S4E13: The Executive's Productivity Paradigm, with Richard Medcalf

This is the No Ego Podcast, where we ditch the drama, end entitlement, and transform your workplace. I'm Sy Wakeman. Welcome everyone back to another episode of the No Ego Podcast. This season I am bringing you all the experts I can think of that will help you really take your workplace and the work you're doing to the next level. So many people— execs, VPs, CEOs— pre-COVID told me they had so much difficulty getting to the strategic work that's in front of them, getting to the real transformational work, playing in their zone, and leaving the operations to standardization, automation, operations teams. They wanted to optimize before they standardized. It's so common before COVID that people had tons of excuses why they just didn't have time for strategy. And now post-COVID and all the firefighting has not helped the situation. So getting back to work means getting back to strategic thinking. And I have the perfect guest coming on for you. He describes himself as what you would get if you put a McKinsey consultant— and I love McKinsey consultants, I do a lot of work with A couple. So if you take a McKinsey consultant and a slightly unorthodox pastor and an entrepreneur, throw them in a blender, you get my next guest, Richard Medcalf, founder of X Quadrant. And I'm so glad to have you on the podcast. Welcome, Richard.

Hi. I'm so glad to be here as well. I love your show and I'm really looking forward to diving in today and talking about some cool stuff.

I really am too. You have such a great pedigree. I was reading a bit through your bio. You've simply got to share at least a paragraph about your pedigree so that we can all look up to you.

Well, okay. Well, talking about myself is my favorite subject. So strap yourself in for the next 7 hours and we'll take it away. But actually, before I do that, let me say a lot of my clients have the same thing, which is, On the outside, right, they have this incredible CV that everyone looks up to and admires. They're the CEO, they're a senior executive, they're a founder, or whatever it is, right? They've just got a great track record. Inside, it's just like, well, this is just what I do. Doesn't feel that special. Perhaps I've been lucky, perhaps I was in the right place at the right time, whatever it is, but doesn't feel that special. And actually, inside, I know I've got— I've whole level more impact, a whole new level to get to. I know I could do a lot more. I'm not playing my biggest game. And I think that's really, I suppose, if I'm being honest, it's also me, right? I'll tell you about my CV. But I think that hunger for more impact is something that I have through me and my clients have. So I guess the The executive summary, I suppose, is, so I grew up in the United Kingdom. I went to university at Oxford. I did a master's there. I got a good result there. Moved into strategy consulting in the tech, media, and telecom space and became the youngest ever partner in that company, which was a lot of fun. During that time, I moved to Paris in It was meant to be for a year, and here I am still, 22 years later, with a wife and family here in France. And then, I guess, a couple of years after being made partner, I kind of felt it was time perhaps to stop being a big fish in a small pond and perhaps do something different. So, Cisco approached me at that time, and I joined Cisco, worked with them for about 10 or 11 years. The last team I was in was set up by John Chambers and Chuck Robbins, the CEO and global head of sales at the time of Cisco, to really kind of catalyze cross-functional strategic partnerships and that kind of thing. Or as I like to describe it, fulfilling rash commitments made by the CEO to other customer execs. We were the ones that would get the phone call.

It's sometimes disguised as strategy, right? What they mean is somebody make sure not to screw up this important deal.

Yeah, well, basically it was kind of budget creation. I mean, basically it was like, John or Chuck would have a meeting, they'd get very excited with another exec in a partner company about a new initiative, Internet of Things, collaboration, cloud computing, whatever it was. And then we'd get the phone call saying, yeah, we've got to do something amazing here. There's a big opportunity. But of course, you'd go into the organization, and yeah, the CEOs were aligned, but then you had the rest of the organization that had a very different, more transactional relationship with Cisco that you had to kind of mobilize, get engaged. and really get 2 companies that were very large, often, working together on a cutting-edge initiative, which broke all the rules. So, that was kind of fascinating as an experience.

Oh, I bet. And it was hard to free up. I can only imagine, you know, the big ideas come up, but then when you go to implement them, it's like people see them as a direct threat to the now, the current operations. And there's just, there's a lot of conflict between strategy and operations that is self-created. I always say suffering is self-imposed. And I know we're gonna get to that, but there's so many ways that that's self-created.

Yeah, that's right. And you go in and you're really not quite sure quite what you're gonna see. I remember going into one client in particular. We actually joined, we had an initial meeting. They were a little bit cool because I think they had an experience of, CEOs kind of throwing their weight about and kind of trying to force things upon the organization in the past. So they were kind of listening, they were polite. And then we set up a follow-up call and the CMO joined. He thought he was on mute and we could hear him talking to his chief of staff going, oh, what are these guys from Cisco doing? Do we have to speak to them really? Whatever. So he really was not happy. We didn't let on that we'd heard this, of course. But a couple of months later, 3 months later, I remember having a conversation with him and he said, Richard, you're doing Lord's work here. I must admit, I was a bit of a skeptic when you guys came in, but you've actually stuck with it, right? You've actually kind of rolled up your sleeves and made things happen, and been listening to actually what would make us successful, rather than just trying to come along and sell some Cisco kit, which was great. And so, it was rewarding, right? But sometimes you just have to go at the speed of these organizations as well, right? Sometimes you can't I like to say you can run to the front of the train, but you can't make the train go faster sometimes. Exactly.

Well, and I think that's part of, with reality-based leadership, it's like, given what we have today, how do we succeed? And that's what opens up some of the innovation. And then you went on though to found your own organization, right? X Quadrant?

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I had a moment when I kind of sat back and really thought, what is it that I want to tell my grandkids in the future, or my great-grandchildren sitting on my knee when I'm 90 or whatever? What's the kind of stories I want to tell them about my professional impact? And I think at that point, I realized that what I wanted to tell them about was kind of how I catalyzed people to even greater heights. That's what I love doing. Helping them think differently, see the world in a different way, strategize, kind of cut out all the noise and find out what's really important. And in doing so, make an impact, right? Make an impact on the world, make an impact on their organizations and on their business.

I love that. I love that. In that way, we have similar Goals. You work at a more strategic level. I look at I work at the the individual level, kind of. But we both end up in the same place: the mind shifts that need to happen to make that happen. And I love the title of your podcast. It just really speaks to your purpose: The Impact Multiplier CEO Podcast. And so if people are and I know they will love it. Just remember that Richard has a podcast out there called The Impact Multiplier CEO, and it's fantastic. So. I want to— people are always looking for new things to listen to as they're out and about. Yeah, thank you. You're welcome, you're welcome. Let's get into this because pre-health crisis and in our country at least social uprising and all kinds of awakenings happening, pre-that, the number one thing, you know, I would hear when I work with executives was that they just didn't have time for strategy or they had all these good intentions.

Yes.

But they would get pulled down operation issues and there was this constant disruption. And that's what I heard from them. But what I heard from you that I loved, I wanna emphasize, is that soul craving, like, golly dang, I could be doing more. I could be more fulfilled. I could be having more impact in the world. And that's the unspoken kind of personal piece, I think, for a lot of us. I know for me, a business owner, it's— as I'm approaching my late 50s, I'm like, you know what, I've done some good things, but I want to do some like big things in the world. And how do you extricate yourself from the demands of running a business and delivering, you know, so the money comes in, to that big stuff? And it involves a lot of courage. I think for me, I've had to really say no to so many things to create the space And when you're in that space, for me, the fear of mediocrity comes in because after you give up all your excuses, like I don't have time and I get pulled into operations, you are just left with what if it's not in me, like the imposter syndrome. But, um, I think that's such an interesting question. So I want to turn that over to you because pre-pandemic people would have a lot of excuses for why they couldn't get into strategy. And they asked me like, how do I free myself up? Do I have to, you know?

Mm-hmm.

go to a desert island for a year? How do I get focused on strategy? And I know you have so many great insights about that. So I'll just lob that volleyball to you and you can figure out where to start with that.

Yeah. Well, you're right. I mean, actually you have to go to a desert island for about 3 years actually. So that's really the practical advice. No, no. So yeah, you're absolutely right. I work with one-to-one coaching CEOs and other senior execs and also with executive teams, leadership teams. And this is a key refrain, right? I hear it all the time. I'm stuck too much in operations. I'm not spending enough time on the strategic projects. I'm not working on the things I know is really going to get us to the next level. Yeah, I'm stuck in operations, or it might be actually, and my team, my team is stuck in operations. So, how can I— I can't even give stuff to them because they're all stuck in operations, right?

And they ask me, they're like, what class can we take? What course can you bring in? What book can we read? And I would tell them honestly, I have a lot of people reading a lot of different books on strategy, but for some reason they focus externally on how to change your circumstances, which of course goes against no ego. No ego is how do you evolve so that you move through your current circumstances more skillfully. But every book I've read so far is all about like, how do you get more productive and how do you get organized and how do you carve out time? And it just isn't sustainable because it's trying to manipulate reality. Right.

Absolutely. And so here's the thing, extracting yourself from lower-level tasks to work on more strategic activities is not a matter of forcing yourself to become more organized or to adopt new tools, tips, and productivity frameworks. Okay, absolutely not. So those things can help, but they're not going to get you there. And it's really a deeper game. I like to describe it actually as a mindset challenge, a leadership challenge, and a behavior challenge. And it's why I find that often these things come up with me in my coaching work. I just ran a group program on this very topic of freeing yourself up with a bunch of leaders. And when I started, this one person in particular just jumping to mind said, I'm absolutely overloaded, working the weekends, no time, completely bottleneck in so many processes, so many things. And about 3 months later, he said, I went to my boss and said, hey, where else can I help in the business? Because he said he had free time. He had chunks of free time. And as a result, he's gone on to actually take on a much wider remit. So these shifts are possible. And often we think they're not possible. We think there's all these reasons why we can't do it. So I've got 4 shifts that I think could be helpful as you start to think about this. The first shift is stop trying to free up time. Stop trying to free up time because that's what we all want to do. We want to free up time. But the reality is things just pile back in. As soon as we free up time, something else appears.

You have to be a boundary master because if you haven't elevated yourself and gotten really selective, anytime you free up, something finds its way in.

Yeah. There's always another email.

That's the same thing, Instagram scrolling, right? Yeah. Right.

So one of my clients— sorry, one of my guests on the podcast, my podcast kind of alternates between content that I deliver and people that I interview. And I interviewed a CEO and we were talking around how he became And a master of delegation overnight. He said, I became a real expert overnight and I've never lost it. So, wow, how did that happen? He said, well, my wife became critically ill in hospital. That was it. So reality is he delegated immediately. He had to, right? He had to let it go. He had to just focus on the few things he really had to do and everything else—

And that's where you see things are an illusion because we have all these excuses like, oh, I can't delegate. Nobody around me can pick up the pace. And then a crisis like that happens and it shows us the illusion that we've been operating under. And our ego is just master of illusions to keep us frenzied and not reflecting and not doing anything that would impact the existence of the ego. So all of a sudden, overnight, this guy can delegate.

Exactly. And so the point here is that instead of freeing up time, we need to focus on our high-value activities and perhaps our top Strategic priority. Okay, so the way I like to say it is, most of us, we're doing the things that made us successful last year, and we're not thinking about what's really going to make us successful next year. In fact, I was talking with somebody in a high-growth scale-up tech company, and she said, the mantra in their company is, if you're doing the same activities as you were last year, you must be failing. Because we're growing so fast. If you're doing the same thing, you're obviously being a bottleneck. You're not pushing it down, you're not systematizing it, and so forth. So rather than freeing up time, that's that first shift, is you want to really be thinking about what do I need to be doing and really get crystal clear on that.

The high-value task. And I love that next year, last year. It's like what What do you need to be doing to be successful next year? Now, when I coach people on this, Richard, this is where we hit kind of their fear points and their ego point because, you know, we all love feeling competent and we love to stay in the land of what I know. Mm-hmm. And I think what draws people into doing what they did last year is that really that feeling of competence. You don't have to be vulnerable. I mean, when somebody says like, you know, hey, get out and do what will be good for next year, A lot of us are just getting competent as we're, you know, we're learning on the fly. We are doing it super imperfectly. We're like, you know, guessing towards the future. Um, we may not be doing that with mastery. And, and so at least for me, and I think for others, that's why we tend to toggle back into what we know, because that unknown is kind of unsettling unless you're doing some real work there. Do you find that?

Yeah, that's right. I mean, and that's actually, I guess it's a nice lead-in to talk about this other shift in the context of what you've just said. Because the second shift, I guess I like to tell people is you need to start with your beliefs. Examine your beliefs first. Because the message is you don't need a productivity hack, you need a mindset shift. And so you're right, it's how we think about things, what we feel comfortable with and what we want to go back to. that is generally the thing that's constraining us. So, I'll give you one. You talked about that kind of question about how am I going to deliver things at a high standard, things I'm comfortable with, I'm strong at. Well, I was working with somebody and he said, well, Richard, the reality is I have very high standards. I believe in excellence, and I know that I'm the best person to do this job, quite frankly. And my team, I'm not quite sure that up to it. So I thought, well, so what you're telling me is you want to be the high-performing janitor. I was like, what do you mean? And I was like, well, you want to be like, you're the high-performing janitor. You are polishing those, you're scrubbing those floor tiles, right? So that you could eat your breakfast off of them. They'd be beautiful. But in the meantime, the rest of the building's falling down, right? Or gathering dust.

Such a good metaphor. It's such a good metaphor.

And so you'd be doing low-value tasks.

At the same time that we're doing what we feel competent in externally, I mean, we look good or we're never caught in a vulnerable position, all the external focus. But going back to what your soul craves and what you're fulfilled about and what you have gnawing about that you could do bigger work goes unfulfilled. And You know, I think that's so interesting because there are times in my life I'm like, should I do this or that? And what's the right thing? And, you know, what's the right task? It's all externally focused. And it's like, what's my soul crave? What would be fulfilling work? And once I decide that, it is so easy to crowdsource to say, then who could help me, you know, know how to do that? Or who could help me, you know, get a plan in place? But until I can ask a better question, you know, when we're asking kind of the same questions, we get the same unfulfilling answers. I think it's really, do I want to be the incredible janitor or do I really want to be the legacy person who not only restored but repurposed this building?

Yeah. So yeah, I like to talk about, to get over the fear barrier, we need to focus on what's my maximum contribution? What's my greatest service? What's my greatest contribution at this moment? And when you do that, you get out of yourself and you're out of your comfort zone and you go, well, if it's worth doing, it's worth doing badly. I'm going to have a go. I'm going to learn. I'm going to lean into my edge and I'm going to make a bigger impact. And I'm going to just go for it. I love

it. And it's the acceptance of life is messy. You won't do this well. My favorite poet is David Whyte. And he talks about when you're at the door that you must walk through, just know you will not come out alive. You will not come through this alive. And what he means by that is you have to be willing for an old identity, like what you were proud of and good at, to die in order to really deliver at another level. And we're not really good at, um, you know, kind of letting go of the past. You know, that's why we all talk about, you know, the greatest accomplishment, you know, 10 years ago instead of our greatest dream 10 years from now. And it's like changing that conversation to Quit talking about our CV and talk about our hopes and dreams and gather people around us that can help make them happen.

Absolutely.

This is good stuff.

So yeah, so let me move on. So I guess the third shift is to really focus on acceleration and not speed. And what I mean by that is instead you need to think about how am I going to build a system to get better at getting better. And let's face it, a lot of us, we actually optimize for speed. In other words, we just try and solve whatever problems come our way as quickly as possible and move on to the next one. We're not thinking about acceleration. So, I suppose the way I like to imagine this is, you have this ceiling of complexity, and you can either use time, or you can invest your time. Using time basically means you do whatever is necessary to get the task done, but that task is going to come back next week, next month, next quarter, next year, or it's going to come back when you onboard your next employee, or when you sell to your next customer, or whatever else it is in your business. It's just going to come back. And so, I call that OpEx behavior, right? And for financial people, right? OpEx, it's recurring costs, operating costs. It's just a cost of Transactional.

It's not wasteful, transactional and repeated.

It's repeated stuff, fundamentally. And so, at that point, we just run out of hours in the day at some point, as we accumulate this OpEx, right? These different recurring tasks, until we're maxed out, and we can't go any further. And that's the ceiling of complexity, and so many people are jammed in there. But just imagine if you could invest just 10 minutes of what I call CapEx, investment time, that's going to then free up some time every week.

That's what you mean by the focus on accelerating that time.

Yeah, because then you've created a bit of margin that you can then repurpose the following week. and the following week. There'll be a bit of short-term pain. It's a classic thing like, oh, I've got no time to delegate. Well, if there's a recurring task, you've got no time not to delegate. You have to get it off your plate as far as you can. If it's not the highest and greatest use of your time, you will be underperforming as long as you're doing that task. It's as simple as that. And I think the difference between those of us who stagnate and those of us who have these exponential paths of impact is whether we stay doing the same old things or whether we do find a way to break out of that and invest time. And that's why developing your team, training yourself, actually learning the ins and outs— it might sound trivial, but actually learning the ins and outs of the software tools that you use so that they do a lot of the work for you, right? All these things.

That's a big one. That's a big one because I think the people I work with a lot of times, like, they just delegate unprocessed crappy work to others and it becomes somebody else's OpEx. And it's like, and I know that you brilliantly look at this, but it's like, does it even need to be done? Does it still have the ROI? Is it being done because it's my personal preference or there's actually some big value add? Or can we eliminate it? Can we automate it?

Yeah.

You know, so often we have, you know, I know in my organization, I work a ton on telling my team, use the tools. Like, you know, our software has to be able to do that so that no human ever touches that. But I find in my own team that people believe opening something up and looking at it and acknowledging, like, where it is, they touched it, so it somehow added value. I'm like, no, if you didn't move it from one stage to the next, there was no value added there. Yes. didn't move it along. So, that is so interesting to kind of declutter and relieve yourself of that burden.

And I think there's 2 elements here, which are important to realize. I think the first one is this idea that most of us have risen up throughout organizations by our ability to solve the problem. And that is going fast, it's acceleration. So, it's speed, right? And then acceleration is actually when we go, I don't need to solve the problem myself. My task right now is to make sure my team becomes the kind of team that can solve the problem themselves.

Got

it. That is a big shift for most people, and that's quite hard for many people. The other part is to remember, as we were just talking about, the tools of your trade. I remember a colleague of mine once saying, Richard, I only do home improvement once a year. So I buy a cheap $1 hammer that falls apart after the third whack. But that's fine. I'll buy another $1 hammer next year. But if I was a carpenter, he said, I would buy that $100 hammer that was, I don't know, titanium reinforced with shock absorbing handle and whatever else you needed, right? And was going to last a lifetime because it's the tool of my trade and I needed it to be the best, the most efficient. Because it's going to impact everything that I do. And so, therefore, as a knowledge worker, I make sure I have the best IT, I have my big double-screen setup, I have the latest phone, I've really learned the ins and outs of the software tools that I use. It's because it's my hammer, I'm a knowledge worker. And it was a really key insight for me, and it made me think about technology in a bit of a different way, even though I've always loved technology. It really made me go, you're right, this is not where you skimp. And the number of people who spend all day in their email programs, right? And yet haven't set up filters and auto-replies and canned responses and anything else. It's like, you're using the $1 hammer, right? And you're a carpenter.

That's so true. And I think there's an element too of giving up control in that because you know, my own company, we set out for the plan that I would be freed up, and we really defined the high-value work I wanted to be doing. And we also looked at some things, you know, with the changing algorithms on social media that had been our go-to strategy.

Hmm.

And we're giving a lot of free stuff away, and it just wasn't being seen. And, you know, we needed to— that was no longer high-value work, and we changed those strategies. But what I found myself is just having to be really okay with, in many regards, I am just not involved in the day-to-day workings of my company, which means that if something, you know, rises up and the exception wasn't handled well, it's a coaching, teaching moment. It's a shaping moment. But for the most part, I've had to have a lot of tolerance of, I guess, giving up control, just really, you know, choosing to trust my people and trust the process and really look at what is really a fatal, um, you know, issue and what's not. Mm-hmm. Um, so there's another mind shift in there, I think, in doing what you're talking about, which is the ability to, like, use our tools. Because if your identity is really, um, connected to, you know, whether it be busyness or, um, you know, kind of physically acting upon something, that's, that's a whole different piece. I'll never forget when I was, um, First a director and in a healthcare system. And I was— we were gonna have some strategic planning. And so I really was just— we had these glass hallways, these glass offices, and I was sitting there. I had just read like a mind-blowing article, and I was sitting in my chair just staring out this front window of my glass hallway. And my CEO walked by. He walked all the way by, and he backed up, and he goes, Wakeman, what the heck are you doing? And I was just sitting there thinking. I go, I'm just— my mind just got blown. I'm just sitting here thinking. And he goes, well, stop it. Do something. It was so funny. It just stuck with me for a long time because, I mean, I was so rewarded for doing things even at the director VP level. And it was like he was horrified to catch me thinking.

Yeah, it's a key one because we We also get this kind of reward, right? When we knock something off our to-do list, even if it's a small thing and minor, we feel good about it. And I see a lot of people say, Richard, I'm going to put strategic thinking in my diary, and I never do it. I always delete it or move it or don't know what to do. It's like, well, yeah, because you've got a choice of a super specific, easy, quick thing, like replying to an email, or you've got a whole block of time, which sounds big and scary, and you've no idea where to start. What does it even mean to think strategically for an hour? What exactly are you going to do? What are you thinking about? What problem are you trying to solve? What output are you trying to create? If you haven't defined any of those things, then you've just set yourself up for procrastination because it's ambiguous, it's unrewarding, it's just a big mess. So strategic thinking, you have to set up the context for it and be clear about what you're trying to achieve. You can't just—

And what you're solving for. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, hey, listen. These are great. I know you've got one or two more here.

Yeah, I just want to make sure I hit them because I think this last one's a real key one, which is, as you remember, I might've said at the start, it's a mindset challenge, it's a behavior challenge, but it's also a leadership challenge. And so, you need to work the room because one of the reasons that I hear a lot of my clients say it's hard to do this, it's hard to level up, is because of the expectations of their board, of their colleagues, of their team. upon them, right? People count on me for doing this in the business, or they count on me to get back to them fast. But the truth is you can't level up without renegotiating your agreements with your stakeholders.

I love this one because so many of us are imprisoned by either contracts we never signed or worn-out agreements that no longer fit who we are or Or just assumed it's so important.

Well, let me give you an example, a really practical example. I've got a one-to-one coaching client who was the chief human resources officer of a $2.5 billion company, global company. He'd just basically been admitted onto the C-suite. So I was doing a bit of work with him, just helping him kind of really think about the impact he wanted to make in this next phase. And he was really focusing in on some big transformational projects that were really, really huge, right? The group had never done things of this kind of size, and yet it desperately needed to be done. And one session, he started off by saying, you know, Richard, I think I'm spending too much time in my email. You know, I feel I'm not getting enough time on these key projects. I feel I'm a bit too stuck in these operational issues coming up. And so, I was like, okay, well, tell me about that. So he said, well, you know, talked a bit about the situation. He said, well, you know what, I really want to be trustworthy and responsive to my colleagues, you know, and get back to them, you know, so they don't have to hassle me, and, you know, they don't feel that I'm the kind of person that never replies to messages, and, you know, they have to be reminded to do. So I said, well, look, at this point, there's nothing I can say to you that is going to get you out of your email. What do you mean? Well, the reality is that it's a value thing for you, right? You feel reliable and trustworthy when you get inbox zero, right? When you have replied to people every day and dealt with all your messages. But let me ask you a question, I said to him. What would your CEO— what's he counting on you for right now? Oh, well, you know, to deliver these big transformational projects. Right. What about the shareholders, investors? Yeah, well, I guess the same thing, because that's like the— it's going to move the needle. Right, got it. What about the employees? Oh, well, yeah, they're desperate for this, because it's going to really change the employee experience and make them more productive. Oh, great. What about the clients? Well, customers, yeah, customers will— I mean, I guess, if they were there in the room, they would want me to do that too, because it's going to free up the time of all the employees to do what they both need to do for the clients, right? So it's going to be good for them. Okay. So what you're telling me is basically you're being unreliable and untrustworthy when you're not getting around to those transformational projects, and instead you're messing around in your inbox, right?

That's profound.

And he was like, oh, you're so right. And of course, at that point, I didn't need to go and coach him on, how to set up his filters in Gmail or how to block out time or how to prioritize things. That wasn't the question because he had got the shift. He was suddenly, oh yeah, this is not who I want to be. I want to be reliable and trustworthy on the most important things.

Which is such a profound exercise. I give assignments for self-reflection and you just gave it. Take a look, listeners, to the value that's keeping you from doing what you know you could be doing at a greater level and see if you're using those as an excuse. Because a lot of times when I was a therapist, people, you know, would know they needed to leave a relationship, but they would say, I have integrity and I made a commitment.

Yeah.

And I'm like, what if leaving was an act of integrity where you actually told this person that, you know, you weren't the one for them? And it was like mind-blowing to them because they They were staying because they were so loyal and had integrity. And it's like, what if leaving was an act of integrity? And that's that shift that would just blow their mind.

Right.

And I'm like, you have integrity, but you're lying to the person you're with and you're keeping them from being who they're supposed to be with. I don't love divorce, but it's like, and what you did there is so important. That assignment for self-reflection, folks, I'll give it to you now instead of at the end, is Reflect on why you've been unable to move out of something you've wanted to move out of, from a low value to a high value, and see if it's a misapplied value, if you would be better off looking at your reality differently, that you may not be living that value to the largest level that you think you're just using as an excuse. That's fantastic. Sorry to interrupt. That was so good.

No, no, no. Perfect. And then, of course, the kind of the next step which is why this is about working the room, is of course, it's not quite enough, right? He's not quite there at that point. He's got the aha, but email, he's still going to have to renegotiate his expectations. He's going to go to his boss and say, look, I'm freeing up time for this transformational initiative. I'm not going to be able to reply to all those. I'm not going to check my email all the time anymore, right? I'm going to block out time for this. Or he's going to go to his peers and say, look, you're going to have to give me a few days. Because I'm working on this big thing right now. If it's urgent, then perhaps send me a message on my mobile or whatever it is. So, at that point, you start to then renegotiate those agreements in order that you work through it.

It's just talking out loud and not being part of the emotional blackmail. Because I've worked in so many organizations with leaders who, they're like, well, my employees think this is a good leader. I'm like, well, then go retrain them on Hmm. I, you know, do not make up a story when I don't respond quickly to your email. My service to you is creating a different employee experience. And that's what a, you know, a leader needs to be focused on right now in this company. So that you really redefine for them, you know, not only that agreement, that contract, like you help right-size their expectations so that you're not operating out of the emotional blackmail.

Exactly.

It's great stuff.

Exactly.

And I'm sorry I interrupted you.

No, no, I think that was really it.

I love your stuff, Richard.

I love your stuff. Thank you. So yeah, I mean, I think that's really the summary. I mean, there's plenty of topics here, but I think the key thing is that this moving into high-value tasks, right, it's about transformation. It's not information, right? If you want to really make a dent in the low-value tasks and free up that time for the high-value tasks, it is really, it's a mindset challenge. It's a leadership challenge, right? First of all, there's some behavior shifts as well, but it's an internal journey, right? It's not, reality is not what you think it is, right?

You've got to really question it. You've got to reflect and find ways that, where are your kind of reasons, stories, and excuses? And there's no There's no fixing your circumstances. It really is transcending and moving through your current reality more skillfully. And that's why I love, I love the, the work that you're bringing to the table. And I think it's so, so very important. I remember, you know, some people feel good when they can get through their inbox and get everything off their list. I worked in healthcare. I realized that my new state in life was that I would go home every single night with things undone.

Hmm.

And the problem was, is that I was just allowing time to determine that. I would hit the ground running, I'd work as hard as I could, and whatever was left undone at the end of the night was not conscious and intentional. It was just what I ran out of time to do. And I had to accept that I will not get it all done. And so instead of letting time determine it, I would choose what I would leave undone and accept the consequences. So when people call me and they're like, I didn't get this from you, I would say, yes, I chose not to work on that today. And it was like mind-blowing because I couldn't be a victim. I couldn't just say, oh, I ran out of time. And then I started to say, when people brought things to me, like, I just need to let you know, like, that will never make my priority list. So I'm just not the person to bring that to. And that level of like honesty freed me up and it freed other people up that, um, you know, I just remember when I said I'm gonna consciously choose what I fail at or what I leave undone or what I don't get back to people about, and I'm gonna own it and not even, um, you know, necessarily be apologetic. About it, but to say, you know what? I made a different choice. I chose to value this, and that really changed how my relationship with people. So I love, I love your work in saying, you know what? Look at the high value. Look at your own minds and the mindset shift you have to make your own beliefs. Focus on acceleration, not speed. Like free yourself up. So free yourself up mentally and then physically, and, and then renegotiate. And I think every single step you talked about has this element of accountability, not victimhood. Like this element of, you know what, like, I'm gonna see reality as it really is and not be a victim of it. I'm just gonna, you know, be intentional, be conscious, make good choices, and, and own it. And it's just really a cool approach to getting more strategic.

Are

there other tips you have for people? I know, like you or like me, you're really into abundance, Richard. You give a lot away. You've got even a course people can take at no cost on this topic. Do I remember that correctly?

Yeah, that's right. There's a couple of things actually. I mean, there's a bunch of resources. I mean, I guess 2 that come to mind is there is an email course which we dive into some of these topics. It's a free kind of course. It's called Freeing Yourself Up for Strategic Activity, and you can find that at my website, which is xquadrant.com/go/productivity. And that's kind of like, I think, about 8 emails or so that kind of go through these kind of shifts and a couple of other kind of counterintuitive shifts that you might want to make as you kind of look to level up. And the other one, which is a little bit fun, is there's like a little calculator I did, just 10 questions to kind of give you a bit of a benchmark as to where you are on this kind of executive productivity scale. Where are the opportunities to free up time? Where might you be kind of lowering your score in this area? And it just takes about a minute. There's only 10 questions. I don't even ask for an email address. You can just you can just do it. And that's at xcorporation.com/go/productivity-assessment. And so that might, again, might even be another one to have a look at if you've got a spare 60 seconds.

That's fantastic. I'm going to go do that. I didn't catch that. I'm going to go do that and see if I need to— I need a lot of work in this area. Richard, I really appreciate it. We're talking a lot about You know, coming back to work, and I think you know a good health crisis does get you focused on operations. For a while, it was all hands on deck. So many of especially my healthcare clients, you know, said we just put everything optional on hold. And just this last couple of weeks, I've had so many healthcare clients say, you know, it's time we've got to resurrect. And instead of playing You know, soccer like five-year-olds, which is like huddle ball because we've all been just trying to meet the needs of patients. We need to go back to our zones, and we need to you know remove ourselves from some of this operation. So this is a perfect podcast at the perfect perfect time. Where else can they get your information? We've got to get you if you haven't yet. You need to get a great book out there. But um. So remember everybody, the podcast, The Impact Multiplier CEO. I won't book shame you, but your stuff is so good that— and anyplace else? I know that we gave them the xquadrant.com website.

Yeah. So I mean, obviously xquadrant.com has got a lot of the blogs and material and everything else. Your LinkedIn, I'm always happy to just connect. I just love conversation, right? I mean, I'm all about, as a coach and consultant, I'm just about conversations. People get very transactional at times. But I believe in long game, right? You add value to people, you build conversations with fascinating people, and good stuff tends to emerge at the right time for everybody. So do look me up on LinkedIn, reach out, say you listen to the podcast, and strike up a conversation.

Perfect. And it's Richard Medcalf, just to mention that. M-E-D-C-A-F. Oh, yeah. D and no E.

Yeah, D.

Sorry.

I'm a director.

Yeah, D and no E and no T for all of us Americans. Richard and I were just joking about how we spell things phonically here.

Yeah, I said, didn't I? I said I was in Philadelphia many years ago and I wanted to get to the Continental Hotel, and I said it with my crisp British accent, Continental, and the concierge had no idea because he was wanting me to say Con-nen-al. So my name actually has— yeah, it doesn't have the T though, it has the D, so it's Medcalf with a D and no E on the end.

I love it. Well, Richard, thank you. Our relationship actually was one of those LinkedIn, just some nice conversation back and forth, and then you introducing your work to me and me loving it. So thank you for coming on the podcast. I really hope people dig in, especially to that, that value, that belief question. What's holding you back and how are you misusing that belief or value that you're very clear about, but how are you using it to keep you stuck rather than free you up? I think that's an interesting question. So thank you so much and be safe and be well. And hopefully we'll both be able to travel soon to each other's countries. I miss France a lot.

Absolutely. Yeah, same thing. I used to be a platinum flyer traveling with Cisco, I think in economy class, class because that was the thing in the day. And so that was— so I don't miss all of that, but I do miss getting out and about a little bit and seeing fun places.

Exactly. Speaking of transactional rather than transformational, we'll save money by shoving you in this tiny seat so that you're exhausted when you arrive.

Yeah, exactly. That was the company policy of frugality. There you go.

Exactly. Okay, Richard. Well, thank you and be well.

Thanks

so much. This is the No Ego Podcast, where we ditch the drama, end entitlement, and transform your world place. I'm Sy Wakeman.