The Talent Forge: Shaping Workforce Behaviors with Jay Johnson

How To Lead When You Don’t Know: Innovation, Engagement, & Psychological Safety with Alan Gregerman

• Jay Johnson • Season 1 • Episode 66

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What if admitting “I don’t know” is the most powerful leadership move you can make? We sit down with innovation consultant and author Alan Gregerman to unpack the “wisdom of ignorance” and why certainty can quietly sink companies while curiosity keeps them alive. From Kmart and Blockbuster to the next disruptor waiting in a garage, we trace how organizations lose relevance—and how to build the habits that keep you learning faster than the market shifts.

Alan shares practical scripts leaders can use to normalize not knowing, create psychological safety, and invite teams into co-creation. We get specific about middle managers caught between proving competence and sparking change, and we outline a monthly challenge cadence that turns everyone into a problem solver. You’ll hear why 99% of new ideas are borrowed, how to send people outside the building to find them, and what it takes to translate those insights into action customers care about.

If you’re ready to stop being six people’s Google and start inspiring a team of builders, this conversation gives you the language, rituals, and mindset to begin. Subscribe, share with a leader who needs it, and leave a review telling us the first experiment you’ll launch in 30 days.

Meet the Host
Jay Johnson works with people and organizations to empower teams, grow profits, and elevate leadership. He is a Co-Founder of Behavioral Elements®, a two-time TEDx speaker, and a designated Master Trainer by the Association for Talent Development. With a focus on behavioral intelligence, Jay has delivered transformational workshops to accelerate high-performance teams and cultures in more than 30 countries across four continents. For inquiries, contact jay@behavioralelements.com or connect below!

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayjohnsonccg/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jayjohnsonccg/
Speaker Website - https://jayjohnsonspeaks.com

Jay Johnson:

Welcome to this episode of the Talent Forge, where together we are shaping workforce behaviors. I'm excited to bring in guest Alan Gregerman today for a conversation on innovation, engagement, and the workforce. So Alan just recently, on October 14th, dropped his most recent book, The Wisdom of Ignorance. And I just fell in love with the title immediately. So welcome to the show, Alan.

Alan Gregerman:

Well, greetings. Thanks for having me on. Delighted to be here.

Jay Johnson:

I'm excited to dig into the title of your how did you come up with this title? Because when I think the wisdom of ignorance, you know, the oxymoronic uh approach to that. And we all think I don't want to be ignorant, but what do you mean by that? And how did you come to that?

Alan Gregerman:

Okay, good. Yeah. So this is my fourth book, and I'd like to think all of my books have a bit of a counterintuitive nature to them. Um, I came up with it because I'm an innovation consultant. I've been working with companies and organizations around the world for longer than I care to admit on your show. Um, but I've worked with like 400 companies and organizations around the world. And one of the things I've found is that often they get stuck not innovating because they know too much as opposed to knowing too little. Think about this: the world's changing super fast. And so if the world's changing super fast, the reality is we need to change along with it. Change means letting go of some of the things we know and being open to the things we don't know. So the wisdom of ignorance is really about the notion that for any problem that we haven't solved yet or any opportunity we haven't unlocked, actually stepping back and taking a fresh look, being open to the idea that we don't know the answer is really the key to success.

Jay Johnson:

I love that. It reminded me as you were saying that, I was thinking of Dr. Alan Langer and the concept of like mindfulness versus mindlessness. And, you know, I think she uses the example. If you go to your, you know, your parents' house, well, you've been there a bunch of times, you know everything, so you're not coming in. You're coming in already knowing what to expect. But if you came to my house, which you've never been to before, you'd be curious, you'd be looking all around, you'd be uh blissfully ignorant to the environment until you experienced it. Is is the wisdom of ignorance being able to kind of step back and how do how do we do that? Like what does that behavior look like in an organization?

Alan Gregerman:

Well, so I think it's kind of easy, actually. But I think what gets in the way is often leaders or organizations that believe they're smarter than all the other folks in their industry or all their competitors. And so they believe they've figured it out. And so that's the challenge is always believing that we've figured it out means we never make the progress we need to make. So let's step back for a second. So ignorance, you know, the idea of the wisdom of ignorance is not the wisdom of stupidity. I could have called the book that. If you think about the entire scope of human history, it's not knowing stuff, but it's not knowing stuff that's been the key to progress, right? So no one knew how to make fire until somebody did. They figured it out. Um, no one knew how to harness water to make power until somebody figured that out. Uh, no one knew how to create cool glasses or optical lenses that would improve the sight of roughly 60% of the people in the world need some type of vision correction. Um, but it wasn't until the 1600s that somebody figured that out.

Jay Johnson:

And they didn't figure it out because I'm getting dangerously close to that, by the way. Okay.

Alan Gregerman:

Well, when you're ready, just reach out to me. I'll share what I know. I've been wearing glasses since kindergarten. And but so the idea throughout human history, we see problems or challenges, we don't know the answer. We commit to learning. It's what I call enlightened ignorance. Not knowing, but wanting to know the answer. And so in the book, I provide kind of a formula for how we can all be remarkably enlightened and ignorant. But back to kind of what you were asking, I think most companies, it's a bad look to say, I don't know the answer, right? And so leaders don't want to say that. HR leaders don't want to say that. People who are program managers don't want to say that. When I'm a salesperson out on a call, if somebody asks a question, I don't want to say, I have absolutely no idea what the answer is. But the reality is we need to be humble, we need to admit we don't know the answer, and then we need together to find the best answer. That's how we're going to make progress.

Jay Johnson:

So it seems to me is one of the things that we can think about is being comfortable with the vulnerability that everyone is lacking some kind of knowledge or has gaps or is ignorant of something and really embracing that. I'd love to dig into the behaviors of this because you're absolutely right. You know, that uh many of the leaders that I've worked with, I work with a lot of managers, so sort of the mid-level managers. And I think there's a huge fear of being able to say, I don't know. I don't have the answer. It's almost as though that like once we get the title or once we get put into a position of power, it's it's scary to be able to say, yeah, I'm I'm uneducated on that, or I'm ignorant to that. How do we help people shift that behavior? Because that's a I think it's such an important one is when we become a know-it-all versus a learn it all, uh, you know, there's there's no space for that growth. So how do we get past that fear, Alan?

Alan Gregerman:

Well, yes. So for middle managers, it's particularly a challenge because they've often relatively recently gotten promoted. Now I'm a manager. Now I need to appear as though I have my whatever together, you know, and I need the folks who are on my team to feel, oh, there's a reason I'm the manager. They picked the right person. This person can lead us. Now it turns out the best leading behavior is to say, we can be way better than we've ever been before. Let's figure it out together. I don't know how we can be awesome. I know what we do today, and I'm determined to make sure we keep doing a good job today. But I know in the future we have to be awesome, and so let's figure that out together. So, how do we kind of change that mindset? Well, obviously to me, it starts kind of at the top of an organization. So we need whoever is the head of an organization to come clean and say, I know a lot, but I don't know what the future is going to look like. And I know we're gonna need to learn some new things, and let's go on a journey together to do that. So that's the whole idea of coming clean, of saying, it's okay. We can all take a breath. We just have to be better in the future. Let's figure it out together. I think what people are looking for is leaders that simply say, This is where we're going. I'm excited to get there, and I can play a part in making that happen. So think about yourself as a manager. Wouldn't you want all the people on your team to be energized or what we often call empowered to really be helping you to be remarkable at what you do, help your part of the organization. So I think what we need to do is we need to not say, I'm like a moron, I don't know this, I've petered out, I'm an imposter. We're all impostors in a world changing super fast. What we need, in fact, is to just have as an idea and good currency, it's okay not to know because the future is going to be different and we're gonna have to be different. So it's kind of presumptuous to assume we know all the answers now.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah. Well, and uh in reality, even if you know the answers today, even if somehow you had a magical book that when you got promoted, all of the answers to all of the questions was put into your head by tomorrow, in the world that we're living with, with change in such a rapid cycle, it's gonna be different. The book that you got yesterday is not going to be necessarily the same book that you need today. So I I love this concept of sort of embracing the collaborative aspect of the team. Uh, I think a lot of people, you know, let's let's play this scenario out. Because I know that we've got a number of managers, a number of coaches and trainers, and even HR listening in on this. Let's play this out. I see a manager, and that manager refuses, refuses to necessarily say, I don't know. Okay. For whatever reason. It could be that fear, it could be the vulnerability, it could feel like they have a target on their back. What are some of the things? And and I know you would agree with this, but oftentimes it's the lack of psychological safety that keeps us from engaging or being vulnerable or opening up. What are some of the things that we might think about to do to increase the psychological safety in a space to be able to create that condition for innovation?

Alan Gregerman:

Okay. So think about my role as a middle manager, let's say. Um, I have two kinds of audiences, I believe. I have to manage up, you know, so I have to get the leaders to think I know what I'm doing, that it was wise for them to make me a manager. And then I have to manage my team. I don't want to say manage down. I'll say I have to manage to the side. I have to get a team of hopefully kind of equals to do awesome work. Well, to manage up, I need to say to the folks who I report to, you know, I'm determined to make sure we're efficient and effective and doing the stuff we committed to today. But you need me to be open to the possibility that tomorrow we need to be different or better. I'd like your support to continue to be awesome at what we do today, but to experiment with kind of new ideas that are going to start moving us to the future. I'd like to connect with our customers better, whether they're internal or external. I'd like to ask them what matters to them. And then I'd like to figure out where we need to get to. And then I want to get my team to be energized to try. Now, from the lower end or the vertical end or whatever, my team, I need to go to all those people and say, you guys are awesome today. We're doing exactly what the customer wants today. We're developing products, services, solutions, business models, customer experiences they really respect. But I know we need to be better. And I'm counting on all of you because I believe you're super smart. I believe all of you have the potential to be geniuses. And together, collectively as geniuses, we can really be amazing. We can be absolutely the best at what we do. So it's asking the folks above us to give us some permission to try and be better. And then it's asking the folks on our team to participate because we believe in them. Not because I'm simply saying just do this, but I'm saying to them, you have ideas. Your ideas matter. We're going to take all the ideas we have and figure out the right path to it. Now, I think those two things kind of change the equation. Now, of course, they get stuck if when I try to manage up, the big bosses say, now just do your job. Come on. We've got orders to fill in things to do. I always like to say, you know, today I come into work, I know what I need to do. Um, next Monday might not be that different. The following Monday might not be that different, but some Monday in the future, what I do isn't going to be good enough. And so we as a team need to figure out how to be better. You know, so many people say to me, they approach me and they say, Well, I hear you're really good, but we really are good at what we do. Um, our customers adore us. And I always say, your customers adore you because they haven't found anything better yet. Or they adore you today. Yes, once exactly. Once they find something better, they will drop you like a hot potato or whatever.

Jay Johnson:

Look at every single organization, Alan, right? Like when you think about somebody, everybody loved Kmart. They loved the blue light specials, they loved all of those aspects, and then all of a sudden, they didn't modernize, they didn't adapt, and they didn't, they didn't position themselves for the customer of tomorrow. They were really stuck in the customer of yesterday.

Alan Gregerman:

So Yeah, so that's a great example. And think about this for everybody listening. 260 of the Fortune 500 20 years ago don't exist today. So that's more than half of the great businesses in America that no longer remained relevant, like Kmart. They lost their mojo or whatever they lost. They lost their connection with customers, and they simply disappeared. That's kind of shocking, isn't it? Well, and it's going to happen faster every five years. So we need to position ourselves to not let that happen.

Jay Johnson:

Well, and yeah, I even think about somebody like Blockbuster, right? They saw the writing on the wall, had the resources that they could have utilized the wisdom of ignorance and said, hey, somebody's onto something over here. Let's jump in and learn a little bit more about this and how the customers are reacting to it. And we might still have a few stores here and there, but there's one.

Alan Gregerman:

It's in Bend, Oregon, right. But there were 9,094 Blockbuster stores, mostly in the U.S., some in Canada. I think a few in Mexico. They've disappeared, right? And you're exactly right. So the folks at Blockbuster saw that the writing was on the wall, that people were starting to first get DVDs like Netflix did, and then eventually they were moving towards something called streaming that was appearing. Um, actually, the folks at Netflix who were struggling early on offered to sell themselves to Blockbuster for $50 million, and Blockbuster said, no, we're good. We got retail stores. Heartbreaking. Well, yeah. How many people listening went into a Sears this past weekend?

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, yeah. Well, and I think that's so uh it's so spot on to what you had said, though, is Blockbuster thought that they knew everything. They didn't create the space for it. They thought that they had it. They had the secret sauce, we've been doing this, we've got 10,000 stores. What do you know? And I there's it's there is such a danger in that, not only at that corporate level, but just as an individual doing our job. Right. I I think one of the phrases that I hear boards of directors, especially like when you have a new person that joins a board of directors, and you know, they come in with innovation, and and this this comes to a question, Alan, because I think this is so important. I come in, I'm on a new board of directors, I've got all these ideas, right? I was either elected, appointed, whatever it is. I come in and I hit a wall of that's not how we do things, or uh, we've always done it this way, and that way works. What happens when you're the person that is leaning into the innovation, is is is you know uh living the wisdom of ignorance. But you receive just that pushback or resistance from the wall of no.

Alan Gregerman:

Right. So you have a I think a couple of options. Well, you have always have three options, I think. But the options that I think of are you say to yourself, can I create a campaign to influence enough of these people to realize that we need to change? And I say that as a board member, but I would also say that as a new employee. I come in with ideas, I've been somewhere else, I have some fresh perspectives. I look around and I see that we're awesome. I'm lucky to be here, but there are things we could do better. I suggest those things. And so I either create a campaign in which I get enough other people to think those are good ideas, or I say, nah, I thought I could make something happen here. I thought I would be valuable, I thought they would listen to some of the ideas I have. Um I can't make it happen. I'm gonna look somewhere else, or I just sit back and say it's a nine to five job. We obviously don't want the last two things to happen, right? As managers, we don't want to lose the best members of our team. As HR leaders, we don't want to have a talent drain of people who could actually make us better who decide, nah, it's impossible. I just can't push the rock up the hill. Um, so we need to get people to figure out how to make things happen. And we need to be more open to ideas. And as a board, a board needs to be open to ideas. But think about how most boards are picked. Some of them are the friends of the leaders of a company. Others are picked because they have a certain technical function that, of course, isn't going to be a function that's going to suggest ways we need to change. And then other folks, I don't know how they got on boards. I know I, as a somewhat deviant thinker, am not regularly invited onto boards.

Jay Johnson:

I would say that some of them got onto the boards back when Jesus appointed them, and they've been there ever since. We're just waiting for them to give up their seat. Good point. Okay.

Alan Gregerman:

Yeah. That's fair.

Jay Johnson:

Well, I I I want to bring this into and I'm going to keep the thread here, but I think that this is really important. I I've been doing a lot of different conversations and talks on generations in the workplace. And I think that this is kind of an interesting take on the questions of innovation. You've got, and this was true, let's say 15 years ago when everybody was worried about millennials coming into the workforce and taking over. Now we're into the Gen Z. By 2030, I think the most recent stat, 32% of the workforce is going to be Gen Z. And Gen Z's Gen Z cut a little bit of a different cloth. They come in with ideas and they want to share those ideas. And I think this is going to get into some of the engagement conversation as well, right? They're coming in with ideas. They've got a very different lens in which they've uh look at the, you know, look at the world of work. And we know from generational research, generally, it's the things that you've lived through. This is this is a generation that has lived through economic uncertainty and terrorism. And they've never had uh they've never not had access to a high-powered supercomputer and a video camera in their pockets at all times. So that's definitely shaped some different behaviors. So my question is is they come in, they've got these ideas, and what ends up happening, and this is not all, this is not all generations, but let's just say Gen X. All right. So I'm close enough between Millennial and Gen X that I can pick on either of them. So I'm picking on Gen X. Gen X says, keep your head down, do your work, don't, don't get out of line, don't jump in there, you know, stay out of trouble. And they think, on some level, I'm protecting this person. They just don't know, they don't understand, they don't have the experience. So I'm saying they're doing it from this place of like, I'm gonna call it, they're doing it with the right intention, but maybe having a negative impact on innovation, engagement, etc. How do you navigate some of those different experiential gaps, right? Like you and I might have an experiential gap, but it seems to me both of us are the collaborative type of creatures that would be like, wow, that's fascinating. Okay, let's hear what you got. Where's that coming from? How do you create or instill that sort of idea towards collaboration when you do have some level of experience or disparities in knowledge or uh expertise?

Alan Gregerman:

Okay, that's fair. But let me let me go back for one second, because one of the things you said is particularly important, I think, for me and hopefully for your audience. And that is the idea, as companies and organizations, wouldn't we want new people to come in and make us better? So I just want to put that out there. Now I'll share what I think we ought to do. So some of the people listening are in organizations that have something called orientation. And so orientation is kind of an interesting thing. We come in for a couple of days, we hang out with the other new employees, they teach us exactly how we've always done things, and then they give us our work and say, here's your cube, good luck, may the force be with you. We'll see you at the holiday party. So if I were to begin to change this, I would change the moment somebody arrived. It is so competitive to get a job now that I'm guessing whoever you hired has done an awful lot of homework on your company. They know your values, they're on the website, they know roughly what you do, they know roughly what they've bargained for. Now they show up, and here's what I'd do. I'd say, we're delighted to have you here. I'd give them a clipboard and I'd give them blank sheets of paper with a line down the middle. I'd say, what we want you to do for the next couple days is just wander around. Knock on people's doors, hopefully they're open, talk to people, attend meetings, pay attention to us, walk the halls, look and see what we do, walk the factory if we have a factory. And what we want you to do as you're doing that is on the right hand side of the page, write everything down that you see us doing and you say, gosh, I'm so lucky to be here. These folks are awesome. And on the left hand side of the page, we want you to write down everything where you say to yourself, these folks are clueless. Do they ever get out of the office? Do they have any idea what's going on in the world around them? Then what we want you to do is we want you to present your list to our management team. For the things you think were really good, we'll pat ourselves on the back. For the things you think were clueless, we'll have a conversation about those. And then we'd like you to pick one of those, day two, day three, and help us to be better. The only caveat is we'd like you to find some other people that you've met along the way that will help you do it. So what we're saying is when somebody arrives, they matter. I don't care what generation they are, they're here to make us better. They're gonna do their job, but they're gonna take on an extra project to figure out a way to make us better that's obvious to them, and they're gonna find folks to collaborate with. They're gonna build a team and connect with other people. That changes the equation so dramatically. And so I've done that with a lot of the companies we work with. And suddenly new people are energized. Talk about engagement. What's the most difficult thing for people? Is they show up and they feel pretty quickly it's hard to connect, it's hard to belong. Now, Ed, one of the things I think that you were alluding to, they've also gone new young people have gone through COVID, right? And so they went through an era where they actually were convinced it was great to work remotely. I mean, what a no, I don't know. There are a bunch of people listening who probably like to work remotely. But if I'm a new employee, I want to be around other people. I want to learn from other people, I want to be mentored, I want to have a face-to-face with people. I don't just want to be on a screen and engage with people. So the reality is we have a generation in which they're already kind of disattached or disassociated with our company. And now we just tell them, okay, sit at your kitchen table and just crunch this workout, and you know, and we'll meet once a week. And that's awesome, isn't it? So I think we miss the chance to truly engage them, give them a sense of belonging, and tap the genius in them. But again, I go back to this idea. I don't want another employee who isn't going to make us better. I don't need that. Employees that just come and continue to crunch out the work and make us the same, that's exhausting for me.

Jay Johnson:

Well, and Alan, I love that because basically what you're doing is turning all of those new employees into high-priced consultants. Hey, come in here and take a look at what we're doing as an outside objective person that's going to be able to give us some recommendations and guidance to fix those. I mean, I there's an entire field of work for that, and you're getting an onboarded employee engaged and owning something that early, that's a pretty cool experience.

Alan Gregerman:

Yeah, no, I th I had never thought about it that way because I'd hate to think they put me out of work.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, thanks, Alan. Appreciate it.

Alan Gregerman:

No, no, no. But if they land and are happy and make a difference, I'm happy. It's great. I think we just need people to be bring their best to work, and they don't bring their best unless we say to them we actually care about what you know.

Jay Johnson:

Alan, I've noticed in and I'm loving this conversation. I I've noticed in a number of organizations um critical thinking. And I'm going to call it critical thinking, problem solving skills are often being commodified and just owned by leadership. And you know, you got a bunch of people that are working, let's say, let's say a mid-level manager who oversees six people. And this is one of the jokes that I've made with some of the mid-level managers that I've worked with is congratulations, you've become six people's Google. You're their own trusted browser. You are their AI because you constantly are solving their problems. And and I and when I say this, I don't, you know, when we're in a leadership position, we want to be supportive, we want to be helpful, we want to guide, we want to give this. But I often think that there's something lost there, that we're not creating the conditions for co-collaboration and in solving a problem, or that you know, we become over-reliant on going to that quote expert authority to get our problem solved. How can we really inspire? And I think inspire is the right word here, and you can correct me if if you hear a different word. How can we inspire people to maybe take the time to try? Because I I see a lot of I see a lot of just help me get this done, rather than the struggle it takes to actually learn how to do it.

unknown:

Right.

Alan Gregerman:

No, so I think that's fair. Um if I ruled the world for many of the folks who are listening, as a leader, what I would do is each month, I would try to identify a critical issue that we need to be better at as an organization in order to move forward. And I would put that out there to everyone. And I don't care if they're 20 people or 50 people or 500 or 10,000 people in an organization. I would say this is something we need to be better at. We need to improve technical support, we need to improve our distribution chain. We need to use technology in new ways. We need to unlock the value of AI in a way that it supports us as humans. Um and so I'd put that challenge out and I'd say this month we're all gonna think about it. I'd like you to organize as teams who are passionate about an idea, do some thinking about it, and then come back to us with your ideas. And then we're gonna sort through all these ideas and figure out do we have some wisdom yet about the direction to take? So I think we need to engage people, we need to challenge them to be at their best, and we need to challenge them to also understand you know, my book, The Wisdom of Ignorance, is about innovation. And so let me share with your listeners kind of the untold truth about innovation. You know, most of the time in companies we need to be innovative, and so whoever's the boss says, uh, bring some bright people together in a room, we might have whiteboards, sticky notes, all kinds of things, and says, you know, we need to be better at this. Does anybody have an out-of-the-box idea? It's as though we've all come to work with just inside-the-box ideas, as though we're all stupid. But now that they've asked us to turn on that part of our brain with an out-of-the-box idea, I'm all over that. But it turns out that 99% of all new ideas throughout the course of history have been based on somebody else's thinking or something someone found in nature. And so if that's the case, then it changes the equation for all these people I want to energize. I don't need to say to these people, just sit in a room and kind of look at that blank sheet of paper until your head bursts, or you need a Kit Kat bar or whatever the case is. What I want you to do is either use your phone, I don't know where my phone is, or I want you to actually get out of the office and wander around and look for the 99% of ideas that are going to make us better. What I need all of you to do are be the folks that find ideas, bring them back, and then connect those dots between an idea you found and us being better, and then we work out the details. That's actually how innovation occurs. And so what I find is folks say, well, that's great. We have like Skunkworks and a team, and these people hide in a room and they're coming up with brilliant ideas. And I go, like, why? You know, there's so many brilliant ideas out there that we just need to adapt to our world to be awesome. And so I really want folks to think about the idea that we can, I love your word inspire. Um, we have to, as leaders, inspire people to take initiative. We need to be clear about our purpose and what really matters. We need to help them focus so they don't waste their time on things that won't move the dial. But we need to move people to be inspired to try and find brilliance out there, bring it back, and then say if we tweak this idea, we could be amazing.

Jay Johnson:

I love that, Alan. So I I got another question, and I'm going to relate this. This one of the programs that we run is called Behavioral Elements. And what it does is it measures core biological drives. And the drives were actually established by two management scientists from Harvard University, Dr. Paul Lawrence, Dr. Nitt and Noria. We measure these drives. One of the drives is the drive to learn. It's associated with our hippocampal region, acetylcholine, and it's that sort of like curiosity, the natural, like hardwired neurobiology of curiosity and innovation and exploration. The opposing drive is the drive to defend. And that is the one that says, I do not like uncertainty. I don't want to do something, I don't want to walk into that cave if there is the possibility that there's a lion in that cave. I need to be certain that there's no lion in that cave. And this is much more of our drive that that establishes patterns of behavior like um systems, process, quality, etc. Each of us have these drives. Some people are lean more towards the drive to learn than they do the drive to defend. Other people lean more towards the drive to defend. How do we manage? Because and I always make this joke. If you ever get a phone call, I need you to come down to my office. Most human beings are not going to be like, yes, I'm getting a raise. They're going to be like, oh my God, what did I do? And it's immediately going to go into the threat protection, the negative protection. So we have these two opposing forces. If I am more sitting on that side of the drive to defend, I like to be sure, I like to be certain, that brings me joy, it hits my dopamine circuits. How do I how do I manage that either fear of uncertainty, fear of failure? How do I take that first step into the unknown?

Alan Gregerman:

Okay. So when you talk about the drive to live in a world of certainty, I believe that's because we believe that that's what they're paying us to do, to get the things done that we expect people to get done. So again, I hate to bring it all back to leaders, but leaders are really important. We have to, as leaders, say, we're not going to bet the ranch here. There's going to be a level of certainty here. A significant part of what you do is gonna be the stuff you're comfortable doing. I'm okay with that. But that's not gonna get us to the future. We live in an uncertain world. We all have to raise the bar. And that's why I love the whole notion of let's be great, let's continue to be better at the stuff we do. And so for those folks who like the world of certainty, I say, I just need you to figure out how we can be better at the certain part of our work. You know, the stuff that resonates with customers now. And the folks who like the world of learning, I need to energize those folks and say, I know that a big part of what we do in the future is gonna be different. You guys need to take the lead in helping us to get there. You need to ask questions, learn new things, explore the world, look for ideas, bring ideas back to us, and experiment with ways we can be better because some of those experiments are gonna lead us to be remarkable in the future. And so I like to balance those two things. Um, I learned one thing, and I have to admit, I don't have a PhD in adult developmental psychology. But one of the things I did learn from a psychology class was that adults don't change very easily. And so I'm not gonna show up one day, you know, and may wave a magic wand and say, okay, you like certainty. I'm gonna get you to be a person who likes learning and uncertainty. I know that's not the case. But I do know as leaders, we owe it to everybody to get them to understand that the world is changing. We absolutely have to do that and that they need to be part of helping us get there. You know, you've mentioned several times, and I couldn't agree more. We're gonna get there by collaborating. We're not gonna get there by all being individual superstars. We're gonna get there by bringing the diverse ideas we have together as part of a team, asking lots of questions, looking at things in different ways, and then together figuring out what's the best path forward. But we need leaders to sanction us to do that. And if I'm in an organization where a leader is kind of asleep at the wheel, the worst thing I can have is a leader who spends all of their time in the world of certainty. What I want is my leaders to be balanced. I want them to have part of their time, I don't know which hand is that, part of their time in the world of certainty, and part of their time, I want them to say, we're gonna have to do things differently. And so if I have those kind of leaders, I can find my place. And then as a person who likes certainty, and if a leader says, you don't have to worry, if you're continuing to do great work, we need you. But we want that great work to morph into us being even better. And I believe in you. You know, one of the things I know about adult development psychology, and let's be honest, I have a PhD in geography, but one of the things I know about adult developmental psychology is the idea that if we can get people to believe that we believe in them, that we believe that they have the potential to do something that changes the equation. Then I'm not horrified when somebody calls me. Then I go in and I know that they believe in me. It may not be the best news right now, but we're together going to figure out a path forward.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, and that concept of having the shared future and the trusting in the shared future is so powerful. But I love what you said. You're absolutely spot on. You know, high expectations require a high level of support and connection. You know, we can hold somebody very accountable to really high standards, but it's got to be matched with that care and support. So let's let's uh one quick question here. All right. So innovation, oftentimes, I mean, we see different innovations. We do we see people trying, try new things, try something different. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't work, but failure. Failure universally from a human perspective, uh initially, I would say most people are not comfortable with failure. Now, I think that there are some people, particularly maybe entrepreneurs, that step into it and kind of look at it maybe a little differently. It's not failure, it's a learning opportunity. I didn't fail, I'm just it's the next iteration, and so on and so forth. But with that being said, I would say a sizable portion of the population worries about failure. I don't want to try this new thing that could be better because it could cost the company a ton of money. Or I don't want to do this because if I do this and it doesn't work, my manager's gonna lose faith in me or lose that trust in me, lose that feeling in me. That feeling of failure, I think, obviously holds back. And I know that the leaders and everything else. So I'll ask a very direct question here. Do you think celebrating failures is a good practice? Or is there another way that we should approach when a failure occurs in an organization?

Alan Gregerman:

Well, so it depends how we define celebrating failures. So I think we, you know, going back to what we were talking about, I think we need to learn from failures. So is that celebrating, or is that I've learned this the next time I'm gonna do it differently? What I always tell the companies we work with is we're gonna create an engine of failing fast and failing small. So they're gonna be failures, but we're gonna do them fast because the world is moving really fast. And I'm not gonna invest a lot in an idea until I've actually proven that there are first customers out there and second that I can deliver on the idea that I have. So that changes the entire equation. What I worry about is all these companies that ask all these people to work on projects that never see the light of day, and then they've invested, as you suggest, they've invested a lot of time, they've invested a lot of kind of person power, they've invested a lot of their passion, and then it just doesn't happen. Think about who we're competing against. It's three people who over a weekend come up with a half-brained idea, they eat some artisan pizza, they drink their favorite IPAs, and then on Monday they share it with some customers. That's what an entrepreneur does, okay? And then the customer says, either this is a great idea or this is a pretty lame idea. And if the customer says it's a great idea, then we simply say, Great, help us make it better. We came up with the 75% idea. Um, we knew it wasn't going to be perfect, but we knew that you'd have a lot of insight. Then the customer tells us how to make it better, or a set of potential customers. We go and make it better the next weekend. Maybe we have another artisan pizza, or maybe we bring in Thai food. I don't know the answer. And then we have a different kind of premium beverage, and then we send it back out to them. That's how entrepreneurs work. If we can't in organizations come close to that, we can't win. So that's why I say we need to be experimenting all the time, but we're not experimenting with a lot of money or a lot of time. We're making tests, we're sharing them with customers, we're connected with the outside world, and we're really trying to learn. So then are we celebrating? I don't have time to celebrate a failure. I barely have time to celebrate a victory. What I have is enough time to do a quick post-mortem on what did we learn from that that we can apply to the next thing we try, and then let's be smarter. Um, there's no I have no problem with people kind of not knowing or being ignorant. I have a problem with them trying something and not being smarter when they try something new. And I believe all of us have the ability to learn. You know, it gets to. So go back to what you were talking about is I believe we can want certainty, but also want to learn. And so we all got to be learners. You know, in a world changing fast, we all got to be learners. Whatever we learn in school, I don't want to say it's irrelevant, but we got to recast it to be relevant, I think.

Jay Johnson:

We learned how to learn, and I think that that's really the biggest thing that we take away. So, Alan, this is such a fascinating conversation, and I am certain that some of our audience would love to connect with you and dig deeper. Well, how would they reach out to you?

Alan Gregerman:

Okay, well, I appreciate that. And I've loved the conversation. So thanks for inviting me. Um, they can find out about me by going to my website, which is simply alangregorman.com, A-L-A-N-G-R-E, G-E-R-M-A-N.com. They can connect with me on LinkedIn. Um, I would prefer if they connected with me and not follow me. You know, if they're interested in my ideas, I'm interested in kind of what they're working on. So connect with me on LinkedIn. They can, I would love it if they bought my book.

Jay Johnson:

That's such a beautiful cover, too.

Alan Gregerman:

Well, thank you. No, I love I really like this book, but I'll make this offer to your viewers, and that is if they buy my book and don't find it valuable, I will Venmo them whatever they spent. I'll buy it back from them. Wow. I don't want them to be unsatisfied. You know, and I learned that from our dear friends at LL Bean, who in 1912 offered an unconditional guarantee of satisfaction. I want people to be happy with my book. But um, yeah, so those are probably the easiest ways to connect with me. I would love to have people connect with me. I post on LinkedIn pretty regularly. Feel free to follow kind of the things as long as you connect with me. Yeah.

Jay Johnson:

I love that, Alan. And I will be connecting with you and hoping to continue conversations because I think we scratched the surface. And this has been such a fascinating conversation. I just want to say thank you for joining me today, for sharing your wisdom, your experience, and insight, and even sharing some of your ignorances, I guess.

Alan Gregerman:

Oh, well, thank you for that. No, actually, one of our customers recently, you could appreciate it, said, you know, when it comes to not knowing stuff, Alan Gregerman is a genius.

Jay Johnson:

I love that, I think. No, that's beautiful. The book is The Wisdom of Ignorance, and I encourage you, audience, to check it out. If we are not innovating, changing, learning, adapting, we are probably going the way of the Dodo Bird as well as Kmart and all of the others. So it's definitely something that I find to be incredibly important. And today was just so many good thoughts, tactics, mindset shifts. I can't thank you enough, Alan. Thank you again.

Alan Gregerman:

My pleasure. Thanks for having me on. Loved it.

Jay Johnson:

And thank you, audience, for tuning into this episode of the Talent Forge, where together we are shaping workforce behaviors.

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Jay Johnson, CEO and Co-Founder of Behavioral Elements

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