Giving Yourself an Edge

Anita Brick: Hi, this is Anita Brick. And welcome to CareerCast at Chicago Booth. To help you advance in your career. Today, we're delighted to be speaking with David Horsager, who is a business strategist, keynote speaker, and author of the national bestseller The Trust Edge. His work has been featured in Fast Company, Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal, among others.

His new book, The Daily Edge: Simple Strategies to Increase Efficiency and Make an Impact Every Day, is our topic for today. So David, thank you so much for making the time. I know you just got back from Africa, which is pretty awesome in and of itself.

David Horsager: Fantastic trip and fantastic response to some of the stuff we're going to talk about today, as well as the original research around trust. It's a privilege and it's a privilege to be with you.

Anita Brick: Let's start off with a question from an evening MBA student who said, when working towards a long term goal, I found that there are cycles of enthusiasm and fatigue or burnout, which I'm not always able to control. If I could maintain enthusiasm throughout the drive toward my goal and accomplish more towards that end. Is there an approach to controlling enthusiasm and preventing burnout that can give me an edge?

David Horsager: There's a couple of ways I could go here, but I will tell you a simple idea that I would think about right here is something I call seeds. This person does need some absolute clarity. They also need to check their seeds. Are they sleeping enough? S stands for sleep. If you don't get enough. Oh, they're tired all the time.

Are they exercising? I know this sounds simple, but people don't accomplish big long term goals if they are not moving in their life. E eats the right people to make sure they get four green vegetables a day. They don't do carbs, you know, bread type carbs, sugars and stuff like that. They get their cars from fruits and vegetables.

They last longer. The D stands for drink water. The final S is for source. We found that if people don't have a source beyond themselves, whether faith or family, they just don't laugh at goals. People that plant their seeds and cultivate their seeds, they have a chance at accomplishing big things.

Anita Brick: The first four set you up for having the foundation and wherewithal. But the second source to me, I have seen that when people have that when, however, you define that, that enthusiasm keeps going because that source is a reminder of why they're doing it. And that seems to mitigate some of those ups and downs.

David Horsager: That's exactly right. And people that have a strong source, they just have much more consistency in life and they are steady and really for accomplishing anything that's what we need, a steadiness. Not, well, I did this and now I'm in the tank. If you're going to get life all your life from your business, don't get it all there because things change. Sometimes you fail a business, sometimes you win. Sometimes you get a promotion, sometimes you don't. And if you get your source somewhere else, you'll do a lot better in leadership and in business.

Anita Brick: Very, very good point. Switching gears now, going from I, that felt like a macro now going into maybe a micro. Allen said, I know that logging is a good idea, but it takes time that I feel could be spent achieving my results. Perhaps I'm not doing the logging effectively, but it feels overwhelming and I consistently stop doing it. Your advice is greatly appreciated.

David Horsager: Talking about logging things like tracking things here, and I talk about this under a tip in the book. Here's the thing. And others have said it before me. But what gets measured, gets changed or has a chance of getting changed. I say what gets measured or celebrated gets changed, or you move the needle on. If you don't measure it, it's hard to make any movement on it.

But it's amazing how actions change when you track something. When you actually put it out, you change the actions and you do the much more important thing. So for the logging exercise in the book, I'm just asking people for 2 or 3 days to measure their time and the impact of what they do with their time when they start an activity, when they stop an activity.

Everybody that I've ever heard from has never said it's a waste of time, and most have said it was a monumental awakening. I did not know I was spending this much time on email, or this much time on the phone, or this much time doing nothing, because once they tracked it, they were able to change it. And so people would say to me, I don't have any time.

That's baloney. We all have the same 24 hours. It's what we do with it. If you don't track it, you don't change it. Hey, you don't have to do this forever. The logging of time that I'm talking about in the book, although there's some things I think we should always track. I have something now that I'm working on, and so I'm tracking it.

It's how much, how many times I intentionally appreciate people. What I've noticed is because I'm logging or tracking them, I act differently on them. And that's the same with the logging of time that I talk about in the book. It is worth logging it. If this person is saying to me, oh, I'm not going to do that for two weeks or a week or whatever I might recommend to it for a day.

Anita Brick: Yeah, no, I totally agree. In fact, I don't know if you are aware of this, but there is a study done at UT Austin where they did something with a group of executives who laid off one group. They got help with resumé and all that stuff, and the other group received all those resources. Plus they tracked at the end of the study, the people who tracked it had three times as many offers as those who did not.

David Horsager: That's amazing.

Anita Brick: Measure it. It's worth measuring. So an MBA student said, I understand that. Prioritizing things is absolutely crucial. My challenge is my list of two do's collapses into a lot of high, important, high urgency items. How can I get past this and have a list that is more useful and really prioritize?

David Horsager: Well, first of all, everybody thinks everything they have is important and this is the first problem. Every task might be important and it might be urgent, but they're not all equally important and urgent. And what happens with many people that have a list like this, they get so overwhelmed by it they do nothing, or they do the less important things. So you do have to define what really is most important and urgent. So this is a simple idea on prioritization. Many of you have heard it before, but it's worth trying at least a few times to get unstuck in this process. And for this person thinking that, oh, they all seem so important.

Anita Brick: I'm just going to take a step back. So practically, how do you do it? I mean, I think we all want to think so.

David Horsager: One practical idea just to try to take your list. Let's say it's ten items long. Could be 100, but let's say it's ten. You've got ten really important, really urgent things today. Take that ten and go by importance and just try to think quickly. Don't make this a big burdensome process, but think through those ten. Make yourself give the most important one a ten, the next more important one on the list, a nine, and so on.

Those numbers are on the right hand side. Then urgency. And the most urgent one is that I have to do this. My boss is going to be on me. I'm going to lose out on this. I'm not going to get to the project. It's urgent, urgent, urgent. The most urgent thing that gets a ten every one of your ten items has two numbers. A number for important to number for urgency. There you just prioritize your list by adding up the important and urgency number. Now you're able to move forward.

Anita Brick: Got it. Okay, good I think this next question goes along with that. An evening student said, I've been practicing saying no more. That's it. How can I say no to things that are part of my job, even though they're not things I believe are a priority. I really don't leverage my strengths, however leadership wants them done. So that's a really tricky one.

So you may go through this prioritization and it's based on you. How do you make sure that you don't get fired, that you say no to things that you don't think are a priority, and not lose your job in the process?

David Horsager: You do have to honor leadership. You are hired by leadership. The idea that you can always just work to your strengths. I think that we have to get over it. Yes, we want to work on our strengths more, but that we would have to work at it all the time. You know what? We just need other things done. The way to get around this is yes, I believe generally you do need to honor leadership. You could have a poisonous leader. It's true. You could have to go around them. And that has to be done with great wisdom. The only way to deal with this is you must meet in the middle with your leader, your manager, and say, this is what I think priorities are, and explain why and allow them to explain it and have a conversation and come to the key priorities and get absolutely clear on them.

A huge problem for companies, and it's draining. Productivity is a lack of clarity. And where they're not aligned and on the same page with their leader. One you can be doing the most important thing, even though it's not always perfectly in your strengths. And number two, you've got to get aligned with your leader and it might be you creating. Buy in with your leader about why you think this thing is more important than that thing isn't. But otherwise, yeah, leaders are enrolled to do their job, and if they think that thing needs to be done, you might have to honor it.

Anita Brick: Very good point. You want to make sure, of course, that you're doing what needs to get done. Because usually when you do that and you excel at it, you're given more latitude. This is one I struggle with. I'm not saying I wrote this question, but this is one that I struggle with. And even MBA students said, what would you recommend that I do to eliminate distractions, especially email? When my clients and investors expect a very quick response, I invariably keep one eye on my email and my phone for text messages. That's a struggle that a lot of people have. How do you recommend that someone eliminate distractions, even if it's for pockets of time?

David Horsager: It is very difficult specifically for certain roles. I would first of all question that person and say, do they really expect to be taking that email every second? Because what we've learned is sometimes people are addicted to it, and they think that that investor is expecting a response every second. And that may be true. That's fair, but it may not be true.

And what we say around here is, hey, we don't check email for pockets of time so that we can serve our clients better. I'm not going to act like I know this person's situation. They could be rolling their eyes at me saying, this guy doesn't get it. I have to check it all the time. And if that's true, then you have to check it all the time.

That's your job. I doubt it in the book. I have a process there for getting ten or less emails a day in your inbox. Even if you get 300 a day like I do, you've got to get in this habit of not thinking of it as an inbox. It's a through box. You're going to read it, deal with it, file it, delete it, shoot it back to someone.

By the way, emails for information sharing. It's not for firing or emotional things. Couple of thoughts for those of you that are listening and can create pockets of time, define time is to check it. Don't take it every second. What happens to people is they finally get working on a project and thing. Oh, and they check the email and then they look back at their project and they're like, oh, where was I? Oh, I guess it's time for lunch anyway. And they never get the most important things done.

Anita Brick: David, what about someone who has to check email? How can you create a time, a regular time to check it rather than every time it pings?

David Horsager: If you can communicate to your staff, communicate to your team, communicate to your clients. I check the email every hour. Let's see you get 20 emails in an hour. Check all 20 in a bundle. Not every time one comes in, because then you'll never get a focus project done. You've got to get rid of that during the pop up.

Make sure you put your settings so you don't have that happen, so that you can actually have focus time on a project. You'll get that project done so much faster and so much better. Having a process for dealing with emails, it's worth it because emails are killing productivity in many cases.

Anita Brick: Got it? That goes along with this, an MBA student said. Do you recommend having a consistent power hour each day? I love the idea. My travels take me all over the place. I have a lot of work, travel, and client visits and my schedule changes a lot. What would you recommend that I do to make this concept work for me? When I can only block out my power hour 1 to 2 weeks ahead?

David Horsager: This person is traveling a bunch. I would argue there are still pockets of time you can absolutely have focused power hours. Just look at the pockets of time you have, especially if you travel. In fact, I find when I travel I have a better opportunity sometimes out of power hour. By the way, Darren Hardy, who's interviewed thousands and thousands of the top most successful people in the world, he's a publisher of success magazines, said this is one of the key ideas for super achievers.

They were able to block out and do the most important thing and not take an interruption getting power hours in. Not that they're perfectly consistent. Some of you have the opportunity for perfect consistency, but for others, they created pockets of time that would be uninterrupted and they got most important things done. That was a marquee of the super achievers that were interviewed.

Anita Brick: Excellent point. So there is someone switching gears a little bit from a weekend MBA student. And he said, some people say I think too much before making a decision. I believe that pausing before making a decision is a responsible thing to do. How do I balance the needs of quick decisions for my management and my desire to make solid decisions?

David Horsager: This is a great question. You know, everybody will have a different opinion. Colin Powell, the great leader, said most great leaders have to make their decisions on 70% of the information. This is maybe where you're having tension with your leaders. You have to have enough information, but you also have to move. Sometimes a decision is better than taking too long.

Just find the perfect one. Everything has to be weighed on the possible risks. So it's a really high risk that we're going to take more time on. If it's like we have two pretty close revenue sources, which one are we going to put our focus or marketing efforts into and go, you weigh it against the risk. I understand the challenge. I think you're right about pausing, but I think, you know, you just have to set a time limit on that pause.

Anita Brick: Time limits sound like a way to achieve a lot by chunking it. It makes a lot of sense. One thing that I remember reading about this a long time ago was in John Dewey's Virtues, where he talked about replacing a habit rather than struggling to eliminate it. And the weekend he said, I love that idea of replacing a habit rather than really struggling to eliminate it. How do I find a replaceable habit? That is a sure win and easy. So I create. Well I'm creating new momentum.

David Horsager: Yeah, that's based on you. How are they going to change a habit, especially if they don't feel like it? Your way to replace a habit is something else that's positive, but that you would like. It's incremental and it's steps and I can talk about it. I try to make certain changes and it was like, and now I'm going to go do this drudgery thing and I wouldn't do it. But when I replaced it with something I would like, that was a step. And then another step.

Anita Brick: Totally makes sense because we want to win. Our brain tails better when we win. If it's something we don't want to do, eventually we're going to rebel and we won't do it anyway. So exactly. Yeah, really good point. Of course, the incremental part is good, but I think that your point about choosing something you like will actually help solidify that and create a new habit. But experimentation, it sounds like that's a big part of this as well. So the first thing you choose, maybe it doesn't stick. Don't beat yourself up. Go choose something else.

David Horsager: Right?

Anita Brick: This is an interesting one. And again, not that this is about me, but I can relate to one as well. And Alan said for me, motion and action can look the same on the surface. How can someone like me avoid the activity without the progress trap, especially since taking action can feel good in and of itself?

David Horsager: It's very true. And this is where clarity becomes very important. Absolute clarity around the most important things. I'll give one little quick strategy into this. I kept hearing from my team about many of the organizations we serve. I worked really hard all day, but I didn't get anything done. I hate when I hear that. I certainly don't want to hear that from people that I pay, and I don't want to hear that for myself.

But in essence, what they're saying is I was really busy, but I didn't get the most important things done or I didn't move the needle. I didn't move us forward. How can we avoid that? Here's one little idea we called the DMA strategy difference making actions. People have seen a triple in sales based on this little strategy, and all we do is we take out a sticky note.

It's intentional that we don't have this in electronic form. We write down on that sticky note every morning the five most important things I could do today to move my organization forward, or my key priority or objective or mission. At this given time forward, you can't have more than five. So our to-do list might be an electronic format.

I might have 600 items on my to-do list, but this forces me to just put a sticky note on my desk or in front of me wherever I am. I have five, only five things. And then we make those five items fun. Fun. Number one is first priority. First, it's the most important thing I could do today to move my organization forward or my key goal forward.

The U stands for your main priority. It's got to come under your main mission or key priority. And the end is the most important. Its number is attached. There's got to be a number attached. So DMA can't be, I'm going to make more sales calls. I'm going to make five calls. It can't be that I'm going to clean my office.

That's overwhelming. It can be I'm going to clean one drawer or I'm going to clean for 20 minutes. There's got to be a number attached. We've found when we do our DMs, we don't try to fill our day often. A DMA is two minutes long. So we put it down as a DMA. And now we see people doing the most important things all the time. DMs sticky note it's one idea to overcome this challenge.

Anita Brick: I love it. Built in is the progression and the the note of progress around this. So it's really it's excellent. So there was an evening student who has an interesting situation, and I thought maybe we could talk about a couple of things that he might be able to do to give himself an edge. This question is a little bit longer, so bear with me.

I work in a company with a very horizontal structure. I'm about to finish my MBA and I want to advance. Gone through the process of having open career discussions with leaders in the company, it's fairly clear that the MBA degree alone is not enough to justify a promotion. What are some things that I can do to give myself an edge that might be visible to leadership? It sounds like the Dmas would be one really amazing thing to do. What else would you suggest?

David Horsager: We're all judged in business on our results. Yes, we're absolutely also judged on our attitude, our character, the way we do things. I agree the MBA shouldn't necessarily give them a jump, a promotion. The results are what we as company owners are. That's the only way we have more revenue is better, quicker results, better, more efficient, more effective, more valuable results.

Think of it in terms of you have to be more valuable. What this person did was brilliant. I think it's simple, but a lot of people don't do it. And that is communicating with your leadership, saying, what can I do? I want to be a part of this. I believe in this organization. I believe in the mission.

How can I grow as a leader? How can I grow into more and more leadership? If that manager doesn't give them some specific things, then they're obviously not doing their job. So I think that person probably has some specific ways that they can be more valuable. That's one thing, is communicating with them and getting some specific ideas. Secondly, thinking on your own and defining what are the specific things I could do to add more value here?

And maybe it's even talking to other people, you know, laterally with their peers saying, how can I help with this? How can I possibly help? And they become known as being great to work with. This person did the right thing, I think, in communicating and just asking now they need to deliver on that.

Anita Brick: How would you recommend that someone make those results that they follow through on visible without bragging?

David Horsager: And this is even culturally an issue. I mean, you find in certain parts of the country, the Midwest, Scandinavian roots, people are very genuine, humble about it. They don't want to blow their own horn. In America, certain places on the coast, it's totally fine to look at what I did and be all out loud about it. It is also, globally, a cultural issue.

One of the better ways, I think, rather than writing about it, is to say someone did something great. Now you write a little case study about this, or you write a little article of we did this and this was the result that gets noticed. And yet it doesn't look like they said it themselves. Any opportunity people have, I will say speak.

If you get an opportunity to share about an idea that worked or can talk to your managers, hey, would you want to hear this worked for us? We tried this. We got these great results. What do you want others to know about this? Or if anything in your company allows you to be up front and speak? It's unbelievable the bias people have toward giving leadership to people that can speak well.

Anita Brick: It's a really good point, and I've actually seen that work really well, especially if someone puts together a case study or an article where it then teaches the rest of the organization how to implement that process, that improved productivity or improved whatever measure they were looking at when they're teaching others. People love that and then.

David Horsager: Instantly seen as a leader. They're seen as a giver, they're seen as a value ladder, and they're not seen as a bragger. And everybody wants to know who wrote about that and who did this.

Anita Brick: You're absolutely right. It's great. This is all great. Do you have time for one more question, by the way?

David Horsager: Yeah.

Anita Brick: What are three things that a person could do today to begin to get an edge and really achieve important goals?

David Horsager: Okay. One idea that has changed the world for many and it's certainly changed my world, is something I call the how process. There is a lot out there on the importance of the why, and I agree with Simon Sinek, and I agree with many others that the why motivates the why unifies. If you have the why, you don't have to have the perfect strategy.

However, people are missing the word of clarity and they stop too early and they don't ask the word of clarity enough. And the word of clarity is how? And so people will say, I want to. We want to have a better culture around here. And I'll say how I say, oh, we're going to say nice things, and I'll say, how are we going to appreciate people?

No. Or I'll say, how you've got to ask how at least three times it might take seven. This happens all the time. Two people, one big company I was working with, were tanking. I asked the senior leadership, what do they need to do to start building more trust? The senior leadership stood up and said, we need to be more clear.

I said, how are you going to do that? He sat down with his senior team. They talked about it, discussed it when they're already the team leader, stood up and said, we're going to communicate more. I said how he sat down. They talked about it. He stood up and said, we're going to hold each other accountable. I said, how?

Because, see, none of those answers are clear. You've got to ask how until you're clear enough to do something differently today or tomorrow, any time you're solving a problem, don't stop asking how until you are going to do something differently today or tomorrow. I want to appreciate people more how you do that. Until someone says, I'm going to write a note every day for the next 90 days, I don't trust them.

Specifically how, how, how, how, how until you're going to do something differently today or tomorrow. That process can change everything, and it gives hope. It gives specificity, it gives clarity. How is the word for clarity? One other idea? It really is the little things done consistently that make the biggest difference in work and in life. People that are doing the little things consistently are the ones that are trusted, and the ones that are moving the needle in every area of life and it might seem simple, but that is powerful. You've got to look back this year, right now, what are the little things that I need to stop doing? What are the little things that I need to start doing? What are the little things that I need to continue doing?

Anita Brick: It's great. Any other final words of wisdom.

David Horsager: Even though The Daily Edge is this tip book, almost 3 to 5 page tips, 35 them in there. Everything for me comes under my original research and that is my biases around trust. I believe a lack of trust is the biggest expense of every person. Every government, every organization will pay more for the trusted brand to follow. The trusted leader will buy from a trusted salesperson. So all these tips are just trying to build more trust on a daily basis.

Anita Brick: Guide it. That's wonderful. What you're doing is so important. I'm glad you're doing it. I'm glad that you took this rather sophisticated research that you did for the Trust Edge, and you boiled it down into very tiny, actionable things that anyone can really implement beginning today. So thank you so much for doing that. Can't wait to see what comes out next. And really appreciate the time that you spent with us today.

David Horsager: Thank you Anita, thanks for having me and thanks to your audience.

Anita Brick: So if you want to learn more about what David is doing now, what he's done in the past, and a lot of different resources, you can go to trustedge.com. And thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with CareerCast at Chicago Booth. Keep advancing.