#130—JP Pawliw-Fry: Culture Under Pressure—The Last 8%

JP Pawliw-Fry, is world-renowned keynote speaker and New York Times bestselling author, also coaches Navy Seals, professional athletes and their coaches on high performance. 

As the founder of IHHP and an expert in culture, leadership, and emotional intelligence, JP has helped some of the most successful Fortune 100 companies unlock their potential by fostering courageous, high-performing cultures. 

JPs research has led him to help organizations cultivate high-performing cultures by enabling employees to overcome fear and feel valued, have a voice, and feel safe to take risks and be courageous. 

Based on his insights from his book, Performing Under Pressure, we discuss the intersection of culture with individual psychology to create high-performing cultures. 

In this episode, JP shares: 

• How pressure—and specifically cortisol—affects our perception, and why the idea that we work better under pressure...is a fallacy  
• His  theory of the 8% gap—how humans are programmed to perform well in 92% of cases, and then switch into “avoid or make a mess” mode when we get to the last 8% 
• How you as a leader and organization can enable people operate in that 8% 
• Why the right unit of measure of culture is not your organization or even your business unit, but your team (and the implications of this are for culture change)
• A interesting model for assessing culture  

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Episode Timeline:
00:00—Highlight from today's episode
00:58—Introducing JP+ the topic of today’s episode
02:53—If you really know me, you know that...
03:35—Defining strategy and the role of culture
05:52—Teaching as a catalyst for deeper learning and personal growth
08:12—How team culture is forged: the role of pressure and cortisol 
10:33—Understanding the last 8 percent
14:34—Bridging the gap between intent and action
17:46—The 8 percent culture map
19:58—Risk-taking and its connection to innovation and performance
22:30—Debunking myths about pressure and performance
26:15—How can people follow you and continue learning from you?
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Additional Resources:
Personal website: www.jppawliw-fry.com
Link to book: Performing Under Pressure
Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/jppawliwfry

Thank you to our executive producer Zach Ness, our producer Nazanin Homayoun Jam and our editor James Pearce. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow, download, and subscribe. I’m your host, Kaihan Krippendorff—thank you for listening.

Follow us at outthinker.com/podcast

Transcript

Kaihan Krippendorff: Well, JP, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us. I know you've got a very busy schedule, and we really appreciate you being here.
 
 JP Pawliw-Fry: Oh, it's totally my pleasure.
 
 Kaihan Krippendorff: So I'm gonna open up with the same 2 questions I always ask. First is, this is just to get to know you personally, may have nothing to do with your work. If you can complete this sentence for me, it really know me, you know that.
 
 JP Pawliw-Fry: This is easy. If you really know me you know that I am obsessed about the New Zealand all Black Rugby team? So much so that, by the way, last night, they played England. They played on Saturday, but I was so busy. I watched it last night, tape delayed.
 
 I'm so obsessed that I leave Wednesday to Dublin to watch and play Ireland this Friday. That's how crazy I am. And I've been to the last 6, I think, since 2003 Rugby World Cup.
 
 Kaihan Krippendorff: Second question is because this is a podcast that specializes in strategy, and you do strategy for, you know, mental strategy, military strategy, sports strategy, coaching strategy, culture strategy, people strategy, business strategy. What is your definition of strategy?
 
 JP Pawliw-Fry: I think I probably have less of a good answer on this 1, to be honest.
 
 Kaihan Krippendorff: We always get a different answer. 
 
 JP Pawliw-Fry: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's funny because, you know, we're big believers that the long term difference maker is culture you. If you have a good strategy, people can, over time, copy.
 
 If you've got good product, people can. If it's differentiated and adding stuff, people can copy. But culture is not something you can copy. Because of the and we'll talk about this, because of how it develops. It's unique to the experiences within that organization.
 
 You can't cop people say, oh, we wanna have a culture like Google or Goldman or McKinsey, whoever. It doesn't matter. No. You actually can't copy it, which is which is something I hope everyone who's listening really gets because that becomes then your point of difference, your competitive advantage. So I don't know if I if I can answer the question on strategy but more so bring it back to what drives the execution of strategy.
 
 Because here's what we know. When we talk to organizations and CEOs or, you know, strategy you know, CIOs or folks who are on the strategy side, you don't work on your culture because it's nice to have, because always should have a nice culture. No. You do it because for 1 reason 1 reason only, to help you execute your strategy more effectively. That's it.
 
 Your people are so busy. They don't need something that's like a fluff or a check box. No. They need something that in their very busy lives will help them deliver, execute, get results quicker, faster with less drama. And that's how culture and strategy come together.
 
 Kaihan Krippendorff: Yeah. No. I think that's that sounds exactly right. We did a session for some of our chief strategy officers. We're talking about leadership and culture with a former CEO of a big company.
 
 And that's sort of where it came down to is, like, culture is not just about everyone being happy and everyone liking to each loving each other, it is about there's strong culture that aligns with strategy that encourages whatever the behaviors and choices that are aligned with strategy. So I wanna get into 8 to the 8 percent. I wanna get into what people get wrong about culture and about the role of pressure in shaping. But first, you know, I know that you taught at Kellogg and were ranked as 1 of the most popular professors there? And what was what was your class called?
 
 And what was that?
 
 JP Pawliw-Fry: That was my mom did those rankings. A lot of usability there. Yeah. So what I thought was leadership, specifically, had a lead under pressure, specifically how to manage your brain under pressure, and that that was the kind of focus. And yeah.
 
 Yeah. I just I loved my time there. I'm not teaching her anymore as kinda like you. I'm so busy with traveling. I just I couldn't do it.
 
 And so I didn't choose to.
 
 Kaihan Krippendorff: Yeah. You know, I heard you talk about the power of teaching as a way of learning too. So I'm gonna leave for paragolite tomorrow, and I teach a 3 day, 8 hour, a day class. And it is a great excuse to get my thinking straight about things I'm teaching.
 
 JP Pawliw-Fry: Oh, it's so true. And there's and there's 2 parts of this that I think you might be alluding to. 1 is for anyone out there listening, the best way to get your head around some content is to teach it yourself. So if you're thinking strategy or you're thinking culture or whatever in your organization listener, the best way for you to really internalize it is to reteach it. No question.
 
 But what you're saying, I think, is exactly true too, and it I find that in my experience. The more I work with this material so we do we survey 40000 people a month, and we've done that for many years, and we're doing lots of research. But that's what'll be great at a certain level because then you gotta test it. You gotta be in the room and test it. And I the best ideas come out of the very things you're about to do.
 
 When you sit there and this doesn't land or somebody gives you way more concrete way to think about it. You're like, and it just it just boom. And I learned this is your point. I learned as much from kind of reteaching and that play that they kind of almost literally play with ideas and then I think that's what makes ideas stick. Because at the end of the day, again, we're all so busy.
 
 And the way our brain works, we can't hold on to a lot of ideas that I don't wanna touch. So we need it stickiness stickiness matters.
 
 Kaihan Krippendorff: Yeah. And you think that maybe just the truth should be enough, but it needs to be memorable in order to kinda cascade. Let me let me let me give you a common view on how culture changes that I know you've proven have at least 2 falsehoods that are commonly held to be true. I wanna transform culture, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna develop a set of values that I will write down, and I'll illustrate them with some stories, and then I will cascade it down from the top of the organization down through the entire organization, mirroring, you know, having leadership mirror that. Yep.
 
 That doesn't work very often. Like, for some reasons, it doesn't work.
 
 JP Pawliw-Fry: Yeah. So it really comes to, like, a couple of really important empirical findings, but really important ideas. Number 1, culture exists less across organizations and more on teams. The fundamental unit where culture exists is on a team. Okay.
 
 That's number 1. And I'll come back to that in a second. But number 2, how culture develops is really important to know. Culture is the stories of how things are done around here. That's their nice, simple definition.
 
 When we're under pressure, We have more cortisol in our brain. Chortisol is a stress hormone for those who don't know. 1 of the things that Chortisol does is that it seers in memory. So when you got that call at 2 or 3 in the morning, I did about my 12 year old 1 day, which was just horrific. Cortisol will seer that memory in when 09:11 happened.
 
 Right? When whenever a big event, when there's more cortisol in someone's brain, then that whatever is happening that moment gets seared into their brain. Okay. Now What does I have to do with culture? So culture exists on a team.
 
 You as a leader of a team. You can say, here are our values. But if under pressure, when people have more cores on their brain, the decisions you make in that moment, the behaviors you make in those moments, or that you engage in those moments, that's what gets seared into the brain of everyone on your team. That becomes the culture on your team. You can say, we believe in integrity.
 
 But if you're Wells Fargo now and you know, you're fitting millions of fake accounts. Forget your values. It's what you do under pressure when you have to hit your results. And by the way, that's heavy, but it's also I hope everyone who's listening gets this it's your biggest opportunity then. That's when you can shape culture in the hard moments.
 
 Right? That's what people miss. So we see last 8 percent, which we haven't really identified. I I should explain what the last 8 percent is, but last 8 percent are your biggest opportunities to transform yourself and transform the culture on your team? So let me describe lasting perspective.
 
 That's not that's not fair to people. So some background first. To be high performing, on a team, you need to take risks. It's the best empirical finding we have right now on what differentiates a high performing team as they take risks. What do I mean by that?
 
 Well, there's intrapersonal is strategic, but let's talk intrapersonal. They name an inconvenient truth. They actually say what's on their mind. They're open to feedback. They disagree.
 
 Whatever it is, but they take an inter personal risk. Now here's the thing. The very same moment that we need to take a risk to be high performing, our brain which has been designed to protect the body, save, survive, our brain defaults to protection, not risk in that same moment. And so there's this conflict. We call it the fundamental conflict of performance.
 
 And unless you can get over that and get really underneath that, people will not take risks. Okay. That's first big point. Second point is we wanted to quantify this. We're big quant folks.
 
 Right? Imagine this now. So you're on a team. There's a risk that, again, I'm gonna speak to all the listeners. For all of you who are listening, you know there's a risk you need to take on your team, strategic, in your personal, whatever.
 
 You know there's a risk you need to take. Have a hard conversation. Let's use that 1. And then there's a risk that you actually take, and there's a gap between the risk. You know, you should take in the risk.
 
 You actually take and that gap we quantify, 7.56 percent. We rounded up to 8 percent and studies 34000 people, we know that when you wanna go and have a hard conversation, most of us, we leave a gap, and that gap is everything. Yep. So 1 of the things we love to do in our work is to challenge people and become students of human behavior. It's why I love your work because you're you're a hundred percent just like you just kind of, you know, self disclose just now.
 
 And I'm go I'll tell you the same. So when we hit the last 8 percent, we know that there's 1 of 2 predictable patterns or we call them predictable default behaviors that we respond in that moment. 60 percent of us avoid, 32 percent of us make a mess. I think most people know what a void means. I'll come back to it.
 
 That make a mess. I'm wanting to have a conversation with you. I'm thinking about it 3 in the morning, 3 in the morning. Now I get in the room, and I come on way too strong, way too hot. And I have impact, I don't intend.
 
 So our work is really to help people find a middle way between avoid, which 2 thirds of us do 68 percent or make a mess. Now for the record, I'm an avoider. So I've worked with a as I like to say, I've either worked with a coach or therapist for the last 17 music. When my life is going well, it's coach, but it's not going so well. It's a therapist.
 
 But the thing is that that's been a great I hope. Learning for me, which is okay, on my senior team. I can avoid why. And I know why because I wanna be liked. I'm in a relative position of power as are you.
 
 Right? I started this company. I blah blah blah. And I feel the need to be like, imagine everyone listener on your team who doesn't feel the same kind of or isn't the same power position. Imagine how why do you avoid?
 
 Because, again, the worst thing they can do is to be excluded. So the brain defaults to protection, not risk, and that's why they're gonna play it safe. And they're not and just imagine for strategy. How can you execute your strategy? Get good ideas.
 
 Right? People on this podcast love to play with new ideas to be creative, to innovate. That will not happen unless you dig in you decrease that gap. From 7.56 to even to 5 percent. Great.
 
 Even those marginal gains make a huge difference. Mhmm.
 
 Kaihan Krippendorff: Just a clarification question for the audience. This is 8 percent of what
 
 JP Pawliw-Fry: Sure. So imagine so there's kind of a there's a risk we need to take to be high performing on a team, whether it be let's say name and it can be your truth. So you know you should be saying something. In your gut. But the actual risk you take to say something, name something, is there's a gap of 7.56 below that.
 
 So there's a gap between what we think we should say, what we actually say. Someone asked for feedback. Do we say everything what we call it? We know we should say no. We you leave that gap wide for a bunch of reasons.
 
 1, because self preservation ourselves. 1, sometimes, we don't wanna upset others. So in our in our some of our work we've created, studies 72000 people, we found that there's different cultures that enable risk taking. So imagine through our whole conversation here, we've identified need to take risks. Here's the percent that we avoid.
 
 Like, in a conversation, we don't say that last 8 percent. Or you don't make that hard decision. K? But then we know there's some cultures that actually enable that and some some that don't. And so we've got a 2 by 2, and it's based on courage, in connection.
 
 The largest concentration of our of this map is in the lower right hand quadrant. So imagine, courage is on the vertical, connections on the horizontal. So culture in the lower right hand quadrant is low on courage, high on connection, we call that a family culture. Right? And so we default to being nice avoiding.
 
 It's an avoiding culture, and we don't name the hard thing. And so we wanna both give people skills to internally. So, again, let me go to some good research. People don't know this. Again, if you're in strategy, you need to know this for somebody to speak up on your team to have a divergent ideas and communicate that.
 
 There's 2 things they need. So that person taking a risk was just there's 50 percent of the factors that drive that risk comes from inside of them. So they need some capabilities and some confidence to use those capabilities to speak up to know how to. That's 50 percent, but only 50 percent is what's in their environment? What's the culture on their team?
 
 So that's our work is both give skills to that individual, but also build the culture on their team, fundamental, you know, where culture exists. So they can actually take that risk. Because you know and I know. Let's say you're in a room in Paraguay, and you just got it. You've got the team humming.
 
 You know, you're a pretty sharp guy. You're charismatic. You're confident. You act in that room different than, let's say, you go to a hospital for someone. It's not life threatening, but you go in and you're trying to find your way.
 
 You don't have any status in the hospital. You don't know your way around, and you act way less courageously. You you're the same person with the same skills. Why is that? Because 50 percent is the culture on the team, and I'll say this to everyone doing strategy.
 
 If you don't work on the culture on your team, you're gonna have maybe even capable confident people who will sit back, and they won't because they are trying to protect themselves. They don't wanna be ex communicated from their tribe.
 
 Kaihan Krippendorff: Yeah. Got it. Do you mind just describing maybe or at least give us the names of the other of the other For sure.
 
 JP Pawliw-Fry: Yeah. Yeah. So Yeah. For sure. So just to kinda get to behavioral to make it concrete.
 
 So we say courage and connection, but, really, it's high care and high accountability. So the courage it's more than this, but we try to reduce everything down to make it sticky. So think of high care and high accountability. In the upper left hand quadrant, you have more courage, more accountability, but less care, less connection. We call that a transactional culture, upper left.
 
 Bottom left is low connection low courage or low care, low accountability. We call that a fear based culture. So imagine we've got transactional upper left, fear based, lower left, family bottom right. That takes up 67 percent of all the cultures in this study of 72000 people, which is amazing. Only 33 percent is it that upper right hand quadrant of high care, high accountability.
 
 And what's interesting, you and I talked about this in other settings, but So 1 of the things that I've been lucky enough to do is coach coaches in the NFL NBA, NFL Olympic coaches. And this is the characteristic that upper right head quadrant of the best. High care, high accountability. What does that mean? That means that the athlete and I'm gonna use this word literally.
 
 The athlete feels loved by that coach to such a degree, so high care. They know the intention of that coach so well that they can withstand high accountability, high good feedback. When the coach pushes at athlete and the athlete knows why they're being pushed, that's the key. So as you're listening up there and you're thinking, like, thinking about your team, oh, you know, everyone out there. How can I build this upper right hand quadrant of high care, high accountability?
 
 And that's literally the work we do with organizations around the world as we help them, you know, build their culture in months, not years, kind of at scale, at speed with this map, with these skills.
 
 Kaihan Krippendorff: I love the framework, and I get that you need to do that on a team by team basis, why you do the work there in the team. What I'm not sure if there is a linkage here. So now we'll get back to that later is in the research that I found for driving innovation within, we see a very strong correlation between high levels of entrepreneurial intensity and financial performance and the ability to recruit and retain top talent. What drives higher levels of entrepreneurial activity are a number of factors, but there's kinda, like, 4 4 different blood buckets, but risk taking appears in 3 places. You need to have a structural Organizational structures that allow risk taking, a culture that allows risk taking, and you need to attract and develop people, have a certain risk profile.
 
 They take smart risks. So risk is the only 1 that appears across 3 of them. And so there's clear linkage to financial performance if you could do that. So how do you do that?
 
 JP Pawliw-Fry: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think in just your definitions so, again, when we work with an organization, part of it is it's a great question is, What are the what's the structure? What's the performance management com? All these things that help an organization communicate signal, we value risk taking, and we're gonna incentive reinforce it, you know, through our structure. So that's 1 part.
 
 But the big thing is because the fundamental unit of culture is on a team, the key is that manager, that people leader. So in our culture tune system, We'll give them this structure. We call it a sprint to own the culture on their team. And so that's the bigger push. Like, the structural pieces are there, not there, but it's on your team where you go, I feel that my coach my manager has my back.
 
 They are modeling high care, high accountability. They still push me. That that to me is the kind of the really the big piece. And the great news, it's interesting because people are busy, but managers in our experience so wanna have something to build the culture on their team, but they don't know how sometimes. Right?
 
 And they're busy. You know what I mean? I'm not a facilitator. I don't know how to do it. But in fact, and that's our special sauce.
 
 You're at least it bring it to that level. So imagine this across a whole organization, at the same time, we can have people leaders running this sprint, and so you actually get a pure pressure, which is amazing. Right? So we do without getting into all the specifics, but mistaking will only happen if people feel safe and they have the skills to take, you know, to step in and kind of manage their brain under pressure. And that's where they really comes again.
 
 Kaihan Krippendorff: Yeah. I'd like to just I don't know we're reaching towards the top of our time with you, but I think we need to also bring in pressure here because you talk about, you know, pressure rising to the equation, performing under pressure is a wrong way to think about it. And then pressure is this moment where the culture gets made. So just talk to us about those 2 things.
 
 JP Pawliw-Fry: Yeah. Oh, that's great. But by the way, you know, I've been interviewed in another podcast, not everyone does their homework. I love how you read and are on top of stuff, honestly, because that's a really important question. And here's kinda what you're getting at for the listener.
 
 When we're under pressure, there's a myth. And the myth is that people perform better under pressure. They rise to the occasion. That's utter bunk. Again, look at the data.
 
 Michael Jordan, most people on the podcast will know Michael Jordan, you know, were all of this that maybe that age group. Michael Jordan shot worse under pressure. How do we know what do we mean? Precious situation being a free throw in over time, up a point, down a point tied, under a few minutes left. Like, we you know, there there's research done on this.
 
 Michael Jordan shoots worse in those pressure moments than his playoff or his season average. He shoots worse under pressure. Consistent with every NBA player in the history of the game. Why am I saying this? I'm saying this.
 
 So if you know that there's a chance that you actually will underperform under pressure, when you underperform it, here's the catch. So let me say this. Michael Jordan shot worse under pressure, but he was less worse than everyone else. And here's the thing. Everyone else I'm not I I don't know everyone else.
 
 But what I've seen like, I've been to 7 Olympic Games work with athletes. I can tell you this. What an athlete thinks so imagine a story an athlete can cox. I'm going to my first Olympics. This is the highest level.
 
 I'd better be at my best in order to succeed. If that's the story, you're done. Because you in your first Olympic game, you're gonna underperform the first 5 minutes. It's just, like, it happened that time. Yeah.
 
 Because you're a bit more pressured. That's right. And so if the story is I need to be better than I've ever been before to succeed, if all of a sudden I'm not being as good as I've been for, I can't succeed anymore. Just viral. This downward spiral.
 
 Yeah. But instead, you're like, no. I expect it. And when it comes, I got a tool to manage it. Let's go.
 
 And so I'm less affected. That's what Michael Jordan was less affected than anyone else. And so that's where the pressure piece comes in. And then the second great question is, okay. But I thought it's in pressure months when you're creating culture.
 
 It is. And so, again, strategy officer, you know, leader on listening to this know this. You will make mistakes when you're under pressure. But can you own it? That's it.
 
 Can you sit there, come back to a meeting, go, you know what? I think though we're reactive team or David or Cayan or whoever and own it, because people will give you such a benefit of the doubt. It's 1 of the things that we We're so afraid to not be perfect. We're so afraid to, like, appear like we know everything, and that's actually a barrier to that intimacy that grows when you do and make a mistake. When you are just open and honest because that's the truth of the situation.
 
 And that's why this whole idea of the last 8 percent opportunity. Your last 8 percent for most people, they avoid it. They feel bad in the body. I get it. If you can reframe that and say, when we have a last 8 percent, it's our biggest opportunity to grow the culture on our team.
 
 This is our biggest opportunity to differentiate from our competitors. All of a sudden, now you're gonna be more courageous, and you're gonna build a culture that encourages this longer term, you know, kind of courage, which is just you know this. It's so exciting to see. People wanna be on an adventure. They do.
 
 They wanna be doing great things. And if you can be a more courageous organization, like, to build a that's really what we do. Build courageous organizations, people love it. They get so energized.
 
 Kaihan Krippendorff: Yeah. I love it. I've got 15 more questions, but we are reaching
 
 JP Pawliw-Fry: out to the top of our
 
 Kaihan Krippendorff: time with you. But the great thing is that you've got an amazing book, you've got other materials, you've got this podcast that we can listen to walking every morning, how can people best connect with you and continue to learn?
 
 JP Pawliw-Fry: Yeah. I mean, reach out on LinkedIn. That's probably the easiest way. It's a weird name, though. Hey, Pawelph fry, PAWLIW dash fry.
 
 How do how do you remember that? That's hard. You know, go to our organization's website, which is IHHP as in Peter dot com. There's the podcast, a walk in podcast, and we've spent 25 years iterating for athletes. But now it's just freely available, which is a way to start your day, you know, you know, to manage your emotions and to be better in the last 8 percent.
 
 Kaihan Krippendorff: Well, JF, thank you so much for the work that you do building and other people's risk of doing your own proprietary research and really giving us grounded proven things that are also actionable and inspiring. So I'd thank you taking the time to share some of that.
 
 JP Pawliw-Fry: Pleasure was all mine.