April 27th - Track skills, not just numbers

Dabadadadada Dabadadadada Flip reverse, no we just do it twice. sorry. And then we flip reverse it because it's the 27th of April. It's flipping the script, the energy's in the room, and I'm gonna read something to you. Hit me! Turn it inside out and see what it is like. What it becomes like when old, sick or

prostitute in itself. How short lived the praiser and praise, the one who remembers and the remembered, remembered in some corner of these parts and even there not in the same way by all or even one. And the whole earth is but a mere speck. So Marcus Aurelius is a day older and a day wiser. He said turn it inside out. And what I felt he was saying with that

was not the t-shirt that you wore yesterday. I think he was saying like, dig deeper and find out what the root cause is. The root cause is responsible for so, so much. I didn't know that's where you were gonna take it. I'm glad you did. Yeah, okay. So where should we start? Root cause, why is it important? There's more reasons not to change than there are to change. And often the thing that someone thinks they're trying to solve is actually just the symptom of a deeper...

root cause. Would you like an example? Yeah, please, please. Love examples. Okay. So let's say I want to get, I want to work with, have a meeting. I want to get more meetings in the diary. I felt that's the problem. I want to more meetings in the diary. then when I get them in, actually people don't seem that interested in what we have to offer. And then they're not really buying it and it deteriorates from there. What I thought was the problem was the meetings.

actually, no, no, it's more of the market fit or the product actually doesn't do what it says or its age or whatever it may be. It's understanding what is the real root cause. And that way you can sell to that rather than just the surface level plaster or band-aid problems. Yeah, really good, really good. And there's something called inertia. Do you know inertia? I think she was in the year below. No, she was the year above us. And inertia is where the pain's not.

enough to warrant change. And I think that we're thinking about finding motivation. That's where like the root cause really plays a strength. Like if we can find out why they want to change, what the reason for the change, what warrants the change, and we can use that for our deep discovery, you might find that there's not enough pain. And actually I'm all right with this. So an example that we use sometimes is the cassette player in my car is broken. Okay.

So we've got a problem. know we've got a problem. But actually, I've got one of those fancy Bluetooth devices. Someone's doing well for themselves. I can still listen to magic at the musicals. So what it means is there's not enough pain. Actually, if this situation was a little bit worse, I'd probably make a decision to change. So if it's like you're thinking about getting a personal trainer, actually, you're in that state of inertia. If you were just a few stone overweight more, you might make a complete change. But

We need to get to the root cause to truly understand that. Very good. And Charlie Munger's got this great thing where he talks about inverting the question. businesses might ask, look at all these great reasons for people to work with us. Charlie Munger would say, why would someone not work with you? Why would someone work with you? Why would someone not want to work with you? Often just inverting the question is quite a clever thing to do. When we add Rory Suddell on the Way of a Meeting podcast and we're chatting to him, he was saying part of the work that I do, and he's like, a bit of secret of what I do, he's just completely invert the question that they're trying to solve. And you'll tend to find that you're then looking at things from a completely fresh perspective, which I know you're quite big on, of fresh perspective. I'm a big fan of perspectives. You are. I've been Jack Frimston. I've been Zach Thompson. Remember you or die. Fresh perspective.