Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: Part 6: How to survive in uncertain times with Michelle Holland

Episode Date: May 2, 2020

As social animals in our globally connected world, our very survival will revolve around the strength of our cultures. Does your family, your workplace and your community all operate in what Simon Sinek calls a circle of safety based on open honesty and trust? If not, how can you help create a circle of safety culture?  This is where our guest Michelle Holland comes in.   Michelle is a self professed culture warrior and a recognised thought leader in the organisational culture space.  She’s an international best-selling author, speaker, executive coach, consultant and entrepreneur, and the Founder and Creative Director of SynergyIQ.  Her most recent book, Culture Inc., applies her decades of experience and research in culture, leadership and employee engagement to empower you to create workplace cultures that deliver the results you desire, with your ideal employees and customers lining up at the door – it’s a great read. And Michelle's SynergyIQ team are amazing consulting and change professionals who specialise in leadership development, culture, change management, and business transformation. As a qualified change, culture and business excellence authority, we enjoy an in-depth chat today that will give you a practical playbook to build cultural resilience - and she answers all of your crisis and culture questions including: How can you grow through discomfort and vulnerability? How do you lead and manage in challenging and changing times? What’s the difference between empathy and compassion and why are they both important? How do you make good decisions in dynamic circumstances? What is culture and Why is it is critical to survival at the individual and group level? What defines an effective culture and How can you build a robust resilient culture that will allow you to survive and thrive through any circumstance? So If you’re looking for someone to expertly guide you through uncertainty, challenge, vulnerability and risk, then you’ll enjoy this high energy chat with Michelle Holland. Michelle's book recommendation: The Hero With A Thousand Faces Connect with Michelle: synergyiq.com.au Get Invested is the podcast dedicated to time poor professionals who want to work less and live more. Join Bushy Martin, one of Australia’s top 10 property specialists, as he and his influential guests share know-how on the ways investing in property can unlock the life you always dreamed about and secure your financial future. Remember to subscribe on your favourite podcast player, and if you're enjoying the show please leave us a review. Find out more about Get Invested here https://bushymartin.com.au/get-invested-podcast/  Want to connect with Bushy? Get in touch here https://bushymartin.com.au/contact/  This show is produced by Apiro Media - http://apiropodcasts.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

And Dr. Brené Brown, she defines vulnerability as uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. And I don't think that there has been a time where collectively, not just in Australia, but globally, we have had a period where we're all in this completely uncertain time of going, I don't know what's going on. that vulnerability that you know failure that um the uncomfortableness is actually just part of the process it's not something to be afraid of it's not something to walk away from it it is part of the process and if you don't go through that you're not growing and learning resilience is definitely um something that i've had to develop throughout my life um you know through through

many different challenges. So I think, you know, if there's any advice that I can give to people going through this is actually just recognize that. Recognize that there is fear, recognize there is grief. Recognize also that there is excitement and opportunity in this as well. Welcome to the Get Invested podcast, where we share great conversations with experts from all walks of life to uncover their secret know-how on where they invest their time, their skills, and their money, and the benefits that this has created. You see, the truth is that everyone invests every minute of every day. We're investing our time, our skills, our energy, and our money in something. Some of us are investing consciously, some unconsciously, sometimes for good,

sometimes for bad, and sometimes for no impact. Get Invested will help you to start living by design, not by default. I'm going to help you to make it happen, not let it happen. You'll hear the top tips on how you can live with conscious intent so that you can live more, work less and leave a living legacy by investing now. Listen to the show to discover the top tips on how to get started, make the most of your investment journey and ultimately to be living your dream, not someone else's. More episodes can be found on iTunes or at bushymartin.com.au forward slash getinvested. Thanks for listening and now let's get invested. Hi Freedom Fighters. Do you feel vulnerable? Do you feel like you're drowning in uncertainty?

Do you often feel anxious and worried about what seems like an ever-growing, ever-changing and never-ending wave upon wave of risks and threats? You're not alone. While the future often feels daunting, let me ask you some other questions. Do you know what the weather is doing today, tomorrow, next week or next year? Do you know someone close to you who's been diagnosed with cancer or a terminal illness and you don't know whether they're going to survive or how long they're going to last? Have you ever lived through a natural disaster or been made redundant?

Have you or do you know someone who's struggled through infertility? Chances are that you'd experience one or more of these challenges. And uncertainty and adversity don't discriminate. If you're alive, you're going to have to, or you've already had to, deal with tough times. The only certainty is that we live with constant uncertainty. The only difference now is that every single one of us on the planet is experiencing and trying to deal with radical ongoing uncertainty all at the same time.

Radical uncertainty and rapid change are on a global scale and our fear and anxiety is constantly fuelled by the 24-7 mainstream media fear factory newsreel. In trying to cope with the grief of losing our current lifestyle and the fear of our future anxiety, we're constantly told to work through and accept the old five stages of change, from anger to bargaining to denial to depression

and finally acceptance. We're told that this is normal and just to grin and bear it, that it is what it is. Now I know all this means well, but I'm concerned that this type of thinking leaves us feeling like victims, where we're all left feeling totally overwhelmed by the journey ahead

and powerless to exert any influence over our situation whatsoever. Now, I don't know about you, But for me, we don't need to be told how bad things are anymore. We already know it. What we need most is hope and purpose. We need a journey through all this anguish and uncertainty. We want to take control of the grief and anxiety that we're feeling.

And history demonstrates time and time again that you can rise up from adversity. Countless others continue to demonstrate that it's possible to make yourself think and act in certain ways that will help you to navigate through tough times. So what separates those that survive from those that thrive during times of crisis? Well, repeated university studies reveal two differentiating qualities, individual resilience and group culture. Let's start with resilience. Resilience is the ability to bounce back quickly from life's difficulties and challenges. It's not what happens to you, it's how you respond that's key.

And the good news is that resilience is not something we're born with, but something we can develop as a skill and a habit. Now, it was building resilience that allowed me to grow from burnt out, broken and completely broke over 20 years ago to now living our great lifestyle and allowing me the privilege of sharing our know-how to help others to secure their future through safe, affordable property finance strategy. So to help you build and strengthen your resilience, I want to share three simple approaches that successful, resilient people adopt.

And I've borrowed these from a resilience expert, Dr. Lucy Hone. They can be summarized in the words suffering, focus, help or harm. Accept suffering, focus on good, and continuously ask yourself, is what I'm doing helping me or harming me? Let's break it down. resilient people know that suffering is part of life they know that suffering is actually the sharpener for success embracing suffering is the basis of ancient greek stoicism summarized in ryan holiday's awesome book the obstacle is away if you haven't read it grab yourself a copy

when the tough times inevitably come resilient people seem to know that suffering is part of life. Knowing this stops you from feeling discriminated against when challenges do arrive. You stop asking, why me? And you start asking, why not? If not me, who? And if not now, when? Unfortunately, the real tragedy these days is that not enough of us seem to know this anymore. We live in an age where many of us feel entitled to perfect lives. Shiny, happy, perfect photos on Instagram and Facebook have become the norm, when all of us actually know that the very opposite is true. The last 28 years of uninterrupted prosperity here in Australia

and New Zealand, for example, have increased our expectations and weakened our resilience muscles. We're just not used to dealing with uncertainty in our iPhone everything and instantaneous Google and GPS worlds anymore. Secondly, to be resilient, you need to focus. you carefully choose where you're directing your attention. Resilient people have a habit of realistically appraising situations. They focus on the things they can change

and learn to accept the things that they can't. This is vital and a learnable skill. Resilient people have worked out a way of tuning into the good around them. They find things to be grateful for daily, despite how bad things might seem. I've learnt to start every day by mentally going through everything I'm grateful for before I even get out of bed In my simple one page daily bush journal action plan I start by writing down the three things that I'm grateful for

and the three wins I had yesterday This can be anything from the very small to the very large I give thanks for my wife, my son, our smiling Samoyed rescue dogs size doesn't matter here as it's the thoughts that counts as i often say what you think about is what you bring about i also listen to positive uplifting podcasts and youtube videos when i'm getting ready every morning to energize and motivate v for the rest of the day so deliberately and consciously go hunting for the good stuff every day and turn off the bad stuff whatever you do. Make an intentional, deliberate, ongoing effort to tune into what's good in your world

because there's a lot that we take for granted. The third key in building resilience is to keep asking yourself every day, is what I'm doing now helping me or harming me? This is a very powerful question. How is what I'm doing or not doing serving me? If it's not, stop doing it or stop doing nothing and do something different. After I lost my marriage over 20 years ago and was separated from my son Adrian, late at night I'd often find myself poring over photos of Adrian and getting upset. After torturous months of doing this I started to ask myself, is this helping me or is it harming me? I realised that I was much kinder to myself if I stopped looking at the photos before I went to bed. By asking yourself whether

you really need to spend another hour on social media or listening to the news, you're putting yourself back in the driver's seat. It gives you control over your decision making. So to summarise, if you want to build your resilience muscles, remember to embrace suffering, focus on the good stuff and constantly ask yourself, is what I'm doing helping me or harming me? Now and in the future when you find yourself in radically uncertain and rapidly changing situations where you're filled with fear anxiety and grief where you start thinking there's no way i'm going to survive this which by the way is going to continue to occur with increasing frequency in our exponentially changing world i urge you to lean into these three simple approaches know that

struggle is part of life don't let your attention get fixated on the negative and constantly question if the way you're thinking and acting is helping you or harming you. Now, I'm not pretending that thinking and acting like this is easy and it won't remove all the pain, but it will allow you to work with change and move through it so that you can bounce back. Just remember, suffering, focus, help or harm. Accept suffering, focus on good,

and ask, is what I'm doing helping me or harming me? These are the keys to developing resilience so you can not only survive but thrive through tough times. And contrary to what many of us think, resilience isn't a fixed or elusive trait that some people have and some people don't. It just requires the willingness to try basic strategies like the ones that I've shared with you today. Now, we all have moments in life when the path we thought we were taking

veers off into some terrible direction that we never anticipated and we certainly didn't want. It happened to me over 20 years ago. And it will happen to all of us at some stage. So expect them and embrace them as your major learning and growth phases. Resilience is also the key quality behind our four-part Keep Calm Cycle Survival Series webinar videos that I did with Paul Averill of the Property Investors Network of Australia and New Zealand, or PINANZ, that's P-I-N-A-N-Z.

On them we discuss in detail a full raft of survival and growth strategies that you can implement to stretch your cash flow by cutting costs, activating savings, leveraging other people's money and managing your mindset. To get all the details on all of your options, just jump on the links on our website at www.knowhowproperty.com.au forward slash blog or join us on Facebook in the PINANZ group,

that's P-I-N-A-N-Z group and join a safe community of fellow homeowners and aspiring investors where we can all learn from each other. now i normally don't do this but one of the key takeaways i encourage you to action is if you haven't refinanced your home and investment loans for over 18 months then call our finance team or another good savvy finance broker now while you still can as we're reducing home loaners cost by up to twelve hundred dollars a month and i strongly suggest you do this

sooner rather than later as the banks and lenders are significantly restricting who they will lend to as a result of the pandemic. So don't wait until it's too late. Let's now turn to the second interdependent quality that separates those that survive from those that thrive during times of crisis. And this is the criticality of culture. If our individual survival is dependent on our growing level of resilience, then our group survival centres around creating and operating in a culture of trust and safety, in times of need and when no one's looking, has everyone you know really got each other's back? Is it okay to fail and learn and grow from your mistakes knowing that everyone around you is supporting you and committed to you without

fear or favour? As social animals in our globally connected world, our very survival will revolve around the strength of our cultures. Does your family, your workplace and your community all operate in what Simon Sinek calls a circle of safety based on open honesty and trust. If not, how can you help create a circle of safety culture? Well, this is where today's guest Michelle Holland comes in. Michelle's a self-professed culture warrior and a recognised thought leader in the organisational culture space.

She's an international best-selling author, a speaker, executive coach consultant entrepreneur and the founder and creative director of synergy iq her most recent book culture inc creative business that delivers results and people love applies her decades of experience and research into culture leadership and employee engagement to empower you to create workplace cultures that deliver the results that you desire with your ideal workmates and customers lining up the door it's a great read and her Synergy IQ team are amazing consulting and change professionals who specialise in leadership development, culture, change management

and business transformation. As a qualified change culture and business excellence authority, we enjoy an in-depth chat today that will give you a practical playbook to build cultural resilience. And she answers all of your crisis and culture questions, including how can you grow through discomfort and vulnerability? How do you lead and manage in challenging and changing times? What's the difference between empathy and compassion

and why are they both important? How do you make good decisions in dynamic situations and circumstances? What is culture and why is it critical to survival at the individual and group level? What defines an effective culture and how can you build a robust, resilient culture that will allow you to survive and thrive through any circumstance? So if you're looking for someone to expertly guide you through uncertainty, challenge, vulnerability and risk, then please enjoy this high-energy chat with Michelle Holland.

Welcome back, Freedom Fighters. Now, in times of radical uncertainty and rapid, all-encompassing change, the very fabric of our cultures are under threat. When I talk about culture, I mean the sum of our values, traditions, beliefs, interactions, behaviours and attitudes. From our families, to our businesses, to our communities, to our states, our countries and even globally, as highly social, purpose-driven animals, the strength and quality of our cultures is being put to the test. And it's our collective cultures that will ultimately make or break us in these times

of trouble and will separate those who struggle to survive versus those who go on to thrive. So to deep dive on culture as a major survival and growth driver, we're really privileged to be joined by a leading culture warrior, Michelle Holland. So welcome. Let's get invested, Michelle. Hi. How are you doing? Very good, Lee.

I've been looking forward to getting you on board because culture is one of those things that sits there unsight unseen for most of the time until there's either an issue or something to dive into. and I know you're a cultural guru as far as that goes, but for those who don't know you and what you do, can you give us a quick rundown on that for us to start off? Yeah, certainly. So I am a culture and leadership specialist.

I've been working in this space for well over 20 years now. I always say 20 plus because I don't want to give it away too much, but 20 plus years. written written a few books including one uh specifically on culture and culture and organizations it's called culture inc create a business that delivers results and people love and and i guess i view culture a little differently or a little the same as some people a little differently than others i like to go really deep into it and i'm a bit of a data and stats nerd so I like to get into all of the statistics that sit behind cultures as well

so yeah I guess I started my career I actually started as an accountant funnily enough and then decided that numbers weren't so much my thing and but I love the problem solving so went into human resources and as you can imagine people create lots of lovely problems to solve and as I got further into that world I determined that I was sick of putting band-aids on situations and wanted to start fixing them so hence I moved into much more of an organizational excellence and culture and leadership space so that I could you know fix the problems before they happened that was the the idea anyway so yeah and I guess in my my spare time I'm a mum and I am a business owner and I have another business

with my partner as well. We're doing a start-up in the IT space, music education. It's just, yeah, my brain, as you can imagine, is all split in a number of different pieces, but today we'll talk culture. That's awesome. Brilliant work. I guess where I'd like to dig in there straight away a little bit,

Now, we'll come back to how you view culture differently shortly. But what I'd love to do early on is just to delve into those initial choices and where you're invested your time and your interest because in my head I'm going, right, there's quite a difference between being an accountant and sort of moving into organisational change and leadership. Can I go right back to what led you to even want to be an accountant? What were the drivers then? Yeah, wow.

Okay, we'll go back then. So I actually wanted to be a photographer and I was following a very artistic, creative route and I unfortunately at that point, or fortunately, whichever way you want to put it, I listened to all the very well-meaning people in my life who told me that you can't earn money from the creative industries and therefore I should go and find something else to do

that would be a better career prospect for me. So I started to look around. I was very good at maths and my dad said to me one day, well, everybody needs an accountant. And I went, oh, okay, well, I'll go do that then. So that's actually how I ended up being an accountant. It was, yeah, I just kind of fell into it. And interestingly, I left school.

So this is after school. I went on a holiday and I went, nope, I'm going to be a photographer. So I looked up all these courses on photography. And when I got home, my mum and my dad, thinking they were doing a very good thing for me, had enrolled me in the accounting course that I was investigating previously. So I went, OK, looks like I'm going to be an accountant. So, yeah, I kind of fell into the accounting world and did it quite well. That course actually brought me some really good friends,

and I actually met my now ex, but my husband at the time, who's the father of my two children. So I definitely got some major bonuses out of that accounting course. but you know it's it's interesting because when i think back to it i i don't regret anything in my life because i feel that it's always a learning experience and you know you get a lot of grounding out of uh studying things like accounting you know it's uh very much how the the back end of a business works so i think it set me up in good stead to you know be in the world that i'm in now because you know culture is that top layer um but there's what's going on underneath so i think the

you know digging in deep and and figuring it all out and almost like ferreting away a bit uh it's uh it's really necessary when you want to know what's actually going on in a culture of a business so even though even though they seem very different i think that um really helped ground me into a very practical place when it comes to looking at an organization overall yeah okay so what was the trigger then that uh you obviously reached a point in in your accounting career where you said no this is there's bigger things or different things for me Talk us through what you were feeling and what you were thinking at that time that led you to invest your energy in more of the leadership change culture space.

Yeah, well, I was actually working as an assistant accountant and every so often I would jump into the financial accountant role. And one of the things I really enjoyed doing was actually the board papers. I really enjoyed that part of it, telling the story around the finances rather than the you know the detail of it and i remember having a conversation with this you know the guy i was reporting to and saying i just can't get excited about finding the zero and he's like what what do you mean and i said you know you have to get to zero when you're doing all this accounting stuff has to equal zero at the end and i just can't get excited about the zero and uh and

And I said, but what I am excited is about telling the story of the business, the financials and the more that strategic end. So I started to recognize then that I had a more strategic mindset. And at the same time, the same organization, the HR manager was sitting across from me in a little cubicle across from me. And I was kind of watching her and what she was doing, thinking, oh, this seems like a bit of interesting role, what she's up to. and then she had me involved because I was managing the payroll for that business involved in the employment manual and then I got involved in implementing a performance management system and I thought you know what this this I think is more me this is really more me so from there I made a big decision to quit my job and go back to school to study HR so I did that and you know you

talk about investing time and energy I have invested a lot of time and a lot of energy into my own professional and personal development and that's always been for me a catalyst for change if I'm feeling like I'm not doing what I should be doing I seek out the uh the learning so that I can start going okay let's find something different so I did start doing uh human resources and i started doing that um moved into a payroll position in a big organization actually uni sa i worked which i loved working at the university and the reason i chose that was because i was looking specifically for a payroll job because i knew i could get a payroll job given my background that was based within a hr department so i could transition so very strategic um

choices I guess I made in my career and making sure that I could transition and I was so so lucky that as I was in the payroll job I moved into the supervisor job pretty quickly and started doing communications out to the the organization and the senior consultant in organizational development actually was apparently watching what I was doing and she came over to me and said hey really like the way you communicate really like the way you're introducing these changes I've got a six-month you know role in this project do you want to come over and uh and hang out with me for a bit and and do this uh this work over here and uh and she was extraordinary as a mentor and a leader and a teacher and I was very very lucky her name is Irma Ranieri and she's actually

the she's now the commissioner for public sector employment here in South Australia so So she's done all right for herself as well. But I was very, very fortunate to have a very good grounding in strategic workforce development and organisational development and also an amazing leader, you know, and a female leader as well. So that was great grounding for me. Tell me, why would you define her as an amazing leader? What were her qualities that you thought would stand out to you?

I think one of the things that I remember the most about Irma is that she always, she cared. That was one thing. She actually really cared about me and my career. So it wasn't just a, you know, here, go do this job kind of thing. She actually did care about me and my career. She was willing to take a risk on me as well. And she challenged me. So I remember one situation where I walked into a room to deliver a workshop on performance management in the university.

And I think it was my very first workshop that I was delivering. I was all very excited, you know, and I had this room full of people talking to them about performance management. And I happened to have one of the professors of employment relations in the room who was not very nice in their questioning of me, this very new person in performance management. And I came out of that session just, you know, feeling quite destroyed and going, this is not going to be for me. I can't do this. And I spoke to Irma about it and she said, no, you can do it and you will do it again. and i'm like no i can't do it and she said yes you will you're gonna you've got one next week and i'm booking you in and you're doing it next week and i'm like no she's like yes

so very much i get back on that horse um and i'm you know i could have very well just gone no this is not for me quit i'm out done she wouldn't let me do that she didn't know we'll work together we'll build your confidence back up again you'll walk back in that room you'll own it here's how to facilitate you know those kind of questions and uh and it'll be fine and and it was and it was so yeah that's um that's great leadership not allowing you to back out when you want to back out and i think also it's it's seeing potential beyond what the person can see for themselves it's uh that's a pretty rare quality and and to create a framework where you're able to fail but That's just part of the learning is what I'm hearing as part

of Irma's approach there. She made you feel okay about that to get back on and have a go and you knew that she had your back in that regard. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it's interesting because when I reflect on that time, you know, being a little bit more experienced now and learning a lot more about the journey, she was a person that knew that vulnerability, that you know failure that um the uncomfortableness is actually just part of the process it's not

something to be afraid of it's not something to walk away from it it is part of the process and if you don't go through that you're not growing and learning so i think um you know when i reflect back now she was putting that into action and i didn't know it at the time but i do now yeah and a very important insight for the the times that we a lot of us are trying to work our way through is accepting that that fear and uncomfortableness is actually a part of growth and not to run away from it but to embrace it as as part of the learning and helping us to become the person and a better person on that journey yeah that's awesome yeah yeah brilliant so so you spent some time with erma take us on the the rest of the journey because you've obviously

you know had some interesting challenges along that path to get you to where you are today take us take us through the rest of the history from that point on yeah yeah so um so i guess i mean for a period of time i was very much uh trying to figure out what part of human resources i wanted to get involved in i you know right at the beginning of my hr career it was all uh strategic strategy and organizational development um but I knew that I needed to get broader so I I jumped into doing training and development I jumped into doing uh workforce um workforce planning uh employee relations as well industrial relations I went into an industrial relations team for a while and spent you know countless times sitting with industrial commissioners and learning

all that sort of stuff um and you know worked my way through and almost all of the facets of human resources the only one i didn't touch on was uh work health and safety um because i just couldn't do it don't blame you way too much compliance for me it's like oh no oh no that'd be a death by a thousand cuts yes the one yeah it wasn't for me so um yeah so then i moved into a uh a role in a aged care organisation that was a senior HR advisor. So it was a lot more of a practical role in a much more diverse, I think, role as well. So that really allowed me to broaden out.

And I'd actually followed over one of my other mentors into that role as well. She, another amazing female leader that I was fortunate to have early in my career as well, Julie Goods, her name is. and I followed her over there and then an opportunity came up about nine months into me being there my HR manager decided that he'd had enough and he was heading off somewhere else and Julie thankfully took a risk on me and put me into the senior HR manager role and I you know I floundered about for you know six or eight months going oh right this is what

leadership and management's all about that's not as fun as it looks from the outside so you know learned along the way and it's much easier to give leaders advice on to do things and actually do it yourself and yes I had a very challenging situation a challenging team at the time we were you know we'd lost our payroll people both at the same time and brought in some temps and then that ended up being a big mess and we had to clean up all of that and clean up the relationships associated with that and so yeah it was a really challenging period of time uh you know for me as a very new manager trying to manage a team I think there was 13 people in the team um I learned a lot I call that my management boot camp uh because it was a lot of learning

a lot of um struggle uh a lot of discomfort a lot of work as well as a not-for-profit organization so there wasn't a lot of big budget so we did you know i did a lot of volunteer work for that organization um yeah and and it was a big struggle and i got to a point where i was i was exhausted and i just couldn't couldn't do it anymore and started looking for something else um and i wanted to get more back into the strategic side of the world I was I was sick sick of the day-to-day the transactional and it was just it was just bleeding me so I found a role in local government that was an organizational development manager role walked into that one and had a team a very small team it was only a team of four people at the time but I thought that's great because

organizational development i only need a small team uh little did i know until i walked in it was actually the full hr scope that i was doing in that with those four people went hang on a second one of those bait and switch kind of moments here's the real deal yeah that's right that's right so again there was a few challenges there but i actually really loved um loved the industry of local government i didn't think i was going to i was kind of trying to steer clear of government But I've really enjoyed that local government is about building a community. It's really about looking forward into the future and how we can build this community and support the community and get more out of it and growth and development. And those are all sort of fundamental for me.

So I really enjoyed the industry. And the CEO at the time was a very innovative and dynamic CEO. so he gave me a lot of a lot of rope to play with which was amazing and I was able to build a fantastic team there and yeah we we did some really really really great work and then that CEO left and you know the change of the guard always is an interesting thing in organizations they ended up heading in a direction that I decided wasn't really the direction that I wanted to take my career in so at that point I was going okay what's next for me you know I've done the senior senior HR role for quite some time I've been able to really dig into strategy in

this organization really dig into creating a culture that we were proud of a leadership approach that we were really proud of and I was kind of seeking what was next so it was either go into a more senior role like a GM role in a big organization or a sort of a CEO role in a smaller organization more senior executive and I applied for a job and actually got almost to the end of it and on paper it was probably my ideal job and then realized it wasn't what I wanted to do so at that point I went okay yeah let me jump straight in there yeah because that's most people would follow their ego and go right I yes I've got this job I've got the title of I'm king of my own little world because I've been there and made similar decisions

at times in the past I'm really interested to understand what was your thinking that said well yes uh this is where i've sort of been tracking and heading but uh for these reasons and i'd love you to expand on those i've suddenly worked out that this is not for me this is and this is why i'm going in going to invest my energy in this direction can you talk us through your thinking and feelings at that time yeah i think um there was many different uh different thoughts i guess and going on um it if I'd taken the job I would have made it my own so I would have got a lot out of it and I suspect that career pathway would have been amazing as well um at the time I was in a I need something different point I just I felt like I needed a different kind of challenge so

you know the role would have offered its own challenges but it was still in the same sort of sphere as I'd been in previously, you know, it was still in management, it was still doing strategy, it was still in, you know, an organisation that was quite a community-focused organisation, you know, and on paper, it was a great, great role. But yeah, I think the thing that kept coming back to me was, I'm not as excited about this role as I should be. And trying to figure out what that was. And I think for me, I'd always in my mind had this idea that I wanted to start my own business. I wanted to get out there on my own. I wanted to be able to apply my skills in a broader way. And I wanted to build a business, you know, I wanted to give that a go and see what

that was like so um that's what I did you know I I kind of went all right it's time for something different I think um you know it's it's interesting because I'm trying to reflect on the actual moments or the the behaviors the decisions that was made at the time but I think it was really um I I have a tendency to get bored quite quickly and and I like to challenge myself in different ways and I'd gotten to a point where I felt that I was I was an expert in what I was doing at the time and this new role was only going to deepen that expertise but it wasn't going to broaden it so um I'm a firm believer of you know in in discomfort comes growth so um I challenge myself and I'm a bit of a risk taker.

I didn't think I was, but when I reflect back on all the things that I've done in my life, I've realised that I am actually a risk taker. So I was like, it's time to do something different, Michelle. You need to get out there and, you know, put your money where your mouth is and see if you can be an expert in a different way. Let's delve into the financial cliff that I'm sure you would have jumped off at that stage as well. As most of us do when we make that –

Two hours. Yeah. When we sort of throw away the parachute and jump off the edge because there's not just the building the business, it's actually surviving long enough to come out the other end and then flourish in the business. How did you tackle that? Because I think one of the big barriers to a lot of people doing their own thing

is I just don't think I'll be able to survive long enough financially to make this happen, or worse still, they have a crack, they dive off the cliff and then run out of money oxygen and then go under in the first two years. How did you tackle that? How did you manage your way through that? Yeah, really, really badly. And my advice is always please don't do what I did.

It wasn't great. Look, I had a small safety net. so I think the advice is usually given to me is you know three to six months or six months to eight months whatever it is of safety net in your account so you can go yeah no worries I'm good so you can cover your living expenses I think for me I had a small safety net of maybe a couple of months worth I had a couple of months of annual leave saved up as well so I came out with a couple of months of that um which really should have seen me through for quite some time when you break it down to just living expenses my bigger issue was is that when I'm looking at living

expenses I was looking at you know the expenses that I was currently spending on a very nice income not on what I actually the baseline needed so that was one thing I think for me that you know when I'm advising others it's like think about what your baseline is and just make sure you're not spending that extra stuff you know do you need that holiday in the first year etc but you know I went out there all guns blazing tried to get in as many jobs as I could I actually burnt myself out in that first year as well trying very hard to to create something from nothing um thankfully I actually had a very strong network moving into that space so I was able to draw on my network quite a bit and that kept me going for the first uh first year and first sort of year and a

half it was actually year two that was not fun at all and it almost um I started looking for jobs again in year two because it was just not a great space for me um but I think my tenacity and my determination and almost i think a bit of ego as well i cannot let this fail um drove me to um to make some different decisions and to ride it to the end and it was almost at the end i i'll tell you this little um this little tale i was uh i was actually standing in uh savers which is a you know secondhand um clothing store that we love to go to because you get great deals and on stuff like that ikea ad start the car um when you go in there it's like yeah so my daughter and i love to you know peer through and see if we can find anything and at that point i remember being

in there she wanted a pair of jeans and i was like yeah okay let's go have a look and i just remember going i've got almost nothing in my account now like almost nothing i've probably got enough to pay for her jeans what am i going to do next week i've got a bit on the credit card still we're gonna be okay oh my god like what's gonna happen um and I was standing in that store just going this is this is me I'm gonna have to like ask my mom for some money and I got a phone call while I was standing in the store and it was um a project that I'd put in for and it was quite a decent sized project and they rang me and said yep you've got the gig you've got the gig so that was my lifeline at that point and uh and it was it was all up from there actually because I

recognized that you know what I can actually just I can do this even if I'm right at the end I can do this the work will come I know it will if I do the right things the work will come so I just put more time and energy into doing the right things which were things like you know connecting with my network and making sure that I was developing a good understanding of marketing and a good understanding of running a business rather than just the craft you know because I think that was the um the turning point for me was recognizing that I was no longer a culture and leadership specialist I was a business owner first I was a consultant first I was a salesperson first and what I was selling was culture and leadership specialty and I think once I my mind

turned to that then my business turned as well and uh and that contract that came in um enabled me to get another one and another one and another one and and you know and now we're in a really good space where you know we've got a I've got a business partner on board and we've got staff and We've got people doing, you know, doing work for different clients. But, yeah, it was that turning point. You know, it's almost like, you know, you ask the universe for something and it eventually turns up. Yeah.

Great insight there, though, in the context of the shift between being a specialist practitioner to a business owner. And that's the very thing that I think a lot of people trip themselves up on. I often say for people coming on board with our team, because everyone runs their business within our business. That's the business model for us because it's built-in performance and built-in accountability. It becomes very results-based, which people then are self-motivated to drive

and it minimises the amount of management that's required actually to – you're just there to support and guide and train and give them the skills. And I often say that, you know, if you're going to do this and you're jumping off the salary bandwagon, you've got to be able to survive for two years because that's how long it's, it's not six months, it's not eight months, it's two years that you need to be able to see you through this. What's your partner doing?

Can she fund, he or she fund your lifestyle while we get there? But you need to start by recognising that you are running a business within a business. and unless you've got that right and you're very clear on that, then it's going to be a very torturous road. Absolutely. Great insight, really good insight. Yeah.

Yeah, no, that's brilliant. Was that the, if you look back on your journey so far, was that what you would consider to be your most challenging moment? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think that period of time, it challenged not only me financially because I'd always – I've had a job since I was 14, right? So I've been one of those people that's always had a job, put money away, did the holidays when I wanted to, bought what I wanted to buy because, you know, I moved up the career ladder, had a very good income. And then all of a sudden, I was struggling for money. And I'd never been in that position before. So the financial challenge was real. But what I think the bigger challenge for me was the challenge of identity. What did this actually mean for me as a person? Who was I? um there was a lot of challenge around that time around you know is this is this what I want from

my kids you know am I able to you know two years ago I was able to take them on holiday and now I can't um you know there's there was a lot of that challenge around am I doing the right thing from from my family not just um you know for myself what happens if my parents need my help I can't give them the help right now uh what happens um you know i like i love giving to charity and doing volunteer work and i was unable to do that at the time as well and contribution is actually one of my deep values so it really really challenged me around my my deepest values because i wasn't learning as much as far as that well that's not true i was learning a hell of a lot but it was It wasn't a, I wasn't doing any, it didn't feel, I didn't feel like I was formalizing the learning, if you know what I mean.

I wasn't doing, you know, I wasn't going to conferences. I wasn't, you know, doing new courses or learning new ideas. It was really, I was learning who I was and how to survive. And when I look back on it now, that has been absolutely the best learning for me. um this whole uh response you know for COVID-19 that we're going through right now um my business has taken a big hit because we are you know 50% of our business is face-to-face uh in training rooms and you know groups etc so it's taken a big hit and I think you know that situation a few years ago when I was early in my career in my career as a consultant and business owner has set me up so I

know that i will get through this it's going to be okay i love that uh that self-belief that you've engendered through probably you put the oxytorch on on your resilience uh that's probably mentally toughened you to be able to accept that well even if i get down to my last cent and i'm looking through the window at savers i'm actually going to get through this what yes that tenacity and that resilience has that always been there or is it is the situationally uh you've sort of grown that muscle i've definitely had a good base of um tenacity and and resilience as you said i think that is a good base in that um you know my mom and my dad were both uh you know um good role models in that my dad was a business owner himself um my nan was a business owner my great nan

was a business owner as well so you know she's she would be what would she be like 105 this year if she was still alive so you know you think back she was a business owner when women weren't business owners um you know so it's in my blood uh that part of it it is in my blood um i think the tenacity and the the resilience has come you know from a long a long journey through uh school as well um i don't know if you notice i've got a funny old accent here that you probably can hear and people say where is she from what is that accent i get that a lot um i quite often have a bit of a pop quiz bingo in uh in my rooms and somebody wins with chocolate who can guess where i'm actually from but uh it's canada i'll just give that away awesome well i i thought you were

canadian i um was going to bring that up at some stage but i wasn't going to insult you by calling you're american because i know that that is an insult but particularly now that's right i think americans are saying they're not american right now i love it no that's that's awesome yeah yeah so when i when i came over and i was very young i was uh eight and a half i think i came over my parents and um consequently going into school with a very funny accent i was bullied quite badly in school and you know that that period of time all the way through high school I was bullied and you know the um that that I think builds builds your character um it rips you down because you have to rebuild yourself absolutely but it rebuilds your character into into somebody

different so resilience is definitely um something that I've had to develop throughout my life um you know through through many different challenges and you know and it's interesting when i i think back to those um those years uh our um our business mission is actually to to help leaders create world-class businesses where people are safe valued inspired and fulfilled and that safe and valued really comes from um me not feeling safe or valued when i was young not by my family they were amazing they were my safety zone but actually out in the world and you know and it was literally just because I spoke differently you know and uh when I think back to that time and I write a bit about this actually in my book Culture Inc because it it really sparked um my

journey of going it's not okay that people are treated differently just because they speak differently or think differently or look different or come from a different religion or come from a different background it's not okay that's just not okay and why do we keep doing it um you know 30 years later my kids are are in school and they talk to me about the same kind of bullying that's happening in in you know their schooling and they see kids um being bullied um thankfully they haven't experienced it the same way that i did um but yeah they still see it happening you know and I'm going, what the heck, man? What are we doing?

I know. What are we doing? It's incredible, isn't it? I think the scary thing now, Michelle, is that bullying has become gutless because it's done remotely through social media. So you're not looking someone in the eye saying something. And anyone can be a hero when they're doing it remotely.

We see it all the time. And it's actually become more rampant because of that. So, hey, just as sort of coming back to that tenacity and resilience piece, because a lot of people right here right now are being challenged at all levels, personally, professionally, lifestyles have been turned on their head. There's challenges and uncertainty around income and financial survival, given the pandemic's response and the forced break that's been put on the economy.

What would your advice and your suggestions be to the listeners around how best to tackle that? Yeah, it is interesting. I've been watching it with, you know, almost as a case study. It really is a case study in vulnerability. It's this period of time. I think what I observed is in the first few weeks, so the sort of first two to three weeks of, you know, what's going on, you know, are we locking down, are we not locking down, okay, now we're going to be going, you know, to work from home. We're not able to go out in groups of, I think it started at 500 in Australia and then down to 100.

And, you know, and I was watching myself go through this as well as the people that work with me and also our clients and the broader community and how people were responding to it. And it really was a complete and utter collective vulnerability. And Dr. Brené Brown, she defines vulnerability as uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure. And I don't think that there has been a time where collectively, not just in Australia, but globally, we have had a period where we're all in this completely uncertain time of going, I don't know what's going on. the risk not only for you know the health risks but the the risks of business you know I've got a number of people I know are in the entertainment industry and their businesses have come to a full stop you know so that financial risk the business risk the you know and talk about emotional exposure everybody's scared you know there's a lot of fear that's about we saw people hoarding

things um from supermarkets that is born out of fear you know and and it's really interesting in you know the the media's response to that you know obviously is uh you know to exacerbate fear so that they can sell you know so what they need to sell um but people's response to the hoarders are they're being disrespectful they're just jerks they're this they're that and it's actually they're scared and this is their response to being scared um underneath most negative behaviors and vulnerability there's fear you know we're just fearful and and we respond in different ways some of us you know do that sort of run and hide and and pull the doona over our heads and i don't want to get out of bed and others go into full attack mode because they are fearful um and this is i

think an unfortunate thing of our society and and workplaces we see this all the time is the amount emotional intelligence is actually really really low so therefore we don't name it as fear we may or grief there's grief as well going through this things are changed I don't know if I'm going to be allowed back in my workplace that's grief you know and but we don't name those things we then go it's anger or people are you know um frustrated or people are you know just jerks or whatever we we decide it is but underneath all of that there's this huge amount of emotion um and i've seen the really uh the really i hate using the word good but the the managers that are actually doing well and the businesses that are doing well are the ones that actually acknowledge

those emotions in their people. And they do something to help people cope during that time. And it might be as simple as, how are you going today? How are you going? Is there anything I can do how can i help what do you need you know just those simple questions um is is amazing you know a number of our clients have been um extraordinary in their communication they've uh they've been sending out messages okay this is what we know so far we don't know this but we do know this you know that's vulnerability you know um then the myth around vulnerability is that it's exposing and telling everybody everything about ourselves it's not it's about recognizing that we're in an uncertain time that we're all a little bit fearful that we're having to let go of things that we

might not want to let go of that we're going to have to take on things and we don't really know what they are yet you know that's vulnerability in in leadership it's being able to be there with your people within the circumstance not excluded from that circumstance so I think you know if there's any um any advice that i can give to people going through this is actually just recognize that recognize that there is fear recognize there is grief recognize also that there is excitement and opportunity in this as well in this time um one of the things i have noticed is that really early on particularly it's starting to shift a little bit now but early on and particularly we were having only one-sided conversation and that was everybody is upset about working from

home nobody knows what to do and that's not true it's not true there's a lot of people that actually really enjoy working from home there's a lot of people that you know they don't go out on the weekend every you know to every concert and whatnot they're introverted and they like their time alone so you know there's um we were having a very extroverted conversation and and it was only a one-sided conversation i'm glad to see now that things are starting to get a little bit deeper and people are recognizing that you know i think this might be our new normal and it's going to be our new normal for a while so how are we going to actually um uh you know build this in and what are the really cool things that we're really enjoying that we can take into you know

our new normal again once we've you know released the hounds and we're all back allowed out to out into the world again you know it's um you know people are recognizing that actually when the rubber hits the road their team members their people and their businesses can actually respond to change really quickly and when they're not being micromanaged on a day-to-day basis they're actually much more efficient and effective and productive and they can just get on with it so there's a lot of there's a there's a lot of good that's going to be coming out of this period of time as well and I think you know the advice is recognize yes that there is fear and there is there is grief through this period and help your people through that and also recognize that there

is a huge amount of opportunity and good things that are coming through and how can we leverage all of that yeah beautifully said and I think the because I talked then about people who are actually enjoying this you just described me because yeah i'm a i'm pretty much a caveman i love to go i love to create i love to uh and i need time and space to do that so our business has been set up that way for years very deliberately and and it creates the autonomy the independence for the team because i'm i just get out of the way everyone knows what their role is, and as long as we understand that the joint contribution of that is what ultimately makes a business successful, how they do it, where they do it, and it's actually better

for our lifestyle, there's a lot of positive opportunities going to come out of cementing relationships with your children, with your partner, because you're in closer proximity. It's made some massive changes. We've got a finance breaking arm of our business, Michelle, and for years we've been hammering the banks around why do we have to have a face-to-face conversation with someone to prove that they are who they are why can't we be doing that by remotely through technology to verify id well coronavirus has wiped that out now now we don't have to meet you anymore to refinance your homeland or to to get your loan to get in into property they've actually on board of that

process out of necessity so those those things are really good i think there's a lot of really healthy stuff that's going to flow out of this in terms of the way we live, the way we work. I think the big risks are potentially hauling out CBD office buildings because I think there'll be a big recognition that we don't really need to be doing that. In our exercise, we had a collective point in relation to a meeting room and a board room where we could face-to-face so that there is that level of human touch and contact, which is really important.

and just on that I'd love your thoughts I've been suspicious is not the right word but but tentatively cautious about this new term that the social distancing term it really worries me in relation to the habits that that that may set up in relation to our our human connection the level of trust and everything that that makes us who we are as a as a race uh what are your thoughts of that yeah i'm glad you bring that up actually because it's uh the term social distancing to me is actually a really um it's the wrong term to use for what we're actually doing what we're trying to do is physical distancing you know we're trying to maintain a physical distance so that we're not spreading a virus that's really what it's about i think the problem is is that a lot of companies

already have social distancing in place and it's called a lack of trust right so the unfortunate thing with this social distancing is people are going okay I need to make sure that I'm doing x y and z to have a social interaction on the weekend um it's it's I'm cautious of using that term as well which i gotta say it's one of those ones that i think oh geez it's it's setting us up for some um for some bad outcomes i suspect but uh you know the physical distancing i totally get you know as far as the science of it is concerned it's it's right uh the terminology i think is is not right and we've been using it too much and uh it it does breed in our minds um we have to be away from people we can't contact people we can't connect with people and that's just not true we

absolutely can um what we want to be doing is protecting um our society from a you know a virus that moves through people really quickly so we need to stand apart you know 100 and i think the There's a danger that very subtly and psychologically that isolationist, separatist approach could have some unfortunate consequences at the intimate individual level but on the larger level. I'm sort of hesitant about the patriotism that may create separateness and create potential conflict, all based on the fact that as a species we actually need the physical contact. Absolutely. We need that level of connection.

We are very social beings. So I think we've got to be very careful around the habits that form out of that and you well described it all evolves around trust because if there isn't that level of intimacy at that level, then trust becomes a question mark and if there's no trust in the community, then potentially we're in trouble. Yeah, absolutely and I do wonder if part of the reason

that you see people rebelling against it, You know, you see the protests in the United States, you see, you know, Bondi Beach being filled up with people, you know, all of those sort of things. And it's almost a rebellion against this social distancing. And I do wonder if they come out early on and spoke about it in a very pragmatic and practical way that it's actually we're physically distancing. We're not socially distancing. We're not disconnecting from people. We're just staying apart so that we don't transmit a virus. i do wonder if that put it would put something different in people's minds but you know i kind

of think you know with humans as soon as you tell us we're not allowed to do something that's exactly the thing that we want to do yes you know there's this rebellion aspect to to the human creature because we're you know we're made for survival that's what we're made for and one of the ways that we survive you know we're hardwired for this connection because of that survival if we weren't connected in a pack you know back in the day we would die you know that's the reality of the situation if we weren't connected to our tribe we would die so we actually are hardwired to be connected it's whether we have to be you know face to face across a table drinking coffee to be connected or we can do a connection like this where it's it's more verbal connection or can we

you know connect via Skype and Zoom and all the rest of the tools that they've got out there saying that I do think that there absolutely is something about being physically present with someone else another human being isn't there's a energy exchange that you don't get on the phone or on you know a Zoom or on a Skype or whatever that I think is is probably what people are craving now are really starting to crave now and will definitely start to crave the longer this um disconnection or this distancing actually occurs 100 agree i'm i'm a infamous man hugger uh i just love to hug everyone that's just a just a thing uh yeah and it's it's selfish in a way it's just because i i i love just to as you say that any energy exchange there's nothing

better than giving someone a massive massive hug and and that's man or woman you know any of the guys who know me know me the first thing I do with everyone is give them a massive hug and lift them off the ground and then that that sets the tone it really does set the tone so I think the way we maneuver that back into our existence at the right time in the right way is as you say It's part of our survival mechanism as the group mentality. Tell me, on a similar sort of subject, talking about the virtual organisation, and again, I'm talking here from a business who's been doing this for a long time and it works very well for us individually and our clients for that matter,

the way we're able to manoeuvre that to suit them in a time-poor world. What do you think, given your cultural expertise, What do you think the impacts of this sort of sudden and large scale across the board virtual organisation come remote working is going to have on individuals, businesses and the community at large? Yeah, yeah. I think there's a lot of positive impacts. There's a lot of negative impacts. And there's, I think, some neutral ones as well that are starting to come about, which is I think some of the positive things that I'm definitely seeing and hearing is things like, wow, our meetings are much more productive. You know, we're keeping them to 40 minutes rather than the hour that we would have had before.

So all of a sudden I've got more time in my day. um you know some of the the productivity arguments for people you know people are just sitting around doing their you know laundry at home i think this is some of the fears that managers have the research actually shows that people are much more productive when they're in their um a remote working environment whether it be at their home or in a small office that they are remote from from a bigger group um one of the downsides to that though is and I'm definitely experiencing this is when do you switch off like when does work end and life begin you know um that you know I've always been one for integration because you know being a a business owner and a and a consultant

it's very much integrated uh but I've been very um clear about carving out those periods of time where I don't work you know I've had strong boundaries around when I get phone calls about work and when I don't get phone calls about work and I have noticed in in the last few weeks that I've I have personally fallen into some bad habits of working on the weekend again and you know doing things all hours of the night and and I think because I've set up my office in a more accessible place because my kids are now schooling from home as well so they've you know they've taken over my other office uh it's a lot more accessible so you know these are the impacts I'm noticing personally but I'm also seeing them with our clients you know they're going yeah we're getting this real

efficiency happening um from people working from home and I think part of that a little little cynic inside of me says part of it is because they're not looking over their shoulder constantly um to see you know every mistake they're making they're actually just seeing now the outcome rather than seeing the mistakes the inputs so that that's a real benefit and i think that's something that i'm hoping that leaders uh start to really reflect on as far as their culture is concerned is um if they aren't so focused on the inputs that they can actually get better outputs and that is a culture thing in many organizations and I have noticed you know we've been speaking to a few of our clients who've our coaching clients and our culture clients as well

and they're noticing that they're really noticing that their people have stepped up that their people seem to be transitioning through change in a more productive way and I can't help but think it's because they're actually it's a bit like the Facebook thing right you only see the good stuff you only put the good stuff on Facebook you don't put all the crap that leads up to the good stuff you just put the good stuff on Facebook you know so all of a sudden managers are seeing the good stuff but they're not seeing all the crap lead up so they're going wow this is amazing you know people are really producing they're really productive they're really performing which really says more about the manager than it does about the individual

exactly right exactly right yeah so i think sorry you go yeah no i i think you're touching on a really good point there because i sort of love your thoughts around uh as leaders at any level in whatever business you're in because we're all leaders at different times and in different situations uh given the fact that we are locationally independent effectively now for a big percentage of the time in our work lives. What are your thoughts in relation to how leaders need to be leading and how they need to be making good decisions in these times of radical uncertainty?

Yeah, I think decision-making is such a critical aspect to culture. I've been asked in the past, you know, what's the first thing you look at when you're going in and diagnosing somebody's culture? and it's essentially it's decision making I can usually pick a type of culture within a very short period of time when I understand how decisions are actually made in a business so you know when we we talk about an effective culture and effective business it's their leaders are able to make the decisions that with enough information that they can critically analyze to have the best kind of impact they want to have they're not always going to make

the absolute right decision every time because they might have information this time is um you know the information that's coming through is different almost every day you know there's new information that's coming through particularly in the first few weeks um leaders can only make good decisions when they think more broadly than the next step so if they think about what's the impact of this decision on not only the people that are making the decision for but on the people that they are then serving as well so having a much more holistic view on decision making is really important. This is one of the things that we talk with leaders about when we are working with them to set up the kind of culture that they want is, you know, what sort of outcomes

do you want? If you want great outcomes for your client, then you need the decisions to be made as close to the client as possible. So this is where, you know, that micromanagement just does not allow people to have a great customer experience because you know customer says i want x customer service person says hang on a second i just got to go ask my manager manager says just a minute we'll go check the policies and procedures policy and procedure people say hang on a second we're just um re you know redoing that policy and procedure can you wait a week while we finish it off um executive teams say not really keen on the way this policy and procedure is written can we just wait another week and we'll get another

version of it you know three months has gone by and the customer hasn't got the x that they've requested this is bad practice it's inefficient it's not a great way for you to keep your customers on board um and this is the impact of culture right so that's the impact we often say that the experience that your employee is having having is directly correlated to the experience your customer is having and that is about the leaders yeah right so um and i don't want to just say culture is only leadership it's not but it's a big part of it because it's generally the leaders that are making the decisions on how the business is actually running um i think in this particular time right now with all this uncertainty and the change that's actually

happening it actually is enabling leaders to think differently about their decision making it's meaning that they actually have to make swifter decisions it means that they have to let go of some of the perfectionism around decision making as well and the 80 20 rule has to rule here i'm making the best decision with the best information i've got at this time and and i'm having i'm going to use that um and the other thing i think is really important for leaders during this period of time is that you don't make decisions and chisel them out in concrete right you can actually in the two days time go you know what that decision that we made was based on that information we've got new information now we're going to have to be agile

We're going to have to shift what we decided then and this is the new decision. As long as they're getting their people involved, making sure there's lots of communication, you know, delegating the decision-making as close to the customer as they can absolutely do in good faith, then that is going to set them up for success in the long run. Yeah, great advice.

Absolutely. because we need to pivot and move very dynamically in the current sphere. Absolutely. And this will be – this is a training ground. I think this is a massive wake-up call for all of us because we've had 28 years of uninterrupted prosperity basically. Yes, there's been some shocks along the way, but they haven't really had a major impact on our day-to-day living.

This has. This won't be the last. I think what this is doing is actually honing our flexibility, adaptability skills across the board and those that embrace that and just like yourself, Michelle, have understood that it's in times of your biggest challenge that you learn the most and you grow the most. If we embrace that as part of becoming a better person

and we expect it and we're ready for it and our mindset is therefore more able to actually react positively with it, then there's some great opportunity that will flow from this as you've so well said. Yeah, just on a similar exercise there because we've talked about leadership but I often find in organisations and there's a bit of a, to some degree I'm probably overstating this, there's a bit of a victim mentality in some organisations

where people say, well, I can't influence that, I'm not running the show. But everyone's a part of that cultural mix. What's your advice to those that mightn't be directly leading in terms of what they need to be doing to contribute to a culture that's going to survive and thrive in challenging times like this? Yeah, yeah. It's a really good question because we get that a lot as well as,

you know, I'm not the leader, we can't do anything, you know, et cetera, et cetera. What I often say is culture is an everybody game. It's every single person in the organisation that creates the culture and keeps it in play as well. So, you know, there are people who are creating processes and practices. Are you in control of those processes and practices?

Then yes, you probably are. Then you can make change in them. You can look at them and think, you know, how is this going to impact on the procurement team down the road there? How is this going to impact on the project manager that's got to implement it? You know, you can think broadly beyond how is this going to impact on me?

That doesn't take any time, really any more time, any more money, or, you know, it doesn't need a leader involved in that. You can do that yourself. Being able to be honest and open and have good, robust conversations with people, again, you don't need your leader's permission to do that. You don't need to be in the CEO role to have good, open, honest conversations with your colleagues that help them learn and grow and help you learn and grow. It doesn't take any time, any money. It takes time. It takes investment of energy, but it doesn't take any money. It doesn't take, you know, a leadership position to do that.

There are really simple things that people can do that actually really contribute a lot to culture. um there are you know when we look at uh culture overall there are some elements of the structural elements of a business that hold the culture in place or you know there's the expectations that are set uh and there's the experience that happens within a business and that's where each individual person can actually have some control over is the experience what experience are you giving to your colleague? What experience are you having when you're dealing with another team? How often do you just go, you know what, I'm going to go over and see if I can get some time with that team that I'm supposed to be collaborating with, but I'm not collaborating

with them because I feel like they just stand in my way. How about I take one of them out for coffee and get to know them a bit better? You know, these things seem really simple, but they're really impactful and there's a whole list of things that people can do from that granular level one of the most important things that they can do though is actually expect something better than what they've got if they can go I would like something better than what we have right now and they start to almost rally the troops. I've seen a lot of change happen because a group of people from within the business

have raised concerns, but not only raised concerns, taken action to make things different. And it might be those small actions to start with, but those small actions have a big impact quite a lot. um there's that yeah um it's that margaret mead um quote where she says uh i'm going to completely get it wrong here but it's essentially i don't think that a small group of people can't um create significant change in fact it's the only way significant change has ever happened um you know and i think that's so true in organizations as well we wait way too long for the people at the

top to create change but unless you tell them change is necessary unless you show them a different way unless you um you know rally your colleagues together and come up with different ways then there are times where the leader is sitting at the top or sitting too far away from the work that's actually happening and they're having a very different experience so if you're not actually saying something then nothing's going to change anyway so i think that's probably the most powerful thing that people um at um you know your traditional non-management level roles can do is actually just start talking start talking with your people start expecting things to be different start wanting something different do some research read read some books read the stuff that we've got

on our website which is you know about um how you can interact differently with people how you can look at processes differently you know it's a it's a multi-layered approach to culture it's not a one-size-fits-all it's not a one-person job it's an everybody job and it takes time to to get it right you know and it's not there's not a one-size-fits-all so you know um i quite often say you know what what's the definition of culture when we talk in in groups and they you start throwing out some words like behavior and norms and values and I'm like keep going keep going keep going and they throw out more words more words more words and I'm like you're not going to get it wrong there's actually nothing you can say that is wrong because everything

is culture culture is the DNA of the business so it's in every decision it's in every process it's in everything everything so you know you'll never get it wrong just try something start something and you know what's the worst can happen it stays the same yeah i love that we've got a one of our maxims in in know-how is that if you catch yourself talking to your partner after work or someone else at work about something that you haven't spoken to the person directly affected with then that's your trigger to go and have that conversation yeah perfect yeah i love Because straight away it's like, okay, well, nothing's going to change if you're telling everyone else but the person that's involved in it.

Have the conversation. It can be robust. You may not agree, but that's okay. If at least it's aired, then there's an opportunity for some improvement to be made. So, yeah, I love that. And I love what you've hit on the head there is culture's not a big thing. It's in every little thing that we do every day.

It's the stuff that we do when we're not looking that really defines the essence of the culture of a group, whatever that is, whether that be your family, whether it be your business, whether it be the community. They're all exactly the same in that regard. And what I'd love you to do, because your book, Culture Inc., really focuses on some of this gold in terms of, you know, what would you define as the hallmarks of a good culture in that regard? Yeah, so we tend not to use the term good or bad cultures,

but what we do is we use, yeah, high-performing, functional, effective. The most important part of the whole practice or process with looking an organizational culture is determining what is right for that particular business because it's different because there are the values in place you know everybody's values are different even if we have exactly the same word we define them differently so that's the first place to start is to say what is right for this organization what is the kind of culture that we want to have here that's going to deliver what we want for our customer and it's going to deliver the experience that we want our people to have and the, you know,

the functional elements of the business. However, there are some common, I think, commonalities to these kind of cultures anyway. And I'm yet to see a, you know, a future focused, you know, ideal culture diagram without things like communication in there. And communication, it's one of those funny throwaway terms. people say i want better communication but they don't actually name what that is um yeah to me it's uh it's actually communication is two-way i want to be involved in the conversation that's

actually what they're saying to you not i need more emails coming through it's i want to be involved in the conversation so organizations with great cultures that are high performing um have two-way conversations with their people um their people are involved and they're they have input into actually the way the work is delivered not just the work that is delivered um their leaders are very skilled and they're skilled at leadership and management they're not just skilled in their technical field a lot of you know leaders in businesses are very very good engineers or accountants or HR professionals, not necessarily great at the skill of leadership and management. That's really important. Executives, the leaders, they make really

well thought out decisions. Those decisions that can be delegated are delegated. Teams that are working together, they will actually work together and seek out collaboration because they know it gives them better results, not just because collaboration is on the list of things that a team needs to do. One of the things I think that is really evident in great organizations overall is that honesty and candor. And it's not all about being, we don't use the word nice, right? So if you're being nice in a business, that's a problem. That's a real problem. because nice is passive. Nice means we're not having the conversations we need to have

to get better results. We love candour. There's actually a book called Radical Candour by Kim Scott, who I just, I'm in love with her right now. It's just, it's amazing. So it's great when you find something, you go, yes, that's exactly what I've been trying to say for ages. Thank you so much, Kim.

yeah but her matrix of candor and radical candor is just a matrix of to care personally and challenge directly and i love that it's great it's so perfect and that's exactly what it is you have to be able to in a functional high performing culture to be able to have the freedom and the safety to be able to challenge what's going on and you know having stand-up robust conversations in workplaces doesn't mean it's a bad culture it actually usually means it's a a functional one you're actually communicating if there's robust discussion because you're you then know that people are saying what they think not what they think they should be saying absolutely i would much prefer somebody say to me this is just crap i don't like what's going on

here please you know we need to do something different than complete silence yeah 100 agree i haven't read that radical candor that's just gone straight on the kindle list thank you yeah love that hey yeah i um there's a lot of subjects that i would love to delve into but one of the things that i i don't see enough of i think uh when we talk about those commonalities in culture is compassion now i hear a lot about empathy and it's easy to be empathetic but but there's a difference between empathy and compassion what's your feeling on its contribution to the right culture yeah absolutely look i think um the the the definitions of empathy and compassion are really important for people to understand as well because i think that sometimes empathy

gets a raw deal that it's a soft thing and it's not it's actually quite an active um active thing um empathy is essentially when we are connecting with the other person and how they're feeling not necessarily the situation but we're connecting with them and how they're feeling we're recognizing that in ourselves and we're there for them compassion is the active um process of the support that then happens so i think both are essential in um in good you know in good organizations that have effective cultures they you know seeing not only leaders but everybody having compassion for each other being able to actively support each other is such an important part of the empathy process you know we can we can feel for someone but if we then go i feel for

and then I'm heading out the door and I'm not going to bother with you anymore, that's a missed opportunity to develop and strengthen a relationship. You know, I feel for you. I hear what you're saying. What can I do? Is there anything I can help you with is when it transitions then into compassion.

You know, I know that you're going through a tough time. Do you need some time off? I know that you're going through something at home. can we balance out the work that you're doing here with the work that you're doing at home you know how can we do this in a more practical way so you know i look at compassion as a very practical um skill set that uh that everybody can actually put into place you know a team member can say to another team member hey looks like you're a bit challenged with you know xyz um is there something i can help you with like as far as your project is concerned or i know that delivery is

coming up soon can i can i help you you know just that can i help you is is going to help um someone say either you know what yes i'd like some help or actually you know what yeah it's tough i'm going through something and i've got this but thank you for asking the question yeah i love that i love we we talk about creating that circle of safety in our business where we've we've all got each other's backs and we've all got our antennas sort of sensitised to – because we all go – every one of us, our life goes in waves and it's quite dynamic. And unless we're asking each other the question and then actually doing

something about it where someone is, you know, very different to say, oh, yeah, someone talks about an issue and then, as you say, that's great, see you later, to actually going, righto, well, this is what we're going to do to help. Would that help you? How about we do this? How about we do that? Yeah.

That's the stuff that really builds a really trusting team that are then prepared to do anything for everyone else in the team but also then are much more inspired to be looking after clients and customers as a consequence of that. Yes. And I think in times like these, teams that do have that empathy and compassion are the ones that will survive through this and people will remember how they're treated at this time.

Your clients and your team, they will remember how you're treated and they will make decisions. Once things get better and there's other options to consider, people will make decisions based on that, I feel. What's your thoughts around that? Oh, absolutely. there's a Maya Angelou quote that is people will forget what you do but they'll never forget how you make them feel and I think that's a really important thing for all of us to remember because

we can you know have a really positive impact and influence on someone and also a very negative one you know quite often say you know words have the power to heal and they have the power to harm and it's our choice um that actually says what we're actually going to do with that you know are we going to harm are we going to heal and are we putting in a thought into um our words before they actually come out of our mouth i don't think um and you know no way in hell am i perfect in this quite often those words come out and i go oh join the club um yeah that's not what can we rerun that one can we just wipe that and have another go absolutely that's when you want that you know rewind button you know you go crap i'm supposed to be a leadership culture expert

that's not good right let's try that again you know it is funny though because i think um you know this period of time as i said you know our business has taken a bit of a hit as far as our client facing but what it's enabled me to do is do all those things that you know for our business that i i talk to other businesses about and i help them with you know we're we're getting our strategy really clear and communicating it more to our people we're you know working on um how they are feeling and and how they can contribute to the business and you know we're we're um looking much more strongly into our onboarding and offboarding processes and you know all those things like i constantly tell our clients that they should be doing where uh you know a little

bit like the uh what is it the plumber with the bad parts or the accountant who doesn't get his tax yeah exactly that's the one yeah yeah and i think we're all a bit famous for that but uh you know it's just this time has enabled us to go okay i'm actually have a little bit of time to focus and because I can focus, my business is going to actually and my people are going to reap the rewards and the benefits of this and we have to keep this going. We have to keep this going. 100%.

Any final thoughts on how best to survive and thrive in radically uncertain and rapidly changing times, Michelle? I think literally it's communication. That's the top one for us. It's recognising emotions in ourselves and others and also communicating and just staying in touch with your people and just asking the question. You know, don't assume what's going on with them. Don't assume if they're, you know, they've got a grouchy face on Skype

or Zoom, it doesn't mean that they're having a bad day. You know, just ask them. You know, they might have just gone, you know, being bitten on the toe by their dog. That's right. You don't know unless you ask. So I think this is a really good opportunity for leaders in particular to start to really either solidify the relationships with the people that they're working with and or grow the relationships. trust is built through those really small moments in time so you know take the opportunity to have a five minute you know Skype call have a have the opportunity to send a text message to a couple

of your people just going hey just checking in you know just let me know I'm here for you but those sort of things are just they're small and simple but they actually do have a good impact um it's also really important for particularly going through a change i can't emphasize this enough to really check in with people that they know what they need to do just the practical thing they know what they need to do during this time if things have changed because we've had to put projects on pause or whatever that they know how that they are contributing to your business because we just want to contribute right that's really what we want to do we want to contribute and be valued for that contribution.

So make sure they know what they're supposed to be doing. Yeah, it's stating the obvious, but it's the obvious that often gets missed. So it's absolutely spot on there, spot on. Hey, very mindful of your time. You've been very generous in sharing some wisdom with us, but I would like to pivot into the ambush session, which are just five quick questions

that I make you tap dance on for answers that all the listeners want to sort of glean your words of wisdom on. All right, all right. You ready for this? You're on the starting block? Yep, I'm ready to be ambushed. You've got a cigarette?

All right. That's right. And you've given us... Is it the type of vodka yet? That's right, exactly. The first one of those, and you've given us a bunch of great quotes already, but what's your favourite quote and why, Michelle?

Yeah, you know, I live my life by quotes, as you can probably see, right now the one that's in mind for me is This Too Shall Pass. Yeah, yeah. This Too Shall Pass. Yeah, I keep that one on replay. Yeah, it's so spot on. It feels all-encompassing right at the moment,

but it's going to be a drop in the sea of time before we know it. And the one thing I do know is that we've all got a level of resilience, even if we don't believe it and I think unfortunately we've become so accustomed to certainty by, you know, we can Google anything at our fingertips, we can go anywhere with a GPS. So uncertainty has actually become quite foreign to a lot of us. Yes, you're right. So that muscle is withered a little bit on the vine and so when we're thrown

into a rapidly and dynamically changing environment with a lot of complexity to it, it's quite confronting. so reminding ourselves of this too shall pass is very sage advice what about a top book that you'd recommend and why yeah so i'm a massive reader i read at least one book a week so i've got lots of them uh one of the ones that i recommend to people um and it's a bit of an unusual one but i always recommend this one because i talk about it all the time in almost every conversation is the hero with a thousand faces by joseph campbell yeah um you're aware of that one yeah so this is you know the hero's journey and i was we were in a customer conversation

with our team yesterday and i spoke about it for our marketing you know i'm in our leadership courses i talk about it in you know our culture change programs we talk about it it is the hero's journey it's the the um that sort of fundamental underlying humanness um and it also has one of my favorite quotes in it which is the cave that you fear to enter holds the treasure that you seek that that's a very quite i've done a bit of keynote speaking and i always finish with that one because yes it's just um and then there is some absolute gold in in uh that time by joseph campbell it's quite absolutely quite a time uh and it's it i guess it really provided the the framework for for a lot of the talks i do but also my book even a lot of the storytelling

uh in the way in terms of communicating things in a way that will engage is all threads back to the the hero with a thousand faces so it's a absolutely yeah yeah i mean it's a it's a it's one of those ones that you've got to get into and keep going through it. It was written in, what, 1946, I think. So, you know, it's a bit of a language and it is a very dense book. Yep. But, oh, the gold in it is just amazing. It is gold.

I mean, it's got massive thud value. It makes a noise when you throw it down on the table. But it's really worth going through. Totally. Yeah, awesome. This one's a little bit left field, Michelle. what's the top legal thing you've done to minimize the tax that you pay top legal thing i like that you know i think um and this is probably the answer a lot of people give when they're not

all that financially minded but get a great accountant um but get a great accountant that actually cares for you and cares for your business i think that's really important as well that they're not just a person that's transactional. We had a couple of transactional people in the past and they didn't do what they needed to do. I've actually got two accountants because I've got two different businesses. So one of our accountants, Michael, he's amazing. He's absolutely amazing. And I remember saying to him a couple of years ago, I just want to be one of those rich people that don't pay any tax how can I go about doing that and he and he said the same thing legally well here's that this is what my accountant says to me and he's a great great

accountant as well he says if you're paying too much tax then you're doing something right because you must be making money I know that's what Michael keeps saying to me as well you know every time I whinge about my tax bill, he says, well, it wouldn't be paying tax if you weren't making any money. I'm like, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I get a good accountant and they will help you to reduce that tax bill. And, you know, he does that and our other accountant that do our

company books for Synergy IQ do a really great job as well. Yeah, brilliant advice. Surround yourself with experts in their own area so you can focus on what you've got out and love that. Hey, back on the investment subject for a minute, what's both the worst and the best piece of investment advice that you've ever received? Yeah, so I think probably the best piece of advice

that I ever received that I'm not sure if I did it early on but I'm definitely doing it now is to have sort of three to six months of safety net of expenses in an account that you don't touch because if you do, you you don't have that safety net you're going to be constantly worried about money you're going to be constantly worried if i lose my job and you're constantly worried about you know if uh if the if coronavirus hits not that we knew that was going to come but you know that i think is is left me in good stead right now as well so that's the best piece of investment advice is

to make sure that you're investing in your mental health around the finances um probably the worst piece of uh investment advice that i've ever had and this this was my own stupid fault as well but investing in an apartment uh timeshare years ago yep uh and you know yeah invest in this timeshare you'll never lose maybe your holidays for the rest of your life you know etc yeah yeah i'm paying it off for the rest of my life too but i think the other thing that um that happened And during this period of time, 12 months before, sorry, 12 months after I, you know, signed this, you know, great awesome investment, Airbnb hit the market.

Oh, no. Yeah. So that's one of those things that I keep going, okay, yeah, live and learn, live and learn. Yeah, we've all done those. Don't you worry. Hey, personal habits. What's a personal habit that you believe contributes most to your success today?

So there's many different ones. I think investing in my learning and my own self-growth has been a real habit for me. So I listen to audio books all the time. I listen to podcasts daily, daily. So at least once to twice a day, I'm listening to something or investigating something that's growing my knowledge. And it's not always just in my field of expertise. It could be in something interesting. You know, when coronavirus first hit, I went, all right, I need to find out all about how viruses spread and how this works.

So, you know, following my curiosity is a really important habit. we can get off the track a little bit but sometimes it's very good totally um yeah so very much investing in my my development uh both formally and informally um habits around and as i've mentioned before they've sort of uh wavered a little bit in the last few weeks but having boundaries around when it's work time and when it's not work time and having boundaries around when I spend time with my family and when I spend time with, you know, other people that I care about in my life as well. So I think some boundaries around that.

Probably financially, we've set up so that we pay ourselves in the business. So it's not just drawings. We actually pay ourselves. So therefore, super and tax is paid, you know, and I've set up auto payments on my payday. So as soon as, you know, the money hits the account, there's money that goes off to my tax account, there's money that goes off to my savings account, there's money that goes off to my bills, there's money that goes off to my kids' accounts. Music to my ears, Michelle. In my book, The Freedom Formula, I talk about the automatic saver system that does exactly what you've just said.

It's so easy to do, but so few do it. And it's just not difficult these days, just taking the time initially to get that in place. But if it's set and forget, if you've set it up and it's looking after itself, then there's no better and no easier way to do that. So I fully commend you. You're the first person I've heard who's actually said that. So that accounting training has certainly come through somewhere there, Michelle.

Well done. Well, my mum's also Scottish. I think that has something to do with it too. Awesome. Now, just a question I always love to finish on, Michelle. if I was to give you a microphone that spoke to every single one of the 7.7 billion people that are currently in the world and I gave you one minute to talk, what would you say?

Oh, there's so many things that I would like to say. I mean, I can talk as you can tell. I think one of the things that I would love for people to do in the world more of is to carve out more time to think and think deeply, think critically, rather than, you know, just jumping in and making decisions or just, you know, it's where ignorance comes from, right, without thinking deeply, learning, understanding.

So I guess maybe ask more questions, think deeply, talk less listen more it's uh you know it's steven covey you know the seek first to understand before being understood i think that's probably um if there was a critical lesson for every single person in the world that's probably it 100 totally agree i'd love thinking so i i create time to do that. I'm almost a bit selfish in that regard in carving out time so I can actually think and the podcasting exercise and thinking about the introductions and how I can sort of assist

in making the guests' wisdom more engaging is, you know, I'm doing that every second day of the week now, which I love doing. But being able to listen is one of the challenges I have as a podcast host is shutting up and letting the guest talk. I know, it's just hard. I think your advice is gold there is to talk less, listen more, take time to think.

None of us are allowing that to happen. We're so busy and so time poor these days that it often becomes an excuse not to think. Absolutely, I agree. Very sage. Okay, well, what's next new and exciting for you, Michelle? and CineGIQ? Well, we're pivoting at the moment, so as you know,

how many businesses are, and we're taking the opportunity to create a whole digital suite of tools for our clients to use and also to gain more clients. So I'm currently working on an online training program that essentially digs deep into the learnings within Culture Inc. So it helps leaders to start the process of, you know, oh, my culture's not great. Where do I start?

It gives you that where to start. So, yeah, working on that right now, working on looking at our offering to the world as well and really honing in on where we can be of most value for our people, really understanding our piece of the puzzle as well and working hard to become the go-to consultancy firm for culture, leadership and change. Yeah, I love that.

Now, for those listeners who are smart enough to recognise how important culture is to everything we do, and I'm talking not just business but in our family interactions, in our community interactions, in our sports interactions, in our career and pretty much everything we do. For those that are smart enough to recognise that this is a fundamental piece in good times and bad, it makes no difference. We're more sensitised to it now because we're forced to stop and prop

and have a look in the mirror and go, right, we perhaps need to be doing something differently here. How do they reach out to you? How do they contact you if they're looking for your assistance to really do some work in that area? yeah so probably the best place to go is our website which is synergy iq.com.au that has the most information on it and it's got some free resources uh and also our contact us um uh button as well that you can get in touch with us um we're on all the social medias as

well linkedin is great please connect with me on linkedin so if you're listening to this and um you're interested in connecting please reach out and connect i accept uh 95 of the linkedin requests that come through and i say that because there's some that i look a little dodgy so i don't accept them but you know if you look like a real person and you you know you're doing some work i don't care where you are in the world or what you're doing i i connect with people so please please reach out on linkedin and find me synergy iq is on linkedin we we do a lot of posting there We're on Facebook and Instagram. That's kind of, you know, starting up a little bit stronger than it was before.

So you'll find us there as well. Or send an email through to us at admin at stimngiq.com.au and we'll be able to point you in the right direction. Great, Michelle. It's been a very enjoyable and engaging discussion again today on a subject that doesn't get enough airplay, unfortunately. it often gets the blame but it doesn't sort of get much of the accolades

I agree yes thank you for saying that yeah it's so true so really enjoyed you sharing and opening our ears to the opportunity that culture brings us to not only tackle tough times but to thrive in the good times so I appreciate

that and look forward to staying in touch thank you Bushy I really enjoyed this it's been great fun it's been great talk soon bye bye well freedom fighters how good was that to get a summary of all this investment gold in the show notes just email me on hello at khgroup.com.au that's h-e-l-l-o at khgroup.com.au or check us out at www.bussymartin.com.au forward slash get invested i look forward to joining you next week

for another episode of the Get Invested podcast. So thanks for listening. And as always, dream as if you live forever and live as if you die tomorrow.