Excellence Foresight with Nancy Nouaimeh

Riding Toward Excellence: Culture, Speed & Team Dynamics- A cyclist’s view on organizational flow and the Shingo Model With Peter Barnett

• Nancy Nouaimeh • Season 3 • Episode 12

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A peloton moves faster than any lone rider, not by heroics but by trust, timing, and the quiet work no one sees. That same dynamic powers great organizations. We sit down with Peter Barnett, director of executive education at the Shingo Institute, to trace how cycling’s paceline, Team Sky's marginal gains, and principle-driven leadership create cultures that endure pressure and win the long game.

Peter shares how small 1% improvements compound into big results, lighter tires, better seats, smarter sleep, then links those choices to Shingo principles like seek perfection, focus on process, and respect every individual. We dig into why many companies chase big-bang transformations and then snap back under stress, and how to build constancy of purpose instead: measure weak points, test small changes, and make learning safe. The conversation goes deep on team dynamics too: the unsung domestiques who make podiums possible, and how to elevate the vital middle of your organization with clear intent, real-time information, and autonomy.

We also confront leadership habits that stall culture: hiring for presence over humility, swapping frameworks to leave a mark, and neglecting the basics that underpin every “breakthrough.” Peter’s stories, from shadow boards to a costly mistake turned lesson, offer sharp, practical guidance. If you’re ready to move beyond star-performer worship and build flow, trust, and shared purpose, this ride is for you.

Subscribe for more purpose-led leadership insights, share this episode with a teammate who sets the pace, and leave a review to tell us the next hill you want to climb together.

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Nancy Nouaimeh:

Welcome to the Excellence for Thai Podcast, the podcast where we explore what it means to lead with purpose, adapt with agility, and pursue excellence in everything we do. I'm your host, Nancy Noimi. And today's episode is about riding towards Excellence with a special guest, Peter Barnett. Peter shares my passion for continuous improvement and my interest in cycling. He's a dedicated cyclist and a passionate advocate of the Shingo model. He serves as the director of executive education at the Shingo Institute, bringing deep expertise in lean thinking and leadership development. Peter, welcome to the Excellence Foresight Podcast.

Peter Barnett:

Thanks, Nancy. Glad to be here.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

Great. So now let's start with your cycling story, Peter. When did you first get into cycling? And what does the Peloton mean to you personally?

Peter Barnett:

Yeah, that's a great question. I do like to talk about this topic. I actually started when I was 11 years old, I started racing BMX. And so I was doing the bicycle motocross thing for several years and I loved it, but I I've always had this kind of passion for bicycles and kind of the mechanical aspect of them and just the technology behind them, even as a little kid. So yeah, I started racing then and I got into uh mountain biking and road biking when I was in college. I took a couple courses and I was living in Utah and there were beautiful places to ride. But this was back in the late 80s, early 90s, and mountain biking was just taking off, and road biking was pretty solid. So that's where I learned a little bit about um the, you know, this the strategy behind road biking and cycling in general. And I learned a little bit about the Tour de France and I was watching that. It was a lot harder to watch back in those days, but you could follow it and just starting to learn a little bit about some of the strategies and techniques and um how you know this this Peloton idea that you're gonna really dive into, it was, you know, really for me, this metaphor of of trust, but yet independence, and how that kind of shared effort, it was so amazing to me the first time I went on a roadback ride with a good group, and we had a paceline going, and I was going five miles an hour faster than I normally rode by myself. And it just amazed me. My effort level was lower, but actually my output was much higher. So as I could see real early on, that there was something pretty interesting to this group ride and kind of opportunity with the road biking that brought a little difference than what I was used to in my mountain biking and BMX skills.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

Excellent. Peter, I think we're gonna learn a lot from your experience in biking, and you started to allude a little bit to lower performance, maybe to compare to higher performers, and how the cycling uh transformed that. I have two cyclists at home. My son, we do hope that he's gonna become a professional cyclist soon. Uh I've also been learning a lot myself. So, but if we want to go back a little bit to your experience, uh, and how did this experience shape how you view leadership or uh excellence in your professional life? How can you link the cycling paloton to what you are currently doing at the Shingo Institute?

Peter Barnett:

You know, a few years ago, uh early 2000s, I was paying attention a lot to cycling, uh road, you know, road cycling and the Tour de France in particular. And I was fascinated by uh Team Sky. You know, they had this new coach they had brought in, uh Dave Railsford. Uh Chris Room was the guy back in the day, you know. And um British cycling hadn't won uh anything big, anything at all, really, in like a hundred years, forever. They just weren't a very strong cycling force at all. And uh didn't look like it was going to change. They bring in Dave Railsford, and I don't know if you've heard much about him, but he's the he has this philosophy of um really trying to break things down into small increments and improving them by 1%, you get a significant increase in the overall output. So that there's really simple but effective philosophy of how you drive performance improvement through increasing and focusing on small marginal gains, really is I think the the what I would apply as my leadership style and how I like to see organizations improve. Many organizations want to do this one big bang initiative, drive all kinds of huge value all at once, and then move on to back to the way they were working before. But you know, as Dave showed with um with that that team back in the early 2000s with Team Sky, it's those marginal gains, it's as you focus on getting a little bit better every day at everything you do, and then stepping back and reflecting again, and then going again to try to get a little bit better, and not just focusing on one aspect of your business or um your cycling team allows you to really achieve the best success.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

Exactly. And I think we focus sometimes on those big campaigns and doing one thing at a time and focusing on one initiative or another, and then we lose sometimes sight of what's the most important, which is keep moving forward. And those uh that's the small, I mean the small continuous improvements which are gonna take us there. So, uh Peter, the the cycling paloton is a very powerful metaphor, and we see more and more articles around it. It's all about alignment, shared purpose and trust. And we see the teams, how do they really play well together, trying to get their leader up to up on the on the podium? So, how do you see this uh reflected in the shingle model itself? Uh we teach continuous improvement process in the shingle model, and how do you see it reflected there?

Peter Barnett:

Uh yeah, great question. I was going on with that same discussion around the team's guy. One of the shingo guiding principles is seek perfection. And it's not perfectionism, but it's rather never being satisfied with the status quo and constantly being willing to experiment and learn and try new things. So that applies to cycling just as well as it applies to businesses. You know, this idea that we can get a little bit better, but we're willing to test and learn and sometimes fail. In fact, if you're not failing, you're probably not really running tests because um great tests will always push the envelopes of what's possible out into areas which we're not sure. And that's really healthy for an organization. Obviously, it's healthy for learning how to get better at cycling. When when uh British cycling team went from that zero wins, you know, 100 years ago to winning almost 60, I believe, or so in that early 2000s, that 10-year period there, they did it by not just, you know, one big campaign or one big focus, trying harder, big slogans. They didn't do any of that. What they did was they they focused on tires and they got lighter tires, and they focused on seats because they found that the seats were important, not just because of the weight of the seat, but also because of the way it ergonomically helped the cyclist. So it was getting beyond just you know, maybe driving on the bike itself, but how did it interact with the person? They started looking at the what they're wearing. They started wearing the kind of crazy skin suits. They were lighter, cooler, and and more effective uh than the traditional suits they had been wearing. So, as and the I mean, I think the other thing that I that always kind of impressed me about what they did was they were constantly measuring and monitoring the weakest points and improving those. And so you take that analogy to what we would want to do as a uh organization. We would be constantly looking for our weakest points, measuring and monitoring them and driving improvement in incremental ways. Um, and they focused on things that you wouldn't expect. They focused on things like uh bringing their pills with them as they traveled so that they would have a more comfortable night's sleep. It's much like organizations. Sometimes we can be so focused on reducing the cycle time in production or driving cost out of our supply chain when in reality things like improving our culture, building trust can have a much bigger impact because it transcends so many of the other aspects of what we do. So those principles that we saw there are really the same principles. You could see them coming alive in just different ways in those two organizations.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

Now, this is amazing. Going from winning zero races to winning like 60, that's really a great transformation. And I think it's a great story. And um, I think um uh Peter, you mentioned a little bit performance. We often in organization focus on the rising stars, right? Those are will be the people who give take the attention of their managers, they are the ones promoted and they take the scene everywhere they go. So in the cycling Peloton, where do you see respect of every individual more reflected in what in the balance between the individual performance and the team dynamics?

Peter Barnett:

Yeah, you know, the the the way you win the Tour de France is you have the rider with the shortest time over the 21 days uh at the end of you know the race. And and that dynamic is is kind of to your point, uh loses that there's many riders, you know, eight to you know, 10 plus riders in that team. And there's so much work that those riders are doing that allowed that one rider to get across the line first. So you'll notice whenever you watch the end of a race with the Tour de France, and whoever comes across is often going back to celebrate with their team members because they know that the reason they were in a position to go across the line first is because they had domestiques uh bringing them water and protecting them in the Peloton and leading their way and basically making it much easier for them to ride so they could save their energy till the last minute to win because it's the team that ultimately wants to win. And there is a rider that goes across first, and often there's heroic efforts that they bring to the table, but they're part of a broader team. And I think that when you think of how that works in organizations, there is a downside, a big downside of focusing on just those, you know, star performers and not having strong teams to support uh the entire organization. And I think that's just something that's a kind of it's an easy thing for managers to do. Um we tend to spend our energy as management focusing on two individuals, two groups of people. Those side performers, they're they're fun to work with and they're stretching and doing all that. And then we work with our very, very poor performers. We're putting them on improvement plans. And so the the bulk of our organization, the 80% that sits in the middle, often is, I wouldn't say completely ignored, but doesn't get the focus of those other two groups at the peril or demise or kind of reducing of the effectiveness of the entire organization. So I think that's an important piece as we think about respecting every individual. It applies to not just our top performers, not our bottom performers, but to everyone in the organization because we recognize that as we start, especially in this new world we're moving towards, teams are becoming much more autonomous because our communication systems, technology allow us, is allowing us to have much flatter organizations. Those flatter teams have to have information at their fingertips. Uh they have to be able to act on information, they have to be able to have accurate information. Much of our traditional management system is designed around cascade of information and strategy, and it's probably designed in the most inefficient way possible. And then we're trying to then operate in more modern worlds where we can we can have everybody in the organization know exactly what happened in that strategy meeting immediately in real time if we wanted to, but immediately after it happens. So everyone could have that information. Whereas in the past, we would have to share that through a cascaded train, it would dilute and lose some of its information and impact as it went through. So there's this, there's I as I think about how we need to transform organizations in the future, there's so much we can learn about how, like a cycling team, for instance, has to be able to communicate. When they're talking on their little speaker, the entire team hears everything that's being said right there, real time. So if I'm a rider in the back of the pack and I hear my my potential race leader had a problem, I'm slowing down immediately. Nobody had to tell me to slow down. I just heard the information, I understood the plan and the strategy, I knew who was gonna be our person we wanted to get at the front that day. They had a problem. I'm gonna sacrifice myself to get back to help pull them into the and back into the main Peloton again. So it's just that dynamic of how are we gonna start shifting our organizations in a way that kind of supports this.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

You used the key word here, the sacrifice themselves. And this is pretty true. I mean, everybody works towards the having the leader on the podium, their team wins. Sometimes we hear their names, right, you know, on the race, but they're not really very well known. But all of them are really doing everything they can toward that win. Uh and the Tour de France is really crazy. I think crazy atmosphere, what you see there, and the competition you see, but all of them, I think they understand the strategy, they know how to move forward towards that same direction. I think that makes makes really a big difference. And Peter, you alluded to the new technology I think they're using now to communicate and the easiness of passing on this information, which is very key, I think, to the success of the teams. Now we see more technology integration in what they're doing, and I think we can learn a lot also from that. So uh just um going back to the shingle model a little bit and the principles, and um how can you share an example where a culture of excellence truly mirrored that of high functioning Peloton and the work you do with organizations and uh the companies you implement the shingle model with?

Peter Barnett:

Um yeah, yeah. So, you know, it's it's a common hallmark of every great team. So one of the cool opportunities I get is being associated with the Shingo Institute is um we get the opportunity to go visit organizations that feel they've reached a level of you know maturity in their organizational transformation, uh, they they then say, hey, you know, we we want to reward our organization challenging for the Shingo prize and hopefully be a recipient of that prize as something that they can do to celebrate with their organization. Um so we get the opportunity to meet these organizations to really see what's going on by under the, you know, under the covers, behind the curtains, and and really get a feel for what helps to drive it. And when you think about the cultural enablers, continuous improvement dimensions of the model, um you you see leaders that focus on enabling rather than directing. Um, they create conditions, we often call it conditions for flow, where there's clear purpose, trust, shared accountability, and where the results can be remarkable. But that that idea of flow, one of the beauties of it is when there's interruptions to flow, they become very obvious. That helps those organizations respond much faster. And that speed in response reduces backflows and and improves their ability to um uh continue to recover and move forward uh quickly. And so it doesn't matter whether that's a production issue, uh, a cultural issue, a strategic market decision, organizations that are able to create those kind of um high functioning teams are going to be better off no matter what. And we see that show up in those of the type of organizations that then uh win the shingle prize.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

Yeah, I think I remember seeing, I mean, some of the winners on stage, and you could see really um that how proud they are of what they've been achieving. And I think the fact that they are a good functioning team together helps them really uh get there. So um, Peter, how do you help leaders shift from command and control thinking to one that fosters flow, collaboration, and shared purpose? So you shared an example about the teams and the organization. Where did the role of the leader is in all this?

Peter Barnett:

You know, it's tough because we have leaders that are rewarded, often chosen, because of a certain set of skill sets. So you can see, you know, you can think about you know, they're super intelligent, they come from the best school, they're they're very articulate in their ability to uh speak, you know, with with a command of the you know, the language and the influence others. They they have all these kinds of things. They can be very, you know, um a strong presence, you know, in meetings and they they carry themselves well. So we have all these characteristics that often are what we hire leaders for. Um but when we step back and we think about you know, leaders that but the type of leader that we want going forward, we often realize that those characteristics that we we kind of value when we bring in a leader aren't often the characteristics that are gonna help them be successful in an organization that's trying to drive more leading with humility, respecting every individual, kind of going away, as you said, from that command and control to more of a kind of a flow collaboration environment. So you have to start thinking about different characteristics of leaders, you know, and we don't often think of, I want to go, you know, uh put the top characteristics in this uh search for a new. I I've been involved in some searches for CEOs for organizations. I haven't seen, you know, the really super effective coach show up on that list yet, even though we push them and try to get them. You don't see they're so incredibly humble, you know, they never take credit for anything. You don't see that show up on those lists. Um, they're awesome listeners. That's what you know, you just don't see those things. But yet we know from all the experience we've had that those are characteristics that are going to create the type of environments that are gonna be most effective. So there's a lot of shifting that has to happen. It's not just the individuals, it's often the system that brings those kind of individuals in as their leaders.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

Yeah, I totally agree with you. And I just had an example last year where I saw big disconnect or gaps between the hiring process, what we look at in individuals, and what is gonna serve finally the organization, because we don't look at the right skills, we don't look at the people and and the person whether he fits in that culture or what is he going to bring. We're just looking at competencies sometimes, but that doesn't necessarily get us to the right result. And I think Peter, having a culture uh within the organization depends on the systems, right? We teach this in the single model, we say systems will drive ideal behavior. And if the systems are not well designed, we're gonna always have gaps and uh alignment in the organization. And you mentioned continuous improvement, those small improvements. When we look at organization, we could look at improvement in every department, in every system, not just focus on one area and forget the others. Um, in your experience, what's the toughest part of creating or sustaining a culture of excellence, either in an organization or even in a cycling team, if you want to go back to that? Yeah, which area you think is the hardest really to impact and change?

Peter Barnett:

You know, um that's that's a good question. And it's it's it's I'll give you a general answer across the board, but before that, I think there's it's generally it depends. You know, and and one of the things that I've seen, there's a there's a joke from uh, I don't know, one of those kind of classic bar jokes, you know, um uh where the priest comes into the bar and and uh the bartender, he's talking to some folks, the bartender asks him, so all right, all right, I got a tough question for you. What's the most difficult commandment? You know, and the priest thinks about it for a while and says, Oh, it's the commandment that you're struggling the most to live. You know, and so you think about that with an organization, what's the part, what's the most important thing you should focus on, or what's the principle you need to be thinking about the most, or the system you need to drive? It's the system that you're struggling with the most. And that may be different for different organizations, but common themes I see in this space is that um constancy of purpose, and we were kind of leading towards that. That's a deming phrase, but it really gets back to this um relentless pursuit towards a goal and a focus on satisfying customers and just not letting any other distractions get in the way, the new shiny object over here, the potential market out there, whatever it is that could distract us from that targeted focused goal. So we talk about how um continuous improvement is constantly driving improvement. A lot of organizations um will look for the shiny transformation object. And so it was TQM, and then it was gonna be Six Sigma, and then it was gonna be Lean, and then it was gonna be Lean Six Sigma, and then it was gonna be Shingo, and then it's gonna be whoever knows is gonna do Agile next, and where's and they're constantly looking for a new transformation framework to help them do something that they're just not doing, and it's not the framework that's the problem. And so I think that's part of the dynamic is is constancy of purpose in that kind of relentless consistency, um, you know, driving towards sustaining it, uh, and especially when the pressure comes on. I find that it's when the they're pretty good, and then we miss a quarter and they're getting some pressure from the board, and they revert right back to their old ways of working, you know. And it's that that what do you do, not when things are going okay, but when the pressure's on, how do you respond? And are you able to continue to live into those principles, or do you abandon them and go back to your old ways of working? It's a big challenge.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

And that that's a great, I think, Engel, and and what I see frequently, and also uh in the Middle East where I work is that there's a lot of frequent changes in leaders, which that also every reader brings his own perspective, his own agenda, and then you lose all what you've been building um prior to that. So there's a lot of changes which impact uh people, not necessarily uh they have to go through it, yeah, but that they they just deal with it.

Peter Barnett:

It goes back to that that what we were talking about earlier, is is that we hire leaders and we sometimes even give them incentives that drive the wrong behaviors. So we hire leaders, and I've had I can't tell you how many times it blew me away the first time I heard it, then I heard it again and again. Where organizations that challenged and won the shingle prize and had a created a really great culture and system and thing. And they got a new leader, and that new leader said, you know what, we're dropping the shingle thing, we're doing something else because I want my program. I want my thing. I gotta have my signature delivery because that's what they're they're expecting from me. The reason they brought me in was to do something different. And I think that's a paradigm we need to shift a lot when we think about uh you know how we bring whether we're bringing leaders up in an organization or we're externally bringing leaders in, is oftentimes our expectations aren't, you know, we want you to take what we have, we want you to help us build that in a new market. That would be a building of our culture. Instead, what they often do is they look for ways to then, you know, do, you know, and they end up doing the simple thing, which is let's just change the framework of our program. And uh by the time, unfortunately, by the time we find out that that's really in fact essentially destroyed much of what we built, that leader's already moved on. So it's it's this unfortunate cycle. I think if organizations can can think about, they might be able to start breaking that. And you have to be very conscious about it.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

Exactly. And I think we there's a lot of disruption that not necessarily needs to be there and it's destroys uh rather than really builds uh over, I mean, a continue what has been started earlier. Uh for me, I call it also the syndrome of the new CEOs, where they feel the need to do things differently, which they didn't. Uh, it's a continuation. I think I was on one of the Shingo workshops where I understood understood that continue the good things rather than just eliminate and start fresh is very important for people, for the continuity, for the constancy of purpose, but unfortunately it's not done.

Peter Barnett:

Yep.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

So and and that brings certain resistance to change sometimes also in organization. Uh, as in cycling, there are the headwinds, and I think the team moves based on that. Uh, burnouts, lack of alignment, all of these exist in organization. So, what's your approach to navigating these and what have you learned uh during your cycling journey?

Peter Barnett:

Yeah, yeah, you know, so um shingle principle, but you also see this show up just like with with Dave Grailsford and the and the British cycling example we used earlier. But the the thinking that results come from behaviors, ideal behaviors, meaning the the the best of the behaviors will deliver the best or ideal results, which are rooted in principles. We've been talking about a lot of them today, you know, respecting every individual, leading with humility, focusing on process, you know, thinking systemically. All those are principles that you can then align behaviors to which will drive results. Outcomes happen, and those best outcomes happen that way. So I think of things like um like that when I when I'm when I'm contemplating how to help organizations because burnout and stress are very common. One of the things that I encourage leaders to do in this space is to approach that those feelings of resistance, I guess, with empathy, but with curiosity. Be curious about what's going on, not not um, it's easy to brush them aside. Oh, it'll get better, don't worry about it, you know, just suck it up. Um, yeah, it happened to me too, I got through it, you'll be okay. You know, all those kind of things, but really be empathetic to their feeling. Tell me how you're feeling and really try to understand because oftentimes there's systemic issues that are going on that you can address, um, and then you can break problems down into a small, more manageable chunk that makes them less overwhelming. That can also be great leaders are able to do that. Great leaders also give people the freedom to fail, and that freedom to fail huge can take huge burdens off of people. They they normally don't really believe it, but many great leaders will point back to an experience in their life. I had one myself, um, uh made a purchasing blunder, and uh it cost my organization $150,000. Back in, you know, the early 90s, that was a lot of money. So it cost $150,000. I thought for sure I was gonna be fired for this. It had had to do with, you know, uh kind of missed some things in a contract. Um, thought I was gonna be fired for sure. And I remember my boss saying, Why would I fire you? I just paid $150,000 for you to learn a lesson. I'm never gonna expensive. And and you know, it reinforced with me that there was more than just the day-to-day business. It was about helping me really understand how to be more effective in my role. And uh some of those mistakes would I would never repeat them again, right? So I think this idea of uh, you know, the this cycling idea, we kept going back to kind of alignment and trust, um, recognizing we're part of the broader team, um, they're all kind of principles that get back and support each other.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

This is great. Uh Peter, just a quick rapid fire now round of questions. One chain of principle you think is most misunderstood, as we spoke about a lot of principles so far. Which one is misunderstood by organizations?

Peter Barnett:

Um, off top of my head, how about lead with humility? Many think leading with humility means being soft, um, but it's really more about being open and curious and willing to learn from everyone. Yeah.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

Great. Your favorite cycling moment is it trace or ride?

Peter Barnett:

Uh it would definitely be definitely be ride. And just a quick one on this one. I love uh the ride itself. I, you know, with road biking, so I have shifted a bit from road biking. I don't road bike much anymore. Um, I do mountain bike a lot, and I find that with road biking, I was focused on how many miles did I do, how fast did I do it? And but on mountain biking, I find that it's completely almost 100% about the journey. Did I clear that obstacle I couldn't clear before? You know, did I did I really feel good going around the corner? I smell the roses more. I just enjoy the journey. So I think it's you know, enjoy the journey, get on a bike.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

That's great. Uh, you remind me every time I ask my son how was the ride when he's riding alone nuts racing, he says, fun, fun, fun. So that's really, I think there's a joy in it. Gotta enjoy the journey. One thing you wish more leaders understood about excellence.

Peter Barnett:

Um, well, we've hit it a little bit, but organizational excellence is not a destination. Even though we have a shingle prize, we really try to emphasize that that is a recognition that you're doing well on the journey. It's a journey, it should be uh never-ending. You should constantly. I think Simon Senek talks about it as the um infinite game. You know, make sure you're playing that long game. I was at a plant last week, really quick, and and they were introducing a new product. That product had to cut the cycle time in half in order for it to be competitive. It was going to be really tough. They they had made products forever, and it took you know typically the same amount of labor hours to complete it. They needed this one in order to have to be half those labor hours. So there's all kinds of things they were doing. The challenge was as we walked around the site, they had little visual boards up around, and the visual board would have a place for the broom and the and the mop and the dustpan and everything to be sitting there. And guess what? Nothing was where it was supposed to be. And as we'd walked by it, we noticed that things were pretty dirty and there was a lot of mess everywhere. And then there was a broom sitting on top of the shelf over here. It wasn't going where it was. And so we go through this, and the CEOs really wanted to dive into the details of how, you know, give us some ideas. What can we do to really cut our cycle time in half? And I said, look, I'll be completely honest with you. We walked by that shadow board for three last three days, and never once was anything done. This pile of garbage is still there, it's been there. If you cannot do the simple, easy things, you're not gonna be able to cut your cycle time in half. So the answer I'm gonna give you is take care of basics first. And I know it doesn't sound sexy and it's not what your board wants to hear, but if you can't do that, you're gonna be really, really frustrated trying to do something really hard.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

Absolutely. And it's always important. The foundation is very important, right? Um, so Peter, if the Panoton had a motto for business, what would it be?

Peter Barnett:

Uh boy. You know, maybe what we were just saying, I'd say it's if if it was for me, it'd be play the long game. It's a 21 day race, right? Play the long game, uh the infinite game, and enjoy it. Right. Right.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

Peter, I've really enjoyed our discussion. Thank you very much. I'm sure our listeners will enjoy it too. Before we wrap up, I just have one question for you. I hear a lot about self-awareness, right? So what does this mean to you? And it's it's about leading with the humility somehow, but yeah, what does it mean to you?

Peter Barnett:

You know, self-awareness to me um is is hard. Uh I think it's something that I have had the benefit. Uh so it's it's kind of an interesting answer, right? So for me to become more self-aware, I can think back to several instances in my life where someone pointed something out that I didn't realize was happening. Them pointing it out then changed my ability to be more aware of how I was coming across. I sometimes have, you may not know, believe it, but I sometimes have the uh challenge of getting super excited about things such that I can kind of almost take over and steamroll um a session because I get so passionate about it. I'm like, oh, this is so funny. It's good, but I miss the fact that there's several people in the room that are still struggling and it feels like they're being steamrolled. And I've had feedback, and so it's forced me to step back and realize that I have that tendency to just really get excited, and I realized I needed to bring the room along. So self-awareness for me was recognizing where you have weaknesses, and that takes a lot of others to help you, but when you have that, I can now try to reflect and realize that I, you know, most of what we do in an organization or in a Peloton for that matter is not about me. It's about we and how do I bring those organizations along or those leaders along or team or whoever I'm working with along? And I need to be less worried about my own passion and excitement and trying to really listen and understand others. So for me, that that's it's but it's it's this balance of great feedback, wanting it, listening to it, taking it to heart, and then being able to think about how I need to change my way. So for me, that's it's it's getting trying to get better, but but I don't know that I have a perfect mirror yet.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

This is great. And and just you reminded me of a funny story, a quick one from my side. Uh, in one interview, I was talking, and you're supposed to be saying I in an interview, and I was talking about the we all the time, and the lady asked me, who we said it became really, and that was a moment for me also like you it's part of what we do all the time talking about we, but at a certain point we need to maybe distend a little bit and say I, but I totally agree with you that the culture of excellence is really about the team, is about we. So, Peter, thank you very much for this energizing conversation. I love how our shared passion for cycling connects so deeply with the work we do around excellence. Where can our listeners follow your work or connect with you, Peter?

Peter Barnett:

Yeah, that's great. So um reach out on LinkedIn. Uh, you know, Peter Barnett, you'll find me out there. And I would also encourage you to go to the shingo website, shingo.org. There's so many great resources, and a lot of what I was talking about has been heavily influenced by that model. And in there, you'll find me there also.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

Great. So uh to our listeners, this was Peter Barnett riding toward excellence, culture, speed, and team dynamics. Peter, I've learned a lot about your cyclist view on organizational throw and the shingo model. Thank you again. And to all our listeners, uh, whether you're leading a team or climbing a hill, success is all about alignment, purpose, and the people you ride with. Enjoy the ride and see you next time on the Excellence Foresight. Thank you, Peter.

Peter Barnett:

Thanks, Nancy. Take care.

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Nancy Nouaimeh

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