Camille Rapacz: How was your week, George?
George Drapeau: It was a busy week. It's the last fiscal week of our quarter, and so there was a lot of stuff going on, closing out the quarter financially. What happened next week for the most part. But we had goals, Q1 goals that were rolled down from the top of the company, company wide for everybody for the first time ever.
George Drapeau: And what I mean by that is, We have goals, but the management practice about making sure goals are in workday, in our HR system, there's not much adherence to it, but something changed. And this time everybody was basically supposed to have words on paper, words in, by yesterday, the 31st of March.
George Drapeau: So I spent time with my team reviewing what that meant, and we had already known what we were gonna do for the quarter. So it was not a problem. It was mostly a, a paperwork and sanity check exercise.
George Drapeau: Anyway, so this is, I think that one of these transition steps from big boy company. Yeah, it's awkward. Just like puberty. We're in corporate puberty.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. I often think of this whenever I'm working with businesses I always frame it into like, oh yeah, growing pains.
Camille Rapacz: There's always these growing pains as they're going from one stage to the next, right? Mm-hmm. That's what you're doing. Yep. Same deal.
George Drapeau: This story here reminds me of why we were thinking about the podcast in the first place. Cuz everyone's like, so this is what's happening with me and goals at Big Company and in the past I'll tell you about this to be like, oh yeah, I remember those days.
George Drapeau: And then you'll usually have some story about somebody you're consulting with or helping with right now and dealing with that. And this kind of like, I'm mildly annoyed at what's happening at my company thing as part of what I think gave you the idea like, you know, we should make that into a podcast
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. And even just listening to you talk about it now, and I think, you know, smaller businesses, they're not at that level of, they're gonna grow into, I gotta put all my stuff in Workday, which is just a fancy, you know, computer system. Yeah. But like if they work with me, I start pushing them into, well you have to set your own quarterly goals.
Camille Rapacz: And for a lot of small business owners, they're like, well, I do. I got, yeah. Oh. Oh yeah. I guess I do. So there's just layers of how you're setting goals and how they're rolling out through an organization. There are all these just iterations of improvement that we're making, right.
Camille Rapacz: That we talk about all the time. Yes. This is how we're leveling up performance. Yes, indeed.
Camille: Welcome to The Belief Shift. The show that explores. What you really need to know about building a successful small business.
Camille: I'm your host, Camille Rapacz: small business coach and consultant who spent too much of her career working in corporate business performance.
George: And I'm George Drapeau: your co-host and her brother. I'm a leader in the tech world bringing my corporate perspective, but mostly my curiosity.
Camille: Together, we're exploring beliefs about success and how to achieve it. But mostly we're bringing practical solutions so you and your business can thrive.
Camille Rapacz: And how was your week? Well, my week was great. What did I do this week? I did a lot of podcast planning work this week, so that was fun. Oh. Mostly because I'm trying to get ahead of the game right now because I have, I'm basically gonna be out for the whole month of May, and I Yes, I know.
Camille Rapacz: I'm very excited. We'll talk about that more later. Okay. But I'm trying to decide if I'm gonna have podcasts that come out while I'm out or if I'm gonna have a break. And I'm okay with either one. I'm just sort of trying to see how it's playing out, and so that's requiring a little more advance thinking than I would normally be doing. I wouldn't normally be trying to get that detailed into my plan. I mean, I do a lot of planning, but this is pretty detailed anyhow, so that's what I was busy doing this week. Otherwise, good week.
George Drapeau: I think that's good for the audience to know. I mean, I think they're probably getting a sense of you as the rest of us who know and love you do that you are a planner, but I don't think of you as a high maintenance planner.
George Drapeau: You're just Yeah. Clear, clear thinker and when we talk about stuff when I visit, you don't make me plan my every single minute. That's not how it works.
George Drapeau: And so hearing you talk about like you're spending extra time planning cuz you're taking May off, maybe some of the audience would've figured, oh, I thought she had the next three years planned out every single week. No. I mean you have planning but not, not stupid advanced planning, right? You still live your life.
Camille Rapacz: I do try to, yes, have a nice balance. And I will say my husband helps to balance out the non planning cuz he's not a planner. Though recently he's been asking for my help with his business and helping him. So I'm basically doing coaching with him now on his business. Awesome. Which is have actually been really fun and rewarding.
Camille Rapacz: I know people are like, what? You're coaching your spouse? That seems weird.
Camille Rapacz: It's actually really fun to just see what's going on. I'm learning more about what's happening in his business and what he's challenged with and feel like I'm actually able to help him when I'm in that mode.
Camille Rapacz: I think he can hear me offer up ideas in a way when we're in a official coaching session than if I'm just his wife. Yeah. I can see that. Like over dinner saying, Hey, you should try this thing. You know, which I try very hard not to do.
Camille Rapacz: Alright. Do you wanna talk about our topic today? Yes.
Camille Rapacz: Or on, we could just keep talking about this cuz kind
George Drapeau: of fun.
George Drapeau: We could do that too, but I think we should probably get to the topic at hand.
Camille Rapacz: In our last episode, which was episode 33, we talked about growth mindset. And the reason we talked about growth mindset was because it's the prerequisite to talking about this topic today, which is the idea of what does it mean to build a learning organization? Or to build learning into the culture and environment of your company?
Camille Rapacz: Question though, for you, George.
Camille Rapacz: Do you believe that we all have a desire to learn serious answer?
George Drapeau: No serious answer. And I find that incredibly frustrating. I used to think that we all had a desire to learn, but it's just not true. No,
Camille Rapacz: not really. Interesting. It frustrates me.
George Drapeau: Yeah. Do you agree with me?
Camille Rapacz: I do.
Camille Rapacz: I think people want to be smarter, but maybe skip the learning part.
Camille Rapacz: I literally just realized that's what I think. Yeah. As you, as you said. No, I was like, oh, cuz I usually think everybody has all this potential and they wanna be the best person and I'm like, no, he's right. There are people who really don't, cuz learning is painful.
Camille Rapacz: So yeah, I think I'm with you. I don't think everybody's really down with the actual learning thing. Yeah. And when it comes to companies, companies I believe, are definitely not designed to encourage learning. And so I think that that's interesting adds to this.
George Drapeau: Can we expand on that?
George Drapeau: Yeah. Yes, it does. I mean, I'm in the software industry and you learn or die pretty much in the software industry.
George Drapeau: If you go further with what I think you're trying to say about the organizational support for encouraging learning, I wanna hear what you think about that. Because it's one thing to say, yeah, we support it. Or even here's some money. It's another thing to really put scaffolding around it.
Camille Rapacz: Yes. So I am talking about more than just saying, here's some training dollars though. That also is, that's huge. Not why, why not widely, you know, used in all companies, like really big companies sort of have the budget to, do it. Yeah. But even when I worked in, big companies, I would run into this issue all the time of just getting them to approve tiny amounts of training money for my team.
Camille Rapacz: Yes. It was always a struggle. It's always a fight, right? So I think even when you're in a space of, we all agree learning is good, but companies actually creating an environment that encourages it by removing these obstacles, like, well, I can't afford it, or I don't have time.
Camille Rapacz: Or all these things like companies are kind of like, you go take care of your own learning. Sort of seems like the, the general approach.
Camille Rapacz: I think just the inherent design of a business can sometimes create an environment that actually hampers learning. Like a business by design, inhibits learning. And you as a business owner are probably creating a business without having structures and an environment for learning. Yeah. Without even knowing it.
Camille Rapacz: Like, you're not intentionally saying, I don't want anybody to get smarter and learn something. You don't go into it like that, but it's done because it happens because of the inattention to making learning a critical part of the business.
Camille Rapacz: And it connects back to the idea we talked about in the last episode in Growth Mindset. It's, well, we said growth mindset isn't just about, I like to go take classes.
Camille Rapacz: Growth mindset is about reframing how we think about failure and mm-hmm. It goes beyond the, the typical standard ways we think of learning.
Camille Rapacz: So that's why I connected these two ideas together because I think it's also how we get learning in an organization wrong is we oversimplify it.
Camille Rapacz: But if we can do it right, if we can get a, a company designed with learning as just culturally part of how we think about the way we do all of our work.
Camille Rapacz: So today I wanna talk about how companies inhibit learning and what do you, as a small business owner, how do you either head that off as you're growing your business or when you're business as it's getting bigger, how do you pay attention to it?
Camille Rapacz: So you're still benefiting from that? Cuz it's gonna give you so much better results at the end of the day if you can just do some of these things intentionally. And that's really what it comes down to is having intention around creating learning as part of your company but also not getting overwhelmed by this idea.
Camille Rapacz: Again, as we talk about everything, how do you micro move your way into it, right?
George Drapeau: Yeah. Okay. So I have to admit this, this is gonna be an eye-opener for me. I can already see that cuz I'm on the same page as you, but I don't think I've actually thought.
George Drapeau: I can feel George's rose colored glasses attitude taking over here. Yeah. So you ask me do I think our company's designed to encourage learning? Yeah. I mean, in my experience I get a lot of positive reinforcement. My own training is, you know, ask for money to get training. That's really as far as I'm getting most of the time. Cause I'm a very happy, positive person, but like, I'm not thinking about really how companies are inhibiting, tamping down learning.
George Drapeau: So like, how is that happening? How do you see companies inhibit learning?
Camille Rapacz: Yeah, let's talk about it. So I have a list that I wanna go through and I love that you're trying to see this other side of it.
Camille Rapacz: I think I have eight things that I identified that are ways that I think companies really inhibit learning. So your job, George, is to listen to them and see if you can suss out what you think your top three on this list would be.
Camille Rapacz: This isn't to say that audience George is perfect. And these are actually the top three.
Camille Rapacz: These are just George's top three. I'm here for 'em. George's
George Drapeau: top three at the moment.
Camille Rapacz: So before that I just wanna say there's a couple references cuz you know, I always like to share with people if you're curious to learn more about this topic.
Camille Rapacz: I mean, obviously you're gonna listen to the rest of the podcast and you will be enlightened. But then when you're done, if you're like, I wanna know more, or I wonder if that girl really knows what she's talking about. I have a couple of resources I'll link to in the show notes.
Camille Rapacz: One is this book called The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge.
Camille Rapacz: And that he really talks about this idea of creating a learning organization, that one with the mindset book that we talked about last time, those two together really were informing me and how to think about building a culture of continuous improvement.
Camille Rapacz: Mm-hmm. I'm also just pulling from my own experience of, I did spend years just working on this idea of how do we create a learning organization as part of continuous improvement. So all of my experience, that's what we were doing when we were trying to implement lean.
Camille Rapacz: So I'm pulling from that. I also found this really great Harvard Business Review article that again, I'll link in the show notes. It really has a great summary. Even better probably than, you know, trying to read the whole book that Peter Senge wrote does a really great summary of just learning organizations.
Camille Rapacz: So if you're looking for more references, you can see those there. But Awesome for now listening cuz here we go. Okay.
Camille Rapacz: All right. So these are the eight things that I see that's inhibit learning. I'm sure there are more, but these are my top eight. The first one is just the idea that we are not thinking as business owners and leaders as learning is part of a high performance business.
Camille Rapacz: And what I mean by that is, Where you focus the business around we need a good strategy, we gotta have good marketing, we need product development, we need, you know, great customer service. We're focusing on all these elements of business. And we create departments around them, we create old processes for them.
Camille Rapacz: We do lots of creative discussions and brainstorming on these topics. We really put a lot of energy into them, but we don't treat learning in the same way.
Camille Rapacz: Learning is sort of assumed, which actually is number two, assuming that people will do it naturally. Okay? So the number one is we don't think about it as critical to high performance the way we do strategy marketing and all these other parts of business.
Camille Rapacz: And number two is we just assume people will do it naturally. So whether you believe we have an inclination to learn or not, which you saying, no, I don't, then this is a horrible idea to assume we're gonna do it naturally, right. That's number two.
Camille Rapacz: Number three is that we limit our learning to just going to training and doing it in a classroom.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. As opposed to also learning by doing. Yeah. And so learning is just, yeah, I, like you said, here's the money. Go to that class. That sounds great. Get that training. But you're just going and receiving information. How do you then come back and learn by actually doing the thing? Okay. And have support for that learning. Yeah. So that's number three. Just limited to training in classrooms.
Camille Rapacz: Number four, limiting people's roles in the company. So if their job descriptions are too narrow, or in a company where I don't know if you've ever experienced this, George, where it's just like, kind of like, you know, you're told to stay in your lane.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. Like, don't think about the problems outside of your area. That's not your job. Yeah, it's frustrating related systems, like don't be as, I'm feeling triggered now. Yeah. Okay. So that's number four. Limiting your roles
Camille Rapacz: Number five is your work is centered around being reactive and firefighting all the time. Oh, interesting. Yeah, this is a really big one for small business owners. Like we're constantly in this reactive mode, right? We get busy and all of a sudden that's all we're doing. So there's no time to analyze or problem solve.
Camille Rapacz: And the true problem solving is learning. learning a better way. And sometimes I hear people say, yeah, I'm great problem solver, but all they're actually doing is firefighting. You're good at reacting to a situation. You're not good at actually root cause analysis and problem solving, and they're different.
Camille Rapacz: Okay. Yeah. And that second one is where learning happens. So that's number five.
Camille Rapacz: Number six. Doing accountability poorly or what another word for this is just blame. Playing the blame game Oh I see, so we call it accountability, but what we really mean is I need somebody to point the finger at for who's responsible for this thing that went wrong.
Camille Rapacz: Seeking to blame somebody, it's easier than thinking about the larger problem or system. We want someone held accountable for this thing that went wrong. Yes. So that's number six. Okay.
Camille Rapacz: Number seven is leaders and managers who just don't know how to develop employees into learners. Yeah. And that's either, they just don't know how to teach them how to think creatively and broadly.
Camille Rapacz: Nobody taught them how to do it, so they don't know how to teach anyone else. Sometimes these leaders themselves, they've just stopped learning. Like you get to a level of achievement in your job and you get a certain title and you're like, and I'm done.
Camille Rapacz: Don't need to learn anymore. I got this. And then sometimes it's also just that those leaders or managers, they don't even know that it should be part of their job. Nobody told them your job is to develop these people and help them learn. Yeah. So that's number seven.
Camille Rapacz: And then the last one is just generally not creating a culture of what we call psychological safety. Which basically just means we have a culture where people are encouraged to speak up and that it's supported for them to speak out about what they're seeing going on in the company.
Camille Rapacz: So we make it okay for them to, try something out and fail at it, or to put a crazy idea out for people to discuss. Like, Hey, what if we tried X? And often companies are set up where people feel like they have to have their ideas fully baked before they can present them. I remember having this feeling where I was like, man, if I go into that room with all those VPs, I better know what I'm talking about.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. Because all they're gonna want to do is poke holes in my idea, not actually collaboratively talk about the potential of my idea. Yeah, man. Yeah. Right. Ugh. Happens all the time.
Camille Rapacz: And they're like, no, we're trying to help you by poking holes. No, you're not.
Camille Rapacz: You're trying to take down my idea. You're not actually trying to elevate my idea with me. I mean, you can send me off to go do more work, but we're not having a collaborative conversation about this. So that's missing in if you don't have enough psychological safety in a company for people to feel safe again, feel safe psychologically to just talk about this stuff.
Camille Rapacz: So you're losing opportunities to thought, partner, collaborate, brainstorm, do any of this learning together cuz you're squelching it.
Camille Rapacz: So those are my eight.
George Drapeau: Awesome list. Okay. Wow. What are your thoughts? So many reactions. I'm gonna do my lightning on top three and then I have an honorary mention.
Camille Rapacz: Ooh. I like it. Okay.
George Drapeau: The first one. Limiting learning to training in classrooms and I have a pet peeve about that. I feel very strong. That's probably my biggest one.
George Drapeau: Number two, limiting people's roles. Yes, absolutely. I find that frustrating when it impinges on people's growth and learning. And I see that happening even when it's well-meaning. I get the point for swim lanes. You don't want a big company full of cowboys where everybody just cuz it does everything and you don't coordinate.
George Drapeau: You want coordination, you want clear boundaries between people, but not to the extent that it limits people's learning.
George Drapeau: And then, work being centered around being reactive and kind of firefighting.
George Drapeau: Actually this is another thing that comes up for us in the podcast, doesn't it? Like being reactive, getting in the way of something else. Getting in the way of planning. Getting in the way of reflection and so it comes up again, getting in the way of learning.
George Drapeau: My honorary mention will be the not knowing how to develop employees into learners.
George Drapeau: I like this one because it is so kind. I mean, it's giving leaders and managers credit for wanting their employees to learn, but just not knowing how to do that.
George Drapeau: This is my honorary mention, and I would say for you, those of you who are leaders, and you say, but I encourage my people to be learners.
George Drapeau: Like, consider what Camille's talking about that maybe there's some tooling you can get to actually be good at that. I would love to hear more about that.
George Drapeau: Can I go back to my top one and say my pet peeve?.
Camille Rapacz: Yes, please do. And then I'll come back and make another comment about your honorable mention.
George Drapeau: So limiting learning to training in classrooms so I work in a function at our organization where I'm working with other partners and we're in a sales organization, so we're jointly combining technology with our biggest strategic partners.
George Drapeau: And then we're training the sales forces on how to go and sell that stuff to customers, but not just training. At this company, we use the word enablement. And a lot of times when people say the word enablement, what they really mean is the training. And so the pet peeve about this word, and what I'll tell them is, look, here's the difference between training and enablement in my mind.
George Drapeau: Training is like what you learn when you go to law school. You spend time in classes, read books, you do case studies. But you're not actually running a law of business. Enablement is the stuff after that. You need to learn how to set up your practice, how to fire people, what area of law to go into, how to have conversation with the customer's training.
George Drapeau: And when you're done training, you're not fully enabled to do that business. There is a difference. And so one of them, I mean that ties into the kinds of training how people think about it and going to classrooms or sending you through classrooms and thinking you're fully ready to go out on the street and do stuff.
George Drapeau: You're trained, but you're not enabled. That's why that's my top one. Cause I have this pet peeve about training versus enable. Damn it.
Camille Rapacz: I love that description. You just drove that point home. That is the difference that we're talking about in creating a learning organization.
Camille Rapacz: Just having classes and training for people it's important. ] I don't wanna poopa that. You must stuff train people. You must job train people. I know companies that aren't training their people on all of the systems that they have, that people have to use, you know, the technology.
Camille Rapacz: And so they're fumbling all the time and they're frustrated in their jobs just cuz they don't know how to use this software.
Camille Rapacz: So training is important. However, you can't stop there I can, okay, yeah, get trained how to do my job, but this is one of the benefits of when they talk about doing on-the-job training, having actual programs for that.
Camille Rapacz: Cuz then all the variables come in and that's where the learning really happens. Yeah. In a classroom, it's hard to have all the variables, all the unexpected stuff show up. You can't do it.
Camille Rapacz: , I wanna come back to, you know, your my honorable mention. Honorable mention about the leaders and managers who just don't know how.
Camille Rapacz: So this is one of the things that we focused on a lot in creating a high performance organization, is teaching our leaders to be coaches.
Camille Rapacz: That's essentially what we're doing. How do I teach you how to be a coach to your team?
Camille Rapacz: And coaching is about, I'm helping you learn for yourself. Consulting is, I'm gonna tell you what to do cuz I'm an expert. Coaching is, I'm gonna help you learn, discover ways to do things better for yourself.
Camille Rapacz: Usually leaders and managers are like, well, I'm supposed to be the smarty pants in the room cuz I'm the boss. So I just give answers and solutions to my team. But when you flip it and right, I mean that's, that's, that's the standard way to think about it. But if you're really gonna build a high performing team, you're gonna teach them how to do things better on their own.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. And you're gonna coach them through how to do that. So there's this element of coaching in here that's really essential to being able to do all of this stuff. That I just love the tie-in for that.
Camille Rapacz: All right. So those were your top three plus honorable mention. Now I wanna move into the next phase of this, which is, of course, we always wanna tell people like, well, what are they supposed to do about it? Yeah. Right. Okay.
Camille Rapacz: And if you're a small business, you might feel like my people feel good about speaking up. I will just say, every leader and business owner believes that they 100% have the best culture of people feeling free to speak up. Mm-hmm. And I will just say, even with all the best of intentions, you can still be doing things that are shutting them down . Or they might be bringing their own baggage in from their previous job.
Camille Rapacz: I've had this right, where I'm like, why is this person being so resistant? Oh, thinking I'm gonna be just like their last boss. And so they're coming in with that same approach. So just be aware that this does take a little bit more intention I would say around how you think about this and don't just be like, oh no, we're fine.
Camille Rapacz: We don't have an or. Or my company's not big enough to think about this. Oh yes it is. Yeah. Even if it's just you, you really gotta be thinking about this. But especially companies with small teams, they may not have the issue of say people's roles. Cuz in that case you probably have people holding like more and many hats cuz you're a small team and everybody's kind of doing a little bit of everything.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. So that's kinda the beauty of that. Those lanes get narrowed the bigger the company gets. But as you're growing, you can be thinking about this like, how do I keep the dynamic that we had when we were young and we were all like all over the place and how do I keep that learning energy up as I continue to grow the company?
Camille Rapacz: That's one of the things I would have 'em focus.
Camille Rapacz: But to keep this simple, I wanna walk through how people can think about how to start building learning into their company.
Camille Rapacz: And then when I get done with this, so George, your job now is I want you to pretend you are a small business owner, okay?
Camille Rapacz: And I'm gonna walk through these, what you can do. And then afterwards we're going to, do a little mockup of how you would do it in your business, just from your own approach. Not that this, again Awesome. Is awesome, the perfect way. It'll just be George's way.
Camille Rapacz: So I'll give people kind of an example of how you might think through it. Okay. So cool. Here we go.
Camille Rapacz: So I've talked about my framework for a high performance business in the past. And basically I think of these three pillars for high performance. . So at these three pillars, clarity systems, and mindset, and if you are working on developing in each of those three areas, then you are working towards building a high performance business. The beauty of this framework is you can apply it to all these smaller parts of your business.
Camille Rapacz: And so this is also gonna be a theme that's gonna be showing up often as we talk about, well what do I do about it? Well, what you wanna do to build the learning organization as part of the culture of your company, is you wanna first get clarity around setting clear expectations for learning and the behaviors that go with it.
Camille Rapacz: Hmm. You wanna create a shared vision for the company. People need to know what's the purpose of the learning? Like what, where are we headed? So like when you talk about in a software company, learning being sort of, you have to be learning all the time. Well, yeah, because the purpose is for you guys to be out ahead of everybody, and that is a fast moving industry.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. So it makes sense. There's a clear vision of what we're trying to accomplish and so we know what kinds of things we should be learning about. Really clear. So that's important.
Camille Rapacz: And then you do wanna clarify to the people that you work with that personal mastery does matter.
Camille Rapacz: That there are expectations for them to personally be developing. This gets back to the very first thing we said, which is don't assume everybody's walking in thinking I'm here to be a learner. Cuz they might not be okay. Right? And so, you know, you obviously you wanna hire well you wanna hire people who want to be learning, but then you wanna set that expectation.
Camille Rapacz: So these are areas of just creating clarity around being intentional of learning being part of your company. Okay. Questions about any of that, George?
George Drapeau: I don't think so. I think I get this.
Camille Rapacz: Okay, then we'll go to systems. Okay, so systems is the second part of this. And the systems, this is kind of the big part, right?
Camille Rapacz: And this is the easy stuff to think about. Cause this can be more tangible. So create systems for things like problem solving. Okay?
Camille Rapacz: Expecting people to really focus on understanding cause and effect versus looking for root cause of a problem, right? Understanding what that means. And a great way to do this is create some sort of shared mental model or framework for problem solving.
Camille Rapacz: And it could be something super simple, right? Just hey, we're gonna have this one part of this team meeting where we're gonna talk about actual root cause analysis of a problem we're working on, or something to that nature.
Camille Rapacz: It could be very, very simple, but that you're deliberate about it, not just assuming people are doing, cuz people don't really naturally do a root cause analysis. We don't. I agree. It's, it takes energy. Yeah. So of course we don't do it, so we have to be intentional. So creating systems for that. Okay. Also thinking about learning systems and practices.
Camille Rapacz: So what are the processes, the tools, the mechanisms for learning?
Camille Rapacz: In big companies they'll have a big knowledge management system, right? Yeah. So maybe some of you worked there in a company where it's just you had this big knowledge management or learning management system and you held this information in there.
Camille Rapacz: That's not necessary for smaller businesses. I shouldn't say that. Depends on the type of business you're in. You might need that, some way of having this knowledge be captured in a system.
Camille Rapacz: One of the reasons you do that, by the way, is so that the knowledge doesn't just sit in the heads of your employees, but it sits in the head of the business, which is in this system.
Camille Rapacz: So as people leave, yes. Knowledge doesn't leave with them. Yeah, absolutely. We can't avoid that completely. But you're minimizing it. Okay.
Camille Rapacz: Other types of learning systems and practices would be things we actually talked about before, which are things like doing the qbr, your quarterly business reviews.
Camille Rapacz: Or doing these after action or hotwash conversations. Hotwash. Yeah. I know. I like the hotwash. This is cool too. So doing that where it's like, Ooh, this thing just happened. Let's just talk about that. That's being intentional about learning. So you see how it's different from training, but we're learning in the moment, what just happened?
Camille Rapacz: What went well? What could we do better? Boom. Done. Okay. Super fast, but still is bringing, learning into every aspect of what you do. And not by the way, just when things go wrong. It could be, we just had a big sales meeting. Let's do a quick hot wash conversation about how did it go. Also, you'll recognize on a team where people have very different perceptions about what happened, which is Oh yeah. Like fabulous to capture. That's a huge bonus. Doing lessons learned on big projects and things like that.
Camille Rapacz: And then just even just reporting out on just sharing what's happening, reporting out on a project or an initiative or whatever's going on in the business.
Camille Rapacz: Just sharing the information is also part of creating this culture of learning. Like, oh, I should be sharing information, not just holding it or assuming that people don't care. Okay.
Camille Rapacz: So those are examples of some systems that you can create to build this learning organization.
Camille Rapacz: The third part is mindset. This very much relates to what we talked about last time. You gotta have a growth mindset as the leader of this business. But also thinking in terms of how do I be more of a systems thinker? How can I look more at the big picture and encourage that in my company?
Camille Rapacz: People should have clear role and expectations of what their job is, but you want them to think broadly when it comes to problems for the company. So having them feel comfortable thinking about the big picture and thinking about the systems, which basically just means I'm thinking about if I change one thing in my department or in my role with my work, what will be the ripple effects to other parts of the business?
Camille Rapacz: Okay, cool. That's kinda the basics of systems thinking. I'm not just thinking about how it's better for me, but if I make it better for me, am I making it worse for the guy down the line who has the next job? Yeah. Or am I making it better for them? Right. Yeah. Systems thinking.
Camille Rapacz: Examples of that would be you could do cross department collaboration or job shadowing and job visits so people understand Yeah, cool what other people's jobs are.
Camille Rapacz: You can use visual tools diagramming out, how does this whole customer service business actually work beyond just the customer service department or the customer service person? Map that whole thing out so people can visually see, oh, that's how that works. Don't assume they know.
Camille Rapacz: Those are some ways you can really broaden the systems thinking perspective. So that's one part of mindset. Okay.
Camille Rapacz: The other one we've talked about a lot, which is that environment, psychological safety. Just create a culture where you're open to all the ideas. You don't have to act on all the ideas, but you wanna hear all the ideas. Cuz every once in a while there's gonna be a gem in there and you will be sad if you'd missed it.
Camille Rapacz: Okay. So just leveraging that. We've talked about reflection a ton. Making reflection standard practice, you just have a mindset that's just like we do reflection, right.
Camille Rapacz: And then leadership. You gotta go first. You gotta go in with the growth mindset first. You gotta be the one that's leading the charge on creating the structures and systems that support all of this.
Camille Rapacz: And you have to create the clarity for the company of what you expect this to look like. So that's the clarity systems mindset approach to how you build learning into your company as an element of achieving high performance.
Camille Rapacz: Awesome. Okay, so now George, you're a small business owner and you wanna make learning part of your company culture and it's way of working.
Camille Rapacz: So first of all, like what kind of business do you have? What are you doing?
George Drapeau: A company in the competitive marching industry, like supporting drum cores and high school, college marching bands.
George Drapeau: Cuz there's a lot that could be done there. So shall I tell you about this company?
Camille Rapacz: Yes. Tell me. I can't wait.
George Drapeau: Okay. So a lot of people know about, you know, college marching bands and, you know, get out in halftime and if you've seen that, you probably don't really know about the competitive marching landscape.
George Drapeau: High school marching bands are travel nationwide and they do these incredible performances that takes them months and months to hone down . The level of showmanship and professionalism musicianship is unbelievable. And then there's a subset cult of that called the Drum and Bugle Corps activity that is kind of extracurricular outside of schools, but they're nonprofit organizations and they tour all summer and they have a national championship and it's amazing.
George Drapeau: And there's a whole subculture industry around that for hiring instructors to instruct the kids how to march, how to perform, writing their music, writing what we call the drill, the marching patterns that they do. But there's a lot more to it.
George Drapeau: So I would want a company that could be helping schools and individuals on how to be better at this.
George Drapeau: So I might have writers on staff or writers on call, probably writers on call. My company's gonna be very, very small, just a few people. But I'm gonna go and have people like me who are enthusiastic about the activity, going and having trainers onsite and going visiting schools and drum corps and helping them with their stuff.
George Drapeau: I'm just kind of spitballing this stuff. But that's my company. My company is, I don't have a name for it yet. If you have a name, I'd love to hear it. But marching Magicians Incorporated. I don't know.
Camille Rapacz: Perfect. Okay. Wow, this is a fabulous company.
Camille Rapacz: I feel like we got really close to you answering my first question. So we're gonna start with clarity. All right. So what we wanna do is I'm your business coach and I'm gonna help you with how do I incorporate learning right out of the gate into this business of mine.
Camille Rapacz: So the first question for you is, what's the long-term vision? When we talk about the exercise of removing the obstacles, what's the vision for it?
George Drapeau: My mission statement, I think will be, and we'll go from there to my vision.
George Drapeau: My mission statement will be to help the youth become more than they think they can be through the performing arts. And my vision for getting there will be to supply expertise and support to performers and the organizations like schools to help deliver a positive mindset and the tools for helping the kids get there.
Camille Rapacz: Got it. So your vision is very much about development of youth through this performing arts. This is exactly right. Yeah. Okay. So you, man, I totally wanna do this company. Now. I know maybe we're actually creating a little monster here. Mm-hmm.
Camille Rapacz: Oh my goodness. I know. And then thing, you know, you're gonna be like, I need to just do this. Okay.
Camille Rapacz: So now in order to get a another layer of clarity we talked about in clarity, so we did the most important, which is I think you do have to have this vision clear for your business. Yeah. And then we talked about a couple of these other ones, which was okay.
Camille Rapacz: Setting clear expectation for the learning and the behaviors that go with it. And this is now with your, with your staff, with your employees. So it could be your employees and also any vendors that you might work with. So just think of anybody who's contributing to the work of your company. This should go beyond just employees I believe.
George Drapeau: Yeah, so there's, if you're a supplier through me, I want you to carry my vibe to Absolutely.
Camille Rapacz: Totally. So that's gonna actually guide you in who are the right people to hire to work with my company? It's totally exciting as consultants and coaches, right?
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. Okay. And so there's that, and just the idea of clarifying that personal mastery matters.
Camille Rapacz: So, imagine you're sitting down having a conversation with either your employees, your vendors, like those people. What would you say to them about your expectations for learning as part of your business? This is for the people that are working in your company. Okay. So let's just say employees, just simplify it to your employee. Yeah, great.
George Drapeau: I got it. The, the, yeah, the people delivering the service, not the people receiving the service.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: Cause my expect this is a little com complicated by the fact that your service is also about learning, teaching and learning, right? So yes, we're just talking us, you, it's a little meta, but let's talk about it just employees.
George Drapeau: So I would say, look, we're here to help kids learn about themselves and be better.
George Drapeau: This is an enablement business. And so I want you to understand how it currently works, the challenges kids are facing, what things we can supply them to help them learn. And if you're not familiar with this, let's go learn about that. There's ways I can help you do that.
George Drapeau: Let's go watch a show. Let's go see what kids' classrooms are currently like. Let's learn about some of the other people that we're gonna be dealing with.
George Drapeau: There's all these components that come into it. So I want you to understand that sum of the whole thing.
George Drapeau: I also want, we're all coaches. Coaching is part of what we do. This everybody's enabling our customers, students and teachers. And so have you had a chance to do coaching before?
George Drapeau: Do you know what it's like to enable somebody else? Not just delivering your knowledge to somebody else, but how do you really coach somebody to be better? These are just the ideas off the top of my head, I guess. Everybody, we are all learning.
George Drapeau: Once we get used to learning, that's gonna help us understand how to help others to learn. Cuz you will have gone through that learning journey yourself. That just came to me. If we're not learning, how are we gonna be good at understanding what those guys need to do to learn? Right?
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. Again, you have this benefit of your business is actually about learning, right? So it's like we need to get used to learning. I like that you said used to. Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: We need to get used to learning so that we can help others learn. We need to be experiencing learning all the time so that we can help them have that experience.
Camille Rapacz: This is what I think of when I think of leaders as coaches is those leaders have to get good at being coached in order to be good coaches. Oh, yeah. Right? Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's a tricky business. It's a very tricky for coaches, by the way, to be coached.
George Drapeau: It reminds me of therapists going to therapy.
George Drapeau: Every therapist goes to therapy. Well, partly for that reason, right.
Camille Rapacz: Yes. I think about all the time, like, who, where am I getting my coaching from? So that I have to flip my mind around and be on the other side of receiving. Mm-hmm. I need to be open to receiving now. Not trying to, pull things out of somebody.
Camille Rapacz: It's a different mindset, but it's important. So, yeah. I like that They're gonna have to be on both sides.
George Drapeau: Who's Camille's yoda? We're gonna go there someday.
Camille Rapacz: Yoda. It's Yoda.
Camille Rapacz: Awesome. Why do you think I've been nerding out on Star Wars lately? Mm. I'm listening to all My Jedi.
Camille Rapacz: Okay. So good clarity. I like that.
Camille Rapacz: Let's talk about systems. You're a small business. You're just getting things started. I don't know. How many employees do you think you have as you're getting started? Three. Three. Perfect. Okay, so thinking about systems, what would you do first? Like what would you guess, oh, guess would just be like, what are the first couple things you think I want this and this happening in this company for learning?
Camille Rapacz: Damn, that's
George Drapeau: a good question.
Camille Rapacz: You said a couple things in the last answer.
George Drapeau: Okay. I want to take my employees to some shows. Let's start experiencing what the end state is. I'm gonna take them to visit one of our vendors, meaning people who are writing drill and music. So I guess it's an educational tour at first.
George Drapeau: We're gonna take 'em to a couple of schools. I wanna see schools to do it well and the schools who are not doing it at all. So they get the full range of experience. Cuz there are some schools who are already doing this well, they will not be our customers, but they will look like our end state and what have they done, what can we learn from them?
Camille Rapacz: So those are great first steps. Yeah. But they're kind of like one-off steps. Yeah. If you were to now, now the, so you've done it, you guys have gone out and learned this stuff. Things are launching, but now you need to just do something that keeps the learning going in the business.
Camille Rapacz: What's one way you would do that?
George Drapeau: The first thing that comes to mind is to build a calendar. And that calendar puts dates in there so we're oriented around a business that tends to have seasons.
George Drapeau: So I can put things in the calendars for going to some performances. Go to camps. So learning and putting planning time. So we, when we know when the, when we have time to plan for, when we have clients, we're gonna go teach them. So let's create a calendar of the, here's the kinds of things that we do.
George Drapeau: Team planning, team selling season, I guess we're always selling, but like, there's times when we have rollouts or pushes, you know, before the seasons. And then we're gonna have clients, we're gonna go see them and observe them in performance.
George Drapeau: And then we're gonna have kind of retrospectives what did we learn from this season from our clients that we did well and not, and observe and observe and, and got feedback from our students and teachers.
George Drapeau: That's my first thing. Start a calendar. And that helps me think about some of the activities that we wanna do. And maybe from there I will start observing, not, I, all four of us, me and my three employees will all look at this together and we'll see if we observe patterns. Like, you know, when we're doing this across the year, it occurs to me that we should do this build into our part of our routine.
Camille Rapacz: I like that. Observe and looking for patterns and ways that you can collectively improve on this. It does assume you have some money to be able to do all this stuff. Yeah, I know. So I wanna propose another, let's say you're a business that just doesn't, I've got my three employees.
Camille Rapacz: We're all reactive all the time. We're super busy. We're stressed out. Yeah. I can't do any of that cool. I mean, what George just said sounds really awesome and I wanna work for his company, by the way. But I don't have that kind of business right now. Not yet. I always like remember the growth mindset. Not yet.
Camille Rapacz: So as your coach, I would say also think about how do you encourage your team to do some regular conversations focused on reflection and learning? Maybe there's a weekly conversation where the team's like, okay, how did the work just flow this week?
Camille Rapacz: Did we have any issues? How did it go? Yeah. How could we do that better next week?
George Drapeau: Am I involved in those conversations or is it amongst themselves or individual?
Camille Rapacz: It's totally up to you. It's your system. No, you can design it however you want. So if you feel like, Hey, I've coached my team and I've set the stage for them to do this, they could do it on their own.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah, it could be something you lead where you're like, Hey guys, I wanna create psychological safety cuz this is new for us. So I'm gonna come in and just bring my own challenges that I had this week and we're gonna talk through those. Right. Okay. Like when you were talking last time you said, you know, you had this leader who was great at owning to their mistakes.
Camille Rapacz: So you could do something like that. This is a way that it doesn't cost you any money. It does cost you time, but it doesn't have to be a lot of time. It could actually be we're just gonna spend 30 minutes reflecting on the week and talking about maybe one thing we wanna do differently next week.
Camille Rapacz: Maybe we don't have a thing to do different, maybe we're still puzzling through it. So don't also feel like every single time we must create change. Sometimes. Exactly. Just having the conversation and doing the reflection is enough, and you as the leader can then say, you know what? I do see something in here we can do.
Camille Rapacz: Or you can be like, no, that was enough. We're good. Just keep going guys. We don't need to act on this right now. It's not the end of the world.
George Drapeau: This is great. It's interesting to me as we're going through this, I didn't really have a problem with clarity.
George Drapeau: I just making up this example, I have a vision that feels good and I could tweak this and hone it, but out of the gate, my vision feels workable.
George Drapeau: Getting to the system stuff, it's harder for me to think of. I think I have a lot of great point ideas, like you said, a lot of one-offs, but it's harder for me to think about as a system, what I'm gonna do. This is fascinating.
Camille Rapacz: I do think this is inherently back to why businesses are built, sort of just the way they're designed, inhibits learning.
Camille Rapacz: I think this is it. Because when we think about I wanna learn something, we instantly go to all the stuff you said. Like I totally got all the stuff you said. Like, yeah, I wanna go do that. I wanna go learn this, I wanna go there.
Camille Rapacz: Which by the way, are all brilliant ideas and if companies can do it, can go visit, vendors, can go visit customers can go like go out to see the work. Yeah. Even just doing it in your own company, if you're just not seeing what's happening in someone else's job and what they're doing. What's happening on the frontline, as we say. Mm-hmm. You should go do that. Always go do that.
Camille Rapacz: But if we only think about that as part of the learning, we're gonna do it few and far between because it takes time and money.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. And so this is where we inhibit the learning. We're like, oh, we can't really afford that. Oh, we don't really have time for that. So if I don't have a business that has the funding to do it, I sort of just write it off as I don't have the ability. And so that's why I like to think of it as, again, the micro moves.
Camille Rapacz: What are the small little things you do? And systematize. We do this all the time. Our normal way of being is at the end of the week, we have a 30 minute reflection, as an example. Yeah. Lots of ways that you can do that. But you do have to start thinking about how do I make it consistent?
Camille Rapacz: Because if I don't, I'm not creating a learning organization. I'm just again, kind of doing the, I'm gonna go to training once. Yeah, absolutely.
Camille Rapacz: So your calendar idea definitely got closer. Like, oh, having seasons of what we would do even better. And just trying to have like, oh, it's that season, this is where we should be going out to learn this quarter or this season. I love that idea. That's definitely a system.
George Drapeau: Question for you. I'll give you the background for the question first. I think seasons are helpful. I think of football coaches. One of the reasons football coaches I think can do well is because they're completely structured.
George Drapeau: Everybody in the business knows what you're gonna do every week. You don't have to be particularly creative to know when you're gonna do what.
George Drapeau: I know I need to get on planes from this month to that month. I know spring training is this date of this day. The NCAA limits that for me, and where I'm going with this is, I don't know if there's a difference between patterns and systems. Do you know what I mean?
Camille Rapacz: Well, as you were saying that, I was thinking that is something that as a small business owner, if you aren't in an industry that has this natural pattern or seasonality to it, yeah, you have to kind of create that for yourself.
Camille Rapacz: That's why we have this quarterly goal setting process. What do you want this next quarter or this season to be about? What are you gonna be promoting or what type of you know, marketing are you gonna be trying to do?
Camille Rapacz: Or what's your content gonna be about? Or there's some way of thinking about that. Cuz if it's just a whole long year of slogging in your business, one, it's kind of boring, but also it's hard to really focus and do one thing just really, really well. It feels like a pattern helps you build a better system,
Camille Rapacz: Cuz the structure is there. Like, well, here's the pattern or the, here's what's already in front of you. Now build a system that works in that. That would be easier. If you don't have the pattern, then you gotta make one up. I can see
George Drapeau: myself falling into the trap of confusing a pattern for a system. I feel intuitive.
George Drapeau: Like there's something related, but not exactly the same.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. And when we talk about systems, there's also like systems as the process. There's a routine.
Camille Rapacz: And then there's actual systems, like my electronic systems and all of those things can work together in this, right?
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. So, Systems. When I think about it with business, it's a pretty broad term. Okay. But kind of on purpose. I think of it as encompassing all of the structures, the processes, the routines, the technology, the all of the things, the systems that hold this whole thing together and make it go.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. So you have business processes, you have customer delivery processes, now processes for learning, then systems that support it, it's all in there. So it's pretty broad category. But it is the, how we make it all work, clarity is that I totally what, right.
Camille Rapacz: What is it that we're trying to do, the systems is how we're gonna do it. Mm-hmm. And then the mindset is that whole nuanced, you know, these are my choices in the culture of the way that this is gonna happen. Yeah.
George Drapeau: Okay. I'm seeing the value of coaching here big time. I'm not just saying that cuz I'm your co-host.
Camille Rapacz: All right. We set it here. Brother sees a good reason for his sister to coach him. How about that? Yep.
Camille Rapacz: So the third one is mindset, if you think about this, so yeah, we're trying to create this culture of continuously learning.
Camille Rapacz: Having that just be embedded into it. So beyond just the, I want people to go out and learn, but I also want 'em to do it inside the company. You're doing both those things. Mm-hmm. How would you create that environment for learning? And thinking about this from that mindset perspective we talked about, right?
Camille Rapacz: When we talked about growth mindset, we talked about how do I help people be systems thinkers, or how do I create psychological safety, encourage reflection. Like this is the leadership piece. Yeah. What's one thing that you would.
George Drapeau: Oh man, I got a bunch of ideas here. The first thing I'm gonna do is steal from in elementary school. At our, son's school on Fridays so far it seems like all the classes have share and tell.
George Drapeau: The kids can choose to do it or not, and they can bring anything that they want and share if they have it. They raise their hand, I wanna share today, and they get up and share and tell.
George Drapeau: I love the idea of doing share and tell. So maybe on Fridays at lunch or an email like, Hey, what's one thing that you picked up that you wanna share with the team? Excellent. And again, there's no pressure, like you said before, I think it's important not to have pressure to do.
George Drapeau: If you don't have anything to share, that's great. We'll skip you in meeting today.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. This gets to a really important point, I think, which is that there are gonna be people who are just gonna feel uncomfortable because that's just who they are.
Camille Rapacz: They're introverted or they haven't experienced acceptance in speaking up about things.
Camille Rapacz: Maybe they even have a speech impediment. They just feel awkward talking. Right. For whatever reason. Yeah. People are gonna be hesitant. So just demonstrating for them that, speaking up goes well, you being that leader so that they're like, oh, all these people are having a lot of fun doing it.
Camille Rapacz: Maybe I do wanna do it.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. And maybe recognizing that that person first needs to partner with somebody who's good at it and not be just spotlight on them by themselves. Yeah. So these are all things you can do also as a leader to just help the ones that you see them repeatedly, not step up, but you know, they have good ideas and things to share. So you wanna hear from them.
Camille Rapacz: It's not that you wanna put the spotlight on them to embarrass them, it's that I know they've got good stuff. How do I help them feel comfortable sharing it?
George Drapeau: Here's another idea. I'll borrow from my own team's quarterly business reviews. And that is, let's say we've got a couple of clients, or even prospects, we're still prospecting our clients.
George Drapeau: And so we're looking at what they're building. So I probably have a pretty decent idea about how we've helped our clients, how they've gotten from this level of capability to this level of capability .
George Drapeau: But I don't know if my three employees have that. So every so often, we do this exercise where we all assess, we do a review. How do you guys think we've done with our customers? I'll do the first one and I'll tell you what I see. But then I want each of you to spend some time telling you what you've seen.
George Drapeau: If you've got nothing, that's fine, but everybody's gonna have something when you give them permission to say, Hey, just anything that you've observed, I can give you a framework for it. But just now organically, what did you observe Everybody participates in that we will get better, we will get used to reviewing it.
George Drapeau: We will build up that muscle for, oh yeah, I liked how this went. Next time I'm really gonna pay attention to what I'm seeing. Maybe I'll even figure out how to take notes so I can present it better. Maybe I'll bring that note-taking system back to the team. Like, Hey, I've got a way for helping us assess how we're doing.
George Drapeau: This helped me think about our review session before. You know? And that builds kind of the whole learning thing into a system. Yes. Cause my employees are great.
Camille Rapacz: Well, cuz you're a great leader. But this, you are exactly describing what I think is the essence of creating a learning organization, which is I've learned something.
Camille Rapacz: I'm going to share that knowledge and learning with the rest of my team so that we are all elevated together. So you don't have to go and learn what I just learned by yourself cuz that's the slow path. Yeah. But I'm gonna bring it to you and then if it's valuable to you, you can take it and run with it.
Camille Rapacz: If it's not, that's okay too. Or if you have a different way, that's okay too. But this idea of sharing like, Hey, I just discovered this thing and I thought I'd share it with you guys. That's what you really want a learning organization to be doing all the time about all the stuff.
George Drapeau: And I'm gonna tie this back to the very first thing you said in the podcast, which is you asked me, true or not, we all have a desire to learn.
George Drapeau: And I said disagree, but. Everybody, everybody has an opinion. And you could leverage that to turn that into learning. So I don't have to tell my team, Hey, what did you learn? It's like, what do you think? What's your opinion about how this going? Go ahead and be as critical as you want, and then we'll figure out how to turn that opinion into a learning mode, right?
Camille Rapacz: Yes. And that is a, actually an excellent focus of mindset because you're recognizing like, okay, maybe everybody's not in the learning mindset yet, but I can get them there. If I meet them where they're at. And this is a key coaching tool. Yeah. I'm gonna meet them where they're at. And you're saying, I know they have an opinion and they wanna just say it.
Camille Rapacz: But you're gonna lead that into a lesson learned, right? So they can see, oh, but that's where we end up. Well that's interesting. And eventually they'll come along to that. Most people, yeah. Not everybody totally will, but yes, I love that approach. Yeah. Excellent.
Camille Rapacz: Well, your company is gonna be well set up for learning right out of the gate, George, so congratulations. This was fun.
Camille Rapacz: What did we call it? March Marching.
George Drapeau: Marching Magicians. Incorporated
Camille Rapacz: Marching Magicians. L L C
George Drapeau: I gotta think of some more names for this company.
Camille Rapacz: We can brainstorm it out.
George Drapeau: Hey audience, if you have ideas for this company, I'd love to hear your names for it.
Camille Rapacz: So while everything we've been talking about, you know, learning maybe seems like an obvious solution. Even as we were starting this, you were like, ah, this is kind of obvious and I get training and whatever.
Camille Rapacz: But when I say learning organization, you can see I'm talking about something at another level, something that's kind of embedded in how you guys interact, not just in what you do.
Camille Rapacz: So if this is something that you're kind of grappling with or you're thinking about, again, just think about starting with being intentional about learning, like that's the first step, and having some kind of a plan, like just what I watched George through for his little fake, cute buisness. You can do that too and figure out what's my basic plan?
Camille Rapacz: What are the basic things I want to do? And keep it really simple.
Camille Rapacz: Number two is to make sure you're setting the example. So ensure that your growth mindset comes first. So if you're still struggling there, which we all do at times by the way, so don't feel bad, don't be like, oh my gosh, I must be a horrible person cuz I don't have a growth, growth mindset.
Camille Rapacz: Nope. We're all struggling with that all the time. \ So you wanna learn more about that and you didn't listen to episode 33, go back and listen and really focus on that and make sure your growth mindset is on display for your team.
Camille Rapacz: And then the third one is do this Clarity Systems Mindset.
Camille Rapacz: Do this. Just get clarity. Get a system, get your mindset dialed in. Again, keep it simple. Do that approach to learning in your organization and you'll be off and running.
Camille Rapacz: Awesome. Hopefully it's obvious. This is great why you would do this, right? I hope
George Drapeau: so. You did make it, but it's not, listen to this again.
George Drapeau: If it's not obvious, listen to it a third time.
Camille Rapacz: Well, I mean, high performance business, obviously the faster you can learn, the better off you're gonna be. If I can get better faster at learning how to improve my marketing, of course that's gonna accelerate my business.
Camille Rapacz: If I can get faster and better at how I deliver quality to my customers, man referrals are gonna shoot through the roof, right? Yeah. So that's what this is really about. We want rapid cycles of learning. So every single aspect of your business, you can get better at faster. And that means faster growth.
Camille Rapacz: So that's what we're all here to do. All right, cool. Also just better for humans, like you said last time, it's also like the curiosity when we talked about that last time and growth mindset and you're like, it's just more fun. Yeah, fun. This one Fun too. Fun. I think is just more fun. It's way more fun when people are just learning together, so, oh, yeah.
Camille Rapacz: So yeah, if you have questions, you have thoughts, you're trying to do this, or you have a suggestion for George's fake business that maybe someday would be real, I don't know. Leave us a voicemail thebeliefshift.com and we would love to hear from you.
Camille Rapacz: Any last words we before we check out here?
George Drapeau: Thanks for being my coach. It was a lot of fun doing it.
Camille Rapacz: Thank you for being my, fake business owner and playing the game with me. You were awesome at it.
George Drapeau: Thank you. Just for the record, everybody out there that was live, I was surprised by it. Wasn't scripted out.
George Drapeau: So all the stumbling for real.
Camille Rapacz: I'm making a note in the calendar. The day that Camille taught her big brother something Woo. Doesn't happen often. All right, thanks everybody.
Camille Rapacz: We'll be back in your ears next week.
George Drapeau: See everybody.
