The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 422: Dr. Ron Friedman - How To Reverse Engineer Excellence

Episode Date: June 6, 2021

Text LEARNERS to 44222 for more... Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12  https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12 Dr. Ron Friedman is an award-winning psychologist who has served on the faculty of the University of Rochester and has consulted for political leaders, nonprofits, and many of the world's most recognized brands. His first book, The Best Place to Work, was selected as an Inc. Magazine Best Business Book of the Year. His most recent book is called, Decoding Greatness: How the Best in the World Reverse Engineer Succes. Notes:   When Michael Dell was 16 years old, his parents bought him an Apple Computer. And they were horrified by what he did next... He took it apart to learn how to build it. He was curious. Excellent performers don't passively observe. They take action. When you encounter an awesome memo or speech, try to identify why it was remarkable... And then see how you can implement what you've learned to do the same. Nature vs. Nurture? "It's both." The stories we've been told are wrong: That it takes talent + practice. That's only part of the story. It's thinking in formulas and becoming a collector. "Identify what works and turn it into a template for yourself." A presidential speechwriter like Jon Favreau (President Obama's speechwriter) would study the greatest presidential speeches in history as he wrote... Reverse outlining - Take a finished product and reduce it to small paragraphs. Read the transcript and identify the emotion. There are six main narratives for main characters... The analysis comes after collection. Identify what's extraordinary... And then create a template. Create metrics and rate your work. "Measurement begets improvement." This requires a mindset of curiosity (like Michael Dell) Think in "blueprints." How does this work? How do I recreate it? President Obama initially was not a good politician... He observed pastors at churches. He started using repetition and pausing for effect to improve his ability to give compelling speeches. How are Chipotle and Starbucks similar? "They think in blueprints." The creators of Chipotle knew that people love burritos, but there wasn't a fast way to get great ones. They created a blueprint. The leaders at Starbucks modeled their buildings after Italian coffee bars. It's "pattern-thinking." Tom Petty didn't watch Bruce Springsteen because he felt they were too similar. He didn't want to outright copy him. Ron reads fiction to help him become a better storyteller and use cliffhangers in his non-fiction writing. Visualization - Why does it not work? "It can give you temporary satisfaction and lead to you not working as hard for the goal. You feel as if you already achieved it." "Visualize the process instead of the outcome." The UCLA Study: Visualize the process Practice in the past - Be reflective, use a journal, look back at previous entries Deliberate practice - It needs to be hard and you need feedback from an expert. Practice in different locations. Novelty is important. This allows you to be more present in the moment... Sign up for improv classes Find a hobby that has an overlap with what you do (if you're a manager, join toastmasters to become a better public speaker) Tinder algorithms - They predict who you'll find attractive. It looks for commonalities... The takeaway? Start a collection intake engine. Curate what that contains and what you exclude. Ritz Carlton obsesses over metrics. They understand that what gets measured gets managed. They optimize for their net promoter score (NPS). The links that are drivers to outcomes... For Ron, he needs to do cardio to get into creative mode. To do great cardio, he needs great sleep. To get great sleep, he needs regular massages. It's a chain of events to get the optimal outcome. Figure out what that is for you. How to give a great Ted Talk? Ron reverse engineered the most watched talk... Here is what he found: Ken Robinson used one fact He had lots of anecdotes There were LOTS of jokes (and they were funny) The storytelling drives the whole talk Taking risks -- Ron learned this from his grandmother and dedicates his work to her. He was born in Israel and moved to New York when he was 7. His grandmother would go door to door selling the services of her husband (he was a dentist). "The more risks we take, the more likely we are to succeed." Life/Career advice: Take more risks Optimize for your relationships... And your spouse is the most important relationship Apply to be part of my Leadership Circle

The point is really doesn't really matter, honestly. What matters is if we can identify the techniques that top performers use to get to where they are and figure out ways of incorporating them into our everyday lives, we can improve our chances of succeeding. And that's what Decoding Greatness is about, is figuring out what are the top performers doing differently. And obviously, reverse engineering is a key part of it. Welcome to The Learning Leaders Show, presented by Rixie and Meyer. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here.

Text learners to 4422 to become part of Mindful Monday. You along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world will receive a carefully curated email from me Monday mornings 9 o'clock Eastern to help you start your week off right. You'll also receive more details about how my book, welcome to you. to management will help you become a more effective leader. Text learners to 4-4-222. Now on to tonight's featured leader, a great one, Dr. Ron Friedman, award-winning psychologist who has served on the faculty of University of Rochester and has consulted for political leaders, nonprofits, and many of the world's most recognized brands. His first book, The Best Place to Work, was selected

as an Inc. Magazine, best business book of the year. His most recent book is called Decoding Greatness, how the best in the world reverse engineer success. During our conversation, we discussed the secret that the Ritz-Carlton hotel chain knows to improve anything and how you can implement it for yourself. And then why visualizing success doesn't work and what you should do instead.

And then what algorithms like Tinder and Spotify can teach us about improving our skills? Ladies and gentlemen, you're going to love this one. It's Dr. Ron Friedman. Hey, Ron, it's good to have you here on a Learning Leaders Show. Welcome. Thanks so much. Great to be here. Okay.

There's so much to get to, man. But I am fascinated by this idea of reverse engineering something. And I think this is done a lot when talking about and you've written about it, certainly at the beginning of your book, whether it's Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Michael Dell. And I actually want to start with the third one there, maybe the least known of the three, although really impressive in his own right. So for his 16th birthday, I read that he got an Apple II computer and he took it to his room and he did what? So his parents get him a birthday present.

They have a brand new computer. What does he do? he takes it apart. He doesn't even bother turning it on. He takes it apart because he wants to understand how it's made. And what that represents is just the way that thoughtful, inquisitive, curious leaders think is they don't just passively observe an experience that is extraordinary. They try to decode it and understand why is, what is it that makes this work? And that is a mindset that we can all use, regardless of what it is that we work on. So let's say you encounter a memo that is just really impactful, an email that really moves you, a speech that you find

inspiring. There are all of these techniques that I talk about in decoding greatness that you can use to figure out what makes them difference. And I'll just give you a preview of one of them, and that is to play a game that we all played as children called spot the difference. And all it takes is, as you recall from the game, where you take, you have one visual on the right, another on the left, and you have to spot what is different about these two images. That's what we can do. That mindset is one that we can apply. by comparing extraordinary examples to simply ordinary examples and figure out what is it that's different about this extraordinary example. And by simply playing spot the difference,

you can't help but identify the ingredients that contribute to making something great. And the next step, obviously, is applying that to your next iteration. But it is through that mindset of curiosity and learning that we can all elevate our skills. So I'm curious from the nature versus nurture part of this question, Ron. And that is, was Michael Del Bourne, this way or does his parents cultivate this curiosity into him? Was it the environment? Obviously, it's probably a little bit of both. But I'm curious since you're the, you're the scientist here, you're the PhD. Where does this come from? What every scientist will tell you is it's always both. Yeah. It's always both. And it's impossible to teem to a part because we don't run controlled experiments

that enable us to put Michael Dell in a cage and compare him to his normal self and then identify what are the key differences when we take away his environment. But the point is really doesn't really matter, honestly, what matters is if we can identify the techniques that top performers use to get to where they are and figure out ways of incorporating them into our everyday lives, we can improve our chances of succeeding. And that's what the coding greatness is about, is figuring out what are the top performers doing differently. And obviously, reverse engineering is a key part of it. And just to step back a second, the argument that I make in the book is that the stories we've been told about success are wrong. Most of us have been taught that success comes from one of two things.

Either talent, the idea that you're born with certain inner strengths and that the key to finding your greatness is simply finding a feel that allows your innate talent to shine. The second story is that greatness comes from practice, the idea that if you just put in the 10,000 hours and you have the appetite for doing lots of hard work, then eventually you will improve and get to a level of greatness that you could only have dreamt about if you hadn't put in that time. But there's a third story about greatness, and it's one that people don't often talk about. And it's evident in these examples of Steve Jobs, Steve Gates, Michael Dell, but also people like Stephen King and Malcolm Gladwell and Judd Appetal. And that's reverse engineering.

It's all about finding great works and then decoding them, figuring out what is it that makes this unique and how do I apply this to my work? I love this, Ron. I mean, this is really kind of what my show is all about as trying to understand the uncommon common commonalities. among leaders who are sustaining excellent. So let's get practical for a second. Let's say there's somebody who's currently a vice president in a Fortune 500 company. So they're not the CEO, but they're not a frontline worker anymore, not an individual contributor. They're running an organization within an organization.

That's our avatar for this particular example. And that person has, you know, aggressive goals. They've got to hit certain levels of revenue. They're in charge of a couple of different products. clients and they got a sales team and marketing and finance right they got P&L responsibility the profit and loss so for for that person and they're reading your book and your book is one of those and I got to give you huge props here it's one of those ones where it's really hard to stop you know and I think it's as good a compliment as you can give a writer it's just hard to stop because you're oh I got to keep

going I got to keep going I got to keep you know so for that person Ron what what are some of the key kind of frameworks or mindsets they could start implementing right now. to help grow their business and grow their own leadership as well. Yeah. So first of all, thank you. That's very kind of you. And you're right. That's the nicest compliment you can give someone who's a writer.

And just to your point about the book being feeling addicting to read, that is me reverse engineering what works in fiction. So you'll notice that there are cliffhangers. That's usually not something you find in business books. And it's something that you will find in a lot of shows and a lot of fiction. It's all about identifying what are the elements that are resonating for you as a viewer in all kinds of experiences. And one of the things I love about this formula of using reverse engineering is it gives you license to just go ahead and enjoy whatever it is you enjoy without feeling guilty about it. Because as long as you're applying this mindset of thinking and formulas and identifying what are the blueprints that makes this work, you're identifying components that you can then introduce into your own work.

But back to your question, how do we make this practical? The first step that I would urge everyone listening to start doing is to start collecting, become a collector. And here's what I mean by that. When we think about collections, we think about physical objects. We think about shoes or stamps or wines or books. But that definition is far too narrow. If you look at the people who are really experts in their field, they start by collecting. And so my designer friends collect logos.

My copywriter friends collect headlines. I'm a writer. I collect openings, transitions, and conclusions because I want to understand why is it that they work and I want to templatize them. So it's all about collecting, identifying what works, and then turn it into a template that you can then apply to your future work. So in the case of this vice president, if there's an email that is really impactful for you, put that in your collection. If there's a deck that you find that you think is really interesting, put that in your collection. If there's a speech that someone has made, whether it be a TED talk or a podcast, or a, you know, a podcast. a presidential candidate or there are particular lines that you find moving. Put them in your collection.

What that does is it enables you to go and visit it like a private museum the next time you need to generate something that is extraordinary. And now you have some inspiration to draw from and reminder to think big. Interesting. So collecting is the first point. You know what you mentioned speeches? I've read a lot about presidential speech writers and listen to them on podcast because I'm fascinated by great speakers and great speeches, like having it go from your mind to the page

and then delivering the speech. And John Favreau was a big time. You probably know John, actually. He's a big time writer for President Obama. And he would read every speech in written form and he would watch them or listen to them as he was writing speeches for President Obama. And I love listening to John talk about his process for putting those talks together and then giving it to his boss. and they would go back and forth and edit them. But usually there was so much taken from the greatness of speeches in history.

And I think that that's like he reverse engineer the process. Like what really hit? What moved the American people? And he took from that, you borrowed, reverse engineered, whatever you call it, and implemented some of that style into his writing. And that's what led to these incredible speeches. Without question. Ryan, let me let me let you and your listeners in on a secret.

everyone who's at the top of their game, who's a creative professional, is doing this. And no one's written about it. And when I tell my friends who work in advertising agencies or consulting what I'm writing about, the response I get was uniform, which is, I do that all the time, but I've never read about it. No one's ever taught me how to do that. And so that's why these techniques are so critical. And just to make this even more concrete, in the case of John Favro, if you and I, for example, let's say we ended up in someone's campaign, we had to generate a speech tomorrow, the first thing you would do is take a speech that you think is amazing and then work backwards. And so in Decoding Greatness, I talk about all these techniques

that you can use that range from something I call reverse outlining, which is, you know, everyone's heard of outlining. When you're a college student, you would outline your paper by putting in bullet points what you're going to put in every paragraph, and then you would write those paragraphs. Reverse outlining is traditional outlining sneak your cousin, which is take a finished product and then work backwards to see if you wanted to reduce every paragraph into one bullet point, what would it look like? And by time you're done, you've got an outline of what needs to happen in every paragraph. And that's a template that you can then apply to your speech. So that's one approach, reverse outlining. Another approach you can do is just take the transcript of the

speech and identify in each paragraph what the emotion is. What's the emotional trajectory of this speech and simply label it as a plus if it's if it brings up positive emotions a minus if it brings up negative emotions and maybe i don't know a circle if it is it does nothing it's neutral and then what you could do is take those that list of plus circle minus and graph it out so that you can see what's happening in the speech and kurt vonnegut used to do this with popular stories and so he would compare different stories and instead of mapping out what's happening in every paragraph in the case of Kurt Vonnegut, what he would do is graph out what's happening for the main character. How are things going?

Are things going well for the main character? Are things going poorly? And what he found in doing this is that all of the world stories can be broken down into six main narratives. And so just as an example, and so you might listen to that and think, hey, how could that be just six stories? Look at Netflix. There are thousands of movies on there. Could it just be six stories? Well, compare Cinderella and Annie.

It's the same story with different characters at the beginning. Things are going poorly for the main character, right? Annie's an orphan. Cinderella is being abused by her step-sisters and her evil stepmother. Then something good happens. Cinderella goes to the ball. Annie gets rescued by Daddy Warbucks. Then something terrible happens.

Cinderella clock strikes midnight. She's got to go home. She's back to square one. Annie gets kidnapped by people pretending to be her parents. And then finally, after a climax, things work wonderfully out for both characters, in the case of Cinderella, she lives happily ever after with Prince Charming. In the case of Annie, she goes back to living with Danny Warbucks and the rest of this history. So it's the same story multiple times.

We don't even recognize it because the context has shifted. And that's the power of reverse engineering what's happening on the level of the main character's fortunes as Kurt Vonnegut would have it. And once you do that, you develop the structures of the patterns to start creating your own work, which is so much easier than starting out with a blank page. Back to being practical for this for our avatar, Ron. Okay. So the first piece of advice and the application that they can do immediately as they get done listening to this episode is they become a collector.

Okay. Right. So they're collecting the emails that really move. And they collect speeches. They collect of stories or of information they're finding from others that are excellent at the craft. Okay. What's next?

What's another thing they can do? Okay. So that is the analysis phase, which is basically variations of spot the difference. So we talked about a number of different analyses that you can do on the work to identify what's different about the extraordinary versus the ordinary.

Once you've identified what the elements are that you think are contributing to the object's success, now you want to create a template. So the template might take the form of, let's say in the case of writing the presidential speech, you might start off by talking about how you see great things for the country. then whatever the steps are, the ingredients are that you've identified in your reverse engineered examples,

create a template for yourself. And then crucially, you want to create metrics that you can then rate your work on as a scoreboard. So I talk about this as the scoreboard principle within the book. And the scoreboard principle simply means that anything you measure, you are likely to improve on. I say it more lyrically in the book, which is measurement begins improvement. Anything you measure, you will likely improve on. We know this from the research. So if you want to increase your water consumption, monitor your H2O intake every day. You want to lose weight, measure your calorie intake every day. You want to increase your focus, then start measuring how many interrupted minutes you have every day of deep work.

So we know this from the research. Anything you measure are likely to improve. So the key is to identify what are the components that I don't want to make sure that I hit on in my speech or whatever it is I'm writing that will definitely put me down the path of succeeding and then rate. how well your execution does on your scoreboard. So those are the, if we were to just, you know, reduce it down to a few sentences, collect, analyze, turn it into a template, give yourself a scoreboard, execute. You know, Austin Cleon writes a lot about this, like steel like an artist.

And I imagine that that's part of your research as well in that the, the greats are regularly trying to take bits and pieces from all others that they admire, that they look up to, that they respect, that they deem is excellent, and then kind of mashing it together with their own personality, and then that becomes them. And you kind of become maybe a little bit more original as you go. But this process of always being a collector of what's great out there, combining it with maybe your unique skills or contributions or just your natural personality. And that's what I feel like your process seems to be when it comes to decoding greatness and becoming, I think, an excellent leader. This is a process to do it.

Right. And it requires different processes for the different elements of your job. And I think it's all about having a mindset of a curiosity, but also be thinking in blueprints. Every time you experience something extraordinary, don't just enjoy it passively. Think about how does this work? How do I recreate it? And how do I apply it to something that I'm working on in order to improve? And so I think just having that mindset of curiosity, of breaking things down,

figuring out what the elements are is a crucial step that doesn't get discussed enough. And I'll give you another example from the book, which is the story of Barack Obama while we're on the topic of John Favro and Barack Obama, why don't we just bring it home? With Barack Obama was a terrible politician who first started. and he got trounce his first race. He lost by a margin more than two to one. He considered leaving politics until he decided to observe what it is that pastors were doing delivering sermons at churches. And in doing that, he came to realize that there are certain elements that he could import into politics.

And so he started using repetition. He started varying his tone. He started slowing down and pausing for a fact and telling stories from the Bible. And he came back. to politics and just was a completely different speaker. And one thing that I should note is part of the reason why he was a terrible speaker is because he was a law school professor and was used to lecturing students. voters didn't appreciate being lectured to, but they did appreciate being admired as churchgoers do. And that insight, I think what the story tells us is that the story of Barack Obama illustrates that you can take elements from different fields and incorporate them to your own. It's not just about reverse engineering somebody else.

else's speech. And it's certainly not about finding your talent or practicing harder, which is what we've been taught. It's about identifying what are the elements that are working in other fields. How do I incorporate them into mine to not just reproduce someone's winning formula, but evolve it to make it my own. You've written about the fact that Starbucks and Chipotle, two places that I frequent quite a bit, ultimately come down to the same exact strategy. What is their strategy? Yeah. So on the surface, they're very different in stores. One is selling food, the other is selling drinks. But one of the things that entrepreneurs do extraordinarily well is identify blueprints that work for a business and

then could be applied in a different setting. And so that's the kind of the thrust of the book, is thinking of blueprints. And when you think about what is it that led to both of these company's successes, it's ultimately the same blueprint. And that blueprint is find something that's working in a different location and import it into your own. So in the case of Chipotle, Steve Ells did not invent burritos. He was living in San Francisco. There were burrito bars everywhere. But what he did was he took the burrito bar concept and brought it into a location where it didn't exist, which is Denver, Colorado, where it just took off and became a chain. Starbucks has a similar story where it didn't emerge out of thin air. It emerged when they studied what was happening in

Italy and the coffee culture and the espresso bars that were happening there and they brought them into Seattle. And at the time, coffee was not a big deal in America. It was all about, you know, diners and coffee, coffee, coffee bars, I guess, that coffee shops that have made barely passable coffee and I remember them well. And so that illustrates the idea, which is, If you start thinking blueprints of what is it that's driving this organization, or more specifically, what is it that's working elsewhere than I can import into my destination? It just becomes a recipe for finding all kinds of business opportunities. And so when we look at entrepreneurs, we think that they're more creative or they're more

relentless or they're smarter than middle managers. The truth is they're not. In fact, the research bears this out. What they are very good at is identifying patterns. And so pattern thinking is the thrust of what makes them successful. And if it's something that you're considering, the better you get at thinking of blueprints, the more likely you are to succeed as an entrepreneur. And this idea of studying others in order to kind of implement what we're learning from them is good to an extent. And I had read that you had, you'd written about Tom Petty.

Tom Petty is one of my all-time favorite artists. My first ever concert was a Tom Petty concert. and I read that he intentionally didn't listen or watch Bruce Springsteen. Why is that? It's because he recognized that the style of Bruce Springsteen was very similar to Tom Petty's style. And so he didn't want to replicate his work. And I can tell you, so this is one of the strategies I talk about for evolving a winning formula. So in the book, I not only show you how to reverse engineer winning examples and turn him into a formula and a template,

But I also show you how to evolve those winning formulas so that you make them your own. And one of those strategies is the strategy used by Tom Petty, which is also currently being used by Bill Maher and HBO who does not watch John Oliver or Jimmy Fallon. Jimmy Fallon doesn't watch either of them either. Because they recognize that if you watch someone too closely who's already inherently similar to your own style, you're going to be moved to essentially be viewed as derivative. And so you want to make sure that your formula is unique in order for it to stand out. And I can tell you, in my case, I very rarely read authors in my space.

And that's deliberate. I don't want to write like that because I want to be me. So what do you read? I read a lot of fiction. I read academic journal articles. I read fiction. And that's my unique combination is I see me looking behind you right now because you got a bunch of books on your shelf. Let me see some of these fiction books.

This is undermining everything I'm saying to you right now. I can't read. I can't see the titles. These are actually my nonfiction collection because this is what I draw on. Sometimes, you know, as I'm writing articles, if I want a citation of some kind, but the fiction collections at home because I don't want to think about work when I'm at home. Gotcha. Okay.

So fiction makes, like what is it about fiction that you think makes you a better writer? The storytelling element of it? Yeah. So this is getting into an interesting conversation. So what do I love about fiction? First of all, and this isn't to say that all nonfiction writers don't do this. Some of them excel at this quite well, which is the storytelling element. I talk about Gladwell in the book and what makes him unique.

And he obviously is very good at telling stories. Recently, Adam Grant's books are also in this vein where he's very good at telling stories. Real quick, Shane Snow is one of the best also at cliffhangers. I think smart cuts is just packed with. So when you mentioned cliffhangers, I get massive writer envy when reading Shane's work. And very like similar to yours because I'm like, wait a second, how do you, because I write the whole thing out. I'm like, wait, where can I, how can I make this a cliffhanger? And it's really hard.

It's really hard when you have kind of your chapter or your section. And then it's like, I got to re figure out how to make this a cliffhanger and sometimes it doesn't work. You know, so anyway. So here's where reading. can help because when you're reading a mystery, you have no idea where it's going to go. It's only at the end where they tie all the loose knots. But if you start with the mystery, knowing who the killer is, now you can throw in all of these red herrings when Gladwell does this really well.

He'll ask questions that he knows are not going to lead anywhere, but they peak your curiosity. And so that is a technique that I think mystery writers use very well that can be imported into nonfiction writing and can help. So certainly, you know, I do read nonfiction, but it's just not, it's not, it's not the majority of the reading that I do. And it's because I'm trying to import other elements. What about, I have watched, my background, Ron, as in athletics, and there's this, this big kind of movement that's taken place over the past many years about visualization.

Yeah. And so, you know, our coaches or people, or even watch. I remember Jason Day, a golfer would do this all the time before every shot. He would hold his glove on his left hand with his right hand, and he would close his eyes and he'd visualize the shot, and then he'd go up and hit the shot. And so it became really popular as he was winning tournaments. And other people have talked about this. And something that you've said is that this actually may not be useful.

What do you think about visualization? So I think visualization can be useful to a point. The challenge is when we are told stories like, you know, the attention. attraction principle. I think that's what it's called. And the idea that if I just visualize my success in my profession, I'll be more likely to succeed. And that turns out to be false. We have research showing that in fact, if you visualize positive outcomes alone, and that's all you do, you're actually less likely to be successful. And it's because what happens when you visualize positive outcomes is you're temporarily sated. And so you get that instant satisfaction.

of seeing yourself winning that award or getting that promotion and going on that vacation. And that leads you to not try as hard as you would have if you didn't have that temporary daydry. There is, however, a useful approach to visualization that does improve performance and that is visualizing process. So in terms of a particular golfer, if he visualizes himself, holding the club a certain way, bending his knees, I don't know, whatever the process is for for being more successful at execution. That's a different process. It's not about seeing the ball go in the hole.

It's about what are the steps that I need to take to execute this correctly? And so in the book, I talk about a study done by UCLA where they had psychology students who were about to take an intro to psychology tests, and they assigned them into three groups. The first group was told to visualize themselves achieving a high score. The second group was taught, it was told to visualize. themselves studying for the test. And then the third group was just asked to track how much time did you spend study. And what they found is that the group that visualized themselves studying for the test ended up getting the highest scores compared to the control group.

Control group was just how much time did you study. But the group that visualized themselves achieving a high score did worse than any other group. And again, it's because they're temporarily stated they didn't try as hard. And in contrast to that, visualizing yourself doing the work encourages you to front load decisions. So, for example, if I'm asking you to visualize how you're going to study, now you're thinking about what time am I going to do it, what do I need to bring with me, where am I going to be, do I need to bring my headphones so that I'm not interrupting,

all of that ensures that when you do study, you do it more efficiently. And so that's why we can all use visualization and everything that we do, whether it's about delivering a speech to your organization or even just writing a memo tomorrow afternoon, visualizing the process of yourself doing it and empowers you to front loads those decisions and ensure that you execute more effectively. You know, it's funny, Ron, this is a really good, good point because I think about giving speech.

I just did one yesterday. And part of what I think why it went well is because I really just, I practiced a lot, I think, which is an underrated skill for anyone who's going to get up and give a talk. And I just kept, as I was getting ready to get introduced, I was thinking about my practice repetitions before I went up on the stage. And I thought, I got this. Like I know this cold. And that was like the form of visualization as I went up to go up and know it, like,

front and back inside out. Because I remember thinking like, well, I just practice this over and over and over. There's nothing to be nervous about, right? I'm just going to go up and deliver. And I feel like that, even though that was like a form of this visualization, it wasn't like, I wasn't visualizing. a standing ovation or anything, I was visualizing me practicing. Exactly, exactly.

And so in Decoding Greatness, I talk about practicing in three dimensions. And most people think of practice. They think of practicing in the present, which is what you did ahead of your talk. But there's actually two other dimensions that we're missing if that's all we're doing. So, and this is what professional athletes do is that first is visualization, which we talked about. If you visualize in a way that focuses on process, that is a useful way of harnessing practicing it in the future to elevate your performance. And indeed, there's research showing that people who deliver speeches who visualize themselves giving that speech and occasionally faltering

and visualizing themselves recovering from that temporarily temporary setback, they give the most persuasive speeches. So we know that visualization works not just for athletes. It works for speech givers. It works for surgeons, feeling less anxious during a surgery. And it works for musicians who are about to learn a piece. If you can visualize your learning the piece by looking through the notes, even before you step in front of the piano to start playing for the first time, you will learn it faster. So that's practicing in the future. It's also practicing in the past. And practicing in the past is known within the research as reflective practice. We've all heard about deliberate practice, which is practicing the things

that you don't do particularly well and getting immediate feedback so you can make adjustments. Reflective practice involves journaling, writing, what you did today, what you learned today, but also looking back at previous entries. And so a great tool for this, and I recommend it in the book, is get yourself a five-year journal. You can find it on Amazon or any other bookstore. And what a five-year journal does is it has a space for every day of the year with five slots. And those five slots, you use one of them to write what you did today and what you learned today. But then a year from now, if you're doing this for a year, and you'll put in your entry, but you also see what you did on this day a year ago. And that enables you to reflect on

what you did that day the previous year. And through that process of reflecting on previous entries, we strengthen our memory, which is not a small thing, right? We identify some previous wins. And we also identify some overblown concerns, things that appear to be huge problems at the time that we navigated fairly easily. And we can't help but compare our initial expectations to the actual results. And that leads us to transform experiences into wisdom. And so reflective practice beyond just visualization is a really crucial practice to improving at anything and one that anybody can start using right now.

What's the third? Oh, so we're talking about practicing the present. You want to talk about that? There's practicing the present, which is deliberate practice. So deliver practice is one of the keys to deliver practice, which I think people often forget, is that unless you're practicing in a way that's hard, in other words, it's uncomfortable and it forces you to stretch, you're probably not going to grow. And that becomes really difficult to do over time, because the more often you do something, the easier becomes unless you're thinking about it.

You're automating your responses. And what you need to do is pay careful attention to your responses in order to improve. So one of the techniques I talk about for making practicing in the present a little bit more challenging is novelty. So practice in a different location, practice with different people, mix up the different skills that you are practicing. So in other words, if you're trying to improve your basketball skills, don't just shoot free throws. Mix it up between three pointers, free throws layups, because that will lead to faster improvement. So can I real quick, Ron, I want to talk about this like in the current, current world, although we're kind of getting out of this, there's been so many companies that have had to shift leaders that have had to shift to leading like town hall sessions on Zoom or on

whatever video platform you use. Yeah. And I've joined a lot of these because sometimes they'll bring on like a guest speaker or something. And I go early to watch or listen. And what's surprising in a lot of cases is that it's obviously they had not practiced. They're not prepared to utilize the technology of sharing their screen properly or having to call in an assistant to help can you get the screen share right oh what's going on and they don't have a light or they don't have a microphone they don't have a decent camera and i don't know about you but like again i'm getting practical here for anyone who's a leader yeah that's how you show respect for other people that's how you show respect for your team that you're leading practice prepare don't have to call in somebody

else to fix all of your problems and i don't know how exactly this applies here but i think it does And maybe it's just top of mind because this has happened a few times recently. But what do you think about that aspect from a leadership perspective of showing respect for the people that you're leading by being ready to go? And one of the ways to do that is to do dry run through is practice, go through it, make mistakes, fix them as you go prior to getting your entire team on the talent hall. Yeah. I think that it's understandable to me from the leader's perspective that they have a lot of things to do. Right. And it's just one of the things on the list so it doesn't require.

It's not worth the extra 10 minutes to do the practice because they've got other things to do. And as long as everyone gets the main idea, that's good enough. Well, I would push back on that just a little bit. I'd push back on that a lot of bit. I know you would. You would for sure. Go ahead. The reason I would push back a little bit is because what that enables you to do is be more present during the meeting.

And that's not a small thing. That's actually a big part of being an effective leader. Mindful presence is key to this. This is why you see so many executives now signing up for improv classes. It's not because they want to be funnier all of a sudden, but because they realize that improv teaches you mindful presence and deep listening. Those are crucial skills for being a better leader. And in Decoding Greatness, this is back to the point that we started off with,

which is practicing in the present, one of the ways you can improve your skills, that whatever it is you're trying to master is find a hobby that has overlap with the skills you need to improve in your day job. And so improv provides a great example of how leaders are stretching their skills by doing something fun outside the workplace that enables them to achieve mastery a little faster. And we can all do that no matter what it is we're trying to do, find a hobby that has overlapping skills. I love that.

That's so true. I've done improv classes and it is one of the most embarrassing things ever. Within the first 15 minutes, the teacher had a singing in front of the entire class of strangers, especially just awful experience. Although after the three days, I felt so much better. And I felt like a better communicator and definitely a better listener, which helped me, and it's certainly in what I do for a living now. Okay, Ron, I'm fascinated by a couple more of these points. So algorithms like the one Tinder uses. Now, Tinder is a little bit before my time, or I was before that, I guess, I should say, meaning I got married before that

existed. So how does the algorithms like Tinder teach us about improving our skills? So just to be clear, I also do not go on Tinder. So I, but I did do just kiss my wife's listening. But I did do research on this. And so here's how algorithms like Tinder. And this applies to Spotify too, which I do listen to quite often. This is how algorithms make predictions about what it is that we're going to like. Right. So one of the things that Tinder does really well is it predicts who you're going to find attractive. And how it does that is by asking you to rate a set of images at the beginning by, you know, swiping left or right, do you find these people attractive? And what it does is it looks for commonalities among the people that you find attractive

in order to generate additional predictions. And then the more predictions it puts in front of you, the more people you swipe left or right on, the better its predictions get it. Because really, those apps, all they want is you to stay on their app. They want engagement, right? So they have to figure out a way to keep you on their app. That's one of the ways. That's certainly one of the ways. And in the case of Tinder, they will look at all kinds of things, like not just what you're swiping, but how long you're looking at it, whose profile you're reading, if you're

interacting. And what it does is it's able to identify commonalities among the people you selected that you may not even be consciously aware of. So you're looking at the appearance, but after a set of like 10 people that you've rated as attractive, now Tinder can look to see what, what are those 10? have in common. Maybe it's a particular height. Maybe they're both, they're all outgoing. And so now it's able to generate predictions. So what's the takeaway here? The takeaway is you can't, Tinder is useless without that initial collection of the people that we like to just to bring this

full circle to the beginning of the conversation, start a collection to identify what those commonalities are. And now you can start to generate predictions about what it is that makes it work and how you can execute against it. So we talked about collecting works at the office. Same as true at home, start a collection, and look for commonalities. That's how algorithms work and it's how you can improve your ability to detect patterns as well. Yeah, I think you got to, you got to have this intake engine and it needs to be regularly fueled. Oh, well said. Love it. That's fueled through the collection of whatever it is that you're curious to. I love that intake engine because we think about, you know, unless we're producing something, we're not productive. And I want to challenge that with your

a very artfully stated comment about you need an intake engine and curate what that engine contains. One of the things I talk about in the book is that also includes what you exclude from your intake engine, right? Like Competty and Bruce Springsteen, right? Yeah. So you look at so many professionals who are all reading the same newsletter, who are all reading, listening to the same podcasts. And I think that you really need to question, is this bringing value to my life? And if it's not excluded, because through the process of excluding the same influences that everyone else has, you will make yourself unique.

Yeah, that's a really good point. How about, I've been lucky to stay in the Ritz Carlton a few times. It's not my regular spot, but a few times. What do they know that's different from others, the secret that they know about improvement? Because this is a big point. I know you brought up before. Yeah. So what they know is that metrics are the thing that will lead you to be successful. And so in the case of the Rich Carlton, if you haven't stayed there, it is a remarkable experience. And it is because their customer service are the thing that defines them. Yes, the place is certainly a very nice looking hotel. But if you ask people who stay there why they choose the Ritz-Carlton, it's the customer service. And what the Ritz-Carlton has realized is that they need to optimize for net promoters

scores. Net promoter is market research speak for when someone stays at your hotel, how likely are they to recommend that same hotel experience to their friends and their colleagues? And the reason they're optimizing for that metric is because they realize it's not enough to just have people who are satisfied with their experience. What you want is you want them going home and talking to their friends and their colleagues about it, because that's how you get the most bookings and what enables you to charge $1,000 a night. And along the way, what the Ritz Carlton discovered is that how you drive net promoter scores is not simply by answering people's requests when they make them, but it's by thinking beyond the expressed request to the unexpressed need. In other words,

if I ask you, does the, if I call customer service and say, does Rich Carlton have a coffee shop? You could say yes, which is factually correct, or you could say, yes, we do. Would you like me to text you to the menu? Do you see how that taking that extra step is not just about answering my question, but going, digging deeper and figuring out what is it that Ron really wants. And they do that all the time. And the story I tell in the book is I also had the good fortune of staying there once. And my son, this actually, I did, this didn't make the book, but this, because there were like so many crazy stories I had to put into the book. So this one didn't make it, but this is a true story. My son lost his goggles. And he was devastated. So he asked the person working there,

have you seen my goggles? And they said, I haven't. But would you like me to get you a new pair? And they took him to the shop and they just got him new goggles and didn't charge us. It was just got him new goggles. And it's what you realize when you stay there is that, again, they're optimizing for net promoter scores. And they give all of their employees a budget that they can spend on any customer without having to get it approved. And that particular individual used that budget to buy my son goggles. And again, it just speaks to the importance of metrics. So anything you want to improve on, find the metric. And through that process of measuring your performance on that metric, you will inevitably uncover the drivers of that metric. So if I'm optimizing, for example,

for my creativity as a writer, if I start measuring tangential things to that metric of how many hours that I spend producing creative work, I might also measure, for example, how many hours of sleep that I get the night before, how much exercises did I do, what did I eat? And I can start linking drivers to outcomes. So I can tell you for me, if I want to have a great writing day, if I don't do cardio, probably not going to get the best possible sleep. And I'm probably not going to be all that creative the next day. So for me, that's a driver.

Cardio is a driver of creativity. And I wouldn't have uncovered that if I didn't have metrics on my performance. What do you mean? So by the way, same metric there for me. What do you, so you tested your creativity on a day when you did cardio versus when you didn't and you did this a series of experiments or how do you, And maybe what are some other ones from a court piece? Yeah, yeah.

So it sounds like you're doing this and I am too. We can geek out on it. So I've got an Apple watch and my wife, you've got one too. Yeah, my wife thinks it is a ridiculous tool that measures all kinds of unnecessary metrics. I disagree because what I have found is that the amount of deep sleep I get is vital to all kinds of things. And it's not just about hours in bed. It's not about like sometimes I will only. sleep for six and a half hours, but if three of those hours are deep sleep, I don't need the

additional time. And so what I've been interested in is what drives the deep sleep. And without question, it's cardio. Obviously, stress levels will impact it. Water intake can help. But the thing that I found that is really interesting to me is massages. If you can get a massage, your deep sleep will skyrocket. And once your deep sleep skyrockets, all kinds of good things happen the next day. Hmm. Interesting. Oh, well, that's a whole other rabbit hole we can go down when it comes to productivity. But I really like that. One other thing, though, that you did is your own reverse engineering by searching for hidden patterns in the world's most popular TED Talk. So we've talked a good bit about speaking here. And I think it relates to a lot of other things. So you can take your

own practical takeaways from it. But what did you learn through that? process. So in Decoding Greatness, I show you how to reverse engineer all kinds of exceptional works. And one of the examples I show you is me reverse engineering, the most popular TED Talk, and it's the one delivered by Ken Robinson on the topic of creativity. So if you've had a chance to see this, if you go to TED Talk's most popular, this will be number one on the list. And in the talk, he makes the case that schools beat the creativity out of us. And so we're all taught to get the right answer. And we don't realize that when we teach kids to just find the right answer were unknowingly encouraging them to not be creative because creativity requires

taking risks. So what you find when you reverse engineer it, and I do that by way of reverse outlining it and also looking at some of the metrics, what I found is that Ken Robinson uses a grand total of one fact, the entire talk. So he's got a 20-minute talk and there's only one fact. Now, if I was writing a tech talk from scratch and I didn't reverse engineer anything, I would assume, I don't know about you, but I would assume that you need a lot of persuasive facts in order to convince people of your point. This guy's got the most popular TED talk of all time, and he's got one fact. So what is he doing differently?

Well, he's got a ton of anecdotes, and he's telling a ton of jokes. He's operating like a stand-up comic. And what that analysis tells you is that storytelling is the thing that drives people to TED talks and leads them to go viral. And I think it illustrates the power of reverse engineering because we wouldn't have known that if we were just talking about how do you create a popular TED Talk. But by dissecting one that actually worked and identifying the elements that contributed to its success, now we have a roadmap for creating our own.

And it doesn't have to be one that duplicates Ken Robinson's formula because I can tell you for me, if I go up there with one fact and 40 jokes, it's not going to be a pretty experience for anyone. So I think what it tells you is you need to go find a TED Talk that resonates for your particular style, reverse engineer it, and then figure out how do I apply this in a way that is both authentic to me, but also allows me to evolve this formula by perhaps combining elements. Maybe it's some portions of Angela Duckworth's TED Talk and some portions of Susan Kane's TED Talk and some portion of Dan Pink's TED Talk crafted, of course, to the message I want to make. Two more questions. You have time for two? Of course. Of course. You're, you dedicated the book to your grandmother. And speaking of taking risk, that's what you wrote in the dedication. Can you get personal for a moment and tell me a little bit about your grandmother and how she taught you to take risk and maybe how I really appreciate. I really appreciate you. You asked me. So my grandparents met in the Holocaust. They literally met in the Holocaust and in a concentration camp. And my grandfather's gift to my grandmother was a loaf of bread for for their wedding. And so he became a dentist.

And when they got to Israel, which is where they went after the Holocaust, they knew no one. They had no family. And when I was born in Israel, I came here when I was seven. I live in New York now. When I was born, my grandfather was kind of known as the dentist in the town in which they lived. And he would walk down the street. He was like a celebrity. Everyone knew who he was.

And how that came to be is that my grandmother. mother went door to door knocked on people's doors and asked them if they needed a dentist. And that's how she built on business. So talk about taking risks, man. She's the ultimate business development rap, huh? That's right. That's so cool. Yeah. Wow. Uh, I love that. I appreciate you asking. Yeah. I mean, well, I mean, how have you implemented what you learned from her into your life and your career? Getting outside of the, the science now on the stories of others. I'd love to hear like briefly, that wasn't my second question, but the follow up has to happen. What do you, like, how have you implemented that for you?

In my first book, The Best Place to Work, I talk about the importance of risk taking. That's actually the first chapter and why most organizations get this wrong by actually discouraging risk taking and how risk taking is essential to learning. And I can tell you in my life, I have certainly taken a lot of risks. Just to give you an example, this is kind of little inside baseball. But when it comes to getting endorsements for your book, there's a lot of groveling that happens. So you will write an author that you respect and you will ask them to read your book and you will ask them to give you an endorsement. And a lot of those you don't get responses to.

Sometimes they'll just say, I don't have time. But the reality is that you, as someone who is just on an Amazon page, you don't know any of that. All you see are the endorsements. And that mindset is so crucial to thinking about everything we do in life, which is no one's going to know about your failures unless you do something. something just horrible, right? Which the chances are you doing that are probably not likely if you're trying to do something admirable as we are. If you're listening to this podcast, you're probably a decent person, I would imagine. So I think that is so crucial to remember, which is that people are not going to know about the things that you didn't succeed at, but what they are going to see are the things that you

succeeded. And by that math, the more risks you take, the more likely you are to achieve certain successes. And I just think that that is crucial to thinking about everything in terms of like applying for that job or applying for that promotion or seeking a new job. There are ways that we can all apply that to our daily life or asking a client for another project. The more risks we take, the more likely we are to succeed. And we lose track of that because we become convinced that the failure is so painful we shouldn't even try. And I just, one of the things I hope that people take away from this book is that you don't have to have, you don't have to be born with tremendous talent, you don't have to put in your 10 years of practice.

What you need is a system for achieving greatness, and part of that system is taking more risks. So I think this applies to what I was going to close with, and that is, you know, I think you probably get a lot of requests from people who are new college graduates who are young, ambitious, want to put a debt in the world, leave people better than they found them. What are some general pieces of career slash life advice you'd give to that person. Well, clearly taking more risks is crucial. The other thing I would say is that this is true for me. I don't know how true this is. I guess I would say this is true

for others as well. I think that we often assume that we need to get our career in place first, and then we'll take care of our relationships. But I think it's the opposite formula. I think if you can optimize for your relationships first, that'll give you the confidence to do things in your that you wouldn't have otherwise done. And I think that's true for me. I met my wife in high school. And having, I think, that stability in terms of a relationship allowed me to focus on my career.

And I just, I know that a lot of folks just say, you know what, when I get to my 30s, then I'll worry about my relationships. But I think that that might be something that is overlooked. And I also think that we, it's remarkable to me that we don't teach in schools how to find a life partner because that probably is the most important decision you will ever make. And it seems like a lot of us just by default, look for a person who

is fun to hang out with or is attractive and we forget to think about whether our values mesh, because that's the thing that ultimately is going to determine the success of your relationship. Yeah. And you're just probably a lot smarter than most people when they're young. I was an idiot at age from. Give you huge props. Made too many mistakes. But no, I think it's fantastic advice because you're right. you know, you'll rise or fall to the level of your peer group. And number one in that peer group is your partner. Yeah. And I think they can, I've, we've all have friends who we've seen there lifted up by that

partner. We have other ones, unfortunately, where it's torpedoes because of it. And that is such a bummer when it, when we see it. But it's so true. The importance of the decision making that you make. Yeah. Is inverse to the, to your age because the decision that you, and you're like at the worst possible moment to make important decisions at the age of 18

through 20. And just to be clear, I'm not smarter than you are. I got lucky. That's different. Okay. I'll take it. Well, I'm happy for your luck. No, you made the best of it. This is awesome, man. And I could go all day. By the way, the blurbs, you know, Dan Pink, Adam Grant, Cal Newport, Jonah Berger, David Epstein. A lot of people have been on the show. Todd Henry, too, a good buddy here lives down in Cincinnati. I'm in Ohio. So with them, but decoding greatness, how the best in the world reverse engineer success.

Ron Freeman, this is, this is awesome. And I just like to say, I'd love, to continue our dialogue as we both progress. And I may be emailing you for a book blurb just so you know because we talked about it. I'm excited to hear about it. That sounds great. When's your book coming out? Uh, uh, not announced yet, but it'll be with it. It'll be less than a year.

I've turned into the manuscript. I've turned in the manuscript. So we're in that phase now, you know, where you turn it in and then you get the edits back and then you got to kind of see how terrible of a writer you are, at least my case. And then you fix it. No, it's fun. I love the process. I, I, I truly enjoyed the process.

of taking a rough sketch and outline, turning it into a properly formatted book, and then getting the feedback from a genius, genius author that I work with at McGraw-Hill, and she's the best. And it makes it so much better. I think for me, that's part of like the greatness. The excellence of it is, is that you got to have kind of the guts to get it out there for people to judge it and say, whoa, I'm going to have to mark this thing up. But that, that's how things get better.

You know what I mean? So I love that part. Yeah. Well, I'm excited to read your book. And Ryan, I appreciate the kind words and the opportunity. Absolutely, man. Thanks so much, Ron. That is definitely a person I would love to talk with for many more hours.

I really enjoyed that one. I hope you did as well. A few notes, takeaways. One, become a collector. Fuel that intake engine with knowledge. And then identify what's extraordinary. Create a template for yourself. and then create metrics to measure because measurement begets improvement.

And then if you care to become a better storyteller, do what Ron does. Read fiction books. Look at how they create cliffhangers to keep you turning the page. And I think this goes for whether you're a writer or a speaker or working to lead a team in a compelling fashion. read fiction. It will help you. And then link drivers to outcomes. In his case, doing cardio and getting massages leads to deeper sleep and that leads to high levels of creativity. He has reverse engineered to understand that. So learn what drivers lead to better outcomes for you and then implement that into your routine. I know it's easier said than done, but very,

useful and practical. Once again, I really enjoyed that conversation. I hope you did as well. I just want to say thank you so much for continuing to spread the word, for telling a friend or two. Hey, you should listen to this episode of a Learning Leader show with Dr. Ron Friedman. It will help you become a more effective leader. And because you continue to do that and because you continue to write a review on Apple

podcast and rate the show. hopefully five stars, you are continuing to give me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so much. Talk it soon. Can we?