PART I
WHY MINDSET MATTERS 1. A DIFFERENT APPROACH
Two black cargo vans snake down Wabash Avenue in Kansas City, Missouri. The passengers are members of the Kansas City Police Department (KCPD) SWAT team. They are about to serve a high-risk drug warrantâthe fifth warrant service of that day. The targets of this warrant are sufficiently dangerous that the squad has obtained a âno-knockâ warrant, meaning that they will storm through the door unannounced. The men are dressed in black from head to toe, their faces covered by masks that leave only their eyes exposed. Bullet-resistant helmets and body armor make them an intimidating sight.
Senior Sergeant Charles âChipâ Huth, who had been leader of the 1910 SWAT Squad for eight years, is driving the lead van. He slows as the target residence comes into view, and his men stream from both vehicles as quietly and quickly as they can.
Three officers sprint around to the back of the house and take cover, supplying containment should the targets attempt to flee. Seven others, including Chip, run to the front door, six of them with their guns drawn. The seventh runs a well-used battering ram up to the door and slams it through.
âPolice,â they yell. âEverybody down!â Inside is bedlam. Men attempt to scramble out of the room, some to the stairs and others down hallways. Young children stand as if paralyzed, screaming. A number of women cower in terror on the floor, some of them shielding infants who are screaming at the top of their lungs.
Two of the menâthe two suspects, it turns outâgo for their weapons but are taken down by officers. âDonât even think about it!â the officers shout. Then they pull the menâs arms behind them and put them in cuffs.
With all the young children, the scene in this home is more hectic than most, but within five minutes, the two suspects lie facedown on the living-room floor, and the rest of the inhabitants have been gathered into the dining room.
With everyoneâs safety secured, the officers begin their search. They move with purpose and precision. Chip notices his point man, Bob Evans, leaving the room, and he assumes Bob is simply joining the search.
A couple of minutes later, Chip passes the kitchen as he walks down the hall. Bob is standing at the kitchen sink. A moment earlier, Bob had been rifling through the kitchen cabinets looking for white powderânot for contraband to be used as evidence against those they are arresting but for a white powder that was of much greater immediate importance. He was looking for Similac. With babies crying and their mothers understandably in hysterics, this most alpha male of all the alpha males on Chipâs squad was looking for a way to help them. When Chip sees him, Bob is mixing baby bottles.
Bob looks at Chip with a faint smile and shrugs. He then picks up the bottles and begins distributing them to the mothers of the crying infants. Chip is delighted by this. He hadnât thought of baby bottles himself, but he completely understands what Bob is up to and why.
This one act of responsiveness changes the entire scene. Everyone calms down, and Chip and his men are able to explain the situation thoroughly and then smoothly turn the two suspects over to the detectives. Nevertheless, mixing baby bottles is such an unusual and unpredictable act that many people in police workâincluding the members of this SWAT team just a few years earlierâwould have considered it irrational. But in Chipâs squad, this kind of responsiveness is routine.
It wasnât always this way. To appreciate the remarkable transformation that had come to the 1910 SWAT Squad, we need to learn a little of Chipâs challenging background and his history in the Kansas City Police Department.
Chip was born in 1970, the son of an alcoholic, abusive career criminal and a bipolar, schizophrenic mother. When Chipâs father was around, the family usually was running from the lawâmoving from state to state around the South. When his father was absent, Chip, his siblings, and their mother often lived out of a car, collecting cans and cardboard for recycling as a way to survive.
One time when his father returned, promising that things would be different, his abuse of the family escalated. Chip, age ten at the time, stood up to him, and this finally prompted Chipâs mother to call the one person her husband fearedâher exâSpecial Forces brother, who came to wrest the family away from the man. âIâm here to get my sister and the kids,â he told Chipâs father. âIf you get up off that couch, itâs going to be the last thing you ever do.â That was the last time Chip saw his father.
Chipâs father hated cops, which is the primary reason Chip became one. He joined KCPD in 1992. After three years as a patrol officer, he was moved to a SWAT team. Four years later, he joined the police academy as a use-of-force and firearms instructor. He was promoted to SWAT sergeant in 2004. The chief of police thought that the 1910 and 1920 SWAT Squads, which act as the strong arm of the Investigations Bureau of the police department, were out of control. Chip came in as a hatchet man to fix them.
What the chief may not have known, however, was that at the time, Chip was psychologically better suited to lead such a group than he was to change it. He made sure to outwork all his men so that he could kick their butts if necessary. Whenever he felt threatened, he responded with threats of violence, and he was just unstable enough that his team members were kept in line.
He was even more severe with the public. The way he saw things, there really are bad guys in the world (he should know since he grew up with one), and they need to be dealt with in a way that makes them sorry they ever committed a crime. Everyone the team members arrested, they took down hard. And they didnât much care how they treated peopleâs property or pets. It wasnât uncommon for some of Chipâs men to spit tobacco on suspectsâ furniture, for example, or to put a bullet through the skull of a potentially dangerous dog.
Chipâs squad was one of the most complained-about units in KCPD. Some of that was to be expected, since SWAT officers tend to do more damage than regular officers on the street. But even so, the rate of complaints against the squad was alarming, and the cost of the associated litigation was a drain on the department. Chip didnât see a problem with this. He believed his squad was working with people in the only way it could. In fact, he thought the more complaints he and his squad received, the more proof they had that they were doing something right!
A couple of years after Chip took over the SWAT squad, another KCPD officer, Jack Colwell, helped Chip see some truths about himself that startled himâabout the person Chip had become and how his attitude and methods were actually undercutting his effectiveness and putting his men and their missions at risk. This revelation coincided with a troubling encounter Chip had with his fifteen-year-old son. Driving his son home from school one day, Chip could tell that something was on his mind and began asking question after question of his son, with no response. âWhy wonât you tell me whatâs bothering you?â Chip asked. âYou wouldnât understand,â his son responded. âWhy?â Chip asked. âWhy do you think I wouldnât understand?â Then his son gave Chip the answer that perhaps prepared him to hear what Jack had to say: âBecause youâre a robot, Dad.â
This comment cut deep. Chip began thinking about the kind of person he had become. He had believed that suspicion and aggression were necessary for survival and success in a vicious, combative, and violent world. But now he started to see that being this kind of person did not put a stop to the viciousness and combat; it actually accelerated it.
These events started Chip on a journey of change, an endeavor that resulted in a complete transformation of the work of his squad. The team used to receive two to three complaints a month, many of them regarding excessive use of force. On average, these complaints cost the department $70,000 per incident. However, because of the team membersâ new way of working, they havenât had a complaint filed against them in twelve years. It is rare, now, that they leave othersâ personal property in shambles or shoot a dog. They even hired a dog specialist to teach them ways to control potentially dangerous animals. And they never spit tobacco. Chip told his men, âUnless you can tell me that chewing tobacco in peopleâs homes advances the mission, weâre not doing that anymore.â And, of course, they prepare baby bottles.
These changes have increased the cooperation Chip and his team receive from suspects and from the community, and the results have been astounding. In addition to shrinking community complaints against them to zero, in the first three years after adopting this approach, the 1910 SWAT Squad recovered more illegal drugs and guns than it had in the previous decade.
What transformed the teamâs approach and effectiveness? A different kind of mindset than the members ever had before: a way of seeing and thinking that we call an outward mindset.
Mark Ballif and Paul Hubbard, co-CEOs of a highly respected healthcare company, have built their organization utilizing an outward-mindset approach similar to the one Chip has used with his squad. A few years ago, they were meeting with the principals of a venerable private equity firm in New York City. With 32 percent and 30 percent compound annual growth rates in top-line revenue and profitability, respectively, over the prior five years, getting meetings like this one with potential capital investors hadnât been difficult for Mark and Paul.
âSo you have turned around over fifty healthcare facilities?â the firmâs managing partner asked.
Mark and Paul nodded.
âHow?â
Mark and Paul looked at each other, waiting for the other to answer. âIt all hinges on finding and developing the right leaders,â Mark finally said.
âAnd what is the most important qualification you look for in a leader?â Mark and Paul felt as if they were being cross-examined.
âHumility,â Paul answered. âThatâs what distinguishes those who can turn these facilities around from those who canât. Leaders who succeed are those who are humble enough to be able to see beyond themselves and perceive the true capacities and capabilities of their people. They donât pretend to have all the answers. Rather, they create an environment that encourages their people to take on the primary responsibility for finding answers to the challenges they and their facilities face.â
The other members of the equity firm in the meeting looked at the managing partner, who sat poker-faced.
âHumility?â he finally said, his tone condescending. âYouâre telling me that youâve acquired fifty failing facilities and turned each of them around by finding leaders who have humility?â
âYes,â Mark and Paul replied without hesitation.
The managing partner stared at them for a moment. Then he pushed his chair back from the table and rose to his feet. âThat doesnât compute to me.â Without even a handshake, he turned and strode out of the room, leaving behind a compelling investment opportunity in a company with a proven track record. What he couldnât comprehend was how the companyâs results depended on humble leaders who âsee beyond themselves,â as Paul had described.
Nearly fifteen years earlier, Mark, Paul, and another early partner decided to try their hand at building their own company. They had less than ten years of experience in healthcare between them, but they saw an opportunity to create a unique organization in an industry plagued with problems. So they began purchasing the clinically and financially beleaguered facilities their competitors were desperate to be rid of. They were convinced that the key missing ingredient in failing healthcare operations was not an absence of the right people or even the right location but an absence of the right mindset. They engaged in a systematic approach to apply the principles that are presented in this book.
Mark explains their experience this way: âSome of our competition couldnât get rid of facilities and their teams fast enough because they thought that the teams were simply defective. Our thesis was that we could take a poorly led and therefore under-performing facility and, by helping the existing team see what was possible, they could turn it around.â
As they acquired their first facilities, they encountered a pattern that would repeat itself, almost without exception, acquisition after acquisition. The outgoing leader, trying to do them a favor, would give them a list of the five or so staff members they would need to fire if they stood any chance of turning things around. âWe would thank them for the list and then go to work,â Mark and Paul reminisced. âInvariably, four of the five people would turn out to be our best performers.â
Consider what this demonstrates. If those who had been identified as problems could, when working under new leadership and a new approach, become star performers, then organizational improvement, even turnaround, is less a matter of getting the wrong people off the bus than a matter of helping people see. It is a matter of changing mindset.
âLeaders fail,â Paul explains, âby coming in saying, âHereâs the vision. Now you go execute what I see.â Thatâs just wrong in our view of the world.â Continuing, he says, âAlthough leaders should provide a mission or context and point toward what is possible, what humble, good leaders also do is to help people see. When people see, they are able to exercise all their human agency and initiative. When they do that, they own their work. When people are free to execute what they see, rather than simply to enact the instructions of the leader, they can change course in the moment to respond to ever-changing, situation-specific needs. That kind of nimbleness and responsiveness is something you canât manage, force, or orchestrate.â
Mark and Paul learned these lessons early on as they operated their first few facilities themselves. Reading situations attentively, they found themselves mixing plenty of baby bottlesâtaking responsibility to do whatever each situation required. As they acquired more facilities, they needed other leaders who could operate with an outward mindsetâpeople who would mix baby bottles as necessary and help others learn to do the same.
This book is about how to help unlock this kind of collaboration, innovation, and responsivenessâhow to experience a way of seeing, thinking, working, and leading that helps individuals, teams, and organizations significantly improve performance.
At first, you might feel like the private equity firm leader who walked out of the meeting with Mark and Paul. The ideas we will cover may not make perfect sense to you early on, and you might wonder whether these concepts can help you with the challenges you are currently facing. We invite you to stay in the meeting. You will learn an actionable, repeatable, and scalable way to transform your personal, team, and organizational performance.
Just as importantly, you will begin seeing situations outside of work differently as well. You will see new and better ways to interact with those you care most about, including those you find most difficult. Everything in this book that applies to people in organizations applies to people in their home and family lives as wellâand vice versa. This is why we include corporate, home, and individual stories. Lessons learned from each will apply across the board.
Our journey begins with an idea that Chip, Mark, and Paul believe to be foundational: mindset drives and shapes all that we doâhow we engage with others and how we behave in every moment and situation.
2. WHAT DRIVES PERFORMANCE
Given external realities, achievement is driven by two things, one of which is well understood and one of which is not. The obvious contributing factor to success is a personâs actions or behaviorsâthe things one chooses to do. Most modern approaches to success treat this first success factorâbehaviorâas if it were the only factor to success. Even while acknowledging that other factors such as attitudes and values also matter, people who believe in a purely behavioral approach to performance end up recommending behavioral formulas for improving attitudes or defining values. For behaviorists, all problemsâand therefore, all solutionsâare behavioral.
You might wonder w...