1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,280 Well, let's pick off where we left and record some more sessions. 2 00:00:04,880 --> 00:00:13,920 Yeah, I think I'm not sure where we left off, but I'd like to talk about non-arguable goals. 3 00:00:14,720 --> 00:00:21,120 And if possible, MoCA, which is a form of communication. Are you familiar with non-arguable 4 00:00:21,120 --> 00:00:28,160 goals? Yeah, I think you mentioned that last time, but. Did I? Yeah. So I mean, a non-arguable goal 5 00:00:28,160 --> 00:00:32,480 is actually literally something that someone wouldn't argue about. And my favorite example is 6 00:00:34,240 --> 00:00:40,400 Paul O'Neill of Alcoa saying that their non-arguable goal is going to be employee safety. 7 00:00:40,400 --> 00:00:47,840 And the non-arguable piece was like he asked the shareholders, look, if anybody wants to lose an 8 00:00:47,840 --> 00:00:54,000 arm working at Alcoa factory, raise your hand and we'll take that arm. Right. So like, who's going 9 00:00:54,000 --> 00:01:02,320 to argue against that or for that? And, you know, and he also said at the same time, or sometime 10 00:01:02,320 --> 00:01:08,560 during that process, anyone who comes to me with a proposal where our company is going to make a 11 00:01:08,560 --> 00:01:14,480 lot of money by sacrificing the health and safety of our employees or our stakeholders, just 12 00:01:14,480 --> 00:01:23,920 shareholders, that person's going to get fired. Right. So a non-arguable goal is often unattainable. 13 00:01:23,920 --> 00:01:35,360 So zero worker days lost to illness or death or just somebody calling in sick when they're not well, 14 00:01:35,360 --> 00:01:39,040 or when they are well, sorry, like they said, they have a vision problem. I can't see myself 15 00:01:39,040 --> 00:01:46,640 coming to work today. That's not attainable. Someone's going to get sick. Someone is going 16 00:01:46,640 --> 00:01:52,160 to get hurt. The goal is like, you need to have zero. You don't want to say, well, it's okay if 17 00:01:52,160 --> 00:01:59,760 1% of our employees get hurt this year. That's not a reasonable thing to say. If it's you, if you say, 18 00:01:59,760 --> 00:02:08,000 okay, well, I'm volunteering. I'll be the one who gets hurt. Different story, right? So non-arguable 19 00:02:08,000 --> 00:02:15,120 goals, I think are highly effective at galvanizing activity in an organization. And they have 20 00:02:15,680 --> 00:02:21,520 far reaching effects across organizations beyond the stated purpose of that goal. And that, once 21 00:02:21,520 --> 00:02:27,600 again, that other one's a really good example. What Paul O'Neill knew at that time that no one 22 00:02:27,600 --> 00:02:35,920 else was paying attention to is that there are a lot of ways that worker safety permeates other 23 00:02:35,920 --> 00:02:42,400 pieces of culture that are important inside the organization. For instance, it's actually very 24 00:02:42,400 --> 00:02:48,880 expensive and anti-efficient to have people call in sick. And certainly it's very expensive to have 25 00:02:48,880 --> 00:02:55,280 somebody get their arm taken off and then end up in a lawsuit. It's time consuming, right? It's 26 00:02:55,280 --> 00:03:04,160 unethical as well. And so it actually was driving organizational excellence across the organization 27 00:03:04,160 --> 00:03:12,320 in a lot of different ways. And you can measure the culture, the positive or negative culture 28 00:03:12,320 --> 00:03:22,480 in an organization by worker days lost to employees calling in sick. So he knew that. 29 00:03:22,480 --> 00:03:26,640 And he knew that it would have an effect on the bottom line. And he also knew that when he 30 00:03:26,640 --> 00:03:34,000 made it clear to everybody that the employees were really important and their health and safety was 31 00:03:34,000 --> 00:03:39,120 really important, that that would translate and transmit itself to the customers as well. 32 00:03:39,840 --> 00:03:47,280 Quality of products would go up, quality of ideas would go up, all of that. So at the 33 00:03:47,280 --> 00:03:52,560 Globally Conscious Leader, we have invented a non-arguable goal called zero unmeasured 34 00:03:52,560 --> 00:03:57,440 externalities. And are you familiar, Harry, with the term externalities? 35 00:03:58,080 --> 00:03:58,800 I am not. 36 00:03:58,800 --> 00:04:05,040 It was actually coined in the late 1800s and it was made famous in the 1920s by an economist. 37 00:04:05,840 --> 00:04:12,400 And it was the first time someone said, okay, here's an externality. And what an externality is, 38 00:04:13,280 --> 00:04:21,760 is an effect that your action or someone's action has on someone else that is they don't 39 00:04:21,760 --> 00:04:29,680 know about and is unintended to them. It might be intended to you, like I'm going to pour this barrel 40 00:04:29,680 --> 00:04:35,840 of toxic chemicals into the river knowing that it causes cancer. That's intentional, right? 41 00:04:36,240 --> 00:04:40,000 But you've created an externality for somebody's granddaughter living downstream. 42 00:04:40,560 --> 00:04:44,000 They don't know the water's toxic. They don't know they're going to get cancer, all those things. 43 00:04:44,000 --> 00:04:51,760 Those are externalities. And I'm forgetting the name of the guy who coined it, but the idea was 44 00:04:51,760 --> 00:04:57,760 you need to know what your externalities are from business. Because we all know there are 45 00:04:57,760 --> 00:05:02,640 certain externalities to some activities. For instance, if you sell heroin to school children 46 00:05:02,640 --> 00:05:08,400 at the schoolyard, you're going to end up with a bunch of heroin addicts, right? We don't 47 00:05:08,400 --> 00:05:14,960 legalize selling drugs to children because we know it's bad. It has externalities all the way across 48 00:05:14,960 --> 00:05:22,400 society. And as a business, every business owner has externalities. And a business owner's job 49 00:05:23,040 --> 00:05:29,040 is to know more and more externalities, to take them outside, external, and bring them inside. 50 00:05:29,040 --> 00:05:37,680 And I use the term externalities a little more loosely, maybe a lot more loosely than most people 51 00:05:37,680 --> 00:05:43,920 do. I think it's important that we understand the original intention of externalities as business 52 00:05:43,920 --> 00:05:50,480 people because it helps us define our stakeholders, not just shareholders. Because our 53 00:05:50,480 --> 00:05:55,440 stakeholders are anyone that we're going to have an effect on, plainly spoken. And then you can name 54 00:05:55,440 --> 00:06:00,720 as many as you want. It's how we ended up going from a bottom line to a dribble bottom line to a 55 00:06:00,720 --> 00:06:08,240 quadruple bottom line, quintuple, there's so many, you can keep going. So with zero unmeasured 56 00:06:08,240 --> 00:06:13,440 externalities, you're saying we don't want to live in a world where we don't know all the 57 00:06:13,440 --> 00:06:18,480 effects that our activities are having on people around us. Whether they're our consumers, 58 00:06:18,480 --> 00:06:24,800 there are partners, there are partners, employees, the granddaughters of our partners, employees, 59 00:06:24,800 --> 00:06:29,520 our granddaughters, all of that. So does that make sense, Harry? 60 00:06:30,400 --> 00:06:32,080 It kind of does. Tell me more about that. 61 00:06:33,360 --> 00:06:38,560 Well, as part of the core values of the globally conscious leader, what we're trying to teach 62 00:06:38,560 --> 00:06:45,760 people, we're trying to set a bar of core values around ethics. And that's what we're trying to 63 00:06:45,760 --> 00:06:51,280 teach people. A bar of core values around ethics that basically says, don't do something to 64 00:06:51,280 --> 00:06:55,680 someone else's granddaughter that you wouldn't do to your own granddaughter. Granddaughters are 65 00:06:55,680 --> 00:07:06,240 precious. Everyone else is precious too. But that's the concept. So our relationships and 66 00:07:06,240 --> 00:07:13,040 business are important and how you run your business is important. And what we're saying is, 67 00:07:13,040 --> 00:07:18,320 if you take into account your granddaughter, which I think everybody does, we're using that 68 00:07:18,320 --> 00:07:23,760 as a way to cross, call it political and global boundaries and social boundaries, because this 69 00:07:23,760 --> 00:07:32,400 isn't a political issue. This is a personal issue. If you are running a factory in a town 70 00:07:32,400 --> 00:07:37,600 and you're pouring chemicals into a river and it's upstream from anybody, but we're saying it's 71 00:07:37,600 --> 00:07:41,680 your granddaughter, you shouldn't be doing that. So why would you be in a relationship with someone 72 00:07:41,680 --> 00:07:48,000 in another country where they have maybe a different set of rules or that person is breaking 73 00:07:48,000 --> 00:07:52,000 those rules that you're partnered with and they're doing the same? We're saying you wouldn't. 74 00:07:53,440 --> 00:08:01,600 This is where the globally conscious leader piece comes in. It's our job as business owners, 75 00:08:01,600 --> 00:08:08,560 as entrepreneurs, as executives, as the janitor, a middle manager, an employee, 76 00:08:08,560 --> 00:08:15,200 to hold up a set of ethics that says it's not just about money. It's about leadership. It's 77 00:08:15,200 --> 00:08:23,440 about doing the right thing. And we believe that businesses are uniquely suited to have a huge 78 00:08:23,440 --> 00:08:28,000 effect on this. We're not saying that everybody's dumping chemicals. I'm using hyperbolic examples. 79 00:08:28,000 --> 00:08:37,280 But we produce stuff. We take stuff out of the ground or we pay someone who pays someone who 80 00:08:37,280 --> 00:08:41,440 pays someone who pays someone to take it out of the ground and turn it into something else. 81 00:08:42,080 --> 00:08:50,960 And then we sell it. And there is a limit to the number of resources that we have on this planet 82 00:08:50,960 --> 00:08:55,920 and we need to figure out how to use them. And businesses, I think we have a responsibility 83 00:08:55,920 --> 00:09:04,240 to do that in a responsible, globally ethical fashion. Thank you for sharing that. I want to 84 00:09:04,240 --> 00:09:13,840 go along with what you just shared. The real question for you, Steve, is that I want to ask 85 00:09:13,840 --> 00:09:22,480 is what is the story behind this non-arguable goals that you set up? Why go along this path? 86 00:09:24,480 --> 00:09:33,040 Why did you start all this, essentially? Yeah. Well, great question, Harry. We started this 87 00:09:33,040 --> 00:09:38,880 John Leamy and I started the Globally Conscious Leader together. We did not come to this idea 88 00:09:38,880 --> 00:09:47,680 solely on our own, but we, along with lots of other, now I'm a consultant. I have a company 89 00:09:47,680 --> 00:09:54,480 that we call dotcom jungle. People hire us to build really big ERP integrations with 90 00:09:54,480 --> 00:09:59,840 large manufacturing retail websites and dealer portals and things like that. And I get hired 91 00:09:59,840 --> 00:10:07,680 for technology. And what I've learned over and over again is that there are often culture problems 92 00:10:08,320 --> 00:10:15,600 in organizations that are created by poor technology decisions. And more often than not, 93 00:10:15,600 --> 00:10:22,720 there's actually culture problems because a owner is like maybe some sort of fantastic person who 94 00:10:22,720 --> 00:10:27,760 invented something really cool with their hands. They went from making something with their hands 95 00:10:27,760 --> 00:10:33,760 to making, having teams of people make that thing with their hands. And as they've grown, 96 00:10:33,760 --> 00:10:39,520 they've made and sold a lot of stuff, but they maybe haven't transitioned from I know how to 97 00:10:39,520 --> 00:10:44,880 make something to I know how to lead people. I know how to find the right people to fit in an 98 00:10:44,880 --> 00:10:50,160 organization, fit in my organization, and I know how to treat them well and I'm not going to yell 99 00:10:50,160 --> 00:10:56,960 at them and make them feel like crap or whatever it is. So in my role as a leader, I've been 100 00:10:56,960 --> 00:11:02,000 in my role as a technology specialist is essentially a technical architect who can come in and look at 101 00:11:02,000 --> 00:11:10,560 all those systems. I often pretty much every time run into cultural problems. And they're 102 00:11:10,560 --> 00:11:18,720 usually systems problems that can be fixed with a better system or recognition of a new system, 103 00:11:19,280 --> 00:11:26,800 or they're cultural problems where something very pragmatic like a system or a way of talking can 104 00:11:26,800 --> 00:11:36,320 be applied. And the reason I'm saying this this way is in general, if you bring up this topic of 105 00:11:36,320 --> 00:11:42,240 having great culture and great systems and being efficient, like people are going to say it's really 106 00:11:42,240 --> 00:11:48,400 expensive. It's totally hard to do. You're like, you can't you can't do all of that. And I'm saying, 107 00:11:48,400 --> 00:11:57,440 okay, it is difficult to do. It's very hard to do. And it's also easy to start doing. And you don't 108 00:11:57,440 --> 00:12:04,800 have to have an MBA. You just have to have a couple of concepts, I think in mind and a couple of tools. 109 00:12:05,440 --> 00:12:14,080 And I've chosen a few. There are other tools out there that that work. I've chosen Mocha, 110 00:12:14,080 --> 00:12:19,520 which is a conversational framework. It was presented to me by Stephen Sloan, who is the 111 00:12:19,520 --> 00:12:26,400 founder of Humane Leadership Institute. It stands for motivation, opportunity, clarity, and ability. 112 00:12:26,400 --> 00:12:32,080 And I would challenge anybody who's listening to this to put that acronym on a post-it and just 113 00:12:32,080 --> 00:12:38,080 put it everywhere. Because I've never been in a situation, or maybe I should say rarely instead 114 00:12:38,080 --> 00:12:43,600 of being, you know, super hyperbolic about it, but I've rarely been in a situation in a business or 115 00:12:43,600 --> 00:12:54,720 conversation where I couldn't access Mocha in order to make the conversation better and to make 116 00:12:54,720 --> 00:13:01,200 the results of that conversation better in the future. Or to even assess, you know, call it a 117 00:13:01,200 --> 00:13:08,080 failure that has happened. I think it was Sig Siggler who said that failure is not a person, 118 00:13:08,080 --> 00:13:15,040 it's an event. And if you approach a failure, whether it feels like a personal failure or it 119 00:13:15,040 --> 00:13:21,840 feels like a systemic failure or an organizational failure, from the perspective of Mocha, 120 00:13:23,040 --> 00:13:31,520 you can sort of say, okay, who would be accountable for this? Right? And you can Mocha a company. 121 00:13:32,480 --> 00:13:38,000 You can say, I used to own an outdoor store and I actually sat my entire staff down and I said, 122 00:13:38,000 --> 00:13:43,440 like, I want you guys to take the next 24 hours, you get like a half hour break each day to do this. 123 00:13:43,440 --> 00:13:48,720 I gave them the opportunity, part of the O, schedule it in. I want you to sort of Mocha the 124 00:13:48,720 --> 00:13:54,320 company. Are we motivated to do what we're doing? What are we doing? Do we have clarity? You know, 125 00:13:54,320 --> 00:13:59,120 do we know how to do it? Do we have the ability? That's the A. And are we giving ourselves the 126 00:13:59,120 --> 00:14:05,920 opportunity? And it was a very interesting exercise because, you know, I learned that 127 00:14:05,920 --> 00:14:09,680 everybody's individually motivated and they felt like the store was motivated. But then we found 128 00:14:09,680 --> 00:14:14,640 some places where maybe we weren't giving ourselves the opportunity to be as successful as we wanted 129 00:14:14,640 --> 00:14:23,040 to be. You know, so I basically elicited very good, pragmatic business development ideas from 130 00:14:23,600 --> 00:14:27,360 a group of people that I believe most other people would say they're just employees. I don't need to 131 00:14:27,360 --> 00:14:32,000 listen to them. Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned into Vision Pros 132 00:14:32,000 --> 00:14:37,440 Live. I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward. This 133 00:14:37,440 --> 00:14:41,360 is going to get more and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement as well. We'll invite 134 00:14:41,360 --> 00:14:45,360 people to participate in the show and thank you for giving us your time and attention. 135 00:14:45,360 --> 00:15:02,160 Have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.