EntreLeadership - #191: Adam Grant—Championing Creative Ideas

Episode Date: March 20, 2017

Ideas are easy. But getting people to support them? That’s a whole different ballgame according to this week’s guest, Adam Grant. The awarding-winning Wharton professor, best-selling author and organizational psychologist joins the show to discuss how to recognize a good idea and how leaders can build cultures that welcome dissent. Also on this episode, EntreLeader Devin Becker shares his transformation from an “accidental leader” in his family business to becoming a more confident and effective EntreLeader. entreleadership.com/podcast Summit Event EntreLeadership "Sales Cheat Sheet" Infusionsoft's "Emails to Close a Sale" Marketing Director Hire for EntreLeadership Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. Now, here is your host, Ken Coleman. We are broadcasting from the Music City, and this is the podcast of leaders, by leaders, for leaders. Thank you for joining the conversation. Our feature interview is Adam Grant. He is the author of Originals, How Non-Conformist Move the World. I think this is an absolute must-read if you were a thinker about the future

in your space. It really is great conversation. We're going to bring it to you shortly. We also have a big announcement from our VP of Entree Leadership, Daniel Tarty, and we have a spotlight story on an Entree leader. Devin Becker, he's one of you, folks. We love these stories.

And, of course, we have free resources, tools from InfusionSoft, and our amazing Entree Leadership team. All right, folks, just looked at the production notes, big announcement time, and there's nobody who needs to do big announcements. Other than the Grand Puba of Entree

leadership himself, Daniel Tarty. This is actually really personal, even though it's a professional announcement. You're pumped about this. Yes. What is the big announcement? Well, here's the thing, Ken. Our team is growing. Our brand is growing. We've got such a huge vision for how we're going to impact small business in this country. And we need help. We are trying to find somebody who has the mind of a marketer and who can come in and be a marketing director for our organization. We've got some great marketers on our team. But we are hiring and very actively searching for somebody that's probably in our podcast listening audience who loves this brand and has followed us and who says, I want to go over there and help those guys. Wow. Now, wait a second. We can't,

we just can't leave it there because I feel compelled because I feel people right now are on the edge of their seat. You're going, Ken, give me the info. I want the job. But we're real about this. Like this whole entree leadership thing. We've got people who've been to our master series of us. Like, it's not easy to get hired here is what I'm saying. So do we need to at least say, now look, expectations here. If you text in in just a moment, this is a tough process. You're looking for, as Dave likes to say, an eagle. For sure.

We've turned away people with five to seven years of experience who are super bright. We want somebody who is going to raise our game and is going to come in and go, I know marketing. I know digital marketing, email automation. I know how to do podcasts to lead magnets, to webinars, to live event promotions. I can lead a team. I can think about sales. I can generate leads for a sales team.

I've done that before. I can bring the strategy and equip your team and help you guys go to the next level. And I love your brand. I love small business. I love Entree leadership. That passion has to be there. It's a must. Yeah. And that's just to get you in the door. How many interviews would you say on average a team member goes through before they get hired? This is a leadership role. So it's more than average. It's probably 10 to 15 interviews. And we look at your personality style. We look at your resume a little bit. But really, we're looking for, are you hungry? Are you humble? Are you smart? Which by the way, if you're listening and hiring, all three of those things, those are Pat, and Choney's ideal team player. Indeed. But on steroids for our brand, hungry, humble, and smart. And you've got to be skilled in which, you know, in the marketing area. This is no joke. This is not an entry-level position.

All right. So that's good. So I wanted to give people a realistic situation here because we want you to be a part of this opportunity and we'll see what happens. And I want to say this because a lot of people are going, well, you hired Ken. So the bar can't be that high. And I just want to put an asterisk on that people. We understand.

They're still doing studies to understand how in the world I got in the door. So again, I want to get your standards up because you listen to me every week. Come on. You're thinking if Ken's on the team, I got this. Well, listen, this is a rock star position. And so we want you to respond right now. It's very simple, but I also want you to know you're going to have to bring your game. So here it is.

If you're interested in say, hey, give me more info. I'd like to throw my name in the hat. EL Marketer. EL Marketer is the phrase. You're going to text that to 33444. That's 3344. 444, and if you make it through all of the interviews, I'm told, you have to come into the old podcast studio and sit in the chair across from me.

Hey, we'll make the announcement. We'll come back and say, hey, here's who we found. Oh, no, I'm kind of, I have not gotten this approved, so this may get edited out of this, but I'm going to put them through my interview. Oh, you're going to interview them live on the mic. Just in front of everybody. So, like, if they make it through all of the legitimate leadership interviews, then they come in for me.

I like this. And I just put them to the test. And by the way, you got to love the idea of living and working in Nashville, Tennessee. We're right here in Franklin, beautiful area. But we don't do. We know everybody's right here in house. That is true. So there it is.

Hey, thanks for coming by, dude. Looking forward to seeing. Absolutely. Wouldn't it be great? Wouldn't it be cool? Now, again, folks, I'm not trying to be the wet blanket. I'm trying to be Mr. positivity. But we don't know if it's going to happen, but wouldn't it be awesome if we hired the person right here out of the old audience?

I bet we'll get you a bounty if that happens. Really? Maybe. Oh, that's exciting. I'll talk to Dave. Yeah. All right, good to see you, buddy. Thanks.

Well, this episode is very gratifying because Eric, the producer and I and our team worked really hard, as in months, trying to get on Adam Grant's schedule. Busy guy. And, of course, we've got a lot of things going on. Everybody does. And so we had a couple times where it was going to happen. It didn't happen. And we really felt like this was a conversation we needed to stay with to bring to you.

The book is, of course, originals, how non-conformists move the world. Now, if you admire Sir Richard Branson, which I certainly do, I think he's the entrepreneur's entrepreneur. He says it's one of 65 books that you have to read in a lifetime. Grant's a Wharton professor, and he is a bright thinker. Fortune Magazine put him in there, 25 most influential management thinkers under the age of 40. By trade, he's an organizational psychologist. So he's constantly thinking, studying. How do we get true meaning behind what we are thinking and doing?

so that we can lead a life that is fulfilling. His 2016 TED Talk has been viewed almost two million times, and it was on the subject of the surprising habits of original thinkers. We discussed that and more right here. Adam, it's a pleasure to have you with us, and I remember when this book came out, it just kind of popped off of the shelf. I happened to be walking through a bookstore

and thumb through it and thrilled to now have you with us on this podcast. And before we dive into a lot of the booknotes that I've taken, and I'd like for you to just share for our audience some of the research. There's amazing stories and anecdotes throughout the book. But what research was involved with this book? Because this is such a compelling, thoughtful, I think, a book for people to really reconsider the way they've been thinking. We'll get into that.

But what was the research behind it? I think, I guess at the end of the day, I'm interested in what happens after you have a creative idea. So we have tons of guidance about how to be creative. That's right. Right. But I don't think we lack creative ideas in the world. I think we lack people who know how to champion them effectively. And so I really wanted to know, once you have an idea, how do you know if it's any good? How do you speak up effectively and bring allies on board? How do you overcome anxiety and make your idea reality? Yeah. All right. This is great. And this idea comes to, I think, to bear right out of the gate. I started reading this. And I tell you, page six is folks where I started really taking a lot of notes. And I want to, I want to be able to bear right out of the gate. I started. I started to bear right. I started. I to lead you there. And the big concept that you introduced in this first chapter is this idea of rejecting defaults. So how do we begin to fight against the default, right? We can't rage

against the machine, right? We can't be nonconformist until we really realize that we're all fighting this natural default way of thinking. So how do we begin to disrupt that? Well, I think the starting point is to realize that every time you say this is the way we've always done it or you just assume that the way somebody else is doing something makes sense that's you taking an emotional pain killer and telling yourself well you know the the world is supposed to be this way and that way you know i don't have to be satisfied with it i don't have to worry about whether i can change it and that becomes a huge barrier to any kind of creative disruption or destruction i think that the the way to overcome that is to remember that all the defaults in the world that hold us back were created

by people. Somebody set unfair prices. Somebody decided that, you know, you as a small business owner would have to follow a certain set of rules and procedures. And once you remember that those systems and rules and procedures were created by people, you start to realize, you know, these actually aren't God-given, they're arbitrary. And, you know, somebody made them up at some point, And that doesn't mean that they're the best way to organize things today for my business. And that tends to give you both the curiosity and the courage to ask, is there a way that I could do this that's different and better? And that leads us to these moments that I love, which are the opposite of deja vu. They're called Vujade.

Great phrase, right? Yeah, I love that. Tell us about that. I think of Vujade's moments where we look at something that we've seen many times before, but suddenly, we're seeing it with fresh eyes. So, you know, imagine you're waiting in line for a taxi. And you've done this probably hundreds or thousands of times in your life. But this time is different because you notice all these cars passing by with empty seats. And you wonder, why can I have a ride in one of those? And then Uber and Lyft are born. That's a Vujardé moment.

And the more of those moments you have, the easier it is than to start championing creative ideas. Yeah. Okay. Following that phrase, championing creative ideas. as I was listening to you, I was thinking, I'm going to pause where I'm going the interview, and I want to camp out here because, folks, I think for the leaders in our audience, this is a tremendous challenge to make sure that we're not just personally defeating this default thinking, but leading others to do that, and then leading in a way that's not default thinking. And you actually talk about this, and I want to set you up, Adam, on this, is there are advantages, you say, when leaders encourage dissent.

and I'm not talking about chaos. You're not talking about that. But there's a way to do it in a healthy way that you don't have melting down in meetings and you don't have just absolute chaos. But encouraging dissent. A couple of things that you mentioned. One is this idea called Kill the Company. And then the other one is an innovation tournament.

I thought those were two brilliant ideas. I think it speak to this. So would you summarize both of those ideas? Yeah, Kill the Company I actually learned about when I was working on a project at a big pharma company a few years ago. The CEO was frustrated that they were bureaucratic, they weren't innovating enough, and he brought his executive team together,

and he said, I want you to spend the next hour brainstorming about how to put our company out of business. Imagine that you're one of our biggest competitors and your job is literally to destroy us. What would you do? Now, I have never seen a more energized group of executives in my life, right?

There's a scientist who was like, I have been waiting 20, 70 years to destroy this company. Thank you for giving me a voice. Oh, that's great. But what was great about it was they did the exercise. And then the CEO said, look, some of these ideas that we're coming up with are real competitive threats. Others are opportunities that we ought to seize. And so he had them turn around and ask, what are we going to do about these ideas?

And I think there are two things that are really powerful about kill the company. I think it's something that leaders ought to run at least twice a year. The first is that you get all the ideas that you normally don't hear. where people are worried, you know, that they're going to be seen as, you know, complaining or, you know, criticizing the boss. When your whole job is to kill the company, there is nothing that's unsafe to speak about. And then secondly, people are way more creative on offense than defense. If you would run this exercise to save the company, you get a bunch of boring,

conventional, risk-averse ideas. But where you're going to kill the company, you drill down into possibilities, you never would have considered otherwise. And I think it's such a powerful thing. I got to interrupt you there, Adam, because you just said something that I don't want people to miss. And I think this is absolutely brilliant. I think it's bombshell. Adam, I want you to readdress it.

Folks, if you missed it, he said people are more creative on offense than they are on defense. That is a huge thought. It's absolutely right. But I don't want to miss that. I want to go back and have you unpack that thought a little bit. I know I interrupted you, but I think it's worth it. Why is that? And how do we keep that top of mind when we go, we need to be on offense as much as possible for the sake of being

creative and not default defensive thinking? I love that you ask that question, largely because I have no idea what the answer is. Well, it was brilliant. It stuck out to me. Yeah, that was all I had. Oh, okay. Let me see if I can try to unpack the psychology of it. So a lot of this actually is based on what's called prospect theory. Anybody who's read, like Danny Kahneman's book, Thinking Fast and Slow, which summarizes a lot of that insight. He won the Nobel Prize for it. And the idea was that we think about risk differently, depending on whether we're dealing with losses or gains. And when you're in the domain of trying to sort of protect yourself, which is what you do when you're playing defense, you think about the world in terms of a bunch of gains that you already have, and you just want to

keep those safe. And you basically say, look, I don't want to take any gambles here. You know, I already have a good situation. And so I'm not going to stick my neck out for a potentially bigger gain because I might lose and, you know, I want to stay ahead. And so that's what happens when people are on defense is that are like, look, you know, I want to protect the gains that I've already achieved, right? Whereas when you're on offense, you're in a much more risk-seeking mindset. You're like, look, if we don't give this new direction a shot, then we're really missing out on something that could be big, right?

Our job is not to be perfect. Our job is to score some hits or some goals. And so that's when you start to say, look, I'm willing to be. go out on a limb and try something I've never considered before because there's a chance that it could open up a whole new line of business for us or a whole new customer base. That's really good. Folks, trust me, that's worth the entire podcast. Good news for you all. We're going to keep going. And I interrupted you Adam. And I know you were kind of laying in the plane on the idea of kill the company and then wanted you to continue to summarize this innovation tournament. But thank you for

letting me interrupt you. I think that's a wonderful thought. Well, it actually feeds really nicely into the innovation tournament idea. So a lot of companies say, you know, we know we need more ideas if we want to be more creative. And the way we're going to do that is we'll run a suggestion box. And the problem with it is a suggestion box is a lot of people are afraid to speak up. Even if they're anonymous, you know, they think, well, this is an exercise in futility. Nobody's going to hear my idea or if it's good, I'm not going to get credit for it. And an innovation tournament tries to solve those problems and says, look, people need focus, they need direction when they're asked to be creative. You can't just say, give me ideas. You

have to give them some parameters. So one of the best ones I've seen was at Dow Chemical. They said, we're looking for ideas to save energy and reduce waste and will consider any proposal that anybody in the company submits as long as it costs no more than 200 grand, and it has to be able to pay for itself within a year based on the savings that you think it'll generate. And they put this call out, and so instead of just having like an open season, you know now what's a valuable idea and what the right criteria are for judging whether yours is going to fit. And they don't really know if anybody's going to submit or not, but they end up getting a ton of ideas roll in. And then they have subject matter experts and peers evaluate the ideas and advance the best ones to the next round.

They submit a more complicated proposal. And then eventually Dow actually invests in the best ideas. And the people who submitted them, if they're interested, can actually redesign their own jobs around making those ideas a reality. So you go through about a decade. Dow has funded 575 ideas, and on average, they've saved the company $110 million a year. Staggering. It is, isn't it? Because these are not people, most of them are not in innovative jobs. Some of the ideas come from people sitting on factory floors who saw a problem, had an insight about how to fix it, but didn't know where to take that idea until the innovation tournament was called. Wow. So, folks, there it is. Two very simple, effective ideas.

to create this idea of dissent and ultimately some really good communication that you can win big with. Those numbers, do not lie. Really good stuff for you leaders. Okay, now, folks, I'm going to tell you this. I took a ton of notes. You all know I do this. I try to give you page numbers and all that good stuff. This book, eight chapters, there's no way.

I'd need two and a half hours to accurately give a decent summary to T Adam up, so he could summarize it. So we're not going to get to all of it. That's why you've got to run and go get the book, digest it and live it. But I do want to go into chapter two. It's called Blind Inventors. and one-eyed investors. And just this idea, Adam touched on it in his first answer, page 31, you'd lay it out and say, look, this chapter is about the hurdles and best practices and idea selection.

You said this in the first answer. You said there's tons of resources to come up with creating ideas, but you say that it's really about the selection of ideas. It's not idea creation. It's idea selection. That's the game changer. Talk to us more about that. Yeah.

Look, we've all seen people run into false negatives where they reject an idea that turns out to be brilliant. I had fun in the book writing about Seinfeld, which was just shot down by NBC not once but multiple times. That's right. And, you know, I don't know about you. I think it's the greatest show in television history. Absolutely. Could not agree more. Well, then, you know, we have nothing further to talk about here.

We have covered it all, folks. Good night, everybody. Done. I mean, look, but why does this happen, right? Why does Seinfeld get rejected? Why was Harry Potter shot down by a half dozen publishers? And why do we do this in business all the time as well? And I think what happens is, first of all, we can't judge our own ideas if you look at the data, right? We're way too positive on our own. And so then we rely on leaders and managers who are the second worst judges of ideas for the opposite reason. They tend to be too negative instead of too positive.

And there are two big issues that hold leaders back. One is that they're that when we're leaders, we are stuck using templates for what's worked in the past. So in the Seinfeld case, all the NBC executives looked at that and said, this breaks all the rules that have been established for a successful sitcom. Nobody likes any of the characters. The plot lines are totally unresolved, and the show is about nothing. Why would anyone watch that? And look, it's perfectly reasonable to use your prototypes for what's worked in the past.

if you're trying to bet on something that's not new. But if you're trying to innovate and be original, what's worked before is irrelevant to what's going to work tomorrow. And in that case, it took a guy who didn't even work in sitcoms, Rick Ludwin, who came from the Variety and Specials Department, so he didn't have the same baggage. And he was able to watch the pilot and say, yeah, I realize this is way outside the conventional mold,

but it made me laugh. And that's what a sitcom is supposed to do. And I think that actually you will, find over and over again that it's people who don't share the biases of leaders and managers about what's worked before, who are the best judges of whether a new idea is going to be a hit or not. And that group is usually peers, fellow creators who, you know, are willing to say, you know, instead of here are all the reasons why this won't work, you know, this is kind of interesting and different. Maybe we should give it a little bit of a chance. Yeah, that's so

powerful. It just makes you wonder if these executives, you know, did they ever just put that out in front of real people and see if they laughed. It's mind-boggling. They did. And the sad thing is that the focus groups they ran hated it too. Interesting. This is just a flaw in the design of focus groups because when you put people in front of something new and you say, I want you to evaluate it, then they're in a really critical mindset. And they don't watch it the same way they would if, you know, they were sitting in their living room at 9 p.m.

Just waiting to be entertained. And so if you're going to do that, you have to get people to actually experience it. like they would as an audience member or a customer, as opposed to coming in, looking for reasons to shoot it down. And then there's, you know, this other piece of the puzzle is these, a lot of the leaders and managers, you see this not just at NBC,

but in all kinds of organizations, they have skewed incentives because they know if they bet on a bad idea, it's going to embarrass them and it might ruin their careers. Whereas if they reject a good idea most of the time, no one will ever know. That's so true. So, you know, what are you going to do, right?

Are you going to stick your neck out, or are you going to play it safe? And most of the leaders and managers played it safe. That's right. Which is why you wrote the book. My goodness, we need to be nonconformist. Okay, we're going to keep going. I will tell you, folks, if you only read one chapter, Adam, you may hate this.

I probably shouldn't do this with the author of the book. But if you only read one chapter, I think it's chapter three. Out on a limb, speaking truth to power, you introduced on page 75, this idea of taking familiar songs like Happy Birthday, jingle bells, twinkle, twinkle, little star, row, row, row, your boat. You get it. And I want you to explain this idea of tapping the rhythm to those songs out on the table and the experiment, the whole psychology behind it,

what people thought would actually happen. And then I'll come back and ask a question behind that, but I want you to explain this experiment. All right, so, yeah, you get an easy song. Your job is to literally tap the rhythm to it on the table in front of you and see if somebody else can guess it. And I did this actually pretty frequently with different groups of leaders. And in one case, I had somebody shout out, 100%.

And I'm thinking, that's just dumb. Nothing is ever 100%. Like, you don't understand probability theory. And I look over and it's Jamie Diamond, the CEO of JP Morgan. And luckily the guy next to him got it right. Yeah, right. But what's interesting is when most people do their estimates, they come up with 50%. that's the average and also the most frequent estimate.

And people just think, yeah, you know, this is going to be easy. One in two will recognize it. And then the actual correct guessing rate is only one in 40. So it's two and a half percent of people who will recognize that song when you clap it or tap it. And I wondered, look, why are people so overconfident? And I think the reason is that you, in order to tap the song, you have to hear the tune in your head. It's impossible to do it otherwise, right? I dare you to try.

And that makes it also impossible to imagine what your disjointed tapping sounds like to someone who is not hearing the tune in your head. That's right. So, you know, it's like, you know, you're just hearing like a bunch of random sounds. And I think this is a great metaphor for what happens when you bring original ideas to the table, which is when you pitch a new idea, you are not only hearing the song in your head, you wrote the song. You have spent days or weeks or years thinking about this idea.

It makes perfect sense to you. And that makes it really tough. to fathom what that idea sounds like to somebody who's hearing it fresh. And this is why the data often suggests that it takes 10 to 20 exposures to a new idea before other people really start to appreciate it. See, this is powerful, and that's why I recommend this chapter so much, because I'm sitting there, Adam, and, you know, I'm in the creative space. I'm a broadcaster, content guy, and I was reading this, and I'm going, oh, my word, I could think back to multiple times where I'm going, what was wrong with these otherwise very smart people? They're not getting it. And

What was happening was, is I've got the tune in my head. I wrote the tune. And it really is brilliant. And so let's follow this up. We know the psychology takes about 10 times, as you mentioned, you know, again. But there's also an art form. I just want you to speak to your insight and what you've learned about. It's not just the amount of times, but how we begin to keep hitting that drumbeat

without being obnoxious. Maybe audacious, yes, but not obnoxious. Yeah. I think that the next time you bring an idea to any group of people and they shoot it down, you should just come back six minutes later and say, here it is again. No. Brilliant. Done. I think that it's all about taking your unfamiliar idea and make it feel more familiar. And the way you do that is you build bridges to show how it's like other ideas that have worked before. So my favorite example of this was at Disney where when they tried to make their first ever

animated film based on an original script instead of an existing fairy tale. The script was just ridiculed. Nobody liked it. Nobody got it. And the moment it got the green light was when somebody said, this should be turned into Hamlet. And the amazing thing about this movie is nobody wanted to make it before. And then after somebody said, like, this could be Hamlet, it became the most successful film of 1994. You might have heard of it. It's called The Lion King. And the original pitch for the Lion King, this is remarkable, was I quote, Bambi in Africa with lions. Oh, no wonder it got rejected. Yeah, Ken, you hear that and you're like, I have no idea what this movie is going to be about, and I am terrified for Bambi.

That's right, yeah. But when you reframe it as Hamlet with Lions, now it clicks. People are like, oh, of course, the uncle's going to kill the father, and the son will have to avenge that. and now you can wrap your mind around the plot and the characters. And I think this is how you get other people familiar with your tune and your lyrics, is you basically give the Uber for X pitch. And you say, like, here's how my idea is, like something else that's worked in a completely different realm. And then people are like, oh, yeah, I could see that.

That's good. That's really good. Okay, we got to keep rolling, folks. I want to move to Chapter 4, Fool's Rush in, Timing Strategic Procrastination. And the first mover disadvantage. And again, can't cover it all. But I was struck by a couple examples you give in the book on Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, this idea of strategic procrastination, procrastinating on purpose. For the purpose of the idea, allowing oxygen for it, multiple voices to weigh in.

I'd love you to just summarize this and actually take us in. I think it's a zygarnic effect. Am I saying that right? You are. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. I'm hooked on fun. So I just want to tee you up to talk about the specific examples first of Lincoln and King,

the Gettysburg Address, of course, Martin Luther King's, I have a dream speech, how both of them were essentially procrastinating to the final moments of those great oratory moments. Yeah, these are widely regarded as the two greatest speeches in American history, and not surprisingly, the two most famous. and I found it stunning that both Lincoln and King really waited till the last minute to get it right. Lincoln didn't even know he was being invited to give the speech until about two weeks before Gettysburg. And the day beforehand, he'd only finished writing about half of it. And it was the morning of the speech that he finalized the closing paragraph.

And King had a very similar experience. He worked on the I Have a Dream speech on and off a little bit here and there in the two months leading up. up to it. And he actually scrapped all of the material he had and started over from scratch after 10 p.m. the night before. His wife said that he pulled basically an epic all-nighter that would make any college student proud. And he was still scribbling notes and crossing out lines when he's sitting in the audience waiting to be called onto stage. And you know, you wonder, why did these great orators wait till the last minute? And, you know, I think there are lots of reasons. But the most important one is they knew that you can't rush creativity and that there was

an opportunity as they gave themselves more runway to incubate. And instead of, if you didn't procrastinate it at all, just running ahead with your first idea or your easiest idea, they really wanted to give the ideas a chance to develop. And not only did that help them develop a better speech, but in King's case, I think it left him open to improvising. because he's standing on stage, he hasn't spent weeks rehearsing the words. And he's much more than receptive to whatever comes to mind at that moment. And one of the things that comes to mind is this incomplete task. So this Russian psychologist is a Garnik almost a century ago now

discovered that we have a better memory for unfinished than finished tasks. When something's done, you put it away. You lock it up. That's right. When something's not done, it kind of, you know, it's poking around in the back of your mind. And so, you know, King had all these ideas that were swirling in his head to build into the speech. And, you know, about 11 minutes into his speech, one of those ideas comes to mind is something that he's actually spoken about on stage before. But the advisors talked him out of using because they thought it was cliched and cheesy, which was the lines, I have a dream.

That whole segment wasn't drafted in. It was improvised. And I think if he had finished the speech days earlier, that Zegarnik effect would never have kicked in. But because he left the task unfinished for a while, there was more room for those sort of unexpected thoughts to swirl their way in. See, I think this is an important, important discovery, folks, if you realize this. Now, you may not be a public communicator. Adam, you and I both do public speeches from time to time, obviously. And I think there's an important distinction I want you to speak to. We're not saying, don't be prepared. Both Lincoln and King were prepared in that they had a sense of where they were going to go.

they had began to think through it, obviously, marinate on it, but they left themselves the creativity to feel, not just think. And that's what really makes some of the great moments in history is things that are said that weren't planned to say. Yeah, it's, you know, it's so interesting. I think that I spoke about this at TED last year, and I got a lot of questions afterward about whether, you know, I'm trying to encourage people to procrastinate. And I said, no, you should always be prepared, but the key is to be quick to start but slow to finish, which is a great phrase from a colleague of mine, Reb Rebley. And you want to dive into a task early.

You want to prepare, but you don't want to close the door so that you're ruling out ideas that might come to you later. And I think if you do that, what it does is, you know, it's not about procrastinating more. It's about normalizing the fact that sometimes creative problems are hard. We all procrastinate, and that can be a pathway to opening up new insights. Yeah, really good stuff. Okay, I want to tee you up. We have about 10 minutes with you. I want to honor your time. But I want to tee you up to talk about this idea of rocking the boat and keeping it steady. So the last chapter, again, you cover so much, but managing anxiety, apathy and ambivalence and anger. You look at those four A words. That is a leadership 101 type situation there. You could, at any leader who's listening, you can go, okay, I get that. What are you? What are you? What are you? your insights and encouragement for leaders on that specific idea of rocking the boat, but also

keeping it steady. Well, the biggest mistake that I see CEOs make in particular on this is whenever they're trying to drive innovation or change, they say, you know, I want people to be optimistic. I want them to be hopeful and I want them to be afraid. And so I'm going to talk about, you know, I have this great new vision and I'm going to articulate all the good things that are going to happen if we embrace this change or, you know, we, you know, we pursue this direction for innovation. And then nobody gets on board. And they wonder what, you know, what am I doing wrong? And the issue is that as we talked about at the beginning, people are often really content with the status quo. And so you can tell them about something, you know,

that's new and great. And they're like, yeah, but I think what we have is already great. Like, why do we need to change? And you have to destabilize that status quo before you can get people excited about change. And what that often means is you actually have to convince them. There are bad things that will happen if they don't change, if they don't innovate, for them to then say, well, we need to consider some alternative possibilities here, some new directions. And that's actually back to kill the company. That's one of the reasons this exercise is so powerful is it opens people's eyes to the fact that if they continue with business as usual, there's going to be someone who will come in and disrupt them. Or, you know,

a market's going to change, a new technology will enter. And, you know, doing things the way have always done them. It's not going to work anymore. And then they're much more open to saying, let me see what else is out there. And so I think as a leader, you have to resist the impulse to reassure people right away. You have to say, look, there are real possibilities here that we could be disrupted. Here's what I think they look like. I'd love to hear from you what I'm missing. And then the good news is, I think we have the right people and skills and knowledge to be able to do something about this so that you don't have to live in fear. Yeah, folks, it's so good. All right, final question for you, Adam, as a parent of three, you've got two eight-year-olds and an 11-year-old.

This is selfish our audience is used to me asking some parenting questions. You actually touch on in Chapter 6, this idea of Rebel with a Cause, how siblings, parents, and mentors nurture originality. And folks, I'm going to tell you, if you're raising kids or leading teams, that's why this book is so huge. But certainly, if you're raising kids and you want them to be who they are in a world that's trying to tell them they need to be something else, I think this book is huge for parents. Now, with that in mind, here's the question. You actually touch on this parenting style and how we can contribute to making sure our kids

are the original copy of, you know, not copy, that you can't say original copy. Boy, we might have to edit that out, Eric, the producer. No, I love that. I want to raise an original copy. That's right, that's right. But, you know, this speaks to me, Adam. This matters to me more than anything else that I do

is speaking into my children's, lives so that they are who they are supposed to be. I want them to be Josie. I want them to be Chase and Ty. Nobody else. How do we take the great truth in this book? And with our parenting style, how do we help them be who they are supposed to be? I love the question. I think probably the place to start is to recognize that you can't actually raise a creative child as easily. as you can thwart a child's creativity. So it's mostly about not being a loser parent, as opposed to being the perfect parent, which is good news.

I think that one of the things that really stamps out creativity in kids is when parents put too much pressure on them to achieve. So, you know, Tiger parents, if you look at how they raise their kids or Tiger Mom, you could call them Lombardi dads, you know, when you put pressure on kids to accomplish one thing, They will often work really hard to excel at that. The problem is that they'll master it the way everybody else has done it. And you see this a lot with child prodigies, right?

Like they master how to play a great Beethoven symphony or to recreate Picasso's paintings. And yet they've never figured out how to do something their own way. And what we see over and over again is that practice makes perfect, but it doesn't make new. And so I think the best thing that you can do is a parent, is just make sure that your kids are exposed to lots of different interests and activities. It's the breadth of experience, not the depth that really opens people up to creative insights.

And so, you know, I think just engaging lots of skills, raising them to make sure that they're aware of. They're exposed to more than one thing is the way that you try not to screw this up. One thing I'm going to add, these are your words, because this really spoke to me. I'm going to talk to my wife about it tonight. How are we doing? Let's do a scorecard on this. And I think this is a great distinction to kind of wrap this part up. Adam challenges, he says, when we look at what our kids are doing, so let's just take a picture.

And they show it to us, and our tendency is to say that drawing is really creative. But you challenge us when it comes to character, we may be better off praising the person. So it's a little bit of a shift. Nothing wrong with saying that. But you are really creative. Or you could say you are really diligent, or you are really disciplined or you are really compassionate. Those types of phrases speak tremendous amount of life around this idea into our kids, and they begin to embody their original qualities, correct? I did write that, didn't I? Yeah.

You did. It was so good I had to remind you, but that's my job. Thank you. I appreciate that. You know, it's funny because, you know, I think there's a little different from what a lot of parents think when they learn about growth mindset and how, you know, you're supposed to praise actions and effort, not that you're smart, but that you worked really hard, and that's why you did well in this test, or that's why you learned this skill so fast. And I think that this is actually not in conflict with that, but when it comes to character, kids need a sense of self, right? They need to know not just that I occasionally turn out something creative, but that I am a creative person. And the way that you make sure that doesn't go to their head is you help them see that just because they hold a value

or they have a skill doesn't mean their behavior always reflects those values and skills. So the flip of this is to say, look, you are a really creative person. But then when they don't show that level of creativity, when they just copy something in a rush, then you also have a responsibility as a parent to say, look, I had very high expectations of you. And here's how you let me down. And I believe you can do better next time. And that works because it shows disappointment. And disappointment makes kids feel the best of all moral emotions, which is guilt.

So, you know, I think Irma Bombach said it best, guilt, the gift that keeps on giving. Yeah, boy, that's the truth. It really is true. As long as you help kids establish a sense of having, being a creative person, that that's part of their identity. And then let them know when their behavior doesn't live up to that identity, you're in pretty good shape. He is Adam Grant. The book we've been discussing is entitled Originals, How Nonconformists Move the World. Folks, I'm going to tell you something.

I think this is an absolute must read for any person who wants to live out who they are. It's absolutely must read for anybody who is leading people. And I think if you're a parent, you'd be nuts to not read this, digest it, and apply it in this amazing context of launching these little human beings into being adults who can hopefully change the world in their zip code, wherever they are. I think it's important stuff. and I could go on forever, but we got to let you go. I've got to honor your time, Adam, but we appreciate you. I'd like to have you back to discuss previous books, new stuff. I think you are a brilliant thinker.

Enjoyed the conversation. I think you're a gift to our audience and all those who consume what you do. So thanks so much for being with us. We're better for it. Well, thank you, Kenna. I appreciate the kind words. I'll try to live up to them. And I was just saying, closing, that your favorite chapter, chapter three is also my favorite chapter.

Interesting. And my publisher let me put one. one chapter online for free, and I picked chapter three. So if anybody wants to read it, it's at adamgrant.net. You can just download it right there. Adamgrant.net. I had no idea, folks. I promised you that was not a setup.

I'm so glad Adamgrant.net, go download chapter three. It's absolutely worth it. It'll get you all excited. And then when you start reading the rest of it, it'll all make a whole lot of sense. Adam, good stuff. Thanks again. Thank you, Ken. Hey, folks, you know we love to bring you free resources.

Our Entree Leadership team is bringing you the super super-selling cheat sheet, the secret to serving your customers well. Folks are diving into this resource, so you need to as well. You can download it by texting one word, E-L-Sales. E-L-Sales, just text that to 3-3-444. You'll get a link, and then you can go get it, or if you'd rather just go to the show notes of this episode at Entrateleadership.com slash podcast.

Eric, the producer, has the link there for you, and don't forget why you're there. We have a link to InfusionSofts, amazing resource for you as well. Well, this is the 10 email templates to help you close, close, close, close. It's good stuff. So go check it out. You can get it at infusionsoft.com slash 10 emails. Infusionsoft.com slash 10 emails. Or again, we have the link in this episode's show notes at entreleadership.com slash podcast.

Well, folks, we tell you all the time that we love to hear your stories. And our Entre leader spotlight is on a young man, 27-year-old Devin Becker. Now, Devin took over his family's company after his dad had a tragic health incident, and it's really changed Devin's life direction as well. We're so thankful to have hung out with him at a recent Entree Leadership Master Series event. Here is his story. So my name is Devin Becker. I'm from Becker Safety and Supply, which is in Greeley, Colorado. Dad started the business back in 1999 and out of a backseat of a mercury topaz.

and, you know, it was just a small family business, grew up, worked for my dad, you know, as I was going through college, would work on my days off or part-time. Just a little insight in the family business. They specialize in gas monitors, fall protection, and fire-resistant clothing. However, Devon's passion was to be a firefighter. In the vast plains and mountains of Colorado, there will always be a need for firefighters. When I first started the fire service, I was a volunteer. And so I quickly moved through the ranks at the volunteer fire department and as a full-time firefighter. And that was my career goal, dream job.

And I loved every second of it. However, Devin got married and began thinking beyond what was right in front of him. Eventually, he felt a calling to go back home and work again with the family business. It was about three months before January. My passion started changing. I kind of got the entree leadership budge as I've just listened. listening to the podcast and listening to, you know, going to the Entree Leadership One Days and went to one of the live events. But learning more things and seeing what the potential of the business can be.

My passions started changing towards the business. And that kind of surprised me because when I worked for the business before, it was like, yeah, I don't really like this. I didn't know if this was the right decision, you know, the correct decision for my family. It took a while for me to kind of wrap my mind around that. And then, like I said, in January, it left. And it was my last day on the fire service. And as it often is in life, Devin would have no way of knowing

just how important the timing was. I got a phone call from my mom, and I could tell she was really panicked and really stressed out and really just, like, over the top. And I'm like, Mom, what's up? And I was actually at work, and she was like, dad had this weird sensation

come over in him. He couldn't really stand. The paramedics are here, and they're taking dad to the emergency room. You know, he's having a lot of weakness and tingling, and it's just not right. And they did a cat scan, and they eventually found a four-centimeter tumor in his head, and totally shocked us, and so we all go to the hospital and, you know, start praying. Devin had to quickly step up his VP, and despite the hardships ahead, he was fully ready to serve his team. my role

it really changed overnight of I was pretty much this SOB, you know, the son of the boss and I really didn't have that much leadership and I was more in charge of everyone else which has been a really tough thing

for me because I was working part time these guys were here a lot older than me because I'm 27 and so I was in charge of them and telling them what to do and it's just really

a weird position to be in and also to deal with all the stuff that's going on with my family and my dad and stuff like that. But Devin eventually pushed past his insecurities and immersed himself into leadership and personal growth. He attended our Master Series event to learn about the following

business needs. Delidating I think is one of the biggest things I've learned to try to do every day is, okay, so I have this one, two, three, hundred different things. What am I going to prioritize? What am I doing to have done?

And then look back and definitely plan out your day a lot better. I've been trying to do that and it seems to be working a lot better. But delegation is a huge thing that I've been struggling with, but I feel like I'm growing at allowing people to take on more responsibilities, which will allow me to open up my schedule a lot more and get stuff done that I really need to be done. In addition to these principles, another thing Devin learned was becoming more effective with communication. Transitioning my leadership roles, it's been challenging having to figure out how to best connect with people. Because with me, from the fire service, I'm a very type D personality.

I'm definitely a high D in my distance assessment. And so I think that comes from the fire service. You got to get stuff done, get it done. Don't come back to me unless it's done. guys that kind of attitude and my dad's the opposite he's more coddling he's more hey tell me about your day and you know okay we got this to do i'm more like we got this to do let's get done kind of attitude and so i think it's been an adjustment for everyone to try to change from as a young leader you know i try to do everything perfect and and i expect everyone else to do it perfect and so

i've taken that patience you know taking that second just to maybe talked with them and just talked through things instead of just rush into a reaction. So for me, it's one of those things I've learning as I go. But I feel like every day I'm surrounded myself with the right people, the right material, the right knowledge. And that's really the reason I'm here is just to gain those tools of, okay, how do I handle people? Because really, I haven't had that much experience.

our team is rock solid. We're an awesome team that we have. We have about 11 employees, team members. So we call them. And so having those 11 team members, they've really pulled the weight, especially when Dad was in the hospital, we were there pretty much the whole time.

And so they're definitely rocked solid and lifting the rest of the team up. Having established his position, Devin can now speak into the specific mission of the company. Our goal is every day, to serve everyone that comes in the door and to get them home safely. And that's a big thing for us and trying to get everyone with that mindset of, I know we're selling gloves, we're selling safety glasses.

It might not be the most glamorous thing to do, but we're getting people home at night. And that's what we tell everyone that we do trainings for. We do, you know, that come in the door. As long as we get you the right equipment, the right, knowledge and get you home to your family, we've done our job. You know, with coming from the fire service, it was a lot different. It's more glamorous because everyone highly respects the firefighter.

And they're like, oh, thank you for saving my life. But when you're at a safety supply company, it's completely different mindset that you're, you're supplementing this person of their gloves, hard hats, safety, whatever. And you're getting them home safely. and that's the biggest reward is knowing that the equipment that you provided did its job and John Holm. Well, we appreciate Devin sharing a story with us, and folks, I want to give you an update on Devin's dad because this is life. And many of you're going through things like this, heavy stuff. So Randy Becker, Devin's dad, is about a year from his diagnosis and continuing to do treatments,

but recently was able to give his daughter away at her wedding and dance with her. By all accounts, there weren't any dry eyes in the room. Now, the reality is, while Randy's spirits obviously are high and he's fighting, it's a progressive form of brain cancer. So Devin and Randy and the whole family have said, hey, prayers are welcome. So if you feel comfortable doing that, I know they would appreciate it. So send them some prayers. Hey, folks, I just scanned the calendar.

I'm getting a little excited May 21 through 24 in Orlando, Florida at the gorgeous J.W. Marriott. That is our third installment of the amazing event, Entrade Leadership Summit. We've got a special rate for you podcast listeners. So if you'd like to learn more, get to special. special rate, text Summit 17. Summit 17, all one word. Text it to 33444.

That's 33444. And you can talk directly to one of our advisors that will help you out the speakers. Simon Seneca, Robert Hershevik from Shark Tank, leadership guru John Maxwell, legendary coach Lou Holtz. I think one of the best leadership writers in the world, Pat Lynchione, Dave Ramsey, Chris Hogan, Christy Wright, and myself all there together. It's going to be fantastic. Again, text Summit 17 to 33444, or we have a link about the event in this episode's show notes.

Just go to entreleadership.com slash podcast. Big thanks to Devin Becker for sharing his story and to Adam Grant for sharing his knowledge and wisdom. Hey, we love your feedback. That's how we grow. And by the way, we are growing. So we'd love for you to share, share, share, subscribe, let people know. We appreciate it so very much. And as I always say, and I truly mean, on behalf of Eric the producer, Will the Engineer and the entire Entree leadership team.

Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk again very soon.