The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Innovate or Die: Michelle Risinger on Social Impact Strategies

Starting point is 00:00:00 You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. I'm host Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, it's the Mixed Official. Welcome to the big show. As always, for 60 years and 22 hundred episodes, we bring you the smartest, brightest people in the world.

Starting point is 00:00:49 None are me. I'm just the idiot with the mic and the host. But I bring the most amazing guests on the show that share with you their journeys, their cathartic moments, their stories, their lessons of life, their blueprints, how they survived, and how they can help you learn you're not alone. You can survive as well. And if not, it's probably your fault that you're not. I don't know. It sounded funny in my head. Hey, guys, we have an amazing young lady on the show today.

Starting point is 00:01:10 We're going to be talking to her about her insights and how you can improve your life through some of the things she's learned as well. Michelle Reisinger joins us on the show. She is the principal and founder of Rising Solutions, an internationally recognized innovation strategist, design thinker, facilitator, and public speaker who's trained thousands of individuals in innovation and design thinking approaches. to imagine an award-winning portfolio of global innovation projects with work featured by USAID, USDOL, Department of State, Forbes, Gates Foundation, DevEx, and in the critically acclaimed 2018 book, Lean Impact. Welcome to the show. How are you, Michelle? Oh, thanks, Chris. When I hear you read that bio, it sounds like a lot of buzzwords.

Starting point is 00:02:03 There's a lot of buzzwords in there, but there's a lot of big words. I flunked second grade, as the show knows from callbacks. I was trying to get through there. But give us your dot coms. Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs? Yeah. So folks can visit us at risingsolutions.co. We are actually not a dot com, folks.

Starting point is 00:02:23 Nix that M off the end. We're dot co, risingsolutions. Nick's that M off the end. We're.co, rising solutions.co. That is our company website. You can learn a little bit more about our services, our portfolio of work, and that's where you can engage with us. So give us the $30,000 overview of what you guys do there at Rising Solutions. So Rising Solutions is an innovation strategy, design thinking and facilitation firm. And so our focus primarily, Chris, is for international NGOs, domestic NGOs, bilaterals and multilaterals.

Starting point is 00:02:53 So like World Bank, UN, folks that are in the social sector, essentially. And this isn't as commonly discussed as I would think it should be. But we don't do innovation or R&D in the social sector. It's the bread and butter of the private sector. It's how you stay relevant. But in the social sector, we don't invest in R&D teams. We don't hire innovation strategists. And we run the risk of not staying relevant in the social sector.

Starting point is 00:03:24 And jokingly, you know, we're referred to in the social sector as being 15 to 20 years behind the private sector. And there's a reason for that. Oh, wow. Yeah. Wow. So they need more innovation, more design thinking, and executive facilitation. Let's walk through this. I'm looking at your website, and there's a cool picture, I think, you and like all these post-it notes on a big window and some i forget what they call these sort of threads that go out the

Starting point is 00:03:50 thought you know the little armatures of like mapping mapping so we we didn't learn that word so is this i mean this is one of the approaches or ways that you teach innovation and stuff to be yeah it's a great question for anybody who does r&d or innovation you'll know that jokingly post-its are kind of like you know the number one tool associated with brainstorming but we actually bring in a lot of creativity neuroscience and behavioral design into our facilitation which is sort of one of our differentiators. And so we're looking at, for example, the psychological biases of behavior and

Starting point is 00:04:31 how that drives innovation and R&D. And there's actually a really fantastic book called The Human Element from two Northwestern professors. And in that book, they talk about the status quo bias and the inertia against R&D and innovation, and that it can feel like you're trying to move a ball uphill when doing R&D and innovation. And that feeling is actually accurate. Human beings prefer the status quo. And even when we espouse the desire for creativity, even when we try to plan strategies and transform our business models, inherently as human beings, we don't want things to change. And that dichotomy and disconnect is a place in which we really focus at Rising Solutions is it's not just the

Starting point is 00:05:19 innovation, the product or the service that you're trying to create, but it's the behavioral aspects that you may be up against institutionally. And in the social sector in particular, who's trying to innovate on social topics. So that could be health or education or women's empowerment, livelihoods. In those instances, we're really needing innovative solutions in order to elevate people out of poverty. And at the same time, we're not always set up to do that well. And, you know, when we think about the private sector versus the social sector, the private sector is set up to do it really well. But do we really need another toothbrush? Whereas the social sector is trying to target really lofty, ambitious human goals, and we don't do it as well.

Starting point is 00:06:09 And so that's sort of where we play. Mad Fientist Yeah. All right. So basically, you help teach people how to be more innovative and have that sort of design sort of outward thinking. You know, one thing you mentioned early on, it seems like there's a paradigm of people, you know, it's kind of a thing in the business community where, you know, you ask people, why do we do it this way? And they go, I don't know.

Starting point is 00:06:29 We've always done it this way. Because we've always done it this way. I always love when people say that to me. And I'm like, we need to fix some things around here. Don't fix it. That's the other one I hear a lot. Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:06:39 That's my first 10 marriages. And then that's what I said. Oh, we don't innovate on that. I'm sorry. Yeah. first 10 marriages the and then that's what I said yeah but you know and then there's the the you know who moved my cheese or don't move my cheese element yeah they're like hey I I got this all figured out in a little box here I need to stay that way forever and unfortunately change in innovation and you know everything else that goes on in the world doesn't stay stagnant. So you have to

Starting point is 00:07:06 keep up. And there's a real layer of risk aversion as well. You see risk aversion both in the private sector and in the social sector, but in the social sector, the risk aversion is really pronounced. And here's the thing, Chris, that not a lot of people are aware of if you're not in the sector, but in innovation in the social sector or R&D in the social sector, your user of your product or service is usually not your buyer. The buyer is the donor. So the buyer is the grantee who wants to fund a program or who wants to design a particular solution. But then the people who are using that solution usually are not the buyer. And so you've got these different drivers and motivators where you're trying to appease whoever is funding the project in a grant-based model,

Starting point is 00:07:58 but then the consumer of that product or service or project is not the buyer. And so it's a fascinating dynamic of, there's essentially two personas that you're trying to innovate for and make happy. And they oftentimes are thousands of miles apart on different continents and are not informed really about the realities of each other. Wow. You got to get everybody at the par. It's really important. And one of the other aspects that I had a question for you on is, why is innovation for social impact important? Why do we have to innovate for that? Yeah. I mean, it goes back to what I was saying earlier in the sense that the social sector is traditionally considered 15 to 20 years behind

Starting point is 00:08:46 the private sector. And yet it's the sector that's trying to solve really complex human issues. And so it's the sector that is most in need of innovation because it has the ability to change people's lives for the better. It's programs and services that improve the human condition. Whereas in the private sector, you may be innovating on a product or service that's like floss or a new kitchen appliance. And it's not necessarily the same imperative as saving the world, but it tends to be the sector that innovates more efficiently and understands the need for investment in innovation and R&D. Whereas I feel like a lot of what we do at Rising Solutions is convince people of the value of innovation and R&D.

Starting point is 00:09:38 Well, you definitely need innovation and R&D because if you don't come up with a better idea, if you don't eat your own lunch, you know, somebody else is. Yeah, I'll say it. Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, Apple did that with the iPad. They knew that the iPad would eat their lunch sales of the Mac computers. But, you know, they're not that great anyway.

Starting point is 00:09:59 Yeah, who's that? And so they came up with the iPad and they knew it was going to eat into their sales, but they knew that if they didn't come out with something that was technologically advanced such as that, then somebody else would. So they beat themselves to market and everyone else. And yeah, innovation is hugely important because if you're not innovating your your your compo your competition is exactly you know like you talk about in social spaces if you're not innovating for people then most likely there's stagnation there's problems you know we saw what happened at the va over decades of misuse and misappropriation and perfect example you know i remember in the 90s we used to go in there and

Starting point is 00:10:43 it was just like being in a morgue. The veterans were sitting around for hours on end, just trying to get help. The depression, the suicide rates for veterans, et cetera, et cetera. And evidently, things have improved, I'm told. But that is an example maybe of that sort of thing going on. Absolutely. And one of the things that I also kind of wanted to bring into the conversation was presently, and this is sort of ubiquitous across all sectors, whether it's private or social sector is we're seeing an increased articulation, particularly post COVID around stress and burnout. And what, because you sort of mentioned it with the VA and, and from a medical standpoint, more from like a neuroscience standpoint, there is a real connection between

Starting point is 00:11:35 stress burnout and the ability to innovate. And what's been fascinating for us in the last four years, particularly the COVID years is when clients come to us, they're asking for, for example, support in operationalizing an innovation strategy, or they're asking us to kind of review their innovation portfolio, their R&D portfolio, if you will. And then at the same time, when we start diving into the project, we're realizing that the staff are completely burned out, the leadership is completely burned out. And neurologically, that is the antithesis of the space in which you're actually able to come up with new ideas. And so a lot of what the research

Starting point is 00:12:17 that we produce is around trying to create spaces for innovation innovation if innovation is truly what you want. Because if your staff are stressed and burned out, there's a direct neurological link to not being able to innovate. And the answer is counterintuitive to leadership, which is they need space for rest. They need space for thinking. They need to turn on what's called their default mode network, which is the area of your brain that's on when your mind is wandering, when you're not engaged in task-specific cerebral work. But that behavior is not rewarded at the office. We're rewarded for being very task focused. Don't be daydreaming at the job. And the irony is that is the antithesis of how you create an innovation culture. And that's been a lot of our focus the last few years. Yeah, we, we, you know, one of the things that made a big, Peter Senge, you know,

Starting point is 00:13:10 the learning organization that had a huge impact to me before I started really building big companies. And so I always wanted to build a learning organization or what you call, you know, an innovative organization and one that they're, you know, I i i learned early on that i'm not the purveyor of all the greatest ideas no matter what my job title is and being able to ask people to innovate and of course having a culture of innovation maybe you can speak to that one of the one of the rules we had around our office was the only stupid question is the unasked question because we want to encourage you to ask questions and it was okay. No one was going to attack you and be like, what the, you didn't learn that in the training? What kind of idiot

Starting point is 00:13:49 are you? You know, that sort of thing. It would be like, okay, well, let's, let's get you up to speed here that it was okay to admit that you, you were an idiot. I'm glad you brought that up because when it comes to innovation culture, the complete foundation of an innovation culture is psychological safety. And so that actually directly correlates to the joke you just made, which is if you don't feel like you have the freedom and the safety, so to speak, in order to speak up, that actually is the number one indicator of whether or not you have an innovation culture. And innovation culture is predicated by psychological safety, where you know that you won't be demeaned or shamed

Starting point is 00:14:32 if you share an idea. And a lot of the work that we do with organizations is trying to shift the culture needle a bit towards greater psychological safety through trainings, through understanding what psychological safety is and why it's important. But I'm glad you brought that example up because that's case in point. Yeah. And if an environment feels, you mentioned about burnout, people feeling disaffected, that's a big deal for Gen Z and some of your up and coming generations that are you know they want more involvement they want to feel like they're a part of something much bigger themselves there's a purpose to it you know they're not something like us gen xers where

Starting point is 00:15:14 we're just like do i get paid for this crap or what exactly i'm a millennial so i saw fall somewhere in between oh do you okay well i see what game you're in that's right i'm the entitled generation that's true she's very entitled about it too but yeah good for you being a gen gen what do i say millennial i'm a millennial yeah that's okay still recovering from it millennial i think i've heard someone use that phrase before i'm a recovering millennial and i'm like how do you get out of that i don't know. Everybody wants to be Gen X because it was the coolest generation ever. What are some other things we want to run by you?

Starting point is 00:15:52 One of the things you talk about in your discussions with people is chronobiology. What does that mean and how do we utilize it? Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up because that's directly connected to the stress and the burnout and innovation conversation. As an innovation strategy firm, some of what we do also is trends and foresights. And we think that the future of work is actually going to be designed around individual chronobiology. So you may know this, Chris, but the nine to five workday is a vestige of the industrial revolution. It's from the Ford auto manufacturer, and it has absolutely no basis in productivity or neuroscience. We work an eight hour workday because that's the maximum amount of labor you can extract from the human body without diminishing returns. I think we should bring child labor back too. No, I'm just kidding. Well, what, what the, the shift, the trend that we see happening here is that the idea of the eight hour workday, which previously referred to physical labor, it's now permeated all industries

Starting point is 00:17:00 and those industries that extract in knowledge work, if you will, in data and the exchange of information, our minds are not meant to work like that. And as an innovation strategy firm, not only are we seeing the stress and burnout lead to the incapability of coming up with new and innovative ideas, but the stress and the burnout is overall linked to a workday that has no basis in science. And we really saw during the COVID years and the burnout is overall linked to a workday that has no basis in science. And we really saw during the COVID years and the great resignation, people just throwing in the towel and saying, no more of this. And they're not wrong. We're not neurologically designed to work that way.

Starting point is 00:17:40 Actually, a study showed that an eight-hour workday, we're productive for two hours and 53 minutes. And that's it. That's all our brains are capable of. And so chronobiology is this idea that your workday should be designed around your peak performance, your peak cognitive performance. And so you're using a variety of different variables, including sleep, but also diet, nutrition, exercise, exposure to sunlight, caffeine intake. And then you're identifying when your peak performance hours, and then you're planning your workday around your peak cognitive hours. So you're scheduling your meeting presentation with your CEO in a peak cognitive performance hour. And then you're at your lower

Starting point is 00:18:21 performing hours, that's when you're doing more mundane tasks or answering emails. And Cal Newport, he wrote the book on deep work. And what he was saying in deep work was you need to kind of get into the zone in order to do your deep work. But the piece that was missing from that is that that zone for deep work should align with your chronobiology. It should be the hours of the day in which you're the highest cognitively performing. Yeah, my highest cognitive performation. Clearly not now. It's not a perforation.

Starting point is 00:18:55 Yeah, it's about once a year in October on the 15th. So that's when I can meet with people, my boss and whatever. That must be a full day's calendar then. When can we meet with you, my boss and whatever. That must be a full day's calendar then. When can we meet with you, Chris? In October. Why?

Starting point is 00:19:09 That's my best day. I have the most energy to put up with all this shit. That's right. That's the spirit. Boundaries. I mean, I try and get up to two days a year, but I usually run out of energy by the first day. I'm catching you on an off day then.

Starting point is 00:19:23 Yeah. Yeah, they're all off days at this point. I'm 57. They're all goddamn off days. I can't feel my legs. What else? And then you're published in medium.com in a feature about purpose-driven business. Let's talk about that for a bit because I think that seems to be a topic we talk a lot about on the show too. Yeah. So if folks want to check out the article, it's on medium.com and you can search for my name and purpose-driven business. It's called Purpose Before Profit. And so we are a for-profit LLC, but we are strongly purpose-driven and mission-driven. So our services are designed around clients who have a social impact. And we actually only work with clients who are trying to have a social

Starting point is 00:20:12 impact. So we'll work with a corporate, but the project we're working on has to also have a quantifiable social return. We won't work on a project where it's purely a financial return for the client. But underlying that is being values-driven. And our values at Rising Solutions are empathy, humility, and curiosity. And for us, being values-driven is around living the values, not just saying those are what your values are. And so we bring up the values in conversation. We talk about how we lived them with clients. We also use them as criteria to work with clients. Do we feel like the client's

Starting point is 00:20:51 values align with ours? And those lead to the best possible business relationships. Because when things inevitably go sideways, you have the values to lean back on. You have the values to get through complicated and challenging situations. And so for us, that's really what being purpose-driven is about, is never compromising on the values, especially if you're in a position where you could financially benefit from it, but potentially there's values misalignment. There you go. Those values line, damn it, people. Get out of line. With people and clients you work with, do they need to be a certain size, a certain sales size or certain spend or medium, small, large, et cetera? That's a really good question. So we actually work with

Starting point is 00:21:39 a range of different sized clients. So for example, one of our clients does 2 billion annually in revenue. We work with the UN, which is a huge global organization. Fancy that. And then we also do work with smaller entities. So we have experience on both sides of the spectrum. What I think is interesting is folks who have access to a bit more agility and flexibility in their day-to-day operations are able, I think, to absorb working with us much faster because innovation requires agility and flexibility and adaptability. Whereas larger clients, not that to say in any way, shape or form that it can't be done, but those are the clients where culture becomes really important. And a lot of times they come with you with a project in mind, and inevitably you end up talking about culture because culture will be the only way to operationalize the project they're trying to do.

Starting point is 00:22:43 And that's been really fascinating for us. Innovate or die. Yeah, innovate or die. The theme for 2025. Yeah. I think we had Gary Shapiro, and it's the CES show on this week. He appears every year for the last six years with us. We're good friends.

Starting point is 00:23:00 And I think that was one of his book titles, Innovate or Die. I know his newest one is Pivot or Die, but Innovate or Die. I mean, it really is. If you don't innovate, your competitors will, and some will beat you to market. And usually you're surprised by it. We actually have a lot of clients in climate change right now who are experiencing a rapidly changing environment where laws and rules and regulations are being changed around the world. And suddenly they're finding themselves having to rapidly adapt to new climate laws and regulations. And young tech startups in the

Starting point is 00:23:39 climate space are reacting so quickly and are able to be more responsive to those changes. And some of the larger institutional NGOs are really having to work hard to keep up. And NGOs, social sector, don't think you are not at risk for that same outcome. Yeah. It's attributed to, it looks like Peter Drucker. That's kind of interesting. And it looks like it's also, quote, Robert Iger said from Disney. I love Bob Iger. Yeah, he's a really smart guy. Yeah. I read his book and his insights to leadership are pretty amazing.

Starting point is 00:24:15 You know, but that's that. Anything further people need to know about what you do there at your company and how you do it? Just that if you'd like to reach out and have a conversation with us, we'd love to kind of have a chat about what you're experiencing and what you're seeing. We do, again, only take projects that have a social angle to them. So you do not have to be a nonprofit to engage with us. But we often see corporates engaging with us from, for example, their CSR teams, their corporate sustainability and responsibility teams, who may be already looking at how to leverage corporate assets for social good. We also work

Starting point is 00:24:52 with a lot of nonprofits and governments. And so essentially, in the simplest possible way, if you have a project that has a social angle, and you're looking to get it off the ground, you need innovative structures and processes for a new product, service, or idea, come have a chat with us. Get over there, folks, and do it. Give us your.co as we go out. Yeah. And thanks for remembering it's a.co. We are at www.risingsolutions.com.

Starting point is 00:25:18 No M. She saved you a whole lot of time that you're saving off that. That's right. Yeah. I often think about the kids and their lingo, how they shorten stuff. And you're like, boy, you must have saved so much time. You're going to use that for something productive. Clearly.

Starting point is 00:25:32 So thank you for coming on the show, Michelle. Great discussion. We really loved it. Thank you, Chris. It's a pleasure. Thank you. And thanks for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, Chris Foss

Starting point is 00:25:43 won the TikTok and Chris Foss, Facebook.com. You can see Chris Foss. LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Foss. Chris Foss won the TikTok. And you can get Chris Foss. Facebook.com. You can see all the crazy groups we have. We have so many groups and pages over there. It's like insane. I don't know what's going on on Facebook. But Mark Zuckerberg does. I don't know what that means.

Starting point is 00:25:56 Speak to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. Some jokes have no point.

The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Innovate or Die: Michelle Risinger on Social Impact Strategies

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