367 Reauthoring Leadership: Take Charge of Your Story, Navigate Change, and Empower Transformation with Lior Arussy

***DISCLAIMER: Please note that the following AI-generated transcript may not be 100% accurate and could contain misspellings or errors.***

[00:00:00] Mahan Tavakoli: Lior Arussy, welcome to partnering leadership. I am thrilled to have you in this conversation with me. 

[00:00:06] Lior Arussy: Thank you very much for having me on the show. 

[00:00:08] Mahan Tavakoli: You have lots of outstanding books, Lior. We will touch on some of those insights, but most specifically your newest book, Dare to Author, Take Charge of the Narrative of Your Life.

Before we get to some of those insights, Lior, we'd love to know a little bit more about you, your upbringing, and how that has contributed to who you've become. 

[00:00:30] Lior Arussy: I was raised in a neighborhood that let's say not too many teachers gave us a lot of chances of coming out of the neighborhood.

Oftentimes, we were told during school time that maybe we should go to professional schools as opposed to high school because we're anyway not going to get to college. So why waste the time. 

Many of our parents were either washing floors or working in restaurants. And, we were destined in the same direction, childhood that was in a neighborhood that Didn't really promise us much of a future and if you want to fight for that future, you have to find your own role models because there weren't that many around.

[00:01:07] Mahan Tavakoli: In your work and your books you've talked a lot about customer experience. We're going to touch on a couple of elements of that. I love next is now. I find there to author has a personal connection and a need for leaders to connect with their own stories as well.

What got you to write this book? 

[00:01:32] Lior Arussy: So it's an interesting story. , I'm going to start with something that truly bizarre that happened to me. I was walking. in manhattan minding my own business rushing from one meeting to the other in the middle of the crosswalk a guy stops me and says leo marussi and gave me a big hug and he said you changed my life because of you i changed my life completely i was completely shocked and then he said to me because of you i decided to get divorced And I'm looking at him like, what?

How did you do this? In what world? He said no. I went to your lecture. I was in that program. And you gave me the courage to do that. And I'm like, which program was it? And he told me the program. Man, I was talking about customer experience. How did you get the courage to get divorced from that? And that, that one, look, it, it was surreal.

And after that I was reflecting and I realized something that I knew deep down, but never really crystallized for myself. I said what I said. He heard what he heard. We don't live in facts. We don't live in numbers. We live in stories. And somehow, a story of courage that I shared on stage gave him the courage to go there.

It often happened to me that people would come to me with a book and say, Oh, on page 52, you said this and this, and I learned this and that from that. I'm like, Yeah, I thought not what I meant to say, but if that's what you got out of it. So I started to investigate this whole notion of people hearing stories, not facts and everything else.

So that was a trigger number one. And I'm like, okay. People live in stories, people don't live in numbers. Now, in the last three decades, I dedicated my life to helping large organizations go through big transformations. And when I go back to the obstacles, to the difficulties of organizations and individuals making the leap to the next chapter, that they're stuck in the old chapters.

And it's really a narrative that is out there that is directing them in one way. And they look at change as a narrative that is threatening the old narrative that they have. Now, why now? Because the speed of change that we are facing today is so fast. Then ever before that, as I said, in next is now my argument was as individual and as organizations are for competence is no longer a skills or products.

It's our ability to change fast. I call it change resilience. The speed. And scope in which you change, and I saw so many people struggling with that I said it's no longer about giving them an idea. It's really about teaching them how to close all chapters and convert them into future strength.

So when you take over your story. It's not just about understanding what happens to you, but it's a process of converting your experiences is. Into future toolkits in helping you become future ready. So between that bizarre call in Manhattan And the speed of change that is happening and seeing so many employees struggling with how do they move from one chapter to the other and evolve themselves the idea for the book came up.

[00:04:57] Mahan Tavakoli: What an outstanding perspective as well, Lior. I couldn't agree with you more. I've had a whole host of conversations. with brilliant thinkers and authors about the power of storytelling. Personally, I refer repeatedly to Yuval Noah Harari, who helped me understand how we view the world through stories.

Now, a lot of leaders would nod and they agree with you that we need to change the narrative of our own lives. And in order to bring change to our organizations, we need to change the narrative. of change and that willingness to go through disruption. It is still a struggle. 

Why do you think that is? 

[00:05:44] Lior Arussy: So a couple of things, most leaders today are mimicking what they learned from their boss. 30 years ago. We don't use the same software from 30 years ago. We don't use the same cell phone from 30 years ago, but somehow they think that those skill sets that they've seen from their manager 30 years ago are applicable today.

And when you tell them storytelling, they're like, I don't know what you're talking about. Cause he never told me stories. He told me here are your KPIs. Here's what you need to do. Go do it. It was a top down So first we need to recognize that leaders are entering an era where storytelling is important But they've never seen it themselves.

They never experienced it as human beings or as employees before So that is obstacle number one to the challenge Second and I want to come into what you mentioned around change our experience have shown that when people hear the word change They equate it in their head You To a negative judgment on everything i've done until now.

Let's say the company is upgrading to sap and until now we use excel sheets So when i'm asking you to move to sap In your mind, you're saying, Hey, we always telling me that my excels were crap. And that's not what I'm saying, but that's how you interpret that. So you've been working with those excels for 20 years.

And now you heard that I said that the last 20 years were not good. That is too much for people to process. We have A very crazy relationship with change. love it, but we don't want to do it. But what we found out is that the real struggle of people is that they see change as a departure from the past.

They see change as a negative judgment of the past. And what I teach people to do is let's split the purpose from the tools. The purpose remained the same. The tools are evolving. Let me give you an example. So I was working with a bank that with digital transformations are giving more and more tools to their customers and they had to shut down some branches and they had to shut down some cashiers.

Because people don't come to get cash anymore. And in a focus group that I conducted, one employee said to me, I'm willing to learn the new digital tools if you guarantee me that I'm going to have a job in the future. And I said, I'm going to guarantee you that you don't have a job in the future if you don't learn the digital tools.

So how's that for a guarantee? But then I said, step back for a second. I've been a good cashier. That's what I've been doing for 20 years. And I knew my customers and now that I don't have the customers and I don't do the cashier and I said, stop for a second, let's split the purpose from the tools.

Your purpose was always to help people fulfill their dreams through financial means. Right? Savings, loans, stuff like that. The tools have evolved. You've been here for a while. Once upon a time, you used an abacus. Then they gave you those calculators with the paper strip. Remember those old ones? Then they gave you a desktop.

Now they're giving you an iPad. The tools did not define you. The purpose of your existence, the impact that you make on people remain the same. It's the tools that are evolving. And the moment you split the two, you create freedom for people because They don't see a departure from the past. We are not judging the past incorrectly because there is continuity and what really changes are just the tools and that we can handle because we are not judging the past negatively.

So our relationship with change has to do with the fact that we look at it as a departure and a judgment of the past as opposed to an evolution. These were the best tools then and now these are the best tools and in the future there'll be better tools and. Our purpose, our impact on other human beings doesn't change.

And that story of splitting the purpose from the tools is what's missing from leaders to be able to accelerate their teams to actually buy into the change and evolve with that change. 

[00:09:53] Mahan Tavakoli: I love that separation, Lior, and that vivid example that I've heard different versions of it in different organizations.

So I'm sure the audience can relate to what you're saying because they have either gone through that themselves or they've had a team member who has expressed that in one way, shape, form or another. While I know every transformation has been seen as being the most transformative, most impactful, I wonder if In your view, AI as a tool is muddying up some of what you were talking about of separation of the purpose from the tools.

Will the tools in essence at this point become capable of delivering that 

[00:10:43] Lior Arussy: Excellent. Thank you for the question. In order to answer the question, I would like to open the lenses a bit wider. Okay. During the industrial revolution, one of the areas that had the biggest change was textile, fabrics, how you do fabrics.

And Manchester was the center of the world in that area, starting in the late 1700s, 1800s, 1900s. And believe it or not, people saw their labor work being replaced by machines. They fought against it. They absolutely fought against it. And every time we see a technology, it's the same exact point. Labor intensive jobs are finding themselves in the hands of new technologies, and then we are asking ourselves, what will happen with us?

Let's fast forward. Let's take the bank. So another banker said to me, Oh, I used to help my clients with filling up the mortgage papers and now they don't need me anymore because they go online and they can fill it up. And I said, Wow. So now you get some free time that instead of looking at the paper and filling up, you know, boring data, you can actually look at your customer and ask them, how do you feel about the new home?

How can I help you fulfill the American dream? So look at it as I'm elevating you from a menial, boring job, and you need to ask yourself, how can I add value in a new world where the menial job is being done by a technology, and how can you add creativity and human impact? And I would make the argument to you that every time the technology penetrated labor intensive jobs, it freed up humans.

To actually start doing something of a higher value and it elevated our humanity. It elevated our humanity because we can now solve bigger problems, different problems. We can personalize, we can customize in ways that we could have not done when that happened. Our ability to handle AI is only when we look at historical perspective and see that technology is always coming and it frees up time for us to do it.

To elevate our humanity. I would argue that part of the issue with the book is that every time that we see new change coming in, we go immediately into victim mode where victims and by doing that, we are relegating. We're giving agency to others to control our story. And I'm saying, stop that.

Stop being a victim. Victim is a choice. syndrome is a choice. You either believe it or you don't. Or you let it go. So the book is calling for people to stop being a victim. And what happened is when we have victim, we're reducing our performance to the lowest level of our performance. And I believe that each and every one of us, we have two positions of performance of victimhood and performance of victory.

When you choose to perform a victory, victory. victory. You are rising up to the higher version of yourself. And when you choose to be a victim, you lower yourself to the lowest version of yourself. And this book is calling people to rise up to the higher version of themselves. 

[00:14:17] Mahan Tavakoli: What a beautiful and inspiring challenge you're throwing down to all of us, Lior, with your message and with your book, now, one of the things that you say is that in order for us to be able to author our own stories, we need to get rid of the fake stories that Come to us based on all the external influences that we have. So I would imagine most people listening nod and agree that others are influenced by fake stories.

How can we see whether we have fake stories that are influencing us that we need to offer differently? 

[00:15:05] Lior Arussy: going to give you a story. I was doing a performance evaluation with an employee of mine, somebody who rose up through the ranks, became an amazing performer, and I'm praising her.

And I noticed that the more I praise her, and we go over all her performance throughout the year and so on and so forth, the more I praise her, I can see an anxiety on her face. absolute anxiety and it's getting to a point where it's visible. And I turned to her and I say, what's wrong? And she said to me, I would really appreciate if you stop this and just go straight for what's wrong.

And I looked at her and I said nothing is wrong and she's come on the more you praise me the more I know That something is wrong. Just tell me what's wrong. I said, you know what I was actually planning to give you a race today So let's do a little exercise How about you write down a number that you think I was about to give you a race and i'll write that number that I was Planning to give you a race and let's see what the numbers are.

And of course the numbers were completely different I call this in the book the gratitude denial syndrome We believe that people give us gratitude, but they're fake, and we believe that it's all about packaging bad news or bad message, and I'm talking about it in the book, in Dare to Author, that by robbing ourselves of the gratitude, we're robbing ourselves of the energy to face the future.

Because the gratitude represents what we do well. Why do you think that my negative feedback has more weight than my positive feedback? How dare you? How dare you ignore what's great about yourself? So the gratitude denial syndrome, when I talk to audiences about that, you could see like it hits them in the face and it's oh my gosh, I do that.

I'll give you one more example. I need you to respond very quickly. Bad news. Good news. What do you want to hear first? I would say bad news You are about you are part of the majority. We did that We did studying in university with mba students 75 80 of them bad news first You know what bad news first means you are a fixer.

You're not a creator. You don't see opportunity first things and the problem is a fixer always maintain the past but don't grow the future So all of many of us will respond with best bad news first and I have to tell you even with my wife. I had a whole argument about this She's like i'm a bad news person.

I said, I think it's wrong. I think you need to be a creator So so she said I love your book, but this chapter I feel it's a little bit too personal for me But these are just Two examples of prejudice, wrong beliefs. scars, fears, that when we give them power, they author our story, but in a way that is not empowering us, but rather doing exactly the opposite.

And that's what I'm, the first section of the book is uncovering a whole host of agents that we have relegated. Or outsource our story to and I'm saying it's time to take it back from them because they are creating a fake story They are creating a story and I share by the way imposter syndrome. I don't want to Do a spoiler alert, but I share a very personal story of I went into an anxiety attack before a very important meeting with a very important executive Because of an imposter syndrome, it's real but you know what?

How do we get out of it first awareness that they exist and be changes of how we're going to treat them in the future. As every chapter in the book has a special trigger questions to make you think about how do you engage with the message I just wrote about. How is it relating to you and what are you going to do differently about it?

So every chapter has those triggering questions because I want you to experience it. I don't want you to just read it. I want you to come out of it and say, I am not going to deny my gratitude in the future because my gratitude are my strengths. And I want to strengthen my strengths. I don't want to weaken my strengths.

[00:19:33] Mahan Tavakoli: Now, one of the things that I see is in my work with a lot of CEOs and leadership teams, the CEOs primarily have a challenge with the imposter syndrome that you're talking about in that there is lots of external recognition, they are better at accepting that recognition, .

When you go beyond the surface and have genuine conversations with them, there is an incredible amount of imposter syndrome. So what could people do? Especially successful executives. These are CEOs, as I mentioned, who are extremely successful at least a couple of times a year, newspaper or a magazine gives them an award for their leadership.

How can they overcome? Imposter syndrome because externally they're getting reinforcement nonstop. 

[00:20:36] Lior Arussy: So let's start with something a little bit fun. So when I work with CEOs, I tell them, look, been a CEO of multiple companies and there's one little problem I have. I never know if I'm funny or not, because I never know if they're laughing because I'm funny

and I learned to accept that. I'll never know if I'm funny or not, , so start with the fact that CEO's job is very lonely. Okay. And information is being filtered out. So first, there are natural conditions that makes the job very challenging. Now, the imposter syndrome or the end of end of life illusion, or any of the other biases and prejudice and everything else are all going to come back to the same issue.

You're not offering your life story. It's being authored to you. Or for you, and I'll give you an example of COVID. There's a chapter in a book about COVID. Why? Because in COVID, we all started as victims. Everyone. Nobody knew what to do. We all started as victims. All countries. All people doesn't matter reach you know for whatever you are and I had a lot of conversations with clients at that time and they said leor we don't know what to do and I always start with the emotional side.

So I said, okay What's the emotion that you feel right now? They said Unprecedented this is an unprecedented event. I said, okay good. Good. Good factually, you're right. Emotionally, it's a problem problematic place to be. Let me explain to you why. Because when you say unprecedented, you also say, I have no tools, and I have no skills to deal with the situation.

So here's an exercise I want to do with you. Let's go back to the last unprecedented event you have experienced. And for many of them, it was 2008, 2009, the financial crisis. I said so clearly we're talking today. So you survived it. Let's go back there and let's analyze what happened. And we have a full story board.

I have a chapter on that to do the same thing for COVID. When was your lowest moment? What values were challenged for you? What was the turning point? What have you done? What have you activated? What did you learn? What paradigms you needed to let go? And what we did is we converted that life experience into a toolkit for the future.

So now when they were facing COVID, they're like, Oh, I have this tool from there. And I did that. What happened? They left that chapter untouched. They didn't convert that life experience from 2008, 2009 into future toolkit. So when they faced the next unprecedented event, they felt again, helpless. That is the whole point of offering a life story.

For those CEOs to believe that they're not impostors is to spend the time to take life experiences, decisions in which they've been successful, decisions in which they haven't been successful, author them in a way that builds their toolkit so they don't feel like impostors because they know that their life experience are the building block that got them here.

Because we leave all the successes aside because we take the gratitude for granted and we don't Believe it and all these are we have a cemetery of life experiences that we haven't converted into future ready tools and that's the notion of authoring your life story. 

[00:24:08] Mahan Tavakoli: And in order to be able to do that, Lior, it takes a couple of things.

You give great examples and frameworks and questions in your book. So that plays a significant role. In addition to one of the things that I find Very challenging is it requires for the CEOs, executives, managers to take the time for the kind of reflection that can take them there right now. There is so much busy ness and so much distraction where people aren't taking the time to do that, therefore, it's harder for them to author their own stories.

[00:24:55] Lior Arussy: You're absolutely correct, but there are some rules that will never change, okay? At the end of the day, there are things that we are good at, and there are things that we'll never be good at. I used to upset my kids high school teachers. I would go to a parent teacher conference, And let's say the history teacher will say to me, Oh, your your son is a D in history.

We need to work on it. And I would say, no, we don't. He said, what do you mean? He's a D. I said, yes. What does it mean? He means he doesn't love the subject. It means that his heart is not there. He's probably not have a good inclination to history. And even if we work on it, he'll be C minus.

So from D to C, I'd rather take him from B plus in math to an A plus in math because clearly that's an area that he's gravitating to. So stop

trying to be all things to all people. Whatever you don't do on the front end, you're going to end up doing on the back end. Whatever you're not doing in prep, you're going to end up dealing with fires. Just try to look at your time, and how you actually spend it, and start slowly allocating some time from firefighting to that.

So that's suggestion number one. Suggestion number two. If you are a top down leader and you don't really delegate, eventually what's going to happen is your employees are going to start asking you stupid questions that they should know the answer to, but they're used to, they're used to you answering all the questions and in by doing that they're also relegating to you the responsibility of those decisions.

So guess what? It's time to start pushing down. It started, and the CEO said to me once but some questions they're right to ask me, but some questions they're wrong. So how do I deal with it? And I said, I, you really want to start making a change. He said, yeah, I said, so here's what you're going to do.

Let's say you got a request for a question that you believe they should know the answer to. Here's what you're going to respond. You go right back and say, Okay. I know the answer to that, but I believe that it is within your purview to know the answer to that too. If you still insist that I'll give you the answer, I'll charge you 100 for that, or you make your own decision.

What I'm saying is, busyness, every generation has busyness. Even before Slack and all the other channels, we still were busy. I think it's about us figuring out what really matters, where we make the big difference. And it is about a movement toward preparing ourselves as opposed to firefighting. And by the way, some CEOs are having an adrenaline charge from being the firefighters.

That's why they love bad news first. And not about all good news first. And good news first is where the opportunities are. Good news, at firefighting, at best you will survive. At good news first, at best you will thrive. And you need to start asking yourself, how do I create opportunities? Not how do I plug holes?

[00:28:08] Mahan Tavakoli: Lior, I find that sometimes that sense of overwhelm for some has become a subtle source of pride. So I make fun of it, that in a business community on. Till maybe about five, six years ago, things have changed about people's perspectives on sleep, recognizing the importance of sleep in the business community.

Sometimes in the networking conversations, I would hear people say one person would say, Oh, I get only six hours of sleep. Then the next person would say, I get five hours of sleep for, so it was a source of pride, how little sleep people get. I don't hear those conversations as much anymore, but with the sense of overwhelm.

I find sometimes executives find that their importance is connected to lots of things coming at them and feeling overwhelmed, which is why the typical answer to how they are feeling is always overstretched, overwhelmed. 

[00:29:09] Lior Arussy: Let me respond to it in a couple of ways. the height of my work, I would run 10 to 15 major transformations for corporations.

And I would not be just an advisor at the site. We would be in the thick of the stuff, doing it with employees and so on and so forth. My company had 150 consultants with offices in Australia, in Toronto, in London, and in New York. And I had clients coming to me saying, one transformation is difficult for us.

How do you live with 15? And there were days that I was drinking from that adrenaline junky drink. Fulfilling, I'm the rest of, I'm like, I wake up in the morning and I deal with luxury cars, then I deal with diabetes, and then I solve a problem for the Philharmonic, look at me, I'm, look, it's unsustainable, and this is going back to what I mentioned before, we are all mimicking our first boss.

30 years ago, this is how you survived in corporate. You would show up and stay as late as possible. And these are not the rules, guys, anymore. You're not using Windows 95 anymore. So why are you using the same mindset from 95? It's time to recognize that part of the change is about equipping ourselves with new tools.

And by the way, I would say one more thing. No one wants to follow an invincible leader. a leader that, that sends the vibe that they know everything. I had a friend who used to be a monk at a monastery for 10 years. Then he moved to become an HR director at an energy company. And I asked him, can you compare and contrast your experiences?

He said, actually, I did. He said, when I was a monk at the monastery, about 40 percent of my colleagues believe that God speaks to them. They think they have a divine inspiration. He said, now that I'm in corporate, it's about 85%. All the managers act like they know everything and they never ask the question, what do you think?

They just think that God speaks to them, and they're a vessel that spits out all the answers. Stop. Because no one will follow an invincible leader. They'll say, okay, so you do it. Then you do it. Why should I? So what you're seeing is a vicious cycle. You nurture this invincible, always busy knowing all leader.

Your employees are not going to take charge. They're going to dump on you more decisions. You're going to be even more overwhelmed because you're not nurturing the network. And I'll give you one example. When I want to prove my point to CEOs and to executives, I said, you know what, let me use a management cliche.

And see if you can fill in the blank. I'm going to do it with you, man. If you want to do it, right? 

[00:32:02] Mahan Tavakoli: Do it 

[00:32:03] Lior Arussy: yourself. Bingo. That's what your first manager told you 30 years ago. And unless you're going to consciously let go this stupid paradigm, you're still operating on an old story of somebody else.

You're not offering your own story. You're captive to a bias to a prejudice that existed 30 years ago. So my challenge to you is your paradigms review your beliefs. You have relegated to them that power 

[00:32:38] Mahan Tavakoli: And when you take the time to author your own story, as you talk about in Dear to Author, Lior, it both impacts you and provides the opportunity for growth to people around you as well.

[00:32:54] Lior Arussy: I could not agree more. Let me build up on what you said. First, I tell leaders, the definition of leadership is doing the right thing when you don't know what the right thing is.

Let me repeat that. It's doing the right thing when you don't know what the right thing to do is. Because if you would know what the right thing to do is, it will not be a leadership issue. It will be just following the recipe. So let's accept the fact that leadership is navigating in a VUCA, in, in vulnerability, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.

Second thing, the true measure, Of a leader the true measures of a leader is when he Raises his people to the higher version of themselves the most touching One of the most touching moments I had with a client is a ceo came to me and he said I want to know Why didn't you fire us? We were such a difficult client and we were watching you struggling And fighting through and trailblazing and you didn't fire us and I want to know why You And I said two things.

A, the experience I bring to the table is I know how the process looks like for you. It's the first transformation. So you're freaking out at milestones that I already recognize. And the second thing is, I guess I believed in you more than you believed in yourself. That's true leadership. You believe in your people more than they believe in themselves, and you show them that they can reach a new height that they never believed they can do.

You want to be rewarded as a leader. You look at your people growing. And the question you ask yourself every day is, who did I empower today to do something they never believed they did? That's leadership. 

[00:34:39] Mahan Tavakoli: I love both of those elements that you mentioned, the growth in the people, Lior. what an outstanding way of talking about leadership, doing the right thing when you don't know what the right thing is.

Because if you already knew, Those would be part of the systems, the policies, the procedures. Exactly. Handle it. 

[00:35:03] Lior Arussy: Exactly. And that, by the way, man is connected to the AI question because AI is about parents and human contribution is in the creative space. When the patterns do not exist.. 

[00:35:17] Mahan Tavakoli: Now, I do want to touch on another element from dear to author. The fact that as we narrate. our own lives as leaders. There is an element of personal storytelling that can inspire our teams and has an impact on organizational culture.

As we do this for ourselves as leaders, what pieces, what elements, and how can we incorporate this into the stories we tell our teams and incorporate into the culture of the organization? 

[00:35:53] Lior Arussy: So several years ago I did a study with Harvard Business Review when we benchmark 422 companies around change.

And we asked them, how successful are you with your change programs? 9 percent reported they've been successful, 9%. And then we asked them, okay, so what are the root causes? Is it budget? Is it time? Is IT? Governance? Number one reason is the human side. The human factor was the biggest obstacle. What leaders need to understand is their communication style today.

They think they're doing storytelling, but they're really spitting out numbers and facts. People don't follow numbers and facts. If people would have followed numbers and facts, we would all lose weight on our own. Because we all have a couple of numbers that we would like to lose, and we don't. Okay, so stories is what's mobilized human beings.

Creating hope is what mobilizes human beings. Giving people a vision and a challenge is what mobilizes human beings. That's what storytelling is. And I want to say you mentioned the notion of corporate culture. It became almost like a curse word because culture is I don't know what culture is.

I don't know how to touch culture. You know what? I want to put culture aside. I want to talk about KPIs. You all have KPIs to make, you all have numbers to make. If I'll take the same strategy and put it in three different companies, same strategy, same tools, I'm going to get three different outcomes. Why?

Because the cultural readiness is not there. So I want leaders to understand culture is not HR job. Culture is your read, the readiness of your employees to meet or exceed your KPIs. Stories is the way that you're helping them Lift up. Because here's the truth that most leaders don't want to admit to.

Caring, smiling, thinking outside the box, creativity. Those are all personal choices of employees. You cannot put a KPI on caring. You cannot put KPI on creativity. You cannot put KPI on thinking outside of the box. You don't have a contract that says you have to demonstrate 37 thinking outside of the box on a monthly basis.

It doesn't work that way. If they want to, they'll do it. And if they don't, they'll relegate themselves to the victim performance as opposed to the victor performance. You want your people at the victor performance, ask yourself, what have I done to create an environment that will invite them to do that?

[00:38:38] Mahan Tavakoli: That is such a great perspective on how we need to think about leadership in an environment where I find your, in part because of the technologies, the pace of that change and disruption has become a lot faster. I know you wrote about it in next and now you do. A lot of work on it. , the leadership of tomorrow needs to be different than the leadership of today at a much faster.

pace. So how can we incorporate that constant rethinking and re narrating of our stories and our lives? So 

[00:39:26] Lior Arussy: while tools evolve and change, humanity doesn't. We still need to love, we still need to hate, we still need to hug, we still need to be challenged, we still need to mobilize other people, we still enjoy making an impact.

In the book I'm bringing a study from Harvard Medical Journal that demonstrates that people who are volunteering and giving to others are actually living longer than people who are not. Why? Why charity such an inspiring things. If I give somebody 1, 000 to give to charity versus I give somebody 1, 000 to buy something, I'll find a person who gave it to charity much happier than the person who actually purchased.

Why? Because as human beings, at the end of the day, we want to feel That we make an impact on the world and that impact is not coming from more consumerism. It comes from the ability to make an impact on others, which means we are people of power. We're not people of helplessness. First and foremost, understand that.

Your organization is a sum total of people, not some total of processes. I deliberately want to make the distinction. If your organization is some total of processes, you'll always have problems with change because you'll have to change processes and people are hiding below the processes. But if your organization is an organization of people that happens to use processes, that happens to use procedures but.

The procedures are not the ultimate destination. They're just tools. Then you create the flexibility. That's the first thing. Second, the awareness that you need to control your story, that you need to adapt life experiences into future readiness, is your way of keeping yourself constantly current.

Because what I'm a true believer that we are not being placed in locations and situations that we don't have the tools to handle. I believe that we are always there at the juncture between where we are needed the most, and where our skills are most applicable. We just need to discover that.

And the authoring process gives you a proactive way of constantly monitoring. What did I learn? How can I apply? What did I learn? How can I apply? It's about building tools. If you're getting into that proactive mode, if you refuse to be a victim, if you make a choice to be in charge of your life story, you will evolve naturally ahead of the rest.

[00:41:54] Mahan Tavakoli: And what a great way of also serving as an example for others that you want to lead as well by doing , 

[00:42:05] Lior Arussy: remember how we talked about the invincible leader, nobody wants to follow. So in order to break that notion I give the following example, the best baseball player what's their score?

0. 32, 0. 35. That means they missed 65 percent of the cases. That's awful. Now imagine the coach coming and saying, I'm implementing a new method from today on it's home runs or you're fired. What's going to happen? Nobody's going to pick up the bat. Okay. So understand that failure, which is a result of trying is part of the game.

You've got to swing. You've got to give it a try because that's the only way you're going to learn it. Okay? So if baseball is willing to tolerate two out of three as a form of failure, then ask yourself, how do you want your people to experiment if you paralyze them by a notion that you're invincible and 100 percent performance?

They're not going to do that. So yes, yeah. By authoring what you do is you also take what you call failures, but I'm calling practice to success and you convert them into new tools, new wisdom new things you can use. And that is going to give permission to your employees, your colleagues. To follow you and to feel comfortable that trying is part of the game.

[00:43:40] Mahan Tavakoli: And as you said Lior, this is a very different mindset and requires us to re author that narrative and the way we have thought about what is appropriate and what is not, and how we are supposed to lead. Everyone comes up with reasons and excuses why in their organization, they nod and they agree with you. But why in their organization, they cannot afford to experiment and do things the wrong way.

Therefore, gravitating back to the old leadership mindset of the desire for control and perfection rather than experimentation. 

[00:44:22] Lior Arussy: Let me give you an example. Would you agree that Coca Cola is the largest soft drink company in the world? 

[00:44:32] Mahan Tavakoli: I believe they are. 

[00:44:34] Lior Arussy: Yep. Would it be fair to assume that they have one of the largest market research budgets in the world for soft drinks?

Then out of nowhere, which I will challenge you to find it on the map, gets Austria, comes a young company called Red Bull, and create a whole new category. That's the first thing I want to tell you that Coca Cola did not see in any of their market research. Isn't that insane? 

[00:45:05] Mahan Tavakoli: It is crazy. 

[00:45:06] Lior Arussy: Okay? American Airlines is based in Dallas, Fort Worth, six miles away from them in Love Field.

Southwest is starting to fly. You cannot tell me that America did not know that Southwest exists. They would see each other crossing, right? And Southwest grew to become the most profitable and successful low cost company and airline in the US. That's insane. What is wrong with that? How is it that the biggest companies with the biggest budgets are missing the biggest trends, irrespective of the budget?

I'll tell you why. Because the biggest companies in the world are stuck with a fixed mindset and their operating question every day is, how do I repeat what I've done yesterday? They're focusing on best practices, which are by definition, past practices. The other guys are saying, we have a flexible mindset.

Whatever we've done yesterday, God bless, that was success. What's next? The biggest difference, and the answer to that CEO that you mentioned, is what is the price you're paying for not experimenting? And if she or her founder forgot, I would hand them Clayton Christensen's Book Innovator's Dilemma and remind them how companies were wiped completely for markets that they led because they allowed other to be the disruptors.

They did not respond to disruption and they found themselves out. And there is a graveyard of those. 

[00:46:42] Mahan Tavakoli: There is, and it's essential for us to think about it I love that book and  Chris chinsons work. And those cycles have become a lot faster for organizations across industries.

[00:46:54] Lior Arussy: That's right. And you know why? Because technology is coming into all the industries and technology is moving much faster. We all loved Borders bookshops, but they made the most ridiculous decision in their life.

In 1998, when they heard about Amazon, you know what they did? 

They outsourced the e commerce to amazon

For 10 years you were sent to borders. com which were ran by amazon They literally handed amazon the largest list of book lovers in america And their names and their emails you want to talk about disruption that didn't work. Here it is We all know the rest. So every generation, every time people are saying in our industry is different, and I've done over 400 transformations so far from insurance companies to football teams.

To airlines to hotels to cruise lines to pharmaceutical companies. They all say the same thing. You know what I remind all of them? The customer is the same and the employees are the same. Even though they consume differently when they buy diabetes insulin from you or they go on your cruise, it's the same person.

It's the same emotions. It's the same disruptions. Your employees are the same. They're looking for the same thing, which is making an impact on other people and getting the empowerment to get the job done. You're fooling yourself that your industry is different, but your industry is based on people. The ultimate assets of every industry is employees and customers, and you need to unlock that.

And that's what true leadership is all about. 

[00:48:32] Mahan Tavakoli: And to be able to unlock that, we do need to author and re author the narratives of our lives. I love what you mentioned, rather than best practices, which are past practices, now, we need to look for re narrating our lives. In addition to your books Leor, are there any books or resources you recommend

[00:49:02] Lior Arussy: so I usually give CEOs couple of exercises they can do. The first one, I want you to go in front of your people with no slides, and I want you to tell them why you love this company. When did you discover this company? Why do you wake up in the morning is willing to do this?

And I remember a CEO was like, nobody cares. I said, just try it. Just try to go there, go into storytelling mode and just tell them why you love this company, why you feel personal mission to do it as a human being, not as a CEO. And that exercise is mind boggling for them because you can hear it a pin drop, so that's one exercise. In my website, lyor rui.com, you'll find tons of articles available to all to go and see and experiment and so on, so forth. And as you mentioned in the book, there are questions and so on and so forth. But then there's another exercise that I would recommend. Go to the book that you love.

Go to the movie that you love. What happened there? Break it down. Who was the villain? Who was the protagonist? What was the threat? What was the moment that it was a turning point? What was the superpower that was used? What did victory look like? What things did we need to let go?

I would always tell them before you start building new things. I want you to recognize the paradigms or the convictions that you need to let go. Cause if you're not aware of them, you're building on top of a very shaky foundation. So let's go to. What are those paradigms convictions that you learned from your first manager?

And are they still really valid? Those are some exercises I would recommend to people. 

[00:50:41] Mahan Tavakoli: What outstanding exercises. One, we all have those paradigms that we need to challenge and think about. And secondarily, just recently, I was having a conversation with the CEO about the first point that you made where, when he was talking about his organization, It's all data facts.

What we are going to do in such an unemotional, unengaging way. It's why do you love doing what you are doing in a way that resonates with you? Not a way that has been put together by a PR team or someone else. The bullet points to share. 

[00:51:23] Lior Arussy: Yeah, absolutely. I just got off the phone with the CEO, probably a fortune 100 in the U.

S. And we were talking about a problem that I have identified in a certain study that I've done for him among his employees and leaders and so on and so forth. And, my goal was to empower him to take it and so on. So when he said, Lior, to be honest with you, you tell the story better than me.

And I'd love for you to come and tell the story. I'll do the followup with them right after you finish, but it's personal to you, it's emotional to you. I want you to tell the story and then I'll work with them on their resolutions. And I said, I was trying to empower you, but I understand your point and let's bring the best storyteller to help in that.

Thank you. And be of help. I'll be happy to help you. 

[00:52:06] Mahan Tavakoli: Now, Lior for the audience to find out more, both about your book, Dare to Author, and follow your writing and work, where would you send them to? 

[00:52:17] Lior Arussy: russi. com www dot l i o r a r u s y dot com leo russi dot com 

[00:52:26] Mahan Tavakoli: Thank you so much for the conversation, Lior Arusi. 

[00:52:30] Lior Arussy: Thank you very much . I really enjoyed it.