Join Jeff Ma and me on the Love as a Business Strategy Podcast. We discuss the importance of culture in high-performing organizations and the need for intentional choices. Culture defines behaviors which are driven by our belief systems. If we want to have different experiences, we need to examine and change our beliefs. We emphasize the importance of making conscious choices and being true to oneself. Leaders need to have consistent behaviors of their organizational culture to have alignment in values and beliefs. Learn more in the episode Love as a Business Strategy.
Audio
Episode 168. Love as a Belief System Strategy with David Greer
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3okaHHskFnYsEHKeu1CnGC
Transcript
David Greer (00:00):
High performing organizations are driven by culture, whether it’s intentional or not, and I’m a big advocate for making it intentional.
Jeff Ma (00:18):
Hello and welcome to Love as a Business Strategy, a podcast that brings humanity to the workplace. We’re here to talk about business, but we want to tackle topics that most business leaders shy away from. We believe that humanity and love should be at the center of every successful business. I’m your host, Jeff Ma, and as always, I’m here to have conversations, hear stories with real people, real businesses in real life. My guest today is David J. Greer and he’s an entrepreneurial author, coach, and facilitator. And David is a catalyst who helps people fully live their dreams right now. And whether it’s through his book Win Your Sales Speaking Engagements or Coaching, he specializes in not just giving advice, but providing concrete action items that help shift and transform businesses quickly. In addition, David specializes in working with entrepreneurs who are facing the challenges of alcoholism or addiction, and we’re going to talk about that as we explore his story. Today. He’s joining me from Vancouver, Canada today where he lives with his wife Karalee, and three children. I’d love to welcome David to the show. David, how are you doing?
David Greer (01:29):
Thanks, Jeff. I am doing fantastic and super excited to be here with you today.
Jeff Ma (01:34):
Absolutely. I think we get a number of Canadian guests on this show, and it’s not on purpose, it’s just there’s so much good vibes happening in Canada. There’s so much progress happening in the business culture front over there.
David Greer (01:51):
I’m glad we can help.
Jeff Ma (01:56):
David, I want to start today. I know we’re going to be talking about your story in general. I’d love to hear, I’d love to dive into it and we don’t have to dive ahead. First, I’d love to start with a broader question around you and your passion. I’d love to know how would you define your passion, where it lies today in your phase of life and how did you come to that passion? What’s the story that brought you here?
David Greer (02:26):
I don’t think about passion all that much, but if I have a single passion, it’s to inspire others to really live the life of their dreams. And it turns out I was doing this for a lot of time in my life and didn’t really realize it. I joined a young software company as the first employee and we built it into a global powerhouse. But my former partner and I, our strategy was to write a new paper every year and then travel around the globe giving presentations to both management and technical audiences, create belief in this small Vancouver based software company. You’re going to trust your whole business too. That strategy worked really well, but I think it was us sharing our information and showing people what they thought wasn’t possible was possible because we’d done it. And so I think we inspired a lot of people that way and the kind of computing platform we worked on and the kind of businesses that they run our products had really high leverage.
(03:31):
Like we were helping a core group of IT people, but we were helping them in turn help 500 or a thousand or 1500 employees who were then in turn helping thousands of customers. So is that an inspiration purpose? I’m not certain, but it’s like to have this meaningful impact and then I’ve lived somewhat larger than life, life and done things that most people have never considered doing.
When I sold out of that business, my wife and I commissioned a sailboat in the south of France and we took our three kids and we homeschooled them for two years while sailing more than 5,000 miles in the Mediterranean basin and just this tiny infinitesimal small percentage of the population ever goes and does something like that. And I kept an online diary and I kept writing about it all through the 2001, 2003 [and the] dot.com meltdown. And I came back and people said, David, I love your emails. They were the only positive thing I heard in two years and my coaching work is to really, my number one request of clients is make intentional choice rather than have the universe just toss and turn you wherever bring conscious choice. If I can inspire one or two people to do that and to live the life they choose that they want to live, I’ll be really happy.
Jeff Ma (05:10):
I love that. And I think knowing coaching and one-on-one is so much of kind of your realm of work. I think I can see that really coming through and being important in your conversations to have this passion for helping others. So here we are in a format in which you could potentially help many other people as they listen to you here. I wanted to talk with you today about your experience through coaching, through your book, through all these things, but really talking about culture and workplace culture in general. And I think it, it’s not a foreign concept here that leadership, self-development, growth, all these things are important. And so I really wanted to tap your brain for, as an entrepreneur and for others who are listening who are leaders in their space, where would you start in advising generally when it comes to how do you get there? How do you achieve that dream? How do you get that goal?
David Greer (06:11):
Do you want to talk more about making your dreams come true, or do you want to do more around the culture piece
Jeff Ma (06:18):
And
David Greer (06:18):
Culture and high performance?
Jeff Ma (06:20):
Yes. In the realm, I guess in the space of culture and high performance, what are the things that people need to be concerned with in order to achieve to help achieve their dreams and their goals.
David Greer (06:32):
I have a path I think through what you’re talking about, which I’ll do from an entrepreneurial perspective. So yes, I believe high performing organizations are driven by culture, whether it’s intentional or not, and I’m a big advocate for making it intentional. So the first piece of that is discovery. People often think that culture should be altruistic or just good. I mean, there’s lots of really high performing organizations that are filled with assholes and they hire more assholes, but that’s okay if you’re not an asshole, don’t go work there because you’ll be very unhappy.
(07:22):
So again, it’s not my place to judge, and I’m not certain I’d want a client like that because it isn’t who I am, but it doesn’t mean it’s wrong. It’s just, it’s what it is. And so I think culture is more a discovery process and especially I work a lot with owner founders who’ve then grown their businesses to a high level of success and then stalled or flattened or had a crisis or something has happened, so they want my help. And so usually that culture is the culture and belief system of the entrepreneur who founded the company or maybe the first two or three big leaders, which are often friends of the entrepreneur who grew the company to its current stage.
(08:08):
And the reason I think culture is so important is because culture really defines behaviors. To me, what culture does it defines how people behave. And in my experience, it is a thousand times easier to teach someone a skill than it is to change their behavior. Right? Changing behavior is hard and behavior mostly comes from our family of origin, early teachers, mentors, coaches. That created a whole belief system for us, which is then drives all of our behaviors, mostly unconsciously until you reach some point in your life potentially like I have where those behaviors aren’t serving you. And so now you have to go dig into them inside if they’re serving you very well. Entrepreneurs who start to buy into culture, one of the things I see is what employees really look for is in any organization is does the leader, if a leader says they really believe in culture is do they live the culture that’s being identified? Because if there’s any mismatch, people will pick up on it right away. So you can’t just say one thing and do another. In this instance, you really have to live it.
Jeff Ma (09:35):
You mentioned a thousand times harder to change behaviors and beliefs. Does that mean it’s something that we should still strive to do, or is it easier to just surround yourself with the right people instead? Or what is the right approach with that?
David Greer (09:51):
It’s way easier. I really coach people to hire for core values slash behaviors first and skills second, which is the opposite way that most people hire.
(10:06):
Most people say, do you have, you’re a computer developer and you understand Pearl and this backend and that front end and this and that and the other thing. Great. And I mean there’s obviously for every position there is some floor of skillset, like you don’t have time to teach them, give them a computer science degree. So there’s some floor, but among the people, but before you get too deep in the skills, you want a threshold skill test. So at least you think their potential is there. Then you want to dig into the behaviors and the culture and that it needs to be through open-ended questions. Or looking back, if we look at something like top grading where you go back to what was your first job in high school?
(10:55):
How did you work in that job? What would your boss say about you today if they remembered? I mean, I’m 66, I don’t think anyone who hired me if they’re still alive. And then we work forward through your various roles. And again, I think those behavior things are laid down very early. And again, until you get to some point of personal growth where those behaviors are hindering you and you want to make some kind of change to ’em or you want to moderate them, like my core kind of what we say in 12-step recovery, my defects of character, they’re never going to go away, I don’t think. But I’ve polished the sharpest edges off of them, and when they show up too strongly, I’m quick to own that and make an amend for it. And so it’s not appropriate, but I mean it’s taken quite a bit of work to get to that spot.
Jeff Ma (11:56):
And I think in the line of work that I do, and it sounds like you do as well, I mean we’re working with people who have oftentimes already been placed in a position or put themselves in a position where the best route is to attempt to transform in these ways, whether themselves or their teams or their organizations. So I don’t know that it’s always an option to, I guess, start from scratch and surround yourselves with people who share all these same belief systems and things like this. So is that,
David Greer (12:31):
On the other hand, I would say the most dangerous players, at least the senior leadership level, I would say, are toxic. So those are really A-performers, but they totally operate outside of the cultural norms. They like stomp on people’s heads to climb up, and they’re very hard people to let go because they get so much shit done and they make such a big difference to the organization or the business, and they’re the most important people we help move on.
Jeff Ma (13:04):
And they set the tone for everybody else on how to be successful,
David Greer (13:07):
Unfortunately. Yes, unfortunately, and it’s tough. I don’t want to sugarcoat this and say, and in the case of entrepreneurs, sometimes it’s really hard because it is that friend who you hired early on in the business and grew the business really well. I mean, it could be that they’re toxic. Okay. The other one is that they just can’t grow fast enough to where the business is now growing. And it’s not like they won’t get there, but they won’t get there fast enough. And that’s a really tough conversation to have. But again, as a leader, if you really want, if that’s what your business is doing and where you’re taking it, then you have to have that tough conversation. And I think the hardest part of high growth businesses is finding the next level of leadership is growing the next level of leadership.
Jeff Ma (14:00):
Have you yourself worked through belief system change and things like that that you could maybe talk about to help exemplify or inspire others around that?
David Greer (14:13):
Sure. So in the intro, you mentioned that one of the things I specialize in is helping entrepreneurs who are challenged with alcoholism or addiction. And so I want your listeners to know that I’m an alcoholic, thankfully in recovery, but I was someone who was completely addicted to alcohol for many, many, many years and was in complete denial about it. I’d go to amazing lengths to deny that this was a problem in my life. And I was super high performing. I mean, I built a software business to be a global powerhouse, raised three kids, but I got to a point where I just was a hollowed out person. Fortunately the universe put an amazing coach in my life who I worked with for over nine years. But after we’d worked together for our first 18 months, I’d built enough trust and we cleared off enough stuff off the table so nothing was left but the elephant in the room. And I admitted to him that I had a drinking problem, which was an understatement, but it was the first person I’d ever admitted really that I had a drinking problem. And he coached me to go to 12-step recovery, which I did. And in that process, so first of all, there was the denial piece. I had to get to a point where I wouldn’t deny it anymore. And that was a fundamental change in my belief system.
(15:52):
For listeners who are struggling to get to that point is such a milestone. If you’ve been there and gone through that, congratulations, that’s really hard and hard personal growth. And then to succeed in recovery. And we say it’s not that hard to put the cork in the bottle. The problem is to live life on life’s terms without going back with my number one tool of choice, which is alcohol. Alcohol was my coping mechanism. I’m sober, but life goes on, challenges happen, things show up. So now in 12-step recovery, we have these things called the 12 steps, which are like our code, our toolkit for how we cope with life. So I mean, I did that. I did personal therapy work next week, my wife and I are going to celebrate 42 years together. Congrats, thanks very much. But the first 30 we’re very codependent.
(17:00):
And then as I grew in recovery, and then we started doing relationship work, which we’d never worked with a professional relationship counselor, we did eight years of work together with a set of four different therapists, each of who was perfect for that stage of our relationship. We have grown massively and we show up for each other very differently today, which has all required us to go back and look at our own family of origin and our belief systems and how we want to show up and really and deep personal growth. But I’ll just say I can only share my experience, but for me, 15 years ago, if you saw me, I had a house and I had three kids and I had two cars and looked like a very successful person. And today, if you look at me, I have a house and I have my wife and I have three kids, and now I have two grandkids and two cars, and the person on the inside is completely different, completely different. And that’s the personal journey that I’ve embarked on for myself and for those around me. I mean as you change, it changes just, it changes your relationship with everything else in life,
(18:27):
Whether other people change or not, you are changing. So your relationship to everything changes.
Jeff Ma (18:32):
Yeah, absolutely. And my personal belief is that we all carry this potential to transform. And in your case it was there was this catalyst and this fortunate crossing with a coach that helped you realize that there was this positive transformation opportunity. I find that a lot of the people I come across, it may not be to that extent of talking about addiction and alcoholism and things like that, but there are parts of the way they live their life and parts of the ways that they treat others and just their general, and again, this may be just from my perspective, but I also have stories with people where these are opportunities for people to transform. But the hardest barrier is that step of self-awareness and recognizing that there is a deeper rooted belief that’s driving these things. Recognizing that is a huge, huge challenge I’ve seen for people because it’s invisible for the most part. It’s part of who we just think we are or it doesn’t seem like something we need to change.
David Greer (19:44):
I think it often takes some kind of crisis, like a burnout, really getting ill, my case, the recognition of my alcoholism losing a loved one, which causes you to suddenly reexamine where your life’s at. It often takes a trigger event of some kind. Or if we go back to the entrepreneurs and core values and the entrepreneur, often entrepreneurs are the single biggest thing holding back the business that they want to have. And so part of my work as a coach is just helping them show where their belief system or how they’re holding, how they’re showing up, they’re not living the core values or they’re not interacting with people in a respectful way or whatever it is, they’re not able to achieve what they want to achieve because they’re in their own way. And the only way to get out of their own way is to look at, so why do you behave that way? Why is it so important that you think you have control? Because all of us think we have way more control than I believe we do. I think that’s a human condition problem. I think that’s true for pretty much 80% of the planet and some of my personal growth has been realizing that I maybe have 1% control over the things around me. And really it boils down to I control my response to events or things that happen to me and I have control over the next right step that I take. And that’s about it.
Jeff Ma (21:33):
Is there something you’d recommend broadly? I know a lot of your work is personalized, but is there something that you’ve seen from a trend perspective that everyone can probably go right now and reexamine and do a step everyone can take that might yield something good?
David Greer (21:52):
My number one request of clients is to make conscious choice. And I think we seriously underestimate how much we can actually make a choice. We’re so afraid of either what people will think of us or we’re so afraid of consequences of saying no, if there’s too much in your calendar. You can’t do some of this personal work, the only way to solve that is you’ve got to say no to something in your calendar. Make a conscious choice about what you want to say no to. And especially in the work environment, I find I work with an individual who works for one of the largest tech companies in Canada, which has somewhat of a toxic culture, and I’m in Vancouver and the headquarters of the Canadian division, I mean this is a worldwide top tech company, but the Canadian division headquarters are in Toronto, and the senior executives think nothing of having their dinner.
(22:59):
And then at nine or 10 o’clock at night Toronto time sending messages to people to do work at dinnertime here in Vancouver. And part of my coaching with this individual was say, no, say no and see what the consequences are. And I mean, we talked through some of the worst case consequences. I would say a lot of the times in coaching, I actually, let’s go down the path of the worst case. You say no and you’re fired. Why now will your world end? You don’t have a plan B right now. Fine. But it’s funny how when you talk through the worst case, you realize the worst case is not quite the stuff of the nightmares you thought it was,
Jeff Ma (23:51):
Or really it might reveal a lot of the belief systems you have about the worst case. Like, oh, wait, well, why do I need a job to survive? Well, I need money, right? Well, why do I need money? All these things tie into such strong belief, this,
David Greer (24:04):
Yeah, do I need to live in this big a house on this side of town sending my kids to private school? Right. No, I mean those are choices and you give good reason for all those choices. I don’t want, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with any of those choices, but those choices are leading you down a path, right? And have consequences. And are you okay with those consequences?
Jeff Ma (24:33):
Yeah. There’s a saying I love, it says, you got to choose your hard. I know I can’t stop thinking about that right now because it seems like your advice includes this idea of everybody taking a moment to choose which hard they want to deal with.
David Greer (24:51):
And for a lot of high performing peoples in senior positions saying no, and to certain people or certain situations or certain leaders is often the hardest thing. That is the hard and the default is, yes, yes, I will work more. Yes, I’ll take on that project. And it’s not a healthy behavior if you’re a healthy behavior is I have these five things that I’m tasked with doing right now, so which of these do I drop so I can say yes to what you’re asking me for right now? And if the person says, well, you can’t have to, I’m sorry. There’s not enough time and resources to do six. There isn’t really enough to do five, but I’m willing to take on the five. If you’re not dropping anything, then my answer is no, no, I will not do that. That’s a very courageous thing oftentimes for people to do.
Jeff Ma (25:57):
Yeah, people,
David Greer (25:59):
I really want your listeners to know that it’s easy for me to say that, and I have got much better at doing exactly what I just said, and it’s hard.
Jeff Ma (26:08):
Yeah, there’s people sweating bullets right now just thinking about it
David Greer (26:12):
For sure. Yes.
Jeff Ma (26:15):
With the time I have left, I’m curious to flip a question a little bit more around for the listeners here, that the audience here is not all heavily entrepreneurs. It’s split pretty evenly. So we have entrepreneurs, we have leaders, and we have quite a number of individual contributors who listen to the show as well. I’m curious for those, I guess to help them with perspective, if I’m an individual contributor or just in my opinion, lower on a totem pole and I’m experiencing this and I’m aware of cultural issues, things that misaligned with my beliefs or what I believe should be the beliefs that we all share, and I’m seeing that in my leaders, I’m seeing that and around me. Am I powerless in this? Am I just the victim of this? Or is there something that you would ever advise folks who may not hold all the power of change in an organization to do? Is there a way they can help?
David Greer (27:15):
Sure. One is what can you change within your circle and what you interact with and with that group, and how, if at all, do you want to lead that kind of behavior and change? Sometimes it’s just modeling it. Sometimes it’s just showing up and being different than the rest. This individual that I coached and still work with in this big technology company, I mean, he just ended up behaving differently, and a lot of people noticed, and a lot of people noticed that his ripple effect was very big.
Jeff Ma (28:02):
Nice.
David Greer (28:03):
Has it changed the whole organization? No. Does the organization’s leadership say that they’re moving in some new directions that sound promising? Yes. Is it happening questionable, but there’s more hope. And again, this individual was able to be much more comfortable. He was seriously thinking of leaving the organization, but he decided he could make a bigger shift and change by being his true self within the organization. And again, it’s a very, very brave thing that he did. Right? It’s
Jeff Ma (28:43):
The courageous side of quiet, quitting, I guess the courageous alternative.
David Greer (28:47):
Yes. And clearly for most of us, there is a choice about quitting and going somewhere else. I mean, you want to think it through and you want to try and understand the consequences. And I don’t think the grass is always greener on the other side. So that’s a place where I really help coach people through conscious choice. If people are thinking of a career change, the first thing I ask them to do is, please write down your do not list. I don’t want to hear what you want in your job. What I want to hear is what you absolutely will not have in a job. And the absolute must will not ever. And that provides so much clarity to people. And oftentimes it’s like, oh, it’s not as bad here as I thought. Most of the things on my never have list are actually not here, but the three are really present. But what can I do about those three
(29:46):
Or, oh yeah, all 10 of my absolutely positively must not ever have are here. I need to make a change. But then they have the list, so they filter. It’s like, go look at any position you’re looking at. Go investigate the company and at least as much as you can from the outside looking in, see whether you’re not list how many things are on your not ever list. And then as you get in the interview process, make sure you ask questions around that, like interview processes, a two-way process, not a one-way process. It’s about you getting to know them and making sure that they are a fit for you as much as it is them interviewing you to make sure you are a fit for them. I think we lose sight of that because we give all the control to the people who are offering the job.
Jeff Ma (30:40):
Couldn’t agree more. And I hope that the world shifts more that understanding as we make our
David Greer (30:49):
I so too. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.
Jeff Ma (30:53):
David, thank you so much for your time today. Before you go, I’d love if you’d share a little bit about yourself, people like to learn more, reach out to you, or maybe just a quick understanding of what Wind In Your Sails is about so people can check that out.
David Greer (31:04):
Sure. So when I started my coaching practice, I interviewed over 45 sales and marketing leaders and entrepreneurs because I was really sensing the way marketing and sales happens is changing in a social media world, which is kind of the impetus to get it started. But I wanted to take and build a useful book for especially owner, founders, entrepreneurs who haven’t gone through multiple businesses, like after you’ve done three or four, you’ll know most of the things in my book, but I have 10 chapters, which I call 10 strategies in my experiences. Most owner, founder entrepreneurs are super, super good at three or four of them are decent at another three or four and have at least a couple they’ve never heard of. Exit strategy, what’s that? And a third of the book, or every chapter ends with a case study of an entrepreneur friend of mine who I think really is excellent at that particular aspect of business. So a third of the book is like other people’s experiences, and it’s a little bit of theory and a lot of practice. I explain the theory behind certain things, and then I give a lot of concrete examples that hopefully you can use to move your business forward. And it is designed to be a reference. It’s like when you’re stuck, go look up the thing you’re stuck on and go read two to five pages and you’ll have at least one idea for what to do next.
(32:36):
And then, because I’m an incredibly passionate lifelong sailor, every chapter starts with a sailing story from my life. That’s a metaphor for the thing I’m trying to get across in the book, which is where the title comes from.
Jeff Ma (32:52):
Love that. David, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for joining me here today and sharing what you did. I think it’s helped me process. It’s helped me think I’m ready to go practice some things myself based on what you’ve exposed. So thank you so much for that time that you’ve been generous with today.
David Greer (33:09):
Thanks so much, Jeff. It’s been great to be here.
Jeff Ma (33:11):
To the listeners, thank you for tuning in as always. We really appreciate it and hope you’re checking out the book. Love is a Business Strategy. You’re telling your friends, telling your parents, telling your pets, any of those people, we’re fine. Subscribe, rate the podcast, let us know what you think, and hopefully we’ll see you again here next week. Until then.
