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Ged: Okay. Better. Let’s kill that. Okay. We are on. Whenever you’re ready. Get my cards ready.
Milan: You are good to go, sir.
Ged: Okay, welcome back to podcast. The podcast where Milan and I draw a card at random from a deck of cards just like these, a deck that Milan has created and produced. We draw ’em at random. Let’s shuffle the cars and see what pops out today.[00:01:00]
Milan: Reframe this is a incredibly powerful and incredibly underused tool. So what is reframe? Let’s just, you know, let’s just go edit. So imagine a sentence that makes you feel uneasy, right? Like, we can’t do, this is a typical one. Right. What if we start thinking about the same topic in slightly different way?
We just rewire our brain for a second and we say, no, wait a minute. Don’t say we can’t do that because that has a whole bunch of hidden assumptions behind it. Let’s test those assumptions immediately by saying, what would need to be true in order for this to be possible or in order for us to be able to do this right?
Ged: So, so we’re looking from a different perspective.
Milan: Yeah, yeah, reframe, like really just, just looking at it from a, from a different piece and it’s a, you know, brings the whole [00:02:00] team into a positive state of mind, into a creative rather than defensive. Like, it is like a rule in, in brainstorming. First you throw the things on without being critical to them, and then you start taking them apart.
And again, the reframing could be a very, very strong tool to get unstuck. When you are looking at a problem or when you feel like, okay, this is actually a disadvantage of some kind. From what perspective is this actually advantage and can we adopt that perspective or can we work with that? Well, the one story I heard was of the island of Mauritius.
Which was I believe that their tourist and I, I think it, it, I actually went to a course on reframing long time ago. It was a small workshop. It was actually quite what, quite funny. So this example that I couldn’t find origins of the use was the island of Mauritius. That they were like, oh, we are so, such a small island.
We have so little land, but we have [00:03:00] a lot of ocean. What can we do with that? Right. Just think about how that’s changed the brain and say, okay, that this is our, you know, this is our resource, and you can use a similar. A similar analogy with Taiwan that started looking at, okay, we don’t have any natural resources.
Well wait a minute, you know, we have our population. What if we start thinking about it as a resource? What would it mean? How do we invest into it? And they went the educational route and all those things. And now they made a, make a majority of the, you know, high, high-end chips in the world because of this, you know, multi-decade adoption of of a different, thinking about what your limitations and opportunities are.
Ged: Yeah. So rather than framing something as a, you know, a, you know, a, a final, it can’t be done. Now look at it from a different perspective. You know, look at it from a, you know, from a more optimistic, you know, viewpoint. You know, what is a constraint that you could remove that would make the, the negative statement at the beginning irrelevant. Now looking at it from a different, different [00:04:00] perspective. Absolutely, absolutely. Because this is a big thing in NLP as well, you know, reframing is of a big part of neuro neural. I’ll say. It’s easier for me to say, I’ll say it again, alistic. Why can’t I say that word right now? Anyway? NLP, that’s the one I’m talking about. You’ll know what NLP is?
Milan: I have absolutely no way of pronouncing it right now without embracing myself. So I, yeah, NLP sounds good.
Ged: Mm-hmm.
Milan: And we don’t meet natural eng language processing. We mean, we mean the other one.
Ged: No, indeed, indeed. Neurolinguistic.
Milan: Yeah.
Ged: The one. Neurolinguistic That’s the one. Yep.
Milan: Yeah, so the so the point of of this is it’s not necessarily just flipping, you know, negative into positive.
It’s about trying several different reframes to see what sticks and what might actually show us the way forward. Right? I had a recently a conversation with a company [00:05:00] you know, getting to a financial situation where they needed to consider layoffs. Right. Not a fun place to be for anybody, but I’m having a conversation with them and say, look, you are planning to restructure your team anyway, right?
You just did not pull the trigger. You haven’t used it. Right? So now you have an opportunity and the economical, you know, pressure to actually act on. Right. So now do it right, do it humanly. Do it in the best possible way. But this actually is helping you move the company in a particular direction.
Just make sure that you know, when you are actually doing this, you’re doing it the right way and, and with, with the right people it’s an extreme case, right? But it’s a it’s a situation of, you know, how to reframe and how to say, alright, you know. Don’t waste, you know? Don’t waste a good crisis.
I.
Ged: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe, maybe throwing in a couple of [00:06:00] examples, you know, the, you know, I dunno how to do this or I can’t do this. You could reframe that as well. Know who would be the best person to do this, you know, who else could do this in a way where. I can, I can leverage their expertise, their skills, you know, their brains, so that we get a better outcome.
Because if I can’t do it, then well, maybe someone else is better off doing it.
Milan: Yeah. And then it leads to our, one of our mantras, which is, you know who then what, right. Or who not how to go back to Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy is.
Precise example, or very, very good example of of a reframing is to say, okay, I don’t know how well. How can AI help me? How can you know, somebody else help me? Who would that be? Who would be the best person in the world to do this in order for us to, to move forward? And once you start thinking about solving a more complex problem, [00:07:00] using reframing along the way it just becomes natural, right?
And you can, you can start building a very, very complex. Initially, presumably almost impossible goal, right? To reference our car cart to to a point of okay, just consist of a lot of what ifs and then which one of them do we have in control and what we can do about that.
Ged: Yeah,
Milan: Yeah.
Ged: Won’t work is a very blank statement, isn’t it? You know, there’s a, you, you can then reframe that by saying, well, you know, would it work if, or, you know, if we change this, would it then work? And you know, just look, yeah. Just reframing it in different ways.
Milan: Yeah, it’s, it is the same thing. Like, you know, every time I hear we can’t do this because of A, B, C you know, I stop them in their track and say, no, no, no. Think about it the other way. Tell me what would have to be true in order for this to work. Okay. It’s we might come to the same conclusion that it’s not realistic or whatever that is [00:08:00] under
Ged: Yep.
Milan: Given circumstances, but it’s a much healthier and much more productive way of thinking about it and shutting it down.
It’s, it is the same principle as saying, you know, yes. And instead of no, but right.
Ged: Yeah, yeah, yeah. One, one thing, one phrase I often hear that is a very, very good opportunity for reframing is we’ve always done it like this. Because when someone says, we’ve always done it like this, there’s an inherent block in there. Their, you know, their, their mindset is such that they can’t conceive of any other way of doing it, or why would we change? That’s a great opportunity for a reframe. Okay, well you’ve always done it like this, but now if, what would, what could we change that would make it better, faster, easier, simpler and often people just don’t, don’t even want to go there because they’re so used to the, they’re so entrenched in the old ways of doing things that it’s more comfortable to keep doing it like that. Change is uncomfortable.
Milan: Well, up to us, it’s up to us coaches usually to ask the the following [00:09:00] uncomfortable question, which is, and how has it been working for you?
Ged: Yes, yes, yes. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And sometimes it’s just better to reframe it, you know, rather than
Milan: Oh yeah. Yeah.
Ged: Back on on them, as you know. Yeah. Because anyone who says, we’ve always done it like this, as soon as they say it, they know that that’s probably not the right thing to say in that situation. Deep down, deep down.
Milan: Mm-hmm. Hmm. So you know, another, another example just came to mind at the conference I met a. A construction company from one of the Caribbean islands. Because if I say which island people could probably track which company it was, because those islands are fairly small and they’re basically saying, look, you know, we are in this very interesting environment, but there really, there, there isn’t, you know, the labor is not available and it’s not just our problem, it’s the you know, it is a competition as well.
And I said, so have, have you thought about training? I was like. [00:10:00] Okay. Right. And they seriously considered, I lost touch with them, so I didn’t know where, where it’d go. But during the thing they were, during our session, they were literally making notes and say, okay, so how can we actually build a training program as an addition to our business?
Which then a bring, gives us access to the best talent. Because we get, we get to pick pick from the crop and at the same time, you know, increases our. Brand awareness for quality and saying, if we train the others, we’ll probably, we probably know what we are doing, right? So great reframing at that point was like, okay, so that’s an opportunity.
Like if, if there is a, there is a restriction, you are feeling, chances are that your competition is feeling it as well. So how can you find a position in it that actually turns it into an advantage for you?
Ged: And you also take those trained people outta the talent pool for, from your competitors.
Milan: Yeah, [00:11:00] absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.
Ged: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Milan: Yeah. I think that that, you know, and especially with, with the limited population and limited talent pool in the first place, this could make a massive difference, right? You can literally deny a critical resource to your competition. So, you know, Susu would agree.
Ged: Yeah. So in when we were discussing this one before we start, before we pressed record you mentioned making constraints Beautiful. Tell me more about that. Mm-hmm.
Milan: Oh, well actually you, when you mentioned the word constraint I almost interrupted you because the book Beautiful Constraint came to mind, right? Which is literally this like, okay, how can we use this constraint to sharpen our thinking to. Allow us to focus. We talked about this in the Impossible goal episode, right?
And we, [00:12:00] I think that there are probably, you know, this, this pattern repeats itself, you know, quite often. So again, we are looking at a particular constraint and say, okay, is it a constraint that somebody else is facing? Is there an opportunity in there? What would happen if we remove the constraint?
Is there an opportunity in removal of the constraint in the first place? And so and so on and so on. Again, the book Beautiful Constraint, really takes this into. You know, pretty extensive detail.
Ged: There’s another book I haven’t read. I better add that to the book list.
Milan: Yeah. Well, there is a bookshelf on the website. Right. If you haven’t read everything from there, I would highly recommend that, especially to you. But you know, I’m sure there’s a lot of books that you read, and I haven’t. Oh, by the way, your book is on the bookshelf too.
Ged: Okay.
Milan: Mm-hmm.
Ged: Awesome. Always good to see. Always good
Milan: Yeah.
Ged: Yep. So C Constraints, they often block companies and reframing is a really [00:13:00] useful, very, very simple tool that’ll help you remove some of those cranks constraints. If you can reframe it in a way that’s a solution or a, an answer pops up. A simple tool well worth using.
Milan: Okay, that’s a wrap. You didn’t hear you didn’t hear messages beeping, did you?
Ged: I didn’t. Well, I, I, maybe I did. I I thought I noticed
Milan: No, no, no,
Ged: Sure of his mind. Well, I, I’ve got a guy streaming trimming his garden next door, and hopefully you can’t hear that.
Milan: No. It’s all good actually. Yeah.
Ged: Yep.
Milan: Okay,
Ged: Okay.
Milan: So teaser.
Ged: Teaser. Okay. Shall I just sort of riff on it and then maybe you cut
Milan: Sure, go ahead. Yeah.
Ged: Yep. Mm-hmm. [00:14:00] And I have just finished recording the podcast episode on reframing reframe. How do we change the situation by looking at it from a different perspective, asking a different question now, checking on whether a constraint is really, really valid. Just so we can potentially identify other ways of addressing a blockage something that’s getting in our way.
How can we actually reframe the whole situation with a line of question and it helps us solve the problem in alternative and creative ways. Milan, anything else you want to comment on?
Milan: I would, I wouldn’t limit ourselves into solving a problem. It’s about finding potentially finding a completely new opportunity in that space. Right. And how reframing helps you to do that. We showed, couple of examples, referenced a couple of books as we usually do. So if you feel like you’re stuck with something, maybe reframing, looking at it differently is the tool.
And in that case. Listen to the episode, [00:15:00] read the card, and good luck.
Okay.
Ged: Okay, how are we going? We’re bang on time we are then gonna switch on to what don’t you want to do Now, this is probably one that you are gonna have to lead, and this is probably another short one, isn’t it?
Milan: Exactly. I think that, you know, we’re just, we’re going for volume now to build, build our buffer a little bit. We’ll go for depth next time. And we’ll probably have Damien for the for the meeting prep and the accountability,
Ged: Yep. Yep,
Milan: Then later Norman for the human in the machine. Yep. Awesome.
Ged: Just, I’m just having a quick read of this one.
Milan: Sure.
Ged: And just so I understand that you had actually [00:16:00] asked this as an interview question before employing someone. Is this where this is framed from or would you use it more
Milan: Oh, absolutely. Well, well, I think that, yeah, so you, you have two, there are two cards. What do you, what don’t you want to do? And then there is. The don’t do list. Those are two different things. That’s where I got confused, right?
Ged: Mm-hmm.
Milan: The don’t do list is a separate one, which I believe we, that what we’ve done a few weeks ago. Yeah. So no, this is literally an interview question helps very quickly to wield out non A players. And yeah, and you know exactly, you’re exactly where you are, right.
Ged: Yep. Okay. Okay. I’ll lead us in. We can do the shuffle and then go straight in.
Milan: Okay. If you want me to take a lead on the content, then absolutely. Yeah.
Ged: Yep. Okay, cool,
Milan: Mm-hmm.
