Changing the Political Conversation

If you want to change the game, changing the rules and incentives of the game is a powerful approach.

Few people who watch the news - or those folks who avoid watching the news! - would say the political system in the United States is going according to plan. The founding fathers, if they were alive today, would be aghast at the unbridgeable chasm that seems to have developed in our political culture, making dialogue, compromise and progress nearly impossible on some of our most pressing issues. 

In fact, our founding fathers warned against the rise of what they called factions in their time, and what we today call political parties. 

All of this is happening at a time when the majority of Americans agree that common-sense laws for guns, healthcare and other issues are badly needed. If you look at the numbers, we’re closer together on more issues than you’d think. Research shows that our leaders are often much more polarized than we as a people are. Meanwhile, the US and local governments get less done, eroding our confidence in our democracy.

What can we do to change the game? Some people say “let’s get rid of the electoral college!” but such large scale changes are hard. My guest today has a simple solution that starts at the local level to change the political conversation.

Nick Troiano is a civic entrepreneur based in Denver, Colorado, and is the Executive Director of Unite America –– a non-partisan organization that seeks to foster a more functional and representative government. 

Nick has been a leader in the political reform movement over the last decade, beginning as a founding staff member of Americans Elect in 2010. Nick ran for Congress in Pennsylvania’s 10th District in 2014 and drew national attention as both the youngest candidate that cycle and the most competitive independent U.S. House candidate in nearly two decades. He subsequently worked for Change.org to launch a mobile application to help voters cast informed ballots. 

In 2016, Nick was named to the "Forbes 30 Under 30" for Law & Policy. He earned a Master’s degree in American Government from Georgetown University. He has spoken on the topics of political and fiscal reform to dozens of groups across the country, including along three national bus tours that collectively visited over 40 states. Nick is the author of The Primary Solution an *excellent* book that explains the challenge and a viable set of solutions to political division in America, and a producer on the 2024 film Majority Rules which lets you watch political change unfold in real-time.

I highly recommend watching Majority Rules - you can rent it on YouTube now! You will see partisan politicians learn to navigate a different political game as the rules are changed - and become more issues-focused instead of attacking personalities, and more inclusive than divisive. I also highly recommend supporting primary reform in your region - it’s a non-partisan issue that can help us become less partisan!

Listen to the end where Nick and I discuss how he leads his organization and builds coalitions while living his leadership and political values.

Links, Quotes, Notes, and Resources

The Primary Solution

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Primary-Solution/Nick-Troiano/9781668028254

Majority Rules. 

https://majorityrulesfilm.com/

David Mayhew’s Book “Congress: The Electoral Connection”

More About Nick Troiano

Nick Troiano is a civic entrepreneur based in Denver, Colorado, and is the Executive Director of Unite America –– a non-partisan organization that seeks to foster a more functional and representative government. 

Nick has been a leader in the political reform movement over the last decade, beginning as a founding staff member of Americans Elect in 2010. Nick ran for Congress in Pennsylvania’s 10th District in 2014 and drew national attention as both the youngest candidate that cycle and the most competitive independent U.S. House candidate in nearly two decades. He subsequently worked for Change.org to launch a mobile application to help voters cast informed ballots. 

In 2016, Nick was named to the "Forbes 30 Under 30" for Law & Policy. He earned a Master’s degree in American Government from Georgetown University. He has spoken on the topics of political and fiscal reform to dozens of groups across the country, including along three national bus tours that collectively visited over 40 states. Nick is the author of The Primary Solution, and a producer on the 2024 film Majority Rules.

AI Generated Summary

Daniel Stillman and Nick Troiano discussed the importance of communication and collaboration in advocating for systemic changes in U.S. politics, particularly the abolition of partisan primaries. Troiano emphasized that open all-candidate primaries would enhance voter empowerment and improve representation in Congress, citing recent electoral reforms in states like Alaska as examples of positive change. He encouraged support for ballot initiatives aimed at promoting these reforms to strengthen democracy.

Nick Troiano advocates for abolishing party primaries to enhance political representation and cooperation, noting that only 7% of eligible voters influence 87% of congressional elections. He supports an open all-candidate primary system, citing successful reforms in Alaska that encourage broader coalitions among candidates. Both speakers highlight growing momentum for electoral reforms, with six states considering initiatives to abolish party primaries.

Finding Common Ground (3 min)

(2:04) - Nick Troiano emphasizes the need for shared values. He describes 'the spectrum' exercise for dialogue. Daniel Stillman reflects on political polarization. Many may share common ground despite differences.

Civic Engagement Journey (4 min)

(6:00) - Nick Troiano highlights the complexity of political opinions. He shares his civic engagement journey and motivations. Troiano advocates for systemic change in politics. Daniel Stillman expresses interest in improving discourse.

Impact of Primaries (4 min)

(11:30) - Nick Troiano critiques party primaries' influence on politics. He highlights disenfranchisement of independent voters. Primaries distort representation and discourage cooperation. Congress often fails to act on majority-supported issues.

Moderation and Open Primaries (4 min)

(14:30) - Daniel Stillman discusses moderation's role in politics. Nick Troiano advocates for open all-candidate primaries. This system empowers voters and enhances representation. Stillman reflects on potential changes in political dialogue.

Electoral Reforms Impact (4 min)

(19:20) - Nick Troiano highlights Alaska's electoral reforms. Top-four primaries and ranked choice voting diversify candidates. Candidates must appeal to a broader electorate. Daniel Stillman shares challenges in discussing reforms.

Challenges of Reform (2 min)

(23:55) - Nick Troiano addresses challenges in electoral system changes. He encourages debate on potential improvements. Historical reforms are highlighted for context. Daniel Stillman agrees on the need for change.

Principles Over Policies (3 min)

(26:17) - Nick Troiano advocates for principle-based conversations. A voting system for all candidates is essential. Daniel Stillman highlights complexities in electoral systems. Inclusivity in elections is crucial for representation.

Challenges to Democracy (3 min)

(29:31) - Nick Troiano highlights increasing political division. Grassroots movements aim for better representation. Troiano sees progress towards a more perfect union. Daniel Stillman notes innovation's importance in political processes.

Values of Leadership (5 min)

(32:54) - Nick Troiano discusses Unite America's guiding values. Collaboration among diverse political backgrounds is emphasized. Balancing idealism and pragmatism is a core challenge. Troiano encourages engagement in reshaping political processes.

Full AI Generated Transcript

Daniel Stillman 00:00

Nick. Nick Troiano, I appreciate you making the time for this conversation. Welcome to the conversation factory.

Nick Troiano 00:07

It's great to be with you.

Daniel Stillman 00:08

That's very kind of you and I. And so my first question is, what are your favorite kinds of conversations?

Nick Troiano 00:16

I love conversations that are unexpected in some way. You know, I am involved in politics. I talk a lot about politics, and it's always a good conversation when any of your pre existing notions about who someone is or what they believe or why they believe it is blown to pieces when you can really go deep with someone.

Daniel Stillman 00:36

Yeah. It's interesting in a way. There's like, not everyone brings a joy of the unexpected and the uncovering of a surprise thing you didn't know about someone. Once you get underneath the hood, that's a pretty important value, I think, rather than now. I guess my question, my follow up question to that is, Nick, is, how do you feel like you developed that interest and that value in let's go a little bit deeper and find something that we didn't know we were going to get out of this?

Nick Troiano 01:15

I think the motivation for me has been a value on trying to find common ground with someone.

Daniel Stillman 01:21

Yeah.

Nick Troiano 01:22

So even if it seems on the surface that you may disagree, the deeper you go, I think it reveals more of the shared ground that you both stand on, or at least more empathy for understanding the why behind the what someone may believe.

Daniel Stillman 01:39

Yeah.

Nick Troiano 01:40

An example. You know, at United America, we're a unique political organization insofar as that we're cross partisan, which means we have Democrats, Republicans, independents. We all care about politics a lot, working side by side on a shared goal. And at our team retreats, we do this exercise called the spectrum, where we line up based on our belief or answers to a question that we would pose on a binary. Do you believe the death penalty should be legal or illegal, for example? And you line up on the spectrum depending on how strongly you feel towards those polar ends. So one thing that's interesting is, oh, you know, John is standing over here, Jane is over there. And I didn't really think that they would be that way. Sort of caricature of what we're made to believe that a Democrat or Republican or libertarian or green might think. Then the more interesting part is when we go around and ask people, why are you standing in the place that you are? And then oftentimes it's about a child experience. They had a. An event that impacted their family, something they learned that changed their view along the way. And so that just gives an example the kinds of conversations. I really love that. I'm fortunate to get to have and the type of organization I fortunate to lead.

Daniel Stillman 03:01

I absolutely love that exercise. I've done similar exercises like this. I'm wondering, where did you learn to do that with your team?

Nick Troiano 03:09

Yeah. All credit goes to Lori Brewer Collins, who runs an organization called Cultivate the Cuirassier. Started in memory of a mentor of mine named Jake Brewer, with a mission of trying to bring people together from left and right who are next generation leaders and care about the country and want to find the connection between us. And so did this at a retreat that she facilitated with my team years ago. We've been doing it ever since.

Daniel Stillman 03:41

I love that. And I feel like in your book, which I listened to and enjoyed tremendously, there's this sense that if we were to line America up and or let them line themselves up and say, death penalty, gun control, I have Jerry Seinfeld in my what's the deal with gun control? What do you think? Pro or con? There would be fewer people at the polls for many of the issues that divide us, and there'd be a lot more people hovered around the middle. And this is a really important concept because we tend to have this idea that we're quite polarized. And you were talking about the fact that there's actually a lot of color and a lot of stories and a lot of ways that we can sort of find actionable solutions for things that we do care about, even though we are quite spread across a spectrum.

Nick Troiano 04:40

Indeed. And I think two other points that's important in considering that is, one, no matter where you are on that spectrum, that there's likely somewhere where you can agree with someone who's staying in a different spot as to what we should actually do about it. Yes, you have your personal position, and then it becomes sort of pragmatically, well, what should the answer be? And I think a lot of people are willing to be pragmatic and move in a direction that realizes we all don't get 100% of what we want. And secondly, when you go through this exercise, you realize you might be on one side of that spectrum on one issue and on a different side on a different issue. It's only in our red blue map of eyed version of politics on cable news that we're led to believe that people have very homogenous views that line up perfectly under one party's orthodoxy or ideology. And it turns out that a lot of people have a much more nuanced perspective on the issues of the day.

Daniel Stillman 05:41

Nuance that sounds boring, Nick. Sorry. That's generally people's, people's eyes can glass over. So some people care a lot about spectrums and exploring them, and other people want to make it crystal clear. But there's a lot of complexity in here. There's so many layers I want to pull on. And one of the questions I wanted to make sure I asked you, and I feel like you were talking about it when you're exploring that spectrum. Well, why are you over there, Bill? Why are you over there, Susan, what about you and your story, do you think made you passionate about systems change?

Nick Troiano 06:18

Yes. So my story is I got interested in civics and politics coming out of high school through a program the American Legion runs called Boys State. And that led me to go study government in Washington. And the issue that I became pretty interested in, engaged on is the one around our federal debt and deficit. I sat through a speaking of boring talk by the former comptroller general of the country that laid out in a series of charts the sort of trajectory that we're on in terms of our debt and deficit. It wasn't boring to me. That sprang me to action because it was just so clear about the kind of country and world my generation would inherit if we did nothing, meaning if left on autopilot, where we would go in the future. And by the way, that was some 14 years ago when we had about $10 trillion in debt. We're at 34 trillion today. We're spending more on interest payments to countries like China than we are investing our own national defense to speak of investments in the future. And so I became interested in systems change after I saw Congress's inability to work together to address that problem. There was a bipartisan fiscal commission that President Obama set up that produced a report. And both parties, including Obama and Paul Ryan, the Republican House budget chair at the time, they ran away from. They didn't want to find that common ground. And so nothing got done. And at first I thought, oh, gosh, this is a big problem because our politicians are failing us and it's a politician problem. And I ran for Congress as an independent because I thought my congressman was one of those politicians that wasn't doing a good job on this issue, only to realize several years in that it's actually not a politician problem, or not just a politician problem. It's actually an incentives problem. It's a system because our elections are structured in a way that actually rewards that kind of intransigence and ideological extremism. And it punishes people who are willing to work across the aisle and compromise. And so ever since, I've been focused on systems change, because my belief is until we fix the system, we're not going to be able to address any of the other major issues that we really care about.

Daniel Stillman 08:36

Yeah. And so specifically, I think we should talk about the, the core systems change that you're looking to. I think it's really interesting. I think people should listen to the book because you make a very long argument about all the things we could do to, quote, unquote, fix the system. And some of them are very hard and require literal acts of Congress changes to the Constitution, and others are things that a municipality or a state can do. And of all the different levers that we could pull to try and move the way that Congress is having conversations, their negotiations around things, is to remove partisan primaries so that the people who are going to Congress have to speak to all of their voters and they are more willing to compromise horse trade and have dialogue. They're less terrified that someone's going to run to the left or the right of them after they collaborated with the enemy.

Nick Troiano 09:39

Yeah, that's exactly right. I refer to party primaries, which a lot of Americans don't spend a lot of time thinking about as the primary problem in our politics. And I wrote the book, and I'm running this organization because I have a strong conviction that it's the single most important and viable change we can make. Not to say it's a panacea, that if we do it, everything gets fixed. But to say that if we could focus our time and energy and resources on one thing first before we get to the next, things that we would need to do. Abolishing party primaries is worthwhile to focus on. And it goes directly to your point about the impact that party primaries have on disenfranchising voters like independent voters. 15 million of us in the country can't even vote in these primaries in many states right now, it distorts representation. It disincentivizes people from working together, because if you cross the aisle and work on a solution, you might get primaried. You know, that's a phrase that used to be a noun, a way of nominating a candidate. That's now a verb. The primary system weaponized by the fringes of both parties to keep their members in line. And by the way, they're not there to serve a party. They're there to serve the country. And this is the whole challenge of the system today.

Daniel Stillman 10:59

One of the things I found really interesting about the book and also the documentary majority rules, which I also enjoyed immensely, is I don't think many of us think about or empathize with Congress and think you talk about incentives. The fear of being primaried is actually, I don't think I really understood the sort of the heightened levels of cortisol that the average member of Congress experiences where not only do they have to run and go through this whole process, but now they're thinking about, how do I make sure that I don't screw this up? How do I hold on to this job? I think it's a very natural human desire. And the way that they do that is by speaking to their base, the people who.

Nick Troiano 11:49

Yeah, by the way, we all change our behavior based on incentives to what we want the outcome of a particular situation to be. Yes, keep your job. You want to get promoted. Certainly there are incentives that, you know you will be rewarded if you do this or that or don't do this or that. And politicians are no different. They're rational creatures. I mean, it was in my political science 101 class that we learned about the David Mayhew's book in 1974 that famously described members of Congress as, quote, single minded seekers of reelection. Once you realize that that is the first, second, and third goal, before they start talking about, what are you here to do? Then you have to examine, well, what is it going to take for you to get reelected? Because that's going to heavily influence what they choose to do or not do or how they go about doing it. We are under an illusion right now, most people, that what it takes to get reelected is winning a general election against your other party's opponent. That's just not true. For 87% of our members of Congress, their only threat to getting reelected is not in the general election from the other party. It is actually in their primary to someone from their ideological flank who might primary them. Some of that has to do with gerrymandering, but most of it has to do with our own geographic sorting and the reason why that most districts are on lock for either team red or team blue. And that's why the primaries have such a disproportionate impact on our politics. 87% are decided in primaries. And then you realize in our organization does this research every year to look at, well, how many voters are actually deciding those elections? And this year, that answer is only about 7%. So you have 7% of eligible voters nationally casting ballots in 87% of our congressional districts that wind up electing those members of Congress. And so it is no wonder, then, why when you see issues that 60, 70, 80% of Americans can agree on and Congress doesn't act well, they don't represent 60, 70 or 80% of Americans. They represent the 7% of Americans that are on the far left or the far right who will punish them at work across the aisle. So that is at the crux of our democratic dysfunction right now.

Daniel Stillman 14:10

Yeah, it is. It's heartbreaking. I think there's this idea that if more moderate people wind up in office, that more moderate conversations can ensue.

Nick Troiano 14:27

Yeah. And I would say, or even just push back against the premise of moderation. I mean, some Americans are moderate. I consider myself to be a centrist independent, but not most are. I would say that we do have people across the political spectrum and that the goal of these reforms is not to force everyone into some kind of idea of moderation, but to force better representation. And so a solidly red district is going to elect a conservative member, but let that conservative member be someone who can truly represent the majority of voters in that district, not just the small faction that decides the primary. Same thing in a blue district. And if our congress was more representative, I think we would have better outcomes than we have today.

Daniel Stillman 15:13

Yeah. There's something about the competitiveness that's positive in an open primary. And what do you feel like is the benefit of having more people be in a primary that more people can vote on?

Nick Troiano 15:34

Yeah. So let's talk a little about the solution. So what I advocate in the book is to do away with the bifurcated system of party primaries that we have today and to replace that with an open all candidate primary. So every voter would be able to vote for any candidate, regardless of party, in every taxpayer funded election that includes the primary and that includes the general election, some states will advance two candidates from that all candidate primary to the general election. States like Alaska will advance four, and then the general election rank them so that there's a majority winner through an instant runoff, regardless of that particular nuance. The fact is that voters will get more power to truly vote for whom they want to represent them. Even for a voter that might want to vote Democrat 80% of the time or Republican 80% of the time, that still means 20% of the time. You'd rather vote for someone from the other party, be it for state legislature, for governor, for Senate, you should have that freedom to do so. So I think the core value proposition of open primaries for voters is just the amount of additional voice and choice you get through this system. The benefit for our political system is candidates and elected officials who have an incentive to actually represent a true majority of voters and therefore, to approach governing in a way that serves the majority, not the type of politicking we see today. That is really just about what do I have to do to get on tv to raise small contributions and inflame them?

Daniel Stillman 17:07

Yeah. So there's two things that I sort of got from this, which I think is fascinating. And one is that if I live in a red district and I'm blue, I just get to vote in my blue primary, pick the person who's gonna lose against whoever the red folks pick. Whereas if I live in a place with an open primary, I can pick the red representative that I hate the least earlier and actually have a chance to affect the outcome. I think the other thing that's interesting, and I really want everyone to watch the documentary because I watched Sarah Palin become nicer when she had, when she realized that this was not a burnt, you know, a burnt earth campaign against the other Republican, but she actually had to be more civil. She learned this in the first round. I mean, it's, so you could probably summarize the story a lot better than I can because you saw it unfold. But to me, when I watched this second round of elections where Sarah Palin and Nick, I forget the guy's name. Yeah. They just were like, okay, well, so I don't like everything she stands for. I think you should rank me first, but if you don't like me, you should rank her second. And I watched her do the same thing because they were like, well, obviously, we don't want the Democrat to win in this election. And it just, I saw the temperature of the dialogue drop down. And I think that's just fascinating anecdotal evidence that this, it's possible to change the tone of the political dialogue.

Nick Troiano 18:49

Indeed. And so for your listeners who, you know, want the wonky sort of political science behind this primary solution book goes into some of it. If you'd like the 90 minutes film to watch, it's going to be out on iTunes, Google play, Amazon Prime October 4. And this film chronicles the first time top four all candidate primaries were used in Alaska, along with instant runoff general elections, otherwise known as ranked choice voting. The combination of these two reforms, and it was used in 2022 for the first time, when, by happenstance, the longest serving member of Congress in the country passed away. And there was an open seat. And so 48 candidates ran for office. And this new system was used for the first time to actually winnow that field down to four. And then the four went to the general election. And it was extraordinary because it really did show how the system can impact the outcomes of the election, but not just who gets elected, about how they campaign. And so to your point, in this new system, the candidates adapted to the fact that actually you cannot get elected to this seat just by pandering to the base of your own party. You have to build a broad coalition. And that included it in the general election, saying, if you're not going to vote for me, at least rank me second, because if no one gets majority support, your second choice vote will count. And I think that's healthy for our democracy. I mean, right now most of our elections are binary contests between a Republican and Democrat. And in competitive seats, all they have to do to win is just to convince you how bad the other candidate is. They get elected, they're going to take away your guns, or if they get elected, they're going to raise your taxes, whatever the case might be. And when you have an election between three or four candidates or five candidates even, you can't just win by tearing down the other ones. You actually have to campaign on some positive vision of who you are and what you're going to do. And I think that will be a, you know, positive dynamic for the way that we do elections in our country.

Daniel Stillman 20:58

Yeah, it was, to me, that's like just extraordinary, emotionally palpable anecdotal evidence, because I know you talk a lot about this in the book, that it's hard to measure the direct effects because the effects can take a long time to sort of feed through. It takes multiple election cycles. I am curious, given that part of your philosophy is having unexpected conversations across political divides. You know, I was actually at a party on Friday, and somebody was talking about a specific presidential candidate that they were interested in who was actually not one of the, like, somebody who has very little chance of winning. And I was like, you know, I'm interviewing this guy on Tuesday, and I think if you're going to spend any money, time, energy, resources on politics, it might be on changing this one particular issue because it seems like it's systemic change. There was a woman at the party who was a little drunk, and she unleashed on me a barrage of invective. She said, how on God's earth is it a good idea to have more people voting in primaries? Like, I forget her exact phrase was like, there's so, you know, so few people are paying attention. Why is it good idea to have more candidates for fewer people? And I was really put back on my heels. I was like, hey, listen, I'm new to this topic. I'm not prepared to, like, go toe to toe with you on pulling this argument apart. But, you know, it's very easy for people to come out swinging on this. And so with a topic like this, how do you engage with your opponents on this dialogue around this change? I know you have multiple people in your coalition, but we're talking about, like, the people who are. This is a terrible, terrible idea, Nick, and you're a terrible person for thinking that this is how to make democracy better.

Nick Troiano 23:06

Yeah, if they're in the. You're a terrible person. Right. I probably won't invest too much time in the conversation, but plenty of nice people think this is a terrible idea. And I welcome the good faith debates we can have about this. First, recognizing that no system is perfect, there are trade offs involved. Any different type of election system one wants to design, and there's some transaction costs in switching a system and educating voters about how to use a new system. But what I would go back to and challenge anyone who wants to focus on the flaws of what we're proposing here is to first please defend the current status quo where 7% of Americans elect 87% of our leaders. I don't think many people I have not heard been able to do that in a way that I find compelling or persuasive. So the question is less about, is what you're proposing perfect? But is it better than what we've got today? The last coming up on 250 years of our history here as the oldest constitutional democracy in the world, is a history of, can we make it a little bit better in our own generation, for our own time? We've done that 100 years ago when we invented primaries to begin with, when we started to directly elect our senators, when women gained the right to vote. That's the proud tradition of the country that I think we're continuing today as we ask ourselves, can we do better?

Daniel Stillman 24:39

You know, what's so interesting about that response, you know, to the meta, you know, conversational dynamics perspective? It's very easy to respond to fire with fire and to respond to an attack with defense. What you responded to in that instance, or what, what your intention would be to respond to in that instance is to say, I don't actually think it's perfect, and I think the current situation is also far from perfect. Do you agree if we go down one level, if we take a couple of layers across, do you agree that the current system isn't ideal. And that's really anchoring on at least the overall idea that something might need to change.

Nick Troiano 25:28

Yeah. It's in large part why we lead with our principles, not our policies. And our principles are that every american should be able to vote for any candidate in every election, and that anyone who wins should do so with majority support. And we get over 80% support from Democrats, Republicans, and independents on those principles. And I think it's a good way to begin these conversations before we start debating vote tabulation methods.

Daniel Stillman 25:53

Yeah, well, yeah, because the rabbit hole goes pretty deep on that. And I think, as you point out, and I'm glad you got to that towards the end of the book about the. I think it's like Arrow was the political scientist who said that there's literally, it's mathematically impossible to have a totally perfect system of choosing people. And so, like, let's not even talk about a perfect system. Let's talk about what kind of a system we want to have. There was another principle, I think, that you left out on that list of. Not just that, the idea that taxpayers funding elections, that most people, certainly, if there's all these people who are independents, they literally, in many states, can't vote in elections, primary elections, to choose the candidates that they're going to vote on later. They're paying for that money with their tax dollars, but they can't be in, they can't be part of that process. Which does seem to me anti. Anti good.

Nick Troiano 26:49

Anti good, yes, because I think a common objection people will raise is that, hey, my club, my party should be able to choose its leader without interference from people who aren't part of my club. And I get that. And I would actually just underscore it. You're correct. Your party is a private organization, and it should run itself however it wants. It can recruit, endorse, and support candidates throughout whatever means it desires, and people can choose to affiliate it with. With it or not. When we're talking about a taxpayer funded and government run election system, that system should be open to everyone and should be focused on serving voters, not partisan interests. And that's quite consistent with the views of our founders, who not only didn't anticipate the rise of political parties, they outright feared it. And here we are. We have political parties. In fact, one can make a very good argument about why they're actually a good thing for democracy in terms of how voters can organize themselves and their interests. But we should not conflate them with the democracy that we have that belongs to all of us, and all of us includes the 51% of Americans right now that chooses not to affiliate with either political party.

Daniel Stillman 28:13

Yeah. Yeah. Now, you mentioned, I just read an article from NPR that came out where you were talking about how there's a lot of items on the ballot, this coming election around these issues, and that it feels like we're at an inflection point. And first of all, like, what does that feel like? I know you've been working on this for a long time, and two, like, what do you feel like is on the other side of this inflection point for you and your work?

Nick Troiano 28:42

It feels exciting. I have been working on this a long time. The duration of that time has been a period in which our politics has gotten worse. When I started on this work, our biggest fear was gridlock. Right. That our leaders couldn't agree and the problems would get worse and not get solved today. And in the past few years, the concern has been, can the republic survive? Can the republic survive when our politics have become so divided that our norms and institutions of democracy itself have become under threat? And what I mean by that is fights over election rules, election outcomes, stacking the court, et cetera, et cetera, of a tit for tat that eventually leads to the downfall of democracy. I mean, those are the stakes. And so how it makes me feel to see this movement, having gained traction over the last ten years, is excited to know, to confirm what I know to be true in my gut, which is that there's nothing so wrong with our democracy that the same tools of our democracy gives us the opportunity to fix. And so to see. In a state like Idaho, 2000, volunteers gather 100,000 signatures to put an initiative on their ballot to adopt a new election system that can truly represent a majority is democracy in action. And whether that initiative or others win or lose, we are making progress toward a more perfect union, really. And that's a story that I think is playing out at the same time as some of the negative headlines that we're seeing and some of the negative news about how some elements of our democracy is actually getting worse. So to make it quite tangible, Alaska was the first state to adopt a top for all candidate primary. In 2020. It became the fifth state to do that for, in some way, shape or form. Overall, this year, there are six states with initiatives on the ballot to abolish party primaries, red, blue, and purple states alike. And if just two or three of those were to ultimately win over the forces of opposition from both political parties, I think it'll be a very big deal for the movement, for our country, for our democracy, because it will not only liberate the us senators and representatives from those states that can improve the function of our congress, it will further demonstrate the power that we, the people have to make these changes and I think, accelerate the progress of change that we'll see over the coming years.

Daniel Stillman 31:16

Yeah, I mean, from your mouth to God's ears, as my people say. I think it's a really interesting moment to see if we can cook up something better rather than what we've been using for quite some time. One point I think you make in the book, which is extremely interesting to me, is that a lot of people assume that it's always been this way and it hasn't. We've hacked our way here and we can hack our way to someplace else. Speaking of doing things as we've always done them, we did talk earlier about how do we apply, or how do you think about the conversations that you have internally in unite America and also with your stakeholders and your collaborators? How do you apply these same ways of working and thinking on a microscopic scale?

Nick Troiano 32:05

One of my favorite values at United America is that we model the leadership we seek. So we're a team of Democrats, Republicans, and independents who want to see our leaders hold themselves accountable, to let the best idea win, to work civilly across difference, to be solutions oriented, to operate with integrity. Guess what? All of us can do all those things every day in our own lives, in our personal lives, in our professional lives. And so we internalize what we'd like to see in our politics to the way that we operate as an organization as well.

Daniel Stillman 32:46

What part of that is the most challenging for you? Sometimes I'm curious, like, where do you find your edge? Is it leading in those ways?

Nick Troiano 32:55

I would say where there's healthy tension is another value of ours, which is we're pragmatic idealists. We're trying to do something that doesn't yet exist, that a lot of people don't think is possible, and imagine what that world can be. And so that's our idealism. And our pragmatism is we're up against multibillion dollar entities known as the democratic and republican parties that will fight us tooth and nail before they give up any of their power to give voters that power. And so we have to be ruthlessly pragmatic in terms of where we engage, how we engage, the tactics we employ. Because this isn't about writing a persuasive op ed. This is about, can we help elect or defeat an opponent in a legislature, can we pass a ballot initiative? Can we defend it from repeal, etcetera? And so I would say that the tension that exists is keeping our eye on the North Star while also knowing that we need to be quite pragmatic in our approach to win in this field of political battle in the same way with the same determination as our opponents will.

Daniel Stillman 34:13

Yeah. What's so beautiful about that, from my perspective, Nick, is that all leadership eventually boils down to resolving fundamental polar tensions. And I look at the absolutist idealism and total pragmatism as two poles, that it's really about dancing between them, maintaining the idealism, while admitting that what we can accomplish on a day to day, week to week, month to month basis might fall short of those ideals but still keep ourselves moving forward.

Nick Troiano 34:47

Yeah. This is another credit to Lori, who I mentioned earlier in the interview. We do these polarity exercises, which isn't about choosing this or that, but it's choosing how do you capture the upsides of both mitigating downsides and how do you know when you're going too far in one direction or another? And so we talk a lot about that as an organization because if we're overly idealistic, chances are we're not going to get much done. If we're overly pragmatic, chances are we're actually not going to pursue the ideal vision for what we know and believe can be true in our country.

Daniel Stillman 35:24

Yeah, that's beautiful. Is there anything I haven't asked you that I should ask you before we end our time together?

Nick Troiano 35:34

I would say for those listening, if you're not in one of the six states with ballot initiatives, that means you're in one of the 44 that can help those states win in November. And so I would encourage you to head to majorityrealsfilm.com to see where you can watch the film, where you can share it or screen it or host a house party. It's a great tool to educate others. And we're working very closely with our partner, represent us, which is represent us as a place to go to take action. So you can phone bank, text bank, contact voters in these states and tell them why you care about this and to take advantage of the opportunity they have to reimagine the way that we.

Daniel Stillman 36:14

Elect our leaders, getting behind nonpartisan reform that can change the game for generations. It's definitely worthwhile. That's amazing, Nick. Thank you so much for your time, your energy on this important topic. I'll call scene shortly and just make sure everything felt cool, but I'm really, really grateful. Your time. This is super important stuff.

Nick Troiano 36:39

It's clear you've invested a lot of time in reading and watching, and I really just appreciate the opportunity to share these thoughts.

The Secrets of Motivation and Systems Change

Warning - this episode uses a specific curse word - a lot. And once we started using one, we started using more of them. So…if f-bombs, sprinkled like salt are not your cup of tea, this is a good episode to skip!

My guest today is Rebecca R Block, PhD, who is an expert in helping organizations build programs, services and products that equip young people to develop the confidence and skills they need to enter adulthood as thriving and adaptable lifelong learners. She has spent the last 14 years leading the design, improvement, and evaluation of educational programs and services to make them more impactful and learner-centered. She has built R&D departments from scratch and managed large and small teams responsible for creating, measuring, and improving learning experiences.

She also wrote a book with the word “Shit” in the title…or Shit, with an asterisk where the “I” goes, which actually makes her book a bit hard to google!

The book is titled “Can You Help Me Give a Sh*t? Unlocking Teen Motivation in School and Life,” and she teamed up with Grace L Edwards, a current undergraduate student, to talk to young people across the country and gather their stories about what truly makes for engaging learning environments. In the process, she learned a lot about how motivation works for everyone, not just teens, and has taken those lessons learned into her work as a leader, parent, and educator. 

In the opening quote Becca outlines the ABCs of Motivation. These ABCs are true for children and adults - we’re basically the same species. And the work of luminaries such as Peter Senge and Amy Edmondson make it clear that great working environments are great learning environments - places where we can create and sustain positive feedback learning loops with ourselves and others. So it’s essential for anyone leading or managing others (or themselves!) to understand how motivation really works. 

We also talk about Becca’s essential values when it comes to co-creation - that is, making a systems change along with the people in that system who will be affected by that change. Co-creation is not just a good idea… it leverages the truths about motivation that Becca shared in her opening quote. People are much more likely to want to participate in change that they’ve taken part in forming, rather than going along with something forced on them.

Two Levels of Systems Change

We also talk about the need to work on at least two levels when engaging in systems change: 

Helping people, now
Helping make a bigger shift, over time.

Given that Becca knows how challenging it can be to transform a system as complex as education, she focuses her work in this book on helping people, now, to work to create change for themselves, within the current system. This perspective is helpful for anyone leading a team in a larger organization or anyone leading an organization within a larger industry they are hoping to transform.

Listen in for Becca’s deeper breakdown of the ABC’s of motivation, as well, summarized here!

The ABCs of Motivation

Ability
Belonging
Choices

Ability: In any situation where you want someone (or even yourself!) to have sustained motivation, you need the Ability to do (or learn how to do) the things you want to do. Indeed, whenever you find that someone isn’t doing something you have asked them to do, it’s important to ask - is this an issue of Will or Skill? In other words, can they do the thing? If they can’t yet, do they have the confidence in their ability to learn the thing?

Belonging: Real relationships help us accomplish things. I show up for my Spanish lessons (partly) because I’ve paid for them, and partly because I’d feel bad for standing up my tutor, even though the classes are online. Ditto for my exercise classes. Real relationships create real motivation. In a recent episode, I spoke with Robbie Hammond, Co-founder of the High Line, who talked about how his relationship with his Co-Founder Josh David kept him going through a difficult decade of bringing their dream to reality - talk about Relationships = Motivation!

Choices: Having real choices means you have the autonomy to determine for yourself what you are going to do. “Liberty or Death” isn’t much of a choice - although it is one many have taken. Becca suggests that dysfunctional workplaces create crappy or fake choices, and functional ones enable everyone to see how the work fits into their own personal why.

I connect these ideas to my recent interview with Ashley Goodall, author of “Nine Lies about Work” and most recently “The Problem with Change." Ashley says, “The ultimate job of leadership is not disruption and it is not to create change; it is to create a platform for human contribution, to create the conditions in which people can do the best work of their lives.” This is what every human (and teenager!) actually really wants, if they can connect to the ABCs of motivation.

Links, Quotes, Notes, and Resources

Get the book here

BeccaBlock.com

Becca’s podcast

CanYouHelpMeGiveA.com. 

If you want to be on her podcast: fill out a form here!

More About Becca Block, PhD

Rebecca R Block, PhD, is an expert in helping organizations build programs, services and products that equip young people to develop the confidence and skills they need to enter adulthood as thriving and adaptable lifelong learners. She has spent the last 14 years leading the design, improvement, and evaluation of educational programs and services to make them more impactful and learner-centered. She has built R&D departments from scratch and managed large and small teams responsible for creating, measuring, and improving learning experiences.

In her recent book, Can You Help Me Give a Sh*t? Unlocking Teen Motivation in School and Life, she paired up with Grace L Edwards, a current undergraduate student, to talk to young people across the country and gather their stories about what truly makes for engaging learning environments. In the process, she learned a lot about how motivation works for everyone, not just teens, and has taken those lessons learned into her work as a leader, parent, and educator. 

As such, she can talk about any of the following topics:

Education: Why there need to be more resources about education driven by what students say they want and need–and why meaningful learning requires them to have meaningful choices, belonging, and a continually growing sense of their abilities.

Motivation: How researching teen motivation caused her to learn some surprising truths about her own motivation (and sometimes lack thereof) as an adult, parent, and member of the workforce.

Research methods: Why ethnography and participatory design informed her approach to this particular book, and how those methods can help more workplaces and schools.

Parenting students: What to do if you’re worried about how your teen engages in school–whether they’re apathetic or so high achieving they risk burnout–and why these two reactions are just different sides of the same coin.

Parenting as a researcher: How listening to young people’s stories made it easier for her to connect with her own kids (an elementary schooler and a middle schooler).

AI Summary by Grain

Becca discussed the importance of involving students in defining and solving problems related to their learning experiences and highlighted the concept of sustained motivation based on self-determination theory. Daniel emphasized the importance of designing with stakeholders and including diverse voices in the design process to create more inclusive outcomes. Both speakers emphasized the importance of self-reflection and assessing motivation levels before interacting with others, especially in a parenting context.

- Becca shares the inspiration behind writing a book aimed at helping students care about their education, emphasizing the need to involve students in defining and solving problems related to their learning experiences. 3:24

- Becca explains the concept of sustained motivation based on self-determination theory, emphasizing the importance of autonomy, belonging, and choices for individuals to feel motivated and succeed in any context. 6:06

- Becca discusses the significance of engaging in meaningful conversations with young people to empower them in their learning process, contrasting the common approach of talking about or to teens instead of listening and including them in decision-making. 9:00

- Daniel responds to the previous discussion, emphasizing the importance of designing with stakeholders and co-designing solutions with those closest to the challenges to create meaningful insights and drive impactful change. 17:48

- Becca highlights the significance of including diverse voices in the design process from problem definition onwards to avoid perpetuating inequities and creating more inclusive outcomes. 21:50

- Daniel discusses the importance of unlocking motivation through ability, belonging, and choice, seeking advice on how to remember key concepts for better implementation. 26:51

- Daniel and Becca emphasize the importance of self-reflection and assessing motivation levels before interacting with others, especially in a parenting context. 28:48

- Becca discusses the inefficiencies and shortcomings of the current educational system, highlighting the disconnect between preparing young people for adulthood and engaging them effectively in problem-solving and critical thinking. 35:42

Full AI Transcript

Daniel Stillman 00:00

And now we're really live. And now I can officially welcome you to the conversation factory. At last. Becca block. We made it. All the conversations that we've had in our entire lives that have led us to this moment. I'm, like, thinking of, like, from this moment, it's. Sorry. I'm just. My brain. You just create a space, Becca, where I just feel free to be myself. So I hope you feel the same way. I'm really excited that we're going to be.

Becca Block, PhD 00:26

I do.

Daniel Stillman 00:28

Amazing. So, okay, first of all, what are your favorite conversation types? Like, what's your favorite kind of conversation?

Becca Block, PhD 00:38

Oh, gosh, I love having any conversation that. Well, one that fits the bill that you just described of, like, someone's actually saying what they actually think, and we are engaged in talking about what we mean rather than what we don't mean. But I especially love conversations that both Fitzhe that bill and fit the bill of. Furthermore, we're discovering something about what we think or what we mean or how we engage with the world and each other by virtue of the conversation. Right. So I used to be a writing professor. I used to talk to my students a lot about the difference between writing to learn versus writing to perform. I love conversations that are conversing to learn rather than conversing to perform. Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 01:20

Saying the thing this is, like, this is. Sometimes they call this the negotiator's dilemma. Like, we feel like if we say everything that we're thinking about something, then it will expose us. And so we don't always. We dance. We do the dance. And I love this definition of, like, a conversation where we're here to learn versus one that to perform. It sounds exhausting, even for those of us that are, you know, love a little bit of performative in our conversations. Yeah, it's not the best. So you wrote a book. We talked about this in our pre conversation that has the word shit in it. So there's gonna. I think even though it has shit with a big asterisk in it, if people try to google it, they need to google it with the asterisks instead of the eye. Yeah, right, exactly. Sh. Asterisks or, like, you know, t. And it's a book about teenagers for adults, written with a young adult. And so bold choice to use veiled profanity. Can you help us give a shit about your book? Why on earth a did you write it? What? In your life? Who hurt you? Why did you decide to do this hard thing, which. I write a book. What brought you here? Like, what's your origin story. And, like, how did you get to this moment where this is the book that you wanted to write and put into the world? Very big annoying question.

Becca Block, PhD 02:48

Yeah, no, not a big annoying question. Just mostly going to have to. You should rest the mic away from me if I start rambling on about my childhood or something. Daniel, there's a lot of history that goes into this. The most immediate history is that one of my colleagues and dear friends was teaching a class on executive functioning, study skills, academic motivation to a group of high school students. And she had asked them, what do you want to get out of this class? And had them all anonymously be able to write on, you know, blank worksheets and turn it in. And one of the students wrote on a piece of paper, can you help me give a shit about high school? I want to, but I just don't know how.

Daniel Stillman 03:24

Yeah.

Becca Block, PhD 03:24

And she came to me and one of my other colleagues to say, what do I do, really? My specialty is executive functioning and all the study skills and time management and task initiation, all that stuff. And, like, how do I help her give a shit? And both my colleague and I knew a fair amount about positive youth development and those kinds of things, but also, I realized I went to find good resources for her. And there were not any books that centered students answers to that question. And that really pissed me off, because as a participatory designer, I think it's really dumb to want to solve a problem without involving the people who are actually most experiencing the problem in defining the problem, first of all, and then ideating and iterating on solutions to it.

Daniel Stillman 04:11

Yeah.

Becca Block, PhD 04:12

So that's. That's really what sparked me wanting to do it, is I said that I want to go talk with a bunch of young people all over the country about what their experiences have been in school and what. And under what circumstances has allowed them to actually give a shit about what they're learning.

Daniel Stillman 04:24

Yeah. And you've been thinking about this problem for a while, right? Like, long before you wrote this book, because you've worked as an educational consultant for a long time. What are the kinds of problems with the educational system that in general, you have been trying to solve, have been solving, or still need to feel a need to solve in this system? That is like trying to create, as I put it, like civilization. Like one child, one teacher, one school at a time.

Becca Block, PhD 04:59

Right, right, right. Trying to create civilization still based very much in, like, industrial era culture models of what is it that we're trying to train citizens and civilization for? Right. What's wrong? And what inhibits motivation and meaningful learning and actual preparedness for engaging in your life, whether it's your life in the moment or your life. Of course, my throat decides to dry up right as I'm trying to talk with you, Daniel. Sorry. Let me grab a step.

Daniel Stillman 05:26

I'll take a sip, too.

Becca Block, PhD 05:26

So, yeah. So what inhibits being able to feel motivated in your learning in school, as a high school student, college student, middle school student, is pretty much the same as what inhibits your ability to engage and learn meaningfully in really crappy work environments. Right. And that was something that I didn't fully realize the parallels of until I started digging in and doing this research and seeing how many parallels there were to the many years that I've been a manager and leader in various organizations, in the types of workplace environments that allow someone to actually meaningfully engage and feel motivated and learn and develop and do quality work. Right? And it's not rocket science. This is something that there have been psychologists doing research on motivation science for decades and decades. Pretty consistent findings, all kind of under the aegis of self determination theory that basically says, hey, you know what? For humans to, like, sustain motivation over a decent time period, they need to have meaningful autonomy, which I describe in the book as choices. Because autonomy doesn't tend to stick in people's heads. They feel like they can make meaningful choices about what it is that they're doing in relation to goals that they have. They need to feel like that they have real relationships. In the literature, it's referred to as relatedness. I think that's a really awkward word, so I call it belonging. And they need to feel like that they are competent, right? That they have the ability to do or learn, importantly, the skills that they need to be able to perform to achieve whatever goal it is that they're setting out in. And these are not just generic, free floating things that just are a contextual. You need to have those things in any given context in which you are operating in order to feel any kind of sustained motivation to succeed in that context. And surprise, surprise, most high schools are not designed in the least to cause students to feel like that they have the abilities, belonging, and choices that they really need to sustain motivation, and instead is very much designed on the like, exhausting, extrinsic form of motivation that's all about run away from this punishment, run towards this reward, run away from this punishment, run towards this other reward that just really tires people out.

Daniel Stillman 07:39

Yeah, the ability and something in the choices I missed the thing in the middle.

Becca Block, PhD 07:45

Ability, belonging and choices.

Daniel Stillman 07:47

Belonging. Yeah, it's interesting. I love the subtitle unlocking team motivation in school and life. And I think you're basically paying the picture. And we all were high school students at one point. Anybody listening to this? I mean, it's possible that there's, like, a ten year old listening to this seems very unlikely if you're in the car, you know, I don't think middle school is that different than high school. Sorry, that sounds like a really depressing thing to say to a ten year old, but it is different.

Daniel Stillman 08:18

We all know that feeling of, like, why do I need to study this? What is this for? Where am I going? And it's really hard as a kid to imagine your life or to feel like there's a real goal that you have. And so it sounds like you've learned something about what it is to have a conversation with a young person to help them figure out what their meaningful choices are and what goals they really have. And it sounds like that's a conversation that you're hoping more people have with the young people in their lives and in their classrooms and in their schools, presumably. Is that fair to say?

Becca Block, PhD 09:00

I think that that's completely fair to say. And it's, you know, while I know that, like, education and teens is not, like, topically, how does that relate to the conversation factory? Right. That's not an obvious fit, but the conversation piece is the key piece, right. That you're. That you're landing on is that we tend to talk about young people or anyone who's. Some aspect of their identity is at the marches. Right. And young people are one of those groups. We tend to talk about them instead of with them. We tend to talk to them instead of listening. Right. And so all the ways in which we engage in conversation don't actually include them in owning their own learning. And then we're, like, so surprised when teens are super apathetic school, it's like shock. What is shocker, right? Yeah. When's the last time that you were given a mandatory training at work that you saw absolutely no value in? You didn't think it was going to be relevant for your current or future career development, but you still were told you needed to spend a couple hours on it and you were like, yes, I am so jazzed about that. Right? Like said, nobody ever said nobody ever. Right? And usually those types of mandatory trainings are few and far between and are, like, regulation based in the workplace, but it's the entirety of many young people's educational experience.

Daniel Stillman 10:20

Right. And this is the joke is that, you know, quote unquote andragogy. The principles of adult learning, I don't think are fundamentally different than the idea of pedagogy, the teaching of children. Like, they also need to see a reason to do it and value in it for them. So the question of like, how to make this relevant for everyone. Now, obviously, anybody who's listening to this, who has a child person, their lives that they're trying to control. The secret is like with any negotiation is find out what they want and what they value. Hahaha. The answer is candy. In this case, I'm guessing. But here's the question that I wanted to. I feel like we talked a little bit about this and I want to just really underline them. These two ideas of like, one, your book addresses a very specific theory of change one, and I'll just earmark that. Like, instead of addressing a book at like an academic book at administrators, because systems take a long time to change, you're addressing this at like, parents and teachers because they want to have a change now, and it takes a long time to change a system. We can talk about that. And then there's this other piece which is like, you just the general idea that co design is better than designing with and decentering self is better and more interesting and more effective than designing for. And we haven't really talked about the fact that you co wrote this with a young person, which is like a crazy, much harder thing to do than just like writing a book and also probably in some ways easier. So I think those are the two things that, like, everyone who's listening probably needs to think about all the different layers of a system that they want to address to create transformation and which ones are addressable in my theory of change. And two, like, co design is something that everyone could be doing more of, but it is hard to do. I agree with you that it's important to do, and I'd love to just like address both of those things if you can rant about those.

Becca Block, PhD 12:31

Mini rant on each. All right, we'll try to do mini rant a and then mini rant b, and you can interject, throw an elbow in wherever you need to. Right. So on the systems piece, I really struggled with that one initially, right. Because I do think we need systemic change. I do think we need policy change. And I don't think that the people who are the most motivated, who are experiencing the pain of things the most right now are the ones that are best positioned to think about policy change first. Right. So the people that I have talked with and seen that are experiencing the most pain right now are, first, young people in themselves, and second are the teachers and parents who actually care about them. Right. There's some swath of adults who don't care. Right. They just don't care. But, like, there is a very large group that actually care, and they are seeing young people suffering right now. And the most obvious version of that looks like apathy. But I would actually say that the super high achieving, burned out high school students are the flip side of that coin. And there's been a number of actually great books written about that topic recently. Um, but I think it's the flip side of the same coin. Right. Both is when you experience a lack of ability to meaningfully influence a system that is boxing you in, then you have two reactions. One very good defense mechanism is to go for apathy. Right. It's a very good protective mechanism to go, like, I don't have any control here anyways, so I'm just not going to care.

Daniel Stillman 13:55

Yeah.

Becca Block, PhD 13:55

And the flip side is to go, I have no control here. Therefore I'm going to, like, hyper achieve. I'm going to add a bunch of things to my plate that I can control and still also excel on the thing that I can't. And then, like, become super, super burned out, which is a whole nother thing. I won't go into that rant. How that relates to the system mini rant is if those are the people that are the most suffering, they're either seeing the young people that are burning themselves to a crisp, or they're seeing the young people who are completely checked out, disengaged, apathetic, hiding in their basements, and they're going, oh, my gosh, I'm so worried about this. They don't have time to wait for system change because they're looking at someone who's suffering right now. And so when I looked at that, I thought of a metaphor that a former colleague of mine used to discuss when we were talking about education in general. She would talk about if the river's poisoned and there are sick people on the banks of the river from drinking the poisoned water, you've got to deal with the poison in the water. And I was like, yes, but you also need to treat the people who are sick on the banks of the river. Right. And so when I was picking a place for this book to focus, I was like, there's lots of great policy books out there. There are lots of great books for administrators out there. I am not seeing lots of great books out there that are actually aimed at helping the parents and educators who are like, no, but what do I do right now? What can I do this week? And especially not any that we're taking it from the perspective of actually listening to and empathizing with and learning from young people about what I can do right now this week rather than from expert to send it on high with their special opinion that they just got from Harvard.

Daniel Stillman 15:28

Yeah. Yeah.

Becca Block, PhD 15:30

So that's minirant A. Shall I proceed directly to Minirant B, Daniel?

Daniel Stillman 15:34

I think that's, yeah, I mean, it's a really, I think it's actually really challenging to hold both of those and to decide where because obviously you can, you work on the, usually on the systemic level. Right. And so I guess what I'm feeling into is an itch to make sure that people can get that immediate help, that they need that relief or a way to sort of find a way to shift the experience of an individual, young person and this constellation of people around them. Now, while you work on detoxifying the water system. Right. It's like you can do that work and that's what people hire you for generally, is to innovate and to really think differently and to design different systems. But that takes time. Like the pace, the pace layer of change, I think was the concept we were talking about last time. That takes time and that time is like potentially longer than one child's school year and maybe their entire high school career to create that kind of impact.

Becca Block, PhD 16:52

Right, exactly. Unless you're someone with the luxury of so much capital that you can just be like, I'm just going to airlift my child out of this public school system and drop them into this private system that is working the way that I want to. Right. The number of people who have those kinds of resources for basically like changing the system their young person is in is very few. Right? That's not, most of that's not me. I can't do that. And that is probably part of my own motivation is like, I have a kid in middle school now, another kid in elementary school. I'm looking at what I can do. I'm involved in the district and doing things here and I'm also looking at the pace of change in the district and that it took us twelve years in the school district just to change to healthy school start times. Twelve years. And I was like with lots of parents advocating for it, I was like, oh boy. All right, so we need some other strategies that can be used with a little bit less lead time.

Daniel Stillman 17:48

Right? Yeah. And so that's definitely a good answer to rant one, rant two. Like, anybody who's listening to this probably has the opportunity to design with instead of for. And I, I mean, I can't believe we're still having this conversation on some level, that the idea of, like, getting out of the building, or in this case getting into the building and like, talking to the people who are closest to the challenge in order to create insights about what to do differently. Not shocking to me, but like, what is your actual recommendation for people who are reading this to think about co design in a different way than they are maybe thinking about it now or if they're not aware of it?

Becca Block, PhD 18:36

Yeah. So I'm going to talk first to the people because I suspect most of your listeners would be most likely to be aware of it and the challenges they're running into are getting institutional or organizational buy in to deploy it. Right. And that's certainly what I've witnessed as both a consultant and a full time employee is even when organizational leaders are like, yes, it's so equitable. Design is so important. Participatory design, co design collaborative. Wow. Yay. And then when the rubber meets the road and it's like, cool, we're not going to roll this out. This idea that you just had, person in the organization with more power than me, we're not going to immediately jump into rolling your idea out. What we're going to do instead is first validate with the stakeholders that this is intended to actually benefit, that that is a problem that they're experiencing and learn with them what kinds of solutions they're looking for. Not in the classic Henry Ford. If I ask people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse. Haha. Like I needed to come up with a car. Right? I think that's one of the things that people frequently turn to. Either I've directly had that quoted at me before when talking about co design, or that is kind of tacitly in the back of the mind of like, well, people don't always know what they want. That's true. People don't always articulate what it is that they want and need, because, like all of us, we're humans, we go for whatever the mental model that is like, easiest at hand when we're first asked about something. But that's not the same as it not being possible to collaboratively design with people meaningful solutions that actually help. It does take more time upfront. The main strategy that I have found in getting the buy in for that time upfront is the amount of time and money it saves you on the back end, right? So for people who are, who are primarily motivated by arguments related to financial sustainability or income, pointing out that your likelihood of success with the audience that you are trying to put something with, whether it's a social impact space where they're going to be the users that need to experience impact, you're going to demonstrate that impact to philanthropists to keep paying for it, or whether it's a direct to consumer or to business, hey, the same people that are getting this benefit are the ones paying for it. Either way, you are more likely to get to the results that you want faster. If the people who need that problem solved actually got involved in validating that, yes, this is the solution because they see themselves in it. You get built in early adopter high advocates because they help to create the thing and you've created it with people who are directly experiencing the problem. So the likelihood that the solution is helping solve the problem is way higher because they're not going to continue to use something in your iterative design cycle process that's not actually working, right. They are experiencing that problem right now. So those are the framing and argument that I found most helpful in getting more buy in for participatory co design collab, you know, whatever word you want to use for it. In organizations that really value equity and inclusion, it becomes that much more crucial. Right? The stereotype for designers is still very much a bunch of white cis hetero dudes sitting in a room, right? And while the people who participate in design have expanded, it's still useful to remember that that's where the history is coming from, right? That's where all of this stuff is coming from. The set of practices, the set of norms, the things that we've just picked up and maybe didn't think too much about. And if we don't actively work to get a range of voices in the room from the beginning, not just from the stage of ideation, but from the stage of problem definition, then the likelihood that we are going to continue to perpetuate the inequities that give us exactly the stuff that we're in right now that are creating all kinds of inequitable outcomes, it's just gonna keep happening, right?

Daniel Stillman 22:39

Yeah.

Becca Block, PhD 22:40

So am I being too abstract in my mini ranting here?

Daniel Stillman 22:42

This is one where, I mean, well, I think it's, it makes sense to me. And I think a lot of people who are hearing this might be thinking some yeah, buts, or especially with regard to their own situation. And I think some of the yeah, buts I think about is, like, a lot of people say, like, yeah, but it's low. Yeah, but it's expensive. Yeah, but we probably have a pretty good idea already, or yeah, but we know better. And those are some of the yeah. Butts that I think I've heard. Are there any yeah, buts that you've heard that I haven't. Haven't enumerated?

Becca Block, PhD 23:19

I think. No, I think they all. I think they all could fit into. I've heard them expressed different ways, but yeah, I think they all fit into the categories that you just laid out.

Daniel Stillman 23:27

So when you hear those, I mean.

Becca Block, PhD 23:29

Maybe a little bit the, like, yeah, but we already know better. Is like, a different version of that. Is that. Yeah, but is it really necessary? Right. Like, people think that it is for the sake of performing inclusion rather than genuinely being inclusive.

Daniel Stillman 23:48

Performative inclusion is. We could just do a whole. Write that book. People would really. That would be a winner. And I think the other piece is like, if this is something that's being driven by stakeholders, they have a hypothesis or another way or maybe an axe to grind, a theory of, this is how education should be. And anybody listening this could be reading like, this is how we should make the thing right. And being wrong is hard. Like, being. Opening yourself up to being wrong is challenging. And so I guess my question is like, yeah, how do you. It's very easy to say, and I agree with you, this will save us time, money, and resources at the end, it's the classic Frank Lloyd Wright quote. You know, it's like, it's the different costs between an eraser at the draft board and a sledgehammer on the construction site. Like, it's a huge. It's a ten x or a hundred x savings, but it takes, I think, a certain amount of bravery and also curiosity, I guess. Curiosity and the eagerness to be wrong, I think, is a kind of bravery.

Becca Block, PhD 25:01

Yes, I think that is what I've seen, because it's pretty easy to get past the logical obstructions. But this will slow us down. This will cost us money. Well, let me walk out for you exactly, actually, how it will ultimately save us time and save us money. Okay, okay, okay. But that last one that you're talking about is the real barrier. It's very hard for anyone who comes up with an idea, whether you're the designer leading the process or whether you're enacting a thought idea question whatever that was sort of passed on to you from someone else in the organization. It is so hard for us to actually believe any data that goes against our confirmation bias. Right. As human beings, it is one of the hardest cognitive biases to overcome.

Daniel Stillman 25:53

I don't believe that that goes all against my fundamental mental knowledge.

Becca Block, PhD 26:00

And that's where it's really brutal, because especially if you are doing the co design in lean and manageable, like, small sample size ways, then, of course, the most obvious and immediate conclusion for anyone to jump to when the results come back is anything other than, guess what. The exact thing that you already had in mind is totally what people want is to go, you must. Those people that you got. Are you sure? Like, that's a really small sample size. I think that we should go ahead because, you know, like, I've heard that kind of thing so many times, and I'm sure anybody listening is gonna be like, mm hmm. Right. Like, it's so hard for us to believe the evidence in front of us when we're engaged in co design, if that evidence does anything other than affirm what it was we were hoping to find.

Daniel Stillman 26:51

Yeah. So our time goes nigh, which is shocking. If we were to. If you were to just write the blog post of your book, which I feel like is the most hilarious critique of most books, it's like, if you're just like, tattoo, the message that you want people to walk away with, the three key is if we were to unlock teen motivation and motivation in general for ourselves, for the other people that we collaborate with. You talked about, you know, ability, belonging and choice. I'm wondering, are there some. What is the. What is the thing that I need to be keeping in my mind that if, like, I. That after I read your book and forget it, I will remember, like, the two things that will actually help people do this thing better?

Becca Block, PhD 27:47

Yeah. Yeah. Can I give a couple versions of this for different kinds of audience members?

Daniel Stillman 27:52

Yeah, yeah, let's check. Can I cheat 100%? Yeah, yeah. Let's back into this.

Becca Block, PhD 27:57

So, yeah, yeah. So, for parents, right. Which I know is not your main audience, but I'm gonna start there.

Daniel Stillman 28:03

No, I mean, I think a lot of people listening are probably parents.

Becca Block, PhD 28:07

Also happens before I benefit. Yeah, yeah. So for parents, the most useful takeaway that I keep reminding myself of as a parent, every time I have one of those moments, especially with my older, you know, preteen, like, right about to cross over into teenage years child, when I hit those moments where I'm like, just, would you please, God, just do the thing that I can clearly, obviously see you just need to do, right. It's to go, okay, you know that's not going to work, right? Like, you literally know, you know, from all of your research, from all of your time in educational systems, from your work as a designer, all that. It's not going to work. It's never going to work. It's never going to work. No matter how frustrated you are, it's literally never going to work.

Daniel Stillman 28:48

Leading force and badgering are not a.

Becca Block, PhD 28:50

Theory of change, amazingly, no. But they are great for confirmation bias. They are great at making you feel really justified in how angry and pissed off you are with your child or your spouse or your employee or your boss or your. They're great at that. What has been most helpful for me as a parent is to pause and go, okay, right now I'm not feeling particularly motivated, right? Right now I'm feeling really frustrated and not motivated and like, I just want to toss my hands up and walk away. So let me pause and do a little audit on myself at first so I can model it, and then maybe I can help my kid do the same thing. Right? So first is right now, am I feeling like I have the ability or could learn the ability that I need to solve this particular problem or address this particular goal? Right now, am I feeling like that I actually belong with the people here, in this case, with my kid? Right. Am I feeling like we have a good relationship right now, in this moment? Right now, am I feeling like I have any meaningful choices about the way that I'm engaging with my kid as a parenthood? And if my answer to one or more, and usually it's more than one of those, is no, then I need to shut the fuck up. Like, I. That's. That's literally my.

Daniel Stillman 30:10

Aren't you glad I made it okay to curse on the podcast?

Becca Block, PhD 30:12

I am glad that you made it okay to curse on the podcast, because that's. That's lit. Like, that is literally the mantra that plays through my head. Is it okay? You need to shut the fuck up? You need to do your own diagnosis of what will allow you to feel like you've got the abilities or can identify what you need to learn, what will allow you to feel connected to your kid, and what will allow you to feel like you've got some meaningful choices in the situation before you continue this conversation. And then once you've got those things, then. And this is how I talk to myself in the second person. It's very weird. Probably a therapist would have a field day with it, then I can go back and then engage with my kid from that perspective of like, hey, I noticed that I was shutting down in XYZ ways and I realized blah blah blah was happening and I was feeling phenomenally demotivated. And instead I was just getting angry or just getting frustrated or just getting apathetic. I'm wondering if. Cause usually you can observe as a parent, you have a pretty good idea what's missing there. But not making the assumption, saying like, here's what I'm noticing, here's what I'm wondering. Does any of this resonate with you? And then having a conversation, hey, what can we do? Here's what I'm going to do to try to build my own motivation. What are the things you feel like you could use to feel engaged and interested in us solving this problem together or in me supporting you as you solve this problem yourself? Right? Because especially my kids are still young enough that mostly it's more of a together. But each, every six months as they get older, it needs to move more and more towards I'm in the passenger seat. I'm becoming an increasingly optional navigative assistant. And they are the ones driving, right? That's the kind of scaffolding. Because I don't want my kids to still be living with me when they're 30 and asking me how to make decisions. Right? Yeah. So as a parent, that's my. Still long for a blog post, but probably if I could edit it afterwards, I could get it to blog post length of like main takeaway.

Daniel Stillman 32:05

Can I say before we move on to the next thing, what I heard, which may leverage us to the next thing, I feel like I understand belonging in a different way now. Because when it's all your fault, right? Or I feel like you're over there and I'm over here and I'm trying to, like it's. And I'm trying to fix you. The direction is there, I don't belong to you and you don't belong to me. Like I'm trying to force you. And it feels like if there's a moment where I don't feel like we are in this together, then it's a time to pause and ask, what am I forcing here? And in a way, like the belonging, the lack of belonging sort of cascades down to the lack of choices. Like, because like I'm. I've got to yell at them. They just won't listen any other way. Right? I have to force them. I have to talk over them. And if you notice that there's a lack of an ability to feel like you are in command of yourself, these are also good times to pause and step back and say, like, wow, how do I make sure that we are in a conversation.

Becca Block, PhD 33:12

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 33:13

Together.

Becca Block, PhD 33:13

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 33:14

And not a, like.

Becca Block, PhD 33:15

Right.

Daniel Stillman 33:15

Me forcing you again. Force is not a really good theory of change.

Becca Block, PhD 33:20

Right.

Daniel Stillman 33:21

Because people aren't people. As people are not pieces. People are people.

Becca Block, PhD 33:27

Yes.

Daniel Stillman 33:28

Yeah. Sorry, there was more to you.

Becca Block, PhD 33:30

No, I just. Yes, I just. I was just gonna say, like, I don't. I want to make sure that in that I am not conveying the lie that positional authority doesn't matter. Right. Because that's going to apply to the other, you know, for people who are designers, for people who are thinking about this for the workplace, it applies in all those cases. Right.

Daniel Stillman 33:46

Yeah.

Becca Block, PhD 33:46

Positional authority is real. It does play a role. It is part of the dynamic. As a parent, you have a different job than the job that your kid has. Right. Lying about that is not at all what I'm trying to say. Right. Belonging is not synonymous with we're all the same and all have equal amounts of power. Right. That's one of the things that. That tends to create lies when we were talking about inclusion before, that tends to create lies in communities that are going across lines of difference too. Right? Of, like, let's. We're all the same here. Like, no, we're fucking not. Right? Like, let's not lie about this. I'm just taking your curse word thing to the farthest extreme that I possibly can. Yeah, just like Athwam's everywhere, like, sprinkled like salt. But. So it's not about lying about the fact that you have more power than your kid does, but it is about stopping and going, okay, I'm do have more power, but is this the way I want to be using it? Is this the model I want to be setting? Am I actually helping scaffold my child towards independence in the way that I'm engaging with them right now? Is this even effective? Right. And usually the answer, there is no. Usually every time I'm actually trying to use my power to accomplish something rather than just, like, acknowledge that, yes, it's true, I have a different job than you because I'm your parent. It's not effective anyways, and it just ticks us both off.

Daniel Stillman 34:59

Yeah. And with these sources of power, there's a whole chapter I wrote about this. There's, like, many theories of how many types of power there are, but reward power or punishment power are very limited sources of power because the power of not giving a shit is tremendous. That's actually not in the six types of. I forget. It's like, the theorists who are behind it, but, like, I think it's French and this other guy. The power of not giving a fuck. Anarchic power. The power of, like, you know, how hard it is to lift a kid that doesn't want to be lifted. It's so strange. Like, they're heavier than just a bag of rice. That's. That's.

Becca Block, PhD 35:42

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 35:42

For some reason, they're. They are resisting. So I think that's the force against force is not a really effective way to unlock true motivation. And I think what you're saying here is that true intrinsic motivation, finding a way to unlock goals that they have and meaningful choices that they can that are open to them, is a more durable source of transformation. And it's not just with teenagers. It's with anybody that we have any kind of positional power of. Or any kind of power. Somebody we want to have more influence with.

Becca Block, PhD 36:24

Right? Yeah, yeah, no, it's true. And that's where the metaphor that applies to the various iterations of the blog post. For designers who are seeking to influence up and sideways to shift to co design practices, or for leaders and managers who are seeking to figure out, how do I help employees right now within the system we have inside this organization, that is not optimal yet, and we're working on optimizing it. But in the meantime, I need my employees to feel as motivated as they can be currently. Right. That same metaphor applies across all the situations. We tend to treat teenagers like they're a different species and they aren't. They're just uniquely good at because of the stage that their brain development is in, at questioning everything that we take for granted in culture, inventing a whole bunch of new terms for it that totally baffle adults and make us feel really old and deploying that anarchic, apathetic power. Right. Apathy is a very definitive power that is reserved uniquely for those who are able to not care and not buy into all the cultural norms and then therefore not care about the power that you can deploy on them, because all of them are based in a set of norms that teenagers are primed to resist, question and say things should be different, and therefore, I do not care at all. And in fact, we want that system to set up.

Daniel Stillman 37:48

We want them to be able to do that.

Becca Block, PhD 37:50

Right? We want things to get better. Right? We want them to. So it's one of the reasons that I get the most offended at our current educational system. Sorry, last little mini rant that I get the most offended by our educational system is because we say that this is a public good. We are investing our tax dollars and our time and our attention into school boards and into legislation, all these things because public education is intended to be a public good that sets young people up to be productive members of society, contributing citizens, contributing members of the workforce. And yet what we do inside those environments and the way that we engage with young people while they are young people in no way is preparing them to actually engage in the work of being a productive, to be a productive member of society. You don't sit around and wait for somebody else to tell you what problems you should solve. And also, by the way, here's how to solve them. Right? You don't do that in the workplace either. You don't have people tell you what the things are that you need to do even though you see no relevance in them whatsoever. And you're just supposed to continue to plug and play an industrial era economy. Maybe, but that's not the model we live in anymore. It's changing even more rapidly every year with climate change, AI, everything, right. But we just keep going like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can make all those choices when you're older. Right now, just do this thing that we've always done. That, by the way, is totally boring for you right now, is wasting your time and energy and problem solving abilities right now, and also, by the way, will do nothing to prepare you for adulthood but do it anyways, right? Good luck, have fun, maybe. And just hold your breath for like twelve years.

Daniel Stillman 39:30

Yeah, it's dark and that's why you're working hard to make it better. So we are quickly running out of time. There's two questions I have left here. I feel like I'm just giving you both questions. I have been giving you bulk drops. One, I want to make sure that you tell people where they can go to learn more about you and your work. And also I feel like there's probably something else I haven't asked you that I should ask you. And if there's something you feel like we have not touched on that we ought to touch on, I'd also. You can use the remaining moments we have to let the people know that thing too.

Becca Block, PhD 40:17

I appreciate it. The list of that ladder thing would probably be too large if I opened up my imagination on that one. So I'm going to lock it down and just say, follow up with me if you have a question. And the way to do that is to go to beccablock.com dot. So I have a contact form. There you can find the links to where to buy the book. You can also find the links to where to listen to my podcast, which has the same name. Can you help me give a shit? Which is in all the places. But there I respond to questions from parents and educators about particular things that they want to address with various people from all over the place. So please go check out the book. Go check out the website. Go check out the podcast. Tell me your questions. I am always down to talk with anybody about how we can make education better and also how we can make design better.

Daniel Stillman 41:01

Yeah, that was very succinct. Now we have extra time.

Daniel Stillman 41:11

What do you feel like people will miss in your book if they don't read it very carefully?

Becca Block, PhD 41:17

I think the thing that I'm most concerned people might miss is that they just kind of skim and skip to the actionable takeaways and don't pause to really listen to what the young people are saying. So the book goes heavy.

Daniel Stillman 41:36

Cause there's a lot of stories. There are stories from several young people that are sprinkled throughout the book.

Becca Block, PhD 41:41

Yeah. Yeah. So it's very heavy on stories from young people on purpose, because that is not what most books in this area do. They do like a lovely anecdote to open the chapter, and then they get into all the specific advice that experts have to say about that topic. Right. That's the typical framework for books in this genre. And so I think that makes it hard. I'm, as a. As a write, former writing professor, I know that anytime you're working against genre conventions, you're setting readers up for confusion. Right. I know that. I'm still doing it on purpose. I'm still doing it on purpose because I think that we're getting it wrong when we use young people's voices as the decoration rather than as the core message. And so I think that's the thing that I'm most concerned that people might miss, is looking at the stories as, like, cute illustrations rather than as something to really wrestle with and engage with. Some of those stories contradict each other. Some of those stories say things that I found very hard to hear that don't match the things that I think should happen in the educational system. Right. Some of those stories challenge various cherished beliefs across organizations that I respect or across organizations that I disrespect. Right. Like, I deliberately did nothing, sanitize the stories, and that's the thing that our brains want to do. We want everything to have a coherent, singular narrative. And I think that's the thing that people would be most likely to miss if they did a quick reading, is their brain would kick into default coherent narrative sanitizing mode, rather than actually being able to maintain that productive tension of, like, not all these stories agree with each other, and not all of them agree with the kind of accepted wisdom out in the world.

Daniel Stillman 43:22

We're so hungry for an actionable, digestible, coherent narrative. We need it to survive. Like, it's such a human core need. But it sounds like the call you're making is for people to wrangle with and to sit with the complexity and diversity of needs and just. I used to call it taking a bath in the data, which people don't want to do. They want to know the net. Net. So I really appreciate you going to all the effort to pull these stories together and then to invite people to actually contend with them. It's awesome.

Becca Block, PhD 43:58

Thanks.

Daniel Stillman 43:59

You're welcome. We are literally out of time. Did everything feel includable? Do we need to bleep anything out, or is that all? Are we all good?

Becca Block, PhD 44:08

If you want to reduce the number of times I dropped the f bomb, you can feel free to. But, yeah, no, everything felt includable to me, so.

Daniel Stillman 44:14

No, no, no. I'm, in fact, paste in extras. I'm gonna have my editor.

Becca Block, PhD 44:19

Some more seasoning.

Daniel Stillman 44:20

Yeah, yeah.

Becca Block, PhD 44:21

Some more seasoning throughout. Yeah, yeah. No, I think the only thing that the editor will probably have to catch for is, like, I think there was one point that there was a background noise here, and I didn't notice it until too late. So, like, some of that I didn't hear.

Daniel Stillman 44:34

I think your microphone did great.

Becca Block, PhD 44:38

Okay.

Daniel Stillman 44:38

I didn't notice anything. Well, I will call scene. And I really appreciate you making time and energy for this conversation.

Becca Block, PhD 44:48

I really. I really appreciate you making the time and energy for it. Daniel, I know that it was a little outside the norm for your podcast, but I really enjoyed these kinds of conversations, so I appreciate it.

Daniel Stillman 44:57

Thank you. We said the thing. We said what we meant. I think we both learned something. I learned something. I don't want to say that you learned anything.

Becca Block, PhD 45:06

I did.

Daniel Stillman 45:07

And I think the. The one truth that I know is that all conversations have something in common with each other. And if we're talking about teen motivation, we're talking about human motivation and human influence, and I think that is everyone can. This is not left field. This is. This is. This is center field. Like, everyone can learn about something from this. It's super important.

Becca Block, PhD 45:29

You should use what you just said as you're like, you know, blog post, headline.

Daniel Stillman 45:33

Yeah, I might indeed.

Becca Block, PhD 45:35

The post that you do.

Daniel Stillman 45:35

We're still actually recording all this, so.

Becca Block, PhD 45:38

There you go.

Daniel Stillman 45:39

There we go.

Becca Block, PhD 45:39

There you go.

Daniel Stillman 45:40

Thanks, Becca.

Becca Block, PhD 45:42

All right.

Daniel Stillman 45:43

Talk to you soon.

Becca Block, PhD 45:44

All right. Take care, Daniel. Thank you.

Daniel Stillman 45:46

Thank you.

Becca Block, PhD 45:47

Bye.

How to Turn a Conversation into a Public Park

Sometimes the bold goals we set out to achieve actually happen, and sometimes something even more amazing happens - something better than we can imagine.

Usually that happens because of the people we meet along the way, the conversations we have, the unexpected connections we make that open up new doors - in a word, Serendipity. I had always wondered about what amazing, powerful and sustained conversations led to the High Line Park in New York City becoming a reality.

Have you walked the High Line? Literally millions of people a year walk some of its 1.45 mile length, enjoying expansive views of the city and hundreds of local plantings, as well as amazing art installations. But it was slated for demolition and considered an eyesore and a relic, as long ago as the 1980s.

Built in 1933, it was at the time a revolutionary elevated train line that was colloquially called the Lifeline of New York City since it was regularly bringing millions of tons of meat, dairy and produce by rail, directly into the warehouses and factories of lower manhattan for preparation and distribution. The rail line wasn’t just a lifeline because of the food it brought, it also moved the rail lines safely above the city’s growing traffic - in the 1910s, hundreds of people were killed by the ground-level trains that ran in the middle of the bustling 10th avenue!

By the 1960s the line was growing obsolete due to the rise of trucking, and by the 1980s, it was a hulking relic of the past.

In 1999, Robbie Hammond, my guest for this conversation, co-founded the Friends of the High Line along with Joshua David. The two met at a local community board meeting where the High Line’s future was being discussed. Rudy Guliani, NYC’s mayor at the time, had signed an executive order for its demolition - many property owners wanted it gone so they could take back the land occupied by the tracks and build bigger buildings - a dream of greater square footage and increased rent rolls.

Currently Robbie is the President & Chief Strategy Officer for Therme Group US, where he is leading an initiative to bring large scale bathing facilities to the United States. He also currently serves on the boards for Little Island, Sauna Aid, Grounded Solutions Network, and the San Antonio Museum of Art.

When I was a little kid in NYC in the 80s, I looked up at the hulking tracks and thought “what the hell is that doing in the middle of the city?!” Many adults thought the same thing.

Robbie and Josh looked at the tracks and thought “we should really do something cool with that instead of tearing it down.”

In 2009 the first section of the high line opened to the public. In 2019 and 2023 new sections were completed.

Against all odds, “two neighborhood nobodies” (as one writer described them!) created a coalition, learned to raise money and garner the favorable attention of local politicians, and persisted and succeeded. The park is maintained, operated, and programmed by Friends of the High Line in partnership with the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation and is run on donations.

There are many amazing angles to the story of the Highline:

Maybe you DON’T need a coherent or complete Vision or Mission?!

Robbie makes it clear that they didn’t even have a clear vision or strategic plan for some time…just the idea that the elevated line was worth saving and doing something with…they discovered what they wanted to create along the way. He actually credits the vagueness of the mission with creating a “big tent” that attracted more people to the organization.

From a conventional dream to something better than anyone could imagine

One surprising insight is that the property owners had a rather conventional dream - tear the elevated tracks down so they could build bigger. Turning the High Line into a park seemed like a low-value, impossible pipedream - sex workers and drug users congregated under the overpasses, after all! But the High Line’s millions of visitors have transformed the value of the area far beyond the addition of a few extra square feet.

The High Line as a symbol for dreamers of impossible dreams

One of Robbie’s greatest points of pride is that the High Line now stands as a symbol to many “crazy dreamers” who find inspiration in the story of outsiders persisting and accomplishing more than they ever dreamed possible. The High Line is now a global inspiration for cities to transform unused industrial zones into dynamic public spaces. But Robbie loves the personal stories of folks who come up to him at talks, who are working on all sorts of projects and who find inspiration in Robbie and Josh’s “keep going against all odds” story.

The importance of Talking to People

Robbie talks about how he was always willing to pick up the phone and talk to anyone - the fearlessness of someone raised in sales. But the Friends of the High Line were also willing to host conversations with community groups and listen to them, and learn from them and communicate with them about why they were listening to their ideas and why, in some cases, they weren’t going to. Open lines of consistent communication made the High Line possible.

The Alchemy of the Co-Founder Relationship

In this conversation, Robbie is bracingly reflective and shines a sometimes harsh light on himself. Here at the 15th anniversary of the opening of the Highline and the 25th anniversary of the start of the project, the founding of the Friends of the High Line, Robbie looks back and is refreshingly honest about his own challenges and shortcomings, as well as missed opportunities along the way to do things differently.

What was truly surprising to me in this conversation is that Robbie was so open about his challenges as a co-founder, and is so open-eyed about how essential this most intimate of relationships can be…and how much he and Josh were willing to invest (in time, energy and resources) in that relationship to keep it intact, functional and flourishing.

The Energy and Anxiety of Creation

Robbie suggests that it is common for creative people (which includes entrepreneurs, and anyone that starts anything) to have a drive to accomplish their dream - that is what keeps them going… but that there is often “an undercurrent of anxiety”. Meditation helped Robbie reclaim a higher level of happiness as the High Line approached realization, but it took him years to undo the deep grooves anxiety etched in his psyche. It's a worthwhile lesson for anyone listening out there who's creating something, start taking care of yourself sooner rather than later.

You can follow Robbie on Instagram at thehighlineguy and stay in the loop on Therme’s projects at https://www.thermegroup.com/.

Links, Quotes, Notes, and Resources

https://www.thermegroup.com/

https://www.instagram.com/thehighlineguy

Therme post (2021) 

Robbie’s Book: The Highline:The Inside Story

https://www.thehighline.org/history/

Early documents from the highline: Reclaiming The High Line: A Project Of The Design Trust For Public Space With Friends Of The High Line (2002)

Talks:

Rail Yards Talks 2011

"High Line: The Inside Story of New York City's Park in the Sky" - Richard Hammond

https://www.ted.com/talks/robert_hammond_building_a_park_in_the_sky

More About Robbie Hammond

Currently Robert is the President & Chief Strategy Officer for Therme Group US, where he is leading an initiative to bring large scale bathing facilities to the United States. Prior to joining Therme Group US, Robert served as the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the High Line for over two decades. Alongside Joshua David he led in the transformation of an abandoned elevated railway line in Manhattan into an iconic urban park. 

Under his leadership, the High Line grew to become one of the most beloved public spaces in the United States, attracting eight million annual visitors annually with its innovative design, public art program, and community programming. Inspiring adaptive reuse projects around the world, he also created the High Line Network to foster community and share best practices among leaders of other infrastructure renewal projects.  He was also instrumental in building youth and educational partnerships to engage young New Yorkers as environmental stewards and civic leaders. He has won over two dozen national and international awards for his work.

A certified Vedic meditation teacher, Robert has served as a consultant or advisor for myriad companies and organizations, including the Times Square Alliance, Alliance for the Arts, and the National Cooperative Bank.  He served as an ex-officio member of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Board of Trustees, as well as Liberty Expedia, a formerly publicly traded travel company.  He currently serves on the boards for Little Island, Sauna Aid, Grounded Solutions Network, and the San Antonio Museum of Art.

AI Generated Summary

Robbie and Daniel discussed the importance of understanding conversations that led to significant outcomes, reflecting on successes and challenges of the High Line project. Robbie emphasized the necessity for coaching and mentorship to navigate challenges effectively, given the significant conflicts and reconciliation with their co-founder. Robbie explained the collaborative and adaptive approach taken in the project. They discussed the unexpected success of the Highline, and the skepticism it faced, as well as the project's influence on other initiatives. 

Key Points

-Robbie recounts a critical juncture in the High Line project where tensions arose between him and Josh, leading to the realization of the necessity for coaching and mentorship to navigate challenges effectively. 9:04

- Robbie explains the collaborative and adaptive approach taken in the project, where they listened to community input and gradually developed a vision based on feedback and shared sentiments. 24:37

- Robbie discusses how the Highline made ambitious projects more credible and less impossible, impacting various stakeholders positively. 32:14

- Robbie mentions the unexpected success and visitor numbers of the Highline, contrasting initial projections with actual figures and discussing political influences. 37:41

- Robbie talks about their approach to the new Therme project, highlighting the importance of coalition building and organizing, leading to a discussion about the evolving culture of bathing in North America and plans for a gathering of industry innovators. 46:21

Full AI Transcript

Daniel Stillman 00:00

I'll officially welcome you to the conversation factory. I'm ready. Thank you so much for making the time for this again. I have a very, very distinct memory. I grew up in New York City, and I remember being in the car. I don't know, I must have been, like, six, seven, going from the Upper west side somewhere downtown where my parents needed to go shopping and going. I have a memory of going under the highline and being like, what the hell is that? And. And it's just kind of unbelievable. You've been on my want to talk to list for a long time, and I'm so grateful you said yes. I literally mentioned this. Talking to our mutual friend Michael, I was like, I've always wanted to talk to the people behind making this crazy thing happen, because it's just a whole bunch of conversations that happened that didn't have to happen, that wouldn't have happened otherwise. And so that's why I'm so excited to have a conversation with you. I just. I wanted to go on the record of saying.

Robbie Hammond 01:09

I like talking about it.

Daniel Stillman 01:11

That's good. What are your favorite kinds of conversations? First of all, we can start there. You know, I mean, I like people.

Robbie Hammond 01:18

Say, do you get talk about. You get sick of talking about the high line? And I guess I never get sick of talking about how the highline was started, because it's a good story that has a good ending. I was talking about the things we could have done differently. Now, in hindsight, sometimes I'm criticized for talking about too much of, like, the highline's mistakes or failures, which I just think it's sometimes interesting to learn from some of the challenges we've had or as interesting as learning from the successes.

Daniel Stillman 01:54

Yeah. Reflective.

Robbie Hammond 01:56

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 01:57

Of both. So, like, when I hear your favorite kinds of conversations these days, especially around the high line, it's making sure that you're looking at it holistically, which I love.

Robbie Hammond 02:05

Yeah. Yeah. And I guess it's. It's especially poignant. I mean, even just this week is. This week is the 15th anniversary, or maybe last week, of of it opening, the first phase.

Daniel Stillman 02:19

Wow.

Robbie Hammond 02:20

And next month will be the 25th anniversary of us starting. So I've been thinking a lot about it lately.

Daniel Stillman 02:30

Yeah, it's intense because it's so funny. I wondered all these years, and then I didn't realize you all wrote a book. And I will just say, like, for people who are listening, the sort of discursive style or the discursive style of the two of you, Josh and you talking through the. How the blow by blow is really cool and answered so many of my questions and in a way, like, I don't want to talk about the how in the sense of, like, what happened, but I'm really curious about the, the how in terms of how you kept facing it. And I think the question I have, there's this quote of the success of an intervention depends on the inner state or the inner condition of the intervener. And when Michael shared your bio with me, I didn't realize that you were a meditation teacher and that that Veda philosophy was potentially part of your worldview. That just made me think about, like, well, what was Robbie's inner state in facing this long journey? What about your inner work makes you an effective intervener, do you think?

Robbie Hammond 03:48

Yeah, well, I think it's. I would say my inner state now is very different than it was then. If I had to sum up my inner state when I started the high line, I would say anxiety and depression and general unhappiness. So for the vast majority of the time, I came to meditate because of that, I had sought out. I'd wanted to learn to meditate maybe since my mid twenties because I couldn't sleep at night. And I don't know, I just generally say I was unhappy. And so I tried a dozen different kinds. And so I didn't actually start meditating regularly until a few months before we opened. So the ten years from when we started in 99 to when we opened it in 2009, I would say, you know, I was not very happy. So that's sort of an interesting. I mean, most people that met me would have said that I seemed very happy. I was very. Part of the reason I was good at starting the highline is I'm very good at sales, I'm charismatic, I'm good at getting people excited about things.

Daniel Stillman 04:57

Yeah, I had a lot.

Robbie Hammond 04:59

In some ways, I had a lot of positive energy that people were excited about, and I could rally people around that.

Daniel Stillman 05:05

Yeah.

Robbie Hammond 05:06

But I remember one time, Josh and I, the other co founder, a few times, we had to get coaches because we sometimes just struggled, as many co founders to do, to sort of figure out how to keep working together. And I had this one coach, a guy named Edmund Bingham, and he took me, our offices were in a NYCHA housing project. We had these tiny offices and there was no privacy. So he took me in a closet, a maintenance closet, and videotaped me on a VHS video recorder. And he basically talked to me for 30 minutes. And I thought it was like pre coaching because he would sort of like grill me, sort of harass me, then, like, compliment me, you know? And so I was, like, thinking, okay, we're just. We're getting ready to start the coaching. But then after 30 minutes, he said, okay, and he reround the tape, and he said, I'm gonna leave, and I'm gonna let you watch this tape. And when I. When he played the tape, I just looked so unhappy. And every once in a while, I would smile, and I'd be like, oh, my gosh. Keep smiling. You look so nice when you smile. Can you keep smiling? And then I'd go back to, like, frowning. My face just looked unhappy. I actually have that cassette. I saved it. I've never gone back and looked at it again, but I have it somewhere around my desk because it's a VHS and I can't play it. But I wanted to get it converted to see it. But that was a really pivotal time for me. It was probably three years into starting it.

Daniel Stillman 06:43

Yeah.

Robbie Hammond 06:44

Oh, my God. I gotta be. Not for the sake of the high line, really, but for my own sake, that, like, you know, and when we had successes, you know, I'd act excited about it for the team, but I wasn't personally that excited about it.

Daniel Stillman 07:01

Yeah.

Robbie Hammond 07:04

Because there's this underlying, I don't know, feeling of anxiety and depression. So.

Daniel Stillman 07:08

Yeah. So that's a really effective change model, as it turns out.

Robbie Hammond 07:13

What's interesting is I don't think it's that uncommon for creative people or. And definitely sort of entrepreneurs or people that start something.

Daniel Stillman 07:19

Yeah.

Robbie Hammond 07:20

Because they're often driven. You know, when you ask what keeps you going, there's, like, the dream, but there's also this undercurrent of anxiety. Yeah. And I don't know. It's an interesting combination. And so it really took me, even after learning to meditate, it's taken me a long time to just generally feeling sort of more of a base level of happiness. 25 years later.

Daniel Stillman 07:53

25 years later. Congratulations on both of those anniversaries.

Robbie Hammond 08:00

Always there. But it's just a lot. It's just dramatically different. If I think back, my life was, like, in 99. I started it.

Daniel Stillman 08:08

Yeah. And I saw this in. In the interviews that, you know, reading through the dialogue, it was like, oh, we're. We're the people who could get a million dollar check and then just keep going.

Robbie Hammond 08:20

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 08:21

Right. And, yeah, we would.

Robbie Hammond 08:23

And that's something Josh and I shared, is, yeah, we would act excited for the people around us, but then we would go in a room and say, okay, well, now we need to do X, Y, Z and ABC.

Daniel Stillman 08:37

Yeah. When in your relationship or how did the conversation start that you two should get some coaching? I really didn't know much about that. It's a really interesting. I've done a series of interviews with co founders around how they work through, you know, birthing something together when there's. It can be a very chaotic and challenging marriage. So at some point, you and Josh were like, we've got to work on this for the sake of the project and for ourselves.

Robbie Hammond 09:04

Yeah, no, I know. I remember exactly when it was. It was 2003,

Robbie Hammond 09:12

I think in the beginning of the summer. We were. It was early. It was still really early in the project. Bloomberg had gotten on board, but we didn't have any money. We didn't really have a lot of momentum then. We were still being sued by the property owners to tear it down. And city was recovering from 911. And so to sort of show progress or to have something to do, and people didn't even know what the highline was. We did an ideas competition where we said, okay, it doesn't even have to be realistic ideas. It just has, which people said was crazy, because this was already considered a crazy project. So why are you asking for crazy ideas? But it really hit a nerve in that we got 720 entries at the time. It was the largest ideas competition from. And at the time, you had to mail in giant boards. It wasn't digital. And so I had really pushed to nothing, only do this ideas competition. But I wanted an exhibition in Grand Central. I wanted to do a publication. I wanted to do a video. And it was all going to culminate in our summer benefit. And so we were in this room in the stairrett Lehigh building, where we were storing all these entries. And then the entries were made with, like, rubber glue because they would have cardboard or these poster boards, but then.

Daniel Stillman 10:45

People would glue them. And so the good old days must.

Robbie Hammond 10:49

Have was, like, reeking of this headache inducing smell. And Josh and I had been going through looking at these 720 entries. Never imagined you'd get that many. And we both had headaches. And I was sort of pushing to yet add something else to the thing. And he was fed up because he felt like I was coming up with all these ideas, and then he was having to execute them. And he was like, I don't even want to do all this stuff. Why are we doing all this stuff? This isn't even, you know. And we just, we got really just angry at each other. And we usually didn't. We had conflict, but it wasn't, like, out there in the open, and that's where I. I was like, okay, this isn't. One of us is gonna leave, you know, one of us. And I think both of us, intuitive or not even intuitively, it was pretty obvious we needed each other. Like, we couldn't do this. We couldn't do it emotionally, on our own or skill wise, or, like, it just wasn't gonna happen. And so I had this mentor, Edmund Bingham, who I met in Hong Kong when I was doing construction work in Hong Kong back in 91, who's this sort of unique guy. And he offered to help us for free. And so he did these sessions, but he mainly just did these video things. And then. But you could see what it was like dealing with. I could see what Josh was experiencing working with me, just watching one videotape, I was like, wow, this guy is, like, intense and not happy and not fun. And then he sent me a. He would send you a typewritten letter on a typewriter that even then, no one used. Typewriters.

Daniel Stillman 12:49

Yeah, I remember 2003, more or less.

Robbie Hammond 12:53

And so, you know, he basically just talked about. And he met with us together as well, and just talked about some of the things we needed. And I don't remember what he said in the letter, but I remember paying deep attention to it at the time. And I kept that piece of paper. I looked back on it, and it was enough to get us sort of back on track.

Daniel Stillman 13:14

Yeah.

Robbie Hammond 13:15

Then over time, we had, I think, a total of, like, three different, you know, coaches or founders, therapists, whoever you want to call them, to help us at different times, because it was a really. I mean, it was a great relationship, but it was also, you know, just. It was just hard. There was a lot of stress and pressure, and so we often. It often came out at each other or around each other, and we were dramatically different kinds of people in some ways.

Daniel Stillman 13:48

Yes.

Robbie Hammond 13:49

And so, yeah, but I now even more realize that I was the executive director for most of the time, and I was more of the outward leader, and we were always co founders. We always made decisions together. But I had more of the business background, marketing. He was a travel writer, and I. And I was probably the one that was a little more driven and competitive. And so in some ways, I took more. Some of the leadership role, but now I realize that I just. I would have, that I needed him, not just with all the things he brought. He was a great writer. He's a great communicator. He was great as a press. So many things he became one of the best fundraisers. Although he hated fundraising at first, it really was the alchemy of just us working together that made it possible that I just would never have done it on my own. I mean, whether I could have or couldn't have, it just. It's, like, irrelevant because I wouldn't have done it without him.

Daniel Stillman 15:07

It's so beautiful, and it's really. I'm curious. During those two or three different sort of periods when you more intentionally worked on your relationship, it sounds like you learned something or came back to the relationship with more intentionality or a refreshed perspective. What do you think you were shifting or changing on purpose that allowed you to keep nourishing the relationship and continue to work together over time?

Robbie Hammond 15:33

I mean, I would put a lot of the blame on me. I was the harder one, I think, to deal, like, and it's funny. Cause people that are my friends, even people know me really well, they think I'm really nice. But in a work context, I'm not always really nice. Like, I'm not proud of the number of people that would leave my office crying. He never left my office crying by the time we got an office.

Daniel Stillman 15:58

Right.

Robbie Hammond 15:59

But I was just really driven and I think more aggressive.

Daniel Stillman 16:03

Yes.

Robbie Hammond 16:04

And always wanted to add more and more and more. And often he felt like he was the one holding the bag or having to do a lot of the work, and I was the one that kept adding to it. And on the other hand, I think I pushed him more than he probably would have done. So that was our balance.

Robbie Hammond 16:28

Yeah, I don't know the answer to that question. I mean, partly I'm grateful for his patience. And then there came to a point where I left, and then I came back and he left, where the relationship really frayed. It was really tense between us for a few years, and then I came back, and then he came back and started working with us. And then during COVID we needed a lot of help, and he really came back and was really helping really intensely during COVID And then I decided to leave, and he took over when I left, while they were searching for a replacement, and he ran it for a year. I mean, they wanted him to run it, and he didn't. He just said, I'll do it for a year. But it really. I think that really brought us back together. Covid, in some ways, and we just shared something that only us shared in this experience, in this process of that really. It's really special. I think both of us sort of became grateful for the. Yeah, for what we. Or I can say it for myself. I just became so grateful for what he brought, you know, to me, that sometimes I overlooked when I was in it because I just wanted to do it my way, you know?

Daniel Stillman 17:58

Well, it's interesting because I love the story you tell in 1999 being like, I just assumed someone was working on this and I could just help them. And the two of you meeting at the board meeting and being like, well, I'm kind of busy. I don't know if I can do this. And the other one being like, well, I'm also busy, so maybe, you know, it's kind of like, not it. Almost playing a game of not it.

Robbie Hammond 18:19

Yeah, well, neither one of us wanted to. I mean, we weren't even, like, thinking, would we build an elevated part? I mean, we were just like, oh, someone should save it, and someone else should do all this. Like, we didn't. It wasn't thought out that this was a job, really, at all, you know, and he was a travel writer. My background was in. I was a history major, and I was doing, you know.com, startups in the nineties. So it wasn't really on either one of our horizons, of a career horizon, and really did. I did think. Both of us thought, we're just okay, no one else is going to do it, so let's get it started, and someone else will take it on.

Daniel Stillman 19:00

Yeah.

Robbie Hammond 19:00

And then we pretty quickly realized no one else wanted to take it on, and it was going to happen. We had to do it, but. And I didn't. I don't think I started doing it really full time for a few years, you know, for a few years first, we were both just doing it as volunteers.

Daniel Stillman 19:18

So one of the things I've been thinking about is, like, you know, when I was reading your story is one of the conversational superpowers that I. That I see in you, at least in the story, is your willingness to pick up the phone and just call someone. It certainly was something Josh said. That wasn't my. That wasn't his conversational superpower.

Robbie Hammond 19:44

Yeah, I'm looking.

Daniel Stillman 19:45

So he's pulling out a giant box of files. Everyone. The camera. The camera reverberated with the shake

Robbie Hammond 19:52

I, like, had all the shit there that I, like, kept over 23 years. But these are these notebook pages that I would write in. This is basically how I did the highlight. Like, I never took out a notebook, you know, these notebook, and, like, wrote down plans. Nowhere is there, like, strategy or. All of these pages are just people's names and their phone numbers and maybe a comment by them. And that's literally how my part of doing it, you know, Josh was a great writer, so he was doing a lot of writing, but I would literally write someone down. Someone would give me, I'd call them, like, this page has a lot of art people on it. And, you know, I was calling people that had art galleries to see if they would support us, and then they would give me someone else. And then here's someone from the Daily News that ended up writing an op ed for us, you know, so, yeah, and so I was also used to a lot of, I'd done a lot of sales, so I was used to rejection a lot of it. Most of these people's names, you know, weren't, didn't lead anywhere Yes, a few of them did. And really, they paid off. And, and I think the high line, sometimes I criticize the high line because we didn't involve, there were parts of the neighborhood that really didn't feel connected to it. But there are, I think, thousands of people in the city that felt like they played a critical role in the Highline, and they really did. You know, there's literally, I mean, I still remember all the names of the first donors. I still remember the names of all of these early community people. I remember all the names of the first art galleries that supported us. I remember the name, all these people that worked in the Bloomberg administration, obviously, Mayor Bloomberg, Patty Harris, Dan Doktorov, Amanda Burden, were critical, but there were so many people that worked for those people that were also just so instrumental in making it happen.

Daniel Stillman 22:03

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I see that conversational superpower in you. I'm wondering what you see as the, the approach that you brought to the dialogues you were having. Like, what, what do you think you're doing? Well, when you were doing your best in the things that you were doing.

Robbie Hammond 22:20

Yeah, well, I know I'm not, I'm not particularly eloquent. You know, I'm not a, I don't really prepare for conversations. I don't really prepare for PowerPoints or presentations. You know, I do a lot of talks, and so I just have slides and I just talk to the slides, and I've watched other people give a similar kind of presentation, and they just give a completely different one. It's much more eloquent. It's much more like theory. And so what I feel like I bring is a lot of enthusiasm to it, and so that can carry over a lot of, like, memorize remembering a whole bunch of, or having a very well thought out strategy of explaining something.

Daniel Stillman 23:09

Yeah.

Robbie Hammond 23:09

And especially when you're trying to basically was trying to sell someone an idea that most people thought was crazy. Sometimes the enthusiasm, you know, trumps the eloquence.

Daniel Stillman 23:24

Yeah.

Robbie Hammond 23:25

And that's what's so interesting, going back to the original conversation, is that, you know, it was, that enthusiasm was right there, side by side, that anxiety and depression.

Daniel Stillman 23:38

Yeah.

Robbie Hammond 23:41

So it's interesting because I think part of enthusiasm is like this excitement, you know, that you try to infect people with.

Daniel Stillman 23:49

Yes.

Robbie Hammond 23:51

Come along. Even if it's likely not to happen, especially in those early few years. I mean, the chances were very, very, I mean, no one could have said the chances were likely that this was going to happen.

Daniel Stillman 24:03

No. No. Well, I think in a way.

Robbie Hammond 24:06

Does that answer your question, is that.

Daniel Stillman 24:08

It gets to it? And I think there's so, like, there's two things or two other things that I observed. One you talked about in one of your talks, the community listening sessions that you did.

Robbie Hammond 24:19

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 24:21

The importance of getting input early without a fully fledged design and then actually communicating with people afterwards. Why you are aren't listening to what they're saying and bringing in pieces of what they're saying into the design and communicating that.

Robbie Hammond 24:37

Yeah, yeah. No, that was, I mean, part of it made it easier is we did not have a vision of what it should be, you know, so that most people say, well, that's the most important thing is to have a really clear vision of what you're trying to do. And our vision was sort of like, well, let's stop it from being demolished and let's think about something that could be happening here. But, you know, that's a very, and because we weren't architects or designers or city planners, we didn't really have, and he and I envisioned different things. I mean, he really, I think, saw it more as a site for architecture or maybe different things where I really, I don't know, I didn't, I didn't, I wasn't even that clear. And so it wasn't the case where we were listening to people and then just trying to get them to do what we wanted to do. We really didn't, especially in those early years, we didn't have a clear vision. So the vision that we got happened over time because really people fell in love with, actually the photograph that's behind me, which is a photograph of the high line taken by Joel Sternfeld in 2000, which just shows an abandoned railroad with wildflowers growing on it. And that's what people sort of said, no, I think this is what we like. We like a version of what it's like right now. We just want to be able to go up there.

Daniel Stillman 26:00

You mentioned that, Joel. Joel, you talk about as the third co founder, and I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about that, because his photographs do communicate viscerally the joy of the beauty of the sort of. I mean, it's a very. What's the word? It's like, it's a very. It's like looking at a seashore. Yeah, but it's like, you know, a seashore in winter. It's like, it's kind of. It's kind of sadly obsolescent, but beautifully, beautifully, sadly obsolescent. There's a, there's a grandeur to it, and it captures that.

Robbie Hammond 26:35

It's interesting. The reason he was recommended to me is he had gotten a Rome prize and taken a series of photos of the roman aqueducts that are abandoned outside of Rome. So there's still these abandoned roman arches sort of in the middle of the countryside or in the middle of these sort of like, suburbs of Rome. And he had taken these photos and published it as a book. And it was very sort of melancholy kind of reminder of these remnants of a great sort of civilization. Juxtapos. Juxtaposition. Sort of like bad suburban houses and sort of weird abandoned farms. And so this guy, Ray Gaskell, who used to run the architecture nonprofit, who then became. He ran city planning, later suggested I contact this guy to photograph it, and I looked him up, literally, in the white pages back then, which, for those of you don't know, you used to be able to look up people's home phone numbers in the printed telephone directory that you had at your home.

Daniel Stillman 27:48

Sure. Unless somebody ripped it. All right. Yeah. Like the ones that were in public, somebody would always rip out one of those.

Robbie Hammond 27:53

Yeah. And, you know, it was, it didn't, it was a, you know, it didn't have the two one two on the number before because they were all, you know. And so, yeah, I called him up and he came up and he said, don't let anyone up here to photograph it for a year, and I'll give you something spectacular. And he gave us these images of what it looked like in all different seasons. And we published together. We published a book, photographs called walking the Highline. And that's what. And then Adam Gottnik, a New Yorker writer, wrote a, a New Yorker piece about, not about Josh and I starting the high line. We were mentioned, but the piece was really. I mean, people think it was about the high line now, but if you read about it, it's really about Joel photographing the high line.

Daniel Stillman 28:43

Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned that he refers to you as kind of like, kind of kooks.

Robbie Hammond 28:49

Yeah. I think he said we're like, and we didn't live on the Upper west side, but he said they're like old school Upper Westsiders, community do gooders. Come on, let's turn an old railroad into a park kind of guy.

Daniel Stillman 29:01

Yes. Well, so this is kind of a quote you open up with in your book, and I feel like I'd be remiss if we don't unpack this. We were two neighborhood nobodies with little money or experience. And in one of the talks of yours that I watched, there was you sharing this idea of the real legacy of the highline being the

Daniel Stillman 29:26

enthusiasm it's given to other nobodies with a dream, not to create other elevated parks or anything like that, but just that some. That we can dream something that is potentially better than anybody else can imagine and bring it to life if we apply ourselves to it.

Robbie Hammond 29:48

Yeah. That neighborhood nobody's was actually. That's how Diane, my first wonderland one time, introduced us at an event. For us, it was a highline event.

Daniel Stillman 30:01

Wow.

Robbie Hammond 30:02

She said, now I'd like to introduce two neighborhood nobodies, Joshua and David. Another time she introduced us is my good friends, which is a better start. Joshua and David. The co founder's name is Joshua David, but she. I just watched an amazing documentary about her. And her and her family became instrumental in actually our largest donors and really critical in helping us. But that's where I think. And Josh really deserves all the credit for that book, even the parts that have. It's written in both of our voices. He wrote my parts, so he wrote all the sections that have his name and my name next to him, but he knew my voice better than I did. Like, when I read it, I was like, oh, my God, this is exactly what I would have said if I said it. That's beautiful. So that's where he got that quote from, or that name neighborhood. And there is some truth to it. I mean, we didn't, you know, we didn't have a lot of money. We didn't have any experience. We didn't have sort of even a vision for it. But, you know, on the other hand, we came from, like, wealthy middle class families. We both went to Ivy League schools. We had a lot of contacts. So we had friends of friends that were not neighborhood nobodies. That turned out to be really, really critical to making it happen. I mean, one of my roommates from college became speaker of the city council, Gifford Miller, who was really instrumental in having it happen. So there is some of that. But sometimes I get criticized. I remember I was on a panel with Malcolm Gladwell, and I said, you know, this is a very much of a bottom up project. And he said, if the high line is the bottom, then I want to be on the bottom.

Daniel Stillman 32:01

Fair. Fair, because.

Robbie Hammond 32:03

Yeah, so. But yes, it was two people that didn't have any background, didn't have any, you know, millions of dollars sitting there to build something with. And I think it's. I think there are a whole bunch of projects that have been inspired by the Highline, but I don't think these projects are so difficult to do. What the Highline has done is, I think, has made the crazy more credible. It's made the crazy not seem impossible. So what we do is we help speed along the three years it took to convince people this wasn't a crazy project. And so now mayors and city planners and real estate people and community people and donors, if you say, oh, it's like the high line, it automatically has more credibility. And so I think that's what we've done. Because if you look at these projects, they all, they're not using like, the highline design sense or a lot. You know, they're all sort of, each one of them could write their own book about their path, and each one is very different. But what's similar is a lot of us come from these sort of eclectic backgrounds. We don't necessarily come. Most of us don't come from park backgrounds or city planning backgrounds or a real estate background, but just have this sort of passion and enthusiasm that often has to be sustained for a long time.

Daniel Stillman 33:41

A long time.

Robbie Hammond 33:42

People think the high line took a long time, ten years from when we started to when we opened. And then even then, that was just the first phase. But some of these other projects, I know the Queen's way, that just got $100 million in funding. There were community people that were talking about that before we started the high line. So they've been at it for over 25 years.

Daniel Stillman 34:07

Yeah. And who was the guy? Was it Joel? Who.

Robbie Hammond 34:11

Well, there's Travis Terry, who's sort of the head of the Queen's way.

Daniel Stillman 34:15

No, no, I'm the community.

Robbie Hammond 34:17

There were two community people that were at it way before him.

Daniel Stillman 34:21

The guy who bought the. Who was going to buy the highline.

Robbie Hammond 34:24

Oh, yes. Not Joel. I'm just forgetting his name. But it'll come to.

Daniel Stillman 34:30

There's a picture of him by his trailer. I'm trying to find it in the book.

Robbie Hammond 34:34

No, yeah, he lived in a train car underneath the high line, an actual train car on train tracks. And he bought the high. I mean, then it was called the west side Improvement District. It was high line for $10 from CSX. His name is Peter Oblitz.

Daniel Stillman 34:53

Oblates.

Robbie Hammond 34:54

Yeah, he bought it in the eighties.

Daniel Stillman 34:56

He.

Robbie Hammond 34:56

He died, sadly, before. Before we started, so we never got to meet him. Yeah, he lived in a converted Pullman car. But, you know, he wanted it. His idea. He was a rail enthusiast, and he wanted to use it to haul whale waste out by rail, which I actually really smart, instead of having to take it out on trucks and ships. But it just didn't. A lot of the opposition that we faced was there. Even back then in the eighties, people wanted to tear it down.

Daniel Stillman 35:35

So one of the things that I'm. You talked about this big tent. In one of your talks about just save it and do something cool with it, is a very big tent. But at some point, you had to learn. I'm still going through your conversation. Superpowers. I'm thinking about. There's a slide you show where you need to communicate to Mike Bloomberg, this is what the real value or the financial potential is. And I think what's interesting, I had a design professor in design school who used to ask this question, how much did the Eiffel Tower cost? And the answer is, who the fuck cares now? But at the time, people were really in a twist about, this Eiffel Tower is costing. It's an eyesore. It's an arm and a leg. And now it's a city defining world symbol for liberty, egalitarian fraternity, and croissants. And it's the Eiffel Tower. And I think about the conversation around the highline where it's like, well, look, all these buildings will get three more feet.

Robbie Hammond 36:35

But, you know, it's hard because, I mean, you know, the Eiffel Tower was always going to be defining of Paris. The great example is the Sydney opera house that was wildly over budget, considered a failure because it took decades, and they fired the architect, never was allowed back, but now obviously defines the city. But those were on, like, prominent sites that everyone could see. The high line, you know, was in a neighborhood. There wasn't very many people in it. It was going to be a mile and a half, but it's only, you know, three stories high, seven acres. So seven acres is the size of, like, small parks that don't take a block. So it was really hard. I mean, we weren't trying to say, this is going to be our generation Central park. I mean, we were saying, this is a really interesting project. But we weren't. We didn't imagine that the city said, okay, how many people are going to go? We said, oh, like 300,000. And we just took that number because at the time, the Whitney was up on the Upper east side. It wasn't, you know, downtown then.

Daniel Stillman 37:41

Yeah.

Robbie Hammond 37:42

And it used to get 300,000 visitors a year. That's how much the Guggenheim got. So we were like, okay, that's a good number. Those are city attractions, you know, so we'll get 300,000 visits a year. We opened, we got a million before COVID we had 8 million. I think it's going to be on track to do that again. So it doesn't, you know, it's hard in retrospect. And even the people that, you know, I love blaming Giuliani for. He signed a demolition order before he got office. I always thought he was bad, but, I mean, he always was bad. Now everyone just realizes it. But the two mayors before him, Dinkins and Koch, had also signed demolition agreements.

Daniel Stillman 38:24

Fair.

Robbie Hammond 38:26

It wasn't just the bad Republican. It was a lot of people looked at it and said, this thing just doesn't make any sense. Tear it down. The only rational and even, you know, I ended up doing a. Producing a movie on Jane Jacobs. And, you know, a lot of people brought. I'd actually not read her book when I started it, embarrassingly. Everyone always kept mentioning it, and finally I had to read it. But people used her as an example that she wouldn't have supported the highliness because it would take people off the street. It was three stories off. You already had an avenue that didn't have enough foot traffic. You know, she wasn't always such a parks fan for activating cities. That wasn't, you know, so there were a lot of people, not just like the Giuliani Republicans, but a lot of good civic oriented, park loving folk that didn't think the high line was a good idea or whatever happened, or much less become a project that is one of the city's main attractions. It is, but a very large attraction.

Daniel Stillman 39:40

Oh, huge. And so it's funny, and I think we don't have a ton of time left, so I want to transition to. There's this quote, and it's kind of wonderful, but also heartbreaking. Somebody said to you, when the Highland was built was like, congratulations. You never have to do anything again, which is like, something I think everyone kind of wishes for. But also, like, you're clearly doing things now, and I want to talk about what you're doing now because you're doing cool things still. But, like, that also is kind of an intense thing to graduate from.

Robbie Hammond 40:14

Yeah, I remember this guy named James La Force. He's a pr guy that helped us. I still in touch with him. Yeah, he sent me that, and I printed it out because, like, if you go back to that anxiety and depression, I had this intense, like, sort of self doubt and self criticism, you know, that was crippling. But obviously, I was able to do a lot of stuff, but I couldn't sleep. I would just be, you know, and so it was interesting that, you know, even when the highline opened and somebody sent me that email, I didn't. I couldn't believe that at all. And now I really do. I mean, it's really. I have to say, it is great being one of the co founders of the Highline. Like, it's just. It's wonderful. You overhear people talking about it, you know, and it's just really fun to be. To be able to say, oh, I helped start the high line. You know, it's really. And sometimes people think, because I sometimes talk about the highline's failures, that I'm not proud of it or that I would do it and if I could do it all again differently. But, you know, it's all hindsight. I think it's more not what we should have done differently, but what other people can learn from the highlight.

Daniel Stillman 41:40

So I think it's. It is a really beautiful thing to be able to say. Like, the high line is a symbol for taking something that is better than anyone can imagine and bring it into life.

Robbie Hammond 41:54

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 41:55

And I'm curious, when you think about all the deltas, like, all the ways you would have done it differently, how do you apply that to what you're currently working on? Because I know very little about the third project.

Robbie Hammond 42:05

Yeah. So I'm working. I'd wanted to leave the highline for a while, but I couldn't. Something Covid happened, and I couldn't find anything else that was as interesting for me that would have this kind of sort of impact that was, I didn't want to just do a real estate project or. I like things that are complicated and unusual. And then I heard about this company in. In Europe that built huge scale bathing facilities that are sort of like modern day roman baths or wellness, Disney Worlds. And I just loved it because it was sort of a combination of an indoor botanical garden, pools, saunas, all put together in a different way, but at scale. And they can serve up to 2 million people a year. And the average entry price in Europe is $25. So very accessible. So I just got really. But we don't have anything like that in the US. And when you talk about it here, people either don't understand it, they think it's crazy, or, wow, that's too big. You'll never. It's hard to build something that's half a million square feet in the middle of a busy city.

Daniel Stillman 43:11

Yes.

Robbie Hammond 43:12

And so it had a lot of things like my dad always emails me, says, you know, can you, can you tell me two sentences that describes what you're doing? And I'm like, no, dad, I can't. It's just like in the high line. When I started the high line, I couldn't give you two sentences that explained it, you know, and that's what really interested me at this. And it's a long process. The other thing is, this is, my friends keep thinking, because now there are all these bathing facilities opening in Manhattan. They think they're my facilities.

Daniel Stillman 43:42

There's quite a resurgence of spa culture.

Robbie Hammond 43:45

No, it's this.

Daniel Stillman 43:46

I just went to an event coming, I promise.

Robbie Hammond 43:48

This tidal wave of bathing, it's really exciting.

Daniel Stillman 43:51

By the way, though. It is a return to. I mean, in the lower east side of when my people came, it's like there were bath houses. The 10th street bath is no great.

Robbie Hammond 44:02

Shakes these days, but huge public bathing facilities.

Daniel Stillman 44:05

Yeah.

Robbie Hammond 44:06

You know, during the first half of the century, and then sort of segregation or desegregation. I mean, there are a whole bunch of reasons that they fell apart. I mean, yeah, there were literally dozens and dozens of bathhouses at the turn of the century. And then. So it's coming back, but it's going to take us. These facilities are huge. They're, you know, Yankee stadium sized facility. So it'll probably be four years, the soonest, that we can open one. But so that's what I'm doing now.

Daniel Stillman 44:38

I don't think I'd actually wrap my head around when you say Yankee stadium size facility. That is actually kind of familiar. Breathtaking.

Robbie Hammond 44:44

Twelve acres. And they're just very complex. They're really expensive. I mean, they're for profit. They're profitable because we can get so many people through them. They're social experiences. It's not a spy. You don't go underground and pretend you don't see anyone. It's only 5% of people come alone. So it's really. And that's what's the most interesting to me, is there all these health benefits of bathing. That's one of the resurgence of the hot cold therapy. But to me, the biggest health benefits are just the social aspects. Thousands of people together in their bathing suit.

Daniel Stillman 45:22

Well, and it's integral to, like, you know, korean culture.

Robbie Hammond 45:26

All the big culture has these things that have been around for centuries.

Daniel Stillman 45:33

Centuries.

Robbie Hammond 45:34

You know, it's really. I mean, we had a native american tradition, and we really did. Look, if you look back, some, you know, some of the early immigrant populations had huge bathing cultures, and we built giant public pools for a while. You know, that was an important part of city infrastructure. And so now the way I like to think about this is this is like, you know, wellness infrastructure.

Daniel Stillman 45:58

The city should have with this, a project like this, which is pretty grand, but it's also for profit versus, like, the friends of the high line had this sound that was very open door and very public good. How are you? You think about all the things you've learned about you as a change agent, bringing it into this, which is a pretty big endeavor as well.

Robbie Hammond 46:20

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 46:21

What are you bringing into this project in terms of how you're thinking about how you show up as a coalition builder and an organizer and an actualizer of crazy dreams into reality?

Robbie Hammond 46:35

Yeah, I mean, part of it is just listening to a lot of people, because other people have been doing this for a lot longer. One, this company that I joined has been doing this for 20 years. So they have all of this expertise that they've learned over time. And then there are all these people in the US, some, like Mikhail Alon, who wrote sweat, he just. There's a documentary out called Perfect Sweat that he did. He wrote this book, sweat, in the seventies. He's been doing this for decades. So there's people that had been carrying that flame here in the states, and then there are all these new young people, I mean, that are decades younger than me, that are opening all of these bathing bath houses. And so there really is this new culture of bathing that is happening in North America. And it's one of the things I really want to do is to try to do a gathering of these people. Sort of like we started the Highland network. This isn't. I'm not a leader in this field by any means of, but I like the idea of convening a whole bunch of these people that are starting these kind of projects together just to talk about what's happening and really think about how do we want to shape it, what do we want this movement to be like in ten years? Because I guarantee you it's going to look very different, even in just five years. I mean, there's five bathing facilities within five blocks in Flatiron that have all opened in one year and more coming. And they're all different. Like, they're all different price points. They're all different. You know, they're not. People think, oh, it's. They're all going to drive each other out of business. I don't think so. I think you're going to see more of them.

Daniel Stillman 48:16

It's fascinating to me because I went to. I went to another ship event recently.

Robbie Hammond 48:21

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 48:21

And I'd never been through a, you know, an organized spa experience. You know, like a guided meditation spa. It's not a spa.

Robbie Hammond 48:31

It's not a spa.

Daniel Stillman 48:32

Well, I mean, it was in a sauna.

Robbie Hammond 48:34

I know, but they don't give you. They're very robbie bent. And the other guys that started are very smart. They hosted my 55th birthday a few weeks ago there before they opened, and I got to have 100 friends in a sauna. The sauna can fit 100 people when it's packed in. I think normally they only let them.

Daniel Stillman 48:52

Fit 60, but, yeah, I think I went, yeah, it's a tight fit for 100.

Robbie Hammond 48:58

It was tight, but they were friends, so they. He doesn't give out slippers or robes because he doesn't want it to feel like a spa.

Daniel Stillman 49:08

Yeah.

Robbie Hammond 49:08

Because the spa really is meant, is usually you don't want to be around other people in a spa. You know, you pretty. If you're sitting next to someone in the reception waiting for you massage, you pretend you don't see them. No one's talking, it's whispering. Whereas this, my favorite event, you know, on Fridays, they're going to have the social one where people just talk. I first went to it in Toronto, and I've now visited hundreds of bathing facilities all over the world now. And othership remains one of my favorites. Just because it's so social. It's just so.

Daniel Stillman 49:40

It's very interesting question, because, you know, if you go to spy at eight, which is one of my favorite old school spas, if you go on a Friday, which is when I like to go and just spend the whole day, the regulars talk to each other about spas or about other. It's like we chit chat, but very quietly.

Robbie Hammond 49:57

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 49:59

And it's.

Robbie Hammond 50:00

And that's why there's. It's not. I still love the russian baths. It's totally different. And bathhouse, totally different.

Daniel Stillman 50:08

Yeah.

Robbie Hammond 50:08

Like, my husband and I go on double dates at Bathhouse. It's great. I just went to another one called Ilani that only fits four people. It's on the second floor of a building on 28th street. It's called a bathhouse speakeasy because it's like, behind a door on the second floor, and you have to, like, find it. And it's only four people. And then they have a little bar that serves, like, non alcoholic wellness drinks. They're all really. They give you a different experience, and I think it makes you want to go to more of them and experience different, and then go to the one in your neighborhood and go to the old one and go to the new, you know, and at these new ones, people are. It's not old. I am an old person. Why? I'm older, but it's 20 years. It's not 40, fifties and sixties. I mean, there are older people there, but, I mean, I didn't feel out of place at all. But it's definitely like a new generation looking for in real life experience experiences, you know, that are healthy.

Daniel Stillman 51:20

Yeah.

Robbie Hammond 51:21

And fun. And these things are fun. You know, people talk about the health benefits, which is true, but I think people go because they're fun. And that's why I don't think it's a fad, because they're just fun.

Daniel Stillman 51:33

Yeah.

Robbie Hammond 51:33

And so it's. And healthy.

Daniel Stillman 51:36

Well, social wellness is an aspect of it, which exactly. Is worth talking about. But good God, we're almost against time. What haven't I asked you that I should ask you. What haven't we talked about that we should talk about?

Robbie Hammond 51:50

I've enjoyed this. It's been nice thinking about this as this anniversary.

Daniel Stillman 51:56

I mean, we can just have a whole other hour talking about spa culture comes upon.

Robbie Hammond 52:00

I know. No, but that's why I'd urge you to think about. I mean, they are spas, but spas have this also are very. Tend to be more exclusive and are about pampering. And these things are, you know, some of them, there are facilities that are more expensive. There's remedy place, you know, which has hot and cold therapy, and it's more expensive. More like a fancy club. It's wonderful. It's very, you know, it's great to go there and be pampered, but most of these things, it's just social and so. And they're able to get the price down. Because they can fit more people and so it doesn't require that much real estate. So, no, I've loved, this is really. This has been fun for me. It makes me want to send an email to that guy, James Laforce, who sent me that email 15 years ago.

Daniel Stillman 52:53

That's amazing. That's amazing. If you had to give a title to this conversation, what would the title you'd give to this conversation? Probably.

Robbie Hammond 53:03

I mean, I don't know. It's a meandering, non linear, you know, it's a nonlinear conversation about a linear way. There's no centering the high line. If you notice, there's very few curves on the high. Because the rails.

Daniel Stillman 53:18

Yeah.

Robbie Hammond 53:18

Rail lines didn't have, you know, there's just about how fast, how long can you go in a straight line? Because the locomotive can go faster in a straight line.

Daniel Stillman 53:25

Yes.

Robbie Hammond 53:25

And so the design team, James Corner, field operations, Dillard's, Cavill, Rentro, really took that. And so there's very. Sometimes they have to move it, but they do it with, like, a lot of straight lines. But this conversation was a lot about different detours.

Daniel Stillman 53:43

Yeah. Hopefully we didn't go off the rails too much. Well, in that case, I'll call scene and thank you for your time and just make sure that everything felt good and included.

Robbie Hammond 53:57

It was really fun.

Daniel Stillman 53:59

Wonderful.

Robbie Hammond 54:00

I'm leaving in a better mood than when I started. Thank you.

Daniel Stillman 54:04

That's wonderful. Enjoyed it.

Art That Changes the Conversation

Art has the power to change and even lead the conversation, to spark curiosity and fuel real engagement.

But what comes first in a powerful creative project? 
The idea and the message? 
The tools and the talent? 
Or The Funding, that can make or break it all?

My guest today is Benjamin Von Wong, who creates art on a grand scale that goes beyond awe.

He is an Artist focused on amplifying positive impact. He does that both in the process of how he creates his art, through community, and in the images it produces, finding visual metaphors that stick with people, long after they’ve seen the work.

His mission is to help make positive impact unforgettable. For the last seven years, Von Wong and his team, under the banner of “Unforgettable Labs” have generated over a billion organic views on topics like Ocean Plastics, Fast Fashion, and Electronic Waste for organizations like Dell, Greenpeace, Nike, Starbucks and Kiehl’s. 

In this opening quote you can hear him wrangle with the dance between art and marketing, and his new mission to find ways to create sustainable funding streams that allow him to create message-shaping art in times and places where the world is gathered to solve some of our most pressing challenges. 

It’s a move that can make his work more deeply sustainable - for himself and for his team. Von Wong’s The Unforgettable Project leverages the collective power of philanthropy to help build broader campaigns around environmentally net-positive innovations worth spotlighting - instead of waiting for corporations that are seeking eyeballs and leveraging their funding for good, he’s building a funding source that actively seeks the next project that needs to go viral.

Some of his notable work includes the Giant Plastic Tap which used trash from the slums of Kibera, in Nairobi, Kenya, to demand that corporations #TurnOffThePlasticTap. The Giant Tap was displayed prominently when 193 different countries and 1,500 delegates came together at UNEA 5.2 in 2022 to discuss what was then termed the “Paris Agreement For Plastics” and was eventually used in the United Nations official Plastics Report while raising over $100,000 for the Human Needs Project.

Recently he installed a grand sculpture at the Highline in New York City in collaboration with Kiehl’s to raise awareness and drive adoption of refillable products in the beauty world. Von Wong, along with a large community of volunteers, collected and assembled 2 tons of plastic bottles into a “single-use hydra”, seen by nearly 300-thousand visitors and close to 3 million social impressions for their message of #DontRebuyJustRefill…but as he points out in this conversation, most of the people on the High Line don’t have the leverage to change the system - which is why he seeks to place his epic art in places where the system changers meet.

I learned about Benjamin's work through his wonderful talk at Creative Mornings (a global, IRL community of creatives that hosts monthly talks all around the world). His presentation spoke to some beautiful topics - like the importance of nurturing the conditions of success (like inner narratives and cultivating community) vs chasing success, and the notion of sifting your feelings from reality when it comes to deciding what is enough - personally, financially, and in the work - ie, is my work having enough impact? Von Wong shared the ways in which he’s rewriting his inner narrative to balance his personhood and his purpose or impact. I found the talk profoundly moving and beautiful and highly recommend watching it.

In this conversation, you’ll find:

Ruminations on Creationships - relationships that exist to co-create something wonderful together (4:09)

The Importance of an Interface or a Container to foster Conversation (7:47)

Benjamin’s perspectives on going to where the conversations are already happening to have the deepest impacts. This is certainly true for the large scale work that he creates, but it is also true for anyone looking to change a big conversation. Making people come to you vs going to them means the activation energy of change is that much lower. (13:18)

Benjamin’s thoughts on Community Building and Co-creating art with a community (16:43)

The polarity Benjamin is threading right now: Balancing Speeding Up (to do more work and have more impact) and Slowing Down (in order to build deeper creationships) (26:21)

The difference between an Audience and a Community (32:44)

The power of creating a word that summarizes and defines an idea that people flock to (which we might term the Rumpelstiltskin or Le Guin Rule (as she famously wrote in A Wizard of Earthsea “To weave the magic of a thing, you see, one must find its true name out.” (33:39)

Links, Quotes, Notes, and Resources

https://www.vonwong.com/

unforgettablelabs.com 

https://www.thevonwong.com/ 

How I made plastic pollution more shareable with a Mermaid and 10000 plastic bottles - 3/3

https://creativemornings.com/

Benjamin Von Wong Featuring Possibly Poet: "Is activism sustainable?"

More about Benjamin Von Wong

Benjamin Von Wong creates art on a grand scale that goes beyond awe. He is an Artist focused on amplifying positive Impact .His mission is to help make positive impact unforgettable. For the last seven years, Von Wong and his team have generated over a Billion Organic Views on topics like Ocean Plastics, Fast Fashion, and Electronic Waste for organizations like Dell, Greenpeace, Nike, Starbucks and Kiehl’s. 

Some of his notable work includes the Giant Plastic Tap which used trash from the slums of Kibera to demand corporations to #TurnOffThePlasticTap. The Giant Tap was displayed prominently when 193 different countries and 1500 delegates  came together at UNEA 5.2 to discuss what was termed the “Paris Agreement For Plastics.” and was eventually used in the United Nations official  Plastics Report while raising over $100,000 for the Human Needs Project.

Recently he installed a grand sculpture at the HIghline in New York City in collaboration with Kiel’s to raise awareness and drive adoption of refillable products in the beauty world. Von Wong, along with a large community of volunteers, collected and assembled 2 tons of plastic bottles into a “single-use hydra”, seen by nearly 300 thousand visitors and close to 3 million social impressions for their message of #DontRebuyJustRefill

AI Generated Summary by Grain

The meeting focused on the significance of deep conversations and the value of discussing seemingly mundane topics like weather. Benjamin Von Wong emphasized the concept of "creationships" and the desire for co-creating life experiences with others. They also discussed the importance of transitioning from having an audience to fostering a decentralized community and the challenges in defining language to attract the right people. Daniel Stillman and Benjamin Von Wong discussed the evolution of their approaches to artistry and project development, highlighting the significance of producing work in spaces where attention is focused and involving communities in the creative process. They also touched on reviving the patronage model for fostering creativity and change, drawing parallels between fiction writing and truth-telling.

Key Points

• Benjamin Von Wong elaborates on the concept of "creationships," emphasizing the desire for co-creating life experiences with others and the value exchange inherent in friendships. (3:48)

• Benjamin Von Wong discusses the importance of being present where conversations are happening and questions the placement of large-scale physical art. (13:18)

• Benjamin Von Wong reflects on their growth into leveraging their track record to gain access to projects like the biodiversity cop, emphasizing the importance of experience and network. (20:43)

• Benjamin Von Wong contemplates shifting from a mentorship model to a sponsorship model to support less privileged individuals with resources rather than just advice, aiming to increase capacity and create new constructs. (29:14)

• Daniel Stillman and Benjamin Von Wong delve into the concept of developing relationships and building communities, with Benjamin Von Wong reflecting on transitioning from having an audience to fostering a decentralized community and the challenges in defining language to attract the right people. (32:26)

Full AI Generated Transcript

Daniel Stillman 00:00

Benjamin Von Wong, I am grateful to welcome you to the conversation factory. Thanks for making the time for this conversation twice.

Benjamin Von Wong 00:10

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Daniel Stillman 00:12

I'm really curious, actually. What are your favorite types of conversations?

Benjamin Von Wong 00:17

Deep, insightful, nuanced conversations are the ones that I think I would go for. I love figuring out what makes people tick rather than what the weather is.

Daniel Stillman 00:29

Yes, yes. I agree with you. Deep, nuanced. I would love to unpack what makes you tick. I will just say, as a sidebar, I just listened to how to do nothing by Jenny Odell. I don't know if you're familiar with the book. She's really lovely, artist and creative, and one of the things she talks about, and I've been wanting to go on the record of saying this, she talks about how talking about the weather can seem like B's, but in her view, it basically establishes a fundamental shared reality, the land and the place that we're in. And I have to say, it kind of rocked my brain.

Benjamin Von Wong 01:13

I guess. So I guess it depends. There's a way of acknowledging a place and then there's a way of avoiding a conversation. So I guess it depends on, like, the context and the way it's delivered and the intention behind it.

Daniel Stillman 01:25

Yes. Yeah.

Benjamin Von Wong 01:27

But I don't know. Like, in my, in my sense, the bulk of weather based conversations are generally either a form of complaint. So, oh, so hot, or oh, it's so cold, or, oh, I can't believe I. Or it'll be an appreciation.

Daniel Stillman 01:41

Yeah.

Benjamin Von Wong 01:42

Like, so beautiful and I, and funnily, I think when you establish those two vectors, the one that delves in on a moment of awe and more of that shared reality piece of it, whereas the surface level complaint that everyone can agree to then doesn't have anywhere to go, maybe.

Daniel Stillman 02:01

No. That's interesting. Do you actually have a philosophy on how to take small talk and make it more, whatever, more nuanced, more probing? Like, if you want to take that opportunity, do you have a way you think about that?

Benjamin Von Wong 02:16

Yeah, I mean, I think it works really well in spaces where that is the culture, and it doesn't work so well when that. In spaces where that isn't the culture. So I can't, like, I don't know, if we're at a conference, for example, where people are all there, presumably to learn something, then I can say something that just goes straight to like, oh, what is your intention for the next two days? Like, what are you to change? What is the most meaningful thing that you've heard or how have you changed as a result of the last few conversations that you've been a part of.

Daniel Stillman 02:46

Right. Or what's the metric? What's your metric for a year? Well lived, for example. Yeah, you can't just jump to that.

Benjamin Von Wong 02:53

But on the other hand, I don't know if you're at a wedding. That's not what people really want to talk about for the most part. And so I think my ability to. To dive deep in every situation is fairly situational. Unfortunately, I haven't cracked code just yet.

Daniel Stillman 03:14

Yeah, it's an interesting code because I feel like there's a lot of people complain about small talk. We all have a lot of conversations. As an artist, it actually sort of surprised me when we first met at creative mornings and we were chitchatting that giving talks was a big part of what, what you do. And you see you have a lot of different types of conversations. Right. There's one to many and there's one to many. When you've got an army of people helping you make art, what kind of conversations do you feel like take up the most, most of your time?

Benjamin Von Wong 03:48

Conversations that take up the most of my time? Well, I think. I don't know. It's really hard to answer that question because I have such a valuable life. I very varied phases because I have a project based life, and so the projects bring me to different places and different environments and different ecosystems, and I adapt to those. But I can tell you the kinds of conversations that I'm looking to cultivate in this moment in time, conversations that revolve around creationships. So this idea that I am in this moment in my life right now, where I'm not really looking for more friendships, I'm not really looking for more relationship, but I want creationships. I want people that I can co create life with. I want to know what they want to dream, experiment, prototype, or play with. And I want to be part of that journey. And it comes from the hypothesis that I know I'm 37 years old, and it's really hard to make friends at 37. I just moved to New York, and I think that finding things to co create together is one of those ways that we'll anchor and bring people together. Yeah. Through co creation, that you understand not only how people work, but what they care about, what turns them on, what gets them excited. And similarly, you establish some level of value exchange, which I know that we want to think of friendships as non transactional, but I do think that there's a certain amount of exchange of energy that needs to be somewhat equitable for that friendship to be successful, I think that's so interesting.

Daniel Stillman 05:17

Is that a new word? Did you make that word up? It's a great word. It's so much better than a situationship. By the way, I do know that word. If somebody told me that they were in a creationship, I'd be like, oh, who's, somebody's pregnant. Got them pregnant. But this is a much better version of that too. It's a great.

Benjamin Von Wong 05:34

If you Google creationship, it's actually, some people have defined it as a different form of a relationship, like a romantic relationship in which both parties are actively creating the relationship. But I heard it in a different context. I was speaking to some friends and talking about how I was looking for more people to co create with. And this guy called Malcolm was like, oh, I think the word you're looking for is creation ships. And it stuck with me. And he had heard it from his friend Leah. And since then, I'm like, no, I think this works for me. And so I've actually defined what that word means myself. I've written a little blurb out. That's what I do. I like to write things down. And right now, at the bottom of my email signature, literally every email I send, it says, I'm looking for creation strips in New York. And I hyperlinked to this definition that I created. Do you have any recommendations? And I just think that putting that serendipity out into the world is so powerful, you never know what you find.

Daniel Stillman 06:38

It is so powerful. Just as a sidebar, you know, one of my philosophies about conversations is that they happen usually, you know, traditionally for thousands of years in a time and a place. But they also can happen in more broadly, in an interface. You know, if you put art on a rock wall, it's, you know, if you carve something into a mountain, it becomes a conversation. That can happen across the ages, right? It shifts the interface for the conversation, changes the conversation. And conversations can be linked through activities. And then I feel like in a way, the activity becomes the medium, the interface, the substrate for the conversation. And it's a romantic relationship. The putative substrate is like it's love or sex or living together, but doing stuff. But this is different. This isn't just doing stuff. This is creation and creating something. It seems much more active, and I think it's a really beautiful reframe.

Benjamin Von Wong 07:46

Yeah. And I wonder if the only differential is a level of intentionality, because most creating requires even playful creating requires a container creation to happen. We're going to be talking about medium. We're going to be talking about process. We're going to be talking about outcome or output. Right? Like, I think. I think the act of creating often comes with that, that sort of a frame. But on the one to many conversation starter piece of the puzzle, I mean, I think that's sort of the intention behind both my work and my presentations are to aid conversations. Maybe not to, like, have the conversation in that moment, but to plant some seeds for future conversations that others can have and to. To create and spark, hopefully, new conversations that were never going to happen otherwise.

Daniel Stillman 08:36

Yeah, and I want to open, unpack that because I've wanted for a while to have an artist on the show, because I think art has this power to design, to frame, to begin a conversation, or to heighten a conversation. To find in your work, you find a metaphor that helps people think about a conversation differently. In your creative mornings talk, you talked about the curiosity that somebody is drawn into with your images, to say, is this real? And that starts a conversation. And your medium is very unique. It's people collaborating, but it's also plastic trash. Like, it's a. So I'm just a very broad question, but, like, how do you think about your art as a lever, a hinge point to transform really, really big conversations?

Benjamin Von Wong 09:40

Yeah, I think the answer would have been different depending on which time you ask that question. Right. So the answer has changed over time, and as the art has grown in the past, the demand for content was focused around clickbait. So how might you do something that gets people to say, wait, what? And if that was a compelling headline, then reporters would open the email and people would click on that Facebook link, because that was how information spread. And at the time, I was doing all sorts of stunts, tying models 30 meters underwater in a shipwreck in Bali, tangling people off the edge of a rooftop, lighting people on fire and spectacle. Yeah. I would leverage that ability to not only create the moment and the stunts, but also the fact that I was good at marketing and I would do press outreach and get published. Kind of ensured the visibility. But that was in a time where, like, the sort of one to many was gatekeeped by these different large publication publicators or aggregators of content. These days, a lot of that has changed, right? Like, these days, algorithms choose what to share and what not to share. I mean, TikTok, it doesn't even matter who you follow. They'll show you content for just what they think you'll enjoy. And they sort of killed the follow button, really, and just assume that they can figure out and calculate, based on your things that you like and similar audiences, that they can actually serve you better content than what you think you can find. And so the way information spreads today is fundamentally different than how it used to spread before. And so my role as someone who creates, who rarely creates content, who takes a long time to put projects together, is much more about strategic positioning. Right. So how do I position myself in the middle of a global conversation where attention is already being directed? So I don't need to be fighting for that? And so by being one of the only artists in the room, I guess one of the few artists on this podcast, you end up meeting a whole bunch of different people, and your relationship is different. And so your ability to introduce new ideas to people is actually different. So it's like, instead of going to the artist conferences, I go to the conferences where there are no artists, so that I may contribute in a unique and different way to that conversation. So I spend a lot of time in rooms that talk about policy, in rooms that talk about technology, in rooms that are debating equity and inclusion and trying then to figure out what is my role in this space? How might I contribute to that movement? So a lot of listening.

Daniel Stillman 12:27

Yeah, generative listening. Right.

Benjamin Von Wong 12:33

What I hope to be listening.

Daniel Stillman 12:34

Yeah. Well, because then there comes an image, there's a metaphor that comes out from that. Like, obviously, the global plastics piece that you were showing at creative mornings, like, finding that metaphor and the conversations that you were having leading up to that, at least if I understand correctly from your presentation, that all of the sudden, after many conversations, they said, yes, we can do this. And you had a very, very small window to do that. And it was a scramble. And it sounds like you are redeveloping your philosophy of how you develop projects going where the conversations are. Can you talk a little bit about, like, how your philosophy is evolving now?

Benjamin Von Wong 13:18

Yeah, so I think I've going to where the conversations are happening. So, like, where does it make sense to have physical, large scale, physical art that costs six figures to produce? That's an interesting question to ask. Right. So I recently had a piece up on the highline. It was sponsored by Kieh. For two weeks, 200,000 people swung by to check it out. But what did it accomplish? What did it change? It's hard to say, because in those settings, what you're doing is you're raising awareness for an issue that people don't, broadly, don't have much control over whether or not something changes. So in this case, we were trying to promote refill solutions, but the truth is, there are very few refill solutions that are available to people. And so even if you want to be a conscious consumer, you don't have many options. And so what we need is change at a more, like, systemic level. And so, these days, what I'm really trying to think of leveraging to the best of my ability is this access piece of the puzzle. So how can I get access to places where global policy is being shaped, where the spotlight is already being shined? So, one project that I'm hoping to get access to is the biodiversity cop that's happening in Kali, where countries are coming together to announce how they're going to hit their biodiversity goals to protect 30% of land by 2030. The working concept that we have right now, and it's always dangerous to talk about concepts before you know they're going to happen, because now maybe it won't happen, is like a kind of a not necessarily falling, but deeply unstable Jenga block. And there are 54 Jenga blocks for every Jenga set. And we can put 54 different ecosystems in different terrariums and aquariums, showcasing how all these ecosystems are reliant and codependent on one another. And that unless we figure out how to stabilize this bloody tower, we're really, really screwed, because we're hitting all of these different tipping points. And each one of these ecosystems, even though they're very different from one another, really, really matter. And so what I'm trying to. So I can come up with a concept, but it doesn't matter unless the concept is actually produced in a place where people are paying attention. And if I am fighting with the millions of content creators who create content on a daily or hourly basis, how can the work actually make difference? Right? So access is number one, community is number two. Right? Like, I think. And this is something that I think is a little bit unique to my work. Many artists have teams and or the artisans or craftsmen. Like, for me, the art is about co creating it with community, because then everyone feels a sense of ownership in making difference. So these aquariums and terrariums, I would find it so much more exciting if they were co created by various students, various communities, various nonprofits all across Colombia, ideally so that they can feel represented in this piece.

Daniel Stillman 16:24

Yeah.

Benjamin Von Wong 16:26

And ultimately, it's community that's going to get me access to the right people necessary to bring the physical project to life. The engineers, the talent, access, and then the final ingredient. Then once you have these pieces of the puzzle, is funding. Yeah, I think in the past I was always starting, I was always trying to like get a company to fund something. But the problem is that companies, generally speaking, broadly speaking, have very different impact metrics. They're measuring engagement, views, sentiment analysis, like they're not trying to change a system. And so if you only start with the funding piece of the puzzle, then in some ways I think I might have been giving too much control over to the companies to dictate the boundaries of the conversation. Whereas now by flipping it around and saying, hey, I'm going to be creating something really exciting. At Biodiversity cop, I am looking for companies to join in funding something like this. Because you care about biodiversity, the conversation is very different. And I think that is the difference between art and marketing. Right. With art, what you're doing is you're creating a piece that is open to interpretation, that anyone who wants to join that movement can be a part of marketing. You need to justify how this is going to increase your returns, how it's going to change your market, how it's going to sell a bunch of stuff and product. And so I've been so far in my career, mostly stuck in working in a marketing construct, and now I'm trying to shift to concert that focus art and inviting the companies and the high net worth individuals and the people who think something like this is really worthy along for that journey. And it's been a really fun start of that journey. It's been really cool to discover that actually there are people that are interested in taking these funky gambles, even though it's literally a strategy that nobody I know is employing. Category. There's no like Sundance of film festival for me to like exhibit my stuff or to raise money for.

Daniel Stillman 18:35

Yeah.

Benjamin Von Wong 18:35

It just in its category of its own. And finding the early adopters has been really fun.

Daniel Stillman 18:42

I love the term funky gamble. It's like, it's, that's. It's awesome. So, you know, one of the things I struggled with, you know, in my, my own small type of artistry when I was designing what I was thinking of a conversation operating system, like what are the pieces that I think are actually shapeable, mushable. When I'm gathering a group of people, I can change the place. I can have soft chairs or hard chairs, I can have music, I can know, you know, the space, the place. I can have more people or less people, right. I can call the event something different, right. The name of the thing, the narrative can shift. And I struggled over a period of years of what to put in the center of my operating system. And at one point I had the invitation in the center because an invitation is, you know, at a core emotional level, is what is truly at the center of it. But because I'm a physicist at heart too, I put the place, the interface in the middle because that's really where it all comes together. And I think it's what I'm hearing. And I think this is so interesting is I love this phrase produced in a place where people are paying attention. Like, this is a really important component of this conversation. Operating system that you're building. It's gotta be in a place where there are eyeballs that are part of the problem or fixing the problem. There's got to be a community involved that helps you co create it, and there's got to be funding. And it seems like you used to put funding in the middle of your operating system. Like, okay, if somebody's willing to pay, then go. And now in a way, you're putting the place and the people and the issue in the center and the community in the center. A lot of things in the center, I don't know what you'd say is the most central, but you started with producing a place where people are paying attention. That seems like the seed.

Benjamin Von Wong 20:43

I think that's the seed. And to be fair, I think it couldn't have happened before because, like, if I hadn't created the work at the global plastic treaties, like I have multiple times, like two, three times, like, it wouldn't have the track record to like, hit someone up at the next conference that I have. Like, I don't have a portfolio of work around biodiversity, right? I'm touching it for the first time, but I have a track record of having done meaningful work at these, you know, large conversations. And so I think now it's almost like a growing into your, your power. And it's like, it feels like that's the next evolution. Just like in the past, I don't know, like five years ago, I think it would have been a lot harder for me to find enough people to ask money from, to feel like I actually had like a network to ask from. But, like, now, like, I have been giving, like, I make money at like one out of every three projects I do. But, like, I mean, so I've been so much to the movement that now I can ask for something back in return and I can confidently say what I can deliver. So time is an ingredient, right? Time is an ingredient. And in the same way that your conversation operating system has evolved, I am sure that when it was 1st, 1st designed and when the invitation was maybe at the center, it made sense at the time. And so I don't know. I think sometimes maybe we kick ourselves for getting things wrong, but sometimes it can be right for the time and wrong now.

Daniel Stillman 22:18

Well, this pulls me to. I was just rewatching your talk on creative mornings. It was such a beautiful talk, not least of all, by the way, it was the first talk I've ever been to where there was somebody playing melodious piano music in the background. It created this dreamy, elevated, phantasmagoric quality to your talk. When did you start doing that? Had you done that? You had never done that before. I think you had said, is that right?

Benjamin Von Wong 22:44

First time?

Daniel Stillman 22:45

Yeah, I think it was just amazing ingredient. Do you think you'll try to do that again?

Benjamin Von Wong 22:54

Yeah, I would love to do it again. The challenge is going to be to convince people to let me do it, but otherwise I think it's great. I would actually have even loved it to be. I would have loved the music to be more present. So I think the way Charlie played music in this one, he was trying to be respectful of me and not interfere with the flow. But I would have loved him to be a conversational participant. So if I had a mic drop moment for him to create a fun mic.

Daniel Stillman 23:24

Yeah.

Benjamin Von Wong 23:25

Moment to like have a reaction to that.

Daniel Stillman 23:28

Yeah. Cuz he didn't know your talk really. He adapted. I definitely saw like when you, you actually had like a little verbal break and he like made some like crazy hijinx music at that moment. It was, it made it like, oh, this is fun. This is fun.

Benjamin Von Wong 23:40

Yeah, he definitely had all these like, moments. But I think it like to have even more presence. I think. I think maybe if we had rehearsed a little bit more.

Daniel Stillman 23:48

Yeah.

Benjamin Von Wong 23:49

Breaks or something, I think that would have been really fun.

Daniel Stillman 23:52

I think that's awesome. It's lovely.

Benjamin Von Wong 23:54

I'd love to workshop that more.

Daniel Stillman 23:56

The thing that really caught me most in your presentation, and this is sort of my original invitation to you, is this idea of. And this was the conversation where I never really started thinking about inner narratives. When I started thinking about conversations, I was thinking about group dialogue. I was thinking about community. I was thinking about organizational transformation. Big, you know, big conversations, but they're all driven by inner conversations. And what I sort of was tracking in your talk was this thread of how you went from I want purpose and you pulled at that thread, and then you're like, crazy projects aren't enough. I'm not doing enough to what is enough. I just. I watched this, you know, refinement, honing, clarification, carving, reframing, where you're even holding up two opposing ideals that, you know, infinite growth versus enoughness. And I feel like everything, everything winds up being some kind of attention, a polarity. And I'm wondering in yourself right now, what is the polarity that you're dancing in between.

Benjamin Von Wong 25:20

Right now? I would say the polarity I'm dancing around with is that there is a desire to both speed up and slow down simultaneously. So in order to make new creation ships in my life, I need to have space for them.

Benjamin Von Wong 25:45

And so that's a piece of me that's like, I need to slow down. I need to have spaciousness so that I can nurture these new creationships that I am slowly developing here in New York City. And then the other half of me is the one that's like, oh, my gosh, I got this awesome new formula. I have the potential of creating an art installation at Everest, at cop 16, at UNGA, at the Inc. Five global plastic treaty negotiations. And if all of this goes according to plan, I am literally going to be out August, September, October, November. And I'm like, wait, what am I actually doing? Like, which one do I want? Which, like, how can I have both? And I'm not too sure. I don't know. It's sort of unresolved. I guess the way I'm thinking about it is, well, first come, first serve. And, you know, many of my projects don't go through, but those are the ones that no one sees, so really no one knows about them. But then when a product doesn't go through, I guess then I will have a reason to celebrate and to enjoy that spaciousness when it is there. So I think. I think that's currently, I'm letting things play out. I'm holding the space for that duality, that polarity, and I'm letting time tell me, time and emergence, I suppose, dictate the rest.

Daniel Stillman 27:09

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 27:13

Speed and spaciousness is a really rich. I mean, there's a tool called polarity mapping where you look at the pluses of both of them and the downside of over indexing on one versus the other. And I can definitely see the value of speed, right? You want to make more work. You want to make more impact. And I guess given that you're an empire builder and part of your money makeup, you want to make more money, right? You want to strike while the iron's hot. And I also imagine that there's a downside of over indexing on speed to the. To the cost of. To the detriment of spaciousness.

Benjamin Von Wong 27:58

Yeah, for sure. You know, I think I'm at this really interesting point in my career where I have enough money so that I can do whatever I want to do. Have to do any projects that I don't believe in. Right. I don't have to do any projects just for money. And so I have all the freedom in the world if I literally just disappeared for six months like no one's life depended on it. But simultaneously, I'm not successful enough to scale and hire a team, and I'm like, to have that stability, to bring one more person on board requires me to triple my revenue.

Daniel Stillman 28:37

Yes.

Benjamin Von Wong 28:38

Right. At least. And I'm like, how do you close that gap? So I don't know. I don't have that answer. But I was listening to. I was at a purpose marketing conference just yesterday, and someone said something really interesting. They're saying how, like, you know the world. Like, many, many times, there are wealthier individuals who are. Who have made it, who will offer to significantly less privileged people. They'll be like, oh, I'll mentor you for free. But what that person needs is not just more advice on what to do, but rather what they need are just resources. And so this idea of actually shifting from a mentorship model to maybe a sponsorship model actually makes a lot more sense in those situations. And I'm like, oh, maybe some random person will just sponsor that one extra human to increase capacity. Maybe it doesn't have to be like, I don't know. There's so many different ways of transacting in the world and so many ways of existing that it's like, oh, I never thought of that as a possibility before, but, like, what if I randomly created a construct around that?

Daniel Stillman 29:41

Yeah.

Benjamin Von Wong 29:42

Manifest itself?

Daniel Stillman 29:44

Well, you know, that's what the Medicis did. There used to be this idea of being a patron.

Benjamin Von Wong 29:48

I know that.

Daniel Stillman 29:49

Right?

Benjamin Von Wong 29:50

We need to bring that back.

Daniel Stillman 29:51

It's like, what kind of a king are you if you're not, you know, cultivating a renaissance? Where's your renaissance? And, you know, the king of Germany is like, oh, geez, I've got to get some artists on my payroll and just get them to make some art so that for the glory of the empire.

Benjamin Von Wong 30:09

Well, in this case, I think it's not for the glory of any empire, but rather for the survival of humanity.

Daniel Stillman 30:14

Yes.

Benjamin Von Wong 30:17

Helping to shape and accelerate change in an inspiration, inspiring and empowering way that is bringing people across different professions and lines together. I mean, like, I wish there was a word to describe the kind of work that I create, because then I could try to find my people, but it seems like that not being done well.

Daniel Stillman 30:37

I mean, I. My phrase. Well, I. You know, I'm a chef who thinks the world is food. You're a conversation designer. That's what I. But that's what I think. Many. It's a lens you could give to many things, many types of work. But I can see the. Certainly the challenge that I see you facing right now is it's a classic startup challenge. Right. The revenue to create growth or to fuel the investment, the foundation for growth. And it's a chicken. And it seems like a chicken and egg challenge. And I see how you use community as a multiplier for your work. It's really amazing. And I'm wondering if we can just talk a little bit more. We haven't talked. I wanted to talk a little bit more about community. I remember the humble badasses. You've got a phraseology. We've got. What was the other one? Oh, God. I'm gonna have to look at the. Not a quirky bet. Oh, man, this is so embarrassing. But I feel like there's been some coining of phrases, and humble badasses was one of the coinages that you've made that was.

Benjamin Von Wong 31:56

Well, I didn't make that one. It was recommended by another friend, Christine Lai. So I have these wonderful conversations with my friends who helped. I tell them these abstract ideas I have, and someone eventually comes up with a thing that sticks, and humble badasses was just, like, frame when I was trying to describe the kinds of people that I wanted to have in my life. Yeah, yeah. Wait, what was the question, though?

Daniel Stillman 32:17

Well, yeah, I mean, when. So the other side of that polarity we're talking about is the spaciousness to develop relationships.

Benjamin Von Wong 32:25

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 32:26

And it seems like you have at least two types of relationships that I think you're investing and I presume, you know, one on one and many to many, the, you know, hosting events, being part of a community. Yeah, sorry, go ahead.

Benjamin Von Wong 32:41

Yeah, yeah. So I think that I have actually been very good, historically at building an audience, and an audience is where, like, I'm at the head of the table, I'm announcing something I'm gonna do, and people get follow along. I'm like the Pied piper leading a crew along the way to do some, like, go on some crazy adventure. And what I'm hoping to build these days is more of a community. And I think a community is decentralized and ideally doesn't even necessitate the person who started the community to gather and to talk and to design and to build and to create together. And that's something I don't have a lot of experience in. And so what I do, because I don't have community, is I find communities, and I try to engage them in my activities. But what I would like to do moving forward is to figure out how to start cultivating my own. And I think that's one of the reasons why I. I am playing around with language. Lot to define words that I want but don't quite know how to describe. And the hope is that if you can create the language around it, then the people can find it. But if you cannot define it, then how do they feel drawn to it? Yes. And that's important, because even though as cool as the humble badass thing is and saying, I'm looking for humble badasses, I think many people, many humble badasses wouldn't identify themselves as humble badasses. They wouldn't flock to that kind of a banner. And so it's something that requires almost like this active workshopping and playing and prototyping and seeing how it resonates in the world.

Daniel Stillman 34:16

There is this power to having a word for something. And I see the thing you were asking for in that previous beat of, what does it mean to be someone who multiplies a movement or who is a parabolic reflector, you know, that concentrator of a movement, a lens. I don't have the word for it, but it's really finding the metaphor and the image, which, ironically, is literally what you do, is you're trying to find a metaphor for your metaphor.

Benjamin Von Wong 34:48

I am. And ideally, make that as inclusive as possible.

Daniel Stillman 34:52

Right.

Benjamin Von Wong 34:52

Like, you don't want to make it so. So ambitious and arbitrary that no, people can't join it. And so what does that look, I know I probably need to talk to someone who, like, writes fantasy books. Like the people who design languages.

Daniel Stillman 35:07

Yes.

Benjamin Von Wong 35:08

Ask them, like, if they were to create a world in which this were to be true, what would that look like? What would the words be? What would the guild or the people that championed this thing, like, what flag would they. I don't know.

Daniel Stillman 35:21

Yeah. And you used that phrase before flocking to the banner. And that is really, it is a powerful message that there is something to be said for being a bannerman or the designer of a banner, a banner maker, but it's something bigger than that. And I feel like it's very exciting to find the right word for a thing, not for nothing. Speaking of fantasy writers, Ursula Le Guin, I don't know if you've read any of her work. She was a, she's deceased now, an amazing science fiction fantasy writer. And her philosophy was like, I don't talk about the world as it might be. I talk about the way the world is. The fantasy is a lens to look at the issues of today. And one of her famous quotes is knowing the true name of the thing. I'm gonna get it wrong. There's something about knowing the true name of a thing is a way to control or relate to the thing, to find the true name of this thing.

Benjamin Von Wong 36:23

I like that. Yeah. It also reminds me of what Neil Gaiman said, which was like, fiction writers use fiction to tell the truth. Yes. And people who tell the truth, like, basically create a fiction.

Daniel Stillman 36:35

Yes. Right.

Benjamin Von Wong 36:37

Even if you're trying to be objective as a journalist, for example, you can't. You're biased. In your perspective of the world. You're limited.

Daniel Stillman 36:44

Yes. As a woman in the sixties, she saw sexism and wrote a book about called the Left hand of darkness, where there's a world where people shift genders back and forth, kind of like every lunar cycle. And how can she illustrate? It's a crazy book. And it actually took me a long time to realize the punchline, which is that, like, the main character looks at these people as weird, alien and wrong, whereas, like, this is just how they are. It's about discrimination. It's really hard to see that in the book, but that's not even what we're here to talk about. But it's a. She's a mind exploding writer. She's super awesome. We have boiled through our time so rapidly, I feel like there's. There's always a lot unsaid, a lot unasked, unvoiced. And what haven't we talked about that we should talk about? Like, what haven't I asked you that is important to say?

Benjamin Von Wong 37:59

I mean, I don't know. Like, there's so much more. There is so much left unsaid. There is so much more that is left unsaid than has actually been said from that infinite cosmic that could possibly say and say that one was more important than another. I don't know if there's anything in mind at this moment. Anyways, I guess I would be curious to hear from the audience. What would their next question be?

Daniel Stillman 38:32

That's a great question. They can't hear us right now. But that's a great question.

Benjamin Von Wong 38:39

But all in good time.

Daniel Stillman 38:40

There's one thing I didn't ask you about that I wanted to ask you about, which is another polarity that you identified in your creative mornings talk around being a person versus having a purpose.

Benjamin Von Wong 38:55

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 38:56

And I feel like in the middle of that, was this enoughness idea sort of like going between those two? And I don't know if that's correct or not. I'm curious how you're thinking about balancing your person ness and your purpose these days.

Benjamin Von Wong 39:13

Yeah, I think it's accurate. I think you did a really good job of dividing that because really, you know, there are many people who lose themselves in their passions. Right. They lose themselves in their purpose, and that's not a really good thing because you end up burning out and fade really quickly.

Daniel Stillman 39:30

Yes.

Benjamin Von Wong 39:31

And so, and then the opposite of that, which is not having a purpose or not having a passion, or not knowing why you're here or not knowing how to contribute is equally horrifying. And so somewhere in between those two lies a balance of finding the space in which you as an individual can thrive and that your purpose can thrive and that you don't lose yourself in one or the other. And this idea of enoughness helps us to be grateful, because when we focus on abundance, which I think is really trendy right now, everyone wants to focus on abundance because the universe will provide and you just need to dream bigger and yada, yada, yada, I think what that does is that it basically encourages you to never be satisfied with what you have and to always seek the next thing. And in some ways, we get so addicted to this idea of growing, growing our impact, growing our teams, growing our profit margins, whatever it happens to be, growing the quality of our work that we sort of forget what, well, why are we doing this? Or, like, what makes us happy, what brings us joy, what gives us a sense of fulfillment? What are our core values?

Daniel Stillman 40:47

Yeah.

Benjamin Von Wong 40:48

And I think, like, in my case, answering the like, what is enough question requires you to understand, like, what it is that makes you tick as a person. And my core values are, they start with curiosity and adventure. Like, I like to. I just love novelty and I love going on adventures, but I can't just go on adventures. I need them to be for some intention. So the second value that comes for the purpose of change and transformation, like, I want to do things that lead to some level of growth, either internally for myself or externally for the world. Right. That's one balance to strike between the two and then that last piece of the puzzle is to do both of those things with kindness and authenticity, because I want to show up in a world in a way that others will show up with me for. And so do I have enough in my life to create the conditions for those three to thrive? Yeah, I think so. And do I have enough in my mission? Am I contributing enough to the world in which I am constantly challenging myself to try new ways of being in the right place at the right time, creating the right pieces of art for the right people? Like, I think. Yes. And I think that's why, you know, when you ask that initial question of, like, you know, what. What is my process and what is my philosophy behind it? Like, that is a constant evolution, because I am constantly trying to find the next evolution of my work. And I think there's a way to do it healthily, which is having this north star of what is enough, and there's a way to make unhealthy, which is just to pursue greatness for the sake of greatness more, for the sake of more. And essentially why we are in this sort of unsustainable world that we currently live in is, I think, is this insatiable pursuit of more for everyone all the time.

Daniel Stillman 42:36

Yeah.

Benjamin Von Wong 42:37

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 42:38

Which is just not possible.

Benjamin Von Wong 42:40

Which is not possible.

Daniel Stillman 42:42

But enough might be enough.

Benjamin Von Wong 42:45

Enough is possible. We know that that is possible. There's this book that I've been reading that I really love. It's called tea medicine. And the reason I love the book is because it takes all these spiritual concepts, but views it through the lens of tea. Tea drinking and tea growing and everything tea related. And one of the things it talks about is one of the reasons it's really important for us to drink tea that is organic, is because organic tea ensures that not just our generation can drink tea, but future generations can also drink tea. And so when we say tea is for everyone, it is for everyone, but maybe not for everyone all the time, whenever they want it.

Daniel Stillman 43:28

Yeah.

Benjamin Von Wong 43:29

And. And if that means that sometimes we have to, like, not have it when, whenever, like, not having that level of convenience.

Daniel Stillman 43:42

Yeah.

Benjamin Von Wong 43:42

Then we have enough. Right. We do have enough. We just don't have enough for everyone all the time, whenever they want it within, they, like, ship to your doorstep in 24 hours, you know?

Daniel Stillman 43:51

Yeah.

Benjamin Von Wong 43:52

That's the part that doesn't work so well.

Daniel Stillman 43:54

Yeah.

Benjamin Von Wong 43:55

So that really resonates.

Daniel Stillman 43:58

That's so powerful. Ben, I'm really grateful that you came to have this spacious, purposeful conversation. And if people want to learn more about you and your work. Where should they go on the Internet or in the world to learn more about you? If they want to learn more, yes.

Benjamin Von Wong 44:24

They can just type von Wong on Google Vonwong and they can find me on Instagram, YouTube. I have videos and photos of every single one of my projects follow me on Instagram. I don't post that well, but it's there for those who are more like business oriented and they want to see some case studies of the work combined like and packaged, you can go to unforgettablelabs.com. and there's this final new thing that I'm kind of prototyping. I'm trying to figure it out, but it's built around this idea of just finding funders that are interested in supporting this work. And that one you can find at the von Wong thevonwong.com dot. It's sort of a working website in progress where I'm actively trying to think of like, oh, what happens? Instead of, you know, social media is about trying to reach as many people as possible. But what if I only needed to have like 100 patrons that were investing in projects? What would that look like? And so I don't think a platform like that exists, unfortunately. But at the very least, I'm starting to think and view once again my role and the people I'm trying to convene a little bit differently. And I think that would be a really powerful community of people, too.

Daniel Stillman 45:38

So yeah, convene is a great word. Convene. Convene. Thank you so much. I will call scene and I will just, I assume that all just felt that was a lovely conversation. I really just appreciate your presence and your honesty.

Benjamin Von Wong 46:00

Yeah, that was great. I like that it didn't focus very much on the why, on the how. They didn't ask a single like how question, like everything was on the, like the why or the, the underlying layer underneath it all. And I think many podcasts focus so much on the how. And like, how is such a, like a useless conversation to have because no one is going to do what I do over the weekend.

Daniel Stillman 46:24

Like I assume the how is glue and or wires or toothpicks, I'm not sure. But there's a lot of hows, there.

Benjamin Von Wong 46:33

Is a lot of hows. Theres a lot of hows and theres also a lot of like, oh, where do you get your inspiration from? And I think thats also a form of a how. But I think what we were talking about was maybe about like, what makes a human tick and what are some pieces of that ticking that I can tinker with to, like, lubricate my own little gears. Yes. Felt like a lot of little, like, interesting little seeds that were being.

Daniel Stillman 46:59

I love that image. I would love to include this after this after conversation in the conversation because.

Benjamin Von Wong 47:05

It'S testimonial inside the podcast for your podcast.

Daniel Stillman 47:12

Yeah. Well, that's beautiful. Thank you so much, Ben. You're a rock star.

Benjamin Von Wong 47:15

Cool. I didn't know what kind of conversation you're hoping for, but hopefully this delivered.

Daniel Stillman 47:19

This was exactly it.

Benjamin Von Wong 47:21

Great, great. I love it. I love it.

Leadership is Designing Moments of Impact

Today my guests are Lisa Kay Solomon and Chris Ertel, the co-authors of the powerhouse 2014 book Moments of Impact: How to Design Strategic Conversations That Accelerate Change, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year! I devoured this book 10 years ago and I think you might enjoy it, too!

Lisa Kay Solomon is currently a Designer in Residence at the Stanford d. school, where she teaches classes such as Inventing the Future where students imagine, debate and analyze the 50-year futures of emerging tech, and works closely with the K12 community to make futures thinking a mainstay of 21c core curriculum. She has also been named to the Thinkers50 2022 Radar List and is one of ixDA’s Women of Design 2020.

Chris Ertel is a managing director of Deloitte Consulting LLP with a specialist role designing and providing high-stakes strategic conversations for clients and priority firm initiatives, in the Deloitte Greenhouse® signature environments. Chris is an innovation strategist with 18 years of experience advising leading organizations. He holds a PhD in demography from UC-Berkeley.

We talk about :

• What it really means to be a facilitative leader, and why it’s so impactful. As Lisa and Chris say in MOI:

“At these critical moments, everyone will be looking at you, not for all the answers, but to help them unearth the answers together”

• The Five Core Principles of Moments of Impact, which can form a Design Process

1. Define your purpose  (your design intent!)

2. Engage multiple perspectives (with your facilitation skills!)

3. Frame the issues

4. Set the Scene

5. Make it an experience (even an intense or challenging one!)

• How designing conversations is different from facilitating them: Lisa makes it clear that Conversation Design is about intent and purpose while Facilitation skills are the tool that helps orchestrate those Moments of Impact.

• Why Conversation Design isn’t taught to leaders but should be (Lisa also tells us why it’s so hard to teach, since it brings together strategy, psychology and emotional intelligence)

• Why Chris always coaches leaders to condense and delete content from their strategic meetings (to 10 slides!) instead of making what communications expert Nancy Duarte calls a “Procument” (something that’s neither an easy to use and digest presentation or a leave-behind document!)

• How crucial discussing decision-making rights are - as Chris suggests many leaders want to keep their options open and wind up creating an “air of democracy without the reality of it” 

• Why You should start becoming a junkie of learning theories

• The importance of balancing humor and levity with challenging-ness and sparkiness to create productive environments

• The importance of knowing that the “yeah buts” will come when we’re hosting challenging conversations as in: 
  yeah, but, that won’t work here! or…
  yeah, but, what will we be able to report next quarter? Or…
  yeah, but who’s budget is going to cover that?

And so much more! If you have Moments of Impact that you need to shape, design, and lead and you *don’t* have Moments of Impact on your desk - get it!

Links, Quotes, Notes, and Resources

Get Moments of Impact!

https://www.lisakaysolomon.com/about

https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/profiles/certel.html

A plan is not a strategy: The short video from Roger Martin we were talking about!

A.I. Summary by Grain

The meeting discussed the importance of conversation design and its interdisciplinary nature, integrating fields such as psychology and behavioral economics. Lisa highlighted the core principles of defining purpose, engaging multiple perspectives, framing issues, setting the scene, and making it an experience. Developing skills such as pattern recognition, signal identification, and communication requires dedication and practice.

Chris and Lisa discussed the importance of conversation skills for leaders and the challenges organizations face in rewarding discovery and awareness-building over quick answers. They also emphasized the need for forward-thinking strategies and creating impactful moments in workshops to ensure lasting impact on participants. Gaining buy-in from participants in meetings was also highlighted as significant.

0:46 We discuss the origin of their book, highlighting Lisa and Chris’ passion for bringing people together to have meaningful conversations.

4:59 Daniel  prompts a discussion on the importance of conversation skills for leaders, contrasting it with the emphasis on content knowledge, and questions why this skill is still not widely taught.

5:30 Lisa discusses why conversation design is not taught more widely and how it integrates various fields such as psychology, emotional intelligence, and behavioral economics

9:49 Chris  delves into the challenges organizations face in rewarding discovery and awareness-building over quick answers, stressing the importance of pausing to define problems and frame discussions effectively.

23:11 We  discuss the evolving concept of strategy, moving away from traditional frameworks towards continuous learning, adaptability, and anticipation of future changes.

28:20 Lisa uses hockey metaphors to emphasize the need for forward-thinking strategies and the importance of creating learning journeys to enhance understanding and innovation. Lisa explains that strategy is not just about planning, but also about conversation and constantly learning and adapting to the future

30:44 Lisa  discusses the significance of creating impactful moments in workshops by making experiences memorable, challenging, and engaging to ensure lasting impact on participants.

31:30 Chris delves into the importance of creating a balanced learning environment that includes struggle, sparks, and some level of conflict to facilitate effective learning experiences.

36:25 Lisa highlights the core principles of defining purpose, engaging multiple perspectives, framing issues, setting the scene, and making it an experience in both pedagogy and corporate environments

45:35 Lisa highlights the interdisciplinary nature of design and the need for dedication and practice in developing skills such as pattern recognition, signal identification, and communication.

49:07 We elaborate on the significance of gaining buy-in from participants in meetings to drive forward ambitious ideas and emergent strategies effectively.

More About Chris and Lisa

Chris Ertel is a managing director of Deloitte Consulting LLP with a specialist role designing and providing high-stakes strategic conversations for clients and priority firm initiatives, in the Deloitte Greenhouse® signature environments. Chris is an innovation strategist with 18 years of experience advising leading organizations. His national bestseller, Moments of Impact: How to Design Strategic Conversations That Accelerate Change was released in February 2014. He holds a PhD in demography from UC-Berkeley.

Lisa Kay Solomon designs environments, experiences and classes to help people expand their futures, adapt to complexities, and build civic fellowship. Her work blends imagination with possibility, building the capacity to take the long view when today’s problems seem overwhelming.

Currently a Designer in Residence at the Stanford d. school, Lisa focuses on bridging the disciplines of futures and design thinking, creating experiences like “Vote by Design: Presidential Edition” and "The Future’s Happening" to help students learn and practice the skills they don’t yet know they need. At the d.school, she teaches classes such as Inventing the Future where students imagine, debate and analyze the 50-year futures of emerging tech, and works closely with the K12 community to make futures thinking a mainstay of 21c core curriculum.

Named to the Thinkers50 2022 Radar List and one of ixDA’s Women of Design 2020, Lisa has also taught leadership and design at the California College of the Art’s MBA in Design strategy, was the founding Chair of Singularity University’s Transformational Practices effort, and has guest lectured at organizations and leadership institutions around the world. 
Lisa co-authored the bestselling books Moments of Impact: How to Design Strategic Conversations that Accelerate Change, and Design A Better Business: New Tools, Skills, and Mindset and Strategy for Innovation, which has been translated into over a dozen languages. Lisa created the popular LinkedIn Learning Courses Leading Like a Futurist and Redesigning How We Work for 2021, and has written extensively on helping leaders productively navigate ambiguity through teachable and learnable practices.

Full A.I. Transcript

Daniel Stillman 00:00

All right, well, then I will officially welcome you to the conversation factory. Lisa, Chris, welcome aboard. Thanks for making the time today.

Chris Ertel         00:09

Howdy, Daniel. Great to be here.

Lisa Kay Solomon           00:12

Super fun, super fun.

Daniel Stillman 00:15

So we were just pointing out, and I think it's just really important to get this out of the way. Your book is seminal. I read it a decade ago. It's been a decade. I learned a lot from it. And so I just wanted to say thank you for writing the book. I remember reading it and having my brain cracked open.

Chris Ertel         00:39

Wow. Thank you. It was really fun to do with Lisa, the two of us, and it's fun to reflect on it. It's been a minute.

Daniel Stillman 00:46

It's been a minute.

Lisa Kay Solomon           00:48

Yeah. And I just want to say, daniel, thank you, first of all, for reading it. That makes you, our family members, in good company. No, but all kidding aside, we wrote it, and we'll probably get into this for people like you that were excited and dedicated to bringing people together to have conversations that matter. And we'll talk a little bit more about the origin. But essentially, Chris and I love what we do. We love bringing people together, and we wanted to get better at our own craft of doing them. And we looked at our bookshelves and saw lots of books on adjacent topics, but nothing really geared towards someone like you that would say, this is the I've been looking for. You get better at bringing people together to have conversations that matter.

Daniel Stillman 01:33

Yeah, actually, how did you two become, for lack of a better term, conversation dorks? Like, how did you find your way to being. Cause not everybody in your book, you talk about this three way Venn diagram of strategy and design and conversation, and not everyone becomes sensitized to or aware of this precious thing that is bringing a bunch of people together to have a conversation that matters, that, like, will change the direction of a group, an organization, you know, the world or something. You know, nothing big, right? Like, some people care about it, and some people just think, like, oh, we're just having a meeting.

Lisa Kay Solomon           02:15

Yeah, I'll start and say, you know, we didn't have this conversations podcast for me to get into the Lisa childhood way back machine. But I will say, but that's what.

Chris Ertel         02:26

I do care about.

Daniel Stillman 02:27

Those questions.

Lisa Kay Solomon           02:28

I will say I was a conversation dork. I had no choice. In part. My mother is a psychologist and was a chief learning officer at a national landscape company for over 30 years. So even growing up, she was getting her PhD. It was really a PhD in people and counseling and relationships. And so our dinner tables were things about causal diagrams and the conversation is the relationship, and that all work gets done through relationships. So that was my very, very early childhood, and was kind of surprised that after college and then my early years, before I got the chance to work with Chris and many of our fabulous colleagues was surprised that that wasn't talked about more as a teachable and learnable set of skills. You know, I had grown up with it organically about its importance and sensitized to where it showed up in organizations and culture and leadership. But it really wasn't until I started working at Global Business Network and got to work with incredibly talented people like Chris, who comes to it with a social science background, to say, wait a minute, there's a real discipline here. There's really something that we can articulate and get better at. And so, you know, I just feel so, so fortunate to have that chance to learn with Chris, and then this book was a chance for us to then take it to the next step.

Daniel Stillman 03:47

How about you, Chris? What was happening at the dinner table for you?

Chris Ertel         03:51

Well, no, it didn't. I came to it later, I think, than Lisa. I came to it from a deep content expertise. I got a PhD in demography at UC Berkeley, and so I was very focused on research, very focused on content, and I came. I just stumbled into a job at Global Business network. Lisa, reference. That's where we met back in the mid, late nineties. And GBN, as it was called, was the show back then and futures thinking. It was Ted before there was Ted. It was led by Peter Schwartz, famous futurist, and a number of others. And I got there with. I got in the door because of my content knowledge, but I discovered there that they were doing something amazing, which was that they were engaging people with ideas in a very different way. And it was all about the interaction and that ideas don't do anything. They sit on paper, they sit in people's heads. They have to be engaged. And that's where I've really learned from Peter J. Ogilvy, Catherine Fulton and Kelly, just some real masters of this. And just. It just lit me up. And that's been a 28 year journey since then for myself.

Daniel Stillman 04:59

Chris, you bring up a really interesting point about content versus process, and I wanted to get to this later, but I feel like, why not start in the middle? And actually, now that I think about it in the introduction, you guys say this is the most important skill that for leaders, that is not taught at Harvard Business School or anywhere else. And maybe that's still true ten years later, which is shocking. There's this idea that content matters most and knowledge matters most and expertise is what's so the most important thing as a leadership skill. And then there's this other perspective that the ability to bring people together, to have impactful conversations, to foster all in participation to at these critical, as you literally say, at these critical moments, everyone's looking at you not to have the answers, but to help them unearth the answers together. Like, maybe there's two questions here, like, why isn't that still taught ten years later? And why is it such an important skill? Do you think Chris is saying they better if you're not watching the video? They basically played a game of not air.

Chris Ertel         06:09

No, it's a great question. I don't think. I mean, Lisa's in academe, she's at Stanford. I have less visibility in academe. I don't think feel it is taught hardly anywhere. I think it's the same situation as ten years ago. Sadly, in that way, we have at Deloitte, we have Deloitte Greenhouse, which is this capability. We have 125 person team that does nothing but design and deliver strategic conversations of the sort we talk about in the book. And that got stood up 1211 ish years ago. So it's relatively new. And this in the professional services firm context of Deloitte. Some other firms have similar capabilities. I'm not sure any are as built out as Deloitte's is quite substantial. So we've invested heavily in training cadre of people to do this. But in the world at large, are there a bunch of books that followed moments, in fact, I don't see them. Yours is an important one, but there aren't a lot. And I don't know of courses, Lisa, out there.

Lisa Kay Solomon           07:16

I would say, and this was a huge aha for me, Daniel, in both coming to GBN and then again, having the opportunity to work on this book with Chris, which is that what it's talking about really is design. And the good news is that the understanding of design has grown over the last few years. And that's, for me, this aha moment that conversations could be designed and that's different than facilitated. I mean, so I think that people learn facilitated facilitation skills, and that's really important about starting the meeting on time, ending, you know, getting different people, different modalities, but the taking a step back and leveling up to say, wait a minute, what do I want this conversation to advance? What do I want people to know? How do we want them to feel? What is discovered as a result of being together, which is different than an expert sharing their knowledge and pontificating. Right. What is the. What is the culture I want to build by the choices that I make? The fact that all of these could be designed was like a revelation to me. And so I think one of the reasons why it's not taught more readily is that it is interdisciplinary. Foundationally, it integrates some psychology, emotional intelligence, some from the field of now, behavioral economics. Right. Nudge theory about things you can do to get people in a different place. It does incorporate some core facilitation comfort to make sure that the choices that you make that you can then follow with. And it does take some content expertise, but done differently than in the way that we're taught. Right. As you said, we're taught to be experts. And you go deeper and you get masters, phds, and then a lot of times that content is almost used as proxy for answers. That's not what conversations are about. Our conversations are about questions. Our conversations are about socializing relational flows in different ways. And those harder concepts to really put in neat buckets like, hey, does your meeting start on time? Does it end on time? Does it get to next steps?

Chris Ertel         09:21

Right.

Lisa Kay Solomon           09:21

That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about something much, much bigger.

Chris Ertel         09:25

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 09:25

Which is the. At the center of the design process that you have in the book, defining the purpose that seems to be part of the real design process. It's like, why are we having this conversation? And what do I really want this to get for us versus the how will I proceed once we are in the conversation? Which, of course, is a really important part of the conversation. No. Going to say conversation a lot. I wonder what the calendar is going to be by the end of this.

Lisa Kay Solomon           09:49

Yeah. And can I just say one more point on that? I'll be curious because I just want to really admire Chris's timeliness of joining Deloitte. Right. When this greenhouse capability was getting started. I'm sure it just accelerated because of Chris's work. And book. And the book. But if you think about it, organizations are not really designed to reward the first important purpose, which is discovery. Right. Building awareness, building understanding. We're awarded for getting to answers and next steps. And so first critical piece of, hey, we're going to get people together. And this is why we call it a leadership skill. Because in this volatile world that's filled with ambiguity and complexity coming at us faster and faster, next steps don't mean anything unless you've actually paused to say what is actually the problem that we're trying to solve. How are we thinking about it? How are we framing it? And so there is also an incentive system that's embodied that I don't think is called out enough within organizations, which says, we don't hire black belts to be discovery masters. Right. Like, if you think about the rise of six sigma and, you know, they were like, okay, you're going to reduce variance. Okay, that's a knowable thing. That's a measurable thing. What's less measurable is we're going to promote curious questioners that bring people together in order to sense and question the future so that the next stage around shaping options are really aligned with what are bigger goals.

Daniel Stillman 11:16

Yeah, well, I think it's. I mean, Chris, you kind of alluded to the ways in which you two have been, like, led to this work, but also, like, the different directions that you've been living the work for the last decade. And I'm, I think you, you called it in our, in our pre document indie versus big box rollout. Do you want to talk a little bit about maybe the sort of, like, why you two decided that you wanted to write this book and then how it's shaped the ways in which you've been doing it ten years? Ten years out?

Chris Ertel         11:58

Yeah. I mean, I had struggled with, after I got the bug of working in this way, high engagement conversations around content. I was looking everywhere for books to help me do that because I'm a book nerd. And there were a lot of, as Lisa said, there were a lot of adjacent things, but I couldn't find the book. And that's when Lisa and I put our heads together and started giving a few presentations and thought, okay, this is on us. To reiterate this book. So that was kind of the why of it. The rolling it out in the context where I've been over the last decade plus has been interesting because we, in a large, firm environment, you're always at the edge of customization. It's customized and standardized because you want to be efficient and be able to serve a lot of clients efficiently and effectively. And yet every situation really is different. And so that's, we're always at that knife's edge of efficiency and responsiveness to the specific situation. So that's what I feel every day. And then the kind of challenges, the kind of three challenges that I have that are just kind of my groundhog day that I'm always trying to struggle to get better at is first getting to a small amount of really great content, like people have a hard time letting go of all the details and knowing that you can have a really effective day, day long strategic conversation on one problem, on one topic with like maybe ten slides. Like, that's great if you can get to that, right? The ten slides that matter most. That's kind of all you really need. And it takes a long time for people to get there. That is not intuitive. Right. As a starting point. Second challenge that I encounter a lot is clarifying decision rights. Just being the leadership in the room, being willing to declare, here's the modality we're working in today. Like, either, are we asking for the group to solve the problem or asking the group for input? Is it that the group's gonna create options and these two or three people are gonna make the decision? Like any, pick your poison, that's fine, but just be clear about it. And I find that often leaders like to leave their options open and sort of not leave decision rights a little vague. And I'm always coaching in the direction of being more bold, being more declarative about that. Cause I think people deserve it and people also appreciate it if, you know, I don't have, you don't have decision rights to handle over this topic, but we do what you think. You're in the room with us because we need to have more people contributing to the solution. But we, the leaders, are going to decide, and that's okay. That's the way it's going to be. And most people can live with that. But you create an air of democracy without the reality of it. That's messy. And then just the third thing that I struggle with, and I don't know, Lisa, if you have this too, but I've learned over time that iterating on designs, iteration is so important to design and in other disciplines. When you think about it, you're building a house, you're building in architecture, you're building a building and graphic design, you're doing a poster, product design, you're doing iterations on a toothbrush or whatever. You go through varying degrees of refinement of the prototype, gets more and more real and more and more exacting, and you go from a sketch to a rendering, to a 3d prototype, whatever. And people can give feedback on that in designing conversations. The prototypes are all on paper. All you're looking at is paper and the ability or slides on a screen, and the ability of people to translate in their head how this is going to look, how it's actually going to feel like, what it's going to be like with this group of people on this day is it takes a lot of experience to run the translation function. I try to be as responsive as I can to feedback, and yet it's also hard because the people who you're seeking feedback from, they're often limited in their ability to imagine what this interaction is going to feel like on game day because I haven't been through it 500 times before like we have. Those are, those are the kind of challenges that I find myself up against every, every day.

Daniel Stillman 16:23

And, you know, number one and number three feel related in some sense, because in my experience, running that translation function, like, here's how I think it's going to go. The open, the explore and the close. And the reason I referenced you and Dave Gray and also Dave Gray's book is those are the you all and were the first people who sort of imprinted that as the fundamental model I have. Here's where we're going to start. This is the mess that we're going to try and sort through. And this is where we want to get to at the end. And some people feel like going back to the content question. We need to have 500 slides that takes us through every step and every question and to have it fixed, to have a real equation. It's like that famous far side quote where it's like, you know, step one and then a miracle occurs and then it's like, well, I need more information about step two. You may, in your translation function be like, I think I know how we're going to get through this. And somebody else is going to say, like, we need to have this nailed down because I'm terrified it's going to go wrong.

Chris Ertel         17:32

Yeah. I had this vivid experience recently, a very short story, but then we. I'd had this groundhog Day conversation about, that's too many slides. The slides are too dense. I love Nancy Duarte's concept of a "procument". Right. It's a document that's trying to be both a presentation and a document. So a leave behind, you know, a set of slides that can have 200 words on a page, that's fine, but a slide really shouldn't have more than 40 words on it for the conversation because people can't read and listen at the same time. Our brain doesn't do that. It just flat out doesn't. And if I could wave a magic wand over our firm and all of the business work environment out there, just know that you can't do that. And so I was having this back and forth with a presenter who wasn't getting the memo. And the day before we did the dry run, the day before game day, and we're sitting in the room, giant screen, a massive screen, and the first slide goes up and the presenter looks at it, and that person is sitting in the chair that the client's going to be in tomorrow. And looking at his own slide in the seat where the client's going to be tomorrow, he's like, oh, I can't use this. It's like, no, you can't. We've been telling you that for a couple weeks now. But, yeah, it's got 200 words on the page, and it's just too, too much you can't handle.

Daniel Stillman 18:55

Yeah, yeah.

Lisa Kay Solomon           18:57

There is this.

Daniel Stillman 18:57

Oh, yeah. So please go ahead.

Lisa Kay Solomon           19:00

I relate, you know, so much for what Chris is saying, in part because the prep and the design part, ahead of time is the thinking through part. And you know that you really need to get that, you know, clarity on the other side of complexity that we sometimes say in order to be able to be present in the room and in service in the room of the people in the room, not in service of the ideas that you want them to know and therefore agree with. Right. That's very, very different. And I think that there is a lot still of discomfort, and I think not getting easier as Chris and I talked about reconnecting, about just that the ambiguity and the complexity has actually increased since we've written the book, not less. We don't excel our way through that ambiguity. We don't data our ambiguity. Right. We have to be emotional beings through that ambiguity. And that gets to that training part that we're just not often prepared to practice. Right. So Chris and working with his clients, I imagine, is as much about. Has to be empathetic to. Like, why? Why is it so hard to let go of that overstuffed slide as it is about gently nudging to be like, you know, there could be a different way here. And if you don't have the cycles, it's that much more uncomfortable to let go. Right. You only know what you know. And so I think that for people that certainly I've had the pleasure of working with time and time again, you get into rhythm. You're like, oh, okay. I know what we're trying to do here. We're trying to spark joy. We're trying to spark excitement. We're trying to spark a little fear.

Chris Ertel         20:33

Right?

Lisa Kay Solomon           20:33

I mean, there's data in emotion that sometimes is way more powerful than all the words or charts or graphs. So it's interesting. And I'll just say, you know, Chris alluded to this. I don't, I don't design and facilitate that many strategic conversations these days because sort of since the book came out, I've been much more an accidental educator, first at the California College of Arts, in the MBA in design strategy, and for the last six years at the Stanford D school. I do the same process with my classes. Right. I don't lecture at my students. I create experiences that allow them to have those moments of discovery, those moments, aha. The moments where they may not even realize it until later, where they say, wow, that was a whole mindset shift, because if I came at them frontally and just like I imagine in, you know, boardrooms, my goal here is to have you shift your mindset. And I'm going to do it first by this and by this and by this. They're like, mm hmm. But if I instead start off with experiences or have them in conversation or have them, the crux of the class that I teach right now called inventing the future. We're now doing 50 year utopia and dystopia debates that are really designed conversations about the future. They're not meant to be debates. They're meant to be experiential visits to a time that we're not currently yet living in, but a way for them to feel that future so that it informs better decisions today. A totally different application of the principles we talk about in moments of impact, but no less striving for a moment of impact.

Daniel Stillman 22:06

Yeah, well, can you talk a little bit more about that? Because I think the discipline of strategy can look like I forget who. There's a video about the difference between planning and strategy, and I'm blanking out on the who. You may have seen this, Chris.

Chris Ertel         22:25

Yeah, it sounds like Henry Mintzberg. I will dig it up.

Daniel Stillman 22:31

And this idea of planning being like, here's the things that I want to have happen, and this is how we're going to execute on a plan versus strategy. It's really conflated with what we're going to do versus what kind of future we want to create or what kind of futures we even think are possible. And it's a very, I would think that that's an opening and exploring versus a closing conversation. So in your. And I think this is a question for both of you, but Lisa, I was hoping you could just, like, double stitch on this idea of what strategy really is to you and your in your conception now, because it's not planning.

Lisa Kay Solomon           23:11

No, it's not planning. It's very. And I will say, full disclosure, I don't do that much strategy work. You know, work with my students, certainly not the way Chris does. And Chris is really has taught me so much about strategy, about, you know, how strategy has evolved within organizations. For me, what I'm helping my students do, and I have students of all ages, you know, from freshmen through executives. Right. I work in the executive boot camps and professional learning programs. It's helping change their capacities as leaders to realize that we're taught. Certainly when I got an MBA many years ago, that strategy lives in frameworks like Porter's five forces, or if you're a marketer, the four P's, or even if you're a chief finance officer, the strategy lives in the spreadsheets. Strategy is as much about the conversation, which means that you have to be in a learning mode all of the time. That doesn't mean you are groundless, that you don't have a direction that you're heading towards with clarity and rationale. But I think that this idea that we create a strategic plan for three to five years, and we spend a lot of time and a lot of money and a lot of energy and often consultants to create it, is the pathway forward when again, the future's coming at you faster and faster. I think it sets you up to be on the back foot, to be diplomatic, first of all, versus surprised in the wrong way.

Daniel Stillman 24:43

And if you were less diplomatic, how would you put it?

Lisa Kay Solomon           24:45

Yeah, I mean, that you just feel. You just feel like you're playing whack a mole, that you're always behind, you know, versus, you know, coming up with a point of view about. About where. Where you think that you can, that you want to play, where what you think you know, the value you can create, what differentiates you from others in the market, you know, how you're going to have relationships with your customer in sustainable ways, how you're going to do that, you know, I think it's as much about a business model question these days as it is about, you know, your strategic vision, but that you're building in a capability to constantly be touching the future in constructive ways, that you are recognizing that this is in some ways a prototype of the present that has to constantly be fed through a learning lens about looking at how the future is unfolding and why, and that those are teachable and learnable disciplines as much as it was to help you create that spreadsheet to begin with. So I think the repetition that I keep saying with my students about, hey, look, how do we build anticipatory skills, how do we challenge assumptions? How do we look at change over time? How do we learn to spot signals, not so that it's one and done in a strategic planning, but that that's always available to them as they're navigating new complexities, as they're trying to build ideas to life.

Daniel Stillman 26:07

Chris, do you want to say a little bit more about strategy from your perspective?

Chris Ertel         26:12

Well its interesting. When we wrote the book we commented that strategy departments had been in large companies had been shrinking over time, and there was this evolution towards what I call small s strategy. So small s strategies, everybody needs to be strategic, but nobodys doing, or very few people are doing big s strategy. And I think that trend has by and large accelerated within the large business environment. That is, most business markets are oligopolistic in nature. Theres a small number of very large players, and then you have startups and theres an ecosystem and so forth. So a lot of the work that we dont do, a lot of corporate strategy at the super high level we do some, but it is more at the greenhouse, I should say. The firm itself has a strategy practice. So im more to our experience, we do a lot of just small s strategy means like like talent strategy for an IT function over the next five years, because you're hiring people and the people you're hiring are going to be with you five or ten years from now, a lot of them, and you don't know what skills you're going to need in five or ten years. So it's that kind of thing. But I think strategy in the kind of very open ended sense is a pure strategy in the way the strategists think about it, exists a bit more in the domain of the startups and the smaller firms, and it's like the three of us, our degrees of freedom are enormous as an individual, large companies have a more established playing field and even though the uncertainty is very, very high, it's all about, and his strategy is all about making choices at the end of the day, and you're making choices within, it's not within a portarian kind of framework where you can analyze your way through, because uncertainty is so much higher today than it was in the eighties, but it's also not like, you know, like just for example for a software company to go into products, right, is a non trivial lift. That is a massive, massive lift and it's very, it usually doesn't work. So then.

Lisa Kay Solomon           28:20

Yeah and yeah I could agree. So a couple things. One is Chris I got to give him full credit for this. Has this great quote in the book where he talks about where, you know, strategy used to be played like chess. Now it's much more like a fast paced hockey game. You know, where the puck is all over, and, you know, and then I think about it in the context of what I'm trying to teach my students, hockey metaphor of the great Wayne Gretzky quote of, you know, skating to where the puck is going to be, you know, and I love that as just a metaphor for, like, hey, how do you get ahead of it? But then when you pause and you're like, wait a minute, we're not Wayne Gretzky. I don't even know how to skate. I don't even understand the rules of Hawkeye. You know, you really got to break it down to be like, okay, how do we look at the trajectories with the information that we have now? And how do we learn skills around applied imagination or experiencing the future in different ways? And, you know, I want to say one of the conversations that we used to design at GBN were these learning journeys, right? They weren't done in a traditional way. When we think about conversations where you go into a boardroom and talk about important stuff, you say, let's go on a journey to learn together. Because when we are experiencing things proximately and we're having conversations in different, intimate ways, again, that piques our learning in very different ways. So I think this idea of strategy being one, first and foremost, of peripheral learning, that you can then come back to a point of view that you had to check in. Like, are these things still valid, yes or no? Again, episodic process that lives at a certain branch and stays there. And I will say also that the connection between strategy and innovation is so high, given the fact that things are moving faster, I'm not sure you can really separate those as well.

Daniel Stillman 30:12

I feel like we're coming back around to this question of learning versus knowing and the value. And I see, in a way, at least, the value that you've been living for the last ten years is around in that learning space, like, more explicitly. But, Chris, it feels like creating conversational spaces where a group of people can learn together is so valuable because why are we coming together if we know something?

Chris Ertel         30:44

It's actually my main orientation to the work that we do. I'm a junkie on learning theories. I'm always consuming learning theory, and it, you know, created. There was a really nice book, humor. Humor, seriously, by a former colleague of mine, Naomi Bagdonis, Jennifer Eckert at the Stanford Business School. And the appreciation for the role of levity. Right. Because a lot of creating the environment for learning for me is about you're always juggling structure and anti structure and also making people comfortable and uncomfortable, like in different doses. And you design it and then you facilitate it and you have a theory in the design of here we're going to really make them work hard here, we're going to give them a break, give them some fun. Because first thing from learning theory is you don't learn anything unless you struggle. Like struggle is required for learning. And, you know, an experience where you're sitting there taking in presentations, it's not a learning experience, as we've said, but neither is one where everybody's happy the whole time. Like, you actually need to throw off some sparks. And the way that you make the throwing off of sparks, you need some conflict in these conversations. And the way to make that palatable is to have some fun around it, too. You need to create, I'm not going to say safe space because I hate that term.

Daniel Stillman 32:14

You hate that term?

Chris Ertel         32:15

I hate that term. I'll see why in a second. But you need to create an environment where people are willing and able to open up, be a little looser, a little freer, and be a little edgier, too, frankly. And I don't use safe space as a facilitator. I will explain that because I can't provide that. I cannot guarantee that. If you're in a different organizational context and I'm your facilitator, I can create a learning environment. I can create a positive environment, create a thoughtful environment. If somebody says something in the meaning that's going to undermine their own career, I got no, I can't protect them. Right. So that's why I don't tell people I'm giving them a safe space, because it's not true. Yeah, the leaders can contend in the way they show up and in the way they express vulnerability. They can create a safe space and I can encourage them to do so. But I have no standing in that.

Daniel Stillman 33:11

That's fair. That's fair. Lisa, you're nodding. Say more.

Lisa Kay Solomon           33:15

Well, I am. I mean, you know, having the last six years of being in academia and creating learning environments is not obvious. You know, it's like I've really had to double down on the design aspect of the kind of classroom I want to create, the kind of culture I want to create, how I bring up topics. I so appreciate Chris's point. About how do I bring in productive struggle in a time, particularly when our young people are feeling so vulnerable and unhealed? I think still from the pandemic, worried about their future. So how do I both hold them accountable for their own learning and meet them in a place where they will rise to the occasion? And I'll just give you one new change I made this year that I'm going delighted with. Even after coming back from the pandemic, I found that students weren't really back. You know, they were coming in late. They were, they were masked. They were really engaged. And we're pretty high energy class. I mean. I mean, we really bring it. I teach with Drew Wendy. He's one of the foremost experts on bioengineering. And we're very vested and still, we just weren't getting it back. It was almost a nervousness to participate. One of my colleagues calls it a crisis of enthusiasm, which I think is nervousness. And so this year, we're lucky we're oversubscribed in our class, and we said, okay, in order for you to get into class, write a letter to your future self about how you got an a. Be specific. What did you hold yourself accountable for? Now, notice the design element. Right? What was I trying to get? I was trying to get them to articulate what they wanted at the experience, not what I was going to deliver to them, because I also think students on the whole are like, feed me, give me. You do this, I'm going to create the conditions. But in a class like inventing the future where there are no problem sets, it is up to you to take advantage of everything that we are doing. So I wanted them to really put themselves in the shoes of their future self and say, how did you do your future self a solid? What did you get out of this? It's made huge, huge difference in how the students are showing up just by that design choice. That was super, super intentional. And I'll bring it back. Midway through the quarter, I said, okay, go. Go back to your letter. How you doing? Again, not me being the homeroom murmur, like, you know, you came late five times. That's not my role. Right, your role. Guess what? My job here, your job is not to get an a. Your job is to practice for when you go and work for Chris or you work with. How do you want to practice? How you show up as a learner and a contributor. So, anyway, all of this is to say, I think, going back to moments of impact for me, I keep learning about how to take those principles, the core principles we talked about, and bring them to fruition in exciting and new ways. How do we, said, define the purpose building, understanding, or shaping options? How do we engage multiple perspectives in different ways, both perspectives in the room and perspectives, perspectives that need to be represented. How do we frame the issue? Such an important thing, particularly, as Chris said, to add a little bit of struggle, but not so much that people are completely overwhelmed, that they don't engage at all. How do we make design choices about the environments, and how do we make it an experience? Those are pedagogy for learning environments as much as they are corporate environments. I just find that endlessly exciting.

Chris Ertel         36:56

Wow, that was awesome. And it does tie back to this, a great TED talk by Daniel Kahneman on the difference between the experiencing self and the remembering self. And I go back to that one a lot because he talks about like a vacation in Hawaii, which done a number of times, and it's very pleasant, right? And you can do one week or you can do two weeks. And the things that you would remember from the second week of a vacation in Hawaii, probably pretty limited. If you're sitting on the beach, going for a swim, occasionally reading some novels, having some white ties, what have you. The second week and the first week, it kind of all mushes together into one very pleasant experience, but not necessarily a super memorable one. Right. And the vacations we remember are the ones where something surprising happened, where you missed a flight and you wound up somewhere you didn't expect to be. And it actually wound up being pretty cool and all that kind of stuff. And the workshops that we lead are similar. It's actually not that hard to deliver a pleasant experience, to have people feel good, if you know what you're doing, people feel good to have them feel like they've done something. But the reason it's called moments of impact and not moments of pleasant experiences is that impact is hard. Impact is really hard, and impact requires, it requires that things be memorable. So, I mean, I ask people, I do the thought experiment, like the last big meeting, you were at a workshop that lasted half a day or a day or more. Tell me, when was it? And tell me three things that came out of that. If it's more than a month ago, it's tough sledding, man. They're often not going to call up much. So that's what we're up against. The human memory is ruthlessly selective, and if you don't get people's attention, you don't activate them and really make them struggle in a good way, but then also let them, give them the recovery period and the things around it that make that palatable. It's very hard to get in there to make it stick.

Daniel Stillman 39:00

Yeah. So when we talk about your obsession with learning theories, what is the matroyshka dal underneath? That is understanding human psychology to be able to obviously manipulate it. When I look at the core principles from the book, and one of the first diagrams in the book, which Lisa danced through, define your purpose, engage multiple perspectives, frame the issues, set the scene, and make it an experience. Well, one at least. It's very clear that you're still using that in your context. And, Chris, what I just heard you say is adding sort of in parentheses, make it an experience, but probably an intense or challenging one, which might be edgy for some people. So I guess one of my questions is going back to my current acts that I'm grinding is when, in this skill that we don't teach often enough of being not just a facilitative leader, but a conversation design leader seems to imply the willingness to create discomfort and also to give away power.

Lisa Kay Solomon           40:13

That last one is huge. I'm just going to hop on there, you know, I mean, you had asked earlier, why isn't this advanced more? Why don't more people do it? It requires a huge amount of generosity, of service, of invisible labor, of the thinking and the doing that rarely gets recognized. And that means giving away power. Right. Like, most leaders get up there and say, okay, let me tell you what I prepared for you versus I've got a question, and it's going to take everybody here to help us think through. It's why? And it's still one of my favorite opening anecdotes of the book. And, Chris, you get it. I still get it. Like, every week where it's like I get a call and someone's like, hey, so listen, we have this really important board meeting coming up. It's next week. We have everybody flying in. We have the venue. You know, we have everything planned, but I just need some work on the agenda. And why is that the last thing you're thinking about, or I just need you to facilitate it? No, no, it's chewing. You know, you need. That's the first thing you need to be thinking about. Right. And you need to be thinking about it in a much bigger context. You need to be thinking about the organization or the group that it's being a part of, for the individuals that are coming together, for how the small choices that you're going to make are going to ladder up to people getting comfortable enough to be uncomfortable, but not feel put upon at a personal level, but feel motivated. It's all these tensions that you're managing are just critical to that. That is the design piece. That's the piece that takes lot of time to develop comfort with and even, you know, mastery towards and still learning. And you're still learning. And it will say this. I love it. Chris, here's our moment of tension. I will disagree with you slightly, and maybe it's just from my standpoint that, you know, when I think about my classes, because I'm like, wait a minute. Have I not made them struggle enough? I also power in the joy. Like, the other part is helping people. And I know. I know you feel that way, too, but, like, a big part of us is, like, my students, that they're capable of so much more than they even realized, and that also has an emotional zing that is very memorable. And so I can go more into that, but I think the core part is the emotion part. That is both the struggle of jarring that was hard and like, wow, I didn't know what we were capable of. It. Those are the things that leave people wanting more, and they often don't happen serendipitously.

Chris Ertel         42:43

Right.

Lisa Kay Solomon           42:44

That you have to kind of create the triggers, the nudges, the conditions, the moments where people are like, whoa, we all just experienced something together. Let's, you know, let's do that more.

Chris Ertel         42:55

No. And you're going to have to find something else for us to disagree on, Lisa, because that's. That's not going to cut it. We have a slightly different balance on this, probably, but. But we're in violent agreement on the general concept, which is you can't learn without struggle. And struggle by itself is not fun, people. You have to balance it off with, you know, Naomi's work, with the humor, seriously, the levity, but also the aspirational aspect that you hit on there. I also think there's, like. I think this. So the tension of, you know, structure, anti structure, you know, comfort, discomfort. You have one theory about that in your design, and even as a very experienced designer, very experienced facilitator, having it on paper and then having the humans in the room, you know, even if you've talked with them ahead of time, everything else, stuff happens, right? So there's. There's the balancing act that you've accomplished in your beautiful design on paper, and then you're in a room and real people show up and you gotta course correct. You gotta, like, oh, my God, we're like, I've taken them too far down. I gotta lift it back up again, or. Or there's too much happy talk going on. I've actually got to introduce more conflict, more. More struggle here. So that, to me, is the art of it and the bio feel of it. And when you ask, like, facilitative leadership, like, I actually think more people out there, in my experience, aspire to facilitate leadership than accomplish it. And a lot of the reason isn't mindset is part of it, but a big part of it is capability. Because what I, the balancing act I just described is very, very hard. If you're actually going to go into a room as a leader and open it up and say, we care what everybody thinks, have at it. Let's all throw our best ideas in the pot and really have at this, knowing that most of the ideas aren't going to get taken up. Right. And that's not always going to feel good and da da da. Right. And how are you going to synthesize, like, as a leader? You've got to synthesize the group perspective, decide on a path forward, and communicate it in a way that makes everybody feel genuinely feel heard and respected and as a contributor to the process, even if their ideas weren't taken up and doing that. Rely is a level of communication skills and authenticity that is not ubiquitous. Yeah.

Lisa Kay Solomon           45:20

And I just want to say that practice that, like, synthesizing, practice that, like, you know, again, we're talking about how. How this craft is really interdisciplinary. That's a whole, that's a whole set of skills of pattern recognition and signal identifying and being able to synthesize and communicate, that's one. Then they're, like, holding steady when things are falling apart. That's a whole other thing, right? Like improvisers and skydivers and, you know, like, and I work a lot with athletes in particular. Right. And one of the reasons why I love working with athletes is because they have so much practice at being uncomfortable at pushing themselves. And so, anyway, I just really want to highlight that. It's exciting when you realize that, again, these things that you can practice, they aren't just, like, people good in front of the room. People aren't. But it does take dedication. It's not like, oh, I just took a certification in meeting design and I'm done. And so, you know, but again, it's endlessly curious. It kind of reminds me one of my favorite. I just briefly mentioned improv. One of my favorite quotes on improv comes from Keith Johnstone that I think is relevant, Daniel, to a lot of what you're kind of poking at where he says the people that say no are rewarded by the safety they obtain, and the people that say yes are rewarded by the adventure that they have. There are more people that say no than yes, but you can learn to say yes. And I think it's done over time. Right. So take it out more broadly. Most people, I think, you know, look, meetings happen every day. Conversations have every day. We're not talking about some niche thing that doesn't happen. We're talking about stuff that happens all the time. But it's mostly designed around that first bucket of like, what do we know to be true? You know, how do we get to the safe place? I was taught to run meetings on time and this way and this way versus the like, hey, I'm going to let emotion in the room. I'm going to design. I'm going to think much more like a service provider than I am a strategic decision maker. So I think that there's a lot more room. And again, what gets me up every day is that the world is demanding that more of us learn these skills because, you know, I'm sorry, I know, I know that, you know, language learning model AI are very powerful. No math for this VUCA world. No.

Chris Ertel         47:41

True. Getting all the people in the world.

Daniel Stillman 47:42

In the room is the most important.

Lisa Kay Solomon           47:43

Part and humans can abdicate the responsibility there. But I don't think it's like do the thing from yesterday more, I think.

Daniel Stillman 47:51

So. One thing I'm hearing. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead, Chris.

Chris Ertel         47:54

I want to circle back quickly to what Lisa said about giving away power because there is, I have a nuance to that which is, yes, you're giving away power if you invite everybody in and say, help us solve this problem. But you are giving away some power to gain influence. So it's interesting when you're not a leader, you're trying to build influence to gain power. When you are a leader, you actually need to give away some of your power to gain influence because it's easy. You have the power to have the authority to make a decision, but you may not have the influence to have people follow through on it, what's called buy in. And so I find that edge kind of interesting to explore. One book I'll cite on this topic that I think is just super valuable is Doctor Keltner's the power paradox. It's just wonderful. He runs the greater good science center at UC Berkeley. And fascinating book about how power evolves with, with different roles in an organization. It's, it's genius.

Lisa Kay Solomon           48:54

I'll just quickly build on that. My favorite quote comes from David Butler on this topic, who used to be the chief design officer for Koch. And he said, you know, when you, when you're trying to, like, bring about these emergent strategies and these new ideas, he says, go for buy in, not credit. And I think, you know, when these conversations go well, more people are bought in. And you need those people to then bring the, as Chris said, the idea on paper to life. And just last week, I had Ari Popper as a guest in my class. He runs Sci Futures, which is all about using science fiction to help organizations imagine a whole new range of possibilities. And we were talking about this notion of buy in and how critical that is because, you know, particularly when, when you surface an idea that's ambitious and does not have best practices because it's new and novel. Right. You need that buy in because that buy in is going to, is going to be the thing that keeps people moving forward when the answer isn't readily apparent or you haven't yet reached your goal. I know we're running out of time, but I have to.

Daniel Stillman 49:58

Oh my God, we're getting so close. I feel like we're building up ahead of steam.

Lisa Kay Solomon           50:03

I know.

Daniel Stillman 50:04

2 hours with you guys.

Lisa Kay Solomon           50:05

Exactly. I've seen one more thing that really holds the test of time. In fact, more so. And those are the last two chapters of the book, which I think then comes back to what Chris was just saying about if you give up individual power, what you're getting is organizational power and capability. So the second, the last chapter is overcoming the yeah buts. And just a quick aside, when I first started talking about the book, I was like, I would go through all the principles as I do it, and I would find I actually probably wasn't actually doing the principles in the book because people like, that's so nice. But then when I started leading my presentations with the chapter called overcoming the yeah buts, as in, yeah, that's a great idea, but that would never happen here. And I would sort of open up the presentation. Like, how many people had this experience also never was like, yes, that's me. And it creates to the tensions that Chris started it. To the tensions Chris started off with is that every organization is battling the fact that we're all plagued by short termism.

Chris Ertel         50:59

Right.

Lisa Kay Solomon           50:59

It's hard to do these big conversations when you have people going, what did you produce this quarter? And did you hit your KPI's? So this near termism, this other idea that politics is very much in play, that people are protective of their budgets and the thing that they've invested in. And the third is the capability gap. Right. And when you have these big adaptive challenges come in, they hit these. Yeah. Butts, and they get, you know, it's rare that they get out, but if more people learn the art of conversations the way we're talking about it and all of us are about, then they can sort of frame it with a future orientation. They can create environments that are not ones but are sort of collaborative and constructive and generative, and you orient around a purpose that keeps people going even when things are hard. And so for me, I think of this again, not just when there's an interesting or challenging or high intensity or high uncertain challenge that's come this way, but how does it, getting back to what we were talking about earlier, how does it become a learning component of your culture?

Daniel Stillman 52:04

Yeah, and as we said, these are high stakes conversations when they come up. And it takes practice to master these skills, which is why, presumably, people bring in the pros sometimes, Chris, and we're at time, but I'm wondering, this is maybe a dangerous question to ask you, but what are the pros and cons of developing the skill yourself and rolling your own for everyone who's listening, who's got one of these coming up versus bringing in a team who is an expert at this?

Chris Ertel         52:42

Yeah. Look, any, like, specialized skill, when the situation is important enough, it's good to bring in folks who have done it a lot more times than you have. I we're going through searching for a college for our only daughter, and we're hiring a coach because this person has been through the process a couple hundred times, and we're going through it for the first and only time.

Daniel Stillman 53:07

You're right. You don't get a second chance at this.

Chris Ertel         53:10

Just going to add value. Yeah. And we're excited about that. That said, I mean, I wouldn't let folks off the hook and say, don't develop this skill because you can always hire it, because the people I know who've been trained in this and got really good at it and moved on to other jobs that were not about this all day, every day. They do see it as a superpower. Like, it's every meeting you go to. You can find a way to use some of these skills. And so I think what's a little bit of a challenge for people is to know, where can I get, where can I do the 80 20 rule on adding this to my toolkit. And I think even just starting with having a base course and facilitation, I see. I have a hard time understanding why any professional who works with other professionals, professionals wouldn't benefit from a three day, couple day course in basic facilitation. I think that's really helpful. That's the most obvious kind of general thing I would encourage most people to do if they can find the time and budget for it.

Daniel Stillman 54:14

I'm also willing to guess that.

Chris Ertel         54:15

What's up?

Daniel Stillman 54:16

Sorry.

Lisa Kay Solomon           54:16

I was going to say I'm still hopeful that every business school is going to have math camp and facilitation camp before they start.

Daniel Stillman 54:22

I think that's, and I'm willing to bet, Chris, because you talked about the challenge of running through a plan and having someone get it, and I'm willing to bet that your favorite clients are the ones who are able to think through it with you and be thought partners, where the design process really becomes collaborative.

Chris Ertel         54:44

It's certainly easier then, but you have to bring a lot of folks along for the ride. So my favorite clients are often not the ones that I think they're going to be and, you know, vice versa. So I. I don't know. I've had a lot of folks who are eager learners, who don't have the capability now, but are eager learners and so forth. It's. Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 55:07

Well, we have burned through our time extremely rapidly. I don't want to keep you past time because as a facilitator, I like to respect the agenda. But is there anything I haven't asked you that I should ask you or any parting thought you'd like to say before we close our time together? And I thank you profusely for your generous time and presence and sharing of your knowledge and wisdom.

Chris Ertel         55:31

I have a question for Lisa. When I think about the future of strategic conversations, like, we touched on a little, and I'm in violent agreement that, like, you know, it's going to enable the content better, but it's not going to. The human factor ain't moving fast. But what, the biggest question mark, I think, in the human factor is generational change. And I tend to poo poo generational change. As a demographer, like we always hear, the next generation is different. They're going to be so much better and wiser, and they're going to solve all these problems that we've left them. But, you know, Lisa, talk me down from the cliff. You work with these guys every day. Where's the next generation going to take us in all this.

Lisa Kay Solomon           56:21

Great question. Thank you for that. The next generation gives me huge hope. There are moments where I've just blown away by how they have taken their experience of being digital natives to the next level, which I do think is a game changer on generational change. I do think this generation is different because of that. So they do give me great hope in so many ways, and equally, they give me great worry. Great worry, because the kinds of issues that they're facing and experiencing and seeing on a spigot that they can't turn off, voices that are honed with phds and algorithms that get to the very core sense of who they are. So I see many, many that are struggling deeply. So I don't know. But there is enough of a kind of inspirational hope that I see whether it's students of mine that put on, just as an example, a thousand person fashion show in Memorial church at Stanford based on their own agency. And, you know, it's so much more than a fashion show. It was actually probably the most important community building thing that happened in the last eight months, where college campuses are getting ripped apart. So they still give me hope. As you know, I do a lot of civic work, particularly with student athletes, and helping them use their voice for helping raise all boats. So there's those moments, and then there's equal moments where I see that the destruction is happening way faster than we can repair. So both are true. But I will close and say, Daniel, a huge thank you, not only for having us on and giving us a chance to celebrate ten years of moments of impact, but for all the work that you're doing in elevating why conversations are the strategy and how we can all get better at them. So, so grateful for this opportunity, and, Chris, as always, to learn from and with you. Got more books to read. Got more things to try.

Chris Ertel         58:20

Amen to that. Love the pot. Love the pod, Daniel, and really appreciate your having us today.

Daniel Stillman 58:26

Thank you so much, y'all. Here's to another ten years of moments of impact. If you haven't read it, everyone, it's a cracker. All right, well, we're definitely over time. So I feel like I should call scene.

The Problem with Change and the Power of Stability, Humanity and Praise

My guest today is Ashley Goodall, a leadership expert who has spent his career exploring large organizations from the inside, most recently as an executive at Cisco. He is the co-author of Nine Lies About Work, which was selected as the best management book of 2019 by Strategy + Business and as one of Amazon’s best business and leadership books of 2019. It is an awesome book - highly recommended. If, after listening to this conversation you want to hear more (and I think you will!), take a listen to him and his co-author, Marcus Buckingham, talking on the HBR Idea Cast about lie #5 - the idea that people need feedback - and how most managers think about giving feedback in an utterly wrong way - which is also an idea we dive into later in our conversation today.

Prior to Cisco, Ashley spent fourteen years at Deloitte as a consultant and as the Chief Learning Officer for Leadership and Professional development. 

His book, "The Problem with Change: and the Essential Nature of Human Performance" is about what we might call lie number 10: the idea that change is good and that leaders must lead change in order to be good leaders. Wholesale belief in this lie has created what Ashley calls  “Life in the Blender” - driven by what I’ve heard some folks refer to as “The Reorg of the Day”.

I love love love the musical analogies Ashley uses to describe leadership - not as the lead guitar or first violin, but as the Ground Bass - the principal structural element of a musical piece. The Leader can help teams navigate change by playing a backbeat of stability and consistency, supporting a range of free expression and variation. Find a link to Pachelbel's Canon here and listen to the Goldberg variations here (which he mentions in the extended version of the analogy, later on in the conversation).

What is that Ground Bass? For Ashley it’s about helping people feel seen, connected, celebrated and clear on the story of the meaning of their contributions to the work. 

This perspective aligns very well with the message Bree Larson offered here some years back. Bree is a Partner at SYPartners and shared her framework around the challenges of designing organizational change - that most change can easily result in one or more of the Six Types of Loss she identified:

Loss of Control
Loss of Pride
Loss of Narrative
Loss of Time
Loss of Competence
Loss of Familiarity 

All of which Ashley suggests leaders can deflect or reduce through 9 key leadership skills that he outlines in depth in his book:

1. Make space 

2. Forge undeniable competence 

3. Share secrets 

4. Be predictable 

5. Speak real words 

6. Honor ritual 

7. Focus most on teams

8. Radicalize HR 

9. Pave the way

Prior to releasing the book, Ashley wrote a New York Times Op-Ed piece which is a blockbuster and is an even more succinct, poignant and straight-on condemnation of modern corporate leadership - it is also highly worth reading. This book feels a bit like a Burn Book - Ashley is pointing out fundamental misconceptions at the heart of corporate life in a direct and unvarnished manner - in the hope that some leaders will listen and start doing things differently - Leading in a way that takes into account how humans really are and what we really need to thrive at work.

Ashley is very clear: companies need to look beyond wellness initiatives and corporate cheerleading and shift their focus to the fundamental environment of daily work.

The effects of a corporate life caught in constant change are more than clear to anyone who’s been through it: uncertainty, a lack of control, a sense of unbelonging and of displacement, and a loss of meaning

As Goodall says, “The ultimate job of leadership is not disruption and it is not to create change; it is to create a platform for human contribution, to create the conditions in which people can do the best work of their lives.” 

Also - do listen for an extended exchange around minute 40 where we talk about the power of praise and the Paul Hollywood handshake - if you’re not a Great British Bake off fan, there’s still time to watch a few episodes to get in the mood - or at least witness the effect of the Hollywood Handshake on Friends star David Schwimmer here.

Links, Quotes, Notes, and Resources

Find a link to Pachelbel's Canon here and listen to the Goldberg variations here.

Ashley wrote a New York Times Op-Ed which is a blockbuster

Take a listen to Ashley and his co-author, Marcus Buckingham, talking on the HBR Idea Cast about lie #5 - the idea that people need feedback - and how most managers think about giving feedback utterly wrong.

Canon in D Major by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...)

Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-...

Artist: http://incompetech.com/

Witness the effect of the Hollywood Handshake on Friends star David Schwimmer here.

19:48 Leaders feel that change is their core job - and have no sense of the challenges change creates on the front lines of an organization

The leaders typically saying, either we have no choice, or this is how we should do things, or this is our job. Change, disruption, turn things on their head. A new one of these, a new one of these, a different one of these, reinvent this. Look at this again. And people on the front lines going, this makes my life really hard. So I found my way into that idea. And then one of the very first things I did was I invited people to share their stories. And I didn't say, share me your horror stories. I said, just tell me about change at work. I'm here. I'd like to interview people. If you've got a story about change at work, reach out and tell me your story. And firstly, within 24 hours, I was oversubscribed. I had too many people that I had time to talk to. And then when I got through, all the people I had time to talk to, 100% of them had a horror story. Now, two of them also had a happy story. But if you were doing this sort of election polling, you would go, there's a problem here, because a lot of people invited to share their experience without judgment or precondition said, this thing is really, really tough. And it was when I got through all those conversations that I was like, okay, there's a thing here that we need to shine some light on, and we need to talk about more broadly.

33:58 Leaders should provide stability through change for improvement, like a bass line in music

I'm trying to delineate the improvement space as a thing that's different, a subset of the change space. And then the last thing I'm trying to do is to say, if you actually look about at the improvement space, you're going to have to do a couple of things. You're going to have to find out the conditions under which human beings do their best work, because the improvement ain't going to come from the sky, it's going to come from the human beings. And when you look at that, under which conditions do humans do their best work? You find out that whatever you want, the word I've chosen for it is stability. Stability is the foundation of improvement. So now we've come a very long way in a few sort of short bites from change is all good to change. Change isn't all good. Improvement is good. Improvement means we've got to look to the humans. And when we look to the humans, where they do best is most consistently and most frequently is under conditions of stability. So if you want to improve your organization up and to the right, build stability, get really smart about sources of stability for people at work, which, by the way, are also sources of stability for people not at work, because it's all the same people. Yes. So how can a leader provide that kind of stability through as, which is a through line or a backbeat or a bass line? I don't know what the appropriate musical analogy is like that drumbeat of stability through the inevitable change that hopefully is driving improvement. I think the musical and analog I would reach for is probably either a thing called a pascalia, which is a piece of music on a ground bass. So think Pachabel's canon, famously bass line repeats, everything else changes over the top or. Slightly more adventurously, a sort of theme and variation. So think Bach Goldberg variations, which is 90 minutes of gorgeous, 32 variations or so on one theme, and the theme is there all the way through. You never leave the theme. It's a stable, eternal presence. But what it allows you to do, this is the interesting thing. What it allows you to do is invent. What the Pachelbel ground base allows Pachelbel to do is invent figurations and different variations, different instrumentations, different rhythms that sit on some sort of organizing gravitational force sonically so that everyone knows where they are. Take that away. Then all the invention doesn't actually make any sense. It doesn't go anywhere. It feels very life in the blender. I suppose we should have. We could do an audio podcast, and we could now play people cannon with the bass line turned off, and you'd sort of get that there's something going on, but it's also weird. And then you play the Goldberg box, Goldberg variations without playing the aria at the beginning and without any of that harmonic consistency all the way through, and you'd go, this is noise. Yes.

39:45 Teams are important for stability, showcasing abilities, and social support

We think of organizations as things, as sort of uniform, homogenistic things. But in fact, again, if you spend any time inside an organization and keep your eyes open, it strikes you pretty quickly that most of the people in the organization don't know most of the other people in the organization. It's like you don't know if you live in a town of any size, you don't know most of the people in the town. You know, a tiny little subset, but you're very comfortable going, my town is like this, so you can refer to the entity of your town without actually, you know, here I am in Montclair, New Jersey, what, 30,000 people, 40,000 people. Weirdly, I don't know them all, but I've got a point of view on Montclair. But actually, if you push me, I'd have to admit that my point of view is the few people I know here. So the local, the small, the intimate is massively and predominantly significant in our experience of the world. And we're very comfortable extrapolating from that to what the other things are like. But if you want to change our experience of the other things, you have to change our experience of the local first, which is to say, in corporate terms, if you get the teams right, you've built a good company. If you don't get the teams right, good luck, because there's no company there without the teams. Yes, you've got to live in the teams. And the insight I had, and it felt like an insight when I was working on this book, was that teams are a wonderful source of stability. And this is probably another reason that they are so important to us, to we humans, and to work and to organizations, because teams are, you know, if you've been on a team for any amount of time, people know what you're good at. So they are a place to showcase your ability, which is very stabilizing, gives you agency, reduces uncertainty. People give you social support, people you can gossip about things. You get a lovely sense of belonging from a team. You get. The ability to see that you've had an impact in the world because there are people around you who can say, hey, that thing you did was really good, or that really landed or someone told me about. So all of these things have a very natural home on teams, but not on day one of a team, on month three, maybe, or month six or a year to figure out in a time to build that right. And so if you shuffle all the teams every six months, none of the teams are ever going to figure out all of the beautiful things that teams can do for humans. And therefore, all the humans are going to be adrift most of the time, which is, of

40:10 Praising with human specificity is more effective than conventional (ie negative or "constructive") feedback

Daniel Stillman There's another question I wanted to dig at, which is sort of like how we recognize and reward people. There was a story you talked about, about forging undeniable competence, that the Paul Hollywood handshake, which I thought was a really beautiful, I feel like praise. We think we people need feedback, but this is a sort of a leadership skill that I'm seeing, is something that people could be thinking about differently. People don't need feedback. They need to be praised for what they're doing really, really well. Many, many years ago, one of the first executive coaches I worked with defined leadership as the ability, the quality of recognizing specificity in others to not just say, hey, good job, Ashley. Hey, nice book. Right. It's not the same thing as saying, this passage here is quite musical and. And hard hitting. It's specific and powerful. Praise. Yes.

Ashley Goodall 40:30

And it's attached in some way. And so the idea, though, you know, for those who don't watch the great British Bake off, and they're missing some.

Daniel Stillman 40:39

Very relaxing, wholesome television.

Ashley Goodall 40:42

What's funny is that, you know, just to describe what happens, there are all these bakers. They're all in a tent. It's never been quite clear to me why they are in a tent, because it's in England. So it's going to be either too hot or too rainy or too miserable in the tent. But anyway, they haven't been to tent.

And then the judges go around and judge them, and then one of these judges, guy named Paul Hollywood, he's a very good baker, and if he sees something that he loves, he stops and there's a big long pause. And if you've seen the show before, you sort of know what might be coming and you're like, is it? Is it? Is it? Is it? Is it? And then he just smiles and he stretches his hand out and shakes somebody's hand. And it's so. It's goosebump inducing every single time you see it. None ever times you get it. No one's ever like, well, you should have moved that thing or do this differently, or, why did you use the word arm a lot? It's never. So this is the sum frisson of impact and import and beauty and respect and all rolled up in one, but it's also pointed at a moment of excellence, not pointed at a moment of deficit.

Daniel Stillman 42:53

Yes.

Ashley Goodall 42:54

And I think you can unwind that a little bit and go, well, our idea that everybody needs feedback the whole time in order to get better is based in part on an erroneous assumption about what humans are motivated by and what we're like. Most people actually want to do a decent job and enjoy doing a better job. So most of us aren't like, sitting around going, listen, I suck at this, but that's fine by me. That's not a very human no stay. And it follows that, actually what we're really crying out for is somebody to say, this is the thing you're aiming for. This is the top of the mountain, this is daylight. This is excellence. Let me help you see that. And then you're going to have all sorts of ideas about how you could attain that. But the most helpful thing we can do for others in building their own confidence, which is, back to the point, a source of great stability.But the thing that I want most in pointing myself towards that is a beautifully clear definition of what excellent looks like from somebody who's sort of qualified to know. I mean, it's interesting. It's Paul Hollywood. He's a really good baker.

Daniel Stillman 45:08

It's not just the blue eyes.

Ashley Goodall 45:10

It's not? No. And it's not random bloke we found wandering outside the tent either. It's actually somebody who's an expert, who's saying, this is really good, and then he'll say a little bit when he shakes the hand about why it's really good and whether it's the flavor or the texture or the appearance. Clearly, I've spent too much time watching the show, though. You get some specificity. Yes, but you must. I always ask myself, I always want to imagine, what does the person on the other end of the handshake think? What's going through their head? And I can only imagine it is. Oh, my God. Yes. Now, how do I do that again? Which is what we want to work. We want people with at work going, how do I do? Great. Again? How do I do that again? How do I do that again? And answering for themselves in an idiosyncratic and emergent and motivated way. What we don't want is a whole bunch of people going, I wish you would knock it off with the criticism, because it's crushing me, and I have to sort through the thicket of how much of it makes sense and how much of it doesn't make sense and how much of it is just, you don't really like me. And how much of it is. You were told you had to give feedback because the HR system makes you give feedback, so you had to make some up. That's not what we. That's not getting us there. Yes. What gets us there is to respect the human need to be good at stuff, and then to help them get there in the simplest way. And the simplest way is to tell people when they did something really good. Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 46:47

Which is surprising, because we do believe this is, you know, we call it a lie about, you know, leadership. This idea that, you know, we must tell people what they're doing wrong, but telling them what they did right. It's really, what's interesting about it is that you mention this in the passage, that it's about the work. We're saying the bake was good, the bottom was, you know, but what the message that gets comes through is I did a good job, I feel good about myself, and I hear from you the sort of stability that that creates because it, in a team, I know that I have this quality and that people can rely on me for it, and that's just really powerful.

Ashley Goodall 47:34

And then because they're doing the relying on me for it, I know I have impact in the world. And so I have a sense of meaning. And, you know, we haven't talked a lot about meaning, but again, meaning is another thing that gets very weird at work because it tends to get translated into our company must have some noble mission that is clearly connected with improving the state of the world and the universe, which is fine, hallelujah. But actually, that's not what meaning means for people on the ground. What meaning means is I know my work makes a difference to some other human in some way that's kind of useful. It's a much humbler and simpler thing. And so if somebody says, hey, good job, if somebody shakes your hand, that's meaning as well. It's not just performance, it's meaning I did a thing. I've had an impact that's enormously.

Daniel Stillman 48:29

Yeah. Shareholder value, let's be clear, shareholder value is not individual meaning. Meaning is person to person. Seeing the impact that your work has, either within the team or within the community.

Ashley Goodall 48:44

Yes, but that's an exercise, not of uplifting oratory or inspiring prose or beautiful video footage of the things that our company did. That's an exercise of connection.

More About Ashley Goodall

Ashley Goodall is a leadership expert who has spent his career exploring large organizations from the inside, most recently as an executive at Cisco. He is the co-author of Nine Lies About Work, which was selected as the best management book of 2019 by Strategy + Business and as one of Amazon’s best business and leadership books of 2019. Prior to Cisco, he spent fourteen years at Deloitte as a consultant and as the Chief Learning Officer for Leadership and Professional development. His book, The Problem with Change publishes May 7, 2024.

A.I. Summary by Grain

The meeting discussed the importance of stability in organizational change and the significance of teams in providing it. Ashley Goodall emphasized involving people in the change process and starting with understanding and honoring existing contributions and structures. The significance of specific praise was also analyzed.

Key Points

• Daniel Stillman reads back a passage from Ashley Goodall's text, highlighting the poetic quality and familiarity of the described organizational challenges, prompting Ashley Goodall to analyze the musical rhythm in the writing. (5:37)

• Ashley Goodall delves into the purpose of companies beyond just economic profit, suggesting that the primary focus should be on enabling people to collaborate effectively rather than solely pursuing financial gains. (9:31)

• Daniel Stillman praises Ashley Goodall for providing a voice to those experiencing organizational change, leading to a discussion about the disconnect between leaders' perceptions of change and the reality faced by employees on the front lines. (11:13)

• Daniel Stillman seeks advice from Ashley Goodall on how leaders can navigate change in a more humane way, leading to a discussion on the distinction between change and improvement, emphasizing the significance of stability for organizational enhancement. (24:43)

• Daniel Stillman and Ashley Goodall delve into the significance of teams in providing stability, showcasing abilities, reducing uncertainty, and fostering a sense of belonging and impact. (32:49)

• Daniel Stillman and Ashley Goodall analyze the significance of specific praise using an example from the Great British Bake Off, contrasting it with traditional feedback methods and highlighting its impact on excellence. (40:30)

• Ashley Goodall suggests that leaders should start with stability by identifying what will not change within the organization before considering improvements, emphasizing the importance of grounding discussions in existing values and rituals. (53:57)

• Ashley Goodall emphasizes the importance of involving people in the change process, starting with understanding and honoring existing contributions and structures before seeking improvement. (56:41)

Full A.I.-generated Transcript

Daniel Stillman 00:01

I will officially welcome you to the conversation factory. I'm very excited because I think this is a wonderfully dangerous topic that we're going to engage in. So thanks for making the time.

Ashley Goodall 00:14

Good to be here.

Daniel Stillman 00:15

Thank you. First of all, congratulations on the New York Times op ed.

Ashley Goodall 00:23

Thank you. There were a lot of comments. I don't know whether you saw. Yeah, there are a lot of comments. Until they stopped allowing comments, which I didn't other times actually ever did. And it wasn't because there was a flame war breaking out in the comments. It was because 900 people had said, I think probably 850 of the 900 people said, yeah, too much change. Too much change. Too hard to be on the receiving end of this stuff. This is the ones that meant the most to me were the people who said, this is what it's like to be inside a large organization. I think one of the things I'm trying to do is to be a witness and bear witness to all of this stuff, so that people just feel that they get the sense that they're seen and understood and not alone, which.

Daniel Stillman 01:16

Is, of course, what life in the blender can feel like. I have a sort of author's question for you, because taking a whole book and turning it into, like, you know, we call it like a tight ten and then. And then shaving it down, it's like that old. I'm sorry for the long letter. I didn't have time to write a short letter. Yes, you wrote. I mean, it's a. It's a. It's a hard hitting type. I mean, it's very well written in it, and it summarizes the message of your book, you know, quite, quite succinctly and quite impactfully. What was that like for you to do? Was it fun? Was it hard? Was it something else?

Ashley Goodall 01:58

It's like all writing is for me. It's hard and fun and rewarding and frustrating, and you finish up with more grey hairs at the end than you had at the beginning. And those all, in my experience, are all necessary parts of the process. It is necessary to simultaneously be super annoyed at your editor for sending yet another round of edits and to be super grateful for your editor because he or she is doing a fantastic job of finding the core thing inside the words that you threw out on the. On the page. That there were many drafts of that piece. Many, many, many, many drafts. And that's sort of the way it goes. And I don't know. As we got north of 20 drafts, I actually started thinking of some of the slide presentations that I'd done in my corporate days or some of the other things that took double digits, drafts. And what drives me nuts about it is it's a really hard process. And if you're honest, you can't deny things get better as a result, until.

Daniel Stillman 03:16

They stop getting better. And that's when you stop.

Ashley Goodall 03:19

At some point, you sort of reached the point of no returns. But I was actually, I actually went back when that piece ran, and I'm like, okay, let me satisfy my curiosity. How good was the first draft? The first draft wasn't very good, so it got a hell of a lot better.

Daniel Stillman 03:41

Yeah. And this is change that you invited. This is a change you participated in. You and your editor have a dialogical relationship that you are. You've brought him into it. It's really the opposite of somebody sending you notes and being like, you know, yeah.

Ashley Goodall 03:58

What's the life in the blender version of writing an article about life in the blender? That's a really interesting question, isn't it?

Daniel Stillman 04:04

Yeah.

Ashley Goodall 04:05

So firstly, you're going about your business, doing some other job, and then from the sky comes this. Please write an article because it's a good idea. We've decided it's a good idea and we're not really going to tell you what it's all about. And then you write something and submit it, and then some other person you never met before in your life goes, well, actually, this got passed around to me, and you need to do it this way. And you're like, I don't. I'm not in control.

Daniel Stillman 04:28

Yeah, not in control.

Ashley Goodall 04:30

So I don't know. You can imagine a sort, fairly easily a sort of nightmarish version.

Daniel Stillman 04:36

I don't have to imagine. I think we've all, everyone who's listening probably has been in that situation. And so I have a document off to the side, and there are some large chunks of your text that I foolishly want to read back to you because they, they are so, they're so tight. And I think we'll summarize to the reader some of, and then I'm hoping you can sort of, like, say yes and to some of them, because I was reading and I was like, life in the blender. The unrelenting uncertainty. I mean, it's like a prose poem. It's great. The unrelenting uncertainty and the upheaval that has become constant features in business life today. A new leader comes in, promptly begins a reorganization, and upends the reporting relationships you're familiar with, or a consultant suggests a new strategy, which takes up everyone's time and attention for months until it's back to business as usual, only with a new mission statement and slideware, or everyone's favorite, a merger is announced and leads to all of these and more.

Ashley Goodall 05:37

So there's the first. It's fascinating to listen to one's own words read back to one. I haven't done that before, actually. I read them out loud, but I read them to me, obviously, and I'm there and I'm, you know, so it's different. The first thing that strikes me is that, or the first thing to sort of unpack about all of that is not a content thing, it's a technique thing, because there is music in that. And I don't know whether you know, but I was trained as a musician. I was a music major in undergraduate, and for the first 20 years of my life was completely convinced I was going to be a classical musician. And to study music is to study rhythm.

Daniel Stillman 06:20

And what was your, what was your instrument?

Ashley Goodall 06:24

Started with the piano, then the violin, then the viola, then the pipe organ, then singing in a choir, then conducting a symphony orchestra. So, you know, I covered a fair bit. Yes. Oh, and I wrote some music as well. And weirdly, I'm not very good at writing music, but I can write prose informed by how a musician thinks.

Daniel Stillman 06:45

Yeah, this is a musical. There's a pacing.

Ashley Goodall 06:47

Much better. Yeah. So in that first sentence, there are lots of unwords or words beginning with you, and they pile up a little bit and then there's a little break, and then you get the word upend, which is actually where all of those words are pointing to. So there's a little bit of that. The other thing that strikes me about the passage that you read is that for anyone who's lived inside an organization, those things are utterly, utterly unremarkable. There is nothing. So what's interesting about the passage, and as we've been talking about, got a lot of attention, is this describing something that everybody already knows, that everybody knows is the reality? Yes. And, you know, I was talking before about all the comments on the article, the 50 or so or 40 or however many who were not, weren't particularly glowing about what I had written, really. They weren't saying, you're wrong. They were saying, you're right, but people need to suck it up. This is life. So the total count of comments that said, it's not like this was, I think, roughly none. Yeah. So there's a, there's a hidden in plain sight about. My point is there's a hidden in plain sightness about all of this. Yes, it's fun to try and describe it artfully and precisely and with clarity, but that is a necessary act towards, or a necessary step towards helping people actually imagine a different way of doing work.

Daniel Stillman 08:28

Yeah, yeah. Well, before we do that, and we. And we would like to, and we need to, I, um. You do talk about the cult, the idea of disruption that is metastasized, the credo of which holds everything must be disrupted all the time. And as you said, people are like, this is the way it be. And in fact, I shared the article with a group of other coaches and consultants I'm on a chain with, and somebody said, yeah, like, I talk about what we call the change fatigue. And they're like, yeah, I've been telling some of my clients about this, and they are saying, this is the job. Grow up. And some people think, like, it is the job of the leaders in an organization to kind of, like, suck up the change and kind of, like, manage the disruption and just keep everything going.

Ashley Goodall 09:18

And so, not far beneath the surface of all of this article, and the book as well, is actually a question of, well, what is the job? And I don't think the job is instigate change every Monday morning and every Tuesday morning as well, and do a little bit more on Wednesday lunchtime, just for giggles. So what is the job? And then the behind that is the question of what's a company for? Now, that's like the great existential question of all business. What's the point of a company? But there is an argument to be made that if all the companies for is economic profit, then that's a slightly weird choice, because a lot of us spend a lot of their time there at work. And you can argue that companies exist to help people do things together that they couldn't do alone. And therefore, the helping people do things together is the point of the company, and the economic viability is the oxygen that it takes to keep that process going. But the point isn't the economic viability. The point isn't the profit. The point is the helping people do things. Yeah, that's not a common argument, but I think it's completely sustainable on the evidence.

Daniel Stillman 10:43

Yes, and I want to talk about the evidence in a moment. I also want to go back to something you said before we hit record, because I think it's a really beautifully said thing of some of the function of this book and the work that you're doing is to bear witness for change, to bear witness to the people who are experiencing this life in the blender, who, who are the on the receiving end of it, not the instigating end of it, and who are being told one must suck it up. And to be told by someone who has been there and done that, this is not the best way to do it, is grounding, normalizing, humanizing. Like, all of the comments on that op ed are like, thanks for saying. Thanks for saying that. What I've been feeling.

Ashley Goodall 11:33

Yes, yes. And some of the most moving ones. Exactly that. Thanks for telling me. I'm not wrong. Essentially, I began writing the book because I began working on all of this stuff because I suddenly realized, I think fairly suddenly realized, that there was a big disconnect in organizations between what the leaders thought change was for and the experience of change every day on the front lines. And I'm sort of drawn, my curiosity is piqued by things in companies that leaders think are great and that everyone else thinks are horrible. And yeah, this probably makes me a very, very annoying person and very hard to hire and a little bit of a thorn in the flesh, but I can't help myself. So this is why I got all interested in performance management and ratings. Because the people at the top of companies are like, it's fantastic to give everybody ratings on a scale, and they're really going to like it and they're.

Daniel Stillman 12:47

Good at it and they can do it.

Ashley Goodall 12:50

The bit about me liking it, no, not so much. Not liking all of this. And then the people at the top like, we should give everybody candid, constructive, critical, whatever feedback that'll. People will love that, won't they?

Daniel Stillman 13:05

They'll be all grow and develop.

Ashley Goodall 13:07

The people are like, no, could you knock it off? With all of the judgment raining down on me from all quarters every day. And this one came from a similar place. The leaders typically saying, either we have no choice, or this is how we should do things, or this is our job. Change, disruption, turn things on the head. A new one of these, a new one of these, different one of these. Reinvent this. Look at this again. And people on the front lines going, this makes my life really hard. So I found my way into that idea. And then one of the very first things I did was I invited people to share their stories. And I didn't say, share me your horror stories. I said, just tell me about change at work. I'm here. I'd like to interview people. If you've got a story about change at work, reach out and tell me your story. And firstly, within 24 hours, I was over subscribed. I had too many people, and I had. That I had time to talk to. And then when I got through all the people I had time to talk to, 100% of them had a horror story. Now, two of them also had a happy story. But if you were doing this sort of election polling, you would go, there's a problem here, because a lot of people invited to share their experience without judgment or precondition said, this thing is really, really tough. And it was when I got through all those conversations that I was like, okay, there's a thing here that we need to shine some light on, and we need to talk about more broadly. Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 14:46

You know, I hadn't really thought about this, but we should mention as a sidebar, you were sort of doing a summary of a couple of elements of nine lies about work, which is a blockbuster book, as you know, and a great title and really drives home. I mean, it's. I love it when a book says, what's on the box? What's in the box is what says on the box. It's like, oh, it's chocolate cornflakes. It's like there's nine lives about work, and inside are indeed nine things that we all think are true about work and that, and are just not.

Ashley Goodall 15:17

That.

Daniel Stillman 15:17

We can't actually review other people. We're reviewing ourselves. There's, you know, where there's hard graders and there's. And they're soft graders. It's like, I don't know how you are.

Ashley Goodall 15:27

Yeah, the words will mean different things as well. So, you know, if I have to grade you on your. On how good of a podcast host you are, then what's the first thing I need to do? I need to construct a standard of what I think a good podcast host is. And it's my standard. It's not.

Daniel Stillman 15:44

I will be sending you a customer satisfaction survey because I know how much you love filling out.

Ashley Goodall 15:49

I love those.

Daniel Stillman 15:49

You love that.

Ashley Goodall 15:50

I'm a big fan. Fan of those of.

Daniel Stillman 15:52

So we could call this book the 10th lie about work. In a sense, this is.

Ashley Goodall 15:57

It had not, the possibility had not escaped me that maybe this is the 10th lie. And then, of course, you're like, well, God, what's the 11th? Is there another one coming? The other funny thing is that in the second part of the book, I suggest a number of principles for how we could do, essentially how we could build stability back into organizations as a sort of countervailing force. All of the changey change stuff. And I wrote it, and then I counted them. And, of course, there are nine. So it's not. I was like, we can't call it nine principles, because then people will think, I can only write lists of nine things, but there are actually nine principles. So there's something I don't know.

Daniel Stillman 16:34

Oh, my God. That's right. A through I are nine things.

Ashley Goodall 16:37

There you go. Don't tell anyone.

Daniel Stillman 16:39

So, I do want to ask you again. This was not on my. So, when I wrote a book which involves nine elements, that is sort of an operating system that drive conversations, if you want to make it different, you can change the cadence, for example. It's a lot. As a musician, you understand this bit of prosody and this bit of cadence and the threads, the place that the conversation happens. And I got feedback from people saying, nine is just too many for a business workbook. People can't remember nine things. It's got to be three, five. Seven is best selling. So, how did you guys get away with nine and make a best selling book? Look at that. Apparently, my reviewers were wrong.

Ashley Goodall 17:22

I have no idea. Well, actually, no, I have one very specific idea. The way that we got to nine was we started with ten and deleted one that wasn't good enough. So, yeah, again, I mean, we're back where we started. The editorial process is the thing. It improves things, but at some point, you just have to. I've actually always felt that you have to let the content read form. And, yeah, I was writing. In this case, I was writing about stability, and there were eight things, and one of them was two things, and so eight became nine, and I'm like, I'm back at nine again. How you get away with nine, I have no idea. I think the serious answer is you make them good, and that's very easy to describe and actually very hard to do.

Daniel Stillman 18:11

Yes, it is a great book. And also, I'm just thinking in terms of musical prosody. Again, nine lives is nine lives. It's. It works, and I'm. But it's so.

Ashley Goodall 18:21

But it started as ten. We sent our way back in the midst of time. Marcus and I sent our editor a proposal called ten lies about work, which sounds so weird for anyone who knows the book. Yeah, yeah. And then they're like, delete one. And we're like, nine. Like, ooh, that's good. And you suddenly realize it isn't that fascinating, but sometimes, you know, you get gifts from the world.

Daniel Stillman 18:46

So I'm gonna read you another passage. It's sort of in the middle. It goes between the sort of Schumann to human into the sort of rethinking. And it, it kind of flows as one passage. It's probably a little too long for me to read, but I can't take any bits of it out because I'm a terrible editor. And so I hope you'll bear with me. It might be about like, you know, almost a minute, but I think it's great stuff, and I'm hoping that this is our lead in to talk about. For anybody listening who needs scientific proof, who needs to know what it, you know, what you know about humans that tells you that this is not the way to go. I want to talk about that. I feel like you set it up and summarize it so nicely here and now.

Ashley Goodall 19:34

I'm trying to guess which bit you're going to read. I have a guess. I'll tell you at the end of the road. Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 19:38

The problem with change, in a nutshell, is that it assaults the things that anchor us. Humans do better in life when they have some degree of certainty about the future, some sense of ability to control it, some sense of ongoing connection to the people immediately around us, some part to play in the daily rhythms of the places we live, and some sense that events fit into a coherent narrative from which in turn, we can draw some clues about the why of our lives. Without these things, we struggle, and we and our employers and our colleagues and our friends bear the cost. What all of this science tells us is also, of course, what being alive tells us. We know from our own experience and intuition that uncertainty is stressful, that predictability is reassuring, that powerlessness is hard, agency energizing, and loneliness is toxic, and belongingness grounded. Yet at work, we have somehow decided that these fundamental ingredients of human good functioning are optional. So we can have foosball and free food. When it comes to the rudiments of healthy human workplace. Of a human workplace, sadly, these seem too much to ask. And this last little bit, I think, is so like it's one more dig in the. It's one more knife in the ribs of, of all the leaders listening. These things matter not so much because they are the cause of psychological health when we have them or distress when we don't, but because they are a reflection of our ability to do our work. We can think of predictability, control, belonging, place, and meaning together as the feelings that it's worth putting in an effort, because actions lead to results, and because any action will make a difference, that I know my way around a place and how to work with my colleagues, I feel my efforts are a useful contribution to the world. These are surely not only what we want our people at work to feel, but moreover a minimum of standard like it is required. It's the baseline. So I think some people think psychological safety. Oh, well, that's nice.

Ashley Goodall 21:33

Exactly. It's a luxury good.

Daniel Stillman 21:35

Yes.

Ashley Goodall 21:36

It's a luxury good at work. Economically defined.

Daniel Stillman 21:39

Yes. So I apologize for assailing you with your own words for such a long time, but there's so part of me feels like somebody needs to read a scientific report to be told these things that we feel that we all know.

Ashley Goodall 21:54

And the science is right there and it's quite easy to find. Yes. And I'm, you know, I'm not. I know my way around the outer reaches of the scientific literature, but I'm not. I didn't, I don't have a psych major. I'm not, you know, I'm somebody who knows where to. I'm somebody who knows how to pull on a thread, if you like. So you find something interesting and you read the references and you keep going and you keep going and you keep going and you keep going. But if I can find it, then lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of people can find the articles, the research, the experiments that demonstrate all of these things. And you know, it's not insane to say there are some people who, who want to see the evidence. That's good. I would also make an argument for the various sorts of evidence. And in fact, that extract that you read points to scientific evidence, but it also says being alive teaches us these things as well.

Daniel Stillman 22:59

Yes.

Ashley Goodall 23:00

So the evidence of experience and the evidence of our own eyes and the evidence of anecdote all point in the same direction on all of this stuff and it's. That change is harming our ability to do work. Yes. So it's not, you're right, it's not a. It's not a nice to have. It's not a. I don't know, it's not a. Well, let me, let me say it slightly differently. Very often you hear people go, what's the business case? For which I simultaneously respect and understand and resent? Respect and understand. Because, okay, we should make rational arguments for doing things in the world. And sometimes those are called business cases. Resent. Because do we actually have to argue that doing right by people needs some sort of exogenous justification? Do we actually have to argue that doing the right thing needs math attached to it so that we can figure out the roi of doing the right thing? So it's, it's a sort of, you know, there are. There are standards of evidence in this case, happily, we can say, take your choice.

Daniel Stillman 24:20

Pick.

Ashley Goodall 24:21

You want the science? Here it is. You want the evidence of your own eyes, here it is. You want the ethical and moral case, which is that we should do right by humans, because we are humans, and that's what we've got on this planet and in this life, there it is. They all point in the same direction. We've got to do less of this disruption stuff.

Daniel Stillman 24:43

So, to a leader who's listening, who is convinced by, you know, the first three pages of your book are, you know, just like, as you said, this endless assault of stories of change gone horribly, horribly wrong, and there are more of those than the other type. But on one hand, they were like, yes, I get that this is an assault, but they still have that feeling of change is part of life. It exists. We must innovate, we must develop, we must change. We must respond. And they know they want to do better, and they can't read all the way to the last chapter of a book. When you say, here, make space, forge undeniable competence, share secrets, be predictable, etcetera,

Daniel Stillman 25:39

how should they start thinking? How would you coach them to start being the kind of leader who can shepherd people through change in a human way, or to do change in a fundamentally different way, or to stop doing it altogether, which most people who are hearing would say, that's just not possible.

Ashley Goodall 26:01

Yeah. So I think the first step is to define a little more precisely the area of debate that I'm trying to frame here. Yeah. I am not by any means saying that all change must stop and is a bad thing and that humans should be static and society should be static and we should just stay exactly as we are forever, and then happiness and. And productivity will ensue. That would be a ridiculous argument for anyone to try and make. And I am not trying to make it. I am making the argument that change and improvement are not necessarily the same thing. And so it behooves us to understand at the moment, changes are sort of proxy for all goodness and up to the right, and you can get a long way in the world of business. And by the way, I think probably the world of politics and probably the world of sport as well, by going, things got to change around here. And everyone goes, hooray, hallelujah. Change. Change. Now, of course, what that means is things have got to improve around here, but we say change, and then what we do is change. And we don't always end up with improvement. Yeah. So the second thing about the space I'm trying to argue in here is it's the. I'm trying to delineate the improvement space as a thing that's different, a subset of, yes, the change space. And then the last thing I'm trying to do is to say, if you actually look about the improvement space, you're going to have to do a couple of things. You're going to have to find out the conditions under which human beings do their best work, because the improvement ain't going to come from the sky, it's going to come from the human beings. And when you look at that, under which conditions do humans do their best work? You find out that whatever you want, the word I've chosen for it is stability. Stability is the foundation of improvement. So now we've come a very long way in a few sort of short bites from change is all good, to change. Change isn't all good. Improvement is good. Improvement means we've got to look to the humans, and when we look to the humans, where they do best is most consistently and most frequently is under conditions of stability. Yes. So if you want to improve your organization up until the right build stability, get really smart about sources of stability for people at work, which, by the way, are also sources of stability for people not at work, because it's all the same people.

Daniel Stillman 28:55

Yes. So how can a leader provide that kind of stability through as, which is a through line or a backbeat or a bass line? I don't know what the appropriate musical analogy is like that. That drumbeat of stability through the inevitable change that hopefully is driving improvement.

Ashley Goodall 29:18

It's. I think the musical analog I would reach for is probably either a thing called a pascicalia, which is a piece of music on a ground bass. So think Pachelbel's canon, famously bass line repeats. Everything else changes over the top or slightly more adventurously, a sort of theme and variation. So think Bach Goldberg variations, which is 90 minutes of gorgeous 32 variations or so on one theme. And the theme is there all the way through that. You never leave the theme. It's a stable, eternal presence. But what it allows you to do, this is the interesting thing. What it allows you to do do is invent. What the Pachelbel ground base allows Pachelbel to do is invent figurations and, you know, different, different variations, different instrumentations, different rhythms that sit on some sort of organizing gravitational force sonically so that everyone knows where they are. And if you take that away, then all the invention doesn't actually make any sense. It doesn't go anywhere. It feels very life in the blender. Yes. I suppose we should have. We could do an audio podcast, and we could now play people the cannon with the bass line turned off, and you'd sort of get that there's something going on, but it's also weird. And then you play the Goldberg, Bach's Goldberg variations without playing the aria at the beginning and without any of that harmonic consistency all the way through, and you'd go, this is noise.

Daniel Stillman 31:04

Yes.

Ashley Goodall 31:05

So, you know, that's a very metaphysical answer to a very practical question.

Daniel Stillman 31:11

Which I appreciate. I appreciate.

Ashley Goodall 31:14

I think all these things in the world have things to teach us, to be honest, and the lesson of what is the bedrock on which we create newness and improvement and innovation and joy and dance and all of those things. Those are really good questions to be asking. And I think, in psychological terms, the answer is pretty much stability. So as to how you do that,

Ashley Goodall 31:47

in a way. And, you know, I suggested, as we said, nine things in the book, but what they have in common is that they all respond to the psychological needs of humans that are violated by constant change. So they're all things that increased certainty, for example, or agency, or a sense of belonging. The things that increase certainty are things like rituals. You know, we talk a lot about the weekly staff meeting, or the weekly check in conversation, or the monthly all hands, or the things that have a rhythm create a little bit more certainty in the world. Hey, it's Wednesday. Do I know what will happen on a Wednesday? I do. We have a thing. I like the thing. It's called the staff meeting. Get to see my friends. Okay. Get to see my friends, by the way. So there's belonging for you. So team things are. The teams are the maestros of belonging, if you like. Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 32:49

You talk about this in nine lives as well. Like the team, often we think that it's the reorg is the source of value, and that we can just shuffle people endlessly, but that a group of people who know how to ask each other for what they need is the actual font of productivity, of effectiveness.

Ashley Goodall 33:11

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 33:11

Of creative output.

Ashley Goodall 33:16

We think of organizations as things. As sort of uniform, homogenistic things, but, in fact, again, if you spend any time inside an organization and keep your eyes open, it strikes you pretty quickly that most of the people in the organization don't know most of the other people in the organization. It's like you don't know if you live in a town of any size. You don't know most of the people in the town, you know, a tiny little subset, but you're very comfortable going, my town is like this, so you can refer to the entity of your town without actually, you know, here I am in Montclair, New Jersey, what, 30,000 people, 40,000 people. Weirdly, I don't know them all, but I've got a point of view on Montclair. But actually, if you push me, I'd have to admit that my point of view is the few people I know here. So the local, the small, the intimate is massively and predominantly significant in our experience of the world. And we're very comfortable extrapolating from that to what the other things are like. But if you want to change our experience with the other things, you have to change our experience of the local first, which is to say, in corporate terms, if you get the teams right, you've built a good company. If you don't get the teams right, good luck, because there's no company there without the teams. You've got to live in the teams. And, you know, the insight I had, and it felt like an insight when I was working on this book, was that teams are a wonderful source of stability. And this is probably another reason that they are so important to us, to we humans, and to work and to organizations, because teams are, you know, if you've been on a team for any amount of time, people know what you're good at. So they are a place to showcase your ability, which is very stabilizing, gives you agency, reduces uncertainty. People give you social support, people you can gossip about things. You get a lovely sense of belonging from a team. You get the ability to see that you've had an impact in the world because there are people around you who can say, hey, that thing you did was really good, or that really landed, or someone told me about. So all of these things have a very natural home on teams, but not on day one of a team, on month three, maybe, or month six or a year to figure out.

Daniel Stillman 36:06

It takes time to build that right.

Ashley Goodall 36:09

And so if you shuffle all the teams every six months, none of the teams are ever going to figure out all of the beautiful things that teams can do for humans. And therefore all the humans are going to be adrift most of the time.

Daniel Stillman 36:21

Which is, of course, something that happens. You know, there's plenty of organizations I've worked with that talk about the reorg of the day, which is, of course, a. An exaggeration, but not quite.

Ashley Goodall 36:34

Not quite.

Daniel Stillman 36:36

And this is some of the numbers you talked about it takes six months for teams to cohere, and then we do a big change. And then another 18 months, we do another big change. But we never actually reap the benefits of change. One.

Ashley Goodall 36:50

No, because you never actually reap the benefits of having teams that support one another. So all your humans are individuals and not teams. You're denying them the most important unit by which their collaboration can be enhanced and lifted up and magnified.

Daniel Stillman 37:11

There's another. Oh, sorry, there's more there. I apologize for talking over you.

Ashley Goodall 37:16

No, no, I was just. We train leaders. Certainly years ago, the standard was that a company should rotate its leaders every two years or so so that they would get exposure to all the different facets of a large business. And then beyond this, you'd go, all right, well, Ashley's had two years here, so we'll put him over here now. Okay, Ashley, go run this bit of organization. A and Ashley will show up and go, right, well, here I am. I've been anointed the leader. So clearly what I need to do is redefine for these poor people the strategy and the chart and the teams and the flow of work. So I'll get on with all of that. Because if they'd have been any good, no one would have sent me over here, would they? So I gotta, I gotta shake it all up anyway, so I'll do that a little bit. We'll do six months of planning. We'll do six months of staggering implementation. That really doesn't get us anywhere. Then we'll do twelve months of frustration at it. Didn't really quite work, but I hope no one notices. And then someone will tap me on the shoulder and say, ashley, it's time for another job. Go learn this part of the business. And that's only a very slight and slightly cynical exaggeration of how we move leaders around organizations and how, in fact, the very process of exposing a leader to different parts of the business will tend to result in almost endless churn of strategy, of organization, so on and so forth, cascading the whole time. And I think that's where a lot of this actually comes from. Apart from the sort of big d disruption stuff that emanates from the C suite. The idea that leaders need to be moved around to become any good at leading is creating an awful lot of change.

Daniel Stillman 39:10

That's quite profound. That the way that we're training leaders and this is in large organizations, because this is a habit, there are enough people to do this in a quite large organization that it's creating this idea of, you must go, you must get your sleeves rolled up and actually make an impact, which sort of. There's another question I wanted to dig at, which is sort of like how we recognize and reward people. There was a story you talked about, about forging undeniable competence, that the Paul Hollywood handshake, which I thought was a really beautiful, I feel like praise. We think we people need feedback, but this is a sort of a leadership skill that I'm seeing, is something that people could be thinking about differently. People don't need feedback. They need to be praised for what they're doing really, really well. Many, many years ago, one of the first executive coaches I worked with defined leadership as the ability, the quality of recognizing specificity in others to not just say, hey, good job, Ashley. Hey, nice book. Right. It's not the same thing as saying, this passage here is quite musical and. And hard hitting. It's specific and powerful. Praise. Yes.

Ashley Goodall 40:30

And it's attached in some way. And so the idea, though, you know, for those who don't watch the great British Bake off, and they're missing some.

Daniel Stillman 40:39

Very relaxing, wholesome television.

Ashley Goodall 40:42

Yeah. And they're probably also a bit. A bit lighter than they would be if they watched all these desserts being made and then got tempted to go and try them for themselves. But if you don't watch that show, give it a go. Find a couple of episodes. They're all on, most of them on Netflix these days, but watch it as an exercise in performance and development and not at all feedback. And just see if you can see what I see in it when I write about Mister Hollywood and his. His famous handshake. And what's. What's funny is that, you know, just to describe what happens, there are all these bakers. They're all in a tent. It's never been quite clear to me why they are in a tent, because it's in England. So it's going to be either too hot or too rainy or too miserable in the tent. But anyway, they haven't been to tent.

Daniel Stillman 41:34

It gives you a chance. You really can't get the dough to rise properly. They want to give them that extra challenge because if it was air conditioned, they couldn't be like, oh, so tent.

Ashley Goodall 41:44

Because anyway, so they're in a tent. They're baking in a tent, as regular people do. Never. And they get a task to bake or whatever. Sometimes they're allowed to rehearse. Sometimes they're not allowed to practice. And then the judges go around and judge them, and then one of these judges, guy named Paul Hollywood, he's a very good baker, and if he sees something that he loves, he stops and there's a big long pause. And if you've seen the show before, you sort of know what might be coming and you're like, is it? Is it? Is it? Is it? Is it? And then he just smiles and he stretches his hand out and shakes somebody's hand. And it's so. It's goosebump inducing every single time you see it. Which is interesting, because feedback is goosebumping inducing. None ever times you get it. No one's ever like, well, you should have moved that thing or do this differently, or, why did you use the word arm a lot? It's never. So this is the sum frisson of impact and import and beauty and respect and all rolled up in one, but it's also pointed at a moment of excellence, not pointed at a moment of deficit.

Daniel Stillman 42:53

Yes.

Ashley Goodall 42:54

And I think you can unwind that a little bit and go, well, our idea that everybody needs feedback the whole time in order to get better is based in part on an erroneous assumption about what humans are motivated by and what we're like. And it's sort of like we don't really care about getting very much better. So someone needs to tell us the way there, because we're. The thought of how to. How I might do this better had not ever occurred to me. I'm just sitting, I'm sort of phoning it in. I'm a bit of a blob. I should probably be told how to get better, because I couldn't possibly be thinking those thoughts for myself or answering, asking myself those questions. And most of the people I know are exactly the opposite of that. Most people actually want to do a decent job and enjoy doing a better job. So most of us aren't like, sitting around going, listen, I suck at this, but that's fine by me. That's not a very human no stay. And it follows that, actually what we're really crying out for is somebody to say, this is the thing you're aiming for. This is the top of the mountain, this is daylight. This is excellence. Let me help you see that. And then you're going to have all sorts of ideas about how you could attain that. But the most helpful thing we can do for others in building their own confidence, which is, back to the point, a source of great stability. I have things I can do that no one can ever take away from me. Whoa. Now I've now got a little bit of armor against change and disruption in the world, because whatever. People can fire Ashley from all the jobs in the world, but at least I can write three paragraphs that aren't awful. So I've got that. But the thing that I want most in pointing myself towards that is a beautifully clear definition of what excellent looks like from somebody who's sort of qualified to know. I mean, it's interesting. It's Paul Hollywood. He's a really good baker.

Daniel Stillman 45:08

It's not just the blue eyes.

Ashley Goodall 45:10

It's not? No. And it's not random bloke we found wandering outside the tent either. It's actually somebody who's an expert, who's saying, this is really good, and then he'll say a little bit when he shakes the hand about why it's really good and whether it's the flavor or the texture or the appearance. Clearly, I've spent too much time watching the show, though. You get some specificity. Yes, but you must. I always ask myself, I always want to imagine, what does the person on the other end of the handshake think? What's going through their head? And I can only imagine it is. Oh, my God. Yes. Now, how do I do that again? Which is what we want to work. We want people with at work going, how do I do? Great. Again? How do I do that again? How do I do that again? And answering for themselves in an idiosyncratic and emergent and motivated way. What we don't want is a whole bunch of people going, I wish you would knock it off with the criticism, because it's crushing me, and I have to sort through the thicket of how much of it makes sense and how much of it doesn't make sense and how much of it is just, you don't really like me. And how much of it is. You were told you had to give feedback because the HR system makes you give feedback, so you had to make some up. That's not what we. That's not getting us there. Yes. What gets us there is to respect the human need to be good at stuff, and then to help them get there in the simplest way. And the simplest way is to tell people when they did something really good. Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 46:47

Which is surprising, because we do believe this is, you know, we call it a lie about, you know, leadership. This idea that, you know, we must tell people what they're doing wrong, but telling them what they did right. It's really, what's interesting about it is that you mention this in the passage, that it's about the work. We're saying the bake was good, the bottom was, you know, but what the message that gets comes through is I did a good job, I feel good about myself, and I hear from you the sort of stability that that creates because it, in a team, I know that I have this quality and that people can rely on me for it, and that's just really powerful.

Ashley Goodall 47:34

And then because they're doing the relying on me for it, I know I have impact in the world. And so I have a sense of meaning. And, you know, we haven't talked a lot about meaning, but again, meaning is another thing that gets very weird at work because it tends to get translated into our company must have some noble mission that is clearly connected with improving the state of the world and the universe, which is fine, hallelujah. But actually, that's not what meaning means for people on the ground. What meaning means is I know my work makes a difference to some other human in some way that's kind of useful. It's a much humbler and simpler thing. And so if somebody says, hey, good job, if somebody shakes your hand, that's meaning as well. It's not just performance, it's meaning I did a thing. I've had an impact that's enormously.

Daniel Stillman 48:29

Yeah. Shareholder value, let's be clear, shareholder value is not individual meaning. Meaning is person to person. Seeing the impact that your work has, either within the team or within the community.

Ashley Goodall 48:42

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 48:42

Brings it home for people.

Ashley Goodall 48:44

Yes, but that's an exercise, not of uplifting oratory or inspiring prose or beautiful video footage of the things that our company did. That's an exercise of connection. It's an act of. And again, this is why teams are so good at it, because your team leader needs to be able to say, look, Daniel, that thing that you did, did you see how it went over with those other people over there? Do you understand why what you did is so important? And you can go, well, because you told me to, or because I think. And they can go, yeah, but what you don't see is that this led to this, led to this, led to this, led to this, led to all of these other things as well. And an organization leader can't actually do that if the organization's, I don't know, 10,000 people, because there are 10,000 different answers to that question. But a team leader with ten people on a team can go, Daniel, your work had this impact. Ashley, your work had a different impact. Your work had an impact over here and led to these things. And it's led to connected to. That's what meaning is for humans at work.

Daniel Stillman 49:54

What's so interesting about that, actually, is my thesis is that the fundamental unit of change is a conversation. And what I'm hearing from you is that literally on the conversational level of leadership, like conversation to conversation, praise, storytelling, are skills of a leader that can create the kind of coherence and stability that allows a team to function day by day and week by week.

Ashley Goodall 50:25

And the thing that still sort of scrambles my brain is that these are human skills, not leadership skills. Or rather, these are human skills before they are leadership skills. Better said,

Ashley Goodall 50:41

ask anyone who is a parent about how you help kids get better at stuff, and they will tell you that each kid is different from each other kid even in the same family, and that telling them good job is a really important thing to do, and then explaining why is a really important thing to do. And yes, sometimes they're going to burn themselves on the oven. And so you give feedback and you say, stop that right now, and you prevent disaster. But preventing disaster isn't the same as building a healthy and growing human being. You talk about the fundamental unit of changes, of conversation, which is a beautiful phrase. Those are things that we're all very good at doing, for the most part, outside work. But then there's this weirdness that at work we have to speak gobbledygook to one another so that nobody really understands what's going on. And again, we're sort of unsure of our footing and all of these things. So humans are pretty good at figuring this stuff out. There's a. We could be more deliberate about it. We could be more clear eyed about what it is that we're actually trying to do for our fellow humans at work and beyond work. But what I'm arguing for is not a divergence from human nature, but a return to it. That's why the science is so important. That's why all the psychology findings are so important, because they define for us what a human is like. And we don't actually get to choose. We get to choose how to respond, we get to choose how to act, we get to choose how to interact, but we don't get to choose how people alike. And there seems to be a lot of made upness about humans would be good if when we tell them what to do, they get on with it. Okay, doesn't work. They're not that simple. Or humans would be good if the more we pay them to do x, the more they do it. Which is not true either. And there are all of these things. But, you know, at the core of what I'm arguing for is a return, a return to a world that understands humans and is giddy with excitement at how fun it is to understand a human with all their foibles and all their glory.

Daniel Stillman 52:56

So we are nearing the end of our time, and usually I ask people what I haven't asked them. It's one of my. Because there's so much I haven't asked you, and you're just talking about what's important to. And I heard you use this phrase in another conversation, what's important to know about humans out of the box that we just get out of the box, what's built in, to just understand how we're operating, what our operating system is. So I'm wondering for the leaders listening who are aware of the problem, who do, don't want who to be part of the problem, who you want to be more human. Leaders who have heard you talk about focusing on impact versus change, who are talking about the need for stability through ritual and teams and the power of praise and being human. Being human words. What else would you whisper into their ear? What haven't we said that ought to be said so that they can go back and start the revolution?

Ashley Goodall 53:57

There's an interesting question that I sort of stumble on in writing all of this that I would suggest a leader ask themselves whenever they are confronted with the need for improvement, let's say, which might feel like change, but actually they're after improvement, which is this, what would happen if you started with stability? What would happen if you first articulated for your team and your organization all the things that will not change now, that doesn't have to be all the, everything's because you're going to try and make some improvement. But what would happen if you would, if you would, you know, in the hypothetical situation that we were discussing a few minutes ago, you're the new leader. The board has asked you to come in, or the senior leadership team has asked you to come in and take something in a different direction. Now, most of us, and I've done this, will show up on day one and go, I'm here to take things in a different direction. Here is the direction. Here's a little bit about why, but frankly, the why is in the rearview mirror now, because I'm here. So clearly we're going to do it. And you're like, the number of votes that you've had in this process is precisely zero, and that number is not going to increase anytime soon. So off we go. Because I was sent here to do a job.

Daniel Stillman 55:14

Strap in.

Ashley Goodall 55:15

Strap in. That's the norm. And I've said pretty much those words. What would happen if you would say, listen, I'm here to lead, but the way I'm going to lead is by starting with all the things that will not change our mission, will not change the way that we describe ourselves to others, will not change our structure, will not change our rituals, will not change the silly game that we play whenever somebody does this, will not change those things. We will elevate, we will make them more central to who we are and how we go about our week. And once we've elevated them, then we will start asking ourselves, what can we do better? That's a just, that's a, that's a, all I did was, I said, we're going to change, but let's ground, let's rediscover the Pachelbel cannon ground base going on under the whole thing. First, let's acknowledge that that's there. Let's acknowledge that that's essential for everybody. Let's invite people into a conversation about given what won't change, what should we change together, what should we reimagine together, what should we point ourselves towards and what should we dream about. And it seems to me that that's a better way of addressing the whole thing, really.

Daniel Stillman 56:41

Involving people in the change.

Ashley Goodall 56:44

Involving people's, honoring people's psychological needs and then involving them in the change.

Daniel Stillman 56:51

Yes.

Ashley Goodall 56:52

It's like you've got to, you've got to start with scope, really, to use the business word. I am not here to change the sun, the moon and the stars. I am here to find a way for us to be better. I was probably brought in because I have some ideas or I've got some experience of doing sorts of similar things. But let me start by learning what you all rely on for your contribution here. What teams are the best teams and what they're like, how long people have been around, what the weekly patterns are, what the cadence is, how we talk about ourselves. Let me understand all of those things. And let me understand those things. Not because they're on the list of possibilities to be upended, but let me understand those things so that I can honor and elevate them. And once we've done that, we'll be ready for improvement. And some of that will come from me, and some of it will come from you and some of it will come from us. But we won't improve unless we first see our stability for the vital part of our roles that it is.

Daniel Stillman 58:06

And when you talk about using real words, honor and elevate are really beautiful words. And they sound a lot like the Paul Hollywood handshake. The thing that a person wants to receive, which is recognition of a job well done, is a leader looking at a team and saying, I'm going to honor and elevate what's great about this team, and we're going to do that first, which is a big flip. It seems like the problem with change is that we don't start with stability and elevate what's working, what's great, what makes it tick, how people orient themselves around where even to find the pens, how to get work done.

Ashley Goodall 58:50

I worked with a leader once who taught me how to find words for things in emails or in, you know, when you're talking to people in a group. And he said, it's very easy to just write the usual, the usual thing. I'm excited to announce that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, or even there was somebody who was leaving an organization in slightly mysterious circumstances or slightly mixed circumstances, or wasn't very clear, that was a good thing. And he said it would be very easy to go. This person's a brilliant person and they've done brilliant things their whole life, and we'll miss them terribly. But he said, none of that's true. So what you actually have to do is find a way of telling the truth sincerely and humbly. And it's. That has always stuck with me. That was, I don't know, 20 years ago, that conversation. I can remember where I was sitting when he said to me, find the real truth. Find it without judgment, find it without blame, find the way, the full bodied honoring of another person and write those words down. And when you try and do that, when you try and find the truth, the words that come out are not business words. They are real words. They are human words. They are words like honor and elevate and respect and love even comes out. So there's a. Yeah, there's a. There's a lesson about stability in truth, which is stability in stability, and truth refracted in the words that we choose. And the words, do the words really matter? Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 1:00:31

Well, that seems like a really good place to pause.

Ashley Goodall 1:00:35

I feel like real shame to pause. We could do this for much longer.

Daniel Stillman 1:00:38

Well, yeah, I mean, there's a whole book's worth. There's two books worth my word. But you do have the rest of your day to get onto. As we, as previously mentioned, it's a gray day outside in the greater tri state area.

Ashley Goodall 1:00:54

Yeah. And I've got to go out and get wet, clearly. Yes.

Daniel Stillman 1:00:58

I'm really grateful for this conversation and it's really great to highlight this work. The book is coming out May 7, is that right?

Ashley Goodall 1:01:08

May 7? That's right.

Daniel Stillman 1:01:09

We're going to try and make this come around that time. How might people, after having listened to this, say to themselves, even through your best efforts to make yourself unhirable.

Ashley Goodall 1:01:24

If.

Daniel Stillman 1:01:24

They want to learn more about your work and how to work with you, where should they go?

Ashley Goodall 1:01:30

Where should they find out? Yeah, people can find out about me on my website, which is www.ashleygoodall.com. And of course, the book is available if it's before May 7. When you're listening to this, it's available for pre order on all the places the books are sold. And if it's after May 7, it's available for order order on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, wherever good books are sold. And if you're interested in following me and my evolving thinking about the world of work and about what's fabulous about it and what's frustrating as well, I post quite a lot on LinkedIn, so you can find me on LinkedIn as well.

Daniel Stillman 1:02:09

I just followed you today. Long overdue.

Ashley Goodall 1:02:13

Thank you. I will try and say intelligent things there.

Daniel Stillman 1:02:18

I don't think it's possible. I mean, of course it's possible to not, but you've got quite a lot of, quite a lot of good things to draw from. As we said, turning a book into a couple of paragraphs is difficult, but it packs a lot of punch when you boil it down that way, doesn't it?

Ashley Goodall 1:02:36

Yeah, it's like a good. Now we're off. We're back to cooking again. But a good reduction will take you quite a long way if you're a source person.

Daniel Stillman 1:02:44

Yes, I am a source person.

Ashley Goodall 1:02:49

I think everyone Lacor is a source person.

Daniel Stillman 1:02:56

I'll officially end the conversation. I call scene.

Reunion: Leadership and Creating a Culture of Belonging

Rabbi Tarfon said: The day is short, and the work is plentiful…It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it. 

(Pirkei Avot 2:15-16)

My conversation today with Jerry Colonna closes with him paraphrasing this powerful notion - and the work we are discussing is the work on yourself and the work to create a better world - one where everyone feels like they truly belong. In a world where many organizations are retreating from Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging initiatives, I’m grateful that Jerry is leaning into this conversation. I see the work of antiracism as firmly in the realm of what my peoples call Tikkun Olam, repairing the world.

It’s absolutely essential that men in positions of power and especially men who present as White, do not neglect this work. 

Jerry is a graduate of Queens College and a Brooklyn native.

Jerry helps people lead with humanity and equanimity. His unique blend of Buddhism, Jungian therapy, and entrepreneurial know-how has made him a sought-after coach and leader, working with some of the largest firms in the country.

In his work as a coach, he draws on his experience in Venture Capital as Co-founder of Flatiron Partners, one of the most successful early-stage investment programs. Later, he was a partner with J.P. Morgan Partners, the private equity arm of J.P. Morgan Chase.

As a partner with J.P. Morgan Chase, Jerry launched the Financial Recovery Fund with The Partnership for the City of New York, a $10 million-plus program aimed at creating grants for small businesses impacted by the attacks on the World Trade Center.

Along with a strong commitment to the nonprofit sector, Jerry is the author of two books: REBOOT: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up (2019) and REUNION: Leadership and the Longing to Belong. (2023)

Reboot was met with critical acclaim, stirring up a big question in the hearts and minds of people: “How have I been complicit in creating the conditions I say I don’t want?” Jerry’s second book builds on this question, asking us what benefit we get from the conditions we say we don’t want - the systems of oppression that those who have eyes to see, can see.

Reunion is a highly personal book that asks us all to examine our history of longing to belong - and the ways in which we have been excluded or excluded others.

Key Threads in the Conversation

We discuss Jerry’s Journaling practice and how it is an essential conversation he has with himself, each morning. 

We explore what it means to be a “good man” - and how in his first book, REBOOT, he questioned whether he was a good man, while in REUNION, he built upon the assumption that he is a good man and explored (and expanded) what it means to be a good man in a world where there is division and polarization.

And I get Jerry to coach me on one of my favorite questions: understanding the disowned parts of ourselves, exploring the reasons behind disconnecting from them, and the importance of integrating them back without denying them - very much in line with the process of REUNION. All while working to authentically grow in ways that matter, without self-abuse or denial.

Those parts of ourselves we wrestle with wrestle back at us. Many leaders I coach want to be feel or been seen as more or less of some quality or another - they, like so many of us, feel they must be other than they are in order to belong.

In my experience, fighting against our parts without understanding and loving them is a losing battle. Jerry asks us to understand the stories behind our self doubt, and to honor the ways that part of us has sought to care for and protect us in the past.

I find great empathy and lovingkindness in spending time nurturing my denied parts and my clients do, too. I’m so grateful to absorb Jerry’s approach to self-integration, and to expand our inner work towards creating not just a life we love, but a world we want to live in.

Links, Quotes, Notes, and Resources

Reboot

Jerry’s profile at Reboot

Some other solid interviews with Jerry:

On Being with Kista Tippett: Can you really bring your whole self to work?

Noah Kagan, from AppSumo, interviewing Jerry on being a better human and a better leader

More About Jerry

A graduate of Queens College, Jerry helps people lead with humanity and equanimity. His unique blend of Buddhism, Jungian therapy, and entrepreneurial know-how has made him a sought-after coach and leader, working with some of the largest firms in the country.

In his work as a coach, he draws on his experience in Venture Capital (VC) as Co-founder of Flatiron Partners, one of the most successful, early-stage investment programs. Later, he was a partner with J.P. Morgan Partners (JPMP), the private equity arm of J.P. Morgan Chase.

As a partner with J.P. Morgan Chase, Jerry launched the Financial Recovery Fund with The Partnership for the City of New York, a $10 million-plus program aimed at creating grants for small businesses impacted by the attacks on the World Trade Center.

Along with a strong commitment to the nonprofit sector, Jerry is the author of two books: REBOOT: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up (2019) and REUNION: Leadership and the Longing to Belong. (2023)

Reboot was met with critical acclaim, stirring up a big question in the hearts and minds of people: “How have I been complicit in creating the conditions I say I don’t want?” Jerry’s second book builds on this question, asking us what benefit we get from the conditions we say we don’t want.

Jerry is astounded by the fact that he lives on a farm outside of Boulder, CO near the foothills of the Rockies, and far from the streets of Brooklyn where he was born and raised. He is the father of three amazing humans, each of whom cares deeply about the love, safety, and belonging of others.

AI Summary

• Jerry discusses his journaling practice, which he does every morning, and how it's a conversation he has with himself (4:58)

• Jerry discusses the continuity and progression between his past works and future plans, emphasizing the importance of living authentically and working through meaningful issues publicly. (10:22)

• Jerry explains that in Reboot he questioned whether he was a good man, while in Reunion he built upon the assumption that he is a good man and explored what it means to be a good man in a world where there is division and polarization (12:17)

• Jerry articulates his desire for transformation through openness to dialogue and self-reflection, aiming for individuals, especially those in positions of power, to recognize complicity and actively work towards positive change. (16:30)

• Daniel asks who Jerry wishes would read his book and go through the workshop, and Jerry responds that he hopes it will open hearts and minds to dialogue and radical self-inquiry (19:40)

• Jerry discusses the role of a coach in guiding clients, emphasizing the importance of telling clients what they need to hear rather than what they want to hear. (29:17)

• Daniel Stillman asks Jerry about his approach to coaching clients on difficult topics like equality and antiracism, and Jerry describes his imagery of being side by side with clients and offering guidance without letting ego get in the way (30:41)

• Jerry explains how he approaches pointing out instruction to clients and shares an example of helping a client confront accusations of exploiting unpaid or low-paid labor (34:20)

• Jerry Colonna delves into the process of reuniting with disowned parts of oneself, exploring the reasons behind disconnecting from certain aspects and the importance of integrating them back without denying them. (37:40)

• Daniel and Jerry touch upon the transformation of internal struggles into strengths, referencing the shift from ghosts to ancestors. (45:33)

• Jerry Colonna asks about the benefit of self-doubt and discusses how it can serve as a safety mechanism, potentially passed down through lineage (46:45)

• Jerry and Daniel discuss the danger of participating in the diminishment of oneself while emulating others, and emphasizes the importance of honoring and metabolizing teachings from elders (51:59)

Full AI Generated Transcript

Daniel Stillman 00:00

And I can welcome you officially to the conversation factory. Jerry, I actually really am grateful that you made the time for these open space conversations.

Jerry Colonna 00:08

Well, thank you for inviting me. It's really a joy and delight. I think you were kind enough to ask about what the experience has been about talking with folks, and I have to confess that I just enjoy it. So I'm looking forward to our conversation.

Daniel Stillman 00:29

Thanks, Jerry. There's so many places we could begin, but as a fellow native New Yorker, and there are plenty of us, whenever. This is a sidebar, I wasn't intending to go here, but I feel like whenever somebody's like, wow, you're really a native New Yorker. I've never met one. I'm like, I don't know. You talk to your bartenders. There's lots of us.

Daniel Stillman 00:50

There's a million kids in the New York City public school system, and you were one of them. So I loved the story of you journaling on the subway and discovering your voice and the power of connecting to your own voice. And I just was curious about what your journaling practice is like today. And if you continue to, if you recommend journaling in general to leaders as.

Jerry Colonna 01:17

A practice, well, here's my journal.

Jerry Colonna 01:24

Would I continue to recommend it? Well, what my journaling practice is is exactly what it was when I started at 13 years old. When I was 13, it was a different time of the day that I would do it more often than not. As YOu noted, I had this Long subway ride from Midwood, Brooklyn, to Ozone Park, Queens, and the train would take me into Fulton street, downtown Manhattan, where I'd switch to the a train, and then. So I would Take the entry.

Daniel Stillman 02:05

You're misusing your subway pass, if I recall.

Jerry Colonna 02:08

Do you recall well? You recall well. And I would pass the hours doing homework because it was about a 90 minutes, two hour ride each way, reading and journalIng. And the original journal was always a, you know, three ring binder that I was writing in loose leaf. Eventually, I graduated to bound volumes, probably in my twenties, and I continue to journal to this day. I will confess that my handwriting is so bad, I have dysgraphia, and I cannot go back in time and reread my own handwriting, which is an interesting experience. So it just keeps me very much in the present. And the experience of journaling is just something that, it's a conversation I have with myself.

Daniel Stillman 03:12

Yeah, I mean, I'm really glad you frame it that way. I think that is part of the beauty of it. But do you have a specific prescribed dose or cadence? Because you know, there's the artist's way method of coaching where it's like, you know, it's first thing in the day, three pages long hand, or do you just go to it when you're called to it? Is it a specific.

Jerry Colonna 03:36

Oh, I go to it every morning. Yeah. Every morning. My routine is, you know, I wake, I shower, I get myself awake, I have a cup of coffee, and I journal.

Speaker 3 03:52

Yeah.

Jerry Colonna 03:53

And I do that fairly religiously every day, and then I follow that with sitting meditation. And so from where I. From my experience, the totality of the experience, it takes an hour or so to do all that. It's just a lovely way to start my day.

Speaker 3 04:18

Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 04:21

Do you recommend it to folks, to leaders that you work with who aren't doing it?

Jerry Colonna 04:28

I do. I'm not hard and fast about it. As with almost anything that I recommend, it comes with the same spirit as the Buddha once offered in a teaching, which was, try it. If it works for you, great. And if it doesn't work, that's fine.

Speaker 3 04:54

Yeah.

Jerry Colonna 04:56

When I read the equivalent of that in the buddhist teachings, I felt so relieved from the lack of dharma, lack of dogma. Dogma to the dharma that it felt very resonant to me. So that's the kind of attitude I try to take.

Speaker 3 05:14

Yeah, yeah.

Daniel Stillman 05:16

It has value, but it's not. We're not restrictive or dogmatic about it. I'm really curious. I'm going to follow the thread of having conversations with ourself. One of the. It's one thing that came up in your first book and in your second book was this idea of being a good man. And that's. And it seemed like sometimes that was something you were saying to yourself, like, where I'm not and I want to be. And other times, in the beginning of reunion, it's almost like you're telling yourself, like, I am a good man, and I claim it. And, you know, the state of masculinity in today's culture is, you know, an interesting. That's like a whole other conversation.

Jerry Colonna 06:05

Right.

Daniel Stillman 06:06

But I'm curious what it. What's important to you? And, boy, that, you know, my chest is a swirl with these feelings because, you know, being a good man, it's important to me. I want to feel like I'm a good man. What's important to you about being a good man? What does it mean to you to be a good man?

Jerry Colonna 06:27

Well, I can't help but acknowledge your feelings, which are what's behind the question. I mean, this movement that you noticed, if you will, from one book to the other, from reboot to reunion, includes this movement towards

Jerry Colonna 06:51

accepting, if you will, who I am. So let's give it a little bit of context, and then we'll circle back to the larger question.

Jerry Colonna 07:05

In reboot, you're referring to what I call the good man chapter, chapter nine, in which it essentially opens with me yet again debating the question, am I a good man? And the woman who is now my wife, Allie, saying to me, in effect, in an exasperated way, enough already. You're a good man. Stop it. Right, but. And then as that story progresses, and I share the story of encountering this toppled over oak tree in which I project all of those feelings into the tree and imagine the tree as a good man. And I begin a process of working through the notion that I may have done something wrong in my life. I may not have always lived up to my aspirations, I may continue to not always live up to my aspirations, but nevertheless, I am a good man. You're right. In reunion, I work from the assumption, because reunion was written

Jerry Colonna 08:28

simultaneous with the process that I was going to, whereas reboot was written retrospectively. With me looking backwards. In reunion, I again tackle the question of, what does it mean to be a good adult? What does it mean to be a good human? But I build upon the assumption that I am a good man and then ask the question, a deeper question, which is, what is the relationship to a good man in a world where our dividedness and polarization can lead to children being killed? And how can one define oneself as being good if one is not putting one's shoulder to the wheel to make the world safe for all, to feel loved, safe, and that they belong. So, you know, the way I've internalized that is I am a good man, and there is still work to be done.

Daniel Stillman 09:42

Yeah, I see, you know, in the introduction to reunion, which is a lovely book.

Jerry Colonna 09:50

Thank you.

Daniel Stillman 09:51

There's this idea of redoing our first works over and the Baldwin quote and Parker's perspective of, like, looking at our past works and finding them wanting. And I'm hearing you say, and I had thought myself, there's a thread between them. It's a broadening definition of what it means to be a good leader and to be a good man. So I'm wondering, do you see it? I'm hearing now it's a thread less than. It's a reboot or a reimagining.

Jerry Colonna 10:22

I think that that's right. I think that while I wasn't cognizant of it at the time. And while Parker and I had numerous conversations while I was writing reunion, he very much was my mentor during that process, as he's been for 20 years. There is a. I can look backwards and see the through line, the thread from the work that I was trying to do with reboot to the work that I'm trying to do with reunion. And while I'm not ready to talk about it yet, the work that I'm planning to do in the next book. And if you want to step back far enough and say, okay, so what is actually happening here? I would argue that what I'm doing is living out loud. Living. Working through issues that matter to me in a public space, because I think that that's of service to people.

Speaker 3 11:41

Yeah.

Jerry Colonna 11:42

You know, I'll make an addendum to all that. I'm working my way through the latest Wendell Berry book, and I'm blanking on the name of it. I would have to look it up for a second. I'll pause on that. And in this book, he is yet again re-examining race in America, but through the lens that is really important to him, which is what he would describe as a discrimination against farmers, a discrimination, if you will, against rural America. And he talks about the divide between urban and rural. And I see him working through the same themes, expanding on the themes of his past works, the same themes that he wrote about in The Hidden Womb, which he published in 1970. And so I would expand the definition of what does it mean to be a good man? To include being willing to do our first works over being willing to. To look back and say, there's more to be said here.

Speaker 3 13:03

Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 13:06

It feels like, in a way, being a good man is a horizon.

Speaker 3 13:11

Right?

Daniel Stillman 13:11

It's not a.

Speaker 3 13:12

It's.

Daniel Stillman 13:12

I mean, in one sense, I hear the, like, the power of owning, I'm a good man, and I can relax and I don't have to doubt myself. But on the other hand, there's an aspect of being a good man that is like, continuous process of exploration, a continuous process of revisiting your assumptions, a continuous process of looking around and saying, what kind of world am I creating? What kind of a man blanks.

Jerry Colonna 13:39

You know, I think that. That. I think that's true. And because I'm feeling uncomfortable with it, I'll say that we're having a gendered conversation and an angle here. And I think there is a lot. There are some aspects of this that are reflective of the experience of many folks who identify as men. And there are some aspects of this that are more universal. And that's important because from the subtitle of reboot, as you know, is leadership in the art of growing up.

Jerry Colonna 14:23

The final line of the main body of text in reboot is. And with that, I mastered the art of growing up. And the reason I bring that back in is that what we're both talking about is a practice. What we're both talking about is the. The commitment to the art of growing up. And that's a really important but subtle point, because we can get too wrapped around the axle thinking that there is a point, as you point out, that it's a horizon. It's not a point in the landscape that you arrive at. And then you rest.

Speaker 3 15:11

Yeah, now.

Jerry Colonna 15:13

But there is. There is something liberating in being able to say, as my psychoanalysts used to say to me all the time, not bad, considering. Which is a very liberating thought. You're not bad, considering everything. Yeah, you're okay, you know? So I offer that.

Daniel Stillman 15:37

I appreciate that, you know, so many layers and threads to pull on, but in some sense, you refer to the second book as a workshop, and a workshop has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and there should be some sort of transformative experience that people feel, and we're changed at the end. That's the power of the workshop. And I'm wondering, like, who do you. Who do you wish would read the book and go through the workshop and feel transformed at the end? Like, what's your dream for the transformative power of this. This workshop in a. In a book?

Jerry Colonna 16:17

Well, I think with reunion, the one person I know was changed was me.

Speaker 3 16:26

Yeah.

Jerry Colonna 16:30

And you're right. The implication of using the framing of a workshop is that one is changed by the end. And before I can say who I would wish to be changed, let me talk a little bit about the change that I would want to see. The change that I would want to see is an openness to dialogue. It's really important to me that reunion. Reunion. Leadership and the longing to belong not be presented as a conversation-ender, read this, and then you're done. Far from it. My hope is that the transformation would be an opening of hearts and an opening of minds to consider the possibility that that which we. Those of us who hold power. Right. I identify as white, cisgender, straight male, and as such, I hold a certain amount of power that those of us who hold power in whatever situation we're coming from would recognize the possibility that there's a lot more work we need to do. And that the work is not about looking outward and explaining to somebody else how they're wrong, which we spend far too much time doing, exacerbating the divisions. But the work is to look back, and you'll recognize this word. To look back or this question and ask, how have I been complicit in creating the conditions? I say I don't want to look back and say, how have I been complicit in and benefited from the conditions in the world? I say I don't want to see. And most importantly, what am I willing to change? What am I willing to give up, do that I love in order to see the world that I really want to see exist?

Speaker 3 18:49

Yeah.

Jerry Colonna 18:51

So long. Statement made short. The workshop transformation that I hope to see is that people end with that question and start doing that form of the radical self inquiry.

Speaker 3 19:07

Hmm. Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 19:10

I think of the questions that are. There's this list of questions that I've been absorbing from you. What am I not saying that needs to be said, which I know is from your psychoanalyst. What am I saying that's not being heard? What am I saying that I'm not. What's being said that I'm not hearing? And then there are these other questions, like, how have I benefited from the suffering of others? What don't I want to find out about my ancestors? Have I seen no strangers? There's, like, there's. There's layers of questions that people can be asking themselves, but the. The question that's in me, I don't know if you've ever been, I'm guessing at some point in your life you've been to a Passover Seder. In my.

Jerry Colonna 19:50

I have, yeah.

Daniel Stillman 19:51

In my, in my. My tradition, there's these. These questions. There's a story of. Of the sons, the son. There's a son who says, like, well, you know, this happened to you. Like, this has nothing to do with me.

Jerry Colonna 20:08

Right.

Daniel Stillman 20:09

And there's a son that sort of separates himself from the question. Then there's the son who doesn't even know how to frame the question about, like, why is this night different from all other nights? I'm butchering the haggadah. I really didn't prepare to have this angle, but this is. I'm trying to find a pathway into asking you the question about what? About all the people who, who will not read this book, who aren't ready to ask these questions. I feel like there's. There's. I feel like everybody could benefit from reading this book, and many people, bless you, will not won't.

Jerry Colonna 20:41

And many people will stop reading after the first line. Right.

Daniel Stillman 20:45

And many people are with. Are retreating from diversity, equity, belonging, ESG, you mentioned. I'm grateful as well in the conversation. Like, there's a huge retreat from woke capitalism and all of these things, and it's people who don't want to ask these questions at all because they're uncomfortable questions.

Jerry Colonna 21:09

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 21:11

And I appreciate you leaning into those questions and doing your work in that.

Jerry Colonna 21:17

Well, let's even add to the question. One of the women who wrote the essays in the afterward, Virginia, asks a very, very powerful question of her. After describing her family's joy and maintaining a family tree that goes all the way back to Switzerland, she asked the question, what happened to the queer folk in my family? Because they existed.

Jerry Colonna 21:48

Okay, so, yeah, let's unpack your question for a moment. You started off by asking what happens to the folks who don't read this book? And you also make the observation, which I completely agree with, that we have moved away, if you will, even in the time in which I started writing the book to where we are today,

Jerry Colonna 22:22

I did not imagine as divided as we were starting in, say, the summer of 2020, that we would actually get worse. And it is worse. It is worse. And, you know, it's a challenge. I asked before of the world at large, what am I willing to give up that I love in order to see the world that I know needs to be to come into fruition? So, Daniel, a lot of people loved REBOOT. A lot of people loved it.

Speaker 3 23:07

Yeah.

Jerry Colonna 23:08

Like, a surprising number of people loved that book. And still to this day, people, I was at a book event these last couple of days, and this woman comes up to me shaking with her worn copy of reboot, and she wants me to sign it. And I love that. I love it at a non ego based way, and I love it at an ego from my ego based way. And so what am I willing to give to up that I love? And what I'm willing to give up that I love is being the object of these wonderful and grandiose projections that somehow I have all the answers. But here's a larger truth, and it's implicit, if you will, in the quote from the Talmud in which I start chapter seven. I think it is in reunion. It is not yours. It is not mine to complete the work, but neither are we at liberty to neglect the work.

Speaker 3 24:18

Yeah.

Jerry Colonna 24:19

Right. So that look on your Face. Okay. We are not allowed to ignore the suffering.

Speaker 3 24:29

Yeah.

Jerry Colonna 24:31

Okay. We started off by talking about the good man. Okay? Our task from the divine. And I don't care which of the 84,000 doorways point you to the dharma, whether it's Judaism or Buddhism or Christianity or any other of the world's great wisdom traditions. They all point to the moral obligation to lift those who are oppressed, to welcome the other, to welcome the other, to see no stranger, and to welcome the wretched, to make space. You know, the other night, a woman came up to me because, you know, in reunion, I talk about being motivated by my daughter's participation in the protests over the murder of George Floyd. And she says to me in a kind of almost conspiratorial way, well, you know, black lives matter is anti semitic. And I looked at her and I said, there is anti semitism on the left. There is no question about that. But here's a news flash. There's anti semitism on the right. There is antisemitism everywhere, and there have been for millennia. This is not a phenomena of current times. And I don't know any other way to push up against systemic othering such as antisemitism, other than those of us who are not subject to the burdens of those things standing up and speaking out because it's wrong.

Speaker 3 26:31

Yeah.

Jerry Colonna 26:35

We know this.

Daniel Stillman 26:36

We know this. So one question I'd been sitting with was, as an executive coach myself, in my training, in my mentorship, my coaching mentor, Robert Ellis, said, like, I'm always a step behind you, and if you stop, I'll bump into you, but I don't know where you need to go. And I really appreciated the conversation you were having with one of your founders who was underpaying her employees and her interns, and you pushed back pretty hard on her and then pushed even further to, say, look into her heritage in tobacco farming and the long history of unsustainable economic models involving sharecropping and slavery and onward. And I feel like, in a way, as a coach, I want to be a step behind. And there's the asking telling spectrum. Like, I'm here just to ask questions, but there's a line where an ask becomes a tell, and you're like. And you're confronting them with a question that they don't really want to be asked. And I saw that as a real strong position to take as a coach to bring equality and anti racism and creating a positive world. Like, would you want your children to work at this company? What are the real externalities of your business model? And what kind of a world are you creating for future generations? These are hard questions. And that's not being a step behind. That is sometimes being a step or two ahead. And I don't know. My question is there. It seems like you do it with a lot of delicacy and respect, but also firmness and a little bit of force. So I'm just wondering how we manage this question of people who are not in the conversation, who are not thinking this way with themselves already there is an element of helping them get into the mode of these thoughts.

Jerry Colonna 29:06

I really love this question because it goes to the heart of how one can hold oneself as a coach in these spaces. So I want to recognize and honor what Robert said to you or says to you. And I think what he's saying in that is that the coach does not set the direction. And I would agree with that. The imagery that I feel more comfortable with than being behind is actually being side by side. And the imagery that I hold on to is I imagine myself oftentimes as in the passenger seat of a car being driven by the client. And my job might be to say, there's a pothole up ahead. I know that you can't see it, but I can see that pothole. You might want to make a left turn here.

Jerry Colonna 30:10

I think back to what my first coach supervisor once said to me, which I think is a really fundamental belief system and can be problematic. What she said to me is we tell our clients what they need to hear, not what they want to hear. Now, the problem with that is that we have to be careful of our own ego and our own narcissistic needs to be right.

Daniel Stillman 30:40

I don't know what you're talking about. I have no. That is an alien concept to me. I don't know.

Jerry Colonna 30:51

But there's something fierce about that. And then in the circumstance that you described in the example that I gave in the book, if you recall, the setup was really important. This client came to me not understanding why there was so much turmoil in her organization and what the accusations were against her. The accusations were that she was exploiting labor. Okay. The reason her entire staff quit was because they were exploiting labor. So my, in Buddhism, we call them pointing out instruction. My pointing out instruction didnt come, I think, from some deep place within me that said, let me set you straight. It came from an exploration that said, well, lets put the pieces together here. Youve been accused of exploiting unpaid or low paid labor such to the point that your company has now failed.

Speaker 3 32:06

Yeah.

Jerry Colonna 32:09

And by the way, the accusation was that there was a direct exploitation of non white folks and so the echoes were really worth looking at in that regard.

Daniel Stillman 32:26

Yeah. I mean, she had a central question, and she was looking here. And you're saying there's a bigger. That's circle that you're not looking here for this?

Jerry Colonna 32:38

That's right.

Daniel Stillman 32:39

The answer. The question you're looking for.

Jerry Colonna 32:41

There was a.

Daniel Stillman 32:41

It's true. She was. She was asking the question, why is this happening to me? And.

Jerry Colonna 32:47

Right.

Daniel Stillman 32:48

You're saying, hey, look, look a little.

Jerry Colonna 32:53

Well, it is what we should do as coaches. Right. When. So when a client says, why is this happening to me? And we are seeing a pattern, I don't think it is pushing. I don't think it's necessarily leading to be able to notice a potential pattern that's going on. I remember I used to have a client who used to complain about her boss named John, and I finally pointed out to her that her last two bosses were also named John and that her father's name was John and that the same complaint about all four men was occurring and so was I leading. Yeah, a little bit. But it's also like, you know, you've got a nail stuck out of you, stuck in your head.

Daniel Stillman 33:49

Right. I don't know if you've seen that video. It's a. It's a classic.

Jerry Colonna 33:52

I have.

Daniel Stillman 33:53

Yeah. It's like, I don't know if there's this throbbing. And this is the question of fixing versus not fixing, and also the question of, like, until we make the unconscious conscious.

Jerry Colonna 34:05

Right.

Daniel Stillman 34:05

It's gonna rule our lives, and we're gonna. We're gonna call it fate. And you're just pointing out patterns and seeing if they agree or disagree. We hold them lightly.

Jerry Colonna 34:15

That's right. Or if they resonate.

Speaker 3 34:16

Yeah.

Jerry Colonna 34:17

Or if they're. Or if they generate curiosity. Absolutely right.

Daniel Stillman 34:21

And if she had rejected it, then she would have rejected it. So there's another young quote I want to explore and a question that's been gnawing at me. It's a very ill formed, long winded tangle of a question, but I have an intuition that you will grok it and have an interesting perspective on it. And so this is just me getting some free coaching from you, if I can.

Jerry Colonna 34:47

Okay. Who said it was free? I'm sending you a bill at the end.

Daniel Stillman 34:52

Please do. So the other young quote you mentioned in your book is, we're not what happened to us, but what we choose to be.

Jerry Colonna 35:02

Actually, if I may, because I think the pronouns matter here.

Daniel Stillman 35:06

Oh, yes.

Jerry Colonna 35:07

He said, I am not what has happened to me. I am what I choose to be. Okay, yes, but keep going.

Daniel Stillman 35:15

Fair. No, no, because it's. It's. He's owning it.

Jerry Colonna 35:17

Right.

Daniel Stillman 35:17

And that. That's the difference. He's not proclaiming it for someone else. It's a choice that we make for ourselves.

Jerry Colonna 35:22

Mm hmm.

Speaker 3 35:22

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 35:23

So, I, um. I was listening to your interview with Krista Tippett because I'm a huge Krista Tippett fan. I was re listening to it, and there was this phrase she used that didn't actually get picked up later in the conversation. What do we do with our own messiness? What do we do with the parts of ourselves we don't want to choose to be anymore? And something that comes up in my coaching work is the sense where there's parts of ourselves that we don't want to bring into a conversation. There's parts of ourselves that are. That we kind of want to other. That are ghosts to us, but they're still there. And I feel like there's a context. For example, one of my coaching clients feels the need to project a certain amount of confidence in fundraising conversations. And, of course, everyone has feelings of lack of confidence internally. And so there's this idea of showing up on purpose, of wanting to be. Be a certain way to shape the conversation in a way that we want to shape it. And not all our parts are safe in the conversation. And I guess I'm wondering, it's this idea of, like, self leadership and self management. How do we be these other ways without denying or othering these parts of ourselves? Because we don't want it to be a cognitive, performative act of playing.

Jerry Colonna 37:02

We don't want to fake it till we make it. Yes.

Daniel Stillman 37:05

That's in my notes. Right. And that's. That's like the classic, you know, Polonius, bad advice. Bad advice.

Jerry Colonna 37:12

Right.

Daniel Stillman 37:12

You know, Polonius, a terrible father, gives terrible advice to his okay, son. And so it's. To me, it feels like they're, you know, I want to befriend those parts of myself, but there's. And then we ask them to stay outside, but it still feels like there's this tension to other. These parts of ourselves and to make them unwelcome in these conversations.

Jerry Colonna 37:40

Well, I think I'm teasing through what the question is, so let me respond to that, because I'm seeing it not only Daniel as one coach to another, giving a perspective, but it's also for you, as well. So we'll hold both perspectives, and in a way, both of my books reboot, which is the book with which I was talking to Krista about, which I was talking to Krista about. And reunion. Address the need that's implicit behind your question in reunion, I think it's chapter four. It's the end of part one. So if we take a step back and we say that the basic theme of reunion is that in order to lay the ground work for what David White would call the house of belonging, one must reunite with a series of things, reunite with the truth of our ancestors, and not merely the myth. Reunite with those of our past, those of our ancestors who have been othered, and importantly, the parts of ourselves that we have dismembered from our own experience of us. And this is what's relevant. That's chapter four of the book, and in it, I quote extensively from an essay that Parker Palmer wrote about reuniting with the parts of ourselves. And again, that was a big theme in reboot. Okay, so if we go back to your example for a moment, this may feel like a subtle difference, but it's a little bit how I approach this question differently than, say, perhaps other coaches or perhaps other therapists or perhaps others. The making friends with parts of ourselves that we have dismembered. Okay. The process of reuniting with the parts of ourselves isn't, I think I'm thinking now of the parts work that Dick Schwartz teaches. I think that that is useful and important, but ultimately limited because it misses a very, very important element, which is behind the question of, how have I been complicit in creating the conditions I say I don't want? And that is the exploration behind why was this part of me dismembered? Because more often than not, I disconnect in order to feel loved, in order to feel safe, or in order to feel that I belong. Now, once. The first step is to recognize that there are parts of you that you have dismembered. The second step is to understand what was the cause of that dismembering. And the third step in the welcoming in is to understand that your wish for love, safety, and belonging is because you're human, not because you're broken. And so how do we transform the act of dismembering a part of ourselves, shoving it into the long black bag behind us, of the shadow that Robert Bly would call? How do we bring it back in and integrate it? Not simply by allowing ourselves to live out actions from our shadow, but, in effect, to eliminate the need to put things in the shadow in the first place.

Speaker 3 42:05

Yeah.

Jerry Colonna 42:08

That'S true. Reunion. That's not just living side by side in the same house that's actually bringing it back into relationship and welcoming it in.

Daniel Stillman 42:24

Yeah, it's a really interesting. And I appreciate that. I'm thinking of the. There's this Ts Eliot quote. The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and to know the place.

Jerry Colonna 42:36

I almost used that quote. Almost used that quote in the book. I know the quote well.

Daniel Stillman 42:42

And in a way, what's tough is that there's still. We want to leave the feelings of self doubt outside the conversation, and we want to project confidence. And there's parts of us that feel a need to be seen as powerful, strong, lovable.

Jerry Colonna 43:05

But let me interject for a moment, please. How does the feeling of self doubt serve you?

Jerry Colonna 43:18

What is the benefit of the self doubt? You see what I'm doing there? You said, we want to leave the feelings of self doubt behind. And I'm actually asking a different question, which is, what is the benefit of doubting of oneself?

Daniel Stillman 43:41

It's safety.

Jerry Colonna 43:42

It's safety.

Daniel Stillman 43:44

Yeah.

Jerry Colonna 43:45

And if we look at the child that is in us, who was five years old, who, in order to feel safe, took on the responsibility of doubting one's own capability, because to be too confident was too risky. And that may be not only my interpretation of what I see all around me, but in fact, that might even be a lineage gift.

Speaker 3 44:15

Yeah.

Jerry Colonna 44:16

That might be something that grandparents felt and great grandparents felt. Because if I grew up, for example, in an environment of pogroms,

Jerry Colonna 44:32

did I just hit a nerve?

Daniel Stillman 44:34

Oh, yeah, sure.

Jerry Colonna 44:36

Then it's better to not stand out. It's safer to not stand out. And when I say safe, I don't just mean existential safety. I mean physically safe.

Speaker 3 44:52

Yeah.

Jerry Colonna 44:53

And so if that's the move, then what is needed is to be able to turn around and say, no matter how unsafe I feel, I am, in fact, safe.

Speaker 3 45:07

Yeah.

Jerry Colonna 45:09

Right. They are not coming with a knock on the door to take the whole family away. They did do that.

Jerry Colonna 45:20

But we are safe.

Speaker 3 45:22

Yeah.

Jerry Colonna 45:24

And so I can allow myself to feel the confidence of a fully grown, good man.

Daniel Stillman 45:33

Yeah. And that's the transformation of ghosts into ancestors.

Jerry Colonna 45:37

That's it. That's it. You got it.

Daniel Stillman 45:40

So what's really helpful about this, and I really appreciate you pulling it apart, is, you know, several years ago, I tried to write a. A second book and was blocked because, you know, my mother's gonna listen to this. So I. I don't want to say.

Jerry Colonna 45:59

God bless you, mom. We love you.

Daniel Stillman 46:01

I know that you had, you know, there was we controlled ourselves and parented ourselves in the family context because our houses were chaotic. Right. And so learning how to be things and to feel things and to be more mature than we are, to project what we don't feel internally and to create a shield of being a different way, there's a part of it that's numbing, and it's a kind of self murder. But in the flip side, I have, in my own experience scene when I was a 13 year old kid, I followed around this origami expert, Michael Schaller, on New York City. And I was an origami nerd. And this man was a short, loud, big personality, jewish man who could just own a whole room. And I was like, I learned how to be like Michael. I was like, look at him. And I think there is a beauty and a power. I wouldn't say faking it to till you make it, but seeing what someone else is and channeling them. So I think there's a beauty to that, but behind it is these feelings of self abnegation and numbing and denial and disunion. And I think this is where all of those are present and all of them are possible and true. And I think this is the sort of the question that's been. I appreciate you pulling away some threads at this with me.

Jerry Colonna 47:40

Well, you know, I really appreciate the story you share, Daniel. And I guess the question is, as you were talking about modeling yourself in some ways after Michael, I think of myself as modeling myself after, say, doctor Sayers, my first psychoanalyst, or Parker Palmer. And I think that there's something brilliant and beautiful about that. But it's not necessary to participate in the annihilation of your true self in order to internalize the lessons from others who come, who are mentors.

Speaker 3 48:18

Yeah.

Jerry Colonna 48:20

You know, Parker once wrote, there is nothing so tragic as to be complicit in the diminishment of our own self.

Speaker 3 48:27

Yeah.

Jerry Colonna 48:29

Right.

Speaker 3 48:29

Yeah.

Jerry Colonna 48:30

So, you know, but too often, I think, in the faking it till you make it, in the emulation of those we admire, we participate in the diminishment of our own self, seeing that as a necessary part of the emulation.

Speaker 3 48:56

Yeah.

Jerry Colonna 48:57

And it's. And it's just not true.

Speaker 3 49:01

Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 49:02

So what I'm getting from this, what I'm learning is, and it's really great to hear in the ways that you've emulated and tried to project. You know, it's like, I want to be more blank, like blank is. And it's okay to do that if we use the other hand, to say, how can I nourish and care for and love the parts of me that don't. That don't feel that way.

Jerry Colonna 49:29

That's right. It's, you know, in a very practical way, I might be in the middle of a coaching conversation, and, you know, just as I just did with you, I might look away and stare off and say to myself, how would doctor Sayers respond?

Speaker 3 49:50

Yeah.

Jerry Colonna 49:51

Or how would Parker respond? Or how would Sharon Salzburg, my buddhist teacher, respond? And what I'm doing in that act to reference what I do in reunion. Sorry, we're getting. Our snow plows are here. What I'm doing in that act is taking. Is really referencing and taking in my elders who have come before me, and it's a. It's an act of honoring them.

Speaker 3 50:26

Yeah.

Jerry Colonna 50:27

To. To emulate what they have taught me. You know? I mean, Parker is 85. He's emulated Thomas Merton.

Speaker 3 50:38

Yeah.

Jerry Colonna 50:40

Right.

Jerry Colonna 50:48

You just don't have to participate in wiping out yourself in order to internalize your teachers.

Daniel Stillman 50:57

I think that's beautiful. It's a really beautiful way to put it. It's a really beautiful way of putting it. Sometimes I remind you, Daniel, you don't.

Jerry Colonna 51:07

Have to wipe yourself out to internalize anything. That feels like a teaching for me.

Speaker 3 51:14

Yeah. Yeah.

Jerry Colonna 51:16

In fact, the best way to honor whatever it is that you may have gotten from me is to metastasize it, is to metabolize it, is to take it in and make it your own.

Speaker 3 51:29

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 51:30

Well, the thing that's coming up for me is the Mary Oliver poem, wild geese, which, you know, you do not have to be good, which is, like, such a relief for you do not.

Jerry Colonna 51:43

Have to walk for miles on your knees.

Daniel Stillman 51:46

You just have to love what the soft animal of your body loves.

Jerry Colonna 51:50

Amen.

Daniel Stillman 51:51

Amen. Well, it seems like we're very close to time, and that is probably a great place to stop. But I'll ask you, what haven't I asked you? Or what's unsaid that's worth saying with the few minutes we. We do have left. And I really appreciate all this time and consideration for these questions so far.

Jerry Colonna 52:11

What I would say is this, and here's a trigger warning. It's going to be about you. What a delightful conversation you've given me. What a gift you've given me with your questions, with your explorations, with your authentic whole self.

Jerry Colonna 52:37

Would that every conversation I have touch this level of depth. That would be a real joy.

Daniel Stillman 52:50

Thank you. I really appreciate that.

Jerry Colonna 52:57

I want you to know that I can feel how much my work has meant to you, and that is an honor to me.

Daniel Stillman 53:07

Thank you.

Jerry Colonna 53:07

So at the end of this, you're going to send me your address so I can send you a couple of signed copies of my books.

Daniel Stillman 53:14

Thank you very much. Well, as it turns out, you can also make coaches cry, not just CEO's.

Daniel Stillman 53:27

I really appreciate the time, Jerry. It's really been delightful. We'll include links to all the places where people can find all the things so that people can continue to do this work because it's really important work.

Jerry Colonna 53:39

And amen.

Daniel Stillman 53:40

That work is not the world.

Jerry Colonna 53:42

The world needs us to do our work. We are not at liberty to neglect the work, period.

Speaker 3 53:55

Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 53:57

And the real work is internal work.

Jerry Colonna 54:01

Is inner work, always.

Speaker 3 54:03

Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 54:08

Thank you so much, Jerry. It's really been. It's been a delight. It really, really has been. Have nothing else to add.

Jerry Colonna 54:16

That's a good note to end on.

Daniel Stillman 54:19

Beautiful. Well, I'll call scene then.

The Intentional Conversations that Build Powerful Co-founder Relationships

My guests today are Rei Wang and Anita Hossain, Co-founders of coaching platform The Grand, which was seed funded by Alexis Ohanian’s firm Seven Seven Six in 2023. Rei is the Chief Product Officer and Anita is the CEO.

I met Rei ages ago, in her early days in NYC at General Assembly, where she worked as a Product Manager and Global Community Lead, developing educational opportunities for students.

And I was excited to interview her about her work as the CEO of the Dorm Room fund at First Round Capital a few years back to get her perspectives around the intersection of community and product design…especially when the community IS the product. Check out that conversation here. Rei cultivated a vibrant startup ecosystem, mentoring over 250 entrepreneurs on various aspects of business management and fundraising. Their leadership garnered recognition, including the Forbes 30 under 30 award.

Rei and Anita met during their time at First Round Capital, where Anita was the Head of Knowledge. While there, she helped hundreds of entrepreneurs connect deeply and vulnerably, to share their concerns and to learn from each other. Anita was also an executive coach with the renowned coaching firm, Reboot, and is a certified Neuro-Linguistic Programming Practitioner.

Key Advice for Working Through Challenges

• Prevention is first and foremost! Speak early and often to reduce buildup, bottling up and boiling over of tensions

• Make feedback about actions and behaviors, not about the person or their personality

• Rei suggests that using a simple framework like SBIO is a great way to frame feedback. (Situation or data, the Behavior you see, the Impact it has on you, and the Opportunity for improvement or transformation)

• Make sure feedback conversations are two-sided, with both partners regularly asking for and offering feedback

• Anita underscores the importance of Co-Creation of resolutions to challenges instead of telling someone to be different. Working on these tensions with a sense of collaboration can lead to reduced defensiveness.

Links, Quotes, NOtes, and Resources

The Grand

My previous conversation with Rei Wang

More About Anita and Rei

About Rei Wang

I was born in China and lived with my grandparents and my great-grandmother all under one roof. My grandparents were teachers, lifelong learners, and culture bearers of our community. We constantly had neighbors of all ages over for tea and conversation. These discussions enriched my education.

I love building communities and designing learning experiences. I was an early Product Manager and the Global Community Lead for General Assembly where I created education products for thousands of students to pursue careers they love. More recently, I was at First Round Capital where I served as CEO of Dorm Room Fund. I nurtured a community of 250+ startups, and counseled entrepreneurs on topics ranging from fundraising to management. For my leadership on Dorm Room Fund, I received the Forbes 30 under 30 award.

About Anita Hossain Choudhry

My parents immigrated to the US from Bangladesh and found creative ways to share their life lessons through storytelling. I loved the stories so much I decided to share them by performing Bengali plays all around the country. Through these stories I gained valuable perspective and connected with a place my parents once called home.

I lead with curiosity and empathy which empowers others to find their voice. I launched a women's peer group at Deutsche Bank and a storytelling series for Wharton MBAs. Most recently, as the Head of Knowledge at First Round Capital, I helped hundreds of entrepreneurs connect deeply, candidly share their concerns, and learn from each other. My work on creating safe spaces is featured in the First Round Review. I’m also an executive coach formerly with Reboot and a certified Neuro-Linguistic Programming Practitioner.

The Grand is a culmination of my previous work experiences and inspired by my belief that everyone deserves group coaching and a supportive community.

A.i. Summary and Key Moments

The co-founders, Rei Wang and Anita Hossain discussed how they started their company, The Grand, which aims to address loneliness through consistent and vulnerable conversations within peer groups. They shared their insights around building a successful co-founder relationship, investing the time and effort to create intentional interactions, including fun outside of work. They emphasized the importance of frequent communication and intentional conversations to reduce tensions and misunderstandings. They emphasize the importance of frequent and honest feedback, coaching, and removing judgment in conflict resolution.

• Rei shares how they convinced Anita to start a company with them over the course of several months, comparing the process to a courtship 12:01

• The idea for The Grand came from their own experiences with loneliness and belonging, and their success in creating peer groups for open and vulnerable conversations among coworkers and founders (12:22)

• In their co-founder relationship, they prioritize connecting as whole humans and starting conversations with honest check-ins about how they're really doing, before diving into other topics. (15:18)

• Rei and Anita have frequent conversations throughout the day, which helps them address things earlier on and be more proactive in their communication (17:34)

• The co-founder relationship provides a unique outlet for constant communication about what's going on, how they're thinking and reflecting, and clarifying together. They also recognize the importance of coaching in being leaders and building a business. (23:26)

• Rei mentions the significance of sharing feedback frequently and openly to prevent resentment from building up. They also highlight the importance of framing feedback around specific behaviors rather than personal attributes. (28:18)

• Anita emphasized the importance of empathetic listening in co-founder relationships, where you seek to understand the other person's situation and ask open and honest questions. (31:07)

• Rei advised that forming a strong co-founder relationship takes time and intentional investment, suggesting activities like retreats and pilot projects to test working together in different capacities. Anita added that having fun together as individuals is also crucial in the co-founder relationship. (38:19)

Full A.I. Generated Transcript

Daniel Stillman 00:00

I'll re welcome you all to the conversation factory. Rei for the second time, and Anita for the first time. So I'm really grateful you made time for this, and I do still hope that I can learn from you in this conversation.

Rei Wang 00:12

Thank you so much for having us, Daniel. I'm excited to be you.

Daniel Stillman 00:16

Thank you. So I am curious how you two started the conversation about starting a company together. I know the grand has around for a while, and it started like all things do, I presume, as a conversation. So I'm wondering if you can just tell me a little bit about the seed conversation.

Rei Wang 00:39

Yeah, definitely. I'm happy to start telling the story, Anita, and feel free to jump in. It was actually a series of many conversations. So Anita and I have both started at first round at similar times back in. Gosh, Anita, I think 2015 feels like a decade ago.

Daniel Stillman 01:02

I mean, that is actually almost a decade ago.

Anita 01:04

Almost is a decade, right?

Rei Wang 01:09

I can't believe it. So Anita and I had became friends through work and just developed a close relationship. And I'd always known that I wanted to start a company, and I knew that it was important for me to start a company with people that I really enjoyed working with. Right. Because that would keep me motivated and energized through the ups and downs of company building. And after a few years of working at first round, working with Anita, I was like, I think I want to start a company with. So we used to go to the Boba guys in, you know, just for coffee, tea breaks during work. So I asked Anita one day if she wanted to get Boba. And after we got some Boba, I asked her, I was like, hey, Anita, you want to start a company with me? She's like, you're crazy what we even do together. And I rattled off a bunch of ideas, and she was like, no, I'm not convinced by any of. But I didn't take no for an over. Over the next, gosh, I'd say, like six months to a year. I can't remember exactly how long it was. Anita.

Anita 02:24

Yeah, probably very long.

Rei Wang 02:29

Where, you know, I just kept on asking Anita if she wanted to go get Boba or go get lunch, and then asking her again if she wanted to start a company with me. And being fairly relentless, know, just working together and was hoping to kind of change her mind and convince her that we could do something really great together. And I remember the day that she finally said yes. We had just gone on a company off site where we went curling at the Oakland ICE, and I don't know what it was about? Curling. After we went curling, we went for a walk around Lake Merritt, which is where I used to live in Oakland, and we sat on the grass and Anita was like, okay, Rei, I'll do it. Finally said, you know, it felt like a proposal moment when someone finally says yes. And I was elated and super excited to start this journey together.

Daniel Stillman 03:34

What made you want to propose to her and to be so persistent, why did you want to start a company with Anita? I mean, obviously she's wonderful. There's lots of, I can make up my own reasons, but I'm curious, what made you say she's co founder material?

Rei Wang 03:51

Yeah, that's a really good know. I think going back to the point of, I think a lot of people start companies because they're excited about the problem space or about the market they're tackling. And while I know those things are important, for me, it was really just being excited about who I was working with. And I think over the past three years that Anita and I had worked together, at that point, we had just developed a great relationship. I really felt like I could trust her, I could confide in her. She'd helped me navigate a bunch of different kind of challenges through work and life, and I felt like we could have honest communication and a really great partnership. So to me, I think that was the signs of a great co founder relationship and why I wanted to propose to her.

Daniel Stillman 04:44

Anita, what's your version of this story? I'm really curious what your experience was like.

Anita 04:48

Yeah, that is a beautiful story. Thank you, Rei. My version is a little different, and I would highlight that. I do think there are two types of founders, ones who know they want to be a founder and they want to start a company. And I'd say, Rei was in that camp. And then there's other folks who almost need to be a founder and don't want to be. So that was the camp that I was in. I will paint the was, you know, working at first round Capital, I had become an executive coach, working with Founders Day in and day out, and I really did not want to be a founder seeing it firsthand, unless I felt like I could really dig into an area that I was super passionate about, and I can spend the next seven to ten years working on it. And if I felt like I was uniquely suited to solve that problem. And so that's why I avoided being a founder for some time, just knowing the reality of it. Until Rei and I had these walks and these conversations. And the way I remember it is we had this deep level of trust with one another. Like Rei said, we were confidants for each other, and so we knew that we would work well together in that way. But it was the problem space and our values that we aligned on. And we talked a lot about problems that we saw that we wanted to do something about. And we kept coming back to loneliness, and we bonded over our own experiences. Being first generation immigrants in the US and what that experience was like and our own firsthand experiences with belonging or not belonging. And that's really what helped me understand, okay, we have this level of trust. We also have the same values, and we've also found a space that we can spend a lot of time in and make our mark on the world. And so that's really what it was for. Yeah. And the rest is history. And, yeah, I still remember that day in Oakland. We have a picture of it. It did feel like a momentous day for us, for sure.

Daniel Stillman 07:08

That's really what. What's coming up for me is loneliness and belonging are such big challenges, and there's so many ways to approach that challenge. So I'm curious, from your perspective, Anita. And I love this idea that, God, this is a hard job. I know it firsthand because I'm sitting with people who are solving this challenge every day. And to find not just a problem space that you wanted to lean into, but a way to address it is so interesting. So, for you, how did the grand come out of

Daniel Stillman 07:52

that sort of challenge you saw of loneliness? And.

Anita 07:57

So, you know, we talked about our firsthand experience with it throughout our lives growing up. And in particular, when Rei and I both moved to San Francisco, we both started in a job in an industry that we'd never worked in before. And so if we were left to our own devices and not able to talk to anyone about it, it could be very lonely, because you question everything, like, am I good enough? Am I doing the right thing? And we opened up to each other in this way, and that was really powerful, just this realization that I'm not the only one who has these thoughts. And over time, what we did is we gathered a group of coworkers to have monthly conversations on a consistent basis where we had this real talk and really talked about the self talk or the things that we were telling ourselves and really helped each other become more confident in our roles. That was such a powerful model. We also took that to the founders we worked with. And so we'd create peer groups. And again, these founders at first would come in and thinking they have to perform and say things like, I'm crushing it, everything's going really well, when in reality we knew that that wasn't true and it also wasn't helpful. And so we designed experiences and guiding principles that really helped people share more openly and more vulnerably and talk about the things on their mind, like, am I good enough as a founder? And that is when things shifted and we realized that there is something here, but only top. When you think about executive coaching and you think about these peer groups, only top executives or founders can get access to that. What would it look like if we can create something where people across ages, geographies, roles, can get that level of peer support when they need it most, so that no one has to walk through life alone and ultimately can become what we say, the grandest version of themselves.

Daniel Stillman 10:12

The power of, you mentioned consistency in conversations and self talk, the power of looking at yourself talk and going from surface level talk to real talk. And so I really want to focus the attention away from the product and how you two live those principles, because I've seen the event that I went to, we were talking about, I guess it was several weeks ago. Now, I know, and from my conversations with both of you in the past, I know that intentional conversations matter so much to you. And I'm curious what that looks like on a week to week basis. Because we scheduled this time, we wasted some of your time on technical difficulties. But normally you would be meeting on Thursdays to have your conversation just for each other. What would you be talking about now? How would you be designing this conversation? What would you be making sure you're attending to in your co founder relationship?

Anita 11:23

Rei, do you want to go first?

Daniel Stillman 11:25

I know it was a big question. Nobody wants to jump in on that one.

Rei Wang 11:30

Go for it, Anita. I'll jump in after you.

Anita 11:33

I would say the main thing about our relationship and our conversations and what drew us to each other is we connect as whole humans and not just as colleagues or co founders. And so the container of our conversations always start with, how are you really as a person? And we have a space to do that. Sometimes we do it through rituals like red, yellow, green, check ins, which is a stoplight analogy. Green means you're here, you're totally present. Yellow means you're here, but there's something lingering on your mind. And red means you're physically here, but your head is completely elsewhere. And the goal isn't to be green all the time. The goal is to just be honest about where you're at. And check in with yourself, but also with each other. We presume that everyone's checking in green all the time, and if they're a little distracted or short or whatever, we fill in the blanks and make up our own story. And so how can we have that honest connection in the beginning of any of our conversations so that we know the starting point and then we can get into two other topics, and so that's very important for us.

Daniel Stillman 12:53

Yeah, how we begin is so important.

Rei Wang 12:56

Yeah. Plus one to everything Anita said. Well, also, I think another important thing to know is just the frequency that we communicate with each. You know, Anita and I will probably just pick up the phone and call each other three to four times a. You know, we hardly go a couple hours without talking to each other. And I think that's fairly unique for co founders, especially for remote co founders. But we're constantly checking in with each other about questions, decisions, ideas, feedback throughout the day. And I think that helps too. If you're just meeting once a week for a one on one, then you feel a need to kind of prioritize and only talk about the most important things. And you don't get to dig into all of the topics that are top of mind. But I think having this level of frequency, we're able to kind of address things earlier on, be more proactive in our communication, so that way things don't bubble up into much larger challenges or topics of discussion, but rather ones that we can discuss quickly together and come.

Daniel Stillman 14:08

To a solution or agreement on that is fairly frequent. I'm curious how you distinguish between today is a special day and a special conversation. Like there's more intention versus the. I guess I'm wondering about logistical, emergent, reactive, proactive conversations versus intentional strategic conversations and how the week might be divided up. Or is it just like it is a steady stream of conversation and each one has the same sort of human energy behind it? I feel like I'm not asking the right question here, but maybe you can guess what I'm trying to get at.

Anita 14:59

Yeah, I would say a lot of, yeah, go ahead, Rei.

Rei Wang 15:06

This is hard without.

Daniel Stillman 15:07

I know. Yeah, it's like you can't point, you can't put your finger on your nose and say, not it.

Anita 15:12

You Rei!

Daniel Stillman 15:15

Yeah, you've got the floor, Rei.

Rei Wang 15:18

Okay, sounds is, I would say it's a steady stream with kind of maybe strategic milestones or checkpoints along the way. I think because we're talking to their so frequently, we'll say, hey, I think we need to have a strategy alignment conversation. Let's schedule that for Thursday and then also on the calendar to really dig into it and have more of a prepared agenda for that conversation, especially if we're trying to reach alignment. But other times, I think the conversations are more organic. Sometimes Anita will call, we'll talk about something for five minutes. Other times a five minute conversation will turn into an hour long one, and we'll end up having more philosophical conversation rather than a tactical conversation. Right. And I think it's just having that relationship, knowing kind of what we need, what the other person needs, but also being able to be clear about what our capacity for conversation is, too. And Anita is a mom of two, and we've all got kind of busy lives going on. So knowing, like today, I just have ten minutes to talk through this, but I can chat about this Thursday after six post bedtime and dig into it further. And being able to set kind of those boundaries with each other is also important.

Daniel Stillman 16:49

What did you want to add to that, Anita?

Anita 16:52

Yeah, so just going in a slightly different direction. One thing that I've noticed about our relationship and our conversations is we almost act as each other's emotional thermostats. And that is really critical in a co founder relationship because there are so many ups and downs you deal with on a daily basis. So to be able to have this safe space with each other where one of us might be feeling stressed or down about something and the other person is able to bring the other back up, it's really nice to have that relationship. And I do think us having worked together before contributes to that and really helps that.

Daniel Stillman 17:37

Can you talk a little bit more about this idea of being an emotional thermostat? Because on one hand, telling somebody your challenges can make them feel better. But I also, I'm sure you know, the experience of being bright sighted when you share a challenge with someone, and that doesn't sound like what you're talking about, but it does sound like co regulation, like having someone else who you really can tell everything that's going on creates homeostasis in your dialogue overall in the body of your relationship.

Anita 18:10

Exactly. I think you put it beautifully, and that's exactly right. When you're building a company, there are obviously, you have your team, you have your investors, you have your customers. Just having that relationship with each other and that co regulation that you talked about is so critical to face the day to day challenges that inevitably come up.

Daniel Stillman 18:34

This is something that I think is so interesting and unique about the co founder relationship. And, you know, this obviously, Anita, as a coach, sometimes the way I talk about it is that a founder, really your wife or your husband, can't be the person who hears all your problems all the time. You can't tell everything to your board. You are trying to sort of control the messaging around what's going on to various other people who are in the organization. And there is rarely a person who you can tell everything to, the good, the bad and the ugly, except for an executive coach. And it sounds like, in a way, the two of you provide this very unique outlet for constant communication about what's going on, how you're thinking and reflecting and clarifying together, which makes me think, why doesn't everyone have a co founder?

Anita 19:32

Yeah, that's a really good point. And, Rei, part of our relationship, early days, when you were trying to find a coach, we had that relationship. I don't know if you want to speak to that at all.

Rei Wang 19:49

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think what is unique about our relationship is we're two co founders who are starting a coaching company, right? So we definitely know the importance to being collaborators, to building a business, to building a great product. And going back to the early days, I mentioned that I knew I wanted and needed to be my co founder because we had built that relationship of trust. And I had gone to her with a lot of the challenges that I was navigating in work and life at the time. And she was able to ask me really thoughtful questions to help me kind of process and find the answers within myself. So we've always had that foundation and we have different personalities in that we're able to kind of, I think, adapt to sort of what each other is feeling and provide kind of that alternate point of view and that balance to each other, too. So that way we can help see each other, see those new perspectives and kind of create that happy, perfect 72 deg temperature where we can all flourish and grow and do our best work.

Daniel Stillman 21:04

Yeah. Rei, I'm wondering, you mentioned, oh, we need to have an alignment conversation, or each one of you sounds like you can sort of call an audible, for lack of a. I mean, it's a sports metaphor. I'm not too good with those. But to sort of say what you feel needs to happen. And I'm wondering, from your perspective, I know that you are a very intentional conversation designer as well. How do you feel like you approach the structure of some of these more specific conversations that the two of you might call for? Say, let's have a conversation about blank, and let's actually have an agenda and approach it. How do you think through designing those conversations?

Rei Wang 21:51

Yeah, that's a great question. I think the first thing is to really align on the goal of the, you know, similar to how Anita kicked off our conversation today. Before we hit record, just asking, what do we want to accomplish from this conversation? What is the objective here and where are we trying to go in terms of destination? So outlining what that focus is, what the goals are, and using that to kind of set the context and frame the conversation and then also categorizing what type of conversation we're having. Is this an ideation conversation where we're trying to come up with new potential solutions, or is this a decision making conversation where we're trying to reach clarity and make a critical decision? Is this a feedback conversation where we're both trying to gain developmental feedback for each other, for our teams? Being really clear about what type of conversation you're having and what the purpose is, is the first step to making sure that you have a productive, intentional conversation.

Daniel Stillman 22:56

Yeah. Nita, I'm wondering if one of the things that I'm hearing, and I think this can always be, I think it's an interesting balancing act, is so much co creation and so know in dialogue and deliberation, but you two have different roles. Rei is the chief product officer and you are the. And like, I'm wondering how you separate whose job is what and whose decision rights are what. Or is it really just everything is dialogical and as co founders, it's something that everyone needs to sort of come into a decision together.

Anita 23:40

Yeah, that's a great question. I would say when we think about our roles, we come together first as co founders. And like Rei talked about, if there's a big decision we need to make and through our conversations we usually are able to get to alignment. And if for whatever reason we aren't, then Rei's done a good job of really creating the space for me to set the strategy and vision. But normally as co founders, we get to a point of alignment because we're not precious about, oh, it's my idea, your idea. It's really what's the greater good for the company, for the space, for our team. And when you have that baseline intention, I think you can get to where you want to go. And that's the most important thing about our relationship and how we delineate the decisions we need to make.

Daniel Stillman 24:38

Yeah. Did you want to say more about that, Rei? I think it comes up for you on that question.

Rei Wang 24:42

Sure. Yeah. I think this is a really important question and one that co founders need to figure out early on, but also check in continuously in their journey. And I think this has, has evolved for us a lot over the four years that we've been building the grant. So I'd say in the early days when we were just a team of two, every single meeting together was both of us. Right. And we would talk through every single decision together. Now we're a little bit bigger. We've got nine full time employees, six of which are on the product team, three of which are on the revenue team. So it's pretty clear these days where we focus our time. I spend most of my time working with the product team thinking about new features that we can release to make our experience for coaches, for members, for sponsors better and make sure that we're delivering a world class product experience. And Anita is really spending her time with the revenue team thinking about sales and marketing and go to market and how do we continue to bring in new business for the company. So I feel like these days we have more purview over kind of managing our teams and working with them to kind of deliver our goals and our results. And of course, we still come together a lot as co founders, but we're no longer in every single meeting together because we have to scale ourselves as our companies and our business and our team start to scale, too.

Daniel Stillman 26:19

Yeah, that's a really interesting inflection point moment that you're in where part of me feels like a little like I don't want to project, but it's like, it's a little sadness of this moment from like, wow, it's just like the two of us in everything altogether to like, I feel a little bit of a sense of loss of. Not that it's not okay to trust that person, but it's an interesting moment when you no longer have visibility to all of those things anymore.

Rei Wang 26:51

Yeah, I think there's definitely a lot of nostalgia. I mean, Anita and I like to reminisce on the early days when we would just work from her living room and it was very intimate and casual and cozy. But I think there's also great things that happen as you start to grow and scale too, which is we don't have to be responsible for making every single decision. Right. So I think that emotional burden starts to shift too, because you feel like, okay, I've got a team that I can delegate to. I've got a partner who I trust who's running another team and they're taking care of this too. So you no longer feel like that pressure solely weighs on you or on the two of you.

Daniel Stillman 27:33

I think that's a great reframe. I love that. So the two of you work with a lot of founders, and I'm curious, based on the way you think about your co founder relationship, it doesn't always go smoothly. People do have conflict, and I'm curious how you two think about working through conflict and if there's any coaching or advice you would offer to other co founders who are facing a moment of tension. And maybe I'll start with you, Anita.

Rei Wang 28:09

I'm happy to.

Daniel Stillman 28:10

Oh, Rei. Rei wants to jump in. Go for it.

Rei Wang 28:15

Okay. I'm happy to start on this one. So I think this is one of the most important topics and one of the most common topics that we see. Co founder relationships, business breakups are one of the things that we hear about most. I think, to me, the most important thing is to share that feedback frequently and often, and not to let things fester. I think oftentimes when you don't kind of discuss openly and honestly what's happening with your co founder, you start to kind of build resentment or it starts to kind of turn into a much larger conversation. So going back to kind of our communication practices, the fact that we can call each other three times a day and just very candidly say, hey, I have some thoughts about that meeting. Here's my feedback on how I thought it could be better. Or I have some thoughts on the way that you framed this conversation. Next time, could you try framing it this way? Because we have that relationship and we talk to each other so often, nothing feels like it's been kind of bottled up and boiling over, and it doesn't turn into a large point of tension or a large argument. I think the other thing to be really mindful of is just being really clear about how you give that feedback to and making about the behavior that you want to see differently, rather about kind of the person or an attribute of theirs. And that's something we spend a lot of time coaching founders and leaders on, is always framing the feedback as what is the specific action or behavior that you want to see differently, right?

Daniel Stillman 30:01

Yeah.

Rei Wang 30:02

Using the example of SBIO is a great way to kind of frame that feedback. Talking through the situation, the behavior, the impact and the opportunity, and how that person can either get a new way or approach to shifting that behavior is fundamentally sort of the crux of the conversation.

Daniel Stillman 30:26

Yeah, I'm a big fan of that framework, and it seems like there's a term I use, it's called the FQ, which is the festering quotient. And it seems like you guys really have a super intentionality around keeping the FQ really low because you have that shared vocabulary around feedback and a real bridge of communication that it's expected and that it's being offered within a good framework and within the right spirit, which is, like, super duper awesome. Thank you for that. Anita, do you have anything to add about conflict and how to keep the FQ low?

Anita 31:07

Yeah, I will add that. By the way, can you hear my baby?

Daniel Stillman 31:13

No, I can't. And you know what? Babies and dogs are always welcome on the podcast. It's totally fine.

Anita 31:19

She just started crying. Okay. She's good. The thing I would add is a lot of times feedback is a one sided conversation where you drop something that you want someone to change, and then that's it. You expect them to go off and make that change. And that's why, as we talk about Sbio is the opportunity, and that's where we invite people to take more of a coaching stance, where they get curious and have a conversation. And that part of it is, I think, the most important, because then you can get on the same page and really feel like you're co creating a solution versus someone telling you to do something different, which makes people become defensive. And so that's one thing that is really important in terms of conflict. And the other thing is with the festering quotient. I think about a lot of the founders that I've coached where we've had an open and honest conversation, and I turn to them and I say, can you say that to your co founder? And they're like, what should I do? And it's like, no, have that conversation with them. And at first, people are tense. They don't know how people are going to react. But it's so important to, again, not dwell on it and spiral on it, because then you're making up your own stories versus bringing it to the table so you both can come to the same page and just have an open dialogue.

Daniel Stillman 32:52

Yeah. This is such an important thing about the stories that we tell ourselves about what's going on and the stories, how we interpret what some of these actions is. And I think what's interesting about the SBio framework is it's really about owning your own. This is what I saw. This is what I saw. The SBI is still like, I saw this, this, and this. This is my experience. And just owning that, I think, is so powerful, versus saying, like, you did this, you did this. You did this. And it's a stance, it's a small shift, but I think it's a really important one.

Rei Wang 33:31

Yeah.

Anita 33:31

It's removing the judgment from what you're saying and making it really objective.

Daniel Stillman 33:36

Yeah. So our time has gone quickly and delightfully. There's so many questions I could ask you all, but I will just ask you, what have I not asked you that is important for us to talk about? What is something important? What's a layer deeper that we haven't touched on, or a parting thought that just seems important to reflect on around this question of powerful, effective co founder relationships based on your experience. And Anita, if you want to go first, if you've got something, Rei, we can just popcorn whenever you feel like you got something.

Anita 34:18

What I would add is the key skill of empathetic listening and how important it is in conversation, especially with your co founders. As leaders, we've been socialized to constantly problem solve and pattern match and listening to respond. And when we're in that mode, we get lost in what's really going on. And so one of the things that I hope everyone walks away with is how can we listen to really understand someone's situation? How can we get curious and just be with that person? And if everyone takes that stance and really hones in on empathetic listening and then asking open and honest questions, I really think the world would be better off. And the way that we talk about open and honest questions, it's a question that you don't have a preferred answer. You're not trying to lead someone into a particular answer, and it's not a yes or no question. And so I would say those two things, if co founders can really build those skills with one another, then your relationship will really go to the next level.

Daniel Stillman 35:33

Yeah. What is your favorite question? That is sort of an open, honest, empathetic. I mean, obviously they're the best ones come up in the moment, right? And they're new questions, but I'm willing to bet you've got one in your back pocket that is a favorite for you.

Anita 35:47

Yeah. So I love to teach people what I call outcome shift. And it's a set of two questions that really helps people move away from the problem that they're spinning on and go more into the solution. It's very simple. The first question is, what would you like? And then the second question is, what will having that do for you? And it's really powerful because, Daniel, when's the last time someone asked you, what would you like?

Daniel Stillman 36:19

Usually at a restaurant, it's not very frequent exactly.

Anita 36:24

But then what will having that do for you? Really gets to the core of what someone is seeking. And so you keep asking, what will having that do for you? You repeat back what they've said and then you keep drilling down and you can uncover so much with just those two questions. I was talking to someone who wanted to ask them, what would you like? They wanted to get their MBA and we went through that exercise and in the end we found out that no, they really just wanted to make their parents proud. And so what are other ways that they could do that? And it just opened know a deeper level conversation.

Daniel Stillman 37:04

Rei, does, does Anita ask you that question often? And if do you get tired of it?

Rei Wang 37:14

We do an exercise where we'll actually just keep on repeating that question. What will having that do for you? Over and over again until we get to the source of truth. And it is pretty powerful what it can reveal.

Daniel Stillman 37:26

You guys are such nerds. I love it.

Rei Wang 37:30

We are total nerds.

Daniel Stillman 37:31

You're literally drinking your own champagne. That's beautiful. Do you ask it? Show me. We have almost no time left, but you say, what would having that do for you? And you say something and then she says something. You're just sort of like going back and forth on this and she says.

Rei Wang 37:50

What will having that do for you? And will ask me sometimes five times in a row, right until I get to the root of what I really want.

Daniel Stillman 37:59

Yeah, I love that. That actually is in the room. That's super awesome. Rei, I would ask you the same question in the moments we have left. Like, what haven't I asked you what's important for you to say? And maybe your own favorite question would be amazing.

Rei Wang 38:19

Yeah, I'd say for anyone who's listening that is thinking about starting a company with another person, I think great relationships and great co founder relationships really take time these days. I feel like it's popular to do co founder dating or co founder Kind of speed Networking. I've seen a lot of those events pop up and while I think it's a great way to meet people, you're not going to go from a speed networking event or a dating event to kind of being co founders and great co founders overnight, right? No, I think just like all great relationships and all collaborations, it takes time. You have to form Storm Norm before you can perform. And Anita and I now have had the benefit of working together for eight years. But even in the early days of transitioning from first round to the know, we were very intentional about spending time together to form. So we went on a retreat together in the early days to talk about what the grand's vision was going to be and also to make sure that we could spend four days together in a cabin and really be able to work together well. Right? We did a couple of initial sort of pilots where we facilitated off sites together for other companies just to see what it would be like to work together in a new way or in a new environment. And I think all of those initial projects and initiatives really helped us get a feel for what it would be like to work together in this new capacity. So that's my advice for anyone who's listening, is give yourself that time, put yourself in these unique environments with your co founder to see what that relationship is going to be like and continue building it over years. Because ultimately, I really do believe that co founder relationships are what kind of make or break a company. We've seen it time and time again with the founders that we work with. So you really have to be intentional about investing that time into.

Daniel Stillman 40:27

Is. Oh, sorry, Nina, you wanted to say plus one that.

Anita 40:30

Yeah, like, plus one that. And I would just underline, make sure you can have fun. Know, that's another thing that Rei and I do intentionally, where sometimes we will get together and intentionally not talk about work and make sure that we can have fun as two individuals, two humans. After that event in New York, Daniel, you'll find that's fun. Rei and I were so hungry, we went and got hot pot. Just talked for hours and it was glorious. And so I think that's really important in the co founder relationship, too.

Daniel Stillman 41:06

That is your. Did you know this is a favorite place of one of yours from your New York days, BRei?

Rei Wang 41:14

No, we just both had forgotten to eat at the event. You know how it is, Daniel. We were starving at the end and was just trying to find any place that was open at a Tuesday.

Daniel Stillman 41:26

I'm always looking for recommendations, but if it was just serendipity, then I know the feeling of being below the line with food is halt. As they say, hungry is the first on the checklist. We are at time grand people. Thank you so much for making time to have this conversation. Where should people go to learn more about all things grand if they want to join the grand world?

Rei Wang 42:01

Yeah, definitely check out our website, www.theGrand.World. And if you want access, we've actually built a feedback tool based on SBiO that anyone can use for free to practice having feedback conversations. So you can sign up for that by going to home the grand world.

Daniel Stillman 42:18

And I will put links to that in the show notes. Thank you so much for the conversation. I'm so sorry that the Internet sometimes is not our side, but I appreciate you two being super patient with the technology. You two are awesome.

Anita 42:35

Thank you so much for hosting.

Rei Wang 42:36

Thank you so much, Daniel.

Anita 42:38

Thanks for your thoughtful questions.

Daniel Stillman 42:40

Thank you. Thank you very much.

From Transaction to Participation

My guest today is James Rutter, Chief Creative Officer at COOK, the pioneering frozen food company, where he oversees internal and external branding and communications. COOK is a founding UK B Corp, committed to using its business as a force for good in society, and has been ranked in the top 100 Best Companies To Work For every year since 2013. COOK’s award-winning frozen meals and puddings (which are desserts, btw) are made by hand in Kent and Somerset, and sold from 98 of its own shops nationwide, in 950 concessions and through its own home delivery service. 

James joined COOK in 2010 after 15 years as a financial journalist and editor, and he speaks and writes regularly about purpose-driven business and brands. You should really follow him on LinkedIn!

James and I talk about the glory that is a proper Fish Pie, and about citizenship and participation. James’ leadership philosophy for his internal team is grounded in a sense of play and a recognition of community.

He shares some of his favorite insights from Peter Block’s book, "Community: The Structure of Belonging" and the deep value he’s found in working with Jon Alexander on Citizenship and Participation. Jon Alexander is the author of the bestselling book, "Citizens." James references Jon Alexander’s Participation Premium Equation in the opening quote.

There is so much goodness in this episode!

At Minute 27 James shares his community and transformation insights from Peter Block, including the essential idea that a small group, a community, is the fundamental unit of change, especially when that group is grounded in possibility. He also goes to share the impact that Block’s ideas of Inversion have had on him:

As James says, summarizing Block:

“It's not the performer who creates the performance, but the audience… And again, in a conversation sense… it's the listener who creates the conversation whereas we often think it's the speaker who creates the conversation… it's the child who creates the parent, not the parent who creates… this is (not) some kind of answer, but… a thought to play with. What if that's the way it works? How would you approach it differently? If the audience creates the performance, then how are you seeking to bring the audience into it? How are you giving them the power?”

At Minute 42 we discuss the importance of Connection over content: 

“...you've got to seek to build the human bonds first before you seek to do whatever the worky thing is you want to do.”

In essence, we are marinating in Danny Meyer’s ideas of an Employee-First workplace, which is why we talk, at the end of the episode, about how Happy Cooks make Happy Food, referencing an earlier conversation we had. 

And James insisted on talking about my Mom being on the Mike Douglas show with John Lennon, Yoko Ono and Chuck Berry in 1972, hosting a historical cooking segment -  this episode is famous because it’s the first time John and Chuck met and Played together. You can see A Tiny Video Clip of my mom on TV here (most of them seem to get pulled down). At a crucial moment in the cooking segment, my mother, just 22 and not actually my mother yet (or anyone’s!) realized that the studio band was playing chaotic music, and that everyone was in a chaotic space, and she announced that unless we had a calm, peaceful environment, the food would taste chaotic - our intention and our energy would flow into the food. The Host, Mike Douglas, asked the band to play something quieter and more mellow, and John Lennon, assigned to cut cabbage, began reciting the mantra he wanted to suffuse the food:

“Rock n Roll…Rock n Roll…Rock n Roll”

What do YOU want to suffuse your work with?

Links, Quotes, Notes, and Resources

James Rutter on LinkedIn

Fish Pie Recipes!

Peter Block on Community: The Structure of Belonging

Jon Alexander’s book Citizens

Jon’s Agency Equation: A Proposal

Agency = Purpose + Belonging + Power

Agency: the ability to shape the context of one’s life

Purpose: the belief that there is something beyond your immediate self that matters

Belonging: the belief that there is a context to which you matter in turn

Power: practical access to genuine opportunities to shape that context

Exit, Voice, Loyalty: An essential book on people and organizations

Finding flourishing and play at work - inspiration in https://www.punchdrunk.com/work/

Quotes no one said: “Teach Them to Yearn for the Vast and Endless Sea”

Via quote investigator: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/08/25/sea/

Minimum Viable Transformation

Matt LeMay on Agile Conversations

Happy Cooks make happy food: On Daniel’s Mom being on the Mike Douglas show with John Lennon, Yoko Ono and Chuck Berry Hosting a cooking segment: Context and History! 

Why this episode is famous - it’s the first time John and Chuck met and Played together.

A Tiny Video Clip of my mom on TV! (most of them seem to get pulled down)

Key Quotes

Min 27 “If we're seeking to…restore community, then people have to come together and have a conversation about what's possible, not be anchored on what the problem is, what the solution it is that needs to be found to the problem, what power needs to be exerted to make things work better, but to be open minded to the possibility of what they can create together. And that ultimately that is where community drives from…the unit of transformation is a small group.”

Min 29 “I think you might like this idea as well from this community book, which is about inversion…inversion in terms of thinking about: It's not the performer who creates the performance, but the audience…And again, in a conversation sense… it's the listener who creates the conversation whereas we often think it's the speaker who creates the conversation. He says it's the child who creates the parent, not the parent who creates. I think there's some really interesting kind of. That's not meant to say this is some kind of answer, but it's just a thought to play with. What if that's the way it works? How would you approach it differently? If the audience creates the performance, then how are you seeking to bring the audience into it? How are you giving them the power?”

Min 42 “I do think that in this kind of “be an overnight success, kind of move on, climb the career ladder, have a million jobs in ten years” type vibe. People overlook the real value of established teams and what teams that work together for a long time can really deliver and achieve. Because that's when you do get really high trust. You do get a sense that people turn up and are much more open, are much more willing to be vulnerable. It's human nature. We're not prepared to risk so much with people we don't know so well. If you want people to come and take the mask off, you've got to seek to build the human bonds first before you seek to do whatever the worky thing is you want to do.”

Min 49 “Genuinely, I think the more time we collectively spend thinking about how we are together within our organizations, our businesses… The more productive we're going to be…fulfilled…the more we're going to feel able to take those masks off and be who we genuinely are together and hopefully help each other into a kind of more flourishing future.”

AI Summary and Key Moments

James Rutter and Daniel Stillman discuss creating a sense of community and enabling creativity throughout an organization, with a focus on giving everyone a voice and establishing trust.  

They also talk about the power of playfulness in leadership and the value of established teams and long-term relationships in achieving high trust and vulnerability. James emphasizes the importance of starting with people and their relationships in organizations to create a great product.

Key Points

James explains the importance of giving everyone a voice and creating a sense of community at a diverse workplace with 1800 employees (3:43)

James and Daniel discuss the importance of human flourishing and how it relates to creating a sense of community and enabling creativity throughout an organization (5:56)

James discusses the challenge of enabling people working in a factory to flourish and how their company provides benefits and opportunities for growth (8:30)

James discusses the importance of individuals seeing their own impact on the world and how their company tries to bring that to life through initiatives like care cards for retail teams (12:48)

James shares a story of a customer who received a care card and how it made him feel seen and recognized, highlighting the impact of creativity at an organizational level. (14:10)

The company runs a program called Raw Talent that trains and employs people who have been in prison, homeless, or dealing with addiction or mental health problems (17:15)

James talks about giving everyone a voice and pushing them out of their comfort zones to create creative tension, and mentions an impactful session they had with immersive theater group Punch Drunk. (32:17)

They discuss the atomic unit of change - conversations - and how they can create alignment within a group, and James talks about his role as Chief Creative Officer in holding space for creative team conversations (37:55)

James suggests that building human connections and establishing trust is key to creating an environment where people feel safe to be themselves and take off their masks. He also emphasizes the value of established teams in achieving high levels of trust and vulnerability. (41:05)

More About James Rutter

James is chief creative officer at COOK, the pioneering frozen food company, overseeing internal and external branding and communications. He joined COOK in 2010 after 15 years as a financial journalist and editor. COOK is a founding UK B Corp, committed to using its business as a force for good in society, and has been ranked in the top 100 Best Companies To Work For every year since 2013. COOK’s award-winning, frozen meals and puddings are made by hand in Kent and Somerset, and sold from 98 of its own shops nationwide, in 950 concessions and through its own home delivery service. James speaks and writes regularly about purpose-driven business and brands.

Full AI-Generated Transcript

Daniel Stillman 00:01

I will now officially welcome you to the conversation factory. James, I actually am really pleased that all of our conversations have led to this next conversation, because I've learned so much from you, not only the joys of fish pie.

James Rutter 00:21

You're going to have to explain that to everybody a bit later.

Daniel Stillman 00:24

Yeah. Yes.

James Rutter 00:25

Recipe in the show notes.

Daniel Stillman 00:26

Is that what you meant to say? Yeah. Well, I'm still waiting for the official recipe.

James Rutter 00:31

I've kind of, like, send you the official recipe.

Daniel Stillman 00:34

I've had to hack it together, but I was trying to make a low carb version, so I use solariac and anyway, let's just start with fish pie, because this is a great example of culture, because I think we talked about this in our last conversation. Many of the recipes for fish pie just sort of assume that I live in Britain because it's a very british dish, and they say, oh, go to your shop and get a fish pie frozen mix, which includes various types of fish, and then bang some peas and carrots and what, and then everything that comes out. Those are all things I knew about. I was like, what kind of fish is in a fish pie? No one could really explain. It took me a lot of research to try and pierce the veil of the cultural chasm separating England and America, which was shocking.

James Rutter 01:23

Yeah. Two nations divided by a common language. And fish pie.

Daniel Stillman 01:26

There you go, fish pie. Exactly. So maybe you can put yourself in context. What on earth does a chief creative officer do and where do you do it and why?

James Rutter 01:39

Gosh, I don't know what a chief creative officer should do, but what I do is an entirely, probably different kettle of fish. Back on fish. So I was thinking about this the other day, actually, because people always ask me and I usually just kind of shrug and I said, yeah, it sounds good, doesn't it? I'll tell you when I know what it means, but I kind of just stretch across a lot of things from the obvious, I guess, brand marketing type of creative stuff that probably springs to mind when people think of chief creative officer type roles and then into kind of strategy. And for cook, a lot of internal kind of comms, a lot of internal culture work.

Daniel Stillman 02:28

Yeah.

James Rutter 02:28

So I try and help other people be more creative in their roles rather than assume the crown of creativity, as it were, hopefully. Anyway, that's what I do. And so I try and kind of nudge, facilitate, as you would like to say, no doubt, and generally encourage people to be more creative in whatever they're doing at cook. That's how I like to think of it. Whether I accomplish that or not is another matter entirely.

Daniel Stillman 02:59

Well, we can have one of your employees on.

James Rutter 03:01

Yeah, exactly.

Daniel Stillman 03:03

How do you determine whether or not, I mean, we were talking a little bit before we started around some of the things you're learning around community and thinking of work as a community and bringing a citizen lens. You're really intentionally trying to craft what I would sort of describe as like this cloud of conversations, rivers and valleys of conversations between everyone that eventually lead them to become more creative but also more connected. How are you thinking about the ways in which you're trying to design the conversation at work differently?

James Rutter 03:43

I think

James Rutter 03:48

the obvious thing is that we try or we seek to just give everybody a voice, and that sounds blindingly obvious, I guess. And yet is often in any larger workplace, and we have 1800 people, which obviously is small by some standards, but very big by others, but across 1800 people working all around the country because we got getting on for 100 shops or 100 small retail outlets. So we got kind of 700 people in that kind of context. We've got another 700 people in a kind of classic blue collar manufacturing context in three different sites, four different sites. And then we've got kind of a central office in a classic office type environment. So seeking to give everybody a voice across that incredibly diverse workplace is actually really difficult. Yeah, I wouldn't say we achieve it all the time. Some of the time I really hope we do. But in terms of conversations and connections and relationships, which is what we use relationships as our kind of catch all for human connection, whereas you would go with conversation. But in terms of relationships, that's what we're seeking to. We're seeking to help everybody feel that they have strong relationships with their colleagues, but also with people in other parts of the business, that they have a voice and that they are therefore part of a community rather than a corporation.

Daniel Stillman 05:33

What's important about that shift you mentioned you're reading Peter Block's book on community. What are you learning in that book that's sort of shifting how you shape community? And why is it important to get to that place where people feel like this is a community and not just work, not just a job? It's not just fish pie.

James Rutter 05:56

Yeah, right. I think a lot of this comes down to a little bit. What do you believe about people and human flourishing? In a way? What's the point of it all? Carl? We're going deep early. Daniel.

Daniel Stillman 06:12

Why? Let's go there.

James Rutter 06:14

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 06:14

Eudemonia is one of my favorite words. That is the greek term for

Daniel Stillman 06:22

the highest state for a person, right? The tippy top of Maslow's hierarchy. Flourishing.

James Rutter 06:28

Yeah, absolutely. And I think there's that sense in which all any of us can hope for is to achieve flourishing however you want to define it. And therefore, when we come together in a workplace, if that experience, if that collection of people isn't helping us move in whatever small way towards our idea of flourishing, then really what's the point? And so when you think about all a business is, at the end of the day, is a bunch of people coming together to do something collectively that they couldn't do on their own. That's all it is. It's a fiction. Otherwise, it doesn't really exist, other than those people's willingness to come together and do stuff. And so when we're together, when we're in the same room or over a call like this, or we're in a shop or in a kind of kitchen, in our respects, what we do there together has got to feel like it's both worth something to us, individually and collectively, and is somehow helping us progress. Baby steps, it might be towards our idea of flourishing.

Daniel Stillman 07:44

Yeah.

James Rutter 07:45

So that's kind of, I think, where it comes from a little bit is that belief in what we should be striving for as people. And how can we enable that, not just for the people up at the top of the pyramid, but for actually everybody in the organization.

Daniel Stillman 08:02

Yeah. So how does creativity and community look different throughout the organization? How do you approach giving everyone a voice and making everyone feel connected and creative? There's like the coal face, as it were, which is maybe the worst. Absolutely right. And then there's communications. There's the people who are wearing different colored collars, as it were.

James Rutter 08:30

Yeah, right. Absolutely. And I think that's one of the biggest challenges and kind of struggle sometimes I have with our ambition, when you take it down to a root level, that we have people working in what most people will call a factory. We never call it a factory. It is a kitchen. But people would see it and say, that looks like a lot like a factory. And they're working in what you might say is a production line, an assembly line. They're doing a pretty repetitive manual task. How can we possibly say that we're enabling those people to flourish? Is kind of a bad day. Look at that kind of context. And then, if you like a good day, look at that context is okay. We've got these people in a room. They got smiles on their faces. They're talking to their colleagues. They're having a laugh. They're getting paid enough to live on, which is really important. Yes. They get breaks when they get fed, they get some lovely little kind of benefits, which means they can use a free holiday home, because we got a little holiday home that they can go and stay in. They get together with their colleagues and they have some fun, and they actually, every so often, they look up and they feel part of a bigger whole, and they can say that. They can see that that's doing some good in the world. And so they feel a little prick of pride. And so when they go and meet their friends and they talk about their week at work and their friend just kind of moans on about the drudgery, they can say, oh, you know what? But we did this great thing as a business, or that we get free doctor's appointments or whatever it is. We get our birthday off little things, but they feel a little bit of pride about where they work, and they feel that actually they can stay there for a period of time, they can learn, they can grow, they can move on, they can achieve something that perhaps they didn't think was possible a few years ago.

Daniel Stillman 10:42

Yeah.

James Rutter 10:42

And so even at that level, I say even that's a very kind of condescending thing to say, but at that level, we are hopefully bringing the possibility of flourishing to people in a way that another company wouldn't.

Daniel Stillman 10:59

Yeah. Is some of that have to do know? I'm wondering how the narrative of the B Corp is held throughout the company, because you are a benefit corporation, and we can talk a little bit about what that means for those folks who maybe aren't familiar with it. Do the people throughout the organization understand what that means to be part of not just their own flourishing and organizational flourishing, but also societal flourishing, which is presumably part of what a benefit corporation is meant to.

James Rutter 11:42

Know, the B Corp movement. And again, this is a classic transatlantic divide. So whereas in the US, you have benefit corporations, which is a legal structure.

Daniel Stillman 11:57

Yes.

James Rutter 11:58

You then also still have certified B Corps, which is a certification, kind of an independent certification process that is different from being a benefit corporation.

Daniel Stillman 12:11

Right.

James Rutter 12:11

And over here in the UK, we only have certified B Corp, so we don't have a legal structure.

Daniel Stillman 12:17

Right. You're still whatever the equivalent of our S Corp or LLC is to the government, you look the same.

James Rutter 12:23

Yeah, to the government we look the same. We have to change some wording in terms of how we're incorporated, say we actually take people and planet into consideration, not just profit, when making any decision, but we're not in the same legal structure as us benefit corp people. But as a B Corp, certified B Corp, yeah, the whole kind of goal is using business as a force for good in society. Now, how many of our 1800 people know about that, buy into that, get up in the morning feeling good about that? I don't know. Hopefully some. Definitely not all, I would say, but certainly some. And I guess in all this realm, be it B Corp, be it talking about kind of higher purpose of business, however you want to frame it, I do think a lot of it comes down to your role, your job, what you do day to day, and how can you witness your impact on the world. So you're going to get some pride from what the organization does, but to really have a sense that what you are doing is contributing, I think everybody needs to see their own impact.

Daniel Stillman 13:37

Yes.

James Rutter 13:40

Over the years we've tried to bring that to life with people in a number of different ways, I guess. And like I say, it's often much easier if you're like my direct team in the marketing team and you're talking about all this wonderful stuff and posting stuff on social media and what have you. Or like I say, for somebody who's in more of a manufacturing environment, it's tough. For somebody who's on the shop floor in a retail environment, it's more difficult. Two of the things we've done that I think goes some way towards achieving that. For the retail teams,

James Rutter 14:15

every year we give them, if you like, two little cards, and these are called care cards. And care is one of, we have, we have core values, of course we do called essential ingredients, and care is one of those. And each of those cards gives the holder 30% off our food for a year. And they can give that card to whoever they like, who they think needs our food because they may have health problems or their spouse may have health problems, or they may be bereaved or struggling somehow. And it's just for that member of card to see somebody who thinks needs it and say, oh, here you go, have a card, take 30% off. And the story of that really brings us to life that that kind of has the desired effect was a guy just sent us in a letter just to say, I was in one of your shops and I'd rushed in and grabbed some food, got to the till, I said, could I come back and pick it up later? And I said, yeah, of course, because he had to get to the hospital for his wife's chemotherapy treatment because she had cancer and he had two young kids and they were screaming. He was trying to get out the store and said, don't worry. Don't worry at all. So he came back a couple of hours later to pick his food up, and they just presented him with this card. And he said in his little letter, I just had to leave the shop because I was really emotional and I didn't want to cry in public. And he said, it wasn't the fact that it gave me money off, it wasn't the discount. It was the fact that somebody had seen me in my moment of need and recognized that for that kind of shop team member, that is them witnessing their impact.

Daniel Stillman 16:03

Yes.

James Rutter 16:04

And thinking, actually, I'm doing a good.

Daniel Stillman 16:05

Thing in the world and being creative. That's an example of creativity being harnessed at an organizational level. And it's a lovely story. And honestly, I can hear how it hits you because you feel it telling.

James Rutter 16:22

It, and then it gets.

Daniel Stillman 16:25

The hope is that everyone who gets one of these care cards in the organization feels that narrative impact, that they get that story.

James Rutter 16:37

Yeah, absolutely. And again, I don't think maybe this speaks a little bit to the community idea as well. We can't direct people to kind of use the cards in that way. We are giving them the possibility of having that impact and feeling that emotional connection and going home with a warm glow that night. That's almost the most we can do. We can't force it, but we can say, look, here you go, if you want to step into that, and here's your opportunity.

Daniel Stillman 17:10

I mean, they can give it to their mom if they want.

James Rutter 17:12

Yeah, no, they can.

Daniel Stillman 17:13

Genuinely legitimate.

James Rutter 17:15

Yeah, no, they can. So on the shop side, there's that kind of thing. And then, if you like, on the kitchen side of things, we run what is now quite a big, long standing program of taking people who've been spent time in prison or homeless, dealing with addiction or mental health problems. And we have a program called raw talent that then gives them kind of two weeks of, kind of quite intensive training, and then at the end of that, the possibility of a job in the kitchen. And so we've now taken, I think, 150 people over the last seven years. And again, those people then go into work, and the people they work alongside who aren't from the program when it's most successful, they feel genuinely invested in those people's future, and they feel a real sense of responsibility, but also of impact when it works and equally when it doesn't work, they feel absolutely gutted if people leave. And again, the kind of story that brings that to life for me was when we first started doing this program about seven or eight years ago, I think one of the first people we took into the program had been convicted. I think it was either manslaughter or murder. Very long standing case. And we'd said at the start, look, of the first, particularly this is early days, we're not going to take in anybody who you might feel is going to be potentially risky for your team and one of the teams in the kitchen, I think our pastry team was particularly nervous about the program and a bit resistant to letting it happen, but had reluctantly agreed. So we were a bit worried about this guy going. But anyway, he had him. He'd met lots of people in the kitchen, so we thought, well, let's let it keep going. We'll see how it goes. And first day, he kind of turned up. And at their break, at lunch, he kind of went to sit in the canteen and he didn't have anything to eat for lunch. These are date. We feed everybody there. We didn't back then. And one of the women in the pastry team just noticed it. So the next day when he came in for lunch, she just came over and gave him a sandwich and said, I made this for you today, so you can eat it. And again, it's just that sense of human connection, of suddenly feeling like you're responsible for somebody else that you're taking an interest in and that actually you can help them through.

Daniel Stillman 19:51

I think it's lovely. And this is sparking my brain to ask you about the citizens book that you're reading and if what you're learning from that is shaping how you're shaping culture now and in the future.

James Rutter 20:12

This is from the Peter Block one.

Daniel Stillman 20:14

Well, so you mentioned also John Alexander's book Citizen.

James Rutter 20:17

There's two. There's community, peter block, and citizens. So John is a guy, he's a british guy. He speaks our language literally, so he knows what fish pie is. And he's got a little consultancy or a partnership called New Citizenship Project. And they've been going for a while working around this idea that we need to reclaim our sense of citizenship. So move beyond the sense in which we're a consumer and where our only sense of agency in the world is to consume something, to kind of give over our power to the corporations who are pushing stuff at us and say that's all we can do, and to actually reclaim our agency as citizens, to come together, to decide, to create, to kind of, I guess in conversation to your theme, kind of move ourselves forward and get out of this hole we're collectively in. And so a lot of their work, where we've kind of found the amount of value in working with them, is around this idea of participation and how to really resonate with people, with customers, you need to give them an opportunity not just to buy from you, but to buy into you and participate in what you're doing. And they've got a lovely little equation, which they call the participation premium, which is a higher purpose. So as a company, to have a higher purpose plus participation. That's right. I'm trying to remember how this equation works now. Higher purpose.

Daniel Stillman 22:10

I know.

James Rutter 22:11

Higher purpose plus something in return. So it's not to deny that actually, people kind of need to feel they get something from it. Times participation creates huge value. And so where we've been playing with that from a kind of customer facing side of things is, okay, so how can we give customers the opportunity to participate in a way that isn't just buying a product? What more can we do? So is there a conversation we can involve them? Can they somehow help us solve a problem? Can we invite them into a shop to somehow create something with us? I think that side of the citizens idea from a business perspective is really interesting. So how do you open your doors a little bit to participation and enable people to be more than just if you're, like a blind consumer of whatever it is you're doing?

Daniel Stillman 23:07

Yes. So this is really emergent for you. This is like something you're noodling on, how to make this real.

James Rutter 23:16

Yeah, completely. And a lot of it can just revolve around language.

James Rutter 23:27

So we do some kind of healthy kind of pot type of deal, dishes that are kind of for lunch. And so we had a promotion on. You can get three of these pots for ten pounds. So obviously that's one way you can just talk about it, save whatever, get three for ten pounds is a very obviously consumer driven way of talking about it. But you could reframe that language as kind of one for you and two for your friends, get together and eat. And so in a way that is just slightly taking people out of the. I'm just a consumer mentality into something that is more about, well, actually, this is enabling me to do something productive in the world. Does that make sense?

Daniel Stillman 24:17

It does. And it's a reframing. There's, like, this tiny axe in the back of my head that I need to grind because there's this famous quote. One of my favorite websites is this website called quote investigator. And very often people say, like, oh, there's this famous quote from so and so. And I'm like, they never said that. There's so many famous quotes that nobody ever said. And there's this famous quote that people think they attribute to Antoine Song. I can't pronounce his last name anymore. The guy who wrote the little Prince

James Rutter 24:49

The french guy.

Daniel Stillman 24:50

The french guy. And there's this quote that everyone attributes to him. It's like, if you wish to build a ship, do not divide men into teams and send them into the forest to cut wood. Instead, teach them to long for the vast and endless sea. It's a very beautiful quote, but unfortunately he never said it. And it's not really clear that anybody ever said it. But that doesn't mean that the idea isn't true. And even something as simple as, like, I think very often people think money is the lever to pull because it's very obvious and brutish. Lever, right? Like buy three, get one off. Right. I forgot the deal already. See, because it's not that important, it's not that impactful. But when you frame it as community, when you frame it as feeding your friends, when you frame it as gathering people together and potentially harness what comes out of that somehow, like, make people feel like they're sharing those stories that they are absolutely writing society, invite someone you don't agree with to dinner. These are ways of really being part of a very different conversation than we make food and it's affordable and we're making it slightly more affordable for you. And that is a very creative approach to changing the conversation about what it is that you do and what people would say it is that you.

James Rutter 26:21

So to my other book, I'm reading my community Peter block book, which I was saying earlier, he talks about community is a conversation around possibility.

Daniel Stillman 26:31

Can you say that one more time? Let's let that sink in. That's a really great. Community is a conversation around possibility.

James Rutter 26:40

Possibility, yeah.

Daniel Stillman 26:41

What on earth does that mean? Say more about that. That's beautiful.

James Rutter 26:45

I think his point is quite a big kind of mind expanding one. If we're seeking to. He talks about restore community, then people have to come together and have a conversation about what's possible, not be anchored on what the problem is, what the solution it is that needs to be found to the problem, what power needs to be exerted to make things work better, but to be open minded to the possibility of what they can create together. And that ultimately that is where community drives from. Yes, and he's got this again, there's lots of lovely little sentences, long quotes in this book.

James Rutter 27:41

I'm going to misquote this. But anyway. But the unit of transformation is a small group.

Daniel Stillman 27:46

Yeah.

James Rutter 27:48

And that immediately reminded me of that classic Margaret Mead quote. If she really said it, you can check.

Daniel Stillman 27:54

She did say it, but I'll double check.

James Rutter 27:58

Fact checking.

Daniel Stillman 27:59

Margaret Mead.

James Rutter 28:00

Yeah, exactly. That whole never doubt the ability of a small group of people to change. The world is what it ever has. And I think it's actually a really powerful idea around how do you bring together small groups that then can be kind of energized and create real ripples through a business, through society, through a community. And the power of small groups is really interesting.

Daniel Stillman 28:32

I think this is really.

James Rutter 28:34

How do we even get onto that?

Daniel Stillman 28:35

What were we doing? Well, we're talking about community and citizenship. Yeah.

James Rutter 28:39

Because I was going to say, I think you might like this idea as well from this community book, which is about inversion. So inversion in terms of thinking about. It's not the performer who creates the performance, but the audience.

Daniel Stillman 28:58

Yes.

James Rutter 28:59

And again, in a conversation sense. So it's the listener who creates the conversation whereas we often think it's the speaker who creates the conversation. He says it's the child who creates the parent, not the parent who creates. I think there's some really interesting kind of. That's not meant to say this is some kind of answer, but it's just a thought to play with. What if that's the way it works? How would you approach it differently?

Daniel Stillman 29:23

Right.

James Rutter 29:24

If the audience creates the performance, then how are you seeking to bring the audience into it? How are you giving them the power? How are you.

Daniel Stillman 29:32

Well, recognizing that they have the power?

James Rutter 29:35

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 29:36

I recently had a guest on my friend Matt Lemay. We talked about his one page, 1 hour manifesto, which I will link to in the show notes where he just thinks teams should only any. Nobody should spend more than an hour working on anything longer than one page to share back with the team. Just to close the cycle of conversations. He has another talk that we unpacked in the conversation around. You don't get anyone to do anything because people come up to him after his talks and say, like, well, these are great principles about leadership. How do I get people to do this? And you're like, well, you don't get anyone to do anything. We invite them. We create the conditions for. We create a space for. They have the power. Yeah, the power is yours. That's a captain planet reference for those who understand. So I was thinking, when you're talking about the Margaret Mead quote it's really interesting to think about what the atomic unit of change is because obviously in my book I would assert that the unit of change is a conversation, and I think we can have a conversation with ourselves and we can have a conversation with another person to try and create a lime or whatever. But I agree that getting a group of people to have their vector maps instead of being everywhere, to being at least directionally the same, this is leadership. And I'm curious with your. We've talked about lots of spheres of conversation. We've been talking a lot about the big community, the organizational conversation and how it exists in different strata. I'm curious, in terms of your team, how do you see yourself as a designer of conversations, in terms of getting that group of people to discuss, deliberate, decide, any other ds that we can think of.

James Rutter 31:28

Explain more. Just what are you digging at?

Daniel Stillman 31:31

Well, because you are the chief creative officer, but I presume you don't operate by fiat. There is a group of people who discuss things together and say, ought we to do a, b or c, or should we take a plus b divided by c or none of the above. Right. The creativity at the creative team level, your creative team level, you're the one who's holding space for those conversations.

James Rutter 32:06

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 32:07

How do you do it? What's your trick, assuming you're doing it well.

James Rutter 32:17

Do I have a trick? That's a good question.

Daniel Stillman 32:20

Well, I mean, there's no tricks, obviously, there's no tricks.

James Rutter 32:23

Again, I think

James Rutter 32:27

a lot of it does come back to giving everybody a voice, making sure people feel confident enough to use it, and then seeking to push them into places where they might feel a bit uncomfortable, because that's where the creative tension you hope, will really start to grip and move them forward.

James Rutter 33:04

I don't know if there's a trick, but one of the most impactful things I ever did was do a session with the theatre group called Punch Drunk. Have you ever come across punch drunk?

Daniel Stillman 33:20

No.

James Rutter 33:20

I know they've been to New York at times, so they do these incredibly grand, immersive theatre experiences. So they've got one on in London at the minute, which is all about the fall of Troy. And it's the kind of things where you queue up, everybody has to wear a mask, like a classic half face mask, masquerade type mask. It's usually really dark. You get let out at various places, usually in a big industrial type of site where it's very dark and you're just free to wander.

Daniel Stillman 34:01

Were these ones who made sleep no more?

James Rutter 34:04

Could well be. Was it sleep no more?

Daniel Stillman 34:06

It's because it's giant, because I remember wearing such a mask? And it must be running around early, early days when it was only supposed to run for. I'll just pull rank. It was only supposed to run for a month, and then they just kept doing it. But I think that may be them, and I feel like I should know that. But, yes, sorry, please proceed. Yeah, they totally did sleep no more. That's right. Because it's beyond immersive. It's in a warehouse and there's many, many scenes going on, and it's like beyond an escape room. Right.

James Rutter 34:42

The whole thing is just all going on. But they very cleverly guide and everybody to the same place, the denumont. So everybody experiences the same. So going back some years, I was lucky enough to do a session with them where they were just showing people mostly from kind of brand marketing, creative industry types, people, how they prepare their actors for the performance, some of the things they go through. What that just really brought home to me was the power of play, because it was all around, genuine play around, kind of very unstructured, kind of improvisational games, techniques with some loose rules and frameworks, but within which you were able to do kind of what you wanted, create scenes in your mind, write down kind of letters as if you were writing to somebody who was the thing in your head, all this kind of stuff. And then the best bit was when they open the set, they let everybody into the set one at a time, at two minute intervals. And the sets are always really dark and gloomy. And hidden around the set are candles, little candles, electronic. They were but little electric lights. And by each light is a task. And so when you get led into the set, they say, right, your job is not to be seen by anybody, so you're not allowed to be seen. And you've got to find as many tasks as you can and just do the task. And so you're let into this set and suddenly it comes flooding back to you. The experience of being a child playing hide and seek, and it being the most exhilarating experience in the world to be just in a little bundle in the corner with your heart beating and hoping the person who walks past isn't going to stop and see, and then finding this little light and opening up the paper and just reading what it says and without even thinking, just doing it. And so there was one that was like, sprint down the corridor behind you. There was another one that was pick up the mannequin and dance a waltz on the dance floor. And there's all these kind of things. And it was just such a powerful experience? Because it just reminded me that if you allow people to get beyond their tram lines, that they're told they've got to stay in and really kind of play and immerse themselves in what it really means to create your own experience, you then just ignite people's kind of imagination for what they can do.

Daniel Stillman 37:32

Yes.

James Rutter 37:35

I obviously don't do anything like punch drunk, but at least seek to have a little drop of that in every gathering.

Daniel Stillman 37:44

Yeah, but you brought your team out to something, to one of those, did I understand correctly?

James Rutter 37:51

No, this was me on my own, sadly. But I tried to bring it back. Yeah.

Daniel Stillman 37:58

How did you talk to me about that? Because you talked about giving everyone a voice and bringing in play and playfulness. How do you try and create the conditions for playfulness? In what ways are you trying to nourish your team so that they have the food, the materials to do it?

James Rutter 38:21

I'm a big lover of games, full stop.

James Rutter 38:28

And you see it with any group of people. You'll know this. You'll see it with any group of people, that you give them some silly little simple game to play.

James Rutter 38:41

I think I've seen a video of you doing, like, the shaky thing.

James Rutter 38:47

Anything like that. I think ones that involve pairs of people are particularly good. So if you can do anything that involves an interaction and is a little game,

James Rutter 38:59

you'll have done this thousands of times. You'll go from, like a quiet, dull, kind of slightly lethargic room into a room that's full of energy and laughter and possibility and what have you.

Daniel Stillman 39:11

Yes.

James Rutter 39:14

In that sense, I don't think it's rocket science. It's like figuring out ways to kind of ignite the playfulness that lies inside of all of us and to make people, oh, hey, it's okay. We're allowed. This is playtime.

Daniel Stillman 39:31

Yeah, I think it's beautiful. I have a very difficult question to ask you, and I'm not sure if I've been poking at something, and I don't even know how to ask this question, so I'll try. I'm thinking about the event that I invited you to, the leadership gathering. We were talking about difficult conversations and the sense that what I find often with people is when they're in a challenging context, there's one way that they want to be something that they want. There's ways that they think they ought to be or should be in the sense that we're angry or disappointed or frustrated, but we need to be calm or patient. We're nervous, but we feel like, we need to be confident. And I'm wondering for you as a leader, how you thread that needle. Because the reason I've been poking at this is I love this idea of everyone being themselves and feeling like we're safe to be ourselves. And I also get this sense from a lot of the clients that I coach of this idea of, like, I have to put this mask on, I have to be a certain way. And I've been really thinking about, well, how do we be the other ways and how do we do it in a way that feels good to us and good to the other people? And I imagine that in your work, it's not all play. There are some challenging conversations. I'm wondering how you sort of create a shift in yourself so that you can show up in the ways that you feel you need to in an authentic way.

James Rutter 41:05

I might throw this back as another question, because do you not think ultimately that's built on human connection? So it's very hard to come without a mask if I'm meeting you for the first time. It's just difficult. Some people maybe have that superpower that it's always out there and they just are who they are, but most of us will come with a little bit of a mask on because we're not quite sure how that connection is going to go, whether there's going to be any connection, whether we just miss each other on the way past type thing.

James Rutter 41:42

So finding ways to build that relationship in a personal way as quickly as you can, I guess, would be my sense of how you get then to a place where you're going to be comfortable to show your true self rather than your master. So.

James Rutter 42:08

So again, so in a kind of cook context, we're mostly very fortunate. People tend to stick around for a long time. So you build relationships over years. And I do think that in this kind of be an overnight success, kind of move on, climb the career ladder, have a million jobs in ten years type vibe. People overlook the real value of established teams and what teams that work together for a long time can really deliver and achieve. Because that's when you do get really high trust. You do get a sense that people turn up and are much more open, are much more willing to be vulnerable. It's human nature. We're not prepared to risk so much with people we don't know so well. If you want people to come and take the mask off, you've got to seek to build the human bonds first before you seek to do whatever the worky thing is you want to do.

Daniel Stillman 43:18

Yeah, that makes sense. That's really interesting. Thank you for. I appreciate that. It's a question I've been sort of scratching at for myself. I appreciate your perspective on it. Well, so listen, we're getting close to the end of our time together. My lord, the time goes fast. You are a delightful person to converse with, James. What's your secret? How do you do it? What? Haven't I asked you that? I ought to have asked you what? Haven't we talked about that you think we ought to have?

James Rutter 43:48

What should we have talked about? We've done a lot. Haven't we talked about inversion. Inversion of all that stuff. Citizenship, community.

James Rutter 44:03

We haven't talked about your mum. It's a well known story.

Daniel Stillman 44:08

It's not a generally well known story.

James Rutter 44:11

And it's such a great story.

Daniel Stillman 44:15

I.

James Rutter 44:16

Feel like, about the coolest mum story I think I might have ever heard.

Daniel Stillman 44:20

Well, could we put it in context? How did it come up and what was your experience of being like, oh, I should definitely look into this because I feel like we were talking about food and how happy cooks make happy food.

James Rutter 44:34

Exactly. It came up because that's exactly what we were talking about. We were talking about how happy cooks make happy food.

Daniel Stillman 44:41

Yes.

James Rutter 44:41

And that led us directly to your wonderful, glamorous mother, who came across like this celebrity tv chef before there even. Were celebrity tv chefs in 1973.

Daniel Stillman 44:57

I will put a link in the show notes. In 1972, I believe, less than a year before my brother was born, before my parents were married, my mother was invited to be a cook. She was a macrobiotic cook at the time, and she did a cooking segment with John Lennon, Yoko Ono and Chuck Berry on what was called the Mike Douglas show, which was like Donahue and Oprah of its day. And what was extraordinary, this is a very famous moment. John Lennon. Yokono agreed to come on the Mike Douglas show for a whole week with the caveat that they could bring any guests that they wanted and they were into macrobiotics. Although from the look of know, I think John was on a lot of heroin at the time. It didn't look like he'd eaten in weeks.

James Rutter 45:40

He was on more than your mum's onion cakes.

Daniel Stillman 45:43

Yes. Tajiki egg rolls. And what is quite delightful about is that many of us. I saw it for the first time when I was like 15 1415, where my mother got the video through. They offered her a tape of it and she was like, I'm never going to have a machine like this. My mother was somebody who'd given up her silverware because she thought she was going to eat with chopsticks for the rest of her life. But there was a still shot of John Lennon feeding my mother an egg roll, which happened between takes. And it was just sort of accepted, like, that's a thing that happened, but it is an extraordinary thing. And what's funny is that sometime in the think VH one had the whole week on because it was a very famous. They had lots and lots of famous people on the Mike Douglas show. And so people called my mother and they're like, hillary, are you on VH one? And now it's in. Actually, that bit is in the rock and roll hall of fame because it's the first time that John Lennon and Chuck Berry ever met and played together. You can find footage of that with Yoko ono ululating in the back. Should you care to engage. I just love that and that sound.

James Rutter 46:52

That would be my go to story for every social occasion ever.

Daniel Stillman 46:55

Let me. It does come up.

James Rutter 46:56

Mum, cook for John, Yoko.

Daniel Stillman 46:59

Right. But the point is, there's this moment where they're all. It's just kind of a cluster fuck. And my mother's like, we need to have a calm and peaceful environment, otherwise the food will taste very chaotic. And she just gives everyone a job. And they start playing very nice soft jazz. And so they're playing very weird, sort of like, very chaotic music. They chilled it down. I'm so glad you enjoyed it. Hanging out with my mother circa 1972. This is a very special time.

James Rutter 47:26

I love it. I encourage everybody to watch that clip and marvel over your glamorous mother.

Daniel Stillman 47:32

Oh, thank you. I really appreciate you giving my mom a shout out. She'll enjoy this episode a great deal. Well, besides that, anything else?

James Rutter 47:46

It literally says here, your mom.

Daniel Stillman 47:48

Yeah.

James Rutter 47:48

Rock and roll cabbage.

Daniel Stillman 47:49

Rock and roll. Yeah, that's what Sean Lennon was saying as he was cutting the cabbage. Rock and roll. Rock and roll. Rock and roll.

James Rutter 47:55

No, I mean, I guess the thing we didn't touch on, which maybe we said we would, which just to finish on it, because it's a little bit encapsulated and that good cooks make good food comment. This sense of, again, organizations working from in to out. And how actually, if you don't start with your people and their relationships or their conversations in your world.

Daniel Stillman 48:20

Yeah.

James Rutter 48:20

And how those are back again. Back. And if. And how those are promoting flourishing. How on earth can you hope to have a great product out of the world that's going to connect with the people you hope will be your customers?

James Rutter 48:34

Genuinely, I think the more time we collectively spend thinking about how we are together within our organizations, our businesses. The more productive we're going to be, the more kind of fulfilled we're going to feel, the more we're going to feel able to take those masks off and be who we genuinely are together and hopefully help each other into a kind of more flourishing future.

Daniel Stillman 49:02

What's not in that mike drop. You're right. So if you were to look back on all that we've discussed, and you were to give this talk, this conversation, a title, what would be the title of our conversation?

James Rutter 49:18

Rock and roll cabbage, surely.

Daniel Stillman 49:21

Rock and roll. Yeah, that's a good one. Rock and roll cabbage. Well, then I'll call scene.

Daniel Stillman 49:35

Thank you so much, James. This has been an absolute delight. I appreciate you making the time.

James Rutter 49:39

It's fun, yeah it was fun!

Divorce by Design - Shifting the Default Conversation with Suzanne Vickberg

Today I share my conversation with Suzanne Vickberg, aka Dr. Suz. She is a social-personality psychologist and a Research Lead at Deloitte Greenhouse. Along with her Deloitte Greenhouse colleague Kim Christfort, Suzanne co-authored the best-selling book Business Chemistry.

But there’s another type of Chemistry - or Alchemistry - that I sat down to talk to Dr. Suz about - shifting the default track of a conversation from protection and opposition to collaboration,
Some years ago I interviewed Dr. Elizabeth Stokoe, a Professor of Social Interaction at Loughborough University, who speaks in her book “Talk” about conversations as having a landscape or a “track” that participants asses and orient to rather quickly…and that we glide down that track, while we monitor the texture of that landscape, and navigate the bumps in the road…so that we can keep things on safely on track. Check out our podcast conversation here and her TEDx talk here. In the opening quote to this podcast, you can hear Dr. Suz describing this process of “landscape orienting” happening very rapidly in a divorce context.

Knowing the default path is very helpful when navigating a “hello, how are you?” kind of “small talk” conversation in a non-wierdo-way. Knowing the default track can help make things smooth and easy…when you’re visiting the store, or a bowling alley. And when you don’t know the basics of the track, things can be hard - Doing simple things in a different culture can be surprisingly slippery to navigate when you don’t know the basics of the track. 

But sometimes the default path can be extremely detrimental - especially when the default is ineffectual or becomes unconscious and habitual - we keep doing things out of rote, not intent.

In business, a common default/habitual conversational path is looking at an underperformer and putting them on a Performance  Improvement Plan in order to be able to fire them more easily,

A non-default, more conscious conversation is taking the time to learn *why* they are underperforming and helping them actually transform themselves, their work performance and their lives….and in the process deeply benefiting the company and even the community.

Seems impossible, right? Or grandiose? Carol Sandford, in her book about Regenerative Business talks about an organization that did just this… a manager discovered that a chronically underperforming and late employee was just functionally illiterate. That employee, once they felt safe to share more, helped that manager learn that many of their employees were facing similar issues. Instead of a PIP, this employee got literacy training, and became an advisor to a new literacy program developed inside the organization, which spread out to the larger community, in ripples of growth and transformation.

That is a *non* default conversation - turning a PIP conversation into a community-transformation conversation.

On a micro-scale, Dr. Suz’s book tells the story of rethinking or re-designing the “default track” for a very, very common conversation - Divorce. When that word gets said out loud, people find lawyers, put up a shield, and start digging trenches. 

There is a better way! It takes effort to deeply empathize with your “opponent” in a difficult conversation. It takes patience and imagination to collaborate with your “opponent” to design a win-win scenario. 

But the default design for divorce doesn’t usually create ideal outcomes…just conventional ones. It’s possible to create something better than you can imagine if you create the space for a transformational conversation.

Dr. Suz helps break down how “design” in these situations just means really understanding the REAL problem we’re solving and what our IDEAL outcome really could look like… BEFORE we jump to solutions.

Also check out my podcast conversation with Adam Kahane, author of, among many other amazing books, the book Collaborating with the Enemy - which is what I know a divorce can feel like. Some of his perspectives take this “divorce by design” mindset into the broader business and strategy arena.

Enjoy this conversation as much as I did…and think about how you might transform the most challenging conversations in your life and work. With more conscious creativity and intention, with empathy and collaboration…with more design you can create more of what you really want, just like Dr. Suz did for her own divorce and for her own life.

Links, Quotes, Notes, and Resources

https://www.divorcexdesign.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzannevickberg/

https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/profiles/svickberg.html

https://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/facilitating-breakthrough-with-adam-kahane

AI Summary and Key Moments

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg shares her experience of redesigning her own divorce process with empathy and finding a solution that met both her and her husband's needs. She emphasizes the importance of focusing on the problem being solved and encourages others to consider different ways of approaching divorce. Daniel Stillman and Dr. Suzanne Vickberg discuss negotiation and the concept of growing the pie versus splitting the pie.

Key Moments

• Dr. Suzanne Vickberg defines design as intentionally creating something that leads to a desired outcome (1:18)

• Dr. Suzanne Vickberg talks about redesigning their own divorce and reverse engineering the process to help others do the same, including the conversational work involved in negotiating a new way of being (4:19)

• Dr. Suzanne Vickberg explains how she rejected the idea of protecting herself and instead focused on empathy and finding a solution that met both her and her husband's needs (12:46)

• Dr. Suzanne Vickberg emphasizes the importance of focusing on the problem being solved and envisioning the ideal outcome, rather than just trying to end the pain in the present moment (23:16)

• Dr. Suzanne Vickberg shares her unique solution of co-parenting with her ex-husband and encourages others to consider different ways of approaching divorce (25:37)

• Dr. Suzanne Vickberg talks about her values of not enjoying winning when someone else loses and loyalty, and how she applied them to her divorce process (35:34)

• Daniel Stillman and Dr. Suzanne Vickberg discuss negotiation and the concept of growing the pie versus splitting the pie (37:16)

• Daniel Stillman asks what people should say when someone tells them they're getting divorced, and Dr. Suzanne Vickberg suggests asking "how are you feeling about that?" instead of saying "I'm sorry" (48:13)

More about Suzanne Vickberg (aka Dr. Suz)

Dr. Suz is a social-personality psychologist and a leading practitioner of Deloitte’s Business Chemistry, which Deloitte uses to guide clients as they explore how their work is shaped by the mix of individuals who make up a team. Previously serving in Deloitte’s Talent organization, since 2014 she’s been coaching leaders and teams in creating cultures that enable each member to thrive and make their best contribution.

Along with her Deloitte Greenhouse colleague Kim Christfort, Suzanne co-authored the book Business Chemistry: Practical Magic for Crafting Powerful Work Relationships as well as a Harvard Business Review cover feature on the same topic. She also leads the Deloitte Greenhouse research program focused on Business Chemistry and is the primary author of the Business Chemistry blog. An “unapologetic introvert” and Business Chemistry Guardian-Dreamer, you will never-the-less often find her in front of a room, a camera, or a podcast microphone speaking about Business Chemistry or Suzanne and Kim’s second book, The Breakthrough Manifesto: Ten Principles to Spark Transformative Innovation, which digs deep into methodologies and mindsets to help obliterate barriers to change and ignite a whole new level of creative problem-solving.

Suzanne is a University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate with an MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business and a doctorate in Social-Personality Psychology from the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. She is also a professional coach, certified by the International Coaching Federation. She has lectured at Rutgers Business School and several colleges in the CUNY system, and before joining Deloitte in 2009, she gained experience in the health care and consulting fields. A mom of two teenagers, she maintains her native Minnesota roots and currently resides in New Jersey, where she volunteers for several local organizations with a focus on hunger relief.

Full AI-Generated Transcript

Daniel Stillman     00:00

Allow me to officially welcome you to the conversation factory. Suzanne, I'm so glad we made the time for this conversation. I appreciate you being here today.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     00:10

Me too. Thank you for inviting.

Daniel Stillman     00:12

So let's. We have so much to talk about. Oh, my God. When did you first start to value.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     00:23

Know? I'm not sure I really thought all that much about design per se until sometime probably in the last ten years. I work for Deloitte in part of the organization called the Greenhouse. That is about designing experiences. And that's when the word design and the idea of design really started to be something I was conscious. Yeah. But of course, that doesn't mean that I wasn't designing things before.

Daniel Stillman     00:58

That sounds like, what are the boundaries of design as you see them now? Because it's clearly in your work and in your writing, what is designable and what design is for is not the sort of maybe more conventional definition of some people who might be listening.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     01:18

Yeah, I don't think I've ever been asked that question. So for me, design is really about intentionally thinking about how you want something to be, how you want it to be used, how you want to see it, how you want to feel about it, how you want to experience it, or you want other people to experience it, and then creating something that will lead to that outcome that you're looking for.

Daniel Stillman     01:46

Right. I think one of the things that's so powerful and such an interesting proposition about your book divorce by design is this idea. When we look at the world, everything is designed. I think years ago, I saw a talk with John Maida where he know showed a street, and he's like, look, this street was designed. These buildings were designed. The lamppost, the clothing, everything. And there's also that famous Steve Jobs quote about design being how something really works. Everything is designed. Who designed divorce?

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     02:30

Yeah. Who did design divorce? I mean, it was probably not usually the people who are getting divorced. And even now, while you can design your own divorce, if you are legally married, there will be other people who have something to say about how you do it. Yeah. Right. The end of the day, a judge somewhere is going to approve your divorce and how you're doing it depending on.

Daniel Stillman     03:02

What state you live in. And this is the thing of, like, there are ways that things are already designed that may not be working. Well. I feel like there's this meme of like, am I depressed? Or is it capitalism? Am I sad? Or is it the fact that cities were not designed to be walkable? Right. So there are designs that are not designed for how we are built and what our psychology is.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     03:29

Yeah, I feel that really strongly. I'm an introvert, and I recognize that the world, in a lot of ways, is not designed for me, and that's why things feel hard. But I can design my life around having a little less of the things that don't work for me and a little more of the things that do. Yeah.

Daniel Stillman     03:49

So you took your design mindset and redesigned your own divorce, which is the seed of this book. It is a very powerful reimagining of the traditional ways that don't necessarily serve us. I'm wondering if you can just talk a little bit about your journey in deciding to take a creative, problem solving approach to your divorce and also to help others do it.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     04:19

Yeah. Well, I think that I was like many people who are struggling in their marriage, I struggled for a long time. I mean, we both did. Just really pretty unsatisfied and unhappy, but not really seeing an alternative that felt at all acceptable. We had two small children, like, two year old and a four year old. It didn't seem like something that I could even imagine doing was breaking up our family at that point. And it was this feeling of being really stuck between a rock and a hard place. It's sort of like, I can stay in this and be unhappy, or I can leave and sort of make everyone else also unhappy. And so, like a lot of people, what I essentially did for quite a while was nothing.

Daniel Stillman     05:17

You can just ignore the problem and just kind of certainly try.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     05:22

Yeah, that's one solution, yes. But I just kind of kept working it. I tend to ruminate on things. Usually not a great thing, but every once in a while, it's to my benefit. I just kept thinking, this can't be, like, the only possibility, these two options. And so I really tried to focus in on what is the part of this that's not working for me? And it was the marriage. It wasn't our living situation. It wasn't the family. It was really the marriage. And the way I felt in it. And I won't even say that the problem was my ex husband. The marriage, the romantic part of our relationship, the sort of lifetime partnership as a romantic couple, was the part that wasn't working. And once I sort of really started to think about it that way, I thought, well, can't we just end that part and keep the stuff that works? And I started talking to him about it, and I said, let's just call that over. But no one has to leave. We can stay in our home. We can raise our kids together. Why not we do that? Well, let's just call the marriage over, sort of remove that part from the picture and continue on with the things that do work for us and don't change anything else. I mean, that's really how it came to be. And the book and sort of the process that I help people through to think about their own marriage and their own divorce and how to get creative in their own way was something I sort of reverse engineered after the fact, when I realized what we ultimately were doing. I think it would have been easier to do if I had had this mind frame from the beginning, but it was more a realization. Like, we designed this to be very different from the traditional.

Daniel Stillman     07:52

I mean, well, what you did was, there's this great diagram I don't know if you've ever read collaborating with the enemy by Adam Cahane. He's an amazing facilitator, and he basically has this flowchart diagram of, like, well, if you can't force your way to a new wave with someone, and if you don't want to leave and you can't accept things the way they are, and you don't want to just give in, like, there is this last approach, which is engaging with someone in rethinking or reimagining or redesigning the way things are. It seems simple on the face, but we're subsuming years and years and years of rumination and avoidance, and you finally being able to broach the conversation. And this is really what we were talking about before we started recording. At the conversational level, you had a whole series of conversations with yourself that led you to decide to have a conversation with your then husband, and an almost infinity number of conversations afterwards that had to happen to continue to negotiate a new way of being, to explain it to others, to defend it to society. Can you just talk? Because it seems, on the face, so obvious that divorce needs to be redesigned, because the normal design would be, go get another house, not see your kids as much, spend a whole bunch of money, and we're not optimizing for what we really want. That seems simple, but I know that on a conversational level, it was work. And I'm wondering what you can share about the conversational work that went into getting to that new state and then sustaining that new state.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     09:49

Yeah. Well, I think one of the things that most people do either before or after they've started talking to their spouse about divorce is they talk to other people about it. Right. And those people might be their loved ones, or they might be their therapist or there might be an attorney, they will go and just, I just want to get the lay of the land. I just want to understand what my rights are or how this would work. And there's nothing wrong with doing that, of course. And for a lot of people, it's a really important step. But if you start talking almost to anyone else about divorce, what's going to come back at you is sort of all the traditional stuff. It's how people view divorce. And the first thing that most people will start encouraging you to do is to protect yourself.

Daniel Stillman     10:44

Yeah.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     10:46

And again, I'm not saying some people don't need to do that, but you're immediately, when you start thinking about this in terms of protecting yourself, you are immediately setting up a dynamic, at least in your mind, if not actually with your partner, that we're not in this together, we are against each other in this. And so the conversations you start having sort of usually send you down in a certain direction, which is going to be some kind of combative situation, even if you're reasonably cordial. Let's set everything up. Let's make sure we have all these agreements, because we probably will not be able to get along in the future. We will not be able to manage things together. So those conversations that I had early on with people and that most people do, I mostly found not very helpful, frankly, loved ones who did the same. First of all, the first reaction, at least of my family and friends, was like, really, your marriage is not that bad. You should stay. The assumption always that you should stay. If you can in any way find a way to stay, you stay. Yes, that's what you do. And then once people start to accept that, in fact, I'm not going to stay, or at least not stay married, then they start pushing you down this path of. Because I started telling people right away, well, we're going to get divorced, but no one's going to move out. We're going to live together and we're going to raise our kids together.

Daniel Stillman     12:42

Everyone's hair, I'm assuming, moved back a few inches.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     12:46

Everyone says, you can't do that. That's a terrible idea. Why is that?

Daniel Stillman     12:53

There's no good or bad ideas in a brainstorm, guys. We're brainstorming here exactly why is that a terrible idea?

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     13:02

And because people just couldn't wrap their brain. Like, they just couldn't see it. It seemed weird.

Daniel Stillman     13:10

And your experience has proved that it is, at least for you in your situation, in terms of what you were trying to optimize. For a great solution.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     13:21

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman     13:22

Right. You got more time with your kids than you would have had if you were splitting time between two houses. I was just telling my wife about this, giving her the thumbnail of like. And you don't have to buy another house, and you don't have to see them only half the amount of time. And because there's three adults in the house, you got to have more flexibility and more consistent care for the kids. Like, all these things that everybody in these conversations were like, that's a terrible idea. So the conversation you had with yourself after those conversations, somehow you kept feeling like, this is still the right approach.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     14:02

Yeah, I think I'm not a very good advice taker.

Daniel Stillman     14:08

That's good.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     14:11

Most people really aren't, frankly. I mean, any of us who's ever given advice and watched the people we're giving advice to never ever do the thing that we told them to do. But I'm stubborn. I'm not easily convinced of things. I can be convinced, but it takes a while, and usually I have to sort of hear something multiple times. And I didn't buy it, I didn't see it, and I was the one living in it. And so I think I had a clearer picture than anyone else of what our relationship was like, what I could imagine it could be in the future. And, I mean, honestly, at the time, what we agreed was, we'll just do this as long as it works for both of us. And it's been 13 years. Did I know that we would be doing this for 1315 years? No, I didn't know that we wouldn't have. It was open ended. Yes, but I don't know. I just felt like I don't want to do what everyone else is telling me to do.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     15:27

I don't believe them when they say it can't work. And the other thing people told us was like, okay, fine, maybe you can make it work for a little while, but one of you is going to meet someone, and then what? That could never work.

Daniel Stillman     15:39

Right. And then you have to have those conversations.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     15:41

Yeah. And in fact, he met the woman who's now his wife, Anna, almost right away. Within two months of us calling our marriage over, he had met her. And again, he didn't know he was going to marry her. They waited ten years before they got married, but she was sort of like, within a year was in the picture. And I continued to think, I'm glad. I still don't see why this can't work. And she moved in with us. Once we added onto the house so that we had a little bit more space.

Daniel Stillman     16:20

So I think this is what we would call varsity level conversation design and innovative thinking. There's some layers that I think are worth peeling back on this, because in my way of thinking around design, we're optimizing for something. There's some heuristic we're using to judge whether or not this is a good design. And so when people were saying to you, you've got to protect yourself, you looked at that. What I'm hearing is that heuristic optimizing for protection. There's costs to optimizing for protection. There's pluses to being aware of protection. But there's another set of design principles that you wanted to design your conversation with your husband and your family for. And I think curiosity, bringing an options mindset versus. There's got to be one way or a goal setting mindset of, like, what am I really trying to create here? Mindset. What do you feel like you were trying to design for in those conversations? You weren't necessarily designed to protect yourself. You were really trying to optimize for something else.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     17:44

Yeah, no, I definitely rejected the protect yourself heuristic. And again, I'm not saying that that's not important for some people. I know every marriage is different, and people are sometimes in a marriage that is

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     18:02

much more challenging in certain ways than mine. But for me here, I'm looking at this person that I've been with for ten years, and while we're not working as a married couple, I just didn't feel like there was a reason he would be out to get me.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     18:25

So I sort of just outright rejected it. We didn't even have any kind of financial agreement or anything for the first few years. And we did put one in place eventually because it was sort of like, oh, he had a business, I had a retirement account. We wanted to sort of figure out, well, how is that all going to work? So we did get an agreement in place eventually, but I think what I was really focused on, number one, is empathy. I was looking to have my needs met, but I didn't want to do it at the expense of him getting his needs met. And not all the needs were compatible in the moment because he wanted to stay married and I wanted to get divorced. That was an incompatibility. But digging underneath that and trying to understand why did he want to stay married was the important thing. And it really wasn't about me. It wasn't about staying married. To me, yes, it was about the family. It was about the home. It was about being in the community as a married person.

Daniel Stillman     19:43

Yes.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     19:45

There were things about being married that he really valued that. And I'm not saying he didn't value me as a person, but to me it didn't feel like, oh, this is about, you must be with me.

Daniel Stillman     19:58

Right. It was about the Perry marriage. It was the marriage trapping all the pieces around it in the people that you advise and coach. It is very hard to tap into these resources when we are in a state of scarcity and survival, to get into empathy, to get out of protection and into curiosity and empathy and being generative. I would say nontrivial. They say in the mathematics world, the solution is nontrivial.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     20:41

Right.

Daniel Stillman     20:41

Which means we don't know if a solution exists and we don't know how long it will take to find the right solution. So how do you get people into these really important design mindsets of a willingness to prototype, an openness to empathy and being generative? I mean, I suppose if I was going to do it in the design thinking order, it'd be empathy, a generative mindset, and a willingness to prototype, because you and your husband at the time said, like, well, let's try this for now and let's inspect the results as we go. How do you coach people to get out of that protection and panic survival mindset into this design thinking mindset to really reevaluate their approach? Because it does not come for free.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     21:36

No. Well, it's not easy, as you said. Although I will say that I think that people, anyone who would approach me for coaching around this would already be a step ahead because they're already thinking, yeah, that sounds good. I think your solution may not be the exact right solution for me, but I would like to do this differently. So that is one thing. It's sort of like some people are starting out with a little bit more of an optimistic and open mindset that, well, maybe I don't just have to do whatever someone else told me to do. Another thing is that it's not something that happens in a linear way. It's like there are days when even the most open minded person is feeling really hurt and they're angry and they're just not right now. They're not able to be empathetic because they feel their partner is not empathetic and they're mad and heartbroken. But you could see the same person a week later being in a totally different place as things progress.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     23:04

That's another piece of it. And then what I really try to do with people is get them to focus in on what problem are you actually solving for? And then how would you want it to be if you could? This vision of what's the perfect divorce, which is not the same for everybody, but is a new way for a lot of people in terms of thinking about it and thinking just, like, let's just forget all the realities of the situation for a minute, like we do with almost any kind of creative problem solving. Let's put aside some of the constraints and let's focus on blue sky thinking, like, if I could have anything, what would it be? And then start thinking about, like, okay, well, I may or may not be able to get all of that, but how can I get closer to that than to the traditional path? Yes.

Daniel Stillman     24:04

This is such a powerful idea. It's what my coaching coach would call creating from the future. Right. And very often, we're in this present moment, which is just filled with pain, and we're trying to optimize for the cessation of pain. And the way you tried to do that and the way many of us try to do that is to avoid it, to numb it out, and to just ignore it for as long as possible, because that's actually one of the most efficacious solutions in the present moment, is just try not to feel it. Try not to feel anything. Numb it down. And what you're talking about is not the first step of, like, well, how do I end this pain? Sometimes the most efficacious way to do that is just to go to a divorce lawyer and serve them papers and say, I want a divorce. But you're talking about a much, much harder thing, a much more challenging thing, which will produce greater results for somebody, which is to think about, what do I really want? Not just a month from now, when I'm feeling less pain, but a year from now, two years from now, do I want to still be able to see my cat, our cat? Do I want to see our kids? Do I want to be able to go on vacations together? Like, whatever that optimal dream is. You want people to dream a little bit and then work backwards. And that is so powerful.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     25:37

That's really the point of sharing my story, because, let's be honest, a lot of people don't want to live with their ex for a decade and a half after they.

Daniel Stillman     25:48

It's not for the faint of heart.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     25:50

Not for everyone, but that's not what we're talking about here. That is my solution, our solution for our family, which has worked great for us, but it's so unique. We're not the only ones who do it, by the way. There are other people who have maybe slightly different flavors, but it's still pretty unique. And so the reason that it's so important to me for people to hear about it is because it helps them see, like, oh, okay, well, there are different ways, and maybe I can come up with my own different way.

Daniel Stillman     26:27

Yes. That there are many, many ways of being, and that really changes. I mean, we're talking. My favorite axe to grind is the conversation. Right. Changing the conversation in the culture around divorce. It's a profound shift that can happen, especially if somebody like you did goes and tells some people, I want to make a change. Maybe they won't get the response of, like, you can't do that. So I feel like, will there be a sequel called marriage by design? Has somebody written that book? I should have checked on this, because, in a way, I mean, I actually wrote this in my book. Some people think divorce is an end to the conversation of marriage, but it's actually an agreement to continue. And it either means. I had an ex who she and her boyfriend at the time divided up the bars in Philadelphia. You know what? These are your bars. These are mine. We will never see each other again. That is our agreement. And then she saw him in one of her bars, and it was like, you're violating the agreement very clearly. I got all the bars south of Market street. So it's an agreement to continue the terms of the conversation, and you had a very different set of terms. Like, we're going to co parent. That's a very different set of terms. To be together in a different way. Do you think there was a time, if you'd thought about redesigning your marriage, that it could have been redesigned? I also know that you talk about, like, you tried many things, and so I think there's a danger to that approach of thinking.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     28:19

Yeah, I think that he and I are fundamentally just like, a mismatch. So could we have redesigned it? Sure, we had some conversations about that along the way, but I have the privilege that very few people on earth have of watching my ex husband succeed in a relationship with someone else up close and personal. I am there every day.

Daniel Stillman     28:55

And you celebrate it.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     28:57

And I do celebrate it. I'm happy for both of them. I'm so happy for my children. But I watched their relationship, and she and I were very good friends. We get along really well and are very compatible in a lot of ways and similar in a lot of ways. And we're different in a lot of ways. And her relationship with him is very different than the relationship I had with him. Not that I'm saying that's the only thing that could have worked for him, but watching that and how that works for him and frankly, just watching my own life and what works for me now, I'm like, yeah, those two things, they just weren't compatible. We want different lifestyles.

Daniel Stillman     29:43

Yes.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     29:44

And they're compatible for raising kids together and for living here, but not for sort of, like, going through life as a couple. Yes. But for other people, sure. Redesigning marriage. I mean, you will hear this once you start talking to divorce people. A lot of people will say, if I had had every other weekend off to myself to do the things that I care about, I could have stayed married a lot longer.

Daniel Stillman     30:12

Yes.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     30:13

We have this idea that, oh, we have to be with the family all the time or with the partner all the time, or taking care of the kids all the time. We don't get time alone to live our own life once we're married.

Daniel Stillman     30:26

Most of us.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     30:28

And then you get divorced, and many people are forced into it, like they didn't want every other weekend without their kids. But now they have it, and they figure out how to make the most of it, and they can learn to really appreciate it. And a lot of people will say, if I could have had that, the marriage might have worked.

Daniel Stillman     30:47

Yeah. I feel like I interviewed one of my high school friends who happened to write a bestseller called Fair Play. I had her on some time ago, and she designed a card game for couples to literally put all the cards on the table around who's holding which cards in terms of managing the life. And women hold more of the cards in many relationships and don't have the time to live their whole lives, which is why she wrote a second book called Unicorn Space. Shout out to Eve, sorry, but it needs design. It needs a redesign. The process of being married certainly needs a redesign. And the process of getting divorced needs, as you said, it's a cyclical design process. So I think one of the other things I'm curious about is I imagine that in coaching someone to be creative about their process of getting divorced, they, too, will need to become a coach to the people in their lives, especially their spouse, to continuously. Because one of the things I heard you say in your conversation with your then husband is, oh, it sounds like this is using an appreciative inquiry lens, like, oh, this is the thing you really want. Yeah, this is what staying married means to you. And so I think what would it be like if you could have that and it was still compatible with the thing that I want? Because I think it is that conversation. How can people who want to have this conversation with someone that they are in an agreement with get into the process of coaching them through renegotiating that level of clarity, of detail?

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     32:43

And I think one of the things that can help is honestly reading about negotiation. And there are different, obviously, lots of different schools of negotiation. And so you want one that's going to be focused on maintaining a relationship long term with the person that you're negotiating with, not like a one time negotiation, and I don't care what happens to the person.

Daniel Stillman     33:08

Right.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     33:10

But we had more of a trivial situation when we first split up. I moved into the guest room because I wanted the space most, so I just moved. But then we had to kind of have this negotiation about who keeps the main bedroom because it was bigger and more closets, and we both wanted it.

Daniel Stillman     33:29

Yes.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     33:33

So we had to have this conversation. It's like, I want the room while I want the room. Well, we can't both room. So why do you want the room? And for me, it was like the closets. We just painted it this color that I loved. For him, it was like, because I feel like I should be able to get it because you're the one moving out. The tv is in here. There was no tv in the guest room. Tv is in here. The kids come looking for us in here. Like, I don't want to be in a different room when the kids come looking. But we wanted it for different reasons.

Daniel Stillman     34:13

Yes.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     34:14

And so once we talked about that, it's like, okay, fine, I don't care about the tv. I feel like the kids can find me, and I will move into the guest room. I will paint, have it painted color that I like. I will keep half the closet in the master room, and I'll get the closet in the guest room and part of the closet. So it's figuring out what is the disagreement actually about, again, what's underneath. Whatever it is I'm saying I want. And whatever you're saying you want. Yes. And if we can find out what's underneath it, then we might be able to both have what we want.

Daniel Stillman     34:56

Yes. Getting to that level of curiosity and empathy is a tremendous accomplishment.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     35:06

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman     35:06

I think I just feel like it remains to be said, like, if we're talking about the conversational level of redesigning divorce as a broad idea,

Daniel Stillman     35:19

it seems good and valuable on the face, but each one of those conversations takes some juice.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     35:26

Yeah. And I think a lot of it's about getting very clear on about who you are and who you want to be. I have never been a person.

Daniel Stillman     35:38

Who.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     35:39

Can enjoy winning when someone else loses. I don't want to play a board game with you. I would rather you win because if I win and you care about it even in the least bit, and now you feel bad, then I'm going to feel bad. And I don't enjoy winning that way. Yes. When I watch a sports game on tv, even if I care about which team, I always feel for the other team. So that's part of who I am and who I want to be. Yes. And so in every little interaction we had, as we were figuring things out, I wasn't going to appreciate whatever I had won if it meant that he lost. That was important to me. I also write in the book about my really strong value of loyalty and how that for a long time is part of what kept me married. Well, I'm loyal to him. I cannot divorce him. But instead I took that loyalty and said, what does divorce look like when you're loyal? How can you apply loyalty in divorce? It's by continually thinking about how what you do is going to impact the other person. And it's not martyrdom. It's not that I just said, oh, well, whatever he wants is great, or that, oh, I'll just suffer and he can have everything his way. But it's just about the balance and really doing best to find.

Daniel Stillman     37:16

For you. We talked about negotiation, and I'm just thinking about getting to yes, which is the Harvard project and negotiation classic. I actually went to the Harvard Negotiation Institute for a week long negotiation intensive. I always tell people it's the best business vacation I ever went on, like going up against all these lawyers and losing and learning the process. I had my teacher, Bob Bordon, on the podcast years ago, and one of the things that I learned was this idea of growing the pie versus splitting the pie. And that's really what you're talking about here, is this protection mindset is coming from a scarcity mindset. And the idea that we can both have what we want and what we need and make something better than we thought was possible is a profound shift. And believing that it's true, believing that it's possible means that we can be willing to create it.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     38:18

And I actually talk about getting to yes. I included a little section about it in my book and growing the pie. And that's probably even where I told the story of that example. I just gave and it's funny because when I was, I went to business school many years ago, and I read getting to yes. And I thought, should I be updating this? I'm sure there's more current models of negotiation. Like, maybe I should be reading a new negotiation book. But I just decided, you know what? Okay, fine. Yeah, I can do that. But it works. The model makes sense still today. And so I decided ultimately, I was going to stick with it.

Daniel Stillman     39:00

So, speaking of books, this is not your only book. I know there's another book of yours that's hiding behind you in your virtual screen. How do you put those together in context? Do you see a connection between your two books? What's the yin and yang of them in your perspective?

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     39:17

And so, actually, I have a third book that come out in November.

Daniel Stillman     39:21

Oh, so embarrassing of me to not know that.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     39:23

Well, it's not really been out there yet because we've turned it in, but it's not going to come out till November. And the reason I'm raising it is not just to talk about all my books, but because I have had to think about the thread. Like, what is the thread in my career and my mission? So the new one is called the Breakthrough manifesto, and it's about creative problem solving in teams. And then my first one, which you can see there, is called business chemistry, which is about relationships at work and how each of us prefers to work and communicate and make decisions, and how understanding what someone else wants and needs is one of the most important ways that you can create a stronger relationship with. Know that first book, business chemistry, and the third one, Breakthrough Manifesto, are both books that I have written with my co author, Kim Christford, as part of my work at Deloitte. Divorce by design is my personal book that sort of falls in the middle, but I really see them all three as like, the thread is really about relationships and creative problem solving.

Daniel Stillman     40:35

That's a good thread. I'm wondering, we had this little snippet before we started recording about whether or not we have a personality, what our self is, and the ways in which we like to be can rule our lives. This is what we've been talking about, in a way, is dialoguing with ourselves in order to find more useful and effective ways to collaborate to get what we really want. Which begs the question, like, do we? You know, if, let's say there's somebody who's like, I like to win, but they realize that it's not helping them get what they want. The question is, how do we be another way? And then begs the question, who are we? Who am I? Is there a way I am? Or how do I access other ways of being?

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     41:33

Yeah, well, I certainly don't have the answer.

Daniel Stillman     41:38

I don't either. That's why I'm asking the question.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     41:40

I am on the journey of exploring that. But I've been thinking of, I mean, I've been reading a lot of books lately about this question, essentially, and what is the self? And also, what are all these thoughts that just constant in our brains and how they're often so not helpful. But I am a person. I am very self reflective, and I analyze myself all the time. And I have just been starting to be open to the question that is that good for me? Does it do more harm than good to insist that I am this type of person or that type of person? Does it close me off to a whole nother range of new possibilities? So I've started thinking, like, well, then how would you express something about yourself? And I've started thinking, well, maybe the language is more like instead of, I like to win. I have often enjoyed winning.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     43:01

I have been a person who likes to win. I don't know. Somehow, instead of saying I am, is there other language we can use that leaves us more open to evolution? Yes.

Daniel Stillman     43:18

And it seems like in my own experience, and certainly in your experience and in what we are and you are advising to your clients, is we have to be able to access other ways of being from time to time in ways that are authentic. And I think the thing that I've struggled with is this idea of, like, well, I want to be as I am, but sometimes I have to be more than I feel like I can be. Or that terrible phrase, tone myself down. Right. But this is the use of self and coaching ourselves to bring the right amount of blank into the conversation.

Daniel Stillman     44:05

It's a pickle.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     44:06

Yeah. It's similar to the same question of how do I use empathy in my relationships at work or with my ex and understand what he wants? And then I understand what I want. And then we're trying to figure out how we can both get what we want. And I sort of feel like it's similar in what of myself if I have a self? Do I bring to the world? If I'm an introvert, as I often think of myself, I'd really rather not be in the front of the room a lot of the time, or maybe ever. But my role at work requires that sometimes. And so do I double down and say, no, this is me, and I don't enjoy that. And therefore we'll never do it. That would be legitimate. I probably wouldn't be able to keep the same job. Or do I say, well, I'm going to figure out a way that I can do that only once a month and not every other day, and that will be like a good balance between what's comfortable for me and how I like to do things versus what's needed of me in my job. So I think it's all understanding, ultimately, what do I want? And if I want this job, for whatever reason, then I have to find the right balance between how much of my preferences can I bring to it?

Daniel Stillman     45:41

Yes.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     45:42

And how much do I need to flex?

Daniel Stillman     45:44

Yes. It's a negotiation with yourself and the world, a conversation. So, man, oh, man, I've really enjoyed this conversation. The time's flown. What have I not asked you? What have we not talked about? What is important to say that has not had a chance to be said?

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     46:04

Yeah. I think one of the things is, even though I have said that having conversations with other people around, for example, trying to get creative around divorce is often not helpful because everybody tells you how you have to do it. Yes. And it's really important to be able to listen to your own voice. At the same time, I have found it very valuable to me for me to talk about it because I'm not embarrassed or ashamed or sad or lonely or heartbroken or any of those things. I for a long time, felt like divorce would ruin my life and my family's life.

Daniel Stillman     46:58

Yes.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     46:59

And it didn't because we found a way to do it so that it didn't. And I'm proud of it. And we are all proud of it.

Daniel Stillman     47:08

Yes.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     47:09

My son is going to college in the fall. He wrote his college essay about our family and our household and our divorce.

Daniel Stillman     47:17

That's wonderful.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     47:17

And how it has helped him be more creative and seeing more options. So for me, instead of sort of hiding something that other people might think is weird or that's their problem, there are people who are like, oh, often I think they sort of maybe misunderstand the situation or whatever. But I do think talking about what you're doing or what you're trying to do is that sort of like bring it out into the light. Yes. Can make you feel differently about it than if you're trying to keep it close because you don't want other people to know that this is happening. Yes.

Daniel Stillman     48:08

So this begs one final question and one of my own personal axe to grind. What would you like people to say when someone tells them that they're getting divorced. If you could wish, if you could give everyone the card that says exactly, like, just read off the cue card and say blank, what would you want people to say? Because what they say now is, I'm so sorry. And I think there's probably a better response in that conversation.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     48:37

Yeah, I do have a response, but I do think this is important, and I would like to keep perfecting it. So I think it's something along the lines of, oh, how are you feeling about that?

Daniel Stillman     48:50

Damn, that's good. That's really great.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     48:54

You also don't want to say, oh, great, you're getting divorced, because I usually.

Daniel Stillman     48:59

Say, I'm sorry and congratulations.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     49:02

Right.

Daniel Stillman     49:03

But you're threading that needle in a much more even way that opens up the opportunity for them to express what they're. Thanks for sharing that with me. How are you feeling about that?

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     49:15

Yeah, there's no judgment there.

Daniel Stillman     49:19

That is, it's almost like you wrote a whole book about this and have thought deeply about these conversations. So that's a wonderful redesign moment for everyone. The next time somebody offers this piece of information to them, to us to welcome it and to be curious not to judge it. Suzanne, where should people go on the Internet if they want to learn more about all things Suzanne Vickberg?

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     49:51

Well, they can. I have a website, suzannevickberg.com. I'm on Instagram at Suzanne Vickberg, so they can find me in those two places. The book divorced by design is available on Amazon and Barnes. And, and, you know, it may not be in your local bookstore, but you could request it. And there's a way to contact me on my website or know through Instagram.

Daniel Stillman     50:18

I can attest to. I, that's how we started this conversation.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     50:23

And also LinkedIn. I love connecting with people on LinkedIn. And on LinkedIn. It's sort of like the multiple parts of my interests in life. More of the divorce stuff is on Instagram. More of the other creative problem solving stuff is on LinkedIn. I do cross it over a little bit, but I'm happy to connect with anyone on LinkedIn, too.

Daniel Stillman     50:45

Wonderful. Suzanne, thank you so much for your generosity in this conversation. Thanks for writing the book. And I think we can call scene. That was wonderful.

Dr. Suzanne Vickberg     50:56

Thank you for designing a great conversation.

Daniel Stillman     51:00

That's great.

Conversation Wisdom from an AI-savvy CEO

My guest today is Jay Ruparel, co-founder and CEO of VOICEplug AI, a Voice-AI company empowering restaurants to leverage AI and automate food ordering using natural language voice ordering at drive-thrus, over the phone, websites, and mobile apps. VOICEplug's technology integrates with existing systems and apps, allowing customers to interact with the restaurant using natural voice commands, in multiple languages and be serviced seamlessly.

I wanted to sit down with Jay to unpack what he has learned about how conversations are structured (for computer-to-human interaction) that he brings into his CEO (human-to-human) conversations - crucial conversations, with his senior leadership team and his broader organization - does an AI-savvy conversation-aware CEO approach conversations and interactions with a different eye?

We also focused on a few questions of deep concern for our culture today: the responsible and ethical use of AI and how it might impact the future of work.

Through our conversation, it became clear that:

AI is great for:

Repetitive or highly similar and constrained tasks. Ordering fast food at a drive-in, VOICEplug’s use case, is a perfect context for AI. In these kinds of conversations, there are boundaries on the scope of the interaction and a clear set of intents and possible goals.

Jay also points out that his AI is trained on many, many different instances of people ordering food from other people. So, the voice-driven bot can get better and better at these kinds of conversations, all the time.

Humans are best for:

High-risk and high-complexity conversations with no clear comparables or no clear scope. For Jay’s conversations with key industry stakeholders, at company-all-hands, and with his leadership team, AI can give him ideas or first drafts, but ultimately, he needs to navigate nuance with his human conversational intelligence.

++++++++++++

AI is great for:

Crunching lots of data (which is always from the past) and summarizing it.

Humans are best for:

Deciding what kind of future they want to create.

Jay points out in the opening quote that the Human mind can think, reflect, envision and CHOOSE an ideal future, creatively. AI can do a lot of that…but it can’t choose the future it wants. That is still a uniquely human strength - to dream and to choose to create that dream.

Jay dreams of a future where work is a deeper and deeper collaboration between humans and AI, where humans focus on higher-value activities while AI takes over repetitive tasks.

Jay goes on to suggest that curiosity and powerful questions are THE most critical of human skills.

When I asked Jay to share his favorite ways of designing conversations, he shared three tips:

Take just a few minutes before a meeting to be very clear about your key one or two objectives for the conversation. In other words, start the end in mind. Another way of putting it is to take time to set an intention. You might enjoy my conversation with Leah Smart, the host of one of LinkedIn’s top podcasts, on just this idea.

If Jay is meeting with folks he doesn’t know as well, from outside the company, like new clients or stakeholders, he’ll deliberately slow down the conversation and delay getting to the core objective. Instead, he’ll spend 20-30% of the meeting time getting to know them, talking about other things, all in service of trying to understand them as people, and their conversational style

Jay consciously chooses some conversational areas to NOT be highly scalable or automated - he shares a story about being offered an AI tool that would send automated and personalized birthday emails to his employees. As he says

“What is the point of me having to use that as the CEO (when)…that relationship, that wishing someone on their birthday as a personalized conversation means so much to me. That's the last thing I would want to ever automate.”

Not all conversations, even ones that can seem small and inconsequential SHOULD be automated. It is possible that a real, human touch will be the ultimate in luxury in the future.

Links, Quotes, Notes, and Resources

https://voiceplug.ai/

Jay on LinkedIn

Min 38: The Importance of asking the right questions in an AI-driven world

“In this new AI driven world, the answers are out there, but the questions are really important. And that's why this whole subject of prompt engineering, it's going to get more and more important. In the organizational context also, we have kind of given up a little bit on curiosity as a human trait. somehow that has been waning and now has to come back to the fore, basically, getting answers is easy. That's the way I think the future is going to be. You can ask a bunch of people and you'll get answers, but what questions to ask, how to ask them.

What context to keep in mind, how to make the questions, have the right language, the right conversation style. This is very, very important.”

AI Summary and Key Moments by Grain

Jay started VOICEplug to improve human experiences with technology, specifically in the food ordering industry, by using AI to understand human language (0:32)

Jay and Daniel discuss the difference between augmented and artificial intelligence, with Jay emphasizing that AI should augment human capabilities rather than replace them (2:42)

Jay acknowledges the limitations of AI in envisioning the future in isolation of the past, and emphasizes the importance of human creativity and envisioning capability (7:52)

Jay discusses designing conversations to enable humans to have better conversations rather than just replacing them with bots, including using voice biometrics to personalize interactions at a drive through. (20:29)

Jay shares an example of choosing not to automate personalized birthday wishes and discusses his approach to designing conversations as a CEO, including starting with clear objectives and considering the context and participants (25:04)

Jay notes that AI is past-oriented while visualizing an ideal future is the job of humans (35:11)

Daniel and Jay discuss the positive and negative aspects of AI learning from existing workforce and pushing everyone to reinvent the way they deliver value, and the future of work involving a mix of humans and AI bots working together (47:47)

Full AI-generated Transcript

Daniel Stillman 00:00

I'll record here and then I'll officially welcome you to the Conversation Factory. We're live. Jay, thank you so much for making the time to have a deep dive conversation with me. I really appreciate it.

Jay Ruparel 00:14

Well, thank you for having me. I'm really excited being a part of this podcast.

Daniel Stillman 00:18

Thank you. So can we put VOICEplug in context and if you could talk a little little bit about why this problem is important to you and why you started the company.

Jay Ruparel 00:32

Yeah, so I have been in the broadly, you can say, data science, analytics, AI space for over a decade and I've always been looking for what AI can do to really impact human experiences with technology. And my previous company, we were doing some work around AI in retail and often it was about the technology has moved so fast. But there is a whole segment of people that is struggling to learn and understand how to best use technology, how to have the right sort of interactions, conversations with technology. And so really what Brock got me thinking about this problem is how can technology do the hard work of understanding the human language rather than humans having to understand how do I deal with technology? And so we really took that as the basis and said, if you look at industries today, what are some of the big problems that we see in human computing interactions that we can solve through AI? And that's where we built initially a minimum viable product for voice based ordering and also voice based shopping and took it out to the customers, got their feedback, we got overwhelming feedback, positive experience that customers had when we showed them the voice ordering feature. And we felt that there was a real need for that with just the kind of labor issues that existed in the hospitality industry and the not so pleasant experience that people have had when ordering food, whether it's at the drive through or over the phone. And that's where the journey of voiceplug started, is basically with the idea that how can we make the human experiences with food ordering using AI significantly better than what it has been?

Daniel Stillman 02:42

So on our last conversation, we talked a little bit about augmented versus artificial intelligence. And it seems like your technology sits at a layer where the human eventually can interact with a human, but there's technology that's mediating a layer and maybe eliminating the human at one level, but in other instances making their lives on the other side of the technology easier and more efficient too. Instead of a direct human to human interaction with a phone in the middle, there's a bot in the middle that's helping smooth over the interaction. Can you talk a little bit about your view of augmented versus artificial intelligence?

Jay Ruparel 03:27

Of course. So most of us think artificial intelligence is basically what would replace natural intelligence or human intelligence. And so a lot of the activities or jobs are thought to be. If AI comes saying the fear psychosis that prevails about AI taking over jobs is because it is thought of as something that replaces humans. Right. Whereas whether it is our solutions and a lot of companies are approaching it with this angle is to say how can we really augment current human capabilities by using AI to do tasks that can be automated, that are routine, that don't necessarily need the best of human creativity. Really dividing the set of activities to what can be best done by automation and AI and what activities still need the human creativity, the human compassion. So for example, when it comes to dealing with guests in the kind of hospitality industry experience that we have had, the compassion with which the staff can deal with guests in a lot of different scenarios, the creativity involved in solving specific problems, however good an AI solution you create, cannot replace that. But there are things that are automated that are done day in and day out. Like for example, I want to just order the same thing at the drive through every time I go there. You don't want necessarily human stop dealing with that. The AI can remember the customer say, would you like to repeat your last order or your favorite order? Yes. And then within 30 seconds they are through because the customer is looking for quick throughput efficiency at that time. So really augmented intelligence is really augmenting the human capabilities, human intelligence to really deliver the best output for the end customer.

Daniel Stillman 05:48

Yeah. Where do you feel like the limits are? You talked a little bit about where sort of a voice activated bot shouldn't be used. Where else do you feel like the limits are versus where it's best deployed?

Jay Ruparel 06:04

Yeah, well, actually, I think if you really look at the bots are best used where good quality and relevant data is available. Because the whole premise of AI is that you need to feed patterns and data sets for the AI to really learn from it and then be able to interpret real world scenarios by using that learning to extrapolate results. Right.

Jay Ruparel 06:46

Where there is a steady set of data, trends, patterns that can be extrapolated, that's where the bots can best be used. But where there is a fair degree of uncertainty, ambiguity, the level of abstraction of the problem is higher, that's where AI bots would struggle. So clearly that's where you can kind of separate the capabilities of the bots from the human to say if it's a new scenario, if it's a completely new initiative that has no relevant data that you can extrapolate from AI is not going to be useful there. Maybe once it evolves to a stage where you have operationalized it, now you can have AI step in and take over that activity.

Daniel Stillman 07:49

Yeah, we talked about this a little bit in our last conversation. The idea that AI is taking data and trying to extrapolate or learn from that, but it being fundamentally past oriented or past based. There is a limit there. And so I'm wondering how you think about being clear on that limitation for yourself and in the application of this technology.

Jay Ruparel 08:19

Yeah, the beautiful thing about the human mind is that we can think what we are thinking and we can reflect on what we are thinking and that allows us to really not be limited to future envisioning creativity based on past reflections. The bot has this limitations or AI in general has this limitation that it cannot really think about the future in isolation of the past. And that's what is fascinating for me in terms of when understanding human computing interactions is that if there is a bot to bot conversation, that bot to bot conversation. And a human to bot conversation is differentiated by the fact that the bot to bot is all based on just reflection of what they have dealt with in the past. And the moment something new comes up, they can't really envision a new feature out of it. Whereas with humans it's different. So I think that capability that exists, it's something that when a lot of people say will AI rule humans? And this whole we hear about all this Sci-Fi kind of themes about AI taking over the world, I think it's not going to happen for this very reason. I think the way we can think about the future

Jay Ruparel 10:08

is clearly something which is a very powerful capability that only we have and with however, sophistication whatever sophistication you use to build the AI, it will always be limited and can never match that human envisioning capability.

Daniel Stillman 10:30

It's so interesting and I think it's really profound. This is something that I've thought about shameless plug for my own book when I was thinking about this, as we all have been for years. It's like it can free us up to be uniquely human, right? That automation and pulling some of these things off of our plate can free us up to do the things that we are uniquely good at, which is to dream, to be creative. What's interesting, when you were talking about being data and learning focused and more transactional, I definitely know people where they get stuck in that type of conversation where we're looking at the data and we're trying to sort of like look at the near term versus we are dreaming, whereas we're being creative, we're letting conversations flow. And I'm wondering how you and your own work with your team make space for these really deeply human conversations because I think it's actually very easy to get pulled back into maybe a little bit more of a mechanical approach. Even though we're not mechanical, I think we can get pulled into, well, where's the data, where's the analytics? What's next? What's next versus thinking three, five years out? So I'm wondering how you thread that needle because I don't think it's an easy needle to thread.

Jay Ruparel 11:56

Yeah, I think you brought up a fascinating point. It's something that we are constantly thinking about at the workplace is where do you strike the right balance between how much to use AI for your own work? So starting with, for example, we have engineers and we now have AI based coding tools that can basically generate a piece of code, right? And so we have discussed with our engineering team and we have had some debates about should we use some of that capability that the AI throws up for either validating a core or for generating ideas

Jay Ruparel 12:46

not just restricted to the engineering team, even to the marketing team to say, hey, I want to write a blog. Can I use Chat GPT or other generative AI to basically help build that? For example, when someone told me this that you want to give a speech, we have a town hall that we do every month and someone said you want to talk about this? He said I use Chat GPD to just basically write my whole speech that I give to the employees. And I thought, well, let me try that. And across all these different examples, what we have realized is that you can use generative AI, you can use any such AI tool for giving you some ideas to explore with. You could generate some code and look at is this maybe a good way to solve this particular design problem I'm dealing with? Or I can say, okay, I want to talk to employees about this theme. Can you generate help me with some ideas? And because it deals with large data sets, right, it is about someone that is assisting you, scanning the whole range of different articles and books and coming up with themes for you, right? So that's a great help. But then being able to decide what is right or not appropriate for that context, how to use some part of it, what part to use, that is where really I think we need to differentiate ourselves and say that's where the human capabilities come up. So in terms of that human connect. So when I'm actually talking to my employees in a town hall, I would never use a speech that is generated by Chat GPD because it would be cold to me because it's not my own. It may be a great speech written, but it's not my own. So for me, because the way I connect with my employees and I connect with how I can personalize every bit of what I want to say is not something that can ever be replicated with an AI completely. So that is one part of it. The other is just human to human conversations, like how we are talking now and we have discussions over zoom or in person because they're remote employees that we have, we are always looking for how to have conversations beyond using technology tools because in our day to day life. We are already doing too much of it. Right? So we had this classic case of and this happened in my previous organization. Someone had a loss in the family and everyone across the organization was sending like condolence messages whereas they were just on different floors. I mean they could have walked down. Right? And that caught us. We said this cannot be happening, we can't allow for this. I think it's important for organizations and we are consciously working on that is to say how can we have that human to human element still kept alive? And there are so many benefits of that. Having those short conversations near at the coffee station or just chitchat before and after the meeting and the kind of connections you develop is not something that you can do with a bot or using any technology or tools.

Daniel Stillman 17:02

No. So this goes to one of the conversations I wanted us to have, which is around conversational intelligence because we give these bots a certain level of conversational intelligence based on them trying to learn what it is that we do in normal conversations. And then there's us as human beings being really intentional about continuing to expand our own capabilities to connect and to develop relationships and to learn and create meaning with other people. So I'm wondering, I learned a lot in my own research around designing human conversations by seeing how conversational theorists and technologists were trying to understand and model human conversation. So I'm curious if understanding human conversation from a technical perspective has changed how you think about building good human conversations.

Jay Ruparel 18:05

Yeah, no, that's a great question. I would say one of the things we do and that kind of is differentiating us as a company in building these AI solutions is that we record live conversations between humans and the staff at, let's say the drive through and then use those live audio to actually train the AI. Yes, because there are others that for example use synthetic data where you basically imagine the conversations that people will have in ordering food versus us using these live conversations. It helps us really understand the whole variety of ways that people talk for just one use case which is ordering food. Right? So the AI learns from that conversation and builds on that. What is interesting though is that when humans are doing these conversations and they know that there is a bot at the other side, they basically adjust their expectations because now they know that I'm not talking to a real person, I'm talking to a machine. And so the way when we are going to the bank and going to the cashier versus when we go to the ATM, our expectations are very different in terms of what we would ask, what we would do and not do. Similarly, the human expectations are reset just by whether they're talking to a bot or another human. And that kind of changes the whole conversation style, the level of the relationship, the level of compassion, all those elements are completely different. And so when we started our learning from this has been a couple of things. One that there are certain types of conversations that we would never want to replace. There are conversations that are important to happen between a human and human and you shouldn't want to use technology there because although it may give some benefits in the short run in terms of cost savings or efficiency, over the long run, it is actually a deterioration of the whole human to human relationship. Yeah, the other thing is that even in terms of how we design these conversations, we are now looking at can we actually enable humans to just have a better conversation rather than we were looking at the problem as saying how can we replace some of the automated conversations by plugging in the bot? Now we are saying that there are situations where we want the humans to continue having the conversations, but how can we use that augmented intelligence approach where we actually give the humans enough tools so that they can now converse more intelligently? So for example, using voice biometrics you can identify if the person there is a repeat customer at the drive through. Now the AI can use that and say welcome John and would you like to repeat your order? But if we don't want to do that and continue with the human interaction, how about if the drive through staff gets the same intelligence to say hey, this is a repeat customer. By the way, he ordered XYZ last time. And so start with personalizing say hey John, would you like to order the same burger and fries that you ordered last Friday? And what a great human experience that would be. So really looking at this angle of assisting or augmenting the human capability in doing the right kind of conversation, that's.

Daniel Stillman 22:48

Very interesting because you're basically sort of like giving people potentially a field of data. We've talked about this in the past. I use a tool like Grain that transcribes my coaching conversations and summarizes them. And I have a document that I share with my clients where it's there. It's extremely valuable to me to be able to see that high level summary anytime I want to. It's also really interesting to think about this idea of transactional versus I wouldn't say non transactional conversations, maybe more relational conversations. Because I remember when I was first starting to study conversation design from a technical perspective, google talked about this idea of the collaborative theory of conversations, that we each come to a conversation and we try to exchange meaning and act or transact. Based on that conversation, I reached out to you and said hey, would you like to be on this podcast? And we had a conversation about like, well, what does that mean and can I do that? And what is daniel looking for and what am I looking for? And then now here we are. We're acting and transacting based. It's relational, but it's still, on one level, an action that we want an action to happen at the end of a conversation. And one of the things I heard you talk about was the human conversations that we have in the meat space or in relationship to other people inside of the company. It's very easy to get caught in transactionality versus having a conversation in service of the other person, in service of their growth, in terms of their development. And so being really clear on what the goal of a conversation is, is really important because you're right, when we're going into a drive in, we're talking about ordering a sandwich, we're in our car. It is a transactional conversation. But I think it's very hard to remind. I certainly have a hard time remembering that there's value in slowing down. There's value in not having a transaction and not even having a point to the conversation. Like small talk.

Jay Ruparel 25:04

Yeah, absolutely. I'll give you another example. Two weeks back, our HR brought up this someone from our HR team basically said came to me saying, hey, by the way, there is this tool that everyone has started using. What the tool does is that you can create a template of happy birthday emails and you just upload all the employee data to it. And then it would basically just send out a personalized email. And then you could actually personalize it to a great extent to say. But I said, what is the point of me, for example, if I have to use that as the CEO, as someone who for me, that relationship, that wishing someone on their birthday as a personalized conversation means so much to me. That's the last thing I would want to ever automate and have my Bot. I would rather not do it rather than have

Jay Ruparel 26:08

like you said, the drive through could be very transactional, but this is not something I want it to be ever transactional. Right. It is that one day in the year where you really get the opportunity to wish the person you don't want to automate that.

Daniel Stillman 26:23

I think that's beautiful because this brings in the perspective that I see it as. I mean, everything is a spectrum, and in this sense, there's over design or underdesign, but that's just all a perception. I often quote my mother when she was reading my book. She was like, Dangle, I don't always want to design my conversations. And I said, mom, that's a choice. Choosing to not design the conversation means that you're saying, like, I want to do it myself in my own way. That is a design. I don't want it automated. I don't want it scripted. I want it to be new every time. And I'm curious how you think about the structures that you do like that you do use as a CEO to manage all the complex conversations that you have. Because it's not just I presume winging it every day with your leadership team, with your other key stakeholders. I'm curious how you think about what is the minimum viable structure, what Jay's conversational intelligence guidelines are for, how you think about designing some of those conversations.

Jay Ruparel 27:39

Yeah, this may be like maybe a secret recipe that you're asking me to share, but I'm happy to do that in the sense that and this is something I've learned from some of my mentors as well. One of the things I do is even for specific meetings that I have, I would basically plan just taking a few minutes in advance to think through what is it that I want to convey.

Jay Ruparel 28:21

The objective of the conversation is something that I start with to say and I try to keep it to as minimum as possible and having that piece of communication made very clear. So, for example, if I'm going to have a 30 minutes meeting with a group of four or five members, but my core objective from that meeting is to communicate that one or two things, right? I will basically either write it down or phrase that in my mind to say these are the two most important things I want to convey through the meeting. And then based on the context and the nature of participants, I would then basically decide the way I would like to convey that. Sometimes it could be direct, sometimes it could be through some examples or citing some data to say why that needs to be done. So it starts with the objective, it factors in the context and the type of participants, and then it comes to how it needs to be delivered. And in this, one of the things that I pay special emphasis to is when I'm looking at the nature of participants, I'm not only looking at for each individual because sometimes you're dealing with people that you may not know so much about, right? When it is internal teams, usually I understand what type of communication style will lead to the right impact that I want. When it comes to others, clients, other stakeholders whom I don't know that much, I usually take the first few minutes, maybe even the first 20%, 30% of the meeting, to really understand them. So there will be discussions that we will have which are not really related directly to the topic, but which will just help me understand what is the effective way for me to communicate. But in my mind, I'm clear that I'm going to discover that in the meeting and then use that style which will create the right impact, that little bit of homework. So one of the things this is something I learned from a mentor is I have on my calendar actually scheduled, I have what I called a me time, which is in the morning. So that me time is really from eight to 09:00 A.m., I don't set any other meetings because my calendar is blocked for that me time. And that is the time when, for all my meetings through the day, I'm doing this objective setting. What do I want to achieve, how do I do it? All of that is being planned and other activities are being planned as well.

Daniel Stillman 31:40

It's funny, you answered so many questions. There's so many layers there. And I want to peel a little bit of that onion because blocking out that me time is so important, like, absolutely essential, because if you don't have that preparation time, you're going in a lot more blind unclear about what's going on. And I imagine you've seen the impact of the me time, and so you do not. What would it take for you to skimp on your me time? Would you? Have you I mean, I'm sure we.

Jay Ruparel 32:17

All have, but I try not to because it's a big deal. Now, I have seen the benefits of that. I would not do it unless it is like something which is super urgent, unexpected, coming up. Yeah, that's the sacred time I have for myself. I will never compromise on that.

Daniel Stillman 32:40

And that's to really look at your day and say for each of these conversations, what is my goal or objective, what do I know about the context and what do I feel like? Is my tailored approach? Is it direct? Is it more example or data driven? Do you do that in a sort of structured way or do you feel like it's a little bit more intuitive now that you've been doing it for some time?

Jay Ruparel 33:07

Yeah, I started doing it in a very structured fashion. So I would actually look at every meeting and then I would actually make bullet points in my notes app to say, and I would have that in front of me on my iPad when I'm in the meeting. So I used to do it that way, but it has become less of structure, more now it's more intuitive, but I need to think through that process. And one of the things that I've also learned is that and this might sound

Jay Ruparel 33:49

it might sound bit OD. It sounded OD to me when someone told me this. And I started practicing. I actually look at, I imagine, the impact that I want to get out of the meeting and I just think about it for like 15, 30 seconds. For example, if the impact of the meeting that I want to have is we are behind schedule, let's make sure that we put in all our efforts to get this done by end of the week. Right. And that's what I want the team to agree to. I would basically imagine that situation where someone is saying that at the conclusion of the meeting. And that kind of allows me to also reframe some of the way I was thinking about that meeting. Right. To achieve that. Once you visualize the end result, you have a better understanding of how it will play out and then it just gives you that energy to then make it happen.

Daniel Stillman 35:11

And this goes back to what we were talking about, about AI being past oriented. Visualizing an ideal future is your job. Yeah. I don't think anybody else can or anything else can replace that job for you.

Jay Ruparel 35:31

Absolutely. Yeah. And because that is so individual to you, the way you visualize an outcome is so individual to you. There is no one prompting you like you would do to a Chat GPT of what that outcome has to be. Absolutely. I think you've connected the dots very well. In fact, there was a fascinating article on is ChatGPT a Reflection of Humans? Or something around that title. And basically what it threw some very interesting observations about. Ultimately, when you are interacting with an AI or a ChatGPT, it is basically reflecting on

Jay Ruparel 36:22

what prompts you are giving. Right. A lot of times, yes, you get some bits and pieces of knowledge there, but ultimately your prompts really dictate what you get out of it and also what you interpret out of what you've got. Right. So it's really your own reflection. Right. And some people like that reflection, some people don't like that reflection. But it's like a mirror. I think the article was, is it a mirror to the human soul? And I thought it was a fascinating article.

Daniel Stillman 36:55

Well, you bring up a really valid point, which is like the questions we ask dictate the quality of the answers we get.

Jay Ruparel 37:02

Right.

Daniel Stillman 37:02

I'm curious how you think about because that's an aspect of conversational intelligence. I think often we think about conversational intelligence as what I say. It's also how I listen, but it's also how we ask. And I'm curious in terms of trying to get the best out of your team, which is, I think such a fundamental role of the CEO, presumably everyone reports to you and they are better because of it. I'm curious how you think about how you ask, how you elicit and how you reflect because you're not a bot, but we're still doing those same components that a bot is doing. What's the operating system of your CEO bot when you're doing those CEO level conversations?

Jay Ruparel 37:52

Yeah. I'll give you a real example. Just last week we had our meeting of the product team and one of the things we asked everyone to do as a pre work was describe our products in five sentences. But each of those has to be questions. So don't say our product does this ask a certain question and that should describe the product. And the reason why this is important is that, like you said, it is all about what questions you ask. In this new AI driven world, the answers are out there, but the questions are really important. And that's why this whole subject. Of prompt engineering as they're calling it, it's going to get more and more important. So I think in the organizational context also, the way I feel is that we have kind of given up a little bit on curiosity as a human trait. And I think humans were far more curious earlier than and I think somehow that kind of has been waning and it kind of now has to come back to the fore, which is basically getting answers is easy. That's the way I think the future is going to be. You can ask a bunch of people and you'll get answers, but what questions to ask, how to ask them, what context to keep in mind, how to make the questions have the right language, the right conversation style. This is very important. That's what we want to and we're doing like we did this in this product meeting, want to create ways that we can facilitate employees to really ask questions. And even in meetings it's not necessary to end with answers, but just to end a meeting with lot of floating questions to say, oh, we spend 30 minutes and we came up with fascinating eight questions. That's a great outcome of a meeting, right? It doesn't matter whether you had the answers or not, but we ask great questions and that will create a very healthy organization in terms of the quality of interactions you can have.

Daniel Stillman 40:31

I think that's a very interesting value to apply to conversations because somebody could easily say at the end of 30 minutes, I want to have a clear decision or a yes or a no or a next action. And that's one way to design a meeting which is just a group conversation. But it's really interesting to hear you talk about valuing, getting to a small set of interesting questions at the end of that conversation because that will fuel the next valuable conversation, presumably.

Jay Ruparel 41:11

Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree with that and I think the value that we will start seeing in humans and as we employ professionals is going to be in that is going to be even in interviews when we are interviewing people, it was always about asking questions and seeing who has the smartest answers. I think we are already seeing that change and it will be seen even more is what are the questions that you're getting from the candidate and are those interesting, relevant, meaningful questions? Right, yeah,

Jay Ruparel 41:58

I'm very excited about how I think the true human capabilities in terms of creativity, curiosity, compassion, ability to envision the future, all of this could be augmented even better with what's happening with AI.

Daniel Stillman 42:23

It's so interesting, and I'm really glad we covered a lot of what I was hoping to from, and I said, this is one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on is that conversational intelligence is such an important topic, and you're one of the sort of few people, I think, that can speak to it from both sides of it. Technical and emulation of simulation of conversational intelligence and also making choices and optimizing for human conversational intelligence. And so I feel like we've covered a lot of what I was hoping we should cover. But I'm curious if there's anything we have not talked about that you think we should have touched on because we still have a couple of moments.

Jay Ruparel 43:07

Yeah, I think we have covered some really good points. I think I do want to mention about. One thing that is going to be interesting as it plays over the next few years is how we understand the ethics governing some of these AI based conversations and interactions. Because the regulation has still to catch up and right now it's kind of freewheeling for all the technology companies and they're using AI the way they want. But there are some concerns around to what extent you should use AI and where do you cross the boundary in terms of ethics and privacy and other compliances.

Daniel Stillman 44:05

It's a huge topic. I mean, how should we even be framing the conversation? How should we be designing that conversation about ethics? Like you said, law is always going to be trailing well behind technology. How are you thinking about it.

Jay Ruparel 44:27

Obviously, when it comes to human to human conversation, because there is a human at the other end that has norms around privacy and ethics, you are automatically framing conversations, being careful with the bot and the kind of access to data that they have. I think it is about really reimagining what those boundaries could be. And we had a couple of instances where conversations came up about can we understand the ethnicity of the person of the customer and customize the offering around that now? Well, the AI can maybe do that, but is it right to do that? Those are the kind of conversations so I think there's a lot that needs to be done in terms of just understanding the implications of AI. And I think the term that I keep hearing about is responsible. AI is how can you act responsibly towards the society, the environment and just make sure that while the technology has a lot to offer, we tread on that path carefully without violating anyone's privacy and any ethical norms.

Daniel Stillman 46:06

Basically, privacy is a really interesting aspect of the conversation and also how it's implemented and potential discrimination is an interesting lens. There's another one that I'm curious how you think about the AI supply chain, because you mentioned and I've read about this before, we're training the AI on humans who then potentially don't do that job anymore or do that job less. And I don't think you necessarily have control over how a company brings this into their brand architecture and into their employment habits. But I remember reading a story about how, like, you know, we've got a sales team of 100 and we basically train the customer service bot on the top 10% and then the bottom third of the sales force then becomes much more effective. The top 10% is still great. They don't really need the AI that they've trained. They aren't getting bonuses anymore because of performance. If that's how they were getting compensated, the compensation structure changes. And now the whole rest of the company is doing better because of the people who were doing the best in the first round. I see these the AI is learning from us often and then what happens? And I think that's a part of the ethics that people don't often think about. I'm wondering how you noodle around that.

Jay Ruparel 47:47

Yeah, no, I think it's a really good point because we often think about AI in terms of replacing specific activities or jobs or taking that over, but in terms of just being able to learn from existing workforce and then being able to do that and pushing the envelope really for everyone in the workforce. So it could be obviously there are positive aspects to it in the sense that you could actually have a lot of complicity that may be existing in certain parts of the organization now. Everyone has to kind of reinvent the way they deliver value because the same thing that they were doing is probably some of those or most of those can be done by the AI. So now you need to look at higher value added activities. But then the other side is also how you can as an organization become there's always this challenge about knowledge and expertise residing in individuals versus the organization. An organization is always trying to look at what are the ways to extract that knowledge and expertise so that the organization becomes less dependent on specific individual talent. I think there are both sides to this, but there's a lot of work being the people involved in broad the future of work and how you'll be working. Instead of having human workers in a typical office, you'll be having think of it as almost some humans, some AI bots and you're all working together to achieve the task. I clearly can see that that's the future that will be emerging.

Daniel Stillman 49:59

I think if we're going to talk about ethical AI, then it's a broader conversation well outside of our scope today in terms of what ethical capitalism looks like. Because in an individual company, you're absolutely right. It's optimized to learn as much as possible as an organization and to not rely on the knowledge or expertise of one individual because the goal is to deliver reliably a service or experience regardless of that person is sick or leaves someplace else. So that incentive structure is there. So I think this is a much bigger conversation. I'm glad we touched on some of this. It's an ongoing conversation I think everyone needs to be having.

Jay Ruparel 50:48

Absolutely.

Daniel Stillman 50:49

But I know we're at time. Time goes so fast. Jay, where should people go to learn more about all things Jay and all things Voiceplug. Where should we point them to on the Internet if they want to stay in touch or stay part of the conversation with you guys.

Jay Ruparel 51:08

Yeah. Voiceplug is at voiceplug. AI. And then you can always search Voiceplug on LinkedIn and Twitter. We have some good posts that we do blogs on LinkedIn. And then of course, you can reach me on LinkedIn, just J Ruparel and I'll be happy to connect if there are any questions, any thoughts, comments. Happy to do some follow up conversations as well.

Daniel Stillman 51:38

Thank you so much. And I'll put links to both of those in the show notes. I am so grateful we had this conversation. It was very far ranging. I'm glad we touched on some thorny topics and I really appreciate your openness and your honesty.

Jay Ruparel 51:53

Oh, I really enjoyed the conversation. I think you asked some really nice questions. You brought in some great points. I didn't know where time flew by. So this is a great conversation. Appreciate you having me on the show.

Daniel Stillman 52:07

Thank you so much, brother. Well, the feeling's mutual. We will call scene. Thank you.

Jay Ruparel 52:14

Thank you.

Designing Conversations to Unlock Strategic Foresight and Innovation with Kevin Bethune

I’m excited to share my conversation with Kevin Bethune, a multidisciplinary design executive, entrepreneur, best-selling author and keynote speaker based in Redondo Beach, California. He’s been a VP of Strategic design at BCG Digital, A global process product manager at Nike and a Nuclear Engineer at Westinghouse. He currently leads his own firm, https://dreamsdesignandlife.com/

One of his key ideas is “Open your aperture.” -ie, shifting the lens that you are looking at a problem from or through. Design and Design Thinking has so many tools to help us do just that, and find creative approaches to our biggest challenges.

In our conversation, we discussed the importance of embracing creative approaches (since our habitual approaches most likely can’t solve them!) and the need for bold leadership to optimize for curiosity and creativity - because going with business as usual is usually a lot easier than spending time on curiosity.

It takes a willingness to slow down to optimize for curiosity in a business environment that is often so focused on quarterly capitalism.

We also highlight the lack of diversity in design and innovation, particularly in black representation, and the cognitive dissonance of claiming to serve certain communities without actually representing them - an unresolved critique of many innovation firms.

The S-Curve and the Cone of Possibility

Kevin’s book, Reimagining Design: Unlocking Strategic Innovation, is CHOCK A BLOCK with diagrams (and I love diagrams!) that will stretch your thinking, but we spent some time on one diagram in particular that combines two classic models of thinking: The cone of possibility and the s-curve.

The Cone of possibility is a cone on its side, with the tip at the present, and the sides of the cone stretching out like rays of sunshine to the right. The rays represent possible futures along the timeline. There are many versions of this diagram online. Kevin’s version calls the center of the cone the “most likely” or projected future. The cone of possibility invites us to consider widening edges - future scenarios that are plausible and even impossible or preposterous futures, not just the projected or ideal future

Opening our aperture to consider multiple possible futures means that our plans can be more resilient, adaptable and even antifragile.

The S-curve is a visual representation of one of my favorite Shakespeare Sonnets. #15:

When I consider everything that grows
Holds in perfection but a little moment,
That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows
Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;
When I perceive that men as plants increase,
Cheered and check'd even by the selfsame sky,
Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,
And wear their brave state out of memory;

Things are born (or emerge), they grow, mature and then fade away. Kevin’s version of the S-curve includes more detail:

1. Emergence

2. A dip - the trough of disillusionment

3. A hyper-growth phase that slows into..

4. Maturity and then…

5. Decline, or retirement.

Kevin overlays the cone of possibility with a set of cascading s-curves, representing a host of possible trends rising and cresting as we look out into the possible futures.

As Kevin describes this diagram in our conversation, his hands are making waves of opening and closing, diverging and converging. That's what he’s seeing when he looks along the cone of possibility: all of these different trends, multiple pathways. It’s this complex, undulating space that he tries to illustrate for the teams that he works with to help them see a bigger aperture to think inside of.

These diagrams, these mental models, help redesign the conversation about strategy and innovation. We’re not designing for a single, simple, ideal future. We’re looking out at a complex landscape with multiple possible twists and turns. That is how you unlock strategic innovation - step back, widen the aperture and change the conversation.

In short - creative visualization facilitates dialogue and widens perspectives.

More About Kevin

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbethune/

https://dreamsdesignandlife.com/

Kevin Bethune is the Founder & Chief Creative Officer of dreams • design + life, a "think tank" that delivers design & innovation services using a human-centered approach. Kevin's background spans engineering, business and design in equal proportion over his 25 year career, positioning him to help brands deliver meaningful innovations to enrich people's lives.

His work represents creative problem-solving that brings multidisciplinary teams together to see the future through an open aperture, and a deep industrial design approach to inform and influence desirable, feasible and business-viable design outcomes.

Kevin also serves as a Board Trustee for ArtCenter College of Design and the Board Chair for the Design Management Institute (DMI).

AI Key Moments

(0:19) - Kevin discusses the challenges of implementing design thinking in business environments, including a bias towards formulaic approaches and a lack of collaboration across disciplines

(4:09) - Kevin suggests that it takes bold leadership and a willingness to slow down to optimize for curiosity and creativity in business

(10:28) - Kevin reflects on how his book has served as a mirror for others and helped them see themselves in his story, as well as how it encourages creative courage and confidence to experiment on curiosities and become a source of influential change within organizations

(13:58) - Kevin explains how opening the aperture and considering a wider range of perspectives can enrich team conversations and inform them with more diverse perspectives

(15:05) - Daniel and Kevin discuss various diagrams in the book related to strategic foresight, including the cone of possibility and S curves of emergence and saturation

(20:02) - Daniel and Kevin discuss the importance of requisite diversity in solving complex challenges and the lack of representation in design and innovation industries

(23:16) - Daniel asks about where conversation design fits into a diagram in Kevin’s book and they discuss the power of visualization in facilitating dialogue and widening perspectives.

(40:50) Kevin emphasizes the importance of tapping into the value criteria of stakeholders and creating new avenues of utility for them.

(43:05) - Kevin suggests being subversive with a good heart and showing what design can bring to help the business, while also considering the implications of every business or design decision.He also talks about value creation and mapping value criteria across stakeholders, emphasizing the need to anticipate where value will be and show up for people in new and novel ways

Full AI Transcript

Daniel Stillman

With that, Kevin, I will officially welcome you to the Conversation Factory. Welcome aboard. Thanks for making the time.

Kevin Bethune

No, thank you for having me. Daniel.

Daniel Stillman

So why does design need reimagining? Can we start right there in the center?

Kevin Bethune

Yes. What I can say is that in my business, this experience is, unfortunately, there still lingers a glass ceiling of ambiguity. It's probably the best way I could describe in terms of how the larger business landscape understands design, or even design thinking, for that matter.

Daniel Stillman

Yes.

Kevin Bethune

And the differences in between. I think it's just time to sort of revisit where are these approaches sort of coming from, and how do organizations think about potentially wiring themselves to really embrace these philosophies and these capabilities that design could bring to the table?

Daniel Stillman

I love that phrase, wiring themselves to embrace that. What is the glass ceiling of ambiguity, and how should organizations be rewiring themselves to embrace the power of design and design thinking? Which are we allowed to talk about design? I mean, it's like it's gone in and out of fashion so many times. So I appreciate you bringing it back into the conversation. What needs to shift?

Kevin Bethune

There's a couple of things that come to mind. Unfortunately. I think in most business environments, I think a lot of times, we feel this pressure to derisk our approaches, our methods, how we create product. There's just a general derisking. And with that, also, the speed of the clock only seems to be getting faster, thanks to digital. So sometimes I think there's an unfortunate bias toward looking at a methodology. And if a business community is looking at design thinking for the first time, there might be just a bias to want to march through the process in a very formulaic manner.

Daniel Stillman

Yeah.

Kevin Bethune

And those who are perhaps more familiar with creative approaches, creative processes, understand the nonlinearities that one must take to understand how to react to the information that you have available to make the next step forward. And it's very nonlinear. There's a lot of loopbacks, a lot of pivots, a lot of wayfinding that needs to happen that perhaps the frameworks that the business community might read about don't necessarily get into. And the framework can easily fall down in the face of real business complexity. So that's one thing. And then secondly, in a good way, I think design thinking has brokered a conversation to bring different disciplines to the table to at least begin to entertain their creative process. I think that's good. But in reality, I think especially the larger organizations get the bandwidth to actually collaborate, and problem solve across disciplines is still very much the exception. It's not the general rule.

Daniel Stillman

Yeah.

Kevin Bethune

There's not a lot of time to collaborate. And I still find that with organizations big and small.

Daniel Stillman

Yeah, you mentioned this. So when we were talking about what we wanted to talk about, the ability, the interest, optimizing for curiosity, creativity, and having an open aperture is really challenging because most many businesses are in the business of optimization and maximization and forward moving. What does it take for business to be willing to step back and have that creative open aperture?

Kevin Bethune

Well, it does take a healthy dose of courage and believers in the power of what these creative approaches could offer. And not just I'm not talking through the lens of just design any discipline. I think it takes bold leadership to empower the different disciplines within their watch, give them the space. And it's something like the old adage around going slow to go fast later. If we sort of slow down to appreciate what each discipline can bring to the table. I don't think it happens over the postit note dance or the whiteboarding. Each discipline has their own depth of expertise and their own strengths that we need to make room for. And if we do that thoughtfully and allow teams to sort of norm and find their optimal chemistry, which isn't necessarily equated to speed all the time, true magic can happen. And once we get to epiphanies that are actually more meaningful to the stakeholders that we're serving, then we can go fast later and shift the stuff that's the most relevant. That's going to hit the need right on the head.

Daniel Stillman

Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about if we take a step back and talk about your journey? Because the earlier part of the book is there's too much we can't do it justice here. I think your story is worth reading about. You've had a crazy journey. Not everyone has had the opportunity to work on nuclear reactors and sneakers. Not everybody has built an entire new business for a global agency. Right. So what made you want to finally share it and undergo because writing a book is a pain in the ass. Just acknowledge that writing a book is a journey. What made you want to really undergo the travails of book writing to share your story?

Kevin Bethune 06:09

No, I appreciate that and yes, it was a pain in the ass.

Daniel Stillman

Anybody out there thinking about writing a book, think twice. Ask yourself, how long do I want to deal with this pain? And then how long do I want to be talking about this thing?

Kevin Bethune

And I do have to shout out the MIT press. They've been wonderful sages to get me through the process. But as you mean, it's been a unique journey of multidisciplinary leaps and I could say that now, hindsight being 2020. And I can say also that it wasn't surely easy like as I started my career as a nuclear engineer working on reactor mechanical systems to wanting to garner the language of business just by sheer fact of a natural curiosity to want to understand the bigger picture around. The engineering work led to an MBA came into Nike, which created an environment that offered not just the strategic aspects and technical stuff, but that was the first time I was in an environment that had actual formal creativity embodied in the organization as well. And so that really opened my eyes to the power of design and how it could plug into technical and business concerns. Yeah, and I'm thankful that the Nike environment afforded me some runaway to begin to cut my teeth on Nike product and also start to entertain some early forays and quick wins on design and ended up going back to school for design to really solidify that creative foundation. And that was a big gamble when I thought I was done with school to go back to school for more education. But it was a career bet to really solidify my career positioning at the intersections of these disciplines because I think I honestly believe the future is going to require more multidisciplinary collaboration and conversations to breed the next generation of innovations that will be required to meet the needs of the future. And yes, that's where I wanted to plant my flag. And as I mentioned, it wasn't difficult, it surely wasn't welcome traversing these different disciplines. And I think based on recent experience navigating the environment of BCG in recent chapters where we had to stand up new capabilities that were new to BCG, new to BCG's clientele. I did walk away from BCG with this appreciation for the intellectual curiosity that was a huge part of their culture. This notion of eminence, of sharing what you've learned and the act of sharing through written word articles or keynote speaking at industry conferences, that act of freeing up in communities, that knowledge. You open your mind up to embrace new information from those communities and you can bring that back into your work. And so I think that immersion in BCG culture sort of planted the early seeds that perhaps a book could be written based on what I had to help stand up. But interestingly enough, the timing of when I started the writing process was at the very start of the COVID-19 pandemic. And so, surprisingly, the book went to a very personal place, more so than what I initially expected when I entertained the project with MIT Press.

Daniel Stillman

It was a very reflective time, having all that weird spaciousness in some

Daniel Stillman

you know, you talked about a book being I love this word eminence. And what you sort of sketched out is a classic feedback loop of the way I would describe a book should be. We want it to be a conversation. You're taking all the conversations you've had in your life and turning it into a new conversation. You want people to read it, you want to engage in those dialogues. You want to share ideas from that book and learn. And it creates a new cycle of learning. What's that been like for you now that it's been out for a while now? Is it creating the conversation you were hoping it would start?

Kevin Bethune

Yeah, it's been a year since it's been out. And I'm very thankful for what I've learned over that year of just understanding how it resonates with folks. And I think the consistent thread of feedback was that it served as a mirror of sorts for other people to say through someone's story like take my name out of it. But in diving into someone's story that's had this weird journey, they begin to see a little bit of themselves in that and their own journey. And I think the book helps them open their aperture to understand what they could potentially do, how they could potentially garner more creative courage and confidence to experiment on their curiosities and then taking it a step further. It's also helped them see how they might become a source of more influential change within the organizations and the teams that they're tasked to shepherd.

Daniel Stillman

Yeah, that's exciting. For those of you there's no video of this, but Kevin's smiling. I don't know if you may be able to hear it in his that's that's given you some joy. Yes, I think that's really awesome. What are some of your favorite diagrams in the book? Because it is chalk, a block of diagrams. I'm a big fan of a diagram. Clearly you're a bit of a framework nerd yourself, sir.

Kevin Bethune

Clearly. I'm happy that I got a chance to sketch all the figures that you see in the book. I'm a very visual communicator that's I guess why, you know, my editor was like, you need to sketch all your figures. But I do gravitate to the lens a lot. There's a figure of a looking glass staring at the distant time horizon.

Daniel Stillman

Yes.

Kevin Bethune

And that lens is all about just it's a constant reinforcement I use with all of the collaborations that I'm involved in all around encouraging the teams that I'm a part of to open our aperture. This idea of opening the aperture to regardless of whatever the brief is, whatever the immediate business concern is, we can all stand to take a step back and look at the future through a looking glass. That forces us to really lean into our multidisciplinary collaboration. And if we do that and really leverage the diversity from that, we can populate that lens with all kinds of data points, inspirations, observations, spanning stakeholder needs to business paradigms to trends and exemplars and not taking what is happening in the business world today or the present consensus of how things are supposed to behave as a given.

Daniel Stillman

Yes.

Kevin Bethune

And by opening our aperture, we can interrogate everything.

Daniel Stillman

Yeah. So let's talk about that because that's in chapter four and the lens. You talk about industry, people, trends, exemplars. This is about future strategic foresight. Right. So let's talk about opening up the aperture and what that means to you because again, this is about stepping back and this is about being curious about more elements of the conversation than just what is the thing we're trying to make now? How do we create immediate value? It's stepping back and looking at the big picture. What's important about that to you? And how can we leverage this diagram, this beautiful, starry eyed aperture that you've created?

Kevin Bethune

I think it's a helpful visual to understand, like whatever we're working on in the short term, if we're not tracking at least an appreciation for what's happening across the landscape, across the continuum of time, across not just what's most likely, like right in front of us as a most likely future, but considering dynamics that maybe force us to diverge and think about scenarios beyond that most likely future. If we cast that net wider, we're basically giving our teams a much richer conversation. We're informing the table with a much more enriched and diverse set of perspectives yes. Than what they might have had or they might have had limited if we were to just attack the brief that's in front of us.

Daniel Stillman

Yeah. You're also kind of implicating another diagram in that chapter around sort of the cone of possibility diagram, which I think is a really important one.

Kevin Bethune

Absolutely.

Daniel Stillman

Can you hold those two intention for me when it comes to strategic foresight? And then there's a third one, which I really loved, where it's just a bunch of S curves of emergence and saturation. That was a pretty trippy diagram. That's what you look at when you see the world. That's what Kevin is seeing. It's a cone of possibility and endless S curves of growth and renewal.

Kevin Bethune

Yeah. This is sort of a weird dive into my head in terms of the visualization, because in my mind, it's one visual. Like, if I look through the looking glass at the distant time horizon, that's your lens. But if I turn it sideways, you have your cone of possibility.

Daniel Stillman

Whoa. Oh, I might have missed that. That's looking at the cone of possibility head on.

Kevin Bethune

Absolutely.

Daniel Stillman

Wow.

Kevin Bethune

And as we interrogate how forces of change are commingling across that horizon or through the different parts of that cone over time, trends will sort of EB and flow. Innovation that are making traction in the market will ebb and flow. This idea of the S curve, it's like every new innovation is going to go through a process of emergence. There might be some initial disillusionment in terms of the market's appetite for that, as we well have experienced, and then someone figures it out, and eventually we have some scale, and eventually that will need to be matured for something else that comes along to replace it. So this ebb and flow, this intertwining mix of trends and the wake and the decline and maturity, all those things, we sort of have the opportunity to map, do our best to map and illustrate for teams to figure out what scenarios across our future time horizon might we anticipate to better position our organization for success.

Daniel Stillman

Yeah. Again, your hands are just in this. We're making this wave of opening and closing, diverging and converging. And that's what you're seeing when you're looking along that cone of possibility, all of these different trends, and you try to illustrate that for the teams that you work with to help them see what you see. There are so many layers I want to peel on this onion, one that I think would be really important and I would be highly remiss if I didn't bring it up, is diversity. You are a man of color. You talk about this a fair amount in your book, and I feel like there is a conversation that needs to happen more about what diversity really means in these types of transformation conversations. I don't even know where I'll just be honest with you sometimes I don't like to bring it in unless you bring it up explicitly, indirectly, because as far as I'm concerned, your ideas stand alone, and I don't want to racialize them and I don't want to racialize you and your perspective in total transparency. But you are a man of color and you talk about it in your book, and I think it's really important to talk about what diversity means in all of its layers and the conversations you want more people to be having about race after having read your book a lot.

Kevin Bethune

No, I do appreciate that and I do appreciate the safe space that you're creating to have this conversation. It is a very important one. I think it goes the other way as well in that I'm very careful when I engage people around the topics that I bring in the book to say that I can only speak for me. Yes, I am a black African American male that has navigated some really weird multidisciplinary leaps. And so I do understand what marginalization feels like and reflecting on some of the rooms that I've navigated before. At the same time, I also understand as a male, as a tall male, navigating corporate America. And the presence that my presence can embody in a room might be different than someone else who doesn't have the privilege of what certain business communities might feel. When I walk in the room versus I, especially as a male in corporate America, I understand what privilege feels like. And given the benefit of the doubt based on my stature and my voice compared to someone else, so I can only speak for me. And thankfully, we all get to navigate a world that is this beautiful tapestry of intersectionalities and diversity from every slice of the imagination. But unfortunately, when we speak of our experiences navigating a world that is the way it is by design, who's at the table absolutely matters.

Daniel Stillman

Yes.

Kevin Bethune

And unfortunately, in many of the world class studios and innovation centers and brands, some that I've navigated, some that I've encountered, whether it was through recruiting conversations, I look into those organizations and they don't mirror the beautiful tapestry that is the world. No, especially in design and innovation. Black representation is 1% to 3%, depending on the discipline you're looking at. And they might be claiming to serve an urban demographic that might be half black.

Daniel Stillman

Yeah.

Kevin Bethune

The cognitive dissonance is real.

Daniel Stillman

Yes. The Oscars are so white design is also so white. And what you're highlighting, which is really important, is that there's this concept of requisite diversity in conversation design and complexity theory that if you're going to solve a challenge that's complex, you need to have a group of people that is at least as complex as the challenge they're trying to solve. And I think trying to offer products for a community that you do not represent or relate to in an authentic way is problematic, to say the least. And so you talk about multidisciplinary conversations and the marginalization. That's so easy to have happen. We need to be including people. We people need to be included. Everyone needs to be included in the conversation. That is a really challenging thing to navigate because this idea of inclusion also has the concept of positionality in it. Who is including who?

Kevin Bethune

It sure does. And even the best intentioned practitioners may not realize the harm that they might be complicit with regard to their work. Because representation in the teams is one thing, but what process are they following? That process might have been wired by some limited few in places of power and prestige that have informed the pedagogy in the first place.

Daniel Stillman

Yes.

Kevin Bethune

And many times what's frustrating is there's a lot of quote unquote, world class studios that will design for certain communities they claim to be designing for. But design for is problematic.

Daniel Stillman

Yes.

Kevin Bethune

And you take it a step further, design with becomes the next answer, quote unquote. Like, of course we should co create with our stakeholders and be in there with them and using them as an equal thought partner. But even that, I would argue, is not enough.

Daniel Stillman

Yes.

Kevin Bethune

To your earlier point, why don't we just ensure that our teams are representative, where we actually have representative teammates that come from those communities that can actually form authentic inroads into those communities.

Daniel Stillman

Yes. So there's so many layers there and that's a whole conversation. One of my favorite diagrams in your book is the one around design as concept creation to product creation and execution versus strategic. It's a sort of two by two space. And in the sort of the upper left hand corner of concept creation and strategic design, which we've talked a little bit about foresight design. And on the lower right, I guess you'd say, is motion design. Industrial design is kind of in the middle. Where my heritage? Where is conversation design and gathering what I would call conversation design, which other people might call gathering design. Kind of what we're talking about now. The ability to create multidisciplinary inclusive, non marginalizing processes, gatherings, conversations by which we create things that create more justice. What is that type of design and where does that go on this diagram? Because I feel like it's missing.

Kevin Bethune

No, you are very correct in that it's missing. And I appreciate the words that you're using because especially in today's climate, these are paradigms that are absolutely important. They're also being interrogated with, like, does a human being do that or is the AI engine with the prompts and the conversations with AI?

Daniel Stillman

Yes.

Kevin Bethune

And the speed of the digital clock getting even faster. These are absolutely important. So, yeah, this is an opportunity to even break the visual that I created for this book to expand it. And it's almost like if you take the strategic design corner of the image, this should blow out even further to include the elements that you're describing.

Daniel Stillman

Because I imagine that you are a skilled gatherer. When I looked at all these strategic diagrams, you have so many wonderful two by twos. Of course, you have

Daniel Stillman

vertical versus horizontal innovation, which I loved. I haven't seen that one in a long time, and I still have a hard time really grocking it, whereas you've lived it for years. And I know that you use these to facilitate dialogue. And so I'm wondering if you can talk about what types of conversations you really love to have and how you use all these visuals to facilitate the kinds of conversations you want to have with the companies and teams that you enjoy working with.

Kevin Bethune

I appreciate the question because it makes me reflect that there's been a lot of moments of truth where creative problem solving manifested in very unforeseen ways. And many times, especially over the last 1015 years of my career, there may have been an acute business need, a brief or whatever task that was in front of us. But if there was a moment to leverage my newfound creative skills, many times those stakeholders in the room didn't necessarily know what to ask for or know what to even expect from me beyond the requirements of the brief. And there were moments of truth where there was a brewing connection of dots in my mind that at least spawned the conviction to get out of the chair and walk over to the whiteboard with a sharpie or a whiteboarding marker and visualize what I believe the conversation was provoking. And just by putting a visual on the whiteboard. And granted, I never was your alpha extroverted person or leader in the room. I'm very introspective, very introverted. But there was enough dot connections in my mind that said, you know what, you need to get out of the chair and contribute, and here's a way that you can. So I walk over, I put a grounding visual on the whiteboard, and as much as people are convincing over the conversation, they could look at the visual. And I just felt that power of the visual recentering or reframing or reimagining the course of discussion. And then when they were there, when I had their attention there. And again, this is all about team cohesion around that visual. It gave me a doorway to contribute verbally on top of the visual as well. And so that's been the experience in many instances lately, in that there's an initial ask, but there's always an opportunity to open the aperture. And thanks to the power of visualization, I can use these frameworks, these vehicles, to facilitate a widening of inputs and information and diversity of a perspective that can inform where we're going.

Daniel Stillman

Yeah, the power of a visual to ground a conversation as what are they called, chaotic attractors, because conversations can go everywhere. But when you draw two by two, it really does frame the conversation to say, hey, I know you're asking for this type of innovation or this type of transformation. There's also this other quadrant, this other scenario. How are we designing for this? And so I think that's one of the powers of the two x two scenario planning diagram where you were like, we're talking about this future, but this other future is possible and this future and this future is possible. And what is our optionality for each one of these quadrants? It really does help people zoom out.

Kevin Bethune

Absolutely.

Daniel Stillman

Can you talk more about what it feels like to do that? As I don't identify as an introvert, I think we're all ambiverts. We all live on a spectrum of introversion and extroversion. And so I'm really curious what it feels like, what it's felt like for you to take up the pen and to lead the conversation through providing visuals, with providing a framework, with getting layering more contribution on top of that, what does that feel like in that moment to step into the circle that way?

Kevin Bethune

It definitely was let me just start over.

Daniel Stillman

Sorry.

Kevin Bethune

I can say that it felt magical in the moments. And the other side of that coin of magic was definitely the fear of making a misstep, making a very visible misstep that was out of my character. But I think in the lead up to the last second half of my career, I do remember feeling the frustration of being that introvert in the room and feeling all the inhibitions of speaking up when those convictions were. Bubbling when I was able to naturally connect the dots in my mind. But fearing the political misstep or doing something that might run contrary to people's expectations of me and making the faux PA. But still we navigate and there's all kinds of mismatches, there's all kinds of biases and myopic sort of tendencies in business to meet the needs of where people are and meeting the needs of where people will be. And if I don't speak up, who will? And so I think that courage eventually presents itself to get up out of the chair and do something. But then I realized the mapping of leadership that has been celebrated in my past career. Chapters was the alpha archetype, the alpha person, always driving the agenda, always driving the smart answer. And I realized, again, we're still navigating with all these biases, all these mismatches. Is there a different way that I could lead? And then I started looking at some of the leaders that were truly role models for me, and they didn't necessarily match to that archetype that had been historically celebrated.

Daniel Stillman

Yes.

Kevin Bethune

I've always enjoyed the quiet leader that knows to step away from the team room in a gnarly situation. They might go into their depth of expertise, whether it's coding, drawing, sketching, whatever making, and they bring something back to the team. And they're leading by example, by quietly showing what is possible, then they get out of the way and let the team have a try. Yes, that's leadership, too. You can lead and move the team forward by making, by speaking, by writing, by visualizing. There's many ways to lead, especially with this multidisciplinary opportunity upon us. I'm a fervent believer that we need to embody all kinds of leadership more and more.

Daniel Stillman

Such a beautiful way to lead the conversation, by framing the most important question, by framing the tension in the tension that you see in the challenger in the room and speaking to serve the conversation, not necessarily to say the smartest thing and to bring the attention to yourself. I think that's a beautiful way to look at what I might call conversational leadership. It doesn't have to be driving it, it can be gathering it, it can be corralling it. How else do you love to lead conversations? What are your ideal ways of hosting and bringing people together?

Kevin Bethune

Um,

Kevin Bethune

I think it probably stems from both optimism, but as well as, if I'm honest, past trauma of what it was like to be either recognized as a leader or be accused of being lukewarm or ineffective because I didn't match the archetype of what the organization might have celebrated as leadership. And I've been told in my past, why aren't you like this person? I'm not that person, that's why. But these are things, unfortunately, people hear, and especially when you're not representative of the majority.

Daniel Stillman

Yes.

Kevin Bethune

How that lands. I don't think people will fully appreciate the harm that that causes. And again, these are things I had to unpack. But with optimism and also recognizing that I've had huge opportunities of privilege navigating my career in terms of the spaces I've been able to navigate, I'm very optimistic, no matter how hard something is to say, like, what can we pull together as diverse ingredients? And through a collaboration, having a hope that we can answer the call? So I guess in the work, what drives the optimism is the chance to serve someone and actually impact the human experience in a very meaningful way. Does it manifest that way all the time? I think we all fall short of that hope sometimes, but that hope does keep us moving. Forward.

Daniel Stillman

I think that is an extraordinary aspect of the real design mindset. I'm going to remind myself by saying it now to put a link to my friend. I don't know if you know Aisha Bursell and her work. She wrote a book called how to Design the Life You Love, and it's a wonderful book. I had her on my podcast ages ago. She's a Turkish designer, and she talks about optimism as a fundamental aspect of design. And by golly, it is for realsies hard because we live in a very complex, very challenging world. And to maintain your curiosity and your optimism, kevin, how did you get those superpowers?

Kevin Bethune

Honestly, curiosity has been the defining thread. Again, easy to say that now, but I'm always excited by what you can do when you put two and two together and making two from less than obvious places. Sources of inspiration.

Daniel Stillman

Yes.

Kevin Bethune

And learning over my career to always look up, look out, get out of the office walls, and be open source to just like a fisherman, casting the net wide and getting as many rich and different ingredients as possible, no matter the ask, no matter the brief. Good things tend to happen when you do that.

Daniel Stillman

There's that optimism again. Kevin so can you talk briefly about the name of your firm, dreams, Design and Life? I feel like that's an important thing for us to touch on, because I know that's a significant combination for you.

Kevin Bethune

It's funny, the name came from a hashtag that I used on Instagram and Twitter and years prior to me starting the practice, and where the name comes from. I think that optimism analogously. You think of dreaming of what future possibilities could be had. So the idea of being childlike and dreaming and always keeping that hope alive at the other end of the branding is life. And that life is very concrete. There's pragmatic things, there's constraints, there's concrete realities that we have to navigate. But in a beautiful way, I've discovered how and learned how design could transform my life. And design can be a powerful broker or medium in between the dreaming and the life circumstances to create a path toward a better way forward.

Daniel Stillman

Yeah, what else would do that but intentionality, right? That's the core of design, believing that optimistically, it is possible to create something different. Boy. All right, Kevin. We've covered a lot of territory. Our time is shockingly, running short. What have we not talked about that is important for us to talk about? Because obviously there's more in your book than we could possibly cover in the time we have. There's more in your life than we could dig into. But what haven't we unpacked that would be worth circling back around and unpacking more?

Kevin Bethune

You know, I am I am even more bullish and fascinated by a lot of the nonlinearities and nuances that are involved in any effort that we have to go after a new innovation opportunity or to even investigate what might be a possibility to go pursue. And I am spending a lot of time noodling on what does nonlinearity mean in our journey toward innovation? What are some of the nuances that make innovation endeavors more successful? And I think of the work of friends like Myro Percini, who's a chief design officer of PepsiCo. His book that came out recently, of course, it's not going to be with an Eyeshot. Give me 1 second.

Kevin Bethune

Where is it?

Kevin Bethune

Of course, it would have walked away from my office. Give me 1 second. I want to get the name right out of respect for him.

Daniel Stillman

It's all good.

Kevin Bethune

So. Yeah, his book is Myra Percini's book, the Human Side of Innovation the Power of People and Love with People. That's just one great example of the nuances around. Like, we have to remember that people still drive the pursuit of innovation versus a framework or a methodology. And some of the attributes, the nuances that he brings to light the characteristics of what he calls unicorns or even designers. And are people in love with people bringing the nuances out? And I think if more people appreciate what to look out for and what to sort of appreciate, that's different than the typical archetypes of leadership that are often celebrated in business. Yes, he's giving us a whole landscape of attributes, of the nuances, of what makes our differences actually compelling when we think about innovation. That's just one facet of these nuances and nonlinearities that I think we really need to unpack for people so that they can identify those attributes and recognize that they're valuable. And that's something that is left on the cutting room floor for what's prioritized.

Daniel Stillman

The idea that it's the people and not the framework is a really beautiful perspective because going back to the name of your firm, Dreams, it really does come down to what is the dream? What are the dreams of the people in the room? What's the dream of the organization? Like, what are we really trying to create? There's no objectively perfect way to do it. It really is driven by the people.

Kevin Bethune

Absolutely. And the people that we were designing for, designing with, or including, they have dreams too. And instead of engaging them with whether do you like this handbag I'm about to sell you? What are their dreams? What are their unmet aspirations? What are their motivators? How can we tap in and show up for them correctly?

Daniel Stillman

Yeah, you mentioned this word wayfinding a couple of times and nonlinearity at the beginning of our conversation as well, that there's a lot of ambiguity in the design process and the process of going from curiosity to product market fit and growth and scale going through that S curve, it's nontrivial. It is complex. What helps you wayfind through that process? How do you be a good wayfinder for the teams that work with you to help them through that process in a way that feels safe.

Kevin Bethune

I do think that fluency is important and especially in environments where maybe design might be the youngest discipline to be at that table of conversation, which is typically the case. So I definitely have seen the disservice of design talking theoretical about its benefits, of why we exist and how great design is. If I beat my chest on that all day, I'm going to sound very theoretical to these other communities that matter equally at the table. So the more that I can be, as one of my mentors puts it all the time, the more I can be subversive with a good heart and show what design can bring to help the business. The collective team. Achieve its goals and ideally, at the same time, be systematically respectful of how we visualize and shine a light on the implications of every business or design decision. We have that opportunity to be subversive, to open everyone's aperture, to think about broader ramifications. And that I think is a beautiful thing when it's allowed to sort of have the breathing room to shine and be delivered.

Daniel Stillman

Yeah, lovingly subversive, being subversive with a good heart. I guess I'm paraphrasing when I think about you stepping up and drawing a diagram about what you are seeing, that seems to me to be wayfinding and to be lovingly wayfinding to say I believe that this is where we are and helping other people see what you see. It's a huge act, but it doesn't have to be so effortful. You just have to get up and draw.

Kevin Bethune

Yeah, honestly, instead of using the word design all the time, instead of not just saying open the aperture all the time and encouraging people to do that. But I'm in the business of value creation and no matter the business opportunity in front of us, it's always a question of like, who are the stakeholders? It's never just about the end, consumer consuming, there's a myriad of stakeholders and oh by the way, the planet is a stakeholder. So let's map the value criteria across that constellation of people or entities and ask ourselves, do we have the convictions and capabilities to answer the call, to answer the need? And oh by the way, those needs are shifting all the time thanks to trends and new paradigms. So can we anticipate where the value will be, where that value criteria will be? And again, all that gives me hope that we can figure out new and novel ways and how to show up for people.

Daniel Stillman

Can you say a little bit more about I love that phrase, new and novel ways to show up for people. Put a little color.

Kevin Bethune

Yeah, I guess. Sort of. The negative paradigm of that is, unfortunately, in a digital hyperconnected world, many times we can feel trapped in this flywheel of marketers marketing things to us and consumers consuming. And we see the perils of that paradigm in terms of the unsustainability of it and the disrespect on ethics and privacy and these kind of things. But instead, if we figure out how to tap into the value criteria of where people are, where people will be, I think we'll be more thoughtful of creating new avenues of utility for people to say, oh, that product or service. I could see that being a part of my life. I'm willing to take a bet and give that a try because maybe that's driving new meaning for me, and I'm willing to go down that avenue of utility you've just created for me by your new product or service. At the same time, that person's also navigating an information rich world with emails and messages and ads and pinching from every single direction. But how can we do a better job of clearing the noise for them and giving them the information that matters so that they would want to use that utility, that meaning that we've created for them. And if we show up consistently and are aligned with their value set with our values, we'll create emotional resonance where they'll keep coming back to that same experience consistently and we'll have a loyal relationship yes. Versus this transaction.

Daniel Stillman

Yes. I can't help but think that we're not just talking about organizations creating products and services for consumers, but also the way you'd like designers, anybody who's creating value to be thinking about all the people that they collaborate with.

Kevin Bethune

Absolutely.

Daniel Stillman

Because

Daniel Stillman

creating value with and for other people in a way that helps them clear out the noise is nontrivial. It's very easy to get lost in, well, here's my big deck and I'd like to take you through it slide by slide versus making it easy for somebody to work with you and for you to all to create value together.

Daniel Stillman

I'm going to assume that I can take that message and apply it not just from the inside of an organization to the outside, but between all of the different components of an organization, between all of the stakeholders within a value creation chain. That lesson, I think, is a really beautiful, almost parting moment. We're almost at the end. So where should people go to learn about all things Kevin Bethune? Where can we send people to the Internet so that they can learn more about your book and your work and learn about what?

Kevin Bethune \

I appreciate that. If folks go to Kevinbethun.com Just My Name, there's all kinds of forks in the road to get you where you need to go, whether it's dreams, design and life or the books. And then on social media, it's just at Kevin Bethune. I'm easy to find on all major platforms, so I appreciate the opportunity.

Daniel Stillman

It's my distinct pleasure. So one last micro question. What's your next book going to be called?

Kevin Bethune

Title TBD. But I think folks got a preview a little bit by our conversation around these nonlinearities and nuances.

Daniel Stillman

Nonlinearities and nuances that sounds like the beginning of a trade. PM. Yeah. I love it. I love it. Nonlinearity is oh, boy. I mean, that's a tough one, navigating all that ambiguity.

Kevin Bethune

Yes. I think that's what we're mired in, if we're honest.

Daniel Stillman

Yeah.

Kevin Bethune

So how do we handle it?

Daniel Stillman

How do we handle it? How do we handle it? Kevin, give me the Tweet before I buy the book. How do I handle all that ambiguity? I've got lots. What do I do with it?

Kevin Bethune

Well, I'm going to do my best to shine a light, to give people some wayfinding tools. How about that?

Daniel Stillman

Okay. All right. I might click the preorder button on that.

Kevin Bethune

Awesome.

Daniel Stillman

Awesome. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time and sharing all of this goodness. And I'm also going to hopefully put some of these diagrams in the post so people know what we're all talking about. Thank you so much for your time, Kevin. I really appreciate it.

Kevin Bethune

Thank you for the opportunity. Nice to chat with you.

Daniel Stillman

Okay, we'll call scene.

A Leader's Guide to Managing Organizational Emotions During Layoffs and Beyond with Emily Levada

My guest today, Emily Levada, is a seasoned Chief Product & Technology Officer. Currently, she is the Chief Product Officer and Interim co-CEO at Embark Veterinary, a company dedicated to leveraging genetics to enhance the health and longevity of dogs. During her tenure, the company has achieved notable recognition, ranking as the #3 fastest-growing private company in Massachusetts and earning a spot on Forbes' list of promising venture-backed startups.

She also serves as a Board Member at JCC Greater Boston, bringing her expertise to contribute to the organization's growth and development and holds a significant role as a Member of the Customer Advisory Board at UserTesting, where she actively engages in guiding and advising the company.

Emily is also a two-time podcast guest, my first ever! We did an episode a few years back where she shared some wonderful insights and frameworks about Trust, Communication and Psychological Safety in teams.

Emily was also gracious enough to be a guest mentor for the Innovation Leadership Accelerator cohort I co-ran with my friend Jay Melone from the product innovation consultancy New Haircut some years back.

In this conversation, we sat down to talk about managing organizational emotions, especially negative emotions, and especially during critical junctures, like layoffs - something that many folks have been through, and many folks in the past year. I knew that Emily had some experience with this in the past and had some great thinking to share around this crucial leadership topic.

There’s no *good* side to be on in a downsizing event - the people who are losing their jobs and income are also losing a sense of identity and need to navigate an uncertain future. But the loss of identity and the need to face an uncertain future is also true for the folks who are still with the company - both the “rank and file” and the leadership.

Layoffs done poorly can dent a company culture.

Emily emphasized the importance of transparency in the period leading up to a layoff, as it builds trust and can mitigate negative emotions.

On the other hand, leaders often have a desire to protect people from such difficult conversations until the last possible moment, so the whole team can focus on their day-to-day jobs.

I explored this polar tension between these two fundamental values, transparency and protection, with Emily using a tool called Polarity Mapping, developed by Barry Johnson Ph.D., the creator (and registered trademark holder!) of The Polarity Map®! You can read more about polarity mapping in my friend Stephen Andserson’s short blog post here and check out Dr. Johnson’s company, Polarity Partnerships here. IMHO, Stephen’s version of Barry’s diagram (below) is a bit clearer!

The basic idea of Polarity mapping is that often we feel pulled by two values, like:

Should we focus on Innovation or Efficiency?

Should we prioritize Deadlines or Quality?

Growth vs. Consolidation?

Short-term Gains vs. Long-term Organic Growth?

Centralization vs. Decentralization?

(thanks for these examples, Stephen!)

In my own coaching work, I’ve found leaders can struggle to navigate conflicting parts of themselves, forming inner polar tensions that leave them feeling stuck, like:

“I need to be flexible vs I need to be firm”

“I need to lead the conversation vs I need to let the conversation flow”

“I need to be aggressive or I have to be more passive”

“I need to listen more vs I feel the need to fix challenges”

“I want to be authentically myself vs I need to be a chameleon to get by”

And because we get pulled between them, and feel the polarity to be an unwinnable double bind of “damned if I do,” we kind of flub the balancing act. Polarity mapping asks us to be ultra-specific about the positives of both values AND to be very clear on the downsides of over-indexing on one value to the detriment of the other.

Doing a mapping like this can help us thread the needle of polarity, and look out for the early warning signs of over-indexing in one direction or another.

Below is a version of a polarity map for the tension Emily describes in our conversation, between Transparency and Protection.

Emily points out that these polarities pop up, not just at crucial moments in a business like layoffs, but in day-to-day operations, too.

Leaders can feel that Emotions are Inconvenient, but Team Emotions have real impact

Emily shares the top three negative organizational emotions she finds can deeply impact a team’s ability to learn (i.e., be willing to experiment), be creative (i.e., being able to innovate) and be fundamentally effective:

Anxiety (Fear)

Boredom

Apathy

Fear, anxiety, and boredom are detrimental to creativity and productivity in knowledge work. Leaders need to address these emotions and create an environment that fosters engagement and challenge - and ultimately, create a learning organization.

“People cannot do creative knowledge work when they feel fear and anxiety and boredom. Those things are just incompatible.”

Emily suggests that well-run one-on-one meetings are crucial for understanding how team members are feeling and detecting signs of overwhelm, underwhelm, or “whelm” in their job. One-on-ones can help build a foundation of trust and safety, on which we can build honest and productive conversations.

Emily also shares some straightforward approaches for shifting these key negative emotions:

Anxiety: focus on building psychological safety for teams experiencing anxiety, and provide more transparency and context.

Boredom: create relevant challenges

Apathy: create accountability and challenge for teams experiencing apathy

AI Summary By Grain

Daniel and Emily discuss the importance of transparency and managing emotions during layoffs, emphasizing the need for psychological safety and building trust with team members. They suggest regular check-ins, icebreakers, and pulse surveys to gauge team emotions and prevent negative impacts on productivity. Emily explains that effective accountability requires understanding how a person's job connects to company goals, setting appropriate metrics, and articulating success with clarity.

Key Points

Emily discusses the importance of clarity and messaging in advance of a layoff, and how it can build trust with employees (11:06)

Emily shares an example of how to signal potential risks without creating panic, and they discuss the balance between protecting employees and providing transparency (16:08)

Daniel and Emily discuss the need to optimize for creativity and adaptability, especially after major changes like layoffs (32:41)

Emily suggests developing a measurement system to understand where the team is emotionally, including individual conversations, surveys, and observation. She also recommends doing a listening tour to hear from team members at all levels. (34:45)

Daniel and Emily discuss the belief that people want to do great work and the role of psychological safety in creating a context for great work (48:54)

Links, Quotes, Notes, and Resources

Trust, Communication, and Psychological Safety with Emily Levada

The Joys of Polarity Mapping, by Stephen Anderson

Polarity Partnerships

Minute 1

Daniel Stillman:

And this is something that comes up a lot, which is like, how do we do layoffs? How do we manage the process, but also the emotional space and damage, blow back that happens. And what do we do about the team that's left over? As a product leader, how do you think about this thing that is pretty much inevitable and currently very common?

Emily Levada:

Yeah. I mean, I wish it wasn't inevitable. I mean, I wish we all were able to manage our businesses effectively enough that we never over-hired, overstaffed, had imbalances in the skills and capabilities or anticipated changes in the market. All of those things. At some level, doing a layoff is a failure of leadership's ability to plan for the future effectively. And of course, leaders are humans and it's impossible to predict the future. And that's sort of what I think makes it feel inevitable at some level. I do think that there's a couple of things that are really important. And the first, which I think is the hardest, and the one that I find people push back against the most is actually transparency in the period leading up to a layoff. Because the reality is that... Well, I think people know this, and being a product manager is a lot about managing other people's expectations. And there's this notion that when reality is better than your expectations, you experience delight and when reality is worse than the expectations, you experience disappointment or other negative emotions.

And usually we're talking about customers here. And one way that you can solve for that or drive customer delight is by making the reality better. But another way you can do it is by mitigating people's expectations. And you don't want to sort of overpromise and under-deliver. And I think that the more I've done layoffs, the more I felt like, hey, look, there's something about clarity when a layoff happens about why that decision is being made, about either the business hasn't been in a good place, or the business has this problem and we need to solve this problem. A lot of layoffs come out of the blue and you have leaders who saying, everything's going great, everything's wonderful. Oh, by the way, we're laying off 15% of the company. And that all of a sudden breaks trust because those things are not compatible with one another.

Minute 15

Daniel Stillman:

So do you want to talk about why it's important to learn how to navigate negative emotions and what's important about being able to lean into those?

Emily Levada:

Yeah, sure. I think there are also these misconceptions. I think a lot of managers think emotions, well, a lot of managers think emotions are inconvenient.

Somehow a thing that they have to deal with, but not their responsibility, explicitly, not their responsibility. And also that emotions are only the realm of the individual and versus the realm of the team or the organization, which isn't to say that individuals don't have emotions, but I'm also interested in this sort of organizational emotion that the sort of team emotion and thinking about how you manage that. And I think the real reason why, I mean, what I'm interested in is, how do you create organizations that can move as quickly and effectively as possible towards the results they're trying to drive? And the framework that I use when thinking about this is basically focused around learning. The idea being that if you can learn effectively, you can do anything. You can sort of move into any new space. You can find value sort of anywhere, and you're sort of gated by your ability to learn what's going to be of value quickly.

But I find that that goes hand in hand with a bunch of other things that we care about, creativity and risk taking and resilience and a bunch of other things. And so how do we get our organizations and the individuals in our organizations into this headspace, into this mood, into this emotion where they can be focused, they can be in the zone, they can be resilient and optimistic. And my perspective is that there are sort of three major negative emotions that detract from our ability to do this effectively. Those are fear and anxiety, boredom and apathy.

And a lot of the reason that I have come to those three is they show up over and over again as you review organizational behavior work. And a lot of the frameworks that I've come to really love and to utilize in my day-today, you see these three emotions or versions of these three emotions show up over and over again. And at some point I've started to feel like, hey, look, a lot of what it takes to actually create the conditions for success in my team is about how do we manage anxiety, boredom, and apathy in the team. Because if you can manage those effectively, you can create a team context and a team environment where that learning and that creativity and that resilience is possible.

Minute 35

Daniel Stillman:

So the value of challenge can activate someone in a good way. It can give them a sense of, there's impact. We want to connect with what they're doing to not just output, but impact. And if we over-index on challenge, then people will just feel, we'll go back into that anxiety zone.

Emily Levada:

I think that's right. And I think also there's an underlying value here, which is maybe not in a polarity, but which is as a leader, in order to do this effectively, in order to create effective accountability for that team, you actually have to get your shit together.

Daniel Stillman:

You want to break that down for us a little bit?

Emily Levada:

You have to understand how that person's job connects to the company goals. You have to be aligned on what you're trying to accomplish. You have to set an appropriate metric or measurement for that person to hit. You have to be able to articulate to them with clarity what success looks like.

And a whole bunch of things that sometimes managers are not good at, but it's a good opportunity to say, oh, this is what my team needs from me, and therefore this is what I should focus on in creating this accountability and this productive pressure.

More About Emily Levada

Emily Levada (She/Her), is a seasoned Chief Product & Technology Officer. Currently, she is the Chief Product Officer and Interim co-CEO at Embark Veterinary, a company dedicated to leveraging genetics to enhance the health and longevity of dogs. During her tenure, the company achieved notable recognition, ranking as the #3 fastest-growing private company in Massachusetts and earning a spot on Forbes' list of promising venture-backed startups.

She also serves as a Board Member at JCC Greater Boston, bringing her expertise to contribute to the organization's growth and development and holds a significant role as a Member of the Customer Advisory Board at UserTesting, where she actively engages in guiding and advising the company.

Full Transcript

Daniel Stillman:

Okay. So Emily, I'm so grateful that you made the time for this conversation. You're actually the first, second time interviewee conversationalist.

Emily Levada:

Wow.

Daniel Stillman:

And I'm-

Emily Levada:

What an honor.

Daniel Stillman:

Well, yeah, it's very kind of you to say. Welcome back to the conversation factory. I get to say it for the first time.

Emily Levada:

Thank you. I'm glad to be back.

Daniel Stillman:

The association, when I think of layoffs, I think of... I saw you post recently on, well, I guess it's not that recently anymore now, on LinkedIn around, a leader's guide to managing organizational emotions and your desire, your interest in creating a learning organization. And I know that you've been involved in and have been responsible for layoffs in the past. And this is something that comes up a lot, which is like, how do we do layoffs? How do we manage the process, but also the emotional space and damage, blow back that happens. And what do we do about the team that's left over? I've watched you try to find jobs for people from your last company after layoffs, find jobs for people you've had to lay off. You do put a lot of love and care into it. As a product leader, how do you think about this thing that is pretty much inevitable and currently very common?

Emily Levada:

Yeah. I mean, I wish it wasn't inevitable. I mean, I wish we all were able to manage our businesses effectively enough that we never over-hired, overstaffed, had imbalances in the skills and capabilities or anticipated changes in the market. All of those things. At some level, doing a layoff is a failure of leadership's ability to plan for the future effectively. And of course, leaders are humans and it's impossible to predict the future. And that's sort of what I think makes it feel inevitable at some level. I do think that there's a couple of things that are really important. And the first, which I think is the hardest, and the one that I find people push back against the most is actually transparency in the period leading up to a layoff. Because the reality is that... Well, I think people know this, and being a product manager is a lot about managing other people's expectations. And there's this notion that when reality is better than your expectations, you experience delight and when reality is worse than the expectations, you experience disappointment or other negative emotions.

And usually we're talking about customers here. And one way that you can solve for that or drive customer delight is by making the reality better. But another way you can do it is by mitigating people's expectations. And you don't want to sort of overpromise and under-deliver. And I think that the more I've done layoffs, the more I felt like, hey, look, there's something about clarity when a layoff happens about why that decision is being made, about either the business hasn't been in a good place, or the business has this problem and we need to solve this problem. A lot of layoffs come out of the blue and you have leaders who saying, everything's going great, everything's wonderful. Oh, by the way, we're laying off 15% of the company. And that all of a sudden breaks trust because those things are not compatible with one another.

Daniel Stillman:

Right.

Emily Levada:

And so I think particularly with the last layoff that I did, it was very important to me that the leadership team was messaging in advance. And it was as simple as, hey, we're having trouble balancing the budget, which was the reality. We were having trouble squaring our revenue projections with our costs, and the largest part of our costs was headcount. And we were going through the process of trying to figure out what are all of the other ways that we can balance this budget that are not doing layoffs, but we try to be at least open about the fact that that process was happening and not that everything is wonderful and the plans are all coming together and it's all going to be great. And I think part of the reason that people are afraid of doing that is because they feel like it creates unnecessary anxiety in the organization in advance, and it creates sort of discontent or fear. And for me, I think there's some amount of trading off anxiety before a layoff for trust building in your willingness to be transparent with an organization after a layoff.

Daniel Stillman:

Wait, so let's underline that because you're saying that the blow-back for not being... Well, the downside of being transparent is you can create anxiety, but if you are as clear and transparent as you can be or as you feel you can be gain trust?

Emily Levada:

Right.

Daniel Stillman:

Both of the team before, but also really importantly of the team that's remaining.

Emily Levada:

That's remaining.

Daniel Stillman:

Afterwards.

Emily Levada:

Right. And that also the problem that I have seen where you don't give any indication the layoffs coming, you do a layoff. Now the people who are remaining are saying, well, how can I trust you that when you say things are going well, that they're actually going well. And you have to start earning back trust with the people who are there. But really, I mean, what I'm talking about now is basically all sort of emotional management.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Emily Levada:

None of this is the actual ticking and tacking of how you do a layoff. It's all about how you think about what is fair and right and just and produces the overall fewest negative emotions, both before and after.

Daniel Stillman:

So what's the opposite value? So on one hand, transparency is valuable because if we index on it, we create trust. And if we under index on transparency, we can create anxiety because people don't have clarity, we create anxiety for them. On the other hand, I feel like people say, I want to play this close to the vest. And there's reasons for that. What's valuable and good about being thoughtful or cautious or intentional about what you share with your team?

Emily Levada:

Yeah. I mean, I don't want this to sound like there's not a lot of discretion that goes into what's shared or when it's shared. I think there's a difference between the sort of simmering of anxiety of, hey, there might be a correction that needs to happen in the business and it could impact me, and does that make me demotivated or even consider leaving this company? But I think, what I'm not suggesting is the kind of transparency that creates panic.

Daniel Stillman:

Right.

Emily Levada:

Which I have also seen. So I have seen some leader be like, "Oh yeah, the layoff's coming in two weeks." And then everybody's like, "Wait, give me all the rest of the information." And then they're like, "Yeah, nope. Can't share that information. Don't have more details." Then you just have panic for two weeks. But I think it's the signaling of there is hard work being done to understand what's going to be best for the business, for our stakeholders, for the majority of our employees, potentially at a cost to some other employees. And we are working hard to solve this problem in every creative way that we can. But this happened not that long ago. We were sort of signaling this, and there's a board meeting coming up. We need to do the budget. We're having trouble balancing the budget, we're working through the options. And a very astute individual in an all company meeting said, does that mean that there could be another riff?

And we said, yes, it does mean, that is the very last lever that we would want to pull. And as of right now, we don't have concrete plans to do a riff, but if we cannot solve the budgetary problems other ways we could end up having a conversation about needing to do it. Right, that's the honest answer. But I think that would be a very difficult answer for a lot of leaders to give, because I do think that the other value, and it's a protection mechanism. You want to protect your team. These are the things that managers worry about so that employees don't have to worry about.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Emily Levada:

And there's a desire to shield your team from uncertainty and from ambiguity because it makes it easier for them to do their jobs. It provides a sense of clarity and stability and all of those things, which we value. But I think there's some line where you can go too far.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Yes.

Emily Levada:

In that direction, into a false sense of clarity and civility, which then ultimately ends up feeling like a lie after the fact.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes. Okay. So this is great. I think we're where I was hoping we would get to, because one of the tools that I was actually really excited to do a whole other interview with you about is, this idea of polarity mapping as a leadership skill, having to manage paradox as a leadership skill. And I think you've identified the paradox and the two by two of this tool and people can Google it, I'll put a link in, but it's like, we have these two values and plus and minus of both of them, because both values have goodness in them.

And over-indexing on them, over to the negation of the other creates dysfunction. So if we're talking about protection and transparency as two values where it's like I want to protect them, but I also want to be transparent, what I'm hearing is, I want to protect them because what's good about this, I want to shield them from things they don't need to know about because I want them to be able to focus on doing their job and creating value. And I want to give them transparency because I want them to build trust. And if I over-index on either of those, I can get anxiety and panic, I think, is what we're talking about.

Emily Levada:

Yes.

Daniel Stillman:

And so you're kind of just... Go ahead.

Emily Levada:

By the way, I mean this polarity exists in everyday management all the time. You hear this all the time, the leader, your employees, let's say you come to them and you say, I've made this decision. We've had this discussion, I've made this decision. They get upset because they want it to be included in the discussion and the decision. But when you come to them and say, I have this big problem and I don't really know the answer and I want you to help me figure it out, then they feel like you're not giving them enough clarity in the direction that you're providing. And this trade off between, what is the right moment to bring employees something that is clear enough that they feel they can understand it, they can run with it, but transparent enough in the sort of sausage making of it that they don't feel blindsided by the decision. And I think this is just a very amplified version of that polarity.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Because I think I've definitely been in situations where leaders have over-indexed on protection and everything's going to be fine because they really believe that they're going to pull the fat out of the fire and they don't. And it comes as a serious whiplash. And I think what we're positing here is the negative emotions that come as a result of over-indexing on protection. People are thinking about now, in protection and people are maybe not thinking so much about, and then after, with protection, and they're on reduction of harm now and not long-term management of organizational emotions. So maybe, sorry, is there more that you want to?

Emily Levada:

No, go ahead.

Daniel Stillman:

Well, because I think this is maybe an interesting place to, a lot of people resist dealing with negative emotions because they are uncomfortable. And for those of you, because there's no video for this, Emily just did a very deep nod that I felt that in my chest. You're like, yes. So do you want to talk about why it's important to learn how to navigate negative emotions and what's important about being able to lean into those?

Emily Levada:

Yeah, sure. I think there are also these misconceptions. I think a lot of managers think emotions, well, a lot of managers think emotions are inconvenient.

Daniel Stillman:

And sorry, that's not funny at all. Funny because that hurts.

Emily Levada:

Somehow a thing that they have to deal with, but not their responsibility, explicitly, not their responsibility. And also that emotions are only the realm of the individual and versus the realm of the team or the organization, which isn't to say that individuals don't have emotions, but I'm also interested in this sort of organizational emotion that the sort of team emotion and thinking about how you manage that. And I think the real reason why, I mean, what I'm interested in is, how do you create organizations that can move as quickly and effectively as possible towards the results they're trying to drive? And the framework that I use when thinking about this is basically focused around learning. The idea being that if you can learn effectively, you can do anything. You can sort of move into any new space. You can find value sort of anywhere, and you're sort of gated by your ability to learn what's going to be of value quickly.

But I find that that goes hand in hand with a bunch of other things that we care about, creativity and risk taking and resilience and a bunch of other things. And so how do we get our organizations and the individuals in our organizations into this headspace, into this mood, into this emotion where they can be focused, they can be in the zone, they can be resilient and optimistic. And my perspective is that there are sort of three major negative emotions that detract from our ability to do this effectively. Those are fear and anxiety, boredom and apathy.

And a lot of the reason that I have come to those three is they show up over and over again as you review organizational behavior work. And a lot of the frameworks that I've come to really love and to utilize in my day-today, you see these three emotions or versions of these three emotions show up over and over again. And at some point I've started to feel like, hey, look, a lot of what it takes to actually create the conditions for success in my team is about how do we manage anxiety, boredom, and apathy in the team. Because if you can manage those effectively, you can create a team context and a team environment where that learning and that creativity and that resilience is possible.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes. So my first follow up question for that is, in my book, I sort of posit that nobody has a conversation thermometer or speedometer, and yet somehow we all... Oh God, this is moving too slow. This is moving too fast, this conversation is too hot, this conversation is too cold. With what organ of you, do you feel like you detect that there is apathy, anxiety, or boredom in the team, right? Because we can feel a person-ish, that's empathy or mirror neurons, but how do you feel like you read that room, especially given the fact that maybe you aren't seeing them all together in one place at one time, very often, how are you reading what's going on?

Emily Levada:

So I do think to some extent for the people that I do interact with more frequently, there is relationship building and you just start to learn. You sort of know when someone's on and when they're off or when they're right, when they're nervous about something or whatever. And so there's some amount of that. I will say at the team level, it's much harder virtually. And I remember saying when we first went virtual that I felt like I had lost the sensory organ because there was so much observation in a team meeting of who's paying attention, who's disengaged, who's talking to who, who got excited physically by those ideas, or what were the hallway conversations that happened after a meeting?

I do think that it's possible, however, to read a fair amount of this based on the signals around what your team is outputting and also where the problems are cropping up. So for example, teams who are in apathy are just much less likely to actually deliver results, and they're much more likely to be engaged in conflict or miscommunication. And even your attempts at moving the team top down don't actually produce the results that you want, right?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Apathy is a kind of inertia.

Emily Levada:

Right. People who are bored tend to start... Boredom often goes hand in hand with your bureaucracy. And they'll often complain about, just, I didn't need to be in that. Why are we in so many meetings about things that we all already know? Or they start looking, they start job crafting, they're not feeling challenged enough, and so they start finding other things to do that aren't their actual job. And so it's a little bit of that, just so fear and anxiety tends to create, people tend to turtle, they stop sharing information as freely.

And so you can start to see some of those things in terms of where are the conflicts happening, what's getting escalated to you, which projects are actually moving and which ones aren't. And I think it's one of those things when you start paying attention, but sometimes you do have to get in and evaluate. You and I have talked about my trust and conversation framework, which actually happens to have these four emotions in it. And there are tools like that that you can go in, you can just say, okay, how's everybody feeling? Right? I think we've talked about doing icebreakers where you get into a room and you have everybody just draw a picture of how you're feeling and see what people come up with.

Daniel Stillman:

And if you wait until things are terrible to do that, that's a signal. So it's doing this regularly, really taking a reading.

Emily Levada:

We have a question on our employee pulse survey that is, I don't remember how it's worded, but it's like, what's your predominant feeling? Or how are you feeling most days? And the choices are fatigued, anxious, optimistic, something else, but they're basically synonyms of these things. And so you can get a pulse of, oh, this team is feeling this way, and that team's...

Daniel Stillman:

Yes. Now this is clearly a great reminder that regular one-on-ones done well are so important. I think somebody shared with me recently one of their favorite questions, which was like, are you overwhelmed, underwhelmed or whelmed in your job? And in a way, that's kind of what you're trying to get from that pulse survey. And you want to have a human response from your team members and be listening to how they're responding. So these are... Yeah, sorry. Go ahead.

Emily Levada:

And that's obviously particularly for direct reports and one-on-ones, that is also a skill and a conversation that you build over time. You can ask that question of anybody, even if it's your first day managing them, but you want to build a relationship where an employee walks into the room and says, I'm overwhelmed, or says, you know what? I've been really bored. Right? And where you can just have those conversations openly without having to go dig for that information.

Daniel Stillman:

And this is psychological safety, which is why it matters. And I want to loop us back to the question of, what we're trying to optimize for. And if I'm understanding you right, it's that if we can keep our team in the learning zone, they can adapt to anything. And what we're trying to optimize for is getting their creativity, both pre but also post layoff, that if we over index on protectionism and don't lean into managing and anticipating some of these negative emotions, especially when we're going to need it most after we've had a reduction in force and we want people to do more with less, we're not going to be able to get that creativity out of them if we've lost trust, if we've afraid of telling us what's really going on.

Emily Levada:

And you're always going to see a drop in productivity after layoff. Actually, you're going to see a drop in productivity after any major change of transition, not just a layoff. And the question is, how quickly do you get back? And I will say this is particularly important in roles and jobs and companies where there's a really high degree of uncertainty and complexity and ambiguity.

Daniel Stillman:

So most of them.

Emily Levada:

Right, so most of them, if you're making widgets, actually managing by fear might work just fine.

Daniel Stillman:

Fear and Fiat, all the apps, but we're talking about not, the other thing. You need to get the best of people.

Emily Levada:

But people cannot do creative knowledge work when they feel fear and anxiety and boredom. Those things are just incompatible.

Daniel Stillman:

So when we talk about driving resilience and creativity, how can we build our toolkits as leaders to set ourselves up for success pre layoff? And you've talked a little bit about this, but I think we could double stitch on it and then post to reduce that refractory period.

Emily Levada:

Yeah, I mean, I think the first and most important thing, and sometimes the hardest is developing this measurement piece to sort of know where your team is. And part of that is because you're going to do different things. If your team is bored versus your team is anxious, you're going to do different things to solve those problems. And so you kind of have to know where your team is. And so as we talked about, some of that can be individual, talking to people on your team. Some of that can be quantitative measures by doing surveys.

Some of it can be observation of what's not working, or what questions are people asking. And after our last layoff, I just did a listening tour that was, go talk to as many people as I can in three weeks from all across my organization at different levels and different functions and hear what people are saying and then try to distill down from there. And so I think that's the big one or the big first step is actually getting good at figuring out where your team is. And then there's basically two levers that you're going to pull.

One is creating better systems of accountability and challenging your team more. And the other is building psychological safety or trust with your team. And we could talk about when you do which things, but ultimately I think it comes down to having those two skill sets or those two tools in your toolkit.

Daniel Stillman:

So my follow-up is going back to a point you made earlier, sharing, being transparent about what some of the challenges are. It sounds like if you want to involve your team in helping you solve that challenge, share that challenge with them in a way that they can participate in that challenge.

Emily Levada:

Yeah, I think so. And certainly I think if you're running a large enough organization, at least tapping the middle management layer or the layer below you to say, hey, here's how I'm thinking about this. Here's what I see. This is what I think we need to be driving, because they're going to be right that much closer to all of the individual employees on ground.

Daniel Stillman:

So what do you feel like is the most effective way to pull the most effective lever for you?

Emily Levada:

Well, I think it depends on where your team is. I think in today's environment, it's sort of most likely that people are in... Sorry, that's my dog squeaking his squeaky toy.

Daniel Stillman:

What's amazing, Zoom has filtered so much of it out.

Emily Levada:

Okay. Good. Can you not hear him squeaking?

Daniel Stillman:

I think I can. I'm aware that he's really got his jaws around that, but I'm cool with it. It's not showing that bad.

Emily Levada:

Okay.

Daniel Stillman:

I think they know that we're talking about them right now. He just looked up. It's like, me?

Emily Levada:

Okay, sorry. What was it?

Daniel Stillman:

No, it's all good. We're talking about where most people are right now is, there's a lot of fear.

Emily Levada:

Where most people are right now is either sort of apathy or anxiety. And I say that because those are the two states where you don't have psychological safety, and that lack of psychological safety is going to get you into one of those places. The difference is that in anxiety, the thing that creates anxiety over apathy is actually the high expectation. There's an expectation to do something, to be accountable for something. And there's some fear that if I don't do my job effectively, I'm going to be held accountable. With apathy, you actually have that fear, you're like, whatever. I can do this job in my sleep. I don't need to worry. Or who cares?

Daniel Stillman:

It doesn't really matter.

Emily Levada:

And so the important thing to do is, in that sort of apathy state is actually, I mean, the first thing to do is actually to drive that accountability. And when I say accountability, I don't necessarily mean if you don't hit X number, you're going to get fired. I mean, that sense of ownership and that sense of urgency, that little bit of stress that makes you really productive.

Daniel Stillman:

The dog requires attention. But it seems like you're also asking us to give people, it seems like in a way, the antidote to apathy is engagement, giving people things that they are truly excited about, that matter most to them, where they feel like they're impactful.

Emily Levada:

Yes. And I think sometimes that looks like a challenge, it looks like saying, hey, I have high expectations of you, and I believe you can meet those expectations, and I'm challenging you to do this thing, to own this thing, to deliver this result. And oftentimes, there are sometimes teams where that ownership actually isn't clear and people don't understand how their work connects to what the company is trying to accomplish. And so it is about how do you drive down to a discrete enough thing, an ask that feels like it's going to be meaningful and valuable and impactful and purposeful, because that's what people want. They want to feel that they're having an impact and having a purpose.

And that is going to challenge someone, right? Because ultimately, if you don't feel a little... Not really, not an exceedingly hard challenge, but that little bit of a challenge that makes someone sort of have to work. And I think that in some way, I know that's counterintuitive. If someone's feeling apathetic, give them more to do. But it's a little bit of this, it's easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting kind of thing.

Daniel Stillman:

Wait, say that one more time.

Emily Levada:

It's easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than think your way into a new way of acting.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Emily Levada:

Right?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Emily Levada:

Sometimes it is just doing of the task that gets us engaged, and sometimes it's hard to start. And apathy, as you said, apathy in many ways is an inertia problem. And it's like how do you break people out of that inertia? The challenge is when you do that with apathy, you're going to put people into the anxiety zone. And that in many ways is why people avoid doing it because they're not comfortable with this idea that they're going to do something that creates anxiety for their team. But anxiety is at least active. It's an active state instead of an inactive state.

Daniel Stillman:

So what's the value going back to our two by two? So the value of challenge can activate someone in a good way. It can give them a sense of, there's impact. We want to connect with what they're doing to not just output, but impact. And if we over-index on challenge, then people will just feel, we'll go back into that anxiety zone.

Emily Levada:

I think that's right. And I think also there's an underlying value here, which is maybe not in a polarity, but which is as a leader, in order to do this effectively, in order to create effective accountability for that team, you actually have to get your shit together.

Daniel Stillman:

You want to break that down for us a little bit?

Emily Levada:

You have to understand how that person's job connects to the company goals. You have to be aligned on what you're trying to accomplish. You have to set an appropriate metric or measurement for that person to hit. You have to be able to articulate to them with clarity what success looks like.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Emily Levada:

And a whole bunch of things that sometimes managers are not good at, but it's a good opportunity to say, oh, this is what my team needs from me, and therefore this is what I should focus on in creating this accountability and this productive pressure.

Daniel Stillman:

Productive pressure. And that's a very delicate guiding because on one hand... Yeah, go ahead.

Emily Levada:

Well, and so then there's the second lever, which is it was just creating psychological safety. And that is the lever you need to pull when your team is in the anxiety zone. And I say it that way in that sort of order because I find if you have a team that's apathetic, it's sort of easier to get them moving, to be doing and to see results. That makes it a lot easier to then build psychological safety and trust. It's much harder to build psychological safety and trust in this sort of inactive state.

Daniel Stillman:

Why is that? There's some things bubbling up for me, but I'm curious, why do you think that is the case?

Emily Levada:

Yeah. I think that some of it is just people are not as receptive to it. And some of that is just, they're just not engaged in the conversations. It's something about doing the work that creates the context for the conversations that help us build trust, where we can get into a room and say, okay, why is it that you care about this? Or why do you want to do it this way? The work gives us a context or content for the conversations which help us build trust. Does that make sense?

Daniel Stillman:

It does. I also think conversations are about feedback loops. And certainly when we're talking about organizational emotions, I think of a one-on-one conversation as like it's here, you and I are talking one-on-one, but an organizational emotion and an organizational conversation is this longer amplitude, and it requires time to know what's happening. And so you have to get things moving in order to have a feedback loop. There's no feedback loop-

Emily Levada:

And presumably you can pull these levers at the same time, but the trust building's going to take longer.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Emily Levada:

And so it's actually not a bad thing if you see your team moving from apathy to anxiety. You just need to know that in both of those cases, you're living a world where you don't have enough psychological safety. And that should be then the focus. And the other thing that I see people make a mistake on, is they see a team has this high accountability and is feeling fear and is feeling anxiety, and they're worried about what's going to happen if we don't do our jobs effectively, or there's going to be another layoff or there's going to whatever. And some leaders' instinct is actually to pull back on the level of challenge that they're giving their team, that somehow they believe that psychological safety involves going easier.

Daniel Stillman:

But.

Emily Levada:

But it's not really what it means. Psychological safety is about creating an environment where we can have productive conflict and where all of the voices and opinions are heard, and we can be proactive about resolving problems, it's not the same thing. Now, that doesn't mean that you might not be overworking your people, and you might need to pull back a little, but if you create psychological safety, then you have a scenario where someone can come to you and say, "Hey, I have too much on my plate, and can we talk about what the most important things to do are?" Or they can go to a stakeholder and they say, "Hey, you made this ask to me, but I really don't think that's going to be the most important thing for us to do to our customer." We talk through that.

Daniel Stillman:

And you want people to be able to say that to you.

Emily Levada:

You want people to be able to do that. And if you, as a manager, again, getting back to protection versus some other value, if you try to protect them by just taking things off their plate, you're actually not creating the ability for them to get into this place where they're really doing this productive, constructive problem solving that delivers the most possible value.

Daniel Stillman:

And the hope is, the belief is, that people want to do the best work of their lives. I think there's this implicit assumption and the idea of psychological safety that if we produce the right amount of productive pressure and hire well and create the right context, people want to do great work.

Emily Levada:

Yes.

Daniel Stillman:

I know.

Emily Levada:

Yeah. Yes, you are right. People do want to do great work, and great work requires ambitious goals, and it requires conflict. It requires working through difficult things. I don't know, great things don't come easily.

Daniel Stillman:

No, they do not. Then they would be common. And in a way, I'm looking at apathy and fear and creating clarity and creating productive pressure is your way of getting people out of the apathy zone and to get them activated.

Emily Levada:

Right?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. So I mean, it's crazy. The time goes so fast. What have we not talked about that we should talk about? What have I not asked you that we should have asked you?

Emily Levada:

Well, I think just going back to the beginning, I think it's important to recognize when you do a layoff, that you're going to see fear and apathy, and it's maybe boredom. It's less common. It can happen. And the thing I think is important to stress is that, I mean, not only is seeing those things as normal and natural, but it's a thing that a manager can actively address in the way that they approach the team. It's not just the thing that happens to them that they have to wait for it to go away. And it's also incredibly unnatural after a layoff to say, oh, the thing I should be focused on is putting pressure on my team. And I think that learning, getting comfortable with this idea that there's a certain type of production pressure that allows the team to move forward and to feel like they understand that impact that they're having, they see results, and that allows them to create a context in which they can build back trust and psychological safety, actually gets you to where you want to be faster.

Daniel Stillman:

And that before, during, and after one of these events, knowing that they're coming, one of the things I heard you say is, get your shit together. The job of knowing what's going on with your team will determine which approach to use to get the most out of them.

Emily Levada:

I think-

Daniel Stillman:

And to create the best context for them to work through this.

Emily Levada:

Yeah, I think that's right. And again, to what we're talking about before, I think there's also a lot you can do before and during the process that helps you get there faster, right? Yeah. I mean, obviously I'm not helping former employees find jobs just because it creates psychological safety. I'm doing it because it's the right thing to do. And because I think they're amazing performers, and I want to see them be successful, and I would never have wanted to cut them for my team in a different situation. But it does help to be able to authentically say, this is why we are where we are. This is why we made the decisions. And by the way, we really believe, even though we've let these people go, we want to see them be successful, we want to help them. We're going to do right by them in the ways that we can. Those things all do contribute to your ability to build trust and psychological safety as quickly as possible back with the team that is still in this.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. You can't withdraw from the bank of psychological safety if you haven't invested in it.

Emily Levada:

That's true. And you also can't just hide and pretend that it didn't happen.

Daniel Stillman:

No. So I think the surprising bit of feedback from this is that post layoff, if I've set myself up for success, well, and there is psychological safety, creating positive pressure post layoff may be the most unexpected move to make.

Emily Levada:

Yeah. I mean, in a world where you did have psychological safety, I think what you would most likely see is boredom. Because basically the boredom happens in a world where you have psychological safety, but people aren't really sure what to do. They don't feel challenged.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Emily Levada:

Oh, they don't have alignment. They don't know which direction to go. And so being able to sort of step in and say, focus on this thing, run in this direction. Here's the expectation, I'm setting a high bar. Actually, it creates that forward movement that is self-reinforcing.

Daniel Stillman:

So when will we have you on for a three-peat to talk about your book? Because you're just in the early stages, right?

Emily Levada:

Yeah, we are in the early stages. I don't know. I'll let you know.

Daniel Stillman:

Okay. That's a strong commitment. It's a challenging and emotional process. I'm glad you're working with someone.

Emily Levada:

Thanks.

Daniel Stillman:

I have someone I had on this podcast a while ago who talked, describes your work as being a book doula, and I think it's a very apt metaphor.

Emily Levada:

Yeah. This book has been rattling around in my head for seven years, and so it feels great to finally start getting some of it out into the world.

Daniel Stillman:

I'm really excited to see it real. In the meantime, how should people interact with you post this conversation? If they want to stay in the loop about all the things Emily Levada, how are they to do it?

Emily Levada:

Yeah. The best way is probably on LinkedIn. That's where I'm the most sort of active and plugged in.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Emily Levada:

Nowadays.

Daniel Stillman:

Hit that follow button on LinkedIn. I hope you have that as your first.

Emily Levada:

I do.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. As your default action. Well, good God. An hour is barely enough time to scratch the surface of this topic, but I really appreciate your generosity in working through some of these questions, and I know that there's a lot of goodness in this. So thank you so much for this time.

Emily Levada:

Thank you for having me.

Daniel Stillman:

Well, we'll just call scene then if we feel complete.

Emily Levada:

Yes.

Daniel Stillman:

And we are complete.

Unpacking Mentoring with Jason Knight and Sandra Monteiro

My guest today is Jason Knight, the creator, host, producer, editor and promoter of the One Knight in Product podcast, a B2B SaaS product consultant, and fractional Chief Product Officer for companies that have gotten to product market fit and need help scaling their product team. Jason is also the founder of My Mentor Path, an inclusive, accessible and cloud-based mentorship service. 

Sandra Monteiro, a Product Manager at SAGE Publishing and a mentee of Jason’s, joined us halfway through to share her own experiences with mentoring, how she found her way to working with Jason as a mentor and what some of her learnings and insights from working with Jason as a mentor have been. She also shares her thoughts on what mentees should be thinking about as they search for and work with mentors.

We explored Jason’s mentorship journey and why mentorship matters to him, the challenges of Industrializing mentorship pairing and productizing the matching of the lopsided mentorship marketplace.

We also touch on how to measure the impact of the work and the subtle and important difference between Mentoring and Coaching. Jason suggests that many people who say they want coaching really want mentoring from someone who has “been there and done that”…and that great mentoring leverages coaching mindsets and skills in a practice he affectionately calls “centering”.

Some fundamental questions we explored were the differences and relative merits of FORMAL vs INFORMAL mentorship as well as working with someone INTERNAL vs EXTERNAL to your Organization

One of the big insights Sandra shared was shifting her expectations on the nature of the mentoring relationship from one centered around SOLVING vs conversations centered around TOOLS (ie, being offered relevant examples, learning materials and frameworks, holding space for emotional distance, and being offered broader context for challenges).

Links, Quotes, Notes, and Resources

Sandra Monteiro

Jason Knight

https://www.oneknightinproduct.com/bio/

https://www.oneknightconsulting.com/

My conversation on Unapologetic Eating and Living with Alissa Rumsey is here

AI Summary

Part One: Daniel Stillman with Jason Knight

The conversation was about mentoring and the challenges of being a mentor. Jason Knight discussed his experience with mentoring and his idea for setting up a platform for it. The discussion also touched on the differences between coaching and mentoring, the importance of honesty and transparency, and the need for mentors to recognize their limits.

Meeting summary:

(0:22) - Jason Knight talks about his path to mentorship, starting with a call center job where he had a mentor, then doing structured mentoring sessions in corporate, and finally offering himself as a mentor on Twitter and getting overwhelmed with bookings

(4:46) - This experience led him to consider setting up a platform for mentoring

(5:20) - Jason Knight discusses the challenges of being a mentor, including context switching and the importance of knowing someone over time for effective mentoring

(6:57) - Jason Knight discusses the benefits of long-term mentoring relationships and how they can lead to accountability and knowledge accrual over time

(9:29) - Jason Knight explains their two-sided marketplace for mentors and mentees, the challenge of matching, and how they encourage multiple mentorship relationships to address the imbalance between those seeking mentorship and those willing to mentor.

(17:16) - Coaching and mentoring share similarities but have big differences, with coaching being a craft that uses specific skills and techniques while mentoring requires experience in the industry being mentored in

(21:09) - Jason Knight emphasizes the importance of being honest about not knowing the answer and exploring together with the mentee

(22:31) - Jason Knight agrees and emphasizes the need for mentors to know their limits and stay in their lanes, recognizing when real support is needed

Part Two: Daniel Stillman with Jason Knight and Sandra Monteiro

The participants discussed the importance of both formal and informal mentorship, with a focus on qualities such as trust, respect, and open communication. The speakers emphasized the importance of providing tools and resources rather than direct solutions, and recognizing when a mentoring relationship isn't working out. They also discussed the value of paying it forward by being the mentor you wish you had in your career.

Meeting summary:

(28:54) - Jason Knight asks Sandra Monteiro what makes a good mentor, and Sandra Monteiro lists qualities such as trust, respect, unbiased perspective, providing tools instead of solutions, and having a breadth of knowledge and resources available.

(33:23) - Jason Knight summarizes the conversation so far, highlighting the value of both informal and formal mentorship and the difference between internal and external mentors

(34:55) - Sandra Monteiro agrees that having both internal and external mentors can be valuable and shares her experience with a previous mentor who was also her manager

(36:06) - Sandra Monteiro shares that her mentor focused on providing tools and resources rather than giving direct solutions, which helped her develop her own solutions and rationalize her thoughts

(38:00) - Jason Knight emphasizes the importance of empowering mentees to make their own decisions and take action based on experience and resources provided by the mentor

(41:41) - Sandra Monteiro emphasizes the importance of honesty, trust, and openness to feedback in a mentoring relationship

(43:48) - Jason Knight explains that while there is an imbalance in experience, mentoring is still a relationship between equals with open communication and responsibility for one's own needs and goals

(46:21) - Jason Knight emphasizes the importance of open communication and feedback in a mentoring relationship, and the symmetry of responsibility for communicating needs and wants

More about Jason and Sandra

Jason Knight is a 22-year veteran of tech & product who has worked for big corporates and scrappy startups. He has been building disruptive B2B products for years and is completely in love with product management. A pragmatic idealist, he has long since realised that product management isn’t always like the books and is passionate about helping product managers, and product companies, survive in the real world.

By day, Jason is a product coach and consultant who works with startups and scale-ups to help them build great products and build great teams that build great products. By night he speaks to some of the biggest names in and around product management, as well as inspirational leaders, founders and practitioners on his podcast One Knight in Product. He’s also the co-founder of My Mentor Path, a platform that aims to make mentoring accessible to all.

Sandra Monteiro is the product Manager for Video at Sage Publishing, where she helps shape the future of Video streaming services for Higher Education in the Social and Behavioural Sciences, across Sage Video and Sage Research Methods Video platforms. She is also a plant collector, enjoys watercolour painting and urban sketching.

AI Transcript

Daniel Stillman

Welcome officially to The Conversation Factory. We're here to talk about all things mentoring. So I'm really curious how you sort of found yourself on the path of mentorship, like, why it matters to you, why you think it's important.

Jason Knight

Well, it's good to be here and obviously thanks for having me again. We'll talk about the other conversation another day. But it's a really good question, like the whole kind of path to mentorship and as with many of my life choices and general neuroses and all of the kind of drivers that I have, I think I can trace a lot of this back to dropping out of university, back when I was like 19 years old or so.

After one year, I'd worked so hard to get in, got to the bright lights of Liverpool and just realized that university wasn't for me. And going out and drinking and partying and being a heavy metal addict was absolutely my future at that point. I just kind of collapsed under the weight of the educational system and then ended up going back to Maidstone in southeast of England, my hometown, and kind of being a bit lost and not really with anything to do, and ended up taking a call center job. I took that call center job for two weeks. It lasted two and a half years before I got something else. But I was kind of in a bit of a slump at the time. And I was in a slump because really, I kind of felt that I'd failed and I didn't really know what to do with myself. And I was kind of just scattergun applying for any old random job out there. Admin assistant here, other type of admin assistant there. Like, I didn't really have a path or a plan. And the good thing about call centers is that you have quite a lot of diversity of different types of people.

Now, let's just call out we're talking about the southeast of England here, so not that much diversity in certain senses, but there are certainly a lot of different types of people coming through that place on a regular basis and ended up buddying up with a slightly older guy who we'd kind of just hang out. We'd go to the pub every now and then after work. And he'd had a bit of a career before, but then I guess himself falling a bit on hard times. And it really helped me to just be able to kind of almost lay everything out in front of this guy and just say, look, I don't know what to do with my life. I don't know what's good in my career, I don't know what my career is going to be. And he was really like the first, I guess, mentor that I would say I never called him that at the time, but the first experience I had of having a vaguely interested but still fairly neutral and totally uninvolved in many senses, basically friends that I could deal with. Now I don't know what he's doing these days, I'm hoping he's still okay. But that was kind of my first touch point and it really started to get me thinking.

But I'm going to emphasize over a very large number of years, but if we think about then my career, I spent quite a long time working in corporate. I originally was asked as I moved into leadership positions there, if I wanted to maybe do some mentoring within the corporate structures within the company. And I was like, well yeah, sure. I'd been about a bit by that time. There are other people that were more junior than me. And I started chatting to people in fairly structured mentoring sessions to try to help them with their careers and help them thrive and all of that good stuff at work. So that was my first introduction to kind of serious mentoring in the sense that it's actually something that's sponsored by a company and ends up being a real thing.

So I did that a few times for a few people, then moved out into the world of startups. And one of the things I realized, and I realized this in the worst way possible, because what I did was I went online a couple of years ago now, went on Twitter back when that was still a good thing to do. And I basically put a thing up like a tweet that basically said, hey product managers, if anyone fancies a mentor, why not drop a call in into my calendar? Here's my link and you can book me, we'll have a chat, I'll help you with whatever's on your mind.

And I was expecting two or three handful of people maybe give me a pity booking just to make me feel better. But I got 76 bookings from January through to April, like one a day. And I was like, wow, that's a lot.

Daniel Stillman

Now there's a hunger for it.

Jason Knight

Not clearly 100% there's a hunger for it. And I think product management is a very ambiguous role at the best of times. And there's a lot of people out there that maybe feel that they're not doing it right or that they're underperforming or that their company isn't doing it right. And a lot of uncertainty about whether product management is going well or what's okay, what's not okay. All of these things that mentors can help with. So I did a bunch of those calls, helped a bunch of people, hopefully. And that then really started me down the path of saying, well, hey, maybe we should mentor more people. And eventually to the point where I'm like, well, maybe we should set up a platform to help mentor people.

Daniel Stillman

Not surprisingly, you thought to yourself, how might I productize? Well, you have a systematic approach to things, right?

Jason Knight

Well, yes, although not as such. I mean, yes, obviously it turned out to be but at the beginning, it was very much like, wow, I've just helped 76 people, give or take. That was amazing. But I never want to do it again.

Daniel Stillman

It's a lot of context switching. It's not a time of your day.

Jason Knight

It's a lot of contest, which it was only like 45 minutes or an hour out of each day. And I did it around work, like, before work or after work. It wasn't a big burden, but it's a lot. And just seeing that kind of backlog of people into the future of all these different people, none of whom you know, none of whom you have any idea.

Daniel Stillman

So I'm gonna this is a really interesting point because it's a lot, but in a way, it was also not enough, because I love this idea of an interested but neutral party. And I think some of the gold and mentoring comes from not just having one person. I love that scene of you just finally having someone to unburden your like, this is what's going on. And when we all have these nonlinear pathways in work, like, M I okay, just being seen by another person is really powerful. But I think some of the golden mentoring comes from someone knowing you over time. Is that fair to say?

Jason Knight

I think it is fair to say, and I have to call out that maybe, technically speaking, what I offered these 76 or so people wasn't really mentoring, because a lot of them were one offs.

Daniel Stillman

Well, I don't want to take that away from you. I think you can't. Now I sound like a jerk. Oh, my God, thanks for calling me out. One call can have a lot of value, like just being able to just say what's going on. But I think some of the returns accrue because Sandra, who's going to be joining us in about 15 minutes, you've been working together with her for how long now?

Jason Knight

I think I've been working with Sandra for maybe two or three months to check when we actually started out. And yeah, I think that the return there is a benefit to the return. There is a benefit from the accrual of knowledge that you have about someone's situation and also, somewhat selfishly, the satisfaction of knowing that things change over time. Like, obviously, if you're having a one off discussion with someone, you give them the best advice you can, and they go off, and maybe you keep in touch with them, maybe you don't, but there's not like, a longitudinal element to it. Whereas when you're speaking to the same person repeatedly over time, be it through coaching or mentoring, obviously different sort of sides of a similar coin, I guess.

But the idea that you can basically check in and part of that checking in can be about accountability, like, hey, did you do that? But part of that checking in could just be, well, how's it going? How has your situation changed? And I think that that's one of the most powerful things of a more longitudinal approach where you're going back time after time. I don't think it needs to last forever. I think that there's a natural lifespan for mentoring. But at the same time, I think it is important to a have that context. It's like with chat GPT. Right? Like it remembers a certain amount of stuff. If you say things in the same window, then it will remember some of those things until eventually it forgets. But it ultimately can have a kind of a coherent conversation with you based on the stuff you told it before. And it's just that. But biological with mentors, you're sitting there saying, well, I remember that you had this problem last time. How's that going for you now? And oh, did you try these things? Well, maybe we could try this other thing. So yeah, it does compound definitely for sure.

Daniel Stillman

In our previous conversation leading up to this one about mentoring, we talked about one of the challenges being from a sort of platform approach is how lopsided the marketplace seems to be. And I'm wondering what you've done to I guess specifically, it seems like there's more people who say, I'd really love to get some mentoring, versus people who say, I'm going to carve out some time regularly for a person to do this. What have you done to try and equalize or industrialize the matching process? Because it seems like that's one of the one of the one of the barriers to having this happen more often.

Jason Knight

No, 100%, and just to kind of briefly resume like what it is that the platform that I've set up does. So we've got effectively a two sided marketplace of mentors and mentees, as you kind of touched on that's. Been going since about January, very slow burn. We're kind of growing organically at the moment because there's never enough time to put all the features in you want and we want to make sure that it's right. But yes, you've got a problem. Generally speaking, and this is something I saw last year before the platform was even a twinkle in my eye, when I ran a mentoring scheme with a friend of mine based out in the US. And basically what we did was we put a Google form up, basically circulated it in all of our social channels and said, hey, anyone to be a mentor or be menteed or be mentored, sorry. And there was good feedback or good take up of that, but ultimately we then ended up having to semi automatically match these people. I wrote some terrible Python script to kind of algorithmically match people together. And I'm being very charitable when I call it an algorithm, but there was a certain decision tree that was going on to try and get people and you're right, there were far more people wanted to be mentored than there were to do the mentoring. And I think that that's natural because a mentoring is massively beneficial to a mentee, it is also beneficial to a mentor, but maybe not in as many obvious ways, whereas for a mentee it's super obvious.

And also the lower down the career ladder you are, the more likely you are to feel that you don't quite have it all sorted out yet. And maybe a more wise old bird can come and tell me some of the things as kind of discussed before. So I do think it's natural for there to be a hunger, or more of a hunger for people to be mentored than maybe to be a mentor. What we've done with my mentor path, the platform that we're putting together and continuing to develop is we've encouraged people, for starters, to be multiple mentors. So rather than just Daniel stillman signs up to be a mentor and gets one person to be his mentee, great. But actually, if Daniel stillman has space in his schedule for four or five people, or two or three, then Daniel stillman is absolutely encouraged to do that. Because an hour a month or 45 minutes a month or whatever the session length that you decide to go with is that's not too much time. And if you can handle it, we definitely encourage that.

We also do encourage mentees to reach out to multiple mentors because obviously there's a certain there's differences. Like you can get differences from different types of people, different advice, different perspectives. Maybe if you want someone that's worked in your specific industry or certain types of stages of company or something like that, it's good to potentially get various different people kind of matched up with as well.

So we do encourage kind of both sides to search for multiple or make themselves available to multiple. And as far as I can remember, I'd have to check the figures. I think we actually, technically speaking, have more mentors than mentees available at the moment because of that kind of multiple, that suggestion of multiple. So technically speaking, we probably have fewer physical mentors, but because people are generous enough of their time that they maybe take two or three people on, then technically speaking, we have availability for a lot more. Now, obviously another solution to that is just to pour more people into the top of the funnel and get more mentors and mentees. But at the moment, that seems to be working pretty well.

Daniel Stillman

That's really lovely. And I think selling the value to a mentor, what are the challenge with getting people on boarded, saying, yes, this is worth giving your time to? Is there a mental model shift that has to be invited in them?

Jason Knight

Well, I think if we think about it, there's that kind of classic vitamin versus painkiller. I've translated it into vitamin for the American audience. Vitamin versus painkiller. You can use whichever of those you prefer. But in any case, there's this whole idea, and this is something, to be honest, that affects a lot of effectively well being or workplace well being, apps, this kind of idea that I really want to care about this, but at the same time I'm busy and also it's free, or it's free for me, and therefore the commitment is a challenge. Like people easily forget to do these things.

But I think there are benefits that are easy to espouse, certainly for the mentees. Like if you're a mentee, you can find a mentor who has more experience in your industry that's prepared to spend time with you and is prepared to give you the benefits of their experience to help you and encourage you to make progress in your own career. That's a no brainer in many ways. If you can find the time and if you can find the right mentor. I think if you think for a mentor, it could be considered a little bit lopsided, that arrangement in the sense that, well, I'm giving my time away for free probably to someone. Now I can do that because I feel good about that or because I want to pay it forward or because maybe even selfishly, I just want to feel good about myself that I'm helping someone. Like, these are all reasons that people could do mentoring.

But I think that there's also another thing that I don't know if you remember the film Interview of the Vampire or the book obviously as well, but the story of Interview of the Vampire where basically there's this concept that vampires have to kind of somehow stay in touch with the youth or with the zeitgeist to stop fading away. Like they need to continuously update themselves or they turn into fossils.

Now, it's not quite that dramatic. It's not quite that dramatic, obviously, but this idea that there's this kind of concept of reverse mentoring as well, where maybe a mentor, maybe a bit older, bit further in their career, maybe a little bit out of touch. With the day to day concerns of the average worker maybe gets a little bit back as well from mentoring people that are up and coming and sharing experiences and hearing about the problems that people in today's workplace that 1020 years behind them. I think that's incredibly valuable as well. But again, there is generally a there's there's a certain fluffiness to mentoring as well though, which is something that needs to be discussed, this idea that there's not like a concrete output of it often, sometimes there is. If you're sitting there saying, hey, I want to be mentored so that I can get better at public speaking or something like that and I need someone that's done that to help me or whatever, okay, cool. Like maybe if you then go and do a talk or something like that that you don't think you could have done before, maybe that's an outcome, maybe that's a concrete output. But a lot of the time it's more just a sense that things are better than they were before. But how do you measure that? And how do you attribute that to just mentoring versus all the other things that you're doing to develop your career?

So there isn't certain fuzziness around mentoring, but it doesn't mean that mentoring hasn't helped. I absolutely believe that it does. It's just part of the system. But when you're sitting there saying, well, I need to either do this thing that I really need to do or have that mentoring chat, it can be a barrier. I do think that we need to make sure that we enable people as best as we can to have those discussions, even if they have to postpone them, but to at least see that there is value in the concept of reaching out empathizing with people and just sharing experiences and hearing from people that maybe you haven't heard from before or hearing perspectives that you haven't heard from before and using those to develop yourself as well.

Daniel Stillman

It's a human output. It's human input. It's a human conversation. And what's the value of talking to a friend? So we only have a few more minutes before Sandra comes in. If we were to only answer one more question about mentoring, what should we dive a little more deeply into? What layers should we peel?

Jason Knight

That is a very interesting question. I mean, I guess one thing that people often ask about or maybe are unsure about is the difference between coaching and mentoring and where you'd use both of those things. And I think it's an interesting question because coaching and mentoring, obviously you're a coach, I'm a coach. They do share some characteristics.

Nice human discussions, possibly about goals, regular cadence, build up over time. So you've got that context and the kind of attention window from the past and stuff as well. So I do think that there are similarities, but there are also big differences. And I think a lot of the time when you see people talking about coaching online, they're really talking about mentoring. Because what they're effectively doing is saying that you need to have some person who's super credible in a certain space, like a person or a conversation designer or whatever that type of person is hypothetically. And hypothetically, whoever would have that kind of job, but then they're sort of sitting there saying, well, this person's got to come in and kind of share their experience and guide and train and all of these things.

Now, don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with guiding and training people, but it's not really coaching in the classic sense of the word. Like, coaching is all about actually using coaching skills to have great conversations and use all of the coaching techniques to reflect those back. And arguably, you don't even need to really be a conversation designer or a product manager to coach conversation designer or a product manager. I think that's an important distinction, whereas I think you'd find it very hard to be a credible mentor if you didn't have experience in the job or the industry or whatever that the person is being mentored in. And I think that's a big difference.

Coaching is a craft. You can think that that would be the thing, that the sort of thing that a coach would say. Sure you can think that, but coaching is a craft. It's a certain very specific set of skills in kind of Liam Neeson terms that gets you to an outcome in a certain way. And of course, there is always a chance for coaching to kind of blend into mentoring as well. I kind of call it centering. It's like the idea that you can kind of take different approaches, like the more directive approach of mentoring versus the less directive approach of coaching and do whatever you can to effectively get someone towards that goal.

Daniel Stillman

So it's like a little bit of a coach and a little bit of mentoring. Not centering with a man and a horse. Centering.

Jason Knight

Well, the original Mentor was actually a mythical character from Greek mythology.

Daniel Stillman

He was! his name was Mentor.

Jason Knight

Mentor was the tutor of Odysseus's son Telemachus. That's where the word originally came from.

Daniel Stillman

That is so true. That is amazing. So in a way, it's interesting because I think this is a very fine line of like, a mentor has to have some. We need to feel like they get us. And yet there's no way that you can have had the exact same experiences. And the industry may have changed a great deal in the intervening decades or whatever. And so there is a line between, well, I don't have the answer. So where is the switch between mentoring and coaching and how do you know when to grab for it?

Jason Knight

I think one of the most important things is if you don't have the answer, if you just don't know, then just call that out and be honest about that. Obviously it's great for a mentor to have effectively the answer to everything or an opinion on everything. But if you literally don't know, I think it's important to call that out and then maybe just explore it together. Now that exploring could be, well, you both go away and look it up and try and form an opinion on it. Maybe you go and ask Chat GPT or maybe between you, you just realize that we've got no skin in this game and I can't make a difference in this area. In which case, again, I think that one of the most important things about a mentoring relationship is that it's based on trust and openness and transparency and adds with coaching as well, obviously. But you should not be in a situation where you're basically lying to your mentee to make them think that you're clever. That's not a good outcome if you don't know the answer or if you're in a situation, as can happen, where the mentee is starting to require some other type of intervention, like maybe they actually need counseling. Maybe they need urgent support or something like that, realizing that as a mentor, you're not necessarily equipped to handle all of these situations and that it's your job in that case to get them to the right help as soon as possible, rather than somehow trying to work something out and potentially making it worse.

Daniel Stillman

We are not therapists. And to recognize 100% one of my past guests, Alyssa Rumsey, who's a registered dietitian and helps people with profound food traumas. There's still a line. We were just talking about it this weekend. Which is why it's top of mind of having a client who really should be in therapy and separate from the food coaching. And so if somebody's just literally in distress, right, some of that can be alleviated by just somebody who's been there before saying, yeah, it's going to be okay, and here's some things you can do. But some of that may need real support, real counseling support. So I think it's really important for us, to all of us to know our limits, which is really good.

Jason Knight

We need to stay in our lanes as best we can. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't experiment and push the limits of our shared understanding and all of those good things like we learn together. But we 100% need to stay in our lanes and realize when basically any intervention that we try to do could end up making things worse and that there are professionals that do these sorts of things for a reason.

Daniel Stillman

Well, speaking of staying in our lanes, I'm going to let defender.

Jason Knight

All right.

Daniel Stillman

Right on time, I believe. Sandra. Welcome to the Conversation factory. I'm so glad you decided to join us. I appreciate it.

Sandra Monteiro

Thank you so much for having me.

Daniel Stillman

Yeah. So I'm really curious if you can share a little bit of your own experience with deciding. Sometimes I think about jobs to be done with people in their lives, like the moment when we decide we need the thing and then the search to go and find it. I'm curious when you decided, you know what, I really need a mentor, and then how you found your way to Jason and working with him.

Sandra Monteiro

Yeah, well, it's a bit awkward, actually. I saw Jason until it took me as a mentee, basically. So when I first wanted to transition from I was a salesperson from sales to product management, I was looking for a mentor. And I wanted I i knew I needed someone that would help me, you know, do this transition, give me advice, how to do this, what should I do? And so basically, this was a few years ago, and I was looking online, how do I find a mentor? What is a mentor, basically? How can they help me? And I remember there were a few platforms at the time, but they were very exclusive. So you can join our platform if you have X amount of years of experience in product management, because we have very few mentors and this is very exclusive and it's not for everyone. So obviously I didn't make it into any platform, so I had to go through things without a mentor. And when I found my first job, I took my manager at the time as my mentor because she was this amazing person, super experienced. She knew everything about product management. So I took her as a mentor. It doesn't mean that she took me as a mentee.

Daniel Stillman

Can you say a little bit more about that? Because I've heard other people say this in the past of just treating someone as a mentor. It may not even be an official relationship. What does it mean to sort of just treat someone as a mentor in that moment?

Sandra Monteiro

I guess that my thing with her was that because she was so knowledgeable about everything and she was very kind with her time as well. So whenever I had a question, she was always there to answer it, and she was always there to help me whenever I came across any challenge that I didn't know how to work around. And I really deeply trusted her and I respected her. And I think that is the basis of any good relationship, is trust and respect between both. And when she left the company, I made sure that I kept that relationship going, even though she was not my manager. But she's still knowledgeable and she's still an amazing person and very experienced. So I think it stays the same way. I think I still look at her as my mentor, but she might not look at me as my mentee, as her mentee. So, yeah, I think that was one of the things. It's just trust and respect and being kind with the time as well. It's not like, come on, come on, we need to do this quickly. Let's set things up.

Daniel Stillman

I love this idea of informal versus formal mentorship. I'm really curious how you decided to how does one stalk Jason? What are the steps to stalking a mentor? Because this is clearly a nontraditional path to mentor acquisition. I think what you're saying is actually what many people do you're like? It's a wooing process sometimes, yes.

Sandra Monteiro

I don't know if that's what Jason would call it or just scary, but basically I was already listening to his podcast before transitioning into PM, and I really like the way that he, you know, the way that he interviews people, what he uncovers within these interviews and how he connects with people, how he's funny. I love that we have this kind of saying silly things and having fun with it. And I saw that he was invited to be a speaker at an event in London, so I made sure that I was at that event. And once I was there, I was just with my glass of wine, just trying to be cool and relaxed while being super nervous all about it. And I just went up to him and I said, Hi, I'm a fan.

Sandra Monteiro

And that was basically it. And I was following him on Twitter, on Link, LinkedIn. So again, stalking him, basically. And once I saw that my mentor path platform was on, I made sure that I was on that platform, and I was tweaking my profile, what can I do to make sure that I am matched up with him? But they have so many mentors available that I was being with a lot of people, and I assumed, okay, so he probably has a lot of mentees, so that's why I'm not being matched up with him. Again, LinkedIn. Chad, hi. Can I be your mentee? Do you mind being my mentor? And I said, fine, let's do it. And that was.

Daniel Stillman

It.

Sandra Monteiro

So stalking sometimes, persistence. Yes.

Jason Knight

I think I've realized why we're 100% matched on the platform now as well. I just thought that was a coincidence. But I think it turns out that you basically chose all the different settings until you were 100% matched. Makes a lot of sense.

Daniel Stillman

It's really brilliant. So, Sandra, what makes a good mentor in your mind, in your perspective? Because you've had a few now, what would you say are the qualities of a great mentor?

Sandra Monteiro

Yes. So this is my first official, proper mentor mentee relationship that has a structure. First of all, again, trust and respect. He is someone that I respected already. I knew something about his career and the way that he approached things and how he talked to people. And then as soon as we started this relationship and making it more formal, I also saw that I could trust him so I can be honest and open with him, and I know that he will be honest and open with me as well. Another thing that it's very important for me is the fact that he is unbiased. So he doesn't know my company, he doesn't know the people I work with. He doesn't know my overall context of things. So he's very unbiased. And especially when he's talking to me about things, I might be a little bit worked up when I have some kind of challenge, and I might be a bit more emotional. And he's very objective and clear and dispassionate about things. And I think that is extremely important because it also creates some perspective on my side, as in, it's just a job, let's be cool, be calm. We can work things through. Another thing that is really that I find really interesting is that he doesn't tell me how to solve my problems, or he doesn't give me the solutions. He gives me the tools so that I can find my own solutions and work my way through my own issues. So he always gives me examples of things that he went through in the past, in his previous jobs situations that are similar to the ones that I'm going through. And that not only, again, gives me perspective on things, but it also makes me realize this is not a me problem, it's not a me thing. This is something that happens with other people as well. So I'm not at fault here. It's just growing pains. And the way that we need to do that, we need to go about our jobs and life overall. And the other thing, apart from his own examples, is there is always material. So here's this book, just read through this, here's this Twitter thread. It's very interesting. Or check out this video because it also has some information around that. So I think that

Sandra Monteiro

the breadth of knowledge that he has and how quickly he is able to access that knowledge and share it with I find it really good and really helpful because it's at the time, it's not something that he will say, let me look through things, and eventually I will send you something that will help you. It's just I have this resources available that you can look through and I think that's amazing. I think that's really helpful.

Daniel Stillman

It's really interesting. There's three things that I've heard so far. One is the difference between and the possibility of informal versus formal mentorship and how both can have a lot of value. The story that Jason told before you came on of his first sort of informal mentor, where it's just someone you feel comfortable telling things to. The second sort of interesting tension you pointed out is the difference between somebody who is in your organization versus someone who is outside of your organization. And Jason hooked me up with his friend Talia, who predominantly builds internal mentorship programs. And it seems like, Sundry, you've had experience with internal versus external mentorship. I think there's a lot of value in having somebody who's internal because they know everything and there's a lot of value in having somebody who's outside of the organization and that they are unbiased and you can tell them more things without, I would think, any risk whatsoever.

Sandra Monteiro

Yeah, exactly.

Daniel Stillman

So in your estimation, is it a both and or is it an either or? If you had your druthers, I mean, obviously if you Jason's, you're forever a mentor, he's your ideal, but you've had internal versus external. If somebody else who's listening to this is thinking about either finding a mentor or being a mentor, which direction do you think they should direct their attention for maximum value?

Sandra Monteiro

I don't think it's an either or. I think it's perfectly fine to have both. And it can work to your advantage as well. Because, again, my previous mentor, she was my manager, so she knew exactly

Sandra Monteiro

I would be going to her for things that weren't directly related to what I was doing at that point and how to approach this problem or how to approach that specific stakeholder, or how to deal with this situation within the company, someone from outside the company. It gives you more of a holistic kind of approach. As in this situation, I would do this and this and that. So that is also something that I can take not just for my day to day job, but also if tomorrow I go to a different job, I can still take those with me because they're much more holistic and they are applicable to other situations. So I think that ideally have both. Why not?

Daniel Stillman

There's another point you made, and it goes to a question that Jason and I were trying to pick at, which is the line between coaching and mentorship and solving versus giving tools, examples, materials. Emotional distance, I think is another tool context in the industry. And yet we do want someone who's sort of been there, who knows, who's been along the path we've been before. So I don't know what my question is here. You are not going to get a solution from Jason. So what is my question then? How do you manage that for yourself? Because I think there is often in a mentee relationship, there's a desire for answers because you're coming with a pain, a problem, frustrations with a process. How do you manage that for yourself, your own expectations?

Sandra Monteiro

Yeah, so that was something that that's how I thought it would be. I thought that I would come up with a situation, a problem, and that he would give me the answer and I would be, hey, so this is the answer. I'm the best. And that never happened. Never. And from the first session that we chatted, he was always, there are these tools, there are this book, there are all these resources that you can look into, where you can find your answers. And there's also my experience, and I was in a similar situation in the past and this is what I did. But also the fact that I have to explain everything to him in the sense he doesn't know, he doesn't have the context. It forces me to bring my thoughts outside and speaking them out loud. So I have to rationalize things. I have to try to get some distance from it as well. And that also helps me create my own solution. So it was very organic. It was not something it said, I will not give you the solutions you need to find them. It was just the way that we built this relationship is the talking, the going through all the steps that I've been through, how I approach them, how he approached them and me seeing the difference between my approach and his approach and just trying to find out that middle term, like, the best for me in my specific to approach the problem again. So I think that was one of the things that I appreciate the most in this.

Daniel Stillman

It's really interesting. Oh, sorry. Go ahead.

Sandra Monteiro

Yeah, it's just I'm not telling you what to do. I'm helping you figuring out what you need to do.

Jason Knight

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman

So one thing I'm hearing, if you were to write a manual for mentees, somebody's thinking about finding a mentor, it sounds like one of your pieces of advice is come with a really specific problem, but also expect to be open about how it gets resolved because it's your job to find a solution.

Sandra Monteiro

Yeah, that is one of the learnings. Again, I know I've said it before, but I thought that he would solve my problem.

Jason Knight

I don't have any solutions. I don't really know anything. But I do think one of the most interesting aspects of and again, talking earlier about mentoring and coaching, which both share similarities and they also have differences, but I think that the sense of empowerment is the most important thing. Like, Sandra is not my puppet, that I can just kind of do the strings and just get her to do whatever I think is the right thing to do. And kind of almost like a father looking at his kids through trying to get them to play football because he can never do it or whatever. That's not the point. I very much see my role and the role of all mentors. That role is really to empower people to make the right decisions in their context and to make the right moves based on a combination, for sure, of experience. As Sandra said, this is what happened to me when I tried to do that. Maybe don't put your hand in that hole, and that sort of thing. But also then there's also some other stuff to back up. Here's some books that people who also got bitten when they put their hand in that hole, and maybe you should read those as well and just try and then inspire people to some extent to take action themselves. I think that's really where the sweet spot is, rather than just sitting there saying, right, Sandra, here's nine things that you have to do. Tell me next week if you've done them. Otherwise you've failed. That's not the goal.

Daniel Stillman

So what haven't we talked about that we should talk about? What's an important aspect of mentoring menteeing relationships and doing this dance between solving and asking, what haven't we talked about that's important to talk about? I'd be open for either of you to offer something.

Jason Knight

Trying to think. Feel free to step in. Sergeant, if you're looking for me to empower you.

Sandra Monteiro

I just want to reiterate that I think that the key to any relationship, any good relationship, is being open and trust, because you need to be able to trust each other if you're going to make this relationship work in the long run. And you need to be honest as well. It makes no sense for me to be talking to Jason and saying, so I've achieved this and I've done that. When it's a lie, it doesn't help me and it doesn't help anyone, basically. So being just honest, I think honesty is very much the key. And also being open to feedback. There was this session that we we had a couple of weeks ago when I was very keen and working and I want to do this and I want to do that, and he just asked me why, and I was like, I don't know. Well, then maybe you should find out the why. And I said, great feedback. Yes, maybe that's something that I really need to work on. So also being open to the feedback and not just taking just thinking that everything is just very nice and perfect, you need to receive the feedback as well for things that you might need to improve and also give the feedback. If something is not working between us, I need to be able to tell him this doesn't work. This is not being helpful in any way so that we can work on that and improve the relationship.

Daniel Stillman

This is a really valuable point, Sandra, because this idea of like, oh, it's just going to be all these endless stream of amazing tools and solve problems with wonderful perspective. And sometimes the reality is you're going to hear something that maybe you don't want to hear or you're going to be asked a question that you don't feel comfortable answering yet and walking into the conversation with that expectation. Jason, do you want to say, it sounds like you were nodding your head? You remember that moment?

Jason Knight

It sounds like, yeah, I do. But I think also there's an even more important point I was thinking about as Sandra was talking, is this idea that whilst there is a certain, I guess Imbalance in a mentoring relationship, in the sense that obviously I'm the one giving, for the most part, the, let's say, advice or the places to look, that it's still very much kind of a relationship of equals. Right. Like, I'm not sitting here as Sandra's boss or her better or anything like that. That's not what mentoring is. Mentoring is all about kind of co creating the future that you want to have whilst obviously accepting that one of the people has in that partnership is more experience in a certain area, which means that they naturally have more to bring to certain parts of the conversation. But it's still very much a conversation between two equals that are trying to get to some kind of goal, which is ultimately one person's goal. Like, Sandra has goals. Those goals are not ultimately my goals. If Sandra decides that she's had enough of me, then she will continue towards those goals and I will not. So it's not up to me to live those goals. It's up to me to do my best in the time that we have together to help her towards those goals and try to inspire action in certain areas and point me in the right direction and give the benefit of any experience that I do have. But again, it's not that I'm either the puppet master or the boss or the superior or anything like that. This is a relationship between two equals where just one person has more context and the other person has maybe more breadth.

Daniel Stillman

Anything you want to add to that, Sandra?

Sandra Monteiro

No, I agree with him. It may come a time where I'm just, hey, Jason, this is not working anymore. Let's stop this. It may not happen either.

Daniel Stillman

Well, in my coaching training, one of the things that I try to hold in the space is this is one relationship where you should never have to guess where you stand, and that openness to feedback that you pointed out. Sandra is something that there is some asymmetry, I think, both in the coaching and also in the mentoring relationship. But the symmetry is that we're both choosing to be here. We can both leave at any time, but we're also responsible for communicating what's going on with ourselves. Right. I think one of the things that people are so ghosting is something that happens on online dating, and it's awful to be ghosted by someone. It's terrible. It feels terrible. And this is a relationship where you don't ghost. You say, hey, this is what I'm not getting, or this is what I'd like to get more of, ideally before you get to this is what I'm not getting. So I think that the symmetry is in the expectation of feedback and open communicativeness of needs and wants and goals. So I think that's really the asymmetry isn't that Jason's problems in the conversation are less important than Saunders problems.

Jason Knight

Right. My problems are generally less important than most people's problems. So we should just accept that.

Daniel Stillman

We just have a couple of moments left. Anything else that we haven't talked about that we should talk about, sandra around what makes a great mentor mentee relationship or how to think about it, especially from the mentees side.

Sandra Monteiro

I don't know what you've covered before, but I think that it's just that it's important for people, when they're looking for a mentor, to be clear on what they are looking for, but also to be patient, because you don't necessarily find the mentor at your first. That might just not be the person that you are looking for for whatever reason. Maybe there's just no chemistry, or maybe it's just the experience that is different, or maybe it's just a personality issue, maybe a million things. Just be patient. And if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. You just need to do what's best for you in relationship and just try and find someone else that might be better for you. And if you're on the side that you're being refused, just don't take it personally. It needs to work for both sides regardless. So I think that is important. If it's not working for you, then it makes no sense to invest the time on it, and it might be better for both parts to just start over.

Jason Knight

Yeah, I had some feedback recently from a couple of people that used the platform that were like, I really don't like that button that says end relationship, because it just sounds a little bit too harsh. And I'm like, well, okay, maybe we can come up with some fuzzier words. But at the same time, Sandra's point is really valid. Like, sometimes even the most matched on paper, two people that have maybe they've worked in all of the same types of companies, they've basically got very similar career paths. They're from the same part of the world. Like, all of these different things, they could look like brilliant mentor mentee relationships on paper. But actually, you look at it and you're like, well, actually, we had a chat. We just didn't like each other. We didn't click, we didn't get on. We couldn't find enough common ground for this to be a productive relationship. And we could kind of just tell. Now you've got two options there. You can either try and soldier on, because, like black mirror, we've been matched together and somehow that's now our future, or you can sit there and say, well, okay, fine, let's move on. As Sandra says, no harm, no foul. It didn't work out. There's plenty more fish in the sea from both sides. You can go and find another mentor. You can go and find another mentee, find someone that's going to help you, and don't be afraid to. I mean, look, you should always give people a chance. Like, if you're halfway through a mentoring relationship, like, maybe you're sitting there three or four sessions in and you're like, oh, well, that last call didn't go very well, then maybe there's something that can be corrected. But if you're just sitting there up front and saying, I just don't think this person gets me, or I don't think there's enough commonwealth, just move on. I think it's important not to get too hung up and feel like you're hurting people's feelings. Sometimes it just doesn't work out. Yeah.

Daniel Stillman

And Jason, if you could place a billboard on the A one to encourage more people to like to to jump into the pool and to start mentoring more, what would you what would you want to put on that billboard? To to get people.

Jason Knight

To be a.

Daniel Stillman

Mentor to be a mentor, to start to start doing it more? Yeah.

Jason Knight

You'Ve probably had a lot of support in your career, or maybe you haven't and you wish you had, but in either case, take a leaf out of the book of the person that you wish you could have been and start to pay it forward to the next generation. 100%. Sure. That scans I kind of made it up as I went.

Daniel Stillman

No, that's really on those lines.

Jason Knight

This idea of being I've literally never said that before.

Daniel Stillman

No. The idea of being the person you wanted to have had, even if we didn't have that person and there's a lot of people who feel like I've just bootstrapped myself. There's a possibility of paying it forward 100%. That's really beautiful. We are at time. I'm really grateful that both of you made time for this conversation. I think the mentor mentee relationship is a really special, very powerful conversation patient that's worth doing well. So I'm really glad you both came on to talk about it.

Jason Knight

Thank you very much for having us. And I'm going to go get that restraining order now for Sandra as well.

Sandra Monteiro

Thank you so much.

Daniel Stillman

All right.

Jason Knight

Thank you, Sandra. Thank you so much.

Daniel Stillman

Jason. Be well.

Jason Knight

Thank you. All right.

Sandra Monteiro

Thanks.

When the Mission Drives the Tech: Co-Founder Conversations

It’s not every day that a patient-doctor relationship turns into a Techstars-Funded medical innovation startup. In this episode I sit down with Dr. Onyinye Balogun and Eve McDavid, the co-founders of Mission-Driven Tech, a women's health venture in collaboration with Weill Cornell Medicine dedicated to the transformation of cervical cancer care with modern technology.

Onyi, as her friends call her, is the CMO of Mission Driven Tech and also an Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology at Weill Cornell Medicine specializing in the treatment of breast and gynecologic malignancies and does research into improving cancer care in low and middle income countries.

Eve, the CEO, is a former Google executive who is also a Stage IIB Cervical Cancer survivor. Eve and Onyi met during the pandemic, when Eve was undergoing cancer treatment under Onyi’s care.

I heard Eve and Onyi’s presentation at the 2023 Techstars Demo day in New York and was stunned by the fundamental disparities in historical improvement in gynecological cancer outcomes - as they point out in this conversation, in recent years, Prostate cancer treatment has achieved a nearly 100% five year survival rate. In the same period, cervical and uterine cancer mortality has gotten worse, while cancer treatment for all other cancers has improved exponentially. Their company exists to change that story.

Co-Founder Communication Insights

This conversation is one of a series on co-founder communication. Check out my interviews with the co-founders of online gaming start-up Artie on Pivoting while staying sane (the secret - have a coach and a therapist!), a conversation with Carolyn Gregoire and Scott Barry Kaufman, the co-authors of the 2015 bestseller, Wired to Create, on navigating Paired Creativity, and this interview with the co-founders of collaboration tool Range, Jennifer Dennard and Dan Pupius, on the keys to healthy conflict. One key that Beth Bayouth and Mario Fedelin, the COO and CEO (respectively) of Changeist, a non-profit organization dedicated to youth empowerment, discussed was the importance of co-founders sharing how they are really doing so that they can be sure to not fall apart at the same time, a sentiment that Eve and Onyi echoed.

I also discussed the idea of “prototyping partnerships” with Jane Portman and Benedikt Deicke, co-founders of Userlist - and they helped me see that the healthiest companies have partners that have worked together in some capacity - and indeed, in this interview, Onyi and Eve called Eve’s cancer treatment their “first collaboration”.

Know yourself and each other

The start of a startup journey can be optimistic, so we explore what they have learned about each other that has helped them to better communicate and collaborate together since they started the project.

Accelerators can’t do it all for you

Eve and Onyi share how the accelerators can help with structure, mentorship, capital and community, but that ultimately you need to have something worth accelerating - a key customer insight or a core technology - both of which Mission-Driven Tech has!

Have multiple modes and frequencies of communication

Eve and Onyi have a weekly meeting just focused on their flagship product, the Blossom device, and another meeting weekly for other issues, and to simply connect. Meanwhile, they have a Whatsapp thread that enables them to constantly stay connected and in touch with each other. Balancing always-on connectivity and scheduled connectivity is key.

A partnership is a marriage and reflective listening is key!

Onyi shared their perspective that being in a co-founder relationship is like marriage, and that communication is key for any marriage to work. As she says, “The future of this company rests partly in how well we're able to communicate. So we tell each other the good, the bad and the ugly.” She shared their simple and effective approach to communication - making specific time for it, and using active listening intentionally:

“I hear what you're saying, I reflect it back to you. You hear what I'm saying and you reflect it back to me.”

Know who your real audience is

We discuss user-driven product development, which Eve and Onyi, as a former patient and doctor, are a unique example of…but we also discuss how in their current stage, investors are their actual “buyers”. Onyi discussed how she’s developed a keen sense of “push vs pull” when they are making their investment pitch - some investors just get the commitment required to make a startup like this successful, and those people are their real audience. It’s not about convincing the wrong people, it’s about finding the right people.

Balance Now and Next

Every startup needs to balance managing their current challenges and opportunities with putting energy into strategic vision and planning. Eve points out that this is a particular challenge for medical and device companies - the rate of change can be slow, due to fundamentals of the problem space. So, there needs to be more patience and intention put into planning and hypothesis testing. As Eve pointed out, There is immense pressure to achieve immediate results, but real impact takes time.

Links, Quotes, Notes, and Resources

https://missiondriventech.com/

LinkedIn:

Onyi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/onyinye-balogun-md-ms-22b57283/

Eve: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evemcdavid/

AI Summary

Eve and Onyi collaborated to improve medical devices for cervical and uterine cancer treatment, driven by a passion for improving women's health outcomes. Mission-Driven Tech aims to provide a less painful medical device and raise awareness to improve equity in outcomes for gynecologic cancers. Eve and Onyi emphasized the importance of finding aligned investors and noted the slow process of change in medicine.

Key Points

(3:02) - Onyi points out that The Techstars accelerator provided scaffolding, capital, mentorship, networking, and connections to investors. They learned that accelerators cannot do everything for you and it's important to have critical mass for acceleration. They also discussed how they met through Eve's cervical cancer diagnosis and treatment, where Onyi was her treating radiation oncologist, and this was their first collaboration.

(10:41) - Eve and Onyi discussed their collaboration to improve medical devices used in procedures for cervical and uterine cancer treatment

(12:57) - Eve's persistence and passion for improving the devices and their shared a belief in wanting things to be better in women's health led to them founding the company

(19:38) - Women's survival rates for cervical and uterine cancer have worsened since 1970, due to underfunding and lack of awareness

(22:45) - The startup aims to improve equity in outcomes for gynecologic cancers by providing a less painful medical device and raising awareness

(30:15) - Eve discusses the slow process of change in medicine and their goal to have their device approved for use in clinics globally

(41:22) - Eve discusses the importance of finding investors who understand the impact of their capital and are aligned with the mission, and shares their success in identifying those investors through conversations where they see people lean in and their eyes open

(45:47) -Onyi notes that when someone is for you, they get it, and even when they say no, it's better than a maybe

More About Eve McDavid and Dr. Onyinye Balogun

Eve McDavid is the CEO and Co-Founder of Mission-Driven Tech™, a new women's health venture in collaboration with Weill Cornell Medicine dedicated to the transformation of cervical cancer care with modern technology.

Eve is a Stage IIB Cervical Cancer survivor and former long-time Google Executive who uses her expertise in tech, business & media to fight for change in women's health. She is a passionate advocate for women's healthcare access, literacy and equity and has been named an expert in survivorship and innovation by the World Health Organization. Her story has been featured in The Washington Post, Insider, Thrive Global and ABC-7.

Dr. Onyinye Balogun is an Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology at Weill Cornell Medicine specializing in the treatment of breast and gynecologic malignancies. She is also the Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer of Mission-Driven Tech. Onyi is a graduate of Harvard University and Yale University School of Medicine. Dr. Balogun initiated her residency training at the University of Chicago and completed her final year at New York University.

She has conducted and published breast cancer research in novel therapeutics for triple negative breast cancer and brain metastases. She is also engaged in gynecologic cancer research as well as global health activities with a focus on improving the delivery of radiation therapy in low and middle income countries.

Full Transcript

Daniel Stillman

So I will officially welcome you both to the Conversation Factory. Eve McDavid, Onyinye Balogun, thank you so much for making the time for this conversation…I really appreciate it!

Dr. Onyinye Balogun

Thank you for having us.

Eve McDavid

Great to be here, Daniel. Thank you.

Daniel Stillman

Thank you. And by here, you're where you are, I'm where I am. We're here in a digital space, but you two are together, which I think is nice, actually, to have you not separated by the Brady Bunch window, which is great. How much time do you two spend together versus in your bubbles or in heads down work in your own just I'm kind of curious.

Dr. Onyinye Balogun

Yeah. So it mean. I think we just were part of the techstars. New York City powered by Morgan Cohort So we were together for chunks of hours at a time, at least like twice a week or so. That was kind of more intensive time that we have spent together compared to a lot of remote work has happened since we've partnered. But yeah, so I think we found that we liked spending time together, which is always good.

Daniel Stillman

It's always nice when you like that.

Eve McDavid

Since that's one part of absolutely. We do really well when we get together and we sprint and then we're able to work remotely on asynchronous sort of items and projects and things like that. So we do a mix together.

Daniel Stillman

This is so interesting because I feel like the dynamic of the co founder and how work happens and how conversations happen is so individual and very nuanced. So now that you're not in Techstars, how do you feel like you're structuring your time together?

Dr. Onyinye Balogun

Yeah, so, I mean, prior to Techstars, we know the importance of touching base regularly, so at least once or twice a week we have a meeting for the hardware tools that we're developing, or the engineering meeting, as we call it. And then we also would have a weekly sync where we just check in on various items. And of course, there's real time texting and talking. But prior to Techstars, we definitely knew that we needed a regular working times and meeting times. So that was already established. It just got amplified with the accelerator.

Daniel Stillman

Yeah. I'm curious and we're just going to meander, but what would you say were some of the biggest things you got out of being in that accelerator?

Eve McDavid

Yeah, one of the great opportunities of an accelerator is that it gives a startup scaffolding. So all the resources that a startup frankly needs, the oxygen it needs to grow, to build and to grow. So there's capital, there's mentorship, there's networking, and then there's connections to investors on the other side. We have been really fortunate to participate in two different versions of two very different types of accelerators. We were part of a program at Cornell Tech this past fall that is intended for typically academically driven founders who are now commercialize technology that they've created in their academic careers and bring it out into the wild. And what does that path look like going from academia into a commercial environment, then Spring, we had a very different experience in a commercial environment with Techstars that was very much akin to some of the environments I've worked in previously. In Tech, where there's a really singular focus, everyone is there building a software product, and all the companies are fairly similar in terms of either their staging or their needs or their resources or things like that. So the accelerator we have found is a great way just to put a little bit more structure around the startup as we're building it and figure out what is it that we're specifically looking for, how do we identify those needs within this program, whether those be actual people or specific resources, and then get what we need to keep going.

Dr. Onyinye Balogun

Yeah, and I think one of the major takeaways one was it's good to have more face to face time in this era. We definitely work well remotely, but there was a flow, a synergy that happens when you come together. So I think that's one of the things we got from it. Two is, of course, the capital that was invested. Three were the other founders. Just seeing their drive, their brilliance, the success that they've had since. That has been inspiring. And then finally, I actually think one of the biggest lessons I got was they cannot do everything for you. And that's actually something I, someone else say on a recent podcast, love podcast, they said, do not expect the accelerator to do everything for you. They can take you a certain distance, maybe provide certain things, but they cannot do everything for you. So I think that's one of the takeaways from the experience.

Daniel Stillman

That's so interesting. I'm a former science nerd, so I'm just thinking of F equals Ma. And of course, acceleration is dependent on another variable. You got to have the mass.

Dr. Onyinye Balogun

You got to have the mass, right. You got to have the critical mass. Which way is that acceleration going? Are you decelerating? Don't get me into no.

Daniel Stillman

As you know, I assume well, you may both know this, but the acceleration is the derivative of velocity. It's the rate of change of velocity is acceleration. But the rate of change of acceleration, there's a unit for that. It's called the jerk. The jerkiness of something is the acceleration is changing too much. It's one of my favorite physics fun facts. Completely.

Daniel Stillman

Well, thank you. Maybe not irrelEvent to our conversation because you want to be able to grow at a pace that you can sustain.

Eve McDavid

Yeah, absolutely.

Daniel Stillman

I would say mildly obsessed with the question of how two people meet in this topsy turvy, mixed up world. And it's like hearing somebody's story of how they met in a romantic relationship. I find them fascinating. And this is like the co founder relationship, I think, is beyond a romantic relationship. It's much more complex and deeply entangled. And I'm wondering if you can take us back to the early parts of the conversation. Would you two today and the two of you at the beginning recognize each other?

Dr. Onyinye Balogun

We've never been asked that question.

Eve McDavid

Yeah, that's a good one.

Dr. Onyinye Balogun

That's a good one.

Eve McDavid

Yeah, I think from an ideological standpoint, yes, we would recognize each other. Yes, absolutely.

Eve McDavid

Yeah. Okay, you can tell them this story. This story.

Daniel Stillman

So for those of you listening, on Union did like very hard air quotes.

Eve McDavid

Okay, well, buckle up. It's really good.

Daniel Stillman

Yeah, it's an intense story.

Eve McDavid

It is. That's right. So we are here today because of the extraordinary care that I received when I had a cervical cancer diagnosis three years ago. Onyi was my treating radiation oncologist. And there was a combination of the best medical care that's available in the world that Onyi, as a physician, can administer in a really sort of just in time capacity because there was a lot of stuff going on. I was pregnant at the time of my diagnosis. I was being treated in New York City for both the delivery of my son and for cancer treatment. And then the sort of big sort of explosion within the explosion that happened at the time was that the pandemic started in the middle of treatment, and it was at the beginning of the end of treatment. But it's also the most intense time of this type of cervical cancer treatment called brachy therapy, where a patient has five internal radiation procedures administered over the course of a two week period. And the care windows are really tight, so the care has to be delivered at a very specific time so that the patient is able to receive a very specific dose of radiation so that she's able to effectively have her disease cured. And even in the throes of a global pandemic, where other providers had to make really difficult choices about care that they would continue or not, Onyi kept going and kept and I'm just good. She's stubborn and I'm really good at following the rules. I showed up and Onyi showed up, and we did it together.

Dr. Onyinye Balogun

Yeah, that was our first collaboration.

Eve McDavid

That was our first collaboration, exactly. And what happened in terms of how we put our heads together around this. So these procedures are incredibly important. They cure cervical and uterine cancer, but they are also nearly possible to endure because they're so incredibly painful. And before my first procedure, Onyi let me know that this was going to feel like childbirth, that's how painful it was going to be. And I thought, well, one, that's really scary, but two, this is like a really strange thing that my doctor is letting me know. Something that's about to happen is about to be so excruciating. What is going to happen and why is it that way and how does this go? And so at a point during treatment, we started talking about the medical devices that are used to administer these procedures. The medical device brings the radiation source right to the tumor so that you can have a really hyper targeted, very focused radiation dose and spare the surrounding tissue and organs that are really important in the pelvis. And it turns out that the medical devices are from the early 1970s. They were designed 20 years before women were included in clinical trials. They were never properly designed to properly fit a woman's anatomy. And so you have physicians who are the best in the world at this practice, in the craft, who are using a tool from 50 years ago. And at the time I'd been in an executive function at Google and I'd seen great technology and some of the best technology in the world. And so I was like, I don't understand. What do you mean that in cancer, the tools are so dated, this doesn't seem right. And so we put our heads together on what a better design for that radiation device could look like. And by just beginning the process of what could this be and what could this look like, we really realized that this is a field within women's health that hadn't gotten much love in many, many years and was really due for an update. And from Onyi's incredible clinical expertise and my lived experience as a patient, we put our heads and our backgrounds together to start to make a change here.

Dr. Onyinye Balogun

I think one of the key things know Eve is still being treated, right? It's a pandemic, right? She's still know a couple of treatments of this internal radiation procedure called Brachytherapy. And Eve is asking me all these questions. She's like Onyi, do you think this could be done better? Do you think these devices could be improved? And I was like, I'm trying to take care of your cervical cancer. You have all these questions. You're asking me to see the device. It's great, but I want to focus on preserving your life, getting you back home to your beautiful children, to your husband. We said, let's get you to remission first and then we'll talk about the devices. And sure enough, after her first, I think even at your first visit, after you finished treatment, you were still like, hey, can I see those devices? And it was her persistence, I think, when she first asked me, I said, I know this can be done better. You feel as a physician as though you're not 100% happy with how things are, with the status quo, and you know, in the back of your mind this can be better, but you have so many responsibilities, so many duties, how do you find the time to act on that knowledge that's back there? So it kind of like took Eve, who I think is the catalyst, as we thus to nerd out science a little bit. Eve was the catalyst that activated this because she was so persistent and passionate. And when she came and I said, sure, at a follow up visit, let's look at these devices. And it just went from there, the collaboration. So I think, as we were saying, ideologically, we are still similar. We're dreamers. We are aspirants for people who are not satisfied with, well, that's just how we've done things. So I think we've that core belief of we want things to be better, especially as it pertains to women's health. That's our passion. That's our calling. That's what brought us together.

Daniel Stillman

Yeah. This is so interesting to me because obviously you've been in this problem space for an exceedingly long time and have thought these aware of the limitations and the challenges. And you have to say, like when you said the you said 50 years, I was like, oh, God, that's true. It's a hard number anyway, just pausing over that. Yeah, I mean, hip hop just turned 50, 1973, which is just crazy. So it is really interesting that you'd thought these thoughts and were aware of the challenges. I presume had noodled on this, but you needed a little bit of a catalyst. If you're the active ingredient, you're the reagent. In this analogy, you had some pent up activation energy ready to release.

Dr. Onyinye Balogun

But I think this is the case for a lot of physicians, right? You get caught up in the day to day. You know, I think this could be better. I know that could be better. But they're pressing things the immediate right. There are immediate things that have to get done. And I think a lot of our time goes to that and rightfully know, seeing people writing the notes, making sure orders are in, doing the procedures. But one of the things that really helped us was being part of Wild Cornell. In addition to having Eve as this catalyst and persistent and passionate. And we could see that we both wanted this to improve this device. While Cornell has an ecosystem, they nurture entrepreneurship. And I think that was one of the things that really helped us because it's kind of like, how do you yes, I know something needs to be done, but what are the next steps? And being at an institution that nurtures innovation, that says, okay, come and do this program together, that was key. So we were part of ICORE. We were part of this BioVenture e labs at Wild Cornell. And one of our proudest moments is we were just getting started in this and they had a competition. And so we looked at each other, we were like, we really can pep, like, talk each other like nobody's doing this at key events. And so we were like, we're going to win. Yeah, we're going to win. Yeah. So we go and we give what we hoped was a phenomenal pitch and then it's time for them to announce the winners. And so they called one group and we were like, oh, okay, fine. And then they called another person who won because they said there was a two way tie for second. And we were like, oh, that's interesting as well. And I think we both did not think we had won the competition. And so when they called the third group's name, we were just cheering. We were like, yeah, good for them. And then we realized it was our name, and we started we were jumping up and down.

Eve McDavid

I don't think anyone had ever said our company name other than us in public at that point.

Daniel Stillman

It's a thing.

Eve McDavid

Good for them.

Dr. Onyinye Balogun

And it dawns on us that it's us. And I think that was a moment in which we were like, we can do this.

Eve McDavid

Yeah, we can do this. Absolutely.

Daniel Stillman

So can we talk about mission driven tech and around the challenge of eve, I remember your presentation, both of your presentation during the techstars pitch day, where you're talking about some of the major challenges in the numbers looking at a women's gynecological health. So for those people who are listening, who do not know this situation, could you paint why this company, why your mission is important and the challenge that you're facing here, that we're all facing here?

Eve McDavid

Yeah, absolutely. So I'll start and then the clinical data, I think Onyi really your vantage point here is so important. The data that we see globally for two cancers that specifically impact women, cervical cancer and uterine cancer, women's survival rates today from those two cancers and cervical in particular, which is preventable, treatable, curable survival for those cancers today is worse in 2023 than it was in 1970. And when you look at all cancer survivorship since the 70s, that entire field has advanced exponentially. But these two cancers that specifically affect women that are gynecologic diseases are going in the opposite direction, and that is incredibly alarming. But when you start to double click into this field of women's health and then gynecologic health, and then you get into this field of an overlap of sexual health and public health and oncology, it all starts to make sense. These are fields of cancer research that have been underfunded, underinvested, in, and the layperson with a cervix. The lay woman on the street has very little general education and knowledge and awareness that she has a cervix. It's an organ that oftentimes and does get sick from a common sexually transmitted virus called the human papillomavirus, and that it is a normal part of her overall health to have preventative appointments and screenings to make sure that infection clears on its own versus turning into a cervical cancer diagnosis. So there's a really sort of big problem within a problem. And we started to look at the entire care continuum of cervical health, realizing that our innovation in treatment was just one part of the problem we're trying to solve for across this entire care continuum that includes prevention, intervention, treatment and survivorship and you can't solve everything at once. So as a startup, you have to pick one area of focus and do that really well, which is why we started with the medical device. And so once that work got underway and on a path and we can talk more about where we are in our development work now, we realized, okay, it's going to take time for that to get to market. So how do we also do work across this entire care continuum to draw attention and investment and awareness and research to this field so that we can advance the entire field forward?

Daniel Stillman

Anya, you want to put some more color on that?

Dr. Onyinye Balogun

Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the things that's really important to us.

Eve McDavid

Is just.

Dr. Onyinye Balogun

The question of equity, right? We are a black woman and a Caucasian woman together working on this. And we know that Eve talks about it. She had incredible care, she had incredible outcomes, but that's not the case around the world. And we believe that one of the things that we can do to improve the equity in terms of outcomes for uterine cancer, for cervical cancer, one of the things we can do is provide this device so that women are not afraid to undergo the procedure. The procedure is very painful. And we have a patent right now, an international patent for a device that we believe will decrease the pain, improve the patient experience, improve the physician experience, because you feel awful when you're causing the individuals that have entrusted you with their care that you're causing them so much pain. So by doing that, we hope to also narrow the gaps in terms of racial disparities in these cancers. Also by just drawing attention to the issue itself. It's so taboo to talk about sexual health, to talk about women's health. They're all interlinked. And I think that and shouting it a mystery is part of why women don't come in early enough for treatment. And that's why part of our work is to amplify these issues to talk about. Look, cervical cancer, uterine cancer, they exist. Make sure you go for your screenings, make sure you present early if you have symptoms. So that's all part of what we're doing because right now we should not have 600,000 women a year being diagnosed with cervical cancer right now. We should not have mortality rates for cervical cancer and uterine cancer going backwards. Do you understand that in the same time span, prostate cancer has now moved to nearly 100% five year survival rate? In the same period of time that cervical cancer and uterine cancer mortality rates have gone backwards. Men diagnosed with prostate cancer in the United States can basically expect to survive at least five years. And that inequity should not be it just shouldn't.

Daniel Stillman

Yeah. So what happens during Gynecological Awareness Month? What should be happening? What is the process of how do people get involved? What are you all doing for September that will move the needle from your perspective?

Eve McDavid

Yeah, that's a great question. So you can look at a starting point of awareness for Gynecologic Cancer Awareness Month by looking at search trends on Google. So if you were to compare searches for Gynecologic Cancer Awareness Month relative to Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and it's not a leaderboard, right? Like it's a North Star, it's not a leaderboard. Right. There's no ranking of their winning. I think they've done a great job and they've created a great model. Yeah, the pink ribbon. I mean, everything pink, right? Like corporate sponsorships. And we're comfortable saying breast cancer, right? You couldn't say breast cancer before. Right. So you had leaders, men and women, you had people in positions of power who had capital to draw on the attention of policymakers of research institutions that, again, created a tremendous amount of awareness and research and funding that then helped drive these fields forward. Same thing happened in prostate cancer over the last 30 years. And so we look to those two different disease states as these are great models for what happens when people know about them and when people are comfortable talking about them, and then people have the ability to act and bring others into the mission with them. So for gynecologic cancers, of which cervical and uterine are a part, that awareness is very small. There are zero searches relative to, say, breast when you look at the data on Google. And so we want to make it easier for women to realize, okay, this is a time during the year where we want to make it more comfortable than maybe it was last year talking about this. Encourage women to make sure that they're up on their annual, well, women's visits if they are having concerning symptoms or anything that they want to discuss, that they're not nervous or anxious or uncomfortable having those conversations with their providers. It's just a great time to check in with yourself about are you up to date and when you get into those care appointments, are you getting the questions that you have answered and are you receiving the care that you need? So we're really excited about this time because it gives us all an opportunity to have a conversation about gynecologic health and staying up on care and handling any required interventions in a timely and safe manner as best as possible.

Daniel Stillman

Yeah, well, so I do want to shift gears because you talked earlier about strategy and your roadmap and what you built first versus what you want to build next. And I want to pull back to the next two or three years of your evolution as a company and how you think about the road ahead. I think one of the biggest challenges that every startup faces is managing the present right. What the opportunities that the world's throwing at you versus just being sort of like reactive and proactive with things that yesterday and has put on our calendars versus being really strategic and creating what we want to create and just moving through that energy field of what the world's throwing at us and all the things we could do versus the things that we really, really want to do. And I'm just curious how you manage reactivity versus proactivity versus strategy in your dialogue. Right? Because there's a lot of signals and a lot of noise you have to parse through on a day to day basis.

Eve McDavid

Yeah, absolutely.

Daniel Stillman

We can't wait for it to be a double blind. You can't wait till the data is perfect for us for you to act on a sort of like weekly, quarterly basis.

Eve McDavid

No, I think what you're describing is every challenge of every company and especially every young company. How do you do the right now? Really well. So you're setting yourself up for a great future and in medicine and Onyi talks a lot about like change is slow and it's slow for good reason. We're talking about humans who are the recipients of advancements in technology. And so it's slow and it's deliberate for good reason in two to three years time, from a very tactical standpoint, we'd like to see our device, the blossom with regulatory approvals so that it's starting to be used in clinics here in the US and globally. And in order for that to happen, the seeds of change had to have been planted. So that's what we started doing. We knew it was going to be a long road to change medicine, but we also know that it's for that very reason that this type of change hadn't already existed. So fundamentally, we identified this is a very clear problem statement. There's a very clear, critical, unmet need. Physicians are frustrated and making unnecessary compromises. Patients are uncomfortable, in pain, in distress and having terrible outcomes. And it's like no one's fault. Everyone is there to do their best and this is the outcome of what today's care looks like. So that's where we got started. And then to your point around how do you stay focused and what do you do? The market pulls us to having a product now and having revenue now and having customers now and having all the milestones. Rack them, stack them, knock them down, right. Check those boxes. Right? And it's very difficult. And then you add on the layer that we are two women, we are a diverse founding team. The data in who gets capital and who doesn't couldn't be more clear. Right? So we are constantly balancing how do we tell a clear story to the market about what our company needs to be successful, how much time that will take and what's possible for us to produce with that. And the reality that not everything happens overnight. So it takes persistence, it takes tenacity. You got to be in it, you got to stay in it, you got to keep going. And when you have those really crappy days, you have to be real that those are part of it too. And they're going to be days that totally knock you sideways, and you got to recover from those and at some point get back up and then get back in it so that you have the next two to three years to keep looking forward.

Daniel Stillman

I think you bring up a really valid point Onyi I'm curious what your perspective is on processing. I feel like in any relationship, dealing with healthy conflict is important, but we're talking about something else here, which is just processing of events and continuing to plan and exist together. And I'm curious what your perspective is on your communication, your collaboration style, how you manage some of these, because you come from very different worlds. You're very different people. How are you similar? How are you different in your perspective with how you deal with some of these things?

Dr. Onyinye Balogun

Yeah, so I think

Dr. Onyinye Balogun

we had a conversation. I think we were like, this is a marriage, and how does a healthy marriage work? Communication. So I think we had the conversations where you just need to be real with me, and I need to be real with you. If you're having doubts about something, don't let that simmer and fester. So I think we're very good about understanding that

Dr. Onyinye Balogun

the future of this company rests in partly in how well we're able to communicate. So we tell each other the good, the bad, and the ugly. So I think that's key and to have the time right. If you don't have a time where you can both set aside to deal with, one, what's going on with the company, and also, two, what's going on with us. Eve does a really good job of how are you doing? Are you feeling okay? And I hope I reflect that back to ask you about how you're doing. It can't just be, oh, what are the numbers? Oh, what's the strategy? It has to be what else is happening? Because we call ourselves mompreneurs sometimes. We're mothers, we're partners, and we exist. This company, building this company is part of that ecosystem. Sometimes someone gets sick and we have to shift a meeting. So I think we try to have the space, the scheduled space. And also if you need to just touch base about something that's on your mind, we have that opportunity. And I think we're both good listeners. That's one of the things that's really helpful in that I hear what you're saying. I reflect it back to you. You hear what I'm saying and you reflect it back to me. So that's been, I think, really helpful. I think we're very similar.

Eve McDavid

I actually feel that too. Okay. When I first met you, I was like, this woman is incredible. She's incredible at her job. She's incredible.

Eve McDavid

I think we felt like we were working together from very early on, and. That we sort of knit together that way. There was so much trust involved.

Dr. Onyinye Balogun

I'm trying to figure out how we are different.

Dr. Onyinye Balogun

Maybe we're different in that sometimes maybe I'm a little more like I want to just be efficient and be done and sometimes my thoughts are just but you do a really good job of mapping it out, so I'm finding it hard to verbalize. How are we different? What are the differences?

Eve McDavid

I think you made a really good point. You have a great ability of just cutting through crap and being like, yes, no, yes, no, yes, no. And I'll look at that same list and be like, well, what if and how about? That's really helpful to see the perspective and understand. Sometimes it just very much is a judgment call and you make that decision and you move on and you realize there are very few things that can't be unwound or addressed once you get to that decision point. So that has been, I think, really healthy in our ability to both be creative and dream of what a better world where better women's cancer care is experienced by the patients who receive it and delivered by the physicians who deploy it. And what does it take to actually get us there and how do we build that and execute against it?

Dr. Onyinye Balogun

And I want to double back on what you said about Reactivity, because we're a medical device company, right. One part of what we're doing, we started out focused on medical devices, and

Dr. Onyinye Balogun

people would tell us multiple times, oh, wow, you chose a really challenging part of entrepreneurship to get involved in. And we like a good challenge. But especially in this economic downturn, it's particularly tempting to want to pivot and say, okay, let me give you what you want. Let me morph myself into something that's more appetizing to investors. And so I think what we've done a good job of, we've done a good job of being true to who we are. We're never going to drop the medical device aspect of who we are. Talking with mentors, talking with some other individuals, we found that there were some digital tools that can enhance what we are doing with the that can enhance the education about why do we need this device?

Eve McDavid

Right.

Dr. Onyinye Balogun

That can enhance the education about cervical cancer in general. But at the heart of it all, we began with the medical device. And I'm really proud of us that we weren't just like, oh, well, people don't really like medical devices. So goodbye to the medical device. We forward with it. We now have the international patent. And I think that I think is key. I think we can't be reactive. You have to be true to who you are and follow that. The North Star.

Daniel Stillman

Yeah. It's a very different business model, a very different time frame. And I will reference I'll put a link for people who are listening and you may find it also interesting. I interviewed Avantika Dong from Plum Alley, which she and I talked on this podcast extensively about the gap in female and diverse founder funding, but also this idea of dressing your cap table and really being intentional about the kind of capital you're taking. People who really want to be part of the conversation, people who really get what you're trying to do, because somebody who thinks that you're a SaaS who's going to scale through enterprise sales, that's not your model, that's not the problem you're trying to solve. And it's a very different set of eyes that need to be looking at what you're doing to be able to get what it is that you're doing and to be part of the conversation. I'm curious, as you think about fundraising, which is obviously a huge part of the job, how do you engage investors in an intentional dialogue? Because I think it is clearly one of the most important conversations, and I think treating it like a conversation makes it much more productive, in my experience.

Eve McDavid

Absolutely. And we've had the success of finding folks who really understand what we're doing. They see the need. They are huge supporters of our work. And when you describe to them the state of care and what's possible, it's like an open and shut case, right? It's like, oh, this is so incredibly obvious. We see exactly what you're doing and we really love what you're doing. We want to be part of this. And there's a big conversation happening in medicine around patient centric innovations because so much of an outcome has to do with the trust and the partnership between the provider and the patient. And it isn't a one sided exchange. It's really symbiotic. And it's incredible that just the way that that partnership sort of is built and then grows can have an incredible impact on the patient's outcome. And it's incredible. And so when you're having conversations about outcomes in human lives and you have an investor who understands that that type of impact is where they want to be placing their capital, we do incredibly well in those rooms. And that, I think Onyi talked earlier about this win that we had last year. That was the first time that we did so much of this work over Zoom. It was the first time that we'd been in an open air environment where we're talking about the work, and as each of us are speaking, we're watching the room and we're seeing people lean in and then our eyes open. And when you see that, you know, you're like, okay, I'm in the right room with the right folks who are going to want to help us do something here. And we feel those environments, we know what those environments look like, and we win really well in those environments. In other areas where you'd love to be in a conversation with someone who has an enormous fund and they write enormous checks, and you want to be the recipient of one of those enormous checks. You also figure out, really quickly that no, this is not something that in a quarter's time you're going to have the type of metrics that their fund needs to show in order for their investors to be satisfied and fulfilled. And unfortunately, there's a lot more investors that fit into that latter camp than folks who are investing their capital to do great work in the world that also has a great return. And so part of our fundraising journey has been to identify those people and those rooms where there is that focus on the human impact of that capital. And so this fall, we'll be exploring a crowdfunding campaign to make our work more accessible from an investment standpoint so that we're able to get the message out to folks who are interested in supporting our work and interested in seeing this type of impact really be possible in the field that we're working in.

Daniel Stillman

That's really exciting. And I love this idea of knowing your room and being like, yeah, it's just not my room. Because we can be very hard on ourselves. Just speaking. I can be hard on myself. Use I statements we all can be and be like, but not everybody's for you. I'm not for everybody.

Eve McDavid

That's right.

Daniel Stillman

But it can be very hard to be like, oh, this guy doesn't get me. Right. And that's on me. But no, it is what it is. Sorry Eve, you're going to add some.

Eve McDavid

Flavor to no, that's exactly right. We would have meetings where we were just not clicking and we'd hang up on the close the laptop and then we'd call each other and be like, okay, I'm not discouraged. Are you discouraged?

Eve McDavid

That a lot. And we've had to find those rooms. Right. Like no one is laying out a roadmap to how to find those rooms and how to find those people. We've had to find them and we've had to do a lot of sifting some insufficiently to get there.

Daniel Stillman

Yeah.

Dr. Onyinye Balogun

I think one of the good things is you can tell when the person is for you. We've been fortunate and when the person gets it, they get it. And frequently when they just are opposed and they're not in support, a lot of them have been just very loud and clear about not seeing why this needs to really happen or how it's going to happen. So I thank them for the no's.

Daniel Stillman

No is always better than a roll.

Dr. Onyinye Balogun

Yes.

Daniel Stillman

It's just being confident and clear that aware of the signal of push versus pull. I think of it, it's like am I pushing this or are they like pulling it out of me? They're excited. You can feel that energy. You're aware of that. We're sadly getting close to the end of our time. What haven't I asked you that? I should have asked you all what haven't we talked about that you feel like is important for us to touch on? We talked about the crowdfunding, we talked about Gynecological Awareness Month, your amazing story, the product. What haven't we touched on that's important to maybe touch on?

Dr. Onyinye Balogun

Trying to think.

Eve McDavid

I can chime in. Yeah, okay. I got nothing.

Daniel Stillman

That's good. I call that a plus.

Eve McDavid

Yeah, that's good. We covered a lot of ground. I want to just do a super quick plug for what prevention looks like in cervical cancer, because that's a big.

Daniel Stillman

Question that plug away.

Eve McDavid

Talk to a room about what does it actually mean to prevent cervical cancer. So if you are a parent to a child, the most effective time, the most effective tool that we have today to prevent cervical and actually a number of other cancers that are also caused by the human papillomavirus that affect both men and women. The most effective time to have that vaccine that almost entirely prevents these cancers is between the ages of nine and twelve. So if there are parents in your audience listening and they're wondering whether they should have their child vaccinated, the most effective window is before any exposure to sexual activity. So between the ages of nine and twelve, if you are someone who is listening, who is outside of that window, or your children are outside of that window, that's okay, that's actually really common. The vaccination rates in this country are not nearly as high as where they could and should be for actual elimination of this disease. But if you're outside that window, you or your child, then what you need to be doing is having routine path and HPV tests with your gynecologist or your primary care provider. And those tests happen anywhere from every year to every five years, depending on your risk factors. And so having a conversation with your provider about when you need to be screened, what those results mean, and what any follow up care is required is the key to preventing this disease. If you are up to date on vaccination, if that's an option, and if you are up to date on screening, then you can almost entirely prevent this disease.

Dr. Onyinye Balogun

Absolutely. And I'll chime in that nine to twelve is ideal. But even if you're outside of that window, you should discuss with your medical provider because there may still be efficacy, it may still have value for you to the vaccine. And again, if you see anything concerning, go to your physician. Some of the key signs for cervical cancer are you may notice bleeding in between your periods. If you're still having periods, you may notice bleeding after intercourse or have pain with intercourse. Sometimes there's a strange discharge. It may not be bleeding, but sometimes people don't have symptoms and it's caught, like Eve said, when you go for screening. So I cannot overemphasize the importance of screening. So there you have it, prevention and screening hand in hand.

Daniel Stillman

Well, I think that's a good place for us to write on time, and I want to respect your time. I really appreciate you making the time for this conversation and sharing everything that you're working on. It's really important stuff. I wish you two the absolute best. And where should people go on the Internet to learn more about all things mission driven tech?

Eve McDavid

Yes. Perfect. So check out our website@missiondriventech.com, and then you can also find me and Onyi on LinkedIn, where we share live updates as we build in public.

Daniel Stillman

We'll put links to both of those in the show notes. Excellent. Well, we'll call thank you so much. Thank you. We'll call scene. And I really appreciate you being so generous and thoughtful with your responses. Thank you so much.

Eve McDavid

Thank you, Daniel. Thank you so much.

Give First: The Long Conversation of Being a Co-Founder

David Hoffman built and sold big-data and data analytics company Next Big Sound to Pandora in 2015. He's now building Beam, which helps people create shoppable mood boards for DTC brands.

David reflects on his experience with mentorship and the long arc of the conversation that is being a co-founder and being in community. We unpack the Techstars motto "give first" and discuss the power of the Techstars community and the importance of community relationships in entrepreneurship.

We talk through the complex evolution that is founding and scaling a startup and his experience doing just that with Next Big Sound, and the challenges of becoming a leader inside a growing company.

One challenge is always scaling culture as a company scales, and David outlines some of the routines and structures that helped in defining his startup's culture. David also shares some insights on the post-startup-sale emotional roller coaster and the decision to build another company. Some of my other favorite insights from David:

• Living the “Give First” motto requires approaching everything with curiosity.

• “Grown ups” is a construct: When it is your idea and your company, you can make the decisions you need to make.

• Your Culture is made of your routines, whether it’s Friday bagels or snap-clapping after people share wins.

• Your MVP product can be much, much more simple than you think if it creates value for your customers.

David’s nuanced reflections are a gift, and I’m so glad he sat down for this conversation.

AI Summary

David reflects on his experience with mentorship and the power of the techstars community. Daniel and David discuss the principle of "give first" in Techstars and the importance of community relationships in entrepreneurship.He discusses the evolution of his company, Next Big Sound, and the challenges of becoming a leader. He emphasizes the importance of routines in defining a startup's culture and reflects on the emotional roller coaster of the past eight years.

Conversation timeline summary:

(0:51) - David  talks about the value of mentorship and giving back in the techstars program

(2:30) - David  discusses how he tries to save people time and be thoughtful in his conversations with others

(5:25) - David  reflects on the power of the techstars community and relationships that have evolved over time

(18:54) - After realizing their initial idea wasn't working, they shifted their focus to answering the question of how a band becomes famous and started tracking song plays on MySpace to gather data

(24:47) - They launched on Demo Day despite advice not to and landed major record label deals, collaborated with them to build a pro version of their product, and generated SaaS subscription revenue

(27:58) - The transition to becoming leaders of an organization was challenging, especially while trying to build bleeding-edge software and manage people with unknown skill sets. They learned the hard way about relinquishing moral authority too early and the importance of having confidence in themselves rather than seeking a "grown up in the room."

(31:05) - David  emphasizes the importance of routines in defining a startup's culture, citing examples from his time at Next Big Sound

(43:00) - David  reflects on the emotional roller coaster of the past eight years and the importance of taking time to decompress and figure out what's next

Links, Quotes, Notes, and Resources

Beam

Minute 1

David Hoffman:

one of the things they taught us was the value of mentorship and learning from people who'd done what you were trying to do, and both what worked and what didn't work, and just being really intellectually honest and open to feedback, and criticism, and ideas. And, as part of that mentorship, it was instilled in us as we went through the program, successfully raised money, built a business, later sold the business, that giving back and giving first is the way to approach things and to approach life. So for me, in conversations with potential partners, or employees, or customers, or other entrepreneurs, I'm always looking for what I can provide in value before expecting anything in return.

Minute 31

David Hoffman:

We were like, we need a senior person who can teach us and who can be the "grown up" in the room, with big air quotes. Now, more than a decade later, I am realizing that the, big air quotes, "grown up" in the room thing is very much a, I don't know, made-up construct. Yes, there's wisdom that can be learned, but I think I learned the hard way that when you start something and you have insights and you have conviction around it, there's moral authority that's attached to that, especially as it relates to decision-making, and when you start to relinquish that moral authority or decision-making... and still in the early days of a startup, which I consider Series A... it puts you at major risk for wasting time and wasting money.

David Hoffman:

So, with the new business, when we started it, I brought on some more senior people and had a similar experience again of, I have the unique insight here, I have the conviction, I have the ability to execute on it. Why am I relinquishing moral authority and decision making on something? Is it imposter syndrome, lack of confidence, fear? And I think the healthy thing and that I've gone through is facing all those things head on and being confident in making those decisions myself.

Minute 33

Daniel Stillman:

What was that shift for you, realizing that you could find that part of you to rely on?

David Hoffman:

I think it was just reflection and being honest with myself about what was working and what wasn't and where I was spending time, and that's... Going back to the Next Big Sound story, the piece that was really interesting as we matured and got some confidence there, A: we found some really great senior people who we loved having in the room and who made everyone better. They didn't need to be the, big air quotes, "adult in the room". It was more just seeing them as peers and collaborating.

And the other was just getting into and being really thoughtful about the routines by which we ran the business. And this has been a pattern for me in life, both personal and work, is when things get stressful I lean on routines and try and create good routines. And with startups, it's amazing. When people talk about culture, I literally think, "What are your routines?" That's all I want to know about, because that's in my mind: what defines a culture?

Minute 37

David Hoffman:

We did regular Demo Days at Next Big Sound, and it was mostly engineers presenting, and designers and teams presenting what they'd been working on ahead of it being released, and sometimes going into the backstory or how it worked, mostly showing in.

And so, creating that both opportunity and expectation that every Friday new work is going to be shown, the person who did it's going to be sharing it with everyone. It's not a feedback session, it's a "Here's what's going on" session, being explicit about the intention of it, kept it personal and kept it so it was across the team and not just a small group.

Daniel Stillman:

Hmm. That sends really interesting message, that it's the person who made it is sharing it. It's not feedback. Was it explicitly celebration or is it a "Here it is"?

David Hoffman:

We had a big clapping culture, so after anyone would present anything, people would snapper clap, and I think that sort of just celebrating small wins and being excited for each other's progress was sort of key to the culture we built.

MOre About David

David Hoffman built and sold big-data and data analytics company Next Big Sound to Pandora. He's now building Beam, shoppable mood boards for DTC brands.

Full Transcript

Daniel Stillman:

Right. So, you actually... We're going to jump around. You said there's this principle in Techstars of "Give first". How is that delivered to you, and how do you feel like you're living that principle?

David Hoffman:

Wow. Big question to kick it off. I love it.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, were in.

David Hoffman:

Yeah, so it's been a long time. We went through my first business, went through the third class of Techstars in Boulder, Colorado in 2009. David Cohen, who started Techstars, was actually running the program at that time. They had just launched Boston. It was their first city besides Boulder, they're still in the early days of figuring out the program. So, I'm sure it's come a really long way in the many years since then, but even then one of the things they taught us was the value of mentorship and learning from people who'd done what you were trying to do, and both what worked and what didn't work, and just being really intellectually honest and open to feedback, and criticism, and ideas. And, as part of that mentorship, it was instilled in us as we went through the program, successfully raised money, built a business, later sold the business, that giving back and giving first is the way to approach things and to approach life. So for me, in conversations with potential partners, or employees, or customers, or other entrepreneurs, I'm always looking for what I can provide in value before expecting anything in return.

Daniel Stillman:

That's a really... I mean, that's a beautiful and important shift. How-

David Hoffman:

Yeah. It's funny how these small phrases root themselves in your brain and then you try and live them. I guess that's what values are.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Give... And it's a stance, right?

Yeah. How does that show up for you? Because you said you've been talking to some first-time founders more and you feel like you're ready, you have more to give back now.

David Hoffman:

Yeah, yeah, totally. I think it's in trying to save people time, and I think it's also in being really thoughtful that your... Or I'll just speak about myself, my experiences... But one data point and what happened for me doesn't necessarily mean it'll happen for someone else, but hopefully the story and learnings are inspiring. And likewise, on the other side, when someone takes advice or tries something that's recommended and reports back how it works, I can't think of anything more gratifying. The learning that everyone gets is awesome.

Daniel Stillman:

I always like to tell people that the price of free advice is telling me how it went.

David Hoffman:

Yeah, it's, yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

Very few people pay that price, but I always tell them, "Please, I'd love to know if it was bad advice."

David Hoffman:

Yeah. I love the etiquette around double opt-in intros and moving people to BCC . It seems like that's well-rooted in the world. The thing that I try and do is boomerang that message for after I've had the meeting so I can follow up with the person who introduced me and say, "Hey, here's what I learned. Here's how it went," and close the loop.

Daniel Stillman:

And thank them for the introduction.

David Hoffman:

So few people do that.

Daniel Stillman:

Oh boy.

David Hoffman:

Yeah, exactly.

Daniel Stillman:

So, boomeranging is a really great principle here, because we're going to be going back and forth on the timeline a fair bit, because I think in a way, at the beginning of your Techstars journey, if he were in this room talking to you, I imagine he wouldn't necessarily... Well, I'll ask you, how do you think he'd sound? I won't put words in your mouth. Like, if both you now and you then were in the room together, what would he think looking at you, do you think, given everything that you've accomplished so far?

David Hoffman:

I don't know. I mean, I think Techstars has done a tremendous job of creating very valuable businesses at scale. And my first business, Next Big Sound, was one of the sort of early outcomes of that program, but it's certainly been surpassed many times over by lots of other companies and entrepreneurs now. So when I think about that, I think I am but a drop in a bucket of a huge number of entrepreneurs that have benefited from this and can learn this. And I think the scale is what, rather than me individually, is what's most exciting about it.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, well, I'm thinking more specifically in terms of what you were hoping to accomplish at the beginning of your entrepreneurship journey.

David Hoffman:

Yeah, yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

And now you exited well and you're starting your second company. Is that what you, what he was imagining then? Do you think he saw that?

David Hoffman:

I think so. Yeah, I think that was the hope, is people finding a path and building businesses that create value for society, and stakeholders and shareholders, and having a great enough time doing it that they want to do it again. And that's, it's funny now. I know we're definitely jumping all over in time and we can tell more backstory whenever you want to, but I just was seeking some advice and help on the new business, and one of the people that I went to was one of the LPs in the bullet time fund that invested from Techstars that invested in Next Big Sound. And so it's these people that I met now 13, 14 years ago, 2009 at Boulder, that I still have relationships with and that still are able to provide massive help and are excited about what we're doing, and vice versa. So, I think that the thing I underestimated, and maybe everyone did, is the power of that community at scale and how those relationships evolve over time.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Wow, and that's a long arc. It is very hard to... And this is one of the things that's really interesting and challenging. One founder who I'm coaching, I think one of the challenges we all have is it is hard to imagine what a 13-year arc is. It's hard to know what an opportunity or a conversation or a person in front of you is going to become, which is maybe why the give first principle is so powerful, because we literally can't know, and yet we also have to balance how much we give and what we focus on.

David Hoffman:

Yeah, yeah. As calendars get busy and people are asking for time, saying yes can be hard, but you're exactly right. You never know who you're actually going to help and what impact you could have on them, and then the cherry on top of who they're going to turn into or what it could become, that's been really gratifying too now, over the last 13 or 14 years, is seeing our peers that we went through Techstars with then, seeing our friends that we were graduating from undergrad with, seeing other entrepreneurs we met around that time, and what they've gone on to do, a lot of them are now in the second or third act of their career, and it's so inspiring.

Daniel Stillman:

So, Samir isn't here to speak for himself, so we can't get his side of the meet-cute. This is the way I think of this, in the rom-com-

David Hoffman:

Yeah, yeah, you always have meet-cute.

Daniel Stillman:

I don't know if you're a rom-com fan. Yeah, there's meet-cutes like, oh, you knock over their coffee. You're like, "Oh, I'm sorry."

David Hoffman:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

Do you remember the first time you met Samir, and what happened? How you two started this conversation that is now a 14-year conversation that you've been in?

David Hoffman:

Yeah, it has been a long conversation. Yeah, so we were both in undergrad at Northwestern, and Next Big Sound was started by myself, Samir, and Alex White, also, at undergrad. Alex was a year older than us, and there was an entrepreneurship class taught by this professor who was adjunct, who we knew had sold his last company and was working on something new, and also teaching, and it was a very well-regarded class. The professor name was Troy Henikoff. He went on to run Techstars Chicago, early angel investor in our first business, and then it's been running Math Venture Partners since then. So, it's a small world, and crazy, again, how that conversation with him has evolved over the 14 years.

Anyway, back to the co-founder story. We got to the first day of class, and Alex and I knew each other because we were in the same major, and we'd met a few times and talked at class and decided we wanted to work together. Samir, I think, showed up late or at the last possible minute and was brought there by another mutual friend of ours, Neil Sales Griffin, who also would actually go on to run Techstar Chicago, and run for mayor of Chicago at one point.

He had run into Samir at Norris and said, "Hey, I'm taking this entrepreneurship class. You should come check it out." And, just kind of by random encounter, Samir ended up in this class. And we knew of each other prior to that: there'd been a big student government election, and Samir and I were, as we found out later, two of the only people on campus that knew how to build websites, and we built competing websites for each candidate.

So, I built one for Neil and he'd built one for the other guy running, Mark, and we were like, "Hey, we both build websites. This is interesting." And Alex was very smart to go, "Hey, these two guys build websites, and this is interesting. We should all work together." So that was the first time we really started working together, was in that class in undergrad, and it's gone on since then.

Daniel Stillman:

Well, it feels like you're skipping some steps, but-

David Hoffman:

Yeah. And rest is history.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, the rest is... And a miracle occurs. So you're all in this class and you clearly all value entrepreneurship, because you're there, or Samir found himself there through serendipity or good social pressure. How did the conversation around "Let's make this thing"... Or were you thinking, "We want to make anything," and you found the thing?

David Hoffman:

Yeah. So I found, I fancied myself a designer at the time, so first print design... I'd been doing newspaper and magazine, and then web, like doing themes for blogs, and then software down the line. Samir was a designer too, but he was also a comp-sci major, so he'd been studying computer science; and Alex said a lot of great ideas and was very charismatic. He'd actually pitched me on this idea prior to the class around fantasy sports for music, and I had given him some feedback, and that's kind of where the conversation ended. When we got to the class, that was one of the early things, was figuring out what problem we wanted to solve and what the solution was. We went wide and brainstormed a lot of different ideas, but ultimately Alex, being as charismatic as he is, was very convincing that we should build The Next Big Sound and a fantasy sports for music site, and so we all got on board with that and started building.

Daniel Stillman:

That's crazy.

David Hoffman:

Yeah, so... And it was a funny... You hear about these companies that get started in classes. I don't think any of us thought anything would come of it. The sort of first indication we had were mentors and other successful entrepreneurs that Troy would bring to class. We would practice pitch them, all the different teams in the class, and they'd ask questions and give feedback. And we were getting really consistently engaging questions and feedback to the point where, as we near to the end of the class, Troy, the professor, and some of the mentors that he brought through would take us aside and say, "Hey, if you guys are serious about this you should really consider devoting some proper time and money to it and exploring it."

And there was a entrepreneurship pitch competition on campus, and we enrolled in it, and it was against all these Kellogg grad school kids, and medical device kids and people doing different things, and we ended up winning the competition and getting an oversized check, and we were like, "All right, that's more incremental positive validation." And then we found out there's this accelerator... This is pre Techstars... that was operating in Chicago, down in Champaign, Illinois, and we managed to just squeeze our way into their first or second class that they were running. And so, we spent the summer... Packed up the car, moved down to Champaign, and spent a summer just working on this idea, and that's when we built Next Big Sound 1.0.

And it was the first time any of us had ever really built software, built a business, worked together on something like this. And the way Samir talks about it, and what we'd probably say if he was here, is that that was when we learned how to work together. That was so much of the conversation that was like: who does what, how do we do this? How do we be in alignment and not conflict? What does that look like?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. How did you learn to navigate conflict? Because I imagine there was some.

David Hoffman:

I was going to joke and answer, "We learned to navigate it poorly," but that's not doing anyone justice. I think we got really lucky. Alex and Samir were both and are both really thoughtful, patient, kind, smart people, and I think we all approached things with curiosity. One of the things Alex would say to me many years later, that I think about all the time, is in meeting a bunch of people through building a business, he'd ask them about what they valued and how they thought about the world, and the word that always came up was "truth" and just trying to find the truth. And I think over time our collaboration got towards that too, of this isn't about our singular egos or anything else. We just need to find what's true in this world that we're operating in and build based on that.

Daniel Stillman:

That is so interesting. So, what that is sparking for me, somebody had just posted this on Instagram. So, I follow Neil Strauss who... I mean, this is a total side. I'll just read you the quote from Rick Ruben, because I don't know if you-

David Hoffman:

Oh, sure.

Daniel Stillman:

He just came out with this big book, he's been hitting hard everywhere, and there's this thing about making decisions around the moment one collaborator gives into another. By settling on a less preferential option for the sake of moving forward, everyone loses. Great decisions aren't made from a place of sacrifice; they're made by the mutual recognition of the best solution available.

David Hoffman:

Yeah. That resonates.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. To me, it's not about my truth or your truth.

David Hoffman:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

It's about the truth.

David Hoffman:

Exactly, the Truth. Yeah. Like, capital T. Totally. It's funny, I think that's one of the things Samir and I initially bonded over, was that we both just had a love for making things, and designing things, and building things, and it happened to be software. And I remember being 20 or 21, brightest... Next Big Sound was getting started, and being frustrated, right? Because you're handling all these things that you are ill-equipped to handle, and really just leaning on this thought that I'd have every day of, "I just want to build things that people love," and just being motivated to make stuff and get it out in the world, and having that be sort of a guiding thing was very helpful. And Samir was very much of the same mindset.

Daniel Stillman:

Mm-hmm. So, the question that I'm tempted to ask is: what do you feel like you were most ill-equipped to handle together as co-founders?

David Hoffman:

Yeah. The list is too long to go into detail, but I can tell a little bit more of where the story unfolded from there, and I think it'll shed some light on it. So, we built a web app. It was a streaming app inspired by Pandora. This was when Flash was still the default technology for streaming music online-

Daniel Stillman:

Good times

David Hoffman:

... to date myself a little bit... And we signed up all these bands. Alex had a ton of connections in the music industry. We had them upload four song demos and then we sent out the site so people could listen to the music, to as many people as we could find, and they could sign with big air quotes the bands they thought were going to become famous. And we were trying to answer this question... this was sort of the genesis of the whole idea from Alex... was how does a band become famous? What happens from that small band playing in a garage to headlining a nationwide tour? What are the steps in between? What's repeatable, what's luck? How does this actually work?

And we got this... I mean, thinking back, this is amazing. We're 20, 21 years old. We've put together this site, we get a writeup in the New York Times, just dream press piece, and it sends some traffic, but what we're seeing in the numbers are just crickets. So no one is using this thing that we've built.

Daniel Stillman:

They're coming to look, but they're not playing with it.

David Hoffman:

Yeah, yeah. Exactly. And growing bands is hard, growing listeners is hard. We're talking to one of those mentors and he's like, "How are you going to make money?" We're like, "We're going to sell T-shirts." And he's like, "So, is this a T-shirt company?" We're like, "No, we don't want to build a T-shirt company."

Daniel Stillman:

Was that seriously a monetization strategy at one point?

David Hoffman:

That was earliest ideas, yeah, and Threadless was really big in Chicago. Then we had met the founders and were really inspired by them. But regardless, we realized this thing wasn't working. We went back to class, it was Samir and I's senior year Alex had graduated. He and Samir and I discussed it, and we wanted to keep pushing and figure out a way to make it work. So he pushed back his job offer and was sleeping on couches and just trying everything he could to get it off the ground. I mean, talk about grit. He really just pushed it through. And, we'd heard about this thing called Techstars and Hail Mary-applied with this idea. We weren't spending too much time on it anymore. We thought it'd be really cool to go to Techstars, though. Ended up getting in, flew out for Techstars for a day and met a bunch of people there.

We were so excited, must have made a good impression, and we drove from Chicago to Boulder overnight. Straight shot in my car... Alex, Samir and I all packed in... and when we got there on the first day, it was this full-day orientation.

David Cohen talks for the whole day, it's the only day he does that. And at the end of it, you can tell he is fried, but we really wanted to talk to him. We went up and said, "Hey, we've got something we need to share." And he goes, "What is it?" "You know that idea that you just accepted into Techstars, fantasy sports for music? It's not working and we don't want to build it." And he said, "That's fine. We invest in people, not ideas. But you need to figure out what you're going to do." And it was the best possible reaction. I mean, so much affirmation that we were there because it was us, not for a specific idea, and acknowledging that we could figure out something that we could actually build.

And so, we went back to the drawing board and we kept coming back to that first question of "How does a band become famous?" And what we realized is that we didn't need to build another destination site where bands and fans were connecting and track everything based on that. Fans were already consuming music online in massive quantities, and the most popular streaming site at the time, to date myself again, was MySpace. So we started tracking how many song plays artists were getting on MySpace, and rest is history, to use that expression as many times as possible while we chat today.

Daniel Stillman:

That's a really interesting shift, from, "We make a place" to, "We're going to go where the people are and where the information is."

David Hoffman:

I think it's, the reason I tell that story is, well, because it's the next thing that happened in that sort of journey, but also because that thing about the truth of and being married to a problem and not a solution. It's like, we want to answer this question. There's so many different ways we can do that, as opposed to, "We came up with this idea; this idea now has to be in the world."

Daniel Stillman:

And where did the seed, do you think, for monetization come from? Because clearly you were jamming on this question of this, how does a band become famous, and that was something you were passionate about, and you really found a shift in going to learn about that, and to get a better answer to the emergence of that happening. But T-shirts to getting acquired by Pandora is a big jump.

David Hoffman:

Yeah, absolutely. During Techstars, once we realized that this was something that was possible... So, as soon as we saw this on MySpace we called a bunch of people in the music industry and asked them, "Hey, are you paying attention to what's happening online and how often your artists are being played?" This is mostly managers and some labels. They're like, "Yeah, we know it's happening, but we don't know how to track it." Some of the more sophisticated ones had hired armies of interns to write down numbers by hand, in spreadsheets,

Daniel Stillman:

Spreadsheets. This is, I feel like every startup is finding a way to eliminate a spreadsheet. Is this a-

David Hoffman:

Every good SaaS startup is. Yeah, for sure. We had them send us the spreadsheets and we were like, Great. We can automate this for you, track way more artists, send it on a regular basis." And they said, "That sounds amazing." And so, we set off to build it and-

David Hoffman:

Well, we weren't that smart. So, being a designer... And this is a lesson I've had to learn over and over again, of the risk of over-designing things. I said, we can just send them a beautiful PDF of their stats and we can show time series graphs and it'll feel like an official report, and we'll send it to their inbox. So, we manually put these together before our crawling abilities were across the board, and put them together for 10 different artists, and sent them out to all their managers on a Tuesday. And we were waiting to hear back, and it was nothing. No one responded, and we were like, "This is bizarre. We've just talked to all these people. They've said they want this, we did it. We sent it to them. What is going on?" And we kind of got that feeling we had with the first version, where we built it and they didn't come.

We're like, "What did we miss?" So we were more persistent this time now, when we emailed all of them and said, "Hey, did you see the report? What's going on?" And I think more than half of them wrote back and said, "I'm on my Blackberry..." To date myself again. "It doesn't open PDFs. Can you please send it another way?" So the next week we switched to plain text emails, just writing in the body of the email a table of the stats that they cared about for their artists, and nine out of 10 of them wrote back and said, "Hey, can you please add this person? Can you track this artist? Can I share it with this person?" And the reaction was exactly what we were looking for and we were off to the races.

But, to answer your question about how do you go from those early days to the monetization piece, we put up a site in private beta and started inviting people in the music industry to it, and got the advice from everyone we spoke to not to launch on Demo Day. So, Techstars has this thing called Demo Day where all the companies present at the end, there's a bunch of investors in the audience, and get some press coverage, and you're kind of introducing the business to the world. We ignored the advice and launched on Demo Day. Luckily, it ended up working and we didn't get crushed too badly, and it got a lot of attention from the major record labels, and we found out that they were spending a lot of money trying to solve this problem already.

And, we are also very lucky to get introduced to someone who had been at the major record labels for a long time, had a deep Rolodex, and knew people there. And the timing... And this is another one of those... Like, I mentioned the word persistence earlier, that I think about constantly. Timing is the other thing I think about a lot based on these experiences. The timing was amazing. Sony had built this team that was trying to measure what was happening, and they were running a pilot for a software provider, and they didn't know who they were going to use yet, and we ended up being just in the right place at the right time to participate in this pilot, have direct connections to a bunch of people there, and I remember going into their offices... We'd fly from Colorado to New York every six weeks... and showing them a blank screen and some of the stats we had and asking, "What do you want to see here? What would make this a part of your daily workflow and incredibly valuable to you?"

So we collaborated with them super closely to build out a pro version of our free product, where you could just get stats on the artist to answer some of their more sophisticated questions, and that led to our first major label deal and SaaS subscription revenue.

Daniel Stillman:

Wow. And that's when things really took off, in that sense?

David Hoffman:

Yeah. So that, we had landed, I think, two of the three major record labels by... Started the company, went through Techstars in 2009. We were working with two of the three major record labels by 2010, 2011 and had a bunch of the smaller sub-labels signed up separately. And so, had licensed charts to Billboard. Alex is an incredible people person and great at getting to know people, and he also really believes in serendipity and just exposing yourself to chance and opportunity, and one of those things that happened were Billboard Magazine licensing charts for Next Big Sound. That gave us this big stamp of credibility.

Daniel Stillman:

Wow.

David Hoffman:

And with that progress we raised a series A in 2012 and moved the company to New York City to be closer to our customers. I think that's around the time we met, actually.

Daniel Stillman:

That's around the time we met, yeah.

At that time, when you moved to New York City and you had your series A, this is a really interesting inflection point in any company.

David Hoffman:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

Right, because I presume you started to hire, and you had to become leaders of an organization.

David Hoffman:

Yeah, yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

What was that transition like for the three of you at that moment?

David Hoffman:

It was challenging, and I think it... some of the things that I learned then are mistakes I've repeated the second time around and really learned deeply from. Yeah, we were hiring pretty aggressively, and we were most focused on data science at the time, which, super nascent practice in 2012. And we were looking at all these predictive models around weather and other industries and asking, "How do we actually use this massive data set that we've amassed to predict who's going to become famous before they're famous, and make accurate predictions?"

And so, not only were we leaders for the first time in a growing group of people, and needing to figure out org charts, and routines and cadences, and one-on-ones, and all the stuff you're supposed to do, but we were also trying to build software just at the bleeding edge of what was possible at the time and manage people who we had no idea the depth of their skillsets and what they were able to do.

So, I think it was a lot of trial and error, honestly, and a lot of trying to bring in senior people who could help. And that's sort of the lesson that I've learned, more than once, is... Especially then. I think when we moved to New York... I was 25 and we were all so young we felt like kids. We were like, we need a senior person who can teach us and who can be the "grown up" in the room, with big air quotes. Now, more than a decade later, I am realizing that the, big air quotes, "grown up" in the room thing is very much a, I don't know, made-up construct. Yes, there's wisdom that can be learned, but I think I learned the hard way that when you start something and you have insights and you have conviction around it, there's moral authority that's attached to that, especially as it relates to decision-making, and when you start to relinquish that moral authority or decision-making... and still in the early days of a startup, which I consider Series A... it puts you at major risk for wasting time and wasting money.

So I know I'm not speaking in a lot of specifics here, but there's definitely a lot of learning around that time of how do we grow up in this business, and how do we just have the confidence to know that we can learn and do this ourselves, and we don't need to necessarily find someone to be the grown up in the room.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. So, it sounds like... You said that you're doing that again, or you're trying not to do that again?

David Hoffman:

Trying not to do that again, yeah. So, with the new business, when we started it, I brought on some more senior people and had a similar experience again of, I have the unique insight here, I have the conviction, I have the ability to execute on it. Why am I relinquishing moral authority and decision making on something? Is it imposter syndrome, lack of confidence, fear? And I think the healthy thing and that I've gone through is facing all those things head on and being confident in making those decisions myself.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. What was that shift for you, realizing that you could find that part of you to rely on?

David Hoffman:

I think it was just reflection and being honest with myself about what was working and what wasn't and where I was spending time, and that's... Going back to the Next Big Sound story, the piece that was really interesting as we matured and got some confidence there, A: we found some really great senior people who we loved having in the room and who made everyone better. They didn't need to be the, big air quotes, "adult in the room". It was more just seeing them as peers and collaborating.

And the other was just getting into and being really thoughtful about the routines by which we ran the business. And this has been a pattern for me in life, both personal and work, is when things get stressful I lean on routines and try and create good routines. And with startups, it's amazing. When people talk about culture, I literally think, "What are your routines?" That's all I want to know about, because that's in my mind: what defines a culture?

Daniel Stillman:

So when you think back on the routines that saved your life-

David Hoffman:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

... what do you feel like is the baseline in... Especially in, when we're talking about multiple co-founders and complex decision making in a fast-paced context?

David Hoffman:

So we had a superpower at Next Big Sound, which was all living in the same house together. So-

Daniel Stillman:

The three of you?

David Hoffman:

Yeah, the three of us, and then up until we were, I think, nine people, everyone who joined the team moved into a house.

Daniel Stillman:

Wow.

David Hoffman:

And, yeah, we were all 22, 23 people were moving in from out of state.

Daniel Stillman:

What neighborhood were you living in?

David Hoffman:

Well, this was in Boulder before we moved to New York.

Daniel Stillman:

Oh, gotcha. Gotcha. Yes.

David Hoffman:

We were up on the hill in Boulder, by the university.

Daniel Stillman:

I was going to say. It's like, where do you find a place for nine people and-

David Hoffman:

Yeah, in. New York City. I know.

Daniel Stillman:

New York City, where you're living in Jersey City.

David Hoffman:

But we're deep in Brooklyn.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

David Hoffman:

Yeah. But the routine that we developed there was just having dinner together every night. So even if someone had been on client calls all day, or deep working on a project, or whatever it was, we'd all decompress after at dinner and share what happened during our days and kind of stay in sync. And, as the team grew, I noticed the customer support person and the backend engineer never talked to each other. They didn't have a natural reason to at work. So we started bringing bagels in on Friday, just with the idea that we'd all have breakfast together every Friday so that we're doing something as a team on a regular basis, and that evolved into what was called Friday Bagels or Fragels: an all hands meeting once a week where we'd just go over the business and talk about what was going on. And so those sort of routines, of founders having regular dinners and team coming together regularly around a meal, you know, I think are some of the only things that kept us all pointed in the same direction.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. How big were you all when you got acquired?

David Hoffman:

I think we were just shy of 30 people, so not huge.

Daniel Stillman:

So it was still possible to have a reasonable all-hands at that point?

David Hoffman:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

David Hoffman:

We'd all cram into a conference room at, benches around the table, and make it happen.

Daniel Stillman:

Did it shift... I mean, this is something that I'm obviously obsessed and nerdy about. There are major differences between a conversation of nine people and 30 people. It goes like, it's a graph theory, right? It's not the log, but it goes up fast. There's a lot of conversational density, and how did you make it as useful and rewarding at 30 as it was at nine?

David Hoffman:

Yeah, and I think it definitely changes. This was pre-remote days, but we were hybrid at that point, so there's also people calling in on Zoom every time, creates these tensions, and at 30 that communication became more challenging. I think we always approached it as a chance for anyone to share and not a "leadership is telling everyone else what's going on" type of meeting. And the way we did that was actually... Trying to think if we switched it at some point, but we had, from Techstars, the idea of Demo Day. We did regular Demo Days at Next Big Sound, and it was mostly engineers presenting, and designers and teams presenting what they'd been working on ahead of it being released, and sometimes going into the backstory or how it worked, mostly showing in.

And so, creating that both opportunity and expectation that every Friday new work is going to be shown, the person who did it's going to be sharing it with everyone. It's not a feedback session, it's a "Here's what's going on" session, being explicit about the intention of it, kept it personal and kept it so it was across the team and not just a small group.

Daniel Stillman:

Hmm. That sends really interesting message, that it's the person who made it is sharing it. It's not feedback. Was it explicitly celebration or is it a "Here it is"?

David Hoffman:

We had a big clapping culture, so after anyone would present anything, people would snapper clap, and I think that sort of just celebrating small wins and being excited for each other's progress was sort of key to the culture we built.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, that's really awesome and beautiful stuff, and I wish I could push more on this, but I do want to respect your time and tie up the end of what it's like to reach out to Samir, because I know you took some time between when Next Big Sound was acquired. You stayed for a while and then you had a child, you traveled the world, you took a real breather. And then, at some point, what was it like calling him up and saying, "Strap in", or, "Are you interested in..." How did you start that conversation with him?

David Hoffman:

Yeah. I would love for Samir to be here for... But I can tell you some of the pieces along the way. So, I think while we were still at Pandora, I remember... Let's back up just a little bit. So, the quick connection on the story is we get to New York, have the series A, build all this software, have all these great clients, and we launch Next Big Book. Same thing for music, but in the book publishing industry. Bring on Macmillan as our first of the big five book publishers, and are gearing up for this vertical media strategy to provide analytics and insights for every major vertical as the world's changing.

At the same time, Pandora is our only blind spot. We've tried scraping them and gotten letters from their lawyers. We've met them a few times, we've put together some concepts for them, nothing's gone anywhere. They see the progress we're making, realize that they're not being included, and want to really own it, and we're their first-ever technology acquisition. They make us an offer we can't refuse. We decide to go that route instead of raising a Series B, great outcome for everyone involved.

So we get to Pandora, first time I've ever worked anywhere that wasn't for myself, trying to just learn as much as I can, but also getting curious about things. I mean, I spent my twenties, 20 to 27 or 28 when we sold the company, working nonstop, literally living with my coworkers. You suddenly have this luxury of time, which is even more impactful than money, and you're like, "Who am I? What do I want to do with my life? What did I miss over the last eight years?" Because I was so heads-down. How do I want to spend my time? And so I did a lot of soul-searching, and walking around museums in New York, and exploring interests, and I kept coming back to design. I love design more than anything, and I kept coming back to physical things. I spent so much time staring at screens at that point. I was like, "What is in the physical world?"

And so, we were spending all this time outside of New York up in the Catskills and ended up buying this tiny little two-bedroom vacation cottage 20 minutes outside of Woodstock, and we did a gut renovation from top to bottom, and we didn't have any knowledge of this process. We didn't hire a designer, we didn't hire an architect. I talked to a few. I just hired a contractor and we designed everything ourselves. And, we would stay up at night till three o'clock in the morning, looking at pendant lights, and I narrowed down 500 choices to three, and then we'd pick one, and then they'd be the wrong size and we'd return and buy another one.

And just, we were shopping very intentionally and thoughtfully for products to design this space and design our life. We were at that sort of moment in life when you have the opportunity to do that. And that's kind of what opened the door on the next chapter. So, I remember being at Pandora and being out with some people on the team, and Samir one night, and telling them about shopping for this project and saying, "You know, we've built this taxonomy of data. We've learned from Pandora, the Music Genome project, how you can tag everything and organize it. This doesn't exist for home, and what would a taxonomy of home look like?" And we riffed on it for a little bit and then kind of dropped it. And we got to the two-year market Pandora, and I left and traveled and explored, and I just kept coming up with prototypes and building them and sending them to people and asking for feedback, Samir included.

And I thought I was building a remodeled operating system for a while-

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, I remember that. That is-

David Hoffman:

... A marketplace. Kept coming back to this selection sheet. So, what are all the things that need to be specified when you're designing a space, and how does that live? And then I ended up working with a few different people on it, and I remember it got... I was getting frustrated with Samir. I was like, "Come work with me on this." He's like, "Man, I'm busy." And so, I would do things like say, "Hey, I don't care what we work on. I just want to work on something together."

And I was in Florida at the time, he was in New York. I flew up for two nights and stayed at his apartment, and we just built a stupid side project that didn't go anywhere, but just had fun building together; or I'd be visiting the city and go out to lunch with another friend and talk about an idea. It's just this exploration process. I finally got frustrated because he was still at Pandora, and then taking some time, and I just hired a developer on Upwork and designed everything myself. Wrote the HTML and CSS and had him build this contract proposal application software where a part of it was selections.

And on the selections piece, I wanted it to be able to support any product that you could add so you could see the products together, and the Upwork developer didn't know how to do that, and it was very similar to what we built at Next Big Sound, adding artists from anywhere online. So I sent it to Samir. I'm like, "Samir, I've got the smallest project for you. I just need you to build this scraper so you can add products to this selection sheet thing I'm building."

And so we built it and got it in there and it was working, and it was really cool. And we were like, "There's something here." So we went out to... I met up with him in Green Point where I was living at the time, and we walked over to the river there. I was like, "Look, I really want to work with you again on this next thing. I don't know what that looks like, but it's been fun working on this piece. Let's keep exploring." And it was this... it wasn't the sort of thing where it was like, okay, we sold the last thing. We're obviously going to work together on the next thing. It was like a, "Holy shit, that was an emotional roller coaster. Crazy last eight years. We all need time to decompress and then figure out what we're doing next."

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. And I can see how the arc of this conversation was planted in that one and you kept returning to it.

David Hoffman:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

We're at time, so I guess I will ask you for your parting thoughts. I mean, obviously I'll stay on this call as long as you'll let me, but I want to respect your time, because I know your wife's in the background.

David Hoffman:

No.

Daniel Stillman:

You have a life. But-

David Hoffman:

Sorry I've been long-winded. I do actually have to jump to talk to a VC right now, but-

Daniel Stillman:

No, that is more important. What is the-

David Hoffman:

But I think-

Daniel Stillman:

... the one... Yeah, sorry. What would be your closing thoughts? Wherever you want to end this.

David Hoffman:

The thing that you made me see on this call... And I'm really grateful for, I want thank you for... is this idea of a conversation over a long arc of time, over a decade or multiple decades. And I rarely reflect at that sort of scale, but the serendipity of how things connect over time and the way the small decisions that you make ripple really stood out to me in this.

Daniel Stillman:

That is beautiful. That touches me. I really, I'm so grateful for that. I'm grateful for the time. Good luck with the call.

David Hoffman:

Thank you.

Daniel Stillman:

I'll just assume that we can call scene and we don't have to bleep anything out.

David Hoffman:

No, it was perfect. Thank you so much, Daniel. Let's talk soon.

Daniel Stillman:

Thank you, brother.

Cofounder Conversations: Pivoting while Staying Sane

My guests today, Ryan Horrigan and Armando Kirwin, bonded over their mutual fascination with the future of entertainment and their desire to do something innovative, which led to the creation of their current company, Artie. We talk about pivots and micro pivots and staying sane through the million tiny conversations Cofounders need to navigate.

Ryan, the CEO, and Armando, President and co-founder of Artie have a pretty radical vision for the future of social media— namely, to make TikTok, Instagram, Twitter and other social media apps the gaming consoles of the future.

Before co-founding Artie, Ryan served as Chief Content Officer of the Comcast-backed VR & AR startup Felix & Paul Studios. He oversaw the development and production of feature films, including Academy Award Best Picture Winner “12 Years A Slave.” at Fox/New Regency, and is a two-time Emmy Award winner for immersive entertainment projects he produced with President Barack Obama and NASA, as well as a Peabody Award winner.

Armando has been in the VFX world for over fifteen years, working with numerous award-winning directors, including two-time Academy Award nominee Lucy Walker, Sundance Grand Jury prize nominee Sandy Smolan on The Click Effect, which was nominated for an Emmy; and Imraan Ismail on The Displaced, which won the Grand Prix at Cannes. He also produced Take Flight, starring Benicio del Toro, Michael Fassbender, and Charlize Theron. His most recent VR film, Nothing is Safe (2022), was an official selection of the Cannes Marché du Film.

While movies are a wonderful industry, they both saw the power and potential of gaming as a storytelling platform - and a financial juggernaut. If you didn’t know: According to a report by SuperData Research, the global gaming market was valued at $159.3 billion in 2020. This includes revenue from console games, PC games, mobile games, and esports. Let’s put that into perspective: the music industry was valued at $19.1 billion in 2020, and the movie industry at $41.7 billion. That means the gaming industry is more than three times the size of the music industry and almost four times the size of the movie industry.

TikTok used to be where people just watched videos (as of this writing, TikTok and Netflix are nearly tied for eyeball-hours). Now, hundreds of thousands of people are playing games on TikTok thanks to Artie and the technology breakthroughs that make streaming app-quality games from within social media apps possible.

But how did they get here? Through a million micro conversations about data, signals, stakeholders and what it all means. Artie is where are are today not because of one big pivot, but many, many micro-pivots over the course of years.

Pivots impact the team - who you needed on staff when you were focused on one path isn’t always who you need when you’ve decided to shift directions. Communication between departments and involving the team more is important - which means being intentional about regular check-ins and interdepartmental communication, but eventually, it comes down to the co-founder conversation - owning the choices that need to be made and moving forward, all while making sure you stay healthy and sane.

Pivots vs Shaping Clay

I loved this metaphor from Ryan, where he suggested that, from the outside, to investors, bloggers and customers, a company may have pivoted once, or a few times. From the inside, there are daily conversations, where the product is being shaped like clay, remade, refocused, almost constantly.

“Listen to your body, Have a Coach and a Therapist”

This was one of my favorite insights from this conversation. It’s not often that men talk openly about mental health and needing support. Ryan and Armando both have a coach (although they meet with that coach separately) and Armando advocated for having a therapist, while Ryan discussed how they got much much more intentional about listening to their bodies and taking down time. Armando suggests that therapy focuses on self-awareness, learning about yourself and your patterns, while his coaching focuses on future outcomes and goals.

“You have to care deeply about your people, but at the same time, you can't care about what they think of you”

Ryan quotes what he describes as a harsh-sounding notion from Dick Costello when he was at Twitter: In Ryan’s experience, when you make a tough decision, you can't worry about everyone's collective feelings (even though you DO care about them as people and teammates). You have to make the decision that you, as the leader, believe needs to be made.

As a founder, you have to make and own tough decisions.

Ryan points out that, at the end of the day, you can't ignore tough decisions. You can’t have someone else do it for you. He suggests that while these moments are hard, it’s helpful to focus on the people who are still with you and the ultimate goals you’re trying to achieve.

Links, Quotes, Notes and Resources

https://www.artie.com/

Armandokirwin.com

Minute 13

Daniel Stillman:

Armando, I'm wondering how you as a co-founding team approach the dialogue, the deliberation, the discussion, the decision around, let's do more of this, let's do less of this, and to make the decision to be all in. How does that get navigated. Because it's complex?

Armando Kirwin:

I wish it was a decision. Because honestly, it's not. It's more a year of throwing yourself against a wall and then eventually being like, okay, well we tried really hard and that's just not working. So like Ryan said, when we were attempting to combine AI and game engines and do all of that instantly on social media, we tried really, really, really hard. We made demos with huge IP that we can't talk about. We hired all the right people, which we had to poach from other bigger companies. And it's a lot. And then you're hearing, "Oh wait, this investor's saying that, or the feedback we're getting from this person who is trying this game out is this."

So it's not just one decision, but eventually, if you're honest... I think it's really hard, I think people get stuck when the decision that they made, they should have made 12 months ago and they're still not confronting it. That's when you're in trouble. But it's okay to take a little bit of time to make sure. And for us, that's what we did. We sunset a lot of our AI efforts in our second year, and then we just doubled down on... Everyone will tell you, you'll be like, "Oh, this AI stuff is not quite working. But I love the idea of playing a game on Instagram and TikTok." That's so crazy to me. So you'll be hearing it and then you just have to come to terms with bit.

Minute 22

Daniel Stillman:

What do you think are the conversational skills that founders should be thinking about that enable them to have those dialogues on a regular basis? Because it's not one big conversation, it's many, many smaller conversations. What are the skills that you feel you're bringing into those dialogues with each other that make it possible to have those?

Armando Kirwin:

...that's a hard one. But I think part of it is, I think you have to be okay. You have to be able to function in this really messy, noisy situation without wanting to kill each other. So that's a big part of it. Because you are, it's just so asymmetrical. I might hear one thing from one person, Ryan might hear another thing from someone else, or we might learn something a week apart or what... We have to constantly be sharing, but also with the team. So you're really signing up for a... It's pretty frothy environment. So I think part of the skillset is to somehow be okay with that. I think a lot of people can... It can be hard to take, and you can maybe end up just doubling down on your vision and not listening and then you're screwed. So I think that probably one of the skills is just somehow trying to stay calm, knowing that it's just really... It is a pretty sloppy process, to be honest.

Ryan Horrigan:

Yeah, I agree. I think you have to be willing to kill your ideas, basically. You have to be willing to have these moments where you think you have brilliance, but then on the other hand, be ready to kill them at a moment's notice and be okay with it. So you have to constantly find some source of energy to keep coming at it with new angles and ideas. And you need to know when there's a big thing when you're like, "Hey, we're going to let go of all this AI stuff and put it on the shelf and just focus on this other thing." You have to be willing to do that.

Minute 25

Armando Kirwin:

So we're always trying to figure out what, what's actually working here? What do people want? What are people interested in? How can we reach a lot of people? Stuff that. And that helps get you through the more emotional side of like, wow, we just spent a year on this crazy thing and we're going to not use it.

Daniel Stillman:

So it sounds like keeping the north star in mind is something that's helpful. I saw Ryan, yes you, sir, in the back. You're raising your hand.

Ryan Horrigan:

Well, there's one other thing, which I don't know if this is part of another conversation you want to have, but also when you make a pivot, as Armando alluded to earlier, you may then find yourself with some mismatch or imbalance on the team, where now suddenly you have the wrong people on the team. So that then requires, in many situations, either recalibrating those team members into different roles or different functions or parting ways with people, which as you know, anyone can imagine is very difficult. And then feels as a founder, you have to A, own that, and B, you have to acknowledge that your decision-making process along the way bears responsibility in that, right?

So if you've decided to pivot the company, and now there's three people who you're going to have to part ways with, that's on you. And you have to own that. And I think the wrong decision would be to bury your head in the sand and try to keep them if they really shouldn't be there, because you're also stifling their careers too.

Minute 32

Ryan Horrigan:

Can I say one thing that was a quote from, I think it's from a few years ago, at a TechCrunch Disrupt. I just saw it on YouTube.

I think it was Dick Costello when he was at Twitter. And he was talking about team building culture and making tough decisions and dealing with tough things like these things. And he said something that really resonated with me. It sounds cold, but if you think about it makes sense from a founder point of view. He said, "As a founder, you have to care deeply about your people, but at the same time you can't care about what they think of you." And I thought that was really interesting. And his point there, what I think he was trying to say was, you actually do have to operate authentically in a way that shows empathy and caring. It has to be real because these are your people and this is your company. But when you make a tough decision, you can't worry about everyone's collective feelings. You have to make the decision that you as the leader believe needs to be made. And you can't get weighed down by what someone might think about that. You have to move forward. And that is the hard part, right?

AI Summary

Ryan and Armando bonded over their mutual fascination with the future of entertainment and their desire to do something innovative, which led to the creation of their current company, Artie.

Pivoting may require recalibrating team members or parting ways with people, which can be difficult and requires owning the decision-making process. Communication between departments and involving the team more is important for successful check-ins and interdepartmental communication.

Key Moments

(1:59) - Ryan and Armando bonded over their mutual fascination with the future of entertainment and their desire to do something innovative

(5:24) - Ryan talks about how the film industry was changing and how VR was seen as a potential outlet for the future of entertainment

(9:51) - Ryan talks about the opportunity in mobile content and how it led them to explore bringing speech recognition and computer vision into mobile gaming

(12:02) - Ryan Horrigan had a midlife crisis in his 20s and left the film industry to pursue VR as an outlet for the future of entertainment

(15:39) - Ryan explained how they explored incorporating AI into mobile gaming but ultimately decided to strip it away and focus on solving problems and reducing friction for players

(22:35) - Ryan and Daniel discuss the challenges they faced with creating an AI-driven narrative game and how it wasn't scalable or replayable, and how they struggled to pitch it to other game publishers.

(26:12) - Pivoting may require recalibrating team members or parting ways with people, which can be difficult and requires owning the decision-making process

(29:33) - Ryan and Armando discuss the importance of owning tough decisions as a founder, even if it affects team members

(32:37) - Ryan shares advice from Dick Costello about caring deeply for your people but not worrying about what they think of you when making tough decisions

(44:57) - Ryan discusses different types of pivots and how to communicate them to investors, emphasizing the importance of having the right data points and assessing the pivot intelligently

(26:24) - Daniel asks about conversational skills needed for founders to have regular dialogues with each other, Armando mentions the need to be okay with a messy process, Ryan emphasizes the need to be willing to kill ideas and defend others, and keeping the North Star in mind helps

(34:36) - Ryan adds that founders must take ownership of tough decisions and prioritize their own health, as stress can manifest physically

(54:04) - Ryan suggests aiming for consent rather than consensus when making decisions as a company, and shares a process for identifying dissenting opinions based on business considerations rather than emotions or egos

MOre About Armando and Ryan

About Armando

Originally from New Mexico, Armando began his career in 2007, working primarily as a VFX and indie film producer.

In 2015, he embarked on a journey into the nascent virtual reality industry, joining one of the leading VR production companies as a Post Producer, Executive Producer, and Head of Post Production. During this time he worked with numerous award-winning directors, including: two-time Academy Award nominee Lucy Walker on A History of Cuban Dance and The Vodou Healer; Sundance Grand Jury prize nominee Sandy Smolan on The Click Effect, which was nominated for an Emmy; and Imraan Ismail on The Displaced, which won the Grand Prix at Cannes. He also produced Take Flight, starring Benicio del Toro, Michael Fassbender, and Charlize Theron.

In 2016, Armando began working as a freelance Director of Virtual Reality. He collaborated with Academy Award Best Picture nominee, Luca Guadagnino, on two VR films featuring acclaimed artists Rob Pruitt and Taryn Simon, and with Independent Spirit Award winner Gina Prince-Bythewood on LA Noir, a nine-episode VR film noir series, starring Natalie Portman, Kristen Stewart, and Don Cheadle, which won an AICP Next award.

In 2017, Armando began writing and directing his own work, starting with Mercy, a VR film shot on location in Cameroon that combined 360-degree documentary footage with 3D animated dream sequences designed by social impact artist, Sutu. The film was an official selection at Tribeca and SXSW and was exhibited at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia. He then directed A Life in Flowers (2019), featuring renowned botanical sculptor, Azuma Makoto. Participants reflected on themes of life and death during a conversation with artificial intelligence-powered, real-time renderings of flowers. The project was in competition at the Venice Biennale, received a favorable review by Art Critique, and was on display at the Phi Centre in Montreal, Canada. His most recent VR film, Nothing is Safe (2022), was an official selection of the Cannes Marché du Film.

Armando’s work in interactive VR and artificial intelligence led to an interest in video games. In 2018, he cofounded Artie, a next-gen video game company that has attracted nearly $40 million in venture capital from numerous notable investors, including: Warner Music Group, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, and YouTube founder Chad Hurley.

In 2023, LA Weekly named Armando one of the top ten innovative minds disrupting the entertainment space. He has spoken frequently about the future of entertainment at venues such as: Sundance, Google, Facebook, SXSW, and the Toronto International Film Festival.

About Ryan

Ryan is the co-founder and CEO of Artie, a next-gen mobile gaming platform. We bring high-quality games directly to players on the world’s most popular social media and video apps – with no additional app download required. With Artie, people can easily discover, instantly play and share games with their friends on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, WhatsApp, and more.

By circumventing app stores, we eliminate the friction of app downloads, bypass Apple and Google’s 30% store fees, and dramatically reduce customer acquisition costs while boosting virality compared to today's mobile games.

The Artie team is from Riot Games, Activision/Blizzard, EA, Zynga, King, Glu Mobile, Playtika, Jam City, Playstation, Tencent, Apple, Amazon, Meta, Snap, Lyft, and Disney.

Artie's investors include Digital (Steve Cohen, Mark Daniel, Benjamin Milstein); YouTube founder Chad Hurley; Zynga founder Mark Pincus; Roblox Chief Product Officer Manuel Bronstein; Kevin Durant & Rich Kleiman; Naomi Osaka; Tyler & Cameron Winklevoss; Cyan Banister; Warner Music Group; Allen & Company; Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment; and former Disney D2C Chairman and TikTok CEO, Kevin Mayer.

Before co-founding Artie, Ryan served as Chief Content Officer of the Comcast-backed VR & AR startup Felix & Paul Studios, where he oversaw content and business development, strategy, and partnerships.

Prior to Felix & Paul, Ryan was a studio executive at Fox/New Regency. He oversaw the development and production of feature films, including Academy Award Best Picture Winner “12 Years A Slave.” He began his career in the Motion Picture department at CAA and at Paramount Pictures.

Ryan is a two-time Emmy Award winner for immersive entertainment projects he produced with President Barack Obama and NASA, as well as a Peabody Award winner. He’s a former Hollywood Reporter 35 Under 35 honoree and has spoken at E3, Cannes, Sundance, Google, Meta, among other events.

Full Transcript

Daniel Stillman:

I will officially welcome you both to the Conversation Factory. Ryan, Armando, thanks for making time today. I really appreciate it.

Ryan Horrigan:

Thanks for having us.

Armando Kirwin:

Good to be here. Yeah, excited.

Daniel Stillman:

So my first question is how did you two meet and what are your favorite snacks?

Armando Kirwin:

So we met at a conference site, I think officially, but I had known about Ryan because we had both gone into virtual reality when that was at its peak. And we were both at two really successful VR companies. And Ryan had this reputation of being this absolute killer who could get all the money and all the best partnerships and all the best IP.

Daniel Stillman:

That's a pretty good rep.

Armando Kirwin:

So I knew of Ryan, but I don't think we officially met until the conference, right Ryan? Like in San Francisco, I think?

Ryan Horrigan:

Yeah, it was the San Francisco Film Festival. We were on a panel together. And I don't remember what we were talking about, probably just VR and how it's going to change the world. And this was probably in 2016, I'm guessing, or '17.

Armando Kirwin:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

So you guys were on a panel together, hadn't met, and this is the meet cute.

Armando Kirwin:

Yes.

Daniel Stillman:

This is the moment.

Armando Kirwin:

Yeah, and then we started chatting, and I remember thinking, "This dude should be the CEO of a company." I think I even told Ryan that. I was like, "You should be the CEO." But yeah, those were the early days for sure.

Ryan Horrigan:

And I also was like, "Well, Armando, you understand technology in a way that I don't. I'm just a business content strategy guy," almost like a salesman in better terms.

Armando Kirwin:

No, maybe in the beginning. I think that you've become a technologist as well at this point. But maybe in that era, yeah.

Ryan Horrigan:

Yeah. But we started talking about the future of entertainment. I think that was the reason why we started hanging out and talking is we had this mutual fascination with the future of entertainment. And I think that's one of the reasons why we were in VR, because we both had come from traditional film entertainment, the movie business, from different corners of it.

Armando Kirwin:

Yeah.

Ryan Horrigan:

And we both wanted to leave that business to do something more innovative, more bleeding edge and interesting.

Armando Kirwin:

Yeah, exactly. And we-

Daniel Stillman:

[inaudible 00:02:31] going to avoid the snack cover question completely.

Armando Kirwin:

Oh yeah, the snacks.

Daniel Stillman:

You're just going to leave that aside. I only asked this specific-

Armando Kirwin:

That's hard.

Daniel Stillman:

...because I just had a snack before I got here, and I'll just go first because I had a little spoonful of peanut butter. And for me, peanut butter is just this deeply soothing... It just always gets a little bit of protein, a little bit of flavor, and just gets me above the line again. So that's the reason why it's top of line for me is the snack that helps you just get through that bridge in the day. It's a completely personal and totally irrelevant question.

Armando Kirwin:

Does coffee count as a snack?

Daniel Stillman:

That's a great question, Armando.

Ryan Horrigan:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

Now we're going to have a philosophical-

Armando Kirwin:

I drink a lot of coffee these days. Yeah,

Ryan Horrigan:

I think it does, it's a like ritual.

Armando Kirwin:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

How much milk and sugar do you put in your coffee? Is it enough to...

Armando Kirwin:

That number's been creeping up for sure. Slowly but surely. I used to be like, no, you can't do that. And now I'm like, ah, I need all the support I can get. You know?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. No, I totally understand.

Ryan Horrigan:

So my answer would be if I'm trying to be healthy, which is hard, some nuts or a smoothie. And if I'm being my true self, it would be french fries probably, or something like that.

Daniel Stillman:

French fries as a snack is a really interesting concept.

Ryan Horrigan:

Yeah. Because it could go with a meal or you could just have a side of french fries for no reason, for your lunch. Which is a little strange, but I do that sometimes.

Daniel Stillman:

Whatever to get you over the hump. So that's good to know. Now I know what to send you guys in the middle of the day. If I was going to send a delivery to just make your day peak, that would be hot fries and a steaming cup of Joe. That's really good to know.

Armando Kirwin:

I mean, what else do you need, really?

Daniel Stillman:

Honestly, nothing else.

Armando Kirwin:

Yeah. Honestly, yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

So this moment when you two met is really fascinating to me. I have to be honest, because the formation of human relationships is always a crazy mystery. Because there's tons of people you've met, tons of people you've probably been on panels with where you didn't have a second conversation and a third and a fourth and a fifth. What do you think kept you having a conversation all that time?

Armando Kirwin:

I think, well, part of it is that we had both been in the film industry for about 10 years, even though I was coming up through visual effects and Ryan was coming from the studio side. So there's different perspectives, but there's a shared knowledge base. So we could have conversations easily on a range of topics that we didn't have to start at basics. There was a lot of shared knowledge. But there was also a lot of shared pain because we had been through VR. And in a lot of ways our company today is based on that experience, like the way we're distributing games is almost an answer to how difficult it was to get things done in VR. So I think it was a shared context, both good and bad, that kick started things and made it pretty natural.

Ryan Horrigan:

Same with film and TV too. I think I was in the film business when it was starting to shrink and become different. I came to Hollywood to start my first job out of college when the first writer strike was happening, or the most recent writer strike... Well, I don't even know if it's... One of the most recent writer strikes. In 2006, and that was when we had iPhones. We had, not yet streaming, but we had maybe early YouTube if my dates are correct or we were on the precipice of that. So everything was starting to change, but people in traditional media hadn't recognized it yet. But I think there's some people like myself who were younger who were living online, who were starting to read the tea leaves.

So I think people like Armando and I were just of this generation where, I don't know, I'm not going to speak for Armando, but I grew up my whole life wanting to be in the movies. Not in the movies, but working on movies as a producer or a executive or a writer or a director. And to go from being 10 years old and being a cinephile to dreaming about that for the next 10 years while you're in school and then getting to do it, but then the rug gets pulled out from under you and you're like, oh wait, this whole medium has changed. Not because it's not a great medium, but consumer habits have changed. Technology is changed the way we consume content.

So I had this, it was almost having a midlife crisis but in your twenties over your profession that you had obsessed about forever. Where you're like, wait a second, this is not what it was supposed to be. And I'm like a decade too late, at least.

Daniel Stillman:

Oh man.

Ryan Horrigan:

So that's kind of what led me into VR. I had five years in the film business where I was climbing the ranks and I was working on some Oscar winning movies, but I was deeply unhappy because I felt movies were becoming less culturally relevant, particularly with young people. And I could see that economically the business was shrinking and changing and not in a good way. So for me, VR was an outlet or a stepping stone to the future where I was like, okay, I can have one foot in Hollywood and one foot in Silicon Valley. VR is being supported by Google and Facebook, among others, in a significant way.

This might be the future of entertainment where I can now be in the content, which is a whole different experience. And I still think that the concept of that is incredible. It's just that everyone got way too ahead of themselves in terms of how long or hard it would be. It's kind of like that quote, and I'm going to butcher it: a lot less happens in a year than you expect, but a lot more happens in 10 years than you could imagine your wildest dreams. It's that kind of thing. I think we all thought VR would just change the world in a year or two, but it might end up doing so in 10 plus years.

Daniel Stillman:

So Armando, was that some of the shared pain that Ryan was talking through, what the state of the industry and where you saw it-

Armando Kirwin:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

...where it was and where you wanted it to go?

Armando Kirwin:

Exactly. And I think we were both at these really cool VR startups, some of the best funded, doing the best work. But just in a nutshell, there just weren't enough people. We couldn't reach enough people. 'Cause there was so much friction, right? You have to go buy this thing. And at the time, they were even much clunkier than they are even today.

And so I think it's hard when you're doing your best work creatively and technically, you're pushing the envelope, you're learning new things, and then no one even knows what you're doing.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Armando Kirwin:

It's fun, it was really fun. And some of the coolest people I've ever met were in VR because they were true mavericks and they were just such interesting thinkers. But when we started this company, the thing that's actually been persistent for our entire journey was this idea of how do we reach the most people as easily as possible? And that's the one part of our vision that's never changed. And I think it was a direct response to VR. In hindsight, I don't know that I was super aware of it at the time-

Ryan Horrigan:

Yeah.

Armando Kirwin:

...but now it's like really-

Ryan Horrigan:

In Hollywood.

Armando Kirwin:

...it was crystal clear. Yeah.

Ryan Horrigan:

And film and TV too. It was film, and maybe not TV with Netflix and streaming, but theatrical film in a theater, it was reaching fewer people, particularly young people. So I think we were just thinking to ourselves, well, if VR is not here today like we all thought it was, in a massive way, then mobile is still the dominant platform for this foreseeable future. But what is the opportunity in mobile, in the content space? We have YouTube, we have streaming video, we have social networks, we have app based mobile games that go through Apple and Google. Where's the white space? And that's what led us to a number of thoughts.

The first was we were actually super early, because right now we're in this AI, generative AI hype cycle right now it seems like. And some of this stuff is awesome, but we were actually in the first hype cycle of that when we started Artie in late 2018, there was a little hype cycle. And what we were trying to do was bring speech recognition, natural language understanding and computer vision into mobile gaming in a way that would let players interact with game characters or NPCs in a more personalized, pseudo intelligent way. So imagine talking to your game characters and having a conversation as you play the game. That'd be pretty cool. Or instead of watching boring cut scenes or cinematics, those were more interactive and more human, more uniquely human. So we went down this path for about a year or so exploring that, and that was what we started Artie to do, all while also trying to do it over the top and through the mobile web. Which goes to what Armando was saying, which is reaching a lot of people.

And we're trying to do these two things at once. And I think, as you find in startups, don't try to do more than one thing, do one thing really well. And I think we've had a couple of instances over our trajectory where the bringing interactive entertainment or games to people over the top, to use a video term, has been the constant. But we've gotten involved in a couple of other things along the way, AI being one of them. I think what we found out with AI stuff is also that VR is going to take a long time. We had cracked the input side of things of we can get a game listening to your voice and then converting that into text and then using that text to make decisions in the game. But we hadn't figured out the generative dialogue part, the stuff that GTP-4 I guess today does really well.

And then the output of real time speech synthesis and coding that generative dialogue into a voice of a character you know in real time. So there's a lot of hard stuff there. And then the computer vision, whole separate thing, recognizing your engagement or your contextual stuff to your environment. So we still believe in all that stuff in the long term, but we also found it really limited us in terms of the type of games or interactive experiences we could make.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Ryan Horrigan:

So we at some point decided to strip that away for now and put that on the shelf, and then just focus on bringing really great mobile games to people in a unique and differentiated way that would solve problems, mainly friction, for players.

Daniel Stillman:

So this, I think, a really fundamental question for us to peel some layers of the onion on around the conversation at the heart of a pivot, deciding to double down on one thing or to leave something else behind. Armando, I'm wondering how you as a co-founding team approach the dialogue, the deliberation, the discussion, the decision around, let's do more of this, let's do less of this, and to make the decision to be all in. How does that get navigated. Because it's complex?

Armando Kirwin:

I wish it was a decision. Because honestly, it's not. It's more a year of throwing yourself against a wall and then eventually being like, okay, well we tried really hard and that's just not working. So like Ryan said, when we were attempting to combine AI and game engines and do all of that instantly on social media, we tried really, really, really hard. We made demos with huge IP that we can't talk about. We hired all the right people, which we had to poach from other bigger companies. And it's a lot. And then you're hearing, "Oh wait, this investor's saying that, or the feedback we're getting from this person who is trying this game out is this."

So it's not just one decision, but eventually, if you're honest... I think it's really hard, I think people get stuck when the decision that they made, they should have made 12 months ago and they're still not confronting it. That's when you're in trouble. But it's okay to take a little bit of time to make sure. And for us, that's what we did. We sunset a lot of our AI efforts in our second year, and then we just doubled down on... Everyone will tell you, you'll be like, "Oh, this AI stuff is not quite working. But I love the idea of playing a game on Instagram and TikTok." That's so crazy to me. So you'll be hearing it and then you just have to come to terms with bit.

Daniel Stillman:

Ryan, does that line up with your perspective? A million small discussions around-

Ryan Horrigan:

Oh yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

...signals you're hearing.

Ryan Horrigan:

This sounds horrible to say, but if you're a founder I think you understand this. If you would be like, how many times has the company pivoted? I think to anyone from the outside looking in, it's once or once and a half. But to us it feels like micro pivots every day. It's almost like you're trying to constantly get data points from users or from investors or other people. And the more data points, obviously the better. And you're constantly shaping this clay.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Ryan Horrigan:

You're kind of like, together, you're shaping this thing with new information every day. So to Armando's point, it's really hard to say do a pivot in a day. I think that there's probably almost no company that has done that.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Ryan Horrigan:

It might look that, But there's a lot of conversations and data points, and it's probably different for every company and every pivot. But for us, yeah, I think this first one, this one out of AI was over the course of maybe a year in 2019 and early 2020 probably. But I think by the time the pandemic started, we knew directionally where we were going, except we had a whole new problem, which is a global pandemic.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. And we can get to that in a moment. I wanna-

Armando Kirwin:

You also have to imagine, okay, now certain people on your team aren't relevant, but you need all these new people. And hiring, and that takes a long time. And also sometimes you learn certain things as you're building. As we built out some of our AI tech and we got a really, really nuanced understanding of the costs of operating it, that also factors in. So there are certain things you just can't even know conversationally that involve the types of people on your team or the nitty-gritty of getting this tech actually working and stuff that. So yeah, it takes time. It takes time.

Ryan Horrigan:

And that stuff's really hard, to those two points. We found out with this AI stuff that the only type of game that made sense for us to create was a voice driven narrative game. Think of it like a game meets Alexa, if you've ever done any of those interactive stories or choose your own adventures on Alexa. Or if you're familiar with the choose your own adventures on Netflix, like Bandersnatch is probably the first and most popular one. We were making games like that where you could be with a superhero character or a movie character and go through an interactive story where you're like their companion. And that is or was a genre that has been successful. But what we learned is it's actually a really tough genre, because it's actually more akin to film or TV in the sense that you have to make lots of content that will be experienced one time, or much of it will not be seen by the player at all because you're choosing your own path.

Daniel Stillman:

Oh my Lord.

Ryan Horrigan:

So it's exponential content creation. So there was this irony. It was like-

Daniel Stillman:

Which doesn't, all that surface material, that surface area doesn't even get exposed to the customer-

Ryan Horrigan:

Correct.

Daniel Stillman:

...necessarily. Wow.

Ryan Horrigan:

Correct. So that was the only genre that really made sense, that was so obvious to us. But it was also the genre that required the most art resources and production resources. And it wasn't a replayable game. So we were like, oh, this is actually horrible because this doesn't scale right? And it's really expensive and laborious, and it's antithetical to the idea of AI. AI should make things easier and more automated. And in fact, by having AI as a feature for players, it was making our game creation more complicated. And then when we went to go talk, this was the real test, we went to go talk to the founders of some of the biggest game publishers, mobile game publishers in the world. We happen to know three or four of them, one of them's our investor. What became clear to us was everyone thought this was neat, but they didn't feel there was a way to make it make sense for their current hit games. And their current hit games didn't need it, they were already successful.

So we started to compare ourselves as an analogy to Niantic, who makes Pokemon Go. In that we had heard a lot about their early story, and ours was starting to feel similar. And obviously they're very successful and it worked out for them, but we felt the outcome was going to be very much a coin flip or binary, and we didn't like the odds. So what I mean by that is Niantic was pitching a new type of gameplay experience to other game developers initially as a platform. So they were pitching GPS or out in the world games, there's probably a better... Location based games. And they were pitching AR, the combination of the two. And that's what Pokemon Go is. And I think the game publishers out there, from what I heard, didn't really respond to that. They're like, "Hey, we're not making games like that right now, and our games are already successful, so why are we talking?"

And then when they actually thought about it, they were like, "Okay, we're going to have to do this ourselves. We're going to have to make our own game," which they did. And then they re-skinned it as Pokemon Go and they got the rights and the game is still very successful, but there haven't been other games like it, which is interesting. No one has copied them. There aren't any other GPS AR games out there of note. Not really. And most people don't use the AR mode when they play Pokemon Go according to the data.

So anyway, it's really interesting, and we felt like we were going to go down that path. We're like, "Okay, we're going to be make these voice voice-driven games. No one else is going to care, none of the other publishers because it's just weird. And we're going to have to make a hit game with huge IP to make this work.

Daniel Stillman:

Right, which is very heavy approach.

Ryan Horrigan:

Yes. It doesn't feel a startup, like a scalable startup.

Daniel Stillman:

Right. Whereas the idea is let's make a platform and many people will use the platform.

Ryan Horrigan:

Yes.

Daniel Stillman:

So a couple of things that I'm hearing, which I want to make sure I've gotten this right, 'cause this is important stuff. One is that the feedback loops, the concept is sometimes this idea of a pace layer. That certain things take a while to get the feedback loop, to find out what customers think, to find out what the market wants, to find out how the technology really plays out to find out what the costs really are. It can take multiple months up to a year to make sense of all of those signals that are... and what all the constraints really are.

And you're having conversations constantly. Micro-pivoting on what does this mean? What does that mean? Are we seeing what we're seeing? And I think the question I have is, because you mentioned we're having lots of conversations, and that's of course the thing I care the most about. What do you think are the conversational skills that founders should be thinking about that enable them to have those dialogues on a regular basis? Because it's not one big conversation, it's many, many smaller conversations. What are the skills that you feel you're bringing into those dialogues with each other that make it possible to have those?

Armando Kirwin:

That's a hard-

Daniel Stillman:

It is.

Armando Kirwin:

...that's a hard one. But I think part of it is, I think you have to be okay. You have to be able to function in this really messy, noisy situation without wanting to kill each other. So that's a big part of it. Because you are, it's just so asymmetrical. I might hear one thing from one person, Ryan might hear another thing from someone else, or we might learn something a week apart or what... We have to constantly be sharing, but also with the team. So you're really signing up for a... It's pretty frothy environment. So I think part of the skillset is to somehow be okay with that. I think a lot of people can... It can be hard to take, and you can maybe end up just doubling down on your vision and not listening and then you're screwed. So I think that probably one of the skills is just somehow trying to stay calm, knowing that it's just really... It is a pretty sloppy process, to be honest.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, yeah.

Ryan Horrigan:

Yeah, I agree. I think you have to be willing to kill your ideas, basically. You have to be willing to have these moments where you think you have brilliance, but then on the other hand, be ready to kill them at a moment's notice and be okay with it. So you have to constantly find some source of energy to keep coming at it with new angles and ideas. And you need to know when there's a big thing when you're like, "Hey, we're going to let go of all this AI stuff and put it on the shelf and just focus on this other thing." You have to be willing to do that. And not everyone is, and I think there's this spectrum of when's the right moment to make that decision? When is too early, when is too late? But I think on the other hand, you also want to have conviction on the things that really matter.

So you have to be able to do both things. You have to be able to kill things and not get too bummed out and have fresh ideas, but also be able to defend things and continue with things when they get hard. So knowing the difference between the two is difficult.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, that is a needle to thread. You're right, Armando, it's not trivial, for sure.

Armando Kirwin:

Yeah, it's not trivial. But that's also the difference between a goal and a piece of technology. If you're just broadly interested in the future of entertainment, yeah, you're going to be messing around with all kinds of stuff. You're going to be looking into the VR, AR, you're going to be curious about blockchain, you're going to be curious about AI. You might bring some of that stuff into your efforts, learn some stuff. So I think that you're still moving forward if you don't get too married to a specific idea or technology, per se.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Armando Kirwin:

So I think that that also helps. It's remembering the big picture, I guess is a cliche way of talking about it, but it's true.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Armando Kirwin:

So we're always trying to figure out what, what's actually working here? What do people want? What are people interested in? How can we reach a lot of people? Stuff that. And that helps get you through the more emotional side of like, wow, we just spent a year on this crazy thing and we're going to not use it.

Daniel Stillman:

So it sounds like keeping the north star in mind is something that's helpful. I saw Ryan, yes you, sir, in the back. You're raising your hand.

Ryan Horrigan:

Well, there's one other thing, which I don't know if this is part of another conversation you want to have, but also when you make a pivot, as Armando alluded to earlier, you may then find yourself with some mismatch or imbalance on the team, where now suddenly you have the wrong people on the team. So that then requires, in many situations, either recalibrating those team members into different roles or different functions or parting ways with people, which as you know, anyone can imagine is very difficult. And then feels as a founder, you have to A, own that, and B, you have to acknowledge that your decision making process along the way bears responsibility in that, right?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Ryan Horrigan:

So if you've decided to pivot the company, and now there's three people who you're going to have to part ways with, that's on you. And you have to own that. And I think the wrong decision would be to bury your head in the sand and try to keep them if they really shouldn't be there, because you're also stifling their careers too.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Ryan Horrigan:

Like we had some brilliant AI people who should go do brilliant AI things, but when we were no longer doing it doesn't make sense for them to be here with us. But that's a tough conversation.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, it really is.

Armando Kirwin:

It's really hard because these are high performers, they're your friends. They've done nothing wrong, you've done nothing wrong. It's really hard to sever that relationship.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, and you sold them a vision.

Armando Kirwin:

We actually, even last week I had to do this. And it's been years, and it was still terrible. So it's hard.

Daniel Stillman:

How do you take care of yourself? Because this is, I don't think many people think or have this discussion about the cost of a pivot. We think about, "Oh, we pivoted and we succeeded, we won. That was great." And we don't think about the shedding and the fact that, as you said, we have sold a vision, recruited these people, sometimes poached them. They may be friends and collaborators. And then we get to a point where we say, "Hey, this is where we part ways." Armando, that's hard. How do you take care of yourself emotionally and mentally? Because I definitely have friends who talk about the challenge of letting someone go just around pure economics. This is a decision you made.

Armando Kirwin:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

Right?

Armando Kirwin:

It's really hard. I don't do anything special aside from therapy. We have an awesome coach. And only in the last year or so, Ryan and I have gotten much more serious about downtime and other things that we didn't have the liberty of doing in the first few years. And also just your body is pretty intuitive too. You'll crash hard and you'll phase in and out a little bit in those moments of stress, those weeks or days where you just can't. So I don't have a brilliant answer. Ryan, do you have a better answer? That wasn't great.

Daniel Stillman:

I think it's-

Ryan Horrigan:

No, I mean I-

Daniel Stillman:

We'll come back to you, Armando. 'Cause there's lots of [inaudible 00:29:31] there. But Ryan, what's on your mind?

Ryan Horrigan:

Well, I was going to say all of that is true in my experience too. I think that there's a human decision happening and real implications. So you have to take that seriously. You have to handle that eloquently and with compassion or empathy. But you also can't ignore a decision like that if it has to be made. You have to own it. You have to be the face of it. You have to stand up to it. You can't have someone else do it for you. It's yours. It's your thing to own. So I think as founders, we know that. It does get a little easier in that when you've had to do it a couple times, or if you've ever gone through a layoff situation, it sucks but you also have to learn how to get through it for your team. Because there are a lot of people who are still with you and you're doing it for a reason, to get better. So you have to focus on that.

But I would say to Armando's point, taking care of your health and your mental health is really important as a founder. And I think there's been times when myself and Armando have both found ourselves not doing that, and we try to be a little bit more aware of that today. Like I would say I'm getting older. I'm not that old, but I'm getting older. But I would say my health has never been probably poorer than the last few years of being a founder. And I do think a lot of that is just the stress manifesting as things like back pain or trouble sleeping or just stuff like that. And then just trying to make the time to work out more or be more intentional about how you eat. I think those things start to matter more when your body is reacting to say this mental stress that being a founder brings with it.

Armando Kirwin:

Yeah. I think Ryan hit on a big one for me that I forgot to mention, which is the team. So when you're in the process of doing this, when you know you're going this way and everyone knows that say this person doesn't fit the new model, there's cognitive dissonance with every day that they're still there. Even if everyone loves that person and that person loves everyone... I'm not talking about that. I'm just talking about... You know what I mean? So-

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Armando Kirwin:

...when you do it, you actually help the team too though. So it's almost the hit you have to take as a founder, but your team will thank you because they have that extra clarity and they don't have the cognitive dissonance now of, "Well, what's that person doing if we're all over here doing this?" So-

Daniel Stillman:

Right, people know that. It's not like nobody's aware of this.

Armando Kirwin:

...that context is good. Everyone knows. They're all smart, they're all... So pretending that they're not is just such a waste of time. So getting really head on is great because even the person you're letting go also knows what's happening. So you can't just beat around the bush or pretend it's about this or something else, it's best to just do it. But yeah, thinking about the team helps, thinking about that boost helps a lot.

Ryan Horrigan:

Can I say one thing that-

Daniel Stillman:

Of course.

Ryan Horrigan:

...was a quote from, I think it's from a few years ago, at a TechCrunch Disrupt. I just saw it on YouTube. I think it was Dick Costello when he was at Twitter. And he was talking about team building culture and making tough decisions and dealing with tough things like these things. And he said something that really resonated with me. It sounds cold, but if you think about it makes sense from a founder point of view. He said, "As a founder, you have to care deeply about your people, but at the same time you can't care about what they think of you." And I thought that was really interesting. And his point there, what I think he was trying to say was, you actually do have to operate authentically in a way that shows empathy and caring. It has to be real because these are your people and this is your company. But when you make a tough decision, you can't worry about everyone's collective feelings. You have to make the decision that you as the leader believe needs to be made. And you can't get weighed down by what someone might think about that. You have to move forward. And that is the hard part, right?

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Ryan Horrigan:

But I thought that was really interesting.

Daniel Stillman:

It is. I'm so glad that there's these layers of conversation that we're talking about. The conversation that you're having with yourself. I think Armando, I appreciate you bringing up, and Ryan, you bringing up listening to your body. Because that's the base level, the signals that I am giving to myself. And also it's not, sometimes men don't often seek therapy. And so the idea that a founder needs a therapist and a coach is not something that people... You need a therapist and a coach. I think it's great to hear you've advocate for that. 'Cause I think there are very different types of conversations that you're having.

Ryan Horrigan:

Yeah.

Armando Kirwin:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

How would you characterize what you get from one versus the other?

Armando Kirwin:

Well yeah, in therapy you're learning about yourself and hopefully recognizing certain patterns that you have. Not that they're easy to fix, but at least you know what's going on. But a lot of the coaching that I get, I think Ryan, we have the same coach. That's more about where we're trying to go. It's more about the future and how to get there and how to think about things. So one's about you in the moment and maybe why you're this way. And the other is a lot more future oriented. Like okay, what are the steps you should be taking over the next 12 months to achieve this goal? That's where the coaching is about increasing future outcomes, whatever they might be.

Ryan Horrigan:

Tactical stuff of how you want to deal with this problem or these players or people in this situation. And it's interesting that Armando and I have the same coach, but we see the coach separately, which I think is really interesting. And we never see this person together. And I really like that. I think it, for whatever reason, that really works. Because sometimes there's this connection that's made between this person and Armando and I that there's certain things that Armando and I can talk about together, but then there's probably certain things that are better discussed separately where this person can build a bridge or help us. So it's been really good, I think, for both of us. But then also just personally, regardless of how we relate to one another, just for each of us individually it's quite good.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, it's very interesting you mentioned that. 'Cause I think there's some people who think, "No, no, no, we should have different coaches so that we can have total silence," versus the benefit of them hearing the stories or the complexity of them hearing stories potentially about the other person.

Armando Kirwin:

Yeah, [inaudible 00:36:21] makes sense. Again, it's future oriented though. So it's about helping us achieve certain goals. I think the added context is what makes that coaching even more powerful.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome.

Armando Kirwin:

Yeah, if it was about our childhoods or something, then you could totally keep that stuff separate. Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

Fair. So I think there's two more layers that I think that are important that I want to talk about. One is the cadence and format of how you two structure your own regular check-ins. Like how often you're having your own appointment with each other and how you structure that. And then there's another piece, if we think about the layers of conversation, we've talked about the pivot that you're having and this sensing that you're having with yourself and the conversations you're having. But we haven't talked about how you have the conversation with your funders, your investors as you go through that pivot. And I imagine that there's a level of complexity there.

So I'm hoping we can address both of those, are two very, very different questions. I probably shouldn't have introduced both, and that's bad hosting. But I'd love to talk about first how... You guys have your coaches, your coach. You got your emotional check-ins. How often are you two meeting and is there any specific structure you're using when you meet to make sure you're having the right conversations?

Ryan Horrigan:

I would say no, there's no specific structure and there's no specific time. And we talk once or twice a day, I would say, for 10 to 60 minutes. It really depends on what the conversation is.

Daniel Stillman:

That's interesting. So it's ad hoc?

Armando Kirwin:

It used to be a lot more. We used to call each other 20 times a day and it was craziness, but the company was smaller. In the last 15 months we've built a executive team for the first time. And so Ryan and I attend reoccurring meetings together, certain meetings with the team that operationally it's just easier for us, also for our team to not... Because the problem with telephone calls is no one else is there. No one else is learning and hearing and working through stuff. So it reached a point where it was actually harmful for us to have so many one-on-one conversations. It was driving our team crazy.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, because you're moving forward without your team.

Armando Kirwin:

Right.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Armando Kirwin:

Exactly. So we had to retrain ourselves in the last year or so. At this stage of the company, as you're approaching maybe 50 people or whatever, you have to retrain yourself to actually not have all these one-on-one conversations because they're black holes of information. So we do talk still a couple times a day, but we used to make all of decisions on phone calls and we had to stop. So depends on where you're at, I think, in your journey. And also remote wise and stuff like that where people can't pick up what we're talking about in the office or whatever.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Armando Kirwin:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

That's a very interesting shift. Because obviously having, I've heard this from lots of early stage founders, a lot of conversation, just open dialogue, a lot of honesty and a lot of iteration. But you're at the point now where your senior leadership team needs to be part of the dialogue more frequently.

Ryan Horrigan:

Yeah. And I would say we've been really trying to work on right now in our company interdepartmental communication, because sometimes we find that different departments, let's say marketing and operations, and in our case, in a game company, art, engineering, product. There's all these different pods of people and they're all working towards this...

Daniel Stillman:

Uh oh.

Ryan Horrigan:

...goal, but-

Daniel Stillman:

Ryan warned us that his internet might do that.

Ryan Horrigan:

...sometimes they have different information, they have different strategies, agendas. Oh, sorry.

Daniel Stillman:

No, it's okay.

Ryan Horrigan:

Am I back?

Daniel Stillman:

We just had a tiny blip. You're back.

Ryan Horrigan:

Oh, okay.

Daniel Stillman:

So yeah, different strategies, different information.

Ryan Horrigan:

Yeah. So one thing we've been trying to do is create systems and processes that are simple and not too many of them that will bog us down to better disseminate information in an a sync manner, through a wiki, through Slack, through calendar invites. So we recently, and it's probably too late that we did this, we incorporated a process for agendas or meeting notes that gets shared through the whole company, except for sensitive ones like an HR meeting or something.

So let's say you're in engineering, you will have a multitude of ways to find out what happened in marketing this week, if you are so intrigued or if it matters to you. But then also getting departments to write weekly recaps and then larger monthly recaps and do some show and tell, sharing stuff during our all hands that's more about educating people on the great work they're doing.

Because one thing I think every company eventually finds out is you end up in meetings where people just go through status updates or slides, and that's terrible. If you have someone just reading to you what's on a slide that you should have read before the meeting started, that's just a waste of everyone's time. So what we've found is we need to get people actually having a discourse and having healthy debates or disagreements and also showing people how things work that they've built or that they're doing. So we're just getting more intentional with all that stuff. And it's taken us a while. But it's that thing where you don't want to do too many things, you don't have too many systems, too many processes. 'Cause then you get bogged down, right?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. You don't want to over structure, certainly not the size you're at.

Armando Kirwin:

Yeah. And it's remarkably hard. You'd think, oh, there's so many startups, there's so many companies in the world or teams, this stuff has all been figured out. No, it's so hard. It's really remarkably hard to get 50 people to always have the same information as each other at the same time and be running in the same direction. You do all of these things, and then you still end up having to... It's very clear. It's like, oh, I'm probably two months ahead of certain people on the company right now in terms of what we're thinking about, whatever. It never really ends. So that part's also just part of the learning, I think, of hitting the stage that we're at. It's you can maintain a real time sync when it's two people and they're talking to each other [inaudible 00:43:04]-

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Armando Kirwin:

...times a day.

Ryan Horrigan:

Well another thing that we often talk about is in a company like a startup, you go from a small group of people, let's say less than 10 or five, where you're doing stuff and you're managing people who are doing stuff. That's the first phase. The next phase is you're doing stuff still and you're managing managers, I guess. And then at some point you really shouldn't be doing stuff. And I mean stuff like building stuff, you should just be... Or as a CEO, you got to do the fundraising, you got in charge of communication and culture and alignment. Which maybe for us is expressed through OKRs, right?

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Ryan Horrigan:

But if you find yourself making too many granular decisions, then you're probably doing something wrong and you're probably micromanaging people. So we've really tried to over the last year say to ourselves, "Hey, how many decisions are we a part of?" And sometimes, myself included, Armando knows, we'll make mistakes and we'll get too granular on something. For example, why is this red and not blue? But then the minute you do it, you know you shouldn't be doing it. That's someone else's decision to own.

Daniel Stillman:

Like, d'oh. I do care, but I shouldn't be making this decision.

Ryan Horrigan:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

What a fascinating metric as a startup founder, number of decisions you are not touching but making and being a part of, it should drop.

Ryan Horrigan:

Right.

Daniel Stillman:

That's so interesting.

Ryan Horrigan:

Yes.

Armando Kirwin:

Yeah, it should drop. If you're hiring the right people, it should drop.

Daniel Stillman:

So we're getting close to the end of our time, which is shocking because we really hit a great vein, and I'm really... This is wonderful stuff. Is there anything that we have not talked about that we should talk about with the few minutes we have?

Armando Kirwin:

Well, do you want to talk about how you communicate pivots to investors, Ryan?

Ryan Horrigan:

Yeah. Look, I think it's not a secret that many, many startups, if not maybe more than people realize, do go through pivots. I actually think even companies who set out to build a particular product and end up succeeding have probably done a version of a pivot in terms of a product feature or who the customer is or their strategy of is it bottoms up? Is it top down? So I think there's different types of pivots. There's the real hard pivot. For lack of better examples, just the one in my brain, Slack was a gaming company that became a chat app. That's a pretty hard pivot, right?

Daniel Stillman:

Fair.

Ryan Horrigan:

And I think there was probably somewhere along the way, but they would probably tell you it wasn't a day that they decided. They had built this product for themselves, I think this is the story. And then they started using it, and then they were like, "Okay, we're going to actually just... this is the product." It's no longer a gaming company. Then there's like, "We were doing X and now we're doing Y," and it's a completely different industry. Those are super hard pivots. Then there's companies like us where it's like, "Oh, you were doing this thing and this other thing, and then you got rid of one of them." But you kept doing the same thing. You basically were doing two things and then you said, "Okay, it's just one thing now."

And then there's like the thing we just talked about where it's like, "Oh, I just changed my go-to market strategy and I'm going bottoms up instead of top down." But they're all versions of pivots. So I think when you go to an investor, A, you got to explain that succinctly and you got to prove that you have the right data points from the customer or the right people. But I think everyone's generally open to the idea if they feel you've assessed it intelligently with the right point of view or lens, with the right resources.

So yeah, we've never had an issue with that. I mean, I think if we were pivoting six times every year, that'd be a huge problem. But I think going from AI to bringing games into social media when that was already with us foundationally, for us that's worked out. But also building stuff in the gaming space is very hard and takes many years. It's a lot different than building a widget for Google Chrome that's going to do cool calendar stuff. Not to disparage that stuff, because those are huge businesses, by the way. But just gaming is a different level of complexity. And there are businesses that are way more complex, like in biotech or defense or something, right?

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Ryan Horrigan:

So-

Daniel Stillman:

It's quite a spectrum.

Ryan Horrigan:

...it's all relative. Yeah, yeah. So-

Daniel Stillman:

So one thing I'm hearing is you get one or two pivots.

Ryan Horrigan:

Yeah, that's it.

Daniel Stillman:

You can explain it with the narrative core, especially as you said, with the right data, saying, "Look, we've done our homework and our thesis we now know needs to be revised." Nobody's going to say, "No, stay where you're at." If they've bought into your vision, they may buy into your new narrative if you're sticking with the narrative core. So that's really helpful.

Armando Kirwin:

Especially investors. Investors theoretically are going to be like, "Yeah, that makes sense. I support you." I think the team can be a little harder, especially if someone's been working on... someone who's actually building whatever it was that you're not using anymore. Or even, "Oh shit. Well, this..." I don't know if I'm supposed to say that, but anyway-

Daniel Stillman:

You can curse as much as you want, it's all good.

Armando Kirwin:

...Oh darn, now you're going to lay off my friend. You're going to lay off my friend. So anyway, I think you get more feet dragging for sure on the team side, and that is obviously probably the most important relationship. So that you have to really manage in a more nuance way over a longer period of time.

Ryan Horrigan:

Or you get a fracture where half the people are gung-ho, and they're like, "Yeah, we see it too, and you're right." And then the other people are like, "No wait, why are you... What about this thing that we spent all this time on?"

Daniel Stillman:

How do you heal a fracture like that, when there are camps, factions?

Ryan Horrigan:

I don't think there's a perfect answer for that. I would say sometimes you're trying to bring people to the middle, but that's not always the case. Sometimes you're very firm like, "No, this is the direction." So it really just depends.

Daniel Stillman:

That's really interesting.

Armando Kirwin:

Yeah. And also your team composition, you'll have people on different sides of lots of debates. And as long as you can get them working together, even temporarily, it still makes sense. I'm sorry, it's torrentially down pouring so my [inaudible 00:49:27] is terrible now-

Daniel Stillman:

Actually, I can't hear... Zoom is really good at pulling away repetitive... So I can't hear it at all, you're amazing. It's all good. Yeah, sorry Ryan, go for it.

Ryan Horrigan:

One more just on that topic, something else I heard someone say, and I wish I could remember who recently. Someone who's sort of a operations guru, they said you ideally aren't looking for consensus, because consensus weighs you down. You're looking for consent.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Ryan Horrigan:

I really like that. You don't want a company where the CEO decides everything, that's not going to be good for anyone or for culture. And you might move quickly, but you're not going to get the best ideas. You're going to have bad ideas because it's going to be one person's idea. But then if you go for consensus, it's going to take forever and you're also going to revert to some sort of mean or middle ground that's not amazing.

But consent, like the way it was laid out to me, and there's a process for it. There's a high bar to actually challenge an idea when a group of people or whoever's putting this idea forward is put it out there. Let's say it's status quo or we're proposing something new. You want to make sure that you can identify when there's a dissenting opinion for a different strategy, that that opinion is pure from a business standpoint and it's not emotional or from a ego standpoint. And there's some ways to suss that out in a process that I read recently. I thought it was really interesting and just like, yeah, just get to consent not consensus.

Daniel Stillman:

If you have that link, if you dig it up, I'd love to see that.

Ryan Horrigan:

I'll share it with you, yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

And this really sounds like the disagree and commit mindset. Like we may disagree, but we need to get some data to learn and so let's get consent to at least try.

Gentlemen, this has been a wonderful, vital, vibrant conversation, but our time together is almost done. Where should people go to learn more about all things Ryan, Armando, and of course Artie. Where shall we direct people to the internet if they want to connect more to you two and the thing you're making together?

Armando Kirwin:

Just artie.com, A-R-T-I-E.com. You can keep up with us there. And our platform is already functional, so our first game is live on our platform so check it out. It's in alpha stage, so I'd love to have people playing the game and helping us improve it. And we have a second game that we're starting to work on as well. So lots of fun stuff. But yeah, I think that's probably the best way.

Daniel Stillman:

Awesome. Anything to add to that, Ryan?

Ryan Horrigan:

No, that's it. I mean, if you want to work at Artie, we're on LinkedIn too.

Daniel Stillman:

Excellent. Well, gentlemen, this has been a deep and nourishing conversation, so I will thank you for your time and call scene.

Ryan Horrigan:

Thank you.

Armando Kirwin:

Thank you so much.

Daniel Stillman:

All right.

The Power of Intention

I am excited to share my conversation with Leah Smart, who I had the pleasure of meeting at the Culture Summit where we were both giving main stage talks. Leah is brilliant! She’s all about helping people become the authors of their lives, which she does through her work on the LinkedIn Editorial team and hosting her LinkedIn podcast, In the Arena with Leah Smart, which is out every week wherever you find your podcasts.

She loves facilitating human development work for leadership teams through coaching and workshops and sharing science-backed actionable concepts and strategies to transform your life, your work, and your relationship to everyone around you.

Today we talk about how she approaches designing her conversations with guests as a dance, how she molds her conversations with herself through personal mantras, and her perspectives on the power of intention.

Links, Quotes, Notes and Resources

https://www.leahsmart.co/

Minute 2

Leah Smart:

I used to think that when I went into an interview, I had to show the person on the other side, that I was just as smart or close in knowledge, because I wanted to show them, "I'm your equal," in a way. What was really behind that, it for me probably, created more anxiety.

What was really behind that was, I have done a lot of work, and though I speak to so many people, who have gone the traditional educational route, I have a lot of experience and I read a lot and I learn a lot and what's funny is, it's like the more you know, the more you actually want to feel comfortable knowing very little and being more curious and a close friend of mine, who used to dance for the Royal Ballet of Denmark said to me, I was freaking out this one day, earlier last year, I was speaking to Deepak Chopra and he was my first in-person interview.

I was going to lose it. I call my friend Shelby, and I was like, "I don't even know, I'm so nervous. I can't even..." I was in my apartment waiting to go downtown to the office, to do this interview and she just said to me, "I used to dance." She used to dance for years and she said, "The thing I told myself, my mantra was, nothing to prove, only to share," and I've used that actually every time I've been in a situation, where I've felt my own performance anxiety jumping up. I'd say that's one, is realizing I do have expertise, but I'm not here to prove it to you.

I'm here to share with the other person in a conversation. I'm here to look at them as simply a human being, because that's all they are.

Minute 16

Leah Smart:

No matter where you sit on the socioeconomic spectrum, you are likely to experience some level of pain and/or suffering. I believe that we have put so much emphasis on what we have and what we succeed at and what we achieve at and I am totally guilty of this. I have dreams and goals and things I want to create and I think, "Gosh, all of us should have that, because it keeps you going," but what is missing, or I should say what we're doing, is putting all of our stock and investment in these external things. What do I have? How many people know me? What does my social following look like?

Do I look the right size today? Or is my hair okay today? How do people accept me? It's all these things, that are superficial that we all do it. We all fall victim to it. The challenge, is when you don't have anything to go back to, to re-tether you to what's real and to me, what is real, is not all of these things that have been created around us to keep us going, like little hamsters on a wheel.

It's the internal, it's the stuff in your inner world, where you want to invest and take stock and slow down and get connected and recognize how meaningful and small life is, right? It's the recognition that there is so much more beyond what you're experiencing now and that you are a small part of a huge world, but that your life is very meaningful and that you are so much more than the things that you are valued for, when you walk outside of your house or not valued for.

Minute 33

Leah Smart:

When we have a desire, the immediate thing to do, is to look at all the ways in which it's not happening and we're going, "I have a desire, and here are all the ways I lack. Here are all the ways, in which it's not going down." How do you feel when you have a desire and then you spend the next couple of days telling yourself how shitty it is, that you don't have it yet?

You feel pretty bad, and then you expect that thing to happen. If you just think about it logically, it's like, "I want a new job. I hate my job so much. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it," and then you think that your dream job's just going to show up and you're going to be happy? I haven't had that experience. The time that I hated my job, I went into another job, another company, that I also didn't love.

It wasn't like life turned around from that place. It's similar to, do you want to suffer on the way? And also, is the outcome of what you are trying to create, potentially is there an upside by not suffering along the way? For me to feel, is to feel the experience of what it will be like when, not from a place of lack, but from a place of familiarizing yourself, your brain, your body, to the experience of what it's going to be like when.

Minute 36

Leah Smart:

To truly experience something, can also show you that it's already yours. I'm 35, and a lot of women that I know and who are in my life, are are wanting partners and when you want a partner, what do you do?

You go, "I don't have one." You look at all the couples around. It's like there's couples everywhere. You're like, "I cannot walk a step, without seeing people who love each other," and you can either choose to get really pissed off and feel like you're never going to get it, or you can choose a little bit differently and what I realized was at the time when I was wanting partnership, if I could just sit in the feeling of love, I could realize that actually it was already mine.

Nobody was going to create that for me. It's actually just that there's someone I can point it toward, and that meant that I could feel it, without another person sitting in front of me. Because guess what? That person's going to come and they're going to piss you off sometimes and they're going to make you happy sometimes. They're going to... It's just the same. It's like, you have so much more autonomy and power when you can recognize what is inside of you and not that someone else is going to make it possible for you. It's just, they're presenting an opportunity for you to bring out what you already have.

AI Summary

Leah and Daniel discussed Leah's approach to interviews and the importance of being real in conversations. They also talked about the importance of investing in one's inner world, setting intentions before conversations, and creating what one desires through intentional action.

Meeting summary:

(3:56) - Leah discussed her recent interview with Rainn Wilson and her interest in exploring spirituality and ancient wisdoms in her work

(21:17) - Leah discusses LinkedIn's values and how they prioritize being a good person, doing the right thing, and acting like an owner

(24:46) - Leah emphasizes the importance of investing in one's inner world and recognizing the meaningfulness of life beyond external validation

(27:30) - Leah discusses the tension between accepting the current situation and driving towards what we want to create, and suggests focusing on changing our orientation to the gap between where we are and where we want to be to find contentment and calm along the way.

(30:41) - They talk about the importance of grounding oneself in spirituality or something greater, and how going inward can lead to being a better person when interacting with others

(35:54) - They discuss the need for human connection and meaningful conversations, and how everyone needs each other to function.

(45:30) - Daniel talks about the importance of being intentional in creating what one desires, rather than just running away from what they don't want

(46:52) - Leah discusses the importance of sitting with what one wants and becoming clear and intentional in their life, including routines and rituals that bring richness and ease

More About Leah

I'm on the LinkedIn Editorial team exploring the stories and ideas that increase clarity in our lives so we can work and live in a better world. My podcast, In the Arena with Leah Smart, is out every week wherever you find your podcasts. I'm also a keynote speaker for companies and events sharing science-backed actionable concepts and strategies to transform your life, your work, and your relationship to everyone around you.

With over 10 years of experience in learning, consulting, and coaching, I am passionate about human development and potential.

Previously, I was a Principal Learning Partner at LinkedIn, where I consulted, built, designed, and facilitated human development work for leadership teams through coaching and workshops.

Full Transcript

Daniel Stillman:

Oh, well now see, we'll just keep the messy intro.

Leah Smart:

Let's keep it.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. I officially welcome you to The Conversation Factory. I've been thinking about where to begin this conversation. Just generally speaking, what would you say are your favorite kinds of conversations?

Leah Smart:

I find that of all the interviews I've done, my favorite ones are the ones where I'm learning something or looking at something differently, where I get to be curious, where it feels more like a dance than a Q&A, where it's like you're just vibing and flowing and the outcome's going to be the outcome, but that the experience for the two people or however many people are in the conversation and then those who are listening and/or missing, because they're listening to a show weeks later or a month later, feel like they got to tune in to two friends. I was saying this yesterday, I got to speak with Rainn Wilson and afterward looking back, I was like, I really hope it felt like you got to peer into the window of two friends hanging out in a house, talking about something that you got to join in on and I want it to feel friendly, casual, but also interesting, respectful, relational, relatable, while also giving people space to learn something new and approach life differently.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. How do you think you do that, because you are a great interviewer. I've listened to some of your interviews. What are you bringing into that room? How do you feel like you're doing that?

Leah Smart:

Well, I think it starts with realizing what you're an expert in and what you are not an expert in and what you expect of yourself and what you shouldn't expect of yourself. I used to think that when I went into an interview, I had to show the person on the other side, that I was just as smart or close in knowledge, because I wanted to show them, "I'm your equal," in a way. What was really behind that, it for me probably, created more anxiety.

What was really behind that was, I have done a lot of work, and though I speak to so many people, who have gone the traditional educational route, I have a lot of experience and I read a lot and I learn a lot and what's funny is, it's like the more you know, the more you actually want to feel comfortable knowing very little and being more curious and a close friend of mine, who used to dance for the Royal Ballet of Denmark said to me, I was freaking out this one day, earlier last year, I was speaking to Deepak Chopra and he was my first in-person interview.

I was going to lose it. I call my friend Shelby, and I was like, "I don't even know, I'm so nervous. I can't even..." I was in my apartment waiting to go downtown to the office, to do this interview and she just said to me, "I used to dance." She used to dance for years and she said, "The thing I told myself, my mantra was, nothing to prove, only to share," and I've used that actually every time I've been in a situation, where I've felt my own performance anxiety jumping up. I'd say that's one, is realizing I do have expertise, but I'm not here to prove it to you.

I'm here to share with the other person in a conversation. I'm here to look at them as simply a human being, because that's all they are. We're not all that different and then finally, before I go into an interview, what I love to do, and it's not always easy, but is to take just two or three minutes to just sit quietly, whether that's just focusing on my breath or just sitting, setting intention. It allows me to just turn off my mind and then I can be fully present versus worrying about what I'm supposed to be asking next and how it's going to look, how it's going to sound, it's like you've got to be fully there.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Do you feel like you come back to that, for lack of a better word, a mantra, that nothing to prove? Are you bringing that in as internal self-talk? Does it come up during the conversation, where you're just, "Serenity now," was always my classic internal mantra. It's like nothing to prove. Do you sometimes remind yourself of that, during the conversation?

Leah Smart:

Yeah. Yeah. Yesterday, and I don't know if the mantra specifically, the nothing to prove, only to share, specifically came up during the conversation, but really, that mantra is let go of performance anxiety. Let go of the fear you have of what people are supposed think of you and just show the hell up. Yesterday I was like, "All right, I'm sitting here. It's a live interview. There are 1,000 people watching. Just show up. That's it." Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

I love that you use the term dance and this is interesting, because for me, I think about conversations 100% as a dance, but dance can either be totally unstructured, there's just fluid dance, but even then you're dancing to the music, you're responding to the music. What do you feel like are your moves, when you're dancing in these conversations?

Leah Smart:

I like that question. I go into most conversations, realizing that the people I've talked to, have done a million conversations like this before. They've had people who have moves that feel very structured, that feel like, "And then I will ask you this question next," and, "To follow this up," that have a harder time being in the moment or when I was becoming a coach, it was called dancing in the moment and that's what I mean. My dance moves are probably, they're not spontaneous, but in listening to this book and reading this book, Soul Boom by Rainn Wilson, he shared, and I've heard Oprah share this before, one of her favorite quotes and Marion Williamson also is, "God, use me. Use me. Have me go where you want me to go, do what you want me to do, say what you want me to say and be what you want me to be, all for the purpose of the highest good."

I honestly believe when I'm in an interview, I am truly in what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, one of the positive psychology researchers early on, I'm in flow. It means that I am so there, that my dance moves are just about whatever's there. Something is clicking in my mind that's saying, "Grab that word, grab that phrase. This reminds me of this." It's like everything's firing, to the point where yesterday I had two interviews, but this big one I had, I got home and I had to just lay down. I went to sleep for three hours.

Daniel Stillman:

You left it all on the stage.

Leah Smart:

I leave it on the stage and how else are we supposed to live? If I can't amplify this person's incredible message, by putting everything on the dance floor and being so damned present, then I'm not really doing the kind of job I want to do, for this person's message. Now do you do that all the time? No. Sometimes my dance looks like, I'll go in and tell my producers, "This is a light conversation. I'm going to let it be fun and light and let's just see where it goes," or I'll go in and I'll say, "This is a short conversation. Let's see what that looks like," and I think my dance moves change, based on where I'm at, based on the person's message. It's like, "Read the room."

Daniel Stillman:

That seems like a good poster for us all to have, "Read the room, Daniel."

Leah Smart:

Read the room.

Daniel Stillman:

Well, something I'm sitting with is, your whole life is not doing the interview, right? Because, you also work as a one-on-one coach. All the conversations that happen, with all of the people you collaborate, to make all of these conversations happen and I wonder, the dance of those conversations and the mantras of those conversations, how you feel you are looking at those conversations and designing them, either differently or maybe exactly the same as you do.

Leah Smart:

The first thing that just came up for me is, what's needed now? I am not always designing conversations perfectly and sometimes what shows up, is the shit I'm bringing with me. Last week I had a bike accident, so I was not in a good mood. I was hurt. I'm okay. I lived. I have some...

Daniel Stillman:

How's the bike?

Leah Smart:

Bikes in great shape.

Daniel Stillman:

That's good.

Leah Smart:

Held up fine and there was no car involved and all that, but I wasn't in a good mood last week, and that's hard for me to really accept, when I'm not in a great mood and maybe I'm not being my best self with other people, but that was the reality. I think it's less of planning every conversation and more of, how am I showing up in this conversation? What am I potentially likely to have to apologize for later? Or what am I bringing right now? It's a great day. I'm happy. I'm in a great mood. Things are good, that's great. If it's not a great day, I'm not happy, I'm not in a great mood, I tone things down a little bit. Maybe that means we're a little more focused. Maybe that means we shorten the conversation. I think it's just knowing what's needed now.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. The phrase I sometimes think about is, is serving the conversation? And it seems like that's really what you're... You're serving the person in front of you in their message, sometimes and sometimes you're serving the conversation as a whole and you're in the conversation too, which means if your energy is what it is, you have to serve you. You have serve yourself as well and take care of yourself. That seems like all those things.

Leah Smart:

Yeah, I think we all do.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Leah Smart:

Yeah. It's all of that and for you and I, we're not journalists. We don't go into conversations simply, not simply, but just to collect a story, collect the data, and then report out the story. We bring ourselves in a different way than many trained journalists. Most trained journalists are not taught to bring all of themselves and their opinions. That's the whole point of journalism in general, or at least it used, was that we get the objective story, unless it's an opinion and an op-ed. Yeah and I'd say, of course journalists are people too, so they're bringing their stuff too, but for us, it's a little more complex, because we want to bring our stuff and we're walking in saying, "I'm showing up with my stuff and how do I still serve, based on that?"

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. I want to transition. I have an image here. It's actually a terrible drawing I did, of your wonderful talk from the Culture summit and.

Leah Smart:

Oh, I love...

Daniel Stillman:

The reason I was looking at this, when you were talking about needing something, our pre-chat about we need more, we need something in this modern era, there's this little sketch, something you said during your talk as the organization, as a church, a place for creating meaning and we do spend a lot of time at work and your work is at LinkedIn, which is a church for work, for sure and I'm wondering what you feel like, church has evolved a lot, what we need as people, is ever evolving. What do you think our work church should be like?

Leah Smart:

I feel really fortunate. I've worked at LinkedIn since 2010. I left for a year and a half. I came back, because that work, church quote, was the most intentional I'd ever had and I haven't worked at a lot of different places, but our values at LinkedIn have stayed the same. Yeah, light shifts and things like this, but generally, it's about being a good person. It's about doing the right thing. It's about acting like an owner. I remember when I first started out, there were only 400 employees. There are over 20,000 at LinkedIn now.

Daniel Stillman:

Wow.

Leah Smart:

Act like an owner was, pretend that you started this company and you're running it, what would you do?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Leah Smart:

Humor was a big one and still is, being open, honest and constructive and I think we've changed it since then. I can't remember what it is now, but it's all things that, if you raised a kid and told the kid, from the time they could speak and show them from the time they could watch you interact with the world, the values LinkedIn has, they'd lead a pretty good life.

That to me, told me all I needed to know, because not only was it something that LinkedIn said, it was something that I saw done. Now, do we all make mistakes? Of course. Are you going to hire only people who do that perfectly? Of course not, but to me, I'd say if I were picking a company today, and I think a lot of GenZers and millennials are picking their companies based on the company's values and their beliefs around social issues, around climate, around things that are happening in the world and how they're interacting with those things.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Leah Smart:

You have to act like you care and it's not just that you wrote it down or you gave a little bit of money here or there. It's like, you have to act like you care and I will say as a caveat too, I'll say, I don't know that workplaces should be our new churches. I do know, that church attendance is down. I know that people who ascribe to a religion has massively decreased and continues to decrease.

As I was saying that, I was illustrating that people put more trust in companies than they ever have before, in corporations and expect so much more out of CEOs and C-level executives, when it comes to social issues, that used to be the issues we'd talk about at home and then we'd walk over to work and we'd sit and do our job from nine to five and clock out and what I'm highlighting, is that there has been this in the last [inaudible 00:15:26]. That means that there's got to be something more given by workplaces, which many of them have, but also, I think that for us to put our faith into just that, another governing body, that also is associated with our paychecks, isn't necessarily the only way and it may not be the best way.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. I guess what are the other options, right? Because, you're talking about, we need more of something in the world, in our own lives. What do you want to bring more of into your conversation, broadly?

Leah Smart:

I think and listen, I'm just a normal person like you and everybody else, but when I turn on the news, when I walk around in the world, and I live in New York City and so do you, I think there's so much good, and I think there's a lot of suffering and a lot of struggling.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Leah Smart:

No matter where you sit on the socioeconomic spectrum, you are likely to experience some level of pain and/or suffering. I believe that we have put so much emphasis on what we have and what we succeed at and what we achieve at and I am totally guilty of this. I have dreams and goals and things I want to create and I think, "Gosh, all of us should have that, because it keeps you going," but what is missing, or I should say what we're doing, is putting all of our stock and investment in these external things. What do I have? How many people know me? What does my social following look like?

Do I look the right size today? Or is my hair okay today? How do people accept me? It's all these things, that are superficial that we all do it. We all fall victim to it. The challenge, is when you don't have anything to go back to, to re-tether you to what's real and to me, what is real, is not all of these things that have been created around us to keep us going, like little hamsters on a wheel.

It's the internal, it's the stuff in your inner world, where you want to invest and take stock and slow down and get connected and recognize how meaningful and small life is, right? It's the recognition that there is so much more beyond what you're experiencing now and that you are a small part of a huge world, but that your life is very meaningful and that you are so much more than the things that you are valued for, when you walk outside of your house or not valued for. Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Yeah. This comes back to, I think I can connect this to this idea of, you talked about self-awareness and optimism, as two things we wanted to touch on and it seems like being grounded and tethered to who you really are and what you really want, is really important and powerful and I think there's a fundamental tension between what is and what we want to create, accepting the current situation and driving towards what we want to create. How do you think about balancing that out, when you think about the things we need to feed ourselves, to sustain ourselves?

Leah Smart:

I think there's always got to be tension between what's happening and what you want to see happening. I call that, when I'm working with someone and I'm coaching them or working with a team or whatever, we talk about different areas of this thing called the Wheel of Life. It's an eight sectioned wheel, that has all of the areas of life that we all concern ourselves with, career, romance, family and friends, our fun and recreation, where we live, our health, our money and I have people, don't have to tell me, but tell themselves, how satisfied they are with each area of that wheel, on a scale of zero to 10 and then I ask them, "What would contentment or satisfaction look like for you, in each of those areas?" And what we generally find, is at least in one or two, sometimes more, a gap.

A space between where I am and where I want to be. I don't think that life would be interesting or meaningful or fertile ground for growth, if there weren't a gap between point A and point B. Now, what we all fall victim to, and what I hope to support people in doing, and what I do my best to shift, is not your relationship, to the lack inside the gap, but your relationship to the understanding that there will always be a gap and if you can focus on changing yourself and your orientation to that, then life will change around you, versus, "I need to change that thing. I make $50,000 a year today, I need to make $100,000 and I'll be happy."

Well, no. Yes, we should all have goals, but that can't be the answer to your contentment, or I shouldn't say can't. I should say, how much do you want to struggle on the way to your goals? How much suffering do you want? If you make $50,000 today, how can you find some level of appreciation, gratitude, and calm in that, knowing that you're moving towards something else, something bigger, something greater, so that you're not suffering, as you get to that goal, in the same way.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. It's interesting, because you talked about the change equation in your talk, God, it seems like... It was so long ago. It was almost a year ago. Dissatisfaction, times vision, times first steps, if that's greater than the resistance, change happens, but what I'm hearing you talk about now, is dissatisfaction can be a positive motivator, for our internal dialogue, but you also don't want people that you're working with and trying to help, you don't want them to be suffering through that dissatisfaction and that is very subtle. It's like we want them to feel the dissatisfaction, we also want them to feel the vision, what they want and find movement that is not self-abuse.

Leah Smart:

Yeah. I want them to see the hole, but not jump in it.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Leah Smart:

You know what I mean? There's the hole. That's my dissatisfaction.

Daniel Stillman:

Like you say, I want them to feel the hole, but not jump in it.

Leah Smart:

See the hole, but don't jump in the hole. We all have it. We're all going to have dissatisfaction. You could call dissatisfaction desire too. If you want to reframe it, fine. It can be such intense desire, that moves you. It can also be really intense satisfaction. We've all had that dissatisfaction. We've all had that moment where we're like, "I'm so damned sick of myself. I've got to fix this," but then we also have that moment, where we're like, "Oh my God, I want... I feel this thing," and then the vision is then, let me paint that, paint done for me, paint the picture of it.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Leah Smart:

But yeah, when it comes to dissatisfaction, there's the hole. See it, know it's there, change your relationship to it by shifting... The fact that you can look at the hole, without having to bury yourself.

Daniel Stillman:

That's really interesting. To use your word, to stay grounded and tethered to...

Leah Smart:

Tethered.

Daniel Stillman:

And what is that thing, going back to the conversation you were having with Rainn and this work on spirituality, what is it that we stay grounded and tethered to? What do you think we want to have more of, you want us all to have more of?

Leah Smart:

To me it's, you can call it whatever you want, God, spirituality, the universe. For me and according to Rainn, it's also 31% of millennials and many more GenZers, file ourselves as the nuns, the people who when you say, "What religion are you affiliated with?" We say none.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Leah Smart:

I remember OkCupid, when I first started dating, it was like, "Spiritual, but not religious," and I was like, "That's me."

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Yeah.

Leah Smart:

No, for me, that means it's creating the space in my life, to connect to myself, to remember and connect to something greater and to be connected deeply and meaningfully to someone else too and I added that recently. When I first started on my own, just like, how do I figure out what spirituality means to me? Because I realized that, that was missing from my life, I just went on a solo thing. I was like, "I'm going inward. I'm meditating every day, trying to do it for long periods of time, for an hour, for whatever, and I'm journaling and I'm doing all this stuff."

And it was so enriching, but what you realize over time and what studies have shown, they just finished this Harvard study, it was a 75-year longitudinal study, to say, "What makes a good life?" It was meaningful relationships. It didn't matter how much money you made, it doesn't matter who you are, where you are, that's it. I add that in to say, "Now, I recognize, you can't just go inward and stay inward. The point of going inward, is to be a better person when you go outward and then continue to do the work.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

Leah Smart:

And yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

What's interesting about what you're saying, one of my past interviewees, Michael Burin described, he's a more of a conversation design nerd, than I ever could hope to be and I used to think of conversations as a spectrum of size, from little to big, and he put it as an onion and in the center, is the conversations we have with ourself and it's the core in some sense, it's what it's all grounded in.

If we don't invest in the core, we are hollow and we don't have anything to bring to those bigger conversations, talking to other people, community, but you're talking about a much bigger conversation, that's containing it all, which is a, "What's it all about? What do I think this means to me? How do I ground it in my own sense of what life means?" Is that fair to say? Because, I see you as very much taking care of that conversation with myself and grounding myself, but that larger conversation seems to be what you are really tethered to, that makes you feel like you're not just flung out into the universe. It's like you see it as something's being held.

Leah Smart:

Yeah. Yeah, it's for the sake of. Self-care has become commercialized, right? It's like, "Take a bath, have a glass of wine, have a me day, get rid of toxic people."

Daniel Stillman:

That is such a trend. Getting rid of toxic people, is very on trend.

Leah Smart:

Yeah, and that's a whole other can of worms, because it's like, if everybody's toxic, then you might want to look in the mirror. We all have our own work to do.

Daniel Stillman:

You heard it here first, everyone. You are the constant in all your relationships.

Leah Smart:

You sure are. It's the quote, "If a fight breaks out in every bar you go to, maybe it's you." That's a whole set for me of like, you've got to be so careful. Yes, there are people out there who are not the right match for you, who are not the right people, who maybe aren't doing their work. All of that, but yeah, I think the focus goes here and for me, when I can focus here, I can focus there. When I'm not focused here, this becomes so much harder and it is what fuels me.

Daniel Stillman:

And for those of you who don't know, Leah's a hand talker. This is an audio podcast.

Leah Smart:

I sure am. I'm not a conversation designer.

Daniel Stillman:

No, no. Your hands are... That's a very common way. She's making the small gesture and then the big gesture, right? You're holding them both. You want to be there with both of those conversations.

Leah Smart:

Yeah. Yeah, and every part of the human body, in order to function, needs each other. We all need each other. I just happen to be a person who is so driven by this and driven by having deep and real and meaningful conversations and sharing them and getting them out there. Somebody else, might know that there are so many other people out there, who never want to have these conversations. They don't know how to go there. They don't want to go there. Whatever it is, their lives are too bad. I don't care. They have another role to play in this body of humanity. That's my job. If that's what I'm here for, which I do believe it is, then I've got to do my best to help reveal those things, so that people can have access to the information that can help them feel tethered and tethered isn't always bad. It's something to return to.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Tethered is great, when you're doing a space walk.

Leah Smart:

Mm-hmm. Correct.

Daniel Stillman:

Really, really want to be tethered and we are. Tethered is great, when you want to feel connected to something. Tethered and grounded, we're using them as broad synonyms for each other, which I think is really great.

Leah Smart:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

I want to make sure we have some time for talking about, I'm a big fan of, and I have fundamental tensions with this, recipes. I think recipes are really powerful ways of learning, because they're how we... I usually look at two or three recipes before I cook anything and then I take one, and then I just make it my own, which is I think, a great step that everyone needs to get to become a Chef, of their own life. We're not talking about recipes for cooking, we're talking about recipes for conversations and you shared one with me, "Desire it, feel it, experience it, create it," which seems like a very nice recipe, a very handy recipe, to whip up a journey of self-discovery. Is that fair to say?

Leah Smart:

Yeah. Well, in the kitchen, I am a follow the recipe to the tee, freak out if there's any more or any less of the thing.

Daniel Stillman:

You don't tap into your ancestors for the...

Leah Smart:

No ancestors have any information I am taking. Print out the recipe, are you sure that was a teaspoon? Yeah, don't mess with...

Daniel Stillman:

Well, first of all, this has nothing to do with what we're talking about, but I was saying this to my wife the other day. I was like, "There needs to be something better than... Teaspoon and Tablespoon, just sound so similar. They should have totally different names or it should be all metric.

Leah Smart:

Correct. Big spoon, little spoon would even work for me.

Daniel Stillman:

Big spoon, little spoon. Yeah. It's just totally dumb and I am a very, very well accomplished baker and each time I'm like, is there a TBL? Is that a TSP?

Leah Smart:

Yeah. Correct. TSP, yeah. What are we doing here?

Daniel Stillman:

It's way too much cognitive load. That being said, am I right about, because we haven't talked about this desire it, feel it, experience it, create it. Is that a recipe that you use, to map out a journey from where I am now, to where I want to be?

Leah Smart:

Yes. Yes. I think, like you said before, the natural tension between being in one place and wanting something different, is going to be the way of our lives. We will never be at a 10 in every area on the wheel of life and perfectly satisfied and nothing could change. That's life and I'm still learning that. It's like we're all still learning that. I hope some of us maybe believe that that's not the case, but on this idea of, we are all here, we do, I believe all have free will. We do have agency over how we experience our life.

I also think and believe and through experience and I'm like, "Experience is the best teacher," I've got evidence through experience, that when I get really clear and connected, that I have a desire. That desire has been for me, not like, "I want a green car." It's like, "This is what I want to be doing for work," or, "This is where I want to be living," or, "This is who I want to be partnered with." I have used those desires, to go inward and to really get clear on what that means for me. What's that feel like, to have that thing? And I don't want to get all woo-woo, but I'm going to a little bit, and now...

Daniel Stillman:

You can get woo-ish.

Leah Smart:

Great. Let's get woo-ish. I love that. When we have a desire, the immediate thing to do, is to look at all the ways in which it's not happening and we're going, "I have a desire, and here are all the ways I lack. Here are all the ways, in which it's not going down." How do you feel when you have a desire and then you spend the next couple of days telling yourself how shitty it is, that you don't have it yet?

You feel pretty bad, and then you expect that thing to happen. If you just think about it logically, it's like, "I want a new job. I hate my job so much. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it," and then you think that your dream job's just going to show up and you're going to be happy? I haven't had that experience. The time that I hated my job, I went into another job, another company, that I also didn't love.

It wasn't like life turned around from that place. It's similar to, do you want to suffer on the way? And also, is the outcome of what you are trying to create, potentially is there an upside by not suffering along the way? For me to feel, is to feel the experience of what it will be like when, not from a place of lack, but from a place of familiarizing yourself, your brain, your body, to the experience of what it's going to be like when. I have found that doing that, is what creates the experience.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Leah Smart:

I've truly focused on it three times, in three very clear ways, and I couldn't have told you how it was going to happen. I didn't know, but the fact that I was able to desire it, to feel it, to sit with the experience of it, to really sit with it and to believe in it, because sometimes we sit with it. It's doing your daily affirmations, it's like, "I am this." You don't believe it half the time. That's why I'm not necessarily a believer in only doing affirmations. I think they're great, but they only go so deep. To truly experience something, can also show you that it's already yours. I'm 35, and a lot of women that I know and who are in my life, are are wanting partners and when you want a partner, what do you do?

You go, "I don't have one." You look at all the couples around. It's like there's couples everywhere. You're like, "I cannot walk a step, without seeing people who love each other," and you can either choose to get really pissed off and feel like you're never going to get it, or you can choose a little bit differently and what I realized was at the time when I was wanting partnership, if I could just sit in the feeling of love, I could realize that actually it was already mine.

Nobody was going to create that for me. It's actually just that there's someone I can point it toward, and that meant that I could feel it, without another person sitting in front of me. Because guess what? That person's going to come and they're going to piss you off sometimes and they're going to make you happy sometimes. They're going to... It's just the same. It's like, you have so much more autonomy and power when you can recognize what is inside of you and not that someone else is going to make it possible for you. It's just, they're presenting an opportunity for you to bring out what you already have.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Yeah. What's interesting about this to me, is I still have the change equation up on my screen and with the analogy of dating, it's a good one, but if we bring it back to the other one you talked about, which is your job, if you're just always running away from, "I hate this job," and you just keep running away and you just say, "Well, not this job," and eventually maybe somewhere down the line, you'll say, "Oh, this feels good. This job feels better," but you won't be as intentional, in terms of creating it and what I like about this model of desire it, feel it, experiences it, to me, I sometimes use this idea of double stitching, and really, you're not just saying desire it, you're saying, "No, no. Desire it, then feel it, and then really know what it's like to have something that you really want."

Look around, what does it look like? How do you know? And this is why reverse interviews are so powerful. A lot of people are going to an interview and think, "I'm just here to answer all their questions," but if you really know what you're trying to create, you could say, "Oh, well, can you tell me more about blank, because I'm looking for blank," and that's where creating it really comes in, because the more you really understand what it is that you do want, not what you don't want, you have the capacity to know whether or not you are creating it.

Leah Smart:

Yeah. Most people don't know what they actually want, if it slapped them in the face, because they haven't actually thought about it. They just know what they don't want, but they forget the other part of that is, what you said, "When you know what you don't want, you know what you do want," but actually sit with that. Sit with that, sit with that, sit with that. Because then when it shows up, you can go, "Nope, I don't want that. Moving on. Yes, this is what I want," and then, the whole purpose of this, is to become more clear and intentional about the way that you operate within your life.

And in your life, I do believe there are recipes. I do believe there are routines and rituals, that will just make your life feel richer and I used to not believe that. I used to think, "I want pure freedom. I want to do what I want to do," all that. Once I started connecting more with myself and getting closer to my own experience of spirituality, I was like, "Oh, I want this," and I'm doing this with my hands, and "I want calm. I want contentment, I want ease," and a lot of that for me, gets created through the routines, through the recipes, and through the ability to sit and just show up for my life, in an intentional way.

Daniel Stillman:

Well, man, and we're running out of time, which is crazy. If there was another recipe...

Leah Smart:

I hate it.

Daniel Stillman:

Do you have another favorite recipe for designing amazing, powerful conversations, that you feel like is in your back pocket, that you'd like to share with the world?

Leah Smart:

I got this from Oprah, who I grew up watching every day. There wasn't a day I got home most days, that Oprah wasn't on at 4:00 PT and I've listened to a million of her podcasts. She's probably so deeply ingrained in me and her work and all that, but she shares a story about an interview she'd done, and I believe it was with two members of some white supremacy group, that she'd had on the show and they were live, and they were sitting with her and you can imagine how that went.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Leah Smart:

It wasn't long after, that she decided with her team, that she would force herself and them to, every single time they were going to have a conversation or pitch a guest, they'd say, "What's the intention behind this?" And she forced that. I actually forced it on myself and my team the beginning of this year. We have a document that has the guests we're all pitching, and it's, "What's the intention?"

If we can't check off a good intention or an intention that's aligned to the work that we're doing and what we're trying to put into the world, then we don't interview that person. We don't reach out, but when I get on an interview and when I'm interviewing and when I'm interviewing someone else, I ask them, before we even start, I'm like, "What's the intention for you, for this conversation or for this work that you're doing?" And that, talk about conversation design, the floodgates open, because that's their heart. If they're truly doing a work that they can get behind, that they believe in, their heart opens right up, and then you flow from there. To me, that's an amazing conversation design, and it lets guards down.

It lets my guard down. When I'm jumping into an interview and I'm running from meeting to meeting, I'm sitting down and I'm like, "Okay, I have to interview this person, and I didn't have time to meditate and da, da, da, da, 18 things happening. What is my intention for this conversation?" And I'm like, "Got it." And to me, let's put it this way, you don't have all the control over where the conversation's going to go. We didn't have it today or exactly what it's going to become, but when you set an intention, you set a direction, and that's a navigational path toward what you're hoping to create and then the rest to me, is faith, that both of you can show up and figure it out together and make magic.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Dance the dance.

Leah Smart:

Dance the dance.

Daniel Stillman:

Oh man. That is so good. That's so powerful. Is there something I haven't asked you, that I should have asked you? Something we haven't talked about, that we should talk about?

Leah Smart:

I don't think so. Oh, wow. Maybe the one thing I'll say, is in all this, I've had multiple experiences, that I get the opportunity to share about the life I'm creating for myself and what I'm learning and I'm wanting to share that with so many people and that it's all a series of trial and error. Even when you've created the thing, you've done the thing, the dream came true, you have your this, you have your that, you're going to come right back to status quo at some point, or you're going to lose yourself and you're going to have to refine the thing.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Leah Smart:

I've certainly experienced that in the last six months is, "What is my vision? What am I doing? What does good look like now?" And I come back to this idea of, "You'll get it, you'll experience it, you'll feel it. You'll be so appreciative of it, and then it will become a fold in your life. It'll fold right in, and it'll be unrecognizable that you ever lived without it." It'll be life all over and you finding your way again, and you losing yourself again and figuring out and that's something that I think people also don't like hearing, because we like a happy ending and there sure is one, I think, but I think it happens over and over and over again.

Daniel Stillman:

In a way, this is what you talked about last year. It's not a ladder. It's a series of growth and homeostasis and then stagnation, and then more growth, if we are constantly looking at ourselves and what we really want.

Leah Smart:

Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's like summiting a mountain. You climb a bit, you make base camp, you set up, put your stuff down, okay, feel good and then, you've got to keep going.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Yeah.

Leah Smart:

You've got to keep climbing. There's more to go.

Daniel Stillman:

If you were to give this whole conversation a title, what's the title of this episode? Top three titles.

Leah Smart:

How to Stop the Crazy, is one.

Daniel Stillman:

That's good. That's good.

Leah Smart:

I would also call it just Tethered or Re-Tethered is actually what I would call it.

Daniel Stillman:

Oh, it's a good title for a book, if you're thinking about your first magnum opus.

Leah Smart:

It's on the list. I'm currently at base camp right now, but it is on the list.

Daniel Stillman:

Re-Tethered. Could be.

Leah Smart:

Re-Tethered. Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

Third option, not that I don't like the first two. They're great.

Leah Smart:

The Importance of Intention. Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

I love it. I like that one. I like that one a lot.

Leah Smart:

I like literative types of things. Anyway, so there we go.

Daniel Stillman:

I love that you dug deep for that one too, with moments to spare, where should people go to learn about all things Smart, IE Leah Smart?

Leah Smart:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

Where should we direct them?

Leah Smart:

Yeah, you can go to my podcast, which today is called In the Arena with Leah Smart. It's a LinkedIn podcast. You can go to my LinkedIn profile. Leah Smart on LinkedIn. You can find me on Instagram. I'm just starting to get myself back into social media. Leah__Smart and my website, Leahsmart.co.

Daniel Stillman:

Sweet. All right. Thank you so much for the conversation. I learned a lot. This was great.

Leah Smart:

Yeah. This was great. Thank you for having me. So easy. We danced, we flowed. Here we are and we didn't even set intention, but we knew.

Daniel Stillman:

Well, I'll call scene.

Leaders as Humble, Audacious, Z-Shaped Coaches

I am excited to share my conversation with AJ Thomas, who I had the pleasure of meeting at the Culture Summit where we were both giving talks. AJ was sharing her perspectives on being a Chaos Pilot at Google’s Moonshot Factory, Called “X”. At the time of this conversation, she’s been with Google for nearly four years, starting as Head of People. 

AJ is also A CxO in Residence at A.Team AND an Advisor at Magic Eden and SemperVirens Capital. She is also an Executive coach on the side. 

She’s got a full calendar.

X, A.Team, CxO. This is starting to sound like the credit roll on Sesame Street! That is a lot of letters, but we’ll add a few more, like T, I and Z.

You may have heard of being T-shaped, as in having breadth of knowledge in general and having depth in one particular area…versus being “I” shaped - having just depth, but no breadth. Breadth is important in any position, because having some breadth means you can more readily engage a broad swath of people in productive dialog, partially because you “get” their inside language enough to collaborate with them. This breadth of collaborative potential is especially important for Leaders.

AJ is a fan of being a Z-shaped-leader, which for her means having depth across many different areas, over time, and the ability to connect the dots between them. But while being able to connect the dots, to scan the horizon for innovation and emergent opportunities, to be able to see an Audacious and almost-impossible future AND communicate that vision to others is a powerful leadership skill, AJ sees Humility as an equally powerful leadership value. This puts AJ in excellent company with Dr. Marilyn Gist, PhD, Professor Emerita of Executive Programs at the Center of Leadership Formation at Seattle University, author of "The Extraordinary Power of Leader Humility," and a past guest on this podcast! Check out our conversation here where Dr. Gist shares her Six Keys to Leadership Humility.

I love AJ’s idea of keeping Audacity and Humility in dynamic tension - staying “Humbacious”! That balance, the ability to “sprinkle” one quality or another into a conversation, shows up as tremendously powerful and generative in AJ’s leadership and coaching work. Audacity holds space for people to explore potential - the biggest vision and possibility. And Humility drives us to assume that we might be wrong and to leverage the mind of a scientist to de-risk the road ahead with powerful questions and intentional experiments.

Enjoy this powerful deep dive into these ideas and a lot more.

AI Automated Summary

AJ and Daniel discuss the concept of being a "Z-shaped" person, with depth across many different areas and the ability to connect the dots between them. They also discuss the principles of coaching, including being present, listening for what has heart meaning, and telling the truth without blame or judgment. They emphasize the importance of balancing audacity and humility in leadership.

Meeting summary:

(3:41) - AJ shares her favorite question to ask in conversations: "Can you tell me what led you to that?" to learn about people's approach rather than just their destination (7:04) - AJ describes the T-shaped person and how they have broad experience in their field and deep expertise in a specific area

(7:36) - AJ describes herself as a Z-shaped person, with depth across many different areas and the ability to connect the dots between them

(15:21) - AJ explains how exploring parallel universes can be valuable for leaders, allowing them to access different perspectives and create more compassionate ways of being and doing

(25:00) - AJ shares the four principles of coaching that have influenced her, including choosing to be present and derisking problems through questioning.

(29:16) - AJ notes that it can be difficult for leaders to hear the truth without blame or judgment, but earning trust through presence and deep listening can help facilitate this (37:30) - AJ introduces the concept of "humbatious" - being audacious yet humble in approaching the future

(41:10) - AJ and Daniel discuss the importance of balancing audacity and humility in leadership

Links, Quotes, Notes, and Resources

https://www.couragetakesflight.com/

www.itsAJthomas.com

Minute 1

Daniel Stillman:

Why do you think you enjoy the unpacking side of a conversation?

AJ Thomas:

I love going a little bit deeper in the conversations just because I'm ever the explorer. I'm just curious about where asking the right question can take you. And unpacking, and maybe it's just because I do this, but it's literally unpacking. When you're packing suitcases and you're unpacking different suitcases, there's always little surprises that you never knew were actually in there. Like the little side pockets where maybe you put a $5 bill or some nice little thing that maybe was just packed away on your journey. I see that as something about conversations as well. You never judge the contents of a suitcase by the suitcase itself, like you never judge a book by its cover. But if you ask the right questions and you're curious enough and you're unpacking enough, you just might find something pretty amazing.

Minute 13

AJ Thomas:

It's just a certain sense of, I think it's just built in for me, but I started describing myself as a Z-shaped person because I'm also very visual. So I was like, okay, the T shape, I get. We learn about it through design thinking. We learn about it in business school, but the Z-shaped has always kind of looked scattered to everyone. And I guess what I wanted to do was describe a way where that is just like a linear path is not wrong, a T-shaped path is not wrong, a Z-shaped path is also not wrong as well.

And so there's probably many different kinds of these things, but for me, what tended to describe my journey most was the ability to go from one vertical to another domain, take learnings from that, then go back and take learnings from that thing and go to something completely different. And then continuing to do that formula. And then really it wasn't until hindsight and I looked back and I stretched that thing that I found that everything in common, whether I was in sales and operations and marketing and product, building for a sports center, in HR, working in talent, whatever it may be, the through line was always about people, culture and organizations and how to build the future of what that looks like. So I think there was no foresight into it. Everything was just as a reflection. And quite frankly, I got tired of defending myself, as I saw it as defending myself. And everyone's like, you do all these things, how do you do all these things?

And I always get the question, how do you do it all? And I always have the same answer and it's only two words and it's always I don't. I don't. But again, it's not until I had the hindsight, I think I'm a little bit later on in my career now where I can say, wow, when I was doing this, was I like, yeah, I'm totally doing the Z-shaped thing? No. I was like, I don't know what's happening, but I'm just going to keep asking questions that's going to lead me to these different things.

Minute 26

AJ Thomas:

the four principles that have really influenced me is one, showing up and choosing to be present is so important. And I said that so fast, you probably almost didn't catch the nuance. A lot of people are told to show up and be present, are you present? Be present. And I think what Professor Angeles Arrien encourages us to do is be present, choose to be present. Being present is a choice. Being active in that is a choice. You're not distracted by anything else but that person you're having a conversation with, and it really helps hold the container for whatever you're going to be talking about or coaching through. The second principle that I loved was the ability to listen for what has heart and meaning for somebody, and it could be what they're not saying. Like when you ask somebody, how are you? And they say, I'm fine. If you really chosen to be present with that person-

Daniel Stillman:

How are you really?

AJ Thomas:

Exactly. You're like, well, let's talk a little bit about that because you say you're fine, but I'm hearing outside of what you're saying through your physical presence that you might not be. So it's really interesting, it helps you pay attention when you choose to be present. You listen for what has heart and meaning for somebody. Or when they say something over and over, but it's kind of glib but then when you really get to the heart of it, they're like, oh yeah, that actually means a lot for me. That's a really interesting one. The third one which I love is the ability to tell the truth without blame or judgment. You have to do that as a coach. And I think especially with working with leaders, it can be really isolating to be at the top. And again, I work with a lot of founders and CEOs where they're probably the only person that feels like they're carrying the burden of all the things.

And sometimes because they're in such positional power, people will not tell them what is wrong or what they feel could be worked on, or what they feel is a blind spot because one, they either have not been invited, or two, because society or the way in which they've interacted with communities has told them that there's a respect for hierarchy. But the respect for hierarchy is also the ability to be able to tell that person in that hierarchical relationship the truth without that blame or judgment. You can't do that without earning trust of course, that's really hard to do. So it's almost a little bit of a paradox. So it's a very interesting navigation of how you're able to really tell the truth without blame or judgment, but you have to be able to choose to be present, listen to what has heart and meaning for people 'cause that burdens the trust to be able to do that.

And then lastly, as a coach you're never advising. You always have to ask and be curious and hold the space, connect back, connect the dots, but that also means you have to be open to outcome and not attached. Which is why giving advice is not coaching.

Minute 36

AJ Thomas:

And I talk a lot about how Moonshot mindsets are accessible for everyone. I think one that I love in particular, an Astro talks about this all the time, is the ability to both be humble and audacious. Which I've then jammed into a word called humbacious. But anyway, it's the ability to be audacious enough to articulate an idea or a path forward, but to also be humble enough to say, I don't understand the entire problem set just yet and so it might not be right so I need to de-risk it, and here's how I'm going to do that.

More About AJ

A lot of what fuels my interests and passions intersect at bridging the gaps in talent, culture and career. The three words above matter to me in the grand scheme of things. The result of what I do moves people and organizations forward to create a future of infinite possibilities. I'm very passionate about building the leaders and organizations of tomorrow. It's never easy, but it is my own definition of meaningful work. I currently serve as the Founder and & Executive Director of Infuse Program Foundation where we turn at-risk youth into entrepreneurs in nine weeks. I also have the wonderful opportunity to serve as the People & Culture leader for one of the nation's largest real-estate online marketplaces. I consider what I do with Infuse and work as a key contributor to developing talent for the future.

Building culture is my knack and creating the conditions for people and their talents to come to life in a meaningful way is what excites me. I am often described as a big picture thinker and fanatic executor, though I consider myself an entrepreneur at heart that's just naturally curious. I like thoughtful approaches to complex problems and creating high impact solutions. I fall deeply in love with problems and am energized by the journey in discovering why they exist and how to solve them. The work I do centers around moving people and organizations forward by way of creating, building and institutionalizing process, and designing/experimenting innovative approaches. I get most of my joy in discovering leadership from those around me and have continuously found that a vast knowledge of intelligence exists untapped just waiting for the right question to be asked.

Full Transcript

Daniel Stillman:

All right. Well AJ, thank you for making the time again and thank you and welcome to the Conversation Factory. I'm so glad you're here. We're doing this and you sound amazing today.

AJ Thomas:

Oh, thank you. I'm really thrilled that we got this mic set up working pretty well for us, so I'm glad to be here with you, Daniel.

Daniel Stillman:

Awesome. So my first question for you is, what are your favorite kinds of conversations?

AJ Thomas:

My favorite kinds of conversations are I think ones you can build on. I never like conversations that are just linear, might as well just be a to-do list or an action item. But I like conversations where you can unpack, get curious, and learn things from. Those are usually the best kinds of conversations without even knowing you were going to learn, going into it.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes. Man, unpacking is like... That is a leadership skill.

AJ Thomas:

That's hard to do.

Daniel Stillman:

Why do you think you enjoy the unpacking side of a conversation?

AJ Thomas:

I love going a little bit deeper in the conversations just because I'm ever the explorer. I'm just curious about where asking the right question can take you. And unpacking, and maybe it's just because I do this, but it's literally unpacking. When you're packing suitcases and you're unpacking different suitcases, there's always little surprises that you never knew were actually in there. Like the little side pockets where maybe you put a $5 bill or some nice little thing that maybe was just packed away on your journey. I see that as something about conversations as well. You never judge the contents of a suitcase by the suitcase itself, like you never judge a book by its cover. But if you ask the right questions and you're curious enough and you're unpacking enough, you just might find something pretty amazing.

Daniel Stillman:

I agree completely. I feel like we could have a whole side conversation about luggage, clearly. I believe that bags are maybe the main thing that differentiates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. And I'm obviously I'm obsessed with bags and I agree with you. I actually love leaving things in my bag from if you travel a lot, it's nice to... When I switched bags recently, I was like, I need earplugs because this hotel's walls are thin. And I was like, damn it, I don't have any earplugs in this bag. I'm so sad. What are your favorite unpacking questions? You talked about how, and I agree with you 100%, the right question can help you with exploration. When you are trying to unpack with people, do you have a favorite question or is it more of a stance or an attitude, do you think, that you bring to it?

AJ Thomas:

I think it's the whole piece of loving conversations that you can build upon. And so it really takes... Crafting the right question often doesn't come with, here's a zinger. She's always going to ask a zinger, right? Yeah, I'm going to talk to AJ. She's always going to ask me this question. It always comes with kind of the exchange of perspectives that you have with somebody and then you build the right question from there. I love that question. The thing I tend to ask quite a bit when I'm in different conversations with folks is just, oh, that's really interesting. Can you tell me what led you to that? Whatever it was, I think it helps people reflect back. It helps people themselves unpack. Or if someone tells me, oh yeah, I ended up doing this thing and then I created this project, which ended up this thing.

Oh, that's really interesting that it ended up in that specific space. Did you ever know it was going to go there? Tell me what led you to that? What were the one or two things that you decided to either follow on a hunch or intuition or whatever that may have led you to wherever that thing is? So I think those are really interesting conversations because you learn a lot about people's approach versus just their destination. And sometimes that's much more fun than like, oh, I won this thing, or I experienced this thing. Oh, awesome. How was that?

Daniel Stillman:

Asking about the journey. Okay. Well, so now I feel like I have to ask you, 'cause we don't always unpack the how you got here question. But you mentioned being an explorer and I'm curious what questions you've been asking yourself on your journey that have brought you to go through some of the journeys that you've been going through. What if I said... This is a really fluffy question, but you see what you can do with it. I don't know.

AJ Thomas:

Yeah, no, for sure. Let's build on it.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, let's build. Thank you. Yeah, you're a builder and explorer, so I feel like I can ask a crappy question and you'll just do something good with it, so please proceed.

AJ Thomas:

No, no. There's never any crappy questions, by the way. So just keeping that in mind and riding on that wave and building that, I think what has led me to be an explorer, I could tell you all the motherhood and apple pie things like, oh, I'm just naturally curious and I just really love to see where these destinations take me. But it really is just an interest in the dots that connect things. So for me, for example, because of the profession that I'm in and the line of work that I've been doing, people tend to ask me about my career. What places have you ended up? I'm the epitome of the non-linear person, and it's not by design. It is led by asking the questions. And I think we talked about this previously in other conversations where you have your linear shaped folks, you have your T-shaped folks within an expertise, for example, HR.

I can go really broad on that, and then I'm probably really deep in compensation or in engineering. I'm a really great hardware engineer as a depth piece, but broadly I know everything about full stack. But I think that's the T-shape. For me, I'm really more of a Z-shaped person where I like to explore things here and there. And then I like the alchemy of mashing them up to see if there's any parallels. So for example, I've had the opportunity of having in my background sales and marketing roles, I've been in ground up builds of operational teams, support center teams. I had the opportunity of really diving deep into HR early in my career and then diving out of it and going into something completely different like product, and then becoming a customer of the expertise I spent a lot of my early career trying to hone, and then going back into it as a practitioner with those skills from that parallel universe.

And I've been doing a lot of that in my work to date, to date. Knock on wood. But to date, I've never been in a job that I've ever done before. And it's nice because you proceed until apprehended, but you just can ask all of the questions because you can reimagine certain things in different ways because you haven't traveled it before. Some folks I know that makes them really queasy 'cause it's like, well, how do you build expertise? I think being Z-shaped stacks your expertise because for me, if you think about this zigzag shape of a career, if I then pull it, the through line has always been people, culture and organizations. And I think that's beautiful. I can layer in coaching in that, which I've done. I can layer in the understanding of financial markets, which I'm currently doing right now with the work that I'm studying around venture capital and private equity.

I can layer in operationally, how do you build a tech stack into that? And sometimes people are like, you know a little bit about everything as you're a jack of all trades and master of none. Actually, no, I'm not. I'm just actually innately curious of where I can connect the dots. And I think that's where, for me being an explorer is fun. I want to come prepared to an unknown situation with... I use a lot of analogies, so tell me if this is a lot, but think about it as my most creative self is maybe a chef, we'll put that as a thing. They create amazing dishes and experiences, et cetera for people, but they travel the world tasting different ingredients. And at the off chance that they're somewhere where they need to then cook a dish, they have all of this access of these spices that they have collected.

For me, those spices are perspectives, those are skills, those are experiences that I never would've been able to do if I were just trudging along this linear path. There's nothing wrong with the linear path, by the way. I want to make sure that that's clear because I think there's a lot of vocations and professions that have that. But I think for me, what works because of the work that I do is this explorer mentality and then giving back to that exploration through connecting the dots in whatever journey you're going after. And you leave a little bit of what you've found before included in the new thing that's being created and I think that's fantastic. I mean, that's the way I think about coaching as well, is where can we collect these different perspectives and then how do we connect the dots to an insight?

Daniel Stillman:

So when did you start thinking about yourself as a Z-shaped person? And so just to review, 'cause this is interesting, I want to make sure I understand it. The T-shaped I'm familiar with the model and you described it. You have broad experience in your field and then have or actually brought experience outside of your field. You can maybe collaborate across multiple fields 'cause you know something about many things, which I think is, I can't remember if that's the hedgehog. The hedgehog knows a lot about one thing. The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows a lot about one thing. And you want that. You do want that depth in a person that you're hiring where you know what you're hiring and that they have deep expertise in this.

But a Z-shaped person, it sounds like there's multiple depths. There's depth across many things. You know many things about many things and there's a slash across everything where it's transdisciplinary. Tell me more about this mental model and I actually don't know if it's your model or if it's something that you started to absorb from... Is it out there in the ether that I just missed this or we just need to buy your book when it comes out about Z-shaped people?

AJ Thomas:

Hopefully it's the latter. I don't know. I'm a self-described Z-shaped person. I don't think there's ever been a model out there, but I think it just came out. And if there is, awesome. I haven't even Googled it or anything. Maybe we should and just see.

Daniel Stillman:

Pause for a moment, everyone.

AJ Thomas:

The rise of the Z-shaped person. No, I think for-

Daniel Stillman:

It's a good title. That sounds...

AJ Thomas:

For me what I think is really interesting is the depth doesn't have to be vertical. The depth can also be horizontal. And when I started describing myself as this Z-shaped person is when I started getting into conversations where people were asking me, how did you end up doing these many different things? You're a singer, you're a sales, you're in marketing, you're coaching.

Daniel Stillman:

By the way, I'm going to interrupt you. So if you don't know, you missed the first five minutes everyone when AJ went through three different microphones that she was choosing amongst to hack into her computer. And one of them, it was Chrome, beautiful microphone. I know.

AJ Thomas:

Wait, hold on.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, I know. It's amazing. It's a gorgeous microphone. So yes, you maybe you'll get an... It's like an EGOT. It's the person who can get the Emmy, the Grammy, and the Tony.

AJ Thomas:

Oh my gosh, I don't know if I'm in that category, but I will say I have the heart of just trying things, things that are unknown. Typically, if you put me in a predictable environment and I have to be there, I'll find a way to make it unpredictable. If I'm in an environment where it is unknown, I'll find a way to build. It's just a certain sense of, I think it's just built in for me, but I started describing myself as a Z-shaped person because I'm also very visual. So I was like, okay, the T shape, I get. We learn about it through design thinking. We learn about it in business school, but the Z-shaped has always kind of looked scattered to everyone. And I guess what I wanted to do was describe a way where that is just like a linear path is not wrong, a T-shaped path is not wrong, a Z-shaped path is also not wrong as well.

And so there's probably many different kinds of these things, but for me, what tended to describe my journey most was the ability to go from one vertical to another domain, take learnings from that, then go back and take learnings from that thing and go to something completely different. And then continuing to do that formula. And then really it wasn't until hindsight and I looked back and I stretched that thing that I found that everything in common, whether I was in sales and operations and marketing and product, building for a sports center, in HR, working in talent, whatever it may be, the through line was always about people, culture and organizations and how to build the future of what that looks like. So I think there was no foresight into it. Everything was just as a reflection. And quite frankly, I got tired of defending myself, as I saw it as defending myself. And everyone's like, you do all these things, how do you do all these things?

And I always get the question, how do you do it all? And I always have the same answer and it's only two words and it's always I don't. I don't. But again, it's not until I had the hindsight, I think I'm a little bit later on in my career now where I can say, wow, when I was doing this, was I like, yeah, I'm totally doing the Z-shaped thing? No. I was like, I don't know what's happening, but I'm just going to keep asking questions that's going to lead me to these different things.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, you were just chefing.

AJ Thomas:

That's it.

Daniel Stillman:

So you mentioned the parallel universes, in your perspective, is some of the bars of the Z the parallel universes, or is it more the exploring multiple cuisines and sampling spices and understanding like the salt, fat, acid, heat of other ways of doing things? Tell me your perspective on parallel universes as an important metaphor for a leader to be looking at their work in.

AJ Thomas:

I think a parallel universe. So for example, and again this is the analog, for me was seeing the way that product managers approached user testing. Taking the designing from outside in so that you can design for an experience versus just an event was really valuable for me. So for example, in HR, I see this in the function and I see this with leaders where we'll take, someone's going to have a hard conversation and it's going to happen on April 19th at 2:00 PM because that's the next one on one so we designed for that event. Everything's got to go right and here's what I'm going to say, and we're going to use this method and we're going to ask these questions. But rarely is going into that conversation about, I'm going to have that conversation on the 19th at 2:00 PM, but I want to design it from May 1st backwards.

I learned in product the power of future casting that because you could change the factors. If you just switch the parameters a little bit, you can change the factors of the design of whatever your apparatus is, whether it's a hard conversation or a decision or a strategy. It allows for you to be more aware of the things surrounding your decision making as a leader. And I think the parallel universe is really grabbing some of those things. I mean, each of the different functions are interesting, but there are ways in which finance teaches us about empathy. There are ways in which engineering can teach us about ways in which we approach unlocking hard problems. There are ways in which customer support can teach an engineer the other side of unpacking the huge problem, but then being able to tell the story about the huge problem. So I think there's a lot of those that I tend to think about when I think about parallel universes and what leaders can access.

It creates compassion in your way of being and doing because you're going to then be naturally curious, that's interesting. How does that work in support? Why does the utility of this function process in this way? And how do I get a little bit of that into this? I mean, you're seeing it in recruiting where there's the parallel universe of marketing and people want to take that aspect of building a CRM and nurturing a pipeline the way you would before you launch an event or a product. How is that different from you want to bring a hire into your organization and you want to make sure that they know about that organization? Rather than, oh, I'm going to hire somebody and I'm going to tell them about the company. What if through the journey of them coming to your company, they're already getting to know you? So there's a lot of parallels that I think if we stopped and really got curious around the organization, the utility and the things that they're known for that they're really good at, what could we take in?

Like I said, what's engineering known for? Building great things and tackling huge problems. Okay, well, where are we building great things and tackling huge problems? You could be doing that in any vertical.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

AJ Thomas:

But find out what's the best things they're doing in there. And then how do you implement that in your universe?

Daniel Stillman:

Well, it seems like there's actually two flavors of parallel universes that you delineated. One is, and I think this is a classic design thinking perspective of how do I learn about hospitality? Who does hospitality well in the universe? How can a hospital learn about hospitality from a hotel? What can a hotel learn about hospitality from a hospital? What does customer service really mean? And what are all the ways to absorb and cross fertilize excellence in an organization? Which is super powerful. But there was another type of parallel universe you were talking about, which is designing a difficult conversation, not as a, okay, I'm going to have conversation about topic one, two, three and four, and then I'll be done. But saying, what do I want it to be like two days, two months, two years after? Designing for what are all the ways that this conversation could continue?

AJ Thomas:

Could manifest, yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

Could manifest. And that's designing from almost a multiverse approach of this conversation could go many, many different ways. It could go to shit. It could create amazing positive alignment. It could create forced agreement. And it sounds like you're also designing your conversations. I would call this is the question going forwards or backwards in time? You're almost saying which of the many scenarios that are possible do I want to design backwards from?

AJ Thomas:

Well, if you think about that if you're sitting as a CEO, and I coach a lot of founders and advise a lot of founding teams, and one thing I always encourage them is... So for example, I had a CEO that was rolling out their performance management program and was like, "Hey, let's look at this narrative, this deck. Does this look good?" And the question I really had for them was, I mean, that's great. Would your content change if you designed it not for the event you were going to roll it out for, but a quarter after?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

AJ Thomas:

Would there be anything added to that? Would there be anything taken away? And that's how you begin to future proof through scenario planning. I would say, a more elegant and slightly elevated way of thinking about scenario planning is looking at all of the other possibilities. Now, they may never come through fruition because you're really just trying to nail this one specific thing, but I think it makes you more organizationally aware and agile because if it did come up, you'd have at least thought about it.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Well, I think it's very easy to be in survival mode and say like, well, I just need to get this plan so I can get out to this next thing. And you're asking them, what are we really trying to do here? So this gets to the question, the other thing we really wanted to talk about was being a coaching leader or having a coaching mindset based on whatever your coaching philosophy is, which I want you to unpack for us versus a therapist, which is a very different, maybe much more reactive and palliative approach of, yeah, well, let's work through the feelings and get you to the next thing versus a coaching approach, which at least what I'm hearing from you say is what would create a real lasting transformation? A moonshot, if you will.

AJ Thomas:

Impact. Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

Impact.

AJ Thomas:

Yeah. No, I mean it's really interesting because when I was going through and doing my coaching journey, I was at the service of an executive team and I felt like my utility was really just being a therapist, because you have to hold space. You have to hold space in those spaces. You must. It is a requirement of the job to do that, but it felt like it was really-

Daniel Stillman:

When you say holding space, explain what you mean by holding space for that kind of a conversation.

AJ Thomas:

I mean, really letting people unload on you sometimes because that's what they need because they don't have that safe space to be able to do that. But I felt incapable of holding the right space without challenging as their leader also to give them back their agency, right?

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

AJ Thomas:

I'm going to say, this is going to sound funny, there's a fine line between a brainstorm and a bitch fest.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

AJ Thomas:

And I think coaching helps you give people back the agency that they always had, by the way.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

AJ Thomas:

And it's done through a series of unpacking with the right questions. And so as I think about it, my whole coaching approach and again, was really influenced by these four principles by Dr. Angeles Arrien, which I learned through the Berkeley Executive Coaching Institute. It was a really interesting approach in a sense of how she studied the ways that Shaman Tribes communicated with each other, and it's actually been a very near and dear principle to me that I hold in certain spaces when I'm having conversations with folks. Which really, when you're coaching somebody you're really just having a conversation and you're holding that space for that person and then holding up the mirror back to them to make sure that they at least get a playback of what that looks like. And then you ask questions to help them de-risk their problem. And in some cases, that's kind of what we do with Moonshot's too. Identify a huge problem, ask questions to de-risk. That's simplifying it, of course.

But the four principles that have really influenced me is one, showing up and choosing to be present is so important. And I said that so fast, you probably almost didn't catch the nuance. A lot of people are told to show up and be present, are you present? Be present. And I think what Professor Angeles Arrien encourages us to do is be present, choose to be present. Being present is a choice. Being active in that is a choice. You're not distracted by anything else but that person you're having a conversation with, and it really helps hold the container for whatever you're going to be talking about or coaching through. The second principle that I loved was the ability to listen for what has heart and meaning for somebody, and it could be what they're not saying. Like when you ask somebody, how are you? And they say, I'm fine. If you really chosen to be present with that person-

Daniel Stillman:

How are you really?

AJ Thomas:

Exactly. You're like, well, let's talk a little bit about that because you say you're fine, but I'm hearing outside of what you're saying through your physical presence that you might not be. So it's really interesting, it helps you pay attention when you choose to be present. You listen for what has heart and meaning for somebody. Or when they say something over and over, but it's kind of glib but then when you really get to the heart of it, they're like, oh yeah, that actually means a lot for me. That's a really interesting one. The third one which I love is the ability to tell the truth without blame or judgment. You have to do that as a coach. And I think especially with working with leaders, it can be really isolating to be at the top. And again, I work with a lot of founders and CEOs where they're probably the only person that feels like they're carrying the burden of all the things.

And sometimes because they're in such positional power, people will not tell them what is wrong or what they feel could be worked on, or what they feel is a blind spot because one, they either have not been invited, or two, because society or the way in which they've interacted with communities has told them that there's a respect for hierarchy. But the respect for hierarchy is also the ability to be able to tell that person in that hierarchical relationship the truth without that blame or judgment. You can't do that without earning trust of course, that's really hard to do. So it's almost a little bit of a paradox. So it's a very interesting navigation of how you're able to really tell the truth without blame or judgment, but you have to be able to choose to be present, listen to what has heart and meaning for people 'cause that burdens the trust to be able to do that.

And then lastly, as a coach you're never advising. You always have to ask and be curious and hold the space, connect back, connect the dots, but that also means you have to be open to outcome and not attached. Which is why giving advice is not coaching. Sometimes people can flame-

Daniel Stillman:

Fine, fine line.

AJ Thomas:

Exactly. Well, there's also that fine line of being that therapist. You don't just say, tell me more. You say, huh, I really see that this is affecting you.

Daniel Stillman:

So what's the fine line between telling the truth to someone and giving them advice? Because I could see how in a way you're revealing something to someone, that's not telling them necessarily to fix it, but by telling it to them you are telling a truth about the fact that that's something that they could look at.

AJ Thomas:

I mean, it could be something as simple as we've talked about we can say, "Hey, Susan, we've talked about this topic a few times now, and I've heard you say the word I don't mind at all. And then I see you get really passionate about the specific example when we talk about it. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?" Okay, we'll unpack. All right. And then the reason why I'm asking that is because I sense there's a little bit of you do care about this, that you do care deeply because of the way we've unpacked these specific examples. So telling the truth without blame or judgment could just be pointing them to that one thing that they might unconsciously not even know they're doing. Like oh, this is really great, but I don't really care about that. It's fine. You know when people say that, it's fine and then you unpack it a little bit and they're like, well, actually, there's these couple things that have happened in the last couple of weeks. And I'm really curious you've said it's fine three times describing the specific situation, is it really fine?

That's a way of being able to tell the truth without blame or judgment. And also it comes with trust. You got to get to know folks and say, hey, I know in our last conversation, this is where you connect the dots as a coach, I know in our last conversation what was really important to you was that people collaborated well to get to the outcome you were looking for. And now I'm hearing that you think it's fine that they're not. That's really interesting. You find that interesting? So stuff like that where it's you're really bringing those pieces in from what they're reflecting to you is a way to be able to tell the truth without blame or judgment. Without saying, hey, I don't think you really care, but I've heard you say these couple of things where actually you do, don't you? So it's a very fine line, but it's about connecting it and reflecting it back to them in a way where they have the agency to ask that question for themself without you telling them.

Daniel Stillman:

Well, so this is the other piece that I wanted to pull back a layer on, because agency and being directive versus evoking or provoking people to think for themselves. A lot of people feel like leadership is about being directive and authoritative, and you have a value of bringing your coaching skills into your role as a leader. So I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about how you balance those roles, because occasionally one must be directive, or can you just lead through good questions and deep listening and telling the truth and being open and not directive?

AJ Thomas:

Well, I mean, I'll tell you it's really hard to do it. It's really, really hard to do it because as a leader with your coach's hat on you still have to get shit done, right? It still needs to happen. But again, what I put in the center is whoever that person is am I giving them back agency in how I'm showing up for them? Again, that could be in a question, that could be in a directive to say the only directive is the goal. So that's how I think about it. And if we agree on the goal, you can go kick the ball however you want to. We can agree on the approach, but your technique is your technique, and I'm going to ask. And sometimes I think there are team members who want you to outline it for them, but I always have to say that's great. One idea is to do it X, and then I don't let them off the hook and I will say, what is your idea? Let's hear your idea. Let's see if we can build on that.

If they're lost and they want you to tell them something, I would say, well, how would you approach it? How would you approach it? Okay, that's really interesting. Why don't we build on that with what we know? Let's go back to the goal. So my job as a leader is to align people to the goal because the goal is in service to the mission to help the company succeed. And so as long as I know that's my role, I can continue to play the coach role. If I forget that that's my role, I'm going to be directive and authoritative because I need to get shit done. And I know that's oversimplifying things, but I think for me, that's what I've learned. I used to be the leader that was like, here's our task. Here's what we got to do, da, da, da, da, but what people need is also the context and the agency to say, okay, I can get this done. It is well within my power to be able to do that. And if I'm lost, I can always anchor back and I can anchor back if I'm lost on what the goal is.

Because then people get to see themselves whether or not it's a stretch or it's easy or whatever. And again, it's about giving them back their agency. If I've forgotten as a leader that my job is to clarify the goal and to make sure that the mission is clear, then I will end up being directive and authoritative. There's no other way around it.

Daniel Stillman:

Well, I'm wondering, because I want to talk about your title of chaos pilot, and I feel like in a world of complexity and maybe even chaos, to me it seems almost hubris to say that there is one right way to do things. It seems like a lot of humility comes from the recognition that we are just in a very complex, borderline chaotic situation and our job is to move through that and with a view of alternate worlds and parallel universes, there may not be. You are not coming as a leader saying that there is one best way, and that you know it.

AJ Thomas:

Yeah. You just really can't.

Daniel Stillman:

Unless I'm just putting words in your mouth, but that's the vibe I'm getting.

AJ Thomas:

Well, no, it's true because it's also working in the space that we work in. And I talk a lot about how Moonshot mindsets are accessible for everyone. I think one that I love in particular, an Astro talks about this all the time, is the ability to both be humble and audacious. Which I've then jammed into a word called humbacious. But anyway, it's the ability to be audacious enough to articulate an idea or a path forward, but to also be humble enough to say, I don't understand the entire problem set just yet and so it might not be right so I need to de-risk it, and here's how I'm going to do that. I think it's particularly important when you're working on things that are huge. I always like to say as well, there are people that are really passionate about their work. I can be so passionate about everything that I'm doing right now, but I also feel a sense of responsibility because the work that I'm doing touches the future in some way.

I have three kids myself, and the legacy I'm going to leave behind for them if I'm going to spend 80% of my time at work doing the things that I do is going to be shaped by how the future can show up in the work that we do in the present. And so I think it's really crucial that you don't... I always say, first rule of working on the future is for you to know you don't know it. And anybody out there who is working on the future that says I know exactly what it's going to look like, what we're going to do, here's where we need to go is automatically wrong. Because if I could be so bold to say or audacious enough to say, because the future requires you to constantly ask questions, to constantly de-risk, to constantly test things, and that's fine. But I think in the meta of things, you're always building on something. You're always building on something, and it's never that that one thing that was done is final.

You think about technology and the internet, we're all done for Y2K. Internet is here and now at the rise of generative AI and artificial intelligence or machine learning, there's always something to build on.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes.

AJ Thomas:

Once you plateau at the infrastructure and you create a new operating system, new apps will be built on that. New features and skillsets will be built on top of those new apps.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, that we can't participate.

AJ Thomas:

And the cycle starts all over again. So I think, yes, you should assume that you don't know, but be audacious enough to still explore anyway.

Daniel Stillman:

These two values of humble and audacious are really interesting. Lately, there's this wonderful concept of polarity mapping and polarity thinking in management. If you've got these an two angels on your shoulder, one's humble and one's audacious, we can over index on one and there's positives of each pole, and there's negatives of over indexing on each pole to the detriment of the other.

AJ Thomas:

Absolutely.

Daniel Stillman:

Do you feel like you're navigating those two poles in your work? What happens if you lean too much in one way or another for you?

AJ Thomas:

Well, I mean, I think if you lean too much on being audacious you end up really leaving a trail of folks behind you because you're not bringing them into the conversation in a way where you can get collectively curious. I think if you lean too much on humility, you'll never get anything done because you're never going to want to start it 'cause you're always thinking, okay, well, maybe not now, maybe tomorrow. So you got to have a little bit of that-

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, and why me?

AJ Thomas:

Yeah, the imposter syndrome are settling in rather than having just a little sprinkle of that audacity can really take you there, and then a little sprinkle of humility on the other side. You don't want to change who you are, but you do want to live in the tension of what's the other side of this look like, right? I think some of the greatest leaders out there can see both or four or three sides of an argument, and I always think there's three sides to an argument; yours, mine, and the truth. So it's a very interesting, again, paradox, but I think it's also just very important to hold that tension. I navigate it every single day, and I got to tell you it's not easy.

Daniel Stillman:

No.

AJ Thomas:

It's hard.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

AJ Thomas:

The part that I have to constantly work on is when I get triggered, when do I know I'm being too much of one? It's like your strengths, right? Strengths overused are detrimental to you, but if you have them just toned in the right pocket you're fine. Same thing with much of a good thing. So I think it's not the ability of whether or not you're ambitious or humble. It's not that at all. It's the ability of being able to know when you need to sprinkle a little bit of each in moderation to whatever it is you're working on because some tasks-

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah, or de-sprinkle or to pull back on one versus the other.

AJ Thomas:

Yeah, Absolutely. Absolutely. And again, that's the tension. A lot of people will say, that's context switching. No, it's not. It's being aware that it's there. Half the battle is knowing you're going to encounter that.

Daniel Stillman:

Yes. And to have control in the use of self to say, how may I... 'Cause I have a sticky note in front of me that says audacity from one of my good friends who's actually a therapist. And he was the one who said like, yo, I try to really remember to be audacious, to lean in and say what my clients may not want to hear, but they need to hear. And that's a lever that we can pull.

AJ Thomas:

That is.

Daniel Stillman:

But also let go because as you said, if that's all I'm doing is just pressing the audacity button, I'm not going to get what I want.

AJ Thomas:

Yeah, you won't get the utility of the audacity button.

Daniel Stillman:

Which is not always pressing it.

AJ Thomas:

That's right.

Daniel Stillman:

We've gotten so close to our time, God, we've covered a lot. What have I not asked you that I should have asked you, AJ? Because I have the humility to know I can't know all the things to ask.

AJ Thomas:

I love that. I don't know. I mean, yeah, no, that's a really good question. I mean, I would say we covered a lot of things. I think there's probably some areas where being a mother is a different intersection as well, and a working mother as well, but we can have a whole other conversation on that.

Daniel Stillman:

Happily, yeah. If you coach your kids.

AJ Thomas:

I think it's the other way around. I learn a lot from them. I learn a lot from their very interesting questions. Actually, my daughter and I, we wrote a children's book all from her question of, well, how hard could it be? It was really hard, but it was more of the curiosity of, okay, well, even if we don't know let's just try. And the next thing you know, we've got an award-winning children's book in our hands, which was really awesome. But discovering little things like that. I mean, because I work a lot in the future like I said, it's not just a passion for me. I feel responsible because I'm literally raising three humans who are going to be in the future.

Daniel Stillman:

They live there. That's where they're from.

AJ Thomas:

Yeah, that's right. And so I want to make sure that whatever I pour into it has that consideration in mind, because it can be so easy to be wrapped up in what's happening day to day that you forget that what you're actually working on is never going to be something that you may ever see in your lifetime. At least for me, that's true, right?

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

AJ Thomas:

So I think that, but other than that it's all kind of relative to our conversation today.

Daniel Stillman:

Well, I've never asked this question before, what would be the title of this conversation do you think? If you were to give this conversation one or two titles, what would you say this conversation-

AJ Thomas:

Oh, this conversation?

Daniel Stillman:

This conversation, yeah. What was this conversation about? What's on the cover?

AJ Thomas:

Oh, that's a really good one. I don't know, purveyor of perspectives.

Daniel Stillman:

I have a vote for there's a fine fine line between a bitch fest and a brainstorm.

AJ Thomas:

Oh, that's a good one. I got a lot of love for that one. I got a lot of love for that one. That one was just off the cuff, but-

Daniel Stillman:

I mean, there's so clearly so many books that you will one day write AJ, one of them might be these Z-shaped people and it's another really interesting overarching theme for this. So what it's like to be a Z-shaped coaching leader, it's a very different approach.

AJ Thomas:

Yeah, it is. I mean, I'm pondering a little bit more on that. I'm trying to learn as much as I can in the spaces that I'm in. I mean, because there's other spaces of access. I'm a Filipino first generation immigrant. I don't have a lot of folks that I can look up to in the industry that's doing stuff like this. And so in some spaces I feel like I'm breaking into these types of conversations, but I know I'm not alone. And I'd love to see more folks that look like me that have these different experiences in parallel universes talking more about what it feels like for them as well.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Well, thanks for being part of the conversation and being so generous with your perspectives. It's been really, really delightful. Where ought people to go to learn about all things AJ Thomas on the internet if they want to get to know you better?

AJ Thomas:

I'm on LinkedIn, or you can find all of the ways to connect with me on, it's ajthomas.com.

Daniel Stillman:

Sweet. We will direct people there. Well, I think we will call scene.

AJ Thomas:

Woo.

A Company Must be a Community of Practice

In this episode I talk with my friend Chris Murchison, who is a coach, a facilitator and a talented artist, too!

We talk about his Four principles of Communities of Practice and how building a positive culture within an organization requires, essentially, creating a community of practice. Your team, your organization, is already practicing something…and that practice is either mindful and intentional, or it’s habitual and haphazard. 

Communities of practice are groups of people who share a passion for something they do and so, have a shared purpose or goal for learning how to do it better…and so, they interact regularly with the intention of continuous improvement of that thing.

An example of intentional practice that Chris shares in the opening quote is what he calls a “Sunset Meeting”, a special, extended, and deeper version of a Retrospective, that asks, not just how did the work go, but how did we do? Stopping to look back and look forward means that the space for continuous improvement is being created.

But without fostering deep psychological safety for people to say what needs to be said, a leader and a team can never get the continuous relevant learning they need from the conversation. How to lead that kind of safety is a whole other conversation, but Chris and I do unpack some of the facilitation skills leaders need to master in order to be able to host these types of continuous improvement conversations.

Communities of practice require ongoing conversations and intentional practices. Chris shares four key principles to help you architect an effective community of practice for your own context:

1. Meaningful connection (In order to, as Chris says, plant the seeds of trust and safety)

2. Relevant learning (So people want to be full there AND so the organization benefits)

3. Purposeful practice (so we’re focused on what matters most)

4. Sharing and reflection (slowing down to notice and share what we’re each practicing and learning )

Make sure to check out the links and show notes which include Chris’ wonderful Community of Practice Guide and his more general Community Principles & Practices.

AI Automated Summary

9:39

Chris explains his interest in learning and community, and how they led him to the idea of communities of practice

11:56

Chris and Daniel discuss the idea of organizations as communities of practice and learning organizations

15:13

Chris discusses the importance of psychological safety in organizations and how to create a sense of trust and safety for employees to express themselves

19:36

Daniel adds that safety, expression, and learning are all interconnected and that regular intentional practice is necessary to create transformative conversations and communities of practice

41:05

Facilitation skills are important for creating meaningful connections and purposeful practice within a community of practice

47:35

Chris Murchison and Daniel Stillman discuss how building a positive culture within an organization requires ongoing conversations and intentional practices, and how everyone in the organization can be considered part of a community of practice

Links, Quotes, Notes, and Resources

Chris's Website

Community of Practice Guide

Community Principles & Practices

Minute 1

Chris Murchison:

And the community of practice concept is essentially that. It's just the idea of bringing people together who have a common kind of domain, if you will, share a profession or share something that's of interest to them so they have a reason to be together. And then within that reason there's a sense of connection and community and then there's within that community something that they want to do together and learn together. And so I think I was just so drawn initially to this idea of learning and learning with other people. And so when I came across this concept of communities of practice, it just rang so beautifully for me as something that felt true and youthful and powerful.

Minute 6

Chris Murchison:

In my work within organizations, both as an internal employee and more recently as a consultant, one of the things that I observe and have experienced is a constraint or the difficulty of expression. And oftentimes in organizations, I will experience employees being fearful of speaking up or fearful of speaking the truth to leadership or fearful of, if I say this, I'm going to appear stupid or less intelligent. Or if I say this, I might get reprimanded or there might be some kind of retribution of some kind that I imagine. And it's interesting, and these are all smart people and organizations that support things like showing up authentically and bringing your best self to work, that there can still be this interesting underlying fear.

So I think this relates to this concept of psychological safety and so how do you actually go about building an organization community where there is a sense of trust and greater sense of safety to be courageous and speak more of your truth? I think that's an aspiration and a challenge for many individuals and for many organizations. And so when I think about your question, I think what I would say to a leader is now how do you create ways for people within your workplace community to feel more safe, to feel more courageous, to create the space for people to experiment with expressing themselves more?

And so it might be creating opportunities for people to practice, make these micro practices of connecting. And I mean maybe that's at the root of it sort building the relationships and building enough trust within those relationships across the organization, across your community, so that over time you kind of build a sense of trust and with that, a sense of safety. But then I think allows you to step forward more and to be more courageous in expressing yourself when maybe you have a disagreeing opinion or when you have a piece of feedback that might be more constructive, that you will lean into that because you really trust the relationship and trust that it'll be fine no matter how nervous you might be, that the outcome will likely be trusted and fine. I think also creating some structures to help people begin to practice sharing more. And so I think how do you be thoughtful about creating and you're [inaudible 00:09:25] is creating conversation structures where people are invited to share things.

Another example is a sunset meeting, for example, after a project, rather than getting together and just talking about did you hit your milestones and how did you improve this system or that system and blah, blah, blah, blah, in a typical retrospective, but how do you include in that, how did we do? How did we collaborate? How did we get along? I've sat in many or observed many project teams where there were clear interpersonal challenges or struggles at different points as is naturally human. But how do you create the space for a conversation to also include those reflections on, well, where were those moments where things got a little tricky or hard and how do we reflect on those and how do we learn from those so that we can collaborate better in the future?

Minute 25

Chris Murchison:

And I've been doing a lot of work with art-based coaching recently and learning a lot about it. And one of the things that I find quite remarkable is that sometimes words are just not adequate. And this might be helpful advice for leaders as well, sometimes it might take using a different medium to support people in engaging with their feeling about a topic or a question. And so it might mean engaging in some art-based activity or engaging in a movement activity or taking your team out for a walk in nature to inspire them in a different way in response to a question you're wanting to discuss with them or have with them.

So I think that's really interesting is that sometimes it isn't asking a question and getting words back. Maybe it's asking a question and maybe there's some other medium that you might engage people in that helps them engage that subconscious below the water line kind of level of experience. That might help different words come out eventually, but I think that experience with the art or with nature or even poetry or other mediums can really sometimes help people come up with an even better answer.

Minute 41

Chris Murchison:

I mean, organizations also move fast these days, and so I could imagine people saying there just isn't time to have these kinds of conversations. I certainly have clients who feel that this is a good idea, but we have 10 items on our agenda list, and we maybe have five minutes or some kind of check-in or conversation about how we're doing. So yes, crises require attention, but at a certain point, I imagine a community would want to pause and think about, well, why are we in constant crisis? Or how might we engage and look differently to maybe get out of this loop of constant crisis?

Or how has this experience of being in crisis all the time affecting me and my work or my relationships with this team or with the organization? I mean, being within an organization is a complex experience. And so I always feel like you need time and space to reflect on that experience and to collectively understand what's being developed from that collective experience because sometimes to your point, sometimes that's all it's developing underneath the water line, and it could be developing in positive ways or it could be developing in some destructive ways. And if you don't create the space to understand and allow people to express what they're feeling, you may never know.

More About Chris

My career has spanned the higher education, for-profit, non-profit, and philanthropic sectors. This have given me a unique and diverse perspective on the experience of work and workplace culture.

I have held roles in student services, employee development, human resources, talent and organization development, and more. As a practitioner and consultant, my work is inspired by the research and frameworks of positive organization psychology, art and movement, mindfulness, emotional intelligence, appreciative inquiry, and applied improvisation.

I am constantly learning and evolving my practice. I appreciate multi-disciplinary approaches and the unique solutions that are created as a result.

Full Transcript

Daniel Stillman:

I will officially welcome you to the conversation factory. Chris, I'm really, really glad we're having another conversation and to be talking about this topic specifically. It's a really rich topic, so thanks so much for making the time for this. As you mentioned in your busy, busy, over busy schedule. So thank you.

Chris Murchison:

You are so welcome. I really enjoyed our first conversation, so have been anticipating this one. I'm looking forward to it.

Daniel Stillman:

There are so many delightful, the designed conversations, the toolkits on your website that I really cannot remember how I stumbled upon, but the community of practice guide and the way you break it down, it's such a rich conversation topic. And I want to start at the origin for you about why you value, how you came to value the idea of a community of practice. Can you take us back and take us to how it came to be something that matters to you enough to put that whole beautiful document together?

Chris Murchison:

Yeah, I think if I were to boil it down, I would bring it to probably two interests that I have. One is learning, and then the other is community. And when I put those two things together, learning in the presence of others or with others, to me that just creates a powerful vehicle for growing together. And the community of practice concept is essentially that. It's just the idea of bringing people together who have a common kind of domain, if you will, share a profession or share something that's of interest to them so they have a reason to be together. And then within that reason there's a sense of connection and community and then there's within that community something that they want to do together and learn together. And so I think I was just so drawn initially to this idea of learning and learning with other people. And so when I came across this concept of communities of practice, it just rang so beautifully for me as something that felt true and youthful and powerful.

Daniel Stillman:

One of the things as we were just having our planning conversation, the thing you mentioned blew my mind, the idea of thinking of an organization itself as a community of practice. This seems to connect to the idea of learning organizations.

Chris Murchison:

Absolutely.

Daniel Stillman:

What organization should not be intentionally connecting people to learn, to grow, to create rituals of connection.

Chris Murchison:

Absolutely. I think that's definitely an aspiration. I think what many organizations are searching for or experimenting with are what kind of structures really support being a learning organization. And yeah, there might be ways of looking at it through the lens of training and development or learning and development or lens of organization development to think about how to build a learning organization. I love this idea of community. And so when I was in my last organization, Hope Lab, this is something that we kind of stumbled upon was what if we think about ourselves as a community rather than as a culture? And the focus for in recent years for organizations has been how to build a strong culture, how to build a positive culture, which is definitely a good thing. But I found myself thinking about what if you took that a step further? What have you thought about the organization as a community and a community within which you practice building culture and sustaining culture?

And there was something deeply resonant in that idea for me because if you think about the idea of community, to me it sort of signifies certain kinds of behaviors. But then the community, you participate, you are a citizen of that community, you feel like you have an obligation to support that community and it's growing over time. You're a part of it. You're a what builds it and makes it happen and sustains it. And for me, within that idea, I thought, well, culture fits within that as a culture isn't necessarily something handed down to you. It's something that I think you build within community together and you create this thing that we call culture and then that evolves over time and molds based on leadership, based on the individuals within the organizations and how they relate to it to each other and the kinds of behaviors and rituals that they build with each other intentionally or unintentionally sometimes as well.

Daniel Stillman:

If you were talking to the leader of an organization who knows that they want to improve their culture, who's thinking about having a more learning oriented, growth oriented culture, it is a really interesting shift to think about coming at it from a, well, I don't want to fix my culture, but I want to grow our community. How does the approach shift for them? What would you want them to be thinking and doing and being? How would you want them to be showing up differently to lead a community rather than trying to develop or shift a culture?

Chris Murchison:

In my work within organizations, both as an internal employee and more recently as a consultant, one of the things that I observe and have experienced is a constraint or the difficulty of expression. And oftentimes in organizations, I will experience employees being fearful of speaking up or fearful of speaking the truth to leadership or fearful of, if I say this, I'm going to appear stupid or less intelligent. Or if I say this, I might get reprimanded or there might be some kind of retribution of some kind that I imagine. And it's interesting, and these are all smart people and organizations that support things like showing up authentically and bringing your best self to work, that there can still be this interesting underlying fear.

So I think this relates to this concept of psychological safety and so how do you actually go about building a organization community where there is a sense of trust and greater sense of safety to be courageous and speak more of your truth? I think that's an aspiration and a challenge for many individuals and for many organizations. And so when I think about your question, I think what I would say to a leader is now how do you create ways for people within your workplace community to feel more safe, to feel more courageous, to create the space for people to experiment with expressing themselves more?

And so it might be creating opportunities for people to practice, make these micro practices of connecting. And I mean maybe that's at the root of it sort building the relationships and building enough trust within those relationships across the organization, across your community, so that over time you kind of build a sense of trust and with that, a sense of safety. But then I think allows you to step forward more and to be more courageous in expressing yourself when maybe you have a disagreeing opinion or when you have a piece of feedback that might be more constructive, that you will lean into that because you really trust the relationship and trust that it'll be fine no matter how nervous you might be, that the outcome will likely be trusted and fine. I think also creating some structures to help people begin to practice sharing more. And so I think how do you be thoughtful about creating and you're [inaudible 00:09:25] is creating conversation structures where people are invited to share things.

Another example is a sunset meeting, for example, after a project, rather than getting together and just talking about did you hit your milestones and how did you improve this system or that system and blah, blah, blah, blah, in a typical retrospective, but how do you include in that, how did we do? How did we collaborate? How did we get along? I've sat in many or observed many project teams where there were clear interpersonal challenges or struggles at different points as is naturally human. But how do you create the space for a conversation to also include those reflections on, well, where were those moments where things got a little tricky or hard and how do we reflect on those and how do we learn from those so that we can collaborate better in the future?

Daniel Stillman:

I love so many things in that response, I drew this little triangle of learning, requiring safety to express. And unless we have all of those pieces there, if a leader is not creating the conditions, this is the way I define leadership, is that creating the conditions for a transformative conversation for people to say what needs to be said. If we cannot create the conditions to say what needs to be said, we won't express what needs to be expressed and what I think maybe if I were to put something at the center of that triangle, it's practice not for nothing. That's what a community of practice, this is our topic of the day is how do we actually create regular opportunities for people to intentionally practice these things? And that doesn't come for free.

Chris Murchison:

No. And it's not necessarily easy. So I mean, acknowledge that that can be really hard.

Daniel Stillman:

That's when I say it doesn't come for free that's my general bucket for what we used to say in physics, non-trivial. There's no trivial solution for this. It takes money, time, effort, focus.

Chris Murchison:

Yeah. Takes all of those things. Definitely. I had a thought and it's flown out the window.

Daniel Stillman:

Oh, that's wonderful. What color was it? Let's see if we can follow it.

Chris Murchison:

Yeah, it might have been orange.

Daniel Stillman:

I'll look for an orange streak in the sky. Well, while you're remembering what you forgot, I have a card here on the four principles of communities of practice from one of the resources from your website, meaningful connection, relevant learning, purposeful practice, and sharing and reflection. And I would welcome you speaking either to all of them as a whole or to one that you think is highest value and highest leverage for a leader thinking about creating these conditions. I'd love to peel the onion of what does it take to actually create these opportunities for regular expression of relevant meaning.

Chris Murchison:

Yeah. Well I first, I remember that thought that went out the window. The orange one with the-

Daniel Stillman:

He's big in orange. He's come back in.

Chris Murchison:

Which I think relates to what you were just asking.

Daniel Stillman:

That's amazing.

Chris Murchison:

So people oftentimes use the iceberg to describe culture, organizations. And so above the water line you might see all of the observable things, artifacts, behaviors within an organization, values, observable practices, et cetera, but beneath the water line and as we know with icebergs, what's beneath the water line as often bigger than what's above. So beneath the water line might be all the kind of unexpressed values or the implicit knowledge, tacit knowledge, the routines and things that are more quiet or underground, less expressed or on sidelines, on unexpressed emotions, feelings, even ideas and thoughts might live below the water line.

And so I think if you think about communities of practice within an organization, I think your question speaks to how do you create the environment within which the waterline lowers and you're creating greater opportunity for people to express all of those things that might be beneath the water line and bringing them to above the water line. And so I do think connection, as we were just talking about before, I think connection plays a big part. So the quality of your relationships, the quality of your connection with each other can really support your sense of safety or trust within that space, within that community. And with that hopefully builds your courage to be able to express more, speak more.

Daniel Stillman:

What structures, because you mentioned... Oh, sorry, go ahead. You were taking a breath now. Keep going.

Chris Murchison:

Yeah, I was thinking about your other points, your four points that you were sharing. Sharing a reflection was the fourth one of the four that you described. I do think structuring opportunities for people to practice sharing, how do you maybe create structures within meetings that invite people to share and maybe pose questions to them that are really thoughtful questions that really invite people into them. And so not a question like, oh, how was that? But a question that really takes it to a deeper level. What was your experience when you... So really I think that kind of a question invites someone to step into it and hopefully speak with some truth rather than the larger broad question, which might even overwhelm people because they don't really know how to answer it.

Daniel Stillman:

So this comes to a point of one of the other things I wanted to poke at was, I loved your check-in deck because I love recipes, but we're really talking about rituals, structures that as you said in that document, supporting people feeling welcomed, which is a value for you that comes from how you were raised from your life experience, that it's important to welcome people and use the word invite, which is one of my favorite words. We're really trying to create powerful invitations for people to really say what needs to be said. How can a leader who's listening to this tap into that power of invitation to make people feel welcomed, to ask questions that actually help people feel comfortable, to peel just a little bit more?

Chris Murchison:

Well, I think I can connect this again back to the four points that you mentioned earlier, connection, learning, practice, and sharing and reflection. I mean, I think the idea of coming from this check-in deck that I produced, but the idea of drafting or structuring exercises that invite people into conversations that support them learning. And so a good question can also inspire people to think at a meta level about how they're engaging with their work or how they're engaging with each other and what are they learning from that engagement and how might they want to improve that the next time or build upon that the next time or within their work tasks.

Really thoughtful questions or activities can help people be really meaningfully reflective on what risks they took, how they tried something, maybe it didn't work out as well as they wanted to, or what have supported them reaching their goal or what got in the way, what might they try differently? So I think through thoughtfully structured questions, thoughtfully crafted even activities for a team can really help group reflect and to learn together from their experience. And that's how you also build your practice together. So if you're a team that's focused on collaborative collaborating to work on a project together or you share a common practice across an organization, being able to come together and reflect collectively allows you to improve upon that practice as well.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. It's funny, when I was writing down these four principles from your own document, I wasn't thinking, when I put that together with this idea of an organization as a community of practice. Those become leadership principles. Let's lead meaningful connection so that we feel safe to express. Let's make sure that we're providing relevant learning to feed purposeful practice so that we can actually get better at what we're trying to do here. And I think that's one of the core issues of psychological safety is its we can't do it all the time. It's absurd to think that we can do it all the time. There is always going to be learning and practice and sharing and reflection so that we can continuously create that loop of becoming better at what we're doing together.

Chris Murchison:

Yeah. And it's a virtual loop. So the more we're willing to extend ourselves to try things, to be courageous to experiment, the more we're able to reflect on those actions that we took, then that feeds our learning. And when we go back to do that thing again, we have the wisdom that we've just garnered that we can apply to the next round and then hopefully the next and the next and the next in this upward beautiful upward spiral.

Daniel Stillman:

It is a virtuous loop. I think it's very well said and something I'm looking at the iceberg that I sketched while you were talking about it and just being aware that there is a line and that there is something below the line, I feel like creates some more empathy. One thing I post reposted this or someone reposted this of that I wrote way back, the gap between the amount that we think, the pace at which we can think and the pace at which we can talk. And I think it's very... I'm curious what you think and how you would respond to this perspective. I think it's a very easy to have the expectation that people say and are saying all that they can say that when somebody says what they've meant to say, we've heard everything that they can say on it.

But there's always a very huge fundamental gap between all that we can think about something, all the things that we might say about something and what we actually did say in the time that we had, it's very easy to just assume as a leader, well why wouldn't somebody just say everything that they meant to say and what they've said is what they've intended to say and there's nothing below the line because why would there be? I just asked them a question and they gave me an answer. Let's keep going. Let's move on with the conversation. But it takes, I think, a real shift in empathy and also willingness to slow down to go below the line because it's not easy to go below the line. It's much easier to say, "Okay, thanks for your answer, let's go."

Chris Murchison:

Yeah, I love that. I think I came across that same piece of data recently, and it seems so true that, I mean similar as you were just describing with the iceberg model for us as individuals as well, that we have these thoughts that we can share quickly perhaps with our words or we say something with our words in response to a question. But to your point that there's only so much our brains can pull together and express with our mouths, but there's a lot more-

Daniel Stillman:

It's so true. Just can't pull more together in the time of us.

Chris Murchison:

Yeah, there's so much more happening I think in our belts experience in the subconscious that to your point, takes more time to understand and to connect with and to be able to express and your earlier metaphor of an onion. I mean, there's probably many layers to the onion when we think about a question. They're probably, if you sit with it long enough, there might be many different ways to answer that question or how I answer it now might be different to how I would answer it tomorrow morning or next week. And I think there's definitely power to allowing enough time to in a way mine all of the perspectives that can come if we give people the structure and the time to get below the water line into their more different kind of their deeper feelings or emotions or thoughts about a topic.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Chris Murchison:

I think this has an introversion extroversion element to it as well. I mean, I know as an intro introvert, I oftentimes need more space. I mean, I can say something, but whatever I say in the moment quickly never feels satisfactory. I know if I had more time to think about it, that there's probably a better answer or a different answer or a deeper answer. And in a similar way, I think everyone can benefit from more time to sit with the question and fully grasp it and fully grasp the different ways they might think about it.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. It's the thought, the thinking, talking, intention, Venn diagram might be shifted differently for people who self-identify as introverts versus extroverts. But I think the fundamental math of we can think at 4,000 words per minute and we can only speak at 125 means that the physics is against us.

Chris Murchison:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

There's just no way we can say everything that we intend to say. No one can.

Chris Murchison:

And some things are just difficult to express in words at all. And so I've been doing a lot of-

Daniel Stillman:

Makes my heart just melt, just it's so true. I feel that.

Chris Murchison:

And I've been doing a lot of work with art-based coaching recently and learning a lot about it. And one of the things that I find quite remarkable is that sometimes words are just not adequate. And this might be helpful advice for leaders as well, sometimes it might take using a different medium to support people in engaging with their feeling about a topic or a question. And so it might mean engaging in some art-based activity or engaging in a movement activity or taking your team out for a walk in nature to inspire them in a different way in response to a question you're wanting to discuss with them or have with them.

So I think that's really interesting is that sometimes it isn't asking a question and getting words back. Maybe it's asking a question and maybe there's some other medium that you might engage people in that helps them engage that subconscious below the water line kind of level of experience. That might help different words come out eventually, but I think that experience with the art or with nature or even poetry or other mediums can really sometimes help people come up with an even better answer.

Daniel Stillman:

It's so interesting because I assume you've been exposed to the Johari Window at some point in your work, and I'm thinking about one of the check-ins in your check-in deck and your artwork. So the random box of objects where people just pull out a random object from a box and basically confabulate, say this object connects to the core challenge or my key insight from this because blank and people just make something up, right? They literally make something up because that's what we do as humans. We confabulate, and I'm thinking about your collage work and how it is a way to tap into that quadrant of the Johari Window of the unknown unknowns. It is to tap into the subconscious or the collective unconscious in some way.

Chris Murchison:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

I'm just freewheeling here, but I feel like there's a connection between what you just said around peeling back layers and getting into the unconscious and using unexpected approaches to try and get people to express and some of the things that you're clearly attracted to in your own work, some of your own expressive modalities.

Chris Murchison:

To me, there's different modalities, are just a different way of expressing, and I find it quite powerful. I know that when I have brought in kind of unusual activities to help a group think into the future or begin to envision the future of the organization or to think about themselves in their personal development in five years, or to think about some complex dynamic that they might be experiencing in a team or with a coworker, sometimes again, it's hard to find the words or saying the words might feel a little scary even.

But to be able to use a different source to help channel those emotions and those feelings and eventually those words. So again, finding a poem that somehow captures the essence of your feeling. That could be amazing and beautiful and allows you to express what you're feeling in a different way. Or for me, with collaging, thinking about a question or a situation and being able to piece together quite intuitively images that seem to express how I'm feeling about that situation or that person. It just allows me to express myself in a different way and sometimes in a more honest way than if I were just using words.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah.

Chris Murchison:

Yeah. I think if you also think about centers of intelligence, I mean, we are in our heads so much, and so it's helpful for me as well to get out of my head. And by using other methods like art or again, poetry or other things, it kind of takes me out of my head and draws upon other kinds of wisdom that I have. It might be more emotional wisdom or physical wisdom or creative wisdom, but it gives me different kinds of information than I'm just coming at a situation or a question from my head. And I find all of that information, all of the sources of wisdom really helpful. And so if we can balance them all as we think about how to respond to a question, to me that's beautiful. That's powerful.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. And this goes to... Sorry, was there something else that you wanted to-

Chris Murchison:

Well, I was going to say, to me, to loop it back to communities of practice, I mean, to me that's the beauty of intentionally building a community of practice, whether that's an organization as a community, and thinking about that body as a group that elevates its own practice and learning together. Or if it's in designing a group of people to come together and to meet regularly for the same purpose of learning together, connecting with each other and elevating or improving your practice together. I think that at the core of that is creating that structure that really supports people in having a successful experience.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Well, that actually connects with one of the cards that I have not talked about that I'm curious about, because you mentioned the power of facilitation skills to when you think about creating meaningful connection and these opportunities for purposeful practice and your value of supporting people and feeling welcomed. It is a skill to host these kinds of spaces, to provide the structures that make it happen within one instance, but also to facilitate it as a cadence of conversations because a community practice doesn't mean wants, right?

Chris Murchison:

Right.

Daniel Stillman:

I'm thinking about what's the minimum viable structure, the minimum viable community of practice. How should someone really get started? Obviously meeting once is a good start, obviously psychological safety, having that ethos and the empathy to look beneath the water line is important. But what are the structures that you'd like to see more organizations putting into place to get started in creating more shots on goal for meaningful connection and purposeful practice?

Chris Murchison:

I think facilitation is needed and important. I used to think that groups could be more self-initiated, self-sustaining, and I think that's possible if you have a purely skilled group of participants. But I would say in my experience that my experience in groups has been if you don't have someone who is holding the space for that group, helping that group keep organized, it doesn't have to be a heavily managed kind of organizing or facilitating, but I think it has to be a gentle enough kind of herding and shepherding, if you will, to keep the group focused and moving forward together. And so in my facilitation of communities of practice, whether that's in an organization or outside of organization, to me, one of the first things out the gate is establishing connection. And so if you have a group of people who are coming together, I think initially you want to create a strong foundation of relationship.

And so what can you do, what can you structure to support people engaging with each other, beginning to share information about each other, getting to know each other in a way that feels meaningful so that you begin to plant those seeds of trust and safety within the group. And also not just trust and safety, but also people begin to care for each other. They begin to be curious about each other, hopefully beginning to be interested in each other and what they're practicing, what they're doing in the world. And then that creates a kind of energy of excitement of wanting to meet with these people. So I think once you've established that foundation, then you can move into that sphere of what we want to learn together. And so I think that also requires some facilitation to help the group surface kind of what's important to them. What's something that they can agree on that they want to spend their time together discussing or learning together.

And it's not as easy as you think, sometimes in a group people are bashful and it can be hard to... People might be willing to go along with what Sally says or what Joe says. And I think that's a part of the dance of building enough trust in the group that people are willing to put out there what it is they're interested in so that you're able to see the full kind of menu. And then the group can decide what priorities they want to tackle first. Then there's the question of how, once you identified topics, I think there's how do we want to engage in these topics. And again, if you've built up enough of a strong foundation, the group can participate in kind of co-creating, well, do we want to just have an open discussion or do we want to bring in a speaker or do we want to read something together? I mean, there's so many different ways that you can engage learning and building your practice that ideally you want the group to all weigh in on deciding together collectively, both the what and the how.

Daniel Stillman:

That is a lot of work.

Chris Murchison:

It's an investment in the beginning, maybe that's true of most things they tackle in life. Make that initial investment to get it started. And hopefully once it's off the ground, you've got enough momentum that it can begin to move more easily on its own. Maybe people begin to volunteer to help with different sessions, or you develop a structure for the meetings, which carries itself from meeting to meeting to meeting, or you begin to develop rituals. And so people come knowing what to expect in a meeting. So I think it's yes, an investment in the early part to establish those structures, and then some gentle support and facilitation ongoing to keep it moving.

Daniel Stillman:

One thing that I'm hearing is that leaders should expect that it's going to take some time and some investment to get a return on a community of practice that is not a chocolate bar, a quick fix, it's not a sugar rush, it's a long arc.

Chris Murchison:

It is. Well, I think if you're talking about communities of practice outside of an organization, like a group of professionals, for example, who come together or they want to form a cohort and meet together, focus on their practice together, that can have a lifetime or a lifespan of its own. It could last for six months or a year. It depends on a number of factors. Within an organization, that's an interesting question because by the sheer nature of this group of people working together, they're probably in the same environment, in the same community for some time whether or not this community of practice idea takes off or not. But I think maybe it depends a little bit on what the goal of the community of practice is. And so if the goal is a more broader, how do we build community within our workplace?

How do we make sure we're mindful of culture and building all the practices and processes that support our positive culture? Yes, that's an ongoing thing. Everyone in the organization could be considered part of that community of practice. And so therefore, you would want to be really thoughtful about how you craft conversations at your staff meetings or your team meetings or supervision meetings or your performance conversations or onboarding. And it kind of permeates everything. But how do you be thoughtful about all of those different conversations to make sure that everyone's engaged in this idea that building culture is a practice, it's an ongoing practice, and how do we collectively support that practice and improving it over time.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. In a way, this sense of we are a community together and we are continuously co-creating our culture through the conversations we're having, the ones we are, the ones we're not, and the quality of the conversations we're having. And it sounds like in a way, regularly reflecting and sharing and practicing intentionality around what are the conversations we want to be having more of and less of, really keeping our eye on that ball.

Chris Murchison:

Absolutely.

Daniel Stillman:

It's a big vision and it's really powerful. What else? There's more there.

Chris Murchison:

I mean, organizations also move fast these days, and so I could imagine people saying there just isn't time to have these kinds of conversations. I certainly have clients who feel that this is a good idea, but we have 10 items on our agenda list, and we maybe have five minutes or some kind of check-in or conversation about how we're doing. So yes, crises require attention, but at a certain point, I imagine a community would want to pause and think about, well, why are we in constant crisis? Or how might we engage and look differently to maybe get out of this loop of constant crisis?

Or how has this experience of being in crisis all the time affecting me and my work or my relationships with this team or with the organization? I mean, being within an organization is a complex experience. And so I always feel like you need time and space to reflect on that experience and to collectively understand what's being developed from that collective experience because sometimes to your point, sometimes that's all it's developing underneath the water line, and it could be developing in positive ways or it could be developing in some destructive ways. And if you don't create the space to understand and allow people to express what they're feeling, you may never know.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. Where are we rushing to? Or I think there was a check-in your deck about what is my relationship to busy? What is busy winning us right now? What kind of busy do we want to be? Really investigating in busy. Speaking of busy, I'm going to assume that, well, I know you're busy, so we have a little bit of time left. What haven't I asked you? What have we not expressed? What is still below the line that should be above the line? What have I not asked you that I should have asked you, Chris, on this very, very rich topic that clearly we couldn't bring to full expression in the time we have, but is there anything else that we haven't said that should be said?

Chris Murchison:

Yes, I have been very delighted by some of the work done by a couple names, Beverly and [inaudible 00:43:33], [inaudible 00:43:33] Trainer. They actually live not too far from me here in Portugal, but they've done decades of research and work about social learning and developing this concept of communities of practice. And if you go online, maybe we can link to it in your podcast, but they have some beautiful writing about what they have seen as the core elements that create a community of practice, the core principles that support them being successful, the common things that communities of practice tend to discuss or the kinds of things that help people feel that the time is valuable in a community of practice.

But I think their work is particularly useful in thinking about the possibilities coming out of communities of practice. I think the idea, we started out with this, but the idea of thinking about communities of practice as something an organization can be, can inhabit is a little unusual and different. I love the idea and I think I'm really happy that we had a chance to play around with that thinking a little bit, but I think it's interesting to apply it to an organization setting and the idea that an organization as a community can be a community of practice. I love that.

Daniel Stillman:

Yeah. I mean, definitely from my experience, communities of practice that exist organizationally or where people are showing up as an individual, there's high investment, each individual's bringing a lot of juice from their own passion to get better. But the other piece that we're talking about, an organization, seeing themselves as a learning organization and investing in the skills that they want to invest in, it's a very different problem, and I think people do show up differently in those contexts. I'm happy to include a link to the work of these folks that you were mentioning. If people want to learn more about all things, Chris Murchison, where else can they go on the internet to learn more about the things? I'm happy to link to all of the resources we've talked about today as well.

Chris Murchison:

Well, I did courageously create a website last year that is available. It includes some of my musings about the workplace. It includes some of my artwork. It includes some of the products that I've designed and built. You've mentioned one, the check-in deck. It also includes a document produced with the University of Michigan's Business School about building communities of practice specifically for groups of people who are practitioners of positive organizations, psychology. So yeah, my website is a good source. I wouldn't say that's all things Chris Murchison.

Daniel Stillman:

We know there's more below the line.

Chris Murchison:

Yeah.

Daniel Stillman:

There's parts of you that will be forever unknowable. Well, I really appreciate you making the time to express and elucidate these really, really important pieces of your work and this work that is creating communities where people can get better at the things that they really, really value together. So thank you so much, Chris.

Chris Murchison:

Thank you.