The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Strategic: The Skill to Set Direction, Create Advantage, and Achieve Executive Excellence by Rich Horwath

Episode Date: September 7, 2023

Strategic: The Skill to Set Direction, Create Advantage, and Achieve Executive Excellence by Rich Horwath https://amzn.to/462DXOO Master the four disciplines of strategic fitness essential to executive performance In Strategic, New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Rich Horwath delivers an incisive roadmap to help leaders at all levels think, plan, and act strategically to navigate every business challenge they face. The book offers business leaders a proven framework―the Strategic Fitness System―containing dozens of tools, techniques, and checklists to confidently master every area of the business, from designing market-winning strategies to shaping the organization’s culture. The practical content will help executives in any industry improve what research has shown to be the most important leadership factor to an organization’s future success―strategic competence―and use this skill to transform complexity to clarity in charting their strategic direction. The book features: ● A common language for strategy and business planning ● Practical tools for developing the four dimensions of executive fitness key to advancing the company’s growth: strategy, leadership, organization, and communication ● Techniques for designing enduring competitive advantage and frameworks for creating innovative new value for customers ● Methods for evolving the business model to transform the trajectory of the business ● The Strategic Quotient (SQ)―a validated assessment of an executive’s strategic thinking, planning, and execution With practical tools and dozens of real-world examples, readers of Strategic will immediately be able to set direction, create advantage, and achieve executive excellence. Be more than tactical―be Strategic. About the Author Rich Horwath’s vision is to teach the world to be strategic. For more than twenty years, he has focused relentlessly on providing leaders with innovative concepts and practical tools to think, plan, and act strategically in order to set direction, create advantage, and achieve their goals. As founder and CEO of the Strategic Thinking Institute, Rich serves executive leadership teams as a strategy facilitator, strategic advisor, and executive coach. He has helped more than a quarter million people around the world develop their strategic thinking and planning capabilities. Rich is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of eight books on strategic thinking and has been rated the #1 keynote speaker on strategy at national conferences, including the Society for Human Resource Management Strategy Conference. He has appeared on ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX TV to provide commentary on the strategic aspects of current events and his work has appeared in publications including Fast Company, Forbes, and the Harvard Business Review.

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 rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the big show, my family and friends. Welcome to the big circus tent in the sky.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages. Are the children listening to the show? Actually, there are. Evidently, our TikTok following has been a lot of 13 and 17-year-olds lately. We have a ton of them that like the show and click the link to join the podcast. So I guess we do have to start saying that. Do you have to have a signed thing from your mom and dad to listen to the show if you're under 18? I don't know. We'll have to check with the attorneys. But anyway, guys, welcome to the show.

We've got an amazing, brilliant business mind on the show. He's the author of multiple books, and we're going to expand your knowledge like never before. In fact, you may want to fire up the coffee because we're just going to make you smarter. And we're going to try something new today. At the end of the show, we're going to have a speed round of questions that's going to get you to know our guests better. And maybe you'll judge them more harshly or you'll judge them more kindly. We're going to find out at the end of the show. So make sure you listen all the way to the end to hear our funny speed round. may not quite be at the end so you got to listen the whole show it might just

jump in the middle so there you go it'll be a nice funny session that we'll have and uh if it's not well then you can ask for your money back because we didn't charge you eh so there you go uh as always we uh do a funny improv ramble so that you uh don't see the setup that's coming, but unless you've watched the show for a long time. Refer the show to your family, friends, and relatives. Remember, Christmas is coming, the holidays, Thanksgiving. You're going to be sitting around the table with all your relatives. And as we all know, we all have those relatives that maybe aren't quite on the sharp end.

You know, as George Carlin used to say, think how dumb the average person is and realize 50% of the people are dumber than that. And I'm one of them. So I know this for a fact. But you don't want to be sitting around that table talking to people that maybe need to read a book. And that's why you have great authors on. So refer this show to your family, friends, and relatives. Tell them to go to iTunes and sign up over there. Give us a five-star review over there as well.

Goodreads.com, Forge. That's Chris Voss. LinkedIn.com, Forge. That's Chris Voss. YouTube.com, Forge says Chris Voss, YouTube.com, Forge says Chris Voss, and Chris Voss1 on TikTok. Today, we have one of the most amazing authors on the show. He's the author of eight books of strategic thinking. I love strategic thinking. I've been a strategist since I was young, and I'm still trying to figure out how to do it. So he's going to help me do it and figure out what I've been searching for all my life. And maybe you too, as well.

I'm just telling people what they've been searching for all their life. Like, oh my God, I've been searching. You've been searching for the Chris Voss show and brilliant authors all your life. Rich Horwath is on the show with us today. His amazing new and hottest latest book is called strategic the skill to set direction create advantage and achieve executive excellence it's going to be released on november 7th 2023 which once again in my setup uh makes it so you can give send them to your relatives buy several copies send to christmas and that way when you go visit them for Thanksgiving dinner, Christmas dinner,

they might be smarter. You know, no guarantees. They have to read the book. So make sure they do that as well. Rich Horwath's vision is to teach the world about how to be strategic. For more than 20 years, he has focused relentlessly, relentlessly, damn it, on providing leaders with innovative concepts and practical tools to think, plan, act strategically in order to set direction, create advantage, and achieve their goals. As a founder and CEO of Strategic Thinking Institute, Rich serves executive leadership teams as a strategy facilitator, strategic advisor, and executive coach. He's helped more than a quarter million people around the world develop their strategic thinking

and planning abilities. And damn it, now he's here to help all of us on the Chris Foss show, that is. Rich is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of eight books on strategic thinking. He's been rated the number one keynote speaker on strategy at national conferences, including the Society for Human Resource Management Strategy Conference. He's appearing on ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox TV to provide commentary and Fast Company, Forbes, and Harvard Business Review. Now he reaches the pinnacle of his career. He's on the Chris Voss Show. Welcome, Rich, to the show. How are you?

Chris, I'm great, and it's very exciting to be with you today. Thanks for the opportunity. It's very exciting to have you. Give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs, please, sir. Yeah, so if you're looking to be strategic, you can go to strategyskills.com. So strategyskills.com, hundreds of free resources, videos, white papers, infographics, lots of good free stuff there to be more strategic. There you go. And if you're not looking to be strategic, you can visit my OnlyFans at onlyfans.com.

Don't watch that. I don't know what that means. Don't go there. So welcome to the show. Congratulations on the newest book. What motivates you on to write this book? You put eight books in the can, or this is maybe your eighth book in the can. What motivates you on to write this one?

So, Chris, during COVID, a lot of the live stuff that we're able to do, keynote speeches, in-person workshops, obviously that was done. So I was doing a lot of executive coaching one-on-one through video, as a lot of people were doing video. And one of the things I would do is I would ask my clients, you know, can we record it? And then I'd have it transcribed with an AI software. And as I was going through about three and a half years of manuscripts from different people that I talked to, one word kept popping up time after time. And that word was navigate. I'm trying to help my team navigate the competition. I'm trying to navigate this new market.

We're trying to navigate this. And it really dawned on me that that's a major challenge today. Research shows that about 70% of leaders feel overwhelmed with all the stuff that's coming at them day in and day out. So for me, it was really about how do you help people navigate what they're going through day in and day out? So that was really the genesis for this new book strategic was how do I help people navigate their business effectively and efficiently? There you go. And there's more to navigate now, especially with COVID, post COVID, supply chains, customer changes, employee sort of behavior changes where, I mean, no one wants to go back in the office anymore. Companies like you must come back to the office. And I just saw something about some different companies trying some different things. Um, and it's, uh, it's definitely a challenge. I mean,

the, the marketplace has changed and I hear some people say, Hey, we, when do we go back to the way it used to be? And I'm like, it's not ever coming back. Oh, employee wages too, is a big factor as well. Uh, so give us a 30,000 overview of the,000 overview of the book and your foot and what's inside. Yeah. So if you think about a compass, typically you're North, South, East, West. I developed a compass to help business people navigate. And that's really four areas, strategy, leadership, communication, and organization. And so within each of those areas, you've got lots of

different tools, tips, checklists to help people be better. So let's talk about competition. You know, everybody's in a highly competitive markets these days. You're competing globally online in addition to brick and mortar. So a lot of the tools in the competition section are, you know, who do you, who's your value proposition most important to? What's the differentiating activities that you do that nobody else can do? And then how do you position yourself to be really effective, not just short-term in the next quarter, but long-term too? And then how do you innovate? How do you see what's next? A lot of people are so mired in the day-to-day, they don't lift their heads

up and think about what's my business look like in a year or two years or three years. But if you're a leader of a business, you've got to be able to take time to set aside and think about what's that future state look like. So a lot of the tools in the book are helping you navigate the day-to-day stuff in those four areas. But then also, what should the business look like down the road? There you go. You've got to have that future sense and that future vision, right?

Yep. It's if you don't, I mean, well, those who fail to plan plan to fail. There you go. So tell us a little bit about your hero's journey. What got you interested in strategy and business? And many of the books that you've written fall on the same sort of theme. Hi folks, Chris Voss here with a little station break. Hope you're enjoying the show so far. We'll resume here in a second. I'd like to invite you to come to my coaching, speaking, and training courses website. You can also see our new podcast over there at

chrisvossleadershipinstitute.com. Over there, you can find all the different stuff that we do for speaking engagements if you'd like to hire me uh training courses that we offer and coaching for leadership management entrepreneur ism uh podcasting corporate stuff uh with over 35 years of experience in business and running companies as ceo and be sure to check out chris foss leadership institute.com now back to the show chrisfossleadershipinstitute.com. Now back to the show. What was it like growing up for you and what shaped you?

Yeah, so I'd say, first of all, sports. Back in my day, we didn't have travel sports where you played one sport nine months out of the year and 10 months out of the year and just go, go, go. Our sports were in the backyard, in the alley, on the playground. We played every sport, basketball, baseball, football, you know, ran track, did everything back then. And so it was really about how do you out-compete the other guy? And at a certain point, you know, I realized, hey, I'm not the biggest guy out there,

the fastest guy out there. I got to use my head, man. I got to think about how do I beat this person that's bigger and faster than me? So that was really the genesis. I got to use my head, man. I got to think about how do I beat this person that's bigger and faster than me. So that was really the genesis. I then became a goalie in soccer and you're hanging back in the net. There's not a lot going on sometimes. So you're really thinking about what's going on, but then all of a sudden, boom, everybody's down on top of you. You watched the women's world cup recently, all of a sudden, boom, you got to make a decision like that. So I realized that, Hey, if I can think strategically, if I a sudden, boom, you got to make a decision like that. So I realized that, hey, if I can think strategically, if I can make decisions quickly, that's something that's

going to be valuable, not just in sports, but in business as well. And so that's really was kind of the genesis for me thinking about what do I want to do longer term? I'd say the other forming thing too was in high school during the summer, I was a garbage man. And I know Chris, you're saying, hey, what a glorious job. You are a garbage man, dude. How do I get that job? It was all you can eat. Definitely. Every day, all you can eat.

Wasn't always the best food, but people would leave out some good stuff. Once in a while, there'd be a case of beer on the side if it was 90 degrees in the summer. But being a garbage man helped me realize that, look, you've got to put in the work day in and day out. We were up at 4.30. We'd work 12-hour days. You'd come home. You take one shower. Mom would say, hey, you still stink. Get back up, take another shower. You take another shower. You get up, you do it again. So part of being strategic is not just, hey, I'm a smart person and this is what I've got. It's the discipline every day to practice that skill. So that's one of the things that I work with executives is, hey, you've got to develop that

discipline. If you play golf once a year, you play the guitar once a year, you're going to stink. You've got to be able to do that on a regular basis. And most people, Chris, as you know, they're doing strategy once a year for a couple of days during a planning meeting at the offsite holiday inn for two days, you know, with a nice buffet. And then all of a sudden they go home and strategy's gone. That doesn't work. So, again, it's that discipline to be strategic on a regular basis. The book is really just a guide to help people build that habit day in and day out. There you go.

It's a muscle. It's a muscle. You got to keep working. It's just like going to the gym uh and and strategy is so important i grew up uh playing strategy games and i got locked locked into the challenge of them uh i've never been smart enough to play chess and chess is a great strategy game uh an incredible strategy game i think it's why it's so you know it's been endeared for eons of time, uh, man. Uh, but yeah, I used to play a lot of risk strategy.

Stratego was the game. Yeah. Uh, checkers. And like I said, I, I, uh, I'm probably one of those people who ate the checkers half the time. Wait, is that a politician? Um, but, uh, no, I, I, uh, I guess I came across too much lead in my, uh, growing up. It was one of those wonderful things they had in our generation, lead paint chips.

It tasted great. It gave me that kind of taste. It was bitter, but it kind of made your tongue tingle a little bit. It's great stuff. So there you go. But I've always loved strategy. I love strategy in business. I love thinking of it like a chess game,

even though I'm too lazy to bother to pick up chess. And most people need to think about it because there's so many different moving parts and pieces on like on a chess board to a business, right? Yeah, absolutely. And I'm with you. You know, chess is a great game. But again, it's really about not thinking

just what's happening today or this next move, but it's what's happening two moves, three moves down the road. I mean, I've admired you and your business for many years. I mean, you've been able to look forward and I don't know if you had some insight that the rest of us didn't have, but the fact that you got in so early and doing great podcasts, doing lots of content. I mean, you were binge contenting before Netflix or HBO or anybody else was doing that. So, you know, kudos to you for, for, for starting that out and being a pioneer, you know, in this space. But I think to your point, you know, when we, when we, when we build strategy, you said it before,

it was perfect what you said. It's like building a muscle. In the book, we talk about this idea of strategic fitness. And it's exactly what you mentioned, Chris. It's how do we build that muscle day in and day out? Because we don't want to be what I call the talking dead. You know, we see the walking dead, the talking dead, right? These are the zombies in our companies. And everybody out there, you know who they are. They're in the meeting. They start talking for three, four, five minutes uninterrupted. They stop and everybody looks around. It's like, what did they just say? They're religious.

Right? There's nothing there. So for me, the biggest battle in business today, it's not AI versus humans. It's the strategic versus the unstrategic. So we got to get rid of those zombies. We wouldn't put up with a zombie eating Mark from finance during our staff meeting, but we let the unstrategic people dominate our world. And it slows us down. It takes us into these rabbit holes that are impossible to get out of in meetings. And again, if we can build that

muscle, not just for ourselves, but across the team, now we're going to be a lot more cohesive and we're going to be on that proverbial same page a lot more often. There you go. You know, you're, you're right about the business zombies. Uh, I just have this image of people I've seen come into meeting. We must have meeting, uh, brains, brains. Uh, and you're like, yeah, you're going to eat my brains during that meeting. Cause you're going to kill me with your, with your stuff. But there's those people that, uh, you know, they're, they're buzzword addicted to business because I don't think they know how to do anything else. There's just this huge sucking sound they have in their brain. Um, you talk in the book about a common language for strategy and business planning. What does that look like or sound

like and why is that important over buzzwords? Yeah, yeah, great point, Chris. So over the last 20 years, if you do the research has been done, there's about 91 different definitions of the word strategy. So we've got that many definitions, you know, it's hard to get people in the same place. So I came up with a simple thing based on the two foundational questions of any plan. So if you have a plan for your show, if I have a plan for my company, or FedEx has a plan for their company, there's two questions you got to answer. What are we trying to achieve? And how are we going to achieve it? Right? Those two questions. So when you think about came I came up with the G.O.S.T. framework, stands for goals, objectives, strategies, tactics. Those words have been around for thousands

of years. But when we use them precisely, then we can gain some traction. So goals and objectives, they answer that what question. What are we trying to achieve? The goal is generally what we're trying to achieve. The objective is more specific with the timeframe. Strategy and tactics then answer that how question, how are we going to achieve it? So strategy is how generally are we going to achieve it? And then the tactics are how specifically. So that ghost framework, goals, objectives, strategies, tactics is really a way for people to have that common language and to get away from those 91 different definitions. Definitely. And you've got to keep it simple, stupid. You know, if people, that KISS technique, if people, you know, you overcomplicate things.

I was watching a TikTok recently. I posted on my Facebook of this gal who did a podcast, a podcast, tech bro sort of podcast, and she just spilled like just all these really high end buzzwords that were just like, you know, at the end, you're just like,

what the hell did they say? And well, it may sound good. I don't know. An investor, you know, if you're the CEO and you've got to get up at your investor, you know, your investor call

or your meeting, your annual meeting for the shareholders, it doesn't translate well, I think, to the employees who are just like, what? Can you talk like a normal human being and not like an alien? So goals, objective, strategy, and tactics. Do I have all that right? Yeah, that's perfect.

There you go. I love that sort of thing. You have another cool axiom, and it's called the strategic quotient. Can you tease a little bit about that out to us? Yeah, absolutely. So I know in listening to one of your recent podcasts, you talked about the emotional intelligence, the EQ, and that's a big one for sure. So we know there's IQ out there, intelligence quotient, you've got the EQ. So what I realized was there wasn't a measure of people's strategic abilities. Typically in a company, we'd say, oh, she's a VP, so she must be strategic. But as you know, somebody at the bottom of the pyramid can be the most strategic person. So I wanted to say, hey,

let's objectively measure who's strategic and who's not. And then let's come up with a plan to help them get better. So the strategic quotient was developed as a validated assessment. It's got 50 statements, and it really measures how people think, act, and plan strategically. So it really measures mindset and behaviors. It's not, what do you think about X or what do you think about Y? It's actually measuring people's behaviors. And the results early are pretty interesting. I'd say the average score is around 70%, 69, 70%. People tend to be higher in the execution part. So that's around 73, 74. They tend to be lower in the ideation,

that innovative thinking, that acumen part, that tends to be like a 65, 66. That's what we're finding at least with the first couple thousand people that have taken it. So again, what I'm thinking is IQ gets you hired, EQ gets you promoted, SQ gets you to the C-suite. So again, we're hoping that people will use that as a way to not just sugarcoat who's strategic and who's not, but let's figure it out. There you go. And what was the one term, the idea? Ideation, yeah. Ideation, there you go. Exactly. So just being able to come up with new ideas, different ideas, that innovative thinking

part. And the way I break it down in the assessment is there's three areas. There's acumen, which is the innovative thinking, the new ideas. There's allocation. So that's the trade-offs that you use with your resources, your time, your talent, your budget. And then there's the action, which is really the execution. So acumen, allocation, action, and we dive into each of those three areas to measure people's strategic ability. There you go. So how do you measure people's ability to come up with ideas and innovate? One of the challenges I've had is, I had a great business partner for years and I was the visionary and he was kind of the guy who could just do the mundane stuff. And so we made a great team.

But in times of crisis or times where you're just like, hey, we're slowly bleeding out here, we need to patch this hole in the ship, I would say, look, take a yellow pad home this weekend. I need ideas. I need some ideas. I'm not the corner of all the great ideas. And let's both come together back with our ideas, have a meeting on Monday and go over what we wrote down and see if we can figure out some, some better ways to fix this or innovate. And I would give him the yellow pad and say,

take it home. And, and I would come back with, you know, pages and pages of, of stupid, good, I don't know, just anything, man. I just, you know, I'll throw anything on paper and then see if I can, you know, it's like clay. You kind of throw it down and see if you can form it into something. Sounds like my life. It sounds like my dating life. Anyway, welcome to Tinder.

But I would always come back with all these things and he would come back with nothing. Like zero. And I'd be like looking at him going, dude, like you can, like you can just fucking write something down just to fake it till you make it like just an idea.

Like he just couldn't. And, and you know, I could trust him beyond a shadow of a doubt for 13 years until I couldn't. But, um, when you got Yoko on it, uh,

but, uh, uh, you know, it's how's how do you measure something like that? Because I really would like to know that when it comes to people that I want to put in strategic positions of a company, because if they can't innovate, I don't have much use for them. Yeah, absolutely. You know, the technique that you used research shows that is the best thing is it's not the quality of ideas. It's the quantity of ideas which will generate the quality. So what you did, the legal pad, take a few days, come up with as many ideas as possible. Like you said, some are good, some are not good, some are really ugly. But the reality is the most prolific people in history are the ones that had

the most ideas. They just had the most quantity ideas. And then they acted on the few that really were things that resonated with people. The one thing I'd add to that is what I found helpful is giving people a question or two to help frame that innovation, to frame that sandbox for them to think in. Because to your point, Chris, if somebody is not innovative and we say, hey, go come up with ideas to your point, if they're not innovative, they're going to struggle because there's so much room. But if you say, hey, I want you to think about how do we deliver this podcast to a wider audience? That's a more defined sandbox. Maybe they think about that. And then you use that technique of domain

jumping where you say, okay, if, how would Uber or how would Apple or how would McDonald's deliver this podcast? What would they do if they were in our shoes? So now you're jumping into a different domain and research shows that always drives a lot of new ideas is when you, is when you cherry pick ideas from one area and you make them into something that makes sense for your area. So, you know, back to your question, how do you measure that? It's really about people's ability to first assess their situation. Secondly, come up with a quantity of ideas and then third, be able to filter those ideas. So if they can do those three things, that's a good indication that, Hey, you've got

somebody that is going to be, is going to be strategic. There you go. In fact, you just gave me an epiphany on how to get more people to watch the show. We put the show on OnlyFans and make the guest show up topless. So there you go. I don't think they'd want to see me topless. Start with your next one. We're doing your Second City callback joke strategy right now on the show. We're calling back the OnlyFans jokes.

So there you go. You know i love that i i i need more you know i i learned a long time ago even though i hit a few home runs in a row when we first started companies uh that i am not the arbiter of all the great ideas as a ceo and i think if you think you're if you think as a ceo you are you're probably not uh and so me having resources having a learning organization uh having an organization where people are aren't afraid to put forth ideas or suggest stuff making sure they understand the how and why like we i used to take the extra time to explain to people why we built something when we teach them systems so that if they looked at it and went there's a better way to do this idiot um they would offer it and but having people around you that can really or advisors or strategic advisors you

know this is why people have consultants and and other things that can help you help you strategically look at outside of the box because sometimes you get trapped in it i think we we had a conversation with somebody on that earlier this week. I'm not sure if that show's published or not. There's a bunch in the can. But having that strategic thing is really important. And so, yeah, any way that I can identify people that can come up with ideas. And I think it's a muscle too, because I didn't used to be an idea guy. I didn't used to be a CEO extrovert type. I used to be very internalized and probably an introvert when I was a kid. But so I think it's a muscle you can develop. You just have to develop it, right?

Absolutely, Chris. You're right. You're spot on. If you look at the billionaires out there, the people like Richard Branson, Sarah Blakely, people like that, one of the common themes that you see across them is they all carry a notebook with them. A lot of them still carry a physical notebook and they write those things down. Some of them actually will even pose a question before they go to bed. They'll write it down in the notebook and they want their

subconscious to be thinking about it as they're sleeping. So to your point, to build that muscle, you got to trigger it daily. So to have a notebook, have an app on your phone where you're writing down questions, and then your brain is going to be thinking about those things and ideas will pop up. You'll be taking a bike ride, taking a shower, whatever. Those ideas will pop up. You jot them down. If you don't write that stuff down, they're gone. So you've got to find a a place to record them that'd be one thing i definitely would say the best leaders i've worked with find a convenient place to write those ideas down that's the way that you build that muscle that you're talking about there you go i send a lot of emails to myself like at the gym or something uh something will come to me and i'll send an email to myself and then i ignore all those emails

uh so uh just left is the answer and all the ones with money on them. Master the four disciplines of strategic fitness. So what we've been talking about is that principle you, I think you mentioned early in the show, and these aspects help build your strategy fitness, your leadership fitness, your organizational fitness, and communication fitness. And you like how I worked the gym thing in there? See what I did in there see what i did i just want to make sure no one missed that setup because i i worked at that one um but these are these are really important to give your uh

to give your uh to play on it more to give your people and your business that dexterity because to me one of the early things there was a book I read early on. I think it was the fifth, something about the fifth element. It was about how to build a learning organization. And this was before I created my first multimillionaire company, but I created a few other ones, but I was really endeared

towards creating a learning organization and one that was very agile or what you talk about in fitness in your book. And so what are some more ways that we can kind of encourage our different companies to do that and develop it? Well, I think the first thing is create accountability. It's amazing how often we nitpick people on stuff that doesn't really matter, reports that don't get read, to your point, emails that don't get read, but your point, emails that don't get read.

But we don't really measure ideas. And so some of the better companies I'm working with today are having people accountable for ideas. So every week, every month, you've got to submit three to five insights. And I define an insight as a learning that leads to new value, either for your internal customers or your external customers. So these companies are saying, look, every month you got to submit three to five. We put them on an intranet or some other portal internally. And now we've got all these ideas continuing to churn in. And now we're all collectively, to your point, Chris, we're creating that learning organization because we're all using

those ideas and we're not in these silos. It's amazing how many organizations still have these silos where this is our idea and this is our idea and this is our idea when you're not really embracing the collective, that connective tissue of thinking that's across the organization. So I'd say that definitely is the biggest one is create accountability for ideas and insights. And then the other one, and we talked a little about this before the show, is just the idea of excellence. You know, excellence is defined as deviation from the norm. If you're doing the same normal stuff, the same normal way as everybody else, guess what? You're going to be middle of the pack forever. So you've got to find ways to blow things up, to try stuff that's not going to work. And you've got to create a culture that

allows people to fail and move on quickly. So, again, I think it's that idea of create accountability and really focus on excellence. Deviate from the norm. How can we do stuff nobody else is doing? There you go. So you guys have a central board. You have people put up ideas and kind of create some competition and some drive there and some recognition to people when they advance good ideas and, and kind of help build that muscle organization wise.

Yeah, exactly. That's it. You know, you create the competition. A lot of companies I work with, they'll create a gamification system too. So you're getting,

you're getting badges, you're getting points, you're getting dollars, you're getting, Oh really? Oh yeah, absolutely. Gamification,

love it. Yeah. You it yeah you got you got to gamify stuff these days especially with the younger generations come up i mean they grew up on those games i mean i grew up with pong uh which was pretty static but now the games are are pretty great so yeah you got to increase uh put that gamification i think that helps too there you go i love the gamification concept because people really love it and like i say they're addicted to it even when i play video games I'm like, I see you're training me here with your little gamification. Okay, I'll play along.

But, you know, it does keep people engaged and motivated. And I love the concept of doing that because I've often thought of, hey, God, how can we get people to contribute more ideas? Maybe I just sit there with their paycheck on Friday and be like, got any good ideas? You don't get your paycheck until you get one. Don't do that, people. It's not the right thing to do because they're ready to go and go spend that thing. But that's a great concept and anything you can do to create an organization that can feed more ideas because that's really where it's at. If you don't come up with the good ideas and the good innovations, as you spoke about early in the show about planning for your future,

your competitors will, and they'll beat you to market, and there's endless examples of that. Just to clarify, too, The Fifth Element is a great movie. The book I'm referring to is called The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge. Senge? Is. Senge? Is it Senge? And I loved his book and the workbook that came with it. But, you know, understanding how to build these organizations to make it so that they can rock and roll and kick ass can make all the difference.

What are some other things in your book you want to tease out that maybe we haven't touched on? Yeah, you know, I'd say one of them is meetings. You know, you touched on it before, you know, the zombie meetings. And it's amazing to me, you know, about 80% of executives say that their meetings are unproductive and a waste of time. And 80%, that is a crazy number. When you start adding up the salaries that are in these meetings, that people allow that to happen. So I think, you know, one of the last chapters we talk about is strategic meetings. What does that mean? And for me, there's three things you got to have in a meeting. You got to have intent. So what's the purpose of this meeting? You should have an

agenda. You should have what's the outcome that we're looking for. It's amazing how many people go to meetings where there's no agenda. They don't even know what's going to happen. They just show up and hopefully it goes well. So the second thing is decisions. You've got to make decisions in meetings. The reason we're talking about the same stuff month after month after month is because people aren't making decisions. You know, the word decision comes from the Latin word decadenti, which means to cut off. So if you've got trees on your property, every few years you've got to cut off, you've got to prune some of those dead branches. We've got to prune off the dead topics in meetings too. So take the time to say, what are we deciding in this meeting? And then the third one is really those insights. What did we learn? What are our takeaways? What are the action items?

What are the next steps so that we're actually moving stuff forward as we go? So I think that's one of the big concepts is let's make meetings a lot more strategic versus tactical stuff that just, you know, is not going anywhere. Yeah. And I think you said, what, 75% of meetings are wasted time? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You know, the other thing we probably need to recognize, correct me if I'm wrong here, is we also need to realize that sometimes the agenda is just not to do any work and go to a meeting just to F around a little bit and just screw around, have some donuts and coffee and just, I don't know, argue about nothing and just really stall for time when you don't want to make decisions sometimes or strategic decisions because you're afraid you'll make the wrong one. It's kick the can down sort of, it's kick the road mentality where you have a meeting, we're going to assign something to this meeting.

And then you just decide to have four more meetings, kicking the can down the road to, uh, come back and decide what every you're supposed to decide in that meeting. And you really don't make a decision other than just like, well, everyone think about it some more. We'll talk about it next month. And right, right, right, right, right. Yeah. The other one, just to build on what you

said earlier around the whole fitness piece in, uh, in those workouts is there's a chapter around, uh, mental toughness. And what we talk about is we, we look, I did some research on Olympic athletes, professional athletes, people like Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, uh, Simone Biles, other, other great athletes. And we said, what's their mental routine before games? And so we broke that down and we said, then how do you take a mental routine like that and apply it to a business situation? So if you've got a big meeting or you're presenting to the board of directors, you don't want to just walk in there and wing it.

You know, what's your mental routine like? What's the state of mind? You know, so we talk about using performance statements. So, you know, if you tend to be more of a dictator type of leader and you're just, you know, ordering people around, maybe one of your performance statements is, hey, I'm going to listen first. I'm going to talk second. So that when you go into that meeting, you're thinking about that type of performance. So one of the, I think, more interesting chapters is around how do you take sports mental performance and apply that to business? And a lot of, I heard an analogy recently that, I can't remember who it was, but it was a famous coach.

And he talked about how the night before the game, know your game plan, or at least like the first eight plays, and memorize those. And when people go into the Super Bowl or any different game, they have a game plan. They have a set of plays that they put forth. And then, of course, they'll probably adjust the plays as they play out and the fluidity of the game. But knowing that, going in and trying to manage that agenda can make all the difference.

And people do that. If you, like you mentioned before that sports analogy and, uh, he would, he would tell people that I, before know your game plan the night before, or at least, you know, before you wake up in the morning and go that way,

if something happens, the game's delayed, you end up late to the game. There's some sort of kerfuffle or whatever the distraction might be. Yeah. Um, you know, your first eight plays. And then you kind of kick into gear from that.

And you're not lost. You can at least put that first foot down and get off on the right foot, as I like to say. So I love that concept and everything else. Anything more you want to tease out of the book? Yeah, you know, I think that the main thing is, is chris especially these days and you touched on it earlier everybody's so reactive we're reacting to text messages to emails to voicemails you know people start their day they're just jumping into their inbox and now we're we're basically the bumper car at the carnival and i think the the

take-home is don't be a carny you know be strategic we don't want to be the guy at the carnival. And I think the take home is don't be a carny, you know, be strategic. We don't want to be the guy at the carnival, just bouncing around from one thing to the next, riding that bumper car. We want to be more thoughtful and intentional with our day. And the reality is, and you touched on it too, it's this idea of new growth comes from new thinking. You know, you can't do the same thing in the same way year after year after year and expect something different, miraculously new to happen, right? That's Einstein's definition of insanity. So we've got to have ways to trigger ourself to have that new growth, which is going to drive that new thinking and those new ideas. So I think those are the main take-homes is let's step back out

of the day-to-day, be more proactive, less reactive, and we got to carve time out, put it in your schedule to think. If we don't think, we're just going to be reacting, and now we're going to be following everybody else's agenda in our world and not our own. There you go. It's so important to be reactive. In strategic thinking, most people don't really do it. They're like, well, I don't know, i show up for work nine to five and all that good stuff so we're gonna try something new on the show and hopefully this will be a running uh gig and bit where we're going to ask our uh guests uh interesting questions that'll get to know you to know them better and me to know them better as well probably both of us all of us all of us in the audience to know them better and we'll have

some fun with it too now there is a bit of risk and reward to this conversation. Hopefully all of our guests always read the fine print that says we inherit future children and stuff like that. But if we're going to ask him a series of questions here, if he gets the questions wrong for the most part, he'll be thrown in the Chris Foss show gulags and tortured indefinitely. If he gets them right, he will be able to return to his wife and children. And when we tested this on the show before,

we did have some people that got the questions wrong on purpose, so they didn't have to go back to their home. So you might want to see a psychiatrist if that's your issue because you don't want to be in the Chris Foss show gulag. So I'll have to ask you, uh, Rich, are you ready for the gauntlet here? Let's do it. All right, let's go ahead and circumvent this.

So a series of questions here. It's up to you to get them wrong or right. Uh, the first question, is it better to have a pet dragon or a pet unicorn, sir? You have five seconds. Pet dragon. Absolutely. Because fire beats water any day of the week.

There we go. Okay, we've got that recorded and locked in. That's your final answer? Yep. All right. Is it better to have a flying car or a teleportation device? Oh, teleportation device, because you can pop into anywhere and anything, and actually people don't know you can travel back and forward in time

with a teleportation device. That's how I use mine. There you go. Final answer. Final answer. There we go. That's locked in there.

Uh, is it, uh, which is now this is really controversial. So you'll want to think about this for a second. We'll give you a few extra seconds to work out. Should pineapple be on pizza or not? Never ever put warm fruit on anything. People fruit is meant to be eaten as a side by itself. Do not muck up my deep dish Chicago style pizza with fruit. Final answer. There you go. There you go. I think we lost half the audience and we gained half the audience. I don't know

what that means. Is it better to communicate using only emojis or only animal sounds? Animal sounds because prehistorically that goes back to our ancestors sitting around the fire, and that's how we communicated. And that's still how I communicate today, especially after one glass of scotch. There you go. I love smoke signals. They always work for me. And final question. This is probably one of the most important.

Could people be allowed to wear pajamas to weddings? Pajamas to weddings? No, but togas should be allowed because togas provide more, a more defined look

and it's a more regal look and it goes back to our Roman ancestors and I believe that's where weddings originated as far as you know. All right. Well, let me, let me ask the judges, judges, uh, how'd we do here? The judges said the, the last answer you got completely wrong. The answer is yes. You must wear pajamas, uh, as skimpy as possible to, uh, people who invite you to weddings

because, uh, well, you had to pay for a gift, so you can wear whatever you want. Screw those people. Uh, but the other ones were right. So you have survived the gauntlet, the gulag. We'll have to come up with the title for this bit. The,

the Chris Vosch show gauntlet gulag, uh, uh, bit. I don't know what the fuck. Uh, so gulag and goulash. I like goulash.

My Austrian grandmother makes a great goulash. So the goulash, the goulash, goulash of the Chris Voss show. I like that. We just might use that. So I'm sorry. You will have to return to your family and they'll have to put up with you for me right

now. Thank you very much, Rich, for coming on the show. Give us any final thoughts you want and plugs for all your dot coms. So Chris, again, really appreciate the opportunity. You provide a lot of great food for thought with the shows that you have. So thanks for the opportunity. You provide a lot of great food for thought with the shows that you have. So thanks for the opportunity. Again, for a lot of free resources, you can go to strategyskills.com. You can find me on LinkedIn, Rich Horwath. Love to communicate with people there. Put out a lot of content. And I've got a newsletter that's free. It comes out once a month

at strategyskills.com. You can sign up for strategic thinker and, really appreciated the, uh, the great, uh, conversation today, Chris. There you go. And I'm at the best part was the end.

So there you go. Uh, I can't believe we pulled that off. Uh, so there you go. Order up the book folks, wherever fine books are sold. And as always,

what we're telling people lately is buy like five to 10 copies. So you can give them to your family, friends, and relatives. You always got to have that spare gift to give to people because you didn't think of them because you don't like them but then they give you a gift and you're like oh crap i don't have anything for them buy a few extra copies of people's books that we have as authors on the show and then uh you always have something to hand them you know you're like hey i got this for you

and they're like i i work in medical why would i yeah no but you need to you need to think strategically medical uh order up wherever fine books are sold available november 7 2023 from And they're like, I work in medical. Why would I? No, but you need to think strategically in medical. Order of Where to Find Books is sold, available November 7th, 2023 from Wiley Books. Strategic, the key to set direction, create advantage, and achieve executive excellence. Thanks, Mattis, for tuning in. There's two to three shows a day, 10 to 15 shows a week. If you're not watching and listening to them all, quit your day job, please. Go to Goodreads.com, 4ChestChristmas,

YouTube.com, 4ChestChristmas, LinkedIn.com, 4ChestChristmas, and don't write me about how you can't pay your rent because you followed through with what I said earlier. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time. And that should have us out.