Why Don’t We Think Anymore? The Lost Art of Thinking with Scott Burgmeyer & Tammy Rogers

Why thinking has become as shallow as a puddle

00:00Bill Gallagher: Have you ever had a week when you're completely slammed, but somehow nothing actually moved? Is this one of those weeks? That's not really a time problem. It's a busyness habit problem. My new book, Busy Is Broken, Do Less, Scale More, is all about growing by doing less, not more. Read or listen to a sample chapter over at busyisbroken.com. That's busyisbroken.com. It's also on Amazon and other booksellers.

00:31Bill Gallagher: So look, what if it isn't about more data or some fancy AI tool, which we love—love more data, we love AI tools—but what if it's really about better thinking? Better thinking, every level of the organization, that actually made a difference in growing your business and having more fun along the way. We're drowning in data, but Tammy and Scott say that we're thinking about as deep as a parking lot puddle. That's what we're getting into today.

01:04Bill Gallagher: Hey, everybody. I'm Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach and host of this super groovy Scaling Up Business podcast. Our show comes to you every week, and we bring you stuff to do with scaling your company and surviving the journey, maybe even enjoying it. 650-plus episodes and more wherever you're getting this right now, all the major places and that kind of thing. And you can also go to scalingcoach.com. And you might want to do that because if you want to get involved with us and be in one of our workshops or see about joining one of our cohorts or doing some work—if we can help you in little ways—you'll find all that and more at scalingcoach.com.

01:47Bill Gallagher: Alright, listen. I'm joined now by Tammy and Scott, who are cofounders and—are you guys co-CEOs?

01:56Bill Gallagher: We are. Yeah, yeah. Cofounder, co-CEOs of Become More Group. They've spent over 30 years working in all kinds of people development, helping companies grow also. They've written a number of books, and they host a podcast, the Leadership Line Podcast. And their new book, which I thought we ought to focus on a little bit more since it's kind of a running area or theme: More. Think. The Road Less Traveled. There's not enough thinking in this world. I think about whatever TikTok told me to think. Welcome.

02:30Tammy Rogers: To reality.

02:32Scott Burgmeyer: Yeah, wait a minute. Hold on, hold on. Let's make this viral. Aren't we supposed to do, like, six-seven and, like, move our hands up and down or something?

02:42Bill Gallagher: There we go.

02:45Scott Burgmeyer: We're gonna be on the ticky-talky. Ticky-talky, so funny.

02:49Bill Gallagher: Oh my God. Six-seven. That's so funny. Like, why is that funny? It's just about punking olds like us.

02:56Tammy Rogers: Yeah, that's so true. That is so true.

03:00Bill Gallagher: I don't know. It's taken me a little while to get used to it, but I'm a grandpa. And that is, like, it's hard to reconcile it. Kinda weird. I'm not supposed to be a grandpa yet.

03:12Bill Gallagher: Congratulations.

03:14Tammy Rogers: I was gonna say, Bill, I think you're blessed. So I have no children, and I wanted to have them. So the fact that you not only have children, but you have grandchildren, that's a blessing. I'm looking at your face. He's like, sometimes.

03:29Bill Gallagher: No, look. The hardest, most amazing thing we do in our lives is be parents. It is deeply humbling, no matter what resources, no matter whatever. And yet, it's also the most beautiful, important thing. I have two kids, 26 and 28 now, and a two-and-a-half, almost three-year-old granddaughter. It's amazing. Right? And that's far harder than growing a company over $500 million.

04:02Tammy Rogers: You know, I will tell you, I think you're right, and I think I missed out in that space. And so that spot, I love the fact that you're emotional about that. Because here's the deal. What better way can we make the world a better place than to raise kids, help them be the best people that they can be, and help them go and change the world too? And I just think that that's an amazing gift and opportunity. And for those of you who have kids and sometimes don't appreciate them, those of us who couldn't have them, please know you were given one of the biggest gifts that other people were not given. It is a huge thing. It's responsibility too, but it's such a huge gift. So I love your emotion about that, Bill. Thank you.

04:46Bill Gallagher: It's funny. I'm a highly emotional person, but I never know sort of what the moment is where suddenly it'll be there. But you can count on, like, talking about your spouse, your kids, your parents will make you cry for some reason.

05:00Tammy Rogers: Good or bad. It's true. It's true.

05:04Bill Gallagher: That's an easy one. People are like, oh, you're famous for making people cry from the stage. Like, then they're like, how do you do that? I'm like, well, tell me about your kids. Pretty much that's an express lane to the feels.

The archetypes of shallow thinking

05:20Bill Gallagher: So let's talk about, to get started here, where does this idea come from? The phrase 'as deep as a parking lot puddle,' the thinking. Why do you write this book? Talk about that. Why are we even talking about this?

05:36Tammy Rogers: I will tell you, Bill, you know, we are working in companies all over. Right? Doesn't matter: small, big. If you have a staff of one, one of the things that we're going to hear is, why do people not think? I mean, for heaven's sakes, they are just—and we'll hear these complaints about staff members, partners, family members, that they're not using the gray matter between their ears. And after a few years of having that become a theme that we heard over and over and over, we actually asked the question, why? Okay. We're hearing this enough to know that it's reality. It's what's happening. So why are people not thinking? And that led to the book.

06:27Bill Gallagher: I as I think about it now.

06:34Tammy Rogers: Love it.

06:36Bill Gallagher: All of us think we're thinking. Right? And yet, we read something and then we call our people in our life—our employees, our coworkers, our spouses, our kids, etcetera—and we're like, what about this? And without taking the time to think about it. So I think we think we're thinking, and sometimes we are. But a lot of times, maybe we're not.

07:05Scott Burgmeyer: And so what you're talking about is really the premise of the book. And it's looking at, you know, we talk about different people, and some people—you know, and I'm sure the listeners know, as soon as you're like, oh, I read this and I reached out to my coworker or my spouse or whatever—I immediately thought of Steve, who we lovingly call Soundbite Steve. I hear a nugget of information, and I assume I know everything based on the headline or based on the subject of the email, or I skim it and I'm just hearing bits and pieces. And we call that thinking. But really, it is regurgitating a chunk of information without the full context.

08:00Tammy Rogers: And that's a cognitive bias. Now those are big words. But think about this for just a minute. Do you have anybody in your world that literally—you're like, hey, we need to—and before you even get that out of your mouth, they are running and getting it done. Okay? We call that person Running Rodney. Alright? Soundbite Steve is the person who reads the headline, gets a bit, and then thinks that they know everything about it. Echo Chamber Evelyn is the person that only listens to, reads to, and considers things that they already agree with. Right? We have Jumping Julia, who jumps to a conclusion. They hear something and they jump very quickly to a conclusion. Those are all things that our brains do naturally. And we evolved this way because there are good and solid reasons for us to not think, but to shortcut to get us there faster so that we can move on. And that's a good thing sometimes. But when we overuse it, it means that we're not thinking.

09:06Bill Gallagher: You know, two things come to mind. One, the more obvious one is Tom Watson Sr.

09:12Bill Gallagher: IBM CEO, who had "think" on his desk and on signs all around the company and implored people to think and said, you know, a lot of money has been wasted because people aren't thinking. And you're right, the having a thought and thinking are very different things. Having a thought comes to you almost instantly. And especially, look, I'm smart and articulate, and I know those are core things I've relied on to survive in my life, to navigate my life challenges, and yet they get me in so much trouble. Right? Because I jump to conclusions, because I start acting before I've thought it through, and they serve me well in some regards and they get me in trouble in others. So I probably do a lot of those, and I bet others in our group do the same thing. And I'm smart enough that I'm usually fairly right, close, more right than not. I'm smart enough that it works, and yet the little bit that I'm off bites me in the ass again and again. And for me anyway, cost me relationship. Right? I make a conclusion about you and something you're talking to me about. I leap ahead. I cut you off. I already know where you're going. I think faster, or maybe I don't. Maybe I just speak faster than you do. And then our relationship is now damaged because in your world, you got cut off, interrupted, suppressed. You weren't allowed to speak and be appreciated. And so the relationship, the 5% that I got off, maybe, or more in some case—maybe I'm way off base—it's so damaging.

10:59Scott Burgmeyer: And, Bill, what you're really talking about is a core question: Do you want to be right or do you want to be in a relationship?

11:10Tammy Rogers: And as a business owner, do you want to be right and we're using just your brain? Or do you want to actually tap into the potential brain, the gifts and the experiences and the understanding of all the other people, whether they are your employees or whether they're partners that you are working with? Are you just gonna rely on you? Because here's the deal: you're only gonna be as good as the brain or brains that you let play. And I think sometimes people like you, Bill—okay, so you're fast, you're quick, you know stuff, alright—but what about the stuff that other people know? What about another perspective? What about that thing that you don't know that if we had added that to the mix, we could have actually taken that and made it a better idea? Because sometimes we think there's only one good idea, and that's just a fallacy. That's just not true.

12:11Scott Burgmeyer: Right. Right. Right. Yeah, there are many, many options. And what happens is, I'm thinking of our first staff member as we were growing. And this staff member was actually our first two staff members. They were going to do a leadership development at a company, and they said, you know, the person who was gonna be traveling was, "I don't want to have to carry a bunch of materials, so I want you to ship them." So, well, you know, of course, Tammy and I are advising, "Hey, just think about that. What's the impact? What's the risk?" They're like, "No, no, no, it'll be fine. It'll be great." So we're like, okay. So they, of course, don't print them in time. So then they express ship them, which, of course, now you're paying a premium to express print and express ship. And you can probably kinda figure out where this is going. The person arrives and they cannot find the package. And so, oh, well, now they have to go express print again at an even higher premium at a twenty-four-hour service. And they didn't rent a car because they didn't wanna drive a car in the big city and all these other things. And we did this class, I think it was eight or ten people, leaders in it, and it cost over a thousand dollars to print the stupid materials. Now I'm kinda furious about it. And, of course, I kinda wanna chew some ass a little bit. And Tammy and I talked about it. I'm like, okay, no, that's not helpful. And, yes, I know I was right, and they need to learn. So we spent some time. Let's analyze this. How much would it cost you to have bought a suitcase and put them in a suitcase and check the bag? They did the math. Oh, maybe a hundred, couple hundred dollars, because we could've bought a really cheap suitcase at Walmart. It would all fit in one suitcase. I said, okay, how much did you spend? Alright, when do you need to—and we just had a whole conversation. And I can guarantee you neither of them will ever make that mistake again. And then it's, to me, the thinking part is, alright, you went through this pain, you went through this learning lesson. Where else do you apply this learning that is moving it from the lizard part of your brain, lower cognitive function, to the higher cognitive function in your brain?

Moving out of lizard brain and into growth questions

14:59Tammy Rogers: And it's okay that they made the mistake upfront. Okay? Because we're gonna still make some mistakes. But the question in this space is if we're gonna have the pain, let's have the gain. And the gain in that spot is asking the growth questions: What worked? What didn't work? What are we gonna do differently next time? So we're not always going to prethink the right way. I'm okay with that. Making mistakes is not the world's worst thing in the world. However, if it is not working for us, if we don't take the time to think it through at least then to get the learning lesson, then there's no gain from that pain. There's just irritation. Right? And the repeating of that particular mistake. And so when Scott's like, they're not gonna make that mistake again, well, it could be because Scott's mean and nasty and he's looking at him and making him. Right? Or it could be that they thought it through, and we didn't tell them the solution. They started figuring out solutions. And when they came up with their own solution that actually got the outcome that we were looking for—getting the materials to those students in a way that doesn't cost X, Y, Z number of dollars—then that's their solution. And that's a solution because they came up with it. The research tells us that they will remember it. Ninety-five percent chance that they will then remember that and not make the mistake again. And so that's a way to think. Right? It's great if we can do it ahead of time. If we didn't, we still have the opportunity to think afterwards and learn and retain it.

16:33Scott Burgmeyer: And there's, to me, it's almost thinking three dimensionally. So I need to think about the impact of this mistake I made, and I need to learn from that. That's thinking dimension one. Two is how do I make sure I don't repeat that problem? To me, the third and most mature thinking is how do I apply that learning lesson in other areas of my life or other areas of the business? Because it's not about just training materials.

17:03Tammy Rogers: So let's fast forward that story. We do a lot of conferences, and when we do conferences, we actually have a booth like most people. Right? Well, we can ship that booth, and if we ship the booth, it's about $3,000. Okay? But there's this really interesting thing we can do. We can put that booth in some cases. And since we're taking two people to the conference, if we get on a flight and we actually go first class and we're on Delta or United, any major airline, and we go first class, you get to bring two bags with you that you can actually check. And you can check them up to 70 pounds.

17:47Tammy Rogers: And it doesn't cost you anything extra. So we take two people. We take the booth. The booth is three or four bags that weigh about sixty, seventy pounds. We've put them through. It doesn't cost us anything. We fly first class because that's what you have to do to get that benefit, and then we carry on our own personal luggage because you get to do that too. And all of a sudden, instead of spending $2,000 or $3,000 for it to get the booth there, we actually get to be in first class, drink a little bit of wine, get a little bit of a snack, don't have that extra charge. I'm comfortable. I get to the conference and I'm having a good time, and we save the company money. That's the learning lesson. The third thing that Scott talked about in terms of I took this learning lesson and I applied it over there.

18:33Bill Gallagher: It's funny. When you share this, I hear from a couple different… Do you still hear me okay?

18:40Bill Gallagher: Funny. I sound weird to myself. That's the…

18:45Scott Burgmeyer: Bill, we're not saying you don't sound weird. We're saying we hear you.

18:51Tammy Rogers: Welcome to our humor, Bill.

18:58Scott Burgmeyer: And thanks for coming, and this podcast will never ever air.

19:03Bill Gallagher: Yeah. It's the first time where somebody threw some shade at me. So I think first, like, when a plan or an idea is taking shape, the first conversation that doesn't happen is we automatically think about how it's gonna be great, like, whatever our plan or idea is. And the less comfortable question is, what's most likely to go wrong, and how could we anticipate that or deal with that? And I think that one is one that we're reluctant to do. And when people ask it of us, we're like, what are you trying to take down my idea? That kind of thing. I know I frequently get that way. And when I ask it of other people, they get defensive. No. No. No. I want your idea to be successful. So I wanna consider what are the ways that it's gonna screw up. I wanna think about that so we head them off now. So we avert that before it shows up, that we get in there and we make sure that we don't have that going on. So for me, that's the first question is anticipating ahead of time, what are the ways that this could go wrong? Now you're talking further about optimizing it. Like, how could we think this through? What are all the different ways that we could do that? Right? And then you talk about the learning of it, and the learning of it in a couple dimensions. One is, so what happened? Right? Like, it went wrong. And there we get defensive again. We're like, oh, I didn't know. Instead of going, where did this first go off? Like, what broke down? Where did you miss something? Like, thinking it through more forensically. So if we died in the process, somebody might forensically examine what happened to us, that kind of thing, and we'd look for clues. But we don't always do that with ourself and our thing. I'm like, oh, I was just thinking I was avoiding that. And I think there's a layer of stuff that's fairly unconscious for us a lot of the time about something that we wanna do that's important, that's whatever. Like, I'm not gonna look at it. But it's really valuable to look and then to pivot the whole thing ahead. Like, where else in my life? Like, as we do one thing, so we do everything. That kind of thinking like, oh, this is a pattern that I have. I do this all over the place all the time, and I have a lifetime of this pattern that I've been doing. And how could I, like, redesign things? And then we have to lead it forward and go, like, instead of just pledging, well, I'll never be late again, we have to go, what is it that you're gonna do that's any different this time? Like, people show up, they screw things up, they're late on things, they do whatever, and then they pledge, like, from a moral place, like, with the morality of being a better person. Well, I'll never do that again. Instead of dealing with, first, the impact of the breakdown, and then actually, like, inventing and imagining a new future where they are like, okay. From now on, I'm gonna put this in my calendar in this way, or I'm gonna manage this in that way, so I can see that a difference is made, that there's a possibility of a shift.

The Swiss cheese analogy and how systems prevent blame

22:22Scott Burgmeyer: And it is. And Bill, what we're really talking about is Swiss cheese. If you think of a block of Swiss cheese, it has holes, but the holes don't go all the way through. So when something weird happens, what has happened is if you've sliced Swiss cheese slices, each slice is a process or a place in your business where, yeah, you should catch or see those things, or your life or whatever that is. But what's happened is the slices of Swiss cheese have laid down in a way that the holes lined up and it went all the way through. So I can tell you this year, one of our interns made a banner. And on that banner, it was supposed to read "register here," and what it really read was "Regis stir." And so the word "register" was misspelled. Now, of course, we make it, and when we set it up the first time, it's misspelled and it's noticed right away. And I'm like, how did we just spend $1,200 on a banner for a booth and not see this? Well, when you go back and you're like, oh, well, they made it. They didn't catch it. I looked at it and I said, oh, yeah, that looks great. But in my mind, I don't check spelling because I'm looking at, does it have the look we want? I didn't catch it. Then we sent it to the printer. Printer didn't catch it. They sent us a proof. We signed off on the proof. We got it. We didn't put it together or look at it until three days before we're leaving for the conference, and we had it in our possession for two weeks. So when we unpack that, there were six opportunities for us to catch that, and none of them caught it. Yeah. We could go beat up the intern. Yeah. Which is not helpful. Poor guy's already beaten himself up because he feels horrible that this happened. And for me, it was so funny because when we mentioned it to the printer, like, hey, how fast could you do it? They're like, that happened? Really? They made it for us, rushed it to us. We had it in two days, and they didn't charge us again. They absolutely should've.

24:57Scott Burgmeyer: But they feel like… It's what happened. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. And what happens is we go back to the, hey intern, you did this wrong. Yeah. And we don't look at what all happened in that. Where else could we have caught that along the way?

25:14Bill Gallagher: Yes. It's funny. The best way to find a lot of things like that is to read it out loud. Slowly read it out loud. And yet, sometimes our brain even fills in the gaps and we can read things wrong.

25:31Tammy Rogers: Yes. Well, and that, again, is our shortcut. A brain shortcut, which is another reason why aren't we thinking, because our brain shortcuts things because time is critical to us. Right?

25:42Scott Burgmeyer: And it is rewarded.

25:43Tammy Rogers: Yes. And it's rewarded at work, but it's also rewarded in our life. Right? I mean, how many times have you had that intuition that something was gonna… Like, something bad is gonna happen, and then you ignore it? Right? And then it happens. And if you just listened to yourself…

25:59Tammy Rogers: But we have taught ourselves to not, right? We've said, "Oh, I'm imagining things," or whatever those things are. That comes back to another book that has been written called Blink, in that space where it's like, hey, there's things that we know and we need to pay attention to them, but we don't slow down to pay attention to them. We rush past them for many, many, many reasons. And this piece, right, we also think—and this is a fallacy—that there is a like one right answer. Like if we could figure out the right perfect answer to whatever this thing is, then we don't have any of that downside. We don't have any of the problems that we have to deal with. There has to be a perfect answer. And the answer is there isn't. There are many ways that we could go and achieve whatever it is that we want to achieve, but there's usually a downside with it.

26:51Tammy Rogers: So you were talking about kids. Here's an upside of kids, right? Think of all the upsides that you have had with your two kids and with your grandchild, right? There's an upside, but there's a downside. Okay? For many years, I tried to figure out how to have kids without having the downside of having kids. It doesn't happen that way, right? You get the good and you get the bad. It's a package deal, right? So one of the things that we're talking about in the book is to understand, don't look for the perfect answer. Look for the result that you want that has the least amount of pain associated with it. And then go to your question, which is how do we minimize that pain? How do we minimize the issues in that so that when I implement my solution that I've come up with, I'm already doing stuff to minimize the things that I don't want to have happen.

27:49Tammy Rogers: So in an organization, hey, we're going to make a change. We're going to take this division and we're going to send it over then roll it out and have them run that thing independently. Great. It's a great thing, but there's going to be a whole lot of people that aren't happy about that. There's going to be a whole lot of things that have to change in that spot. So let's think those two things through, figure out how to get the best out of it, and then deal with the pain that comes with it. And that's looking at those options and analyzing the options, not just looking for one right answer. So what are the top five options? And what's the upside and the downside of each of those options? And that has to do with speed and outcomes and all sorts of things. Then choose the one and then deal with those things that aren't great about that option, because there is no perfect one right answer.

28:41Bill Gallagher: You know, it's funny. I have a lot of friends who are like, there is a correct answer, there is a right choice, there is a perfect thing. And I kind of live in a world more informed by a really ancient story of the blind men and the elephant that you maybe know, but it's not super well known in the United States. So for the audience, there's a group of blind men who are led to see an elephant for the first time and "see"—you know, with their quotes—would be to lay their hands on the elephant. They each lay their hands on different parts of the elephant, and then they describe what they see. And, you know, the one holding the ear and holding the tusk and holding the snout and holding the tail and putting their hands on the side—they all describe vastly different things. They're all 100% correct, right, in what they see, and but they only see—they see different things. They see different parts. And I think about that often, and I love to tell—it's a very ancient story. But they, of course, come to blows eventually, fighting each other over their competing views of reality.

29:45Bill Gallagher: And we do this. And we think that there's a right answer and one possible way. But we live in an infinitely complex universe with dimensions we probably can't even imagine. And then we fight over our view of reality, in many cases, with actual weapons in our view of what needs to be and where the future is going and our wrongs and things like that. And then—and look—we pick a particular path, and then, you know, with or without kids or to go high or low or to whatever the hell we're going to do with our business, hire this person, don't hire that person, and you'll never know. Like, you'll never ever ever really know if it was right or wrong or what the other possible universe would have looked like where you chose differently. And you'll never really know, like, even if it felt catastrophic, what that opened up and the value of that, like, beautiful thing. You know? Like, boom. I had a relationship that went bad. I went through periods, then I met my wife. And then we had challenges, but then we had our kids. But then we had challenges, but then, you know, on and on and on. Like, who the hell knows? Like, you—

30:55Tammy Rogers: And why do we even have this thing that says right or wrong? Okay? Why are we trying to put this thing in categories, all right, in this space? And I do think that's why we come to blows, and that's why we become defensive, right? It's because we're trying to defend this position, this decision that we made instead of looking at that and saying, "Okay, so what's the learning lesson?" I mean, for heaven's sakes, life is a series of learning lessons. And I don't want to go through the pain. Okay? I don't want to go through the crap and come out of that thing and not, like, have gained something—the learning, the gift that comes out of that. It was bad enough to go through that valley. Okay? I want to come out of that valley with something of value that I can use. And we teach the staff, this is something that we do to normalize that everything has good, bad, and ugly. Every decision, every human being, every situation you find yourself in, it's good, bad, and ugly. It's not all good. It's not all bad. It's all of it. Okay? And when you normalize it, I don't have to be defensive anymore.

32:12Bill Gallagher: I love this idea that, like, think a bit, but don't be caught in paralysis analysis, right? Like, don't be stuck with the thinking forever, right? So it's not—I mean, look, there's times where you need to react in an instant because there's a pressure, there's a moment, there's an emergency. And then there's times where you have your reaction, but you stop and think. But then there's, like, how much thinking and when—like, there's no perfect answer to any of it.

32:49Scott Burgmeyer: I mean, I would tell you, and we—when we talk about the road less traveled, there is a little bit of—well, I'm going to do a spoiler here. Spoiler alert. Part of the book talks about a thinking model called the ROAD. R is Reflect. So what's currently going on? O is Options. What are the options you could do? A is Analyze. What's the best option? D is Decide. And then there's a second D, Do. So if you don't like spelling with double D's, then that's fine. In my mind, I think it really is as you're going through that cycle, if you're stuck in any one, you have to then look at what is preventing me from taking the next step. Because if you're not having some amount of forward momentum, you then have to balance that against what's the urgency of the thing you're thinking about. Oh, my house is on fire.

34:00Scott Burgmeyer: We don't need to sit for the next three hours analyzing options. I need to go fast. Yeah, I have an opportunity for an acquisition in front of me. That probably is not a five minute thinking. Now probably, again, some people might say, oh yeah, that's a two second decision because we're flush with cash and we're trying to grow and I'm just gonna go spend millions of dollars. In my experience, that's not a lot of companies that would just make that. No, that probably is a week or two or a month or a year of thinking.

Why there is no perfect answer to any decision

34:42Tammy Rogers: And Bill, your point is one that when we have taught this in classrooms, right, the first thing when we talk about this ROADD model is people are just like, I don't have time to think. And in fact, even talking about thinking, they'll be like, I don't have time to think. And in this space, one of the arguments that we make in this spot is, hey, what does two, five, ten minutes gain you? Right? What is the advantage if you just took a bit of time? And they're like, no, that would take so much longer. And then we walk them through this model. And what's amazing is after you kind of understand what that ROADD is, you can actually, like, right now, do it. But when it needs to be expanded, you can expand it, but you can do it in a nanosecond as well. It doesn't take a tremendous amount of time. What it really is is just going, I need to take what's already going on and put it in a system that allows me to be able to come to a decent conclusion at the end that isn't just a reaction. It's enough thinking to move it forward. Now you could take a year if you needed to, right? But most of us don't have a year and most of our decisions. But do you have five minutes? Right? And what will that five minutes get you? Right? What's the advantage of that? And what we have found is that when individuals who oftentimes are so used to just doing what they're told can actually think things through and start doing things independently and coming out with really decent answers that it actually adds value to their life. They feel better about their contributions. They know that they individually are making a contribution to the world. I'm making a difference. It also expands the organization's value because now we're not just relying on the top of the organization to make the decisions to think things through, that we can expand that throughout the organization. And that expands the organization's value in and of itself. I love the fact that Scott just came in upside down. It kinda tells you a little bit about his personality there. Just so you know, he's upside down all the time.

37:07Bill Gallagher: And that's the piece.

37:11Tammy Rogers: If you're listening, not watching on the video side, Scott's camera flipped upside down and back and forth. That's funny. Yeah, it was fun to watch him turn upside down. But in the end, that's what we think thinking is about. It's expanding value, your individual value to an organization, to the world, as well as the value of the organization that you're building in that spot. How can we do that without actually necessarily having to throw more people at it, right, and more dollars at it? It's by using this thing that we have in our head in a way where it's organized and you can have a process to be able to do better thinking. Not just having a thought, but do better.

The ROADD model for structured thinking

37:59Bill Gallagher: I think what comes to mind as you share that is that is the opportunity to follow your acronym, to reflect and to consider options and analyze them and then make a decision and begin acting. And so taking action, but I don't think that necessarily means you need to stop thinking. Like, look, I could think about something. I could take action, and I could still be considering it even as I'm in action. Even as I continue to act because I might change my mind or I might abandon something. I don't have to be neurotic about it. I could just continue to think about it. It's funny. I need to go find this. I'll create a reminder for myself after the show. There was an old sci-fi story about an alien species, a super intelligent alien species. They would move around the universe, and they would evaluate species and whether or not they should be, like, welcome to the community of intelligent beings, right? Or whether they be walled off and ignored and that kind of thing. And they had this core intelligence test that they would apply. And it was how quickly you made a decision and then blocked off the alternatives. Right? Decide, like, kill off the options. And we use decide kind of casually in our everyday usage. But in their world, if you decided something firmly, fully without any further thinking, then you were a stupid species and should be ignored and walled off. But if you could think things and then work them in action, but keep thinking about them, not be too sure of yourself, then you were actually smart. And I think about that sometimes. I get, or at least I aspire to. I'm almost instantly I have an idea. I have a thought. Like, this is probably right. And then I might mull it, and I'm like, but I am now old enough to know that I might be really wrong on this.

39:59Tammy Rogers: I love that. I love that. We talk about that in terms of the iterative process. Right? So we're gonna try it. We're gonna see. Right? And then as soon as we try it, right, we're gonna go back through this ROADD again. What did we just learn? Okay? So a decision, most decisions we see we call micro or macro decisions. And a micro decision is something that can be easily changed, and a macro decision is something that's much harder to change. Like, you get married, it's harder to get out of a marriage than, like, have a date. Right? Two different things in that space. Levels of commitment. Right? And the piece about that is sometimes we take micro decisions and we act as if they're macro. Okay? If your risk is small, make the decision, learn from it, move on. Make the decision, learn from it, move on. Continue this cycle, exactly what you're saying. Don't, like, take a position and then have to stand there and defend that position forever. I now learned more information. That was something my dad taught me years ago. He said, you made a call with the information that you have. It was a good call. Wasn't perfect, but it was a call. Right? Now you have more information. Make the next call.

41:16Scott Burgmeyer: Yeah. Right? And don't beat yourself up. Don't beat yourself up for the call you made. You made the right call based on what you knew in that moment. Now you have new information, and I'm gonna make a new call. And this is a place where people get into this. Oh, I should have done it. Oh, I wish I didn't. Yeah. I wish I should have lots of things.

I don't have time to think is a lie

41:38Bill Gallagher: You know, it's funny. Like, we all have things like that. I had two software companies that I shut down at the end of two thousand one. Shut them down, and then I went to work with my wife for years, and we raised our kids together and that kind of thing. But we had three companies between us. I shut down two of them, and I thought I was just putting them on, you know, temporary hold or whatever. And but I never went back to them. And one of them—

42:07Bill Gallagher: It was an early restaurant takeout and delivery ordering system that was really good, even by today's standards.

42:20Tammy Rogers: Dang it.

42:21Scott Burgmeyer: How do you feel about that one, Bill?

42:29Bill Gallagher: I think about it and I'm like, wow, there's a lot of money to be made there that was left on the table. I shut it down and I just never went back to it. And then, you know, mobile devices came in and locations, and a lot of things got a lot easier in all kinds of aspects of it. But if I had stuck with it, right, what would that have been worth? On the other hand, I've been married for 31 years, and by working together we kept our family together. And, you know, I raised two amazing kids and we have a granddaughter now, and my son's gone on to build one of the big AI tools in the world and is now working for the next big company and, like, amazing things. Like, who knows? And or maybe if I just stuck with it, I'd have done a terrible job and bankrupted us, and my wife would have left me because I was a workaholic, or, you know, like—and my greatest fear always was to be a weekend dad. Right? So who knows?

43:35Tammy Rogers: I love that perspective, because here's the piece: we think that there's one definition of what success looks like, especially in this country, and oftentimes that's about financial gain. But first of all, Bill, your definition of success is yours, and you should think about what does that really mean to you. Scott's definition of success is his, and mine is mine. And in this space, it's looking at this and saying, hey, I am going to follow my value set for that definition of success, and I'm not going to feel bad about opportunity lost as long as I continue with my true north. Whatever that true north is for you, and that is what you want in your life, your definition of success. And yeah, we might miss some opportunities along the way, but if we keep our eye on true north and keep going for it, eventually we will get what we said was important to us. For you, a happy marriage, a happy family, kids that are independent and successful, right, a place where you have relationship—that sounds like it's for you the right thing. And even if you'd gained all that other stuff, you might not have gained what you really wanted, what your heart really wanted. So any business owner, I don't care—okay, you can be a solopreneur and that could be the thing that brings you joy, and everybody in the world is telling you, hey, we need to build a business. And you're like, it sounds good, but I like this lifestyle that I have. Great, go with that. Don't listen to everybody else. Listen to you. Alright? And that, by the way, is good thinking. Listening to you, yourself—that's good thinking.

45:25Bill Gallagher: Well, hopefully we made you think a little today. The book is Think: The Road Less Traveled. Scott and Tammy, host of their show, the Leadership Line Podcast, their book Think: The Road Less Traveled, and their website, becomemoregp.com. It's a place to go find out about more of these guys, see what work they do, and if it sounds like it's a fit for you, check them out. If you want to find out more about us, join our coaching cohort, talk to me about growth for your business, whatever, scalingcoach.com. Like, subscribe, share this episode, do all that kind of thing wherever you're getting it right now. And go to scalingcoach.com. Find out about—we put on a workshop about every month for people just getting started. We have cohorts. We have coach, or you can just do an assessment with me. I'll give you our questionnaire and talk about the different pathways that you might grow your business. Hope that's helpful. Thanks to Wanda and Anna who get our show ready and produced every week, and to my friend and mentor Verne Harnish, who created this whole Scaling Up framework, without whom none of this would have been necessary. Thank you all for watching, for listening. Until next time, keep scaling.

46:46Bill Gallagher: Thanks for listening today. One last thing: if anything in this episode hit home, my book digs into it further. Busy Is Broken: Do Less, Scale More. It's all about how to stop drowning in work and build a business and a team that scales without you. Available right now with content samples at busyisbroken.com. Go grab it. Be less busy.