Getting Things Done Together: A Conversation with David Allen & Ed Lamont (Part One)

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Look at this email, what does it mean?
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Communication is the imparting or exchanging of information or news.
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The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that
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it has taken place.
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Conversation is the oral exchange of sentiments, observations, opinions, or ideas.
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Forbes Books Radio presents the conversation with Clinton and Pageant.
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Today, we're joined by two extraordinary thinkers who have redefined
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the way we approach productivity and collaboration. David Allen is
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the creative of the world renowned Getting Things Done methodology,
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a framework that has transformed how millions of people organize
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their work in their lives. He's been recognized by Time
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magazine as one of the world's most influential thinkers in
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personal productivity in his book Getting Things Done As a
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Modern Classic. Joining him to day is Ed Lamont, a
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keynote speaker, executive coach, and consulted with decades of experienced
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hoping get organizations and executives across the globe bill cultures,
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or trust accountability in high performance. Together, they've co authored
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a Team Getting Things Done with Others, winner of the
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twenty twenty four Google Play Best Business Book Award. This
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book takes the proven principles of getting things done and
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applies them to the collective level, helping teens move beyond
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business to real sustainable productivity in a world where collaboration
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is both essential and more than complex than ever, their
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insights could be more timely. David, Ed, thanks for coming
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to the show.
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Great stuff, Thank you glad to be here. Thanks for
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the invitation.
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My pleasure. I like to think of all the guests
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to come on the show as superheroes, and everyody superhero
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has a backstory or an origin story. So David, let's
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start with you. What's your origin story? Then we'll come
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over to you, Ed.
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So let's see born.
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That might be you know, Kyali Eel was born in space,
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so you never know.
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Yeah, born and grew up for the most part in Louisiana,
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but then went to school I'm Swarna. Then got into
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graduate school at Berkeley in the topic of American intellectual history,
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history of thought culture, not military or political, but more
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history of culture and.
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Thinking process, which I enjoyed and enjoyed it very much.
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That the only thing you.
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Could do, though is teach history. The degree in history,
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and you know this is Berkeley nineteen sixty eight, which
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is a headache.
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Time to be in Berkeleyshire, and you know, there.
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Was so much sort of personal growth stuff going on then,
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and I got kind of tired of studying people who
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were enlightened, and I wanted my own. So I figured that,
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you know, college was not a place to get it.
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So I dropped out and did all kinds of things,
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exploring meditation, spiritual practices, black belt in karate, I got
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in martial arts, and of course they weren't paying people
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to do any of that, so they still had to
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make a living. And so and again I didn't know
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what I was going to do career wise. And I
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have some friends that had their own little businesses looked
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like one or two and needed some help. So I
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showed up and said, hey, can I help you out?
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And I didn't know anything about or not much about
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the content of what their business was, but looked at
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how they were doing what they were doing, because you know,
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either mister efficiency or mister lazy from the accommodation of
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their own And so I look at what they were
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doing and say, well, how can we Now they call
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that process improvement, you know, and you know, back then
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it was just how much earlier could we leave today.
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I looked at what they were doing, and then I
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brought some improvement to what they did.
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And then I got moored. So we found another game.
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Then I discovered one day they called people something and
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they paid them.
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It's called consultant.
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Oh, I couldn't spell it, and now I r went
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and so then but because I had the background, and
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especially meditation and especially the martial arts, I discovered the value.
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Of having a clear head.
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And you know, my little consulting practice started to get
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bit busier and busier, and so I began to look
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for techniques for myself where I could stay more afloat
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given the business of my world that was trying to
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show up. And discovered I didn't wake up one morning
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with GDD with this methodology. It was a long string
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of epiphanets, as I say, you know, the little thing here,
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and that worked, and the little thing here, I added
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that to my thing and that worked. And then it
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turned out that I started to develop this sort of
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kind of a holistic methodology about staying on top of
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my world. And it turned out that as I was
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working with my clients, I shared these techniques with them.
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They needed it too. Their business. Their role was highly
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busy and getting busier all the time, and it worked
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for them. It produced the same kindly results for clarity,
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more focused, more control, more mental space to think about
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cool stuff as opposed to just business. And so that
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became a lot of the key of what my consulting.
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We didn't call a coaching back then, but that's actually
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what it was. It was more like one oh one
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with the entrepreneurs and the CEOs of.
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These small companies.
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And then big head of the human resources department in
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a big corporation saw what I was doing. He said, David,
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we need that in our whole culture. Can you design
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some sort of training around what you've come up with
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and we can test it out. I said, well, I'll see.
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So we did a pilot program for a thousand executives
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and managers with a personal productivity seminar that I designed,
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and it was probably the most successful training that they'd
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ever done. This was Luckheed in nineteen eighty three eighty four,
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and I suddenly found myself thrust in the corporate training world.
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And I said, geez, as an American intellectual history major
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in work, if you told me I was going to
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be in the corporate training world, and I'd said, what
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are you spoking? You come up right, But it turned
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out that was the rightest audience for what I come
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up with. They were willing to pay for it, so
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thrust me into the corporate training world.
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And then for the next two decades I.
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Probably trained hundreds of thousands of people, mostly the American
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companies have organizations, and my consulting practice really turned into
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one on one now we'd call it coaching, one on one,
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desk side with some of the more senior people in
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these organizations that had heard about me, been a similar
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I gave or whatever, And so I spent literally thousands
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of hours with some of the best and brightest people
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that you'd ever meet on the planet, actually implementing desk
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side with them this methodology and personalizing it for them.
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And that thrust me into that world. And you couldn't
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fool me a clip. As I said, it took me
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twenty years to figure out what I'd figured out, and
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then it was unique and nobody else seemed to have
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done it. I had no formal or traditional education in time, medical, business,
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or psychology. This is all the street smarts, and with
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my own experience and you know, building something that was
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duplicated in terms of what was going around on. So
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then had some good advisors that said, gee, David, you
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got to write the book.
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Write a book. How do you write a book?
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My first my next action, my first action on writing
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a book was buying three books about how to.
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Write a book?
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Did they have one called book writing for Dummies? Is
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that out there?
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Yeah?
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Something like that, something and that sort of.
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And I had no idea how successful getting bigs done
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in the book was going to be. I just needed
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to write it, kind of get it out of my
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head and get it out there. And it turned out
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it was quite successful. So that thrust me into a
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whole different world. Cauld realize.
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Once I've written the book, I said, I'm done. That
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is it.
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I put everything in there that I knew, everything that
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was been my experienced for the previous twenty years. And
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but then, you know, God didn't take me away. So
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I figured I'm still here. Now what the big question?
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Now?
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What?
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And then so then I found out that it was
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actually scalable because I had no idea if somebody could
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you read the book and get it or get value
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of just reading the book and the first weekend. It
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was published in two thousand and one, first edition. I
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got an email from a lady who said, David, I
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got I got the book. I read it, I implemented.
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It changed my life. It's just repeatable and it's sustainable.
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It's something it didn't require me physically personally to be
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there for people to get it. So that's a that's
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a short version of a very long story. Well it's
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then you know we're gone global. You know the book
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is sold, you know ready many copies. So there are
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a lot of advocates now of getting based around the world.
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Well, you're out with secuitis and I found those are
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the most interesting ones. There's a song that boz Lermann
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put out. I think it's not his words, but he
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took us a mock speat. Somebody given it a high
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school reunion and it says, don't feel bad if you
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don't know what you needed twenty two. Some of the
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most interesting forty year olds still don't know what they
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want to do with their lives. So, yeah, that was
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kind of you on.
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Your fifty five. The book was for following.
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That's amazing. I kill kids, relax, don't tell us on
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that hole. And I'm pushing it. Well, he wants to relax.
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There's a lot of opportunities still, you're even seeing it. Yeah, anyway,
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that's great.
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Ed.
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How about your backstory, Yeah, well, I mean it's in
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many ways it's it's similar to David's. We met I
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think about two thousand and four, and we hit it
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off immediately, I think because there was there were lots
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of commonalities in our stories. I'm as you can maybe
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here if you're Google's accents on Canada. Lived there for
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eighteen years, and then I got tired of living in
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temperatures that could do as law as minus forty in Winnipeg.
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So I grabbed a bicycle and came to Europe. When
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cycled around for a year and a half, got exposed
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to a couple of languages, old buildings, new cultures, and
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I kind of just fell in love. So I went
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back and started a university degree, did a year abroad
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in Germany. He went back and finished my degree and
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then went to one of the best theater schools in
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the world in Paris for a few years and was
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kind of headed down a track being a performer. For
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a big chunk of my twenties had an injury on
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stage in Japan and had to change careers. So I
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went into oil broking, which is not obvious, but both
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of them involved quick reflexes and fast thinking. So I
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did that for a while and a bit like David,
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I had developed a practice of, you know, kind of
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being able to come to some version of quiet mind
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or centering, and that practice, over time simply made doing
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that job, which was basically, you know, selling things from
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A to B in the morning and then selling them
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from B to A in the afternoon, and then maybe
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on day three introducing c in or if we're there
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to be a bit of variety, it began to just
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feel really meaningless. You know, you can make a lot
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of money doing it, but it really wasn't working for
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me in terms of having any sort of impact in
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the world that I wanted to be having. So in
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my mid thirties, which is where when I started to
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think hard about what I wanted to be when I
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grew up, I took some time off, you know, did
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the exercises required to work out, you know, what are
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you good at, what do you like? Who do you
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want to do it with, and came up with a
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picture that I didn't really recognize. But when I showed
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it to some friends, they said, well, that looks a
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lot like, you know, teaching and training, and I think
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there's a job I think, you know, one of my
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buddies said, I think my dad runs a company like that.
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So anyways, all of a sudden, I was into the
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same world as David mentioned, teaching, training, coaching, consulting, and
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it was a fabulous job and an amazing fit for
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person with my skills and desires, and it took off
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in a pretty big way with you know, very you know,
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serious companies in the world. I was traveling around, making
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good money, doing work that I loved, but I really
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couldn't appreciate what was happening because I was so stressed
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by my lack frankly, as I can see it now,
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lack of system. And so I think it was two
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thousand and four I someone gave me David's book and said,
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I think you might need this. I of course said
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thanks very much, And it didn't for six months because
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I didn't have time to read the book about time,
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And then I did read it, like I skimmed it
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literally like thirty minutes on a plane to New York,
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heading out there for some more work, and I got
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three ideas that you know, were paradigm shifts for me
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about how I could work inside of time. And so
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that I read the book, I implemented the book for me.
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My sense was immediately twenty five percent more productive with
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less stress. So David basically wrote the book that I
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needed in order to stop wasting energy, right because I
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was a bright kid. I had a lot of energy,
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but I was just spraying it all over everything. And
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so read the book, implemented, got the value, went to
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see David. We hit it off. We tried to get
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something together in two thousand and five, and that didn't
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work because our schedules didn't map. And then I was
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about two thousand and nine when I finally you know,
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got together with him and another partner and we started
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a UK franchise, which then spread to Germany. So for
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the last sixteen years, I've been delivering David's work in
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the world. And I guess the extension of the story
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is my contribution was initially into the new book, team
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was being in the trenches and noticing that we were
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training up lots of smart, motivated people, and then just
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sending them back into you know, a metaphorical battle of
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the song right where they they were going back into
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teams that didn't have you know, clear targets, clear processes,
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didn't know where they were going, why they were going there,
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who was doing what. And so David and I had
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a conversation over lunch and that turned into you know,
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four years later, that turned into the new book. So
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that's uh, that's again briefly my backstory up to today.
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I think that I kind of similarly. I was out
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of high school, I joined the Navies for six years,
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and then I went to college at twenty four. So
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I think there's something to be said about maybe finding
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yourself a little bit before you head straight into school.
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So definitely, definitely.
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So let's talk more about the book. You know, getting
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things done basically teams getting things out with others. So
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how do you what are some of the principles or
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how did you come to realize that the getting things
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done principles that were for individuals could also be applied
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to teams.
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Well, I mean for me, it was actually fairly early
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on in teaching and methodology. I ended up working with
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an intact team and as we were going through the
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horizons the focus for an individual, I realized, you know
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that those absolutely mapped to a team as well. And
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then because David had just produced the book which had
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a new sort of matrix of self management, looking at that,
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it was very clear that there was something on all
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aspects of that which would work for a team as well.
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And then the other piece was, you know, in our conversations,
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you know, David and I realized, you know, there was
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a whole bunch of stuff that we weren't teaching people
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that we were using ourselves in our teams, in our
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organizations because it couldn't be really taught at an individual level,
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but it was definitely necessary for teams to collaborate with.
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Yeah, I think it had a major key because frankly,
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in the last decade or ten or fifteen years, probably
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had has spent more time teaching, coaching, getting things done
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within teams, especially at more senior levels, and then watching
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the value that that produced in their cultures when they
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individually got that. And you know, we sort of I
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think EDS sort of basically fostered the idea that the
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book we wrote was more about the mechanics of how
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the team works, not the really subtle hard stuff like
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collaboration and relationships and leadership and all that stuff. But
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if the mechanics of how a team works together are
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not or dysfunctional, it's very difficult to do that harder stuff,
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very difficult for people to focus on the bigger game
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and the more solid things when things are falling through
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the cracks and it's it's creating frustration and irritation, you know,
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just on the relationship level for people. So we're not
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really coaches about the emotional side, but we've certainly seen
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a lot of emotional goodness show up when people got
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the mechanics right.
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You don't have to like people that you work with,
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but you better know how to work.
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With them, and then you know then that is what
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makes it a lot easier to like them.
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If you understand are it's easier to like them. That's true.
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What's the most significant challenge in adapting individual productivity principles
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over to a collective for teams?
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Biggest challenges most people think they're okay that they don't
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need to do anything else because they don't have a
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reference point about what else the else could be, of
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what it could be, and they just haven't seen it yet,
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so a lot of a lot of what Ed and
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I both do still personally, it's just we sort of
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model that. Hey guys, you know, leave it or not
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much on my mind right now, even though I've got
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a very busy, successful life and I've had a great
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career and the clear space, I think we could both
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demonstrate that. And so we're kind of the folks out there.
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Although I'm not a bountivational speaker. I'm not a habit
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change expert.
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You know.
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Our job was defining what the game is and then
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people that decide themselves if they're going to play it,
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and how long they want to play it and how
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consistently they want to play it.
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That's up to them.
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But it turns out we haven't want of champions that
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start to do this and it sticks and they sort
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of share it with people around them.
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So it does work. But it's really more about.
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The mechanics of how how a team functions and mechanics
356
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sounds a little mechanical, right, but it's the it's the procedures.
357
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It's like I think we use we use the metaphor,
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although it's not really so much metaphor. As an example,
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if you like soccer or football. You might have brilliant
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players in the visually, but unless they know how to
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work together as a team, they lose. So it's the
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same principles but applied in very different kind of contexts.
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So capture is still a critical thing to do, but
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capturing as a as an individual, Mike look or solder
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and quite a bit different than what a team together said,
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Wait a minute, what has our attention as a team.
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That's a different context, right, and that's what we I
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think we address them pretty well.
369
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Yeah, when I read your football analogy, I was reminded
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when my son was three or four, you know, we
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started in mid soccer, and you know, kind of the
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individual version of this is at three, they're just all
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running around doing what they want to do. Then when
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they get to be older and they're on you know,
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and they're thirteen, fourteen, fifteen playing soccer, then all of
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a sudden, okay, now they're passing the ball and now
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they're working together as a unit, And that's kind of
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the individual versus the actual team aspect for sure.
379
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Yeah. And I think the other thing that's challenging is
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to help people to take simple stuff seriously because there's
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give's a kind of a default and that it should
382
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be it should be interesting, it should be intellectually stimulating,
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it should be new. And a lot of the really
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easy stuff that people are not getting right is very
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simple and they're just not paying any attention to it,
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and they're not paying attention to it starts to create
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mischief on their teams. So helping people to get serious
388
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about simple stuff is part of the.
389
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Job, right, And as I like to say about individuals,
390
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the reason most people don't fully implement this immediately is,
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you know, this is going to sound a little crude,
392
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but their addiction to stress and they're not like trying
393
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to shoot up stress, but they're willingness to tolerate that
394
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stress that Ed suggested he was in, you know, in
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his previous career. And most people think, well, that's just
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the way it is, that's just the name of the game,
397
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and so they don't really realize what it would be
398
00:21:06.920 --> 00:21:07.880
like if they didn't.
399
00:21:07.640 --> 00:21:08.680
Have that right.
400
00:21:10.440 --> 00:21:12.039
Or they wear that badge of honor that says I
401
00:21:12.119 --> 00:21:13.599
work best under pressure.
402
00:21:14.240 --> 00:21:18.680
Okay, yeah, and staying late gets you promoted.
403
00:21:19.240 --> 00:21:22.640
Exactly, So you have a concept of helped me. High
404
00:21:22.640 --> 00:21:25.240
performance is introduced as kind of the team equivalent of
405
00:21:25.279 --> 00:21:27.920
an individual's mind like water, which I think you talk
406
00:21:27.960 --> 00:21:31.200
about and getting things done. Can you just talk for
407
00:21:31.200 --> 00:21:32.960
a minute about what mind like water means and then
408
00:21:32.960 --> 00:21:34.720
how that applies in the team environment.
409
00:21:35.680 --> 00:21:37.960
Well, I mean mind like water was one of the
410
00:21:38.000 --> 00:21:40.680
three things that and I think that's true for a
411
00:21:40.680 --> 00:21:43.599
lot of people when they read David's first book, The
412
00:21:43.839 --> 00:21:46.960
Idea of Blind Like Water, I understood I had a
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practice and it was you know, if you never really
414
00:21:50.799 --> 00:21:53.519
gets stated anywhere in the book, but you know, for me,
415
00:21:53.720 --> 00:21:56.200
it was kind of screaming out of her repage that
416
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if I could learn to work in the way that
417
00:21:58.519 --> 00:22:02.519
David was proposing, I could you know, be in in
418
00:22:02.599 --> 00:22:07.880
stillness and make better decisions as a result, even in
419
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the worst corporate mailstrom. So that's like a huge part
420
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of the attraction for me. But as I've done the
421
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work over the years, I've seen that, you know a
422
00:22:17.359 --> 00:22:20.720
lot of people are kind of like, Okay, okay, I'm interested.
423
00:22:20.839 --> 00:22:24.000
If you say that's possible, I'm interested. So the idea
424
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of healthy high performance is the equivalent on a team.
425
00:22:26.799 --> 00:22:31.440
It's it's sort of bumping it up to an interpersonal
426
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kind of thing where you've taken care of enough things
427
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that your team isn't functioning as if everyone's hair is
428
00:22:39.559 --> 00:22:43.039
on fire. Right, So you've done the things that are
429
00:22:43.079 --> 00:22:47.960
needed in order for people to have alignment and clarity
430
00:22:48.240 --> 00:22:50.720
on really simple things like well, why are we doing
431
00:22:50.759 --> 00:22:52.960
what we're doing and where are we going? Now? If
432
00:22:53.000 --> 00:22:54.839
we just take those two things, because we could there's
433
00:22:54.839 --> 00:22:56.559
a few other things we could bring into the picture.
434
00:22:57.079 --> 00:23:00.000
But if we just take those two things, and if
435
00:23:00.000 --> 00:23:04.880
if you know that most teams are well underwater in
436
00:23:04.960 --> 00:23:07.839
terms of the amount of commitments that they've made, but
437
00:23:08.079 --> 00:23:12.359
if they were students, if they had clarified for themselves
438
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and aligned around why it exists and where they're going,
439
00:23:17.599 --> 00:23:20.680
then they would be able to use those two things
440
00:23:20.920 --> 00:23:25.039
as sorting mechanisms for the stuff that comes at them
441
00:23:25.119 --> 00:23:27.599
on a daily basis. And if they just had that
442
00:23:27.680 --> 00:23:30.119
as part of their conversation, Well, this is this on
443
00:23:30.200 --> 00:23:30.960
purpose for us?
444
00:23:31.440 --> 00:23:31.559
No?
445
00:23:31.839 --> 00:23:36.240
Okay, well we need to push back on this, right
446
00:23:36.440 --> 00:23:38.720
or does that get us faster to where we're trying
447
00:23:38.720 --> 00:23:41.759
to get to? Yes? Okay, well we need to consider
448
00:23:41.799 --> 00:23:43.759
that one. But if we're going to consider that one,
449
00:23:44.160 --> 00:23:46.640
because we have this concept of helping high performance and
450
00:23:46.680 --> 00:23:49.200
we don't want people falling over on our team. Then
451
00:23:49.240 --> 00:23:51.920
what are we going to let go of? Right? We
452
00:23:52.000 --> 00:23:54.119
can't just keep taking stuff on and on and on.
453
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We need to take stuff on and be conscious about Okay,
454
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something else needs to go on to a list which
455
00:24:00.400 --> 00:24:04.160
is not now. So I mean that's that's kind of
456
00:24:04.200 --> 00:24:08.079
the link is really in the individual's experience all minds
457
00:24:08.160 --> 00:24:11.279
like water obviously is different from the team experience, but
458
00:24:11.359 --> 00:24:14.759
it's kind of in the collaboration and in the you know,
459
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is that collaboration relatively calm given the circumstances. Is it
460
00:24:20.200 --> 00:24:23.319
relatively respectful because you can be you don't have to
461
00:24:23.359 --> 00:24:25.759
shout at people because you're you know, you feel like
462
00:24:25.839 --> 00:24:29.000
it's existential all the time. That's how we got to
463
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healthy high performance.
464
00:24:30.640 --> 00:24:30.960
Okay.
465
00:24:31.079 --> 00:24:32.480
And in the beginning of the book, you start off
466
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with a couple of surveys that really they kind of
467
00:24:35.599 --> 00:24:37.480
paint a bleak picture. And one was the gall of
468
00:24:38.079 --> 00:24:40.200
twenty twenty two State of the Global Workplace Support that
469
00:24:40.279 --> 00:24:42.799
found that only twenty one percent of employees are engaged
470
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with their work, and other studies have shown that most
471
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people are disengaged and are demotivated by their work even
472
00:24:48.640 --> 00:24:51.400
if they're well paid. Is it hopeless or do you
473
00:24:51.440 --> 00:24:53.079
have some ideas how to address these issues?
474
00:24:54.160 --> 00:24:59.519
Well, maybe not to be too philosophical about this, but
475
00:24:59.640 --> 00:25:02.920
you know, people often said there's a dichotomy between being
476
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and doing right, you know, the being that should be
477
00:25:08.319 --> 00:25:12.039
you know and be present and all that, or let's
478
00:25:12.079 --> 00:25:15.240
go do and those they see those as different things.
479
00:25:15.400 --> 00:25:19.240
But I think I made a point in the first book. Look,
480
00:25:19.559 --> 00:25:24.079
it's possible to be being about your doing. In other words,
481
00:25:24.079 --> 00:25:26.799
you could you can be as motivated doing good work,
482
00:25:27.960 --> 00:25:32.119
you know, even if it's work. It could be probably
483
00:25:32.519 --> 00:25:36.759
more motivated if you're doing what you consider to be
484
00:25:37.440 --> 00:25:42.640
good work in a healthy way, right, and then you're not,
485
00:25:43.599 --> 00:25:48.559
you know, you don't need to go home and recover
486
00:25:48.720 --> 00:25:51.960
from your day, sort of live in recovery.
487
00:25:52.240 --> 00:25:55.039
Yeah, there was some movie I saw. I can't remember now.
488
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It was probably a couple of years ago, but in
489
00:25:57.400 --> 00:26:00.440
the movie, it's in the future. Basically the the people
490
00:26:00.480 --> 00:26:02.799
are sitting on the couch with with the four again
491
00:26:02.920 --> 00:26:05.599
the four K goggles on their head being and they
492
00:26:05.599 --> 00:26:08.319
have a clone robot that's actually doing which I thought
493
00:26:08.359 --> 00:26:11.480
was interesting. So they were just getting fatter and fatter
494
00:26:11.880 --> 00:26:14.000
being while the robot was doing all the work doing.
495
00:26:14.839 --> 00:26:16.799
I hope that's not where we're headed with all the
496
00:26:16.799 --> 00:26:20.359
AI stuff. So you caution against and I love this
497
00:26:20.440 --> 00:26:24.160
because I believe process and people are important and software
498
00:26:24.200 --> 00:26:27.000
is just you know, add on. But you caution against
499
00:26:27.000 --> 00:26:30.799
complicated software heavy solutions for what are really human challenges.
500
00:26:31.240 --> 00:26:32.799
And I love this, noting that a fool with a
501
00:26:32.839 --> 00:26:35.960
tool is still a fool. So what is the most
502
00:26:35.960 --> 00:26:39.680
common misconception teams have about technology solving all of their problems?
503
00:26:39.839 --> 00:26:42.440
And maybe what's one piece of advice you'd offer regarding
504
00:26:42.480 --> 00:26:42.839
its use.
505
00:26:43.839 --> 00:26:48.160
Well, I mean, I think we certainly in our work,
506
00:26:48.240 --> 00:26:52.400
we're constantly looking at teams in frankly whole organizations that
507
00:26:52.519 --> 00:26:56.920
are are moving in the hope that the next tool,
508
00:26:57.039 --> 00:26:59.359
whatever that tool, happens to be right. There's been a
509
00:26:59.359 --> 00:27:02.440
few over time, but the next tool, I'm guessing at
510
00:27:02.440 --> 00:27:06.119
one stage it was Outlook, and then it was teams,
511
00:27:06.200 --> 00:27:10.240
and then it was Slack, and then it was and
512
00:27:10.680 --> 00:27:14.079
all these things are spokes to somehow remove the friction
513
00:27:14.359 --> 00:27:17.160
from how they how people work with each other, but
514
00:27:17.279 --> 00:27:21.960
very often they simply don't address the reason that the
515
00:27:22.400 --> 00:27:25.599
collaboration is broken down. So you know, if you look
516
00:27:25.640 --> 00:27:29.480
at just communication and email. Email is not a problem, right,
517
00:27:29.559 --> 00:27:33.079
Email works, It works really really well. It breaks down
518
00:27:33.200 --> 00:27:36.559
if people don't know how to deal with email. So
519
00:27:36.759 --> 00:27:39.519
just taking that problem and shoving it into slack or
520
00:27:39.559 --> 00:27:43.440
teams or texts or and now, I mean the most
521
00:27:43.480 --> 00:27:46.759
persistent fantasy, and this has been around basically ever since
522
00:27:46.799 --> 00:27:49.599
I started doing this work. I would say, is that
523
00:27:49.680 --> 00:27:53.079
some version of AI is going to come along and
524
00:27:53.119 --> 00:27:55.440
tell me what I need to do, Like so they're
525
00:27:55.440 --> 00:27:59.079
going to take away the pain of prioritization from me,
526
00:28:00.000 --> 00:28:01.880
but it will just tell me this is what you
527
00:28:01.960 --> 00:28:04.759
need to go do it, do it now, or stop
528
00:28:04.920 --> 00:28:08.920
and not go do this? And I believe that it
529
00:28:08.960 --> 00:28:12.880
is still and will remain for quite some time a fantasy,
530
00:28:12.920 --> 00:28:14.880
because as soon as AI can do that that you
531
00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:17.759
probably don't have a job in it. You know, our
532
00:28:17.839 --> 00:28:21.200
executive function and our ability to collaborate with other people
533
00:28:21.799 --> 00:28:25.480
is you know, it's kind of the last redoubt of
534
00:28:25.559 --> 00:28:30.960
humans in a world that's fast being turned into you know,
535
00:28:31.000 --> 00:28:32.640
place where computer they're going to be doing a lot
536
00:28:32.680 --> 00:28:33.359
more work.
537
00:28:33.240 --> 00:28:36.119
Right, I think that you know, for me, at least,
538
00:28:36.720 --> 00:28:40.319
conversations are really important. And I while I have I
539
00:28:40.319 --> 00:28:43.519
think Jira and Slack and email and text messages certainly
540
00:28:43.519 --> 00:28:46.559
have a place, but do you feel people tend to
541
00:28:46.599 --> 00:28:50.039
default to them rather than actually have conversations. And I
542
00:28:50.079 --> 00:28:52.079
open this podcast every week with a quote from George
543
00:28:52.079 --> 00:28:54.920
Bernard Shaw that says, the single biggest problem with communication
544
00:28:55.079 --> 00:28:58.000
is illusion that it has taken place. And I think
545
00:28:58.039 --> 00:29:02.160
when we default to these asynchronous modes of communication like
546
00:29:02.359 --> 00:29:05.240
email or text. I see this all the time where
547
00:29:05.279 --> 00:29:07.160
there's a flurry of emails that go back and forth
548
00:29:07.200 --> 00:29:08.640
and I have to step in and say just stop,
549
00:29:08.680 --> 00:29:10.480
pick up the phone and in thirty seconds you can
550
00:29:10.519 --> 00:29:13.440
solve this rather than having this debate over email where
551
00:29:13.480 --> 00:29:15.599
you can't see context you're reading it, whether you're in
552
00:29:15.640 --> 00:29:18.559
a boot mood or a bad mood, just have a conversation.
553
00:29:18.720 --> 00:29:20.599
And you know, you seem to agree with this because
554
00:29:20.599 --> 00:29:23.599
clarity is identified as one of the fundamental principles for teams.
555
00:29:24.319 --> 00:29:26.440
So you know, what can we do to help achieve
556
00:29:26.480 --> 00:29:27.279
that team clarity?
557
00:29:28.200 --> 00:29:30.640
Well, I mean, it's as you say, right, so there's
558
00:29:30.640 --> 00:29:33.599
got to be a conversation, and you know, we look
559
00:29:33.640 --> 00:29:36.680
at a variety of different ways where you could use
560
00:29:36.720 --> 00:29:39.559
that clarity I mentioned already. You know, what's the purpose
561
00:29:39.599 --> 00:29:42.599
of this team? Getting clear on that huge? Where are
562
00:29:42.599 --> 00:29:45.519
we going? Getting clear on that? Also, how do we
563
00:29:45.559 --> 00:29:49.880
want to do this together? Those are all fundamental conversations really,
564
00:29:50.319 --> 00:29:53.240
and a lot of people kind of get stuck on well,
565
00:29:53.319 --> 00:29:56.079
you know, let's wordsmith this to death so we have
566
00:29:56.200 --> 00:29:59.920
the perfect version of it, and that can take you weeks, months, year,
567
00:30:00.519 --> 00:30:03.359
But actually the most important thing is that we are
568
00:30:03.400 --> 00:30:06.480
having a conversation. Whether we have all the words right,
569
00:30:06.720 --> 00:30:10.160
it's kind of irrelevant as long as we are fundamentally
570
00:30:10.200 --> 00:30:13.680
aligned around the direction and the purpose of this team.
571
00:30:14.039 --> 00:30:16.319
But then then you can go on and talk about,
572
00:30:16.400 --> 00:30:18.920
you know, are we clear about how much work we
573
00:30:19.000 --> 00:30:19.440
already have?
574
00:30:19.680 --> 00:30:19.880
Yeah?
575
00:30:21.079 --> 00:30:23.519
Right, If you're not clear on that, then of course
576
00:30:23.519 --> 00:30:25.319
you can be saying yes to all kinds of things
577
00:30:25.319 --> 00:30:28.960
that you you don't actually have capacity for, so that
578
00:30:29.119 --> 00:30:31.480
the clarity is in the conversations.
579
00:30:32.839 --> 00:30:33.279
Any time.
580
00:30:33.440 --> 00:30:36.599
Back to your point, too cut that, I think it's
581
00:30:36.680 --> 00:30:38.880
probably true and you can I'll lead this through your
582
00:30:38.920 --> 00:30:41.240
own experience as well. But I think the two biggest
583
00:30:41.279 --> 00:30:45.000
issues mostly executives say that they have relative to their
584
00:30:45.039 --> 00:30:51.640
productivity or email and meetings, and you know, they can
585
00:30:51.720 --> 00:30:55.839
both suck bad meetings lead to bad email, then we
586
00:30:55.920 --> 00:30:57.599
need another meeting because it wasn't clear.
587
00:30:58.960 --> 00:31:00.759
God, you don't need another meeting.
588
00:31:01.599 --> 00:31:03.880
We should I handle whatever that meeting was about to
589
00:31:03.880 --> 00:31:06.400
begin with it in the most appropriate way. That's getting
590
00:31:06.440 --> 00:31:10.240
back to the cats of it. And you can downward
591
00:31:10.319 --> 00:31:13.880
spiral forever. Bad meeting leading to that communication leading to
592
00:31:13.880 --> 00:31:14.920
a bad meeting together.
593
00:31:15.119 --> 00:31:18.599
You know, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know that might.
594
00:31:18.519 --> 00:31:22.440
Say i'd a little well harsh, that's the truth. Yeah,
595
00:31:22.559 --> 00:31:24.599
we see that all the time. We walk into the
596
00:31:24.680 --> 00:31:27.960
environment singwhere that's kind of what's then going on, and
597
00:31:28.039 --> 00:31:30.160
then they get used to that, and then they think
598
00:31:30.240 --> 00:31:32.640
that's what the work is about. That's what work is like.
599
00:31:33.240 --> 00:31:35.759
Yeah. You know, when I think about when I think
600
00:31:35.799 --> 00:31:39.119
about email versus conversation as well, I think back to
601
00:31:39.200 --> 00:31:41.119
when you were kids and you played the telephone game,
602
00:31:41.200 --> 00:31:43.319
which is where you know, one kid has a secret
603
00:31:43.400 --> 00:31:45.000
and they tell the next kid, who tells, I'll seek
604
00:31:45.000 --> 00:31:47.119
it to the next person. It passes down the line, right,
605
00:31:47.799 --> 00:31:49.200
and the fun of the game is that what the
606
00:31:49.319 --> 00:31:51.480
last person thinks the secret is not remotely close to
607
00:31:51.559 --> 00:31:54.480
what the first person says, and that's what makes that fun.
608
00:31:54.559 --> 00:31:56.200
But the problem is that same thing exists in the
609
00:31:56.240 --> 00:31:59.240
business world today, and it's not fun because the business
610
00:31:59.279 --> 00:32:02.480
and the leader clearly articulates, at least they think they
611
00:32:02.559 --> 00:32:05.079
have their message, and then they are quite surprised and
612
00:32:05.160 --> 00:32:08.720
angry when it's it isn't executed. And to me, it's
613
00:32:08.880 --> 00:32:11.279
when I hear your message. What I hear, I hear
614
00:32:11.319 --> 00:32:13.799
it through the way that I define terms, through my biases,
615
00:32:13.920 --> 00:32:16.319
through my filters. Frankly, whether I'm having a bad day
616
00:32:16.400 --> 00:32:17.960
or not, it's going to it's gonna affect the way
617
00:32:18.000 --> 00:32:20.240
I hear your message. So if I take your message
618
00:32:20.240 --> 00:32:21.799
to pass to the next person, they're gonna hear it
619
00:32:21.839 --> 00:32:23.680
through their biases and their filters and then where they're
620
00:32:23.720 --> 00:32:25.920
having a bad day. So it's really no surprise that
621
00:32:26.000 --> 00:32:28.640
the message gets mangled as it passes from person to person.
622
00:32:29.200 --> 00:32:31.599
Which is why I'm such a huge proponent of conversation,
623
00:32:31.759 --> 00:32:35.759
because if I can ask clarifying questions and get clarity
624
00:32:35.880 --> 00:32:37.759
like you were talking about, then I'm going to have
625
00:32:37.799 --> 00:32:40.400
a much better chance of understanding exactly what you mean.
626
00:32:40.519 --> 00:32:42.880
So you might say, Clint, turn left, which you think
627
00:32:43.000 --> 00:32:44.920
is crystal clear, and I'm looking up ahead and I
628
00:32:45.000 --> 00:32:49.440
see driveway stop sign in a major intersection interstate. So
629
00:32:49.559 --> 00:32:51.440
if I can go back and say, ed, David, which
630
00:32:51.559 --> 00:32:54.000
left do you mean? Do you mean left if the
631
00:32:54.000 --> 00:32:56.839
stop sign or left it the major stoplight. By asking
632
00:32:56.880 --> 00:32:59.519
these clarifying questions, we get that clarity that's so important
633
00:32:59.559 --> 00:33:01.000
that we all moving in the same direction.
634
00:33:02.039 --> 00:33:04.920
Yeah. And then there's the other piece, which is as
635
00:33:05.000 --> 00:33:09.279
the leader of the team or as even on the team,
636
00:33:09.359 --> 00:33:13.559
once you have you know, gotten clarity in a particular area,
637
00:33:15.400 --> 00:33:18.160
the temptation is to think, well, we did that and
638
00:33:18.400 --> 00:33:20.799
move on, right, so we don't discuss that anymore. But
639
00:33:21.240 --> 00:33:24.279
certainly as the leader and certainly with you know, things
640
00:33:24.359 --> 00:33:28.640
like direction and goals and basically you need to bore
641
00:33:28.720 --> 00:33:34.000
yourself talking about things like vision. Yeah, like you know,
642
00:33:34.119 --> 00:33:36.680
the I think in marketing it's something like, you know,
643
00:33:36.720 --> 00:33:38.640
you've got to people are are not going to buy
644
00:33:38.680 --> 00:33:41.240
anything until they've been touched eight times. Well, I would say,
645
00:33:42.200 --> 00:33:45.720
you know, it's probably twice that or three times that.
646
00:33:46.000 --> 00:33:48.079
In the domain of vision, people aren't going to buy
647
00:33:48.160 --> 00:33:50.640
your vision until they've hurt it over and over and
648
00:33:50.759 --> 00:33:53.519
over and have the chance to ask those clarifying questions
649
00:33:54.000 --> 00:33:57.160
so that each time that comes up, they're kind of
650
00:33:57.240 --> 00:34:01.799
laying down a new player of taking a sketch and
651
00:34:01.960 --> 00:34:05.160
turn it into a painting. Right, They've got to see
652
00:34:05.240 --> 00:34:07.640
the thing, and the first time you describe it, they
653
00:34:07.720 --> 00:34:10.920
get a sketch, and the fourth time they've got, you know,
654
00:34:11.000 --> 00:34:13.440
a sketch with a bit of shading, and by the
655
00:34:13.639 --> 00:34:15.880
you know, the fortieth time, they've got you know, a
656
00:34:16.000 --> 00:34:21.519
serious multi color painting that they've fallen in love with.
657
00:34:21.840 --> 00:34:23.960
And then you've got the energy change.
658
00:34:24.519 --> 00:34:25.920
Yeah, I want to touch on something you said a
659
00:34:25.960 --> 00:34:28.239
few minutes ago before I move on, and you mentioned
660
00:34:28.880 --> 00:34:31.199
I'm gonna change your words a bit, But basically you're saying,
661
00:34:31.239 --> 00:34:33.559
don't let the don't let perfection be the enemy of
662
00:34:33.599 --> 00:34:35.400
good enough. Right, So there's you're trying to make it
663
00:34:35.480 --> 00:34:38.000
perfect and word smith it to death, and you actually
664
00:34:38.000 --> 00:34:39.719
in the book you give the example when you're writing
665
00:34:39.760 --> 00:34:42.039
this book, you had what you called maybe not so
666
00:34:42.159 --> 00:34:44.280
great drafts. You pass back and forth and eventually go
667
00:34:44.360 --> 00:34:46.159
to the editor, and then you get better drafts. And
668
00:34:46.800 --> 00:34:49.559
so we shouldn't we always want to achieve, we want
669
00:34:49.559 --> 00:34:51.159
to strive for perfection. I get that, but I do
670
00:34:51.280 --> 00:34:54.440
find that people get stuck with wanting things to be perfect,
671
00:34:54.480 --> 00:34:56.480
and at some point you have said, look, we have enough,
672
00:34:56.480 --> 00:34:57.119
we should just move on.
673
00:34:57.440 --> 00:35:02.320
Let's just get going, and that flexibility is more and
674
00:35:02.440 --> 00:35:03.639
more required these days.
675
00:35:04.039 --> 00:35:07.159
People often f me. They say, David, what's new these days,
676
00:35:07.239 --> 00:35:09.840
especially with technology and everything else. I say, there's nothing
677
00:35:09.920 --> 00:35:13.480
new except how frequently things are new. That's what's new.
678
00:35:14.320 --> 00:35:17.000
I mean, your parents probably did not have to rethink
679
00:35:17.079 --> 00:35:19.159
their life and their career more than two or three
680
00:35:19.199 --> 00:35:22.360
times that they did that at all. Yeah, you're going
681
00:35:22.400 --> 00:35:28.880
to have to do that weekly, you know, or certainly
682
00:35:29.039 --> 00:35:31.519
a lot more frequently. Think about it because there are
683
00:35:31.519 --> 00:35:35.320
opportunities that show up that you can't even see it. Yeah,
684
00:35:35.440 --> 00:35:38.039
and so I think it was Richard Branson or somebody,
685
00:35:38.519 --> 00:35:41.679
you know, maybe he had stolen from somebody else. We said,
686
00:35:41.719 --> 00:35:44.519
there is no luck, there's only lots of preparation and
687
00:35:44.559 --> 00:35:46.920
then taking advantage of opportunities as they show up.
688
00:35:48.039 --> 00:35:51.360
I love that. I totally agree. Yeah, because I've found that.
689
00:35:51.599 --> 00:35:53.199
My best friend in college used to say that I
690
00:35:53.360 --> 00:35:55.639
was lucky, and I was always It would make me
691
00:35:55.760 --> 00:35:58.559
so angry because, Okay, it was lucky that I got
692
00:35:58.599 --> 00:36:01.280
this particular job, but I had to spend six years
693
00:36:01.320 --> 00:36:03.239
and maybe before that they put me in a place
694
00:36:03.360 --> 00:36:04.679
to be able to go to Georgia Tech. And then
695
00:36:04.719 --> 00:36:06.400
I got to graduate from Georgia Tech to put me
696
00:36:06.440 --> 00:36:08.039
in a place to be able to work at Coca Cola.
697
00:36:08.159 --> 00:36:10.760
So okay, you can call it luck because from the
698
00:36:10.800 --> 00:36:13.679
outside looks I got lucky. But under the waterman, I
699
00:36:13.800 --> 00:36:15.840
was that duck paddling like crazy. You know, it's a
700
00:36:15.880 --> 00:36:16.679
lot of work going on.
701
00:36:17.599 --> 00:36:17.719
Well.
702
00:36:17.760 --> 00:36:20.119
That includes Part one of my conversation with David Allen
703
00:36:20.199 --> 00:36:22.639
and Ed Lamont, co authors of the award winning book
704
00:36:22.760 --> 00:36:26.039
Team Getting Things Done with Others. Coming out in part two,
705
00:36:26.199 --> 00:36:28.800
David ned explaining the concept of a team mind sweep
706
00:36:29.119 --> 00:36:31.239
and why it's a critical step for capturing the collective
707
00:36:31.280 --> 00:36:32.039
attention of a team.
708
00:36:32.639 --> 00:36:35.920
When we work with teams, one of the first things
709
00:36:35.960 --> 00:36:38.559
we do, this you know, comes out of David's work,
710
00:36:39.400 --> 00:36:44.599
is to have them do a like in an individual GTG.
711
00:36:44.679 --> 00:36:47.440
There's a mind suite for individuals that's basically whatever's on
712
00:36:47.519 --> 00:36:52.039
your mind. When you bring a team together, they have
713
00:36:52.199 --> 00:36:54.800
whatever's on their minds about their lives, but they also
714
00:36:54.880 --> 00:36:58.280
have what's on their mind about the team, and usually
715
00:36:58.440 --> 00:37:00.840
that's stuff that's probably if it's on their mind, it's
716
00:37:00.920 --> 00:37:05.320
because it's not on cruise control for the team. So
717
00:37:05.960 --> 00:37:09.199
just having them externalize all the things that they currently
718
00:37:09.440 --> 00:37:12.039
think are not quite the way they want them to be.
719
00:37:12.239 --> 00:37:14.920
We don't say that, but that's usually what the list
720
00:37:15.000 --> 00:37:17.880
consists of, because they're not really thinking about things that
721
00:37:18.000 --> 00:37:18.760
are working.
722
00:37:18.559 --> 00:37:23.840
With Thanks for listening to the Conversation. To find out
723
00:37:23.920 --> 00:37:28.519
more about Clint, go to clintonmpaget dot com and pick
724
00:37:28.599 --> 00:37:33.400
up Clint's book How Teams Triumph Managing by Commitments at Amazon.
725
00:37:34.079 --> 00:37:36.320
The Conversation with Clinton M.
726
00:37:36.519 --> 00:37:39.400
Paget is a production of Forbes Books.