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Well, welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. And joining me from Pottsville, Pennsylvania. And he was just telling me about Yuengling and I didn't know anything about it. Is it the home is George Pesansky. George, good day to you. How are you doing? Oh, thank you so much for having me, Greg. I appreciate having you as well. And, you know, you every one of my viewers on YouTube can see the book in the upper right hand screen called Super Performance eight Strategies to Reach Full Potential for Yourself and Your Team and Your Organization, and our podcast today is going to we're going talking to George about the book and so on.

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George, I'm going to let the listeners know just a tad bit about you, and I'll have you fill in more of the details. George is the author of this upcoming book is going to be released on September 23rd, which is right around the corner. It's in, Amazon right now for, preorder. And if you want, you can just go to George Brzezinski PSA and esquire.com there.

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Unknown
You can order the book. And you also could sign up for his, Deliberate minute newsletter, which is there as well. But George is a seasoned expert and operational excellence over three decades of leadership and performance optimization. But here's where this new book is kind of compelling. He's cracking the code on something we all struggle with, and he calls it how to turn those real rare golden hours when everything clicks into consistent, lasting success.

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Unknown
And and I wanted to speak about that because I want to see how he personally got to those golden hours himself. He said too many of us get trapped by unclear priorities and workplace friction. Watching our peak performance moments slip away. So super performance. This book provides eight proven strategies to eliminate the ambiguity, master clarity, and create the sustainable momentum you were chasing.

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Unknown
And today we're going to divide. We're going to dive into those key strategies and discover the practical framework, that you can use, whether you're a leading a team, driving change in your organization or simply yourself, striving for personal excellence. So again, go to George Posnanski, Dot com or blended learning.com is my blended learning. My blended learning I'm sorry.

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Unknown
Thank you for correcting me on that. Well George how did you get here? I mean, how did somebody like yourself finally write this book? And why did you want to write this book? And what did you see going on inside businesses that compelled you so much, to to want to get this book out? And now. Yeah. No, thank you, Greg, and thanks for having me.

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Unknown
You know, I really thought of myself as somebody who would never write a book like this or a business book at all. And, my practice has been about understanding your root cause of your success. The things that work well for you, and how to really extend and expand those to really reach your full potential. And what happened as my career continued to progress, people asked that question, especially when I might be meeting a new client or working with a new team.

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Unknown
And I realized I've never sat down and taken my own medicine and really ask myself, why have we been able to produce the results for these fortune 500 companies? Why have we been able to make a difference? And so many charitable organizations, in so many corporations and in so many individuals, and helping them reach that full potential.

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Unknown
So for me, this was, a little bit of a journey and self-reflection. So rather than writing a book and then going out and trying to do something with it, it really is, looking back on a 30 year career and how I got to where I am very interesting. Now, in the book, you kind of describe yourself as going from this mediocre student who almost didn't graduate high school.

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Unknown
You don't seem like that kind of guy to generating tens of millions in consulting revenue. And that, you know, that's not improbable. You say, it's impossible. What's the real story behind that transformation? Because my blended learning is one thing. Where did you generate these tens of millions in consulting fees? Yeah, we've worked with some of the biggest names that you'd hear kind of in households, you know, products and materials and, just have been blessed to have that opportunity to really talk about how we can help those organizations.

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Unknown
And what we do is very counterintuitive. Not the traditional kind of approach, which is one of the reasons we've had such great success. The journey I've been on is really been about understanding the root cause of what makes me, a great leader or a great professional. And that's not necessarily going to be the same as any of your listeners, but the process of discovering your strengths, the process of really understanding what differentiates you is the story of my blended learning.

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Unknown
And that's really my story, because we discovered those things that helped us differentiate, which was being different and offering solutions around helping people understand best practices versus being yet another Lean Six Sigma consulting firm teaching people how to build process maps. Being different was really our strength, and it's really what helped me go from that mediocre student, which, you know, is a true story, almost not graduating from high school.

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Unknown
And, being able to, you know, be in those boardrooms and helping people understand how they can leverage the knowledge that exists in their organizations if they listen, and I think that based on what, you know, we've talked about here just in the past few minutes, that a lot of this is is the goal in our grade.

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Unknown
It is. And you argue that all of us have experienced perfection, and that's true. But we struggle to extend those peaks. And I know Steven Kotler has been on there many times, talks about flow and the Flow Genome Project. And, you know, this is obviously the time when it kind of time stands still. And before you look up at the clock, you go, oh my gosh.

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Unknown
It's like I, I got so much done, I didn't really realize it because I was in this, altered state of consciousness. Right. Can you walk us through a time when you witnessed someone turn this golden minute into this sustained excellence? Because I think the study of the neuroscience behind what's going on in the brain when we're really engaged in something that we're that we love doing, and we get these peak performance times, everybody from, doctor, Laura, Jim, Laura, who wrote the books on and had the peak performance school to that sold out to Johnson.

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Unknown
And Johnson has been on the show and always interests me the little bit of different twist I get on this. So I'd love to hear George's twist on this. Yeah. No, I appreciate that and appreciate that opportunity. You know, there's a couple of like really obvious examples I like to use all the time. And you know, one of those is a golf swing.

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Unknown
And if anyone has kind of been exposed to that habit, it likely is because you successfully made contact with that little white ball in a way that you never did before. And in that moment where you make that really ideal swing and you make the contact and you see how far that ball can travel, you think this is actually a pretty fun game, and most of us then spend a lot of time and money chasing that feeling of having that sustained performance of those perfect swings.

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Unknown
I can think of my son watching him get up from, you know, that sitting position for the first time and taking that first step. And when he realized he has this mobility, then watching his mind work for opportunities to lift himself up and take more steps, I think of those simple examples, those pure examples, as being exactly what you're talking about.

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Unknown
You know that that flow state. But having trained so many people in these methodologies and these tools of both problem solving, but also identifying and understanding root causes, there has been many examples, but I can think of one in particular, to answer your question of, a young lady that I worked with who really was timid, she was very nervous about getting up in front of a team, getting in front of a group, or running one of these improvement projects to try to drive value for her organization.

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Unknown
It really represented a step change out of her current career, and being able to demonstrate her capability and creating value for her organization. It's what I call utility. It's, you know, the value that you end up creating is because of the utility that you have. She had it, but she didn't have comfort in it. And watching her for the first time follow one of our methodologies.

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Unknown
Use one of our tools. Follow that simple pattern is where she took that minute of being able to just use that one pattern, and then started to be able to extend it into entire meetings. And today I'm so happy to kind of share that she, you know, has made a career as an improvement professional. And she's at a different company, but she's doing amazing work, helping a lot of people do a lot of really good things.

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Unknown
Well, you know, as you were speaking, I got to thinking about, a gentleman I just talked to an old man and he was speaking about, you know, as these baby boomers, retire. And this younger generation now comes in to take over as leaders, leadership. And the issues they have in, an a culture, that has such diverse age group, you got people in their 60s, you got people in their late 20s and 30s and taking leadership roles.

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Unknown
What advice would you have to them about finding, you know, this golden hour and you've created this equation. It's a powerful equation. S equals Q times a success equals quality times success. The acceptance and most leaders focus on the quality of their solutions. Why do you think acceptance gets so little attention when it's the cost? The cost is huge for ignoring it.

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Unknown
And I'd say this because I just talked with Noel. You know, you've got 30 year old people who've taken big leadership positions, and you have some people on the line who were in their 60s, and these 30 year old people are telling these 60 year old people what to do. And I'm not certain that the 60 year old people are saying, that's really what I want to do.

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Unknown
It's what the 30 year old is telling me. And I think acceptance is the key. Here. It is, it is. It's so important. You know, listening is the foundation of leadership. If you're not listening, you're really not getting the feedback. You're not getting the support of your team. And what you're doing may look good, but it's not really doing good.

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Unknown
And you know, I wouldn't take credit for the equation. Although I love it and I use it, it really is all about recognizing there's more than one right answer to most of the problems we face, most of the challenges we experience. It's not unusual that especially somebody who may approach things in extremely analytical ways, you know, a science kind of way of thinking that when it comes to physics, when it comes to chemistry, there really is only one way a water molecule comes together and there is a right and a wrong.

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Unknown
But when it comes to manufacturing, when it comes to sales, when it comes to sales and operations planning, when it comes to the leadership of your small business, there are more than one way to potentially achieve really solid outcomes. And that open mindedness of a leader to recognize that it's not about me, it's about we. And listening to that experienced voice that may be on the line.

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Unknown
Or I'll flip the script. I continuously impressed, I run, you know, classes where we teach problem solving and root cause analysis. And I have a lot of really fun exercise ses that we do, and some of them I've been doing for, you know, decades. And every single time it almost without fail happens that somebody teaches me something that I've never thought of or considered in that exercise.

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Unknown
And recognizing that that young person is maybe only a few weeks, a few months into their career, but they saw something that I've not seen in my 30 years. And that open mindedness to recognize that everyone has something to offer, if we're willing to listen, is really what the acceptance in that's equals Q times A is all about.

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Unknown
And it's like, as you said, sometimes it doesn't matter what your age are, you have these epiphanies you see around corners. I remember having read them a graph on here. It's like it it's like in business today. I think one of the things is a little more predictive analytics. What's really happening? Can we see this coming?

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Unknown
Can we, take a, jog in the road, to miss the oncoming bus? Right. And and I love this thing you talk about, which is called the prisons of Expectations. And, and, you know, this is an interesting one because this is a Buddhist philosophy, actually, they used to say expectations are suffering in the making.

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Unknown
Because when we live in a world of expectations, most of the time we're going to be let down. And, you say high expectations and high consequences can actually trap people into mediocrity. And I would agree, because you don't see beyond what you've actually done. You don't see around the corner how to get out because you're saying, no, I got to get to this goal.

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Unknown
This is what it is. Well, what if the goal actually changed halfway through and we had kind of a different vision for what we were doing because there's something we learned, right? So how do leaders recognize when they're accidentally imprisoned and their best performers. Yeah. You know, in the in the book Super Performance, I actually tell a story, a personal story of working at a company with somebody who is many years my senior and them sitting in my office and telling me, you know, I need to slow down because if I get too much done this year, the next year, the expectation will be to do more than I did this year.

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Unknown
I've heard that and I didn't. 40 year career is a long time, so, you know, slow down, son, you're moving a little too fast, right? So, you know, this challenge, this problem. How do you recognize that? How do you avoid it? How do you prevent it? Well, I think it has a lot to do with having exclusive focus on the outcomes.

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Unknown
The vast majority of the predictive analytics are not really very predictive. They're actually lagging metrics that are telling us about what happened in our business and our performance. And then looking back on those saying, well, based on what has happened, what do I think could happen again in the future? Well, on the manufacturing floor, on the sales floor, that's not how it works.

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Unknown
It's happening right now. Leading indicators, the behaviors and the measurements of how well I'm working are going to be the things that help us succeed. In the again in the in the book Super Performance, I tell the story of being in Little League and having my coach kind of screaming at us that, you know, we're not scoring enough runs and we're losing and thinking, that's kind of obvious, coach.

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Unknown
Like, we we if we don't score enough runs, we're probably not going to win the game. What I really needed was that coach to teach me how to raise my elbow a bit when I swing, to help me understand, you know, what it means to keep my eye on the ball and if I was able to keep my elbow up every time I was at bat, and he really encouraged and measured that I wouldn't be in that position of expectations because it wouldn't have been about the outcome.

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Unknown
It would have been about the input, the process. So, you know that old equation people products process. If I focus on the process, I focus on the people. I'm going to get a great product. Well, yeah, great example of it in the book. And I don't know if this was Undercover Boss, but you were an undercover housekeeper at Starwood Hotel, and you discovered that newspapers were the secret to mystique streak free mirrors.

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Unknown
Now, I have experience with this because my little Jewish mother had a cleaning business, and she used to, she died at 93, but she ran that business, and the. They frequently used newspapers because newspapers created, as you called it, streak free mirrors. This wasn't common practice even at the property. So obviously it was like, hey, you're going to give all the people they're going in the rooms cleaning newspapers versus paper towels or towels to do the mirrors.

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Unknown
How many organizations are sitting on gold mines like this without really knowing it? I think that there's gold in our backyard. We just need to look. It's right around us. I just did a, interview George with Ron Rubin. He's the owner of, Republic of Teas and Backyard Vineyards, and he gives 30, 50 lessons, and one of them is.

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Unknown
And the title of the book is gold in Your Backyard, The Gold Mine. And like you're saying here, it's right in front of our face. We're just not always seeing it. Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. You know, it's funny, I mentioned about not really wanting to write a book. I also have spent really my entire career not wanting to be called a consultant, because obviously it usually is not held with high esteem.

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Unknown
And, you know, why would a company really not like, you know, a consultant or kind of have, you know, a negative opinion of a consultant? Well, I believe most of the time it's because they don't bring something different, new or unique. They often tell you the things that you already knew, but you were afraid to actually act on.

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Unknown
They, they tend to bring the obvious, but now, because they brought it up, we have to do something with it. So I believe every organization is sitting on that gold mine. I think some of them are much more aware of it and are acting on it, and their results demonstrate it. Others are complaining about it and spending a lot of money on consultants and resources to try to better understand it, when in fact it comes back down to listening, and really being open minded that the perspectives, the opinions of the people who do the work may offer insight that you may not have ever considered or may be counterintuitive to your strategy

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Unknown
or belief. I think that open mindedness is a hallmark of really any successful entrepreneur. So, George, what do you think is going on inside of an organization that's missing this, in other words, if if an organization has all these goals and strategic plan set and they're trying to reach these goals or whatever, yet they're running so fast, they're running by the obvious, how do you get them to slow down and not run by the obvious and potentially not only make more money, but have people be much happier in the organization?

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Unknown
Now, if you said you weren't going to be called a consultant, what would you be called? Well, I prefer to be called a coach. I like that term. I have it on my LinkedIn and yeah, if if I had a title, that would probably be the one I'd like to use. I aspire to be a great coach.

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Unknown
I have a friend who told me that I had to call myself a result and not a consultant. There. You could go. That's another good one. Oh. Absolutely. Yeah. You know, to to answer your question, you know, for me, in an organization, the equation is actually pretty simple. And that is the rate of addition, how fast you're improving, how fast you're kind of gaining the value that you're creating for customers has to be greater than the rate of subtraction.

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Unknown
And that is the turnover, the mistakes, the loss, the waste, all of the things that end up, you know, kind of costing the organization. And in my experience, and, you know, I think it's, you know, pretty well established that strategy almost exclu massively focuses on the rate of addition. How are we going to grow? How are we going to add customers?

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Unknown
How are we going to bring in new products, how are we going to expand? And there's no question that there's a lot that we can do there. But most of my practice, most of my work has been helping them basically prevent that bucket from leaking. Because what ends up happening is, is that you can fill that bucket, but if it's full of leaks, you're going to need a bucket twice or three times the size.

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Unknown
And now we hear stories where companies can, you know, go in and cut off 100, 203 hundred employees and it doesn't end up affecting their operations. That, to me is the evidence of leaky buckets in corporations, because the chances are the vast majority of those folks were fixing problems and dealing with mistakes. And if we get to the point where we're really having solid systems that are working well, we won't need to spend all that time and we can focus on creating value and really trying to kind of fill that bucket and making sure that, we're always getting the most out of our contributions.

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Unknown
I like what you say, and I think a lot of this that heard this is, it's I've heard people say, well, it's not about balance, it's about alignment. It's about creating alignment. And you've got this concept that you talk about called the Improvement Factory, where you treat change in this, you know, like manufacturing process. This requires alignment.

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Unknown
Okay. Most organizations measure the wrong things you said, which is to your example of getting rid of 300 people that were fixing things. They focus on how many projects they start rather than how many they actually stick with and succeed and finish. What's the most shocking thing you could tell us, that or that you've encountered about projects?

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Unknown
Sustainability. Because change management, as we know, I don't know if the numbers 98 or 95, it doesn't matter, but most of them just don't work. Yeah. You know, one of my favorite things to do, because it has a certain shock value, is when I'm starting a workshop, a class or session, especially around the idea of sustaining project results, is to ask the audience of the projects you've been involved in over the last few years.

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Unknown
How many of them are still around after two years? So think of 24 months after the project concluded. How many? What percentage is there? And it's often shockingly low single digit percentages is what will often be cited. What's interesting is, is in that meeting, in that workshop, in that discussion, almost always there's at least a few people missing.

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Unknown
And the reason they're missing is because we're too busy to be able to come to this training. Were too busy to come to these sessions, were too busy to spend the time to try to learn how we could work better. And I asked myself, well, and I ask the audience, you know, what do we think the folks who were too busy to join us today are doing?

00;25;15;23 - 00;25;45;19
Unknown
And they're working on projects, and they said, oh, the ones that only 3% of the time are still here in 24 months. And it it drives this sort of moment where people realize we're in a hamster wheel and, you know, the idea of potentially doing less. But doing it really well becomes extraordinarily attractive. And and this is very counterintuitive to a lot of training and consulting and improvement programs that are often wanting to do more projects, more activities, more work.

00;25;45;21 - 00;26;11;18
Unknown
And in reality, doing the work you can really well is really the foundation of that improvement factory. Because anybody who's familiar with manufacturing knows that I want that throughput, and I don't want to have to do rework to come back and have to redo things over and over and over again. I want to get my speed, but I also don't want to take on more orders than what my capacity would allow me to do.

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Unknown
So many organizations are taking on orders and they don't have the capacity to execute. And then they're asking the question, why do we have such poor quality in our projects? Well, you wouldn't send three times the number of orders to your factory and just say, well just make whatever you think is best and send it to our customer.

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Unknown
Wouldn't happen. It's as you're speaking, I'm thinking of the olden days a bit, but, Margaret Wheatley and Peterson guy. And Margaret Wheatley used to talk about the organism and almost like the self-organizing, environment, which can occur. Yet we're always trying to force something, in this case, a project, because we think this project's going to do something.

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Unknown
And in most cases, if I remember correctly, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, she would say the organism itself will literally adjust, accordingly. Kate, can you think back to those days that I'm talking about, about all the odd people that would come in and say, we got to do this, or we got to do that?

00;27;21;01 - 00;27;34;23
Unknown
And I to this day have read Margaret's website just 4 or 5 days ago. And it brings me back to this. Have we learned anything?

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Unknown
Well, I, I'd like to think, on days that we have, but, you know, there there are certainly days where you kind of wonder, why some things continue to happen, why some mistakes continue to occur. And, and I think it really is a little bit around instant gratification. And I think as consumers we can relate to our society wanting more and more instant gratification.

00;28;02;19 - 00;28;29;04
Unknown
But I, I see this very often in leadership in organizations is that rather than doing the best thing we want to do, the quick thing and the quick thing may not produce the lasting result. The quick thing may not address the root causes. The quick thing may not best develop our people and, you know, create improved processes and more knowledgeable, experienced, you know, contributors.

00;28;29;07 - 00;28;52;19
Unknown
But the quick thing requires difficult decisions. And I think that organism, you know, the big fan of the fifth discipline and those kinds of ways of thinking, that that kind of requires you to take that leap as a leader, to recognize what is best today. May not be best tomorrow. And I gotta potentially think a little bit longer term.

00;28;52;19 - 00;29;19;20
Unknown
And I think that's the biggest, challenge. And I understand the pressure on results and, you know, performance and things like that. So I know that people that are in that position will probably hear this and say, well, it's easy to say that when you're on the sideline, but at the same time, the churn, the turnover and the lack of lasting results, I think there's a lot of evidence that kind of shows that that immediate gratification has a cost.

00;29;19;23 - 00;29;53;06
Unknown
And that cost is not really getting to the root of the source and really developing better systems and people. And I think there's a difference between cost and investment. And if you were to take the time to invest first, you will probably eliminate many of those costs. In other words, do it right the first time. If you can do it right the first time, frequently trying to do things, as you called it, kind of fast and quick and Band-Aid it, they come back and they can bite you in the ass.

00;29;53;08 - 00;30;24;05
Unknown
And you talked about your 1979 Volkswagen Rabbit and how you kept jumper cables on the passenger seat instead of fixing the root. Cause this is exactly what we're talking about right now is, we all have jumper cables in our professional lives. What's the most common organizational jumper cable you see organizations relying on? Yeah. So one of the chapters in my book, Super Performance, is about we versus me.

00;30;24;10 - 00;30;57;15
Unknown
And and it really is the heart of this issue. The jumper cable is not a thing in most organizations. It's usually a person, it's a superhero. And right now, I'm sure every one of your listeners, could relate to immediately. They may be this person, or they certainly know exactly who this person is. Because when things go sideways, when things are not working well, when our processes are failing us, when our systems are not working, when the bucket is leaking, these are the folks who have a patch, and we're so thankful that they can come.

00;30;57;15 - 00;31;21;15
Unknown
The firefighter who's going to arrive and those jumper cables kind of enabled me to be somewhat lazy around finding the root cause of my ancient Volkswagen's inability to get started. Because I had friends, I had family, I had lots of places where I could use this jumper cable to just kind of go along to get along, and it's all going to be fine.

00;31;21;15 - 00;31;41;05
Unknown
But the reality is, if somebody took those away and I didn't have that, you know, resource, that kind of gets me out of the problem. Well, now I need to look at things really differently. And I have to ask myself, why is the system failing? Why is this process not working? Why am I continuously spending this time and effort?

00;31;41;05 - 00;32;04;29
Unknown
And that's the question organizations don't ask often enough. We often reward the superhero and thank goodness we have them, because certainly we can't anticipate everything and we do need those folks. But one of the tricks I use, and I talk about it in the book is when I make observations and I'm learning about a new client, I want to meet all the superheroes, and they're typically not hard to find.

00;32;05;05 - 00;32;26;03
Unknown
And if you follow them around, they'll lead you to almost all of those leaky patches that are having to be corrected and dealt with. Yeah, it's it's such a good analogy that you used about the jumper cable and then not going and getting the battery, right. Yeah. To fix the problem or the starter or whatever else it might have been.

00;32;26;03 - 00;32;52;05
Unknown
Right. But at this case, most likely a battery. You you talked about this in kind of the deeper philosophy part of the book. You said your Spanish teacher gave you a proverb. The shrimp that falls asleep is taken away by the current, that clearly shaped your approach to intentional improvement. I want to underline the word intentional improvement.

00;32;52;08 - 00;33;27;23
Unknown
If you had to give one of our listeners out there one proverb today to shape their approach to super performance, okay, what would it be? What would you tell the listeners? Well, maybe he's not a formal proverb, but it's a quote by Thomas Edison that if we did the things we're capable of, we would astound ourselves. And I find that quote so inspiring, because it really speaks to the idea that we have much greater potential than we often give ourselves credit for.

00;33;27;25 - 00;33;46;27
Unknown
And that really is the heart of what super performance is all about, is how do I take advantage of the resources around me? How do I develop that network, and how do I really rely on a team to be able to develop not just the performance for myself, but for my team, for my company, and even for my community?

00;33;47;00 - 00;34;18;11
Unknown
And I, you know, have so many great experiences over the years watching these super performers that do things that they themselves never thought were possible. When, you know, we began our journey together. It's interesting because the business is made up of a team and super performers, and the formula for super performance has common denominators in it and across that.

00;34;18;11 - 00;34;44;01
Unknown
And I and I want to go back to that golden hour, because that's one of them. One of the things that you, point out to and you argue that most improvement books focus on problem solving, but you're more interested in finding the root cause. And I can hear that from what we've talked about. But that's kind of counterintuitive, right?

00;34;44;04 - 00;35;13;12
Unknown
We just talked about the Band-Aids and the, you know, the the, the champion that goes through the company and finds all the leaks in the buckets. Why are we so much better at studying our failures than replicating our wins? Why do you think we fall into this, psychological conundrum? I'll call it to say. Oh, well, look at the failure, but I don't really acknowledge the wins.

00;35;13;12 - 00;35;46;24
Unknown
And that's one of the things we've found in corporate America today that not enough is being done, is celebrating, you know, celebrating wins and working as we instead of me. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, I think there you we talked a little bit earlier about kind of the neuroscience. And I think there's so much here to unpack around, even if you think about just a, you know, a common condition of anxiety, you know, that is worrying about something that may harm or hurt or prevent.

00;35;46;27 - 00;36;17;04
Unknown
We're not having anxiety about something that we're, you know, very successful with or something that we're very proud of. So that anxiety, just the basic wiring we have as human beings kind of really forces us to always look for what's wrong, what's not working. And I think that grows into organizations. But when you start looking at some cultures and some organizations, the concepts around failing faster, the idea that, you know, we we don't need to be perfect, we just need to be quick.

00;36;17;04 - 00;36;43;03
Unknown
We need to be, you know, right. Not letting the perfect get in the way of the good. These are philosophies or sayings that, you know, you hear a lot in very successful startups, entrepreneurs and organizations. And to me, those are, you know, kind of those twinkling moments of where you can see this philosophy at play, where there are a lot more things that went well for you then didn't go well.

00;36;43;05 - 00;37;01;18
Unknown
Now the question is, will you end up having something that went well today, not go well tomorrow? And that is, you know, that analogy of the leak in the bucket? We can keep putting things in and keep doing new things and keep fixing things, or we can really focus on the things that work really well for us.

00;37;01;20 - 00;37;41;03
Unknown
For me, the ability to really try to understand and be a student of observation and being, you know, effective at being able to communicate and train and organize that was my really, you know, kind of success. And I built my entire company around it, recognizing kind of what those successes are in your teams and your employees. That is really what a great leader is going to be able to do not focus on what's wrong with my team, but focus on what are they bringing to the table and what are those unique abilities, skills, or, you know, observational characteristics that I can use to build a great team, to develop a great team to build

00;37;41;03 - 00;38;01;04
Unknown
a great company. And I often hear leaders talk about getting the right butts in the right seats and how much that makes the organization succeed. And I think, well, that's exactly what my philosophy is, is find people who are really good at the thing you need them to do, and then let them do it right. Let that process work.

00;38;01;06 - 00;38;24;18
Unknown
Yeah. I mean, as, résultats consultants, wherever you want to call us. We've spoken about the players for a long time, and I think the business owners know that. But they also don't always know how to identify, train and put those people into those positions. Right. And usually those people rise to the top naturally because they've they are A players.

00;38;24;18 - 00;38;51;10
Unknown
They're not C players. Right. And you've trained 10,000 professionals across six continents. Some of them have been a some of them Vinci, some have been C, c. If you can only teach them one skill, which one would it be? And this whole concept about this, this kind of blend two questions into one. We've been talking about it. It's this uplift of others.

00;38;51;12 - 00;39;16;19
Unknown
Now, I would think that would be one of the things you want to teach professionals and people. But you mentioned that being someone who you said someone's phone call from a foreign prison, right? How do we cultivate this level of trust in this kind of increasingly disconnected world? And, and I think the word trust is, is a very key word here.

00;39;16;21 - 00;39;52;06
Unknown
So first off, what would you tell, of these 10,000 people that you've trained? If you could tell them one thing? And then secondly, what is what are the the one things you'd like to cultivate in this utility of trust in our disconnected world? Yeah. No. Thank you. And, you know, in the book, I, I actually talk a little bit about taking those 10,000 or so folks and actually being able to break them into two pretty distinct groups, one group that is really focused on the knowledge that I have to offer, they're really interested in the concepts.

00;39;52;06 - 00;40;16;05
Unknown
They're really interested in, you know, kind of understanding the words and, and being able to kind of talk the talk. The other group is treating what I do as a vocation and that group is kind of looking at the skill, not the knowledge of how do I apply and use these things. So that thing that separates those two groups, in my opinion, is what are they listening for?

00;40;16;08 - 00;40;38;15
Unknown
Am I listening to be able to say the words and understand the concept, or am I listening with the ability to learn in a way where I'm going to be able to go and apply it like a vocation, like we might see welding or learning how to play a musical instrument. That separation is huge, and it kind of comes back to a point you were making there around the A student, the C student.

00;40;38;17 - 00;41;01;11
Unknown
Another really important thing about this, concept is, well, what is the a? You know, I use a example that if you were to have a medical procedure, you're you're going to need to have completed and you have two choices in your local hospital. One is a doctor who's been practicing for decades and has done this thousands of times without fail.

00;41;01;14 - 00;41;29;26
Unknown
And also graduated from the local community college and went to the local state school for medical school. The other just returned from Harvard Medical School to work in their community. The top graduate after their internship, and arguably has just left the greatest school in the nation. Which doctor are you going to go to for your procedure? Most people are going to say, the guy who graduated local and has the thousand hours of experience.

00;41;29;29 - 00;41;49;13
Unknown
Yeah, absolutely. And the reason we're going to say that is that's the question I'm trying to grade, and that is what that listener is kind of listening for. That's what we're trying to understand. Because if I had a son or a daughter who wanted to go to medical school, then it's a different question and it's a different answer, isn't it?

00;41;49;16 - 00;42;14;17
Unknown
Because the best demonstrated practice is going to come from that person who went to Harvard. They've demonstrated their ability to attend Harvard and be extremely successful, where the other person has demonstrated their ability to perform this particular procedure and is extremely successful. This advice around, you know, what would I tell people to do? It's listen, but not just listen in general.

00;42;14;17 - 00;42;38;08
Unknown
Listen with vocation, listen with how am I going to use and apply what it is that I'm hearing, but also ask, what am I listening for? Because if I were to make, you know, a generalization to say, I just want the best doctor. Well, arguably the Harvard Medical School is a best doctor, but it kind of depends on what is that characteristic and what does that attribute.

00;42;38;11 - 00;43;13;28
Unknown
So it kind of comes down to everyone has something to offer. And if I'm making a generalization, but I'm looking for a good employee or a good salesperson or a good leader, I don't believe that exists. It kind of depends on what's the question you're asking. Well, and and you have to add into that mix, especially you say when you're looking for somebody is the person's level of emotional intelligence, their experience, which we just talked about, which in your case, the doctor had lots of experience.

00;43;14;01 - 00;43;52;22
Unknown
He completed that task many, many times over and over and over again. And then you I think you have to call on as a leader frequently this level of intuition. And what is your intuition telling you about those two candidates? You know, he's a Harvard grad or the other one. And sometimes when you go to make a decision, and I just had Jim Lehrer on here, he called it our internal Yoda, you know, because Yoda has to look at other factors besides just what's on the paper.

00;43;52;24 - 00;44;17;10
Unknown
So if I had two resumes and I put them up next to one on those two doctors, and then I asked my internal Yoda to help me make a decision. Right. And there's a lot that goes into decision making. And you understand that. Yeah, but I do think in business frequently, I remember playing this game with Larry Wilson where two teams would be on their side of one another.

00;44;17;10 - 00;44;33;13
Unknown
There'd be a clock in the middle with $1 million on it, and they had to find where the landmines were. But so everybody was so afraid to stand on the land, mind. Right. But when you found out where the landmines were, you could get across the other side and the clock would stop ticking and you would have more money in the world.

00;44;33;13 - 00;44;56;14
Unknown
Right? It's kind of a game that was played. But the reality was this was more about you're willing to take the risk. And that's the point that I'm making here is frequently, if you want to call it risk, fine. You can call it a, intelligent estimate of where it is that you want to go, but that's really it.

00;44;56;17 - 00;45;28;20
Unknown
Now, George, in kind of summing up our interview, we've talked about a lot, we've talked about the, your, your book and the super performance and the eight strategies for how people reach their full potential. If you were to leave the listeners now with a bit of wisdom and advice from somebody who has navigated through many different companies and taught many people, and again, for my listeners to learn more about this book, go to George Posnanski, and we're going to have it in the show notes below.

00;45;28;20 - 00;45;56;14
Unknown
So click on that link. And also my blended learning. We'll put that in the show notes below as well. What would you want to tell our listeners right now? Well, I think it's more went right today than wrong, you know, and if you listen to yourself and the others around you on how you can do more of it tomorrow than you did today, you're always going to be your best self and give yourself credit.

00;45;56;14 - 00;46;12;19
Unknown
But also really think about what that problem, or opportunity is. Because if you know the question you're asking, you can kind of answer that question by picking the best outcome, picking the best way to kind of get there.

00;46;12;22 - 00;46;43;14
Unknown
I say, I would agree with you on that, George. I was, put a little mute in that. I agree with it. And again, for my listeners, please go to his website. George presents k.com. That's George go org PSA and ask y.com and you can click the button. It will take you to buying the book which would be a great thing to do.

00;46;43;14 - 00;47;06;29
Unknown
But I also think that if you subscribe to his video newsletter called The Deliberate Minute to hear the practices and experiences over 30 years at George's had, it's very quick. You can just click the button, give me your email address and you'll subscribe to that newsletter and you'll get those little short, video newsletter that he puts out.

00;47;07;01 - 00;47;32;02
Unknown
George has been an honor having you on the show. Honor having me. Thank you. Can't wait to see the release of the book. And, for all my listeners, go buy your pre copy. Now it's available. Just click the button at Amazon and you'll get it by the 23rd or thereabouts. So, best wishes to you. Thank you for being on the show.

00;47;32;05 - 00;47;44;26
Unknown
Now I'm a stay to you. And, I look forward to seeing you when I'm in Pennsylvania and having a Yuengling beer. Oh, thank you, Greg, and thanks for having me. It was such a pleasure. Take care. Thank you.