"The Pain of Change"
Excerpt from The Best Kept Secret Podcast (Part 6/8)

​Jay: What are the pain points that you resolve for your clients, and why do they need you to get rid of that pain?
​
Joran: That's a good question because sometimes it's a little ambiguous. Some of the things we hear are, “We're constantly pivoting and we're unable to manage and respond to change in a timely fashion.” 

We call that decision fatigue. Or purpose fatigue. Like, “We've changed our North Star 10 times this quarter, where are we even headed?” 

Misalignment is another. Lack of clarity around who is setting the North Star. Does the team understand where we're going? Is everybody leaning in the same direction every 90 days? Do we have the right people in the right seats? All of that misalignment and chaos can be felt throughout the organization. 

Innovation wise, they might be feeling irrelevant. They might feel the pressure in the market to come up with new ideas or launch new programs or products. That creative spark might feel like it's gone out. Again, going back to the idea that people in a misaligned culture can be withholding and stop bringing their best ideas to the table. 

So, what can we do about it? What happened? Has this gone on for a long time? They don’t usually describe their own culture as toxic. But they'll say it's “uninspired” or “misaligned.” They may say, “We've got a lot of personal conflict or drama.” 

If you're an organization experiencing this, you are at great risk of churn, losing your top talent, and having to spend six months onboarding new talent. This, in turn, causes you to miss out on goals or KPIs and lose money. 

So, that's what we have our antenna up and are listening for. 

"Three Steps to Visionary Leadership"
Excerpt from The Best Kept Secret Podcast (Part 5/8)

Jay: I think you made a fairly compelling case for moving into this style of leadership using visual storytelling, thinking, and tools. Now what do I do? How do I actually make this happen? 

Joran: There are three things we talk about in the book Visionary Leadership – three steps you can take. The first step is to take ownership of the problem. You have to take a hard look at your planning and your systems and your processes, the style of communication and leadership, all of that. You have to ask the hard questions. 

Does everybody have access to the things they need to become the collaborative, visual thinkers you're expecting them to be? Have you provided them with the necessary onboarding and training? Are you painting done around what success looks like for their specific role and how you see them fitting into your future vision? All of this is important. You have to do step one, take ownership of the problem, it is on you. And if it's not happening, you've gotta own it and start doing better. 

The second thing is to break the big thing into smaller things. This can feel overwhelming and it's a lot to do. You know, okay, we've done our customer experience journey, but now we've gotta change these 20 things in the process or in the company. Where do we even start? It's like cleaning out a closet. Take the things out and sort them and organize them and visually stack them and talk about what you're keeping and what you're tossing and is it urgent versus important? And you've gotta lay those things into a plan. You start that by putting things into smaller and smaller buckets. Then you can implement. 

Then the third one is really important. It should be the first thing because it's the most important,  ask for help. You cannot do this alone. You've gotta let your need for control go and not let it keep you from greatness. We talk a lot about the genius zone, which Gay Hendrix talks about in the Big Leap.

You've got to operate not from a space of competency or excellence, but your zone of genius, right? Which means you've got to delegate, offload some of these things to other people and, you've got to ask for help. That's hard for people. Like we've said, we are not in a culture, especially as men sometimes, and trained for and modeled to ask other people for help. You've got to stop and ask for help. Those scrum masters, those aren't the only people who can put stickies on a wall. Those hip looking creative directors aren't the only people in your organization who can think creatively. Those innovation teams that you've created aren't the only ones who can test and validate ideas and make the business better. All of this stuff has to be scaled throughout and it starts by asking for help.

Jay: One of the things that, as you're talking has come into my mind is this idea of being visionary. And how visionary is a visual tool and how that leads straight towards being able to visualize what it is that you want to achieve. Visual thinking and then needing to have tools and engagement that  seems to all tie it together.

"The Emotional Side of Change"
Excerpt from The Best Kept Secret Podcast (Part 4/8)

Jay: When we talk about leadership, one of the things that leaders have to do is lead their teams and their organizations from where they are to where they're trying to get to. One of the things we know is that change is hard.

I think human beings are wired to resist change. So I want you to comment on the perspective of,  “I'm the leader of a business unit or an entire company. I'm hearing what you're telling me that I ought to make things more effective, and that requires me to change.” 

Can you talk about the emotional side? If I'm that leader who's got to green light everything moving forward in the business, where am I starting from and where am I gonna end up? 

Joran: Change begins with becoming self-aware. For any leader who all of a sudden has the insight or the reflection, “Oh, this is on me; I need to change; There's something in my habits or my behavior or my routine that needs to shift, that needs to be rethought,” there are a couple of ways they can do that. 

First, Michael Bungay Stanier talks about it in The Coaching Habit. The steps to changing and creating new habits. Instead of doing a certain thing when another certain thing happens. You say, “When (blank) happens, instead of “X”, I will “Y” And then you work that like a muscle. You're not gonna get it right the first time. It takes time and it takes work. But it is like a muscle and everybody benefits. The benefits for you at the end are that you're leading from the bottom of the pyramid. If you do it right, you are now confident in the entire stakeholder team and you stop to “paint done” for them. You have been explicitly detailed with your vision and your expectations, and you've set them up to get those results.

And you shouldn’t care how they get those results. You should focus on the what and the why. Have faith and confidence in your team. That alone can be liberating as a leader. Because as a CEO or as a founder, you stay awake nights thinking, “Are they going to build the thing I want to build?” 

You just doubt, doubt, doubt. Like we talked about earlier, having the clarity and wisdom to know the difference between what is a short-term project that's going to fire the team up – inspire them, motivate them, incentivize them – versus long-term thinking and major investments. There's wisdom and clarity that comes with that. 

The strength and speed of your visual vocabulary can make you feel like a superhero all of a sudden. You can communicate faster and more clearly to more people. There's a strength and a confidence that comes with developing and nurturing visual thinking, not only in yourself, but in your team.

Jay: It reminds me of when the team really gels and really begins to perform. I like your analogy. You're leading from the bottom of the pyramid. I think what you get is what I'll call the Proud Mama or Proud Papa Syndrome. It just really fills you up with pride and joy in what others are achieving – knowing that you had something to do with giving them the space and creating the environment that allowed them to flourish.

"The Business Benefits of Visual Thinking"
Excerpt from The Best Kept Secret Podcast (Part 3/8)

Jay: You talk about the importance of communication which clearly makes a lot of sense. You were very specific about the value of visual communication and visual tools. How about amplifying that? Give us some examples of what you mean and why. Visual communication gives you a lot of return on technique compared to, “let me just get people around the table or on a zoom call and start wagging my finger.” 

Joran: For me, you can communicate visually if you think visually. Visual thinking is different from design thinking. Design thinking is where you're moving in iterations and you are thinking like an artist by testing, experimenting and validating. 

That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about visual thinking, which means that as opposed to thinking like an artist you are behaving like an artist. When you need to talk about a concept, you draw a picture of it. When you need to host a meeting you have a visual agenda or use a visual pie chart. It's proven that visual communication connects with our brains faster. We're able to process the information quicker and retain that information longer. All of that is proven science. Visual thinking leads to visual communication, and that's how I recommend leading every meeting – every engagement. 

When you see visual thinking happening in a group, it may look like storytelling. Like people gathered around a fire or drawing pictures on the wall. Whether that's a team retrospective, or a customer journey map, or a cone of plausibility, if you put that image on a wall and you gather your team around it, you will create a conversation that will lead to more clarity. 

It's similar to the pushback which we experience in facilitation and consulting. You want people to push back on concepts and images. If I'm talking about a tree in a forest and somebody thinks I'm talking about a pine tree, but I’m imagining something else, that's not going to be an effective meeting. I need to be able to say (or illustrate), “No, it's an apple tree and there are green apples on the tree, and it's not standing alone in the orchard. It's got a bunch of trees around it.” 

We are then super clear as a team what we're talking about. We are “painting done” at that point, and that's why getting these images on a wall, thinking visually, communicating visually is so important. It's effective, it's faster, it empowers your team to be involved in the process and leading becomes really easy at that point.

Jay: I think it's very interesting. Visual storytelling and visual thinking is definitely a twist that I haven't really heard before and I think that is well worth exploring, but I'm sitting here saying to myself, “It sounds good, but how does it move the needle for my business?” 
So when you have done what you advocate – when you have either worked with clients or seen other companies that have used these techniques – how do you see the business benefiting? What are some objective metrics that you can point to that demonstrate effectiveness? 

Joran: Most recently we worked with a big sales software company and we built a journey map for them that was focused on their complex sales deals and their discovery process – all the way from discovery to close. We built a Mural for them because they were struggling with their people sticking to the sales process. They're a huge company. They need all their salespeople to do the same thing. It's replicable and scalable for a reason. They needed a map built that every salesperson could adhere to. So that every sales manager, mentor, or coach could go in asynchronously and set up for coaching calls and talk about the discovery process and the stakeholder map, and ask things like, “Who are you talking to? Who else is connected to the deal? Who else is holding the purse strings?” 

Doing that visually has optimized those coaching calls. It has increased adoption to a very important process for a company as large as they are. 

We also worked with a global AV company that had 13 strategic initiatives. If we're talking about a balanced scorecard, these are high level initiatives. They were calling them “must win battles.” 

Well, for an executive team of 12 people, you can't hold 13 “must win battles” in your head all the time. 

“All 13 of these things are equally important?” That can't be true. 

So breaking it down visually using the OKRs process and saying, “Okay, what are the top three things we need to be able to recite in the hallway? Can my team reflect back to me what our top three priorities are this quarter?” 

We were able to do that visually using graphic recording and the OKRs process. Now, those hand-drawn posters are hanging in the common areas and conference rooms throughout their office.

It's been transformative for their culture. And it's impacting the bottom line.

​Learn more by scheduling a free discovery session with Joran Oppelt:
https://calendly.com/joranslane/30min

"From Ineffective to Inspiring Leader"
Excerpt from The Best Kept Secret Podcast (Part 2/8)

Jay: We have many listeners shaking their heads like this, saying, I know, I know. My leadership isn't where it needs to be. The people I work for, their leadership isn't where it needs to be. So let's talk about what you should do. How do you go from a middling, if not ineffective, leader? What are some of the things that you would advocate to turn that around and be an inspiring leader?

Joran: I recommend two things: inviting and aligning. The first one is inviting people into this process, involving your team through visual communication and collaboration, and putting down the idea that you have to be the one with all the answers. Get rid of the command and control model in your brain. Reprogram, unplug, scrub, reboot, and invite your people into the problem-solving process. I recommend doing that using visual tools. Then aligning happens. Once you have successfully cast a vision and deployed the mission, you align the team with a balanced approach along management methods or innovation horizons. What is the quick win? What short-term thinking do we need to deploy here versus the long-term thinking we need to apply in our innovation portfolio? Aligning your team is then the second step. But I would use visual tools to get there. ​

"Why Do Leaders Struggle and The Blame Game"
Excerpt from The Best Kept Secret Podcast (Part 1/8)
A Conversation with Jay Kingley and Joran Oppelt

Jay: Now, Joran, I know that you spend a huge chunk of your time working with executives, working with leadership and their teams, trying to make things more effective. I would love your take on what you see as the big issues as to why leaders often struggle in that role. 

Joran: Well, you've set it up pretty well. We're not taught how to lead historically. Even when someone goes through the academic process or business school, we're shown or taught, and it's rarely modeled, I'll say it's rarely modeled well for us.

In an increasingly complex business environment, as we go forward into the future, we are surrounded by many screens and devices. We've got this continuous partial attention happening. And we've got scaling, ideally scaling organizations that we're leading. There's a tendency to blame, and finger point away from ourselves at the market or other circumstances. And you know, there are things that happen in organizations like, people just not showing up, people not being honest, people not hitting their goals, people holding back, people withholding, where they used to bring a bunch of great ideas to the table. Ineffective meetings, right? Staff churn, staff turnover, all of this stuff. As a leader, you can point at that and say, well, I don't have a good team. Right? You can blame them. You can blame what's happening around you. The reality is that you need to be showing up as a leader. 

The other thing you can do is finger-point at yourself. The other thing you can do is blame yourself. I deal with a lot of clients who say; I don't want to be that kind of manager. I came from that environment. I'm trying to do this differently. I'm trying to show up as a different kind of manager or director or CEO, and they don't step into that leadership role.

You mentioned people leaving jobs. A recent report, "The Future of Work," said that 65% of millennials have left a job because of their manager. It's the platitude that people don't leave bad jobs; they leave bad managers. This is the reality that we live in.

So, stepping up, being a leader, and knowing that the best leaders lead from the bottom of the pyramid, they get the best results through other people. That's a key to being a leader in this future complex business world we're all co-creating.

Jay: You said something I think is very interesting. I want to explore a little bit with you about blame. People often point the finger of blame outwards, and you're saying, well, often they do, but there are also many cases where people point that finger back at themselves. Then you get what I call the "woe is me." And nobody wants to be around "woe is me." It's that black cloud, so to speak, of doom and gloom. 

Joran: It could be, "Woe is me," or it could be, "Oh, well, I was never shown; I was never taught." And as a team member, it's like, read a book or something. Go study up, brush up on how to do this, man; you're leading us. You know? 

Jay: Right. So I wanted you to hit on the difference between blame and briefly, and we'll go even further and say, making excuses versus honest learning and saying, you know, I want to understand what happened here. I want to understand why it happened because it wasn't the outcome I wanted and what I will do differently next time.

So that the outcome is certainly different and, hopefully, more along the lines of doing that. And, when you go through that process, do you have any points of view about whether you should be self-reflective? Should that be, I need to get my team members involved and have an honest, constructive conversation. Is it a combination of your experience, Joran? What works best?

Joran: I'm a huge believer in this line from T. Harv Eker. It's my favorite quote in the world. "How you do anything is how you do everything." So, look at how you're showing up in all of your relationships, your friendships, your family relationships. How are you leading in other ways? How are you solving those problems? How are you communicating clearly and effectively in those situations? How are you learning from things you could have said differently or framed differently, or how are you getting better all the time? And then just do that with your team.

Learn more by scheduling a free discovery session with Joran Oppelt:
https://calendly.com/joranslane/30min