Latest / The Action Catalyst / Brave Together, with Chris Deaver (Leadership, Culture, Teamwork, Collaboration)

Transcript

Brave Together, with Chris Deaver (Leadership, Culture, Teamwork, Collaboration) · The Action Catalyst

• 0:00
  Adam Outland: Hello, Action Aatalyst listeners. This is Adam
• 0:03
  Outland. Today's guest is Chris Deaver, co founder of BraveCore,
• 0:36
  helping leaders be more creative and creatives be better leaders,
• 0:40
  with time spent at Apple, Disney Dell and working alongside
• 0:44
  Stephen Covey. Deaver brings his experiences together in the book
• 0:48
  brave together, which we'll dive into today. Chris, great to meet
• 0:51
  you.
• 0:52
  Chris Deaver: Likewise. Thanks, Adam.
• 0:53
  Adam Outland: Are you in West Coast?
• 0:55
  Chris Deaver: I'm in the Bay Area. So San Jose, south part of
• 0:58
  it a little town called Gilroy that's the garlic capital of the
• 1:01
  world. Garlic capital of worlds. Yeah, that's our claim at least
• 1:05
  and I can vouch for the garlic fries. But the garlic ice cream
• 1:08
  don't don't ask me about anything good to say so.
• 1:11
  Adam Outland: Oh, man. Well, I'd actually love to start maybe a
• 1:14
  little bit earlier in life was a your one of your first
• 1:17
  professional experiences to work with Stephen Covey back in the
• 1:21
  day.
• 1:22
  Chris Deaver: Yeah, yeah, that was my kind of dream. I listened
• 1:26
  to the audio, his audio tape of the seven habits. I had I had a
• 1:29
  Walkman. So this this'll date me, you know, Sony. It was a
• 1:33
  classic. And I'd go for a jog or run and, and I had his the set
• 1:37
  of habits tape. And I just listened to it constantly. To
• 1:40
  the point that it literally broke, I think was like 1000
• 1:42
  times. And I just couldn't get enough. I thought this is the
• 1:45
  coolest thing. You know, it's about principles. It's
• 1:48
  inspiring. And it translates into business and personal
• 1:52
  development. And I thought that's, that's, that's where I
• 1:54
  want to be. I want to be in that space. So fast forward, I had
• 1:58
  the chance to connect with, with Steven himself. He's, he's I was
• 2:03
  at BYU. And He has connections there and lived in Provo. So,
• 2:06
  you know, it all kind of happened just, I guess I say
• 2:09
  randomly. I was very intentional. But it was it was
• 2:12
  kind of a backdoor in his son had a, like a network marketing
• 2:16
  business meeting at his house. And my friend said, Hey, this is
• 2:19
  your chance. I said, I don't know, interested in signing up
• 2:22
  for some random thing. And he goes, No, but it's at Steven
• 2:24
  Kelly's house. It's like, okay, so cool. So I ended up walking
• 2:28
  up the stairs, nice big house. And, and I looked down the
• 2:31
  hallway I see is bald guy. I'm like, that's well, you know,
• 2:35
  older guy thought there's only one of those around here. But
• 2:38
  I'm not going to chase him in his own house. That's a lock
• 2:40
  word, right? So I kind of stepped towards the door or the
• 2:43
  front door and I and I look at a garage, he pops out of the
• 2:46
  garage, I think his wife, he and his wife go to a Christmas party
• 2:48
  or something. So he's putting gifts in the car. And I walk
• 2:51
  over and I just thought, okay, now's my chance. And I said,
• 2:54
  Hey, you know, Steven, I really appreciated your books. But you
• 2:59
  know, I've made a difference in my life. And he looks me in the
• 3:01
  eyes really deeply. He goes, we've met before. And I said, I
• 3:06
  feel like I have I you know, I read your books that much. I
• 3:09
  feel like I know you. And he goes, No, we've met before. And
• 3:12
  you know, oddly enough, I had a, I had a dream years before about
• 3:15
  estimating. And I don't know, you know, sometimes these things
• 3:17
  just happen for a reason. He just connect. But from there, we
• 3:20
  had him come speak at an event. And we started as we were doing
• 3:25
  this mentoring nonprofit, he said, I'll be your PR agent
• 3:28
  started spreading the word. And he adores our work. And it was
• 3:31
  great. I learned a lot from him. You know, one of the things he
• 3:34
  said, that's always stuck with me, and I'm striving to work on
• 3:37
  to this day. He said, You know, we have two ears and one mouth,
• 3:41
  and it's the right proportion. For listening. So, so my
• 3:46
  introductory work with Covey.
• 3:48
  Adam Outland: Yeah. I mean, how much of that influence? Do you
• 3:50
  feel like carried over to what you do today with BraveCore? And
• 3:54
  you know, the book that you wrote, Brave Together?
• 3:57
  Chris Deaver: I think there's a lot of inherent wisdom in
• 4:00
  questions. And I think especially needed in the world
• 4:04
  today. Right? We're inundated with answers. You know, Google
• 4:08
  is like every tool has answers right? Spitting out an answer
• 4:12
  for us. And we have to kind of cut through this noise. And then
• 4:16
  when our in our interactions with others. This is something
• 4:21
  that both Covey I worked, I had the chance to be at Apple and
• 4:27
  Steve Jobs would would do this in meetings, he listened a lot.
• 4:30
  He would pivot and start to disagree with himself at times.
• 4:34
  And, you know, people would get confused by this. Your CEO, like
• 4:38
  you had a position and he say, well, now this this, this answer
• 4:41
  is better. Right? So a 180. And that's the power of listening.
• 4:46
  Ed Catmull. He started Pixar. Also. His dilemma was he's
• 4:50
  really smart guy had PhD and he said when it early days of the
• 4:54
  company, he would just answer fire off answers to questions
• 4:58
  everybody had, you know, we had the chance to meet with him, and
• 5:01
  we thought this is he's the Yoda right of creativity and
• 5:05
  principles, you know, creativity, Inc, that has, you
• 5:08
  know, has a cabbie flavor to it. But it's, um, it's specific to
• 5:10
  Pixar is principles of their culture, right? And so we
• 5:13
  thought, well, this guy's Yoda, we're gonna click the wisdom
• 5:16
  button, and he's just gonna dispense, you know, the wisdom.
• 5:19
  And he didn't. So we ended up sitting there, my friend, co
• 5:23
  author and I, and we're just sharing, and he's listening and
• 5:27
  asking really great questions. This goes on for 1520, maybe 30
• 5:31
  minutes. And at one point, I'm thinking, wow, this, okay. This
• 5:34
  it was it was an interesting dynamic. So I paused, I said,
• 5:37
  Ed, what's your leadership philosophy? And he said that, he
• 5:40
  said, I lead with the question. And I think as we come upon this
• 5:44
  time, especially, you know, all these technologies, AI, you
• 5:48
  know, all these tools and things that are coming at us? Well,
• 5:52
  there's a unique opportunity to unlock the power of questions.
• 5:57
  And you know, at Pixar, Ed and team, they would send out a
• 6:00
  question a week in advance, so rather than an agenda, they
• 6:03
  would send out a question, to just let that marinate creates
• 6:06
  that space, you know, there's much more anchoring power in
• 6:09
  questions.
• 6:10
  Adam Outland: Yeah, it's actually harder to come up with
• 6:12
  the right questions first, than to work on the answers. Right?
• 6:15
  Chris Deaver: Definitely. But yeah, the feeling and definitely
• 6:18
  the business world, you know, to this day, it's a struggle or to
• 6:21
  wrestle is, you know, we call it in the book, the expert model,
• 6:25
  right? There's an expert model of, you know, it's a temptation
• 6:28
  to kind of show up and say, dump expertise, put answers, you
• 6:33
  know, kind of pour answers into people or into the conversation.
• 6:36
  And, you know, and in a world where there are so many answers,
• 6:41
  it does beg that question of, well, how do we create? How do
• 6:44
  we unlock the space for people to be brave? I saw this at Apple
• 6:48
  where you had, you know, people that had written white papers
• 6:51
  that like nobody else had done it, right, their whole PhD was
• 6:53
  about this technical aspect of something. And yet, they would
• 6:57
  come to the table with kind of egos off the table, a humility
• 7:01
  to the universe, an unanswered question, right, that they had
• 7:05
  to kind of come together to pull something out of the ether with
• 7:10
  a belief that that could happen. And it's something that didn't
• 7:13
  exist prior to that meeting, that they were bringing their
• 7:17
  perspective and others were bringing theirs, but that the
• 7:19
  magic would happen. And it essentially something that it
• 7:23
  would be a revelation.
• 7:25
  Adam Outland: And you had such a career, you know, being senior
• 7:28
  HR leadership at Walt Disney and Apple. And as a teenager in high
• 7:32
  school, like, how much of this did you predict who's going to
• 7:34
  be your life path?
• 7:36
  Chris Deaver: I was just trying to make it through in a survive.
• 7:39
  Yeah, I mean, I think I don't know that I imagined Exactly.
• 7:42
  This course. I know. I knew something about, I enjoyed
• 7:46
  creativity. I also would find myself in those places thinking
• 7:50
  kind of commercially or about the business world. And you
• 7:53
  know, behind all this in the background, my foundation had
• 7:57
  started I'd say, really, my dad was a Scoutmaster. So the Boy
• 8:00
  Scout program for ever. And I just started, you know, I begged
• 8:05
  to go on these big trips, but you know, 50 mile hikes and
• 8:08
  these things were, I didn't realize at the time, but I'm
• 8:11
  observing a version of leadership among these kids who
• 8:15
  are like trying to figure this out, and they have these
• 8:17
  responsibilities a patrol leader, go build it, you know,
• 8:20
  put a tent together, go find, you know, make a fire and, and
• 8:23
  all the messiness of that. And, you know, my dad, he was pretty
• 8:26
  good at like, just okay, go figure it out. The other dynamic
• 8:29
  that happened for me was, I was on an achievement orientation
• 8:32
  path. You know, I did everything to get Eagle Scout at 12. I, you
• 8:36
  know, it was in the grades. And even in college, I studied
• 8:39
  animation at BYU, who is a precursor to them becoming, you
• 8:43
  know, they're, they're recognized now is really the,
• 8:46
  you know, one of the best in the world is that, but this is like
• 8:48
  the first class, but I got there and I wrote a letter to Roy
• 8:50
  Disney, I wanted to work at Disney. And I get a call from a
• 8:54
  recruiter, I didn't know this is gonna happen three or four
• 8:56
  months later, I forgot about the letter. But, uh, this recruiter
• 8:59
  calls and says, Hey, this is Lisa, your ROI said to talk to
• 9:02
  you. And, you know, there's like pixie dust flying everywhere.
• 9:06
  This is I've wished upon a star. It's actually happening, right?
• 9:09
  And all those things, all those achievements in my life, it all
• 9:13
  led to this moment, right? It was the weirdest thing to
• 9:16
  actually have my heart override this, where I said, thank you.
• 9:22
  And I didn't hang up the phone. It was an existential moment
• 9:25
  that I realized, hey, right company. It's part of a dream,
• 9:29
  but that's not right now, it's not what you need. And it was a
• 9:33
  shock to my system. Yeah. Well, I didn't understand it at the
• 9:35
  time. I didn't understand it. But what I'll say is, hey,
• 9:38
  achievement is great. You know, we all have a baseline of fear,
• 9:41
  right? Conscious subconscious, in work or life. And it may be
• 9:46
  the territories that are new for us that were are unexplored,
• 9:49
  some unknown, right, we're at and this happens on a daily
• 9:51
  basis. It's like, I don't know what's gonna happen with this.
• 9:54
  Sometimes it's financial. You know, Maslow's kind of
• 9:56
  hierarchy. And it's like, well, I don't know how I'm going to
• 9:58
  make that work. Yeah, we break Gotta that by being brave, and
• 10:01
  in the achievement world that can turn into hacks and hustles.
• 10:04
  And just optimization of what, how good can we get. But what I
• 10:09
  learned and what the focus of this book is, is that there's a
• 10:13
  higher order approach, which is being brave together. And that
• 10:17
  when we unlock that shared dream, or shared future, just
• 10:20
  magic happens.
• 10:22
  Adam Outland: Yeah. So obviously, you had some self
• 10:23
  belief and self confidence and your value and your worth to
• 10:27
  existentially say that that wasn't the right time. But where
• 10:31
  do you feel like you've developed your self worth and
• 10:33
  value to teach this? Like, where did that come from?
• 10:37
  Chris Deaver: That's a great question. It's really a great
• 10:39
  question. I think it's an eighth. I mean, I think we had
• 10:42
  great parents, I love a lot of grandparents, people have been
• 10:46
  encouraging my life. And my dad was an engineer. And it's his
• 10:50
  credit. The other thing that he would do, it was very co
• 10:53
  creative. I didn't know at the time, but you know, I'd have an
• 10:56
  idea for something. And these are crazy ideas. Like, I build a
• 10:58
  Spider Man suit I want I want to create a, you know, a
• 11:01
  hovercraft. And you know, it's easy for a dad to blow that off,
• 11:05
  you're like, Okay, or just, Oh, that's nice, you know, but you
• 11:07
  actually sit with me, and start to design, whatever it was. And
• 11:12
  actually, we'd start to build those things. So it became real,
• 11:16
  and it became experience where it's like, wow, you can actually
• 11:18
  come up with a thought start to shape it together and bring it
• 11:21
  to life.
• 11:22
  Adam Outland: So there's, there's some good parenting
• 11:23
  wisdom in that too, for all the parents listening, do do stuff
• 11:27
  with your kids, because it makes a tremendous impact.
• 11:31
  Chris Deaver: I think so, I think for leaders too, and
• 11:33
  managers is we have this dilemma, where we look at it as
• 11:37
  such a box of employer employee. And then that's so easy when we
• 11:42
  think in those terms, right. Like Covey would say, you got to
• 11:44
  change people's behavior, change their perception of their role,
• 11:48
  right. But so often, this employer employee relationship,
• 11:51
  in our minds dictates that, well, we got to behave, then
• 11:55
  it's very kind of disciplinary or performance oriented, and
• 11:58
  results based, which just honing in on orientation only or
• 12:03
  achievement only, it doesn't really motivate or inspire. But
• 12:07
  it begs the question of what if, right, the what if is, what if
• 12:11
  leaders? What if managers saw themselves as CO creators? What
• 12:15
  if they saw their employees as CO creators? And so when they
• 12:18
  have those ideas, and one of the best leaders that I ever had, he
• 12:21
  would say, what if you're in my shoes for a day? Like, what
• 12:24
  would you do? He really honestly wanted to know, you know, and
• 12:27
  usually, it's something I was trying to, I was wrestling with,
• 12:29
  I'd say, Well, this, what I'm trying to figure out, I solve it
• 12:32
  this way. And then he starts to take that idea in the air and
• 12:34
  just start to shape it with me. And then he would go that
• 12:37
  direction and say, let's do that. And that well, really,
• 12:41
  that's the simplicity. And the power of co creation.
• 12:45
  Adam Outland: Reminds me of the principle of buy in, right? Like
• 12:47
  you take that approach to organizational leadership. And a
• 12:52
  powerful vision is a shared vision. And so you're equipping
• 12:55
  people to have their fingerprints on whatever it is
• 12:58
  that's being done. And so the buy in is going to be infinitely
• 13:01
  higher. Definitely, one of your co creation principles is
• 13:05
  turning pain into power.
• 13:08
  Chris Deaver: I think that one more than any other was most
• 13:11
  applicable. You know, the world teaches a lot that, you know, no
• 13:14
  pain, no gain. And I think that fits into kind of the brave,
• 13:16
  alone category. And I say, there's nothing wrong with it.
• 13:20
  Well, that could lead to burnout. And I think we've seen
• 13:23
  that right in the pandemic, and some of the fallout from that
• 13:26
  and where people have readjusted their lives. But yeah, more
• 13:29
  specifically for me, if I were to pick a company that really
• 13:33
  had the pain, I mean, I showed up at Dell, and I was fresh off
• 13:36
  my you know, my get my MBA out of that mentoring network. And
• 13:40
  this was before Disney or Apple I, as far as business
• 13:44
  professional context. I wanted to go to those companies. But
• 13:47
  you know, they didn't give me the time of day or my dream
• 13:48
  list. So I I kind of shelf that I thought you know, what's
• 13:51
  available. You know, and Dell is a big company, they'd had some
• 13:57
  success. Of course, I didn't know, I got an organization
• 14:00
  that's about 2008, give or take, and the three or four VPS SVPs
• 14:04
  that hired me they were gone in three or four months, there was
• 14:07
  constant rounds of layoffs happening every three to four to
• 14:10
  six months, massive, and the stock price tanked down to like
• 14:15
  a quarter of what it was been. Dell had had grown in numbers as
• 14:19
  over the prior year, years before that, as far as business
• 14:23
  and growth with the PC, direct model. But what what has started
• 14:27
  to happen was that it got deteriorated as other companies
• 14:29
  like Apple took that approach. You know, I show up there and
• 14:32
  I'm asking all these existential questions, I realized, like,
• 14:35
  wow, this company's got some problems. But what I also
• 14:37
  realized was, to Dells credit, what they're good at and what
• 14:40
  Michael is particularly good at, is being extremely resilient,
• 14:44
  and extremely open to even criticism, right. And so I
• 14:49
  formed a team. And we started to look at these questions and
• 14:52
  wrestle with what does this mean as it relates to a hopeful
• 14:56
  future, and if there is a hopeful future for Dell How do
• 15:00
  you start to build that? And what are the elements required
• 15:04
  for us to get there? And so when we looked at holistically at
• 15:06
  what direct model, as a business model had met, it turned into a
• 15:10
  leadership model at Dell. So we had to empower innovation, they
• 15:14
  had to approach going back to the lead with the question. And
• 15:16
  so we realized that there has to be a shift here and the pain so
• 15:19
  that was the pain, right? Talk about pain, it's like, oh, my
• 15:22
  gosh, like, this is existential, the sky is falling, we may not
• 15:25
  have a Dell right and a few years. And so this team, we
• 15:29
  started to shape what that future could be, you know, they
• 15:32
  wanted they had a target, it wanted to be $200 billion
• 15:34
  company. So this isn't going to happen. If we have this the
• 15:38
  state of flow that we have, we have to shift how the culture
• 15:42
  operates. And to ground that in an anchoring question. We
• 15:47
  positioned this as what we call the Connect model, which was
• 15:50
  empowering innovation. Listen first. And, you know, keep those
• 15:54
  things at work, right? Keep execution. That's good, right?
• 15:57
  But do it in a contextual way that's with others. And think of
• 16:01
  it as a platform, right? How do you connect dots with each other
• 16:05
  as a leader, right in your teams, and then also with
• 16:07
  partnerships, I said, this word of Michael. And long story
• 16:11
  short, I show up in my manager's office, and she's like, what was
• 16:15
  this email to Michael? And I said, Well, he was in all hands.
• 16:19
  He said, He wants ideas, right? We're struggling, we're, you
• 16:21
  know, we have some challenges as a company. And he asked for
• 16:23
  ideas. And she goes, Well, you know, they say that sometimes.
• 16:26
  But yeah, they don't really, I took them out in his word. You
• 16:28
  know, the next day, Michael at 5am, sends a response. And he
• 16:32
  says, huge respect for this initiative. What are the next
• 16:36
  steps? We started a think tank called game changers, where they
• 16:40
  would submit ideas kind of Shark Tank type experience. And
• 16:44
  billion dollar ideas came out of this people that had just been
• 16:47
  in the company, not nobody asked, right? Nobody ever asked
• 16:50
  like, Hey, do you think you could build something else? So
• 16:53
  mobile app emerged out of this billion dollar idea, other
• 16:55
  things, and the what happened was the culture started to
• 16:58
  shift, they were able to turn that pain into the power and it
• 17:02
  took a collective approach to do it. It was shared.
• 17:05
  Adam Outland: True North is one of your other principles. I feel
• 17:08
  that what you meant by that, I think is the alignment once
• 17:12
  you've uncovered and hopefully discovered the principles,
• 17:15
  right, you know, how do you help put the guardrails on on
• 17:19
  meetings and conversations? How do you put the kind of the
• 17:21
  bumper lanes in place so that people stay ahead of the general
• 17:25
  right direction?
• 17:26
  Chris Deaver: Yeah, I think as is just a practical question,
• 17:30
  you share principles. First Principles are key, right? We
• 17:33
  talk about landing a rocket right from the moon, back to
• 17:38
  Earth. And, you know, it's not just a matter of like, hey,
• 17:41
  let's just, you know, throw some materials, aluminum or this or
• 17:44
  that. Right. And it's, you know, we have to figure what are the,
• 17:46
  what are the first principles, what gravity is always key
• 17:50
  elements. And I think building intention into things like
• 17:53
  meetings into one on one conversations, and it doesn't
• 17:57
  have to be all mapped out, right, where we have it all
• 17:59
  buttoned up, and, you know, make it a show, it's, you know, the
• 18:05
  first principles could be shared wisdom, right, which is leading
• 18:09
  with the question deep empathy, right, which has to do with
• 18:13
  another principle, ours make others the mission. But these
• 18:15
  kinds of things that help set the course. And I think more
• 18:19
  specifically for meetings is allowing space for brave
• 18:23
  conversations to happen. Or you could call it brave space where
• 18:27
  people feel inclined to share and that they're not punished
• 18:32
  overtly, you know, or, in a subtle way, right? That they
• 18:36
  feel genuinely like, why I can shoot, you know, because that's
• 18:39
  where the, that's where the goodness is where it's a bit
• 18:42
  messy. Scott Belsky, he's the head of Adobe chief product
• 18:46
  officer, you know, he talks about being on the edge of
• 18:48
  reason, as a collective group, right. And, you know, and I
• 18:52
  think what he's expressing is, so we have to kind of be in a,
• 18:56
  in a bit of a fuzzy call it an art zone, that we haven't been
• 18:59
  as much in if we speak traditionally, about how
• 19:02
  business or leadership has operated the past or culture,
• 19:05
  right, a lot of has been very oriented toward a scientific,
• 19:09
  you know, have the answers approach, efficiency,
• 19:12
  effectiveness. But this is where that wave of co creation, it's
• 19:16
  not only possible it actually if you look at a company like Nike,
• 19:19
  right, we've spent a little time we spent time with with them.
• 19:22
  And you could actually chart this based on the data as to the
• 19:27
  difference between their investment in culture, and it's
• 19:29
  in the investment and the things that we're talking about, which
• 19:31
  is, okay, so practically speaking about meetings, give
• 19:35
  people five to 10 minutes to check in. Right. And it could be
• 19:38
  the one on one meeting or in that group meeting. And it's a
• 19:41
  small thing, right? Maybe it's a 10 or 15 to 20% investment of
• 19:46
  time, but what we see is, if you look at the comparative
• 19:49
  performance between Nike, and and we've charted this based on
• 19:52
  both internal culture and external perception of culture,
• 19:56
  so we partnered with a company called Varuvai. And they
• 19:59
  actually He shared this with customers and asked him the
• 20:01
  question is how much belonging do you feel with your shoes
• 20:05
  right or with your, your, the products you use, and then they
• 20:08
  can gauge essentially our external culture, right impact
• 20:12
  of and so with Nike, the difference between them and
• 20:14
  ASICs and Skechers and other brands is not just like 3x or
• 20:18
  4x. It's 10x difference as far as performance, but based on
• 20:21
  just like a 15 to 20% consistent investment in culture. And then
• 20:27
  also with the first principles we talked about before, they're
• 20:29
  very clear. There's actually a guy named Rob, I forget his last
• 20:32
  name. But when they were early making CEO Phil Knight, they're
• 20:35
  doing their thing business wise. And Rob, just one day starts to
• 20:38
  intuit these principles about Nikes future you may you
• 20:40
  probably seen these online, but he starts posting on people's
• 20:43
  doors. And this historian of Nike asked you whenever asked,
• 20:46
  he was like, was this real? Like, dude, like it? Well? Was
• 20:50
  it just robbing Rob? Or was it like, something that was
• 20:52
  meaningful? And people started confirming? They said, Yeah, he
• 20:56
  actually intuited what the first principle and you could say the
• 20:59
  first principles of their future culture. That's it's a little
• 21:02
  interstellar of us right to go there. But that idea that like,
• 21:06
  the your future, self, but the future self of the culture, but
• 21:09
  those are powerful for grounding people. And it's obvious, I
• 21:12
  mean, Nike success explains a lot, right? We did that kind of
• 21:16
  work at Apple as well. And it was not a fixer upper, there was
• 21:18
  not as much pain, as with the Dell experience. But there's It
• 21:22
  was simple, it was like, Hey, we have pain points, when we go New
• 21:25
  Territories, AirPods, Apple, watch the VR headset with Apple,
• 21:32
  literally, the secret lab was right next door to my office.
• 21:34
  And so I see people go in and come out really excited. And
• 21:38
  these are things that that occasionally get friction, right
• 21:42
  or struggles. But the challenge for Apple was how do we go from
• 21:45
  thinking different, and that could be any extreme, that could
• 21:48
  be an individual approach to really working different
• 21:51
  together, and connecting dots horizontally as well as
• 21:55
  vertically? And to their credit, they, you know, took it to the
• 21:59
  next level.
• 22:01
  Adam Outland: Absolutely. A lot of things that are occurring to
• 22:02
  me while you're talking about the side camera, what book I
• 22:05
  read, but it was, you know, more philosophical in nature and
• 22:08
  discussed, you know, that one of the unique traits of human
• 22:10
  beings that separated us from animals in the beginning was our
• 22:14
  ability to create things that didn't already exist in nature,
• 22:17
  like the earliest forms of art that we find are things that,
• 22:21
  you know, depicted things that didn't really exist yet. And
• 22:24
  that that's, you know, one of our our abilities is to create
• 22:29
  things that don't already exist. And so having almost like a
• 22:32
  disincentive, sometimes incentives get us really
• 22:34
  channeled towards one way of thinking and limit our
• 22:38
  creativity to solve problems. And so being careful of the
• 22:41
  incentives you put in an organization that might stifle
• 22:45
  the creativity for the future, right.
• 22:48
  Chris Deaver: That too, you know, and it could be, are there
• 22:50
  ways to tie this to a team success, right to the impact
• 22:55
  that the team is having? And we've seen that I've seen this
• 22:59
  work really well, when they can, you know, IT companies could
• 23:02
  solve for a reward system that it does both? Right? It's an
• 23:06
  answer. If you look at Apple, it's teamwork, innovation, and
• 23:10
  results. Those things are all important. The tension that lies
• 23:13
  between them is it's a good ecosystem.
• 23:16
  Adam Outland: You know, I always love asking guests, you've had a
• 23:19
  life of experience and you've isolated in some cases, some of
• 23:23
  these principles that you personally and and put into
• 23:26
  motion over your career. You know, some of them you've
• 23:28
  learned along the way what what advice would you give to the 21
• 23:32
  year old Chris Deaver, knowing everything that you've known
• 23:34
  now?
• 23:35
  Chris Deaver: Well, I'll caveat that with, I share some advice
• 23:37
  with my son occasionally. And I went to I went on a coaching
• 23:41
  spree with him one time, it's like 45 minutes of like, just
• 23:44
  heavy coaching related to stuff, you know, and it was emotional.
• 23:47
  There were some things going on with his life. But he's a great
• 23:50
  kid. So we end off and I, we hug each other. I tell him, I love
• 23:54
  him. I go to my room. He comes back later, he knocks on the
• 23:57
  door. And he's like, Hey, can you coach my friends? And I
• 24:00
  said, I don't know. I said, why? And he goes, Well, they were
• 24:03
  listening to the whole thing. Like, what? He's like, Yeah,
• 24:06
  yeah, there it is air pods in. And they were listening,
• 24:09
  apparently. Really, because there was a lot of like, Oh,
• 24:12
  he's a personnel but it was, you know, it was some serious stuff.
• 24:16
  And I said, Oh, it did keep it posted next time. I'm on you
• 24:19
  know, on a live mic?
• 24:20
  Adam Outland: You're being live-streamed to TikTok.
• 24:23
  Chris Deaver: Exactly. But yeah, finding I mean, I would say
• 24:25
  like, largely, it'd be like, keep going, right? Sometimes the
• 24:29
  struggles that we see feel so overwhelming. I mean, there's so
• 24:32
  much going on, right where they could feel like, where's my
• 24:35
  place in the world? I keep thinking gotta go back in my
• 24:38
  mind to like Walt Disney when he was younger. He would go to the
• 24:42
  train station in Kansas City and or Missouri, and the one to La
• 24:45
  he'd stand there and he thought all my dreams, somebody else's
• 24:49
  dealing, like it's already been done. And that was his that was
• 24:52
  his like, call it a pre regret or a feeling of just, you know,
• 24:56
  kind of that pain, right? And now he turned that pain into
• 24:59
  power. But I think that's I think part of it is is like
• 25:02
  don't get discouraged. We have a mental health crisis. But to
• 25:05
  simplify it down and boil it down, I'd say, find a way to,
• 25:08
  yes, be successful, but also to create shared dreams, right?
• 25:12
  It's not just a dream board. It's a shared dream board. How
• 25:15
  do you be brave, you know, with those you love. And like Charlie
• 25:18
  Munger talks about this, Warren Buffett, and they're a classic
• 25:22
  example. Like they've been brave together for a long time. And
• 25:25
  it's just, it's unbelievable, right? The results they get from
• 25:29
  that, just imagine what you can do. Right with in building with
• 25:32
  others. I think that's something to you know, we haven't explored
• 25:36
  it enough on the educational front, we have not explored
• 25:39
  enough on the business front personal level that will unlock
• 25:42
  so many things in your world. It will unlock your dreams and
• 25:45
  accelerate and amplify things like you wouldn't believe. It's
• 25:49
  just amazing.
• 25:50
  Adam Outland: Yeah, I really appreciate the conversation for
• 25:52
  people to dive deeper into this they can read your book brave
• 25:55
  together, lead by design, spark creativity and shape the future
• 25:59
  with the power of co creation. Love it. Any other direction you
• 26:03
  want to point our listeners to for resources.
• 26:05
  Chris Deaver: Yeah, thanks. I just add a website BraveCore.co
• 26:08
  We've got a lot of resources on there and, you know, content
• 26:12
  that can help power what you're doing.
• 26:15
  Adam Outland: Yeah, thank you for this great conversation. A
• 26:17
  lot of a lot of wisdom.
• 26:18
  Chris Deaver: Thank you, Adam. I've enjoyed it been fun.