BẢN CHÉP ÂM THANH 🔗
WEBVTT
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This episode is brought to you by a very special
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dad has given to these questions. In fact, I'm learning
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so much about him and his life that I didn't
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know before, which is amazing considering how much we talk.
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And so I would urge you to give your loved
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your first purchase That's storyworth.com slash leader. Welcome to the
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Learning Leader Show presented by Insight Global. I am your host,
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Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text Hawk.
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to become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens
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of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world,
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will receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday
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morning to help you start your week off right. You'll
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also receive details about how my book, The Pursuit of Excellence,
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will help you become a more effective leader. Text HAWK
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to 66866 now on tonight's featured leader the legendary dan
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coyle new york times best-selling author of the culture code
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named best business book of the year by bloomberg book
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pal and business insider dan has served as an advisor
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to many high-performing organizations including the Navy SEALs, Microsoft, Google,
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and the Cleveland Guardians. His latest book is called The
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Culture Playbook, 60 Highly Effective Actions to Help Your Group Succeed.
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During this wide-ranging and enlightening conversation, we discuss the biggest
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misconceptions about culture. And then he shares some exercises to
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build trust Then the first actions you should take when
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starting a new leadership role. Ladies and gentlemen, this one
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is so good. It's Dan Coyle. I want to acknowledge
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something first. So it's kind of rare to get a
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chance to meet one of your literary heroes. And oftentimes
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they tell you that you shouldn't. because you're probably going
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to be let down. You're, you have these expectations that
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are actually not really realistic for a human being. So, uh,
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when I got a chance to hang out with you
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a few times, I think first when we were both
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doing a thing for skill soft on separate days. So
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we met up for dinner and drinks, which was awesome.
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And then, you know, when he asked me to come
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back to hang out with you, you guys and the
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leaders with the Cleveland Indians, now Cleveland guardians, um, just amazing.
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I have to say this publicly acknowledged, Dan, I'm so
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grateful for me to get a chance to meet one
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of my favorite writers and you end up being an
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even better dude than I thought was possible. So it's
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just pretty, it's pretty, it's one of those moments where
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you're like, Hey, actually, sometimes you should, sometimes you should,
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and it actually exceeds your expectations. And that's the case
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with you, man.
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That's really nice. You thank you. I appreciate that, Brian.
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It's really been fun getting to know you and getting
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to know your story and seeing your impact on people.
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I mean, there's been, I've been a lot of these,
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these podcasts things or other media like this.
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And yours
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is one that, that I've had three different people. One
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guy in my neighborhood, somebody, somebody who I knew back
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in Alaska, somebody else saying, I heard you on that.
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It was really, really like that show. And so anyway,
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you're having a big impact and it's, it's cool to,
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to see this, these, these energy and ideas kind of
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bouncing around in the world.
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Isn't it neat when you see your work in the wild?
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So for example, cause I don't know if you, with
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the culture code now, it's just, it's probably so normal
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that it's not even cool anymore. It's just like, Oh,
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that's just normal. But like, let's say you are, you're
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in an airport and you see somebody reading your book. Like,
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is that still cool for you? Like, how does that feel?
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A thousand percent. Yeah. It's neat. It's neat. And it
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really puts really for me, it sort of spotlights this
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space between, you know, the ideas of the book and,
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and people. And it's like, there's this, There are these
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interactions that are happening in that space that are really
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unpredictable and really interesting. It's not like everyone just uses
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it like a quick startup guide for a DVR or
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something like that. It's just like, no, it's hitting people
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in different ways and different groups are taking it in
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different ways. And so that's just endlessly neat because it
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has to do with this space and this interface where
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somebody's in a situation, they have a problem, and then
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there's some idea that they can grab onto some toolkit
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and interesting stuff happens.
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That's so cool. And it's like one of the greatest
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networking tools ever. I know with the work you do
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with the, the guardians baseball team now that, that you're
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like the guy who brings a lot of things together
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for their learning and development group. And I'm grateful you
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introduced them to me, but what I want to talk
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about is a couple of things today. One, obviously the
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culture code and kind of the playbook written off of that.
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When you see this cover, like how does it make
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you feel to look and see this, the cover, the
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culture playbook book cover?
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That's fun. It's fun. This is, you know, to see,
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you know, these, you know, the Culture Code came out
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three or four years ago. And so this idea of like,
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there was this hunger for like, oh, yeah, we want
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to have like just some takeaways, right? Some simple. And
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when I started, I thought it was going to be
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pretty simple, right? I'm going to take some idea, take
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the best of what great groups are doing and make
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kind of a cookbook, right? And then as I got
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into it, and obviously the pandemic and everything we've lived through,
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there was this sense of it all kind of evolving
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into something different. Like it started in one place, like
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so many projects, right? You know this feeling. So anybody starts,
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I got a really clear idea of where I'm going.
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And then you go and the journey turns you left
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and right and backwards and forwards. And so we ended
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up with a book that's much more like sort of
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a workbook or an interactive experience that's trying to create
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a lot of reflection for people and trying to kind
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of occupy the space, right? And trying to get people,
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what do people need right now? And You know, the
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world is so filled with action. The world is so,
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so many things to do. And yet we've got this
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moment that we've been given the last couple of years
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where we can kind of pull back and zoom out
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and sort of ask these bigger questions. And so it
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is like a culture playbook, but I kind of think
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of it, it kind of functions like a culture pause book.
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Like what do we need to zoom out, stop and
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reflect together about, about who we want to be and
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how we want to work together. And
here's some good models,
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maybe some ideas from great cultures you can copy. Here's
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some questions you might want to ponder as a group.
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And so that whole idea that like pausing is really productive,
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pausing is when the great things happen. Pausing is the
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thing we're kind of least good at doing in some
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ways in our work. And yet it's sort of the
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most powerful thing you can do to sort of stop
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and say, wait a minute, what do we look like
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at our best? Like, What does that really look like?
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What's stopping that from happening? Like, why can't we do
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that every single day? Those sorts of questions end up
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being really kind of powerful launching pads.
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I feel like you're really good at this in your
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own life. When we were having dinner, we talked about,
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I think, some other writers and people who are kind
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of at your similar level have sold tons of books.
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And one of the things, though, that you didn't seem
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to be in too much of a hurry You go
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to Alaska every summer with your family, which I love.
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I've loved learning about that. I know I asked about
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it before we started because I think it's so cool
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that you do that. You seem to be very relaxed
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in the office when we were meeting for half a day.
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In a way, I admire that. It's like this dude
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is comfortable in his own skin. He seems to have
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figured some things out about life. He still works really
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hard and produces great stuff, but isn't like... You're with
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your family. You seem to have your priorities in order.
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Can you walk me through your mindset of how you
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view almost living a pretty cool life and not killing yourself,
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even though I'm sure you could be on the speaker
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circuit just absolutely crushing it if you wanted. Instead, you
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just take a speech here, a speech there. You go
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to Alaska. Can you share more about that?
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Yeah, I don't know. That's a good, that's a good question.
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It's been sort of, it's been sort of an instinctive,
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a set of decisions that have led me to that
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and not to, um, you know, not to completely, but
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there are definitely, you know, times during my life where
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I have been the guy who doesn't, you know, who
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in the NFL, the NFL, you know, animal analogy would
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be sleeping under your desk and waking up and going
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back and looking at more film. Like that's definitely happened
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at times. But there's just always been kind of a
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kind of a clarity around, you know, the sort of
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value of family. And I guess it's because I've made
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those mistakes of sort of thinking like there's some areas
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of life. There's this really interesting distinction that I've been
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thinking a lot about lately. It's between things that are
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complicated and things that are complex. And like things that
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are complicated have got this sort of linear cause and effect.
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If A, it's like Legos, right? If A goes to
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B goes to C goes to D. If I want to,
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you know, get fit, I should lift weights. I should
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work out more. Right. There's like, there's like linear cause
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and effect. And, and that is some areas of life
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that that's really true, but there's the most meaningful areas
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of life are not like that. They're more complex. Like
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that's where there's not like linear cause and effect where
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instead you're kind of like, and it sounds sort of
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woo to say, but you're kind of like, like, like
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in these, you're, you're sort of moving toward these things
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in complexity theory, they call them attractors. And like you're
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probing and doing experiments and seeing what works and, and
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you can't like build it like Legos, right? That's the
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thing about things. And the most important things in life
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are sort of complex, like your family and your relationship
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to your kids, your relationship to your, you know, your
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community and all that stuff. And so in that area,
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and so in certain areas, you want to be like, okay,
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we're going to optimize and maximize. We're going to optimize
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and maximize these things. But when it comes to like
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these big things of like, what relationships do I want
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to have in Don't try to optimize or optimize has
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been sort of the takeaway I've had where it's like,
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do an experiment and see what works and then like
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play with that and see what emerges. And you're much
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more of an explorer. You're much more of an experimenter
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trying to do these. Like when we started doing this
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Alaska thing, my wife's from Ohio. I'm from Alaska. We
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lived in Alaska for 15 years and we did this
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experimental year where it was like, let's, my son's getting
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into high school. Let's live in Ohio for a year.
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And we did. And certain things about that were really
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interesting and great. It wasn't perfect. No. Was it like
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the Lego complicated answer? No, it was, it was hard.
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It was weird. It was difficult, but there were enough
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about it. That was kind of an attractor that we
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like kind of stayed with it. And we evolved this
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sort of thing. It was the same thing with my
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relationship with the Cleveland guardians. Like, Ooh, there's something cool there.
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Like there's some really interesting people. There's some really interesting projects.
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I could like, speak at a different place every, every
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week and be gone all the time. Or these guys
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are right down the road from me. Like they're 15
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minute drive from my, from when we live in Ohio.
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Like I could go down there every, every Thursday afternoon.
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Let's see what that happens. So, and I think when
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everybody reflects on like the best stuff in their life,
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I think it comes from this more like exploration place,
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not the, I have the answer. I know the answer.
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If then, like, if I do this, then I will
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be happy. Like that's always a mistake. So, this, this
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concept of like, like I'm sure in your own life,
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like when you started this podcast, you didn't have any clarity.
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You had an attractor that was like, I kind of
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want to go here. Let's see what happens. And then
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some cool stuff happened and you amplified that.
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Right.
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And I think most of the good things in life
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come out of that sort of process where you're not
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sort of using a cookbook and just plug and play.
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You're like, playing, you're playing in a different way. You're
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playing in this area that's in more of a conversational way.
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Like I'm going to try something, then the world's going
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to talk back to me. And I'm going to say, no,
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that's terrible. Let's not do that. Or this is interesting.
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Let's do more of that.
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It's like relationships. It's hard to hack or optimize them.
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I think they just have to happen. I think about
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time with your kids. Sometimes you just have to be. right?
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Like be present. You go on the car ride to
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the volleyball tournament, you're in the hotel, you're waiting between,
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whatever it may be. Like you're just being in like
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those little moments. That's when relationships get built. And it's,
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but it's not like, okay, we have to plan 17
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trips and go here and go here. It's like, it's
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all the, the, the in-between stuff is the stuff is
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what builds things. Same thing with building a podcast. I committed,
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to following my curiosity with great rigor. That was it, right?
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I'm going to reach out to people that I admire,
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that I think could tell compelling stories that I'm first
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and foremost curious about, and maybe others would be too.
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And maybe then those people would want to follow along.
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And then again, it kind of works. And then you
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double down and triple down and say, okay, here we go.
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But still remember, like, what was the general impetus for
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doing it in the first place and staying true to that?
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So I could talk about this stuff with you, Dan,
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all day. Let's dive into some culture stuff. So first
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and foremost, what do you think are some of the
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biggest misconceptions about culture? Yeah.
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Yeah. No, it's a huge one. It's a lesson that
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we're continually learning, and we've learned it really, really vividly
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over the last couple of years, right? I'd say number
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one is that it's– If you get, there's a misconception
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that successful cultures are happy places. Huge misconception. You sort
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of think from the outside, oh man, Pixar. Like if
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I walked into Pixar, I would just see people having
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these idea-filled meetings and every idea would be good. And
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every film they produced would be great. And every person
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there would therefore be like fulfilled and happy all the time,
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walking around on, you know, on a cloud. That is
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definitely not true. Like when you go there, there's a happiness,
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but it's a different kind of happiness. I describe it
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in the book a little bit as deep fun. And
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this idea of deep fun is where you're sort of
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solving hard problems with people you admire. And you're getting real.
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Like you're not having relationship conflict. You're having task conflict
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is what it's called, where you're seeing if the best
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idea can win. You're trying to have these, you're bringing
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up tensions and you're turning toward those tensions together and saying,
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what's really the best thing we can do here? Tell
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me if I need help. Help me out with this.
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This is not as good as it can be. I
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need you to poke holes in it. I need you
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to make it better. And then I'll make it better too.
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And we'll gather around it. And that's like this shared
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reflex that I think great cultures have. Because when a
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problem comes up, when or even when an opportunity comes up,
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there's sometimes a tendency to turn away from it. Like
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let's just do business as usual. Like it's a Tuesday.
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I'm comfortable. You're comfortable. Let's just do our job and
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get out. But when this, when something new happens, what happens?
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Is there a reflex to like turn toward it together
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and say, well, that's not good. Like that, how, what
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are we gonna do about this? And that's, I think
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what strong cultures have and that experience of gathering around
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a problem shoulder to shoulder. and like struggling with it
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and making mistakes and making it better and making more
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mistakes and making it better. It, it's, it's a very
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particular kind of fun. And I think that is the
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kind of deep fun that you find at these places.
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So that's, to me, that's, that's the huge misconception because
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we sort of are always thinking that, Oh, if we
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get to that happy, happy place, we're going to be,
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we're going to be on a higher.
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Plane now, you know, doing hard things together. I learned
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that through athletic endeavors. I had coach high school coaches
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who studied military leaders. They actually are, or some are,
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some of them are from there, uh, want to, want
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to school there. Obviously you spent time with Navy SEALs.
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I think doing hard things together and being able to
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look left and right that we did this hard thing
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together then can lead to an amazing culture. Um, I'm curious.
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So you, I was rereading, um, the Pixar section of
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culture code last night and fascinated by Ed Catmull. Like
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what are, what are some of the, the amazing things
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or most useful things you say you've learned from spending
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time at Pixar and time with Ed Catmull?
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A bunch of things. I mean, you know, he's unbelievable
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at being open about the mistakes they've made. You know,
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I tell the story in the book that he'll just
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sort of say, yeah, we made a huge mistake building
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this building. It's probably a $ 20
million building and he's
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counting the mistakes. And the thing that I really appreciated
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from him is a few things. One was how patient
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he was. Like, Really, really. There was a time where
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there was a there was a they sort of have
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each movie creates a project team in Pixar. And so
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you have a project team that's just like if there's
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a movie about Scotland, like they're visiting Scotland and learning
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about Scotland history. He watches those teams and he waits
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and he waits for something cool to happen. And there
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was a time where one of his teams, they were
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doing something with the outdoors and they they pitched a tent.
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One day they pitched a tent like in the office
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as part of an experiment. And he was so pleased
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with that. He couldn't force them to do stuff, but
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whenever they did anything, he would spotlight it, amplify it.
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And he was so delighted. So he had this, like
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as a creative leader to sort of equip them with
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this project and equip them with this idea. And his
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favorite phrase is now it's up to you. Isn't that
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a good phrase? Cause it's like, he'll sort of equip
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you and then he'll say, now Ryan, it's up to you. And,
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and it's, So they've got the ownership. And then when
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they do something that is worthy, that is like showing,
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that's creating, I mean, in complexity theory, creating an attractor,
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like this tent, right? It's going to attract all kinds
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of interesting ideas and creativity. And then celebrating it. So
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this immense patience to sort of say, I can't force
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these people to be creative, right? I can't make it happen.
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I concede this. the clouds, you know, like cloud seeding.
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And then when like lightning strikes, I can say, hey,
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look at that. That's pretty cool. And I can celebrate
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that around the company. So that was another one. And
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I guess the other thing is that he really had
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a backbone of humility. He always knew what, he always
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was aware that there was things going on that he
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didn't know. There were always, he always knew that projects
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had a way of going off the rails or the
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creative people can sometimes be very difficult to deal with. And,
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and he was really, really humble about that. And I
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think that, that combination, like, you know, when we think
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of leaders, we often have this cultural baggage, this idea
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of a leader as an admiral, the leader as this,
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this bold, strong kind of masculine personality. presence that knows
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things we don't, can see things we can't, and then
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tells us what to do, like that authoritative model of
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a leader. And what I kept seeing at these places,
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and Catmull is perfectly representative of this, is a really
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different model of a leader, much more humble, much more patient,
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much more of a teammate, actually. Catmull doesn't walk around thinking,
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I'm the leader. I need to say something. Well, the
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power is not with him. The power is with how
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can I support my team? That's really the question on
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his mind. And I think given the way the world
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is changing, like if we've learned anything in the last
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few years, it's that like great, if someone says they're
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a great leader, like that's a huge red flag. If
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someone starts acting like a great leader, that's a huge
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red flag. Go to Netflix right now. What are the
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movies people are watching? WeWork, The Dropout, Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos.
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Travis Kalanick at Uber. All of them are the same story.
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It's somebody who said, it's me. It's me. I've got
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the answers. I've got a new way of doing things.
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I'm different. And this takes you on a path, as
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those movies and stories and case studies so vividly show,
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a path of making mistakes, a path of hubris, a
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path of toxicity, a path of ego. And what you
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find in good cultures is a really different backbone of humility.
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00:22:10.059
You find a bunch of capitals. You find people who
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are saying, I don't have the answer. Now it's up
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to you. Can you help me figure it out?
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Have you ever studied Elon Musk?
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No, not up close. I think he's kind of a
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fascinating guy.
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What do you think about that? Because there's a little
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bit of this, I can fix Twitter. And to his credit,
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I don't know if there's another person on the planet
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that all of a sudden is sending rockets and landing
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them and building electric cars that seem to be pretty awesome.
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I don't have one, but whatever. What do you think
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about somebody like... Is that just an anomaly? It's on
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the side? Or what do you think when it comes
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to culture and a person like him?
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There's always an exception, but my spidey sense is tingling.
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I think there's problems. And I think... I think if
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we take the long view on that, the idea that
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he can be absolutely right about all this stuff is
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the probability of that is very remote. He has a
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lot of power because he has a lot of money,
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but they clearly have some cultural problems there. And it
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is right now. He's sort of, he's exactly at that
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point where Elizabeth Holmes was in 2014. He's exactly at
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that point where Travis Kalanick was, you know, around the
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same time. He's exactly where we work was five years ago. So,
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if that all kind of falls apart, I don't think
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anybody's going to say, Oh, I'm so surprised. I mean,
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he's interesting. He's, he's interesting.
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I think some would be surprised considering if you look
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at like the Tesla stock price. And I know a
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lot of people say it's super overvalued, but, but like,
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I think there would be a lot of people who
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invest too, would be surprised. Wouldn't you? I mean, you
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wouldn't be invested if you were, if you thought that,
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if you thought he was the next Elizabeth Holmes or
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Travis Kalanick.
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A lot of people invested, invested in them at that
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time too.
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And that's true.
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They were the right person. So, I don't know. I
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would prefer to take the Catmull patient long view. Let's
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see what happens.
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Yeah. By the way, this is just for me. And
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maybe it's because you've already produced great work, but how
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do you get access to somebody like Ed Catmull and
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just go in to visit Pixar and say, hey, I'm
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writing a book? I mean, a lot of people can
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say I'm writing a book on culture or whatever. How
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do you get access to Danny Meyer, who I'm going
460
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to ask about next, or Ed Catmull or the others,
461
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Navy SEALs? How were you able to do that?
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It varies. I mean, in certain cases, um, small, sort
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of a small literary world ends up helping a little bit.
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My editor at Random House is Ed Catmull's editor. And
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so he was able to introduce us. My agent, my
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book agent is Danny Myers agent. Um, and so he
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was able to introduce us. So the idea that these places,
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these people that run good cultures tend to, um, have
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those sorts of people. And that's one, that's one way.
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Some of them are harder. the San Antonio Spurs was
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almost impossible to sort of get a visit with, but
472
00:25:01.509 --> 00:25:03.910
here's the, here was the thing with them and with
473
00:25:03.950 --> 00:25:07.930
some other ones, what ended up creating the conversation was
474
00:25:08.049 --> 00:25:12.170
their urge to learn. When, when I was able to say, Hey,
475
00:25:13.690 --> 00:25:16.430
you know, I'm doing this project. It's about, it's about
476
00:25:16.490 --> 00:25:19.579
leadership and culture and being a great teammate. And, and
477
00:25:19.599 --> 00:25:22.319
they're really curious, right? They're, they're RC Buford and other
478
00:25:22.339 --> 00:25:24.779
people are very, very curious. And so that, that was
479
00:25:25.000 --> 00:25:29.180
also a, And of course, when I did go to
480
00:25:29.220 --> 00:25:33.390
San Antonio, I spent the whole time being interviewed by R.C. Buford, basically.
481
00:25:33.789 --> 00:25:36.609
I asked him some questions, but he oh, he's an
482
00:25:36.650 -->
00:25:40.470
amazing person. And and he had all kinds of questions about, oh,
483
00:25:40.490 --> 00:25:42.369
you've been to these places. Tell me what they're like.
484
00:25:42.730 --> 00:25:45.140
Can you introduce me to the, you know, the Navy
485
00:25:45.160 --> 00:25:49.039
SEAL buds director and all this stuff? So that part
486
00:25:49.079 --> 00:25:52.000
of it, because that's what makes them great. Like they
487
00:25:52.039 --> 00:25:55.220
don't to go back to your your first question about
488
00:25:55.240 --> 00:25:57.910
the misconception. They don't think that they've got it all
489
00:25:57.950 --> 00:26:01.029
figured out, right? I mean, they should in some ways,
490
00:26:01.069 --> 00:26:03.400
like they should walk around being really confident, but they don't.
491
00:26:03.440 --> 00:26:06.799
They walk around being really curious. And so when you say, hey,
492
00:26:06.839 --> 00:26:08.720
here's some interesting people you might be able to learn from,
493
00:26:08.880 --> 00:26:09.369
they're all in.
494
00:26:10.539 --> 00:26:12.599
That's what blew me away when I was with you
495
00:26:12.640 --> 00:26:14.299
guys in Cleveland. I think I've already told you this,
496
00:26:14.339 --> 00:26:18.009
but I come in and it's you and Jay Hennessy,
497
00:26:18.089 --> 00:26:22.390
who's a longtime Navy SEAL and Josh Gibson, another brilliant,
498
00:26:22.410 --> 00:26:25.839
brilliant guy. And then and walks Chris, the president of
499
00:26:25.900 --> 00:26:28.880
the team, the baseball team. And all of a sudden,
500
00:26:28.900 --> 00:26:32.400
you guys are asking me questions, and I'm thinking, what's happening?
501
00:26:32.619 --> 00:26:37.089
What are we doing here? This is insane. This should
502
00:26:37.109 --> 00:26:40.470
be completely one way, meaning me asking you, which we
503
00:26:40.509 --> 00:26:42.190
did have a good back and forth since we spent
504
00:26:42.869 --> 00:26:44.650
a good amount of time together. But I was blown
505
00:26:44.710 --> 00:26:48.289
away by the curiosity of you four in that room
506
00:26:48.329 --> 00:26:53.059
where it was so genuine and so real. You've interviewed
507
00:26:53.180 --> 00:26:55.920
hundreds and hundreds of these, these great performers. We like
508
00:26:55.960 --> 00:26:59.119
your podcast. We want to learn. We're curious. And that
509
00:26:59.140 --> 00:27:01.480
I was like, this is why this organization is so
510
00:27:01.539 --> 00:27:04.529
good because of this mentality right here blew me away.
511
00:27:05.130 --> 00:27:08.269
Well, it's, it's not, there's a clarity that I think
512
00:27:08.309 --> 00:27:10.410
the guardians have that I think a lot of good
513
00:27:10.450 --> 00:27:13.809
cultures have, which is like, we are, you know, the
514
00:27:13.849 --> 00:27:16.710
world we live in is a learning contest. You know,
515
00:27:16.730 --> 00:27:19.930
the world we live in is not an execution contest necessarily.
516
00:27:19.990 --> 00:27:23.599
It's not a confidence contest. It's a learning contest. What
517
00:27:23.640 --> 00:27:26.660
helps you with learning? Like those sorts of attributes where
518
00:27:26.680 --> 00:27:29.430
you're continually saying, you know, I think we've got it
519
00:27:29.450 --> 00:27:32.089
figured out right now, but what's, who else can help us?
520
00:27:32.150 --> 00:27:35.150
What else is coming around the corner? How can we
521
00:27:35.609 --> 00:27:38.369
get better, a little bit better today? And if you
522
00:27:38.430 --> 00:27:42.990
like build your values and, and model that sort of stuff,
523
00:27:43.029 --> 00:27:46.720
it ends up being a really, it's getting better. You know,
524
00:27:46.740 --> 00:27:48.859
people always talk a lot about, you know, the culture
525
00:27:48.880 --> 00:27:51.140
of purpose and mission and everything else like that. But,
526
00:27:51.549 --> 00:27:54.150
I think all, a lot of good cultures have that
527
00:27:54.630 --> 00:27:58.880
deeply in common because maybe 50 years ago, if you're
528
00:27:58.890 --> 00:28:03.720
a Ford motor company and it's 1935, like, yeah, it's
529
00:28:03.759 --> 00:28:06.380
an execution contest. There are certain things you can do
530
00:28:06.400 --> 00:28:09.019
to like, I'm going to be better than you because
531
00:28:09.079 --> 00:28:11.599
I have this assembly line and I'm going to be
532
00:28:11.619 --> 00:28:14.400
a big famous law firm because I hired these big
533
00:28:14.440 --> 00:28:17.420
shot lawyers, but that's all going away. It's like, it's,
534
00:28:17.539 --> 00:28:22.289
it's really a time of flexibility. How do you stay
535
00:28:22.430 --> 00:28:25.869
connected and learn is really the question that everybody's facing.
536
00:28:26.839 --> 00:28:30.799
Let's say you're a leader who is either starting a
537
00:28:30.880 --> 00:28:34.299
new season or in the business world. So like in
538
00:28:34.359 --> 00:28:37.220
sports or in the business world, starting potentially a new job,
539
00:28:37.279 --> 00:28:40.680
or you have a new team, a new whatever, what
540
00:28:40.720 --> 00:28:44.519
are some of the first things that that person should do? You're,
541
00:28:44.940 --> 00:28:47.869
you know, last year's over, like we were onto this year, whatever,
542
00:28:47.910 --> 00:28:52.789
there are changes, maybe it's personnel. project, you got promoted,
543
00:28:52.869 --> 00:28:55.069
perhaps you go to a new company, whatever it may be.
544
00:28:55.450 --> 00:28:57.329
What are some of the first things from a culture
545
00:28:57.369 --> 00:29:00.849
perspective that that leader should think about when starting new?
546
00:29:01.710 --> 00:29:05.690
Conceptually, think about this question of connection and safety, right?
547
00:29:05.789 --> 00:29:08.990
That's the foundation on which all this stuff happens. Without
548
00:29:09.049 --> 00:29:11.369
psychological safety, you can be as smart as you want
549
00:29:11.410 --> 00:29:13.150
to be, but
you will not be able to add
550
00:29:13.190 --> 00:29:14.990
up to more than the sum of your parts because
551
00:29:15.630 --> 00:29:18.890
you're not giving people voice. And that's one sort of
552
00:29:19.009 --> 00:29:23.049
slight misconception about safety. That word is obviously in the
553
00:29:23.089 --> 00:29:27.519
leadership world. And people can sometimes think, well, that means
554
00:29:27.579 --> 00:29:29.920
everybody should just feel safe all the time, like feel
555
00:29:29.940 --> 00:29:33.009
like you're wrapped in fleece or something. And that's not it.
556
00:29:33.119 --> 00:29:37.519
Safety is actually about voice. As Amy Edmondson says, she's
557
00:29:37.559 --> 00:29:40.720
sort of a pioneer of psychological safety who a professor
558
00:29:40.759 --> 00:29:44.019
at Harvard. It is not about making people feel safe.
559
00:29:44.079 --> 00:29:46.799
It's actually about making sure that everyone has a voice.
560
00:29:46.980 --> 00:29:50.410
So with that sort of concept in mind, I think
561
00:29:50.470 --> 00:29:53.029
one of the first things for any new team is
562
00:29:53.069 --> 00:29:56.609
to create a space where everyone has voice, where you
563
00:29:56.690 --> 00:30:01.329
are building something together, co-creating something together. And one useful
564
00:30:01.390 --> 00:30:06.250
thing to co-create is kind of a team charter. Just
565
00:30:06.529 --> 00:30:09.750
start out the new year with, all right, old year's gone,
566
00:30:10.089 --> 00:30:15.319
new year's starting, new set of challenges. Let's talk about
567
00:30:15.460 --> 00:30:17.180
how we're going to work together, what we're going to
568
00:30:17.220 --> 00:30:19.660
work toward, what our rules of engagement are going to be.
569
00:30:20.359 --> 00:30:23.000
And there's all kinds of tools, and I have some
570
00:30:23.039 --> 00:30:25.619
of them in the culture playbook that help you do that.
571
00:30:25.779 --> 00:30:29.490
Like make a one-page kind of user's guide. to each person.
572
00:30:29.730 --> 00:30:32.450
Everyone reflects, writes a one pager. I am at my
573
00:30:32.490 --> 00:30:35.630
best when fill it in. I am at my worst
574
00:30:35.690 --> 00:30:37.950
when fill it in. What I need from this team
575
00:30:38.049 --> 00:30:40.029
is fill it in. What I can help this team
576
00:30:40.049 --> 00:30:43.690
with is fill it in and create that. And then,
577
00:30:43.950 --> 00:30:46.039
you know, another idea might be to sort of, let's
578
00:30:46.099 --> 00:30:48.059
write that one page. Let's write a, let's write a
579
00:30:48.140 --> 00:30:50.960
team charter. Let's figure out what we're going to do
580
00:30:51.019 --> 00:30:53.099
and how we're going to do it is a, um,
581
00:30:54.509 --> 00:30:56.809
One group that's really successful at that is the design
582
00:30:56.849 --> 00:31:00.769
firm IDEO, which I know you're a fan of. Every
583
00:31:00.809 --> 00:31:05.910
project team, their insight is every project team is sort
584
00:31:05.930 --> 00:31:09.049
of like a journey. And so they do these flight meetings.
585
00:31:09.269 --> 00:31:11.609
They have a pre-flight meeting, a mid-flight meeting, and a
586
00:31:11.670 --> 00:31:14.710
post-flight meeting. And the purpose of each of them is
587
00:31:14.769 --> 00:31:18.039
to like. turn your attention away from the project. Like
588
00:31:18.079 --> 00:31:19.599
that's the mistake that a lot of teams do. They
589
00:31:19.640 --> 00:31:21.400
just work on the project, work on the project. And
590
00:31:21.460 --> 00:31:24.640
our world is built. Our workflows are built. Our apps
591
00:31:24.799 --> 00:31:28.700
are built. Our desks are built to like spotlight focus
592
00:31:28.740 --> 00:31:30.759
on the project. Where are we? What are we getting done?
593
00:31:31.119 --> 00:31:32.920
And what they do with these meetings is that they
594
00:31:33.109 --> 00:31:36.990
pull that spotlight focus off the project and they put
595
00:31:37.029 --> 00:31:40.750
it on the team itself. Like, are we working well together?
596
00:31:40.769 --> 00:31:42.849
You know, those are some of the questions they ask.
597
00:31:43.190 --> 00:31:46.900
How might we, what's working? What's not working? And what
598
00:31:46.940 --> 00:31:50.500
should we do differently? Like, it's a really simple question,
599
00:31:50.559 --> 00:31:54.160
but it's almost like, you know, it's like when a
600
00:31:54.240 --> 00:31:57.119
Formula One car, they do go to the pit stops
601
00:31:57.180 --> 00:31:59.220
every once in a while, right? Like you don't just
602
00:31:59.500 --> 00:32:02.079
race all the time and make the turn and pass
603
00:32:02.099 --> 00:32:04.779
the guy. You pull in the pit stops and you say, no,
604
00:32:05.099 --> 00:32:07.220
we kind of need some new tires here or we
605
00:32:07.240 --> 00:32:11.480
need more fuel. And so these very simple meetings where
606
00:32:12.000 --> 00:32:14.900
you've got the team together and they talk about what
607
00:32:15.210 --> 00:32:17.329
what are you most excited about? Like, what are you
608
00:32:17.369 --> 00:32:20.490
most jazzed about this year in this project? That's such
609
00:32:20.529 --> 00:32:24.809
a simple, powerful question to ask or ask, like, what
610
00:32:24.849 --> 00:32:27.109
do we look like at our best? Like, let's talk
611
00:32:27.150 --> 00:32:29.690
about that. Do we have a similar vision of that?
612
00:32:29.869 --> 00:32:31.490
Or do I think we're at our best when we're
613
00:32:31.569 --> 00:32:34.049
all working solo and you think we're at our best
614
00:32:34.089 --> 00:32:35.250
when we're really creative?
615
00:32:36.630 --> 00:32:38.880
It's a vulnerability.
616
00:32:38.970 --> 00:32:41.400
It's a vulnerable exercise, right? It's hard to have that exercise,
617
00:32:41.779 --> 00:32:45.390
but vulnerability is really kind of about visibility. Like, Let's
618
00:32:45.509 --> 00:32:49.210
create a shared sense of where we are,
of our
619
00:32:49.299 --> 00:32:52.339
situational awareness with each other so that we can function
620
00:32:52.359 --> 00:32:53.000
better as a group.
621
00:32:53.880 --> 00:32:55.839
One of the exercises I do with leadership teams, Dan,
622
00:32:55.880 --> 00:33:00.220
is called a user manual. There's a manual for every...
623
00:33:00.119 --> 00:33:03.220
There's a user manual for this light, for this camera,
624
00:33:03.359 --> 00:33:07.079
for this screen, for this computer, right? There's user manuals
625
00:33:07.119 --> 00:33:13.710
for everything except for people. And I've wondered why. Why
626
00:33:13.750 --> 00:33:16.650
do we not... It's a series of prompts and questions
627
00:33:16.730 --> 00:33:20.430
followed by then conversations about your user manual. Sometimes you
628
00:33:20.450 --> 00:33:22.599
tweak it after you talk about it because people who
629
00:33:22.619 --> 00:33:24.940
have known you for a while say, actually, but my
630
00:33:25.039 --> 00:33:28.299
point is it's the process of pausing, as you mentioned,
631
00:33:28.579 --> 00:33:31.019
which I think you're something you're really good at being
632
00:33:31.059 --> 00:33:35.180
a thoughtful person, documenting kind of the way that you go,
633
00:33:35.299 --> 00:33:38.470
having a conversation about it. Don't you think that team
634
00:33:38.529 --> 00:33:41.009
who's focused on their user manual and learning the manuals
635
00:33:41.049 --> 00:33:44.099
of others and getting to know them and having Dialogue, right?
636
00:33:44.140 --> 00:33:47.740
Jay Hennessey is really big on dialogue and talking things out.
637
00:33:47.779 --> 00:33:51.700
That's team learning. Peter Sanjay, the fifth discipline, right? All
638
00:33:51.720 --> 00:33:55.670
of that, I think, is a big part of culture building.
639
00:33:55.690 --> 00:33:58.190
And people leave those meetings, I remember them, I just
640
00:33:58.210 --> 00:34:02.430
did one, with these huge smiles. Because they've learned a
641
00:34:02.490 --> 00:34:05.549
lot about other people, and they've got to share about themselves.
642
00:34:05.569 --> 00:34:08.449
And I think it's brought, it brings people together. And
643
00:34:08.949 --> 00:34:11.179
I would imagine the results typically then follow.
644
00:34:11.880 --> 00:34:14.780
A hundred percent. I couldn't agree with that more. I mean,
645
00:34:14.820 --> 00:34:18.000
that moment of vulnerability feels weird in a lot of settings, right?
646
00:34:18.019 --> 00:34:19.920
It feels weird for me to say, here's where I'm
647
00:34:19.960 --> 00:34:22.360
at my best, Brian. Here's where I'm at my worst.
648
00:34:22.639 --> 00:34:26.530
Like it feels egotistical. It feels vulnerable, right? It's strange.
649
00:34:26.949 --> 00:34:30.969
But that's kind of the weird little group magic that
650
00:34:30.989 --> 00:34:35.309
this is tapping into. Like that pain of exposure or
651
00:34:35.329 --> 00:34:39.730
of vulnerability is what brings people together. Like that, you know,
652
00:34:39.750 --> 00:34:43.909
it's called a vulnerability loop. but it is not magic.
653
00:34:44.110 --> 00:34:47.050
It's like, if you think about the people you're closest
654
00:34:47.070 --> 00:34:50.409
to in your life, it's not people you're not vulnerable with, right?
655
00:34:50.809 --> 00:34:54.889
It's those moments of shared vulnerability create that visibility that
656
00:34:54.989 --> 00:34:58.239
lets you function better. And it's not, it feels like magic,
657
00:34:58.699 --> 00:35:02.420
but it's just like physical exercise, right? Like if you
658
00:35:02.739 --> 00:35:05.239
go to work out and you don't feel any pain,
659
00:35:06.019 --> 00:35:08.079
it is not a good workout. You did not get stronger.
660
00:35:08.280 --> 00:35:10.429
You did not get stronger today. So if you have
661
00:35:10.449 --> 00:35:13.289
these group interactions and they're always safe and you never
662
00:35:13.349 --> 00:35:16.929
feel risk and you always feel very secure, you are
663
00:35:16.969 --> 00:35:18.630
not getting better as a group. You're not in a
664
00:35:18.650 --> 00:35:20.730
good group. If you have a meeting and every idea
665
00:35:20.750 --> 00:35:22.380
is a good one, you're not in a good group.
666
00:35:22.469 --> 00:35:25.119
If you have a meeting and nobody disagrees with anybody,
667
00:35:25.159 --> 00:35:27.920
you're not in a good group. But if you're in
668
00:35:27.940 --> 00:35:31.440
a meeting where people are actually saying, this is what
669
00:35:31.460 --> 00:35:34.780
I need from you. This is what I hope to provide.
670
00:35:34.820 --> 00:35:36.780
And this is where I'm bad. And this is where
671
00:35:36.800 --> 00:35:39.199
I think you might have some work to do. Those
672
00:35:39.239 --> 00:35:41.460
are really hard, but that's what makes it strong.
673
00:35:42.079 --> 00:35:45.260
Yep. Like most great things, it's usually hard leading up
674
00:35:45.300 --> 00:35:47.719
to the moments, whether it's preparing for a test, a game,
675
00:35:47.760 --> 00:35:50.679
a speech, writing a book, it's hard. You know, it's much,
676
00:35:50.800 --> 00:35:54.500
much delayed gratification is very important in that case. But anyway,
677
00:35:54.519 --> 00:35:57.039
it's hard. I want to talk for a second about
678
00:35:57.139 --> 00:36:02.440
goals because this is something I personally am all over
679
00:36:02.480 --> 00:36:05.559
the map. And I know others have seemed to have
680
00:36:05.599 --> 00:36:09.880
similar thoughts at times. this mindset of I'm just going
681
00:36:09.900 --> 00:36:12.360
to fall in love with the process and the score
682
00:36:12.380 --> 00:36:14.980
will take care of itself as Bill Walsh might've written about,
683
00:36:15.699 --> 00:36:18.949
or no, I'm setting these big ambitious goals that are
684
00:36:19.030 --> 00:36:21.769
very specific and I've got, they're very stretched and I've
685
00:36:21.829 --> 00:36:24.090
got to go hit those
numbers, a number of wins
686
00:36:24.150 --> 00:36:28.530
per year, uh, a certain revenue target. So I go
687
00:36:28.570 --> 00:36:31.269
back and forth and struggle between, let me just fall
688
00:36:31.309 --> 00:36:33.949
in love with the process, surrender the outcome. As my
689
00:36:33.989 --> 00:36:36.409
friend broke cups might say, who's written a book with
690
00:36:36.469 --> 00:36:39.239
that title. Or no, I need to, I need to
691
00:36:39.260 --> 00:36:42.389
be very specific in these goals with numbers and everything.
692
00:36:42.429 --> 00:36:44.650
So where do you, where do you fall on that?
693
00:36:45.010 --> 00:36:47.059
And what do you think overall about the mindset of,
694
00:36:47.250 --> 00:36:47.929
of goal setting?
695
00:36:48.570 --> 00:36:50.369
I guess I fall in kind of a, I I'm
696
00:36:50.710 --> 00:36:53.989
looking for a middle way there because on the one hand,
697
00:36:54.030 --> 00:36:56.230
if you are very specific about those goals and you
698
00:36:56.329 --> 00:36:58.869
don't get them, that puts you in a really tough spot, right?
699
00:36:58.909 --> 00:37:00.269
Because a lot of times you can now get them
700
00:37:00.329 --> 00:37:02.889
for another reason. A lot of people set big goals
701
00:37:02.929 --> 00:37:05.659
right before COVID hit and they did not make them, um,
702
00:37:06.849 --> 00:37:08.889
And should they walk around feeling like they didn't reach
703
00:37:08.949 --> 00:37:13.349
their goal or is there another way? And the idea
704
00:37:13.369 --> 00:37:16.710
of completely surrendering to the process and not having any
705
00:37:16.789 --> 00:37:21.429
North Star out there to me seems equally sort of,
706
00:37:21.590 --> 00:37:23.719
I don't know that the score will always take care
707
00:37:23.739 --> 00:37:27.019
of itself. The way I would think about it is,
708
00:37:27.039 --> 00:37:29.820
I guess, what is the directional goal? How can you
709
00:37:29.840 --> 00:37:36.909
define your directional goal? Don't, you know, not... being, being,
710
00:37:37.389 --> 00:37:42.639
not being specific, but being specific enough to say that
711
00:37:42.679 --> 00:37:45.280
you kind of want to be in this neighborhood. You
712
00:37:45.300 --> 00:37:48.820
want to be, give yourself some wiggle room, but, and
713
00:37:48.840 --> 00:37:50.949
it kind of connects back to some of that sort
714
00:37:50.969 --> 00:37:55.969
of complexity conversation we were having earlier, because the world's really,
715
00:37:56.530 --> 00:37:58.309
the world is really complex. You can't know what's going
716
00:37:58.329 --> 00:38:02.170
to happen, but you can move in a certain direction, um,
717
00:38:03.309 --> 00:38:05.349
And one way to think about it too is with this,
718
00:38:05.710 --> 00:38:07.929
there's another idea that I know Jay Hennessey talks about
719
00:38:07.969 --> 00:38:11.650
a lot, which is commander's intent, team intent, this idea
720
00:38:11.690 --> 00:38:13.730
that you
sort of define an end state that you
721
00:38:13.769 --> 00:38:17.869
want to get to. And that end state can be
722
00:38:18.730 --> 00:38:22.610
reasonably precise, but it's not 100% precise. It's more like
723
00:38:22.659 --> 00:38:25.980
a situation you want to be in. I want to
724
00:38:26.000 --> 00:38:31.469
be in a situation where I'm more comfortable financially. That's, that's,
725
00:38:31.650 --> 00:38:34.369
that is sort of a directional goal that we can feel.
726
00:38:34.429 --> 00:38:36.219
I want to be in a situation where I'm, I'm
727
00:38:36.260 --> 00:38:38.659
just traveling a little bit less and more connected to
728
00:38:38.679 --> 00:38:41.639
the family. Okay. Sort of, sort of define that end
729
00:38:41.659 --> 00:38:45.699
state and move in that direction without having it be
730
00:38:45.920 --> 00:38:48.340
sort of this, you know, sort of Damocles that is
731
00:38:48.409 --> 00:38:50.849
over your head that if you don't get it, life is, uh,
732
00:38:51.329 --> 00:38:52.329
life is difficult.
733
00:38:52.590 --> 00:38:54.210
Like is the goal of the guardians to win the
734
00:38:54.230 --> 00:38:57.610
world series every year? Does that a stated written down goal?
735
00:38:58.260 --> 00:38:59.880
It is, it is that, that is a goal.
736
00:38:59.940 --> 00:39:00.480
That is a goal.
737
00:39:00.780 --> 00:39:04.179
And, and again, that's, that's a hard goal to have. That's, that's,
738
00:39:04.659 --> 00:39:08.070
it's good to have out there. But the deeper goal,
739
00:39:08.789 --> 00:39:10.809
the deeper purpose of the team is to inspire and
740
00:39:10.869 --> 00:39:15.469
unite the city with the power of team. That's the purpose.
741
00:39:15.489 --> 00:39:19.570
Are we doing that? That's more directional. That's more all encompassing.
742
00:39:20.349 --> 00:39:24.079
And maybe, you know, another, another point to make here,
743
00:39:24.119 --> 00:39:27.190
I think is that you should have a lot of,
744
00:39:27.719 --> 00:39:32.320
I think, Having several different things. There's this idea that
745
00:39:32.380 --> 00:39:34.239
purpose and goal and mission, we should just have one
746
00:39:34.280 --> 00:39:36.880
statement and that's it. Kind of a Jack Welch, like,
747
00:39:37.079 --> 00:39:39.260
if we're not this, we're bad.
748
00:39:39.280 --> 00:39:41.280
We're not playing in that market if we're not one
749
00:39:41.300 --> 00:39:42.030
or two or whatever.
750
00:39:42.250 --> 00:39:48.230
Exactly, exactly. And what I see with other successful groups
751
00:39:48.289 --> 00:39:51.570
is that they sort of have an a whole constellation
752
00:39:51.929 --> 00:39:54.389
of things they're moving toward, right? Are we moving toward
753
00:39:54.429 --> 00:39:57.119
winning the World Series? Yes. Are we moving toward inspiring
754
00:39:57.139 --> 00:39:59.300
and uniting our city with the power of team? Yes.
755
00:39:59.659 --> 00:40:02.900
And so this idea of maybe you want to think
756
00:40:02.940 --> 00:40:05.460
in terms of a multiplicity of things, not just kind
757
00:40:05.480 --> 00:40:06.760
of like one big thing.
758
00:40:07.119 --> 00:40:10.110
I saw Russell Wilson's press conference when he signed with
759
00:40:10.130 --> 00:40:13.170
the Broncos. I'm paraphrasing, so this isn't a quote, but
760
00:40:13.230 --> 00:40:15.690
essentially it was like, I want to play for a
761
00:40:15.750 --> 00:40:18.869
decade here, and I hope we win three or four
762
00:40:18.909 --> 00:40:22.630
Super Bowls. Or my plan or my goal is to
763
00:40:22.670 --> 00:40:25.309
win three or four Super Bowls. Is that like a
764
00:40:25.369 --> 00:40:27.570
win the press conference thing? I mean, what do you
765
00:40:27.610 --> 00:40:29.269
think about it? Because my thing is, if you're going
766
00:40:29.289 --> 00:40:31.110
to play 10 years and your goal is to win
767
00:40:31.130 --> 00:40:34.329
a Super Bowl, why not 10 Super Bowls? Or why
768
00:40:34.369 --> 00:40:36.710
not not have Super Bowl as a goal? I found
769
00:40:36.750 --> 00:40:39.429
that kind of bizarre, like three or four. And I
770
00:40:39.449 --> 00:40:41.449
think that part is a direct quote, three or four.
771
00:40:42.050 --> 00:40:43.210
And I want to play here for a decade.
772
00:40:43.289 --> 00:40:43.590
I don't know.
773
00:40:43.630 --> 00:40:45.530
That part of it to me, maybe I'm too focused
774
00:40:45.590 --> 00:40:46.989
on this and I should just let it go. But
775
00:40:47.739 --> 00:40:50.219
I do think about this as the direction of thinking
776
00:40:50.280 --> 00:40:53.860
about how to, how to kind of proceed and looking
777
00:40:53.909 --> 00:40:56.349
at people who have done really well, which he has,
778
00:40:56.969 --> 00:40:59.190
is that, can I learn something from that?
779
00:40:59.969 --> 00:41:04.409
Right, right. Boy, I, I, I, I, I tend to agree.
780
00:41:04.469 --> 00:41:05.829
Like if you're going to, if you're going to put
781
00:41:05.869 --> 00:41:07.619
it out there, you know, you may as well just
782
00:41:07.699 --> 00:41:10.860
go for it three or four times as hard as 10.
783
00:41:10.860 --> 00:41:14.480
in some ways. Um, and, and yeah, if you're going
784
00:41:14.500 --> 00:41:17.570
to be specific, be real super specific. And if you're not, don't,
785
00:41:17.719 --> 00:41:18.019
you know.
786
00:41:18.409 --> 00:41:19.889
I don't know. I mean, I may be harping on
787
00:41:19.929 --> 00:41:21.630
a little point, but, but I, and I know this
788
00:41:21.650 --> 00:41:23.190
is like out of the culture thing, but I just,
789
00:41:23.210 --> 00:41:25.690
it just, I think this is something cause it's a,
790
00:41:25.750 --> 00:41:27.710
it's a, it's a more of a philosophy on kind
791
00:41:27.750 --> 00:41:29.949
of life and living than it is just on the
792
00:41:29.989 --> 00:41:32.690
specifics of goals of like, what direction are we headed?
793
00:41:32.710 --> 00:41:36.840
And that's why, like most things, life is
messy and
794
00:41:36.889 --> 00:41:39.610
life is not black and white. It's really gray. And
795
00:41:39.690 --> 00:41:42.550
so I think it's, it's, it behooves us to live
796
00:41:42.710 --> 00:41:46.590
in the gray and understand the nuance of all of
797
00:41:46.630 --> 00:41:48.489
this stuff, as opposed to just being like, it's either
798
00:41:48.550 --> 00:41:51.559
that way or it's that way. Most things, not everything,
799
00:41:51.619 --> 00:41:54.659
but most things doesn't work like that. It's not just
800
00:41:54.780 --> 00:41:57.420
here or there, especially in the world where I feel
801
00:41:57.440 --> 00:41:59.510
like some of us, like, or not some of us,
802
00:41:59.539 --> 00:42:01.559
but like the world where it's heading, where it's like
803
00:42:02.000 --> 00:42:04.239
tribal and over here, over here. I don't like that.
804
00:42:04.280 --> 00:42:05.769
I mean, I, I like to think I'm more of
805
00:42:05.809 --> 00:42:09.289
a curious, independent thinker where there are some times, yeah, okay,
806
00:42:09.349 --> 00:42:12.070
I'm with you here. And other times I'm like, oh, yeah, okay,
807
00:42:12.110 --> 00:42:14.920
I'm with you here. But that doesn't seem to always
808
00:42:15.039 --> 00:42:17.920
work today with the tribes that are set out.
809
00:42:18.519 --> 00:42:22.639
So true. That's so true. Right. And again, I think
810
00:42:22.679 --> 00:42:24.579
the world is in the grace. That's exactly right. What
811
00:42:24.599 --> 00:42:27.380
if Wilson had said, hey, I just promise you that
812
00:42:27.400 --> 00:42:29.300
I'm going to get better every day. I'm going to
813
00:42:29.340 --> 00:42:30.969
do everything I can to get a little bit better
814
00:42:31.010 --> 00:42:31.829
tomorrow than I am today.
815
00:42:32.320 --> 00:42:34.730
Which he will. We know he will. That's the type
816
00:42:34.789 --> 00:42:38.630
of guy he is. I don't know. Anyway, but I
817
00:42:38.670 --> 00:42:41.789
do think words matter. I think from a leadership perspective,
818
00:42:42.409 --> 00:42:46.480
words matter. Whether you're a parent, a spouse, a CEO,
819
00:42:46.659 --> 00:42:49.260
you're running something, we do need to be mindful of
820
00:42:49.500 --> 00:42:54.699
what we're saying. Speaking of that, one of my all-time
821
00:42:54.739 --> 00:43:01.079
favorite quotes, Danny Meyer, business like life. is all about
822
00:43:01.159 --> 00:43:05.000
how you make people feel. It's that simple. And it's
823
00:43:05.079 --> 00:43:08.719
that hard. I've seen, I just love that quote. It's
824
00:43:08.840 --> 00:43:11.719
so true. What you spend a lot of time with
825
00:43:11.760 --> 00:43:15.039
Danny Meyer, you covered him and, uh, setting the table
826
00:43:15.079 --> 00:43:18.289
by him is another great book. Um, what are, what
827
00:43:18.329 --> 00:43:20.090
are some of the things like the key learnings you
828
00:43:20.110 --> 00:43:21.889
took away from your time with Danny Meyer?
829
00:43:23.050 -->
00:43:25.670
Boy, he is, he, he combines, I mean, just to
830
00:43:25.710 --> 00:43:28.349
give a little context on him. I mean, he started out, he's,
831
00:43:29.070 --> 00:43:31.659
Guy out of St. Louis. His dad was in sort
832
00:43:31.679 --> 00:43:34.880
of in the hospitality industry a little bit. Had a
833
00:43:35.039 --> 00:43:38.639
huge falling out like like with his with his father
834
00:43:39.360 --> 00:43:43.340
at some point and started his own restaurants in the
835
00:43:43.380 --> 00:43:47.880
mid 80s. And, you know, kind of fitfully, kind of slowly,
836
00:43:48.199 --> 00:43:48.900
kind of slowly.
837
00:43:50.800 --> 00:43:51.119
I think.
838
00:43:52.010 --> 00:43:54.090
You know, when I think about his leadership style, it
839
00:43:54.130 --> 00:43:56.469
sort of is captured in this story of how he grew.
840
00:43:56.489 --> 00:43:59.190
You know, he had one restaurant open. It was very successful.
841
00:43:59.210 --> 00:44:01.329
Then he had a second one and they both started
842
00:44:01.349 --> 00:44:03.150
to fail because when he could be in the room,
843
00:44:03.210 --> 00:44:06.139
he could control the culture like a lot of leaders, right?
844
00:44:06.960 --> 00:44:09.619
People knew how to position the salt shaker on the
845
00:44:09.659 --> 00:44:12.260
table because that's how Danny did it. They could see him, right?
846
00:44:12.659 --> 00:44:14.840
But all of a sudden he couldn't be in two
847
00:44:14.900 --> 00:44:18.599
restaurants at once. And both restaurants started to go downhill.
848
00:44:19.059 --> 00:44:22.130
In fact, they had a waiter who insult a customer,
849
00:44:22.429 --> 00:44:25.429
the customer, like didn't like the salmon and the waiter
850
00:44:25.610 --> 00:44:27.590
argued with the customer, like, no, no, this is how
851
00:44:27.610 --> 00:44:29.889
the salmon is supposed to be like, you're wrong. This
852
00:44:29.969 --> 00:44:33.730
is this salmon is delicious. And he realized I've got
853
00:44:33.750 --> 00:44:36.329
a problem here. Right. And so he closed both his
854
00:44:36.389 --> 00:44:38.969
restaurants for a time. And then went off and started
855
00:44:38.989 --> 00:44:44.239
like trying to make his values explicit building what it
856
00:44:44.260 --> 00:44:47.099
went later would be called a mantra map. Like he
857
00:44:47.139 --> 00:44:50.860
figured out true North, was about creating raves. Talk about
858
00:44:50.880 --> 00:44:55.619
the use of language. Creating raves. Not serving good food,
859
00:44:55.719 --> 00:45:00.000
not making money, not being successful, not a goal of
860
00:45:00.079 --> 00:45:02.579
being a three-star Michelin. That would have been one, right?
861
00:45:03.260 --> 00:45:04.780
This is an example of what we were talking about.
862
00:45:05.099 --> 00:45:09.409
Creating raves. That's what he wants. Is that a specific goal? Yes,
863
00:45:09.949 --> 00:45:12.510
it is. It's pretty specific. Like, are we creating raves
864
00:45:12.650 --> 00:45:15.650
or not? Is that a rave or is that just
865
00:45:15.730 --> 00:45:18.960
like good reviews? And so that ended up being this
866
00:45:19.059 --> 00:45:22.039
North star that was incredibly effective with him. So really what,
867
00:45:22.300 --> 00:45:25.699
and then he built all these other corny mantras, corny
868
00:45:25.719 --> 00:45:32.869
catchphrases like athletic hospitality, the excellence reflex. This was my
869
00:45:32.909 --> 00:45:38.610
favorite one. Mistakes are waves. Servers are surfers. That's stupid,
870
00:45:39.030 --> 00:45:41.289
but it's also kind of genius. Like there's a mistake.
871
00:45:41.690 --> 00:45:43.329
It's an up, it's a wave. You have to surf
872
00:45:43.349 --> 00:45:46.940
the wave. Um, The road to success is paved with
873
00:45:47.050 --> 00:45:51.269
mistakes well handled. Isn't that good? Like he's got a
874
00:45:51.409 --> 00:45:53.670
billion of them and he used them to kind of
875
00:45:53.789 --> 00:45:56.989
train and orient the culture in this really explicit way.
876
00:45:57.409 --> 00:46:00.719
His use of language, I think, is really sets him apart.
877
00:46:00.880 --> 00:46:03.920
Like he's continually trying to come up with more. I
878
00:46:03.940 --> 00:46:06.559
was in his office and his whiteboard had all kinds
879
00:46:06.599 --> 00:46:11.449
of weird sayings about like bridges and monsters. And most
880
00:46:11.489 --> 00:46:13.679
of them, it was like, I sort of thought it
881
00:46:13.699 --> 00:46:16.679
felt like being in the office of like a country
882
00:46:16.739 --> 00:46:21.300
singer in Nashville trying to write country song, right? Because
883
00:46:21.340 --> 00:46:22.800
it's got to have a truck. It's got to have
884
00:46:22.820 --> 00:46:25.880
a dog. It's got to be raining. Like that's what
885
00:46:25.920 --> 00:46:28.840
he's doing in his culture. He's writing songs really as
886
00:46:28.900 --> 00:46:31.360
a way to think of it. Like culture is this
887
00:46:32.099 --> 00:46:35.219
kind of musical relationship people have with each other where
888
00:46:35.239 --> 00:46:39.320
they're picking up patterns and following models and kind of
889
00:46:39.420 --> 00:46:42.400
chasing some North Star. And he's really good at that music.
890
00:46:42.650 --> 00:46:46.369
And I think that's an important quality in leadership. The
891
00:46:46.429 --> 00:46:50.550
other thing that he's got is he takes his time.
892
00:46:50.949 --> 00:46:54.070
Like when you're with him, you are the only person
893
00:46:54.570 --> 00:47:00.590
in the world. He thinks really deeply before he answers.
894
00:47:00.849 --> 00:47:04.210
And he also answers in ways that are like disarmingly
895
00:47:04.730 --> 00:47:08.829
personal and real. Like there's a time, and I've never
896
00:47:08.869 --> 00:47:11.530
talked about this before, so maybe it'll come off as
897
00:47:11.570 --> 00:47:17.869
kind of strange, but when he finally like got, he, I,
898
00:47:18.250 --> 00:47:20.550
he talked about the process of bringing his team together
899
00:47:20.570 --> 00:47:22.909
and starting to build this mantra map and making these
900
00:47:22.949 --> 00:47:25.170
things explicit. And I asked him, and this is back
901
00:47:25.210 --> 00:47:27.809
in the beginning of his career. And I'm like, how
902
00:47:27.829 --> 00:47:29.969
did that feel for you? Like to, to sort of
903
00:47:30.230 --> 00:47:32.949
crack that code or to sort of figure that out together.
904
00:47:32.989 --> 00:47:36.139
He goes, he goes, it felt like taking a really
905
00:47:36.179 --> 00:47:40.699
good shit. That's what he said. That's what he said.
906
00:47:40.719 --> 00:47:44.110
And it was just like, Are you kidding me? Like
907
00:47:44.159 --> 00:47:47.539
that is the craziest thing to say, but that's what
908
00:47:47.579 --> 00:47:51.099
he said. And I kind of really admire him for
909
00:47:51.139 --> 00:47:58.679
it because he really does kind of make himself very
910
00:47:58.820 --> 00:48:01.820
present in the moment in a way that a lot
911
00:48:01.840 --> 00:48:05.599
of leaders could have answered that a million different ways.
912
00:48:05.760 --> 00:48:09.989
But he is very mindful. There's something kind of Buddhist
913
00:48:10.050 --> 00:48:15.460
about his his alertness, his attention, and kind of the
914
00:48:15.539 --> 00:48:20.360
patient way he is with you. It's kind of magical.
915
00:48:20.380 --> 00:48:21.789
He's really an amazing guy.
916
00:48:21.800 --> 00:48:25.940
How do you get that to permeate throughout, especially as
917
00:48:26.019 --> 00:48:30.719
an organization grows? And sometimes these places maybe have a
918
00:48:31.039 --> 00:48:34.909
cult-like feel, which I know is a little meta considering culture,
919
00:48:34.969 --> 00:48:39.739
but that part of when it's small, and you have
920
00:48:39.820 --> 00:48:44.150
kind of direct influence over most or everybody, I feel
921
00:48:44.170 --> 00:48:46.969
like it's probably much easier. But then as you grow
922
00:48:46.989 --> 00:48:50.050
and there's multiple locations and people are everywhere and you
923
00:48:50.090 --> 00:48:52.570
can't be everywhere all the time, how does that grow
924
00:48:52.670 --> 00:48:58.420
beyond kind of your individual sphere of influence beyond and
925
00:48:58.460 --> 00:48:59.539
have like ripple effects?
926
00:49:00.280 --> 00:49:02.340
A few thoughts. First of all, it kind of doesn't.
927
00:49:02.559 --> 00:49:05.159
You don't have a monoculture when you get past a
928
00:49:05.219 --> 00:49:07.920
certain size. And so what you do have instead is
929
00:49:07.960 --> 00:49:12.019
a bunch of little ecosystems, a bunch of little microcultures
930
00:49:12.019 --> 00:49:15.710
that exist. And Danny and others are comfortable with that.
931
00:49:15.710 --> 00:49:18.610
Like they realize, hey, it shouldn't all feel the same.
932
00:49:18.829 --> 00:49:21.050
Like this restaurant's going to be different than that restaurant.
933
00:49:21.070 --> 00:49:22.949
This team's going to be different than that team. And
934
00:49:22.969 --> 00:49:25.909
that's actually a strength. That's actually kind of a good,
935
00:49:25.949 --> 00:49:27.909
healthy thing. They should have their own mantras. They should
936
00:49:27.949 --> 00:49:30.610
have their own models. They should have their own way
937
00:49:30.650 --> 00:49:36.489
of doing things. So that's one. the only thing that
938
00:49:36.530 --> 00:49:39.969
really scales in culture is this idea of purpose and
939
00:49:40.030 --> 00:49:43.710
North Star. And so they end up really often doubling
940
00:49:43.750 --> 00:49:47.090
down and being very explicit and creating a lot of
941
00:49:47.150 --> 00:49:51.010
conversations around purpose, around what are we here to do?
942
00:49:52.289 --> 00:49:55.230
Because the other things, a lot of elements of culture
943
00:49:55.289 --> 00:50:00.010
are relational and relationships don't scale. Like, yeah, I'm sure
944
00:50:00.050 --> 00:50:04.619
people that work at Tesla feel like they know Elon Musk,
945
00:50:04.679 --> 00:50:07.829
but you know what? If he did something, that relationship
946
00:50:07.889 --> 00:50:10.610
isn't real. That a lot of people at Theranos felt
947
00:50:10.650 --> 00:50:13.730
like they really knew Elizabeth Holmes. They didn't. They can't.
948
00:50:13.929 --> 00:50:16.719
You can only know a hundred or so people. So
949
00:50:18.500 --> 00:50:23.099
that's where I think Danny Meyer's attention to language, that's
950
00:50:23.159 --> 00:50:25.619
why it's so important because that's the way in which
951
00:50:26.099 --> 00:50:29.510
he can't know these people but he can create a
952
00:50:29.639 --> 00:50:33.929
shared fabric of meaning and understanding on which they're operating.
953
00:50:35.369 --> 00:50:39.690
Like he came up with this word skunking, which is when,
954
00:50:39.750 --> 00:50:44.170
if something goes wrong, you sort of get angry and
955
00:50:44.210 --> 00:50:47.989
resentful and sort of create a foul atmosphere in the room,
956
00:50:48.050 --> 00:50:52.179
sort of like a skunk spraying. And by defining that
957
00:50:52.320 --> 00:50:55.280
and making it part of the language, like what's going on.
958
00:50:55.440 --> 00:50:59.449
Oh yeah. That, that, that whole, all the dishwashers are
959
00:50:59.469 --> 00:51:04.039
skunking right now. Okay. We've just taken a situation that
960
00:51:04.059 --> 00:51:08.519
could be interpreted a million different ways. It's totally ambiguous. Maybe,
961
00:51:08.659 --> 00:51:10.460
you know, there's a million ways to explain it. And,
962
00:51:10.699 --> 00:51:15.650
and he created language for it. And therefore, you know, words,
963
00:51:16.030 --> 00:51:18.710
words are really, really powerful. And I think that is
964
00:51:18.789 --> 00:51:24.909
where you can not exactly exert control over a growing
965
00:51:24.969 --> 00:51:27.570
organization but you can kind of define the direction of
966
00:51:27.630 --> 00:51:30.849
its travel you can sort of say here's here's where
967
00:51:30.889 --> 00:51:32.670
we should be going and here's where we shouldn't be
968
00:51:32.690 --> 00:51:36.159
going i can create it's like those poles of energy
969
00:51:36.380 --> 00:51:39.659
right where you've got positive over here negative here let's
970
00:51:39.679 --> 00:51:42.739
define those poles in language and then we can our
971
00:51:42.780 --> 00:51:44.039
group can navigate that.
972
00:51:44.000 --> 00:51:47.449
Better yeah Okay, we didn't bring it up last time
973
00:51:47.469 --> 00:51:50.150
we talked, but again, I was rereading it, and just
974
00:51:50.530 --> 00:51:52.750
the billion-dollar day when nothing happened, it's just too good
975
00:51:52.769 --> 00:51:54.880
of a story. I want to just go over it
976
00:51:54.909 --> 00:51:57.389
real quick before, and then I have some notes here
977
00:51:57.550 --> 00:52:01.900
on actions to take from the culture playbook. I just
978
00:52:01.920 --> 00:52:04.159
think of the quote, these ads suck, the note that
979
00:52:04.199 --> 00:52:07.320
Larry Page wrote and hung up on the wall about
980
00:52:07.400 --> 00:52:10.840
Google AdWords. Can you talk to me about the day
981
00:52:10.880 --> 00:52:14.480
when Larry Page wrote that note And it became the
982
00:52:14.519 --> 00:52:18.920
billion dollar day when nothing happened, when this quiet, skinny
983
00:52:19.179 --> 00:52:23.460
engineer named Jeff Dean saw that and decided to do
984
00:52:23.519 --> 00:52:24.230
something about it.
985
00:52:24.800 --> 00:52:26.739
Yeah. Yeah. There was this huge race. It was kind
986
00:52:26.760 --> 00:52:28.980
of like the moon, you know, race for the moon
987
00:52:29.019 --> 00:52:32.469
or something between all these companies in the early 2000s.
988
00:52:32.820 --> 00:52:37.849
And the race was who could combine effective ads with
989
00:52:37.969 --> 00:52:40.849
internet search terms, right? Like if you could If you
990
00:52:40.869 --> 00:52:44.039
could do that, you could open up this massive advertising market.
991
00:52:44.420 --> 00:52:48.300
And there was a company in existence named Overture that had,
992
00:52:48.320 --> 00:52:51.699
they actually, they were way ahead. If it was the
993
00:52:51.760 --> 00:52:56.090
moon launch, they had already launched satellites. They had some
994
00:52:56.150 --> 00:52:59.469
people who had invented the software on which these early
995
00:52:59.530 --> 00:53:02.849
efforts were based. They had tons of venture capital money,
996
00:53:03.010 --> 00:53:06.960
tons of resources, huge campus, and If you had to
997
00:53:07.000 --> 00:53:09.360
bet on who was going to crack this first and
998
00:53:09.940 --> 00:53:11.780
optimize it and maximize it, it was going to be
999
00:53:11.800 --> 00:53:15.179
this company Overture. And over here you had a hundred
1000
00:53:15.199 --> 00:53:18.179
or so people working at this startup called Google with
1001
00:53:18.199 --> 00:53:20.280
a guy named Larry Page, who was in charge at
1002
00:53:20.300 --> 00:53:23.110
the time. And they were also trying to do this
1003
00:53:23.210 --> 00:53:26.590
on a, on a kind of a shoestring sort of situation,
1004
00:53:26.610 --> 00:53:30.730
you know, with gum and chewing gum and wire. And
1005
00:53:31.230 --> 00:53:33.909
they had an early effort where you would, you would
1006
00:53:34.110 --> 00:53:38.030
post a search, and then it would show the ads
1007
00:53:38.110 --> 00:53:41.559
that this search generated. And so Larry Page looked at
1008
00:53:41.599 --> 00:53:44.219
that and they were bad. And so he printed out
1009
00:53:44.480 --> 00:53:48.199
the bad ads, poorly matched ads, and he wrote in
1010
00:53:48.320 --> 00:53:51.980
big letters, these ads suck, and posted it in the
1011
00:53:52.019 --> 00:53:54.150
dining room, in the kitchen where everybody could see it.
1012
00:53:54.719 --> 00:53:57.119
And there was a guy working there named Jeff Dean,
1013
00:53:57.369 --> 00:53:59.670
and he wasn't even working on the AdWords project. He's
1014
00:53:59.710 --> 00:54:03.750
working on a completely different project. But that signal inside
1015
00:54:03.769 --> 00:54:07.239
that culture, that you know, honesty about it. That's sort
1016
00:54:07.280 --> 00:54:10.199
of Danny Meyer, like here's what's really going on. Like
1017
00:54:10.539 --> 00:54:12.340
it would have been really easy for Larry Page to
1018
00:54:12.360 --> 00:54:15.389
be like, well, that's a good try guys. You know,
1019
00:54:15.429 --> 00:54:17.130
let's try to be a little bit better next time.
1020
00:54:17.170 --> 00:54:21.409
Good luck. But instead he did this extraordinary transparent thing,
1021
00:54:22.030 --> 00:54:25.320
which is, you know, pretty, pretty honest sort of say
1022
00:54:25.380 --> 00:54:27.539
these really, this is, this sucks. This isn't where we
1023
00:54:27.559 --> 00:54:31.900
want to go. And that signal sort of activated something
1024
00:54:32.059 --> 00:54:35.179
in Jeff Dean. And this is where you get to that, again,
1025
00:54:35.239 --> 00:54:39.840
that sort of complexity thing. You can't plan for these
1026
00:54:39.900 --> 00:54:42.679
sorts of moments. You can't treat them as linear cause
1027
00:54:42.719 --> 00:54:46.780
and effect. You have to send out signals and attractors
1028
00:54:46.840 --> 00:54:49.239
and see what happens. And that's exactly what Larry Page did.
1029
00:54:49.280 --> 00:54:51.739
He sent out this thing and Jeff Dean saw it
1030
00:54:52.179 --> 00:54:54.440
and then spent two nights trying to fix it. And
1031
00:54:54.480 --> 00:54:57.079
he did fix it. And he invented, he had such
1032
00:54:57.260 --> 00:55:01.530
breakthroughs that it became the basis of Google's kind of
1033
00:55:01.550 --> 00:55:04.130
their entire business, really their entire, they're an advert, they're
1034
00:55:04.150 --> 00:55:07.630
an advertising company, like so many, so many, that's how
1035
00:55:07.690 --> 00:55:11.869
they make money is with surveillance advertising. And that's, that
1036
00:55:11.929 --> 00:55:15.639
was the moment and nobody assigned it to Jeff Dean.
1037
00:55:15.960 --> 00:55:20.159
You know, nobody knew he was working on it. He,
1038
00:55:20.219 --> 00:55:23.400
it wasn't part of his job. Like it was just
1039
00:55:23.480 --> 00:55:26.570
a day. It was just a day. with the sign
1040
00:55:26.590 --> 00:55:29.269
in the kitchen and somebody who was curious to go
1041
00:55:29.309 --> 00:55:31.369
back to your earlier point somebody was curious enough to
1042
00:55:31.409 --> 00:55:33.769
say i wonder if that kind of that kind of
1043
00:55:33.809 --> 00:55:35.570
connects to something i'm working on let me let me
1044
00:55:35.590 --> 00:55:38.380
give that a shot what the heck and ends up
1045
00:55:38.480 --> 00:55:41.880
changing the history of you know really of uh of
1046
00:55:42.139 --> 00:55:44.599
technology in america and the world.
1047
00:55:44.860 --> 00:55:47.079
How about when he's asked about it after the fact
1048
00:55:47.139 --> 00:55:49.440
he can hardly even remember he's like oh oh yeah
1049
00:55:49.460 --> 00:55:50.940
yeah like it was like not that big of a
1050
00:55:50.960 --> 00:55:53.090
deal it's like it's just another that's just what we
1051
00:55:53.110 --> 00:55:54.679
do or that's just what i do like It wasn't
1052
00:55:54.760 --> 00:55:57.170
fake humility. It was just genuine like, oh, yeah, like
1053
00:55:57.889 --> 00:56:00.349
he didn't even fully realize of what he'd done.
1054
00:56:00.369 --> 00:56:03.469
That's right. That's right. And I think that's how if
1055
00:56:03.510 --> 00:56:05.829
you talk to Navy SEALs after a successful mission or
1056
00:56:05.849 --> 00:56:08.300
you talk to people at Danny Meyer's restaurant or you
1057
00:56:08.320 --> 00:56:10.840
talk to anybody, there is this sense that you have
1058
00:56:10.880 --> 00:56:13.380
in a culture of I'm part of this bigger thing.
1059
00:56:13.460 --> 00:56:16.300
I'm playing my role. It's not me, me, me, me, me.
1060
00:56:16.820 --> 00:56:22.150
It's this– this dynamic between people. And it's, it's, it's
1061
00:56:22.190 --> 00:56:23.690
really cool when you see it. And I think a
1062
00:56:23.730 --> 00:56:25.869
lot of us have felt it at one time or another, like,
1063
00:56:26.469 --> 00:56:27.849
you know, if you made a great play in your
1064
00:56:27.869 --> 00:56:31.050
football career, you wouldn't say, look at my great play.
1065
00:56:31.090 --> 00:56:34.380
You'd say, Oh, great blocking. That guy ran a great route.
1066
00:56:34.679 --> 00:56:38.059
We had the right play call. All of these things
1067
00:56:38.139 --> 00:56:42.039
came together and, and that's what creates great group performance
1068
00:56:42.159 --> 00:56:46.320
and tuning into those connections and those kind of subtle
1069
00:56:46.380 --> 00:56:48.380
feelings of like, Hey, this is just another day. And
1070
00:56:48.420 --> 00:56:50.619
it feels, it feels good to do that. I mean,
1071
00:56:50.639 --> 00:56:53.059
that's why Jeff Dean did it because it felt cool
1072
00:56:53.179 --> 00:56:54.820
and it felt good. And he felt like he could
1073
00:56:54.860 --> 00:56:55.159
have an impact.
1074
00:56:55.880 --> 00:56:59.320
And he was curious, right? Like, like a superpower of
1075
00:56:59.380 --> 00:57:01.800
a trait when looking at a hire, I don't see
1076
00:57:01.940 --> 00:57:05.699
many jobs where if you have a genuine intellectual curiosity
1077
00:57:05.739 --> 00:57:09.860
to perhaps solve a problem, that is, is a, it's
1078
00:57:09.889 --> 00:57:12.849
just a top of the list when I'm looking for somebody.
1079
00:57:13.230 --> 00:57:16.230
for most, most roles, certainly for the role that he had. Okay.
1080
00:57:16.510 --> 00:57:19.320
The culture playbook. I want to focus on a few
1081
00:57:19.780 --> 00:57:23.179
actions for people to take. One I want you to
1082
00:57:23.199 --> 00:57:28.000
expand on is scheduling regular tune-ups. What does it mean
1083
00:57:28.059 --> 00:57:30.159
to schedule a regular tune-up?
1084
00:57:30.800 --> 00:57:31.000
Yeah.
1085
00:57:31.599 --> 00:57:31.840
Yeah.
1086
00:57:31.860 --> 00:57:33.659
When you got, you know, we have this, this world
1087
00:57:33.679 --> 00:57:36.320
we're living in where it's just all about productivity, where
1088
00:57:36.340 --> 00:57:38.440
it's like, we have a project to do. We're always
1089
00:57:38.460 --> 00:57:41.619
put on teams. We're always trying to move that workflow forward.
1090
00:57:42.329 --> 00:57:45.869
Build our workflows for maximum productivity, optimize and maximize. And
1091
00:57:45.909 --> 00:57:50.250
a team tune-up is when you say, stop. How are
1092
00:57:50.289 --> 00:57:55.030
we doing? What is exciting us most about this? It
1093
00:57:55.349 --> 00:57:57.530
was sort of a Jeff Dean moment. What are we
1094
00:57:57.590 --> 00:58:01.210
curious about right now? How can I help the team
1095
00:58:01.269 --> 00:58:03.090
work better? What am I doing wrong? What am I
1096
00:58:03.110 --> 00:58:05.190
doing right? What are we doing wrong? What are we
1097
00:58:05.230 --> 00:58:07.710
doing right? There's a woman named Roshi Gavechi, who I've
1098
00:58:07.730 --> 00:58:10.989
written about, who worked at IDEO. And she was... a
1099
00:58:11.090 --> 00:58:13.030
genius at this, they would bring her in to kind
1100
00:58:13.050 --> 00:58:16.010
of stop teams and tune them up. And she would
1101
00:58:16.030 --> 00:58:19.699
just ask these really simple, simple question, like, like, what
1102
00:58:19.739 --> 00:58:22.400
are you, what are you most excited to learn? And
1103
00:58:22.440 --> 00:58:25.000
just pausing and doing that, that sort of a tune up.
1104
00:58:25.119 --> 00:58:28.360
And we've talked about a little bit earlier, this IDEO
model,
1105
00:58:28.599 --> 00:58:30.159
I think is the most powerful way to do that,
1106
00:58:30.260 --> 00:58:34.199
where you do a pre-flight, a mid-flight and a post-flight.
1107
00:58:35.000 --> 00:58:38.260
And that moment, and they give a few ideas in
1108
00:58:38.280 --> 00:58:40.010
the books on how to do it, but my, I
1109
00:58:40.030 --> 00:58:43.789
think my favorite ones are mortems. Like if you do
1110
00:58:43.829 --> 00:58:48.590
a pre-mortem and a post-mortem. And the pre-mortem would be
1111
00:58:48.610 --> 00:58:51.130
in the pre-flight where you would ask the team, if
1112
00:58:51.269 --> 00:58:54.500
this fails, if this just goes off the rails and
1113
00:58:54.519 --> 00:58:57.840
we completely fail and we're two years into the future
1114
00:58:57.860 --> 00:59:00.300
or one year into the future, what will we look
1115
00:59:00.340 --> 00:59:02.480
back and say, well, that's the cause of it? What
1116
00:59:02.519 --> 00:59:05.780
caused it? Like if we fail, what caused it? And
1117
00:59:05.800 --> 00:59:08.409
that is such a cool question because it actually makes
1118
00:59:08.469 --> 00:59:11.059
you like all good questions. It makes you zoom out
1119
00:59:11.559 --> 00:59:14.159
and see yourself from a, from a different higher perspective
1120
00:59:14.480 --> 00:59:18.030
and say, oh yeah, if we don't like work with
1121
00:59:18.050 --> 00:59:21.750
these three other departments on this rollout, it's not, it's
1122
00:59:21.789 --> 00:59:23.530
not going to, we're not going to make it, you know,
1123
00:59:23.969 --> 00:59:27.369
it gives you a view of the barriers you face.
1124
00:59:28.639 --> 00:59:30.559
And in the world today, like we tend to focus
1125
00:59:30.579 --> 00:59:32.039
a lot on our goals and we tend to focus
1126
00:59:32.059 --> 00:59:34.400
a lot on our skills and we naturally focus a
1127
00:59:34.460 --> 00:59:38.610
lot on ourselves. And that question zooming out and saying,
1128
00:59:38.909 --> 00:59:42.269
let's define the barriers that we face and creating that,
1129
00:59:42.590 --> 00:59:47.250
that situational awareness, let's call it like every good athlete,
1130
00:59:47.289 --> 00:59:50.110
every good team has great situational awareness and asking that
1131
00:59:50.230 --> 00:59:54.039
premortem question gives you that. And then there's the postmortem
1132
00:59:54.059 --> 00:59:55.780
at the end where you say, all right, let's break
1133
00:59:55.800 --> 00:59:58.139
this down a little bit. Let's, Let's talk about what
1134
00:59:58.159 --> 01:00:00.139
went well, what didn't go well and what we should
1135
01:00:00.159 --> 01:00:00.460
do different.
1136
01:00:01.079 --> 01:00:03.619
Yep. So much learning. I love going back. For example,
1137
01:00:03.639 --> 01:00:07.340
when I do like off sites, um, I regularly go
1138
01:00:07.400 --> 01:00:09.260
back and look at the notes of the, of the
1139
01:00:09.340 --> 01:00:11.679
pre and post of what were we trying to do?
1140
01:00:11.719 --> 01:00:13.610
And then the posts as well as feedback from the
1141
01:00:13.650 --> 01:00:17.269
people who attended years of worth of those that I
1142
01:00:17.349 --> 01:00:19.949
look back on. It's so helpful. Like in the moment
1143
01:00:19.989 --> 01:00:22.849
you get a document, what happened? What, what, well, what didn't,
1144
01:00:23.090 --> 01:00:24.010
how are we feeling?
1145
01:00:24.070 --> 01:00:24.230
Right.
1146
01:00:24.309 --> 01:00:26.610
That type of thing in the moment. is when you
1147
01:00:26.670 --> 01:00:28.590
document it so that you'll be able to use that
1148
01:00:28.869 --> 01:00:30.429
for a long time. It's really good.
1149
01:00:31.469 --> 01:00:34.059
Jack Nicklaus used to do his, he'd shoot around a
1150
01:00:34.099 --> 01:00:36.800
golf and he would immediately go to the practice range.
1151
01:00:37.820 --> 01:00:40.800
Why is that? Because exactly what you just described. That
1152
01:00:40.840 --> 01:00:44.320
is where you have your most effective practice because your
1153
01:00:44.800 --> 01:00:49.710
mistakes and successes are freshest in your mind. You remember
1154
01:00:49.789 --> 01:00:52.590
what it felt like. And that immediacy is super important.
1155
01:00:53.329 --> 01:00:58.510
Trust, building trust. The foundation for any relationship, Dan, obviously
1156
01:00:58.570 --> 01:01:01.769
is that we trust each other and it's critical in
1157
01:01:01.789 --> 01:01:05.829
an excellent culture. What are some of the playbooks, the
1158
01:01:05.869 --> 01:01:09.519
plays from this book that we can implement in order
1159
01:01:09.639 --> 01:01:13.739
to build trust? One, if let's say we're still like
1160
01:01:13.760 --> 01:01:16.579
in the early stages and maybe even two, maybe it's
1161
01:01:16.599 --> 01:01:19.949
been broken before. Maybe we've messed up. What are some
1162
01:01:19.969 --> 01:01:20.690
things that we can do?
1163
01:01:21.679 --> 01:01:25.400
Yeah, signaling fallibility is really important. We tend not to
1164
01:01:25.440 --> 01:01:28.679
do that in our life because we don't like risk.
1165
01:01:28.719 --> 01:01:31.989
We don't like exposure. And yet, especially for leaders, especially
1166
01:01:32.030 --> 01:01:35.769
for any position of authority, that moment of saying, hey,
1167
01:01:36.889 --> 01:01:39.510
here's where I need your help. Here's what I don't know.
1168
01:01:39.590 --> 01:01:41.800
Here's where this is weak. I need you to poke
1169
01:01:41.820 --> 01:01:44.840
some holes in this. Like, help me out here. It's
1170
01:01:44.900 --> 01:01:47.199
such a small signal, but it's such a powerful signal
1171
01:01:47.219 --> 01:01:51.570
because it gives everybody permission to dig in together. and
1172
01:01:51.869 --> 01:01:54.210
actually expose the weakness. We have such a bias to
1173
01:01:54.269 --> 01:01:56.739
hide our own weaknesses and to hide our team weaknesses.
1174
01:01:57.159 --> 01:01:59.739
And we finish a project and
it's very tempting just
1175
01:01:59.760 --> 01:02:01.519
to kind of like, well, let's shake hands and move
1176
01:02:01.579 --> 01:02:02.239
on to the next one.
1177
01:02:02.599 --> 01:02:02.820
Right.
1178
01:02:03.380 --> 01:02:07.429
But pausing, taking that minute to reflect together and say, yeah,
1179
01:02:07.550 --> 01:02:09.969
I think we really were a B minus on this.
1180
01:02:10.090 --> 01:02:11.789
And I think here's what we can do to move
1181
01:02:11.809 --> 01:02:17.030
it up to an A is, is incredibly powerful. And
1182
01:02:17.179 --> 01:02:20.239
another thing that I think that can create that moment
1183
01:02:20.280 --> 01:02:23.739
of trust and vulnerability is something I call the subtraction game.
1184
01:02:23.760 --> 01:02:27.099
You know, the world is really good at giving us
1185
01:02:27.360 --> 01:02:30.239
more to do. Right. I would call it the disease
1186
01:02:30.280 --> 01:02:34.619
of more. And I think every organization is suffering from
1187
01:02:34.699 --> 01:02:38.480
it because just the nature of the system in which
1188
01:02:38.539 --> 01:02:41.019
we live, the nature of the environment in which we live,
1189
01:02:41.119 --> 01:02:44.570
is that there's always more. There's always more. And so
1190
01:02:44.610 --> 01:02:49.780
our plates are continually piling up with new tools, new processes,
1191
01:02:50.099 --> 01:02:52.199
new readings we have to do, new podcasts we have
1192
01:02:52.219 --> 01:02:55.880
to listen to, like everything, right? And I think good
1193
01:02:55.940 --> 01:03:00.110
cultures do a vulnerable thing and a trust building thing
1194
01:03:00.139 --> 01:03:06.469
where they say, let's subtract. Let's take some things off
1195
01:03:06.510 --> 01:03:08.590
the plate. And the subtraction game is one way to
1196
01:03:08.630 --> 01:03:11.250
do that, where you you sort of say, hey, get
1197
01:03:11.269 --> 01:03:13.869
the team together and say, hey, what have we done
1198
01:03:13.909 --> 01:03:16.510
for a long time, but it's no longer useful? Let's
1199
01:03:16.550 --> 01:03:20.179
name something. What was once useful, but is now adding
1200
01:03:20.239 --> 01:03:23.960
needless friction? Let's name those things. It's a short meeting, right?
1201
01:03:24.440 --> 01:03:28.079
But you can co-create, and that's such an important word
1202
01:03:28.119 --> 01:03:30.070
on a lot of this cultural stuff. It's not like
1203
01:03:30.090 --> 01:03:33.550
the leader is just going to announce that, okay, we're
1204
01:03:33.590 --> 01:03:38.150
no longer using Trello or whatever. It's that you're co-creating
1205
01:03:38.170 --> 01:03:41.730
and creating sort of shared awareness and, and figuring stuff
1206
01:03:41.769 --> 01:03:46.989
out together. That's really the moment, this vulnerability loop, when
1207
01:03:47.010 --> 01:03:49.380
you have people get together and really kind of get
1208
01:03:49.449 --> 01:03:53.260
real with each other. It creates a space for you
1209
01:03:53.280 --> 01:03:55.860
to figure things out together. Like that's what happens inside
1210
01:03:55.880 --> 01:03:58.519
that vulnerability loop. You're actually, let's take a look at
1211
01:03:58.539 --> 01:04:00.679
what's really happening and let's figure it out.
1212
01:04:02.110 --> 01:04:07.230
Dan. So good, man. What, what, Let's say there's somebody
1213
01:04:07.250 --> 01:04:08.989
who's reaching out for help, and maybe this is even
1214
01:04:09.030 --> 01:04:11.840
one of your kids considering the ages now that they are.
1215
01:04:13.300 --> 01:04:17.039
Earlier in their career, perhaps they just graduated college and
1216
01:04:17.079 --> 01:04:18.639
they're trying to figure things out. They know they want
1217
01:04:18.679 --> 01:04:20.340
to do good, right? They want to leave a dent,
1218
01:04:20.400 --> 01:04:22.929
a positive dent in the world. What are some general
1219
01:04:23.090 --> 01:04:27.090
pieces of life slash career advice you'd give to that person?
1220
01:04:27.829 --> 01:04:31.710
Yeah, I think it's an idea that I am stealing
1221
01:04:31.789 --> 01:04:35.360
from Dave Epstein, a real range, but it's something I've,
1222
01:04:36.050 --> 01:04:37.849
talked about with my own kids as they moved into
1223
01:04:37.869 --> 01:04:40.510
the work world, which is sort of think in terms
1224
01:04:40.550 --> 01:04:45.300
of experiments and keep a book of experiments, like write
1225
01:04:45.489 --> 01:04:49.920
down and reflect on, you know, if you're curious to
1226
01:04:49.960 --> 01:04:52.820
sort of check a certain area out or a certain
1227
01:04:52.840 --> 01:04:56.119
kind of job, like don't just sit around and imagine
1228
01:04:56.159 --> 01:04:59.789
what it would be like, but actually spend some time.
1229
01:04:59.809 --> 01:05:03.170
If you're curious about healthcare, go be a candy striper
1230
01:05:03.289 --> 01:05:05.619
in a hospital for a while. If you're You know,
1231
01:05:05.699 --> 01:05:09.840
curious about being a fireman, go see if you can
1232
01:05:09.920 --> 01:05:12.260
shadow for the day. Like you'd be surprised how many
1233
01:05:12.320 --> 01:05:15.940
people are open to those sorts of experiences when you
1234
01:05:15.960 --> 01:05:18.480
just say, hey, can I just learn about your work?
1235
01:05:19.239 --> 01:05:23.780
Most people will say, sure. And this idea of having
1236
01:05:23.820 --> 01:05:27.110
an experiment, a real world interaction with this domain that
1237
01:05:27.139 --> 01:05:32.949
you want to explore, and then write about it. Like stop, think, reflect, process,
1238
01:05:33.389 --> 01:05:37.400
you know, all learning. happens in a loop, right? You
1239
01:05:37.420 --> 01:05:40.400
have experience and then you have reflection. You have experience
1240
01:05:40.639 --> 01:05:42.739
and then you have reflection. And we often underrate the
1241
01:05:42.780 --> 01:05:47.619
reflection part. Like we sort of run through our lives, experience,
experience, experience, experience, experience.
1242
01:05:47.659 --> 01:05:52.460
And we're constantly gathering, gathering, gathering, but actually to stop, pause, process,
1243
01:05:53.139 --> 01:05:56.380
figure out what, what was I responding to there? What,
1244
01:05:56.889 --> 01:06:00.550
what direction should I travel? And so doing experiments in
1245
01:06:00.570 --> 01:06:04.869
a direction, I guess is, is, is a really important thing.
1246
01:06:04.949 --> 01:06:08.159
And to, as you go, as you go through that,
1247
01:06:08.699 --> 01:06:10.920
you know, to be patient, I mean, it's, it's such
1248
01:06:10.960 --> 01:06:14.019
a cliche, but you're not gonna, if you're not struggling
1249
01:06:14.059 --> 01:06:16.920
in your twenties, you're not doing it right. Like that's
1250
01:06:16.960 --> 01:06:20.440
what I think. Like if anybody's going through, Adam Grant
1251
01:06:20.460 --> 01:06:21.980
is really good on this. He does gives a lot
1252
01:06:22.019 --> 01:06:25.300
of career advice to his students. And when somebody comes
1253
01:06:25.340 --> 01:06:28.090
in and says, I know exactly what I'm doing for
1254
01:06:28.110 --> 01:06:32.650
the next 10 years, that's the worst sign, right? Certainty.
1255
01:06:32.730 --> 01:06:36.340
Are you kidding? Like, if you really have that mapped out,
1256
01:06:36.420 --> 01:06:39.860
you are deluding yourself. You don't have a clear vision
1257
01:06:39.880 --> 01:06:42.199
of yourself or the world. Like, cause that's not how
1258
01:06:42.239 --> 01:06:44.469
the world is built. That's probably not how you're built.
1259
01:06:45.389 --> 01:06:48.590
And so this idea, and there's, there's another book that
1260
01:06:48.670 --> 01:06:51.849
I've given to some people in their twenties, which is
1261
01:06:51.889 --> 01:06:55.809
called designing your life. It's, it's, it's a good set
1262
01:06:55.829 --> 01:06:59.070
of exercises and reflections for kind of thinking about what,
1263
01:06:59.690 --> 01:07:01.710
you know, what experiments you want to do and what
1264
01:07:01.750 --> 01:07:04.150
lights you up. And it's a, it's a nice tool for,
1265
01:07:04.550 --> 01:07:05.530
for that time in life.
1266
01:07:06.269 --> 01:07:11.090
The question in interviews, what is your like five-year plan
1267
01:07:11.130 --> 01:07:13.969
or what do you hope? I've found that to be bizarre, man.
1268
01:07:14.010 --> 01:07:16.489
Like I'm the worst at answering that question. But what
1269
01:07:16.510 --> 01:07:18.670
do you think of that as a question in the
1270
01:07:18.710 --> 01:07:19.469
interview process?
1271
01:07:20.010 --> 01:07:23.550
It's not, you know, every question, you know, is a
1272
01:07:23.719 --> 01:07:27.039
gateway to whatever the answerer wants, you know, in some way.
1273
01:07:27.260 --> 01:07:29.500
And so I don't think it's a great, I don't
1274
01:07:31.690 --> 01:07:34.170
you can answer it in some really interesting ways. You
1275
01:07:34.190 --> 01:07:37.840
can start talking about scenarios. You can start saying, yeah,
1276
01:07:38.280 --> 01:07:41.099
I have 10 different scenarios that I've been thinking about, right?
1277
01:07:41.500 --> 01:07:44.400
Or I could see this playing out in different ways
1278
01:07:44.480 --> 01:07:49.920
based on these forces, right? But it doesn't speak super
1279
01:07:50.000 --> 01:07:53.769
well of the questioner if they are themselves just talking
1280
01:07:53.789 --> 01:07:56.630
all the time about my five-year plan, my seven-year plan,
1281
01:07:56.650 --> 01:07:57.829
and my 10-year plan. Yeah.
1282
01:07:57.949 --> 01:07:58.190
Really?
1283
01:07:58.710 --> 01:07:58.829
Yeah.
1284
01:07:59.960 --> 01:08:01.480
I think, I think that's hard. Cause I, one of
1285
01:08:01.539 --> 01:08:03.150
the ways I've answered is like, I know what I,
1286
01:08:03.760 --> 01:08:06.360
what I'm committed to doing right now is I will
1287
01:08:06.480 --> 01:08:09.639
work very hard to follow what I'm most curious about
1288
01:08:09.900 --> 01:08:13.559
and hope that it helps people. And when I've done that,
1289
01:08:14.719 --> 01:08:16.640
Dan Coyle might send a text saying, well, you want
1290
01:08:16.659 --> 01:08:19.899
to come hang out with the Cleveland baseball team, right?
1291
01:08:20.060 --> 01:08:23.439
The president, all the guys who could have, how could
1292
01:08:23.489 --> 01:08:25.270
that have been a part of my five-year plan? Right.
1293
01:08:25.329 --> 01:08:26.409
And that would have led to the end of the
1294
01:08:26.449 --> 01:08:29.350
team's call with Jay and then the relationship and A
1295
01:08:29.369 --> 01:08:33.189
lot of other things, right? All those things happen because
1296
01:08:33.229 --> 01:08:35.909
of that one kind of North Star guiding point of
1297
01:08:35.949 --> 01:08:37.659
I'm going to work really hard to follow what I'm
1298
01:08:37.720 --> 01:08:40.859
curious about, to try to be very prepared, and then
1299
01:08:40.939 --> 01:08:44.079
hopefully it helps people. And if that happens, the opportunities,
1300
01:08:44.739 --> 01:08:47.500
I don't know, they're almost endless as weird and kind
1301
01:08:47.539 --> 01:08:52.189
of bad catchphrase as that sounds. That's how this has gone.
1302
01:08:52.210 --> 01:08:55.550
I'd imagine that if I stay committed to that, that
1303
01:08:55.590 --> 01:08:56.710
it should continue to happen.
1304
01:08:57.810 --> 01:08:59.829
I agree. That's how the universe is built. It's complex.
1305
01:09:00.000 --> 01:09:03.600
It's not just Legos, right? There's energy and there's patterns
1306
01:09:03.739 --> 01:09:07.250
and there's magnets. And it's like that stuff is just
1307
01:09:07.489 --> 01:09:09.909
going to keep exploding. So the better question I think
1308
01:09:10.430 --> 01:09:13.489
is about habits and behaviors. I don't want to know
1309
01:09:13.510 --> 01:09:15.310
about your plan. I want to know what you did
1310
01:09:15.350 --> 01:09:18.260
last
Tuesday morning. Or I want to know what you
1311
01:09:18.300 --> 01:09:20.859
did to prepare for this conversation. Let's talk about that.
1312
01:09:20.920 --> 01:09:24.300
Like that's a real question where if somebody goes, yeah,
1313
01:09:24.319 --> 01:09:26.819
I'm kind of winging it. Like that says something. And
1314
01:09:26.859 --> 01:09:29.819
if somebody says, no, here's exactly, I looked at these
1315
01:09:29.880 --> 01:09:32.619
models and I've been thinking about this for a while.
1316
01:09:32.699 --> 01:09:35.720
And here's the different ways I prepared. I mean, it's
1317
01:09:35.760 --> 01:09:38.279
called behavioral interviewing. That's kind of the formal thing, but
1318
01:09:38.319 --> 01:09:41.220
it's a really, it's a, that's why it's important because
1319
01:09:41.260 --> 01:09:45.350
it actually is specific concrete and you can actually talk
1320
01:09:45.390 --> 01:09:46.649
about it.
1321
01:09:46.810 --> 01:09:49.909
By the way, I should have said this earlier. So
1322
01:09:49.970 --> 01:09:51.770
you've done some work with Insight Global. I know Bert
1323
01:09:51.810 --> 01:09:54.300
being their CEO, I think you've spoken and worked with
1324
01:09:54.319 --> 01:09:59.739
them a little bit. Bert was at a conference. This
1325
01:09:59.779 --> 01:10:02.000
is kind of hearkening back to this, like you never
1326
01:10:02.020 --> 01:10:03.659
know what's going to happen. Bert was at a conference
1327
01:10:03.699 --> 01:10:05.880
with a bunch of CEOs and another one of them
1328
01:10:05.920 --> 01:10:07.600
came over to him because Bert's like, you know, we're
1329
01:10:07.619 --> 01:10:09.199
really trying to rebuild our culture. I think he was
1330
01:10:09.239 --> 01:10:11.699
a new CEO at the time, trying to rebuild our culture,
1331
01:10:11.739 --> 01:10:13.880
try to do some things. And some random guy, a
1332
01:10:13.880 --> 01:10:16.319
guy I still don't even know, said, you should listen
1333
01:10:16.350 --> 01:10:19.479
to to Dan Coyle. It's episode 242 on the Learning
1334
01:10:19.520 --> 01:10:22.659
Leader Show. I think it'll be helpful for you. And
1335
01:10:22.739 --> 01:10:25.539
obviously read the book and stuff, all that too. So
1336
01:10:25.600 --> 01:10:30.640
Bert listened and really liked it and decided to continue
1337
01:10:30.659 --> 01:10:33.359
to listen and has listened to most episodes since then.
1338
01:10:33.380 --> 01:10:37.180
And a year ago, I started working with another senior leader,
1339
01:10:37.220 --> 01:10:40.930
Sam Kaufman, who's our chief revenue officer two years ago now.
1340
01:10:41.390 --> 01:10:44.489
A year ago, we came into like a formal partnership,
1341
01:10:44.529 --> 01:10:46.510
similar probably to what you have with the Guardians. And
1342
01:10:47.279 --> 01:10:51.829
That kind of magic would have never happened if you
1343
01:10:51.869 --> 01:10:54.109
and I wouldn't have had that conversation and it would
1344
01:10:54.130 --> 01:10:57.010
have
impressed him enough to say, I want to continue listening.
1345
01:10:57.029 --> 01:10:59.449
And he listened and he became, I think, a fan
1346
01:10:59.520 --> 01:11:02.539
over the course of years to the point where it's like,
1347
01:11:02.619 --> 01:11:05.680
we need to work together, right? And that has been
1348
01:11:05.699 --> 01:11:09.319
the best partnership I could have ever had. So it's
1349
01:11:09.579 --> 01:11:12.810
just amazing the way the world works, man. It's like
1350
01:11:12.939 --> 01:11:15.189
hard to fully predict, but 242 is.
1351
01:11:16.579 --> 01:11:20.100
Will forever be a special one to me because of,
1352
01:11:20.300 --> 01:11:22.000
I had no idea. I was just trying to be
1353
01:11:22.060 --> 01:11:24.319
prepared about the culture code. That's it. You know, you
1354
01:11:24.340 --> 01:11:26.500
show up and you hope it goes well, you know,
1355
01:11:26.600 --> 01:11:28.239
idea is going to lead to what it did. And
1356
01:11:28.300 --> 01:11:30.159
now here we are. So it just, it just, it
1357
01:11:30.189 --> 01:11:33.449
just wild of how the world can work. Sometimes if
1358
01:11:33.489 --> 01:11:35.590
you try to work hard and be prepared and meet
1359
01:11:35.630 --> 01:11:36.350
the moment, I think.
1360
01:11:36.869 --> 01:11:38.130
Super cool. Love it.
1361
01:11:38.609 --> 01:11:40.350
So, so what's that?
1362
01:11:40.449 --> 01:11:43.130
It feels, it feels like magic, but down deep, it's
1363
01:11:43.390 --> 01:11:43.850
not magic.
1364
01:11:44.170 --> 01:11:47.720
No. The book's The Culture Playbook 60. We only covered
1365
01:11:47.739 --> 01:11:53.590
like three. 60 highly effective actions to help your group succeed.
1366
01:11:54.029 --> 01:11:56.989
I highly, highly recommend people get this. Obviously, if you
1367
01:11:57.010 --> 01:11:59.550
like The Culture Code, you're going to love this. It's
1368
01:11:59.810 --> 01:12:04.630
an amazing follow-up, and it's very practical. You can put
1369
01:12:04.670 --> 01:12:09.050
it into action today. Start doing the things today, and
1370
01:12:09.069 --> 01:12:11.109
then it will help you achieve the results you want
1371
01:12:11.130 --> 01:12:13.449
from a culture perspective. So The Culture Playbook, I highly
1372
01:12:13.489 --> 01:12:16.409
recommend it. Dan, obviously, I'm so grateful for you and
1373
01:12:16.750 --> 01:12:19.380
we'll certainly continue our dialogue as we both progress, man.
1374
01:12:19.979 --> 01:12:21.760
Me too. Hope to see you soon, Ryan. Thanks for
1375
01:12:21.800 --> 01:12:22.640
having me. Great conversation.
1376
01:12:23.180 --> 01:12:28.319
Thanks, man. I love talking with Dan Coyle. I think
1377
01:12:28.340 --> 01:12:31.939
it's evident by the sound and energy, excitement of my
1378
01:12:32.020 --> 01:12:36.579
voice when we're having conversations. He is such a kind
1379
01:12:36.880 --> 01:12:42.140
and giving, thoughtful and really smart guy and a fantastic
1380
01:12:42.260 --> 01:12:46.279
writer and storyteller. If this is your first time hearing
1381
01:12:46.319 --> 01:12:49.340
of him, you're in for a treat because you get
1382
01:12:49.359 --> 01:12:52.619
to go back and read his books, which are fantastic.
1383
01:12:53.979 --> 01:12:58.340
A few takeaways from my notes. Schedule a pre-, mid-,
1384
01:12:58.439 --> 01:13:03.199
and post-mortem meeting. This is how we learn. We set
1385
01:13:03.239 --> 01:13:06.619
expectations early on. We pause in the middle to ask,
1386
01:13:06.739 --> 01:13:09.869
how are we doing? And then post-mortem, we react. An
1387
01:13:10.050 --> 01:13:12.710
after-action review, as the military might call it, to learn
1388
01:13:12.729 --> 01:13:15.699
about from what we did well and where we messed
1389
01:13:15.800 --> 01:13:18.500
up so that we ensure we're getting better for the
1390
01:13:18.560 --> 01:13:23.460
next one. Then the misconception is that places are always happy.
1391
01:13:24.199 --> 01:13:27.539
Doing great work is hard. The way we build great
1392
01:13:27.619 --> 01:13:33.630
cultures is doing hard things together, and we're focused on
1393
01:13:33.729 --> 01:13:39.739
connection and safety. I think when he talked about Ed
1394
01:13:39.800 --> 01:13:42.279
Catmull at Pixar and the fact that, yeah, it wasn't
1395
01:13:42.520 --> 01:13:47.119
always happy. They're doing hard things together, but it is
1396
01:13:47.899 --> 01:13:52.109
safe and they are connected. And I think that's what
1397
01:13:52.189 --> 01:13:57.750
great leaders, how you build long-lasting, excellent cultures is by
1398
01:13:57.829 --> 01:14:00.829
fostering an environment for that. And then think of your
1399
01:14:00.930 --> 01:14:08.380
life and experiments and the learning loop. It's experience plus reflection.
1400
01:14:08.840 --> 01:14:15.340
Experience plus reflection. Write down what you've learned from your experiences.
1401
01:14:15.550 --> 01:14:19.970
Writing creates clarity of thought. While that advice is for
1402
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people earlier in their career, I think it would benefit
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all of us. I want to tell you, thank you
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so much for continuing to spread the message and telling
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a friend or two, hey, you should listen to to
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this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Dan Coyle.
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I think he'll help you become a more effective leader.
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And because you continue to do that and you continue
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to write reviews and rate the show, hopefully five stars
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on Apple Podcast, you are giving me the opportunity to
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do what I love on a daily basis. And for that,
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I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much.
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Talk to you soon. Can't wait.