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KF #33. Strategic Mindset Archives - How to be Awesome at Your Job

1060: How to Use Sponsorship to Open Doors with Dr. Rosalind Chow

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Dr. Rosalind Chow discusses how to become a better sponsor to open new opportunities for others—and yourself.

You’ll Learn

  1. Why mentorship isn’t enough to advance
  2. How sponsoring others elevates your status
  3. Four things sponsors should do—and one to avoid

About Rosalind

Rosalind Chow is an associate professor of Organizational Behavior and Theory at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research, teaching, and writing focus on how we all participate in social systems in ways that have implications for the maintenance or attenuation of inequity. Her current research focuses on how people can use their social connections to elevate others via sponsorship.

Chow serves as the faculty director for CLIMB, offered through the Tepper School of Business in partnership with Deloitte. CLIMB focuses on preparing Black and Latino professionals for leadership positions in the accounting industry. Prior to CLIMB, Chow served as the founding faculty director for the Executive Leadership Academy, an executive leadership program addressing the challenges facing the advancement of Black leaders in the Pittsburgh region.

Chow holds a BA in Psychology from Columbia University, and a PhD in Organizational Behavior from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She currently lives in Pittsburgh, PA, with her husband, Jeff Galak, and their two children, Lia and Simon.

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, Sponsors!

Rosalind Chow Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Rosalind, welcome.

Rosalind Chow
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to talk about sponsorship, and your book, The Doors You Can Open. And so, maybe just first things first, a matter of terms or definitions so we’re on the same page. Sponsorship versus mentorship, what’s the distinction?

Rosalind Chow
So, my easy way of telling the difference is to ask yourself, “Who is being acted on?” or, “Who’s being asked to change?” So, with mentors, they change mentees. So, when we give coaching or feedback or advice, we’re essentially telling the mentee, “Here’s how you should be thinking about a situation. Here’s how you should be acting.”

Whereas, a sponsor is not asking the protege to be any different than who they already are. They’re actually asking an audience, some external other person, to see or think about or behave differently toward the protégé.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, thank you. That is clear and direct. So, that’s what we’re talking about here. Not so much getting advice, seeking advice-givers, but serving as a sponsor or seeking out and enjoying the benefits of having a sponsor in your world. So, could you maybe kick us off with an inspiring story of a professional who came to get a good understanding of these sponsorship concepts and saw cool career results unfolding from that?

Rosalind Chow
Well, so I start the book with the example of Kim Ng and Derek Jeter. So, if you’re not a baseball fan, he’s a very famous Yankee player. And Kim Ng, actually, was an assistant manager on the Yankees during the Yankee dynasty of the early 2000s.

She’s been working in baseball for a long time, but she only, in 2020, got to be a general manager of the Miami Marlins. And that was a big deal because she is the first, and to this day, only female general manager of a major baseball league team, had probably been ready and qualified to be one for at least a decade before that.

But really, she needed a sponsor. She did not need a mentor. She did not need anyone to tell her how to be a better candidate. She just needs someone to really convince other people that she was the right candidate. And so, that came in the form of Derek Jeter, who was, at that time, a co-owner and CEO of The Marlins.

And so, that would be an example where Derek Jeter clearly helped Kim Ng and her career. I would argue that it also helped elevate Derek Jeter as well. So, when he was inducted into the Hall of Fame, he was lauded not just for his ability and performance on the field, but also because of all the work that he did in helping to elevate diversity, equity, and inclusion in baseball as a whole. And Kim Ng was certainly touted as one of the ways in which that drive of his was manifested.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that’s cool and nifty. And so, there are so many threads to go down here, but I want to address this one head on, just in case there is a segment of listener who, they bristle or they resent the DEI trainings they’ve done, could you make the case for why this stuff is worthwhile and valuable and impactful for them and others in their careers?

Rosalind Chow
So, great point. Sponsorship is something that benefits everyone. And also, it benefits the people who are being sponsored, it benefits the people who do the sponsoring, and also benefits organizations. And so, I like to help readers think about organizations as, you know, organisms, where each part of the organism has certain things that it needs.

And what sponsors do is essentially make sure that the right nutrients or resources go to the right places where those nutrients or resources are needed. So, it’s not DEI necessarily related at all. It’s something that we all actually do already in our everyday lives. Whenever we recommend someone for an opportunity, or even when we praise someone, when we’re introducing them to other people, these are all forms of sponsorship that we engage in all the time.

The thing that I think people don’t recognize is that when we do that, sort of when we engage in that kind of behavior, yeah, we’re making other people look good, but we also look good by saying nice things, introducing people to each other, because, at the end of the day, what we’re helping is the group. And in the book, I have this conversation about how for people who care about having status, being seen as someone who helps the group is one of the best ways to increase your status.

And so, that’s why everyone should be a sponsor because it actually helps raise your own status. That’s what’s good for you, but also helps the group because it makes it so that the group has a better grasp of what sorts of resources are available, who ought to be working on what sorts of problems, so everything runs much more efficiently.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I like that metaphor, as I’m imagining the right nutrients going to the right places. It sounds then there’s sort of like an underlying presupposition here that sponsorship isn’t just talking up your buddy or trying to be nice and friendly, but that your advocacy is actually helpful in terms of, “No, this person really is awesome, and it seems like we might not be aware of that.”

And I’m having a memory flashback here. I remember we were reviewing resumes at Bain and Company, doing some recruiting at the University of Illinois, my alma mater. And so, we all had our, geez, we all went through like 500 resumes, and so we were going to share, “Okay, who do we think is great?” And so, we were going through them. And then someone said this name, and I said, “Oh, yes, she is my number one.”

And then I remember my colleague said, “Really? Why?” Like, this person was not even on his radar. And I was like, “Well, look, she was ahead of this. She started that. She figured out this. And check out this down here.” And so, it was like, “Oh.” And then he was like, “Okay, I see.” It’s like, “Oh, I’m not done yet.” And I had like six things that, and so he’s like, “Okay, okay, you know, I get the point.”

And so, it was telling for me, in a world of 500 resumes or a lot of noise or chaos or distraction or whatever, it is very easy to overlook and be completely unaware of the amazingness of people in your midst.

Rosalind Chow
Absolutely, yeah. So, Pete, I feel like what you’re highlighting there are kind of two things, that we live in a world where we’re just inundated with so much information. And so how do you get people to rise above so that others actually pay attention to them? And this is where sponsorship becomes really important.

One is maybe there’s not enough information, and so sponsors are providing additional information. But the other version is there is so much information that sponsors, essentially, are saying, “Okay, there’s too much information, but I’m going to highlight why this person is the right match for this opportunity or for this problem.”

And so, the other part that you’re highlighting that I think is implicit in what you’re saying is that there also needs to be some accuracy in making that match. And that presumes then, for you to make a good, accurate match, is that you understand what the nature of the problem is or the nature of the need, and you also understand the other person’s strengths and how they fit that need. And you need to be able to articulate that clearly to be an effective sponsor.

And if you get it wrong, and this is also where sponsorship is different from mentorship, if you get it wrong, it’s not just bad for the person you’re getting it wrong about. It’s also bad for you because in the future people are not going to be as likely to weigh your advice or your recommendations as heavily.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. And I think that’s helpful because it can be tempting to just, if you’re a friendly, helpful person, to just want to support, like, put in a good word for anybody, that’s like, “Oh, hey, I like them and I want to see them succeed and flourish and prosper. And here I am with some influence in a room so that’s a thing that I might just want to do to be a friendly fellow.” But to your point there, yes, that accuracy is key and it should, indeed, be the right nutrient and the right place.

Rosalind Chow
Right. Yeah, you want to cultivate a reputation for yourself as being group-oriented, as being a helper, someone who is willing to make connections when those connections make sense, but you also want to be a discerning helper, right? This is not, like, shotgun approach of like, “Hopefully, we’re going to send everything out in all directions and hope something hits.”

You want kind of more of that, like, sniper sort of accuracy there in terms of diagnosing, “Okay, this is your need. I have something in my arsenal that I can bring to bear on this problem that you have.”

Pete Mockaitis
And to that end, I’m curious, if folks are asking us to serve in a sponsor role, and we don’t think it’s the right move, do you have any pro tips on how to let folks down gently?

Rosalind Chow
Yeah, that one’s really hard. And so, this is why I do recommend for people not to ask people to sponsor them. This is not to say that you don’t let people know that you are looking for sponsorship, but you have to do it in a way that gives the sponsor autonomy and freedom to decide for themselves if they want to do it or not because, otherwise, it becomes very awkward.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah. So, can you give us any scripts or pro tips or stories to illustrate how that’s done in practice?

Rosalind Chow
Yeah. So, my favorite way of approaching that sort of situation is to go to someone who you believe has influence in a particular domain, and you ask them for advice. So, it’s always, ask for advice, not help. Help makes it seem like you don’t know what you’re doing. Here, it’s not that you need help.

It’s, “I’ve thought about it. I have this plan or this desire. Here are my action steps in terms of how I plan on going about getting to this goal. Given your experience and wisdom, I would love to have some other person’s perspective on what I’m planning on doing just in case I might be going about this the wrong way or there’s something else I haven’t considered.”

In that way, you’re essentially conveying, like, “I have put a lot of thought into this. This is something I care about. I’m not just kind of flailing around and don’t know what I’m doing,” but it gives the other person an opportunity to weigh in on what your plan is. And, usually, at that point, is when they spontaneously start brainstorming with you about what you should be doing.

And if they’re being very thoughtful and think well of you, they will also then say, “Oh, well, that’s a step I can help you with,” or like, “Oh, I know exactly the person you would want to talk to if this is the thing that you want to be doing. Let me go ahead and make that connection for you.” So, putting them, you know, you’re pushing them in the direction of seeing how they can be helpful, but also offering them the opportunity to offer you that help instead of asking for it directly.

Now you could, at the end, be like, “That was so helpful. You laid out all these points. You mentioned this person who would be really helpful for me to get to know. Would you feel comfortable with making an introduction?” Now that would be, that’s pushing. But a thoughtful sponsor would be like, “Okay, let me think about that. Let me see if that makes sense.”

And I would also say for potential sponsors who find themselves in a situation where they don’t want to make the connection, there’s a couple ways you can handle that. One is you can just say, like, “I don’t really have the kind of relationship with that person that I would feel comfortable doing that.” And that’s just being kind of honest.

The other version is you can say, “Let me think on that and let me see what I can do.” And then you can, behind the scenes, you could reach out to someone and say, “Hey, this person came to me. I don’t really know if they fit with what you’re looking for at the moment. But, in case they do, I thought I just, like, give you a heads up, that they came across my radar. Would you like me to make that introduction and if not, like, no big deal.”

So, you’re still giving them the choice of whether or not you take their time in making this connection. Because the worst-case scenario is that you say, like, “Okay, I don’t really want to make this connection, but I’m going to do it anyway because I want to be a nice person.” And you introduce them to each other, and then now you have put the other person, that external person, that audience on the spot.

If they care about their relationship with you, they can’t just ignore the email. So, then they feel like they have to respond. And then if it turns out that it’s a total waste of their time, you, again, as the sponsor, have also suffered because now, in the future, when they see an email from you, they’re going to be like, “Ah, Pete, no.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, I appreciate you speaking the truths of what’s the dynamics underneath the surface, and I totally agree and resonate. And I don’t know where I heard this but someone just called it the practice of a double opt-in for introductions, as in general. It’s sort of like and that’s kind of what I do almost always.

I was just meeting with my podcast mastermind group and I’m just thinking about how we always do that with guests, and say, “Hey, this person was amazing. Let me know if you want to talk to them,” because the prospective guest, you know, they already want to talk to all the podcasters. They got the book, they’re ready to go.

So, it feels nice on the receiving end. Like, I never am upset with someone asking if they may introduce, because it’s like, “Oh, that was thoughtful of you.” And I’m not put on the spot, and with the exception being, I’d say if there’s, like, folks who clearly always want these introductions, “I sell a thing and there’s a person who wants to buy the thing.”

There’s no need for asking permission. I always want the hot leads. Always. I think that’s probably fair and, generally speaking, in terms of folks, like, “This is clearly what you want always. So, we could just sort of skip right to it and accelerate.”

Rosalind Chow
Yeah, I mean if I am going to make an introduction without first getting permission from the person who is kind of the recipient of the introduction, is that I am very clear when I make the introduction why I am making it, and what one person wants, what the other person might be looking for.

So, I might say, like, “I remember in our conversation the other day, you were having a challenge with X, Y, and Z. And then I just happened to be talking with this person. It turns out they have expertise in exactly X, Y, and Z. So, I figured you should probably talk to each other because it seems like there would be mutual benefit here.”

So, what I really dislike is the thing where everyone’s on the email, and it’s like, “Oh, let me introduce…” you know, like, “Pete, let me introduce you to so-and-so. So-and-so here’s Pete. Take it away.” And there’s like no other context around why this introduction is being made. That one really irks me.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, understood. I suppose, unless of course, you have already talked to each other about each other, and now this is just the formality. It’s like, “Hey, you both know what each other is about, so here you are.

Rosalind Chow
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, you’ve got a nice little categorization of four categories of sponsorship. Can you run us through what those are?

Rosalind Chow
Sure. So, it’s what in academic terms we would call a two by two, where you want to, first, think about, like, “Do the people know each other already? If yes, are you trying to maximize a positive impression or are you trying to minimize a negative impression?” So, for your listeners, I think it’s easiest to just stay on the positive side. The negative side is a whole other animal that we can talk about.

But so, assuming that what you want to do is create positive impressions, you’re either creating, because you’re creating a new impression, a new positive impression. If you’re thinking about this in marketing terms, this is when you’re introducing a new product and you need to raise audience awareness. And then there’s the confirming form of sponsorship, which is when people are already aware of the other person, and now you’re just essentially, like, boosting their already positive impression.

So, this would be again, going back to marketing, right? You have your product, it’s already been out for a while, but you’re just reminding people that this product exists in the world, and just refreshing their positive sentiments around that product.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that so much. Well, it happens all the time. It’s like I’m thinking about, I’ve had two guests on the show, Maui and Steve, and so they know each other, but it took a third party to say, “Wait, wait, Maui, do you know what Steve does? He’s doing this team clock business. You’re doing this leadership development business all the time. Have you talked about that thing that you’re both into?”

He’s like, “Well, no, I guess we never have.” And then away they go and a beautiful, fruitful partnership was born. And so, it’s funny and yet happens all the time, that we are just unaware of the tremendous assets that’s right in our midst.

Rosalind Chow
Right. Yes. And this goes straight, you know, going back to that earlier point about making sure that the right nutrients and resources go to the right places. Here’s an example where there were resources and opportunities that existed, but people were not aware of that potential match until you have a sponsor who is making that connection for them, often because that sponsor is having different conversations with each party than they typically have with each other. And so, that sponsor holds different information about each person than they hold about each other.

Pete Mockaitis
Totally. It’s like, “We usually talk about our kids” or fill in the blank, as opposed to, “Oh, this completely different domain.” Well, let’s also talk about the negative prevention part of the two by two, just to round it out. The prevent and protect, can you lay these on us?

Rosalind Chow
Yeah, so prevention is, and this one’s hard, I think, to see in real life because it’s essentially the creation of a non-event. So, I talk about this in the book, it’s like if you’re familiar with the movie, “The Minority Report.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh yeah.

Rosalind Chow
This is Tom Cruise running around, as he does in all his movies, but he is part of this special organization where in the future, they have Precogs, these people who can predict things that are going to happen. Whenever they see a crime about to happen, Tom Cruise’s unit swoops in and essentially arrests the person right before they’re about to commit the crime.

So, the crime never actually happens. It’s been prevented from happening. So, this is when you’re a sponsor and you have a protégé, and you are kind of like, “Okay, I need to manage, potentially, like this information about them that might not work to their favor.”

Or, “There’s this opportunity and I think it’s a bad opportunity for them. And if they take the opportunity, it’s like not a good match. It’s going to make them look bad. So, what I’m going to do is I’m going to try and make it so that that doesn’t even happen.” And we talk about this, usually, in terms of dead end-like projects, the projects that nobody wants to take. They’re not glamorous. They don’t get you sort of any sort of promotional type of credits in terms of being chosen to advance or get raises.

Somebody’s got to do them but, like, it should not be, if you’re a good sponsor, it should not be your protégé. So, your task as a sponsor is to just say like, is to try and head that off and get somebody else to take that on, and, essentially, protect your protégé’s time, their reputation. Another example is like if you know there’s a problematic person, like a problematic manager who tends not to treat their people very well, you may not want your protégé to be associated with them.

So, then, you essentially step in and you’re saying, necessarily like, “Pete’s too busy doing work on this project over here. Tony is going to have to find somebody else. Not going to happen.” So, that would be prevention. It’s preventing something bad from happening.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, if I may, on prevention. So, prevent a crime from unfolding to your protégé’s career. And so, I guess within the framework of sponsorship, we are asking other people to change, like, “No, don’t pick this person. Pick someone else.” Although, I suppose we could just dip over into the mentorship category and tell our protege very simply, “Hey, this seems like a really risky project. I would suggest you not try to get on it.”

Rosalind Chow
Yes. And so, one is, you’re absolutely right, one version, and this is always a yes/and. It’s not an either/or. It would be, in addition to trying to make sure that people don’t assign your protégé to this bad assignment, it is also telling your protégé, “If anybody asks you if you want to join this assignment, say no.” But sometimes, protégés or mentees or people who are lower in the hierarchy don’t feel like they have the ability to say no.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I got you.

Rosalind Chow
Right? And so that’s when a sponsor really does need to step in and be like, “Okay, I know they can’t say no, so I’m going to say no for them so that I take the heat for that. If they say no, they’re going to be seen as like not a team player, as someone who’s not willing to kind of do the hard work for the team or for the group.” And you don’t want your protege to have that kind of reputation. So, as their sponsor, and you’re saying no on their behalf, you’re essentially taking that risk off them.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Rosalind, I appreciate the way you’re talking about the gritty realities because in a naive, idealistic view, would be, “Well, then that organization ought to abandon that project and find ones that are truly more value creating for the enterprise.” Or, “Hmm, it sounds like there’s some toxic cultural forces that really need to be cleaned up if these things are in existence.”

And so, like, yes, I guess there’s another yes/and. Like, yes, that should happen, but unfortunately, it can often be the case that these things exist and we have to deal with them.

Rosalind Chow
Yeah. I think my answer to that also is, like, there will always be the less desirable things to do in an organization that are still necessary for the organization to function. And so, one thing that a leader could be doing is thinking more systematically about how those projects or tasks are allocated so that it’s not just based on people volunteering or being voluntold to do them.

Or, make it very explicit that like, “Yes, this is not a fun thing to do, but it’s something that we’re now going to reward by making it more promotion worthy, so that everybody understands just how valuable it actually is.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And protect?

Rosalind Chow
So protect is one that we don’t see often but, actually, is consistent with, I think, how many people think of sponsorship, when they think of sponsorship or if they think of sponsorship, which is that whole proverbial, like, someone’s pounding the table for you in these backdoor meetings.

Well, the only reason someone’s pounding the table is because they’re disagreeing with other people. Otherwise, there would be no table pounding. And so, this is when people are talking about you, maybe they don’t have really great things to say about you, and your sponsor is there, and they’re saying, “No, I don’t agree with your assessment of this person at all. This conclusion is flawed. Maybe it’s based on inaccurate information, maybe incomplete information. Let me give you some context around what happened so you can better understand why they made the choices that they did.”

All of this is as, you know, we talked about earlier, it’s to mitigate these negative impressions. I don’t know that you’ll ever get to a situation where people then have positive impressions of a person who’s being talked about in this way. But if you don’t have a sponsor in the room who is reframing the conversation, bringing new information to light, giving a different interpretation to things that had happened, that’s when people are shown the door. So you definitely need sponsors to be there to protect you.

But hopefully, if you are doing sponsorship well, you won’t ever be in that position because your protégé will always be seen as positively as possible, and no one will ever have anything negative to say about them.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. Well, Rosalind, can you give us any other top do’s and don’ts for getting sponsors, doing sponsorship well?

Rosalind Chow
So, one of the main points of the book is that we typically think of sponsorship as something that only people with power can do. And it’s true that people who have lots of power are typically able to sponsor in kind of these much more visible, obvious kinds of ways. But that does not mean that people can’t be sponsors.

So, I like to encourage everyone to think about how they can be sponsors, usually in the form of, as we talked about earlier, what do you notice about other people and how they’re positively contributing to the group or to you?

Not only should you be letting them know that they’re having that impact, but you also want to make sure that other people are aware of that impact because, as you already pointed out beautifully, oftentimes people are completely unaware of what other people are working on or doing or even passionate about or things like that.

And so, any of us can go out and kind of amplify other people’s good news. There are no bad ramifications for saying nice things about objective, verifiable accomplishments that other people have either done or have expertise in. So that is the safest way to be a sponsor is just to say, “You know, I know Pete’s a great podcaster. I love being on his podcast.”

Pete Mockaitis
Fact.

Rosalind Chow
Right. Fact. Exactly. And there’s no cost to doing that, because you’re not asking for the other, the audience to go take a leap of faith in any real sort of way. It’s when we start projecting into the future, when you start kind of making some sort of a guarantee about how a person’s experience is going to be when they engage with this person. That’s when you start putting a little bit more skin in the game as a sponsor.

Pete Mockaitis
“He will not let you down.”

Rosalind Chow
Oh, yeah. Yeah, right. I know, right? So, be careful, like, how hard you’re pushing, because the stronger your guarantee is, the larger the penalty if you get it wrong. But so, everyone, though, again, if you notice people doing good things and you can speak to it confidently, there is never any downside to making that more well-known to others.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, and this just makes me think of, like, any time we recommend any product or service or business to anyone ever, I can just say, “Yuri at Lille Flooring was quick and responsive, and installed my flooring beautifully within the price range that ChatGPT told me it should cost. These are facts. So, if you’re looking for a flooring person, and you’re like, ‘Oh, well that sounds better than what I’m dealing with right now. I would like to talk to this person. Thank you.’”

Rosalind Chow
Yeah, exactly. So, yes, being careful about whether or not you’re talking about your own personal experience, things that happened already in the past, versus things that are in the future and uncertain.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well said. Well, now could you share with us a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Rosalind Chow
So, you probably know of this idea of team players, right? And the question is, “How do you know someone is a team player? How do you identify who they are? How do you even know how they contribute to the group?”

We all have this kind of vague sense of, like, “Oh, Pete is a team player.” But then if you were asked, like, “Well, what do you mean by that? What does Pete do that indicates that he’s a team player?” Well, one version is like, well, it’s because you do things on behalf of the team. But there’s another version that these researchers found, which is that there are some people who, just by their presence in the team, actually amplify the performance of other team members. And they don’t even have to be talking to each other.

And that’s the part that kind of blows my mind, is that they have these tasks that people do together in groups, and some of the tasks don’t require anyone to talk to anyone, but just they’re able to statistically pull out the fact that when you have a team player in the team, they actually help other people perform better, just their physical presence. And I just find that so amazing.

I think what’s going to be hard for organizations is figuring out who these people are. And my guess is that at least some of what these team players are doing is they’re sponsoring their teammates. They’re saying, like, “Oh, okay, we’re working on this right now. Actually, Pete’s the right person to be doing that task because Pete has got the right skills for this.” And naming all the resources that are in the group and just making sure that they’re going to the right place.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Rosalind Chow
Probably somewhere between Cryptonomicon, so that would be Neal Stephenson, and he has another one called Anathem. So, I’m just a big Neal Stephenson fan.

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

Rosalind Chow
You can go to my website, that’s RosalindChow.com. Also, I post fairly regularly on LinkedIn. And just to be clear, I don’t post about myself or my own research, actually. I like to post about other people’s research because I think there’s so much great research that happens in academia that doesn’t get kind of translated and sent out into the world for other people to know about. And so, that’s one of the things that I love doing on LinkedIn. So, if you follow me on LinkedIn, you will get lots of posts in your feed about new research that’s really exciting.

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

Rosalind Chow
If someone’s doing something that is really great and has a positive impact, go ahead and name that for them, not just to them, but to everyone else.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Rosalind, thank you.

Rosalind Chow
Thank you.

1059: Finding Peak Performance through Upgraded Emotional Regulation with Ryan Gottfredson

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Ryan Gottfredson shares science-based tools for upgrading the mindsets that hold us back.

You’ll Learn

  1. How to rewire limiting beliefs
  2. Keys to moving past your fears
  3. The key mindset shift that sets great leaders apart

About Ryan

Ryan Gottfredson, Ph.D. is a cutting-edge leadership development author, researcher, and consultant. He helps organizations vertically develop their leaders primarily through a focus on mindsets. Ryan is the Wall Street Journal and USA Today best-selling author of Success Mindsets, The Elevated Leader, and Becoming Better. He is also a leadership professor at the College of Business and Economics at California State University-Fullerton.

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, Sponsors!

Ryan Gottfredson Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Ryan, welcome!

Ryan Gottfredson
Hey, thanks for having me on.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I’m excited to talk about personal transformation. It’s one of my favorite things.

Ryan Gottfredson
Mine, too. And I think I’ve kind of learned that the hard way, which is where my new book comes from. So, I’ve got my new book coming out called Becoming Better. And part of it comes from my failures in trying to develop myself and some of the things that I’ve learned from that.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. Well, could you share with us, perhaps your most dramatic and instructive personal transformation?

Ryan Gottfredson
Well, I guess let me set it up this way. Like, I’m just curious if any of the listeners, if you’re listening to this, have you ever been in a position where you felt like you had the knowledge and the skills to be successful, yet you weren’t as successful as you wanted to be? I imagine most of us have been in that space and that’s an incredibly frustrating space to be in.

So, I’ve been there in several different ways. I think about, like in high school, my goal was to get a college scholarship to play basketball. And I think I was good enough, I had the knowledge and the skills to do it, but it didn’t happen. Fast forward, I’m in my doctoral program at Indiana University, and I think I had the knowledge and skills to be successful in my program, but I failed my first comprehensive exams. I went on to pass them the second time, but there was a failure moment there.

And then fast forward several years later, currently I’m a professor at Cal State Fullerton. I teach and do research on leadership, but I took a leave of absence to do some consulting work with Gallup. And 10 months into the job, and I feel like I had the knowledge and skills to be successful, but 10 months in, I got fired. And I never thought I would get fired.

So, these are three examples where I feel like I had the talent, the knowledge, skills, and abilities to be successful, but I didn’t perform at the level that I could have. And that said less about my talent, knowledge, skills, and abilities, and it said more about something else. And that’s what I call our being side.

So, we’ve got our doing side, which is our talent, knowledge, skills, and abilities, and we’ve got our being side, which is actually the quality of our character, our mindsets, our psyche, our consciousness, and even our emotional regulation abilities. And what I’ve come to learn is that, most of the time, when we feel stuck or when we fail, it has less to do with our doing side and more to do with our being side.

Pete Mockaitis
This is reminding me a little bit of Pat Lencioni, teams smart versus healthy. Just about all the teams he encounters are smart, but not all of them are healthy. And so maybe we could zoom into the Gallup situation. Could you share some details about what went down?

Ryan Gottfredson
Well, I mean, there was a couple of factors that went down. One was when I took the job, they didn’t necessarily communicate clearly what position I would be in. So, when I got into the role, it ended up being a much smaller position than what I had anticipated. So, I kind of felt like I was boxed into a corner. And what I was trying to do is try to expand out and do more than what they wanted me to do. So, there was some frustration there.

But, ultimately, one of the things that I learned is that, and this is only in hindsight, but what I’ve come to learn as I reflect back on that experience is, again, while I had the talent, the knowledge and skills and abilities to be successful, I actually had mindsets that didn’t set me up to be successful. And what I mean by that, and what I’ve learned in the mindset research that I’ve done, is that we all have mindsets, they all dictate how we see and interact with the world, and our mindsets can range in quality, from on one side of the continuum to being more wired for self-protection, and on the other side be more wired for value creation.

So, for example, many people are familiar with fixed and growth mindsets. So, a fixed mindset is actually a self-protective mindset. It’s something that makes us wired to avoid learning zone challenges because we don’t want to fail or look bad. Whereas, a growth mindset allows us to step into learning zone challenges.

And so, what I learned from my experience at Gallup is that while I did have talent, knowledge, skills, and abilities to be successful, I had some self-protective mindsets, like a fixed mindset, a closed mindset, an inward mindset that ultimately caused me to be more focused on protecting myself than on creating value for our customers, stakeholders, and team members.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s interesting as a continuum, self-protection versus value creation. And just conceptually, I’m hanging out there, like these things don’t necessarily, on their surface level, sound like opposites of each other. Like, black, white; short, long; cold, hot; self-protection, value creation. They don’t sound like opposites per se, and yet you say they represent the extremes or the opposing ends of a continuum.

Ryan Gottfredson
Yes. Right. When you think about a hero, like think about Superman, Spider-Man, right, why do we celebrate them as heroes? Well, it’s because they’re willing to step into short-term discomfort, right, they’re willing to step in and fight the bad guy, put themselves in harm’s way. They are not being self-protective. But the reason why they’re doing that is because they want to create value for the people that they’re saving.

So, if we ultimately want to be value creators in our world, then we have to have a certain degree of willingness to step into short-term discomfort.

Pete Mockaitis
So, it seems like there could exist a world in which you are being self-protected and also value creating.

I suppose, if you’re doing the same comfortable thing you’ve been doing for a long, long time that people appreciate, like, “Hey, you crank those widgets out real great, Ryan. Keep up the good work. Thanks, buddy.” You’re like, “Hey, I’ve been doing this for 10 years. It’s easy to crank these widgets.” So, I suppose some of those contexts exists. Although, as a counterpoint, I suppose you might say, “Well, by sticking your neck out a little bit, you could be creating substantially more value.”

Ryan Gottfredson
Well, yes, and what this allows us to do is to connect back into our motives, “Why is it that we are doing what we are doing? Are we doing the comfortable thing that we’ve done forever because it feels comfortable to us? Or are we doing it because we see it as our purpose and our way that we create value in our world?”

And, ultimately, what we’re finding that matters when it comes to leadership, when it comes to influence, when it comes to impact, is it’s less about what we do and it’s actually more about why we do what we do. So, if we’re doing something from a self-protective perspective, that doesn’t mean we can’t create value, but the impact is going to be limited. But if we do something from this place of kind of love of creating value, it’s going to have a much greater impact.

Pete Mockaitis
That tracks in terms of what is being transmitted and coming across and received to the people that you’re interacting with as you do the thing, in terms of love, like, “Oh, you care about me and my happiness and satisfaction with this project, this product, this process,” whatever.

And it is a good feeling to hear that, as opposed to, “Well, this is our policy and this is what we do.” And it’s like, “Oh, well, okay then. I didn’t mean to inconvenience you, service provider.” It’s not nearly as edifying and valuable an experience on the receiving end.

Ryan Gottfredson
Yeah. And let’s bring this to life just a little bit more. So, I’m going to give you four desires, and I want you to tell me if society says these are good or bad desires, okay?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Ryan Gottfredson
We got a desire to look good, a desire to be right, a desire to avoid problems, and a desire to get ahead.

Pete Mockaitis
Look good, be right, avoid problems, and get ahead. I think, generally, society, well, it’s funny, like, I guess, it’s like a hypocritical mixed message is the answer from society on these matters. It’s like, if someone’s told you, “You know, Ryan, what I’m all about is looking good, being right, avoiding problems, and getting ahead.” I’d go, “Yuck. I don’t think I want you on my team, Ryan. That doesn’t feel like the energy, the culture, the vibe we’re going for here.”

And yet, at the same time, when one looks good, is right, avoids problems, and gets ahead, we pat him on the back, like, “Good job. Look at this star. Wow, Ryan is so wonderful.”

Ryan Gottfredson
You’re spot on. And I love how you articulated that, right? Because we could justify these desires. Because who likes to look bad, be wrong, have problems, and get passed up? Well, nobody likes that. So, when we have these desires, we’ve got to kind of ask ourselves, “Where’s our focus?” Well, it’s on ourselves. It’s me looking good, me being right, me avoiding problems, and me getting ahead, right?

And these are actually desires that are fueled by the more self-protective mindsets, fixed clothes prevention, and inward mindsets. And when I first started to learn about mindsets, this was really eye-opening because all of these desires resonated with me, right? To your point is I didn’t celebrate them, “Oh, look at me. I always want to look good.” But that was a core desire that my body had, that I wanted to avoid failure.

But what we’ve got to understand is there’s kind of this different side of the continuum with more value-creating mindsets and value-creating desires, such as to be able to learn and grow, to find truth, to reach a goal or a destination or a purpose, and to lift others. And here’s the thing about it. If I want to learn and grow, I’ve got to be okay failing at times.

If I want to find truth, I’ve got to admit that I’m wrong at times. If I want to reach my goals, I’ve got to wade through problems at times. And if I want to lift others, I’ve got to put myself on the back burner at times. And I don’t know about you, but those at-times moments are really tricky to navigate. And it’s our mindsets that dictate which way we lean in these at-times moments.

Do we lean more towards self-protection when we’re in a situation where we might fail? Or, for example, with from close to open, do we lean more towards doubling down on being right? Or are we willing to admit that we might be wrong to explore a new way of operating? And what we find is that, when people operate with more of these self-protective mindsets, is that helps them with their emotions in the short term, but inhibits their ability to create value in the long term.

And so, I think it’s really helpful to have a framework like this to help us to awaken to how our body is wired. Is our body wired more towards self-protection or more towards value creation? And what I found, so I’ve got a mindset assessment, it’s free on my website and people can take it and awaken to where they stand along all four of these continuums.

And to kind of give you a highlight of one of the things that I found, I’ll give you two highlights. One is, across 50,000 people who have taken it, only 2.5% are in the top quartile for all four sets of mindsets. So, most of us have some mindset work to do. Most of us, myself included, have some self-protective tendencies, and that’s natural.

But then another finding that I found interesting is I find that 60% of leaders in organizations have a fixed mindset as opposed to a growth mindset. And what’s interesting about this, if you were to speak to a room full of a hundred leaders and you ask them, “Do any of you have a fixed mindset?” I’m pretty certain nobody’s going to raise their hand.

Pete Mockaitis
“Yeah, we know that’s a bad thing.” So, it’s like, “No, we don’t like that.”

Ryan Gottfredson
Yeah. So, despite the fact that most people think that they have a growth mindset, what we find is, at least leaders in particular, 60% have a fixed mindset.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s so funny because, like, we all know, if you read books and have been, like, listening to that improvement-y podcast that, “Ooh, ooh, growth mindset, good; fix mindset, bad. And, therefore, we don’t want to self-disclose that.” It’s like, “Do any of you…? Who in this room looks down on poor people?” It’s like, “Oh, yeah, that’s me.” Like, people are not going to self-disclose that.

Although, sometimes you can tell from people’s actions and the way they’re treating folks that, “Well, you do.” So, we won’t cop to it. I’m intrigued then. So, what’s the magic of your assessment? How does it get folks to land in the fixed mindset zone without them just saying, “Yep, I got a fixed mindset”?

Ryan Gottfredson
Well, yeah, the assessment presents kind of polarized options to choose from, and these options like, so we’ve got some fixed mindset options and ways of thinking, and we’ve got some growth mindset options and ways of thinking. And to somebody with a fixed mindset, the fixed mindset options feel right. To somebody with a growth mindset, the growth mindset options feel right.

And so, it’s actually, what I’m finding fairly difficult to gain because it’s really about how our body perceives our world. And so, when we were presented with these two options, one generally is going to feel more right to us than another, and that corresponds to our mindsets.

And so, with two people look at it, if I have a fixed-mindset person look at it and a growth-mindset person look at it, they’re going to see those options and going to feel differently about those options. They’re going to see one as being good and the other’s going to see the other as being good. So, it’s really interesting.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, lay it on us then, Ryan, if we would like to be shifting our mindset, how is that done in practice?

Ryan Gottfredson
Yeah, so the first step is always awareness. So, here’s the thing, our mindsets are the most foundational aspect of who we are, and they largely reside below the level of our consciousness. So, for example, how would you say most people respond to constructive criticism? They get what?

Pete Mockaitis
Defensive.

Ryan Gottfredson
Defensive, right? That’s our bodies’ kneejerk reaction, and it’s something that occurs at a non-conscious level. It just happens, right, “I get thrown into this defensive mode.” And so, that’s an indicator of the quality of our mindsets. So, the first step to elevating our mindsets is to become aware of our mindsets and their quality.

We tend to all think that we have good mindsets because, whether they’re wired for self-protection or for value creation, they feel good to us because they’re serving a certain job. The self-protective mindsets are serving the job of protecting our emotions in the short term. So, therefore, it feels good to us.

So, for example, many people seek to avoid taking risks. Well, they have a mindset about risks that kind of directs them in a non-conscious way. So, but if we could put labels and descriptions to these mindsets, then we could bring them to the level of our consciousness. Then we could become aware of them. So, that’s the first step, is becoming aware of the quality of our mindsets.

Then when we become aware of them, we might come to learn, “Oh, I have more of a fixed mindset,” or, “I might have more of a prevention mindset. Well, now that I know that, then I could do something about it.” And so, what we could do about it is what’s helpful for us to recognize is our mindsets at a neurological level, our neural connections in our brain.

And the reality is, Pete, in your brain right now, you’ve got a fixed mindset neural connection, and you have a growth mindset neural connection. Now, one of those is generally stronger than the other. And when one is stronger than the other, that becomes the default mode by which we process our world. So, let’s just say, I’m not saying you have a fixed mindset, but let’s just imagine that you do.

And that doesn’t mean that you can’t turn on a growth mindset at times. You can, you’ve just got to be intentional about doing that. But, by and large, your default mode’s going to be the fixed mindset neural connections. So, the reason why this is valuable for us to understand is because our neural connections are a lot like muscles. The more we use them, the stronger they become.

So, what that means, if we want to shift from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset, we’ve got to activate, regularly activate and strengthen our growth mindset neural connections, and this is kind of just simple things. This is things like meditation, gratitude journaling, watching videos related to this, or reading books or articles, having discussion questions, and then working on, like, journaling or self-talk exercises.

Research over the last 40 years says that if we could do these types of, I’m going to call them, experiments or habits, on a regular basis, like daily, then over the course of about 30 days, we’re going to see significant shifts in our mindsets.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so that’s fixed versus growth. Can we do another one?

Ryan Gottfredson
So, there’s two exercises that I mentioned that I’m going to call they’re global mindset exercises. So that’s the meditation and the gratitude journaling. Both of those, researchers are finding, that will shift across all of our mindsets more towards being value creating. But then some of the other exercises that I mentioned, like reading books, reading articles, watching videos, journaling, discussions, we could tailor those specifically to the mindset that we’re working on.

So, for example, if I’m working with somebody that wants to develop a growth mindset, I’m going to recommend a Carol Dweck’s book, Mindsets. Or, if I’m going to be self-promotional, I’ll recommend my book, Success Mindsets. But if I want to work on developing more of an outward mindset, where we’re more focused on lifting others, then I’m going to recommend the Arbinger Institute’s book, Leadership and Self-Deception.

So, depending upon the mindset that we want to work on, we could cater those different activities – again, books, articles, videos, journaling exercises, discussions – more tailored to those particular mindsets.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, Ryan, as I’m thinking about learning and neurological connections, I think the learning that is in me, deepest, comes from lived experience, in terms of, “I tried a thing and this is how it went.” And then I kind of get that connection up in my nervous system, like, “Oh, stay away from that thing. That’s bad news,” or, “Hey, that worked out really great. Hmm, maybe more of that would be good.”

So, as you lay down these things, I mean, hey, I’ve got a podcast about being awesome at your job. I love that sort of stuff in terms of, like, the content, the media, these exercises. But I’m thinking about getting out and having some real lived experience can make a world of impact on the learning and neurological connections.

Because I mean, part of me is thinking, “Hmm, if I want to get better at not being defensive with criticism…” I’m thinking about general, you know, approach versus avoidance and exposure therapy-types interventions. Like, “Maybe I would do well to get a lot of criticism and somehow enjoy and appreciate it as being good for me.”

Do you have any thoughts on this, Ryan, in terms of how can we take it out of the safe confines, if you will, of this zone of exercise to really get some experiential learning up in there?

Ryan Gottfredson
Yeah, so great question. And, to me, that’s kind of a step two here. So, it is helpful for us to kind of push against some of our self-protective wiring in some of these ways, and I’m going to give some examples on how to do that. But before I do that, let me kind of tell a little bit of my own story. So, when I first learned that I had all of these self-protective mindsets, then I’m thinking, “Okay, what do I do about this?”

Well, one of the desires that I had at the time is I wanted to start a business. I got fired from Gallup. I come back, I’m a professor at Cal State Fullerton, but I decided I still want to do this consulting work. I’m going to start up my own business, or that’s what I would like to do. But I was really scared to do so because I had a prevention mindset. I was really, like, fearful of taking risks. I didn’t want…I was kind of raised by a dad who failed as an entrepreneur.

And so, I always kind of saw being an entrepreneur as being super risky and dangerous. And that’s not something that I wanted to do. But so, what I did first is I started to work on my promotion mindset, neural connections. I picked up a book, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, it’s called The Five-Minute Journal.

And every day, I’m answering a question, which is, “What are three things that would make today great?” And this is something that activates the promotion mindset because I used to kind of wake up in the morning, and think, “How do I survive today in the easiest ways possible?” Well, after doing this over the course of a few weeks, I’m starting to think not, “How do I survive today?” but, “How do I make the most of today?”

And then by shifting my mindset now, I built up the courage to start actually practicing being an entrepreneur, taking the steps to start my own business. So doing the mindset work first helped me kind of break through some of my fears and insecurities, which allowed me to kind of push against some of these beliefs.

So, the reality is, and you’re spot on, so when we start to do this mindset work, we’re going to come up against places where we’re hitting a roadblock or a hurdle, right? Or, for example, as you mentioned, if we receive constructive criticism and we recognize that we’re really quick to get defensive, well, one, I’m going to suggest, let’s work on developing more of an open mindset.

But then, two, let’s actually strategically seek out constructive criticism. And there’s an approach that we could do that, right? If I’m going to seek out constructive criticism as a way to practice whether or not I get defensive, I don’t want to start with my boss, right? But maybe not even my spouse, right? But maybe I want to start with a good friend that I’ve known my whole life, that I have some sort of, you know, a certain degree of psychological safety with that individual.

And so, I want to start small and then, over time, I want to build that up and expand. So, that’s the second approach. So, first approach is let’s work on those neural connections first and foremost. Second, let’s now start, engage in experiments to practice in these different ways.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s cool. And as I think about that experience of receiving that constructive criticism alongside the journaling, that could really go hand in hand, in terms of, “Oh, I had some constructive criticism, and actually it was really useful and eye-opening and valuable in these ways.”

And then I imagine some of the journaling is, likewise, reflect back into times in your past in which you’ve received some constructive criticism that turned out to be very useful. And then I could sort of feel a shift happening in me right now, as I’m thinking, “My freshman year of high school, my teacher, Mrs. Judy Federmeyer, gave me a not-so great grade on my first writing assignment.” And I thought, “What is this? I am accustomed to A’s always. That’s just very unsettling.”

But, sure enough, that was extremely useful in identifying how to improve my writing. And now, what do you know, I’ve got a couple of books, I’ve got a career doing content stuff. So, thank you, Mrs. Federmeyer, for that feedback, even though, in the moment, it sure was a gut punch to look at a not-great grade for perhaps the first time.

Ryan Gottfredson
Yeah, spot on.

Pete Mockaitis
I guess I’m thinking about how there’s variability in my day-to-day lived life experience in terms of the more that I am stressed, frustrated, exhausted, hungry, under-slept, just generally don’t have needs met physically and psychologically, the more likely I am to be in that self-protection mode.

Like, “You know, I really don’t feel like making that difficult phone call,” as opposed to, if I had all the things going for me in terms of, “Oh, I’ve had some wonderful friend conversations, some good food, some good sleep, dah, dah, dah,” I would feel much more equipped and ready to take that on. So how do you think about the daily fluctuation and variability of living this stuff?

Ryan Gottfredson
Yeah, and I’m even going to expand it even wider because you’re spot on. So, I think it gets us to ask the question, “Why do some of us have more self-protective wiring?” Well, it’s really one of two large, broad reasons. The first is our life’s experience, and the second is our current culture and our current environment.

So, our life’s experiences are things like trauma. One of the things that we’re finding, the more trauma one experiences in their life, the more their body becomes wired to be self-protective. And that makes sense, right? It’s our body’s natural reaction to these difficult circumstances. The same thing goes with our current culture. If I’m in a work environment that doesn’t feel psychologically safe, I’m naturally going to turn and be more self-protective.

If I’m more hungry, if I’m more tired, right, those are also factors that are going to impact my body. So, what we’re starting to connect to, where we started was, we’ve got a doing side, that’s our talent, knowledge, skills, and abilities, and we’ve got a being side. And that’s effectively the quality of our internal operating system, how our body’s nervous system is actually wired to operate.

And so, mindsets is one way to gauge our altitude along our being side. Self-protective is more towards the bottom of our being side. Value creating is more towards the top of our being side. And so, there are factors that can temporarily kind of pull us down. But we do, what the research has found is we do tend to have a center of gravity where we tend to fall along that continuum from low being to high being.

And what I’ve learned is that, as we elevate along our being side, our body’s internal operating system, our nervous system, actually becomes more higher quality and more sophisticated, so that, even in the times where we are hungry, tired, stressed, we’re feeling a lot of pressure, our body is able to still stay in value-creation mode, even though we’re feeling the pressure or the pull to move into self-protection mode.

So, this is why this concept is really important for leaders, because when leaders step into leadership roles, now their stress, pressure, uncertainty, complexity elevates. And if their being side isn’t a very high quality, then they’re going to really struggle to navigate that particular environment because they’re going to pull and be more self-protective.

So, if we’re in an environment where it’s really high pressure, high stress, the only way that we’ll ever be able to navigate it more effectively is not by focusing on improving our knowledge, skills, and abilities. It’s actually on improving our being side, upgrading our own internal operating system so that we have the emotional regulation abilities to navigate those circumstances in a healthier, more productive way.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, we talked about a number of ways to do these upgrades. I’m curious, from all your research, what does the science say is the most reliably effective kind of ROI in terms of being upgrade per minute, “I invest in doing the thing” that you would highlight for us?

Ryan Gottfredson
Yeah, the biggest bang for our buck, so to speak, is maybe not the best place to start. So, here’s the way that I think is helpful to think about it, is there are what I call starter-level strategies, there are deeper-level strategies, and there are deepest-level strategies. Now, you don’t have to necessarily go in that order, but I do think that there is some value to that because it opens up our body more and more to doing that really deep work.

So, we’ve talked about some of the starter-level strategies. That’s things like meditation, gratitude journaling, yoga, even cold plunges. Those are all factors that serve to upgrade our nervous system. So, that’s our surface level. We’ve also talked about the deeper-level strategies. That’s focusing on our mindsets specifically. And that’s a deeper way, a more precise way of helping us elevate along our being side.

But at the deepest level, this is where we get things like psychological and trauma therapy. So, for example, research has found that EMDR, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, may be one of the most effective trauma therapy approaches to healing our body’s nervous system. If we have, let’s say, ADHD is something, it’s a neuro divergency that affects our being side altitude.

One of the things that research is finding is that neurofeedback therapy is helpful for rewiring our mind. And then, if we’re really going to go for the biggest bang for our buck, it’s kind of a controversial area, but it’s a burgeoning area of research. And what researchers are finding is that psychedelic-assisted therapy might be the best approach for us to upgrade our body’s internal operating system. So, those are some of the deepest level approaches.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, Ryan, these three interventions that you highlight here, my impression, I’m not deep in the literature, is that they’re new, they’re hot, they’re trendy. And I’m curious, though, you’re saying they also have the most phenomenal results in the systematic reviews of the human randomized control trials?

Ryan Gottfredson
Yes. And here’s part of the reason why that is. Yes, they feel hot, they feel trendy, and here’s why. It’s because of technological advances, there has been more neuroscience research that’s been done in the last 10 years than all of time before that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And we talked about healing from a trauma. I just wanted to find terms with trauma. Now, is it fair to say that trauma need not necessarily be an unspeakable horror or crime that befalls us, but rather something that sticks with us.

For example, if someone made fun of us for something at an impressionable age, and it hurt a lot such that we want to never do that thing again, and it feels very uncomfortable if we approach that. Does that qualify as “trauma” in how you’re using terms here?

Ryan Gottfredson
Yes, and you defined that really well. So, trauma is not what happens to us. It’s our body’s response to what happens to us. So, it could be something relatively insignificant that changed how our mind and our body operate. Let me give you a personal example. I’ve got some emotional neglect in my past that has played a significant role in how I show up today.

But on a more minor note, I don’t know if this has ever happened to you, Pete, but I used to love to fly, like, go to airports, go on trips. I loved, like I just thought it was a lot of fun. Well, on one of my trips, I missed one of my flights. I was actually sitting there and I was waiting for my flight and the time zone, I didn’t switch the time zone on my watch, and I effectively watched the plane take off in front of me that I was supposed to be on.

And so, this is relatively insignificant. Most people have missed a flight, but for whatever reason, this jarred me, right? So now, every time I go to the airport, I’m anxious about my flights. I’m checking my watch like a hundred times an hour to make sure I’ve got the right time zone, right? And it’s changed how my body functions in that airport environment. So that’s a relatively insignificant thing that’s occurred, but it has altered how my body functions. And, therefore, it would be classified as trauma.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, and what’s interesting is that it’s super conscious, I imagine. As I think about my experiences of that, it’s like you go to the airport, it’s like, “Oh, I hope I don’t miss this flight. No, I hate missing flights. Missing flights is the worst. I remember that time, the flight was terrible.” So much so as it’s not in the conscious brain, but it’s just in the body. Like, “Ah, I feel kind of antsy and agitated here at this airport.”

Ryan Gottfredson
Yeah. So, when we start to connect to these ideas like anxiety, for example, the more that we…now there could be some chemical imbalances, right, that are impacting our anxiety. But when we’re having anxiety, that’s actually an indication that we’re not yet where we could be along our being side. That means that kind of our environment is feeling overwhelming and our body isn’t able to deal with that environment.

And so, the only way we’re going to be able to navigate that environment is, ultimately, and this is kind of why I love focusing on this. And here’s the core message is if we want to become better, transformation-ally so, we’ve got to focus on healing our mind, our body, and our hearts. And what’s kind of eye-opening to me is that, when most people try to improve, they generally don’t go there.

Where they go is they focus on, “How can I gain more knowledge, more skills? What’s the next degree or certificate that I need to get to be able to advance in my career?” They’re generally not thinking, “How do I heal my mind, my body, and my heart so I could show up as a more positive force for good within the space in which I operate?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s very well put in terms of a distinction. And, boy, there’s probably so many reasons for that. It’s uncomfortable for us independently, individually, and it’s almost not okay to say in a professional work environment, in terms of it’s like, “Hmm, you keep making some sloppy mistakes in your client deliverables.”

And so, it’s like, “What I need you to do is heal your traumas.” And it’s like, “Are you allowed to say that to me? Should I talk to HR about you, sir?” But that might actually be what is necessary in terms of, if there is a block, an emotional thing going down that prevents them from doing the things that need doing, it may very well not be a matter of learning these spell-checks software or whatever the thing is.

Ryan Gottfredson
Well, let me give you an example. So, in the consulting work that I do with organizations, I’m helping to develop leaders. And some of the organizations that I work with, we’re kind of helping leaders go from good to great. Well, sometimes I get called in, kind of head of HR calls me up, and says, “We’ve got a CEO that is really wrecking a havoc. It’s kind of operating at this bad level.” And they kind of say, “Can you help this guy? Can we get him from bad to good?”

And, generally, I’m, “Yeah,” because I want to help, I want to help the organizations, and I want to help these leaders. In every single one of these circumstances where I’ve done this coaching with CEOs that are, I’m going to say, are operating at this bad level, and we’re trying to help them just to step up to that good level, every single time, what comes up in the coaching process is they bring up a trauma from their childhood.

I’ve had one CEO tell me, “When I was a boy, my best friend was my bike.” I had another CEO tell me, “When I was a kid, my parents divorced, and I didn’t really see my dad, and my mom really wasn’t around. I never was recognized.” Another executive, this wasn’t a CEO, but another executive said, “When I was a boy, I could never please my dad, no matter what I did.”

And all of these things have left an imprint on these leaders that causes them to show up as a leader in really self-protective ways. Some of them are, “Oh, I need to be seen. And so, I’m willing to run over others in order to get the fame, the accolades, whatever that might be.” And, ultimately, it’s because they’re driven by past hurts that have made them develop certain insecurities and fears that are holding them back.

And here’s what I’ve learned. We’ve all got these. We’ve all got past hurts. We’ve all got fears. We’ve all got insecurities. And unless we’re willing to lift up the rug and start to look at them and start to do work with them, they’re going to continually hold us back from becoming the people that we want to become.

Pete Mockaitis
Alrighty. Thank you. Well, Ryan, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about your favorite things?

Ryan Gottfredson
Well, I think we’ve covered it, right? But I want people to just understand that there’s really two paths that we can develop ourselves. One is by focusing on our doing side, and that’s what most people focus on. That’s our education systems, our athletic programs, most of our organizational development efforts.

But what I hope we’ve opened up for people is to help them to see that there’s another path, there’s another side for them to focus on, and that’s their being side. And I know that for many people this is new. And so, let’s open up this so that they have the opportunities to now start to do this work. And what I’ve learned is that when we improve along our doing side, it’s helpful but, generally, only incrementally so. But when we focus on our being side, it could be transformational.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. Well, now, can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Ryan Gottfredson
Yeah, one of my favorite quotes is by Anais Nin, and it is, “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” And I think that speaks to some of this being side growth that we’ve been talking about.

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

Ryan Gottfredson
I will point people, there’s a great TED talk by Alia Crum, and it’s all about the placebo effect, and it dives into mindsets. And there are several studies in that that I just think are incredibly fascinating. But one of those studies, it identifies how some of these exercises, like we’ve talked about, watching a three-minute video can shape our engagement, our performance, and even our blood pressure two weeks later. That’s one video.

Pete Mockaitis
I want to watch that video. And, hopefully, in a good way. It shapes in a good way or it makes our blood pressures sky high?

Ryan Gottfredson
Yeah, well, it depends on the video. So, they showed them a video, they had two groups. One group saw a video that said, well, stress is bad, and another group saw a video of how stress is good. And the people who saw the stress-is-good video, they had higher engagement, higher performance, and lower blood pressure two weeks later than the group who saw the stress-is-bad video.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Ryan Gottfredson
I’ll go with The Choice by Edith Eger. This is a memoir of a Holocaust survivor, and it’s less about her Holocaust experience and more about her life recovering from her experience. And I think she is such a great case study of doing this being-side work, which really started 20 to 30 years after her Holocaust experience. And it’s just an incredibly moving book.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool?

Ryan Gottfredson
Well, I would say a tool that I use every day on my phone is the Insight Timer app. That’s what I use to meditate as a part of my being-side work.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Ryan Gottfredson
Oh, next up, right after I’m done meditating, then I pick up my book, The Five-Minute Journal. And, to me, that’s been game-changing. So, I’ve been doing that for the last seven years, and I credit that to most of my growth and development.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that seems to really connect and resonate and folks quote back to you often?

Ryan Gottfredson
Well, I hope some of the ideas around doing side and being side helped, but I think a quick little tagline might be, “Success starts with our mindsets.” And if we want to elevate our success, we’ve got to focus on our mindsets.

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

Ryan Gottfredson
Yeah, I’d point them to my website, RyanGottfredson.com, also any social media outlets. And, in fact, if people wanted to comment, find me on social media. And if they were to comment in that they listened to this show, then I’ll give them access to my mindset assessment. And I’ll even offer up a free phone call with them to walk them through their mindset assessment results.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome with their jobs?

Ryan Gottfredson
Yeah, I mean, just go to my website. I’ve got two personal assessments that are there that are free. We’ve talked about one of those, the free Personal Mindset Assessment. And then there’s also a Vertical Development Assessment, which is a different way to measure our altitude along our being side. So, those are a couple of free resources that can help you awaken to your altitude on your being side.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. All right. Well, Ryan, thank you.

Ryan Gottfredson
Thanks for having me.

1004: Seth Godin on How to Maximize Your Impact and Deliver Work That Matters

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Seth Godin shares insightful stories and perspectives to help us think strategically and create meaningful change in a complex world.

You’ll Learn

  1. The mindset that makes you indispensable
  2. Why to embrace that you’re an impostor 
  3. Three questions to ask with every project 

About Seth

Seth Godin is the author of 22 books that have been bestsellers around the world and have been translated into more than 35 languages. He’s also the founder of the altMBA and The Akimbo Workshops, online seminars that have transformed the work of thousands of people. 

He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership and most of all, changing everything. You might be familiar with his books Linchpin, Tribes, The Dip and Purple Cow. His book, This Is Marketing, was an instant bestseller around the world. The newest book, The Practice, is out at the end of 2020 and is already a bestseller. His newest project is leading a worldwide group of volunteers creating The Carbon Almanac. 

In addition to his writing and speaking, Seth has founded several companies, including Yoyodyne and Squidoo. His blog (which you can find by typing “seth” into Google) is one of the most popular in the world. His podcast is in the top 1% of all podcasts worldwide. 

In 2018, he was inducted into the Marketing Hall of Fame. More than 20,000 people have taken the powerful Akimbo workshops he founded, including thealtMBA and The Marketing Seminar. 

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, Sponsors!

Seth Godin Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Seth, welcome back.

Seth Godin
Thank you for having me. It’s good to see you.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I am excited to dig into some of your insights and wisdom and stories and fun that you got cooked up in your latest book, This is Strategy: Make Better Plans. Could you kick us off with a particularly fascinating, surprising, counterintuitive nugget that you’ve come across as you’re putting this piece together?

Seth Godin
Potatoes.

Pete Mockaitis
Potatoes. That’s surprising.

Seth Godin
There were no potatoes in Europe until 1500 or so. They evolved and were hybridized in Peru. Well, when potatoes arrived, it’s worth noting that potatoes are twice as efficient at creating calories and food for humans as any other food that you can grow.

But when potatoes took off, Dublin, in the 1800s, was the most densely populated place on earth and has never retained, become that densely populated since. So, potatoes are the key to all of this. Anyway, because the people in Europe were colonialists, they looked down on things that were strange, it wasn’t high status. Potatoes came close to being banned in England, and they were banned in France.

And a guy, an entrepreneur, wanted to get potatoes into the diets of people who were starving and who needed food. He had access to the court, so he got Marie Antoinette to wear potato flowers in her hair, just as a little signal that maybe potatoes would be okay, but that wasn’t enough. So then, he rented some farmland a few miles away from Versailles and planted a whole bunch of potatoes and hired armed guards to stand watch over the plot all day but at night, he sent them home.

So, of course, the peasants, seeing that this high value item wasn’t guarded, stole potatoes, ate them, discovered that they were just great. And that’s how France was saved. The lesson of this is strategy is your philosophy of becoming. What moves will you make? What tasks will you take on to change the system, to see the system, and then change it? And it’s all about status, and affiliation, the freedom from fear. It’s time all woven together so that we can do the work we’re proud of.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s beautiful, and there’s a lot there. I want to maybe get a contrasting story. Tell us the tale of your hot take on how organ donation should work.

Seth Godin
Well, a relative needed a kidney and so I got to learn a lot about the system. It turns out, in the United States, kidney donation is opt-in, and it turns out that every year millions of kidneys are buried that could go to somebody who needed them, and this leads to a shortage and a waiting list. The problem with the waiting list, of course, is that people are dying to get on it, and they’re dying when they’re on it.

So, lots of things have been suggested. Most of them are horrible, like paying poor people to donate their kidneys when they’re dead. And I got to thinking about the game theory here, the strategy that you could bring to the system, and Dr. Jonathan Sackner-Bernstein, a well-regarded cardiologist, worked with me. We wrote a paper, published it in Transplantation Journal. We did everything right, and even though my idea is correct, it didn’t get adopted. And in the book, I outlined exactly what we did wrong.

But the short version is this. Right now, opting in to donate a kidney has some fear associated with it because you have to acknowledge you’re going to die, and you have to think about how your family is going to engage with that. If we just added one shift to the rule set, which is your priority on the wait list is based on how long you have signed up to be a donor because now there’s no moral issue, right? If you’re not willing to be a donor, you shouldn’t be willing to be a recipient.

If that is the case, that there’s a priority to people who donated early, everyone’s going to get on the list as soon as they can because you would be afraid of being left out. Tension, and status, and affiliation. As a result, the shortage would go away and we wouldn’t need a list. But – and this is the lesson – the people who are in charge of the list are risk averse. The people who are in charge of the list don’t want to go first. The people who are in charge of the list, the worst thing they can imagine is screwing things up.

So, in order to get them to say, “Yes,” I would have needed to spend four years on the road, going to conferences, writing papers, going to meetings, dealing with committees, doing tests, and I wasn’t willing to do that sacrifice. And that is a key lesson in how we make change happen, which is don’t try to start a log on fire if the kindling you have is too small.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s great. And what it’s hitting home for me here is that your kidney idea and potatoes are both fabulous. I love them both. I’m a good Lithuanian boy. We love our potatoes. And it’s intriguing, I think, and this might be sort of a no-duh for many, but I think a number of professionals who strive to be awesome at their job, kind of get a rude awakening at times that just being great, having a fantastic idea or product or offer or solution or skill set isn’t adequate to make it happen.

Seth Godin
Correct. Well said. And that’s why the first two ideas that I just shared with you are not about your job. They’re about projects. But most of us have a job and we have a choice. Either our analysis is, “My job is to do my job, to wait for instructions, just like I did in school, and to do the tasks that are put in front of me.” The alternative is to view my job as a series of projects where I go to people and I enroll them in working with me to make the change I seek to make.

The problem with the first path is, while it might give you peace of mind in the short run, particularly in a changing world with AI and everything else, you’re going to be a cog in a system that doesn’t care about you. Whereas, if you can adopt an awesome mindset to say, “I want to be a contribution. I do projects. I make change happen,” the doors are wide open.

And the CEOs I talk to from companies big and small, that’s what they want from their employees. Unfortunately, they act in a way that doesn’t signal that. They act in a way that makes it feel like third grade and you’re just trying to get through the day.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, you zeroed in on a few of these key principles, difference makers, status, affiliation, fear. And, yes, I think there, I think I see them front and center in terms of, “You know, if I stick my neck out and do this kind of weird thing that nobody else seems to be talking about, so maybe it’s not important, then I could very well look like a total idiot here, and so my status could be down, my affiliation could be down, people not asking me, inviting me to cool stuff anymore, and I’m just afraid of that. Ultimately, you know, getting fired, losing income, got to sell the house, got to downsize, all the things that could unfold.” So, help us, how do we kind of navigate through those core issues?

Seth Godin
So, you’ve nailed it. And the one thing you left off the list that people are motivated by is the freedom from fear. Not actual risk, but the freedom from feeling like we are taking a risk. And it turns out that work has amplified our fear. That’s how they get us to comply and it’s a trap because, the people who get the joke and are willing to encounter the feeling of fear, actually have the most stable and resilient jobs.

So, my first job, I didn’t know any better, I was 23 years old, I was lucky enough to be working with Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, and Michael Crichton, I launched a whole line of science fiction adventure games, and it was a job, I wasn’t the boss. And the packaging was absolutely beautiful but I needed a way to seal the package for the stores because Target and Lechmere and other mass merchants didn’t want this fourfold gate thing open.

So, they said, “You have to shrink wrap it,” and I didn’t want to shrink wrap my beautiful packaging. So, I ordered 10,000 little tiny Velcro dots to hold it shut. The problem is that 10,000 little tiny Velcro dots do not adhere and stick to coated cardstock. And as a result, my peers happily made fun of me for months. And the thing about it is the 10,000 tiny little Velcro dots probably cost the company $400. And because I was willing to dance with that, I launched more than a dozen gold or platinum level pieces of software in the time it took my colleagues to launch one or two middling products.

Because my posture was the best surfers find good waves. Here’s a wave and it’s not fatal. I can lean into possibility. I can do projects that could be generous if they work and aren’t about my ego but are about making a change. And I knew that the downside was, yes, maybe I was going to get fired. I came within a day of getting fired.

But if I was going to get fired, it wasn’t going to be because I was timid and it wasn’t going to be because I was selfish. It was going to be because I was bringing possibility to the table that made people uncomfortable. But I knew that that’s the definition of being awesome at your job. We don’t need you to comply more than everyone else. I can go to Upwork for that. I can go to Fiverr for that. What we need from you is to push and to imagine because that’s what’s worth paying for you.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s really powerful. And so, zooming in on, I guess, the fundamental mindset that you had cooking with regard to the dots is whereas, others in that same position say, “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know. I guess shrink-wrapping is the thing that we do. So, hey, that’s a shame, but, okay, shrink-wrapping, here we go.” So, they might just go down that pathway.

But because you’re willing to take the occasional oopsie and embarrassment, you are liberated and emboldened to charge ahead and do a lot of great stuff and get way more big wins than a couple of little scuff losses along the way.

Seth Godin
Yeah. So, here’s one way to think about it, and I learned this accidentally at business school. A business school professor has a challenge where they’re teaching a case. They’ve got 60 people in her class, and she has to call on people to move the conversation forward. And I showed up at business school, I was one of the younger people there, and it became clear to me that the spreadsheets and the two-thirds of the case that was about crunching the numbers, it was going to make my eyes bleed. I was never going to be good at it. I didn’t want to be good at it.

So, I decided that I was going to invest all my effort on reading about the personalities and the situations, and not even open the spreadsheet that came with it. And I made it clear through my actions that if a professor wanted that kind of analysis, that’s the day to call on me. That if they wanted to embarrass me and ask me about the numbers, they were welcome to, but that would ruin the… that gets old. They don’t want to do that. They don’t want to set me up to fail. I want to set them up to succeed.

So, if you earn the reputation at work that you’re the person who does interesting things with energy, that you’re the person who contributes and raises the quality of conversation, if you’re the one who asks hard questions, you can hire a boss that wants you to do that, and now you have job security forever. Whereas if you are, you can pick anyone, and I mean anyone, trying to fit in all the way, the minute they can find someone cheaper than you, I promise they will.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s a hard reality check, a true one. I’m reminded, we have a conversation publishing shortly, with Duncan Wardle who worked at Disney, and he developed a reputation for making impossible things happen, which was so fun because they just kept giving him these super cool out-there jobs, and he just kept getting to do them and getting cool results and building a career reputation, and now consulting practice and books and all those things.

And so, that’s quite beautiful how you get a bit of a, the word personal brand feels a little shallow for this. It’s a reputation, it’s an oomph, it’s an ethos, it’s a vibe, it’s a thing that you carry within you and is recognized by others and that perpetuates more phenomenal opportunities.

Seth Godin
But let’s be very clear, this is not about talent and what you are born with. You begin this by being the person who orders lunch better than anybody else, because ordering lunch is hardly fatal, and the people who order lunch and always order the same thing, boring thing wrapped in the shrink wrap and everything else, those people, you can count on them for boring lunch.

But if they come to expect that you’ve done your homework and you realize that two of the people are vegans and one person is gluten free and you found this place, and dah, dah, dah, and lunch was great, you haven’t pigeon-holed yourself as an admin. You have pigeon-holed yourself as someone who cares. And from that, you will get better at caring and being seen as caring.

And so, it’s not that, you know, “Seth started doing this at the beginning of his career, so I will never be able to do it.” It’s, I just was lucky enough to be present with people who challenged me to be challenging. And once I got a little better at it, I could do it more. And so, that’s what we seek to do. And I don’t think I tell this story in the book, but one of the key bits of development I had in my career, it’s the first day of work at Spinnaker Software. It’s my summer job. I am the 30th employee. The company would grow to have hundreds of people and then get acquired and stuff like that. But I walk in, there’s no voicemail, there’s no email, the fax had just been installed, and on the receptionist desk, is this plastic carousel with 50 slots in it and a Dymo label maker to put each person’s name on one slot.

So, you would walk in after lunch or you would walk in in the morning, you’d spin and spin and spin this thing until you found your name and then there’d be the pink message slips. You had to do this three, four, five times a day. It wasn’t in alphabetical order. It was in the order people had been hired. That makes sense because otherwise you’d have to rebuild the thing every time you hired someone. And I walk in and I look at this thing, and I go, “I’m going to have to look at this thing five times a day spinning, spinning, spinning, spinning, spinning, so does everyone else.”

So, I reach over to the receptionist desk, and she has a one of those magnetic things filled with paper clips, and I pull out a paper clip and I put it next to my name. So, now all you got to do is spin to my paper clip and I’ll be able to find my message, and the people who know they’re near me can spin to my paperclip and save time. Well, within 24 hours, it was festooned with different-colored paperclips and pipe cleaners, everyone had a little flag over their thing.

I saved the company many, many, many hours of spinning. It wasn’t fatal. It was awesome, and no one told me to do it. No one said, “You’re the senior vice president of paperclip affixing.” Instead, I saw a problem and I solved it. I didn’t have to take credit for it. I didn’t have to send out a memo. I just took responsibility, and if someone had said that was stupid, I would have taken my paperclip out.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s beautiful and very resonant. My mom ended up becoming the CEO of the local credit union because she noticed the former CEO was vacuuming after everyone left, and she’s like, “Well, I know how to vacuum.” And so, to your point, she did not get a reputation for, “Oh, Jan can clean.” It’s like, “Oh, Jan cares. She’s invested in this facility and what we’re about. Well, okay. I’m going to give her some more responsibilities,” and then one thing leads to another.

Seth Godin
Go, Jan, go.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, absolutely. So, let’s talk about this fear business. Freedom from fear, it’s interesting because I’m thinking about Dr. Casey Means makes an interesting point about feeling safe. She’s like, “To be incredibly clear, you and everyone you’ve ever loved will die. So, in one way, none of us are really safe.”

Seth Godin
Correct, not to mention the asteroid. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Uh-oh. Now I’m fearful, Seth. So, in a way, none of us are really safe. However, feeling safe is associated with all kinds of wonderful benefits. There’s creativity and health and freedom from chronic disease and all these things. So, likewise, with regard to freedom from fear, none of us are truly free from all risk. Like, we may very well get fired and someone may very well say, “That’s a very stupid idea and you’re not allowed to come to these meetings anymore.” That can happen. But if we have freedom from fear, boy, we unlock a lot of goodness. So, do you have any pro tips on getting to the other side of that?

Seth Godin
Well, we need to talk about resistance, but first I just want to do a small asterisk about fired, which is, I remember a few decades ago when Ford Motor Company saw that sales of the Ford Explorer were slowing down and they fired 10,000 people in one day. Here’s the thing. If their union had been smart, the UAW, a year earlier, would have said, “You’re making junky cars. We’re going on strike until you design a better car.”

Because the fact is those 10,000 people didn’t deserve to get fired. They got fired because other people designed a lousy car. That’s the risk we face, actually, when we show up at work; the risk of complying, not the risk of leading. So, this freedom from fear. If you talk to people who run the marathon, the first thing you’ll discover is that some people quit at mile 20 and other people finish.

And the difference between quitting at 20 and finishing is not how fit you are. It’s, “What are you going to do with the tired?” because they all get tired, but the people at 20 don’t know what to do with the tired so they have to stop, and the people who make it to mile 26, their coach didn’t teach them how not to be tired. Their coach taught them what to do when they feel tired. And the same thing is true with the fear.

Resistance, the thing that holds us back, writer’s block, Steve Pressfield’s great term for it, makes us feel like an imposter. And imposter syndrome is real, that when you get asked to do something, where you are confronting the future, something that hasn’t been done before, you will feel like an imposter. And so, the question which you just asked is, “How do I make imposter syndrome go away?” And the answer is, “You can’t.” And the reason you can’t is you’re an imposter, and so am I.

If you are making assertions about the future, you can’t be sure. You can’t guarantee that you are right. So, if you’re being honest with yourself, you’re simply pretending that the future will be the way you say. And so, when we feel that show up, we can’t make it go away, but we can dance with it. We can welcome it. We can invite it to sit down for tea. We can use it as a marker and a symbol that we might be onto something. And if I don’t feel afraid when I’m doing my work, then I know I am not trying hard enough.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Can you expand on that a little bit because that shows that you care, that you’re trying something new and challenging on your edge, outside your comfort zone, like these kinds of things?

Seth Godin
Yeah. Well, how long does it take to type a 200-page book? And the answer is a day, maybe four days if you’re Robert Caro, but not that much longer. So why does it take so long to write a book? And the answer is, “You don’t know what the next sentence is supposed to be.” That the work you’re getting paid for is to explore what the next sentence is, not to type.

But a whole bunch of people signed up to do a job where they’re in the typing pool. And the problem is the typing pool is no longer filled with employees. That the miracle of AI plus outsourcing is that if I can write down a job, I can get someone to do it faster and cheaper than you.

Pete Mockaitis
If I can write down a job. Yeah, I could chew on that for a while. What is write-downable and what is not?

Seth Godin
Correct. So, I can say to somebody, or to an AI, “Please read this 100-page document and highlight 20 of the quotes.” And if all I need is the quotes, that’s mechanical. I can write that down. If it’s, “Please highlight the 20 most important quotes,” that’s worth paying a human for. Because the decision of what are the most important ones, the choice to leave the other ones out, that’s risky. There’s no guarantee you’re right. Fear arises.

And so, where I get into trouble with AI, where I get into trouble with Upwork, is if I ask someone to do a job where I can’t write down all the steps, because then, inevitably, I get disappointed. But if I can write down all the steps, I would be a fool to hire an expensive human to do it when I got a computer that’ll do it all night for free.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. So, pick the best quotes, or the most engaging quotes, or the most viral quotes, or the most thought-provoking quotes. So, if someone on Upwork were to say, “Okay. Cool. Sure thing, Seth. How do I determine which ones are more thought-provoking than the others?” then that is supremely not write-downable.

Even if you could write down, it’s like, “Well, you know what? It might have, like, an interesting contrast, like ‘Ask not what your country can do, but what you can do for your country.'” You know, so it might. So, any document or guidance you could produce would be incomplete, and, thus, in your parlance, not write-down-able.

Seth Godin
Correct.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. Yeah, that’s juicy. Okay. So, we’re all impostors, so we dance with it and it’s not going to disappear. And, in fact, we could hopefully learn to embrace it as an indicator of something good and positive and exciting.

Seth Godin
Yeah, that’s our job. That is actually what it is to be awesome at your job, is to do things that are not write-downable, and this doesn’t mean you have to be a super fancy executive. So, there’s a fancy hotel chain in the US and the chambermaids are the lowest paid people in the organization. They’re the people who make up your room every day. Every one of them gets a $250 per guest budget to spend any way they want to please a guest.

So, they’re the front line. If they discover a couple really upset about something, they can just interrupt while they’re making the bed, and say, “Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that. Why don’t you just go have lunch? It’s on us.” And they just made a decision that is not write-downable in the moment, and this is somebody who’s getting paid minimum wage.

If you don’t trust your frontline people to do that, you’ve decided to make a commodity and to race to the bottom. The alternative is to race to the top, is to stand for something and to trust your people to understand the strategy and help you get there.

Pete Mockaitis
Seth, I love that so much. My very first W2 job-job was at Kmart, and Pantry Pete, they called me. And when I learned in the training video that I had “the power to please” you know, like, “Oh, sorry, we’re out of the Pepsi 24-pack, but I can give you two 12-packs for the same price as the 24-pack,” I thought that was the coolest thing ever. And I even wrote down in my schedule, “not work, but exercise power to please,” or EPP because I was dorky.

But it really was the funnest thing I did in terms of, I guess it was the autonomy and pleasing people feels good and I think that’s just a thing that I wish every team, organization, had more of, that capacity to do that.

Seth Godin
And Kmart closed its last store last week, and the reason is because they took that piece away and raced to the bottom. They tried to out-Walmart Walmart, out-Amazon Amazon, and that’s really hard to do, because if you race to the bottom, you might win.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, I love that language, out-Walmart Walmart, out-Amazon Amazon, and they sure didn’t out-Target Target. Sorry, Kmart. I mean, I’m a loyalist, got the apron, but, yeah, Target really wiped the floor there. So, let’s talk about you have a great quote in your book, “We mistakenly spend more time figuring out how to win the game we’re in instead of choosing which game to play in the first place.” I think there is just loads of wisdom in this. Can you unpack that a bit for us?

Seth Godin
Well, so we’re surrounded by games. Social media is a game. How many followers do you have? Whichever project you’re taking on is a game. Your career is a game. How much money do you get paid? These are scoring mechanisms that imply what the game is for, that there are people, billionaires, who think that what the world is for is for them to make as much money as possible.

And the thing is, if you confront a game that you cannot win, that is making you unhappy, trying harder to win that game is probably the wrong path. And so, the smallest viable audience gives us the freedom to pick who we are working with and for, and to ignore everyone else. And that gives us the responsibility to pick a game we want to be responsible for, as opposed to just saying, “Well, I’m playing the same game everybody else is.” Everything goes back to high school.

When you were in high school, you could have played the game of “How do I become Homecoming King or Queen?” or you could have played the game of “How do I get on the football team?” or you could have played the game of “How do I become first chair clarinetist?” Those are totally different games. And if you’re playing one of those games really, really hard, but the only reason is because you need to win it, you haven’t thought about which game is good for you and your world, you’re probably making a mistake.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And so, in the professional context, I’m just thinking about folks who just ran down the path, “Go be a doctor. Go be a lawyer. Go be an engineer. Oh, shoot, I hate this. Uh-oh.”

Seth Godin
Correct.

Pete Mockaitis
Can you give us some more examples of folks who have made this mindset paradigm shift and it’s been transformational for them?

Seth Godin
Well, one of the keys to the shift is to ignore sunk costs. Sunk costs are all the things you’ve invested in – a law degree, building something, buying something – and defending them going forward. You’re 35 years old, you’re a dentist, you hate being a dentist. It’s not going to get any better. You’re still going to hate being a dentist, but you keep doing it because you’ve already invested 10 years of your life and all this money in being a dentist, which means you’re sacrificing the next 40 years of your life to defend a choice that might’ve been a good one in retrospect when you made it, but it isn’t a good one anymore.

And the response is, “All sunk costs are gifts from your former self.” The Pete of yesterday, or 10 years ago, did something for me today, and you are allowed to say, “No, thanks.” You don’t have to accept the gift. Now you can make a new decision with new information. I could take this gift of a dental practice and this dental degree, or I’m going to say, “No, thank you,” and I could go become a tree farmer.

And shifting like that turns out to be good-decision science, but it’s also great for our heads, because every day you go back to your job, every day you go to work, you are re-signing up to accept the gift from yesterday. But if the gift isn’t helping you, don’t do it. So, yes, I know people who graduated from Harvard Law School but are now podcasters and life coaches. I know people who had a really good run doing something in Silicon Valley, but now they’re busy building boats because they didn’t give up, and they’re not retired. They’re creating value. They’re just playing a different game.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Some gifts need to go to Goodwill, and that’s totally fine. That’s acceptable.

Seth Godin
Yeah, it’s critical, actually.

Pete Mockaitis
A lot of this rich thinking we’re doing here seems to only exist, from my perspective, outside the realm of the urgent, the here-and-now next action. How do you think about dealing with urgency and getting the headspace to think wisely and strategically?

Seth Godin
So, you either live in the last minute, the next minute, or the best minute. Those are the three choices. So, what does it mean? The last minute is whatever is the highest on my urgency list is what I’m going to do right now, because there’s always going to be something that’s the highest on your urgency list. That lets you off the hook. You don’t have to be responsible for any of your choices because the urgency list determines it. That’s doing everything at the last minute.

The next minute is offered to everybody, every day. We get the next minute. What will we choose to do with it? And the best minute is yesterday you had one minute that was the best minute of your day. Everyone did. How can you make it so that your best minutes stack up? How can you make it so you have more of those? Because very few people who spend their life working at the last minute have many best minutes to report.

The short order cooks don’t usually have a lot of highlights from their day because all they know is someone ordered some eggs, they made some eggs, and then they went back to the next thing. And the power comes from taking a deep breath, leaving the urgent alone, it will take care of itself, and focusing instead on “How do I make this a best minute?” And you can’t work enough hours to defeat everybody because there’s only 24 hours in a day, but you could work less hours and make a bigger difference if you did the right thing with your time.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Seth, I love that question, “How do I make this the best minute?” Your book, This is Strategy, is filled with useful questions. Could you share a couple of them that you think might be the most frequently useful and transformative?

Seth Godin
Well, the ones I keep coming back to are “Who’s it for?” “What’s it for?” and “What’s the change I seek to make?” Because “Who’s it for?” makes it very clear who my client is, who my boss is, who my customer is. Ignore everyone else. “What’s it for?” is why do they need this from me? What are they dreaming of when I show up? Where’s the empathy of what I did for them?

And the third question is, “What is the change I seek to make?” because if you’re not making a change, then you’ve just signed up to be a cog. You are here to make a change. Our work is actually projects. Our job is getting paid by somebody to consistently do projects, but your projects are here to make a change happen. Can you point to the change you are making?

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. Well, Seth, tell me anything else you really want to make sure to mention before we hear about a few of your favorite things?

Seth Godin
I would say the single best thing people can do, if any of this has resonated, is to find someone not related to you, and meet with them once a week by Zoom to tell each other the truth, to answer these questions together because what you will discover is, knowing the meeting is coming, you will change your behavior so that you can report in the meeting that you’re onto something. And just having that sounding board can open the door to make a difference.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. Now, could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Seth Godin
In the classic self-help book, Dune, the Bene Gesserit say, “Fear is the mind-killer,” three words probably worth tattooing somewhere on your body.

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

Seth Godin
I think that understanding what the marshmallow test really measures is really helpful. The marshmallow test has been seen as saying that if a three-year-old can sit for five minutes with a marshmallow so they’ll get two, that self-restraint leads to 20, 30 years of happiness. So, therefore, people who are “born” with self-restraint are destined for greatness.

And some of that is correct, but it’s worth understanding that a kid who grows up in a household that’s under stress, where there’s trauma, where there isn’t dinner on the table, where parents are doing their best but can’t always keep their promises, those kids understandably eat the marshmallow because who knows if you’re going to come back with two marshmallows. You probably won’t.

So, I think we need to give people a little bit more grace and a lot more support because we don’t all win the birthday lottery. And what we can do as a culture is create the conditions for people to become resilient and to find self-restraint so that we can all maximize the joy we have and that we create for others.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Seth Godin
You know, it’s really fascinating to me that you’re not supposed to talk about your own book, but I listen to my own books all the time, because if I’m headed to a meeting or I’m feeling stuck and I put on The Practice, it gets under my skin again. But if I have to pick another book, I think if you haven’t read The War of Art by my friend Steve Pressfield, you need to do that right now.

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

Seth Godin
You might not have a spokeshave at home, but a well-sharpened spokeshave is your first choice for woodworking. And for my job that involves typing, Claude.ai is so much better than ChatGPT. It’s harder working, it’s kinder, it’s not arrogant, and if you’re not using it every day, you’re being left behind because the future is arriving very fast.

Pete Mockaitis
If I may, I do have a ChatGPT premium subscription, and I’m thinking about switching. Have you looked around to all of them; the Gemini, the Perplexity, the dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, and Claude’s your winner? Or you just found Claude and said, “Yep, I’m sticking with you”?

Seth Godin
I use Perplexity every day. If you’re using Google, you’ve made a mistake. Perplexity completely defeats Google. I’ve tried Gemini a little bit. It’s really fun if you want to tweak Google, to ask Google to compare things. Like, type in “Pop-Tarts versus Doberman Pinschers,” and it will give you a little essay about the difference between a Pop-Tart and a Doberman Pinscher, as opposed to say, “That’s a stupid question.” Claude would say, “Why are you asking me that?” and do it in a kind way.

So, I haven’t tried all of them. What’s magic about Claude is they spent a lot of time trying to create something that will challenge you to do even better with the next time you interact with it. Whereas, ChatGPT, to me, feels like it’s always doing me a favor, it does the minimum amount, and it argues, it really argues with you when it’s wrong, and that just pisses me off.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it’s like, I say, “Hey, give me this answer,” and it tells me what I would do to get the answer. It’s like, “Yes, I know. Go do that now, please.”

Seth Godin
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Seth Godin
I would say that my favorite habit, if people know me, is that I have habits. That I have intentional habits. That I eat the same thing, I get up at the same time, but most of my habits are about wearing an actual uniform and having a practice when it comes to my job. I do not wait to be inspired. Tomorrow, there’ll be a post on my blog, not because it’s the best post I ever wrote, but because it’s Friday. And knowing that these are things I do, frees up my mind to make a different sort of decision. And we all have habits, but if they’re not intentional habits, I think they’re probably getting in the way.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to especially resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often, they Kindle book highlight, they retweet to the high heavens?

Seth Godin
My most successful blog post is also my shortest. What a surprise. You don’t need more time. You just need to decide.

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

Seth Godin
Seths.blog, there’s 9,000 blog posts, one a day for a very, very long time. And if you go to Seths.blog/TIS, you’ll find out everything you need to know about this new book.

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

Seth Godin
You’ve already done the key thing, which is listening to Pete’s podcast, which is showing up and announcing you want to be awesome at your job. The challenge is, “Can you actually say what it would mean to be awesome at your job?” Because if you don’t know where you’re going, it doesn’t matter how fast you’re going there.

Pete Mockaitis
Seth, thank you. This was so much fun. I wish you much luck with your book, This is Strategy, and I hope you have many excellent plans well-executed.

Seth Godin
Thank you, Pete. Keep making this ruckus. It matters.

939: How to Waste Less Time on Meetings…and Spend More Time on Strategy with Rich Horwath

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Rich Horwath reveals how to cut through the busywork and make more time for strategy.

You’ll Learn:

  1. What being “strategic” really means
  2. The critical questions that determine what truly matters
  3. Why most meetings are useless—and how to fix them 

About Rich

Rich Horwath is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of eight books on strategic thinking and has been rated the #1 keynote speaker on strategy at national conferences, including the Society for Human Resource Management Strategy Conference.

He has appeared on ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX TV to provide commentary on the strategic aspects of current events and his work has appeared in publications including Fast Company, Forbes, and the Harvard Business Review.

A former Chief Strategy Officer and professor of strategy, Rich has created more than 700 resources to help leaders at all levels maximize their strategic potential. He designed the Strategic Quotient (SQ) Assessment, a validated tool to measure how effectively a person thinks, plans, and acts strategically. Rich created the Strategic Fitness System as an online platform for leaders to practice the skills to effectively navigate all areas of their business, including strategy, leadership, organization, and communication.

Resources Mentioned

Rich Horwath Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis

Rich, welcome.

 

Rich Horwath

Pete, thanks. Great to be with you today.

 

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I’m excited to dig into your wisdom that you put forth in your book Strategic, but first I need to hear a little bit about you and the Second City improv club in Chicago. I did a little bit of training there myself. Tell us the tale and how that relates to you and strategy.

 

Rich Horwath

Well, strategy, for many people, can be quite boring, and realizing that early on, I said, “Well, how can we differentiate ourselves? We know strategy is important to have differentiation.” So, I said, “One way to potentially not be as boring is to do some improv training.” So, I joined Second City because I lived in the old town area at the time so it was very close, and spent a year there training, doing weekly classes, and it was a great opportunity to really push myself outside of my comfort zone.

Anyone who can tell you that’s heard me sing, singing is not a strength of mine, and some of the improvisation required making up songs as we went. So, being able to put yourself out there and do something completely terrible, and make it through mentally and emotionally, was a good way to build some mental fortitude.

 

Pete Mockaitis

I like that a lot. I remember I did an intensive over, I guess, five-ish days, just before Thanksgiving, and I remember I came back from it, I said, “Oh, this is fun. I think it really loosened me up.” And my friends said, “Pete, I don’t think you needed to be any looser.” But, nonetheless, I got looser and I appreciated the impact.

 

Rich Horwath

I love it. I love it.

 

Pete Mockaitis

Well, tell us, you’ve been talking about coaching, studying, consulting, strategy stuff for a couple decades, any particularly surprising or counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made about this stuff as you’ve delved into it?

 

Rich Horwath

Well, one of the things that’s a little counterintuitive is we hear the mantra “fail fast” a lot, and it’s come out of Silicon Valley, and a lot of people apply it across the board, “Fail fast. Try something. Fail.” And my experience, Pete, has been that that’s not really a great recipe for leaders to follow, especially ones that are in more established industries.

Because, yes, in a startup environment in Silicon Valley, a tech company, you’re going try things, see if they work because you’re really pioneering new markets. But if you’re in a more experienced industry with maturity, the ability to succeed, to think, and to plan is something, I think, it’s going to be more important to people’s long-term career success.

So, that’s one thing that would be a bit counterintuitive is, I’d like to say, let’s replace fail fast with think first and then succeed. So, that would be one thing I’d mention off the top of my head.

 

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, I like that a lot in terms, yeah, fail fast has a time and a place in terms of, “Okay, don’t spin your wheels forever. Sometimes the best way to learn is just by trying it out, see what happens.” But other times, the cost of failure is pretty significant, and the benefit of getting it right the first, or second, or third time, instead of failing dozens of times, is massive. So, I’m right with there. I love my 80/20 Rule, my the-one-thing kind of stuff. It’s a beautiful thing.

For those who are not yet converts into strategy is awesome, can you share with us what’s sort of at stake or the benefits for professionals who master this stuff versus kind of limp along, doing okay with the whole strategy thing?

 

Rich Horwath

Well, when we think about the average person out there, and their ability to be led, to be a follower, to have set direction for them, one of the things that we see from a research standpoint is that 22% of people in the workforce, and this is a study of 30 million workers by Gallup, found that only 22% said, “Hey, our senior leadership has set great strategic direction.”

And so, one of the things we want to think about is if you’re in an organization that doesn’t have good strategic direction, all of a sudden, you’ve got people spending time on this thing, time on this thing, they’re spreading their resources too thin in lots of different areas, and it’s not all gelling together. So, being able to be strategic, to set direction for your business, whether you’re the CEO, whether you’re a first line manager, whether you’re an individual contributor, is going to be really important because strategy isn’t just what’s written in the PowerPoint deck.

It’s how each and every one of us spend our time, day in and day out. That’s the real strategy because strategy is about resource allocation. And the most important resource is time. So, all of us out there are strategists. The key is to have an understanding of what that means, and then really understand, “Are we putting our time into the priorities that are really going to drive value for our company and for our customers?”

 

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And I think that most of us think that we probably do an okay job of this, “Sure, I got a to-do list, and I think about what might be most important, and I put an asterisk or a box around that item on my to-do list.” So, is that adequate? Or just what sort of benefits might I unlock if I were operating at a Jedi-level of being awesomely strategic?

 

Rich Horwath

Well, Pete, I’m going to borrow one of the phrases you’ve used because I really like it. You call yourself pathologically curious.

 

Rich Horwath

And I think when we consider the ability to be strategic, a lot of involves that level of curiosity, that explorer’s mindset, that we’re trying to discover new ways, new solutions, new approaches to bring value to people. Because what happens is, too often, if we’re just following a to-do list, and we’re on that activity treadmill, then we can lose sight of, “Are we really providing new and differentiated value to the people that we’re serving, either internally or externally as well?”

And so, I think being strategic is, “How are we accumulating or generating insights?” and I define an insight as a learning that leads to new value. So, the best leaders, the best managers are the ones that are continually accumulating these insights, these new learnings that are helping them bring value to their company.

 

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I like insights. Maybe, Rich, can you make it all the more real for us by sharing a cool story of a professional who upgraded their strategic game and saw some cool benefits from it?

 

Rich Horwath

So, I was working with a mid-level manager at a medical device company, and this is about 10 years ago, and we were in a session, and we were doing some brainstorming using a tool called a value-mining matrix, which, in simple terms, is looking at customers and needs, and trying to determine, “How can we bring new value to meet some new needs that people have?”

And this company was in the cardiovascular space, so the heart space. And, typically, when they had these brainstorming sessions, all the ideas were in the heart space, but this one leader said, “You know, I was in an operating room not too long ago with one of my customers, and one of the main problems, the challenges that the surgeons and the nurses had was really being able to get rid of a lot of different materials, liquids, things that were no longer usable in the operating room right after the surgery, and they didn’t really have a good, clear, clean way to do that.”

And so, she said, “Maybe we should think about some type of disposal service for general surgery.” And it was interesting, Pete, because people in the session were kind of rolling their eyes, and looking around, and somebody even said, “You know, we don’t do that. That’s not what we do.” But she said, “Well, we need to think. We’ve heard the term outside the box, but we need to think about what are other ways that we can solve challenges that our customers have?”

And so, they wound up doing a pilot program in coming up with a prototype service to work in general surgery to remove the different types of waste materials, and it was successful at a regional hospital. They rolled it out across the State, and then they rolled it out nationally, and a couple of years later, that was a hundred-million-dollar piece of their business, which was a fairly significant part of the company.

So, again, it was this idea of not just being locked into doing the same things and the same ways we always do them, which tends to be our operational effectiveness, but strategy is really about, “How can we pick a different path that’s going to help us be successful?”

 

Pete Mockaitis

All right. I love that. Well, it’s so funny, when you said that idea, it seems so perfect because, yeah, that’s probably how it would land, like, “Aargh, this is annoying. Let’s get back on track. This meeting is already too long. We don’t really do that.” But then I’m thinking from my perspective, “Man, if you solve a problem that surgeons are having, there’s probably a lot of money there.”

 

Rich Horwath

Exactly.

 

Pete Mockaitis

And, sure enough, there was. And money not just for the company but, I imagine, for that clever professional, as well as people on their teams, some promotions and raises are probably dolled out along the path of making that happen.

 

Rich Horwath

Yeah, absolutely, there were. And, again, what it did was it forced everyone in the organization to rethink what their sandbox was. And, again, it typically was the heart space, and they said, “We need to look at other ways that we can take our capabilities, our skill sets, and our knowledge, and apply them across all the needs that surgeons might have.” So, you’re right, there was a big seismic shift in the way people were thinking about the business.

 

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. So, in your book Strategic, it sounds like is that kind of like the main point you’re bringing there, it’s like, “If you take the time to get these insights, great things happen”? Or, how would you articulate the main message or the big idea here?

 

Rich Horwath

Yeah, I think that’s a great way to capture it. The reality is if we think about physical fitness, so if we think about running, jogging, lifting some weights, doing Pilates, if we do any of those things once a year, one day out of the year, we’re probably not going to be very physically fit. If we played the guitar once a year, we’re probably not going to be a great guitar player.

But when it comes to strategy, and planning, and thinking strategically, a lot of people do it a couple days out of the year, in November or creating their plan, and then it goes away for about 11 and a half months. So, a lot of people treat strategy like a birthday where it happens once a year, there’s a lot of signage and funfair, and then it goes away.

So, the premise of the book, to your point, is really about, “How do you take the importance of generating insights on a yearly basis, and make that everyone’s daily job? How do we create that accountability for learnings that lead to new value?” because that’s the way that you really take knowledge workers and create a true learning organization, versus people doing their own things in silos, which happens quite a bit.

 

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. I like that notion, the fitness, strategic fitness once a year, once a quarter isn’t going to cut the mustard on the body, nor will it with your strategic skills. Well, Rich, could you give us a quick overview of you lay out four disciplines of strategic fitness? What are those?

 

Rich Horwath

So, there’s strategy, leadership, organization, and communication. And so, in my work over the last 20 years, I found that the executives that are truly successful in the long run, they’re good in all of those areas. They’re not just one or the other. For instance, Forbes magazine found two years ago that the most CEOs that were fired in the Fortune 500 were fired because of emotional intelligence issues, not financial performance.

So, just being good at strategy, as a leader, is not good enough if you’re not good with people, if you’re not a true leader, if you don’t create purpose for other people. So, one of the keys is you’ve got to be well-rounded in the fat that you have to be a good communicator, you’ve got to be able to set the structure for the organization and the processes, you have to be a leader, meaning you have to be able to set direction and serve others to achieve goals, and then you’ve got to be able to set strategy, meaning, “We’ve got to allocate our resources in order to get where we want to go.”

 

Pete Mockaitis

Well, now that is a fascinating little tidbit you shared there, and I didn’t think we’d talked much about emotional intelligence in a conversation about strategy but let’s go ahead and do it. 

 

Rich Horwath

Well, when we think about emotional intelligence, there’s two main areas. There’s self-awareness and then there’s the situation awareness. And the situation awareness is really about your interaction and relationships with other people, and that’s the one that seems to trip up most of the CEOs, is it relates to their teams, as well as the board of directors.

So, oftentimes, they’re surprising the board of directors with news about different things. From a culture perspective, they’re not creating the integrity of having a culture where they’re talking and doing things that match up. So, oftentimes, they say, “Well, honesty is one of our key values,” and, all of a sudden, they’re asking their people to do things that may not be quite honest as far as customer reporting, customer sales and things like that.

So, to your point, they don’t tend to be the big scandalous things, but a lot of it is just their awareness of how they’re interacting with other people. And are they doing it in a way that’s empathetic, meaning they’re putting themselves in other person’s shoes to understand, “How does this person want to be treated? What do they need to know? And am I being transparent with the things that they would want to know?”

 

Pete Mockaitis

That’s beautiful. And not to dehumanize this at all, but it is actually quite strategic, in my experience, to have a wide network of good relationships that you can work with again and again and again. I’m just thinking about John, this guy I’ve collaborated with from time to time on some big audio projects, and I was like, “Ooh, I’ve got a short deadline.” And so, I was like, “Oh, I’ll call up John. Oh, he has some availability. Well, that’s great news.”

And so, it’s like if I had been a jerk in previous times I had big audio projects with short deadlines, and yelling at John to do more faster, well, then you wouldn’t have that resource available. And so, it is with all sorts of things, strategically thinking, it’s, like, we have our strengths, our gifts, what we can do way more efficiently than others, and to the extent that you are filling in your gaps with other people over a lifelong network of collaboration, that is just a huge enabler of strategic goodness.

 

Rich Horwath

And, Pete, what you just said there is such a good point, you said the word lifelong. And I think that’s a great reminder for everybody out there because, too often, we look at relationships as transactional and short term, instead of lifelong, like you talk about. And if we think about that relationship from a lifelong perspective, one of the things I encourage people to do at all levels is to pick the top ten people that you work with on a regular basis, and then map out, “What are the intentional things that you want to do to develop that relationship even further or deeper over the next year?”

And so, that’s one thing I’ve seen people do to be successful, whether it’s with your board of directors, colleagues to your point, other people that you work with outside your company, but pick 10, 15, 20 people, and just jot down a couple bullet points for this year, “What do you want to do to build or develop that relationship to another level?”

 

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, I love that. Well, so now you highlight a number of time traps that impede our ability to be strategic and effective. Can you share what are some of those? And how do we deal with them effectively?

 

Rich Horwath

So, when we look at being strategic, time, the ability to marshal, to use your time effectively is so critical. So, there’s a few things that trip people up when it comes to time. One of them being just not carving time out to think. Sometimes we’re on that activity treadmill, we’re going and going and going, but we don’t really stop to think about, “What are we doing? How are we doing it? Why are we doing it? And are there ways to do it differently or better?”

And the best executives I’ve worked with are the ones that really carve out some times, 30 minutes, 60 minutes a week to step back and think about changes that they would like to make and the ways that they’re using their time. The other really interesting learning I’ve had in studying CEOs is a lot of the good ones batch their time.

So, instead of bouncing from one thing this minute to another thing this minute, to email, to a report, to a one-on-one meeting, to a staff meeting, they really batch their time in chunks of two, to three, to four hours. So, they might say, “Well, I’m going to do all of my one-on-one direct report meetings on Monday from 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.”

And the big benefit of that, Pete, is they reduce the number of mental transitions that they have to make during the day. Because if you have 70 or 80 different mental transitions during the day, that’s what causes burnout, that’s what causes people to be really tired at the end of the day. But if you group all of your one-on-ones for three to four hours, then you do 45 minutes of email, and then you do a couple reports, now you’ve got three or four transitions versus 60 transitions.

 

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, I think that makes all the difference because it takes a while to get into the groove of a thing, and then I think the time in which you’re not in that groove, there’s friction. And so, yeah, less time in the friction zone would probably result in less burnout, more energetic goodness, so that’s awesome. Now, I need to hear about the particulars for the how-to’s of strategic thinking, like the key questions you ask, how you identify what really, really, really is important and worthwhile versus not so important and worthwhile. How do you go about thinking through and approaching these?

 

Rich Horwath

Yeah, so, in general, I think we could start with three A’s. There’s a three A strategic framework, which is acumen, allocation, and action. So, acumen is, “What’s the insight? What’s my learning here?” So, one thing I’d recommend is try for a week, every interaction that you have, if it’s a one-on-one meeting, your daily staff meeting or huddle, a report that you’re doing, after you have that interaction, sit down for just a minute or two, and ask yourself, “What did I learn in that session? What was the key takeaway for me?”

Because what we see, Pete, in the last couple of years is we’re stacking meetings on top of each other, especially if we’re in a hybrid or remote format and we’re doing a lot of things on video. We tend to stack those meetings and we go from one to the other, and we don’t really take the time to identify, “What are the action steps out of this interaction? What were my learnings? And what would I do differently with that next interaction with these same people?” I also recommend this idea of scoring your interactions, especially meetings.

So, as you go throughout your week, one thing I have executives I work with do is I have them use a scale of one to three. So, one was low value in the interaction, two is mid-value, and three was high value. And what’s interesting then is that if you categorize those results at the end of the week, so you say, “My operating meeting, my IT meeting, my HR meeting,” if you rate all of those throughout the week, if some of them are coming as a one, a one and a half, or a two, then you need to ask yourself, “Is that a meeting that we should keep doing? And if so, how do we improve the value of that meeting?” for yourself, for the other people involved with it.

So, that first A, acumen, is really about thinking, “How do we create more value in what we’re doing every interaction?”

 

Pete Mockaitis

And if I may, when it comes to scoring the value of the interaction, how do we think about measuring value and making that assessment? And what are typical sorts of improvements that you’ve seen upgrade the value?

 

Rich Horwath

So, the main thing I would say is you have to have your goals clearly identified, not just your goals, but you have to understand the goals of the other people, the other groups that you’re meeting with. Too often, people go in with their own agenda to these interactions, and they’re not really empathetic as to what the other person is trying to achieve as well. So, to me, the first step in understanding or ascertaining value is, “How well did that interaction help us progress toward our goals, not just my goal, not just your goal, but our goals collectively?”

Once we understand what the goals are, then we need to ask ourselves, “Did we have the right questions and preparation going into that interaction?” I’m a big believer that if you have a one-on-one meeting, a group meeting, you’ve got to have preparation.

Forty-eight, 72 hours beforehand, send out one or two key questions, and have people think about that. So, when you get into that meeting, that conversation, it can start at a much more accelerated pace because people are really ready to engage. So, I would say those are a couple of the key things that can turn up the volume on value.

 

Pete Mockaitis

And I suppose as you go through this exercise regularly, you might discover fairly quickly, “Oh, actually, the goals that we’re pursuing in these meetings aren’t actually worth pursuing at all.”

 

Rich Horwath

Great insight. Yup, exactly.

 

Pete Mockaitis

“Let’s skip the meeting and it’s all good.”

 

Rich Horwath

And that’s a good point, Pete. I would recommend folks out there to think about taking a meeting audit. So, jot down on a piece of paper, on a Word doc, what are all of the meetings that you currently attend, and think about what’s the goal, or what’s the purpose of those meetings. And a lot of times, when people do an audit or an inventory of their meetings, to your point, Pete, there are some of them, they say, “You know, this is not adding any value. I’ve done this meeting for three years and it’s the same old conversation.” And it could be better served if somebody just sent out an email, or, even these days, did a quick one- or two-minute video overview of the topic and information that they wanted to share.

 

Pete Mockaitis

I like that a lot. I am a huge proponent of Loom. I guess there are many software pieces that do this kind of thing. But, oh, yeah, that screen recording, so quick and easy and simple. Don’t have to coordinate everyone’s calendar, and it’s just like, “Here’s what you need to know. Here’s the process. Here’s the software and the documents and the things that we’re doing, or an update on what I’ve discovered, and what I might recommend we look at next,” and then that’s that.

 

Rich Horwath
Yeah, absolutely. There’s a lot of software and things to do that. And, again, I think the key point, and you touched on it as well, is we just need to think about, “How are we using our time in ways that are getting us to our goals?” because, too often, time is driven by activity for activity’s sake alone.

 

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Let’s hear about allocation.

 

Rich Horwath

So, allocation then, that second A, is really about, “How are you using your resources, your time, your energy, your mindset, your talent, and any budget that you have to achieve the goals that you have?” And, again, the key for allocation, and you know this as well as anybody, great strategy is as much about what we choose not to do as it is about what we choose to do.

So, the best managers, the best leaders I’ve seen are really crystal clear for themselves and their team on, “Here are the areas and things that we’re not going to spend our time on. So, we’re not going to generate these reports. We’re not going to work with these types of customers. We’re not going to fulfill these types of requests because they’re not the sweet spots where we can bring the most value.” So, a lot of allocation is, yes, you have to have a to-do list but, as we’ve heard before, you want to have that not to-do list as well so people are really clear and not wasting time.

 

Pete Mockaitis
You know, I love the not to-do list. And I remember I was having a chat years ago with a friend. We were talking… totally different context; we were talking about dating. He’s like, “You got to get really clear on your must-haves and you-can’t-stands.” I was like, “Okay, I guess that makes sense.” And, also, I said, “I think it also is really helpful to get clear on your doesn’t-matters.” And he’s like, “Why? Why did you say that?” I was like, “Because I think it’s easy to get sidetracked.” Like, “Ooh, that’s impressive that he’s rich.” It’s like, “Oh, but actually that doesn’t matter because of…” well, whatever reason. He’s like, “Financially, it’s all good over here.”

Because it’s easy to get sucked into something that’s attractive and interesting, romantically or from a business career professional perspective, because it just sort of triggers something in you, like, “Ooh, that’s really cool and nifty fresh opportunity.” Like, “Oh, we got to do AI because everyone is doing AI, and AI is the thing to do, right?” It’s like, “Okay. Well, maybe, but that’s actually not at all a good reason to go do AI because it’s hot and everyone else is doing it.”

Maybe it’s like, “Oh, there is an opportunity here to do substantial savings. Maybe,” or maybe it’s not. So, I like that notion a lot, getting clear on the not to do. And while we’re talking allocation, I got to hear your take on the 80/20 Rule. Is it real, Rich?

 

Rich Horwath

Absolutely. I believe it’s real, both from a business and a personal perspective. When you think about the organizations that have really been successful, and obviously the ones that come to mind, the Apples, the Googles, the Nordstroms, the Metas, what you find is that they’ve really driven tremendous value through one or two things that they’ve done for the most part.

And then once they’ve gotten 5, 10, 15, 20 years in, they start to add other things. But really, my experience working with leaders is that if you can identify that 20% of things that’s going to drive 80% of the value, that’s going to be a great ticket to being as effective as possible. And I do recommend everybody out there, at least once a quarter, jot down how you’re spending your time in 30-minute increments throughout the week. Add those things up at the end of the week, and I’d even recommend graph it out.

So, on the X-axis, put the different categories where you spend your time, on the Y-axis the hours, and map that out, draw that out. And what you’ll find is there’s going to be a couple things that take up the majority of your time. The question is, “Do those things actually matter to your goals and priorities?” And if they don’t, then we need to make some changes. So, that’s my perspective, Pete. What’s been your observations on the 80/20?

 

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, it really has been, and there are times when I have actually made a spreadsheet of, “What is the expected profit generated per hour of Pete required of all these different initiatives?” And just as the 80/20 Rule would predict, the vital few activities, those 20% of things that drive 80% of the value, can, indeed, be 16 times as impactful as the trivial many activities. And it’s just so eye-opening.

I think if there’s a whiff of procrastination in my psyche, and there is often, just having that kind of clarity is so powerful. It’s like, “Okay, Pete, this is 16 times as important as the other thing. So, don’t even think about investing your time in that other thing.” And it’s just pretty wild. So, I’d love to hear from your perspective, working with clients, what are some common themes of activities that are often in that vital few top 20% zone that are truly often 16 times as impactful as the other stuff?

 

Rich Horwath

Well, I would say the number one thing is spending time with customers, so it may be your customers internally. So, if you’re an HR leader, it might be spending time with the person who’s doing compensation, the ones who’s doing incentive, the ones who’s doing DEI stuff. So, to me, spending time with the people that you’re serving, either internally or externally, that, I think, is where most of the leaders I’ve talked to are really getting a ton of value.

One of the things I throw out there that I’d say a lot of leaders get caught up in, that doesn’t bring a lot of value, is presentations, whether it’s presentations internally, presentations to the board. I’m seeing leaders spend an inordinate amount of time coming up with these presentations when, in fact, I think what most people are really hungry for is a real dialogue, not just a presentation, “I’m going to talk to you for 30 minutes, and then I’ll give you two minutes at the end to ask a couple questions.”

People want interaction, they want dialogue. So, that would be one, I would say, trap to avoid is getting caught up in the real fancy presentations as opposed to creating real dialogue with folks.

 

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And the action?

 

Rich Horwath

So, the action, that third A, is really about, “How are you prioritizing what’s important versus the stuff that’s urgent?” And I think you brought up the 80/20 and some of the ways that you use it, I think that’s a great tool to help people act in a way that’s going to really drive value for them and for the people that they’re serving, if you can take the time to identify what those few activities are that are driving the majority of value. And then, like you said, a good leader helps people avoid the noise, the things that are out there but aren’t really relevant.

So, I think, as a good leader from an action standpoint, you’re almost putting earmuffs on people to say, “Look, here’s what we’re focused on. Don’t let all these other things that are uncontrollable in the environment, or things like AI, distract us from really what the task at hand is.” So, it’s really just that ability to prioritize the important versus the urgent.

 

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Now, before we hear about some of your favorite things, I’d love it, Rich, if you could lay on us any other quick tips, tricks, questions, shortcuts for zeroing in on super high value stuff fast?

 

Rich Horwath

Yeah. Well, one thing, Pete, we’re all involved in meetings, and meetings take up a lot of time. And the recent study shows that about 70% of executives feel that meetings are inefficient and ineffective. And so, one of the things I’d recommend is this meeting framework. So, think about three things. Think about your intent, your decisions, and your insights.

So, intent is, if you’re meeting with people, even if it’s one person, “What’s the intent? What’s the purpose?” and formulate that in an agenda. The second piece is decisions. If you’re just meeting to talk, and you don’t have decisions where you’re moving things forward, you’re potentially wasting time. So, think about what’s the decision there. And then that third one is insights. Take time at the end of interactions to really think about, “What’s the learning? What’s the new action plan based on that interaction?”

So, I would say that’s an important one around meetings, it’s just that idea of intent, decisions, and insights. That’s a key one. And then, I guess, the other piece I’d mention, too, is just that we’re in a lot of conversations day in and day out, so we really want to make sure that we’re in conversations that are exploratory, but then also think about a funnel, we’re at the end of the conversation, we’re getting to the bottom of the funnel.

A lot of conversations I’ve been a part of and see, we’re at the top of the funnel the entire meeting and that’s where we end, but we don’t get down to the end of the funnel to the neck of the funnel, to say, “Okay, so what based on this conversation? What’s next?”

 

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, now, Rich, could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

 

Rich Horwath

A quote from Proverbs, it’s “Iron sharpens iron, so man sharpens his fellow man.” I think we can learn something from everybody out there if we’re just open enough to do that.

 

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite book?

 

Rich Horwath

The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin. 

 

Pete Mockaitis

And a favorite tool?

 

Rich Horwath

Mindjet. So, it’s a mind-mapping software, very simple in nature, very inexpensive, but, to me, it’s the best way to think through an article, a project, even your to-do list for the day.

 

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite habit, something you do that helps you be awesome at your job?

 

Rich Horwath

I start with a mental workout each morning. So, not jumping jacks, or pushups, or burpees, or anything, but I do a mental workout where I actually take some of the things that Olympic athletes use, like visualization, affirmation statements, performance statements, and I tailor that for my business. So, I visualize the meetings that I have coming up, how I’d like to be in those meeting, I think about a couple key performance statements, like, ask good questions, be a good listener, be an active listener, things like that. So, I try to do that each morning to kind of frame my mental attitude for the day.

 

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

 

Rich Horwath

New growth comes from new thinking

 

Pete Mockaitis

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

 

Rich Horwath

A lot of free resources, about a hundred different free resources at StrategySkills.com, articles, white papers, infographics, videos, podcasts. So, StrategySkills.com.

 

Pete Mockaitis

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

 

Rich Horwath

Yeah, I would say that the one thing to keep in mind is, “How are you bringing new value to people?” It’s easy to say, “This is my job. This is my activity. This is what I do.” But then, let’s take that one step further and think about, “How am I providing, creating, delivering value for people today?” If we put ourselves in that value mindset, we’re always going to be relevant to the folks that we’re working with.

 

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Rich, thank you. This is fun. I wish you many good strategic decisions.

 

Rich Horwath

Pete, thanks so much. It was great to be with you today.

824: Thriving amid Information Overload with Ross Dawson

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Ross Dawson shares battle-tested strategies for excelling in a world of massive information.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The five information superpowers 
  2. How to consume information optimally
  3. How to discern the good sources from the bad ones 

About Ross

Futurist and author Ross Dawson has focused for over 25 years on the challenge and opportunity of how to thrive on unlimited information. The initial offering of his first company Advanced Human Technologies was helping financial market leaders and company directors develop their information capabilities. He shared early insights in his prescient 1997 article Information Overload: Problem or Opportunity? 

For over two decades Ross has applied and consistently refined his frameworks for enhancing information capabilities. As a leading futurist, keynote speaker and advisor he has travelled around the globe helping business and government leaders envisage and create positive futures for an immense array of industries and issues.  

Resources Mentioned

Ross Dawson Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Ross, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Ross Dawson
Wonderful to be talking to you, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into your wisdom about Thriving on Overload: The 5 Powers for Success in a World of Exponential Information. But, first, could you tell us a little bit about your knack for musical instruments? I understand you can play many. How did you learn how to play them all? Any tips and tricks, or any special performances that really leap to mind?

Ross Dawson
Well, it’s just at the age of 14, I said, “I just want to play guitar,” so I gave a little money to my dad, he bought me a guitar, and I actually, at the time, had some cassette tapes and a little book, and I taught myself. So, I teach myself just about everything, and so it was the guitar included, and then I sort of worked out, “Okay, well, that note on the guitar, is that a note on the piano?” And so, I looked out on how to play the piano, and learned a couple of other instruments. It’s all self-taught.

Sometimes it’s useful. Often, it’s useful to have teachers but I think there’s so much we can discover ourselves in the way we find our own ways of doing things if we do them ourselves. And that’s certainly been my musical journey where I just do what I want to do, and I enjoy it, and not necessarily following what anyone’s suggesting to me I should be doing.

Pete Mockaitis
Fun. Okay. And were you in a band at some points along the way or any noteworthy performances?

Ross Dawson
Yes, just lots of bands along the way, mostly pretty early on when I was at school, when I was university, and then after that, yeah, a number of other bands, and playing guitar, bass, keyboards, percussion. And I’ve been certainly keen to get back to it for quite a while, and it’s a bit harder when you have kids and you got busy and so on, but working on some ways to use technology plus instruments to be able to create my own one solo show live.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, fun.

Ross Dawson
So, working it too.

Pete Mockaitis
Looking forward to it.

Ross Dawson
So, see you if I actually get on stage at some point.

Pete Mockaitis
That is good. Well, one final question on the music scene, did any of your bands have funny names? Band names are our favorite.

Ross Dawson
Nothing that I…well, funny, I don’t even remember them all. Platinum Blues was one of the sorts of bigger bands that I was in. So, this idea of those blues but we were sort of gilding it. So, that was, I suppose, one of the steps along the way.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. All right. Well, Ross, now tell us a little bit about Thriving on Overload. Any particularly surprising or counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made along the way on this stuff?

Ross Dawson
Well, I suppose, in a way, Thriving on Overload is counterintuitive in the sense we live in a world of overload, but we can thrive on it. I think this is a fundamental belief that our brains are not adapted to the world that we have created. Incredible inventors that have made, among other things, a profusion of information, and screens, and always on, and this is something is what we have brought ourselves, but it is not something that our brains are ready for, so we are overloaded. We are overwhelmed. It’s just natural. It’s impossible not to be, in a way.

But I do believe that it is possible to thrive on that. And this is, I suppose, a way where we can become, you know, learn, change how we do things, what we do, our attitudes, practices. And that, in a way, means we can transcend who we have been to be more adapted to the world that we live in. So, this is a journey, we can learn things, we can progress, and so that’s something which is not obvious but I think this really is our most important capability that we need to develop.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so then can you paint a picture for, if there’s any cool studies or data or research, which really reveals just what’s possible in the realm of thriving on overload? Like, what’s the typical level of thriving/floundering in the midst of overload versus what can really be possible if you master this stuff?

Ross Dawson
There’s a whole set of capabilities to develop the capability to thrive. So, the subtitle of the book is, The 5 Powers for Success in a World of Exponential Information. Those five powers are purpose, framing, filtering, attention, and synthesis. So, we need to be able to dig into each of those and how all those fit together. But if we want to distill this, I suppose, to research and some data and some one frame, one piece of research or sort of now what is compounded research is into multitasking.

And some people think they’re good at multitasking, and the reality is that now more recent studies on what’s actually happening in our brain shows that when we think we are multitasking, as we think we are doing two things at the same time, our brain is actually switching from one thing to another thing, and then back to the other thing, and then back to the other thing.

Now, if we’re simply listening to a podcast while we’re cooking dinner, that’s probably achievable. That’s not too hard to go back and forth. But if we’re doing something which is contemplatively taxing, and we’re then checking our email, or trying to watch TV, or whatever it is, it’s simply not functional. So, studies have shown, in fact, that those people who think they are good at multitasking actually underperform those people that don’t think they’re good at multitasking because they’re trying to do something which is literally not possible. Our brains cannot multitask.

So, this is where we are put in a world with so much wonderful things going on, and we try to pay attention to multiple things at the same, and it’s simply, yes, you can do it by switching your attention, but you will perform less than you’ve done before. Now, taking research at the other end of the spectrum, those who are trained in the single practice which takes our attention the most sustained is meditation, which is simply the practice of keeping our attention sustained on one thing for a period of time where we can continue to be on attention on one thing for a period of time.

And you don’t need to be a meditator to get there. There are other ways to be able to get there, and there are people who switch everything off, and for three hours at a time, aside from getting up and stretching and having a drink of water or whatever they need along the way, will be focused on task for a period of hours.

And the reality is that it’s only a very small proportion of people that are able to and do take that time and capacity, develop that three hours of attention, spend it on one thing in which they can achieve incredible things. Whereas, the vast majority of people, it’s literally, their attention is not on one thing for more than literally a few minutes at a time, at best, because they’re just strayed by thoughts or notifications or alerts.

And those are the two poles. One is eternal distraction, eternal attention watering all over the place where we can never achieve that much. And those people that demonstratively can keep their attention on one thing achieve extraordinary amounts of things in quite limited periods of time.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that does sound exciting in terms of what’s possible. Now, to zero in on that three-hour figure, I’m thinking about ultradian rhythms and just what’s possible for the human organism. Is that three hour like three hours but with, like, a couple minute bathroom and beverage break? Or, how does that unfold, that three hours?

Ross Dawson
Yes. So, to your point, the basic rest activity cycle is generally understood to be 90 minutes, where our brains do go through cycles of, amongst other things, ability to be more focused and less focused. And so, we do need to take that into account, and our brains are different, we could be more or less tired, those all sorts of different factors, but 90 minutes is a reasonable guideline.

So, three hours is something where it is very possible for anybody to spend three hours in reasonable degrees of focus but that’s probably more than as much as most people would want to achieve in a day. The way I put it is that everybody should, for at least 90 minutes, at least once a week, have a complete focus time.

And that’s something which, again, is already challenging for most people. Most people don’t take 90 minutes out where there’s no distractions, nothing interrupting them, where there’s only one thing, they can’t escape from it, and they do get on with it. It actually takes practice to get into that but you can still achieve a lot as you get to that 90-minute period and I think that’s a good starting point for most people.

If you’re used to just being distracted and checking your email all the time, whatever it may be, make sure you have a time of 90 minutes, no distractions, no notifications, nobody’s going to interrupt you unless it’s the end of the world, and you have one task to get on with, and you just do that for 90 minutes, and do that once a week. That’s just incredibly starting point. And from then, you can start to build it.

So, in terms of some of those cycles, one of the most famous is the Pomodoro technique, which you spend 25 minutes of focus, five minutes break, 25 minutes of focus, and five minutes break, sometimes a bit longer break, and then you do that three times, which basically takes you to 90 minutes, have a little bit of a longer break, and then you do that three times again, 25 minutes plus five minutes break. And that works for a lot of people.

Personally, I think that the more flexible approach, as in if you feel you’re in the groove, then why suffer 25 minutes, or if you just feel a little bit of a break first that’s earlier. So, we can let our…some people work to that structure, having a time run, 25 minutes and five minutes break, that works for them perfectly. Other people, I feel that 25 minutes, often I’ll just want to keep on going, I won’t want to stop. But when I’m ready, I can take a stop, wander outside, pick up the guitar, whatever it may be.

So, I think if we get into this practice, what we do need is find our practices, find our routines that work for us, find what times of day is the best time to do this, but just making sure that you are starting with at least carving out some time, which is this what I call deep-dive time. That’s when you can achieve an incredible amount in very limited periods.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, then so we’ve got a sense for what that means with regard to minutes of focused attention, which is handy. Could you share a cool story if there’s a particular case or poster child, if you will, that really illustrates what that can mean in practice for one’s results, career, productivity when they get there?

Ross Dawson
I think the reference point for, certainly for me, and I think for a lot of people is writing books. There’s pretty significant proportion of people say they aspire to write a book at some time in their life. You are never going to get there unless you have the focused time and you’ve blocked that out. So, that’s where anybody can say, “All right, I would love to write a book.” It could be a fiction book, it could be a memoir, it could be about this big idea you’ve have, it could be to show you’re the expert in your field, whatever it may be.

And, yes, when I wrote my first book, before I wrote my first book, I said, “I think society overweighs the value of a book. Being an author is an incredibly wonderful thing and society gives a lot of value to authors and, yeah, it’s a good thing but it’s…so I’ll play that game, if that’s what it is.” I have to say that after writing the first book, I say, “Well, actually, probably authors do deserve some respect.”

But it is something where you do need to carve out the time. So, anybody who writes a book will have an incredible accomplishment, it doesn’t matter how many books or copies are sold, you will have achieved something of value, something to point to, one which will advance your reputation, your career, your abilities, you’ll learn a lot through doing that. So, I think it is a wonderful endeavor, and that is something which can only be done with focused time that is blocked out, it’s simply for that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, there it is, it’s kind of binary, on or off. Certain accomplishments such as writing a book are just impossible without the ability to have that focus for an extended period of time that is 90-ish minutes or thereabouts or even greater. And then I think in this age where there are different media and creations, we could maybe think of the book as a proxy or a representative for any sort of, I don’t know, magnum opus or great work of sorts that they’re not cranked out in 15-minute break in between Instagram sessions.

Ross Dawson
Exactly. To your point, if you want to be a YouTuber, today the bar for YouTube videos is pretty high, as in it’s a very high quality. If you want to do X videos on a particular topic and show you’re the expert, you’ve got to be pretty good because there’s a lot of other really good people out there. And, again, that’s not going to happen by itself.

You’ve got to say, “All right. Okay, I’ve got to work out. All right, what’s my topic? What’s my script? Where do I get my video assets? What are the overlays that’s going to be?” This is, again, going to take focused time. It’s not going to happen just by filling in in between other things. And what you can do, for example, in 90 minutes of focus will far exceed what you can do just trying to do bits and pieces while you’re interrupted along the way.

So, this is a way of amplifying your productivity, but it’s also a way of just being more…creating more value from the world we have. And I think that this fundamental equation for almost all of us are input as information. It’s what we read. It’s what we experience. It’s our conversations. It’s what we see in the world. It’s what we live, what we notice. It’s what we make of the world. It’s our knowledge. It’s our understanding.

And then it’s sharing it. it’s creating value with that. It’s building a startup. It’s applying it to our work. It’s making better decisions. It’s seeing opportunities. It’s creating YouTube videos. It’s creating blogposts. It’s creating articles. It’s having more intelligent conversations that add value to more people. It’s the input and the output. And both of those require this structure to how it is we bring our information together and building knowledge. And the structure in our work lives and to how it is we create something of value from it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so you mentioned these five powers: the purpose, the framing, the filtering, the attention, the synthesis. Can you expand upon those in terms of, I guess, a definition, and maybe some top do’s and don’ts for really developing each of these powers?

Ross Dawson
Certainly. So, just at a high level first. Purpose is simply knowing why. Why is it that you deal with information, do what you do in the first place? Second is framing, which is being able to literally build frameworks for your knowledge, for your understanding, for your information so you can piece together how they are connected. Filtering is being able to look at the information source that you have, and to be able to discern what it is that serves you, that serves your purpose, and what it is that doesn’t, and being able to make sure that you leave the ones, the information, that’s not useful.

The fourth mode is attention. So, we’ve been talking about this idea of deep diving. We have extended focus for a period of time, but that’s not the only attention mode. For example, we might have scanning, we might say, “All right, there’s a period of time when I’m just going to look at all my information sources. I’m going to stop and then move on to then perhaps reading and taking that in,” so there’s different attention modes.

And the fifth one is synthesis. And this is, in a way, pulling everything together so that it’s rather than just be lots of information, we can make a body of knowledge, we can understand the system, we can be able to have the foundations to build something of value. So, these are the five powers, and we can sort of perhaps flip over the year digging into specific questions. I can obviously go into greater depth on any of those, but I think laying those out as the five is critically important.

So, where would you like me to dig into from those topics?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I guess I’d like to hear what sorts of practices enable us to develop and deploy each of these powers well versus what is the antithesis, the kryptonite, of each of these powers that are to be avoided?

Ross Dawson
So, we have to start with purpose, and the way I frame that in my book Thriving on Overload is around our relationship to information. So, we have a relationship with money, we have a relationship with food. In the same way, we have a relationship with information, there’s a lot of parallels with our relationship with food and relationship with information where we can have a not very positive relationship with food where we snack on chocolate all the time or eat when we’re stressed and so on.

And, in fact, there are some quite similar habits, sometimes, which people have with information. But we can also have a positive relationship with food, where we eat healthy food, and we feel that is sustains us, and we don’t have too much food when it’s not something that we truly want. So, with information, the same thing, where we can have a positive relationship with information, which is formed by going to what actually is good for us, which makes us feel happier, which inspires us, which informs our ability to achieve what we want to achieve, and is something which we’re not always indulging and snacking in all the time.

And so, I propose this idea of intermittent fasting information diet. So, some people, for food, they say, “All right, I’m not going to eat for a period of time. Come back and eat a meal, whatever, but I won’t eat anything at all in between.” And I think that’s a very valuable approach with information as well. We can say, “Well, I’m not going to check social media, I’m not going to check the news headlines, I’m not going to indulge in those things because, for a period of time, there are things that I want to do. I want to play with my children. I want to read something which is important, which I’ve decided is something I want to spend my time on, and I want to be able to write my book,” whatever it may be. So, we can vary those things.

But this all comes from purpose in the sense of understanding what it is we want to achieve, what it is we think is worthwhile, and, as a result, being able to determine the information that’s not useful. And the antithesis of that is simply not knowing, “Oh, that’s interesting. A bit about the celebrity news,” or, “Oh, see this horrible thing about what’s happening in politics, and spend some time looking at that.” And none of that serves us because we’re not clear on our purpose.

And so, having that purpose is an absolutely fundamental starting point to simply being able to prosper and know what it is that is valuable to us in a world which is often overwhelming.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Ross, I’d love to expand on that notion of purpose in the specific context of reading the news. Sometimes, when people read the news, they say things like, “I want to be informed.” And that strikes me as a little bit vague as far as a purpose or a goal goes because, in a way, there is infinite news one might be informed or not informed about. And so, it seems kind of thin in terms of, “My goal in reading this news is to be informed.”

And sometimes I wonder, maybe just because I don’t like reading a lot of news. I guess my purpose, the way I go into this is say, “I’m going to spend approximately 40 minutes scanning the headlines of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal so that I have a general clue as to the happenings in the world so I am able to converse with people,” as opposed to going, “Huh? What?” And so, that’s my purpose when I’m going to the news.

And it doesn’t take that long, and I find that if I spend too much time on the news, one, I’m pathologically curious, which is great for a podcast interviewer but not so great for a news consumer because, like, two hours later, it’s like, “Okay, I’ve read all about the chess cheating scandal, but how does that serve me?” I found it very interesting and I know I can comment a lot about it, Ross, if you have any questions, but it’s not really enriched me much.

So, can you share with us some example articulations of what might be some rich, useful, best-in-class articulations of purpose when it comes to approaching information of the news?

Ross Dawson
So, a couple of points just with what you’re saying. So, I think that’s wonderful in the sense of, first of all, you mentioned you take 40 minutes, and that’s exactly what I say. We need to have a period of time when we say this, “I’m going to scan the headlines and no more.” But news is one category, in a way, of information. It’s what I framed in the book as society, in a sense of, “What do we want to know about what is happening in society at large?”

And we said, the purpose is, “What is our purpose for it? Why is it that I read the news?” And you articulated, again, a quite clear purpose, so you can have intelligent, or at least, somewhat formed conversation with people, and you only need the headline for that to be able to not know…or, to actually know what’s happening as opposed to having the idea of what’s happening. And that’s entirely valid.

So, some of the reasons why you would want to go in the news is to be an informed voter. Now, that’s something which you probably can catch up with just before you need to vote. You don’t need to be constantly…

Pete Mockaitis
The day before, binge.

Ross Dawson
You don’t need to be constantly reading the news all year round in order to be able to vote, whatever it is that you vote. But that’s one valid reason. Another is to be able to have intelligent conversations with your friends you want to have conversations with. Another is to be aware of the things which are changing in your community, and so that gives you a geographic for this, “All right, I would like to see news about my local community.”

Another is to say, “Are there any things which are going to impact my children’s opportunities?” I might say, “All right, if they’re at a particular age, I might be looking at developments in university or college admissions,” or something like that. So, these are things which you would start to be focused. But this comes back to the domains for our relationship with information.

And one of the first ones, one of the most important ones is expertise. We do have to choose our area of expertise to be clear, “This is what I am an expert in, or I’m aspiring to be an expert in, or something which I think I’ll be useful to be an expert in in a few years from now,” and being quite clear around that, writing that down, “I will become…” or, “I am an expert in a particular area,” quite clearly defined, and that gives you clarity on what information, what sources you need to take in, what you need to distill so that you can become that expert. If you’re just skimming across the surface, you’ll never be an expert in anything, and that is not very useful in the current state of the world today.

Another is in wellbeing, “So, what is it that I’d want to know about my own wellbeing, well, the wellbeing of my loved ones? What is it that’s going to help me to have a better diet to be able to help support the conditions of people in my family?” So, it’s perfectly valid to have some passions. All right, so sports teams or there’s nothing wrong with celebrity news as long as you don’t let that expand to take over all of your news.

So, I think there’s different categories around helping you decide what your purpose is. There is information you can look for. You can look in your expertise, your ventures, whether that’s a startup, or whether it’s a community garden, whatever it is, in terms of your wellbeing, in terms of your relationship to society. These are all things that we can think through in order to become effective.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, Ross, what you really are crystallizing for me is, and this is so helpful. Thank you. Hopefully, it’s good for listeners too. But I find, internally, I have a response of frustration or irritability when I see a news headline or blog article, or whatever, it says, for example, “Topic: What you need to know.” And I’m thinking, “There is no possible way you know what I need to know because our contexts are so wildly different.”

Like, the person running the political campaign for this politician needs to know way more and way different things than someone who may or may not vote for that person months down the road, or someone who’s managing the budget or employees in that industry. I guess maybe because I’m a content creator myself, I’m prickly or snobbish about the quality, but it’s like, “What you need to know, there’s no way one article can provide what everyone needs to know because everyone’s contexts are so different and their purposes that they establish are so different.”

So, Ross, thank you for clarifying what was simmering under the surface for me. And is it fair to say you’re going to have a hard time writing a piece of content that’s what you need to know for all peoples in one fell swoop?

Ross Dawson
Well, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head.

Pete Mockaitis
I guess I just wanted to make sure. Thank you, Ross.

Ross Dawson
But what it comes back to is saying we need to know it is health, and we don’t necessarily know that. So, what I described is we need to develop our own personal information plan. So, to complement the book, I’ve created some software or course where it takes people through that journey of identifying their purpose, and their expertise, and their areas, and their sources, and how they can use that, and the times they’re going to use that and do that.

You don’t need the book or the course, though they’re obviously designed to be as useful as possible. But we all need to decide, “What is my own personal information plan? What is it that matters to me? What time am I going to spend on that? What time am I not going to spend on the things that don’t matter? How am I going to structure my day? How am I going to structure my time? How am I going to spend time to be focused? How am I going to make space to synthesize this and pull this together?”

Information is the core and the value, I would suggest, of almost all of your listeners, and it’s something which most people haven’t spent the time to think about, is to, “How can I do this better?” And we can all build our own personal information plan, and that starts with this idea of, “Why? What’s important to me?” And from that, a lot of that starts to flow into, “What are the structures and the habits and the practice which will enable you to achieve what you want in your life, and be happier because you’re not drowning in the things that somebody else thinks is important to you but actually isn’t?”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s powerful. Well, you got me thinking about email outsourcing, but we’ll move on in terms of thinking about what’s important to me, and what’s not important to me, and what’s important to other people that land in your inbox, and how can you navigate that effectively, whether it’s software or helpers or different levels of support. So, we’ll just let that percolate in people’s heads for now. But let’s hear about framing next.

Ross Dawson
So, framing is building a framework. So, we got lots of information, but that’s all just bits of information. It only becomes knowledge and understanding when we connect that, when we say, “What are the relationships between these ideas? How does this fit together? What are the foundations of my understanding of this area of expertise that I’m developing?”

So, there’s a number of tools, a lot of visual tools that we can use. So, we can use things like mind maps. We can use things like concept maps. We can just sort of just draw things on a piece of paper and draw lines with them. And there’s now more and more software which helps people to not just note, “Ah, that was interesting. Oh, that’s interesting. Oh, that’s a really good study there,” and then to actually make links between them.

So, there’s a whole new generation of software tools, including around research and obsidian, but also other ways of just using simple software tools, such as note taking tools and so on, that enables us to practice this way of framing by drawing connections in, building a lattice of knowledge which is the foundation for how it is we can become an expert, to understand things, to be able to know what the reference points and the researchers that supports what are valid ways of thinking about these spaces.

Pete Mockaitis
And can you paint a picture or give us an example of what a frame looks and sounds like?

Ross Dawson
So, on RossDawson.com/frameworks, I’ve created a whole set of what I find is useful frameworks about the future, but any mind map. I think mind maps are one of the most people are most familiar with, where you have one idea and you lay that out as a kind of visual representation of some of the ideas and how those fit.

So, one of the good things about a mind map is it combines a hierarchy. You have a central idea and then subsidiary ideas, and then subsidiary ideas, but also being able to lay that out to be able to show some of the potential relationships between these ideas. So, these are forms of structuring, and it’s different for every person as to what is most useful for them and the way in which they think.

And some people like putting things in a linear document but we’re trying to move beyond linear. So, how do we draw connections between things? And I think, often, just being able to sketch things on pieces of paper, write down ideas on a piece of paper, draw lines between them as to what the relationships between those ideas are, and then you can start to literally build a picture of an area of expertise, of what it is you’re looking at.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And now let’s hear about filtering.

Ross Dawson
The filtering requires, first of all, understanding what information sources you’re going to go to. And this is not just going directly immediately. You might be using feeds, or you might be using aggregators, or you might be using different tools, but it’s building more and more this discernment of what it is that serves your purpose. So, clarity on your purpose, being able to guide that, and what it is that you need to discard.

And more and more, this is around being able to make sure that we are not succumbing to our confirmation bias, that we are not just looking for things that affirm what we want to know, but we are looking for things that complement our knowledge. So, one of the, I suppose, ways of shifting our thinking is to say, rather than being certain about things, whether that be in politics, or society, or in our area of expertise, is to start attributing probabilities to things.

So, we can say, “I think it is 90% likely, or 60% likely, that this is the case,” and then you can start to look for evidence that either increases or decreases the probability of you being right. So, there is a study of super forecasters, these people that are very good at predicting the future, and they have this implicit way of thinking about the future, or thinking about what it is they know as a probability. They’re never 100% certain on anything, because you can’t be.

But what you can do is to say, “I believe this. This is what I understand. This is the probability I attribute to that,” and then being able to look for evidence that will make your assessment that more accurate. So, this is a way of being able to actually go to the most surprising information to you and assessing that, and whether that’s valid so that you can then start to incorporate that into your mental models, or your ways of thinking, or your hypothesis around, for example, what will be a successful business.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then, I’m curious, when it comes to arriving at what sources you think are winners versus ought not to be delved into, are there any core criteria or questions that really helps separate the wheat from the chaff?

Ross Dawson
So, it’s context. So, I frame this as, first of all, thinking about yourself. So, what is it that you want to be true, for example? Or, what is it you’re looking for? Or, what are your ideas already around this? You need to be thinking about yourself first, in a way. Second is the source, and you say, “Well, is this generally reputable, to generally other people consider this to be worthy? How much research did they do?” And being able to assess.

And no source is completely accurate. The most credentialed scientific journal in the world, Nature, has had 50 retractions in the last 10 years of things where they published it, and then they say, “Oh, actually, no, that’s not right. Ignore it.” And so, we can go to the most reputable sources and then we can’t actually be completely confident. There are certain sources where you can say, “Well, okay, there’s not much credibility,” but it doesn’t mean that any source is completely off the table either, but we need to have an assessment of that.

And the third one is actually looking at any specific piece of content, one of the most important things to do is to go back to its sources in whatever way to be able to corroborate that, “Is there anything which would suggest this was also true?” And it’s incredible, when you skirt into practice of going back to original sources for what it is you read, how often it is distorted or, in some case, a complete misrepresentation of what it is it says to be reporting on, or simply just misleading.

So, the single best practice is not to take anything at face value, but to then go back, and, of course, only if it’s important enough to you to warrant that, to go back and to do your research, to delve back, to say, “Well, let’s see, where does this actually come from and how do I assess that?” So, I think this requires a curiosity.

Yes, you are trying to say, “Yes, this is a more likely to be true source, more or less likely to be a true source,” concentrate on the ones which are more reputable, of course, but also to take everything with a grain of salt, and to dig back and to build your own reference point just what you believe is true, and be able to find the evidence you can to support that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now, could you give us any top do’s and don’ts in the zones of attention and synthesis?

Ross Dawson
So, attention, there are six modes that I identify in my book. So, the first, which we discussed, is scanning, so just looking across existing news sources. Second is assimilating, where we assimilate, and we say, “This is worth spending time on.” It could be a book, it could be an article which you identified, and just rather than being distracted, you spend time and you take that into your body of knowledge.

Seeking for knowledge, explore, and I think it’s important to spend time where you’re deliberately trying to find things you would never normally find. Deep diving, which we discussed from the outset, that way of just spending focused time for a period of time. And the critical one, and one of the most ignored and most important really of the attention modes, is regenerating, which means stop doing, taking in information. And going out in nature is the most powerful way to do that.

It doesn’t need to be a forest. It can be a single tree in a park or whatever it may be. Just getting out in nature is a form of regenerating our attention. So, the best practices, the time box, let’s say, “This is the time I’ll spend on this. This is when I’ll do it. This is the time I’ll spend on that, and I’ll do that.” And to make sure that you’re spending your time deep diving each day, you’re spending time scanning each day, you’re spending your time assimilating each day, and you are spending time regenerating each day.

And the don’t is simply just to go from one thing to another all the time, just continually distracted by the next thing, “Oh, I should be doing that. Oh, I should be doing that. Oh, I might do this instead,” and you never get to a fraction of what you could achieve otherwise.

In terms of synthesis, it really is about getting to a state of mind where you can pull all of the things which you’re exposed to into understanding, into knowledge, into something where you have insights that other people don’t. And that requires this going between the intense focus but also the breath, giving your mind the space in which it can piece together all of the different elements in order to build that understanding.

So, in my book, I describe some of the different ways in which we can get to the state of mind where insights happen, where we can synthesize the ideas, where can come up with insights. And I suppose the don’t on that thing is simply just to burrow down all the time and not give our mind the space which it needs to be able to do what humans are incredibly good at, uniquely good at, is to pull together, connect the dots, and make sense of the whole.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, Ross, tell me, any final thoughts before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Ross Dawson
Simply that this is the foundational capability for success today, is this ability to deal well with information and create value with it. And I think that anybody, whether you’re a beginner, as it were, or an expert, everyone can get better on it. And I just believe that we can all and should be spending time trying to get better at our information capabilities because that’s what will drive our abilities to create what it is we want in our lives.

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

Ross Dawson
So, one of my very favorite quotes is from James Carse, and it is “Finite players play within boundaries; infinite players play with boundaries.” And it’s from his book Finite and Infinite Games, and that’s so many things. People are so much stuck in their boundaries, and so we need to play with the boundaries of our life and work.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And could you share a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Ross Dawson
One of my favorite bits of research which studied normal people and then meditators, and they put on a metronome, and the metronome started ticking. And for normal people, the first tick, they had this strong brain response, and then, quickly, it went down and they just didn’t notice it anymore. The Zen meditators, the first tick, they noticed. The second tick, they noticed it, and they keep on noticing it. They are continually seeing the world afresh. They are not becoming habituated to it as almost all of us do. So, this shows that we can continue to see the world afresh even as it stays the same, or seems to stay the same.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Ross Dawson
One of my favorite books I’ve read recently is The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch, pointing to the infinite potential we have as the human race.

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

Ross Dawson
Favorite tool, well, just in terms of information access, Techmeme is just one way, one place where I can just quickly get on top of all of the important technology news of the day. So, just a quick, easy, and simple tool, and makes me informed in that area.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a habit?

Ross Dawson
The habit which I am developing more and more is when I feel like a break, is doing one of two things. One is picking up my guitar, and the other is rather than browsing through things, is turning to a book just to read for a few minutes, and then turn back.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they Kindle book highlight it and retweet it and such?

Ross Dawson
Simply that we have to believe that we can create a better future in order to be able to create it. And I think a lot of people are very negative today. There’s a lot of negative news reported, people getting some poor states of mind, but I think the first thing is we need to believe that a better future is possible. And it doesn’t matter whether we think that’s highly probable or not very probable at all, as long as we believe it is possible to create a better future, that gives us the foundation to say, “Well, what is it that I can do in order to be able to create that?”

So, I think that’s, in a way, the foundation of my work, and I think it’s a lot of what resonates with people is this starting with this potential, this belief that we can create something better to drive the action, which means that we can work towards that.

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

Ross Dawson
For my work, in general, RossDawson.com but for the book, ThrivingOnOverload.com. There’s a wealth of resources there, there’s free parts of the book, the exercises, the introduction, there’s the overload course, there’s a podcast, there’s a whole set of resources. So, ThrivingOnOverload.com is a wonderful place for those people who want to go further on this journey.

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