Milan: [00:00:00] How about I do the panel for once? Yeah. All right.
Ged: The cards.
Milan: I’m ready.
Shoulder.
Alright everybody, welcome to Cart Cast the podcast when Jet and I will pick up a card from a deck just like this and pick up a topic for conversation that way, and then we just chat about it. So let’s shuffle the carts and see what we get today.
Ged: The card that popped out is the art of slowing down. Now, a while ago, we recorded a card called The Impossible Goal. And this is the opposite. This is the opposite, and it’s just about the [00:01:00] context. Sometimes you. Need to go fast and set an impossible goal. And sometimes you need to slow down. So this card is actually the art of slowing the fuck down Milan: Yes.
Ged: There’s a bit of shock value there.
And often we need to, we need to sort of know, jolt people into decisions. We need to jolt people into action. So this is, this is an interesting card and this is really about balance of pace.
Milan: And, and you know, because I really found myself, you know, writing that card, it came on the but this happens with lot of cards, right? That, that I have a similar situation that happens with several clients in several conversation in the course of a week or two hour, like. What is going on, right? And when I said myself, when I caught myself saying to three different people at three different occasions, in a span of two weeks, slow the fuck down.
I was like, Hmm, there’s probably cart in that. And that’s, that’s how it came, right? That when, [00:02:00] look, a speed of decision and, you know, bias for action and you know, all of those all of those things are such a cliche and such a, such a.. I, I wouldn’t call it the, you know, ingrate wisdom, but that’s how people are thinking about business.
Like a speed is everything. And it’s better to act than to not to. And you know, the speed of scaling is everything. And how are you going to increase the velocity of your deal, or whatever that is, right? Everything that we hear all the time is about how to just go quick, quick, quick, quick, quick.
Very often the quality suffers. So what this card is saying is like, Hey, like really slow down for a second. Because you could spend a lot of f into pushing yourself into something where it’s not the right direction, it’s not the right thing, and you waste a lot of [00:03:00] energy. And then if you do this often enough, then you will get the goldfish reputation.
Right, like going after things that seem urgent, but there is no cohesion to it. There is no overall strategy, no overall plan. And the card is talking about several different ways or several different situations in which slowing down is ultimately leading to faster, better results
Ged: And that bias for action can often become a problem now, and I. Introduced another card we’ve recorded recently. You know, the impossible goal, and I think these two cards can work together. Now, if you are focused on an impossible goal, then the other things that you maybe wanted to do at the same time, maybe you need to slow down on those.
So that you don’t burn the team out so you can stay focused on the impossible goal. [00:04:00] So there’s a time and a place for all of these ideas, all of these concepts. Sometimes you need to speed up. Sometimes you need to speed to slow down. And the key point here is it needs to be a considered decision. You need to make a conscious decision about when is the right time to speed up and when is the right time to slow the fuck down.
Milan: Well, I, I like it. I, I like to call it that, you know, we need to panic in a calm and organized fashion because that’s that is important. And even in the story, in the impossible goal, it started with the five minutes of doing nothing. Right. And thinking about what is the one path that can actually get us to the goal and then started executing on it, right?
I didn’t go and wake up the kids, right? You said, okay what do we need to do in order to do that? Do we go now? Do we go first thing in the morning? Like, you know, all those things. Like there was a planning element to it, even going against or towards the impossible goal [00:05:00] on incredibly short. Short timeframe, really,
Ged: Sometimes you need to take a gap.
Milan: Oh, yeah, no, absolutely.
Ged: A break.
Milan: Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes it’s in the, on different scales, right? Because sometimes the time you are taking is seconds, for example, before you respond to something that is triggering you in a conversation, right? And say, no, wait a minute. Why am I feeling that way? Right? Sometimes you take a year. Because you realize that you actually don’t have to make that commitment in the time.
So you take that year to give yourself the best possible hand to make the decision at a time where it needs to be made, right? So the, the principle is independent on the timescales involved. Again, it’s all about finding the [00:06:00] appropriate pace at which to, at at which to proceed.
Ged: So, so how, how do you decide how fast you should go?
Milan: You know, there is actually another card in the deck that’s talking about the cost of hesitation, which is the opposite issue of this. And, but they’re really talking about the same thing. And maybe this episode should just cover both of them and we’ll go a little longer. But the.
I actually have a tool for that. When we are working with the with a team in a, you know, in a group, sometimes you have like, Hey, what are the questions? What are the objectives? What are the things? But if you put them on the, on the chart and say. And do we need that answer today or do we need it this week, or do we need it this quarter?
Right? In order to get that, that best desired result, just by thinking about that, you usually figure out what it is. Like, no, we don’t need to know that until whatever. [00:07:00] Right? So why would we rush a decision rather than say, okay. Let’s do the second step. What do we need to do? Or what do we need to get in order to make sure that the decision is of the highest quality we can make at a time when we need to make it? The, his brothers in, in decisive are talking about this a lot, right? Which is a great book for basically the. Process of making decisions and you know, we’re calling it like, decide how you are going to decide about something. Like who are the people who need to be involved? When does it need to happen? What are the what are the criteria? How do we know? How do we measure back whether we made the right decision or not? How does good look like? Right? Thinking about all of these things before actually jumping into the decision can reveal a lot of things. And sometimes you find out that actually it’s not a decision to be made because.
Maybe it’s already made and you are killing yourself, [00:08:00] or it’s actually doesn’t have the impact that or its impact is in no way correlated to the perceived urgency of that. Those are two different different axis. Yeah.
Ged: It’s a question I often ask in my leadership team sessions. You know, when I’m, when I’m running a workshop a session with a client, I’ll, you know, I’ll ask the question, you know, if they, if they’re sort of diving down into something that doesn’t seem to be particularly urgent, I’ll say, you know, so, so when does this question need to be answered?
You know, when do we need a decision on this? And. The answer might be, oh, well, not, not now. We don’t need to make a decision now, so, so why are we spending really valuable leadership team time discussing something that doesn’t need to be decided right now when you’ve got a whole backlog of things that are probably more urgent. Wouldn’t we be better off spending our time on those things and deferring this decision until when it needs to be made? So I really like that tool and I think I might, I might borrow that [00:09:00] tool because I think that’s a great way of actually putting, putting dimensions to this so you can actually make a considered decision. How important is it and when does a decision need to be made? ’cause often if a decision doesn’t need to be made, now you can come back to it. Once you’ve done additional research, you’ve done additional thought, you’ve, you’ve dived into it in a bit more detail and you can then make the decision. On the data, based on the latest up-to-date, relevant, accurate data.
Milan: Yeah.. You know, in my previous career, which was all about data and data analysis, we were saying that if you don’t have the data to write data to make that decision, make a decision to obtain the data. So next time you come into the same, the same decision space you can. You know, you, you are in better position, even though if you have to make, make a gut call today as long as you can measure the impact, as you can do, do that. You know, that tool since you’re mentioning it, first of all, I think there is a link to [00:10:00] download of a template in the cart, in the on the website, but it went through a little bit of an evolution. And the evolution was all around the horizontal axis. The vertical is impact. That’s completely subjective, right?
You, you are just doing a relative, relative things. So I originally had, had the line on like, do do, does it need to be today or can it be later? Eventually, I ended up with a ate scale, right? Today, this week, this month, this quarter. End of the year, next year, you know, whatever, you know, whatever that is. And I just found it really, really useful because it’s sort of each one of those. Columns have a completely different emotional loading. Right. It’s like beyond some point. It’s just like, yeah, we’ll get to it. Right? And as long as we keep this link alive, you know, as, as [00:11:00] long as we keep it at a point where, you know, we look at it again and say, well, what was next quarter before?
Is this week now? Right? Have we done the work? Have we done the homework to get to that point? Yeah.
Ged: Yeah, because teams are often not in the right head space to make a particular sort of decision, you know? And teams are often made up of people with different behavioral styles. Some people make decisions quickly. Some people need to consider their decisions. So often, just taking a bit of time to maybe take it away, think about it, sleep on it. Now come back to the same problem. A day later, a week later, a month later now the, the
Milan: Hello.
Ged: The frame of mind can be much better. When you do come back, now you’re, you’re less likely to make an instinctive, knee instinctive kneejerk reaction decision, which is probably gonna be wrong. Mm-hmm.
Milan: And you know, speaking of the other card, and really I think that we should rename this episode and, and talk about the other one as [00:12:00] well and maybe look, we’ll show it is the cost of hesitation because even though it’s dealing with the opposite problem, the solution is actually the same. Which is to make sure that by kicking the can down the road, we don’t pass the point of no return when the decision make, make itself.
So again, understanding now, hey, what does go into the decision? What is going to be the impact and when does it need to be made and give to give ourselves the deadline to act against and to plan against will. D both reduce or remove the unnecessary urgency, but we’ll also remove the risk of us blowing through that finish line without being, you know, without being ready for it.
So it’ll never become urgent because we will be ready when the time, when the time is.
Ged: Or it’s been sold in a different way by some other thing. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Milan: [00:13:00] By circumstances, right? Because what can easily happen is that by the time you get to it, the, you know, person that you were. Figuring out of how to refa their role so they can become a player already left because they were not happy in the role, in the everyday were, and they get no indication from you that you actually cared and was trying to do something for them. Or the customer moves on or the. I’m UNC uncharacteristically out of examples at the moment, but I’m sure
Ged: Yep. Yeah. Yeah.
Milan: The listen will understand. Yeah.
Ged: Yep. Yeah. So this is all about balance, isn’t it? You know, the know the card to be recorded recently about the impossible goal. That’s when you’ve gotta really, really move fast. You know, there is a, there is an impetus, there’s a reason to move really, really fast. And what we’re talking about now is, you know, the decision [00:14:00] making structure, the decision making process that, that. Do you need to move that fast or is there a different pace that works better in this particular circumstances for this outcome? So there’s no one right answer to this. The key point here is to be considered about the pace of your decision making.
Milan: You know as we do sometimes, I slightly disagree with the, with that statement.. Look, sorry. I’ll come back to this because despite of what I’m trying to do here, the phone is ringing.
Okay?
Ged: And you just also check your video. You went blurry for a little bit there.[00:15:00]
Milan: Yeah, no, that shouldn’t be. Didn’t touch anything.
Ged: Okay.
Milan: Alright, so we’ll rest.. Well, I’m not sure I entirely agree with that statement you said. So, you know, let’s, let’s have a banter about it. You know, because even in that scenario, and I know I already said that there was the point of planning, you know, I, we knew that that decision needed to be made quickly, but all the actions thereafter.
We’re actually a part of considered plan on. In order to do this, we need to act at this particular time. You know, we knew exactly what time we have to wake up, right? All of that stuff was, was done because of the slowdown, right? Because the, the, the first 10, 15 minutes did not matter. What mattered was how we are going to [00:16:00] use the 12 hours that we have ahead of us.
And we could have gone crazy and just panic and not, not get anything done. But we did take them 10, 15 minutes to think about it and do a research of what the options are and, and what happens. Right? We actually. You know, I went to, I went to pilot school and one of the things we were taught there was that if you find yourself in the crisis, the first thing you do is to tell, is to count calmly to 10.
’cause if you crash within the time where it’s probably very little you were able to do in that, in that point anyway. And the second is that you are in much better you, you hand yourself. Much better hand or deal yourself much better hand to deal with that situation because you calm yourself down, you suppressed your fight of flight reflex, right?
And you gave yourself a chance to essence the situation. You know, get your contextual, your contact [00:17:00] awareness to speed and have the best starting position to actually deal with that. We will do that problem. And this is exactly the same thing, right? Like. Pause, slow the fuck down, right? But then be clear about when each action needs to happen.
Assign ownership to it. Who’s gonna do what when, and hold them to it yourself included, to increase the chance that you’re going to get the outcome you desire.
Ged: So I think, I think what you’re saying, if I can sort of know, play that, play that back just ’cause I think we are actually saying the same thing just in slightly different ways is, you know, even if we need to move really, really fast towards an impossible goal, we should still take the time to plan out the best path to that goal. And I absolutely agree with that. I think a lot of leadership teams don’t do that, so they do make instinctive knee jerk decisions when they should have just the fuck [00:18:00] down for a few seconds, a few minutes, and then embarked on the impossible goal.
Milan: Yeah, because without doing that, without taking that little time, you don’t even give yourself a chance to realize from which place you’re making the decision. Because it might be a fear, it might be, it might be, you know, a pressure that doesn’t need to be there. Giving yourself those few seconds or minutes or days, depending on again, the, the framing of the problem ahead of you again, gives you the best possible starting point to make the right decision.
Ged: And thoughts just occurred to me, which I don’t think we talk about in the, in the card, is, you know, you are much more likely to get a team to disagree, but commit. If they’ve had a chance to consider the decision saying to someone, okay, okay. I’m the, I’m the decision maker on this. I’m the [00:19:00] accountable person.
This is the decision I’m making. If people haven’t had a chance to think it through themselves, they’re much more likely to commit to it. Even if it wouldn’t be their choice, that decision wouldn’t be the way they would approach it. So giving people a bit of time just helps them resolve things in their own minds so that they’re more likely to actually disagree and commit.
Milan: Yeah. And giving them the chance to disagree, right? Giving them the chance to be listened to. Like, I hurt you. I know where you’re coming from. This is what we need to do as a team is much better than not even giving them a chance and say, Hey, this is the, this is the thing of you. Go. Yeah, it is just another example in which to giving yourself and your team a little bit of extra time is going to significantly increase the chance of success.
Ged: We actually covered two cards in [00:20:00] today’s f.
Milan: Yeah. Yeah. So I’ll, I’ll, I’ll like to Luke know, because he might need to, he might need to adjust the, the, the the graphics to it. The same way, you know, on the AI cart. We will be actually covering three. So, you know, at least we have a precedent for that.
Ged: Yeah.
Milan: The website is ready for many, too many relationship between cards and, and.
Episodes. So that’s fine.
Ged: I, I
Milan: So now the question is, do we squeeze in? That’s fine. That’s fine. Yeah. The, the question is, do we squeeze in one more?
Ged: I’ve got a pretty hard stop at nine 30 my time. So in 24 minutes, do
Milan: Five for a.
Ged: That we can riff on quickly?
Milan: Probably let me,
Ged: The teaser as well,
Milan: Let me,
Ged: Gotta do the teaser for this one?
Milan: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So why don’t you set your brain [00:21:00] for that. While I am going to take a quick look at available visits.
Ged: Now I will abbreviate TF for the teaser because that’s probably going out on LinkedIn and other places. Lan and I have just finished recording Slow TF down, and that’s a card really about. Making sure that decision making is considered and taken at the right pace. This was a bit of an odd episode because this conversation just branched naturally to cover another card two. So today for that episode, you get two cards in one, you.
Milan: You should probably say which one. The other one is, which was the cost of hesitation. So they’re both talking [00:22:00] about the two extremes in making decisions. One is to rush them. Under some kind of urgency. And the second one is kicking them down the road until it’s too late for it to have any impact. And finding the right balance is what those two cards will give you together in one episode.
Alright.
Ged: I’m not sure how that will stitch together. We’ll let Luke deal with that, but I’m just gonna do a very, very quick snip that he can maybe add at some point. And I’m also gonna
Milan: Okay.
Ged: The in. So today you get two episode. It isn’t today. It’s then the next episode. Yep.
Milan: Yeah. Got it.
Ged: Yeah. So in that episode, I shall leave a pause. In that episode, you actually get two episodes in one. You get slow TF down, and also the cost of hesitation. [00:23:00] So cards together, they create a bit of a decision making framework that helps you make the decisions at the right pace and at the right time you can do something. Stitching all that together.
