Latest / Humanity Working / Bonus Episode: The Intangibles of Great Work (Part 1), Featuring Dan Rust

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Bonus Episode: The Intangibles of Great Work (Part 1), Featuring Dan Rust · Humanity Working

0:15
SPEAKER_02: All right, hello, everybody.
0:17
SPEAKER_02: Uh, welcome to what is actually going to be a slightly different version of uh the Humanity Working Podcast today.
0:25
SPEAKER_02: Um I am joined by Dan Rust.
0:29
SPEAKER_02: Um hey Dan.
0:31
SPEAKER_02: Hello there.
0:32
SPEAKER_02: Hey, Paul.
0:33
SPEAKER_02: And Dan is um the host of, I guess you could call it a sister podcast, because we're uh we're very let's call it that, yes.
0:42
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
0:43
SPEAKER_02: Um, even though none of it, neither of us are female, we'll call it a sister podcast.
0:46
SPEAKER_02: And uh it's called uh Leadership Disrupted.
0:50
SPEAKER_02: Um and uh what we found out, that Dan and I just uh met formally for the first time uh about half an hour ago, and uh we found out that we've sort of been stalking each other for uh for a while.
1:04
SPEAKER_02: Um Dan's been listening to this podcast.
1:06
SPEAKER_02: I've been uh listening to his stuff and watching his stuff as well.
1:10
SPEAKER_02: And also I've read his book, Workplace Poker.
1:14
SPEAKER_02: Um really, really interesting uh book, and there's some uh some themes and topics from it that we'll uh we'll get into, I think, in our uh in our discussion today.
1:23
SPEAKER_02: Um Dan's also got a new book uh coming out soon um called Called Leadership Disrupted.
1:31
SPEAKER_02: Conveniently Called Leadership Disrupted, yes.
1:34
SPEAKER_02: Good, good, good co-branding there.
1:36
SPEAKER_02: Love it then.
1:37
SPEAKER_02: And is the uh VP of uh global leadership development for info pro learning.
1:44
SPEAKER_02: So first off, uh a formal welcome, Dan.
1:47
SPEAKER_01: Hey, it is great to be welcome, Paul.
1:49
SPEAKER_01: It is uh I mean we've already had a great 30-minute conversation and uh hoping that that will just continue for the next 45 minutes or so.
1:58
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:58
SPEAKER_02: And uh and I said we're gonna do things a little differently.
2:01
SPEAKER_02: And and uh so I was just having a uh thought about how we can have a really meaningful discussion today.
2:07
SPEAKER_02: And um what I decided to do was to break it down into a set of questions where both Dan and I can give uh can give our point of view on this topic.
2:18
SPEAKER_02: Because having, as I say, stalked down and followed Dan for a while, uh there's a lot we agree on, but I think there's some areas where potentially we creatively disagree as well.
2:26
SPEAKER_02: So hopefully that will lead to some uh to some really interesting discussion uh uh about our relative approaches to all of this.
2:33
SPEAKER_02: Um so I've got eight questions, Dan.
2:36
SPEAKER_02: I've uh I've forward those questions for you, so you shouldn't use a copy of it.
2:40
SPEAKER_02: I do have them, yes.
2:41
SPEAKER_02: Good, excellent.
2:42
SPEAKER_02: And so we'll just go, we'll we'll do kind of kind of do like a back and forth, back and forth.
2:47
SPEAKER_02: So I'm gonna ask the first one, and then uh we'll both give an answer to it.
2:51
SPEAKER_02: You'll ask the second one.
2:52
SPEAKER_02: You're ready for this game, Dan?
2:54
SPEAKER_01: So this is kind of like a Letterman top 10 list, only in a sense, different, yes.
2:59
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, not 10, not eight.
3:00
SPEAKER_02: Actually, the new spinal tap is just about to come out, so we should probably have done 11, but but uh but but we're doing eight.
3:07
SPEAKER_02: Um and I think I was inspired to do this by virtue of the fact that your book is named after a game, a poker.
3:13
SPEAKER_02: So uh so this is probably a less entertaining game than poker, but hopefully a more enlightening one.
3:19
SPEAKER_01: We'll try.
3:20
SPEAKER_01: We'll try to make it entertaining.
3:22
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
3:23
SPEAKER_02: All right, so we've got our first question, and uh the brains.
3:30
SPEAKER_02: Oh, I should I should, by the way, uh add that these questions are kind of mine and of course kind of AI driven.
3:38
SPEAKER_02: Uh so uh so Claude uh had a little bit of help in asking these questions, but I think they're I think they're actually relatively good.
3:45
SPEAKER_02: They're good.
3:46
SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, absolutely.
3:48
SPEAKER_02: So well done, Claude, uh the the third contributor to this podcast today.
3:52
SPEAKER_02: So um this first question that it came up with an iTweet uh is what are the warning signs that someone should leave their organization immediately?
4:03
SPEAKER_01: Over to you, Dan.
4:05
SPEAKER_01: So uh I guess this will tell you something about me.
4:08
SPEAKER_01: When I because I read that question, the first thing that came to mind was well, um uh gentlemen in uh blue FBI windbreakers coming into your office would be the first warning sign that you should leave your organization immediately.
4:24
SPEAKER_01: Um now, and I can't say that I have experienced exactly that, but I have experienced the aftermath.
4:30
SPEAKER_01: I've been hired into an organization with the intent of um doing a renewal because the entire senior leadership team was eviscerated when uh you know black SUVs pulled up in front of the corporate campus, marched in, stood in front of everybody's computers, and said, everybody step out.
4:52
SPEAKER_01: And uh they and this is a multi-million dollar organization, large business, and ultimately um uh uh they all went away.
5:01
SPEAKER_01: And then three months later, somebody's hiring Dan Rust to uh head up learning and development.
5:07
SPEAKER_01: But in any event, they so uh on a more like serious note, in terms of warning signs that you someone should leave their organization immediately.
5:15
SPEAKER_01: So I will I will say this first of all, I'm a literal person, so when I read immediately, I think immediately, I think in most cases, the reality is unless you are in some kind of danger, um, you probably don't leave immediately.
5:32
SPEAKER_01: You probably begin planning immediately.
5:35
SPEAKER_01: So I would say, what are the warning signs that someone should start their mental plan to get out?
5:42
SPEAKER_01: Start looking, start exploring, start preparing the landscape for a transition out.
5:48
SPEAKER_01: And in most cases, that comes from a circumstance where there's a complete misalignment of values, where you just can't feel good about going into work every day, if you find yourself consistently waking up and dreading that entry into the workplace, either because there are people there that you don't like for whatever reason, or because of the mission or the business practices or of the organization.
6:21
SPEAKER_01: If there's something where you just can't feel good about the work that you're doing every day and that it's in alignment with who you want to be as a human, then begin planning and begin, begin laying the foundation and go go find.
6:36
SPEAKER_01: And this is the hardest lesson for me to learn.
6:38
SPEAKER_01: Honestly, I I grew up as my family background.
6:45
SPEAKER_01: I grew up as a family of farmers, ranchers, and and coal miners.
6:50
SPEAKER_01: Very blue-collar, never much money.
6:53
SPEAKER_01: Um, and and so I didn't even realize that, but I took that with me into my adult life.
6:59
SPEAKER_01: So I was always having anxiety about money, about paychecks, about, and so I stayed way too long in more than a small number of places because I didn't want to risk the money.
7:14
SPEAKER_01: I didn't have the faith that if I just left, I could replace that.
7:18
SPEAKER_01: Now, luckily, that has changed in the last 10, 15 years.
7:25
SPEAKER_01: But in my early days, I stuck it out.
7:28
SPEAKER_01: I tried to make it work.
7:30
SPEAKER_01: And if I if I had any lesson that I wish I could give to my younger self, my lesson would be um listen to your instinct.
7:40
SPEAKER_01: And if you just don't feel good about yourself and the work that you're doing because of that kind of misalignment, um actively begin laying the groundwork to go find something else because there is something else for every one of us.
7:56
SPEAKER_01: There is a place for any of us to go and work and have a decent living and make a contribution and feel good about the work that we're doing every day.
8:06
SPEAKER_01: Um if that makes sense.
8:08
SPEAKER_01: How does that sound to you, Paul?
8:10
SPEAKER_02: It does make sense.
8:12
SPEAKER_02: And um, I guess I got a follow-up before I give my answer, which is that as you were talking about the idea of sticking at a place for longer than you wanted to or you should have done, or you anticipated, it sounds like that's that's closely related to your and some and many people's attitude towards risk.
8:34
SPEAKER_02: So have you found that over time your attitude towards risk has shifted?
8:42
SPEAKER_01: Um I know it should have.
8:45
SPEAKER_01: So I know what the right answer is.
8:47
SPEAKER_01: And the right answer would be yes, over time I've evolved to be more, more comfortable taking smart risks.
8:54
SPEAKER_01: But I just know I know me.
8:55
SPEAKER_01: I am a risk-averse person.
8:57
SPEAKER_01: I just, I just am.
8:59
SPEAKER_01: Um I have kind of an engineer's mind.
9:02
SPEAKER_01: I'm mildly autistic.
9:04
SPEAKER_01: I don't, I just don't, I don't like to take risks.
9:08
SPEAKER_01: And so my version of a healthy risk taking would be doing proactive planning and preparing and laying the groundwork for a less risky transition.
9:22
SPEAKER_01: So what I have tended to do in the past, again, I'm saying this is a this is a don't example, is wait until the change is thrust upon me.
9:29
SPEAKER_01: Then when the change is thrust upon me and I don't have a choice, then I scramble and do the things that I need to do to get a new job.
9:36
SPEAKER_01: Today, if I was if I was guiding somebody, if I was coaching somebody, I would say, don't ignore those warning signs and begin the hard work.
9:46
SPEAKER_01: Begin doing the groundwork.
9:47
SPEAKER_01: And there's a whole series of things that you can do.
9:50
SPEAKER_01: When you are, you're when you're working in a role that you know you're eventually going to be leaving.
9:57
SPEAKER_01: If you can have control over the project projects that you take on, over the work that you end up doing, do the work, invest in the work that's gonna serve you forward.
10:07
SPEAKER_01: Take on those projects.
10:08
SPEAKER_01: In some cases, those are the projects that are harder and riskier and that other people don't want.
10:14
SPEAKER_01: Go to your boss and say, I'll take on that big, juicy, uncertain project.
10:19
SPEAKER_01: Because what you know, what you're doing is you're gonna do your best work on that project, but you're also gonna have that.
10:26
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna have that success as part of your story going forward.
10:30
SPEAKER_01: And or whatever else, what other decisions you make internally in that workplace, make those decisions with that strategy in mind.
10:38
SPEAKER_01: This will help me position, or will this help me position myself going forward?
10:42
SPEAKER_01: Um, and then you know, as you begin to do the work of promoting yourself and reaching out and having interviews, doing all of that proactively, it's just easier to be a strong interviewee when you when you have a job, even if it's a job you hate.
11:01
SPEAKER_01: When you have a job, you're just in a better position to be, I think, more authentic and and ultimately give a stronger interview.
11:09
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
11:10
SPEAKER_02: So I guess I guess my answer to the question, um, which is a reminder, is what are the warning signs that someone should leave their organization immediately?
11:20
SPEAKER_02: I think my answer to the question would be twofold.
11:22
SPEAKER_02: And a bit like you, I'm a little bit literal on this when I'm I'm interpreting it as immediate, like that hour or that day.
11:32
SPEAKER_02: The first one would be I would say if you get a whiff of Enron vibes, you know, you get a whiff of that uh of the um there may be danger associated with me staying or associated with me remaining associated with this organization.
11:50
SPEAKER_02: Um and or if, which is the second one is very close, if the if the company completely conflicts with your ethics, and I mean that you know specifically, as in you feel like like going to work is um, you know, the idea of you going to work that day is helping something uh move forward that is comp yours is completely and utterly opposed to your worldview, then that's probably a warning sign.
12:22
SPEAKER_02: And then the second one that I wouldn't discount and I wouldn't discount it because I've had it once in my life, is there are occasionally examples.
12:35
SPEAKER_02: Um, this might happen once or twice in your life.
12:37
SPEAKER_02: It happened literally once in mine, whereby everything seems fine, everything seems fine, and then suddenly you hit a wall.
12:48
SPEAKER_02: Um this is really interesting for me.
12:52
SPEAKER_02: I was involved in learning and development at the start of my career, and I was um, and I'm back in learning and development today.
13:02
SPEAKER_02: So it's not that I hate learning and development in any way uh in any way, shape, or form, but I was training, uh, I was doing a lot of IT training for people, learning courses, delivering courses, learning the next course, delivering, delivering the next course.
13:17
SPEAKER_02: And I was walking through uh one of these tiny parks that you see in London that are like in the in between like two streets, and they're sort of the size of a size of a square.
13:28
SPEAKER_02: Beautiful.
13:29
SPEAKER_02: It's a beautiful day.
13:30
SPEAKER_02: Uh everything about the morning was lovely.
13:34
SPEAKER_02: And as I was walking into the office, I was like out of nowhere.
13:39
SPEAKER_02: I got hit by a truck going, I do not want to do this ever.
13:43
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to walk into that, I don't wanted to walk into that office, I don't want to see anybody, and I'd never experienced that feeling before.
13:50
SPEAKER_02: It just hit me like a truck.
13:53
SPEAKER_02: And later that day, I handed him my notice.
14:01
SPEAKER_02: And I was didn't know what I was going to.
14:05
SPEAKER_02: I didn't know even why I was feeling the way that I was, uh, the way that I was feeling.
14:11
SPEAKER_02: But it was as big, it was as powerful and as strong as though you know I'd had a heart attack or something along those lines.
14:19
SPEAKER_02: It was just like a like a feeling that was it that was absolutely impossible for me to shake.
14:25
SPEAKER_02: Looking back on that, I can now see that I was having symptoms of sort of low-level burnout that I was disregarding, disregarding, disregarding.
14:36
SPEAKER_02: And then suddenly it hit me like a like a health event, I suppose.
14:42
SPEAKER_02: And it took me probably two or three months to fully kind of recover my work mojo.
14:50
SPEAKER_02: But I think the best decision that I made in that period was actually acting upon it.
14:54
SPEAKER_02: Um, so it's a slightly confusing answer, really, but it's just the that like if you're if your subconscious enters into your conscious and screams at you that you shouldn't be doing this anymore, that's probably a time when you should at least think about acting upon it.
15:11
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
15:12
SPEAKER_01: And I'm tracking with you, and if and if I were to summarize all of this, I would just say, don't ignore that voice.
15:18
SPEAKER_01: Don't ignore that that voice that's telling you, I think he just lied.
15:23
SPEAKER_01: Or that voice that's telling you, I don't think that's the real story under the story, or that voice that's telling you, this is this is icky.
15:33
SPEAKER_01: That you may never know the full story, but don't ignore that that voice and at least begin planning, begin thinking, begin taking care of yourself.
15:43
SPEAKER_01: Um because there in the the world of business, the world of capitalism, the world of you know, Darwinian survival of the fittest in the world of business, it is a you know, at its best, it's a it's a collaborative, creative, innovative experience, but at its worst, it's incredibly competitive and challenging, and and just don't turn that voice, that inner voice off.
16:09
SPEAKER_01: So I think you and I can definitely agree on that.
16:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
16:13
SPEAKER_01: All right.
16:13
SPEAKER_01: You've got one for me, I think.
16:15
SPEAKER_01: All right, now the next question.
16:17
SPEAKER_01: So um I want to get this exactly right.
16:19
SPEAKER_01: When you see someone struggling at work, what is usually the root cause?
16:25
SPEAKER_01: Um, whether it's for individuals or um for leaders, do you tend to find some common root causes when people are struggling at work?
16:37
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, um we we see this quite a lot, actually.
16:43
SPEAKER_02: Um because in our day job, my day job, I do really kind of two things, which is one centered around programming for people that are um to help them thrive at the workplace, either as individuals or as leaders.
17:01
SPEAKER_02: And it's that as part of that programming, there's an experiential component where people are um figuring out how the materials apply for them and in their lives.
17:10
SPEAKER_02: But then the second aspect of what we do is is coaching and mentoring of people in these situations.
17:14
SPEAKER_02: And so we come across a lot of people who are in some ways struggling at work.
17:19
SPEAKER_02: That tend those tend to be the people that reach out to us.
17:22
SPEAKER_02: Um and I will say, and this will be a theme in terms of some of my answers, that that there is a lot of uniqueness, but there are also a lot of themes, right?
17:33
SPEAKER_02: And the themes are really uh are really interesting, and I think the themes have actually shifted a little bit over the course of the uh of the last say five to six years.
17:44
SPEAKER_02: Um I'll start with the individual.
17:48
SPEAKER_02: Um for me, um the thing that I encounter the most with individuals is that um there is a feeling of overwhelm that is uh much more prevalent now than there was uh than there was say a decade ago.
18:12
SPEAKER_02: And the overwhelm is very uh is very interesting in its own right.
18:17
SPEAKER_02: If you go back, let's say 20 years, we used to have uh job descriptions that were pretty robust and tended to relate to the to the activities that people would perform on a day-to-day basis.
18:34
SPEAKER_02: And in general, for the majority of employees, the expectation was that you would show up at a particular time, you would leave at a particular time, and you would do a fairly structured set of activities.
18:46
SPEAKER_02: And if you accomplished that structured set of activities and did enough of it, then you were a good worker.
18:53
SPEAKER_02: And if you did not, then you were not a good worker.
18:57
SPEAKER_02: And that formed the basis of discussions between managers and employees.
19:05
SPEAKER_02: Um and also because there was some ex some structure and some specifics associated with that, that allowed employees to have a confidence that they were doing a good job on a on a day-to-day basis.
19:21
SPEAKER_02: They could see what they were being measured on and they could see the stuff that they were that they were being measured on.
19:27
SPEAKER_02: And somehow, as we've shifted to environments that are much more flexible, and we've created organizations that are much more adaptable, which is which is great, and we created work, which is much more flexible in nature.
19:41
SPEAKER_02: As we've done that, for many people, a lot of the time, that work itself has become highly unstructured and highly ambiguous in nature, to the point where many people um do not have an understanding of what good looks like.
20:00
SPEAKER_02: And there is always more work than there is time to do it, right?
20:04
SPEAKER_02: The never-ending to-do list is what we call it in one of our uh in one of our programs.
20:08
SPEAKER_02: And so you're dealing with this idea of an um of as far as you can look, there's more to do than there is time to do it.
20:16
SPEAKER_02: You've got to figure out somehow which of those things you are actually going to do.
20:20
SPEAKER_02: You've got to work your way through it, and you gotta kind of figure out are you good at it or are you not good at it?
20:26
SPEAKER_02: Have you done a good job?
20:27
SPEAKER_02: Have you not done a good job?
20:28
SPEAKER_02: Because in many cases, your managers or your leaders aren't even gonna know what you're doing.
20:34
SPEAKER_02: So even if uh so they can't necessarily provide the guidance associated with that.
20:38
SPEAKER_02: So that unstructure, that unstructured, ambiguous nature, the never-ending to-do list, that all comes together in feelings of, you know, a low-level struggle, low-level burnout.
20:48
SPEAKER_02: And we find that that is that's sort of like thematically true.
20:54
SPEAKER_02: We did, when we started Billy and Mines, we did well over a hundred interviews, and we found that theme was kind of like working its way through everybody.
21:02
SPEAKER_02: I don't know what good looks like.
21:03
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if I'm being successful.
21:05
SPEAKER_02: And it really hit its um, you know, sort of most.
21:10
SPEAKER_02: The thing that hit home most for me when we were doing our research on this originally was when um I asked a qu I started asking a question, which is can you tell me some something specific that you did yesterday?
21:25
SPEAKER_02: And the majority of people that that I spoke to that were in those types of roles could not remember a single thing they had done the previous day.
21:35
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
21:35
SPEAKER_02: So they were so in other words, it was sort of like flowing work was flowing through them.
21:41
SPEAKER_02: And uh and because they didn't journal, because they didn't do these various other sort of reflective activities, it was flowing through them, and all the only thing they know is that they were tired at the end of it and they don't know what they did.
21:52
SPEAKER_02: So that that's at the individual level.
21:54
SPEAKER_01: I think at the leader level Can I reply to that and we'll go.
21:57
SPEAKER_01: Oh, please, yeah.
21:58
SPEAKER_01: So so go for it.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: At exactly the same time that all those things are happening, that manager or leader who's who's prompting the hiring and is working usually with the with human resources, they're going through the exact same thing.
22:11
SPEAKER_01: They're feeling the exact same overwhelm.
22:14
SPEAKER_01: And so they end up creating job descriptions that are the minimum viable level for HR.
22:22
SPEAKER_01: So HR and recruiting goes out and gathers up uh candidates, but all they have in front of them is this bare framework that they've been provided by an overwhelmed manager.
22:35
SPEAKER_01: Then HR does the first round of interviews.
22:38
SPEAKER_01: HR ends up with, let's just say, three or four candidates.
22:43
SPEAKER_01: This overwhelmed manager is most likely not going to interview three or four candidates and say, well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna reject all of them because none of them have the deep skill base or the right skill base based on my deep knowledge of the position.
22:58
SPEAKER_01: And instead, this overwhelm manager goes, Well, I guess I have to pick the best of the four.
23:02
SPEAKER_01: So recruiting is broken.
23:04
SPEAKER_01: You end up hiring a lot of people who are not matched for the position, either because we don't actually know really deeply what that position is or what it requires, or if somebody does know, that doesn't make it to recruiting.
23:19
SPEAKER_01: And also on the employee side, employees who want the job, who need the job, they're selling themselves.
23:26
SPEAKER_01: So they may not be very discerning to be able to assess and analyze oh, I'm actually not a good fit for this.
23:33
SPEAKER_01: Because if the job description isn't good for the company, it's also not good for the prospective employee.
23:38
SPEAKER_01: And so I think we do end up with a lot of mismatches unintentionally.
23:43
SPEAKER_01: The business world is so fast-paced now, so complex now, so ambiguous now.
23:49
SPEAKER_01: How do we find out if somebody's a good fit for the job?
23:52
SPEAKER_01: We hire them and then we we experience them for three months or six months.
23:59
SPEAKER_01: After three months, we probably recognize, oh, this is a good fit or is not a good fit.
24:04
SPEAKER_01: What do we do if we recognize that it's not a good fit?
24:07
SPEAKER_01: Generally, nothing.
24:09
SPEAKER_01: We we might give them some guidance a little bit.
24:12
SPEAKER_01: We might give them a performance review, some challenging feedback.
24:16
SPEAKER_01: We might.
24:17
SPEAKER_01: A lot of times we don't.
24:18
SPEAKER_01: And so you end up actually, what do we actually what do we actually do?
24:23
SPEAKER_01: We work around them.
24:25
SPEAKER_01: I hired you to do these things.
24:26
SPEAKER_01: Oh, you're not really good at this subset of these things.
24:29
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna work around that.
24:31
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna find other people or other ways to do those things.
24:33
SPEAKER_01: And you end up with these traffic jams of accountabilities and people, and and then we're and then we're adding more and more accountability.
24:43
SPEAKER_01: It's amazing we get anything done sometimes as as complicated as we've made this this world of hiring.
24:51
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely agree.
24:53
SPEAKER_02: One thing I'll add on the leadership side, um I would I I think the challenges of leadership generally have their roots from the day somebody moves into leadership or the day before they moved into leadership.
25:11
SPEAKER_02: And we have a um a leadership program that we run.
25:16
SPEAKER_02: And um the single biggest change that I'm happiest with about our leadership program when we have a strategic relationship with a uh with a company now.
25:26
SPEAKER_02: We used to run our leadership programming for leaders starting as soon as they got into the role.
25:34
SPEAKER_02: Now we run our leadership program with our leaders starting three to six months before they go into that leadership role.
25:43
SPEAKER_02: Leadership has changed so much in terms of what what is effective leadership is so different in a world where um the world of work is highly distributed.
25:54
SPEAKER_02: In some cases, you don't even uh you never even met some of the employees that you're leading on it uh on a day-to-day basis, and you have to shift between this physical world and this virtual world, and you've got different employees with different states uh you know, you know, in terms of their relationship with you.
26:12
SPEAKER_02: Maybe you've got one who sits just down the corridor from you, and you've got one that is a thousand miles away, and somehow you have to figure out how to use all of their strengths uh equally and things like that.
26:21
SPEAKER_02: It is a very, very difficult job.
26:23
SPEAKER_02: Most leaders are a set in leadership practices that go back a long, that go back a long time and no longer work in this current world of work.
26:32
SPEAKER_02: And so for leaders, it's sort of like um many of them are studious and they look to leadership books and so on to try to uh try to figure out how to do it.
26:40
SPEAKER_02: But the the training they're receiving, if they're getting any, in many cases they're not, you take people who are good individual contributors and turn them into leaders that they're uh that they're completely unsuited for the role.
26:51
SPEAKER_02: But in even in cases where they are relatively well suited, um, they're not necessarily getting great training.
26:57
SPEAKER_02: And I know in your uh organization, you had to revamp a lot of the leadership training for your company, right?
27:04
SPEAKER_01: We have we have these conversations with leaders every day trying to identify the root causes.
27:11
SPEAKER_01: Um and I think I had a conversation.
27:13
SPEAKER_01: Oh, this goes back a couple of months, but I had a leader and he said, he and he'd been in the workplace for 35, 40 years.
27:21
SPEAKER_01: He was he was on the on the back end, you know, the last decade of his of his work life.
27:26
SPEAKER_01: And he said, I've been doing this for a long time and I've never felt so overwhelmed.
27:32
SPEAKER_01: And he said, I can't put my finger on it, on any one thing.
27:35
SPEAKER_01: It's just that there's so much.
27:38
SPEAKER_01: And and I he said, I know I need to be better at it.
27:40
SPEAKER_01: And he listed off five, six, seven things, most of which had to do with, I need to know better what my people are doing.
27:48
SPEAKER_01: I need to know how they're doing it.
27:50
SPEAKER_01: I need to uh be a little more conscious regarding who's doing a great job and who's not, and be more of a coach.
27:58
SPEAKER_01: I need to be willing to step in and coach people.
28:01
SPEAKER_01: And he went on and on.
28:02
SPEAKER_01: And I just felt for the guy because he he he's he has seen, he's lived this shift in what we need from leaders.
28:11
SPEAKER_01: And if I were to summarize it, we need leaders who will go deeper and they will go wider, which makes it harder.
28:19
SPEAKER_01: It we need leaders who will work hard, and I don't think that's happening.
28:25
SPEAKER_01: Not never.
28:26
SPEAKER_01: Of course, of course, you have some leaders who are being doing fantastic jobs because they're working it.
28:31
SPEAKER_01: They are they are treating leadership almost as a sacred obligation, and they're doing great jobs, but I think that's more the exception rather than the rule these days.
28:42
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
28:44
SPEAKER_02: Um, and I encourage listeners of our podcast to go back to the recent interview that I did with Gary Rich, um, who I think is really, really is a deep thinker about this stuff and has written the book, Any Dumb Ass Can Do It.
28:58
SPEAKER_02: Um, and uh Gary talks a lot about those specific things, and we'll include a link to that uh episode in the show notes for this one.
29:06
SPEAKER_02: Um, all right.
29:07
SPEAKER_02: So I'll keep us going here.
29:09
SPEAKER_02: Um, my question for you, Dan How do you recognize which workplace cultures can be navigated versus which ones are fundamentally toxic?
29:16
SPEAKER_02: And this is where I'm gonna plug your old book again, uh, the the uh workplace poker book.
29:22
SPEAKER_02: Um I have to tell you, I found fascinating, Dan, your categorization of um of um almost like extreme cultures, I think you refer you refer to it as.
29:33
SPEAKER_02: But that was just that to me was utterly fascinating.
29:37
SPEAKER_02: Um I found uh I recognized across my all too long career times where I'd been in the those varying different cultures, and particularly in large organizations, you can see almost like microcultures when those last large organizations, so you might be in one group in a company and then you shift to another group in that company, it's got a completely different culture.
29:57
SPEAKER_02: Really, really interesting stuff.
29:59
SPEAKER_02: So if folks want to go back and and uh and read Dan's book, that those that section of that book is really, really interesting regarding this topic.
30:08
SPEAKER_01: And and it's it's all based on reality and and lived experience.
30:14
SPEAKER_01: And um let me just give you a bit of the backstory to answer your question, because you know, the question is specifically which cultures can be navigated versus the ones that are just fundamentally toxic.
30:24
SPEAKER_01: So I think I you know I mentioned just a moment ago that I'm I I guess I would call myself borderline autistic.
30:30
SPEAKER_01: I've never been a good reader of people, and it's created challenges for for years.
30:36
SPEAKER_01: And because there I did reach a point where I recognized there's a story under the story.
30:42
SPEAKER_01: There's so many work situations where I was I was playing the game on the surface.
30:47
SPEAKER_01: I thought if I worked hard enough, I thought if I did a good job, I thought if I did the right things, it would all work out.
30:54
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it did, a lot of times it didn't.
30:57
SPEAKER_01: And most of the time, it was because I wasn't playing the game under the surface.
31:02
SPEAKER_01: Not saying we all have to play corporate politics.
31:04
SPEAKER_01: I'm saying you have to at least recognize that there is a culture.
31:08
SPEAKER_01: There is something happening under the surface.
31:12
SPEAKER_01: Every meeting that you attend, there are you do you attend a meeting with 12 people?
31:18
SPEAKER_01: There are, including yourself, there are 13 meetings happening at the same time.
31:22
SPEAKER_01: It's 13 different meetings.
31:24
SPEAKER_01: Now, I'm not expecting any of any of us to to read all 13 different meetings, and but but you do have to study the human dynamics that are taking place around you.
31:36
SPEAKER_01: And so, because it didn't come naturally to me, I had to really work at it, had to develop very specific skills and mindsets to pay attention to those details.
31:48
SPEAKER_01: And so I've worked in toxic cultures, I've worked in really great, fantastic cultures.
31:56
SPEAKER_01: Some of those are broad organizational cultures, some of those are just cultures for a particular work group, a particular cohort of people.
32:04
SPEAKER_01: And I'll go back to what I said before.
32:06
SPEAKER_01: Learn to recognize and not dismiss that voice in your head that says, something's not right here, or something is icky here.
32:18
SPEAKER_01: Um and listen to that, pay attention.
32:22
SPEAKER_01: You don't want to now can you be too cynical?
32:26
SPEAKER_01: Possibly.
32:27
SPEAKER_01: But I would say you're in much more danger of being too Pollyanish, of being too believing.
32:35
SPEAKER_01: I would say so, in terms of navigating corporate culture, I think my hardest learned lesson is that you're not going to change corporate culture.
32:48
SPEAKER_01: So you either learn to flow with it like water, you flow with it, you just recognize it.
32:52
SPEAKER_01: Now you don't necessarily have to buy into it, but you can learn to flow with it.
32:58
SPEAKER_01: And then when that culture becomes truly toxic, it's back to the very first question.
33:04
SPEAKER_01: What's a warning sign that you should leave immediately?
33:07
SPEAKER_01: If the the people in the organization or the work group with the least amount of power, watch them, what listen to them, watch them.
33:16
SPEAKER_01: If they seem beaten up, tread upon, if the organization or the work group is crushing those with the least power, that's time to move on.
33:29
SPEAKER_01: That's the I now you may move on immediately, you may move on after six months, but it's it's it's time to move on.
33:36
SPEAKER_01: Don't don't think you're gonna fight it.
33:38
SPEAKER_01: You aren't, you might be able to temporarily put band-aids on it.
33:42
SPEAKER_01: And I've made that mistake, thinking, you know what?
33:44
SPEAKER_01: This leader treats his people like dirt.
33:47
SPEAKER_01: Uh and because I'm a mid-level manager, I'm gonna treat my people better, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna rise them up, I'm gonna give them more opportunities, I'm gonna be the band-aid that, but but you have to recognize that's what you are.
34:01
SPEAKER_01: You're just a temporary band-aid.
34:03
SPEAKER_01: The damage is still being created.
34:05
SPEAKER_01: So if you're in a toxic work environment and you recognize it, transition on, find a way to move on.
34:15
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I the only thing I'd add to that, agree with all of it.
34:18
SPEAKER_02: The only thing I would add to it is that it's a it's a it's very much a you question.
34:23
SPEAKER_02: And the you question is gonna depend upon where you are at in your career and your life and things like that.
34:29
SPEAKER_02: So, for example, as I look back, I can see scenarios where I was in a toxic workplace and I stayed too long for some of the reasons that you were talking about, like I don't know where my next job's gonna come from and all of that kind of stuff.
34:43
SPEAKER_02: But I can also see scenarios where um I stayed for a period of time and it was and it was appropriate to stay for a period of time because of what I was learning, uh, what I was learning from the situation.
34:56
SPEAKER_02: And I was quite clear-eyed about it.
34:57
SPEAKER_02: So very early on in my career, um, I spent a year at a company, and it was only a year at a company, and two months in, I knew it was a highly toxic workplace.
35:06
SPEAKER_02: But the amount of learning that I was doing in that uh in that environment, um, ironically, some of the more toxic workplaces, they're so high-pressured, so high-paced, so unforgiving that you do end up learning a bunch of stuff in them.
35:19
SPEAKER_02: And so I was so what I decided two months in is I'm giving it a year, and I'm gonna learn as much as I can over the course of that year, and then I'm gonna take that learning and I'm gonna apply it, uh, apply it to something else.
35:31
SPEAKER_02: But as I say, it's very individual and very time-driven.
35:34
SPEAKER_02: I would, I, I did that in my early 20s.
35:37
SPEAKER_02: I would not do that as a 50-something year old because there are other things that are important to me at this uh this stage in my career.
35:45
SPEAKER_02: So I do think it's a it's an evaluation that you have to go through.
35:48
SPEAKER_02: And it starts, as you rightly point out, by correctly identifying what the culture is that you are in and then making a clear-headed decision as to what you're going to do about it.
36:00
SPEAKER_01: And I totally track with what you're saying and agree with what you're saying.
36:03
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes just saying to yourself those words, I see the craziness, it's not me, it's them, and I'm staying, but I'm staying for these very conscious reasons, that alone can make it just a little more palatable for you because you recognize um why you're staying, and then you recognize when that reason has ended.
36:24
SPEAKER_01: Once you've extracted out the learning, once you've pulled out from it everything that you can pull out from it, um, then it is time to move on.
36:33
SPEAKER_01: Because uh, if you stay too much longer than that, then you simply become an enabler for sure.
36:38
SPEAKER_01: Now, I believe I have a question for you.
36:41
SPEAKER_02: We're going to we're gonna have to accelerate ourselves a little bit here, Dan.
36:46
SPEAKER_01: Well, but and I knew I think we knew that there was gonna be a danger in this.
36:49
SPEAKER_01: You take two very like-minded people with different lived experiences, plenty of stories to tell.
36:54
SPEAKER_01: This is fantastic.
36:55
SPEAKER_01: So, all right, here's my question for you, Paul.
36:58
SPEAKER_01: Do you believe in universal success habits, like waking up at 5 a.m.
37:03
SPEAKER_01: or whatever?
37:04
SPEAKER_01: Uh, or should advice for success be personalized to the individual?
37:12
SPEAKER_02: So this is the heart of what we do, and it is uh the biggest change that I've had personally in my life.
37:21
SPEAKER_02: So um I if you held me, you got a bunch of books on your wall, there's a bunch of books uh behind me as well, and you would have seen probably you know 10 or 15 years ago, I was the impulse buyer of almost every one of these things, like the secret to this and the secret to that, or the 5 a.m.
37:42
SPEAKER_02: club, or whatever it would happen to be.
37:44
SPEAKER_02: And um, and when we started my company, we almost found ourselves initially as sort of being like a curator of all of these things, going, okay, well, that bit's really smart, and you know, this part over here about, you know, from I don't know, eat that frog is really interesting, and this uh this thing over here from uh from I don't know, getting atomic habits fascinating.
38:12
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, atomic habits, etc.
38:14
SPEAKER_02: And we were collecting all these things together, we recorded a bunch of videos associated with it, and we thought, oh, we'll just curate all of those and we'll get those to people, and then everybody can be super, super, super successful.
38:24
SPEAKER_02: And then we started talking to real people, and it was amazing the extent to which you could take all of this stuff and attempt to apply it to a whole bunch of people and find crickets.
38:42
SPEAKER_02: Maybe we go, oh, that's interesting.
38:44
SPEAKER_02: Does it work?
38:45
SPEAKER_02: Maybe can I do it?
38:47
SPEAKER_02: Well, I haven't done it successfully yet, so I'm probably not going to.
38:51
SPEAKER_02: And what we've realized over time is that there are two or three different reasons why that happens, but I'll keep it uh, but the probably the main one, the most interesting one, is that the habit that you that you form has to match the underlying aspects of who you are.
39:13
SPEAKER_02: So to pick on the 5 a.m.
39:15
SPEAKER_02: club, right?
39:16
SPEAKER_02: I chronologically, and I and we know this because if I go on vacation or something like that, or if I don't set an alarm, chronologically, I'm a relatively extreme night owl.
39:29
SPEAKER_02: Um, I have my by far my most productive times of the day are between about 10 p.m.
39:36
SPEAKER_02: to about 3 a.m.
39:37
SPEAKER_02: or 4 a.m.
39:38
SPEAKER_02: You take that human that is me and get me up at five o'clock in the morning.
39:43
SPEAKER_02: You create somebody who's up at five o'clock in the morning, but you also create somebody who is chronically tired, right?
39:49
SPEAKER_02: Um, and so there is this, there are broad principles that work really well for people, but they have to match to a certain extent uh who the uh who the human is in order for the human to be able to adopt those habits.
40:05
SPEAKER_02: Otherwise, they will be completely unable to adopt them.
40:08
SPEAKER_02: And I'll give you one specific example of I think something that works relatively well and something that doesn't work well.
40:13
SPEAKER_02: So we've just established I'm a I'm a night L.
40:16
SPEAKER_02: A universally effective habit uh is for us to to uh for people to get exercise and movement in their in their life, right?
40:25
SPEAKER_02: Everybody should everybody should do that.
40:27
SPEAKER_02: Um about a year ago, I belonged to a gym that shot at nine o'clock at night and they accepted their last client at eight o'clock at night.
40:40
SPEAKER_02: And how often did I get to that gym to work out?
40:43
SPEAKER_02: Maybe if I was lucky once every two weeks.
40:47
SPEAKER_02: I identified that the problem here was that not that I didn't want to form the habit of working out, the problem was that my chronotype and the way that my work was structured around that made it very difficult to for me to match that.
41:01
SPEAKER_02: So I made one change, and that one change was to shift from the gym that was closed at nine o'clock at night to a gym that is open 24 hours.
41:09
SPEAKER_02: Now I work out five days a week.
41:11
SPEAKER_02: Changed nothing else about at that gym five days a week.
41:14
SPEAKER_02: Changed nothing else except for going to something that was open at the time in which I wanted to do the thing that I was I was gonna do.
41:22
SPEAKER_02: So it was adapting the environment to who I was as an individual to allow me to have the positive habit that I needed.
41:28
SPEAKER_02: So individualism is extremely important.
41:31
SPEAKER_02: Um, and if you do it, it makes it much more likely that people can engage in some of those success habits that we're talking about.
41:39
SPEAKER_02: Over to you.
41:41
SPEAKER_01: I'm still waiting for the interesting conversation where you and I disagree.
41:46
SPEAKER_01: Because I think it's coming up.
41:50
SPEAKER_01: Because um, well, we'll we'll see.
41:52
SPEAKER_01: We'll we'll see.
41:53
SPEAKER_01: But honestly, yes, now there are there's there's probably not a single self-help book that I've read since the 80s that I regret reading.
42:03
SPEAKER_01: Every single one of them, uh let's say the majority of them had at least two or three bits and pieces that worked for me.
42:11
SPEAKER_01: But the one of the mistakes that I made was thinking, okay, I'm reading this um this uh memoir of Steve Jobs.
42:18
SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna Steve Jobs is gonna be the the the model for me.
42:23
SPEAKER_01: Or someone else is gonna be the model.
42:25
SPEAKER_01: Uh back in the the 80s, it was um um the CEO of Intel, Andrew, uh and I can't remember his last name now, but Andy Grove.
42:33
SPEAKER_01: Andy Grove.
42:34
SPEAKER_01: And I and I I I read a book about Andy Grove, and I thought, oh yes, I I'm gonna be the Andy Grove.
42:39
SPEAKER_01: I and and and there were bits and pieces that I took from that that I actually did uh apply.
42:46
SPEAKER_01: But the big lesson is over the years, it's been bits and pieces.
42:51
SPEAKER_01: And I am the expert on me, and you are the expert on you.
42:56
SPEAKER_01: And when you read a book, scan through it, read through it, absorb it, but know that you're looking for those bits and pieces that work for you and the finding a way from them to work for you.
43:09
SPEAKER_01: So that's that's my way of agreeing with you.
43:12
SPEAKER_01: I think it's it's absolutely correct.
43:14
SPEAKER_01: And then also recognize when something's not working.
43:17
SPEAKER_01: For example, I'll give you something not working.
43:19
SPEAKER_01: When it comes to exercise, I agree every human being should exercise.
43:24
SPEAKER_01: So I decided to try a strategy, and one of the strategies I tried was having next to my desk on the floor two weights, 35-pound weights.
43:33
SPEAKER_01: That 35 pounds gets heavier every year.
43:38
SPEAKER_01: But so, so my the concept was well, if I have them here, when my Fitbit says get moving, I can stand up and I can do do my thing.
43:49
SPEAKER_01: Well, it that's a great concept.
43:53
SPEAKER_01: However, oftentimes Fitbit will say, Well, get moving, but I'm in the middle of a meeting.
43:58
SPEAKER_01: I'm in the middle like My day is spent on on these these kinds of calls, these kinds of meetings.
44:04
SPEAKER_01: So I still have them here, but I don't get much use out of them.
44:10
SPEAKER_01: And I have to rethink.
44:11
SPEAKER_01: All right, what is a strategy that does align with like the natural flow of my work life?
44:17
SPEAKER_01: And um so I appreciate you sharing your story because it's I'm gonna make a note to myself and I'm just gonna rethink because this is not working.
44:24
SPEAKER_01: I I've had these here for six months.
44:27
SPEAKER_01: This last time, that's the second time I've actually raised to say you just did one rep there.
44:32
SPEAKER_01: And I'm doing it on a podcast as opposed to actually exercising.
44:37
SPEAKER_01: So note to self, current strategy not working.
44:40
SPEAKER_01: Let's try something new.
44:42
SPEAKER_01: Um absolutely.
44:44
SPEAKER_02: So this is this is the one where I think we're gonna disagree.
44:47
SPEAKER_02: So we will see.
44:48
SPEAKER_02: Um, so what role do you think luck plays in a person's career?
44:55
SPEAKER_01: Uh oh, this will be interesting.
44:58
SPEAKER_01: I think it's huge.
44:59
SPEAKER_01: I think it's huge.
45:01
SPEAKER_01: Um now we can prepare ourselves for those lucky moments.
45:06
SPEAKER_01: We can prepare ourselves for, oh, you you meet somebody who might be a connection, or there's a job opportunity that might be available.
45:16
SPEAKER_01: Um and and I will say, for example, my current role is the best job I've ever had in my life.
45:22
SPEAKER_01: Talking to leaders every day uh about what's happening in their workplace.
45:29
SPEAKER_01: Um the opportunity for this role came along, I was prepared for it.
45:36
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't uh it wasn't that I had done this job specifically before, but I had over time prepared myself for it.
45:43
SPEAKER_01: So it was like preparation meets opportunity, and voila, magic happens.
45:48
SPEAKER_01: But it's also true that sometimes luck, luck, and and what's what's the what's the opposite of luck?
45:57
SPEAKER_01: Lack of luck.
45:58
SPEAKER_01: Bad things happen.
45:59
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you do all the right things and it just doesn't work out, or there's there's a twist in your life, and sometimes trying too hard to find meaning in the minutiae.
46:14
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you can.
46:16
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's just crappy stuff that happens, and we just need to move on.
46:22
SPEAKER_01: But that's so that's that's my answer.
46:24
SPEAKER_01: Um, I would love to hear yours.
46:27
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I was surprised.
46:28
SPEAKER_02: I thought I was uh in reading the book, in reading what plays poker.
46:34
SPEAKER_02: Um, I'd love to get into the into the why behind your uh your approach to this chapter.
46:40
SPEAKER_02: I was trying to find the exact statement.
46:42
SPEAKER_02: I was gonna be like a tough journalist here.
46:44
SPEAKER_02: So you said in this uh book at this point.
46:49
SPEAKER_01: If you're writing an advice book, if you're writing a career advice book, you have to provide career advice.
46:53
SPEAKER_01: And it's tough to write a book that's built around the theme of you know what, it happens.
46:58
SPEAKER_01: You know what?
47:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh sometimes it's luck.
47:01
SPEAKER_01: Uh good good luck.
47:03
SPEAKER_02: So but but I think the point and and actually that I think I think you've answered the question right.
47:10
SPEAKER_02: Um and it's a it's a it's a really, really interesting one.
47:13
SPEAKER_02: So in the book, by the way, for those, for those people that uh haven't read it yet, um Dan talks about uh as strongly and and I think very effectively talks about uh personal accountability and talks about the fact that whatever is happening to you in the workplace, um you often play a a role in those things that are that are happening to you uh in the workplace, and getting introspective about what that role is is really important.
47:42
SPEAKER_02: You want to add anything to that before?
47:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you and and of course now now you're recounting the book that I wrote and it's been a while, but now I'm remembering I think I think the analogy that I use is you can't play the chess game of your life and move your pieces this way, this way, and this way, and then suddenly look at the chessboard and go, Oh, I don't like the positioning of these pieces.
48:01
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you are the person who positioned these pieces, and now you can you can reposition them as you move forward.
48:08
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I'm I'm I'm big on personal accountability, but but let's be honest, sometimes stuff happens.
48:16
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
48:17
SPEAKER_02: I I think actually, and this is the one area where we might we might disagree on degree, right?
48:24
SPEAKER_02: So one of the most impactful uh books that I've read over the last um, I would say four or five years, um, is a book called Mastering Uncertainty.
48:38
SPEAKER_02: Um and um we've actually had one of the authors of that, Matt Watkinson, on the podcast, and that's part of why I uh why I got turned on to uh to this approach.
48:49
SPEAKER_02: But basically, uh if Matt, if you're listening, I apologize that you're not here to give the perfect description of your book, but the way that I interpret it is that it basically states that luck plays a far bigger role in our lives than we like to give it credit for.
49:07
SPEAKER_02: Because after all, right, if we can think about the world as being deterministic, that can be a much more comfortable place to be.
49:12
SPEAKER_02: Like why do XYL happen?
49:14
SPEAKER_02: You know, all that kind of stuff.
49:15
SPEAKER_02: Um, and so, but as he points out, in almost every uh everything major that happens to us, there's a small degree or a medium degree or a large degree of luck as that is associated with that.
49:26
SPEAKER_02: Like how most cases there's luck involved in how you met the person that you spend the rest of your life with, for example, right?
49:32
SPEAKER_02: You might not have been at that party, or you might not have, even these these days, you might not you might have swiped left instead of swiping right or whatever it happened to be, right?
49:39
SPEAKER_02: And so there is, um, and so the way that Matt describes it is that a fundamental approach that we should have to life is maximizing our luck surface area.
49:50
SPEAKER_02: And so you're putting yourself in a position where good things are more likely to happen than bad things, and um, or a higher percentage of good things are likely to happen.
50:01
SPEAKER_02: And you're always in a position where you can control that, but you are dealing with something where the the landscape in which you are driven is fundamentally about luck.
50:10
SPEAKER_02: And if you understand that and internalize that and then determine how to navigate that, you can be in a very strong position.
50:17
SPEAKER_02: So I look back about five or ten years ago.
50:20
SPEAKER_02: I used to think of the world in a much more deterministic way than I now do.
50:24
SPEAKER_02: I now think of the world as a as fundamentally sort of random, and uh, but that there are strategies that you can adopt uh to be able to navigate your way through that effectively.
50:35
SPEAKER_01: Let me give you an example of exactly so I'm I'm completely agreeing.
50:38
SPEAKER_01: Everything you just said.
50:39
SPEAKER_01: So here's a here's a real world example that's happening right now.
50:42
SPEAKER_01: You and I had planned for about a 45-minute podcast.
50:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
50:48
SPEAKER_01: Um, and when I thought when I looked at the eight questions, I thought, yeah, we can we can do that in eight.
50:53
SPEAKER_01: But look at what's happened.
50:54
SPEAKER_01: So we're about halfway through.
50:57
SPEAKER_01: But my sense of it is the interplay has been so valuable, so interesting, so compelling, that there's no way either you can't have me back or I can't have you back to doing this.
51:12
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna do a book.
51:13
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
51:13
SPEAKER_01: So that's exactly what we're gonna do.
51:15
SPEAKER_01: On on the opposite, had we had a flat, dull, boring 45-minute conversation, we would both just be going, oh my God, let's just get through get let's get through six, seven, eight, and and let's let's move on.
51:28
SPEAKER_01: So this is where you know preparation and uh luck has some play.
51:36
SPEAKER_01: And maybe the maybe the analogy is not really holding together well, but but in fact, how so something happens, something happens good or bad, how you end up reacting to that thing can make a difference.
51:48
SPEAKER_01: Can it make all the difference?
51:49
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes, a lot of times not.
51:52
SPEAKER_01: So I now and what I love about conversations like this is whenever someone like you recommends a book like Mastering Uncertainty, what's Matt's last name?
52:01
SPEAKER_01: Watkinson.
52:02
SPEAKER_01: Watkins.
52:03
SPEAKER_01: So Watkinson.
52:05
SPEAKER_01: Watkinson.
52:06
SPEAKER_01: So my you know, one of the habits I have developed is I I will immediately, as soon as my next meeting is done, I will download the audio book from Audible, um, and then I'll put that on my playlist for my um my exercise, my my new exercise routine, which I'm going to be committing to sometime soon.
52:26
SPEAKER_01: So this has been fantastic, honestly.
52:28
SPEAKER_01: So we got through um the first five.
52:32
SPEAKER_01: We've still got six, seven, and eight.
52:34
SPEAKER_01: But um, I know out of respect for our both of our times, we've got to wrap it up.
52:39
SPEAKER_01: But thank you for this.
52:40
SPEAKER_01: Honestly, thank you for this.
52:42
SPEAKER_01: And what I love about this is this is a purely virtual relationship.
52:45
SPEAKER_01: You and I have never met in the real world.
52:47
SPEAKER_01: We we came across each other through LinkedIn.
52:50
SPEAKER_01: We came, we became introduced by by mutually reading on LinkedIn.
52:54
SPEAKER_01: And now I feel like I've got a kinship with someone in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that I never would have had without without this.
53:03
SPEAKER_01: There's something there.
53:04
SPEAKER_01: There's something to not ignore.
53:07
SPEAKER_01: When something happens with that, I don't know what the word is, serendipity.
53:13
SPEAKER_01: It's it's not to be ignored.
53:16
SPEAKER_02: Or luck.
53:17
SPEAKER_01: Or luck.
53:17
SPEAKER_02: So uh completely.
53:19
SPEAKER_02: So uh thank you so much uh for being with me today.
53:23
SPEAKER_02: Dan, we there will be a part two.
53:25
SPEAKER_02: Uh so we don't know exactly when that part two is gonna be.
53:27
SPEAKER_02: It'll probably just show up in your next uh the next part of your podcast feed.
53:31
SPEAKER_02: But Dan and I will get together and we will uh tackle the last uh three of these questions in our next podcast.
53:37
SPEAKER_02: But for now, thanks for joining us.
53:39
SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much.
53:40
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to the Humanity Working Podcast.
53:43
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53:48
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53:50
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