As auditors we tend to be a very serious group of people. In our attempt to appear competent and professional we often switch over into the boring, robot-like realm … a place that gives rise to much of the auditor stereotypes.
In this episode we discuss how humor and creativity can actually make us better auditors and more effective in our job, plus we have a lot more fun doing the work. I’m joined by Mike Jacka, a truly hilarious auditor who has been waving this flag for decades. Come laugh with us on this episode and walk away with some advice for how you too can incorporate more humor and creativity into auditing.
Mike Jacka is the Chief Creative Pilot of Flying Pig Audit Consulting and Training Solutions.
You can get a copy of Mike’s book “Auditing Humor: and other oxymorons” through the IIA Bookstore or on Amazon at: https://www.amazon.com/Auditing-Humor-oxymorons-Mike-Jacka/dp/0991280903/ref=sr_1_6
You can reach out to Mike at: [email protected]
To take advantage of the 50% off cRisk Academy on-demand course use this link: http://bit.ly/criskacademy and use coupon code: JAMMING2019 when you register for a course. cRisk Academy is offering this to listeners of the Jamming with Jason podcast through 30 November, so make sure to take advantage of your savings today.
Transcript
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Welcome to another episode of jamming with Jason. Hey, today I have a very special treat for you. I’m joined by Mike chakra.
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And Mike is his his his technical title is chief creative pilot flying pig audit consulting and Training Solutions. But as we were talking beforehand, he’d prefer probably to be introduced as His Royal Highness, so
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Your Royal Highness. Welcome to
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Oh, good. I have a lot of friends who will never let me live that line down.
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Well, we have to we have to pull it in there now. So for those of you, you know, this is going to be a little bit of a different episode because you’re going to hear lots of laughing
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Right, because I think. I mean, Mike is is is an amazing guy. In fact, has a book called auditing humor and other oxymorons that will probably talk a little bit about too.
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But somebody that I’ve, you know, known for a little while, have known about for a lot longer as well. And so, Mike, I’m glad to have you on here.
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So maybe you know just give people you know those people that aren’t familiar with. You just kind of give them maybe like the two minute spiel of, kind of, you know what, what your career entailed and kind of where you’re at right now in your life and career.
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Yeah, sure thing. I was born in a small child that
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doesn’t remember
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You know, I actually got into I started working with farmers insurance. I had an accounting degree.
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I wasn’t accounted for six months. I did the same thing, six times in a row. I was bored to tears. I saw the auditors having way too much fun over there joined auditing and never left. I was lucky enough to get with a group that had a great touch of insanity.
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Auditing has always been a lot of fun. So 30 years with internal audit and then they had this thing called the defined Pension Benefit Plan and for anyone who doesn’t know what that is. You don’t want to
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Well, there’s not very many people
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That actually know what a pension.
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Plan is anymore. I used to do a lot of auditing and pension plans. But yeah, almost everybody’s gotten rid of them now.
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Yeah, so they have to pay me for the rest of my life. So I just started doing this I was already involved a lot with the AIA with internal audit groups. And so I do writing and speaking and training and as my wife says IBS for a living. Now,
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Welcome to the world of speaking, my friend. Yes.
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Many people who work for me. Who said I did that for a living, before
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Before
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Well, and it’s, you know, one of the things that I really appreciate about you is your humor and actually bringing or trying to bring humor into
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Into this profession, right, because I think a lot of times we take ourselves so seriously. And we’re so
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You know prim and proper and everything else that that a lot of times you know people end up viewing us as kind of these robots and the in these people I know before we got on if you want to read that thing from International Harvester
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Yeah, if I can.
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This is
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How they described auditor’s back in the 60s.
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Yeah, this was 19
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Grey supposedly for 1963 supposedly from International Harvester magazine. I’ve never checked to see if this is really true, because I so want it to be true.
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If I can read this correctly, but the internal auditor have to take a deep breath for this one.
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The typical auditor is a man or woman just past middle age spare wrinkled intelligent cold passive non committal with the eyes of a cod fish polite and contact, but at the same time cold common composes a concrete poster plaster of paris cast
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A human electrification with a heartfelt sparring without charm of the friendly German espouse passion or a sense of humor, happily, they never reproduce and then finally go to hell. Oh.
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No, it’s it’s it’s funny. Okay. But, but there’s some serious side to that as well. Right. I mean, it obviously I like to say there’s truth to every joke.
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Most definitely. And, and that’s one of the things it’s fascinating why I’ve been glad the last few years to get out and about, is
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fascinating to see how true. This still is in some operations. Here’s a horror story for you. I was working with a group one time we were doing report writing
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And we were talking about writing the objective of the audit. Of course, you know, the objective is to ensure and we were going through all those glowing terms in this one set of a subset of this group.
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made the comment we write our objective is to find what’s going wrong. And I went, haha. That’s very good. I appreciate it. They said, no, they literally wrote that their objective was to find something going wrong. And it just amazes me. They are still out there.
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Well, it is. I mean I experienced that earlier in my career. I mean, I remember when I was, I was a young senior and
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And one of the managers came to me, it’s like, Okay, we’re going on this next engagement.
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And I was tasked with finding at least seven recommendations. Right. I was given a number. It’s like, come back to me with at least seven recommendations which
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To me, even at that point, I kind of thought, well, that’s kind of crazy right why some arbitrary number
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Seven. But that’s what she wanted. And that’s what she expected and so it’s it’s almost like you said that that group, saying, well, you know, we’re trying to find something wrong.
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Oh my goodness. If we are, if that’s our intent. What kind of a relationship. We’re going to be developing with the people that we’re auditing.
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And that’s most time you hear those stories zero, this was two years ago. I mean, that was reason, like I say they are still out there. It’s a
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It’s a little bit I what I what I’m trying to do, actually, there’s some questions or what I’m trying to do. But one of the things I’m trying to do is is
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kind of break people away from the stereotypes by hopefully making fun of them out there. Yeah, I did a P, so I got into this whole humor thing.
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The internal auditor magazine. They were looking for humor pieces and I happen to be on the committee, I said let me take a shot at it and so
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Actually what makes up this book is is a number of the ones that were in there. A number of years ago, one of the ones that I did was called auditing carols for the Christmas season, and it was, you know, one of them was called picking on the oddities or something like that, you know,
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And somebody wrote back and said this is horrible, you’re reinforcing the stereotypes and it’s like, no, no. These are the jokes you only understand the stereotypes and can battle them when you can laugh at them and recognize
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The truth that’s in them, but making something new and different and then taking a new look at. Yeah.
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Well, and because because I think it’s important you know before you can
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Really conquer anything or change anything. You have to first have that awareness.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, and I think that is what is so beautiful about humor in general, you know, and so you can see this kind of from from comedy from the art form of comedy how, you know, comedians will use that art form as a way to shake people
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And to get them to think about stuff. And they’ll, they’ll end up crossing lines just to get people’s attention. But usually, you know, again, I mean, if it’s, if it’s a good comedian who’s actually trying to make a point.
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Where there’s a reason why they’re doing it right. And so getting people to laugh about it because
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It reminded me when I was a young kid. I was, I think it was in fourth grade and and we had my teacher brought in a guitar, you know, which was like awesome
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So we got to have like singing time once a week. You know, like my favorite time of the year of the week and and I remember she took she taught us a song called goober peas. Okay. And goober PS is it’s it’s a it’s a term for peanuts.
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Right.
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But it was a song that was created during the Civil War, when people in the south were starving.
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As part of the war. And so they had the choice, you know, all they had to eat was the peanuts, like the boiled peanuts. And I remember her saying, you know,
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People made this song and it was either they could either laugh and sing about it or they could cry about it. Yeah.
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And. And that’s I think the same way with humor, it’s like we can either cry about it or we can kind of laugh about it and then try to fix it and I’m one that thinks laughing about it a little bit and trying to fix it as a much better, much better way to go.
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And what I found is the people who have trouble laughing at this type of stuff. One may have better tasting humor than I do.
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But the other is they are the ones that see themselves too much in it and it strikes a little too close to home.
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People who are actually making the change or seeing a difference can laugh at the these types of concepts. Yeah, I still need to change, but I recognize it and I’m moving forward from it.
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Yeah, we’re like you said, the people to get offended or like, well, that is me and I’m offended that you’re actually, you know, bringing this up because, why do I need to change. Well,
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That’s kind of why we’re laughing about it, folks, because it is it is kind of silly and we don’t want to be seen as you know that auditor cod face.
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Like
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I just think of Peter Pan. Yeah.
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Yeah yeah
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And and sadly we do reproduce actually had something happened recently with my son, kind of, kind of, a kind of a sad thing he, uh, he became an internal auditor.
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Oh, no.
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My heart. My heart goes out to you right
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Apparently we do reproduce do
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Every, every parent’s worst nightmare.
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That’s right. That’s right. Yeah, internal auditor to. Yeah.
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But no, so, so, so, so let’s talk a little more kind of about the humor and I know you’re big to on on creativity.
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Yeah, well, because I think it’s
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It’s very easy for us to get really kind of in our routines and I mean heck part part of the definition of internal auditing includes the word systematic and routine right
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Or assist systematic and disciplined approach is for
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Yes, yeah.
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Okay, what’s interesting, does not mean routine.
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No, it does not mean routine, but it but but i think a lot of times people take those words and they think that we almost have to be robotic
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Yeah, and and that’s not not what we’re supposed to be. We were still people
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And if we get that robotic feeling to us. It’s really hard to develop
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relationships with other people. And I think, too, especially you know you’ve done a lot with report writing and other stuff too. Right. And
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And it’s by the time you write the report is too late. Almost at that point.
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You know you you have to have have developed a relationship done some of this other stuff along the way. And one of the great ways to reduce tension.
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Is by using humor yeah and and even, you know, self deprecating type of humor is a great way to kind of ease some of that tension. And so, you know, as an example, you know, you go out, you do an audit.
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You’ve got some messages that have to be presented, you can make it a little bit lighter or better better received if there can actually be some humor that goes along with it and I’m guessing you’ve seen that throughout your career as well.
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Yeah, and like anything else with you. There’s a time and place for it. But there are times i. One of my favorite times was
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We were just battling my auditors were battling trying to get a report past this person.
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Long story as to why. But, finally I got in in the meeting. We started the meeting I said, what’s it gonna take for us to get you into this audit report and within half an hour. We had it. I just, I became the used car salesman. Perfect.
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Yeah, it goes that way and I and it’s
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It’s one of those things. It’s like auditors forget they are allowed to be human.
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Yeah, that’s the part that comes in, you start talking about emotional intelligence, you start talking about
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Credit even critical thinking it’s being a human being and and and that’s listening that it doesn’t mean everybody has to walk in and say, take my audit report, please. But take to have to be human. When they greet them and and
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Yeah, as I says, as I say, I’ve just seen people walking out. I’ve seen auditors walking in thinking that it’s time for the stone face and it just doesn’t work. And the weight part of the way I
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Tried to get this everywhere was not. I mean, I was the type of person I am, which you know that can be filed away probably isn’t a big file somewhere.
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But it was building an environment within my audit department that was created. And it wasn’t just telling jokes and doing things like that. But it was carving out time to literally do things that were creative so that the people who work for me then started to build creative mindsets.
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It was an office that people from outside like to walk into because it was fun to be in the audit department, think about an audit department where the clients want to walk in and just say, howdy and hello and they did because we built that environment that was nice to be in
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And it was a lot of different things. I mean we collected coffee pots, we wrote on the walls. I mean, literally, not just on a whiteboard.
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We had one year, every year, our company would have a profit sharing and there was always a decorating contest and one year. They said, No, look, there’s so much going on. We can’t have this decorating contest.
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Was it what you guys can’t. But we can and we had a poetry 60s and 1960s poetry slam contest and went around and had people write poems about farmers insurance and we gave away awards for
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Hilarious. I don’t know. Some of the war, but it was it was interesting and different for people and gave people a different perspective of what it turned out it was gave the auditors, the freedom to be inventive
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From the Phoenix office, which was probably about one 10th of the entire population that there was an audit throughout all the farmers insurance time
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Within five to seven years, one third of leadership came from that office.
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And I like to think that’s part of why director and a VP level and that type of thing. But more importantly, some of the more innovative ideas and the new things we did
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That became cutting edge internal audit work came out of our office because we had that mindset and we let people do things.
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Well you nurture it you nurture it and allowed people to be creative, which is, and I think this is an important point that you know kind of what we do, like, a little time out for people, you know, back, back, that are listening here because
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I see this all the time where a lot of times auditors feel like they have to be so serious, they have to put on this air of I’m an expert.
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And because I’m an expert. You need to listen to me, and you need to follow my recommendations and that is inevitably like hitting your head against the wall. Yeah.
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Because, because we are all human we’re emotional. We make mistakes and and really the more emotional intelligence, you have
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The more authentic you are, the more you let your personality actually show that will help you to actually really develop real human connections with other people.
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And a lot of attention. A lot of the other stuff just kind of melts away, right, which again is why
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I’m one of those people up here trying to like rah rah. Everybody I know you’ve been doing it, your whole career, too, because I see so many people trying to focus just on I’m going to be the best technical person, but guess what you’re boring.
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And nobody wants to be around you. If you don’t have those soft
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Skills, you know, you still have to know what you’re doing.
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Yeah yeah yeah
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Person or else. Nobody’s gonna really want to listen to you.
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And there was a gentleman that I worked with who one time made the comment. The only time I’m not thinking about internal audit is when I’m hitting a bucket of balls. Now, the gentleman very intelligent but he had reached his peak because that was all he was thinking about
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But the other. The other question I often get because I do presentations on this and I’ll show what our office look like and show some of the will go with the word bizarre things that occurred.
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People go, oh my gosh, that’s unprofessional. One thing we never got accused of with any of our clients was being unprofessional.
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They knew us. We knew what the heck we were doing. They knew that when we went in there. We had it together. So no matter how strange. We were no matter how different the department was never once the question of professionalism come up
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Yeah well i think that’s that’s a good thing again for people to
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Realize and start incorporating it’s okay to be unique. It’s
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Okay, to be weird. I mean, one of my favorite terms is embrace your weirdness, right, because it’s like
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Hey, I know there’s a lot of people out there that think I’m crazy and weird. Well, you know what, I don’t care because I like who I am and there’s plenty of people that like, who I am, too.
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Because the more. And this is where it actually gets interesting. The more you try to be somebody that you’re not
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And sometimes this, you know, you know, being serious. And you know stoic and all those things from that harvest or magazine.
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It actually affects you on an emotional basis and a lot of the stress and anxiety that people feel is because they’re trying to pretend to be someone else that they’re not
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Right. And it actually has a huge, huge emotional impact on people, which again is another reason why you know you and I are out here trying to get people and not take things so seriously because
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It’s already a stressful enough job. You don’t need to add to it, you know, by doing by doing some of that stuff.
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Well, in the creativity thing. I’ll talk about this too, because I’ve done a lot of work around auditing social media and a lot of people and I
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In fact, from what I know. Farmers insurance was one of the first audit shops to do an audit overall of what the organization was telling
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People say, wait a minute, you know, where did this come from, well, it’s just being open to new ideas. My kids go to Comic Con forever.
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What time my daughter comes back from Comic Con. This is quite a while ago.
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And she’s upset because she had missed out there, did a tweet go out from Warner Brothers about some swag. If you go to room, whatever within the next half hour, and she missed it.
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And that was the moment when I suddenly went, Wait a minute. This is a sales technique. This is marketing. This is something new and different
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This is more than narcissistic navel gazing about what you had for breakfast in the morning, they’re building tribes, they’re building thing, and this was
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When I gave my first presentation on the subject. It was even call it wasn’t even called the social media, nobody. It was called social networking or something auditors. We’re still trying to come to grips with it. Now, does that mean I bring it let’s skip that question.
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Yes.
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But it does mean just keeping your eyes open for something new and different. I always ask people, What are you reading right now.
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Internal Auditor magazine good a better be my column. But, you know, are you ready business for. Okay. What are you reading nonfiction. What are you reading fiction. What are you reading differently.
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It’s about just you never know where the next idea is going to come from and it can be something as weird and strange as the electric Kool Aid acid test and I got some ideas on how to run
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How to run seminars from that book. And if you know that book at all. You know, look it up. You’ll find out about it, but you would not think it would can’t came from that. I’ll tell you what.
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Well, no. And I think you bring up a great point.
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You know about about creativity and about some of the other stuff because I’ve seen this to from a risk management side as well.
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You know, it’s like a lot of times people put these blinders on. And, and, you know, and then they wonder you know why they missed certain things.
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Because again, you’ve got to be broad, you’ve got to be looking outside
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Of where you’re normally at to be able to have some of these ideas, right, like you said, I mean, unless your daughter had come to you and was all mad about the Comic Con thing, right.
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You would have probably never thought about that. And so actually engaging in that having, you know, your thoughts outside of just auditing.
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Like you said, You know that guy that I think about auditing all day except for when I’m hitting a bucket of balls. Well, not just a minute if that’s all you’re thinking about, you’re probably not going to be the best well rounded auditor because you’re not going to be thinking broadly.
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And so we need to think about some of these other experiences or things that we’re going through and how can I relate that to what I’m actually doing right
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So you did that with your daughter. Well now hold it. If it’s important for Warner Brothers. Is it important for farmers well yeah because
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We’re probably using that as a way to, you know, either either strengthen our relationships with current policyholders
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Or in a way to try to bring in new people as well. Right, right. And you can do things that would be risks in would be detrimental to the organization and how you do that. But you can also do really good things that lead to opportunities and rewards as well.
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And the companies that do that better you know auditing social medias and just about seeing if your employees are posting during the middle of the day or saying something negative about the company.
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It’s a lot broader than that and you would have never come to that had you not been open to
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Write something from outside the profession.
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Yeah. You just never know where ideas come from. And I won’t even bother with the quote because I’ll do it wrong. But Steve Jobs made the comment.
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When people come up with ideas and you ask them what they did, they have trouble going well I didn’t do anything. And it’s because they’ve taken a bunch of dots. So like connected them to something new and it just happens.
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Well, and a lot of times that comes when when we least expected
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Oh, yeah.
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Right. And so, so again, the whole idea of you know we got to work harder. Harder. Harder. Harder.
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And then we end up getting the answer no, what ends up happening is you work really hard. And then you’re like, Okay, time out. We got to take a break we’ll come back tomorrow morning.
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And you go home and you watch a little TV or you do whatever and you go to sleep and you get up and in the morning when you’re having your shower shaving or doing whatever. All of a sudden, it goes thing and you walk back into the office and it’s like, I got this figured out
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A lot of
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A lot of studies on that and wearing people do it. The one thing from my impromptu and non statistical reviews whenever I’ve asked people, you know, when do you get your best ideas I have yet to have a single person say when I was working real hard.
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Because it just doesn’t happen.
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Yeah.
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And actually even. I mean, you know, if we get into Brain, Brain neurology and psychology
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It’s because of the way that the brain actually works is the short answer. But when you you relax when you when you focus on and shift your attention somewhere else.
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It allows your subconscious mind to actually let those things out if you’re if you’re focused too much on your on your consciousness. You don’t allow those that sub consciousness to come out.
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And the sub consciousness is 90% of your brain activity. Right. So it’s like if you want to use. You want to use 10% of your brain and you want to use the whole brain.
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You got to actually take time to relax and, you know, laughing, having a little bit of humor and other stuff like that because it’s a shift. It’s a pattern interrupt actually allows those things to flow out
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Yeah, you said we’re gonna have a lot of laughter. We got real serious here. I know.
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I know. So let me
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Let me give you this one. This to me is the best internal auditor joke in the world. Why did the auditor cross the road because he looked in the work papers and that’s what they did last year.
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Yeah, you tell them on auditor it, said Joe, can you get crickets, but hundreds. They love the outdoors. I get that right.
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That with all
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That. How do you tell an introverted auditor from an extroverted one
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The extroverts looking at your shoes. The shoes.
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Yeah.
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Oh, yeah.
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I don’t know. We’re just laughing right
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sequiturs or us
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Well, and it’s, it’s, you know, I think what’s what’s kind of funny, too, is that, you know, we can find humor in almost anything right.
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If we’re not trying to take ourselves so seriously if we’re trying to learn the lesson. Maybe that that comes along with it and and a lot of times it’s those things that that you’d almost really kind of never predict would end up happening or being the thing, right.
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Yeah, I mean what, what are some. What are some great examples maybe from your career of things that
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You know, you’ve just how humor was able to work in in some of the different things that that you did over your career.
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Well the biggest. The biggest thing in the pure humor piece of it really was.
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There’s no one thing that led to something big. It was again just setting that feeling and then atmosphere within, within our office within our department within the company and recognizing that
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That it helped set that I have this problem in that when anybody asked me a question. My first thought is the joke.
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No.
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I’ve got a set that aside, most times, but almost anybody in any meeting.
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You do that appropriately catches them by surprise and loosens them up. Plus, it’s a great little template to find out a great little test to find out what you’re facing.
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And if you think you’re in an atmosphere, you know, suddenly it’s the great stony face in reply, you know, you got to turn things around a little bit from what you’re doing.
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So that is really humor in and of itself.
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That’s the way I’ve seen it best used in setting that up. I think the number of
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Opportunities that have come about because of the loosening of the atmosphere because of the temperament, we had in our office.
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That again made people realize. Look, I can be funny. I can be different. I can be experimental and the ideas that came from that are where that long range really had the impact on the way we did the work.
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And I’ll give you a quick example on that one. One of my favorite lines is and I I learned this a long time ago I made all my auditors use this when you hear into idea people instantly.
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Think of why can’t work. Yeah, the rule is
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The rule is before you can say why it won’t work. If you have three reasons why it will
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So,
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Kind of an auditor come in to me one time and we did. We audited 10% of the agents every year. I mean that’s 1000 agency audits, we were doing every year.
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He said, Hey, I’ve got this new idea of how we can use it in a involve technology and all that. And I literally had it at my lips, ready to go. This will not work because and I got myself. I said know
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Internally, I said that to myself because I’m is unintelligent internally as I am extremely
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I said, Okay, you keep preaching this. And so we had a discussion about why it would work in a funny thing happened.
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We never once talked about why it wouldn’t work. It was a great idea. And by accepting my own concepts and making other people do that.
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We change the fundamental change to the way we did our agency out of work that saved a bunch of time made things more efficient, everything just opening up and being something different.
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But I think that’s a great example. And that’s something that’s tangible that people can actually use right now.
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Yes. And it’s funny because, you know, again, as you said, Our, our knee jerk reaction is why this won’t work. And again, back to the brain that’s
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Because the amygdala three to one ratio of we’re worried about loss. And so we’re always trying to protect ourselves.
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And so using something like this. Look, you got to tell me three things for why this will work before we go to the negative side of it is a great thing that’s another example for for the creativity.
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Yeah, you know,
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To go behind it. Because a lot of times we just, you know, there was the joke you know about
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Why did you cross the road because it was what was in work last year’s work papers. Too often we just end up kind of going back to what we’ve always done
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Instead of stopping and thinking about, well, why are we doing that. You know what, what are some some ways that we could do things different.
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And, and, you know, sometimes it’s again in our profession, it can be very stodgy I remember back in the 90s when I had the radical idea of putting some work papers in three ring binders instead of on the old yellow fold out paper.
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Okay. And I will tell you, I fought this for probably a year with some of the people.
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Because they’re like oh no we can’t do that, you know, and it’s like, well, let’s just look at the practicality our files will be one third less
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In size just because we don’t have one piece of paper stapled into a folder around, you know, kind of a thing. But again, sometimes we we have that tendency to want to say no, we can’t do it.
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And that’s when, like you said, we need to take the time out and think about, well, why could this actually work and why could it be a good idea because I think more times than not you’re going to figure out probably is a good idea. We probably should do it.
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And I don’t want to think about the number of people listening right now who not only don’t know what a three ring binder, er, but
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Echo bases and slide rule is or an advocacy.
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Or a queen. Oh wait, I just
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Yeah yeah
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Department
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PhD was another one. Yeah.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, well. Another thing about the humor piece, too, because I talked about internally but it was it really did help in relationships with the clients, either in individual artists in presentations.
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Even in doing presentations for internal auditors. Now, which is one of the big things I do. I’ve had a lot of people come to me and say,
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Well, first, the best response I ever got when one of the written responses from a conference and but 60 different ones. It was a Western regional conference and lots of glowing things and one person said
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Jack is not as funny as he thinks he is that person was right. But what people will say to me is
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Because I’m interjecting with these things throughout the whole thing. They go, you know, I had to pay more attention.
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Because I never knew quite what direction you’re going to go and so their jokes their non sequiturs their illusions that people may not get but it does make them pay more attention. So if you’re in the audit environment, you don’t
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Saturate the whole thing with it. But if you start out with that they could they’re suddenly going wait this thing going to be normal.
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Just a little bit more attention to what’s going on here.
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Well, and it’s funny that you bring that up, you know, because obviously auditors give lots of verbal presentations, right, whether that’s an exit conference you know board meeting, whatever else. And yeah, it’s excuse me, it’s not a. It’s not a comedy act.
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Okay, so, so you don’t want to think of it, and prepare like you’re doing a you know 30 minute comedy sad.
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But throwing a few of those things in there, like you said, it makes people pay more attention it lightens some of the tension that might be in the room.
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And again, if you’re sitting at home. Listen to this. Just think about it, right. Would you, would you rather listen to somebody speak, who is like, you know, monotone professor and now on slide 33 or going to talk about bullet three
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I think I saw the last interview.
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I was, I saw, I saw more than one of the
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Anyway, but but that’s, that’s why. As an example, you and I do things different. Right, because again it’s. Would you rather listen to somebody doing that or somebody that is interjecting so
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The one
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Line. I often use is my job is to keep you awake. If you learn something accidentally good and there really is more truth to that than it should be, because I’ve, I have seen some incredible presentations that I had. It was almost impossible stay awake for and
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Let’s face it, let’s talk about a one hour presentation. What are you going to take back from one of those two three
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The best advice I ever got was actually somebody that work from Disney and they made the comment that when they’re at these two and a half day conferences, they don’t take notes. All they uses the back of their name. Other nameplate their badge.
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He goes, I write two or three things down. And that’s it. You see all these people there right and pages and pages and pages of notes, they’re going to take it back. They’re going to file it away. They’re never do anything.
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I go back and I look at that badge and I do those three things, three things more than most people that
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So when I think about presentations. If people can actually pick up 123 things from an actually do them that’s an incredibly successful presentation, you think about any meeting you have
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If it’s an exit conference and entrance conference, just an interim conference, if they actually pay kitchen.
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One or two things and do them. That’s probably more successful than the than the meetings, you’re having right now. No matter how much information you and whoever you’re talking to her sharing. Yeah.
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Very true, very true. But again, that’s not you know that’s not typical.
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Model. I know as far
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As what but that but that’s exactly what we’re talking about right is try to be a little bit different. Use some creativity use some humor and actually show that we’re real people.
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Well, you made an interesting comment about don’t make it a comedy act and even one of the things, if you’re paying attention to what’s being said
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And looking for the slightly skewed approach to it, as I say, somebody asked me a question I can almost never give a straight answer first
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You are paying a lot closer attention to what’s being said if you’re thinking about all those terms and aspects of it. And that way you are starting to critically think a little more look at it differently, step back from it and not hear.
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Your own oddities and your own oddity, this works wants to it.
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Yep.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, and it’ll, it’ll overall make you a better auditor right
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Because listener.
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And a better auditor.
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Better. Well, yes, because there’s a better listener. You are a better auditor. Yeah, much, much better. So I we have two ears and one mouth right that’s what I was always
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Taught or means one who listens. Yeah.
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Yeah, it’s either that or was my parents just telling me to shut up. Right.
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Well, yeah, yeah.
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My parents were voting for know mouth, but that’s another
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Lesson. I would need as much but
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Uh huh. Well Mike like usual. We get to talk and just, just to friends and the time goes by very, very quickly. So
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Kind of before we wrap off off here just to remind people again because I know you’ve got your auditing humor and other oxymorons book. Yeah, that’s out. And it’s great read. Like you said, funny stuff.
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That may have ended up in an article in internal auditor before, but a lot of stuff that you’ve kind of collected over the years.
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Yeah, where can they find out
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The I actually carries it on their last I knew they had it in the bookstore.
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But also get it through Amazon. Okay. And similarly, people can also contact me and particular I’m more than happy to work out bulk sales deals
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Oh, yes.
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You want to, but you need to buy one for everybody. And this is this is particularly this is to General Motors and to
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The ones that have 400 people in the shop right
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Buy one for everybody. So then, a lot of leniency is really funny, but they can contact me my email address in Jacka that’s a JC k at F packs.com if packs is flying pig audit consulting Training Solutions. Alright.
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And we’re happy to talk to anybody about anything, obviously, but also if you’re interested in in that kind of discount or whatever.
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Yeah, and we’ll make sure I’ll make sure I put that in the in the show notes as well because, I mean, and like I said you you’ve been doing this for a long time. I really appreciate what you’ve been doing because
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You know, I think we need more of us out there trying to get people to laugh, trying to get them to be creative.
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Because that’s that’s really when we’re going to start adding more value, you know, trying to be more technical more serious isn’t going to get us head.
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We actually have to do some of these other stuff. And like you said, it worked for you guys at farmers and, you know, I remember you said that you never got accused of being unprofessional. Yeah.
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So we can actually do this and still be seen as a professional professional does not mean stiff.
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Yes.
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That’s a dead person. We don’t want to be dead people.
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Well, you can be a professional that person, but there’s no money in it.
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Going but
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Anyway,
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So, um, I really enjoyed talking with you today. And again, yeah. Everybody go out, get Mike’s book.
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You gotta laugh a little bit and it’ll get you doing that and thinking a little bit more creative, because that’s really what we got to be bringing into the profession.
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To add value and to really help help make change in our organization. So Mike, we’ll have to have you back man because we got to do less more laughing as well.
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Well, it’s been fun. And I appreciate the time. Thanks so much.
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Hey. You’re welcome. And we’ll see you on a future episode of jam with Jason
