EntreLeadership - #171: Lisa Solomon—The Secrets of Innovation

Episode Date: October 31, 2016

If you want to build a Steve Jobs-like environment, where innovation and creativity reign, cookie-cutter won’t cut it. Learn from management consulting expert Lisa Kay Solomon as she discusses how to design strategic conversations that accelerate change. Lisa will show you how to get your employees to view themselves as innovators, not clock-punchers. entreleadership.com/podcast Create Core Values Tool Infusionsoft's Free Email Templates Spring EntreLeadership Master Series Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. Now, here is your host, Ken Coleman. Broadcasting from the Music City, this is the podcast of leaders, by leaders, for leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. Here's a rundown of what's coming at you. Our feature conversation is with Lisa K. Solomon. She is the author of two books.

One, moments of impact, how to design strategic conversations that accelerate change. and design a better business, new tools, skills, and mindset for strategy and innovation. We spent our entire conversation really looking at great stuff from both of those books. We're going to bring you free stuff from Entree Leadership, how to create core values. InfusionSoft's got 10 emails that you need to close to sell. These are templates. And we've got some really fun emails. Two emails we're going to focus on from Ken's Electronic Mail.

One of them, in my opinion, one of the most inspiring emails we've received in my time at Entree Leadership. So all that coming to you. And I'm on a high. Still buzzing because we're off last week's Entree Leadership Master's series here in our office four days hosting 180 business owners that, my goodness, they just make you feel so good about the future. What an incredible crowd. What an incredible time. And we'd love for you to join us on our next one. It's February 19 through 23. And that's when we'll be doing it again. These do fill up fast. And we just had a spectacular time. In fact, Eric the producer and I are scheming on what content from that event we will bring to you so that you can get a sense of it. So stay tuned for that. If you want to come

to the event, it's entreleadership.com slash EMS. Entreeleadership.com slash EMS. It's February 19 through 23. And we'd love to have you here. Again, it was just a phenomenal four days. And speaking of phenomenal days, I've been in and out of Nashville quite a bit this fall as we're out on our live events. One of the other hats I wear. at Ramsey Solutions. You may not know this. I host our live events and we've been out on the smart money tour with Dave Ramsey and his daughter, Rachel Cruz. And really, we've turned it into a book tour because her new book, Love Your Life, Not There's, seven money habits for living the life you want that will change your life is taken off like wildfire. Rachel has really

developed her own tribe alongside of Dave and now her own following. And this new book is just such a positive and practical guide to just living your life. The idea here is don't try to keep up with the Joneses. That never works out. And what she's done here is give you a practical guide on how to just live your life and focus on positive money habits that will give you a practical guide to winning with money. So if you want to learn more about that, Rachelcruise.com, you can get the book there and stay in touch with what she's doing. So every once in a while, I will ask one of our guests that we've had on at the end of our conversation, hey, who are three or four people that you recommend?

In fact, I do it a lot. I guess I do it more regularly than I don't do it. Is that right, Eric? He's shaking his head. And the reason I'm telling you this is twofold. Number one, this is how we got in touch with Lisa K. Solomon. Robbie Baxter, who's a recent guest, this was one of the names. And they tell me why, and these are great people,

and so therefore I want to get their recommendations. But the reason I'm also pointing this out is that this is something you need to do more of. take the time to be strategic and asking a couple of questions every once in a while of people you respect. Like, hey, what would you recommend? Who would you recommend? Why would you recommend? That's just a quick little nugget here. Sometimes your best resources are the people you've been put in touch with. Don't waste that opportunity. Get their insight. Get their wisdom. So that's what we've done. And really excited that we asked Robbie because we got to meet Lisa K. Solomon. And you're going to love this conversation. Very practical. Get ready to learn. Here is our conversation with Lisa Solomon. Well, Lisa, I want to start with a book you wrote not too very long ago, but it's not your latest book, but I want to go back some because I, the subtitle is what really jumped out to me. The title of the book is Moments of Impact, folks, and the subtitle says how to design strategic conversations that accelerate change. Now, that's a great subtitle. First of all, Lisa, congrats. It may be one of the best subtitles I've ever heard.

Thank you, Ken. It accomplishes a lot. But the idea of strategic conversations. I want to first start there. So part one of the question, and then I'll follow up. What is a strategic conversation in your mind? How do you define it in the book? And why is that important? Thanks, Ken. It's a great question.

And I'm so glad you started there because I believe strategic conversations are the key to how we think about our strategy and the growth of our organizations, our companies, and how we can take advantage of some of the opportunities we have available to us. They have to be in conversation. And the reason is because the world we're living in is getting increasingly complex, increasingly uncertain, and in some ways increasingly volatile. We don't quite know what's going to happen day to day. So the idea of a strategic plan, a five-year strategic plan that we created at one time

and then put on our shelf to have that dictate our actions going forward, I don't think that's really the best way for us to think about how we can create opportunities for our customers to serve them. It has to be more dynamic. So the idea of a strategic conversation is a creative and collaborative problem-solving conversation that's oriented towards how our company can continue to serve our customers in this moment at time. And I also love the idea of a conversation because it suggests that there are several people around the table, hopefully diverse perspectives, that can weigh in on what they're seeing so that we can make decisions that affect the future of our company in the most dynamic and appropriate way.

All right, Lisa, I want you to give us some context. That's a wonderful description, but give us some context of the type of strategic conversations, a little bit more specific, that you believe our audience, a lot of small business leaders, need to really master. What would be an example of a few? We talk about strategic conversations in really three buckets. There's a set of conversations you need to have that builds understanding about your business, your customers, and how you're delivering products and services to meet their needs,

essentially your business model. There's a second set of conversations about ideating, about innovating, about asking yourself, what if, what could we be? And there's a third set around actually making decisions. And it's important to distinguish these three different kinds of conversations because we love to solve problems. And oftentimes I've seen when companies are excited about being innovative and I spend a lot of my time helping organizations think more creatively and expansively about their strategy and about how they can serve customers, we jump to that second kind of

conversation, the ideating one, the brainstorming one, the problem solving one, because those are fun and energetic. But if we forget to have that first kind of conversation, the conversation that first aligns us about what our business does today, about what we're good on today and about how we're currently serving our customers or even who our customer is. When we jump into that ideation question, we're all coming to it from a different perspective. So I think it's really important that we first start with that building understanding question. What are we doing well? What is our current business model? Who are our customers? And how do we best serve them today? Now, I want to go back to, and you've covered this beautifully,

but I really want to dive deep on the design part, right? How to design. So you've really done a good job of explaining what a strategic conversation is, the types. But this design thing is very interesting. That's the unique approach I think that you have found and obviously write so beautifully about in this book. So set us up there because you really draw a nice parallel. In fact, folks, if you're taking book notes, page 24, she really begins to unpack this. And you use a wonderful metaphor of how designers, you know, they come to elegant solutions.

Those are your words. by an emergent craft-based process that follows core principles. So again, you don't have to unpack all the principles, but explain the design part and how that fits into really designing strategic conversations that have huge impact. Absolutely. We actually talk about the importance of designing conversations as a leadership skill. In fact, Ken, you may see it's the opening chapter, the most important leadership skill you've never been taught. And this notion of design comes from a sense of intentionality around setting the people up around you for success. So I'll just back up for a second and say my definition of design is not necessarily something

that's beautiful. We often think of design as an artifact that sits in a museum somewhere that we admire for its elegance. I think of design as a sense of responsibility about making choices that trigger the right responses in others. So for example, we talk about our iPhones as being beautifully designed. Why do we say it's beautifully designed? We say it's beautifully designed because it delivers functional utility to us. It connects us to the world. It allows us to do all of these interesting things through its apps. And it makes us feel something. It triggers emotional engagement. We love our iPhones. We sleep out overnight to get our iPhones. I could say the same thing about Dyson vacuum cleaners. If you talk to someone who owns a Dyson vacuum cleaner, they're fanatic.

This thing that gets dust bunnies under their couch, they love it. because it does the job of cleaning up and it makes them feel delighted. It makes them feel excited. So let's apply that now to our conversations. We often go into our most strategic conversations, the ones that really impact the future of our organizations with dead seriousness. We're going to talk about serious issues. And the content we use to have those conversations are numbers and opinions. And we don't think of what is it that we want to get out of this conversation? What is the functional you in terms of what we want people to know and what we want them to be thinking about as we make choices that are going to meaningfully affect the future of our company and getting back to the

other part, how do we want them to feel? Do we want them to feel excited to be working at this company? Do we want them to feel delighted about what's going to be next for the next chapter of the company? So when we talk about design, we're really talking about all the work you do in advance to make sure that when you are together for that conversation, you're achieving what you want to achieve. Yeah, and it's a great shift. And so I'm going to do this. I didn't plan to do this, but Lisa, this is fun. I'm going to set you up, so we move through this quicker because we have so much to cover. But on page 33, you really set up this wonderful graph, if you will, and it's the key differences between a well-organized meeting, which I think people do very well. I mean,

if you think of meetings all the time, you probably go to a lot of well-organized meetings, but what's the difference between a well-organized meeting and a well-designed strategic conversation. Folks, she lays this out. And so I'm going to tee you up, Lisa. Okay, I'm going to give you the adjective, if you will, or the attribute of a well-organized meeting, and then you kind of lay it out for, well, this is where it goes to a strategic conversation. You go with that? I'm ready. All right. So this is fun. So a well-organized meeting, you declare the objectives. But in a well-designed strategic conversation, what do we do? We focus on the purpose. And the difference there, Ken, is that the objectives, and we know this, we go to meetings, and you say,

what do you want to get out of this meeting? People say next steps, right? Convergence, clarity. When you're having a strategic conversation that tends to be much more exploratory in nature, it's not necessary about rushing to closure. It's really about getting aligned on where you are on the process. Right. Okay, next one, we identify participants in a well-organized meeting, but in a well-designed strategic conversation, we're engaging multiple perspectives. What does that mean? Right. Totally different approach. So, Ken, I don't know about you, but a lot of times when I'm in these meetings, the people in the meetings are pretty much the people that were in the meeting the last time.

And we sort of get these recurring meetings. We don't really stop to say, wait, are these the right people that should be in this conversation? Who needs to be represented in this conversation so that we're giving ourselves the best chance of truly understanding the issue? Maybe we need customers. Maybe we need partners. Maybe we need younger employees who have a totally different perspective than the folks that have risen to the top of the organization. So it's really about thinking through the perspectives we need, not the individual people. Yeah, that's powerful. I think that's huge, folks.

That's a big takeaway. That's worth the entire podcast right there. But we want you to keep listening. Okay, next, well-organized meeting, you assemble the content. But in a well-designed strategic conversation, you frame the issues. This is big. Ken, this is big. Again, meetings were really well trained. Have the agenda. Do we have the agenda? Agenda item number one, two, three. But when you're having a conversation, it's far more important. Think about how are we asking the right questions. Are we framing the core issue right? So Ken, if you can imagine, this is the metaphor I use. You have three different people and they have the thought bubble above them. And the first one has the thought bubble of a circle, the second, a square, and the third, a triangle. And everybody just comes in thinking, so we're all talking about the customer, right? And everybody has a different perspective

on who that customer is. It's really critical that you think hard about how you want to orient people's time and attention on the issue. And that comes down to framing. All right. So next, a well-organized meeting, you find a venue, but a well-designed conversation, you're setting the scene. This is one of my most favorite chapters of the book. To talk about all of the choices we can make to get people in the room in a generative and imaginative and open mindset to have conversations about things that sometimes are unknowable. A lot of times when we talk about our conversations and particularly things like our board meetings, we find the most serious room, this big board room with a big table, no windows. And we are now learning, thanks to some advances in neuroscience,

that our brain treats these environments that are so serious like a, like, like, like, like, like in jail. So at the precise moment that we need people to be open and flexible, our brain is saying, I'm in defense mode. I'm ready to defend my turf. That's really good. Okay. And it sets up the last one beautifully. They tie together so well. In a well-organized meeting, we set the agenda. But in a well-designed strategic conversation, we make it an experience. So true. Again, we often think about the success of our meetings if we got through all of our agenda items. Essentially, did we manage time, And what we say in this book and the whole essence of this power tour on how to have a strategic conversation is that if you want to get the best out of your people around the table in the room,

you've got to engage them emotionally as well as rationally. It's not just about creating PowerPoints and presenting at people. It's about making choices that get people to feel something, to get them fully immersed in the issue so that they are giving you the best insight they can to carry forward another day. I'll tell you folks who does this very well. And if you think for a moment, just transfer yourself to the last time you went to a great show, whether that be on Broadway, maybe in Las Vegas,

something like that. And they do this very well. People who produce these live shows, they set the scene for us, and they make it an experience. And then if you go to really good corporate events, and Lisa, we do this, at Ramsey Solutions, we have a lot of live events.

And this is those two last things we just discussed, setting the scene, making an experience, and how you unpack that, that is so huge to transformation where the audience can come in and unplug from what they're doing in life and plug into what you've prepared for them so they can learn and walk away. And I bring all that up to throw the ball back at you to say, what you're laying out here can be done. It doesn't have to be on a magnificent level, but even in important meetings within the daily organization, important meetings when you bring it in investors or clients, customers.

we need to be borrowing from that. Isn't that what you're setting us up for? A hundred percent, Ken. And I want to suggest that it doesn't even have to only happen in meetings. It can happen in your everyday life. If you embrace the power of thinking like a designer, then you are taking on a sense of responsibility of making choices that enable others to be successful. What I say is if you make decisions that affect other people, you are a designer. And it often comes down to, just as you said, Ken, the small choices you make. along the way. We talk about in the book moments of impact the importance of sweating the small stuff. Because every time you make a choice that helps people be successful or helps them feel seen

and heard, you're building trust. You're building buy-in. And when you make a choice that flies in the face of what it is that you're trying to accomplish, then you've lost them. That's where the trust and the disconnect happens. And that is one of the biggest reasons I've seen that companies fail at being, for example, more innovative is because they say the words we want to be more innovative, but their actions are totally different. And again, I just want to go back to what you said. If you look at a well orchestrated show, a Cirque de Soleil, a Broadway show, recently I had the privilege of going to Hamilton, that is one of the most magnificent examples of a pure design that I've ever seen. So much so that the choices that Lynn Manuel Miranda made to essentially bring the history of our

Founding Fathers to Life in a foundationally human way is actually influencing our future. It's incredible to see. All right. So I want to stay on this path because I love how you really set us up to think about design. And you actually talk a lot about visual thinking. And you challenged it just a moment ago that this is an everyday thing, right? This doesn't have to be just an event or an experience with a customer. But how do we begin to shift our minds to this visual thinking that you talk a little?

lot about? Well, I love visual thinking because it really taps into another part of our brain that allows us to me more imaginative. We tend to think of visual thinking as people that can draw. And I just want to completely disavow that notion. Visual thinking is our ability to use what we take in with our eyes and our imagination, our mind's eye, to create something different, to really dream and imagine. And that is one of the core foundational skills of a successful innovator. And we can practice that every day just by starting to take in the world differently, by refining our observation skills and looking at it when we embrace the power of a designer through the lens of empathy, through the lens of what our customers might need from us.

Not typically how we think about it. What do we have that we can sell them? But rather, what's happening in their every day that's either bringing them joy or causing them pain? And if we can zero in on areas that would really help them be more successful our customers, that's where the insight comes in to think about how to create something new that can generate true value to them. And so getting back to your question of visual thinking, the earlier we're able to give form to that idea, even in the form of stick figure, is then gives us the ability to test if our idea, our initial hunch, actually has the value that we think it might have. And if we begin to employ what you just gave us, you know, and so we're visually thinking,

it really does take a little of the pressure off of innovation. And what I mean by that is it seems to me that it simplifies. Innovation isn't this big scientific rocket science type project. It can just be simply bringing something fresh. Is that fair? That is 100% fair. Ken, I'm a big believer that innovators come before innovation and that innovators can learn how to be innovative through a set of disciplined practices.

We love these mythical heroes of innovation, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, that they have some kind of magic ability that we don't have. And I would suggest that what we need to do is learn about what they do every day so that we can start to practice it in our own lives. I have seen tremendous growth, not only of my graduate students that I work with,

but oftentimes they get the privilege of working with K-12 students. And when you empower them with some of these skills, the ability to pause and look around, the ability to ask different questions, the ability to give form to their ideas in the form of these simple shapes of circles and squares, you can't believe how empowered they feel to be someone who is capable of bringing something new to the world that has value. I love that. All right, I want to shift the conversation over to your latest book. And you've mentioned it, design a better business. and there's several skills and tools that you present in the book. So I've got some specific areas I want to dive into.

But first, I want you to give us an overview of what you're delivering in this book. Thanks, Ken. I'm so excited about this book. It really follows everything we've been talking about so far. I really believe that the reason why we don't think of ourselves as being innovative is that we've never really been taught. So this book, in many ways, is a visual playbook on how you can bring design-driven innovation into your company and even into your lives. So it outlines a process for how to think about design that starts with preparing ourselves for the journey, very detailed, we call it the double

loop process, and we back up that process with a set of visual tools with some guidelines on how to use those tools and the skills that you're going to have to start to develop in order to make the most of those tools. It's extremely visual. And all of the tools that we're we create are actually available to be downloaded through Creative Cromins. So we tried to employ the design mentality ourselves in creating this book to make it as easy to use as possible. You said, I'm paraphrasing that we don't think this way in large part because we haven't been taught. I want to go back. And I want you to explain that. Why haven't we been taught? Such a great question, Ken. I'm spending my life's work trying to undo that.

Yeah. There's something about our school where pretty much from second. and grade on, we start to reward kids that have right answers. We grade for people that get to the thing that is gradable, that tends to be a single right answer. And over time, we learn that the person that can write something that is clear and has a single point of view gets rewarded. And the students that ask the questions, for example, that take teachers off track or that provide a divergent point of view that the teachers aren't necessarily ready to acknowledge or it feels like it's taking them off their lesson plan, those kids start to feel ostracized. They start to

feel like they're the distractors. So all that divergent thinking that is so critical to design, to being innovative, starts to get ostracize. And we don't get rewarded for that. So we don't practice those muscles. And the same thing happens in our organizations. The people that, deliver on known answers tend to be rewarded for their efficiency and their ability to execute. We don't have the same kind of mechanisms to reward people for asking questions that take us into the unknown, that are really discovery-driven. And that is the essence of the discipline behind innovation. That's right. And I know many of our audience are smiling right now. I set you up for that question because this is a theme. You know, I've talked with Marcus Buckingham about this.

You know, Sir Ken Robinson, in my opinion, is a real pioneer on this. I'm so glad that you glad you said you're dedicated to this because I think, I think you were very kind. I think that the education system in America is unintentionally beating curiosity out of our kids. I think that's right. And then to go back to what we talked about earlier around design, teeing up responses that deliver utility, functional utility, and emotional engagement, gosh, it just kills me when I see kids that are dredging their way to school. School should be a place of celebration. School should be a place that honors their unique talents and gifts. them to grow them in magnificent ways. And we just have a thought about the process to allow that to

happen. I mean, I would love it if school started off with just two minutes of dancing or two minutes of a playful exercise that opens up kids' brains to saying, I'm possible, I'm ready. We're not talking about massive policy shifts, right? We're getting back to something we said earlier, sweating the small stuff. If you want kids to show up in a way that they're ready to learn, We've got to engage them kinesthetically. We've got to engage their imagination. We've got to allow them to express themselves in individual and unique ways. And the other issue, too, is we have this assembly line type teaching mechanism.

And the kids who don't have any type of learning challenges, they can just kind of skate through. But they're suffering as well because they're losing that muscle as you beautifully laid out for us. But here's what's really interesting because you've talked a lot about design. And I just have one more question on this because I think you have a unique vantage point. you know this some of the great creative minds in the history of the world certainly america and the american economy and designers a lot of designers have learning disabilities what we call learning disabilities which i think is a bunch of junk but their brains are wired differently they learn differently yet if we if we take on this approach that you're suggesting it brings everybody

into the circle a little easier because it's not about empirical learning it's about discovery it's about question asking and different perspective is that right Do you agree with that? I 100% agree with that. And here's what's interesting, Ken. So one of the promises of some of the new technologies that are coming out is to really allow differentiation in the classroom in a scalable way. Because differentiation has happened in the classroom, but just as you pointed out, often

in the special classrooms, in the kids that have special needs, what are they doing in those classrooms? You're differentiating. The issue is it hasn't been able to happen in a scalable way. So there are some exciting new technologies that are really in. enabling teachers to do what they love to do, which is to help empower all kids to achieve their best in a way that they can do in the limited minutes that they have in the classroom. The problem is that teachers, first of all, have not gotten the support they need in the form

of professional development, and they've gotten squeezed in terms of what they have to accomplish with the time that they have. So I'm very hopeful that some of these new technologies will really enable the teachers to be able to do more with the time that they have. have in their classrooms with the variety of students that they have in their classrooms. That's my great hope. Well, thank you for what you're doing and consider me a friend, however I can help you on this issue. I think this is very, very important as we really develop a future generation of innovators and great thinkers and problem solvers. This is fantastic stuff, but I want to jump into the book, folks. And again, I'm going to hop around, as you know I do from time to time.

And one of the real tools and chapters that you dive into here is in the book, Design of Better Business, is mastering ideation. Now, ideation is kind of like this new kind of fun word, right? It hasn't been around forever. But it really does, I think, signify the gold of problem solving. You know, how do we ideate around issues that we want to solve in business, social sectors, whatever? And so I just want you to summarize this idea of mastering ideation. How do we do this? that. Great question. I think it comes back to some of the things we talked about earlier. First of all, framing. What are we ideating on? A lot of times people say, okay, today we're going to brainstorm, and they just let this open, let a thousand flowers bloom kind of energizing session. Everyone feels great in the moment. It's like eating a donut. You love it. And then you go back to your desk and you

see your full calendar and you're like, ah, now what just happened? And all those great ideas that felt so good in the moment, they just kind of stick there like in the wall. the whiteboard or a bunch of post-its. So I think one of the important aspects about mastering ideation is understanding where ideation fits in the overall process. Because when we're bringing new things to life, there's a moment in the process where we're diverging, where we're getting in these different perspectives, and they have to inform them the next step, which is converging, figuring out the critical thinking, the analytical part of looking at those ideas to see if they're actually going to advance our goals. So it's, again, this notion of a discipline where,

At moments we're going to, we sometimes call it flaring, where we're gathering all kinds of out-of-the-box ideas. And then we are moving forward to taking those out-of-the-box ideas to the next step to evaluate if they're actually going to help us create more growth, create more revenue, become more profitable. So again, it's really a design step to sort of understand what do the people in the room that are ideating need to bring their creative thinking to bear. And that leads us to another idea.

I want you to talk about. You touched on it. You previewed it there. And that's validating. And the intro to that section, you say, you entitled it, Kill Your Darlings. And I think this is important here. And I'm aiming this question at leaders. Because let's say we dive in on all this and we start to do this. And sometimes we and I am chief on this, chief center on this one, sometimes we get an idea and we are enamored with it. We are passionate about it. And yet, you say, you're, you say, your first idea sucks at large part, and sometimes it does, you know? So how do we resolve this, right? How do we kill our darlings if sometimes we don't have the hindsight or the perspective to say,

maybe it's not the best idea? Oh, it's so hard, Ken. It's so hard. We have this great idea. We work so hard on it. And then we put it out in the world, and then we don't get the feedback that we want that suggests our idea was as valuable or as good as we thought. And our first reaction is, you just don't get it.

This is a really good idea. It can be so hard to face some of that evidence that suggests that idea may not be quite right. And I think there are three big areas that we need to think about testing our new ideas. The first is, is it desirable? Do people actually want it? We may love it, but this again gets back to that notion of empathy. Is it actually useful to the person that I'm intending to use that idea or new service? The second, is it feasible?

Can we build it? So we have this great idea. people have said that they really like it. They've shown us and they've given us lots of examples of how it would add utility to their lives, but we can't build it. And the third is, is it viable? Can it actually make us money? So we can build it, but maybe it costs too much money.

So what we say in the book is that you have to create different tests along the way to validate that these different buckets are actually going in the right direction, that you're getting the right data back from the right sources to suggest that the idea is not just a good one, but it's actually one that can be scaled. It's one that could help you make money. It's one that you can actually deliver. So it's important when we think about innovation to understand that it requires both creative thinking, that ideation part we were talking about, and critical thinking, this notion of validated tests, very carefully thought out, hypothesis-driven experiments to gather the data we need to understand if our idea is actually a good one when it comes to scaling, when it comes to our business.

Yeah, on that thought, what do you think is a healthy posture for leaders in this process of being okay with not having the best idea or finding out that your idea wasn't that great after all? What's a healthy response and posture? I think going back to something we said earlier, being open to being curious, being willing to say, I'm excited about this new idea. I have a hunch this new idea is going to be terrific. And it's important that we make sure that we test this idea with the people that are ultimately going to get value from it. We talk a lot here about failure and about how failure can often get in the way of great ideas. Because if we think of failure as I had this idea and it didn't go well and they're Therefore, it was a failure and I'm a failure that completely gets in the way of learning. This process is about scalable learning. And so if leaders can embrace the fact that they're modeling, being a curious leader that cares about learning and cares about growth, that can make the total difference in how they approach innovation and how their employees think of themselves as innovators. Because if their leaders are saying, here's what I learned from the following experiment,

it didn't go exactly the way we hoped, but look at all the things we gathered from that and look what we're going to do with that, boy, that really sets a toe in a possibility. Okay, let's talk about the reality that people are listening in here and they dive into this and they go crazy and they start innovating, they get enthusiastic and they try to lead up and leaders or a leader puts the brakes on, not open to it, it stops, momentum just gets halted. Why, first of all, does this happen at times? Maybe a couple of perspectives on that and then how do they handle that? I think a lot of time momentum stops

because they're not seeing that first pop or brilliance. Again, we tend to think of innovation as like the apple fell from the tree and we immediately had this idea and it's brilliant. What we often underestimate is the long road we have to bring that idea to life. That's not the stuff that we read about in magazines. We only read about the successes.

being innovative and seeing your new idea to fruition takes enormous amounts of persistence, hustle, hard work, resilience. These are the things we don't talk about enough. And so going back to something we said earlier around visual thinking, another reason why I love visual thinking and why I teach my graduate students about how to give form to new ideas quickly is that it gives them another way to measure the process along the way when we don't have numerical metrics to say that was a home run. We can actually articulate the process visually in a way that allows us to see that our efforts are worth carrying forward another day. So I think it is

about architecting that next step in a way that allows people to move on when they've maybe had a disappointing obstacle. Okay, I want to put you on the spot for we let you go. So much we've covered, and this has really been helpful. But I want you to talk to our audience. We have such a diverse audience everybody from their 20s to their 60s and 70s, their leaders, they are men and women who really are serious about personal growth and living a life of significance that matters. They're making a difference in the economy. Just from your head or heart, if you could sit down at lunch with each one of our listeners and say one thing of encouragement to them, what would you say? I would say you are capable of making decisions that makes tomorrow better than today. One of my biggest hopes in trying to help people understand the power of design is to help them

understand that their choices can set others up for success. That if they think intentionally about how to help others be successful, how to help others feel like that their contribution matters, that is one of the most noble things that they can do. And it starts with a sense of intentionality about the choices that you make that help others achieve their goals and ultimately align to do something bigger in the world, that it's within all of us to do that. That's a good word, folks. And Lisa, I want to make sure that before we let you go, you tell our listeners where they

can connect with you or learn more about what you're doing. What's the best place? Oh, gosh, thank you so much, Ken. Well, you can find me on Twitter at Lisa K-Solomon.com. So Lisa, K-A-Y-Solomon, S-O-L-M-O-N. So that's my Twitter and also my website as well. All right. Well, hey, we're so much better for this.

Thanks for hanging out with this. We have a lot to think about and a lot to do. So really, really fun. Thanks again. Ken, thank you so much. It's been great fun. All right, question for you folks. How many of you have actually taken Infusion Soft's October Tool and put it to work?

This is the free templates. Ten emails you need to close a sale. And as I told you early in the month, this doesn't have to be a sales template. You can work this thing any way you want to work it, but 10 different email templates to help you close. This is so huge. You're down to a salesperson, start employing this stuff. There's so many different ways you can use it. And we've had a great response, but I asked that question of it because I can't hear you talking back to me.

But I want you to use it. It really is effective. And we're so thankful for InfusionSoft giving you stuff that you can actually use. That's why we work with them. Ten emails you need to close the sale. The templates are super practical. You can get them at infusionsoft.com slash free email templates. Infusionsoft.com slash free email templates, or you can click the Infusionsoft link in our show notes.

It's episode 171 on the podcast page at entreleadership.com. Hey, this is the final week for our October giveaway. It's our core values tool. And essentially, this is a cheat sheet on how to create core values, not just create them, how to implement them, make them a part of the culture. why it's so important, a lot of stuff here that will help you. So many of you've taken advantage of it, but we want to let you know, only one more week to get it.

Text the word EL values to 33444. EL values to 33444. Or you can get the link to this in our show notes at entreleadership.com slash podcast. All right. I've told you about these emails. Two of the most interesting emails, I'll tell you why, when we get into Ken's electronic mail. Ken's electronic mail. You've got mail.

All right, first email is from Rachel, and this caught my eye. And Eric said to me, he said, do you really want to answer this one? And, of course, it snapped my ADHD into hyperfocus when he kind of said it that way. So I read the email, and I said, sure, I'd love to answer this one. So this email is from Rachel. Rachel, thank you so much, first of all, for sending the email. And very transparent. So Rachel writes in, I am dating a woodworker with the intention of Mary.

marriage. And when I read that line, I was like, I love where this is going. By the way, when's the last time you had anybody say Woodworker? It's great. Great. I love that. That's a good trade. I'm dating a woodworker with the intention of marriage. The closer we get to that potential future, the more I'm looking for resources for how to be a supportive spouse that also keeps him on track with other important priorities. He owns his own business and worked it full time until recently when we simply were unable to make ends meet. He now works 35 hours a week at a desk job, then heads home to work in the shop for countless hours. I do my best to be as cheerleader, but sometimes I feel like I'm always the last thing he carves out time for, and that is hard. If we talk about it, he seems like he gets a little better for like a day, maybe a couple days, but then it's back to the same old song and dance again. Okay, now this is big. Now there's a couple things going on here, Rachel. Number one, you're not married yet. And I'm not going to get into, you know, the details of your relationship. But it seems like you guys are very, very committed. But this is a major red flag.

And this is not about him, the entrepreneur. It really isn't. This is about you all. And the boundaries of your relationship, the communication in your relationship, expectations in your relationship. So let's just forget about the entrepreneurial context. Yes, he's got to. to work hard, he's got to go hard. Okay, but the first, and I think most important issue of your email is this is a communication issue in what could be a marriage, and I think it's a major red flag. Simply put, you're feeling like you're the last thing on his mind. That's a problem. And it seems like you have communicated this, and he makes an effort, but then he slides back into it. So this is not all him, and it's not all you. This is

we. And so I will tell you, you all need to go into some premarital counseling because this isn't going to get better once you walk down the aisle. This has got to be established before you get married. Meaning, this is what I want in a married relationship. This is what I need. And he needs to be able to say the same thing. So I'm going to tell you to go see a marriage counselor and do some pre-marriage counseling before you walk down the aisle. The second thing I'm going to do is tell you to get a book called Love Talk. It's a book by my dear friend, Dr. Les Perard, who's a marriage expert, and it is about communication and communication styles so that you two can get on the same page and understand what one's thinking and understand how to communicate this. It seems like you're making

an effort. But he is in, you know, your fiancé or boyfriend, whatever, he is in a situation where he's really hustling. And there are times where you've got to go. And there are times where you've got to go hard. So you need to be able to communicate well and with a professional, but I would also recommend you get that book Love Talk. And to the best of your ability, there's an assessment in there where it'll spit out a report for both of you. He may not read it. I'm just being honest as a male, the whole book. But if you do the assessment, which it only takes you about half an hour, it'll spit out a report for you both so you're both aware of how each other reacts, thinks and communicates, and it'll help with this type of serious conversation. Is this a season where

you need to be more understanding, or is this a pattern that you're worried about? These are things I can't answer, but I want to give you that advice and go that direction. So premarital counseling right away and bring back these issues up that you've already talked about to your credit. And then I would get Love Talk, do the assessment, spit it out, and talk about it. I think that will give you the best chance of winning here in this relationship. So hey, Rachel, thanks for being so transparent. And thank you the email. Next up, this is from Jonathan. And this is a no to a yes story. You know, Eric and I have asked for you to share some of these stories. We think these are so inspiring. When you hit a roadblock, when you experience rejection, how do you take that no and turn it into a yes somewhere else?

And that's the mature response. And by the way, that's what people who win in life figure out and they do it well. So here is Jonathan's story. It says a year ago it's working for a Fortune 50 company. After 18 months at the company, I applied. for a new role, it was my dream job, and it was a two-month hiring process. On the day I was set to receive the promotion. The director of my division brought me into his office and gave me the news. He would not allow my promotion for another year. I was shocked. I had spent the entire previous year setting myself up for this moment. I would wake up at 3.30 a.m. I would Uber for a few hours before I went to my job. I needed the extra money because I was cash flowing my university and saving up to propose to my fiancé.

I get off work around 5 p.m. drive 45 minutes to an hour to my university classes. Take three hours of night classes from Monday to Thursday. I graduated December 2015, exhausted, but I was looking forward to the next steps of my career. It was Thursday, January 7th, 2016, the day that my director asked me to withdraw from the promotion. I won't ever forget him saying I had no grit. Hearing no and no grit was something I didn't handle well. A few days later on Tuesday, January 12th, 2016, I came into my office, gave my resignation letter with no backup plan. I just knew in my gut it was the right thing to do.

And a couple weeks following, I was approached by a private equity group. They had heard of some of the things I was working on and believed we could build a business around my idea. February 1st, 2016, at 28 years of age, I launched my own transportation software company. With the ideas, I was rejected for previous. Next week, we will have our 11th and 12th team member starting. I still have a lot to learn on this entrepreneurial journey, but I'm grateful for the opportunity to have each day. The day I heard no grid is still something that shakes me to this day, but it is also a part of the fuel that keeps me going.

And this is my favorite line, Eric. Not to be cliche, but as a Canadian, I can truly say the dream is still American. I got goosebumps all over me right there. Maybe I'll sing the national anthem, Eric, in the studio. Not on the mic, but after, just because I need to get it out of my system, that fires my soul. Love that. And then he closes his email with a nice note, and I won't read that. But he gives us a quote that I'm going to share with all of them.

you. He says every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it a seed of an equal or greater benefit that is from the great Napoleon Hill. What a line. What a challenge. And I'll finish Ken's electronic mail and another no to yes story with that reminder. Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it. A seed. A series. A seed of of an equal or greater benefit, Napoleon. On behalf of Eric the producer and the entire Entry leadership team, thank you for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon.