We spend a lot of time thinking about culture as something that happens between people. The experiences leaders create shape what employees believe. Those beliefs influence how people act. Those actions ultimately determine the results an organization gets.
That is the Results Pyramid®.
But lately I’ve been thinking about what happens when you turn the pyramid on yourself. Because you have beliefs about yourself, too.
You believe you are disciplined or undisciplined. Good under pressure or terrible under pressure. Someone who follows through or someone who procrastinates. Someone who can handle difficult conversations or someone who avoids them. Someone who exercises. Someone who reads. Someone who takes risks. Someone who quits.
And those beliefs matter because they influence the choices you make.
If I believe I am terrible at public speaking, I am probably going to avoid opportunities to speak. If I believe I am someone who can figure things out, I am more likely to raise my hand for something I have never done before.
Those choices are the actions you take that start producing results. Which means that if you want different results in your life, one of the most interesting questions you can ask yourself is: What experiences am I creating that reinforce what I already believe about myself?
Think about developing a habit. Most of us start with the action. I am going to work out five days a week. I am going to wake up at 5:30am. We make a choice then we rely on discipline to make the action happen. Sometimes that works. Often it doesn’t.
The Results Pyramid® suggests another place to start: experience.
Create an experience that gives you evidence for the belief you want to have.
If you want to believe you are someone who exercises consistently, maybe the first goal isn’t an hour at the gym every morning. Maybe the goal is creating enough experiences of keeping a commitment to yourself that you begin to believe, “I actually do what I say I’m going to do.” That belief makes the next choice easier. Then you make it again. Eventually, you have enough evidence that the story you tell yourself begins to change.
This is why I think we sometimes make personal change unnecessarily difficult. We decide who we want to become and immediately demand that we behave like that person perfectly.
But beliefs rarely change because we order ourselves to believe something new. They change because of experience… even our own.
You cannot stand in front of the mirror every morning, tell yourself that you are courageous, and expect courage to magically appear. You can, however, deliberately put yourself in situations where you have to practice courage. You can have the conversation you have been avoiding. You can volunteer for the assignment that scares you. Now you have evidence.
The same thing happens in the opposite direction. Every time you tell yourself you are going to do something and don’t do it, that is an experience too. You said you would get up and you hit snooze instead. You said you would have the conversation and avoided it. None of those decisions individually determines who you are. But repeated experiences create patterns, and patterns create beliefs.
Eventually, “I didn’t do it today” can become “I’m just not someone who does that.” That belief will influence tomorrow’s choice before tomorrow even arrives. This is why changing yourself requires more than setting goals. You have to pay attention to the evidence you are collecting about yourself.
What belief would make the result you want more likely? What choices would someone with that belief make? And most importantly, what experiences can you intentionally create that would give you evidence that the belief is true?
Maybe you don’t need to become more disciplined overnight. Maybe you need to create one experience today that proves you can keep a promise to yourself. Then do it again tomorrow.
Wait, am I just describing what they say in the book Atomic Habits? I never read the book, but I bet I’m close.
Elsewhere in Culture
Should AI Redesign Who You Hire? with John Frehse
Most companies are trying to layer AI onto jobs that were designed for a completely different way of working. What happens if you throw out the org chart instead?
John and I talked about the power of the clean sheet exercise, why old job titles can trap leaders in old assumptions, and why the future of thought leadership may be less about having opinions and more about showing what you have actually done. Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ceo-daily-brief-with-dr-jessica-kriegel/id1725350421?i=1000786951740 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0MFDxtmDkgk0Xe5LX0tjLi?si=8ef48658ec5b48ba
The Most Important Lesson at the Table with Rashmi Badwe
Rashmi Badwe, EVP and CEO of TIAA Wealth Management, finally earned a seat in an exclusive strategy group early in her career, only to be kicked out two meetings later because she had not said a word.
We talked about learning to develop an informed point of view, having the confidence to express it, and recognizing that leadership lessons are rarely universal. Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ceo-daily-brief-with-dr-jessica-kriegel/id1725350421?i=1000787154868 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/28oYVy5BEL26JX8ZGPnPfg?si=0996104fd8374f76
Why AI Efficiency Doesn’t Change Organizations with John Frehse
Saving hours every week with AI sounds like productivity. But if the person downstream from you is still working at the same speed, the organization has not actually gotten any faster.
John and I unpack why individual AI efficiency keeps creating new choke points, why isolated pilots are not enough, and why leaders need to redesign the entire workflow if they want AI to create enterprise value. Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ceo-daily-brief-with-dr-jessica-kriegel/id1725350421?i=1000787386924 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/19wDbInPoaRVbnlzj6KRLQ?si=ae27a847ff0d425c
And coming later this week…
When Leadership Instability Becomes Everyone’s Problem with Heather Younger
Heather Younger, leadership keynote speaker and author of the upcoming book The Unshakable Team, joined me to talk about what happens when instability at the top starts spreading through the organization.
We talked about why teams stop speaking up, how psychological safety is built through repeated behavior over time, and the uncomfortable possibility every executive needs to consider: you may be creating the problem you are trying to solve.
Your $20 AI Budget Is Not an AI Strategy with John Frehse
Giving everyone access to an AI tool and telling them to experiment is not the same thing as having an AI strategy.
John and I talked about what more intentional adoption looks like, from focusing employees on specific workflows to finding places where AI can remove days of work. The question is becoming less about whether your people are using AI and more about whether their use of it is actually changing how the organization works.