Dave shares his powerful OSCS Framework that he uses for rapid improvement in multiple areas of his life and business.
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0:45 “Research your own experience. Absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, add what is essentially your own.” - Bruce Lee
1:10 OSCS Framework = Open, Stop, Continue, Start
2:04 You've got to be Open to feedback before you ask for it.
3:29 What should you Stop doing?
5:10 What should you Continue doing?
6:25 What should you Start doing?
7:01 Don't just do things because you can. Make sure it moves the needle.
7:47 You can catch most of Dave's Facebook LIVE sessions at https://facebook.com/groups/dmmdavegambrill .
8:30 360 degree feedback
9:55 Avoid catching a case of the "yeah buts".
11:08 Avoid asking blind people to proofread your vision.
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Welcome to Unleash the Awesome with Dave Gambrill. All of us have unique skills, talents, and abilities that aren't being used to their full potential. Our mission is to share the people, tools, apps, and other resources that will help you unleash your awesome on the world. Yo, what's up it's Dave, welcome to another episode of unleash the awesome today.
Let's talk about my OSCS framework for rapid improvement. Like many of the things I share with you, this is something that I had learned, different elements of it in my corporate experience. And I took it in true Bruce Lee fashion, who has famously said, and I'm going to paraphrase except what is useful, reject what is useless and make the rest uniquely your own.
Uh, with that spirit, I've taken some of the stuff I've learned in corporate America and made my own framework for rapid improvement. So in this case, I call this one, the O S C S framework for rapid improvement. What the heck does that stand for? Well, it stands for open stop, continue, and start. And we'll talk about those each in just a moment,
but first one talk about where this works and how to use it. So this works really well. When you look at your own work, your own tasks, the things that you're doing, the repetitive things that you're doing, your business, your life, your workout, your eating habits. It really can work in just about anything you're doing in your life,
but it works especially well when you are dealing with customers and prospects and maybe partners or your family members or things like that for getting feedback from them as well. So this works doing your own research, your own, look at things, using your own information to go through this framework, but it works exceptionally well when you get some feedback from other people.
So what is the OSCS framework? Well, as I mentioned, the first step is open. This is a feedback mechanism. And if you're going to get feedback from people, you need to be open. That's why I added this to the beginning. Most other people will only tell you about the three other steps, but if you're not going to be open to receiving information and open to perhaps receiving harsh feedback or feedback that you weren't prepared for,
unless you're open, none of this works. So if you don't think you're going to be open, then don't even listen to the rest of the podcast. Cause it won't matter. You have to be open. You have to be open to the following three questions that we're going to ask people. So you have to put yourself in a position of, okay,
I want to get better. I want to improve. So I'm going to ask these questions and then I'm not going to fight people. I'm not going to make excuses. I'm not going to have a case of the yeah. Buts, right? Yeah. But this, yeah, but that now I'm just going to take it and say, thank you,
thankful for your thoughtful information. Thankful for your, thank you for your thoughtful reply. I appreciate your feedback. This is so great. Thank you. I'm so glad you were willing to tell me this. Things like that. Okay. So that's where you have to go. If you're going to go all in all defensive don't even bother. Okay? So the first step is to be open.
Now let's get into the meat of this, the first thing you want to do. And I change this up a little bit because in corporate America, they used to call it a start, stop, continue. But I think this order makes more sense and it's more critical. So the first step is stop the question you're asking yourself, or you're going to have people ask you,
or you're going to ask them, what should I stop doing? What things am I currently doing that I should stop doing? Right? This is what I call addition by subtraction. There's probably a lot of stuff we're doing that we should not be doing. Right? Many people assemble it to do list on some level, we need to be looking at a to don't list.
What are some things we do that we just should not be doing? They're not adding value. They're not moving the needle. People don't like it. The customers don't like it, your partners, your family members don't like it. Um, and maybe frankly, you don't even like it, but you were just doing it because he thought it served other people,
right? So the first part of this is the first question you ask is what should I stop doing? What is something I'm doing that I should stop doing? Right? So you can look at your own processes that way, your, your workout routine, your nutrition, your, how you get dressed in the morning. Like, what is your, they call it the activities of daily living.
Like what does your morning routine look like? There's probably some things in that that you could stop doing and we could optimize it. Right? So what should you stop doing? Okay. And when you ask other people this question, this is probably where you get the most volatile responses, right? What should I stop doing? And people will say something and you'll be like,
okay, thank you. I appreciate your feedback. Let me, let me think on that. Let me, let me ponder on that. Let me, let me marinate in that for a little bit and I'll get back to you. You don't need to give people a quick response. Okay. I'm going to stop doing that or commit to stopping. Just go.
Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. I'd never really thought of it that way. I appreciate your, your insight because a lot of times people are gonna highlight blind spots for you and you can't see them. That's why they're called blind spots. So what should you stop doing? Okay. That's the first one. The second question is what should you continue doing?
So based on what you have left now in your processes, if you're looking at stuff yourself or you're asking somebody else, like, what should I stop doing? Right. What do you think? Or what should I continue doing? Right. What things am I doing that you like, what things should I continue doing? And would you like me to see more of that?
Would you see more of that? Would you like me to double down on that? Should I turn it up a little bit? Turn it down a little bit, right? You can ask a nuance question here, but what are the things I'm doing that I should continue doing? And again, look for that feedback. And the crazy thing here is oftentimes when I ask other people this,
they will give me an answer that I had no idea about. Like, there's something that I was doing. And to me it was just routine or second nature or just, I wasn't even thinking about it. And maybe I thought about it and I was like, God, this is why do I even do this? This is so dumb. And a lot of times people will be like,
Hey, I really like when you do this, or I really like how you do that. Like, you should continue doing that. And I was like, Oh, okay, thank you. I'm thinking in my head, like, I didn't realize that had any value to anyone. That was actually something I was considering stopping. So yeah, sometimes you get that kind of feedback,
right? So be open where do the things I should stop doing? What are the things that I should continue doing? And then since you're all smart folks, I know that, you know, the next part is what should I start doing? Right. So we hopefully remove some stuff from the stop. And with the continue piece, we looked at things and said,
okay, here's some stuff that we need to allocate time and resources to. We're going to continue doing some of these things. So through those two questions and the answers you get, hopefully you've optimized already. But then that leaves room for what should I start doing? And it's tempting when you're doing this yourself to look at your stuff and be like, well,
I need to start doing this cause so-and-so is doing that or is. So I read a book and so, and so says, I need to start doing this. Now don't just do things because somebody said, or somebody else is doing it right. There should be a business case or a logical reason why, or like in the case of this podcast,
I always kind of wanted to do a podcast. I just never made the room in my schedule to do it. And I knew it would bring a tremendous amount of value. And I knew I could reach a different audience, but I just never went through the process of getting rid of some of the things, right. Stopping some of the things to free up the space to do this.
Right. And so finally I went through that, exercise enough, where I paired down the things and said, okay, I don't need to be doing this stuff anymore. And then it freed up some room to do this podcast. So that's something that I started looking at my, do my own assessment. Right. But I also got feedback from people that said they would love to listen to a podcast because they can't always catch my Facebook lives or something like that.
Alright. So what should you start doing? And again, you might be surprised here. Like you might hear people say like, I wish you would praise me more often or I wish you would praise me in public or I wish you wouldn't praise me. Right. Maybe you'll get that in the stop. One. I don't like being praised in public.
There's some people that don't like that. Right. So depending on how people are wired and whatever, you'll hear some very interesting things here. I wish you would start doing team meetings. I wish you would start creating an agenda for our meeting. I feel like our meetings don't go anywhere. Like we need to have an agenda. You should start doing this,
that or whatever. Okay. So again, you don't need to have immediate answers to all of these questions, but just take it all in. And especially if you can get, um, you know, this is what in corporate America or HR, they might call 360 degree feedback, you know, ask these questions of the people that report to you,
ask these questions of some of the people that are your peers, and then ask these questions of people who might be above you in the reporting structure. Or sometimes you get really good feedback from people that are across the organization. So in HR, like to call this cross functional relationships always have crazy names at HR, but like people that you work with across the organization that aren't necessarily your peer and they don't report to you and you don't report to them,
but you got to work with them, their customers, if you will, internal customers. So getting feedback from all the different channels, then you can look at what you're doing go. Hmm. Interesting. Okay. Here's some stuff I need to stop. Here's what I need to continue. And here's some things I should consider starting. And then on your own stuff,
this was a little hard because if you're the only one looking at it, it's hard to get other feedback. But that's why I like to listen to other podcasts and read other books and listen to other books and see what other people in my space are doing. Because sometimes I'll look at that stuff and go, Hmm, maybe that's something I should start doing.
And I'll just keep a list maybe in Trello, maybe never note whatever. And so then when I free up the time or make the allocation of resources to be able to do that thing, then I have a list of stuff that I could just start doing anyway. But it's of all these things, I think the hardest is what should I stop doing when you're looking at it yourself?
Because oftentimes you'll be like, well, yeah, but right. And you get a case of the habits even for yourself. Yeah. But I like doing that or yeah, but it worked this one time. Well, okay. I worked this one time, like three years ago, but it hasn't worked since maybe we should stop doing that and do something else.
I, so it's really hard to give that level of scrutiny to your own stuff, but that's, that's work. It's super valuable. Okay. So to review the O S C S framework for rapid improvement, first step is open. O is for open. You gotta be open to this or don't even bother doing it. The next step is stop or do the things I should stop doing,
or you should stop doing the next step is continue. What should I continue doing? What are some things you'd like that I'm doing that I should continue doing? What are some things that are working in my business I should continue doing? And then the last one is start, what are some things I should start doing? What are some things I should consider doing?
Right. Take that feedback, ruminate on it, marinade in it, whatever terms you want to use to think it over and then put it into play and your business. Right. And you're not going to do all of it. And after some thought, or maybe you get some of this feedback and you bounce it off other people and say, Hey,
um, this is some feedback I got. What do you think? But if you are going to get feedback from other people, just make sure they share your vision. Because a lot of people are asking blind folks to proofread their vision, if you will. So if you're asking your coworker, if you should leave your company and start a job, start a business,
like make your side hustle a full time thing. I'm pretty sure you know, the answers you're going to get, right. That would be like asking a barber. If you need a haircut, of course, they're going to say you need a haircut. Right. So be, be smart. If you're gonna bring another parties to help you think through this other thinking partners or whatever,
that's why things like masterminds and having a coach are so valuable, right? Because those people aren't necessarily vested in your what's going on. And so sometimes they can help you see things a little better or talk it out a little better because they don't have the myopia. How's that for a word, right. They're not stuck in it. They don't have tunnel vision and they can kind of see outside the picture.
Right. Cause as my, one of my mentors, John Maxwell often says, right, it's hard to see the full picture when you're in the frame. So that's why sometimes it's wise to bring in some outside counsel for this. Alright. So that's all I got for this episode until next time, share this podcast with a friend and then go on unleash.
your awesome on the world. See ya! Thanks for listening to unleash the awesome. Please be sure to subscribe, rate and review wherever you listen to your podcasts and please share us on your favorite social media platforms using hashtag unleash. Awesome.