Bill Sims Jr.  
The most important single biggest driver of behavior change according to employees, is not a t shirt, not a jacket, not a pizza party, but but positive reinforcement. And that is the number one driver of culture engagement, whatever you want to measure. And as I said earlier, it's it's so often missing 95% of our cultures pretty much devoid of it and our management strategy clueless.

Jeff Ma  
Hello, and welcome to as a business strategy, a podcast that brings humanity to the workplace. We're here to talk about business. But we want to tackle topics that most business leaders shy away from we believe that humanity love should be at the center of every successful business. As always, I'm your host, Jeff Ma. And I am here to have conversations from real people, real stories about real life stuff. And my guest today is Bill Sims Jr, the president of the bill Sims company incorporated. And for more than 30 years Bill has created positive reinforcement systems that have helped large and small firms to inspire better performance from employees and increased bottom line profits. He's a world renowned keynote speaker and recently was selected as one of the top 10 speakers by the National Safety Council. Bill has built more than 1000 Positive reinforcement systems at firms including Dupont, Siemens, VDO, Coca Cola, and Disney and holds issued patents in the field. Recently, he formed globalsafetyinstitute.org to capture and share best practice safety, leadership and culture around the planet. Bill's first book entitled green beans and ice cream, the remarkable power of positive reinforcement has garnered rave reviews. And as you may have tell from the title, we're going to be talking about some green beans, some ice cream and what that all even means. What does love have to do with that? It's so I'm so excited to have Bill on the show today. How you doing Bill?

Speaker 1  
 Doing great doing doing fantastic, Jeff, lovely to be with you. Thanks for having me in.

Jeff Ma  
Absolutely. And you know, so, so many questions listeners already going to have about green beans, ice cream, whatnot. But I'd like to kick it off about you. I just want to know, what is your passion? And how did you come to find that passion? How that passion come to be?

Speaker 1  
Yeah, you know, I always say life is like a box of chocolates, as Forrest Gump said, and I kind of stumbled into this, I'm not exactly sure when or how this calling found me. But you know, my, my passion today is really helping companies to understand what positive reinforcement is what it is not. Because there are so many misconceptions, so much bad information, and then not only understand and have an awakening to what it is, maybe just consider that, you know, we, we might need to do a little bit better job as a company at this and our approach. And so how, how do we do it? And where are we getting it right? And where are we getting it wrong? And then helping them kind of develop a new set of glasses to look at their culture and identify where positive reinforcement is happening and isn't happening right and then then fix that right with with a systems approach. So I'd say my, my passion is really around this number one need that people have in the workplace, which is so related to love. It's positive reinforcement. It's the number one driver of employee engagement, morale. It's the fix for our quiet quitters our work from homers. It's the fix for all these things. And not only is it the number one thing it's the thing that's least often used in business today. How tragic How ironic. So I guess it's it's sort of turning the lights on this subject globally. That's that's become my passion. How I fell into it, you know, that's, that's the story of me and my mom, I'll I don't want to spoil all, you know, spoil the surprise. But we'll get into that as we as we progress.

Jeff Ma  
Okay, well, let's dive right into it. I mean, the question at hand is green beans and ice cream. I'm sure you get it all the time. I'm sure you named the book that intentionally. Tell us about green beans and ice cream and what is what the heck does that have to do with Positive reinforcement.

Speaker 1  
I gotcha. So let's, let's pretend you and I are sitting on an airplane together. And hopefully we both got upgraded to first class. And we're and we're not stuck back there in the in the very back which of the back of the plane but wherever we are, there's probably going to come a moment where I'm going to ask you, Hey, Jeff, what do you do? And you're gonna say, man, dude, I talk about love as a business strategy. And I'm like, That's pretty amazing. Tell me more. And then you're gonna finally after that you're gonna get to so what do you do, Bill? And I'm gonna say exactly this. Well, let me set it up. right for you, Jeff. I am the global subject matter expert for green beans and ice cream. Now I know I am the only global subject matter expert because, I invented it, therefore I am the expert, right. And the idea behind green beans and ice cream is that we're really really good as parents, telling our kids, and we're really even better as bosses telling our employees what they did wrong, we get that down to a science, maybe just maybe, where we need to do a little work is telling our kids and our employees for a change what they did, right. And mom figure that out, son, if you eat your green beans, you can have ice cream, right? When we focus on the positive in people around us, and then ourselves, performance, Blossom, safety improves customer service, quality, morale, mental health, all the things that we want to move needles on all magically happen. And so it's really taking leaders down the journey, this path that there is this whole other way to lead a person. And it doesn't have to be command and control. I'm the boss, you're not you got that. In fact, that's been proven to be the worst way to lead. So that's where it all came from. It's that that day with mom, sign of future green beans, you can have ice cream.

Jeff Ma  
Got it. And I feel like green beans ice cream, as this analogy makes perfect sense to me. It also feels like there's, you know, tied into that exact story with mom, you know, this element of doing something you don't want to do and getting a reward on the other side? Is that what you mean, in the workplace of positive reinforcement? Is it about the reward of ice cream? Or is there what other facets are there to it?

Bill Sims Jr.  
Yeah, there's, there's so many ways you can go with the model. From a classic behavioral science standpoint, which is everything I write is based not on just behavioral science, so it's accurate to the science 100 years of science. But it's been proven and tested in the real world with my clients like General Motors, Ford, Disney, DuPont, and others. You know, the basic premise is we have the activator, something we we need someone to do that they may or may not want to do or prefer to do. If you think of simple example, seatbelts, a lot of people don't want to wear seatbelts. Right? Well, there's your green beans. Right? And and then what's the ice cream? Well, in that case, hopefully it's that you live and survive a crash. So fundamentally, life is generally face we are we are generally faced. When we think about motivation with there's something in life, some green beans that you have to get through to get to the ice cream, you got to go to four years of college and sit through some absolutely boring professors. There's your green beans to get to the ice cream of the diploma or high school or whatever, you know, whatever. So I think there's a larger you want bulging biceps, which I'm going to get one day, Jeff, I promise, you've got to you got to spend your green bean time in the gym, do you know I think internally we need to understand what our green beans are and focus on our ice cream ahead of us to be able to put up with the green beans. But externally when we think about motivating other people, which is really the the the focus of the first book, it it's it's all about identifying what we want people to do. And then delivering positive reinforcement for those tiny little movements towards a goal and there's hundreds of behaviors that have to change, to get to a new habit. And when we get to a new habit, those habits have to happen for a considerable period of time until we get to a result. You know, you think about weight loss. You got hundreds of behaviors you got to change you got to stop these things. And drinking these things and start eating and drinking these things and you got to start exercising, all of those are figurative green beans, if you will, the payoff at the back end is the ice cream, you feel better, you look better, all those other things. So I would say the green beans and ice cream metaphor can apply to anything relative to human behavior, or, you know, if you're training your brand new puppy, green beans and ice cream as a place they're to

Jeff Ma  
makes a lot of sense. And I think when it comes to how I see a lot of businesses taking this approach, right now, their their green beans is people to work hard. And their ice cream ends up being quite literally ice cream, like maybe an ice cream party or pizza party or some sort of, you know, even even nice things right end of year events and, and perks and benefits in the workplace. Are these types of things. Positive reinforcement, or is there is there more to that?

Speaker 1  
Yeah, it's an interesting and very thoughtful, insightful question. Um, let me roll back a tape for a minute. Say one more thing that I think ties into that. And then I want to comment about those those other things, you know, into the year parties, what have you, you know, so I always say, Mom understood the laws of behavioral science. Not that she ever read it. She just kind of figured it out. As a mom, you know, my dad always says, When you get a baby instructions come with them. And and so what mom did in that moment, when she said, Son, if you eat your green beans, you can have ice cream, she communicated the behavior she wanted for me very specifically, I need you to eat your green beans, right. And then when my behavior change occurred, I got a smile, a hug, and a big bowl of ice cream and hello, I got all those reinforcers immediately, not 1 million safe kid hours later, I didn't have to wait for annual kid performance reviews to see if mama was gonna give me one, two or three litres of ice cream compared to my siblings, right? So what we know from the sciences, it's got to happen within 10 seconds or less. The implications for business leaders are huge. If the positive reinforcer has to happen within 10 seconds or less, let me illustrate some things that are fundamentally flawed. You hand the worker $100 gift card and a steak dinner and a T shirt as he goes through the dinner line. Hey, um, what's this for? Well, it's our end of the year party and oh, yeah, we're rewarding you because you were safe this year. Okay, if he had to ask you why he got it? Didn't you just waste your money? Because your steak dinner, which was the ice cream. And this illustration did not happen within 10 seconds of his behavior, right? We know that the feedback has to be as close to 10 seconds or less as possible, which is why performance reviews are the worst way you can attempt to motivate people. Here's how they happen. They're one time a year for most companies. And the way they really go down as you get on the elevator with your boss, she looks at you and says you write your performance review. And I'll sign it. And at the end of the day, that one two or 3% pay raise is really not enough to motivate me all year long. So I want to talk about one other aspect later if you could just make a note because I'll get distracted. One of the other things about positive reinforcement by definition, it can never be what it is for most people, one size fits all. And we'll we'll drill into that I call that my nickname for that conversation is organizational communism. You know, organizational communism is alive and well here in in our country, globally, in fact, and we can go there and a little bit so write down  organizational communism. If you want to dig into that we will. But let's go back to your original question. Ice Cream parties. I did a survey of 1000 employees I said what are the best reinforcers that happened to you at work the things that make you feel better about yourself? And then I said what are the worst reinforcers and here are the top three worst reinforcers ready? pizza and ice cream parties. One worker said you know what they'll feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Last Wednesday, the safety department gave us all free pizza all we could eat. It was safety day. Last Thursday, the HR department came around handing this little bags baby carrots telling us to eat healthy. It was wellness day. It's not right. And so pizza parties ice cream parties, not very motivating. logoed swag gifts. People love that stuff, man. No, they don't. Research has been out there to prove it's one of the worst motivators you can use. If you want to advertise your business shirts got a place. But if you're talking about motivating me to change my behavior with a dadgum, logo, ballcap for T shirt for forget about it. And, and then we can also while we're in there, chalk up number three worse motivator from the research, donations to charities, not very motivating to change my behaviors, the nice thing to do, does it made me want to change behavior? No. So those are the those are my comments about into the year parties and all those things are they have some value, it's very limited, very, it's hard to put an ROI there. Now, the most important, single biggest driver of behavior change, according to employees, is not a t shirt, not a jacket, not a pizza party. But but positive reinforcement. And that is the number one driver of culture engagement, whatever you want to measure. And as I said earlier, it's it's so often missing 95% of our cultures, pretty much devoid of it and our management strategy, clueless.

Jeff Ma  
So if I'm hearing you correctly, psychology says 10 seconds through or to behavior, and we're trying to go for behavior change. So that means in my mind, the only really kind of most impactful and effective action has to happen, right then in there in a room, when something happens when something is said done, when that behavior is exhibited. Being able to, in the moment, give that feedback, call that out and say, Hey, I love what you just did there I love and just being able to say that that's exactly what you kind of validating that that was exactly what you would want. Is that. Is that accurate? Is that? Yeah.

Speaker 1  
Yeah, man, you got it. You know, I'm looking at the wall behind you. You got it looks like a bazillion games back there. So I'm assuming you've been known to play a game or two. Is that a fair assumption? Right? More than fair? Yeah. Yeah. And so what would happen if if you played a video game, and you did something, and your player wandered around for a year before anything, any feedback came back to you before your player died? Or one? Or if you didn't score points for a year? Right? Would you keep playing the game? Heck, no. It'd be boring as all get it like be like playing NIST. I played that game all 30 seconds. And then that was it. I was done with this. So an early video game, right, that takes you back. So what we know is that video games are so effective, because they provide feedback, positive feedback, within milliseconds of every move you make. That's why they're addictive. It's no different in business. If people don't want to come to the office, and they want to work from home. Sorry, CEOs. Here's your problem. You didn't figure out how to make work more positively reinforcing than home. And I got a really cute puppy. I'll tell you what, you know, it's hard to leave him.

Jeff Ma  
absolutely makes sense. And it begs the question for me. That sounds wonderful. And like you mentioned, it's not happening. So how do we get at an organizational level? How do we get our leaders? How do we get our team members to be making the most of those 10 seconds? around them? How do we get them to be kind of speaking the same language and getting people positively reinforced?

Speaker 1  
Yeah, you know, I mean, that's really where the book kicks in. And here's a crass commercial plug, you know, greenbeanbook.com is where you go for it. Um, I think there's three steps, really, that I've seen, and I've helped Disney for DuPont, down these path, this path. The first step is really the why there's the why there's the how there's the what, right, there's three rocks. So what is positive reinforcement? Why do I even care as a leader? You really got to have some time to help the leadership team reflect on what it is and what it is not. And here's the amazing thing. Everywhere I go, I don't care how smart the company is, how sophisticated they are, how much money they make. When I asked the question, what is positive reinforcement? They don't know. And they disagree on the answer. And so I have a unique little question I like to ask in the beginning of my workshops, to, to help them see that wait a minute, we actually are not as cool as we thought, right. And, and so once we, we can help them understand what positive reinforcement is why you care, as a president, as a department manager, as a supervisor, as a parent, this becomes then the awakening that, hey, there is something that we need to focus on a little more here at our company, and that something is positive reinforcement. Okay, so that's the why you got to step them through that part. And they're not all going to get it by the way, and they're going to be a lot of people that are naysayers and disbelievers. So this isn't like a walk in the park, right? And then we move them down to the house. Okay, we understand why positive reinforcement matters and why we should care about it. How, how do you go about delivering it. And, and, and doing it in the right way, because done wrong, it does more harm than good. And the book outlines some of the train wrecks that companies have attempted and you know, what, what's happened when they got it wrong. So help us with a common blueprint to talk about behavior and positive reinforcement. And that's really where my my my seal workshops come in to help leaders understand servant leadership and, and positive reinforcement and culture change. And then you move once we get them kind of through the how, and they know sort of how to ride the bicycle without training wheels, then then we kind of move to the what, what are the systems and tools we need to move to warp speed to measure positive reinforcement real time in our culture? Because positive reinforcement is the electricity of your culture. It is if you build airplanes, I'm sure you measure how many airplanes you built yesterday. But did you measure positive reinforcement? Probably not. And yet positive reinforcement is actually more important than how many airplanes you build. So it's, it's it's what sorts what sort of systems and tools? Do you need to have to be able to measure this? Because if you can't measure positive reinforcement, you cannot manage it? So I think it's a it's a three step process. It's it's what it what is positive reinforcement? Why do I care? Okay, now that I, maybe I care, how do I do it? And how do I not do it? And then last, how do we track it? How do we hold ourselves accountable? I think that would loosely be the series of steps over overarching.

Jeff Ma  
Well, for the spoiler, I'd love to ask, what is positive reinforcement, then? I know you this is supposed to be the trick question you lead with. But what is positive enforcement? Knowing that you already said positive reinforcement can never be one size fits all? Yep. So that so then what is it?

Bill Sims Jr.  
Well, and and don't forget, if we have time, we want to come back to that one size fits all question, right? Why I say that? Um, so the easiest way to perhaps answer that question is yet with another question. And that's the one that I always start every leadership workshop with, I get the 20 leaders in the room or the 30, or the 50, or the 100, whatever. And I ask a very simple question. All right. Take yourself out of the equation. Consider the average teenage kid working making minimum wage sweating outside in the parking lot at Chick fil A, with that little mobile scanner, taking your order through the drive thru and they're making $7.25 an hour, right? True story. I know a kid who works at one and that's what he makes. I'm sure others pay more. So there's that or maybe it's that kid at McDonald's making $7 An hour cleaning the bathroom fries and french fries. For that average kid is a paycheck positive reinforcement and I say now before you answer, there's three possible answers here. You Same there. I don't think so I think it's just an entitlement. I don't see a paycheck as being positive reinforcement for the average person. You could say, you know, Bill, and I'm sitting on the fence here, dude, I'm, uh, maybe I think one person, one kid might want to come to work and get that paycheck. Another one might rather be home playing video games. And and then the third outcome or answer is, yeah, I think it is positive reinforcement. So when I asked that question, it's, it's fascinating to me to watch the management team divide. They're all over the map. You know, like 40%, say, no paychecks, not positive reinforcement. 40% say, maybe I'm undecided. I think it depends on the worker, one guy might rather go deer hunt, and one might want to go fish and might want to come to work. And then the minority is usually the yes, they're like, 20% Yeah, I think it is. Let me just Jeff, ask your answer here. If you're in the audience, and one of my workshops, what would you say is a paycheck? Positive reinforcement for the kid at McDonald's? Yes, no, or maybe it depends.

Jeff Ma  
I if I had to pick one of the three that I have to fall into the maybe because to me, it's it's, it's how the paycheck is positioned, to the to the employee, or how that how that benefit, or the kind of the grace in which it is delivered. The transparency in which the organization actually is with, like, their financials and all these other things, right? Like, because some organizations where you know, you're making way less than you should be, or at least you have a feeling, that paycheck is not positive reinforcement, where I feel like I'm being fairly paid, and I'm being rewarded for the contributions that I have that it very much is. So uh, maybe, maybe

Speaker 1  
perfect. So I always say for my maybes, thank you very much. Maybe y'all attend the church of the undecided. Right. So there you go. Welcome to the Church of the undecided. And, and you know, what, what we then have after we do this survey, is the first teachable moment in the workshop, and there are many, I look at the leadership team, be it Disney or Marathon Oil down in Africa when I was there. I say, Guys, with all due respect, y'all have a problem? You disagree on the answer to my question. You know, a third of you say, a paychecks, not positive reinforcement. A third of you say maybe it kind of depends. And in 20% of you said it is if you as a leadership team cannot agree whether something as simple as a paycheck is positive reinforcement or not? How you going to execute on a strategy to deliver it? You can't, you have to be able to define it, said Dr. Deming to do it. Let me get y'all on the same page. And so, you know, we run through the workshop. And then at the end, I bring that same question right back up after we've gone through all the science, all the stories, just that the other. I say now, in the beginning, I asked y'all is a paycheck, positive reinforcement, y'all. We're all over the map, I promise to get you on the same page on the same page. And so let's do that is a paycheck, positive reinforcement for you? And every employee on the planet? Absolutely. Yes. A paycheck is positive reinforcement for one, and only one behavior, getting you to come to work every day. If anybody disagrees with me, I got an experiment. Here's how that goes down. We take away your paycheck for two years. And I stand by your desk and count how many days you keep showing up at work. And we get the standard chuckle from the team. And so now my next question becomes, and I'll ask you to give me your answer out loud, is a paycheck positive reinforcement for the behavior of coming to work. What would you say?

Jeff Ma  
For the behavior coming to work? Yes.

Bill Sims Jr.  
Next question. Does that paycheck by itself guarantee you'll give me voluntary extra effort in the moment of choice when I'm not there watching? No, no. To get that requires positive reinforcement leadership. And that's what I teach how you how you do that in the moment. Just like you said a minute ago, you jump right to where we want leaders to be, hey, here's what you did. Here's why that matters. Boom, boom, boom. And so, positive reinforcement, we use a very different definition of what it is because the definition we use Is, is what behavioral science has proven it to be. Positive reinforcement is any consequence that causes behavior to repeat an increase in frequency, even after the consequences removed, that makes it unique. All the other consequences require you to be there as a manager doling it out. But when you get positive reinforcement, right? Once you're gone, that follower continues to move off the charts. And that my friend is worth millions of dollars to your business to your bottom line. That's how you develop healthy fully function non chemically dependent adults from your kids that contribute to society. It's it's cool stuff.

Jeff Ma  
That is cool. Amazing. Amazing. I love that perspective. I love how you laid that out. I know we're coming up on time here but organizational communism. I promised you some space for it. Let's dive into it quickly.

Unknown Speaker  
Yeah, man. You know, what I always say is, not only does positive reinforcement have to be immediate, it can never ever be one size fits all. What do I mean by that? Well, you've been taught through life. Again, and again. We've been taught in business you know what if you give Sally a new jacket, you better give Joe a new jacket or you give one person a pay raise the other one better yet. You give this person a Starbucks card, you better give them all one that is one size fits all reinforcers. It is organizational communism. And here's why. We have for now I'm going to give you only two examples that I think matter relative to this. Let's pretend you and I work on the same team. You're the hardest working person on the team. You bust your butt for quality for safety, and customer service. Right? That's what you do. Me I'm a cave person citizen against virtually everything. I'm a slacker. I goof off. I'm a quiet quitter, I sleep and we both know this about each other. It gets better. Somebody up above us and their infinite wisdom at corporate decides you know what? We're gonna give bill and Jeff the exact same reinforcer. So you and I both get a $50 Starbucks gift card and a steak dinner and a company t shirt. And as I walk my hand you through the steak dinner line. Hey, Jeff, my steak is just as big as yours. How does that make you feel?

Bill Sims Jr.  
Did we just destroy your commitment? Yeah. And did we reward my bad behavior? Yeah. Right. So when we give everybody the same, it's organizational communism. You know what boomers like to tease Millennials about every kid gets a trophy and Gen X loves to rag Millennials about that? Do Millennials didn't invent it? Boomers invented it, right? Maybe somebody even before boomers, and we just passed it down to our millennial kids. Organizational communism, it didn't work well in Russia wasn't effective in Cuba. It has no place in your business. And yet every single business in this country and around the world has organizational communism at work.

Jeff Ma  
Wow. Glad I got glad I made time for that piece because that was great. Love it. Bill green bean book.com. You've already mentioned, we'll put you in the notes. Anything else you want to just share before we depart here?

Speaker 1  
You know, if people like what they heard the other website to go to and it's free. It doesn't cost anything. It's beyondzeroinjuries.com just spell it out, spell out the word beyond spell out zero injuries.com. Click See Bill in action. And you can catch one of my keynotes where I talk about what makes great leaders Great. How do you go from being an average leader to being a superhero? Superhuman leader. So again, that's beyond zero injuries.com Other than that, Jeff, all I got to say, man, thanks for having me on the show. And may life bring you lots of ice cream.

Jeff Ma  
I love it. I have to make sure I get the green beans in first though. Thanks to the listeners. You guys are great. appreciate all the support and hope you're checking out the book love as a business strategy and GreenBeanbook.com beyondzer injuries.com Check out Bill Sims  Jr. All the things that he's doing amazing stuff. Really, really love it. I'm going to be checking that out. So with that, subscribe rate, tell your friends tell your mom leave a book on your boss's desk, and we will talk to you all next week. Bye