Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Innovation Expert: Embrace the Creative Process and Find Joy in the Unknown | JoAnn Garbin

Episode Date: April 2, 2025

What does it take to go from nothing to something—and then scale it into meaningful impact?I want to introduce you to someone you may not be familiar with, unless you’re in the innovation space -- JoAnn Garbin. JoAnn has led innovation teams at some of the world’s most influential companies—including Microsoft, and she is one of those rare minds who can dance between deep technical systems and the human heart of innovation. She has a 25-year track record of turning big ideas into reality and is co-author of The Insider's Guide to Innovation at Microsoft.In this episode, we unpack how innovation isn’t some magical gift—it's a process rooted in values, shaped by principles, and fueled by the courage to face fear. JoAnn shares how divergent thinking, psychological safety, and even AI can be used to unlock new futures—not just for businesses, but for each of us as individuals. We also get into the human side of it all—her personal story of resilience, her vision for building ease in the midst of chaos, and what it means to be part of something bigger than yourself. If you’re looking to innovate and stretch the edges of what’s possible—in work, in life, in your own path to becoming—then this one’s for you._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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you got two decisions. Like I'm just going to take what I got and I'm going to go with it and that's the breaks or I'm going to figure out how to change this. What does it take to go from nothing to something and then scale it into meaningful impact? Welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I am your host, Dr. Michael Gervais by trade and training, a high-performance psychologist. I want to introduce you to someone

you may not know unless you're in the innovation space, Joanne Garbin. She's a technology entrepreneur with a 25-year track record of turning big ideas into reality. And she's the co-author of The Insider's Guide to Innovation at Microsoft. I think innovation, what we go to is it's value creation. So it's not just about delivering an idea or something new, but it's fundamentally bringing value to other people from their perspective. So how do you help folks understand where fear sits in the innovation process and how to work well with fear? For a lot of people, even just sharing idea is scary. What if it's dumb? What will they think of me? That'll never

work. And your response is? Not my person. Next. Right, yeah. Joanne has led innovation teams at some of the world's most influential companies, including Microsoft. And she's got so much to offer about how to work well with failure, how to navigate uncertainty, and how to turn your idea into something that can change the world. The open space needs to be a space of possibility. If you participate in the creative process,

you will tap into something that is fundamentally joyful. It is just a positive feedback loop that is fundamental to our nature. And that's where we find joy. So with that, let's jump into this week's conversation with Joanne Garvin. Joanne, I have really enjoyed your book. And so we have a shared common path at Microsoft that we've both had an upfront view on how they build what they build.

And every company has its challenges, but the power of innovation that is coming through and your capture of how innovation really works, I love it. I love what you've done with your co-author. It's amazing to have you here to open up how innovation works from your take, from your lived experience. And I'd like to focus on three things primarily. One is I want to talk about what sits under innovation from the lens of curiosity. I want to talk about fear and I want to talk about humanity. But before we dive into those three, I want to read you a quote from Alex Honnold. Do you know

who Alex Honnold is? I don't know that a quote from Alex Honnold. Do you know who Alex Honnold is? I don't know that name. So Alex Honnold is one of the most significant athletes of our time. He's widely known for climbing El Capitan without any support. So it's no ropes, just his hands. Yeah, no, no, no, right. Just his hands, his feet, and his head, his wits about himself. And if he makes a mistake at 3,000 feet,

the consequences are real. So I would like to read you a quote from him and just kind of see how you respond to it. So Alex says, I mean, a lot of people look at the stuff that I'm doing. They're like, oh, that's crazy because they can't imagine the mental side of climbing. But for me, the mental side has always kind of come natural. But the physical side is a lot harder. Pause. This is one of the best in the world at what he does. So I look at people who are physically gifted. I'm like, what's so crazy?

How can they do that? So I ask you here, is there an analog between risk-taking and looking at how other people are doing it and being either inspired by it or encumbered by what the extraordinaries are doing? Because oftentimes the extraordinaries create a spotlight. They can create a glow. They can create a spotlight, they can create a glow, they can create a shadow. There's a lot of things that we can be in reference to what the greats are showing us.

So there's a two-part question here. One is Alex is exceptional at calculating risk, and he's also exceptional at the thing he does. So it creates an experience for the observers. So there's a two-part question embedded in his insights. How do you dance with that quote of his? It made me immediately think about the opposite ends of the economic spectrum that many innovators come from. We have a lot of innovation coming from folks that had advantage, that had money, connections. And that's true, not just in tech, but art. A lot of people in art will say the only people that can afford to be artists come from money, right?

You don't make a living. But that's not my journey. And that's not a lot of the people I know in life. When you come from the other side of the economic spectrum, where you don't have everything locked in, and you're spending your formative years figuring out how to get it done, how to put food on the table, how to keep the lights on. You know, your family is your team. They're not just your parents or your siblings. You're a team.

That gives you skills and a risk tolerance because you've got to do it. You wake up every day. You have to do it to survive. And what you figure out very early in life is you can, right? And you figure out ways, you get really creative in figuring out how to do it. So that's why I feel like there's these these rags to riches stories, but those are a little shallow, right? It's more that you've learned to be creative, you've learned to be collaborative, you've learned to face fear and survive it, you get knocked down, you get back up. And then there's the other side, which also has a ton of lessons in it. You may have had those safety nets and that capital and those networks, but you had to

figure out how to overcome other things to get it done. And I don't know that experience personally, so I can't really talk to it. But a lot of people fail at that end too. Which one don't you know? I don't know the start with the safety net and have the capital in the network. I had to learn how to build networks. I had to learn how to get capital. I had to learn a lot of things and make strategic decisions to get me in position.

And I share that in common with a lot of people that start scrappy people. You know what I'm interested in is the way that you just responded to a quote from one of the world's greats on risk-taking, and you went to life design. You didn't go to risk-taking to share an idea. You didn't go to risk-taking on how to lay a bet financially. You went to life design, meaning first, know kind of where you are in resources. And then from there, figure out a path, if you will, on how to best flex those resources. That's really interesting because I would not have imagined that you would have gone to life design. And so when you think of life risk, you go to the design of lifestyle or the way that you're going to live rather than sharing an idea. Yes.

Ideas are cheap. That saying is popular for a reason. We all get ideas all the time. It's what are you trying to do? What are you doing with your time? What do you want to wake up? And how do you want to spend your life? Fair warning, I'm an existentialist. So I believe that we're born and we make choices and we are in control to some extent. There's chaos, obviously. But we are in control of who we are and what we become.

And so innovation is also creativity. And creativity, this is something Dean and I connected on very early in our friendship. It's a fundamental part of being human. And so that's why we believe innovation skills are so important to everyone, because you're tapping into a fundamental aspect of humanity. And that's, you're going to feel fuller, you're going to feel more satisfied with your daily existence if you have an opportunity to express that part of your humanity. So it's a little bit of my unconscious competence that I equate all of this to life design. But again, I also think it's being a bit of a scrappy upstart. You know, when you start in a life that you don't want to lead for the next however many years, you know, happy home, but otherwise our world was tough. You got two decisions, right? Like, I'm just gonna take what I got and I'm going to go with it and that's the breaks or I'm going to figure out how to change this. And so maybe it's just,

that's where I started from. Yeah, that is awesome. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions. In any high-performing environment that I've been part of, from elite teams to executive boardrooms, one thing holds true. Meaningful relationships are at the center of sustained success. And building those relationships, it takes more than effort. It takes a real caring about your people. It takes the right tools, the right information at the right time.

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And that's why I've been leaning on David Protein Bars. And so has the team here at Finding Mastery. In fact, our GM, Stuart, he loves them so much. I just want to kind of quickly put him on the spot. Stuart, I know you're listening. I think you might be the reason that we're running out of these bars so much. I just want to kind of quickly put them on the spot. Stuart, I know you're listening. I think you might be the reason that we're running out of these bars so quickly. They're incredible, Mike. I love them.

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the chocolate chip cookie dough. And a few of our teammates here at Finding Mastery have been loving the fudge brownie and peanut butter. I know, Stuart, you're still listening here. So getting enough protein matters. And that can't be understated, not just for strength, but for energy and focus, recovery, for longevity. And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value,

and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash findingmastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. So usually we think about innovation as like giving birth to an idea or a set of tools or a product that we're sharing it with others. This is, I want to first make sure I'm thinking about it the way you're thinking about it. Innovation is really bringing something new to others.

Creativity is new to self. That's the simplistic model that I use for those two. And first, before I take it one step further, do you agree with that? Do you have, like, where's your point on the difference between creativity and innovation? They are obviously a continuum. I think innovation, what we go to is it's value creation. So it's not just about delivering an idea or something new, but it's fundamentally bringing value to other people from their perspective. I think we're saying the same

thing and you're taking an extra turn at it, which is saying, if you are going to create something that new, if you're going to innovate and bring something to life, is it valuable? Yeah. Let's start with the first principle that it ought to be a value to others. Yeah. Right? Not a frivolous pursuit. Yeah. Julia has a great quote in the book. She's the president of the developer division. And she just says, if you don't achieve that, it's just a cool idea. Very cool. Okay. And the way that I would hope we can shape this is innovation. Let's use the lens about innovating the next version of oneself. So creating something that is different than who you are today, you know that

it's in there, the next version of you, if you will, but haven't quite sorted out the right set of practices to give birth to that new version of you, to open the aperture so that next version is more clear and more apparent. If we start with that premise for this conversation, can I just ask you, what version are you of yourself? And if we think about, this is a big question, right? And the way that I think about version, the difference between one and two, is it's a significant difference between one and two. There could be 1.2 and 1.4 and 1.8, but one and two look different. They feel different. It's materially different. And so when I think about major versions of oneself, just for fun, what version do you think you're on?

That's a tough one. I lived many lives in my first 25 years. I think back to that period fondly. I would say somewhere in the eight range maybe. Okay. So you've had some turns. Could be 80. Yeah, right. Most people, just for reference, say somewhere between four and six. Okay.

So maybe you've had some traumas that have helped shape it. Maybe you've had some extraordinary experiences that are awe-shaking fundamental that have taken it a couple extra clicks. Or maybe you've been deeply introspective that have taken it a few more clicks. And this is back of napkin science by me, asking that question to thousands of people

like most people come back between four and six. So why do you think in the reference between most four and six and yours at eight, what would be the maybe additional? I think all of the above of what you listed. Born in a specific time and a specific place with circumstances that weren't, you know, easygoing. What does that mean? So I actually just wrote an article with a friend about this. We're both 80s kids.

And she has a magazine in Philly called Root Quarterly. And we were talking about the founder's mindset. And a lot of my thoughts have evolved based on this conversation with Heather that at the end of the 70s and early 80s, divorce rates just went through the roof. I don't know if you remember that. And a lot of people, mostly women, ended up single parents. And my mom was one of them. And she ended up up we lost everything. Like we went from having a custom built home that my mom designed and my dad built and our own business to my mom,

three kids under the age of nine. And she didn't have anything more than a high school degree or a high school diploma. She was trained to be a secretary. And so we ended up, ironically, a lot of my friends have the same tale. We ended up being rented a house in a cemetery from the church. And if we didn't have that, we wouldn't have had anywhere to live. You said you rented a house in a cemetery? Yes. I grew up in a cemetery. Awesome on Halloween, especially because my mom's a prankster. I have never met anyone that grew up in a cemetery.

You got to have stories. Oh, yeah. So this is, okay, so we're starting off like, okay, pretty early disruption. Yes. Yeah. And so, and I'm the youngest. So I had the advantage of being three when all this went down. And my one brother was four, so we were pretty clueless.

We didn't really understand that the whole world just blew up. My other brother was nine, and he had a good view of what just happened. So there's one of those traumatic things, right? Most recently, I shared with you, I went through cancer. That's a traumatic thing. We lost my sister-in-law when she was 41 to cancer. That's a trauma. There's all of these things that have, on that lens, have happened.

And the type of cancer for you? Invasive breast cancer, which was what killed my sister-in-law. Yeah. And how are you doing through the process? Good. Yeah. Yeah. I had wonderful care from Microsoft, from my family, from my friends, from Swedish Cancer Institute. They were amazing. Yeah. Are you Swedish or that was the? No, that's just the network up in the Seattle region. They're amazing. They're amazing. They really are. Yeah. No, I have no complaints. I actually have a very weird take on the whole experience that it was in total a net benefit okay so we can talk about that yeah i do actually want to talk about that because i'm i will always listen to the words that people share and at the same time i'm there's a there's like these other antennas that i've developed to it's more of a um a sense felt about what's happening.

And that's maybe the, either I don't know if I was born with it or I developed it by listening deeply with so many really interesting people. I wrote a blog about antennas. You probably developed it. Yeah, let's talk more about it. And so as the other antennas are present, I don't feel the embodied pain about either of those traumas.

And so that is either, oh, she's numb. She hasn't dealt with it, which I don't believe is the case. Or she's like really processed well. And so and the third option is like compartmentalized, where it's just like, no, I know how to stay intellectual. And so which one of the three is it that I and the listener is feeling as you're talking about two really heavy situations? I hope it's the middle one that I've processed it well. If I am ignoring or compartmentalizing, I may not know. One of my natural tendencies is I love to learn. And I know that can sound trite, but I am just someone that loves to learn. I collect reference manuals. I read instructions. I interview people. And so experience doing is such a wonderful way

to learn things. And so- Wait, wait, wait. You took a bridge there. Yeah. So I was going reference, listening to people, like the way you learn. And I was going, oh, okay. So I want to get to the gem about how you frame experiences, because I think you're framing from early trauma to the most recent invasive breast cancer that the framing has got you to the other side of like, no, I'm net better. Yeah. So I don't think it's the set of tools necessarily that gets you to net better.

I think first, like the big rock is how you frame experiences. We know that from research. If you frame getting old in a negative way, getting old is really hard and materially, I'm not just talking about psychologically, but materially harder. And the same with just about any experience. If you frame it like this is an opportunity, this is a challenge, I'm going to step into this. And I know that you come, you naturally orientate your framing towards high agency. Oh, I'm an active person in how my life, the contour of my life. So can you talk about the framing when you're up against something that's hard?

Yeah, I think that's so, I love when people help me figure out my own babble. I definitely frame challenge as opportunity. They are one and the same. I do have preference for what kinds of challenges I want. For instance, chemo is a dreadful challenge or could be. I looked at it as this is what I have to go through. The numbers made sense. The doctors made sense. We came up with a plan that I could live through. And so that, it wasn't dreadful. I actually looked forward. It was a great nap every week. I will tell you that much because you don't sleep a lot because you're sick and everything else. But they pump you for all this, these drugs that knock you out and you're in a nice warm blanket and people feed you

sandwiches and it was lovely um treatment was actually lovely it's the aftermath that's pretty awful whereas other challenges um i don't there are plenty of things of interacting with other people or animals and like seeing the way we treat the world, nature, animals, those types of challenges can really unnerve me. So I think that's it. It's like when it's a it is what it is situation, and probably because I was born into an is what it is situation, I have learned that it is, but I have a role to play. Yeah, I mean, one of the great insights. That's the brain. Yeah, one of the great insights. Yeah. One of the great, okay. One of the great insights is that an experience is just that it's what you make of the experience that makes it so. Yeah. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentus. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be

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It's like your creative idea to get across to the innovation arc, there's a lot of challenges. So you're framing those challenges as opportunities. Yes. Opportunities for what? I guess for me, because I am an engineer and I'm service-oriented, it's to solve a problem, to help, to fix something that's not quite working right and add value to the world.

Because I'm here, I might as well do something while I'm on the planet. Oh, first principle number two. Yeah. I'm an agent. Yeah. I shape my experience, principle number one. First principle number two is while I'm here and I'm expressing this agency, I want to do something good. And interesting.

And interesting. Yeah, definitely. Okay. Challenges are interesting. Challenges are interesting, yes. Our DNA is supposed to light up in the face of challenge and threat. And so when our DNA lights up, it's marked by the psychological skills to manage that really full central nervous system. When our central nervous system is fully switched on

and activated, it can bring the best out of you, or it can bring the most constricted, tight experience out of you. I don't think anything beautiful comes from that tight, constricted, nearly frustrated, scratchy, irritable state. And it's fine to be in there. I find myself in there much less than I once was. But to really create beauty, and it doesn't mean it needs to be aesthetically pleasing to all people, but it is aligned with your thoughts, your words, and your actions. There's beauty and power in that alignment.

And when you can get that expressed, it's amazing. I don't know if you noticed the opening quote from Rudolph Diesel. Yeah, I did. Yeah. That third stanza. Let's read it, actually. Oh, yeah. Because it really, you know, Diesel was an inventor and an innovator, and he gets it. So the third stanza is,

the introduction is a time of struggle against stupidity and envy, apathy and evil, secret opposition and open conflict of interest, the horrible period of struggle with man, a martyrdom, even if success ensues. Yeah, it's real. Okay. So there's a set of skills that we're going to point to. And I want to make sure that we illuminate those skills to be more curious, to work well with fear, and to bring a full humanity into whatever we're creating, whatever we're innovating here. All right, so let's start with curiosity. So I think to frame this properly, we would need to understand the innovation arc

that you've outlined. And then if we can stitch right underneath, how do we become more curious in our lives to be able to innovate the next version of ourselves or the product, if you're so interested in that? So in the second half of the book, where we get into the patterns and we lay out this over time and expansive view of innovation, one of the fundamental building blocks that we found, no matter what you called it how you framed it was diverge converge synthesize you learn how to do that and you just keep doing it over and over and over again you'll get from nothing to something and if you have enough business people around you scale oh that's good yeah because like the synthesize is typically reserved for um in my world philosophy psychology

spirituality and that world is like for the elders yeah right like divergent thinking convergence of ideas um and then over time you can synthesize that into something that is insightful and potentially of wisdom and so you're not using it in that frame. So let's define divergent, convergence, and synthesizing. So I'll start with where most people are. Most people start with an idea and that's convergence. Whether subconsciously or consciously, you've got an idea. You've already converged on a starting point. And there's this current thread of fail fast, iterate. You'll get it to where it needs to be.

But it tanks so many people inside of companies, outside of companies, because you run out of money, run out of energy because you run out of money run out of energy you run out of trust just there's only so many iterations of anything you can do when you do have boatloads of money and prestige or whatever you to be, you got to think before you do. You know, another one that I hate, I have a bias for action. I'm like, hmm, okay. But it's a balance, right? You have to, I have a bias for learning and contemplation, you know? So it doesn't mean I'm not doing things. I wrote a book, you know? It's that soundbite social world we're in right now that fail fast was never, it was taken out of the context of learn, test, iterate, right? And if you drop the learn part of it, you're missing the divergence.

So that's what we try to emphasize in the book is if you have an idea, which a lot of us get ideas, just stop for a moment, step back from it and ask a lot of questions. Get curious about that idea. Why is that your idea? Where did it come from? Who cares? Do you care? Do you want to spend the next seven years of your life working on this idea? Because it's probably going to take that long. What benefit will it have? What repercussions will it have? How else might we solve it? What might it look like? There is so many different questions to be asked. What is divergent thinking to you? Divergent thinking is exploration. It's taking up a different perspective and looking at the same

thing in a new way. It's the look at the elephant from the front and you see one thing, look at it from the side, you see the other thing. And as you get more sophisticated at it, to your earlier point about synthesis, it can be, I'm going to look at this from an economic view. I'm going to look at this from a philosophical view. I'm going to look at this from an aesthetics view or a functional view or a natural function view, like a biomimetic view. I can take on all of these different personas and perspectives to explore the same exact thing and uncover countless different angles. Okay. So let me play it back and see if I'm grokking correctly. Convergence is the beginning of an idea. It's when the idea takes place and it is sprung. Yes. Okay. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't

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They've got some great new products I think you'll be interested in. A shampoo, conditioner, and a hair serum. With Caldera Lab, it's not about adding more. It's about choosing better. And when your day demands clarity and energy and presence, the way you prepare for it matters. If you're looking for high-quality personal care products that elevate your routine without complicating it, I'd love for you to check them out. Head to calderalab.com slash findingmastery and use the code findingmastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. Divergent thinking for you, the divergent process is when you are examining from multiple points of

view. Some people are really natural at that and other people, that has to be trained or developed. And then synthesis is when you can take, let's call it a larger pool of thinking and adopt that lens or pull in those assets of thinking or resources or whatever to add to the at once birth of an idea to pull together other industries, other assets, other ways of thinking to make something new. Did I get the last piece correct? I would say yes and with the other views. They're both part of divergence and synthesis. So you're almost sandwiching

the convergence in them. Oh, okay. So it's not linear. It's, oh gosh, no. Bookmark in hand, innovation is loopy, very loopy. And so you take on all those perspectives to explore your idea, and that helps you go really, really wide. But what happens is because of how we work, and you know this better than me, we will start connecting dots and we'll start converging on something. More than likely, it will be a different something than that first idea you had. That starting point is almost never the right starting point or the most valuable, effective, scalable, workable, solvable, whatever description you want to give it. So you go wide, you either wait for that natural convergence to happen or you can, there are techniques to bring convergence, there are

different tools for it. You get to that convergence point. Sometimes it's one thing, maybe it's two or three things. Then you synthesize it with your experiences, your intuition, your knowledge, your team's experience, intuition, knowledge, what resources you have available, what platform, what marketing, what distribution channels. That's where we talk about synthesis. Okay. That's a bit different. Thank you for the clarity. Let's use something as concrete as writing a book. Yeah. Or can you use something that is a great example of those three experiences? Yes. So we actually just use the mousetrap in the book. We say a better mousetrap.

And so that's our converged starting point. I have an idea for a better mousetrap. My divergence could be who would value a mousetrap? What else could be a mousetrap? Or what else can the mousetrap do? Or why else would someone want a mousetrap? You know, the original statement of the mousetrap could have been restaurant owners want a mousetrap to catch rodents for cleanliness. That's pretty narrow, right?

When you go to why else might I want a mousetrap, I may want to study them to see how their populations interact and grow. Or I may want to see if there's different varieties of mice in this forest. That's a very simple way to say I've now taken myself out of the restaurant, which gives me an image of a city and dirtiness. And now I'm out in a forest, just trying to understand nature. Very different mousetrap is going to come from that, right? One, probably going to kill it. The other, don't want to kill it. And so if you do that with any idea you have and explore it from different points of view, in this case, the ecologist versus

the restaurateur, if you do that and your teammates do that, just imagine the dimensions you can unlock in any given thing. That's just a mousetrap. So what if the mousetrap is the next version of myself and I have an idea of who I would like to be? How would you walk through the innovation cycle that way? Yeah, I did this process. I did this process before I went to Microsoft. It was a big decision for me to join the company because I am happy as an entrepreneur

and big company cultures are not where I gravitate to. And so I applied the innovation process to me. And so I started with what do I value? And no matter what you're building, you should understand who you're building it for and what they value, right? Otherwise, especially if you're trying to make money. Because if they don't value it, you're done before you started, right? That's right, yeah. So did a value mapping exercise, and I actually, I have it with me. Your values in this case.

In this case, when you think about innovating a person yourself, yeah, you got to know what you value right do you value awards and recognition and trophies and like simplest terms external or intrinsic you know extrinsic intrinsic um i valued things like balance um integrity uh collaboration learning impact those i came up i whittled it down to like five values and how did you do that did you use there's a there's a free online tool called values in action that i found to be pretty nice um you could go look up benjamin franklin's you know virtues you could look up aristotle's you know list of virtues or you just probably go to Copilot and ask, help me out a little bit with my virtues or values. So how did you do it?

Yeah, this was six years ago. So tech was different. I downloaded a 400 or 500 word list of value words. Yeah, right. And then I just started highlighting, circling, relating, culling. Yeah. And you do find that like, like if you whittle down to like creativity, innovation, like which one actually, is it brave or courage? Which one? Like they're so similar in some respects, you know, honesty or courage.

Like, you know, so my wife and I did this for our son. Yeah. So he's now 16. So it was 16 years ago. We wanted to be very clear about what we were above all else helping create for him. And so she went away and create a list of her values. I create a list of the values that mattered most for me that we wanted to pass on and teach. Not for ourselves, but that we wanted to teach. And then we whittled, whittled, whittled, whittled. We couldn't have five. It was just too much for us to carry.

Where do we start? Can I remember all of them? Of course I could. So we got to two. And we both nodded like, those are the two. And we keep revisiting them to make sure that they're meaningful, and they still are. So it's strength and kindness. How do you define strength? The ability to stand for what matters most. And so it could be physical strength is like I've got the ability to recruit muscles to be able to lift something with speed or power or whatever. This is like the same model, which is, do I have the inner strength to be

able to stand for what matters most to me? And I think we need those folks in this world. And we need a little bit more kindness. Could have picked compassion, could have picked empathy. But just the fact of kindness and strength married together feels like I want to be friends with those people. Yeah. Yeah, me too. Yeah. Anyways, so you started with values and then – Start with values. You take it into guiding principles. And I give examples.

So many of the people I work with are engineers, and engineers are taught to have requirements. We specify what we're building, and it's very specific and to great precision. Guiding principles are not that. Guiding principles are more like bumper rails, right? But they keep you centered. They keep you grounded. So if you can communicate your values as a statement, then we, again, usually shoot for three to five of these that people can remember. So we make them short.

We make them, you know, they become part of the team conversation. So you shared your values. Can you share your guiding principles? So those guiding principles are for the data center of the future where Microsoft creates value for itself, its communities, and nature. And that was phrased very specifically to not allow an or, it's and. So right away, our very first principle reflected a value of what the company has, which is we want to achieve more, we want to empower others to achieve more. It's not just about us making money, right? And with the sustainability goals we have and the responsibility goals, that all got embedded in this simple sentence of create value for Microsoft, its communities, and nature.

Brilliant. Super simple for everybody in the room to hold on to. Brilliant. Super simple for everybody in the room to hold on to. Brilliant. And then data centers are big, complicated structures, very expensive. Can't be building them as snowflakes, right? Like you can't go out and design a custom data center for every town in the world. That would be horrible. But one of the problems we have is if it's not designed to fit in the community, we're breaking our first principle. So we had to come up with a principle that helped us balance. And so we came up with the one of globally applicable, locally desirable.

Okay. You're giving a master class on how somebody can think through how to become the next version of themselves. Know your values, understand your first principles. How do those values and first principles actually work together? And you just shared two of them that are like that. And then last kind of turn of the screw is like, what is the compelling future you're working towards? Yes. And then underneath of that, we would suggest there's a whole set of psychological skills to help you move up against the challenges well, so that the speed to innovation is enhanced because you're not stuck for too long of a time against the headwinds that traditionally buffer you back. And so,

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quality sleep is just too important to leave to chance. The third guiding principle is change over time. And this one was critical. We're in a large corporation working on a large entity, and it translates back to us, right, as individuals too. You are a whole person with a lot going on in your life. If our guiding principles didn't reinforce every single time that we're designing for adaptability, then very quickly, whatever we build will be obsolete. Whatever we become will be out of touch or irrelevant. The world's changing faster and faster. We grow. And so for us, we put it in the guiding principles that whatever we do has to

change with the context of the environment, the age, the people, change over time was fundamental. Beautiful. There's so much rich insight in what you shared. So you're on it there. If we transition over to fear, what are some of the big fears you have? And then how do fears in general, and we'll learn from your unique fears in life, but how do some how does

fear um how do you work with fear and specifically we're talking about innovating for the next version of you but like what are your fears how do you work with fears and how do you help others work as they're trying to innovate i'm a little bit of an odd duck on fear um i don't have many things i would call fear there's one that every time i get asked that question comes to mind and i fear random acts of violence and i feel like that's a pretty good one to hold on to like be prepared um it's interesting because the data doesn't support that it's prevalent um it's it is there yeah and i understand i understand it you know i live in a city as well um i think i've learned it empathetically from my wife who's who's you know afraid of it and so um and fearful for good reason. It sounds like that doesn't

run your system. It does. But it's, it's there. So how do you help folks understand where fear sits in the innovation process and how to work well with fear? It's throughout the whole process. I mean, for a lot of people, even just sharing idea is scary. What if it's dumb? What will they think of me? Right. That's where FOPO sits. Yes.

Yeah. And there are far too many people in the world that are saying, oh, we already tried that. That'll never work. You just don't understand how this works. That's why you think that's possible. And your response is? My response is not my person. Next. Got it. Yeah. And that person may come back into the innovation cycle further down the line where I need skeptics to validate, but they're not going

to be in the open space. The open space needs to be a space of possibility. It needs to be, oh, I had never thought of that. Or I thought of that before, but I didn't pursue it. Or what are you thinking about that? How are you seeing it? Can you draw it? Can we draw it? You know, let's pull in so-and-so.

I think I heard them talking about something like that. If you meet a person that takes what you do and expands it, they're your people. If you meet a person that constrains it, they're not your people in that part of the innovation process. Diminishers and amplifiers. Yes. Scarcity, abundance, there's all these things, right? And there's- But I like your agency in this narrative, which is like, no problems. I shared my idea. I'm not

afraid what they'll think of me. I'm actually calibrating to see if they're part of the open space or not. They're part of the team at this phase or not. And there might be a place for them. I love the elegance of like, not now later maybe later yeah right it's not it's not judgmental critical like another another idiot i think it's meant to be more factual than critical and but so there's an elegance in how you're you're metabolizing how they share something back to you try yeah some people are really difficult um i'm not gonna lie and especially i i will throw this out there, and my community knows that I speak about this often,

especially if you're a woman leading innovation. Is that right? Some people are really difficult. More so? Yes. And where do you think that comes from? Social evolution, you know, and not just the whole framework of society yeah so systemic yeah

yeah it's systemic i i have it better than my my black girlfriends so um i get away with more than they do and it's just it is the nature of things at the moment but that's also something we need to change what would you want people in positions of power independent of gender or race ethnicity like what would you want them to know um to be a better leader oh lots of things um but in specifically well we're talking about innovation in the innovation arc and we're talking about individual and also if somebody is wanting to innovate something new as a business, like a product or service. And there's people that they're going to work with that hold a position of they can open up an aperture, they can reduce an aperture. That's kind of what leaders can do. What would you want them to know about supporting a person that's trying to innovate or a team that's trying to innovate?

Yes. So the leader's role is to give that credibility and that authority to be expansive. It's going to go counter to most people's instincts right most of business is set up to rinse and repeat to to be efficient to keep going forward we we liken it to a river in the book rushing forward path of least resistance that's not. Innovation is this vast ocean that has a current. If it doesn't have a current, you're not going to get anywhere. But progress swells and crashes. And that leader's role is to allow that to happen. Let the ocean be the ocean. Let the river be the river and the real hard part of innovation is bringing them together because in nature the river runs to the ocean the ocean doesn't run to the river but that's exactly what we need to do to bring innovation into the world is bring it to the river

very cool bring it to the river not the river to the ocean right bring it to the river, not the river to the ocean. Right. Bring it to the river. How do you bring... So I was totally with you and I'm like, oh, there's the business model, right? We need to know how to better be rivers that feed into the ocean so that we can get to the scale model to create real change. And so you flip that on its head. Yeah, because the innovation's happening in the ocean, not in the river. Whoa, really? I'm upside down now. Yeah. Right? So we don't have a natural model. It's an engine. And it makes sense, right? Like we're

trying to expedite progress. Nature's very slow at progress. We don't have that luxury in the business world of being slow at progress so we have to engineer a way to bring the ocean to the river what always comes to my mind and maybe it's because i live in seattle now is a fish ladder or a lock right like we have to create these steps step changes even though the the big vision is what you have to drive for, you can't look small because you'll never get anywhere. You have to look out far on the horizon, big ocean. But then you build these steps to bring this thing to the river. Now, you also do have to change the river. Most transformational innovation where the most value lies,

your existing systems, probably your business model, they're not going to support that. But you can't just shift the river. It has to happen over time and it has to be thoughtful. You know, you can't, people don't change quickly, but they can change if you help them. What do you think people really, really, really want? I'm talking about the humanity of innovation, the humanity of becoming the next version of oneself. I think people want to be at ease. Very cool.

And that speaks to the fear part of it too, right? If you can be at ease with all the fears that come up through the innovation process, they no longer disrupt you while you're trying to disrupt something that's what i think i've done is and i think dean's done it i think all the people in the book have done it all our collaborative partners we've gotten you know that comfortable with being uncomfortable it's we just have we're at ease in this process. We trust the process. We know if we do the work, do the exploration, do the convergence, do the synthesis, with that big vision in mind, we know if we build stepping stones, we can do what we're setting out to do. And so that fear subsides and we're at ease

in the process. And to be at ease every day is a real gift. And then when you fold in humanity and what we're aspirationally thinking about with the emergence of AI, And there's a real fear, kind of pulling this back around, that I'm going to lose my job. I'm not da-da-da. I'm going to fall behind. There's all of these fears that sit underneath the surface about AI. Are these bots going to run the world? Are we on to a dystopian future? Will I concretely lose my job? And what happens if I don't know how to use this tool that everyone's talking about and I'm kind of, I'm on the sidelines?

So how are you thinking about the fears that sit with the humanity, the intersection between fear and AI and humanity and AI? That's why we wrote the book. Too much magic and mysticism is wrapped around innovation where it's the domain of a few and, you know, the gifted.

It's not true. Innovation is this long journey that involves everyone in all parts of the business, in all parts of the world. And it's a skill set. And skills can be learned. And you decide how much practice you put into it. You decide what part of the journey you like the best, like we were just talking about. Some people really don't like ambiguity and uncertainty. Don't focus on the front end of innovation because it comes with the territory. But at some point, it has to come into the world and you need system and process and you need training and all of that.

That's much more knowable. Focus there. You're an important part of innovation then if you're focused on the operational side of innovation. And so find your happy place in the journey and then learn the skills and practice the skills. The AI skills. Many of the skills we have in the book are not AI skills. They are human skills. They are how to ask better questions, how to understand meeting people where they're at and helping them come to where you are. That is a skill and there is a process to it. And it's a lot of, you hear about this all the time, a lot of people think you can argue

somebody into your point of view and buying a thing, give them facts, give them features. It's not true. You got to meet people emotionally, connect with them, build trust with them. Now you get them to a point of enthusiasm about what you're doing. But you can't build enthusiasm in somebody if you don't know them. So it starts with that connection. So it's things like that that – like I will say my brother – one of my brothers is a master connector. He can connect with anybody over anything instantly. I'm not. I have to work at it. teach me how to not just jump into the analytical intellectual side of things, but connect emotionally with people first and then move together forward. So all of that is to say, Gen AI is a tool. And yes, play with it, practice with it, it's going to keep changing. So keep playing with it and keep practicing with it.

But there's a whole set of skills and innovation that have nothing to do with the current enabling mechanism, right? When we look at the different revolutions that have come by, we've always thought that it would be a net negative. People are going to be displaced. But in the history, it's always panned out to be a net benefit. But there's transition involved. So you got to find your place in the transition. How are you using AI concretely right now? So we are, and I say we because it's always a team in my world, we are looking at some of these mechanisms that we use to move innovation forward.

And there are parts that just decades of experience has shown us people don't like to invest in them, but they're critical. Divergence is one of those parts. It's very hard to get the space and the time to do divergent thinking. If you have a good leader, you get afforded that. So we're looking at AI and saying, well, instead of them having to hire us to come in and help them explore, let's build a tool that helps any individual sitting at home, watching a movie, laptop, you know, multitasking, do a divergent exercise, explore a topic. And because we can train AI to be anything, we can make it expert at anything we want. And now if I want to sit down and have a conversation with a biologist, an artist, you know, Paul Simon, Bugs Bunny, I can do that I can i can teach the ai to be those people and things

and i can be me and we can work together on diverging around an idea i have and it can really open up things fun and the really cool thing is it removes a lot of the fear too because now i'm in this safe space. It's just me. AI is not going to tell anybody I said this or did this or thought this. And so maybe we can help people get to this, you know, what we call the second step, convergence, through divergence with less fear.

They can get there faster. They can get there on their own time without having to ask for budget from above for consultants to come in and help them. And we could very easily look at that and say, we're displacing ourselves. It frees us up to do other things. In that case, if let's use Paul Simon or Bugs Bunny, if the engine is mimicking the way that they would potentially answer something, where does it leave folks that are the originator of ideas like Paul Simon or I don't know, like fill in the blank, any expert that you want to from the language model pull into your solution? How does that where does that leave the creators? I don't believe it. It cuts them out in a meaningful way because it's it's thin, right? The it's a representation of them and only a representation of what we know of them.

And none of us know another person fully and completely or how our magic works. So I wouldn't even begin to think I understand how Paul Simon does what he does, even though I've read books and listened to him and everything else. And the AI engine has read everything that he's ever produced and tried to make sense of it with the hallucinations when they, when it assumes it's wrong. Right. And anybody that's playing with generative AI right now, what you'll see is it does, it is very thin. Like if you ask it to write something for you in the perspective of Walter Isaacson, it is not producing a Walter Isaacson book. It's not even coming close to a Walter Isaacson book.

I feel like it's been actually fed a lot of freshman year college term papers. It has a lot of extra words in it. But it doesn't mean it's not a useful practice to have different perspectives to bounce things with. And the better that bouncing is going to be. So it just is a way to build a team. Like, I know my team very well. I couldn't possibly replace them with generative AI. They can't do what the people do on my team. And I don't think it'll be able to do that even as rapidly as we're progressing. I don't see that as the future. What do you want people to know from this deep investment that you've made in your book? For folks that are contemplating picking up the book or are halfway

through it and they're like, what do you really want them to know? They can do this. They can innovate. There is a role for them in the process. They have innate value to bring into the creative journey. And it is a positive feedback loop. If you participate in the creative process, you will tap into something that is fundamentally joyful. Your day will be better. Your relationships at work will be better, but your relationships at home will probably be better because your relationships at work are better. It is just a positive feedback loop that is fundamental to our nature that unfortunately, the last revolution, technological revolution, took us out of it. We went from a manufacturing and farming where we put our hands on things and crafts people. We built things.

We went into this period of consumption. We just consume things. I am so glad we're coming through the end of that into opening up the knowledge economy to a tool set that anybody can learn and use and become a creator again, because that's where we find joy. Oh, I love the vision. Joanne, thank you for your commitment to write this book to help us understand better what you've learned from the innovation cycle and how maybe we can just innovate ourselves

with a bit more speed, a bit more substance, a bit more soul. So thank you for your time today. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. That was really enjoyable. There's information that's flowing where it's like, yes. Oh yeah. You too. Oh yes. I've seen that too. Okay, great. What about too much fun? Emma, who do you have lined up next? Okay, so next up, we have something special because we have two podcasts dropping next week on Monday and Wednesday. That's right. Okay, so this is the Modern Leadership Series, right?

Correct. Yes. So first up, we have Apollo Global's very own Matt Breitfelder. Matt is a game changer. This one's going to be special for a lot of reasons because by title, Matt is the global head of human capital at Apollo Global. Now, Apollo Global is one of the world's largest asset management companies. And inside of that, he is a trailblazer. He is redefining leadership and human potential, full stop. Matt shares how he's breaking the mold, how he's challenging the status quo.

So join us on Monday for a very special episode to discover our take on the future of modern leadership and why caring might just be the unlock to long-term success. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no-cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback. If you're

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