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Manipulating Core Values: Maximizing

We're gonna start with maximizing, all right. So greater and stronger. So, think about what you would have, what you have as a core value, and how we can blow it up and make it bigger. Who's got a core value I can play with? Hit me with something. Something you do really well, something your business does really well. Okay, I'm gonna start with Bop It. Oh no, Lee, you've got one. Hit me. Yeah, my personal core value as a employee is sales team motivation. Excellent, so sales team motivation. And your skill has been in a business of how many? Say, pick it. 12. 12, okay. So, a medium sized team. A sales team of 12. Yeah, right. So you're motivating sales people to do better Yes. is one of your core things. All right, so we're gonna magnify that. So that attribute of being able to magnify people to sell more, we're now gonna take that. So we can either have your voice amplified by having you. I mean the logical thing would be then to put you online and have you become what...

I'm doing right now, have you become an instructor to motivate others. But what else could we do? How else could we outreach to make Lee have a much bigger impact? We could perhaps turn what you do into a connection that means you don't have to physically be there. Perhaps we make some sort of conduit where you communicate to sales people in a much larger network, somehow. So we could have an outreach, which would perhaps be you running something once a week to an entire network of sales people. That would be an outreach. We're still doing business to business though. How else could we magnify you? How could we repeat you more frequently? Arie's got a concept about repeating her husband more frequently. I'm interested. No, what about expanding the community that he does that motivation for? Right, okay. But how can we expand your reach? Right now, your company, you're dealing with sales people. But what about if you took that motivation and expanded into the greater community? What would it be? What could you do for people? Some sort of motivational, self-help kind of presentations. Yeah, so but specifically. 'Cause if you say it's some sort, then you're losing your core value. And what your core value is is that you're motivating people to sell. But I mean you could turn that and say okay, am I gonna motivate people to sell themselves to themselves. You know, can you turn that motivation to actually help a whole lot of people. You could find groups of people who don't have great self worth, for example. And your outreach would be massively magnified, I think, if you could outreach to groups of people and help them use that sort of motivation and selling but to improve, perhaps. What do you think about that? I think that's true. I think personally, my value as a sales manager is actually creating, motivating sales teams. But it's also about being part of a team. Interesting, so that's a good insight. So we've thrown a few things at you which help you determine that in fact, the team part is really important. Yes. Which means that we don't want to physically scale the outreach. Perhaps then what we'd be doing, if we were gonna maximize, is we'd template what it is you do and try and make it repeatable so that somehow we capture the essence of how you motivate people, whether it's you, as something that we can send out to people, or whether it's the way you do it, that we can capture in a template and teach to other people so they can spread. Perhaps that's it. You continue to be in your team. Right. Right, and people understand and learn from that. Or, the other interesting aspect of this would be, in the days of reality TV is, you keep doing exactly what you're doing. But you're also on air doing what you do. You know, rather than instructing two people, which is a different, sometimes a different thing, there could also be fly on the wall, Lee, where you basically continue to motivate your team and people observe not only you doing your motivation, but the effect on the team. And that's another way of affecting a greater number of people, if that became a way of outreaching. So this is one way of doing maximization. Anyone got like a more, well let's do, I'm gonna do Bop It. So we had a look at Bop It the toy. Most people are familiar with it although I hadn't actually seen it til a couple of years ago. But it's this crazy thing that activates the player. Right, so it tells you what to do and then you sit here and play with it. And its value is in giving you permission to play and then activating, physically activating people. So if we took the Bop It, this toy that's designed for interaction with one person, but maybe you're playing with a friend, 'cause it does say pass it at some point. Right, a group of friends. We take that core value with its activation and joy and we want to maximize it. We want to outreach to more people. What could Bop It become? It's hard, right? It's hard. So this is the point of the creative leap. So you gotta push yourself for five minutes. What could this be if it's not what I know? Like, I know this thing so well. But what could it be if it wasn't doing what it's doing. Well let's go straightaway to a toy that's this big and let's blow it up. Right, it becomes a playground structure. Now if this thing becomes a playground structure, more people are gonna play on it. But there's no reason why it can't do exactly the same thing. The whole premise of Bop It is you're pressing it and squeezing it as it tells you to go, and you're going faster and faster. So in fact, if you had a massive playground that was telling you what to do, and everyone was actively whacking it, and flipping it, and turning it in order to do it, you'd have a bunch of vigorously exercising people. So Bop It at playground scale could have massive impact on fitness, joy, awesomeness. You could say then, oh maybe that's good for people with sensory issues. Perhaps that's really great for people that are overactive and want to be like completely kinesthetic about this. Or you could say it's for other groups of people. Why is it for kids? It doesn't have to be. Maybe this is a family interaction. Or you could take away the physical-ness of the toy and do something that Dan ran us through in his lessson which was he stood everybody up and actually made an exercise class out of Bop It. If you want to spread it to more people, it could actually become a thing where the instructor at the front goes twirl, scratch, whoosh, whatever. And you're all doing it faster and faster. Again, the core is joy. The core is action. But you've just delivered it in a different way. Does this make sense? Max. Anybody got another core value they want me to have a go at with maximizing? So I have integrity. I threw that out earlier. And I got my words back. And one common one was compassionate. And compassionate, strong, and innovative. Excellent. So I guess, with the integrity part, compassionate ties in. And I know with my professional life so far, my integrity was really important when I led teams. Yes. I get trust with 'em and I motivated them. So trust. Yeah. Yeah. So is that like, which is the right word for the core value, trust? I feel like you could pick any of them really. I mean integrity, everything has your own personal spin, doesn't it? But we could talk about integrity in terms of what you do. So I think, you know, we talked a little earlier about integrity in terms of people trusting you to tell a truthful story, or a story that's authentic maybe. Truthful's a little judge-y. What is truth? (laughing) But let's say that your core value is authenticity. So your integrity in telling an authentic story. And to date, that core value is in person to person, and sort of person, or person to business. But it's in small group, right. So if we were to take that ability you have of telling an authentic story and we decide we want to maximize, what could that be? Usually when we think about maximize, we straight away think of well what if we take it online? Because that's our immediate and easy, you know, if we're frugal innovators and we're gonna talk about that. The easiest way to take a message to more people is to throw it out online. It's something you can manage yourself, to an extent. It's not expensive. You know, and you have this incredible market maybe, theoretically, that you can outreach to. So if we took what you do and put it on the internet, what would it be? What would you be? What would I be? Well I have a website where I share my own like story information. And when I travel, I share that website with other people. Okay, so it's not that. 'Cause that's what we know. That's what we know, yeah. So if we just take the core value of authentic story telling, your ability to do it, and we want to affect way more people with this thing, it usually means you have to come up with some way to template what you do, or create a version of it that people can share or learn from. Right? So if you want to maximize and you have a personal core value, often what it means is you need to productize. You need to think about what you do and then you need to think about well how, if I want to repeat that more frequently. I want to put it out to more people. And how do I take what I do really, really well, and how do I make, not necessarily me a product. You might not want to go hey, it's me, and it's all about me. You might just go actually what I do has such value that it needs to get out further. And so what could it be? Now bear in mind that this lens is simply about making you think more creatively. Also bear in mind, your brain does not distinguish between imagination and reality. So whenever you think through these scenarios, it's as healthy for you and your plasticity as a real scenario. When you're problem solving, your brain doesn't care if it's a complete fantasy of how to get the dragon from A to B, or if it's how to get yourself more money. It doesn't care. If you're making unexpected connections, you will make more neural pathways. Your plasticity will continue to grow and be fabulous. So, whether you do in fact productize is a whole 'nother thing. But forcing yourself to think about what you do in this completely different context. How can I outreach? But it can also have you second guess and actually reconsider core value. Because sometimes, when you think about maximization, when you think about outreach and affecting more people, a light bulb can come on. You can go, actually that's epic. Like if in fact I truly believe in this amazing core value I have, and I know I'm really good at it, why wouldn't I try and affect more people? Like, this could be really, really good. So that's another benefit of rethinking is it can actually throw you a bone when you least expect it and send you off on a new tangent. But at the heart, we're yet again trying to push our brain really hard from something we know really, really well to something that we don't and see what happens, see what sticks. It's interesting, Dan always says when I talk to Dan, the toy maker, he says, people always talk about throwing it against the wall and seeing what sticks. But he's like nothing sticks except really nasty stuff. So in fact, you don't want to throw ideas on the wall and see what sticks. 'Cause only the really bad stuff ever sticks to the wall. Right, you're much better off to build the table. (laughing) All right, so that's maximizing. Anyone got any questions on maximizing? Or any core value you want me to try and maximize for you? Yes. Well I think this works. But I think like with most like groups and stuff, and part of our jobs I have, what's really important to me for each of them to have kind of like a network or a support system within them. Doesn't matter like if it's like a school job, or a club, or like a more corporate thing. I think like having a human factor, and having a support network within each of them is like super, super important. Great. So you've got small work groups, or small social groups, and support networks. What does a support network look like? Well I think just having the, I think a lot of good communication I guess. Do you mean like regular check-in? Like a sort of a scheduled check-in sort of thing? Yeah, like check-in, or just sort of having the option to check-in, or the option to reach out to people. Doesn't matter if it's work or something like that. Just having that system, just in case you do need it. Yeah, okay. So if we took as the core value the concept that you have the ability to reach out and connect whenever. Like the safety zone, I guess, you've created a safe environment that lets people connect. How do you take that and maximize it? What does that become? That's a tricky one. 'Cause you could say, some people might go oh, that's Facebook. Sort of might be for some people, right. All this online social connection is like a massive extension of that. So you see it happening already. And then you might say, well how do I take that out as a personal, like as a human touch type of thing? That's gonna be another thing entirely. Do I send out a template or do I form groups? I mean I guess it's like Rotary, or Lions Club, or any of those things. Do I now establish a system where little groups form in communities? They all have a common purpose. Yeah, well I think the one little thing that is the trickiest part is that since everything's on a screen, it kind of loses its human touch. I think the human factor is the most important part of it. Which is tricky because not everyone can be in the same room as everyone. And even when it comes to like Skype and stuff, it gets a little more human. But still there's like, it's like looking into the screen the whole time. So that's the tricky part I think. That's really interesting. I wonder how much just hearing a human voice helps you know. Definitely does something. Yeah, yeah 'cause like maybe we want to stop staring at the screen all the time. Very interesting. Thank you. I don't have an answer. I don't have an answer for a lot of stuff. But I'm good with that. (laughing) All right, so maximizing is one of the manipulations that can just have you really thinking about what you are not doing with your core value. Not what you should do, just what you're not doing. Whether you throw yourself into that area of bearable discomfort, blah, but I'm not doing that because. Don't spend any time telling yourself why you're not doing it, or justifying why you're not doing it. That's not the point. All we're trying to do is spend five minutes throwing yourself from what you know way out into what is possible. Put some little feelers out there. See if there's anything interesting. If there's not, that's good. Good for your brain. And if there is, hook it in, bring it home. So that's maximizing. One of the three manipulations.