Unlocking Potential Through Beliefs, Self-Efficacy & Abundance Thinking

All right, so what I'm going to do, I'm going to ease into our presentation today as we have folks that are still joining. And I know some of you are actively filling out your survey as we speak. If you have any difficulty, the form is going to remain in the, I'm sorry, the link to the form is going to remain in the chat, so you can get back, do that anytime. We'll put that in there a few more times for those of you that joined recently if you need access to it. But we're going to go ahead and get up and running.

So welcome everybody. Thank you for joining. It is the first Friday of the month again, and we've been doing this since last August. This is our monthly Beyond Limitss executive briefing. And we do this on the first Friday of every month.

And our goal is to be able to bring in individuals. We host these through different members of our organization here. My name is Kevin Sp, you'll see me most frequently. I am the Chief Growth Officer here at The Pacific Institute, and my role with The Pacific Institute is to help take the principles that we've championed over the past 53 years and help share them with an audience like this. Finding a group of individuals like yourself, which is comprised of business leaders, owners, executives, putting you together in a centralized location where we can discuss topics that we focus on in our consulting practice here.

Things that help individuals, teams, and organizations improve their overall performance. And that's something we're passionate about. But unlike most organizational change companies or most consultancies, we're not going to give you a model and tell you to follow it. We're not that type of a company that gives you that sort of a prescription. What we focus on is the individual beliefs, those thoughts that live between your right ear and your left ear, the ones that are telling you what to do all the time and guide our every action because if we have control over the thoughts that run between our head or those beliefs, and we know that those impact our actions, that's going to guide how we react and view the world around us.

And when we have a positive view like that and we share it with others, we call that culture. And that's one of the things that we're going to be talking about a lot today. But we believe that that all starts on the inside with you individually. Each and every one of us has a beating heart and we want to make an impact with that person first. And if we do that well, we can branch that out to the rest of your, your team or your family or even your organization or your community.

So we believe this quote from our founder, those of you that have worked with us for a long time, met a gentleman named Lou Teis who started this organization 53 years ago with a quote like this. All meaningful and lasting change starts on the inside and it works its way out. And we believe that to be one of our core tenets. And we really believe that when we do that, we can transform those around us, like I said, our families, our teams. And when we can move from that me to we or from ourselves to our team, then we can start to impact even bigger, the whole organization, the whole community if we do it just right, the whole darn world.

So what I want everybody to do today is before we get started, I want us to just think about some of the, the beliefs that we have. Some of you may have seen this activity before, so you might have a uh, a little bit of an advantage. Some of you might seen it before and you have a lousy memory, so it won't make any difference. But let me put something up on the screen here and I'm curious if you can look at this. We'll see who's good at riddles.

You've got children in the background, they're going to help. They're better at this. But if you look on the screen here and you see that there's a series of parking spaces and our little white sedan is parked over one of them thus covering the parking space and we can't see it. I'd love to see the answers in the chat. Who can tell me what number parking space is covered by our white sedan?

Who's got an answer? George came in right away and said, 87, lolly says 87. Raise your hand wave at my screen if you think that that says 87. I'm going back and forth over a lot of screens. There's a bunch of you here today.

Honest question. Raise your hand if you have absolutely no idea what's under there. All right, those of you who are honest, good job way, way to go. Way to raise that hand. When I first saw this, I had absolutely no idea.

Interestingly enough, I've given this exact same image to groups before and some of the groups have done exceptionally well. In fact, one time I gave it to a group of children that were in the fifth and sixth grade and every single one of those children got it right, right away.

Now, if you didn't see it, do you believe me when I say that fifth and sixth graders were able to get this? And I promise this is not an are you smarter than a fifth grader exercise? That's not what we're shooting for here. There was one huge advantage that I gave those fifth graders that I didn't give you. And that one huge advantage that I gave the fifth graders was I showed this to them when they were sitting on the other side of the table.

And when you look at this from a different perspective, suddenly what those numbers are becomes a lot more obvious. Because before we looked at a pattern and said, what in the world goes from 16 to six to 68 to 88 leaves a blank spot and goes up to 98? And our brain said nothing. That's not plausible. Conversely, when we flipped this over and looked at it from the other side with a different perspective, how easy is it to see that the missing number between 86 and 87 is in fact 88?

Moreover, if I was then asking this group of children to perform moving forward and they needed to be able to predict what was happening next, how easy is it for them to see that 92 happens next and 85 happened first? Because they have a total understanding of their surroundings just by shifting that perspective. And when we shift that perspective and we get that extra energy, those of you that saw this and did that motion that many of you did, made that little palm to the forehead and went, oh, they were on the other side of the table. And you experience what it was like to have that energy and creativity of seeing possibilities. That's what it's like when you shift a belief.

That's what happens when you change a perspective. And that's what we do here. I'm not going to bury the lead. That's what we do at The Pacific Institute. Our goal here is to be able to help you change that perspective so that you can see those possibilities in areas of your life where you simply didn't see a possibility before.

Not because there's anything wrong with you at all, but simply because when you were given the information, you were on the wrong side of the table. So our goal here is to be able to help folks take that step back and understand that we have a lot more control when we can change that perspective. Now, we talked a little bit about beliefs. So you can answer in the chat, who do you always believe? Who's somebody that you always, always, always believe?

I always like to see the answers come in on this one. Who do you unequivocally believe all the time? Always first answer came in said my pastor. First answer that I came in the last time I asked this was my dog role models my adult children. Good answer with somebody.

As somebody who has teenagers, that's hard for me to wrap my mind around, but I, I can see it. No one. Barbara says, I believe no one. It's like X-Files, right? Trust.

No one. Good answer. Whoever said, my fiance, that's a good way to make sure that that's a lasting relationship. So here's what I believe is true. And I stole this quote from Seth Goodin, so I can't take credit for it, but I sure do say it a lot.

And that is people don't believe what you tell them. If you work in sales, you've probably experienced this before and they rarely believe what you show them. I'll repeat my last statement. If you work in sales, you've probably seen this before and they usually believe what their friends tell them. And I mentioned I got teenagers at home, so I know what that's like.

But last, the person we always believes, as much as we always believe our spouse and our pastor and our dog and those other ones, the one person we always believe is ourselves. We always believe what we tell ourselves. You can talk about lying to yourself, but you're not. There's a little bit of an argument and it's based on what you believe now, what individuals believe has a direct impact on how we act and what we do. Those of you that have children at home that are below a certain age understand how ineffective elf on the shelf is on months that are not December.

And that is a direct reflection of your beliefs. And when we believe something differently and we believe something different, we act differently. Now, when organizations believe something different, they act differently as well. And that's what we call culture. And when we're comparing what the beliefs of these organizations are, there's a traditional model and there's a little bit of a more progressive, more of a new model.

And we want to talk about both. First and foremost is the traditional problem solving model. My grandfather would've known all about this, identify the problems and fix the dang problems. So when you have a culture that says, our approach to growth

and to change is to identify the problems, do a root cause analysis, design interventions that address the said problems, identify solutions. What you're saying in that type of a culture or that type of environment is your basic assumption is our job is to handle and overcome the major problems that come up around here. Things are going to keep falling off the rails and we're going to keep fixing it. This is like the person who says, my job is to sweep the floor. I'm just going to wait for it to get dirty and I'm going to sweep it again and then I'm going to make plans to sweep it again tomorrow.

Now this is a good system for fixing problems. However, there is a huge difference between solving problems and driving future success. So if we think about a positive or an abundance approach, and this is where we really focus and spend our time, we're not saying that it's all about solving problems because we are going to look to solve 'em. But what we're really saying is this type of culture or an environment is putting more appreciation and valor and honor. We're describing what success looks like describing what we want to do more of or what we want to continue doing.

And we're designing interventions that are creating an ideal future, creating the future that we want. Not just identifying, I want all this bad stuff to stop happening, but what do I want it to look like moving forward? And with that, it changes the basic assumption. The basic assumption of leadership says it's not just our job to solve problems, it's our job to enable our highest potential and to embrace change. Now, who has ever heard the expression change is hard?

Eh? Congratulations. You've met my mother. It's her favorite expression in the world. She says, change is hard and change is inevitable.

So if we're going to be living in a world where change is inevitable, we gotta get kind of good at it. But let's talk about that continuum of performance. Before we talk about organizations, let's talk about human beings. We've got about 75 of us human beings here on this conversation. And when we think about our continuum of performance, if we think about ourselves as physical beings, our health in the middle, we're healthy.

A negative deviation from that. If something has gone wrong, we're sick, we've got a cold, we've got a flu. If it's real bad, we've got covid, right? But that's not the same as moving from being in a state of healthy to thriving. And we know what we're talking about.

We're in that state of thriving where you're just feeling well, you're hitting the gym all the time, you're getting all the numbers, the number on the scale between your two naked toes says exactly what you want it to. You're feeling good, but we understand that healthy and thriving are not the same. And when you have the flu and you've been on your new, you know what, for a week, all you want to do is get back to healthy. But the day you don't have the flu anymore, that is not the same as when you're in good shape. You've been going to the gym regularly.

It's not the same as flowing. We can see it also with psychology. If we think about our psychological state, there's our stable normal state and the negative deviation might be illness or mental illness. We might see anxiety or depression and being under duress. And that is nowhere near the same as being in a state of flow.

New musicians out there that can get into a state of flow and playing music or you spreadsheet people that get really excited about that, or even those of us that work in sales that get really excited about a good conversation, understand that flow and stable are not the same. So if we understand that for ourselves, we're trying to get to that thriving point or we want to get to that point of flow, what's that look like for our businesses? Because businesses are comprised of human beings, just a bunch of heartbeats that come together and form an organization. So what does it really look like for a business? Because it's not going to be psychological, it's not going to be physical, but it's going to be economical.

It's going to be how you handle your effectiveness, your quality, your efficiency, ethics, relationships, and adaptability. So everybody who's here hopefully did a little bit of a survey question before and what you were filling out and when you did that survey to start with is a roundabout way of seeing is your organization more focused on problem solving or is it more focused on abundance? And if you want to see where your results were, if you actually open up your phone again and go back to where you had your results, if you click that option that says, see previous results, you're going to be able to see how you stacked up against everybody else. So if you feel really good about your answer or really bad about your answer, you're going to be able to see what everybody else put for the most part. So here's what this looks like.

And you can do a quick little evaluation on yourself. If you're looking at question number one and you answered A, that's a cost cutting answer

B would be a stable and profitable answer. And C was investing in growth. Now, if we look at these different areas, and we know that with ourselves physically healthy, stable is the middle. But thriving and flow is what we want. It's important that we recognize that there's parallels that are like this within our business.

Within our business, yes, stable and profitable is something that many of us want to have, but that's not the same as growing and investing and growing forward, right? Cautious and open isn't bad, but that's not the same as embracing change and saying, you know what? This bad thing happened. Hey, guess what? Tariffs are out but we're going to solve because right?

So there's a lot of difference. And as you go down on your list, this is not designed to be something that has you beating yourself up, but it is designed for you to recognize are your efforts just designed to go from the negative deviation to normal instead of trying to get all the way towards positive? Are you just trying to plug the holes in the boat to stop it from sinking? Or are you focused on moving that boat forward towards your goals? 'cause if all of your focus is just on plugging holes with your fingers and toes to keep the boat afloat, there's nothing left to paddle the boat forward with.

So we really try to change that focus and we know that that comes from culture. Peter Drucker says, culture eats strategy for breakfast. Anybody ever heard that expression before And then thought, what in the heck does it mean? Well, this is our attempt at trying to explain that we know that culture has a far greater success on strategy than than strategy alone does. We do autopsies of companies that have failed and there is inevitably a really strong strategic plan clutched in their hands that they did not follow because somebody didn't have the belief to follow that plan.

So they had the right strategy, they had the right people, but they also had the wrong beliefs. And as a result of that, those right people and right strategy didn't follow the strategy. The thing that they were supposed to be good at that they were all hired to do didn't end up happening. So when we talk about culture, I mentioned it before, culture we say breaks down to two things. And my associate, Cheryl Hicks is the best in the business on this.

If you came to her executive briefing that we did, uh, called executive impact back in December, you would've seen a really interesting breakdown on the difference between climate and culture. And if you didn't, I'm going to give you a quick overview. And the overview is this. We say that culture is a shared system of beliefs and values that can lead to be behavioral norms that guide the way members of an organization approach their work and interact with one another. So we know that it's the beliefs.

We could also say that's kind of the self-talk because that's what people are doing with their beliefs, is they're talking to themselves in their head and the behavioral norms, what's allowable, what's not allowable. Sometimes we like to say culture is not the rules that you set aside for your organization. It's what you let people get away with. It's how they act when you're not there. If I want to have a good culture at home with my children and say, don't drink, don't do drugs, don't stay out late, all these types of things, if that only works when I'm hovering over them, but it doesn't work when I leave and go on a business trip, do I have a good culture or do I have a problem solving culture that only works when I'm there to plug the holes?

So what we really want to think about is how do we focus on those belief and behaviors? Because culture really is the best predictor of an organization's ability to execute strategy. Because if you have a strategy that works and people don't believe that it's going to work, doesn't make any difference. If a person didn't believe that an umbrella kept the rain off their head, they'd never walk outside holding a stick in the air, it'd be a silly thing to do. So what we want to do is be able to focus on those beliefs.

And when we do, when organizations shift to that problems away from that problem solving and into an abundance culture, we see direct impact. So there was a study that was done long time ago, started back in 1992, they did a 11 year study and then they revalidated back in 2018. So Ka Heskett studied over 200 different companies and they were evaluating them on revenue growth, on employment growth, on stock price, and on net income growth. You see just about every head on the screen nodding along with one of those because most people in here have at least

one of those things attached to a goal next to their name. So if you'd like to try to see what the difference is when you move from problem solving to abundance your business equivalent of moving from healthy to thriving or flow abundant cultures in revenue growth, were about five times larger over that same period of time. From 166% revenue growth to 682% revenue growth for employment growth. Those of you that have retention issues know exactly what this one is like. We keep hiring, we keep hiring, we keep hiring.

But over the next 10 years, over the last 10 years, we only got 10% bigger because they keep leaving and going other places. Employment growth on the abundant cultures 756 times, massive difference there. Stock price, anybody else's stock portfolio look pretty crummy at the moment. So stock price is kind of nice. That sort of good one.

If you have shareholders, this matters a lot about 282% versus 36. And then the big one, money. This is what matters forganizations. 74% growth on the problem solving because you're trying to plug and plug and plug. But 901% on the companies that focus on the abundance culture. Abundance breeds abundance.

When you're out there looking for possibilities, when you're looking for growth, when you're growing a culture that has a belief in the system and structures and processes, people lean in. And if you look at this like it's weights on a scale, the heavy ones are going to get far, far, far more momentum. And these are pulling you towards your goals instead of trying to push people. Another way to think about this is where are you getting your leverage? Where does your business leverage really come from?

So if you're in any business at all, you're in the business of results. And if this is your little teeter totter, this is your leverage. You want those results to go up. Everybody does up equals good. So the first thing you need to do is have a strategy.

And as I mentioned before, organizations that die are tightly gripping that strategy. They didn't use it unfortunately. So you can get some leverage by just applying a good strategy. But a strategy is nothing without people doing the strategy. There's a behavior that is required.

And remember, behavior is a component of culture. It's one of the two components of that. So if you can get people to behave in accordance with that strategy, that's good. We're moving everybody in the right direction, you get more leverage out of that. But we know that beliefs are what drive behavior.

And we know that people don't do anything without the belief first, right? Elf on the shelf works real, real good in December, doesn't work so hot in February. Beliefs make a really big difference in how people are going to act. And when we have a belief that supports the behavior and we get a lot of leverage and remember culture is what happens when we have that combination of shared beliefs and behavioral norms. What's acceptable, what's expected?

What are we supposed to do? What do we do when the boss isn't here is your culture. And when that culture is driving the beliefs, the behavior and the strategy, your results are going to go up every time. This is how individuals can take on huge difficult tasks and become stronger working together as a team. However, the other side of that is true as well.

If you let those beliefs go negative and they don't engage in the behavior, they ignore the strategy and the results go down and they plummet quickly. So how in the world do we evaluate culture? I mean, how do we know what a culture looks like? I'll give you a hint. It's not your ping pong table, it's not the events calendar and it's not your uh, when's your next happy hour?

Our good friends at Human Synergistics built us a tool that helps us get a snapshot of your culture. So what I'm going to ask everybody to do again is scam the QR code that is on your screen. I'm also going to put something in the chat. So those of you that don't like to use your cell phones don't have to and we're just going to follow along. You don't have to do anything in advance on this one, but you can click the link in the chat or hold your phone up, scan that QR code, I'll scan mine along with everybody so we can participate.

And once you have scanned that, if you scanned it on your phone, you'll have something that looks like this. So hopefully everybody sees something

that looks like this on their screen. You can also click the link in your chat and there's an area where you can put your email in at the bottom. I'm going to give you a hint. If you put your email in there, I'm going to email you, but I'm also going to email you your results. I'm going to send you information, there's an opt out, don't worry, we're not going to harass you, but you don't need to put anything in there yet because if you hit the submit button on that right now, which I can already tell about seven of you, did I get a blank email?

And so do you. So don't worry about putting anything in yet. But what I'm going to do is we're going to go around the circle and we're going to start at position number one. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to say some things out loud that are typical quotes or expressions that are said by people that are in that culture. And if you hear the words that I say and you read the words on the screen and you think, wow, that sounds exactly like my workplace, that sounds exactly like the culture that I work in or really darn close, then you're going to put a mark towards the edge of that circle out towards the outer edge.

So if were making them tires, they'd be really big tires. And if you say, that's not like us, that never happens, I don't see that even a little bit in my organization, then you'll put a mark more towards the center. So if we're making tires, they'd be real small. So if we start in that first position, if we start in number one position, what we're talking about is the humanistic encouraging style that reflects an interest in growth and development. So what it might sound like is my boss models how he or she wants us to be and act, or it might sound like my boss or my company cares about my personal development.

Or we might say something like, my ideas are encouraged and my ideas are acted upon. So if you feel that that is really, really true, you feel like that absolutely Applies towards you, then you put a mark way towards that outside edge and yours should look a little bit like mine looks here. And if you think it's way towards the inside and yes, you can zoom in on these, then you put it way in towards the inside. Now I'm going to pick up the pace just a little bit because I'll bore you to death. If I spend three minutes on each and every one of these and we are going to go around the full clock so we know there's 11 more coming, if there's questions, toss 'em in the chat.

Myself and my associate John will help address those. As we move to the two o'clock position, we move down the clock a little bit. This is our affiliative. This reflects an interest in developing and sustaining positive relationships. So here's what it might sound like.

Our team is based on trust and inclusion. Or you might hear somebody say, you know what? Let's look at this from the perspective of the compliance department. Or maybe say, you know what, before we get started, let's address the recruiting team and the biggest problems that they're facing. You hear that a lot, you put it towards the outside edge, you don't hear it very much.

You put it towards the middle or towards the bottom, obviously you can goldilocks it right in between. Moving on to the three o'clock position on our clock, this is the approval style that reflects the need to be accepted. A little bit of self-worth is tied to being liked by others. So what it might sound like is, hey, let's meet after the meeting, the old meeting after the meeting. Or Hey, let's take this offline, Greg, let's take this offline and we'll have another meeting later.

Or you might hear somebody say, you know what? I always meet my bare minimums. I meet my contractual obligations or expectations. So again, you hear that a lot. You're going to see a big green slice on there, you don't hear it very much.

You put it towards the center, you'll see a little green slice moving on to four o'clock position. This is conventional reflecting how much there's a preoccupation with conforming or blending in with the environment. So it might sound like, you know, we've always done it this way. That's how we've always done this. Or the inverse.

We can't do it that way. We have to do it this way. Or you know, we tried it that way before and it didn't work. Remember that one time in 1987 in the fall, we tried it, it didn't pan out. So if you hear that a lot, you put it towards the edge, you don't hear it very much, you put it towards the middle or towards the inside five o'clock position.

As we move right along is going to be the dependent. This is really focused on self-protection. This is where we might hear things like, you know, my boss didn't ask me to do that. Sorry. Nope.

Not until the CEO tells me to do it. Did you check with our managing partner? Did you check with the CEO? Did you check with the boss? Lot of verifying that somebody else in another position of authority says it's okay before moving forward.

Or you might hear somebody at the employee level saying, you know, I don't, I'm not comfortable doing that alone. I need to go get approval first.

We just reached a halfway point at the six o'clock position. So this is the avoidance one. This reflects apprehension and strong need for self protection. Little bit of a, a need to withdraw from situations. So things like, hey, let's put that in a parking lot.

We're not ready for that yet. We're not prepared for that discussion or we can't, we need to analyze, we need to analyze this more. We don't have enough data yet, or there's no point in discussing. It won't end well. I heard a CEO at a financial planning firm say that sometimes this sounds like somebody saying, instead of ready, aim, fire, they just say, ready, aim, aim, aim, aim.

Are we ready? Aim. But we never actually get to the point of taking fire. And if you're one of those leaders, it's like, then I hope you put that number way out towards the edge of that one. Moving on into the seven o'clock position, this is our oppositional.

If you've got a 2-year-old at home, you know what this sounds like. And if you have employees that act like them, you know what it sounds like, yeah, that's good, but sort of mix a lot like that big. But, or somebody would say, that's a great presentation but here's why it won't work. Or my favorite oppositional statement, let's agree to disagree. If you hear that a whole bunch, we put that towards the outside edge and not so much towards the middle.

Moving on to eight o'clock, this is the power position. This is the one that reflects a need for prestige and influence. If you're uh, in a time machine and you find yourself in a company in 1956, you're going to see an awful lot of this. Do it because I said so. A lot of top down leadership we're going to do, we're going to solve the problem my way because I'm in charge.

Or you know what, let just, I'm going to take over to keep it efficient. We'll do it my way. Moving on from the power position, where to position number nine, we're rounding it out here. This is competitive and this is comparing oneself to others. I win.

You lose. Let me do it. I'm the best analyst that we have here. I'm the top salesperson three years in a row. Haven't you noticed it's your turn to kiss the ring?

I'm going to win at all costs. Doesn't matter what happens, I will be the winner. Whole bunch. You put it towards the outside edge, not so much in towards the center perfectionistic at the 10 o'clock position based on the need to attain flawless results or avoid failure. This is a rough one.

If you're avoiding failure, check your work. Again, this has got to be perfect. My daughter's a gymnast. There's a lot of perfectionists. You know, nine point fives a pretty darn good score, but all they can think about is that half a 10th, it's off.

It might sound like, hey, that's pretty good, but you know what? Let me fix that for you. Instead of pointing out what's good, let's just fix it for you. Or this is the nothing is good enough for my boss. My associate, Cheryl likes to describe this as the college professor that refuses to give an A, just not quite good enough.

Two more positions. We're almost there in the 11 o'clock position. We have achievement and this is focusing on high quality results linked to one's effort based on challenging goals. So it'll sound like this. Yeah, that's a tough goal, but I think we can do it.

We're going to beat the plan this year when we execute and we've learned a lot from that misstep. So let's not make that step again, let's apply what we've learned. And then finally, thank you everybody for your patience in our 12 o'clock position. Self-actualizing is based on the need for personal growth, self-fulfillment, and the realization of one's potential. What it sounds like is everybody here acts in accordance with their core values, or I want to learn more about this other part of the business.

Can you help me learn a little bit more about that? Or the boss might say something like, I'd love to hear your new ideas and see what those sound like when you've done all this. You should have a completed circumplex. Those of you that have it on your phone, can you hold it up to the screen so we can see just a little bit of what these look like? Does everybody have something that looks like this?

Perfect. Everybody's done a good job. So let's do a little bit of dissecting what that looks like. Now keep in mind this is self-reported and this is not scientifically validated. So this is a little bit of a snapshot.

At the end of our day today, I'm going to give everybody an opportunity to do a free version of this exact same test in a more robust manner so you can get a little bit more detailed an answers. But for now, if you'd like to at least see what you have so far, this is a great time to put your email address in,

click, email me my results, I'll get a copy and you'll get a copy and it'll give you a breakdown of what you're looking at. You're more than welcome to reply to that email. It comes right to me. But let's explain what we're looking at. So if you're holding this up and you're looking at this thing and you go, that's great Kevin, it's pretty.

What does this mean? The goal is not just to give you something that has red and blue and green. We want to dissect what that actually means. We, so let's break down what our quadrants of the clock look like. There were 12 different positions.

We're breaking it down into three zones. So the first one is the aggressive defensive style. That's between seven and 10 on your clock. And that's the oppositional, that's the power, that's the competitive, that's the perfectionistic style. With organizations like this, the focus is very, very task oriented.

The focus is on what you do, what needs to be done. The ditches need to be done. What that leads to is a culture that is very self-promoting. Does people want to point out what did I do? Did I do the thing and they want to prove I did the thing.

And it's very focused on what you do in promoting oneself. Now the trouble with that is that creates organizational volatility because everybody's trying to look good. 'cause there's only so many people that can do the thing, which means if only one person can look good, there's a lot of volatility. And if one person looks ga bad, oftentimes air go, somebody else looks bad. So there gets to be a little bit of a trouble with that.

Now those types of cultures oftentimes breed these green cultures, this passive defensive style. And if you're on the passive defensive, we're looking at the areas of approval, conventional dependent or avoidant. And what this is, is focused on how you do it. How well did you dig that ditch? How well did you make your prospecting phone call?

How well did you fill out your compliance reports? With those, it changes the focus to self-protecting because everybody wants to prove I did my job. Well, they're just trying to prove I did what was asked of me. I did my job. So the focus there is inflexibility because the individuals are trying to be good.

I did everything that was asked of me. And when that becomes the focus, you get a lot of inflexibility and it becomes problematic. So I always stop at this point and I tell a story because it is an example of a culture. And before I explain the last one, I want to explain a little bit about what this this story is. So the story goes like this, I live in Californiand in southern California we have this beautiful mountain called Mammoth.

About a seven hour drive away. And in order to get to Mammoth, you gotta drive up this road called the 3 95. Anybody who's from California should be smiling at the sound of that one on that road. You go a long ways without seeing much. You drive for a really long time without seeing any other towns.

And all you see are these tiny little pockets of a town and each one has three gas stations and you move along and there's another one just like it. And those of you that are not in California, calm yourself. When I say the prices, 'cause I am about to say California gas prices. So we're driving along and all of the gas stations are at about $5. Yes, those of you from the south, we do pay $5 a gallon for our gas.

So we're driving along, it's $5, $5, $5, and all of a sudden there's one that has $6. And we're like, what in the world is going on with this? And I'm driving along, I got my stepson in the car, he's about 12, 13 years old at the time. And he asks what I think is a pretty darn intuitive question, which is why is that gas so much more than all the other gas is? I was like, I don't know man, they probably put truffle oil in it, right?

But he's real inquisitive and he wants to go find out. So we're not going to stop and get gas. But you know what? Uh, sure. We get a bag of chips and a Gatorade and I tell him to go ask the attendant at the gas station what in the world is so special about their gas?

So he goes up and he ask the guy and he says, how come your gas costs so much more than everybody else's? And the guy says, oh, it doesn't. Well your, your sign says $6 and everybody else's says five. And the gas station attendant just looks at him and goes, oh yeah, the sign's broken as though that was the answer. Now think about the cultures that you see on the screen and you think about if somebody's just focused on what you do or how you do it and you break down the gas attendant job, his job is collect money from people that come in.

His job might be clean up a spill on the floor and it might be restock the shelves, but his job in his mind is very, very singular. I just have this one thing to do. If that person is just focused on what they do or being self-protecting, did they do their job? Did they check all the boxes? I took the money for gas when they came in.

I restocked the shelves, I did all the basics, but they didn't do the entirety of the job. So I'm going to explain that last piece before I go into what some of the other, what what I talk about with our gas station attendants. So the third style, we call it our constructive style. I'm not going to bury the lead. This is the one we're shooting for.

This is the one that we want to see the most of. And in that this is focused on why you do what you're doing. The result is people want to participate because they're participating in getting the result. Now what this results in is organizational resilience because people want to do good. Now, human beings always do whatever we have to do to feel safe at all times and at work people think safe is I'm going to retain and keep my job.

And if you view the world in a red or a blue or a red or a green culture, you're not viewing it in a way that says, I'm trying to do good. You're just saying I want to look good or be good so my boss doesn't fire me. That is not the same as being productive and doing good work. So if our gas station attendant had come from a, a culture that was more focused on participating on achievement, self-actualizing, affiliative, humanistic and encouraging, if he had come from that type of a culture, there are options that are available. One, call the boss.

Hey, the sign's broken. It's showing that our gas is way higher. Nobody's coming into the store anymore. Boss doesn't answer, turn the sign off. A sign that reads nothing is better than one that shows a gas price a dollar higher than everybody else.

That's the difference between beliefs and behavioral norms directly impacting actions within organizations. Everybody, if you think about your own organizations, you probably have a couple of gas station attendants that think the way that this person did. So the key is how do we get those people to think differently? How do we flip 'em over to the other side? And again, I said I wasn't going to bury the lead.

The blue cultures are the ones that do best. We showed it before I showed the statistics, the 756% more income and those other factors. But if you think about things that leaders have to deal with, intention to stay AKA, retention, teamwork, people working together, quality of work, adaptability, satisfaction, those are all things you want to see go up. And the studies have shown in green and red, passive aggressive and passive defensive cultures. They go down, the things that you want to go down are stress and turnover.

And those end up going up. We flip that coin over to the other side and we see where those blue cultures win. There's a lot of data that backs this up. Those of you that are data nerds like me who spend your time on LinkedIn every morning reading two or three articles, read the World Economic Forum article that came out this January and the article that came out in January in their future of jobs report said the following, in their report, they said that the number one factor for growth. So self-efficacy, somebody's belief in their ability to grow and learn and drive change is the number one most crucial factor in an evolving workforce.

If you're looking to have employees who stay with the organization and grow and do good work, the number one factor is their belief in their own ability to do exactly that. Beliefs drive behavior. 39% of the skills that exist in the workforce are going to be gone in the next five years. Yes, AI is going to steal some of them. Automation is going to steal others and all sorts of things are going to change. So if you are not evolving, chances are the job you may have might evolve out from underneath you or at least the job of some of the people that work with are for you.

So that means that resilience, flexibility, agility, these are all really key traits that are going to come in pretty darn handy because 85% of employers out there are prioritizing upskilling their employees with 50% of them plans, planning to transition their staff into roles that don't even exist yet. Meaning they're looking at their organizations

and saying, all of you that are doing this job, if you're here, you're probably doing a different job. And that's scary because it's going to involve doing things that are new. This is a direct quote from the article and it might as well be a direct quote from our curriculum at TPI Beliefs, shape behavior. Those who trust in their ability and their team's ability to learn and adapt are the ones that are going to thrive in the future of work. That answer right there is what we mean when we say culture eats strategy for breakfast.

Those of you that are at the tops of your organizations, I have conversations with you all the time. I said my, my title is Chief Growth officer. So I talk to heads of organizations all the time. One of the things they complain to me about, and I'll even go so far as to say it is actually complaining, is that they get stuck making all of the decisions. If you're at the top of an organization, wave your hand.

If you're like, why does everything have to bottleneck through me? It gets annoying and frustrating. And that happens a lot because a lot of people were at the head of an organization when it was small and it got bigger and bigger and bigger and everybody got in the habit and had the belief that all decisions need to run through the boss bill's in charge, everything runs through Bill. We're just going to keep doing it that way. The trouble with that is that leads to a passive defensive environment and we want to spread that decision making further and further throughout the organization so that the gas station attendant feels empowered to be able to make the right decision when the right decision needs to happen.

That is my children choosing to do the things that I tell them to do when I'm not in the room anymore. That's the gas station attendant calling the boss and saying it doesn't work. Our ga our our sign is broken, it's showing the wrong price. And when that doesn't happen, taking it one step further and going, fine, I'm going to turn it off. And maybe just maybe going even one step further and handwriting the real price over the actual sign because that would be the definition of doing good.

Because when you can move decision making down in your organization away from just the folks that are up at the top, all of those bottlenecks that drive your executive team crazy about why did they run everything by me, they start to go away and the efficiencies really increase. I don't know what happened with our gas station. I'm sure eventually they sent somebody out from corporate to come fix it or somebody from corporate called an electrician to come plug the sign in or something. It was something really basic I'm sure, but it was a wasted resource, whatever it was, whatever it took to get that gas station signed, fixed was a wasted resource because the organization already had somebody who was capable of doing that. And if they had a culture that focused on them doing good versus looking or being good, they would've got the exact result they wanted.

So what we want is a strategy that doesn't just have some people doing things or middle management doing things, but a strategy where it says everybody has the belief that they can make a difference in an impact. And when that happens, and it does take a little bit of time, but when that happens, organizations see massive growth. This is a financial planning firm that we work with out of Boston. If you see on the left hand side, 2014 when they filled out their full survey, this was for the entire organization, 120 some odd questions, uh, 150 some odd people in the organization. You can see they had a lot of red and green.

Their numbers were not terribly great. You can see in 2024 they got a boatload of blue, they got a circumplex. It looks like the stinking ocean. And the data that you see over on the right hand side is their real actual 2024 data. And if you work in financial services, which about half of you on this call do, you're probably thinking, wow, almost 80% retention when the industry average hovers between 15 and 20 is pretty doggone good.

And some of these numbers look pretty darn good. This is what happens with organizations that focus on driving blue cultures where folks want to do good, not just look good in front of the boss or act good but actually do good work. It makes a big, big difference. So where did they start back in 2014? They started where most of the companies start with when working with us.

And if you'd like to explore what the possibility of working with us looks like, we have a program that is called the Cultural Foundations Package. It is a 90 day development program that we do with your executive leadership team. Depending on the size of your team, we could fluctuate that up or down. But that begins with a scientifically validated assessment, very similar to the one that you did before. If you're looking down at your phone and you're thinking all these pretty colors, I wonder what the science is, that's where we will, that's where we work with folks like Kathleen who's on this call to help do a professional and detailed scientific assessment.

But the assessment is just data on paper. That's not fair. So we'll debrief that with you. We'll do a structured debrief where we're going to explain what do these things look like in your organization. If we'd done this with the gas station, we'd be able to explain this is what it looks like.

And they would say, oh, that's why people aren't turning the sign off. So we're able to connect the dots between what's going on across your entire organization about what people believe is expected of their behavior, and then we can set some goals for you. From there, we'll move into our flagship program. It's a two-day workshop. Those of you that have done work with us in the past and maybe sat through sessions with folks like Lori who's on this call and some of the others who've been through thought patterns, you've had a two day really impactful experience.

Bobby, I see you nodding along. I've seen you in many of them before. This is our two day flagship program where we spend 16 hours together. The first 12 hours we're heavily focused on remember me, and then we start to pivot from me to we. So we take that from you to your team and then we build it more towards how do we take this to your organization?

We move to be coaches and consultants and we do two follow up sessions with you. So a 90 day program, you end up working with us for a total of about two and a half to three days. And this puts us in a position where we can make some really strong recommendations for you and for your organization moving forward. And from there we can determine where do you need more blue behavior and what would it look like in your office or your organization? Moreover, what does it look like when we act red and how do we make it go away?

And then you get to work with our professionals like Cheryl who can walk you through all the systems and all the processes that can go into place that help make sure that those beliefs and those behaviors are reinforced on a day in day out basis. So it doesn't feel like you're pushing the ball uphill all the time. So if you'd like to take this one step further, here's one more chance. I know we scanned QR codes left and right. Your poor phone's data plan is all exhausted.

But this is a more robust version of that assessment that you took before. This version has the full 120 questions. It is far more scientifically validated and it takes away your ability to try to gain the system. 'cause I'm sure some of you after a while started to realize, I can tell what the good answer is and the bad answer is 'cause I'm very coy. It's less plausible to do when it's a scientifically validated assessment like this.

So we highly recommend that you do. You scan that QR code on that page. You'll see there's an opportunity to complete the assessment through our partner in human synergistics. There's also a link to my calendar and you're welcome to schedule a time. We'll book a debrief.

There's absolutely no cost for doing this. We'll debrief those results with you to help give you a little bit more of a scientific breakdown of is that culture red, is it green and is it blue? If it's red or green, we can help give you a strategy for what you can do to turn it blue. If it's blue number one, we'll pat you on the back and tell you good job. And then we'll build a strategy for what you can do to make sure you keep it that way.

Because just 'cause you're in perfect shape doesn't mean you don't still want to go to the gym to stay that way. So that is my time. I have left an amazing 10 minutes left, which I absolutely never do. And I will take this opportunity to say that I did that on purpose. I intentionally finished early because everybody deserves to have some time on a weekend.

That said, I'm going to stop yapping and see if anybody has any questions. There is no more presentation left. So those of you that came here, thank you so, so very much for coming by, giving me your time and your attention. As always, we will be back again next month. Next month.

Our topic is retaining talent in a remote first world. So if you have a hybrid environment or if you've gone remote and you are trying to figure out how to keep human beings and drive your culture, we'll be doing a session similar

to this one on June the sixth. But that is my time for today. I will stick around if anybody has any questions. And thank you so very much for your time and attention. Have a wonderful weekend.