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Marco Bartolome

May 18
0

Gold Nugget #1153: How to Confidently Negotiate for What You Want with Attia Qureshi

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In episode 1153, Attia Qureshi shares simple techniques to build up your negotiating skills, one step at a time.

Take a relational approach to get more out of every negotiation. Most people can help you, but it’s up to them whether they want to or not. Thus, building good relationships with those around you will open up the way for your negotiation.

Reduce fear and tension by visualizing the best, fine, and worst outcomes. Thinking through possible outcomes helps you realize how unlikely the worst outcome is. You can even take it a step further and practice achieving your best and fine outcomes out loud with a partner.

Identify and vocalize the emotions you’re feeling to take their power away. MRI studies show that doing so helps diminish an emotion’s feeling. Use Attia’s interactive emotion wheel to identify the main emotion you’re feeling. Then get more specific and list all the other minor emotions so you can say them out loud too.

Use reciprocity to nudge people towards helping you. We’re all hardwired to want to return a gift or a favor, which builds stronger connections. That, in turn, can make it easier to ask for something down the line. However, Attia also stresses that you need to have both parties’ best interests in mind when using reciprocity. Otherwise, people will see it as manipulation.

Say people’s names during negotiations to connect with them on a more human level. That puts us at the top of their attention list. In addition, showing empathy makes them more sympathetic towards you. Taking time to think about the other person’s interests is one easy way to empathize with others. Doing so also expands your options since you can now work together to create a win-win solution.

Build your negotiation confidence by practicing in low-stakes situations. For example, the next time you go out for dinner, try to guess what the other person’s interests about that dinner might be. Then, show them your list and ask how close you were. That helps you get used to thinking about how to align your interests with the other party’s.

Remember that the more you ask, the more you get. Rejection is an inevitable part of negotiation and life. While we can’t make it go away, we can build our tolerance for it in the same way we build confidence. The next time you find yourself hesitating, remember what you’re potentially leaving on the table by not asking.

Start with the number that’s most favorable to you. We generally stay around the first number mentioned during a negotiation. Then, to make your case even more solid, bring data to back up your number.

Learn when to say no, because saying yes comes with its own costs. Saying yes all the time will make you seem agreeable, but it’ll lead to burnout down the line. In the same way, learn when to say no to a bad deal in a negotiation. Most of us are in a privileged position where we can still look for other, better deals after.

Read/listen to the full conversation HERE.

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May 14
0

1152: The Five Essential Steps to Getting to Where You Want to Go with Dr. Henry Cloud

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Dr. Henry Cloud reveals the five essential components to achieving your desired future.

You’ll Learn

  1. Why the human body is our best model for achieving results
  2. The biggest power move of high performers
  3. Two questions to go above your natural wiring

About Henry

Dr. Henry Cloud is a clinical psychologist, leadership expert, and New York Times bestselling author whose books have sold over twenty million copies worldwide. Named by Success magazine as one of the top 25 leaders in the field, his work spans executive coaching, organizational transformation, and personal growth. He holds a BS in psychology from Southern Methodist University and a PhD in clinical psychology from Biola University. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

Resources Mentioned

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Henry Cloud Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Henry, welcome!

Henry Cloud
Good to be here, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to be chatting with you. I loved your book Boundaries, and we’re talking about your latest, Your Desired Future. Could you kick us off by sharing, perhaps, one of your most intriguing, fascinating, counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made about this tricky gap between intention and achievement?

Henry Cloud
Well, it’s something that we all experience and something that we notice in others who, whenever we’re at one place, it may be in your career and it may be in your life and it may be even in a relationship, “Well, here’s where we are,” and we want to be in a desired future or a different place, right?

And we got to work on it, and it doesn’t happen. And what was kind of the sort of you call it the awakening, was that I noticed that, when people would put hard work in things and they weren’t getting there, they started asking the question, “Well, what’s missing? And is there a universal path that just has to be included in getting anything from here to there?”

And that’s what started the study on it many, many years ago. And that’s where this model came from. And, basically, it’s because we go about things as we are wired. And we create teams and companies and projects in our own image.

And the problem is we don’t have all of the strengths that it requires, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t make sure all of those elements are there. And that was the big awakening, just to give a map for that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, the major reason we don’t achieve that which we intend is that we’re kind of going about it just you doing you.

Henry Cloud
It’s a great phrase.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And some things, I guess we’re wired to achieve, you know, fairly naturally and other things are kind of a stretch.

Henry Cloud
Yeah, and what’s really important, you can look at people that accomplish stuff in different areas and even very different styles. You take a Bill Gates and a Steve Jobs, they started out the same time, kind of doing the same thing, very, very different styles. But if you break it down, what was it that moved them from here to there? Those elements are the same. They do it differently.

And sometimes, like you’re saying, we do those things naturally in some particular area, but we fail in other areas because they’re not present.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, could you share with us perhaps a story of someone who was running into some trouble and then made some changes in alignment with these principles you’re unpacking here and what happened for them?

Henry Cloud
This is one you see all the time. It’s very common for an entrepreneur or a founder to be really good at vision and really good at engaging the talent and sometimes even good at strategy. And what happens is, when it gets a little further down the line where you start to have to really get a little bit what feels like to them in the weeds, then that’s where it kind of unravels.

And I think you’ve seen a lot of stories like this where somebody starts something, where you see it a lot is in the public companies. It goes public, and then the board says, “We got to bring in a seasoned operator.” Well, that’s because of these other components in the chain.

If you want a story, I can tell you about my own.

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s hear it.

Henry Cloud
Many years ago, I wanted to start a psychiatric hospital that was friendly to people of faith. Because a lot of times people of faith would check into a hospital for treatment and their faith would be seen as part of the problem, not part of the answer. And I just wanted a place where that was friendly.

And so I thought, “Well, the best way to do this is to buy a hospital.” I was in my 20s. I didn’t even know that was hard. So I went out and raised the money to buy a hospital and started down that path, and ended up changing the model a little bit.

Long story short, started the company, right, and was doing one hospital, and it was doing well. But I was doing it in my own image. I wasn’t in the healthcare industry. I was a clinician, and so I set up this whole hospital company almost in a private practice model.

And what happened was, just by happenstance, I met somebody that had come from that industry, and he looked at it and said, “You have no clue what you have here.” And he started asking questions, like, “Where is your call center?” And I go, “What’s a call center? I mean, we just took calls and put people in treatment.”

And then he started asking all of these questions. And just by having somebody that could bring the other elements in of engaging the right talent and having a strategy to scale, and knowing what to measure and what to hold accountable, be held accountable to and all that, we ended up in 45 markets in the western United States.

And I would have been kind of stalled at a very limited vision if that hadn’t happened. But it took somebody else to point out to me what was missing.

Pete Mockaitis
And so these things about having a call center, how would you categorize the domain of stuff that was just sort of you were blind to?

Henry Cloud
Yeah, let me put it in then. The book is about a very simple model. I found a long time ago, if people have little models as almost like a GPS to look at, “Am I doing everything that needs to be done?” That’s where this came from.

And I had a big awakening one day, because there’s all this leadership and performance literature out there. But if you put it all together, what’s it really talking about? And I decided, “Why can’t we factor and analyze all that and get, what are the categories? What are the elements that it falls in?”

And I ended up asking a question. If you look at the human body, the most efficient, most complex, most complicated, greatest achievement machine it’s ever been designed, how does it get from here to there?

And it was incredible because if you break it down and went to neuroscience and neuroanatomy and all this stuff to ask, “How does a human body get from here to there?” Well, it starts with, what you read in the literature, your brain has something no other species has, which is the capacity to imagine a future that doesn’t exist today. We call that a vision.

Now, what was a real awakening was everybody knows about vision. But when you start to look at the brain and what it does with a vision, it has certain components to it that then creates a linear path and does all the stuff. But your head can’t go anywhere by itself.

So what it does is, number two, is it starts to engage the talent it’s going to need to help it get there. Because the brain is not going anywhere by itself. So it says, “Well, I’m going to need a couple legs and a couple eyes,” and it starts recruiting people with the talent and the skills that are gonna help them move from here to there.

Now we got it all together, you got the, “I don’t need my little finger, but I need a leg and I got eyes. And then we got to figure out, well, how are we going to get there? Well, I think I’ll call an Uber. Well, that’s not a good way to get there. How about a scooter?”

“Now if I’m going to get over the other side of the room, what’s my strategy going to be? How am I going to get there? I’m going to walk.” And now we have a strategy that begins to define the specific activities that are going to make that strategy come to fruition.

Now that becomes a big deal. And what your brain does at that point is it creates a plan with specific activities that move the needle on that strategy. And then, number four, it has already designed a measurement and accountability system.

You start walking, you start to wander off, it goes, “Wait a minute,” and it corrects you because it knows what you’ve got to be held accountable to that’s going to get you there. And, number five, if you do veer off, it quickly fixes you before that problem becomes a pattern.

So what do we have? We’ve got a very clear vision that’s got to be compelling enough to awaken a lot of systems in you and desire and other things. Number two, who do you need to help you get there? It might be talent, it might be a team member, it might be a friend, it might be a supporter, whoever. But we’d never go anywhere by ourselves.

And you got to specifically name, like Jim Collins said, “What are the seats on the bus that you need? And who are the people that are going to be in those seats?” And then you got to have a strategy. Otherwise, we start doing all sorts of random stuff, hoping we get there.

That strategy has a plan. And, number four, are you measuring the right things along the way? Because a lot of people just measure against the goal. They’re not measuring against the specific activities that are going to move the needle.

And then when you find something that’s off, you’ve got to fix it fast. Because if you don’t fix it fast, you don’t have a problem anymore. You’ve got a pattern. And patterns change the direction of where we’re headed.

So the human body knows what it’s doing. We should just kind of do what it does. And when you look at great achievements, you’re always going to find those five things. Clearly knowing where they were going, getting the right talent on board, having the right strategy, measuring the right things with accountability, and quickly fixing what you find. That’s the way we get from here to there.

Pete Mockaitis
And when you say your body knows what it’s doing, you’ve got chapter 2 entitled, “Your Body Knows Best,” what do you mean specifically by that?

Henry Cloud
Well, what I mean is that it comes with all the systems that do all the right things to get you there. Let’s just take the measurement and accountability system. When you start walking across the room or you start driving a car, your brain has already figured out what it needs to hold you accountable to. You automatically steer. Well, that’s because those systems are wired in there.

What we’ve got to do, if you’re going to increase sales or increase the culture of a team, you got to start with knowing where you want to go and then knowing who’s going to play what role in getting you there, and then knowing what to do.

So our bodies just do this naturally until you start to break it down on what they are doing. The neuroscience of how your body achieves things is exactly applicable to everything we do in life.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I like that you have laid out some core foundational fundamental principles, and it seems like you’ve done a nice job of categorizing, cataloging.

Pete Mockaitis
And so it seems simple and elegant and, but, of course, with the way you lay it out this way. How do we run into trouble?

Henry Cloud
Yes. Here’s how we run into trouble. Two ways. One is everybody knows those topics. There’s nobody in business that hasn’t heard of those five things. We run into trouble because we’re not doing them in the way that they work, A. But, B, we really run into trouble because our own personal issues get in the way.

For example, take holding people accountable or holding the team accountable. Well, what if you’re conflict avoidant? What if it’s hard to have difficult conversations, what if you have fear around that?

Or back to vision. What if you come up with a, “Gosh, we could do this,” and then you got a bunch of negative voices in your head that say, “Well, what makes you think you can pull it off? You don’t have the money for that. No, that’s too hard”?

And just our simple thinking patterns and the limits we have in our own head can stifle a vision. So all of these components, the growth gaps that we need to do in getting better, those really come into play. And that’s what a lot of coaching is about, too.

You know, I work with CEOs in huge, I mean, public, multibillion dollar, they run huge things. And most of the time, it’s not that they don’t have the business acumen. It’s some kind of personal growth step that’s getting in the way. And that’s how a lot of times we get stuck.

Pete Mockaitis
Could you give us an example of a personal growth step and how that gets things back on track?

Henry Cloud
Well, I’ll give you one of a big company everybody knows. If I ask the question, “Where did Google come from?” We all think back, and if you’re old enough, “Ah, well, tech was ramping up, and the internet was ramping up, and somebody put a bunch of money up, or whatever.”

I would answer that this way. Where Google came from was a graduate student named Larry Page who went to a personal development, personal leadership development retreat, a camp, and they taught him a mantra. And the mantra was, “Have a healthy disregard for the impossible.”

And he kept saying that over and over and over. And he was trying to get rid of the natural tendency to think in some sort of limited fashion and question any idea or discount it or have objections. And he just started doing that over and over and over.

Well, one morning, he woke up and he had a thought. And that thought was, “What if we downloaded every URL on the entire internet and saved them?” Now that’s insane, I mean. Most of us would go, “Well, we don’t have enough RAM for that? I mean, where would you, you know?” All of a sudden, all these reasons why it can’t happen.

But he took a personal growth step to get some crap out of his head and then we ended up with a search engine, and then we ended up with all this other stuff. So it’s a lot of looking at oneself, looking at my patterns and how I typically go about stuff.

And are there any of these elements that are difficult for me that I should take a growth step in or I should get help with or bring somebody to the party who knows how to do this? You know, if you go back to my hospital company that I built, I was much more on the vision side of that. I engaged the talent. I brought the investors. I brought all the doctors, so 200 doctors ended up working for us and a bunch of other stuff.

But I didn’t have the strategic operational skills or even thought about that, that would ever get that to the place it went. And I probably never would have gotten there if I hadn’t brought in new talent. And that didn’t have to be somebody you hire. It could be your uncle who’s done what you’re doing.

We always need to find the right wisdom and the right help, whether it’s paid or unpaid, that can help us get to the next step.

Pete Mockaitis
And how do you identify or zero in on which of these components is our shortcoming, our gap, our personal development need?

Henry Cloud
Well, one of the ways, first of all, just look at the results. We have a lot of ways of explaining things away, “Well, the market’s bad, this or that.” Let reality talk to you. And sometimes that’s in the actual results of what you’re getting and whatever you’re trying to work on.

And you’ve got to get honest about this, “Is this thing working? Is it moving forward? Is there anything I can look at that says, yes, we’re going in the right direction?”

If there’s not, then what I would do is I would just go through the categories and start to ask, “What’s missing here? Or what have I really not focused on?” You know, a lot of times, a big one is the engaging the right talent piece. I mentioned that a few times because it’s huge.

We don’t know what we don’t know a lot of times. And what we’ve done is we’ve kind of just listened to people that are right there. And sometimes we got to get out of our own bubble or our own neighborhood or whatever.

And there’s somebody that’s done this before. There’s somebody that can look at it and know what I’m missing. And we need other eyeballs. And the best people, they get out of their closed system. They look at the way other companies, other teams, other individuals, other people are doing this that kind of expand this and can help them.

And the biggest, highest performers I’ve ever worked with, when I first went into coaching, I kind of expecting the ones that were crashing and burning to reach out to me the most because, “I need help. They’re calling me all the time,” this or that. It turned out to be the exact opposite.

The highest performers are the ones that use input from the outside the most. It is the highest performers that I hear from most often.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, I have found that is rather transformational when I reach the conclusion, “I really don’t know what I’m doing here. Someone else does. I’m going to talk to them.” And so I just recently, I emailed someone who’s like, “Hey, I saw your LinkedIn. You’re a strategic advisor. I could use some strategic advice. What’s your hourly rate? Let’s do it.”

And she said, “It’s 500 bucks an hour.” I was like, “You got it.” And it was a pretty worthwhile $500 hour in terms of, “Yes, this is what I am missing and what I need. Thank you very much.”

Henry Cloud
Because what’s the value that you got from that? You know, a lot of times people look at the rates they’re going to have to pay and they go, “Well, that’s a lot for an hour,” this and that. Well, if that ended up making you, when you utilize it, multiple seven figures, it’s the cheapest hour you ever got in your life.

It’s just you have to look at the value you’re getting, always. And sometimes that value is free. Again, it might be a relative, it might be a friend. What’s important is, “What value does that talent bring to what I’m trying to do?”

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely.

Henry Cloud
Because advice is cheap.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes.

Henry Cloud
Anybody will tell you what they think you ought to do.

Pete Mockaitis
And I think, in my experience with this, it seems like you can get an answer very quickly by asking a buddy, asking Google, asking the AI models, but it’s not what you really need. Well, I mean, it might be if it’s really quick and easy, straightforward answer, it’s like, “Okay, yep, that’s it. Got it.”

But when it’s nuanced and complicated and specialized, I find that we…what’s the expression? Is it Mark Twain or someone? “It’s not what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

It’s like, “Oh, okay, that’s the answer. Okay, I’m just going to go do that.” It’s like, “Oops, no, no, that actually is not the move,” but, unfortunately, you’ve sort of spent a lot of time and effort, maybe money, on a path that might make some conventional sense or feels good, but it is not actually rooted in reality, best practices, etc.

Henry Cloud
I think you’ve hit a couple things on the head there. One of them is when you said it’s nuanced and everybody’s got an answer or whatever. I’m very leery, I should say, of people that have a template that they just come and apply to every situation. And there’s value to that.

I mean, there are consultants and they have a model and they go in and take that model and put it there. The people that I want to talk to are the people that have the experience base that they don’t come in and say, you know, “Look, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

So they look at every problem, “Here’s the answer,” right, because that’s what they know. It’s like you’re saying, they know that and they’re going to apply it. There’s a proverb that I love that says, “He who gives an answer before he understands is a fool.”

And I want to talk to somebody who’s got great diagnostic abilities to look at my situation and, inductively, pull out from their experience base the nuances, like you’re saying of, “This is the path. This is what I think is wrong. This is what I would suggest.” And they’re doing good diagnostic work.

And sometimes people, they already know the answer before they’ve met you, then I would I’d be a little leery of that. I want somebody that’s got enough experience and knowledge to whatever I’m struggling with. The answer is somewhere within them and they’re gonna pull it out of the box.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’d love to get your pro tips in terms of are there any super high-leverage moves, like we talked about finding a great person for insight, advice, diagnostic skill to help you out? Within the other domains of a vision, strategy and plan, measurement, accountability, adaptation, problem solving, are there other high-leverage, best practice moves, tips, tricks, tactics that really do a lot of good work for us when we implement them?

Henry Cloud
Yeah, there’s one big one. Look in the mirror.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Henry Cloud
It’s, we gotta look at ourselves first. I mean, it’s so easy to explain things away, “You know, this person is not good,” or, “The market is this,” or, “You know, we got bad customers,” or, “My boss,” or something. And that’s not what great performers do.

The big power move is to first look at ourselves in that context, and ask, “What am I contributing to these results? What am I contributing to this problem? What am I contributing to keeping it from being resolved?” And to own it.

Then we can go to, “What do I need to take control of to change?” But it is a tough shift for a lot of people to make to stop externalizing what’s holding them back. Now there are external factors that we have to work with, but if we don’t look at ourselves and how we’re responding to those external factors, it’s just going to continue to stay stuck.

And it all starts with some pretty good self-awareness. And here’s what a lot of people don’t realize. Self-awareness is a fruit of other awareness. We become aware of ourselves by letting really good eyeballs take a look, and other people on the other side of us talk about their experience with me and what they see, and we got to assimilate and accommodate that data.

And so, here’s a good question. If you’re on a team and y’all suck and you’re leading a team, go to each one of your team members and ask a simple question, “So what’s it like to be on the other side of me as your leader in two areas? Relationally, how am I doing? How do I make you feel? How do I help you? How do I support you? All that.”

“And on the other side, the actual work, the tasks. How am I performing? How am I delivering for what you need from me?” That’s a great conversation to have. And ask it above you, ask it to your peers, and ask it for people that report to you. And you’re going to probably get some pretty good direction from that.

Now, you don’t listen to everybody. There’s nutcases out there, too. They have their own biases. They have their own agendas. But if you choose carefully, you’re going to probably see a few patterns emerge.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, super. So we look in the mirror and we get self-aware by getting other aware, talking to folks, asking those questions. Any other power moves that make a big impact?

Henry Cloud
What’s hardest for you to do next? We tend to move away from change that’s going to activate our fear systems, really. When we got to make a change that’s not, and these are the most valuable changes, by the way, because if they were easy, we’d already be doing them, but they’re necessary and we’re not doing them.

So that’s usually the growth step we need to take is going to feel very uncomfortable to you. And big growth steps happen from stepping into the area of your discomfort, because that’s where new skills and abilities are not only needed, but that’s where they’re going to be built.

We don’t grow without discomfort. Your hippocampus has got to be aroused in order to keep the log and the memory patterns of new whatever you’re doing to turn them into automatic. And arousal comes from getting nervous.

It’s like the Olympic swimmer who’s waiting for the gun to go off. They are aroused because it’s a big challenge, but that pulls them to greater achievement as well. Most of the big records are set in the final event. They’ve had that same swim 100 times before they got there. So step into the areas where you’re not comfortable, and that’s really where you’re going to learn.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Anything else?

Henry Cloud
Well, I open the book with a story about my dog Finley. Finley is a Doberman. I’ve always loved big working breeds. And Finley is awesome. I mean, she does her job, but she does it like she’s wired. Somebody comes to the door, she runs to the front door, she barks, scares the heck out of them until I come up and say it’s okay. And it is intimidating and she does it great and I love her.

But I’ve never heard her run to the front door and bark, and then stop and say, “I wonder if that was helpful?” In fact, a bigger question, “I wonder if barking like that is going to get me closer to where I want to be on Thursday?”

That ability to get above what we’re doing, above how we’re wired, and begin to ask the question, “Am I doing what needs to be done to get me where I want to be on Thursday?” that is something that all of the greats do. They don’t just work, they work on how they’re working and they get above it.

And that capacity for self-observation, with some kind of a path, and that’s what the book is about, you could just get above and say, “How clear have I been about the vision and communicating it to the people that have got to go with me? How much have I really worked on making sure I got the right talent around me?”

“How clear is the strategy for all of us? Have I just assumed that? Do people know every day when they wake up what they got to do that day that really moves the needle? And then are we really keeping tabs on are we doing what we said we were going to do and is it working? And then when problems come up, are we fixing them?” And if we get above that path and start asking those questions, all sorts of light bulbs come on.

Pete Mockaitis
Ooh, I like that a lot. And I’m thinking about, we had a guest, Richard Medcalf, with a book called Making TIME for Strategy, and he was sort of talking about just this. And often there’s a project that no one’s asking for, but it requires asking these kinds of questions to really get those tremendous improvements.

I’d love your hot take in terms of, is there a ritual, a habit, a practice by which folks you’ve seen incorporate this into a recurring rhythm and see good things on the other side?

Henry Cloud
Well, one of the important words here is rhythm. We tend to observe ourselves, but not frequently enough sometimes. The cadence of it is not enough. If you take, for example, you take a pilot and they’re going from LA to New York, well, they’ve got a strategy, they’re going to fly this plane, but they’ve got a plan and the plan, the strategic anchors are 40,000 feet, 540 knots, certain heading. So they take off.

Well, what they’re also doing is getting back to the cadence of measurement. If they drive down at 38,000 feet for more than just a blip, their accountability system is going to say, “Flight plan shows 40,000. You’re at 38,000,” instantly, they go, “Crap! I’m burning too much fuel. It’s slowing me down. I got to adjust.”

But if they wait too long for that to happen, they’re going to end up three states away or getting there an hour late. And when we’re looking at what we’re doing, some cadences, they’re too short. I mean, people don’t even have time to work before somebody is in their face again, you know, they micromanaging them all over their case.

You got to give enough space to what you’ve observed to begin to implement it. But if you go too long without self observation for you and the people that are involved, you can be 500 miles off track and now you’re down the wrong road.

Pete Mockaitis
So, is it daily, weekly? In some ways, it’s possible, I think, to overdo it. Like, we’re kind of getting into a bit of a navel-gazing or a, what is it, a state-dependent vibe, which is suboptimal, per the research and literature. So, what do you think?

Henry Cloud
Well, again, it depends on, “What are you doing?” Some things that you’re working on, and sometimes in crisis or things have gone south, that cadence can be daily for some things. I mean, it depends on what you’re doing.

Other times, a quarterly checkup. It all depends on what you’re doing and how long it takes for the change to take effect and how long it takes for it to unravel things if it’s not addressed. Those are the two factors I’ve looked at.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now let’s hear about some of your favorite things. Could you share a favorite quote with us?

Henry Cloud
One of the favorite quotes that I put in the book was one time Peter Drucker said, “There’s nothing worse than executing perfectly the wrong things.”

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Henry Cloud
I think it was 2004, we had about 400 fatalities in the commercial airline industry in the US, 400 and some people died. The FAA came together, and what they did was they brought into one group the equipment manufacturers, like Boeing and Airbus and those people who make the planes, the pilots unions, the mechanics unions, the air traffic controllers, and kind of whoever touches this thing called flight.

And they formed a covenant of their group together. And the covenant was this, “When we find a mistake that we did, we’re going to bring it to the group, and we’re going to – lack of a better word – be transparent, confess it.”

And what they said was, “Nobody is going to get fired, nobody is going to jail, unless you try to blow up a plane or something. Nobody is going to get in trouble. We just want to bring the problems to the group.”

Here’s what happened, just take an example. A pilot comes in and says, “We had a near miss and it was really close and it was really bad.” And the group starts going, “Tell us about it. How did it happen?” They said, “Well, I was trying to adjust the switch down here and lost visuals and wasn’t looking at the radar or the screen or whatever, and there it was.”

The manufacturer says, “Oh, well, we can move that switch.” A million things like that where they’re coming together without fear.

Now here’s what happened. That was in ‘04. I think it was 12 years later. You can look up this story. I want to say, like, they went, it’s like, in 12 years, 20 billion departures, something like that, in that time period, zero fatalities for 12 years.

Now, what does that tell us about the kind of teams we need to create, the kind of relationships we need to create with bosses, with direct reports, with our peers, where we can come to the table and talk about what we’re struggling with and where we need help and where something is not working and where I screwed up? That’s one of my favorite studies.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Henry Cloud
One of them is not a business book. It’s a book called No Man is an Island by Thomas Merton. You know, I don’t even know what year this was, but Peter Drucker wrote a classic called Management. It has so many foundational principles in it. You can go through it and just over and over and over again. That’s one of my favorites.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool, something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Henry Cloud
OneNote.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Henry Cloud
One of my favorite ones that anchors me is I try to, somewhere pretty early, 9:00 o’clock-wise, but soon in the day, whenever I get up, I need about an hour of quiet time, and try to do that every day if possible. And it’s a spiritual time for me, it’s a reflection time, and that’s a really important one.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget that you share that’s been quoted back to you many times, a Henry Cloud nugget that you’re famous for?

Henry Cloud
Probably the one I hear the most is it’s more a phrase, it’s from my book, Necessary Endings, and they will say, “Knowing about the wise, fool, and the evil changed my life.” That’s what people tell me. And it’s a little, again, a model. You don’t deal with everybody the same way, that we have three kinds of people in our lives at any point.

A wise person is a person that, when they receive feedback, they say, “Oh, you’re right. I’m sorry. I won’t do that again,” and you have a conversation, things get better. And so we can talk about problems with them.

A fool is someone that, when the truth appears to them or when they’re given truth, they don’t adjust themselves. They try to adjust the truth.

So they’re going to minimize, get defensive, blame you, the problem is never in the room. It’s out there somewhere or they’ll attack you and get angry. And it does no good to talk to them about problems. You have to talk to them about a different problem.

And the problem is, “When I talk to you about problems, it doesn’t help. So I’m not going to talk to you about problems anymore. We’re going to move to some consequences if this doesn’t change.” And the third category are people that do evil things. And those are the people that are intentionally out to hurt you. We need to always protect ourselves from that group.

So you talk to the first group. You have some limits and boundaries with the second group, and sometimes that can get to a good outcome. But the third group, it’s lawyer, guns, and money, like Warren Zevon said. You got to go into protection mode.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Henry Cloud
Probably just go to DrCloud.com. A lot of what I do is right there.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Henry Cloud
I would do what Finley doesn’t do. Don’t just keep barking. Stop barking and ask yourself, “Is the way I’m barking going to get me to where I want to be on Thursday?” Get above your ways and look at the patterns. And the book will give you a good template to look at that with.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Henry, thank you.

Henry Cloud
It’s good to be with you.

May 11
0

1151: How to Harness the Surprising Power of Ignorance with Alan Gregerman

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Alan Gregerman shares why the right kind of ignorance is the secret to driving innovation.

You’ll Learn

  1. How to challenge assumptions that are keeping you stuck
  2. Why not knowing can often lead to better solutions
  3. Six ways to unlock ignorance as a superpower

About Alan

Alan Gregerman is an internationally renowned authority on business strategy, innovation, and hidden potential who has been called “one of the most original thinkers in business today” and “the Robin Williams of business consulting.”

As the president and chief innovation officer of Washington, D.C.-based consultancy VENTURE WORKS, a bestselling author, and a sought-after keynote speaker, he focuses on helping companies and organizations unlock the genius in all of their people in order to deliver the most compelling value to their customers. He is also the founder of Passion for Learning, an award-winning nonprofit that teaches girls technology skills as a key to life and career success.

His three previous books—The Necessity of Strangers, Surrounded by Geniuses, and Lessons from the Sandbox—challenge conventional thinking about people, the world around us, what it means to be remarkable, and where brilliant ideas actually come from. He’s also the author of the critically acclaimed blog Surrounded by Geniuses.

Resources Mentioned

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Alan Gregerman Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Alan, welcome!

Alan Gregerman
Greetings! Delighted to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I am a plenty ignorant person, so I’m excited to hear about how that could actually be a force for wisdom. Could you kick us off with a particularly surprising and fascinating discovery you’ve made as you were putting together your book, The Wisdom of Ignorance?

Alan Gregerman
Sure. So I’m really keen on the idea that all of us have the ability to innovate consistently, but we’re going to do it by paying attention and taking a fresh look at the things that matter most. And so the world around me is such a fertile ground for innovation. So let’s start with a simple story I love to tell. And that’s 1941, a guy named George de Mestral walking through the Alps with his dog.

So George is walking with his dog and he notices his dog is covered with burrs. All of us have had that experience and we’ve said, “What a nuisance!”

George thought burrs were cool. So he took some of these burrs off of his dog and he took them back and looked at them under an old microscope. Probably a lot of listeners have an old microscope somewhere.

And he noticed that these burrs were amazing because they had an amazing ability to hook on to things as they brushed against them like his dog. George discovered Velcro. Velcro wasn’t discovered by geniuses with expertise in a lab.

Velcro was discovered by a guy walking his dog. So my guess is all of us can walk around, pay attention, and imagine remarkable things that could be different. And that’s really part of how we keep our careers energized and valuable.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Alan, I love that story so much. And that really reminds me of occasions in my own world and life where I noticed something and then I dig in and then it becomes really potentially impactful. I remember one time, I was at a podcast conference, Podcast Movement. It’s amazing. And someone had a podcast app. They had a booth. Everyone is promoting their stuff, you know, walking around the exhibit hall.

And I remember what I was struck because I saw this podcast app actually listed how many subscribers to a given podcast were on that app. And I said, “Holy smokes, you don’t see that anywhere. Not on Apple podcasts, not on Spotify.”

“So I could conceivably deduce based on your market share, a very rough estimate of the total listenership of a show based upon this number.” And the person behind the booth was like, “Huh, yeah,
I guess you could.” Like, that hadn’t occurred to them, but it was very fascinating.

And, hopefully, you’ll sort of deconstruct this alchemy because, I mean, I just noticed it and then it was like Eureka, and it was exciting. And then that was pretty helpful in terms of figuring out maybe some promotional opportunities, priorities, etc., and sort of market research and all kinds of little things. It’s been a handy tool going forward. And now Listen Notes exists, so people just go there.

But before they did, I had this nifty tool at my disposal because I noticed a thing and was really curious about the potential implications. But I’m imagining, Alan, I’m leaving a lot of noticing on the table. Like, there could be a lot of cool ideas just waiting to burst forth, but I’m oblivious to the implications of stuff, just like that Velcro burr example.

Most of us were like, “Ah, how annoying these burrs,” versus someone goes, “Wow, how fascinating. Let’s dig deeper.”

Alan Gregerman
Well, so think about most of us in most of our jobs don’t take the time, and it’s either because we’re determined to do a good job or our organizations don’t ask us to take the time to actually step back and imagine, “Could we do more with whatever we’re working on?”

And then imagine one other thing, which, for me, and I’ve been in innovation consulting for a long time, people can’t see me, but I have a few gray hairs. And so imagine what I talk about as the 99% rule. And that is 99% of all new ideas are based on something that already exists.

And yet, in most organizations, they ask us to come to a meeting, they give us a blank sheet of paper or a beautiful whiteboard, and they say, “Does anybody have a brilliant idea?” It’s as though we can turn on the part of our brain that has brilliant ideas because we haven’t been using it the rest of the time. The reality is just get out there, pay attention, and suddenly things start to click.

Everyone listening, I’m sure, uses Uber. Was Uber created by folks who knew the taxicab business? No, Uber was created by two friends who couldn’t find a taxi on a trip to Paris and suddenly realized something called GPS technology existed, which had the ability to bring someone with a car to someone who needed a ride. And so that was the origin of Uber.

And so the world is filled with ideas and they’re all based on people actually stepping back, paying attention to things that exist, and imagining how they can adapt it to their world.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now you got my wheels turning. I’m pondering here with regard to the 99% versus the 1%. Just so I have a taste for what does a completely new idea even sound?

Alan Gregerman
Okay, yeah. No, that’s a good question. So, of course, fire, that’s like a completely new idea when it happened two million years ago. And whether it happened because a lightning strike hit something and it’s set on fire, and then people suddenly decided, “We don’t have to wait for lightning. We can do it or not.” So that’s an original idea.

And then in 1895, the folks at Weber created a grill based on the idea that fire existed, okay? So that’s an important thing. The wheel, about a 6,000-year-old idea. Now the wheel is used in everything and we couldn’t get around on a scooter or a car or an Uber without the wheel. So those were original ideas,

Optical lenses. So I wear glasses, I’ve worn them since kindergarten, lucky guy. And when I was in kindergarten, glasses were pretty dorky. I’d like to think I have pretty cool glasses now. But the reality is optical lenses to improve vision didn’t happen until around 1285. And they’ve gone through lots of iterations.

So now we can even get Lasik surgery or whatever we want to do. But that was an original idea, I think, when it happened, and it improved the ability of 60% of people who see badly to be able to see. So there are lots of original ideas, but most ideas actually are based on something else. It doesn’t mean they’re not original, but they didn’t start by somebody taking a blank sheet of paper.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, okay. And then, by contrast, can you share with us some ideas that are just like, “Hey, you know, I combined a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and here we go”?

Alan Gregerman
Well, think about it. I mean, so many things that are all around us. So Airbnb, people like to use Airbnb. It’s an alternative to hotels. Not started by people in the hotel business. Started by some friends who were design students who needed to pay their rent.

And one of them said, “Gee, should we let someone surf on our couch?” And then, suddenly, they realized, “Well, couch surfing, everybody has a couch, an extra couch. Some people have an extra apartment. Some people have an extra house. Maybe those are places we can rent.” But the idea of having somebody stay somewhere and pay you wasn’t a new idea at all.

So ideas kind of abound. You know, the folks at Southwest Airlines, when they actually were really doing a good job – I shouldn’t probably say they’re not doing a good job – but they’ve changed their business model.

They changed not by knowing a lot about the airline industry but by knowing there had to be a better way to travel. And their model actually was Greyhound buses, the idea that people needed to get from point to point and it shouldn’t be particularly expensive.

So look around at almost anything that really matters to you, and the reality is somebody has thought about how to make it better. And when we get into talking about how to make your career more valuable, I believe the folks who pay attention and figure out how to make things better are the ones that are going to be consistently valuable and relevant and really be desirable in the marketplace.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s good. Okay. Well, so it’s funny, Alan, as you do this, it seems like these ideas seem super easy in hindsight, “Well, of course, we just do this.” But when we’re in the midst of things, sometimes coming up with these combinations, these creative breakthroughs feels real hard.

Alan Gregerman
Well, it feels real hard for a few reasons. One is I don’t want to downplay that it’s not hard, but it’s doable for all of us. And the reason why I think it’s particularly hard for all of us is because we don’t get up and wander around and pay attention.

Think about when we were kids, we were innately curious, partially because we didn’t know a lot of stuff. And so we were trying to figure things out. So we asked questions, looked, wondered what things were all about.

We don’t know a lot as adults. The percentage of what we know compared to what we could know or think about is really, really small. But we don’t get up. And so either we’re working in a business or organization, or we’re working virtually, and we tend not to get up and wander around and pay attention. So the world passes us by.

My view is, if we simply get out there and engage the world, ideas are going to come to us. We see some place using a technology. We see people on scooters. We see whatever is going on. And, suddenly, it dawns on us, “Why can’t I do things differently?”

You gave the example of the podcasting conference. And, suddenly, when you saw an app, you thought of all the possibilities. Well, we should look at the apps on our phone and imagine what are the possibilities. Could we create an app that has that same functionality that does something a bit different?

So I believe we just don’t pay attention and we don’t wake up each day saying, “Maybe I should think differently about the world around me.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. You’ve got a fun turn of a phrase, enlightened ignorance. What is that? And how is that different than just not knowing what’s up, being uninformed?

Alan Gregerman
Okay, good. So we live in a world, let’s be honest, where we’re surrounded by stupidity, okay?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Alan Gregerman
And so I think of the difference between stupidity and enlightened ignorance as stupidity is really, “I really don’t know but I actually don’t care to know.” And for me, enlightened ignorance is, “Great. I don’t know but I’m challenged to figure out how to do something remarkable.”

And so that’s what the book is really about is the idea that we can find a problem that we don’t know anything about and we can figure it out if we have the right mindset. And so I want people to think about in organizations how we have the right mindset so each and every day we can show up and be really kind of engines of innovation.

And so enlightened ignorance is really a formula for how we take something we don’t know, we admit that we don’t know the answer, and we actually figure out how to get smart enough to think about solving it.

And so that, for me, is really the heart of innovation. That’s what almost every innovator has ever kind of lived as, someone who’s enlightened about something that needs to be done, but ignorant about how to do it and determined to figure out a better way.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, it’s funny, I’m thinking about, I remember a moment of my ignorance back when I was consulting, I was, you know, a fresh Bain associate consultant, and we had a giant department store, was our client, a chain of department stores.

And I remember, they had some apparel stuff going on, and I learned about the concept of size packs, which was totally new to me. I thought, “So a department store doesn’t just tell, like, the manufacturer of the clothing, ‘I want 10 larges and 20 extra larges, etc.,’ like per their needs, but rather they are constrained to order a size pack, which has like five larges, four mediums, whatever, and then just hope they can mix and match like the size packs to get what they actually want?”

And I thought, “That seems really silly to me.” You know, not me not knowing about whatever supply chains and logistics and all the things. And I thought, “Well, wouldn’t a manufacturer really like maybe working with us more if we order just…?” or, sorry, “Wouldn’t it be better for us if we could just buy the things that we wanted to hit our inventory needs for the customers at a retail stores instead of being, you know, constrained by these size packs?”

And I was genuinely curious, this is new to me. I’m learning. I’m asking. And when I asked that question, basically, like, “What’s up with size packs?” I remember the partner on the case looked at me, and was like, “Are you serious?” I was like, “Oops! Oops! I guess I wasn’t supposed to ask that question.”

I’ve revealed that I am a total neophyte, ignoramus in the world of, you know, department stores and clothing distribution logistics. But, to this day, and maybe I should just look it up, but I still think there’s something to it, in terms of you could disrupt the way that game is played.

And there would be, I’m sure, you know, pros and cons on playing the game the same versus differently. But I felt like, in that moment, my ignorance could have potentially been an asset.

Alan Gregerman
Well, I think ignorance is often an asset if there’s a better way to do something. So now, based on what you said, let’s use our imagination.

Pete Mockaitis
Sure.

Alan Gregerman
I can imagine now, using AI and having cameras located in department stores, and having those cameras look at all the people who come to shop for clothes, and those cameras, based on some parameters, making some decisions about the general sizes of the people who are coming into my store.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, the customers will love it.

Alan Gregerman
And then I order based on that, okay? But now I just assume that people are evenly distributed and people looking at certain types of clothes are evenly distributed, and that’s why I get extra large and large and medium and small and extra small. And there are better ways to do things.

You know, so I’m always thinking about the fact that, and I’d love your listeners to think about, we’re only limited by our imagination. So anytime you get in a situation where you get a little bit frustrated at work or somewhere else, just pause for a moment and say to yourself, “There must be a better way. What’s my initial thought about how there could be a better way?”

And that’s really kind of part of the reason why I wrote the book, is I’d like to give people a guide to thinking about how there could be a better way to do the things that really matter.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And it’s interesting, and then, I guess, also to keep that humility, and I do want to hear about that’s one of your six keys. So let’s talk about those in a second, but to also have the humility that is like, “Well, no, Pete, actually, a size packs save us a huge amount on transportation and warehousing and whatnot. And to get all customized without size packs, you’re going to dramatically increase that cost. And it’s actually not worth it for anybody.” Like, “Okay, understood.”

Alan Gregerman
Okay, but I’m not certain that’s the case, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it may or may not be the case. There may be certain contexts where, you know, it’s often, I guess, I’m biased towards the middle a lot, Alan. That’s kind of my thing is I imagine there are probably certain contexts and circumstances in which size packs are perfect and others in which an alternative is superior.

Alan Gregerman
Well, so I’m not an expert in retail clothing, but I do know, because I order a bunch of stuff online, that when I order online, I actually vote with my feet, right? So I know roughly the size I wear and so I’m ordering.

So if I run an online clothing business, then the reality is, and Nordstrom Rack or something else comes to mind, that people are giving me guidance so I now know what to order because I can see what people are ordering.

If I run a store, maybe I’m stuck a little bit with size packs, but I think in the future I won’t need to be if, in fact, there actually are retail stores. But what I want people to think about is the idea that there are ways to collect information and that I can be most successful by starting fresh with a new challenge and saying, “Okay, what do I need to know to figure this one out?”

I’m not certain that retail stores are thinking about that and that’s why they offer the array of size packs or whatever they do. But I want people to actually just pause and say, “Okay, I can do anything here. Let me think in a new way.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, let’s talk through your six keys to enlightened ignorance.

Alan Gregerman
Okay, so here’s the thing, and I appreciate the chance to talk about enlightened ignorance and the idea that actually we find something that matters to us and we actually want to be remarkable at it. And I think, you know, as I think about your podcast, if I think about the things that are most important for people in their careers, it’s that that’s the challenge we need to navigate.

And the challenge is that we need to be committed to continuing to learn, grow, think of valuable ways to make a difference wherever we work, and then be open to suggesting those ideas. So where do we start?

The first one, I think, is, if I have a clear purpose, something that matters to me, I’m likely to make a difference. I’m likely to be focused on all the things I need to do because this is something I want to solve for. I want to create a solution to a problem. I want to create a new opportunity. So purpose is really powerful.

And purpose can be, “I want to create a product that enables women to feel good about the clothing they’re wearing.” Sara Blakely creates Spanx, okay? So Sara Blakely, think about this, she was a door-to-door fax salesperson.

Some of your listeners, because I know your demographic are first going to go, “Door-to-door sales? Would anyone open their door for somebody?” And the second they’ll say is, “What in the world is like a fax machine?”

So this woman was selling fax machines door-to-door, and she suddenly realizes that her undergarments probably can be seen through some of her clothes. So she says, “I’m going to solve this problem.” She becomes, for two years, totally purpose-focused on solving this challenge. And she does.

And she creates this company called Spanx. And she’s a billionaire now, all based on having no idea how to solve this problem, but then doing a series of tests and experiments to see if this problem is solvable. So that can be a purpose, certainly, but other purposes abound.

If any of your listeners are ever in Washington, D.C., and they come to the National Portrait Gallery, they’ll see a piece of art called “The Throne.” And “The Throne” is a remarkable piece of 184 objects that are all wrapped in aluminum foil, which was the work of a fellow named James Hampton, who was an untrained artist who worked in the federal government, and, for 14 years, evenings and weekends, built what he thought was a tribute to God.

He was determined to be ready when God came back to Earth and to show that he was among the most faithful. So he built this. This was his purpose, his life’s work, and he was doggedly determined to do this.

And this piece of art is amazing. In fact, you can Google it. Just called “The Throne of the Third Heaven.” And if you look at this piece, you’ll say to yourself, “Wow! What drove somebody to do it?” A clear sense of purpose. So I just like people to think about, “What am I doing and why does it matter? And why do I want to learn and excel at something?” And if we have a clear purpose, that really matters.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m also just thinking very, very tactically, was it the reticular activation system? Like, that notion that if you’ve got a purpose and there’s something you’re trying to solve for, any number of random stimuli can become the impetus for, like, Eureka inspirations, like that dog Velcro situation.

I don’t know his story if he was looking for fastening options or anything, but if you were, you would get really fired up. You would notice that, like, “Holy smokes, I got to know everything about burrs stat.”

Alan Gregerman
Well, right, so I think you’re onto something. So here’s the idea, and that is if I have something that really matters to me, a problem I want to solve, an opportunity I want to create, then almost anything becomes the raw material for thinking about it.

So I wake up each day kind of overwhelmed with the idea that I can create a breakthrough and do something different. I show up at work on Mondays – can you imagine that? – really energized to do something different.

I’m going to improve customer service. I’m going to improve distribution. I have an idea for a new product or service. I am energized. If I don’t have a purpose, I show up and I’m just kind of slogging it through, you know, I’ll do more of the same.

And so I find purpose is the great energizer, in a way. It’s a great starting point for making a difference. I’m kind of super highly motivated to show people that you don’t have to be an expert to create a breakthrough. I wake up every Monday, super excited to get the word out to more people.

But I think whatever we have as our purpose, if it drives us, then it really makes us really powerful in terms of our ability to take a fresh look, because we’ll do whatever it takes to be remarkable at solving that purpose.

So that then leads us to the second, which is curiosity. And that is, if I have a purpose, I ought to be curious about, “Is there a better way to do the things that matter most?” So if you’re thinking about your job, think about, “What should I be curious about? And it might not be folks in my industry who are awesome at what I do, but it might be folks who are in something else, who do something else, another business, another walk of life, who would be a spark, a source of inspiration.”

So let me give you an example. A team of people came to me because they needed to improve customer service in their organization. And they said, “Well, where should we think about it?” And I said, “Well, think about all the leading providers, where have you gotten great customer service?”

And then I said, “How about this? Let’s go to Cirque du Soleil together.” And I have no idea what goes on at a Cirque du Soleil performance. They’ve got a funny language, they’re doing all kinds of things, they’re cool costumes, but I know they’re focused on, from start to finish, a remarkable customer experience.

So we arrived an hour early and we simply paid attention to everything they do to engage customers and get people excited about this kind of different type of entertainment. And then we stayed an hour afterwards to see all the things they were doing afterwards to make it so that people would really be involved, tell other people, be repeat customers.

So wherever you think folks are remarkable, in any walk of life at doing what you do, commit to being curious about what they do, figuring out what they do and seeing if you can apply it to your work.

Pete Mockaitis
And when I’m thinking about the biography of Leonardo da Vinci here, it’s like that dude may be the most curious human who ever lived. I mean, it was astounding in terms of it didn’t need to be remotely relevant, so it seemed, what he was directly working on, but he would just go deep into researching a random animal’s functioning body part, like, “Why it did it the way it did.” And in so doing, I mean, well, I guess the proof is in the pudding. That was remarkably fruitful for him.

Alan Gregerman
Well, yeah, so I mean, he ended up being called a Renaissance person, right? So I guess we have a term for somebody clever, but imagine, here’s one example from his world that ended up having a current implication.

So Igor Sikorsky, in 1939, invents the helicopter, the first vertical lift craft, okay? As an 11-year-old boy in a market, he saw a toy called the Chinese top. For those of you kind of listening, but you can’t see it, I’ll kind of demonstrate here.

It’s a stick with a propeller on it. You rub it in your hands and it goes straight up in the air. As an 11-year-old, that sparked him to think about humans someday going straight up in the air. He goes to a library in Kiev where he’s from, or Kiev, and the librarian says, “Well, you know, there was this guy, Leonardo da Vinci, and he actually drew pictures of a helicopter, like, he never, ever created one, but he drew pictures of them.”

Did he come up with this on his own? No. On his balcony in Florence, he saw dragonflies. And dragonflies are actually the natural embodiment of a helicopter. They’re like miniature helicopters. Sikorsky saw this, looked at dragonflies, and many, many years later created a helicopter that actually, on the maiden voyage, flew for 59 minutes. That’s kind of awesome, actually.

I mean, compare that to the Wright brothers, eight feet above a beach for a hundred yards, and they’re the fathers of flight? Sikorsky goes up for 59 minutes straight up in the air and flies around. But da Vinci was an important part of that because, as you said, he was innately curious about everything around him.

And so he imagined that dragonflies were something humans could do, and it took about 500 years for humans to actually do it. But, no, so I just feel like I would love everyone listening to just get out there and pay attention.

You know, when I wander around, and I’m in DC, but I’m in Chicago a lot and lots of other places, I see people walking around glued to their phones, you know, as though that’s like really important. They got to send a text or they got to take a call or they got to check their email. They’ve got to do all those things.

Just put your phone in your pocket and wander around and pay attention. You’ll be shocked at all the things you see and the connections you start to make just by being curious.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And how about respect?

Alan Gregerman
Well, so let’s, for a moment, because in my mind there’s a little bit of an order about it. So let me insert one more and then we’ll get to respect. And so that’s humility. And it’s a natural thing. So, look, if I honestly realize I don’t know everything, or that the stuff I know isn’t appropriate for solving the problem I’m trying to solve, I ought to be humble.

I ought to admit that I don’t know, and that ought to energize me even more to figure it out. And so I like the idea of humility. So let me give you a great example there. It’s a sad example that turns out to work out really well.

So a fellow named Dixon Chibanda, and you can Google his TED Talk, is one of only 13 — 13, that’s an actual number — of licensed psychiatrists in the country of Zimbabwe. And Zimbabwe is a country of 17 million people. And so if you do the math, and I was not like a rock star math student, but I can tell that’s not enough psychiatrists to take care of an entire nation that might have some mental health challenges.

One day, one of his patients can’t get to him and she takes her own life. And he decides there has to be a better way. And so he decides, in a country that’s under-resourced with psychiatrists, that he has to figure out who would be respected that people would listen to. And he determines that it’s grandmothers, the most respected people in lots of societies.

He trains thousands of grandmothers to be the front line of mental health defense, and creates an organization called Friendship Bench, in which he places benches in communities throughout Zimbabwe, and tells young people they can book a time to hang out and talk with a grandmother. And he teaches the grandmothers the fundamentals of talking with somebody who’s facing depression.

Pete Mockaitis
I love that. I’m reminded of the Vince Vaughn movie, “Nonnas,” with the Italian grandmas who started a restaurant, but this is way cooler.

Alan Gregerman
Well, yeah. And so imagine this, five years later, the suicide rate in Zimbabwe goes down over 90%. And it’s based on the fact that people have someone they can turn to, and it’s a grandmother, and nobody’s going to do something really bad when a grandmother cares about you.

And so kind of a brilliant idea, but that’s the idea of humility. I’m trained as a psychiatrist. That’s not solving my problem. I’ve got to get more people involved in mental health. So, back to what you were asking about — respect.

I can learn something remarkable from any other person on the planet if I’m open to doing that and if I’m willing to connect with them. So imagine, I tell a story in the book about a homeless man, an unhoused person, that I met by actually going to McDonald’s to have my Egg McMuffin and coffee.

And I met a man out there who was sitting on the curb who asked if I could buy him two apple pies. And I said it first, you know, because I was trying to focus on health, I said, “Well, you know, two apple pies is not really a balanced breakfast.”

And he said, “Well, I really like apple pies.” And I said, “You’re an adult. Go for it,” though I did get him an orange juice because I figure we all need vitamin C. I began to see him regularly. You know, I would go to McDonald’s every week and buy him two apple pies and an orange juice. Never got him to eat protein, but I’m not sure there’s a lot of protein at McDonald’s.

And so I befriended him. A person who, on the face of it, most people would say, “What would I learn from him?” I learned a lot from him during our conversations. I would guess I learned at least as much from him as he ever learned from me. But I learned about, you know, he was a jazz musician. I learned about his love of jazz. I listened today to lots of the musicians he recommended to me.

I learned about his life and his family and some of the ideas he had. And, most importantly, I learned about resilience. Almost every company and organization talks about, “We need to be more resilient in a fast changing world.” Here was a person who lived on the street for two years. He had to figure out how to be resilient every single day. And the things that he knew were things that I incorporate in my life and my world.

So whether somebody is in another culture around the world, whether somebody is of a different generation, whether somebody, through a quirk not necessarily of their own, has landed in a difficult place, we can learn something from everybody but we have to wake up each day believing, “Anyone I meet, potentially, could be valuable to me.”

And the idea of respect is that, “I don’t know where the ideas that I’m going to need are going to come from but I ought to cast a wide net and be open to those.” So that’s the idea of respect.

The fifth thing I’d love people to think about is what I call future focus. Many of the people listening probably were either subject to or they loved reading about Jules Verne, Around the World in 80 Days, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

Jules Verne was like the first science fiction writer or one of the first. He wrote all of his books based on wandering up and down the streets of Paris and imagining things, and going to the library and reading other books.

We can imagine what the future is going to be like by just engaging with the world around us and paying attention to the clues it’s giving me, “Why is everybody riding a scooter?” “Why do some restaurants not even have service people? I just scan a QR code and then I order online, and then my food appears.”

Lots of things going on. “Why are driverless cars really popular?” All kinds of, but I need to pay attention. I need to get up and pay attention. I need to think about what the clues are about the future that are actually leading me to the future, and then I need to figure out how to win by getting to the future before anybody else.

If I’m in a job, I should think about that for my company, “What’s going on out there in the world that’s going to impact us? And how do I bring that in and be valuable, suggesting ways we can respond?” So that’s the idea of future focus.

And then the last thing is the simple idea that I talk about all the time, and that is, and it’s not something that we all think is great, but we all should be paranoid. And what do I mean by that? You know, the reality is we all should pay attention to what’s gaining on us.

Right now, we’re all afraid that AI is gaining on us. It’s going to take our job. It’s going to make what we do irrelevant. I think we need to pay attention and then we need to figure out what’s our strategy, “As a human, how can I be valuable in a world of AI? I can imagine. I can make connections. I can care. I can be curious.”

AI is only as good as my ability to be all those things. And I can show how I can connect the dots in ways that no machine ever could. But I have to always believe that somebody is following me because that motivates me to have, you know, as we’re talking about it, this enlightened ignorance.

It motivates me to say, “Each day, I can learn something new that will make a difference that’s going to make me more valuable in the work I do. And I’m determined to do it.”

Pete Mockaitis
You’re right, the word paranoia doesn’t have the greatest connotation in terms of positivity. And yet, if we think of it as the antidote to complacency, I think that’s super useful to just have a bit of, well, we had one guest saying, you know, fun, fear and focus is just a great mix for getting stuff done and having creative ideas and all that.

So, in a way, there’s a bit of sort of an emotional, maybe biochemical component there. But also, you know, I think it’s possible that I’ve probably been guilty of it, it’s like, “Hey, the thing I’ve been doing has been working pretty well. I’m just going to keep doing that on repeat for years.”

And it might be worthwhile to not be so comfortable and to proactively change things up instead of having to have them change, thrust upon me from external forces at a timing and in a context that’s not ideal.

Alan Gregerman
Well, no, so I think you’re right. And just think about it logically. And that is, five years ago the world was very different than it is today. Five years from now, it’s going to be even more different than it is. If we believe we can do exactly the same thing and know exactly the same stuff and be relevant five years from now, I think we’re kidding ourselves.

In fact, if we think that we can go to school and major in computer science, and that the day after we leave school and get a job, we won’t have to learn something new, we’re probably kidding ourselves. So the reality is we need to constantly up our game, but I think that’s part of the fun of life, actually, learning the right new things when I need them.

I like to think about the idea that we should learn how to engage the world. These six things I talk about are the things we should be learning as kind of habits of our lives. And then we should learn how to kind of “just in time” learn.

Say, “What do I need to know in order to do what I need to do to get me or our company or our organization moving forward? And then I’m going to figure that out. I’m going to be all in and I’m going to cram like crazy to figure that out. And then I’m going to make some mistakes but I’m going to refine what I know and I’m just going to get better and better at it.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you mentioned AI, I’d love your hot take in terms of how can AI help and hinder our creativity.

Alan Gregerman
Well, so I use AI a lot, but I don’t write anything with AI, and I don’t come up with my final answers for AI, and I don’t even imagine using AI. I often use AI just to think about what’s known about a certain topic, and I use that as a bit of a starting point in helping me to think differently.

I use AI to collect information. If I were to go to the web, I do a lot of speaking around the world, and I often say to myself, “I’d like to do some speaking in Chicago or Japan or wherever. Can you give me the names and contact information of folks who book speakers in these places?”

And AI can do that. I’m sure I’m using up way more energy than I have a right to. But AI can do that really, really quickly. If I had to search a lot of data sources to figure that out, that would be a monumental effort.

So I collect information using AI, but I use my human ability to imagine and to connect dots after I’ve used AI.

And so I think of wherever a job requires creativity and innovation, wherever it requires building strong relationships with other people, wherever it requires kind of connecting dots in different ways, seeing patterns in different ways, I think all of those things are things that humans are going to do really, really well. And so I’d invest in those things and then I just invest in how to learn quickly.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, Alan, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Alan Gregerman
I just believe, for everybody listening, we’ve been sold — I don’t want to say it’s a bill of goods — but we’ve been convinced, a lot of us, that we’re not particularly innovative, that the world is a place in which there are people who are really creative and then there’s the rest of us, and we need to be resigned to just doing stuff.

I believe we all have the potential to be remarkably creative. It’s just we’ve got to open our eyes and pay attention and start thinking in different ways. You know, I wrote this book to truly challenge people to say, “I can actually take a fresh look at the things that matter most and come up with something different.”

And so I want everybody out there to believe you can do awesome things. You just have to be open to trying to make those happen. And so that’s really what I’m kind of passionate about, is the belief that every single person can do awesome things with kind of this straightforward formula for the six things we need to do really well.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Alan Gregerman
So I love José Andrés, you know, the restaurateur who also created World Central Kitchen, and who’s determined, especially in war zones and danger zones, to feed people.

So he once said, “Life begins at the edge of the unknown.” And so I believe the stuff we already know is fine. The stuff we don’t know but could know is like energizing and awesome. So I love that quote.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Alan Gregerman
I like Don Quixote by Cervantes. I love the idea that we all need to kind of battle windmills and think about what’s possible, and imagine no matter where we start that we can do remarkable things.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job​?

Alan Gregerman
If I were to give a favorite tool that I like in the world of work that’s relevant to your audience, I would say, each day, find somebody in your organization you don’t know very well, but that you, working with them, would be beneficial to the organization.

And set up either a call or a meeting or coffee, depending if you’re co-located in the same place, and have a conversation in which you just talk about things you have in common that have nothing to do with work.

And I can guarantee you, in 10 minutes, you’ll make a connection with that person and you’ll be more eager to think creatively and make a difference with that person.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Alan Gregerman
I wake up each day and we have three dogs, I take them for a walk, and I pay attention to kind of what interests them, probably the smell of another dog being in some place. But because they take their time walking, it’s kind of called a sniff and stroll, it gives me time to ponder and think about things.

And so I’m imagining all the things I see, and kind of the power of the bright color of flowers this time of year, of kind of the different ways people transport themselves around. I just pay attention and my morning walk is a great start.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that seems to really connect with folks, they quote it back to you often?

Alan Gregerman
There are a lot of key things, but I’d love to think about the thing that people kind of resonate with most is just the reality that we can figure out the stuff that matters most if we have the right mindset.

That we don’t have to know everything, that we should just get started. Figure out something that matters to you and, even if you’re bad at it, just get started because you’ll bump into ideas along the way and figure out how to be remarkable.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch with you, where would you point them?

Alan Gregerman
Well, so lots of places. I mean, they can go to AlanGregerman.com. You can connect with me on LinkedIn. Don’t follow me. Connect with me. I’d like to learn what you’re up to. So you can do that.

As Pete said, you can go on, actually, on Listen Notes and put my name in there and kind of listen to me. I mean, I’m honored to be on your show. But if you want to hear more stuff, if you’d like more information, I can send you other stuff about me, articles or books.

Read a few of my books. I mean, read The Wisdom of Ignorance, and if you don’t like it, I will Venmo you the money, you know?

Pete Mockaitis
Guarantee! And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Alan Gregerman
I think, just show up at work each day and say to yourself, “How can we be more valuable to the internal or external customers we serve? So how can we make an even greater difference in their lives?” And I think if you use that as the starting point of your purpose, given whatever job you have now, it’s going to energize you to take a fresh look at the things you do. You won’t get stuck in the things you do. And, over time, you’ll find you’re more and more valuable to wherever you work.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Alan, thank you.

Alan Gregerman
Thank you. I’ve appreciated the chance to be on your show. Thanks.