Hello Mr. Reganon, it is great to be with you. Thank you very much for the invitation. I appreciate it. I'm really happy to have you here. I have lots of questions. I'm very excited about the topic of intelligent disobedience because it's, I felt, you know, throughout my career I felt very disobedient so I think it applies to me pretty well. I have been too. Most of the time it's been intelligent but I've had my moments when it isn't so it's good to learn from those.
So you've done, you've been a LinkedIn Learning instructor, you've written a book. You have a copy of that? I sure do. Intelligent disobedience. Intelligent disobedience, the difference between good and great leaders. Yes. I've worked with a number of, yeah, I worked with a number of people and I found the best leaders that I've worked with are those that know when to bake or bend the rules. I mean a good business process will work 98% of the time, a good one.
The question is what you do during the other two when whatever's happening or whatever the circumstance that that process is intended to produce is an outcome isn't going to happen. What do you do then?
And I think the best leaders know the best way themselves or to lead their teams to bend the rules, break the rules, do things different to get the outcome that those processes were intended to produce or in some instances get a better outcome upon which you can then build new processes for your business. Right, right.
And then there was this, sorry there's so many things that I want to talk about but I wanted to first ask a bit about your background because I know that you're currently working with something called Curated Culture and as well you're working with something called Gwen Pinnington so if you can just give us a bit of background on these two. Sure, sure.
First of all I've worked for IBM for 18 years so you know very conservative sort of a company and sort of learned about intelligent disobedience even within that context and then started my own project management training consulting business which I sold about four years ago. I then started another business called Intelligent Disobedience which is associated with the writing of the book.
And from there I also do some work with some other organizations that I feel are really striving to develop leaders and reduce toxicity in the corporate environment and working with Gwen Pinnington who I've known for 10 years who does a lot of fabulous work and a leadership model we call Compassionship so taking compassion into a leadership model and then Curated Culture is looking at different ways in which you could develop culture within the organization
that ultimately suits the mission of the organization, the people of the organization but also what it is that you're intending to present yourself to the marketplace. So we're not saying A culture is the right culture. In fact the whole idea of Curated Culture is like the collection.
We collect and try to understand different cultures that we could lay out and discuss with people and then ultimately help them look at their own point of departure and what their point of arrival should be for a more productive, more peaceful, less toxic culture and then help them on the steps that they need to go through to get there. That's not easy. I mean you have these traditional businesses that tend to go down the I told you to do this or do it.
And I think that's very much along the lines of what you've written, what you've consulted on. It is very much a subjective exercise. I mean culture and what it should be and why we do Curated Culture and give them other options is part of that but then the whole idea of intelligent disobedience also falls into that as well. What's intelligent disobedience in one organization isn't necessarily in another. So to give you an example and use maybe two ends of the continuum.
If I am managing let's say the electric grid in a major city, I don't want to make changes willy nilly on the fly, try things and see what happens. I mean I may take the power down at a hospital. So I have to plan. I have to be very, very diligent. You may have to do some modeling that sort of thing before you're going to make a change to an electric power grid. If you're in Google and you can change the parameters of your search engine five times a day to see what happens.
An entirely different environment in which you can engage in intelligent disobedience when you take those two things. So the concept is there but how you apply the concept is very subjective to the environment you're in. And from an individual standpoint where you sit in the organization what your own risk appetite might be also comes into play. So I don't ever claim to be an expert in intelligent disobedience by the way.
I'm a story collector and a story sharer about this concept as a tool in which we can get better outcomes. And so I love having conversations like this and having you ask me questions because I might learn from this as well. I'm already starting to pick up on a couple of things but there was a YouTube video that you recently did speaking of stories. And the story really clicked and it made intelligent disobedience very clear for me. It's a story about the chapter dog, the seeing eye dog.
Yes. And it's how I learned the phrase intelligent disobedience which comes from the world of seeing eye dog. You spend 18 months training a seeing eye dog to behave and the next 12 to 18 months teaching it when and how not to behave. So if you picture you're at a street corner and you have your seeing eye dog who's on a rigid harness and you hear like many signals in major cities around the world right now have an audible tone associated with walk and don't walk.
And you hear the tone turn to walk and you command the dog to go forward. You call an electric car that's very quiet maybe coming around the corner or pulled away from the curb and the dog will disobey its master and stop as a means of preventing them from the danger of the car but ultimately getting them to the goal they want to get to which is getting to the other side of the street safely.
So that's the concept of intelligent disobedience and Chap was a dog that actually prevented his master from going on to an elevator which had failed because the elevator floor was maybe 30 centimeters below the floor that we were standing on. And what I saw that dog do is amazing. I had hardly figured out what it is that was going on and Chap the dog jumped literally jumped 90 degrees and created a hurdle around in front of which his master could not move.
And I talked to his master about what it is that was happening and said that was really amazing and that dog is pretty incredible of how quickly he reacted to the situation. And he said something I'll never forget. He said Chap is the most obedient dog I've ever had. But when he disobeys me you can bet I'm going to obey him because he has information I don't have. He has information I don't have.
Take that concept and put it into the business world where you have managers that aren't on the cold face of what it is that's going on. They're not in the day-to-day business. They have information that the employees don't have based on maybe some strategy, different directions, status with customers, whatever the case may be.
But by the same token, the people that report to a manager are going to have a different perspective on the business, the processes, how they're working, how they're not working, what the tone is from customers. If they're in general conversation like at a service desk or something like that, there's information to be shared to create better outcomes. And intelligent disobedience, I think, is a way to bring that to bear. It's not something you're going to do every day.
It's going to be for a certain outcome that isn't going to be realized by normal means. By the way, there is an opposite to intelligent disobedience. I don't know if you saw that in the YouTube because I don't think I mentioned it. The opposite of intelligent disobedience is malicious obedience. You can hear it. It sounds like this. Okay, Leith, if that's what you want me to do, that's what I'll do.
And you follow the process literally knowing that whatever it is is going to go right off the end of the cliff. I think everyone has been guilty of doing that at some point. It happens. But the flow of information back and forth reminded me that the last time we talked, you mentioned that in general had actually called you from the U.S. Army. In general, it's a colonel. That's an interesting story as well because I have delivered intelligent disobedience
workshops for the U.S. Army special forces, so the Green Berets, in their training school. And when Colonel Tuland called me about this and said he'd want me to do workshop, potentially look at doing workshops for him, I was really confused to be honest with you. I said, wait a minute, intelligent disobedience and the armed forces, and you teach people to obey orders. And he said, that's exactly the problem.
He said, in special forces, we're putting people into, we're putting our troops into, well, special, unusual situations, it's not normal warfare. And normally they have intelligence. We give them what it is we think the scene is and what they're going to run into. And often it's slightly off. Sometimes there's bits of it that are right and bits of it that are wrong.
And what we need these special people, these really highly trained troops to do, is obey the orders we should have given them if we knew what they knew when they get on the ground. It is almost a perfect parallel to the seeing eye dog concept. Don't follow my orders. Follow the orders we should have given you.
But the issue is, is that the people that go into the armed forces are so drilled on following orders, that the idea of doing that, even the vocabulary around which to describe it, is something that they don't have. And it's created suboptimal outcomes and maybe led to other things like PTSD that they're concerned about.
So we were working with the troops to grasp this concept of intelligent disobedience, try to create a vocabulary around it so they can have some discussions of the context under which the orders were given and what the intent was. And to focus on the intent, not necessarily the process, because the process may change once they get on the ground. Right. And you see this across many organizations, the same problem like you said earlier. I mean, it's funny enough it's a pandemic. It is funny.
You're right. You're right. And it's been with us much longer than COVID, I'm afraid. And in some cases, it's just a weakness in the manager's part that they have to know everything and they feel uncomfortable when they don't. It may be because the nature of the business is such that you really do have to follow process or you believe you have to follow process. And let me tell you what I mean by believe you have to follow process. I've done a lot of work with banks and in financial industry.
And there's a lot of reporting that banks need to produce, particularly investment banking and that sort of thing is to, you know, what they're doing to protect clients, money, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Right. Prevent money laundering, that sort of thing. So you have to produce a lot of reports. In most cases, the process by which you go through to produce that report is not regulated. It's just the report that's regulated.
You could use, you know, three PhDs or 87 chimpanzees to produce the report. It doesn't matter. It's just if the report's accurate, you're fine. But a lot of organizations will somehow elevate the whole process of creating the report as being regulatory, which makes it difficult to apply intelligent disobedience to it. But you can. And it's sometimes a matter of just picking apart the process and the outcome and understanding what's regulated and what's not.
And they're determining what space you've got for intelligent disobedience. But it takes a lot of homework. You can't do that wrong. If you're in the pharmaceutical industry developing vaccines, speaking about COVID, right, that process is highly regulated as well as the output in the reports. So you don't, it wouldn't be intelligent disobedience to take shortcuts in that or to do something different. But that's not often the case. It is in some instances, but not often.
One thing you just mentioned was actually a very sensitive topic. In my opinion, is knowing when your team is enacting intelligent disobedience, how would you recommend a manager gives that faith and trust in the team to go against what he said or she said? In steps. Let's start there. It's not binary. It's not binary. It's like, okay, here you go. You've got free reign now.
There's actually in the book, one of the chapters I have in the book is actually a growth path that's just specifically geared towards giving people some leeway with intelligent disobedience. So it starts with you can vary steps in a process, but we don't want you to start a new process altogether. And it might be you can vary step one, three, five, and seven, but don't vary step eight. And then you get a little more leeway to vary the process.
And then you get a little more leeway to break the process altogether in certain circumstances. Or you may have your financial delegation maybe X, but you can go X plus 15 percent if you're to execute a task. If you see a special circumstance, you don't need to ask my permission, but you need to tell me you did it and give me the rationale thereafter. And then I as the leader, the manager can work with you on whether that was the right thing or not and sort of adjust your thinking.
So over time, your acts of intelligence, disobedience get more and more sound because there's always dialogue between the manager and their employee around those actions. So that's just one sort of a stream of thought that says, it's something that you can regulate, put boundaries on, and then slowly widen those boundaries as you see those decisions coming back being sound and things that you as a leader would have done yourself. Their thought process is there.
But then there's some other people that are very, very good employees, but they absolutely need those rules. I mean, very kind giving people who will give away the store because they're very empathetic or very compassionate about people. And it's like, all right, well, I'm not supposed to give you that, but I will.
And they're doing it and what they think is really a good thing to do, but their personality and disposition doesn't have the right balance of long term business impact of doing something like that. So I don't endorse intelligent disobedience being given out, you know, like bits of chewing gum or something to everybody. You know, here's candy or a donut at lunch or whatever the case may be or for a break.
I think you have to be very mindful of the people's personalities and then bring them along. It's not just turn the switch on and they can engage in intelligent disobedience. Right. They really need to understand the business from the inside and out or whatever they're doing. If it's not a business, they need to really understand every single detail for them to make that sound judgment. And I think exactly another thing that it seems to be a common thread here is communication flow.
But it's okay to disobey as long as you're informing and keeping that open communication. This is a fascinating topic. We could talk about this for an hour and I always have a grin on my face because I do a presentation called the rules for breaking the rules. These are the rules for breaking the rules and intelligent disobedience. And one of them is you don't do this in stealth.
When you've engaged in an act of intelligent disobedience, you tell people you've done it and if you could tell them in advance, you think it's the right thing to do, that's best. Now, inevitably and appropriately, by the way, someone will say, Bob, I've heard more than one manager say sometimes it's easier to get forgiveness than permission. Yeah, that's actually an accurate statement and I support that. So what I try to do is say, look, it's a judgment call.
I think whenever you possibly can, communicating ahead of time or communicating afterwards, said you engaged in an act of intelligent disobedience is the best way to proceed. But I hesitate to make a blanket statement that says there aren't times when taking the Nike approach or just do it. And if the outcome turns out right, no one's going to know the difference. It's probably okay and there are managers that have done applied very good judgment as to when to do that.
And so I nod my head and I say, yes, that's a story I will share and it's a story I endorse and it's a story I can say I've done once in a while myself. But I really don't want to become the guy with a reputation that just sneaks behind the door or under the desk and does something that no one can see. I'd want to have some justification. If I was challenged later to say, why did you do that and not tell anybody, I want to have a very good answer.
If I don't have a good answer other than I didn't want to be bothered because someone would question me about it, then I would refrain from doing that. But it's a viable approach to intelligent disobedience, quite honestly. It's super fascinating, I really enjoyed this topic more than many other leadership studies. It's correct to say that I'm going to take this action regardless ahead of time, especially when it's a really sensitive thing and you're really walking that gray area.
And like you said, it's just a matter of judgment. It's a judgment call. It is, but I do worry about one thing you said and I don't want to pick on the language. I'm going to do this regardless, scares me. In fact, the third chapter of my book is on the ethics of intelligent disobedience and it was the hardest thing for me to write. Not because I found it difficult to write it and share, I want it to be very complete.
I don't want this book or a talk like this that you and I are having the people listen to to be an excuse that people can use for bad behavior. I would never say take that action regardless. You have to have regard for a lot of things, other people, the integrity of your business, your short-term risks, your long-term risks, whether you're breaking the law or not because sometimes if you're not knowledgeable enough that you could be doing that. That should be an obvious red flag. It's yeah.
Yes. Not a line I want to cross. Let's talk about the ethics, the guidelines of ethics within intelligent disobedience. That would be fascinating. Sure. First and foremost, it is to advance the business not yourself. This is not something that I am suggesting for self-promotion. It's for the benefit of the business. Now, you might get some good positive attention because of the outcome and what it is that you did. I have no problem with that, but that's not the primary reason you do it.
The justification of an active intelligent disobedience is to advance something for the organization for which you work. That's first and foremost. Second, it's not an excuse to lie. If I have decided to do something in stealth, an active intelligent disobedience and not discuss it with my manager and I'm challenged, I'm going to tell the truth. This is why I did it. This is why I didn't tell you. All right? So it's not an opportunity to lie or it's not intended to be.
Third, it is not an excuse for passive aggressive behavior. I do not want to hear stories of people sitting at a meeting and say, yes, they'll do something, thinking that's a horrible idea, walk out of the meeting room and then not follow what they just agreed to in the meeting room because I think it's dumb.
The intelligent disobedience act to take in that case is to challenge that direction in the meeting room or in a subsequent conversation with the leader thereafter and say, boss, maybe this is not the appropriate thing, normal thing to do, but I don't agree with this. Here's my truth and I use that term very consciously. Here's my perception based on my experience. That manager may have other information that you don't know. It allows her or him to put their truth on the table.
You then look at that greater sense of truth and can make it the best decision as to how to go forward. I think one of the things that we do, particularly if we're passionate about something, is we make the mistake of thinking our truth is the truth.
Our truth is from our experience and our victories and our failures, but if I'm working with the team or I'm working with the manager, there's other dialogue that they're in, there's other conversations they're in, there's information they may not have, and they have a different set of victories and not so victorious moments than I do. Determining the best way to go forward is best performed by putting the greatest set of truth on the table.
That's the truth and then you make a decision from there. It's about the collective, the curative. The curating truth in this case, exactly. Yes. Yes. It's kind of similar actually, just reminding me of how I've known that someone will tell you, don't rely on one new source for all your information. There is bias. We're all human. So, gather from multiple sources, collect the common information, and then make a sound assessment on your opinion regarding the topic. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Without naming names, there are different news sources on this planet which would make you think we're on different planets. If you're listening to just one or the other, it's like, wow, it is really, really different. So yes. Yes. Unfortunately, the idea of collecting news and making opinions is a lot more work than it used to be as a result.
True. True. I mean, even in teams, it's a lot of work because you have to sit and you have to, even if you're passionate, like you said, you're also passionate to argue your case. So it's hard to suppress yourself for a moment just to listen to the other perspective. And that's very energy consuming as well. It is. But I really try to take the approach that says, you know, someone say, I need help with influencing my manager to make this decision.
And I went, I think that's making an assumption that your truth is the truth. Because they may have other information and it may not be the good decision. And if had you known that, the statement you just made to me, you wouldn't have said. So take the approach that says, I want to put my truth on the table. I want to make it the greatest and best invitation for the people I'm working with to put their truths on the table.
And then we'll see what we kind of influence needs to be applied to what kind of decision to make. Yeah. So in the sake of a team, it's not about who's right and who's wrong. It's about the good of the team, like you said. And you really have to have the wider perspective of whatever the situation is that they might be handling or the initiative. Yeah. And in accepting that truth is the core of what we're talking about now with diversity, inclusion and acceptance, right?
I mean, it's one thing to have a numbers game that says, I got this many people of this origin or that origin or this religion or male or female or whatever the case may be. Okay. Great. You got the numbers. Do they have the ability to attend, participate, put their truth on the table and have that considered in the greatest degree of truth? That's the power of diversity. That's true. Right to bear.
There are many advantages to diversity, but that, I mean, multiple perspectives is un-comparable to others. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, in the, I have a LinkedIn learning course called Leading with Intelligent Disobedience. And there's a three-minute segment on what I call pretend employees. Those are employees that come to work and have to leave part of themselves home.
It may be the very creative part that comes up with really wild ideas, but in the middle of that wild idea, there's a seed or two that are really fantastic that you can put together in a business and you have to be patient enough to hear the wild to draw out those seeds. But if you reject the person that happens to communicate that way and say, oh my God, you're just being way out, just, you know, go away. If they're still in your business, they're wearing a mask. They're only half there.
They're spending energy not being themselves or suppressing themselves, which means they're not putting their energy into your business and belief into your business and drive into your business and passion into your business. You've got to pretend employee. You can't see it on paper. You may be paying them the same as somebody else, but they're not a full employee of your business. To the greatest degree we can.
We need to let people be as authentic as we can, and that's allowing them to put ideas on the table, put their thoughts on the table as freely as we possibly can to allow them to really be included and take their diversity of backgrounds and perspectives and bring it into the table to make decisions and take advantage of that knowledge and experience. Well, I mean, that hit very close to home because I'm a big advocate for hiring people that argued me in the first interview.
Actually, my marketing manager sitting right across from me is laughing right now because we had a big argument about how to do our digital media on the first time I met her on the interview. But her perspective was right at the end of the day, and that's how we're rolling out the marketing plans that we've been doing. There's a fantastic book about Abraham Lincoln in the United States in his cabinet called Team of Rivals.
He was very big on bringing people together that had different ways of thinking from him and different ways of thinking with each other because he wanted the greatest spectrum of possibilities and thought on the table to make decisions. And the book is about a team of rivals with different rivaling, competing ideas. Absolutely. So I have someone asking a question which I'm not really entirely sure if it's clear here. Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.
I'm going to avoid this one. It's too politically... But let me... I do want to address that not his own fact. I agree. I understand the concept of that comment, I think. But let me just put that in perspective. I may say, God, this project is going to be easy. I've done three of these. Somebody else may say, I can't imagine this project being easy. I've done three of these, and two of them were an absolute disaster. Well, did I just get lucky?
Or have they discovered something that I didn't discover? And so it would be good. And again, I want the fact of the experiences they viewed it to try to understand it, to put on the table so I can add mine to it, versus just conjecture an opinion. So I want to sort of sort through that a little bit. But I don't deny... If someone can give me an authentic experience that they've had, and they've reflected on it, I usually want to know about it.
That doesn't necessarily mean I have to do exactly what it is they say. That's their truth, and I want to look at the truth. Right? 99 people had no problem with this project, and one didn't. I'd love to understand why the one didn't have a... Or whatever the case may be, to learn from that. But then we're probably going to go with the 99 other things. In that process, I don't want to deny that outlier from having a voice.
I think that's really detrimental to not only that employee, but the fact that I've shut that down is going to be noticed by the other employees on my team as well. And then I don't want someone going home and saying, gee, what's too controversial an opinion for me to share with Bob? And now they're wondering whether they should share. I don't want them spending energy wondering whether they should share. Absolutely not.
Someone was asking, and of course, this is a politically charged question, so feel free not to answer, but I will go ahead and ask it. Someone is asking if Trump, Donald Trump, can be considered as intelligently disobedient. I get that question a lot, especially when I live in Australia, I was born in America, and I'm both an American and Australian citizen.
Do you remember we talked about the first rule of intelligent disobedience, and that you are engaging in an active intelligent disobedience for the benefit of the business or the organization as a whole? Now I may have conservative or liberal political views and maybe agree with those or not agree with those. I'm separating that for the moment, because I don't think that's germane to the point I want to make.
In my viewpoint, I don't think it was evident that that was always the case, that he was putting the organization in the United States in front of what appeared to be personal interest. I don't know that for sure. I can't say hand on heart, this is the hard evidence, there you go, because I heard the conversation or I saw a document, so I can't pass judgment on that. But my belief is makes me question it from the things that I did see.
So as a general, I don't think it was intelligent disobedient in many cases. I can't put hand on heart and say that's a fact, because I don't know the entire story. Like you said, there's so many different perspectives that if we wanted to help with the answer that we would need to know all those different perspectives. A lot more than I know.
So I'm sorry, I'm not going to distinctly answer the question, but my leaning is kind of that way, that it's not really an always intelligent discipline, it didn't appear that way to me. Well, let's shift gears a bit and avoid the politics for a second. I wanted to ask also, when was the point when you decided that you or what was the point where intelligent disobedience became integral in a part of your life?
So while I wasn't calling it intelligent disobedience then, because I hadn't met Chap and his master and learned this whole perspective that seeing eye dogs and the concept of intelligent disobedience. As I said, I worked for IBM for 18 years and a couple of years in, I got my first management position and I was sent to IBM Management School. And this was in the 80s. IBM was really, really big on educating and I benefited from that greatly.
And new manager education involved a number of different things, including a week, a very intense week where you had three different manager instructors with three different styles. So this is not right, this is not wrong, you adopt your style, right?
And so we were getting a sample of three different styles and one of the guys came in and it was two guys in a gal, but one of the two guys came in to one of his lectures in our little session and he had a construction helmet on that was beat to hell. And dents and scratches. I mean, this thing looked as if he decided to ram buildings with it. It was just horrible.
And so it was a notable thing and very unusual to, you know, this guy's got a suit and tie and this construction helmet on that was awful looking. And he says, if you don't have dents in your helmet, you're not trying to advance our business hard enough. Wow. That was 30 some odd years ago and I remember every word of that lecture. That is probably the head. He had me hook line and sinker with that one.
And I've always tried to take that management approach that says, you know, you have to be reasonable. I mean, I'm not going to run into a building without a helmet. Let me put it that way. Right? Nor was he advocating that you do that. Right? And he's ultimately saying, take a risk. You know, I'm going to take a risk by a protection helmet on. It could be because I've done research.
It could be because I've talked to my manager and they're going to back me up because I want to try something new. It could be a number of different things, but don't take a risk without your helmet. But you know, don't try to keep your helmet really clean by just doing little things either that's not moving the business forward. If you do that. So, so I sort of, there might be something in bread in my jeans that that meant so much to me when I heard him say that.
So there might be a bit of inbreeding or, you know, a gene pool sort of thing that led me to embrace that. But that certainly released it as a great thought process for me. It's such a heavy sentence. You know, you can't advance the business without, you know, a dint in your helmet. It's a lot of people now lately on social media that they're doing these posts of quotes and so on. And one of them is, you know, you can't reach the top of Everest without getting dirty. And that's the same concept.
I mean, if you're all polished and neat and just sitting on your clean desk, it suggests that there's not a lot of work being done. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, the other thing, and I know we may be going off on a tangent from intelligence and disobedience, but I've heard that quote before in my always carler is that, yes, and you need Sherpa. You need Sherpas. Don't forget you need a team and you need to appreciate them to get to where you want to get. So, yeah, but both is true.
And I said, I want to take us on too much of a tangent, but I can't help myself when I hear that quote. No, no, no, it's okay. I mean, that quote, that quote, second time you told me that quote. And every single time I'm just as hit as equally as hard as every single time I hear. It's so true. It's so true.
I wanted to go over just another concept that you had mentioned or a story, let's say, on the same YouTube video was when there was a training being given and the top managers that stopped the training. Of course, if I'm repeating directly, I'll let you take over from here. I've got a few YouTube stories. There's a few stories. I'm trying to remember which one you quoted. Sorry about that. Well, there was one bad review of the training and then there was like 99 good reviews of the training.
Okay. Yeah. So it's an interesting thing when you get feedback and how you treat feedback can be an element of intelligence disobedience. And it's easy to look at the numbers of 99 things that are positive and one that's not and say, you can't reach everybody. So there's two stories to take away from this. And I don't know if exactly what you're allowing me to go to, Leith, but I think there's two stories I want to share based on that intro for me. The first is this.
And this is really, this is true with intelligence disobedience. There are people that are going to be very comfortable with intelligence disobedience. The guy who I talked to that was my management instructor that had that helmet on is absolutely going to embrace intelligence disobedience. And there's people that are going to be very process minded and very uncomfortable when you vary from process.
So you get a lot of feedback when you're not necessarily going on what people will think the straight and narrow and following the rules all the time. So I, you know, and someone said this also about making presentations in public and getting responses. He said, here's what I want to understand. He said, let's just pick a number. He said, 2% of the people that review, see your presentations and review you are going to hate everything you said. Hate it.
Could be because the dog died just before they came to work. Could be just because they've had a bad day. Could be because your voice reminds them of somebody else they don't like or they just don't think you have the right approach to the topic. Doesn't matter. 2% are not going to like what you have to say. 2% are going to think you're God's gift to the topic and they will follow you around like groupies following a band. They're going to think you're wonderful.
They're going to praise you at every opportunity that they get. Here's what you need to understand about those two. Neither one of those is your fault. Right? The fact that you are horrible, the fact that you're like God-like, you just have to dismiss those. Right? Focus on the 96% in the middle. So that's one thing relative to the 991. The other is, what's the content of the one?
People might have been entertained by what you said and enjoyed a training or enjoyed the presentation or enjoyed whatever it is that they're evaluating, you're going to get a good score. But I read the negative ones very carefully because there may be something I can learn from that. Somebody's perspective, somebody's background, that could be somebody else's truth going back to the putting truth on the table and it's like, you know what?
No one else noticed this by this, but this person and that person might have been really, really paying attention. And I may have something to learn from that. So the 991 thing brings up those two thoughts in my mind relative to how you deal with feedback. So is it, you know, was that feedback that one on the 99 and therefore you could stop and make a change? And I'll tell you the story behind this is, you know, is that falling into the 2% of just someone that grumbly and didn't like it?
And did they have something concrete you need to learn in those comments? And the story is, the intelligent disobedient story is halting a set of education, even though we got an absolutely fantastic rating if you look at the numbers, because the really, I wanted to listen to that one negative because it had a really, really valid point in it and we needed to turn around and restructure the way that we did that training to accommodate it and it was a very, very good thing as a result.
So don't always just play the numbers game. Look at the truth that was put on the table in the comments that you get. I can't undervalue the smaller number. There was great value in the attention that the person put in that put in a negative comment. Feedback's a gift. And it may be just someone venting or it may be someone that has something legitimate and in this case, that's something legitimate and you really want to read it and pay attention. Not let it get you down again.
It's the 2% and the 2% both aren't your fault. But if there's something in there, pay attention to it. Hello? Are we there? Hello, you're back. I saw and heard you this all the whole time. So sorry about that. I don't know where that failure was, but I think we're back together. Sorry about that. I'm in here frozen. I actually have a really good question here from someone called Said. He's saying, how is intelligent disobedience related to our values?
They are absolutely intertwined with your values. In an earlier conversation and in a different context, Leith, I said I talked about Google and a electric power distribution. What is intelligent disobedience in one environment may not be intelligent disobedience in the other. Values tie into this. Something that's acceptable in one country is going to be unacceptable in another. And maybe intelligent disobedience if you do it, or maybe just plain disobedience if you do it.
So the company's mission, company culture, country culture, and the values that come about from that are all intertwined as to whether something in your context may be intelligent disobedience or not. And in the past, which is why I say I'm not an expert on it and I can't tell when or any given instance is an active intelligent disobedience. I say, well, tell me more. Tell me the story. Tell me the background. What research did you do?
Before you, or what knowledge did you bring to bear before you took this action and determined it was intelligent disobedience or not? So it's a very situational concept. Right. That is a tough one. And hopefully that answers its question. Hopefully, anyways, I think that it's been lovely having you on here. And if you want to go ahead and add anything else, now would be a good time. Sure. Again, I am the collector and share of stories of intelligent disobedience.
So intelligent disobedience, the difference between good and great leaders is my book, intelligent disobedience, one long word, dot com, is a website where, and then you can, you know, there's a YouTube channel for called intelligent disobedience and LinkedIn learning is there's a course on intelligent disobedience. I mentioned along with 20 other courses that I have in LinkedIn learning on project management and other leadership and business building concepts and consulting.
And Bob, my first name at intelligent disobedience.com is my email. I always love people reaching out, asking questions if there's something that I said that you liked or didn't like or whatever, or you're trying to apply this in a scenario when I have a bit of a chat. I'm more than happy to do that. In fact, I'm always thrilled when I can help people navigate this concept. Because when you put it into place and it works, the outcomes that you get are fantastic. Absolutely. Thank you.
I'll go ahead and share the link for your book as well in the comment section. And of course, thank you so much for being on Leaders Talk with us. My pleasure. Oh, and one more thing. I think there's only two Bob McGannons on LinkedIn Learning or on LinkedIn. If you want to reach on me on LinkedIn, the guy with the white hair, the Bob McGannon with the white hair is me. So you can reach out to me that way as well. Right. Well, thank you so much again.
And anything that we missed in the comments, we can go ahead and answer over text. Absolutely. Thank you so much once again for having me on, Lathis. I appreciate it, and I hope the audience enjoyed it. And again, any comments or questions are more than happy to respond. Definitely. Thank you so much. Have a great day. Thanks. You too. Take care, everybody.