Good Life Project - David Burkus: Upending Everything You Knew About Business

Episode Date: May 9, 2016

This week's guest: This week, our in-depth conversation features David Burkus, dad, author, speaker, researcher, and associate professor of management at Oral Roberts University.He teaches courses on organizational behavior, creativity and innovation, and strategic leadership and has made it his purpose to facilitate the transfer of good ideas. THe is the author The Myths of Creativity: The Truth About How Innovative Companies Generate Great Ideas and writes regularly for Harvard Business Review, Forbes, PsychologyToday and 99U. He's also the founder and host of Radio Free Leader, a podcast that shares insights on leadership, innovation, and strategy.His new book, Under New Management: How Leading Organizations Are Upending Business as Usual, draws on decades of research which has found that not only are many of our fundamental management practices wrong and misguided, but they can be downright counter-productive.In This Episode, You'll Learn:How he ended up in a university teaching position he didn't see coming.Why paying people to quit is a great use of company funds, if you value culture.What happens when companies place their employees above their customers.That the smartest corporate leaders are the ones you've never heard of.Why some companies are re-evaluating or eliminating email all together.The benefits of pushing through the uncomfortableness of pay transparency.Mentioned in This Episode:Zappos' CultureZappos' transition to "Holacracy"Slack Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So imagine stepping out of your day-to-day life and just dropping yourself into a gorgeous 130 acre natural playground for three and a half days of learning and laughing and moving your body and calming your brain and just reconnecting with people who see the world the same way that you do and just accept you as you are. So that's what we've actually created with our Camp GLP experience. We've brought together this lineup of inspiring teachers from art to entrepreneurship and writing to meditation, pretty much everything in between. And it's this beautiful way to fill your noggin with ideas to live and work better and to fill your heart. And with this rare opportunity to create, you know, the type of friendships and stories you thought you pretty much left behind decades ago.

And it's all happening at the end of August, just 90 minutes from New York City. And more than half, actually, well more than half the spots are already gone at this point. So be sure to grab your spot quickly because our final $100 early bird discount ends June 15th, 2016. After that, it goes up to full price. So you can learn more at goodlifeproject.com slash camp, or just click the link in the show notes now. Sometimes you can make a decision that's good for sort of the whole organization, and it's not good for a small percentage of people. And that's a real leadership sort of defining moment.

Are you committed to the culture, or are you committed to people in such a way that you'll rules that govern the way we work, especially if you work in a large organization, seem to actually not really fuel great productivity, great performance, total happiness. So the question is, why do they still exist? You know, we've been working as a human race in various shapes and forms for a really long time. And now we've got these organizations, companies, groups that have been built, and then we have rules and cultures. So why do so many of those rules, why do so many of the sort of like the guidelines that we live and breathe by for the vast majority of our waking hours, why are they very often so dysfunctional? This is part of the conversation that I dive into with today's guest, David Berkus, who is a professor, a speaker,

and the author of a really cool book called Under New Management. I hope you enjoy. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X.

Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th.

Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk.

So it's good to be hanging out with you. You know, it's interesting what's occurred to me. We've actually spoken before a couple times, I guess, and I've sort of been looking through your work. And I want to talk about your work because I think it's a really interesting intersection between just the human condition and how we contribute to the world, especially the new one, you know, because it's, there are a lot of like, really tight areas to dive into. But it occurs to me also, I really know very little about you. I know your professional resume. But I want to, so I want to go back in time a little bit. Yeah. I mean, how much time do you have? Four or five hours. But I mean, right now, you're an author, you're a speaker, you are a professor.

So fill that in for me a little bit first. Yeah. So ironically, the professor part's the only part that wasn't planned. You know, like normally- It's usually the opposite, right? Exactly. Exactly. No, it's the total opposite.

So I, from like 14 years old, was interested in writing. I went to undergrad for writing. I actually was supposed to, we're not far from it. I was supposed to go to Fordham at Lincoln Center, right? And a lot of different financial aid stuff didn't line up, et cetera.

So then I sort of scrambled and tried to find another place that met that kind of fit, but applied all up and down the Northeast area and ended up going to Tulsa, Oklahoma to go to Oral Roberts University. That is a far cry from Fordham

in New York City. Well, so mission-wise, it's really not. You know, Oral Roberts is an evangelical school. Right. But it's very mission- Fordham was genuinely founded. Right. But it's, and there's a lot of overlap between that.

So that was what- That's interesting. But I mean, it's definitely different in terms of reputation, in terms of location. Yeah, yeah. And all those other things. But I mean, you know, I rolled the dice. I figured worst case scenario, I'll transfer to Fordham now that I can afford it because I went to a cheaper school. And, you know, when you're 18 years old, you only know so many different professions that are out there.

Right. So, I mean, it's sort of like, you know, I have a four year old now and, you know, he knows that cops are a thing, that firefighters are a thing, et cetera. It's like the big five. Right. Yeah. Doctors, firefighters, whatever. That's all he knows is so clearly he wants to be a firefighter. Right. So I think it's the same thing when you're 18, when you think writer, like you think novelist, right. Or poet, probably, you know, one or the other. So you go to school for that. And then. And also poverty. and that's what i realized right i also was on a road trip and it's funny because in a weird quirk

of history this person actually teaches in the office next to me right but i was on a road trip and i was sitting next to somebody i'm like oh so what's your major right and she said she was studying organizational communication i was like oh what's that whatever we started talking i'm like oh that's that's really interesting that's really kind of cool so i took i basically signed up for a class in that when you're an English major, you have a ton of elective credits, right? Cause they're kind of like, we don't know how you're going to get a whole degree out of this. So just take whatever you want. And so I ended up taking that, taking multiple courses and ended up doing that as a second major. And this was around the time that like Gladwell had started, right? Which sort of

proved Gladwell, your early Dan Pink books sort of proved that like there is a genre called application of social science right right and that's what i found just fascinating right so i came in thinking i was gonna be a novelist came out knowing like i'm gonna write books like this i'm gonna write non-fiction books about you know i would you could call it the human condition or about social or whatever right so i knew that was always going to happen. And then I met a girl there, which is probably why I still live there. Met a girl who wanted to go to medical school, student loan on in-state way better than out of state. So we've been there ever since. And because she was in medical school, I went to grad school because you can work full-time.

You can go to grad school full-time and still have 20 hours a week to kill when my wife was in medical school. So that's what we did did so i went to grad school to study organizational psychology just was bored basically when that was over so started a doctorate and then again the whole idea was like maybe i'll get a doctor and i'll do some adjunct work while i'm building the the platform and writing the books and whatever and then so it like the goal was never because a lot of times when you sort of like you go for the phd um a lot of that is with it with teaching in mind like i need this to actually get a professorship. I went to a very specific practitioner, doctoral program and everything.

It was geared toward the working professional type person who might want to adjunct or might just want to charge more because they have doctorate. And that was the goal. I mean, the traditional sort of research-based PhD would have been great, but I couldn't move.

My wife was in med school, right? Where we are is where we are. So did all of that. And then the professor part was the accidental. Somebody retired at, at my alma mater that I moved to Oklahoma to go to somebody retired. And, and the part I left out, my wife's father has been a professor there for like 30 years. So I married into like the broader clan of university faculty. So I was on the short list of people that they called and were like, have you ever thought about teaching? I was like, yeah, I mean, let's try it. Let's see what happens.

And so I've been there ever since. So that's the accidental part, right? Which is funny because most people say like, did you ever want to write a book? I'm like, yeah, every day since I was 14. It's the professor part that was totally accidental. Right, yeah, that's so funny because the story is almost always the exact opposite.

So what would you actually consider the center of what you do right now? Or would you not consider, like, is it not a hub and spoke or is it really like a blend of different things? I mean, I guess so this is I'm going to sound I'm going to sound enlightened. I mean, the center of what I do is I'm Jana's husband and I'm Lincoln and Harrison's dad. But occupationally, I think the center of it, I'd have to say was the writing. Like I, I did all of the graduate school in order to better understand psychology and social science so I could write about it better, you know? And so it never was the idea of doing the research. And I, I love this. Actually, I was talking to Mitch Joel about this a couple weeks ago. I'm finally at the place with my writing that I'm comfortable saying I'm a crap researcher.

Like as a, as a doctorate, as a faculty member, all of that. So I'm terrible at, I hate it. You know, I'll never be Angela Duckworth. It's not going to happen, but maybe I can be really good writing about Angela Duckworth or whomever else. Right. And so that's, that's the goal. So that's at the center of it. And that fuels everything else. I mean, that, that fuels the ability to bring really cool insights into the classroom that fuels the speaking that fuels everything. So into the classroom. That fuels the speaking. That fuels everything. Yeah. I don't want to skip over what you just said before that, though, which is like the real center of everything, you know, in sort of the enlightened man standpoint. You're a dad and husband.

Because it's funny. Because in every professional bio that I have, it always starts with dad and husband. And I get some funny looks sometimes, you know. We both speak, right? Right. some funny looks sometimes you know if somebody we both speak right so like you know my bio says in the beginning you know the the speaker bio you know dad husband and dot dot dot whatever else right um and to me it's the most natural thing in the world because that is the starting point for everything and all the professional stuff happens to be fun stuff piled on top of it

right um so it's interesting that you just led with that also. Well, and you know, I think a lot of it is the, the only way you can sort of have enough energy to sort of fuel it all. So if you put all that first, you know, I have, I have a lot of friends and I even have family members who definitely chose that kind of career at center and then things sort of disintegrate and, and you just, you're left holding pieces and going, why? Right. You know, and I'm okay with the fact like I, I let's, let's be honest. I live in a city that makes the top 50 cities in America possible. Right. But it's an amazing place to raise children. And it's where my wife's family has been sort of from. And so

I'm okay with it. Right. Because that's, what's important. Right. And it, and it means limits on probably what I'll ever be able to charge and speaking and how big of an audience I'll ever have and that sort of stuff. But I mean, at the end of the day, like for the first book came out, I remember this vividly. And within about three weeks we were on CBS this morning just by fluke, right? Like an article got passed around. It got viral.

A producer found it three days later. I'm in New York. Yeah. And then, so we're in that. It's like a six 30 in the morning interview. We go right from there back to LaGuardia, right?

The third world airport known as LaGuardia. And I fly back to Tulsa and I fly back. My wife was working at the hospital that day. So my in-laws were watching my, at the time, the only son. And we go back and like, my son has basically two things to share with me, right? One, daddy, I saw you on TV. Two, I have a poopy diaper, but like, that's perfect. You know, I wouldn't want just the first part, right? I wouldn't want somebody the first part right i wouldn't want somebody who only knows their dad from watching him on tv like i i love the the boldness to it yeah bothness what an awesome word um well nila ferrari stole onlyness i know so i gotta go with

like when she first told me yeah that's the whole the whole concept of onlyness i'm like oh that's good yeah i know i'm just gonna add add this to everything. That works actually. Yeah. In this kind of way. So you basically develop a career now, uh, speaking, writing, and you mentioned that you, that you're on number one book, two, three. This is, so this is two. Okay. By, by real count. I mean, early, early on as blogger podcaster, we did like a self-published book that I shouldn't even be talking about now. Cause I hope no one ever finds out about really. I have a secret book. That's me by the way.

Yeah. You know what it's like? Nobody knows. Right. So let's, this is the, this is the second real book. Yeah.

Yeah. How long ago was the self-published one? Was it like in a distant, distant past or? It was probably 2010. Maybe. I don't know. It wasn't that long ago actually.

Well, I mean, I didn't have a career in 2010. It was pre-legit, man. Can we move on? Right. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I could tell you, it was called The Portable Guide to Leading Organizations.

And you can get a copy of it on Amazon for $99 because somehow there's still copies floating out there. And because there's no competition for them. There's three left that my mom didn't buy right yeah i mean actually like there's a ton of them in in a box because i can't bring myself to throw them away but then like some guy on amazon has one yeah and so you can buy it for 99 yeah i have a don't buy it please don't buy it i have a similar one i'm not even gonna say the name of it but but mine was like no no no no no No deal. You poked it out of me. Especially as a marketer, it's like the worst name in the world. It was called the long, hard fix.

Because I wanted to do the opposite of like the quick and easy. I was like, no, let's be real about what this will take. And of course, like not realizing the marketing side. I can totally see why that didn't sell. Nobody wants honesty when it comes to that. But yeah, I'm pretty sure you can't buy that anywhere anymore, by the way. I'm going to look. So you're bopping around the world right now. And I want to actually, you and I actually, I think our first actual conversation actually was around the career of speaking.

Yeah. And would you consider yourself, because I know, I think a lot of our listeners are maybe like speaker curious. Would you consider yourself sort of like a professional circuit speaker, like a full-time traveling around? Wow. So the deep secret is there is no circuit, right? There isn't,

it's not, but, but I always just assumed I've been outside of the club, man. That's not even a club. So here's my theory. My theory is there, there are writers who speak and there are speakers who write cause it sort of flows to speaking. And it's hard to tell the difference. But when you get into it, you can kind of'm the writer who speaks. You definitely make more speaking,

whichever model you pick, you're going to make more from the speaking side. It's just a question of what do you focus your time on? And so I focus in on the writing and then I'm lucky enough to get the writing, get some level of demand that actually makes it all possible. But I'm definitely not that like,

got to have a gig booked every single week, if not multiple ones, et cetera, type person. So you're a writer who speaks yeah yeah right not a member of the national speakers or anything like that whatever i'm just trying to be a writer who speaks and you also brought up this really interesting thing which is sort of like the gladwell that there are people who i think become known as the x person where like x is a particular topic and you just keep going deeper into that topic and like your five books over 12 years are just different nuances of that topic. And then there's the Gladwell style where it's like, no, I'm going to latch onto one thing that's just really cool for, you know, like three, two, three, four years, go really

deep into it, explore it, and then latch onto another thing that's just really cool. Yeah. The intellectual ADHD. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. And I have that too. You know, the first I, you can see kind of a through line throughout them. I actually pinned, I did an interview one time with Daniel Pink and I tried to tell him why all of his

books are linked. I think you can do the same with me, although it's only, it's a chain of two links. So it doesn't really count yet. And I like that sort of better. Right. And that again was the goal. And, and you see it with i i truthfully i think the the books and the ideas that stand the test of time are the result of that as opposed to i mean you'll you'll probably sell more in the short term if you've got that same idea that you just rewrite every couple of years put a different title on it it's got a picture of you know you've got a picture of you on the cover with your you know arms crossed etc like that you might sell more in the short term but i don't think you create a work that, that lasts. I mean, I know you don't create a work

that lasts because if it did, you wouldn't have to do it three years later. Right. Right. So I'd rather do that other route for sure. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting to the, the idea of, I'm just picturing like the arms crossed on the title of the cover of the book. I'm like, I'm not on the cover of any of my books. If I, I mean, if I ever have a book like that, just throw it at me, invite me into the studio to talk about it and then peg me in the head. But it goes towards the same thing, which is, you know, like, is the book fundamentally selling you as a positioning mechanism versus the idea that you're really hoping to put forward? And I've had this, I'm sure you've had this debate also because you're a writer and a speaker with different people who are like, oh, you have to have your cover on, your picture on the cover of the book or no, like, you know, it's not about that. Right.

No, no, totally. And I mean, I even get it too. I've had this fight with both of editors for both books where they say like, well, we need to hear more about you and what this means for you. And that's where they go. People aren't buying me. Like my job is to tell a story, a story of an executive or a story of a researcher or whatever. I'm not the center of it. I'm the storyteller.

I'd rather get out of the way and do that. And so, you know, I mean, maybe, maybe I'm sacrificing short term sales, but I don't, I mean, I don't think I look good in six by nine on the cover of a book anyway. So I have, I mean, I'm a podcaster, right? I've got a face for podcasting. Well, and well, so which brings up the whole idea of like podcasting and you being on the other side of the mic also, which flows into what you were just saying of, you know, like your, you'd rather it be about the ideas and not your personal story, which also is sort of like the way that you've built your podcast too. It's like an interview show, which means you're the guy asking the questions, not giving the

answer. Right. Yeah. And it's, it's why, I mean, like we started this with what's my story. I do a good job of hiding it. Right. Cause it's not supposed to be about me. Right.

Which, but, but it, but, But it is. I mean, yes. Yes. Because you came in here and we've known each other for a while now and we've had conversations on the phone. And I'm like, I actually want to know who you are. So do I. So that's my problem. And the therapy begins now. Exactly. Let me set the clock a little bit.

So it's an interesting thing when you talk about creating a book, right? And you're not selling you. You're selling the idea. And you reference Gladwell out of the gate. Gladwell doesn't write about himself. He's always telling other people's stories. But I think there is a moment where there is a deep and profound fascination with who Gladwell is as a human being. Where people are maniacally trying to figure it out.

But exactly, how much do you know about him? You don't know. Nothing. I mean, he lives how much do you know about him? You don't know nothing. I mean, he lives somewhere near you, right? I, interestingly enough,

I, I literally bumped into him in a cafe yesterday up like in a small town, two hours north of New York. Really? Yeah. Oh, that's kind of interesting. He kind of stands out.

Well, yeah, that's fair. No, I remember the day that I saw him on humans in New York and was like, Oh, like they found him. Cause I mean,

I knew he's sort of lived here looking for the geo tag on the photo but again and and you you he has a brand where i mean he you build a personal brand but you build a personal brand that says like you know i can trust this guy not to shove down my throat how amazing he is right and that might be this the speaker who writes model right but you you can trust gladwell you can trust chip and dan heath to talk about the science and pair it with really good examples. And the same thing with sort of Dan Pink, none of these people are trying to, when they write,. It's the quality of the ideas and the quality of the writing. And I sometimes wonder, I mean, I sometimes think that that's becoming more of a lost art, that there's so much focus on like the... So I think it's two things.

And I'm curious what you feel about this. You know, when you're writing books about big ideas or the intersection between science and, you know, like the human condition, you know, there's definitely the value of the information. There's the value of the idea. There's the value of the information. There's the value of the idea. There's the value of the message. But how do you feel about the actual value of the writing as an integral part, not just as the medium, but as a part of the message? Right. So this is where my opinion based on being an undergraduate English major probably doesn't track with reality. Like, I think the craft is big and huge,

but there are so many parts of the craft choosing, grabbing a thesaurus, right, and choosing just the right adverb and all that sort of thing that I'm not entirely sure matters. I think people just want to hear stories. Like, I think the number one best thing you can do to have a book where people say,

like, and actually, you know, jury's still out because the second book has been out today right so i i might be totally wrong because everybody will read it and just slam it on amazon but you know i think in general people people want to hear a good story beginning middle and end a little bit of conflict how it was how it was resolved these are these are things that are very basic and yet i think most people especially kind of in our field of writing more toward um you know non-fiction business applicable those sorts of people still they don't do that they want to write an outline and they want to prove a case or they want to use some other lead with the principle and then back it up with right and i i think you know it doesn't

it's weird it doesn't take a lot to be i I mean, we'll never win a Pulitzer prize, right? But I think you can get, you can tell a good story. And because it's so rare in our genre, I think people remember it more, but it's not like we're, we're grammar masters. It's not like we have our own sort of personal dictionary. That's tens of thousands of words.

And we pick just the right one. We just know the secret. People want to hear a story. And I, I guess when I think of that though, I, that's part of a big part of what I think of when I think about the craft. It's not necessarily like, do you know Strunk and White as a Chicago Man U style?

Like, are you writing articulate, you know, like grammatically correct sentences? God knows I don't. Isn't that what editors do? And I'm like, I'm waiting for my copy edits for my next book back right now. I'm like dreading it because I deliberately break every rule because I'm much more interested in cadence and rhythm and the story but but i think story story craft is profoundly important and it's something that a lot of people sort of like give you know like passing reference to in terms of like how important it is to really understand how to tell a story well yeah including i would say you know with with the types of books that i write including telling the story of research like it's one thing to say you know in a study of 200

on you know university undergraduates such and such and such it's a whole other thing to be like put someone in the situation that we asked participants to be in or i mean the the trick that i like to do is i like to try and tell the story of the researcher. So so-and-so was a, you know, this and that inspired them to start doing this study and here's what they found and all that sort of thing. And that's a really hard thing to do because academic writing in particular is not story centric whatsoever. It's very much, you know, here's the premise. Here's the hypothesis. Here's the null hypothesis. Here's how we try to prove it.

We didn't prove it, but we still make a contribution to the literature. Please publish us. Right. And then check the citations and once a month to make sure that you're getting something. Exactly. I went through it really. I'm on Google Scholar. It's sad. I still, I mean, I've already admitted I'm a terrible researcher and I still check my Google Scholar stats. I'm fortunate not even to be in a position where there's anything to check on Google Scholar. Now you and I are going to co-write an academic paper. I'm fortunate not even to be in a position where there's anything to check on Google Scholar stats. Now you and I are going to co-write an academic paper. I'm going to force it.

Oh, that would be horribly scary. Well, I was trained to write as a lawyer originally, you know, which is like very, yeah. There is an absolute method. And I remember actually being hung out to dry in open court as a young lawyer because I wanted to actually do a lot of storytelling go deep into the the people that were affected by this one particular investigation and um my then supervisors

was like we have the technical violation of the law write it up technically and present that i'll say but the judges i'm pretty sure the judge is a human being and he's gonna want to actually know the story of the people yeah so. So I get up first question. And you're Joel McHale in community. You make it. Yeah. He's like, so I'm assuming you spoke with all these people.

Tell me about them. Oh, busted. Mayday. Mayday. We've been compromised. The pilots, the hitman.

I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him.

Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch,

getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Back to you and your journey and your books and stuff like that so you got a new one out right now we're hanging out right here and it's called under new management um and it's it's kind of fun because there's a lot of short and sweet chapters um that's my other secret in addition to telling

stories is yeah what's that about actually i have intellectual adhd so um i would rather write 13 essays and then find the through line and string them all together. I mean, it was the same thing with the myths of creativity. Like it was all of the only thing all of these things have in common is their misconceptions about innovation and creativity. So I'm going to write in that case, I think it was 12 essays or 10, 10 essays about it. In this case, 13. And I think I'm actually in the process of thinking about book three. And again, it's like, well, I don't want to do like a because i think most books do you can get the

point of it they're they're written trusting that you'll stop right and so i kind of write in that modular format hoping that you won't right because each chapter is a standalone thing and my worst amazon review to date says on this this reads like 13 different medium posts i'm like exactly that's what I wanted. You can consume it. It's good. And then you can move to the next one. Yeah. But, but I also think that that really reflects sort of a shift in consumption. My sense is that that's the way that there's an expectation, maybe because that's the way that Kant has, has just been developing on the web, that there's sort of this increasing expectation that when you see a larger

body of work, you know, we're trained to still try and process it in small chunks, because that's what we do all day, every day digitally. And it's almost like there's cognitive dissonance when it isn't laid out that way. So it's almost like you're giving people what they want in the way they're being trained to want it. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or bad thing, but it's a thing. And it's not, it's actually not that new of a thing. Like we forget that most of the great literature of the 18th and 19th century was written in serial format. You know, Count of Monte Cristo was a bunch of little things and it's, now granted it was one big story in public, but even then we were consuming it in little sort of chunks like that. I think it's kind of always

been that way. No, very true. Let's play with some of the ideas that you play with. I'm just going to bounce around your table of contents. No, go for it. I mean, I actually let the editor pick the list of what order they come in. I only had one requirement, and that was picking the last one. But the rest of it's all his list. So please bounce around. All right, awesome.

One of them is something that I think we've both probably gone into a little bit, and that's paying people to quit. There's this, you know, take me into this. I love this idea. I really do. For two reasons. Like the first is, and I know this from coming from the org psychology and HR background, like you will, the average company will spend one and a half times a person's salary training them. Right. And if you do all spend all that money and learn that they're not a good fit, it's over. Right. And so it started with

Zappos. Tony Hsieh kind of popularized the idea and said, you know, basically at that, they get the offer. It's capital T capital O the offer. Right. And after a few weeks, they basically say, here's what we're about. Here's our culture. If this isn't right for you, we'll pay you. I think right now it's $4,000, about a month's salary for most of the employees. We'll pay you $4,000 to quit. Right. No questions asked. No, have a good life. You know, go, we got a month's salary. You got a month to find a new job on us. Right. Which is, it's one of those things where you go, it's crazy. And then you think about it for five seconds later and you go, no, it's brilliant. Right. But then I, I mean, I thought about it for two years and it's even more brilliant, right?

Because it's even more brilliant when people don't take the offer. Right. So most people don't take the offer. 90 plus percent of people don't take the offer. And from a psychology perspective, we have confirmation bias working, right? You're always looking to selectively filter in or filter out information that confirms you made the right decision. So if you made the decision not to quit, you're selectively filtering in and filtering out reasons why you this is a great place to work and you're highly engaged and this is a great company, why you didn't take the money and run.

And so then then it's a really good deal because I didn't even have to pay you and you because you turn down the offer. And now I get a more engaged employee than had i not given you the offer that's probably the part that fascinates me even more than the idea of letting people self-select out is that idea of what happens when people decide to stay you know because then you don't have to pay anything and i mean they they've had up up well up until really some of the recent bigger changes around holacracy but they've had this legendary reputation for culture you know their internal their external product was service, but their internal product was always culture. You know, world-class culture where they had no turnover

and people like live together, you know, like breathe together, party together, and like never wanted to leave. I wonder if like part of that is sort of like this, you know, you're self-selecting a really early stage to just like completely and utterly buy into that sense of family well and they they do a a huge job of hiring for culture so they actually have like they have two different sort of tracks of interviews so you interview for competency but you actually do interview for culture they have their little

culture document i think it's 10 i forget what they all are yeah the points that right the 10 points of culture right and it's you know deliver wow and be fun but a little weird and those kind of things and they actually have an interview where they structure the questions deliberately to get a sense of how much these values actually resonate with a person right and so assuming that that weeds out a lot of people who aren't a culture fit then you have the offer which is okay so we thought you were a culture fit but now you've seen our culture if you think who aren't a culture fit, then you have the offer, which is, okay, so we thought you were a culture fit, but now you've seen our culture. If you think you're not a culture fit, here's our last chance to sort of decide that this isn't right for you, which is really, I mean, that's kind of what it takes to reinforce a strong culture is to make

sure that the people that you bring in already resonate with it because whoever you bring in, they're going to change the culture. The question is if they change it in a way that's good and serves those values or degrades the power of those values yeah and it's really interesting what's happening now you know because the company i guess a little over a year ago you know tony made the announcement that they're basically moving entirely to holacracy as a management philosophy and basically said you know either you're in or you're out and And from external accounts, something like 20, 25% of the people basically left. But the ones who stayed who were going through like that level of profound shakeup. Right.

You got to wonder how like really deeply in there. Well, I mean, I think from the reports that I see, and again, all of this is speculation, right? But a lot of the people who left were the manager roles, the ones who had basically been used to a culture of being a manager. And that idea that we're going to remove that in order to better serve these 10 things, we need to remove that layer. I could see how that wouldn't resonate with those certain people. But again, it's that commitment to culture. Like, here's where we're going, right? I mean, this is totally unrelated to Zappos.

But I actually just, because he's in New York on a sabbatical, I was just talking with our senior pastor at the church that I go to because we're making changes. And one of our jokes is like, yeah, we should do that. We're going to lose like 5% of people, but we should do that. And it's that idea that sometimes you can make a decision that's good for sort of the whole organization and it's not good for a small percentage of people. And that's a real leadership sort of defining moment. Are you committed to the culture or are you committed to people in such a way that you'll let them change the culture? Right. And it comes back to like, I'm reminded of like a Seth Godin thing about the ability to say

to your customers, this isn't for you. Sometimes maybe we need the same thing for employees, being able to say like, we're not a good employer for everyone, but if you're this, we're great for you. Which, which kind of segues into something else that you talk about, about customers. I hate customers. That's what it really comes down to. Talk to me about customers. I just hate customers. No, so there's a chapter in Under Dimension called Putting Customers Second. And this is, again, this is not my idea. It actually comes from Vinay Nair. He's the star of the story. And he was the CEO of HLC Technologies,

a really big India based software and solutions company. And he basically realized that whether a project succeeded or failed, the customer had the same thing to say, your people did awesome, right? Meaning even if they failed, their people did awesome. So it was corporates problem that they failed, they're the sort of reason it was corporate's problem that they failed. They're the sort of reason. And so he came up with what he called this idea of the value zone, that the value of the organization, I think this is true. I actually was talking to educators and talking about this,

even in an education system, the value is created by the people that touch the customer, whether that's a student or whether that's a physical customer buying, all of the value of an organization is created in that interaction. And so whoever's in that value zone, that's who the rest of the organization ought to be accountable to. Right. And, but so often we don't have that.

We have a hierarchy of culture where that frontline or that customer facing roles, they sort of have a divided loyalty. They have to serve the customer, but they also have to serve their manager accountable to that. And so it's a very big shift in thinking that like in, in order to put the, to serve the customer, but they also have to serve their manager and be accountable to that. And so it's a very big shift in thinking that like in order to put the, to give the customer everything they need, we need to make the entire organization accountable to the value zone so that we've been, we put that first so that they can put the customer first. But you know, fanatic customer loyalty turns out to actually be an effect, not a cause,

right? And the cause is putting employees in that value zone first. Yeah. I mean, it seems like it's sort of like an outgrowth of a servant leadership mindset where, you know, it's like that whoever's touching the customer, you're like the, the mindset of the person who they're, you know, quote reporting to is how can I best serve them so that you can best serve across. Yeah. It's a very, it's very much a reciprocal trust idea that if I invest trust in you, I'm, I'm hoping that you trust me back. So if it seems so logical, why isn't this the way that it just happens all the time? Well, I mean, let me ask you, if you were in charge of a 10,000 person company, wouldn't you want them being accountable to you? If I was in charge of a 10,000 person company, I'd be hiding in a corner.

Probably, well, if I were in charge, it might not be a 10,000 person company. But, you know, so, I mean, every company that that ever started ever started with a founder or founders right and most of the time we add new people to the organization when that founder can't keep doing the work and we keep scaling we keep finding work but the idea is sort of we build a top-down hierarchical model on this assumption that the guy or girl who started it they know how to do the work best. So we ought to be accountable to them. And they ought to have information sort of flow down. And it takes honestly, a you could call it servant leadership, or transformational leadership, or just that idea of reciprocal trust. But it takes a strong leader to be able to say like, no, I'm not the most important person in this organization anymore. Because if we truly want

to be sustainable, we got to serve the customer. and so whoever is in charge of that yeah and you can you can choose to do it yourself and try and be a very front-facing ceo or whatever but really it's kind of a better idea to go no my my role is to serve you because you serve my customer yeah and then at the same time i completely agree with that it makes total sense and at the same time you see huge organizations that were built around the unique personalities and capabilities of like a leader who built it from the ground up. And then when that leader steps away, the entire company starts to head south. I mean, I'm thinking of Phil Knight and Nike, I'm thinking of Howard Schultz and Starbucks. And like that leader, right, right, has like steps back in, right, you know, in order to sort of like, quote, right the ship. Right. Yeah. And, you know, I think, again, it stems down from this idea that, of course, that founder person, we should just always trust them.

We should listen to them because they started it. Right. And they have that infinite wisdom. But again, like the smarter leaders are the ones we've never heard of because there never was a crisis when they stepped down. You know? never heard of because there never was a crisis when they stepped down right you know and yeah i mean we live in a world where people want to make an impact and develop a reputation and feed their ego and get the spoils of good business and all that sort of thing so we become a very star focused culture but the truth is that i mean the best corporate leader of the ones you've never heard of you know because they put the people in the value zone first so much so that you never i mean until vanette in a year came out with a book about this philosophy,

if he hadn't have done that, you would have never heard of him, ever. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, actually. So you also have some interesting things to say about one of my favorite things in the world, which is email. It's your favorite thing in the world? No.

Oh, talking negatively about email is your favorite thing in the world. Let's do that then. Well, yeah, I mean, so it's interesting. I think most people these days have somewhat of a love-hate relationship with email, probably trending more and more towards hate. And it's even just the idea of... Did you have AOL?

I did. Do you remember how awesome it was to get email back in the AOL? Oh, yeah. I was like, oh, my God. I was so excited. Yeah, it's like the little you've got mail thing. And first of all, it took so long to sign in that sign in and not hear that you've got mail was right i remember hearing like the modem tones in the background oh yeah oh yeah this and this was the start of the addiction right we got pavlovian trained to hear the modem tones

the um you know connecting connecting i'm gonna go make my coffee while I come back and see if I've got email. Right. But see, if you went through all of that and then there wasn't a you've got mail, you were disappointed, right? And that was the beginning of it. And now, actually, if somebody sends us a physical letter, we're like amazed. We feel that way about it. But, you know, email, it's an amazing invention, honestly.

And it's amazing because it's cheap and it's asynchronous right but it's also devastating because it's cheap and it's asynchronous right it's cheap to send so we really don't think about whether or not we should send it or whether there's a better medium for it we just send it right and it's asynchronous which is great because in in theory that means i can send it to you at 11 o'clock at night and you'll get to it whenever, but that's happens to be when I work. It turns out though, in a work context, and a lot of it is set by whatever sort of the manager does,

but it turns out in a work context, there's always that feeling that you need to sort of reply whenever you can, even if you're at home. And so we've never had, we just went from like, oh, this is great. And we readily adopted it. And we never stopped and had that conversation about like, well, hang on, when should we use this tool? When should we not use this tool? What are our communication needs?

What's the best tool for it? We never had any of that conversation. And so in response to that, there are companies who are having that conversation now. And some of them are saying like, forget it. We're done with internal email entirely. And others are saying, well, we'll restrict it to certain hours. But again, it's a matter of what's the right tool for the need. And so like one company I profile, Atos, had to build their own sort of, the best way to describe it is a combination of a social network and a Slack, right? If you're looking for flexible workouts, Peloton's got you covered. Summer runs or playoff season meditations, whatever your vibe, Peloton has thousands of classes built to push you.

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Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. January 24th. Tell me how what worked for them. And others said like, no, email's fine, but we're going to cut it off at 6 p.m. and start it again at 8 a.m. type of thing. Again, it goes back to that conversation. We have to have a conversation about it in order to have the most effective tool. Preferably not an email conversation about it. Yeah, good point. We'll have it on Slack. But it's so interesting, right?

Because, you know, and I guess there have been more examples of bigger and bigger companies literally saying we're killing email for the entire company. And I think a lot of people are like, but how can you even think about functioning if you don't have email? Like, you can't even conceive of being able to function without email. Like, my God, you have to get up and walk three cubicles down and talk to the person. And what's going to happen then? Well, what's going to happen is you're going to get up and walk three cubicles down and talk to the person. And yeah, I think we've become so accustomed to it because it's cheap and it's easy and we do it often that we don't remember what it was like before. And there are times where what it was like before was better. And that's what we find.

Yeah. So you brought up Slack, you know, and I think, and you look at, so for those who don't know what Slack is, Slack is this sort of alternative communication tool that's an app and a tool system and desktop that a lot of people use, including us and our team. And it's exploded within like the first nine months, they had a billion plus valuation and it, the adoption rate of it has just been like astonishing. And I wonder if that's in part because it's, you know, it's people perceive it as in some way relieving some of the pain caused by email.

Yeah. I mean, so the craze is, here's what I honestly believe it is. And it's a subtle little thing hidden in Slack. Do you remember about two or three days into your using Slack, they sent you a thing that said, you're getting a lot of notifications. Maybe you should turn off the notification where anybody sends a message and will tell you and just do it if you're tagged. Do you remember that? No, because I start with everything turned off. Oh, all right. So you're the 1%. I am. I'm the freak that actually turned off to do it. But most people don't, right? So the thing that Slack basically did was it created a system where when communication ramps up, it goes, hey, we shouldn't notify you as often. It's the only technology I've ever seen that says, let's not notify you all the time. Right. And that's really what it is. And it's the same thing with blue Kiwi, which is what Atos created. And I talk about it in the book. It was this idea that instead of interrupting us all the time, we'll just let people set it and how they want to be notified. And you can, I mean, honestly, you can do this in Outlook or Mac Mail or whatever, but nobody does.

We just stick with whatever the default is. Yeah. And it's funny. I was flashing back to the very first time I got a BlackBerry device. And it was like this new cool thing. And everyone's like, oh, my God, you get internet on your phone. And the first thing I did was email the company. I went to the company website and I emailed them to try and and find out like, how can I turn off the little footer

that says, that says it's coming from like a BlackBerry because I don't want anybody to actually know this was before there was an expectation of constant on. I don't want everyone to know that I have this thing because they'll, then they'll think that I'm actually able to get the email anytime. And then they're going to expect that I'm going to because then they'll think that I'm actually able to get the email anytime. And then they're going to expect that I'm going to respond to it. And in an astonishingly short window of time, that is the absolute expectation is that, you know, it's just, we all have smartphones. We're all checking our phone somewhere between 150 and 300 times a day, depending on the study you look at. And so if I send something to you, like anytime,

24 seven, any day of the week, you know, you should respond to it. And that's so destructive. I mean, I have every push notification on my phone turned off to the extent where like, sometimes my team needs to reach me, they'll call because it's the only way to get me, you know, and even to get me on Slack, I was the last one on my team on Slack. Because I'm like the curmudgeonly creator. I just want to be in a cave. Right, right. But again, you're that 1%. Yeah, I realize I'm not normal. The most common ringtone on the iPhone, the one that came with it.

I didn't know that. Most common text. People just don't change most of it. And so we're stuck with and and of course it's in the technology's best interest to notify you all the time to get you using it all the time all that sort of stuff that's what i think is so crazy about slack they were the first software type thing to say no we don't want to notify you all the time we want to figure out what's the right thing for your team in how frequent they're communicating yeah which

is so counterintuitive because yeah because everyone says you have to go and actually get engagement and get usership on multiple times a day to develop the habit so that you'll stick with the app and you'll stick with using. Right. Yeah, so interesting. So one of the other things that you explore also,

which I find kind of fascinating, is the intelligence or lack of intelligence around stopping people from competing with you after. Oh, the non-compete clause. It doesn't work out. Yeah. Yeah. Take me into this a little bit. So, I mean, so if you don't know what a non-compete clause is essentially like when you're hired, they can ask you to sign a piece of paper that says, if you leave, you won't work at a similar type company for a year or three years, usually a year is about the standard. And these are pretty common clauses actually. Oh yeah. No, super common. I mean, Jimmy John's has one, right? I mean, they don't,

so I gotta be careful here. I talk about this in the book and they don't require it, but they include it in the franchisee packets in case you as a franchisee want to implement it. Right. So it's optional, but they've got one, right? I mean, and it actually, in the book, I talk about a church that had one, a church, you know, that said, no, you can't go work with any other church. Like, okay. And so they're, that's how common they are. And we don't really think twice about it. Cause we think it's one of those things where the intention of it just makes perfect sense, right? Like we're going to invest in you. I told you earlier, it takes one and a half times the cost of somebody's salary to usually to train them. So we're investing a lot of money and we don't want you taking all that knowledge and sending it somewhere else. That turns out to

be kind of short-sighted because it turns out that when someone leaves and goes to another firm, both firms actually benefit because now you've got this new connection to another firm. We know this from looking at patent data. Like when somebody leaves one firm A and goes firm B, when they're working at B, they're still citing patents from firm A, meaning they took some of that knowledge with them. But it turns out that firm A starts to cite patents from firm B. They've never had an employee who used to work at B. It's just they had an employee that used to work for them. So there's sort of a knowledge sharing that happens because there's a network connection made now.

And then there are some states and there are some companies that are committed to non non-competes California. I mean, I think one of the primary reasons for Silicon Valley's explosion compared to a couple other places in the U S that were equally resourced is that people had freedom of movement. State of California basically said like non-compete clauses restrict people's freedom of movement. So they're invalid. Yeah. And as a result result you get people trading around bringing knowledge with them but sharing knowledge back to the organization and that sort of rising tide raises all boats yeah which is so interesting too because if there's one state where you'd figure people would be sort of like maniacally protective about you know like you can't leave you can't go to a competitor it's all like about like you know the intellectual property that we you develop and part of that is always going to be in your brain still when you move on right and you

know so it's almost like there's this you know if that's really deeply ingrained in you there's this disincentive to build your industry in california if you know like california can be like no go wherever you want it's all good that's true but that's the exact opposite has happened yeah so um orly lobel who's a brilliant law scholar out of San Diego, University of San Diego, I believe, has a lot of this research she wrote up in a book called Talent Wants to be Free. And that's what shows up in the lab, too. Like talent actually wants to have freedom of mobility. And so, yes, you would think that we don't want this. But in reality, that's what talent wants.

And so you've got to do what your talent wants. And so we end up having it now. Apple sort of is always the exception that proves the rule. They're sort of like famously, it's famously secretive and all that sort of thing. But again, you need an exception in order to prove rule. Everybody else is sort of the opposite in that freedom of movement,

et cetera. So why are they, I have no idea. I mean, I shouldn't have brought them up because i knew you were going to say the why thing and i just i don't know i really don't because you know like literally every case to the exception and yeah but and now they're out there you know like the highest value and you're like yeah so they are the exception but they're also arguably the most

successful of all of them oh i mean we'll see we'll see i mean you a i mean come on there's a difference between market valuation and sort of actual lasting tangible sustainable value we'll see i mean i i i don't think i've not brought bought an apple product in the last five years as you've got like the apple watch i know i've got the apple watch to turn the iphone off before and etc right this is an apple mic isn't this the new no I'm just kidding. I mean, I honestly don't know. I think to be totally honest, I think part of the secretiveness is kind of an illusion and there's still a lot of sharing going on inside the firm that we're just not hearing. And I think part of their secrecy is baked into their marketing and the idea that they don't need, they, you know, they started early letting places like

Mac rumors talk about them. And so then they shut down talking about themselves because it fed MacRumors and it created – I think some of it sort of caked into marketing. Like, you know, there's a bunch of – Bob Sutton said it best. Steve Jobs is a Rorschach test. You look into Apple and Steve Jobs and you can learn whatever lesson you wanted to learn before you looked into them. And, you know, one of the famous ones is this idea that they never did market research or focus. Right. I mean, like, but they did, right. They listened, right. And they had, and they listened through constant iteration, but they had, they just had a different way to listen. It's not like they said, it's not like they said, we'll tell the market what it wants.

No, they did a lot of prototyping to figure it out. They just knew if they did a focus group, everybody would lie to them. So they found a better way to get customer feedback, but they got it definitely. Right. And the, and the other thing, and it's, it's so interesting you brought that up. Cause I've thought about this a lot. Cause I've heard that same thing so many times, you know, like we'll tell the market what it wants and say, but when you have a company with tens of thousands of employees who are also fanatical users of your product, you don't really have to go outside. Right, exactly. Because you can keep everything in your 50,000 people and get probably all the data you'll ever need.

Yeah, no, exactly. Right there. Exactly. And they would make, like on the iPad, they made prototypes of it in like 40 different sizes and dimensions etc and experiment around and played with it and exactly that they get a lot of feedback on it the other thing is like there's a difference between telling the market what it wants which is like the segue right between telling the market you've solved that problem you didn't they didn't know they had right one requires a deep amount of market research i think apple does the

second one more they they listen to the market to figure out what needs are there and then they say hey you don't know what this is because you've never thought about this as a solution to your needs but here it is i mean and the ipad's a great example like it was made fun of at first until everybody figured out like no this solves this problem and this one this one of this one and then you have like the segue which literally is trying to tell the market what it wants and nobody wanted it yeah okay so here's my question you're wearing an apple watch i am and you're wearing a fitbit i am which is what i owned before i had an apple watch and i i actually and like had to make a decision between the apple watch and the fitbit and you made the wrong choice ah i think i made well this one that has less notification you're talking about sort of like

the difference between telling them what they want and sort of like you're like predefining a need that you don't yet know that you have where do you think the apple watch falls in that i wanted so i had a fitbit that couldn't tell time and so i wanted that all right and then actually it what it solves for me is the notifications problem with a phone so i have i don't know if i showed you this so my wallet is a phone case ah got it so now with the watch i never need to take this out right i have to make a call right because i have and i turned off the vibrations or whatever and i have a little red dot if i have a notification and i love that because again i check that on my terms not not theirs and so that's that's actually the primary thing it solved for me is it actually removed notifications but kept my like diabolical need to feel connected at all times yeah right without even having to take the

the phone out of my wallet right all right i'll buy that for now but i mean i started with if i wore a fitbit for two years before the watch came out and had it not been for the fitbit i would have never said like oh this is really useful right and funny enough for me which goes along with apparently my isolationist uh tendency is one of the reasons I actually didn't buy the Apple Watch was because I'm an Apple fanatic. Like I love Apple product is because of my sort of maniacal rejection of push notifications. And like, so one of the big sales of the watch was, you know, like you don't have to check anything like your watch is going to let you know. And I'm like, I don't want something else to let me know. Like I want to go looking for what I'm ready to go looking for yeah so but again like

we've already discussed i'm very much the alibi when it comes to that there's another topic that i just want to uh jump into before uh we sort of come full circle because and it kind of touches on this and the idea of secrecy in large organizations which is and you've spoken about this also is the idea of uh pay transparency and this has become a big public topic for a lot of people these days. Take me into sort of your thinking on this. Yeah, I was not expecting to be an advocate for this one, actually. Really? I'm a reluctant, I'm very reluctant.

It's a new political party. I'm a reluctant advocate. Can I sign up? I know, right? Well, depending on how the primaries go, we might actually want to start the reluctant party. I'm reluctant about basically every person in the primaries right now. It's awful. No, so, you know, I have libertarian leanings, right?

I'm very into privacy and individual responsibility and individual freedom and all that sort of stuff. So I was expecting this idea of like, no, no, no. It's like that's that's private information between an employer and an employee. What I found when I dug into the data is that, like, even if that's true, it's not worth it. You know, so we have, you know, the number one reason you would want to keep pay secret is that you're paying people different rates and there'll be chaos if they find out they're gonna find out whether you shared or not if you're paying people to dramatically different rates right and this is not a new thing this is like two people have essentially the same job yeah so you and i do the same thing but you're better at negotiating right during the interview right which may or

may not have any relevance to the value you can bring after the fact, right? Negotiation skills for most people are not something you need to do your job unless you work in sort of sales, right? And so because you can negotiate and maybe I can't, you make 10 grand more than me. We do the same work, right? I'm going to find out, right? Even if it's secret. And I mean, this goes 1950s with john stacy adams there was a thing called equity theory that he that he promoted and later research kind of proved it that people are always looking to compare what am i getting out of the effort that i put in compared to what are you getting out of that right so if i work 10 and i make 10 and you work 15 and you make 15 that's fine it's not about paying people the same thing but it's about letting people see that like your

effort is being rewarded fairly. And when they perceive that as not fair, they're more likely to be distressed, more likely to slack off to try and restore equity, more likely to quit all of these sort of things. And really the challenge is we're awful at judging. We're always constantly sort of looking to see what everybody gets paid, but we're awful at figuring out what it actually is. And we're awful at judging sort of one another's value contribution, right? So keeping those things secret just feeds that idea that we're awful at this. So we're destined to feel frustrated and making them transparent in contrast says like, no, here's, here's what John gets paid. Here's what you get paid. And here's the reason for the difference, you know, and now we can agree

or disagree that that's fair. And we can have a productive conversation about what's fair right but now i don't hate you because you get paid more i sort of rally against the system and maybe we'll even improve it which is what you see in a lot of the companies that go transparent so i mean beyond that societally there's a lot of huge benefits so there's a lot of research that that suggests that the gender wage gap dramatically narrows in transparent companies women and minorities are especially like high talent, highly educated ones are more likely to be attracted to transparent companies for that same reason. They don't have to worry about this anymore. So there's a lot of benefits for it. And in the end, I'm like, okay, it may be uncomfortable to share what your salary is, but it's less uncomfortable than always worrying about whether or not you're getting a fair deal.

Yeah. And I guess, especially with the, like the gender side of things, which has gotten a huge amount of attention over the last couple of years. I mean, those two things are so related. I think that's the reason the whole conversation is happening. Yeah, I do also. So a lot of interesting topics we've touched on. There's a lot more in your book. Let's come full circle here. So the name of this is Good Life Project. So if I offer that term out to you, to live a good life, what does it mean to you? To live a good life. I mean, we already sort of talked about it a bit with that idea that family and personhood are sort of at the center of it. And that career is just sort of a matter of one other thing that kind of orbits the self, right? And I think that's probably what it means to live a good life is to figure out the proper orbits of all the different things that you keep in your life. You know, if you're your own son, what's Mercury, Venus, Earth, et cetera, et cetera, how far out or how big or how close are they? How big are they, et cetera. And I think honestly, that's different for everybody. Some people are way more career focused than others. And I think to live a good life is that idea that you've got to figure out what your solar system of the self looks like. And then you've got to go build it, which is the harder

part because every different planet wants to be, this is a terrible metaphor, but you get where I'm going. Every different planet wants to be the gigantic one and you can't let that happen. You've got to sort of figure that out. And so it's, it's tailored. It's, it's bespoke. So I don't know. I can't, I can't answer that for everybody, but I've got my solar system figured out and we're orbiting. Thank you. Thank you. Hey, thanks so much for listening. We love sharing real unscripted conversations and ideas that matter. And if you enjoy that too, and if you enjoy what we're up to, I'd be so grateful if you would take just a few seconds and rate and review the podcast. It really helps us get the word out. And you can actually do that now right from the podcast app on your phone. If you have an iPhone, you just you hit the subscribe button while you're at it. And then you'll be sure to never miss out on any of our incredible guests or conversations or riffs.

And for those of you, our awesome community who are on other platforms, any love that you might be able to offer sharing our message would just be so appreciated. Until next time, this is Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch,

getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Results will vary.