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Andy Stanley - Jim Collins on What to Make of A Life, Part 2 · Andy Stanley Sermons

0:02
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast, a
0:05
Speaker 1: conversation designed to help leaders go further, faster. I'm Andy Stanley.
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Speaker 1: your leadership with Belay. And now back to today's episode. Today,
1:30
Speaker 1: we are continuing our conversation with Jim Collins on his
1:33
Speaker 1: latest book, What to Make of a Life, Cliffs, Fog, Fire,
1:37
Speaker 1: and the Self-Knowledge Imperative. If you missed last month's episode, seriously,
1:42
Speaker 1: you just need to hit pause on this one and
1:44
Speaker 1: go back and listen to part one, or better yet,
1:46
Speaker 1: just go purchase a copy of What to Make of
1:48
Speaker 1: a Life. Jim, once again, welcome back to the podcast.
1:52
Speaker 1: Thank you for giving us another round of great content
1:55
Speaker 1: related to this great book.
1:57
Speaker 2: I am really enjoying both of these conversations, so let's continue.
2:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I'm sure so many people want to have
2:05
Speaker 1: you on their podcasts and television shows and everything else because, again,
2:08
Speaker 1: you disappeared from us for You know, I think almost
2:10
Speaker 1: 12 or 13 years to do this research. And, you know,
2:13
Speaker 1: where's Jim Collins? So we're glad you're back. So before
2:16
Speaker 1: we pick up where we left off, working our way
2:18
Speaker 1: through the book, will you do a quick recap of
2:21
Speaker 1: what it means to come into frame and maybe the
2:24
Speaker 1: three critical elements or however you want to talk about that?
2:26
Speaker 1: Because that's kind of the framework for the book is
2:28
Speaker 1: getting into and staying in frame.
2:31
Speaker 2: Yeah. So just a very brief kind of structural framework
2:36
Speaker 2: for everything. The book itself actually breaks into three parts.
2:39
Speaker 2: The first part called Coming Into Frame. The second part
2:42
Speaker 2: about navigating cliffs and fog. The third part being about
2:46
Speaker 2: feeding the inner fire long and late in life. And
2:49
Speaker 2: in the first episode, we really hit the first two
2:52
Speaker 2: parts of the book. And Coming Into Frame basically means
2:55
Speaker 2: that your life is in frame around doing something. One
3:01
Speaker 2: big thing that meets three tests. One, you are deeply
3:04
Speaker 2: encoded for it. We talked about that a lot in
3:07
Speaker 2: our original session. Second, you're willing to flip the arrow
3:11
Speaker 2: of money to do it. What this means is that
3:13
Speaker 2: you don't do what you do to make money. You
3:16
Speaker 2: need money to be able to do what you're encoded for.
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Speaker 1: Say that again. This is such a big idea. Say
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Speaker 1: it one more time. This is great.
3:23
Speaker 2: So the essence of it is that you don't do
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Speaker 2: what you do principally to make money. but you accept
3:31
Speaker 2: the hard-headed truth that you need economic fuel, you need
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Speaker 2: money to be able to do what you're encoded for.
3:40
Speaker 2: And in just a very brief, we have a whole
3:43
Speaker 2: chapter in there on this, which looks at how the
3:47
Speaker 2: people in our study created the economic fuel to do
3:52
Speaker 2: what really they were encoded to do.
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Speaker 1: And in some cases made huge sacrifices financially and economically
4:00
Speaker 1: to keep doing what they were encoded to do, even
4:04
Speaker 1: when they had opportunities to make money, but it involved
4:07
Speaker 1: them doing things they weren't encoded to do. Like Robert
4:09
Speaker 1: Plant was such a great example of that.
4:12
Speaker 2: Exactly, exactly. And Robert Plant, whether it was in his
4:16
Speaker 2: early life when he was just trying to survive so
4:21
Speaker 2: that he could sing, and then later in life, even
4:24
Speaker 2: when he had more money than he knew what to
4:27
Speaker 2: do with probably because of the success of Led Zeppelin.
4:30
Speaker 2: The motivation was still always the same. I just want
4:33
Speaker 2: to sing. And so the economic conditions changed, but his
4:39
Speaker 2: fundamental drive was, I need to sing. It doesn't matter
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Speaker 2: what my economic conditions are, but here's a key thing.
4:45
Speaker 2: There's a phrase out there, and you've probably heard it,
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Speaker 2: which is do what you love, the money will follow.
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Speaker 2: This isn't what that's about. Because what it's about is,
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Speaker 2: I need to do what I'm encoded for, And that
4:56
Speaker 2: feeds my fire, which is the third part of being
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Speaker 2: in frame. It needs to be something that really feeds
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Speaker 2: my fire, something I've encoded for. And I embrace the
5:04
Speaker 2: practical reality that in order to do that, I need
5:10
Speaker 2: to be very smart about how I generate the economic
5:14
Speaker 2: fuel to do it. But I'm clear that the direction
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Speaker 2: of the arrow is I need economic fuel to do
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Speaker 2: it rather than I do it just to make a
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Speaker 2: lot of money.
5:24
Speaker 1: And, and, For the parents out there, they're like, I
5:27
Speaker 1: don't think I want my child to read this book,
5:29
Speaker 1: if that's the case. That sounds like a lot of
5:32
Speaker 1: financial insecurity. But at the end of the day, you know,
5:36
Speaker 1: a quick example, and some of our podcast listeners know this.
5:39
Speaker 1: My son went to university, got a finance degree, got
5:43
Speaker 1: a great job. This is my oldest son. Great job
5:45
Speaker 1: with a big company here in the city of Atlanta.
5:48
Speaker 1: But he wanted to write comedy. And I said, I
5:53
Speaker 1: don't know what that. looks like. And I look, maybe
5:56
Speaker 1: I know what it looks like at 25. What does
5:57
Speaker 1: it look like at 45? But as time went by,
6:00
Speaker 1: clearly his encoding was toward comedy, not, not the world
6:06
Speaker 1: of business and marketing and all the other things. And
6:09
Speaker 1: so I, I just had to decide as a dad, Hey,
6:13
Speaker 1: am I going to encourage that or not? And because
6:15
Speaker 1: of things like this and other fathers I've watched get
6:18
Speaker 1: this right, I'm like, Hey, chase the encoding and the money. Well,
6:22
Speaker 1: you know, we'll, we'll see. And so I would say, Andrew,
6:25
Speaker 1: how's your job going? And he would say this. He
6:26
Speaker 1: would say, I love my life, but I don't love
6:30
Speaker 1: my job. I said, well, welcome to being an adult.
6:33
Speaker 1: That's that's kind of how it goes. But eventually he
6:37
Speaker 1: figured this out. And then I, as a father, had
6:39
Speaker 1: to hands off. You know, you can do this. So
6:42
Speaker 1: this is an important principle.
6:44
Speaker 2: It is. And just to briefly flesh this out a
6:47
Speaker 2: little bit, because something I was actually really pleased that
6:49
Speaker 2: we did in the research was we took all the
6:51
Speaker 2: people in the study and we did an analysis of
6:54
Speaker 2: how did they make the economics in their life work, right?
6:57
Speaker 2: Because it's practically real that we have to deal with
7:00
Speaker 2: economics in our lives. That's practically real. But what we
7:04
Speaker 2: did was we said for all the people in our study,
7:06
Speaker 2: because most of them didn't come from family wealth, how
7:09
Speaker 2: did they make it work? And it turns out there
7:12
Speaker 2: are 12 different economic streams, and they usually drew upon
7:16
Speaker 2: three or four of them. It could be as simple
7:18
Speaker 2: as they're working over here like Carlos Santana at one
7:22
Speaker 2: point was dishwashing while he was also getting his guitar
7:26
Speaker 2: career going. Or it could be that you get really
7:30
Speaker 2: good at building a little flywheel where doing this kind
7:33
Speaker 2: of work generates fuel to do more of the work.
7:35
Speaker 2: Or you start a social organization that actually has resources
7:38
Speaker 2: behind it. There are all these different models. But basically,
7:41
Speaker 2: one way or another, they very pragmatically figured out how
7:46
Speaker 2: to put enough of the pieces in place so that
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Speaker 2: they could focus on doing what they were encoded for
7:53
Speaker 2: that fed the fire. And when you have all three
7:55
Speaker 2: of those come together, then you're really fully in frame. Yeah.
7:59
Speaker 1: So it's discover your encodings, flip the arrow of money,
8:02
Speaker 1: and focus on the inner fire. So the third section
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Speaker 1: of the book is entitled Feeding the Inner Fire Long
8:07
Speaker 1: and Late. And of course, I love this section because
8:11
Speaker 1: I'm late. You and I are the same age. We're
8:14
Speaker 1: in the season of life where we've been told, hey,
8:16
Speaker 1: you did your thing, you're done, go to the beach,
8:18
Speaker 1: play golf. And neither of us are wired that way.
8:22
Speaker 1: And this book just comes in around all of that
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Speaker 1: and says, hey, long and late, there's plenty of fire.
8:28
Speaker 1: As long as you've got the fire, there's something to do.
8:30
Speaker 1: So talk a I think Meryl Streep, that example from
8:35
Speaker 1: her life is a phenomenal example. And of course, my
8:39
Speaker 1: wife is a huge Meryl Streep fan and love that illustration.
8:42
Speaker 1: So talk a little bit about that.
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Speaker 2: Okay, so first of all, I just want to sort
8:46
Speaker 2: of set a frame with this. So as you get
8:50
Speaker 2: to this part, there's a kind of a conventional view,
8:52
Speaker 2: which some people might hold, maybe not everyone, which is
8:56
Speaker 2: that our best and our most creative, our most energetic,
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Speaker 2: our most breakthrough, all of this stuff tends to come
9:04
Speaker 2: early in our life. And that our younger selves will
9:08
Speaker 2: tower over our older selves. And then whatever we do
9:11
Speaker 2: in our later years, it will never measure up to
9:16
Speaker 2: those younger years. But you take a look, for example,
9:20
Speaker 2: we have, I mean, it's really, really interesting to look
9:23
Speaker 2: at Meryl Streep's creative productivity over the course of her career.
9:26
Speaker 2: And yes, and it's really spread across the entire career.
9:30
Speaker 2: And she has I think she had 21 Oscar nominations
9:33
Speaker 2: by the time we finished the research. And roughly half
9:36
Speaker 2: of them have happened after the age of 50. And
9:40
Speaker 2: she was just as productive and doing great acting in
9:43
Speaker 2: her 60s as she was in her hyper creative phase
9:46
Speaker 2: in her 30s. And so you don't see you just
9:49
Speaker 2: basically see this incredible growth. creative evolution over the course
9:55
Speaker 2: of decade upon decade upon decade. If anything, I mean,
9:59
Speaker 2: she was amazing when she was young and she was
10:02
Speaker 2: amazing as the decades went by. I want to share
10:06
Speaker 2: one little thing that's one of my favorite little tiny
10:08
Speaker 2: data points from the book, but it just summarizes this
10:12
Speaker 2: for me. If you take all the pages in the
10:15
Speaker 2: major biographies of Benjamin Franklin and you ask a simple question,
10:20
Speaker 2: What percent of the pages in those books remain on
10:23
Speaker 2: average when Franklin hits age 60? And the answer is 53%.
10:31
Speaker 2: So I think about it this way. When you hit 60,
10:35
Speaker 2: you're not even halfway with what could be the most
10:38
Speaker 2: creative and breakthrough and spectacular phases of your life. Or
10:43
Speaker 2: as I've started to think of it as when you
10:45
Speaker 2: hit 60, you finish your warmup.
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Speaker 1: I like that. I'll go with that. But again, our
10:54
Speaker 1: culture and the average age of retirement and all of that,
11:00
Speaker 1: you and I grew up in a world where people
11:02
Speaker 1: didn't think that way. In fact, we grew up, I'm
11:04
Speaker 1: sure you as well as I did, around people who
11:07
Speaker 1: were longing for and reaching for that point in time
11:10
Speaker 1: where they could quit work. That was the goal, which
11:14
Speaker 1: is neither healthy nor necessary. So The research demonstrates the
11:18
Speaker 1: very opposite of that, which is super encouraging. And it's
11:21
Speaker 1: also encouraging for people, professional athletes, where you profile some
11:26
Speaker 1: professional athletes. A professional athlete's career generally ends early in
11:30
Speaker 1: their 30s. Again, it's like, hey, I circled the earth.
11:33
Speaker 1: What am I going to do now? So this is
11:35
Speaker 1: super important. Here's a couple of quotes I like. Don't
11:38
Speaker 1: confuse the need for a break with the need to quit.
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Speaker 2: Okay.
11:42
Speaker 1: That's that's huge, because at some point everybody needs a break.
11:46
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean you need to quit. And then
11:47
Speaker 1: I love this one to differentiate between that's it and
11:52
Speaker 1: that's it for now. So those those statements that allow
11:56
Speaker 1: for a break as people retool and rethink about what's next.
11:59
Speaker 1: And in some cases, it's a fog. In some cases,
12:02
Speaker 1: it's just a break. All those things are are super powerful.
12:06
Speaker 1: Can I read one more thing from the book?
12:07
Speaker 2: Please. OK.
12:09
Speaker 1: And this is personal, so I'm giving you a moment
12:12
Speaker 1: to decide if you want to dive in. You write,
12:15
Speaker 1: in finishing up this chapter, I realized something about this
12:18
Speaker 1: entire project and its role in my own life. You write,
12:22
Speaker 1: I've puzzled on the question of why I seem, I
12:25
Speaker 1: love this, why I seem to have at least as
12:28
Speaker 1: much energy at 67 as I did at 37 and
12:31
Speaker 1: perhaps even more. I need less sleep. I feel I'm
12:35
Speaker 1: up on the balls of my feet tilted forward. I
12:37
Speaker 1: can't wait to get up before 5 a.m. and throw
12:40
Speaker 1: myself into each day. The inner fire burns brighter than ever. Now,
12:47
Speaker 1: you are an author and a business leader and a
12:51
Speaker 1: thought leader who has circled the earth. You did your thing.
12:55
Speaker 1: I mean, good to great and built to last and
12:57
Speaker 1: everything you've done. I mean, you could have just put
13:00
Speaker 1: a fork in it. And yet here you are this
13:02
Speaker 1: season of your life. And not only did you write
13:05
Speaker 1: this fabulous book, it is so different than your other books.
13:08
Speaker 1: And you were willing to take a risk and not
13:10
Speaker 1: come back into the marketplace with another business book or
13:13
Speaker 1: another book for business leaders. That would have been, you know,
13:17
Speaker 1: you and I understand this because I've read the book.
13:19
Speaker 1: That would have been Robert Plant accepting the invitation to
13:23
Speaker 1: just play his old music over and over and over
13:26
Speaker 1: and travel the earth, you know, do concerts all over
13:28
Speaker 1: the world. And he's like, no, that's looking backwards. I
13:32
Speaker 1: want to look forwards. So you really are an example
13:36
Speaker 1: of this principle. So what lights you up? What's burning
13:40
Speaker 1: bright inside of you these days? And you may not
13:43
Speaker 1: want to talk about it publicly.
13:44
Speaker 2: I'm happy to chat about that. And it actually ties
13:47
Speaker 2: into one of the key chapters in the book, which
13:53
Speaker 2: is this notion of extend out, circle back. And there
13:57
Speaker 2: were multiple seeds of this book. And one of them
14:02
Speaker 2: was I was always curious in the question about how
14:04
Speaker 2: do people remain self-renewed is a question that had been
14:08
Speaker 2: inspired by the great John W. Gardner, who thought about
14:11
Speaker 2: that question many decades ago. And I met him when
14:14
Speaker 2: I was teaching at Stanford and he was just down
14:16
Speaker 2: the hall from me as kind of a wise man
14:18
Speaker 2: in residence. And but I was kind of puzzled, like,
14:21
Speaker 2: what are the elements of that so that you're just
14:24
Speaker 2: full of expansion and fire all the way to the end?
14:27
Speaker 2: And there was this very interesting pattern we began to see.
14:29
Speaker 2: Let's pick up Robert Plant for a moment, and then
14:31
Speaker 2: I'm going to answer it relative to myself. Very interesting
14:34
Speaker 2: with Plant. He never lost his fire for music. And
14:38
Speaker 2: as he went along, he was always extending out, right?
14:41
Speaker 2: So you think of this pattern of kind of extending
14:43
Speaker 2: out and always exploring and pushing your own edges and
14:46
Speaker 2: so forth, but in the end, Circling back. So the
14:49
Speaker 2: extend out would be, instead of I'm just going to
14:52
Speaker 2: try to repeat the Led Zeppelin.
14:55
Speaker 1: Sing Stairway to Heaven for the rest of my life.
14:57
Speaker 2: For the rest of my life, right. In the same way. Yeah. Instead,
15:00
Speaker 2: what he does is he starts exploring other genres of
15:03
Speaker 2: music and he ends up doing this marvelous album as
15:07
Speaker 2: he's heading into about age 60 at this point with
15:10
Speaker 2: Alison Krauss, this bluegrass album called Raising Sand. And one
15:14
Speaker 2: of the most remarkable things about it, if you remember
15:17
Speaker 2: Robert Plant and Led Zeppelin, the golden God on stage
15:20
Speaker 2: with all the curly hairs and so forth. And he
15:24
Speaker 2: was always the lead singer. And then he extended out
15:28
Speaker 2: to learn how to blend his voice with somebody's voice
15:33
Speaker 2: who he described as like the voice of an angel.
15:35
Speaker 2: That was a huge extend out for him. That was new.
15:40
Speaker 2: He was learning. He was expanding. He was extending. He
15:43
Speaker 2: was the genre, bluegrass, blending. But notice something else. At
15:48
Speaker 2: the same time, he would also circle back, and there's
15:51
Speaker 2: this marvelous video that we came across. There's that classic
15:55
Speaker 2: hard rock Zeppelin song, Black Dog. Yep. Starts out, hey, hey, mama, bam!
16:01
Speaker 2: And it's just like, wham! Full-on blues rock. Then he
16:06
Speaker 2: and Alison Krauss do this version of it in bluegrass.
16:10
Speaker 2: that is slow and it's melodic and it is mature
16:14
Speaker 2: and it is seductive and it's still black dog. Cause
16:17
Speaker 2: he's going back to a Zeppelin. That's the circle back.
16:19
Speaker 2: But the extend out is now he's doing it as
16:22
Speaker 2: a duo in a whole different genre. So what we
16:26
Speaker 2: found was a really cool thing is this constant process
16:31
Speaker 2: of extending out the edges, but also circling back. Yep.
16:36
Speaker 2: to from things earlier that act almost as accelerants to
16:40
Speaker 2: extend out further. So let me just pause there for
16:44
Speaker 2: a moment. I'm just curious if this idea rings true
16:47
Speaker 2: for you in your own evolution, and then I'll be
16:49
Speaker 2: happy to talk about why this feeds my fire.
16:52
Speaker 1: Well, at the end of the book, you say, I
16:56
Speaker 1: love the way that book ends, I'm not rushing to
16:57
Speaker 1: the end. You say, hey, I'm not here to tell
17:00
Speaker 1: you what to do. I'm not even sure what you
17:01
Speaker 1: should do with this book, but I'm going to give
17:03
Speaker 1: you a list of questions that To get you thinking
17:05
Speaker 1: about how the content of the book intersects with your life.
17:08
Speaker 1: And one of those questions is related to this. And
17:10
Speaker 1: I had a hard time answering it. There were two
17:13
Speaker 1: questions that were really challenging that I have to go
17:15
Speaker 1: back to. And one of them was about this extend
17:18
Speaker 1: out and circle back. What came to mind, it didn't
17:21
Speaker 1: scare me. But it challenged me because something came to
17:26
Speaker 1: mind I would have never thought about apart from that question.
17:29
Speaker 1: That's all I'm going to say about me. So what
17:32
Speaker 1: about you? Let's extend out and circle back.
17:35
Speaker 2: So the extend out circle back here is starting in
17:39
Speaker 2: about 2013, I realized that I had largely satisfied a
17:45
Speaker 2: lot of my curiosity in the question about what makes
17:47
Speaker 2: great organizations and great companies tick. And I didn't want
17:49
Speaker 2: to do another seven-year study on that. And and so
17:54
Speaker 2: and the seeds of this one, as we talked about
17:56
Speaker 2: in the previous conversation, got really went into me very
18:00
Speaker 2: early in life. And then they kind of started to
18:03
Speaker 2: flower as I watered the seeds of this project. So
18:07
Speaker 2: on the one hand is a huge extend out. I'm
18:09
Speaker 2: studying lives, pairs of lives, people going through cliffs, wandering
18:13
Speaker 2: through the fog, figuring you're looking at all the I'm
18:16
Speaker 2: looking at geneticists and computer scientists and astronauts and rock
18:20
Speaker 2: musicians and politicians and people in all these different business leaders. Sure.
18:26
Speaker 2: But that was only a very small fraction of it
18:29
Speaker 2: of the book. And so it was a big extend
18:31
Speaker 2: out all these worlds I was learning about things I
18:34
Speaker 2: never knew about and how these lives intersected with these
18:37
Speaker 2: entire universes. I am pay as an architect or, you know,
18:41
Speaker 2: you could look at Tony Morrison, the novelist, all these
18:45
Speaker 2: different worlds for me. And that was wonderful. But notice
18:49
Speaker 2: something else. I'm also circling back because I'm encoded to
18:54
Speaker 2: do big things. giant projects where I lose myself. I
18:58
Speaker 2: have a research method. I lose myself in evidence and
19:03
Speaker 2: really let the evidence lead me. If I have to
19:05
Speaker 2: spend five years on it or seven years on it,
19:08
Speaker 2: or in this case, 10 years to do the research,
19:12
Speaker 2: I'm encoded to go into monk mode and do that.
19:16
Speaker 2: And so the circle back is I have research. I
19:19
Speaker 2: have pairs. I have method. I have evidence I'm drawing upon.
19:22
Speaker 2: I'm being surprised and delighted by the data. And then
19:26
Speaker 2: I have to make sense of it all. I have
19:28
Speaker 2: to figure out what it all means, how it all
19:30
Speaker 2: fits together. That process I used on Good to Great.
19:34
Speaker 2: I used it on Built to Last. I used it
19:36
Speaker 2: on Great by Choice. I used it on How the
19:37
Speaker 2: Mighty Fall, that process. So the process is circle back
19:41
Speaker 2: and then learning how to write it and learning how
19:43
Speaker 2: to communicate the ideas. That's all circle back. The extend
19:47
Speaker 2: out is instead of companies and organizations. organizations, it's people.
19:53
Speaker 1: What to make of the life.
19:54
Speaker 2: Yeah.
19:55
Speaker 1: But and you also bring the hedgehog concept back around
19:59
Speaker 1: as well.
19:59
Speaker 2: So which is that integrate is sort of the personal
20:02
Speaker 2: version of the hedgehog. Yeah. Is encoded for it. Flip
20:06
Speaker 2: the arrow of money to do it. And focus the
20:09
Speaker 2: fire on it, right, which is the personal version. When
20:12
Speaker 2: you have that all into one big thing, like Robert
20:16
Speaker 2: Plant singing, Meryl Streep acting, Barbara McClintock genetics, John Glenn
20:21
Speaker 2: when he was an astronaut, they are in a hedgehog. Yeah.
20:26
Speaker 1: So I want to move to one other section, even
20:28
Speaker 1: though that brings so many other things to mind I'd
20:30
Speaker 1: love to talk about. So chapter 11, you just mentioned
20:34
Speaker 1: Toni Morrison. So let me just read this quote from
20:36
Speaker 1: Toni in chapter 11. The name of the chapter is
20:38
Speaker 1: Choosing Responsibilities. He writes, you see, the point is that
20:42
Speaker 1: freedom is choosing your responsibility. It's not having no responsibilities.
20:48
Speaker 1: Freedom is choosing the ones you want. And then you write,
20:51
Speaker 1: this is your quote, and this is what I sent
20:53
Speaker 1: to our whole family. Freedom does not mean the absence
20:57
Speaker 1: of responsibilities. Freedom means that you get to choose your
21:01
Speaker 1: your responsibilities. What a big idea. I sent that out
21:05
Speaker 1: to our family knot on our little text stream. And
21:08
Speaker 1: my daughter-in-law drove to the bookstore and bought the book
21:11
Speaker 1: when she read that. The whole idea of choosing a
21:15
Speaker 1: responsibility and then making ourselves accountable to that responsibility. Can
21:20
Speaker 1: you talk a little bit about that? I just think
21:22
Speaker 1: that is a massive concept. It's both liberating and focusing
21:27
Speaker 1: at the same time.
21:28
Speaker 2: At the same time. So as I was– there was
21:32
Speaker 2: this real moment. I saved my pair of writers as
21:36
Speaker 2: kind of my last pair to study, and it was
21:39
Speaker 2: Toni Morrison and Barbara Tuchman. And so Toni Morrison had
21:43
Speaker 2: a lot that she said about writing itself. And she
21:48
Speaker 2: gave a lot of interviews, and then, of course, I
21:51
Speaker 2: had all of her novels. And so I read all
21:53
Speaker 2: of her novels in sequence. All of them. And I
21:54
Speaker 2: also read all of her– all of her interviews and
21:59
Speaker 2: all the things that she said about how she went
22:01
Speaker 2: about things and the choices she made and how she
22:03
Speaker 2: wrote and so forth. And in the mid 1980s, there's
22:06
Speaker 2: this one little snippet. And that's where that quote comes
22:09
Speaker 2: from when she talks about what freedom is. And it
22:12
Speaker 2: hit me so hard. And it was like, all of
22:14
Speaker 2: a sudden, all these dominoes, when I thought back to
22:17
Speaker 2: all the other people in my study, it was like
22:19
Speaker 2: a tumbler just went tumble, tumble, tumble, tumble. And I
22:22
Speaker 2: realized that part of what fed the fire for people
22:28
Speaker 2: all the way along in their lives, but especially late
22:31
Speaker 2: when you could just decide, I'm done, I'm not going
22:33
Speaker 2: to choose any more responsibilities. I'm free, I'm retired, I
22:37
Speaker 2: can just do what I want at 10 o'clock in
22:39
Speaker 2: the morning. Their response was the Toni Morrison response. As
22:43
Speaker 2: her comment, freedom means you get to choose your responsibilities.
22:50
Speaker 1: It's such a big idea.
22:52
Speaker 2: Bang! And the responsibilities... And that's what that sense of
22:57
Speaker 2: self-accountability to a responsibility that you choose. We haven't talked
23:01
Speaker 2: about Catherine Graham yet in the study, but she didn't
23:05
Speaker 2: have to run the Washington Post when she lost her
23:07
Speaker 2: husband to the disease of manic depression and ended up
23:11
Speaker 2: with the Washington Post on her hands. She chose the
23:15
Speaker 2: responsibility to begin simplex stepping and then eventually emerge and
23:19
Speaker 2: to truly lead the Washington Post. And she discovered her encodings.
23:24
Speaker 2: Charles Coulson, who we talked about in the last conversation,
23:28
Speaker 2: he chose his responsibility and he chose to hold himself
23:33
Speaker 2: to account for his responsibility all the way till the end.
23:38
Speaker 2: And I think when people choose responsibilities, whatever they are,
23:42
Speaker 2: they may be very private. They may be very personal.
23:45
Speaker 2: One of the things that really impacted me as I
23:48
Speaker 2: thought a lot about a lot of people when I
23:50
Speaker 2: was doing this study is You may not know about
23:54
Speaker 2: the responsibilities people are choosing.
23:57
Speaker 1: Right.
23:57
Speaker 2: You might see a big visible one that somebody does.
24:01
Speaker 2: But we have in our own lives. Do I choose
24:05
Speaker 2: the responsibility like Tenley Albright in the study to practice
24:10
Speaker 2: every surgery I do with the highest level of surgical
24:14
Speaker 2: conscience of care for the patient? Because that is simply
24:18
Speaker 2: the sacred standard I choose to live by. You know,
24:23
Speaker 2: that's not seen on a grand scale. Right. It's lived
24:27
Speaker 2: on a daily scale.
24:28
Speaker 1: And it's personal accountability to a responsibility they chose. You say,
24:33
Speaker 1: talking about the people in the study, they chose responsibilities
24:36
Speaker 1: for something or someone beyond their own individual success, comfort, recognition, enjoyment,
24:44
Speaker 1: or achievement. They dedicated a sizable portion of their energy
24:49
Speaker 1: to choosing responsibilities for pointed outward beyond self, and that
24:53
Speaker 1: is one of the most powerful forms of fuel. And
24:57
Speaker 1: I think that's a critical component to this. It's not
25:00
Speaker 1: simply choosing a responsibility and becoming accountable to something that's
25:03
Speaker 1: just for me. The people who change the world, the
25:06
Speaker 1: people who leave a legacy, and we'll talk about legacy
25:09
Speaker 1: in a minute, but the people who make an impact
25:11
Speaker 1: are the people who've chosen a responsibility, made themselves accountable
25:15
Speaker 1: to it, and it's not centered on them. It's centered
25:18
Speaker 1: on making some part of the world or somebody in
25:20
Speaker 1: the world, a better person or making the world a
25:23
Speaker 1: better place. And those are the people we celebrate. But
25:26
Speaker 1: so oftentimes they had an opportunity to just be done.
25:29
Speaker 1: And yet they stayed accountable to that responsibility. That section
25:33
Speaker 1: of the book was so inspiring to me and brought
25:37
Speaker 1: to mind so many people that I've had the opportunity
25:40
Speaker 1: to work with and work alongside who are just committed
25:44
Speaker 1: to the thing they feel called to do that they
25:46
Speaker 1: don't have to do, but they've again, chosen to stay
25:48
Speaker 1: accountable to it. It's amazing. What else on that?
25:51
Speaker 2: Anything else? So the thing about this notion of the
25:57
Speaker 2: choosing of the responsibilities, I think, first of all, I
26:02
Speaker 2: think it does something very powerful. I'm going to mention
26:04
Speaker 2: two things. One that's not in the book. Okay, so
26:06
Speaker 2: don't let me forget that part because I want to
26:09
Speaker 2: circle back to something.
26:10
Speaker 1: That- Bonus material right here on the podcast.
26:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it'll tie into some of our prior conversations.
26:15
Speaker 2: But one of the things that, I think that choosing
26:17
Speaker 2: responsibility does is it helps you live this thing I
26:20
Speaker 2: wrote about called the Mothershed Mantra, which was this wonderful
26:23
Speaker 2: professor I had when I was in college who was
26:26
Speaker 2: a philosophy professor. And I asked him, you know, I'd
26:29
Speaker 2: like you to look back on your life and just
26:31
Speaker 2: tell me, you know, what are the most important lessons
26:34
Speaker 2: from your life that you give? And And in a
26:37
Speaker 2: very kind way, he said, I reject your question because
26:41
Speaker 2: there's two ways to go through life. One is to
26:44
Speaker 2: be riding on a horse, sitting in the saddle, looking backward.
26:47
Speaker 2: And the other is to go through life, riding on
26:50
Speaker 2: the horse, sitting in the saddle, pointed forward. I'm the second.
26:54
Speaker 2: I have no interest in looking back. And he was
26:57
Speaker 2: already emeritus at this point, but he was as fire
27:00
Speaker 2: filled and just pointed forward as anyone I'd ever met.
27:03
Speaker 2: And that stayed with me. And that's what I think
27:06
Speaker 2: our people in the study did was they just stayed
27:08
Speaker 2: pointed forward in the saddle until they just ran out
27:10
Speaker 2: of road. And the other thing, though, is that I
27:14
Speaker 2: think that how do you do that? I think what
27:16
Speaker 2: choosing responsibilities does, if it's beyond yourself, it spins you
27:21
Speaker 2: forward in the saddle. It's what it does. It's a
27:24
Speaker 2: mechanism for it. Now, here's the bonus thing.
27:27
Speaker 1: That's great insight.
27:28
Speaker 2: Yeah. You and I have talked about something that goes
27:33
Speaker 2: all the way back to good to great, of level
27:35
Speaker 2: five leadership. These leaders who have the personal humility and
27:39
Speaker 2: indomitable will for something that is not about them. And
27:43
Speaker 2: one of the ways that my thinking has evolved over
27:45
Speaker 2: the years, and it really got reinforced in doing this study,
27:49
Speaker 2: is when I first wrote about level five leaders way
27:51
Speaker 2: back in 2001, the first time I wrote about it,
27:55
Speaker 2: coming out of the good to great study, I thought
27:58
Speaker 2: it was such a high standard that I thought maybe...
28:00
Speaker 2: 20% of people could be level five leaders. I now
28:05
Speaker 2: believe that well over 80%. I have evolved to tremendous
28:10
Speaker 2: optimism about people being able to become level five leaders.
28:14
Speaker 2: And I think the reason is because I understand that
28:18
Speaker 2: the catalyst for true level five is asking the question,
28:22
Speaker 2: what responsibilities beyond myself am I going to choose? And
28:27
Speaker 2: that any human can make that choice. It may not
28:30
Speaker 2: be something that the rest of the world can see,
28:33
Speaker 2: or it might be. But the very act of choosing
28:37
Speaker 2: that responsibility, I choose to be responsible for this. It's
28:41
Speaker 2: not about me. Is the level five ultimate simplex step. Wow.
28:47
Speaker 2: And I think that when you think about when people
28:50
Speaker 2: have said, what's the, how do you become level five?
28:52
Speaker 2: I never felt I had a great answer for that.
28:54
Speaker 2: I had some good answers. I think this study gives
28:57
Speaker 2: the answer. It's in chapter 11. Yeah.
29:00
Speaker 1: It's an understanding freedom as the choice of a responsibility
29:04
Speaker 1: that I choose and holding myself accountable to it.
29:06
Speaker 2: That's right. And it's something that still fits your encodings,
29:09
Speaker 2: your giving of your encodings. It feeds your fire. Yeah.
29:13
Speaker 2: And you're choosing it. And it's a real responsibility. That's
29:18
Speaker 2: the path to level.
29:18
Speaker 1: And it's an outward focused responsibility. That's amazing. Okay, now
29:24
Speaker 1: I want to read just a random quote that I
29:26
Speaker 1: love by your wife. This is from Joanne, okay?
29:29
Speaker 2: Yeah.
29:30
Speaker 1: And the reason I love this, I'm going to brag
29:32
Speaker 1: for just a minute. I love this statement. This is
29:33
Speaker 1: what I wrote in my notes. I love this statement
29:35
Speaker 1: from Joanne because I thought I was the only person
29:38
Speaker 1: who thought this way. So I've never said this publicly
29:41
Speaker 1: because I thought I'm probably wrong. But your wife said it,
29:44
Speaker 1: so I'm going to be more bold. Here's what she said.
29:47
Speaker 1: You were talking to her about legacy and why you
29:49
Speaker 1: didn't talk much about legacy and you need to give
29:52
Speaker 1: more thought to legacy. And she said, and I quote,
29:55
Speaker 1: Speaking of legacy, it's a waste of time to think
29:58
Speaker 1: about your legacy or how you want to be remembered,
30:00
Speaker 1: Joanne said. It's self-centric and distracts from doing what's right
30:05
Speaker 1: in front of you. Besides, you won't be here to
30:08
Speaker 1: enjoy it anyway. I think that is so true because
30:13
Speaker 1: when people start thinking about what's my legacy going to be,
30:16
Speaker 1: I'm like, just do what you're supposed to do and
30:20
Speaker 1: let other people determine what you're.
30:22
Speaker 2: I don't know.
30:22
Speaker 1: I just love that. So you can thank her for that.
30:24
Speaker 2: Well, I thank her for that, too, because it was
30:27
Speaker 2: part of spinning around in the saddle to always be
30:31
Speaker 2: looking for it. And there's actually the end of that
30:33
Speaker 2: chapter of choosing responsibility is about the dangerous lure of
30:36
Speaker 2: legacy and all this worry about legacy and what's going
30:38
Speaker 2: to happen after. And actually, one of the things I
30:43
Speaker 2: close that chapter with a paragraph, which is basically like
30:48
Speaker 2: the real questions in front of you are what responsibilities
30:51
Speaker 2: can you choose, even if you receive no credit? What
30:55
Speaker 2: can you help make happen that might not otherwise happen
30:58
Speaker 2: for you? What responsibilities can you choose that fit your encodings?
31:04
Speaker 2: And changing the question from what do you want your
31:07
Speaker 2: legacy to be after you are gone to what responsibilities
31:11
Speaker 2: will you choose right here, right now? With the limited
31:17
Speaker 2: time you have left on this earth.
31:20
Speaker 1: Big questions.
31:21
Speaker 2: And that was Joanne's question. She was like, why would
31:25
Speaker 2: you take your eye off of what's right in front
31:27
Speaker 2: of you?
31:27
Speaker 1: Why would you spin around in the saddle now?
31:30
Speaker 2: Right.
31:31
Speaker 1: I love that. So you brought this up. So you
31:34
Speaker 1: close the book with a series of questions and I
31:37
Speaker 1: work through all of them, as I mentioned earlier, and
31:38
Speaker 1: a couple of them I'm still working through. And I
31:40
Speaker 1: just want to say this again, without going into detail.
31:44
Speaker 1: Two of those questions gave me immediate clarity around a
31:48
Speaker 1: big decision I've been wrestling with. And what it did
31:51
Speaker 1: for me, the question pulled me back into frame because
31:55
Speaker 1: I was trying to solve a problem or answer a
31:57
Speaker 1: question out of frame. And getting back into my frame,
32:02
Speaker 1: I had almost instant clarity about something I was approaching
32:05
Speaker 1: completely wrong. It was that catalytic, that powerful. So I
32:10
Speaker 1: just wanted to say thank you for that. And I'm
32:12
Speaker 1: telling you, for the people who get this book, After
32:15
Speaker 1: reading the book, working through those questions, you're going to
32:17
Speaker 1: walk away with greater clarity, steps to move out of
32:20
Speaker 1: the fog. When cliffs come, you won't be shocked and
32:23
Speaker 1: you won't be knocked out of the saddle to go
32:27
Speaker 1: back to the other metaphor.
32:27
Speaker 2: Well, I think, Andy, I just want to underscore something
32:30
Speaker 2: that you highlight there, which is that, as you mentioned
32:34
Speaker 2: in our very first conversation, this book doesn't give people prescriptions.
32:37
Speaker 2: It has a few cautionary things like don't make big
32:40
Speaker 2: irreversible decisions when you're in the fog and stuff like that.
32:44
Speaker 2: But It doesn't end with a bunch of like, okay,
32:47
Speaker 2: now here are the 10 steps or anything like that. Right. Basically,
32:50
Speaker 2: it gives you questions that flow from the research. And interestingly,
32:56
Speaker 2: what I hope is in some ways people, that the
32:59
Speaker 2: questions even received into the background, that what really happens is,
33:03
Speaker 2: is that they wrestled with them. Yep. And that then
33:06
Speaker 2: maybe ultimately they had conversations with people they love about them.
33:11
Speaker 1: That's why I love the fact that Sandra... is reading.
33:15
Speaker 1: In fact, she'll finish up the book probably the next
33:17
Speaker 1: couple of days because she started a couple of days
33:19
Speaker 1: behind me. That's why I love the fact she's reading
33:21
Speaker 1: this book with me, that we've been able to talk
33:24
Speaker 1: through it. And so many of the concepts and the terminology,
33:27
Speaker 1: you've created some terminology about things everybody's experienced. But if
33:31
Speaker 1: you don't have terminology, you can't talk about it with
33:33
Speaker 1: somebody else. You've given us some phrases and some concepts
33:37
Speaker 1: and terminology. I think we're going to carry with us
33:39
Speaker 1: probably through the rest of our marriage in this book
33:42
Speaker 1: because they've, they've been so catalytic and they're so memorable,
33:45
Speaker 1: which makes them portable. We'll carry them along with us.
33:48
Speaker 1: Any last things you want to say before we wrap
33:50
Speaker 1: this up?
33:50
Speaker 2: Just, I would love to express my gratitude to you
33:54
Speaker 2: for one, really engaging with the book itself. And as you,
33:59
Speaker 2: you know, you've written many books yourself and you know
34:02
Speaker 2: that the ultimate currency is about having wonderful readers who
34:07
Speaker 2: are The book becomes theirs. At this point, it's your
34:11
Speaker 2: book and it's not my book. It's your book. And
34:14
Speaker 2: as somebody who spent all these years on that, it
34:16
Speaker 2: gives me tremendous satisfaction that you engage so richly with it.
34:21
Speaker 2: And that's what I really, really hope is that people
34:25
Speaker 2: engage and have conversations. I intend to be going for
34:29
Speaker 2: many more years. I'm 68.
34:31
Speaker 1: Right.
34:31
Speaker 2: So I'm a little past my warm up. I guess
34:33
Speaker 2: I'm into the full force now. And I'll have other questions,
34:37
Speaker 2: I am sure, that will eventually reach me. But with
34:40
Speaker 2: this one, if by some strange reason this ended up
34:45
Speaker 2: being the last thing I ever did, which I fully
34:47
Speaker 2: don't expect that to be, I've got great health. But
34:50
Speaker 2: if it did, I'd feel like it had been a really,
34:52
Speaker 2: really worthy one to end with. Wow. And I really
34:55
Speaker 2: want to share it with people. And then, of course,
34:59
Speaker 2: I'll extend out and circle back to what comes next,
35:01
Speaker 2: whatever that next big question will be.
35:03
Speaker 1: Wow. That's amazing. The book is What to Make of
35:07
Speaker 1: a Life by Jim Collins. And if you aren't already
35:11
Speaker 1: convinced that you need to pick it up, just go
35:14
Speaker 1: get the book. Download it however you get your book.
35:16
Speaker 1: Sandra and I always read on a Kindle now because
35:19
Speaker 1: we can mark it. We can notate it. We can
35:21
Speaker 1: word search it. So anyway, we love this book. Jim,
35:24
Speaker 1: thank you so much for giving us this much time
35:27
Speaker 1: to our podcast listeners. Thank you so much for listening.
35:30
Speaker 1: Before we leave, we do have one ask, and that
35:32
Speaker 1: is to subscribe to the podcast. If you subscribe, you
35:35
Speaker 1: allow us to continue to grow the audience, which allows
35:38
Speaker 1: us to keep improving and bringing you great guests like
35:41
Speaker 1: the one we've had for the last two episodes. Also,
35:44
Speaker 1: be sure to visit the andystanley.com website where you can
35:47
Speaker 1: download the Leadership Podcast application guide that includes a summary
35:51
Speaker 1: of this discussion, plus some questions for reflection, either for
35:54
Speaker 1: you individually or or for your team and join us
35:57
Speaker 1: next week for our reverb episode, where Susie and I
36:00
Speaker 1: will dig even deeper on this topic on the Andy
36:04
Speaker 1: Stanley leadership podcast.