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.