Audio for this transcript available
Transcription Services Provided by Verbal Ink
Russ: This is the BusinessMakers Show heard here and seen online at theBusinessMakers.com. It's guest time on the show and I'm very pleased to have with me Morrie Shechtman, founder and Chairman of Fifth Wave Leadership. Morrie, welcome to The BusinessMakers Show.
Morrie: Russ, glad to be here and talking to you.
Russ: All right. Well let's start by you telling us about Fifth Wave Leadership.
Morrie: Fifth Wave Leadership is a consulting firm that deals with human capital development and that's a fancy way of saying what we focus on is how people make the difference in companies. Everything else has been commoditized - technology, capital formation, everything else can be replicated overnight but your people can't be.
Russ: Okay. Cool. Now, this name, Fifth Wave, what does that mean?
Morrie: Fifth wave deals with the stage of evolution we're in as a species now and that deals with the fact we're in the intrapersonal revolution.
Russ: Okay.
Morrie: So what we deal with now is not how we've evolved from agrarian to industrial information. Our whole premise is all the advancements now are gonna incur inside of people. People are gonna get greater insights that allow them to be more productive but everything outside of people is so easily reproducible that that's not very revolutionary, now.
Russ: Interesting and so the prior wave, the fourth wave, was this informational thing that we've been in for the last 30 to 50 years, right?
Morrie: Right, absolutely.
Russ: Okay.
Morrie: And people got a lot out of it, do a lot with it.
Russ: Okay, right.
Morrie: But it's so ubiquitous and so replicable that there's nothing new that can't be copied overnight.
Russ: Okay. Well, tell us a little bit more then about the intrapersonal wave. What's that mean?
Morrie: The intrapersonal wave is how people either maximize who they are or get in their own way. A short way of saying what we do is we help entrepreneurs get out of their own way 'cause they have taken that to an art form, screwing up themselves.
Russ: [Laughter] I understand that, totally. Wow, so you're saying that the era that we're in is in the way people that become successful and progress or vice versa is gonna be totally dependent upon their intrapersonal skills?
Morrie: Absolutely. It's all about what people know about themselves, not what they know about the rest of the world. The key concept in our work is self information.
Russ: Okay.
Morrie: The most successful people have more self information than the failures.
Russ: Okay. In prior waves that was not necessarily the case?
Morrie: It wasn't the case because people could get ahead by having a hotter product, having better technology and now that lasts maybe 24 hours.
Russ: Wow. Wow.
Morrie: And people are caught up with you right away.
Russ: Very interesting. Okay, so tell me - contrast somebody that has great intrapersonal skills, in general, versus somebody that doesn't. What's the difference?
Morrie: The difference is that they know what they do that gets them into trouble and they know what they do that keeps them out of trouble. Most entrepreneurs are unconscious competence or unconscious incompetence.
Russ: Wow.
Morrie: What we work with is to make them conscious competence, so they know every day what they do that works and they can replicate it and teach people that work for them how to do it.
Russ: Real interesting. So -
Morrie: Most entrepreneurs are clueless about what they do well, let alone what they do poorly.
Russ: Okay. How in the world do they learn that, then?
Morrie: They learn that by getting feedback. I teach people to create feedback-rich companies where the owner gets feedback all the time and he or she gives feedback to the people that work for them.
Russ: Okay.
Morrie: Without feedback, you're clueless. You don't know how you impact on people. You don't know how you impact on customers and you keep screwing up things and doing the same stupid thing over and over again.
Russ: Yeah, yeah. Aren't some of us perhaps more inclined to recognize feedback, you know, body language and stuff and perhaps some of us not.
Morrie: Some, yeah some people are more inclined, intuitively, to read those things -
Russ: Right.
Morrie: But they're not inclined to use them productively.
Russ: Okay.
Morrie: And they don't know how to put them together for a coherent picture. That's what we do in our work.
Russ: Okay. I assume now maybe we're getting to that area of what separates fifth wave leadership - from those other people that are executive coaches and consultants and so forth?
Morrie: Right. Yeah. If you don't get to who people personally are and you don't bring down that firewall between personal and professional, all you're doing is moving the deck chairs around the Titanic.
Russ: [Laughter] All right.
Morrie: And that's what most consulting does.
Russ: All right.
Morrie: It's simply shifts these dysfunctional players from one area to another but it doesn't tell them why they're fundamentally dysfunctional.
Russ: Okay. I'm talking with Morrie Shechtman, the founder and Chairman of Fifth Wave Leadership. I can understand, Morrie, how you might be able to be real effective with this sort of consulting and advising on a one-on-one basis but you do go in and talk with entire companies or entire leadership groups, correct?
Morrie: Oh, we do. We do -
Russ: Okay.
Morrie: - in fact we do 90 percent of our work in groups.
Russ: Okay.
Morrie: And what we do in groups is get everybody looking at each other, confronting each other, giving each other feedback and the power of that group is unbelievable because you get a multiplier effect when you're talking about what people struggle with.
Russ: Wow.
Morrie: We run groups that connect professional goals with personal obstacles and personal strengths.
Russ: Okay.
Morrie: Because that's why people succeed or fail.
Russ: Okay.
Morrie: We have a saying in our work. You get hired for what you know. You get fired for who you are.
Russ: Okay. All right.
Morrie: All the time.
Russ: This is real interesting. So when you sit down with a leadership group - I mean you're kicking it off and you're encouraging them all to communicate with each other but including a critique of each other as well.
Morrie: Absolutely. Absolutely. We teach people that teamwork is about challenge and confrontation.
Russ: Right.
Morrie: It's not about consensus and back-slapping, when we really don't understand how effective teams work.
Russ: So when you kick off one of these things, I assume it's a day long or multiple day exercise within the group?
Morrie: At the beginning there's generally a retreat with a senior management group and that's a day, day and a half.
Russ: Right.
Morrie: But it has to occur over a period of time. We run 30-day groups.
Russ: Okay.
Morrie: If you don't know where your employees are every 30 days you're gonna get surprised and not nicely.
Russ: Right, right.
Morrie: And one thing we do is get rid of yearly evaluations. They are silly.
Russ: [Laughter] Okay.
Morrie: And a waste of time.
Russ: Okay.
Morrie: If you're doing a yearly evaluation now, you're back in the horse and buggy days.
Russ: Well almost all of the HR people that I know in the world highly recommend that because they assume that a lotta people aren't and haven't progressed to that point. You're saying if you progressed to that point, it's a mistake?
Morrie: Oh yeah. It's a mistake and it's a waste of time and money and resources.
Russ: Right, right, right.
Morrie: If you wait to evaluate someone once a year -
Russ: Right.
Morrie: - you are so far behind the curve that don't even do it.
Russ: So in your focus on intrapersonal skills - you're kinda talking about continuous individual micro-evaluations of each other and their opinions and how they're behaving and acting and communicating?
Morrie: Uh yeah, yeah. And we do it on a regular, ongoing basis - on a 30-day period. You've gotta know where people are at now at a minimum every 30 days or you're gonna get surprised.
Russ: Okay.
Morrie: And it's not gonna be a fun surprise.
Russ: Cool. I'm talking with Morrie Shechtman, the founder and Chairman of Fifth Wave Leadership and we'll be back with more with Morrie after this. You're listening to The BusinessMakers Show, heard here and seen online at theBusinessMakers.com.
[Commercial]
Russ: This is the BusinessMakers Show heard here and seen online at theBusinessMakers.com and continuing on with Morrie Shechtman, founder and Chairman of Fifth Wave Leadership. Well I find this whole focus on intrapersonal communications and skills really fascinating but my goodness, it would seem to me, Morrie, at the very beginning when you first encourage a group to do this, they're kinda giving each other feedback and kinda doin' a critique that could get real sensitive. I mean, maybe arguments break out. Maybe fights break out. I mean how does it flow?
Morrie: It flows by personalizing, first, the interactions. What businesspeople miss is that if people don't have personal connections, they won't communicate effectively with each other. Most business meetings are eight to ten times longer than they need to be.
Russ: Well I agree with that.
Morrie: And we hear it all the time. I don't wanna go to another meeting and waste my time.
Russ: Right.
Morrie: They're a waste of time because there's no personal connection.
Russ: Okay, well tell me what that means, though.
Morrie: What it means is we start out every business meeting with a personal check-in.
Russ: Yeah.
Morrie: Meaning rate your life from 1 to 10 now; 1 being the worst, 10 being the best life.
Russ: Okay.
Morrie: Okay, you got a couple of minutes to do that and then tell the group why you arrived at that rating.
Russ: Okay.
Morrie: As soon as you do that, the task tension falls as the relationship tension falls.
Russ: Okay. But what - is that kick off exercise -is that the same in every meeting?
Morrie: Same in every meeting.
Russ: Rate your life 1 to 10 and why.
Morrie: And why, right and what that does is release the tension that allows people to get into the tasks earlier and takes the risk of giving people feedback.
Russ: Okay. But now you know when you do that, do people maybe sometimes rate it low because I'm having - and say personal things, like I'm having big fights with my spouse?
Morrie: Yeah, oh absolutely.
Russ: Wow.
Morrie: Sure, sure, those kinda things come up all the time.
Russ: [Laughter] Wow.
Morrie: Oh yeah. Yeah. It's a new paradigm for connecting business, admittedly.
Russ: Yeah. Okay.
Morrie: People's first reaction is you gotta be kiddin' me.
Russ: Yeah.
Morrie: I'm not gonna talk about this stuff with my colleagues.
Russ: Right.
Morrie: And you know what? After two meetings, they're right into it.
Russ: Wow.
Morrie: Everybody in business who works together, knows who's struggling and who isn't struggling.
Russ: Yeah.
Morrie: There's no secrets. What we do is simply say, "Let's get it out on the table,"
Russ: Mean, who's struggling with their lives, not with the job or their -
Morrie: With their lives. Yeah, not just with their jobs, yeah.
Russ: Wow. Okay.
Morrie: And if you don't deal with that that person's headed toward termination.
Russ: Yeah. Wow.
Morrie: The cruelest thing we do in business is let people struggle personally and then one day they get so irritating to deal with they get fired.
Russ: Right, right.
Morrie: Instead of us saying, "What are you gonna do about the issues you're struggling with?"
Russ: Right. But what if you have an employee that's just always struggling with personal problems which certainly negatively impacts their performance at work?
Morrie: Oh, then you sit down with them and say, "You know, clearly, you got some issues to deal with. What do you think your choices are? Which one are you gonna take?
Russ: Right.
Morrie: You don't have to do anything and if you don't do anything, you're probably gonna get fired for poor performance."
Russ: Okay. Okay.
Morrie: And that's what happens in business all the time.
Russ: Okay, wow. So I've had the opportunity to peruse some of the topics that you tend to cover in your sessions and I know there's this one called "The Familiars".
Morrie: Right.
Russ: Tell us a little bit about the familiars.
Morrie: The familiars describes a feeling state that we have from the earliest times in our life that we tend to reproduce over and over again. It's the strongest drive we have in life. That's why people do stupid, often uncomfortable, painful things because it's predictable. We seek the predictable. We flee from the unpredictable. So lemme give you an example of that.
Russ: Okay.
Morrie: The number one familiar for entrepreneurs is the need to struggle.
Russ: Okay.
Morrie: We've studied their lives.
Russ: Wow. Okay. [Laughter]
Morrie: Okay, and we know that nothing's ever come easy. That's why they're successful.
Russ: Right.
Morrie: It's also why they doom their own companies.
Russ: Right.
Morrie: So the greatest threat to an entrepreneurial business is stability.
Russ: Yeah.
Morrie: As soon as it gets stable, you can take it to the bank, the entrepreneur's gonna stir up stuff to deal with.
Russ: Yeah, now there are exceptions to that, aren't there? I mean -
Morrie: Rarely.
Russ: - I, well I think of Fred Smith, the founder of FedEx who's been a guest on this show.
Morrie: And I know Fred.
Russ: Is an entrepreneur - okay - and a founder and built a c- and he's still CEO today and - I mean clearly there's times where there's turbulence out there but I mean -
Morrie: Sure.
Russ: - he's adjusted and his struggle paid off.
Morrie: Oh sure and Fred worked his way through knowing what he could likely do to sabotage the very growth.
Russ: Okay.
Morrie: 'Cause as soon as the company that an entrepreneur founds gets sufficiently stable and big -
Russ: Right, right.
Morrie: - they're gonna have to give up a lotta control -
Russ: Right.
Morrie: - and move to the next stage.
Russ: Right.
Morrie: And they resist that, fight that like crazy.
Russ: Right.
Morrie: That's why they often sell the company, move off and start the struggle all over again.
Russ: Right. Okay. Well, that's interesting.
Morrie: Because they love to do that. Now where it gets counterproductive is they get in their own people's way and start creating problems that don't need to be there.
Russ: Right, the familiar. So struggling is an example of the familiars that an entrepreneur -
Morrie: That is right.
Russ: - give us another example of the familiars?
Morrie: Another familiar would be the salesperson who always hits 80 percent of their goals.
Russ: Okay.
Morrie: You can take it to the bank. No matter what's going on, they'll do 80 percent.
Russ: Right.
Morrie: They'll never do 100 percent -
Russ: Right.
Morrie: - unless they realize that their familiar is being disappointing. So they need to be sure that they're always disappointing their sales manager.
Russ: All right, well how does one overcome their familiars?
Morrie: By - number one, identifying it and then structuring an action plan that forces them to take a risk and the risk is to do something that they've never done before in their life. Okay, so for example, sales people struggle with close.
Russ: Right.
Morrie: They only struggle with that because they're conflict avoiders.
Russ: Right.
Morrie: Okay and their familiar is continually avoiding conflict all the time.
Russ: Right, right.
Morrie: So we force them to take the longest open case and either close it or say goodbye to that prospect.
Russ: Right, right. Okay. That's kind of interesting. My background is sales and man I never was really afraid to ask for the order but I do know that some of 'em would drag on for a long time and I eventually developed a strategy - well, I'm pretty sure they're not gonna buy now 'cause it's going too long but I'm gonna make 'em tell me no. And I - maybe I was recognizing one of my familiars and saying, "We're gonna wrap this thing up"?
Morrie: Sure, sure. You're pushing through that all the time. We have a saying in our work. We ask people that we work with, "What do you do on a regular basis that gets you the results you say you don't want?"
Russ: Okay.
Morrie: And everybody in business does it.
Russ: Wow.
Morrie: That's their familiar.
Russ: Now say that again. I wanna -
Morrie: Yeah, what do you do on a regular basis that gets you the results you say you don't want?
Russ: Right. Wow. Okay.
Morrie: And people think about that for a moment and they can identify it in a heartbeat.
Russ: Okay. What's your education in, psychology?
Morrie: I'm a trained psychotherapist.
Russ: Okay.
Morrie: Used to be licensed in Illinois. I had a practice in Chicago -
Russ: Okay.
Morrie: - for 15 years. Before that I was a university professor. So I'm a recovering shrink and a recovering academic.
Russ: Great. All right. Talking with Morrie Shechtman, founder and Chairman of Fifth Wave Leadership and we're gonna be back with more with Morrie after this. You're listening to The BusinessMakers Show, heard here and seen online at theBusinessMakers.com.
[Commercial]
Russ: This is the BusinessMakers Show heard here and seen online at theBusinessMakers.com and continuing on with Morrie Shechtman, founder and Chairman of Fifth Wave Leadership. I find this all to be fascinating, particularly your comments about entrepreneurs. I also continue to read the topics of what you like to talk about and teach to business executives and there are two here that I just wanna hear your perspective on - that's the productive side of anger and the other one is early conflict and the building of credibility. What are you talking about there?
Morrie: Yeah, those are real important because most people misunderstand both anger and conflict.
Russ: Okay.
Morrie: Anger is the expression of disappointment in a person or situation.
Russ: Okay.
Morrie: If you're not - if you run a business and you're not regularly disappointed in yourself and your people -
Russ: Right.
Morrie: - you will fail.
Russ: Okay.
Morrie: Guaranteed.
Russ: Wow.
Morrie: Disappointment is the catalyst for the next step of growth.
Russ: Okay.
Morrie: And without disappointment we don't grow. Every successful entrepreneur I work with is always happy, never satisfied.
Russ: Okay.
Morrie: And that's a key -
Russ: Always happy, never satisfied.
Morrie: - never satisfied.
Russ: All right.
Morrie: And that lack of satisfaction is a driver for the next step of growth.
Russ: Wow.
Morrie: So the expression of disappointment is a vote of confidence in people and in yourself.
Russ: Wow.
Morrie: If you're not disappointed in people, I know you gave up on 'em a long time ago.
Russ: Wow, wow that's interesting. I think I can think of a couple of instances where I could relate to that, too, but what about the productive side of anger? I mean, there's a broad spectrum of anger, too, I mean -
Morrie: Well it isn't anger. Most people confuse hostility with anger.
Russ: Okay.
Morrie: Okay, anger again, the expression of disappointment. Hostility is a blanket accusation from which there's no redemption.
Russ: Okay.
Morrie: So an angry statement would be, "Russ, I didn't like the way you handled that client and talked too 'em. I'd like you to look at what you said and why you said it."
Russ: Okay.
Morrie: That's an angry statement. A hostile statement would be, "Russ, every time you deal with a client, you blow it."
Russ: Okay, okay.
Morrie: Right, the latter, there's not much you can do about.
Russ: Yeah, right.
Morrie: The former gives you something specific to work on.
Russ: Wow. I assume you've done this enough now where you might even have specific individual examples of people that sort of changed -
Morrie: Oh yeah.
Russ: - what they communicated with and found it to be successful.
Morrie: Yeah but I'll tell you the most interesting thing is entrepreneurs, particularly small business people, have a very difficult time confronting the people that work for them -
Russ: Right.
Morrie: - about the inappropriate things they do.
Russ: Okay.
Morrie: And instead of simply saying to the clerk in a dry cleaning store, "You need to start smiling when clients come in -
Russ: Right.
Morrie: - 'cause that dull look all the time you have on your face is driving our customers away.
Russ: Right.
Morrie: So I need you to work on that." Instead they say nothing and clients stop coming in 'cause they don't wanna deal with that terrible look.
Russ: Wow. Okay.
Morrie: Most small businesses commit suicide. They're never murdered.
Russ: Wow. It seems to make sense but it seems sort of confrontational, too. I mean almost.
Morrie: Oh, it is confrontational.
Russ: Okay.
Morrie: Confrontation is good.
Russ: Okay.
Morrie: Right, we gotta redefine a lotta terms we throw around in this culture.
Russ: Right. I kinda set you up with a softball and said I imagine you have success stories but I imagine you might've had an instance where something didn't work out and went a bit awry.
Morrie: Literally, 1 or 2 times in 30 years. The last time it didn't work was with a bunch of environmental engineers. You know, these are people that have Ph.D.s in bold.
Russ: Right. Right.
Morrie: They didn't wanna personalize anything. Let's all keep it at 60,000 feet.
Russ: Okay. Interesting. All right, so you've already mentioned entrepreneurs a whole lot -
Morrie: Yeah.
Russ: - and as you know, we have quite a few entrepreneurs that tune into our show. We also have some young aspiring entrepreneurs. So let's say somebody's tuned in now, they're just finishing business school or undergrad and they're just rarin' to go and they have a couple of business ideas that they wanna go out and implement and start.
Morrie: Right.
Russ: What sort of general advice would you give them, Morrie?
Morrie: General advice I'd give them is first and foremost, create a coherent personal life. Set personal goals, develop a personal vision and start looking for committed relationships. If you don't have that, your business isn't going anywhere.
Russ: Wow.
Morrie: You can have the greatest amount of capital behind you, brilliant business ideas and if your personal life isn't nailed down, it will screw your business up.
Russ: Right and you mean everything about your personal life?
Morrie: Everything, everything -
Russ: Your home life, your significant other, your family relationships, where you live -
Morrie: Particularly, yeah absolutely, particularly your significant other.
Russ: Wow.
Morrie: People don't succeed in isolation.
Russ: Wow.
Morrie: If they don't have a solid relationship, they won't be able to sustain the struggles of a business.
Russ: Morrie, I really appreciate you being with us this morning.
Morrie: Yeah, thank you, Russ. Enjoyed it.
Russ: You bet. That's Morrie Shechtman, founder and Chairman of Fifth Wave Leadership. And you've been listening to The BusinessMakers Show, heard here and seen online at theBusinessMakers.com.