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Transcript

Stuck Happens with George Anderson · Humanity Working

• 0:10
  SPEAKER_02: Hey everyone, it's Paul.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: A couple of weeks back I got to chat with George Anderson.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: I've had the pleasure of knowing George for years, and he's one of the most effective people I've ever met, so I couldn't wait to get him on the pod.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: He's currently a global program director at Microsoft, in addition to wearing many other hats.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: And he's the author of a great book that anyone who likes this podcast or works with Billy Mine should absolutely love.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's called Stuck Happens, and it's well worth checking out.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: In this podcast, we talk about how George got to this point and get some of his best tips for optimizing your work in the context of your broader life.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_02: I learned something every time I talk to George, and this time was no exception.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sure you'll enjoy it.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: So, George, we've uh we've known each other for years.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and one of the things that's always surprised me is you seem to accomplish so much in the same number of hours as everybody else has, unless you've got some kind of like weird superpower that allows you to expand time.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_02: So let me think.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_02: So you've got a PhD, you've got an MBA, you're a certified program manager, you're a global program director at Microsoft, you've written goodness knows how many books at this point, you teach classes at multiple universities, and you're doing kind of all of that at the same time.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_02: So there's got to be some drive that has led you to lead this kind of life.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: Where did that drive to do all this kind of stuff comes from?
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: Come from?
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's a good question.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um I mean, as you can tell kind of by my background, you already know I like to learn.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm one of those kind of continuous learners.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um and I guess the thing that's different about me is I also like to share what I've learned, you know, regardless of whether or not anybody wants to hear it.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, I've done a lot of conference sessions.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I I used to like blog and and write the occasional kind of journal article and things, but it's me sort of connecting the dots and putting things together.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_03: And that's uh that's how most of the books kind of materialized, is you know I'd get into sort of a new domain and and I it's super exciting, right?
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_03: Because I'm learning new stuff and I'm and I'm meeting new people and I'm filling in the blanks, and then I just want to the next thing to do, I just want to go out there and kind of share it.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: And is that yeah, is that like like consistent desire to do that?
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: Was there a time in your life where that didn't exist, or is that always has that just always been in you?
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_02: And if it has, is that has that come from family?
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_02: Has it come from somewhere else, do you think?
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I I I've never really thought about that.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_03: Um my family, like growing up, I think we were all, you know, well achieved in school.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_03: And we and it but I don't think it really it really manifested itself until I was probably in my late 20s and 30s.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_03: Probably had something to do with business, you know, you're getting into the workplace and and uh and kind of discovering more.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_03: And then for me, it was really like especially uh we I was in the military, and all of a sudden I'm in these new environments with new people, eyes open to new kinds of culture, and uh, and and that was kind of another spark for me as well.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um you said you're in the military, it's the Marine Corps, right?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um so what were the more significant lessons you think you learned from that time in the Marine Corps?
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_03: Uh the I mean the Marine I think any kind of military organization is gonna teach you a lot about leadership, but for me, it was it was at first a lot about self-confidence, you know, and and really understanding that I was able to do a lot more than I thought I could do and endure a lot more than I thought I could endure.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_03: And then, you know, down the road it was sort of uh also about connecting the dots and and again getting back into like like you know, basic kind of diversity and oh my gosh, there's a whole bunch of people out here that think differently than me, that have different kinds of backgrounds.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, and because I'm a continuous learner, I was that was fascinating.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_03: And so I enjoyed that.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um you know, and I and I enjoyed kind of the uh the the travel and the adventure part of it as well.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_03: And and I think actually that in in retrospect probably led to a career in consulting.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it was sort of those early um, you know, connections where I'm like, oh my gosh, if I could put you know this sort of because I was in the Marines doing technology, if I could like marry up technology with I can travel the world, uh, I can learn a bunch of stuff, and then maybe down the road I can actually help others kind of understand what I've learned.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_03: I mean that was that was uh that was the pinnacle right there.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_02: So you come out of the military and you transition into civilian life.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_02: Was that was that a shock?
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_03: What how how easy was that transition?
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_03: So I was one of those few people that while I was in the the military, I actually finished my degree.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_03: I had started, got bored after two semesters, joined the Marines, but within about a year and a half, I was actually taking classes again at like at night or in the morning.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_03: And so after my six years, I actually had an MBA.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm thinking I'm gonna leave the Marines and get a fantastic job and be able to start that kind of adventure, you know, in a in the civilian world right out of the gate.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_03: And that just wasn't true.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_03: It was like there's so much that you kind of still have to prove um, you know, from a like a business perspective that you don't necessarily get when you're in the military.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_03: So so that was eye-opening.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_03: But it but it still the foundation was really good.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_03: And and what I found is the network of people, and I talk about this um in in a couple of my books actually, the way that we can kind of overlay the connections we've got with others informally or formally really helped me down the road.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_03: It helped me get one of my first big jobs, like my big boy job after the first one.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, and it's still, you know, to this day, there's there's just a network of people out there that actually care deeply about me.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, we stay connected.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_03: And and it's been cool that over the years I've had other kind of layers of you know, of people and organizations, companies I've worked with, you know, institutions that I've helped, customers that I've helped, where I keep getting this kind of additional set of layers of uh of people, which is just you know super cool.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_03: And I mean, and you're part of that, Paul, right?
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_03: The the time that we spent together, it's been like 10 years now.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_03: But that you know, that whole kind of organization and that that time together, we've both got people that we you know still stay in touch with, and it's it's pretty cool.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um you talked about the idea that you were kind of in in college and and uh and then you kind of got bored and you went you decided to get yourself into the military.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: Do you think that's related to how much stuff you do?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_02: Is it like, are you afraid of are you afraid of being bored?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_03: Oh man, that yeah, that is a huge thing too.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_03: And and I think you know, my parents, my family, my friends, they you know, everybody would tell you that if I don't have 10 or 20 things going on, then then I'm also just not a side.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_03: I oftentimes I feel like I don't work a day in in my life because so much of what I do I actually enjoy.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_03: We've all got the administrative stuff and things that we have to do, but um, I use some techniques, and maybe we'll even talk about some of that to kind of help me get through the stuff I have to do so that I can spend more time doing the stuff I actually enjoy doing.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: I'm in your primary job now, I guess we call it, is uh your global program director at Microsoft.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so a lot of the listeners to the podcast wouldn't really understand what a program director does, and then there are differences in terms of what a program director does inside different types of organizations as well.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: I know from my background that Microsoft program directors are a little different.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_02: So, can you explain a little bit what um what that means uh in kind of real lay terms, what a what a program director does?
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_03: No, I think that's good.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_03: So we we all know what a project manager is, and a project manager kind of handles the the tactical stuff of you know scope and cost and time to get something done.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_03: A program manager, a program director looks at you know kind of the most complex combinations of projects that that organizations will put together to get something really hard done.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_03: And so they tend to be messy, they tend to have a lot of stakeholders, people that we need to interact with, you know, the the level of communications and the cadence of communications tends to be different.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_03: And then this whole notion of governance, right?
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_03: How you sometimes I joke and call it adult supervision, but it's how you make sure things are actually getting done.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_03: That's my role.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, you might call it a babysitter, but it but it's a lot more than that.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_03: Because you know, everybody's adults, and it's like, well, how are you gonna make sure something goes from here to there when along the journey you just got a thousand you know places to get derailed?
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_03: And especially in the last two years.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_03: You can imagine how hard that's been.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's super fun though.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_03: And and recently, back in October, I was given a new world where I sort of own you know governance and project and program management around the world.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_03: I've got a lot of colleagues that obviously help, you know, me and I, and we kind of work together to make that happen.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_03: But that's been a lot of fun and super eye-opening.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_02: Helps.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I think one of the most interesting aspects of that is that you know, the primary work that we do at Billion Minds is really to help people optimize their unstructured, ambiguous days.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_02: We often we often say that our our primary uh uh primary client is somebody whose calendar is very different today than it was yesterday and whose calendar tomorrow will be very different tomorrow than it was today.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_02: You live in the very, very interesting world whereby um you have a ton of experience in terms of um of imposing structure and creating uh and creating structure around things and making structure work, as it were.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_02: But you personally live in a world that is extremely ambiguous and extremely unstructured because of all the different moving parts that you all that you have in it, and all of the different people that are all on their own personal journey, in some cases that are living very unstructured lives themselves.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_02: So do you find that you kind of like thrive in that ambiguity?
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I'm curious because obviously your part of you is wired to want structure, and part of you lives in a world of extreme ambiguity.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_02: So how do you kind of like how do you kind of how do you manage that?
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I think for me a lot of it goes back to um because I'm involved in the most complex and kind of messiest programs and super super big projects, it's how do you how do you face that ambiguity?
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_03: You know, what are you gonna do with it to create clarity where you can?
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_03: Knowing that you can never create all the clarity that you want, because my gosh, if you did, it would just be easy.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_03: But like what what can you sort of do in terms of dividing and conquering?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_03: And how do you separate the uncertainty that's really me focused?
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know what to do first, second, third, with the ambiguity, which is really externally focused, all the stuff that's around us, and what I can make sense of, what I can control, probably not much, what I frankly have no control over, and what are the techniques and methods that I can use to at least get a better like understanding, a better awareness.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_03: With the end goal being, I want I want to be able to take the next best step.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_03: You know, what does that look like?
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_03: Not just for me, but for my team.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_03: So it so it's fun because it's almost like I'm I'm trying to bring structure into something that's super ambiguous.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_03: And and I know and my teams know that we're never gonna be able to provide all the structure we need.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_03: So we all, and and this is kind of one of the litmus tests, you know, of a good uh kind of team member is like we we gotta be good with some level of ambiguity.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_03: If you're not, you're gonna you're gonna drive yourself crazy.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_03: You're not it's not the role for you, you know.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_03: But uh, but but if you if you find that, okay, if I if I can learn just enough to kind of take the best next step, the best smart step, then uh and and you thrive sort of in that.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_03: What does tomorrow look like?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_03: What does next week look like, then it's a wonderful career.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_03: It's a heck of a lot of fun.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's really interesting.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: You touch on something there.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_02: There's definitely a personality type that is okay with this type of uh with this type of life.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um and uh and very clearly that you have that.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think that uh the other thing that we often talk about is the idea that you have to sort of simultaneously be comfortable in ambiguity, but uncomfortable with unnecessary ambiguity.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: So in other words, if something if something is ambiguous and absolutely doesn't need to be, and unstructured and absolutely doesn't need to be, and there would be a strong benefit if it was structured, then that thing should be should be structured.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_02: So you have to you have to want to do that at the same time while being comfortable with it being ambiguous as well.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_02: So it is very uh it's it's very interesting.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a sort of creativity element to it, isn't there?
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_03: Well, there is, and and I and I love the um the example of like you know, in software implement implementations, if you're smart, you've got a backlog, or you're developing a backlog.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_03: That's where you can get some structure and think about how you know what you're gonna do and how you're gonna do it, and what preparation looks like and what your cadences look like and how you time box you know yourself, um, which is essentially a forcing function, right, to make progress.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_03: And so, and so those are the kind of things that we can control, we can sort of overlay process around and and and get rid of some of that ambiguity.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, what are we gonna do tomorrow?
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_03: You know, what are we gonna develop?
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, no, we know.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_03: We actually have a bit of a roadmap.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_03: Now, I don't know a year from now because the business, you know, might come back and say, we need to do something different, we need to pivot, the industry says something, the pandemic tells us something else.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, but but yeah, at least I can control that kind of short term in front of me.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_03: And you're right, it takes a certain certain kind of person that's gonna be okay with that.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: Billion Minds has taken over a dozen years of research into the habits of the most effective among us in this new world where work and life are merging.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: They've distilled it down into a 90-day program targeted at employees that do unstructured, ambiguous work.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Employees from five different countries around the world are using Billion Minds to help them start each day with a purpose and end it with accomplishment.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: If you or your team wants to discover how Billion Minds can help employees optimize their work in the context of their broader life, go to billionminds.com slash learnmore today.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's billionminds.com slash L E A R N M O R E.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: Billion Minds, providing practical tools for our way too busy lives.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: All right, so let's switch to your most recent little bit.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's called Stuck Happens.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I think it's just fascinating for a bunch of different reasons.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_02: But one is that it's it's a really good guide that collects together all of the learnings that you've had from your career and your life, but it structures those learnings in such a way that it's very easy for anybody else to pick up and uh and apply to their own life.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um and we'll get into kind of like how those things are uh are mapped in a moment here.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_02: But um I'm really intrigued as to where the idea of this came.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_02: Describe it.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_03: So uh so you know I wrote another book back in 2019 called Design Thinking for Program and Project Management.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_03: And as I was thinking about what a V2 looks like for that book, I was collecting ideas from around the world.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_03: One of the things I did in that book is I said, Hey, I want feedback, like literally, uh legitimately, I want you to send me feedback.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_03: And I provided my email address.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_03: I've had people provide, you know, hundreds of kind of nuggets of what they were looking for in the next edition, and along with like new techniques and methods that I wasn't aware of.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_03: And so it was super cool.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm bringing all this stuff together and I'm starting to write that second edition, and I'm thinking to myself, there's really an opportunity here to actually explore what it means to think differently.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_03: Because I kept going back to this notion that that a lot of times the the projects, the programs, the strategic initiatives that we're working in, they eventually stall, right?
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_03: They get derailed.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_03: And it's like, how do you how do you get out of that place and make progress again?
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_03: And I didn't think of the term stuck happens until I was actually writing the back copy for a book that I thought was only going to be on thinking.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_03: And it was like, you know, it da-da-da-da-da, uh stuck happens.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, oh, that's actually a pretty cool title.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_03: But but before, and you know, I was like maybe at a hundred pages at that point, I was going, well, shoot, this feels kind of light.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_03: It's like a pamphlet, it's not really a book.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_03: And then, and and for me, you know, because I'm sort of process oriented, I'm thinking, I can't put something out there that just says how to think differently if I don't explore what it means to sort of learn and understand broadly.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_03: And then I got to thinking, I really, I really can't just talk about thinking differently without the the back end that says, well, now what am I gonna do?
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_03: What am I gonna do differently?
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_03: You know, and how do how do I show up differently to make a difference to get me unstuck?
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_03: And then for so that's where the model came from.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_03: And then really that's how the whole genesis of the book came to be.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that gets us into the structure of this thing.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_02: So it's really interesting how you've you've basically broken it down into learning, thinking, and doing, which, if you think about it, uh are the skills that we need if we're gonna thrive in this this unstructured and ambiguous world in which we live.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um and uh what's intriguing about this, at least for me, is the fact that yes, you can apply a lot of the stuff to your your work life, but you can totally apply it across your whole life.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_02: We all have things that we need to do, we all have things we need to think about, right?
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_02: We all have things that we ideally need to learn if we're gonna uh continue to grow over time.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so you've taken that overall structure and then you've effectively cross-referenced that against significant problems and situations that people commonly face.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_02: I'd love you, could you just talk through a couple of the of the problems, as it were, so that people can get a sense as to as to how it might apply in their own lives?
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and it was interesting too, right?
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_03: As I was thinking about different ways, different life hacks for thinking, it got me also naturally thinking about well, where's the intersection of that particular technique or life hack with the situation that we you know come across?
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_03: And I had done some previous work probably three years prior to when I was writing this last year, and it was organizing around all these different themes, like we have a hard time you know making choices or prioritizing, or we're faced with uncertainty, or we have schedule problems.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_03: And then there's even like more personal ones, like I have a problem with self-discipline.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_03: What am I gonna do about that?
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_03: I have a problem with self-confidence.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_03: Like, what are the what are the life hacks in the in the learnings that I can apply to to get me unstuck if that happens to be my problem?
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_03: And so I I mean I had a really big matrix at one point.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_03: I kind of distilled it down into 10 or 12 different areas.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_03: Um, schedule, you know, I thought was another kind of really natural one.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, risk, right?
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_03: What does it mean to you know, to identify, to manage, to mitigate risk?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_03: That's something we all face.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_03: It doesn't matter if you're at home, you know, you're back in the job.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_03: You're gonna you're gonna face risk.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_03: And so what are the the techniques and the life hacks that can help you with that?
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_02: So we're very focused and billion minds on helping people develop the skills, as I mentioned, that are helping them optimize unstructured days.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's very uh very akin to some of the stuff that you're talking about.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: As we're doing this, we get a lot of like direct feedback from uh from our users as to things that they struggle with a lot.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I will say that one of the single biggest problems that we find is this issue around uh prioritization.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: And what I really mean here is tactical prioritization.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_02: It's something that you touched upon uh actually earlier on.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_02: So literally, you know, the moment that we stop this podcast, what's the next thing that I'm gonna do when we stop this podcast, right?
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: What's the thing that I'm gonna do after that?
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: And if I do the next thing, by the way, and I spend half an hour doing the next thing, does that change what I might do after it?
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_02: So that kind of like uh like prioritization in the moment, and then even bringing it back to the start of the day, um, what we find is a lot of people struggle with motivation at the start of the day.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_02: So um they've got the 20 different things that they could do, they don't really know which one to do first, and so they they don't really do anything, right?
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_02: And we've worked actually with quite a few people who will freely admit that if they have a meeting, if they're working from home and their first meeting is at uh 11 a.m., they're basically not getting anything done before 11 a.m.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: because there's that concrete thing, the meeting, right, and they don't know what to start on or how to start before that.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_02: And so it really can impact their overall productivity over time.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_02: So I wonder if you could uh talk a little bit about um how you deal with the issue of of prioritization and maybe even give us a specific uh tip or trick around prioritizing effectively in the moment now, just and that's a tough one.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_03: And I think about these things in terms of horizons.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_03: So, like you, you know, you're talking about that super tactical, what do I do half an hour from now, versus what are me and my team or me and my family, what are we gonna do, you know, a week from now, and what are we gonna do, you know, over the summer?
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_03: Um, for me, and and this probably goes back to one of the earlier questions too.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_03: The way that I sort of get motivated in the morning is that I cheat and I decide I'm gonna do whatever I'm passionate about at that moment.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_03: And and I cover this a bit, I call it the multitasking conundrum because I don't think we really multitask well ever, but but I think I get a lot of things done, and and others can get a lot of things done if we follow our passion.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_03: And so I'll jump around and and like I teach um uh at a couple universities as well.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_03: I might check on some students in the morning, you know, I might think about you know, a book that I'm doing or something, you know, something I'm doing maybe on LinkedIn.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_03: Um I might look at I've got multiple projects and programs and just a lot of strategic initiatives.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_03: I, you know, some of those are super interesting to me.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_03: So it's easy for me to go check those things out.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_03: What's going on?
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_03: Did so and so get something done?
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_03: Um I I think that's a key for me.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_03: And then the other part is is Well, how do you get motivated if everything in front of you feels like, oh man, I don't want to do any of that?
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_03: Because that's really tough.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_03: And that's a different life hack that that one of my um uh managers actually shared with me probably, I don't know, probably five or six years ago.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_03: And it's when I myself was personally stuck.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_03: And he's like, You you need to set up a forcing function, and I mentioned it earlier.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_03: And it's and it's that, you know, like I needed to get this super just boring thing done.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_03: Just needed to get it done.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_03: It was like force yourself with dates, you know, force yourself with a plan, um, obviously delegate, do some other things you can do, right?
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_03: So it's not all on you.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_03: But it but I found that the date thing was really effective for me.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_03: And it was weird because I had used dates as a forcing function way back when I had like 20 technical certifications.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_03: And if I wanted to be like a netware CNE, you know, back in the 90s, you know, I would actually schedule those exams and then I'd, you know, I'd study and you know, do the hands-on stuff I needed to do to be able to pass them.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's that's been super effective for me forever.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_03: And I think it's another thing that that our audience and and others could, you know, you can start that today, along with you know, smart multitasking.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_03: Think about what you're actually passionate and interested in right now, and at least do that.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_03: Because then then at the end of the day, at least you got something done.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_03: And if you get something done, you're gonna make progress eventually.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, create forcing functions is a terrific idea.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_02: And and uh I'll say the other one as well.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: We recorded a um, we call them Friday work tips.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_02: We recorded a Friday work tip some time back, and I remember one of them was called I'll Eat That Frog, I'm just not sure when, or something along those lines.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: And uh the the point about that was was that there was there was a book that was released, gosh, I want to say in the early 2000s, that was called Eat That Frog, and it was centered around the the Mark Twain quote, which apparently Mark Twain never said, Um, about that if you eat the uh that if you eat the frog, then uh you'll at least know that you've done uh something worthwhile that day if you do it at the start of the day or something along those lines.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um it doesn't matter.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not misquoting Mark Twain because he never said it.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_02: The uh the the point uh of that book was the idea of like find the thing the most important thing slash the thing maybe that you don't even want to do and do it really early on.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_02: And we looked into that and we looked into whether into how that works, and it really is kind of highly personal.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_02: For some people, you need to just get you going, you need to do something you're enthusiastic about, and then you can go tackle the tackle the different thing.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_02: But for certain people that we work with, if they start doing the bad thing first, they don't feel the sense of relief, they just feel the sense of like, well, that was kind of a crappy day, and it sticks with them for the rest of the day.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_02: So it is quite it is quite personal, this stuff, and and uh we've definitely seen that um that for many people the idea of starting something that you're enthusiastic about can be ex can be extremely helpful, right?
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_02: As I say, I've known you for a long time, and we know and uh and I know that all of us, all of us go through through difficulties, and and it's you know it it's happened in my life, it's happened in your life.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_02: Can you describe a time when you hit a roadblock, could be a career roadblock, personal roadblock, whatever it happens to be, and then what you did to kind of work your way through that where it just wasn't humming in the way that it's it's humming today.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_02: How did you get yourself to where we are now and get through that difficult time?
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_03: That's interesting.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_03: So we already talked a bit about forcing functions, and and I've used that a long time.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_03: But I think another interesting one for me, and it's it's more personal, but and so here's let me just set the stage.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes in our lives, we have people that don't make the kind of decisions and choices that we are aligned with today.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe we were yesterday in the in the day before, but it's like today we want to do something different, we want different opportunities for ourselves.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_03: And so there's there's a technique, a life hack out there uh that I call temporary detours.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_03: And the notion is it, and it sounds harsh, is I'm gonna cut somebody out of my life or cut you know a group or an organization, or you know, but but it's gonna be something.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_03: But it's easier to do if you look at it like it's not forever, but it's for a season, right?
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_03: And there was somebody really close to me that I had to do this, and in the season wanted being like 30 years, you know, and it's a heck of a long season.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_03: But but you know, now we're in a place where we have a healthy relationship again, and we're not just sort of enabling and doing kind of the the same old stuff that you know got us both into trouble in the past, if that makes sense.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_03: That's that was a big deal.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_03: And there's and there's another form of that called um burning bridges, where where you just sort of cut off whatever that kind of thing was that was destroying your you know, your self-confidence or your ability to make decisions, um, your ability to stay focused, your ability to prioritize, cut that off and don't ever look back.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_03: And and I think all of us can probably look at situations in our life where we're like, you know what, I don't want that to be a temporary thing.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_03: I want actually I want that to be gone.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um it's it's harder to do, but there's there's help out there for it.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_03: And I talk a bit about that in the book.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_03: So I I first wanted to explore kind of the work world, but I found that so much of you know these life hacks were really more useful from a personal perspective, you know, um back at back at home, you know, back in the community, um, and and how we could make progress, you know, in those kinds of ways and get out of these kinds of patterns that I think all of us, you know, see as unhealthy.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, how are you gonna break those patterns?
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_03: There's there's a lot of ways to do that.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's I think it's absolutely terrific.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_02: And I think one of the biggest challenges, though, that people face when they're at those difficult times, right?
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_02: Where they're in some kind of professional or personal relationship that isn't working, or that they're in a position where they need to burn one of those bridges that you're describing, is that typically those times are the times when you're most stressed.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so therefore, those are the times where it's very difficult, A, to see what the problem really is, and then B to see the path out of that problem.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_02: And so the thing that I think I would add uh to what you said is just how important the people around you are to help you get some sense of reality around it, right?
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so I can think back in in my life in uh earlier times where you were personally helpful to me as I was struggling with some uh some of these similar issues and just getting a uh a sounding board from somebody who was outside of of my situation to help me see it more clearly um was something that was really important.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_02: So that can be that can be family, that can be people in your community, it can be coaches, like professional coaches, things that uh things of that nature, but somebody with some measure, and I and that's sometimes why family is not always the best for this, but somebody some somebody with some measure of separation so that they can help you see clearly what you're uh what you're going through, but are still invested in you and trying to uh and trying to help you see what is best for you.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know is that what you've seen as well?
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_03: It is, and I write about that.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_03: That's one of my life hacks.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_03: It's called third party for progress.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_03: And it's really bringing that objective person in, whether it's like, you know, marriage counseling or whether it's an issue, problem at work, it's like that tiebreaker, that that other person that can kind of weigh in and pour in and hopefully has a vested interest in in both parties or all parties, right?
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_03: To to make a good, healthy choices and decisions for us, with us, and you know, kind of help us along the way.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_03: That man, that that is powerful.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_03: And and I gotta say this, if you haven't, you know, been to counseling for some of these things that sort of own you from like a self-discipline kind of perspective, then you're really doing yourself a disservice because that third party right there can make a huge difference and can open your eyes to things that you have become so accustomed to that they feel normal.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_03: And and you know, somebody else needs to be able to call that out and go, whoa, that's not normal.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_03: There's a way out of this, and there's there's different ways to handle these things, and and the situation you're in only feels normal because it's been so long.
• 30:16
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• 30:21
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• 30:23
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• 30:31
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• 30:36
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• 30:39
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• 30:43
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• 30:50
  SPEAKER_02: As I mentioned before, right, we have um a nickname for people like you.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_02: We call them, as I say, our personal effectiveness superheroes.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um now, any superhero has a superpower and a weakness, a kryptonite if you like.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so for you, uh, this this can be based on feedback you got from others or think the the way you think about yourself.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_02: But I'm curious as to what what would you describe as your superpower and what would you describe as your kryptonite?
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I mean, I can talk about my kryptonite right out of the box, and it's it's the fact that I say yes to Frigger.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um and it's and it probably goes back to, you know, there's something in me that wants to please people, you know, that that wants to be helpful, that wants to help somebody make a difference, you know, get out of a situation.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_03: It's probably why I'm in the consulting kind of world, is because you know, people have problems in situations and I want to help them get through that.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_03: Turn a corner, get to a brighter place.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, this all sounds fantastic.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_03: Um the the superpower probably has something to do with listening.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, and it's weird because I've been called out on maybe I listened too much in the beginning.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and then people are like nervous.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, you know, are you gonna provide that leadership that's needed here?
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_03: Are you gonna are you gonna start solutioning?
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, man, I actually need to learn, to understand, to kind of empathize with what the heck's going on here and the people that are involved before we can start figuring out what the problem is, because we don't want to just go off and solve the wrong problem.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_03: Done that before.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_03: That doesn't work.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_03: And and I guess the other thing too is I'm really good at at helping people and helping myself kind of think first before we dive in.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_03: You I mean, you know this, right?
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_03: Our natural inclination is let's listen for 10 seconds and now let's plan for four years on what we're gonna do, and it's gonna be beautiful.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_03: And the solution looks like this.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_03: So it's like, no, let's flip that and let's think deeply about this situation and the people in that situation and what we need to do next.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so I think I bring that to my team and I bring that, you know, to my family, and I, you know, personally, I sort of embody that as well as a way to ultimately to make progress.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_03: And it's about getting, you know, finding that path for progress and then helping us kind of stay on it.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_03: I think the other thing I'm good at, you know, maybe superpower is is helping people come to a shared understanding of what it is we're doing or what it is, you know, how we're gonna solve something, you know, and what that kind of looks like.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, and I use a lot of pictures.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_03: This is sort of newish for me, probably in the last last four or five years.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_03: I think and we all know that pictures are worth a thousand words, right?
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_03: But a picture can really help us understand like a process, something that's that could be very, very complex.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_03: And if we keep flashing that picture up in front of people, you know, as this is our plan or this is how we're gonna solve this problem, you know, that reinforcement just becomes sort of second nature in all of our heads.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_03: And it helps us, first of all, to see if there's disconnects initially, and then secondly, to just be aligned and get on with it, you know, get the thing done.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I don't want to layer too many superpowers on top of the of each other, but I will say the one you know, the one that I'll I've observed, um, and knowing you for as long as I have is is actually related to almost to where we started this out, which is this lifelong learning thing.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_02: So for many of us, we kind of go through um spurts, if you were, of learning, and it's often driven by circumstances, right?
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_02: As in we go into a new role, we have to learn a bunch of stuff because we're going into a new role.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um and um and then we get enough, and then once we've got to a point where we can do our job reasonably well, we kind of switch that off for a while, and then we're never gonna learn again the next challenge comes along, we learn to do that.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_03: I know everything I need to know.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_02: But in your case, you kind of invert that in a sense, right?
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_02: So what you do is you continuously uh learn, build um, build the learnings that you've got uh upon which we what what you've already had previously, and then you learn, use that foundation that you're constantly building and constantly refining to help you advance.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's much more proactive in terms of your uh of your learning, plus you're continuing to build uh knowledge and capabilities and wisdom through that learning.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_02: And then that leads you to be able to uh to be able to make some of the career choices that you've been able to make as a result.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_02: I think that proactive nature to learning versus a reactive nature to learning is what I've observed in you as being a as being extraordinarily uh unusual and a great thing.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_02: So you can add that to your list.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's it's a it's a nice, it's just it's better and better.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_03: The list just grows.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_03: I I also think this notion of uh like an inf that and humility.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know, my humility continues to grow exponentially.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_03: But uh uh this this funnel notion, and we fill up our funnel with ideas and learnings, and and you know, and if we have more to draw on, then we've got more opportunity to to sort of make the right, the best choices for the situation we happen to be in.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's something else I do, and and you know, and my teams do well, and uh and that helps us make progress down the road.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_02: But I'm sure you've got another book in you.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_02: It sounds like you've got the next rev of this book uh in you already.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but what is next in terms of uh of your writing?
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_03: So that that's a great question.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, I do have the V2 of the design thinking for program and project management.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_03: I've already iterated on Stuck Happens.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_03: This is the third iteration, but I haven't um, you know, it's still the same.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_03: Like if you go out and you buy it on Amazon, it's the same one.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_03: I feel bad for the people to bought the first version because the third version is so much better.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_03: And and frankly, it's from feedback, lots and lots of feedback.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_03: And then um, I decided to go back to Pearson and Prentice Hall and say, hey, I noticed that you guys don't have any design thinking books on the shelf by you guys.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_03: It's like your competitors have some really good stuff out there.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_03: And so we worked out a deal where I'm doing um, and I'm a quarter of the way through this now, uh design thinking for tech.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_03: And it's and it's all about you know uh solving problems and creating value.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_03: And so instead of being organized around like project or program management or kind of life, it's really organized around uh again, it's a pretty simple model, but but how we can understand broadly, you know, and gain some clarity, think differently, and eventually um, you know, deploy, iterate successfully, do some things down the road.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_03: It for me it's an interesting book because it applies to like all technology, not just to the super complex kind of stuff that I tend to get involved in, but you know, the the simple kinds of things that we need to do from a like a digital transformation perspective.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_03: So that'll be out by the end of the year.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_03: And and the challenge with writing for somebody else is that I don't get to follow my passion as much.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_03: So I've got sort of a schedule right that you got to put together, and I'm like, oh man, I really like it when I'm doing these things for myself, you know, and then find the publisher.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_03: This one I you know did sort of backwards.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_03: I said, okay, I got an idea and we had to organize it.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_03: But uh hey, you know, I'm I'm excited about it.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's gonna be a really good addition to a lot of bookshelves out there, and and I'm uh I'm excited to yeah, just get it done too in the morning.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it gives you that forcing function, what we were talking about.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: We were talking about forcing functions.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: You got one right there, yeah.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_03: I've got schedules and and it's you know, I'm waking up and working on my you know projects in Europe and I'm thinking about that in the gaps, and I'm you know thinking about all the other stuff.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_03: And so I'm excited about it, and kind of going back to one of the things we talked about earlier.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_03: If I don't have anything else I'm excited about, I'm excited about that, and I can go dig into that for half an hour, you know, make some progress.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_03: And I tell you, Paul, it's interesting that you know, as as I think about design thinking, you know, from a tech perspective, that there's so much application to the to the projects and programs and initiatives that I'm I'm involved in at work that it actually sparks you know some additional kind of creativity or desire to go tackle those other things with maybe some renewed vigor.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_03: So it's it's been it's been good, it's been pretty healthy.
• 39:08
  unknown: Right.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_02: All right, George.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thank you so much.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_02: Really appreciate it.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, we thoroughly recommend go read uh uh George's book, Stuck Happens.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it's it really, really is uh um very helpful, lots of tips and tricks there.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_02: And I know that many of the people who are customers of billion minds, many of the people who live uh uh live their lives around our way too busy podcast and can't wait for the next episode.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_02: You're gonna be exactly the kind of people who are gonna really get a um a ton of value out of this.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_02: So so do check that out.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_02: And uh George, really, really appreciate uh you spending time with us uh with us today in what I know is a very busy schedule.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_02: So so thanks a lot.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_03: And thank you for having me.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_03: I sure appreciate it.
• 39:54
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• 39:58
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• 40:04
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