Why Complex Plans Kill Execution (Simplify The Work) | Mike Simmons

Mike Simmons, founder of Catalyst, joins the show to discuss why complex plans inherently kill execution. He emphasizes that professionals often gravitate toward complexity to hide poor results or simply out of complacency, but true progress requires simplifying workflows to gain clear, actionable data. By stripping away convoluted steps, leaders can easily determine if a failure occurred because the team didn't do the work, or if 'the work simply didn't work.' A major focus of the conversation revolves around diagnosing organizational execution problems. Simmons breaks down the difference between public information (found in CRM systems) and private information (locked in employees' heads), advocating for deep, initial qualitative audits. By asking 10 different team members to simply describe or draw out the sales process on a whiteboard, leaders can quickly uncover misalignment, identify assumptions, and foster a 'beginner's mind' approach to solving systemic issues. Finally, Simmons provides a tactical framework for fixing persistent communication issues by addressing the gap between what is 'said, heard, and remembered.' By implementing a robust call plan that outlines attendees, objectives, and specific next steps, leaders can ensure alignment. He urges managers to validate communication actively and focus their ultimate leadership efforts on a single, vital objective: building other leaders.

Discussed in this episode

• The energy versus impact matrix and how to delegate tasks to people who get energy from the work that drains you.
• Why professionals use complexity as a hiding mechanism instead of simplifying strategy to see if the work actually produces results.
• The power of collaborative whiteboarding to give everyone a voice rather than relying on top-down slide presentations.
• Differentiating between public system data and the vital private information trapped inside team members' heads.
• Using a blank-slate beginner's mind to audit a team by asking ten different people to define the exact same sales process.
• The chronic communication gap caused by the difference between what is said, what is actually heard, and what is remembered.
• Validating communication alignment by simply asking team members, 'What did you hear me say?' after giving directions.
• A four-step call plan framework focusing on attendees, their objectives, your objectives, and concrete next steps.

Episode highlights

1. 0:00 — High impact and energy matrix
2. 3:30 — Why complexity kills execution
3. 6:15 — The power of whiteboarding
4. 9:00 — Hiding behind complex plans
5. 11:45 — When the work doesn't work
6. 14:15 — Private vs. public information
7. 17:30 — The 10-person process audit
8. 20:45 — Said, heard, and remembered
9. 23:20 — Building a structured call plan
10. 25:50 — True definitions of leadership

Key takeaways

• Simplify execution to quickly find out if the underlying work actually works.
• Use whiteboarding to give all meeting participants a voice in the strategy.
• Uncover private information trapped in your team's heads through qualitative interviews.
• Close communication gaps by validating what was actually heard versus what was said.
• Focus your leadership efforts on building other leaders and taking accountability first.

Transcript

Private is the information that's in your head that someone's got to pull out. Public is the information I can go if I go into a system. People are lazy and complacent and it goes back to nothing changes if nothing changes. And we're so used to doing this a certain way that we feel we have to do it this way.

You can just add more and keep adding more and keep adding more and and then confuse people and then you lose people and What if you simplify? Welcome back to another episode of the Bridge the Gap podcast powered by Revenue Reimagined. It is a special episode for two reasons. Number one, I'm going to give myself some props.

It is my birthday episode. Number two, there is no one else I would rather record with on my birthday than our guest today, who is Mike Simmons, founder of Catalyst and a strategic operator who helps business leaders make clear, purpose-driven decisions. I can tell you after spending some time with him one-on-one, this is 100% true. He's known for simplifying execution through better communication and helping leaders cut through complexity so their teams can actually move.

I was saying when we started the show and I'm going to say it again, that my last conversation with Mike, I think it was last week, maybe the week before, um, was one of the more impactful conversations I've had this year. And Mike's like, you know, thank you, that means a lot. And I'm like, well, the bar's really fucking low because I talk to Dale all day. Now, that said, even if we raise the bar in the other people I talk to besides Dale, it was one of the more impactful conversations and I'm excited to share that impact with our listeners today.

So, thanks for being here. Thanks for saying that and uh, so what was impactful? See, this is what I love about you, um, is that you don't just you're not just He doesn't remember. No, I do remember.

So, the the the the two the two by two. It's his birthday. We'll have to give him a little bit of grace, Mike. It's my birthday.

I still got for a red eye. For No, Dale's trying to throw me under the bus being like, oh, he's just saying that, he's not going to remember. Um, so my number one takeaway was the two by two, um, high high impact and do what you love. Um, I literally still have it sitting on my desk, um, and it's something I think about as of everything that I do every single day.

That's awesome. It's What do you Did you really say that, Mike, or did you or did you not say that and he would just made that up? Oh, he he That would be funny if I did it and he's just like, right? Yeah, sounds great, man.

It, uh, why do you think people struggle with doing what they love or staying focused and and getting the things done that bring them energy and have high impact. Like what's the what gets in the way of that? I I should have known this was going to be a podcast of us being interviewed and not you being interviewed. Um, I love it.

So, I'm curious Dale's thoughts. To me, um, I think people are lazy and complacent and it goes back to nothing changes if nothing changes. And we're so used to doing it a certain way or we feel we have to do it this way or this is how we have to make money or we're not willing to put in the time or effort to look at it from a different way. I think all of them.

Yeah, I I think we're all a series of patterns and I think as you evolve through life, you get into a place of like, it's hard to change sometimes and like if you don't push yourself outside the boundaries of like your current thought process, like you get stuck in this rut that you go back and forth on. And so, I think that happens more often. And then now what I think is happening is I think everyone believes there's some kind of easy button. Like, oh, generative AI or like this is going to happen and I'm going to create some kind of workflow and it's going to make it much easier.

What I'm learning is, um, what I'm learning is that the execution part of the AI world is a lot more difficult and you actually have to it it's not actually more difficult than anything else. The real problem is that you still got to map it out in some kind of diagram or strategically think about something or like build it out and map it and then you can go execute it. Just like you would five years ago, 10 years ago. Like that's not going to change.

Um, so anyway, and it maps back to what you do really well, which is like clarity through that execution path and drawing things out, right? Like, you and I have talked about this a long time, but I think visuals and the diagramming of things get one gets it out of your head and two, like can get and can grab clarity around it. Yeah. So, You guys both love, you guys both love whiteboarding and diagramming.

It is admittedly one of my weaker areas. Um, I'm not great at whiteboarding. I love it when Dale pulls out a whiteboard. I think you all are both great at that.

It's some the mind mapping. Mike's better than me. He's phenomenal at it. I wish wish I was great at it.

What's your what's your hang up with it? I don't know. Um, I'm not I'm not really a visual learner. Um, so that's probably part of it.

That's not necessarily my learning style. I'm more of a, you know, I I listen and I take my own notes and whatnot, but I I love I love the idea of it. I love a good lucid chart like when I'm building something for a customer, but it's more for them than for me. Yeah.

Well, I mean, and that's what this tool is for. It's for the people that are in the room to get engaged. It's not for me to go up there and just draw some shit up on a whiteboard. And be like, hey, this is cool.

And my penmanship peaked in second grade and all of that other kind of stuff. Like I'm not that's not that's not what I'm that's not what I'm trying to convey with this tool. What I'm trying to convey is everybody who's in the room, who's part of the conversation, whether it's in this virtual environment or it's in a physical environment, has a voice and has something to contribute. And the big challenge is that we as leaders typically get up in front of the room, think it's about us, we start pontificating or going to slides, ask questions, don't give space for people to respond and then wonder why everybody goes quiet.

But as soon as somebody sees, you know, their words up here, like you know, whiteboard, even if it's not written well and we know what it says, like it just now you're part you're part of the conversation. Like you contributed to that. It's it's not it's not me. And I think that's the that to me what I've realized, um, I've realized a couple of different things over the last 10 years of operating the business.

I missed retreats. I missed being together with teams. So then I joined masterminds to have that kind of experience. I missed the engagement of being able to hand a marker off to a client in in a meeting and be able to do and build on the whiteboard together.

Like I learned what the ZVB line um is from Intel being in a room with people at Intel while on while a customer success person and going back and forth with a marker. Like they like these are these are things that happen in that kind of environment. And what's super cool is the technology now has allowed us with a lab mic and a good camera and good lighting to bring this into both the virtual environment, in the virtual environment if you're not able to do it in the physical environment. And it's very different than me like if I'm writing notes down here and onto a digital whiteboard and then having it present on a screen, it's very different than turning around and you seeing the Oh yeah.

stuff on the back of my head and like, all that kind of stuff, right? So it's just it's an experience and there's there are inside the digital whiteboards and stuff. Yeah, I've done a couple of different things with them. Like I used to use an iPad before when my office was set up differently.

So like I I was in a different room in the house before and I didn't have uh the I actually had uh like a fake screen behind me kind of thing in that kind of space. And then move to a point where I had a wall and the shadows were off and then put a smaller whiteboard up and then put a bigger white This whiteboard is uh 7 ft by 5 ft. Oh, wow. A big white board.

It is it can take up a lot of space. Like three feet taller than Dale. What's that? It's like three feet taller than Dale.

No, it's wide. WIDER, you know, kind of like not not not tall. So the um there's this yeah. Oh, we we could go we could go super deep on all of this kind of stuff.

Um, but there's you can go out there and you can get tools and they're not super expensive. Yeah. And the impact is amazing if that's the kind of experience you want to create. So, I mean one of the things Adam, it's going to be really tough for you to enjoy and appreciate the whiteboard stuff if you don't have a whiteboard.

Um, you know, in in kind of the the background, but if it's not something that draws brings gives you energy, then you partner with somebody else who gets energy out of doing that kind of work. You partner up with a Dale and then now you and Dale can create some really cool things together. So and that was the point of that whole energy versus impact two by two. Um, is you you'll find people out there who get energy out of the things that suck the life out of you.

The key is going out and finding them. 100%. I'm talking on something. Jeez.

So Mike, let's let's dive in a little bit. I mean, it's an amazing conversation, but I'm I'm so curious. But Dale wants to stick to his damn agenda, Mike. I love I love what people say, this is an amazing conversation.

But, but it's amazing, but I don't want to continue it. Well, so but this actually brings into what you were just saying, of clarity driving execution. Like this is not anything different, but it's like how does that execute how does like executing or that clarity drive the the non uh complication of execution? Like why do people want like move towards complexity when things can get simple and then they can just chuck them off the list?

Like you see so many people make simple things complex. Why do people work for large organizations? I ask myself that every time I talk to someone who works for a large organization as someone who started my career working for a public company. What happens in public companies?

You can get lost. You can hide. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. You can get lost. You can hide. So what happens in complexity?

You can hide the real reason why we're not achieving results. Right. 100%. You can always come up with a different reason.

That's just like the way Dale gives me some giant spreadsheet every time I ask him for something. I it's you you can you can just add more and keep adding more and keep adding more and and then confuse people and then you lose people and What if you simplify and you have a really clear set of strategy and aligned tactics to achieve a result. And you do the work, the tactics, then you either realize that the work didn't work, The work didn't work. Yep.

You did the work, the now you know, the work didn't work. So it wasn't the right work. So now you can change. Or you didn't do the work because it wasn't all of these things.

It wasn't this giant to do list. Like how many people have a giant to do list? A lot. How many people add more to that to do list?

Every one of them. How many times have you ever added more to somebody's to-do list? Frequently. So like we keep adding more and more and then we wonder, well why aren't people getting the things done?

Well, it's not because they're uh it's not because they don't want to get the thing done, it's because they're not really sure what they're working on, why they're working on it, how it aligns and all of that kind of stuff. So by simplifying, then you can really get your hone in on the data and start making some decisions. Is it the is it that I didn't do the work? Is it that I couldn't do the work?

Is it that I did the work and I just didn't do it well? Is it that I did the work, I did it well and the work didn't actually work? All of those things give us in information to be able to refine our strategy and tactics to achieve a different uh to achieve the result that we're working toward or realize, hey, you know what, maybe that result isn't what we really want. I like, I I did the work but it didn't work.

You know, when when you talk about the to-do list, so I I'm anti-paper generally speaking. Um, but I do have a little notepad and they're separate for every single client, um, because that's my OCD. I've tried to move to iPad. I just can't.

Um, but it's the to-do list. He won't. It's not that he can't, he won't. I can't.

I've tried. Have you tried this this is the pattern. Like this is the pattern. Dale, Dale, quiet.

Dale, let the guest talk. Have you have you tried in device? Yeah, I tried a remarkable. Remarkable, yeah.

Cool. Yeah, didn't love it. Didn't love it. Okay.

It's I it's something He can't. It it's like my my notes aren't linear, they don't, you know, all make sense. And then when I'm done with the paper, I like to be able to rip it and trash it and scratch. I I don't know.

It's something about the physical pen, I don't know. Okay. It is what it is. Do you guys what you guys like me to turn this into a Dale and Adam therapy session or we do we want to do a podcast?

So we could do either one of those. No. Let let let let let let's shift gears. So we're we're we'll stay on the same pack a little, but we're we're talking about simplification.

So when you work with the Oh, you want to go back to the agenda. Okay, okay. What's the What's the first thing you look at when a team says, Mike, we have an execution problem. Where do you start?

Yeah, I it depends. And and the real the the real answer is, like I don't know where to start just yet on their side. So from a process perspective, my first thing that I do is I gather data. I gather data, conduct research, basically go in there and ask questions and interview.

And I So like an audit. What basically an audit, but an audit and private information, not public information. And the way that I distinguish private versus public is, private is the information that's in your head that someone's got to pull out. Public is the information I can go if I go into a system.

And it don't and sometimes the systems are bad and what not, but the systems are internal versus external. Like all of that kind of stuff. Like data integrity is a real real challenge. I I'm it's pretty simple to go in and figure that kind of stuff out.

The first thing I want to understand is, you know, what are people thinking, doing, saying. So thinking, doing, saying. And and how are they feeling and where do the patterns start to disconnect. So it's information-based interviews, gather data, conduct research.

Depending on scope, um, that's typically a minimum of 10 of those interviews. And the reason I want to do a minimum of 10 is if I've got people they cherry-pick people inside the organization and and I just happened to talk to the three people who all started around the same time and had the same kind of background and work in the same kind of market and do all of that kind of stuff or all of the high performers, whatever it is, then I'm I'm going to get limited data. So, uh minimum of 10 interviews, gather data, conduct research. That's my first step.

I love the private versus public. I almost, you know, wonder and we start everything with an audit. Um, but I I almost wonder the question of, all right, you know, Mike, like we have these 175 questions we're going to go to, but I I want to start and ask it broadly. Let's talk about what's in your head that I'm not going to find going into Hubspot or Salesforce or everything else and not another leave it blank and just let them have diarrhea then out.

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They're going to say, okay, someone's going to go into the data and someone's going to go look at some stuff and someone's going to see all these things. I the thing I ask if we're if we're talking about assessing a sales team just as an example. Sure. Um, where the view is, look, I don't know that if I've got the right people on the team or I don't know if they're motivated or if they give a crap or if they don't know how to do their jobs or, you know, whatever the thing is that they're doing.

What I want to know is from their perspective, what's their sales process? Just tell me, describe it. And I can throw it up on a whiteboard. And then I can ask them, what did I miss in the process?

And after I have 10 conversations with people, what how often do you think all 10 of them draw out the same sales process? Never. Never. How many how many how often do two of them do the same thing, right?

Yeah. And then and it gets even better when you ask them the question about, okay, well, how do you define that stage? Like what's your definition of that stage? Um, and what ends up happening is you start to it's a it's a beginner's mind approach.

Um, infinite learning is I think what Barry Diller has talked about called it before. Um, so infinite learning, beginner's mind, it's always day one. Like whatever you want to look at, like blank slate. I'm just going to go through my process.

I'm going to gather data, conduct research. I'm going to assess that data. I'm then going to identify areas where we want to test. I'm going to put those tests in place and then I'm going to get more data from the results of those tests.

And that's the process to go through. And in this instance, what I want to do is I want to go and work all the way across and just kind of understand when I ask that question about what your sales process is, I immediately see are they looking at sales process through the lens of forecasting for the business? Are they looking at sales process through the lens of how the customer makes a decision? Are they looking at sales process through the lens of how they do their work?

Like it's not what's your definition of sales process? It's just what is your sales process or can you describe it? And then we just go from there. And then um, typically the next set of questions will be built on that.

Get that kind of stuff loaded and say, um, so you know, when when you're really excited about the type of customer that you get a chance to work with, what are those things? What you know, what's happening? What typically do you see? What are they saying?

Uh, what kind who are they introducing you to? What are those things look like? Um, what is the communication look like inside the organization? If you could change certain things, what would you change?

I if I get into those questions inside a 25-minute period and that's usually what I limit it to. Sometimes they're recorded, sometimes not, it just depends on uh culture inside the organization what they're open to. But the um, yeah, the it's uh, those are those are the questions I tend to ask and they're the same ones over and over again. Like literally, go straight back.

Ask the question. And the follow-up question will be built based on what I get back from them because sometimes there's interesting stuff where I need to get some clarity around a word that they used or something else there or something else pops out. We usually have to ask Adam a couple of questions deeper than just a surface to get to his real thought process, like why he cannot like use an iPad to write notes. I can, yeah, I can, I can tell you uh when we talked last week, it's amazing there was that quick ago or maybe it had been the week before, but I Yeah, I think it was two weeks.

it seems like it was an eternity. Uh, it didn't take much to get the clarity around kind of what was going on because you could just see the non-verbal. Like there was a there was a lot of stuff. I don't I don't hide it well.

And and which is which is cool because when people do that, this is the thing this is why it's so important to have the have video on. Like you can you when you see it, then you can go in and you can lean in a little bit more and and I you just can't script this stuff out. Is if you script it out, you lose certain things and become now it becomes more about the script and what's on the document or what's on the piece of paper or here's the technology that you should be really kind of working through. Guys, like this thing is absolutely insane.

What is that? The uh when you can when you start to get that information out, then you can go a little bit deeper. Was that paper or was that a digital device? So this is a this is the uh remarkable paper Move Pro.

And Oh, it's a little integrates with Slack. I can take my handwriting again that peaks in second grade, sync it into our Slack instance and send notes to um other people on the team. And uh and it Okay. so I I just pulled that up on my screen.

Um we might we I I like the integration into Slack. That's super cool. It's awesome. Yeah, consider an Adam into Slack in 2.

3 seconds. Any Slack at any time, 2.2 seconds. 2.

2 Email too. You yelled at me yesterday for answering an email too fast. Well, you also you also ended up going down a different path. Anyway, let's go back to the podcast.

Actually, one thing I've been using Mike is um is Whisperflow. So most most of my love isn't Well, most of my stuff is not written out most of it's just talked and it just Dale likes not to write. Translates. No, so it just translates into everything.

So in Slack I just talk and I think I'm up to 132 words a minute, so it tells you like how fast you're you're talking, writes everything, kind of segments it, puts it in bullet points. So there's a lot of different uh different levels of it. Anyway, Yeah. Yeah, I tried it.

I don't like it. All right, let's uh now He tried it. He doesn't like it. He's going to be like this.

Everything. tried it, didn't like it. Did he tried it? Because you can't reflect on what you're going to do.

You actually have to go do it. And then of course. The question is, did he really try it? Enough.

Whisperflow? Did he try it enough to say, yeah, I'm not sure. Like Adam likes to try things. two weeks.

Ah, there you go. two weeks. That's fair. That's fair.

Dale, I'm going to give you I'm going to give you something for Adam in the future, right? So Adam, don't pay attention to any of this. Um, you're going to hold hold this marker in front of Adam. And be like, hey, try try to pick up this marker.

Sell me this pen. Try. And you what he can't do is he can't actually touch it. Because if he touches it, he didn't try.

He picked it up. So just show me what try is. And before you know it, you start to realize, oh, Yoda was onto something when he said, you know, do or do not. There is no try.

So did you do it or didn't you do it? Did you? Ah, I like it. I like it.

Interesting. Very interesting. We're getting we're getting philosophical, psychological in this in this episode. It's a therapy session.

So, practical. Strategic communication's important, right? In in any org back to the internal communication is a performance lever. You've seen good communication, you've seen bad communication, we've all seen bad communication.

On this episode. We we've seen great communication. Yeah, when Dale interrupts. What what is effective communication actually look like?

What what does that mean to you? Yeah, so I mean, let me let's take a step back and just say like, why is the communication problem something that continues to persist? Like why does So we agree there's a communication problem. And we agree that it's important to solve.

Why does it continue to persist? Well, it persists because there are things that are said, there are things that are heard, there are things that are remembered, and very rarely are all three of those the same. Right? Said, heard, remembered.

So if we get everybody agreeing on that and people will and you can come up with little stories around it. And they'd be like, okay, so, um, just share with me our I'm sure our company mission has been shared and said more times than anybody cares to remember like in inside an organization. How many times has it been said? Well, what did people hear?

Is it remembered? And that's one of those things that's just been echoed over and over again. So said, heard, remembered. A lot of that a lot of the reason why there's a conflict or there's always so many things that are going on.

I'm thinking about what my next meeting or I'm thinking about what I was supposed to do on this to-do list or I'm thinking about, oh, I hope that I don't get called on. You know, whatever the thing is, like I'm my brain is in someplace else or I get an alert on my phone and it distracts me or I want to keep my 2.2 second record on task with Slack. So I need to make sure that I'm responding quickly on top of it.

Like I've got that stuff there. So there's stuff that gets in the way. So said, heard, remembered. One piece.

Once we agree that that happens, now we've got to understand, in order to for something to be remembered, it has to have been heard. So when we share information, ask this question, what did you hear me say? And depending on who the audience is and what you know, whether or not somebody else is in that room when that happens, there are some people who can get defensive with that, what did you hear me say? So there's different ways to kind of color and and share that message.

Um, if someone shares information with you, you can follow up and say, just want to confirm this. Here's what I heard you say. Did I get that right? Because now we've bridged the gap between said and heard.

And we're going to be in a better position for remembered. The way to solve for the remembered piece on that side from an effective communication perspective, build out your call plan. So who who's going to be in the room? Know what their objectives are, anticipate those objectives, excuse me.

We're going to anticipate the objectives of others. We're going to know what our objectives are and we're going to be clear what our about what our desired next steps are. Just four simple things. Like who, their objectives, our objectives, desired next steps.

This is not an agenda. It's a call plan. Right? It's a plan and the plan's going to going to change based on first contact, first first interaction with someone.

If I don't go in with a plan, I'm leaving everything up for chance. If I do go in with a plan, I've at least got a view of where I want to go, what I want to do, what I think somebody else wants to do and ultimately if I can get to these desired next steps quickly, then it then I can end the meeting. So from an effective communication standpoint, if I understand said heard remembered, I know I verify that the things that were said were heard. I come in with my plan and objectives, then my next steps turn into who will do what by when, which helps me get to execution.

That was a lot. To go through. Yeah, it is it is important for the heard side of it. Like, you know, how many meetings are you in where you're getting distracted doing 85 other things or someone saying something and you're like you're you're thinking about something else, so it's very hard to like digest what they're saying so that you can remember it later, which is almost getting worse now with all these call recorders cuz like, ah, we'll just let the call recorder take it.

It's like cuz I remember like I used to do mind mapping in meetings and like that way I would like write down what was happening so then I'd really remember it. So. Cool. Um, so This is making.

Well, what do you guys think? Was that is that helpful? Um, I think it's helpful from like I think it's helpful from like a framework perspective. I think people can digest things in frameworks or in like small pieces and I think one of the things that happens in today's when you're getting to the herd side of it or the understood side of it, if you make it we end up making things too complicated.

So said, heard, remember, like people can digest that or the box, right? Like how do I set myself up for success? Yeah. Yeah.

Makes sense to me. Adam, what do you think? He doesn't. Yeah, it's I I don't.

Um, he was on a red eye. It is his birthday. Yeah. I was I was on a red eye.

No, he's just going to. And it's his birthday. And it's his birthday. You you have to you have to have a process, um, for anything.

Um, and I think that in this example, the process makes sense. I think it's different for different people. Um, but yes, it does. And it's and a lot of these things are check the box type things.

Like if I go in with my call plan, now I know what's going to be said. I can validate what was heard and then my next step should align with that who will do what by when, so ideally those things are remembered and if I follow the framework, my notes, my follow-up notes, let's say it's after a client meeting, I can communicate back. Here's what I heard that was exciting. This is what we agreed to as far as next steps.

Here are the people who own those next steps. And then that fits simply into your CRM from a notes perspective and it all just kind of fits together. Like the the work is integrated into workflow. Rather than something new that someone has to kind of keep track of.

Yeah, and I wonder how much of that is going to get dispersed when we start getting into AI and like some of that data gets like that thinking it's lost, but um, yeah, I I think the frameworks are good, but we need to wrap up a little bit. So let's get into some rapid fire. Let's see how really rapid fire. Look at Adam.

He's about to fall asleep. We got to we got to bring this up. I'm not about to fall asleep. I I think it's funny that you're like, up, I'm done talking to Mike.

I got to go. Seriously like that. Hey, this was a great conversation, but let's wrap it up. There are there are things that we have to get to, man.

We have we're on a clock. We're on a clock. I I Mike, you are my this is my last meeting of the day. Um, I'm not on but Dale has somewhere to That must be nice.

He doesn't work. Wow. Wow. Who who I'm not going to go there.

Um, flew to California on a Monday, home on a Tuesday. This is your own. This was your own. Signed a contract while I was there.

This is your own fault, bro. Nice work. Good win. Okay.

Yeah. Right? Hardest leadership lesson you've learned. Just like hardest leadership lesson I've learned.

It's not about me. I like that. No. I like that.

Okay. Mike, what's what's a communication mistake you still see everywhere? The assumption that communication actually happened. Like Yeah.

Back to what you just said. Yeah. That's actually, I want to double click on that one a little bit because like expectations. I think expectations like screw up everything in the communication side.

You're expecting something, it doesn't end up happening. Yeah. Or you're not clear you're not clear with someone around what your expectations are. Like, hey, if you have an expectation, just share it.

And and if and if someone's non-verbal reaction is, hey, you're a dick for sharing it that way, then okay, then don't share it that same way the next time. Right? Use your feedback loops to to go through and say, maybe we do this a little bit differently next time or respond like a human being and say, it looks like that that didn't come across the way I intended and that's typically what I'll ask that question, hey, what did you hear me say? I love that.

One thing leaders should do daily to stay aligned besides whiteboarding. I that my um, my mindset around leadership is this and this is providing the color and the context on it. Um, first mindset definition, attitude, belief, clarity of definition. That's how I look at mindset.

That's my definition of mindset. Attitude, belief, clarity of definition. A, B, C, D. My mindset when it comes to leadership, leaders build leaders, leadership starts with self, and leadership is how we move forward.

The one thing that we do, build leaders. If we're not out there building leaders, then I don't know what you're doing. I I don't know, I don't know how you even describe yourself as a leader. Uh, leaders build leaders.

So, first thing, build other leaders. And have that perspective of leadership starts with self. Look, it's me. If you're looking for leadership, start with a mirror, look at that reflection.

And you know, ultimately the function of a leader is is how we move forward. So if we're not moving forward toward our objectives, something's wrong. Let's go figure it out. Like A to B.

Don't worry about getting to Z. Let's get from A to B first. How's that for one thing? I love it.

Yeah, that one thing. Mike, if if you weren't doing this kind of work, what would you be doing instead? I think I'd be an engineer. I really do.

I think like What kind of engineer? Mechanical, software, like what kind of engineer? Yeah, mechanical engineer. Like just build things.

Like I like building things. And you know, lately this is kind of leaning into this building of people piece from a leadership standpoint. They could in another life, another world, I'd have been in a uh I'd have been an engineer. Like when I'm around that kind of environment, I don't feel like I'm out of place.

Um, there's a lot of other places where I'll feel like I'm out of place, but that would be that would be one where that probably is the direction I would have gone. Final one, man. Dale, ask your last one. What is it?

Dream vacation destination? Dream vacation destination. So, um, before we hit the mics live or started recording, uh we're talking about settling down on vacation, like being able to detach. And I am one of those people who had a really hard time detaching during vacation.

I still do because I do work that I that I love and that I appreciate and is is meaningful. So what we did is we went on a cruise for the first time and I was too cheap to pay for Wi-Fi. I'm just not going to pay extra money for and this was before I even worried about whether or not it was secure. I didn't pay for the Wi-Fi.

So I wasn't connected to anything. I literally is the boat is leaving Port Canaveral. We're I'm on with emails going back and forth because it was that point in time. So emails and text messages, not Slack.

Um, we are doing a dream vacation later this year. Uh we are on a repositioning cruise from Barcelona, Spain to Florida and that is going to be absolutely awesome because you know, now at that point in time, I've grab it'll be the first big vacation like that where we've got four adults in the family. Um, we're in that season in that season of life. So uh that dream vacation is coming up and it's a cruise from Barcelona to um uh to uh either Port Canaveral or Miami.

Love that. Nice. Love that. It is a different season when you have adults.

Barcelona's great. Um, one of my favorite places, uh, Barcelona, Madrid. Uh I will give you the best pastry shop you've ever been to in your life. Um, in Barcelona.

Awesome. Best like unbelievable. Mike Simmons, thank you for joining the show, man. Thanks for having me.

Thanks for having me. Where can people find you? Where can people learn more? Uh you can find your catalyst and find my catalyst.

com. I like that. You can find your catalyst at findmycatalyst.com.

Yeah, that that was planned. That's awesome. That's why Mike, thanks for joining the show, man. Thank you guys.