Text us. Share your thoughts. Ask Questions. We would love to hear from you.
Have you ever wondered how the complexities of a neurodivergent child's mind could be unraveled? Join us on a fascinating journey as we explore this and more with the help of personal growth coach John Ballinger and Dr. Manny Rodriguez, a specialist in Organizational Behavior Management. We're celebrating the success of our podcast and eagerly anticipating the launch of Season 2, promising even more insightful content for our listeners.
We're also excited to give you a sneak peek into the workings of Puzzle Box Academy, a beacon of hope for neurodivergent children and their families. Under the guidance of Founder and CEO Pamela Furr and Dr. Rodriguez, the academy is making waves in shaping the futures of these young minds. I look forward to the heartening success stories of students who've gone through Puzzle Box Academy, demonstrating the profound impact of educational and therapeutic services on their lives.
In our discussion about leadership and mentoring, we delve into the power of feedback in molding behaviors and the intricate dance of effective communication. We shed light on the Blue Ocean Strategy, which focuses on novelty over competition. In an era where communication can make or break a team, we also offer strategies to foster positive behavior and create an environment conducive for tough conversations. Buckle up for an enthralling ride into leadership and organizational behavior management.
Note: This summary has been written from the point of view of the podcast host/s, hence the usage of the first-person voice.
Text us. Share your thoughts. Ask Questions. We would love to hear from you.
Have you ever wondered how the complexities of a neurodivergent child's mind could be unraveled? Join us on a fascinating journey as we explore this and more with the help of personal growth coach John Ballinger and Dr. Manny Rodriguez, a specialist in Organizational Behavior Management. We're celebrating the success of our podcast and eagerly anticipating the launch of Season 2, promising even more insightful content for our listeners.
We're also excited to give you a sneak peek into the workings of Puzzle Box Academy, a beacon of hope for neurodivergent children and their families. Under the guidance of Founder and CEO Pamela Furr and Dr. Rodriguez, the academy is making waves in shaping the futures of these young minds. I look forward to the heartening success stories of students who've gone through Puzzle Box Academy, demonstrating the profound impact of educational and therapeutic services on their lives.
In our discussion about leadership and mentoring, we delve into the power of feedback in molding behaviors and the intricate dance of effective communication. We shed light on the Blue Ocean Strategy, which focuses on novelty over competition. In an era where communication can make or break a team, we also offer strategies to foster positive behavior and create an environment conducive for tough conversations. Buckle up for an enthralling ride into leadership and organizational behavior management.
Note: This summary has been written from the point of view of the podcast host/s, hence the usage of the first-person voice.
I believe in the power of direction. With clear direction, with clear direction, people have a path. So my leadership principle is to ensure that I'm giving clear direction from people and making sure that they understand the path that we're on and the end goal of that direction.
Speaker 2:Welcome to First Lead you, a podcast dedicated to building leaders, expanding their capacity, improving their self-awareness through emotional intelligence and developing deeper understanding of selfless leadership.
Speaker 3:Hello American, welcome to First Lead you where we believe selfless leadership is essential. America is suffering a leadership crisis. Self-awareness and emotional intelligence is the key to developing selfless leaders. Now here is personal growth coach John Ballinger. Mr Ford, mr Ballinger.
Speaker 4:How are you, sir? I'm doing great. How are you doing?
Speaker 3:I am well. Thanks for asking. We surpassed the number 25 mark for our podcast Big milestone. Yeah, so we are number 26, and I think, if I could this is a little unscripted.
Speaker 4:Not that we have a script.
Speaker 3:Well, we have guidelines and I will say that you and I have been talking about Season 2 a little bit. Yes, we have, and I look forward to closing out Season 1 of First Lead you and Season 2, the planning and preparation that we will do in December for that. And I really think, as we are getting momentum on the podcast and people are interacting, closing out Season 1 and opening up Season 2 with some new, fresh content and some new ideas and strategies is going to be good for our listeners.
Speaker 4:Absolutely. Yeah, we will probably take a break between Thanksgiving and the first of the year and so we won't publish any new episodes. But certainly people are welcome to go back. If you're new to the show, Go back and catch up on some of the episodes that you haven't been able to listen to. But we will publish our first episode after the first of the year, probably around mid-January somewhere, and we will actually going to put up a sign up on the website in the next couple of weeks. You'll be able to just give us your email and we'll send you a notification when the new episodes start again. But yeah, we're looking forward to Season 2. There's going to be a lot of fun announcements that come in advance of Season 2.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're not going to tell the folks right now.
Speaker 4:No, no, no, not yet, not yet.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but we do have a. We've really been blessed to get through that first season, close to that first season, and be talking about Season 2 and some things that are going to be we feel like are going to be unique to to first lead you. We have a special guest today.
Speaker 4:We do.
Speaker 3:Dr Manny Rodriguez and he's a follow-up to a podcast that we had a couple of weeks ago with the founder of Puzzle Box Academy, and Dr Rodriguez actually does a I would say that almost like a chief operating officer, if you will, of an organization. He and, I think, very similar in, you know, behavioral science and just the behavior of humans and things like that. So it was good meeting him at the conference and also having him on the podcast discussing some of the training and things that they do, the statistics that they have with success. And as I was thinking about this podcast, I thought about what we've taken to conferences to help people understand what we do. And it's a Rubik's Cube.
Speaker 3:And we, when you mess up a Rubik's Cube for for those that know what a Rubik's Cube is when you mess up the colors of the green, the yellows, the blues, the reds and things like that, and then you've got to put it back together, you know you've got to. You've got to twist sides and and get it back to where there's clear all orange, all or the blue, green, red, yellow on all sides. And really through leadership, we want to take leaders, brains that aren't quite all yellow, all green, all red on that Rubik's Cube and actually help put them in its clarity, bring clarity back to it. So I was thinking about Puzzle Box Academy and we heard what they were doing with children that maybe they're Rubik's Cubes a little bit out. They're helping them succeed and be come into society and actually progress in society, when some people would have discounted that. So I look forward to hearing Mr Rodriguez and today's on today's podcast. Today is number 26 and I would be remiss if I didn't. Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 4:We need our NASCAR update.
Speaker 3:You got to have it right. We do.
Speaker 4:I mean we started at least for season one. Oh my God.
Speaker 3:We hadn't talked about taking it into season two, have we? Maybe we won't no go ahead, go ahead. Number 26, ricky Rudd. Ricky Rudd, that name sounds familiar yeah.
Speaker 3:Ricky Rudd was a NASCAR driver back in the day number 26 and was a pretty successful driver. He was a blue collar. Like a lot of those guys back in the in the old days he was a blue collar driver, but Ricky Rudd ran NASCAR circuit for a little while. So we're happy to just tell the folks if they don't remember things like we're telling them NASCAR, but we're happy to tell them that who Ricky Rudd was. Yeah, but we have Dr Rudd Regas and we want our listeners to really pay attention to what he has to say when it comes to taking someone's brain that may have hindrances in it and how Puzzle Box Academy is actually taking that brain of that child that may have some challenges and actually clearing things up to where they progress in their schoolwork and in their life.
Speaker 4:Dr Rudd Regas brings a different set of information to the table about Puzzle Box Academy. This is really probably episode two of Puzzle Box Academy interviews, but he's done some great thing in things in behavioral science and he's actually written a couple of books and he'll talk about those after the break in the podcast.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we hope you enjoy listening to Dr Manny Rodriguez as he discusses what they do at Puzzle Box Academy. We have Dr Manny Rodriguez who has more than 20 years in organizational behavior management. He's a doctor of business administration and the executive director of strategic growth at Puzzle Box Academy and I got to tell you when I saw that I saw because we had we met Manny at the Hill Conference and we had Rubik's Cube on the tables down there and so I was looking at that and then got to meet Manny and saw that Puzzle Box Academy and I thought man, that's pretty cool and as well as these works at Kaleidoscope Interventions, dr Manny is also CEO of OBM, which I'm going to guess Manny is organizational behavior management enterprises, a firm dedicated to dissemination and education in organizational behavior management to business leaders. Welcome, dr Manny Rodriguez.
Speaker 1:Thank you, douglas. Thank you, john, appreciate your time.
Speaker 4:Well, thanks for joining us today.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So, manny, we met at the Hill Conference down in Tampa and there were many unique individuals that were passionate about what they do, and I would say you stuck out as one of those passionate people at what you do. Give our listeners an understanding of what organizational behavior management is.
Speaker 1:Sure, yeah, absolutely Well. Organizational behavior management is science of human behavior by the workplace. It stems from great work of individuals, pioneers, fields of behaviorism and behavior analysis, like Dr Jeff Skinner and Dr Watson and Dr Pam Law, and those were kind of the early pioneers, well, and then it emerged and evolved as the field practice in the 60s and late 70s. One pioneer in particular that I got a chance to work with closely is Dr Aubrey Daniels, and he pioneered the practice of organizational behavior management and it kind of bolted my career as well. So, in short, I mean it's really the science of behavior applied in the workplace.
Speaker 1:So why we do what we do and what can we learn about behavior to influence effective change and do so in a positive way. And that's kind of the key ingredient there is we look for positive means for behavior change. There's some elements to organizational behavior management that you and your listeners may be familiar with, such as some of the foundation, of course, is behaviorism, but also a great deal of work done in the field of industrial engineering, industrial organizational psychology, the business, the business minds of schools like Yale, then Harvard Business, all of those, all of those fields of study and practice and research have been highly influential in the field of organizational behavior management, and so that's, that's OBM in a nutshell. When I when people ask me that question, I pretty much sum it up as it's why people do what they do, apply it in the workplace, trying to make a positive difference in the workplace.
Speaker 3:Do you think human nature plays a part of that OBM.
Speaker 1:When you say human nature, do you mean like an eighth motivation kind of thing?
Speaker 3:Just how somebody's wired from birth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a good question. You know I did what we won't be talk about in terms of behaviors. That behavior is very much learned and influenced by by the environment. So, for example, if I live in a certain country, my behavior will be shaped over time by the norms of that country. If I live in an upper class versus lower class scenario, that may have an influence in my upbringing and my behavior when it comes to business. Absolutely right. So what we learn along the way as pre adolescent, teenagers and adults, what universities we go to or don't go to, whether we go military don't go military, all of those different turning points, those pivot points in our life, are definitely part of our learning. So we talk about behavior is definitely shaped over time and it's learned behavior that's reinforced by our environment.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he's almost sound like he's listened to a couple of our podcast.
Speaker 4:Maybe that's why we have him on podcast.
Speaker 3:Because you know, doc, we talk about this in our initial I think it was our first five foundational podcast, what you just talked about. We just dissected on those first five podcasts, so I did, I did listen.
Speaker 1:Believe it or not, I did listen. There is great synergy between me and I think, and that's why I was like, oh, you guys are singing my song, you got, we're playing. We're playing the same band. So you know, and we may you know, in the field of OBM, I owe psychology, industrial engineering. We may have different words for things, but the science and the foundation of where it all comes from, I think, is what ties us all together.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I use a. I don't. I don't remember I talked about this on the foundation. I believe I did the 4-H process. Douglas, you didn't talk about it in the.
Speaker 4:Hill Confer.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so.
Speaker 4:We did talk about it in one of the episodes. Early episodes of.
Speaker 3:Firstly, G yeah, we're all humans that have human nature, that we need human. Yeah, we need human resources, and that's not the department to create human capital. That's a you know a podcast or kind of some instructions that I talk to leaders about all the time, because we are all humans and the the more that we recognize that we are, you know, the better off we are. So so, thanks for that OBM definition. Tell us about Puzzle Box Academy and Kaleidoscope Interventions.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely so. So Puzzle Box Academy and Kaleidoscope Interventions, first and foremost, are sister companies. So Kaleidoscope Interventions is a subsidiary of Puzzle Box Academy. So let me start with Puzzle Box Academy first.
Speaker 1:So Puzzle Box Academy is an institution of learning for the neurodivergent population of children. So what does that mean? So our kid, from pre-kindergarten all the way to high school, are your, they have all the letters, the alphabet soup, if you will. Tied to their, tied to their name, right? So ADD, adhd, oppositional defiant disorder, they have intermittent explosive, they have autism, they have learning disabilities, they have all sorts of things, right, all different classes. That's why we call it neurodivergent.
Speaker 1:We also have neurotypical kids as well, and so, in this special place, puzzle Box Academy was created on the foundation that all children, all children, no matter what, what's going on with them developmentally, have the right and opportunities given to them to have a great educational life, a journey, and so we provide that. So we have developed some great technology around individualizing their learning experience, and we do that by something that really truly the public schools can't do in this world, and that is that our leadership team has created a curriculum designed and developed to them, individualize for each student, how they learn based on how they learn, giving them the tools and knowledge they need to effectively be a productive and successful student.
Speaker 1:We do that from the early days of pre-k, kindergarten all the way to high school. The other part of Puzzle Box Academy that's very unique is that we have to fuse applied behavior analysis, which is the science of human behavior in general. So organizational behavior management we talked about earlier, and OBM stands for behaviorism, and that's why behavior analysis so all one at the same Just ABA is kind of more broad right general. So what we've done is we infuse that same science of behavior into the way we teach, into the way that we effectively help the students, and also infusing some technology of how the students themselves self monitor, provide their own feedback to themselves and apply the tools for them to monitor their own successes. So that's Puzzle Box Academy In a nutshell. We have two facilities, we're close, we're nearly 100 students strong, from kindergarten to senior year of high school, and it's been an amazing, amazing 10 years of this company's growth and prosperity of helping thousands of families.
Speaker 1:Now Kaleidoscope Intervention that is the therapeutic arm of how we support these children and family. So applied behavior analysis is the science of human behavior right Well over the year, especially with regards to the field of autism, and not solely on autism, but in that space. Practitioners of applied behavior analysis have done a masterful job supporting these individuals and families, and it has become the most critical therapeutic service needed for these kids. It's actually deemed as medical necessity for children with autism to help shape and support their life. So Kaleidoscope Intervention is the company that has the therapist that provide these therapeutic services to these kids and the families. So my role is I'm the executive director of strategic growth for Puzzle Box Academy, but I am also a board certified behavior analyst with Kaleidoscope Intervention, so I wear both hats right, and so my role is to really support the growth and prosperity of Puzzle Box Academy and I also serve a clinical role with clients and families, and I get to work with families as well.
Speaker 4:Well, that's great In terms of your what you're doing with this. What kind of success are you seeing with the students that come through Puzzle Box Academy in terms of their ability to go on and lead their own productive lives?
Speaker 1:Oh, what a great question. So we have. So, just in the last several years, what we have, what we have seen accomplish is, is quite impressive. We have seen students jump by one and a half to two grade levels from where they started with us within a school calendar year. So within one school year, one school academic year and we're a year round school. We have been able to help shape the students performance from wherever they started to one to one and a half four grade levels higher, one and a half to two years sorry, one and a half to two years higher than they started. So they were in a third grade level. We got up to at least fourth grade and not to fifth grade level, and that's pretty impressive because it's very difficult for a lot of institutions of learning to be able to do that. And we've done it in such a way, with good data to prove it, to show that the learner it's all about how the learner works, and our leadership team takes very special attention to learning the individual's way and adapting that.
Speaker 1:And then to your other question, our success stories about gaining independence. So we actually just and not for the first time, but many times, but just recently we celebrated a graduate of our ABA therapy because they have reached their specific goals, their milestones with our therapist, a kaleidoscope interventions to be that independent, high functioning individual in society, and so they've learned the skills they wanted to learn. They grew the way they wanted to grow between their selves as kids and we're talking, you know, 10, 11 year old kids that can articulate to you what goals they want to learn from social skills, independent living skills and things like that and with the family support, we work with them, we shape them, we work on the therapy and success right, so we get to celebrate that moment. We just had three graduates just recently in our whole program and over the years we have graduated hundreds of them, and so that for us, is part of the way that we measure success in this is that we set goals with the families, with the individuals kid, we set these goals, we monitor these goals along the way and then, as things progress, we may add more goals if they have, if they still have some learning need.
Speaker 1:But then at some point we start to fade out our services. Our mantra and apply behavior analysis is to put ourselves out of business, because if we, if we're working with somebody, our success is their success. So as soon as they hit their targets and goals, we should be fading out our services to the point of no services are necessary, and that's what we look to do at Kaleidoscope intervention and then with Puzzle Box, of course. Is their graduation right? Graduating from fourth grade, from sixth grade, from 12th grade? We were 10 years in our high school, just graduated, a graduate for last year's school year, and now we have three of our students in Joel and woman in college courses. I mean that that choice are measures of success.
Speaker 4:Well, that's awesome. I think from what you're saying it sounds like you guys are way ahead of the curve. I just finished listening to slash reading a book called the end of average and they were talking about this idea of personalization of education and, of course, on the public school side that we kind of keep trending that way, little by little by little. But it sounds like you guys are far ahead of the curve in creating those individual education plans that help people reach the goals and success that they can reach if they're given the proper opportunity to learn.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I appreciate that, I definitely think we are, and I think we are because we were given those opportunities to work with these families to do just that, you know, to work on that individualized plan.
Speaker 1:And so a lot of this stems from the experience of our founder CEO, pamela Kerr, with her own son who was diagnosed with autism years ago and he happens to be the first, one of the first graduates of the high school program and he, when, when she got that diagnosis of her son and worked through those that journey as a mother, she had to go through the whole process of IEPs, individualized education plans with the schools and and all the teachers and all that, and she learned the good, the bad and the ugly right.
Speaker 1:And so part of the whole premise of puzzle box got me a kaleidoscope intervention is to help these families understand what, what they shouldn't be getting as part of the, the services for their children. And fortunately for us, we have been given that opportunity with thousands of families Unfortunately, there's probably even 10 times that families in the world that are struggling right, and we're. We're now at the point where we're looking at leading the way and paving the way to educating the world and what we've been doing in different variety of ways and we're just super excited about doing that Because I, you know we may be, you know it may be too strong to say we're pioneers, but I would say we're definitely in the front. We definitely want to be in the front and center of this, of this journey with people, because we we kind of done the hard work, so we want to show people how to get it done.
Speaker 3:Yeah that's great. So, Douglas, I think we take a quick break and then we'll come back with Dr Manny Rodriguez. Welcome back. We've got Dr Manny Rodriguez from the puzzle box Academy and Palliades scope intervention, and Dr Rodriguez has been talking about some unique what I would call a military tip of the spear things that are going on in their organizations to take education, especially when that can be challenging to some people, and create people's ability to have to be productive citizens.
Speaker 3:And when I hear when I heard him at the first part of the segment think about that, I thought how many people is this organization touching that would not normally have been this this may be a tough word to hear discarded because of their challenges and because of what Dr Manny and Amala are doing, those individuals can now be productive citizens, which I think all of us it doesn't matter what kind of disability we have. I don't think people that have them want to just be discarded or thought about as less than a people or whatever. They want somebody to help them be the best version. And it sounds like the puzzle box and a lot of scope have picked that up. So doing saying that it firstly, gee, we talk about it, Dr Manny Rodriguez, at some point in your life, you had to look at yourself and say in order to do what I'm capable of doing, I need to address how I lead myself as well as others. So what are your leadership principle?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a great question and I'll try to be succinct about it, and it's all very heavily influenced by mentors of mine and friends and colleagues. So my leadership principles are first, I believe in the power of direction. With clear direction, clear direction, people have a path, and so my leadership principle is to ensure that I'm giving clear direction from people and making sure that they understand the path that we're on and the end goal of that direction, and I think that that's an important principle to you know. Even flip it into a question do my people, the people I'm trying to influence, have clear direction? You know, you could use words like vision or strategy, but essentially it's direction when are we going and what's the end goal? That's one of my well, my main principles.
Speaker 1:The second one is around capability. Right, I believe that everybody deserves a chance to be capable, and so that principle, in terms of the way I lead and the way I try to manage and lead others, is unlocking their capabilities and making sure that what resources, what things do they need, what tools do they need, what education do they need? To be as highly capable individuals as they can, and I think that that's an important principle, because the alternative is, if you have a bunch of incapable people, the business is going nowhere. You know, whatever you're working on, whatever it is that you're trying to lead, incapable people are going to get frustrated, they're not going to perform optimally and therefore that whole notion of incapability just ends you in a bad place. So capability is another facet of leadership principles I focus on.
Speaker 1:And then, lastly, I would say, you know, is there is no such thing as too much feedback.
Speaker 1:I've been on the other end of that where I've been in situations and companies employee as a company where I've got zero feedback, and I think it's such a dark place, it's such a bad place to be in because you're left guessing, you think you're doing a great job and then all of a sudden someone says you're not and you're like where did that come from?
Speaker 1:And then there's companies that say oh, no, no, that's way too much feedback, like that's way too frequent, like giving it every week or something like that. And so in my principle is there is no such thing as too much feedback. And where that stems from is this notion of feedback rich environments, that if you work in a place or you work with a group of people, and people are getting feedback about their performance at whatever frequency, that it makes sense for them at the end of the recipient, and that's a great place to be, that's a great place to work, and so that's one of my main principles in leadership is that there really is no such thing as too much feedback. You give feedback to people so that they can optimally perform and carry out the work that they're trying to do again and ties back to that direction piece so that they can achieve that direction that we're going.
Speaker 3:Right, and this is maybe a sideline question what do you do when someone doesn't take direction?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So that's a great question I think we get down to. From my standpoint, I'm a big fan of coaching and mentoring, so I believe that people deserve chances, and so if somebody is not taking direction well, or they're not performing optimally to the direction that we're going, or that I step, I start to shape that behavior. I believe in shaping behavior, and so what that looks like at the end of the day is coaching, feedback, coaching, feedback, coaching feedback. Now, of course, there comes a point where, if you provide enough coaching, enough feedback, and the performance is still not where it's supposed to be, then it becomes a subject matter.
Speaker 1:I think of a leader's job, myself included, to start talking about fit for duty, right, like is this the right fit? Is this the right job for you? Is this, are we trying to force what's the old saying around? Peg in a square hole or square peg in a round hole? So I think that's part of it. I think that that's definitely part of it. It's really just recognizing that we have a responsibility as leaders to shape and coach and give feedback. At the same time, as a leader in a business, we also have a responsibility to recognize is this the right fit? And if it's not the right fit. Maybe we could do something about that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I was talking to a CEO the other day that had 41 years in the seat of a company 25 is the president CEO and he said the most difficult challenge he had is learning how to have difficult conversations.
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely. I definitely think one of the hardest things to do is to sit front and center in front of somebody you've been working with and talk about is it the right fit, are you the right fit, or is this the right role for you? Or maybe your journey empties your kind of conversation, and that is I don't envy that. I don't like doing it myself. I've had to do it myself many times. It is not a pleasant experience for anybody. But I will say a mentor of mine years ago used to say sometimes that's the best thing, most important conversation to have with that individual. It's kind of their wake-up call as a professional to say, hey, we gave this a shot, we gave this a good go, but it's not the right fit. Let's help you find the right fit somewhere else.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would agree. One of my mentors told me early in life that sometimes the right thing and the hard thing are most likely the same thing.
Speaker 1:Right, that's good.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you have to do it as a leader. So what inspires you as a leader?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a good question. You have a lot of good questions, guys. So you've been doing this a while.
Speaker 1:Honestly, what inspires me is I'm driven by probably a couple of things. I really enjoy working with people. I enjoy watching somebody grow professionally and do so in a way that impacts other people positively. So, for example, right now I'm mentoring one of our executive clinical directors and she's within her first six, seven years of her career and we're just working side by side on a variety of things. And when she asks me questions and she looks to me for advice and things like that, and then I first set advice and she implements it and she sees good outcomes, that motivates me to know how I'll do that every single day, if I could. That's amazing. So I love that. That inspires me to come to work every day, to be on the phone with you all, to do the things I get to do presenting conferences like Heal and it's simply to see the impact from someone else doing good things. I love that. So that's one.
Speaker 1:The other one I'm a business guy, I'm an entrepreneur, I've done my fair share of work and I like to create things. Something that motivates me is the ability to create novel things, and whether it's a new training program or a book or a new presentation at a conference or even just some type of like, some type of means of like sitting down and creating, sitting down and doing something novel, right, there's a book that I love called the Blue Ocean Strategy, and it was about going into the market with a new thing, a new what's the word? Just something that is novel out there. That it's not about competing with other competitors, it's about creating that thing that nobody's created yet. So that whole Blue Ocean Strategy I just find to be just an amazing motivator. So if I could do something that's a Blue Ocean, that motivates me for sure.
Speaker 3:That's good. You have a LinkedIn page that has behavior Bolton those letters called the behavior Bolton, which is, I guess, a newsletter about what's going on with OBM and different things in the Dr Manny's world.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, it's something that I love doing. I like to write, I like to disseminate, I like to share things. So one of the things that I just I really enjoy is sharing, like, what's happening in the world of business and OBM and what are some tips and strategies for performance improvement. And so this bulletin, this newsletter, the behavior bulletin, was simply to kind of share, every month, a couple of articles that are related to real time relevant subject matters around business and behavior and infuse it with some just some, some solid tips and strategies for people to pick up and run with.
Speaker 3:And obviously your passion for writing spawned into some books, so tell us about the books that you actually recently published.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I've had. I've had the great pleasure over the years to co-author several books, but recently I've dived into the world of sole authorship. So my most recent books are organizational behavior management. It's the second edition, it's a, it's a textbook, if you will, but really it's a guidebook. So somebody should be able to pick it up and read it and learn from it and apply the science of organizational behavior management to any, any real performance issue that they have, whether it's productivity, efficiency, service delivery, profitability, sales, you know whatever. And they walk through the guidebook and they implement their own performance improvement project through OBM. And that was the whole premise of that book. And I'm very grateful to say, you know, honor to say it's been picked up by a dozen or so universities across the globe as their, as their book of choice for schools of business and schools of psychology. There's about 100 or so organizations that have picked it up as their leadership book of choice, so they're training their leaders in OBM. It's just just been awesome, you know, it's just been fantastic. And my whole point of that book was just disseminate, disseminate, disseminate OBM.
Speaker 1:The second book, kind of a spin off to that book, is what I call seven synergies. Seven synergies, life lessons about making a positive impact of the world and in life. And where that came from was actually, it was influenced by my wife, who was sharing with me about number symbols and, like you're I don't know if you guys are familiar with that it's kind of like a spiritual thing about numbers and like everybody has some type of number that is associated with their life. And I'm honest and I was just happy to get a person like what, what is she talking about? But she convinced me that there's something there for that and I was like all sure, let's talk about it. So then she started, you know, looking at what I was doing with my book and, long story short, I started writing a list of things that influenced my life, you know, professionally speaking, and it came down to seven, seven things Performance management, change management, leadership ethics and so on. And so I was, I wrote these seven things and then I realized, oh, isn't that funny. I have, I'm a father of five and me and my wife make seven.
Speaker 1:Then I started drilling into some of my old texts and there's seven strategies to this and seven strategies to that and seven tips for this. And I was like, oh, my God. This is very bizarre, because now the number seven just doesn't escape my vision. Apparently, seven is my number, so so then I started taking that approach and saying, well, when I'm training leaders and leaders are asking me about you know what are some methodology thing that should be in place to maximize performance in the workplace.
Speaker 1:That's what seven synergies is all about. It's giving people kind of a guiding light to these seven practices in the world of work that have truly made a positive difference in the work and they've also, they've also can apply to your life, they've applied to my life. So things again like leadership, change management, performance management and ethics, for example. So yeah, so that's seven synergies. They are, you know, I'm very honored and happy to say. You know, a lot of people are giving me a lot of positive reviews about it, so I'm very humbled by that and they're they're out there in the market, they're available on Lulu comm is the publisher, lulu publishing. So it's not I'm not looking to be like an Amazon bestseller or USA Today bestseller or anything like that. You know people that read it or want it. They either go on my LinkedIn profile, they get, they get snippets from it and can can link to the book itself, or they can go to Lulucom.
Speaker 4:Well, it sounds like we just done our two more episodes, that we can bring you back and have longer discussions about things. Both of those sound extremely interesting and fruitful for, especially for our listeners.
Speaker 3:Dr Rodriguez, from all of us at first, lead you. We appreciate your time.
Speaker 3:Sorry, you're tapping on the. Oh, I was tapping on the table, doc. So yes, cut that out, douglas. Dr Bannie Rodriguez, from all of us at FirstlyGee, we appreciate what you and your team are doing at Puzzle Box Academy and Kaleidoscope Interventions and I am especially grateful when I meet someone that wants to take their talents that they've been given and share them with others, and they get filled up when those others that they share them with actually progress and become the best, the best version of themselves. That's exciting to me.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you very much. It's been a pleasure, guys. I really enjoyed our time together. It was great to meet you as well. I'm inspired by the work you guys are doing to keep it up. Keep making that positive difference in the world. That's what it's all about.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Thanks, doc. Thank you, I was excited when you talk about behavioral science and the brain and things like that. Kind of like me. I mean I get charged up when I think about that, and doc does as well, and you know he's passionate about helping someone unlock their potential, especially if there are roadblocks in them reaching that potential, and so I really appreciate his passion and I really appreciate someone following their passion and making a difference in someone else's life and really at the end of the day you know I've talked about this when we started first lead, you were passionate about helping leaders be the absolute best they can be for themselves and the teams that they work with.
Speaker 4:Absolutely. And in case you didn't get a chance to get those book titles, two book titles. One is organizational behavior management, the second edition by Dr Manuel Rodriguez, and the second one was called seven synergies. So those are both great resources. If you're wanting to get a little bit deeper, get a little more information about behavioral sciences, I think those are great resources for you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you know we've mentioned this in prior podcast, but I use the old term leaders or readers, and maybe you're a listener and so you want to download the book and just listen to it as you drive or on the treadmill or whatever.
Speaker 3:But we really encourage our leaders to take books that we've either read or people that we've interviewed and they've written, and embrace those books and learn and take from that what you need, because not every book is going to give every leader exactly what they need. But sometimes you will find that person that just pours into your life the way you need it, need it poured into and hang on to that and grow from it and communicate with them. And you can have through emails or, you know, messaging services linked in message. I get messages all the time on LinkedIn where people are asking me questions about like John, how do you do this, and I've come up against this obstacle and what would you do? So people that actually want to pour into people and want people to be successful will take the time to respond to messages like that, because we want people to be successful.
Speaker 4:Absolutely Well. Another great episode. We look forward to being back next week.
Speaker 3:Very good. Thank you, Mr Ford Smile and have a good weekend.
Speaker 4:Thanks, people, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you.