170 Jason and Steve: The Urgency Trap

Do you yearn for enhanced task prioritization and heightened productivity in your organization? Are you tired of being trapped in the never-ending cycle of urgent demands that hinder your ability to focus on what truly matters? By unraveling the impact of being ensnared in the tyranny of the urgent, you’ll be better able to focus on the tools and strategies necessary to achieve improved task prioritization and increased efficiency. Together, we will unlock the power to seize control of your time and resources, enabling you to accomplish more meaningful results for your organization.

In this episode, Jason and Steve discuss:

• Impact on Morale
• Taking Ownership
• Back to Basics
• The Emergent Nature of Coaching
• Interconnectedness of Personal and Professional

Key Takeaways:

• Discover how to optimize your workplace culture for better morale, fostering an encouraging environment that fuels productivity
• Gain insight on refining your leadership fundamentals for maximum impact and preparing your team for success
• Unveil the invisible burden of the "tyranny of the urgent" and learn to counteract its effects on your time management
• Hone your skills in balancing urgency and importance when managing tasks to streamline work processes
• Experience the transformative power of coaching and self-reflection that can boost morale and positively influence workplace culture
  
  

“Practicing the fundamentals is something that we should probably think about doing until forever.”
- Steve Scanlon

Connect with Jason and Steve:

• LinkedIn: Jason or Steve
• Website Rewire, Inc.: Transformed Thinking
• Email: grow@rewireinc.com

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Listen to the podcast here:

Jason and Steve- The Urgency Trap

Hello and welcome, everybody, to this episode of The Insight Interviews- Powered by REWIRE- Powered by REWIRE.   This is your host, Jason Abel, along with your other host, Steve Scanlon. Steve, hello.

Hi. It's funny to welcome people.

I know.

Like, we're at a party or something, like, hey, welcome in. That's super weird. I don't know when people are listening to this. Right? Like, whatever.

I kind of do feel like we're at a party, man. You're on the left coast, I'm on the right coast. It's in the morning in the middle of summer right now, and I don't know. I'm excited to excited to be with you right now. I'm excited about our topic that we're going to cover, and this particular episode is going to be a little bit different. Steve and I have come together, we've done some prep work, and we have just noticed that there are certain topics that continue to come up inside of coaching sessions really lately. And as we talk about, we try to sharpen each other as coaches here at Rewire. And there's been some topics that have come up, and we're like, okay, if this is continuing to come up in our coaching sessions, this is probably something that should come up as a podcast episode. And Steve, I know before we get into the actual topic and how it may help the leaders that listen to our podcast, I know that we want to specifically talk about privacy and confidentiality. Do you want to say a word or two about that?   
     

Yeah, absolutely. I think we're going to have clients listening to this, and Jason, you and I are both certified through the International Coaching Federation, and we have other certifications and blah, blah, blah. When you go through that certification, it was really interesting for me that the ICF at that point, I think there were 29 codes of conduct. It was their ethical codes of conduct, and of the 29, I think seven of them were dedicated to confidentiality. Like, it's a big deal.

Yup.

I think if you're listening, you can get that, right? We do think that it would be super cool to bring forth some topics, like Jason said, into the world, but we are going to go really far out of our way to protect our clients, and we made it a goal to like we want to maintain the integrity of the topic while absolutely protecting 100% the identity of the client. And so, our goal was to maintain that integrity and even the client listening wouldn't have a clue that we were referencing him or her. How about that?  
      

Yeah, great point. In fact, even as you say that, I don't know, man, makes me proud of our profession and also the way that we just adhere to that, because one of the things that makes coaching as good as it really is, when it is as good as it can be, is the confidentiality and the privacy piece. That that coaching conversation stays within the coaching conversation. So, we're going to change identities. We're going to change names. We're going to change scenarios, but the crux of the actual topic will remain the same, because we do want to make sure that kind of like you said, Steve, the integrity of exactly what's happening, is there, so that as you, the leader, are listening to this, you can go, man, I see myself in that. And I think this particular topic, I think that'll happen well.

And people will know that, I hope you know that, it actually happened specifically because Jason and I, we're just not creative enough to make this stuff up. We don't have the time to sit around and go, okay, let's make up a scenario. Like the stuff actually happens, which helps us because otherwise we'd have to sit around and map out something fictional, and I just don't know that I have the creativity to do.

Yeah, no, I hear that. When you and I have had a couple of meetings where we've gotten together and there are these we have this series of topics that come up and this first one in particular gosh, I can't tell you, it may fall under the back to basics category, but at the same time, all the way from CEOs that I coach, right on down the line, to executive management, middle level management, high level individual contributors that I coach, I see this particular topic being very helpful to people. Not like every coaching call or anything like that, but when things start to go awry for a coaching client, this particular topic and really workshopping it and diving into the weeds of it really just seems to be helpful. So, I'm glad we're kicking this series off with this particular topic.

Yeah, well, those fundamentals again, this might already be some content for the leaders and people listening to this, but practicing the fundamentals is something that we should probably think about doing until forever, right?

Yeah.

And that's something that I really learned from my coach, Jack, who has taught me that the three phases in any sort of developmental process, in his view, include practicing the fundamentals, being released to go and do the fundamentals, and then being joined by somebody to say, hey, what did you do with those fundamentals? And then lather, rinse, repeat. And those are the three phases. He uses that in the way of a guitar, but you're also the one pointing out to me sometimes that that's Vince Lombardi starting at the beginning of every year saying what, Jason?

Gentlemen, this is a football. And I'm so glad even you brought that up. Literally, I'm already learning, as you and I are doing this. Just being reminded of that is so I'm going to actually use that today with some of the projects that I have for myself, like, just back to basics on some things. So, yeah, it's exactly right.        
            

Perfect. You see? Aren't you glad I didn't say, Gentlemen, this is football? Because that's so your line. I had to let you have that.        

Well, it's Vince Lombardi's line, but I do like to say it often because when you think about, I know a lot of the people that listen to our podcast, gosh, they're just playing at such a professional level, such a high level, and sometimes that whole thing about, gentlemen, this is a football, sometimes there - I deal on such a high level that I need to remember, like, okay, way back to basics. And it reminds me of clients that want to run a marathon, and they may not be runners. Well, we got to go get a pair of shoes and walk around the block first, right? Well, just put the pair of shoes on in the morning first before we go run a marathon. And so, this is one of those topics. It's one of those things where, yes, it's back to basics, but once you dig into the weeds of it, it's a little complex. And I think your story that you're going to tell this morning is an example of that, where you go, okay, the topic is X, and I'll let you introduce it. But then once you dig into the weeds, you actually have to do a little bit of work with it to have it be effective for you. So here we go.    
    

Yeah. All right. Well, yeah, let's dive in. So, this all stemmed from a coaching call that I had, and my client, she came in, and I chose she, you will never know she or he, but she came into this call, and like we do in coaching, we did some placement. We began the call, and it became apparent very quickly that the presenting challenge, this is what Richard Boyatsis talks about, and I personally think that Richard Boyatsis is the godfather of coaching. I know Tony Robbins likes to think he is, but Boyatsis has been studying the field of coaching since 1969, which, by the way, as best I can tell, is about 15 years before the industry even became a thing.

Yeah. Right?

So, he talks about a presenting challenge or a presenting opportunity. What's presenting? And what was presenting for this client specifically, I could just feel it in her. It had to do with culture. I need help with our culture is not where it needs to be. The morale of our culture is low. Hey, coach, can we dedicate time and energy to think through together morale of our culture?

Even that give me a little bit of placement. This is a leader, correct?

Yeah.

In other words, so give some placement, organization, size, reporting level, just that type of thing.  
      

Yeah. So, this individual oversees, let's just call it the footprint of an entire state of a national organization that's in all 50 states, and I would say there's probably close to 100 people underneath her. Maybe not all direct, obviously you don't want 100 direct reports.

Sure.        

But yeah, about 100 people in her little kingdom of that footprint, and so pretty substantial. And even within that footprint, she had people both in the production side of things and also the operation sides of things. She also had leaders underneath her. So, yeah, I guess the closest she was - think of a pretty high up regional person.

                                                                                                           
"And that helps just because now when you say things like morale, I'm like, okay, this is actually a person that is not maybe an individual contributor that's complaining about morale, but this is somebody that affects morale, leads morale, and is partly responsible for morale."

Yeah, that's a really good point, even to her credit, I think one of the things what she was asking is, is she the thermometer or the barometer?

Great. I love that.        

And so maybe that's a question that we need to ask, right? You and I can sit around and just think you and I aren't – we’re he barometer, right? Like, we are affecting morale. We're not just looking at it and going, oh, that's what that thing is.

That's right. Yup, yup.

So she definitely had an impact on it. And for the record and again, this was from my purview as a coach I did ask her, because it would have been helpful information for me to know that the morale was that regional to her, or did she get some indication that that was industry or companywide? And she let me know that when she was speaking to her colleagues and even her boss, that she indicated this was a companywide problem. But having said that, how do I put this nicely? She did say that, and that was helpful for me. It didn't matter to her because what really mattered to her was what she could see, in her view.

Yup yup yup.

But that was just information for me because it would have been helpful as a coach to ask different questions if this were only happening in the state that she was in or her region or whatever, and she did indicate it was across a lot of lines, but we were going to focus primarily on what she could see and what she could control, et cetera, et cetera.

Well, that helps me. When I was in corporate America, for a while, I was in a very similar situation, and I found myself as a leader, almost confused at times where gosh, is this somebody else's fault or is this my fault, right? And not really fault, but basically, is there something that I can do as a leader to affect this? And oftentimes the answer is yes, but that's not always the easy answer. And so, this helps me just paint the picture of the scenario that your client's dealing with.

Yeah. So, let's dive in. I will say here -we've been talking about let's get in, let's get in. It's like 20 minutes later. Let's get into it. Really, that was the presenting problem. The unique thing about it, and this often happens in coaching, is that what became of that as she began to have some insights around it, we actually started looking at something else and not directly morale. And that was really for me, I was like, well, that's really interesting. So, here's how that went down. As we began to talk about it, she recognized that kind of like a good leader would, that initially she was kind of going to this person and that person and that person, and then she began to look in the mirror. Wait a minute. If I'm going to have an impact on this, I got to look at me. I got to look at me. And she's like, if I'm being honest, my morale isn't good.

Yep.

Now, we had to have I was just asking her some questions. You know as well as I do, our job is not to accuse people or tell people what to do or whatever. I was just asking some questions. Well, talk to me about this and talk to me about that and help me understand this a little bit better, and as I was doing that, she came to the conclusion that she needed to look in the mirror and realize that she was the barometer and that she needed to do some things to impact her own morale. Because there was a quick dialogue around, and we have this all the time, like, is she a reflection of what's going on around her, or is she the one reflecting? Does that make sense? Where did the problem start? But at the end of the day, to her credit, she came and said, it doesn't really matter. I can only impact maybe me anyway. And so we began to really look at her morale.

Well, looking into the mirror is I mean, gosh, we almost could end the podcast right now or talk about that particular topic of looking in the mirror first, right? And just the fact that she was able to bring it up, you all were able to have a dialogue, and I'm not hearing any defenses or anything like that at this point. I'm just hearing, like, gosh, let me uncover some things. Let me try to get clear. And by the way, let's look in the mirror first as opposed to somewhere else type of thing. So, I'm already very intrigued by this story.

Yeah, well, here's where it took a little bit of a turn that, quite honestly, I didn't know it was going to take. I think that's the term that we like to use in coaching is coaching is emergent. When I think emergent, something emerges from who we are, which is sort of the opposite, Jason, of us talking about coaching being prescriptive, right? We as coaches don't come in and go, oh, well, here's the fourth -we shouldn't. I hope we don't. Here's the four things you need to do and create a prescription for someone. I don't think good coaching is prescriptive. I think it's emergent. In other words, as we ask questions, as the client participates, something arises. And really what arose you already mentioned one thing was the fact that this leader, by her own awareness, needed to look in the mirror. Secondarily, as she looked in the mirror, she identified something that, again, totally took me off guard, which, good thing, you and I are willing to wait a minute, I need to pivot here for a second. I didn't think it was going to go there, but what she said was, I just noticed that I am constantly trapped in urgency. Everything is urgent. Everything is urgent. Everything is urgent. And when she said that I was like, well, that's a really interesting thing, and by that, what she was implying is that there's a bunch of things that she perceived to be important that she wasn't getting to, and this incessant going home and going to bed and realizing that there were important things you're not doing because you are trapped in the tyranny of the urgent, I think that's what Jim Collins called it, It might be Stephen Covey, but we'll find that, but the tyranny of the urgent, she recognized that it was that urgency day in and day out that was reflecting on her, and it actually created just a situation where she didn't feel good about herself. She didn't feel good about other things. Morale started to sink in her, and I don't know if that was the whole reason morale was bad around her, but if she were going to be a willing participant in helping morale, one thing she could do would be address the tyranny of the urgent.

 

I can so identify with this. I've been in situations, and I have clients that have been in the situations where there's all kinds of names for it, right? Putting out fires, being a firefighter, just going from one meeting to the next meeting to the next meeting, and sure, the urgent things are just popping up in a whack a mole time versus, man, what are we bigger picture, what are we trying to do here? What's the important things? And they get pushed aside. And you're right, there's so many consequences of that, right? Whether it's morale, personal stress levels, health, all kinds of different consequences as a result of that.

Yeah, well, that's exactly right. And as we worked through that, I think one of the things that we came up with, we co created together, was this idea that you're exactly right, Jason. We started thinking about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, right? I mean, Abraham Maslow created this tool years and years and years ago that he called the Hierarchy of Needs, and the lowest levels are things like safety, and there's even one below that, like breathing and just living. Right? Existing is the lowest. And so, as morale dropped, more and more people just felt like they were existing, which, by the way, exacerbated this idea of urgency. So, if you're feeling like, oh, my God. Day in, day out, I got to earn a living or make money, and it becomes more and more and more of this concept where you just feel like you're not at the self-actualization part that Maslow was talking about, but rather you feel like, I just got to get food and breathe, that will create a situation where you feel there's emotional intelligence. Right? You feel like, well, urgency makes sense. We got to do this now. We got to do this now. We got to do this now.

Yep.

And so it was just such a cool thing that in our coaching call, she was able to step back and view that, whoa, she got out of the trap.

She got out of the trap.

                                                                                                       
"Yeah. I suppose that's one of the really cool things about coaching is at least provide some environment for people to not be in it, in it, in it, in it. We were able to step out and look, and she was like, Whoa, whoa. It becomes sort of, I don't know, a vicious circle, a repeating cycle, maybe the more challenging things get, and I feel like I'm lower on the thing, then the more urgent I think I need to get myself out of it. And that was repeating and repeating and repeating, not just with her, but with other people around her. And so, in that moment, she was like, okay, I think what we need to talk about is, let's talk about what's important."

And even that piece right there, Steve. I know I'm picking this apart, but I want to call that out. That alone is a big deal because I find people and I've been here myself where it's a little embarrassing to admit that. Sometimes it's easier just to go, go, as opposed to step outside of it, get out of the trap, and actually admit, we got a problem here, and what can we do about it? Because it can be a little embarrassing.

Yeah. Well, that falls under the category of that there's an ancient Hebrew proverb, right? That speaks to the idea of all a person's ways seem right to them.

Yeah.

Both you and I, in the moment, we think anything, we think we're right, and so if people, including you and I, are trapped in the tyranny of the urgent, we don't look at that and go, oh, we're wrong there. We think we're waking up doing it right. So you're exactly right. The idea that someone would examine that and go, hang on a second and see that their way, quote unquote, wasn’t exactly right, is embarrassing. It's humiliating. And by the way, it takes humility to do that.        
            

You're right. Part of my point there is oftentimes, and I see this and I don't know what, I don't know your client, but even that doesn't come out. The fact that she was able to step outside and look at it because and again, I've been guilty of this. I'm like, no, I don't even want to admit that. We're just going to keep on going because it can be hard work to admit things that you're maybe not doing right or contributing to the problem type of thing. So, there's just been some things, whether it's the back-to-basics idea or the fact that she looked in the mirror or the fact that she was able to admit certain things. You see what we said in the beginning, it can be a lot of work, but I can't wait until to hear the rest. I keep on interrupting you, but I can't wait.

No, that's cool. Again, just based on the amount of time that we have, I'm not going to belabor the end of it because I actually think the setup I mean, most of what I think was important was the recognition and the awareness. And I think if people could hear that and they could have that now, I will certainly tell you two or three things happened after that when my client had this epiphany, this insight, this dawning, I love when our clients say that. You know what dawned on me? That's our Holy Grail, right? Something that dawns on them.      

Sure.

When she had this epiphany, what was really interesting, she did what we all do. She got really excited about it, actually. She got past accumulation. She was like, yes. And then she swung the pendulum really hard, which is what we do when we get really excited about that. Like, in other words, she was like, that's it. I'm only doing important things starting now.

Yep.

And I was like, well, I didn't say no, you're not. I was kind of like, well, let's examine what that might look like if you took that hot dish out of the water and threw it under cold water like that. Let's examine that. I didn't want to be a wet blanket to her enthusiasm. I just wanted to make sure that she was like- but that's how I knew it was an epiphany because she got so excited. She wanted so I said instead, why don't we, and that's when actually she told me she was like, you know, this important, urgent thing, which by the way, Jason does come from Stephen Covey. We have to recognize that. That was a tool, the important urgent quadrant, if any of our listeners want to read more about that. He went into that in depth in his book, First Things First. He built out this whole quadrant of important and urgent and not important and not urgent, and it was really brilliant.

 

That's right.

I heard him give an interview later on, before he died, about that book, and he actually said in this interview that he thought it was a better book than his Seven Habits, but that was his flagship book. You don't sell millions of copies of something. And he was like, well, everyone liked that one. But First Things First. Anyway, this topic came from First Things First, and so if people want to read more about it, it was a Stephen Covey thing. So, at that point, she had told me, she said could we she didn't say it exactly like this. So, this is where we paraphrase. But she was basically saying, this is all great, and I dig it, except if we just ended it right now, to be honest, I don't really know what to go do.

Right. So, yeah. Now I'm curious. What did you guys do? How did you start to start?

Well, yeah, and what she was saying was, this is great. We have identified it. Great. If we just leave it like this, it stays in this theory, which could make probably make her feel good. But if that's what you and I do in coaching, if it makes you feel good, but you don't actually go do anything with it. Whatever.

Sure.

And so at that point, what we decided to do together was create a list, actually sit there in our coaching call and go, let's make a list together of specifically important things that you need to get to. Let's write that down. And I believe at that point, we came up with nine different things that were important, not urgent. We didn't mean to make a list. By the way, if you're listening to this, you don't usually need to make a list of urgent things. They'll take you there anyway.

That's right. Yeah.
        

But write down the important ones. What are those things? And then we took some time and this is all part of the process, we took some time to synthesize that list. We realized it wasn't a perfect list. We didn't even know we were going to go in and do this, right? And so we realized that three of them could have been kind of put together with other two. And at the end, we came up with six. There were six specific things, topics, ideas, concepts, tangible things that she could identify that were important for her. And she saw them on a list like, okay, this is what we're dealing with. And I could just tell, Jason, it was so freeing for her, just to even see that. I mean, they lived it. She kind of knew they were there, but until she actually put them on a list and could see them, I was like, whoa. And so that was part of the process for making them real. And then because there was this enthusiasm in the call, she once again went, that's it, and she came up, and she flat told me. She was like, she started making things. I'm going to do these. She came up with it felt to me like ten things per six, like, action items. I'm going to do this, and I'm going to do this, and I'm going to do this.

That feels like a lot.

Well, again, our job as coaches isn't to say that that's a lot. I just asked the question. I was like, okay. So, feels to me like you've almost got, like, eight to ten things per item, and this totally falls under a quadestion. It's a suggestion with a question. I totally get it. So, forgive me, coach, but I said, how does it feel to you to tell your coach, here are the 60 new things I'm going to go work on?

Yeah. Right. Six times ten. Yeah, that might be falling right back into firefighter mode.

Right. And so, we laughed together, like, okay, hang on a second, and then at that point, it seemed reasonable to her to go, since I was sort of falling short, that was the whole point of doing much on any of these important things, basically, what we created is, what's the next good step that I could take within these one good, possibly even small next step within these important things?

Yes, perfect.

And we actually made that list, and then at that point, it seemed reasonable and doable, which also gave energy, because, again, if we walk away from, you know, this as good as I do, you walk away going, here's the 60 things you're going to work on. Number one, they won't. Number two, that'll actually cause morale to go down, because you will realize when you're not going to go do 60 things, that's just no good all over.        
            

For sure. Yeah. Too daunting.

So, at the end of the day, she felt really good about being able to make a commitment to these things that were I'd self identified as important things in getting back to them.

Yeah. Such a good story. And again, it is back to basics. Gosh, it took us half an hour to describe all that because, yes, it's back to basics. Yes, it's simple, but when you actually do the work of it, it is a little weedy. It gets a little intricate, but so worth it. I mean, as you're telling the story, Steve, my shoulders are going down, right? Like, I'm like. Oh, good, okay, she found a solution there, and that wasn't that bad. And I can only imagine how she felt, right?

And I will say. And again, protecting the protect. There's two things we know we got to go here. We got to wrap it up pretty quickly here. But there's two things. One of the questions that I and again, this was all emergence. I didn't know I was going to be asking these questions. I didn't have a prescription for this. Now, I was reminded about Steven Covey's things, and I was able to flow with her through this. But one of the things in the end, I had asked is, is there anything, because a lot had to do with the morale of the company and of her region and all of this, I said, was there anything on a personal level that fell under the important thing that was maybe being neglected? And that caused a really big light to go on with her.

Oh, good.        
            
So, I will say that, yes, we identified some important ways that she needed to relate to people, make some specific meetings and do some things that she wasn't getting to because it wasn't urgent. That was super important. But also, she realized that of those six things, I will again, I got to be a little protective here, but at least two of them were actually personal.

Yeah.

And then together we laughed and was like, I love when people say, oh, that's my professional life and my personal life. And Jason, I tell people all the time those two things are- you only have one brain. You're going to bring your personal to work, and you're going to bring work home. You just are.

Yup, yup.

So, I thought that was cool. And then the last thing I will say, and hopefully this will be important for people, is when we got done with that, she was like, you know what? I need to go through this with at least five people that I could think of that were my direct reports. I need to go through this same exercise.

I was hoping you were going to get there. That is the part that gets really exciting for me, not only to help the client, but then that client can take the exercise that you all went through to her direct reports. Well, now we are really starting to affect overall morale, overall culture. That starts to get fun, I think.

Yeah. And again, I don't think we needed to spend because it was hot and fresh. This was on the press as we were doing it. We did pause for a second, and actually, this is what I would call meta coaching, right? It's coaching about coaching. We just sort of pulled the curtain back together and said, well, exactly, Steve, how did we do that? Let's look at the mechanics. And we listed it down. Wait, you asked me some questions about this. It led to that. I saw this and she was like, you could tell she was writing the questions, and then we actually identified what was important and actually wrote that down. So, there was a process and we wrote what was important down, we had dialogue around what was important, we synthesized what was important and then we co created some tangible actions from that was important that we could see would have a direct impact. And so, she could see the process and she really got excited about going through that. Now, to her credit, she said this before I could get it out. There's a great saying that says you cannot give away what you don't possess.


She did the work first herself.

Well, she got pretty excited because she knew when we talk about culture, culture isn't just one person. That's the whole idea of culture is this collection of different people's thinking coming together under one roof that represents some sort of ethos for a company. That is what culture is. And so, it's not just one individual. To her credit, she was like, I am going to go practice this with other people, but I'm not going to do that until I begin to practice it myself.

Yeah. So smart. So smart. Look, leading everything in an organization comes down from the leader, and so, for her to be able to practice that herself as opposed to just say, okay, now I'm going to help my people with their urgent important issues, she's going to practice it herself, model it, lead from the front and then help to coach people through it. Yeah. That's an important order of events there.        

Yeah. So, anyway, I think at least at that point she felt a lot better and then I don't know. Like we do, I really capitalized on her epiphanies and her insight, which was it feels to me like that's a much more sustainable thing to do than having me come in and go, I think you need to do this and I think you need to do that.

Well, for sure, Steve, dude, you're the pro. From a coaching standpoint, I will say this, that some of the things if you are listening to this podcast episode right now and you are identifying yourself in this situation, gosh, I would almost encourage you to rewind and play it again. Because, Steve, you did outline a step-by-step approach where you could even coach yourself through this. And so, if you're seeing morale issues or you feel like you're a firefighter today or a whack a mole expert, man, you could go through these steps and affect change yourself and your direct reports as well, to affect the overall culture and morale of your organization.

Absolutely. Yeah. Well, don't tell anybody that. That's a big benefit of coaching, is that we finally get to listen to ourselves a lot, Steve.        

So true. I know we need to wrap it up.

Wrap it up, baby.

Yeah. I mean, the couple of insights that I've had, it's funny. You and I prepped for this. I knew what we were going to talk about. I still took notes, brother, and I learned doing this, which is such a really good consequence of being able to host a podcast like this. But here's what I wrote down as far as my insights go. You know, the importance of the back to basics. I was just reminded of that when you gave the Vince Lombardi quote, and I think that for us to be humble enough to get back to basics and admit that no matter how high we are in the organization, even if it's the organization that we found it or that we're honored to be able to lead, that we too can get back to basics. This piece about if there is an issue in the organization or a challenge to be able to be the leader that looks in the mirror and says, okay, what about this is my responsibility? What is it that I can do about this? And then just the reminder, the insight of the organization follows the leader whether they like it or not. It just does. And so, if you are under the tyranny of the urgent likely, so is your organization. And likely that's why morale is the way that it is.

Well, it's at least it's a contributing factor to be.

That's exactly right. So, I don't know. Those were my insights. Steve, but you told the story, but any insights from your end before we wrap?

Yeah, my big insight is it's hard to tell a story like that and protect the innocent because you want to maintain the integrity of the story. But yeah, I liked when you said that back to me. I mean, we did found this company and so I couldn't help but think that what are some of the foundational things that we need to keep looking at? And also making sure that I keep in mind that I'm going to bring this work home and home is going to make it to my work. We got one brain. And so, when I'm looking for important things, don't be limited to just one or the other to impact both. Maybe you need to get to important things to impact home and maybe you need to get to some personal things to impact your work as part of it. And so that really impacted me.      
            

Yeah. So, well said. So well said. Well, those were our insights listeners. I mean, as we say at the end of every episode of The Insight Interviews, it doesn't, doesn't much matter what our insights were, but as you listen to this story and potentially saw yourself there, the real question is what insights did you have?  
     

Exactly.

Steve, thanks a bunch, man. We did it. End of the episode. See you next time.        

See you next time, bro. Thank you.      

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