Hi guys, and welcome back to another episode of your Brains Coach podcast. My name is Angela Shurina, I'm your host, I'm your Brains Coach and Executive Coach 360, helping you to discover, learn and also learning with you. All the best recent cutting edge, most interesting, useful, important and applicable to your life brain-body-work tools so we could take better control of our thoughts, emotions and, most importantly, of our actions. So we could create a life experience that we absolutely love living, unlocking more and more of our potential, living more and more meaningful lives, serving the world, creating one-of-a-kind value and contributing to making the world a better place. That's what we're all really about here. I personally believe that inside of each of us, there is a superhero to be unleashed, and each of us was born to this world with a purpose to serve some bigger purpose, right To be this piece of a puzzle in a bigger picture, without which the whole picture cannot exist. And so all of us are superheroes with superpowers inside of us, but we need to take action and agree to participate in the process of developing them, of unlocking them, of mastering them and ourselves to be the fullest expression of ourselves we can possibly be and, again, to create the best life and the best world. That's the bigger picture of this podcast. Mastery change, growing into your full potential in becoming the best piece of the puzzle that you can be in the bigger picture. Today, guys, we are talking about urgency, urgency. If there is no urgency, change doesn't happen.
Speaker 1I've been reading a lot of books on change leadership, change management, specifically in organizations, and what's in the way of change, why, according to data, 75% of change leadership, change efforts fail like a big percent right, 25% is still working, but 75% of fail efforts fail. I've been reading a lot, a lot about change as a discipline and how to approach change. You know coaching and I've been in coaching for 15 years. The entire goal and purpose of coaching is to produce meaningful change, to help a person, a group, a collective, an organization to change and create desired results. You know, I always these days talk about coaching compared to therapy. When you go through therapy. I haven't gone through it, but that's what I learned from my clients and people I talk to when you go through therapy. It allows you to learn more about yourself, to understand yourself better and to feel better. But my clients, when they come to me after therapy, they say but you know, angela, I never felt like I achieved results that I can measure, that I can achieve certain goal or breakthrough. Yes, I understand myself much better and that is very valuable. But now I want results and that's why I came to you. And that's where the difference between coaching and therapy is, and that's why I came to you, and that's where the difference between coaching and therapy is.
Speaker 1Coaching is, yes, it helps you as well to understand yourself better, to create, to develop more self-awareness, but the purpose of coaching is to get results. It's not to just feel better and understand yourself better, but what's the goal of the goal? Where is the progress? Where are the milestones? Where is the transformation? What are the numbers that we can track?
Speaker 1We coaches are concerned with measurable progress, not just feeling good, but also doing good in a measurable kind of way, not just staying or learning more about yourself, but also staying accountable on certain results that you want to create, whether that's results for yourself or your family, your organization, your collective. And that's where I also see a lot of change. Efforts fail. They're approached more like a therapy, like we are now feeling better about the process. But are we actually doing better? And what's the goal of the goal? Are we actually achieving that result that is meaningful to us?
Speaker 1So I've been going through a lot of literature on change and one of the major barriers actually in change literature it says that this is the main barrier to change not creating urgency or not having that urgency in the first place. You know, staying comfortable, protecting status quo, staying where we are, staying in the comfort that's what human beings are wired to do by default. We don't like change unless change is necessary, unless you understand why the change has to happen right now. And so if we don't have the urgency communicated clearly to ourselves and other people, nothing gonna change. It's gonna be like oh yeah, I have to get healthier. Oh yeah, I have to get fitter. Oh yeah, maybe I need to lose some weight. But you know there are other things I have to do in life, so I'm just gonna put it away for a while. And that while can last for days, months, years and decades, and some people never change and it's always somewhere on the back burner. And that's how people get stuck for life in the same place in their career or their relationships or their health or their personal journey.
Speaker 1You're going to get to a good enough level to a comfortable level, and there is no urgency that you create or communicate and the urgency that you connect to, and that is why change becomes one of the items on your long to-do list. One of the items on your long to-do list. So the first barrier and factor to address when you, when I, when we are going through a change, is urgency. To simplify it, it's the answer to this question why now? Why does it have to happen right now? And what I found is why does it have to happen right now? And what I found is, if we don't have a good enough answer to this question, answer that is meaningful to us, answer that we connect to, then we're not going to change Because life is going to get in the way, people are going to get in the way You're going to get distracted, a lot of things are going to happen. You won't be able to prioritize your resources, your time, your schedule in a way that is powerful enough to produce breakthrough to the next level, to produce the desired change, especially if it's something hard, where you're going to be challenged, and growth without challenge is not possible. So, if you don't have the urgency and the answer to the question why now, it's not going to happen. You can just give up.
Speaker 1Right now I'm more and more in the corporate coaching and transformation of corporate culture space and I often would start speaking to people in culture or HR and now I'm realizing I need to speak more to business units to create the culture change that the organization is seeking to make and also the business results that they need to make to produce business outcomes that they seek to produce right. I always say these days yeah, feeling great and good as a culture, it's nice. Feeling great and good as a culture, it's nice. But that's not what business is for. We don't create a sports team to feel good. We create it to beat the game, to win the game Business. Now some might say that businesses are to create profits. I personally believe that businesses are to serve society, to serve the world, to create value, to create more good and whatever way you look at the business, the purpose of business, the purpose of business, is not to make people feel good. Now some people again might argue that this is sort of community, but it's not a community. Business, just like a sports team, is created for a purpose create value, serve the world, and then to survive and thrive, the business needs to make profits and need to make money, need to be able to support itself.
Speaker 1And I find myself in many conversations, especially with people in culture and businesses, where I would say, yeah, we would agree on the things that we got to do, that we got to change, et cetera. And then there will be a conversation about budgets and processes and cycles and approvals and very often we would need to wait for like a few months and then I would hear stories about how they tried to change culture for years and I'm like, but no wonder you didn't change anything. There was no urgency. It's like months after months after months, how long will you wait? And if there is no urgency, it's not just me talking, but it's written in books and it's been there for decades now that if there is no urgency, it doesn't get done. And it's true whether we are talking about an individual, it's true when we are talking about teams, it's true when we're talking about organizations and countries and the whole world. If there is no urgency, it's never gonna get done.
Speaker 1And after a meeting last done. And after a meeting last well, it was actually a couple of days ago after another one of those conversations like, yeah, we got to do this, but we got to wait till July, and I'm like, yeah, fine, it's the way the things are done here. But then I thought to myself as I left the meeting that's why we are stuck as a society, that's why I've been stuck on certain business goals and cashflow goals and my personal journey in some ways, because I have not created this urgency. And so two questions popped up in my mind how do I create urgency for my clients so they understand that if they don't have the reason to change now, they're never going to change? And how do I create and maintain more urgency in my own life so I move things faster further? Because the reason things aren't moving faster isn't that they can't, it's that the pressure isn't high enough yet until you create it.
Speaker 1You know, very often you might love or hate Elon Musk, but he is a fast mover. He produces a lot of progress really fast, and somebody interviewed him and asked him actually asked the person who wrote his autobiography like why is Elon so much more productive than a lot of other, most of the other businesses? That's probably why he's I don't know the richest or one of the richest people in the world. It's because when he encounters a problem that is a constraint to the business, he deals with this constraint right away. He's not going to wait for approval, for estimations, et cetera. It's like let's focus on the thing, let's get it done, let's get it out of the way so we could move forward.
Speaker 1And if we approach our lives, our projects in business and personal and health life, like that, like what is the thing that's stopping me from getting this? Let me address this now Then we can create results a lot faster, because most of the results we want in life don't really have this hard timeframe in which the change can occur. It's going to occur as fast as you want it, if you want it bad enough, if you have the urgency and from my perspective, the more I mature and go through my life experience, if it's not worth fixing now, then it's not worth thinking about now. So work and focus on the things that produce maximum improvement in your life's quality, that move you in a meaningful way forward right now, and then, once you're done with that, take on another challenge, take on another change. But if a thing is important, but if a thing is important, then deal with it now. There is no better way than now. And then the question again why now? And then you have to dig deeper and ask yourself what makes this important, why now is the time? What am I stealing from myself by not creating, not working on the change now? And the thing is, for human beings it's not even that important for us to get to the exact goal, but it is important for us to make progress on the things business, relationship, life that are important to us.
Speaker 1But back to this question how do we create urgency for clients and for ourselves? Let's start, maybe, with clients. I did some research, brainstormed with ChatGPT, as probably you do often these days, and it gave me a few really good answers Like, for example, creating urgency for clients. Quantify the cost of waiting. What are they losing every day that they are not taking action? You know, I like this phrase of Alex Hormozy every day or every year that I'm not making million dollar, I'm losing million dollar opportunities and I'm losing that opportunity to capitalize on other opportunities that come from me reaching this goal. So every year that you delay, every month that you delay your goal and I'm talking about creating urgency for clients that you can use do research numbers If we let's say, don't develop this technology. If we don't create a culture of high productivity or a culture of purpose, culture infused with purpose, with motivation, with drive right, how much productivity are we losing and how much money are we leaving on the table and what are other things that we are not able to accomplish Our collective purpose that we state as a company? What are we not able to do because we are delaying creating the culture of productivity where people do their best? How much talent are we losing every single day because we are delaying all of our culture, effort and not making them a priority? And then you can quantify in real numbers done by different consultancy firms like McKinsey or BCG, etc. So they're real numbers done by great companies, based on research and real-life case scenarios. So create this urgency. Show the losses that you get by not acting now, that you get by not acting now.
Speaker 1Then make it a time-sensitive opportunity was another suggestion that Chad GPT created. Like scarcity moves people. What can you offer with an expiration date? And the only thing that I had sort of against it is from my perspective. I never felt good creating urgency artificially, like if there is no expiration date I can come up with that holds true in reality. I wouldn't create this artificial time-sensitive opportunity. It never felt good to me when I would hear, oh, it's STEM limited offer, you get a discount on this membership, on this, and then in a month or two months you come back and there is the same offer, or even better. I'm like, why would you even do that? I never felt good about that and I try to never do anything that is artificial and made up.
Speaker 1So, yes, make it a time-sensitive opportunity, if there is one, and there is always something that is time-sensitive. Life changes, technology changes all the time. Life is time-sensitive. So there is a more honest way to create time-sensitive scarcity. But don't just make up things because people might ask you or think, like, well, why is that time sensitive? Can you explain to me? And if people start doubting you and not trusting you, that's never good for a long-term relationship with a client, right? So don't lie. But try to make it time sensitive because scarcity does drive us. We don't like losing Tied to their personal stakes in terms of culture development, for example.
Speaker 1Always try to explain and that I know from personal experience and still working on that what business KPIs are important for the company, for this department for the person you are talking to, and how can they win and what do they lose when they delay the actions on what you propose, make it personal. It always works. After all, we're all personal human beings who have our concerns, our fears, our desires, so we need to understand what's in it for me personally, so I would go and move things forward and do extra effort. What's in it for me? Every single human being asks this question to them all the time, whether they are aware of that or not. So if you don't answer this question for your client, what's in it for them, for this decision maker, for the person you're talking to, the chance that they're going to do extra work to move things forward is going to be a lot slimmer, right? So what it is for the person you're talking to, and then get a quick win for them, how can you run a pilot or some sort of intervention that is fast and gives the sense of progress that this thing is going to work really, really fast? Because also, if you work with companies and bigger organizations and bigger projects, if you want buy-in from a lot more people and stakeholders, so the whole project moves a lot faster.
Speaker 1You need to give people signs of it working. It's also true in coaching. When we start working with clients and their life, health, transformation, whatever goal they have, they need to feel that there is momentum, that the efforts they put in sum up to something. And in some way and fashion, we got to measure track and progress, sometimes objectively, sometimes subjectively, but we got to measure it so we know that we are moving into the right direction. Because, again, every brain of a human always asks this question what's in it for me and is it working? And if it's not, I should probably go and do something else. That's the unconscious conversation that happens in every single brain and because of that, you need to give a person, a collective, an organization, your client, a sign that this is working, quick win progress. And besides that, I made this post on threads I thought about. Life is so beautiful. You can only take it one step at a time, and what it also means related to our conversation is that it also means related to our conversation is that any big project you undertake for yourself or your client, it only unfolds one step at a time and every week you can create some progress. No matter how big the project is, there is always something that you move forward if the process of change is designed well, so quick wins for clients and for yourself.
Speaker 1Speaking about ourselves, how do you create urgency for yourself? So the goal, let's say, of business growth that I'm working on right now doesn't drag into another 10 years and it can. If I don't create urgency every month, every week, every day, how do you create urgency for yourself? What I know works, what I've been seeing in coaching practice and in my personal progress whenever I have a big goal and I break it down into smaller and smaller milestones let's say I have a year goal to make $1 million I need to break it down into monthly goals. I need to break down monthly goal into weekly milestone, weekly milestone into daily milestone, like what has to happen today. If I'm serious about hitting that milestone in a year, right, when do I need to get my funding? When do I need to get my next client, how many clients I need to get every month and how many calls I need to do for that, and how many people I need to talk to then, and what do those people need? And do I have everything? And if I don't, when is the time that I absolutely need to get it done, to move things forward, and you create more and more pressure by those milestones, the pressure that you need to move forward.
Speaker 1Because the thing is we think, oh, the goal is a year ahead or two years or three years and I'm just going to wait and get it done. But big things take time, anything takes time, and if you don't act with that urgency, like what you do today matters for that goal in a year, in two years, you're never going to get it done. You're going to be pushing it away and away and away. And it's amazing to think long term, but if you don't have short term pressure, that long term is never going to happen. It's just going to be moved further and further and further away, like it used to be moving for me for like a decade. My business goals would move to the next year, to the next year and to the next year, until it became so painful that I'm like I'm not moving it anywhere any longer. Right, and that's how I learned to create more urgency for myself and how I realized what I teach in coaching.
Speaker 1It's important for everyone. If you have a long-term goal and you're a long-term thinker by default you need to also balance it out with short-term objectives to create that pressure that's going to move action steps forward today so you create consistent results and you have a chance to hit that goal in the near future, right? So daily and weekly milestones Sometimes I have milestones even for an hour, for half a day, because I know if I just spread my time around and gonna jump from one thing to another because I have the whole day to accomplish it closer to the evening. I'm like man I have these objectives and I haven't even started and I have two hours left in my working day. So that urgency, this skill of creating weekly and daily and sometimes hourly urgency, it's crucial for long-term success.
Speaker 1Otherwise, your strategies and long-term goals are going to just be moved away and away and away. It's like that star in the distance. You're kind of walking towards it, but it seems like it's just going further and further and further away. It's great to have a North Star, but if it's not moving closer to you, what's the hack? You're going to be dreaming your whole life and never having the opportunity to have it in real life. Where is the real joy of creating your dream in reality, right? So daily and weekly milestones. That's what creates this urgency, that pressure to actually move you somewhere. You know they did this research even on horses. If the horse doesn't feel the pressure of starting a race, her whole physiology doesn't change. When it's right at the gate where the race begins, her blood pressure goes up. They actually measure that in horses in anticipation of the race beginning. So your whole physiology changes when you feel the urgency. So your whole physiology changes when you feel the urgency. Your thinking and doing muscles all get activated when you have a sense of urgency. So it's a very, very important skill to achieve short-term goals and to have a chance to ever get closer to your long-term goals and your North Star Accountability with stakes.
Speaker 1I'm also learning during this season of my life that not having accountability is going to really minimize the goals that you achieve. So now I'm a member of consulting Success coaching community, which helps me to stay accountable to fellow consultants and have someone to ask advice when the problems arise. But having other people talking about the stumbling blocks, the problems that I encounter, sharing progress and telling I'm going to do this by that day and, you know, keep me accountable that really matters. And then having a friend with who we discuss our progress every single day. That helps a lot. And saying you know I plan to do this and then telling you know, I did this and I haven't done that and I haven't done that, I learned this, that I need to improve my work on that or I need to change my approach Having this accountability really matters. So accountability, you know, chad GPT also proposed accountability with stakes or a friend 100 bucks if you don't hit a milestone. Right, real pressure, real movement 100 bucks, you know, as an entrepreneur at this moment, I don't think it's very effective for me. Nor do I think you know my milestones are good enough to do this kind of betting. But my worst consideration, you know, if you really feel like you need high pressure and accountability, money reward might also be a thing, but have accountability, have people you talk to.
Speaker 1The second or the third proposal from ChatGPT is having public commitments, announcing key goals on LinkedIn, instagram, to force yourself to show up and execute. No hiding. For me, again, what I've personally found to be very effective, a lot more effective, is having public accountability with my family, with my friends. For example, with my family discussing our vacation that I need to show up for and I need to fly out there and for that I need to be at a certain financial level of income. So having that accountability and having people like your family, your friends, asking you about so what's the plan, how is it going? And because you promised to do that or because you said we're going to do that, right, having other people's plans depending on you, that's a huge bonus to creating the sense of urgency in yourself why you need to hit certain goals. If you have no pressure, no accountability from other people, it's just going to be so easy to slack off and just on your not so good days just like, oh, whatever, I'll just keep it. It's so much easier if you don't have this outside accountability when other people depend on you. You are going to be so much better with consistency on your actions. That's going to help you to maintain that sense of urgency that it has to happen, and it has to happen now.
Speaker 1And the last suggestion from ChatGPT was act like time is running out. If I only had three months to make my biggest goal happen, what would I do differently? That's the level of urgency I need to operate from daily right. And I agree, acting like time is running out is also a very, very effective strategy, in a sense that you know, very often we create those timeframes and deadlines not rooted in anything in reality, and so when we shorten time frame, we force ourselves to think differently. What do I mean by that? Well, let's say, most people would say set your $1 million goal for three years. That is more doable.
Speaker 1Yes, it might seem like it's a more doable strategy, but then I ask myself myself why not in one year? What's the constraint? That is rooted in some laws of physics or reality? As a consultant, you don't produce any physical products. You don't really need manufacturer's capability. You don't even need that much in terms of delivering the service to your clients If you use the technology right, if you use artificial intelligence, that is now a lot more capable, obviously. So what is the constraint of one million has to be done in three years. There is no actual constraint that anyone can explain to me and with the right kind of partnerships, with the right kind of learnings and frameworks and my own commitment, it can be done in a year. It's just most people will never do that. But do you want to plan all this on what most people will do?
Speaker 1So urgency, and there are many other strategies on how to create this sense of urgency, but the most important thing I personally found the most effective is understanding your answer to the question why now? Like, what are you losing if you're not going to do it right now, if now is not the time? What are you going to lose? And whether that's for yourself or for your clients, explain to yourself, to your clients, what's the urgency, what's going to be the loss of waiting? You've been waiting for a decade without urgency, so where did it get you for a decade without urgency? So where did it get you? What did you lose? What opportunities did you miss, right? So create this sense of understanding that urgency is important and also, again, from all the books if there is no urgency, it's never going to happen. It's probably going to be delayed for more months, years and decades.
Speaker 1So urgency is important. Make it very clear why it's important to do now, to start now and to have the milestones and to have the accountability to make sure that you push through as fast as you can. And to sum it up, the truth is, you know, some people and organizations and collectives stay on the same level for years. It takes years for them to change, and others level up every year, month and week. And it's not a difference of talent or ability, it's a difference in approach and hunger, the urgency. You can train both guys.
Speaker 1And so now I'm asking myself and I'm asking you what's the most urgent milestone you need to hit today, not tomorrow, not on Monday, but today. You see, speed isn't just an advantage, speed is the whole game of life. When we don't have urgency, we don't change. That's just how humanity works, and I believe in our world today, in our times today, if we don't realize that the change has to happen now, it's never going to happen. The thing's going to go wherever they want to go by themselves. We're not going to create the positive change that we seek to create and our dream life and results that we know we can make, just going to get further and further and further away. And again, if there is no urgency, it's never going to happen.
Speaker 1Think about the changes, your personal goals, that you tried to accomplish recently or in the past few months or years. Maybe it's a health goal or a fitness goal, maybe it's a business goal, like for myself, Maybe it's a relationship goal that's been here for years, like who are you waiting for? What are you waiting for and is that really important? Because if it's not, and there is no urgency, you're not going to change. You're just going to have the same experience, the same year, over and over, and over and over again, until you get too old and you die.
Speaker 1So on this happy note, guys, and the podcast about urgency and all the possible strategies you can create and train this sense of urgency and hunger, we're going to finish our podcast. Please do share this podcast with one another so to keep each other accountable on the goals you say are important. Create this sense of urgency for yourself and people around you, because without urgency, as one good book says, if something isn't urgent, it doesn't get done, and if you're okay with never having what you say you want, then that's fine with me. But is it fine with you? Have an amazing rest of the day, rest of the week, stay tuned for more episodes that are just going to get better. And what else? Till next time, guys, have an amazing, filled with urgency day and do something awesome. Talk to you soon, stay tuned.