1773 – Interactive Facilitation and Training Leaders with Faris Aranki

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0:58with us right now ferris aranki ferris you are the founder and ceo of shia ghetto consulting you're found on the web at shiaghetto.com that's s-h-i-a-g-e-t-o.com ferris thank you so much for joining us thank you very much for having me josh it's a real pleasure to be with you and the listeners viewers today yes well give us a quick overview of the work that you do who you serve i'd love to learn more yeah well the clues in the name of the company sheer ghetto which many people have no idea what it means that's a japanese word for a sharpening stone right so if you've ever had a knife or a pair of scissors that have gone dull you may have used a sheer ghetto to sharpen it and you didn't know right uh why did i call myself after a japanese sharpening stone because my company sharpens other companies.

1:47You know, we all go a little bit dull, particularly our strategies go a bit dull, our effectiveness goes dull. So what we do is we go in and we help companies and teams become sharper and more effective. And the way we do that is through our patented methodology. It's three pillars. We help improve IQ, EQ and FQ. And FQ is not a rude word, in case people are thinking it. It stands for focus quotient, which many of your listeners of viewers might not have heard of, but it's that ability to focus. And so we work across those three dimensions. So that's really what we do day to day. It means getting in the heart of teams, facilitating them to get the best out of them, make sure they all align, talk the same language, or teaching leaders and up and coming leaders to do the things that we do to have that impact.

2:33Yeah. So how might someone know that there's some sharpening to be done within our organization? You know, what a great metaphor. Over the past couple of years, I've really obsessed on learning to cook, you know, kind of improving my kitchen skills. And you're absolutely right. And, you know, with this metaphor, a good knife or even a bad knife, which is always dull, but a good knife, it generally requires sharpening nearly every time you use it. And people who aren't paying attention to that may not be aware that they're working with dull knives. Someone who's experienced and is used to staying sharp, you know, having their knife fully sharpened can absolutely tell when things are off.

3:18And I think that that's such a great metaphor for experienced leaders who don't get complacent. And I think complacency can be a major problem. Massive problem, massive problem. Fortunately or unfortunately, most of our work comes with people who have a dull knife, right? They're not achieving what they need to achieve. They can't unlock their strategic priorities. The team is just not working right. But you're right. If they were to take the time to finesse that blade more regularly, keep it sharp, they'd be on top of things. They'd get that sort of 10%, 15 % more effectiveness, and it would just mean better results.

3:56So why wait till the end and have to fix all the problems, then foresee them and nip them in the bud early? Yeah. Well, OK, so help us develop our spidey sense, if you will, or our sensitivity to dull systems. And because, again, what I'm hoping is maybe we can inspire a few ideas how we can be a lot more perceptive. But the number two is how to prioritize inspired action. Like, how can we be more proactive when we sense that something is off? Yeah. So, you know, if I go back to those three pillars that I talked about, you know, that's a good way that we go into companies and assess, right? Have you got an IQ problem?

4:37As in the great indicators that you're not generating enough ideas, right? First of all, you don't have clarity on what you should be achieving. That's the number one problem. If you can, you and your team cannot all enunciate in the same way, this is our vision, this is what we're going for, this is what we need to achieve, then you've got a problem. Right. Because otherwise people are working at cross purposes, even a 2 % or 1 % little change means they are doing different things when they walk out into the company and they're focused. So do you have clarity on that? Secondly, have you generated enough ideas on how you might achieve that?

5:08If you haven't, if you're just taking the first idea or the first option coming your way, you're probably your IQ is a little bit dull. Right. Get more ideas in the hopper, test them. Right. And then you're going to be in a good place. So that's the IQ sort of early warning signals, the spidey sense, as you say, you know, do we have clarity of vision? Do we have enough options to get there? And have we tested them? Then if you move on to the EQ, that's the ability to take others with you on the journey, right? So if you find silos in your business, if you find people having more confrontations than actually working together, if you find people not understanding your message as a leader, right, that's your spidey sense for your EQ needs a bit of sharpening.

5:45I need to be able to communicate, take them on the journey with me a lot better. And finally, the FQ, that's the focus question. That's the one people maybe struggle with. That's probably your team are doing too much. They're overburdened. You know, they're burned out. So, you know, the spidey sense on the FQ is, are we doing too many things? Can we lessen the room? Are there distractions that are affecting the team? And I don't just mean like mobile phones pinging here and there. You know, I'm talking about broken processes, broken things that disrupt our flow from achieving and focusing on what we really want to focus.

6:18You know, classic examples are, you know, we don't have licenses for pieces of software. We have a broken printer. So everybody loses 10 minutes of their day to just kick it in. Right. These are all FQ distractors. They rob you of focus. Just eliminate them. Right. And you will get more out of your team. You will be sharper. So there you go. Some Spidey sense across each of those dimensions. So Ferris, tell me a bit more about how you engage and work with your clients to achieve these goals. Yeah, so me and my team, we operate in one of two ways. We engage, either we get in the heart of teams and we are there to challenge them, very interactive facilitation where we sort of fill in the gaps that the team is missing.

6:57We challenge the biases that we see and we make sure that everyone is included that way to get the best out of that team. And if we're not doing that, you know, we are teaching leaders to do what we do. We train in a range of soft skills. How can you influence people? How can you use storytelling for maximum impact? How can you build a relationship with a complete stranger in less than five minutes? These are really powerful things for leaders to get the most out of their teams, get people to go. And it doesn't matter if it's a strategy session, if it's a war game, if it's a team offsite. These are the sort of environments that we interact in and have a lot of success.

7:29And to be frank with you, Josh, we enjoy it. It's lots of fun. Yeah. And so tell me about Shiger, like how long you've been in business, how you got into this, you know, what types of clients do you work with normally? Yeah. So I started the company four years ago. I quit a strategy consulting firm where I had a really good role. Tyler was a partner in a firm because I saw this gap of developing strategies. You have some big brains, but when it came to the companies adopting them and getting the maximum value out of them, nine times out of 10, they did nothing. They didn't do the full value. and that's because people didn't buy into those strategies they weren't being landed so I saw a gap there because I was really really good at that so I set up a company to do just that forget the coming up with ideas you know as much as I love that um so I set up this company six months before COVID obviously the first year was terrible absolute stinker uh because of COVID we didn't have any work for almost a year but then it took off it took off with a bang Josh so now fast forward to year four we have uh 30 big clients the likes of Amazon the likes of Heineken We work with giant corporates, but we also work with startups because there's different challenges in each.

8:35And I love that diversity because you're taking ideas from one to the other. And we just continue to grow. We work across North America. We work across the Middle East. We work here in Europe. It's a lovely place to be and look forward to the future. Yeah. Your website is shiaghetto.com, S-H-I-A-G-E-T-O. Looks like you've got some great resources. Share just a bit about someone that's maybe just getting to know you, what you would have, what you'd recommend for them to look at or engage. What I'd recommend is come to our website. You'll find lots of tips on how to sharpen each of those little elements that I talked about.

9:10And there's an assessment on there to see how strategically effective you are. So, you know, have a go, put in whatever you want to achieve in life. It could be personal. It could be business. And you'll get an assessment of how good you are and how close likely you are to achieve success in that. That's a great place. You can also have a bit of fun seeing some of our blogs and vlogs. But that's where I'd really start for anyone who's just coming to the website. And of course, by all means, drop me and the team a line. We love to talk about these things. And that's the best place to carry on the conversation.

9:41Yeah, excellent. And so also to tell me just a bit more about who you work with or someone what I'm curious about is someone may be listening right now. And you have worked with some big companies Coca-Cola, Condé Nast, Amazon, BMW. There is quite a huge who's who list on your website. Do you only work with enterprise-level companies? No, no, not at all. So we work with enterprise-level companies. I'll tell you the secret, Josh. The thing that connects all those companies is I have relations with people in them, right? I dial up my EQ. That's how I build my business because people like working with people they like, right?

10:23So if you've had an impact previously, they come back to you, even if you're a small company. Just the other week, I had a phone call saying, could you be in the US? Can you be in New York? And I'm in London within five days because we just love working with you. Come and work your magic with the team. And so, yeah, unfortunately, I was free. I was able to change some things around. But that's the power of how you can build a small business. So, yes, we work with large corporates. But as I said before, we work with a bunch of stuff. I could reel off a bunch of names, but your listeners and viewers would never have heard of them.

10:54We work in coffee tech. We work in medical outsourcing. We work in marketing agencies. We work in a range of small companies because they're fun and they're going to be the big corporates of tomorrow. So why not diversify? Excellent. Shiaghetto.com. And again, Ferris Aranki, you are the founder and CEO. Congratulations on your success. Congratulations on your impact in the world. Ferris, it's been great connecting with you and having you as a guest. Josh, the pleasure's been on mine. Thank you very much.

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