Greg Voisen
Well, welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. My name is Greg Voisen, everybody knows me but not everybody knows Jane Frankel. On the other side of the camera here on the Zoom cam is Jane Frankel, the author of a book called The Intentional Mindset: Data Decisions and Your Destiny. And she is joining us from Pennsylvania today. New Frankel you said? Or what's the name of the city?

Jane Frankel
Northwest.

Greg Voisen
Northwest? Sorry. And how are you doing? Good.

Jane Frankel
How am I doing?

Greg Voisen
Yeah, how you doing? Good.

Jane Frankel
Oh, I'm great. Good.

Greg Voisen
Well, this book for all my listeners is a book that you should get an apply the knowledge and wisdom from Jane from and I'm gonna let our listeners know something about you, Jane before we get started. She is the Managing Principal of the art of performance LLC. She founded in 2007. The website is called artofperformance.net. That's artofperformance.net. Her focus is on building 21st century innovation cultures through workforce and customer engagement, strategic alliances, internship and innovation planning. Previously, Jane was the director of corporate business development, knowledge management and education at vertex Inc, the managing strategic alliances with large companies and consulting firms. Other employers have include Unisys Corporation, Delta data systems, and the School District of Philadelphia. She's also the adjunct professor of economics providing project based internship and corporate partnership through the College of Liberal Arts of Temple University. She previously taught entrepreneurship and international business at the Fox School of Business, Temple University and the global College of Business at Arcadia University. She holds an MS degree in organizational dynamics from the University of PA and an MA in education from Temple University, and is a member of the entrepreneurs former of Greater Philadelphia, an advisory board member of the center of regional economic at Temple University. Well, you've got quite a bio and background. And I think our listeners can go to your website and learn more about her from there. So Jane, and tensional mindset, the term you know is is kind of use a lot we hear intentional, floating around all the time be more intentional. really consider what you're doing first before you do it, do it with a new mindset meaning a mindset. Yours then has a subtitle called Data decisions and your destiny underneath that. Right. So if your listeners why you wrote the intentional mindset book with this perspective on business, because in business, you know, a lot of times it's just about getting things done, there isn't sometimes a lot of intentionality around it. Business people are hard forging, forward. It's like well, let's just get it done. But you now bring in this new element of let's do this with a tremendous amount of intentionality. So what do you hope the listeners are going to take away from after reading your book?

Jane Frankel
Now, that that AHA is a very, very encompassing question, Greg. And what the reason I wrote this book is because through my experience in the public sector, the private sector, all ages on basically an educator and I found that in many cases, people people really do the best educating when they deal with themselves if they seek out what they need to know, and, and how they're going to create experiences and do research and have opportunities that will meet their particular goals. So the reason I wrote this is because I encountered so many people who were not using their they were not delving into deeply what they really wanted to do what they wanted to achieve his goals with their values were and, and their modes of work. Were not really serving them well. So I thought, well, you know, the, these folks if they had a tool set and an tension to actually be in control themselves of their work and their thinking, and how they worked with other people, they could be totally self sufficient, not have to rely on other people other opportunities, they, they would be in charge of finding those things for themselves, and would then be the best people to serve themselves. So I just really developed this passion for you can do this, you have the power to do this, if you think just think about it and think about what you're thinking about. So,

Greg Voisen
right? Well, it is. It is, you know, an introspection. intentionality is an introspection, it's a look deep inside, about who we are, why we do what we do, and how we could do it better. And can you speak with the listeners about making a mindset, the making of a mindset? Because that's where it starts? And can you speak with our listeners about the four key components that you talked about, and the critical relationship to one another? Because that's where it all starts is with the mindset.

Jane Frankel
It all starts with the mindset. And I've defined the mindset as having four components, your goals, which are what you want to achieve in your life, as your destiny as your legacy. And your values are the core principles by which you live your life. And those two things really go hand in hand. So some people will make their values first and say, well, these things, these three things are really important to me. So I'm going to make goals that are aligned with them. Or people will say, these are the things that I need to achieve, what are the values that will support that? So then that kind of provides a flat platform for you to then go and think about, well, what do I believe about all of the people or the domain that I'm going to encounter, while I'm going after those goals with the values that I've defined, and what would should be my mode of work. And when those things are aligned and in sync with each other, then it's much easier to get about the business of actually laying out your goals, which are there are two sets of goals, there are learning goals, and there are performance goals. So we always want to be able to lay out a path, to learn what we need to learn in order to get to the performance of whatever the goal is. Some people don't think about it that way. And if you just think about achieving a goal, if you think about winning a marathon, well, if you if you don't take the time to back up and say, Alright, what do I need to do and achieve along the way to learn how to how I'm going to be able to achieve that. That goal, then you don't you haven't you've derailed yourself, you have not really thought about what the what the steps are, though, I think,

Greg Voisen
I think in that respect resources. Yeah, it's a, you know, you set a big goal, sometimes it's a big reach, but you have all these proximal goals that these are the small, tiny steps toward that. But you have to actually do that. You can't just say, Oh, great, I'm going to make a million dollars. So the question is not just how you're going to make a million dollars, but what are the steps you're going to take to get to the million? And what's going to inspire you internally, to want to do that? What are the what's the reason for you wanting a million dollars, just because you want a million dollars, doesn't work that way. And you know, you reference Peter Drucker in his work, Managing Oneself. And I you know, I'm a fan of Peter Drucker, I'm sure many of my listeners have read his books. And he used to be at a university not very far from me here in Claremont, where he did all his work, and I used to live in Claremont. We would, we would see Peter Drucker speak. And it this brings me back to his work with Managing Oneself. Could you speak about the importance of what we've referred to as the autonomous mindset and the seven skills of autonomy because, hey, if, if you reach this peak, autonomy is what people want.

Jane Frankel
Right? For self actualization, right? So, so Peter Drucker points to three things in the article and everything he's written about managing oneself and that's be aware of and take and maximize your strengths. Know your values and know your mode of work. So beliefs I put in there because I think that we all have biases that we need to really explore on the way to between your values and your motive work, because they really do impact your actions and your decisions. So being autonomous, is really something that everybody should strive for in this knowledge economy. And by that I mean, I've defined autonomy as being independent in control, but also didn't knowing what you're dependent on. So it's really a dual path forward of what can I do myself? What plans do I need to make? What learning do I need to achieve? But where will I get all of those resources? The learning? Who are the experts? What are the organizations that might have tools to help me whereas the network of people? How do I build up my internal capital, to be able to take advantage of my strengths and my values, and anything that conflicts with those, those three things being aligned, is really a detriment to your progress. So the seven skills that I've defined of autonomy are first consider mindset, you really want to delve into what your mindset is, and the mindsets of the people you're going to be working with. Because it really is very difficult to work according to your goals, values, beliefs, and motive work, if the people who you need to work with are not on that same page, if they have other other thoughts that they have other mindsets. And that's not a good or a bad thing that that is just the way it is. And we need to really consider the mindsets of those people to find a common ground with a good example of that was the there was an executive of Volkswagen in the 1980s, I think it was the 80s, who this examples in the book, he was charged with creating a partnership between Volkswagens German technology, with the Chinese, in Shanghai, and the name of the book is 1000 days in Shanghai. And I can't imagine a bigger task in the context of aligning the Chinese mindset for work, right, right. German engineering, the German discipline, and but the point was, the Chinese actually wanted that, that German discipline built into their practices to build their auto industry. So, you know, he couldn't, he couldn't just go there and say, Alright, this is the German way we're going to, this was our mindset. And this is the way we're going to work. He had to integrate whatever he could, in the Chinese mindset. And he found that, that it was very helpful and productive, to continue to go back to the goals because they all understood that they had the same goal. So that kind of tied them together and created a platform that allowed them to align the other parts of their mindsets to be able to work together. Well.

Greg Voisen
I think it goes along with this question, you know, you state in the chapter on the origins of mindset, like the origins of mindset of somebody in China, versus the origins of mindset, somebody in Germany, are completely different. And the mindset come and you stayed in there that we have them, we we may not change the source, but we can change its impact. Could you speak about the origins, and how we can change the impact of our mindset? Because your example led to how we could actually change the impact of this mindset? That's

Jane Frankel
right. So so there are five areas that I have to find that impact your mindset or help or create that for you and their nature and nurture. Sometimes they're the same thing, because most often, your nurture comes from your, your nature from your parents. It's genetic, and also behavioral throughout your life. Then there are your strengths, what are you just intuitively good at, which gives you some insights into how things quote should be done. Then there's the your experiences, what what good things happened to you what things were not so good, and what did you embrace and build into your value structure from those experiences? What about your community mentality, we all belong to groups, groups have expectations on behaviors and on what's important, and so that is a filter that helps people that creates people's mindsets and then of the uncertainties that we all experience through life where you think something is going to be one way. And it turns out to be very, very uncertain and unstable. And so all of those things really contribute to how you think and what you think. Now, that impacts what you think. We all think, before we have an action, or before we decide something. So you could say, you definitely can say that your mindset impacts how you go about your business, how you work. Now, when there's a negative outcome to that work, you then most effectively go back and look at what did the five why's What did I do? What was my behavior? Or what was someone else's behavior that caused this project to go and cry, or made it the best the best outcome anybody could ever expect? What was it that made that work, I just shared the value the example of the going back to the goals, okay, for the Volkswagen Shanghai partnership. So if you can keep going back with the five why's to pinpoint what it was in your beliefs, or your motive work, or your values or your goals that impacted that outcome, you then can say, Well, I still believe that that was really, that was really important, that goal was important, and I don't want to change it, the value, maybe I could change a little bit. And you really reflect on where you could make a change, to make an outcome better, or to solidify your actions and your decisions. So that you always use those when you're you're working on a similar project. And

Greg Voisen
I don't want to assume, Jane that all the listeners know the five why's but if you just keep asking the question, why, why that's it. That's all that it is. And it'll literally guide you back to the origin, right of how that happened. And I think then, you have the ability to put the pieces together, because your mind has to function in a way to be innovative and creative. And you've got to look at new ways, which is what you have been an expert at doing. And I want to talk about awareness of reality and the impact it has on the communications, how insightful it can be, you know, we create our own reality, right? Nobody outside of it does. You would about the four message styles, and how this affects the success when working with others. Because, you know, I think this is the key to this is like, hey, we create our reality, great. If we're creating that reality, what are we doing to change that reality? To make the reality, I'm gonna say better, right? Or to improve it because the mindset that you enter any project with, with a business is actually going to determine the outcome of that particular project. That's right. So if you go in negative with a negative mind that good chances are, whether you're a team member or not, you're not going to be the greatest team member. But if you can go in with a positive mindset, and an intentional mindset, and look at it positively, and I'm going to say contribute, feel like you wanted to be somebody who contributed to the ultimate outcome of this project, it's going to be successful, no matter what happens, it's going to be successful. So how do I how do you change people's reality? And you what you're talking about here, the four styles that affect how we are working with others? Well,

Jane Frankel
the first thing, like you set your goal. And but then the first thing you really need to do is look at the goal and the mindset of the people that who you will be working with and determine if they what type of communication is going to be most effective for them. Are they looking for someone to preach at them? Do they really want to be inspired by somebody who set himself up as the expert? Do they want to be prosecuted for doing something wrong? And then therefore they can go do it right? Do they want to be treated as if they're in a political rally where they're being convinced and given motivations and rah rah rah? Or do they Want some data and information to take a scientific inquiry and support whatever it is you are looking to achieve with them. So if you can understand their mindsets where they are and what type of communication is going to resonate with them have for alignment of their their activities with your activities, there is a much better chance of getting to a common using a common platform to work together. Working together towards a common goal with common values and beliefs and mode of work is just the fastest way to get to a positive result. Because everybody's thinking the same thing. There's that team, there's that team group effort going on that is unbeatable. Yeah,

Greg Voisen
well, you know, look, this intentional mindset, you know, data decisions in your destiny, I'm gonna go back to that. Because if you have enough data to analyze the situation, and you can make a more impactful for the decision, you know, hopefully it's a correct one. Not always, are they correct? Right, but it will come to the Disney, which brings me to this, you've talked about this now, three or four times, you state that once our goals are set, or our goals and our proximal goals and our values have been defined, and they're aligned with each other, and confirm with organization in the stakeholders perspective. So now you're looking at the inner circle, and a much bigger outer circle here. This isn't just me, this is now me and all the stakeholders, it's me and all the team members. Can you speak with us about the you've already talked about the five why's and how it approaches to connecting the goals and values to beliefs, and what you call the mode of work? Right? And I don't think we've addressed the mode of work. We have addressed the five why's and why you would just keep asking why, why, why, why why. The question is, is how does this define the mode of work?

Jane Frankel
Well, let's start with the beliefs because now we've talked about the goals and the values. So your beliefs are your biases, and we all have biases. And they're kind of a translation, they are a translation of your goals and values into how you're going to work. And that's your mode of work, your mode of work is most easily implemented by setting a set of protocols for how you're going to work now, and then following them. So and that that must be aligned very much with your goals and your your values. So if you value diversity, if you say you value diversity, and then in your meeting, your mode of work is to discount somebody, anybody's inputted, who doesn't agree with you, well, then you're not demonstrating diversity, and there's a disconnect. So it's really very important to recognize everything that you do, if you give if communicating is a valid value to you that communication has to be strong and consistent, and accurate. But then you send out meaning invalid invitations, 10 minutes before the meeting, you're not demonstrating that communication is very important to you. And that builds distrust, and that builds conflict. So mode of work is pretty much pretty much everything that people see about you, that demonstrate your goals, your values, and your beliefs, and build your narrative. And your narrative, of course of who you are, is very, very important because it gets people to work with you or not. So, so back to Drucker. The mode of work is something would be demonstrated by considering mindsets, it would be considered a mode of work beat would be that you always use data to make decisions you don't it's not see to the pants, and it's not. This is how we always do it. There's data to to validate the path that you think you would like to take. So

Greg Voisen
are you you mentioned in the book, Jane that in this 21st century that we live in, which is always on data driven AI? I mean, let's face it, we've got more tools that are fingertips now than we've ever had in our life to get data. Actually, I think sometimes we're data saturated. But at the same time, you know, you say systemic inquiry and decisions drive the destiny, speak with us about our data and information can improve the quality of our decisions. But while at the same time, I want to say this, not freeze a decision, because we're trying to get too much analytics to say, Okay, well, I need this, this and this before I make this decision to do X. Because I just think today, we do at our fingertips, literally look at how you and I are now interacting, that wasn't happening even five years ago, right. So the amount of data that is out there is exponential to our ability to kind of filter data. And I remember one thing that one of the experts, and I'm trying to think of his name right now, he's been on the show several times, David Allen used to say, you can only be as good as what you allow to come across your transit. And if that comes across your transit and distracts you, okay, you're not going to be making a very good decision.

Jane Frankel
And that's where that's where most of work, your mode of work would define how much is enough data? And what are the what are the situations that would require more data, or less data? Now, I will point out that with all this volumes of data that's out there, your beliefs, your beliefs, can very much limit what you find, because your beliefs, your biases, research can restrict what you find, because we all look for what we believe in the first place. Right? So you being aware of your beliefs, will allow you to expand that range of what you might be looking for, and not just pick up, you know, when I when I write something, I have an idea, and I go look for validation of it. But I also need to be open to lack of, you know, validation, or some conflicting data, or information. And that is going to make my argument, not not so valid, because I

Greg Voisen
want to, I want to say something here about emotions. And you're a study or have all of this. But you know, we've seen in our time, Jane, and I'm going to be 70 in July, and I look at it and I see, I'm just gonna comment on a political system. And everyone says social media, a social media environment, which then can create so much decisive divisiveness. Around a belief that I have on a topic, I don't care what topic it it doesn't matter if it's immigration, or it, education, or it's whatever. But what I can say, gets people going is emotion, okay, their emotional attachment to a belief to stand on something, when stand so strongly that it affects now, take this to business, let's just take that same thing and move it to business. You're saying biases, which I'm just talking about, because those beliefs or biases are affecting how we perform in business. And I want to get to that, because how we carry these emotions and our ability to let go of our certain beliefs about what we think is right and wrong, is affecting everything that happens inside that.

Jane Frankel
That's true. And about 30 years ago, this new field popped up, which was a psychologist. And economists got together and said, Wait a minute, economic decisions are not made economically. And in some cases, that was that was estimated to be 90% of the time decisions are made based on emotions. So how do you get away from that? Well, the only way you can get away from that is to basically talk to yourself and talk to other people and recognize the difference between a bias and a fact. And that's, that's a tall order. Yeah, cause people want to believe what they believe. And but I if you take it I always think if you take it a few, speculate and create a story out of it and say, okay, so you believe this, and then kind of do the whys in a forward motion and say, well, so what's going to be the outcome of that? What do you think's gonna happen? What will if we believe we believe that and we act upon that? What are the outcomes, and then sometimes that can give a greater insight into why you want to alter that belief or not? Well,

Greg Voisen
where did Critical Thinking go and logic?

Jane Frankel
Went away of emotions. So when I say 90% of the time, like

Greg Voisen
you've been an educator all your life, you've watched critical thinking skills, I think we've become very dependent on the devices which we use, which have mitigated the amount of critical thinking skills that we've had, when it really could have enhanced it, we've relied on an iPad or an iPhone or this or that I'm not picking out a company, but something to feed us something that literally now has got us believing something that literally that belief could be misaligned, with really where we should go, right?

Jane Frankel
Well, yes. And I think that that's all very, very valid and great observations. And I would make the same observation about artificial intelligence, actually. Because there there is no thinking there's matching. And that's, that's a great, that's a great facilitator for getting information or getting something written or whatever, you know, whatever you want to do with that. But if you don't ask the right question, you get the wrong data. And also, are asking the right question is the most critical of skills. So there's a set of seven levels of critical thinking that I use, and they take you from, from the very basic level of just reading something and acknowledging, not understanding what it says all the way down to level seven, which is how can how, what what new value can I create from those different levels of thinking around, you know, analyzing, synthesizing, evaluating all of those skills, if you do that, with a, if you do that with a consistency, or around an issue, then you have to uncover your biases. Well,

Greg Voisen
it will do that and I want all my listeners to go get a copy of the intentional mindset, you can get this on Amazon. Great book, it's actually extremely well laid out and thought through lots of diagrams, charts, but more importantly, I think it's a learning tool. This is a tool for you about how you're thinking, okay, and how you can change your thinking and what we were just talking about also your emotions associated with that thinking. Now, you asked the audience when we before we came on here that you wanted to give them your email address so they could reach out and get to you you can go to the artofperformance.net but you also can get it when you want to give them the email address real quick so they talk to you. It's

Jane Frankel
My name Jane H. Frankel. H is important because it doesn't work otherwise. janehfrankel f-r-a-n-k-e-l @artperformance.net. Okay.

Greg Voisen
We'll put that into the blog entry. Now, Jane, in closing up our interview, I want us to focus on some takeaways from our discussion today. Everybody loves to close something with like, okay, what are the action steps and I think, you know, it's important because you can sit here and listen to us discuss this. But the question is, do you have anything that I can act on? And if you were to give our listeners today, I always say three big takeaways because we always learn in threes for some reason, sets of threes seemed to always be very good to remember from the book, what might they be and more importantly, how would they inculcate these into the essence of their being?

Jane Frankel
Well, I would say that the the selfs the three selfs are what I would like to talk about and help people to embrace. And my in my best of all worlds, people are self sufficient. Does that mean they're successful? Every single time, no, but it means that they learned something from everything that they do. And they know how to really be in control be be develop the agency of self confidence, and to then be able to create options that they can be accountable to. So the three, the three, the three selfs are, build your build your self sufficiency by building your confidence through your agency and your self accountability. And there is no better person to take care of you than yourself. Yeah. So if you take on that responsibility, and do it through developing an intentional mindset, well, then you You're, you're good to go, you're going to be successful. And whatever it is you try to do, no matter how many times you have to change that goal, that value. You know, sometimes a goal is unrealistic, but you don't really realize that until you work your way through the values, the beliefs, and the mode of work that are necessary to align to that goal. So,

Greg Voisen
you know, and I would, I would add one thing to yourself. Okay, and I know it might be coming up, maybe I haven't heard it yet. But as we go through life, you and I, who have reached a level of maturity, I think one of the biggest self is self love. To learn how to love yourself for who you are, actually is one of the things that actually gives you more confidence to

Jane Frankel
That's right, that confidence realm. Exactly. Yeah,

Greg Voisen
and I don't think we spend enough time loving who we are, and who we've become, because we're always trying to get to higher levels of performance, or better. And we don't know when that end just right or the other begins. I know Marshall Goldsmith was on here not that long ago. Speaking about that gap between regrets and performance. Right. And, and, you know, I don't think there's really any Yeah, you can say, well, what are your regrets? But you could say, well, is that I wish I woulda shoulda, coulda? Well, don't beat yourself up for that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it is just learning. Well, you know, your, your takeaways are great. And I think for our listeners today, really, the intentional mindset. And she did say you could reach out to her through her email and it's Jane Frankel, at the art of performance.net. Jane H Frankel. At the art of performance.net. Don't forget the age because if you don't put the age in there, you're gonna come across an interior designer named Jane Frankel, I made that mistake myself. So here's the book, everybody go, well, interior design, maybe we need to redesign ourselves too. But Jane is going to help you with the better redesign. So, Jane, it's been an honor and a pleasure having you on inside personal growth and sharing your insights, your wisdom and your knowledge of the years of experience that you've had helping corporations, work with the people inside those businesses to come to greater levels of awareness and insight about what they need to change personally, to actually attain goals that are valuable and important for the purpose and the alignment of those individuals in that company. And ultimately, to the stakeholders in that company, who literally are saying, hey, I really appreciate what this workforce is doing. And you know, Jane has plenty of examples, but I always point to a few. And one that if you really people are out there want to look at what I think has done a great job. And I it always comes up is Patagonia. I always say, you know, you want to see a founder who actually gave away the company who empowered its people who said, Look, you know, I think his book is let's go surfing. He tells them to all go surfing so that they can be more innovative, right? So take that time away for reflection. So that when you come back to the workplace, you have something to apply what that reflection gave you the gift that you get from that. Right. And Jane I know you've worked with companies like this that know this, but you know Sometimes it's very challenging if you're listening to me still right now, to move the needle, both personally, professionally and organizationally, personally, professionally and organizationally. And when those three are aligned, there isn't anything you can't do. There isn't anything they can't do. Any parting words

Jane Frankel
the environment that allows this to happen is also something that individuals and organizations have to embrace. It doesn't happen automatically. There has there have to be resources and time and reflection. There's a whole chapter on reflection so that you actually can get to do some of this work for yourself and and time is really critical because if you don't take the time Oh, Thomas Friedman's book, thank you for being late is all about acceleration and don't worry about being late because you need to stop and think

Greg Voisen
I always love the companies Jane that say, you can put a sign on your door anytime that says I am thinking don't bother me. With that Happy Holidays to you Happy Hanukkah to enjoy. I

Jane Frankel
like it really enjoyed the experience. Thank you so much.

Greg Voisen
I enjoy having you on as well. And thank you for the book. Everybody go get the intentional mindset I can ever tell which way I'm holding this. It's data decisions in your destiny, Jane happier.

Jane Frankel
And I tell your audience about the butterfly on the on the cover. Real quick. Reply on the cover represents every individual and there's a grid. So you can be as free as a butterfly. As long as you've created that, that mindset grid to help you.

Greg Voisen
I love it. It's like a tapestry of life. We're all interconnected. That grid is the tapestry. The butterfly can fly anywhere it needs to go. Thank you so much, Jane, you

Jane Frankel
Take care now. Bye bye bye