The show’s guest in this episode is Dave McKeown. He is the CEO of Outfield Leadership and author of The Self-Evolved Leader – Elevate Your Focus and Develop Your People in a World That Refuses to Slow Down. Dave McKeown helps individuals, teams, and organizations achieve excellence by doing the ordinary things extraordinarily well.

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Achieve Excellence by Doing Ordinary Things Extraordinarily Well

with Dave McKeown

Hello, it’s so nice to be here with you live today on the experimental leader Podcast. I’m Melanie Parrish. And I’ve been thinking about experimenting in my life, mostly because my kid and I, my kid Emerson, who’s a competitive swimmer, and I decided to experiment with coming to New Mexico, in January, and him enrolling in school, and he’s been swimming here, while Ontario was in lockdown. And we decided to stop our experiment this week. And so we’re gonna go back to Ontario. And it has me thinking about how we approach experimentation. And then what happens when we decide to stop our experiments? And then how do we think about that, like, I’ve had people go, Well, I guess your experiment didn’t work out. And it’s like, well did it or didn’t it like, hindsight is 2020. But the experiment you have to do in the moment. And, and so I, I noticed my attachment to not having made a bad decision, but rather the that we did an experiment. And we can end up that experiment at any moment, which is also true. And I noticed that we don’t even have the data to know now, what the best new experiment is. But we can figure out our next hypothesis, and then we can commit to it and then collect data. So it just has me thinking in a deeper way about how we experiment when we stop experimenting. And I think we stop experimenting. As soon as we know, as soon as we collected enough data, to know that the experiment isn’t yielding the results we were hoping for. And then it’s it’s good to stop it. We don’t have to be committed. That’s the whole idea of sunk costs, we can actually be free to start the next experiment whenever we know that our current experiment isn’t working. So my challenge to you this week is to think about what experiments that you’re doing in your life that aren’t working, whether it’s, you know, something work related, something fitness related, something diet related. As a coach, I always end up talking about those things with clients, even if they’re CEOs and those kinds of things. So what’s not working? What’s the experiment you’re doing in your life that isn’t working.

And today, I am super excited to welcome Dave McKeown. He’s the CEO of outfield leadership, and is the author of the self evolved leader elevate your focus, and develop your people in a world that real life that refuses to slow down. Dave helps individuals, teams and organizations and achieve excellence by doing the ordinary things extraordinarily well. I am super excited to talk to Dave today.

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Welcome to the show.

Melanie, thank you so much for having me. It’s really great to be here. I love that little anecdote on experimentation and was just thinking on the way through it’s funny how folks say to us, well, that experiment didn’t work. And And to your point, it’s like, well, no, it did. So maybe I didn’t get the results that I thought would have happened. But I learned a whole bunch of stuff as a result, right? Just, I thought that was a fantastic little story. So thank you for sharing. That’s a little nice, little thought provoking for me for the rest of the day.

Yeah, I had spent a thought provoker for me, too, over the last few days as we’ve been trying to make this big decision, but that’s based on, you know, experimental data. And, and you’re right, we never know if an experiments gonna work or not, or wouldn’t be an experiment, it would be the truth. For sure. So it’s kind of funny. Well, I just want to hear what you’re experimenting with in your life and your work right now.

Gosh, you know, for me, I’ve been thinking a lot just similar to that point on this notion that when we look back on our life, we have a tendency to believe that we just walked one path. And we don’t consider the other paths that could have been something that we walked. And yet, when we look at our future, we’ve got so many routes and avenues to go down. And so for me, it’s all about being able to say yes, to those projects that are super exciting to me, I think it was Tim Ferriss, maybe a couple of maybe five years ago said if it’s not a hack, yes, it’s a no. And thankfully, for whatever reason this year has begun where I’ve been fortunate enough, where there’s been enough projects that have come across my desk, I’m like, That’s a heck yeah, like I definitely want to do that. Because whenever you’re able to do that and say that you get much more enjoyment out of it. And you can see that the lesson that comes out of that. So that’s what’s been top of mind for me finding out those things that I get to say heck yeah to.

I don’t know if you can say maybe you can tell me but then you have to kill me. But what’s your favorite “heck yeah” project that you’re working on right now?

I have got the opportunity to build out a leadership development program for a company that is a tech company that can count them for privacy purposes. But it was one of those projects that just came across my desk. I was like, yeah, that’s, that’s an absolute Yes, I just love the the opportunity to do that. So I spent the work that I do is to build and deliver leadership training and development programs for leaders, typically mid level and above. So there are two aspects of that one is helping the most senior leadership teams in an organization’s work more collaborative, collaboratively together, build out compelling strategic plans, and then building the skills that they need to deliver that. And then also the next level of leaders, helping them develop the mindset and skill set to really become the leaders that our organizations and our people need. In today’s fast paced, ever changing uncertainty mixed world. And so any opportunity that I get to do that, to really move the needle for individual leaders, their teams and their organizations is what super is what excites me.

That’s, I think that’s really fun. I love building that stuff out too. It’s like, there’s a, the magic of creation or something has delivery is often like there can be rigor, and there can be joy in the outcomes, but it’s not as creative. So I love that you’re getting to do that. That’s really fun.

Yeah, sometimes starting just with a blank sheet of paper and said, Okay, what is the journey that we need our leaders to go through, is a really fun place to be and sketching is that just that behavioral journey that they’re walking through, is fun to just take a step back and take a look at it. And then you begin to narrow down, narrow down, and then to your point, you get into the delivery of it, which is great, because you’ve got human connection, and you can start to see some of that coming, come into action. And I think that we have to be a little experimental in how we develop both ourselves as leaders and those in our teams. You know, I think that there’s no, one way to build great leadership, it is very much based around who the individual person is, who’s on their team, what the current situation is. And I think one of the greatest skills that any leader can develop is to view their own journey through that lens of experimentation that you talked about budgeting is a fantastic lens that says, I don’t know all of the answers, right. But, you know, we as a team can can can run some experiments and check our understanding and see if it takes us in the right direction. And I think, unfortunately, for a lot of leaders in their teams today, the pressure to just deal with the urgent crises of the day, along with this need to deliver results, kind of gives them not enough not as much room to experiment to say, Well, what do we believe to be true about this particular aspect, and then go and push against that to get to a better place. And if there’s one thing that for folks listening on this, that I’d encourage them to do is to try to get to that point where there’s just a little bit of leeway for you to experiment in your own leadership or with your team’s because I think, to your point, your story at the beginning, that’s where we learn and we grow. If we don’t experiment harder, we were just we’re just doing we’re rinsing and repeating and we’re not growing, you know.

I’m really struck by the tagline of your book, and doing ordinary things extraordinarily well. Can you talk about that a little bit? Like what would those things be?

Yeah, so my father, who was we really got me into the world of leadership development and consulting had a phrase, which is the brilliance is built on the mundane. And in our culture and our society. We love to put forward role models and pictures of heroism in action, whether that’s from sports, or movies or politics. We love to put forward this this hero who’s you know, steals victory from the jaws of defeat and swoops in at the end of the day to to, you know, prevent disaster befalling upon us. And that doesn’t translate well to our organizations. You know, being a leader, day to day in an organization is not the same as building a sports team. It’s not the same as being in the military. It’s not the same as is creating a movie character. And and despite our best efforts to try to make some of those lessons translated, it’s still not a, a great translation. And what it does, for the most part is it instills this myth that the leader has to be a hero that we’ve got to just make these diving catches that we’ve got to say yes, and then figure out how to deliver it, that the only way to really lead is to just take these big leaps of faith. And sometimes that’s true. I’m not saying that that’s that we don’t need those things. Absolutely we do sometimes. But when that’s your only mode of operation, as a leader, it puts you in a very exhausting and untenable position, and it frustrates your team because they become too reliant on you as the hero. And actually, funnily enough, when you look at people that are truly successful at what they do, where when they look like they are, they are achieving these great feats of brilliance, it’s often just because they have done the basics over and over and over and over and over again, day in, day out. And I think that as we look in to our organizations, as a leader striving to be just a little bit better tomorrow than we are today, doing that on a weekly, monthly quarterly annual basis. Like can I be like a percentage point better tomorrow? Not can I be 50%, better 100%. But can I just be marginally better tomorrow call combines over time. And it is also an incredibly and an unsexy way to think about development, you know, we all want to be the star, we all want to be able to do that. But actually, to get really good, you’ve got to get good at the basics on on a daily basis and try to help that component for you and your team over time.

I think what you’re saying is so interesting, I think that leader who’s heroic, also sometimes breaks things like in big, you know, grand, you know, ways. And, and I still believe in that continuous improvement model. The it’s, it’s to have a process, there’s actually one in my book, improvement, kata, an experiment kata of how you can experiment your way to steady improvement in one specific category. And I really love that it as a coach, it’s it’s not the sexiest work I do as a coach to help people improve over time, but it is the most effective, right, is to have people actually see change happen over, you know, years, as they work on on things. But it’s not fast. It’s not at all.

No, not at all. And I often use a musical analogy, which holds up to a certain degree, you know, most of all analogies are wrong, and some are useful. This is a wrong but useful analogy. You know, if you think about that, that notion of heroic leadership and you apply it to a band setting, it’s like the lead guitar is just like going off on this, like, we’ll have a solo, which is, which is which is great if it’s done in little bits, but it’s also built on the consistency of the drummer, keeping beat and the bass guitarist, making sure that we’ve, we’ve got a tight baseline of the rhythm guitar, just keeping things chunking along, if all we had was a bunch of lead guitarists just like rockin Oh, it would just be just just a ridiculous wall of sign. And so when I speak to leaders, I say, you know, you can be elite guitars, but you got to ensure that the band’s humming, and actually better than that is that just to step away from the band, that’s an entirety towards becoming a conductor. So that you’re you’re keeping the rhythm of consistency of doing those ordinary things extraordinarily well on a daily basis. But if you need to pull up, you know, the brass section or you need to pull something out of the wind section you can but it’s, it’s intentional, it’s for a specific purpose. And it’s, it’s just, it’s there, and then it’s gone. And you go back to that consistency. Like I’m all for acts of heroism and brilliance in our organization, so long as they’re built on that bedrock of being able to deliver results consistently because if it’s not then it’s just exhausting. It’s tiring. It’s hard to keep up.

Well in in a world where we aren’t guaranteed to keep our people long term if you have a really good guitarist and the guitar sleeves. Nobody else has been developed to fill that entertainment spot or that you know, heroic spot so yeah, we need shiny heroes all over not giant heroes who come and go.

And I think that we have to be a little experimental in how we develop both ourselves as leaders and those in our teams. Share on X

And right yes, and a system that they come into. So it’s like you know, the the new guitars comes in and they get the sheet music And they get, you know, maybe they get some backing tracks that they can listen to, so that it’s not based on the person, but it’s based on the process of the system that they come into. Anyway, I’m stretching the the musical analogy way too far. It’s good to start to crack it to see.

All this music analogies crack about now I know now. Yeah, so what do you think are the things people should be thinking about in leadership right now, right now? 2022? What should we all be thinking about as leaders?

Obviously, this varies by industry and geography and, you know, position. But there’s, there’s a couple of things going on. Uh, one, I think that we’ve got to take stock of just the last two years and the volatility of the world that we’ve lived in, and what that has meant for our people. And for some industries, that’s been more volatile than last. But but just realistically appreciating the struggles for folks for the last two years, appreciating the fact that if you’ve got a team that was with you two years ago, that’s still with you today, like be appreciative of that, because I know a lot of leaders are, are in a position where their folks are beginning to look elsewhere. So just taking a moment to take stock, pay homage to what’s happened, and to honor that. And then to begin to think about the next two, three years or less, there’s something that the last couple of years has done, through, you know, feels like we’ve had crisis layered upon climate crisis and continues to layer upon that. And when that happens, it shrinks our long our ability to think about the medium and the long term, we get very focused on the day to day, rightfully so because true crisis management requires day to day thinking. But there’s a gravitational pool with that, when we when we don’t exercise our longer term planning and development muscle. It’s like any other analogy is like any other muscle in your body begins to atrophy. And so we’ve got to start to build that muscle backup again. Because the longer you stay in the in the day to day crisis management, the harder it is to get out of it. And so, you know, we don’t know, still the next two, three years looks like but we’ve got to start to reimagine the vision that we have for our team begin to, to cast our perspective forward, and to to really reevaluate the purpose for our existence.

Yeah, I did when you said that, like I, I think that. Yeah, I think our timelines got really short. And as soon as we have a breath, which I think might be right now, as soon as we have a breath is the time to start extending that timeline again. I always think, you know, the, the best leaders have 20 year timelines the worst leaders are thinking about today, you know, not tomorrow, not, you know, any distance out in the future. But I do agree with you that timeline extension is where we’re at right now.

And for those leaders that mean, there might be somebody sitting on the college’s things, I just can’t do that I’m just to fry the last few years have taken too much Artemi. My advice and guidance is go find an outlet to work through that. I think that the requirement in our leader is to maintain optimism, morale amongst our team over the last couple of years has, for those leaders that haven’t had an outlet to talk through that work through that for them perspective, from from their own perspective, that can be a challenge because a very lonely place. And so if you’re feeling burnt out, go find an outlet to replenish and rejuvenate yourself, because you are useful still, oh, leader, and we need you for the next for the next few years that we’re going through. And I think that we’re also moving to a world where we’ve got to be able to build these medium and long term plans. And we’ve got to understand that there are multiple paths to get there. If there’s anything that the last couple of years have showed us that if you put all your eggs in the basket of one path to success, oh, gosh, you’re just constantly going to be butting up against it. And so being able to imagine potential routes, and and so just being a little bit more intentional about our planning that says, here’s our best guess about what’s going to happen. And here are some other guesses some things that we might be able to do to mitigate some of those potential obstacles and problems so that we can just maintain a little degree of agility if and when challenges come. I think I think a combination of those two things will really stand our leaders in good stead.

Well, I’m also curious what I always like to ask people who come on my podcast or I sometimes ask, what do you do for self care for yourself? I always think it’s interesting for people to hear some ideas.

So I speak to a therapist twice a month, which is just massively helpful. I’ve been doing it for about a year and a half. And honestly, I have no idea why I didn’t do it before it’s, you’ve got somebody who’s in your corner that literally their job is just to listen to you to not provide narrative do not, you know, just to just just give you that, that place to talk about things. And so that’s been super helpful for me, it has helped me identify some patterns of self talk, because we all have these, like internal narratives that we tell ourselves. And I always thought my it was funny, I always over relied on myself talk as my ability to get out of any situation, like, I just put too much trust on my ability to do it. And what I didn’t see and didn’t realize was that I could find myself in some, some negative patterns of self self talk. And so just speaking to somebody else about that has helped elevate that. And whenever I can see that coming, I can just make a pivot and make it make a shift. So that’s one. And secondly, for me, I play the guitar. So that’s where the musical analogies come from.

If we don't experiment harder, we're just doing, we're rinsing and repeating and we're not growing. Share on X

Do you play lead guitar?

I mean, I try to armature at best. And every now and then I’ll just, you know, pick it up and strum away. And if I’m feeling particularly frustrated, I’ll back away. And, you know, I think reflection is a massive thing. So probably the third thing that I do is just really reflecting on what am I noticing about how I’m feeling? What am I noticing about, about what I’ve gone through? What am I hoping to achieve next being just being intentional, I think so often, our ego drives so much of our behavior in a reactive way, because we’re not aware of it. We just think that that’s us. That’s that’s that our behavior, how we react is just who we are. But actually, we’re, we’ve got a bit of a duality of of, of how we view ourselves. And our ego is just one part of that, understanding what our ego needs and desires and moves towards. And using it as a tool rather than letting it drive our behavior can be really helpful. So just intentionality. And reflection, I think can be can be really helpful.

Cool. And where can people find you?

I’m currently in my office in my small house in Laguna Beach. No, just kidding. You can go to Dave mchugh.com. To find out about me and some of the keynote speaking that I do, or outfield leadership.com is all about the training and consulting that I do. I’m also on LinkedIn and Twitter, pretty active there. Love to connect with folks, come find me whatever way you want love talking about leadership and I’m happy to share thoughts.

Well, it’s been fantastic to have you on the show. Thank you so much for being here. It’s been a pleasure.

Melanie, thank you for having me. It’s been a fun conversation, all the best of luck with your next experiment.

Thank you.

 

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I think it might be a little colder. Well, it was great to talk to Dave today. And I love that he was talking about reactivity. And I have a gift for you. I have a cheat sheet that’s about toxic leadership behaviors, you might find them in yourself, you might find them in others. And I would love to give you our cheat sheet that helps you overcome them, helps you work with others who have them. You can get that you can get that at reactivecheatsheet.experimentalleader.com. I’m really proud of this. And I think it’s a really helpful way to just think about how how you work with others. We are always doing that. And it’s important to figure it out. I was really struck today with this idea of timeline. And I think it’s so important for us to adjust our timelines to fit the situation. If you think about what COVID has done to all of us collectively, it has shortened our timeline, everything became an emergency and that’s burned out our adrenals. It’s made us tired. It’s given us less capacity. The thing you can do for yourself as you’re coming out of it if you want to excel in leadership is to start just leaving space to consider the timeline a year from now two years from now three years from now, maybe five years from now. Not because you can put a plan in place. But because you can put a plan in place that includes that timeline, you may still have the reactive things that are going on in your organization that you have to respond to quickly. That’s fine. Start to leave space to dream about the future. My challenge to you this week is what’s your dream for three years from now? And what do you need to do today in order for that dream to be possible? It’s been great being with you today. Go experiment.

 

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Dave McKeown

 

Dave McKeown helps individuals, teams, and organizations achieve excellence by doing the ordinary things extraordinarily well. He is the CEO of Outfield Leadership and author of The Self-Evolved Leader – Elevate Your Focus and Develop Your People in a World That Refuses to Slow Down. He has a wealth of experience in connecting individual and team performance to improved business results with a particular focus on fast-growing, complex organizations.

Dave started his career as a Consultant at Accenture, quickly moving to become the COO and then President of Predictable Success, a boutique consultancy focused on helping complex businesses achieve scalability. Whilst at Predictable Success he also ran Inc. Consulting, a joint venture with Inc. Media which helped companies on, or aspiring to be on, the Inc. 5000. achieve consistent, scalable growth.

As Founder and CEO of Outfield Leadership, Dave now speaks, coaches and trains on moving from execution to excellence. His goal is to help organizations build a culture of real, authentic but ultimately results-driven leadership. He has shared his leadership strategies at the Inc. 500 and Growco conferences, for Bank of America, the British Government, Entrepreneur’s Organization, Bamboo HR and countless others. And has worked with leaders at Fedex, Spectrum Health, Renewal by Andersen, Akamai, NYSE and many smaller, fast-growing organizations.

Dave is the host of the podcast ‘Lead Like you Give a Damn’ and writes a weekly column for Inc.com

 

 

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