Welcome to the Potential Leader Lab Podcast, and I'm your host, Perry Maughmer. So today, I thought I would revisit the E3 Framework. And the E3 Framework is something I came up with that stands for Explore, Experiment, and Evolve. And it's, my, it's I guess it's just kind of my framework. What I did is I kinda looked back at how I approach things over the years and how I've seen other people approach things. And I came up with a framework that is it's very much descriptive, not prescriptive. I'm not I'm not telling anybody what to Explore, Experiment, or Evolve with, but I just wanna give people an idea of a framework that can be beneficial to help them break down something that seems to be more complex in the manageable parts. And, you know, kind of if you assign steps to the thing and have a and have a process, it gets a little easier to do.

And I also believe it's important because one of the main functions of anybody that's in that that wants to lead, that wants to influence people, that wants to help other people become more successful is to be able to explain to them how they think, and that's often the missing piece because I often say that one of a leader's main roles is to teach people how to think. We definitely don't wanna teach them what to think. That's not the objective. But to give them a framework of how to think, I believe is truly important. And it's also I have to be able to explain to everybody how I'm thinking. Not not what I'm thinking, but they need to understand my process. Right? And it and I think it just helps us make sense of something we do every day, hopefully, at least, and enables us to be more intentional about our evolution. Because if I have a framework and I know there's certain steps involved, then I know that I've left something out or that I skipped something or I can always go back to something.

And finally, I think the most impactful thing it does, at least for me, what it's done when I follow this Explore Experiment Evolve Framework is it enables me to continually update my biases and assumptions. We all have biases and assumptions and we can never be free of them because we actually need them to survive. So we we never we're never gonna walk around being completely a 100% unbiased or or have no assumptions about anything. But I do think we can acknowledge that we have them and then work to Evolve them with us as we learn. So, again, I think the best thing we can do is just continually update our our biases and assumptions. We can't be free of them, but we, a, have to know that we have them, and then, b, do everything we can to update, update them as we learn. So why all of this and where do we start? So before you even start with Explore, Experiment, Evolve, before you before you decide what you wanna Evolve into, you can't do it in a vacuum. And so for me, you have to kind of, you have to really focus on getting radical clarity around 2 things.

Why are you evolving? To what end? And who are you serving? So you gotta get clear on your why and your who. So I would start with the who because I believe the who is is wound into the why. And so if you think about and the reason this is important is because as we I think we need to shift and and self transcend. So Maslow Maslow's hierarchy of human needs at the top of that pyramid sat self realization. Now if you read Scott Barry Kaufman's book Transcend, he actually does a lot of research and explains that Maslow believed the ultimate goal should be self transcendence, which is moving beyond ourself in service of others, not self actualization. Self actualization is really focused on us. Self transcendence, I've transcended that thought. I'm working I'm working on for other people.

The reason that's important is because I think once we shift that to another person or another group of people, we're willing to do the hard work necessary that it takes to Evolve because it is really challenging work. And I've I've purposely and and I'll talk about this in a little bit. I purposely avoid the word change because I think it has a negative connotation. And most people think that when you change something, it's better than it was before. So there's an implication that whatever you were doing isn't good. And I I wanna avoid that at all costs, and that's why I love the term Evolve or or just grow. But in the book, Kaufmann talks about Maslow and says that really the goal is self transcendence. We wanna move beyond ourselves.

And it's it is really hard work. And I think once we were doing it for somebody else, if we're doing it in service to other people, it gives us the additional drive that we're gonna need to sustain that effort to achieve the evolution. Because, again, the difference between change and evolution evolution change typically is a one time thing. Right? It's not dynamic. It's I change from a to b, and I'm done. Evolution never ends. And so I think it's important for us to understand that as we get on this kind of this journey, this is the end is not the goal. The the process, you know, Cervantes said the journey is the end.

And I think that's the case here is once once you start this this journey for yourself, the goal isn't to win or to finish. The goal is the journey, which funny enough is actually how you define the word play. Play is defined as an activity you do for the sake of the activity. So kind of we could we could correlate the fact that if you're into, you know, evolving yourself, it is play. It's play because the activity itself is the goal. The end state is not the goal. To win, there's no winning. Win is not the goal.

Now and I and so when I go through I'm gonna walk you through the kind of the roles that I think align with the steps of Explore, Experiment, Evolve. And and I choose words very carefully because as my friend, Hillary Blair says, words create worlds. So we do have to be very careful about the words we use because people interpret them based on their own experiences. So the word Explore, you know, travel to new territory or for adventure or discovery. And for me, it means that we set a direction but not necessarily a destination. So when you're gonna Explore something, you set a general direction, but you don't have a specific in place in mind. It's kinda like the difference between, for those of you that have listened to anything of mine, I'm not a big fan of goals, but I am a big fan of intention. You know, you can set an intention of something that you want a direction you wanna go, but you don't necessarily pick a a particular destination.

And the reason I think that's really important is because it's impossible for us to know what the future holds. So we may pick based on what we know right now, a destination. And in 12, 18, 24 months, that destination may be invalid or not exist anymore. And so process is really important, but the endpoint, not as much. And in order to support that, I think there are 3 kind of concepts that go into my thinking around that. The first two come from, Nicholas Taleb who wrote the Black Swan and Anti Fragility, and those are the two concepts. In The Black Swan, he essentially says prepare, don't plan. You know, planning Eisenhower said planning is indispensable.

Plans are useless. So I love Taleb's thought about prepare, don't plan. And if you prepare for things, then you're always ready. Right? If you plan, unfortunately, what I've seen, people once people have a plan, then they just go back to what they were doing. Their mindset goes back to, okay, I I've got a plan. If that ever happens, I'll enact the plan. The problem is is that the minute the plan's done, it's out of date. So quite honestly, you could have a plan, and the plan could be anywhere from 6 days old to 6 months old.

But oftentimes, if you it it'd be like if I ask anybody, at the beginning of the year, I want you to write down all of the things that you believe right now about this coming year, all the things you're gonna accomplish, and how you're gonna do it. And I want you to write it all up, type it all out, whatever you wanna do, seal it, put it away. Then in June, I want you to get that back out and read it and see how much of it is actually still relevant based on what has happened between January June. And I can say with some level of confidence because I work with a lot of leaders and business owners, and most of them don't remember the things that they planned 6 months ago because 6 months ago seems like 2 years ago. Because time the the the speed at which time moves, it's almost impossible for us to know what we thought about or what we projected forward 3, 6, 12 months ago, let alone any longer than that. And so it's really back to Taleb, prepare don't plan. Make preparations, but don't have a plan. His second concept is antifragility, and I'm I'm a big fan of antifragility just from a conceptual standpoint because it it's the same point as prepare.

So he said, essentially what he said is the the opposite of fragile is not strong. So people think, okay, if I'm not fragile, I wanna be strong. And in terms of shocks to the system, in terms of changes in the environment, I don't wanna be fragile. I wanna be strong. Well, Taleb makes the argument that strong is not good either. So we don't wanna build a system or build preparation around resisting shock. We're better off if we build resilience to benefit from shock. So instead of resisting shock or being broken by shock, we actually benefit from shock.

And the best example organically or physically I can give you is our is our immune system. Our immune system's built to get stronger the more it's exposed to things. And if we can build ourselves, our mindsets, if we can build resilient organizations, adaptive organizations that benefit from shock, how much better are those organizations prepared back to the first point for the future? Because they don't need to predict. They don't they don't need to know what's gonna happen because they've built in resiliency and preparation to be able to operate in any number of environments. And that's what makes a company strong. And then, finally, the final concept around exploring is the theory about infinite game. And James Carce is the one who originally wrote the book about infinite game, and, it was popularized. Oh, his name's escaping me now.

Leaders Eat Last. I'll think about it in a minute. But anyway, he wrote a book, cynic, Simon Sinek, his book, The Infinite Game. And I've always found that fascinating. And it goes back to the the journey and the destination. The the the purpose of an infinite game and and see, there's finite games and infinite games. And finite games are ones where there's clear rules, all the all the moves are known, and there's a definitive beginning and end and and the goal is to win. There's nothing wrong with it.

We have plenty of games that work that way. All of our sports work that way. Any board games work that way where you just there's a definitive set of rules. You know what the moves can be, you you any any game chess, you name it. Right? They're they're finite games. There's a winner and a loser. Infinite games are different. And the in infinite games, there is no endpoint and there is no winner or loser.

In an infinite game, all you're doing is earning the right to continue to play. That sounds to me a lot like life. Right? A lot like being in a business because as far as I know, we the challenge we have with mindsets and around people and around how we lead in organizations is that we often use a finite set of terms to refer to an infinite gain. So I think you would you would often hear people in businesses, we're gonna win, where we've got this goal, we've got all these things, but the game is never done. Like, that's not a finite game that they're playing. Now at the end of that day, you could be playing a game for that day to win the day, but you're actually playing an infinite game because the goal in business is to continue to play. So all you're doing is earning the right to continue to play, but the frustration comes from others because we keep using finite mindsets and finite rules and finite words to describe an infinite game. So it can be really frustrating.

So for me, exploration and why that matters is prepare don't plan, develop and be antifragile so you benefit from shock, and your the goal is not to win. The goal is to continue to play, which is really exploration for me. And it and it's also divergent instead of convergent. So the word Explore opens up possibilities instead of closing down possibilities. Because if my goal is to travel from point a to point b and I have clear goal, I've I've now converged on that goal and I'm not entertaining other ideas. I'm I'm I'm focused on the one thing and I wanna get there. Whereas exploring is really setting a direction, not a destination, so that I can find and be open to things that come along the way that may be in in some cases more valuable or better for me than the things I thought I was going after. So in the terms of Explore, you gotta you have to be literally, shocking here, you have to be an Explorer.

Alright? So when you're exploring, you wanna have the mindset of an Explorer. Now once you start doing that, you're gonna get into Experimentation because you're gonna Explore concepts, ideas, frameworks that'll help you in your evolution. Right? Once you gather that information, you're gonna start to Experiment. So to be in in that stage, you need to transition from being an Explorer to a scientist. Alright? So you change coats, you change hats, whatever whatever part of your wardrobe you wanna change. Right? So you're metaphorically changing your wardrobe. You've you've reached at least far enough along in your exploration. You've got some information.

Now you wanna run some Experiments. So scientific method. That's what we're gonna use. That's why I say scientist because as a scientist, it's a way of thinking, right, that helps us go through problem solving. And it encourages you to question your assumptions and test ideas objectively to get closer to some type of objective truth as possible. What I like to say in this process is we form a hypothesis as a as a just individual. I think if I do x, then I will get y. Simple as that.

I think if I do x, if I behave like x, I can get y. And and by the way, all the stuff we're talking about when it comes to leadership and it comes to Explore, Experiment, Evolve, almost all of it's around behavior. Alright? So it's all about us testing new behaviors, us trying out, trying on new behaviors to get a different result and to and to make the world a better place for those we care about. Okay? So in the terms of the of the scientist, we're Because, obviously, the re the way they are responding is not favorable. So when I do that, I'm not trying to find the right answer. So the goal of a scientist is never I came up with one hypothesis and it was right. The goal in the scientific method is you come up with a hypothesis, then you run a bunch of Experiments to try to prove it wrong. And if you can't prove it wrong, then it's right.

We do the opposite most of the time as human beings in anything that we do, anything at home, anything at work. We come up with an idea, and then we'll we'll fight like hell to prove it right. No matter what the feedback is, no matter what the data points are, no matter what the results are, we'll just keep after it because it's our idea. It's a great idea, and it needs to work. Think about how much wasted emotional time emotional energy, time, and money are spent doing just that when it's a bad idea. The hypothesis the goal of a scientific method is not to prove something right. It's to test out the hypothesis to see if, in fact, you can't prove it wrong, then it becomes right. And, essentially, what that means is we only leverage ideas that work.

So think about if we took that approach when we're Experimenting with these behaviors and we care less about whose idea it is or how I feel about it, but we simply judge it on, did it move me closer to my destination? Does it align with my evolutionary goals? Am I becoming more of the person that I wanna be? Is this working? If I if I use these behaviors with these people, am I getting the go am I moving them and me closer to the thing that I want? That's how we should judge our behavior, not if it's one that we like or not, or not if it's one that we believe in or not. We have to be a little more, I guess, I would say, agnostic when it comes to that. Now the second part of Experiments and I think you you really want the and the underlying assumption there, by the way, if we back up a minute, the underlying assumption is humility in an Experiment. In an Experiment, the reason I run an Experiment, the foundation of that Experiment is I don't know. So just think about that. The whole point of an Experiment is I don't know as opposed to we feel most comfortable in today's world, be it as an individual or at work or at home as knowing. The more we know, the more comfortable we are. The more we don't know, the less comfortable we are.

So I would I I believe that one of the strongest dangers we have as a human is as we get more successful, as we get more experience, we we tend to start believing we know the right answers. So the opportunities and the our curiosity starts to wane. We we're curious about fewer and fewer things because we think we know. Well, obviously, we can't learn something if we already know it. So if we know a lot of stuff, how much are we learning? And that's really what we have to be wary of. We can have experiences that are valid, and we can have experiences that we can have done things in the past that worked. All those thing those things are true and great. But I will say that just because it worked at company y with person x, does not mean it's gonna work at company z with person d.

And our brains wired to find similarities. So our brains wired to see patterns. That's that can be a wonderful thing. But the real question that leaders must ask themselves regularly is your mind's already your brain's already answering what's answering your question, what's the same here? What's similar? Because somebody comes to you with a challenge and you've got an answer based on the time that you did it back, you know, 10 years ago with this person, with that person, or you could have done it as as 6 6 months ago. But slow down just a second and ask yourself not what's the similar what's similar with these situations. Ask yourself what's different. Figure out what the differences are and why your idea may not work. Doesn't mean that it's not gonna work, but it also doesn't mean that just because you heard that this situation is somewhat similar to the one that you used this solution on before, that it's definitively going to work.

Alright. So again, the foundation of of Experimenting is we don't know. We don't have an answer. We don't have a solution. So that's why we run Experiments. So that's the underlying part of that the of that part of of Experimenting is we don't know. And then the last thing I'll tell you about Experimentation as a scientist and why Experiments are run-in a lab. They're run-in a lab because it's a controlled environment and you're small risk.

Now, low risk, low reward. I get that. But we have to manage our own risk and not not when it comes to when I'm talking these types of Experiments, we're talking about things like social capital. Right? If you have an idea of a new behavior you wanna try out, figure out where you're gonna try it out where there isn't a lot of risk involved. You might try it out with a friend or a family member. You might try it out with a colleague at work. But you probably don't wanna try it out in front of a brand new client that could, if you close the deal, could make you a $1,000,000. Probably not the best place to Experiment with new behaviors.

Nothing wrong with it. Do it if you want to, but we just have to understand there's a risk reward relationship. There's a definitive correlation between those two things. It's a high risk, could be a high reward. It could also be high risk, no reward because of the risk involved in it. So as an Explorer, I wanna Explore. As a scientist, I wanna Experiment. Now, now we've gathered data.

We've run our Experiments. Now, we have to figure out what to do. So for me, during the evolutionary stage of our process of the framework, you know, we've gone Explore, Experiment. Now we're gonna get to Evolve. As Evolve, we wanna take on the mindset of a philosopher. Alright? Now I also wanna say I'm gonna revisit this. The reason this word is Evolved and not change is because, again, change kind of connotes a current state that's undesirable. So if I'm gonna change, the inherent thought process is, oh, well, you're changing because what you have or who you are or whatever isn't good.

So you want it to be better. That's not what we're doing here. I'm not saying that anything that I'm doing right now is not good or desirable. I'm just saying I make a choice that I want to Evolve because it's not serving me the way I'd like it to. And maybe if I didn't change anything, everything would be fine. Nobody you know, the world's not gonna tilt off its axis. The sun's gonna come up tomorrow. No problem.

Right? But is it gonna be good enough for me? Am I doing as much as I wanna do for the people I care deeply about? So if we, if we set a philosophic mindset, Right? It involves approaching life and questions with curiosity, critical thinking, and a willingness to challenge our assumptions. It makes us take time to ponder. I'm guessing, if I ask everybody, when's the last time you have pondered something? First of all, I get a lot of kinda curious looks, and then I would get a lot of, I don't know. Now another word for ponder, in case you're uncomfortable with pondering, is reflection. Alright? So when we when we reflect, it's, and I forget I think it was Dewey, Thomas Dewey who said we don't learn from our experiences. We learn from reflecting on our experiences. And so you do need to build in time to ponder. And and I like ponder better than reflect because I think the visual is better.

If I'm pondering something, I'm just sitting on a rock somewhere by a nice, lake or stream rubbing my chin, thinking. Right? Now and, again, I I don't this isn't I'm not saying weeks, days, whatever. Sometimes, it's as simple as at the end of the day, just spend 10, 15 minutes thinking about your day. You wanna talk about and earlier, we talked about the fact that time moves fast. There are some days that I'm betting some of you sit down at 5 o'clock and can't remember what happened at 10:30 that morning because it seems like yesterday or the day before because so much has happened. So imagine building in time during the day to reflect on what you're doing Because it's only through that reflection that we can learn. Because we have to we have to evaluate the results of our Experiment. We have to gather that data, and then we have to figure out what does the data mean.

Because the data, it just by itself means nothing. We have to figure out for ourselves, what is this indicating to us? Drawing on our own experiences, our own understanding, or even going out and talking to some other people and saying, hey, this is what happened. What do you think? But unless we build that time in to reflect, which I think, by and large, we're we're missing the boat in all aspects of our lives. We're not spending near enough time in reflection. And again, I wanna make clear. I'm not saying days or weeks or months. I'm saying minutes. I gotta believe and and here's the thing.

We don't remember what Dewey said. We don't learn from our experiences. We learn from reflecting on our What opportunities are we losing? What opportunities are we losing? Because we're not learning. We can't learn and do at the same time. Remember, philosophical thinking requires reflection, open mindedness, and a commitment to reasoned inquiry. I was telling a group I met with yesterday, the objective of an argument, and I mean an argument in the classical sense where you're exchanging ideas, the goal of an argument is not about that. If you get into an argument Now we use the term differently, but a classical argument is just an open exchange of ideas that are not the same idea. So we have we have different ideas about something and we exchange them.

We're we're actually arguing in the classical sense. So when that happens, is my goal when is your goal when you get into any I'm not gonna call them arguments. Any discussion at work or at home is your goal to learn or to win? That's all you have to think about Because are you are you trying to make progress? Are you trying to learn something to make progress? Is the other person trying to learn about your point of view and what you could incorporate into yours and what she could incorporate into hers? Or is it to win the argument and get the other person to capitulate and essentially say, oh, you're right. I'm wrong. Is that your goal? Because if that's your goal, how often does it work, and at what cost? Because making people admit they're wrong and agree with you is not a way to build a coalition. It's not a way to develop people. It's not it's certainly not a way to create psychological safety, which is the hallmark of any high performing team. So reflective thinking.

I wanna give you a quick definition. It involves consideration of the larger context, the meaning, and the implications of an experience or action. Again, consideration of the larger context, the meaning, and the implications of the experience or action. So I'm trying to see the bigger scope. When when I'm looking at the results, I want if I wanna have reflective thinking, I wanna think about my thinking. So little metacognition thrown in there. And so I wanna think about all the implications of what I'm what I'm remembering, what I did, what what are the downstream implications, what are the upstream implications. I wanna think about it holistically.

I wanna look at it from 360 degrees. There was a, in ancient, Rome or Greece, they came they talked about the Archimedean point. The Archimedean point is where you can see a problem from its totality objectively. Now, the last thing I'll cover in the Evolve stage and it kinda ties back into Experiments because this is a process, not an event. These are not static. You can flip back and forth depending on where you need to go because the certain things you find out in your evolution may flip back to the Experiment. You know, you may re Experiment with things or you may go forward and go, hey, you know what? This concept looks really good. I need to Explore a little more.

So, again, this is not it's not linear. Right? So it isn't linear. You have to it's in a process. I have to go 1, 2, and 3 and then repeat. It can be 1, 2, 3, back to 2, back to 1, jump to 3. It it's very dynamic and organic. Just like life. But I will tell you, when you start getting the data back, because it's gonna be in term in in kind of in terms of feedback.

It's gonna be feedback from people in your life. When you're trying on new behaviors, the only people that can give you the feedback are other humans. Right? So you're gonna get feedback. When you do that, I got great advice, a couple years ago from a coach who was walking me through how to learn how to do a 3 60 assessment. And she said, when you get all that feedback back in front of you, and in this particular case, there's gonna be a couple pages of it, all bullet pointed out, no names, just completely objective. But it's gonna be a lot of lot of feedback. Some good. Some you won't look at as good.

You know, if anybody's ever had a 360, that's what happens. And and rightly so, it should. But if I have, if I have all that feedback in front of me, she said, here's what I want you to do. I want you to take a red, yellow, and green highlighter. And as you read all the feedback, highlight the stuff in green that you're gonna take action on, highlight the stuff in yellow that you're gonna think about may need to come back to, and highlight the stuff in red you have no interest in changing. And I thought that was a very empowering way to look at feedback because as she said, it's all feedback. It doesn't make it all true. So there it's true to that person, but it doesn't mean you have to change it.

And so you still have free will. So being able to position it to the point of, yeah, I I know that this is the way it is and I'm okay with that. I'm not gonna change it. There's nothing wrong with that. You made at least you made an intentional choice. That's all we're after here is intentionality. Alright. So I'll just we're gonna go just what we talked about, Explore, Experiment, Evolve.

When you Explore, go figure, you're an Explorer. When you Experiment, you're a scientist. And when you Evolve, you're a philosopher. So if you think about those behaviors, those are the that's the persona that you wanna take on when you're in each of those stages. And you wanna be able, after a while, to develop the ability to move kind of in and out. You don't actually have to take the, the the lab coat all the way off to be able to discern have in order for this whole framework to work. Well, I hope this has been helpful. And that's about all I have for everybody today.

I appreciate your time and your energy and your attention. And between now and the next time I see you here in the lab, be good and take care of each other.