Keith Ferrazzi [00:00:00]:
We have identified 10 critical shifts that a team needs to make to be able to be the kind of high performing team that we dream of. One of those high performing shifts is moving from conflict avoidance to candor. Another critical shift is moving toward real purposeful bonding where a team owns the fact that it has each other's back. Give your team clear monthly sprints where they get to be on their own, they get to stop where they are in their work. Here's what I did achieve versus what I said I would, right? So you know what balls are dropped or not. Here's where I'm still struggling so that you get some curiosity and humility among the team where problem solving is needed. And here, by the way, is my next month's sprint. Expect more from our teams.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:00:44]:
It is game changing. I have seen so many leaders who have been struggling with the burden of being hub and spoke to everything going on and have stepped back, taken a breath and that invited and mandated that their team step up and take some of the mantle of leadership on the team itself.
Mike Koenigs [00:01:16]:
Hey, welcome back to Capability Amplifier. This is Mike Koenigs and today I'm speaking with Keith Ferrazzi. He's the author of Never Lead Alone and lots of other books. I'll tell more about that, but I've known Keith for two decades now. You might know him from his book Never eat Alone and also who's got your back Leading without authority and competing in the new world of work. But one of the things I love about Keith is first of all, he's one of the biggest world class connectors and speakers and most authentic guys I've ever met. He spent a lot of time building businesses and figuring out what works and what doesn't. And he's always been more than just individual success.
Mike Koenigs [00:01:58]:
He's about team success and his life's work is about transforming how people work together. So in his latest book, Never lead Alone, it's a playbook for creating teams that not only perform at the highest level, but also genuinely support and elevate each other. Team, I love you man. Keith, I love you man. I can't believe I called you team. But so good of you to make some time today.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:02:21]:
Mike, you're such a good friend. I love you dearly and I can't wait to meet your audience here.
Mike Koenigs [00:02:26]:
It's so good. Well, let's dig into some of the meat here. I like to start with a little bit of emotion, which is if you can think of a specific moment from your childhood that you see as a major Turning point that shaped your commitment to teamship and co elevation. I just like to connect the dots here with the young you and this you.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:02:51]:
Well, you know my backstory. My old man was an unemployed steel worker immigrant from Italy, and my mom was a cleaning lady, and I had to go to the local country club to make 20 bucks a day carrying golf clubs. And that's when I got out. And there was a woman named Mrs. Poland who was life changing for me, because dad used to say to me, keith, show up at the golf course a half an hour early. And I did. And I was walking around trying to figure out, like, just bored, but I would notice where the pins were placed, I would notice how the greens were cut. And as a result, when Mrs.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:03:30]:
Poland, who was the best woman golfer at the club, had me cutting for her one time, she saw something special in me. And later I found out that the reason she invested so much time in me was key. She joked that I took two strokes off of her golf score because I showed up half of an hour early at the golf course. I had better information, etc. The power of this was the Mrs. Poland did invest in me. She introduced me to her friends. She got me caddying every single day, which was meaningful to my.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:04:02]:
My family's economic condition. But she changed my life. I realized a long time ago that poverty is not the asset. The absence of money, poverty is the absence of relationships. Mrs. Poland opened up doors like nepotism would have, like a second mother would have to me, because of the authentic relationship. Now, what was most important is to recognize that the reason she did it is because I showed up showing up at the golf course a half an hour early for her. I was able to give her more than other caddies were able to give her.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:04:38]:
And. And that's what I hope for all of your audience to recognize, which is the doors of opportunity are available to you through some of the most powerful and important people in the world. But you gotta show up at the golf course half an hour early for them.
Mike Koenigs [00:04:51]:
Right on. Right on. Well, so the next question I have. So, Dan and all of Strategic Coach is all about operating in your unique ability, but also the power of a unique ability team, and they really celebrate it. They do a lot of pre testing. So, for example, they're heavy on the Colby test, really getting to know someone and their core unique abilities, and then building teams around that. But the other thing that I see in you, and I've always seen in you is how vulnerable you are, and you're the first guy to lead with something really raw. Like when you're facilitating meetings and connections like at Abundance360 for example.
Mike Koenigs [00:05:36]:
So the question is, in your experience, what's the most courageous thing a leader can do to foster an environment where there's real vulnerability, real candor that can thrive without it turning into a liability so people can operate in their unique abilities.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:05:54]:
Yeah. So the new book chronicles 20 years of research on high performing teams. I was influenced very early on by Lencioni and his five Dysfunctions book. Like everybody else was. I was influenced by the Gartner, not Gartner group, by the group that was studying employee engagement and making sure that there was an awareness that employee engagement led to measurable change of outcomes. And I started realizing I wanted to study measurable impact of high performing teams. And I've done that for 20 years now. And I coach some of the most prominent teams in the world.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:06:34]:
Fortune 50.
Mike Koenigs [00:06:35]:
Can you drop some names? It's okay. It's okay to brag when it's true. You don't think so?
Keith Ferrazzi [00:06:40]:
I'm blessed to be a part of what's being. What's going on at IBM today. I was there at the coal face of General Motors when they were coming out of bankruptcy and getting back on track. I'm working with some of the biggest unicorns and venture capitalists. Lightspeed VC has made me a venture partner to coach their portfolio companies. We just came back from Davos with an amazing group of people. So yeah, I mean it's. And I'm coaching countries like Bhutan and the transformation of an entire nation, adopting the principles of high performing teams between government and for profit and the politician side of the business, etc.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:07:21]:
So anyway, that's what I do. The reason I wanted to go back to that story is we have identified 10 critical shifts that a team needs to make to be able to be the kind of high performing team that we dream of. Three or four of them are disproportionately important. You name two of them. One of those high performing shifts is moving from conflict avoidance to candor. Another critical shift is moving toward real purposeful bonding where a team owns the fact that it has each other's back. Those are two critical shifts from serendipitous bonding to purposeful bonding, from conflict avoidance to candor. Two of the ten.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:07:59]:
Now the question is what's the role of the leader? Right. And of course you could say that the role of the leader is to set the tone as you were suggesting that I have a superpower. Of building that kind of vulnerability. But I'll tell you, the most important thing that a leader needs to do today is expect more from their team and to negotiate a social contract with the team that says, folks, I have traditionally been a hub and spoke leader, which I think both of us know is the bane of existence of so many entrepreneurs.
Mike Koenigs [00:08:30]:
Yeah, for sure.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:08:31]:
Themselves at the center of everything. To get yourself out of the center, of being the leader at the center and instead to look at your team and say, listen, I could give you all feedback, but it's time for you to give each other feedback. I could hold you all accountable, but it's time for you to hold each other accountable. It's time for you to have each other's backs. It's time for. And the ability to shift from a focus on your leadership to a focus on their teamship will be one of the greatest chiropractic adjustments you can give to your business in decades. It is going to free you up by 30% of your business. I mean, you and I both know Sergey Young.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:09:14]:
I worked with Sergey's team for many years. And Sergei, who's an extraordinary entrepreneur in the longevity space. Sergei truly was able to start an entirely new business by virtue of how he shifted his leadership for his. From his primary business. His primary business hit 10x what it used to be, it 10x the business. And he freed up his time to start a new business because he adopted teamship instead of leadership. And so that's what I wanted to chat a little bit about today and some of the practices to bring that to life.
Mike Koenigs [00:09:51]:
Yeah. So let's, let's go into one of them, which is think about a real world example where you saw that team breakthrough. So there's, I think conflict avoidance is one thing to make the shift possible, but also adopting KPIs and deliverables not as punishment, but as a sense of actual deep connection. So sort of like, how do you, how do you integrate that mindset?
Keith Ferrazzi [00:10:30]:
So, so let's take, I'll take a look at one company that has. It starts with the negotiation of what are those KPIs. And like you said, KPIs should be an appropriate negotiation with the team itself. But it's not just a leader handing down the KPIs. One of the things that I find leaders miss is the curiosity to fully understand inclusively what the perspectives are from the team. And not only, look, there are some people on the team that feel that a particular KPI is not achievable, but it's because they have programmed in their head a belief system of constraints that if we were to negotiate those KPIs, those constraints would be put on the table and we could collectively solve for them, take them off the table, so that the KPI is now achievable. Right? So one of the problems with this hierarchical view of KPIs, this cascading view of KPIs, is that we're not, we're not inclusively collaborating to own those KPIs from the very beginning. Right? The next step, of course, and I think you all have this with the operating system that you put into place.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:11:40]:
But the next step, of course, is to be working in very clear monthly agile sprints around the business, where at the end of the monthly sprints, we stand up and say, here's what we've achieved, here's where we're struggling, here's where we're going. That transparency. Now, what was interesting is in the olden days, the candid organization standing up and saying, here's where I'm struggling. And for the team to say to them, here's what you don't see, here's the risks that we see. That dialogue is what I call a challenge culture. Now, most of the time that challenge culture doesn't exist among the team. People think that if they challenge each other, it's throwing each other under the bus. What I know your system does with Dan's systems does, and what this book purports is that if we turn it into an assignment, if we say that you're going to monthly stand up and do what we call a stress testing, you're going to stand up and say, here's what I've achieved, here's where I'm struggling, here's where I'm going.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:12:38]:
And then the team is assigned to beat that up and say, here's where. Here's what you're missing. Here's an idea for you, here's where I'll help. That act of assigned stress testing is the freedom of the team to turn into a challenge culture. But you do it through assignment. And what we find is that the average team on a scale of 0 to 5 is down in the low to medium ones in terms of its courageous dialogue. We ask the question, can we challenge when it's risky? And the answer is usually 1.9. If you do this stress testing exercise on a monthly basis against your clear KPIs, that candor, because the challenging has been turned into a monthly assignment, that candor turns into the High threes so I can literally snap my fingers and change a culture of a team by adding a new practice.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:13:34]:
We call these high return practices. Monthly stress testing is a high return practice that moves from conflict avoidance to candor and keeps the KPIs monthly in the square eye of the whole team. And the whole team then owns the correction at the same time. Now, Dan Sullivan and the work that you all do is very aligned to this. I know in terms of clear operating systems, I'd be curious whether this sounds familiar to you.
Mike Koenigs [00:14:03]:
It does. I'm going to ask a different question because I think it will and I think the journey will be more important than my reflection. And you caused me to to think about another question that I think is really germane to what's going on. But first, so you talk about the transition from individual leadership to teamship and strategic coach promotes the idea of the entrepreneurial team. So what's a practical strategy that entrepreneurs who are used to being the hub and spoke. I'm one of them. I'm used to it too. That we can start using to share leadership and accountability without feeling like we're losing our grip.
Mike Koenigs [00:14:43]:
What do you see over and over again? What's the biggest personal challenge they need to overcome? I think I know what mine is. Mine is, I'm afraid balls are going to be dropped that are going to be more expensive later on to pick up, clean up or fix. And I also know after raising a kid that the best thing I can ever do is let my kids fail. But I'm not dealing with children now. I'm dealing with grown adults.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:15:11]:
So I'll go back to the practice that I just gave you. Monthly agile sprints with stress testing at the end. So here's what happens. And this by the way, one of the chapters of the book focuses on the CEO of IBM, Arvind, who is really, if you take a look at the stock price, the PE of that particular company, it's crushing it these days. And one of the reasons IBM is crushing it is because of the adoption of Agile as an operating system at the executive team level. So Mike and everybody who's listening, I understand that you'd like to be in the shorts of every decision for fear that if you're not, balls will be dropped. I understand that you'd like to be in the shorts of every critical initiative for fear that balls would be dropped. Give your team clear monthly sprints where they get to be on their own.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:16:04]:
Right? You give them clear outcomes, clear KPIs, and once a month, they get to stop where they are in their work. They. They look up to the team as a whole. Not just you, but the whole. Their. Their peers as well. And they say, okay, you set me off on this last month Sprint. Here's what I did achieve versus what I said I would.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:16:26]:
Right? So you know what? Balls are dropped or not. Here's where I'm still struggling so that you get some curiosity and humility among the team where problem solving is needed. And here, by the way, is my next month's Sprint. Now, if you have a much more volatile organization than monthly, you can do this every week if you want, right? The velocity the Sprints has have to be with how much work can you autonomously do. But during the sprint, you stay out of their damn shorts. So they are autonomous and they have their way. But the end of it, they stand up. And it's not just standing in front of you, they're standing in front of the whole team.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:16:59]:
We're crowdsourcing the insight. At that point, the entire team goes into small breakout rooms of two. Every member of the team answers the following question, okay, we heard that person's Sprint report. Now, everybody writes in, what is this person missing? Challenge them. What is what? What innovation would you give them? Give it to them. Now, I'm not talking about just verbally. You write it the damn down in a. In a Google document.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:17:23]:
Right? And. Yeah, and where might you help? So then the person consumes all this information and says, okay, thank you very much for this. Thank you. Yes, no, maybe, blah, blah, blah. But now they lock in their next month Sprint, right? And everybody understands that the input was heard. They lock into the next month Sprint in terms of deliverables, clarity, KPI, etc. And then you give them an autonomous month or week or whatever it is to go do their work. Get these.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:17:51]:
And the benefit is, you're not the only one giving the interrogation once a month. The whole team owns the interrogation. And we do it not out of throwing each other under the bus. We do it because we refuse to let each other fail. That monthly system of refusing to let each other fail, owning each other's success, that's the key to what you're asking for.
Mike Koenigs [00:18:15]:
Okay, that's really useful. One of the things that I love about our quarterlies at Strategic Coach, so the way Dan and while the whole every coach works at Strategic Coach, we meet quarterly and we're planning out our next 90 days. And this is as founders and owners and his mechanism is he always shows a new Tool demonstrates the tool effectively, has it filled out to solve one of his current challenges. And then we break down, we fill it out and then we break into small groups, we talk about our particular challenge and then we come back and report what our biggest takeaway was. And the byproduct, the learning is oftentimes more valuable than the tool itself. But the tool is a vehicle to get there. It's a vehicle to ask better questions. And I really, I really was experiencing that as I was listening to you now.
Mike Koenigs [00:19:12]:
So any reflection on that before I ask you the next one? Because I'm going to.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:19:16]:
That's genius. Look, the only thing I have often found is that the, the specific practice of how you negotiate the conversation often leads to either mediocre challenging or high degrees of challenging. Our research has shown that small groups of two or three having a conversation increases psychological safety by 85%. And so if you do, if you, you need to make sure you break down into small groups and you need to make sure that you tell people, write down what you challenge of what you just heard, you need to assign a challenge and then people will dig into themselves and find the thing that they disagree with so they can put it on the table. The other piece that I want to make sure I point out is you've got to condition people that just because they have opinion doesn't mean they have a, they have a vote. They're giving input, they're not giving directives. So the person who owns that threat of work continues to own the work. But what they're getting is double barrel feedback from everybody.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:20:18]:
What you're, what you're celebrating is the truth telling, not the taking over or hijacking each other's authority.
Mike Koenigs [00:20:25]:
It's great. I love it. So the next question I have, I'm going to frame this through your book, but I'm going to ask a really specific question so it's going to have a problem solved in it. So in the book you emphasize the importance of moving from silos to alignment. And I'd like you to share a specific example of how a team successfully broke down these barriers, created a unified approach and what was the biggest mindset shift that was required from leadership to make it happen. And let me give you a real life example of this. So today I always meet with my EA every Monday at 9 o'clock. It's how I open up my week and we just plan ahead.
Mike Koenigs [00:21:04]:
And one of my goals lately, and I'm doing this both for us and also all of our clients, is how do we integrate more AI in our business to support and eliminate friction? So the challenge I gave my EA was I want you to think about what are the five things that you spend repetitively that's frictional, that is challenging, that if we had an AI to either support or do it for you, it means you could focus on higher value things. So I'll get back to the question, which is, you know, the goal is I want to create a unified approach. I want to integrate that mindset thinking, not just in my organization, every business I know right now is thinking, how do I eliminate friction, how do I integrate more AI? What's the mindset shift that leadership needs to make to make that happen?
Keith Ferrazzi [00:22:01]:
Well, so I just got back from Davos a week ago and this subject was squarely on everyone's plate, which was how do we accelerate the broadest adoption of AI tools in critical roles? Right. So good news is the business you have focusing on this is squarely on everyone's agenda, as you well know. And what I, what I wanted to recognize is, and I think it goes squarely to the book, so often leaders think that the solution is top down and control oriented. That's the natural reaction. It's like, you can't get these people to get this to happen. How do we top down fix this? You know, how do we send a group over here to come up with a solution and then how do we drive it down through the organization, through training? That's got to be the weakest form of building transformational movements of change. I think we learn a lesson on AI by going back and I'm writing an article about this which I would like to send to you, Mike, and see if you can edit it a bit and maybe be a part of the piece that I'm writing. It's going to be for Harvard Business Review.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:23:15]:
Yeah.
Mike Koenigs [00:23:15]:
Yes is always the answer to Keith Farazi.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:23:17]:
Okay, thank you.
Mike Koenigs [00:23:19]:
You're welcome.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:23:19]:
But it's a piece where I reckon back, I remember the days when I, when I first graduated from college and I went to a large British chemical company to work and I was trying to build a movement of systematic change in total quality management in manufacturing. And what started to emerge was this idea of black belts of Six Sigma. We would take frontline people who cared about their own brand and cared about being experts in quality and teach them more, but have them teach each other and become super users of TQM and Six Sigma and then go out and teach others they were black belts. I think what we're calling for Today we need black belts of AI inside of the company.
Mike Koenigs [00:24:06]:
Yeah, absolutely.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:24:07]:
And these super users need to be self organized and they need to have a mission that they agree upon, that they are the drivers and the evangelists of cracking the code of the use of AI in their role and evangelizing and exporting it to their peer groups. And we've got to stay out of this mindset that we're shipping an answer down into an organization, but instead we're creating a groundswell of AI evangelists that are, that are the, you know, the 12 disciples of AI permeating the religion into the world. So that's, to me, the next. That's the mindset shift. Stop being top down and start to think about how do you serve super users? How do you humbly serve a movement? Not call for top down authority.
Mike Koenigs [00:25:00]:
I love that. One of the things that you've inspired me to do listening to you right now. So I have two reflections back to you. Dan and I did a podcast episode a while ago and we called it the Birth of the Clear Collar Worker. And I just made that name up because we've gone from blue collar to white collar and now it's an AI assisted mindset. You like it? And a huge opportunity, especially for young people, because the number one thing I get asked when I speak is how can I get my kids to be mentored in business and be an apprentice in an organization? Okay. So anyway, that's the mindset here and what I'm going to do because of you and having this conversation. I'm going to send out a survey and I'm going to ask every business owner on my list, like give me your top three friction points that you know of in your business that you wish could be solved by AI.
Mike Koenigs [00:26:06]:
And I have to really integrate this mindset of a I don't know if it's bottom up approach versus top down. What do you call that when it's coming from within instead of coming from up on top?
Keith Ferrazzi [00:26:17]:
Yeah. You know, the other thing I want to invite you to is, and I'm just here we are on a podcast and I'm sending you an email now. It's done and I copied you with my Harvard Business Review editor. I. I'm hosting a group of CIOs of some of the biggest companies in the world and chros of some of the biggest companies at the TED conference this year. I don't know if you're planning to go to TED or not, but one of our agenda points is going to be the Awakening to. We need to be reinventing workflows. And the partnerships between, you know, CIO and CHRO are so important, but also we're going to be working on this.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:26:55]:
How do we. How do we radically accelerate the use of the Generative AI tool? So I'd like to get you involved, I'd like to write you into this HBR piece and let's see how we can co create something extraordinary here. By the way, folks, if you're watching this, this is how partnerships get created, right?
Mike Koenigs [00:27:13]:
Yeah.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:27:13]:
You show up and you always ask yourself the question, how can an abundance mindset? How can a gifting mindset? How can I, you know, like, Mike's here to elevate my new book. Mike's here to elevate a new program that we have called Beyond Connections. But I'm always asking, are there five packets of generosity? I could bring a teammate. And I'm always trying to think about how can I be of service to others? And if you need to have that mindset, folks, you need to always be asking the question, are there something I can do to make this person more successful? And I promise you, if you do that, you will live such an abundant world and doors will be open for you and your brand will be one that other people gravitate toward. Right. And this is what teamship is all about. How do you get your team to have this mindset with each other? How do you team have a commitment to the mission, but also committed to elevating each other in the process?
Mike Koenigs [00:28:12]:
Totally. And this is what happens every time I sit down with Keith. It's like, let's do this and let's do this, let's do this. It couldn't happen. This is such a productive way. It's sharing knowledge. And by the way, I just want to stop here for a moment. Get the book right now.
Mike Koenigs [00:28:29]:
I set up a link, but you can just go to Amazon and get. Never lead alone. I created a link for you. If you just go to capabilityamplifier.com Keith that goes straight to Amazon. You can pick it up there in a moment. Keith will also talk about this community he's put together that will elevate and accelerate this even further. First, I want to ask a related question. So you've been talking about CO Elevation in the book and in the context of Dan Sullivan's concept of the gap and the gain.
Mike Koenigs [00:29:01]:
How does CO elevation help teams focus on the gain and celebrate their progress instead of being stuck in the gap? And how do you ensure that everyone on the team feels seen and celebrated. So talk a little bit about the psychology.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:29:13]:
Thank you. So I started looking at high performing teams 20 years ago and what emerged is three layers of a high performing team. The bottom layer is the relational layer. It's the layer that really shows up and says, listen folks, we can't win unless we all win. We're going to have each other's back, we're going to build great relationships and we're going to celebrate the hell out of all of our movements. There's an entire chapter on all three of those chapters. All three of those components, Right. One of them being celebration itself.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:29:45]:
And how do you make the team responsible for celebrating each other and what are the practices to do that? The next layer is the performance layer and it's the layer that says, how do I teach the team to kick each other in the ass and push each other higher? Why? Because they love each other so much that they refuse to let each other fail. How do I make sure that our team gives each other constant feedback and that everybody is agreeing that our team is going to be our growth engine, our team is our coach. So that middle layer of high performance and then the top layer is how do we adopt 21st century collaboration? How do we use the tools effectively? You're an expert in the AI piece. I'm an expert in collaborative software, program and project management software, et cetera. The tools of Dan Sullivan and what he brings to the table in terms of the process, that 21st century layer. So all three of those are what we critically bring to a team. And the answer is it's a new social contract. Right? It starts with something that's joyful and joyous, which is a group of folks that have each other's back, high fiving each other, taking hills together.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:30:52]:
The next level is a group that's butt kicking and co elevating. Co elevating. I watched all of this stuff happen and I said, you know what? That's a different kind of collaboration than we see today. We see silos, we see competitiveness. We need to create a new word for what does it mean to have a group of folks so damn committed to a mission that they won't let each other fail. Co elevation. Co elevation is the word I came up to with it.
Mike Koenigs [00:31:19]:
Okay, so that leads me to the next one, which is you emphasize teams being seekers who are each other's coaches. I love that.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:31:28]:
That's that middle layer, that's that high performance layer. I need you to stop thinking that it's only your job to critique your team. It's a shitty job to be in. And the reality is your team as a crowdsourced will know more about each other's capabilities. Now you got to do it outside of punitive. It's not. The team is not throwing each other under the bus. They're refusing to let each other fail.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:31:51]:
The best company I've ever seen that does that is elf beauty. And there's an entire chapter, chapter 10, I think, written just about elf beauty's transformation of coaching hierarchical to team to team coaching.
Mike Koenigs [00:32:03]:
Okay, so what if you were going to think of one or two of the most important things teams can do to give and receive feedback in a way that's constructive and growth oriented? And how do leaders build that resilience in to themselves to hear truth from their teams?
Keith Ferrazzi [00:32:21]:
You know, all of it's in practice. Everything that you see in my book is every shift has a couple of simple things a team can do. One practice is called an open 360 where the leader starts. And my team would all go around and say to me, keith, what I most appreciate about your leadership this last month is X. And then everybody will go around and say, keith, what I. Your success is so important to our success. So I might suggest, for the next month, I might suggest. And everybody goes around.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:32:52]:
So I want everybody to give corrective feedback and suggestive ideas. Applause and suggestive ideas. And every month you check in with each other in an open 360. And it's amazing. You, you really do get to the core. And you know, look, there have been months when I've totally been off, I've been absent, I've been off, something going on in my personal life, whatever. And it's the time when my team needs to be able to say to me, what I appreciate about you is this, but next month what we need from you is this. Right? And that.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:33:23]:
And similarly that everybody gives it to everybody else. It's an open 360. The next person, Mike, you're on my team. You get it from everybody. And it's, it's a gift that's given. It's a simple practice. It's monthly. Everything that I give you in this book is a simple practice.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:33:39]:
All you got to do is open the book and go through it and you're going to be eating practices like popcorn and everyone is game changing.
Mike Koenigs [00:33:46]:
I love it. I love it. Okay, I'm in a frame and I'm going to have you process my last big question for you. But before you answer it, I want you to tell us about this community you've been working on. So I'm going to plant the seed of the question in which is I want to know what the most powerful and impactful thing that you've personally learned in the last year that's transformed how you think about leadership and, and how others can use that knowledge in their own lives and businesses. Because you're exposed to the best of the best, the biggest of the big. And you had to write this book, you've had to promote it, you've had to see and get feedback and you've done a lot of interviews. So just put that in a little circle, process it a little bit.
Mike Koenigs [00:34:29]:
But I want you to tell our friends about the new product and basically about beyond connecting connections and connected success dot com.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:34:41]:
Yeah. So what I realized is I've been focusing on 20 years in high performing teams and as I was emerging that intellectual property, one of my business partners came to me and said Keith, dude, you're known for never eat alone there. There are people all over the world that lives have been changed by virtue of the doors that that book is open for them. Don't forget that community. And I was like, well I appreciate that but my meat and potatoes is here in the high performing team space. And this gentleman, his name is Ronan, said, I'd like to create a business that takes your first three books never to loan who's got your back and leading without authority and offers it to salespeople, independent practitioners, entrepreneurs who want to be better at authentically driving their business success through relationships. And I want to create an eight week program that teaches everything that you've codified, but in a community we offer peer to peer coaching, etc. I was like high five, let's do it.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:35:49]:
And it's been one of the most joyful things that I have done in a decade because once, you know, once every two months a graduating class hits and they come to my home. Graduation classes come to my home. We celebrate their success. They get introduced, you know, people like Peter and yourself and others. And it's been extraordinary and I love the fact and what's interesting is I'm seeing already that that community of leaders learning how to build authentic and deep connections. I'm seeing the fruit of that in society. Look, you know very well in a world where we're becoming more and more divisive in society, we need deeper connections. So the program, you want to learn more about it? It's if you can go to connected success.com connected success.com and the program is called Beyond Connections and we're really, we're really proud of it and thank you.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:36:49]:
And we invite your folks to join us on the journey.
Mike Koenigs [00:36:52]:
Yeah, no, I love it. I think it's a great idea. When you told me you were doing it, I thought, all right. I love the fact you got back to your roots because for me that was. I met you before I read your book. I was fortunate in that regard. We met as friends first and then spent time over the years together and I've watched your evolution. But also, you've always been such.
Mike Koenigs [00:37:17]:
You are the best facilitator I've ever met in my life. It's just amazing when I watch you do what you do. So let's go back to the big question here. Which is the most powerful and impactful thing you've personally learned in the last year that's transformed the way you think about leadership and how others can use that knowledge?
Keith Ferrazzi [00:37:35]:
It's so simple. It really is. Expect more from our teams. It is game changing. I have seen so many leaders who have been struggling with the burden of being hub and spoke to everything going on and have stepped back, taken a breath and that invited and mandated that their team step up and take some of the mantle of leadership on the team itself. It has been game changing. I've seen it work in Fortune 50 companies, I've also seen it work in startups and it really defines a different type of culture. This principle of co elevation which is butt kicking accountability, geared toward deep commitment to the team on the team and deep commitment to transformational outcomes.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:38:23]:
It's game changing. I'm really proud of it and I know it's going to make a big difference in so many people's lives just like never alone did.
Mike Koenigs [00:38:29]:
Okay. So I want to put that into a container which is I'm going to take an action today and I want to use the principles from the book and that mindset. So let's say I was going to schedule a full on team meeting with that intent and that goal and I'm going to start this new conversation with my team and a team of empowerment and expectation. So I'm going to expect more from my team. So if I were going to create the subject line for my outbound email and ask them to prepare, what would I.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:39:08]:
Let me ask this.
Mike Koenigs [00:39:10]:
Yeah, go for it.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:39:11]:
Who is one member of your team that is running a really critical initiative that you absolutely can't allow to fail?
Mike Koenigs [00:39:20]:
I'm going to do internal. External. Okay. My internal is with the Superpower accelerator. That's when we're creating brands and businesses in one week for founders who want to reinvent themselves. What we call your next act. So that's Abby and she's my chief of staff. So she's.
Mike Koenigs [00:39:39]:
We have. It's high deliverability, high pressure, and it's got to be done right the first time.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:39:46]:
Got it. Check that.
Mike Koenigs [00:39:47]:
Okay. Okay. And then the second one, the external one, is Scott, who's in charge of marketing. And we do about a campaign a week that goes out and is producing new business or engagement.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:40:03]:
So here. And what I would like you to do is now take both of those sessions. Each one's going to be about an hour.
Mike Koenigs [00:40:14]:
Okay?
Keith Ferrazzi [00:40:15]:
Okay. And you can put them together in a two hour session. You can keep them separate, it doesn't matter. Each one's about an hour. Each one needs to put a presentation together, which is just one page and one column is. Here's what we've achieved and we're proud of. Here's where we're struggling today and here's what we're planning to do in the next. You define the time frame.
Mike Koenigs [00:40:39]:
Quarter, 90 days.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:40:40]:
Yeah, yeah. Make sure that it's all very clear that it's aimed towards some goals, some KPIs, etc. So what we've achieved based on that, where we're struggling, where we're going, have them both create that one pager. Then have them both prepare no more than five to ten minute video of the them going through that. Okay. Now you can send that video to everybody who's got some point of view at all. Certainly send it to your whole team. But I might actually invite you to send it to some of your suppliers, some of your partners, maybe even some of the clients.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:41:21]:
Like send it out to people who's got some perspective on this, on each of those points. Yeah, Give them, tell them that we're coming together, we're meeting and have them prepared with a point of view around that video. And the, the point of view breaks down into three different areas. One is what challenges do you have for this presentation that they're missing? What are they missing? What idea or innovation might you offer them? And any offer of support or help now bring everybody together in each of those hours. So the first hour you break people into breakout rooms focused on Abby stuff. Breakout rooms at 2. Give them good 20 minutes to talk to each other. They both thought about it in advance, so it's not cold.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:42:11]:
They've come together and now give them a Google Doc and have them Write the answers to their questions, what challenges, what innovations, what ideas. And then everybody comes back and presents that to Abby. But they also have it documented in the thing so Abby can look at it after. Right. Then do the same thing for Scott. Let the broadest, most inclusive group of folks who have a dog in the hunt come together. And if somebody can't make the meeting, say it's okay, but would you mind writing in the Google Doc, even though you can't make it right? Because maybe you, maybe you want 15 people to have a point of view on this, 10 people, whatever it is, but not everybody can show up. That's fine.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:42:49]:
You can do this asynchronously. You don't even have to have a meeting for it per se. But the fun thing about the meeting is you get crowdsourcing and insight and wrestling with it. There's a Fortune magazine article which I will send you, that I wrote just a few weeks ago that is all about this and it's really about how do you reinvent your culture with stress testing. And it's really, it's called Culture Change isn't about flower eretic. It can be turned into a simple assignment. So I'm gonna put it into chat with you.
Mike Koenigs [00:43:23]:
I, I love it and I love it. And I'll put that in our, I'll put that in the show notes for everyone to get and I'll create a short link which I'll make a short link for that right now. So here's how I'm going to wrap this up and I'm going to give you the last word. So number one, go and get Keith's book right now at Amazon. Never lead alone or just go to capabilityamplifier.com Keith. Also go to connectedsuccess.com learn about Keith's community and work with his body of work. And then finally for that, that article, go to capabilityamplifier.com K transformation. K transformation.
Mike Koenigs [00:44:10]:
That will be a short link so you can read that right now. And what is there, is there something I should have asked you that I didn't, Keith, other than I love you, I appreciate you. And that was just like a knock it out of the park implementation phase.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:44:25]:
Thanks, brother.
Mike Koenigs [00:44:26]:
There you go.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:44:27]:
I love you. I'll see you soon.
Mike Koenigs [00:44:29]:
I guess you will. All right. Thanks everyone. This is Capability Amplifier. Share that with your friends. Make sure you subscribe if you haven't already. Thank you, Keith Farazi.
Keith Ferrazzi [00:44:38]:
Thank you, Mike.
