Dispelling IT/OT Convergence Challenges and Myths

[00:00:00] Jeff: Thank you guys for joining the show today. , Today we've got, our guest with us, Dr. Troy and, , Ben Jamin, , excited to talk to them. Their organization is Cohesion Culture. , It's all about team building and how you interact with the folks in your workplace and your work environment. , So guys, thank you for jumping in and, , being willing to have a conversation today.

[00:00:37] Jeff: Really excited about it. , Looking forward to kind of where this goes. , Give us kind of the 30, 62nd story. How did you guys kind of come together? How did you guys build cohesion culture? What was kind of the driver behind that? , And we'll go from there.

[00:00:50] Dr. Troy: Sure. But before we do that, Jeff, share something with us that's not on your resume.

[00:00:56] Jeff: Something that's not on my resume. , I am an avid movie lover. I love movies. I have always loved movies. So

[00:01:04] Dr. Troy: Do you like Marvel movies or,

[00:01:06] Jeff: I'm a little bit of everything. I'm, I have a super eclectic both movie and music taste. So, , star Wars Marble Shawshank. ,

[00:01:14] Ben: You

[00:01:14] Jeff: still go to the movies now or

[00:01:16] Ben: is it

[00:01:17] Jeff: all at home?

[00:01:18] Jeff: I still go to the movies every once in a while. , My boys really like movies as well, so I like take them to the movies. , But yeah, we've got, you know, a couple of the different streaming apps. We do a lot of stuff at the house as well,

[00:01:27] Dr. Troy: so I have a multi-generational home. Our daughter, husband, and four children live on one side.

[00:01:33] Dr. Troy: My wife and I live on the other.

[00:01:35] Jeff: Oh, wow. That's awesome. How's that working out for y'all? It works,

[00:01:38] Dr. Troy: it works out great because we have separate spaces, so everyone has their own spots, so that's awesome. It, , it's kinda like two homes wrapped up together with one, , siding on the outside and one front porch with two separate entrances, but you wouldn't know it.

[00:01:51] Dr. Troy: That's , Just the way it works. Yeah, it works out really great.

[00:01:54] Jeff: Did you guys build the house that way, or, uh, we

[00:01:56] Dr. Troy: did.,

[00:01:56] Jeff: Yeah. That's awesome.

[00:01:57] Dr. Troy: That's great. We did.

[00:01:58] Jeff: Thanks. Good stuff.

[00:02:00] Ben: I, I love sleeping outside every chance I get and have over 400 nights in hammocks. Oh wow. Love being outside under the stars.

[00:02:07] Ben: That's awesome. I switch the limits on not doing a rain fly or bug shield just to be outside.

[00:02:11] Jeff: Dude, that's impressive. what is your favorite hammock?

[00:02:14] Ben: , The majority of the ones I have are eno, , Eagle Nest Outfitters. And my trick is just pulling 'em a lot tighter than most people do.

[00:02:20] Ben: That makes it for a better sleep. When you have a too much curve in it, you gonna hurt your back.

[00:02:24] Jeff: Yeah. You sink down and, yeah, I did that, , during hunting season a few times and like my shoulders would always kinda roll in. And

[00:02:31] Ben: there are some models though that have like tent poles in 'em that, that widen it out.

[00:02:34] Ben: they're ones that are variations in style that at some point I might explore, but I've been comfortable with mine.

[00:02:40] Jeff: That's awesome. Good stuff, man.

[00:02:42] Dr. Troy: So basically in that one question, we've given you more than a 32nd view of what our company is about. It's about creating connections before content.

[00:02:50] Dr. Troy: It's about helping individuals, , leaders within organizations develop themselves. Also for them to develop others with the intention of retaining talent. We do strategic work, we do team building, we do culture, leadership and coaching. All of that kind of wraps up together under the umbrella of cohesion culture.

[00:03:11] Jeff: Yeah. having gone through some of the stuff that you guys do with , the GTK group, , you know, when we came to South Carolina, it was a lot of fun. It was very different. , One of the things that they said that they were telling us before we got there was, this is not your typical ropes course.

[00:03:25] Jeff: This is not, you know, trust falls and, you know, all that fun stuff. And it was very different and you guys really delivered on that. It was very impactful and very interesting. How did you guys come to kind of start building that? What was kind of the driver for you guys when you looked at the market?

[00:03:39] Jeff: Did you just feel like this was a gap that existed? Like you didn't feel like it was addressing the main issues, , that you guys were concerned with? Or kinda walk me through that thought process.

[00:03:49] Ben: So I, um, saw that there was a speaker about cohesion, giving a topic called Engagement is Out, cohesion is in, back in 2019.

[00:03:58] Ben: And this was Troy, , stumping, , promoting his, first book Cohesion Culture. And so. For me, I was curious about this scenario because on my, the back of my business card, 'cause I'd been in business since 2011, I had team engagement experts. So I had to find out what it meant to be engagement being out because we tried to get folks to this goal.

[00:04:20] Ben: , So we met, at a one event, then a lunch and learn. We chatted for a bit. He shadowed one of my events, where I do experiential team building, but I had tailored it to a different book at the time. I actually had multiple programs based on different books, whatever a client was reading and, , Troy's like, I'd like to be the book you talk about.

[00:04:39] Ben: And we realized that a lot of the concepts were core to what I already did. He just gave me a different language in vernacular. And so that kind of started what I'll let him finish as far as the connection of all those things, because I'd been in experiential education and training, , at this point, close to a decade.

[00:04:58] Ben: , Training wise, learning, I wanted to be different. I wanted to be outdoors. I wanted to combine technology, but also have tactile learning, , but make it not stagnant sitting in workshop lecture style.

[00:05:10] Jeff: Yeah, no, that totally makes sense. and I would definitely say like having experienced it firsthand, I think that you guys have definitely succeeded in that because I think it really, going through, it really kind of forces you to think differently.

[00:05:21] Jeff: it forces you to, you know, really work more as a team and like think through things together. So that's really cool. Like having gone through that.

[00:05:30] Dr. Troy: Yeah. And it was really important for me, , you know, in talking with Ben is to understand what he did from team building and team bonding because it was about no broke courses and no trust falls.

[00:05:41] Dr. Troy: And since then we've added no death by PowerPoint, , with the intent to make sure people understood it was experiential learning, high energy impact. , I wanted something different with the teaching. I have a strong academic background, , and I thought the lecture is not how adults really learn the best.

[00:06:00] Dr. Troy: It might be the way the professional school system puts things together. But I have been a trainer for a good number of years, and even though I have a, I had a C-Suite position, I still. Trained people. I love developing them and helping them get to where they wanna go. I needed something for this next generation and Ben's, , thought process and what he provided was really great.

[00:06:25] Dr. Troy: So it's if you'd have a Reese's Cup, you know, one of us is peanut butter, the other was chocolate. We bring it together, we got the great combination. I mean, that's awesome. it really worked out. And so to add to the story, you know, we first met December of 2019. I shadowed him in January of 19.

[00:06:42] Dr. Troy: We put a whole program together in February of, I'm sorry, January of 20. And then we had a whole program ready to launch in February of 20 ready to all to just go on the road and talk about this and do these experiential things. Yeah. When people were together and you know, what happened in March of 20?

[00:07:01] Dr. Troy: Right. Yeah. Yeah. And so March of 20 forced us to use technology to pivot. Yeah. We had to come up with a way to do our programs online. Yeah. And not just rely on that physical presence. And I don't like to tell anyone that there were great things that happened from that because so many people have lost loved ones or created very traumatic, but what the adversity that occurs within a business when you're, when you have business continuity that's interrupted.

[00:07:33] Dr. Troy: Yep. So that's what I wanna speak to, is that interruption of business continuity. It requires you to think differently. And that's what we were able to do. So we then started using Zoom, and I had no idea. I thought Zoom was just a word you say when you drove a car real fast. , And then we get online. The next thing you now know we're now doing all of our sessions, we're doing all kinds of things on Zoom.

[00:07:54] Dr. Troy: We do it in person. It's like pretty crazy.

[00:07:56] Ben: Yeah. One thing, one unique thing on that idea of team building. One of our first online clients was salesforce.com via a hashtag on LinkedIn. Oh, wow. Virtual team building was a thing. And one thing that we wanted to make sure of as folks were trying to do, .

[00:08:13] Ben: Virtual happy hours or show your baby pictures and calling that team building. Yeah. We wanted to make sure that we were delivering engaging, thought provoking, implementable strategies. And so our entire format was different of we talk about something, we do an activity, we discussed the activity, so it was actually just like being in person, but understanding the engagement element to what that means.

[00:08:36] Ben: And that was a big thing. But I am actually very glad that what we produced in February initially did not come to fruition because it actually wasn't a very cohesive. Program. We actually had three different things adding in some verbiage of really what we wanted to do. It was gonna be his session, my session, and then an outdoor activity.

[00:08:55] Ben: Yeah. We since then blended our sessions together and created this whole new thing that is way better than anything we started with. And then we still have, we now blended that element in, which is the hunt for cohesion, which is something you did as well in addition to the four Cs program. So different variations of those things, but same learning involved.

[00:09:15] Dr. Troy: Yeah. And Jeff, if you don't mind, yeah. Before we go too far? Yeah, absolutely. I think it's important for your listeners to understand a little something that Ben teased them in the beginning when it was engagement is out, cohesion is in. To really get some understanding of that. I think that'll be important because as we share more of the technology, you're gonna see how this all wraps up around the strategic elements of cohesion.

[00:09:35] Dr. Troy: So, , my PhD is in global leadership and entrepreneurship. My dissertation was in group dynamics with an emphasis on cohesion. Yeah. The three strategic elements of cohesion that we present is our program are belonging, which is inclusion value, which is meaningful work and commitment, which. Comes up generally through collaboration, where need and trust are the foundation.

[00:09:58] Dr. Troy: So we had this fundamental now background or framework that we can use to then create all of the conversations to create that as a grounding for where we take things. So when we do a hunt for cohesion, we start, we help organizations understand how these three elements really impact the leadership and the culture of the company.

[00:10:20] Dr. Troy: And the reason the that's important is cohesion is a causal phenomenon. It's not correlational, right? Meaning that we can correlate information from data. But it doesn't prove that it will happen. Yeah. Correlation is more causal so that when you have cohesion, you now get engagement. And the level of engagement you get are employees who are helpful without being told or being asked, who are active in problem solving, who are vested in the company and their own personal selves.

[00:10:53] Dr. Troy: And they're eager to learn, grow, and develop. And so when you ask an organization, do you want employees who are like that? Do you want that level of engaged employee? They resoundingly said yes. Now how do I get it? So there's no tricks, there's no overuse of technique. It is just the fundamental understanding that belonging, value and commitment, when it's present within the leadership of the company, you get engaged employees every time because the performance is there.

[00:11:26] Jeff: Yeah, no, I mean, it totally makes sense. . Again, you know, having gone through a portion of that, , I mean, it was very interesting how fast you could start to figure those things out when you're kind of put in that environment where like, Hey, you have, this is what we're doing. Like we're all together in this is the direction that we're going and here's kind of what we're trying to accomplish.

[00:11:45] Jeff: , I mean, it was very impactful, you know, just even as small groups, you know, with people who maybe didn't even know each other that well. Right. It was pretty impressive , , to be able to experience that in person. So, yeah. No, totally appreciate that. And I, we've talked about the intersection of technology and people and kind of, you know, in some cases I feel like technology's probably overused.

[00:12:04] Jeff: , In some cases people are using it in a way that doesn't necessarily do as much as it could or should. , But I'm curious that you, I mean, you mentioned about . Your previous time in, , education. I'm curious what your thoughts are over the years. What have you seen change with some of the technology that's being used, and do you feel like it has added to some of the things in ways or has it detracted from people's either ability to learn concepts or principles or, you know, whatever the deal is from a training standpoint?

[00:12:31] Jeff: Like, do you feel like the technology has made an impact there or do you feel like it's a base level piece of what you're doing?

[00:12:37] Dr. Troy: So I'll speak first to my experience and then Ben can add to his. But my basic, , , thought process here is that there's not enough technology built into education to really make a difference.

[00:12:47] Dr. Troy: Most of higher education still requires lecture people coming to a class. Maybe the book is now downloaded to, you can read it digitally, you know, that's fine. Or maybe you might be able to read a portion of the book, probably, you know, that'll be fine. But some of the things that really create the connections and how they're going to interact with the material, I don't necessarily believe that.

[00:13:08] Dr. Troy: , There's been enough technology, , impact in education to really make a difference with that. , Which is why when we focus with an organization, we can talk about the things like when I do a consulting, gig with a client and they want to really think through and go. Well, what would you recommend technology wise, for our company based on this?

[00:13:30] Dr. Troy: And so I've got some very specific things that we take a look at that cover those three elements of cohesion. So if you're looking inside your organization for technology, then I say, let's first start with belonging and inclusion. What are you doing? So what's the school system doing for belonging and inclusion?

[00:13:50] Dr. Troy: Not so much unless it's the physical interaction, but from a technology standpoint, there isn't so much. It's the physical meet and greet. So what Ben and I have done is we've created a community so that individuals can now interact in the community. We have a, , we have a mingle session that's available, , seven days a week, 24 hours a day.

[00:14:10] Dr. Troy: Individuals can go in and mingle in that environment. , once they connect with us to get the link. It's up to them on how many times they want to connect. Yeah. But we give them that community where they can feel they can be included. That's just one example. I've got a couple more, but I'm gonna hold off on that 'cause I want, , Ben to have a chance to speak to this.

[00:14:28] Dr. Troy: Yeah.

[00:14:29] Ben: I have two parallel thoughts on that. One, I agree that technology is more needed in the sense that it opens the doors to many people, but I think it should be done in a almost hybrid fashion where you get the content, but then you learn how to do some offline things to communicate, or at least homework if you will, or whatnot.

[00:14:52] Ben: Right. Not just watching a video because you watched it saying you've done it. Right. Not just that testing, but something that you then take offline. I think we need to be in that world and that's how we've created a lot of our things. and actually I haven't even talked with Troy in this. , But I'm actually making a transition in overall I love technology has drastically changed how I've built my business over the last 10 years because it took me from analog paper, scavenger hunts that would take a lot of work to be at a different new location, right?

[00:15:21] Ben: So I was stuck to where I was because it took a lot of work. Once I added the technology, the barrier to entry to a new location, to a new idea, to new training is so fast right now. Yeah. So I love that capacity to it. However, what I am doing today is actually using that technology then and bringing back in.

[00:15:43] Ben: I'm not discounting it, but I'm bringing back in more stations or challenges within our experiences that require conversations and communication in person less than. Head in the tablet doing some problem. Right, right. I'm actually within the frame of the technology that we use now for the listeners, , there's the training aspect of things that we do, and then there's the , game things that we do as well.

[00:16:07] Ben: So I'm speaking in this case directly on the game aspect of things where instead of doing riddles and things that are on the screen, I would maybe take them to a station GPS wise or clue wise that would get them somewhere and then somebody would do something physically with them. So we're using the technology to help us, but then I also want more interaction and so that we're not relying only on heads in the tablets or heads in that piece.

[00:16:31] Ben: So I'm in a transition phase because I see the writing on the wall to some degree is in some elements we have too much of it. Not in the education world, but ed in our lives in general. So I wanna figure out how the fun, the learning can be a little bit more, , balanced in that aspect, but it's not to be the case.

[00:16:49] Ben: So when we do our trainings online. It's a blend of that as well. So I love that we have online trainings and different courses and modules, but we have assessments and you know, go out in the real world and try these things out, right? Yeah. Things have to be implementable, not just watch a video check mark.

[00:17:07] Ben: I'm done. I know it. Like there has to be real world application for it to be effective I have loved this, and I think Dr. Troy agrees with it, is that Ben Franklin's famous quote is, tell me. And I forget, teach me. And I may remember, involve me and I learn.

[00:17:21] Ben: Yeah. So without the involvement piece, it's all for Naugh.

[00:17:24] Jeff: Yeah. I mean, I think it's interesting. I mean, you bring a really good point there is, you're wanting people to one, like yes, you have this whole kind of thing put together in the tablet that somebody is following. Right. But you don't, to your point, like you don't want them just to be basically like being in your phone all day.

[00:17:39] Jeff: Right. You need some push to get back into the real world and actually communicate and have, you know, conversations with other people and whether it's doing a task, whether it's collaborating on some problem or any of those kind of things. I think that's probably a key piece that, a lot of people are missing is it's like, how can I push everything into technology in some cases, right?

[00:17:58] Jeff: , And have as little interaction with other people as possible. Well, you wanna do that in some instances, but like, you need to have the reverse where it's pushing you to actually do things, you know, in the real world as well. And I,totally agree with you on that. I think that's something that a lot of companies miss.

[00:18:14] Jeff: , You know, by trying to automate, I mean, obviously you want to be efficient and you wanna do things as efficiently as possible, but there should still be some level of, I mean, I know for me, like this is an example, right? Whenever you call a helpline, right? I hate getting into the, like the circle of death ophere, where you're just going from robot to robot to robot, and it's like, I just wanna talk to a person.

[00:18:36] Jeff: To make sure that I understand what's happening and make sure that they understand how they can help me, rather than just going through this infinite death loop of like, you know, press one for help, you know, that kind of deal. there are definitely, , I think use cases on both sides of that, but,

[00:18:50] Dr. Troy: so,

[00:18:51] Jeff: , Dr.

[00:18:51] Jeff: Troy, any other thoughts on that? I know you mentioned you had a couple of other. , Thoughts around the technology piece?

[00:18:55] Dr. Troy: Well, I think that, , one of the things that Ben, , brought up that also that you just now talked about was how you might use ai. And so what we have, , determined and how we figured out is we can use AI powered bots to assist us in our training and development.

[00:19:12] Dr. Troy: The bot serves as a, , a way to interact when we're not there, right? Doesn't replace us, but it just gives an additional access and the bot knows everything that we know. So we launched Carl the very first AI powered book bot and stands for cohesive Artificial Response Leader and went along with our first joint bestselling book called Becoming a Cohesive Leader, the Power Up Guide to Grow, develop, and Advance Your Career.

[00:19:39] Dr. Troy: And what we recognized in our work is not only are there organizations that will develop. They're employees, which is what our cohesion culture program does. Our cohesive leader program is for those individuals who are dissatisfied that their current employer is not giving them the training and development they need.

[00:19:58] Dr. Troy: They're passing them over for promotion with no plan for improvement. And so we thought, you know, with this growing demand of individuals being left out, we needed to do something. So we began to incorporate how the AI powered influenced, could help us. So we attached Carl to the book. So Carl knows everything about Ben and myself specifically around our, , teachings, our research, the books.

[00:20:27] Dr. Troy: , And Carl is a closed loop, meaning that, , specifically for organizations who have protected data and they're concerned that this lot is going to the internet. The other thing too is if you're going to answer questions about Emin and my information, we want it to be our information, not something that they have gathered from other sources , We want it to use, its ability to have artificial intelligence, but we want them to know the pool of information to come from is from us. Yes. So we use this bot to do it. That evolution then now comes in conjunction with our latest book that we've done in a joint venture called the Cohesive Sales Approach, which has Carl sister Sally, S-A-L-L-E, which are our sales assistant for learning.

[00:21:13] Dr. Troy: Leading and engaging. Now, what's really clever and unique about Sally built the same way for Carl, but she knows everything about sales. But Sally goes one step further for our clients that we interact with. We can download procedure manuals, we can download product manuals so that when Sally is responding in sales, she's responding customized to the client that we are working with.

[00:21:37] Dr. Troy: that's pretty awesome. That's impressive.

[00:21:39] Ben: Leadership coach and a sales coach in your pocket,

[00:21:43] Dr. Troy: right? Literally. It's literally, right. There's, that's, and you know, have you ever gotten a book where you said like, oh, I have to listen to the whole thing. And so I put it on like one and a half or two times, which is the way Ben listens to his books.

[00:21:53] Dr. Troy: Like they, they're talking so fast. It's like a fly in my ear. Yeah. But he's listening to it. , To get through the book and like, you don't have to worry about the book. You can just ask Carl or Sally, Hey, tell me something that is interesting. Look at the, , , table of contents and say, well, what is this?

[00:22:09] Dr. Troy: Yeah. And Carl will answer it, or Sally will answer it. We'll tell you, you know, what information it is and then you can challenge it. Good news is, here's how we leverage the technology on the backend. We know every question that's not answered. We know how. Either that is a legitimate question that needs answered, or they get the polite response that says, Hey, we really don't know the answer to that question.

[00:22:30] Dr. Troy: You can either rephrase it or you can email us if it's leadership. Yeah. Or with a client, we actually tell the, in individual employee, they talk to their direct supervisor.

[00:22:40] Jeff: That makes sense. And again, that's where you're pushing people back into the real world to have kind of those one-to-one interactions and that totally makes sense.

[00:22:46] Jeff: That's awesome. , It's apply business solutions. Isn't that awesome? Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. No, I mean, it's, it, the piece of that's interesting is like there are a lot of different companies doing, , similar things in that space from the standpoint of, , building an AI that to your point, like it knows all the things that we know and we've, you know, trained it to, you know, to think like we do basically that type of a thing.

[00:23:08] Jeff: , It, it's interesting to put that in the context of like what we were just talking about and what you're talking about is unique because like, yes, it has answers and it's doing the things that you want it to do, but it's still pushing people back to make connection with you, make connection with other people.

[00:23:23] Jeff: That's something I think that is. critical moving forward, I think, you know, pushing people back into the real world at some point. You know, to have that level of communication and collaboration with somebody else is critical. I think that's the only way that some of this is gonna move forward in a way that, that really makes sense.

[00:23:39] Jeff: And

[00:23:39] Dr. Troy: yeah. So one of our clients was so impressed with, , Sally loading , the manual for opening the accounts, like how you process the connection between the consumer and the organization. Yeah. , All the step-by-step instructions, whatever they would have provided in a training class, , Sally now is able to respond to.

[00:23:57] Dr. Troy: So if the information changes as a small update to Sally for the information to change, yeah. It's gonna revolutionize the way they train. They're actually already thinking of new ways to train their material. They used to have printed materials in a binder and people would sit through it and they'd flip the pages and they'd go through the points and.

[00:24:17] Dr. Troy: Here's the thing about education. You only remember a certain portion of it unless you're using it. Go back to the famous, you know Ben Franklin quote. Yeah. And you know, if you're not involved in the activity and you learned about it, just because you covered it in a training class doesn't mean you're gonna retain it forever.

[00:24:33] Dr. Troy: And you wanna go like, oh my gosh, I remember that. Like, it's on the tip of my tongue. Like, I know what it is. Well, don't worry, don't stress yourself out. Just ask either. Carer again, they'll tell you. Right?

[00:24:45] Ben: I mean, enabling for somebody for success is providing resources and removing roadblocks or removing things.

[00:24:51] Ben: And. Teaching people how to think and go towards the resource that we're providing, but they still have to have some basic knowledge on it. I was having a, , a very long conversation with my own GPTA little while ago and without leading questions, asking what it thought was the future of work, like what was good as far as education, like which degrees had ROI versus which didn't, which trades and all that kind of stuff.

[00:25:14] Ben: And it came to, you know, there's certain degrees that are still gonna be great because of what they are, that you have to have you know, medicine and things like that are gonna help there to help coincide with technology as it advances. But in the trade world, , or anything else, it's learning how to bring out the most of our technology.

[00:25:32] Ben: Yeah, thinking through the prompts, thinking through what you're asking for, the usability, so whatever you call it. Leadership skills, human skills, people skills, soft skills. The folks that can learn those things are gonna be the ones that integrate and think through how to use the technology for other people.

[00:25:49] Ben: Because we're still gonna be out here living, it's gonna be a few years till we become batteries like in the matrix, right? That's right. But But we still have to interact. But we can have a great life if we're gonna doing the great things and technology is working for us now. my biggest concern is that when you say you used technology or you meaning anybody, it says they used technology.

[00:26:11] Ben: Oh my gosh. That saved me four hours. So what did you do with that? Four hours? Did you just do more work? Which, this was actually a very interesting book and articles that I read that were based in the fifties and sixties about they said that the average person was gonna get 20 hours back in their week because of having washing machines and dishwashers and all that kind of stuff.

[00:26:31] Ben: Where'd that time like? So we have to learn to then put this back into actual life and not work.

[00:26:38] Dr. Troy: adding just a little bit to that, , following me on social media. Most recently I've been posting a lot because AI has been so dominant in the conversations, just to make things clear for those folks who are listening.

[00:26:49] Dr. Troy: We're talking about technology. We talked about ai, but a, it's not AI that is going to displace people. , So. The jobs that are going to be evolving, , through the applied technology is for those individuals who understand how to use it and can adapt to it. Yeah. And make it work. , One of the latest articles that I did, I had an interview with a gentleman who is in the technology area, and boy, he was resistant to this, , concept of using some technology and he was really creating for himself a barrier to advancement, a barrier to, , the acceptance within the organization.

[00:27:27] Dr. Troy: He had to recalibrate his brain. Yeah. Simply say, what can this do? How can I see this exciting? What does it change? And that change of mindset. Ben talks about this all the time, mindset, how important it is when he changed his mindset to say, I'm not going to fight it. I'm going to understand how to use it.

[00:27:51] Dr. Troy: Again, not just apathetically giving in, but being purposeful and intentional about it. It changed the trajection of his work. Got a promotion.

[00:28:02] Jeff: Yeah. think it's one of those things that definitely, , you're gonna have the people that lean into it and say, go write me a 12 page essay on this topic, whatever.

[00:28:13] Jeff: And then they just say, go do it. Right? And then they may review it or they may not. But where I think the power of it comes in is when you get far more specific and spend a little more time, like really building something specific. Like you guys have, like you've mentioned with Carl and Sally, like if you put intention into what you're building there, it's gonna have a different outcome, right?

[00:28:35] Jeff: in all technology, in all cases, doesn't matter what it is, audio, video, networking, computers, any of the rest of. Better inputs are always gonna make better outputs. So if you spend more time on the front end and you really develop something, you know, you've thought through it, you've gone through and created kind of the documentation in the background to really understand this is what I'm trying to drive at and this is what I'm trying to accomplish.

[00:28:58] Jeff: if you've put more time onto the front end of some of that and this is for business owners in general, like the more you do on the front end of it, the better off the output is gonna be at the end.

[00:29:07] Jeff: Like the more time you're gonna save, the more efficiency you're gonna build into that. that's one of the things that I think a lot of people get caught up in is the microwave mentality of, oh, I'm just gonna go automate this one thing and it's gonna just do all this stuff for me.

[00:29:19] Jeff: You've gotta basically put that into your kind of business decision making lexicon and say, okay, I'm doing this thing because it's gonna affect these four other things and then I'm also doing this piece because it affects these four other. Like, you've gotta walk all the way through that. 'cause if you don't.

[00:29:34] Jeff: The output is gonna be garbage and it's not gonna, help you as much as you think it's going to help you. Like, you're gonna have to spend more time on the back end trying to fix those things and trying to kind of bring it back into line. , You know, at that point it's just there, there's a lot of interesting pieces with that.

[00:29:50] Jeff: I'm curious, , with the game specifically, , did you guys develop that from scratch? , If you did, were you working with like a developer to kind of build it in the background and kind of what was your experience there?

[00:30:01] Ben: hold that thought up because your last comment made me think of a statement.

[00:30:04] Ben: And then two quick stories on this. I 100% agree that better inputs matter, but it's also trust but verify. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Saw a video of a teacher, , talking about how to combat using AI with students writing papers and she said. it's inevitable, right? Yeah. So Why not make the project the task?

[00:30:24] Ben: Use your GPT, do your research, have it produce something. Then in class you be the one that edits it. You be the one that makes it, because you know it doesn't talk normal. You can do all you want in the good prompts. Yeah. If still you can pretty much spot an AI driven thing no matter what, how it's written, right?

[00:30:40] Ben: Yeah. So that's where you craft the rest of this piece element is afterwards. Yeah. And then the other trust would verify, I used my GPT to create a scavenger hunt in Bueno area, Argentina. I thought I was extremely thorough in the prompts. It did a great job. I said I wanted this many points within four miles of this specific address where the client was starting.

[00:30:59] Ben: I want three different routes and all these things. I wanted to be broken out. Which of the paid locations, which of the free locations, and then. I don't always use clues to get you somewhere, but for this one, because I'm not going there, they didn't have the budget in to fly me down there. So I need to rely on AI to come up with a scenario.

[00:31:18] Ben: And there was plaza and Italian plaza with a fountain in it. And it gave me a riddle about this. For the task for the people to do it, said Find blah, blah, blah, this lion, and take a photo. Mimicing the pose. My skeptical nature to some degree, but also the trust would verify. I go and look at Google images of this thing.

[00:31:39] Ben: I see fish everywhere, not a lion to be had. And so I said, why did you make a clue about lions? Like, oh my bad, you caught me, right? Like it was trying to pull one over on me. It said typically a lot. , Italian sculptures always have lions in them. Yeah, they knew the location, but weren't being specific on that.

[00:31:58] Ben: So yeah, that's where the human element comes in. You can't just rely on it because, correct. We know it's batted numbers. it's bad at hands if it's making you imagery. Right? So all these things,

[00:32:10] Ben: you know, the app is a third party, the one that I use for this is built in Estonia, we are the biggest users of it in the US so I love the, we're able do that. But it is an engagement platform and that's all it is. It is a place where we get to create engagement. How we do that can be done through GPS scavenger runs. It could be do from task oriented things. It could be simply scanning QR codes or prompts.

[00:32:32] Ben: We've done gamified training, so, you know, in the, we do, we serve a lot of financial institutions and the Bank Secrecy Act. Yeah. Doesn't sound all that great, but we made it fun, right? Yeah. , So we create the content and the application or engagement that the user has with it. So we think through how that works.

[00:32:51] Ben: Are we gonna get them up out of their seats? , How do we account for mobility issues if we're doing an indoor tabletop adventure? Because some clients want this because of time. I want that too, but I still want them to get outta their seats. If they can't, I want. Right. I want to have the blood flowing.

[00:33:06] Ben: So yeah. What we ended up doing for the experience you had was a blending. Yeah. I have a traditional scavenger hunt that company do, but we have found, because of our work with cohesion, that a lot of folks want the fun, the engagement, the bonding that comes from the experience that we offer, but they would love some undertones of a little bit of skills built into that.

[00:33:29] Ben: Right. Yeah. So while the fun, the game itself has woven collaboration and problem solving and time management, we introduced then the concepts of cohesion. So on a timed interval. No matter where you were, so you didn't have to be on pace, you didn't have to go to a certain location. We brought up tasks that introduced these concepts to you.

[00:33:50] Ben: And then later in the game, we actually asked for recall. what it required was your team to record this knowledge. And somehow, even though we told you we were gonna be ask you later, some people might say, oh crap, I didn't remember it. Well, you didn't take a photo, you didn't write it down.

[00:34:04] Ben: You didn't take a screenshot. Yeah. Like, we prep you for it. So it, we try to use that also. These are real world solutions. Like, here's some information. What are we gonna do with it? So we then infused and layered our training. But that's what it makes it fun is because it's non-invasive learning.

[00:34:20] Ben: Yeah. And it's immediate application, in a fun environment because we like to create the hahas that become ahas. Yeah. Right. And the gap, the distance between those is very small. Yeah. So when you're laughing, like the best teamers are gonna have you laughing and then hit you with a zinger, right?

[00:34:40] Ben: Yeah. Learning can be the same way.

[00:34:43] Jeff: No, that totally makes sense. That totally makes sense. I was laughing at your, comment about , the ais and the problem with making hands that I was just had this vision of like, pictures that I've gone through and tried to work with and where it's got like eight fingers and, or, you know, things that are just overlapped.

[00:34:56] Jeff: It just looks crazy. Yeah. But, , I totally agree. There's so many examples of that.

[00:35:00] Jeff: ,

[00:35:00] Jeff: From a technology standpoint, everybody's rushing to try and put the AI badge on it because it's the hot, cool, new, shiny thing, right? , But there are some things that it's very good at and there are some things that it still has a long way to go before it gets to any kind of, you know, critical mass that it can, you know, solve, even more complex problems and some of those kind of things.

[00:35:20] Jeff: So it's interesting, you know, to your point, like these times where you put things in there and you think that you've prompted it correctly and you've given it a bunch of information. I love the idea of the trust but verify. 'cause it's very much something that. That we do. Right. , Being in the technology space, we are always going to, verify what we're actually doing and verify what's actually happening.

[00:35:38] Jeff: Because if you don't like, to your point, like it could be telling you, go look for a lion and you'd be searching the rest of that entire time for a lion and you never find one because it's not there. Right. , So that whole thing I think makes sense as far as, really kind of leaning into that and going back and verifying what, you know, what some of these things are actually telling you.

[00:35:56] Jeff: I think that, , what we're gonna see happen probably over the next few years is at some point there's gonna be a resurgence. And I think it's already kind of starting with some people where what you guys are focused on as far as building that connection between teams and between people, that's gonna become such a bigger thing.

[00:36:15] Jeff: It's gonna become such a bigger issue because people have, you know, people have been in their phones, they've been on their laptop, they've been doing these things. Humans in general are built for connection and built for collaboration with each other, right? You're built for community, you're built to be in, some kind of involvement with other people.

[00:36:31] Jeff: And the further you get away from that, the worse off you feel as an individual. But then the worse off that your community potentially is because you're not bringing the things that could actually impact your community,

[00:36:41] Dr. Troy: Yeah. That's why we started out this session with you by asking you to tell us something about you, not on your resume, because it's about building connection before content. Yeah. We want, every time that we present this information, we wanna drive that home because the primary element of cohesion, you can't get anywhere else without the sense of belonging and inclusion.

[00:37:04] Dr. Troy: And to do that, you need people to be freer to speak and to, , to provide information that they're comfortable with. So to ask you something personal about you, instead of me saying, tell me something personal, we just simply phrased it by tell me something that's not on your resume. Yeah. And then generally we get to the personal side and we can have so much more meaningful conversation like we did with you about movies Yeah. That you liked. And we could have even gone further if we wanted to create the entire podcast around movies. We. May never have gotten to any of this other information. Right. Simply because it so it sets the foundation. We know this works because inside organizations, when individuals are feeling that their psychological or their physical needs are not met, then they don't go to belonging.

[00:37:51] Dr. Troy: They don't go to self-esteem. They don't go to self-actualizing. Yeah. If you want people to be engaged, they have to be at self-actualizing. They're not going to be engaged at fear of my job. They're not going to be, oh, I'm not sure of my, surroundings. Yeah. People actualize and begin to think and evolve and contribute when they're in that space where they feel that they have been included.

[00:38:13] Dr. Troy: Yeah. That they know that the value that they bring to the table is meaningful. Yeah. And they can commit to something where they know they are needed and trusted. And that's what we do. Whether we use technology or whether we use in-person techniques, it's a blend of that to make sure that those organizations clearly come away with those strategic elements.

[00:38:36] Dr. Troy: And the really cool thing about it is there is no one way or only way to do it. Yeah. You understand the concept and then you put it in place. So Jeff, I'm gonna ask you this question to drive this home. Yeah. Jeff, do you like chocolate cake? I do, yes. Actually. Okay, good. Have you had chocolate cake from different bakers?

[00:38:57] Dr. Troy: Yes. Okay. I will not ask you how many pieces you've had in any one sitting, but I'm assuming then you've been able to have these different chocolate cakes and you can tell that it's a chocolate cake, even though it came from different bakers. Yes. Good. Yes. So there are three primary ingredients that all chocolate cake needs in addition to the cocoa.

[00:39:15] Dr. Troy: They need eggs, milk, and flour.

[00:39:17] Ben: Yeah.

[00:39:18] Dr. Troy: And you can actually create a lot of variety. In some cases you can even leave flour out now you can have a flourless chocolate cake. So you have all these opportunities for variety. That's what belonging value and commitment is. Yeah. It's the eggs. The milk and the flour.

[00:39:36] Dr. Troy: You can choose the variety of eggs, the variety of milk, the variety of flour that meets you. Yeah. And what you want as the chef. So we like to say, Hey, go create your cohesion culture cc and create your chocolate cake cc. And all of a sudden, every time you eat chocolate cake, you're going to think you Asian culture.

[00:39:57] Jeff: Yeah. No, you're totally thinking about it. Yeah. No, that totally makes sense. and I agree with you on that standpoint. I mean, I think when you get to the place where you understand those principles and you start to reiterate them the way that you guys are talking about and the way that you guys normally do, , I think it definitely makes a difference in how you think about those things.

[00:40:13] Jeff: And then also with technology, like having these solutions that you could do certain things with that, you know, at the end of the day, oh, this is gonna drive more collaboration.

[00:40:21] Jeff: But it's really not like, unless you have, you know, those principles in place, it doesn't matter what technology you put on the backside of it, people aren't going to engage and they aren't gonna collaborate because that's a behavioral thing. And it's a perception of the person, you know, to your point, feeling like they belong, feeling like they're valued and having a commitment to complete the task at hand or the project that they're working on.

[00:40:42] Jeff: , And so having those conversations with people, it's like you could spend a million dollars and completely redo all of your stuff, but it's not gonna make a difference if you don't address the root cause or the root problems of, you know, making somebody feel like, yes, my opinion is valued and if I wanna solve this problem or work on this project, I'm gonna be a part of this team and I'm gonna contribute and I'm gonna do the things that I need to do.

[00:41:03] Jeff: And giving them the space to do that.

[00:41:06] Ben: People put their headphones on, right? I mean, they put their EarPods in and all that and they couldn't hear each other and If they put a rule that said you couldn't hear it, then they couldn't focus 'cause of the other noise and all those things. And so a quick story on the idea of how technology piece, most people do hybrid meetings wrong.

[00:41:23] Ben: Yeah, you have the technology of the owls or the light. You know, you're at a table with the 10 people in there. You've got one camera going down. You got these weird angles. , You're always wondering if they can hear you. If you're remote, you can't tell who's speaking, right? So our take on this is even different.

[00:41:39] Ben: We had an international client that we did a cohesion culture event. 10, 28 countries, 10 people were in person. In 18 different countries. Yeah. How we did this is different for most people. All 10 people that were there in person were all on Zoom. they all were on their own laptop individually.

[00:42:00] Ben: Camera on found off except for one. So the people that were fully remote got to see faces with names. They could see people talking. Maybe they weren't highlights. They had to do a gallery view because the speaker didn't line up because there only one that Mike was on, right? Yeah. But the sound was great for everybody.

[00:42:19] Ben: They got to know who was talking. And then when we did breakout sessions, of course we honored the commitment and

[00:42:24] the,

[00:42:24] Ben: effort that the in-person folks made, they were breakout session together, and then we broke up the other ones. Think a little bit of thought into that type of meeting goes a long way.

[00:42:35] Ben: Yeah. Because of the experience. You don't want remote to be second class citizens, right? Yeah. There's always been the us versus them in the sales and ops world.

[00:42:44] Right. Well,

[00:42:45] Ben: Now the biggest thing is in-person versus remotes. They all have their superior complex depending on which one they are for several reasons, and that becomes something like, I show up and I have to do this thing, or My work can't be remote and you feel you're better than me and.

[00:43:00] Ben: We hear it. Right? So learning how to bring them together so everybody has the same experience through that virtual session is a big deal.

[00:43:07] Dr. Troy: And we have a couple of theories that we really apply this in principles that go with it. And one of them is that culture is available to everyone, not just those under the same roof.

[00:43:17] Dr. Troy: Yeah. And we also believe that culture is built in how you treat people, not the treats you give them. So if we can fundamentally align that together, then we can do it. Like we're not a proponent of whether people have remote work or not. It doesn't matter to us. But if you're going to do remote work, let's do it.

[00:43:34] Dr. Troy: Right? Yeah. And then the other thing that I'm going to say on this particular topic is that is if you are still calling it work from home, change your. Vernacular, it's remote work because when you say work from home, you give it a demeaning value. You make it less than if I were in person, and it automatically goes against cohesion.

[00:43:58] Dr. Troy: Cohesion says I give meaningful work. My value is in the meaningful work. The purposeful work I do. But if you don't believe that my work is meaningful or purposeful and that you think that as a convenience, you've let me work remotely, but I'm like. Hey, I'm in a different country. I am working. It's remote.

[00:44:16] Dr. Troy: I'm not at home. I'm at the airport. I'm working. I'm not at home. I'm answering something while I'm at the park, while I'm parked or before I get in the car after a face-to-face meeting, I'm now handling something in the parking lot. I am not at home and I'm still working. There's a value to that and I think that's the part that for me.

[00:44:37] Dr. Troy: And using technology is making sure that people are feeling valued in the way they use technology. And for me, I need to close out of this interview. Yeah. Because of some other commitments based on my time of where we are. Yeah. So I wanna be able to add to you the other elements. So when I told you that it, the technology that we use for, belonging is this community that we create, then people will say,

[00:45:03] Dr. Troy: what technology for value or for meaningful work for that is called a continuous.

[00:45:09] Dr. Troy: Performance evaluation system where you get rid of the paper and you do the performance evaluation online, but it doesn't mean that it's just online and it's no longer any talking. It's the communication that you have, but the online keeps track of the information and allows it to constantly evolve and update itself.

[00:45:27] Dr. Troy: Yeah. And then looking. Commitment, which is collaboration, create as many shared documents, create the environment where people don't have to house the documents on their own computer that they can actually put it

[00:45:40] you know,

[00:45:40] Dr. Troy: into the space. Ben and I used Google, but it took me. A while to figure that out because I was trained to keep everything on my own personal computer, that I wasn't necessarily bringing it forward so that he could access that same information and our other team members can do it.

[00:45:58] Dr. Troy: So it was really just an evolution of how you have to change the way you think sometimes to be able to make this technology work for you.

[00:46:07] Jeff: Yeah. It's the whole thing of you've gotta be willing to be uncomfortable sometimes and learn the new thing.

[00:46:12] Jeff: Right. You've gotta be willing to not be great at something. You've gotta be willing to like deal with, I suck at this right now, but I'm gonna figure it out and kind of press through. You know, to get to that point. And

[00:46:22] Dr. Troy: technology should never be a shiny object. It's not just something I get because it's brand new or something that I have, it's not like upgrading my phone to the latest version just for the sake of doing it. Because technology, like anything was built to solve a need.

[00:46:36] Dr. Troy: If technology doesn't solve a need, then there's a problem. Correct. So technology that might be clever, crafty and sassy that doesn't solve a need is just called art.

[00:46:52] Jeff: That is fantastic.

[00:46:53] Jeff: And you're 100% correct. , Because there are times that I think about the things that we do, , from a company standpoint, and there are some things that it's an absolute problem and this technology solves that problem. And then the rest of it is I wanna show off how cool and shiny this new thing is.

[00:47:09] Jeff: Right. And I have one of these, and you don't. Right. we see that so many times with clients where. They're trying to solve problems that don't exist. , You know, or they're creating problems just to solve them with whatever the new shiny thing is. Right?

[00:47:22] Dr. Troy: Yeah. Well Jeff, thank you so much for allowing me to be part of it and continue the conversation with Ben if you'd like.

[00:47:27] Dr. Troy: Yeah. But if anybody wants to reach out to me, they can follow me on social media at Dr. Troy Hall and they can reach me at info@cohesionculture.net.

[00:47:36] Jeff: Awesome. Dr. Troy, thank you so much for jumping on. Appreciate the time and, , I look forward to having another conversation in the future.

[00:47:42] Dr. Troy: You're welcome.

[00:47:42] Dr. Troy: And I like to close out with a phrase that I use a mantra with all of our cohesion culture programs. And that is, you don't have to know everything, just need to be teachable. Good stuff.

[00:47:53] Jeff: Thanks guys.

[00:47:54] Ben: , I happen to keep on going 'cause I I've been embracing technology for a while now. , And it's funny because I feel I'm a laggard.

[00:48:01] Ben: I feel when I hear other people and what they're doing and building with it, and just yesterday encountered somebody in the hallway at,, we have a entrepreneur hub at my office, space, coworking space. Right. And he was asking all these questions about how I was using things and whatnot, and I'm like, man, I don't even feel like I'm scratching the surface, but apparently in this world I am the early adopter.

[00:48:22] Ben: Yeah. Even though I feel very slow to it.

[00:48:25] Jeff: , That's interesting. do you feel like other people are that far behind because they're still doing paper? Or like, , what do you feel like is the reason that you're at the front rather than behind?

[00:48:35] Ben: I think from my usage, it's a combination of a lot of things.

[00:48:39] Ben: A, it's technology and my business, but also the technology that runs my business now. , I have a VA that manages two offshore VAs. Yeah. That all have access to my own GPT, that they're all running and learning and doing these things, and we're using these systems for automations and whatnot.

[00:48:58] Ben: And I think the motivation there was I want my time back. I want to go be outside and do things and, you know, theoretically I could do all, use all this and make more money. Right. But that's not my driving force. Right. I want my time back. Yeah. I want to be able to have this work for me so I can sleep in a hammock and go off grid without a phone and do all those types of things.

[00:49:19] Ben: Right. Like absolutely love that. And, but I think that's probably why I've probably a little bit quicker, but in so many other things, I would normally say as a technology in general goes, I am the bell curve guy. I will get it on the earlier end of that. Right. I don't want the newest phone of anything.

[00:49:35] Ben: Right. Yeah. And, you know, to much people to grin. I'm a Samsung guy, , And actually I saw a very interesting video about how the AI on their photo software. Samsung is different than Apples. It literally, somebody removed , the patch on, , , , , Nick Fury, , on an image. Oh yeah.

[00:49:50] Ben: Literally, Samsung's literally put an eyeball in it, whereas Apple's left it a scar. So very interesting use of it there, but I'm not the one that needs the latest one. I've got a 5-year-old phone. Right. , And so I watch and I observe these things, but then it's one of those things of, okay, there are a lot of options out there.

[00:50:06] Ben: I don't wanna go change, so I wait a little bit. I wait a little bit to find out which one's kind of rising to the top. I wanna do that one. I wanna make sure it integrates well. Yeah. Right. And that's been a problem to me is like, you know, five years ago when I just started, , , four years ago, when I was doing all these things, I had this software, this software, this software and this software. Because they all did different things. Yeah. Well now I use one software that use them all. The transition time sucked. And I are there better options probably, but that also exponentially made my cost more. Yeah. And what the value of doing one thing excellent versus everything else good to great was not worth it for me to spend that extra money.

[00:50:47] Jeff: Yeah. No, and I to, I totally get that. And that's, that I think is something that people don't always think about is that there are pieces of this. It's like, part of it is you need to start, right? you need to start going down that road and you need to figure out what it is that you're trying to accomplish.

[00:51:01] Jeff: And like, you know, like I was saying earlier, if you spend more time on the front end in preparation, right, like your output is gonna be that much better. And to your point, once you've got the output, go through and verify it, go through and check it and test it and see what it's doing and then go back and retweak it and put it back into production and see what it's, you know, see what it's doing after that.

[00:51:20] Jeff: Right. But I don't think people always think about it that way. I don't think they go into it knowing exactly what they wanna accomplish. Knowing Exactly. You know, Hey, how do I want this workflow to happen? it's amazing to me to have conversations with business owners who have not gone through their business and actually like workflow, charted out their entire operation to say from sales to final payment.

[00:51:46] Jeff: What does that entire journey look like for my company, not only for my company, but what does that entire journey look like for my customer? Right? That's a simple thing of literally just whiteboarding it out and saying, okay, we go from here to here, to here to here. This is what happens. if business owners just did that, forget all the technology, forget everything else.

[00:52:05] Jeff: If you just did that, you'd probably find 10 to 15% of waste. , And efficiencies and steps that either don't need to be there, or steps that can be automated, or things that can be moved over. As you start to do that, it builds in this incredible amount of, you know, productivity that you can capture on the backside of it.

[00:52:23] Jeff: But to your point, you have to look at those things. And like, if you're getting two hours back, what are you doing with that two hours? where are you putting it? Like what are you reinvesting that time in? , I think it's interesting like the overall conversation like that Dr. Troy was talking about with, you know, working from home and that whole thing.

[00:52:40] Jeff: The location has nothing to do with the value. The time is the value. Basically, all of the value that you get out of those things is because of the time that you're putting into it. The location has nothing to do with. So at the end of the day, like you, like he was saying, you could be anywhere, you could be working from anywhere.

[00:52:57] Jeff: That's why

[00:52:57] Ben: remote versus just saying, okay. Yeah. 'cause there's the connotation of okay, well the remote one is the envelopes you're sending out or you're doing something like that. So yeah, the work can be done remotely, so do it wherever type of deal. Right. , So to understand what you get out of something, and I feel confident saying this.

[00:53:12] Ben: My office manager just yesterday said, you know, sometimes I hate saying you were right. I hate that. I dunno. However, , we spent probably close to 20, $25,000 a few years ago with an automation upgrade. , We teach disc behavior assessments and within that I learned that my office manager.

[00:53:35] Ben: Has is task oriented, but also heavily I, she's wants the influence, she loves people, not so much on the detail aspect of things. Yeah. The overall macro task, not as much micro on the detail. And so I pushed hard for this automation side of how we run our events. Right? Yeah. So you were a participant to the event, so you didn't see all the reminders that went out and all this kind of stuff.

[00:53:57] Ben: But we now have an intake process. Once it goes in, we put, here's your billing contact, here's your day of contact. Many times they're different people. We have all this process. Yeah. All this backend stuff. And initially, several years ago, the pushback was, well, these are all the tasks that I'm doing.

[00:54:12] Ben: What? Like, you're gonna cut my hours back because she's a contracted assistant. Yeah. She works for Moley. She's in the States though. And I said, well, the whole goal for this then is to make you figure out, I don't know what it's yet, but let's take this stuff off your plate. 'cause I want us to have the T'S off crossed and the dotted.

[00:54:30] Ben: Yeah. With the details, the nuance. So that we can figure out how to get you, who knows our business, customer facing, because that is something that gives you joy and energy and Yeah. Motivator for you. Yeah. So now we have all that stuff automated and processed. we have custom content. we added custom content into your experience.

[00:54:50] Ben: Yeah. You know, that was her meeting with the folks, the team, and coming up with this. And so now she's living something that she enjoys doing, you know, to go into Patrick Lencioni's, , , working geniuses, right? Those are things that give her genius, right? Yeah. the innovation elements. So it's a fun thing because that's where you use technology assessment, right?

[00:55:09] Ben: You use it. Some people just wear it as a label. I'm this way, deal with it. No. How do we truly do that on a team? , Our most recent VA that we hired is an implementer. Yeah. I had a gap on my team. I love it because she's telling me what to do. All the other ones are supporter roles or things like that.

[00:55:27] Ben: They would do the work. It was quality work, but it wasn't pushing us forward. This last person I accomplished in three weeks, something I've been wanting to do in two years. Yeah. So finding out the technology then helped me find out the right person for this. Now, I didn't hire her because of that.

[00:55:44] Ben: I found that out afterwards. Right. A good referral because you can't hire based on these things for many a reason. , But it's great to find out, here's the fit here. I need a person like this that can do these things. Does that sound exciting to you? Yeah. Now you can say, if they don't feel excited about that, it may not be a good fit.

[00:56:00] Jeff: Yeah. Well it's definitely one of those things. I mean, 'cause we use the, you know, like most of the GTK folks use the PI for those assessments. Right. , And one of the things that we found, we've definitely used it for hiring, but not making like the final decision just based on, oh, this person has this profile.

[00:56:15] Jeff: Right. But it definitely gives you a leg up to understand like, this person's naturally gifted at these things. This job has these requirements already built in. So from that standpoint, that's very much in line. Now let's talk about like how that person interacts with other people, how they carry themselves.

[00:56:36] Jeff: Let's go through that whole rest of that interview process. But man, as far as using it as a tool to kind of really figure out, you know, and line out what you need somebody to do, what you're actually looking for, and then what you're asking them to do. Are you asking them to go against their own nature?

[00:56:50] Jeff: It's really the main question, right? And at that point, like it totally changes the perspective of that conversation because you already know going into the conversation like, this person's already naturally gifted these things. Like, I don't have to worry about that. I just need to make sure that, they carry themselves well.

[00:57:05] Jeff: You know, they can talk to people, you know, they don't have any issues there. You know, some of these other things in the background. , do you guys do the discs with clients or are you just using them internally?

[00:57:15] Jeff: Yep. Okay. I figured, I figured that was a test. We're

[00:57:17] Ben: TTI disc, which is a very different version than others people won't be aware of. Ours is very science based. TTI invented the online assessment in the eighties. Yeah. So not as a sales pitch there, but I, we research many different ones for us to go with and just fell in love with the model that this one is.

[00:57:34] Ben: To take this one step further on the thing you talk about, here's your naturally gift and well we adapt, we have to do certain things that we're, in the, um,, working genius model, if you know that there's gen working genius, there's working competency and working frustrations.

[00:57:46] Ben: You can do all of those 'cause you have to, life has those things. But if you work in your adapted sense too long, or you work in your working frustrations, you're gonna have burnout at some point, right? Most people spend their life in working competency. They're good at it.

[00:57:59] Ben: They get paid, but it doesn't give them joy. Right? Yeah. It doesn't give them life. Right. I actually started inputting my assessments of my team into my GPT. I said, Hey, I want you to compare and contrast this person's working genius or this person's disc, what they have. And then I said, okay, create a working model on your end if 'cause within our disc we have driving forces.

[00:58:22] Ben: And I said, can you with some certainty, figure out what someone's working genius is gonna be? Yeah. And so then I put someone's disc in there and then it came up with thing and it came up with what it felt their working genius was to be. And it wasn't. And I said, well, where did you go wrong? Why was this a mistake?

[00:58:38] Ben: And it said, I didn't make a mistake. A driving force is your motivation to do something. A working genius per the design is how you feel from doing it. It understood the emotional difference. Yeah. But you pursue this and that's why you do it.

[00:58:54] Ben: Yeah. There's not one, you may not pursue doing it, but when you get to do it, you really love doing it. And so it said, I cannot create a model by looking at one versus the other of what their numbers are gonna be because the motivations are different. Yeah. So I realized I can't just do that. So it's pretty cool

[00:59:10] Jeff: that is interesting.

[00:59:11] Jeff: I've kind of done some similar things with bi , profiles and results and stuff and,and asked it to evaluate certain things. And it is interesting the way that, you know, it, interprets some of that information and what it spits out there. , What do you feel like has been the most significant technology for you guys in cohesion culture?

[00:59:28] Jeff: What's been the one technology that you guys lean on more than anything else that. Brings the most ROI on the time and effort and resource that you spend on it.

[00:59:37] Ben: I'd have to say the Google work suite, I mean, as simple as that is. like living documents, right? Yeah., Troy alluded to it, right?

[00:59:44] Ben: He used to be in a very contained world in his, , , corporate world where everything had to be locked down. So then he would send attachments. We'd have which version we, you know, his nomenclature versus what made sense. My, we, we don't think alike. So the way that I would save things and whatnot. So, you know, we have some organizational that will do it, but to do a Google folder and share things and have access to it has been great for our own cohesion because of the collaboration element.

[01:00:10] Ben: To have assistance be able to access things, that's been crucial. , We as companies, so I have several other companies that I'll run on WhatsApp as well. Yeah. So from a communication platform, I love that aspect of things because of its versatility. And there's there's Slack, there's other ones as well.

[01:00:27] Ben: Yeah. I love the voice note components, the encryption, the speeding up back and forth. and it's platform agnostic, right? Yeah. So, I love that component of it. , The integration of being on a desktop, that's been helpful because, you know, most people say, oh, I use that when I travel overseas.

[01:00:43] Ben: But, you know, we run our companies on it for minist reasons. The community feature, actually, we actually create communities within WhatsApp. Yeah. So each spread, so in Slack it would be your different hashtag channels this means. We can remove and unremoved people Yeah. Easily based on the topic.

[01:00:58] Ben: So that's been great. So me, him and our writer. Or in this group chat me, him, the writer, and somebody else are in this chat. Yeah. So we know with smart labeling, which communications, so we're not all lumping up and where was that? You know? Yeah, that's a big deal because we have so many channels. Like was that an email?

[01:01:15] Ben: Was this, that kind of thing.

[01:01:17] Jeff: Yeah, no, I totally get that. I mean it, trying to keep all of those things synced across multiple different platforms, multiple different things going on. I like I totally get that. 'cause we run into the same thing as well. , You mentioned something earlier when you were talking about the video conference that you guys hosted.

[01:01:30] Jeff: I want to kind of dig into that a little bit more, ,,I'm curious the outcome of that particular meeting that you were describing. The feedback that you got from that, both in person and online, did you feel like the feedback from that was that it was all very positive and everybody understood why you kind of did it that way and or did anybody have any questions about that or any other feedback about it?

[01:01:50] Jeff: I'm curious kind of how that went for you guys.

[01:01:52] Ben: Well, great question and you know, Troy's not here to defend himself, but the biggest, so from the client aspect, it was total praise. Yeah. They loved it because they got to see everybody's name with it. They gotta see who was feeding back. So we required the client to test this out prior, like we said before we get started, your 10 people, you'd have to have one person online remote.

[01:02:15] Ben: You have to make sure that you can do the connection on the computers and all that. Now, Bupa's recently changed some things, so I have to go in before I do the next one like that and make sure that I can connect this way and whatnot, which shouldn't be a problem. They've also changed how a mobile person using two accounts, so that's a minor thing.

[01:02:30] Ben: The biggest thing was at that time. Troy had just come from the corporate setting using the normal web conferencing. So for us, it was a getting together cohesively on the reason behind it. Okay. Yeah. his first example was, let's have each person that's in person be in their own room. So they're on Zoom.

[01:02:49] Ben: So everybody had the same experience. Yeah. Okay. But this is where we were relatively new in our relationship. Working out, figuring out each other. Right. Yeah. And I said, I understand why you'd want that. I want the same thing. However, we cannot shortcut or devalue mm-hmm. the commitment that was made by the folks that were in person.

[01:03:09] Ben: Yeah. Right. They made the effort, they did the travel. they spent, they're there for them. They're in the room. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sowe can use technology in a different way to make this happen. Yeah. So they had to say, they could talk with each other. Right. They could talk over each other. They weren't looking at their screens.

[01:03:25] Ben: Yeah. That's the big thing to point at. It wasn't like they were, they had. Who knows what their view was. They weren't looking other folks other than they were talking here. They were looking here, they were looking here. But if someone was online, they then could see them. Yeah. So it made it a very powerful system.

[01:03:41] Ben: And we've done this many times. , not an advice, but a scenario is when you have clients that are wanting conference rooms like that, what is their engagement? Have them ask if they have repeat folks that are remote. How do they feel in these sessions? Do they feel like second class citizens?

[01:03:58] Ben: Yeah. Right. 'cause they have the weird angle or it's over shoulders. And you, or what I love is you see one half of this person, one half of this face. Right. Because they're trying to do zoom together. Right?

[01:04:10] Jeff: Yeah.

[01:04:10] Ben: And it's a simple solution

[01:04:12] Jeff: crowding around the laptop. Yeah.

[01:04:14] Ben: you could be right beside each other.

[01:04:15] Jeff: Yeah.

[01:04:16] Ben: Just don't connect one to the sound. Like it's simple. It's a simple thought process, but it's intention.

[01:04:22] Jeff: Yeah. , I think that in, you know, we talked about it earlier, I think that intention piece is the piece that you're creating, the connection with them, you're signaling and you're communicating the value of that person being involved by the intention of, even if it doesn't work the way that you think it should or it doesn't do the thing that you think it should.

[01:04:41] Jeff: You're creating the value and commitment that you have to make them a part of what's happening and to include them in what's happening by going through the process of trying to include them in any way possible. Right. Whether you could even do that on a phone, right. With just FaceTime at this point.

[01:04:56] Jeff: Right. same thought process, same type of deal. It's the intention I think of bringing them into that conversation, going through that whole scenario with them and making sure that they feel included and involved.

[01:05:08] Ben: Technology may fail. you may have good intentions, it may not work.

[01:05:12] Ben: That's where practice comes in. Right? Yeah. Trying it out, doing that kind of thing. Right. , Also the scavenger hunt you experienced. Yeah. We do those hybrid. Yeah. We literally can change a setting in the backend and have someone on your team somewhere else, , doing a clone version, so whatever's on the tablet Yeah.

[01:05:29] Ben: they're seeing it as well. Cell phone. Right. Yeah. Now we can actually have them. Phone call somebody else talking live. Yeah. And let's say they can't answer some of the physical things. Like what, you know, you had to go somewhere and see something and count something. They can't answer those even though it's on their screen.

[01:05:46] Ben: Yeah. However, if it was a riddle, a picture riddle or something, they literally don't just have a screen that can't do anything. Yeah. They literally can go and do those things and actually add value to the team.

[01:05:59] Jeff: Yeah.

[01:06:00] Ben: And that's the capabilities of our software for that.

[01:06:02] Jeff: That's a good example of remote work.

[01:06:04] Jeff: Right. So we're like in the scavenger hunt that you guys did, there are things that you have to do in the physical location or you have to take a picture, you have to, you know, go do the thing. But then you had the other piece of it where you could go answer all these questions, right? And if you had somebody in that case, they could go through it and go answer all these questions in the background while everybody else is working on the actual physical thing in the site.

[01:06:23] Jeff: Right. and that puts it into the real world scenario of like, if I have somebody that's working in the background remotely, somewhere working on admin tasks or automated tasks or whatever the thing is, like they could go be going through and knocking all those things out while other people are in the field actually doing other pieces of the work that need to happen.

[01:06:41] Jeff: Right. , So that's, yeah, it's a really good example of, how to incorporate that and how to be intentional about that, how to go through and, um, , and we

[01:06:49] Ben: built games just for that. Yeah. Like I have games that we've done 250 people at one time. Yeah. Using zooms and breakout rooms properly and all that kind of stuff so it can be done.

[01:06:59] Ben: And it's not just showing baby photos of people. I give that one a whole lot of crap. I mean, yeah, they were doing what they could, like, they were trying to figure it out. And I get that was more entertainment, a little bit of connection people. Yeah. But we wanna also make sure our time is meaningful and we do something with it.

[01:07:13] Ben: So yeah. I just love creating games like that. and, and that one we can facilitate hybrid. So, you know, in person we have booklets online. You have an online booklet. Yeah. So it's a fun thing to do.

[01:07:24] Jeff: it's interesting talking about intention. I, II don't even think it's necessarily the thought per se as much as it is the time.

[01:07:31] Jeff: Because the most valuable thing you have in the world is time. You're never gonna get it back. You can't buy more, you can't do anything. You know, so like, if you're intentionally spending time. Working on something or trying to include somebody or having a conversation with somebody, even if it's a heated argument, the fact that you're having the conversation and trying to work through it, you're investing the time into that relationship and into that person.

[01:07:54] Jeff: And so on a subconscious level, I think most people, understand that. And I think it's one of the reasons. I mean, like, put this in the context of, if you have a family and if you're married, , sometimes like just the amount of time that you spend with your spouse, it doesn't even have to be on anything special or specific or romantic or any of those kinds of things.

[01:08:12] Jeff: It's just the investment of time because you value that person and your time is the most valuable resource that you have. And on some level, I think everybody understands that, you know, even if it's a subconscious level to a certain degree. But, Ben. Thank you for jumping in.

[01:08:26] Jeff: Thank you and Dr. Troy for coming on today. This was a super fun conversation. Really enjoyed. Catching up with you guys and running through some of the stuff that you're doing. , Tell everybody where they can find you on socials and, any other notes you wanna put out there. I'll give you a

[01:08:38] Ben: list of ones You can go from, , the cohesive leader.com.

[01:08:41] Ben: You can find more about our community, Detroit mentioned. , Power up guide.com is where you can get a copy of becoming a cohesive leader. , Me personally, , Ben Jamin toy on all the socials. The dash ma, is it ben dash J-A-M-I-N. So it's Benjamin with a dash that allows me to be findable and our lives are represented by the dash between our birthdate and death date.

[01:09:03] Ben: , Last name toy, like a teddy bear, but that's LinkedIn's probably one of the best ways to actually get connected on purpose. adventures.com is the company that I run a lot of the games through that isn't cohesion related, but all the projects that Troy and I talked about, , can be found, , or connected through either his website, dr troy hall.com or the cohesive leader.com.

[01:09:24] Jeff: Awesome. Highly recommend them guys, if you have a chance to check them out, definitely do it. 'cause it's a fun experience and it's very different. , And you walk away thinking very differently about how you interact with your team and how you bring people in and how you communicate with people.

[01:09:37] Jeff: it's a fun time, , as well. So, and it

[01:09:39] Ben: doesn't just have to be in Charleston, even though we are in South Charleston, South Carolina, we travel the country. So yeah, just anybody listening from anywhere, we are all over the place.

[01:09:46] Jeff: Yeah. That's awesome. Ben, thank you again. Really appreciate the time. This was fantastic.

[01:09:50] Jeff: , Look forward to catching up with you guys in the future. Have a great one. Thanks.