On Transformative Experts, I had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Andrew Kim. Dr. Kim went through the process of learning to lead with a left-side dominant brain. The process of improving culture is hard to deal with for many left-brained people. Dr. Kim has developed a way to make this process easier for left-brained leaders.
Here is some of our conversation:
Dr. Kim:
I am a natural left-brained leader. Left-brained, a general summary for that word, is someone who tends to see the world through systems, processes, data – a person who likes to make sense of things. And when things don’t make sense, it bothers them, and at the same time that’s how they keep their world together. I’ve always been like that, Chris. Ever since I was young, it was my quirk. I was good at math, I was good at science. In the areas of literature and arts, perhaps I had to put more effort into those.
Chris:
That’s where you and I are similar. Those creative writing assignments were always tough, weren’t they?
Dr. Kim:
They always were. I suppose the fact that I was always like that kinda drew me to a more left-brained path of education. Even during my MBA training, I specialized more on finance and strategy. And I suppose my initial journey into leadership was in entrepreneurship. Naturally, when someone is a left-brained individual – or at least leans in that direction, I don’t think anyone is completely one or the other. There’s always a certain degree of balance – What they tend to do is look at all the best processes out there. I remember what I also did was I looked at processes outside my industry in order to amalgamate what the best ones were – and it worked! It helped us get an initial growth. What tends to happen is after you achieve a rapidly growing situation, you want to scale some more.
What I’ve come to learn about scaling is the more you try to scale, the less you can actually have your eyes on everything. I had to learn that the hard way, because what I’ve come to learn is that any system of processing you introduce, guess what? You’re the one who has to maintain it all, too. Monitoring the data, both in terms of quality assurance and feedbacking. It almost got me into a situation where so much was going on that it all almost came crashing down. When you try to grow, your expenses go up, too. At the same time, you’re trying to meet an increased demand and that demand needs to come in at the same time. If all that doesn’t come together, what happens is you start losing resonance with customers. You also start losing resonance with your employees.
Chris:
What was the catalyst for change? I know a lot of left brain people, I think of myself, I will be more on the left brain side in the right thing, though I think I’ve got a lot of right. But I’ve seen people who will, even bleeding thousands and thousands of dollars, will remain oblivious, because they’re so process-focused. And they’re so driven to a certain way that they can’t get out of their own way. What was your Aha moment? I mean, it wasn’t just the bleeding of the money and trying to figure out how to turn around – you could have over systematized things. What actually caused you to step back and say “wait a second, maybe there’s something else, maybe there’s something on the creative side I haven’t done.” What helped you?
Dr. Kim:
Oh, absolutely. First of all: It wasn’t when I first started bleeding. When I first started bleeding, I was systematizing things even more. In fact, I think I did have to go through that unfortunately to try out everything that I thought would work.
After a certain point, after you’ve really exhausted all your ideas, your efforts. Your mind starts opening up to alternative ideas. I had a brick wall, and it was painful. It was very painful, Chris. At that point, ideas that I brushed aside as irrelevant, I started listening to more. In fact, I was working with a coach/consultant at that point. And he was trying to get me to reassess things in the terms of both management and leadership. The word culture was not thrown around, it was through management and leadership.
Chris:
What year was this just to go put a baseline to it. Best guess.
Dr. Kim:
2018 I would say.
Chris:
So it wasn’t too far in the past. It’s funny, you had somebody come and kind of open your eyes is what I’m hearing. You had a coach or somebody that was helping you to see the path. You actually sought out some help.
Dr. Kim:
Yes, I did. I also long sought out different ideas in terms of seminars, and I was recommended to look at things from the right brain aspects: Management and leadership. Now, I didn’t accept it, right off the bat, Chris. Even as I was starting to approach things in that manner, I didn’t believe that it was really going to do much. But at that point, I was in a situation of “What the heck, I tried everything else that I could. Let’s give this a roll and see what happens.”
Chris:
And how uncomfortable was that?
Dr. Kim:
It was extremely uncomfortable, because number one, sometimes it feels like you’re opening up the floodgates more than anything else. And not only that, but you don’t see the results right away. This is a long term effort, in which case, eventually, due to discipline, through consistency, through a leap of faith, through repetition, where eventually you hit a critical mass. Where things flip around. Where you start realizing that people have more ownership.Where the problems that you used to have don’t appear anymore. That you’re actually hitting both the quality of service and financial objectives, without as much effort as you needed. There’s no flipping point when you look back and think about what you are doing, this study or measurement, where are you now, and realize that everything’s working.
It’s just when you take a step back.With some introspection and realize, “wait a minute, I’m in a very different situation from where I used to be. How about happen?”
Chris:
One of the things I’ve learned through the years, especially with entrepreneurs, they sometimes become their own worst enemy, right? They become the roadblock. There is this point in which there’s a lot of models that we’ve utilized, in a lot that we talk about that really show. And there’s even statistics and data for our left-brained people that show that there’s a point in time where the leader, when they maintain control of every aspect, they become the bottleneck to growth. There’s only so much that one person can do, there’s only so much at one person can control, and that’s the story that you’re sharing. In that moment, that allows them to start delegating to others, bringing others into the fold, letting go of every decision, becoming more of a leader, as opposed to a controlling manager, that’s when companies transition. It sounds like that’s kind of one of the catalyst points that you went through In order to make this change.
Dr. Kim:
Oh, absolutely, I mean, it is regrettable that I had to cope with such an experience from my mind to open up, but it was required. I do, encourage our audience members, to perhaps become open to such ideas before it becomes a life or death situation.I think it would have been a lot less of a stressful situation if I did it in that manner and is a possibility that if we hit that life or death situation, there’s a possibility might be too late. It doesn’t happen overnight. Some reason why it might not be a bad idea to open up your mind before you hit that do or die moment.
Chris:
It’s funny, there’s a line in an earnest Hemingway book, and there’s this conversation. He’s talking with somebody at a bar. He asked the question, something to be effect of: “how did you go bankrupt? How did you fail?” And the guy said, “Well, slowly at first, and then suddenly.” And if it’s such an amazing insight, because it does kind of come on if you’re not aware of it. And then all of sudden the path to failure can hit you like a ton of bricks. Just, it’s a very good call out.
Dr. Kim:
Absolutely and basically, when I went through all this, that’s when I had a desire to share this know-how, share the set of knowledge or wisdom to other leaders and/or business owners. Perhaps we can bridge people to become open to such ideas and at the same time guide folks in order to make such realizations in order to prevent that painful moment. But at the same time, continuously grow in a manner that they dream of. I remember that especially for the left brain box, they want things organized. So pretty much, what I did was reverse engineered what I have gone through in terms of MBA style systems, in a way that makes sense. So that a left-brained leader can make their own realizations. As they either read a book, or have their mind opened to such concepts. “Oh, if I want to actually employ such techniques, I might actually have to adapt my approach with people.” It is almost also a self-guided process.
Chris:
Yes, so you’re taking something that’s art and turning it into science which is not an easy thing to do. Because there’s still an art component, I mean no matter what you have to let go, so you trying to utilize science to tell them that they have to be artists.
Dr. Kim:
Absolutely, but one thing I have noticed, at least for left-brained folks, if they can see the pathway and understand where the risks and benefits are in terms of want to watch out for and what to capitalize on, they can plug into the dots as they do things.
And then that’s when they make self-realizations: “Wait a minute, if I want to do this next step, there is a vulnerability component, there is a way of how I communicate that really matters.”
When the pathway is visible to them, I’ve noticed that those who haven’t been open to such ideas do become open.
Chris:
Yeah, absolutely. I’m curious about one other thing. You mentioned working with a coach, and you said the word culture wasn’t even in our vocabulary, and yet it’s the first word in the title of your book. When did your mind start shifting and when did you realize it’s a culture thing? And how do you define culture?
Dr. Kim:
It was actually, when I took a step back, when things were humming and moving along nicer when I took a step back and tried to understand what really happened during this transformation. And after really thinking about it, after putting all the pieces together, that’s when I realized it was the culture that we moved the needle on. It was that introspection, because you’re right, as I was working on these things, that word wasn’t utilized at all. Most people’s end objective to move the needle on culture isn’t the culture, per se, it is the sustainability of the business. It’s those aspects where people become interested in that topic. And it was interesting because at first I thought these were fluffy and squishy topics. Because most of the mainstream media makes it sound like that, to be honest. And that’s why I think the definition of the culture, at least my favorite definition of it, is not about what the rituals of a particular geographical area is. Once we start defining culture in that manner, it becomes very difficult for it to tie into productivity. My favorite definition of culture is actually: what a group of people believe to be acceptable and unacceptable behavior.
And the reason why I think our definition is so profound is number one, it does respect what other people believe in terms of what culture is, but then there is a very visible tie into productivity. If we take a step back and try to think, “okay, I can see what people believed to be acceptable behavior or unacceptable behavior and how it ties into productivity.” Let me ask you, how do you move the needle on that? Can you move the needle on that simply by telling people “I want you to believe X-Y and Z- and I want you to move in a way that is healthy to the culture.” Do you really think it’s going to come together that way? Of course not.
Do you want to learn more about left-brain leadership and Dr. Andrew Kim’s deconstruction of leadership? Listen to the full episode of , Transformative Experts on VoiceAmerica. The show airs Mondays at 8 AM PST. Join my newsletter so these blogs will go straight to your inbox! As always if you have any specific questions you would like to see covered here on the blog or email me directly at [email protected]. And don’t forget to follow along on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
