Beyond the Executive Comfort Zone: Outrageous Tactics to Ignite Individual Performance

By Frank Granara and Lorraine Grubbs

Beyond the Executive Comfort Zone: Outrageous Tactics to Ignite Individual Performance chronicles six unprecedented training sessions and the comprehensive change they yielded for a determined CEO who craved a fundamentally new approach to leadership training.Frank Granara, the president and CEO of General Insulation Company, wanted profound and lasting change in his leadership team. Simultaneously, he wanted short, powerful sessions that yielded results in just two to three days.These pages detail how Frank and nationally known consultants Lorraine Grubbs and Rita Bailey achieved unparalleled results. Be warned: their approach is not for the faint of heart. Rather, it's designed for those who are willing to embrace a radical means to achieve remarkable results.Told from the perspective of Frank, Lorraine, and the senior leadership team that underwent this training, this is not your typical leadership book. However, it just might be the one you are enduringly grateful to have found.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hillcrest Media Group
• Release date: Feb 5, 2016
• ISBN: 9781941782170

Book preview

Beyond the Executive Comfort Zone:

Outrageous Tactics to Ignite Individual Performance

By Frank Granara and Lorraine Grubbs

Inspire On Purpose Publishing

Irving, Texas

Beyond the Executive Comfort Zone:

Outrageous Tactics to Ignite Individual Performance

Copyright © 2015 Frank Granara and Lorraine Grubbs

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form without prior written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Inspire On Purpose Publishing

Irving, Texas

[phone]

http://inspireonpurpose.com

The Platform Publisher™

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015944942

ISBN-13: 978-1-941782-17-0

"Beyond the Executive Comfort Zone: Outrageous Tactics to Ignite Individual Performance...let me recommend this unique and powerful approach to any company wanting to enhance their level of teamwork. It is truly a creative endeavor. This experience impacts trust, self-reflection and honest communication, which should become the hallmark of how to build a leadership team...hence RESULTS more quickly."

—Tony Jeary, The RESULTS Guy

"Beyond the Executive Comfort Zone: Outrageous Tactics to Ignite Individual Performance...does exactly that! The methods described in this book are creative, effective, and fun. Frank and Lorraine, together with Rita Bailey, use their combined skills, talents, and creativity to develop a training program like no other I have ever seen or heard about. The results speak for themselves - open and honest communication that led to trust, increased productivity and improved morale."

—David Cottrell, Author of Monday Morning Leadership and Indispensable!

"Creating an environment built on trust and loyalty, Beyond the Executive Comfort Zone: Outrageous Tactics to Ignite Individual Performance is a real-world out of this world read...Finally, there's a fresh new twist to organizational development. Creative role-play provides the secret sauce needed to spice things up for companies in pursuit of improving organizational excellence."

—Evelyn Nelson, Vice President of Development, South Shore Habitat for Humanity

I think it was Colin Powell who said, If it isn't broke, don't fix it, is the slogan of the complacent, the arrogant and the scared. It's an excuse for inaction, a call to non-arms. Beyond the Executive Comfort Zone: Outrageous Tactics to Ignite Individual Performance...in my opinion, deals exactly with the issues he was talking about. Frank Granara, in his own inimitable style, hits the lethargy in inertia-riddled American business right between the eyes.

—Mark Andrews, CEO, Knauf Insulation North America

"Warning: not for the faint of heart! Beyond the Executive Comfort Zone: Outrageous Tactics to Ignite Individual Performance is a unique approach to building a high performance management team. Lorraine and Frank’s unorthodox tactics inspired a level of trust, communication and self evaluation amongst the GIC leadership team that most companies will never reach. If you are looking for a way to really shake up your management team, this is a must read!"

—Peter Hunt, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Virgin America

An OUTRAGEOUS leadership learning pathway! This book crystalizes the steps necessary to view your business on a macro level in order to paint the picture for the future. All too often we find our time as executives is taken up with the immediate needs of day to day business and we begin to believe that’s all it takes to succeed and grow. Frank Granara and Lorraine Grubbs catapult us into challenging ourselves and our teams to confront complacency, own up to weaknesses and strengthen our leadership performance. While we can’t all enjoy the destinations GIC took their executive team to, we can duplicate the model they used to achieve our strategic goals!

—Kathleen Gilmartin, President & CEO, Caring Brands International

Acknowledgments

Frank, thank you for your vision, unconditional support, and friendship. You are a true visionary who understands the premise that leadership development lies at the very heart of General Insulation Company’s (GIC’s) future success.

A heartfelt thanks to Rita Bailey for her creative insight and resources. She was instrumental in the design and development of each session, ensuring every component was relevant and impactful and that it aligned with the overall objectives.

To each of the VPs who trusted the process and played full out in every session, you have my enduring respect and gratitude. Your loyalty to the company, along with your newly expanded thinking, will ensure GIC’s continued success.

Thanks also to our resource partners and facilitators who brought their valuable expertise and experience to each session. You became an extension of our team, and we look forward to working with you on future projects.

A special thanks to Richard, Marcela, and the friends who contributed advice, support, and love every step of the way.

Gratefully,

Lorraine

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Genesis of Our Unprecedented Training Sessions by Lorraine Grubbs

Prologue

How My Quest to Build the Best Possible Leadership Team Began by Frank Granara

Session One

The Magical Mystery Tour

Session Two

The Odyssey

Session Three

The Ultimate Decision

Session Four

Pushing Limits

Session Five

Dante’s Inferno Reimagined

Session Six

The Capstone Project

Conclusion

Onward to the Future

Recommended Resources

Resources Per Session

About the Authors/Contributors

Introduction

The Genesis of Our Unprecedented Training Sessions

by Lorraine Grubbs

Warning! This book does not convey your typical training experience. As such, only those who seek to shake up, wake up, and make better teams should read it. Though it will take courage and confidence to implement it, this experience will produce impressive growth for any group of leaders. Participants will be propelled out of their comfort zones and thrown into situations purposely designed to force them to think on their feet. They will evolve into a high-performing team, creating the trust necessary to allow them to think outside of the box when making critical decisions.

We know. We delivered (in only six sessions) unprecedented and unparalleled results for a visionary CEO. For years he had tried to get his leaders to understand the importance of acting as a strategic and forward-thinking team. Despite books, classes, charts, and lectures, they didn’t fully get it; so one day he decided to take a different approach. Together, CEO Frank, my associate Rita Bailey, and I developed what would become for the team, six magic bullets that fully hit their mark.

My name is Lorraine Grubbs. For fifteen years, I was a leader at Southwest Airlines, one of the most successful companies in America. After leaving Southwest, the principles and practices I experienced there became the basis of my consulting business and my internationally published book, Lessons in Loyalty. For the past eight years, I have been training top executives from companies across varied industries, successfully implementing these same loyalty principles.

Beyond the Executive Comfort Zone: Outrageous Tactics to Ignite Individual Performance began with a call I received in 2011 from Frank Granara, president and CEO of General Insulation Company (GIC), headquartered in Medford, Massachusetts. Frank’s request for a training program challenged everything I had ever believed about the power of training and proved that profound change can happen … in mere days.

Frank’s vision was to create training sessions designed to compel his people to think more strategically and less operationally by stretching them way outside their executive comfort zones. He wanted to challenge his leadership team to the core, take them to the brink of the cliff, and leave them hanging by their fingertips. For the first session, he suggested incorporating Greek gods, famous business leaders, The Wizard of Oz, and other fictional characters into the training. He actually told me, I want them to feel like they are on an acid trip, without the drugs!

Rita and I relished this creative challenge and wanted to make sure we accomplished Frank’s goal of stretching his executives far beyond their comfort zones while helping them realize they needed to make some changes. With these goals in mind, we were able to flesh out Frank’s ideas and make his vision a reality.

And so, the first session — our very own Magical Mystery Tour (MMT for short) — was born. The objective, as Frank stipulated, was to put his senior leaders in a boot camp-like environment to shock them out of their current complacency and open them up to learning new ways of thinking, interacting, and strategizing.

The initial two-day event, documented in Session One of this book, contains five segments that forced a senior leadership team to dive into uncharted waters from which they emerged shaken and awakened. As a result, they became much more cohesive and strategic.

MMT:

Generated positive behavioral changes

Germinated new and better thinking

Improved leadership performance

Increased the bottom line

Took Frank and his team to a whole new level of awareness

And that was just the beginning. MMT was so successful that we went on to create five more innovative training sessions to further the work this powerful session began. We were convinced others could also benefit from this effective program. In fact, months after it was over, Frank shared the following thoughts:

I’m thrilled. It’s encouraging to see how far the team has come in the way they handle adversity and challenges. I’ve noticed it in the work environment specifically, as they tackle tough business decisions on their own instead of constantly coming to me for advice. I’ve seen their ability to think more strategically improve, especially this past year. They are making better decisions. As a team, they’ve developed trust and an ‘all for one’ mentality, and our bottom line shows it.

So, in the hope that you, too, can learn from our experience, we’d like to invite you along on a journey. Like Frank, if you’re willing to push your team out of their comfort zone to think more strategically, you’ll be better positioned to compete in the global market.

Beyond the Executive Comfort Zone is the ultimate improv experience. Because our sessions so frequently involved acting out scenes of a play, I chose to follow a similar format in writing about our adventures. The curtains, scenes, and acts (segments) will guide you on the journey that ultimately accomplished playwright Frank’s objective: to develop his key players and get them to think differently by facing their vulnerabilities, expanding their critical thinking skills, and exploring and improving levels of team trust. Each chapter concludes with a series of key questions crafted to inspire additional reflection, innovation, creativity, and change with your team.

Told in my voice, Frank’s voice, and the voices of the vice presidents who underwent the training, Beyond the Executive Comfort Zone documents six groundbreaking team training sessions. They will knock the socks off anything you’ve ever tried before.

Prologue

How My Quest to Build the Best Possible Leadership Team Began

by Frank Granara

I am a stickler for high performance. I expect my people to deliver, and I reward them accordingly. This philosophy has served me well over the years. In 1982, I bought an almost bankrupt General Insulation Company and expanded it to almost 50 locations throughout North America. To accommodate GIC’s explosive growth, I elevated my two vice presidents to executive vice presidents and promoted another six general managers to regional VPs.

To give these new leaders a foundation in basic teamwork, I sent them to a team-building class at the Disney Institute. While this was a good learning experience for them, it could not have prepared them for the financial and banking crisis about to hit.

During a lengthy period of economic chaos and deterioration, my VPs found themselves doing damage control instead of planning for the future. This reactive mode caused a silo mentality, and for the next several years, these executives operated their individual regions with little thought given to the company as a whole. This meant the lion’s share of that type of thinking and analysis fell to me, the CEO. By 2011, with the economic outlook improving, our lack of teamwork and the absence of global thinking was cause for concern.

I thought long and hard about how to get my VPs to think and act more like a team. They were all working extremely hard, but I needed a more visionary, forward-thinking group, one that operated with a single voice.

I considered what the military does with new recruits. In order to prepare them to act and work like a high-performing team, recruits are first broken down to their lowest common denominator. Only then are they ready to fully accept a new way of thinking.

After many months of researching and developing my ideas with Lorraine and Rita, the Magical Mystery Tour was ready to put into action. Our objectives for this session were comprehensive. We wanted the VPs to:

Become a stronger team

Leverage their strengths

Think and act more strategically

Become more effective leaders under stress

Enhance their overall communication skills

Elevate trust among the team

Challenge the status quo

In short, I wanted to take the VPs out of their comfort zones so they could begin a process of self-discovery. I wanted to observe how they reacted when challenged: would they become defensive, would they stand their ground, or would they shut down?

After a great deal of planning, we arrived in Dallas