Reviving Passion in Corporate America

There are some people that make their work just another thing they have to do, and there are those that make their work something that they want to do. Welcome to Working on Purpose with your host Elise Cortez. In our program, we provide guidance and inspiration from those people who have found deeper meaning and personal connection to their work life. It's beyond nine to five. It's working on Purpose. Now Here is your host, Elise Cortez. I'm your host, Elise Cortez. Joining you lie from Dallas, Texas, which is home based for me. This program is all about helping people more meaningfully and productively connect with their work and equipping leaders to cultivate meaning and purpose in the workplace to elicit passion inspired contribution, innovation, and persevering performance. So I seek out and bring on guests to a particular perspective, experience, or expertise that I think contributes to or expands this conversation. And as a management consultant and social scientist drawn on a meeting and work and identity research I've been doing over the last fifteen years, as well as from my experience consulting, speaking and developing workforces across the globe, I hope you caught the show live last week. If you missed it, you can always catch up a recorded podcast. We were on the air with Shaun Anderson, who was a motivational author, unlimited thinker, and lifetime entrepreneur with a history of inspiring others. Is a six time author with the latest book called Amicus one oh one, a story about the pursuit of purpose and overcoming life's chaos. Is also the human spark plug behind the Extra Mile day a day, recognizing the power we have to create positive change when we go the extra mile. We each talked about our own pastor discovering our purpose and got real about the journey we've each been on. We hope that in sharing our own stories that we gave access to listeners to discover their own purpose and journey forward. It was a really fun conversation with us. This week is doctor Lance Secretan, who is a pioneering philosopher and corporate adviser who's best selling books, inspirational talks and life changing retreats have touched the hearts and minds of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. Author of twenty two books about leadership, inspiration, corporate culture, and entrepreneurship, as well as an award winning book and nomir called a love story. His latest book is The Bellweather Effect. We'll be talking about his own experiences accumulated over his lifetime that I've taken him to his conclusions today about the workplace, some of the incredibly broken practices that are destroying the corporate world of work, and glimpse a way forward to a much more inspiring life in the corporate world. He joined you today from Canada, Doctor Secreton. Welcome to Working on Purpose. Good be with you. Oh it's wonderful. I've been telling people about you coming onto my show. In fact, I'm here in the offices of Luminum Leadership where Rebecca Bales is here and she's worked with leaders across the globe, and she said, oh, you're having doctor Secreton on your show tonight in my office. I said, yeah, how exciting is that. So you're famous. Thank you for being with us. Great to be here, Thank you for inviting me. Absolutely well, I want to dive right in. So in our first conversation you said something pretty profound. You site that we spend one hundred and seventy billion dollars on leadership yet the way we lead is completely broken, and then if we don't get this turned around, no one's going to want to work in corporate America. Would you say a bit more about what's behind all that, what's going on? Well, I think what's happened is that we have grown our awareness of leadership in the modern organization based on an old model that came out of the military and is very dated now and doesn't even fit the kind of infrastructure approach that we're now using in work. The thing to remember is that work as a new word. It's only four hundred years old. We didn't even have the word in the language before the sixteen hundreds. We didn't go anywhere to work, so work is a brand new idea. We now go somewhere to work, but that's ending too, So now we're going back to people who are in the gig economy working in their homes, and that's what we used to do four hundred years So we need a kind of approach today that is inspiring for people. I completely agree, which is what I'm up to as well. Now I want to situate a bit if I can at least approximate your background, Doctor Secreton, you have run huge enterprises as a CEO, and you went on to teach leadership at the university level for several years. You've written twenty two books on leadership, and you now consult with large organizations on their business issues. And so I can't imagine what it must be like for you to live with all of that experience and understanding and expertise and yet be so cognizant of the enormous problems we still face in the corporate world. How do you channel what must be tremendous frustration. Well, you know that I think the numbers are typically eighty twenty. Let me just confirm that with you. When I ask audiences when I make a speech, what proportion of the population you think would give up their careers and jobs if they had a free choice? And I asked, do you think it would be fifty percent? And someone will immediately say no, it's sixty percent. Someone else will say no, it's seventy percent, someone else will say eighty And that's where we always end up. So here we are eighty percent of the world does not want to go to work. That's what we've created. We need to change that, and that's I think the history that we've inherited. And yes, there are twenty percent of companies where people are happy and are inspired, and very often those are the people that call me and they're not broken. They just want to get better. That's why they're good already, because they're always trying to get better. I understand that mindset and appreciate that. It's interesting to see who just who is reaching out to you. And along those lines, I'm very curious about the work that you do at the Secreton Center. Will you share a little bit about some of your offerings and what you've been doing and how long you've been working at that there. Well, we've been at it about thirty plus years, thirty five years or so, and our clients tend to be large organizations, mostly Starbucks, Microsoft, Human Kaiser, Permanente. Those are the sorts of names that we work with every day. And clients are already all those ones I've mentioned. They're running very, very successful businesses and we're helping, I hope to make them even more successful. So one of the things we do is implement the ideas that are in the Bellweather Effect. So, for example, we take away mission statements and vision and value statements and all clunky stuff like that and replace it with a dream, so that a company that has a dream is an organization that's fired up. So, for example, starbucks dream is to create a third place. And if anybody goes to Starbucks, you'll understand there are people writing their resumes, making dates, having performance interviews, also job interviews and so on. So it is the third place. And that's what Starbucks dream was all about. You know, I recently read that in one of the many books that I've been sticking my nose into, and I find that story really remarkable. Fact that if it was Howard Schultz's idea, that he could actually go to Italy and see and look and watch the way that they interact in the coffee shops, and his perspective was, wow, this is a community here. Let's take that back and create down the United States. Is that the way that it happened. Yeah, that's the way it happened, because there is no third place in the US. You know, in France you have the home, work and the bistro. In Italy homework, and the cafe in England homework and the pub in America homework and what there is no third place. So that's what it is. It isn't, and this is the important thing. It isn't to be the best coffee shop in America, which would be a mission statement, or to provide the best customer service in coffee shop retail. That would be an old, clunky mission statement. It's a different ideas to create the third place. That's an awesome idea. And it's the kind of thing, that sort of dream that powers passion and creates inspiration. People get up to work because they're inspired. I completely understand that maybe you're a good person. And then to clarify this point that I also read about Howard Schultz. So this idea that if you're pointed toward a dream, then it becomes pretty easy to stay true to decisions that will only support that dream. And I read that Howard Schultz at one point discovered that a good number the baristas no longer knew how to make a really, really stellar cup of coffee. So he shut every single store across the world down one day for training. Is that true? Yes, it is. And there was another incident where he came across someone who was racially insensitive, so we shut all the stores down again and did a sensitivity training for all of his employees, and another story he at one time during the recession, one of the directors said, you know, one of the ways we could save a lot of money and get this turned around little bit would be to remove all the healthcare benefits for the part time workers. And how Schultz said, you know, that's what you think you shouldn't be a director of this company. There's a very firm commitment to being inspiring, committed to people, committed to the planet, and doing good work. M Yes, and just I think when you talk about having a dream and really just aligning all the actions too, that it just becomes very simple to make very easy decisions that support that. And I'm pleased that you, as the person of tour could actually affirm those things that I had read along the lines about Starbucks and Howard Schultz. The next thing I guess I would want to ask you then, is if these few people, these few already well performing companies are the ones that are calling you, how do we get the other companies that are out there that maybe aren't performing as well to reach out for help. Well, I hope that they watch the wonderful things that are happening to these companies. If I give you another example, I've been working with Humana for ten years, and in two thousand and eight, we created a dream for them. At that time, there were a fifteen billion dollar corporation. Today there are a sixty billion dollar corporation. At that time, their stock was about fifteen dollars and today it's three hundred and thirty dollars. So they will tell you that one of the biggest strengths in their whole strategy has been their dream. Their dream that we created for them has helped them to achieve magical things. M Yes, I read a little something about that on your website. It's remarkable, remarkable. Would like to hear a little bit about some of the retreats that you do, if you don't mind, I'm very intrigued with your It seems that you've got a very specific approach to retreats. What makes them so special? Well, I do a lot of them, different kinds. I do coach certification. We teach coaches and sort of them to coach using our work. We also teach teachers, consultants, and executives. In a live in retreat, we run it for three days in my home, either in Canada or in Colorado, and we also in Colorado, I teach what we call the leadership Summit. We teach leaders how to ski double black diamond ski runs in one day, and the idea is to show them how we can make a breakthrough. So it's a metaphor. So once we do that, the leaders are so inspired. We get down to the bottom of the mountain and we sit down and we talk about why don't we do this? Everywhere we all plateau, we all stop learning. We all are victims of a bell curve as parents, as leaders, as children, as friends, as citizens. So it doesn't matter where we are in our worlds, there are ways in which we can make breakthroughs and therefore achieve remarkable outcomes in our every aspect of our lives. Well, I have never been anybody who wanted to ski down a mountaintop, So maybe I should come to one of your sessions too. Well, one last question before we go on our first break if we can. I clearly you are a man who has established himself as a subject matter expert, the authority on leadership. And then there's this whole other piece of you, doctor Secreton, that is just if I may say, larger than life. You just have all of these amazing interests. You've You've had an amazing love in your life, you have terrific adventures. It's an incredible full gamut of really an exhibit of the human potential, it seems to me. So if you would, if you don't mind, you share with me a little bit. When we spoke first by phone. You have a memoir called a Love Story that I believe you wrote about your wife. Would you share something about that and why it's important to you and how it came to be. Yes, Well, my wife's name was Tricia. We had the most amazing relationship, truly a romance maide in heaven. We never had a fight in all those years, thirty years. And she passed away four years ago. And at the time, during those years, I had written poetry for her, just for her own eyes. Not that I fancy myself as a poet or anything like that, but I decided if she passed away that I would write a book to share the story with others, because I know so few people that had an experience like mine. Fifty five percent of first marriages fail, sixty five percent of second marriages fail, and seventy five percent of third marriages fail, so not only do we not get it right the first time, but it gets worse. And that's just a sad story about what goes on in romantic relationships. So the book really talks about the wonderful journey we had. It's a beautiful book in physically it's one all kinds of awards and remarkable to me. It's actually one awards for poetry, which I never imagine what happened, and it's done quite nicely. So I've been very proud of that book. It's obviously not a New York Times bestseller, and it won't find a large market because it's a very specialized book, but a lot of people have bought it and couples, for example, read it to each other one chapter at a time before they go to bed. And I've loved hearing that story. I think it's a very cool idea. I wanted to talk about it on this program because I do, like you very much pursue passionate purpose and inspiration in my life, and I want to help our listeners find that as well. And I just thought that was a wonderful thing to surface. So thank you for sharing, and that is a great way for us to take us into the first break. I'm your host, Alice Cortez. We round the year with doctor Lanstraton, who's a pioneering philosopher and corporate advisor who's best selling books, inspirational talks and life changing retreats have touched the hearts and minds of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. He's the author of twenty two books about leadership, inspiration, and corporate culture and entrepreneurship, as well as an award winning memoir, A Love Story. His latest book is The Billweather Effect. He joins it to Day from Canada. We've been talking a bit about his long tenure of work and how he's ac community to his knowledge. After the break, we're going to get into that Bill Weather Effect and talk about its contents. Stay with us, We'll be right back. Alise Cortez is a speaker and engagement and development catalyst. She designs and delivers professional development, leadership and engagement workshops and can bring her expertise to your organization. She will help ignite meaningful development within your workforce that will increase employee engagement, performance and retention to learn more or to invite Elise to speak to your organization, please visit her at www dot Elise Cortez dot com. She would welcome the opportunity to help get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with Elise Cortez. To reach our program today, send an email to Elise ali Se at Elise Cortez dot com. Now back to working on purpose. If you're just joining us, My guest is doctor Lance Secreton, the author of twenty two books about leadership, inspiration, corporate culture, and entrepreneurship. His latest book is The Bellweather Effect. Individuals, entire organizations, cities, and states have experienced remarkable transformations through his unique mentoring, coaching, wisdom, and approach. He has helped six companies to be named to Fortune's Best Companies to Work for An America list, and eight others are also his clients, and thirty Secreton Center clients are on the Fortune's Most Admired Companies List. Speakers in America ranks him among top five leadership speakers, and his firm, The Secreton Center, Incorporated, is ranked number one in the world as an international leadership consulting firm by Leadership excellence. I'm your host Elis Cortez, doctor Secreton. Quite just an amazing life that you have created for yourself. It's just really wonderful to get to have your expertise and share. So from here, if we can get into that latest book of yours, The beau Weather Effect. It's really compelling that you've outlined eight specific examples of counterproductive business practices, and I want to talk about a few of them a bit in depth and if there's any examples that you can produce for us to really bring them to life. So let's start, if we can with what I like to call the dreaded performance review. Why is this so counterproductive? Well, I wrote this book because all my work has been really about inspiration. So I'm actually not a fan of leadership because, as we said earlier, we've been spending a lot of money on it and it isn't working, and I don't think we can ever describe it or teach it or get it into people. So what is it we're really looking for. We're looking for inspiration. So I've been writing books about how to inspire and how to become inspired, how to inspire other people, how to build inspiring cultures and so on. But what I discovered was we're actually doing some things that are very uninspiring. And when you're trying to inspire an organization while you're already doing uninspiring things, it's kind of fruitless. So I wanted to take a look at these practices, and performance reviews are right up there and the top of the list as one of the most despised and judgmental and critical and horrible things that goes on in business today. This whole approach of trying to sit down with someone every six months or every year and evaluate them is really pathetic. I mean, in an era when we expect and are agitated if we don't get an answer to a text message in six seconds, waiting six months for feedback is ridiculous. Now, the other thing is that I have this little test I use, would you do this with your spouse? So let's take a performance appraisal. Hi, honey, We're going to sit down and have a little conversation today about your key performance indicators and your budget and where you think things are going over the next year. We're going to set some goals. Maybe we'll do some three sixty reviews with others to see how they are working with you and someone you wouldn't get one word out of your mouth, you'd be out of the door. Well, why because it's demeaning, it's demoralizing, it's negative, it's critical, it's judgmental, it's an affront. Well, if it doesn't work at home, why would you do it at work? And what we should be doing. We did some research some years ago, and this is the alternative. We ask people what you don't like about leaders? And they said, we don't like cowards, we don't like phony people, we don't like people who as selfish, we don't like people who tell lies, we don't like people who rule with fear, and we don't like idiots. And we said, well, and you know, why don't we just do the opposite. That seems like a simple solution. And the opposite is courage, authenticity, service, truthfulness, love, and effectiveness. That spells an acronym castle because we love people who are courageous, We love people who are authentic, we love people who serve others, we love people who tell the truth, we love people who are loving, and we love people who are effective. Therefore, if we want to inspire other people, and we want to check in with them on a daily basis to see how they're doing. This is the way to do it. We do it with courage. We do it by being authentic. We do it by serving others, by telling the truth, being loving and effective. I think that's gorgeous and something we can all add into our repertoire, I think quite nicely. And I like the idea of trying it on our snavik at other as well to see how that would actually fly. And then let's talk about this if we can relate it to the performance review. One of the other I think nasty components that comes with it that makes it terrible is that you might get a pretty decent performance review, but then there's this thing called forced ranking. Yeah right, so can you speak to that how that tends to devastate the city. Stacked stack ranking or force ranking was something started by ge principally Jack Welch when he was running Gear and it was morphed into multiple other organizations, including Microsoft when Steve Bellmer was the CEO. And basically it's just simply removing the bottom's ten percent in terms of performance of a department on a regular basis. So it's calling the weakest performance. So in Microsoft it was known as rank and yank, and you know, it was derided as a brutal kind of activity. And how can you be inspired in an environment like that? This is just misguided thinking when it comes to leadership. So a better idea is to never do that. I mean, you wouldn't do that with you with your family, Like supposing you had five kids, you'd take the last one and from away. It was just ridiculous. So you work with people and inspire them to hire performance. Yes, here here completely agree with that. And I want to go through a few more of those and then talk a little bit about we'll talk about the way forward here, but I really want to surface a few of the things that you talk about. And one of the years are that really caught my attention is the idea of separateness and silos And of course I've run into that quite a bit in the work that I've done with organizations around organizational culture assessments and trying to design something better. Can you tell us more why is this not working for us? Well, it's completely unnatural, isn't it. I Mean, if you think about entrepreneurial organizations, they don't have departments. They have five guys in the garage. They pull all their earnings in their effort. They work around the clock. They are completely in love with what they're doing. They're passionate and inspired, and they don't get things like leadership competency lists that they have to work with every day, or performance appraisal or engagement surveys, and they don't have departments. It's one and whoever is on the team commits to the team. It's kind of like in the rock on Old business. In the singing business and music, you'll see the same thing with bands who work together to make one beautiful sound. And that's essentially what we're trying to do in organizations. It's totally unnatural. Nothing in this world is separate. We can pretend it's separate, but it's not. And if I do something in my little patch of the world is going to affect other people, there's no way I can separate that. So to distinguish inside an organization between sales and marketing and accounting and finance and all the rest of it is archaic. And to have layers and job titles and salary levels and all those other things that separate us is very, very unhelpful, and then making it worse if we start separating by gender or by race, or by ethnic background, or income or education or any titles, and all of this is excluding to other people. They feel left out. That's uninspiring. We're inspired when we feel well. I think we could probably have a whole radio show conversation about how to really pull that off with an organization. But let's just hold that thought for just a second because I want to talk more about the way forward a little bit later. But one of the other things that also caught my attention in your list of the things that are counterproductive is motivation. What's wrong with the way we go about motivation today. Well, motivation is a fear based system. We want to manipulate the behavior of other people, like, for instance, a salesperson by giving them a bribe, which would be a bonus or a proper sharing or a trip to Hawaii or whatever it might be, if they hit their quota, their sales target. This is about me, not about you the salesperson. This is about me, because if you hit your target and everybody else does in the sales department, then I get to be okay. I make my targets and I get to go to Hawaii. So this is a fear based system where if you don't achieve things, then you get into trouble because you have made your lament on the totem or women on the totem, and people are going to criticize you and so on. So it's a fear based approach. And inspiration, on the other hand, is an entirely different idea, and we have not even realized as a difference. We talk about being motivated and inspired like that one word, but motivation, the fear based system is what we use everywhere. It's the bedrock of leadership theory. It's what we teach in universities when we teach leadership. It's the bedrock of human resource policy, because all compensation plans, for example, are geared to incenting and incentivizing people to achieve something performance of some kind, and they're awarded accordingly. And it's also the cornerstone of every other part of our lives. In marketing, by this product, or you'll be ugly in religion, joined this religion only, you'll go to hell. In parenting, do what I say, I'll punish you. In business, do what I say, I'll fire you in academia passes exam, or i'll fail you in healthcare. Follow this protocol or you'll get sick. So everywhere we've learned to understand this. In the elections that are going on now and at other times during the year, we see fear as the main driver of all the communications and advertisements, even to the point where they're not even true a lot of the time. So fear has become the core of what's going on for most leadership ideas. Now, inspiration is something that you don't do to someone. Inspiration comes from within. Leaders who are great at what they do create an environment that's inspiring for other people. And in summary, what I would say is that motivation is lighting a fire under someone and inspiration is lighting a fire within someone. There's an entire difference because inspiration is about other people, it's serving them, it's a gift to them, it's an act of love and service. Motivation is about me, it's something I want need. So there's a very, very one hundred and eighty degree difference. Now we're very good at motivating, we now need to learn how to inspire. I'm sure you've been told us a million times. But that is probably the crispest delineation I've ever heard between motivation and inspiration. Doctor Secreton, thank you. That was enthralling is one word that comes to mind, and I agree with everything that you said as well. So within organizations, why are we continuing down this path? Why are we still buying this and drinking this kool aid? Well, that's absolutely what we're doing. We're drinking the kool aid. We look at bell Weather companies. In the old days, those companies would have been IBM, gen Electric, Honeywell, rubber Maid companies like that. Today, those bell Weather companies on Facebook, Google, Twitter and so forth, Netflix, and we look at what they're doing. They are very good at publishing articles in Harvard Business Review and Stanford Journal and so on, and we copy that. Now we don't ask a lot of questions. We just say, hey, six sigma is a good idea. They're doing it over ge or Total Quality Management, doing that act Toyota in Japan, or any other of these wonderful things. Re engineering. I mean, we've had a lot of these ideas and they essentially, even the ones I've just mentioned, have been ruined us for a lot of companies. Some companies that have been struggling to get on the ball Ridge Award have actually gone bankrupt because of all our efforts to do that. It's just simply a wrong focus. So what we're actually stuck with now is copying the behavior of other companies and then trying to bring it into our own organizations fruitlessly. We need to think freshly, and some of the ideas in the book describe the alternative approaches of how we could create inspiring environments. Well, I'm in for that, and let's go ahead and take our last break here so we can devote the last part of the show to all of the way forward. I'm your host, Alice Cortez. We've been on the air with doctor Lance Secreton, who is a pioneering philosopher and corporate advisor who's best selling books, Inspirational Talks and life changing Retreats have touched the hearts and minds of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. He's the author of twenty two books about leadership, inspiration, corporate culture, and entrepreneurship, as well as an award winning memoir, A Love Story. His latest book is The Bellweather Effect. He joins it today outside of Toronto, Canada. After the break, we're going to get into some of his ideas that may actually fix things for us. Stay with us, We'll be right back. Elise Cortez is a speaker and engagement and development catalyst. She designs and delivers professional development, leadership and engagement workshops and can bring her expertise to your organization. She will help ignite meaningful development within your workforce that will increase employee engagement, performance and retention. To learn more or to invite Elise to speak to your organization, please visit her at www dot Elise Cortez dot com. She would welcome the opportunity to help get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with Elise Cortez. To reach our program today, send an email to Elise ali Se at Elise Cortez dot com. Now back to working on purpose. If you're just tuning in. My guest is doctor Lance Secreton, the author of twenty two books about leadership, inspiration, corporate culture, and entrepreneurship. His latest book is The Bellweather Effect. Individuals, entire organizations, cities, and states have experienced remarkable transformations through his unique mentoring coaching wisdom and approach. He has helped six companies to be named to Fortune's Best Companies to Work for an America list, and eight others are also his clients and thirty Secreton Center clients around the Fortune's Most Admired Companies List. Speakers in America ranks him among the top five leadership speakers, and his firm, The Secreton Center, is ranked number one in the world as an international leadership consulting firm by Leadership Excellence. I'm your host, Elise Cortez. So for this last segment here, doctor Secretan, we want to really talk about We painted the picture of doom and gloom. I think fairly well, let's talk about an inspiring future. One of the things that you and I talked about when we spoke on the phone is that you said that if we don't fix these problems in the workplace, no one's going to want to come to work for corporate for the corporate world, and we'll have a revolution on our hands. What would that look like. Well, that's already happening. And we are finding, for example, that the millennials are not interested in graduating from wherever they're studying and entering corporate America, so there's a real shortage. They want to start up new companies and they want to get into entrepreneurial opportunities. And then at the other end of the pipeline the boomers who are coming to the end of their career and they're leaving early because they've burned out and stressed, and so they don't want to be part of that anymore. So we've got the pipeline emptying at both ends, and we're left with the middle, which is not always the best part of it because that can lead to mediocrity. So if we end with insufficient intake. And by the way, this is especially concerning for women, because we need more women to enter the workforce and more women to accelerate up the ranks of corporate America and become CEOs and leaders across the whole of the corporate world. And that will not happen if we're not getting people to come into the workforce of either gender. So these things take time, and if we don't get this right. Bearing in mind, the corporate world is a key part of our society. Everything depends really on how that works. We are a capitalist nation, so we need to make sure that works, and it works better than it is now, and if we don't, people will find an alternative. And I'm not sure what that looks like. I don't know what that would look like, but I don't think it will be pretty. And I think that we should not wait for that to happen. It's kind of like climate change. We need to get on it. Well, you certainly piqued my interest in your perspective about needing more women in the workforce and in leadership. I have a perspective on that. Why do you believe women are so important in the workplace and in leadership? Well, one of the things I've written about in The bell Weather Effect, one of the eight things that we do that's really uninspiring is the use of warrior language. We talk about being blown away and being blown up and blowing the doors off things, and killing the competition and destroying the enemy and having a battle plan and being a road warrior and so on. I mean, it gets really, really tiresome. This is mail speak. So for one thing, one wonderful benefit that women would bring is the intuition, the feminine energy, and the absence of this kind of languaging. We made people sick when we speak this way, we don't realize that, but we've done all kinds of research and it is noted in this book. There are seventy footnotes about this sort of stuff in the book, and it is clear that when I say to you and I could, because I have no hair, I would kill for your hair, or I have this is chocolate cake to die for, I mean the best of intention, but actually it's totally negative, and I'm we're hurting each other when we do that. So it's very important that women bring that balance into the workforce because I think would generate something quite different in the way of culture than what we've been experiencing. M Again, I cannot argue with any of that and completely agree. Okay, well that's I beg your pardon. It's also fair, it's quite fair, yes, yes, and right well, as we both say, organizations would win, the teams would win, families would win, all kinds of people would win. Absolutely well. One of the other things that you said, and when we've spoke on the phone, that I thought was fairly compelling, and it's it's fresh. As you said, going forward, we need to teach organizations not to add or change things, but to rather stop doing things. What do you mean by that? Well, as the bell Weather effect describes, there are eight things we do now that are really unproductive and depressing and demoralizing. So rather than add new things, you know, new techniques, new fads, new theories, new concepts, new shiny objects that we find, and like re engineering and TQM and so on, six sigma and the rest of it, how about taking some of the things that we're doing that are really uninspiring, like separateness we talked about, like fear. Take fear away from the workplace, like motivation instead of inspiration, like engagement surveys, performance reviews, salary levels and warreal language. These are all things that are very unhelpful. Take them away, and we now clear the runway so that we can now build inspiring cultures. So how would we I'm just I'm terribly curious here, you know, we get rid of these awful performance reviews, would it look like instead in that space or some similar sort of space, exactly the same as it would look like at home. So I would go to whoever I'm living with, and I would say, how are things going today? Do you need any help? I'm your partner what can I do that would be supportive. I mean, there are lots of ways to ask questions. You shouldn't wait six months to find out what's going on, right, That doesn't make any sense at all. You should be in touch with everybody every single day, and actually maybe several times a day. That's the job of the leader, and therefore it's universal. The things I'm describing in this book basically apply to everything in our lives. We want to be in touch with each other on a routine, regular basis. Now, to make it even more imperative, if everybody's going to work from home, or more and more people are going to work from home, it's even more important the leaders keep in touch with them because they don't even see them, so they want to be talking as you and I are now, for example, using Skype or some other digital technology that helps us keep in touch with each other. And by the way, there are lots of apps for this now too, Amazon as an app, IBM as an app, Price Waterhouse as an app. There are lots of companies that have apps that enable them to check in with each other to find out what's up. And then somebody can say, well, actually i'm having a crappy day today. Oh really, well, I'm your leader and your coach. How can I help you? That sounds far more compelling than waiting for six months for some feedback, for sure. And it's not judgmental or critical. It's not meant to rank you in any way. It's not going to go in your personnel file. It's not going to be something that you feel burdened by or offended with. M H. It's so hard to imagine what that would look like. I must confess, given how long I know I've been exposed to performance reviews. So this is all very encouraging speak for me. And I know I know that you have dedicated your whole life to helping people organizations get this right. So I'm counting on you, doctor Secreton, that we're going to We're going to We're going to turn this ship around right from you too. Okay, We're in this together. We need the whole lands here. Okay, you got it. You got it all the way down the ski slope as I screamed my head off. One of the other things that you said in our short call that I thought was quite intriguing, and I'm sure you probably addressed this in your book, But if you could give us a snippet, you mentioned the interdependence of church, government and business. How could they work better to get us moving in the direction of well being and flourishing in work. Well, that is really a tricky subject, isn't it, my goodness, and a big one. Let's tackle church first. Church is and I pretty well include everything here, whether we're talking Islam or Catholicism, or Christianity of any stripe, or Buddhism. Even most of these places have got some troubles going on, haven't they. And we don't need to get into the detail of that here, but we all know what we're talking about. This is a failure of leadership. So we want to change the way these organizations are led and make them much stronger and much more inspiring than they are today. People are leaving religion in droves because it's not inspiring. If we take government, well, what can we say? I mean, government is so screwed up now, and politics is such a mess that we do really need to try and achieve some differences. I am intrigued by an election that's going on I think in New Hampshire or Vermont. I can't remember which where one of the candidates has flat out refused to buy negative ads. This is a female candidate, but she's being pummeled by bad ads or negative ads by the opposition, but she is staying to high road. And it's going to be a major test in this election to see if that actually works, because negative ads have been working so well. I'm currently coaching a politician who's running for election, and he too has stayed on the high road. He is not sunk into the mire of swinging mad at everybody else. And you can't make yourself look good by making everyone else look smaller. So in politics, we need to really stand up, be counted and stand for something that people find inspiring. And people like John McCain and President Reagan and so on did that because they try to stay in a place which lifted other people and made them feel better. This is why we long for them today. And it didn't matter what party they belonged to. They set an example of how humans should behave And the same thing, of course, is true in business. Now. These are inextricably intertwined. Maybe more than is necessary or more than is advisable, but it is the way it is. So that's the structure of our society. We need to work on all three of those. I appreciate that, I do see the interdependence of that, and I agree with you, doctor Secreton. If we can also get people running for office to stop running of ads, my goodness and mouse. I'm also coaching someone who's running for a political office, and she and I have had long discussions about what her opponent is saying about her and should she join that race, join that kind of language, and we've agreed that she shouldn't. So the small little pebble, Yeah, the small little pebble. Please, if we can get that moving into the direction of the pond. How is that going, by the way, Well, well, well, so far, so far, so far, so good. Although her her opponent is still throwing or lobbing at her, so far, she's she's holding her own and she's she's got a pretty good shot of winning. And I'm i'm I'm I'm grateful or hopeful that she's she's going to pull it through. Well, do let me know, because I'm really watching these individual approaches and hoping that this is going to be a message to politicians that they'll get wiped out if they keep crapping on other people, that's not policy, that's not vision, it is not inspiring. And I think that the electorate is tired of this. I completely think they are as well. And I think you're right, of course, doctor Secreton. Who wants to that isn't inspiring. Who wants to listen to someone or follow someone who's just speaking negatively all the time with someone else? That isn't inspiring? No, exactly, Well, we've got we're getting close to the end of the show here, but I want to be sure and give you a chance to talk if you can give us some hope here, if you will talk to us about an organization, or if we have time too, that's gotten on the right track toward progress. Well, I think that a good example would be Microsoft, Microsoft as a new leader. The old form of Microsoft was basically a take no prisoners, no hostages, just destroy the competition. The point then in those days was that Windows and all of the things that Microsoft makes, the Office Suite and so on, would not be available to competition, in particular Android and Apple, and so if you wanted to use those services and software platforms, you had to go with Windows, because you couldn't get it anywhere else. That was the old style, and hopefully enough people would want to be following Windows that they wouldn't go to Apple or Android. Well, it turns out that that's not the case. Long come sat An Adela, a new CEO, and he says, we're going to end that. That's simply not going to be the way we work. We're going to make our stuff available to anybody who wants it, and we'll design it in a way that it fits an iPad or an iPhone or anything else that Apple makes, and any kind of Android phone or other device. And now you can get all of Microsoft's products on all devices and they're totally interchangeable, and they're working to support everyone in the world. Now. The reason for that partly is that they came up with a new dream. So the old dream was to not the dream. The old mission statement, because that's the old language, was to put a PC on everybody's desk. All about me. You see, we make PC's and we want PCs with our software on everybody's desk. Then we'll be rich and famous in our stock will go up. Long come saton Adella, the new CEO, and he says that's going to go away along with our approach to competitors, and we're going to have a dream. And the dream is to help everybody and every organization in the world achieve more. That's all about others. That's the difference between a mission and a dream. A mission is about me, A dream is about you, and it's lofty, it's large. Is to help everybody in the planet to achieve more. Since he's been the CEO, he's added four hundred billion dollars of value to that company. That's part of what this does. This is the success that company is going to achieves. Just like the story about Himana that I was telling you about earlier, and Starbucks too, sounds pretty compelling to me. I just don't see how we can argue with this. I don't see why people are not buying. Why are we sticking to our own ways when there's so much compelling evidence to the contrary. Good question, and the question is answered in the last chapter of The Bellweather Effect, which is titled why We Don't Change. And I know that people will read this and they will say, yeah, that's nice, but I'm not going to do that, or they'll be okay. In California, but not here, and okay, in another company, but not my company, or I'll be returning in five years. I don't need all this upheaval and so on. So the last chapter says, this is why we don't change, And partly that's ego. I don't want to be the first one to go here people are going to laugh at me. Partly is because we are stuck in a rut, and we've got a paradigm and a box that we live in. And that box is essentially the water that we swim in, and so we don't want to go outside the box. Everything that we know in the world is defined by that box, and so we find it very very hard to get outside it. And the natural tendency of human beings homeostasis is also important. So I ask people at the end of the boat, read the chapter that gave you the most difficulty, and see if you can find one useful thing in there that could change everything for you, because we really need to be open to change. M boy, I have to say, for me, in my life, I have gotten the most mileage out of the most difficult changes that have come my way, and I wouldn't change them for anything. Because helped me become who I am today. And they were hard and they were terrible, but I wouldn't I wouldn't change it for anything. It doesn't kill us, It'll make us better, right, exactly right, and I am better for it. Thank you very much. Well, in our last bit of time together here at Doctor Secretan, would you please just share your final pearls of wisdom and say in about a minute or so, knowing that this show was listening to globally and we really are up to trying to help individuals and leaders more meaningfully and productively connect with their work and really enjoy work for a change, what would you like to leave them with? Well, I think happened. Joy fulfillment and meaning. Those are important parts of what we are looking for in our work, and that comes obviously as a result of inner work. All of this is really about inner work, and an earlier book I wrote, The Spark, The Flame and the Torch, I talked about how we need to first become inspired, and we do that by building inspiring relationships, by having a dream, and by understanding deeply at a deep level, who we are, why we're here on the planet, and what we're going to do with our lives. That fills up our tank. And we need to fill up our tank because we can't inspire other people if our tank's empty. So we need to fill up our own tank with our inspiration, and that's called the spark. Then we're in a position to inspire other people, which is the flame, and we do that with the Council principles that I mentioned earlier in this program. And then finally we inspire the world, which is the torch. Now, if you come to work every day and your tank is full and you're inspired, you're inspiring other people and you have a way of doing that and you're making a difference in the world. That is a fully inspiring and meaningful way to live a life. At the end of it all, we need to answer the question did we make the world better? That's the whole point of our lives. And if we can't answer that on a day to day basis every day, yes, I made the world better, then we shouldn't be doing what we're doing. And the last point around this is it always needs to be inspiring. So even if we want to tell a truth, because that would be raising the bar and you're moving the needle in our corporate life, we still need to do that in a way that inspires other people. So everything we do needs to be inspiring, like an email that needs to be inspiring, like how we show up at meetings, how we leave voicemails. Everything we do in terms of decision making needs to make other people feel larger, not smaller. That's what inspiration is all about. What a fantastic, beautiful way to finish the show, Doctor Secretan, thank you very much for joining me and letting me share you with our listeners across the globe. It's been an honor lovely to be with you at least thank you for the good word you do. Thank you. If you want to learn more about doctor Secreton, his book The Bellwether Effect or is consulting or speaking, go to his website. It's www dot Secreton dot com. That's s E c R E T A N. Secreton dot com. Join us next week when we're when we talk with Deputy Chief Police at the Kapelle Police Department, Danny Barton. We'll be talking about the work he's doing to create a movement toward teaching police officers emotional intelligence and their work in the community, important thing he's up to. See you there, and remember that work is at least one third of our lives, So let's work on purpose. We hope you've enjoyed this week's program. Be sure to tune in to Working on Purpose, featuring your host, Alice Cortez, each week on the Voice America Empowerment Channel. This week, find your life's purpose at work