The Anti-Freedom Truth: Why Constraints Spark Breakthroughs

0:00 The topics and opinions express in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability, explicit or implied shall be extended to W FOURCY Radio or its employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. What's working on Purpose? Anyway? Each week we ponder the answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their highest potential. Business can be such a force for good in the world, elevating humanity. In our program, we provide guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we all want Working on Purpose. Now, here's your host, doctor Elise Cortes.

1:05 Welcome back to the Working on a Purpose program, which has been brought to you with passion and pride since February of twenty fifteen. Thanks for tuning in this week. Great to have you. I'm your host, doctor Eluse Cortes. Most leaders are sitting on untapped human energy, and I help them unlock it. I'm an organizational psychologist, logotherapist, workforce advisor and the founder of Gusto Now. But the title I live by that's much simpler, is simply I traffic and energy, not the surface level motivation or another engagement initiative, but the deeper force what I call Gusto, the life force for performance that drives commitment, perseverance, and genuine ownership of his shared mission in the clients we serve. You can learn more about us on how we can work together at gusto dashnow dot com or visit my personal website at Leastcortes dot com for information on my speaking and books we have with us today. Sherry Jacobs. She's an author, keynote speaker, and innovation strategist who helps organizations unlock their creative potential by rethinking boundaries, risks, and leadership.

1:57 She's the founder of Avenue m Group, where she has partnered with over three hundred organizations and surveyed over half a million people to uncover what drives real transformation and growth. She's the author of The Unexpected Power of Boundaries, Rethinking that the rules risk and the great drivers of innovation, which we'll be talking about today. Specifically, we're going to focus on the key drivers of boundaries, voice and permission to help leaders unlock and unleash more innovation in their organizations. She joins it today from Denver, Sherry, A hearty welcome to Working on Purpose. Thank you, Lisa. It's such a pleasure to be here. It's amazing as I want to celebrate this book that we were talking about before we got on air together, and I want to share just you know how much I got out of this, Sherry. I learned so much from your book, and one of the reasons I keep hosting the show is because it is that catalyzing learning engine for me. So thank you first for just bringing a beautiful, well written book into the world.

2:51 Oh, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. You are so welcome. And let's let our listeners and viewers understand a bit more of your background. I know it because I read your book, but let's hear about your background and where this book came from and why you were so compelled to write it. It's not easything to write a book, so let's hear the background. Absolutely so. Over the last sixteen years, as you mentioned in my introduction, I have run a research company, surveyed a lot of people. Five hundred thousand is a lot of people across every industry, and I kept seeing a trend show up and it was conorintuitive to what most people think. So most people are trying to drive growth, they're trying to make change happen, they're trying to be innovative. Yet something is missing. And from my research and from my own observations, and then also from my own creative pursuits, I discovered that it was not that unlimited freedom, but it was more having clarity around the space where you can play and explore and experiment. That actually was the most likely driver for people to see growth happen or to see change happen.

3:59 And when it kept seen that trend over and over, I started collecting these stories and then writing the book actually came fairly easy. You know, I'm one of those people that you talk about in your book who chafes about the idea of rules and boundaries, and yet you have completely convinced me of their import so I'm in now, So I appreciate. Also, you know why you wrote the book and who's its FOREMANA love for you to just expand on this so people understand. But you talk about it's for people for teams that are hesitating to experiment, if your strategic plans sound bold but they stall on execution, feeling a bit more about who is this book for and who can who can help?

4:40 Sure? Absolutely, so I really do see this book as for many different people within all different types of organizations. If you lead a team, regardless of the size the industry or how large of a company, you want to make sure that your team brings forward great new ideas. And yet you and you may walk into a meeting and say everything is anything's off the table. You can do any idea, bring me your best ideas or think outside the box. Right. We do that all the time, and the leaders who say it mean it. They really do want people to bring forth ideas like that, or they usually mean it.

5:20 So your question was who is this for? And the problem is is that oftentimes the people fall into one of four quadrants when they are trying to bring fourth ideas. Either the boss says it, but there's no clarity around Okay, where's this space where I'm a lot of experiment or I'm not allowed. And so this is for those teams to say, Okay, fantastic, I'm going to bring ideas forward, but what are the edges? What are the boundaries. It's also to give tools to leaders who want to bring more out of their team. And they may have a team that has those ideas, but it's the clarity is there, but. They don't have to park, they don't know where to go.

6:02 And so it is both for the leaders and for the team so that you can have better conversations and really bring forth more ideas. So I thought you supplied so many incredible examples, a couple of which I want to talk about on the program, but that really bring home the importance of this and I found it really interesting and fascinating how you anchored this in the import and role of fences. So maybe first can we talk about you know, the playground research that I'm not sure this person's how to say her first name, Jack Karava Goodman's study that was really fascinating the way that you laid out the import of fences in that study with regard to children and playing.

6:45 Yeah, it's one of my favorites. And I even started the book telling an anecdote about my own daughter and having lived on the edge of a park backyard and extended into this park. And then when I came across the study, I'm like, oh, that makes so much sense. So there was a study that was conducted, and what the landscape architects student wanted to do was to see the power of boundaries and how it impacted how children play, how creative they were, how inventive they were. So they had to pre school teachers take kids to two separate parks, and both parks had swings, sides with chips and a big grassy area all around it. But the one difference is one park had a fence and the other didn't.

7:29 And so we would think that when the kids were at the park with no fence, unlimited freedom and no rules, that they would explore and they'd run and they would be creative. But what turned out what happened is those kids stayed on the playground, and not just that they continued to do the same activity they do every time they go to a park. But when those exact same kids went to the other park a week later and there was a fence that was visible, the kids ran, they explored, they invented new games, they tried something, and if it didn't work, they abandoned it and tried something else because they knew the safety of how far they could go. And so the fence isn't the limitation. The fence actually is the freedom. This happens in our workplace.

8:16 When we know how far we can go. When the fences are clear, we will play up to them. When we don't, we will continue to do the same slide, swings, sandbox that we do every day when we go into work because we just don't have that clarity. I thought that was so so powerful, and I could appreciate that. We're going to talk about the psychological safety aspect that comes with knowing that that fence is here. But let's go through the three parts of your book here, if you can distinguish that for us, boundaries, voice, and permission. Yeah, absolutely, so, Boundaries is where everything has to start without having that clarity. I mean, clarity is what drives growth, Clarity is what motivates teams. Clarity is what increases engagement.

8:59 All that from knowing where the boundaries are, just like it did on the playground, and I give lots of examples for that. The second part is about voice and really making sure that other voices are heard. I have long experienced both in a junior role and a more senior role, and I've seen this time and time again that the person who is the decision maker or sitting in the corner office is often three positions away from the person who is closest to the customer, the patient, the client, whoever it is, and so they don't really see the problem, and so they also may not see the best solutions. So making sure more voices are heard is critical. Once you have those two in place, that's when you can go and start more the tiny experiment giving people permission, allowing them to take shots, and they will because the other two are in place.

9:53 I appreciate this. I'm going to tell you you're going to probably appreciate that. I was talking about you on my run today. So I run with my friend Charles on Tuesdays in the morning, and he knew he knows my show was every Tuesday, and he saw me prepping when he came over to scoop me up and I told him about about your book, and he said, you know, this would have been handy before I went through this whole air conditioning issue. He said. I called a company and they said the part that I needed to be able to get this was nine hundred dollars nine twenty five in salt. And then the guy says, well, actually, if you take this thing off the truck that I have for me, it's a different model, it'll be six twenty five and yeah, or three twenty five, so saving him six hundred dollars. So he said, I went ahead and did that. He said, but then I thought to myself, what if I just went on eBay and I looked for the exact part, and he said, which I did, and he was sixty five bucks. And he was just kicking himself in the foot for spending three twenty five when he could have spent sixty five. And I said, that's where Sherry's work would have helped you. If you would have had the boundary of I only want to spend one hundred bucks or less to solve this problem, you might have had a different outcome. And so I want you to know I celebrated your first thing this morning and put your put your work right to work.

11:07 You have no idea how much I love that story for a couple of reasons. First, at least, I'm a runner and I have my running friends, and we had the best conversations when we're out on our runs. It's it's how I came up with the name of my company. Even so, I love that that that conversation happened there. I also love the that that little anecdote about how boundaries because it does impact our. Lives in every single way. I love fashion, I love to shop, and so the boundary I have to put in place is that whenever I walk into a shop, before I look at an item I fall in love with, I tell myself how much I think it's going to cost, and then I turned over the price tag, and if it is above that I've already put in the boundary, it's easier for me to say no, I have to do that because I literally can just keep shopping. So I love that that example that you gave.

11:55 You know, we do something, So I have a very similar approach to that. I do something very what what would I be with and to pay for it, and if it's more than that, I'm not getting it right right. Sometimes sometimes there's fudging, but you know, yes, it just depends on how much risk I want to take that day, which is where I want to go next. I really appreciated your risk capacity model, your four kinds of risk capacity, and I appreciated how you talk about how many organizations pride themselves and being data driven, but that mindset can invertently limit their understanding of risk capacity, and that you have a different approach to that. So if you could flesh out the idea of risk capacity for. Us, sure, absolutely. So. I often ask this question is if I were to ask you how likely you would to do something something you haven't done before, what is the phrase that comes to mind? And everyone and every audience, every conversation will say, well, my tolerance. Of course, it's about my risk tolerance. I said, yeah, that's what we all think. But here's the thing. It should not be about your risk tolerance. It should be about your capacity to take the risk. So how you feel emotionally about something maybe either holding you back or you may be taking risks that are too big because you have high or low risk tolerance.

13:12 The question we should. Always be asking is what is my capacity to run this experiment, to try something new, to fail, learn from that and move forward. If it's low, if I don't have a lot of capacity, don't do it. If it's high, then move forward. Make it something that you can learn from. So the quick example I share is Amazon clearly has high risk capacity. They invest, they can have major failures and lose a lot of money. But my little local pizza place that's around the corner from my house, they have tight margins. They have a small built in audience. If they try something new and it fails, that has a bigger impact on them, and so their risk capacity is lower. And knowing your risk capacity is critical, not your tolerance, but your capacity to try something new for It's a network for you to learn, but to be able to successfully move forward.

14:09 So I think that's incredibly helpful. And then of course nelsled in that is you talk about you argue for being more data influenced instead of data driven. I thought that was also very very insightful. Yeah, absolutely, well, I like you you mentioned before we got on how many books you've read and how many authors you've interviewed, and I picked up a book, and it was talking about get eighty percent of what you need to. Move forward, and that was years ago. Over the last fifteen years, I've run a research company, So I run a company that helps organizations gather the data. But I will always say that there's a certain point where you need to get what you have and move forward with it. And that is data influence, not data driven.

14:52 Because by the time you cross every tea and dot every eye and gather every single data point, the world has changed. And we know that, we feel that every day. So identify the couple points, a couple of things that are going to give you more confident and that fall within your capacity to take the risk or to try something new. And that is being data influenced so that you could learn rather than waiting to have every single data point and probably missing an opportunity. So powerful, and I think many of our listeners viewers can really resonate with what you just said there. Okay, So then the other thing that I wanted to cover here that I thought was really interesting is you know what it makes sense to move the boundaries And I thought the Brooklyn Public Library example was stellar to illustrate that if you could share a bit about that case.

15:41 Yeah, absolutely, so not too long ago, the Brooklyn Public Library, Amy Talver, she reached out to my company and. Said, we are we're curious. We think that there is a policy in place that is out of date. And almost every company organization has this in place. They have policies that were there, that were designed and they were made sense at the time, but nobody goes back and revisits them. Well, in their case, it was, you know, when we had public library you know cards, we had to make sure that you lived within a certain distance of the public library because we had physical books. But years ago we started moving to ebooks.

16:23 And I'll even ask a roomful of people who here reads an ebook, and almost every hand will shoot up, and so so many people used ebooks, and that you don't need to physically return a library book to the library. But the policy around getting a library getting access to books had never changed for most public libraries around the country. And so what we were looking at is is this a boundary that can be moved, Why does it exist, what if it moves, and what will be the impact. And as they looked at what their mission was, why they existed, and what they hoped to achieve providing people with access and what was critical to that was changing the policies around getting library cards. There's a bigger program that this was bundled into or called Books on Band, but that whole entire effort to just make sure that any individual, regardless of where they lived, had access to certain books was what drove was the initiative that drove this.

17:26 But the takeaway from it is how many of us are still operating within policies or within guidelines that have become outdated, and so those are boundaries that potentially can. Be moved right. Yeah, running the company from nineteen eighty three policies. Let's change. Yeahbub our first break, I'm your host, Doctor Release Cortes. We run the air with Sherry Jacob's innovation strategists and founder of Avenue m Group, who helps organizations unlock their creative potential by rethinking boundaries, risks, and leadership. We've been talking a bit about some of the important base of her work. After the break, we're going to continue with more examples and much more examples of how you can use the voice aspect of her work.

18:06 We'll be right back, Doctor Elise Cortes is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author, she helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to a lease a LISEE at eliscortes dot com. Now back to working on purpose.

19:13 Thanks for staying with us, and welcome back to working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes, as I too, am dedicated to help them create a world where organizations thrive because their people thrive. They're led by inspirational leaders that help them find it and to contribute their greatness, and we do business that betters the world. I keep researching and writing my own books, so one of my latest came out. It's called The Great Revitalization. How Activating Meaning and purpose can radically enliven your business. And I wrote it to help leaders understand today's diverse and discerning workforce. What do they want to stay with you and give you their best And then I give you twenty two best practices to equip you to provide it for them through your leadership and your culture. You can find my books on Amazon or more personal site at Lascortes dot com.

19:54 You are just joining today. My guest is Sherry Jacobs. She's the author of The Unexpected Power of Boundaries, Rethinking the Rule Risks and Real Drivers of Innovation. So I absolutely jammed on a lot of the voice section of your book because I thought there were so many great examples in there, and I wanted to showcase from the good Catch Model chapter the idea of the best new mistake Ward. I thought that was just brilliant. Oh thanks, Elise. Actually it's funny because that's one that pubably gets some of the most attention from this book or when I shared it from the stage. So years and. Years ago, I worked at a dot com and this is at the very start of when people were going onto the internet and the only thing people were doing they were checking sports scores. They were sending emails or going into chat rooms. They were not doing any financial transactions.

20:44 Banking wasn't done online and certainly not payroll. But we were launching a company, and in those early years we were very innovative and we would take risks and we knew that our capacity for which ones we could take, and we became a very innovative company, to a point where we became the largest online payrole company in the world. As we've gained that success, so many companies do and they grow want you have this mindset of how do we keep that mindset here? How do we make sure that people continue to innovate and not get comfortable. And so we created something that is called the Sure Choice Awards. And so while we had awards for the best new innovation in the best customer Service, and other typical awards you would see at companies, we also offered an award for the best new Mistake, and that ward got four times a monetary.

21:38 Value of any other award. And with that, the idea was if you tried something, it failed, but you learned from it and that helped a future improvement. It was the mistake that and that you submitted that's what could win the prize. And I remember my boss at the time of Troy Hennecoff and Michael Alter, saying, you know, a really good leader and a really good employee never bets the company, but occasionally bets their job. They take that risk, right, And so they wanted to create that culture and also reward people, not just say we have a culture of experimentation, but actually reward people for it. I would say that that whole idea gets replicated when I share it all the time.

22:22 People are always looking at how can we create the best new Mistake award? What rules do we put in and that you have to determine for yourself. But it's a great concept to replicate. I think it's brilliant. And I also appreciate that you say in your book that this approach reframes mistakes as potential breakthroughs. I thought that was wonderful. And then you also there's a quote in there from an Ink magazine article about they were altered. The leader is quoted as saying, mistakes or the tuition you pay for success. Yeah, I think that's boy. If you could reframe to that, what a difference that would make. Well when I was younger, I felt that a lot of things I joking say that my mom had like fine cherriets, hid and talent.

23:03 It was this campaign and. She wrote, yeah, And I tried every instrument and gymnastics and acting and I just constantly failed. And I remember when I was young, I talking to a grandparent and saying, just complaining, I'm like, I am not good at anything. I keep failing. And what they said to me was that failure is knowledge earned, and knowledge is power. And I just never forget that, because like, knowledge earned is tremendous. And when we're young, we do fail a lot, we're given that opportunity. When we get older, we put we put in things that like I don't want to fail, when the truth is that we just need to know what is our capacity for failure.

23:45 Going back to that, so absolutely. So good, okay, and then building on that, I thought the concept that we talk about intelligent failure versus incompetence, let's let's tease those two out. Yeah, so, well, not all failures are going to be created equal, right, So, and that's important and your team needs to know it as well. So we definitely want to have a culture of experimentation, and there's a lot of great literature that's been written about this and studies about how important it is that people can speak up and that people can try things and talk about it. But we also want to make the distinction that when mistakes are made or they spark growth or one that signals that there's a problem here and we need to address it, that's very different. That's intelligent failure and that's Amy Edmondson's brilliant work on that, and I think that's it's essential as we look at how do we bring the concept of failure into companies that are so focused on excellence, are so focused on what we're going to achieve, they're through thoughtful and crafted and executed experiments and not just random acts that may happen. On the other hand, preventable failure happens when there is a clear standard or a best practice and somebody just didn't follow it. So it's not about just you know, experimenting and failing just

25:16 for the sake of it, but it is making sure that we know why we're doing what we're doing, what is the purpose of it, and how to follow through on it. So you know, again, the preventable ones our repetition and careless errors and missteps, and you want to have training and structure versus intelligent failure, which is thoughtful experimentation with a learning intent. And also we don't want to forget let's celebrate it and make sure that what we're learning is something that also can be scalable. Awesome. It's just that was so crisp. And you know, I know both of us have spent time in many organizations that really you know, just to your say, the mandate is, you know, create, innovate. You've got through space, but the conditions are not there and the support is not there for them to do that, and they're not aware of it until they read your book.

26:09 That's right, That's right. Okay, So I think it would be incredibly useful next to talk about the role of failure boundaries and why they matter. Yeah. So at the very beginning when I started writing this book, I really love that phrase around failure boundaries, and it's something that has stuck with me throughout the writing of the entire book. And that's what creates that sandbox, that area where experimentation and play can happen within your organization. Right, you're defining the edges of the creative space. You're framing what it is, and within that frame is where the creativity really can come out. I see this as a in addition to being a researcher and an author and a speaker, I'm a wildlife photographer and I see this in all aspects of my life. Is where when we know where those failure boundaries are, when we have a frame for that, then we can take bolder moves. That's when we can really try something different and not waste energy on something that is not going to help us move forward. So a clear failure boundary doesn't just permit risk, it invites it. It says, let's try it, let's learn.

27:24 You know, we've got your back, We're here, we get it. You Know. One of the many things I appreciate about your book and the books that contain something like this is I loved your stories of being a wildlife photographer and you know all the three thousand shots that you would take. And the reason I think that's so important as an author is we know you. We then know some of your essence and we can relate to you and feel you. And I just I just thought it was really delightful. How you shared those stories? Oh thank you. Yeah, it is my voice, like when you hear me speak, and when you read the stories, you do get it, to get that essence. You know. She didn't she didn't have a what's where a ghostwriter? She wrote this, Okay, So having somebody who is actually just I was in the hospital for a week in December. So the good Catch program and just culture example you talk about with the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia was incredible. So if we could bring that to life, if we could get more organizations to do stuff stuff like this, I really think we could change the world.

28:25 Absolutely. So this is a case study about chop which is at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. But also Amy ed Vinson had done her whole body of work around psychological safety. Also it was around healthcare workers, and so there's a huge body of work out there. And then there are anecdotes where you can see it where there are two ways we can think about things. One, we don't have a culture where people can bring up observations or mistakes so that we can learn and move forward. There's too much fear. They don't have that freedom to say something, and they don't build it into a reward system or a culture where they say this is essential so that we continue to have the patient's best interest in mind right, or we have that culture where that is critical for us to learn and to make sure that ultimately, if a mistake happens, we want to celebrate the person that observes something and brought it forward.

29:21 No blame happening, but so that we could change things. And that happens every day in healthcare because everyone is human. People are going to make mistakes, they're going to overlook something, they're going to be burnt out. There's all the different reasons why things will happen, and so how can we make sure that when something happens we can bring it forward. How do you have that mindset? And that happened in the Good Catch program, and that the Good Catch program was the name at Chop, but it's also a program now at many other hospitals. Where you see something and it could be just simply like a gurney or something that's going through the hospital that is is wobbly or can put the patient on it at risk, and you raise the attention to it and you're like, okay, good catch, we caught this.

30:08 Now and so now we. Can make a change so that future patients don't get injured by that that kind of culture. We can bring that same sense to every single work setting. It happens in aviation, it happens in airlines and with pilots, and it really needs to happen in all cultures too. I agree, and I appreciate that. You know, what you also said in the book about that particular case is you say this mindset shift at the heart of the Good Catch program. It's a proactive initiative focused on identifying and addressing potential issues before they cause harm. It's rooted in what's known as a just culture, where individuals are not punished for making mistakes, but rather held accountable for how they respond to them.

30:49 That is so powerful, Absolutely anecdotally. One of my closest friends, her husband is a pilot. He just retired, but he's a pilot for a major airline, and I would talk about this with him and I was curious, you know, what do we see? Was he seen as a pilot? And he says, we have that that is built in here because at the end of the day, when the pilot decides to take off, they have all those lives there on the plane, and so we need to be empowered. But not just the pilot, but even the co pilot or anyone else on the plane. This part of the crew is able to speak up and say something. Oh, I just can think of so much disaster that could be averted if we can make this safe. And we will talk about more about that after when we come back from the break. I'm your host, Doctor re Le's Cortez. We've been on the air with Sherry Jacobs.

31:36 She's an innovation strategist and the founder of Avenue m Group, which helps organizations unlock their creative potential by rethinking boundaries, risks, and leadership. After the break, when we come back, we're going to talk about this the importance of bounded psychological safety and why it's important for performance and innovation. We'll be right back. Doctor Elise Cortes is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author. She helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is Working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Alise Alise at elisecortes dot com. Now back to working on Purpose.

33:00 Thanks for staying with us, and welcome back to Working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor e Relies Cortes. As you know by now, this program is dedicated to empowering and inspiring you along your journey to realize more of your potential. I mentioned my last book came out, The Great Revitalization, and that it contains those twenty two best practices to help you to elevate your culture of your organization for today's discerning workforce. What I did for you is I created a simple, three page free assessment you can take off my Gusto Dashnew dot com site to determine the extent to which you're meeting those standards. If you are just now joining us. My guest is Sherry Jacobs. She's the author of the Unexpected Power of Boundaries, Rethinking the rules, risks and real drivers of innovation. So as an organizational psychologist, I could not help but just rivet myself on how much you sprinkled the idea of bounded psychological safety throughout the book. But I want to anchor that too, And then just thinking about how so many organizations.

33:54 Of course, people aren't encouraged to innovate because they are worried about their job. They're worried about, you know, getting fired. They're worried about you know what I'm so they stick their neck out. So if you could bring to life a bit more of bounded psychological safety and why does it matter for performance? Sure? And there are within every workforce there or company, there are different departments that some of them they work in compliance, they work in finance, but they have to work with a sales team, or they work with other departments that have different levels of risk capacity or things that they're going to do. In addition, like you said, not everybody is like, look listen, I just want to keep my job, like they're not necessarily looking to innovate. And I had this conversation with a friend of mine, Dan Japarkov, who used to be at Google. And Dan was telling me about you know, innovation at Google and just about listen, you are going to have whether it is because it becomes a seasoned or a product that's been out for a long time so nobody wants to change it, or it's the individuals who are there that just simply don't want to take risk. Having that bounded psychological safety saying this is the space where risk is okay. This is the space where there's a certain amount of failure that we that it's okay for us to do.

35:16 It doesn't just help the people that are excited and want to innovate and try new things. It also helps those that are that are in a role that. Needs to be more conservative, that in a role where they have to protect the company. They work in compliance, they work in finance, they have tightly held regulated positions. This idea by bounded psychological safety is fantastic for them because now they can work with the teams that want to try new things and they all understand how far they can go. So it is actually a concept that really is supposed to help everyone. You explained that beautifully, Sherry. Thank you. That was just great. Now I want to talk next about that you said we did culture, and I want to situated in that.

35:59 Of course, in the work we do, we do an awful lot of diagnostics with organizations around culture engagement, et cetera, and around how purpose is being lived in an organization, and so many, so many organizations are really cool about that idea. They love the idea of getting the information, but then they don't. They keep it to himself and they don't do much about it unless, of course, we push them into it. So if you could talk about the what is you said, we did culture and how why is it important? Absolutely so we mentioned at the beginning of the broadcast that I own a research firm and I have surveyed half a million people. And over the years I started hearing this phrase people said, which was, Oh, it's survey fatigue and people don't want to give feedback. And I dug deeper into it, and when I looked at organizations and companies that both of them were serving, both of them were collecting feedback through a variety of different means.

36:50 But the ones that got really. Meaningful feedback and we're moving forward and seeing growth or more innovative, we're the ones where they It wasn't about survey fatigue. They were the ones who didn't have the survey in action, right, So they're the ones where when we ask you for your input, we share with you what we're going to do with it, and if we're not going to move forward on something, we're going to share why. Right, you said we did, and it's also and we did not do this, but this is why, right, versus the organizations that constantly ask for input and they whether they move on it or don't, they just stop and they never continue that feedback loop and they never provide input on. Okay, you said this, this is how we're taking it in So building a culture of you said we did can help you overcome some of that what you think of is first survey fatigue, but is really survey in action.

37:45 Beautiful last week, share a head on Mary Barrett who has a book out called Squash the Sunday Scaries, and it's really written for HR teams and such, but much of it was exactly what you said right there. Do ask for the feedback, do something about it within nineteen days. Within nineteen days of collecting the feedback, come back to the people and say here's what we heard you say. Here's what we can do now, and here's what we can't do now for this reason. Very powerful, right, really really powerful. Now people are sitting up and willing to give their voice. I love that title of that book. I remember being in my twenties and with roommates and living in Chicago, and I remember that Sunday feeling with my roommates. I mean that is something that it so overwhelmingly is being felt by probably more of our junior workforce and those who are coming to work that Sunday feeling.

38:33 And I haven't read the book, but that totally resonates. Yeah, she's just a little firegrecor and her personality shows up in their big time. So it's a great read. I certainly recommend it if you're in that camp. I recommend it. Another case study that you talk about in your book that I just thought was so compelling was the Lego case study, and I really appreciated their approach to you coming from behind. So if you could share a bit about with that case study is about and why it's important for innovation. Sure, I have to start with the quick story of how I discovered it, So I love it. Yeah, my sister lives in California, She works in finance for a very very large global company, and so her when she comes home from work, her favorite things to do is did to do Legos.

39:18 And problem self. And I went over to visit her and. All of a sudden, all the family photos were gone, including my daughter, her only niece, and in its place was a millennium falcon made out of Legos. And when I asked her about this, she's like, yeah, yeah, they're in the other room, but let me show you all the Lego kids. So I started thinking about this. My sister is an adult fan of Lego, and I started diving into the other adult fans of Lego, and that's when I came upon the story about Legos and how they nearly after this long history and this deep, deep, you know, passionate following from people, nearly went bankrupt. They didn't, but nearly did, and how they came back, how they lo us their way they were trying to do be everything to everybody, and then how they came back and they had much more clarity around what they would and went and do, and then.

40:08 How they built a community and that community. That they built were part of the people that were building that future for Lego and they really supported that group with team Ambassadors and they built that into their infrastructure to find out, what is it that our major audience, because they're adult fans of Logo is bigger than the children, not surprisingly, and they wanted to as a company, if we're going to grow, we need to engage them. How do we do that. Let's create a platform, and. Let's create a platform where we empower anyone who goes onto that platform to provide feedback or ideas. So that co creation that they built and then they came back from the brink of bankruptcy. It's been written about, but it just I think there's an idea there that many organizations that are struggling to move forward forward or they have they're split in so many areas. How do we get that clarity and focus. Part of it is going to come strategically internally, but part of it's going to come from your audience, from your users or your customers.

41:13 I think it also really speaks to the power of collaborating with you know, those very customers that you want to serve and depend on, and that and you open there there's vulnerability in that, there's there's there's trust there's a request, you know, there's it's really beautiful. And so I thought that the example was really spoke to what could happen when you really generally care and want to serve your customers. You need their help to improve your product, and you want to enroll them in your process. Yeah, and they still have fences, so they still have the boundaries there. So there has to be feasibility, There has to be they go through, they have a series of different items that even if they co create and an idea comes forward and all the fans voted up and it seems like a good concept, they still have those fences in place to make sure it's something that's feasible, that's marketable, and that you know, if they invest their time and their money and it's something that the market wants.

42:09 And so I think it's not just a. Great idea around collaboration and community, but it also shows how you bring those fences back in. It's just it's just so it's so thoughtful and creative and dynamic. I just really really want to celebrate that. Yeah, okay, so now let's go on to the permission section of your book. Here, I just thought that there was so much in this but of course you know there's you say, there's a reason so many innovators and creators talk about feeling failing, failing fast, and failing forward, failing early and often kind of thing. But you also talk about it in your own in your own example of being a runner, somebody who totally said I hate running, to running the Boston Marathon, you run into, you run into some some issues along the way, and of course part of what you're talking about in the whole book here is the importance of prolific attempts. So if you could just speak a little bit about this idea of permission forlific attempts failing.

43:04 Yeah, absolutely, going back to what I said about when I was young and all the failures I had when I got older, when I was in my twenties, I had spent so many years, all my entire life up to that point, having this idea in my head of who I was and who I wasn't and in my mind, I was not athletic, I was not a runner, and that is something that I would fail. I failed at and what I learned because I had this new motivation that everybody who starts anything, any instrument or any unless you're just a natural talent. The vast majority of us, when we start something new, we're going to fail at it, and so giving yourself permission that that's part of the process and how you'll get better is critical to it.

43:49 For me, it was running and once I got past that first mile, and then I put together more miles, and then I set a goal, but even not hitting the goal, but thinking about, well, what do I need to do to get to that goal? And that goal for me was not just to run a marathon, but to qualify and run Boston Marathon, which is for an amateur runner, it's about as good as you can get. And I had multiple failures on the attempts to get there, but ultimately I made it and I qualified to get in and then had another setback, which is I got an injury. And as I met with somebody and I talked about my injury, we figured out a way to still get me to the starting line even if I had to make some adjustments, and what that final race is going to be. That experience, combined with my wildlife photography experiences, I've had failures and successes out in the wild as a photographer really taught me more about how important it is to take more shots and to give yourself permission to do so, even if multiple times it ends up in failure.

44:51 But what can we learn? Yeah, oh my gosh, so good. Okay, So I really wanted to as we had toward a close here, I wanted to say, celebrate one of the leaders that you talk about in your books. It's the chief technology officer of Battle Motors, right, is that right? Yeah, it's Kaylee or Keiley Shankle. So she's going through trying to navigate rapidly changing world of high performance, you know, in a custom engineered vocational trucking business. And I really this is perfect for us to share this in terms of leadership, which you talk about how a philosophy that shows up in everything Shankle does can be summed up in the words she learned years ago from a mentor quote, the best leaders take the heat and spread the warmth. I think that's incredible. So in an industry that faces multiple constraints that must continuously innovate, Shankle leads with curiosity, the drive to make things better, and plenty of heart.

45:50 Yeah, you know, I was so fortunate to meet her. I met her at an event where I was a speaker and we connected and then afterwards as I learned as I talked to her, and I talked about the what she had built, especially as somebody who was not. A majority gender. So she was a female in this department and it was more populated by men, so not dominated. She also taught me that phrase, it's not male dominated, it's male populated. Yes, and so she as I talked to her, and she told me about how she was able to bring such innovation out in her department. It really came from that philosophy and making sure whether it was an intern from I think it was cal Polytech, or from wherever it might be, to any other person on our team, so that she could encourage them to do that right, feel hard, feel fast, feel often, just really bring that forward in the work that they do, and to support them in that way so that they could innovate.

46:52 I love celebrating leaders like that because I think we need I know that we need many more of them. Of course, I'm out to help develop those as well. I couldn't let you go without celebrating that. I think you know that this program is listening to by people around the world, and they tune in for different reasons. They tune in because they want to continually become a better leader themselves. They want to learn more about human flourishing in the workplace and be part of that various things. What would you like to leave them with? Yeah, you know what, we think that more is better and we're often said unlimited boundaries or think outside the box or if you know, if there's more out there, more opportunities, that's what I need. And it is a different mindset to say, actually, frame what you are trying to do. When you draw that boundary, when you draw the edges around the box, you will get more done.

47:40 And so next time somebody says to you, think outside the box, don't build the box. Frame the problem and you will find more creative solutions within it. Erry, I learned so much from reading your book, and then I've been delighted to have you on. Thank you so much for coming on, working on purpose and talking about your work. Oh thanks having me at least, it's truly my pleasure. Listeners and viewers, you're going to want to learn more about Sherry Jacobs and the work that she does. I recommend that you go to her website, it's Sherry Jacobs dot com. So it's s h E R R. Oh sorry, yeah, there's just one r s h E r I Jacobs dot com. If you missed the show last week, we were on with Mary Baird. We were talking about squash the Sunday Scaries, where she gives a flywheel framework to help HR leaders do just that, starting with deep listening of the employee experience. Next week, we're going to be on air with Baru Kharlevi talking about his book and how he helps men stop drifting and start living their why.

48:40 His book is called The Guy in the Glass Six Questions to see the Man who you were meant to be. It'd be an amazing conversation. He's been on before. He's a deep thinker and with a big heart. So we'll see you next week. And let's continue learning, leaning into discover how to elevate your operating system as a leader and create destination workplaces where legendary business take place. Let's work on Purpose. We hope you've enjoyed this week's program. Be sure to tune into Working on Purpose featuring your host, doctor Elise Cortes, each week on W four cy Together We'll create a world where business operates conscientiously. Leadership inspires and passion performance and employees are fulfilled in work that provides the meaning and purpose they crave. See you there. Let's work on purpose.