BONUSODE: HENRY CLOUD: How to Arrive at Your Desired Future

Episode Transcript

Note: Transcript is AI-generated and may contain errors. Please refer to the episode audio or video for exact quotes.

[00:00:00] Henry: And this sounds complicated, but it’s very, very simple. This is what we do with a family to get ’em in the van, to get to school on time. Everybody’s got a role. You gotta do this by this time, and then we can all get in the van and love each other. But if they don’t, somebody’s running upstairs going, you need to get your teeth, but you need to get you, you, you, you, you and it just breaks down.

[00:00:26] Michael: Hi, I’m Michael Hyatt.

[00:00:27] Joel: And I’m Joel Miller.

[00:00:29] Michael: Joel Miller. Oh my gosh,

[00:00:31] Joel: not Megan.

[00:00:32] Michael: Megan’s not here today, but he is married to Megan, and I’ve actually known Joel longer than Megan. This is not his first appearance on the Double Win Show. We interviewed about him about his most recent book, the Idea Machine, which you haven’t listened to that episode, go back and listen to it.

[00:00:48] But Joel is first and foremost, a dear, dear friend, one of my very best friends. He’s also my son-in-law, and he’s our Chief Product Officer at Full Focus. So Joel. Welcome back to the show. Thank you for sitting in for Megan.

[00:01:01] Joel: Yeah, I’m looking forward to this. It’ll be a lot of fun. It’s a great seat to fill.

[00:01:05] Michael: I’m excited. Why don’t you introduce our guest?

[00:01:06] Joel: Well, today we are talking with Henry Cloud, and you may know Henry Cloud Odds are good that you do because Henry has written something like 46 books at this point, and some of them like boundaries and necessary endings and the power of the other have sold bazillions of copies.

[00:01:26] He’s ubiquitous. And I think he is ubiquitous for a really good reason. The things that he says resonate as very true for the people that hear and then apply them because they’re connected with deep practice on his side, he’s a, a clinical psychologist who’s been, you know, raised in that world and has worked in that world for decades.

[00:01:49] He ran a whole network of clinics, but then he is also taken all of that experience and he is taken it into the corporate world as a, as a coach and as a consultant. And he has led countless people through some of his frameworks in ways that deliver real results. And so today we get to talk to him about his new book, your Desired Future.

[00:02:11] And I’m gonna go ahead and read the subtitle here because it’s pertinent for the conversation to come, the five essential steps that take you where you want to go. And that seems important ’cause we all have places we want to go. Right.

[00:02:23] Michael: Thank you Joel. Let’s get into our conversation. With Dr. Henry Clown

[00:02:31] Henry, welcome to the show.

[00:02:32] Henry: How are you?

[00:02:33] Michael: I’m doing great. I enjoyed our lunch last week and uh, was looking forward to this interview.

[00:02:39] Henry: I’ve been looking forward to it too. You know, every, it’s hard to do interviews with you because you, you know, so, you know, a lot of times people are just doing an interview, but you actually know a lot about this stuff and so it’s hard, you know, we get into it and it’s hard to, to cut it off ’cause we keep hitting icebergs with a lot underneath.

[00:02:57] Michael: I was having some anxiety this morning as I was looking through our interview questions because there’s so much to talk about and I’m just personally fascinated by this topic and I suspect that I’m missing some of this in my own coaching. So I think it’s gonna be very, very helpful to the listeners if we can just get through the content.

[00:03:19] So that’s our objective.

[00:03:20] Henry: I know, I know.

[00:03:21] Michael: Okay, so we’ll just start here. So you opened the book with a story of your doberman. Finley. Yeah. And you say that she’s never once asked herself, will that bark help me get to where I want to be on Thursday? So why was that metaphor the right place to start the book?

[00:03:38] Henry: Well, basically the book is about how humans are incredibly designed to do the basic thing that we all wanna do in performance, whether it’s leadership or personally, to move something from here to there. You know, you hear that phrase all the time. And Finley has a wired in here to there, you know, she’s trained and she’s, you know, built this way.

[00:04:02] Somebody comes in the front door, she runs the front door, and it is scary, Mike. I mean, it, it is just scary. And I mean, I got delivery people tossing stuff on the porch and she’s behind the glass door. But I’ve never heard her do that and sit back and say, now I wonder if that was helpful and I wonder if that bark will get me closer to where I want to be on Thursday.

[00:04:23] The reason I started it with her. Was that capacity is reserved for the human species. We’re the only one. Finley has never said, you know, I’d like to have a ribeye from Ruth Chris next week, and what do I need to do to make that happen? We’re the only ones that can literally see a future state that does not exist today, and then organize our three things.

[00:04:51] We have basically our time, our energy, and our talents into making that happen. And so when I started to look at this and all the leadership performance literature under our factor analysis of it, what is universal through everybody’s path when they accomplish something. Is there is a path, and they may do it very differently.

[00:05:12] They don’t, you know, bill Gates and Steve Jobs looked very different, but the universals were there, like the laws of physics. And so when I looked at that, I, I started looking at the human body and how’s it designed to move from here to there? ’cause even ai, the best thing we got out there is trying to emulate what the human body does.

[00:05:32] And so that became the metaphor. And then I went into the neuroscience and all of it and just showed how the way the human body is constructed and gets things done is the way that we have to do it if it’s gonna work.

[00:05:44] Michael: When you look at the leaders that you coach, how often is the real problem that they’re just barking louder at the same door?

[00:05:53] Henry: That is often the real problem. And there’s a reason for that. And the way I put it in the book, we create teams, we create businesses, we create plans in our own image. Hmm. Which means. We’re wired a certain way. We have certain strengths and certain weaknesses, and we’ve done things in a certain way and we just take the next one and double click on that icon.

[00:06:16] The program starts running. But what Finley doesn’t do, and what humans have to do is what you do every day in your coaching practice, you get ’em out of the barking and what psychologists call an observing ego. The eye above the eye, and you look at it, and what I tried to do in this path was, you gotta look at what you’re doing and are all five of these elements there because they’re not, something’s not gonna get to its height or maybe not get there at all.

[00:06:46] Are all five of these there? And generally they’re not because we don’t have strengths in all these areas. So we tend to, again, create our own image and, and there’s a part of this that we don’t care about or we don’t, we’re not good at it and it’s not happening. But you don’t have to do it. You just gotta make sure it’s happening.

[00:07:04] Mm-hmm. That’s what it has to occur.

[00:07:06] Joel: You talk about these five elements, I wonder if you could go ahead and just explain them for the listener so they have a grounding for the rest of this conversation. What are these five elements that they need? I think we’re hearing Finley, by the way.

[00:07:19] Henry: Uh, can you hear her?

[00:07:20] You know, and there she must be doing her job. See, she’s not sitting above it and going, I wonder if my barking is helping the house get to be helping the team get to where she’ll shut up. In a second, I’ll take you through a quick view of the model.

[00:07:32] Joel: Yep.

[00:07:32] Henry: Okay. In, in the way that, that I use the metaphor. So I’m sitting here and we’re having this interview and, and what if you know wasn’t exactly the right?

[00:07:41] And I go, you know what? This is here. I think this would be better. That’s a desired future. This would be better if we did it over there. Okay. Now I have come up with what we call a vision. Your prefrontal cortex does that and now we can see something that doesn’t exist. Number one. Now everybody’s heard that before, but what I try to do in the book is show how a lot of people have vision, but they don’t have it with the components necessary to drive the train forward.

[00:08:11] And it breaks down. But I got my vision, okay? That comes from my prefrontal cortex. Okay, brain, let’s go there. Your brain ain’t going nowhere by itself. It’s just not. What it does is number two, it begins to engage the talent that’s necessary to make that happen. So I need a couple of legs. It sends out recruiting emails to your legs.

[00:08:35] It engages them. The vision is so compelling. Legs wanna go, right? And it, I’m gonna need a couple of eyes. I’m gonna need a ears to, for my balance, inner ear, I’m gonna. I don’t really need a pinky. That’s not relevant. I’m not gonna wake it up, but it gets the necessary talent. Mm-hmm. Sort of like when Brady was gonna go to Tampa Bay hadn’t won a game, they hadn’t won a game in or a season in 14 years.

[00:08:58] He looked at it and he said, there is specific talent that’s missing. And there were three positions they weren’t performing at, at the level to win a Super Bowl. The vision. So it engages the talent. Okay. Well, well let’s go number three. How am I gonna get there? I think I’ll call an Uber. Uh, it really doesn’t fit the market doesn’t fit the context, doesn’t fit this vision.

[00:09:20] Maybe a scooter. No, I think the best way to win here, I’m gonna walk. Okay. So when your brain figures that out, the flip side of a strategy, how am I gonna win it must have a plan that’s going to execute that strategy with specific activities. Who does what, when. Your brain’s figured out. We don’t even know it, but the systems are designing all of that and it’s got a particular plan to do that.

[00:09:50] And so we start walking. Alright, we start walking. Well, what happens when you start walking? Well, I’m going fine. Well, what if I hear a siren outside and I turn to look out the window? And I kind of get interested in that, but then I gotta get over there. My brain knows this. Measurement and accountability are we, me, it measures, are you doing what you said you were going to do, the activities that move the needle?

[00:10:13] And if you’re not, it does number five, it quickly corrects and fixes it. Mm-hmm. And it does that very quickly unless you have a DD or some other problems. It corrects that pretty quickly because if you don’t solve that problem and it keeps going, you no longer have a problem. You have a pattern now that’s digging its own behavioral, neurological wiring patterns.

[00:10:40] Now your company didn’t miss a product launch. It becomes the company that misses product launches. And so that’s why the quick fixing and adapting to the mutation, because mutation becomes DNA and DNA turns into identity. It’ll get you back on track and then you get there. And so. That was the model. And then when you start to go into the deep, how does the brain do this?

[00:11:05] It’s amazing. It calls up all these systems and networks and past experiences and timelines of, you know, allocating resources. It’s just insane.

[00:11:15] Joel: Yeah.

[00:11:15] Henry: But the problem is we don’t have all those strengths and we don’t like a lot. I mean, what if you’re conflict avoiding, you may be a visionary and you have no measurement, accountability, really operating

[00:11:25] Joel: right?

[00:11:25] Henry: Or what if you find problems but you’re too distracted over and you don’t fix ’em real quickly? All of these things are essential. And that’s kind of the model

[00:11:34] Joel: because you’re arguing ultimately that this individual thing that we do is what we do in companies. And this model, this model transitions exactly over to what we do collectively

[00:11:45] Henry: if we are watching how we’re barking.

[00:11:48] Joel: Yeah.

[00:11:48] Henry: Yeah. But again, here’s where it gets interesting. And in each section I go down, I drop down to Now what about you? Let’s just take something simple like vision. Everybody’s got a vision. Well, do you have the kind of vision that’s gonna be compelling and focused and clear enough that humans can actually follow it?

[00:12:09] And so when you look at vision, there are a lot of personal issues that strike down a vision right when it’s created, because we have these experiences that create these maps. And your vision may be way too limited of what could actually occur because of the voices in your head or what you’ve done before, or what you think’s possible or not.

[00:12:34] Or on the other side, it may be two, two grandiose and impossible. But a lot of the, you know, desires and thoughts will come up to people. They say, well, I can’t, you know, I could never pull that off. Why would anybody listen to me? And the visions just get shut down. You know, I ask people, where did Google come from?

[00:12:51] Everybody goes, well, Silicon Valley or you know, tech and somebody had an idea. I said, that’s not where it came from. You know where it came from. It came from a graduate student, Larry Page who went to a leadership camp and they taught him a mantra and the mantra, and he kept thinking about saying all the time was this, have a healthy disregard for the impossible.

[00:13:15] And they just soaked his brain with that. And what it did was start to dissolve a lot of these limiting stuff. And one morning he wakes up, he has a thought, what if we downloaded every URL on the entire internet? It saved it. What could we do with that? Now a lot of us would just, well, I don’t have enough RAM for that and my servers don’t.

[00:13:35] I mean my, there’s all sorts of reasons why, but not if you have a healthy disregard for the impossible. And now we have the search engine and now we have everything else. But each one of these has personal. Things that we need to examine about us or our team.

[00:13:51] Joel: Mm-hmm.

[00:13:52] Henry: Maybe the people that are doing it and figure out is there something keeping a vision from even being created or created in the right way and then all the way to execute it.

[00:14:01] Michael: So if you consider all five of these, I think what your argument is is that we need all five to get from here to there. It would be the rare leader that has each of those five fully operational in their individual psyche and then not even considering the team thing.

[00:14:20] Henry: It’s kind of almost impossible to have all of them in the way.

[00:14:25] We’re talking about big visionaries usually don’t get down into the weeds.

[00:14:29] Michael: Right.

[00:14:30] Henry: But somebody’s gotta get in the weeds.

[00:14:32] Michael: Okay. So that’s kind of answers where I was going. So it’s not that the individual leader needs to cultivate and become proficient at each of these five. What you’re arguing is that’s probably contrary to our wiring.

[00:14:44] It’s not gonna happen, but they’ve gotta build a team. All these components are present

[00:14:49] Henry: a team or a village,

[00:14:52] Joel: distinguish those two

[00:14:53] Henry: in the enterprise or even in a personal goal. Let’s say my daughter for example, and actually put this example in the book to show that it applies to everything. She was 16, 17 years old.

[00:15:03] She’s always loved music and writes music and had done that for a while and creating stuff in garage band and all this. And she comes in the kitchen one morning, she says, dad, how do people become singer songwriters? That’s what I wanna do. And I never had heard her put it in that straight of a declaration.

[00:15:20] And I said, Lu, her name’s Lucy. I said, Lucy, that’s great. Tell me about that. She said, well, that’s what I wanna do, but how do people do that? And I go, well, Lu, lemme tell you. And I go out and get my whiteboard out of the garage and I pull it in the kitchen. She rolls her eyes. Gonna create another life lesson from the psychologist.

[00:15:39] But I said, the first thing you gotta have is a vision. So tell me your vision. And guys, it was like compelling.

[00:15:45] Joel: Hmm.

[00:15:46] Henry: And she had a few examples of people that are doing this, like she wants to do it. I said, that’s great. Next thing you gotta do is engage your talent, en engage the talent. And she goes, this is to your question.

[00:15:57] She goes, well, you and mom said I have talent. I said, Lucy, I’m not talking about your talent.

[00:16:04] Joel: Hmm?

[00:16:05] Henry: I’m talking about the talent it’s going to take. The abilities have gotta be in the picture somewhere to get you there. She instantly got it. She goes, oh, I need a new guitar teacher. I’ve been working with and we’re just, we just hit a level.

[00:16:19] I’m not getting to, I gotta go on YouTube and look at chords because I’m not getting it from him. Okay, let’s bring that talent to the picture. And then she said, I gotta start playing in front of people. How do you get auditions? I don’t know. I don’t know whether those find, some friends are connected to some local playhouses or school plays or something like that.

[00:16:38] And then she said, you know, I make stuff on my computer, but how do you produce like a real EP that you could put out there? And I said, I don’t know. Let’s look into that. So I had a friend, Kevin Jonas, the dad that produced the Jonas Brothers, and I was talking to Kevin at an event and he heard her sing and he goes, oh my gosh, I haven’t heard that since Demi Lovato.

[00:17:00] I want a manager. And so he came along and hooked her up with a producer. They released something. CBS television buys the song for the network on a show. The CW network bought the song, Spotify, apple Music, MTV, all these platforms start featuring her. And I’m telling you, she did not have all of those five.

[00:17:25] But to your point, you said build a team, the team doesn’t necessarily have to be in-house.

[00:17:31] Joel: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[00:17:32] Henry: They don’t have to be employees. You just gotta have those components. It may be your uncle Harry’s got a friend that ran something like, I mean, we were talking about this, you know, before we went on that there’s some things that I need right now and you know, I got a friend that you don’t have to hire these people.

[00:17:46] It could be a mentor. It could be an advisor or whatever. You just, this stuff’s gotta happen. And if we’re not good at it, you gotta find the arms and legs paid in-house, consultant, coach, uncle. They just have to be present somewhere.

[00:18:02] Michael: You say in the book that often leaders hire in their own image. I see this all the time in my coaching practice.

[00:18:10] You know, it’s a kind of unconscious cloning that happens. And literally just yesterday I was talking one of my favorite clients and she said, oh my gosh, on the Kolby Index A, which is an assessment that we recommend and she had used with her employees, she said, everybody looks like me. And I said, that often happens nellis com

[00:18:29] Henry: and look at your business and what’s it missing?

[00:18:32] Michael: Exactly. So how do leaders guard against that? I mean, does it start with self-awareness?

[00:18:39] Henry: It does start with self-awareness. You know, the eye above the eye and then use that self-awareness. And we really do need other eyes. This is why coaches are so important and, and you know this, we always think somebody who’s coaching just ’cause they’re struggling, the highest performers are the ones that use coaches the most and utilize ’em the best.

[00:19:01] And they always have advisors, some other eyes that can look at this. Because we will do exactly what you said. And it’s not a fault. It’s just we, we have confirmation bias, we have paradigms, we have experiences, we have woundedness that maybe there’s somebody we need that’s really aggressive, but we don’t feel so connected with them.

[00:19:24] You know, we talk to them and we’re kinda, maybe you’ve been hurt by an aggressive parent, who knows? But your mind goes, man, I don’t want that. It’s exactly what you may need. And so that’s why coaches and a board, not a formal board sometimes, but boards of advisors or experienced people, come look at this and it’s amazing how this is what the high performers do.

[00:19:46] You know? And Tiger Woods won the Masters at 20, 21 years old. First major, first Spring as a professional. He wins it by what? 12 or 14 shots. All of a sudden there were two tours. There was the PGA tour and then there was Tiger. The next week. He calls a coach and he says, I saw some weaknesses in my game this week.

[00:20:12] And everybody’s going, what? Weaknesses? Nike didn’t see them. They wrote a really big check. I saw some weaknesses that I will never get where I want to get to vision if I don’t fix these things. So what did he do? Brought other eyes to it and engaged the talent. Tiger has a great phrase. There’s feel and there’s real.

[00:20:39] Joel: Hmm.

[00:20:39] Henry: So he learned long tail. His coach would say, you know, you need to take it back at this angle. He said, well, I am. Well, let’s look at the video. No, you’re not. And so we feel things from our experience and all of that, but we need other eyes. You’re exactly right.

[00:21:01] Joel: So we’ve talked about vision and we’ve talked about talent that gets us now to like strategy and planning. And I wondered if you’d just take a minute to distinguish those two for us a little bit more sharply. Because I think sometimes the muddle for people,

[00:21:15] Henry: that’s such an important point you’re making because we think of strategy, it really answers the question, how are we gonna win?

[00:21:22] Mm-hmm. And what a lot of people do. They think they have a strategy, we’re gonna go do this and this and this and this. But really what it is, is a lot of activities, you know, it’s a lot of effort. They try this and try that and try that. But for strategy to work, it’s gotta be pretty focused because there’s all the strategy.

[00:21:39] Consultants will tell you the most important strategic word is no because you get moving. In fact, Michael, you just said this earlier today, you talked about something that came to you. It’d be a great opportunity and, and you said, but I said no to it because it would’ve been a distraction for us. Your strategy will keep you loading all of your talent and resources onto a particular strategic set of anchors that will get you there.

[00:22:09] Otherwise, we’re chasing great opportunities, but you’re gonna get diluted, you’re gonna get distracted. And who knows if they’re gonna work anyway. I, I’ll give you an example. You know, take Chick-fil-A, for example, incredibly successful company, they have a growth strategy. And the growth strategy is they find new markets or holes in the market, even where they already are, where it’s underserved and they grow by planting a new Chick-fil-A.

[00:22:38] In that market. And the strategy is we’re gonna plant one that is exactly like us. And from day one you open, you go on the door and you, and you feel like, whoa, this is new. I mean, this feels like a real chick. It is just as good as the one I went to in Boise, you know? But that’s the strategy to growth that they have.

[00:22:59] I got a call from a regional bank that wants to go national and they said, our growth strategies, acquisitions, we’re gonna buy banks and we need your help to morph them into our culture so it doesn’t get all screwed up with a hundred different cultures. Very different strategy.

[00:23:17] Joel: Mm-hmm.

[00:23:17] Henry: Both of them great for their context.

[00:23:21] But if you’re Chick-fil-A and what if Bob comes along and says, I got this great store where you aren’t, and it’s Bob’s burgers. But I can start selling chicken and we can. They go, no, that’s not our strategy. And so that’s the strategy. How are you gonna win the Super Bowl? I mean, look at Super Bowl. Last year, the strategy or the year before, the strategy was they were so strong in defense, we’re gonna win by neutralizing the homes with our defense.

[00:23:54] You gotta know how you’re gonna win. Is it gonna be digital? Is it gonna be what? You just gotta know? And then to your point, Joel, what people do is okay, they go out and start doing that. Well, like the brain, if you haven’t defined, first of all what the specific activities are that are gonna move that needle, and then who’s gonna do what when it’s not gonna go well.

[00:24:21] And when you do that, each person knows every day, what do they touch that moves the needle? And what does somebody else touch that moves the needle? Are they interdependent or not? You know, you gotta figure that out and everybody knows what they’re doing when, and you know, at Chick-fil-A when they say we’re going to, first of all, they say we’re gonna grow.

[00:24:43] Well, who does what to move the needle on that strategy first? It’s the real estate department. Mm-hmm. They go study the market and find the place, and they gotta be here. As soon as they say that, there are teams that are developing that team that’ll be there on day one. There are teams that have to work in the supply chain and all that kind of stuff.

[00:25:04] And if everybody doesn’t know what they’re doing at specific times, you know, in manufacturing they call this gates.

[00:25:11] Joel: Mm-hmm.

[00:25:12] Henry: Everybody, we gotta get to this gate before we go to the next one. And there’s everybody there. That’s the way the brain works because you might have the store built and well who, who’s gonna open it?

[00:25:21] Oh, we better recruit a plan. Makes your strateg strategy work. Some people aren’t that linear.

[00:25:30] Joel: Yeah.

[00:25:30] Henry: And they’re not detailed enough.

[00:25:33] Joel: I’m not like, if I think about where, where I break down in this cycle, this is typically where I break down. This is basic project management and I think project management.

[00:25:42] Henry: And you know what, Joel, there are some people that, oh my gosh, they love it. They wake up every morning.

[00:25:47] Joel: Yeah,

[00:25:47] Henry: let’s get the to-do list. And you start talking about something big picture and their eyes glaze over and say, what are you, you know, what are you talking about? But you have a lot of CEOs, and I’ve seen this a lot, who are very big picture and strategic and they’re bringing their team on board.

[00:26:01] They can see in their head. How getting from here to there is is so simple, guys, right? But it’s simple because of their pattern recognition and these other gifts that they have, and the team’s going well, how do we do it? Well, they can’t see it, and they need a linear process, and they need definition from all that.

[00:26:21] And this sounds complicated, but it’s very, very simple. This is what we do with a family to get ’em in the van to get to school on time. Everybody’s got a role, you gotta do this, but by this time, and then we can all get in the van and love each other. But if they don’t, somebody’s running upstairs going, you need to get your teeth, but you need to get you, you, you, you, you.

[00:26:43] And it just breaks down

[00:26:45] Joel: one area where this gets a little bit tricky is back to talent for a minute. If you don’t have the ability to do this project management stuff on your own, you’re gonna need somebody to step in and do it. But then there’s possibly this disconnect between the visionary and the people in the weeds, like you said earlier, because they don’t appreciate that.

[00:27:03] Somehow or another, those people in the weeds actually do need to navigate all those fine points, get from gate to gate.

[00:27:09] Henry: You’ve hit on such a breakdown. That’s important. The visionary wants to know, why aren’t this finished? Why aren’t we hitting our note? Why aren’t, you know, and they wanna get there.

[00:27:22] They’re doers and many times they don’t appreciate what’s involved in pulling off what they’ve asked somebody to do. But this is where some constructs, like I talked a lot about this in the accountability section and the way grade leaders do it, this is where when you get a team together and they’re, they’re looking at what’s gotta happen and each part really understands what the implications of what they’re doing are for the other department.

[00:27:50] Michael: Hmm.

[00:27:51] Henry: And then they begin to appreciate and they begin to do it in a way. I remember a, a big, big tech company I worked with that had a product launch. Absolutely botched it. And so I went in and we’re gonna do a postmortem on this ’cause you can’t let this happen. You know, it’s the kind of thing you read about in the papers.

[00:28:15] So we’re going through it and what was actually ha, what actually happened was r and d has to make this stuff right. Well, the sales team, the CEO was driving these numbers and they had to meet these numbers. The sales team is out there with customers and the customers say, well, will it be able to do this?

[00:28:33] And sure we can build that into it. That’s not a problem. And they’re making promises. They don’t feel the pain of having to execute that. And so they come back and tell our day, we can’t do that by April. We, in fact, we can’t even do both of those. They conflict and et cetera, et cetera. And, and so that’s where this team of, and building in these constructs, we call it psychological safety, which is not softness or niceness.

[00:29:00] It’s creating a culture where the truth can come out.

[00:29:03] Joel: Mm-hmm.

[00:29:04] Henry: And the trust dynamic of helping each other to accomplish this. What you’ve hit on is so important. ’cause we don’t understand how hard something we love may be for somebody that’s gotta actually do it. And sometimes they get in there and it’s not as hard as they’re belly aching about, you know, you got a lot of people that wanna slow everything down for 8,000 reasons, but it’s only in that connected environment that you can figure that out.

[00:29:34] If my body, again, my body tells me to walk across the room. Let’s say I’ve got a little bit of a, uh, let’s say I’ve got a splinter in my toe, my head wants to run, but as soon as I step on it, what happens? My whole system begins to send a message to the CEO. You can’t push that hard. We gotta slow down and do what?

[00:29:58] Fix this problem.

[00:30:00] Michael: Mm-hmm.

[00:30:01] Henry: First, if you’re gonna run, this is why I love having a little model that everybody can see how all this works together. And then it’s like, I use example of what Carl Young called synergy, where it takes on a magic that’s bigger than the sum of the parts. And like an NBA player, we, you know, we watch Jordan flying through the air and doing these acrobatics and all this.

[00:30:26] Well, he didn’t plan that in terms of, he didn’t know his arm was gonna be doing that. His torso was gonna be doing this, but the vision was there and your body becomes synergistically working together where it accomplishes stuff that you don’t even know how that happened.

[00:30:44] Joel: Yeah.

[00:30:45] Michael: This is more of a curiosity than anything, but it’s, it goes to strategy.

[00:30:48] On Sunday, Gail and I decided that we were gonna try In-N-Out Burger. They just came to Franklin where we live, like they moved their corporate headquarters here now. You lived in California, LA for I think, most of your life, except for growing up in Mississippi and then

[00:31:03] Henry: for everything after college.

[00:31:04] Michael: So, you know, you,

[00:31:05] Henry: I mean, it’s only been five years, but you know everything after college.

[00:31:08] Michael: But you were, um, familiar with In-N-Out ’cause it was phenomenon on the west coast. And so we went at about one o’clock. We thought, let’s get the, we’d heard the crowds were long and we thought we’ll just wait for lunch to get over and then we’ll go and eat late lunch. And we got there and the cars were unbelievable.

[00:31:26] How many people were in line? We asked the guy that was directing traffic, how long? So wait, he said, probably 45 to 50 minutes. We said, well, that’s not happening. So we went home, we came back that night and it was a 30 minute wait. So we thought, okay, well let’s try it now. I’d like to know what is the strategy that makes that work?

[00:31:45] Because I’ve had a lot better burgers at other places. I, it was good. I’ve had better french fries at other places. But what’s the strategy? That they’re employing that makes them so successful.

[00:31:58] Henry: I’m not, I’m not inside that company, so I don’t know how they really thought about it. But looking at it from the outside part of it is there, there’s an emotional connection to that brand.

[00:32:15] Now you have a strategy to be able to build that. But over the years there’s been this emotional connection and I’ve had people visit me in LA and say, you know, from other parts of the country, go, what do you wanna do when you’re here? And they go, look, I gotta go to Inn out. I go, seriously, that’s where you want to go.

[00:32:38] All of LA’s food scene. There’s some kind of an emotional connection. And then what also happens is when you go in there compared to other burger chains. It feels good. They don’t let you down between your expectation and what they deliver.

[00:32:58] Joel: Hmm.

[00:32:59] Henry: They’re friendly. It just goes well. And so it’s a little bit, people are a little bit of a drug trip about how o you know, it’s like the oxytocin and, and falling in love is you don’t see his or her faults.

[00:33:13] You, let’s run to the altar. Right. And, and you’ll wait on her. Right. You give her time to go get rid of the, uh, old boyfriend that keeps coming around. But there’s an emotional connection to this. And great companies are able to do two things. They’re able to build that, but you can’t build it with crap.

[00:33:35] You really have to deliver on the expectation. And then what you do is you exceed it. And I think that’s part of it without, without knowing, but. It’s a good thing to have. I mean, apple’s a lot like that.

[00:33:53] Michael: That’s true.

[00:33:53] Henry: You know, you’re in love with this stuff and I mean there’s, there’s other platforms that can do a lot more really.

[00:34:03] And other phones that can do a lot more. But then they have another strategy where now you’re locked in. Yes. You’re in this ecosystem. It’s hard to get a divorce ’cause you got a family. It’s, and smart people figure this out. Now I, when you were talking about the strategy though, that there’s one, one nuance in here that I made it somewhat a linear process because it’s, but there is some time, you know, I put engage in the talent and the strategy.

[00:34:34] There are times when the strategy will dictate what talent you bring on.

[00:34:42] Joel: Right.

[00:34:43] Henry: And so that’s kind of a little bit of a merry-go-round.

[00:34:46] Joel: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:47] Henry: But actually what happens is most times it’s very rare that a strategy is developed in one person’s head. You know, they kind of know where it’s going and know how they wanna win this, that, and the other.

[00:35:02] But generally, you know, they got few really smart people around, either on a team or wherever, and the strategy emerges. But what’s gonna happen is that’s a merry-go-round. ’cause sometimes you’ll realize I don’t have the talent, you know, like Brady said, I gotta bring them head the strategy first. I mean, he’s a quarterback, we’re gonna win by throwing football.

[00:35:22] Right? And so you gotta bring on the talent to execute that strategy. But that’s always true. I’ve gone in companies that are our new strategies, we’re moving to digital, and I look around the executive team and I go, so who, who’s the it? Leader and they go, oh yeah, he reports to the CFO and he is like two or three levels down.

[00:35:45] I go, you are putting your whole business in a strategy of digital and you don’t have the digital person at the table really. And so our strategy is dictating, doing something different with the talent. And then the flip side’s true too. And so sometimes we’re in a strategy we need to bring on more talent and sometimes we need more talent to come up with the right stretch.

[00:36:09] Michael: I want you to talk about Weight Watchers a little bit because I think this is one thing leaders sometimes don’t understand, and that is that some leaders might be too quick to give up on the vision when what they really need is a change in strategy.

[00:36:21] Henry: That’s

[00:36:21] Michael: right. If the strategy isn’t working, you need to come up with a different strategy.

[00:36:24] And the strategy is only as good as long as it works. Right.

[00:36:27] Henry: Look at Michael Dell.

[00:36:28] Michael: Yeah.

[00:36:29] Henry: I mean, he built the most incredible company out of a dorm room with the strategy was on cost. He’s gonna beat everybody on cost. How? By buying these parts and assembling them and cutting out all of that middle stuff and going direct like Ikea.

[00:36:49] I mean, you gotta assemble it, but it’s cheaper. And that’s a, that was a strategy. Well, when all, when parts got commoditized, to your point, everybody could get these parts cheaper. Roll it. 10 what? 15 years later, they changed their whole strategy to services and other stuff. You’re exactly right.

[00:37:09] Michael: And tell the story a little bit about Weight Watchers because they, they had the exact right strategy until they didn’t.

[00:37:14] What was involved there?

[00:37:16] Henry: Well, their strategy was anchored in some very, very real good things that to lose weight, I just lost, just, I say just I’ve lost ’cause I was sitting in a wheelchair for three years and not moving and all that weight, no three different big surgeries. And I gained 30 something pounds and I’ve lost it.

[00:37:36] I, I’ve lost that now. So, and PE people go, how’d you do it? And I said, kind of the George Foreman diet is the way I did it. And they, they said, what’s that? If you remember, foreman Lost, I don’t know how much it was. Was it 150 pounds? There’s, it was a huge amount of weight. And I saw him on an interview one time.

[00:37:54] He said, how’d you do it? He said, well, I just had to learn something that I didn’t know. And they said, what was that? He said, you can’t eat everything you want. Okay. What Weight Watchers did. Everybody knows if you’re, you can’t out exercise your diet, right? And there’s other stuff for some people, hormones, blah, blah, blah.

[00:38:15] But most of this is how much we’re doing this, right? Or a lot of it. So everybody knows that. But how do you have a strategy that’s going to actually enable people to do that when they’ve never been able to do it before? And what they did was they anchored it in known behavior change. Hmm. So there’s, we build new neurological patterns about four factors.

[00:38:43] That’s how wiring gets built. New wiring that we don’t have. There’s an awareness of what we gotta do in real time. You’ve gotta be prompted and to see, oh, you’re tiger. You’re not swinging. You know, make sure you swing it this way, not that way. And then once you’re aware of it in real time. Then you have to deliberately practice the new one, the new behavior.

[00:39:03] And all of that has gotta be threaded with interpersonal relational support to get the new wiring to lie down. So what they did was they built a program awareness. You gotta learn about how points work. And then in real time through the week, that’s gotta be, there’s gotta be focused attention that brings that to mind.

[00:39:22] And then you gotta deliberately practice a new behavior. We’re gonna start counting this and there’s a accountability and all of that, and there’s a relational support. And then they meet in a group. They built a very, very good system. And all the research showed back in the day, they got better results than you buy great strategy until you could get Weight Watchers in a syringe.

[00:39:47] Michael: Hmm.

[00:39:48] Henry: Ozempic and all these drugs hit now, not that the other stuff still isn’t important, but you can kinda trick the body into doing a lot of that for you. And so at the time of the writing, which was this, you know, the book’s about to come out or it is out now, I guess. And so however many months ago, I think Weight Watchers stock was down, was it 80%?

[00:40:13] 80%. 80,

[00:40:14] Michael: yeah.

[00:40:14] Henry: And I think what I said was, I don’t know a lot about Weight Watchers, but somebody’s sitting in a room right now thinking, we gotta change our strategy. I mean, Michael, you lived through this in publishing.

[00:40:26] Michael: Yep.

[00:40:27] Henry: The strategy used to be, gosh, get these bookstore owners in love with your books and, and let ’em know about ’em.

[00:40:35] Because the strategy is get people in there and these bookstores can lead ’em right to the book that’s gonna answer their question and, and we have this community and all of this, and all of a sudden you can. Go online and order it, have it tomorrow and not go to a bookstore.

[00:40:50] Joel: It’s a different world. It was pile high and watch ’em fly in the old days and then, and then that turned into returns.

[00:40:57] Henry: Yep, that’s right. Didn’t

[00:40:58] Joel: work.

[00:40:58] Henry: And remember book signings. I mean, as an author,

[00:41:01] Michael: oh my gosh.

[00:41:01] Henry: And you go do all these book signings. Well, I don’t know if anybody even does this.

[00:41:06] Michael: I know that’s much thing.

[00:41:08] Henry: I think if you’re like Taylor Swift or something, and if you do a book signing, I don’t think the strategy is what’s going on in that store.

[00:41:15] Strategy becomes such an event that you’ve caused so much awareness. That’s probably how it works.

[00:41:28] Joel: What about 11 Madison Park? Because this is a great story about strategy in the book and how by not competing in the way that their competitors were competing, they completely changed. The whole game.

[00:41:44] Henry: If you don’t know that story, 11 Madison Park was, um, it was a restaurant in New York and there’s this group, the top 50 restaurants in the world, and you get all the Michelin stuff and all that, and they have this big awards event.

[00:42:00] But when you get named in the top 50, you go to the event and you don’t know what number you are. You might have been number one, or you may, you know, who knows. But they call him off up to the stage from number 50. And so Will Guero was the owner and the guy that ran it, and he, he had made the top 50 and he gets there, he goes, wonder, wonder how high we are in all this number?

[00:42:28] 50 11? And he goes, oh, well, great.

[00:42:37] Michael: Something.

[00:42:37] Henry: But then he started thinking, how do you get to number one?

[00:42:41] Michael: Mm-hmm.

[00:42:42] Henry: Okay, we’re a restaurant. Every piece of food in every one of those 50 restaurants is probably beyond perfect. How do you differentiate yourself and become better? How does number 27 become better than number 18 next year?

[00:43:00] By food? And my words is, this is sort of a fool’s errand, right? And he started to think there’s gotta be a different strategy. So what he came up with was back to the emotional experiences we talked about. He was gonna do it by what he termed unreasonable hospitality. Now we get to strategy and a plan, unreasonable hospitality was going to give that person an experience that they could not believe this happened, and that would create such a connection with this restaurant.

[00:43:36] So when he did strategy and a plan, get the talent. He created a new talent position, I think it was called the DreamMaker and the dream makers one or two or three, I guess would be in the restaurant on call and the plan, the servers in getting to know the table, getting to talking to ’em, overhearing their conversations.

[00:44:01] Something would happen at that table. They would take that something, give it to the DreamMaker, who would then go make it happen. An example or two, this guy comes in New York, the server over here said, I can’t believe I’ve been in New York three days and I mean this is a great meal, but I never got a street hot dog.

[00:44:21] How can I’m leaving in the morning? How can it, Charles is agreement. They go out on the street, they buy the street hot dogs, they bring ’em in, they serve it in a silver platter. The guy doesn’t know it’s here. And they put it before me, reached out and there’s this hot dog and the chef had cut ’em up with all this.

[00:44:38] Another example, they heard this couple say that

[00:44:43] Joel: they said,

[00:44:43] Henry: how long have you been in Newark? Well, we’re just not even supposed to be here because we were, we were flying to the Caribbean for this anniversary, beach vacation that we’ve been longing for and our flights are all canceled. And now we’re, you know, who knows it’s gonna work, toss it to the DreamMaker.

[00:45:01] But the DreamMaker does. Goes out, figures out how, I don’t know how they did this, probably down the street in New York. They bought a blow up swimming pool and they got a bunch of sand from somewhere, another room in the restaurant. They brought in all these plants and everything. They created a beach.

[00:45:24] With Howard, they knew what music to people like they created a beach with a private table and gave them their tropical dinner. And it’s just a million stories like that, but it’s got a strategy and a plan and talent and everybody knows their role and that’s how it works. How are you gonna win? And then how’s that gonna get executed?

[00:45:52] I met Will a couple years ago at an event and we got to talking and we had a lot in common and, and he said, we gotta get together. And I go, where? Where do you live? He said, Nashville. I just moved to Nashville. I said, I did too. Where? And he told me he’s my neighbor. And so, you know, we’ve gotten to know them and here’s what’s really funny.

[00:46:12] So we go out to dinner. If you go to a nice restaurant with Will now. Because of who he is. It’s like going into a guitar store with Elvis. I mean, the managers, the serving, it’s, but he’s, he’s created a real thing about hospitality now. A lot of industries, industries are, are flocking to him for training and his people, and it’s really great.

[00:46:43] Michael: We’ve gotta know him a little bit too, and we’ve had him on this show and funny story was, he says, you know, people are often afraid to invite my wife and I, his wife’s an amazing chef too. Invite us over for dinner. Well,

[00:46:55] Henry: she, she started Milk Bar.

[00:46:57] Michael: Yeah,

[00:46:58] Henry: that’s, yeah.

[00:46:59] Michael: He said, so they’re intimidated to invite us over for dinner and I have to tell ’em, I say, look, we’re not getting together for the food.

[00:47:04] I mean, if I wanted to find amazing food, I could find it anywhere, but we’re coming for the connection with you. And that’s what’s important to us. That was really beautiful. Okay. I wanna talk about accountability. That’s your fourth kind of component here. I don’t wanna miss that because it, it, it does scare people.

[00:47:24] Henry: I mean, it’s one of the worst words in people’s limbic system. As soon as you hear the word accountability, you know, it’s like, because everybody’s had experiences, right? Or I always think of it, everybody’s seen this on C-SPAN or something. The senators up there pounding the, somebody’s gonna be held accountable for this and it means you’re gonna get punished, right?

[00:47:45] You’re gonna get whatever. And that’s what it means to a lot of people. It’s been their experience, you know, whether a parent or an authority figure or a boss or whoever. And so the first thing to realize is nothing happens without accountability. Nothing. What is basic accountability? The word actually means the etymology means to answer to a trust.

[00:48:09] So we’re in this thing together, and this is your role. This is my role, and we’re trusting each other to do what our part is to make this happen. It’s a very positive thing. Your body, back to the body. One of the most basic measurement accountability systems that keeps you alive is your immune system.

[00:48:32] It’s always measuring are things like they’re supposed to be, but if something, there’s a problem, it immediately addresses that and it has different levels of accountability. Your saliva first and then your stomach acid, if it’s a bigger problem. And then if it gets through and actually something there, the marker cells really interesting in your immune system.

[00:48:55] Marker cells go to that bacteria and put up a sign that says, you know, Ebola, some country 1948, here’s the genetic code. We understand the problem. So everybody knows this is a problem. And then the T cells, the team come around and contain it. That’s what great accountability systems do for us. The first thing I do with teams about this is, okay, what comes to mind when you, when I say the word accountability, when you see the, you know, whatever.

[00:49:24] Then I put up two charts. Two flip charts. Okay? I want everybody to tell me what happened when you’ve had a bad experience of accountability. What, what, what happened in that dynamic? And we put all those, well, it was harsh or you know, I, they never told me what they were expecting anyway. And then they came down to me or didn’t talk to ’em for six months.

[00:49:43] And then, you know, there’s all these reasons. Okay, let’s get all those down. Now. Tell me a time when somebody had a good accountability relationship and it really helps you. What happened in that relationship? We put those things up there. Then I kind of, you know, group ’em together. Well, the really, these three are talking about this.

[00:49:58] So then you get three or four behavioral anchors and I go, look, team, this is how you’re gonna do accountability. We’re not gonna do these bad things and we are gonna do these good things. Same thing Alan Mulally did when he went back to four in, in his accountability every Thursday morning, had an accountability structure, made a very positive thing, but he had behavioral rules.

[00:50:17] About respecting each other and helping each other and all this. So you gotta get it positive first, because then everybody’s brain’s gonna be working, right? But we don’t realize how key this is and positive to getting there. And one of the examples I use is, if you’re a pilot, okay, and you’re flying a airliner from LA to New York,

[00:50:40] Joel: you have a vision.

[00:50:42] Henry: You’ve engaged the talent. You got a copilot, you got the navigator, you got all that. You got a strategy. The strategy is, well, we’re gonna fly, but there’s a plan, a flight plan, 40,000 feet, 540 knots certain heading, okay, there’s your plan. The next

[00:51:03] Michael: thing

[00:51:04] Henry: that happens, you got measurement and accountability to the plan.

[00:51:07] A pilot would never take off without her accountability partners. Now, the first one. Our instrument panel asking the question, according to the flight plan, are we doing what we said we were going to do that’s gonna get us there 40,000 feet fine. She dips down, wins or whatever. She’s at 38,000, gets feedback, beep beep, beep beep.

[00:51:34] Plan shows 40, 38, please. You know, correct. In her head she goes, oh, good night. Thanks. Thanks. Why? Because I’m burning too much fuel at 38,000 feet. I’m not, you know, we can’t do that. Quickly fixes and adapts, right? If it doesn’t happen, then her next accountability relationship, the Regional Tower United 7 21 flight plan shows this heading.

[00:52:01] You’re, uh, actually headed at whatever. Oh gosh, you’re right. You know, sorry, I got distracted up here with an equipment thing. You know, it helps you get there and that’s how individuals and teams. Must see accountability. You’re my best friend. If I’m veering off, please tell me. You know, I wrote a book called Necessary Endings with three kinds of people.

[00:52:25] There’s wise people, foolish people, and evil people. And the wise people are ones that the book of Proverb says, correct A wise person. And they will get wiser still. They’ll get better, they’ll get back on track. If you correct me correct, a fool actually says, don’t correct a fool. ’cause they’ll hate you.

[00:52:44] They’ll cast the insults upon you, you know, defensive. And what if that happens in accountability? You’re 38,000 feet. Oh, shut up. I know what I’m doing. Well, we know where that ends up. It’s the best thing ever. But we’ve had such bad experiences. And then I actually divided that part of the book into two sections, the accountability and how it works.

[00:53:02] But the second one is having the accountability conversation because. How we do this actually loads on brain functioning and whether people will be able to use it and execute it or not. And that’s the big deal. A lot of people don’t do it well, but a lot do it.

[00:53:18] Michael: So good.

[00:53:19] Joel: One of the phrases you used in the book is that it’s partner work, not police work, which seems like a really simple seems but great mnemonic for remembering the two different types of ways this might show up for people.

[00:53:32] Henry: Another thing that I said there was, we think of it rear view mirror only. You know, looking back to what somebody did last week or what they did in the quarter, whatever the cadence is. But it’s really forward looking because we’re seeing what we’re doing and what we did last week and if we keep doing that, we’re gonna end up over here, not where we want to go.

[00:53:54] And again, it all ties back. Our vision is what holds us accountable. Really what we’re doing though, knowing I gotta get to the other side of the room is not gonna correct my activities unless I take that future reality and move it back to the present where actually actually do something that’s gonna affect the future reality.

[00:54:20] And that’s why, you know, I’ve heard you talk before about write your obituary.

[00:54:26] Joel: Mm-hmm.

[00:54:27] Henry: What do you want that to say? People can’t just write their obituary and then think, oh, that’s what I’m gonna do. Then what you have ’em do is you work that date back to what have you gotta be doing today to make that happen?

[00:54:41] And that’s what accountability does. It’s a very positive thing, but we gotta get in people’s heads where it feels that way.

[00:54:48] Michael: We don’t have time to fully get into it. We’re about out of time as I knew this would happen. But, uh, adaptability, it’s your

[00:54:54] Henry: fault always.

[00:54:55] Michael: I know it’s always my fault, but the adaptability component really flows naturally outta the accountability.

[00:55:01] Henry: It either flows naturally or it doesn’t because of our issues.

[00:55:06] Joel: Well say more about that. I mean, we’re talking about like, if you don’t fix it, it ain’t gonna happen. So what’s the breakdown there?

[00:55:13] Henry: Well, a lot of times it may be very uncomfortable to go fix it. What if you’re conflict avoidant? That’s gonna require a hard conversation.

[00:55:23] This human tendency of avoiding negative realities. Is as deep as anything. Why do people know they’ve got three things they have to do today, but they scroll instead, or they go to the coffee machine? Get it. Because sometimes there’s two things. One, some people are wired for more immediate gratification than delayed gratification, and that’s gotta be worked on.

[00:55:53] But there’s another part of this is that if there’s a problem that by definition activates certain kinds of stress, right? And stress kind of fight or flight, we’re gonna go into scream at somebody about the problem, that’s the fight. Or we’re gonna avoid it and go work on something we really like, or we’ll minimize it.

[00:56:13] A lot of times we minimize it. One of the, we can’t do this. One of the examples I use in the book was, I’m. Boat addict. I’ve loved boats my whole life and yes, I had the little better is little bigger is better disease. And the first time I got a boat, I lived in LA for a long time, so I moved from lakes to the ocean and the first time I got a boat, it was big enough to really have systems.

[00:56:38] I picked it up, marina del Rey with the the yacht broker and we’re taking it to Newport Beach where I was at the time. You gotta go way out there beyond California Peninsula. It’s pretty good trip. And so we’re out there and we’re up on the flower bridge and I go down the, to the master state route and I’m in there and I hear this, I’m hearing this intermittent noise and I go, crap, something’s wrong because the engine room was was next to that.

[00:57:07] And I go, but I couldn’t. I go, something’s wrong. I ran up to get the guy and I go. There’s some noise down there, something’s broken. And he goes, what? And he, he comes down there and he starts laughing. He goes, that’s the autopilot. I said, oh, I never had an autopilot before. This boat was bigger than neat thing I ever had.

[00:57:25] And I said, well, what’s that noise? And he said, well, when we rounded the peninsula, the swells out here are really big and you know, you can feel it. And, and they’re boats supposed to get on this heading to go to Newport. Well, you know, we’ll get knocked off that heading all the time. And I set it on a much tighter cadence for correction because we’re moving so much, I want it instantly correcting pretty quickly.

[00:57:51] Because if you don’t back to the words in the book, adapt and fix to what the measurement shows you, if that weren’t happening quickly, we would end up. Catalina Island, if somebody didn’t fix, didn’t fix what the measurement and accountability showed us. And so the quick part is really important.

[00:58:13] Collective wisdom has said this for centuries. Nip it in the bud, for example. It’s just true Problems unaddressed become patterns. Patterns become deeply ingrained. It’s like tributaries of water outta your gutter. It’s not gonna go where it’s supposed to. Now with a big storm, it carved a new path into your yard and we gotta address it quickly or it’s, it’s neurological, it’s how behavior app.

[00:58:38] Michael: So good. So just to summarize, if you wanna get from here to there to your desired future, five basic essentials here. Vision, talent, strategy, accountability, and adaptability. You’ve written a tremendous book. You guys need to go buy this book. You’re Desired Future by Dr. Henry Cloud. I was trying to encourage you before the show to create a coaching certification program around this, and I hope that you’ll end up doing that, but this is a book for every coach.

[00:59:15] It’s a book for every anybody who wants to accomplish anything. This is the basic operating system for getting into the future You want. Henry, thank you so much.

[00:59:27] Henry: Well, thanks for having me. I always love being on with you guys. ’cause again, you actually know this content domain and it’s such a great discussion, so I’m sure we’ll, we’ll continue it at lunch.

[00:59:41] Michael: Okay, buddy. Thank you. That’s

[00:59:43] Joel: awesome. Thanks Henry.

[00:59:43] Henry: Yeah.

[00:59:55] Michael: Okay. That was a fun conversation and as I predicted, it was hard to bring the plane in for a landing because there’s so much to talk about.

[01:00:03] Joel: We had a lot of stuff that we couldn’t get to.

[01:00:05] Michael: Oh, true. I mean, we probably covered a third of the questions that we had. But, um, you know, he is become a dear friend over the years.

[01:00:12] I’ve known him for a long, long time. And despite the fact that he is written all these bestselling books, he sold so many copies of those books. He’s spoken at so many conferences that, you know, none of us get access to. And he’s got all these impressive credentials. He’s such a down to earth guy.

[01:00:30] Joel: Very.

[01:00:31] Michael: And I really admire that about him. So what did you take away from this, Joel?

[01:00:35] Joel: I mean, I love the fact that he bases it in a model as simple as our daily waking experience. You know? Mm-hmm. We all wanna wake up and go do stuff, and to do that we have these various steps that we just automatically do. We don’t even have to think about it.

[01:00:51] And yet that model scales all the way up to massive corporations trying to go do something. And I think that’s just a really fascinating, on the one hand way of approaching it, but it also then shines light on all these places where things break down when you highlight, for instance. Needing to recruit talent.

[01:01:10] Your body has the talent that it needs to do most of the stuff that it wants to do, but your organization may not, and that may be exactly where the breakdown is coming. Or you may be reluctant to take the feedback that the environment is giving you or the market or whatever is giving you. Your body would know, for instance, a pain signal, ouch.

[01:01:28] Don’t go there anymore or ouch, correct course. But in an organization you might be really reluctant to listen to like the feedback mechanisms that you have in place. And so we suffer the consequences. So scaling up from that basic idea that it’s kind of like what the human body does on a daily basis, that’s what we’re doing in big organizations and small teams and everything in between.

[01:01:49] I found that just really compelling, really easy way, an easy way to kind of understand what’s going on.

[01:01:54] Michael: It felt like something that, uh, grew organically out of his observations about the body, and there’s nothing more fundamental than the way that we move through the world and try to get what we want.

[01:02:06] And so those five components of his system

[01:02:10] Joel: mm-hmm.

[01:02:10] Michael: Are so, for me at least, easy to memorize because they just naturally flow from one to the next. And even when he talked about, you know, sometimes the strategy will dictate the talent, you know, I thought that was a nice nuance to it because that’s definitely how it sometimes happen.

[01:02:28] I think my biggest takeaway though, was around accountability. I had so many more questions that I wanted to, to ask him about, because I do know as a coach myself that people sort of bristle at that, at that notion. Mm-hmm. It’s kinda like everybody says they want accountability and tell It happens.

[01:02:45] Joel: Yeah.

[01:02:45] It’s the right thing to say, but it’s not the right, it’s not the thing you wanna feel. Yeah.

[01:02:49] Michael: And it’s literally the number one thing I look for when I’m interviewing a new potential client is are they willing to be accountable? And the thing that I say to ’em is I say, look, I’m not gonna hold you accountable.

[01:03:01] I can’t do that. But I’m gonna help you hold yourself accountable for where you want to go.

[01:03:06] Joel: Mm-hmm.

[01:03:07] Michael: And I think that Henry has given me some new language about, around that.

[01:03:11] Joel: Well, like that partner versus police thing, right?

[01:03:14] Michael: Yeah. It’s feedback so that you can adapt so that we can both get you to where you say you want to go.

[01:03:21] Joel: Yeah.

[01:03:22] Michael: And I think in my own life, you know, I think it just makes me open more open to feedback. ’cause let’s be honest, when you get feedback, particularly from people close to you, I’m not gonna mention any names, but sometimes it’s, you know, it’s a little bit hard to hear.

[01:03:35] Joel: It can sting

[01:03:36] Michael: and it’s easy to try to justify yourself.

[01:03:39] But if we’re wise, as he pointed out, we’ll welcome it because we have an opportunity to get wiser.

[01:03:44] Joel: The other thing I thought was great about the simple five. Steps or components or features of this way of, of doing things is it works like a diagnostic too. Yes. So when, when you’re stuck or when things are breaking down, you can kind of pull out that list and you can just look, where am I failing?

[01:04:02] Like, where’s this going wrong? Because it’s gonna be one of those five things.

[01:04:05] Michael: You know? I think this would probably be true at full focus. I’ll see if you concur with this. But I think that if there’s one place that we’ve struggled with over the years, it is in the accountability. Not that people aren’t willing to be accountable, but up until recently we haven’t been able to build sort of the dashboard that gives us the feedback we need to.

[01:04:26] Correct.

[01:04:27] Joel: That’s really true.

[01:04:29] Michael: I think it’s true for most of my coaching clients too, and certainly in our double win coaching program, a lot of those people who are have businesses, they don’t have any system for getting feedback. So they don’t know if they’re on course or off course. Right. And you can end up miles and miles from where you want it to be, just because.

[01:04:46] You didn’t have a source of feedback that created the accountability that resulted in the adaptability that kept you on course.

[01:04:52] Joel: And like where the breakdown can happen with us is like we have the data but don’t have a way of getting access to it in a useful way. And so even if you have the parts of it, you may not have what you need out of it in order to get what you want.

[01:05:05] So like back to that diagnostic idea, if you see that breakdown, you gotta, you gotta dig in. Like to use his phrase, you gotta double click and then go further into it to see where the breakdown is. ’cause it’s really easy to say, well we’ve got the data.

[01:05:17] Michael: Mm-hmm.

[01:05:18] Joel: But in like, unless you can actually look at it and use it.

[01:05:20] No you don’t. Even if it’s there,

[01:05:22] Michael: it opens up so many possibilities.

[01:05:24] Joel: Yeah, it does.

[01:05:25] Michael: Well I love this conversation and oh by the way, much like your wife Henry is the master of metaphors and stories, and I think that elucidates everything he was talking about and makes it clear in a way that, you know, just.

[01:05:40] Telling the principles doesn’t,

[01:05:42] Joel: right? It’s just all on the top of his head and out it comes. And it’s great to listen to

[01:05:46] Michael: guys. We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode with Henry Cloud, and we hope that you’ve enjoyed it so much that you’ll share it with the friend. So do that if you would, because we wanna spread the word and we wanna get the news about not only this interview with Henry, but also his book out there.

[01:06:01] And of course, go by the book, your Desired Future or Better Books are sold. See you next week.