103: Extreme Integrity with Chris McGoff

Pete Mockaitis
Chris, thanks so much for joining us here on the How To Be Awesome at Your Job Podcast.

Chris McGoff
It’s great to be here, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now, I was really enjoying reading some of your stuff all over the place, and you used the phrase “universal pattern” a lot. So I think it might be great if we just get that defined, first of all, so that we’ll know clearly what we’re talking about as we chat through the rest of this.

Chris McGoff
Great. Well, let’s start with the word “pattern.”

Pete Mockaitis
Sure.

Chris McGoff
Once you understand a pattern, you can predict what’s coming next. That’s pretty much the benefit of a pattern. Universal means anywhere in the world, anytime in the world. So these are patterns that appear anywhere in the world, anytime in the world, with respect to group behavior.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Intriguing. So now, in your book “The Primes: How Any Group Can Solve Any Problem,” you talk about a few different sets or categories of universal patterns which I’d love to dig into kind of each of them in turn. But maybe just to chum the waters or get some excitement going, could you maybe give us an example of one universal pattern and bring it to life by telling a story of how maybe working with your extensive client list (that’s very impressive) or somewhere, they kind of internalized and articulated and became aware of a universal pattern, and it just changed everything?

Chris McGoff
Well, I think the easiest one, and I think the one that we surfaced the earliest, was big hat-little hat. Big hat-little hat is just this conflict, this dilemma that happens when you’re part of a unit. Say you’re in a department in a company, so you have a department that you identify with (that’s your small hat), but you also identify with the company itself. When I worked at IBM, I was in Department 412 and I worked at IBM. So my big hat was the corporation. My small hat was the department I work in.
Big hat-little hat shows up in the State of Pennsylvania versus the United States. It’s a very old, intractable dilemma called “good for the part, good for the whole.” And the question comes when it collides, when something good for the part is not necessarily good for the whole, or something that we’re going to do is good for the whole but not necessarily good for the part.
So when you’re in a big hat meeting and you’re going to plan a strategy for the company or some kind of vision, or you’re going to take some bold action at the corporate level, some of the time, you’re thinking, “Wouldn’t that be great for the company?” but then it’s very natural for some of the time to be thinking, “What does this mean to me?” or “What does this mean to my department?”

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely.

Chris McGoff
It’s a difficulty to manage, not a problem to solve. Big hat-little hat is a constant dilemma. And it was written about thousands of years ago. It will be written about thousands of years in the future. And that dilemma manifests itself everywhere on earth. Big hat-little hat.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So having laid out that that’s a principle, sure, I can see that that does apply just about everywhere in all kinds of places and times and people. So are there any sorts of, I guess, prescriptions or pro tips or ways you’ve seen that universal principle get considered well such that there was an excellent outcome from it?

Chris McGoff
Well, I’ll give you two examples. The first thing to do is to discern it, to let everybody know, if you’re in one of these bigger hat things, like budgeting (company budgeting is usually a big hat thing), let everybody know that they’re going to be switching back and forth from the company perspective to the individual perspective or department perspective, that it’s natural and it’s going to happen. Everybody says, “Let’s keep the big hat on.” That’s not actually the way it works. You’re going to wear those two hats, and they’re going to flip very quickly in your mind.
So I think one of the best things to do is to name it and say, “Look, because of the nature of this meeting, because we’re building a corporate budget, this is going to be a big hat meeting,” but you’re going to shift into that little hat and ask yourself, “What does this mean to me and my department?” It’s okay. Here’s the red card, though. If you start advocating from a small hat perspective and what you’re advocating clearly is not in service of the big hat, we’re going to have to give you a red card or a yellow card on that. So once it’s distinguished, while they’re talking, you’ll hear the group go, “Yeah, we got that, but that’s really a little hat perspective,” and they start to self-police. So the cool part about the big hat-little hat is once it’s distinguished in the meeting, the group will self-police itself.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Very good. So you’re saying that a big piece of it is just that you have a unique vocabulary for it. And I guess it doesn’t sound selfish, or it’s like “That seems like a little hat perspective” sounds a little bit nicer to say than “Stop being so myopic and only looking at your own viewpoints.” It just seems like a nicer, friendlier way to kind of enforce and bring people up to where they need to be.

Chris McGoff
It is. It’s not making people wrong. It’s just naming something that’s very natural. It’s right to advocate for those you’re loyal to in your unit. It is right to do that. And it is right to advocate for what is right for the business. This isn’t right and wrong. These are two rights colliding.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. So that’s pretty cool. So maybe could you then share a bit of a story in terms of how you saw some folks, they got their arms around some distinctions or universal principle language, and you saw a cool transformation come about from it?

Chris McGoff
I’m working a little bit out there in the Silicon Valley, and these are high-speed, well-capitalized businesses. And I’m reminded of one very recently where this big hat-little hat thing was really getting in the way. The company set out with one idea of what it was going to be and do. But while they were being and doing it, the world changed. New developments happened that they didn’t see specifically… The technology that they were building became a commodity right when they were building it, and so they had to then embrace the fact that the thing that they identified with, the thing that they were building was now available for free everywhere.
There was still something to do with that commodity, something special they could do, but the engineering team was hanging on to “But we can do it better.” The hardware engineering team. But the software engineering team and the rest of the company was saying, “That incremental improvement is not going to make that much of a difference in the market.” And so what we did was we said…
It was kind of going on and on, and we got called in, and we saw that big hat-little hat dilemma. We sat down with the engineers and we said, “Look, you have to understand something. Engineering is what you do. It’s not who you are. We can let go of this aspect of the company. It doesn’t mean you have to be taken out of this company. The small hat perspective you’re having just doesn’t have any longevity in this company, based on what happened in the market.”
And I remember sitting there and the team going, “But this is our identity. We are hardware. It’s our fingerprint.” I was like, “But the world showed up. The world happened. And the little hat arguing for it right now is burning time with the group, and it’s not going to work out. So now, when you advocate for it, instead of a yellow card, it’s going to be a red card. You know the whole thing. Just choose to go where we’re going with this company.” And it took a little while.
And these people were wonderful people, and they let go of that. And thank heavens we did because the price on that technology and the functionality… The price came crashing down. The functionality went flying up, all available basically in the open market for free. I mean, it was really free. So I think if they didn’t do that and we didn’t move as fast as we did away from that particular aspect of the business, I think it would have been very detrimental to that company.
And right now, that company is thriving. It really judoed that change in the marketplace and said, “Look, it happened. Now what? Let’s persist variously.” And I think they’re doing really well with it, and we learned a lot about that. And that big hat-little hat is really instantiated in their vocabulary now because that world they’re working in is changing at lightning speed. And if you get too attached to anything, the conversations are really going to slow that business down. I’m real proud of how that worked out for them.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s cool. Thank you for sharing. Yes, I got you. And it’s interesting how there was sort a personal hang-up there in terms of identity or worth or value is like this thing that I’m working on or what it could be, but then you shift gears a bit. So, understood. Thank you. Now, you kind of broke out in your book, “The Primes,” a few different categories of universal patterns, and so I’d love it if you could maybe share a universal pattern or two, maybe one that’s among the most powerful or overlooked inside each of these categories. So one of them was for leading during uncertain times. What’s a universal principle that we should be aware of?

Chris McGoff
You know, I wrote that when I was looking at the history. People always think it’s uncertain times. I was looking back just on… I draw a lot from the philosophers. I want to make sure that everything that we talk about has been talked about a long time ago. So we have to source all of this stuff in ancient scriptures and ancient writings because we don’t believe in new things. We don’t want to drop another business book that’s the flavor of the day. So while I was doing the research, I was learning that everybody thought it was uncertain times. I mean, can you imagine as the Roman Empire went around the Mediterranean, what it must have been like for those countries? And that’s where I draw a lot of this from.
So uncertain times is a constant. But I think as simple as leading is, the prime leading, there’s so many books on leadership and on leading, but when we boiled it down… Not the noun leadership or leading. The verb leading is what I really want to focus on. And this sets people so free. There’s four responsibilities when you’re leading. And anybody can lead. Set direction, align the resources, inspire the action, and be responsible for the results.
It boils down to that. If you look all throughout history, the act of leading is to set the direction. Now, that shows up as vision, strategy, intent. There’s books on that. But set direction. Align the resources. That means allocate people and money to activities that allow the direction to be realized. Inspire the action is when you enroll people and you get them to give up on what they were thinking and doing to be committed to a new way, a new place, and to do new things. Inspire that action. And finally, hold yourself responsible for the results. I can’t tell you how much clarity that simple prime brings as we go to develop an intention for a company in an uncertain market.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Well, it is nice and comprehensive there. I’m thinking about, yes, when you’re leading, those are essentially the things that you’re doing. I’d love to maybe zero in on the inspire the action piece for just a moment. So I’m thinking that one way you’re going to inspire to do action is “Well, this is your job, and these are your incentives, and this is how you’re paid for tackling that thing.” What are some other sort of key ways that you’ve observed leaders throughout the centuries enact to be sort of extra-inspirational or get that inspired action flowing beyond just carrot sticks money?

Chris McGoff
Right. And it turns out that the fourth category that we’re going to talk about is much more powerful. It’s this idea of enrolling.

Pete Mockaitis
Enrolling? That sounds like a familiar term. Tell us more.

Chris McGoff
The question we have to confront people who are leading is “Does your vision elevate people in degree and excellence and respect?” and “Does it inspire them to act boldly, to act very boldly, to dare noble and mighty things?” Enrolment is fascinating. And I hope this isn’t too jargony, but it’s usually a function of context. So when a leader comes in front of a group of people, and at the end of that presentation and at the end of that time that that leader is with these people, the people are just excited and they’re willing to work unreasonably to achieve this idea. But it’s usually not about their company. When we see leaders truly enroll people, they usually start with the biggest context.
Let me give you an example. Say a leader is in a tech company. Say they’re in a drone company. I’m drawing from a real example here. And they stand in front and talk about the future of drones and the future of the technology. It’s really a yawn, quite frankly. Or even if they talk about the future of their company. But when they come out into the group and they say, “You know, it’s wrong that blind people don’t have the freedom to go wherever they want and to get whatever they want. It’s wrong that people have to climb up on roofs to inspect hail damage and that insurance companies hold tens of thousands of people in jobs that make them dangle on the tops of buildings. It’s not right that people have to go down into acid-filled tunnels to inspect things,” we see a world…
There’s the key. There’s the key in enrolment. We see a world where machines in the water and in the air, they’re our eyes and they’re taking care of very hazardous observation, the tops of cellphone towers. And that’s allowing people to live in a less risky kind of orientation with their work. And this leader just went on and talked about this world they were seeing. And when we all really got excited about it, I mean really excited about it, we’re like, “That’s the kind of thing that we should…” and he said, “We’re going to build the drones that make that possible,” it was the context that excited us.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Thank you. That is a great example. And it’s funny. It reminds me of the TV series we talked about, “Silicon Valley.” Have you seen the show “Silicon Valley”? It cracks me up. They always talk about “We’re changing the world.” And so they left it as sort of a punch line, like “What? How? What do you mean?” But I love what you’ve done there is you really filled in some of the blanks and the gaps, so it’s clear how, yeah, we are changing the world for these kinds of people in these kinds of jobs, and this is what’s possible when we kind of go to work and make that happen. So, understood. That’s really cool. Thank you.

Chris McGoff
And you’re right. It’s for these kind of people in these kind of jobs. But it turns out that there’s tens of thousands of people that are climbing up on roofs to inspect hail damage, and drones do that brilliantly.

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect. Okay, cool. Thank you. Could you now maybe give us a universal pattern for forming powerful alliances?

Chris McGoff
Well, we’re in a world right now… I don’t know. I looked at your audience and I’m really glad to be speaking into this group. I think you’ll agree it’s really difficult to take on noble and mighty things by yourself these days.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure.

Chris McGoff
And it’s even difficult to take on noble and mighty things with just the people in your company. We’re almost forced to work between our companies. We have to join up people who aren’t normally together. We have to put these groups together. I can’t tell you a day where I’m just working with the same group of people. I’m always forming these alliances. And so it turns out that forming alliances is just a real important capacity for a thriving business today. And when you try to form these alliances, it can be very difficult unless you get people into a shared perspective.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Chris McGoff
Now, for an alliance to have power, they have to have three things: a shared perspective, a shared intent, and an action plan that allows them to coordinate their actions. Three things. We’re talking now about perspective. And when we found that old piece of silk (It’s on the internet; people can look it up) of the blind man and the elephant. One guy is holding on to the leg and he’s saying, “Hey, it’s a tree,” and the other guy is holding on to the trunk and he’s saying, “Hey, it’s some kind of pipe.” And somebody’s got the ear and they’re saying, “It’s some kind of warm leaf.” And somebody’s got the tail, and that person is saying, “No, it’s a rope.” And there’s one person who can see standing way back, saying that it’s an elephant. But understanding that each of these people are perceiving this based on their point of view, what they can see.
If you try to get those people to make an agreement around an intention, it’s going to be all over the map. So the first thing that we have to do when we form an alliance is we have to get people into a shared perspective. And a very simple way to think about that is if you’re standing right on a street level and you see a lot of traffic, and you say, “Hey, let’s fix this traffic,” your plan will be different than if you’re standing on a building looking down at that traffic and you can see further up and down that street. That plan would be different if you were up in an airplane, and that plan will be different if you took a satellite view. When you form an alliance, people are existing at all different levels of perspective.
And so one of the key things in forming powerful alliances is to build a model, to model the problem, model the opportunity, to draw a picture of it, because it causes these strangers, these people that are coming together to form an alliance. It causes them to snap into a common level of perspective. Once they have a common level of perspective, it’s not that hard for them to establish an intent about what they want to do together. But I’ll tell you something. You bring a group together and you don’t get them aligned on perspective, then you’re going to have a lot of fragmentation around their intent. Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
I hear you. Absolutely. It’s like, like you said, they’re all over the place, so it’s hard to intend the same thing because they think that their intention from their vantage point is, by golly, the thing that just needs to happen because they see it every day.

Chris McGoff
Yeah. It’s something that we weren’t doing for a long time. We weren’t going through the process of building these shared models. And since we’ve been doing this, it really snaps the alliance together much faster.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. All right. So then, could you also share with us a universal pattern associated with getting outstanding group performance?

Chris McGoff
Well, I’ll tell you something. Outstanding group performance, there’s simply no way to get around integrity. It’s the cornerstone. You know, we all value trust. We know it’s important to trust people. When you’re going to be working in the context of a group, it’s important to trust those people around you, but it’s a fool’s errand to focus on that.
The base of the whole thing is integrity, and integrity is narrowly defined. And I know you’ll agree with this. What a word. Socrates alone talked about this word. Aristotle obviously the same. Integrity meaning each part does exactly what it’s designed to do, so the whole can produce the intended outcome. The integrity of a car, each part of a watch, the integrity of a plane, all those parts working together so that the machine flies.
Well, it turns out that groups basically work the same way. And in this context, integrity means “What I say I’m going to do, I do 100% of the time.” It’s not moral. This is not moral. It’s just integrity. A gun can have integrity. The parts can do what they’re individually designed to do, so the whole can accomplish what it’s designed to do, and it can be used for evil or good. Integrity is agnostic. It simply means “I say what I’m going to do and I do it 100% of the time. No big, no small. When I give my word, my words become what you observe in the world that I do.” So we think about integrity really as workability.
Now, when you are perceived by the rest of the group as a person of integrity, you become what is called trustworthy. And people who are trustworthy become trusted. And it’s a funny thing. Once we trust each other, we’re going to start sharing our vulnerabilities, our ideas, things that might make us look bad. We’re going to start having intimacy, and that’s going to be the source of telling each other the truth, and that’s going to set in place enormous performance.

Pete Mockaitis
Fascinating.

Chris McGoff
But the base of the thing is integrity.

Pete Mockaitis
You’re saying that it naturally follows that if you are doing what you say you’re going to do, your words become actions, your commitments you follow through upon them 100% of the time, that others around you then trust you, and then they will naturally be willing to be vulnerable with you and sharing and disclosing and opening up.

Chris McGoff
Yes, that is exactly what I’m saying.

Pete Mockaitis
So I think that I see certainly some connections or correlations. I guess I’m wondering, though. I’m imagining someone who is almost like a robot. They say something. They commit something. Then they do that something. And then they say, “By golly, we can just count on that guy. He’s awesome.” But that almost seems a little bit different than a person that you would want to open up to. How do you think about that? Is there a contrast? Are these different distinctions, or are these along the same lines?

Chris McGoff
Well, think about it this way. Would you open up to someone that you don’t trust?

Pete Mockaitis
No.

Chris McGoff
Would you tell them a secret? Would you tell them a vulnerability? If you can’t be certain what they’re going to do with it, if in the past you’ve observed them not be their word, where they basically say they’re going to do one thing and you observe them doing another, then you go to them and you have something really, really important that needs to be shared, but it has to be in confidence. It has to be something that… there’s a pact being made, but this person is observed as not being their word. They can’t be trusted. So I don’t think integrity automatically causes intimacy, but it is a fundamental ingredient of intimacy.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood.

Chris McGoff
It causes safety. Integrity really causes safety. If you were around people who really honored their word as their life, they say, “Okay, listen. I’ll get this report to you tomorrow,” and you just know that that report is coming the next day, it doesn’t necessarily make it that you’re going to definitely buy from them, but I’ll tell you something. If you get a salesperson and they’d say, “Oh, I’ll send you that thing tomorrow,” and it didn’t come that next day, a lot of red flags will up. So I don’t think integrity automatically causes trust, but I don’t think trust can happen without it. Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. I hear you. Yes. Okay. Understood. Thank you. Now, I want to hear, in practice, integrity, doing what you say you’re going to do 100% of the time. Let’s say in practice, most people don’t. What are some of your perspectives on practical ways to upgrade your game so that you can be that kind of rock?

Chris McGoff
Yeah. What a question. I mean, it’s the central thing in a high-performance group that they value integrity, that they hold integrity as a value. So we have to go in a little bit deeper here, and let’s get some real specifics. The first thing that’s going to happen when a group takes on integrity as a value is they have to take on the word “no.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Chris McGoff
When requests come into the group or to the individuals in the group, they have to be able to say no, because what’s happening is you get during the day and you say, “I’m going to live in integrity, and I’m going to be on time for my meetings, and I’m going to get this report done for Mary by 1,” and it’s all set up and it’s going to happen and those commitments exist, and here comes a man of integrity going through his day, and all of a sudden, requests start to come into him. And if he says yes to those requests, they will compromise the already yeses that he made, the integrity he’s living in.
So high-performance groups value the word “no” as much as the word “yes.” And high-performance groups will be saying no more than they’ll be saying yes substantially. Now, the trick here is you have to distinguish three parts of speech when you’re doing the social contracting. You have to distinguish a statement (“I’m hungry.”) from a request (“Would you please get me food?”) from a command (“Get me food.”). The statement “I’m hungry” requires no response. The request “Will you get me food?” can have yes or no, and no can have no consequences because it’s an actual request. The command “Get me food,” the only answer is yes.
What happens in low-performance groups? Those three things are not distinguished. Somebody will come in and say, “Hey, the printer needs paper,” and they’ll come back 20 minutes later and say, “How come you didn’t change the printer paper?”

Pete Mockaitis
“You didn’t ask me to change the printer paper.”

Chris McGoff
“You didn’t ask me to change the printer paper.” So let’s recap here. Get social contracting right. Understand a statement from a request from a command. And remember, the request, the most popular social contracting tool, yes or no is an available response. In a high-performance group, the word “no” is valued as much as the word “yes.” Why? Because the people saying no, their motive for saying no is to protect their integrity because they’ve already given yeses and saying yes to the next request would put that in jeopardy.
Now, this is a fundamental. When we work with high-performance teams, whether they’re product teams or they’re marketing teams, or we’re going to do a merger or an acquisition, this is a walkaway for us. If we can’t establish the value of integrity, really crisp social contracting, and being totally okay with the word “no,” we just cannot achieve the level of performance that… we just don’t get to high performance.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. I hear you. That’s open and shut for you. Understood. And so, could you maybe, on the flipside, give us a universal pattern associated with group failure?

Chris McGoff
Well, mishandling big hat-little hat is going to really screw up a group. I think that the one that I really want to hone in on, though, is giving too much attention to laggards. It’s about 13% of the system. Laggards are people who make a living out of destroying possibility. They ask a lot of questions. A lot of their questions are legitimate. The difference between a laggard and an early adopter is both of these people, when they’re presented with an opportunity, a possibility, something new happening, they’ll both ask questions. The early adopter will ask questions, and the laggard will ask questions.
The difference is this. When the early adopter gets their questions answered satisfactorily, they lock and load. They become committed to the possibility, and they carry a lot of the other people in the company with them. Once they lock and load, people go, “Yep, it’s got to be a good idea.” Mary thinks it is. She’s an early adopter. The laggards, once they get answers to their questions, they simply ask more questions or they bring up gnostic data. And what happens is the group starts to feed this. They start saying, “Okay, we’ve got to get Jerry on the bus. We’ve got to get Mary on the bus,” and they start giving them attention. And that’s exactly what the laggard is looking for.
So if you really want to careen a group off of a cliff, really like have very low performance, fail to distinguish your laggards, and if you do distinguish them, fail to ignore them sufficiently, because they will take so much group time. And it’s all noise. There’s very little signal in laggards. And they’re easy to spot. Once you get used to it, Peter, you can spot them very quickly.

Pete Mockaitis
You estimate 1 in 8-ish fall into that category.

Chris McGoff
I think roughly that. Yeah. Geoffrey Moore wrote “Crossing the Chasm,” and he looked at some research. There’s quite a bit of research in this area. If you have 10 people in the room, one of them is probably going to be having deep laggard behavior. They’re very articulate. They’re very interesting. They’re not dim bulbs, but they really have this orientation in life to draw attention to themselves by causing enormous ambiguity. And really, they just deflate possibility for a living. That’s how they draw attention to themselves.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. Thank you. Well, this is some fun, sort of high-level conceptual thinking that has brought applicability in many spheres. So I’d love to get a quick take from you before we hear about some of your favorite things. Is there kind of one or two sort of immediate “Start doing this, or stop doing that” kinds of practical or tactical prescriptions you’d put forward to listeners here now today? If I want to be more awesome in my job and I’m thinking about all these universal patterns, what’s something I should start or stop doing right away?

Chris McGoff
Okay. I have to come back to it. If you’re not living in integrity with those around you, get there and start immediately. Be on time for things. Have things done when you said you were going to do that. It’s not as easy as it sounds. It’s really difficult in the world we live in to be a person of your word. So I can’t emphasize that enough. It’s free of charge. It’s a wonderful experience. And all kinds of great things happen when you occur to the world as a person who honors their word as their life.
For me, it was one of the fundamental transformations in my life personally. And as a leader of a company, I’m that person that’s sitting in that meeting five minutes before it starts. And because I’m leading a company and because that’s my orientation in life, our meetings start on time, and it didn’t used to be that way. So I just encourage your audience to simply honor your word as your life and what you say or do in all matters. And if you don’t, clean it up.
The second thing that I think is fascinating for your listeners that are leading businesses or part of leadership teams in business is get two markers. Get a yellow and a blue highlighter, and start highlighting your calendar in this very important distinction. Use one of the markers, say the blue marker, to highlight when you’re working on your business. And use the yellow marker to highlight the hours in the day when you’re working in your business.
The in-on distinction and being accountable for how much time you work on your business. That’s bringing new functions to your business, new markets to your business. When you work on your business, you’re literally changing your business. When you work in your business, you’re really operating your business. And in today’s market, the business itself is demanding a certain percentage of your time on and a certain percentage in.
I’ll tell you, that drone company, when we hit that unexpected market development, we went all on the business. We had a serious conversation over a serious length of time. “What are we going to do?” And now that we have the company flattened out more, it’s in an operational mode, we’re spending most of our time in the business actually doing what we said we were going to do.
So the in-on distinction and being accountable. It’s not right and wrong. At any point in time, especially from the leadership team, your business is crying out for a certain amount of on activity and a certain amount of in activity. Learn to see the difference and ask yourself, “Am I appropriately working these ratios?”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. Yes. Thank you. All right. So now, if you could share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Chris McGoff
A favorite quote? “To know and not to act is not to know.”

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And how about a favorite study or experiment or piece of research?

Chris McGoff
A favorite study? Right now, what I’m studying is the word “contentment,” and I’m fascinated by the Apostle Paul’s ability to be content when held in the Roman prison. Some of the people that were locked up in the Jewish concentration camps have written about contentment inside those circumstances. And I’m really fascinated right now about being content, independent of anything that’s going on around you. And I’ve been travelling in the developing world where people have so few possessions, and I’m captivated by their contentment. So that’s just something I want to take a really strong look at for myself, for the leaders that I’m working with, is this concept that you can be powerful while content.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Chris McGoff
Well, I’m kind of one-dimensional in that area. I just came back from a great trip to Israel. When you look at Isaiah 56 on something that’s 400 B.C., I’m still completely amazed by the truths that are inside the Bible. I don’t think I’ll ever be finished with that being my favorite book.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. Thank you. And how about a favorite tool or product or something you use often that’s really handy?

Chris McGoff
Well, this Christmas, we’re having a lot of fun with this Amazon Dot and just really beginning to make our house respond to verbal cues. I had enough trouble getting into the touch screen, and now, in this house here, I have a lot of technical young people around me and they’ve got lights coming on when I say, and I guess I can order things now just by talking. And so the use of the voice to command computers to do practical things, I think it’s going to be a very, very big next development. I can literally look at this thing and I can call its name and ask it to bring me a product from Amazon. And I didn’t think that was going to be a big deal until I found out just that lack of going to it, lack of touching it, just talking to it. I’m using it a lot, and I don’t know where that’s going to end. So that’s just something we’re having fun with right now.

Pete Mockaitis
Fascinating. And how about a favorite habit or a personal practice of yours that’s been really helpful?

Chris McGoff
Yeah. I’m just really fascinated by what happens when you take a walk, just the action of walking for 20 minutes, 40 minutes. It’s more than physical. Just something seems to really happen to people. And I’ve been asking people about it, and it seems like it’s universal. But the power of taking a walk and not listening… So it’s just taking a walk, and if you can walk in nature. I could spend a lot more time doing that. It’s a unique thinking process. It makes your body feel good. It gives you energy. So that’s just something I’m focusing on.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool. Thank you. And what would you say… Is there anything in your books or your teaching that really seems to resonate with folks such that they retweet it, they nod their heads, they furiously scribble notes? Is there a Chris McGoff original that really seems to be hitting the mark with people?

Chris McGoff
Nothing I have is original, Peter. I wish it was. Everything I have, I copied. I didn’t invent anything. I’m an archaeologist. I find the truths that work over time. I dust them off and I try to make them pure signal into the world. I don’t have anything original, but I know that a lot of consultants and a lot of people have this thing of “Let’s analyze what’s happening.” I’d ask my clients, “Why don’t we give up coming from ‘Something is wrong’? Why don’t we just give up ‘Something is wrong’? Why don’t we take on ‘what is possible here?’”
So in all matters, as we pursue the future of this company, we are constantly going to be asking, especially when we’re surprised by the marketplace, “What is now possible?” versus “What was wrong with our plan? What’s wrong? We’re in trouble.” Maybe, but what’s possible? So what it really boils down to me when you’re leading in uncertain times is just make a habit out of being a possibility.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And what would you say is the best place for folks to contact you if they want to learn more and get in touch?

Chris McGoff
Well, you can contact me through theclearing.com. The company is called The Clearing, and our website is theclearing.com. And that’s the easiest way to get a hold of us. And you can also reach me at chris.mcgoff@theclearing.com. And I’d love to hear from your listeners.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes. Well, thank you. We appreciate that. That access is awesome. Is there a final challenge or call to action you’d issue forth to those seeking to be more awesome at their jobs?

Chris McGoff
So starting immediately upon leaving this podcast, listen for when you’re giving your word. That’s the first step. Listen to yourself when you’re giving your word.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent. Thank you. Well, Chris, it’s been a real treat. Thank you, and I wish you and The Clearing and everyone that you’re working with tons of luck. This has been a treat.

Chris McGoff
Peter, I want to thank you for the time. I very much enjoyed it, and I hope we get to do more of this.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you.