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All right.
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Well, welcome to Damn Skippin.
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I am your host, Nick Richmeyer, a show for trust makers bringing leadership and change to a trust broken economy.
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So glad to have you here.
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It's been a minute since we've done a solo episode, and I'm excited to be just spending a little bit of time with you.
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One on one, or one on two, or one on a hundred, or however many people listen to this podcast, pretend we're sitting out on my back patio by the fire pit, just having a little chat.
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That's the spirit of this.
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This week, an open question.
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Does it even matter if I know my shit anymore?
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Does it does it matter if we know anything?
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Um, no big surprise that knowledge has been sort of under assault for quite some time.
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Uh we're gonna talk about that.
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Um some of this comes from my recently released book, The Damn Rules.
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Um, but we're gonna go a little deeper this time, and you'll hear a little bit about why as we go.
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Um so I want to start with a conversation I've had four times since I think I talked to you last, maybe five.
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Um, and it really is in a very consistent vein, which is I know what I bring to the table, I've had years of experience, and I know how to apply that in a ton of context, right?
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Leaders are saying people have hired me or my firm over and over and over in the past.
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Other than and the thing that's driving me nuts is that other people in this space are kind of posers and they're using AI to sound more credible, and they really are, and some of that's about social media, but it's more than that.
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It's that they're feeling like their ability to differentiate and communicate value by way of saying, I know some stuff has uh been degraded.
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They don't want to go online, they don't want to develop a personal brand, they don't want to chase the gurus, right?
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And these are folks from the big four consulting firms, they're private soloists, they're internal leaders, they're other founders.
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Um the interesting thing about that is everybody's a lot smarter and a lot savvier than they were last week or last month or last year.
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The preponderance of information available to us, the speed at which we can access it.
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You know, I have been very loud about sort of the unreliability of AI and AI scraping the universe and all of that.
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But the the simple fact is speed of access to soundbiteable or structured, contextless information, the kinds of stuff that we go into the internet for, is a lot more accessible than it used to be.
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Now, most of that's because Google and OpenAI and Anthropics stole every idea that's ever been and repackaged it.
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Um but regardless of that, the thing is we can pick up information more swiftly.
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Now, a lot of the early research about this is showing that the speed of our ability to pick it up is pretty much matched by the speed of our ability to put it down.
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And that's because mental friction matters, right?
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So one of the things I said in the book, and have I've said a lot of places, is that we built, we spent a generation focused on efficiency.
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And it turns out that the inefficiencies were load-bearing.
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And one of the places where inefficiency is really, really load-bearing is in how our ability to know and understand information and our ability to think well and think in structured ways and think in context.
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And so we've all been on a training program, or many of us, most of us who are still staying engaged in digital formats, um, have been on a training program these last four or five years of contextless information.
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Where the only context is the chatbot and its ability to organize and spit back information that we ask of it.
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And the convenience of that has had a cognitive effect.
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And whether you use that stuff extensively or don't use it, the reality is it's had a systemic cognitive effect.
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We all feel a little smarter, but we all think a little worse.
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And one of the one of the primary negative beneficiaries of that are people who sell knowledge in some way, right?
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So this is you know, advisory firms, um, consultancies, agencies, learning organizations, educational organizations, most soloists, right?
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Much of this falls into what Alex H.M.
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Smith recently framed as the B2B discretionary quadrant.
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So if you think about business as a four-quadrant thing of B2B and B2C across the top and discretionary and non-discretionary across the side, well, one quadrant is B2B discretionary, and that's stuff businesses don't have to buy.
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They have to buy legal, they have to pay their taxes, they have to do payroll, there's services they have to buy to stay in business, and there's stuff they don't have to buy that is purely discretionary, often stuff that's not budgeted.
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Um, they don't have to buy a website upgrade, they don't have to buy online marketing, they don't have to buy a consultant, they don't have to buy an HR operational improvement program, they don't have to buy these things.
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But they often want to, but the demand for B2B discretionary has gone down.
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And some of that is because a lot of what lives in that B2B discretionary space is this knowledge business, people who sell knowledge for a living, uh, agencies, firms, individuals, et cetera.
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The main question there is what is the link between my increased capacity?
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So people feel like they're coming out of the fog, COVID's long over, they want to want the world to change, they want to be better, they put some investment in themselves, they're ready to sort of re-engage in a deeper way.
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And but what is my the relationship between my increased capacity and knowledge and a marketplace that seems to suddenly be really cavalier or maybe even hate knowledge?
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Um, and so the thesis I want to offer you today, uh, on today's brief episode, is that we're seeing a collapse of knowledge as a tradable commodity, as a thing that you can buy and sell in the world, because knowledge has been completely price pressured down to near zero by the uh LLMs, and the rise of something else, the rise of wisdom.
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And then what I want you to think about that is knowledge is something I know.
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It is a thing in a box, and I can bring it out and I can show it to you.
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I know how to run this program, I know how to take you through these steps, I know how to build this tool, I know how to have this conversation with your team.
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We know how to implement this outbound campaign, right?
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It is information in a box that doesn't need a context, right?
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It just you need to find the in the file system, grab it from the file system, and do it.
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And the reality is a lot of folks sell that service.
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I know how to build a portfolio, I know how to put together a financial plan, I know how to um again deliver a marketing campaign, I know how to coach you through an MA transition.
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And it reads because a lot of us who run these things grew up in a knowledge-based economy.
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A lot of it reads like, hey, I can go to the library, find it in the card catalog, pull it out, and give you that information.
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Anything that reads as going to the encyclopedia, going to the library, pulling the file out, and delivering information, no matter how valuable that information is, all of that is pressurized to that and price compressed to that near zero state that we're seeing everywhere in terms of near zero pricing.
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Now, there are exceptions to that.
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Please don't email me all of your examples of being an exception to that.
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I know there are exceptions to that.
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Um, but where most of the differentiation now is then happening is something else, which is wisdom.
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And what I would argue wisdom is in comparison to knowledge is wisdom is a more ancient and human and um outside of time idea, which is it is embodied and applied, context-rich knowledge.
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Wisdom is embodied, applied, and context-rich knowledge.
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So it is the ability to take the knowing of things, the access to information, the access to steps and tools and ideas, and to bring those to bear in very, very specific confines and translate what you know in those spaces.
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What I think challenges that for a lot of knowledge-based businesses is you've been trained to niche down.
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I know exactly how what to do for dog walking dentists who only want to do corrective surgery for children between the ages of 11 and 14.
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And I know how to do that over and over and over and over again.
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I have niched to a knowledge base.
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I and I only know how to work in that context.
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If you followed any marketing advice in the last 10 years, you probably follow an advice down that merry trail.
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Niches get reashes and other sort of silly sayings like that.
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And all of that has led an entire swath of the economy to be cut off at the knees by the LLM system.
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Because you've actually communicated, I don't actually have wisdom.
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The subtext is I don't have wisdom.
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I can't translate from category A to category B to category C.
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I can't move in and out of things.
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I'm actually just a box of information.
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And so if you can find that box of information somewhere else, say from Google or from Anthropic, then I guess what am I going to do?
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Shrug my shoulders and hope that I can find enough clients that are anti-AI to hire me.
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That is a decision you could make, but not one that I would suggest.
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What I would suggest is not only do you have to rethink how you position yourself in the marketplace, but you have to rethink even how you embody your own work.
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Now, this is getting into some different territory that we don't always talk about on this show.
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We're probably going to talk about it more, just warning you.
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So prepare yourself and your subscription buttons on or off.
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But what I mean by embodying something is you have to carry your work in a different way.
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You have to think about your own self-leadership in a different way.
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You have to think about how you spend your time in a different way.
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You have to think about how you evaluate your capacity and your skills and your team, what you hire for, how you organize power, how all the dynamics of a really important business, your revenue model, what you get paid for and what you give away for free, all of that has to move through the lens of an anti-knowledge trust broken economic system.
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And once you start to see that and do that, then new opportunities open up.
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But it literally happens in the way you carry it, in your the in the hours you spend, how you think, how you move, who you talk to, when you talk to them, whether you're sitting there building up uh LinkedIn campaigns or whether you're calling up somebody and having a conversation.
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Those are embodied decisions.
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You feel them in your actual physical self.
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I know that's a little bit too weird to talk about when we're sitting here on a podcast and you're watching on YouTube, which by the way, I'm hat wearing today.
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Those of you not watching on video, new experience, tell me whether you like it or not.
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That can be embodiment can be a weird experience whether you're sitting here talking about it on YouTube or whether you're listening to it in your car as you're driving around or you're, you know, multitasking with me in your ears.
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And I'm sitting here saying, you got to embody this.
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And that's probably a good signal to tell you that as this podcast progresses, it's gonna become less and less useful as a kind of quote unquote second screen, just to be straightforward.
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Because what I'm interested in is not just being one more yapper in your year, the ear.
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You got so many of those to pick from.
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Why do you need one more?
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What I'm interested in is creating spaces for you to slow down and really consider.
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One of the compliments I love getting back is when people message me and say, I had to listen to that episode twice.
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I had to listen to that episode three times.
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Because I really had to slow down and consider what you were saying.
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That is the kind of podcast this is, and that is the kind of podcast this is gonna be.
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This is not your second screen, play it while you're making the meatloaf podcast.
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Now, some of you are good at that, and you can sort of do things with your body and listen at the same time.
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Do that if you like.
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But what we want to build here is a different way of embodying your work.
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And to do that, we have to actually call out more than just adding more bullet points of knowledge into your way of being in the world as a leader.
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So if wisdom is embodied, context-rich, applicable, right?
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How do we get there from here?
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Um, that's really the focus of our of the last half of the episode today.
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Before we get there, I want to just talk a little bit about why this is.
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It really isn't because of AI.
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This has been going on for a while, and there's a lot of really good writing about it.
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Um, some of you, I think, I've recommended this to you.
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You've read it.
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You read the Gutenberg Parenthesis by Jeff Jarvis.
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There's a couple other interesting pieces.
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I talk about this in the first chapter of The Damn Rules, and that is that we are in a transition from a written social commons, a written psychosocial world where ideas and information and knowledge and even cultural awareness transfers through blocks of information and words that is organized in a written format, to we are going backwards, really, toward an oral system.
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This is me delivering this to you over a podcast, is an oral system.
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And it's one of the reasons why I'm asking you to slow down and maybe have a piece of paper out and a pencil and to take notes because I'm you will be best served to think about this, even if you're literally doodling on the page and just writing related thoughts.
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You will be best served to experience this podcast through the lens of a written system.
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That's why we deliver transcripts.
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It's why we want those things available to you, is so that you can take what is probably better experienced as a cool video or a listening experience, but you can experience in a written way.
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Because a written system for knowledge organization and transfer is completely different than an oral system.
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Um, oral culture, because of how ephemeral oral is and talking and chatting and all of that, is is really ends up with very localized ethics.
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An oral system is functionally ephemeral.
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So I say it and it's gone.
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And you think about the internet that way, right?
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You go to the internet and it's gone.
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Yeah, there's a written record there and you could search it and whatever.
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Might come up in LLMs.
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But in terms of sticking in people's consciousness, the words don't stick long enough for people to consider what do those actually mean and what are the implications thereof?
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That is a hallmark of an oral culture.
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One of the things that people often who are critics of the president say is, well, my gosh, how can he say these things, off the cuff things, and then just disappears out of people's minds?
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Because most of what he's saying and doing is delivered in an oral culture way.
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Even when there's tweets, those tweets are sound bites.
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Those aren't organized, written, long form thoughts.
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They're tweets, they're posts, they're so even social media, even when it's written, is in an oral culture form.
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It's a yap versus a yap versus a yap versus a yap.
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And all that yapping is meant to go into the brain and back out again.
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And it creates a body embodied experience.
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It creates a sense of anger or frustration or questions or doubt or curiosity or joy.
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We feel it.
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And to be honest, in oral culture, the people who succeed are better at making you feel things.
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Right?
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So why is Mr.
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Beast jumping through the screen on YouTube?
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Why are all these quick cuts in a YouTube video?
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Why, why are all these hallmarks of the oral tradition so loud and so emotive and so over-expressed?
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Why do those things work?
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Because they are the only way you create stickiness in an oral communication.
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Because we're not writing it down.
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We're not actually considering the ideas.
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We're not slowing ourselves down to go, what's right about that and what makes sense?
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And does that idea connect to that idea, connect to that idea?
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When the president writes 36 tweets over the process of three hours in the middle of the night, we no one's sitting down, except for maybe some person at the New York Times is going to write an op-ed that three people will read.
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No one's sitting down going, is this coherent?
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Does this make sense?
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What is the core argument?
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What is the core thesis?
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Do I agree with this core argument of core thesis?
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We are all doing it based on feeling.
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And we attribute that to the person.
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Oh, well, that's just how he is.
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He just knows how to rile people up.
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She communicates in sound bites.
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We've got in the habit of attributing this to people.
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Or they're internet brained, right?
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And what was really happening, one of the big interregnums that we are in the middle of between is between a written culture and an oral culture.
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And that oral culture lives and dies by emotive reactivity instead of actually considering the idea.
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So a lot of people's businesses are still functioning in a way where they're going to the marketplace and they're trying to go, hey, do you want to consider this deep idea with me?
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And they're, but they're they're trying to do it in oral culture formats.
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They're trying to do it on LinkedIn.
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They're trying to do it in um quick sound bites.
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And the reality is it doesn't work that way.
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You have to invite people to something different.
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And one of the reasons why I've been challenging people is say, can you really do what you're trying to do and market it through digital algorithms?
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It's not because I want to talk about digital algorithms.
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Jesus Christ, if I could just stop talking about digital algorithms, what a gift that would be.
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The reason why I raise that flag for people is because algorithms is the primary place where people feel the pain of a transition between a written culture and an oral culture.
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And that transition is a transition between systemic value-rich knowledge and what the oral tradition values, which is wisdom and experience.
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And social media and algorithms don't like wisdom because that causes people to slow down and usually causes people to stop scrolling.
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So if the only things that translate in an oral-rich situation is reactivity, emotive, sometimes storytelling, and wisdom, really context-rich.
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Here's how to think about this, here's how to do well, here's an engaged way of conversing about this.
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Well, they're going to throw wisdom out of the bucket.
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And algorithm's never gonna pick wisdom because wisdom's never gonna keep you scrolling from one addictive post to the next.
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The only thing that's gonna keep you scrolling is highly emotive, highly reactive, gotcha, kind of feelings-based, body reactive-based information, which is the death knell for knowledge workers and for knowledge businesses.
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And so there's a reason why those of you who work in that space, I work in that space, have found such a resistance to those kinds of increased mediums, and why other people have said, well, who cares?
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Who cares about delivering knowledge?
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Who cares about delivering wisdom?
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What I'm gonna do is learn how to be quippy and funny on the internet.
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And that's what you need to do too.
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And so hire me to help you build your personal brand so you can be quippy and funny on the internet too.
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That's fine.
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If you want to be quippy and funny on the internet, that's fine.
00:19:49.839 --> 00:19:55.599
But it understands that you are picking a side in our oral culture future.
00:19:56.480 --> 00:20:09.279
And that side is the side of fast, quick, reactive, um, compulsive uh interactions that move through us ephemerally.
00:20:10.000 --> 00:20:18.880
And that ephemeral movement creates really interesting consequences if we look at the history of oral tradition long before Gutenberg, right?
00:20:19.839 --> 00:20:21.599
Pre-printing press.
00:20:22.160 --> 00:20:24.720
So you get things like localized ethics.
00:20:24.960 --> 00:20:27.599
You get what some have called detached reasoning.
00:20:27.759 --> 00:20:29.759
Detached reasoning means I can think this.
00:20:29.839 --> 00:20:35.519
It doesn't have to make any sense anywhere else other than sitting in my chair, but I think this, and therefore I'm gonna say it.
00:20:35.759 --> 00:20:41.200
And that produces language that is more performative, more conflict-driven, and more impulsive.
00:20:41.440 --> 00:20:50.960
And if we really gut check ourselves, we're watching our entire culture move that to that space and have been for some time in a way that has nothing to do with AI.
00:20:51.599 --> 00:20:54.799
Perhaps is accelerated by AI, but has nothing to do with AI.
00:20:54.960 --> 00:20:58.640
And really fundamentally, it is the move back into an oral culture.
00:20:58.799 --> 00:21:05.359
Now, we will do oral culture in a completely different way because we have digitally globally accessible mass media.
00:21:05.519 --> 00:21:13.440
And arguably, a digitally globally accessible mass media through the internet is a really destructive way to do oral culture.
00:21:13.599 --> 00:21:20.000
Um, you can look at the history of Facebook and its uh role in, I don't know, say genocide to see that be true.
00:21:20.240 --> 00:21:22.640
But the bottom line is that is where we are.
00:21:22.880 --> 00:21:40.400
And the truth of what your business is, those of you who sell and give and deliver advice and knowledge, is that your clients, your customers benefit from something else, which is thoughtful, engagement, context-rich approach to the problems that they have and the solutions that you can bring to the table.
00:21:40.640 --> 00:21:44.799
Well, how are you going to deliver that in an oral tradition way?
00:21:45.519 --> 00:21:49.359
Because ideas are hard to analyze and break down and consider.
00:21:49.599 --> 00:21:51.680
And that's the beauty of the written word.
00:21:51.759 --> 00:21:59.759
That's the beauty of long form, is that it when you write everything out, like my decision to write a book, when I had to write everything out, I had to really think.
00:22:00.240 --> 00:22:02.720
About how does this idea connect to that idea connect to that idea?
00:22:02.799 --> 00:22:03.519
And is it coherent?
00:22:03.599 --> 00:22:07.200
And could it apply in this context and this context and this context?
00:22:07.440 --> 00:22:11.599
That level of discipline produces better outcomes.
00:22:12.160 --> 00:22:16.079
We wouldn't have a sense of the human psychology that we have.
00:22:16.400 --> 00:22:18.400
Walter Ong wrote about this.
00:22:18.799 --> 00:22:27.359
Um, we wouldn't have a sense of the human psychology we have if we didn't learn how to write and learn how to read.
00:22:27.519 --> 00:22:39.599
And so a post-literate society, the decline of reading rates, short attention spans, all that kind of stuff, does have substantial impacts on our ability to think and our ability to decide, which has real implications for business.
00:22:39.680 --> 00:22:44.000
And is one of the reasons why economically things are stalling the way that they are.
00:22:44.319 --> 00:22:51.759
That we're having an economic forestallment because everybody is doing active all-day long, everyday training to not think well.
00:22:52.240 --> 00:23:00.079
Because as soon as you can't think in long-form systemic ways where you have organized, structured meaning, which is what long-form running does.
00:23:00.319 --> 00:23:13.680
And as soon as you're thinking only in an oral tradition, and in our case, an oral tradition that is only delivered to you in sound bites and reactivity, our ability to make decisions decays dramatically, even as we feel smarter at the same time.
00:23:14.000 --> 00:23:29.680
So this core thesis of today is that we are, if we're going to live and thrive in the context of an oral society, and I think that again that we've been in this direction for 10 years or more, then we're going to have to move from knowledge businesses to wisdom businesses.
00:23:30.079 --> 00:23:32.480
That's why I am building out the wisdom school.
00:23:32.559 --> 00:23:34.160
And I want to talk a little bit about what that means.
00:23:34.559 --> 00:23:38.559
Understand the wisdom school, you really have to understand how it views the world.
00:23:38.799 --> 00:23:45.920
Organizations today have to be considered, they have to be agile, they have to be thought through, they have to be narratively coherent.
00:23:46.000 --> 00:23:54.799
They have to tell a story that makes sense and clarifies and delivers the strength of that organization across all the fields in which they work.
00:23:55.200 --> 00:24:00.240
And specifically across all the fields where human attachment and alignment happen.
00:24:00.480 --> 00:24:03.039
So I want to talk a little bit about human attachment and alignment.
00:24:03.359 --> 00:24:08.720
Human attachment is the fundamental system of how our bodies and brains work.
00:24:08.880 --> 00:24:14.960
It is the way in which we decide whether we can even hold our thoughts together, who we are, how we exist in the world.
00:24:15.119 --> 00:24:19.839
Human attachment is also the fundamental system by which all organizations run.
00:24:20.160 --> 00:24:29.359
Sales is human attachment, marketing is human attachment, hiring is human attachment, organizational design and power dynamics are human attachment.
00:24:29.519 --> 00:24:39.440
Everything is about the system by which one person connects to another person and says, we belong, and we're going to feed back information and knowledge and wisdom and connection to each other.
00:24:39.759 --> 00:24:49.119
When we're in that human attachment system, then we have a thing called alignment, which is really about where group membership happens, says, I'm a part of this.
00:24:49.359 --> 00:24:57.119
Human beings for the dawn of time, all a part of our neurology and brain patterns, human beings have connected in groups and says, hey, we're in this together.
00:24:57.279 --> 00:24:58.960
We're a part of this thing together.
00:24:59.200 --> 00:25:09.920
That group membership and people knowing that they're a part of something is an essential piece of how organizations are going to have to function in an oral tradition.
00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:12.559
It's one of the reasons why a lot of marketers are yapping out there about community.
00:25:12.640 --> 00:25:14.960
You got to build community, you got to build community, you got to build community.
00:25:15.119 --> 00:25:22.480
Now, often that means joining our$20 a month Slack circle, but that can be community.
00:25:22.799 --> 00:25:28.079
But what it at a deeper level and a more important level, what it means is a sense of membership.
00:25:28.240 --> 00:25:32.640
I, because of who I am and because of these other people, all belong to the same thing.
00:25:32.880 --> 00:25:41.119
Increasingly, the way you sell and the way you go to the marketplace has to have that same level of community and connection and a sense of belonging.
00:25:41.359 --> 00:26:05.440
All of those things, to stick with the theme of today, are a hallmark of the oral tradition, of an oral culture that is passed down human to human, conversation to conversation, connection to connection, that either transfers down by incendiary and emotive and reactive speech that triggers the body, or is connected through attachment, making real meaning and belonging together.
00:26:05.680 --> 00:26:11.200
Organizations have to get their head around this, and leaders have to start to figure out how to embody this if they want to break through the noise.
00:26:11.359 --> 00:26:14.400
Otherwise, you're going to be forever chasing the algorithms.
00:26:14.720 --> 00:26:34.400
Now, in the Wisdom School, I use Trustmade Growth, which is what I've been implementing for years now, where we look at those human attachments and how to build ventures and organizations across six factors: community, point of view, org design, positioning, culture, and value creation.
00:26:34.720 --> 00:26:44.559
Those six surfaces, those factors, are the spaces in which a healthy venture builds its meaning and wisdom by which to deliver to the world.
00:26:44.799 --> 00:26:45.359
Right?
00:26:45.599 --> 00:26:55.440
Now, to do that well, because again, it has to be agile, it has to be considered, it has to have a storytelling meaning component, it requires leaders that don't just know things.
00:26:55.680 --> 00:27:00.480
Bad news for all of us who spent the last 20 years knowing things and getting better at knowing things.
00:27:00.640 --> 00:27:06.240
But what it requires instead is leaders who can live deeply and comfortably in context.
00:27:06.400 --> 00:27:13.759
You can move from room to room, to conversation to conversation, to place to place, to setting to setting, and still be yourself.
00:27:14.240 --> 00:27:27.759
And not just be yourself in an authenticity way, but to lead and express the vision and identity and cohesion of what you're leading in a way that invites people into the same thing over and over and over again.
00:27:27.920 --> 00:27:32.400
Otherwise, we're gonna we're never gonna get that group alignment that we need, right?
00:27:32.640 --> 00:27:42.799
So that means that not just you have to live in a coherent way inside you, but the business has to live in a coherent way inside of you and then come out of you in a coherent way.
00:27:43.119 --> 00:27:45.119
That work is wisdom.
00:27:45.359 --> 00:28:01.039
So that I can talk about the business with shareholders, I can talk about the business with employees, I can talk about the business with customers, and I'm not code switching between places, or I'm not code switching from one customer to the next customer to the next customer because that's what they want from me and I want to appease the customer.
00:28:01.359 --> 00:28:03.440
I embody the thing.
00:28:03.839 --> 00:28:06.880
I am the thing that I say that it is.
00:28:06.960 --> 00:28:12.480
Now that doesn't mean that you and the business are one and the same, but that you can carry it with you everywhere in a coherent way.
00:28:12.640 --> 00:28:24.799
What I refer that to is an undivided leader, a leader who isn't breaking themselves into parts to make different contexts work and just hoping that the knowledge they bring to those places is enough because it won't be.
00:28:25.119 --> 00:28:29.200
Having a body of knowledge that you drop in the room every time you show up in the room isn't enough.
00:28:29.279 --> 00:28:36.160
You have to be able to apply that knowledge and apply that way of living in each unique context.
00:28:36.640 --> 00:28:38.559
Now, this doesn't have to be heavy, right?
00:28:38.720 --> 00:28:44.559
So when I talk about public modeling wisdom and oral tradition, we're way into deep thinking spaces.
00:28:44.720 --> 00:28:48.720
But the reason why we're there isn't so that we can all be like, well, am I being wise today?
00:28:48.880 --> 00:28:50.000
Am I doing deep things?
00:28:50.160 --> 00:28:52.720
Am I being coherent and aligned and embodied?
00:28:52.880 --> 00:28:55.839
These are words that have meaning, and I use them because they have meaning.
00:28:56.000 --> 00:28:58.480
But the way this should feel is light.
00:28:58.640 --> 00:29:06.880
It should feel like joy and comfort and ease because the leader is not wearing a heavy costume.
00:29:08.000 --> 00:29:21.920
The leader has built a company that is coherent and meaningful and organized in a way that doesn't require a lot of backroom dealing and confusion and shifting and saying one thing in one place and one thing to another.
00:29:22.079 --> 00:29:27.039
Um, that they get to be who they are from one place to the next, and there's a level of transparency to that.
00:29:27.359 --> 00:29:33.200
And though that leader themselves doesn't take themselves too seriously, right?
00:29:33.440 --> 00:29:39.519
So I don't need to be heavy about what I bring, but I have done the work to be able to bring whatever is needed for this.
00:29:39.759 --> 00:29:42.160
Maybe what's needed for this is for me to be silent.
00:29:42.400 --> 00:29:44.400
Maybe what's needed for this is for me to ask questions.
00:29:44.559 --> 00:29:53.119
Maybe what's needed for this is for me to listen and see what else is happening in the room before I try to apply the wisdom and point of view that I might have.
00:29:53.440 --> 00:29:56.240
That is the embodiment of an undivided leader.
00:29:56.400 --> 00:30:01.519
And the wisdom school is organized to help leaders learn that skill.
00:30:01.839 --> 00:30:12.400
If, for example, next week we're doing a working session, what I call a public classroom for folks in our guild that's totally free around what's called a notice meeting.
00:30:12.480 --> 00:30:28.000
And you guys may have heard me talk about notice meetings before, but a notice meeting is just a very intentionally structured meeting where you show up in a way that you can comfortably give attention and break the rhythm of the attention economy theft.
00:30:28.240 --> 00:30:49.119
So instead of waiting to see if they're going to ask from you or waiting to see if you can give your pitch or getting around to what you want to talk about, you are learning to actually listen deeply, understand what's happening in front of you, laugh when it's laughable, change the subject when it needs changing, enjoy the person in front of you, and notice what's happening to them as they're happening, as it's happening.
00:30:49.440 --> 00:30:55.519
Now, most of us don't have any idea how to do that because what we're really looking for in other people is the mirror image of ourselves.
00:30:55.680 --> 00:30:59.279
When we're in conversation, we're listening to them, going, I wonder if they like this question I'm asking.
00:30:59.440 --> 00:31:01.599
Let me think about how I want to, what I want to say next.
00:31:01.759 --> 00:31:04.960
Let me see if I is the conversation going where I want it to go, right?
00:31:05.200 --> 00:31:13.119
We are too often in conversation, particularly business conversations, looking for some sort of Rorschach test mirror image of ourselves.
00:31:13.200 --> 00:31:14.079
And that's just human nature.
00:31:14.240 --> 00:31:16.240
Doesn't make you a bad person, just human nature.
00:31:17.200 --> 00:31:24.079
It takes skill and ta-da, wisdom to learn how to notice what's happening in front of you.
00:31:24.240 --> 00:31:36.400
So that you can be in contacts with the people and see how they are responding to the context that you're bringing and what's happening and and all of their reactions to how you're talking and what you're saying.
00:31:36.640 --> 00:31:39.599
This is like the most anti-AI thing you can do.
00:31:39.839 --> 00:31:43.440
So a lot of people in my world are like want to see less AI and blah, blah, blah.
00:31:43.519 --> 00:31:44.160
That's fine.
00:31:44.319 --> 00:31:52.240
But the if you really want to be anti-AI, then you have to learn how to be in the moment with deep context and deep attention and deep connection.
00:31:52.480 --> 00:31:55.519
Now, again, deep connection can be us laughing about a movie together.
00:31:55.599 --> 00:31:56.640
That can still be deep connection.
00:31:56.720 --> 00:32:07.119
So I'm not talking about heavy connection, I mean connection that me has rich meaning for both people, which is longstanding in the oral culture.
00:32:07.359 --> 00:32:09.279
We just have to relearn how to do it.
00:32:09.599 --> 00:32:28.799
And if you want to grow a venture, if you want to build something that's going to break through the noise cycle that is never ending in our society, you're going to have to think about what is the wisdom of our unique work, my business, my department, my team, what is the wisdom that we bring to the party that can move beyond one context to the next?
00:32:29.119 --> 00:32:35.839
That you, as the leader, are getting better and smarter and more aware of yourself and more aware of others.
00:32:35.920 --> 00:32:39.039
You're not just sort of resting on your list of old knowledge achievements.
00:32:39.279 --> 00:32:45.039
And I'm going to use a really heady phrase, but I it's because it's the one that I think communicates the best.
00:32:45.200 --> 00:32:53.279
You are guiding your business and your team and your clientele from what I call a psychosocial wholeness.
00:32:53.680 --> 00:32:59.279
So what's inside of you isn't perfect, it's evolving and changing, and you find weird, quirky stuff all the time.
00:32:59.440 --> 00:33:13.359
But what's inside of you is a clear connection and a wholeness psychologically to yourself, and you're saying yourself, and socially to what's happening around you that allows you to work in healthy systems.
00:33:14.240 --> 00:33:15.839
And some of you go, God, that's a lot.
00:33:15.920 --> 00:33:16.079
Right.
00:33:16.160 --> 00:33:17.519
That's why it's a wisdom school.
00:33:18.160 --> 00:33:26.640
That's why I the way this work is rolling out, it could be years of participation for all of us that are working.
00:33:26.720 --> 00:33:32.720
So we do three months of this or a month of that or six months of this in the context of the wisdom school.
00:33:33.039 --> 00:33:40.079
And I am so committed to this, in part because I think it's what I can bring to the world.
00:33:40.640 --> 00:33:44.000
Um, and we're doing it through a lot of different formats, right?
00:33:44.079 --> 00:33:46.799
We're doing it in individual formats, one-on-one formats.
00:33:46.880 --> 00:33:48.319
We're doing it in cohort formats.
00:33:48.480 --> 00:33:51.119
We're continue to do this at a venture grade.
00:33:51.200 --> 00:33:55.200
Um, I really have been doing wisdom school with our ventures for a long time.
00:33:55.359 --> 00:33:56.480
We just didn't call it that.
00:33:56.640 --> 00:34:08.639
And so wisdom school at the venture grade is working with teams to solve structural problems, the organizational design, who has what role, how does power move, the positioning, how do we negotiate who we are with the general public?
00:34:08.800 --> 00:34:13.519
All of those we've been working on through the lens of the Trustmade Growth Wisdom School for a long time.
00:34:13.599 --> 00:34:14.639
We just didn't call it that.
00:34:14.800 --> 00:34:37.119
So we're gonna continue to do that and structure it more effectively at the individual level, at the cohort level, and at the venture level, but all of it coming back to this idea that if we are gonna live in a deeply oral culture, we have to show up to it with an actual context-rich and ability to be in a context-rich way, wisdom, not just a body of knowledge.
00:34:37.199 --> 00:34:40.559
Because again, body of knowledge is just gonna go to the AIs to grab it from you.
00:34:40.800 --> 00:34:44.559
Okay, well, I had a few more things I originally wanted to cover, but I think we're gonna call it a day from there.
00:34:44.639 --> 00:34:47.760
This has been a really intense and heady conversation.
00:34:47.920 --> 00:34:55.679
What I want you to do is if any of this resonates for you, or if you have a question or a ton of questions, I want you to reach out.
00:34:55.840 --> 00:34:59.840
I read every email that comes through podcast at culturecraft.com.
00:34:59.920 --> 00:35:04.880
I look at them, I respond to them, I engage with the folks who come through that way.
00:35:05.119 --> 00:35:12.079
But I'm guessing that some of you listening are going, yeah, I feel the pain of the decay of the understanding of knowledge.
00:35:12.239 --> 00:35:19.760
I haven't been able to figure out how to make the stupid online stuff work because I'm not loud, I'm not incendiary, I'm not, I'm not gonna build some sort of personal brand thing.
00:35:19.920 --> 00:35:24.239
Um, and my thing that I run, I think is deep and meaningful, right?
00:35:24.400 --> 00:35:31.519
You run a financial planning business or a consulting business or an agency or an HR operations support system.
00:35:31.679 --> 00:35:39.440
You run these organizations that when you think about it, you're like, I don't want these to be fly by night, like ephemeral YouTube businesses.
00:35:39.599 --> 00:35:44.960
I want these to be my business is real and it makes a real difference in our customers and clients' lives.
00:35:45.199 --> 00:35:52.000
How do I communicate that and build that in this confusing as heck world that's emerging?
00:35:52.559 --> 00:35:54.960
Does it still matter if you know shit?
00:35:55.119 --> 00:35:55.519
Yes.
00:35:55.760 --> 00:35:58.960
Oh my God, it matters so much that you know shit.
00:35:59.119 --> 00:36:01.679
That's the question we started out this episode on.
00:36:01.920 --> 00:36:03.599
But it isn't enough.
00:36:03.840 --> 00:36:08.480
Now you have to embody it, you have to take it with you, context to context to context.
00:36:08.639 --> 00:36:10.880
And that's what we're using the word wisdom to call for.
00:36:11.039 --> 00:36:12.719
So hope this was helpful to you.
00:36:12.880 --> 00:36:17.039
Please send me an email at podcast at culturecraft.com if you have questions or thoughts or opinions.
00:36:17.199 --> 00:36:18.800
I listen and care about all of them.
00:36:18.960 --> 00:36:22.639
And until then, we'll see you at the next episode of Dam's Given.