Martin Lindstrom | The Average Person is Wasting 400 Minutes Per Day Via Email with One of TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People (Part 2)

Show Notes

Today’s guest  was named by TIME MAGAZINE as one of the World’s 100 Most Influential People and he’s been interviewed 20 times on NBC’s TODAY show and he’s here to talk about his new book, The Ministry of Common Sense: How to Eliminate Bureaucratic Red Tape, Bad Excuses, and Corporate BS.

NOTES: 

Martin Lindstrom is the founder and chairman of Lindstrom Company, a global branding & culture transformation firm, operating across five continents and more than 30 countries. 

Does your office struggle to get things done? Is your business filled with slow moving bureaucrats, policies that nobody reads and enough productivity killing red tap to make your brain explode? Well on today’s show we are joined by Martin Lindstrom whom TIME MAGAZINE has has labeled today’s guest as one of the World’s 100 Most Influential People and a man who interviewed 20 times on NBC’s TODAY show and he’s here  to talk about his new book, The Ministry of Common Sense: How to Eliminate Bureaucratic Red Tape, Bad Excuses, and Corporate BS

https://www.martinlindstrom.com/

Today’s guest is the New York Times best-selling author who:

1. TIME magazine 
2. Today’s guest Martin Lindstrom advises huge companies that you know including Burger King, Lowes, Boar’s Head, Beverly Hills Hotels, Pepsi, Nestle and Google. 
3. The Wall-Street Journal praised his book Brand Sense as “one of the five best marketing books ever published,” and his book Small Data as “revolutionary,” and TIME called his book Buyology “a breakthrough in branding.”
4. Today’s guest Martin Lindstrom has appeared in Morgan Spurlock’s movie The Greatest Movie Ever Sold and on America’s Next Top Model and he joins us today to share about his new book, The Ministry of Common Sense: How to Eliminate Bureaucratic Red Tape, Bad Excuses, and Corporate BS! 
5. Yes, yes, yes and yes! Martin Lindstrom, welcome onto The Thrivetime Show! How are you sir?!
6. Martin Lindstrom, before we get into your new book, I want to ask about some of your most well known consulting clients…Let’s start with McDonald’s and their request for you to help reinvent the Happy Meal…when did your relationship with McDonald’s first begin?
   1. Charlie Bell, the Former CEO, reached out to me to rebrand the happy meal.
   2. I wanted to make it healthy and he was okay with that.
   3. I wanted 6 year olds to be able to eat broccoli.
   4. I made a plan for the happy meal and brought it to the headquarters of McDonalds. They told me that it was “Interesting”. That is where I learned that you have to have an immune system. 
7. What exactly did McDonald’s want you to do with their happy meal?
   1. They wanted me to reinvent it but when I went forward to do so, they didn’t really like it.
8. Martin Lindstrom How did McDonald’s respond to your recommendations? 
   1. They said it was “Interesting” but did not take any action.
9. How often do you see this level of soul-sucking bureaucracy blocking progress?
   1. The frozen middle is the day to day stuff that blocks up people.
   2. You have to look to countries that have done it right. 
   3. People would determine how great they are based on how large their… Powerpoint… is.
   4. Nothing works in meetings where electronics are involved. 
   5. We found that people spend 3 hours per day to fix technology issues.
   6. We spend on average 1 minute per email. That is more than 4 hours per day before we have even started our day at work.
   7. We have an invisible straight jacket at work that is holding us back.
10. You were named by TIME Magazine as one of America’s 100 Most Influential People…what did receiving that honor feel like? 
11. What inspired you to write your new book, The Ministry of Common Sense: How to Eliminate Bureaucratic Red Tape, Bad Excuses, and Corporate BS
12. How much money are organizations wasting by not implementing the strategies found in your new book, The Ministry of Common Sense: How to Eliminate Bureaucratic Red Tape, Bad Excuses, and Corporate BS?
13. Your book offers a five-step guide to ridding ourselves—and our companies—of the bureaucratic bottlenecks and red tape that plague every office…I would love if you could share what common kinds of bureaucratic bottlenecks that you see as being common in business today?
14. Martin Lindstrom What are the 5 steps for ridding ourselves of the slow moving bottlenecks that prevent most businesses from unleashing their potential?
    1. (Bad) customer experience
    2. Politics
    3. Technology
    4. Meetings and Power Points
    5. Rules, Regulations, and Policies
    6. Compliance and Legal
15. What kind of time-wasting activities are common in America’s conference rooms?
16. Video screens freezing, cords not working, and employees dropping in and out.
17. Sitting through endless Power Points that no one has read.
18. FUN FACT: The average person now spends 11.3 hours per day consuming media. https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/article/2018/time-flies-us-adults-now-spend-nearly-half-a-day-interacting-with-media/
19. Martin Lindstrom What are common examples of common sense not being found in the workplace today?
    1. People who want to triple confirm appointments
20. You come across as a very proactive person…so how do you typically organize the first four hours of your and what time do you typically wake up?
21. What are a few of your daily habits that you believe have allowed you to achieve success?
22. What advice would you give the younger version of yourself?
23. We find that most successful entrepreneurs tend to have idiosyncrasies that are actually their super powers…what idiosyncrasy do you have?
24. Martin Lindstrom What message or principle that you wish you could teach everyone?
25. You’ve got the mic, what is one thing that you want to share with the Thrive Nation before you drop the mic?
    1. Take a photo every time you see a stupidity going on in your company.
    2. Print them.
    3. Point out the stupidest thing going on in your company. 
    4. Assign 2 people to tackle the issue.