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Welcome to Business Leader Breakthroughs where we help unlock the potential in you, your teams and your business. Hosted by Ryan Castle, along with Dr Mike Ashby, we share insights, experiences and stories on achieving breakthrough successes in business and life. In addition to a podcast, The Breakthrough also specialises in delivering management training that actually sticks, is cost effective, and easy to implement at scale to sustain change from the inside out.
Welcome to Business Leader Breakthroughs where we help unlock the potential in you, your teams, and your business. I'm your host Ryan Hassall along with Doctor Mike Ashby. We'll share insights, experiences, and stories on achieving breakthrough success in business and life. To learn more, click the link in the episode show notes or go to the breakthrough.co. Now let the breakthroughs begin.
Ryan Castle:Do wanna read the intro today? Do you wanna start off?
Mike Ashby:No. That's too uncomfortable.
Ryan Castle:Too uncomfortable.
Mike Ashby:The host. You're the host of the most. Hi there. I'm Mike Ashby. Welcome to our Business Leader's Breakthroughs podcast.
Mike Ashby:With me today is our host, actually, Ryan Castle.
Ryan Castle:But Mike, as a deputy host, you've done an job of that intro. Thank you. We're gonna talk about uncomfortable things today. Yes. That probably wasn't very uncomfortable for you at
Mike Ashby:all really.
Ryan Castle:But, you know, we'll we'll talk about more uncomfortable things as we as we dive in. We are talking about getting the big stuff done. Yep. And I think there's a challenge for all of us in fact I've asked the question to look probably thousands of business owners and senior business leaders now have you ever run out of stuff to do?
Mike Ashby:Yep for sure
Ryan Castle:I'm yet to have anyone say yes, I finished my work end of the day, couldn't do another thing, completely run out of things to do, really hoping someone bring something to my desk tomorrow, hasn't The happened interesting observation is that whilst we never have enough time to complete what we feel like we need to do, we always look to solve the problem by working more.
Mike Ashby:And there's also I thought what you were gonna say, that is true, working longer hours but I think the thing I thought you were gonna say was, but there's always enough time to start something new. Oh. Have you noticed that?
Ryan Castle:Yes. Particularly if you're a pioneer.
Mike Ashby:For the if you're a pioneer in the world, it's so exciting. Yes. Well, it's what we used to call it when I was at university, a PhD, piled higher and deeper. That's what happens. The work gets piled higher and deeper.
Mike Ashby:The the pile just simply grows. And when it gets piled higher and deeper, the your your goals, the things that are most important, they slip further and further away. So what's the strategy when we talk about this in the module? We talk about and we've, you know, preached this for many years and we're not bad at ourselves, you know, define the priorities, what are the three most important goals and you write them down and you put time to them. Easy.
Mike Ashby:As Mick Jagger would say. That might
Ryan Castle:not. So let's come back to the defined priorities because I think that's really really critical and a fantastic book Four Disciplines of Execution which we've referenced often and you know the very first one that is define the goal and how many of them there are and through very very extensive research that they did they were able to identify that after three goals you start getting diminishing returns. Yeah. So the more goals you have after three, the least returns you actually get. Yeah.
Ryan Castle:Why is that? Of course, three goals gives us focus, we can put our resource in to three three goals, we're not spreading that resource then whether that be human resource, time resource, dollars resource
Mike Ashby:Attention resource.
Ryan Castle:Attention resource
Mike Ashby:Most of the ones. Context, it's our attention. It's just kind of being able to keep track of them is the is the first piece and and having fewer. Even though most managers, they like to have a long list of goals so that they can feel like, know, making a difference and getting somewhere, you did right. Beyond three, it starts to drop and you know, if you get more than 10 or 11, you're not you're just not gonna get any of them achieved.
Mike Ashby:They're putting time to them is the particular problem that we we wanna talk about here. Our approach to that problem is simply to create space and we do that through something called development time. And the idea is that you take a couple of hours well, with business owners, we used to say take a day a week.
Ryan Castle:Yes.
Mike Ashby:And and as business owners ourselves, we do that. We take a day a week. We get away from usually away from the office, the workplace, and we work on develop business development, business growth, business development, so on. Realize that that's a bit of a challenge for people who are, don't have that same kind of flexibility. So we say, okay, two hours a week, just two hours a week for what we call development time or time on.
Mike Ashby:And what's in that kind of space, that two hours that you are not on the phone, you are not doing the business as usual stuff, it's where you be proactive. What we know is that the highest performing managers, the ones who rise to the top are those who are proactive. They do stuff that's not strictly required and it's not reacting to circumstances. They carve time out to go, actually, this would be really useful if we did this and then and then kinda get on with it. You know, what does that look like in terms of being proactive?
Mike Ashby:It looks like the future business. Right?
Ryan Castle:It does because we can fill our time with things that were created yesterday and the day before and the week before, all those things that are the little boxes on the to do list Yeah. And we can task tick, right? We could even in that two hours we go, oh, that would be great. I could get a whole lot of tasks ticked off. This is actually about building the future of the business and it's whatever that context is for you.
Ryan Castle:You might be a head of a department so it might be about spending those two hours going how do I improve develop or transform my department? Yeah. The team that I I work with as a senior business leader it might be thinking about how does this organization get from where it is today to where it needs to be in another one, three, five years, five years time, but that's as you rightly point out, Mike, it's it's the focus on the future Yep. Not the work
Mike Ashby:Skipping away the work. Work. There's I remember in the days before paperless offices, long before your time. Right? I was working with a guy and they'd started us They'd done a a JV and it was a bit of a startup and they This guy, he said, oh, it's a bit different from back at the office, know.
Mike Ashby:In the office, your work comes into your in tray, you spend your day kind of getting it from the in tray to the out tray and there's your day done. Here, in this environment, there's no in tray and this this perplexed them. You could live your life and spend your days dealing with what's in your inbox
Ryan Castle:Yes. Couldn't you? The scourge.
Mike Ashby:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you could allow it to dominate your life and you could take care of the stuff.
Mike Ashby:I I, you know, you could really spend your whole time dealing with stuff that came up yesterday and just keep moving it forward. Totally. Development time is all about creating the future without reference necessarily to that. It's actively putting time and energy and attention to the most important. Not necessarily the most urgent, not necessarily the most pressing, it's the most important and it's two hours minimum.
Ryan Castle:So when I talk to clients and customers about this and they go, Oh yeah, sounds great, yeah, two hours of development time, yeah, I'll do that. And then I get really detail focused and go, So when will you do that? What day of the week? What time? How does it fit with when your energy works when you do the best your best work because you need to be doing that in that time?
Ryan Castle:Don't don't slam it in at the end of the day if you're not someone who operates well in those those hours. Where will you do it? It needs to be minimal distraction so hence why we tend to do our development days away away from the office but it might be about booking a meeting room, it might be heading to a cafe, it might be whatever but just get a zone where you're not going to be interrupted. It's doing things like switching your mobile off it's turning off your emails if you you might still be using your laptop or something you know don't have your emails and alerts coming in because we know that the tasks switching time absolute killer for product productivity in this kind of zone. So Derek Handley, very successful entrepreneur, he does his development time but he literally takes a notebook and a pen and goes to six on a park bench and that's where he does his thinking and development time.
Ryan Castle:Doesn't take his mobile, doesn't take a tablet or laptop anything and that's what he's found really works well for him the point here is move from that's a good idea to execution and execution looks like booking that time in your diary being clear when we're how who and I think the communication piece is really essential as well. We tend to not tell the people around us, know, our other team members, maybe our our own manager why we're doing this, why it's important, so get that agreements upfront and it's like this time doesn't move. We don't book meetings over the top of it. We don't go, oh, well, I'll catch up on it next week. It's like you've got to build the habit.
Ryan Castle:Mhmm. Lock in lock in the time, communicate to others that you're not gonna be available unless someone has died Mhmm. Don't don't try to talk to me during these two hours.
Mike Ashby:Really good about that in a in a in an unexpected way was what what people found when they did that. And they made this big song and dance, but this is development time. And then their staff would catch them sending emails as, hey, what are you doing? You're meant to be doing your development of it. Oh, okay.
Mike Ashby:It works really well. That public declaration piece actually creates an accountability on you Mhmm. And it's a good way to do it. It's a good way to kind of hold your own feet to the fire. No no kind of flicking off emails while you're in the middle of
Ryan Castle:this. Yeah. What I was gonna say, Mike, give us some guidance around the types of things we'd probably look to work on Yeah. In development time?
Mike Ashby:I think the first one is is about shifting away It's all about shifting out of today's stuff or yesterday's stuff and into, you know, creating space for what the future might look like. And so just spending, a couple of minutes kinda settling yourself and and letting go of decluttering the the from the from the other stuff. Then you'll be doing things like planning, professional development, activities like this. You know, listening to podcasts is a genuinely good development activity because it's about investing in your future growth. You might you know, some of the current stuff that you can play with is is take a problem that keeps recurring, you know, persistent problem and analyze what's behind it.
Mike Ashby:Go into a kind of root cause analysis. Because one of the things here is it's not really meant to be a sort of productive thing of getting lots of things done. It's meant to be a a deep dive. And, you know, we called it we had a a a term for it, the ginger crunch Mhmm. Where we would there was an internal contest to to to find the world's best ginger crunch.
Mike Ashby:And what it was was two hours to kind of eat ginger crunch. Didn't do that for two hours. And really work through the detail. You know, we've done things like pricing for example, which was a persistent problem for us. How do we kind of resolve this?
Mike Ashby:What does our future resource plan look like? Actually, diving deep. So time on is like a deep dive. It might be research. It might be just staring out the window thinking about what you could be doing next.
Mike Ashby:Now you're not gonna do that very often. Don't don't panic. You're not gonna be kind of completely activity less. But it is about, you know, you might be thinking about redefining processes, work processes. Just think about those really important things that you don't get to at the moment, probably one of those is going to be on your list of time on activities.
Ryan Castle:My context is the what is it that you continually find yourself fighting fires around? Yeah. Go go into the root cause around around that and I think it's worth mentioning you've got to find what works for you in this time. Yeah. Some people can literally stare out the window, process the entire problem in their in their head and that works really well for them and they they get great great outcomes.
Ryan Castle:Some people are look I need to mind map that if I get a mind map that really helps me. Some people might find actually they do this very well around a whiteboard Yeah. With some others because Yeah. That's what generates the the outcomes for them. So be conscious of what works for you, find your zone, find what works for you, and then dig in.
Mike Ashby:Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's really important that you learn to do it without guilt. This is, you know, people say, oh, I've got so much work that I can't spend two hours doing this stuff. You've gotta spend two hours doing this stuff.
Mike Ashby:You know, this is the future of the business and we need to reframe that that active mindset piece around get out of that sense of busyness, that's not importance. Just because you're busy doesn't mean you're important or valuable. The most valuable thing you can do is, you know, working with your head rather than your hands. Thinking about what the future of the business looks like and where or the team or or the product or whatever it is. Because in business, we are all about and always about adaptation, evolution, what's the next step, what does it look like.
Mike Ashby:Biggest value you bring to the business is between your ears, not at the end of your arms. So, you know, do the upgrade. Right? Mhmm. Yep.
Mike Ashby:Work higher. Work higher. That's what we call it. Work higher. Stop depriving the business of your best thinking.
Ryan Castle:Absolutely. So, Mike, you've introduced the concept of one uncomfortable thing to I many of our stole
Mike Ashby:it. I can't I can't remember where it was from.
Ryan Castle:Didn't you adopt it, adapt it, improve it?
Mike Ashby:I adopted it. I've adapted it. I've improved it. I don't think the guy called it one uncomfortable thing. He just talked about an uncomfortable thing but Yeah.
Mike Ashby:It was a great concept and I thought it was a really powerful way of kind of disturbing us. Because when we get disturbed, we use our brains better. So I guess what we say to people is, you know, think about something that might have happened yesterday and if you hadn't constrained yourself or got too uncomfortable or intimidated or challenged or whatever, what might you have done in that moment? And then think about how you'd make that difference if you hadn't constrained yourself. What went on that you ended up limiting yourself?
Mike Ashby:And then and then simply resolve to do it. So the idea is every day we should do at least one thing that makes us uncomfortable. Not unethical, just a little bit vulnerable, a little bit worried about how we might look, this might not work, we might look like a failure, you know, can I do this, all of that kind of stuff? It's just yeah. Anything that kind of in that moment makes us uncomfortable.
Mike Ashby:Capture that and then resolve to do something different. So shifting our targets out a bit, just pushing ourselves and, you know, our inner voice is going, oh, you don't have to do this. You can take this. I remember a guy talking about it was really interesting talking about the bike ride from Wellington to Auckland he did. He was an older guy.
Mike Ashby:He was not a, know, only Yeah.
Ryan Castle:It's uphill going that way too.
Mike Ashby:Is it?
Ryan Castle:Yeah. Wellington to Auckland.
Mike Ashby:It's uphill. It's much easier going the other way. Isn't it? Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Mike Ashby:Yeah. Well, he said that the physical it's because it's up to what? It's five or seven days or something. Yeah. He said the physical recovery took about a week.
Mike Ashby:The mental recovery took about three months. The mental exhaustion. And and what he talked about was, you know, he he could have just stayed in the in the group, but he wanted to do better. He wanted to push himself. So every day in, you know, in the moment, he'd be going, I just need to catch up with that next group.
Mike Ashby:I mean, if I can catch up with that next group because they are all faster riders, then they'll then I'll be able to and his but his mom, oh, no. You don't have to, Steve. Just relax. It's okay. Just stick with these guys.
Mike Ashby:Stick with your mates. That's a lot of the mental battle. Wow. That's so true. Right?
Mike Ashby:And and he did that for seven days solid because if you don't keep pushing yourself, you drop back in the Peloton. Yeah? Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Mike Ashby:There you go. And your and your kind of objectives lost, right? But the energy it required to manage his mind was such a wonderful example of a seriously uncomfortable Yes. Other examples, if you don't understand what's going on, ask a stupid question. And people are very reluctant to do that because well, it's a stupid question.
Ryan Castle:But it's not really a stupid question and it's just it's really being uncomfortable enough to admit that you don't understand. I don't know what that acronyms. I did it yesterday. We were in a meeting with a client. Yeah.
Ryan Castle:She used an acronym like, I don't know what that acronym So I so I asked, you know, just get put it out there.
Mike Ashby:And the good part is that in that moment of feeling uncomfortable, you go, you know, the active mindset piece goes like this. It goes, talking about AEAs and it And you think, oh, I should know what that I'm gonna look stupid if I ask that question because obviously, the other guy knows what they're talking about. Shit. That's great. That's what that kind of The active mindset goes, no, of course, I'm not gonna look stupid.
Mike Ashby:And actually, don't matter if I do. What's an IEA?
Ryan Castle:Because once I know what's being talked about, then I can contribute to the conversation again when I don't know I have to essentially remove myself from the conversation. I can't add any more value at that point because I don't know.
Mike Ashby:That's true and also you develop your development muscle because all development, all growth lies outside your comfort zone. One one more rep. Right?
Ryan Castle:One more rep.
Mike Ashby:That is where the growth lies. And when we and you are good at this. You are good at observing the discomfort and moving into it because you know that's where the growth lies. And and so, yes, you can participate there in the conversation. More importantly, you've just developed your your character and your development muscle and that's a lifelong thing.
Mike Ashby:Right? And it comes into in work settings, you know, making that call and if you again, if you stop the active mindset and you go, what's happening here? Oh, yeah. I'm I'm a bit concerned they're gonna say no or I'm gonna be bit concerned they won't wanna hear from me because they don't think I'm important and dot dot dot and and making the call anyway.
Ryan Castle:Mhmm.
Mike Ashby:And we can say, and you'd be surprised how many times that call actually led to a wonderful That's good. It's not the main point. The main point is that you conquered yourself.
Ryan Castle:Correct.
Mike Ashby:You conquered your own objections. Maybe disagreeing with someone in authority when you go, well, that doesn't sound right. Actually saying, can we just go over that again because I'm, you know, not a 100% clear or whatever. Do it politely, of course. You know, just say, no, that's not true.
Mike Ashby:That's more than discomfort. That's silly. What are some others? What are some of the I
Ryan Castle:I think we easily form bad habits around technology. Totally. So we get addicted to now we leave the office and the emails keep coming through and the messages keep coming through. So unplug, get home, turn your phone off. Had a fantastic client who we got home he would switch his phone off and put it in the hot water cupboard and literally close the door and you know when it came home to roost when his children said to him dad, it's amazing you're just not on your phone all the time now.
Ryan Castle:Yeah. Yeah. It's like, oh, okay. I didn't realize how Yeah.
Mike Ashby:What other
Ryan Castle:the environment I was creating. I think admitting a mistake. Oh.
Mike Ashby:Oh. Yeah. Well, look, I've mastered this one because I go whole days without making any mistakes. Is it not
Ryan Castle:I was just wondering if we should like phone a friend into this
Mike Ashby:Oh, yeah.
Ryan Castle:This podcast and and get a independent perspective on on that.
Mike Ashby:I don't think that'll be necessary. Not quite. Okay. I'll just take my word. I'd I'd like to just take my word for I
Ryan Castle:think one that's common, you know, how how do I leave work half an hour earlier every day? We build these habits of going, oh, well I I now work from, you know, 07:30 to 6PM and it's just what I do. Yeah. Building some resilience, building some some muscle around around this doing one uncomfortable thing is like, I'm I'm leaving at 05:00 today. How do I how do I get around there?
Mike Ashby:I've made a commitment to spend more time at home honoring that commit, oh, just do one more, one oh, just just one more, just one more. Just go and and feel the guilt and the kind of the walking away from it and you know the kind of whatever that's called, separation anxiety from work.
Ryan Castle:Oh and leave loudly. You know being you know take away the guilt. This is a concept that was made famous by Pepsi Cola. They talked about their managers leaving loudly. So, know, if you normally leave it, leave at six and today you're gonna leave at five.
Ryan Castle:Don't sneak out the door because you don't want anyone to know that you're leaving early.
Mike Ashby:Yeah.
Ryan Castle:Leave leave at five, go, great day people. See you tomorrow. I'm off to spend some time with.
Mike Ashby:Let's go.
Ryan Castle:Yeah. Yeah. You don't have to make an excuse about it but just be be positive about about the fact that you're you're living a life as well as Yeah. As well as Yeah.
Mike Ashby:Cool. Cool. Yeah.
Ryan Castle:Leave it out.
Mike Ashby:Not the I I like to practice as you know the the I believe it's called the Irish goodbye. Just kinda
Ryan Castle:We're like, hey, where's Mike? Where where is he? Oh.
Mike Ashby:Oh, He's gone.
Ryan Castle:Oh, he's gone.
Mike Ashby:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Ryan Castle:That's right. We're used
Mike Ashby:to Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely.
Mike Ashby:Along with that kind of sticking to those commitments and those habits is little things like, for a lot of people, it's really difficult to accept a compliment. And to be able to do that with grace, which is just smile and say thank you. Instead, our Francesca was was complimenting me about something and I was, oh, well, you know, it just it wasn't quite done and she said, just just that's a compliment. Alright. Thank you.
Mike Ashby:You know, that that kinda catching ourselves, we would rather wrap it up in something else rather than just say,
Ryan Castle:yeah, did
Mike Ashby:a good job. Thank you.
Ryan Castle:Thank you for as the compliments come, we need to improve our acceptance of criticism as well. You know, accepting criticism with curiosity. What is what is going on there? Can I reflect on that? Would I've done it and taking it as a personal attack?
Ryan Castle:Yeah. See it as an opportunity for potential improvement. And you might reflect on that and go, there is an opportunity for improvement. You might reflect on it and go, actually, I think that person's context is is out of whack but Yeah. Taking a moment to reflect is is a great place
Mike Ashby:to be. Yeah. Well, it's somebody called it finding the coaching and criticism which is which is a really good way to way to do it. Yeah. And look, it's not the practice, it is the process.
Mike Ashby:It's where you take yourself on. You take yourself on, you develop those character muscles. It's how you grow your confidence. It's when you are daring rather than staying safe, when you're winning small challenges that you set yourself, that's that's how you grow your confidence. It's not it's not talking to yourself about how wonderful you are, it's demonstrating to yourself that you can take yourself on, that you can take on your inner critic and your inner constraints and get past them.
Mike Ashby:That's how people get there, isn't it? You think about the great champions, that's how they learn to back themselves as taking risks, feeling uncomfortable, pushing beyond the discomfort, and getting there over and over again. We had a lovely quote from one of our clients. He said, you know, one of the big things that stuck with me and he and he still talks to his wife about it all the time, he said, it's that doing one thing every day that makes makes me uncomfortable. He said, I force myself to do it every day and when I've done it, I always realized that it's actually not even uncomfortable.
Mike Ashby:It's just in my head. That is so cool, isn't it?
Ryan Castle:Yeah. That is so cool. And ten seconds of bravery.
Mike Ashby:Oh, I
Ryan Castle:love that. You know, you don't have you don't have to be this person conquering fearful situations all day every day. Yeah. It's like, here's my one uncomfortable thing.
Mike Ashby:I'm gonna
Ryan Castle:be brave for ten seconds. I'm gonna give that a give that a whirl and Yeah. Go for it. And we can all summon courage for ten seconds.
Mike Ashby:See, courage is not the absence of fear. It's being afraid and pushing on anyway. And I think one of the things that a quote that I've always loved and I've always reflected on from Ed Hillary. He said, it's not the mountain that we conquer, but ourselves. Love it.
Mike Ashby:Love it. And what
Ryan Castle:a beautiful way to close the episode. Catch you next time people. Thanks for joining.