Competitive Advantage Part 1

How do you gain a competitive advantage? In this episode Karla Nelson and Allen Fahden discuss how Johari’s Window fits into how your company and team can gain an advantage over your competitors.

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Read Along as Karla and Allen discuss How You Can Achieve A Competitive Advantage

Karla Nelson: Welcome to the People Catalyst Podcast, Mr. Allen Fahden.

Allen Fahden: Hello, Karla.

Karla Nelson: Good evening, kind sir. How are you?

Allen Fahden: I’m doing very well, and I’m just happy that we’re recording another podcast because this opens a lot of doors if you look through a window.

Karla Nelson: Oh, I love it. Yeah, we’re going to be talking about Johari’s window, right?

Allen Fahden: Yeah.

Karla Nelson: Most people are looking for love in all the wrong places, but we could actually say looking for competitive advantage in all the wrong places. We’ve quoted Peter Drucker many times on this podcast where he said, “Innovation is easy. Just put people in teams.” The problem is, nobody knows how except for us.

Allen Fahden: Us and Joe and Harry.

Karla Nelson: And Joe and Harry.

Allen Fahden: That’s right.

Karla Nelson: This is hilarious. So, we actually did the research on this podcast, and Allen found out that Joe and Harry are really a thing for Johari.

Allen Fahden: Johari, yeah. It’s a guy named Joe something and then another guy named Harrington. They’re long gone by now, but they made a great contribution. Probably what we want to do here is get a really simple way to understand this and then see if we can show you where some opportunities are that you may not realize.

Karla Nelson: Yes, I love it because there’s a certain piece of Johari’s window that is obvious, but then there’s also pieces that we just dare to go. So, we’re going to make this the first part of the two-part series, simply because if we jumped all the way into Johari’s window it would be a little bit… It’s easier to understand if you’re going to look at certain pieces or in two pieces, because again, a window, it’s four parts, right?

We’re going to look at two pieces of the window, and the next series we’re going to look at the other pieces. So, why don’t you walk us through a little bit of the explanation of Johari’s window, Allen? Because, you’re so much better than I am at this because I just jump forward. I’m like, “Come on. It’s obvious, right?” as a mover.

Allen Fahden: Yes, and as a shaker, I know that nothing’s ever obvious because I’ve played in that realm too much.

Karla Nelson: Nothing’s ever obvious. Of course, with a shaker that would make total sense.

Allen Fahden: We’re going to do a visual with the verbal here. So, it’s going to get a little confusing. So, I’m going to try as hard as I can to be extremely clear about this. But imagine a window pane, some people call it a quadrant. So, there are four areas. The lower left, and this is going to sound pretty funny, is what we know that we know, and most people play there. I know this, and I know that I know it. So, I’ve gotten my whole body of knowledge and I can access it very comfortable, and that’s who I am, and that’s where I play most of the time.

Then, however, if we want to grow or if we get some new areas opened up to us who we want to stretch a little bit, we go into the other reasonably comfortable area, which is we go from what we know we know to what we know that we don’t know.

Karla Nelson: Yeah.

Allen Fahden: But notice in both cases we know about this. This is all familiar. We’re not being surprised about ourselves. It’s sort of like we’re operating like-

Karla Nelson: You’re consciously aware, right? Consciously aware.

Allen Fahden: Yeah, we know ourselves completely. There’s stuff I know, stuff I don’t know. I know what it is. Thank you very much, we’re done. But, we’re not done. So what they do, and by the way, those are the two southern quadrants. The southwest on the left and the southeast on the right. Southwest and left is what we know we know, and then southeast and on the right of the bottom is what we know we don’t know.

So, that’s the comfort area, and that’s true really what we’re going to be talking about. But, there are a couple of other parts that you ought to know about, and that’s where competitive advantage can lie. Because if we just deal in what we know we know and what we know that we don’t know, everybody’s thinking is going to be pretty much the same and they’re all going to be in the same box.

If you ever wonder why it is you develop something and somebody else already has already done it at the same time, we’re all focused on the same stuff. So, the opportunity, according to Joe and Mr. Harrington, are to move up into the upper two quadrants. So the northeast, the upper right is where we usually go is what we don’t know that we don’t know. That’s mysterious area.

It’s like, “Oh my God, I never even realized that that was out there.” So, maybe somebody will come with the new technology, artificial intelligence or whatever. So now, you’re thinking, “Oh, I need to go there. I need to learn this” to try to get competitive advantage, and maybe if I don’t learn it I’m left behind. So, that’s where we go. It’s out of our comfort zone and it’s all new. That’s great, but it’s still not the real opportunity area because everybody’s going to be learning this new thing.

Here’s a big key. If you’ve got a lot of knowledge rolling around inside, the place for the big breakthrough’s going to often be what we don’t know that we already know.

Karla Nelson: Yes, which is the top left, right?

Allen Fahden: Top left.

Karla Nelson: So, the western.

Allen Fahden: It’s almost humor.

Karla Nelson: Yes.

Allen Fahden: It’s like, “That’s absurd. What do you mean we don’t know that we already know this?” Well, let’s just say it another way. I forgot I knew it, or I never thought about it in this context before. What happens is that move up from the southeast on the right side to the Northeast on the right side top, what we don’t know that we don’t know gets us into a new context that introduces a new context.

What can often happen is out of that context, you can realize, “Wait a minute, I already know a lot about this,” because once we put this and this and this into place, well then it’s just a matter on implementation of doing things I already know, or I’ve worked in an area close to that, or I not have knowledge of the principles that I’m applying to any of this, this new thing.

Karla Nelson: Yes, because when we don’t know something that we don’t know, it’s challenging, right?

Allen Fahden: Yes, yeah.

Karla Nelson: In this space of Johari’s windows, what we don’t know that we know is actually easy. Typically, there’s your peak work. So in part two of this series we’re going to get into the top half of Johari’s window. For this podcast we’re going to talk about, because it’s really useful to have all four, right, working for you.

Allen Fahden: Absolutely. Because, what we don’t know that we don’t know opens up the new context. Once you got that new context, it’s a gateway. You open up the next door, and it’s what we don’t know that we know. It’s like, “Oh, I’m a lot smarter than I thought.”

Karla Nelson: You apply it in that context.

Allen Fahden: Yeah, I’m a lot more competent than I thought. That’s a big aha moment for people. It’s like, “Wait a minute, I’m a great value here. I got a lot to offer.”

Karla Nelson: Yes.

Allen Fahden: That’s inspiring, that’s energizing, and that’s what leads to real innovation.

Karla Nelson: Oh, that’s super cool, by the way, because really that is at the crux of the Hoodoo method. Because, it doesn’t matter what you’re already doing, but if you don’t know the method actually exist and you apply it to what you’re already doing, right, that’s really lives in what we don’t know we know.

Allen Fahden: Yeah.

Karla Nelson: Because, you know it really well. Let’s just put gasoline and a match on it. Of course, we’re jumping into part two of the series.

Allen Fahden: Yes.

Karla Nelson: Because, that’s where we want to live, which is super cool. So, we will get into that, but what you tapped on there, Allen, in what we often call fool’s gold innovation, right? So, the CEO declares, I think in the last webinar we did, it was like almost 80% CEOs say that innovation is on the top of their list for 2020, right?

Allen Fahden: Yes.

Karla Nelson: So, you can declare that innovation is on the top of your list, but the challenges is that there’s two different ways that innovation typically runs, is, number one, kill an idea because it wasn’t the CEO’s idea. Again, look at that from a mover, shaker, prover maker aspect, right? You got to shaker CEO. If it’s not their idea, that’s 35% of the population, they’re going to kill it. Prover, there’s too much wrong with it, 25% of the population, they’re going to kill it, right?

A maker’s probably not going to be a CEO, but the 15% of the population that says yes to an idea is a mover. So, first of all, either you’re going to kill the idea or you’re going to pick your idea or potentially run with a bad idea if you don’t have a process by which you’re deciding what you’re going to do, ideation, or how are you going to do it, implementation.

So either way, if you don’t have a process, you’re going to be out of balance. How do you get a hundred percent buy-in from the team because they’re the people on the ground, they’re the boots on the ground getting it done?

Allen Fahden: Yep, absolutely. So, it’s a really kind of a fail this way or fail that way situation. Going back to Johari’s window, that’s all in the realm of what we know we know, and what we know that we don’t know. It’s, “Oh yeah, I don’t know why it always comes out like this. We either kill a good idea or we run with a bad idea and we get burned that way,” but that’s what comes from living in those two comfortable windows: what we know we know, and what we know that we don’t know.

Karla Nelson: Yes, definitely. I think you’ve got a really the interesting story. Remember in Singapore?

Allen Fahden: Oh yeah, we were dealing with that a long time ago in Singapore. Several of us got together and sort of started a movement and we weren’t sure about what to call it. So, we just did a simple opposite. Instead of calling it innovation, we called it outovation. There’s a different approach to innovation, and it’s like, “Well, why would you call it that?” Well, the line underneath and that explains it, “Out ovation, it’s not innovation until it gets out the door.”

Now, we should even say one more thing, and it’s not innovation till it gets out the door, but it shouldn’t get out the door until as many of the trade-offs or problems with a bad idea have been solved. Well, the best way to solve that is to use the Hoodoo method on it. Generally what happens is, because it can get out the door and be a bad idea, and you’ll get a lot of pushback, you’ll get overwhelmed, and you’ll just cancel the whole thing.

But, it’s not outovation, it’s not innovation until it gets out the door and with the Reviso, get it out the door when it’s been thought through, where it’s still a good idea. In fact, even improved by the theme.

Karla Nelson: Yes, and using the process so that you get that a hundred percent buy-in on top of it. Right? So, one piece is what are we going to do? So, the ideation aspect of saying, “This is how we’re going to have this item discussion,” whatever it is that you’re attacking, this is what the group identifies with and says, “Yes, this is great.” Remember, in ideation, we stop ideation when the prover says, “I can live with that.”

Allen Fahden: I can lie with that.

Karla Nelson: Exactly. Then, you move to implementation, step two of the process, which is actually implementing the idea. Remember, it flows back and forth. They’re the same players, but you have to flow this back and forth, and back and forth. When you’re focusing on what we know we know, and what we know we don’t know, this is actually easier process, right?

Allen Fahden: Yep.

Karla Nelson: But at the same time, having a process by which you decide what to do and then decide how you’re doing it is critical. So when you think of Johari’s window, right, and you’re identifying what we know we know in dealing with that, and what we know we don’t know, right, and complimenting those two things, make sure you’re breaking it down into two separate processes.

Allen Fahden: Yep.

Karla Nelson: Remember, 94% of failure is process failure, not people failure.

Allen Fahden: Not people failure.

Karla Nelson: Yeah. So Edwards Deming, guys, the father of manufacturing. This guy is amazing, by the way. If you have not done research on him, I pretty much read every book now, Allen, is incredible what this guy did during his time. He was basically trying to figure out how can we make effective change in modern day manufacturing? Right? Because remember back in the day, manufacturing was pretty crazy when they first started out. Right?

Allen Fahden: Yep.

Karla Nelson: Then, he identified, “Okay, all these different aspects in these,” because people want to succeed by definition, but how do we create a process by which we use these aspects to move everybody forward? So ideation, implementation, and using the Hoodoo method between the two, it completely balances the what we know we know, and what we know we don’t know.

Allen Fahden: That’s right. So, you wind up finding a new space between killing the idea and running with a bad idea, because both of these are just simply twin sides of a bad coin.

Karla Nelson: That’s good. Yeah, yeah, yep. They are both sides of the same coin. It’s a very thin coin, isn’t it? Yeah. So, I think one of the examples that we could kind of use, and I think you brought this up when we were having a conversation earlier is, or actually you said it earlier in the podcast about take every idea, fuse it together, if they don’t fit that, and that’s what’s funny.

Allen Fahden: Oh yeah, it was Arthur Koestler wrote a book in the early ’60s called, The Act of Creation. What he said was that we really don’t create when we’re being creative. Everything is already created. You can apply this to anything and you’ll get a new truth out of things. You think that’s not true. Well, check it out and think that way and look at something that’s been created. He says, “We don’t create, we combine. Everything’s already created, so we are making new combinations of things.”

Now, many of the ideas that you, again, these days are simply things that have been put together that have been combined before, so that doesn’t really produce much of anything. But if you give two things together, the elements together that haven’t been together before, you get it two possible outcomes. They either fit together and they become a great new idea and innovation. Or, they don’t fit together and that energy has to dissipate somehow, so people laugh.

That’s why in meetings usually, especially the shakers, will come up with preposterous, absurd ideas at first because they’re funny, and they’re funny because they just so obviously don’t work, so obviously don’t fit. So, you sort of get your yayas out and then either somebody says, “Hey, wait a minute though. If we just did a twist on that, that might be a good idea,” or they’ll just laugh and let it go and it sort of diffuses the jitters in the room, so to speak.

Karla Nelson: Oh, I love that. That’s so true, especially when we do the tradings. It’s always the shakers that come up with this craziest ideas. Would we do the Titanic game?

Allen Fahden: That’s right.

Karla Nelson: They just kind of like, “What?” But, it’s also because you’d bring it back a little bit or a new idea. Actually, and this is why we say we just have to keep everybody in their own lane because a new idea actually sparks other ideas.

Allen Fahden: That’s right.

Karla Nelson: Because when you shoot it down-

Allen Fahden: It’s get you in the mood. It gets you in the mood, it gets you in the right realm of thinking.

Karla Nelson: Yeah, yes.

Allen Fahden: I think probably one of the great examples of the two elements not fitting together, and this was a story that Steve Martin would tell, he was having dinner with his agent and it was at a time when they still had smoking sections in the airplanes and you could smoke and restaurants. A guy leans over from a table next to them and says, “Excuse me, you guys mind if I smoke?” His agent shoots back, “No, mind if I fart?”

Steve Martin of course, understanding this about comedy, that it’s just elements and putting one element into a context of another, so he put the idea of farting into the context of smoking. So, he said, “Yeah, I do that all the time. In fact, they’ve got a special section for me on airplanes.” Of course, he was talking about farting in the context of smoking. He said, “I like to light one up after sex,” and began farting in…

Karla Nelson: Oh, my gosh. Okay, that’s a news story. That’s pretty hilarious.

Allen Fahden: Then he said, You know, I tried to quit but I started to gain weight.”

Karla Nelson: Yeah.

Allen Fahden: So, and like most comedians, he stopped at three, because that’s one of the laws of comedy. But, here are two elements obviously that are absurd. They don’t fit together and yet combining elements into an absurd combination-

Karla Nelson: Yeah, you understand, yeah, the absurd piece in the context of applying it to something else.

Allen Fahden: Yeah, and what that does is it puts you in a different place in your thinking. Oftentimes, you can say,” Hey, wait a minute,” and that’s what happens. When somebody does something completely absurd, you say, “Hey, wait a minute. Maybe that’s a good idea.”

In Australia, they had people talking on the phone too long and they wanted to get them off the phone, especially on payphones. So, what they did was they made the receiver heavier. They got the phone receiver to weigh about 30, 40 pounds so nobody could stand to hold it up to their ear for very long, and it shortened the phone bill. So, I mean, there’s an idea based on an absurd idea, but you can take an absurdity, do a little twist on it, and ca-ching.

Karla Nelson: So true. Well, coming from the one book bookstore man, that is not surprising. What’s so cool is that if you learn the Hoodoo method, right, the chances are your competitors are not going to okay. That’s really critical to understand both with the Johari window in that context of the Hoodoo what we know that we know and what we know we don’t know. Then, applying that process to figure out what are we going to do, and how are we going to do it? But, the ideation is really where you’re kind of pressing on here I think, Allen, which is, how do we take something in ideation, right, and then create that competitive advantage?

Because, if you can combine those two and then, of course in the next podcast, overlay, right, the other two aspects of Johari window, then you’re basically walking away with so much more than what your competitor has in their backpack.

Allen Fahden: Yeah. Especially, you think about this, everybody, is that sometimes you’ll get competitive advantage and Renee Mauborgne and Chan Kim in Blue Ocean Strategy and define this as uncontested market space. Well, how are you going to get uncontested market space go where men have feared to go, gone before?

Karla Nelson: Men have gone before.

Allen Fahden: So, where is that? That’s in the upper quadrant.

Karla Nelson: Wait, what was that? That was Star Trek.

Allen Fahden: I think it was Star Trek, yeah.

Karla Nelson: Star Trek, yeah.

Allen Fahden: Once you get in that, you’re in there and not a lot of people in there. So, you’re thinking’s going to go a lot of way because you’re seeing different things, you’re thinking different things. So if you can live in those upper quadrants, which we’ll talk about next time, then you’ve got some opportunities.

Now, right now we’re stuck in what we know we know, and what we know we don’t know. Still, there’s some things you can do there. One is just now, I mean, you’re listening to this podcast, learn the Hoodoo method, and you’re going to get some competitive advantage there because it’s early and not that many people are doing it.

Karla Nelson: Yes.

Allen Fahden: So, you can solve that problem of kill the idea or run with a bad idea. You don’t have to accept either of those.

Karla Nelson: Yes, I love it. Then, understanding who is on your team. I cannot tell you how many times I get on the phone with individuals or have meetings and, “I’m a team builder.”

Allen Fahden: Yeah, yeah.

Karla Nelson: Yeah, exactly. It’s like, yeah, we can all sing kumbaya around the fireplace or have the potluck on Friday, but at the end of the day the object of the exercise in business is to get something done. If you do not know who is on your team, it will always be challenging. It’s just a fact, right?

If you don’t understand if that person is a shaker or if that person is approver or applying themselves, it’s kind of crazy. We just validated the assessment recently and I have met over a thousand people in the last, I don’t know, month and a half, is that? That’s about, maybe two months, and I can email them and tell them who they are and they think it’s magic, it’s hilarious, based off of their core nature of work.

It’s like, no, it’s just your core nature of work. When the object of the exercise becomes not getting along but getting something done, it’s very interesting to see people’s response. Right? Even based off their core nature of work. By the way, I don’t think we’ve had one maker actually finish the assessment, right?

Allen Fahden: Why?

Karla Nelson: Right, why? Because, it hurts them to do something new. They’ve got real work to do back at your desk.

Allen Fahden: Yeah, that’s true.

Karla Nelson: We actually had to go through. So, almost everybody in my network, I guarantee you is a mover or a shaker or a combination of the two. All right. Then, it’s funny because Kevin, almost everybody in his network was a prover. We had to get a hundred more just to make sure that the bell curve was accurate. He sent this out to individuals, and he had tons of provers. Well, imagine that, that a prover, that’s a pilot, and has connected with other provers. Right?

The fact that we can’t get a maker to take it to save our lives, think about that just for a second. So, understanding who is on your team is absolutely critical to being able to figuring out what you’re going to do, and then how you’re going to do it, even when it comes to doing the thousand person validation study that we’re doing.

Allen Fahden: Yep. I think one of things you’re coming up with here too is that there’s a point along the road were this big pit opens up and you fall into it. That point along the road is after you have your ideas. Okay?

So, you have people picking the wrong ideas, you have people fighting for a crazy idea, you have all kinds of things going on. That’s where all the knowing goes out the window. People don’t know what to do, so they cope. I’ll give you an example of this. There’s a lot of delusion that goes on too. Somebody once said, “Denial is not just a river in Egypt.”

Karla Nelson: I’ve heard that before.

Allen Fahden: Yes, and I’ll give you an example. I went to a brainstorming session once and it was all morning long, and it was in one of these big places with all the flip charts and toys to get your brain going. Obviously the whole objective of brainstorming is to generate ideas. A lot of them, and you hope that some of them are good, and you hope that you can pick the good ones and go with them, and you hope that you can get those that you picked implement.

So, give me an example of how it can all blow up. I love some of these ideas. This happened to be for a company that made cheese, and they wanted to become a dominant force, really disrupt the market, be the innovator, and really have something where they’re going to really exert their power and make the market over.

So, we had all these great ideas, and I said, “I’m coming back this afternoon if it’s okay with you. I want to see which ideas you’re going with. There’s so many great ideas here. I’m really excited about what you’re doing.” So, I came back about 3:00 in the afternoon. Now I had left there, there were about 170 ideas pinned to the walls on those flip chart papers. I walked in about 3:00 and I started realizing, and these two guys were still there, the people from the company, and I started looking at the ideas.

I couldn’t find any that weren’t crossed off there. They were just lines through them and I, “Oh my God, that’s a great idea.” I’m thinking, “Why would anybody cross that off, get rid of it?” So, this is a big room, about maybe 30 yards long, it was huge. I walk to the other end, these guys are there and they turned around, they have big grins on their faces and they said, “We got it. We got it. This is really going to do it. I can’t believe it.”

I’m thinking, “What?” Because, there were so many good ideas then. So I went, “Oh, I’m glad you got it. So, what are you going to go with?” They said, now, this is, again, in the face of some really great ideas-

Karla Nelson: Yeah, brace yourself for this, right? Innovation all morning long, 170, and drum roll please.

Allen Fahden: Oh, my gosh. The room was on fire, sparks everywhere. I said, “Well, what idea did you choose, and how did you get here? What methods did you use?” They said, “Oh, it’s easy. We just took any idea that it had something wrong with it and crossed it out.” Well, every idea has something wrong with it.

Karla Nelson: Has something wrong with it. That’s why you run the process before you pick it.

Allen Fahden: Yes, the bigger the idea, the more it has wrong with it. Every colleague of mine in Singapore said, “Every idea’s important drowning,” and it’s true. The bigger the idea, the more that was wrong with initially. So, they’d use of the Hoodoo method to get all the negatives out of it and keep the positives and actually improve it.

So, what was the idea that they went with? Now, I’m really curious. They got these big grins on their faces and they say, “Okay, okay. Do you know on the package when they reach in the refrigerator case and get our cheese out of it, there is a rectangle on the package. There’s type on top of the rectangle, and the rectangle’s navy blue. You know how that is?” “Yeah.” They said, “Well, we’re going to change that to teal. From navy blue teal.” I was-

Karla Nelson: So, those were obviously provers or makers, who knows.

Allen Fahden: Stop me now before I shoot myself.

Karla Nelson: Which, by the way, we need everybody. We need you at different times, and so that’s why the mover gets to pick the idea. The prover gets to poke the holes in the idea, and the shaker gets to overcome the challenges that you run with. Because, what happened there is there was a, “Hey, it’s because I get to pick the idea,” right? Then, they didn’t throw it through the provers, and then onto the shakers, then having the mover facilitate it.

Of course, this is only an ideation. Implementation changes a bit, but one of the biggest things is movers, 15% of the population. All right? They, number one, are the group that says yes to a new idea. It’s got to be a good idea because they’re really have a gut instinct of picking that, but yet they also understand how to combine, if necessary, ideas and then come up with a strategic plan, right that can help, or who do we need? When do we need them? All that good stuff. Right?

But, the cool part about it and ideation is now you’ve got your shakers and your provers, which by the way, Allen, shaker walked in the room, and I guarantee you, even though it was a hired position, you are rolling your eyes going, “Are you serious?” as a shaker, “You came up with all this cool stuff and that’s what you picked?”

So, what would happen is if the mower picked the idea, “Hey,” even though a mover would never pick change something from blue to teal. It’s just not going to happen. But if they did, okay, and that’s what you did, the prover’d be like, “Why the hell would that even change our sales?” Then, the shaker would be like, “Yeah, why the hell would that change our sales?” You’d be gone with it. Right? So, that’s the re-

Allen Fahden: It’s going back to the false dilemma of killing the idea or running with a bad idea. Now on face, you would think that running with a bad idea would mean like have some bad consequences. Unintended consequences might kill people if you’ve made the thing teal. No, nobody’s going to say that. But nevertheless, it’s an even worse idea in some ways because it won’t move the needle, it won’t do anything. Nobody will even notice.

What you’re doing is you’re wasting your resources, and you’re confirming that you’re going to be a Me Too, and making a commodity out of your own product. So, why waste the time? Why waste the resources? Why show the market that you’re not going to innovate while somebody else is eating your lunch by doing a big idea at the same time?

Karla Nelson: Absolutely. So, we all just need to do what you said, which was go to the meeting, and then take their ideas, and form a team, and go into business as your competitors.

Allen Fahden: That’s right. They weren’t too excited about that either when I suggested that, “Why don’t you just let me have these and I’ll start my own cheese company? Okay?”

Karla Nelson: Yeah, exactly. So, they just thought they couldn’t do anything about a situation that was at hand. I think that’s really going back to what we started with, Allen, which is a lot of times to have the competitive advantage is just to realize there is something you can do about the challenge in the problem at hand. Right?

Allen Fahden: Yep.

Karla Nelson: Yeah, and I think often we focus on the wrong problems.

Allen Fahden: Well yeah, and that’s, again, is a symptom of being stuck in what we know we know, and what we know we don’t know. When we get all the way through to what we don’t know we don’t know, and we’ll talk about this in part two, and then to the end thing is what we don’t know we knew, or another way of saying that is, I didn’t know I knew that, but this is great.

Karla Nelson: This is super cool. By the way, this is where most people’s core nature of work lives.

Allen Fahden: Yeah.

Karla Nelson: This is the thing that is easy for us. We do it without thinking. It’s all we need to do is have somebody pull it out of us. It’s because we spend only eight to 10% of our day working in this place, and that is the sweet spot, because you already know it. You don’t need to do anything about it. You just need to dig into that aspect and apply it, maybe, to something else.

Allen Fahden: Yep.

Karla Nelson: So, I’m super, super excited about part two of this series because that’s really where the juice is. Although, it’s more common for us to think about what we know we know and what we know we don’t know. Right? So, “I have this problem, I need to learn about it.” So, that’s what we know we don’t know, or “I know that. I’ve been living in that space for a very long time,” right? That’s the safe space. So, part one of this series is the safe space that most people and most businesses play in.

Allen Fahden: The safe space is not safe.

Karla Nelson: Yes. It’s not safe.

Allen Fahden: But, it is a great opportunity because your competitor’s also in that safe space and it’s not safe for them. One great thing is just to shove them deeper into their safe space, and then occupy the territory of what part two is going to be on.

Karla Nelson: Yes. Awesome. I watched G.I. Joe as a kid, that knowing is half the battle, right?

Allen Fahden: That’s right.

Karla Nelson: So, being aware of this is super important and understanding Johari’s window, that our good friends Joe and Harry created in 1955, is absolutely fantastic. Any last words, sir?

Allen Fahden: Yeah, I just wanted to say one thing. I’m going to go back to my favorite philosopher, Yogi Berra, who played all the time and, “We don’t know that we know,” who turned out to be one of the great philosophers of all time. He was in eighth grade, his a teacher called him up after test and said, “Lawrence, it appears to me from the results of your examination, you don’t seem to know much of anything.” Yogi shoots back, “Know anything? I don’t even suspect anything.”

So, you got to love that guy. He was playing in a completely different plain, and that’s what we’re going to talk about next time. So, tune back in for part two.

Karla Nelson: Yeah. Awesome. Looking forward to it, Mr. Fahden, and we’ll see you on part two. In the meantime, you can go ahead and check out our website at thepeoplecatalysts, and that is plural because we need you all but at different times, dot com.