The Truth About Navigating Burnout: Lessons from High Performance and Hard Falls | Gurps Khaira

In this deeply honest and powerful episode, James sits down with Gurps to explore what it really means to navigate burnout and grow through pain. From a childhood marked by civil war and personal tragedy to a high-performing career in finance and fitness, Gurps shares how discomfort became his greatest teacher.

Together, they unpack the mindset and practical tools needed to move through burnout, overwhelm, and life's unexpected breakdowns — including Gurps own 4D framework: Decide, Define, Do, Done. They also discuss the role of sleep, structure, and surrender, and how choosing gratitude and inspired action can shift everything.

About Gurps:

Born in India during a time of civil unrest and terrorism, Gurps' formative years were shaped by unimaginable adversity. At just five years old, he witnessed the suicide of his mother, a trauma that forged in him an unshakable inner resilience. Those early experiences didn't break him, they became the fuel for a life defined by discipline, determination, and the pursuit of excellence.

Today, Gurps is a global leader in AI, Cybersecurity, Digital Transformation and high-stakes Change Management. With over 15 years of experience spanning AI, Cybersecurity, IT, Banking, and even Construction, he specialises in leading complex, high-impact projects in some of the world's most demanding environments. His approach blends strategic vision with hands-on execution, helping organisations navigate digital risk, compliance and organisational transformation with clarity and confidence. But Gurps' drive doesn't stop in the boardroom. After 8 years of intense training, he went on to compete in the Miami Pro World Championships of Fitness Modelling, proving that discipline, focus, and elite performance are not just professional ideals, but personal standards he lives by. For Gurps, excellence is a lifestyle, whether it's in the gym, on stage, or leading global cybersecurity programmes.

A compelling keynote speaker, Gurps is known for combining technical authority with deeply human storytelling. His keynotes connect with audiences across industries, from CISOs to CEOs, offering powerful lessons in leadership, resilience, and transformation. In every talk, he brings a message that's as inspiring as it is practical: no matter the adversity, greatness is always within reach.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/gurpreetkhaira/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppEUlXg-HBw&t=1s - Showreel

Transcript

0:01

In this episode, I chat with Gers about navigating burnout. We talk about pain as a catalyst for growth and how to break down big goals into manageable, actionable steps used in his four D framework. Welcome to Man: A Quest to Find Meaning, where we help men navigate modern life, find their true purpose, and redefine manhood. I'm your host, James, and each week, inspiring guests share their journeys of overcoming fear Embracing vulnerability and finding success. From experts to everyday heroes. Get practical advice and powerful insights. Struggling with career, relationships or personal growth? We've got you covered. Join us on Man Quest to Find Meaning. Now, let's dive in.

James: 0:54

You only grow when you're uncomfortable. Good morning, rp. Can you tell me more? Absolutely. James.

Gurps: 1:03

I want you to think about pain, the pain that you've felt in life either mentally or even physically in, in some unfortunate cases as well. I believe that pain is a very harsh teacher. And what I mean by that is like all the painful experiences that, that we have gone through in our lives, it might be, the breakdown of a relationship having lost somebody very close to us. Redundancy, loss of job, like all of these change. Drastic changes that have occurred in our lives. I think, that's what I mean by pain. And I think that what I've learned over the years with some of the life events that have happened and occurred to me, which, we'll delve into a little bit later. Those change events. Happen to us to make us grow. And when we're going through those events, we feel a lot of pain. And, but that pain is there to make us stronger and make us better, and make us more resilient for future for, what's to come down the line in life. I come from a fitness modeling bodybuilding background as well. That is very closely related to a lot of pain in the gym, right? So the whole point of going to the gym is to do your reps do your exercises to break and tear your muscle fibers so that when rest and recover, leave the gym, they come back bigger, thicker, stronger, ready for the next time you go to the gym. It's there to help you grow physically. So we'll talk more and more about that, James, but I think that's what how I wanted to hit home that statement that you only grow when you are uncomfortable. So when we're going through that change. Event, or whether it's a life event or even something in the gym. You are very uncomfortable as you're go through it, but it is the foundations on which we will continue to grow. Does that make sense, James?

James: 3:06

I can relate because a lot of my growth over the last 10 years have been from breakups, but I also want to push that sometimes, even though. We can, I believe we can still grow when we are comfortable, but it almost has to be a willingness to grow. And I think that being comfortable and willingness is quite a, there's a difference between it. And so I feel like sometimes if you are in that comfortable space, you can be too comfortable. The same time, if you realize, if you are, become aware that you're too comfortable. I almost believe that if you have the willingness and the need and the want to grow, I think is it can still happen, I think, but slow.

Gurps: 3:56

Yeah. I do agree. James. I think it. You've got to have the fire in the belly to, to want to grow. And I don't think that fire in the belly it's got to come from somewhere. Like you, you can't ignite that without having, some sort of past experiences or some life events that have happened. Something that's. Pushing you to want to grow and yeah I, I do agree with you. Perhaps, you can grow when you are comfortable as well. But I've found in my experience, when there's when you hit your sort of absolute low. Lowest points, when you absolutely can't take enough of something and that's when you feel like you've absolutely got to do something about it. Let's just take something as, as simple as weight loss, right? Summer holiday coming up. Everybody wants to get fit ready to go get their beach body out. Over the year you're gradually putting on more and more weight and you're like, oh, diet starts Monday and I'll hit the gym on Monday, but that Monday never comes. But then you get to a certain point where, the weight has just increased so much and you're like that is it. Now, that's when you've hit your absolute low as, and I think that's what it. Call you, that fire then gets ignited to be like this truly is enough. So I think what we have a we have lots of tolerances which I think have to really be hit quite in, intensely in order for us to fuel and motivate us to to grow. Yeah, so I, I don't disagree with you, but I think when you are uncomfortable, I think that pushes you more or perhaps it's the journey from comfort to uncomfort, right? Like you, you could be comfortable. Again, let's use the weight gain analogy. You could be comfortable gradually putting on the weight, but then once you've put on far too much weight, that's when you're now uncomfortable and you're like I've really gotta do something about this. And, I'll use a story, from my days when I used to compete on stage I spent a couple of years training but didn't tell anybody that I was going to compete and start stepping on stage. And it was very much a personal journey. I only spoke about it, after I'd done the training and after I'd been on stage and that's when I was encouraged to get on social media and, promote my pictures a lot more. But it was just never about that for me. It was just always more of a, an internal journey of growth. But once I'd done it and people realized, my entire network realized that I'd been on stage, got absolutely ripped, and, as lean as I could get, every single person in my network. Wanted to know how I did it and, what was the training plan, what was the nutrition plan? And what I found was that a lot of people, sometimes just, they just wanted that knowledge. Like they didn't necessarily want to execute or take action on the back of it, but they just wanted to know what it took. I think it was only a handful of people, maybe one or two people out of, a couple of hundred that came up to me. Asking me for those diet and nutrition plans that maybe only one or two actually took action on the back of the advice that I gave. And then I think those one or two people were the ones that perhaps in that very uncomfortable position where they just needed to do something and take action.

James: 7:09

The question is, what is too much discomfort? Because from my own experience, you can go about and literally throw yourself off the cliff and really go right into the very deep end. But that for a lot of people, I think fear would kick in before they even got anywhere near and. Ha not having too much ha and the other side of things where discomfort is not quite enough. Yeah

Gurps: 7:42

It's very subjective, right? Like that, that tolerance limit that we have, that's very unique and subjective to each and in each and every one of us, right? But it's down to us to know what our boundaries are. I can talk specifically let's say around fitness and health as well as around wealth creation as well. In our jobs and the property industry as well. And I think you've got to have your tolerance limits in place. So when you are if you have health goals and you want to get to a certain physique, you may have an upper limit where, you don't want to be at a certain weight. And you, that's where you define yourself to be too heavy or unfit and, not been able to sustain enough. Cardio to be able to do just, general walks in the park and thing parks and things. And then on, perhaps on the wealth side of things, when it comes to money matters there's a, everybody wants to have, more money, right? But perhaps there's a tolerance where, you've been in the same job for such a long time, but because it's comfortable, you keep on doing that job for the salary that you're on, and it. Perhaps after a couple of years that salary is no longer, sufficient. And so you stick with it for, 4, 5, 10 years maybe. But it's only when that un uncomfort starts hitting and the salary isn't enough that you realize, hey, I've got to do something and perhaps start bringing in, other avenues of income. So I think that the tolerances of when you're in, your tolerance of comfort and uncomfort. Is dictated By yourself.

James: 9:18

Nice. Okay. Can you tell us your story please?

Gurps: 9:22

Yes. Okay. Sure. Absolutely James. Let's take it all the way back then. I was born in the mid eighties in very rural northern India in the state of Punjab. And I was born slapped, bang in the middle of a civil war that had broken out. And this was operation Blue Star in 1984, where the Indian army had attacked the Holy City ofa because, for political reasons, right? But we won't get too much into that. And so I, I was born pretty much in, in the thick of that. And I was born about sort of 40, 50 miles west of the nearest the city of amateur and what that. Whole event and that Civil War gave rise to, were a lot of like political terrorists. I would call them and they would they were running from the military and the police and they would often go and hide out in very rural remote farmhouses. Of which, one of which was mine. And my family. And they would, come on horseback with shotguns loaded, fully loaded with armor and weapons. And then they would come to my farmhouse and hold my whole family hostage. For weeks at a time running, because they were running from the military and the police. And, very often they held my family, at gunpoint, threatened to kill whoever, went to the police. But then you couldn't also go to the police because the police thought that you were on their side because you were harboring them and let them stay in your house. So you were damned if you did and damned if you didn't. And then unfortunately this went on James for a couple of years really the second half of the eighties going into the early nineties. And then my, my grandmother who we used to live with in, in India in those days you had multi-generational multifamilies living under one roof. So it was my my dad and my family. As well as his younger brother and his family and three kids as well. And my grandmother and, she would sometimes lock me up in suitcases when these political terrorists would come on aback and to avoid being kidnapped. And, this went on, I say for good four, five, maybe six years or so. And then unfortunately we've spoken about pain like my. In addition to these painful events, that the next event that would occur would perhaps. And, the rest of my life, and which I still hold with me, even today is that my mother unfortunately, a few years of this had gone on. And then she unfortunately, decided to make a change in her life and everybody else's life. And she ended up taking her own life and unfortunately committing suicide. After that my father thought, enough is enough. And I'm there, about five and a half years old, I've witnessed the suicide of my mother and also, these horrific events of these gun men holding my family hostage. And my father thought, enough is enough. So he brought me over to England. When I was about five and a half, six years old. And then that's where I really, done all of my studying and education university degree and then, landed into the banking and financial services industry. And just been. Gradually, climbing the ranks over the last sort of 15 years or so. And currently sit within change management, deploying cybersecurity projects across global enterprises and pretty much in every country across the world. And using that experience. I've also had public speaking as a massive passion and hobby of mine. I've been a member of Toastmasters international for about 15 years. I've been part of the professional speaking association as well, so that's always just been a hobby running in the background of my career. And very recently, I've just combined the two. To want to give back all the experience that I've amounted. What I'm speaking about on stage in my talks is all of the, nearly two decades of change management and deployment experience that I've mounted up. And with the view, James, I think to give back and perhaps in like a mentorship capacity. That's really why I step on stage and do the talks is really over the years. I've and then unfortunately my, a separate story. My, father got killed when I was 21 in a horrific accident back in India again. I lost my parents I would say fairly at a young age. Mom at five and then dad at 21. But I've never had that sort of guidance and handholding on how to navigate or watch out for the pitfalls in life. And specifically, when you're deploying projects as well. So I've always learned, the long way, the hard way. Also, made a lot of financial mistakes along the way as well. And so I've now wrapped all that up into a number of different talks and then step on stage, say, here's how I've done it and if you guys can take something away, then, if one person in the audience comes to me and says, that was brilliant and I learned so much from that talk, then I feel like I've I've done my job and really made a difference to even just one person. So that's me. James.

James: 14:35

Truly inspiring. Can I ask. So obviously throughout your life, you mentioned about some of the pitholes and how you navigated them. What are some of the key pit hole bit pitfalls that you made?

Gurps: 14:48

There's a few so I was just trying to pick an example whether to go in the professional space when deploying projects or perhaps in, in the personal space. So I'll speak specifically about let's talk about burnout. I just wanna focus on that where perhaps I feel like a lot of people will be able to relate to which is when we all take on too much and, in, in the society and the world we're living in at the moment we are just absolutely bombarded, with so many to-dos, right? That to do list just keeps getting longer and longer. And I think I'd wanna focus perhaps. Where we just take on too much work. And this happened to me probably not probably, but when I was 28, 29 I had just started a new job in as an FX sales trader at State Street global SSGM in Canary Wolf. So State Street global I forgot what the M stands for now. Global management. And at the same time. I was also competing in fitness modeling, and so I had a competition coming up around about April, 2015. Both things were physically and mentally demanding, right? Like the job entailed me having to be online logged on in the office. This was before COVID, so there was no working from home. Logged on for half seven. And then you typically did, quite a lengthy shift. Finish about seven half, seven again. And then at the same, then after that, I have to then go to the gym. As well. Because I had a, had that competition coming up, so I was eating, seven meals a day, doing my cooking, doing my prep in the evenings, training twice a day, on top of a job that was asking for 12 hours, not including commuting as well. Just executing that for quite a lengthy period of time. I just kept cutting back on, on the sleep'cause there were just not enough hours to, to execute all the, to dos and I just kept cutting back on, on the sleep. And, I specifically remember that one week, in the fitness modeling world, we call it peak week where you drop your carbohydrates almost down to zero. And your water intake goes up every day from four liters on the Monday. And then on Tuesday it's five liters Wednesday, six liters Thursday, seven liters, and by Friday you are on eight, nine liters of water a day. And then on the Saturday you competition will be on a Sunday, but then on the Saturday you would completely cut. Or water to start the dehydration process. So the toll, that I was pushing my body through it, it just it just got so much and, I don't know how I ended up making it through that competition. That's when I really felt a huge episode of burnout and, the anxieties as well that are associated with it. And I just absolutely, mentally, physically crashed and burned, the minute that competition was over on the Sunday, and, that, that was probably my first. True like real experience of anxiety and burnout. And then there were like episodes of depression as well that, that followed because I just wasn't able to understand, what was happening to my body, like mentally and physically.'cause nobody had explained, what this burnout thing was. And, nobody told me to calm down or to stop and slow down. The body is a machine, right? And any machine, if you overwork it, it's gonna crash and burn. Even and that absolutely happens. I think it would, I, we can talk more on that James and some of the tools and techniques that I've then build and crafted to then identify when that's happening again. But, going back to, to. Not having that mentorship, not having somebody holding your hand and showing you what to do. There, there are pros and cons to, to that as well. Because no one can. No one can, live your life for you, right? You've still got to go through, and the motions and the hoops of whatever it is that, that you are working on. But I find that with that guidance some of the pitfalls such as burnout and depression and anxiety, that they can potentially be avoided. If have somebody showing you the way and, letting you know when the red flags or what the red flags are when these things might be happening. So that that's one of the examples James is experiencing burnout by just pushing, the body to the absolute limit. And perhaps, dangerously I would perhaps call out.

James: 19:12

Yeah, I'm noticing at its moment in time obviously with, in the UK here we're kicking into autumn. I think soon won't be long till it's winter, and I'm noticing how going from the summer to the, to autumn, my body's getting tired almost like when the the light changes. The body almost knows what it needs to do. We've just gotta be conscious and aware enough to execute that or to be aware of that and then execute it. But there's a sense that. At this moment in time, I'm like getting 10, 11, 12 hours sleep. My body needs it and I almost feel lazy sometimes because of all this, but in the, i in the end, I know that this is currently where I am with regards to my current state. What kind of tools and strategies did you do you use now to do, to be able to navigate this?

Gurps: 20:15

Yeah. James you've touched on such a valuable point there about sleep and, straight away that, that sort of stuck out to me because that, that is one of the biggest lessons I've learned is the emphasis on sleep and, pushing your body to burnout, to, absolute breakdown. Cutting back on on sleep. Is one of the biggest contributors I think I which contributes to burnout. So one of the biggest lessons, I was probably getting in, in that for that period of, having started a new job in a very demanding front office environment in the banking industry. Plus, competing at the same time. I just, I kept eating into my sleep, so I was probably, there was some nights I was getting about two, three hours sleep. If that, and, just feeling like my heart just pounding every day. And it was just, you are just constantly trying to find more and more time. And all you, all I did was keep eating in into that sleep, but not then realizing just how important sleep is, to the body, to all the organs, mentally, physically, spiritually, like sleep is by far one of the biggest lessons learned is to basically sleep more. One, one of the things I do quite a lot, James, is which I encourage the audience as well, if you're out there listening is read like reading, read as much as you can about anything you can. And I find quite a lot of mentorship and guidance from books. When I can't find a mentor to perhaps help me with my next project I'll turn to books.'cause, they're a lot easier to get why we sleep. By Matthew Walker is a big recommendation that I would suggest. And that really was a bit of a game changer for me.'Cause it just, taught me so much about why we need to sleep. And it was just the, those epiphany moments, I was like, oh my god, what an idiot. I was for cutting in into sleep. Definitely I would say sleep more is one of those. James. And those lessons were the second one is around taking the weight off the brain. The brain is just constantly ticking with thoughts, with anxieties, with worries, with like worries of past events. We're always thinking about things that. Mistakes or potentially worries from the past or we're anxious. And we suffer from anxiety about future events. But very rarely, are we living in the moment and are we actually here now present? One of the things that helps me with that is to write down and take the weight of my brain of all the things that I have to do, or are perhaps, I forgot to do yesterday and I need to do tomorrow. Working in, project management and change management one of my sort of bread and butters is to be able to make a project plan. And so I got a point where I. I was doing this at work, making lots and lots of project plans, and then it occurred to me like, where's my plan? I haven't got my, my, my own plan. And when I started crafting my own plans, it, that's something that I found really helped was just taking all those thoughts and those activities that I wanted to do or that were causing me worry and anxiety was just taking them down, writing them out. Not typing them, not on computer, but manually, by hand. Good old fashioned pen and paper, if anybody remembers those. And that for me was a massive psychological benefit. Just the art of writing it down, on, on paper just took so much like load off my mind. And then the crucial bit is don't just, take the to-do list from your mind and write on paper, but it's also flip it horizontally because you might end up with a list of 10, 20, 30 things to do, but you've only got 86,400 seconds in a day. You won't be able to get all of those done. Plus you've got to sleep for 6, 7, 8 hours a day as well. Is. And what I mean by turning them horizontally is to prioritize your to-do list into and break them up into days or even weeks, right? Like you don't need to do everything today. You might do some things tomorrow or the day after or the following week. So by constructing your, or constructing my plan, I was able to just really take the weight off the mind because the mind's not as good at perhaps prioritizing. It is great at building the to-do list, but not telling itself, Hey, actually that can wait till. Next month or next week. And that for me really helped. So it was read more and sleep more and build a plan.

James: 24:58

Yeah. Something I've started doing recently is so I, I believe the brain is an absolutely magnificent machine. They also feel it's limited to what we read, to what we learn, to what we teach ourselves. And so what I tend to do is I drop myself into my body. I feel like into my intuition is the key to figuring out what inspired action do I need to take next. Because we can have this to-do list ahead. Think you need to do this. But sometimes we can be busy being busy. So if I feel, for me, it's dropping myself into my body, taking a few deep breaths and then asking myself what is it that I need to do? And sometimes it might just say, I need rest, and that's okay, and that is okay. And other times it might say, yeah, okay, now you can record your own podcast. Or I can go and go for a walk. But what I find is if I keep following that. It leads to, I feel more energized. I think I've moved through things faster, if

Gurps: 26:05

yeah. Absolutely. A famous quote that comes to my mind is, no map, however carefully executed to detail carries its owner over even one inch of ground. Action alone is the tinder that ignites the flame. And you can have all the plans you want, but if you don't take action, and you don't execute those tasks, which you've now mapped out into your plan, but you won't grow, you won't be better than yesterday. You won't have that, that, that activity which you needed to complete. You mentioned about podcasts, if you don't take action on the back of your thoughts. You won't go through your growth journey through the execution of that activity. Habits get formed and as those habits are then formed, you, you become more and more efficient and you become more and more of a professional at whatever it is, of the activity that, that we're executing. I completely hear, what you're saying, James, about, just being able to, take those thoughts and then, crucially taking action on the back of those to then generate those habits. So then you become more and more efficient, on a daily basis. At, becoming more and more efficient at your chosen chosen activity.

James: 27:18

And you talked to, during your story, you talked about how you went through such a traumatic five, six years. How did that kind of create who you are today? And you talk also about resilience. How did you use your resilience to, to step through them kind of experiences?

Gurps: 27:38

You've just, you've answered the question almost for me, James. And it crucial what you just said there, the two words and they step through. Being able to, keep going through what is happening. And granted I was, very young at the time and, unfortunately, like she committed suicide, like very, literally right in front of me. But I was too young to know what she was doing, until it was too late. And at that age, what I learned was to just keep putting one foot, in front of the other. And just keep going and keep moving. And, another quote that comes to mind is, the only way to stay balanced on a bicycle is to keep pedaling. So I think those very early years just taught me to continue taking action and just keep putting one foot in front of the other and just keep going forward. And that is something that still sits with me today. When you're managing. Global projects and these, eye watering amounts of budgets programs within cybersecurity, AI tech. You can have the biggest plans in the world, but if you're not putting one foot in front of the other and you're not executing those plans, they will be no progress. And those sort of early lessons and development of those early mindset habits and thoughts are what sit with me today. It's the reason why you and I are having this podcast now was just because, is me pushing myself out of my comfort zone as well and just saying yes and taking action to do this podcast, to deliver the projects and. And just keep moving forward and keep taking action, in every category that you may be trying to progress or become better in at and, using, again that, that mindset. So one mindset James is all about taking action. The second mindset for me is and again, early tools which I use today is that of gratitude. I like to think of practice gratitude, with every breath. I'm so blessed to be awake today to have this opportunity to speak to you, to speak to, you, know, your audiences as well. And I really hope you know that they can take some value from this podcast. And just being so grateful for the opportunity. Being, being grateful for being in this country, being and it goes all the way back to me now. I will never know why my mother did what she did, but I am grateful for her doing it because had she not done it, perhaps I would never have come to England and I would never have, climbed the ranks in the corporate industry. I would never have been exposed to. Public speaking, and I would not perhaps be having this conversation, with you now. So I'm just grateful for those events. And whilst I may never understand why she's done it I can choose to be grateful that it did happen. Or alternatively, sometimes things go when. These kind of changes occur in people perhaps they can go down the route of, not being grateful and, drugs, alcohol, and, that route could potentially be an option as well. However, if anybody does or is going down that route, I would encourage to perhaps take a step back from that and, avoid that route if you can, because we do we're so fortunate in the western world to, to have that dignity of choice and, you can choose whether you want to be grateful for something or you can choose whether, you just wanna. Give pain, to others and to yourself as well in the world. So I think having that dignity of choice is part of the gratitude that I, I'm here, I'm in this country, and I'm grateful to have these opportunities, but only if I am prepared to do the work that is required of me to obtain these opportunities as. Yeah. Action. Action. James. Followed by gratitude.

James: 31:43

You made a key point there. Choice. We can choose to take the action or we can choose just to do nothing, but those are people who perhaps have big goals. They're so complexed by the goal because I've been there myself, where the goal's that big and you just like to just think to yourself, how the hell do I get through this? How can people start to take one step in front of the other in order to at least start to make progress?

Gurps: 32:15

Absolutely James. That, that's like my bread and butter, in the organizations, in the banking industry, in the cybersecurity world where, I've taken again, like eye watering budgets and big goals about, uplifting cybersecurity controls of a bank and. And breaking that down into very small chunks. The message here, James, is going to be little by little, a little becomes a lot. And what I mean by that is it's essentially, what we discussed earlier about taking the goal out of the brain and putting it down onto piece of paper. So let's jump into a bit more detail about that. So I've, over the last of 20 years now of within change management. I've started seeing lots of delivery patterns. So I've delivered projects in cybersecurity and tech banking also construction and residential properties as well as the fitness modeling and bodybuilding world. And what that's allowed me to do, James. Just see the patterns in order to develop a framework a delivery framework or a delivery discipline that I'm actually labeling as G'S four D delivery, discipline. And the four Ds stand for, decide, define, do, and done. So as a decide, define, do, done, and. I'll talk more now in what each of that each phase means when you are trying to deploy these big goals. So the first step or the first phase is decide. This is where you make a decision on what it is that you are trying to achieve. So what is the vision? What is the mission? What is the goal? And this is where the smart. Acronym comes into play or you start having smart goals. And what I mean by that is SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timed. So that's specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timed. So as an example, this would be, you want to purchase your first residential property in the UK within nine months. So that's your decision. That's what you've decided to do. That's your mission, your vision. For an organization it could be perhaps you wanna relocate your entire workforce to, new sparkly offices within 12 months or 24 months, depending on the scale of the organization. But that's really it. That's the decision. After the decide phase James, we go into the define phase. Now, this is where we'll take that initial vision and mission and we'll start breaking down, the tasks that need to occur underneath it. And basically this is where you start making your project plan. And as an example, this would be, let's take the property purchase, tasks that occur underneath there. Would be things like initiating conversations with your broker going out and doing viewings and finding estate agents and finding multiple properties that you need to go and view. Fine. Getting hold of lawyers and solicitors engaging with the council, if there are any, potential amendments or structural changes that you might wanting to be doing to any of the properties. But you start mapping that, that list out, and you basically start forming the entire list underneath that initial very first bullet point in the decide phase. So you start defining it. As well as that, you start flagging some of the risks that are involved in executing this project as well. So these could be market risks as well as, project risks and market risks are, things that you can't control, right? I did a project back in October, 2022 within the property. It was a property project and if anybody knows what happened in October, 2022, that was when, our interest rates here in the UK just went, sky high, I think from not 0.25% all the way up to was it 6%. And so I ended up, losing a fair amount of money as a result of that. But that was a risk that I had already factored into the project plan. And I was a, I wanted to proceed knowing that risk because that is a known market risk in the property industry, right? But you can't do anything about interest rates. It's outside of your control. Then we have risks, project risks, which perhaps you can control. So these are risks associated with the project schedule, the project budget the business benefits of the project and also. If you need other people or teams to help you with that project as well. You can have risks in every element of that of those project risks. But this is where you start defining absolutely everything you know that could go wrong. In that project. And crucially, putting next to that risk is how much this risk could cost you as well. And those costs will then start also helping you form your financial plan as well on how much this project is going to cost you. So after the decide and define phase, then you go into do, which is JFDI. You know what JFDI stands for? Just f-ing. Do it.

James: 37:37

Okay,

Gurps: 37:39

get on with it. And you probably realize, James I do love my acronyms as I'm sure anyone in the back in the industry will attest to as well. We do use a lot of acronyms, so yeah. JFDI, which is, enough deciding, enough defining, now it's the case of executing. As we were talking earlier, execute that plan. Look at all that list and start mapping out. Put the priorities next to them and start executing, the list in order of your priority. So perhaps this week, you'll go and find some houses and properties to look at. Next week you will start engaging with brokers. The following week you might start speaking to solicitors. You don't need to do all of that today, but you're getting on with it and you're finding the properties and you are executing that, that list that you formulated. And now this due phase, it's it's usually the most expensive and time demanding on on your on your time capacity. And the most expensive. So it's usually where the initial payments are due as well. So if you're purchasing properties, you might have to buy the, you pay the initial deposit. If you are in a big organization and you are onboarding teams and people. Then, those consultancies and those people will need salary and be paid. It's, it is usually the most expensive part of the project. And it can go on, for weeks, months, even years, depending on the complexity of the initial goal and also the scale of the organization. And, we touched on this earlier, property purchasing in the UK can sometimes take nine, 12 months. So you would be in the due phase, for that entire duration until all of those tasks that you've defined are executed and completed. And then that will then take you into the done phase. So decide, define, do, and then done. And this is where you basically look back at your entire project plan. You make sure that all the tasks have been executed and all the actions are closed, and then you've also formulated a lessons learned log. And the lessons learned log should have three things in there, which is your, what would you stop doing? What should you start doing and what would you keep doing if you had to do a similar project next time with a view to hopefully make it go faster and cheaper, if you did this project again and that's the phase that sometimes gets left out, is people don't go through or review to make sure all the activities have been delivered, the initial benefits of why you wanted to do this project. Have they been realized? Have you achieved that initial mission that you first set out to, to achieve? So it's decide, define, do, done,

James: 40:30

celebrate, sorry. Plus celebrate. Plus celebrate. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. That's a key thing. Yeah, that sounds,'cause it, it's it gives a nice structure, I think, to any goal.'cause you can, as was saying before, you can have a big goal, but it can be so overwhelming. And something I feel sometimes you have, if you have a ginormous goal, you don't always know every step. And there's a level. I feel like sometimes there's a level of trusting that when you take the first couple of steps. Other steps will show themselves as you proceed.

Gurps: 41:10

Yeah, a hundred percent James. I think, it's absolutely crucial. I was gonna touch on this as well. It's. Is to remain very adaptable, right? Because the difference between the decide phase, from the beginning to when you're in the due phase, they could be nine months apart or 12 months apart, and your initial goal may have changed since you initially set out, right? Perhaps you wanted to buy a hundred thousand pound property, but as you've gone through the hoops, you've had to perhaps bring the budget down, for whatever reason. And you might end up with a, 80,000 or 70,000 pound property. But, you have to have that flexibility because, life happens. And just because you've written this down and you've made this brilliant plan, it doesn't necessarily mean that it is. Of change. But have these principles, in your back pocket. So if the plan does change, go back to the definition phase and update that plan. It's a living, breathing organism. It's a document that, you can't just write it once or, we call it baselined. In the corporate world, you can't just baseline this initial plan and say that this is exactly how it's gonna happen. You don't know what you don't know. You've never executed this project before but you're setting the compass and if you aim at nothing, you will always hit. So make sure you remain flexible, you remain agile. In, in the corporate world, there is a project delivery methodology called Agile. And it's all about, constantly reviewing your plan and constantly checking in with all of the people who are sponsoring your project to make sure that, the project is still on track and still in line with those initial vision and mission statements that, that were set out. It absolutely, James it's I've developed this to provide that structure to a, what I've seen is change management and deploying, change and deploying projects, in my opinion, can be very messy and unstructured. And so I've gone and thought okay, Kurt, what are you gonna do about that? So that's where, I've come up with this framework to, to help bring some structure to, big goals for organizations or even smaller goals for individuals.

James: 43:33

What I wanna talk about now is you obviously talk about a lot about pain and discomfort. How. How do you personally navigate pain and discomfort when things, say, for example, in a gym when you're training and things don't quite go to plan, or you are working at a on a project in a bank and it just completely goes up from underneath you. How do you navigate them Times of pain and discomfort.

Gurps: 44:02

James I always come back to the principles I've just shared with you. I always come back to the four D delivery discipline, so you know, if something goes off track. If the project runs outta money it's all about coming back to the principles. And so perhaps you've let's take the gym as a, as an example, you are executing. You've got your vision and your target. You've defined your plan. You've got your nutrition plan, you've got your diet plan, and now you're executing that and that might be a 12 week plan. And every week you know you're tracking your weight. Against that plan and perhaps, for a couple of weeks you've just had enough, you start gobbling down, whatever foods and drinks you want and, which typically happens after about four weeks, I think, everyone's enthusiastic and motivated for the first four weeks, see brilliant results and then just boom, start celebrating and complacency kick kicks in and yeah. I've done that myself. Multiple times. But that's where I'll then just go back to my documentation and start and then look at that initial, decide phase that I was in. What was, why did I set out on this journey in the first place? What was the goal of the project? And again, that having that documented and having it out of my brain and onto a piece of paper. Has helped me, not just with these personal goals, but even in the big corporate world as well. It's when you know change can, in the corporate industry you have many different stakeholders and people that are involved in this project, and you always. If things get derailed, going back to your foundational principles is absolutely crucial for then, realigning that compass on, why did you set out to do this change in the first place? And as I mentioned, the decide phase and do phase, there can be a big period in between. But going back to that phase. And just looking at that goal, perhaps you amend the goal slightly or it needs to change because of financial constraints or because the market's turned. But then you just, you update and you refine that initial decision and that vision and then you go, and then you define your new plan on the back of that new decision and then you start executing new activities on the back of that. Whenever you get derailed or fall off the tracks. I always just, I go back to my project plan every single time.

James: 46:27

It seems that's a good framework. Thank you very much. Gi for the people that wanna get into contact with you, how can they, what? What's your contact details on how can they get in contact?

Gurps: 46:39

Absolutely James. I would, love for them to get in touch with me. I love to network, so please do reach out to me. LinkedIn is the tool. So please connect with me on LinkedIn. It's. So I would love for all you to connect and, thank you, James. I really appreciate it. This means so much to me that you reached out to have this podcast. And I, and, thank you to the listeners as well. I really appreciate you all taking your time out of your busy schedules and listening to this podcast. And please do connect with me. I'm based in London, get in touch. Let's do a coffee and talk more. Thank you very much.

47:16

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