Mike Rayburn

Speaker, musician and upcoming CASBO conference keynoter discusses change, possibility and innovation

By Julie Phillips Randles

What if you could dump the things at work that hold you back? We’re not talking about changing out the coffeemaker or upgrading your software system, but digging deep into cultural issues like old thinking, low morale, discouraging uniqueness, forgotten sense of purpose, thinking small, fear of failure, sales routines and unproductive meetings.

Speaker and entertainer Mike Rayburn decided to step out on that limb himself, and he discovered that it didn’t snap and send him plummeting to the ground as we always fear. Now he’s excited to bring a message of what works to his keynote presentation at the CASBO Annual Conference & California School Business Expo in Long Beach in April.

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” he mimics the popular saying. But he’s not subscribing to it. “Time breaks everything,” he notes.

And his secret isn’t rocket science, although it is a mindset change: Stop managing change and start to create change, to lead change. The pandemic and its aftereffects? Just a powerful launching pad for what’s next, in Rayburn framing.

He sets his message to music to both entertain and make it easier to remember his points when you return to your district. It’s a natural medium for a man whose career centered around music after graduating from James Madison University in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Rayburn was an early pioneer in ecommerce online music sales and was featured in Newsweek and Billboard Magazine for his insight in leveraging the new tools on the block.

Along the way, he conducted a cross-country concert tour by bicycle, performed his own two-guitar arrangement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony with a hologram of himself, and learned to play the fretboard of his guitar with both hands. He heard the naysayers but still used the same skills he now teaches – elevation, innovation and transformation – to tune out the noise and move forward.

As a result, he’s a member of the Speaker Hall of Fame, has recorded two TED Talks and is a featured artist on SiriusXM. He’s been an eight-time headliner at Carnegie Hall and in Las Vegas. Overall, he’s given more than 5,000 presentations in more than 22 countries.

Rayburn and his family currently live in the Reno/Tahoe area, where he holds “What If” weekend retreats.

Mike Rayburn

What’s one thing you changed your mind about recently?

I’d have to say that I have an ongoing habit of mind change. For example, I came to the table as a purist as far as presenting using my guitar, voice and presence on stage. For so long I thought, if I can’t do it with just me and the guitar and standing on stage in front of the audience, then I can’t do it. And I was successful doing it that way.

However, for the purist in me – the person who doesn’t use guitar effects or visuals – the change of mind came when I realized that I’ve been successful being a purist, but what if I could improve my impact, program and sound by adding some effects to the guitar, bringing some visuals to the stage, by embracing technology. When I changed my mind about that, my programs increased in their impact and I was booked more often.

And I say it’s an ongoing mind change because what I’m doing is eating my sacred cows. We sometimes say, “I would never do this” when discussing the strategies with which we approach what we do. Well, what if you did and it was something that improved things? With that question in mind, I’m in an ongoing mind-change process.

What’s your go-to mantra in hard times?

I have a few of them, depending on the challenge. When I did the first-ever, crosscountry tour on a bicycle my mantra was, “Steady on wins the race.” In other words, keep pedaling. Like Dory in “Nemo,” just keep swimming!

When I’m about to go on stage or about to be the center of attention and I’m feeling unsure, I tell myself, “Do what you do, and do it the best way you know how.” In other words, don’t try to change yourself to try to fit something in or be someone who’s inauthentic. Don’t let the nervousness of the situation pull you away from who you are and what you do.

The third one is a very general one: “I live every day in victory.” When I feel less than or not enough, or when I’m nervous about who I am, I remind myself that I already have this victory; it’s already there.

You’ve said the pandemic can be a powerful launch pad for what comes next. How does this apply to school leaders?

It’s a chance to reexamine everything we do. We don’t usually make those chances happen. If things are working, we tend to stick with them. Well, it wasn’t our systems that caused this challenge. However, it gave us a big reset; it gave us a chance to look at what we do and imagine it from outside. And in a lot of ways it wasn’t just a chance to, it forced us to.

Anyone can apply this thinking to their careers or businesses or schools. It’s about asking questions like: Is this process the best way to do something? Is my approach to leadership the best way to handle this?

Overall, the pandemic gave us a chance to reexamine what we do from a new standpoint.

What is a “possibility thinker” and how does this kind of thinking help leaders find new opportunities?

A possibility thinker is someone who looks at what’s in front of them and is willing to ask, What else could this be? Or, what’s missing here? Or, if this could be more, what would it be? It’s someone who actively and intentionally, especially in the beginning, looks at things beyond just what’s in front of them, and instead looks at the possibilities of any given situation, challenge, problem or opportunity. They look at the possibilities that those things bring forward.

It’s a use of your imagination as you process what’s happening in front of you. It’s someone who’s willing to ask the question, “What if?” What if we did this differently; could we do it better? What if we didn’t have to do this at all? What if technology could consolidate all these processes into one simple process? What if I change the way I’m approaching this situation?

Those are all possibilities that exist, they’re not actualized or used unless someone goes after them with intention.

After the extreme education challenges presented by the pandemic and continuing challenges with funding, employment and student achievement, what three tips would you give school leaders to help them tap into the passion that brought them to school leadership in the first place?

There’s one process I’ve heard people use for writer’s block, and that’s if you are near where you grew up, go back. Look at the house you were in, look through some old photos. Think about when you were in school or college and try to remember things that happened around that time. Because it will pull you back into that mindset. And that’s usually from our childhood or school years or college when we discovered our passions.

Another way is to look at the things you’ve done and see the positive outcomes you’ve had in the past. You can see a school that’s thriving that wasn’t before. You can see the school that has helped students in ways it hadn’t before. You can see a student whose life has changed. You can see parents who are profoundly thankful for what you brought to the table in education.

Look back at your successes. Look back at the things you’ve done really well or the outcomes you’ve had a hand in. A lot of times we downplay our influence and say, well, I didn’t do that. Actually, maybe you did. Maybe you had a profound effect – take that to heart.

I also encourage people to have a morning power hour. It can even be just 10 to 15 minutes when you read, write, pray or meditate. And when you’re doing that, think about those things you’ve done. Take stock of those things and be willing to say, wow, I actually did something well there. And as you do that on a regular basis, it will reignite your passion for what you do every day.

Mike Rayburn

You caution against trying to manage change. In fact, you’ve said doing so is dangerous and stupid. What do you mean by that?

I’m paraphrasing leadership consultant Peter Drucker on that, and what he said was that managing change is not only stupid, it’s dangerous. The only way to manage change is to create change. And then I like to add, “Be the one to define the curve rather than follow it.”

After all, managing change means that change has happened outside of us. It has affected us, and so now we need to manage what has happened. And there will always be times we have to do that because we can’t predict everything.

However, what I want people who hear me speak to leave with is the mindset that we’re not going to just manage change. We’re going to actually be the ones who create change, who lead the way, who define the program we’re following. We need to pay attention to not just what’s in front of us, but to what’s coming down the pike. And we need to be willing to look to the future and trends and the different things that are happening and use those as a basis for creating a new process, a new approach, a new system, rather than waiting for something bad to happen and trying to keep our heads above water.

I want people to start to create change based on their expertise and on the things they bring to the table, before the change from outside happens. It’s a matter of looking at whether we’re simply going to react to what happens or whether we’re going to be the ones who make things happen.

That’s when I want leaders to use the question, “What if?” to affect that outcome.

You’ve said that “time breaks everything” and that to survive, leaders need a mindset that addresses change, innovation and reinvention. What is that mindset? How does it work? The time breaks everything point is an expansion of the idea about how to respond to change. We have a tendency to say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” which is valid sometimes. However, time really does break everything. What’s working right now, what’s absolutely just humming along just perfectly, is already obsolete on a drawing board somewhere. So we need to have a mindset for reinvention.

When change happens in a way that all of a sudden something’s not working because of this thing outside, then we realize we need to reinvent it or find a new way to do it. The idea here is to do so intentionally – before it’s necessary.

So I encourage people to reinvent intentionally and strategically before it feels like it’s time yet, in order to create improvements before they have to happen, and then we can have a little more control of the situation.

And that’s where the “What if” strategy comes into play. The best way to implement that is to look at what’s right in front of you – you don’t not need to go into some crazy strategies or new things that someone else is doing – just look at what you do every single day and ask, What if I could do this differently? What if I could do it better? What if I actively look at something even if it doesn’t seem like it’s necessary?

The goal of asking is an improvement, a new way to do something. So when you’re asking something like, What if there’s a new way to do this?

For example, there was a young man working in a mailroom at a company who noticed all these one-page FedEx documents that were going to the same location. They were sending dozens of single items to the same location every day. And he asked, “What if we put them all in a single package?” Well, he saved the company nearly $1 million a year on FedEx bills because he saw that possibility.

He saw an opportunity. He asked what if. And then he went to the people who could actually affect the change and they saw the advantage.

Now you won’t come up with a solution every single time, but as you continue to ask the question and you make this a habit, you start coming up with solutions. And then you can focus on the outcome and focus on the benefits.

That company wouldn’t have changed its FedEx process if it didn’t recognize the huge benefit. But once they saw it, they did it. So when we can show that if we do this and this and this, it’s going to be easier, better or faster, that’s when we start to create change.

And if you’re doing this on a regular basis, it creates a culture of future possibilities; a culture that looks toward improvement, a culture that’s not just managing what’s happening, but actually creating new ways to do things.

Can you tell our readers about your recent learning about neuroplasticity and how they can apply that to being a successful leader?

For thousands of years, we thought the brain was static – that the way your brain was when you were born was the way your brain was when you died. What we’ve learned is that the brain can be physically changed through thoughts.

We know scientifically that we can actually change the way the brain works through the thoughts that we choose to think. But first you have to realize that you have control over your thoughts. For example, there might be something that pops into your mind that you don’t want to think about. You have a choice at that moment to entertain it or to let it go.

For example, there’s a way of processing that every time I hear about this thing or event, I have a negative reaction and I can’t get around it. What we need to do is break down the old thought and replace it with a new thought. And then we consciously make ourselves think the replacement thought, the new mantra, every time that old thought comes up.

Mike Rayburn

It’s just like people who create hiking trails. They’ve created a trail through the woods that gets traveled many times. If we want to have a new trail, we need to carve it out – that’s the deconstructing. And then we have to travel that trail a lot. Once we’ve traveled this new path – the new neural pathway – over and over again, it gets to a point where you remember, oh yeah, there’s that old trail, but we don’t even use that anymore. And the old trail, in time, will be grown over with trees and shrubs and, in the long run, you might not even know it existed. We have that capability with our brains. And that’s why all leaders need to be constantly working on self-improvement. There are certain leaders who may be successful, but they’re told in reviews that they’re not very good at something or that they always react a certain way when something happens. And if that’s not a positive, then embracing neuroplasticity and carving out a new path is a way to become a better leader – a way to respond in a certain situation better than you used to.

Another angle of this is called reframing, and here’s what that looks like. Let’s say something happens and we choose the story about the event or about something someone says to us. When we reframe the event or comment, we no longer apply this story or this meaning to whatever the stimuli it is. We give it a new meaning. For example, when a person was unkind to me, it doesn’t mean I’m a bad person. It just means they were having a bad day. Reframing is the way we can create serious change when it comes to lifelong issues. It’s about looking at the meaning we attach to stimuli. Another example is a job evaluation. If we look at our evaluations and we see something we need to work on, what meaning do we attach to that? If we attach a meaning that says, I’m not good enough or I failed, it’s going to hurt us. But what if we have a different reaction? What if we reframe that negative evaluation to, “Wow, this is the key to me getting everything that I want. If I change this one thing, that’s how I’m gonna get there.”

There’s a lot more to neuroplasticity and changing neural pathways, but the bottom line is that if we identify something we need to change and we do this process of deconstruction and reframing, all of a sudden we can see what the freedom and strength on the other side looks like. We can look at the things we need to adjust, make the change and embrace neuroplasticity. z z z