Intentional Leaders Podcast with Cyndi Wentland
Welcome to the Intentional Leaders Podcast with Cyndi Wentland. Where we’re all about creating confident, successful, and focused leaders who manage with purpose and impact. I’m Cyndi Wentland, the founder of Intentionaleaders. And I’m passionate about learning, teaching, and coaching on all things leadership related. My purpose is to equip leaders like you with the tools, resources, and support to accomplish your goals. To learn when you want, how you want. So, if you’re an aspiring leader, first-time manager, experienced executive, or you just want to make a bigger impact in your role as an individual contributor—this podcast is for you. Because each week we’ll focus on relevant, applicable, and easy to implement skills and practices—to create focus and a deliberate path to employee engagement and business results. I know that leadership has its challenges but learning to lead shouldn’t be one of them.
Intentional Leaders Podcast with Cyndi Wentland
Master Resilience in Times of Uncertainty
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Speed without direction is just wasted energy. That's the powerful truth at the heart of my conversation with Simon Severino, founder of Strategy Sprints and a master at helping leaders master resilience in times of uncertainty by navigating complexity with confidence and intention.
From his home base in Vienna, Simon brings a refreshingly practical approach to leadership that blends endurance athlete discipline with entrepreneurial agility. He cuts through the noise about strategy with striking clarity: "You can be the fastest person in a marathon, but if you're running in the wrong direction, that's not helpful." What leaders truly need is velocity—speed with the right direction.
The Strategy Sprints method he's developed tackles this challenge head-on. Every Monday, team members identify their most crucial task. By Friday, they report what they've accomplished and—perhaps most importantly—what they've learned from their mistakes. This creates what Simon calls "positive loops" that generate energy rather than depleting it, a concept he's successfully implemented across twenty different industries.
What makes Simon's approach particularly valuable in today's environment is his emphasis on decision-making under uncertainty. He challenges the traditional leadership model of exhaustive planning and analysis, arguing instead for experiential learning and quick adaptation. Leaders today face a radically compressed timeline, often making twenty decisions per hour with incomplete information. To navigate this reality, Simon recommends tracking decisions with probability assessments and developing an emotional reset capacity that allows you to move forward without carrying baggage from previous decisions.
The framework is elegantly simple: maintain only a rough three-year vision and laser focus on weekly execution. Everything in between is deliberately eliminated. This creates the space for both strategic direction and tactical agility—exactly what today's unpredictable business environment demands.
Ready to transform how you lead through uncertainty? Explore Simon's approach through his book "Strategy Sprints" or visit his website where you can experience his methodology firsthand with a seven-day free trial. Your team's resilience, clarity, and impact may depend on it.
Be the Best Leader You Know
Perform with Power, Lead with Impact, Inspire Growth
To sharpen your skills and increase your confidence, check out the Confident Leader Course: https://www.intentionaleaders.com/confident-leader
Welcome to the Intentional Leaders Podcast. I'm your host, cindy Wetland, and today I have the pleasure of speaking with Simon Severino. All the way from Vienna, he is the founder of Strategy Sprints and he's a global expert in helping leaders scale their impact with speed, clarity and intention. Simon is a business coach, a strategist and an author who's worked with leaders around the world. What he helps them with is navigating complexity to grow with confidence and to stay resilient in the face of constant change. Might that be appropriate for you? I bet it is. His work is rooted in real-time results, not just theory, and his approach blends bold strategy with very human insights.
Speaker 1:In today's episodes, we're going to explore what it takes to be fast and focused and why resilience is a leadership muscle worth building. The mindset that helps leaders move from reactivity to intentionality is what Simon focuses on, especially under pressure. So if you're ready to rethink how you lead in fast moving times, this conversation will meet you right where you're at. Okay, I want to officially welcome Simon Severino to our podcast this morning. Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm excited.
Speaker 2:Hey, cindy, thanks for having me, hello everyone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I got connected through you. We got connected through our websites and through our podcast application form and we got a chance to talk and I was so excited to get to know a little bit more about you, about your business and for the audience. I think what you're dealing with in your business, the things that you do to contribute to leadership, are so essential in today's world. So I'm excited to dip into what you do and the value you provide to leaders. The value you provide to leaders. So what I wanted to start with is your focus as a business is on coaching business coaching, particularly around strategy and right from the get-go. I was kind of curious why do you see that as so essential to leaders and organizations today? What is it that's driving the importance of strategy and organizations today.
Speaker 2:What is it that's driving the importance of strategy? Without strategy, whatever you do is probably wrong, Because you can be the fastest person in a marathon, but if you're running in the wrong direction, that's not helpful. My mentor's mentor, Peter Drucker, used to visualize it as you can do the right thing, you can do the wrong thing. You can do it efficiently and you can do it with less efficiency. What's the best thing to do? What's the worst thing to do? The worst thing to do is the wrong thing efficiently, that's why, strategy matters, so you can run the marathon in the wrong direction.
Speaker 2:Hopefully you are very slow. That's less damage than if you are the fastest in the wrong direction.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. That's why strategy matters.
Speaker 2:As a leader, as somebody with responsibility, we are always in the heat of the moment, in responsibility, in meetings, in decisions, and if we just do that, we actually have no idea what the overall picture is. And so you can optimize speed without strategy. But speed plus direction is velocity, and in a team you don't want speed, you want velocity. Velocity is speed, including the right direction.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and are you a runner, by any chance? I?
Speaker 2:am.
Speaker 1:Have you run a marathon by any chance?
Speaker 2:Yes, marathons, triathlons, yes, yes, I run every day.
Speaker 1:All right. So you're doing this literally and figuratively.
Speaker 2:Literally and figuratively.
Speaker 1:yeah, that is fantastic. I have great admiration. My husband and I actually got to a half marathon a couple times, but after that I was like okay, I'm done, I accomplished a goal. Yes, Like okay, I'm done I accomplished the goal.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and there is a link between leadership and endurance sports. Many leaders become endurance athletes at some point. Start either running or biking or swimming or something that is linked to endurance for many reasons. One is resilience yes one is mindset and one is because leadership. At some point you realize that leadership is an inner game, and so when you run for two hours, that's when the work happens. This is when you and your agreements with yourself come together. This is when you review yourself, when you prioritize, when you realign.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a great way to think about it and I know you do a lot of work in resilience and mindsets Before we go there in the back of you is your book Strategy Sprints. So when you talked about strategy, you know going the speed plus the direction equals velocity. How does Strategy Sprints fit into that? Equals velocity? How?
Speaker 2:does strategy sprints fit into that? Any team that wants to perform needs a direction and execution Right. So the practical thing is and then there are some principles of flow that you have to build in so that people are motivated and don't burn out but actually get more energy from doing, because there is also doing that depletes you. If you allow that, you have a team that burns out. So you have to create the conditions for, when you exert energy, that you get more energy back Again. Similar to sports, because if you want to have more energy, you actually go and work out, which is counterintuitive. You go, oh no, but I don't want to spend energy, I want to receive energy. Well, you receive energy if you spend energy in a workout.
Speaker 2:Same thing with teams when you have a task that's a full swim lane, so it is end to end your task. You don't have to stop after three meters and ask somebody for something. Yeah, you get energy. And if you have a task that's not a swim lane where you have to ask multiple times, you have to stop and ask, stop and ask, stop and ask, stop and go to a committee, stop and read the report, stop and ask. This is where you get depleted? Yes, and so on Monday, the strategy sprints method is very simple Every Monday, what's the most important thing to do? And everybody tells it On Friday. Okay, what did we do? What do we learn from this? What are our top three mistakes? Gold medal, silver medal, bronze medal mistake. Oh, my gold medal mistake. I forgot to call back that very important person and I realized it when it was too late. We lost the deal.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay. So what do we learn? Oh, next time, if I can't call them back, I will hand it over to somebody who can call them back quicker, because velocity matters. Yeah, oh, I will hand it over to somebody who can call them back quicker, because velocity matters.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, I love that. I love a gold medal mistake because it really gets to that whole sense of growth, moving forward and also knowing that mistakes happen, things get missed, and being able to talk about it openly and vulnerably helps everybody grow and get through it more effectively. It's a great process.
Speaker 2:We have done sprints in 20 plus industries. Some of them, they are afraid of mistakes.
Speaker 2:Think of aerospace defense, medical doctors who do surgeries those Industries are trimmed to never make a mistake for good reasons. Yes, absolutely. But when you are a team in there, if you never make mistakes you actually never learn. So there needs a space where mistakes just cannot happen, that's in accounting, surgery and when you fly a plane. But then there needs also another space where every week you can run experiments. You're expected to do some small mistakes, because if tiny mistakes, because if you don't do them small enough and frequently enough, are you even exploring the limits of what you can produce, of what you can improve.
Speaker 1:Yes, a hundred percent, and I think that's a, it's a great mindset, as you said, and and it also feeds into what you know some of the things I want to ask you about, with fear and resistance and resilience, all those kinds of concepts embedded in there, and it sounds like what you're saying is, organizationally, the output has to be there, it has to be effective, it has to be accurate. The process that we're going to get to make that end result, or to produce that end result, has to be full of learning and growth, and that's how innovation happens to like. If we aren't willing to try something and see if it works, we're never going to be as innovative as we could be, because it's not safe. That's, that's fantastic. So you and I did talk a bit about resilience, and when you think about best practices around resilience, what would come to mind for even your top two or three? How leaders and organizations and teams can be more resilient. What would that look like to you?
Speaker 2:One is flow, one is the weekly dashboard and one is psychological safety. So let's start with safety, because we were just talking about the mistakes. Psychological safety this is something that came up when Google made the research. What makes high performance teams in the modern age Right? And this is what researchers like Brené Brown then picked up and said oh OK, this is about vulnerability. How do we get more vulnerable? And the reason why psychological safety matters is because if you don't have it, everything else gets muted. Innovation, trying stuff out, learning, communication everything gets muted. Innovation, trying stuff out, learning, communication everything gets muted. And that makes you really uncompetitive, it makes you slow, it makes you fearful. So you will learn less, and when you learn less, you are not going to outcompete your competitors. Psychological safety matters. One way to do this is, every Friday, ask for the gold medal mistakes, silver medal mistake and bronze medal mistakes, because now you are reframing that to be something positive. I expect from you mistakes and it's okay to do them. The other one is flow.
Speaker 2:Imagine you're playing Angry Birds and you're shooting the bird and it says 600 points. Now you shoot the next bird and it says 800 points. What do you want to do next? Most people want to shoot again because it's so positive. Oh my God, can I make 900? Yes, that's a positive loop must be immediate, must be quantitative, must be visual and there is even a sound, something like. So you see, these four elements, that's what creates flow and now that's why people wanna shoot an expert. So we have to design work like that A little bit gamified, visual, in small chunks, and you get immediate feedback. Now, how many tasks in an American corporation right now are designed like that and how many are more like okay, you do something, so you shoot the bird and then it says in three weeks you will get a CRM report from SAP and it will tell you your results.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:That's not flow. I've forgotten it.
Speaker 1:I have no energy around that, whatever.
Speaker 2:Zero energy right Nobody has.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And that's why it feels like that. So the strategy sprints method was born out of that frustration. We want everybody to work in swim lanes so they can do stuff end to end. They get immediate feedback If what I have just put effort in, if it actually, if it works, if somebody's happy about it, if anybody would miss it if it wasn't here, and what can be improved. So that's one loop in a strategy sprint. It's always seven days. Monday what's the most important thing to do? Friday what did we learn? And part of that is the sprint dashboard, very simple spreadsheet, but everybody reports some wins and we celebrate wins first. What were your wins of this week? That's the first Friday question.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, I love that. Well, and I think this, when you think about the psychology of what gives us energy these days and why video games and all the things are so popular and things are gamified, is because it does matter, and I think, as this new generation of people are growing up, they have been taught that that matters and that feedback of how I'm doing with Angry Birds or the game or whatever it is, is built into how we expect to perform at work. So now I'm doing as you said, I'm doing something at work and I don't get any feedback good, bad or indifferent. It's less energizing, and I think this is so meaningful, generation wise as well, because different generational workers need different things. So you're really appealing to what's important as people are entering into the workforce.
Speaker 2:Yes. So my kids play video games and I see there is a quest. Yes, there is very quick communication between the teams and there is clear roles. So one quest save the princess from the dragon. Clear quest yeah, doesn't need to be super meaningful, but it's clear. It's clear enough and it can be. If it's a little bit fun, they go for it. And then the clear roles Okay, you are the shooter, you are the medic, you are the guy who brings the fruits, and there is real-time communication. You are not waiting for three days later when the meeting happens, you say immediately hey, I'm going to go through the left window. What do you do? Okay, I'm waiting here. So these three things, if you can build these three things into your work clear mission, quest.
Speaker 2:We call them even quests. We do quests with our clients 90 days quests, 60 days quests If a sales team doesn't perform well, they're like, not so motivated. We go, okay, cool guys, let's do a 90 days quest. What sucks right now? They go, oh, prospecting. I don't want to call people. Okay, let's make it 90 days quest. What sucks right now? They go, oh, prospecting, I don't want to call people. Okay, let's make it fun. What would make it fun, let's make a 90 days prospecting quest. Okay, okay, but then you increase the energy by gamifying it and making it a collective endeavor.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're really getting at the motivational principles, not, you know, and both intrinsic and extrinsic. You know, the extrinsic is going to see the result, the end result, intrinsic motivation of energy, a goal, purpose, role, clarity, all the things that intrinsically energize us as human beings. So I think it's a great way to connect all the dots of motivation. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:So when you think about you've talked a lot about velocity and speed and I know you know both you and I have worked with leaders and organizations for many years and I work with a lot of leaders who tend to fall on the side of caution rather than speed and when you think about leading with intention and being delivered but also moving quickly, what are some of the things that you think are important? Mindset shifts, how can leaders kind of embrace velocity and leave the fear of? You know, I don't want to go too fast because I don't want to make a mistake or I don't want to do the wrong thing, et cetera?
Speaker 2:One thing that I find fascinating is, if you like, 30 years ago, when we would teach leaders, we would teach them models on how to map the situation, scenarios, interdependence analysis, SWOT analysis, many things that were very cognitive, analytical, because things weren't moving that fast so you were winning. If you were better at thinking through things Right now, if I would have to teach leaders right, if I would have to teach my kids to become leaders, their world is different. It's moving so much quicker. One tweet, but by one orange person can change supply chains worldwide yes so that's a different situation.
Speaker 2:It's quicker. So now, if I would teach leaders now, I would make it very experiential. I think you need much less models and much less books and you need an experiential learning. So immerse yourself in the situation. Take a decision. Take a decision. Take a decision Review. Take a decision, take a decision, take a decision, review With limited data, because you don't have enough data Right now. Everybody has to decide what do they do with long term contracts. They don't know how long the supply chains are going to change. You don't know. It's a week, it's six months, but they have to decide the contract right now. So how do you do that? And if you were raised with the traditional leadership methods? Now you are too slow. Yeah, agreed agreed what?
Speaker 2:what I am studying personally to get better at decision making, to get faster, is probabilities again. My mentors mentors was peter druker yeah druker, because he's he was in vienna here it was druker in in globally. He's dr Drucker, right Peter.
Speaker 1:Drucker You're saying it's the correct way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so he was teaching us to write down every single decision. He had a little book and he would write down his decisions, and so we would write down our decisions, but we had like one entry per month.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right now I have 20. I still write down my decisions, do you? I have 20 entries per hour, cindy Per hour. They are smaller decisions but they are more frequent. And I have added two things Probability of winning P-O-W, probability of winning P-O-W, probability of losing P-O-L and probability of ruin P-O-R. And I write it down in percent. So 20 decisions per hour. I work 9, 10 hours per day, so I take 200 decisions a day and I write down what's the probability that this decision is going to win.
Speaker 2:So a successful decision, the right decision 55% Losing is always just the opposite. That would be a 45% Ruin means it's irreversible and it would create serious damage for the organization. Okay, and it would create serious damage for the organization. So at ruin. If it's just a 10%, that's a problem. You shouldn't take it, you shouldn't do it. These are the three things. And it's not really math, right, it's second level math, but I think this is what leadership needs. You need to become very good at taking decisions very quickly under uncertainty, with a lack of data. But you have to create the conditions for you to be quick at taking 200 decisions and being 80% right. I think the goal should be 80% right.
Speaker 1:Okay, I you know this is fascinating to me. I just taught a class last week to a group of I think there was 30, some leaders and we were talking, just it was a small class, two hours, but it was all about decision-making and these are financial people, so they're very analytical. But you're, the thing that you are suggesting is really reshaping the muscle in your brain of how you decide, paying attention to how and that was what I was trying to get them to explore last week is even how do you currently decide? And then deciding with more intention, and and I think what you're getting at too, is more speed, and we have to train ourself to do that. We have to be able to say okay, what, what would I be looking at differently? That would allow me to go faster, but also analyze the risk involved.
Speaker 2:Yes, always. Risk management is the most important thing as a leader Absolutely. That's what we get paid for.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:That's why we sleep the worst, because we carry that responsibility, both legally and economically, if we lead an organization. Yeah, and so we should really be held accountable for our decisions. So we should really be held accountable for our decisions. And the speed of the decision increases when two things happen. One is the volume of your decisions, because you get better at pattern recognition and you see the patterns quicker. Oh, I saw this eight times already. Okay, this is the ninth time of the same thing. Okay, let's move in that direction. Everybody looks at you. What, how can you? How can we move in that direction? Trust me, I saw this nine times. Let's go there. Yeah, and because you are faster, you are the leader. That's pretty, um, a one-on-one relationship. Uh, and the?
Speaker 2:The second thing is it's emotional work. So I just took this decision. It was wrong. Now I go into the next meeting. I have to decide again. How can I quickly refresh, reset, not bring the baggage from that meeting to this meeting, even if it was seven seconds ago? How can I reset? Sometimes it is. How can?
Speaker 1:I reset refresh.
Speaker 2:You know you meet CEOs, I meet CEOs. Sometimes you have to decide seven seconds later the next thing, but you don't have the time to take a break, go have a coffee and reset yourself. So you have to get into. You have to create a space inside of you. That's why we journal, because when you journal you create a space inside of you and that's always with you, yes, and that space is also.
Speaker 2:How quickly can you let go of emotions, because an emotion is an attachment to the past, is also how quickly can you let go of emotions Because an emotion is an attachment to the past and it means that you are carrying now an old pattern into the present moment. That makes you a worse decider.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, because you're judging yourself for the past. Essentially and I think that's a's a it's a hard thing to to do when you think about decision making and, as you're talking about it, that didn't work. So I think a lot of times people beat themselves up for looking backwards and saying, oh, I didn't make the right decision, but you're making the decision you made at the time because of what you knew at the time, and then you might get more information that suggests, okay, maybe that wasn't the best one. But rather than looking back and saying, oh, I shouldn't have done that, should have, would have, could have. There's no value in that. There's value in looking back and learning what you want to do different and growing from it, but not, as you said, the emotional energy to stay stuck in that, Because I think what happens then is people then think I don't want to go that fast in the future because it was the speed that was problematic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the speed is never problematic.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Only the pros, exactly, and if we get afraid of speed, should we really be leading that team, that organization? Maybe somebody else should, right? So we should be the role model of how to take good decisions with limited data, because that empowers everybody else, because they have to take as many decisions as we have to, also during the day, and we need to be a role model on that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Another thing is not judging your decisions based on the outcome, because the outcome actually doesn't tell you if it was the right decision. The process tells you if it was the right decision. You can take the right decision and it goes wrong. You can take the wrong decision and it goes right. Yeah, that's why process matters yeah, yeah, absolutely Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And training yourself to have thoughtfulness about what that is and, as you said, looking for the patterns, which I think is really important to notice and be more cognizant of and bring that to the surface. I think sometimes you know again, as you said, businesses are moving so quickly, leaders are moving so quickly. It's hard to be deliberate about what those patterns are or even what you're doing. And, as you said, I think journaling is so important because it captures. It captures that experience, it captures what's going on in your head and how you feel about it, and just noticing and being more self-aware, which is always very profound. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1:All right, so my notes are crazy on this page, things you say I'm trying to highlight capture. At the same time, and I think what I love about the work you're doing is you're creating leaders' mindset and you're creating systems within the team that they lead to do all this more successfully in a way, and teaching them and coaching them and supporting them and exploring your website, which we'll put in the show notes. You have so many awesome tools that you provide and resources and ideas for how people can do this more and better, which is hugely beneficial and hugely valuable. I just am so impressed with all the work you're doing in creating this infrastructure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the tools. They come back to process, right. We have this whole page strategysprintscom slash tools, full of tools, and the reason is we go back to process Whenever things are hard or fast or need to be done faster than I can actually do it. That's when I need a process. We don't rise up to the levels of our goals, we fall down to the levels of our current processes, and so, with good tools, under harsh conditions, we still can maintain good quality of operations, good quality of risk management, and never fall below our standards. This is very important as a leader, as an organization Always keep the standards at the level that you need to hold.
Speaker 2:And so, under pressure, I go back to processes. For example, I had to do more reach out, but I wasn't feeling like reaching out. I was like, no, I don't want to bother anybody. And so I go to my prospecting system. It's a process, right. It reminds me oh, there's already five steps. Okay, let's do step one, step two and I check them off. Literally. It gives me back that energy because it makes it small, right? One go to their LinkedIn profile. Two send them the message Now. Now, it's so small, I can do it. It's a process One, two, three, four, five. It gives me that safety. It makes it small, so it's not overwhelming anymore. And you see, when stress comes at you, a process helps you get going, still keep going.
Speaker 1:Yes, moving, keep moving, yes moving.
Speaker 2:Keep moving.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. When you think, then, about so many of the things we've talked about, are you saying, organizationally and within a team and within your brain, here are the things that will help contribute to speed and success and velocity and whatnot that will help contribute to speed and success and velocity and whatnot. So you're helping to build the infrastructure in people's brains and work to get it done. What do you most often see in leaders that you work with that creates the most fear or resistance to what you're trying to teach them to do? Where do people get stuck?
Speaker 2:One thing is overthinking Okay. Because traditionally you would never get fired for having an amazing plan.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, that changed. Right now, nobody cares about your plan, nobody even has a plan. There is no plan and if you have a plan everybody's laughing at you. Oh, he has a plan. Funny beginner Right. Yeah, there is no plan, uh and so so forget plans right. So right now it's different. A good leader right now is somebody who can stand in a very uncertain situation and still be calm and move forward.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, I don't know exactly what's going to happen, but this is, this is what's next. Let's schedule a meeting with that organization.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, and that's a really I love that stand in uncertainty. And how comfortable are you I mean anyone listening. How comfortable are you doing that? Because that is really the nature of business and work right now, especially with everything going on with the economy right now. It's kind of like we don't know. We don't know all the answers and the more people stay stuck, it's not benefiting them, it's not adding value to the team, to the organization or to ourselves, because we get so focused on the stress associated with being unable to move. That's a very stressful situation to be in. So how did you get here, when you feel like you know the past, all the things that you're helping organizations with, helping leaders? What was the experience to get you to where you are today? That shaped you to have these processes and strategies in place that you're even offering to organizations?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, first of all, I'm a man and as a man, I think we are biologically wired. We need a big problem. Give me a big problem. I want to solve it. Yes, that's what we need. If I don't have that, oh my God, I'm a terrible father, husband, friend. I'm irritating everybody. So I need a big problem. Give me a big problem. It becomes my adventure.
Speaker 1:And I love that.
Speaker 2:So if I don't have that, I go and run a trial alone just to have that big problem that I can work myself into, right, okay, so so this is how I'm wired.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And because of that, I have decided that I will put this in service of business owners. So I've decided I am devoting my life to helping business owners and I want their biggest problem. Give me your biggest problem and I want to solve it with you, because that's what makes me happy.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:This is how I started 22 years ago, and I was sitting there in the boardroom what's the biggest problem right now? Boy, they have a ton of problems. They say our competitor is taking market shares in that country. This product we launched it. It killed three people, so they are full of problems. And I said, OK, let it. Killed three people, so they're full of problems. And I said, okay, let's pick the biggest one. What's the biggest one? Which one do we take on this week?
Speaker 1:That became the strategy sprints method. Oh, fantastic it gives you. It sounds like that is so energizing for you and for some people it's not. Some people look at problems and big problems and all the challenges and then they get so overwhelmed Again when you think about talk, about overthinking and how do we create a game plan? How do we solve all those things? No, we're not going to do that. What are we going to do? What is most problematic and how do we move forward on that and just be more agile in our thinking and our problem solving and decision making?
Speaker 2:So and you felt the awareness on that. I would be overwhelmed too if I didn't have processes. But because I know that I have 274 processes plug and play ready, I say, hey, give me your biggest problem, let's do this, you have 274 processes ready to go. Yeah, Many of them are for free on our page strategysprintscom.
Speaker 1:You are so cool.
Speaker 2:Many are in the book Strategies Prints.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, yes. So I got to get the book. I have been checking out your tools and I think that it's so great because, again, in the absence of tools, or even where to get the tools and what are appropriate tools and what are high-quality tools, I think the fact that you have an overall strategy, that you're focused on strategy, can reassure people that the tools that you're providing are going to work, because you've demonstrated how they're going to work and, connecting to what is your problem, here's the appropriate tool. That's really huge, I think, for people. So you are the problem solver and you want to partner with people to solve their problems. So, at the heart, that's your business. It's fantastic.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, I need a mission. Give me a big problem and I'm happy when I when I solve it.
Speaker 1:OK, and I bet a lot of people actually have a lot of problems that they would love you to solve. So my my last question is you have worked with a lot of leaders around the world. You have worked with a lot of leaders around the world and obviously I named my company Intentional Leaders because I think people that are very deliberate in what they're doing, thoughtful about and have a high self-awareness. To me that's key to leadership and even in the space that you're talking about, how agile are you at solving problems and how fast can you move all those kinds of things? So what separates, in your opinion, intentional leaders, people that are more deliberate, from people that are more reactive? What's a key difference from your perspective?
Speaker 2:That's interesting because the times are collapsing so much. I often get asked, simon, should I even have a five years plan, a three years plan? And I say, yes, still do it, but don't take it so seriously and don't put a lot of time in the details. So how we solve this having a long-term horizon but being very agile in the moment is we have eliminated everything in between. We only have the three years vision. That's the grand strategy. If you want.
Speaker 2:So in a company that's you know we are going to be, every kid will have a computer on his desk. So that's the grand strategy three years. But then we have eliminated all the milestones in between. No milestones. There's only the week Now, the next seven days, what's the most important thing to do? And everybody reports on Monday I'm going to work on the cables, I'm going to work on the marketing, I'm going to do the the cables. I'm going to work on the marketing, I'm going to do the brochures, I'm going to send out the emails, I'm going to build the software, and so everybody has one swim lane over the next, from now until Friday. That's five days, five days and three years and nothing in between. This is how the agile world has solved for this because you don't want to be reactive so you have the three years vision but you also don't want to be stiff following a plan while the world is moving. That's why five days.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's a great, it's a great strategy. Yeah, yeah, it's a great, it's a great strategy. It's a great strategy shift and mindset shift that we're not looking at huge milestones that are out there Again, the whole concept. I don't know if you, if you've read the book Atomic Habits, james Clear.
Speaker 2:I did yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that kind of small short. Get it done. Think differently, act differently, create very small things that make a big impact. But, as you're saying, we're not just doing those small things. They're in the context of the bigger strategy and what we want to do and making sure people are making that connection, which I think is really important.
Speaker 2:He shows how, if you just improve 1% every week, that is actually it compounds exponentially. That's an amazing graphic in that book. When you see that, you go, oh my God, that's actually a disruptive change. If I just do 1% improvement, yeah, and I think so, that's one thing, and the other thing is okay, but what's the direct? It could be also reactive, everyday, reactive a little bit to reacting to something. That's why you still need the three years level. But don't think too much about it, it's very rough.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Because it will change.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and letting go of that. Again, one of the things that people, people, human beings and adults like is certainty. You know, certainty is, or the lack of certainty is, such a stress trigger for people Like I don't know what the outcome is going to be, which keeps people again paralyzed and stuck and overthinking and whatnot, and again what. And I know I keep reinforcing this because I think what you're trying to do is help people get unstuck through tools, resources, processes, mindset shifts, new skills in the way that people are thinking and doing and leading, and I just think it's brilliant because you're bringing everything together that people need to do. What you're saying. You're not just saying here do this and I have one piece of it, you have all the pieces of it.
Speaker 2:And I feel it. When somebody says I'm risk averse, I totally resonate with it. I am risk averse. So I have three little kids. So my wife and I we have organized the whole week and the next week. If somebody says, hey, something's gonna change, change or your kid is going to be sick, we don't like that change. So we're risk averse. We don't want anybody to get sick. Nothing to change. We stay here forever in this neighborhood. Please, nothing change. Okay, we are just organized. Please don't change anything. So we are very risk averse. On the other side, the highest risk, the most risky thing is to never expose yourself to small risks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because that's the only thing that makes you too rigid.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so how do you? Do that with your family, because it's true. I mean, we talked about that before we started. Like you've got your hands full with two and six and nine year olds yeah, well, the same thing.
Speaker 2:Same thing, pol pov por. Uh, so hey, our daughter is sick. Now one of us has to change something. Okay, my wife and I look each other deep in the eyes, we sip a coffee and it's like a cowboy movie. Okay, do you now cancel your meetings or do? I cancel my meetings.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:So that's the first thing, and that decision needs to be fast. Right, we try to rotate. Okay, this time it's me, then it's you, and then. And it needs to be fair Like what kind of meetings are you canceling? Yes, am I canceling? And then we go through. Fair, like, what kind of meetings are you canceling, am I canceling? And then we go through it. Okay, what's the probability of ruing? Hey, if you cancel your meetings, ooh, that could impact how we pay our mortgage. Okay, well then, let me cancel mine, okay.
Speaker 1:Yes, so that's the difference.
Speaker 2:Good idea Again P-O-L, p-o-w, p-o-r. So I can cancel the tennis match, but I should probably not cancel the workshop, right? Same thing P-O-R. Probability of ruin of canceling the tennis match. Okay, it's zero. Okay, let's cancel the tennis match.
Speaker 1:No, so you're implementing your strategies in your household. Is your wife wired the same way? You have to be.
Speaker 2:When you have three kids, you become a implementing your strategies in your household. Is your wife wired the same way you have to be when?
Speaker 1:you have three kids, you become a project manager, you become a risk manager. I love that. It's true. It's true, that's fun. I bet you have some fun date nights too. We're talking about all this.
Speaker 2:We do, we do. Yes, you have to plan some time together too, otherwise you are just a project manager.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, that's not really Okay, but what's so? Back and this was probably 20 years ago in my career at least there was an organization that we worked with and they were advocating for, and again, at least there was an organization that we worked with and they were advocating for and again, at that time, way back in the day, there wasn't as much agile processes or practices or even thinking. It was back like, oh, we need a strategic plan and we need a 20-year plan, a five-year plan, a 10-year plan, all the things like oh. So the times were a little different, but this organization was advocating for something very similar to what you do, which was and it was called an accelerator, productivity accelerator and it was all about what are you committing to at the beginning of the week, what did you do at the end of the week? And that process and practice of doing that was to keep everybody focused and to get the results.
Speaker 1:And again, I saw the value of that and I saw the benefit of it. What I think differentiates what you're doing and enhances the value and effectiveness of what you're doing is, again, back to the. You're not just advocating for that discipline, you're creating tools, processes, gamifying the work to get people excited about it, shifting leaders' mindset to do it and to execute it and to overcome some of their own fear and resistance in it. So it's not just the strategy of doing it, it's wrapped around. What does it take for a human being to execute this?
Speaker 2:It's to maximize learning. So if you just have more output, maybe it's the wrong output, maybe it's the right output, but you're not learning anything about the clients, the colleagues, about yourself, the product, the services. So it's really to maximize learning. The most important thing in an organization is learning. Are we learning more about what the customer needs, what the shareholder needs, what the, the, our colleagues need, what the product is capable of, what we could improve? Yeah, you want to maximize for learning. That's why the Friday sessions have these three mistakes questions and everybody has one simple number from their swim lane because you want to learn about that. And if you do it three weeks in a row and that number is not going up, then we should discuss should we? Is this really the most important thing to do and are we doing it the right way?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yes, that's fantastic. So what I'm going to put in the show notes is, of course, your, your website, your LinkedIn profile, for people to contact you and get in touch. And if you think about people listening right now and think about, ooh, I want to contact Simon, I want to work with him, what would be the thing that people would contact you with? I know you said you enjoy the big problem, and if you could be like, what would people contact you for right now? What would it be?
Speaker 2:Yeah, first step I would say read the book. If you go to wherever you buy books, buy Strategy Sprints. You can probably answer a lot of your questions that you have Now. After that, if you want to go deeper and actually grow your business that means really optimizing the sales and marketing processes then let's talk. And the way to talk to me is you go to strategyysprintscom and then you hit try seven days free, because I've created a possibility for everybody to walk into our house, stay there for seven days without paying anything and they can enjoy everything. They can try out the tools, meet the people. I always wanted to have an open house so that they can come in, because it's always risky. Yeah, you don't know this guy. He can tell me anything, but what if the tools are crappy? What if the people are low quality people in there?
Speaker 2:You have to find, you have to to test right. And so there is a seven days testing period. They come in, they, they have a look. There is a seven days testing period. They come in, they have a look, they see if it fits for them and then they decide if they want to go deeper.
Speaker 1:That is awesome. I love that. I love the process and what you're doing back to something you initially said at the beginning of our discussion is about psychological safety. You're allowing them the psychological safety to come in and see it and experience it. And, as you said, what are the tools, what are the strategy? What kind of value and support are you offering and creating for them, which is very powerful. The buyer.
Speaker 2:yes, you just spotted the most important point. The buyer is always at risk If I take this decision. What if it's the wrong decision? Do I lose time, money, reputation, image, and so, if you are an organization, really the most important question to ask is how can we make it safe and easy for people to buy?
Speaker 1:and easy for people to buy. Yes, absolutely, absolutely. And you're modeling all the things that you're also teaching them to do, which is noticeable and important. Simon, thank you. I am endlessly grateful for meeting you and for you carving out the time today in your very busy life and I know you have a lot going on but to talk about not just your business, which I think is fantastic, but all the things below the surface that you're thinking of to support what value you're offering to leaders and companies and those to me. The mindset shift, the resilience, the learning, the growth, the mistake making all those things are just a part of who you are, your brand and the organization that your culture that you're creating. So I, just as I told you previously, I'm going to be stalking your website, stalking you. I signed up for your newsletter already and I'm excited to learn more about what you do and be able to share that with my audience.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Cindy, for showing up for your leaders day in and day out and holding the space for them.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's my honor and it's my passion. We share in the passion and energy for leadership and developing organizations, so I appreciate and honor what you do and thank you for your time. What an energizing and grounded conversation with Simon. He's a powerful reminder that strategy isn't just about doing more. It's about doing what matters most, from building resilience to shifting mindsets. I think Simon's insights are a masterclass in leading with clarity, courage and intention. So, as you reflect on today's episode, consider this what would it look like for you to lead from a place of purpose even when the pressure is high? And thank you for joining us today in our podcast. If this conversation sparked some new ideas or inspired a shift in your thinking, please share it. I'd love for you to leave a review or reach out and tell me what resonated. Until next time, stay focused, stay resilient and keep leading with intention.