Mastering Simplicity: The Fundamentals-Driven Approach To Success

[MUSIC] In times of rapid acceleration, high pressure, and general uncertainty, the reality is clear. Professionals are struggling. They have become more mentally and emotionally exhausted, less curious, more stressed, and less giving. Adding to this is the complexity around solutions with the overabundance of protocols, supplements, and so-called performance hacks. The end result is leaders are more distracted and have less mental agility, poorer performance, and struggle to be the belief builder and energy multiplier for their teams. We don't want to accept that. Our passion is to help professionals be more. These conversations help illuminate your thinking into sustainable human performance, learning real solutions to improve your energy, focus, and ultimately increase your impact. This is the TIGNUM Thought Cast. [MUSIC] Today's episode, Mastering Simplicity, the fundamentals driven approach to success with special guest, Paola Balosta-Smaguarsa, global practice leader, healthcare and life sciences at Kearney. We hope you enjoy it. [MUSIC] Hello, everyone, and welcome to our Bold Circle Roundtable. Today at our table, we have all of you and a great guest, one of our members, Paola Balosta. And I know I say that every session that we have, but it just keeps getting better and I get more and more excited. For those of you that don't know, Paola's a partner at Kearney's Health and Digital Practices, where she works with leading global biopharmaceutical companies at the intersection of medicine and technology to improve patient outcomes. And this is a big area right now in the world as technology, science, medicine, human performance is kind of all coming together. So we'll get to talk a little bit about that. And today we want to talk about mastering simplicity and using a fundamentals driven approach to success. And it's so easy in this complex world to get away from fundamentals. So I think we're going to learn so much today from Paola. And Paola came to consulting after a career as an industrial engineer. And I share that with you because that was an experience that helped mold her both into a curious and analytical person, but also awoken in her this kind of personal approach and a passion, I think, to helping people be more human. So I want to welcome you today, Paola. Let's jump right in. Hi, everyone. And hi, Scott. Delighted to be here with you guys today. So great. And as usual, we're going to start with a little discussion you and I. And then we'll let our other bold members come in. But if they want to send in any questions, now I know some of you have sent some in ahead of time. Feel free as you listen to send some of your questions in so we can get everybody at the table. So Paola, I think a great place to start is to simply ask you to just share your story of kind of the current journey you're on with our members. So we can all get a feel of how you came back to discover the importance of your personal fundamentals. Great. Thank you, Scott. So I think you introduced the engineer and you introduced the management consultant, but you did introduce the sort of recovering people, please, which I very much I'm today. And I think that the story of going back to the fundamentals actually starts a few years ago where I was just this thriving management consultant. I was like mid mid career and I kept saying yes to everything. I just had this compulsion to please everyone to please clients, to please people internally in the firm. As just my way of getting this sort of validation, I think in professional services, we talk a lot about insecure over achievers. And I was very much one of those. And what that led me to was just catastrophic burnout back in 2016. I think I was in a meeting room in our office in all of a sudden my mouth started to drop. And they thought I was having a stroke ended up being not a stroke, but just a pretty kind of serious migraine condition, which is called a hemipelic migraine, which basically is an epigenetic disorder. You sort of have the DNA to have this disease, but you have to wake it up through external factors. And in my case, it was just this overdose of adrenaline and cortisol. And basically I've now since been stuck with it, but what I'm into at that time is that I couldn't work for six months because my brain was in function properly. Some days I would kind of wake up in my hand wouldn't work in my leg wouldn't work. And yeah, I mean, at one point I thought I wasn't going to be able to work again. So that sort of gave me the wake up call to think about, okay, you need to take your life a little bit back to basics. Like what makes you wake up in the morning? What are you really passionate about beyond getting a pad on the head from somebody else, which obviously is very exciting when you do, but you need to have something else, some more meaning in your life beyond somebody telling you that you're doing a good job. So it was a real kind of journey of recovery, both from a mindset perspective and a lot of therapy perspective, but also just reconnected with the just reconnected with a mind body connection. So how do I feel myself? How do I exercise? How do I recover just to make sure that I can be a kind of well-rounded individual? And after that journey, I thought, well, okay, I've got two options. I actually spoke to to use Scott into yoga as you know, maybe I have a career in sustainable human performance after this kind of big revelation of my life. Or do I go into industry and actually work with some of my clients in the pharmaceutical industry, hoping that the pace is going to be a little bit just a little bit slow, which in reality probably wouldn't have been. But I decided to go back to the to the line stand and just go back to to consulting and go back to my firm with two beliefs, one that I could actually be the the person that I wanted to be, not a sort of slave to the the opinions of others, but thrive just with my own intrinsic motivation that I could also put into play. Everything that I had learned about those fundamentals in a sustainable way in a kind of fast-based professional services. Well, and also that I could bring what I had learned to improve the sustainable human performance of everybody in my firm, all 4,500 of us. Sort of like the beginnings of my of my very first kind of ball project that is still very much underway fast forward a little bit of time. I became a mum after that and boy does that put your things in perspective in your life, in perspective when you don't even have the time to be a people, please, because you're growing another little human and you tried to make that human a nice one. So again, with that comes all sorts of like expectations and guilt and sleep deprivation and everything that a lot of our listeners probably very familiar with. But that did bring quite a lot of perspective to me, but what it also did as I was also getting more senior is that I was then juggling a lot. I was juggling this bold project of transforming this place in this firm into a place where people can thrive and where people are comfortable setting boundaries and where we have got empathetic compassionate leaders. Another bold project of then as a partner tripling the size of our life sciences business and then obviously my most important bold project, which is to just raise this human so that she can have a positive impact in society and she can have a good happy life. So again, a few months ago, I found myself everything becoming a little bit too much because I had taken my eye of the ball on those fundamentals. I was just putting one foot in front of the other just literally whatever is in my calendar, I was dealing with I felt like in this constant like fire flight mode guilty at work because I wasn't kind of paying attention to my family and showing up in the way that I wanted to be in guilty at home because I was trying to kind of like be present and then maybe not putting as much attention into work as I should do. I just pulled in also to directions and in a real kind of sense of like lack of control and complete loss side of really what are the basics that I need to have in place to have a life that is actually enjoyable because I don't think I was enjoying my life very much in the summer. So again, my lifeline Scott, Yogi and then I met Laura my coach through you guys and in really it was about kind of bringing it back to basics, which is, who do you want to be because right now you're being everything that everybody else is wanting you to be. You're being the partner in the consulting firm and the leader to your team and the mother and the wife and the friend and this and that but you're being everybody else's kind of vision of what you should be as opposed to your to be vision and I think that for me as simple as it is it was a bigger home and for me which is I haven't taken the time to actually sit back and reflect will help you when you grow up at home and at work and how does that translate into your habits your behaviors how you're going to feel how you're going to show. And then I know only then I was able to then start to work on okay how far am I from that vision with the health of Laura. That's incredible. I mean such an inspiring story and it's funny because this question who do you want to be is so simple but so important I remember we were we had a global team meeting and we had Tony Nadal who was the uncle of Raphael Nadal. One of the greatest the greatest clay court player ever but one of the greatest tennis players ever and we were asking them all these questions and he goes you know it's so simple it comes down to one simple thing what do you want and he said I asked Rafa what do you want do you want to win one tournament we can do that will be one path do you want to win. one grand slam, that's one pass, one path. Do you want to win many grand slams? Well, then we're going to have to take a totally different path. And I love that you came back to that fundamental question. And so what I'm wondering though is, as you're kind of juggling these three big bold projects like you described them, you know, you're senior partner, trying to, you know, triple the amount of clients you have at the same time, your mother, and you want to be, you know, a great parent and a great partner. And then at the same time, you're trying, it sounds like trying to effuse this way of thinking into both curvy and your clients. And I know you've used the, the term before with me around regenerative leadership, I think it was. I'm not sure if that's, that's the right term. How do you stay committed and grounded to your own fundamentals when you're juggling these three big bold journeys? Great question. And yeah, we talked about regenerative leadership. And I think just to, to take a little site term before I answer the question directly, I think one of the things that I'm feeling and I'm sure people around this, this circle, and I wish I could see you all guys and like, and with a hug, by the way, I'm a massive like, hugger people person. But I think the, the, the sense that I have is that we just seem like poly crisis. I think it's just even before the pandemic, it felt like the world is like hectic, like everyday's intense, every week is intense. You read the news and you feel like overwhelmed by what's going on in, in the world. So this sense around kind of creating businesses and impact, the can be regenerative that is kind of dealing with kind of society, the environment and all the crisis that we've gotten. How businesses need to reinvent themselves at a much faster pace that we needed before. I think that then means that we need to be regenerative leaders. The, how do I show up in those environments and how do I lead those organizations so that they can respond at this pace and have the level of resilience that is required to operate in these environments. And in order to do that, then you have to like regenerate yourself and you need to re-energize yourself. And I think that's, that's been kind of a lot of the reflection that I've had with, with Laura in the team, which is to say, okay, I know what I want to do from a business perspective. I have my two-vision of how I want to show up at work and I have my two-vision of how I want to show up at home. But not everyday is going to be a day where you can afford to absolutely devote every inch of your being to achieving that because life does get in the way. In professional services, clients get in the way. Just things happen, right? You get the phone call from a child of like some explosion in the in a team happening or somebody comes up to you in tears or a client calls you and and pulls a project that you thought you were going to sell or go to those. All of these things happen all the time. And our diaries tend to be pretty crazy. So the work that the Laura and I have been doing is that, okay, the to-be vision needs to be the sort of north star. That's what we really need to be aiming for. But we need to deal with reality. So what is a vision of a day or a week that is a green day where you can really be your to-be vision at work and at home? What does that feel like? What does that look like in terms of the micro breaks that you give yourself? How you fuel yourself? How you exercise? How are you thinking and talking to yourself in those days? This is a number day where the sort of the intensity is going up and potentially you need to make some trade-offs and then all the way to a very red day or a red week where literally it's just survival. You know that you have to have some non-negotiables in all of your routines and dimensions around fueling and nutrition, around recovery, around sleep, around mindset. So that you don't get into that sort of like horrible treadmill that I was on where everything goes out of the window and you just literally on survival mode. So that's been really helpful to me because again, back to the sort of standards and putting the bar really high. I am like really bad at asking too much of myself and just this perfectionism just taken to the extreme. So if I was thinking the to-be vision has to be the to-be vision for every day, the amount of pressure that that would put on myself would be too much. So that's what we give ourselves. What are the different flavours? The red flavour, the orange flavour and the green flavour so that I can also just have some kindness to myself when times just do really get tough. You hit a couple very critical topics that I think are so important if you want to be able to do a bold project and stay at your best, continue to grow, continue to get stronger from stress. One of those you mentioned was the reset because it sounds like you've had a couple of resets. You had this terrible burnout in 2016 and then recently again you started to feel yourself sliding back and then that awoke in you to realize hold it. I've done this before. I've been here before. Let me tap back into how do I start again. And so I love that and I think that all of our listeners, all of our bold members need to always remember we as humans will always fall off of the path and need to have resets. And when we do that, it's a growth and learning opportunity. It's not a negative and it's not something we should feel guilty or shameful about. The second thing that I'd love that you talked about is the importance of, you know, whether you call it a green day, yellow day, red day, whether you call it a plan A, plan B, plan C, is if you have a plan, then you're really never off of your program and you always are doing something to show up as you're to be vision, to show up at your as your best self. What many of us do, unfortunately, I think is we fall off because my plan didn't match today's challenges. And therefore what I've basically told my brain, this was a dumb plan anyway, because it doesn't work. And what I love what you and Laura did together was create these plans. And so are there any markers or things that tell you up? This is definitely, I've moved from a green day to an orange day to a red day, anything that that that tells you that. Yeah. So I think absolutely. And one thing that I, that just really helps me is that I burnt out in the first place. So I then started to become like really interested in the in the topic. And I think the guy was called Freudemberger or something like that, the coin, the term back in the day before even the WHO recognized it as an actual condition. But in essence, he did a study on volunteers on an addiction center in Germany. And they were dedicating a lot of the time to just to get these addicts back onto a good path in life. And he started to notice some symptoms. And that's how he coined the term. And it was things like, so even no matter how many sleeps, how many hours you sleep, you're still fatigued, you've got quickness to anger. There's a numbness where you can just like, you cannot feel things anymore. And there were just a few other that I can't remember now. But for me, the sort of the noticing of it this time around in July is that that quickness to anger was set in Lee there. I started to become really transactional at work. So I'm normally a very sort of close empathetic nurturing kind of lead to to my teams. And they were almost looking at me as then who is this woman that is being so cutting and so sort of all of a sudden demanding and just being very transactional, getting to the point, telling them what to do, telling them what I expected and not really taking the time to sort of accompany them and listen to them and just be with them in the way that I would normally be. So there was one big sign. The second sign is that I was just tired all the time, no matter how much I slept, no matter how much I recovered at the weekend. I was just exhausted. And then the last thing for me was the biggest wake-up call and I think what made me call you guys was that I was actually really disliking being a parent. And I was arriving at home and look, I know that there will be a lot of parents on the call and you're probably with me when I say the sometimes kids can be really annoying. But I have to say it was just night after night. I was like, I just cannot wait until this child is in bed. I just cannot be faced with a tantrum or like a demand for something. I didn't have the emotional bandwidth to parent. And there was one particular day when I think I'm not a very shalti mamadol and I think I shouted and I was like, I do not want to be this woman. I am not this woman. And yeah, all those were the signs that kind of made me realize that I was getting close to the fire again. But in a more sort of like micro level on like a day-to-day basis, I would say and I worked with Laura a lot on this, which is there are days when I literally would have no breaks. I would start my calls at say 8 30 AM. I would finish my calls at 8 p.m. And sometimes with luck, I would have a lunch break and I would have to just like run to the toilet in between calls and so on. And the sort of the cognitive fatigue and also depending on the topic of the calls, potentially the emotional fatigue because if they were people related topics, they would be pretty loaded. Mentor that at the end of the day, I just was barely a functioning human. So what we started to do with Laura is, okay, we need to look at recovery at the super micro level of like literally within an hour. So we now start calls say at 5 past instead of studying them on the hour. And that's better than actually studying a call on the hour and then finishing it at 25 past because naturally you're going to go into those next five minutes. So those little tweaks have meant that I now have got even in the weeks that are like really bad, I have got some recovery built in between. And I'm able now to take a step back and look at a week and say, this is going to feel orange. Therefore, let's make sure that I'm creating the right breaks in between. That I'm going to not ask myself to go to the gym like three times, but I can do this like smaller, high impact metabolic workouts that I'm going to have like meal prep or I'm going to order in a particular food so that I'm feeling in the right way. So it's just that the main thing that has changed to me has been that I'm being deliberate. I am in charge. It's not said I'm in control because you cannot be in control of like everything in your life. I wish I could because I'm a control freak, but I can't. But I'm being deliberate and I wasn't being deliberate before. It's like my life was running me as opposed to me running my life. Anyway, I think I've gone a little bit all over the place. But I hope you're doing well. First, I want to thank you for your honesty because I just love that you're willing to be so vulnerable, which how can you grow, how can you get better, how can you change your habits, how can you become your to be vision if you're not vulnerable? So I think that is amazing. And I think it's resonating with all of our members who are on the call because they're also probably saying, I'm so glad she said that. But my observation is this combination of both reactive and proactive, which I actually love because you've combined like monitoring my internal signs, which we call body literacy. So paying attention to actually what I'm feeling and how my brain is performing and what my emotional state is compared to what my best is. And as I see this degradation, that's a flag. I love that. The second thing you mentioned was you start looking at your day. I'm noticing that I have back to back to back meetings. I'm not getting any breaks. Hold it. The load. Another flag. And so now, and then the last step you said, which I thought was incredible is, so then I have to become more deliberate, which means now I'm truly proactive. I'm looking ahead rather than wait to end up this way, which means some damage is already done. You're now starting to look ahead and be very deliberate in how you look at your day different, how you recognize whether you're in your green orange or red plan. And then you also how you adjusted even you talked about your movement, your nutrition, your recovery. So if I have your habits or your fundamentals down, just listening to you, started with your to-be vision, who you want to be, went back. So you clarified what do you actually want? What is the most important thing to you? Then you went back and you said, look, I don't have many perfect days. So I need to create multiple plans. So I have a plan for every type of day. And then the third one that you just mentioned is adding quick recovery breaks, these pit stops so that recovery doesn't become this long drawn out thing you have to do, but actually building it into your day. Do I have that right? Are there any more fundamentals that you added? I think another fundamental that, well, I'm going to give you two more. Scott, which is one is the micro recovery for sure, but the other thing that Laura and I are working on is I used to arrive at my holidays so fried that basically the holiday just became a way of recovering so that I can then go back and run, run, run, run, run until I can't run anymore. And that's not sustainable, right? And also that's just not enjoyable because holidays are there to be enjoyed. Holidays are not there to be like so braided that you can't be there for your family and actually enjoy the time, right? So what we're doing as well and I appreciate that this is a massive luxury is that once a quarter, I take a day to myself and that happened to me two weeks ago, I think. And I just literally take the day off and it's not take the day off to be with my daughter is know that take the day off to like be with friends is just to be with myself. I have to confess that I had I had breakfast with yoga in London just because he was in London but like come on, when do you get the chance to have breakfast with with yoga in over often. So I did that but then I took the rest of the day to myself and I actually used my my Tignum diary and I did some scribbles. I was I exercised. I went to the spa. I walked around London and it was like such a reset day and I think building a little bit of that. So it's not the macro recovery of the of the holiday is not the micro recovery in between the day is something in between that you just build in every once in a while and I think that we're happening randomly and then back to the point about being deliberate. I think it's now with Laura a little bit more of okay, we know for example that the last push to the end of the year is going to be pretty hideous for me. So okay, so how can we make sure that in the middle of that I take maybe a half a day to do something like that. So yeah, I think there's the recovery of the micro medium and macro level, the deliberateness for sure and then the other thing that I would say Scott, the I don't have an abundance and it's something that I am like really working on is that I just need to be nicer to myself throughout the whole thing because even with the best intentions and the to be vision and my kind of green amber and red plan, I don't know if I can swear or not, I'll try not to swear. I can I can still screw it up and and come on, it's just going to be okay. So tomorrow's another chance. I suppose to say you idiot, you didn't do it, you didn't hate your plan or blah blah blah. And that's been a that's been a big change just like the internal dialogue and like come on, you're awesome and you can do this and yes, maybe you didn't do anything that you set out to do, but tomorrow's another chance. I think that's a does a big as well. Yeah, I love that, you know, being a consultant, your job is always to push people to the limits of perfection or excellence, like you're always driving that and yet for yourself, you recognize how difficult that is. I was just with the executive leadership team of Starbucks up in Seattle and we were having a great conversation about that because every brand is driven to find every little lever to produce value, right? And so at some point you start doing that to yourself and I shared with them a book that I read many years ago called Just Enough and the funny thing is about the book is and it's a great book so I don't want to devalue the book, but once you know the name of the book, you know, you know, you know everything, you don't almost don't need to read it. That sometimes we just need to settle and say what is just enough today? And it sounds like you've tried to maybe adopt that a little bit to realize that every day doesn't have to be 100%. Does that sound accurate? Totally and let me give you a very, very recent example this week. I had like a a Tignum textbook day on Wednesday. I was like, oh my god, I am nailing it. Look at me go, just I've done everything. Laura would be so proud of me and I'm getting to the end and I'm like showing up as like the mom that I want to be dancing and around the limit with my child. I even sent a video to Laura of like me doing this is like, look at me go. And then yesterday it was awful because I didn't have some of those like breaks. I ended up the day completely fried and I got home and I wanted to give my child to a good home for free. Like I just was not ready to parent. So then I went to bed thinking okay, like what happened there? And then I just reflected okay, so what went wrong there? So what went wrong is that we lost track of some of those fundamentals. So straight away like sat down with with Anami assistant who is my savior and is like, hey Anna, we can't we can't like drop the ball like this. Like we both need to keep an eye on like, are we doing these things? Because otherwise all the good that we're doing can just like disappear in front of, in front of our eyes. But it came from a place of like, come on, we can do this together and let's try again and make sure that we the we at least try and get it right for next week. As opposed to all, look at us, we're like screwed it up and we're crap and and all of this. So yeah, that's that's important. It's a great reframe. So we know from our research, it's a take them and also if you look at much of the behavioral change research, that there's two common reasons that we find that people actually fail at trying to achieve the behavioral change they want to make. First, and you hit on this so importantly, is they don't change their self image. So they did say they're going to change a behavior, but it doesn't align with who they want to be or who they see themselves as. And so the brain just sabotages them back to what it really thinks, to who it really thinks they are. So and then normally there's some inter dialogue around shaman guilt where the brain tells you, I told you you weren't going to do it. That was dumb. You're not that strong. And the second is that so often we don't connect our new behaviors with the benefits that we're actually trying to create. And we know that human beings are so motivated by behaviors. So in this way, if we don't do that, the brain just sees the pain and the effort and the grind rather than the benefits and the transformation. So I thought maybe one last question before I'd open up to our members for you. What were some of the benefits that you experienced by recommitting to these five fundamentals that you just shared? I think the first one I would say Scott is just a bit of perspective. And I think I was talking to Lauren and Yogi about a little while ago. So I was so, my head was so in the sand in trying to survive with literally my eyesight was on the next 25 minutes. Was the next school was the next school was the next school. And I wasn't able to look up and think about okay, like what's going on around me? Am I going in the right direction because I could be going very fast like down in precipice, right? So one of these what happened is that I had more more kind of breathing space and sinking space to look around me and say okay, am I actually going in the right direction across all three of my of my bold projects. And in one in particular, which is on this thing about kind of tripling the size of our business and the impact that we can have with some other farmer companies in their patients, I'm very dedicated to one of our particular clients, which is a kind of top five farmer company. And in professional services, we are sort of like reliant on on our relationships, right? And and that's been going very well for me. I've been working with them for like 10 years. But then I had never had the opportunity to think, but what happens if the tap like closes in all of a sudden they say consulting ban and you can't work with us anymore. Like you'd be really exposed from a business perspective. And the having the extra energy and the extra capacity to think allowed me to show okay, I need to stand a second platform on a different client just to make sure that I'm just de-risking my personal business and also just de-risking it for my team as a whole. And that paid off because we now have got a second platform that is like really emerging and accelerating. And I honestly think that if I hadn't done some of this, this wouldn't this wouldn't have happened. I think the second one is that my teams recognize me again. And you can see in the way they're interacting with me, the shoulders are down, they're relaxed is this the sort of like human connection again. And you just see that as a virtual circle because then they are then their way with our teams and we get this like halo effect. And then the final thing is that I'm really enjoying being a parent, apart from yesterday yesterday was in a good day. But the majority of the time I'm actually just enjoying it and I look forward to going back and like listening to her and all her stories about school and being like silly and playing. Whereas before it was like such a chore that sort of like 6pm to 8pm was a was a real drag. So, so yeah, those would say are the three things that the addressing the fundamentals has delivered for me. It is amazing how things, you know, whether it's leadership or parenting can be both such a burden and then such a transformative amazing rewarding experience. And so much of that depends on you and how you not only show up, but how you perceive it. And that is kind of the the polarity of of our lives, which I think is so important around this. So this is probably a great place. To open up and get and to maybe share some of the questions that have come in from our members so we can get them involved and really get this conversation going. So and any great questions that you have perculated. We have got a lot of great questions. Thank you so much, Paula. We've been the test being very active. So what I'll do is kind of I've also had some other questions come in kind of previously and sort of by other channels. So I might kind of group a few things together. But there's a really interesting one here. From Connie. So that and I recognize this in a lot of other clients as well. Like, love my idea of the to be vision. But what I found in the past is that I get excited when I create it, but I don't keep using it. And I think other are others who kind of experience the same. Like, how did you manage to really own your to be vision. I know you talked about the different color days, but that really kind of only in stepping into and being becoming your to be vision. Any ideas, any tips there. So some of the things that has really worked for me, Connie is that I used the image in it. So I mean, I spent a lot of time crafting the to be vision. And that was the first thing the Laura and I did together. And I've I constantly evolve it actually a little bit. I tweaked as I learn more about who I who I really want to be. So the text is sort of like live in breathe in with some like core messages, who has really helped me is that I attached a photo of it. And it's a shame that I can show you guys on the camera. But basically is my daughter. In my in my home region of of northern Spain. And it was on her very first hike. Now I have to say I hate hiking. I'm like just I've grew up in the city. So I love concrete. But but I connected with nature actually really grants me and being at home in in when my roots are in Spain really grants me. So is a photo of like her first hike in this forest. And we had such a moment where I was with my my family. I was with her. And I was sort of like talking about some of the work that I'm doing. So it almost like everything happened magically in in those two hours that I was in there. So I that brings that that image brings me back to the kind of leader that I want to be in what I want to be doing at work, but also how I want to show up for her and my family. So interestingly by adding the photo to the to be vision and all of the text. I sort of started to connect the feeling of how I think I feel when I'm living my to be vision in that photo. Now and then it went to okay from reading it to just looking at the photo to now just have to think in my mind's eye about that photo and I evokes the feeling in me. And I think that's what made what's made it part of my part of my routine basically because before I when I'm transitioning from from work to home, I go on the train is a very short train ride. I am I live in central London. But I sort of have that image in my head when I'm doing the final stretch of the walk from the station to to my flat and that sort of like gives me back into the sort of to be home vision. So yeah. So imagery. I think my work for some I guess if you like visually orientated. No, I think that's so true and I know many others have really kind of found that to be the case as well that that image can be so important. There's one here from Anna. You know, super interesting story and you know, appreciated the sharing this sort of the people pleasing and the burnout that they're both kind of tracks and is there any. Do you have fear of kind of falling into those traps again and if so, how do you deal with that fear. Big time Anna. I'm not sure we'll ever like stop being people, pleases to be honest. I'm trying to I'm trying to think where is her editor as well. So I sometimes listen to my daughter when she comes back from school with a gold star and I'm like, what are you happy about? The fact that somebody gave you a gold star or what you did to achieve the gold star just to see whether she's extrinsically or intrinsically motivated because I hate the thought that I could have passed this on to her. But I think it kind of like lives with me every day and and sometimes when I have like a real like punch the air moment at work or when somebody like gives me praise at work. I really take the time to understand where my excitement is coming from is my excitement coming because say for example, I am like intrinsically motivated and happy about say the development of somebody in my team or because somebody has patted me in the head and has told me aren't you an amazing leader. And I really like force myself to connect with the feeling and say, where is the the sort of like dopamine hit coming from hair power like is it coming from what you did or is it coming from the fact that it's been recognized externally and it's just a constant like I really force myself to go through that exercise because I guess if I don't my tendency would be to like seek those taps like on the shoulder and on the head. And I suppose to the actual thing that the really gives me the joy so I don't think I'll ever stop being it. I just need to make sure that I'm disciplined with myself in in not chasing after it. That's amazing. That's like next level for body literacy, I think. This one's it came sort of externally this question from James, but you you mentioned this regenerative leadership. Can you can you talk a little bit more about that because it's a great expression. What does what's your meaning about what's your meaning of that. So I think we just exploring it actually and I'm kind of starting to do and it would be great to actually get the thoughts from the ball circle on what would it what would it mean to be a regenerative leader, but I think is somebody that is it comes is somebody that can drive the organization to regenerate itself so that they can face the constant challenges outside. And then from an internal perspective, I guess it is somebody that can constantly like re energize themselves and and reconnect with like the purpose so that you can then lead others so I think for me when I lost it a little bit earlier this year, I found myself chasing the dollars and chasing the revenue. As opposed to chasing the connection with my clients and chasing the ultimate patient impact and and I think that was that was part of the like the beginning of the other regeneration this there's really reconnecting back to to the to the purpose knowing that everything around you is going to to evolve. But then there must be some some truth that are very linked to your values that you always have to kind of be honest about and hold on to so yeah some some early thoughts. Now I love it and and we can definitely look at that sort of maybe you know polling people what what their thoughts are on that I think that's a that's an interesting idea. One here from from Jennifer and I'm sure Scott will have a view on this as well talk about the you talk about the basics and the fundamentals and you know totally get that what Jennifer says is. Jennifer says it. she struggles with, you know, when she's facing these very complex issues. So, and that's, you know, typically what we're dealing with on a daily basis. So how do you balance that simplification and basics without overlooking the important details that, you know, are involved in a complex issue? Great question. I think, Jennifer, what I would, I mean, the way that I living at the moment is that I need to take it back to basics with myself so that I can have the energy to deal with a complexity. I think what was starting to happen to me is that I had so much complexity around me like, we made an acquisition, so I was integrating a team of 70 into our team. We had like changes in like leadership above me. We had like just the very kind of turbulent market environment like everybody is experiencing people issues and then just kind of all the challenges of home. And I think what I was finding is that I didn't have the clarity, sorry, I didn't have the sort of energy and also the sort of the mind clarity to be able to discern between what was important, what was urgent, what could be delegated, what couldn't. So basically, I was going after everything. And I think by then applying the basics to myself of like, okay, you need to create those breaks, you need to fuel yourself in the right way, you need to be kind to yourself. Then I created a little bit more mind space to then be able to just make the right choices. I think that's what happened. I was just, I was throwing complexity at complexity. I was just to complex myself. And one thing to say, and actually, when I started the kind of the the the Tignum journey, I thought it was going to be like hugely complex. And I was going to be like censored up to the max. And I was getting going to get all this data on my biology and like link it with my calendar and some complex algorithm would give me the answer. And I couldn't have been more surprised. It was like, oh, take it back to basics. Like, where are your, what are your biggest, what are your biggest energy drains right now? What's going to give you the biggest impact? And let's go after that. And I think that's that's what we did. And then allowed me to deal with a complexity around me in a in just a better way, as opposed to I'll deal with whatever, whatever fire is bigger and closer to me, I'll deal with that one first. And it is interesting. If I could just jump in and just for a second, when we're in the moment of chaos, it is so impossible for the brain to find simplicity. And so this idea of having to flip that upside down and starting from you with a place of calmness and simplicity and then being able to enter complex situations and create clarity, that's so important. And your idea of, you know, of taking these days one one day for yourself every three months, I try to do the same thing I found, you know, it's amazing when you go for hike in the mountains by yourself, how everything suddenly falls into this simple pattern you're like, I couldn't see it because I was in the middle of it. But now it all makes sense. And I used to one of my mentors, the X fire chief of the Phoenix Fire Department, you would go to lunch with him and he would pull out a napkin and you'd have this really complex problem you were trying to solve. And he would take out a napkin and draw, you know, Scott, it's as simple. Mrs. Smith has a house. Her house is on fire. She needs water on that fire to put it out. And he would just like break it down to the most simple elements. And you would leave there just shaking your head go, that is so true. Why am I making this so complicated? So I really love the connection of the sustainable human performance and the the world that we live in. No, exactly. Very interesting one here for Mary, and we've actually had another question kind of on this theme as well. Like how do you deal with the issue of permanent sleep deprivation and consulting? You know, I feel like this is a huge element in being able to apply all of the strategies that, you know, we know about, you know, in that environment, how do you advocate for this approach without seeming to be less committed? Like is that how do you deal with that issue? So it's such a fundamental question, Mary, and for I guess everybody in professional services. So any that is anybody that is in law and investment banking or like even VCs will probably be dealing with the same. When your time is in your own, but if somebody else is in actually somebody's paying a lot of money for your time, you feel like you have to be constantly on the go to kind of show your worth. We had a super fascinating discussion in our partner group yesterday. So we have an initiative that I spearheaded when I came back from burnout, which is to sort of kind of transform the mental health of our organization. And we did all of the usual things that you do, which is, oh, let's do like yoga and mindfulness and blah, blah, blah, blah, and let's give people extra time blah, blah, blah. And then it came to the point where it was like, guys, unless we get to the root cause, we can put, like, lipstick on a pig. But this isn't going to change anybody's lives. So we're now dealing with the sort of underlying cause as a part of the symptom. And it's ugly, marion, and everyone. It is just not nice because what it comes to ultimately in consulting is, do you have the confidence in yourself to say to the client, actually, this is going to cost you more because I don't want people to die delivering this project. And I want them to have a decent life. And I want them to work like max 10, 11 hours. And then also if things are going wrong or if they ask for extra stuff to say, fine, I can do it. But it's going to cost you this much more or it's going to cost you this this amount of time. And I think in general in consulting, there's so much competition, there's so many firms out there. There were probably default to saying, actually, we'll do any cost and the team will have to just just go through it. So we very much in that in that journey right now. And by no means, I mean, we are the very beginning of the journey. We're now acknowledging that that's what we need to do. But we're going to start to kind of pilot a few things, which is to get a whenever you sell a project and you're pressing a project to getting a stand-alone pair of eyes to say, okay, is your resource going to be conducive to people having a good kind of work-life balance or not? So some checks and balances so that we protect teams a little bit more. But it's, I mean, it's the issue that is that is right in the industry. For me personally, I can function if I sleep less than seven hours. I just can't and I go into I could go into getting more episodes of this migraine and so on. So I just have to be very truthful about what I take on and what I don't take on. But I'm at the top of the food chain as it were. So I can be more more selectivorous other people and people in my teams and so on. I sort of more are the mercy of whatever the the partner asked them to do. So it's harder there. Yeah, it's not it's not an easy there's not an easy answer, I guess, is the no, I'm professional services. It's very very written with this when when your time is in your own. Yeah. So question here again from Anna, like how would you describe the level of support you get from, you know, family members, whether it's partner, parents, others, like do you feel kind of understood and supported or do you find yourself leaning more towards, you know, I have to take care of these things myself. And I guess it it sort of leads from that work environment because it's also about kind of leading by example, but like how does that work for you? Yeah. So I'll address sort of the different kind of spheres of of of my life. So look, I think at home, I'm super lucky. I've got a we're in a dual career household, which I think is a is another like real difficult situation to have when both careers are firing at the at the same time. It also happens to be somebody use this term with me the other day and I love it, which is sort of this this kind of group of people that might be between life 40 and 50. You are at that when your career is really accelerating, you probably still have kids at home or your kids might be relatively young and then your parents are starting to get sick and potentially die and somebody coined this the rush hour of life. And I couldn't agree more. It really does feel like the rush hour of life. And in a dual career household, you really have to like look at each other and go like, okay, we're we're in this together and and we need to learn to trade off have each other's backs and know the the is going to be bumpy. So I'm very lucky that I've got a kind of a husband that understands this. I'm not going to say it's easy because it's not and sometimes it feels like he's my housemate and we've got this like logistical marriage where we're playing like tag team like you have the child now and then you have the child and started and then you have the child and Sunday and I'm flying this and I'm flying that and like everything's very logistical but I trust that this will be a face and then I'll see my husband on the other side and we'll still love each other but but I think having that at home is fundamental and I don't think I'd be able to do it otherwise. At work is an interesting thing. I am when I came back from from burnout it was a little bit of like okay I'm going to do things my way and if this firm takes me great and if they don't I'll I'll go somewhere. else because I needed to set these boundaries in order for me to be able to work again. I think that gave me the platform to then start to talk about these topics inside the firm. Now as a senior partner, I have got a more leeway in legitimacy. I wouldn't say that I feel supported from the organization if you know what I mean. What I feel is that I have the flexibility and the independence to do it, but I don't feel that I have this body of the super senior leaders in my CEO that says, "Amazing. We've got your back. Do what you need to do." I'm sort of doing it myself. A bit of a mix to be honest, a bit of a mix of having to fly my own flag, but also knowing that I've got people in my corner. And then the other thing that I would say as well is that the team, like my team, because they kind of see me lead in this way, and I took very openly to them about all of these things, then they also have your back. And then you can have your kind of like Epsen flows and like peaks and troughs of activity, knowing that you've got like this army behind you that are kind of in together without you as well, with you as well. Paula, can I ask you one question here too around this because I feel like there's this element of self discovery, but there's also this element of doing business differently, and that actually you're all-how moments where you've come up with these best ideas, we're not in the normal way of working, which was chaotic and high levels of fatigue. Is this the impetus of your thoughts around this concept of regenerative leadership? And maybe just talk a teeny bit about that, because I feel like that's where we are. Big time, I think, Scott. And you know what, when I came back from leave, I thought to myself, how can I show up to this place in a way where I'm not going to feel like I'm putting a super hero costume on every morning? Do you know what I mean? When you have to like go to work and dress up as something that you're not, pretend for a number of hours and then be exhausted because it's not the real you. And I think so when I came back, I was like, well, I'm going to be who I am. And if it works, it works. And if it doesn't, it doesn't. And I think the level of openness, transparency, and kind of the leading authentically, and like overdosing on the human side of things, rather than maybe on the kind of more traditional, transactional business numbers side of things, is served me well. In a world now where we're going into challenges around generative AI, wars everywhere, kind of climate catastrophe, we've got each other like us as human beings really to crack some of these problems. And I think if we don't show up in a way that is like vulnerable, that is authentic, that is empathetic, like before the robots come to get us, I think we might be doomed. So I think there is something in it. But I have to say then when the pressure gets turned up and I was feeling that in the middle of the year, I sort of felt the urge to comply and almost like abandoned this like real, real me, like lead me human me, because I felt that, oh, maybe that's not, maybe that's not going to get me there. Maybe I need to default to like the standards and the expectations of what a normal leader should be doing. And I have to say the further I got from my little soul into this perceived image of what I thought I need to be, the worst things won for me. So I think, yeah, I think maybe there is, there is something in there. Like how authentically can you, can you be yourself, show it to others? And then maybe that will start something something really positive in the organization. But is it interesting, you know, you mentioned when I asked you about the benefits, the first benefit that you shared was this extra capacity to think and be curious. And that you actually in that state realized a risk that you had by having all your eggs in one client basket. And that expanded your portfolio, which actually strengthened the company. So sometimes I feel and I will ask you because you're in the out in this world all the time, that that's part of what people are afraid of is that if you go to this type of regenerative leader, like you described it's open, authentic, human centric, vulnerable, compassionate, but all towards a purpose. So not just because that's nice to have, but driven towards a purpose of driving impact that people would hopefully realize. This is actually the only option to be successful in business because the other was your first journey that started in 2016. More great leaders. I mean, we can all hear your talent and what you bring to the world and bring to your clients, bring to your daughter. More leaders like you will just burn out or drop out. And so it feels to me like we're at this moment in our evolution, maybe where people have to realize there is no other option but regenerative leaders or regenerative leadership. Do you feel that? I hope so. And that's kind of like the kind of like gorilla movement that I'm trying to do having here. And I don't know if I'll be successful, but I think to me is like one of the things that I've observed is and I don't know if the same happens to the rest of the circle, but as we promote people in here and some of the like the homegrown tantra, external talent makes it to partner is almost like they get lobotomized and they've got, they go through this assimilation process where like I'm going to become the leader that I was led by, which is like an ancient way of leading in what I'm trying to do with the team here is this break the generational cycle. And like don't change, like don't put the costume on the moment you become a leader. Just stay true to her you are and then let's see if that way and this generation that is coming through that is much more connected with the societal issues that is much more fierce about protecting the boundaries. I know that we all complain a lot about leading millennials and so on, but I think there's something to kind of like learn from them and make sure they don't lose some of that. So I for sure think that the future will be brighter in this way. Again, not to say that it needs to become like all soft and so on. I think the point that you made is the right one Scott that has got to be the connection to impact for sure. But I do hope at least in the little role that I can that I can play in this organization that I get to transform it and that there are more regenerative style leaders in here that then can go and do big things in the world that they decide to leave this. Well, today you achieved your mission because you made the world a little bit of a better place so we can we can say thank you for that and thank you for joining me today and our member round table. And thank you everyone for joining us and we'll see you in our next next session. Thank you everybody. It was a pleasure. Thank you for listening to the TIGNUM thought cast. If you've enjoyed this or any of our other thought cast episodes, please subscribe so you don't miss out on future releases. If you'd like to get in touch with TIGNUM, please email us at [email protected]. Until next time, be bold, be more and keep ruling your impact.