What does optimizing B&I offerings look like in practice right now?

You know, I think it's a great question, and it has multiple tiers of answers depending on the position at which I come at it from.

So, What does optimizing offerings from my perspective out to the field look like is how do we add more value for our members? The more value we can add for the member, the more help and training that we can provide them to build their businesses.

How do we deliver upon that in a better way is optimizing our offerings around training.

With our franchisees and our directors, how are we helping them grow their business? I say frequently, If they are successful, we are successful, not the other way around.

It's our job and obligation to help our franchisees build strong businesses through BNI and help them understand how they do that through the membership.

Adding value, we're working on some products and services that will allow our members to engage in great discounts on things like airlines and et cetera.

And what is the biggest shift you have seen in networking over your 37-year, 35, 37-year career?

So you knew about this?

I did.

Yes, I did.

He said, Father, I'm going to go on a Phil Henry show.

And I have the phone now, R.C. Don't grab it away from me.

Tell it right, okay? I'm going to tell it right.

So he said to me, Father, I got an idea.

you collapsed in the office...

Welcome to Zorro, Dave.

Well, thank you for having me, sir.

It's always a pleasure to be here.

I did have to take a break.

I was trying to actually work on a mask for Ronaldo.

Because, you know, poor guy goes out on these missions and Zorro's all masked up and, you know, pow, powing with the bad guys, and he's just [laughs] running around out there with his face all out, and I kinda feel sorry for him.

So, uh, I'm trying to work on a mask for him so we can distinguish him from Zorro, but with the bad guys don't know who he is.

Yeah.

So how can organizations measure the impact of incorporating improvisational techniques into their HR strategies?

This is hard.

I, I, I think as a, as a training consultant and as someone who is often training people on what are traditionally seen as soft skills, right? The ability to listen, the ability to communicate.

Like, it's hard to measure how good of a listener someone is, or how comfortable they are being uncertain.

The direction I think to go in is to try to measure psychological safety in your organization.

There are a lot of tools for that.

You can pick your, you can pick your poison with w- how you wanna measure psychological safety, but that is an area where when you implement this type of thinking and this type of approach, and you encourage your leaders to behave in a yes, and mindset, it spikes psychological safety scores.

So for the HR professionals who might worry that encouraging spontaneity could lead to compliance issues, um, or maybe inconsistent messaging, how would you address those concerns?

Uh, was there anything else you wanted to bring up, Dave?

Oh, gosh.

We got so sidetracked.

I don't think so.

I think I hit pretty much everything.

Um- So, you know, sometimes if you read some '90s comics, and I, I specifically say '90s because a lot of them were very kinetic.

Like, I mean, it was ...

[laughs]

lawyers? You can't defame the dead, so you can tell and talk anything about Teddy.

No, Teddy was a legend.

He really was.

He was the showman.

He...

He knew he was the number one.

Everyone had to respect where he was.

Is that the longest, if you recent memory, have we actually off air?

A

little too broad.

But if the realtor comes in and says, I'm looking to expand my contacts in the new home builder space, and if anybody knows Brad Smith, who it works for, pick a builder, I would enjoy an introduction to that person.

So I'll tell you a quick story.

Because we'd get very specific, I was at a conference in the U.K., It was roughly 300 people in the room.

And we did a thing called the dream referral.

And somebody stood up and was so specific on their ask, and it had to do with relocation from the US to the UK and the moving or not moving of vehicles or acquiring a vehicle when you were there.

right the people that absolutely uh destroy it like at the top and really are doing well with it what is there how much time are they spending in person versus on the technological tools because in person is it may help you build trust more quickly you know they're real people But then you'd also have the technology side, which can give you a lot of leverage, although maybe not always the most helpful leverage, depending on how you look at it.

And I wanted to just throw it back to you on the melding of coaching styles and philosophies and how that looks going forward.

Okay.

Happy to.

This is a book that we've just done that covers all that.

Yeah, you're right.

There are probably three broad approaches out there.

There were two.

[laughs] Right.