← Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Fortune 500 Advisor on Why This One Minute Will Change Your Workday | Juliet Funt
00:53:40
It can be easy to feel overwhelmed by endless meetings, emails, and responsibilities. In this episode, Juliet Funt shares practical strategies to simplify your schedule, re-energize your leadership, and create “white space” to help you cut through the chaos and empower your team.
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- [00:00]
A
The wedge is a little piece of white space. Open, unprescribed time and you start adding oxygen into the system. Unbelievably business relevant things happen. But people have to be willing to say that this is important.
- [00:18]
B
Hey, it's great to have you back for another episode of the Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast. I have a guest with me today that I promise you is going to give you very, very practical tools to help you grow in your productivity and therefore making you a better leader. Now, if you're new to our community, I want to welcome you. We drop a new episode on the first Thursday of each month. If you're not getting the leader guide, come on, you gotta get the leader Guide. Go to Life Church LeaderShipPodcast. Just give us your email. We'll send you the leader guide with each episode and there's more valuable content, discussion, questions, and a lot of tools to help you grow with your team. Now, let me tell you about today. We're gonna get right to. My goal is to bring you the highest value content per minute of any podcast out there. So let's get straight to it. My guest today is a returning guest. Juliet Funt is a globally renowned keynote speaker. Interestingly enough, she's known as the Tough Love Advisor to the Fortune 500. That's a good title. The Tough Love Advisor. She's the founder and CEO of the efficiency training firm Juliet Funk Group and helps companies all over the US and beyond. She works with the US Military, American Express, Costco Wholesale, espn, Google, Hershey's, National Geographic, Nike, Pepsi, Spotify, Wells Fargo, all sorts of things.
- [01:40]
A
You do the whole client list.
- [01:41]
B
I got the whole thing on them. This is impressive, right? And she helps teams grow in their performance and building cultures that retain the best talent. Juliet, welcome back to the Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast.
- [01:53]
A
Thank you, friend. It's so good to be here.
- [01:54]
B
That's a massive thrill.
- [01:56]
A
I think you read everyone since I was like 27. So there you go.
- [01:59]
B
So out of all of those different types of organizations, you probably. I can't technically had a favorite, but I've had to push you into a corner and you had to say one type of group is the most energizing to you and fun to work with right now. Could you name one?
- [02:16]
A
Yeah, I actually could. US Air Force.
- [02:18]
B
Definitely the Air Force. Okay, interesting.
- [02:20]
A
We've been working with them for six months and I'm just in love with every one of them. I've never ever had a military buddy, boyfriend, relative. I'm as cold as you could be to the world of the military. And I'm just heavily, tell me, why.
- [02:33]
B
Would someone with no background, what about the Air Force speaking to you?
- [02:38]
A
So the romance of the whole culture is really beautiful. It's so mission oriented, obviously. But the leadership cares at a level that is what I have dreamed of for every month of my life. Trying to get corporate people to have the time, have the bandwidth, find the resources to care about people. These military leaders come in and the people are first. Air Force is people first, mission always. People first, mission always. And so they just come in with this dedication to the human, to wanting people to have family, time off, time, sanity margin. They care so much about the mission, but the humanity of it is. It's really floored me as a complete outsider and it's just entranced me. I want to be around them as much time as I have.
- [03:24]
B
So what do you think the why is behind that? Is there something inherently natural to being in the military? Is it Air Force? Is it an intentional choice? Why would they be more caring than maybe other corporations you've worked with?
- [03:38]
A
I have to be caring. They're not more caring than corporations. It's just in the corporate machine it is hard to find space for caring. There's so much pressure. There's the quarterly shareholder call, there's money and margins. And I think leaders who have a lot of caring in their heart are always struggling to make that a priority. Whereas in the military it just seems that they think of the people as the number one resource. It's just how they're built. They're hugely communally oriented because they go through so much together. So I think that they think of having each other's backs is a non negotiable and probably more will be revealed as I keep getting to know them and really understand what it is that drives that. But I'm just locked on.
- [04:21]
B
So one of the things I appreciate about the way you consult and teach, because you teach on leadership and you just did it right then. You didn't throw like corporate CEOs under the bus. You're kind and you're trying to help everybody get better. You're not taking cheap shots. And I might be one of those who would care a lot, but yet not always take the time or find the space to express it. Can you give me, give us, give our community some advice when you teach on creating white space or as your book is called, A Minute to think. What's some low hanging fruit for some things that I can do to create more space to not Just think for me, but to express care to my team.
- [05:07]
A
Oh, there was a lot in there. So first of all, you sort of alluded to this feeling of caring and what that really means to a leader. So I want to speak to that for a minute because when I say that there's no room for caring, I don't mean that individual humans don't have a warm heart and hug each other in the hallway and care about families. I mean that the system is not designed for the person to be the priority. The system is designed for profitability to be the priority. And that's what businesses are for, to make money. So I think that every leader who has a big heart starts at a disadvantage because of that system. I think that if I were.
- [05:39]
B
Does the system need to change or is that system is that just is. Is it. Is what it is. And it's always going to be that way.
- [05:44]
A
I think it's changing. I think there are leaders out there. There's a gentleman named James Re who wrote a book about Ashley Stewart about bringing up a company based on love and kindness and math is his formula. And I think that there are a lot of people talking about making people first. It just hasn't been a very good couple of years for that. Because if you Covid trace back to when Covid started, everyone got burnt out. And then people got more and more and more and more exhausted until about the end of 22, where we started becoming afraid of a recession. And then right when all that burnout was so huge and so present for everybody, we decided it was a really bad time to spend any money on human beings because we were worried about the recession. And so that burnout just went underground, it went late, and it's in there still. And so I still think right now that people are fighting to fix their exhaustion, their burnout. So there's a metaphor that really helps people understand this. If you think of a big cartoon lever, lever on, lever off, lever on, we're at work, lever off or not. The entire world thinks that the way that you fix burnout and exhaustion and take care of people is to keep trying to turn the lever off, give them a wellness day, give them more vacation time. But then when the lever goes back on, there is an accepted level of mania and dysfunction and miserableness that is part of work. So we keep trying to turn it off and give them more breaks. The solution is to fix the lever on experience, the daily experience. The majority of human beings days are taken up by work. So if we can look at how that actually plays out from the moment they get to work to the moment that they leave. That's really the part where burnout lives. That's where burnout lives. I think another really, really important idea is to stop addressing burnout at the end of the cycle. We are giving them therapists, we're giving them yoga, but we refuse to go upstream. Like Dan Heath would say, go upstream to the unbelievably predictable things that are making people burn out. And there are things that we've been talking about for the last 24 hours. Too many meetings, too many emails. Lisa Bodell would tell you that we're only spending 14% of our time in the day on meaningful work. So no wonder everybody's tired and fried and the young people are leaving and nobody's engaged, because that's too many minutes per day of boring, sloggy work to get to the part that engages your heart. And so if you go and you start looking at. Looking at that, that makes work better for people.
- [08:13]
B
So I'm interested in your take, and I'm going to ask this, and I don't want it to be to seem like it's accusatory in any way. When people are burning out, is it because there's too much, or is it because there's a lack of resilience, or is there a combination? Why does it seem like people are burning out more today?
- [08:32]
A
So the car and the road, right? Sports car is the person. And smart companies understand that if you teach them to sleep well and if you give them better food and if you help them use Headspace or an app, that they will be a better car. But then the road is the organization. So what are our norms? Are we gluttonous, which we'll talk about in terms of how many projects we take on? Do we take appropriate breaks? Do we have permission and camaraderie around healthy, sane pace and cadence of work? What's the timing like of the day? Or are we steeped in what we call hallucinated urgency, where everything is frantic and manic all the time? You have to look at the car, but you can't put all the onus on the car, because if it's all about wheatgrass and exercise, then it's also the car's fault when they're not doing that. It's the road also. And the road is the organization. That's our responsibility.
- [09:23]
B
So just hearing you talk makes me feel a little bit overwhelmed, feeling like there's so much to fix.
- [09:29]
A
Sure. Let's start small. Let's make it really manageable.
- [09:32]
B
Let's start this Monday. And you're working with. First of all, I want to ask too, you're working with a broad range of companies. Are there common problems everywhere? Okay, so let's start there.
- [09:44]
A
Emails and meetings.
- [09:45]
B
Okay, talk to me about emails and meetings.
- [09:47]
A
So the very first and most important thing that you do is you go in on Monday morning and you teach your people about something called the wedge. The wedge is a little piece of white space, open, unprescribed time that you insert in between the things that previously were connected. So instead of going from project to project or idea to idea or meeting to meeting, you insert a little wedge. And the way that this looks is your calendars will develop stripes because as you add these five 10 and 15 minute blocks, you will have white stripes appear on what previously probably looks like a paint swatch. Color, color, color, color, color, color. And then your double book colors and you start adding oxygen into the system. And in those 5 and 10 and 15 minute pauses, unbelievably business relevant things happen. Not just rest post. We look back at what we just and we figure out do I have to take a note? Did I learn something? What do I want to write down? I look within in that pause. Maybe I need water or I need to have a power bar or see the sun. And then I pre I'm going to meet with Craig. How do I prepare? What do I need to have ready? So all of the quality of my interactions are improving in the course of the day and I'm also having a little bit more of a sane rhythm for a human being. So if you have a company with the wedge and a company without the wedge, it will be a completely different work experience. And if you did a only that, it would change the way that people feel.
- [11:12]
B
So just to be clear, a wedge would be. Let's say normally someone would have a meeting from 8am to 9, then they might have a phone call at 9 to 9:30 and then they'd go into a feedback session at 9:30. So you're saying at 9 you take a 10 minute break.
- [11:27]
A
Yes.
- [11:28]
B
Is that a wedge?
- [11:28]
A
So you can do 50 minute meetings or 25 minute meetings or 45 minute meetings. Anytime that you have a pause in between and without it, we're showing up to everything, pretending to be, excuse me, pretending to be. To be present. We are very, very good. In the first four minutes of hello new person, I am with you, but you're really not because your brain is cooking on the end of the last thing that you did. And so we're improving quality of interactions as well as giving that pause. But yes, that is what that means.
- [11:57]
B
And in that 10 minutes, when I'm coming out of something, going into something else, what am I doing?
- [12:02]
A
You are reflecting on what you just did. You're possibly using it for recuperative time and you're using it for preparation. Or you might be using it for deep strategic thinking that something was a catalyst in your last meeting and you went, oh, wait a minute, what if we that and then we did this and then how about that? If you didn't have that wedge, that innovative breakthrough aha idea would have had to just surrender you, it would not have been able to follow you and you would have lost it because there was no thinking time in the day. And so it just does so many different things.
- [12:34]
B
So do you work to make that a well integrated phrase into a culture?
- [12:41]
A
Yes. Yes. And it's sticky. So people will start saying, I need a wedge. Can you respect my wedge? Maybe you need a wedge. They will start using it in a way that makes it sticky. And the more you can make it normative, the more cultural it is. The more leaders use it, the more people will feel permission because they do need to feel a lot of permission about any of these counter busyness measures because it will feel like they're not willing to be as much of a work martyr as everybody else.
- [13:12]
B
So give me some therapy because I would not, not have many wedges.
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A
I know you do not.
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B
And I have met you and I would, I'm gonna say I, I, I want to believe you, but I've got to be efficient. So help me understand how creating some buffers will actually make me more productive rather than just take more time and.
- [13:35]
A
Sure, I mean, honestly, you're a pretty unique bird, I would have to say. And as I get to know you, there are people who just go. And obviously you've built spectacular things with that habit. So I don't want to challenge it. But we don't know what you're capable of with more margin. And we don't know what magical next level Groeschel thoughts could appear if you were sitting, looking out of a window for 15 minutes a day, cooking, playing, iterating, who knows what next planetary level of genius is possible. I really do believe it. I believe in the, the restorative element of those moments. I mean, I'll tell you something really personal. Cause I think it's okay to share this. We've been talking last night that My mom went into hospice and those moments where I would take a pause were the moments where I processed feelings. I recuperated from what was happening. I also had the best ideas when I realized that we needed something for her. I have. I have a foundational belief that when the human mind is freed, it cooks up amazing things. And so never would I question a system that's been as successful as yours. But who knows?
- [14:53]
B
No, actually, I'd like for you to convince me, and I want to. So we're going to establish that as one of the first practical things we could do.
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A
The wedge.
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B
Yes. Is create a wedge.
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A
I can give you more.
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B
And I'm assuming and just to repeat, it needs to be cooked into normal vocabulary.
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A
Correct.
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B
Because it can't be. Three of us know that and we're trying to create wedges and everybody else doesn't understand.
- [15:13]
A
You can start somewhere, but ideally you start from the top and it's org wide and that's how we do things here. Every single thing that I will teach we're working toward this is our team norm. And the reason that we're working toward that is because when it's a team norm, there is no outlier. You don't have to worry if it's okay to do things. It's just how we work. So I'll give you a few others. Rolling dismissal from meetings. You don't get everybody there. And then as each person concludes the thing that they are there for, they can leave. So if you start aggregating the minutes found from that absolutely spectacular. On the email side, every single person should create one folder that is the fyicc reply to all folder. You can train your Outlook or your computer program, whatever email program you use that anything that is not a direct to to you or anything that has the words fyicc, I reply to all go in that folder. And you only check it once a day. That means that your actual inbox is now all high value stuff and you're not just weeding through all the junk. And we could just go on and on and on. There are a lot of small, practical, tactical things that begin to stem the tide of all of this. I'll give you one more asynchronous communication. My new favorite. I got this from Sam Corkras, who runs the company levels. Instead of a meeting, I send you a little voice memo. Hey Craig, we were thinking of hosting a retirement party for our neighbor. Do you think of a Mexican theme? And Craig sends back, oh, I hate Mexican. And we go back and forth and Back and forth. So Maybe we exchange four 2 minute voice memos or 2 minute loom videos if we want a visual. Instead of sitting together for 45 minutes, we've now exchanged 16 minutes of content. We've gotten the same communication across, but it's asynchronous. Loom is a program where you can actually show your computer screen while doing this. You can say, as you can see here on line four of this budget, da da da, da da. There's so many ways we could just sit here for an hour and I could just go on and on and on. But people have to be willing to say that this is important. And that kind of loops back to the first beat that we did here today is if we believe that time is the currency where people can have more creativity, more liberty, and more engagement, then we have to be more proactive about giving them back that time.
- [17:29]
B
Okay, so let me just wrap back. We can create a wedge. The rolling dismissal. There's a part of me that, that inside kind of left with joy because I can hear all the people thinking, okay, I'm done. Why am I sitting here? And there's another part of me that goes, but what are they going to miss?
- [17:47]
A
Right, Right. Fomo. That's interesting. You have sort of a boss FOMO on their behalf. I don't think I've heard of that before. Usually FOMO is from them, but you're worried about them missing.
- [18:00]
B
I actually see the value. And then I wonder. And so for meetings on my end, and a lot of times I argue, hey, don't have positional meetings. Meaning if you're in this role, you come to the meeting, it's like as needed only and it's not by rank. I'll have meetings with people that are with three random people because I want their specific knowledge. Or I'll have high ranking people that I don't want in the meeting because it's not valuable for their time.
- [18:30]
A
Sure.
- [18:31]
B
So I think strategic use of people's time in meetings, absolutely critical.
- [18:36]
A
So you just inferred something that I want to kind of take a right turn onto, which is that every tip or tool or edict is going to have a balancing question where you have to have enough white space to really think through. Everything is going to have two sides. So I'll give you an example. In the military they have something called the open door policy. And a lot of people feel a very strong obligation that any time any soldier or airman would stop a leader and say, hey sir, or hey chief, do you have a minute that they would stop what they're doing or that they would keep their door open. It's a value for them, but it creates terrible confetti time, terribly broken time of the leaders trying to do deep work. So as an example, we were having a session where we were working on if you are 100% available, does that make you really 30% present? And if you were 30% available, would you then be able to be 100% present? A week later, a military leader told a story to the same group that there was one time when someone came up to him, said hey sir, do you have a minute? He said he didn't. He texted the guy later and the man was thinking of taking his life and it was only the text that prevented him. And that's what he came there for. So it prompted this incredibly juicy conversation about almost in a fear based sense, you feel like you have to be available any second, every second, just in case. And what I bring that up to illustrate is that there will always be two sides of these seemingly simple tools, tactics, tips, cultural norms, unique, need, thinking time to really think through. So what that group came to was that it was really important for them to say, unless it's urgent, here are my office hours, unless it's urgent, here's my protocol. But without that kind of circular conversation about both sides of it, they wouldn't have gotten to the perfect balance. And so you're bringing up another one. And every single rule or edict would have that balance in question that needs to be discussed.
- [20:31]
B
I think it's super important, especially like in my role. And there would be a significant number listening to this podcast that would be in ministry and pastorally, we feel a spiritual obligation to be there to serve people. And we have other obligations that if we're constantly interrupted, we could never get them done. And so there's ongoing tension and, and in the early years I tried to be, to a fault, available almost to my own detriment. And now what I'm finding and tell me if you agree where you'd push back. Sometimes a more loving way to serve people is to be intentional about how and when you serve them.
- [21:12]
A
Absolutely. Because if you're not present, you're torn, you feel that other tasks that you sort of were doing or wish you were doing and it's yanking you away from the human being that you want to be with. But if you have a certain amount of time that you're going to be with them and you know it, my opinion is you're more with them because you are not torn. And so I see that as one of the benefits.
- [21:33]
B
Talk to me about the phrase is interesting. Executive gluttony. What is it and what do we do about it? Cause that's probably one of the seven deadly organizational sins.
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A
It might be a little spiritual chart.
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B
Do a little.
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A
We'll do a little chart. All leaders just want to do so much stuff. It's exciting to do so many projects.
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B
And what's wrong with that?
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A
Because it burns people out and it creates. You spread the peanut butter too thin and then you start tearing the bread. Right.
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B
And you start to create a loss of effectiveness in other ways.
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A
Correct?
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B
Yes.
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A
So doing everything at the same time is exciting and it's sometimes thrilling for the leader who is creating the list of tasks. But it is a big, big problem.
- [22:15]
B
So what if you're working for an organization and your leaders continue to come up with more and more ideas and you've maybe got less effectiveness, but it's burning you out. What do you do from your seat?
- [22:25]
A
Yeah, good one. Try to paint a picture with stories and data that they care about. I would say so. For instance, retention is a place to look at engagement scores on pulse surveys. You know, it's very expensive. When someone leaves, it's about $160,000 to replace somebody. So when you're losing people because they're burnout, it's very, very expensive. Engagement scores are something that companies can care about. Net promoter score, customer service. You want to look for anywhere where there's a metric that would give that executive a healthy scare about their certainty about that list. They give them a little bit of a pause. You also can start your quantification, which we were just talking about with your team, figure out how much time is going to projects that you would consider lower value, and then use salary data to figure out the value of an hour to figure out the cost of those investments of time and start bringing them numbers. Because you have to speak in the language that the executive can hear. And so you want to look for what we call pain producing questions. They're just a little bit risky for them. And that would maybe jolt them out of their certainty that that project list is exactly as it should be.
- [23:36]
B
So it's a massive issue. And I am both a part of the problem and the solution. Meaning I'll spin up new ideas.
- [23:44]
A
Me too. I'm an idea factory.
- [23:46]
B
Be too aggressive. And then I'll also be the one to say, we gotta cut back, cut back, cut back, cut back. Keep things lean. And so, so it's both sides and both are necessary. Sometimes you do want to expand and often all the time you do want to evaluate and eliminate. And so I created four tiers. We made this up. Tier one is like absolutely essential. What can only you do that moves the needle the most? And there are actually very, very few things, very, very few things that go on tier one. Tier two is what's meaningful and productive, but not essential. Tier three is what are we doing that really has lower value. And tier four is anything that's externally motivated, meaning someone ask you to do it. And so I take those four tiers and look at them really, really hard and try to keep everything. What's interesting is most people, their time is dominated by Tier 4 activities. Someone else asks them to do something, it's crushing. It's crushing, right?
- [24:38]
A
And go a lot of levels down from where you and I sit. And that's the whole day.
- [24:43]
B
That's the whole lot of stuff.
- [24:44]
A
The whole day is 5 o'. Clock. You're walking to the car going, did I do anything today that gave me the tiniest margin of pride or excitement or anything? And the answer is sometimes no.
- [24:53]
B
You don't change the world until you're feel. And that's where most people live. And so let's talk about practically, because you're really, really good at going into organizations and helping leadership cut. Yeah, meaningless expenses, time, energy, projects. Talk to me about, let's say we've got people. Maybe I got a youth pastor who's overseeing their area, or I've got an executive CEO of a massive company. How do they start with their team? What questions do they ask? How do you start eliminating?
- [25:24]
A
And it's all the same. By the way, tomorrow I'm going to an Air Force base. You mentioned two other. Every group we talk about is going to be the same thing. And the first thing we have to talk about is the confusion about the different aspects of simplification. So there's prioritization, improvement and reduction. And they're all different.
- [25:43]
B
How are they different?
- [25:43]
A
Prioritization is you have 10 things and your task in prioritization is to put them in the right order. What is the perfect order of effort for these 10 things? Improvement is how can we make these 10 things better? And reduction is how can we get this list to six. But they are very, very different things. And most people in all organizations will focus mostly on the first two. They will keep force, ranking, effort, energy and money.
- [26:09]
B
They'll improve something that's not effective or.
- [26:11]
A
Necessary or shouldn't be there in the first place because it's so unfamiliar to just say let's get rid of this. It is not a reductive world, it is an additive world. Everything we know about the excitement of businesses scale, right? It's all about more. And so when you go to people and say what are you willing to let go of? It's a transformational moment for them. Now I will tell you that when we start doing, we do executive sessions either for command team in military or C suite in corporate. We put one slide up, I put one slide up, it says I wish we could start stop blank. And then we work off that slide for four hours. Because if you unlock human beings, especially with post it notes because everything has to have post it notes, you start making the internal weight of that external, you start getting it out in writing and people start having that experience of what if we stop this and what if we cut that? And it's like a floodgate because there is so much that they viscerally feel is weighing them down. But really the only two options they've been given are prioritization and improvement. And neither one of those is reduction.
- [27:17]
B
Are there top categories that are most common of things that you see should be cut?
- [27:22]
A
Yes. Emails, meetings, reporting and projects.
- [27:25]
B
So let's talk about those emails. How do we cut emails?
- [27:29]
A
So the first way to cut emails is to teach your team to use a yellow list. A yellow list is a document that you keep in your phone or computer. And when I'm about to send a digital communication, I teach myself to take a pause and I think for a second instead of acting, hey, is there any reason that I'm putting this into an email or could I just jot it down on my yellow list for the next time I see Craig? I'm adding a momentary wedge, a micro wedge in there to break the natural just think type, think, type, think type that we get into. And what we realize is that 20, 30, 40, 50% of what we would put in a digital channel actually just easily could be just jotted on that list. No ccs, no one else involved. You know, when you send an email, that email's gonna have babies and those babies are gonna have babies. And so you're stopping all of that.
- [28:19]
B
So I'll send emails and copy people because I want to err on the side of over communicating. But in some ways I might be over complicating.
- [28:30]
A
Why do you do that? I mean, why do you want to err on the side of over communicating?
- [28:35]
B
I want as many People to know what I'm thinking or which direction we're moving as possible. But as I'm hearing you speak, I'm wondering, where's the balance?
- [28:47]
A
There's two sides of it. So there's another term that's really helpful to understand is pull versus push communication. You might need to find a repository somewhere like a Google Doc or a SharePoint where you put all those thoughts and then anyone who wants to can walk over and grab them. That's called pull. Push is the magazine subscription that comes to your door whether you want it or not. Pushes, you put them in the emails and they don't have a choice as to whether to be copied.
- [29:12]
B
And so you give me an idea. I like that. So let's say I've got. This would not be unrealistic. And last month I did 14 different talks, entirely different talks.
- [29:24]
A
Wow.
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B
And I might be working on anywhere. You know, let's say 23 different working projects are going.
- [29:31]
A
Okay.
- [29:32]
B
And so what kind of a what pull document could I create? What tool do I use?
- [29:40]
A
So that's really personal. Depending on how you guys work. We use Asana. Some people use Google Docs. That really depends on your interest.
- [29:48]
B
So we could put everything we're working on there and then they look at it when they want to.
- [29:54]
A
Well, I'm not saying that you would replace all email communication with pull, but you should have push options and pull options. So if everything is going through pushed communication, you're overloading people. Potentially unnecessary. You could have one project or channel per speech. You could have one project or channel per project. I think there's a lot of ways to parse it, but you as an executive would have to start really thinking about, hey, it's almost like keeping a yellow list for your pull repository. I'm just going to jot these things down and instead of throwing them into emails, I'll throw them into a place. And that place gives people autonomy. They don't have to get your email. They can say, hey, I'm curious and I would like to go over there and look.
- [30:35]
B
Okay, I like it. Let me comment on these two. Then I want to ask about 1. Meetings, projects in reporting. So meetings would be obvious to me.
- [30:43]
A
It's huge.
- [30:44]
B
That they're too long. There's too many people. There's not a plan. There's no so what, who does what and when by by when and how they held accountable. So you have to have a purpose for your meeting. You have to have an assignment at the end of it. You have to have Accountability.
- [31:00]
A
That's improvement. I'm just. I'm going to code that. You're working on improvement now, not reduction.
- [31:04]
B
Yes, and I'm getting to reduction, I think. And in meetings, what we try to do is we'll say, does this need to be weekly? Can it be every other week? Can it be once a month? Do we have to have it at all? It's an hour and a half. Can it be 30 minutes? Can it. And I would say. And again, this might be a problem, but could it be an email? And who needs to be in the meeting? So meetings are, to me, I've taught on them. Studied are a little more obvious. Same with projects. We want to cut, cut, cut, cut, cut.
- [31:32]
A
Well, before you go off of meetings, let's just hang there for a minute, because they are. Are the torture of people's lives. I mean, when we started doing zoom calls in the pandemic, people got locked into 10, 11 hours a day. Sometimes in the larger corporations, they're still there. So I just wanna highlight Chick Fil A Supply as one example. They just did a few simple things to change meeting culture. They taught people what we call SBH meeting terminology, which is to be able to identify shouldn't be here. Meetings means I'm sitting in a meeting. I know that I don't feel like I'm being here.
- [32:05]
B
So I think somebody just is having in their car listening to that right now. SBH meetings.
- [32:10]
A
SBH shouldn't be here. They saved 15 hours per person, per month from just bringing mindfulness to exactly what you're talking about. So I just want to put a yellow highlighter first of all, on how big a problem it still is and how easy it is to start giving people tools. The biggest learning gap is bravery. To say no to a meeting. That's an entire teaching section on its own. Because. Because for someone a couple rungs down in a company, even if they know the meeting is low value, getting to the point where they feel okay saying, hey, I don't really think I add value or benefit from being here. That sentence is a gigantic, scary sentence. So the coaching that needs to be.
- [32:50]
B
Applied, the supervisor may or may not.
- [32:53]
A
Agree, and they called the meeting. So nobody thinks their meeting is the meeting. That is an SBH meeting meeting. So that's an entire coaching area. We suggest people pair up with what we call a nobody so they can have someone to practice with. They say, well, what if I said it this way? Does that sound like I'm a doormat or does it sound too strong? It's actually a big area of work for people to even get to the point. Now you have a very psychologically safe culture. And so I think it's probably easier here, but outside it's not always safe.
- [33:24]
B
No. I could see it being like, I would value that here. If someone said it to me, I would appreciate that they value their time. And then it would also make me question, is this meeting effective and necessary, useful? Some places I think it'd be risky.
- [33:37]
A
For those, it would be very risky in meetings. We should also talk about fomo. It's a huge issue and most people don't really parse FOMO into its two halves, which is that there's FOMO of content and FOMO of experience. FOMO of content means I really would love to know what you said. And FOMO of experience means I want this inclusion feeling of I'm in the crowd, I'm sitting next to you, I touch your forearm, I'm part of the team. Two totally different kinds of fomo.
- [34:05]
B
Different people value different. Yes. Some will tolerate being bored in order to have the shared experience. Others want the information alone and don't care.
- [34:16]
A
So FOMO of content, very easily solvable with recorded meeting or open source source notes. So they can go get it. Everything you said, it's right there. Open source notes, very easy. FOMO of experience, way harder to substitute because it's so interpersonal and rich for people. So you have to figure out where you're going to give that to them or some equivalent.
- [34:35]
B
So I want to come back to the one that was surprising to me. So, emails, yes. Meetings, yes. Projects, yes. The reporting part. Cutting reporting. Talk to me about this.
- [34:46]
A
Oh, dashboard scoreboard, spread all this stuff that executives want to know.
- [34:50]
B
And people are sticking my love language.
- [34:52]
A
So. All right, I'll be careful.
- [34:53]
B
No, no, no. Don't come at it hard. Yeah.
- [34:56]
A
Why do you need to know so much stuff so frequently? That's the question is to say to everybody.
- [35:00]
B
To me, it's not frequently. To me it's two hours of a comprehensive monthly study that I do want to see it all.
- [35:06]
A
Great. So you have a mindful cadence.
- [35:09]
B
There might be. But tell me, what do you see most often that does need to be cut and repeat?
- [35:16]
A
I think that you have to figure out why the reporting is being created other than Mr. Big Shot wants this report. So there has to be a reason. It has to functionally or tactically move business forward. And so you have to figure out what's the right richness, what's the right frequency or Cadence. And then why are we doing this in the first place? If you're a kind of a leader who's already thinking through that, then your reporting is probably decent sized. But there are a lot of people out there who are just taking reporting in because one person is constantly curious. And when you mix in the kind of anxiety and financial pressure that is on that leader boy, that anxiety and financial pressure will make you want more and more and more control and more and more and more visibility, because it soothes you to see the numbers. And so it's just a pernicious cycle. We start with cadence, which is what you did. We go through every everything, meetings, reporting. How often could we take weekly and make it quarterly? Could monthly be quarterly? Could quarterly be annual? Then you want to look at magnitude. What is the right richness? Do there need to be graphics? Should it be in colors? What if somebody stood up with a legal pad and just told you what was true instead of spending 56 slides of PowerPoint time to prep it for you? So there's, there's goodies to be had everywhere in reducing reporting. And it doesn't necessarily need to take away anything that you feel is critically important to us.
- [36:46]
B
I think that's super important. And just as a side note, like what we'll do, there'll never be two monthly meetings the same every time. We don't need that. That's not helpful anymore. And so we analyze every single meeting, what is essential, what's not. And sometimes we'll ask for something new. But if there's any sense that it's a dream drag, we say we don't need that anymore. And I'm hyper aware that for us to have that meeting, there were teams of people that spent hours upon hours upon hours prepping for it. And I would say we have to work really hard what is essential knowledge. And for us, there is a fair bit.
- [37:24]
A
And you and I are both presenters and we both appreciate presentation skills as an important thing. Imagine all of the young people that are not learning how to just talk to somebody because they have to have a PowerPoint to hold up for every single communication. I think that there's an enormous training opportunity being missed by just saying, you know what, close a computer, tell me what happened in Q2. They would have no idea how to do that. And so they're not being put to the fire in a good way for that either.
- [37:55]
B
So anybody who's listening to this, maybe, maybe hadn't heard of you before, they're going to say, okay, Juliet's really, really smart. She's good at what she does, she's well studied. What they wouldn't know is that you're a very engaging public speaker as well.
- [38:08]
A
Oh, thank you.
- [38:09]
B
Very, very entertaining. Great. On your feet. Concise and powerful. Can you talk to me a little bit about in the same way when you're preparing to do a keynote, what's the rhythm look like for you of preparing?
- [38:28]
A
So I'm a post it junkie. So usually this morning when I was getting ready for you, I have green post its all over the hotel wall of things that would be interesting to talk about. Then I take pictures of them. And then my secret sauce for me is I record the things, phrases, sentences, paragraphs or whole speeches that I want in my brain and I just absorb them while I'm doing other things. So folding clothes, cutting carrots, I will place stuff back to myself and what happens is I will end up being not memorized, but certain sentences and phrases will drop into long term memory and they will pop out. So I'm as articulate as if I had them memorized, but I'm not in that memorized straight jacket of changes your quality a lot as a presenter when you're actually memorizing everything. So I find that the recording and absorbing is a really good sweet spot.
- [39:17]
B
You seem to work really hard on phrasing.
- [39:20]
A
I like language. I think it's a really big deal to use beautiful language and I think it makes things memorable for people. And so I do. I work really hard on how things are said.
- [39:31]
B
So can you name three or four of the little phrases or combo words? Like just like you said, the gluttony is those words, executive gluttony. That's emotionally jarring, it's attention grabbing and it's memorable. Can you give me two or three or four others that stand out in your mind? What's RPMs?
- [39:53]
A
Oh, that's the RPMs of high value and low value work. We could talk about those in a minute. But so we. Yeah, I like those phrases. I like we say hallucinated urgency. That sparks a lot of really interesting.
- [40:02]
B
When you said that earlier, that one hit me because I thought we're tripping, man.
- [40:06]
A
It's all.
- [40:07]
B
So my team's back there. When you said hallucinated urgency, I could just picture them all going, they're going to make T shirts and put those on it because everything's now. Now. Now.
- [40:16]
A
Yeah. So the questioning, that is really super important. The tolerated misery. Tolerated misery, we talk about that all the time. That just sense of like a get home. Have no feeling of satisfaction or joy in anything I touched today. I think that's a really big one. I'm trying to think if there's any others, you know, and then sometimes there's a phrase that's not a cute little quip like that, but that is a sentence that you just stick with. And so I tell you people all the time when they are afraid of taking pauses, when they feel they don't deserve white space, when that strange, predictable guilt arrives in taking the pause that the sentence that you should remember is, I am not infinite, but the work is. And it is infinite. We will all long pass away. And emails and meetings and garbage and decks and reports will continue to.
- [41:05]
B
So say that again and then let it sink in.
- [41:07]
A
Yeah, I am not infinite, but the work is.
- [41:12]
B
That hits me in a way that almost makes me want to cry because every time I turn a corner and feel like I got something done, there's a bigger mountain around that corner. And the work is infinite.
- [41:23]
A
But some part of you is not expecting that mountain then. And that's the problem is you're feeling like flat terrain is supposed to be your reward for yourself.
- [41:33]
B
Well, I think you climb one mountain and like, we did it. Oh, there's another one. Always. Because I don't tend to look beyond six weeks in my kind of content rhythms of planning.
- [41:44]
A
But there's a conversation we were having personally about people who look at a moment in their day. A wife, worker, a domestic partner, whoever. Someone looks at an hour and it's open and they feel this overwhelming desire to fill that time, that their value is tied to the filling of that time. We have so little tolerance for the comfort with the open time. And that's why we have to remember that this feeling of, if I just cram a little bit more in, I'll arrive at some completion checkbox nirvana that we are actually never gonna get to. And so we have to be able to learn to tolerate that openness for all the other benefits of it.
- [42:23]
B
That's good advice. And I started asking about your speaking process. You will be one of the few people in the history of the Global Leadership Summit. You're coming back for the fourth time.
- [42:34]
A
Fourth time this year.
- [42:35]
B
Fourth time this year, Yes.
- [42:37]
A
I think Lencione's ahead of me and I don't know who else.
- [42:39]
B
Yeah, there would be very few people. Tell me about the event. Why do you keep saying yourself, I love that event?
- [42:45]
A
So you have to really hear this backstory. So a secular Jewish lady is standing in an Airport in 2017, and a gigantic evangelical church calls and says, will you come speak for us? And I'm like, okay, well, that's interesting. And fast forward to my closest friends in the industry. My favorite event of all of life. I never, ever, ever miss it, except for one time when I really had to. And it is the. I mean, it's just the ultimate hub of caring leaders who want to make everything better.
- [43:15]
B
It's a special event. Yep. And this year, do you know what you'll be speaking on yet?
- [43:19]
A
I'm speaking on strategic choice, how to cut. We're talking about the difference between being additive and reductive and why being reductive is the missing secret sauce of everything in making work more tolerable and successful for people.
- [43:33]
B
I will say to our community, if you haven't been, we'll get a discount code on the leader guide. I'll be doing the opening talk again this year, working on my content as well. And it's just there are hundreds of sites around the United States and then hundreds of sites around the world. Probably, probably the biggest leadership event.
- [43:56]
A
It is the biggest.
- [43:57]
B
The biggest leadership event.
- [43:57]
A
And it's magical. And I will say, as someone, I've done 25 years of other events, there is an excitement, a joy, a heart in that particular event that is different than anything I've ever experienced, ever. So if you haven't been, whoever you.
- [44:18]
B
Are out there, it's special and what's what? Normally I start with a question, try to hear someone's backstory. What I wanted to do here is I wanted to let you kind of flex for a minute and just kind of give us. You've got so much practical content. And Amy and I, we had dinner and we were talking and I just blurted out what made you you?
- [44:43]
A
Yes.
- [44:44]
B
And you laughed. And then you said, well, let's talk about it on the podcast. And for the most part, part, we held it. But it's interesting. How does someone, number one Jewish background thrive at a Christian evangelical leadership event? No military background. Go be successful working with the Air Force. You're crystallized in your thinking and fluid in your communication. Those are unusual gifts you don't often see together. What made you you? What's the story behind the story?
- [45:20]
A
Well, my parents. So funny. I was thinking about this a lot with my mom is the humor and the problem solving definitely came from both parents. But my dad was the more famous. He was Alan Funt from the Candy Camera television show.
- [45:32]
B
Now, there's a lot of young people.
- [45:35]
A
Will not Know who that is?
- [45:36]
B
The majority of our audience wouldn't know who Alan Funt is. I barely do. I know in the show, candidates camera was big when.
- [45:43]
A
A billion years ago. But it was one of the first reality. No, it wasn't one of the first. It was the introduction into the world of the idea of people who were not professional actors being on camera. So it was the beginning of reality television.
- [45:59]
B
And for those who are younger, that's a big deal. Your dad was a big deal.
- [46:02]
A
Yeah. Except for that he would never stop crying about what the genre has become in his absence. It used to be a kind, sweet exploration of people.
- [46:11]
B
You had a famous dad.
- [46:12]
A
Yes. Who was also really creative and an idea factory. And I think that was my first puzzle piece.
- [46:19]
B
So the sky was the limit for you as a kid, you believed a lot was possible.
- [46:23]
A
I did, actually. But I have a brother who had the same parents and didn't.
- [46:29]
B
Didn't have the same parents.
- [46:29]
A
So I don't know if that necessarily gives you a guarantee every single time.
- [46:33]
B
Of course not a guarantee. But you did think that you could have the chance to.
- [46:39]
A
Yes, I did.
- [46:40]
B
But that's not the only thing. What else did you. What's the story behind the story? The thing that no one ever asked and you don't get to tell that helped shape you into who you are.
- [46:50]
A
My childhood home was not really peaceful a lot of the time. My mom was in a lot of hospitals for mental health stuff. And I think that I got really good at figuring out what to do in every situation. And then I think maybe that skill of puzzle piece problem solving, how to relate to each situation in a very fast, creative way, was maybe part of what I became good at. I think I'm really good at navigating difficult situations.
- [47:23]
B
So what's interesting is that there were benefits to your family. Sky is a. You know, there's no limit to what you do.
- [47:33]
A
Yeah.
- [47:33]
B
And there were extraordinarily painful times, like we all have, every single one of us. And you go to the pain that helps shape you to who you are.
- [47:41]
A
I think it's part of it. I really think it's part of it. It also launched me into when you. And I'll give you the trajectory of my speaking. But if I hadn't had that pain, I wouldn't have hit one of the important gates that led me to be a speaker, which led me to start a company. So I was an actress in college, and I did improv comedy in a group called Comedy Sports for years, which is competitive improvisational comedy. So it's two groups with a sports theme where there's a referee and two groups are competing to see who's funnier. And I did that for years in Chicago after college. But I thought I was gonna be an actress. That was my first thing. And so it gave me the first piece, which is I am good on stage, I'm comfortable, I have good vocal skills, I hold my body correctly, I can present. But then I really didn't like performing and theater. I didn't like the business of it. And I was sort of lost as to what to do. Concurrently, I had a really pretty bad eating disorder in my 20s and I started going to a 12 step program. In 12 step, you are constantly telling your story and you stand up or you sit at a mic and you just talk. And the thing for me that was different was it wasn't a character, it was just me. And I actually just got to talk from the heart instead of being in a role. And that was the thing that. That crossed over for me. And people started also saying that I was pretty good at it. And so I started doing talks for youth in education groups on eating disorders, body image, inner versus outer values, and things like that. And then it was the program I developed called Over Committed and over it around youth Stress. That was the crossover to start what eventually became White Space and my whole career. Cause all the faculty would stand in the the back of this talk and they would say, we're stressed too. And then the parents would say, we're over committed and overwhelmed too. And so that was the catalyst for moving from youth and education to adult talks, which I did for 12 years. And then we started the company 12 years ago. And that was sort of the short version of the whole thing. But I have only in the trenches education for every single thing. I teach no degrees in anything other than speech.
- [49:47]
B
Speech, which is in many ways a lot of people's story.
- [49:53]
A
I think it's surprisingly so. It also makes you a fun. It gives you good perspective. Like when I walk into the military, one of the things they like is, I know nothing. I know nothing. So I'm like this curious child going, why do you do that and what is this about? And why? What is this thing for? And what is that called? And it lets you re examine with objectivity. Totally, yes.
- [50:12]
B
No. No preconceived ideas.
- [50:13]
A
Totally.
- [50:14]
B
Yeah. Well, I like the fact I just want to highlight this because I know we've got a lot of listeners that everybody has something. Everybody has, oh, man. Challenges. And most of the great people that I've worked with and ask similar questions, almost everybody points back to a challenge they overcame. And so just to anyone right now who is hitting a wall, just want to remind you, you that is often what happens in those dark seasons that develop something in you. The resilience to be faithful and successful the next. And so I just, I like that part of your story. I want to give away some of your books but if someone wants to find out more about you, maybe you might be able to help their organization. What's the best way to follow you and Learn more?
- [50:59]
A
So two websites, julietfunt.com is corporate and the efficient team is military. And love to hear from anyone that knows you.
- [51:07]
B
Excellent. And again you'll be with us the first week of August, correct. At the Global Leadership Summit events. There'll be locations around the United States and then ultimately In I think 60 languages around the world in months to come. The book is an excellent book. We talked about it last time and if you want to hear more of Juliet, episode 69 is when she was on the first time. The book is called called A Minute to Think, Reclaim Creativity, Conquer Busyness and Do youo Best Work. And if you want to win one of five books, hop on over to YouTube and comment. Let's do this. Let's say I need a minute, just comment I need a minute and then we'll draw one of those and give five books away. And again if you don't have the Leader guide, be sure and go to Life Church LeadershipPodcast and I wanna say thank you to those of you are who sharing on social media. It means the world. If you haven't written a review or ranked this, please do so and subscribe. That way you'll get the content immediately and you'll also help us get the message out to other people. Julie, I want to say thank you to you for your leadership, your influence and I'm going to go back and think about the wedge for me the amount of emails I send and who I copy and looking for a push pull type of communication. So those are three things, things that I learned from this and if, if someone's going to go take the content and put it to work, just one closing thought of something simple they can do to create a little bit of movement in the right direction. What little piece of advice would you give to keep them moving?
- [52:45]
A
Yeah, I would say somewhere in your office put a little board and put at the top things I can't control. And every time you're trying to improve your organization and you come up with something that stops you because you go oh I can't you can't control that just put it on the board and go back to the things you can control because you will always use those things as a rationalization for ignoring many, many many things that are in your control.
- [53:06]
B
Excellent. Get it off your plate off your mind on the sticky note and it.
- [53:11]
A
Has to be a sticky note it has to be a sticky note or.
- [53:13]
B
I can't function it won't work if it's not a sticky note Things I can't control Put it there off your mind off your plate and go back.
- [53:20]
A
To what you're to next right action.
- [53:22]
B
That's great advice so thank you for your heart thank you for for serving Gls thanks for being a good friend and thanks for helping us get better and the good news is you got a little bit better today which is great news because we know that everyone wins when the leader gets.