The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 470: Daniel Coyle - Building Your Culture, Solving Hard Problems, & Winning The Learning Contest

Episode Date: May 1, 2022

Text Hawk to 66866 for "Mindful Monday." It's a carefully curated email to help you start your work off on a high note. Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12    https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12 Daniel Coyle is the New York Times bestselling author of The Culture Code, which was named Best Business Book of the Year by Bloomberg, BookPal, and Business Insider. Coyle has served as an advisor to many high-performing organizations, including the Navy SEALs, Microsoft, Google, and the Cleveland Guardians. His other books include The Talent Code, The Secret Race, The Little Book of Talent, and Hardball: A Season in the Projects, which was made into a movie starring Keanu Reeves. Coyle was raised in Anchorage, Alaska, and now lives in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, during the school year and in Homer, Alaska, during the summer with his wife Jenny, and their four children. Notes: Purpose isn't about tapping into some mystical internal drive but rather about creating simple beacons that focus attention and engagement on the shared goal. Successful cultures do this by relentlessly seeking ways to tell and retell their story. To do this, they build what you call "high-purpose environments." High-purpose environments are filled with small, vivid signals designed to create a link between the present moment and a future ideal. They provide 2 simple locators that every navigation process requires: Here is where we are and Here is where we want to go. "The world we live in is a learning contest." Deep fun = Solving hard problems with people you admire. Schedule regular team "tune-ups" to place an explicit spotlight on the team's inner workings and create conversations that surface and improve team dynamics Foster strong culture in remote working scenarios. It doesn't take much physical togetherness to build strong teams. Encourage remote teams meet up in person twice a year Create belonging: every group knows diversity, equity, and inclusion matter, but what separates strong cultures is they aim to create belonging across racial lines. Ex: normalize uncomfortable conversations; read, watch, reflect together; gather data and share it • Build Trust. Ask the magic-wand question to each member of your team: if you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about the way we work, what would it be? Connect. Hold an anxiety party to serve as a pressure-relief valve, as well as a platform for people to connect and solve problems together. Change perspective. Have a once-a-week catch-up session with someone outside of your group. Make it safe to talk about mistakes: Strong cultures seek to highlight and remember their mistakes and learn from them • Listen. Listening to others' problems is one of the most powerful culture-building skills on the planet. It's also difficult. Restrain yourself from jumping in, listen, then say: Tell me more. Embrace the After-Action Review (or as the military calls it, the AAR): Talking together about the strengths and weaknesses of your performance will make your group better. The Billion Dollar Day When Nothing Happened – "These Ads Suck." That was the note that Larry Page wrote and hung up about Google Ad Words. What did Jeff Dean, a quiet, skinny engineer from Minnesota, do to make the ads not suck? He had no immediate need to fix the problem. He worked in Search (a different area of the company. And how did Jeff Dean respond when he was asked about it years later (he said he didn't even really remember it. It was just normal to do stuff like that)... There is a misconception that great cultures are places that are always happy. Doing great work is hard. The way we build great cultures is by doing hard things together focused on connection and safety. Life/Career advice: Think of your life in experiments and the learning loop. It is Experience + Reflection. Experience + Reflection. WRITE DOWN WHAT you've learned from your experiences. Writing creates clarity of thought. Amy Edmondson researched Chelsea and Mountain Medical – What made them a success? The answer lay in patterns of real-time signals through which the team members were connected. There were 5 things: Framing - They conceptualized MICS as a learning experience that would benefit patients and the hospital. Unsuccessful teams viewed it as an add-on to existing practices. Roles - Role clarity. Being told explicitly by the team leader why their individual and collective skills were important for the team's success Rehearsal - Practice a lot Explicit encouragement to speak up Active reflection - Between surgeries, successful teams went over their performance

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That's storyworth.com slash leader. Welcome to the Learning Leader Show presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text Hawk to 66866 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 for me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right.

You'll also receive details about how my book, The Pursuit of Excellence, will help you become a more effective leader. Text, Hawk to 66866. Now on tonight's featured leader, the legendary Dan Coyle, New York Times, bestselling author of The Culture Code, named Best Selling Author. Best Business Book of the Year by Bloomberg, BookPow, and Business Insider. Dan has served as an advisor to many high-performing organizations, including the Navy Seals, Microsoft, Google, and the Cleveland Guardians.

His latest book is called The Culture Playbook, 60 highly effective actions to help your group succeed. during this wide-ranging and enlightening conversation. We discussed the biggest misconceptions about culture. And then he shares some exercises to build trust on your team. Then the first actions you should take when starting a new leadership role, ladies and gentlemen, this one is so good. It's Dan Coyle. I want to acknowledge something first.

So it's it's kind of rare to get a chance to meet one of your literary heroes and oftentimes they tell you that you shouldn't because you're probably going to be let down. You have these expectations that are actually not really realistic for a human being. So when I got a chance to hang out with you a few times, I think first when we were both doing a thing for SkillSoft on separate days, so we met up for dinner and drinks, which was awesome. and then, you know, when he asked me to come back to hang out with you guys and the leaders with the Cleveland Indians now, Cleveland Guardians, just amazing. I have to say, just publicly acknowledged, Dan, I'm so grateful for me to get a chance to meet one of my favorite writers and you end up being an even better dude than I thought was possible.

So it's just pretty, it's pretty, it's one of those moments where you're like, hey, actually, sometimes you should. Sometimes you should and it actually exceed your expectations. And that's the case with you, man. That's really nice. I appreciate that, Ryan. It's really been fun getting to know you and getting to know your story and seeing your impact on people. I mean, there's been, I've been a lot of these podcast things or other media like this. And yours is one that I've had three different people, one guy in my neighborhood,

somebody who I knew back in Alaska, somebody else saying, I heard you on that. It was really, really like that show. And so anyway, you're having a big impact. And it's cool to see this, these energy and ideas kind of bouncing around in the world. Isn't it neat when you see your work in the wild? So, for example, because I don't know if you, with the culture code now, it's probably so normal that it's not even cool anymore. It's like, oh, that's just normal.

But like, let's say you're in an airport and you see somebody reading your book. Like, is that still cool for you? Like, how does that feel? A thousand percent. Yeah. Is it? It's neat. It's neat.

And it really puts, really, for me, it sort of spotlights this space between, you know, the ideas of the book and people. And it's like there's these interactions that are happening in that space that are really unpredictable and really interesting. It's not like everyone just uses it like a, you know, a quick startup guide for a DVR or something like that. It's just like, no, it's hitting people in different ways and different groups are taking it in different ways. And so that's just endlessly, endlessly neat because it has to do with, you know, this space and this interface where somebody's in a situation, they have a problem. And then there's some idea that they can grab out to some toolkit and interesting stuff happens. It's so cool, and it's like one of the greatest networking tools ever.

I know with the work you do with the Guardians baseball team now, that you're like the guy who brings a lot of things together for their learning and development group, and I'm grateful you introduced them to me. But what I want to talk about is a couple of things today. One, obviously, the culture code and kind of the playbook written off of that. When you see this cover, like, how does it make you feel to look and see the culture playbook book cover? That's fun. It's fun.

This is, you know, to see, you know, these, you know, the culture code came out three or four years ago. And so this idea of like, there was this hunger for like, oh, yeah, we want to have like just some takeaways, right? Some simple. And when I started, I thought it was going to be pretty simple, right? I'm going to take some idea, take the best of what great groups are doing and make kind of a cookbook, right?

And then as I got into it and obviously the pandemic and everything we've lived through, there was this sense of it all kind of evolving into something different. Like it started in one place, like so many projects, right? You know this feeling. So anybody starts, I got a really clear idea of where I'm going. And then you go and the journey change turns you left and right and backwards and forwards. And so we ended up with a book that's much more like sort of a workbook or an interactive experience that's trying to create a lot of reflection for people and and trying to kind of occupy this space, right? And trying to get people, what do people need right now? And, you know, the world is so filled with action, the world is so many things to do.

And yet we've got this moment that we've been given the last couple of years where we can kind of pull back and zoom out and sort of ask these bigger questions. And so it is like a culture playbook, but I kind of think of it, it kind of functions like a culture pause book. Like, what do we need to zoom out, stop and reflect together about, about who we want to be and how we want to work together? And here's some good models, maybe, some ideas from great cultures. you can copy. Here's some questions you might want to ponder as a group. And so that whole idea that like pausing is really productive. Pausing is when the great things happen. Pausing is the thing

we're kind of least good at doing in some ways in our work. And yet it's sort of the most powerful thing you can do to sort of stop and say, wait a minute, what do we look like at our best? Like what does that really look like? What are we, what's stopping that from happening? Like, why can't we do that every single day? Those sorts of questions end up being really kind of powerful launching pads. I feel like you're you're really good at this in your own life. When we were having dinner, we talked about, I think, some other writers and people who are kind of at your similar level of sold tons of books. And one of the things, though, that you didn't seem to be in too much of a hurry. You go to Alaska every summer with your family, which I love, I've loved learning about that.

I know what I asked about before we started because I think it's so cool. that you do that. You seem to be very relaxed in the office when we were meeting for half a day. In a way, like, I admire that. It's like, this dude is comfortable in his own skin. He seems to have figured some things out about life. You know, like, he still works really hard and produces great stuff. But isn't like you're with your family, like you're doing, you seem to have your priorities

in order. Like, can you walk me through your mindset at how you view almost living, like a pretty cool life and not killing yourself, even though I'm sure you could be on the speaker circuit just absolutely crushing it if you want it. Instead, you just take a speech here or a speech there. You go to Alaska. Can you, can you share more about that? Yeah, I don't know. That's a good, that's a good question. It's been sort of, it's been sort of an instinctive a set of decisions that have led me to that. And not to, you know, not to completely, but there are definitely, you know, times during my life where I have been the guy who doesn't, you know,

who in the NFL, the NFL, you know, analogy would be sleeping under your desk and waking up and going back and looking at more film. Like, that's definitely happened at times. But, well, there's just always been kind of a, kind of a clarity around, you know, the sort of value of family. And I guess it's because I've made those mistakes of sort of thinking, like there's some areas of life. There's this really interesting distinction that I mean. thinking a lot about lately. It's between things that are complicated and things that are complex. And like things that are complicated have got this sort of linear cause and effect. If A, it's like Legos, right? If A goes to B goes to C goes to D. If I want to, you know, get fit, I should lift

weights. I should work out more, right? There's like, there's like linear cause and effect. And that is some areas of life that that's really true. But there's the most meaningful areas of life are not like that. They're more complex. Like, that's where there's not like, like linear cause and effect where instead you're kind of like and it sounds sort of woo-woo to say but you're kind of like like in these you're you're sort of moving toward these things in complexity theory they call them the tractors and like you're probing and doing experiments and seeing what works and you can't like build it like legos right that's the thing about things and the most important things in life are sort of complex like your family and your relationship to your kids

your relationship to your you know your community and all that stuff and so in that area. So in certain areas, you want to be like, okay, we're going to optimize and maximize. We're going to optimize and maximize these things. But when it comes to like these big things of like, what relationships do I want to have in life? Don't try to optimize or optimize. It's been sort of the takeaway I've had where it's like, do an experiment and do what works. And then like play with that and see what emerges. And you're much more of an explorer. You're much more of an experimenter trying to do these. Like when we started doing this, Alaska thing. My wife's from Ohio. I'm from Alaska. We lived in Alaska for 15 years.

And we did this experimental year where it was like, let's, my son's getting in the high school. Let's live in Ohio for a year. And we did. And certain things about that were really interesting and great. Was it perfect? No. Was it like the Lego complicated answer? No. It was hard. It was weird. It was difficult. But there were enough about it that was kind of an attractor that we like kind of stayed with it. And we evolved this sort of thing. It was a same thing with my relationship with the Cleveland Guardians. Like, ooh, there's something cool there. Like, there's some really interesting people.

There's some really interesting projects. I could, like, speak at a different place every week and be gone all the time. Or these guys are right down the road from me. Like, they're 15-minute drive from when we live in Ohio. Like, I could go down there every Thursday afternoon. Let's see what that happens. So, and I think when everybody reflects on, like, the best stuff in their life, I think it comes from this more, like, exploration.

place. Not the, I have the answer. I know the answer. If then, like, if I do this, then I will be happy. Like, that's always a mistake. So this, this concept of like, I'm sure in your own life, like when you started this podcast, you didn't have any clarity. You had an attractor. Right. Like, I kind of want to go here. Let's see what happens. And then some cool stuff happened and you amplified that, right? And I think most of the good things in life come out of that sort of process where you're not sort of using a cookbook and just plug and play. You're like playing. You're playing in a different way. You're playing in this area that's in more of a conversational way. Like, I'm going to try something. Then the world's going to talk back to me. And I'm going to say,

oh, that's terrible. Let's not do that. Or this is interesting. Let's do more of that. It's like relationships. It's hard to hack or optimize them. I think they just have to happen. And there's, it's, I think about time with your kids. You can't try to like, sometimes you just have to be, right? Like be present. You go in the car ride to the volleyball tournament. You're in the hotel. You're waiting between, whatever it may be.

Like, you're just being in like those little moments. That's when relationships get built. And it's, but it's not like, okay, we have to plan 17 trips and go here and go here. It's like it's all the, the in-between stuff is the stuff, is what builds. things same thing with building a podcast I committed to following my curiosity with great rigor that was it right I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna reach out to people that I admire that I think could tell compelling stories that I'm first and foremost curious about and maybe others would be too and maybe then those people would

want to follow along and then and then again it kind of works and then you double down and triple down and say okay here we go but still remember like What was the general impetus for doing it in the first place and staying true to that? So I could talk about this stuff with you, Dan, all day. I want to, let's dive into some culture stuff. So first and foremost, what do you think are some of the biggest misconceptions about culture? Yeah. Yeah.

No, it's a huge. It's a lesson that we're continually learning. and we've learned it really, really vividly over the last couple years, right? I'd say number one is that it's that if you get, there's a misconception that successful cultures are happy places. Huge misconception. You sort of think from the outside, oh, man, Pixar. Like if I walked into Pixar, I would just see people having these idea-filled meetings

and every idea would be good. And every film they produced would be great. and every person there would therefore be like fulfilled and happy all the time walking around on you know on a cloud that is definitely not true like when you go there there's a happiness but it's a different kind of happiness um i describe it in the in the book a little bit as deep fun and this idea of deep fun is where you're you're sort of solving hard problems with people you admire and you're getting real. Like you're not having relationship conflict.

You're having task conflict is what it's called, where you're seeing if the best idea can win. You're trying to have these, you're bringing up tensions and you're turning toward those tensions together and saying, what's really the best thing we can do here? Like, is this, tell me if I need, I need help. Help me out with this.

This is not as good as it can be. I need you to poke holes in it. I need you to make it better. And then I'll make it better too. and we'll gather around it. And that's like this shared reflex that I think great cultures have. Because when a problem comes up, or even when an opportunity comes up, there's sometimes a tendency to turn away from it.

Like, let's just do business as usual. Like, it's a Tuesday. I'm comfortable, you're comfortable. Let's just do our job and get out. But when this, when something new happens, what happens? Is there a reflex to like turn toward it together and say, well, that's not good? Like that, how, what are we going to do about this? And that's, I think, what strong cultures have.

And that experience of gathering around a problem shoulder to shoulder and like struggling with it and making mistakes and making it better and making more mistakes and making it better, it's a very particular kind of fun. And I think that is the kind of deep fun that you find at these places. So that's, to me, that's the huge misconception because we sort of are always thinking that, oh, if we get to that happy, happy place, we're going to be on a higher plan. now, you know. Doing hard things together.

I learned that through athletic endeavors. I had high school coaches who studied military leaders. They actually are, some of them are from there, want to, want to school there. Obviously, you spent time with Navy Seals. I think doing hard things together and being able to look left and right that we did this hard thing together then can lead to an amazing culture. I'm curious, though, I was rereading. the Pixar section of Culture Code last night.

And fascinated by Ed Catmull, what are some of the amazing things or most useful things you say you've learned from spending time at Pixar and time with Ed Catmull? A bunch of things. I mean, he's unbelievable at being open about the mistakes they made. I tell the story in the book that he'll just sort of say, yeah, we made a huge mistake building this building. It's probably a $20 million building.

And he's counting on mistakes. And the thing that I really appreciated from him is a few things. One was how patient he was. Like he really, really, there was a time where there was a, there was a, they sort of have each movie creates a project team in Pixar. And so you have a project team that's just like if there's a movie about Scotland, like they're visiting Scotland and learning about Scotland history. He watches those teams and he waits and he waits for something cool to happen.

And there was a time where one of his teams, were doing something with the outdoors, and they pitched a tent. One day they pitched a tent like in the office as part of an experiment. And he was so pleased with that. He couldn't force them to do stuff, but whenever they did anything, he would spotlight it, amplify it, and he was so delighted. So he had this, like as a creative leader to sort of equip them with this project and equip them with this idea.

And his favorite phrase is, now it's up to you. Isn't that a good phrase? Because it's like he'll sort of equip you and then he'll say now, Ryan, it's up to you. And it's so they've got the ownership. And then when they do something that is worthy, that is like showing, that's creating, I mean, in complexity theory, creating an attractor like this tent, right? It's going to attract all kinds of interesting ideas and creativity. And then celebrating it.

So this immense patience to sort of say, I can't force these people to be creative, right? I can't make it happen. I can cede the clouds, you know, like cloud seeding. And then when lightning strikes, I can say, hey, look at that. That's pretty cool. And I can celebrate that around the company. So that was another one. And I guess the other thing is that he really had a backbone of humility.

He always knew what, he always was aware that there was things going on that he didn't know. There were always, he always knew that projects had a way of going off the rails or they creative people can sometimes be very difficult to deal with. And he was really, really humble about that. And I think that combination, like, you know, when we think of leaders, we often have this cultural baggage, this idea of a leader as an admiral, the leader as this bold, strong, kind of masculine presence that knows things we don't, can see things we can't, and then tells us what to do.

Like that authoritative model of a leader. And what I kept seeing at these places in Capable is perfectly representative of this is a really different model of a leader, much more humble, much more patient, much more of a teammate, actually. They're not thinking about, Capable doesn't walk around thinking, I'm the leader, I need to say something well. The power's not with him. The powers with how can I support my team?

That's really the question on his mind. And I think, given the way the world is changing, like, if we've learned anything in the last few years, it's that, like, great, if someone says they're a great leader, like, that's a huge red flag. If someone starts acting like a great leader, that's a huge red flag. Go to Netflix right now. What are the movies people are watching? We work. The Dropout, Elizabeth Home, Theronos, Travis Kalanick at Uber. all of them are the same story.

It's somebody who said, it's me. It's me. I've got the answers. I've got a new way of doing things. I'm different. And this takes you on a path, as those movies and stories and case studies so vividly show, a path of making mistakes, a path of hubris, a path of toxicity, a path of ego. And what you find in good cultures is a really different backbone of humility.

You find a bunch of catmills. You find people who are saying, I don't have the answer. Now it's up to you. Like, can you help me figure it out? Have you ever studied Elon Musk? No, not up close. I think he's kind of a fascinating guy.

What do you think about that? Because there's a little bit of this, like I can fix Twitter. And to his credit, I don't know if there's another person on the planet that all of a sudden is sending rockets and landing them and building electric cars that seem to be. pretty awesome. I don't have one, but I've, you know, whatever. What do you think about somebody like, is that just an anomaly? It's on the side or what do you think when it comes to culture and a person like him? There's always an exception, but I, I'm, my, my spidey sense is tingling. Like, I think there's problems. And I think, I think if we take the long view on that, the idea that he can be absolutely right about all this stuff is the probability

of that is very remote. He has a lot of power because he has a lot of money, but they clearly have some culture problems there. And it is right now, he's sort of, he's exactly at that point where Elizabeth Holmes was in 2014. He's exactly at that point where Travis Kalanick was, you know, around the same time. He's exactly the point where we work was five years ago. So if that all kind of falls apart, I don't think anybody's going to say, oh, I'm so surprised. I mean, he's interesting. He's interesting. I think some would be surprised considering if you look at like the Tesla stock price. And I know, a lot of people say it's super overvalued,

but like I think there would be a lot of people who invest to would be surprised, wouldn't you? I mean, you wouldn't be invested if you were, if you thought that, if you thought he was the next Elizabeth Holmes or Travis Callan. A lot of people invested in them at that time too. That's true. That they were the right person. So I don't know,

I would prefer to take the cat mall, patient, Longview. Let's see what happens. Yeah. By the way, this is just for me. How, and maybe it's because you've already produced great work, but how do you you get access to somebody like Ed Catmull and just go go in to visit Pixar and say, I'm like, hey, I'm writing a book. I mean, a lot of people can say I'm writing a book on

culture or whatever. How do you get access to Danny Meyer, who I'm going to ask about next, or Ed Catmull or the others, who Navy Seals, or how do you, how are you able to do that? It varies. I mean, in certain cases, small, sort of a small literary world ends up helping a little bit. My editor at Random House is Ed Catmall's editor. And so he was able to introduce this. My agent, my book agent is Danny Myers agent. And so he was able to introduce us. So the idea that these people that run good cultures tend to have those sorts of people.

And that's one way. Some of them are harder. The San Antonio Spurs was almost impossible to sort of get a visit with. But here was the thing with them and with some other ones. What ended up creating the conversation was their urge. to learn when when I was able to say hey um you know I'm doing this project it's about it's about leadership and culture and being great teammate and and they're really curious right they're there are C. Buford and other people are very very curious and so that that was also uh and

of course when when I did go to San Antonio I spent the whole time being interviewed by R.C. Buford basically I I able to ask him some questions but he oh he's an amazing person and and he had all kinds of questions about, oh, you've been to these places, tell me what they're like. Can you introduce me to the, you know, the Navy SEAL Bud's director and all the stuff? So that part of it, because that's what makes them great. Like they don't, to go back to your first question about the misconception, they don't think that they've got it all figured up, right? I mean, they should in some ways, like they should walk around being really confident,

but they don't. They walk around being really curious. And so when you say, hey, here's some interesting people, you might be able to learn. from they're all in that's what blew me away when I was with you guys in Cleveland I think I've already told you this but you I come in and it's you and Jay Hennessy who's a longtime Navy SEAL and Josh Gibson another brilliant brilliant guy and then in walks Chris the president of the team the baseball team and all of a sudden you guys are asking me questions and I'm thinking what's what's happening like what are

we doing here this is insane there is this is this should be completely one way meaning me asking you, which I, you know, we did have a good back and forth since we spent a good amount of time together. But I was blown away by the curiosity of you for in that room where it was, it was so genuine and so real. You've interviewed hundreds and hundreds of these great performers. We like your podcast. We want to learn.

We're curious. And that, I was like, this is why this organization is so good because of this mentality right here. It blew me away. Well, it's not, there's a clarity that I think the. guardians have that I think a lot of good cultures have, which is like, we are, you know, the world we live in is a learning contest. You know, the world we live in is not an execution contest necessarily. It's not a confidence contest. It's a learning contest. What helps you with learning?

Like those sorts of attributes where you're continually saying, you know, I think we've got to figure out right now, but who else can help us? What else is coming around the corner? How can we get better, a little bit better today. And if you build your values and model that sort of stuff, it ends up being a really it's getting better. People always talk a lot about, you know,

the culture of purpose and mission and everything else like that. But I think all a lot of good cultures have that deeply in common. Because maybe 50 years ago if you're a Ford motor company and it's 1935, like yeah, it's an execution

contest. There are certain things you can do. to like, I'm going to be better than you because I have this assembly line. And I'm going to be a big famous law firm because I hired these big shot lawyers. But that's all going away. It's like it's really a time of flexibility. How do you stay connected and learn is really the question that everybody's facing? Let's say you're a leader who is either starting a new season or in the business world. So like in sports or in the business world starting potentially.

a new job or you have a new team, new whatever. What are some of the first things that that person should do? Last year is over. Like we were on to this year, whatever, there are changes. Maybe it's personnel project. You got promoted, perhaps. You go to a new company, whatever it may be. What are some of the first things from a culture perspective that that leader should

think about when starting new? Conceptually, think about this question of connection and safety, right? that's the foundation on which all this stuff happens. Without psychological safety, you can be as smart as you want to be, but you will not be able to add up to more than the sum of your parts because you're not giving people voice. And that's one sort of slight misconception about safety. That word is obviously in the leadership world. And people can sometimes think, well, that means everybody should just feel safe all the time, like feel like you're wrapped in fleece or something. And that's not it. Safety is actually about voice. As Amy Edison,

Edmondson says she's sort of a pioneer of psychological safety who's a professor at Harvard. It is not about making people feel safe. It's actually about making sure that everyone has a voice. So with that sort of concept in mind, I think one of the first things for any new team is to create a space where everyone has voice, where you are building something together, co-creating something together. And one useful thing to co-create is kind of a team charter. Just start out the new year with, all right, old years gone, new year starting, new set of challenges. Let's talk about how we're going to work together, what we're going to work toward, what our rules of engagement are going to be. And there's all kinds of tools, and I have some of them in the culture playbook that help you do that. Like make a one page kind of user's guide to each person.

Everyone reflects, writes a one pager. I am at my best when, fill it in. I am at my worst when, fill it in. What I need from this team is, fill it in. What I can help this team with is fill it in and create that. And then, you know, another idea might be to sort of let's write that one page. Let's write a team charter. Let's figure out what we're going to do and how we're going to do it.

is a one group that's really successful at that is the design from IDEO, which I know you're a fan of. That every project team, their insight is every project team is sort of like a journey. And so they do these flight meetings. They have a pre-flight meeting, a mid-flight meeting, and a post-flight meeting. And the purpose of each of them is to like turn your attention away from the project. Like that's the mistake that a lot of teams do. They just work on the project, work on the project.

and our world is built, our workflows are built, our apps are built, our desks are built to like spotlight focus on the project, where are we, what are we getting at done? And what they do with these meetings is that they pull that spotlight focus off the project and they put it on the team itself. Like, are we working well together? You know, those are some of the questions they ask. How might we, what's working, what's not working, and what should we do differently? Like, it's a really simple question, but it's almost like, you know, it's like when a Formula One car, they do go to the pit stops every once in a while, right? Like you don't just race all the time and make the turn and pass the guy. You pull in the pit stops and you say, no, we kind of need some new

tires here or we need more fuel. And so these very simple meetings where you've got the team together and they talk about what are you most excited about? Like, what are you most jazzed about? year in this project. That's such a simple, powerful question to ask or ask, like, what do we look like at our best? Like, let's talk about that. Do we have a similar vision of that? Or do I think we're at our best when we're all working solo and you think we're at our best when we're really creative? I, it's a vulnerability. It's a vulnerable exercise, right? It's hard to have that exercise, but vulnerability is really kind of about visibility. Like, let's create a shared sense of where we are of our situational awareness with each other

so that we can function better as a group. One of the exercises I do with leadership teams, Dan, is called a user manual. There's a manual for every, there's a user manual for this light, for this camera, for this screen, for this computer,

right? There's user manuals for everything except for people. And I've wondered why. Why do we not? So it's a series of prompts and questions followed by then conversation. about your user manual. Sometimes you tweak it after you talk about it because, you know,

people who have known you for a while say, actually, you know, but my point is it's the process of pausing, as you mentioned, which I think you're something you're really good at being a thoughtful person, documenting kind of the way that you go, having a conversation about it, don't you think that team who's focused on their user manual and learning the manuals of others and getting to know them and having dialogue, right, Jay Hennessey is really big on dialogue and talking things out. That's team learning. Peter Sanjay, the fifth discipline, right? All of that, I think, is a big part of culture building.

And people, like, leave those meetings. I remember them. I just did one with, like, these huge smiles. Because they've learned a lot about other people, and they've got to share about themselves. And I think it's brought, it brings people together. And I would imagine the results typically then follow. 100%. I couldn't agree with that more.

I mean, that moment of vulnerability feels weird in a lot of settings, right? It feels for me to say, here's where I'm at my best, Ryan. Here's where I'm at my worst. Like, it feels egotistical. It feels vulnerable, right? It's strange. But that's kind of the weird little group magic that this is tapping into. Like that pain of exposure or of vulnerability is what brings people together.

Like that, you know, it's called a vulnerability loop. But it is not magic. It's like if you think about the people you're closest to in your life, It's not people you're not vulnerable with, right? Those moments of shared vulnerability create that visibility that lets you function better. And it's not, it feels like magic. But it's just like physical exercise, right? Like if you go to work out and you don't feel any pain, it is not a good workout.

You did not get stronger. You did not get stronger today. So if you have these group interactions and they're always safe and you never feel risk and you you always feel very secure, you are not getting better as a good. group. You're not in a good group. If you have a meeting and every idea is a good one, you're not in a good group. If you have a meeting and nobody disagrees with anybody, you're not in a good group. But if you're in a meeting where people are actually saying, this is what I need from you. This is what I hope to provide. And this is where I'm bad.

And this is where I think you might have some work to do. Those are really hard, but that's what makes it strong. Yep. Like most great things, it's usually hard leading up to the moments, whether it's preparing for a test, a game, a speech, writing a book. It's hard. You know, it's much, much delayed gratification is very important in that case. But anyway, it's hard. I want to talk for a second about goals because this is something I personally am all over the map. And I know others have seemed to have similar thoughts at times.

This mindset of I'm just going to fall in love with the process and the score will take care of itself as Bill Walsh might have written about. or no, I'm setting these big ambitious goals that are very specific and I've got, they're very stretch and I've got to go hit those numbers, a number of wins per year, a certain revenue target. So I go back and forth and struggle between let me just fall in love with the process, surrender the outcome, as my friend Brooke Cups might say, who's written a book with that title. Or, no, I need to be very specific in these goals with numbers and everything. So where do you fall on that?

And what do you think overall about the mindset of goal setting? I guess I fall in kind of a, I'm looking for a middle way there. Because on the one hand, if you are very specific about those goals and you don't get them, that puts you in a really tough spot, right? Because a lot of times you can now get them for another reason. A lot of people set big goals right before COVID hit and they did not make them. And should they walk around feeling like they didn't reach their goal? Or is there another way?

And the idea of completely surrendering to the process and not having any North Star out there to me seems equally sort of, I don't know that the score will always take care of itself. The way I would think about it is, I guess, what is the directional goal? How can you define your directional goal? Don't, you know, not being not being specific, but being specific enough to. say that you kind of want to be in this neighborhood. You want to be, give yourself some wiggle room, but it kind of connects back to some of that sort of complexity conversation we were having earlier because the world's really, the world is really complex.

You can't know what's going to happen, but you can move in a certain direction. And one way to think about it, too, is with this, is another idea that I know Jay Hennessey talks a lot, which is commander's intent, team intent, this idea that you sort of define an end state that you want to get to. And that end state can be, you know, reasonably precise, but it's not 100% precise. It's more like a situation you want to be in. I want to be in a situation where I'm, you know, more comfortable financially. That's, that is sort of a directional goal that we can feel. I want to be in a situation where I'm, I'm just traveling a little bit less and more connected to the family. Okay, sort of, sort of define that

end state and move in that direction without having it be sort of this, you know, sort of Damocles that is over your head that if you don't get it, life is, life is difficult. Like is the goal of the Guardians to win the World Series every year? Does that a stated written down goal? It is. It is. That is a goal.

That is a goal. And again, that's a hard goal to have. That's, that's, it's good to have out there. But the deeper goal, the deeper purpose of the team is to inspire and unite. the city with the power of team. That's the purpose. Are we doing that? That's more directional.

That's more all-encompassing. And maybe, you know, another point to make here, I think, is that you should have a lot of, I think having several different things, you know, there's this idea that like purpose and goal and mission, we should just have one statement and that's it, you know, kind of a Jack Welch. Like, if we're not this, we're bad. We're not playing in that market if we're not one or two. too or whatever. Exactly. Exactly. And what I see with other successful groups is that they sort of have a whole constellation of things they're moving toward, right? Are we moving toward winning

the World Series? Yes. Are we moving toward inspiring and uniting our city with the power of team? Yes. And so this idea of maybe you want to think in terms of a multiplicity of things, not just kind of like one big thing. I saw Russell Wilson's press conference when he signed with the Broncos. I don't, I'm paraphrasing, so this is a quote, but essentially it was like, I want to play for a decade here and I hope we win three or four Super Bowls or like, or my plan and my goal is to win three or four Super Bowls. Like is that like win the press conference thing? I mean, what do you think about? Because like my thing is if you're going to play 10 years and your goals to win a Super Bowl, why not 10 Super Bowls or or why not not have Super Bowl as a goal? Like I found that kind of bizarre like three or four and I think that part is a direct quote three or four and i want to play here for decade i don't know that part of it to me maybe i'm too focused on this and i should just let it go but i do think about this as the direction of thinking about how to how to kind of proceed and looking at people who have done really well which he has is that can i learn something from that right right boy i i i i i tend

to agree like if you're going to if you're going to put it out there you know you may as well just go for it three or four it's as hard as that in some ways. And, yeah, if you're going to be specific, be real, super specific. And if you're not, don't, you know. Yeah, I don't know. I may be harping on a little point, but, but I, and I know that's like out of the culture thing.

But I just, I think this is something, because it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a specific of goals of, like, what direction are we headed. And that's why, like most things, life is messy and life is not black and white. It's really gray. And so I think it's it's it behooves us to live in the gray and understand the nuance of all of this stuff as opposed to just being like it's either that way or it's that way most things not everything but most things doesn't work like that. It's not just here or there. Especially in the world where I feel like some of us like or not some of us, but like the world where it's heading where it's like tribal and over here over here. I don't like that. I mean I like to think I'm more of a curious independent thinker where there are sometimes yeah,

okay, I'm with you here. And other times I'm like, oh, yeah, okay, I'm with you here. So that, but that doesn't seem to always work today with the tribes that are set out. So true. That's so true. Right. And we're, you know, again, I think the world is in the grace. That's exactly right.

What if Wilson had said, hey, I just promise you that I'm going to get better every day. I'm going to do everything I can to get a little bit better tomorrow I am today. Which he will. We know he will. That's the type of guy he is. I mean, like, which I, I'm like, I don't know. So anyway, but I do. do think words matter I think from a leadership perspective words matter whether you're a parent

a spouse a CEO you're running something like we do need to be mindful of what we're saying and when you so speaking of that one of my all-time favorite quotes Danny Meyer business like life is all about how you make people feel it's that simple and it's that hard I think I just love that quote It's so true. You spent a lot of time with Danny Meyer. You covered him and setting the table by him is another great book. What are some of the things like the key learnings you took away from your time with Danny Meyer? Boy, he combines.

I mean, just to give a little context on him, I mean, he started out. He's a guy out of St. Louis. His dad was in sort of in the hospitality industry a little bit. Had a huge falling out like with his father. at some point and started his own restaurants in the mid-80s and, you know, kind of fitfully, kind of slowly, kind of slowly. I think, you know, when I think about his leadership style, it sort of is captured in this story of how he grew.

You know, he had one restaurant open, it was very successful. Then he had a second one. And they both started to fail because when he could be in the room, he could control the culture, like a lot of leaders, right? People knew how to position the salt chaker on the table because that's how Danny did it. They could see him, right? But all of a sudden, he couldn't be in two restaurants at once. And both restaurants started to go downhill.

In fact, they had a waiter insult a customer. The customer, like, didn't like the salmon. And the waiter argued with the customer like, no, no, this is how the salmon's supposed to be. Like, you're wrong. This is, this salmon's delicious. And he realized, I've got a problem here. Right. And so he closed both his restaurants for a time.

And then went off and started trying to make his values explicit, building what later would be called a mantra map. Like he figured out true north was about creating raves. Talk about the use of language. Creating raves. Not serving good food, not making money, not being successful, not a goal of being a three-star Michelin. That would have been one, right?

This is an example of what we were talking about. creating raves. That's what he wants. Is that a specific goal? Yes, it is. It's pretty specific. Like, are we creating raves or not? Is that a rave or is that just like a good review? And so that ended up being this North Star that was incredibly affected with him. So really what, and then he built all these other corny mantras, corny catchphrases like athletic hospitality. The excellence reflex. This is my favorite one. Mistakes are waves. Servers are surfers. That's stupid. But it's also kind of genius. Like there's a mistake. It's a wave. You have to surf the wave. The road to success is paved with mistakes well handled. Isn't that good? Like he's got a billion of them and he used

them to kind of train and orient the culture in this really explicit way. His use of language, I think, really sets him apart. Like he's continually trying to come up with more. I was in his office and his whiteboard had all kinds of weird sayings about like bridges and monsters and most of them. It was like I sort of thought it felt like being in the office of like a country singer in Nashville trying to write country song, right? Because you got it.

Got it's got to have a truck. It's got to have a dog. It's got to be raining. Like that's what he's doing. In his culture, he's writing songs really is a way to think of. it. Like culture is this kind of musical relationship people have with each other where they're picking up patterns and following models and kind of chasing some North Star. And he's really good at that music. And I think that's an important quality in leadership. The other thing that he's got

is he takes his time. Like when you're with him, you are the only person in the world. He thinks really deeply before he answers. And he also answers in ways that are like disarmingly personal and real. Like there's a time. And I've never talked about this before. So maybe it will come off. It's kind of strange. But when he finally got, he talked about the process of bringing his team together

and starting to build this mantra map and making these things explicit. And I asked to, and this is back in the beginning of his career. And I'm like, how did that feel for you? Like to sort of crack that code or to sort of figure that out together. He goes, he goes, it felt like taking a really good shit. That's what he said. That's what he said. And it was just like, are you kidding me?

Like that is the craziest thing to say. But that's what he said. And I kind of really admire him for it because he really does kind of made. make himself very present in the moment in a way that a lot of leaders could have answered that a million different ways. But he is very mindful. There's something kind of Buddhist about his alertness, his attention, and kind of the patient way he is with you. It's kind of magical. He's really amazing. How do you get that to permeate throughout, especially as a organization grows and sometimes these places maybe have a cult-like feel which I

know is a little meta considering culture but like what do you like that part of when it's small and you have kind of direct influence over most or everybody it's I feel like it's probably much easier but then as you grow and there's multiple locations and people are everywhere and you can't be everywhere all the time how does that grow beyond kind of your your your individual sphere of influence beyond and have like ripple effects. A few thoughts. First of all, it kind of doesn't. You don't have a monoculture when you get past a certain size. And so what you do have instead is a bunch of little ecosystems,

a bunch of little micropultures that exist. And Danny and others are comfortable with that. Like they realize, hey, it shouldn't all feel the same. Like this restaurant's going to be different than that restaurant. This team's going to be different than that team. And that's actually a strength. that's actually kind of a good healthy thing. They should have their own mantras. They should have their own models. They should have their own way of doing things. So that's one.

You know, the only thing that really scales in culture is that this idea of purpose and North Star. And so they end up really often doubling down and being very explicit and creating a lot of conversations around purpose, around what are we here to do? because the other things, a lot of elements of culture are relational and relationships don't scale. Like, yeah, I'm sure people that work at Tesla feel like they know Elon Musk, but you know what? If he did something, that relationship isn't real, that a lot of people of Theranos felt like they really knew Elizabeth Holmes. They didn't. They can't. You can only know, you know, 100 or so people.

So that's where I think Danny Meyer's attention to language. That's why it's so important because that's the way in which he can, he can't know these people, but he can create a shared fabric of meaning and understanding on which they're operating. Like he came up with this word skunking, which is when if something goes wrong, you sort of get angry and resentful and sort of create a form. foul atmosphere in the room, sort of like a skunk spraying. And by defining that and making it part of the language, like what's going on? Oh, yeah, that whole, all the dishwashers are skunking right now. Okay, we've just taken a situation that could be interpreted a million different

ways. It's totally ambiguous. Maybe, you know, there's a million ways to explain it. And he created language for it. And therefore, you know, words, words are. really, really powerful. And I think that is where you can not exactly exert control over a growing organization, but you can kind of define the direction of its travel. You can sort of say, here's where we should be going and here's where we shouldn't be going. I can create, it's like those poles of energy, right, where you've got positive over here and negative here. Let's define those poles in language and then our group can navigate that better. Yeah. Okay, we didn't bring it up last time we talked, but again, I was rereading it. And just the billion dollar day when nothing happened, it's just too good of a story. I want to just go over it real quick before. And then I have some notes here on actions to take from the culture playbook. I just think of the quote, these ads suck. The note that Larry Page wrote and hung up on the wall about Google AdWords. Can you talk to me about the day when Larry Page wrote that note and it became.

the billion dollar day when nothing happened, when this, this quiet, skinny engineer named Jeff Dean saw that and decided to do something about it. Yeah. Yeah, there was this huge race. It was kind of like the moon, you know, race for the moon or something between all these companies in the early 2000s. And the race was who could like combine effective ads with internet search terms, right? Like if you could, if you could do that, you could open up this massive advertising market. And there was a company in existence named Overture that had, they actually, they were way ahead. You know, if it was the moon launch, they had already launched satellites. They, they had some people who had invented the software on which

these early efforts were based. They had tons of venture capital money, tons of resources, huge campus. And if you had to bet on who was going to crack this first and optimize it and maximize it. It was going to be this company overture. And over here, you had a hundred or so people working at this startup called Google with a guy named Larry Page, who was in charge at the time. And they were also trying to do this on a kind of a shoestring sort of situation, you know, with gum and chewing gum and wire. And they had an early effort where you would post a search, and then it would show the ads that this search generated. And so, Larry Page looked at that and they were bad.

And so he printed out the bad ads, poorly matched ads, and he wrote in big letters, these ads suck and posted it in the dining room in the kitchen where everybody could see it. And there was a guy working there named Jeff Dean and he wasn't even working on the AdWords project. He's working on a completely different project. But that signal inside that culture, that honesty about it, that's sort of Danny Meyer like, here's what's really going on. It would have been really easy for Larry Page to be like, well, that's a good try, guys. Let's try to be a little bit better next time.

Good luck. But instead he did this extraordinary, transparent thing, which is pretty honest to sort of say, this really, this sucks. This isn't where we want to go. And that signal sort of activated something in Jeff Dean. And this is where you get to that, again, that sort of complexity thing. You can't plan for these sorts of moments. You can't treat them as linear cause and effect.

You have to send out signals and attractors and see what happens. And that's exactly what Larry Page did. He sent out this thing. And Jeff Dean saw it and then spent two nights trying to fix it. And he did fix it. And he invented he had such breakthroughs that it became the basis of Google's kind of their entire business, really. They're an advertising company. Like so many, so many, that's how they make money is with surveillance advertising.

And that's, that was the moment. And nobody assigned it to Jeff Dean. You know, nobody knew he was working on it. He, it wasn't part of his job. Like, it was just a day. It was just a day with the sign in the kitchen and somebody who was curious to go back to your earlier point. Somebody was curious enough to say, I wonder, it kind of connects to something I'm working on. Let me give that a shot.

What the heck? And ends up changing the history of, you know, really of technology in America and the world. And how about when he's asked about it after the fact he can hardly even remember? He's like, oh, oh, yeah, yeah. Like it was like not that big of a deal. It's like, it's just another, that's just what we do. Or that's just what I do. Like it wasn't fake humility.

It was just genuine like, oh, yeah. Like he didn't even fully realize of what he'd done. That's right. That's right. And I think that's how if you talk to Navy Seals after. successful mission or you talk to people in Danny Myers restaurant or you talk to anybody. There is this sense that you have in a culture of I'm part of this bigger thing. I'm playing my role.

It's not me, me, me, me, me. It's this dynamic between people. And it's really cool when you see it. And I think a lot of us have felt it at one time or another. Like, you know, if you made a great play in your football career, you wouldn't say, look at my great play. You'd say, oh, great blocking. That guy ran a great route.

we had the right play call. All of these things came together, and that's what creates great group performance. And tuning into those connections and those kind of subtle feelings of like, hey, this is just another day and it feels good to do that. I mean, that's why Jeff Dean did it because it felt cool and it felt good. And he felt like he could have an impact. And he was curious, right?

Like a superpower of a trait when looking at a hire. I don't see many jobs where if you have a genuine, an intellectual curiosity to perhaps solve a problem. That is just a top of the list when I'm looking for somebody for most, most roles, certainly for the role that he had. Okay, the culture playbook, I want to focus on a few actions for people to take. One, I want you to expand on, is scheduling regular tuneups. What does it mean to schedule a regular tune up?

Yeah. Yeah, when you got, you know, we have this, this world we're living in, where it's just all about productivity, where it's like we have a project to do. We're always put on teams. We're always trying to move that workflow, build our workflows for maximum productivity, optimize and maximize. And a team tune up is when you say, stop. How are we doing?

What is exciting us most about this? It was sort of a Jeff Dean moment. What are we curious about right now? How can I help the team work better? What am I doing wrong? What am I doing right? what are we doing wrong? What are we doing right? There's a woman named Roshi Gavecci, who I've written about who worked at IDEO. And she was a genius at this. They would bring her in to kind of stop teams and

tune them up. And she would just ask these really simple, simple question like, what are you most excited to learn? And just pausing and doing that, that's sort of a tune up. And we've talked about a little bit earlier, this IDEO model, I think, is the most powerful way to do that, where you do a pre-flight, a mid-flight, and a post-flight. And that moment, and they give a few ideas in the books on how to do it, but I think my favorite ones are mortems. Like if you do a pre-mortem and a post-mortem. And the premortem would be in the pre-flight where you'd ask the team, if this fails, if this just goes off the rails and we completely fail and we're two years into the future or one year into the future, what will we look back and say, that's the cause of it? What caused it? Like,

if we fail, what caused it? And that is such a cool question because it actually makes you, like all good questions, it makes you zoom out and see yourself from a different higher perspective and say, oh yeah, if we don't like work with these three other departments on this rollout, it's not, it's not going to, we're not going to make it, you know, it gives you a view of the barriers you face. And in the world today, like, we tend to focus a lot on our goals and we tend to focus a lot in our skills. And we naturally focus a lot on ourselves. And that question, zooming out and saying, let's define the barriers that we face. And creating that situational awareness, let's call it, like every good athlete, every good team has great situational awareness. And asking that pre-mortem

question gives you that. And then there's the post-mortem at the end where you say, all right, let's break this down a little bit. Let's talk about what went well, what didn't go well, and what we should do different. Yep, so much learning. I love going back, for example, when I do like off-sites. I regularly go back and look at the notes of the pre-and-post, of what were we trying to do and then the post

as well as feedback from the people who attended. Years worth of those that I look at. It's so helpful. Like in the moment you got to document what happened, well, what didn't, how are we feeling, right? that type of thing in the moment is when you document it so that you'll be able to use that for a long time. It's really good. Jack Nicholas used to do his, he'd shoot around a golf and he would immediately go to the practice range. Why is that? Because exactly what you just described. That is

where you have your most effective practice because your mistakes and successes are freshest in your mind. You remember what it felt like. And that immediacy is super important. Trust. Building trust. The foundation for any relationship, Dan, obviously, is that we trust each other. And it's critical in an excellent culture. What are some of the playbooks, the plays from this book that we can implement in order to build trust? One, if, let's say, we're still like in the early stages, and maybe even two, maybe it's been broken before. Maybe we've messed up.

What are some things that we can do? Yeah, signaling fallibility is really important. important. We tend not to do that in our life because we don't like risk. We don't like exposure. And yet, especially for leaders, especially for any position of authority, that moment of saying, hey, here's where I need your help. Here's what I don't know. Here's where this is weak. I need you to poke some holes in this. Like, help me out here. It's such a small signal, but it's such a powerful signal because it gives everybody permission to dig in together and to actually expose the weakness. We have such a bias to hide our own weaknesses and to hide our team weaknesses.

And we finish a project. And it's very tempting just to kind of like, well, let's shake hands and move on to the next one. Right. But pausing, taking that minute to reflect together and say, yeah, I think we really were a B minus on this. And I think here's what we can do to move it up to an A is incredibly powerful. And another thing that I think that can create that moment of trust and vulnerability is something I call the subter. attraction game. You know, the world is really good at giving us more to do, right? I would call it the disease of more. And I think every organization is suffering from it. Because just the nature of the

system in which we live, the nature of the environment in which we live is that there's always more. There's always more. And so our plates are continually piling up with new tools, new processes, new readings we have to do, new podcasts we have to listen to. everything, right? And I think good cultures do a vulnerable thing and a trust building thing where they say, let's subtract. Let's take some things off the plate. And the subtraction game is one way to do that, where you sort of say, hey, get the team together and say, hey, what have we done for a long time, but it's no longer useful? Let's name something. What was once useful but is now adding needless friction? Let's name those things. It's a sure.

short meeting, right? But you can co-create, and that's such an important word on a lot of this cultural stuff. It's not like the leader is just going to announce that, okay, we're no longer using Trello or whatever. It's that you're co-creating and creating sort of shared awareness and figuring stuff out together. That's really the moment, this vulnerability loop, when you have people get together and really kind of get real with each other. It creates a space for for you to figure things out together. Like, that's what happens inside that vulnerability loop. You're actually, let's take a look at what's really happening and let's figure it out.

Dan, so good, man. What, let's say there's somebody who's reaching out for help. And maybe this is even one of your kids considering the ages now that they are. Earlier in their career, perhaps they just graduated college and they're trying to figure things out. They know they want to do good, right? They want to leave a dent, a positive dent in the world. What are some general pieces of life slash career advice you'd give to that person?

Yeah, I think it's an idea that I am stealing from Dave Epstein, who wrote range, but it's something I've talked about with my own kids as they moved into the work world, which is sort of think in terms of experiments and keep a book of experiments. Like, write down and reflect on, you know, if you're curious to sort of check adult, a certain area out or a certain kind of job. Like, don't just sit around and imagine what it would be like, but actually spend some time. If you're curious about health care, go be a candy striper in a hospital for a while.

If you're, you know, curious about being a fireman, go, go see if you can shadow for the day. Like, you'd be surprised how many people are open to those sorts of experiences when you just say, hey, can I just learn about your work? most people will say sure. And this idea of having an experiment, a real world interaction with this domain that you want to explore, and then write about it. Like stop, think, reflect, process. You know, all learning happens in a loop, right?

You have experience, and then you have reflection. You have experience, and then you have reflection. And we often underrate the reflection part. Like we sort of run through our lives, experience, experience, experience, experience, experience. and we're constantly gathering, gathering, gathering, but actually to stop, pause, process, figure out what was I responding to there? What direction should I travel? And so doing experiments in a direction, I guess, is a really important thing.

And as you go through that, you know, to be patient, I mean, it's such a cliche, but you're not going to, if you're not struggling in your 20s, you're not doing it right. Like that's what I think. Like if anybody's going through, Adam Grant is really good on this. He gives a lot of career advice to his students. And when somebody comes in and says, I know exactly what I'm doing for the next 10 years,

that's the worst sign, right? Certainty, are you kidding? Like, if you really have that mapped out, you are deluding yourself. You don't have a clear vision of yourself or the world. Like, because that's not how the world is built. That's probably not how you're built. And so this idea, and there's another book that I've given to some people in the 20s,

which is called Designing Your Life. It's a good set of exercises and reflections for kind of thinking about what, you know, what experiments you want to do and what lights you up. And it's a nice tool for that time in life. The question in interviews, what is your like five year plan or what do you hope? I've found that to be bizarre, man. Like, I'm the worst at answering that question. What do you think of that as a question in the interview process?

It's not, you know, every question, you know, is a, is a gateway to whatever the answerer wants, you know, in some way. And so I don't think it's a great, I don't think it's a great question necessarily. You can answer it in some really interesting ways. You can start talking about scenarios. You know, you can start saying, yeah, there's, there, I have 10 different scenarios that I've been thinking about, right? And, or I could see this playing out any different. different ways based on these forces, right? But it doesn't speak super well of the questioner if they are themselves just talking all the time about my five-year plan, my seven-year plan and my 10-year plan.

Yeah. Really? I think that's hard because one of the ways I've answered is like I know what I what I'm committed to doing right now is I will work very hard to follow what I'm most curious about and hope that it helps people. And when I've done that, Dan Coyle might send a text saying, we want to come hang out with the Cleveland baseball team, right? The president and all the guys. Who could have, how could that have been a part of my five-year plan? Right.

And that would have led to the end of the teams called with Jay and then the relationship and a lot of other things, right? All those things happen because of that one kind of North Star guiding point of I'm going to work really hard to follow what I'm curious about, to try to be very prepared. And then hopefully it helps people. And if that happens, the opportunity, I don't know. They're almost endless as weird and kind of, you know, bad catchphrases that

sounds. That's like that's how this is gone. I'd imagine that if I stay committed to that, that it should continue to happen. I agree. That's how the universe is built. It's complex. It's not just leg, right? There's energy and there's patterns and there's magnets. And it's like, that stuff is just going to keep exploding. So the better question I think is about habits and behaviors. I don't want to know about your plan. I want to know what you did last Tuesday morning or I want to know what you did to prepare for this conversation. Let's talk about that. Like, that's a real question where if somebody goes, yeah, I'm kind of winging it like that says something. And if somebody says, no, here's exactly, I looked at these models and I've been thinking about

this for a while and here's the different ways I prepared. I mean, it's called behavioral interviewing. That's kind of the formal thing. But it's a really, that's why it's important because it actually is specific, concrete, and you can actually talk about it. By the way, I should have said this earlier. So you've done some work with Insight Global. I know Bert being their CEO, I think you've spoken and worked with them a little bit. Bert was at a conference. This is just kind of hearkening back to this.

Like you never know what's going to happen. Bert was at a conference with a bunch of CEOs and another one of them came over to him because Bert's like, you know, we're really trying to rebuild our culture. I think he was a new CEO at the time. trying to rebuild our culture, try to do some things. And some random guy, guy I still don't even know, said, you should listen to Dan Coyle. It's episode 242 on The Learning Leaders Show. I think it'll be helpful for you.

And obviously read the book and stuff, all that too. So Bert listened and really liked it and decided to continue to listen and has listened to most episodes since then. And a year ago, I started working with other senior leader Sam Kaufman, who's their chief revenue officer, two years ago now, a year ago, we came into like a formal partnership similar probably to what you have with the Guardians. And that kind of magic would have never happened if you and I wouldn't have had that conversation and it would have impressed him enough to say, I want to continue listening. And he listened and he became, I think, a fan over the course of years to the point where it's like, we need to work together. Right.

And that has been the best partnership I could have ever had. So it's just amazing the way the world works, man. It's like hard to fully predict, but 242 will forever be a special one to me because of, I had no idea. I was just trying to be prepared about the culture code. That's it. You know, you show up and you hope it goes well. You know, idea it's going to lead to what it did.

And now here we are. So it's just wild of how the world can work sometimes if you try to work hard and be prepared and meet the moment, I think. Super cool. Love that. So cool. So what's that? It feels like magic, but down deep, it's not magic.

No. The books, The Culture Playbook, 60, we only covered like three, 60 highly effective actions to help your group succeed. I highly, highly recommend people get this. Obviously, if you like the culture code, you're going to love this. It's an amazing follow up. And it's very practical. You can put it into action today. start doing the things today

and then it will help you achieve the results you want from a culture perspective. So culture playbook, I highly recommend it. Dan, obviously, I'm so grateful for you and we'll certainly continue our dialogue as we both progress, man. Me too. Hope to see you soon, Ryan. Thanks for having me. Great conversation.

Thanks, man. I love talking with Dan Coyle. I think it's evident by the sound and energy excitement of my voice when we're having conversations. He is such a kind and giving, thoughtful and really smart guy and a fantastic writer and storyteller. If this is your first time hearing of him, you're in for a treat because you get to go back

and read his books, which are fantastic. A few takeaways from my notes. Schedule a pre-mid and post-mortem meeting. This is how we learn. We set expectations early on. We pause in the middle to ask, how are we doing? And post-mortem, we react. An after-action review, as the military might call it,

to learn from what we did well and where we messed up so that we ensure we're getting better for the next one. Then the misconception is that places are always happy. Doing great work is hard. The way we build great cultures is doing hard things together, and we're focused on connection and safety. I think when he talked about Ed Catmull at Pixar and the fact that, yeah, it wasn't always happy. They're doing hard things together.

But it is safe and they are connected. And I think that's what great leaders, how you build long lasting, excellent cultures is by fostering an environment for that. And then think of your life and experiments and the learning loop. It's experience plus brain. reflection, experience plus reflection. Write down what you've learned from your experiences. Writing creates clarity of thought. While that advice is for people earlier in their career, I think it would benefit all of us. I want to tell you, thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two. Hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Dan Coyle.

I think he'll help you become a more effective leader. And because you continue to do that and you continue to write reviews and rate the show, hopefully five stars on Apple Podcast, you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to the soon. Can't wait.