E18 Become A Master Strategist
August 2024
98 minutes
E18 Become A Master Strategist
August 2024
98 minutes
Stream on:
Humans have the beautiful capability to bring awareness and intention to their behaviors. When we consciously behave in line with our intentions, we are creating and executing a strategy. Strategy is often used but seldom understood. In this episode we look at a wide-range of strategies - from the person to the organizational - to support you to uncover what strategies you may be using and how to shift to a more productive behavior.
Key topics include:
0:00-06:04 Introduction To Strategy 06:04-11:15 Childhood Strategies 11:15-24:05 Personality as Behavioral Strategy 24:05-33:19 Animal Strategies 33:19-39:47 Aligning Priorities and Actions 39:47-42:32 Top-Down and Bottom-Up Strategy 42:32-48:08 The Functional Human Systems Method 48:08-51:43 Reflection, Vision and Adaptation in Strategy 51:43-01:06:35 The Qualities of a Master Strategist 01:06:35-01:14:37 Pitfalls of Success: Strategic Drift 01:14:37-01:18:47 Operating Beyond Strategies 01:18:47-01:27:13 Working Without Outcomes 01:27:13-01:28:40 Awareness and Meditation In Strategy 01:28:40-01:35:28 Emotions, Feelings and the Body 01:35:28-01:38:10 Listen To Your Inner Wisdom
is a global, leadership-strategy consulting company. 3Peak creates the roadmap that aligns behaviours, relationships and Functional Human-Systems™ to achieve your business strategy.
Co-Founder holds a Ph.D. in Neuroscience, and did extensive research in Consciousness, Trauma and Physical, Emotional & Mental Health in various Institutes and Research Centers around Europe.
Co-Founder is one of the most sought after therapists in the world, mastering diverse modalities and opening wellness centers in Istanbul, Santiago, New York and Berlin. Her approaches bridges transpersonal psychology, meditation, bioenergetics, family- and business-constellations and more.
Co-Founder has extensive experience advising Fortune 50 and FTSE 100 C-Suite Executives in leadership, strategy, team dynamics, and organizational change. Before coaching, Mino worked in finance, management consulting, and mergers and acquisitions (M&A).
Mino Vlachos: Hello and welcome to the three peak master leadership experience. My name is Mino Vlcahos and I'm joined by doctor Mazen Harb and Krisana Locke. We are the co founders of 3peak coaching and solutions, where master leaders build healthy systems. Our company provides coaching and workshops to executive leaders and leadership and well being workshops to employees. Today's topic is about strategy, strategic thinking. And so if you're sitting in your life and you're saying, I have no direction, I don't know what to do, or you're facing diligence dilemmas and you don't know how to solve them, today's session will be all about strategy. And so what I find funny and a bit interesting at times because we talk a lot about non attachment, you know, not kind of being a slave to the mind. I'm going to just be very direct and I've heard people in workshops say, so you hate the mind, you're against the mind, you hate the brain, which is quite funny because there's no disrespect to the mind. We just want the mind to know its proper role in things. But today I think we're going to pay some respect to the mind and talk about some of the beautiful things the mind can do for us, particularly its executive function and how it supports us to create a strategy and move forward in life. To begin, I'm going to start by just saying, where does the word strategy come from? It is a greek word and I'm greek. And so it comes from the military. And it actually, in Greek it translates to military. So everything we're talking about has a very militaristic origin. And so we will also be talking about war and military and strategy. And of course, we talk about the modern work world and corporate strategy, which we'll also touch upon. We're talking about people who were serving in war who then started businesses. So at least the United States, the majority of businesses that were started were either started because of the war or right after the war. And even if they were before the war, World War Two, they took the principles of the military and put them into the corporate culture. And so there is a lot of kind of DNA from military in the working world and the world that we live in. But in my opinion, and we're going to show this in a little bit, I think every single person on this planet, every human is a strategist, every human being has a strategy. And so we're going to get into some of those strategies and why I believe every human being is a strategist. So we've acknowledged the kind of military influence on strategy. Let's talk about three big concepts within strategy. The first is to have an objective, a strategic objective. This is really our motivation for doing something. Why are we doing something? For instance, one of the individuals I'll be referencing throughout the podcast today is a former captain. I believe he was a captain in the british military. His name is bh Little Hart. And Hart was someone who studied military, so he served in world War one, but he also was someone who studied the military. And one of the things he talks about is that the objective of any war should be to make peace. And so that is why we're going into war, is to make peace, which is a little bit ironic, but that's the end state of what you want to get to. Having said that, many people, countries, people generals, they lose sight of the objective. And so if you forget your objective, you end up in a very different situation. I'll use the United States as an example. Within our lifetimes. So the United States went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and it had no clear objective. And so it stayed in these countries for over 20 years with no objective. People were dying. We spent tons of money. It pretty much, arguably will end up being one of the reasons the american empire falls. And we did it because there was no clear objective in those engagements. So no matter what we do in life, we have an objective, which is really our motivation for doing something. It's our why. Our strategy is the path we take to get there. It's the how. How am I going to achieve my objective? And so a lot of our conversation today is going to be about how we do things. And then finally, in the military, you hear about tactics. Tactics is all about the small things we do each and every day that adds up to our strategy. And so we're going to be talking about all of these. You don't have to remember these right now, but that's some basic definitions to begin our conversation. So let's return back to strategy. Strategy is how we organize ourselves. Even if I say I have no strategy or I make no choices in life, that is still a choice. That is still something I'm choosing to do, is to basically not have a way to orientate and organize myself. I personally believe that everyone has some sort of strategy. We have a life strategy. We have a work strategy, we have a health strategy. It's how we basically make choices and prioritize things. So our strategy is the summation of our choices. It's what our behaviors add up to. And I believe that when you bring intention and awareness to your strategy, then you can really look at what decisions you're making and the behaviors that you're choosing to occupy. If you have an unconscious strategy so you never sit down to actually think about this, it means we're really at the whims of our unarticulated desires and emotions. And so a lot of today is going to be talking about these topics and going a bit deeper into the different elements of strategy, how we do things, how we choose to do things. So I'm going to begin by going to a topic that I enjoy which is more about the child development. And again, I'll posit that each one of us is a strategist. I think even a baby is a strategist. And so, not to surprise or shock you, but, Krisana, I'm gonna ask you a question soon. But we're talking about babies. So, for instance, when a baby has a need, it cries. So it wants something, has an objective, feed me, love me, it cries. And then over time, if the child is neglected, it might stop crying. It might go silent. And in that silence, it might also be able to actually reach its objective. So we all learn as even from babies to children, we learn different behaviors to help us get what we want. So, Krisana, you tell us a little bit about as a child. What are some of the strategies that children employ to get what they want?
Krisana Locke: Well, when a baby cries, it doesn't have a lot of cognitive mental processes so far. So it's really, it's a response, and then the parents come to support it. But as a child, as we grow up, we learn conditioning and behaviors from our family and parents how to get something. So we learn from our parents how to get love and how to receive something. How to. Yes. So we learn very early from our parents and from our schooling on how to lose. Okay, I'm going to do, from a point from my work, how we lose touch with ourselves, and we go into conditionings how to get something, and then we sidestep our feelings, but we start to use processes of wants and needs. So from very early on, children start to mirror and learn how to get things. And by the time you're six years of age, seven years of age, you've already downloaded a lot of your early blueprint of how you're going to be in your life. And also when you grow up, how you use that imprint in work, in relationship relationships, and in direction with your life. That's all I'm going to say.
Mino Vlachos: And so if we consider that the, what I was referring to as the unconscious strategies we pick up in life. Right. So I might behave a certain way to get what I want. And personally, interpersonally, with institutions and structures, tell me a difference between someone who's kind of in that conditioned state. So they have these unconscious strategies, and then what is it like when someone actually brings awareness to their strategies and starts to be more intentional with their behaviors and relationships? What's the difference between those two?
Krisana Locke: Okay, so you may have a strategy at work, and you in a team, you have a strategy and you have an objective, and you all go to pursue this. But someone may have unconscious, I wouldn't call them strategies, unconscious desires that they want to get something out of this through the strategic plan, which can sabotage the outcome that's going to happen. So we have a lot of unconscious desires and behaviors that we're not aware of that come in play, which is called sabotaging, sabotaging an outcome or even sabotaging in ourselves, in our own direction, in work, this is being played out in our unconscious. Even if we have a strategy to put something forward, we have these unconscious desires that come up and stop it from happening.
Mino Vlachos: For me, and this is, again, my take, I'm not saying I'm absolutely right for me, I still think that those folks have, let's call it a strategy. It's just they don't know they have one. It's the unconscious like autopilot strategy. If I call it that.
Krisana Locke: Yes, in the subconscious, they have an intention to have an outcome. It's been framed in their unconscious, which is 90% is run of our unconscious and 10% of our conscious mind. So it's been set up to have an outcome. But what this intention that's been set up, it may be a negative outcome. So it is on your conscious mind, you want to do this and go this way to the left, but in your subconscious mind, you have set up an outcome that is going to send you right. It's the easiest way I can say it. So it's been framed already. And so you have to go in and connect and reframe this outcome to have a positive intention for you that does serve an outcome that goes the right way.
Mino Vlachos: And again, I'll extend that even further. I think that over time, these repeated behaviors that we adopt as children, the kind of blueprint that we take on, these tend to form over time identities, which I believe is what personality tends to become. Personality to me, is a behavioral strategy. That you then start to identify with. And what's interesting is so we can go through all the different personality facets, or I can be. I'm an emotional person. So my strategy is to have heightened emotions, or I'm very even keeled or even numb, right? That's a different strategy. One is strategy is like, I'm super organized. Like that's a behavioral strategy. So I'm a very type a meticulous person. Different behavioral strategy could be I'm disorganized, I'm very chaotic. I allow everything in my environment to kind of take control. What I find fascinating is the more I've worked on myself, the more I've started to kind of even go beyond these behavioral strategies. So I think about introversion, extroversion. If you had asked me my whole life, I probably say I'm an introvert. I'm an introvert. And now I look at myself at work, and there's times I have to reach out to hundreds of people for our company. Three peak. And there's times that I enjoy being alone. I've started to get to the point where I can't even call myself introvert or extrovert. It almost has lost meaning to me. I don't know even know what the words mean in that sense, because I need to do what's in front of me. I have to do what's needed of me. So I've stopped even thinking about introversion, extroversion. I just think about what do I need to do in this moment? Reach out to someone or be alone? I've become almost indifferent to that personality facet. I just do what the situation calls for. But for most of my life, I did have an identification with being an introvert. Being an introvert. So, Mazen, if I think about behavioral strategies that people pick up, that then kind of become personality over time, what do you think is some of the positives and maybe some of the hindrances of this kind of way of looking oneself of like, I have a personality. This is who I am. This is my behavioral strategy in life.
Dr. Mazen Harb: When we don't have yet a crystallized ego, which is, I'll explain what is ego. Ego is how we identify ourselves. So when people say, I have lots of ego, I need to get rid of it. First we need to identify ourselves with our personalities. Ego is a structure that helps us to have a defense mechanism. And through that defense mechanism we create a strategy to deal and adapt at certain times with the outside world. But then that becomes, as you said, identified. So it will help us navigate to a certain degree to understand who we are and to have a certain constant. Constance right. So I feel good about myself because I am like this and I'm like that. So I start to belong to certain category of people. So before letting go of that, it's good to have a strategy to reach to that crystallization of that defense mechanism, which might here call ego, because if we don't have it yet, we are fluctuating in a place where society doesn't yet allow it. I'm fluctuating without a certain identification. So we kind of feel non belonging. I give an example, moving from childhood to puberty, you know, and it's really an, it's an identity crisis because everything that the child has recognized itself now, it's really different going to teenagerhood. And actually the most difficult thing is moving from teenagerhood to post teenagerhood and actually notice until we're under reaching the age of 25, this is where the most intellectualism happened, the most reading, schooling, university. We're trying to figure out where we fit in the world at large. And this is where we start to create an identity, not only the emotional one that Kristana talked about that brought the blueprint and our behaviors, but also on an intellectual level, I am like this. And actually because it will help very much to carve and then find the job we need, find the partner we need. Do we decide, I want to have a family, I want to have kids. So a lot of differentiation starts to happen in that identification. So it has a tremendous purpose until we are 25, to be able to go through this very fast amount of growth in a very short time. It's always changing after that, between 25 and 30 is really you going deep into something that you need. Either you're going to be in a work, either if you're doing a PhD or if you created a family, so it's really diving in, or if you want to explore life and to be hedonistic and travel the world. So this is where it really happens. But when hitting the age of 30, you know, you have certain threshold, you have then this, like the crystallization, they reach its peak and you're like, huh, which direction do I want to continue? And again, when it hits around 40, you already went through that direction. I'm like, hmm, is that who I want to be? I already have lots of money, but is that the job I want or I already have kids and family, but is that fulfilling me? Am I doing the thing I love or because more for us, I did all this personal development work, all this healing work. I feel ready for the world. I'm like, but now let us focus on business. So another way let me learn about more how to penetrate the business world and bring all this person development there. So identities are very, very very important. But in the same time, since they're really very we attach to them. That's what bring us illnesses, issues. Because it will as much as brought up adaptation, it brings us maladaptive behaviors because we start to consider that those personalities are who we are. And we cannot anymore see all the potential how we were when we were in puberty or in childhood. So we start to have another way of thinking. So funnily enough, that was very strategic to who we are and have the best strategies. Early on we like all potential, we need to have strategies. We start to see smaller, smaller, smaller and reach when we are 40 years of age. If some people 50 or 60 and you're like, but I cannot because I decided who I am, but actually where we don't know. And that's the scary part, how to let go of all strategies that has been accumulated. But now they are outdated. Hence that's what we call crisis during our thirties. Crisis during our forties, crisis during our fifties or crisis around sixties depends on the people. We're in our phase in evolution. So to resume creating strategy is a must to crystallize our ego, so we can have a direction in life, so we can focus on what we're doing and fully 100% believe in it. But once we go and do it and finish it, we have to let go of it and reopen to see who we are, what we need, and what if something else needs. So it allows us to continue growing in a sustainable, conscious and very fun way.
Mino Vlachos: I really love what you shared and I kind of repeat myself. But for me, when we get stuck in personality, it means we only have one type of tool we're going to use. So every situation I meet, I'm going to be an introvert. Because that's the only behavioral strategy I've tested out. For me, one of the beautiful moments of leadership is when we can expand the breadth of behaviors we're willing to try on, to see almost the extremes that we're possible of to then know how to toggle between these different parts of behavior. So I can both be extremely introverted and extremely extroverted and anywhere in between. And what ended up happening for me is I started to now become fully situational. I just ask what is needed of me in this moment and that's what I will do. It has gone beyond my identification. It's even gone beyond a need for a particular strategy. I just use the strategy that I need in the moment I need it. So one of the things that can trigger, you said, is crisis, and I'll show you one of my crisis. That was a big learning moment and asked me to really reflect upon my own strategies. And this is when I feel like I, for the one of the first times in my life, intentional, conscious strategy started to turn on. I'm not saying it was necessary, the right strategy, but that part of my brain started to activate. So I felt tremendous pressure throughout my schooling to get into university, and I was a very good student, top of my class. I did well in the testing. I did a thousand clubs. I was the president, vice president. I did, like, everything. Like, I thought I was, like, perfect, man. Like, I was, you know, the honor society, the music society. I played american football. I was a musician that was in, like, the all state bands, like, check, check, check, check, check. Right? Great grades, everything. And then I really just was like, I'm gonna work so hard. I'm gonna be so disciplined, and I'm gonna get this big objective, which is to go to university. And my dream, which was either, I don't know, my own or implanted in me, was like, I'm going to go to the Ivy League schools in the United States. So I really wanted to go to Columbia University in New York City. And that was, like, the dream, the dream, the dream. And then I applied to the Ivy League schools, and I got rejected from every single one. And so not a single school I wanted to go to accepted me. And at that time, when I was 17 or whatever, it was a huge crisis, because I was, like, everything I've poured myself into, working every night, all nighters, doing all this work, just this kind of blunt force. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. I didn't get what I wanted. And meanwhile, I had a friend of mine who's a close, dear friend, and he had a very different life strategy than me at that point in time. And so I remember he got this kind of part time job. There was this pizzeria, and the pizzeria, basically, they said, if you stand on the corner and hand out these flyers and you get people to take a picture and post it on social media or whatever with the flyer, if you can get ten people to do that, we're going to pay you $100 and buy you two pizzas or whatever it was. And so my friend was like, yeah, cool, great. So he went to the location. He observed that he was not going to be observed. They're going to leave him autonomous. So he basically just called ten of his friends and said, hey, if you post a picture of yourself on social media, I'll give you a slice of pizza. And so the ten friends did it, and then he took the rest of the flyers and he threw them in the trash. And then he showed up at the end, he showed the proof. I got the ten people to post, I'm out of flyers. I want the two pizzas and the $100. They said, great, here you go. And I remember hearing that story, and it, like, broke me. Like, it destroyed me, because I was like, wow, this is a person who looked at the objective and looked at the straightest line possible to get to the objective, and just, he did it. He got there, he won. Right? And I was looking at myself at that time where I was like, I'm working, working, working, and I have nothing to show for it. And so something in me, it, like, it broke something in me. And so I had a new epiphany where I was like, my new life strategy is I'm going to try and find the shortcuts in life. Like, that was the thing that dawned on me in that moment is I'm not going to work hard and as hard anymore in that way. I'm going to be clever now. Clever and work hard. And of course, that led me on a different journey, which you can listen to other podcasts to hear how that went in my life, but not great, but it was a different life strategy. So I adapted. I learned something, quote unquote. And when I was thinking about this podcast episode, what came up for me, Mazen, was when you did experiments with mice and how when you looked at the data, you found that there was actually three different behavioral strategies that mice picked up. And so I would love for you to share a little bit about the experiment and learning and behavioral strategies, because I think it's a very beautiful illustration of strategy.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Wonderful. Yeah. I'm delighted you brought that. Actually, I didn't think about it until. Until now. And this was beautiful discovery. I started working in neuroscience department, doing my PhD in neuroscience on learning and memory, the effect of substances, substance of abuse and drugs, or even stress or motivation on learning and memory. Right? So it's all about behavior and how we learn. So actually it's all about strategy. The literature back then, it was really, or the science in that that you really create a plan and then you have a hypothesis, then you have the model, then you have the way how you make the lab animals actually do it. And so you test it, then you go and analyze it. And you really need to be statistical significance. So you can say this worked or that didn't work. At the time, I was working really on appetitive, appetitive substances. So actually like condensed sugar, I don't know, like condensed fatty milk that really, at that time, mice. Mice do like that very high rewarding food. So we find the best way to make them consume it is to starve them a little bit, just to make a food small food restriction. And that was the paradigm in order to see how they learn, right? And the learning was to see, I don't remember what was the question, but I was checking their behavior. Then I put them into groups, and then I started to see that, yeah, they all go toward the middle, like constant middle. They all learning like a good average, but actually it didn't make a difference. I didn't understand something was a little bit off. I have what the. It's written in the literature, but I was looking at the data and say it statistically. I was like, something is off here. And I started to check, I took those numbers, the data numbers I have. I'm like, but one moment, I don't want to just put them all together and see what's the result, because I start to see certain behaviors. I was observing. I was observing, and I'm like, hmm. And then actually what we discovered. And I invite you, if you want, you can put, you can google my name. And there's like four articles based on what we discovered in strategic learning and then adaptation. And then I discovered that the three kind learning and strategy that is developed, which the first one was, we called it, we had, I had to call it a name. We called it sign tracking behavior. The second one is goal tracking behavior. The third one forgot what was in intermediary tracking behavior. So sign stood gt it. And then later on, for the next remaining four years, everything, every experiment I did, it was always there. So it was always in front of our eyes. But when we put them, plot them together, it disappeared. And we make like, oh, all human are together. If you give them this kind of food or this kind of drug or this kind of stress, they will behave that way. And at that time, I was a bit revolting against homogenization. And then this a fundamentalism of the way, how we think and feel in cultures, whether it's politics or religion. So then when I went to it and then I checked it. So the sign tracking animals. So where they, I used to learn I was doing a conditioning, it's called pavlovian and operant conditioning. So some animals, when they connected the signal coming, stimuli that coming, and then they really, in their memory, they connected the stimuli with the giving of the reward. Whenever they see the simulator, the reward is there. So the moment they learned, after a few days, the moment they see the light going, they ran away toward where the food is delivered. And then they were ready, ready, ready, ready for it. So those are the signs. Like all their being, all their body strategy was, became very motoric in a sense. The moment there is light, they run like crazy. The speed between the light and then running and being under the tray waiting for the milk is just really, really amazingly fast. So this is the sign tracking and the same animals, actually they're the same strain, they're in the same cage, they're the same, everything we did with them, similar, similar. Then there is another category, which is goal tracking.
Krisana Locke: Cool.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Yeah. So goal tracking is more, is mainly they went there, they really learned that they can really like, it's all operant conditioning. They can go, they have influence on the outcome. They went there and they really touched the light to make it come and then go. And then having the food.
Mino Vlachos: Right.
Dr. Mazen Harb: So they went and they knew if they do something, something comes. So they never waited and waited for the food. They went there and then they start to click, click, click, click, click, click to see if it works. So they really went with, and the last group, it really fluctuates between the two strategies. I really invite the people, go there and then read it because honestly, now I'm like, hmm, probably I forgot something. Like I explained it, but the detail of it is more in the articles. It's been a long time. I didn't look at it. And this is, and the funny part of it is most animals and most batch group, over the four years it went into one third, one third, one third, more or less fluctuating. So from thinking that if we control the environment and the genes, the same genetic jane, most of them are siblings and then put them all together, we will have them having one adaptive behavior and strategy, and then we always end up having three, either this or that and those one who do this and that.
Mino Vlachos: Can you, if you recall, can you tell us a little bit more about the intermediate group? Because if I recall, there was some confusion about their behavior. But then actually the way they were adapting was something that was quite fascinating. To look at, because they weren't strictly one behavior or the other.
Dr. Mazen Harb: They. So I really need to. Yeah. Just when I'm trying to recall it in my brain, there are the. So the ones who are really sign tracking. So they. Wait, wait, wait. Whenever there's a sign, they go there, touch it, and they get the reward. So they're very, very fast. They remain, during the whole experiment, fluctuating between both. Fluctuating between this strategy and the other. This strategy and the other. So they didn't take on one identity, if you want to call it identity. That's. This is what I. What I can say. And then you're like, hmm. Did they learn? Yes, they learned, but their own way, they're not. They have choices, and they played with both choices in response toward the response. Yeah.
Mino Vlachos: And so what we see is that animals do have kind of, I'll call it strategic acumen. Like, they can orchestrate things and coordinate and move towards an objective. For instance, there's lately been like, I think it's a whales are attacking human ships and they figured out how to take out propellers. And so there's clearly a strategy that they're employing to routinely take out boats and ships. I watched a documentary, I think, probably about a year ago, that was one of the most fascinating nature documentaries I've ever watched, which is called Chimp Empire. And I won't go too deep into it because it's such a good story and it's such a good documentary. But one of the things that was fascinating is there's two rival tribes of chimps and they go to war with each other, but they have two completely different strategies. In one tribe, it's a very male dominance hierarchy, so the males are competing for an alpha position. And so there's constant infighting and war to become the alpha. And there's always, like, fear. And only the male chimps go to war in the other one. It's actually an egalitarian society and they live next to each other, I think, in the Congo. So the egalitarian society, both the female and male chimps fight alongside each other, and they don't have this desire for hierarchy. They each have clear, functional roles within the tribe. And so it's interesting to see that there's an actual strategy playing out, a cultural strategy, almost like a battle strategy. And so animals are capable, even when we see, I believe it's like wolves or lions, like, they can coordinate their attacks on prey when they want to eat. And so I always find it kind of interesting that, again, humans we're not the only ones that can form strategies. Animals many times have these different learned behaviors. And so Krizana, I have a question for you, which is weve been talking about sometimes we can get a bit stuck in a strategy, so we develop a bit of this tunnel vision. So, for instance, if I look at the example I gave of my story where I thought the only way to get ahead of life was you work like crazy. Its kind of this really kind of brute force. I never thought about being clever. I never thought about thinking about the shortest way to the goal, the way my friend was with the pizza coupons. What is the hindrance if we get really tunnel vision in life? If we get really stuck on a strategy?
Krisana Locke: Well, when we go into tunnel vision and we're very much focused on one objective, then we're going to miss out a lot on a lot of other things that are happening in life around us. So that's the narrowing down. You're going to miss other opportunities that may come along that you need to shift and turn when you're, if you have a strategy, but if you just focus on one way. So that's what I would say.
Mino Vlachos: And so for me, strategy, I've been kind of saying it a few times, is what we do. It can be a plan, but it's not. It is not a plan. So many people put together a plan and say, I have a strategy, but if you don't actually execute that strategy or organize around that strategy, then that's not your strategy. It's just a piece of paper with some writing on it. So I sometimes when I'm working with executives, with leaders, CEO's, they have this idea of, this is my strategy, this is what I put down on a piece of paper. This is what I must be doing. But in reality, they're not really aligning their energy, time or money around that plan. So one of the questions I ask in coaching that tends to kind of whatever jar people is, I have them articulate their priorities. So like, what's your priorities in life? They'll be like, one, two, three, and I'll say, look at your calendar and can you tell me, if you bucket the activities on your calendar, what do you spend time on? And then they'll tell me something that's completely divorced of their priorities. So their priorities could be, I'm making it up, like I want to increase revenue, I want to decrease costs, and then I look at what they're spending their time on and they're like, whatever, scrolling on social media, they're having pointless meetings like I'm making this again up in the moment. But the way they're allocating their energy is completely divorced of the priorities they say they have. Which is why I talk about strategy as where we allocate our resources, it's what we're actually doing. And I go back to it can be an unarticulated strategy. If we don't have consciousness and awareness around what we're doing or if we bring awareness our strategy then something that is intentional. So we know that our priorities that we talk about or write on a piece of paper are in alignment with our actions. That to me is real strategy. And so mazen, you also work with CEO's leaders. Have you observed this mismatch between what people espouse, what they say their priorities are and what they're actually doing in their day to day?
Dr. Mazen Harb: Yeah definitely. Because when those two things are aligned results is inevitable. And I'm not saying positive or negative, only positive result. I'm like results because strategy it's not, we do not know what's the outcome, we know where we're going. So you need to have negative results. At least when you have negative results or positive results or any results you can adapt. There is no one strategy fits it all and there is no one strategy in a business or in life that really we have to stick to it. And that's called dogma actually that's called religion or that's called cultural dogma. So strategy is for me it's something when I notice a lot working with people it's to learn how to be able to adapt constantly and then really go toward from a strategy toward at least a little bit of result, reflect about it and then see what is needed. Does that answer your question?
Mino Vlachos: Yes. If I krishna think about again there's potentially a mismatch between what people say is important to them and what they're actually doing. When you've worked with people how do you square that mismatch in terms of well I want this but what I'm doing is completely divorced of that reality. So let's say someone comes to you and they're like my strategy is to start some kind of project, project, business endeavor. And then you notice that well what is actually person doing with their energy? And they're actually just spending all their time dreaming just thinking about it. But they don't make any concrete steps. So the objective is to start a project but the behavioral strategy is dreaming. So when you're working with someone you notice this mismatch how do you kind of square that with the, and how do you work with that individual?
Krisana Locke: Okay, so when I work with that individual, I know that that outcome is not going to happen because it's just an idea and that hasn't had any. So they're not grounded. They haven't set any steps on the way to, to get to that objective. So when I work with them, I would set up, what are the priorities? As you said before, what's important? What do you need to bring in first to make that happen? And also to really ask them if it's just dreaming and illusions and ideas, and to really see if you, to get a business plan, get a business strategy together, and also to get on their own internal mindset and body to really see that it will not happen unless they're also grounded in their body and centered to have this outcome, to start a business or go through it. So I look at both from the cognitive and also from the body to the grounding foundational principles to drive that through the body. That's what I would do.
Mino Vlachos: When we talk about strategy, there's also two types of strategy. I'll include now a new concept. There's something that is called top down strategy, and there's something called bottoms up strategy. Top down strategy is intuitive strategy. It means that I have certain principles that filter my decision making, but I'm acting on a feeling vision. Bottoms up is a very analytical, kind of more cognitive way of putting together a strategy. So I'll give you a personal example, which just shows how kind of nerdy I used to be back in the day. Probably still am, but I was also back in the day. I used to develop, because I was really interested in developing strategy. I used to do a really kind of intense journaling system. So every day I would journal, I would write about my day and what happened. And then once a week, I would read all my journals from that week, and I would try to spot patterns. And so I would circle and underline patterns across the seven journal entries, and I would do a weekly entry about those patterns. And then once a month, I would read the four weekly ones and look for patterns and spot and circle. And in that monthly one, I would write patterns down from the weekly one. Then once a quarter. So every three months, I would look at the three month journal entries, and I would spot patterns and circle and underline. I swear to God, I did this for like, a few years. And then once a year, I would look at the quarterly, I would look at the four quarterly journal entries. And I would circle and underline for patterns. And what I was looking at is a very analytical, bottoms up way to understand myself. And a bottoms up very. Again, the, it's just because it's all data based. And then there's a different approach, which is I can just sit there and reflect on my life and be in a state of being in reflection and vision, and be like, this is the direction I should go. This is what is happening with me. This is how I should. So over time, I learned to drop the bottoms up analytical way and to adopt a more top down intuitive way. Personally, I think there's room for both. I think there's value in both. I'm not saying one is right and one is wrong. They both have strengthen and they both have hindrances. But over time, I've come to believe that the top down can have some more benefit for me, at least. So, Mazen, there's these kind of two approaches, right? There's the more vision, intuition, and there's the I do an analysis to figure out where I'm going. Can you tell us a little bit between those two? What do you see as strengths and weaknesses of those two approaches?
Dr. Mazen Harb: I'm holding back from sharing the method we created in three p coaching and solution, the company that work with businesses and executive leaders. It's the functional, it's part of our functional human system method that's now we actually we send to be patented hopefully soon, in the next year to come. And actually, it's the core fundamentals of behind the creation of every project. So I'm like, I hear you. If before we discovered this method, I would have answered without having what I have in front of me. But like, I'm like, I cannot hold myself. There are principles and rules in life. And of course, because in tripeak, I am the managing director of science and innovation. So when we were three of us created, that gave me lots of joy to lead that project with both of you, until you both said, okay, now let us give it to the, give it to the world. So there are three components of our being. They have to be respected and understood. There is our feeling body, feeling self. It's where we have our intuition, where we have the vision, where we open up to visions and then imagination. When we create a vision, lots of artists are in there. We have the part that we acted out. We go and then the ones we try and then we try. It's really about using the physical body to pin down that vision to make it a reality. And now there's a third part and the fourth, which both of them belong to the brain, right. One part is the creative ability of the brain, which is we kind of call the creative thinking. So it's a part of the brain that gives the creative thinking, which is where reflection happens. You have lots of scientists, philosophers, but in order to activate that part, one need to have data, one need to have a bit of feeling, one need to have tried something or read something and then feel it. And then you have the second part of the brain, which is the thinking brain. So it's not the creative thinking, it's the critical thinking. Okay? And that is really based on numbers, on past experiences, and not on reflecting what the outside, what is possible, not on creating hypothesis and theory based on what we feel. It's only based on what is lived, what has happened on this planet, what do we know about the galaxy, and nothing outside of numbers. Yes, and text. So to go and answer, I really have to draw with those four quadrants and to really explain that based what we discovered, actually, all nature, everything in nature, everything in our body, everything in organization, every project we create, every endeavor we do has to go through a cycle. And that cycle has to be respected. And the moment we do not respect that cycle, we hit crisis. So it's the moment where adaptation and strategy is not working. So when we based on that, and later on I will explain how it's drought, because there are many routes that can go pathways. But when we start with building, you said we're starting with the critical thinking. It's beautiful. The critical thinking normally is really allowing us to build something. Yes, it works like just based on what you have create something, it works. But does that help us in life to adapt? Only to a certain degree. If I only create top down, what is happening is I'm based on that building. I'm not ready. I'm the least ready, actually, for new things, new crisis, new opportunities. I'll give you an example. You are in that company or created a project or anything. Covid comes, the pandemic comes, what do you do? Because you only work on analysis and only on the critical thinking, which is actually the ego part of the brain. So reality exists only in numbers and in identities, and only what I know and beyond what I know, I don't know, I don't know. I don't trust it. But then pandemic happens. Lots of companies disappeared because they were not in contact with the creative side, intuitive side and even adventurer side to try different things. The companies that survived the pandemic it just, they had the biggest ability to restrategize, go back, go from building and critical thinking to open creative thinking, reflect on what's working. And when they fail to reflect, because the situation that we had was very new, they went back to scratch. What is scratch? Going to intuition, going to reimagine this product, this service, and that's the beginning of a cycle. And so those ones are able to go back to the beginning and then start again. They'll have higher chance to adapt fast. And everyone who gets stuck and only feeling but not moving and trying it also will be stuck. So there is not one strategy fits it all. There is a movement. I see strategy. It's a movement of things. But whenever you find that outcome you want, you should never sit still, you should be open and constantly reflect back, build, reflect back. And when the building ends, go back, reimagine. And then when you reimagine, go and go. Try it, try, try it. And then reflect again so no part can be separated and left on the side. Those four parts of the body brain system has to work together constantly to allow the best adaptation and strategies upon strategy to always evolve to fit the need. At the moment.
Krisana Locke: I have a question, because it was interesting when you said you work top, then bottom. So this is a mental process you're talking about.
Mino Vlachos: Yes.
Krisana Locke: So we're going to see this. So you're going into the mental processes and not including the whole cycle that mazen was saying. So it's going from the intuitive to the analytical. So it's a mental process and we've missed out on the other parts, components when we're in the cycle of life. Yes, very interesting. Yes.
Dr. Mazen Harb: So I resume it. So, in a way, like the down is the intuition, the up is the analytical, and then what's in between is the trial and then the reflection. So this is where. Yeah, the bottom. Analytic intuition or the opposite intuition. Analytic.
Krisana Locke: Yes.
Mino Vlachos: And then when I think we're using different terminology, which can get confusing for me. When I talk about top down, I talk about intuition is top down. So it's that I have a vision, and from that vision, things cascade down. When I talk about bottoms up, it's, I have a bunch of data points, and then I build a castle out of those data points. So it's a little bit different because we're talking about, I think, two different systems. So thank you, Chrisana, for bringing clarification there.
Krisana Locke: And then I have another system, cons system with the brain, the mind, and then there's the body. And when you're just in the mind, you forget the body. Yes. So just so listeners and our audience can understand.
Mino Vlachos: Yes. And so based on what Mazen was sharing, for me, it's an important reminding moment, which is strategy is always in service of some vision. And if it's not in service of a vision, then I go back to what I opened the podcast with is you get into these forever wars like the United States and Afghanistan and Iraq, where you have no clue where you're going. And rather than have the, I guess, humility to take a step back to reflect. Right. And figure out what the hell you're doing, you just keep going, going, going. And so this also relates to people, because I talk to a lot of folks or coach folks when they have that, either the midlife crisis or they have a moment of I have no direction in life. But the only way you'll get direction in life is if you go to reflect, which means you have to step away from doing. You have to step away from doing. So create the space for yourself. Take a weekend off, go book an Airbnb, go to a vision quest, like go do something that is non doing, and from there allow yourself to then have the space to have a vision, to try something to reinvent yourself. But you're going to be a beginner again. It's going to be back to the seed of potentially you're going to go back to the beginning, but you have to reflect to start something new to reinvent yourself. So the strategy always has to serve the vision. If you feel like you have no vision. And I really don't know what your strategy is in service of other than just maintenance, just kind of the status quo and just inertia. Like this is what I'm habituated to. So I'm just going to stay in this knowing container. It's not, might even be a good container, but I know it. So there's some safety in knowing what it is. But that is a process, in my opinion, of decay. So I always tell folks, if you're stuck, you need to go to reflection, you need to take a pause. Vision happens in reflection, in receptivity. Strategy happens in receptivity. They use different parts of the system like we were talking about. One's more intuitive, one's more probably analytical, but they still use receptivity. So it's not a doing vision and strategy come from receptivity. And so with that, I'm going to give a little bit of a formula, which is, okay, I want to create a strategy. I call this the gap analysis. I didn't invent it. It's something that's quite known in the business world, where to create a gap analysis, you basically first start with, you guessed it, a vision with an objective. Like, where do I want to go? What do I want to do from there? You think about the future state. So who do I need to be? Or who do we need to be to be able to achieve that objective? So if I really imagine myself fully achieving the thing I want to get, like, what am I? Who am I? What am I doing? What am I feeling? Would it really paint a picture of what the future state looks at? Then step number three is you do a current state analysis, which is a fancy way of saying an honest assessment of where I am right now, today. And from there you can see where do I want to go in the future, where I am today. And then you pick three, maybe five things that need to change and need to shift from today to tomorrow to get the objective. So if I use a concrete example, if my objective is to create a amazing technology company, well, what does a technology company have? Well, we can say what they're probably going to have is some form of AI. They'll have this amount of employees, they'll be in these markets. And then you look today and you're like, well, we actually have no technology. We are not in these markets. We're not doing this. We're not doing that. So what needs to change between today and tomorrow to get there? Oh, we need to hire some people. We need to acquire a technology company. We need to create a culture of innovation. So then you have these strategic principles, and from there we go back to tactics. Okay, so I want to become an innovative culture. Well, tactically, how do I do that? Well, I can do a workshop for my employees on embracing change and adaptation. So I hire three peak coaching and solutions to do that. So there are things that we then break it down to on the individual level that add up to strategy. The beautiful thing about strategy is that it can help organize your people. If I go to a business sense, vision points them in the same direction, strategy gets them moving in that direction in a similar way. It's how we stay consistent. If we don't have a good strategy, then each person is kind of just doing their own thing, which doesn't help move an organization, a body of people, community of people, towards your goal. And so a good business strategy, in my opinion, will always also have a human component, which is every business needs humans to execute a strategy. So you have to figure out how the humans will add up, how their behaviors will add up to getting your objective. So if we think about a business strategy, you should always have a leadership strategy. What do you need of those leaders, of those people to pull off that business strategy? In my opinion, and it's the work we do with three peak we really want people to have the right skills, the right behaviors, the right relationships and the right human systems to be able to pull off your strategy. These things need to be aligned and pointed in the right direction. So we talked about how individuals, even babies, can develop behavioral strategies. But when you have 100,000 employees, you have to make sure those behavioral strategies line up with one another. So people are doing the right things at the right times to move the organization forward. Another thing I'll share on strategy is that I believe good strategy factors in linear time and space. It's bound by reality. It's about physical creation. And when I look at master strategists, I really start to see them more and more as neo from the matrix, the movie the Matrix. So Neo, when he looks around, he sees all those green numbers streaming everywhere. I find that master strategists start to see the world as equations, as formulas, as algorithms, that they basically start to understand what the input is and what the output will be. And they become flexible between strategies. They're able to adopt and drop things as they come. Ultimately, strategy is how we make decisions and how we see our reality. And so if I ask Mazen, I know you've also, not only have you worked with master strategists, I think you're related to a couple of them. What do you observe with our master strategists and how they're able to take inputs and leverage it to create outputs?
Dr. Mazen Harb: Master strategist, the first thing that comes to my mind, I'll give you example, actually, I used to call him the husband of my mother. And what I learned a lot beautifully from him. We lived together in the same household for about 20 years. I always called him master builder. He's a very good friend. My mom divorced, but he's a good friend. So master builder, what I learned from him and also he was literally a builder. Houses, chimneys. Like, he's a mix of artists and that execution, he's a mix of all of them. So the first word that comes is perseverance. And that's it. There is no strategy without perseverance. I used to see him on Saturday, tired and sick and waking up in the morning and then taking shower, shaving and putting his really good clothes on. And then I'm like, why are you doing this? Why don't you chill, right? I was a teenager, and then he learned how to be perseverant. And now he's a, he's a rich man. He really found success in what he's doing, because he really believed in what he was doing. He was giving the best and most beautiful thing, regardless what people think about him. And then now after 20 years, people go and see the buildings he created, the chimneys he created, the houses he created, and they're like, my goodness, your work is amazing. And I asked him the other day, I was on the call with him, I was struggling with something, and I said, but what did you do during this time? And you had, people could not see your value, could not see your product. And then he said, I didn't mind, I was doing what I love, I knew what I was doing. It will last the test of time. And now people, everybody's like, congratulate me. It came 20 years later, but I found my success in my perseverance. So I see master strategist, I would like to call them master builders. And I have so much love and appreciation and respect for master builders. Whenever they fail in something, I never say, oh, I failed. They go and figure out, I'm like, it's incredible. So again, example him, he goes to a car and then he try it and goes and try something else. So they use the same equations to move on in different arts, in different craft. And that's why I called a master builder. So to be able to be in multidisciplinary and ready, not to say, oh, but I need someone to do it for me. And they asked him, so why don't you ask this person to mainly do it for you and just tell me when you go bring your car, you have to know a little bit about the car. I'm like, man, I'm doing my PhD in neuroscience. I'm all about intellectual. I don't want to go see how the mechanic works. He looks at me and I'm like, so when he's going to tell you this cost €500 to change one thing that cost €20, would you know? I'm like, no, absolutely not. He said, good. In my life as a master builder, I was never been cheated because I went with them. At least I knew the name of it, at least I tried it. So it's really bring lots of success to be a master strategist. You don't have to know everything, but give respect to all the arts, that if it belong to your business or to your project, to have a small, slight idea, because what you will build will be infinite and constantly ready to adapt and create something even better.
Mino Vlachos: I know we do a lot of structures, exercises. We like to embody different archetypes. And so we have, throughout our research process for three peak, and we were creating our functional human systems core fundamentals. There were moments where you stepped in and embodied these master strategists, which, anecdotally, between the three of us, we've called the reality Joker, because they operate in reality time and space, and they're a joker in the sense of they can embody all different strategies, right? They're flexible, they can dance between these different ways of doing things. So it's a bit the Joker card. They're not stuck in something. When you have kind of embodied the master strategist, what do you notice in your body, in your mind? What does it feel like to be in that space?
Krisana Locke: As Mazen said, they persevere. But in the moment when you're embodied in that, you are centered, you are ready to take risks, to get to your objective. So you have a 300, it's almost. You have a 360 degree. You're ready to view everything. So you're very embodied, you are very grounded, and you're ready to adapt. Your thinking is adaptable, but you're very clear where you're going, and it will shift, but you stay on point. That's what I remember when we were doing a lot of the research.
Mino Vlachos: And can you tell me if you recall, or even now, if you kind of tap into it? There are other folks we mentioned that can form either an identity or stuck in a particular way of doing things. A particular strategy, which we know from our research, can also bring up different emotions and fear and mind and all that good stuff. What's the difference? What does it feel like? Like, really the embodied difference between someone who might get stuck in a behavioral strategy versus this master strategist we're talking about. How does it feel different to you and your body?
Krisana Locke: What happens for the master builder? He. He tries action. He can step on reflection, he can analyze. So he's ready to move in all these different areas of these different cycles, but it's very earthbound, and he doesn't get stuck. The master builder doesn't get stuck. He will also connect with other people, get input, but also, at the same time, is working out equations for how they can serve him best for his strategy and his objective. So even when there's input coming in from other people. They're very acute at finding what's going to serve them, to move their strategy forward on the ground, on point. They will filter out what's being given, what is good and bad, what serves them. Even if they have a mentor or if they have someone that's helping them in consulting, they may just pick up different pieces and only use those to serve them to move forward with what they want. It's a very physical, master Bill, goal oriented movement. And you make lots of mistakes on the way, but they continue. And that's what I remember from the research when we were embodying it and really looking at it now. I just had to really step back into that to remember this, of how it was. Yeah. And we did a lot of research.
Mino Vlachos: And I have to share that. I believe this is really how I operate in the world. So I'm constantly feeding on formulas, and I can take it from almost anywhere, everywhere. I'm talking to someone about the most random thing, and I will learn something and connect it to something we're doing at work, in my personal life and health. Like I'm always, my ears are always open for little pieces of almost data I can plug into my algorithm to say, okay, this is how I move my company forward. But it can really come from very different places. For instance, I was recently talking to someone who was a master recruiter in the military. And I'm sitting there and I'm really fascinated because some of the equations he's giving me about how to recruit people into the military, I'm going to then go use how to sell a leadership workshop to a corporation. These aren't the same things. But if you learn how to apply learning from one domain to the next domain, you can always be learning and adapting and kind of fueling your own algorithm so that you maximize your chance of success. So we're going to do one more topic on time and still in the realm of time and space, and then Mazen, don't worry, we will eventually get to the beyond time and space. One other concept I want to talk about is something I call strategic drift, which is we might start with an objective, you might start with a strategy, but over time, we can drift into a different strategy. So this, even the binary I talked about, which is your either conscious strategy or unconscious strategy, isn't actually true. There's probably a whole range of activities and behaviors we can take part in between. And so in the beginning, I referenced the british captain bh little heart. He has a really? Again, great book called strategy, which is all about military strategy, over 200, I think, military campaigns. And based on his analysis, what he basically created, this bifurcation, he said there's basically two strategies in military. There is the direct approach and the indirect approach. So he was talking about the direct approach. One of the most famous generals is someone named Carl von Clausewitz. And Clausewitz, his theory is basically, you get more troops, more force. You go directly at your opponent and you smash them. And as long as you have a bigger army, you're always going to win. So you always go right to the knock on the door and then just smash them. What Captain Hart was finding is that in almost every successful military campaign, it's the indirect approach that tends to win, which is you don't do that. You basically try and be more like water. You kind of flow around the situation. You see where your openings are. You try and surprise people. You try and be devious, you create confusion. And so one of the most famous authors is Sun Tzu, who talks a lot about this kind of military philosophy. And another one that Hart was talking about is Napoleon. And so one of the most fascinating, if you look at the actual strategies of Napoleon in the beginning, especially when he was winning, a lot of is Napoleon's objective was to win, but his strategy was to confuse people. So he would never. He would never attack an army directly. What he would do is if there was two cities of an enemy that he wanted to capture, he actually would be completely indifferent of what city he would capture. And so as they heard, oh, my God, Napoleon's coming. Napoleon's coming. People would go into the castles, into the cities, and they would close the gates. And so you have city a, and next to it is city b. And they would divide half and half, and they would wait to see which city is Napoleon going to attack first. And Napoleon wouldn't attack either of the cities. He would actually move his troops between both cities and then keep marching past the cities. And then they would freak out because they wouldn't understand why didn't he attack the city? And so inevitably, one of them would go into a panic and they're like, oh, my God, we can't see his military anymore. He must be attacking the other city. So they would all run out of the gates, run all out of the city and start chasing him. And in that moment, he had one because he had convinced them that he was in. Basically, he truly was indifferent if City a freaked out, and he knew he could take it if City B freaked out, he knew he could take it. If they both freaked out, he could take both. It didn't really matter to him. His strategy was to put them, the phrase I love is on the horns of dilemma. They were completely confused because they didn't know if he was going to go with a or b, and he actually would go with c, which is complete indifference. And in that way he kept winning battle after battle after battle. What's also interesting about Napoleon is that the more successful he became, the more he stopped doing this and the more he started to rely on brute force and larger militaries to attack his opponents. And what happened is Napoleon started to lose and he lost in Russia, and then he lost, I think, to the British at Waterloo. I'm not an expert on Napoleon, by the way, but he started to go with this, what I'll call a little bit more of a lazy approach. And this is what I call strategic drift, which is he had a winning strategy, he had a winning formula, but comfort bred this unconsciousness in him. And I also, I'm just going to be very honest. I think with our company, three peak, we experienced some of this where we had a strategy and then we got a really nice juicy contract to begin three peak. We got a second juicy contract, a third juicy contract. And along the way we tried many things, but I think a little bit we got entitled of like, yeah, we're the best. We get these huge whales for customers. And then we forgot the kind of meaning of the dollar. So we've been in a humbling process of, I think, rediscovering a bit our strategic drift and realizing that we need to go back to what worked originally, which is really to be humbled, to be in service, and that nothing is guaranteed in this life. We have to work for our money, so it can happen to anyone. And I think, and I don't know if you guys agree with that, but that's my perception, is that we had to learn that lesson. And is that just because you win, you have to stay actually doing the formula? You can't just sit on your ass and it's going to come to you. And so with that, I want to ask Mazen, because you beautifully illustrated the core fundamentals to us. When I talk about the strategic drift, how success can breed comfort and how comfort leads us to unconsciousness, how do you relate that to some of the things you were sharing earlier with the core fundamentals?
Dr. Mazen Harb: I was waiting because this is how I weigh again, how I work through this system and through myself. I wait instead of thinking I wait what comes up. And what comes up is to answer this question is I want us to define and success. This is where master builders and master strategists fall. This is where empires fall. This is where emperors fall. This is where any company, any leader, an employee fall. When they've been working all their lives with dedication, perseverance, respect, regardless what they're doing, even if it's a war. But working hard, when they reach and then think they reach success only measured by the result of what they were really striving for. And then they start to celebrate success and they drop their perseverance, their duties, their human connection to what is needed to continue on the path of knowingness, discovering the unknown. We drop into something. I would say if there is one guilt in this for body is laziness. Because when we are lazy to clean ourselves, the body starts to decay. When we lazy to bring our food, we die of hunger. When we lazy took care of our children, they really have abandonment issue. So when success bring. When we think success, we achieve that. Sit. This is where we fail. This is how Napoleon failed. This is how every single empire failed. Ottoman Empire, Greek Empire, every empire, the German Empire, the french empire, the British Empire. We build. We are very creative in building. But the moment we start to find it, we really want to maintain it. And then we refuse to change. Where at the beginning it was all about change and expansion. The moment we consider ourselves successful, we laugh. I'm tired of constant expansion and change. We stop expanding. When we stop expanding our own knowingness of oneself and our work, we it's the demise. Our ego takes over. We say, but I don't need it. I have few millions. I can sit there and do nothing. And I'm like, you never know which crisis will hit a pandemic. A war between Russia and Ukraine, a war in Palestine and Israel, a famine here, earthquake here. Nature is brutal, but it's brutal to wake up, up, to stay constantly awake. That's what I have to say now.
Mino Vlachos: And so now we're going to move even beyond time and space. And I'm sure everyone who's listening is like, what the fuck do you mean? What have you been talking about all this time? So again, I'll draw three categories. Now, up until now, we've talked about two categories. So category one is I have a behavioral strategy, conditioned or not. And I stick to that one strategy. It could be a personality, it could be something I learned, but that is, that is what I do. And I kind of have this one tool that I run around the world with the hammer and everything looks like a nail. There's another way of being, which is like, actually, I become the master of all strategies and adaptable between all strategies, but I'm still really in this builder mode. I'm really all about kind of creating in the here and now. And what if I told you there's a third category which is operating outside of the parameters of time and space? And this is our third category where strategies, in my opinion, cease to exist. But in a real way? In a real way, there is no strategy, but not in the same way as kind of the first group, which is like, I don't have a strategy, but I do. I'm just not aware of it. It's the subconscious unconscious here is we're really talking about beyond strategies. And so I'm going to ask. I've referred to you as our quantum queen. I'm going to ask Krissana.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Yes.
Mino Vlachos: When you've embodied this archetype, let's put it that way, can you describe to us what it feels like in the body to embody a space that is beyond time, beyond concrete reality?
Krisana Locke: So we call that this quantum. And it's. It's very connected and can see all the strategies, can see life, but he's not interested in trying to make the equations. So it's a bird's eyes view and it's not goal orientated, but it knows just outcomes and it's in service.
Dr. Mazen Harb: I'm enjoying those silences. Oh, I'm enjoying those silences because the moment, Mino, you dropped the word beyond strategy, there is this looming fear of the unknown that's, you know, I could feel it. And I really. Even our audiences like, what are they talking about? Because the humans, us, we have fear of surrender. I'm like, and this is now we're introducing. So for the audience, if you feel us speaking slowly giving space, because this is the gaps of inner success. And to know how to go beyond strategy, to understand that all is well.
Mino Vlachos: I'm not sure how to frame this question. It's for Mazen. When I. There's two modes, right? There's like the I take in the formula, I take in the equations, I build in reality. And when I tap into something beyond that, then it's very difficult to put it into words. But there's a space of kind of being, but non being. At the same time, there's something where it doesn't even make sense to pick up a strategy. It's beyond probably my comprehension or my ability to articulate it. So I was curious if when you are beyond, just beyond, like this strategy doesn't even make sense in this realm.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Yes, Krissana has it first because you.
Krisana Locke: Know equations and in that space, you know that equations don't work there really.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Between the conversation, I see what you call beyond being from your perspective as master builder working only on time and space and working on equation. Actually I am calling full being. So this is why there is a terminology from the perspective of your question and Krissana, because she's a good bridge and she really helped us. It's a state of beingness that in it there's, it's beyond doing. When we constantly are thinking in strategy, we're constantly trying to survive. That mean we're only relying on the physical body as a way of survival. But we do not let go to our beingness, which is the subconscious part of who we are, which is the soul, whatever you want to call it, or the subconscious. And in that state of beingness, how many of us can be in a state of beingness yet feel assured that what they're doing is alright by sometimes not trying to understand everything? And that's my question to you. Can you be in a state after you put the intention and you start working on it? Can you be doing something without knowing what's the outcome and really working, but not seeing outcome, not seeing results and just sticking to it, but trusting that you should do that without any feedback loop? What happens to you in that scenario?
Mino Vlachos: Okay. There's different kind of ways I operate. So part of me freaks out because feedback loops for me are very like important and urgent to have. So if I have feedback from my environment, then yeah, I'm taking input in. So then I know how to adjust. So for me, there's like a real big necessity for feedback loops. There is part of me, though, that have touched things in my life where I can go beyond and almost suspend the need for that. So it depends where I am, like what I'm toggling between in life. But, but in my daily working day life, if I put it that way, it's very difficult not to have feedback loops. I feel like when I don't, I feel like I'm in this, the padded room, right? Like the insane asylum where I'm like, I can't see, I can't hear, I can't taste, I can't touch, I'm like, I got to know what's happening to me right now.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Yes. So you need physical sensation. You are bound by the body consciousness, which is. That's we're talking about. So the reality is inhabited in time and space, but this is why you become a massive strategist, massive builder. But there's still something you are vulnerable to. And actually, here I will give it from space beyond time and space and the space of beingness. What if I tell you that in that state where you master build the building only on formulas, on analytical way, even feeling analytical. What if I tell you you are really susceptible to give your power away at any single moment? And what your kryptonite is the fear of the unknown. But what if you start to befriend the unknown and understand what really is intention, how to let go once you have a clear intention and allow your beingness to start doing without having a feedback loop? Well, even if I tell you, can you imagine yourself not for one day or like one week? What if you are in a non feedback loop for a year, creating a business? You'll go mad. Right? But what if I tell you that feedback loop that you need? It is the thing that will, I will use imagine. Now we're in a whatever it can be, this war, non war, whatever anything. And where you have your strategies, I have mine. Since I know how you function, then actually I know how to manipulate. So in the place of beingness, awareness is needed. We cannot reach it without awareness. So since I know what I'm capable of, I'll bring awareness, because if I abuse it, I will pay the price. Very, very heavy. More than I others. But what if I tell you now, based on that feedback loop, I start to give you positive feedback loops? What happens if you react positively and you will feel motivation? And, yes, I'm doing something. So that means you're very influenced by a positive or a negative, but that does not mean you're on the right or the wrong path. So you're very dependent as a reality joker, as a master builder, as an emperor, as a leader, that it's only based on the outcome of. Now, that mean you let go of the vision. You are changing constantly. The vision based on the feedback loop. Immediately you're on the stock market. Oh, it's going up. Let me buy it. This is gambling. And here's my question. Why you forgot the grand vision. And this is where strategy beyond strategy. It's based on the original vision and to let go of the outcome and the feedback loop for a bit or like not to be dependent on it. And then the feedback loop is a confirmation from within. Here I have to introduce meditation here. I have to introduce awareness because it's not true. You're not in a feedback loop. Your feedback loop become internal. It's your subconscious through your emotions and feelings, telling you if you're on the wrong or right path. So you start, you stop giving away your power to the outside to tell you where you are, who you are. What if your business is doing well? If your partnership loving life is doing well, and you check within? What if I tell you in beyond strategy, you will have a constant, immediate feedback loop that is always in the moment, connected to intuition, even if you're going through crisis and very what you consider a negative phase, even if it's a very hardship. But deep down, you know, because something inside of you confirming, so you don't need any more the confirmation of the out, but of the inner through awareness and from their care, respect, and then moving forward. And that's the leaders we need the new leaders coming, the new kids that they were coming with the compass within the. They are not only tuned into the physical reality, only they are tuned into the outer physical reality based on all the equation, but also they tuned into the inner reality. There exists a huge inner reality inside so that you can go be through time and space and within, beyond time and space. And those the leader we need to be behind and support us in creating the new society we're going toward.
Krisana Locke: And I would like to add a, as we're saying, master builder, master strategist. They have a step into this space, and that is through bringing in meditation and awareness. And it's not visualization or dream work, it's simply adding meditation and awareness into your life. So you have that space to tap, drop into that space. We've seen it in our workshops when we see this certain archetype strategist. We've seen the feedback we get from them when they've allowed themselves or they find tools to drop into this awareness. And through meditating, it's just an absolute delight for them because they've discovered something that is. That is an enhancement for the master builder. And it's a space, so it's just like a step into, so you can rise higher into that. You don't lose the space of a master builder. It's enhanced when you bring in meditation and awareness.
Mino Vlachos: I feel for some reason, maybe it's a little formula in my own head. An important caveat is I believe if you are more of a dreamer archetype, not to listen to this conversation and misidentify what you're doing with what we're talking about. If you find yourself daydreaming a lot, you need to try something. So move into the world, move into trying, move into doing. What we're talking about is someone who is trying all kinds of different strategies, who is running and dancing and I doing all the beautiful things across all these different quadrants. They might be receptive, they might be action oriented, they might be intuitive, they might be analytical. They might be into change, they might be into stability. Like, they know when to bring the right formula for the right moment. Of course, everyone can use and benefit from awareness, so everyone has the capacity and potential to use these. And I just want to be careful that as we talk about this space that can be touched beyond strategy, it's not confused for I just sit in daydream.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Yes, and beyond strategy, if we do not have intention, we cannot be beyond strategy. So strategy becomes its initial seed. It's an intention. Why am I doing what I'm doing? So I know what I'm doing. I have a clear intention, clear purpose, clear where I'm going. And then let go, and then wake up every day and then start doing what is needed and then building and yes, so. But intention and let go to oneself. Because the brain is not only the ego, not only the conscious mind, not only the analytical mind. The brain is a powerhouse of so much use. All the power of your brain, and then that. This is why we're speaking. What we're speaking, going beyond surgery, is to use all the power of the brain, not only specific region.
Mino Vlachos: So, with that, I'm gonna do a little recap of some of the topics we've touched upon. And I. If you have been listening to this, I would also. My invitation is to feel how the conversation was energetically at different moments, because I think I. It's quite indicative of these different things that we're talking about. So you'll notice sometimes I was talking faster, with more energy and more kind of assertiveness. Other times where we dropped into more stillness and had more silence and the power of that and why we intentionally might have included that in the episode. So today we talked about strategy, starting even from the most personal behavioral strategy. What. What do I do every day when I wake up? How do I organize myself? What am I putting my time towards? My money towards, my energy towards? We all do this, whether we understand it or not. We all move into life with a strategy. Animals do it. Babies do it. We all have a kind of a how in how we do things. If we want to get very technical and we're talking about a framework. There's the gap analysis where we talked about. You start with a vision, an objective. You translate it into a future state where I want to go. You look at your current and do an honest assessment of where you're at, and you look at the gaps to create a strategy of how to get from point a to point b. We looked at both the intuitive side of strategy and the analytical side of strategy, and some of the pros and cons that come with it. And we talked about strategic drift when we get comfortable and we're in maintenance mode, and how sometimes then that can breed unconsciousness and lead to our demise. We talked about our master strategists, our master builders, who take in input. They learn from everywhere. There is this insatiable curiosity, and they take all of these formulas and create their own personal algorithm, and they dance between different strategies, they dance between different ways of doing things. And then finally, we touched upon a place that's beyond strategy, a place where we have intention and we have being, and we're able to actually transcend the parameters of time and space. And so with that, I'd like for each one of us to say some parting words and to just share whatever is authentically there. After this nice podcast, we'll start with Krisana. Anything you would like to leave us with?
Krisana Locke: I would just like to say, I never know where these podcasts are going because they're really just questions and we give answers, and so it's really in the moment, and I'm just very amazed and surprised what opens, and I leave it with that. It was a. It was beautiful, timeless time space we were in together.
Mino Vlachos: Wow.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Yeah. I will leave us, the audience, with this wish of advice. Whenever you're listening to this podcast, remember one thing. Your brain is collecting information intellectually through everything we said. But know very well that what we might be saying is not why you were here on this podcast. You know very well that your subconscious was absorbing the silences, the key words. Know very well that your brain learned way more than our words. Our words are very limited. Our words is only one facet of the truth. But it's not the truth the brain will take, and your consciousness will take in the whole experience and then understand the truth. We are not the sayer of the truth. We are the guide toward the truth that is found only within you. So if you sit here as a strategy to learn from us, to be the best strategist, without awareness of who you are and how your brain function and your consciousness function, you will miss it another time, and you will go on to another podcast and you will try to learn it from another podcast and another. What if you draw. Stop. Let go. Have the intention to know yourself more, to understand how to be in the world, to start to know. To know how to trust, to have more self compassion. So I invite you another time. Now, a second time, a third time after a few years or immediately after. What if you listen to this podcast without thinking? What if you just nothing hear, but really fully listen, full presence while not thinking and trying to connect the dots? Just put it in your ears and just be with this transmission of today again, it's a transmission of our three voices, but actually it's transmission of silence, of the energy in between each one of us, the three of us and every audience. Every time, you really will be listening. And remember one other thing, that whenever you will be listening for your consciousness and your brain, it's always in the now. So we will be in your ears repeating the same thing. Even if it's SF five years. And it will have an effect as if it's recorded now.
Mino Vlachos: For once, I don't know what to say. I really enjoyed talking about strategy. I love strategy, as it's probably clear. I love all kinds of strategy. I love taking them in and breaking them apart and using them and stealing. And it's all about the formulas in my brain and how I can use them. And what I enjoyed about this podcast episode is that it was really in some ways, paying respect to the mind, the executive function, and this is my moment to also plug in. It is completely incomplete if we do not also bring in the body, the emotions, the feelings, the things that we've also touched upon in other episodes. So if you were to only listen to this episode and not take those into consideration, then your formula is incomplete. Your strategy is totally incomplete. You need to also go listen to some of those episodes on emotional intelligence and the body and the feelings. So I had fun talking about the mind. My mind enjoyed it. But my body knows that there's something more that needs to be brought into the equation. And I'll leave this as a bit of a story, I guess. I did have stuff to talk about this week. I did a guest speaker spot at Deloitte, the big four accounting firm. I got permission to share their name. So I was working with Deloitte. I was working with their coaches, and we were talking about strategy. And I was basically asking them to think about AI and the future of Aih. And I asked them to think about technology and how things are going. And some people, they had a lot of fear, and some people had a lot of excitement. And we were thinking about how the AI thing, right, how it will impact us in our life or work. And we were talking about strategy. And what they realized is like, well, the emotions I have are actually really clouding the future that I believe will happen. And so it's changing the strategy. And I talk about this all the time, that emotions affect vision, emotions affect strategy. But it was beautiful to watch them arrive at that on their own and to say, whoa, if I'm afraid of technology, then it'll skew my behavior and my vision if I'm super overly optimistic, same thing. And so I leave this episode with really just an invitation to really tune in with the emotions and the body and to go check out some of those other episodes because they'll really fill out this one. And with that, I want to thank everyone for listening, and we'll speak to you again soon.