Marty Strong, CEO, Navy Seal, Author

Marty Strong has been a leader and business consultant for decades, first in uniform as a combat-decorated Navy SEAL, and then in commercial business. Marty is a thought-provoking writer, speaker, and guest expert with over 350 appearances on national cable TV and hundreds of radio and Podcast interviews to his credit. Marty is the author of Be Nimble – How the Creative Navy SEAL Mindset Wins on the Battlefield and in Business. 

We talked about:

• 20 years in the Navy Seals
• How that set up the thinking for being a CEO
• Managing via influence
• "Your expression of confidence, gives confidence"
• Books: Be Nimble & Be Visionary
• Short time lines mitigate risk
• Q: "What would happen if we just didnt train people?" A: "What is the alternative?"
• You should always be training your replacement
• Comfort with fluidity
• No such thing as a static universe
• Fearing failure
• Socratic logic, the power of the logical arguement
• Some people think obstance is a superpower
• Human kindness
• Multipliers

To find out more about Guy Bloom and his award winning work in Team Coaching, Leadership Development and Executive Coaching click below.

The link to everything CLICK HERE
UK: 07827 953814
Email: guybloom@livingbrave.com
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Transcript

Guy Bloom : 

Welcome to leadership bites with myself, your host, guy bloom. This is a leadership podcast where I have conversations with colleagues, I chat with guests, and sometimes they'll be just me talking. You can connect with me at livingbrave.com and when you enjoy the episode, subscribe and please tell everyone. So Marty, absolutely great to have you on this episode of Leadership Bites welcome yeah.
 
 

Marty Strong : 

Thanks for having me, guy.
 
 

Guy Bloom : 

Well, I've been looking forward to this. I said that every single time I do an episode, so that just tells me the quality of the people that I'm getting on. I will. I always get slightly schoolboyish and and excited, which must be a good sign. But for those of you that don't know who Marty strong is, please do an introduction.
 
 

Marty Strong : 

Sure so I'm a chief executive officer and Strategy officer for three companies. One is a holding company and the other two are a healthcare company and a training company. About 700 and fifty eight hundred employees all in. And I spend my day. Leading that and trying to think. Big thoughts.
 
 

Guy Bloom : 

And try thinking because so that that happened indicate that you've created space for yourself that might be interesting as a lot of people struggle even with that concept of thinking big thoughts and not being pulled into the nitty gritty. You know you've got an interesting history as well. You've got the the roles that you fulfill, the history that's taking you to where you are and you've got some novels and books that are out. I want to discuss maybe the first stepping stone Marty just to bring a little bit of context to who you are is just give us that sense of. The journey that took you to where you are now, that just gives people a sense of where you're talking from, what your context has been, and where your experiences have come from. I think that really helps set the scen.
 
 

Marty Strong : 

Sure so I spent 20 years as a leader in the Navy SEAL teams, similar to the Special Boat Service in the UK. Actually, we have a very close relationship with the SBS and actually an exchange program. There's usually a couple of seals sitting down there in Pool, a couple seals sitting over here in Virginia Beach, and that's been going on since probably 1970 So that's why I think I got my basic understanding of leadership. And of course a lot of it has to do with crisis and combat training and then actual combat, but. It's a it's a unique group of people. They're very they're type, but they're extremely intelligent and creative and you have to. Influence them more than order them around, which is an interesting way to learn how to lead. And when I left the service after 20 years, I started managing money for United Bank of Switzerland. That was a portfolio manager. So I did that for almost eight years. And you wouldn't think there's a lot of leading there, but the interesting thing is you spend most of your time with your clients trying to talk them off the talk them off the ledge handholding explaining. Laying out a future for them. So in essence you end UO leading your clients a lot. You end up giving them confidence through your your expression of of confidence and of course that's always a component of good leadership. And then after I left that profession i got into government contracting and eventually ended up at the position I'm in now. So I've been out of uniform for 27 years, leading businesses. And I was in uniform for 20.
 
 

Guy Bloom : 

I already realise that this should probably be a three day podcast, but we're going to have to dinner first. Just hearing you say everyone each one of those has got its own. I'm sure with the right bottle of wine and the right food it's a weekend of stories and you going and here's another absolute cracker but we'll we'll try and pick around it. I'm gonna, I think I'm gonna jump forward then to you have a forthcoming book called be Visionary that's going to be available in January. And when it comes out I'll put the links in but you also have some other works out there. So just give me a sense of what's already in the public space and then we'll have a little bit of time. Around the be visionary and what we're going to some other questions, but what have you already got out there and then bring us into be visionary.
 
 

Marty Strong : 

So around 2017 I decided to write a novel, one of the my bucket list, something I wanted to do and. While I could have written a novel about the SEAL team experience, I decided to to purposely dodge that easy, easy subject matter. But I wanted to still kind of. Capture the the. The ethos, the, the warrior ethos, the camaraderie, the closeness of that, of that brotherhood. And so I ended up creating a, a time travel series of science fiction books called the Time Warrior Sagas. And you'll love this. I mean the first book opens up with a Saxon shield wall, you know, in in Britain, ancient Britain. So, but it's about time travel. And so I started writing those books. There's four in the series and after about the second, I think the second book, I was feeling pretty comfortable. I thought, well, maybe I can I can address the SEAL team theme. And what do I want to do with that? And how do I want to. I want to write that well, I do want to write it like a comic book, you know, lots of Marvel, Marvel, heroics and and all that. I wanted to do something that was a little bit deeper so that if you read it, you kind of felt like you were hanging out with seals and saw how the banter went back and forth, the kind of thing that you remember when you're when you're out of uniform and thinking back. So I started writing the SEAL series, which has five novels. The fifth one came out in June of this year so. So that's nine novels all in. And at the end of that I decided I was going to write a book on leadership, which was called being nimble. How the Creative Navy SEAL mindset wins on the battlefield and in business, and that came out in January of this year. And that was. An attempt by Mia. I was doing consulting and mentoring not just for my own direct, direct leadership reporting to me, but but also for other people, other business owners, CEOs. And I thought, well, I've got all these great ideas and thoughts and inputs and people seem to be gratified and it's all useful. Lucy tell me that. So I'm start writing this stuff down, going to start writing my approach, my, my, my stick on how I address leadership issues. And so it's, you know, about the leader, the leader, him or herself kind of what's going on between their ears, the psychology of that, the dynamics of leadership between the leader and other human beings and then the organizational kind of planning, architect part of leadership. So that was that book. And there's one book that is on strategy and I had a lot of feedback that that I could probably focus on that as a whole separate book because a lot of people like that that Charter. So I decided to write be visionary strategic leadership in the age of optimization, which is basically about the conflict between. Strategy and. Vision and. Optimization and micro measuring as a placeholder for strategy.
 
 

Guy Bloom : 

If I've heard that right in terms of that focus, the reality then of. Having it written down, which is almost the easy part in some respects, and then the reality of actioning and and not getting in the weeds and being able to step away.
 
 

Marty Strong : 

It's it's there, but it's also there's a that's been going on. At least in the United States, for about the last 15 years, it's a. Hyperfocus on immediate gratification started at the publicly traded company level. Shareholder value as a quarterly measurement where companies kind of shrunk their vision, shrunk their horizons down to how are we doing now, how we doing this week, are we going to do next week. But that was about it and the I guess the, the, the commentary that was going on and I've actually you know interact, interact with bankers and other finance people and everything and that's that's their focus. They just want to count what's happened and they, they have a tendency to just flop. Pass, you know, passes prologue because they don't know how to do the other thing, which is actually sit there. As I said at the opening, think big thoughts and look out and see what's possibly coming at them, positive or negative on the horizon. And I was experiencing this, seeing this. It was, it was a real thing. And I'm like, OK, so so the business schools are teaching this. And big companies are emulating this. And nobody asks you what you think is going to happen in two years. What's the industry going to look like? What's your market going to look like? What they're asking you is did you hit your, your KPIs, your key performance indicators for this week and what that does is that reinforces in leaders and aspiring leaders and leaders at different stages that are that are rising that that's the measure, that's the focus and that's what you do as a leader as you focus on how you know how many widgets did you make last week. So I think that's. No pun intended, shortsighted. But it's, um, it's also devastating because a lot of times the company will do that and they don't look up and see the train coming before it's too late.
 
 

Guy Bloom : 

I've said this quote a few times on this podcast, which is it's the only one I can remember, which is F Scott Fitzgerald's quote. The sign of a first rate intelligence is the ability to have two opposing truths and still function. And that concept of being able to deal with, we've got to hit some numbers now, but also we've got to be viable in two years, five years, etcetera. And I've also particularly noticed it in private equity. Backed organisations where when the purchase goes through, we've got three years, that's fine, but then the second year, then we've only got a year left and literally people lose their marbles around a set of targets and earn outs and bonuses or whatever that is. And and I see that a lot where there seems to be a point in an organisation cycle where the distance seems that we can do leadership development and we can do the the big visions that actually is the funnel. The timeline decreases, people's focus becomes more myopic it's catalyst for negative behaviours, which in essence is generally fear, the fear of I'm not getting the money at the end or being seen to do what what is being driven by certain people. So I guess that's what we're talking about, that timelines and focus and shortsightedness and being held to account for the now damages and prevents people holding a vision for the future. But then again you can't say, listen, the reason we're doing rubbish now is well it'll be great in five years. It is that weird balance and is that what we're talking about.
 
 

Marty Strong : 

Yes, and I think there's a. I all too human desire to to risk mitigate. So when you shorten those horizons, you're bringing everything into the more knowable time frame, you reducing your risk of failure because you're just next week. How could anything change that dramatically in one week? But think about the risk taking of of looking out at the horizon a year, two years. You don't know. It's, it's, it's, it's an assessment. It's maybe it's an analysis of some sort. It's a much broader approach to studying what could be, what might be what's possible. And also you as a professional or your organization, what their role is going to be in that new, that new possible. So that's a lot of risk. I mean, what I just said was it's, it's all fuzzy, wuzzy, mushy, you know, let's get back to what's going to happen next week that makes me feel comfortable. I don't have to worry about. But here's where, here's where another adverse effect of that shortsightedness. Why should I invest in anything or anybody? If all I'm doing is measuring a week out. If you think about investing like training or investing in plant and equipment, it's because you want to be something bigger or do something better in the future. Investing in training and investing in in planting equipment. Is it's a way of making you stronger. It doesn't happen immediate. The way of making you stronger at a point in time where you want to make a change you want to be. You want to affect the future. And if you don't have to worry about that, if you're not worried about the future, not worry about affecting any future. Then why spend 5000$ or ten thousand dollars to send Susie or Bob to some training course? Especially if they're going offline and nobody's doing their job with their training course. See, now you're back into the optimization short term focus. There seems to be no justification for gaping that person's job and spending the money. So it doesn't a couple of other insidious things that happen when you when you shorten that horizon.
 
 

Guy Bloom : 

It's very interesting as you're fighting against. I saw the maturity or it's confidence or it's even duty, you know the duty to. I don't go so far as to enrich other people. That might be too big a word, but to invest in people and to grow them and to add value to them. But why would I do that if they're going to go off in a couple of years? Well, actually maybe that makes you more attractive to people coming in. So you've always got a funnel. There is no perfection. There is no have your cake and eat it. But actually if you're very attractive because you're seen as maybe you are a conduit, but you've always got high talent coming in, there's got to be that ability to hold. These these two truths I guess.
 
 

Marty Strong : 

Yes, but if you think about the culture that. Inspires through improvement that thinks about the future and. Leads, as if the future is something that we should all strive to. Achieve and achieve in the way we want to achieve, whether it's safety, whether it's seizing some great opportunity, those are the kinds of cultures where people are going to stay longer so so I had somebody one time ask me, why do we want to spend money on training somebody? Because as you just mentioned, they could just leave, you know, in a year or two. And I said, what's the alternative? The alternative is we don't train anybody. They they come in as smart or as capable as they were the day that they checked in and were onboarded by HR and that's the end of that because we don't want to, we don't want to make them any stronger for somebody else. I mean so but if that mindset also creates a culture that's different, it's like we don't, we don't think you're going to stick around. We don't believe in you enough to to invest in you. You see, you see how that kind of works. You are what you are and you are what you practice and so and, everybody else is perceiving what you are so. Better to invest in people and invest in the future and plan for the future than to not.
 
 

Guy Bloom : 

Yeah, it's a very simple. It's a very simple thing and there is something about creating an environment where you always know there's going to be loss, but actually what you'll have is a positive narrative around the culture. You'll have those that will leave and maybe come back because they'll go somewhere else and realise, oops, you know, maybe I shouldn't have gone. Maybe it's about the scales and the balancing that says, look, there's always going to be an element of maybe we did lose on that investment or maybe actually that didn't go as far as we'd have liked with that person. But actually, if we're doing it right, the counter. Balance should be more people have developed, there's a greater sense of community, there's a greater sense of trust in us, so it's never all in our favour, but it should be weighted.
 
 

Marty Strong : 

I think it's a better environment to work in and to lead. The IT doesn't have to be spending money, and it doesn't have to be, you know, gapping somebody's time doing their job to farm them out to a school someplace or. To an experience, some place. Mentoring and coaching can happen right on site and and again. If you if you create a culture where people are thinking that way and thinking about each other that way, then every leader, every strata of the organization. Is trying to make their direct report stronger. It's an interesting thing in the military. You, you always try to train your replacement. That's the whole point because in combat you may need a replacement, you know, so, so we always train everybody to be able to do everybody's job. You cross train, you train up, you have corporals that have in a pinch could lead a mission if they had to and. You're always trying to make everybody stronger around you because when it's time to go to war, you go with what you've got and who you have. So if you haven't been working really hard to make the team stronger, everybody on that team, shame on you. So that's something that you don't see a lot in the commercial world. That's not, I don't want to train my replacement that that's a job security. No, no, I don't want to. Train everybody in case I'm, I'm going to be. Yeah, I'm. I'm the smartest person in the room. Why would I want to train for other people to become the smartest person in the room? That's my edge. That's, that's, that's that's my, that's my anti EU in this game. So I'm going to actually dilute my authority and power as a player in this organization if I start helping everybody else.
 
 

Guy Bloom : 

One of the bullet points I had is why optimization is the enemy of strategy in business and has an navigate that because optimizations are beautiful word almost what could you disagree with? Why optimization? The enemy of strategy, I kind of like some of your thoughts on that.
 
 

Marty Strong : 

So you probably have already picked up that I'm more of a a visionary person than an optimization person. I think there's. There's more than enough people out there that how to optimize. And if you have systems that are measuring, it makes it even easier to optimize because you can see with finite detail how you're doing compared to what you wanted to do and what that variance is, and you attack the variance. But there's not that many people out there that. Are trained in strategy or trained in being an exercising of visionary outlook. I mean, think about it. I mean there's, it's just like leadership. There's, there's they don't teach leadership in college. And many, many, many many companies and corporations don't teach leadership. There's a few stand out large corporations that have internal academies and things. But for the most part they they don't do it. Just not like the military don't systemically where you come in, okay, you're in charge of four people and then three years later they're training now in charge of 10 people. You know there's a constantly upwardly mobile. Commitment to leading greater and greater numbers of people and more scope of authority and responsibility, so you don't see that in the commercial world. And I think you're outnumbered then, because if you go into a room and there's ten people that might be. 9 optimizers and one visionary person and it's really hard. In my experience to convince people that are specialist and love to optimize and make things just so. To just. Throw it all away. Let's spend 5 or 10 minutes just thinking about how crazy things are going to be in 36 months. It's not the way the brains work. That's why they're good at optimising. It's why they're good at measuring accountants and statisticians and analysts and. They're good at what they do, and so they they. They tend to see what they do, what they like to do, to be the be all and all. And they don't. They're not real happy about the strategist visionary person. Because think about this optimising is the opposite of disruption. Optimising is trying to achieve maximum stability. On some on some definition of what stability is and. Vision and strategy is essentially disruption. It's hey Nah, screw that. Let's forget the products we're making. Let's make some new products, because in 36 months, the products we're making are probably not going to be. Attractive anymore? The markets moving this way? I've been doing all this study and they just stare at you? You gotta be kidding me, right? You know we spent everyday doing the best we can to make the products we have absolutely perfect. And you're saying forget that, let's just go with something else. Yeah it's quite, it's quite an emotional engagement when you, when you really get down to it, if you just walked into a room and say, hey, this is what we're going to do, you know, this is our new strategy. We're pivoting to the right. You're going to get a lot of upset people. Not not because you're they don't acknowledge your. Your positional authority and I guess power to make that decision, but they think you're crazy. Because they've got everything. Just so why would you? Why would you break that all up and mess it all up? But as you know. The world does that to you anyway, whether you whether you want to pay attention to it or not so.
 
 

Guy Bloom : 

Is that baked into the militaries? And look, the plants doesn't survive first contact and I'm possibly messing up that.
 
 

Marty Strong : 

No, you're right.
 
 

Guy Bloom : 

But there is something on that lines of, look, the mission might be to rescue Bob from that situation. But you know, when we said we'd land and go left, it looks now we've got a land and go right when you're bedded into keeping the end in mind but constantly flexing. Do you think that's part of that way of thinking, that we don't lose sight of what the mission is, but the route there may constantly shift? And change and do you think that's part of what drives you?
 
 

Marty Strong : 

Yes, absolutely. I mean that's all special operations, commandos, et cetera trained. Not just for adversity, but for a disruption to their plan, a disruption to the underlying assumptions of their plan. Smiling there. When you were talking about how many people you see, there are supposed to be 5, there's only two. In my experience. It's the it's the reverse of that. They tell you there's only two bad guys and there's like 30 bad guys. So even today, with all the technology and everything, there's still surprises. There's, you know, there's weather, there's malfunctions, mechanical malfunctions. There's things that screw up your timeline and and cause you to have to change your your plan and So what they do in special operations. They teach leaders and they teach all the rest of the people. To be highly flexible and nimble and agile, you have a plan. It's the best plan you've been put together with the information you know, but you're extremely flexible if as you're going towards that. That, that target outcome that if something changes the underlying assumptions, you can roll with it, you can adjust to it, and. So I'm very comfortable with that concept, but the other thing is if you if you study business. That's the same way it is in business. There's no such thing as a static universe. Everything's changing all the time, and the fact that you can't see it doesn't mean it's not happening. If you can't see your competitors figuring out a way to leapfrog you, if you can't see a technology that's about to pop out, that's going to make your product moot. If you can't see that your customers are now bored with whatever you're doing and they're swinging to something else, that's because you're not looking and paying attention. It's not, not because it's not happening. Yeah, the longer the time, the time span, the more likely it's about to happen. And, you know, there's no, there's no. That's the other thing. There's no real rhyme or reason to change. There's the. I think that's why I need you stay on your tips of your toes. You need to train to stay on your tips of your toes as as a leader you have to be that that flexible and as an organization you have to prepare to be that flexible and there's a lot of ways you can do that. You can do scenario based training, contingency training where you bring everybody in a room and say, okay, our number three plant in Sri Lanka just just blew up. Now what? Or are our main distributor just? You know, jacked us up for twice the fee or or. That's it. He's not going. He's not going to move our stuff and go, what are you going to do? You can. You can game that stuff out all the time, but nobody does. It's like when it happens, they just react.
 
 

Guy Bloom : 

Knowing the military to appoint and emergency services, time is taken to train for new circumstances and new situations, and there's rotations and things like that, but in that corporate space, whereas the might not be the physical risk, the financial risk is just there. Every single day. And when I go to work with teams, it's ohh, can't we do one day? Why do we have to do 2. Of course when they're into it, they get it and then they go, well thank God we did two days. And what I can see, the value, the relationship with taking time out is not there for most people that what I would call the discipline or the the relationship with craft. Actually you're not taking time out. This is part of the job and actually seeing it as that.
 
 

Marty Strong : 

Yeah, I tell my leaders they need to operate for 75 % of their time. And for 25 %, they need to be thinking. And that that's two totally different realms of. Of brain focus, you know, one is the To Do List and the other one is. Thinking and looking and wondering what's happening and talking to people outside of your. Outside of your little group, get away from the group. Think even outside of your industry to learn what other industries have gone through. Sometimes the other industry has gone through something. There are some precursor events. That you recognize are starting to happen in your industry. You know, like, like the gig economy, you know, if. If you realise that. Full time employees have suddenly shifted to just a handful of people in an apartment building, essentially, and everybody else is living in their house and you're freelancing all the workout. And that happened over in this industry and you, you realise you're having a hard time hiring people and you're hearing that the echo, the rumblings of that happening in your industry, you're like, okay, now I get it. So sometimes it's weird. You can just look over there and say, well, that's what happened to them. Could it happen to us? And is it a bad thing or a good thing? Should we, should we steer that way on purpose and faster? Or are we going to try to resist it and stop it from happening? Or is it? Is it a trend?
 
 

Guy Bloom : 

I'm I'm fascinated by the question. If we were starting up now as a group of entrepreneurs and we were literally saying, right in the next six months we're gonna get this off the ground and do it, how would we do it? And I'm always fascinated by the outcome being nothing like what they're doing currently ohh and yet there's no desire to retrofit or to recalibrate. We've gone too far or well yeah, but if a new person came in, a new organization came in, what would their actual cost? Please be today. How would that look to what we've got if, as you say, they just did it differently and, and I'm always fascinated by denial, I've got to come. I used to work with and they do. The predominant part of their marketing is through post and phone calls, new business phone calls. But you can now opt out of receiving phone calls. You can opt out of receiving certain mail. They had somebody in who said, I predict that over the next 10 to 15 years, your sales marketing process will become virtually invalid and they're still doing it there. This was at least 12 years ago, and I know they're not doing that well. What is it that you think stops people adapting?
 
 

Marty Strong : 

Well, fear of failure is very strong. And failure is associated. Many times with risk taking and risk taking is doing something different. Embracing the unknown, chasing the unknown. So I think that's a big part of it. I'm actually working on a small startup right now, which I'm going to. All the work that I'm doing and all the advice I'm giving is is. Eventually it's almost like a virtual organization and that. It can operate and it can do everything without having a brick and mortar headquarters or and the people on the board that I'm talking to about this are all in there. Mid fifties early sixties are all engineers and they don't understand. What I'm saying they don't get it. They don't. They don't know why I'm not hiring no why am I not proposing hiring full time employees with benefits and. Because I've already been there, done that. I get it. I've, I've, I've seen. I have a hybrid organization with my main. The three companies are run and like a lot of people look, the pandemic accelerated that both with the availability of platforms that are cloud based, so. My accountants could do payroll from their house. You know, a couple of years before the pandemic, they didn't have the the wireless bandwidth to move those files from their house, so they would have to come into work no matter what and use the T1 lines, whatever. So that there's been a lot of things that have. Technology wise, that have been accelerated because of the pandemic. This whole medium we're in right now, this is video teleconferencing. First we had to get past the idea that if you don't meet somebody face to face, it's it's a waste of time that that was a habit, that was a tradition, and then it was the quality, you know, the quality of the experience. It does everybody have a a good camera, does everybody have a good microphone, does everybody have software that works? But then they fix that because we all had to talk that way and meet that way and do business that way, twenty twenty twenty twenty one. And now it is that feels like it's been around forever right so that's how change usually happens. It usually happens a little bit here, a little bit there. You see kind of the precursors of it, hints of it, and then all of a sudden it hits the tipping point and Wham, it's, it's the new way of doing things. If the new way of doing things is going to be harmful to your company or throw it for a loop. Because you weren't prepared for it, it's probably a good idea to be looking for those hints and precursors all the time.
 
 

Guy Bloom : 

Obviously people coming through who are young and now their relationship with it, social media obviously is generally there. I'm 53 so I notice people who are sort of 45 and up can definitely have a very ambiguous relationship with technology. It's not so much that they're on social media, but they don't have it to look at it. And I think there's a difference between. So I may have things like Tik tok on my phone am i on tik tok the user no might post a few videos on there just so it looks like i've got a profile but the reality is i've got a ten year old son and an eight year old son and i want to be abreast of it but also i don't want to miss a trick if something goes wrong and people seem to almost abdicate out of staying connected i guess to that what's coming through maybe because it's too much effort or they see it as frivolous but then they miss opportunity and i think that's something i i see there's a website called fiver f i v e. R and you go on there and there's all sort of people you know they'll do your graphic design they'll do three d modelling and it starts at five dollars and it goes up and i was in an organization a couple of years ago and they were sending stuff and they go yeah well we'll get this back in about two or three weeks from our design agency i said i reckon i could get you that for tomorrow morning and i said well i'm gonna spend twenty dollars cause i paid an extra ten to fifteen to get it done quickly and mine came back the next day cause it went off to you know who wherever on a different time zone and it blew their minds it blew their minds that they were paying such an amount of money versus twenty dollars to get somebody to get it back and then they they actually then started to shift over to that platform why does it take an outsider to offer that and why is there not an internal mechanism for review guess that's what i'm hearing from you scan the landscape pay attention yeah so you've got a couple of things, right. You got 3D printing, you've got the gig Labour model and you've got crowdsourcing. So just those three things. And could offer a huge boon to companies if they really thought about it. I mean the the the gig economy thing is interesting in that. So I've done it a couple of times for editors and for artists and things. So you could have a top artist that you employ that cost you a lot of money you have to pay benefits for and you only give them a project once in a while. Or for about. 2 % of that total cost, you can get one of the best fill in the blank. Performers in the world wherever they are in the world and they can get it to you quicker. So you actually have. You have the ability to tap in to the entire pyramid of talent in whatever category it is, and you can go to the very top and get the very best in the world where you can get, you know, the middle middle class an. And you can do it by just tossing it up and see what everybody says. So I had. My books, my my seal books are all on Audible and Amazon so. Amazon's got this really cool program. They've got a big pool of narrators, I mean hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands that have gone through their quality control process. They have to be able to produce, edit, pre and post production, all that and they have to have the voice and so when you go to. Get in their system. You have to fill out this application. And everything you can think about characteristics of voice, you know, Stern Man, woman, high voice, shrill voice. And he said like all these things, you pick them out. And then some other attitudes. If it's a novel you have to put in like your top three characters and give a little bit about. And then once you're ready. Oh, and you have to put like a A. The four page. For any 4 pages from what it is your project is, your book, whatever. You upload that and then you hit go. Within three hours, your phone's blowing up with auditions. They do. They read that material you gave them and. You you must. If you get on a regular computer, you'll see them all racked and stacked. You'll see the little play button hit the play button. You can listen to everyone of them. I bring my wife in French. What do you think? I'm down to these three people. I mean, I'm. I'm crowdsourcing, and then I'm crowdsourcing again by getting other people's opinions about the voice so. I mean, and that's just to me that's like a casual application because I've known about it for a couple of years. But if I say that people now on the street or a friend of mine, they'll stare at me like it's like you gotta be kid me. That's incredible. Well, no, that that's been around a long time and you don't know about it because maybe you don't have a reason to. Or maybe you're just not becoming. A I call intellectual curiosity. You have to seek insights and asymmetrical information you have to look outside of your normal world, watch other TV shows, watch something crazy like something on string theory. Or, you know, how do you, how do, how are tires? Made you know, just all kinds of weird. You just got to do all this stuff. Talk to all kinds of individuals that are from different walks of life and backgrounds. And, like kind of like nail soup. It's weird. You'll hear all these insights and you'll end well. They don't really relate to exactly what I'm doing with my life or exactly what I'm doing my business. But I'm telling you, somebody will say something and you'll get this epiphany. Because it's something that you never would have, would have applied, but now you see how brilliant would be if you did apply it. And you would have known if you didn't expose yourself.
 
 

Guy Bloom : 

I really buy into that. So people like Jordan Peterson, for example, may very well be on the smartest human beings on the planet, and it doesn't matter if you agree with him or don't disagree with him. But when you listen to him, you certainly learn how to formulate an argument. You definitely understand the benefits of having done some research. Generally when people speak to Jordan Peterson, they bought a pencil to a knife fight. He's much more knowledgeable and he's much more fluent. And you go, yeah, it doesn't matter what he's almost talking about. That's how you do it. Know your stuff. Have practised it be verbally fluent. Your shotgun's already loaded and when you pull and shoot it's almost like watching. You're playing drafts and this guy's playing chess. That's how you do.
 
 

Marty Strong : 

It and see that's that's one of those weird situations where you have a. An old and old methodology. Applied now where nobody remembers, it is actually highly effective Socratic logic. He's basically a master Socratic logic. And unless you knew it, I mean, that used to be a part of learning, right? There should be a part of every university because it allowed you to form. A rational argument. And in a way that it you, you almost got the other person the the adversarial viewpoint into a logic trap they couldn't get out of. He's very, very good at that and. You know, but that's an old thing that could be made new again, because so many, so few people actually think through what they're about to blab out. They don't. They don't form. Their thoughts that way. They don't construct their arguments that way, they argue. But they don't. They don't create a compelling argument.
 
 

Guy Bloom : 

Back to your 25 % of the time thinking, it's not 25 % of your time just reading books and looking out the window. It's 25 % of your time thinking about working through your argument and have I got my fluency in the right place? And if I'm challenged in that way, does it stand up? Now, I can argue my point and my case, but actually, could I beat my own argument? And if I could, then I haven't really thought it through.
 
 

Marty Strong : 

Enough yet, Jordan Peterson. So I'm 64 and I listened to that guy all the time and I listen to him and I listened to him and I listened to his books on tape, on on, on audible. And one of the reasons I listen to him is I really enjoy listening how he puts. His stream of thoughts, how he walks you into the conclusions. So I'm actually listening to him as much to be as a student of that Socratic logic, that methodology as the content. Because I think that's that's a lost art. And I really like that. And I I understand it. I read about when I was a kid because my dad wanted me to read all the kind of classic, classic. Now, philosophy is sociology and a lot of other things, and he's the one that told me about Socratic logic and some other forms of logic and. I didn't. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but later on in life. It's like you haven't. It's like being a black belt in jujitsu if you do it right.
 
 

Guy Bloom : 

Yeah, I agree. And what I hear from you is you know this is life is about what life is about curiosity. It's it's about the willingness to be vulnerable because to learn you've got to be vulnerable. And I think that is a Jordan Peterson point. You know, like when you go to university you're supposed to be challenged. It's not. It's supposed to be physically safe, but it's not supposed to be intellectually safe, right. You're supposed to have moments where you go ohh bugger. I thought it was this and now apparently it might not be and it might shake your foundations. That makes you resilient. It makes you anti fragile. So I think there is something about in the military I can understand that. The physical elements of it, that he's not so much there in the commercial space. The reality is that mental toughness, that ability to have thought through and have a logical space where you've challenged yourself more than any challenge that you can probably receive an open forum and you're not holding a position of obstinacy, but you're holding a position of knowledge and depth and insight. Really what I'm hearing from you there, I think, which is that's the bit that will gain my respect even if we disagree with each other. You've clearly thought this through yeah listen, in special operations you're taught how to problem solve, and so that's part of your confidence too. So you have physical confidence, you have, you have psychological resilience because you've been. Throwing up against a lot of difficult situations, that reinforces that resilience because usually you have to have that to get through the selection process in the beginning. But then they teach you don't think they they do absolutely teach you. They teach how to problem solve. So when things fall apart or get out of whack from what your plan was, nobody reacts in a negative way. Everybody psychologically, intellectually, you kind of roll your sleeves up and go okay. Let's figure out, let's figure this out and then you figure it out, OK, let's go with this plan. And it's a very it's a very comfortable thing because they put it, put you through it so many times. It's just a part of the way you kind of roll. You don't even think about it really so. You know and that's problem solving is it's kind of like it's like logic. If you practice problem solving, and if you aren't very good at problem solving, then find somebody who is, or find a course, whatever. How do you break problems down? How do you reassemble them? How do you weigh the different elements of the of the problem with the challenge? How do you is there one driving factor that you have to deal with or are there two or three different driving factors? And if you deal with one, the other two still beach? You know, we're kind of combinations of things. We have to prioritise and still take the hit. You're not going to win, you're just going to lose less. And those are all judgment calls that are based on the ability to solve problems.
 
 

Guy Bloom : 

I think one of the biggest things I see in a corporate space is I talk about four things, trust, accountability, bravery and connection and when it comes to connection, I'm really talking about the willingness to contribute outside of your own need. And one of the things I see in that commercial space is very often there isn't a unless it's done right and it's got right. You can really see the individuals who are in a team inverted commas. But it's a team that is transactional. It's not necessarily about we're trying to solve this because we've all got to cross. The line at the same time, there's often an element of, especially in larger organisations, even if I if I succeed and you fail, this organization will still survive. Therefore I'll still be okay, I actually don't need you to succeed, right, because because I'd like you to, because that might contribute to a bigger bonus or something like that. But I'll still be here because the organisation will keep going. So as long as I look good, I Will Survive. And I think that's something I notice. How do you recognize or recruit to a standard? Or recalibrate people if they're going down that lightly. It's all about me pathway.
 
 

Marty Strong : 

Luckily there's very very, very few, I mean. Infinitesimal number of people. That are both impactful, talented and. Moving around the companies thinking it's all about me or it's usually it's one. If you have the one you don't have the other. So because I think that that. That's a very shallow way to look at a victory. If if you win and nobody else wins or nobody else was a part of it, that you're somehow you survive because you're on the winners list or you're on the somebody, somebody sees you as a winner. So I think it's got to be the organization that decides and the in the to tell authority of the of the. Of all the people that are in an organization a, team say it's an advertising team of 10 people. There may be somebody who came up with the idea, great, but who produced the entire advertising campaign thou, one person or all 10 people? So you have to look at that and you know, holistically. You know, would you give a bonus to the person that came up with the idea? maybe. Do you give the whole team a bonus if the if the campaign ends up, you know, kicking butt? absolutely. So I don't know very many jobs were all by yourself. You can come up with the idea and produce the idea. So there's that production tail somebody else is putting in the putting in the work and. What I do is. I'm a I'm a stickler for for commitment and selflessness when I see people working long hours and nobody asks them to. If I see people jumping in to help another project and nobody asked them to. Just out of. Human kindness or a sense of professionalism that includes. The team concept I will give that person kudos or potentially reward them monetarily before the one idea person because. That's how you build a real company, that's how you build a culture. That's how you retain people. Because if I'm struggling and having a hard time and somebody comes over and helps me out. Excuse me, I'm going to. I'm going to remember that and I'm going to feel like I'm part of something. So those, those, those people are what you call the military force multiplier. You put one or two people with that. Outlook on life and professional. Performance that it's about it's not about me, it's about we kind of thing. That's something I can't do everyday because no leader can run around and have that influence on every single employee. So if you find it. You supersize it, you you try to figure out a way to retain those people for sure. So that's that to me is more important than the person that comes up with the one idea.
 
 

Guy Bloom : 

When you sound multiplier, have I understood that right? Because my understanding of that is somebody whose value multiplies, magnifies X's those around them by the nature of their either care or interest or curiosity or discretionary effort or whatever it is.
 
 

Marty Strong : 

Yes, so let's say say. There's a there's 20 people in a department. There is no mentoring, there is no coaching, there is no training. Yet you find out at some point that one person, one woman in that group, has been teaching, training and mentoring. The people all around her every single day and making that department stronger, nobody's paying her to do it. She doesn't have a title associated with that as a role. She's just doing it. So that's in the military force multiplier would be like you take an SS to two SS guys and you drop them into. A third world country and say you know. Find a bunch of guys and train them to be a counter guerrilla force. And they do. That's a force multiplier. It's at the the the results, the positive results are are. Out of whack with the level of effort, it's just one person but having this huge magnifying effect. And there are people like that. There's studies showing that social structures of organizations and big corporations, they map the actual social influence like who's making things happen, who's the internal connector. And I read a book a few years back and the thesis was when you find these people. If they're making sixty thousand dollars a year, you should pay them half a million because they're keeping your entire organization. Together they're the ones making sure everything is getting cleaned up and all the words getting passed all the place. It's like an Ant farm as opposed to an org chart. The human beings figure out ways to work around and connect and everything, and there are people that are connectors and they're very good at it and they're invaluable. That's another force multiplier effect.
 
 

Guy Bloom : 

It's why very, very good eras, they are a force multiplier, you know, they're very good at going now may not be the time, they're not doing the work themselves, but they're very good at offering counsel or insight or just saying why don't you just wait a minute, go home, have a deep breath before you do anything or if you don't do something about this, I think it's it's not going to work in your favour. They're just very good at having very small inputs that actually guide and counsel and add value and and reflection and stop people jumping off the ledge when they shouldn't and all these kind of things. The job on paper may look very two-dimensional but actually it's a 3 dimensional. Call Marty. I'm I'm super alert to time and I just wanna keep on talking to you, but I'm gonna be careful not to do that. Any books that you read that really stuck with you or any podcasts that you pay attention to or any websites that you go to?
 
 

Marty Strong : 

Yeah, I I read everything of Malcolm McDowell mcdowell i think he's got great insights any and he lays them out in a way that. For whatever reason, it sticks in my head. Um, the 8020 rule? The trying to think of any others that. Really jumped up. I'm a Big Joe Rogan podcast fan, but I tend to, I tend to watch things that are was it Graham Hancock or somebody, if he has somebody on that's an an archaeologist or a scientist, or I think David Sinclair is an Australian. A guy that is at the Harvard Medical School doing research on aging, that is a very, that's enlightening and it's an entertaining casual way because he brings these extremely brilliant people and from all these different walks of life and from all these different industries and you hear things you just wouldn't hear and you hear them in an hour in a way that you just you'd never go read a book on, on the subject. So yeah that's that's that's probably my go to podcast.
 
 

Guy Bloom : 

Very much an avid listener over and I remember. Look into it back in the day as a martial arts fan, when it became what he became. But I think it's this is an indicator of what listening to other people can do. Because I've heard Joe get smarter. It started off at one level, but now he's holding very intelligent conversations, asking incredibly smart. I mean, he's sometimes messing about, but he's also asking incredibly insightful conversations and he's learning from it. So he started off knowing as much as the next person. But over the years of talking to these people, guess what? He's got smarter. His brain's expanded and is he now a better podcaster, but there's something about him. He's gravitas, he's weight, he's he's impact. He's seen now as somebody that isn't just a bloke doing a podcast and maybe that's what part of the leadership development is. It's not that you're gonna get smarter intellectually, but your weight and the impact that you have and the resonance that you have will increase because you're obviously more than just the role and and I guess that's really important. So I think that's what I'm hearing in.
 
 

Marty Strong : 

You sure? I I think it's. I think it's odd, rare and wonderful that. He is not succumbing to popular. The popular, I guess, TV, Media, entertainment. Paradigm where he's only going to have celebrities on his early going to have people that have a 10 rating, you know in in average society to bring in somebody to talk about string theory or to talk about NDS and and. Human genes and stuff like that. I mean come on that that is not going to be a high, high level of entertainment value for the average person. But he does. And because he does, I've I've learned a heck of a lot about a lot of subjects I would have never listened to.
 
 

Guy Bloom : 

And it's and it's also now it's so large. That's interesting thing, isn't it? You've got a podcast that can last up to three hours and you realise that people want the long form. Very interesting to hear him go, hold on a minute. My brain's trying to catch up with what you've just said because he's not an expert. But I think that's Okay, isn't it? To go tap out for a minute. I've gone now as far as I can go and I think it's good to recognise that you're stretching your brain just like you would a physical muscle.
 
 

Marty Strong : 

And you kind of hit the nail on the head though he's become, he's matured to the point where he reminds me. Now his technique of asking questions. Is a lot more like the forties and the fifties. Interviews i, remember you, know seeing clips, on you know, the David Kavitz and people that. Asked really, really good questions and then sat back and listened and then asked really good questions again. Because I think if you ask good questions, you it's like you you're unlocking, you know, the treasure trove. If you don't ask the good question, you don't unlock that. You have to. There has to be. It can't be a shallow question. It can't be. That obvious questions. Sometimes he just asks some oblique questions and then he shuts up and he lets them just unload you know, and. That's how the old commentators and interviewers used to. Because the people wanted to wanted to hear the the person they were interviewing.
 
 

Guy Bloom : 

And I think one of the things I notice as well, Martin, he takes time with them before the podcast and he, he openly talks, you can hear that they've had an an hour or two beforehand and he's relaxed. He's not, they haven't just rocked in sat down. In fact, you can always tell if you get somebody super famous and they've kind of the Zuckerberg one was interesting because it was a little bit superficial. It wasn't one of the better ones because he wasn't probably spending two or three hours with Joe beforehand. An easing into it. And but, and that's maybe what leadership is as well, isn't it? Listen, I'm. I'm going to ask you challenging questions. I don't need to have to pull hen's teeth. I've gotta I've got to engage with you in a way that if I ask you a question and you trust where it's coming from, I'm gonna get an answer. And that's kind of what he's doing. He lays the groundwork and he gets them to buy into him and then he can ask those questions, which is different to I only see you once a year for a performance review. Here's the big question. Wallop, you know, and the person goes dude. And there's no way I'm answering that because I don't know. You trust you, right? I think I see a lot of that in the way that he approaches it for sure. So listen, Marty, I'm gonna bring us to an end. I don't want to. People wanted to reach out for your connect is is there a go to place just to say hi or just to check out who you are and the work that you've done?
 
 

Marty Strong : 

Yes, it's Marty strong being nimble.com That Marty strongbeingable.com has links to all my books, including my novels. It has articles. It has a lot of other things on there, but that's the place. And I want to Amazon too.
 
 

Guy Bloom : 

Ok, Marty strong being nimble becom fabulous. I'm gonna get you to stay on for a few moments to make sure this upload from me and justice those that are listening this has been a genuine joy, so thank you so.
 
 

Marty Strong : 

Much thanks for having me.
 
 

Guy Bloom : 

That's it. So I hope you enjoyed the episode. Please share so others get to hear about us and subscribe so you keep up to date on new episodes. Also, visit living brave.com if you want to connect with me and find out more about executive coaching team effectiveness. And changing culture ohh and of course you can buy my book living Brave leadership on Amazon. So on that note, see you soon.