How To Get Things Done, Part 1

Want to know how to get things done three to eight times faster and not lose the engagement of your people?

Are you a Mover?  Find out here: https://thepeoplecatalysts.com/who-do-assessment-welcome/

Listen to the podcast here:

Read Along as Karla and Eileen discuss Building Resiliency

Karla Nelson:  Want to know how to get things done three to eight times faster and not lose the engagement of your people? Join Alan Fahden and I in the People Catalysts podcast, part one of Getting Things Done. And welcome to the People Catalyst podcast co-host Alan Fahden.

Allen Fahden:  Hello, Karla.

Karla Nelson:  How are you doing today?

Allen Fahden:  Life is good. Happy, happy. Happy to be here. Happy to be here.

Karla Nelson:  Yes. I’m so excited about what we’re going to talk about on the podcast today. Something very near and dear to my heart. Being a mover within our methodology. And it’s how to get things done in your organization to be three to eight times more effective.

Allen Fahden:  And I’m going to oversimplify this. There’s only one thing you have to do. Find the movers in order to get things done.

Allen Fahden:  Find the movers. If you don’t do that first, you’re already behind the eight ball.

Karla Nelson:  Yeah. And for the purpose of today’s podcast, we’re specifically going to discuss how to find and talk to the movers when you’re just looking to get things done, because there’s so many different computations that you can apply movers when regardless if you’re trying to get it done in your organization, with your team, with your clients, with your promotors. So specifically, what we’re going to talk about today is why this this strength is necessary with the Mover. So if you’re a Shaker, a Prover, or a Maker and you still want to get things done three to eight times faster and without the drama, well, I don’t think we’re definitely less than a hundred percent of the typical drama. You have to be able to find the movers and locate them regardless if you’re working with your team, your clients or your promoters.

And so we’re going to talk today a little bit about, Allen, you could started off here is how do you find the movers? What are the clues that you can use in lieu of taking the assessment that we’ve created, some of the things that you can do to give you all the clues so that you can identify these movers and facilitate the process in order to get things done.

Allen Fahden:  And that’s always a good one, because you can be very accurate by taking the assessment. Obviously, you can’t just walk around with assessments and hand them to people all the time so we can start out with what we call the magic question.

Now that is, if you’re dealing with somebody in your organization, you’re dealing with somebody, even a client or whatever. If things were to turn out ideally with our time today, what would that look like? OK, it’s a great question to ask for a variety of reasons.

In this particular case, look at the person and see if they struggle with that question. A mover is not going to struggle with that question at all. They’re going to go bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, and they’re going to tell you immediately what they want to do.

And if they are a mover, let them lead the way, make the decisions, run the show. You’re their you’re their servant, and it will serve you best to be their servant. So I’ll give you a I’ll give you an idea of how you Locata a mover.

Where do you even find your suspect? I was speaking at a meeting a few years ago, and there were just way too many people there. The economy was down. It was in an area where people didn’t go to meetings like this, yet they all paid to go to a two day conference.

And I kept saying, why are you here? What are you doing here? And the bill kept giving me the same answer. Three words they said, Karla brought me. Yeah. And I said, OK, OK, who is Karla and where do I find her?

A couple of them pointed right over there. And I said, thank you very much. Goodbye. And I made a beeline for Karla, and that’s how I met Karla. If you have somebody who really gets things done and I mean like crazy, get things done.

That’s who you want as your prime.

Karla Nelson:  Yeah. Yeah, that’s funny. That’s great.

Allen Fahden:  That’s not the how. It’s the Who.

Karla Nelson:  Yeah. Finding the appropriate person for sure. And the Mover, again, we need everybody, just not at the same time.

And the mover facilitates and picks up ideas and actually. Do you want to talk just a little bit about that before we get into the next part? But actually, before we go there, I want to bring up another thing about Movers, since I am an uber Mover.

I think you just came up with that little cliche there earlier, Allen. A Mover… But one of the things is make sure when you go to them, that you bring them several ideas, let them know the challenge. Here’s some ideas.

Which one is the best idea and or priority? Because, again, it’ll be very similar. The answer very quickly. Or immediately say, I know this person, that I can go to within the network, get a little bit more data and then get back to you, because it’s just a very natural response to pick the right idea or the best idea or set of ideas and then prioritize. They don’t struggle with this. And so now that we’ve talked a little bit about finding the mover. Let’s talk a little bit about how to communicate with them regardless if they’re on your team, client or promoter.

So after you find the mover, the whole purpose here is to engage their support and connection right with the end result of capturing a bigger share of their attention. And I know a few quick ones that really speak to me as a mover is I really don’t want to waste time.

I want to get to the gist. I want you to use bullet points. It’s a rapid type of communication all this long sales copy. I have never once read all of that stuff. Right. If I get an email and if it has 15 bullet points, that’s no more bullet points.

OK, that’s not bullet points any longer. It’s too much information in data. Right. So and I know one of the other things, Allen, we talked about just earlier this week is in facilitating some videos. Right. Yep. And tell them how long this is going to be.

Allen Fahden:  Yeah, that’s one of the first thing the mover wants to know is because they’re very all about their own time and they and they want to make sure they’re using it as effectively as possible. So, for example, if you’re going to show a video to a mover, tell them in advance how long it’s going to take.

This is going to take one minute and 30 seconds. Then you can have an informed, informed idea as how you’re going to how you’re going to spend your time. And one of the reasons is that this is this is not a personality thing we’re talking about.

This is Movers love relational connections. It’s like, yeah, I love everybody on my team, but it’s really I need my team to get things done. You have to be on good terms with your team in order to do that.

And you have to know enough about them to engage them in the right work at the right time. Or and this is specifically to a mover. And this is another way you find the mover. They’re immediately going to call somebody in their network in order to move the project ahead.

It’s like, hey, we can’t get this done. Don’t worry. I got a person over here and I’m going to call these people and so on. Those are the people who are going to do that for you.

Karla Nelson:  Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And then also in that communication. Right. Be concise. Get to the gist. Use the bullet points. And then I love what you said earlier, Allen, kind of step out of the step out of the way. Right. Allow them to be the facilitator and the natural facilitator.

And I think we can review a little bit now about the inbox and outbox so that they understand, yes, we need everybody. But why is it that you find the Mover? And how do you set up the inbox and outbox for both the Mover, Shaker, Prover and Maker?

You want to talk about that a little bit?

Allen Fahden:  Yeah. And this is critical. When you communicate with somebody, if they’re giving you an assignment. Then you want to make sure that your inbox lines up with their outbox. And conversely, if you’re giving them some information, you want to make sure your outbox lines up with their inbox.

The inbox for a Mover is an idea. So you don’t have to be…it’s the one person on earth you do not have to be afraid to tell five, six, seven ideas, too, because they’re going to want to hear them all and then immediately go, bang, bang, bang, bang, like that.

Quickly decide which is the one. I’ve been doing this for twenty five years. And Movers usually take under a minute to decide what the best idea is out of 60, 70 ideas if they already know what they are.

They know. They just know in their gut. So this is very important. And so when you give the group of ideas to a mover, they immediately select the right one. But at the same time, they’re parallel processing. They’re already planning the launch and converting that idea into a plan.

And the plan is the outbox for the mover. Now, Shakers who are giving them the ideas love this because once they their idea gets converted into a plan that has a very good chance of getting implemented. So if you’re stuck with the Mover, actually with anybody, start paying attention to the inbox and outbox to the person, because that’s the way you want to connect with them. If you ignore your own in your own in and box while you’re doing it at your own peril, end up with stuff you don’t want to be doing.

Karla Nelson:  As you talk about this seriously. Those that don’t understand the process, I won’t even go to a meeting unless they’ve been briefed on the process, because this is why meetings are incredibly awful. I always left one slide. We do, Allen, 1:00, 2:00, 3:00, three o’clock.

And you’re sitting there trying to process this idea and figure out what you’re going to do and how to move forward. And so I want to break down this really because there’s two separate ways you utilize the process.

You find the mover, but then it’s what is the challenge before you choose the idea or in the concept stage where you’re brainstorming and identifying these are the 50 things we could do. And then later, we’ll just barely touch on we probably won’t have too much time to talk about it today.

We’ll have to do that in a another podcast. But then how do you utilize the process during the implementation aspect of it? So one of the things that makes meeting so awful and not understanding this process is, is that when people don’t stay in their lane, when they go into a meeting and we identify or it’s a team that already understands the process, and then it’s like you’ve explained, this is a Shaker and you explain, we’re shaking at this time. You explain you know, here’s our Movers and you explain when we’re picking, right, ideas or a set of ideas and combining them.

You explain who a Prover is and then you can even ask in the in the idea phase to have the Makers leave the room, because the likelihood they’re going to say anything is not likely. And they’ve got some checklists to go eat for breakfast on their on their desk.

Is that. But when you don’t stay in that lane, one of the things that we’ve learned over the years is you have to find that agreement, but then literally … it… all the time, even with people that are in clients that have understood this process for a long time, we often have to have people physically leave the room now. The beauty of this is, is that if you’ve got some really great Shakers on your team, the reason why they have such a hard time with this is because they’re leaning towards their natural strength.

Right. But when we have to literally have people leave the room, I don’t know how many times this happened to me in several trainings that we’ve done together, but also in our individual trainings trying to keep people in their own lane.

And as I always say, sometimes you just can’t commingle the animals. It’s just it’s maddening. And so you really have to have whoever is facilitating the meeting to understand that and have the agreement with the team, or else it just stifles the ability to get all the ideas out, to pick the idea instead of ideas, to figure out all the things that could go wrong and utilize that process over and over again. You could do something in 15 minutes that never would get done in the course of two hours. And that is definitely a big challenge.

After you find the movie where you’re working an idea process, say, for instance, if you’re with your team and you’re creating the marketing strategy and you know, the old way is I always like, here’s a great idea, a bang idea, bang, idea, bang.

Right. And it’s and you end up with nothing and then you walk away and the culture ends up happening. “Sit quiet, don’t make any sudden moves. And hopefully this meeting will be over soon.” Yeah. What’s one of your your frustrations with facilitating the facilitating the meeting?

Allen Fahden:  Well, I think time is a is a real big one, because what happens with people is they get so excited about the content. And this is another way people don’t use their emotional intelligence. They go, “ooh, I got an idea, I get an idea,” and they wind up rushing the process.

Or if they if a Prover raises an objection to an idea, they might jump right back and say, “yeah, but I’ve got I’ve got six solutions to my own objection.” And then what happens is they either slow down the process, they rush it by jumping ahead or they completely disrupt it and every strength disrupts the meeting in a different way. For example, Cook, we had three, three trainings and a Shaker, Prover, and Maker in the room, and I call it from a movie “leading the unexamined life.” And so we’re we’re challenging people on an example when whenever whoever is hiring you doesn’t respect the agreement.

OK, that is something that really irritates me and it’s actually about CEOs.

Karla Nelson:  Oh My God.

Allen Fahden:  The world is like I’m paying you. So, you know. You know, forget your process. I’m talking now. And and they can kill the energy of the meeting, they will shut up the people who had the right way to do things and it gets down to this one expert things and and they completely kill the energy of the meeting.

Oh, my gosh. That’s so true. And I can even just go out as you talk about it. Well, they’ll even invite other people again in authority authority positions who also haven’t made the agreement.

And, you know, it’s almost like a team has to say that’s fine. But if you want to come in here, you’ve got to live by our our set of agreements. Otherwise, none of this is going to work. Yeah.

Karla Nelson:  One of the stories I love is the thirty six to thirty seven story. You got to share that one because it’s so true and it and it plays out so frequently. I know you said earlier where challenge people are now living the unexamined life.

And really what we’re trying to do here with people Catalysts is challenge on the way that all the work has been done for one percent of the population. But the story you’re about to share here, it’s exactly the same in every stinking meeting that nothing gets accomplished.

And this is a, you know, very well named or well-known company. And but it’s the same I don’t care if it’s a 50-person organization, a solopreneur that’s meeting with their potential clients. It doesn’t…You can apply this contextually to just about every meeting when you’re trying to get an idea.

Allen Fahden:  So this company hires me and says, I just we just want you to sit in a brainstorming meeting. We’re trying to come up with a disruptive new innovation in our industry. And I just want you to observe the process and give us a report at the end.

And so I sat through one of the worst meetings I have ever been in. I mean, just…

Karla Nelson:  The bigger the company, the worse the meeting.

Allen Fahden:  Oh, my God. You know, I wanted to kill myself about halfway through just to get out of the meeting.

Karla Nelson:  I’m glad you got to go to that one and not me.

Yeah. Really? It’s so, the end of the meeting in in typical obedient fashion. I gave them a report. They said, well, what do you what do you think?

What’s your report? And I said, well, I’ll write this up for you, but here’s my report. Thirty seven to thirty six. And there was silence just like that. What are you talking about? I said thirty seven to thirty six

You were observing the meeting, too, weren’t you? What does that even mean? And I said, well, sure.

Karla Nelson:  Shortest report ever.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You want me to write that up in triplicate? So there were thirty seven ideas launched in that meeting. And thirty six of them were shot down. And you can imagine the first two or three ideas there was kind of inspired and active and engaging debate and so forth. And about the last 15 minutes of the meeting was “what can we do to get ourselves out of this room?”

And so the thirty seventh idea actually was agreed upon, which was I’m, “sure. We’ll do anything just end this meeting, please.” And so that’s that’s basically what happened. And if you if you shoot down thirty six ideas, can you imagine the thirty seventh one that everybody can agree upon?

Karla Nelson:  Yeah, that’s called “Get Me Out of this room. I don’t care what we choose.” But you know, Allen, what happens to me as a mover, since we’re talking about how to get things done and you have to find the movers.

I completely disengage because it’s chaos. It’s frustrating, you know, that nothing’s going to get done. The energy in the room is so low and everybody’s just talking over each other and not not utilizing the ability to use that time.

And as I said earlier, Movers don’t want you to waste their time. And I know that there’s a great Gallup poll on this. That… and what a big problem we have full trainers just on disengagement right? Not only corporate disengagement.

But this particular Gallup poll was talking about your team engagement and nine percent of your team is working for you. Seventy nine percent is agnostic or is indifferent. And 12 percent are actively working against you.

Allen Fahden:  That must be fun to sign those paychecks.

Karla Nelson:  Oh, my gosh. No kidding. And so I want to go back. You had mentioned how everybody disrupts the process based off of just their natural strength. Can you go back to that just for a second to talk about specifically because you were kind of utilizing the inbox and outbox, too, but also just specifically saying how each how each of them. Well, actually, I’ll take that because I want you to I actually want you to tell a different story at the end of this one. So but this I’ll just get to the gist of each of them.

Shakers disrupt the process because they keep on bringing up new ideas or they are gaming for just their idea. Movers want to tell you the answer and don’t want to take the patience to allow the team to develop it together so they all have their thumbprint on it.

Provers kill the ideas because they feel like there’s too much wrong with it. And then Makers who shouldn’t be in the initial, we were talking about earlier, concept phase. They disrupt the process. And there’s two really good stories I love about this.

But this one I’ll let you take, Allen, because it’s just it’s a great way where a Maker they opened up and actually told you the truth. Yeah. Yeah. Is the truth. Right.

Allen Fahden:  Oh, yeah. And the company, the company will go unnamed.

But remember this and it’s OK to not have a maker in the meeting. And in fact, if you ask most makers, they will say they prefer not to be in the meeting that they initially.

Karla Nelson:  We always ask that question and they raise their hand immediately.

Who just doesn’t want to be in the room when you get a nice little chuckle with it as well.

Allen Fahden:  So so to them, everything this the detail work they do is the most important thing. They don’t want anything messing with that.

And so they have this beautiful game that they play and they just say, “I don’t get it.” Or “What you I’m really not sure about what, what, what?” And then so what you do is you explain it to them, right.

And then they. This one guy was kind of doing a ha ha laugh. And then he said, you know why we do that? Because all the time you take explaining it to us, it’s time that you’re not running off and implementing that crazy idea.

We don’t want you to run off and implement that crazy idea. It’s just going to mess up later on. So, “I don’t get it,” is there is there a way of gaming the whole thing? So beware of that.

Karla Nelson:  Yeah, I love it. I just love it when people open up and tell the truth about you.

Allen Fahden:  Right. A whitle-blower there.

Karla Nelson:  Yes. Yeah. That’s funny. And so we talked about the biggest challenge with the team in the meeting phase. Right. And I don’t want to talk too much about the implementation phase or individual phase. Because that obviously is a whole topic in of itself, and they’re actually quite different, right. Facilitating that, the big picture. Fifty thousand foot view and all of that process is completely different than when you shift gears and you move to the implementation stage. And I just want to bring that up, because the process is so different, even if someone understands this is how we facilitate it in one stage. It shifts gears and you have to manage it completely different on the other side.

And so I just wanted to have you explain a little bit about the the nuances and the differences of both of those, Allen.

Karla Nelson:  Yeah. So once you have your marching orders, everything shifts. Now, you’ve been working in an idea phase.

What are we going to do? What’s wrong with it? How can we bulletproofed the idea? What’s the plan for going ahead and really, really cementing things down? This is a very Democratic meeting and it’s a it’s inclusive. You listen to everybody’s ideas.

And then with the with the process they…

Karla Nelson:  As long as they stay in their own lane as long as you stand there and be a part of the process.

And let me be clear about that, too. If any of the if that’s confusing for any of you being in your own lane, it just means if you’re a shaker, then you contribute ideas. But you don’t critique the ideas. You don’t pick ideas. You do your strength, which is contributing ideas, solving problems. That’s that’s staying in your own lane. Now, let’s say you get to a point where you’ve got a bulletproof idea, you’re ready to move.

Boom. Everything flips. Everything shifts. You move from inclusive to command and control it. Now you’re back to being like a like a nineteen fifties corporation that did the same thing over and over again and just tried for efficiency, because you want to get this implementation done as flawlessly and as quickly as you can, which means people really stay in their lane. And and it’s it’s very, very different because it’s like, what can we do to move it ahead and get it done? And this works very well until somebody runs into an unforeseen problem. And, of course, they’re only going to be a thousand unforeseen problems.

What do you do? Well, we’ll get into that in more detail in our next podcast, because there are some very specific remedies. But think about this. The difference is, instead of working fifty thousand feet up in the air where you can’t see any detail, but you can see the big picture? Now you’re working 50 feet in the air. Now you’re flying under the radar. Everything is about details. It’s about efficiency and. When you have a big mountain or a roadblock that comes up, well, then you got to go back into the fifty five thousand feet up mode, but do it quickly and dispatch the problem and handle handle it by traditional means. This, too,

Karla Nelson:  And balancing those two is really unique thing. Oh, my gosh. Yes, it is. They’re so different in the same process. Completely different application. And it’s a huge change for most people. And it’s like, what? What phase are we in now?

What phase where we are now? Part of this is a set of agreements. We will get into that next time. But yeah, a very different agreement. Right. The agreement that you have to set in the idea phase is the fact that, as we were saying, don’t commingle animals. Stay in your own lane when it’s time to shake you shake when it’s time to pick the idea, a set of ideas. That’s what happens. Nobody at when it’s time to prove you’re proving and picking holes, but they can’t comingle you.

They literally have to sit there with their mouth closed because it’s you know, that’s the source of every crazy meeting, right? Idea, bang, idea, bang, idea, bang. And then everybody’s so tired, you just roll it out. But the agreement that you keep on the implementation side is very different as well.

Allen Fahden:  Very different. And we will spell those out for you. I think we got a phase two coming on this podcast where you know how to how to get things done, phase two. Well, we will definitely set a time and a date for that.

Karla Nelson:  Always great having you on the podcast. Likewise. Great being here. All right. See you on phase two.