722: Where to Start in Survival Mode, with Rebecca Homkes

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:00]:
Uncertainty seems to be more and more the norm. Sometimes that leads an organization into survival mode. If that’s where you are right now, this episode is the roadmap for what to do next. This is Coaching for Leaders episode 722.Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:27]:
Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is Coaching for Leaders, and I’m your host, Dave Stachowiak. Leaders aren’t born, they’re made. And this weekly show helps you discover leadership wisdom through insightful conversations. A challenge that almost every leader faces, maybe it’s you right now, is how to respond in a moment of huge change, how to survive when sometimes context, regulations, policies have changed around you or the organization itself has changed and the environment has changed. Where do you actually begin? Today, a key conversation on the starting points for how to handle survival mode and then what to do next. I am so pleased to welcome Rebecca Homkes to the show. She is a high growth strategy specialist and CEO and executive adviser.

Dave Stachowiak [00:01:23]:
She is a lecturer at the London Business School, faculty at Duke corporate executive education, and advisor and faculty at the Boston Consulting Group focused on AI and climate and sustainability. She is the author of Survive, Reset, Thrive: Leading Breakthrough Growth Strategy in Volatile Times. Rebecca, so pleased to have you here.

Rebecca Homkes [00:01:43]:
Dave, it’s my absolute pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.

Dave Stachowiak [00:01:46]:
Volatile times indeed. You know, so much happening in the world, politically, news wise, organizations, policy. And you highlight in the very beginning of the book that you wrote the book because you’ve seen firsthand how much we tend to get wrong about change. What is it that leaders tend to get wrong?

Rebecca Homkes [00:02:09]:
No. Thanks for asking, Dave. Is one of the first things I noticed when we think about uncertainty or change is when we speak about uncertainty, we almost always frame it in a way that it’s going to be bad. And I want you to watch for this for me. You know, when leaders speak to it by each other about uncertainty, we’re almost always asking, Hey, how are you handling uncertainty? You know, how are you gonna manage uncertainty? How are we getting through uncertainty? We put this word before it that frames our brains is gonna be bad. And when you start with that frame, it actually really impairs your decision making and how you think about setting your organization up. So if we go back to the definition of uncertainty, which is quite simply a series of future events, which may or may not occur, and whether or not those events are good or bad, depends on what we’re trying to do and how we’re set up. And if you start with that frame, you have now opened up a whole other set of opportunities that you might be thinking about when it comes to your organization.

Rebecca Homkes [00:03:06]:
So the reframe is absolutely critical.

Dave Stachowiak [00:03:09]:
You do make this point, like, so critically in the book and in your work that uncertainty doesn’t always have to have bad consequences. And you write, “one of the biggest traps preventing companies from thriving is seeing survive and thrive as opposites. They oscillate wildly between the two. Overspending and lacking discipline in uptimes and overcutting and slowing too dramatically in downtimes. When everyone is growing, it is easy to forget that survive mode is just part of the loop.” We do forget this, don’t we?

Rebecca Homkes [00:03:42]:
We we do. We are so trained from early days that things are binary. You know, there’s a upturn or there’s a downturn. There’s a recession or it’s frothy. Things are going well or things that aren’t going well. And to this binary framing, we give ourselves linear checklist to get through, to get from one aspect of the spectrum to the other. And that completely loses the sight of everything and growth is a loop, not a lot. And it sounds theoretical, but very practically, that means you’re always on this loop journey and all these different pieces connect to each other.

Rebecca Homkes [00:04:17]:
And you will never stay in one place for very long, and that’s actually okay. Right? Because you’re constantly going on this growth journey and this growth loop. So stopping to see the opposites is critical. But what’s even more critical is that the market might swing, but your business model doesn’t have to. Part of survive, reset, thrive is always setting your organization up to survive and thrive regardless of the market situation you might find yourself in.

Dave Stachowiak [00:04:42]:
So a big part of this is mindset, and also part of this is a bit of the, dare I say, creativity that comes out of times of survive and change and context changing, like, part of that is just the reality of utilizing a situation, bad as it may be, to actually move us forward. Right?

Rebecca Homkes [00:05:05]:
Absolutely. Look. And a couple of things happen, and I’m seeing this very much so recently as I’m going through so many different strategies. Is one, we speak a lot about a growth mindset, and growth mindset is absolutely critical. And then and any aspect of a market shock hits your organization and that growth mindset is gone, and you go into operational planning mode and protection mode. So what is growth mindset if it’s not setting yourself from the organization up to see opportunities regardless of the environment? And the other notion is this word change. And what I really has hit me recently, Dave, is that there’s a big difference between a performance culture and a growth culture. Is that we pride ourselves on performance culture, but how that often translates in the organization is checklists and operational metrics and sticking to plan.

Rebecca Homkes [00:05:50]:
But as the world around us will continue to change at even increasing degrees, which is a firm belief of mine that it will, we wanna build in this growth culture, right? This growth mindset, which says change is good. When the situation changes, we might need to change what we’re doing and sometimes reset more completely what we’re doing even if our operational metrics are tracking. So that’s a key piece of the survive, reset, thrive loop is performance when translated to hitting metrics might not give you the breakthrough growth that you’re looking for as an organization.

Dave Stachowiak [00:06:20]:
I’m so glad you mentioned this because this is one of the paragraphs that I highlighted in the book more than any other is you point to a mistake, and I’m quoting you. “Studies consistently show that executives are overconfident in their ability to predict the future more so than the population as a whole. Often, they do little more than guess and then feel the need to stick to their decision in order to justify past investments and avoid being wrong, this is reenfoced by organizational governance systems that reward sticking to the plan.” And I that last sentence in particular is we do tend to have a lot of systems, a lot of organizations that reward sticking to the plan. And yet, oftentimes, these days, like, the plan needs to change. We need to adapt in real time.

Rebecca Homkes [00:07:05]:
Yeah. And you said exactly the right phrase. It’s not that the plan was wrong. It might have been the appropriate plan based on the information we had, but the situation has changed. We now need to adapt. And you need to look no more than the very first meet a line that tends to begin most board meetings or strategy review meetings. If you just think about the first line, we tend to open with the question, are we on track to plan? Which gives a couple of pretty critical assumptions. Right? That assumes there was only one track.

Rebecca Homkes [00:07:35]:
We got it right the first time and the situation hasn’t changed. I can’t think of any company in any industry where I would take any one of those three, let alone all three assumptions. So we need to be starting these review meetings with the question, has the situation changed? And these little worded switches do quite a lot to shifting our brain. But yeah, if you look at the percentage of operational systems in place in organizations, again, in organizations that pride themselves on performance cultures, most of it’s about, did you make a commitment and absolutely stick to it? And there’s a need to stick to commitments, but there’s a bigger need to embrace change when that’s what the situation calls for.

Dave Stachowiak [00:08:14]:
And especially at the highest level CEO, the executive team.

Rebecca Homkes [00:08:17]:
Especially at the highest level.

Dave Stachowiak [00:08:19]:
Yeah. One of the other propositions you make in the book is that no one can predict the future. And this sort of, like, sounds funny in a way because, of course, duh. Right? I’ll sort of know that. And yet, it is interesting how many articles, practices, exercises I’ve seen over the years to help people to do a better job at predicting the future. And there’s a yes and here. Yes. We can all get better at predicting and thinking about probabilities.

Dave Stachowiak [00:08:46]:
And yet, sometimes we tend to over index on kinda going back to that quote, like, we have this overconfidence in predicting the future, and we don’t really think about the realities of, like, okay. We not only can be wrong, we often are.

Rebecca Homkes [00:09:02]:
And that’s okay. Right? A huge yes and, and that’s okay. Yes. When you see it, everyone has the same reaction which is right. One is like, well, yeah. But, you know, last week, that was a big insurance company, and they’re like, well, we get paid to predict the future, Rebecca. It’s like, well, come on now. But we can’t.

Rebecca Homkes [00:09:18]:
Right? But the bigger thing is not that we can or we cannot. It’s where do you wanna build capability? And I’m suggesting we wanna build capability, not getting better predictions, but the real sweet spot capability, Dave, is making great decisions even though we can’t make great predictions. Focus on that capability. Building a leadership team that can make great decisions even though we can’t make great predictions and get better and better at setting beliefs and refining them as we’re making these choices based on them.

Dave Stachowiak [00:09:48]:
Alright. I wanna ask you more about that distinction in a moment. Before I do, though, one of the other mistakes you point to is just the human psychology around anchoring that we tend to adopt the first explanation we hear that makes sense. And it is not unusual for someone who has a lot of experience in an organization, is a senior leader to process something that’s happening, especially when an organization’s in survival mode, create a narrative around it, very well intended, and then everyone sort of adopts that narrative, and it’s not always true. It can be a blind spot in many cases.

Rebecca Homkes [00:10:27]:
Mhmm. Yep. How I like to set this up, Dave, is just give ourselves a little bit of a permission here is our brains were not framed to be strategic. Let’s acknowledge that. Right? Is that part of being great at strategy and leading strategy is acknowledging that our brain was formed to not do that. Right? We’re formed to make decisions based on framing and framing does a lot of great things. You know, we will not be able to function at the speed we do as humans without framing. But that leads into these two traps you’ve mentioned.

Rebecca Homkes [00:10:57]:
One is recency bias. The thing that we saw the most recent, we assume will be the biggest, you know, impact going forward or anchoring because something worked at a previous company or in a previous career span, I believe it’s gonna work again. And we’ve gotta fight against those in this changing situation. Say, hey, I need to constantly re reframe so I can make better decisions, which goes back to this key capability that we’re trying to build. How do I make great decisions even though I can’t make great predictions?

Dave Stachowiak [00:11:25]:
When you see leaders who are able to notice that either in real time or shortly thereafter, that recency bias, that anchoring trap that they may fall into, what do you find is helpful to them either on their mindset or the actions they take or maybe a bit of both that helps them to just nudge a little bit more toward stepping back and reconsidering?

Rebecca Homkes [00:11:49]:
Yeah. You know, there’s all of these governance processes you can put in place, and some colleagues of mine wrote a great book on this kind of called red flags. But linking it back to strategy, it’s really having the discipline to tease out the difference between trends, beliefs, and implications is we kind of have this entrepreneurial trap as leaders where we see a trend in the market. Oh, there’s going to be tariffs. There’s going to be a new tax policy. You know, my competitor is making this big move. Another competitor could consolidate it. And we go to implication.

Rebecca Homkes [00:12:21]:
No. Because we’re seeing this, we must do this. And that’s when our framings kick in because they tell us, hey, the last time you saw the situation, this action was the appropriate one. The pause point is articulate your belief. I’m seeing this trend, but what’s my stance? As a leadership team, what’s the belief we’re taking of how this is gonna move and form over the next three to six years? And because if we take that belief, what implication would we make? So there’s this power move in the middle. So it’s not if x do y, it’s we are seeing x and we believe y, which means zed for us. And then once you’ve got your belief, you can one, figure out as a leadership team where we aligned on a belief. You’d be surprised how often you’re not.

Rebecca Homkes [00:13:02]:
And then we can start watching and testing that belief because we’re gonna get feedback on whether or not that belief pans out way before we get feedback on whether our market action does. So that’s a pause point. Don’t jump from I’m seeing something to an implication. I’m seeing x and we believe y, which means zed for us.

Dave Stachowiak [00:13:20]:
Well, and I think this comes back to a distinction you mentioned a moment ago that I mentioned I’d love to loop back on if the distinction between making good decisions even when we cannot make good predictions. Could you play out that distinction a bit, and what’s the implications of thinking about that differently?

Rebecca Homkes [00:13:39]:
So So there’s a couple of different things here, which goes back to the premise that we can’t we can’t predict the future. Right? Though some futurists might disagree with me, but I just take the assumption that I can’t. Is how can I build better decision making capability, which goes into these pieces of constantly reframing, of teasing out the beliefs, knowing that I’ve gotta make decisions on belief sometimes, not always waiting for facts? You know, as a team, there’s a couple of very specific practical things you can do to boost decision making capability. And that’s where you should put your center of gravity. You know, how can we better codify decision making rights? And one thing, Dave, that’s actually quite powerful is just sit down with your team and say, Hey, what makes a great decision here? What makes a great decision? Because in a period of uncertainty, they don’t always match. A great decision can lead to a bad result and a bad decision can lead to a great result because the world changes around us. So you can’t judge the quality of the decision on the result that it gets. And one very powerful thing you can do is say, let’s just align.

Rebecca Homkes [00:14:39]:
And what are the four or five variables that a great decision has to have at this team? And not only are we building capability, we’re actually empowering people to move a lot faster. Right? Because as long as I’m now making decisions within this framework or these variables, I am now empowered to make decisions at speed and scale, which is as ultimate competitive advantage in a world that’s changing quite quickly.

Dave Stachowiak [00:14:59]:
It’s interesting how much of leadership, especially at the top levels, is about being able to make decisions, being able to make quick decisions in some cases. And yet how often either individual leaders or leadership teams don’t necessarily have a stated framework for what’s the process we use to make decisions. And it’s really kind of the outlier when I see an organization or a team that’s really taken the time to think that through.

Rebecca Homkes [00:15:28]:
And and that’s why there’s so very few of these true high performance breakthrough growth organizations. Now if you can if you take the premise for facing a world of uncertainty, then the ultimate competitive advantage, Dave, is something I call aligned speed, right, aligned speed. Because if you think about it, alignment without speed is just frankly too slow to matter. Right? And speed without alignment is chaos. So we need them both, but alignment takes work. And most leaders don’t prioritize the work that it takes to build alignment and build speed yet do these things together. And making good quick decisions aligned with strategy, what’s gonna give you this key key power in the environment, which is this aligned speed.

Dave Stachowiak [00:16:08]:
One of the other directives that you have for us is to stop planning and start preparing. I think people will hear that and think, well, planning, like, that’s so important, so valuable. So many of us plan in organizations. Tell me about the difference between those and why, especially in a moment of survival, the emphasis more on preparation.

Rebecca Homkes [00:16:31]:
Yeah. We’re not throwing planning away. So let’s start there. Right? We are we are still have many parts of the organization where planning is critical. You know, you’re doing an ERP implementation. Let’s build a plan. You know, if we’re doing some other operational assets, build a plan. But when we’re trying to lead growth initiatives, especially in new markets or new situations or we’re in survival mode in a changing environment, then planning is not always the best course of action.

Rebecca Homkes [00:16:56]:
And I’m actually going as far as to wonder and actually suggest, we shouldn’t call them strategic plans. There’s something about the word strategic plan, and that word plan just frames my brain. Everything in this must get done. And I don’t take that notion with a strategy. Stradding is the living, breathing documents. And so we need to make the shift from planning to preparing. And there’s a couple big differences. You know, one is we’re making decisions based on beliefs, not always waiting for facts.

Rebecca Homkes [00:17:23]:
Now that’s not not making decisions based on data. We’re not throwing data away. But in an evolving environment, historical data might not give me a good enough indicator of future trends. Now I’m optimizing or leading to directions, which means I might not have a very firm fixed destination. And also, I need to acknowledge that variables are gonna emerge as I learn rather than having all of my metrics fixed for the first time. And it’s fundamentally about optimizing for robustness, not always waiting for efficiency. And those are the couple of the big difference. Again, thinking about making decisions based on beliefs, heading for a direction on a destination, acknowledge your variables are emerging, which I often say milestones not metrics.

Rebecca Homkes [00:18:03]:
You know, have key milestones that you’re going through in preparation mode even if you can’t set these very precise metrics.

Dave Stachowiak [00:18:09]:
When you see a team that is in that place of thinking about the preparation that you just described, what is it they do to frame the conversation they’re about to have to be able to focus a bit more there versus just writing out the plan?

Rebecca Homkes [00:18:27]:
A couple of big differences. And one of the biggest ones is they start the conversation with their beliefs.

Dave Stachowiak [00:18:33]:
Hmm.

Rebecca Homkes [00:18:34]:
How is the situation evolving? What are the key trends we need to watch for? And what are our beliefs? The temptation in any environment, whether you’re in survive mode or any other mode, is when you’re get to keen together, the first question is, well, what are aspirations? You know, where do we wanna be at the end of the year or the end of three years? And that’s not the first question. The first question is the beliefs. Those beliefs give you the foundation on which to make choices, you know, about how to win and where to play and critically then what to do. So starting with beliefs, not what we want to do or the goals we want to achieve. I see so many of these agendas and that’s question one. I just think, well, I know you’re not gonna get that answer right. And you’re gonna lose a lot of the conversation. Because once we’ve set that aspiration, the conversation turns to, well, how are we gonna get there? Which then again, frames us away from this environment that’s changing around us.

Rebecca Homkes [00:19:26]:
So it seems simple, but it’s actually quite powerful in practice. It’s changing that agenda and starting with your beliefs.

Dave Stachowiak [00:19:32]:
What does a belief sound like for someone who’s never really heard that articulated well in a leadership meeting? When you hear an example of that, what does it sound like?

Rebecca Homkes [00:19:41]:
So let’s separate again. So a trend is something that I’m seeing. So I might be seeing supply chain shocks. I might be seeing consumers making a push more towards brand to live up to their sustainability standards. I might be seeing a trend on slowing inflation. Then my belief would be, do I believe do we believe as a team, supply chain shocks will normalize and this is temporary? Do we believe that supply chain partners will get increasingly fragmented and difficult, and we need to fundamentally relook at how we approach supply chain? Do we believe geopolitical tensions could likely shut down some trading partners, and therefore, we need to start vetting new suppliers more of the near homing, our near friends, rather than farther away, is really teasing out the belief. So these are not religious dogmas. Right? But just think a stance.

Rebecca Homkes [00:20:30]:
And I often like to simplify it, Dave, like this. The trend is something I can see. So think of your eyeballs. You’re seeing this. Mhmm. Your belief is almost like you’re writing yourself a memo to the future. Think I’m saying, hey, 2027, Rebecca. Twenty ’20 ‘5, Rebecca.

Rebecca Homkes [00:20:44]:
Solve this trend evolving in this way. So trends I’m seeing belief. I’m writing myself a memo in the future. Then once you’re aligned on that belief, then I can start making choices. And you kinda want this Goldilocks zone of your belief. You want them clear enough that you can test them, but not so precise you’re trying to predict. So I might have a belief that I believe over the strategy cycle. Let’s take oil.

Rebecca Homkes [00:21:07]:
You know, the midterm floor of the oil price will be around $80 a barrel. That’s a good belief. I’m saying roughly over the next kind of two to three years, this is where we should price the floor versus me saying, I believe oil will be $92 February the first. Now I’m getting a prediction territory, which I don’t need to do right to start making my strategy.

Dave Stachowiak [00:21:25]:
And you could change your mind. Like, part of the Yeah. When I think about the word belief is like, okay. I have a belief in something, but I also am open to, like, changing my mind. If the facts change, if the environment changes, I’m not locked into this quarter’s numbers. Right?

Rebecca Homkes [00:21:39]:
And even cooler than that, I’m gonna get feedback on my belief way before I get feedback on whether or not my strategic priority is tracking. Right? This is the power and this is how we build that agility. Is I’ve set my beliefs. I’ve made choices based on those, but I’m parallel pathing. I’m actively testing my beliefs as I’m executing. And as those beliefs get affirmed, I resource that priority more. As the beliefs are unproven, I might pause. And when the beliefs are proven wrong, I might de prioritize that priority, if not change it completely or pause it and tally learn more.

Rebecca Homkes [00:22:13]:
Beliefs not only give us the power to change, which fundamentally we should change strategies as we’re executing, but beliefs also build agility because now I know what I’m testing and watching. I can bring that feedback into my execution.

Dave Stachowiak [00:22:27]:
Well, speaking of beliefs, one of the other directives you have for us is periods of uncertainty are a great time to grow. And I think about that statement and the word that you’ve chosen, not only for the model, but the title of the book of survive. Like, when we get in survive mode, oftentimes, we are just thinking about that almost entirely. Like, what do we do to save the organization, to save market share, whatever. Right? And it is so hard to see that as an opportunity, and yet it gets back to that both end we’re talking about earlier of it’s a huge opportunity to think about this potentially as a growth zone for us.

Rebecca Homkes [00:23:05]:
It is a massive opportunity, and I I’m not saying that, you know, because I wrote a book about it. I’m saying because empirically, it’s true. It’s incredibly true. Is periods of uncertainty are a great time to grow for hundreds of reasons, but let me give you the most powerful one. Periods of uncertainty are a great time to grow because they’re a great time to learn. Right? In periods of uncertainty, customers are much more clear on what they need. Consumers are much more honest and show you, right, what they’re willing to trade off from. Partners are much more honest and clear about what they need and what they don’t.

Rebecca Homkes [00:23:36]:
New talent is much more critical and clear about what they need from an employer. You know, in frothy markets are very clear markets. We don’t have that honesty and that leaning into learning. Periods of uncertainty are a great time to grow because they are the absolute best time to learn. These critical learning loops are shortened and accelerated. In organizations that lean in and say, I’m not gonna quote unquote wait for this to pass. Right? I’m gonna lean into this uncertainty, learn faster than others. And Dave, I’ll give you the four words that make the biggest difference.

Rebecca Homkes [00:24:07]:
Learn faster, grow faster. Organizations that learn faster are organizations that grow faster.

Dave Stachowiak [00:24:12]:
I had never really thought about that distinction that when you’re in that survival mode, like, people have a tendency just to be more honest and upfront about all kinds of things. And how interesting, like, as an opportunity, thinking of that, like, back to that, how do you use utilize this as a time to grow? You don’t get that a lot of the time, and what an opportunity that is.

Rebecca Homkes [00:24:34]:
To not only build your organization’s learning capability, but to lean and learn from the market. Absolutely.

Dave Stachowiak [00:24:39]:
I think one of the things that’s helpful a lot of times is think of, like, okay. What? Okay. I’m gonna try to stop making as clear predictions, but what can I do to substitute that instead? And you have two really critical questions that are helpful instead of trying to make predictions. The two questions, what could break us and what could make us? What’s so significant about those two?

Rebecca Homkes [00:25:01]:
Yes. Well, one, again, we’re gonna go back from predicting the future. But if you have conversations with leaders about possible future scenarios, which again could be anything from changing regulation to changing administrations, to tariff supply chain, etcetera, they almost always go into what we need to protect, what we need to hold on to this protectionist mindset is very real. And so I changed the question from what could happen because I can’t answer that. Right? Because that’s prediction territory to what could make us or what could break us. And I call these kickers and killers. And the powerful thing is, and you can just even use something like tariffs as an example, what would really break us? What level of tariffs and where would actually break the business model? And one, you realize you have much fewer kickers, sorry, much fewer killers than you thought. But the kickers is a much more powerful part of this, Dave, and I’ll tell you why.

Rebecca Homkes [00:25:57]:
Because when I’m with a team and I say, okay, give me 10 killers based on these couple of trends. They can usually rattle off 10 or 15 within a few minutes. But then if we say, give me 10 or 15 kickers, like big outsize opportunities, it takes an hour, if not more. And it’s just so startling to me time and time to say, wow, we really have not trained ourselves our work to build our capability about identifying opportunities from uncertainty. We are so geared into the governance risk management protectionist mode, and it’s so powerful. And one of the reasons is powerful is that when you actually start brainstorming these kickers, half of them are just quick wins. Things we could start doing right now. We’ve just never given ourselves a time to put some of these things on the table.

Rebecca Homkes [00:26:42]:
So it’s one of my favorite conversations and I’ll repeat. When things are changing, don’t spend any more time saying what could happen. Just as a team say, what could make us and what could break us. But promise me you’ll spend three times longer on the what could make us because that’s where it needs the time.

Dave Stachowiak [00:26:56]:
And it gets right back to that statement. Periods of uncertainty are a great time to grow.

Rebecca Homkes [00:27:00]:
Absolutely best time to grow.

Dave Stachowiak [00:27:02]:
Yeah. Yeah. You know, it’s really it’s really interesting, like, thinking about this model that you’ve developed through your work and research. And and as you talk about in the book, part of this was inspired by the pandemic, of course, the huge survival mode that everyone went into literally overnight. Right? And thinking through and starting to frame, like, okay, what did organizations do well through that? You’ve been working on this now for four or five years, the book coming together, the model. Speaking of beliefs, I’m curious, as you’ve worked with teams, helped organizations to not only survive, but thrive, what, if anything, have you changed your mind on?

Rebecca Homkes [00:27:42]:
A couple of things. One less of a change in mind and more realize the power is that middle word of the reset. Right? Is that we tend to flip between the two. Don’t just survive, thrive. You know, if you wanna thrive, you’ve gotta survive. But what’s become absolutely clear to me, not just the last five since pandemic, but, you know, the last 15 or so. We’ve got so many other big global events from wars to Brexit, etcetera. Is the reset is the power move.

Rebecca Homkes [00:28:11]:
Right? You can go through all the survival steps well, but if you’re not prepared to really reset, challenge all the fundamental assumptions and change, like thrive is not there. That’s been a big one. And the second is growth is a capability. It doesn’t just happen. I didn’t use to know it sounds, you know, it’s like, oh, used to think, but I just kind of assumed when I started, hey, if you you go through these pieces, you do this right. Like, you’ll you’ll you’ll get into this thrive mode. Wow. Dave is growth of capability, And you’ve gotta actively commit as a leadership team.

Rebecca Homkes [00:28:44]:
I’m actually not gonna do what I need to do as an organization to build growth. I need to invest in building the capability of my leadership team that they can lead growth. And that’s a pretty heavy lift too that a lot of executives aren’t either prepared to make or don’t realize that they need to make. We have this notion, just give it to smart people and they’ll get it done. That’s not happening out there. So you’ve really got to invest in this capability. And that has become clear and clear to me over these past couple of years. Almost kind of just like getting hit by that brick wall.

Rebecca Homkes [00:29:14]:
You know, it’s like, wow. Okay. Organizations who aren’t willing to do this, they will not get in and let alone stay in this thrive mode.

Dave Stachowiak [00:29:20]:
Rebecca Homkes is the author of Survive, Reset, Thrive: Leading Breakthrough Growth Strategy in Volatile Times. Rebecca, thank you so much for your work.

Rebecca Homkes [00:29:29]:
No. Thank you so much for having me. Love the conversation.

Dave Stachowiak [00:29:38]:
If this conversation was helpful to you, three related episodes I’d recommend. One of them is episode four ninety nine, the way to make better decisions. Annie Duke was my guest on that episode. And we talked about the habit that a lot of us tend to do in decision making and in analyzing our decisions that she calls resulting. Resulting is the fallacy that if we got a good result, it means we made a good decision. She reminds us and cautions us that just because you had a good result doesn’t mean you made a good decision. And the opposite’s true too. Just because it was a bad outcome or bad result, doesn’t mean you made a bad decision.

Dave Stachowiak [00:30:17]:
In that conversation, we talk about how to actually make better decisions more broadly so that you do, by and large, have better results over time. Episode four ninety nine for that. Also recommended episode six forty four. Help your team embrace growth mindset. Eduardo Briceño was my guest on that episode. We talked about the importance of staying in a learning mode as an organization. Yes. We do need to perform.

Dave Stachowiak [00:30:40]:
In fact, most of the time, we should probably be there. We also need to be in learning mode at least part of the time. He talks in that conversation about how do we actually make that shift, how much time to spend there, ways to do that tactically, so much more. Episode six forty four for that. And then finally, I recommend episode seven zero one, how to handle high pressure situations. Dan Dowrkis was my guest on that episode. I referenced this episode recently as well too. Emergency room doctor, wonderful training, and lessons for not only physicians, but all of us in tough situations, high stress, life and death.

Dave Stachowiak [00:31:17]:
How to actually handle those situations and to stay emotionally sound so your emotions, the moment doesn’t freeze you down, doesn’t take over. So many wonderful reminders from him in that conversation that, of course, come right back into the survival mode conversation we had today. That’s episode seven zero one. All of those episodes, you can find on the coachingforleaders.com website. And if you have not set up your free membership, I’m inviting you to do so today. Go over to coachingforleaders.com, Set up your free membership. When you do, you’re gonna get access to a whole suite of resources inside the free membership, including the ability to search episodes by topic. And as one of our members reminded me recently, also my own personal library.

Dave Stachowiak [00:31:59]:
If you already have your free membership set up and say you’re looking for a resource on decision making as we talked a bit about today, go ahead and log in at coachingforleaders.com. Go over to the sidebar. You’ll see there’s a an icon that says Dave’s library. If you click on that, as I’m doing right now, and you’ll come up to a page with a whole page full of hashtags organized by topic. I’m clicking on the one right now that says decision making to see what’s in here in the library. And I have databased in here a article from Seth Godin, an episode from my friend, Tom Henschel, at the Look of Sound of Leadership podcast. There’s a resource here from Patrick Lencioni, a little bit more from Annie Duke. There’s a article from Harvard Business Review and New York Times in here, a few more HBR articles.

Dave Stachowiak [00:32:45]:
A lot of resources just on this topic. I have database thousands of articles, podcasts, YouTube videos over the years that I think are gonna be helpful to you anytime I find something. I put it in this database, and it’s all freely accessible for you. All you need to do is just set up your free membership at coachingforleaders.com. Click on Dave’s library. You’re gonna find a ton more that you’re looking for right now. And one of the other things that comes up in conversations about survival mode is inevitably accountability, holding people accountable for results. You all often hear that when organizations are in a time of struggle that we need to have the results and and have accountability.

Dave Stachowiak [00:33:24]:
Yes. Of course. Accountability is an important principle that all of us as leaders need to bring into our work regularly. The key question though is the how and the timing. And in a recent journal entry, I talked about a time when accountability should come last, particularly when we’re thinking about organizational change. I explored that in detail, not just the principle of accountability, but more importantly, when is accountability right, and what is the time that it comes to last? If you’d like to receive those journal entries from me every single week, it is part of Coaching for Leaders plus. To find out more, go over to coachingforleaders.plus, Receiving my weekly journal entries right to your inbox is one of the major benefits of coaching for leaders plus. I hope you’ll check it out if it’d be helpful to you.

Dave Stachowiak [00:34:12]:
Coaching for leaders is edited by Andrew Kroger. Production support is provided by Sierra Priest. Next Monday, I’m glad to welcome Melody Wilding to the show. We are gonna be having a conversation on how to create more visibility for your work. Join me for that conversation with Melody. Have a great week, and see you back on Monday.