Adapting to the Velocity of Change with Mark Green

Mark Green is the author of two books, Activators: A CEO's Guide to Clearer Thinking and Getting Things Done and Creating a Culture of Accountability. He’s also a speaker and coach to CEOs and executive teams worldwide. He has addressed, and advised thousands of business leaders, helping them unlock more of their potential and teaching them how to do the same for their teams.  

Inside This Episode:

• How Leadership Requires Understanding People & Behavior
• Why We Need to Raise the Bar & Accelerate Your Learning
• Why We Know What to Do But We Still Don’t Act
• The Three Hidden Growth Killers
• The Two Basic Motivators
• How Fear Impacts Your Thinking
• How To Reduce Fear and Bring In More Logic
• 3 Principles for Adapting to An Increased Velocity of Change
• Creating a Bias To Action
• The Paradox of Flexibility From Structure
• Why the Pandemic is Not the Problem
• The Importance of Learning How to Reframe Problems to Create Solutions
• How to Make Decisions With Imperfect Information
• Using Guiding Principles vs. Mental Models to Direct Your Behavior and Manage Your Thinking
• The Paradox of Structure vs. Flexibility
• A Simple, Person-Focused Question to Create a Greater Sense of Control
• Allowing Humanity to Come To the Forefront
• Operating Amid Additional Leadership Overhead

Links:

Website: www.Mark-green.com

LinkedIn: Coachmarkgreen

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkEGreen

Mark’s Free Tools and Assessments: https://mark-green.com/tools-assessments/

Mark's Books on Amazon: Activators & Creating a Culture of Accountability

John Ryan
You're listening to key conversations for leaders. This is episode number nine. Welcome everybody. On today's show, we'll be talking about adapting to an increased velocity of change with Mark green. In this episode, we're going to discuss how leadership requires understanding people and behavior. The three principles for adapting to an increased velocity of change why the pandemic is not the problem and much, much more. In times of great change, we need great leaders, those willing to step up to take responsibility and to create a vision and inspire others to join them in fulfilling that vision. A key part of that is having conversations with yourself in those who lead. That's what the show is about better conversations for better leaders, everybody and welcome to key conversations for leaders. I'm your host John Ryan, and today we have a very special guest, Mark green mark is the author of two books. activators a CEOs guide to clear thinking and getting things done, and creating a culture of accountability. He's also a speaker and coach to CEOs and executive teams worldwide. He's addressed and advise thousands of businesses and leaders, helping them unlock more of their potential and teaching them how to do the same for their teams. Welcome to the show, Mark. 

Mark Green 
Hi, John. Thanks. And it's great to be here with you.

John Ryan
Thank you so much for spending the time with us. You know, Marco, I know we have a lot of stuff to talk about today. Can we talk a little bit about your your story, your background and how you got started in in leading teams and poaching teams to develop their potential and their performance?

Mark Green
Yeah, absolutely. So you got to turn the clock all the way back to high school for me. I was always the guy that seemed to cross all of the cliques in high school and was the person who everybody felt comfortable talking to. I don't know why it was but I was always a listener and I just enjoyed that. I didn't Much of it at the time, it was just sort of who I who I was. And if you fast forward through college, 10 years into my career, I ended up at an inflection point to be able to decide what do I want to do next. And that was the moment when I thought, you know what, let me do my own thing. And at the time, the best version of my own thing I could think of was to launch a leadership development training company. And it was essentially working with small businesses and entrepreneurs and developing leaders and managers. And that was the beginning of this business. It was back in 2003. So now 17 plus years and running, and the business iterated over time and about for the last 10 years or so the last decade, I've been engaging the way I'm currently engaging in the middle market, working with CEOs and teams running high growth mid market firms, and to give your listeners a perspective on that today. My Clients are typically 50 to about 400 million in revenue. Some have over 1000 employees, and these are pretty substantial, substantial enterprises. So that's sort of my journey and but it's always been about understanding people and understanding behavior. And because whether you realize it or not, if you're a leader, you need to be an expert on human behavior.

John Ryan
Do you find there's a different level of thinking or focus on let's say, the lower end of that spectrum? Or the 50 million versus the more upper end the 400 million? Or is it really focused mindset, emotions empathy, etc.

Mark Green
It's all the same. It's It's really all the same. I mean, the the you just add zeroes, but the but the problem set and the opportunity set and the mental models and how you think and how you lead and all those things is all the same, for sure.

John Ryan
Awesome. Well, that's helpful, but Then you just got to focus on your skills, no matter where you are in your career and those skills will go with you wherever you go.

Mark Green
That's a that's a great point. My clients view me as the chief bar raiser for them. Right. So we've got a chief executive offer, or maybe a chief marketing officer, maybe a chief revenue officer, and we've got mark, the chief bar raiser. And that's the trick because no matter where you are, you always want to be learning and growing. And I help raise the bar relative to the learning velocity of leadership teams. And the real reason behind it, john, is I've never seen a business where the sustainable growth rate of the business exceeds the individual growth rate of the people running it.

John Ryan
I love that perspective, Chief bar raiser and so there's always more potential and performance so you might as well push that bar as far as you can. What is it that holds people back if the capacity the potential is There? Do we as leaders need someone like you, for example, to come in and push them out of the comfort zone? Or what are some of the factors that caused us to stay inside that bubble?

Mark Green
For sure. So this is the exact reason I wrote my first book activators. Okay. And in the the question that I had in my head that caused me to begin my research and write this book was why is it that even though we generally know what to do and how to do it, as leaders, okay, we still don't act and always get things done. Okay? And you can think about this, like, you've got this person on your team who you sort of know shouldn't really be there, but you're reluctant to have a conversation and, you know, move them off of your team or, you know, you've got a customer that you know, is taking advantage of you or your people, but you find all these reasons why you you delay or postpone the conversation right? These are the patterns of thinking That are the things that hold us back ultimately. And so I did my research and wrote this book because it's what you don't see. That's the issue. And in my view, the last thing the business world needs is another how to book right? Like how to have a challenging conversation or how to write a good business plan, or, you know how to be a great leader like all of these things. There are lots of books out there that are fantastic. The question isn't, where's the material? The question is, why can't we execute on what we What's there? And what we what we've learned,

John Ryan
and that's where activators come in. You bet. You bet. Can you define for us, you know, what is an example of an activator and how can we start using that?

Mark Green
Yeah, for sure. So what I found in my research is there's three hidden growth killers that hold us back as leaders and they are our motivators, our habits and our beliefs. And out of the three hidden growth killers identified I ate activators. And essentially the activator is the mechanism by which you can render the hidden growth killer has to have no impact. Okay? So so for example, we have two motivators. We have fear as a motivator, right? And we have inspiration as a motivator. And activator number one is to reduce fear. Okay, now it sounds easy. It's not. And there's there's a whole bunch of stuff to unpack to get into the nuance of this. But the bottom line is we are biologically wired to have a very profound fear response. Because it used to save our lives when we were about to get eaten on the on the plains of Africa or wherever we evolved from right. But today, you're sitting in your corner office and your best employee walks in and says I want to raise your I'm leaving, and your body and your mind reacts. No different than if a saber toothed Tiger had just jumped out of the bushes and was about to kill you. And yet you're in an office, you nobody's gonna die here, right and, but that's how you your body reacts and and it doesn't it's not a big stretch to then realize that that doesn't put you in a very good place to think critically as a leader. Your body is in full flight or flight fight response. And it's not your defining moment as a thinker. So how do you overcome that, and that's what we're talking about with the activator to reduce fear. And I created a tool that corresponds to each of the activators which is essentially a worksheet that is this idea that if you you don't have to understand any of the science if you just follow the worksheet, you'll take advantage of the science and be able to overcome what's going on. And I'll give your listeners a clue. The trick with reducing fear is you want to reduce the emotion that you're feeling And you want to increase the logic that you're you're you're dealing with. And so that's what this tool does is it takes you take the thing that's causing you fear. And the tool walks you through a process to reduce the emotional content and increase the logical content. And by the way, all of the tools for the activators, along with two different assessments are available for free on my website, which we'll get to at the end of the show. But everything I'm talking about here, your listeners can access for free.

John Ryan
Fantastic, and thank you for for sharing that resource. And we'll definitely connect about that in just a little bit. So the the fear that we have, it's really out of proportion for the problem that we're experiencing. When that employee comes in and says I want to raise or I'm out of here, we have a total overwhelm. We're flooded with those emotions, our logical brain goes to the background. And so I'm guessing this tool helps us to kind of challenge that. Explore the awareness, get the focus in the right direction, so that we're in a more logical resourceful state than just operating from a place of fear.

Mark Green
Yeah, and I've had some amazing experiences with this tool, in particular, the reduced fear tool. I've been, I've facilitated workshops where I've had a roomful of 100 100 CEOs. And and everybody's at their desk working through the the fear reduction tool. And in the middle of this workshop, I've had CEOs literally crumple up the paper that the tool is on, throw it over their shoulder and explain it a roomful of 100 other people. That's it, I'm done. And, and what I asked, Well, why what just happened? They said, You know, I don't even need to go all the way through the tool to see how ridiculous it is. That this fear I have is prevented. me from doing the thing that is just right in front of me that I know I need to do. And that's part of the power of this of this process.

John Ryan
I love that. I love that. So it's it, you won't use your logical brain starts coming in and you see the path, you know the end of the story, and you can short circuit it.

Mark Green
It just looks ridiculous. It starts to look ridiculous. You see it for what it is. And that's the that's the beauty of this. And that makes me feel great because that's my goal here is to help people get past what they are manufacturing to be in their way.

John Ryan
Make sense? So awareness, emotional awareness and responsibility and getting these activators to help us to manage our state manager focus on all those things that can pull us out of the logical framework. What are some other skills and traits that you think that people need, especially in today's environment, with the landscape changing as quickly as it is?

Mark Green
For sure So, a lot of business leaders feel like we're we're in the midst of this pandemic. Now, that's when we're recording this okay in mid 2020. And there are a lot of leaders out there who feel like the pandemic is the problem. And my perspective is a little different than that. I don't believe the pandemic is the problem for businesses. The problem is that we are not able to respond appropriately to the velocity of change. Now, the pandemic is illustrating this to us very starkly. But the problem is you can't respond quickly enough to the velocity of change. And if you reframe the issue, to the velocity of change, some things begin to open up that you can deal with that if you're trying to focus on responding to a pandemic as a business leader. It's not as clear what you have to do. And so I've created a series of guiding principles and mental models that I believe Using with my clients over the last seven or eight weeks with great effect. And if you if you'd like, I'd be happy to share a couple of them with you. Yeah, please do now that the guiding principles are about behavior, their leadership behaviors, and the mental models are our how we think. Okay, so one is action focus, the other is how we think. And I'm actually going to start with the action first. And the reason is that we're in a mode where the velocity of change is so great that you've got to have action behaviors hardwired, to be able to act very, very quickly if something happens, and then think after the fact. Okay, now, what are we going to do to move forward. And this happened to a number of my clients who saw the pandemic coming, they were seeing what was happening, and they had to act very, very quickly before they could put all the thinking in place. For example, I have a client that at the end of February, which is pretty early in the scheme of things made a decision to buy 1000 laptops in anticipation of taking every one of their employees and having them be remote.

Mark Green
Okay. Now, he didn't have the whole plan.

Okay, but he made the decision to do it. And that's powerful. I have another client that is a restaurant that literally enter a restaurant, multi unit restaurant chain in urban areas. And overnight, they had to make the decision to completely shut down. And they acted on it, but but it wasn't the full blown thought process of where does this lead us and then how do we get out of this? It was we just got to do this right now. So the guiding principles that I want to share with your listeners are there's three of them. The first is be agile. Okay, you have to be agile. And agility is about being able to be responsive and adaptive, and a shapeshifter Okay to respond to what's happening in front of you. And that's what agility is all about. And there's a bias to act that's in there. In other words, it's it's not waiting around for things to happen. But it's being agile and active and and willing to adapt and adjust very quickly and continue to move. That's the first guiding principle. The second one is structure. And now you may have people listening to this thinking, Well, wait a minute, Mark, you just said agility is is a guiding principle, how is it possible then that structure is also a guiding principle? Because don't they conflict? Yes, they absolutely conflict. And that's the whole point. Because if you don't get the structure, right, you don't have the ability to be agile. And what I mean by this is, I was just on the phone with a former client yesterday in fact, and he said, you know, Mark, all the structural things. You helped us put in place when we worked with you, like meeting rhythms and how we plan and how we set our priorities, and how we communicate. As leaders and our core values and the culture of the business, all of these things, we were able to switch to work from home as an executive team through this crisis, and not skip a beat.

Mark Green
That's the value of structure. So the, the ability to move very quickly from from a physical environment, for example, to work at home is an example of agility. But the structure is what enabled it to happen. And so those two things have to exist simultaneously. Okay, so agility and structure are two guiding principles. And the third, always important, but now more important than ever, humanity. how deeply Are you connecting to your leadership team To your extended team and to all of your employees, and are you really paying attention to people and by the way, and your customers and your suppliers, okay? Are you really paying attention to people, as people, because right now, more this is always important, but right now this is especially important. People are more isolated people are feeling more pressure people are in even though they're in their own homes, they're in a very unfamiliar environment with a lot of uncertainty. And kids running around and homeschooling going on and all sorts of things are happening, that are putting pressure on, on your people that you may not be fully appreciating. And I'll give you a quick example of humanity in action. I have a client of mine who said, you know, the best question that I ask when I'm when I'm talking to one of my folks remotely, whether it's in a group meeting or one on one is what's your plan for dinner tonight. in quarantine. Yeah. And he said, it's the best question because what ends up happening is people will go like, Oh my god, we're having beef short ribs, and we're making this thing and we're doing this thing and all this fella. And he said, it's it's incredible that it really sets people off. Because people will tell you at length, all of the fun and wonderful things they're doing to plan their dinner. And and what I asked him Well, why do you suppose that is? See the answer was fascinating. The answer is because it's one of the few things that we're able to control right now about our own environment. Now, even if it's just restricted to what you have in the house that you can cook from, you can still make a choice what you're going to put together and cook for dinner. And it's very powerful to realize that and so that's what people want to talk about, and that's humanity in action. Okay, so, agility, structure and humanity formed sort of this triangle of guiding principles that I've been working with. With my executive teams on here for the last couple of months with great effect, and now your listeners can benefit from them, too.

John Ryan
Thank you so much for sharing that model, it makes so much sense that what's for dinner question gets right to the heart of a concern that a lot of people have about food supply chains. And it focuses on what you have in its person, a person, it's not about the profits or the structure or what we're going to do going forward. It's like right here right now, being grateful for what you have. Do you think I know they all have to happen simultaneously? humanity, which is, you know, without people, businesses don't exist, humanity seems like that's the backbone of it at all. And that's me where the people have to come in. And first because if you if you start losing the humanity and the fear creeps in, well, the structure goes away. When the structure goes away, then you can't respond and be agile, like you said, as well, is that I mean, they'll have to happen simultaneously. But is that an appropriate priority?

Mark Green
It's always a priority. It's always a priority. I mean, unless your, your your, you know, the old joke is the ideal factory is. There's a man and a dog. And the man is there to feed the dog and the dog is there to make sure the man doesn't touch anything in the factory because it also has automated running itself. Right. And and like, but but but unless you're in that situation, you're depending on people to to accomplish things right. And so yeah, it really it really matters. That The other thing that's on people's minds right now. And I've been playing around with this concept of leadership, what I'm calling leadership overhead is greater now than under, let's say normal circumstances. And what I mean by this is things just take longer, like your people are working from home. They've got all kinds of things going on. And it's harder to have a meeting or schedule a conversation or make a decision. decision, right? And you do have to spend a little bit more time with people finding out how are you doing, personally? What's going on in your life? Is your family. Okay? Right? these are, these are questions that we wouldn't necessarily focus on in normal times, right. But we really have to focus on it now. And so there's more leadership overhead that's required of us, then, in non pandemic circumstances, let's just say, and you have to accept that and acknowledge it. Okay, not get frustrated by it or say, well, let's just dispense with that stuff and kind of get to the heart of the meeting here today. Right. And I think you do that at your peril. And so there is an element of us as leaders recognizing that it isn't there's a new element of a cost to doing business, which is this time and focus and energy that we need to put into leadership overhead, perhaps in a way that's more substantial than we've had to in the past. That's something that's very important to recognize, because what it does, it allows the space for the humanity. Yeah. Right. It allows space to, to, to adapt the structure into a remote environment. And and so I think that's important to acknowledge as well.

John Ryan
It's I imagine things go faster when you address the humanity to because once that's out of the way in your mind, then you can focus on the decisions that you have to make going forward to be agile. Yeah, you bet. When you said the the bias to action. So biases normally come across as like a negative thing, cognitive bias, for example, and affirmation bias, but the bias to action, really putting the emphasis on speed and implementation over the long term consequential analysis that you might get into normally enter decision, because we don't have the information. But we'll have the information and it sounds like That's okay. Because what are you left to do you because you can't do a logistical analysis, but all the things are gonna happen. You have to jump into action. Are there any things that people can do to risk making a decision? Because that make a decision to buy 1000 laptops? potentially save the company?

Mark Green
Yeah, for sure. For sure. And, and in the story had had a very happy ending. I mean, they literally put 1000 people remotely and continued operating the business and they are and the business is doing okay, of quite well. Awesome. In fact, they're, they're at the end of the curve where they're potentially looking to acquire in this environment, right. So, you know, not that everybody's a victim, not everybody's a victim here and, and some of that happens by choice by deliberate action, right. So the bias to act also happens to be one of the mental models that I'm using. It's one of the four mental models I'm using, so it's kind of a good entry point there. And yes, We want to be in a position where we need to be able to act rapidly. It's part of how we're able to fulfill agility as the guiding principle. But if you come back to my assertion that it's the velocity of change, that's the real issue, then the trick is, are you able, as a leader to respond at a at a velocity that's equal to or greater than the velocity of change that's occurring around you? Because if not, you're by definition, always playing catch up.

Mark Green
Right. You don't you don't want to be playing catch up. So how do you make sure that you're okay making a decision and acting even though you feel like you may be having complete information or situation isn't ideal or whatever. So I have a couple of recommendations there specifically. Number one is get the right people in the room. You should never be doing this alone as a leader. You got to get the right people in the room. And by the way, if you're a solopreneur, you can still get the right people in the room. They just won't be your employees. Okay, who do you know and trust? Who are other people that you can talk to, and get some additional perspective or guidance from. So that's that's Thing number one. Number two, have the right external conversations. Okay. It never ceases to amaze me. It happens all the time, even with pretty sophisticated organizations. I find we're in a boardroom having a conversation about what our clients do or don't want.

And, and I'll sort of raise my hand and say, well, has anybody actually asked? Right?

Yeah. And of course, everybody looks around the table. And it's like, well, you know, we talk to clients all the time. Yeah, I understand that. But Has anybody actually asked this question? Mm hm. Right. And it's like, Go forth and get get some money. information that you need. And it doesn't take a lot of time. By the way, it just it does not take a lot of time. You know, because right now, for example, we're operating in a period where our client's needs have changed, full stop, like whatever you do for whatever client you have or a customer who you serve. Okay, there needs that were from six months ago, are not the same as their needs today. Period. Do you know what they are today? How have you asked? Because how can you respond? If you if you don't know? Right, so we got to make sure we're collecting some external information or finding some external data pretty rapidly. Okay. And then we've got this bias to act, which is this idea of realizing it's not going to be perfect, and I would take a bias to act with a risk of being wrong. But more decisions being made and more actions being taken. In any day over a delay, and then making one decision very slowly. Okay. And Jim Collins, great business researcher and author has a term that he uses called firing bullets. And you want to fire a lot of bullets before you fire a cannonball. And this is the the last piece of this thing that, that as you're moving to act, can you run tests? Can you test things that are relatively low risk, relatively low cost, and relatively rapid to provide some feedback, and that's the bullet terminology. You want to fire a lot of bullets, try a lot of experiments and things that that are quick, low risk, not expensive. Learn from them rapidly, so that then you can calibrate what he calls a cannonball, which is a bigger decision that involves more resources. So you Want to look for bullets?

John Ryan
Look for bullets fire as many bullets as you can to get that cannibal because once you have that Cannonball going, like, it's a lot harder to move that in the correct that than it is to to replace another bullet out there.

Mark Green
Yeah. And a lot more costly and in some, in some cases fatally costly.

John Ryan
Absolutely, absolutely. So humanity comes back again, leave that conversation you said we're in the boardroom talking about what the clients want hypothesizing what the clients want, you're saying get out of it. Get out of the bubble, even if you're a solopreneur. Get out of there, get some input from colleagues, competitors, advisors, etc, in talk to your customers because their needs have completely changed, which is that principle of humanity which allows you to be more agile. Probably one of the things that's holding you back I'm sure it's related to one of the activators is the fear that you mentioned earlier, that comes up making the wrong decision. Instead, fire the bullets fire as many as you can. Are there any other unproductive habits or factors that come in that prevent people from getting into the bias to act.

Mark Green
Yeah, so another very unproductive leadership habit, and I unpack some of these in activators is what I call denying reality. And it's the sort of ostrich mode with your head in the sand. And it's, it's an unwillingness to acknowledge what's actually happening. And it might be an unwillingness to acknowledge what's happening in your business, or it might be an unwillingness to acknowledge what's happening in the in the real world. And the the productive habit that you that you need to put in place to overcome it, is to be able to face the brutal facts. Okay, face the brutal facts, and that means you have to have truth tellers around you. Right? That means that the people in your organization and your outside advisors I have to be able to speak their truth to you, and not just speak what they think you want to hear as a leader, right? And so in, in the accountability book and creating a culture of accountability, we talk about this idea that you cannot punish the messenger. Right? Because one of the ways that you create an accountable organization is to celebrate messengers who are delivering brutal truths, some of which are not good news.

Mark Green
Because that's what then gives you a chance as a leader, to course correct and respond to something before it's too late. Or to be agile, and, and do something about something before it's too late. Right. And, and, and so this idea of facing reality, the brutal reality to overcome the bad habit, the unproductive habit of denying reality is really critically important. And I'll give some specific examples here because it helps. I mean, I've met CEOs, some pretty smart, sophisticated people who don't like looking at their financials. Really. They don't like looking at financials and or they do, but it's kind of surfacey or they're not willing to deeply engage, or they say, well, that's my CFOs job. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Okay. Yeah, your CFO is important, but you've got to engage with your financials because they tell a story. And if you don't understand the story of your financials, then you don't understand the reality of your situation. Okay. And it's not just about where you've been, it's using that to project where you're going and different choices that you have available to you to make. Mm hmm. Okay. And the other one I'll put out there to keep on the theme is an unwillingness to talk to customers. Because what am I going to learn what am I at risk of learning there, right that I may not, I may not want to face like, hey, You're not as good as you think you are. Right? Or you're too expensive or, or, or, or, and by the way too expensive as code for the value is not there. Absolutely. Okay. So um, so these are behaviors that are exhibited sometimes in a leader that is, has the non productive habit of denying reality.

John Ryan
It's amazing how much of all the things you talked about so far go back to that first issue of the fear that we don't look at the financials because we are afraid of what the story might say, don't want to talk to the customers because we're afraid of getting feedback that it's too expensive. And the reality is, that just means we're not satisfying their needs, which probably have changed in the last few months. clearly what we talked about before. So fear is a big issue that comes up and we have to face that we have to really get clear and not deny the reality and surround yourself and probably create a culture where it's okay to be a messenger, a harbinger of bad news. That's going to be a difficult thing. I think I've seen a lot of people where they have a tendency to surround themselves with people who are the sycophants and this, they're Yes, men and yes, women, and there's then you put yourself in a bubble, you're not facing reality. have you encountered cultures like that? And how do you approach that?

Mark Green
That's, that's a fascinating question. So the answer is Yes, I have. And the corollary to it is there on the border of engagements that I would refuse to take as a coach. So it depends on how willing the CEO is to acknowledge that they are causing this problem. Okay, by surrounding themselves potentially with the wrong people, and or creating the wrong set of incentives and behaviors in those people through their own actions. And it's that that self awareness is the test I use. It's called being it's how coachable are you? Right? And for leaders who are in that kind of situation who are not very coachable, meaning they're not very self aware or not seeing themselves as the as the cause of the problem, I will I will very politely disengage from those conversations. And as most practitioners By the way, I learned this the hard way. Because, you know, I, I worked with those clients back in the early days, sure. And then I would get really frustrated and think I was the problem because they weren't getting any results. And the reality was, they were the problem because they weren't able to make the changes necessary. And so I got smarter as a practitioner and tightened up some of my screening. And it's a key key thing now.

John Ryan
So if they're on that margin, it sounds like you'll have a conversation with them. And just to kind of gauge how receptive are they to to mine Outside feedback, because if they're not open to influence, then there's no point in wasting your time anyways.

Mark Green
Yeah, and you know, anytime you have a leader who is is saying something to the effect of, well, you know, Mark, if you could come here and just fix all these people who work for me back then we would have everything perfect. And it's like wait a minute and and so in those cases I always ask I always say Okay, so how is it possible that you're contributing to the problem? Mm hmm. Their answer to that question is very telling. And, and then I'll push even further from there. I mean, I push really hard on this now, because again, I've learned the hard way, is not where I want to be you a number of years ago, I spoke to a CEO of a pretty well known executive jet company. Okay, a fractional jet company. Sure. And and we had we had a substantial conversation on On the phone, the entirety of which this CEO was essentially talking about all of the deficiencies of their people. And I asked that question effectively, and the answer was something like, I don't, I don't think I am contributing to it in any way. And we just got to get these people fixed up and then we'll be fine. And and that was the moment that I said, well, then I guess you don't need my help. You know, and I wish, I wish you I wish you I wish you all the best. Now it was fine. Because at that point, this person also knew they didn't need my help, because they because I was unwilling to to accept the idea. Yeah. That only their people you needed fixing and I'm using air quotes that your listeners can't see when I say too thick fixing okay. Yeah. Because it's ridiculous.

John Ryan
It's like an American said, well, it's not my fault. It's my My spouse, and it takes two to tango.

Mark Green
Yeah. And and by the way, and these are not unsuccessful people and these are not small businesses. It's it's just, uh, you know, there's only so far you can go as a leader before the world starts closing in on you. If If you don't get it all figured out at some point,

John Ryan
well this goes back to the idea you said is that the capacity of potential and the actual performance, the performance, your your bar raiser, you got to raise the bar and that means as leaders, we have to be willing to do the work we have to be willing to push through that fear not deny the reality and become more agile focus on humanity and also create the structure organization to make that happen. So I love how this is all coming together and I just had a curiosity because you have so much experience in working with the mid to high level you know, companies out there and you're a thought leader yourself you write books on the subject. What do you do cuz I know you demand this of your leaders To grow and look, what do you do to keep yourself sharp? And do you look outside? Or is it introspective? How do you focus on that?

Mark Green
So thank you, it's good question. Another one of the activators is called change your neighborhood. Okay, and this is about not being surrounded with what I call a comfort zone network. Because if you're surrounded by the same old people all the time, think like normal peer groups, executive forums, you know, the same advisors, you've had forever, that kind of stuff, right? You're going to keep getting what you have. And the idea of changing your neighborhood is the idea of never wanting to be the most expensive house in the neighborhood. Okay, as an individual, and there's a whole story behind this I have in the book, it came from my grandpa Ben, who actually gave me real estate advice that about a decade later, I realized wasn't real estate advice. It was life advice. Okay. And so if you're the most expensive house in the neighborhood, you're not going to be growing. And so you need to continually be upgrading Who you're surrounded by. And I subscribe to this wholeheartedly and completed completely. And I'm always looking to meet people and work with clients who scare me. And stretch me, right? I have this conversation with my wife every, maybe once a once a year now maybe once every other year or so where I'll say, you know, I just met this new CEO and they're, they're incredibly impressive what they've done and all this kind of stuff. And you know, what, I got to figure out how to how to bring them on as client, because they actually freaked me out a little bit. They're so good. And, and I do and I figure it out, and and that stretches me, right. The The other thing that I do is I keep working on my own growth and development. And, you know, there's a bit of integrity here. I can't be in the business of being the chief bar raiser for people if I'm not raising the bar on myself. And so for perspective last year in 2019, I started spent a total of six, six plus weeks, almost seven weeks of time away from home in a massive neuro linguistic programming certification course that I that I did for myself and by away from home I mean, across the country for extended periods of time last year, and it was a huge huge investment. And something is very important to me because it's it's a key learning area for me. But you know, I'm, I'm in my early 50s. And to be in a position where I can take six or seven weeks of time and self invest for this kind of a learning experience that ultimately is to the benefit of my clients and to the to the people in my networks and to the people that I communicate with. That's what this is all about. And that's why I can have such a high expectation of those around me, because I do these things myself.

John Ryan
That's one of the main pieces skills of leadership, you can't ask others to do what you're not willing to do yourself. And thanks for walking the walk and not just being, you know, a talking head, but really living the principles. That's so important. So thank you. And also want to thank you for all of the models and the guiding principles that you share with us so far, what's the best way for our listeners to get in touch with you? And to continue the conversation?

Mark Green
Yeah, for sure. So the thing, the first thing everybody should do is connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm at coach, Mark green on LinkedIn. And I'm sure you'll put the link on the on the show notes. But I'm very easy to find I have a lot of content out there. I'm a regular publisher of content on LinkedIn. And I have a newsletter through LinkedIn as well. That a lot of leaders find of great value and you very well may as well. And if you connect with me on LinkedIn, send me a little note, tell me how you're heard of me. I love that and we can take it from there. The other place you can connect with me is my website, which is Mark-Green.com. And if you click on the Tools tab in particular, that will take you to the free tools and assessments from my book activators. You'll also find links to be able to buy the books activators and a culture creating culture of accountability on Amazon, and they're available in multiple formats and all that kind of stuff. But you can get to that through through there.

John Ryan
Wonderful. Thank you so much for spending time with us and all the words of wisdom. We appreciate it.

Mark Green
JOHN, it's been great. I appreciate you having me and be well stay well.

John Ryan
Alright, you do. Bye. Bye now. To connect with Mark again, go to mark hyphen green COMM And check out the Tools tab for free tools and assessments. And you can find him on LinkedIn under coach Mark green. Until next time, develop yourself empower others and lead by example. Thanks for listening to key conversations for leaders with your host John Ryan. And I'd like to stay connected. If you haven't Go ahead and like and subscribe the show to make sure you don't miss any episodes. And you can connect with me on twitter @keyconvo and on LinkedIn under JohnRyanTraining. Talk to you soon