Leadership, The Glue for Your Business

And then I'm goingto share my screen.Let's test up.And with this play now,you guys can see this,I believe this iscalled 140 three,and we are wrapping up themulti-part call series on justthe business fundamentals.We kicked off and I'll giveyou a recap a little bit,but this episode or this callis going to be about leadership,and it's a lofty word.I don't reallyknow what it means,so it's going to be abit of an explorationto figure this out together.OK, quickly.Recap here we had gone throughmarketing and sales and pricingon one call, and thenboth Matthew and Bentalked about differentlevels of operations,how they manage content,how they manage teams,and how we deal withthe back end stuff.Now based on someof the feedbackthat I got from you guys.You want more tacticalstuff from Ben,so I think we need tocircle back with himand get a little bit more.I don't think he was prepared,given enough advance noticethat he was running the calls.For some reason, hedidn't read his messages.So I think next time it wouldbe even more jam packed.So the last fifth ofthe puzzle or the piehere is theleadership component.So I want to kick this off byasking you guys this question.I want us to think aboutit for a little bit.It's a rhetoricalquestion, but whenwe go into thebreakout sessions,I want you to talkwith your team membersto see what answersyou come up with.And so let's talk about this.What is effectiveleadership and how is itdifferent than management?And there's clearly a differenceand we'll talk about that.So what I want todo is to switch backto a breakout group,and I want youto think about this question,this question right here.What is effectiveleadership and how is itdifferent than management?So if you need to screencapture this or write this down,that's your prompt.And then when you gointo your breakout room,here's what I'mthinking a lot of timeswhen we talk aboutthings in the abstract,they may or may notsound good or bad,but if we can identify maybea person that we look up toand you don't all have toagree, you guys can justdetermine one and try to breakdown the characteristics,the traits that they have thatmakes them a great leader.Now we haven't read thebiographies on anybody yet.I don't think inpreparation for this call.So just do your best.You can poke around on theinternet, you can researchor you can just discussand your impressionof what a great leaderis might actuallybe even better than whatthe real traits are.It gives us somethingto aspire to.So we don't do this forabout five minutes or so.OK, so I'm going to stopthe share right now.And when I switch tothe breakout room,if I can do this right, soI'm going to just randomlythrow you guys in a group.So there's 42 of us.I'm thinking groups of four, sowe'll create 10 breakout rooms.And for whatever reason,if you can't join one,you get kicked out.Just come back and I'llreassign you to another group.OK, everybody cool with that.Does anybody have any questionsbefore we do the breakouts?Now, it'll be reallyimportant once we start,once you're in your group,just mind your time,five minutes come backbecause I can't move onunless everybody's back.Ok?any questions?What is an effectiveleader and how is itdifferent than management?How's leadershipdifferent than management?Identify somebody in your mind.Talk about it.Get some kind of agreement.I would only spendthe first few secondstalking about who it might be.If you get somekind of consensus,move forward and try to identifywhat traits they exhibit.What do they do?What can you see from afar,not what's in their mind?Like, what can you see?What do you assume to be true?All right.So we going to dothe breakout roomand I will create 11 roomshere because we have 43 people.So it's going to assign you guysautomatically, you guys ready.Here we go.Good luck, everybody.Go join your rooms.See, in five minutes.Have fun.Randi?David.Did you guys not getput at room, randy?A unmute yourself.Can you hear me, Ican hear you now.Did you not get in a room?Know what's going on.I'm going to assignyou to room 10.OK all right.Thanks Pottery teacher.You guys are back.Should we close the room?Just a few hours back,less than 10, I think.OK, I'm going to go aheadand close the rooms,then I'm going to justpush everybody back.It's going to end in 60 seconds.OK, I'm going to getback into my deck hereand I'm going to write down someof the things that you guys.Some of the observationsthat you had, ok?So this is where we gointo reflection mode,and I'm going totake some notes here.Who cares what youguys came up with?Anybody want to share?Leaders take themselvesout of the equationand don't operate from ego.They operate froma place of serviceand they keep theireyes on the big vision.The why and not the how.That's a couple there,so servant leadersfocus on why not the how?What else?I think one thing that we guyssaw was that leaders reallyabout people and they're verypassionate about what they do.So the energy kind of rubs offand they're also innovative.OK, that's good.OK, so I'm right down south,so they're innovative.And they're passionate.What are the other ones?Was that my?Who is talking?I know.Yes, I mentioned thatthey care about peopleinnovative,passionate, visionary.Care OK, so I'm going to andthey have long term, whichthey have what?Long term goals, long termgoals, yes, long term goals,perfect, OK.Anybody else?Their motivationaland accountable.So if they are theface, they alwayshave to be accountable and havetheir eye on the big pictureat all times.Mm-hmm Thank you.So what our groupcame up with isthat they workwith everyone else,they don't just give out orders.They think of the future.So long term thinking, likewe said, they can be anyoneand they takeinitiative and they helppeople achieve their goals.Perfect I'm going toput most of those thingsunder servant leaders.OK OK.Yeah all right.Our group came talkabout assignmentsthat quote that managerstake charge of people,but leaders take careof the people thatare in their charge.Mm-hmm And they inspire us tobe better than we are our group.The main theme of it wasthat they real leaders,create a pull versus a pushso they're not pushing people.Usually, they're usuallycreating a magnetismthat attracts people throughvision, through thought,leadership and all that.They kind of set thatvision and peopleare drawn to it versusbeing pushed into it.So our group, we camewith some similar things.So it's a vision,but also you'vegot to be able tocommunicate this vision.So you've got to be avery good storytellerto get people on board andalso leaders kind of I'vegot your back as well.So if you kind ofreally fuck up,somebody is going to be thereto kind of help you out and kindof get you back on track.So they're not going to justthrow you under the bus.Some other things thatcame out was people thatgive you recognition as well.So when you achievesomething like,OK, this guy's done really well.What else do we have?And then also leaders thatgive you space to grow.Just let you get onwith its autonomy.Discuss most, most of the thingsthat were mentioned already.But one thing thatstood out to mewas I heard thissomewhere before that.If you pull people onwhat makes a good leader,they'll say integrity.But the truth is, it's clarity.Clarity is actually moreimportant than integrity.What does clarity mean to you?Clarity is having thatvision, the purpose.Where are we going?How are we going to get there.And being able tocommunicate thatand probably likethe simplest forms?I also think I wentin a group, but I alsothink that a goodleader is somebodywho takes responsibilityfor when something happens.Instead of blaming but then alsoshares lifts other people upor I don't know, praises them,gives say, hey, you know,Mo did this when instead of justtaking all the like, hey, yeah,I did this.I don't think thatwas clear, but Ithink what I mean is thatyou're looking for motivate?No, not.I think what she's sayingis a good leader givescredit versus takes credit.I've heard the phrase that agood leader credits their teamfor the successes andtakes responsibilityfor the failures.that's a good one.Mm-hmm I was initiallyin group one,but I ended up in a group of onebecause I couldn't hear anyonein my group.So the only thing.So the only thingI have to shareis I think leaders arepeople who have the humilityto know their place and toknow everyone else's place.And they're really goodat facilitating peopleso they can be in their places.Getting the right peoplein the right seatsis a big part ofleadership to me.OK all right.So here's the thing I'mmindful of the timer.It's 824 and I have ahard out at 9:00 AM so I'mgoing to share with you guys.Now what I wrote down now.I didn't captureeverything, but Ithink we got thegeneral sentiment here.So don't feel badif I didn't get itall down because it's tryingto keep up with everybody here.So hopefully you guys cansee my screen, right now.Let me do something real quick.And Zoom in a little bit.You guys can see itright, so I was justquickly read whatI wrote down, and Iwant to ask you a question.After I read it.So a great leader isactually a servant leadertakes care of thepeople in their charge.Focus focuses inthe why not how,and they're ableto tell that storyand communicate it to other,therefore monetizing peopleto the bigger purposeand the mission.And those things are usuallylong term goals and not shortterm profits profit.And so if we understandtheir purpose,then maybe that will motivatea whole bunch of people.And there's a lot ofpeople sharing a sentimentthat they're very accountable.They take ownership overthe success and failure.And if they'rereally super humble,they just give everybodyelse the credit for success.And in order tofacilitate others and justserve them well, they haveto create space and encourageautonomy.And you know that becausethey are accountable,they're not going tothrow you under the bus.And so I think this is theoverall sentiment right now.I want to ask youjust a quick questionin looking at a list like this.What does that tell you?What's the storyyou tell yourselfabout your company of one,your company of five or 50or 500 whether you'rein-house or independent?What is this telling you?And I just want you towrite a little note down.We're not going to havetime to go over that.So what does that tell you?OK and if we havetime, we're goingto where to go andtalk about that,maybe on a follow upcall or something.I'm going to share thisdesktop again at this time,I'm going to play this.OK, so these are some thingsthat I found on the internetand I've shared this before,and so we'll just go over it.It's kind of interestingto compare contrastto kind of see where you fit.So managers restrain people,leaders enable people.Managers tell you how andwhen leaders sell whatand why managersorganize people,whereas leaders alignpeople, managershave short term vision.While leaders think bigpicture, long term managersendorse culture, while leadershelp to shape culture managersvalue consistency pay attentionto this one, whereas leader'svalues flexibility.Managers are autocratic.They dictate what to do, whereasleaders build consensus and askfor people's opinion.Managers keep the status quolike, what did we do yesterday?Let's let's hold the line.Whereas leaderschallenge the norm.This one trips people up.Managers do the thing rightthere, focus on refinementand perfection andfollowing the rules,whereas leaders askthemselves, are weeven doing the right thing?There's a quote thatgoes something like,there are no such thingas the right answersto the wrong questions.So here are someprompts for you.Maybe you guys cancapture this part, ok?Ask yourself, howmight you enablepeople that are in your charge?How might you tellthe story of whatand why you do what you do?How much you alignand build consensus?How might you shift short termprofits to long range thinking?I might to find your culture.Hi, mike, how might you adopta more flexible mindset?How might youchallenge the norm,the norms of your industry,what people expect of you?How might I missthe word you hear?How might you define whatis the right thing to do?And you only knowwhat the right thingto do once you have clarityon your purpose, your why?Because otherwiseeverything elselooks like it's agood thing to do.So in the book, effectiveexecutive Peter Druckeroutlines a few key ideasI want to share with you.Mixed in with a few things I'velearned over the 10 plus yearsof coaching that I've received.And in the book, it reallyfocuses on this idea.Like to ask yourselfalways what is necessary,not what is fun to do,what, what I like to do,but what is the necessary,vital, essential thingthat you, as the executive, haveto do for your organization?To progress, togrow, to prosper,and they're not alwaysthe same things in termsof what you want to do.So let me just giveyou a quick example,if you like doing video work,but video work is not the thingthat your companyneeds to do to prosper,you need to change gears.If you enjoy doingmany different things,but after many years ofdoing many different things,you feel like you're not makingthe progress that you need to.You have to make thosehard decisions, right?So that's reallywhat a leader is.Is is charged with is they haveto decide on things that nobodywants to make a decision on.And there's this greatquote from Barack Obama.And he says somethinglike by the time somethingreaches my desk, that means it'sreally hard because if it wereeasy, somebody else wouldhave made the decisionand someone elsewould have solved it.And the reason whypresidents age really fastis because they'realways operatingwithout completeinformation, it's incomplete.If the informationwere complete,the decision wouldbe really easy.It's always clear.So you have to make a guess.You have to say go aheadand send the SEAL Team into take this person out that webelieve to be Osama bin Laden.We don't know.But send them in harm'sway and see what happens,and you have to make that call.So one thing that my coachhas always told me is, Chris,you will never haveall the informationyou need to makethe right decision.All you can do ismake the best decisiongiven the information you have.And be OK with being wrong.Looking back, you'llsay, like, oh, Ishould have madethe other choice,but you can't seethat looking forward.Now, in the after hourswith the pro meet up.One thing that I shared withPeter after the fact was hewas really beating himselfup because in his mind,it was a binary optionbetween winning and losing.And if you always look at yourlife like winning and losing,it's really hardto make decisionsbecause I don't want to lose.So what happens is wedon't make any decisionsand not making a decisionis a decision in itself.There's opportunity cost.When things are openand opportunities there.You don't take action,that door closes.For example, right now,carousels are working,LinkedIn is popping rightnow, but many of youare not taking advantageof it, you're stillsitting there thinking,I don't want to fail.What if I get it wrong?Because of that?Eventually thosedoors closed and.The world moves on and thenyou're on your carousel now.You know, I'vetold you guys thisbefore the LinkedInparty is goingto end when LinkedInreaches critical mass.They're going to start doingads just like everybody else.So rather than sitthere and think youeither win or you lose changethe lose word to learn.So in life, you eitherwin or you learn.So when things don't goyour way, ask yourself,what did I learn from this?This is a learningopportunity, and I'mgoing to be smarter everytime I make a mistake.Every time I fail, I learn.And if I don't, thenI've truly lost.OK, so what you want to dois do only what is necessary.I put out a tweet the otherday about what entrepreneurshipis, which is to never dowork that somebody else cando for less.That could do itbetter than you.This is a blow to your ego.I rarely ever thebest at anything.So therefore, I shouldbe delegating everythingto someone else,especially because theycan do it for less moneythan what it cost me to do.So if you're sitting there doingmenial tasks because it givesyou some kind of pleasure,ask yourself, really,why are you doing this?And are you doingwhat is necessaryand one way todetermine somethingis necessary not is askyourself this other question.This is straight upin the book is whatwould happen if I did nothing?A lot of times we confusebusy work with important work.And so we might bebusy doing somethingthinking this isimportant for the company,but just stop andask yourself, whatif I didn't release that video?What if I don't?I don't know.Fill out the paperworktoday or whateverit is that you're thinkingthat's super essentialto your life right now.Not that those aretwo good examples.And if you can't come backwith a reasonable answerlike this is going to derailmy business, you have to stop.And they say to yourself,maybe this is notwhat I need to be doing.Because we all have the sameamount of time in the day,if you don't sleep,you have 24 hours,we're all given theexact same amount,but some people areable to do so much more.It's not because they'vecreated more time,it's just they've eliminatedless stuff for themto be doing.That's that's not essential.OK so in the bookhe talks about thisis that your poweris your abilityto think and to have the spaceto look at the big picture,and you can't dothat when you'reinside your businessall day long.So the first task isthe delegate away,everything that is notessential that somebody else cando for less money than youthat could do better than you.And then organize your dayso that you have the largestchunk of discretionary time.So rather than have a meetinghere, a meeting there?Put all your meetingsback together.It'll be intense for you,but then at least you'llhave three or fourhours just to think.And what you do in thattime, your discretionary timeis up to you.But it's reallyimportant to have thatbecause that's where allthe good ideas come from.And so he says that wheneverhe's coaching somebody,he asked them todo a time on it.So he's talkingto like Jack Welchor like heavyweight CEOsof large corporationslike what do you dowith most of your time?And the answer isalways not whatit is in reality, which is Ilead teams or I plan thingsand then he's like,OK, let's do a time outat work with your assistantor Secretary or whoeverand map out your time.And what comes back is somethingcompletely different than whatyou think, because in yourmind, you tell yourself a storythat I'm doing important work.In reality, you'rejust doing busy work.The other thing that you guyshave heard from me before,is to reduce context switching,and that means that insteadof doing a little bitof everything in a day,consolidate similaractivities and today's.So you can callthose focused days.I have focusedweek and maybe I'llfocus life, but starteasy just to havea focus day on this day.All I do is make callsand send out emails.On this day, I'm goingto have just meetingsor in this day I'm just goingto do all my production workor whatever it is.You're going to seeyou're going to startto increase productivity there.This one's a hard one.This one is really, really hard.This is something I learnedfrom my business mentor,and he said, Chris, you justhave to remember somethingevery time you makea decision, youhave to weigh thesetwo options here, ok?Do you want to get the job doneor do you want to be right?Let me give you an example whatthat means if the light turnsgreen in a car, youhave the right of wayyou're supposed to gothrough the intersection.But if somebody runs thered light, you can sit thereand you could see it andyou can say, you know what?It's my right to go.I'm going anyways,and you get smashed.You get t-bone inthe intersection.Your spine is misaligned.Your whole life, everythingchanges because you were right.You know, like you've beenwaiting for a parking spotpatiently for minutes.The person pulls out somebodycoming in from the other side,sees it jumps in there,snakes your spot.Yeah, you could be right.You can out thereand tell them off.They pull out agun and shoot you.Yeah, you're right.Or you can justget the job done.You can get the job doneor you could be popular.I don't let anybody go, Chris.They're my friends.So you keep bleedingmoney and theninstead of lettinga couple of peoplego, the wholecompany goes bankruptand everybody loses their job.So get the job done.Last one is, you know, sometimesit feels uncomfortable,it feels awkward to talkabout certain things in frontof people about money.Maybe some of these overstayingtheir welcome at your house,somebody wants to borrowsomething from youand you don't feel like it.Would you do it becauseyou want to be liked?Or you want to get the jobdone, so you're like, OK, jimi,you could stay anotherfour days in my house.And then this creates frictionbetween you and your partner.Because you didn't have theguts to say, you know what?Out of respect for my wife,I just can't have you here.You've got tocheck in the hotel.We'll hang out.But you can't stay here.Let's talk a littlebit about innovation,this one's criticalbecause I reallywant to spend some timetalking about innovation,and this is a tough thing.It really is.So we need to understandsomething therethat at two ends of the spectrumis innovation or efficiency,and they fight eachother and we confusewhat one is versus the other.So let me talk a littlebit about efficiency.Efficiency is I've learned howto do this one thing reallywell, and becauseI can do this well,I've optimized my pipeline sothat there's minimal amountsof wasted energy.We get the job donereally quickly.Everybody goes home.We make the mostamount of money.You keep working on that.You keep refining it.Whereas innovations like we'regoing to try something newwe've never done before andwe mess up and we waste money.It doesn't work out.We want to try new things.We won't incorporate3D virtual reality.We want to develop coding todo something, whatever it is.Well, you need to knowthat innovation isinherently messy and wasteful.So if you say I'm an innovativeperson and innovative companyand you're not wastingall kinds of thingsand making a mess of everything.Chances are you'renot innovating at all.And how do you know, becausethere's a very high failurerate?When I have staff meetingswith my team, I see guys,I have a really crazy idea.There's a goodchance it won't work.In fact, I'm pretty sureit won't work at all.Let's do it.That's how.OK, now in the book rework,they talk about this.These are the guys thatare founders, the basecamp, the 37signals signalscompany and talk about thisa lot, which is don'tmake one giant gambleand this is what scares people.It's like instead ofdoing one big, innovativepush, chop that thing downinto 10 parts and pieces,it will allow you tocourse correct as you go,as you fail your way to success.So by the time you'vehad your seventh failure,you've learned a lot of things.Maybe try eight,9 and 10 will bethe thing that breaks through.So in other words, you want tomake many small bets versus onebig gamble.Over the lastcouple of days, I'veshared with peoplelike how we'regoing to get from $3million to $5 millionin revenue this year.I've asked my team and this ishow I think about things now.I want to come up with10 $1 million ideas.For each one ofthese million ideas,I'm willing to spendas much as $100,000of revenue or research anddevelopment money to do this.I only need two of them towork to increase our revenuefrom $3 million to $10 million.And looking at itthis way allowsyou to consider manycrazy ideas and alsoto eliminate a whole bunchof ideas that are just notbig enough in their thinking.So here's a prop for you.You have some biggoals this year, right,we've already written them down.Have you put together aplan of 10 small bets thatare moonshot bets that canget you there financially,professionally, maybeartistically, whatever it is?Have you done that yet?If you don't have that plan?I mean, you mightget lucky and hit it,but I don't liketo rely on luck.OK, let's talk a little bitabout innovation, culture.This is really importantto because thatfrom the leadershippoint of view,if you are hyper like forwardthinking, very fast moving.But if your company,your culturedoesn't believe that youwill never get there.So what we need todo is we kind ofhave to look at thisa different way.Right it doesn'tcome from the top.You shape the culture,but people haveto be enrolled in the culture.You have to align people.And to do that, youhave to be cleared.You have to expressthis and you haveto, in other people's words,very passionate and maybe evencharismatic about how youcommunicate this other people.So they join your tribe.So what we want to do is gofrom a top down man managementstyle to a bottomup leadership style.So the culture isshared with the team.We believe in this.We hire based on this,we fire based on thisand the culture pushes this up.So I'm going to share alittle quick story with you.People ask me like, how areyour people able to dealwith the kinds ofchanges that you'rethrowing at them, given thebreakneck speed that you'removing?Well, many, manyyears ago, we startedto formalize our companyculture, our core values,and doing so allowed me toeliminate a lot of people.So it was a long process.It took probably overa year and a halfto get people who arealigned with the visionand the culture.And then I looked at the peoplewho were left in front of meand almost everythingI threw at them.They would embrace andsay, let's go for it.Whereas in the old culture,any new idea they fought,they tried to kill.They resisted passively.Aggressively they resisted.And it consumed all my energy.Now, having said that, the onlyreason why the future existstoday is because that oldteam from blind that exists,that we're ready forchange, that embraced it,we're able to makethe switch because wewent from doing 20plus years of serviceto now content and education.It could not be more different.Now we're still struggling tofigure out how this all works.It's not all rosesand champagne, OK,but we're only here becausethe group has been primedand trained and ready to go.We have a long way togo, but we wouldn't evenbe able to have thisconversation if theyweren't ready.So what you wantto do is you wantto spend some timedefining your core values.In the book deliveringhappiness from Tony Hsieh,the founder of Zappos.He's just forget about brand.If your people don'tbehave in a way that'sconsistent with yourbranding, you have no brand,he says, get the culture right.The brand willfollow, and we getthat his example is if you goto a company, if you go to a barand you run into a bunchof Microsoft employeesand there being total jerk wads.Self-centered, self-absorbed,loud and obnoxious.You walk awaylike, well, I guessthat's what Microsoft is like.Despite what theysay on their website,despite what they sayin their commercials.And we've learned fromthe branding master classwith Marty is thesethings are integral,it's like the helix of DNA.They're intertwined andyou cannot separate cultureand brand and businessfrom each other.They're like glued together.If you separate him, it'sinauthentic, it's inconsistent.So I'm not going tospend too much time here,but basically these are the oldcompany core values from blindand you can see acouple of them here.I'll just highlight a fewto embrace and drive change,to create fun anda little weirdness.So if you create anenvironment wherepeople are allowedto express themselvesand to be a little bitweird, not too crazy.Well, built into your cultureand your office environmentis a little bit of instability,a little flexibility.So I used to be veryanal retentive about howthe desktops were maintained.I wanted everything to bethe same because I wantedto look good in pictures.And wanted a uniformity.And everything to be superclean and tidy, as you can see,if you walk throughthe Office now,it doesn't look anything likethat because I had to change,I had to let that go.I wanted people topersonalize their spaceand be comfortablefirst and foremost,but to feel like the office ismuch their home as it is mine.So these are some of thecore values you've got,you want to startworking on yours,and the core values are afilter for making decisions.If we're doing this or wepursuing growth and learning,how do I know this?Well, if somebodyasked me, Chris,would it be OK if Ienrolled in this program,even though it cost money andit will take them out of work?I say, well, thedecision is in alignmentwith pursuinggrowth and learning.Yes let's do it.So how does thistranslate in real life,I'm going to show you acouple of quick examples here.This is the backsideof our business card.So I started to writeour core values downand I even started to find moreso in the back of each businesscard, courtesy of mu,because you can havea gazillion different backs.Every time somebody gotone of my business cards,they can flip it over andit's like they were unique,but they got a glimpseinto who we were.It reminded themand it reminded us,and it allowed meto tell that story.They what does this mean, chris?Why do you do this?It's an opportunity to tellthe story, and we live it.So this was abunch of my internswho decided to dothis mural with chalk.And to express how theythought of the core valuesand we have funny dressup days like everybodywears wears a funny hat.And that's them.So people who don'teven have hatsmade whatever they can makewith whatever they found.And we had an exercise or aculture of exercise, so evena temp receptionist whocame in, it's like, hey,what's this exercise all about?How do I get on the wall?This is Lacey.She's like, OK, I could do that.Then if you can beat a record,you get your picture taken.And this is strange becausewe started to find communityaround making films.This be before, like the wholeDSLR revolution blew everythingup.But Greg and I started doingthis thing with Matthewcalled frame society, where abunch of artists and filmmakerswho has aspirations tomake stuff got together,shared resources, and we hada couple like a homemade filmscreenings, and thiswas pretty cool.I think this is called likefright night or something.We made films together filmslike loosely in quotes, right?So if you have corevalues that are defined,you have to live them, youhave to use them to filter outwhat you're going to do andwhat you're not going to do,including the peopleyou're allowingto stay in the company.Some thoughts about innovation.There's an excellent article.You've if you listento me long enough,you've been paying attention.You know that I've madethis reference before.There's something calledthe good enough revolution,and it's written upin Wired magazine.OK, there's a couple of thingswe need to realize that one.This is one idea I don't thinkI'm going to argue with me.Things are changing fasterthan they have ever before.The rate of change.If you look back into history,we're moving so fast right now.The amount of informationand video contentthat's being uploadedto YouTube is staggeringper minute per day per year.Incredible, right?It is also simultaneouslythe slowest rate of changethat will ever exist again.I mean, that bogglesmy mind, so thisis the fastest it'sever been, and it'sgoing to be the slowest it'sever been because tomorrowwill go even faster.And all that is to tellyou is that if you'reoperating on a system ofinformation, instructionsthat are five years old,it's already outdated.10 years.Heaven help you.30 years, I don't knowwhat you're doing.So the reason whyI tell you thisis because some of you guysare at least 30 years oldand you've beenparented from peoplewho had an even olderoperating system than you.Who told you thingsthat you may or may notstill believe to be true today?So I would start toquestion everything.To become a much morecritical thinker and say.Is this a valid idea?Given what we knowtoday, start to change.OK so in other words, what gotyou here won't get you there.OK a lot of you in this groupare here for camaraderie,for kinship and community.But if we have to boilit down like we'vegot to make you money, we've gotto help you get to your goals.Life goals, right?But given all the videosand all the exercisesthat we asked youto participate in,why aren't there morepeople in this groupthat are cracking their goals?Well, there's 100,400 1,000a million wherever you are,it doesn't really matter.There's no judgment there.But why aren'tpeople doing that?And one of thosethings is resistance.When you hear a new idea thatdoesn't sound like somethingthat makes you feelcomfortable, youstart to tell yourself a story.This is not going to work.It will not work for me.I don't have those resources.This is not my reality.So you perpetuate.The circumstancesyou're already in,and I don't understand that.OK here's some radicalideas from the book design.What is it called thedesign for company,and I love these things.These are reallystrong bullet pointsfrom the book writtenby Marty Neumeier.And I love them.He says, like innovation withoutemotion, it's uninteresting.The products withoutaesthetics are compelling,that brand without meaningor undesirable and businesswithout ethics is unsustainable.This is like the new erain which we live in, right?And so he startsto go and challengethat maybe everything youknow is untrue and incorrectand everythingyou've been taught.We need to do 180 degrees.Flip on this thing.So here's what he's saying now.It's like customerscontrol the company.Jobs are avenuesof self-expression.Look what?Strangers design your productsand fewer futures are better.This one's crazy.Advertising drivescustomers away.Stability is a fantasy.Talent trumps obedience,imagination beats knowledgeand empathy, trounces logic.So everything you were taughtin business school is wrong.Flip it, OK.This idea of refinementversus disruption,we want to revisitthis because thisis central to thisidea of innovation.Ok?Dr. Clayton Christian talksabout this in his book.I think it's somethingcalled innovation.I forget what it's called.I apologize.But he said there's twokinds of innovation.One is called constantor constant improvementor refinement, which is whatmany American companies do.They take an idea andthey keep working on itto get better and better,and their market share grows.And it works because everythingthey do in refinementyields a short term profit.So I guess we're selling morecars, we're increasing profit,we're using less peopleto build our cars.That seems likeit's working right?And we've been doingthis for years,and it's gettingbetter and better.And then there's thisidea of disruption.Disruption, like wheredoes disruption come from?What does that look like?OK, well, disruption, he says,usually comes from a nobody.A tiny little player, andthey see a gap in the market,some white space that they wantto crawl in and what they makeis usually pretty crappy.And they're doing somethingthat the big companiesdon't care about at all.So they're allowed tolive in their space.Heck, the bigcompanies might evensupport them because theythink this is not a threat.And this is exactly what'shappening to Tesla right now.I recently cameback from Amsterdam,I think I was talkingto somebody in Amsterdamabout how the big Germanautomakers are justdropping a load of their pantsright now because they can seethat Tesla would destroy them.It's already worth more thanthe American car companiesbecause we can see the future.So they're all like movingreally fast right nowto get their electric things,the electric cars online.What's even radical is thatElon musk, with all his patents,he's like, you can all use them.I won't.I won't protect them.Pretty cool.So if you want to readmore about the good enoughrevolution, that's the link.All you have to do is typein good enough for revolutionand you can read all about it.I highly, highly recommendit to all of you.So it's probablya 20 minute read.OK, oh, so here's the book.I'm sorry I did do it.Gosh, I'm losing my mind.It's called theinnovator's dilemma.Dr. Clayton Christensen.He's the one who coinedthe term disruption,and today it's being usedand lobbied about it.It's kind of lost someof its real meaning.OK, so he goes into thisis in the wired article,they talked abouthow for a long time.We all believed that thehighest quality of everythingis the best andthat's all we wanted.And the Napster comes in andstarts releasing MP3s and thenthe whole CD market.The whole musicindustry is destroyed.Because at a certainlevel, the qualitydoesn't matter, becauseconvenience trumps.The quality.Same thing with like desktopcomputing versus cloudcomputing, now youhave Google docs,you have all kinds of thingsthat you can do in the cloud.Not necessarily as powerful asyou could do on the desktop.But it's much moreconvenient because everythingtravels with you,it's much more secure.You never lose anything, theysave every iteration of it.You don't have to worryabout viruses destroying itor some kid coming inand mess up your file.The same was true withfilm, so film companieswould not let go.So DSLR companiesmay be censors thatwere pretty crappyat the beginningand progressively got betterand better and then supplantedfilm.One of the most interesting onesthat they talk about, the Wiredarticle is this isthat the militaryused to buy a ton of f-16like fighter jets, right?They're expensive, butthey can fly really fast.They have a large payloadcapacity for dropping bombs,and they've got agood amount of range.They started to experimentwith flying predator drones,and they now have morepredator drones than anything.Well, the payload on thepredator drone is very limited.The amount of time it canfly in the air is limited.But here's what happens.They're much cheaper to buy,and if a drone is shot down,nobody dies.So what they do is they havedrones flying 24 hours a day.Any time they wantto kill somebody,they can because whathappens is a pilotflies a drone for a while.They get tired, theyswitch out, theyget another one in the air.So they can circulateabove any enemy areaand just drop a bomb on theirhead any time they want.So this is the goodenough revolution so,so many of us inthe creative fieldthink the highestachievement in what you dois to make a higherquality product.But as you've heard me saythis many times before.It's a diminishingreturn, the pursuitof perfection of high quality.It's going to be your undoing.You are already good enough.Start innovating.OK, so, Marty, I hadthis little chart,this is my last slide here ison the good and different scale.You want to make sureyou're good in different,not different, but not good.Versus good, but not differentand definitely not goodand not different.All right.And that's it for this slide,and I have a few minutesto talk to you,something stop the share.OK I'm sorry forcutting this one.So close to the wire,you guys, because Ido have to run because I'mon a podcast a little bit.So does anybody haveany questions for me?We want to talk aboutthis a little bit more.If I may jump in, I thinkI'm speaking for everybody.Can you please share at leastscreens or the whole deckafter the call?Yeah, absolutely.I will upload the PDF, and itwill be attached to this call.OK, thank you.Yeah you don't know you'respeaking for everybody.Come on.Anybody else?I think Anna has a raised hand.Thank you.And hi, Chris.Hi, Ana.I wish you had talkeda little bit moreabout the difference betweena leader and a manager.I feel like all of us that'sa challenge because youwant to go somewhere andyou have your own ideas.But usually the people you workwith might have their own ideasand you want to inspire them.But at the same time, youalso want to get them there.And there's a fine linebetween being a leader.And becoming acontrolling freak.There's not that fine ofa line, I promise you.So I'm curious, how doyou defend yourself?How do you tell the difference?Ok?can you give me moreconcrete example?Know, like, forexample, you saidyour team embraces all thesuggestions you are making.Right?and I'm curious, I mean.I would like to be surroundedby an objective teamif everybody would sayYes to me all the time.I would be a little scary.So I would love, Iwould like to havea team that would alsogive me a different opinionor a different.Mindset, right?Which might be somethingelse that I'm thinking about.OK, I'm going to give youa really short answer,but this may be the jumping offpoint for another fool call.Ok?mostly because I haveto leave really soon,but it's a reallybig question, so Idon't want to dismiss this.Please write this down.I'm going to you the veryshort answer to this.If you are a goodleader, the best ideais the idea that winsis not your idea.And we have to bevery clear about thatbecause we get attachedto our own ideas to.So one example of thisis in December of 2018I was kind of startingto panic a little bitand I told the teamlike, man, everybody weneed to generate some sales.Everybody call peopleand dig into your networkbecause we need somenew business, right?Things are slowing downsomewhere around December.I said, let's do this,and Matthew looks at me,he's like, Chris, do we wantto spend all this time tryingto go after new business?How much money arewe to make on that?Wouldn't we bebetter off focusingon the future on our ownbusiness versus chasingnew clients?And that's not my idea.He challenged me on the spot.But what he was thinkingabout was the futurethat I already talkedabout, but I didn't have.The courage togamble like that big.But in that moment, I saidafter like just lettinghit me in the face for alittle bit like, you know what?You're right.You are totally right.We need to focuson our business,and chasing after theseclients is not the way to go.So I changed the plankind of on the fly.I said, hey, everybody,OK, everybodyreach out to all your contacts.You have 48 hours or youhave the week to do it.After that, we're focusedall on our business.I don't want to spendany more time on that.And ultimately led us to makingthis pledge to ourselves.We're not going to takeon any more client work.And that challenge wasset also by Matthew,I think, in December of 2018.So 2019 it was likea gut check time.We had to say no to everyclient job as big as they were.We kept saying no.All right.So I'm not lookingfor yes, people,nor are you looking foreverybody to adopt your ideas.It's about creatinga culture wherewe are going to beOK with not knowingand to be more risk tolerant.OK, that's just aboutthe innovation part.We can talk a lot more aboutleaders versus managerson our next call.I'm pretty sure I'd evenanswer your question,but that's the time I have.I have to run, guys.That's it for me.We'll talk to you later.Continue yourconversation online.As good seeing you.I hope to see more ofyou on our next meet up.But if not, I wish you the best.And we will continuea conversation online.OK, bye, Renee.