kevin edwards  0:00  
And before we begin the show, folks with the real Lisa Bodell, I just want to let you all know that if your organization has an impact company, and you have not applied for the religious impact awards, where you can be featured on our global publication and newsstands and airports all around the country and reach 30,000 CEOs now hundred 35 countries that control $9 trillion of spending, if you're that impact company that hasn't done that yet, go online and really calm and apply your company before August 31 when the early bird fee doubles, okay, that's one thing I'd be doing you a disservice if I didn't tell you that second thing, folks. I need 50 reviews on Apple podcasts by August 31. That is the goal. I've told you once I'm gonna tell you again, thank you so much for the 10 people who have already left reviews and let others know what to expect for this When they reach the channel, if you could do both of those things today for me, God bless you and enjoy the episode.

Lisa Bodell  1:09  
Why? I don't know, it's always been like that. What let's list all the things that you need in terms of making decisions. Are there certain decisions that can have less? You know, it takes one to say yes and two to say no. Or there's certain decisions now that we look at it can be done without their bosses. And suddenly they start to just kind of peel back the onion and realize, well, we never really questioned these things before. We just gave them the tool to do it. So we are taught to follow rules, not challenge them and the companies that are more simplified and more innovative. Make it okay and give the permission to challenge and simplify those things.

kevin edwards  1:41  
You are listening to the Real Leaders podcast where leaders keep it real. I'm your host, Kevin Edwards, and that advice comes from who else but Lisa Bodell, the CEO of future think who believes the key to unlocking innovation in your company, is by killing conformity And on today's episode Bodell shares the mindset of a futurist, a few techniques to kill your organization's rules, and how to break away from the day to day to pursue more meaningful work. So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, please give it up for really yours top 50 keynote speaker, Miss Lisa Bodell. Enjoy. Alright, well, that being said, we will get started here in 5432 and one and welcome, everyone, to this episode of the real leaders podcast. I'm your host, Kevin Edwards. Joining us today from the future people is the CEO and founder of future thank and really there's a 50 keynote speaker, Miss Lisa baudette. Lisa, thanks for being with us today.

Lisa Bodell  2:47  
Hey, thanks for having me. That's the most energetic introduction I've had all week are the best

kevin edwards  2:52  
we're gonna try. We're gonna try to keep the energy going, Lisa. Now, this is interesting. I've had a lot of guests and say hello I guess I've had about 10 guests on the show that call themselves futurists. Now I thought being complacent and I thought this was some self proclaimed title. I was like, oh, their futures they like the future. They know more than I do. They can predict things. I can't let's have them on but I was watching your speech Lisa. And you said you have a degree in this you can go to school to get a degree in futurism, what is this?

Lisa Bodell  3:19  
It is not there are some people who are a call mark, a futurist, they think that because they read about trends that their futures but there is a you can get a degree it's typically a master's in science. You can also take certificate programs. And several the people that I belong to with associations, the Association of Professional futurists, which is one of the largest, we teach at the University of Houston and Clear Lake. And the idea is you can get a master's in foresight, and people in academia don't call futuring. That's a foresight degree. And the idea is to teach you about how to determine the implications of trends and how to activate the findings of trends because that's really what it is. It's like, what's the implication? How do I take advantage of it? And there's a studied way to do it. I mean, futuring is really just how do you teach people about change and how it happens.

kevin edwards  4:08  
So what got you into futurism? And how does one think,

Lisa Bodell  4:14  
but like a future as well. So a happy accident I actually was, I was going home to visit my grandfather in Midland, Michigan. And I happened to meet a futurist, there was the futurist of Dow Chemical. And we were networked together because I really like to network with people that think differently. And I met him and I said, his name was Andy Heinz. He's a friend of mine. And I said, What's a futurist? Like, that's a thing. I didn't know you could be that right. And he told me and he was the resident futurist at Dow Chemical. He went on to teach at University of Houston clearly, by the way, and he said, I teach people about possible, probable and preferable scenarios of change, because think about that. You're trying to learn what's possible, but it's not just about that. It's what's preferable, right. And sometimes it might be possible, but not preferable, so you have to remember, like, not all change is positive. And of the change that is positive, how do you want it to impact you? And so that's what I really learned about that from Andy. And then I decided to study it, I became part of these groups, and I learned all the tools around futuring. So I then could teach futuring and change to others, and it changed my life.

kevin edwards  5:20  
So now you have the understanding of being a futurist, you know, how they think. Do you have this sense of purpose to go explore and tell others and these organizations about this and what some of the, I guess some of the impact that you yourself had been able to have in these are?

Lisa Bodell  5:36  
Totally I mean, I think people that are futurists are by nature, they're very different thinkers, they connect dots in different ways. They don't think linearly they think in terms of constellations. A future horizon for me when someone says, tell me about the future, I don't think in terms of quarters or one to three years, I think in terms of 510 20 Plus, you know, if you're an oil and energy company, you're not thinking about just the next quarter About 50 years from now, right in terms of oil supplies, I mean, these are their big picture concepts. And that's typically what a futurist is. The reason I like futuring on a more, you know, everyday level is because it's about helping people reach their potential. So it's not the future isn't about who you are. The future is about who you're becoming. And futurists are always thinking about what are you going to be becoming, so you can start planning for that. Now, most people go through life or work every quarter, and that's very just activity driven, versus foresight driven. So all in all, we teach people how to better anticipate trends, we can help them anticipate who they're becoming, and that's reaching your potential. I think

kevin edwards  6:43  
that's so interesting. So cool. Let's let's talk about shell I know you worked with Shell how, what was your approach with them? How are they thinking about the future?

Lisa Bodell  6:54  
Well, shell the partner and we've we've worked with them on smaller levels, but shell also has a lot to teach everybody about futuring They're one of like the grandfather's of futuring. Because they are one of the few groups that has the foresight group called game changers and other areas. And they are really great at scenario planning. So one of the cool things about shell and companies like them is they bring people like us in to help them plan the scenarios. Most companies where they fall down, is they just plan right strategic planning as they come up with a strategic plan. Well, that's a problem. Because what if that plan isn't right? Shell, and a lot of energy companies, because they have such big investments and long term horizons, they do scenario planning. So they have strategic plans, A, B, C, D, and E. And what's cool about that is they're not placing bets just in one area. They're looking for hunting grounds of different places, they can place bets depending on how things change and how things more for the future. So really, people that do scenario planning are really good at mitigating their risk, and doing lots of scenarios of who they could become. So let's take shell in the future. You know, energy companies might not Be about extracting energy. They're going to be about growing it. And so they need to have very different not just equipment and businesses, but people. So they don't need geoscientists anymore. People don't know how to mine. They need bio scientists, people that work with living organisms. So they really need to think about who do they hire. And that's really different because you know, who they're going to hire and steal from. It's not going to be people on engineering, it might be people from pharmaceutical companies, and might be bio engineer. So you've got all these new competitions that are going to happen that 10 years ago, you never would have said. That's what futurists do is they talk about the implications of change that you probably never have thought of before.

kevin edwards  8:40  
Interesting nowadays, let's stay on this example. We have a lot of impact companies I mentioned a little bit earlier. People who are trying to sustain the future transform these lives intentionally taking on these problems and building a business around it. How much do you factor in environmental external Costs into your trends into your forecasting this environmental Do you see this as a trend? Or do you see this as something that businesses are going to increasingly have to adapt their innovation around?

Lisa Bodell  9:13  
Amy like the literally the environment like climate change, not just change culture environment. Yeah. Well, I think all of them do. I mean, one of the things we talk about in terms of futures, when you scan for signals of change, that's what we do, right? It's signals of change. You think of an acronym called steep. And you want to bucket all your information across or within one of these steep buckets, social, technological, environmental, economic, and political. Those are usually the five steep areas of change. And when something is really a big impact, it can cross all of steep it could be like a mega impact. So some things aren't just in one bucket, right? They can cross many of them.

kevin edwards  9:54  
Okay. I like that acronym. It's very nice. I'm sure people can it's cool now. Yeah, you also mentioned a few times about how you were starting out, you went to these organizations and you found maybe some of the people that were asking you to come on. were some of the people that were blocking innovation in their company, maybe tell our audience a story about kind of your journey through helping companies.

Lisa Bodell  10:19  
Well, you know, the we do a lot of things. So you know, my company future thing we teach, featuring, but we really teach change and innovation. And that's the goal. You know, a lot of what we do, there's specific groups within companies like its shell, and Citi group and Accenture. They have futuring groups, right? Those are small groups of people who think big, but most people they want across the organization to learn about changing innovation. That's what me and my trainers do. That's like futuring one on one stuff, how do you change and what we were finding it's very interesting is that most people have the desire to change, like they have the skill, but you know, what they don't have as the permission. And so what we needed to do is actually create a culture that would allow people to have the behaviors of an So you are very innovative, but you might not be allowed to do it. Or you might not have been taught how to do it with your team. So it's our job to come in and not just give people the skillsets, right the tools, the ideas, I can teach you a million of those, but the mindset of how to change how to take a risk, how to be agile, how to be resilient, that is really what people were looking for more so they can have the permission to do it.

kevin edwards  11:25  
Interesting. Now, what are examples that stick out to you some companies that you've worked with, that maybe had this idea of innovation and maybe pass it, bounce a few ideas off of you? And then you come back? And you say, you know, let's let's reframe this idea,

Lisa Bodell  11:40  
you know, I mean, it's interesting, because everyone knows this, right? You go into a brainstorm, everyone comes up with ideas, you leave the room, and nothing happens. But that's what happens to most people. It's not that they can't come up with their ideas, they can take action on them. And so I was kind of surprised by this, we would come in and do all these amazing projects. Practical, actionable brainstorms, like assumption reversal. How do you challenge how you work and do the opposite of it unlock change, we would come up with creative collaboration ways are within adjacent and beyond a stretch, disrupt the thinking. And even though we would come up with these ideas, what we realized was, it wasn't about the ideas, it was about barriers. Until we broke the barriers to innovation down, people couldn't get to the innovation itself. So what became our number one tool was called kill a stupid rule. So it was not about having people come up with ideas, it was knocking down the things that were holding them back from doing it the first place. And so what we would do is go into companies and say, let's start with kill a stupid rule. Let's get everyone into a room and figure out within their sphere of control, what are all the things that hold them back from better innovating, be more creative, coming up with new ideas doing more valuable work? And you'd be surprised all the leaders would say to us, oh, I don't know if people are going to come up with much. I will tell you that they come up with dozens and dozens of things. And what's interesting is what they come up with our rules, their policies, procedures, time, Sox annoyances, cultural norms or assumptions that have been around forever. Rules of Engagement, those kinds of thing politics. Well, what's cool about killer stupid rule is you can quickly get rid of stuff that everyone's like, Oh, I just assumed that was a rule. And we can get rid of it and save time for work that matters. And it creates a behavior that tells people you know, what, if you see something that's not working, it's okay to say no. Because we're taught to just say yes, right? So what we do is we teach people know first to create the space so innovation can happen killer stupid rules godsend for people.

kevin edwards  13:46  
So I've only worked in one large corporation, but I do remember that, you know, we do have a lot of policies and I would assume that would be because of the size and risk. Maybe, you know, a lot of people breaking rules and regulations, things like that. That's a lot of risk. Yeah, it could be a liability. Now, how do you view this? How do you view conformity and risk taking in a large corporation?

Lisa Bodell  14:07  
Well, so we say that there's a lot of problems, right? within companies. It's, first of all its complexity, and then that creates complacency. That's kind of they go hand in hand. And it's endemic at large corporations just because of scale, right? There's more layers. There's more people, there's more decision making. There's more politics, but it happens in all companies, small companies. And the reason why is because, you know, complexity or barriers to innovation are driven by behaviors. They're not just driven by tactics or policies, its behaviors like fear and risk and power control and trust. And those are things that are human behaviors. And it doesn't matter if you're a company of two or a company of 2000. So as long as you can identify those things that the behaviors that you want to be okay to do, or what holds you back from doing the things you want to do. That's what really helps you start to simplify and be able to have time for more editing. They have things. So for example, and Pfizer, they'll say, you know, we, one of the things that holds us back is decision making. What do you mean by that? There's so many layers of decision making. Why? I don't know, it's always been like that. What let's list all the things that you need in terms of making decisions. Are there certain decisions that can have less, you know, it takes one to say yes, and to to say no, or there's certain decisions now that we look at it can be done without their bosses. And suddenly, they start to just kind of peel back the onion and realize, we never really questioned these things before. We just gave them the tool to do it. So we are taught to follow rules, not challenge them, and the companies that are more simplified and more innovative, make it okay, and give them permission to challenge and simplify those things. 

kevin edwards  15:43  
Now this behavior change with your experience, where do you think it needs to come from? Does it come from the top and you say we does it come from the top? Is it the leaders, the decision makers who are driving them values and instilling that throughout the organization? Is it the people in the middle of the day to day workers Are the people at the bottom where in your experience? Do you see this change coming from? 

Lisa Bodell  16:03  
Yeah, so it has to be anyone that tells you it's only from the bottom up, I think is lying. And the reason I say that is, is because it's very hard politically within an organization, if you don't have the, the sign off from the people who are paying the bills or setting the strategy, it's really hard to change behavior. So it has to strategically come from the top. But the actual empowerment needs to come from the bottom. So people The reason that we always teach change based on first the sphere of control what you can do every day, it makes people feel empowered, but also responsible. And then we start to engage with their sphere of influence. So that's why when we go on, for example, and we do kill a stupid rule, I would say to you, and I say you know what, what can you look at your work? What are your time sucks? What can you stop doing? Because what that does is that stops you from saying, Well, you know, I hate what HR does and legal does and procurement. That's what people want to do. They want to complain up of big things that are too large and too complex, too. But when you start at your sphere of control, you start to see that change can be real. It can be quick, and you can have influence over it. So it starts in the center down below, and then it can move up.

kevin edwards  17:11  
And I'll answer that question for you emails. I'm on my email too often. Lisa, does that a prom? Sure you are. Does that promise?

Lisa Bodell  17:17  
I'm sure you Yes. You know, it's funny because I, I say to people, I'll be on stage and I'll be doing a keynote. And I'll say, you know, what do you spend your day doing? Just shout it out to me. And I'll be in a, you know, same in a ballroom or used to be in the ballroom with 3000 people. And no matter the country, the culture we're at, you know, the layer of people, the industry, I'm with the first two things out of everyone's mouth. What do they spend their day doing our meetings and emails? And what's surprising about that is I then I have everyone raised their hand and I say, when you were being interviewed for this job, how many of you were questioned on what great emails you send or what a great meeting you run, and no one no one gets that they're not hired to do those things, but that's where they spend all their time. So then I start to talk about what do you wish you were doing? And we teach them exercises to shift from meetings and emails to meaningful work.

kevin edwards  18:09  
What is meaningful work mean to you?

Lisa Bodell  18:12  
meaningful work is a you know, it's interesting, I can define it because to me, it's not just what gives me no satisfaction, but it adds value to my business goals and gets me closer to that every day. So if you ask people what meaningful work is, most people can't answer it. And because they're drowning in mundane tasks, meetings and emails every day, so can I share a technique that's really cool to try? Okay, so I will tell the leaders on this podcast no matter small company, big company, right, but think within your team that you operate with every day, okay? This is something you can do individually, or you can do with your team I think do it individually first if your leader and then do it with your team. So make a T chart on a piece of paper. On the left hand side, write down what what do you see Spend your time doing, and track it for a week. And you can be as anal as you want. You can get all those time tracking apps or you know, look at your calendar, whatever, okay, but write down 20 things. And these are typical things you spend your week doing. And please be specific, like, don't just say meetings, say like your weekly status meeting your quarterly update your I don't know, you know what I mean? At the end of that week, you look at your list, okay? And here's what you're going to find, you're going to look at it. And I'm going to first challenge you to say, you know, what, circle the things on that list that you think are valuable? You define what that means, okay? valuable to you, personally, to your goals to getting promoted? I don't know. And what you find is that people only circle a handful of things. And so you have to ask yourself, if something isn't circled, why are you doing it? If it's not valuable? The first thing that people say is I'm obligated my boss wants me to. That's where a great team discussion can happen. Because if you're if you're spending your time on things that aren't circle, what the hell's going on? But the idea is, that's where you can those of your time sucks, right? You can get rid of stuff on the left hand side, because you want to make space now for the right hand side of the t-chart, that side should be labeled: What do you wish you were doing. And people typically then write down, you know, give them 5,10 minutes as a group. Things like brainstorming and coming up with more innovative ideas, doing more thinking meeting with more customers, what you really are doing there is you're defining meaningful work. And the aha moment is when you as a leader, as a team, look at it and on the left hand side of the chart. Now the first side we did, those things tend to be internal and obligatory, the right hand side of the chart, what you wish you were doing tends to be big picture thinking and external. So that is the meaningful work and you got to shift from the left side to the right side. And you literally can do that exercise in no time at all with your with your team or with yourself.

kevin edwards  20:56  
So that's incredible. Now do you think that this is the power simplicity. Is it just this simple, that's where t charts all day long, identify where you are, we're going to reflect a little bit more, we're going to think outside the box. And we're going to make sure we understand why we're doing what we're doing.

Lisa Bodell  21:13  
So, do I think it's that simple? Ah, yes, I do think there are lots of things we can do to get rid of unnecessary work. The problem is our behavior, a lot of it's fear, you don't want to make someone mad. I mean, it's out of out of goodness, and a lot of cultures and companies because they have a culture of nice. And so they don't want to say no, or they don't want to not go to that meeting, or they don't want to offend somebody. They don't want to give that direct feedback. And so that's why things take longer or whatever. And I think if we can start to change that culture with some simple things like killing rules or auditing meetings and getting rid of them, allowing people to say no, I can give you lots of tips and tricks like that. Yes, our work could be simplified. I could get you back two to three hours a week, right? Now easily.

kevin edwards  22:02  
Lisa, how do you see the future work? Looking like like, I'm just thinking about this. Now, this would change a lot of like organizations, a lot of work cultures, if they were to do these exercises and actually have these meaningful discussions and then make those changes for their people, how do you see the future of work looking like and you know, 10 to 20 years?

Lisa Bodell  22:24  
Well, that's gonna be interesting, because you're always have these wild cards like Corona, don't you? Whereas before this, people said, Oh, you're never these were common conversations. You can't train people remotely. You're never going to be able to do keynotes or do discussions remotely. Well, guess what yet can right until people are forced to change behaviors? they resist it, they can imagine that the future is to imagine a different scenario. What do I imagine work being like I do? There's a few things. First of all, I think it's not going to be all or nothing. We're not going to go back to how we were. I think it's going to be a hybrid for a few reasons. One, people are realizing that that you Time now can be used for other things. Now that work work in life is blended into one, there really is no boundary between the two. And people like the flexibility. So the work life balance, if we can figure out some of this exception being a lot of people with young kids, we have to figure out the school issue. I think that people are liking it more. Companies are going to call it work life benefits by allowing them to work from home. But really what it is for companies is a cost savings, they're going to have huge real estate savings. They're going to have huge travel savings, and they're going to realize that not everything has to be a meeting in person. So I do think in the future, for example, we will meet in person because what you miss from being remote, while it's very productive and very independent, you miss the human connection. You miss the informal conversations, you know, like when you socialize things, you're what people really think it's the non planned zoom call where you get to really talk about things has all gone away. And that's a big problem right now when people collaborate, we're getting to tactical. So I think when people get together now it's going to be a lot more meaningful. It's gonna be a lot more select. And I think it's going to have a lot more powerful connections for people when they do.

kevin edwards  24:16  
How is your organization making changes? How are you being adaptable? How are you being flexible? What are some things that future thing is doing?

Lisa Bodell  24:24  
Oh, my God, how much time do you have? Well, I mean, like, we have to eat our own dog food. I mean, if anything, we have to be creative problem solvers. We have to be agile, we have to be resilient. So we did have some strategic look, you know, as a training and futuring organization that in February is before here in the States COVID was going down. We launched all our online learning, and we've been planning that for 18 months. So that was just some very strategic Good luck. Um, the other thing we did is we pivoted all our workshops to be one hour because people have a DD we are all accelerated learning now. And we made them all online. And what you learn online, you know, a virtual presentation like this is very different than in a classroom. We translated every single one of our courses in a month to do that. The other thing we did is we realized that accelerated is worth that. So we do nothing. Now more than one hour. We actually launched a whole series of products, their 15 minute work hack webinars, because we realized that 30 minutes is the new 60 minute meeting. And 15 minutes is the sweet spot for people's attention. So if you want to get people working remotely and being engaged, you have to change how you teach and think and work. You have to engage people in different ways. Right? You got to do pulling the rug out, you got to do techniques, but you also have to do it in a very short amount of time and give them one thing, so no more teaching things and you give people 20 things to do. You took a little bit of time on how to apply it and then let them go do it because I think that's how people are going to have to absorb. It's kind of like the three minute YouTube video is much more productive than the all day seminar.

kevin edwards  26:06  
Lisa, it seems like he got a lot of fans here. A lot of fans chime in as well. Obviously, they're attending the workshops for you. When you see that, like, what do you think people follow you? Why do you think people listen to you? Why do you think when you come onto a stage, people clap for you?

Lisa Bodell  26:24  
I think a few things. One, it's really hitting a pulse of how people feel. Right? Not just how they're working, but how they feel right? simplicity is an easy one, because people are overwhelmed. I mean, it's, you know, people aren't lazy. They're not. It's not that they're not getting things done, because they don't get it done, because they have too much to do. And they're looking for ways to solve it. They want to do the things they were hired to do, but they can't get to it. Why? And so I think that the message around simplicity really hits home, which is different than the message of productivity isn't that productivity is you're not being productive enough. Simplicity is I want to help you focus on what matters those are very, very different. And the second thing I really think that they like is not just the content, but the approach in terms of, I think you have to be very self deprecating and have some humor. I mean, I, I feel that I write books on things that I'm trying to figure out myself. And I was trying to figure out why somebody who is I'm extremely productive, I'm really organized, why are things not simplified? And it's because I realized that being organized is not being simplified. And I really had to set on an A journey to figure out so what does simplification mean? And that's how I got to not being able to do more, but to be able to do valuable. And I think that those messages really resonate with people to feel better about themselves. And I give them very practical things to get them started on it. You know, theory is one thing we can sit here and talk about simplicity all day. I mean, I, I've heard 50,000 people talk about it, but unless they helped me do it, it doesn't matter. Like I want to do it. And I think that's what I'm good at doing.

kevin edwards  27:54  
That's a really good point like the organization as well. Sometimes I'll find myself just being trying to get organized just to get over organized, and not keeping it simple. And now when you're in the future, like how important is it to be in the moment to keep things simple to not get overwhelmed? And make sure you're you're making note of was actually right in front of you.

Lisa Bodell  28:16  
How do you actually focus? Is that it? Well, there's a few that I mean, there's lots of different techniques. I mean, one of the things I do in the morning is, I do think it's helpful to be organized, right? You can't be all over the place and be simple. But the idea is what's most important and what's valuable. So I have two things every day that I have to get done, and then lots of other crap pops up. I mean, we all have that, right. I mean, I don't know about you guys, but I'm flooded with emails and meetings, and I run this simplicity company. There are things outside of my sphere of control that I can't help. But I always have my focus on the two things that I want to get done, because that's what matters. by listing those two things. It helps me constantly check myself on what's valuable and what's important. Please

kevin edwards  29:00  
I'm so happy that you are in this top 50 keynote speakers. I was listening to one of your speeches last night. And you know, I kind of have no thank you. I'm just taking notes in this thing. And then I just pause, I just had to like, go back to my screen and look it up. And for anyone listening to this, I'd highly recommend you watch one of your speeches. Now, when you watch this back, I listened to my podcast all the time, and I make fun of myself and I can't stand them. Now, when you watch yourself.

Lisa Bodell  29:23  
I do that too. That's funny. I don't like to listen to myself.

kevin edwards  29:28  
Exactly what goes through your head?

Lisa Bodell  29:30  
A bunch of things. One, of course, I always want to change my voice like you and I always I actually do watch my speeches because i think that's that's how people that present learn write in terms of your mannerisms, and how you slow down and how you talk. But what do I learn? I it's not so much watching my speeches, but I always ask people for the B roll to watch the audience. Because I have to listen to the response. People learn in terms of writing their books and writing their speeches based on feedback. That's one of the things that is really great. For example, and That's really interesting when you see people's comments, as well as when you're in an audience to get people's nonverbals. because, frankly, it's not what you say it's how you make them feel that matters. And to be able to understand the feelings behind the words or behind how they're reacting, that's what I always look for. Do you

kevin edwards  30:17  
think leaders need to do more of that? Understand how they're making people feel? What are your thoughts on what a good leader is?

Lisa Bodell  30:24  
Yeah, well, that's a great question. Um, what a good leader is, it is about feeling but I don't mean that in terms of a touchy feely way, but it's everyone has kind of an agenda of behavior, and everyone's human. That's why I say most of complexity is driven by behavior, right risk and fear and power and trust. And no matter what organization we're in, it's the same thing. I don't care if you're regulated or not, it doesn't matter. So I think a good leader that can understand that's important, but I do think this is an extreme time that we're living in with COVID but dangerous constant And so really great leader to me as someone that can be a creative problem solver. be agile and be resilient. Um, for a lot of younger generations, I think that's hard because agility and resilience, like stick to itiveness has not been something that we teach in school, right? We teach the go to different things. I think being agile but resilient, sticking to your, to whatever your idea is going to be key. For a leader, being creative, Creative Problem Solver is really key, especially as things are more volatile. And I'll give you one last thing that will help people here. So if you want to be a really good Creative Problem Solver, you have to kind of look at the positive in the positive out of the negative. And there's a technique we teach called That's fantastic. Have you heard of this before? Not? Oh my god, you're gonna love it. So I invite everybody here to your next status meeting or try this right with a team member. We teach the technique but then you do it in the real world when something bad happens And so you get people together. And let's pretend that I'm the CEO, okay? And you are my employee, and you just have to come to me and just bring the bad news. And the only way I'm allowed to respond is with the phrase that's fantastic. And tell you why. So for example, what if we owned a bowling alley? And you came to me and you just had to give me bad news? And you're like, Lisa, bad news. I'm, we're no longer allowed to use bowling balls. It's illegal. And I would say, you know what, that's fantastic. bowling balls have been around for 15 years. I've wanted to reinvent this game. We got to get into video games. Anyway, that's the best news I've heard. That's fantastic. So do you see how it just changes it from problem to potential? If you can get people in terms of that fantastic. They'll start to look at bad things in a much better light

kevin edwards  32:54  
and gifts. Now is there a link for that that we can post or find?

Lisa Bodell  32:58  
That's fantastic. I was you know what? I've been Got some articles on things like that that I'll I will get to you but you can find it I have a Forbes articles that I write every week you can find my column. And you can go to future think calm and there's a lot of free tools there too

kevin edwards  33:13  
wonderful. Lisa, I know you kind of just described what a good leader is. And this question is going to be a little redundant. The last question I always ask people on the show is this is what is your definition of a real leader?

Lisa Bodell  33:28  
Well, I always say a creative problem solver. That's what I think a real leader is. It's somebody because that embodies a lot of things right there. When they're faced with adversity. They're creative in solving it. They help potential, not just problems, and they do it because they're creative. They're gonna figure it out. And that gives people confidence when they operate with fear. And those are the leaders the more people trust,

kevin edwards  33:51  
leases and pleasure having you on the show today. Thanks for coming back time. I know you got to get back in the the car in the back to the future and send it off. But listen to this. For Lisa, Adele. I'm Kevin our is asking you to go out there be a Creative Problem Solver and always folks, keep it real. Thanks, Lisa. Thanks so much. And thank you good people for hanging on to this 34 minute and 15 second episode of the real leaders podcast. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. And if you haven't yet left a review, scroll down to the bottom on Apple podcasts and help me reach my goal of 50 reviews by the end of August 31. I do not want to push the goalposts back folks. August 31, we will reach that number okay. Lastly, I'm going to just reiterate this one more time if you are an impact company, if you are a complex problem solver, go online to really calm and enter in your organization for the relators impact awards. That's it for me. Thanks for tuning in this episode that really is podcast and stay tuned. For more

Transcribed by https://otter.ai