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The Build a Vibrant Culture Podcast explores the real-world strategies behind building strong work culture, improving organizational culture, and leading with clarity in today’s fast-changing business environment.
Hosted by leadership expert Nicole Greer, this podcast features conversations with business leaders, executives, and entrepreneurs who are shaping modern business culture through effective communication, leadership development, and intentional management practices.
Each episode delivers practical insights into leadership and business, including topics like team communication, project management, career growth, and creating workplaces where people perform at their best.
You’ll gain actionable tools, frameworks, and leadership skills you can apply immediately through coaching concepts, real-world examples, and professional development strategies, whether you’re a manager, executive, business owner, or emerging leader.
If you're looking for guidance on building a thriving organizational culture, improving communication, or advancing your leadership career, this podcast is designed for you.
Learn more about training, coaching, and courses at https://vibrantculture.com
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Michael J Lopez Episode
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[00:00:00] Nicole Greer: Welcome, everybody, to the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast. My name is Nicole Greer, and they call me The Vibrant Coach, and I have another, yes, another amazing guest on the podcast. His name is Michael J. Lopez. Let me tell you all about him. Michael J. Lopez helps organizations solve one of their hardest problems, and you've got this problem, how to make change actually stick.
[00:00:22] Nicole Greer: Hello. And he's the founder of Michael J. Lopez Consulting, with over 20 years of experience guiding Fortune 500 leaders at companies like Entergy. Did I say that right?
[00:00:33] Michael J Lopez: You did.
[00:00:34] Nicole Greer: Oh, my goodness. Okay. Clorox. We know all about them. That's the bleach people. Vanguard and Meta through their toughest transformations.
[00:00:41] Nicole Greer: His approach combines the neuroscience of behavior with hands-on execution. That neuroscience, we gotta get in these employees' heads. That's what we're talking about here, people. All right. Michael is the author of Change. If you're on the YouTube, it is up over his... Let's see. His-
[00:00:56] Michael J Lopez: Left ...
[00:00:57] Nicole Greer: left-hand corner there.
[00:00:59] Nicole Greer: Yes. And so it is called Change: The 6 Science-Backed Strategies to Transform Your Brain, Your Body, and Your Behavior, and the lead researcher behind Rethinking Change Management 2026, a national workforce study on why change initiatives keep failing, and failing, and failing, and what actually makes them stick.
[00:01:20] Nicole Greer: He's also a LinkedIn Top Voice and the host of the Top Voice Tuesday podcast. Welcome to the show, Michael. I'm so glad you're here.
[00:01:29] Michael J Lopez: Thank you so, so much. It's great to be here, and, and yeah, I'm excited to jump into it with you.
[00:01:34] Nicole Greer: Yeah, yeah. So that's really great. And so, why is change so hard? That's the first question.
[00:01:39] Michael J Lopez: Oh, well, it's- For a lot of reasons. Th- the first one, I think, is to really understand that our perception of time in people that have goals, it never happens as quickly as we want it to, and in fact, I talk about this in my book. And of Course, organizations are no different, and in many ways we have a tension between the desire for the outcomes that we want and the time it's actually required to shift either ourselves or the organization to go capture that.
[00:02:08] Michael J Lopez: That, that's the first thing. I think the second thing that's really important is that change is, change is difficult. If, if it was something you already knew how to do, it would be a habit, and change requires motivation. It requires- Yeah, like
[00:02:20] Nicole Greer: eating ice cream every night, y'all ... Right. That's easy. Yeah.
[00:02:23] Michael J Lopez: That's
[00:02:23] Nicole Greer: easy. Change, hard. Okay.
[00:02:26] Michael J Lopez: It requires motivation, it requires energy, it requires focus, it requires mistakes. It requires low performance. We're never good at something when we first start it. Oh, my gosh. And all of those things mix into why we give up, and there's a great quote or there's a great day.
[00:02:42] Michael J Lopez: I don't know if you know what Quitter's Day is, but Quitter's Day-
[00:02:44] Nicole Greer: No, teach me. I never heard of this. I, 'cause I'm not a quitter, so I don't know about this day. But- But go ahead ...
[00:02:50] Michael J Lopez: so Quitter's Day is roughly January 18th or 19th, when- Oh,
[00:02:54] Nicole Greer: going to the gym ...
[00:02:55] Michael J Lopez: it's the day that people give up on their New Year's resolutions, and it's because of two of these things that we just talked about, the length of time it takes to achieve our goals, the complexity and effort that's required.
[00:03:06] Michael J Lopez: And you- you've probably heard this phrase a lot, which is, under times of stress we default to our base behaviors, and that's because 47% of what you do, roughly, is a habit every day. And so, the more you move from habit to change, the more effort and focus and intensity it takes. And, a lot of people don't like to withstand that experience.
[00:03:24] Michael J Lopez: Mistakes also, by the way, not great for the ego, depending on where you're at or-
[00:03:27] Nicole Greer: Oh, that dang ego
[00:03:28] Michael J Lopez: ... what kind of organization you're in. And so those are just two things. There's a lot of other reasons, but, at the base kind of biologic level, that's really what's going on for us when we try to do anything different in our lives, quite honestly.
[00:03:40] Nicole Greer: Yeah, yeah. So, all my listeners know I have a coaching methodology that I put together a while back, and it's called SHINE. And so I really believe that people need to before the change process begins, they need to turn the mirror inward. What kind of change person am I? Am I a change agent?
[00:03:56] Nicole Greer: Am I change resistant? So the S in SHINE stands for self-assessment. Mm. So before anyone can grow, they have to become aware of where they are today.
[00:04:06] Michael J Lopez: Yeah.
[00:04:06] Nicole Greer: All right?
[00:04:07] Michael J Lopez: Yeah, and... And- Oh, sorry. I, I was just gonna add to that, because I think- Yeah ... where you are today is also a function of- The gap between the distance of where you think you're going, and one of the other things that we get wrong when it comes to change is how we define our goals.
[00:04:22] Michael J Lopez: A lot of people-
[00:04:23] Nicole Greer: Oh, the gap and the gain
[00:04:24] Michael J Lopez: ... particularly if you're, it's make more money, be a better spouse, be a better parent, read more books, sleep more, exercise more, eat less junk, all these things. You can only change a couple things, really only one at a time, number one. Number two, all of those things tend to be nouns.
[00:04:39] Michael J Lopez: They're states of beings. They're things that we hope to attain. But, but change is, is actually about effort. It's about the process of getting there. And so a lot of the way we design our goals actually demotivates us, and that's something we can dig into a little bit more. But it, it requires you to take stock of, of where you're at.
[00:04:56] Michael J Lopez: What are the things that I desire to achieve and accomplish? And then that's gonna set a really important motivational spike for you on the journey that you get started on.
[00:05:05] Nicole Greer: Yeah, absolutely. So I, I every coach should have a coach, Michael, or they're a big, fat hypocrite.
[00:05:11] Michael J Lopez: That's true.
[00:05:11] Nicole Greer: And so I, I have a coach, and his name is Dan Sullivan.
[00:05:15] Nicole Greer: He, he runs an organization called Strategic Coach, and he talks about the gap and the gain, and it's exactly what Michael just said. So, Google that, everybody, Dan Sullivan, gap and gain. But we set this big, huge goal out in the future, like losing weight. "I wanna lose 30 pounds."
[00:05:30] Nicole Greer: Right. That's so ginormous. You're gon- your energy's gonna run out, right? But instead, you could look at every day I ate right two out of my three meals today. Yay, me, so that's the gain versus the gap, which is 30 pounds. Yeah. So I, I think what you just said is genius. Okay. So your book which is over his left-hand shoulder if you're on YouTube and you're looking...
[00:05:51] Nicole Greer: You should probably go to YouTube now. All right. So there's six strategies. You outline six science-backed strategies for transformation. Could you introduce those six strategies to us, and then explain why they work together and we should rely on those instead of willpower or motivation? That's a big, fat question.
[00:06:09] Nicole Greer: What's your answer to that?
[00:06:10] Michael J Lopez: Yeah. Yeah. This is, this is like naming the seven dwarves. I'll- Okay ... I'll read them very
[00:06:15] Nicole Greer: quickly. Oh, but you have to know that he... How many children do you have? Let's just go down that bunny trail. Before we started, Michael told me how many kids he has. How many kids do you have, Michael Lopez?
[00:06:23] Michael J Lopez: I have six.
[00:06:25] Nicole Greer: Okay. Can you name them all?
[00:06:27] Michael J Lopez: Of course
[00:06:28] Nicole Greer: Okay, it's easy for you. Yeah. Six strategies, six kids. Yeah. It's all the same. Yeah. Okay.
[00:06:32] Michael J Lopez: Yeah. So in no particular order that... Because there is no hierarchy here, but just the way that we wrote about them in the book shift environment, which is your- Mm
[00:06:42] Michael J Lopez: there's four different environments that you experience. Initiate movement, which is the process of starting your journey. Embracing stress, I say this quite often, which is you will not change unless you have a productive relationship with stress.
[00:06:54] Nicole Greer: Yes.
[00:06:54] Michael J Lopez: The fourth one is what I call create focus, which is our ability to intently focus on a single new action at a time, and the science behind how we do that.
[00:07:04] Michael J Lopez: The fifth one is generate repetitions, and this is a fundamental principle of how we learn, particularly as adults, and the number of attempts that you need to make, as well as mistakes. And the final one is what I call, it's really been renamed, is reward effort, and it's a way we just talked about to rethink how you design your goals.
[00:07:23] Michael J Lopez: And instead of focusing on the outcome of your goal, you focus on the effort and progress you put into it as the principal goal itself.
[00:07:32] Nicole Greer: Yeah. You're gaining. I love it. I love it. Okay. All right. So let's, let's talk about the f- l- the first one or one of them, and kind of take us through that. Where should we start?
[00:07:43] Michael J Lopez: Well, starting is an interesting concept since you used that phrase. Let's, let's talk about initiate movement and the-
[00:07:49] Nicole Greer: Okay,
[00:07:50] Nicole Greer: awesome ...
[00:07:50] Michael J Lopez: it, it, it actually is a concept. That phrase actually came from a client of mine, an Air Force colonel many, many years ago, who I deeply respect. Nice. And it is a phrase that really encapsulates a couple things that we know about the science of motivation.
[00:08:04] Michael J Lopez: Number one, we are really motivated in two dimensions of our goal pursuit: when we start something new, and when we're about to finish pursuing that goal. So, the example I give quite often is you imagine a road trip to somewhere fun, Disneyland, I don't know, and it's a seven, eight-hour drive. You get in the car and you're super jazzed for that.
[00:08:25] Michael J Lopez: Maybe for the first hour you're playing games, you're talking about all the things you're gonna do, and by hour two or three, that motivation starts to dip, and you get into the dog days of the middle of that journey.
[00:08:37] Nicole Greer: That's
[00:08:37] Nicole Greer: right. We're
[00:08:37] Nicole Greer: only in Georgia.
[00:08:39] Michael J Lopez: We're only so far, and then about an hour away you get close, and the closer you get, the anticipation starts to build.
[00:08:47] Nicole Greer: Yes.
[00:08:48] Michael J Lopez: That, that, that is actually a real biologic, neurologic experience that we understand. If you talk to people who run marathons... I hate running, but I have a system I use to do that. There's, there's a real experience that's about starting. And so that's the first thing to understand, is that when we initiate movement in the direction of our goals, we become more motivated.
[00:09:09] Michael J Lopez: You don't get motivated to move, you move to get motivated, and that's a really important understanding of the human experience because, number one, motivation is subjective, so what's motivating to you may not be motivating to me, and it's... the, the time duration of that motivation is very different based on the person.
[00:09:28] Michael J Lopez: You may be able to sustain, a lot more than me. And so that's the first principle. You're never really ready to start pursuing your goals. That's why this January 1st thing is so interesting to me, because we, we sort of wait for the day that we feel ready. It turns out that if you start, you will start to feel more ready every day.
[00:09:47] Nicole Greer: That's right
[00:09:47] Michael J Lopez: ... and so there's some strategies in the book around how to do that, particularly navigating the, the messy middle of goal pursuit, which is that, hours two to seven on your eight-hour journey. What you've got to do is take that and break it into mini starts and stops, and find ways to spike that motivation through gaming the system a little bit and the games that you play on your, on your path to your goal.
[00:10:09] Nicole Greer: Yeah. That's so good. So, you, when you brought up running and then you're talking about this I, I have actually, believe it or not, run one marathon and two halves and ump- Good for you ... umpteen 10Ks or whatever, fives and Ks and 10s and Ks and whatever. But I used to get Runner's World magazine, and I'm racking my brain over here, but maybe you can tell me.
[00:10:31] Nicole Greer: He was a gold medalist in the Olympics for marathoning. His name is Jeff.
[00:10:37] Michael J Lopez: Yeah. I'm, I'm not a huge runner, so you're outside
[00:10:39] Nicole Greer: of my wheelhouse on this one Okay. All right. Put it in the comments everybody, 'cause I can't think of Jeff's last name. Anyways, long story short, he wrote this article that, of course, was genius title.
[00:10:47] Nicole Greer: Michael, the name of the ar- article was You Don't Have To Run Today. Mm-hmm. So even though you get Runner's World Magazine, you're, you're like immediately going to page 32. "Really? I don't have to run today?" And basically it was this little short article, and it was like, "You don't have to run today.
[00:11:02] Nicole Greer: Just put your running clothes on." And then come back to this article. And then you put your running clothes on, and then he's "Okay, now that you're back at the article, go out on the front porch with the magazine and your running clothes and just stand there and see what the weather's and then after you look, come back to the article."
[00:11:17] Nicole Greer: Yeah. And then he's "Just go down to the end of your driveway. Just jog down to the stop sign. Hey, you're running today." It was the greatest little article. Is that what you're talking about?
[00:11:27] Michael J Lopez: Yeah, yeah. Framing starting as a goal in and of itself is a really great way to trick yourself into goal pursuit and into motivation, which is the goal is just to start.
[00:11:37] Michael J Lopez: It's to just get moving. And so I, I'm a, I'm also a big believer in this phrase, it's a quote that I don't really know who it came from, but that it's easier to, to act your way into new ways of thinking than to think your way into new ways of acting.
[00:11:51] Nicole Greer: Oh.
[00:11:51] Michael J Lopez: And so many, so many of us stare and look for the right moment to start moving in the direction of our goals, and the truth is there's never a good moment.
[00:12:02] Michael J Lopez: There's never the perfect time. The perfect time is the time you have right now to just go do something in the direction of your goals. Maybe it's just writing a list. Maybe it's prioritizing something. Maybe it's not doing something else. All of those things are ways to get going and help you move in the direction of your goals.
[00:12:19] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Fantastic. Okay. All right. So, I'm all about building a vibrant culture, and I think that a vibrant culture is full of change agents and people who c- say it again, c- can act their way into thinking?
[00:12:32] Michael J Lopez: Act your way into new ways of thinking than to
[00:12:34] Nicole Greer: think- Yes ...
[00:12:35] Michael J Lopez: the new ways of acting.
[00:12:36] Nicole Greer: Yes. Oh, that...
[00:12:37] Nicole Greer: Okay, that's money. Everybody write that down. Re- take your finger, move it over, write that down. Okay. So, I think that's really important. All right, so habits build a culture. That's what I think, right? So whatever we repeatedly do inside of this business, organization, nonprofit, whatever starts to become the culture, right?
[00:12:55] Nicole Greer: Yeah. So I often tell leaders, culture isn't built during annual planning meetings. Culture is built in the habits we practice every day. How does neuroscience explain why habits become the architecture of organizational culture? That was a big old- Yeah ... question again.
[00:13:14] Michael J Lopez: Yeah. Well, I think the simplest answer is that, I, I think I mentioned this just a moment ago, roughly 47% of everything you do, this has been studied, is a habit as an individual.
[00:13:25] Michael J Lopez: Mm-hmm. And why is that, right? Habits are tremendously efficient. If you thought about everything you had to do every single day, it would be very tiresome, it would be very inefficient. You'd use a lot of resources doing things that didn't make a lot of- difference in your day. And so you, you move things into the habit category to save resources to dedicate to the most important things.
[00:13:47] Michael J Lopez: Organizations are, are no different. And organizations, by the way, efficiency is incredibly profitable.
[00:13:54] Nicole Greer: Yes.
[00:13:54] Michael J Lopez: That's the whole goal, is to be faster at-
[00:13:56] Nicole Greer: System
[00:13:57] Nicole Greer: systems ...
[00:13:58] Michael J Lopez: at a service, at processing, at product launch, at customer experience. Time is money, and in your body, time is resources. It's hormones, it's blood flow, it's heartbeats, it's all of these things.
[00:14:10] Michael J Lopez: And so there's a real unders- th- there's a real relationship between the, the, the sort of neurological experience of being and kind of reserving the highest value activities for the most important things and resources. Organizations really, really do operate the same way. And so the challenge, of course, back to your comment about culture, is that Your culture will design itself whether you attend to it or not.
[00:14:36] Nicole Greer: Okay, say that again.
[00:14:38] Michael J Lopez: Your culture will- ... design itself whether you attend to it or not.
[00:14:42] Nicole Greer: That is
[00:14:42] Nicole Greer: exactly
[00:14:42] Nicole Greer: right.
[00:14:43] Michael J Lopez: And, and most culture, when it gets designed unintentionally, takes on the characteristic of the leader or the leadership team and the cadence of the business. It's one of the reasons startups have so much difficulty moving into big companies, because they really are two different cultural experiences clashing together.
[00:15:00] Michael J Lopez: And so I always tell leaders that you should be intentional about what you want your organization to look and feel like- Mm ... and then you need to live that every single day and set the example. And, and, so, so if you weren't thoughtful as a person about how you spent your time, right? Doom scrolling is a great example.
[00:15:20] Michael J Lopez: You just end up doing things and not realizing where the time has gone. You've got to be intentional about your priorities, about what's important to you, about how you dedicate your time. I'm not suggesting you should be ruthless about it, but just focused on it.
[00:15:33] Nicole Greer: No,
[00:15:33] Nicole Greer: but schedule an hour to doom scroll, and then move on to something else.
[00:15:37] Michael J Lopez: Right. Right. And, and, and if we're not-
[00:15:39] Nicole Greer: Or not
[00:15:40] Michael J Lopez: ... if we're not doing that within organizations, then what happens is you get either pockets of experience and culture, and ultimately performance, that differ across the organization because they haven't been calibrated to something. At, at best, that's what you get.
[00:15:55] Michael J Lopez: At worst, you get competition and conflict. And, and so that's why I think you spend a lot of time, I spend a lot of time with leaders, helping them unwind the unintentional design of the culture that they didn't mean to build, but they actually built.
[00:16:09] Nicole Greer: That's right. That's exactly right. Okay. All right, so you...
[00:16:12] Nicole Greer: So the first one, initiating. Yes. Okay. All right. Second one is what?
[00:16:17] Michael J Lopez: So the second one I'll pick, because I think it's-
[00:16:19] Nicole Greer: Okay
[00:16:20] Michael J Lopez: ... super important, I mentioned, is what I call embrace stress.
[00:16:23] Nicole Greer: Okay.
[00:16:23] Nicole Greer: Yes.
[00:16:23] Michael J Lopez: And I said this casually as we were going through the list. You will not change unless you change your relationship with stress.
[00:16:31] Michael J Lopez: And I wanna make a caveat here, which is I'm not talking about traumatic, long-term, sustained, emotional, physical stress. That's a different thing. We're not talking about that. What I'm talking about is self-induced, short-term, acute, productive stress that stimulates you, your body, your focus, your mind to change your behavior in some productive way.
[00:16:53] Michael J Lopez: And there's all way... There's a million different ways to do this, from cold plunges to cold showers to heavy workouts. It really is a physiological experience. I mean, stress is designed for one purpose in your body. It's designed to get you to move. That's it. That... It... Stress doesn't know if it's because a bear is chasing you or you're about to have a hard conversation or go do a public speaking event.
[00:17:14] Michael J Lopez: Your, your body doesn't understand the context. It only knows the experience. And if you can channel that and point that productively in the direction of your goals, well, then that initiate movement thing gets a little bit easier. It doesn't get easy, gets a little bit easier. And so- I think resilience, from my perspective, is the single greatest attribute we can have as people, which is the ability to start, stop, start, restart, go through hard things.
[00:17:38] Michael J Lopez: And it turns out that that attribute and that characteristic, you have something in your brain, a region called the anterior midcingulate cortex. It's kind of the air traffic control center of your prefrontal cortex. And what it does is it basically, first of all, keeps you alive. It manages the budget of resources in your body, but it is directly tied to the experience of doing hard things.
[00:17:59] Michael J Lopez: And people who do hard things, subjectively defined, they live longer, they tend to have higher performance, and their AMCCs are larger than people who haven't kind of really embraced that mindset. So we know that there's real science behind the physiology of doing hard things, and we know that the more you do hard things, the less hard things feel hard to you, and it becomes a performance doubler and multiplier in your experience.
[00:18:26] Michael J Lopez: What you've got to do then is turn that into an organizational capability Back to our conversation on culture, you can make that a cultural attribute, which is we're a culture that does hard things. We're a culture that faces adversity. We're a culture that doesn't just act nice to each other because it's pleasant.
[00:18:42] Michael J Lopez: We actually have the hard conversation, right? There's so many ways to take this attribute and bring it to life. Mm-hmm. But you've got to be willing to withstand that experience in order to do so.
[00:18:52] Nicole Greer: Yeah, and that attribute has so many character traits, I think, inside of it, right? Yeah. So, there's courage.
[00:18:58] Nicole Greer: You got to have the courage to do hard things. And then also kind of like this, the idea of consistency and persistence and a lot of those things I think is really important. So doing hard things, doing the stressful thing... And I don't know, I don't know if this is still the research.
[00:19:14] Nicole Greer: Last time I looked at stress research I, I got this bell curve, and on the one side of the bell curve it says, "If you have no stress..." People will say, "I don't want any stress." It's it said "You'd be bored. You'd be depressed. You we'd have to resuscitate you," and then there's the peak stress, and then there's the thing that you're talking about, like you have a- Yeah
[00:19:33] Nicole Greer: a health scare or something terrible happen- Yeah ... or, or some kind of a critical thing happen in your life, right? But stress is really very good for you, for your survival. It, it- Don't miss what you just said ...
[00:19:43] Michael J Lopez: yeah, it's, it's not just good for you, it's essential.
[00:19:47] Nicole Greer: Yeah.
[00:19:47] Michael J Lopez: I mean, we-
[00:19:48] Nicole Greer: Keeps you alive.
[00:19:49] Michael J Lopez: The human body was designed under stress.
[00:19:51] Michael J Lopez: We perform under stress. Muscles grow. Bones get harder. We learn under stress. You focus in, the fight or flight response is when something kind of shocks you, it narrows your focus on the things that are most important. It helps attune your brain. There's all sorts of chemical reactions that we talk about in the book that happens when that occurs that actually help you focus.
[00:20:11] Michael J Lopez: And so it's a necessary part of the human experience. And, and so growth by definition requires resistance, and resistance requires stress in order for us to push on something that forces us to move. And so I just think we've maybe... I, I'm not trying to sound like an old guy who's talking about the glory days of when life was simpler.
[00:20:31] Michael J Lopez: I don't mean that. But I do think we've... To your point, I think we've, we've vilified stress in ways-
[00:20:37] Nicole Greer: Yes,
[00:20:38] Nicole Greer: absolutely ...
[00:20:38] Michael J Lopez: that, that have been unproductive in every scenario. And so I talk about a lot of that in the book, and it's just something that I think is absolutely essential to the human experience.
[00:20:48] Nicole Greer: Yeah.
[00:20:48] Nicole Greer: And so you talked about how it's like a chemical reaction. Did I get that right? Like-
[00:20:52] Michael J Lopez: Yeah.
[00:20:52] Nicole Greer: Right. Yeah. Okay. So, correct me if I go wrong, 'cause, I'm, I'm a big student of everything. So, here's the thing. You, you can get addicted- To doing hard things.
[00:21:02] Michael J Lopez: Sure.
[00:21:02] Nicole Greer: Like in the greatest way, right?
[00:21:04] Nicole Greer: Right. So like you could get a little dopamine drip. Yeah. You could get a little serotonin going. And I tell people all the time, I'm like, "When you get these neuropeptides rolling through your bloodstream it becomes the, the good addiction in your life, the thing that you want more of, and then you begin to want to do hard things."
[00:21:21] Nicole Greer: And I'm 59 years old, Michael, and I was at this thing the other day, and there was this, this guy in there, and he was like 49 or something. He was like, "Oh..." I, I said, "What are your big goals? What are you working on?" And he's like, "Retirement." And I'm like, "Dude, that's gonna be a long time," 'cause you got 15 or 17 years to go.
[00:21:40] Nicole Greer: Yeah,
[00:21:41] Michael J Lopez: yeah.
[00:21:41] Nicole Greer: So I'm not trying to act like an old lady. I'm trying to say be a cool old lady and get out there and get ahold of something, it'll change your life. Okay.
[00:21:49] Michael J Lopez: You're, you're, you're brushing up against one of the other things that's-
[00:21:52] Nicole Greer: Okay, tell us that one. Number three ...
[00:21:54] Michael J Lopez: in there which, which is really important, which is-
[00:21:56] Nicole Greer: Okay
[00:21:57] Michael J Lopez: tied into this. It's kind of a shared between generate repetitions and create focus.
[00:22:02] Nicole Greer: Okay.
[00:22:03] Michael J Lopez: One of the reasons I like create focus so much is that you have the ability to learn your entire life.
[00:22:09] Nicole Greer: Uh-huh.
[00:22:10] Michael J Lopez: That this is a fact. You can learn something the day before they close the casket. You have that ability.
[00:22:17] Michael J Lopez: Anyone who tells you that's not possible doesn't understand the science. Now, that being said, how you learn as you get older changes, and the first criteria for learning is that you have to believe it's something worth paying attention to. It's not whether you can learn, it's whether or not you believe you have something to learn.
[00:22:36] Michael J Lopez: And for me, it's one of the reasons I think we atrophy, I'm 53, in older age. It's because we just go, "Hey, I've, I've kind of made it. I am who I am." Yeah. "Let me just stop here and coast the rest of the way." But-
[00:22:48] Nicole Greer: Oh my God, don't do that ...
[00:22:50] Michael J Lopez: that, that is, that is not how it's supposed to go. No. It's how it can go, but, I worked from in, in big consulting firms for a long time, and they had a mandatory retirement at 60 years old.
[00:23:02] Michael J Lopez: And I would see a lot of people, they would retire at 60, and they would go one of two ways. Either they'd take that and they'd take their pretty well earned life and go do really cool things, adventurous-
[00:23:12] Nicole Greer: Right,
[00:23:12] Nicole Greer: sail a giant boat or something, right? Yeah,
[00:23:15] Michael J Lopez: or they would just atrophy and be like, "I'm done."
[00:23:18] Michael J Lopez: And the people that would atrophy would have all sorts of health issues and all sorts of challenges, because your body needs this experience. But you have to believe it's worth pursuing. And so this create focus, we talk a lot about the science of learning and what's required, some of the tactics involved in how you learn, which is the repetition piece.
[00:23:35] Michael J Lopez: And so learning really requires three things. It requires that you do something frequently, it requires that you make mistakes, so you got to fail at it, because failure, by the way, is the single greatest contributor to the opportunity for neuroplasticity. It doesn't mean just because you make a mistake you, you learn.
[00:23:52] Michael J Lopez: There's a pattern there that some people keep making the same mistake and never learn from it. Yeah. You got to pay attention to that.
[00:23:56] Nicole Greer: We all have a relative like that. Okay, go ahead.
[00:23:59] Michael J Lopez: And you do that through your... to, to your point, through feedback from a coach. You need somebody to share a reflective surface from you from the outside because your brain is, only knows what it knows through its own referential experience.
[00:24:11] Michael J Lopez: And so those two things together and the science of learning, it, it's just, again, it's frustrating, it's hard. People don't like the experience of making mistakes. It takes... It's slow. And so people give up, well within and well before- They've really gotten a chance to get into the flow of things, right? And maybe a good example is learning foreign languages.
[00:24:32] Michael J Lopez: You see kids when they're little, they, they just learn language through experience and exposure, and it happens pretty quickly because their brain is going through a process of, of adapting very rapidly. We don't do that as adults, right? We're, we're sort of a map that's been kind of fixed, but what we have to do is repurpose the pathways that we have for new information.
[00:24:52] Michael J Lopez: So I've, I... That takes focus, that takes effort, that takes attentional span, and that's a hard thing to do.
[00:24:59] Nicole Greer: Yeah. So, I, I just totally love everything you're saying. So speaking of languages I took Spanish when I was in high school, and I just shared how old I was, so we know how long ago that was.
[00:25:10] Nicole Greer: Okay. But we went to Buenos Aires, right, to Argentina.
[00:25:15] Michael J Lopez: Yeah.
[00:25:15] Nicole Greer: And that stuff came back. I was doing pretty good. Ev- my whole family's "Dang, you're doing pretty good." So I got back and I'm like, Duolingo. I'm gonna do the Duolingo. And I'm on level 30 or something now, right? Good for you. And yeah.
[00:25:28] Nicole Greer: And it's like, okay, so is it worth doing, right? So the thing is, is I, I had an epiphany in my business. I'm like, what if I could... I work with a lot of manufacturing. I'm like, what if I could teach Vibrant Culture Toolbox totally in Spanish?
[00:25:43] Michael J Lopez: Hmm. If you want, we could finish this podcast in Spanish, so I, I'm
[00:25:48] Michael J Lopez: down.
[00:25:49] Nicole Greer: I can't finish it in Spanish, but ca- are you fl- well, Mr. Lopez, of course. Do, are... so did you learn it as a kid, or learn it how'd you...?
[00:25:57] Michael J Lopez: I, my grandparents on my dad's side are from Central America, so they would speak to us in Spanish a lot as kids. Oh. And I would, I would mostly respond in English. So I still think in English and translate, but I also took formal Spanish, so I learned, how to go-
[00:26:11] Nicole Greer: Like
[00:26:11] Nicole Greer: me, yeah
[00:26:12] Michael J Lopez: yeah, and so like you, I speak a little bit of Spa- I mean, I speak a little bit of Spanish to my kids, and we do that sort of thing. I don't do it as much as I should, but when I get dropped back into that environment, my m- it all just comes flying back within a pretty short period of time.
[00:26:27] Nicole Greer: Oh, I'm jealous.
[00:26:28] Nicole Greer: Yeah, so I, I'm cooking that. I'm cooking that whole idea. Great. So that's one of my goals. So I don't look at the fact that I can't finish this podcast with Michael Lopez in Spanish, but I am doing my Duolingo every day, and I'm on level 30. That's the gain, everybody.
[00:26:42] Michael J Lopez: There
[00:26:43] Michael J Lopez: we go. Your anterior midcingulate cortex is thanking you for doing the hard thing.
[00:26:48] Nicole Greer: Yes. Yes, and that, and it will make me hopefully live to 100, so we'll see what happens. Okay. All right, so what number are we on now? Did you do two at once just now, or should you- I did ... elaborate on? Okay. I did.
[00:26:58] Michael J Lopez: I tricked you. All
[00:26:58] Nicole Greer: right. Give me another one. Give me another one.
[00:27:00] Michael J Lopez: We, we did two at once. Well, the, the- Okay
[00:27:02] Michael J Lopez: The other one that we didn't talk about, which I sort of the first one, is what I called shift environment, and-
[00:27:07] Nicole Greer: Mm ...
[00:27:08] Michael J Lopez: this is the easy one that people refer to as put your clothes out the night before you wanna go for a run. Yes. Make it easy. James Clear talks a lot about this in his book Atomic Habits, where it's about creating access to the behaviors that you want.
[00:27:23] Michael J Lopez: Where, where I expand that concept is really particularly at work. There's, there's four environments. There's obviously your physical environment, and that's, that's a really impactful, and there's been a ton of studies about-
[00:27:35] Nicole Greer: Oh, sure
[00:27:35] Michael J Lopez: ... the bidirectional relationship of your environment on your behavior and your behavior on your environment, and we know a lot about how that works.
[00:27:42] Michael J Lopez: I think most people take that now as common knowledge. But there's three other environments that are really important. Mm. There's your virtual environment. There's the world of computers and social media and the places that we connect or get distracted from. There's a lot of brotherhood or community and collaboration that can happen there, but there's a lot of distraction and toxicity that can happen there, and so you've got to understand how that environment impacts your life.
[00:28:05] Michael J Lopez: There's your emotional environment, which of course back to the idea of stress. There's places where you might be in a really toxic situation personally. You could be surrounded by happy people, and you're really vibrant, and you're getting a lot of encouragement.
[00:28:19] Nicole Greer: Do
[00:28:19] Nicole Greer: that.
[00:28:20] Michael J Lopez: Yeah. And then there's your social environment, which are the people that are maybe outside of that, immediate emotional sphere, but the, the broader community of people that you have, close friends and all that.
[00:28:32] Michael J Lopez: And all of those environments can be- Affected positively or negatively in ways that really the goal is to create access to the behaviors that you want and create constraints to the behaviors that you don't want. And I'll give you an example of what I call an emotional or social constraint that's really important, is having someone in your life that's a truth teller.
[00:28:53] Michael J Lopez: Somebody who will say to you, "Hey Michael, remember when you said you wanted to go accomplish this thing? What you're doing right now is not in concert with that goal." And so because- Time's
[00:29:02] Nicole Greer: ticking, Michael.
[00:29:03] Michael J Lopez: We'll trick ourselves about what it is we think we want and, and we, we'll rationalize a way, right?
[00:29:09] Michael J Lopez: 'Cause your brain is, your brain is your brain, not anybody else's. No two brains on planet Earth will ever be the same. That's impossible. So you need people that can do that. And so we talk about the, the role that your environment plays and how to set that up in ways that help you move in the direction of your goals
[00:29:27] Nicole Greer: Yeah.
[00:29:27] Nicole Greer: And that is why you need a coach or a mentor. And I have this little phrase, Michael, that I use all the time. I'm like, "I'm gonna practice right now truth-telling, honesty, and candor." There you go. Which... And then I go, "Do you want me to do that?" And I've never had anybody say, "Tell me a lie." And so, so, having this truth-teller is absolutely essential, and I think that's also a big part of a vibrant culture.
[00:29:51] Nicole Greer: Things are transparent. We have an opportunity, an issue. We put it on a list. We're gonna go through it. We're gonna identify it. We're gonna discuss it. We're gonna solve it. We're gonna do all the things, right? So, I think truth-telling, honesty, and candor is a huge part of it. Okay, how many do we have left?
[00:30:07] Nicole Greer: One? One,
[00:30:08] Michael J Lopez: which is the final one, and this one actually I really do treat as the final one.
[00:30:13] Nicole Greer: Okay.
[00:30:14] Michael J Lopez: Which is, which is in the book I call it reward progress, and it really has evolved into what I call reward effort, but they're synonymous in many ways. Okay. And it's really the idea that we talked about at the beginning, which is most people define their goals in nouns, in things that they want to achieve, states of being activities, amounts, dollars, lost weight.
[00:30:37] Michael J Lopez: They're all these kind of noun states. Mm-hmm. And what you gotta think differently about is that your goal needs to become the effort you put into pursuing the goal, not the goal itself. And when you reward yourself for effort, and there's been, again, a ton of studies on the impact on particularly young kids and performance when you reward them for effort instead of outcomes, what it does to their performance.
[00:31:01] Michael J Lopez: Th- this is actually, by the way, for all the old folks who get mad at participation trophies- ... came from, where that
[00:31:09] Nicole Greer: came from- You know you're out there.
[00:31:11] Michael J Lopez: Yeah. I, I... Look, I'm a coach. I coach sports. I played college sports. I, I-
[00:31:15] Nicole Greer: So good ...
[00:31:16] Michael J Lopez: some of this I also inherently struggle with. But what that came from were studies that said when you praise kids for effort and for resilience and continuing to press on in the face of adversity and moving through that experience, that they, number one, they actually stick with the activity longer, and number two, over the long term, their performance gets better.
[00:31:37] Michael J Lopez: Mm. And so that's where all this has come from. And so that, I think, is really important for us to understand, that your brain and your body is at its best, your brain particularly is at its best when it's striving. Not when it's accomplishing, not when you're crossing the finish line, but when you're chasing the finish line, and that's a big piece of motivation and dopamine and all this together.
[00:31:57] Michael J Lopez: And so we've got to think differently about how we design our goals. That's the first part of the rewarding effort piece. The rewarding progress part is, I think this is, goes back to the, the time dimension of goal pursuit, which is- Change is always slow. It's never as fast as you want. And so when we reward progress, it's, it's...
[00:32:18] Michael J Lopez: I always say this, is that progress is directional, it's not absolute. And so if you made 1% or 2% or 3% prog- work today, that's great. Celebrate that, and then move on to the next day.
[00:32:29] Nicole Greer: Absolutely. I love to
[00:32:30] Nicole Greer: celebrate.
[00:32:30] Michael J Lopez: And, companies, I- this is where companies really struggle they really struggle in this regard because what are companies designed for?
[00:32:38] Michael J Lopez: They're designed for returns, quantitative returns.
[00:32:41] Nicole Greer: That's right.
[00:32:43] Michael J Lopez: A certain amount of time, a certain amount of money-
[00:32:44] Nicole Greer: R-O-I
[00:32:44] Michael J Lopez: ... a certain amount of growth. Right. And that's slow. People don't respond as quickly as business systems do, or expectations, and it's hard to measure sometimes the distance traveled while you're waiting for the ROI to show up.
[00:32:55] Michael J Lopez: And so I unfortunately get a lot of clients that give up way too soon because they don't see the needle move, and that's 'cause they don't understand what it takes to actually change human beings. All this stuff sounds great till you get actual humans involved. So that last piece of reward, effort/progress is the place where, as a consultant, a practitioner, I really...
[00:33:17] Michael J Lopez: It, it takes a lot of work to get companies to be patient and consistent enough to see that sustainable change actually take hold.
[00:33:25] Nicole Greer: Yeah. So I wanna talk about that a little longer, because I'd like to hear a, maybe a story or an example of how you've worked with somebody and helped them reward effort versus-
[00:33:38] Michael J Lopez: Yeah
[00:33:39] Nicole Greer: W- we're doing good on the stock exchange or whatever.
[00:33:41] Michael J Lopez: Yeah. Yeah. I have a client that I just... I, I'm gonna put this in my next book, which I've started writing already. That's- Oh,
[00:33:46] Nicole Greer: what's it gonna be called? Tell us, tell us.
[00:33:48] Michael J Lopez: I, it, it, it doesn't have a title yet. It's, it's gonna be built off the study that I just did, which is, that you mentioned in the introduction.
[00:33:55] Nicole Greer: Yeah.
[00:33:55] Michael J Lopez: And it, the, the, the first book was about organization. Or sorry, the first book was about people. Mm-hmm. This book will be about broader organizations, and so there'll be stories about people I've worked with and other case studies about how do I translate all this science to actually groups of people, and broader...
[00:34:10] Michael J Lopez: This thing that we call the company, whatever that is, which is just a bunch of people.
[00:34:13] Nicole Greer: Right, right. Yeah, so go to the Amazon and follow Michael Lopez, the author, and as soon as it's published- ... you'll get a little email. Go ahead.
[00:34:21] Michael J Lopez: Yeah. Th- this'll be sometime next year by the time we get it done, which is crazy to say.
[00:34:25] Michael J Lopez: It's already middle of August, but-
[00:34:27] Nicole Greer: That's that's right. We have to get this Change book read, and we have to understand it first, so go.
[00:34:30] Michael J Lopez: Yeah, yeah. So I just wrapped up a couple year engagement with a client here in Sacramento, which is where I live. Nice. They're a quasi state agency. And, the short version of the story, without giving away all the twists and turns, is they started with a process problem of they actually do lending for affordable housing, and they couldn't get the volume of loans out that they wanted.
[00:34:52] Michael J Lopez: And so they believed that they had a process problem, and if they could just look at their intake process and their processing systems and, how they issue loans, that they could double and triple volume. We, I went through a process of talking to everybody and I came back to them a couple weeks later and I said, "I could design you a new process.
[00:35:09] Michael J Lopez: You would break it in 48 hours because you don't trust each other." And, and that matters-
[00:35:15] Nicole Greer: I love it
[00:35:16] Michael J Lopez: ... that matters more than whatever you have on the flowchart. And the reason you're slow is because at every one of these steps, because you don't trust each other, you're making people go back and do the work again.
[00:35:26] Michael J Lopez: And so I don't care what you have on paper, I care what's actually happening with the human being.
[00:35:30] Nicole Greer: That's right.
[00:35:31] Michael J Lopez: And that, that journey, which they thought was gonna be an eight-week thing, and, eventually I told them, "We're... Look, we're gonna take a step back and we're gonna work on the leadership team, and we're gonna decide who we are and how we wanna treat each other, and what we want our intentional culture to be."
[00:35:45] Nicole Greer: Mm-hmm. "
[00:35:46] Michael J Lopez: And we're gonna solve that problem first, and then the 12 of you are gonna take that into the organization and lead by example." And-
[00:35:54] Nicole Greer: What?
[00:35:55] Michael J Lopez: And, and we started that journey, and then in year two we said, "All right. We've got this foundation in place. Now we're gonna go rebuild the strategic plan, and it's gonna match the tone of the culture and the goals that we have so it's all gonna line up, so there's no hiding from who we wanna be as an organization."
[00:36:13] Michael J Lopez: If they had listened to themselves the first round and just said, "We have a processing problem," they would've gone eight weeks, I would've given them some deliverable, and they'd be back exactly-
[00:36:21] Nicole Greer: Yeah, they Six Sigma'd it,
[00:36:23] Nicole Greer: all that stuff, yeah ...
[00:36:24] Michael J Lopez: they would be exactly in the same spot they were. Two years later, they're a, they're really a different organization.
[00:36:30] Michael J Lopez: But they had, in this case, a success story of the patience to see that journey all the way through, and then weave it not just into sitting around in a workshop talking about our feelings, 'cause that's, that's important, by the way. We gotta get that stuff out. We had a couple- Oh,
[00:36:45] Nicole Greer: 100%.
[00:36:46] Michael J Lopez: We had a couple come-
[00:36:46] Nicole Greer: 'Cause I, I'm
[00:36:47] Nicole Greer: mad at him about a decision s- Yeah
[00:36:48] Nicole Greer: 18 months ago. Yeah.
[00:36:50] Michael J Lopez: Right. Right. And, this is... again, I'll... This all sounds great to get real people involved, and they don't have to follow the flowchart. And then once we got that out, we, we made sure that we tied it to strategy, and that it became not just a set of cultural norms that we put on the wall.
[00:37:07] Michael J Lopez: By the way, they already done some like a year before that, and they didn't follow any of them. They couldn't even recite them. We identified-
[00:37:12] Nicole Greer: Right. Oh, doesn't that just chap you? What? It just upsets me so much. Yeah. They paid some consultant other than us to come up with this stuff, and then it's just fluff, and it is words on the wall-
[00:37:23] Michael J Lopez: Words on the wall.
[00:37:24] Michael J Lopez: And
[00:37:24] Nicole Greer: if they're- ... instead of behavior in the hall.
[00:37:26] Michael J Lopez: That's right. Oh, I love that phrase. Mm-hmm. I'm gonna steal that one.
[00:37:28] Nicole Greer: Okay. And so, so- All right. Give me credit. All right, go ahead.
[00:37:31] Michael J Lopez: Yep. Yep. And so, so that's a journey. Now I'm gonna give you another quick example that, it literally just happened. I do a lot of work in the nuclear space, of all places, and so nuclear power stations are really-
[00:37:41] Nicole Greer: He has
[00:37:42] Nicole Greer: a nice glow about him, if you would go
[00:37:44] Michael J Lopez: on the YouTube.
[00:37:44] Michael J Lopez: It... I can see really well in the dark. And, And so, they... We were about six months into a culture transformation for them. They were, they, they had a performance issue that they had i- that they had identified in the past, and we were trying to resolve the, the inputs to that performance problem, not the...
[00:38:01] Michael J Lopez: this is not the, "Just go look at our procedures and change them." It's about why is it that you had these procedures in the first place and you couldn't follow them? That's the problem to solve, not redesigning the procedure. And we got through a team, we had a team about 60 people. We were working hard to change that group.
[00:38:18] Michael J Lopez: I'm not here to change 500 right now. I'm changing 60, and then when I change you, you're gonna go change the rest of the station.
[00:38:24] Nicole Greer: That's right.
[00:38:25] Michael J Lopez: And they
[00:38:26] Michael J Lopez: They got six months in and they stopped, and they said, "We don't think this is really having the effect that we want, and while we think we know what we need to do-"
[00:38:35] Michael J Lopez: so we're just gonna go do that, and, and we think we're good." And I was really, I was really disappointed in that, because they- they've got a ways to go, and, and they just didn't feel like it was getting... Now, that's feedback for me as a consultant. There's some things I could have done differently, for sure.
[00:38:48] Nicole Greer: Oh, sure.
[00:38:49] Michael J Lopez: But, but that happens way too often in the world of change, is that we treat change-
[00:38:54] Nicole Greer: Amen
[00:38:54] Michael J Lopez: ... as a, as a project instead of as an ability. And, and I think building resilient, stress-tolerant, change-capable cultures is an ongoing daily job that lasts forever. It's not a project with a go live date, and then we all celebrate success, so.
[00:39:12] Nicole Greer: Yeah. There's a lot of confusion between project management and change.
[00:39:16] Michael J Lopez: Correct. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. Change is a verb, not a noun. It's an ability. It's something that you practice on a regular basis. And I think, part of this study that I just released that you see over my right shoulder was because I think as an industry we have failed to meet the promise of what we were intended to do, and there's a lot of reasons for that.
[00:39:37] Michael J Lopez: One of those big reasons is because our, our vendors, our, our clients, the people that sell this, have tried to sell the easy button, and they've treated it as a project experience instead of as a capability that should be resident in the organization. And we wanna make it seem cheap, we wanna ma- make it seem easy, and we wanna make it seem fast.
[00:39:57] Michael J Lopez: And we just got done talking about how change is neither of those three things. And so-
[00:40:02] Nicole Greer: Right ...
[00:40:02] Michael J Lopez: we've got some work to do to unwind that, I think, as an industry.
[00:40:05] Nicole Greer: Yeah. I mean, and if I just think about all the people that have come before you and wrote- written the books, we've got Kotter, right? And he's got, you know- Yeah
[00:40:15] Nicole Greer: The eight steps, right? Yeah. Okay. So I love the eight steps, but you have to have the skills behind each of the steps to get that thing through, right? And then we go to ADKAR, and great stuff, great books, great process. But we've got to have the skills to do all those A-D-K-A-R stuff, right?
[00:40:33] Michael J Lopez: Yeah.
[00:40:34] Michael J Lopez: Yeah. I've, I've been known to be more than a little bit critical of all those things, not because they didn't serve a purpose at the time. And I don't mean critical of, It's great work. It's good- Oh, yeah ...
[00:40:43] Nicole Greer: at the time ... it's the, it's what you've layered on top of, right?
[00:40:46] Michael J Lopez: Is, is- Yeah ... is I think our industry has atrophied in place a little bit, and there's a lot of reasons for that.
[00:40:53] Michael J Lopez: I would encourage people to download the study, and it's, it's all in there. We've just talked about one of the topics that's really kind of key to that. But- My next book is really gonna be what, what's needed now, and I think that we've recycled a lot of frameworks, we've repackaged a lot of ideas that have been around for a long time, some of them for good reason, some of them, quite frankly, that probably need to have a grenade dropped on them and we need to start over.
[00:41:17] Michael J Lopez: But we haven't self-disrupted our I think in a way that, that we need to. And so my job is, I always say I've been on a bit of a crusade to change the way we talk about change, and not because it's been bad, but I don't think it's been good enough. And, we don't get to sit here as practitioners and talk about all the things our clients need to do, and then stare up at the famous 70% statistic and say, "We've been crushing it."
[00:41:43] Michael J Lopez: I mean, unless we play Major League Baseball, 30% isn't good enough and, and I think we can do better, and that's the crusade that I've been on. And, I include myself in that list of constructive criticisms.
[00:41:54] Nicole Greer: Yeah, yeah. So where do we get the... Tell us where we go to get the, the report. Everybody's scrambling, not listening to you anymore.
[00:42:01] Nicole Greer: So where do they go get that?
[00:42:02] Michael J Lopez: You can get it on my website, Okay ... michaelj, michaeljlopez.coach. There's a research page there, so backslash research, and you can download it. There's a, there's a free version that's about 12 pages that gives all of the major five big themes and some of the highlights of the recommendations.
[00:42:19] Michael J Lopez: Then there's a paid version that's 50 pages long. It does deep dives on all 10 questions, and each question is really... It's 40 questions when you slice it all up. So, but you can get the free version there. And yeah, it's all there and it's... I've been excited to talk about it and share it, and that will be the basis for my next book.
[00:42:35] Nicole Greer: That's fantastic. All right. We're excited. Okay. So tell us the title and the subtitle of your current book.
[00:42:42] Michael J Lopez: It's called Change: Six Science-Backed Strategies to Transform Your Brain, Body, and Behavior.
[00:42:48] Nicole Greer: Okay. Did y'all get that? Did you write that down? Write it down, people. Go get on the Amazon. All right. So, let's do our little rapid-fire round.
[00:42:55] Nicole Greer: Yeah ... so coffee or tea?
[00:42:58] Michael J Lopez: Coffee.
[00:42:59] Nicole Greer: Oh, see. I knew I liked you. Okay. Morning or evening?
[00:43:03] Michael J Lopez: Morning.
[00:43:04] Nicole Greer: Me too. Oh my God, we're twinning. Best leadership book besides your own book?
[00:43:10] Michael J Lopez: Yeah, I'm a big fan of Lencioni's The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.
[00:43:15] Nicole Greer: Oh,
[00:43:16] Nicole Greer: yeah.
[00:43:16] Michael J Lopez: And so I think I used to do a lot of work in that realm when I was with Ernst & Young, and I, yeah, the reason I like it is there...
[00:43:23] Michael J Lopez: Look, there's a lot of great leadership books, and many of- 100% ... my, my other ones come from sports, and I worked with the military for years, so I've just been blessed to be around a lot of great leaders. But I think leadership is about groups and it's about teams, and so for me, that one's always been near and dear to my heart.
[00:43:38] Nicole Greer: Yeah. And in all of his books, if you've never h- heard of Patrick Lencioni mo- most all of his books, I don't think The Advantage is a parable, but the, but the rest of them are. Yeah. And I have them all. Yeah. And I've read them all. I need to get... I'm, I'm gonna get that back out actually.
[00:43:50] Michael J Lopez: There you
[00:43:51] Michael J Lopez: go.
[00:43:51] Nicole Greer: Actually teach it all the time. Oh, so it's good. All right, all right. One habit you never skip, just like a real habit.
[00:43:59] Michael J Lopez: Exercise.
[00:44:00] Nicole Greer: Good. What do you do?
[00:44:02] Michael J Lopez: I lift weights, I run, I do a lot of high intensity stuff. I do a lot of mobility things. I'm getting older, so I gotta take care of all the joints.
[00:44:09] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Do the yoga, Michael.
[00:44:11] Michael J Lopez: Yeah,
[00:44:11] Nicole Greer: yeah. Okay.
[00:44:12] Michael J Lopez: Oh,
[00:44:12] Nicole Greer: yeah.
[00:44:12] Michael J Lopez: All
[00:44:12] Nicole Greer: right. Okay, good. Everybody knows I'm a yoga instructor. Okay. All right. One... Let's see. One word that defines a vibrant culture.
[00:44:20] Michael J Lopez: Resilient.
[00:44:21] Nicole Greer: Oh, that's good. Biggest myth about change.
[00:44:26] Michael J Lopez: That it's easy.
[00:44:28] Nicole Greer: One leadership behavior that destroys culture.
[00:44:32] Michael J Lopez: Not leading by example.
[00:44:34] Nicole Greer: Mm-hmm.
[00:44:35] Nicole Greer: That's why I said earlier, I said, "Really? What?" That is an oldie but a goodie, everybody, but it works. It works every time. Okay. Let's see. What's something you've changed your mind about recently?
[00:44:49] Michael J Lopez: I change... I try to change my mind a lot about a lot of different things. I think certainly being and running my own business and looking at the...
[00:44:58] Michael J Lopez: I get hit up a lot by people about change your marketing, you can get... Here's the best way to get in this article or this thing, and I've really changed my mind about the value of m- marketing as an experience and not getting kind of caught up in the flashy new thing and really... Maybe I haven't changed my mind as much as I've reaffirmed my belief that the best marketing is doing great work, and the more you do great work, the more you will market yourself.
[00:45:27] Michael J Lopez: And so I just, I think I've fallen for the, for the tricks too, one too many times. As an entrepreneur, you gotta learn. Yeah. And so I've really become much more comfortable in my approach of just doing high quality work and letting those clients refer you to other places is always the way to go.
[00:45:43] Nicole Greer: Yeah, you just took the word right out of my mouth, because the referral channel is the channel. And then, the other thing is sometimes you'll just work with this part of the organization, and then they start to do something fantastic. Yeah. "Well, what are you doing over there?" There you go.
[00:45:54] Nicole Greer: And then you'll get into this part before you know it, you got all the parts, so that's good. All right. If every leader adopted one daily habit, what would it be? What would you tell them to do?
[00:46:05] Michael J Lopez: I think it would be... Well, we talked about leading by example, but that's an easy answer. I think not assuming you're right is an important- Ugh
[00:46:15] Michael J Lopez: is an important attribute, and I think you could call that being curious about other people's points of view. You could call it self-disruption. You could call it whatever-
[00:46:23] Nicole Greer: Open-mindedness
[00:46:24] Nicole Greer: ...
[00:46:24] Nicole Greer: but I think...
[00:46:25] Michael J Lopez: Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I think we have to start being curious about our own beliefs and biases, and really being inquisitive about those things, so I would start there.
[00:46:35] Nicole Greer: Yeah, yeah. A little metacognition would be good. All right. Favorite quote about growth or change?
[00:46:43] Michael J Lopez: Change happens slowly, then all at once
[00:46:46] Nicole Greer: Oh. Who has influenced your leadership the most? Oh, you've worked with a lot of cool people. How you gonna pick one? And they're all-
[00:46:54] Michael J Lopez: Yeah, I can't, I- They're
[00:46:54] Nicole Greer: all nice to me and Michael
[00:46:56] Michael J Lopez: I, I would say that, and I say this quite a bit and because it's true, is that every good thing I've learned about being a teammate and a leader has come from playing college football and working with the military. And so, both of those organizations and experiences, I was never in the military, but I worked in intelligence for several years and have had a lot of clients in that space.
[00:47:16] Michael J Lopez: And, and I think both of those experiences have just shaped me in really, really foundational ways. And yeah, I, I would... there's too many people to name in there, but both of those experiences are really, really foundational to who I am as a person.
[00:47:30] Nicole Greer: Mm, so good. All right. And let's see. Last question: What's one thing you hope your children...
[00:47:37] Nicole Greer: Now, tell them about your two youngest children, 'cause it's pretty exciting. Today is a big day, right?
[00:47:42] Michael J Lopez: Yes. Well, we're two months away. They're... We have 10-month-old twins, a boy and a girl. Great. And so they are-
[00:47:47] Nicole Greer: Oh ...
[00:47:48] Michael J Lopez: 10 months today. And my, my son was downstairs. He's getting ready to walk. He's got his little walker out, and he's running across the floor with, holding onto that thing.
[00:47:57] Michael J Lopez: So he's, he's getting ready to, to take off.
[00:48:00] Nicole Greer: Oh, he's gonna be a little running back. That's gonna be good. Okay. All right. What would you hope... what's one thing you hope for your children or your grandchildren or the next generation? What do you hope for them?
[00:48:12] Michael J Lopez: I hope that we would do... I hope they would learn from the way I've lived my life- Yeah
[00:48:17] Michael J Lopez: and understand that the only way is through, and hard things, as we talked about, are part of the experience. And, it's not really about what I accomplish, it's about what I teach them about what they can accomplish, and my hope is that they turn into people that continue to do hard things and push forward in whatever their chosen career, that they're disruptors, that they're moving ideas forward.
[00:48:42] Michael J Lopez: Obviously the future looks very different than when you and I were 18 and what we're- That's
[00:48:47] Nicole Greer: right ...
[00:48:47] Michael J Lopez: seeing now. So, I hope there are people that embrace the difficulty and the joy of that difficulty for the rest of their lives.
[00:48:54] Nicole Greer: Yeah. That's great. That's a good place to stop. All right.
[00:48:58] Nicole Greer: Michael Lopez, it's been great to have you on the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast. Love your book, love your energy, love your message. One more time, tell everybody where they can find you.
[00:49:09] Michael J Lopez: Michaeljlopez.coach is my website, and all my socials are on there. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn and Instagram and other places like that.
[00:49:16] Michael J Lopez: So you can find me there, follow everything, download the book download the study, and subscribe to my podcast as well, which I have. So, and that's a slightly different thing, but it's been a lot of fun. So yeah, everything starts there.
[00:49:28] Nicole Greer: Okay. All right, everybody go down and say you liked it and subscribe to the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast.
[00:49:34] Nicole Greer: It's been such a pleasure to have you on the show. I'm grateful.
[00:49:37] Michael J Lopez: Thank you