How to Create a Debrief Culture w/Mark Fogel
Episode Overview
In this illuminating episode of Making Better, hosts Matt Gjertsen and Mark Vogel dive into the pivotal role of debriefing and feedback in shaping a productive corporate culture. They explore the necessity of separating individual performance from personal worth, and the significance of healthy conflict in learning from failures. Drawing on their military backgrounds, the duo emphasizes the high stakes of giving feedback and fostering a learning culture for continuous improvement. Tune in for a robust discussion on leading with empathy, improving team dynamics, and why taking smart risks in line with organizational values is crucial for success.
About Mark Fogel
Mark Fogel works in human capital management at Mile Two, a human-machine teaming company. Before, he worked in talent and organizational design in the public and private sectors, and consults for organizations around culture, leadership development, and learning. He is a graduate of the US Air Force Academy, Harvard Kennedy School, and is studying for his PhD at Bayes Business School, University of London.
Make sure to connect with Mark on LinkedIn and check out his TED Talk.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/fogelmark/
https://www.ted.com/talks/mark_fogel_the_culture_of_a_fighter_squadron
Full Transcript
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Mark Fogel [00:00:00]:
The stakes are incredibly high, and we're talking livelihoods. You mentioned power earlier. When you confront someone, when you give feedback, even if it's well meaning, accurate, and framed correctly, and all that jazz, there's still a chance that you're gonna really ruffle some feathers. And at the end of the day, that could, if nothing else, affect your livelihood. So the stakes are always very high. And getting these things right, even though, you know, I don't want to add to someone's sort of sense of anxiety about it, I think the point is, it absolutely ports over things that occur among police departments and medical teams and hospitals, military contexts. Those lessons absolutely poured over to all kinds of walks of life.
Matt Gjertsen [00:00:41]:
Hello, and welcome to the making Better podcast, where we talk about how to make ourselves, our teams, and our organizations better. Whether you are a business leader, a talent development person, professional, or an individual contributor, this show will give you actionable insights on how to improve your own performance and the performance of those around you. Our guest today is Mark Vogel. Mark and I have had surprisingly similar careers. We both graduated from the US Air Force Academy, we both became pilots, and we both ended up in the talent development space once we left active duty. His current role is in human capital management at Mile Two, a human machine teaming company. Before that, he worked in talent and organizational design in the public and private sectors and consults for organizations around culture, leadership development and learning. He is a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School and is currently studying his PhD at Bayes Business School, University of London.
Matt Gjertsen [00:01:43]:
In today's episode, we talk about a concept from the flying world known as the debrief. Expect to learn what a debrief is and how to give one. How to create a culture that rewards learning and the importance of mindset when you are giving feedback, plus so much more. Before we get into the episode, I do want to remind you that if this is your first time listening to the show, make sure to like and subscribe so that you never miss a future episode. And if you were already subscribed, if I could ask you to take just a moment and share this show with one other person, because that, after all, is how we grow. I can't tell you how much it means to me. So with that, let's get into the discussion with Mark Vogel. Mark, I would love to start with.
Matt Gjertsen [00:02:28]:
I've been trying to figure out how to, how to phrase this. What is the biggest hierarchical difference between you and someone you've been giving feedback to, like, whether that's civilian life or obviously in the military. You know, was there a time where, you know, you were a new lieutenant talking to a colonel or what? What's an experience that comes to mind with that?
Mark Fogel [00:02:48]:
Yeah, you're making me really think. I think certainly I can recall a couple of salient moments in the military when I was a very new early career pilot. And I had to give very direct feedback, to put it mildly, to not only someone of much higher rank, a colonel, but was actually going to be my future boss. So that was tricky, but it went well. There's also actually been times when I was thinking about it recently that I've been in meetings with members of Congress. I wasn't in their organization, though, so it's not like there was much of a giant power differential. Obviously, they've got status and so forth, but, you know, that actually was easier to do than probably what it was when I was, you know, a 24 year old trying to, trying to build my career in the military.
Matt Gjertsen [00:03:34]:
Yeah. And I think you're, I think you're spot on in that it's really the, it's not just the status imbalance. It's really the power imbalance that makes some of these situations so tricky because, I mean, I shared with you earlier one of the first corporate leadership trainings I ever went to when we were talking about feedback and specifically giving upward feedback, the guidance, and this wasn't internal. This was an external company. So this was training that was given to lots of different organizations. The guidance on giving upward constructive feedback was simply, don't do it, because it's like, it'll always go wrong. They won't listen to you. You'll be punished, whatever it is.
Matt Gjertsen [00:04:13]:
And it just seemed, you know, as somebody who was fresh out of the military, it seemed so foreign, you know, like, how do you, how do you create a culture where you can't give your boss news? When you reflect on what you saw in the military and what we were able to do in the military, what do you think are some of the reasons why that kind of culture has developed in at least parts of the military, at least the pilot community, where it hasn't in other places?
Mark Fogel [00:04:39]:
Yeah, it's funny because right, as you're saying that story, I thought that's probably both discouraging. But also, on the one hand, there may have been some wisdom to it in certain, you know, certain corners of our work. And of course, as you know better than most, it's probably good advice to some people even today, again, based on their organization, the culture and so on. So as much as it's discouraging for folks like us and your listeners to hear. At least there's a rationale for why you were told that. To answer your question, how did sort of we get there in the military? My sort of pet hypothesis is that it was a very natural, unintentional evolution over time. It was really the epitome, almost the quintessence of teams and organizations that had to try to find a way to, I mean, at the one end of the spectrum, survive quite candidly all the way up to thrive and do very well. And so over the course of many years and decades, teams, processes, nuances, norms of behavior and so on would just evolve and take little zigs and zags.
Mark Fogel [00:05:51]:
And it led to being a very, you know, in those corners, like you talked about in the aviation community and others. It led to being very effective as a culture. And so when, when someone like yourself or I would leave that and then be told in a training environment in the private sector, don't give upward feedback. I mean, talk about a red flag. Talk about a seismic shift from. From before to now. So anyway, my long answer, my pet hypothesis, really, again, a natural evolution over time, kind of accidentally discovered how to do a lot of these things very well.
Matt Gjertsen [00:06:25]:
Yeah. Yeah, I think that. And it is. I think you're spot on in. It's not something that was, like, intentional, but kind of was created by necessity just because the stakes are so high in so many of these instances. You know, like earlier, before a call, you were telling me about that example that you gave earlier where you're having to give feedback to your future squadron commander. You know, it's like your future boss, somebody who was probably dependent up probably at least two, if not three kind of levels above you as an individual in the squadron. Sounded like that was a very real kind of life threatening situation, almost that you needed to give feedback on, and that was probably part of why you needed to give feedback on it, because it was a very serious situation.
Mark Fogel [00:07:13]:
Yeah. And I almost want to just take this right on the nose and address it head on because the world is not short of folks, frankly, like you and me. Coming from an aviation background, seals, special forces, there's a lot of really intelligent people with incredible backgrounds, often in the military first responders. They leverage those insights into future lessons learned outside of that insight. And a lot of times people will say, well, wait a minute, mark, Matt, come on. You can't say that it's the same in the boardroom or in a small team in a software company as it is when you're in a jet in enemy territory and lives are on the line. And actually, I fundamentally disagree. I think you absolutely can find a direct correlation because it's not the stakes that matter.
Mark Fogel [00:08:01]:
It's the norms. Again, it's those norms of behavior. It's those expectations among team members that will drive certain behaviors. And for me, absolutely, like, if I hadn't intervened and said something both real time in the moment and then later on after the fact, it could have been a very tragic situation. But even in no matter what one's line of work is, or even, frankly, outside of work, their passion pursuits, their families, the stakes are incredibly high. And we're talking livelihoods. You mentioned power earlier. When you confront someone, when you give feedback, even if it's well meaning, accurate and framed correctly and all that jazz, there's still a chance that you're going to really ruffle some feathers.
Mark Fogel [00:08:46]:
And at the end of the day, that could, if nothing else, affect your livelihood. So the stakes are always very high. And getting these things right, even though I don't want to add to someone's sort of sense of anxiety about it, I think the, the point is it absolutely ports over things that occur among police departments and medical teams and hospitals, military contexts. Those lessons absolutely poured over to all kinds of walks of life. So I just wanted to kind of say that on the nose because we're always going to have listeners who say, wait a minute, I'm not flying jets. I'm not, you know, I'm not jumping out of helicopters or whatever people do, but very accurate and valid lessons that we can, we can pass on.
Matt Gjertsen [00:09:26]:
Yeah, I totally agree with that. I think, you know, it's just the extremes in life are what let you just kind of examine things in closer detail. But that doesn't mean those lessons only apply in those extremes, for sure. And I think. Go ahead.
Mark Fogel [00:09:42]:
No, sorry. So, I mean, I'll be candid. Like, to be sure, I hesitated. I mean, I wasn't positive what I should do by way of my, my own selfish interests, which is my reputation, which is how I be seen and valued among my peers. I mean, those things are real. And to pretend that they're not, I think we can accidentally do injustice to those who are trying to learn these norms. But I do remember thinking to myself, if I don't say something, if I don't do something, obviously in the moment was one thing, but after the fact, if I don't address it, if I don't really, you know, stretch this out, peel back the layers of the onion. I would forever regret it if something bad happened.
Mark Fogel [00:10:25]:
And I think that, again, that lesson can be learned and applied to any context that we all face in our work life. Again, family, you name it. So the idea of not doing something, which is often easy, and frankly, maybe we're even incentivized to do it, you got to think about, well, what's the alternative? And if it feels like it's worth saying, it almost certainly is worth saying. So.
Matt Gjertsen [00:10:48]:
Yeah.
Mark Fogel [00:10:48]:
Anyway, just. I'll never forget that moment. Yeah. It was a real, real clarifying moment.
Matt Gjertsen [00:10:52]:
Yeah. And, well, and I think, again, to, you know, put a pin on this point of why it, or how much of a corollary there is. As you're talking, I'm really thinking a lot of Brene Brown. And the opening to one of her books where she talks about, there was a person on her team who was performing poorly. And I forget if she was a new manager, they were a really nice person. And so she just didn't want to tell them, oh, they made a mistake. She just didn't mention it. They made another mistake.
Matt Gjertsen [00:11:21]:
She didn't mention it. And she just kept not mentioning it until the point where she had to let them go. And the person looked at her and she's like, if somebody had just told me, I could have changed this. And to that point you're making of it still all has real consequences. It's all still in real life. That's a great example of. Because of her unwillingness to bring. And this wasn't even when there was a power, you know, a power mismatch.
Matt Gjertsen [00:11:48]:
This was, she was the boss coming down. So in all ways, just that giving of feedback can often be violating almost a social norm that we all just let each other go. But if you let it go too long, then it will inevitably lead to, okay, now we need to do something. And in the flying world or in, you know, certain, you know, extreme situations that might lead to loss of life or something bad, really bad, but in the boardroom or in the corporate setting, it results in somebody losing their job or a poor decision being made on a project or that costs the company money, it still has lead, ultimately leads to consequences.
Mark Fogel [00:12:25]:
Right? Or on a manufacturing line, something is not made correctly. And it's one thing if a toy doesn't work as advertised, but maybe that something is a jet engine or maybe it is medical equipment. It rarely is a job being done somewhere right now, especially in the United States, where there are not real impacts to what is being produced. And it is, yes, of course, financial for the firm and the livelihoods of those who are employed there. But often something is being delivered, there is value being created. And if your part of that machine, so to speak, that is not striving for getting, not just, you know, not even just getting better, but certainly ensuring that mistakes don't happen, the value, the output, the end result is going to be a negative one. You know, something you were just saying that also made me think of the fact that without a doubt, again, there are times that I have chosen, and I will choose to not say something. I mean, no doubt about it.
Mark Fogel [00:13:32]:
Like, none of us are just in constant, always on feedback mode. What I have found in my.
Matt Gjertsen [00:13:37]:
Unless you work for Ray Dalio.
Mark Fogel [00:13:40]:
I always think about kind of the, you know, the fearless organization, the Amy Edmondson road and the radical candor and Ray D'Aiguillo's world. I talk about this a lot because it's a great point, because I feel like someone who reads that book or they hear the lessons, they go, okay, great, I'm gonna go do that. And they walk across the street to the job the next day and they give it a shot. It's an utter disaster.
Matt Gjertsen [00:14:05]:
Go poorly.
Mark Fogel [00:14:05]:
So all those contextual factors, all those cultural elements are really, really important. I was going to say one thing that I've found for myself, and I talk about feedback. I study feedback professionally and academically. I will say, for reasons I can't quite put my finger on all the time, I struggle to give feedback to my direct reports more than I do my own supervisors and managers. And I think part of it is I'm so sensitive to ensuring that my team knows that I believe and trust them. And it's a weakness of mine. I mean, something, frankly, that I just recognize it as an area that I want to improve. And I'm wondering, for your listeners, many of them, of course, are managers and leaders, some at the very top, some are maybe brand new or aspiring to be managers and leaders.
Mark Fogel [00:14:50]:
It's something that they're going to have to kind of wonder and think about is as they have a team under them, so to speak. Giving feedback to your team members, I think, can actually be really challenging. So it's not always just the idea of feedback up, which has its own challenges and the power dynamics and so on. But anyway, it's just funny because I've never spent a ton of time reflecting on that until you had mentioned some of that yourself just a bit ago.
Matt Gjertsen [00:15:15]:
Yeah, I think it's a really good thing to reflect on, especially in the current climate, in the current time. It's something that Gary V. Actually talks a lot about, you know, being, you know, empathy, being a superpower for a leader. But what do you do when that empathy goes too far? And if you let it kind of run rampant, then in the short term, it can feel like the more empathetic thing to do is to not say something. But yeah, and the, you know, guys of the radically transparent and stuff like that, over the long term, that's where you're actually not being empathetic because you're not looking at them for the long term.
Mark Fogel [00:15:50]:
Right.
Matt Gjertsen [00:15:51]:
You know, one thing that you mentioned quite clearly in your TED talk, which I'll definitely link to below in the show notes that I think can help with this, that is something that comes from the culture of the flying world, is this idea of a debrief where, you know, it's one thing to say, oh, we have a culture of feedback that's great. Like, that's a changing an organization's culture feels like a really big thing to try to do. But if I tell you, no, what you need to do is just create this one space, this, like 30 minutes after a project or whatever it is, where you can. Where just the expectation is this is a space for feedback. If you could. Since many listeners may not even know what a debrief is from your world and from your experience, what has been your experience with a debrief in terms of whether that's the flying world and how do you see that translated into a corporate setting?
Mark Fogel [00:16:45]:
Yeah. So I'll kind of define it real quick because your point is an accurate one. We hear different terms around it. It's everything from a hot wash, an after action review, a debrief, a lessons learned, a reflexivity exercise. There's a lot of terms both, again, in kind of the consulting space. Academics talk in different ways. I'll use it much the same that you would. And ironically, I feel like debrief as a term is actually rising in the literature and among practitioners.
Mark Fogel [00:17:11]:
To me, a debrief is simply, you get your team together and you say, okay, did we achieve our objectives? If not, why? And what should we do different next time? That's fundamentally what it is. To me. It's clearly something that we'd all learn early as we're learning to fly airplanes. Your instructor would pull you to the side after the flight, and you'd spend time talking about mistakes that were made and how to get better and so on. But then later on, paradoxically, perhaps, as you get more and more experienced and you become more of an expert in your realm, the actual depth and length of debriefs increases. So again, a bit paradoxical, but you're doing, let's say I talked about this in my TED talk around the culture of a fighter squadron. You might be doing ten minutes of actual training, combat training, ten minutes. But you might spend hours, sometimes days, picking apart every tiny, tiny little facet of everyone's individual role within the.
Mark Fogel [00:18:11]:
Within the mission. So it actually increases over time. But part of the reason is that there's an expectation of performance. And so when mistakes are made, which are inevitable, and frankly, often they're okay because they're inevitable, we can't blame people for being human and natural. We're going to be able to get to better ground truth through the process of the debrief. So we certainly see it, I think, in the private sector. Yes, it's been talked about quite a bit. Again, unsurprisingly, a lot of the norms and the teachings have come out of the military context.
Mark Fogel [00:18:47]:
After action review itself was a us army term that was developed in decades past. There are interesting articles about it. Firms and companies and organizations do it. But you hit on, to me, the absolute crux of the issue is even though companies, teams, leaders know that there's value, they just don't make the time to do it. So that, I mean, it sounds almost too good to be true. It's not, of course, a panacea or silver bullet, but we know, not just from a practitioner level, but also in theory and academic research, we know that team reflexivity and debriefing actions lead to better team performance. We just know it's. And so making the time to do it is usually the area where firms and teams fail.
Mark Fogel [00:19:31]:
And again, I get it. I mean, it's costly. It takes time to get your team together. They're not making sales calls. They're not walking the floor. They're not, quote unquote, doing the work in the eyes of the old model of work. But to me, and I think, of course, I'm preaching very much to the choir with you, Matt, and your listeners. Making the time for a debrief is the work.
Mark Fogel [00:19:55]:
I mean, that is the work. You're getting better next time. Again, it's as close to a panacea about increasing team performance that we know from the literature.
Matt Gjertsen [00:20:06]:
I love that the idea that no, taking that time is the work. That is the real thing. That is what I mean. It sounds like Steven Pressfield, the war of art kind of stuff of just like, no, the struggle is the work. It's like really getting into the nitty gritty of how do I improve? How do I understand what's wrong? That's what separates the mediocre from the good, the good from the great. That's really how you can make a big difference. Do you have any examples of where you have seen this in the corporate world, done well, or like a specific example of where you have seen kind of a debrief or whatever you want to call it, really help a team?
Mark Fogel [00:20:53]:
Absolutely. So I've had some experience just working both Fortune 500 to smaller startups. It almost doesn't matter the sector, the size, take all those potential qualifying characteristics apart. If a team simply makes the time and goes at it with a mindset of learning and improvement rather than blame and responsibility, so that's where they're going to find success. The example from the big Fortune 500 company has really reinstalled a lean mindset, a six sigma continuous improvement mindset, and has done so with very clear expectations for everything from their top executives down to the newest employee. That the reason that we do these debriefs and after actions is simply to get better. It's for individuals on the team to learn. We're never going to do performance evaluation around these debriefs.
Mark Fogel [00:21:58]:
We're never going to assign blame and say, you know, Mark, it was your fault that this happened. It's, Mark, next time. What we expect differently is this. When there is that, there's the fork in the road with mindset, and when it is a learning and improvement mindset, you see improvement. When it is a blame and performance evaluation mindset, you see defensiveness, you see the human nature kick in around not wanting to take blame. Blame assigning in the wrong places it goes, you know, it spirals down. So again, it's very, it's rather agnostic to the kind of team or the, again, the sector size, et cetera, it's when they have that appropriate mindset, it works.
Matt Gjertsen [00:22:40]:
Yeah. And you reminded me of, in some of the work I've done around designing performance management systems and how important it is to kind of have that separation between the feedback and the rating and how it's. There's not, I at least don't have a good answer to it. I feel like it's more of an art form of how do you create a system that is very specific, measures a lot? It's a system that places emphasis on performance and measurement and a system that rewards results and is a meritocracy while also creating space for learning where you're, even though you know that that evaluation goes into your long term advancement, you can create spaces where in the moment, that evaluation isn't being used for, you know, it's being used for learning and not for that other thing. It's, it's a very fine edge. I feel like that people need to.
Mark Fogel [00:23:43]:
Find it is, and it's, it's not easy. I mean, it'd be a lie to say that. It's just, you know, there's, you apply this one little framework and it's all, it's all better.
Matt Gjertsen [00:23:50]:
Yeah.
Mark Fogel [00:23:51]:
Because fundamentally, what we're trying to do, whenever we're talking about performance management, which itself is, I mean, you should have, you could, you could have a ten part series of performance management in your future podcast. It's a big topic, but we fundamentally, we believe that what we can do is we can say with some objectivity, Mark and Matt and Mohammed and Rebecca are somehow performing at different levels all the time. It's like a characteristic or a traitor. The reality is that we have peaks and valleys. We're trying our best to meet the expectations of what we think we're supposed to be doing, which often are not clearly communicated. There's so much noise in that system, there's so much error that when we have a system, we say, okay, we're going to put the system in to squeeze all the error out. That's when things can really go downhill. I've always said, from a fundamental approach to performance management, what you're trying to do is you're trying to ensure that people are meeting your expectation, whatever those expectations are, and you're rewarding.
Mark Fogel [00:24:54]:
And you're evaluating people on whether they ask a lot of questions, whether they are willing to take smart risks, not whether they never fail. Because if you never fail, it probably, as you know, means you're not taking smart risks. Are they adhering to your values as an organization, those kinds of three things? Your listeners are going to hear that and go, yeah, that seems perfectly sensible. But I imagine if you take 20 firms and look at their performance management systems, maybe one would incorporate those elements. There's still a lot of thinking that is, I think, tough to justify around. Somehow saying mark is a seven on the ten scale. It's like, well, what does that really mean? I think on some days I'm a ten, on some days I'm a three. And that's just the truth.
Matt Gjertsen [00:25:44]:
Well, and something else that sparked in my mind, as you were, as you were talking. There is this idea of both fostering an environment. Another key part of this culture is to foster a mindset where there's a difference between the performance and the person.
Mark Fogel [00:25:58]:
Yep.
Matt Gjertsen [00:25:59]:
You know, and it's not that you are a seven. Your performance was a seven.
Mark Fogel [00:26:06]:
Right.
Matt Gjertsen [00:26:06]:
And, you know, finding good ways to, you know, because, um. And that seems very interesting, especially in kind of like an american society where whenever you meet somebody, the first question you ask is, what do you do? Because that's the defining characteristic of who you are, is what you do. And the more you can create a situation where you separate that, again, it makes it easier to talk about the performance because you're not talking about me as a person.
Mark Fogel [00:26:31]:
Right. So hard to do. And you, you, again, you hit the nail on the head. Our identities are wrapped up in, quote, what we do. You know, it's. You meet someone at the park, you know, what's your job? What do you do? It's almost like a how's the weather? Type of question. It is so ingrained in our. In our society that our job is reflective of ourself.
Mark Fogel [00:26:52]:
And if we're told, you know, hey, this last quarter, it hasn't been strong. The performance that I observed was x or y. You might be saying it in all the right ways, but, I mean, Matt, again, it's just true human nature. We're going to internalize that. We're going to take it personally. I mean, there's just. There's no way to fake it. I mean, we just have to be honest.
Mark Fogel [00:27:13]:
I think one thing that we did well in the flying world is that, as we would debrief and sometimes they were very heated, it was healthy conflict. It was. Mark, you really screwed that up. I was expecting you to do x, and you did y, and that makes no sense. That would be fine. But then we'd try to figure out what occurred that led to that. Okay, mark, what did you know or perceive happen? What was your decision around this moment? How did you execute something there? And the time that the leader was investing in me learning proved to me that the value, their intent, the value here was me learning. It wasn't for me to hear what they thought about me.
Mark Fogel [00:27:51]:
So the moment I was told, hey, you failed at something, everyone knew right away, okay, fine, we failed. Let's try to understand what happened, and let's try to figure out how we get better at it next time. And then, by the way, when we're done with our debrief, we'll go and we'll talk and we'll talk about our lives and we'll be, you know, social. We may not be best friends, to be quite blunt, but it was clear that it was. There was care and concern for who you are. You mentioned empathy. We want our leaders to be empathetic. Yes, of course, that can go too far.
Mark Fogel [00:28:19]:
But I think it's the balance of you care about your people's development, and you prove it by what you're doing in the course of a debrief. It's not simply saying you're a five. It's. I perceive that a five has, like, you've been giving me a five this last quarter. Let's try to understand what's wrong here. It may be me as a leader not effectively communicating my expectations. I mean, that happens a lot. So let's.
Mark Fogel [00:28:41]:
Let's spend the time together as a team and try to. Try to unpack this. And if you're doing that work, then people will take it. Maybe not. They might take it a little personally. Again, it's baked into us, but it's so much easier of a pill to swallow.
Matt Gjertsen [00:28:54]:
Yeah. Well, again, to that point of when the challenge is as a leader, giving feedback down, I think it really helps to ultimately say, even if you're just internally, ultimately, performance of my team is my fault. Right. Like, it all comes back to me. And if you have that as, like, an initial framing of, to your point, the reason why you're asking questions is you're kind of trying to figure out, what did I fail to communicate? What did I not give them, what resources did I not provide? And even if those aren't the exact questions that you're asking, having that frame in your mind, I believe also, just like it slightly colors the language coming out of your mouth so that it is less accusatory and more exploratory.
Mark Fogel [00:29:43]:
Absolutely. Said it perfectly. I mean, the mental frame that we have as leaders going to those circumstances does a lot for us. And if we are of an ilk that says, like you did, at the end of the day, success or failure rests with me, I mean, the buck stops here attitude that is going to color how you approach those conversations and your actions. And I think, you know, it may be a bit of a trope, but I think there's a lot of data to support it. You know, in, in decades past, the. The sticks and carrots method of management was, if you're not going to do what I need, you're going to be hit by the stick and you're not going to get the carrot of a big bonus. And we've, we've, there's limits to what that's going to lead to.
Mark Fogel [00:30:24]:
And this day and age, we just, we just know that's, that's largely ineffective in most contexts. Instead, it's, we are operating and doing a lot of complex knowledge work with a lot of cool codependencies and overlapping layers. As a leader, work is hard, and if you go into a situation after some error, failure, mistake, et cetera, going great, we're going to discover what happened as a team so that we can understand it, so that we as a team next time will come out ahead. And just having the attitude, like you said, I mean, that's 80% of the game. I mean, mindset is so critical for leadership and leadership development. It's why we spend so much attention to it.
Matt Gjertsen [00:31:04]:
Absolutely. To kind of wrap up this idea of the debrief for people, for leaders who want to try to bring this concept into their team. As you said, there's so many different names for it, there's so much different advice about it, and ultimately it comes down to actually executing it. What kind of advice would you give for a leader that says, okay, I want to start implementing this in some form on my team? What are some things they should be thinking? Thinking about?
Mark Fogel [00:31:27]:
About. Yep. Step one, bake it into a process. So there has to be some form of a cadence, some form of a, you know, a temporal, you know, a time based trigger to when an event is going to happen, the debrief event. And maybe it's every quarter you're discussing your sales team's efforts. Maybe it's after a software team has, has wrapped up a project. You know, some form of a natural trigger should lead to, you know, event ends. Next thing, debrief time.
Mark Fogel [00:31:58]:
We get everyone in the room. It can be in person, virtual, doesn't matter. We have someone who's ready to take on the task of uncovering the truth as best we can. So just baking that into a process and making the time critical. Step one where most organizations fail. Right there.
Matt Gjertsen [00:32:14]:
Awesome. Yeah, I think that's, that's perfect. It is. Yeah. If it's not part of a process, it's just, it's just not going to get done.
Mark Fogel [00:32:20]:
It's just, I mean, you know it as much as I do. And time, of course, is money. And no doubt it has been said to me, you know, Mark, you know, great ideas. We love your framework. Thanks for your help, but it's just not practical. We don't have the time to do it, I go, okay, I get it. At minimum, modify what we're talking about to make it fit with your time constraints. But if you're saying you don't have time to do it because it's too costly, again, it's an old trope.
Mark Fogel [00:32:47]:
I guarantee it's going to be more costly in the long run to not do it at all. So it is worth the investment of time of your people. Not only are you learning from events and doing better, you're also building that learning culture. And I think both you and I know that at the end of the day, part of what I talked about in the talk you witnessed at the end of the day, when you bake it into a culture around norms and expectations of conduct and behavior, that is when the magic happens. And if you're doing that as a leader in your organization, you're baking it into, that's, you know, we're always going to debrief. We're always going to learn from this stuff. You're going to, you're going to see the improvements, period.
Matt Gjertsen [00:33:25]:
You just, you just are absolutely, absolutely awesome. Well, to wrap this up, we always like to ask kind of the same question. You know, the name of this show is making better. So we have this interesting question that I love. I love the different answers I get. If you could snap your fingers and change one thing to make the world better, what would it be?
Mark Fogel [00:33:45]:
I thought about this a lot, and this is a hard question. It's like the more you think about it, the harder it is. Right. I was imagining that maybe we could all do better with not taking ourselves so seriously. Clearly. I'm choosing, of course, to go down certain paths of. I'm setting the critical needs around justice and security and safety and peace aside. Right.
Mark Fogel [00:34:11]:
But, you know, I think our mental health is so baked into our self impression, it's so baked into comparing and contrasting with others. We see the u dip of happiness curves in our, in our thirties, forties and fifties. Cause we, we're just so. We're so overwrought with trying to be perfect. But your podcast is making better, not making perfect, you know, and if we just can recognize that it's aspirational, it's incremental improvement, and it's moving in the right direction, and that's a win, then things are. Things are going to be better. So that's. That's my making better of knowing I'm not perfect.
Mark Fogel [00:34:46]:
I never will be. If I do a little bit better every time and take some steps back. It's all right.
Matt Gjertsen [00:34:52]:
Exactly. I think in the end, that's all we can hope for, right? Is just to make those incremental improvements, for sure. Well, Mark, this has been absolutely fantastic. It was great to hear the background, great to hear more, explore this idea of, you know, having a learning culture, a debrief culture. I'm sure people got a ton out of it. So thank you so much for your time today. I hope you have a great rest of the day, and I look forward to talking to you again.
Mark Fogel [00:35:16]:
No, thank you. I appreciate it very much.
Matt Gjertsen [00:35:18]:
Thank you so much for listening today. If you are a fan of this podcast and have ideas for future episodes, I would really love to hear from you. Send an email to podcast ettereverydaystudios.com.com and we would love to incorporate your ideas into the show. While you're at it, make sure to like this episode and subscribe so you never miss a future episode. I hope you have a great rest of the week and we will see you next time on the making better podcast. Bye.
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