The Inevitable Collapse of Agile - David Stackleather

To get to the web page of the radio show, click here.

To download the mp3 file, click here.

To subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, click here.

This transcription was completed through an automated service.  Please excuse any typos or misrepresented words.

VoiceAmerica  0:04  
One problem facing people at many levels of business is how to make time for a work life and a personal life. Do you find that one seems to keep getting in the way of the other? This is the work life balance with Rick Morris. Even if you're not involved in the business world, you'll have a lot to gain by tuning into today's show. Now, here's your host, Rick Morris.

Rick A. Morris  0:26  
And welcome to another edition of the work life balance. Very excited to have everybody along. You know, I think it's still just really, really crazy times. I know a lot of the states in the United States are starting to kind of think about reopening and reintegration and you know, it's it's just been a crazy moment, but I had a moment of reflection this morning. I had a chance to join a mastermind with several of the john Maxwell team members. And really, you know, I think the the entire part of us being quarantine for that matter is that we really It's allowed me to focus more on connection versus distraction. Right, this is kind of the key thing that came out, I think, because I was traveling so much and because I was going all over the world and, and literally would lose two days a week to travel, there was just tons of distraction that I wouldn't allow that connection piece to always go and now that I'm kind of forced to stay in one spot, it's really been something to focus more on connection with people and so I challenge you to reach out and connect call three or four people today and just you know, maybe past clients or people that you haven't gotten, gotten in touch with recently and just have an opportunity to reach out to them. You know, I've got some some very special people in my life that that provides that connection that really just amplifies my energy and so I urge you to find the same. We also want to announce if you haven't had a chance to come join us at the pm tribe calm please do as for my project managers that are listening out there my agile lists that are listening out there. We wanted to create a community that did more than just deliver content, we wanted to deliver direct mentorship. So it's led by six of the brightest minds that we know in project management and agile and each one of us have lanes in which we have calls every week, the calls are recorded, but you have the ability to call into to the mentor and ask anything you want to ask and deal with any issue that you want to deal with. And we've got some phenomenal mentors, john Steinbeck, Colin Ellis, Peter Taylor, Elizabeth Heron, Elena Hill, and myself. And so it's just a great community of people that are really driven to watch you grow in and master your influence to be able to really do the job that we were intended to do. So that's at the pm tribe calm come join us over there. So we're going to get to our guests today. Our guest is is I'm really excited about this. He's an independent management consultant. And he's focused on unraveling track troubled large scale projects and helping organizations transformation into high performing and adaptable companies. In short, his mission is to help teams and organizations become better, better in the sense of increased teamwork, increased flow, increased learning and increased passion about their mission. Most companies today are run based on flawed and outdated assumptions about how people work their best. These assumptions around the structure work methods and management got us far during the Industrial Revolution. But those same approaches no longer work. The good news is we know what works now. And the challenge is that it's not easy or intuitive to get there and so we're going to talk to this gentleman who brings us this this great knowledge His name's David stack leather, David, how you doing, sir?

David Stackleather  3:37  
I'm good. Rick, how are you doing?

Rick A. Morris  3:38  
Doing fantastic. And you know, when I asked for a topic for the show, you know, the inevitable collapse of agile and so boy already I can feel the Agile is just, you know, just breathing heavy. Like, don't don't mess with my method. Don't you touch my standup right. Don't mess with my sprint. But let's talk about that. Right agile is is such a big buzzword and It's It's, you know something I looking at you on the screen here. I'm not going to guess age or judge age. But we've been through the ITIL. We've been through the Six Sigma craze. We've been through all the latest fads and things and, and so when when I first heard of agile, I thought it was a fad. I was like, man, they may even be around in two years, but right, it's hanging on. So talk to me. But why did you come up with that as a title? Why do you see it as an inevitable collapse of Agile?

David Stackleather  4:25  
Well, I, my early career, my first professional job was in when TQM was coming into the

Rick A. Morris  4:34  
TQM I'm certified baby.

David Stackleather  4:36  
Yeah, and process reengineering. And Mike hammer. And there was an executive at the company I worked for who was big into process reengineering. And I was kind of picked from the bowels of the organization as maybe I had an interest in that skill there. And so those things I was really passionate about that did a lot of work within the company I worked for with our clients, kind of an internal consulting company learned a lot traveled the world. And I still believe in all that stuff. I still believe in TPM. And I still believe in process reengineering in the in the right context. But it became clearer and clearer to me that there's a more fundamental issue that even if you have the recipe, even if you have the quote unquote, solution, there's a bigger issue and trying to accomplish that in larger organizations. And my most recent experience in a large scale agile transformation, were a very old school organization in the insurance space, which is famous for not wanting to change for some good reasons and some bad and looking at even an organization that wanted to go through the transformation and needed to go through a transformation. How much kind of nonsense there was within that structure and nonsense internally generated but a lot of nonsense externally generated from consulting firms. A lot of people who really had no idea really what they were talking about, but they had a certification over weekend and suddenly they felt they could suggest how an organization that is a multi billion dollar, billion dollar organization is going to operate and appreciating the complexities of that, you know, because it's not a machine that we're dealing with. And I've dealt in manufacturing environments, and those are also extremely complicated. But when you get humans involved in the situation, it's really complicated and the context is key. And so the more that I look at specifically agile, which I'm a big believer in the foundational principles of agile, I think this is the right direction, but the industry around it and what's being sold is is doesn't kind of hue to those standards. I don't believe and just like frankly, if we're speaking, you know, honestly, the T QM days, the process reengineering days, the Six Sigma days, whatever fad, you can mention the outcomes, I think we're generally disappointing to the various Businesses that implemented them not that there weren't successes. And I think we're seeing that now in the Agile space as well.

Rick A. Morris  7:06  
Well, so let's back that up and deconstruct it a little bit first, whether it's t qm ITIL, agile, Six Sigma, it's all plan, do check act. I mean, Pim Bach is doing that, is doing that. I mean, it's, it's all we're gonna plan, we're going to do it, then we've got a measure, and then we're going to act upon those measurements and deviations right there. Right? Plan, do check act. So that's why I always considered a fad. But I think my biggest determining factor of whether or not I really believe in what's going on, is whether is the first step that suggested and if the first step is suggested is we got to train everybody in the organization in new in new words and a new lingo. Right, then you're selling training, you're not selling a product because honestly, if you do it well, you don't really have to put anybody through training. It's just you just change the underlying structure and say, This is the way it's going to be done here.

David Stackleather  7:53  
Is that fair to say? No, I think the way that I I look at these I question, especially with the Large scale frameworks and I use safe as an example not because I have any particular issue with safe, but that's the most popular one. And I asked myself, what's being sold there? What's the business model and the business model is a certification business model. And it's a consulting, business model implementation business model, but really from the the large scale frameworks being sold. It's really the revenue stream is certification, which is why you pick just about any of the frameworks, or any of the organizations providing certification. And when I first got involved in the Agile space, there were a couple you know, you had your product owner and your Scrum Master certification, you know, there was a handful. Now, there's a dozen or more for most of these. Yeah, I mean, it's just it which is is kind of crazy in a lot of ways. And so just like any other business, they're coming out with new models all the time because they want to create new features and new models they can sell and that's really exciting. It's not fundamentally about improving an organization, it's about selling the training and all the kind of add on processes. And I think you're right in the executive or a leader will see that as you know, I call it installing the agile, you know, I want to buy the agile and install the Agile as if they're buying a printer or something. Right. And because of the way it's structured and sold, it kind of looks like that. And it seems very scientific, and it seems very official, and it's very expensive, and very time consuming. And by the time you get through all this certification and relabeling and all this process, a couple of things happen either it fizzles out, and people just still use the same terms but they're not really acting in that way. or an organization will try to fool itself because once you've spent millions of dollars implementing something, you can't really admit that it didn't. It didn't work. And so now you're you're, you're kind of forced to set to say that it did work or move on and Forget about it because you don't want to admit that you spent a huge amount of money doing something that didn't work.

Rick A. Morris  10:04  
Now Dean leffingwell is is a friend of the show and he's endorsed books that we've done. We wrote a book called agile Almanac, which was scaling all the different types of agile methodologies to the to the bigger scale. he endorsed that book, wonderful person, but the certifications coming out too fast. I mean, I was certified I think in four Dotto, and it's already up to five. And that was just a few years right and your certifications no longer valid because I decided I wanted to change the model. And the reason why I changed the model is because I'm getting feedback that it doesn't work right. So it's it's, it's this constant thing, but to be fair, one of the things that you said was was Tiki and and all these things were six sigma t qm, although they seem not to work in what I think happens is I think they do work I think, I think in their purest form when when, you know, the Toyota way, right, that was the big thing. Everybody wouldn't read that book and try to implement it like Toyota did. But it did work for Toyota. It was it was amazing what they did, but I love the way that you said the install methodology. So just go get me that no, that was a whole culture built and we've got a top down and everybody was no knowing what was happening. And so I want to get some of your feedback we're about to go to break here and I want to start talking about what you call the Agile industrial complex but to leave the listeners with something here as well as one of the biggest things that I see in failures of Agile is that we don't change the methodology the executives and I see this I have a lot of coaches on the line as well that a lot of john Maxwell team coaches and when when you approach an executive they go Okay, yeah, my team needs coaching. They're like no, no, we're starting with you. Oh, no, I'm fine. I'm good. I'd you know that my team needs that I'm you don't have to talk to me. And so I'm watching you know, a team base agile get started, but still being requested waterfall reports. So when is it going to be done? how much it's going to cost, which means the organization hasn't bought in, right? And so now you've spent all this money on training, you've got this agile team running and now when you're trying to then quantify it back up to the executives They don't, they don't that coach has never done it in a large scale like that insurance company there's the person that got sort of certification hasn't led anything on a large scale where the less transform a business right So, lots to talk about lots to unpack we'll get into the Agile industrial complex you're listening to David stack leather and Rick Moore's and the work life balance.

VoiceAmerica  12:27  
Are you frustrated with the overall productivity of your project management processes? Do you lack consistency and project delivery? Our squared consulting provides end to end services to assist companies of all sizes in realizing and improving the value of project management. Whether you want to build a project management office, train project managers or learn how to bring the oversight and governance to your project processes. r squared has tailored best practices to help you in all areas of project management, visit r squared consulting.com Are you getting the most out of your project management software. In many cases, it is not the software that is failing, but the implementation limitations or processes surrounding the use of that software. r squared can analyze your current use and help improve your return on investment. r squared can also suggest the best software for your organization and goals and assist in the selection implementation and training. Allow r squared to ensure that you are getting the value of your investment visit r squared consulting.com today from the boardroom to you, voice America business network.

You are tuned in to the work life balance to reach Rick A. Morris or his guest today we'd love to have you call into the program at 1-866-472-5790. Again, that's 1866 For 725790 if you'd rather send an email, Rick can be reached at our Morris at r squared consulting.com. Now back to the work life balance.

Rick A. Morris  14:12  
And we're back to the work life balance on this Friday afternoon visiting with David stack leather. David is talking about the inevitable collapse of agile. So that obviously piqued my interest. And I'm excited to have you aboard the show. One of the things that you brought up in in some of the pre interviews is you talked about the Agile industrial complex, can you can you describe what that is and what you're talking about there.

David Stackleather  14:33  
So this is the most visible aspect of this are the certification organizations, you know, the scrum.org and the scrum Alliance, and then some of the framework vendors safe and less than those kind of things. And that's even in the past couple of years that's kind of exploded. Even from a framework perspective. We have Nexus and others that have popped up and you know, I think as we talked about Before the break, a lot of this stuff is based on the same set of principles. It's just kind of a re mixing of it doesn't really bring anything new. And so this creates this process where there's an industry that's selling something to people. And there are multiple customers in the industry, which is kind of the complexity of it. The certification is one component of it. And those customers are employees, and folks who want to get into a job or a career. And the certification is just like in you know, the project management space, you had PMP certification, this is like that, but just worse than that, there's so many more. And the employees and the workers feel they have to become certified so you have a ready made audience. Hiring managers are part of this as a customer of this complex because hiring managers are looking to hire a fairly complicated skill set and a lot of these roles are Scrum masters and amazingly complicated skill set to hire for. And so as a hiring manager, it's much easier for me to simply Do you have a CSM and then I'll hire a CSM. And then, you know, just like in the old days where nobody got fired for buying IBM, you could say, well, nobody gets fired because you hired a CSM, they were certified, but nobody knows really what that means being certified. And you have executives who are for various reasons, some of them real, the performance of their organization isn't where it should be. And they're looking to change or they just want to be in on the latest fad to tell their friends that, hey, I'm an agile organization now. And so they want something to buy and install. And a lot of these large frameworks that come along with the certifications is something they can buy and feel that they can install. And what's what's fascinating, you said something before the break about, you know, it does work in certain contexts and stuff. And you mentioned Toyota and I totally agree. Now, the interesting thing is there's only one Toyota in the universe, right? And so the you know, the context is key there and in Toyota the, you know, executives were really bought in and continue to be really bought into the concepts and the philosophy behind it and the culture and that organization has built up over time. But you can't simply say to a, you know, a financial services firm be like Toyota, that just doesn't really work. And so a lot of this, this industrial complex is really about selling pieces of this to different customers. But it's not about fundamental transformation, because you can't, you can't just buy that in a box and install it.

Rick A. Morris  17:29  
Now, they, but they're sold it, that they're sold, what they they're sold a bill of goods, you write this, you will get this

David Stackleather  17:36  
there sold this as a bot and the more you know, kind of the more complicated it looks, the more pieces the more titles, all that stuff, the more it kind of makes sense to the existing narrative, which is really a false narrative, but they you know, they think there's just some tweak and it from an executive standpoint, they're really saying I want somebody else to change, I'm not going to change so give me something that I can install that will have these other people change. I think there's also something that's happened recently, a couple things that's happened recently. And by recently, maybe in the last decade. One is that you have a lot of executives and organizations that have found themselves in a position where they have to understand technology. Because their business, everybody relies on technology. You know, when I was in the financial services space, you would have executives talk about, I don't really care what happens in the technology department. And you know, I tried to tell them, if the technology stops working, this organization dies in 24 hours, right. And so there's no distinction between the business and the technology nowadays, but you have a lot of executives who this is new for them, and a lot of them don't really want to be involved in to the degree that they need to be. And so this this kind of scratches an itch to say I can, instead of understanding really what's going on there and be a part of that solution in the context of my organization and change myself and change how my my leadership team operates. I'll just buy this box of gizmos and have you guys install it. And it'll just it'll change the organization. But it fundamentally is an impossible ask. The other thing that's happened, you know, in the past maybe three or four years, I would guess is the very large consulting houses have come into this, they see this, the buzz generate, and large organizations, you know, on the kind of late adopters. And so that's an opportunity for them to just kind of, here's all the people, we're going to sell you thousands of hours of very expensive consulting folks to go in and transform your organization. And all they're doing is implementing the box of gizmos that you buy from the framework, implementing it without context within the organization. And they'll spend several years doing that. But fundamentally, your organization won't change because the culture didn't change the way the leadership operated, didn't change. And unfortunately, eventually all the employees will figure that out much quicker than the leadership And they'll become kind of upset that this is another fake change, which is probably one in a long series of fake changes within most organizations not all I mean, I want to be careful that there are there are definitely organizations out there that are trying to change and leaders that are trying to change but if you look at a percentage of organizations, I think that's a pretty small percentage.

Rick A. Morris  20:21  
And so so it's some it's important for us then to focus on the why of the change the one of the big things and misconceptions of Agile is if I install it will be faster. It's just it's it's, it's no different than saying I'm going to hire a personal trainers so that I can run faster, or that the day that you hire the trainer, you're running faster, right? That's Yeah, months of hard work and months of transformation in changing. And so I think the other thing is, is if if you're going to agile because you're having delivery problems and a lack of trust in the team and a lack of leadership, agile is only going to exacerbate that it's only going to make it worse because It requires more trust and more cohesive team units and stuff to be really effective. Right. But I recently had a client that that was sold the safe bill of goods essentially they wouldn't say but almost every single one of their projects is commercial off the shelf installations. Hmm. So now you're at the mercy of the vendor, and they're trying to be agile, and they're trying to do pies and it wasn't working for them. And I always said, so just don't do that ceremony. Right? Oh, well, you know, it's prescribed is what moves. But we have to recognize that these are just like the Pim Bock if you look at PMI in the pen back then that was a methodology but that doesn't mean I do every single one of those processes for every single project methodology. This isn't a doctor prescribing a treatment. If you don't do the treatment, you're gonna die. Right? This is this is somebody going you know, you may want to eat a couple less potatoes a rake, just gotta lay off the potatoes like a little bit there. Right? That's more of what it is. So So why, why is that difficult though for executive To just comprehend why we see it because we've been through it all. Yeah. Why? Why are these executives just buying it?

David Stackleather  22:08  
Well, I think part of it is that, especially in large organizations with a big hierarchy, most executives don't interact with the people who are at the interface to their customers. So I read somewhere, I wish I knew who had written it. But they said, there's a developer, a programmer has more in common with this with the CEO than any kind of mid manager does, right? Because they both just want to get something done at the end of the day. But most CEOs don't talk with the developers who are writing the software for their customers. And don't sit down and listen to what their problems are. And therefore, they have all this middle layer, this information that's being kind of squeezed the value before it gets into a PowerPoint and it gets into the boardroom. And the middle layers that are squeezing that information out are not doing it maliciously. They're been trained through the culture to do that. To what to expect, how to communicate. The one that I always kind of laugh at is I'm always admonished for providing too much detail to executives. You know, they don't want to go into that detail and say, Well, I understand they don't want to have a five hour long, you know, speech about something. But these are smart people. I mean, these are these are not dummies, why are we dumbing down everything? Why don't we have real conversations about real problems at the interface of the customers, which is the only relevant interface in an organization. And so I think that, because the executives and leaders have separated themselves, they don't go and sit down with developers and customer service people and the guy at the dock, unloading the boxes. All these folks know exactly where the problems are. And they'll tell you now, they may not tell you in the you know, most flowery language, they may not be polite about it, but they'll tell you what the issue is and you should be thankful if that's the case, but too many executive Don't do that. And I've seen in my career, a couple who are really good at that, and would know what was going on and could could interface with the organization at all levels in a way that made sense. But most are just kind of trapped in their daily meeting structure and PowerPoint decks, which there's no info. There's no valid information coming from that process.

Rick A. Morris  24:21  
yet. Carly Fiorina actually attributes a lot of her success, who first female CEO of a tech giant HP, to the fact that she would, she talked to everybody, she'd sit down with anybody and hear them out and got her best ideas from the lower level. There's the thing that I've done, I've dubbed it the fuzzy middle layer, you're talking about the middle layers, I call them fuzzy because that's where stuff just gets fuzzy. Right? But it's interesting, I was part of a project at at CAA, where we were developing an application on top of clarity ppm. So your total project portfolio management's got all of your statuses. And we built an app for an iPad, where you could do your strategy, but then you could tie your Strategy directly to the project. So you could see in a dashboard, how it was beautiful, but it bombed because it bypassed the middle layer, because it was getting the project managers were inputting data directly into the system. And that was feeding right up to the strategic plan, right. And there was no context being given by the fuzzy middle layer. And so it caused a lot of concern. Right. And so the project managers loved it. The executives loved it. The fuzzy middle layer, hated it. Really interesting to watch. Yeah, but why do we Why do we think executives stay so far removed? I've met with CIOs that literally just they're like, they like us. They like us, these consultants who will give them that level of data because we're the only people giving them real actionable data in the system. How do you How can they not see that culture getting for?

David Stackleather  25:52  
Well, they, you know, a part of it and happens over time. And so it's it's the old boiling frog problem. It's not a quick thing these cultures are generated over time. And it makes sense. It's logical that as, especially as an organization grows, you're like, Well, when I have, you know, 10 people in a room, and we're a little 10 person company, we don't have a lot of hierarchy. We're just in a room, we're talking, everything's flowing. If we have 1000 people in the organization, as the leader of the organization, I think, well, just mathematically, I can't deal with 2000 people. So it makes sense for me to create a hierarchy, rather than creating kind of a network process, which is a structure that you might want to look at, rather than a hierarchy. But the default is, well, I have a problem. So I need to hire a role. I need to have somebody to manage these people. And before long, you have all these structures. And there are a couple of things that happen, I think, to most executives, one is they get into a cadence, it's the you know, the old maker versus manager proc process where you know, managers can split their time in half hour increments, but if you actually build anything for a living, that's not possible you need to have long periods of time, financially. interrupted, you know, programmers don't develop software and half hour increments, right. And so they get into this cadence where it kind of makes sense you're having these meetings, you're think you're getting the information, it's very quick to fool yourself, that you have some line on what's really happening because that data is all being translated based on what the middle layer thinks you want to hear. And that middle layer is watching the executives reaction really, really closely. And so I think what a lot of executives don't realize is when they have a reaction, that's maybe a poor reaction, or they push back against something or they complain about something that that almost has a 10 x effect on the reaction of the middle layer, and it just makes the situation worse. And I've seen that time and time again, with like executive reaction in a meeting where somebody's presenting some data, which is valid and it's not good data. It's not good information. We'd rather not to be that way. And the executive reacts and I don't like this And the reaction is kind of a 10 x effect to the middle managers, and therefore the next meeting is even more watered down. For sure. And, you know, one of the things that has amazed me, especially in large, very large, like financial services organizations is the disconnect in, in opinion between the executives on what they think the worker level in the organization is, how good they are, versus how good they really are. And so they have an opinion that will our programmers aren't very good. That's why our software kind of goes down or whatever. And if you sit down and talk to the developers, you know, you're like, these are really smart people. These guys know what's going on. And you're lucky to have this kind of staff but the executives have never really talked to them and interacted with them and understand how many of their decisions which they don't even understand the impact of their decisions, kind of causes problems within the systems of the organization. They kind of they kind of lay the groundwork for their own torture in the future, but they just don't realize it. Because fundamentally, they're talking to people because they think that as an executive, my job is to sit in meetings and listen to PowerPoints and issue directives and that sort of thing rather than get lazy, right? You get lazy and you get used to that process. You know, we're all human. We get used to that this is kind of nice coming into the office, having my coffee, having somebody come and you know, give me a PowerPoint deck me making some kind of pontificating on it. The other thing that's dangerous let's let's pause right there because what I'd like to do is give some tips and tricks around kind of preventing this happen, but we do need to get to a break really quickly and we'll get it right on the other side of these commercials listening to Rick Morrison the work life balance.

VoiceAmerica  29:44  
Are you frustrated with the overall productivity of your project management processes? Do you lack consistency and project delivery? Our squared consulting provides end to end services to assist companies of all sizes in realizing and improving the value You have project management. Whether you want to build a project management office, train project managers, or learn how to bring the oversight and governance to your project processes. r squared has tailored best practices to help you in all areas of project management, visit r squared consulting.com. Are you getting the most out of your project management software? In many cases, it is not the software that is failing, but the implementation limitations or processes surrounding the use of that software. r squared can analyze your current use and help improve your return on investment. r squared can also suggest the best software for your organization and goals and assist in the selection implementation and training. Allow r squared to ensure that you are getting the value of your investment visit r squared consulting.com today it comes to business you'll find the experts here voice America Business Network.

You are tuned in to the work life balance to reach Rick A. Morris or his guest today, we'd love to have you call into the program at 1-866-472-5790. Again, that's 1-866-472-5790 if you'd rather send an email Rick can be reached at our Morris at r squared consulting.com. Now back to the work life balance.

Rick A. Morris  31:31  
And we're back to the work life balance on this Friday afternoon. Afternoon. We're visiting with David stack leather and talking about agile and how you what we may see as the inevitable collapse of agile and right before break. We were talking about 10 executives being removed. And you made a really good point, Dave, in talking saying that. There's opinions that are that are different in the opinion of the developers, the executives are is really based on that fuzzy middle layer that we're talking about. I always like that as executives when I go When I say well, who's who do you think makes the strategic decisions of this company? And you know, of course, well, I do, you know, this is what I get paid for, and I go, so do you have a prioritized list of projects? And are you resourced against those? And they go, No, I go, well, then you're not making the strategic, you may make the strategic direction, you're not making the strategic decisions, because the person that is that DBA in the corner that just got asked for things to do. And because there's no clear direction on what I should do, first, they're making the strategic decisions of what they're doing. And I've got 884 different strategic decisions being made a day. So that's, that's, it's an interesting concept, but how do we what are some tips and tricks to kind of help that or how do you deal with those opinions?

David Stackleather  32:44  
So So one, and you know, agile really helps in this way, which if if executives and leaders would accept this is the idea that if you operate off a prioritized backlog of things that you're working and whatever the granularity of the backlog is, you know, But certainly at a higher level about what the outcomes are you need for your business. And the idea of forcing that prioritization. So you don't have 10 number ones, which is usually in large enterprise, everything is important, we need to have 10 number ones. And, you know, the way that I describe it to them is Look, when you when you come into work in the morning, you have to get dressed, and you have to get your your set appearance to show up at work. All that stuff's important, your pants are important, your shirts important, everything's important, but you have to have a priority to get it done. You can't do it all at the same time. And so that's fundamentally the same way that we have to operate in these these projects on these efforts. One is to to the one decision is what is the most important thing at this moment in time and if you can, as a leader make that decision, then you need to figure out what information who do I need to talk to, because I think a lot of organizations kind of outsource that work just like you're describing to the to the layers the programmers and the DBAs in the to mid level managers to make those decisions, and there's 1000 decisions happening. And probably with most organizations 60% of the work is not really relevant to the success of the organization. It's kind of busy work, it'll be thrown away, or it doesn't really matter at the end of the day, but leaders are not making those decisions, because they're not having a hard discussion about prioritization, which is hard. I mean, I admit it, you have to make decisions about what you won't do, and what you will do. And that list should be fairly small, and it can change over time. But too many love to pass that

Rick A. Morris  34:33  
it's there.

David Stackleather  34:34  
Right? But that's the you know, as you just described, that somebody is making a decision. And they're making that decision for you. And you've just outsourced that decision to somebody you don't know. And you don't know why they're making that decision. And most likely, the decisions are not going to be consistent for delivery of some value that the organization needs, which is why you have so many organizations spending what seems like more and more money. Especially on technology efforts, but they see what they get more or less and less value out of the other end. And there's lots of reasons for that. But one, I think, is because of this lack of really, if you're an executive, the one thing you need to do is prioritize what's important to the organization, what what really needs to happen? And what are the goals of the organization and have a feedback loop to understand if you've if you need to change your decision, and very, very few leaders have that process. But the Agile kind of guides the way if you if you just take the kind of baseline agile of a prioritized backlog that concept and approach can help quite a bit, but too many don't want to have those difficult discussions because it is difficult. But let's Yeah,

Rick A. Morris  35:42  
let's talk about that first and prioritize backlog and I'll give you an example working with an executive recently. It first of all, the term agile coach, I hate that it's so why because I am an agile coach. But I don't, I don't install teams and I don't do whatever do is I work with executives to teach them how to think in an agile format? So for instance, you build me a data warehouse. Okay, well, that's fine. But what are we going to do with it? Well, you know, I don't know, I just need all my data in one place. And I'll tell you, no, that's not what we're going to build. And so I was doing this with an organization. And it's like, so what are we trying to get at? Well, we feel like we need to do local market plans. Okay, great. So how's the local market plan work? Well, we get our 50 accounts, and we get information. So great, let's, let's take six people, we'll do 300 accounts, we'll clean them up. We'll do this all manually to see if we're going to get a benefit. Before we go by Big Data Warehouse. I just kept asking questions. So I was like, so why can't we just take the 50 accounts and finally got the executive to go, Well, how do I know those are the best 50 accounts? And I was like, there's your first agile question, right? How do we know? And what are we going to use? So what are we going to use to determine it comes back? I don't know. That's why I needed their data warehouse to give me all the data and I was like, even if you have all the data, you're not going to know so Let's start here. And that's what an agile coach should really do is really force you to the value conversation and asking really good questions to be answered versus, well, I want to build a data warehouse and we're agile, so I should get it in six months instead of a year.

David Stackleather  37:14  
Right? Yeah. And I think it's, it's interesting, because as you're describing that, you know, if you take, take it out of the Agile coach or an external party, like yourself having that conversation and put an employee in that chair, they wouldn't get past the third question, right? What you know, they would just kind of be like, Okay, I'm done talking about this, just do what I told you to do. I have another meeting to go to. And so, you know, I think too many. I give you an example, a personal example, I've had somebody who's worked for me three companies over my career. And this individual will tell me when he thinks I'm going loopy, in a nanosecond, a very straightforward and sometimes it can be a frustrating conversation. You know, it's like he keeps pushing, pushing, pushing I've always valued that you have to have have to have people in the organization or people that you trust to be able to push back on the process or ask the 20 questions until you get to something that makes sense. And too often, executives or even mid level managers don't want to allow that. They have a very short fuse for that. And I think because it's part of it is because of the internal PR machine in your head that a lot of managers have when they're not involved in the day to day, and occasionally they'll come up on a situation. And they'll say, they'll make a comment, oh, you should do it this way. Or have you thought about that? And they're right, and the employee says, Oh, we didn't think about that. Sorry. And what people don't realize is the manager or the executive in their head, the PR machine in their head is saying, oh, you're a genius. Look, you just figured something out. You're a genius. You're a genius. And it plays in their head continuously and then they they end up believing their own internal PR when it's not just because you don't not involved and you just showed up and you saw it from a different angle and you made it statement and it seemed like you're a genius, but it's just the context of where you're coming from. It's not that you have any greater knowledge than your employees. And so I think they train, you know, and we all do this get trained over time, if we're not actively pushing back against this process, where we're shutting down the conversation that is so critical. But But oddly enough, we'll let an external party do it. If you bring in an external consultant, you'll let them get away with all kinds of stuff. Not always. There's always Oh,

Rick A. Morris  39:29  
yeah, I've been I've been escorted out a building. Yeah.

David Stackleather  39:32  
I mean, you have to kind of judge the context. But you can get away with a lot more as an external party and ask more uncomfortable questions and just about any employee in the organization, and that shouldn't be that way. Right? I mean, from because there's a lot of good knowledge in organizations that they're missing.

Rick A. Morris  39:50  
So we've got a couple of minutes left about two to three minutes left in this segment, what should executives really be focused on if agile is not going to work? What What should work what should they be? focused on.

David Stackleather  40:00  
So I think they shouldn't be focused on, you know, implementing a framework or having everybody get certified. They need to not that these things are not useful. These components of what we call agile are very useful. But executives to understand what's the context of their organization? What's the culture of their organization? What is the the goal, the optimizing goal of the structure of the organization? What do they need? What problem do they need to solve in the next several years, five years, and look at maybe tactics or structures that they can implement and test and have a feedback process but not to buy something that they're going to install? A large framework, starting to change titles, get people certified, really until you as a leader say, what are we trying to accomplish? And how should we change our work and there's a lot in Agile that'll inform on that and it's very valuable, but you shouldn't be your first step should not be to call up a consulting firm and say I want to buy the agile and to install the agile, because that's all that's inevitably going to fail. And most organizations, that's what they're doing. But the hard work is to understand your organization, go talk to the developers, figure out really what you really want to accomplish as an organization, maybe you don't have a problem as an organization, frankly, you might be working just fine. And agile is not the right thing to implement. And so that's the real process is to have those discussions and questions at all levels, not just in the boardroom.

Rick A. Morris  41:33  
I think I think one of my biggest suggestions I gave when we start talking about agile as if we're going to deploy agile, you need to start deploying agile yourself as an executive even in the way that you're bringing in people. So what's the value that you're going to negotiate in versus, you know, and that's my frustration with some of the big firms and in Look, they some of the big firms do a lot of great work. They do, to be fair, but then, you know, we have our run ins as consultants. I you know, I was an expert of this software for 20 years I was there when it was built. And I'm working with the lady that actually wrote the financial calculation portion. We're trying to solve something for a client and it's not working the way we want. And this guy comes in, sits down with the software for two minutes, and it gets a meeting with the CIO. And now I'm having to sit with the CIO, because this guy thinks he solved the problem. It's taking a Nic. Again, this is not I wouldn't suggest this. But again, I was an external consultant was frustrated. Plus, I'm Italian. I said, Look, I read all about your business on Wikipedia last night, I know how to solve all your problems. And the guy goes, What are you talking about? I said, that's what this joker just did here. I mean, you've got the people who wrote the software in the building. Let us finish this out. Right. He has no idea what he's talking about. But unfortunately, that's what we deal with in the consultant game. Right?

Unknown Speaker  42:44  
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Rick A. Morris  42:47  
So we're going to go ahead and take our final break right here. We're going to come back with David's deck later, we're going to find out how to get in touch with them, as well as what are some of the best advice he's ever received. Stay tuned right here. You're listening to Rick Morris and the work life balance.

VoiceAmerica  43:04  
When it comes to business, you'll find the experts here, voice America business network. Are you getting the most out of your project management software? In many cases, it is not the software that is failing, but the implementation limitations or processes surrounding the use of that software. r squared can analyze your current use and help improve your return on investment. r squared can also suggest the best software for your organization and goals and assist in the selection implementation and training. Allow r squared to ensure that you are getting the value of your investment visit r squared consulting.com today. Are you frustrated with the overall productivity of your project management processes? Do you lack consistency and project delivery? r squared consulting provides end to end services to assist companies of all sizes in realizing and improving the value of project management. Whether you want to build a project management office, train project managers, or learn how to bring the oversight and governance to your project processes, r squared has tailored best practices to help you in all areas of project management, visit r squared consulting.com.

You are tuned in to the work life balance to reach Rick A. Morris or his guest today we'd love to have you call into the program at 1-866-472-5790. Again, that's 1-866-472-5790 if you'd rather send an email Rick can be reached at our Morris at r squared consulting.com Now back to the work life balance.

Rick A. Morris  44:50  
And we're back to the work life balance our final segment this Friday afternoon still visiting with David stack leather David what company did your own consultant you have your own firm Yeah, I have my own, you know, one man operation called scale frameworks kind of as a joke about the Agile frameworks. Well done. I like that.

Unknown Speaker  45:11  
I was I was available

Rick A. Morris  45:14  
right out of people get in touch with you, how do they find you?

David Stackleather  45:18  
So the easiest way to get in touch with me is either at David at scaled framework comm if you want to shoot me an email or I'm on LinkedIn, at LinkedIn slash stack leather linkedin.com slash stack leather. I'm only one of two David stack leather so you'll quickly find out which one it is the other ones my dad, he works for the federal government, that's not me.

Rick A. Morris  45:39  
Well, what would you say is your your ideal client?

David Stackleather  45:42  
My ideal client is someone, a leader in an organization who really wants to make change. Who sees that the situation is changing maybe in their industry, they're not delivering as they they used to. They're not satisfying their customers. They don't really know What the what the gears are how the thing needs to change, but are open to anything and open to dealing directly with people who do the work open to changing hope and open to being in very uncomfortable situations. And those are the best, like if we can just have a real conversation and maybe it gets a little heated but we're okay at the end of the day, we're moving forward and trying to do the best thing for the organization and and the folks that rely on that organization, both employees and customers. That's the best situation I really get energized by those kind of situations. I'm not really big on politics and hierarchy and let's talk about the org charts and that sort of thing. That's, that's not really something that I was interested in.

Rick A. Morris  46:46  
So what some of the best advice you've ever received.

David Stackleather  46:48  
So probably the you know, as similar to the kind of the internal PR machine I as I mentioned before the break I had an executive that I worked for for quite some time and he Told me during a dinner or something, always remember, you're not a genius, which is shocking to have somebody about seven rungs above you on the org chart. And we talked quite a bit about that. And what he had said was that there's so much information there's the world is so complicated in a lot of ways you can't possibly know everything, you have to rely on other people. You have to be open to new information. And no matter how smart you are, how smart you think you are, you have to know and believe that you're not a genius. And you're not always going to have the answer. And for two reasons, one is because you're not always going to have the answer. The second is even if you have the answer, other people have an ability to kind of mess that up for you. And so you have to make sure that everybody's on board and nobody likes to work or deal with somebody who thinks they're a genius. It's annoying. And so I think I'm very smart. I have an ego like anyone else, but I try to actively tamp that down. I think it's important especially the highest You are up in a hierarchy, the more kind of good luck you've had in your life about moving into a position, having the right education, having the right parents, whatever the situation is, is having a little humility and understanding that the world is very complex. And you don't have all the answers. But if you get enough people together and have a good conversation, you can probably find a good solution. And that's the best advice. And I've tried to increasingly improve on that over the years, this probably was 20 years ago when I heard this message. And that's, you know, led me down a good path. I think over time, where I can I can at least be proud of what I've done. And I'm not ashamed of anything that I've done in my my career.

Rick A. Morris  48:46  
Do you have any final thoughts or things that you'd like to share with the audience?

David Stackleather  48:50  
Well, I would just say that especially if you're involved in an agile transformation, if you've got your CSM, if you're in an organization that uses is kind of struggling is to kind of throw away the idea about the certifications and go back to the the actual underlying data. And what I mean by the underlying data or the underlying information is the the old stuff like Deming, the number of times that I'm in a room of executives and ask them if anybody know who Edwards Deming is. And I get maybe one hand at a 40 cola. You know, it makes me really sad. And this is what I mean about this. We know what to do in these organizations. We know how people work we know how leaders and people on the factory floor or the call center floor ideas that really operate but we need to go back to this information so kind of throw away the new website stuff and go back to the lemmings and McGregor it's not hard to find all these people. And and you'll be surprised when you read the kind of the old knowledge that we've known about this for quite some time. We have a lot of ideas, but I think focus needs to really go back and read that stuff and understand it the intent behind it, rather than kind of taking a, you know, pre written, pre installed framework or set of tactics, and try to shove them in the context of your organization, because it's just, it's just going to be frustrating. All the way around.

Rick A. Morris  50:18  
Yeah, and, again, there's gonna be something else that comes behind agile, it's gonna be the, in fact, I already heard of one friend of mine just went to Rome to get certified in this thing. And but essentially, when he described it to me, I was like, so tell me how that's different from my toe. Right? Well, this one's different because you're, there's chargebacks they're really trying to use a cost center. And I was like, right, that's exactly what I was doing. And everybody, everybody froze at the time that you were trying to do that configuration to the CMDB. Right. There was always the, the one piece of thing and there always seems to be one piece of thing and in this case, it's it's agile is the right level development of when you throw something into poi. That's always the one thing that people seem to miss. That's And strategy over versus functionality or requests or business questions, right? In this one, right, it was a CMDB. So now they've tried to figure out how to do it without a CMDB. And therefore, it's Yeah, it's it's frustrating.

David Stackleather  51:14  
Yeah, well, that goes to it's, it's a business model, and they're not realize this, they're constructing a product to sell, which means you have to change something, and you've got to have something to sell. And now you're just re, for the most part, you're rehashing old stuff in a new format with new fonts and, you know, fancy website, but fundamentally, you're not really selling anything new. And fundamentally, people can't buy something and install it and change their organizations and that that deep giveaway just is not really possible.

Rick A. Morris  51:45  
So I've had to I've had to learn how to develop analogies that I do a lot of stuff on resource management, understanding the utilization of our people and it doesn't have to be hard takes five minutes a week per person, you know, per manager really to do. But I always love We don't have time to do resource management. I'm like, well, that's like saying you're too fat to diet. It just there's nothing there. That makes sense. It's Yeah, it is what it is. Right? Well, David, I've appreciated your time partner, I appreciate you coming on the show and sharing your expertise with us. And we wish you luck in the future. Thank you very much. I've enjoyed it. And so for everybody else hanging on, we're going to have West bush on the show next week. Wes is a best selling author of product lead growth, these renowned product lead growth pioneer, it says in his bio, he's ridiculously tall, so we're gonna have to figure out what that means. But looking forward to have Wes on the show. We've got some great guests lined up. We're actually I think, booked out into July now for the show. So we've got a lot of great information coming up. We'd love for you guys to give us feedback. You can do so at Rick A. Morris on Twitter. You can find me on LinkedIn and Facebook at Rick A. Morris, and you can always send an email to our Morris at r squared consulting comm or Rick at Rick A. Morris calm and until next Friday. We hope that you live your own work life balance and stay tuned right here to voice them. America business for our next fantastic show.

VoiceAmerica  53:06  
Thank you for joining us this week. The work life balance with Rick Morris can be heard live every Friday at 2pm pacific time and 5pm eastern time on The Voice America business channel. Now that the weekend is here, it's time to rethink your priorities and enjoy it. We'll see you on our next show.

The Plague of Training....

This post is dedicated to personal development and a commitment to training.  In my experience, I watch organization after organization remove or shorten the length of their projects by two categories:  Testing and Training.  Why?  They are generally at the end of the project and get squeezed in between a date that is arbitrary and project overruns.

For example, after purchasing a system, a company finds out that managing a long project plan can be harder because they do not understand the new system.  It was rolled out hastily and to save costs, they did one training for the user group and expected them to understand a complex tool.  Learning properly would take roughly 8-10 hours of reinforced teaching and changing the way that they think currently.  The company will claim that there is not enough time or money to invest in this level of training and reduce it.  As the users start to use the new system, they become frustrated and begin to create workarounds.  They store high level plans in the new system and create longer plans outside the system that fits the way they used to perform this task.  This then creates 4-6 hours of rework depending on the number of project they are running because most of the information is outside of the new system and they have to enter data twice for reporting.  The chore becomes keeping everything in sync.  Assuming each resource takes 2 weeks of vacation, this turns into 200-300 additional hours of work without value because it is "easier."

What if we invested this time to learning the new system properly?  Those hours could be invested in value generation versus rework.  

This is also true of personal training.  The almighty PDU.  I am constantly being bombarded with quick and easy training opportunities that give me a PDU to hold my certification.  I often wonder if the PDU is adding value or just taking score?  I watch so many people waste time looking for the easy or cheap PDU versus finding something that will enhance and grow their career.  

John Maxwell states, "Everything worthwhile in life is uphill, but many people have downhill habits."  This is very evident in how people pursue or grow their knowledge.  Personal development and training should force you out of your comfort zone and help you understand new skills and habits.  This is not an easy undertaking, but nothing worthwhile is! 

No Day But Today,

Rick

Radio Show Transcript - What I Learned from John Maxwell February 2018 Edition - Recorded March 2, 2018

What I Learned from John Maxwell February 2018 Edition - Recorded March 2, 2018

To get to the web page of the radio show, click here.

To download the mp3 file, click here.

To subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, click here.

Please remember this is a transcript of a radio show that airs live every Friday and is also podcasted.  Spelling and punctuation may be affected.

FULL TRANSCRIPT (with timecode)

00:00:26;28 - 00:00:40;17

Rick A. Morris: And welcome to another edition of the Work Life Balance here on a Friday afternoon I'm so excited to have you guys along with me as I'm going to take an hour here in just kind of detox over the last month as you guys know.

00:00:40;20 - 00:02:16;27

Rick A. Morris: Many of my longtime listeners know one of the favorite things to do. One of my favorite shows to do is just to kind of breathe and reflect especially after I return from what's known as the International Maxwell certification event which happens in Orlando Florida. I generally do that right after the event. We did have somebody scheduled which was Kupe Kupersmith last week and what a great time we had with Kupe if you guys didn't hear that show that was a very very fun show. But now I'm going to take a moment and just kind of reflect talk about some of the changes that we've had to the show some of the new things that we've got going on and then just reflect and tell you what I learned from John Maxwell what I learned at this event talk about my journey through the John Maxwell team. I get a lot of questions on social media I get a lot of people asking about the team why I joined in my journey certainly was different than a lot of people that I know that are members of the team and so you know I thought it would take some time and share not only my journey but what also happened at this event and some really cool moments that were so important to me so always you can hit me up @rickamorris on Twitter you can find me at rmorris@rsquaredconsulting.com also on Facebook I'll be looking for questions and e-mails and things to pop in during the show and try to respond to those. For those of you listening live some of the changes to the show just to kind of keep up with them I mentioned throughout but I just wanted to take a moment to talk through a few things that we've done to keep you connected to this show. One is that we do have an Alexa skill now. So for those of you that don't get a chance to catch it live.

00:02:18;22 - 00:02:31;24

Rick A. Morris: And don't want to subscribe via iTunes and do have an exit device. We have an iPad subscription now so you simply can say Alexa ask Anypod to play the Work Life Balance.

00:02:31;25 - 00:03:59;12

Rick A. Morris: And she'll play the latest show for you in its entirety and you can skip forward and skip backwards and find other shows in it'll play the entire subscription. So that's pretty cool. We got that done for you. We also are transcribing the show now. So we started to do a transcription service so that if you know mentioned names or websites or you just want to go back some people are readers versus listeners or you don't want to hear the show at work but want to find out what the value is that we're bringing into the show. So if you go to pmthatworks.com. We have our announcements for upcoming guests on that blog. Sometimes I do blog post there but then we also generally about two or three days after the show airs. We transcribed the show and posted there as well. So those are some of the new things that are coming up. As far as guests that are coming up at Johanna Rothman that's going to be coming up next week. She is is one of the most downloaded webinars and podcasters in project management right now. I'm going to be taking the week after that off as I will be with John Maxwell in a few of us are going to be going to Costa Rica to fulfill one of John's passions which is to transform a country. And so we'll talk a little bit more about that later in the show. And then the big show that I'm really looking forward to as well is March 23 a person that I really feel will transform my career in project management.

00:03:59;24 - 00:04:54;28

Rick A. Morris: A project management consultant I was looking to potentially quit the profession and I came across a book called Radical Project Management all the way back in 2002. And just the way the book was written a lot of the information within the book it really just transformed my career and I've finally gotten that gentleman and contacted him and he is going to be on the show Rob Tomsett on March 23 we can't can't wait for that event. So stay with us on the show. We've got a lot of stuff coming in a lot of good and hopefully positive change. So let us know what you think about that have you been reading the transcription or you know if you've been connecting with us through reelects or that kind of stuff let us know if we're reaching you and in you know help us make sure that we're adding value to you because you know a lot of times I'm doing the show sitting here in my home office in Birmingham Alabama talking to a computer screen and we just want to know that you're out there that we're servicing you and that you guys are finding value in what we're doing.

00:04:55;16 - 00:05:09;07

Rick A. Morris: So let's talk the journey of the John Maxwell team for me. So a lot of people join teams like this or this kind of stuff looking to jumpstart a business maybe get into business for themselves.

00:05:09;07 - 00:05:19;24

Rick A. Morris: There's certainly a path through the John Maxwell team to become a certified coach a certified speaker.

00:05:19;24 - 00:05:33;03

Rick A. Morris: You know those kinds of things and they what's interesting about that is you know so some people are coming to the team to define a business to start a business. It was very different for me.

00:05:33;03 - 00:05:44;16

Rick A. Morris: I had already had a business for seven or eight years before I started to look at. Actually probably six or seven years but had been running businesses for several years before I started to look at the team.

00:05:45;02 - 00:07:42;28

Rick A. Morris: And you know so I was super excited to get an opportunity to do this. I was also already a professional speaker before I went through the speaker training with John Maxwell team. And so it was a little bit different for me I wasn't you know I was looking to enhance my career. I had some content that was kind of drying up and just thought you know maybe I would get some more ideas and be able to leverage John's name. So to be honest in a little bit forthright in this a little bit selfish in joining the team I went there a little bit selfishly and so I went to my first training and now I think I've been at six or seven maybe a trainings now but I went to my first training and didn't really know what to expect. And so our first event that you do at the training as you go through speaker training with Roddy Galbraith and Roddy teaches the Maxwell method of speaking and I learn more Roddy in the first two hours of that training than I had in ten years of hard knocks as a speaker just incredible incredible and I was just blown away. And so then the next thing that you do is you go through coaching training and at the time I didn't really have any desire to really be a coach. And then I saw Christian Simpson who quite frankly and to be honest brought me to tears. He taught me how directive I was being and it was again just another incredible experience. And then you know it just it was event after event after event that really just opened my eyes. But really what it taught me more than anything was the power of being a servant leader and there's a quote that John says and it touched me more than anything and it really is what has lit my world on fire the last two years. Is that once you taste significance the success really just doesn't matter.

00:07:43;28 - 00:08:16;26

Rick A. Morris: And that has become the the end all be all for me in why that I've been so driven with the team why have been so driven to do Costa Rica why I've been so driven to really open up the mentorship lanes in my business and give back as a matter of fact you know it was rushing back here was almost late to the show because I was giving back to to the high school kids here at the Hoover High School where I live and we were doing mock interviews to prepare them to get ready for business.

00:08:17;19 - 00:08:39;23

Rick A. Morris: But those types of things just you know opening yourself to become more of a servant leader and to really give back to your community to really make sure that you're using the skill set and in the talent that you've been given to give back. Once you start to have that that path it becomes a never ending you know becomes a waterfall truly of emotion. And.

00:08:40;15 - 00:09:05;07

Rick A. Morris: I think the John Maxwell team and the people around it and you know coming back from this event the people that I know now that are in my life that I consider family to be honest with you the people that are regular attendees like me that I talk to almost every week or that we exchange messages every week.

00:09:05;07 - 00:09:14;18

Rick A. Morris: Those people that have come in my life which really now are part of my inner circle that there's there's no price I can put on that there's no price.

00:09:14;21 - 00:09:18;05

Rick A. Morris: And so that's really why I do it.

00:09:18;05 - 00:11:21;14

Rick A. Morris: It's why I go back and now you know when you go back to the certification there's different tracks for alumni. So when you go back you don't go through the same trainings that you go through you get different trainings. And so I've had exposure to Seth Godin that exposure to Les Brown that exposure to Curtis Sliwa. You know we get extra time with John we get a change. You know I've been certified through DISC with Dr. Robert Rohm and so I mean these people that you get exposure with. Again I would spend ungodly amounts of money. Do we get to do but they're giving back to us and they're pouring into us. So that's what's amazing about this organization and why we continue to do what we do with this team. So I mean if anybody who's interested in wants to know more about it please reach out to me rmorris@rsquareconsulting.com. You know if you've heard about the team or want to join or have reservations or just want to know what it's all about or what it can do for you we certainly. I certainly be somebody to pour into you to understand you know an added benefit. You know Paul Martinelli who started the team you know and he's built 5 businesses over 250 million dollars is going to be leading a personal mentorship thing at 7 a.m. tomorrow that I get to be a part of through. You know Think and Grow Rich which obviously I've read the book. I've just never been personally mentored by somebody who's who's you know build 250 million dollars with the business on how he's utilized that platform to grow himself the people around him and make himself you know financially free so to have access like that to be around people like that that not only are so successful but are such you know phenomenal examples of being a servant leader just fires me up and it makes me roll out of bed it's going to make me roll out of bed at 7 a.m. tomorrow morning with my pen and paper and my copy of my book ready to go.

00:11:21;14 - 00:12:04;23

Rick A. Morris: So those are the types of things that that expose. So that was my that's kind of my why that's the why behind it. In my personal life. So it's not just you know for those of you that are out there saying you got a businessman I'm successful I don't need that stuff. But dude that was me. And I'm telling you I knew nothing and I I learned something this week from a team member who just flicked a light switch into me who has changed my entire thinking of how I do my product marketing and not only that but I've been doing it so wrong for so long.

00:12:05;09 - 00:12:25;18

Rick A. Morris: And you know just being able to meet somebody like a Dave Gambrell who shared a very simple thing with me and said Hey why don't you look at this you should be doing this just showed me how to absolutely monetize my business and get my business working for me when I'm not sitting at the desk.

00:12:25;18 - 00:12:48;04

Rick A. Morris: I mean those types of things are priceless and unbelievable and can't. Can't wait to be around my people so what we're going to do for the rest of the show is talk about some of the best quotes some of the things I've learned some of the things that I consider to be life changing and share some of worries of what really happened at this last event that I just found incredible. So stay with us right here.

00:12:48;04 - 00:12:58;02

Rick A. Morris: You're listening to the Work Life Balance with Rick Morris.

00:15:44;13 - 00:16:01;16

Rick A. Morris: Now back to the Work Life Balance and we're back to the Work Life Balance we're discussing what I learned from the John Maxwell event February edition. We just got back a couple of weeks ago. So at this one there's a couple of really touching stories we'll get into as we go.

00:16:01;17 - 00:17:31;06

Rick A. Morris: But when you go back to an event the first thing that you get to do is choose what's called Think Tank days and these things take days. The faculty of the John Maxwell team which are again just second to none prepare something really special. And you get to choose and decide which one you want to be a part of. And I've got a chance to spend some extended time with Christian Simpson so I've shared in the last segment that Christian Simpson really just kind of opened my eyes to the whole coaching and in really about what it means to be you know a directing learner versus a coach. And so he had some really interesting information to share this one couple of the key quotes that really got to me. First of all I've never really heard this I thought this was interesting. Thought I'd share it with you guys that you know you always hear about the top 1 percent you know people always say the 1 percent in America who's the 1 percent and the 1 percent that's always getting taxed and all that stuff. He defined that. So you know I don't know if this is as accurate as I've heard it. I haven't had a chance to research and get to the numbers he defined. He's saying that the top 1 percent is defined to people that are earning four hundred fifty thousand dollars or more. I thought that was pretty interesting because when you hear the one percent you're thinking you know Warren Buffett think Bill Gates and all these others and while they are part of the 1 percent that the top 1 percent of wage earners is actually four hundred fifty thousand dollars or above.

00:17:31;23 - 00:18:25;29

Rick A. Morris: I do want to dig into that number a little bit more about that that was pretty interesting. He was really speaking to a lot of us small business owners as a lot of us are. And what was interesting was the take of this. And you know it's something I've really been focusing on the last two years three years and I can see the direct results in my business which is you know when you're developing a small business you don't develop the business you develop the owner. And as the owner itself develops and as that as the owner develops the business will come along. But you can't really develop a business you've got a business plan you've got things that you want to do but you've got to develop the owner and have the owner grow because a lot of times the limitations of the business are the limitations of the business plan is based on the limitations of the thinking of the owner right.

00:18:26;02 - 00:18:47;24

Rick A. Morris: So it's it's the thinking of the owner that's going to determine the size of the money or the wealth of the business. You see these people that are extremely successful they've got big thinking and you see the people that have small small businesses and they have small thinking. And so it's that size of thinking that that really determines the size of the business right.

00:18:47;24 - 00:19:50;09

Rick A. Morris: So I mean essentially you know one of the things that he says often is you know if you if you fail to go within then you'll go without. You've got to you've got to really go inside you and figure out what those limiting beliefs are what your fears are what your anxieties are and learn how to develop those and then find people that are better than you at the things that you're not good at. I mean that's how you're going to develop your business. And I think one of the most poignant quotes that I wrote down from him was that a person that is not willing to make mistakes is living one. So I'll say it again to a person that is not willing to make mistakes is living one. So how often do you in your business or in your daily career whatever you are in your stage of life become so afraid to make a mistake that you're limiting your belief or limiting your growth because of the fear of change or the fear of taking a big step.

00:19:50;26 - 00:21:21;27

Rick A. Morris: And you know the point is is we need to make mistakes. I'm a conglomerate of my mistakes and in love you know I don't like the pain of when it occurs. But love the growth that's a result. And I think it's important for us to remember that you know the the mistakes themselves are are the the ultimate understanding of the limitation of our thinking at the time. And so for instance like there's so many people that will focus especially when they're developing themselves and they're looking at things and you see these training programs and you find these books that are worried about the cost. And so one of the big things that you can tell right away about people that are really adamant about their growth and really adamant about being successful is how they look at investing in themselves. And so you know for instance you know you had a moment to spend with John and it was one on one moment and it was a five thousand dollar price tag. How would you look at that. Would you look at that. That's five thousand dollars of cost and I don't have the money or would you look at that as you know this five thousand dollars has an opportunity and the return on investment that I could get you know in him pouring into my business is incredible.

00:21:22;24 - 00:21:39;14

Rick A. Morris: Right. So it's it's not a line item it's not a cost. So small minded or small thinking is attributing everything to a cost and big thinking and growth is attributing everything to return on investment. I'm not talking about just throwing money wildly.

00:21:39;27 - 00:23:51;22

Rick A. Morris: I'm not saying cost is unimportant. It's a return on investment rates a return on investment is looking at it as I understand there's a cost but what am I going to gain out of it. What's the what's the return that I will get for the time and the money that I'm spending. If there's a high return then it's then it's a no brainer. But if I'm only solely concerned about cost and whether or not you know I have that then you know it's not really a sure sign of growth. So I thought that was interesting and you know Christian shared a lot with us. And you know the other thing and it's certainly something over the last two years that I've really been concerned at is I have been a consultant for a very long time and a consultant. And what we do is we trade time for money and I've been sitting on you know seven eight even 10 years worth of content that I've developed over time. But you know I've got six books on the market. I've got videos I've got webinars I've got all these things and the lightbulb that went on for me and meeting with Dave Gambrill and everybody else is you know how much actually could be monetizing that content. So that it would be working for me when I'm not working. Right. So the question that was posed to me was you know do I have a system and people working for when I walked away that the business was still working for me and if not then then I'm being consumed by the business and my business is consuming me. And that's not a good equation. So how can I start to move the business into a way that it doesn't consume me right. I consume the business so interesting thought patterns. And again you've got to be open ready to shake forward ready to understand it. But to me that was a huge aha moment for me and a way for me to start analyzing how I spend my day and where am I getting the greatest return of investment.

00:23:51;29 - 00:26:24;25

Rick A. Morris: Which brings me to an interesting story because I think what we do a lot is business owners we make a ton of excuses for why we can't do certain things and so they brought a young lady onstage by the name of Maria Cristina and I'm trying to get her on the show. We've got to get her on the show. She made a personal promise to some orphans in Bangladesh after a great flood that they were she was going to take care of their education. She actually made the promise to the parents are not the parents but to the foster parents and to these kids into the people who are taking care of these kids in the orphanage. And but she didn't have the money but she made the commitment that she was going to take care of their education fully. And so she didn't know how to make money so she Googled. How do I make money. And somebody said well you need you know you go to the North Pole and you can make money. So she trains and she goes to the North Pole and she didn't raise everything that she wanted. So she came back. Googles how to how do I make money. Somebody says well if you run seven marathons in seven continents you can raise the money. So she runs seven marathons in seven continents and still doesn't use the money. So she comes back and they said well if you go to the south pole she goes to the South Pole. Somebody says if you climb Mount Everest she climbs Mount Everest. This is a true story. Look her up Maria Cristina and then somebody says well if you run Iron Mans and turn in the fastest time for a female and these Iron Mans she does that and it comes down to where she wants to swim the English Channel. But there's one big problem. And if I gave you a guess. Right. And we did this on the show last week. What her big obstacle would be in swimming the English Channel and if you guess the fact that she can't swim you'd be right. So she hires a coach and the only coach that responds to her only teaches people how to swim in a pool. She goes that's fine. So she teaches she learns how to swim and then swing swims. The English Channel says she's got eight Guinness Book World Records now and she was still three hundred thousand dollars short and she's still going around telling your story and raising money to keep her commitment. Is that even money for her. It's it's to keep the commitment to these children that she promised. And when you hear a story like that when you meet this person and you could see her in person hear this story and you're sitting there going make excuses.

00:26:25;02 - 00:26:37;04

Rick A. Morris: I don't want to wake up out of bed in the morning or you know it's really hard to pick up the phone and in cold call or it's it's really hard to sit down and force myself to write. Yeah yeah.

00:26:37;09 - 00:27:24;29

Rick A. Morris: These excuses all of a sudden don't start to stack up when you see somebody like Maria Cristina and she is just this little powerhouse and she's a powerhouse but she's not very tall. And it's incredible to be inspired by stories like that and then you're sitting around and looking at your challenges and recognizing that really what we're doing is we're making excuses. So while we're on break when we're going to take one here in a second. Check out Maria Christina Google her name find her charity. 20 dollars her way because I'm telling you this lady deserves every penny ticket to meet that commitment. And we're going to take a break right here. You're listening to the Work Life Balance with Rick Morris.

00:30:29;05 - 00:30:33;07

Rick A. Morris: And we're back to the Work Life Balance right for a break we were talking about Maria Cristina.

00:30:33;09 - 00:31:11;29

Rick A. Morris: You can actually find her at Maria Cristina foundations for MariaCristinaFoundation.org if you'd like to donate to that incredible incredible charity sharing in the break there. We're going to get her on the show it's going to happen I'm going to get Maria Cristina on the show and you're going to hear that story firsthand as I did. Which is which is incredible she's an incredible story of resilience in just sheer determination. And again though for anybody who feels like they've got an awesome excuse just listen to her talk and she'll wipe any of those away for you.

00:31:11;29 - 00:32:09;14

Rick A. Morris: Speaking of stories though there was another thing that happened in these conferences are fairly well scripted in the way that you know certain times certain things happen. And there was a a lunch and learn that was done and it was actually done on John Maxwell's public Facebook page. You could go to John Maxwell's public Facebook page find this lunch and learn sign up for it and see it. And it was around John Maxwell's new book Developing the Leader Within You 2.0 where he's taken his book he's written eighty nine percent of it. And they were teaching how to mentor people with John's book and John was sharing some of his personal secrets of how he mentors people with this book. And so the behind the scenes of that and I was actually sitting like right from table to the right as they were doing this and it was it was a two hour session. But the first hour is on this Lunch and Learn webinars so you guys can go find it's a free resource it's phenomenal to watch.

00:32:09;29 - 00:32:24;17

Rick A. Morris: But during that about about 10 minutes to go there's a great story that Roddy Galbraith shares and so he's talking about a young lady that came up to him the day before at the conference saying that her brother had passed away.

00:32:24;19 - 00:32:45;27

Rick A. Morris: She had to go to get received a diagnosis to fly very far away in Mexico to a very specialized clinic and had been diagnosed with cancer and was given 90 days to live and she was coming back and saw a book in the the airport instead.

00:32:45;28 - 00:32:54;28

Rick A. Morris: I just I have to get this book. So she goes up to the book vendor and she says how much for the book and the book vendor says it's twenty dollars she says. I only have five.

00:32:55;22 - 00:33:37;17

Rick A. Morris: So the book vendor says no just just go ahead take the book. You can have the book. So she reads this book and it changes her entire outlook on life. When she returns home her family is actually already starting to save money for her funeral. And so it turns out this was nine years ago so she had a few surgeries she ends up beating cancer. But she has an incredible positive outlook on life and she now is a John Maxwell team member and she had come to the training event in Orlando and she really couldn't afford to even do that as a matter of fact we had heard that she was sleeping like in the doorway of a 7-Eleven the first night.

00:33:37;17 - 00:34:09;25

Rick A. Morris: And so some of the people at the Marriott Hotel had hooked her up with a room and she told Roddy she goes you know this book changed my life and she goes even look at my shoes and Roddy looked down at her shoes. And you know the soles were coming apart and that kind of stuff she goes I'm still poor but but I'm happy. And so right it goes well I'm going to be talking with John tomorrow can. Can I share the story. She said sure. So she goes upstairs and he talks to his lovely wife Susan and tells Susan the story and Susan's kind of match she's like but Roddy he says what she goes.

00:34:10;02 - 00:34:17;03

Rick A. Morris: What was the book Roddy. What book changed their life and he's like I don't know I didn't ask.

00:34:17;05 - 00:34:29;12

Rick A. Morris: So they looked through Roddy's phone and he had a picture of her. They find the girl and it turns out the book was called Winning Attitudes by John Maxwell. And so.

00:34:30;21 - 00:35:00;23

Rick A. Morris: They tell the book and and show it to John and John so touched. So John says right there live during the lunch and learn he says I've got to I've got to meet this girl. I have to meet her. And so the lunch and learn and the life of ends. So we're still in the room for another hour. And so Roddy had texted Susan right when John said he wanted to meet her. And Susan went and got her out of the session and brought her into the alumni room. And John got to meet her and she just starts to cry.

00:35:00;25 - 00:35:39;17

Rick A. Morris: And again John knowing that she didn't have a whole lot of money he said you know what every book I have on my table you can have and it was just one of those moments unscripted. You know everybody's in tears and just another phenomenal thing that just happens that you just can't see the generosity of people that drive of people and things like that just just change your life forever especially when you're right there in the room I actually got a video of him meeting her. Yeah I started to go post that. You know it just wasn't my story to share like that. I mean I don't mind telling the story this way or sharing it with people or you guys my listeners.

00:35:39;17 - 00:35:47;15

Rick A. Morris: But yeah I just didn't feel like that was something that was going to post. We have a caller on the line. Kevin how are you doing.

00:35:49;14 - 00:35:55;10

Kevin:  How are you man.

Rick A. Morris: Where are you calling from Kevin?

Kevin:  San Antonio Texas.

00:35:56;05 - 00:36:01;02

Rick A. Morris: Is this Kmart?.

Kevin Martin: It is buddy.

Rick A. Morris What's up brother man.

00:36:01;02 - 00:36:16;16

Kevin Martin: Not much man. I'm just enjoying the show. I appreciate you so much sharing. You always do. I'm always interested in learn something from me almost every time we interact. I want to say thank you for that and just keep doing what you're doing man. We're never done are we we make mistakes every day.

00:36:17;11 - 00:36:23;05

Rick A. Morris: Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. So you hear that story about I know the girl and John?

00:36:23;07 - 00:36:27;29

Kevin Martin: Oh my goodness. I did.

00:36:28;18 - 00:36:46;04

Kevin Martin: Yeah. You know days when guys like us who do give back and oftentimes you don't realize the people that you're impacting cause we just don't do it for that reason. But we continue to do it and then when we get impacted it reenergized us and we're just on fire again. And it sounds like you're on fire.

00:36:46;04 - 00:36:53;02

Rick A. Morris: That I am brother that I am can't wait for Costa Rica.

Kevin Martin: Yeah sounds great. I wish I was going with you. I know it would be a good time.

00:36:53;26 - 00:36:56;14

Rick A. Morris: Yes sir. Thanks so much for calling. It's great to hear from you.

00:36:56;14 - 00:36:58;15

Kevin Martin: Hey great to hear from you Rick. Lead on.

00:36:59;06 - 00:37:07;20

Rick A. Morris: Thank you sir. So yeah. So I know you know so we have I know we have Maria Cristina and I got to tell you about this time and I'm I'm cried out.

00:37:08;06 - 00:37:17;14

Rick A. Morris: I'm a big dude. I don't mind crying. I don't mind sharing my tears. But yeah that that was that was big for me.

00:37:17;16 - 00:37:30;14

Rick A. Morris: So going back into Maxwell training. You know what I'm sure another event because this was also the first time. You know John does share a faith service.

00:37:30;14 - 00:38:16;17

Rick A. Morris: And again I don't care where you guys are and your faith I don't care. You know what. What you do with that. No I'm not trying to impart any any faith to you but he does do a great service. John comes from faith in everybody who's read John knows that and so he does a faith service and at the end he does a call to action. And you know he was in particular on this one because you know we just found out that Billy Graham died as well. And one of the things that we do is for anybody who responded to the call of action we give away a Maxwell speakers or Maxwell Leadership Bible. And the first time just where I was sitting and who I was sitting with. They invited me up on stage to help pass out the Bibles to the people they had come up.

00:38:16;17 - 00:38:29;07

Rick A. Morris: And that just got really emotional for me on this time. And you know don't don't know why so much didn't want to really dive in and figure out why so much. But just once there was nice time.

00:38:29;09 - 00:39:04;05

Rick A. Morris: And the first time I got to see from that perspective that kind of giving and growth. So that was interesting time for me as well. So going into John's messages especially you know some of the things he shared with us he's got a new book coming up called Leadershifts and he played with that. It's the first time I heard John come from stage but he had a little fun with that. But shifts book is he just finished the manuscript. Actually while we were there together.

00:39:04;15 - 00:39:49;29

Rick A. Morris: And so that's going to be the next big Maxwell book that comes out. And as always he started to teach us directly from that book and started to give us some insight on what's what's coming and you know some great quotes coming out of that you know in in for me just understanding you know the timing and context and environment of your life. You know the big thing he was talking to me. I felt like directly in the audience you know people ask him how he stays relevant in the leadership world in his answer to that is you've got to continue to shift you've got to continue to change.

00:39:50;10 - 00:39:56;27

Rick A. Morris: He says he can't stay the same and the leadership game because the leadership game is not the same it changes.

00:39:56;28 - 00:42:27;03

Rick A. Morris: And that speaks directly to the book of developing the leader within you. So first of all let's just talk about John for a second in the sense that you know 25 years ago if you look at the 90s early 90s every book every book was about management. Every book was how to manage your people how to effectively manage your people. It was all about management. There was very very little about leadership. And not only that the prevailing theory is that leaders were born. You're a born leader you're a natural leader. So the whole thought of developing leaders wasn't really a big thing. And John even shared very personally that when he was getting started. He didn't nobody wanted to come to a seminar nobody wanted to come to a leadership seminar nobody wanted to be taught how to be a leader. They come to a management seminar but they wouldn't come to a leadership seminar. And that was very interesting insight. And now read things about leadership right. Leadership is huge everybody's talking about leadership and thinking. But when when he was reviewing his book developing the leader within you which was groundbreaking 25 years ago and they asked him to rewrite it he rewrote 89 percent of it and that's because he was like because I've grown I've shifted I've changed become better and you know interesting story that I relate to you know my first book that I wrote Project Management That Works I wrote in 2008 I when I teach that now I still teach that on stage and at seminars and events I teach it the way the book is written and then I tell people how I do it differently today so that they can feel the evolution of how I've changed in the last 10 years how I would run projects because I certainly don't run projects today like I ran projects in 2008. I've changed I've grown in the last 10 years in everything that I know I don't I don't have the same certainties and beliefs I had. Ten years ago. And so it's is really interesting. And so that's what this whole book Leadersshifts is about and really you know what's coming down the pipe. And so I will share a couple of my favorite quotes from leaderships and then we're going to wrap up the show because man has time flown by. On this edition of the Work Life Balance you're listening to Rick Morris. We'll be right back after these commercials.

00:42:35;02 - 00:43:35;16

M6: In today's hyper fast super competitive business world ontime is now too late on budget is now too expensive. And today's innovation is tomorrow's antique which means app releases that used to happen regularly now need to happen continuously while always delivering experiences that keep your customers coming back for more. In other words you need to be agile and there's no better way to get there than with agile management from CA Technologies a complete set of solutions and services that make agility a reality. So you can anticipate and rapidly respond to change and immediately incorporate customer feedback. Build a flexible bridge between ideas and execution and transform app delivery from an endpoint into an always on part of your development lifecycle while ensuring an exceptional service experience. So be the one who wins app after app. Day after day with agile management from CA.

00:45:27;21 - 00:45:38;08

Rick A. Morris: We've been sharing what happened at the John Maxwell training and just how stories and quotes and things like that. And I teased into Leadershifts a little bit and what I love about John.

00:45:38;09 - 00:47:28;28

Rick A. Morris: You know John actually tells us hey you know here's the book Here's things in it now go start telling people. And you know he does it this way too he says that you know the first time you tell it go and say you know John Maxwell says the second time you tell it. Say you know I heard somebody say and the third time he said. So you know I've been thinking. And he he he does it in a way versus fencing and fencing out. Well it's a great analogy. He said that he worked with a bank back in his first church and when farmers were asking for more money the banker would look to see if they were fencing in or fencing out if they were fencing in. The guy wouldn't give them a loan because they weren't intending to grow their fencing out. Then they would get the loan because they could see that they were intending to grow into more. And so what John does is he's like Dude here's the stuff. Go teach. And he goes. Always does a joke from stage because as a matter of fact when the book does come out then you can look at your people and go man. I was with John in Orlando. I was talking with them and now look it's here in the book. He's so gracious with his material. But the point being is people say Why do you do that though aren't you protective because no he says I'm learning and growing every day. I want to share my ideas and make you guys better every day because I'm going to have more ideas. It's an abundant life it's an abundant thought pattern. And I love that about what I want to share with you just a couple of the quotes when I write I have pages and pages of notes. But what I'll do is. I'll write journal next to some of my favorite notes that. That forced me to sit down and expand my thoughts on the quote that he just said so that I journal them and really dive into them.

00:47:29;11 - 00:48:14;02

Rick A. Morris: So a couple of the things that I wrote journal next to against his leader as one he wrote that said that life expands or shrinks based on our courage. So you know really what he's saying is is your life will become abundant or won't. Based on your courage to share to help people to really put your ideas out there. If you're if you're not. If you're fencing in and not sharing and not being abundant with your thinking and abundant with the people around you then you know your life is going to shrink. If you have courage to share encourage the poor and encourage to serve others your life is going to greatly expand and I thought that was a beautiful quote.

00:48:14;02 - 00:48:33;24

Rick A. Morris: The other one was tweak your way to success not twerk. Be careful. But it was to eat your way to success. And so we learn a methodology of you know to to you know fail learn improve and re-enter.

00:48:33;24 - 00:49:14;29

Rick A. Morris: It's just it's a cycle for us is to try things. But you know he recognizes it and again we get a chance to watch it. So for No Limits the book that came out last year I saw him teach that for the first time and then you know I don't know how many times he taught it in between but I saw him teach that three times to us and I know the first time he taught it to us before the book came out. Which means I got to see his process of tweaking the language and how he teaches from stage before he was really ready for that to be prime time which was awesome to watch. And so some of his key points were quite wordy.

00:49:14;29 - 00:49:53;15

Rick A. Morris: The first time that they were more concise but more powerful the second time and then the third time it was just rock solid. But you could see him tweaking the language and trying to get it right which was just again just mind-blowing to be a part of it and to watch. The other thing I journaled was amplify and so this is part of one of his acrostic that he does around sharing and the a and share was amplify. But he said you know your imagination is better and that that struck a chord with me because he said you know and all your ideas and all your thinking.

00:49:53;15 - 00:50:11;26

Rick A. Morris: Use your imagination because your imagination is better in the analogy he used is. Have you ever read a book and then gone to see the movie. He said it's so much better when you read the book he said so you need in your ideas in your business thinking and everything that you do.

00:50:12;10 - 00:50:42;03

Rick A. Morris: Your imagination is better so use it. Be imaginative you don't. Don't be afraid to think bigger thoughts or to go you know to go big. You know which is better. The book that you're thinking of or the movie that you're thinking of use your imagination and be better. So those were just some of the key thoughts that are going to be coming out in the new book Leadership which is going to be tremendous.

00:50:42;03 - 00:51:07;29

Rick A. Morris: It's going to be amazing. That's all the time I have for for this show. I just did want to reflect on all this. I wanted to personally think you know obviously John Maxwell Paul Martinelli Christian Simpson Chris Robinson Roddy Galbraith you guys are just amazing to me and are mentors to me.

00:51:08;19 - 00:53:51;24

Rick A. Morris: You know who Sheri Griffin Darryl Rivers. You know you guys you know make this special Dennis LaRue Jelena Simpson. There you go know I've got such a list of people John and Jessie Terry. You know there's just there's people that I go to this event that have just become family to me. You know I've got Norma Zambrano Monica Santoyo Darryl Monica got engaged at this event which was incredible to watch and made Daryyl the smartest person in the world because we were at a cocktail reception already. So that turned into his engagement party. So he didn't have to pay for his own engagement party which I thought was brilliant. But you know I see Mike Lightener. And just look I hate that I started naming names because there's so many that I'm going to leave somebody out and hurt their feelings. But you guys know who you are and what you mean to me. Right. Chris Melissa Rollins Mike Stephens the whole crew. You guys know what you mean to me. You know how much I look forward to spending time with you. I can't wait. I mean we're literally a countdown eight days away for Costa Rica to transform a nation together with my family and friends and mentors and then we're already counting down to August to the next event. So look if you want to be a part of this and you like what I've said and you want to know more. I'm not an affiliate I don't get paid for that. It's just it's something that that you know I served the team I work the event. It's something that I pour my heart into. You're welcome to join us and I'll tell you anything you want to know about it as part of my servant leadership. Back to something that has just been so powerful in my life and made things so much better for me. That's all the time we have for this episode. Next week we've got Johanna Rothman who's one of the most downloaded speakers this past year in project management. So we're going to be talking Agile with her. And then again I'll be in Costa Rica and then we'll have Rob Thomsett said on the show. I appreciate you guys let me vent in detox from this event and just take a moment to breathe and process as I love to do. I love all of you guys and always hit me up @rickamorris or rmorris@rsquaredconsulting.com. Please stay tuned right here to the voice America business network. We love that you're a part of us and hope that you will continue to do so. We'll see you guys next Friday. You've been listening to the Work Life Balance.

00:53:51;24 - 00:53:56;02

M1: Rick Morris.

00:53:57;08 - 00:54:14;16

F1: Thank you for joining us this week. The Work Life Balance with Rick Morris can be heard live every Friday at 2:00 p.m. Pacific Time 5:00 p.m. Eastern time on the voice America business channel. Now that the weekend is here it's time to rethink your priorities and enjoy it. We'll see you on our next show.