TrueLife - Alan Willett - Lead with Speed

Episode Date: November 16, 2022

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/https://exceptionaldifference.com/https://alanwillett.comExpert consultant, speaker, and award-winning author of Leading the Unleadable:How to Manage Cynics, Divas, and OtherDifficult People, and Lead With Speed, AlanWillett is co-founder of ExceptionalDifference.Alan works with clients around the world,including the UK, Turkey, South Africa, China,India, Canada, and Mexico, and of course,throughout the United States. Alan Willett hasconsulted with HP, Oracle, Microsoft, NASA,General Motors, Intuit, NAVAIR, Orbital ATK,OnStar, Cornell University, Rutgers University,Technological de Monterrey, and many more.Alan's passionate work has focused onleadership and the unique challenges ofleading in the elevated pressure environmentsof high-technology developments.Alan was a member of an elite team at theSoftware Engineering Institute (SEl), locatedat Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. AtSEI, Alan joined other renowned thoughtleaders in developing cutting-edgemethodologies adopted by corporationsglobally. Through this work, Alan was able toestablish a worldwide network of peers andthought leaders that constantly push thehigh-tech development world to"do better." Itis from this position that Alan launched hisconsultancy in 2012. Alan has designed and taught many differentworkshops at universities and corporationsaround the world, reaching over 2000 peopledirectly. His personal backstory enlivens hiswriting and his speaking. He grew up on adairy farm that had been in the family for over170 years and which was honored as the dairyfarm of the year for New York State for manyyears running. Alan has run across the UnitedStates from ocean to ocean with his collegeteam, beating the record of the Pony Expressand earning him a spot in the Guinness Bookof World Records. He is a co-founder ofEcoVillage at Ithaca, the largest co-housingecovillage in the world, which is spotlighted inthe news on a global basis, including in Japanand France, and featured in the book"Ecovillage at Ithaca: Pioneering a SustainableCulture" by Liz Walker, (New SocietyPublishers: 2005).Collaboration with Exceptional DifferencePrincipal Julia Mullaney inspired him to doubledown on his love for training the bestengineering minds in the world. Willett holds aB.S. Computer Science from RochesterInstitute of Technology, and Master's inTechnology from Walden University.Alan encourages everyone to get out thereand make a positive difference in the world. One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark. fumbling, furious through ruins

maze, lights my war cry Born from the blaze The poem is Angels with Rifles The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Welcome back to this edition

of the True Life podcast. We've got a great show for you today. We're here with Alan Willett. He is an international consultant. He has done quite a bit of work in leadership and high tech development. We're going to talk about his new book today, some strategies and how to,

the title of the book is called Lead with Speed. And I'm going to just dish it off to you and let you kind of introduce yourself a little bit, Alan, if you want to add anything in there. Well, thanks for having me today. I'm going to have a lot of fun. Yes, lead with speed. Bottom line is,

we're in a hyper-competitive environment and everybody's always under more pressure to do more fast. I got to tell you, the biggest question I always ask when I get in the needs organization, you're in a hurry. Where are you in a hurry to? And we'll hit more of that later, I'm sure. Yeah, it's a great question because, you know, sometimes when I think of speed, like, obviously, if you are in a position where you need to get a grant or where you need to get a project

done or you have a timeline, there's an enormous amount of pressure that surrounds you to get this done. And sometimes it seems when we put speed into a grant, effect, there can be a lot of accidents and the accidents can be worse with the higher speed that we have. So I guess maybe you could begin talking about how do you discern the critical differences between slow projects and fast projects? Oh, that's a great question. What is the critical difference between slow projects and fast projects? Okay.

I'll give you an example of slow projects that look like they're fast. Okay. Okay. I have a story of what I call the red team, red team versus the green team. The red team has been working overtime. They just are just pushing and pushing and pushing. And they get things into, you know, they make something fast and then they're testing it. And then it's broken and they're working overtime to fix it. And they're going and going and going. They miss their deadlines, but they get it done. and they're happy and it has the customer.

Meanwhile, the Green Team, Green Team looks slow. They're taking their time to design. They're doing careful checks of the design before they ever start to test it. They get into the testing, and it works, and they're done. They put in a lot of hard work, but it's not late at night.

It's not on weekends. It's not fueled by pizza and Red Bull. And what I find, the critical difference between fast organizations and slow organizations is which ones can make it distinguish between sweat and results. The red team sweat a lot, very visibly. The green team got results, and they got it out the door. And I think that's one of the big differences. The green team recognized a number of the 21 laws of speed,

which is, you know, rework kill speed. Another one is we'll get to later, which is, you know, you got to know where you're going. And the Green team knew where they were going. So, yeah. Did I answer your question? I can do more. Yeah, no, well, it's good.

We'll get there. We'll get there. I just, is that some of the, like, let's say that if you look back on your experience and you're called into a large corporation or an institution of some kind, what are some of the biggest? things they throw out you right in the beginning. Is there a pattern there? Do you see patterns in these corporations? Or what are some of the things they're asking you to have help with? Sure. I was called into one of the big automotive places. And they called me into their research

center. And they said, Alan, Ellen, we have problems. And I said, that's great. Let's do me a favor and just do a little bit of prep before I show up in your conference room and write down the problems and they had this whiteboard, this line of problems, very engineering, by the way. It was, you know, nice list, very well organized, numbered, et cetera. And I, and I go through those and I say, huh, I'm not being rude, but I put together, I put W against some of them, O against some of them, and problem against two or three of them. I said, some of these are just whining. That's what the W is, because this is going to be true. Requirements are hard. It's hard to perceive what the customer wants at the end. Cars, right? If you asked before cars, they said,

I want a better buggy with. They didn't ask for a car. So getting requirements right. It's hard. That's whining. Just get over it. And some of them were observations, which was, you know, this happens when this happens. And I said, you've got a couple of problems. here. What I'm struggling with here, guys, is you're saying you have to go faster, faster to where? What's the issue? And that's

where the gold happened. Because what we found out is what they were worried about was, I won't take it through the two-hour discussion, but in about an hour and a half point, we finally got here. They were worried that they were not innovating

as fast as their competitors. They needed to innovate fast. faster than the other automotives. I said, okay, now we're somewhere. I said, let's look at your measures of success. How often do you get features out there before they do? How often do they get features out there before you do? What's the comparison?

We don't know. They weren't looking at the right end. So this started the change they're thinking immediately. Okay. I said, now which of these problems over here that you're talking about affect your ability to innovate faster than the enemy? And that just changed the whole discussion. So that's what I mean by speed to wear. For them, it was really innovated faster than competitors.

When I worked with the Department of Defense, it's, well, their adversaries are enemies, if you will. with other people it's really it's really speed to profit we need to start to actually generating more revenue we have to make sure our features are generating that revenue and you know it's just really we're wearing a hurry too why and what's the impact if you don't what's the impact of you do so that's the whole part of lead with speed is know where you're going first and why Yeah. That brings me to this. As I was reading the book, in the beginning, I began having this question in my mind. It seems to me that one of the problems that major corporations have today is a little bit, maybe it's speed without knowing where they're going. Because what I see is a lot of multinational corporations that are using data. And it seems to me, at least in my opinion, that they turn the working person into a, number. And when you do that, you strip out the humanity. However, it's necessary in order to datify the person. Because when you have data sets and data numbers, you know, you can streamline

everything. You can see this person or this employee is a certain way. But on some level, aren't you kind of taking the humanity and the all-around morale out of the workforce when you do that? Yes, absolutely. I mean, there's two things here. You know, you got to be careful what you measure because what you like it, what you'll ask for. You know, I feel true. I really, I feel bad about the, you know, going to the major grocery stores now, where the checkout people are measured by, you know, basically their scans per minute, things like that.

And it really has lost some of the humanity and, et cetera, of a personal experience. that makes you more loyal to a store, more, and also where the people can actually help you find what you're really missing as opposed to the very fast thing. Did you find everything you're looking for? Scan, scan, scan. And you don't want to mess with their scan rates. Now let's talk about knowledge workers. So maybe at a grocery store, that makes sense. Maybe they don't really care about the customer.

experience as much as getting the customers out of the store quickly. Knowledge workers, measuring their keyboard strokes per minute or whatever, really will dehumanize and take away. Because what we find is really look at the knowledge worker place where you really have to take the time to design things and create solutions that are innovative and creative in really paradigm leaks for your business, for your customers, etc., is a nonlinear processed, if you will. And oftentimes this means these people have to, the exceptional ones, are doing more

than creating something. They're creating a product. They're creating a community. They're creating a school of thought. They're innovating by bringing other people in and creating this culture of excellence. I personally don't know how to codify that yet at a detail level. I can detail it at a very system level. You know, this is like quantum physics.

You know, you know, the principle of uncertainty in physics, right? You can't predict the behavior of any electron, but you can predict the behavior of a system. So trying to do this for individuals is like trying to do it for an electron. You can measure the system, and that's where we need to be looking. Right. And that kind of brings us a little further into the book as we skip around the idea of lead the exceptional few to be the catalyst for accelerating your organization. Absolutely. Do you want me to talk about that?

Yeah, please, please, please do. Okay. Well, you know, it took me a while to be hit with the obvious. And I go back like 20, 30 years. I was coaching really high performance teams, but I would have to coach some teams as big as 30 or 50 or 60 people. Now, before I got smarter, I was trying to coach every single individual.

That was, you know, pulling my hair out. It was impossible. But through an evolution and then a revolution, I realized, oh, I just really need to coach the exceptional few. a few people. And when I got them to understand the immutable laws of speed, when I got them to understand

how to coach other people, I had a lever that I could move the world. I could coach just a few people and I could change the performance of entire teams, entire organizations. In the company, I run now, the exceptional difference,

we have this mantra. One person can change a team. One team can change. the whole organization. And we have found that to be true over and over again. We get the exceptional few into our experiences that we give, which is very different than training, but most people put it in the training bucket. People go through an experience and they come out the other side transformed, and they're able to transform entire teams. Where I used to have to train 100 people, I can now transform one person that changes the whole team. So the exceptional

a few. And if you look through history, it's except from a few that make these big differences. Leaders that understand that in their organization can basically create a trim tab for their organization. If I may go off for a second more. I look at organization

as fractals, if you will. If you notice a fern plant, oh my gosh, sorry. I love it. I love it. I love fractals. Okay, great. If you look at a fern plant, if you look at the tiny leaf at the bottom, it looks like the bigger leaf, which looks like the whole plant. I find if you look at organizations, if you can take a vertical slice of that organization, you get the whole thing. Even if it's a very thin slice, if you look at what these managers doing, these team leaders are

doing, these engineers are doing, you're going to find that it's almost true across the board. If you can change that vertical slice and just really put it to a paradigm leap, the rest of the organization is going to come with them. You're going to change that fractal and it's going to replicate throughout. And that's why I find this work so exciting because we just keep learning more and more about the strength of individuals and the strength of some individuals to really influence the whole and that we can actually do our mantra, change one person, change one team, change the world.

It's so much fun. That's awesome. I love that idea because I can I add to the fractal metaphor a little bit like I I feel that like Okay, I might go off on a tangent now Ellen Allen so excuse me let's go. I get it Okay, so I don't think you come into this world. I think you come out of it and I think that if you want to build an organization And industry or anything that's going to last you got to look at nature as a model and like let's take for example you know, let's take, for example, a, like a glacier. So every spring, the glacier begins to melt.

And think of this giant glacier, and it's the first day of spring and the sun comes out. And all of a sudden this beautiful beam, boom, it lands on the glacier and a small little drop begins to melt at the edge of the glacier. It slowly rolls down, beginning the process of erosion down the mountain hill. And it takes the same exact path that it's taken. for generations. And as it's slowly moving down this, this mountainside, boom, it gets stuck at a little spot and it begins to pool. Now, if we could personify that drop of water for a minute, that drop of water is probably thinking, oh, man, I'm done here. There's no way I'm going to make

it past this thing. But you know what? The drop of water, it looks back to the path from which it comes. And here's the first example. We as people or as an organization, we can look back to the path that came before us, whether it's in our institution, some of these companies have been around 100 years, or it could be an institution that had been more, that had had a better strategy than us. But either way, we can look back to the source from which we came, the same way in which the water drop looks back to the source from which it came. And it can see the path. And then it can start making the inference, well, I am going to be reinforced by this, just using its logic. It gets reinforced. It makes it over the hurdle. So when you talk about fractals and when you talk about

nature, I think that those two parts go well together. I think as above so, you're not. I think as above so below and you can apply what happens the way a tree grows, the way a glacier melts to the strategy of a business. What say you, Alan? Absolutely. No, you're just the source looking back to where I came from. You know, I got to say, I often think I'm, I am following in my father's footsteps, although I'm not doing farming anymore. But I look back, I just remember, you know, once I grew up in a dairy farm, very hard work. My dad. And my dad was dairy farmer the year, year after year for the area. And I remember one day, we were sitting watching TV on a sunny Sunday afternoon in the summer.

Okay, just know, that doesn't happen on farms. But we were. And another farmer dropped by and said, oh, Fritz, my dad, you're watching TV. He goes, yep. He goes, you got all your hay. in, yep, Walden Hay's in. He just went through a list of questions. My dad said, yep, we're all on top of that.

And the other farmer goes, who was behind and yak here with my dad, who said, oh, man, I got to get out there. I'm so behind and everything. You are one lucky farmer. And my dad said, yeah, I'm one lucky farmer. When the guy left, my dad said, I guess he missed that that luck was, you know, that during the winter, we made sure all of our equipment was fixed. and when the sun was shining,

we worked until three in the morning to get all that stuff done. I think we put a little bit of work in to get this lucky that we could watch this TV show on a sunny Sunday afternoon. And you know what? And my dad ran everything by data before anybody else had computers

back when they were really expensive and not met to be in the barn. He had a computer in the barn. He was measuring the product. You know, it's just, It's amazing. I follow the path of my dad because I bring data. I bring work.

I find that I've had a lot of teams that have been wildly successful like the green team where everybody else said we were lucky. Let me tell you, it's not luck. It's knowing the laws. It's knowing where you're going and doing the right things to get there. I like that path metaphor. Yeah. My mentor used to tell me the harder I work,

luckier I get. Absolutely. And if you work hard and smart, you're going to get even luckier. Yeah, it's a great, it's a great point. They just reinforce each other. And, you know, when we talk about reaching back to the source, a lot of the stories that you tell in your book, which the book is called Lead with Speed, ladies and gentlemen, it's a great book by Alan Will. You should definitely check it out. I think you'll enjoy it and learn quite a bit from it. Lead with Speed. But in the book, you tell some stories about, your personal life, about being a running track and coming up with strategies to be faster, being a software developer and coming up with strategies there. And when I, you know, it's almost

fractal in your nature to pull back on these things in your life. Is that something you teach people or it sounds like you're using the Prado principle, but when you, when you find these few individuals, right, when you find them, are you teaching them to reach back to success stories in their life and apply those to what's happening in their life now? Absolutely. What you're referring to it's more than Prado. To me it's

this. The most exceptional people work on their not just on improving but they work on their

ability to improve. So you make that sense made sense to you. Yeah, I'm going to write it down.

He's making a note about that. So really it's working on your improvement engine. So yeah,

Pareto is part of that, but it's really it's about, again, as an individual, knowing where you want to go. It's an individual collecting the important data, the important aspects, and constantly reflecting and learning on what was successful and why, and what didn't work as well

and why, and what might have outright failed. And looking at that, not with tears and depression, what you should do for a minute, you know, take a wine break, but then look at it and say, what can we learn from this? You know, one of the things I write in there is gaining speed from the shrapnel of failure. It's just a silly look at all of this stuff and use it to feed your improvement engine. So your question was, do I teach people this? Yes. But I have to say, getting to that point usually takes the people that work with me a little bit wild to get to that place,

where they understand that meta process, to understand that on their shrapher. shoulder is themselves looking at not just what the work they're doing, but how they're doing it and constantly coming up with ideas, oh, maybe this little tweak could help us do that better next time. Maybe this little tweak could help us create more value. You know, I write books, I write. I'm on probably writing process number 23 or something like that, because I keep learning how to tell stories better and how to go faster and make them more valuable. You know, I just love it when people call me or write to me and say, you know, hey, I just finished your book. I just got this last week.

And it really just changed my life. And no book has ever done that before. I'm kind of blown away by that. But it's great reinforcement. And I called the guy and said, tell me how. It's like, I want to know more about this. But really, it was that improvement engine part. Yeah, that's awesome.

That must be a great feeling. And maybe perhaps in the future you could have a book of letters like the, know, like the same way World Pool and all these people back in the day had books of letters. That would be a good one to read. So let me ask. That would be great. That would be fun, right? Like, we don't have those books anymore.

Remember, like, I don't know. If you, I have a pretty big library. And in my library, I have all these old books and it's letters from Turkestan, like letter from Turkey, the embassy letters and stuff. And I think you can learn a lot about an individual and what they're about when, in fact, you read the letters or correspondences that were written to them. So, Alan, if you write that book or you publish those, So I'll be the first to buy it.

Absolutely. Nice. Okay, here's my next question. So as we talked about you finding the exceptional few, and we got into the cradle a little bit, it seems like a fine line between, like let's say you find someone at this corporation, and you have identified this particular leader

as a leader in the organization. They're exceptional, and they are going to be the catalyst. If you push them too far, aren't they going to leave that company and start their own company? Like, what holds them there? You know what I mean? Oh, absolutely.

You know, one of the biggest challenges people have, especially in the world of knowledge, work, engineering, et cetera, is attracting and retaining top talent. Right. And I mean, it's really the top talent. And the top talent are the people that you're going to push them most. They want to be careful that you don't push them out, is your point. And to me, that always comes back to,

what I started your podcast with, which is the value, where are you going? If people feel their part and committed to this purpose, the value-based purpose, and why it's good for their customers and why it's good for their company, they're going to want to continue to be part of that. It's when people are lacking that commitment to purpose that they start to, their eyes start to wander and they start to listen to those other offers they're getting. As long as they feel they're part of the solution and part of a valuable solution, they are going to stick with you.

Yeah, I like those two words, purpose and meaning. There's so much power that are packed into those words and there's so much speed probably that's packed in there because that's where the real motivation happens, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. And really what I really try to inspire in my... the leaders I work with individuals, that they want to be able to empower their people to have these mantra in their mind, that the person that's working for me is going to do more, care more, know more about this project I've given them that I possibly could.

I want them to have that agency where they can blow me away and surprise me. You don't want people to feel like they're the fingers and toes to your grand plan. You want them to feel like they have this agency to create this grand plan. And that's what leaders, the best leaders really are going to do. They're going to give the people this power. Yeah. Let me ask you this one here. Like, what would you say is the difference between a leader and a visionary?

Ah. Okay. It's challenging me. Well, that's good. First I'll start with this, the difference between like a good manager and a good leader. or exceptional leader. Good managers, you know, keep their people occupied and they keep things well run. They have good agendas, et cetera.

Exceptional leaders are pointing in the right direction. Now, visionaries are, I guess, just creating this on the spot, visionaries to me, are taking the whole team to a paradigm leap. It's like looking beyond the what's there and how to improve it to say, what's the thing we can do that's extraordinarily different that really changes things for company, for our customers, for ourselves. That's what a visionary will do. I like that.

When I speak with people in management, I tell them this. A manager is someone who, a manager is someone who does things right, and a leader is someone who does the right thing. You know, it seems like too many people get themselves in trouble when they do what's right. You know, instead of doing the right thing. I think there's a difference there. And I think people can get caught up in that little hiccup right there, Sometimes.

Ladies and gentlemen, we're here with Alan Willett. His previous book, Leading the Unleadable, is available at bookstores. Today we're talking with expert consultant Alan Willett about his new book, Lead With Speed. You can check him out at his website, Exceptional Difference.com. It's called Lead With Speed, and he really gets into the nitty-gritty of what it's like to be at the top and trying to find and retain top talent. It's really trying to get out there and see where the problems lay. And if there's roadblocks in the way, you've got to find out what those roadblocks are.

You know, is it behavior? Is it a sort of lack of purpose? All of us, regardless of where you work at, you probably know a team, whether it's a sales team or an engineering team that gets out there and they start building this product and then they get stuck. What are the reasons they get stuck? Do they get stuck because they're behind budget? Do they get stuck because lack of vision? And there's all these little roadblocks that can stop you from getting where you want to be. And if you're honest with yourself, the same things that probably slow you down in a team

or the same things that slow you down on an individual level. And there's the roadblocks in our mind. They are the problems with money, the problems with vision, the problem with teams. Teams is a big one because there's a lot of different personalities that get involved when you're building something. There's a lot of, there's a lot of different things that can happen when you get into the world of building things together. And I think if you take a look at Alan's book, he's got a lot of remedies for these particular situations. If you check it out, it's called Lead with Speed.

I think you really enjoy it. I know that I have, and I've learned a lot. He's back here with us now. We're going to learn even more. So I was just telling, I was just telling the people about some of the possible pitfalls that happen when you're working with a team. when you're working with a budget and in a timeline. I guess, let me ask you, how do you create a targeting system for speed? One of my favorites.

Okay. Okay. There's what I encourage targeting system by the speed, by the way, what I like to think about is it's an active system. It's like the missiles now that, if you will, that can track the target thereafter. It's not like you let an arrow go and it's gone. It's going to be tracking along the way. So a targeting system for speed is for leaders to really be constantly looking at this.

First off, in the center of this targeting system is value. What is the value we're after? The second is, depending on the priority and importance of the project, you have to get the right talent on that project. then outside of that you have to start to organize this talent in the best way possible. So I look at it as this escalating circles outward. And then once we have the talent and once we got them organized, I wanted them to have the best processes and tools to support them.

And I want them to have the power, the agency, to change those tools that they need to, to get the best tools for the job, to get the rest support for the job. So to me, it really starts with knowing where you're going and then start to get the best talent on it, get them the best training, et cetera. It just all fits together nicely when you start to look at it.

In my book, you see I have a very nice chapter about this, and I have a nice graphic that just shows what, you know, sort of like a scope that says, here's what the center is and here's the neck circles out. it's a lot of fun to think about the thing that's amazing to me is a lot of organizations can i talk about how that fits with exceptional start yeah please whatever you want okay um this is fun because it's amazing how often i go into organizations that are under this great stress and one of the questions i uh i have learned is uh it's like socrates asking the right question because i find out

people know the answers. I would ask people, what happens when you start projects poorly? They tell me what happens. Oh, if you started a project poorly, they're going to be behind the curve from the start. They're going to be under so much pressure. They start to make mistakes. They're going to miss dates. There's going to be a lot of rework. And there's going to be stressed. People leave because of the stress, and we have to replace the people, which makes it stick longer. Managers tell me these things. Executives tell me these things. And I said, okay, I say, what are the 10 things you have to do to start projects right? And people are brilliant.

They tell me, they basically outline the targeting system for speed. Well, we better make sure that we know what it is and where there is the priority in the organization. We got to get the right leadership on it right away. The people that have the most skill for this, we just can't rely on putting who's available. We may have to make some changes. We have to, you know, they go through the list. And basically they come up with 10 items. And here's the killer.

You ready for this? I'm ready. What you got? I say to them now, how many of those 10 things do you do when you start projects? And the answer was, oh, probably two of those. And so the targeting system for speed, everybody really has a good sense for. I put it together in a way that makes it really understandable, et cetera.

But here's the real challenge using it. Because when I talk to these leaders, they say, I say, so why? You know what the problem is. You know if you don't start them well, this will happen. You also know what the right things to do are. Why aren't you doing them? And so the real key is to just have the courage to be different than everything around you.

Because in most organization, one of the stories I tell is the cucumber looks at the pickle barrel and says, I'll never look like you guys. But it gets thrown in the pickle barrel and it gets pickled. And the brine is culture. So if everybody around them is starting projects badly because they want to look like they're going fast. If you start a project in a hurry, you're going to be started before everybody else. People think if you know you start the race early, you're going to win. No. How many teams times have you watched races in the Olympics, the long-distance race in the Olympics where the guy in first for the first three lapses in the back of the pack at the end?

Yeah. It's not how fast you start. fast to finish. And if you watch chess matches or go matches, you'll see they spend the first two hours on the first dozen 20 moves and the last hour on the rest. Starting Projects Right takes them work, and it looks slow. So people don't want to look slow. These are the problems.

People want to look. A lot of organizations are going to reward the red team for their sweat. more than reward the green team for the results. Over and over I see this. The ones that excel are the ones that say, hey, I'm the focus on results. I don't care what the rest of the organization looks like. My job is not to just get results.

My job is to change the brine. My job is to make the organization better. And that is a definition of the exceptional few. That is a definition of the visionary. That's the difference between a good manager and an exceptional leader, a good engineer and an exceptional engineer. That's a great definition, Alan. Well done. That's changing culture is it's a really, that's something only exceptional people can do because it becomes contagious when they have the vision, when they have the drive.

That contagion is what changes the brine, as you say. You know what I have to say, it's just through years of the, experience that I finally figured this out in some ways. I'll tell you two stories if I got time. Please, of course. One is, you know, I used to be, you know, there's a lot of methodologies out there. I don't know how much you know about the world of engineering and development, but there's this big agile push from all these different methodologies.

And I used to be one of the people that was coming out to these organizations and pushing methodologies. And I thought the methodology was great and I'd get in there and I would find all these problems in the way of doing the methodology. And I'd help the organization fix all those problems and then the methodology was great.

But the organizations kept calling me back. But they didn't call me back for the methodology. They kept calling me back to solve problems. It's not about the methodology. And what I have found is, a lot of organizations have methodology,

but they're not, they haven't solved all the problems surrounding them, the methodology is still crap. They were getting results before, bad results before this knowledge, now they're getting bad results with this new shiny object. It's not the methodology. It's the leadership.

It's the culture. It's the brine. And there's certain things you must change for that. So that's one thing I learned, is it's not the methodology. It's really making sure, that you fix the problems in the organization to make the methodology work.

The second thing I learned was this. We would put a lot of people through the methodology training, if you will, and they got it. They loved it, and they knew that this methodology would work because it really is a green team methodology, you know. But they couldn't survive in the culture.

It didn't matter how much training they had. But what we realized is we realized is we shouldn't be doing training, we should be transformation. So what the exceptional difference does now, for example, we have people go through what? Traditional training is, you know, you go into a week-long thing, maybe a week-long workshop, and you've learned tons of stuff, and you're really excited, and you maybe get to apply 5% of it when you leave the room.

And you maybe remember 3% of it in the following weeks. There's actually data to support those kind of numbers I just threw out. So we don't do that. We said that is at work. So one of the things we have is the exceptional engineering experience. It's across six months. It's little, it's discussion groups and assignments that are directly about their job and intense coaching. So it's very little academic.

There is a part where it's reading and, you know, things. But most of it is, okay, here's the principle. now go apply to your job and we're here to help you change the brine and they go through a number of things to do this and one of the final things is what we

call culture. What can you do as an individual engineer or an individual team leader or individual executive to change their culture? So that's the final piece. After they get those immutable laws of engineering I talk about, we

finally add on the part of and how do you make those around you better? How do you tell the truth to make a positive difference? How do you make those around you better? How do you start to change the brine, change the culture? And that's really where the breakthroughs have been. It's almost like a class in social engineering on some level. I like that.

I'll use that. Yeah, like I think it's one of the most important things people can do. and if you want to be great in life, the first thing you should do is try to make everyone around you better because that, you know, sometimes I ask myself this question, how many people do I have to make around me exceptional

before I become exceptional? Because it's going to be, it's going to flow into you eventually, but I wonder what that number is. You know what I mean? It's fun to think about. Oh, you remember the show The Weinkest Link? Yeah, I do.

Well, what's interesting to me is, you know, one of the things we taught was this engineering class about how to really create, defect free software very quickly and et cetera. And one of the people that I put through it where we actually got all their data, he was like, he was super from the start. He was like, I was like, wow, you never needed this course.

He said, I didn't. Everybody around me did. And the thing was, he was right, because everybody around him went from okay engineers to very good engineers because the thing is, and this is getting complicated the engineering stuff, but really, if you look at the rockets that are going up,

one single nozzle is off, you might have to scrub the entire launch, right? So what we find this is true for any complex system, if any part of it is crappy, the whole system is crappy. It doesn't matter if I did perfect work

if the engineer next to me did not. Does that make sense? Yeah, totally. So when you say that about in a laughing way, it is funny, but it's also very serious, especially when we're looking at where, how pervasive software is now. Yes, it's in your toothbrush. Your toothbrush is probably not going to kill you. It's in your car.

That could. These are safety critical systems that it's becoming pervasive in. And we really need exceptional engineering. and we cannot afford to have any single piece of that fail. These are so complex that we really have to get this exceptional engineering throughout the industry, throughout the world. Wow, that's, that's, it's awesome. I'm having a great time talking to you, Alan.

Can I shift gears here from, actually, I got a few questions that a few people have asked here, and I'm going to see, I'm going to throw them up here, and we'll read them here. This one is more of a common. It says agile, scrum, black belt, et cetera. It's just different syntax. Benjamin, I love that.

I think we are of a like mind. All right. Here's another one for us. Same guy. Thank you, Benjamin, George, for chiming in here, man. Twitter 2.0 is trending. Employees received a letter with 24 hours to acknowledge a commitment of hard, core work, 80 plus hours, et cetera.

Any thoughts on that, Alan? Oh, my goodness. so many thoughts. I could write a book. Well, we're talking about a very interesting leader. And I won't, I'll just, and I could talk about him and what I see is pluses and minuses are. But let's just say, in general, pressure doesn't make diamonds. Pressure makes people leave. And it's usually going to make the top ten.

So from what I've seen in other organizations, this could be very problematic for Twitter in the long term. Because, you know, one of the big bains in the industry, especially for engineering, is known as technical debt. It's just where code gets very difficult to make changes to. Now, I saw that one of the engineers was saying how by the technical debt is and that that that means. to be fixed. From what I heard, that individual got fired for complaining about it. That's not going to fix the technical test. So to me, if you're going to take over a company and try to make it better what you really

want to focus on, let's get away from Twitter and my ranting about that. I don't know what's going to happen there. I'm not behind the closed doors, and maybe they're doing some good things. But if you really want to help transform a company, what you really got to do is get the top talent on board, top leaders, top engineers, individual engineers, and get them to be pointed in the right direction we want to go and make them part of how we're going to solve the problems we have, how to change not just the software or the product, but how to change the culture. So we, going back to the individual thing. So we're as an organization, aren't just improving. We're improving our engine on how to improve. Yeah.

I hope that answered the question. It does. But I want to dig a little deeper. Because it seems that, it seems that, let's say it doesn't have to be Twitter, but Twitter is an interesting model because you have these two camps that seem to be, you know, at each other's, at each other's throat. a little bit, at least in a political nature. But if you come in and let's say there's another

company like that, how do you change the culture in there? Like if you have great people on both sides that know the code, but they have different ideas about what's right, what kind of olive branch could you put out there to bring those people together? You know, you don't need

an olive branch. I got to tell you. What you need? And seriously, usually what people are arguing about is the wrong thing. It's so true, yes. You know, I've heard this one before. They're arguing about what color to paint the boat,

and they haven't decided they need to go anywhere. And so to me, what I usually find is they're arguing about tactics when they need to have a strategy, and that has to start with what goal? Are we sharing goals? What are we trying to do? And this is what I usually find when there's warring parties. And there's incentive.

Let me see. You know, I look at politics. That's hard. So, you know, it's crazy because their incentive is to stay in the office. Their incentive isn't necessarily the solve problem. So, but in organizations where really we often do have the same goal, we want the company to be successful. I find with any warring parties I talk to in companies, they are passionately wants the organization be successful.

What they're usually arguing about is the wrong thing. One organization, I was called into the engineers and management were at each other's throat. But it turned out once I got there, I showed them they were arguing about the same thing. The managers were really mad about the engineers whining all the time. and the engineers were whining about, you know, we have these issues, these issues, these issues, and that's horrible. And managers were giving them more pressure. You're going too slow, our competitors are catching us, etc. I got in there, and what we found out was the engineers were whining about things that needed to be fixed,

but what we transformed what needed to be fixed into was a business case. once the engineers fixed these certain things they could go actually 10 times faster seriously they could go 10 times faster after fixing those things and we were able to show management that with data that the team could go faster they were arguing about the same thing engineers were complaining though about what was in their way but they didn't put it into and if we fix these we go faster and management was not listening they were just saying you're freaking slow not listening to why they were going slow.

They just needed, I'm sorry, but Douglas Adams was babblefish. They needed a translator. So we were able to actually, if you go deep for a second, we just actually looked at various things they were doing and measured their productivity there. And we found out it was like 1 over X. And we looked in other parts of the system where it was clean, et cetera. It was 10 over X.

It was really simple after that. Here's 1X. Here's 10X. you want the 10x to get the 10x we have to fix these things here and then you have 10x and it's going to cost you to do that and management said when could we start

so to me these Warren parties thing again it's really let's make sure we're arguing about the right goal if we're arguing about the goal we're okay now we have to have a management

decision about which way we're going. And usually when management picks which way to go, again, the fight's over. People will line up against it. They'll say yes. They most likely will stick around once the direction is set. If there's no direction set, everybody's pulling in different directions. Okay. I went on about that.

Sorry about that. No, it's free to talk. It's just a conversation. And I think some of the most interesting conversations I have are when people begin telling stories and telling ideas about it and stuff. But the story you told me reminds me of a, back to our fractal ideas again, it seems to me that what's happening in some corporations and a little bit of the story you told is what's happening in the world.

And it's this idea of specialization that's causing linguistic problems for people. We're so specialized, people aren't talking the same language, even though they're in the same place. And whether it's medicine, it's everywhere. And it's, is it, do you see that too? and the work you're doing? Oh, absolutely. Really, you know, we mentioned technical debt a few times.

Right. Most of the time managers here is technical debt is whining. And seriously, you do. It's just so that they go off whining again. You know, we're running what I call a technical debt deep dive, for example, right now. And, you know, it's interesting, you know, like an engineer, I was walking me through one thing. I said, okay, so this is costing you, you know,

seven to ten days every time you have to do it when it should only take you one. Because absolutely it does. Because we have technical vet. I said, yeah, I understand you have technical. So if you fixed it, if you got rid of the technical that, it would only take you one day, oh, less than a day, half a day. How long would it take you to fix this?

Oh, probably two days. and I'm like, how long is this been there? Five years. Why do you, two things. One, you probably don't even need permission to do a fix like this. But if you think you do need position, you've got the data. Stop whining about it, put together the data, make the business case. And it was so easy after that.

He got it, you know, this is the Brian talking again. The Brian says, here's the improvement engine again. The Brian says, keep going. More features, faster. The improvement engine says, hey, what are the things I can do now that can make me faster? How do I balance doing stuff versus going faster? It's really just making that perfect balance between those things. Yeah.

I forgot what the question was. we were talking about specialization and then how oh right right oh yes so the specialization so technical that is a specialization kind of language and a lot of the upper managers do not understand what that means developers think they understand what it means but they don't have a way to translate it there's a lot of other examples of this you know

developers are going to talk about patterns and anti-pattern the executive that's running the company usually doesn't understand that unless they were an engineer themselves. We have to move away from the language and talk about the value. To me, what I say is what engineers need to focus on, especially, and managers need to understand this as well. I give this talk two different ways. I tell engineers, this is your obligation, or I tell managers they have to tell the organization. organization. So let's talk to the executives for a minute. The executives should make it clear what the obligations of engineers are to them as the executives, that everybody should be focused

on value, first of all. Second is they should focus on quality. Third, they should focus on ownership of speed to value. And fourth, make commitments you keep. And then I tell them what that, to explain what that means. Value for our company, such as, you know, I don't know, my company, our value is transformation. We really don't care of we care if people like what the training, etc.

they take. But what we are devoted to is that it makes a positive impact to their whole company, their whole organization, to their teams, to their lives. That's what we care about. Transformation. So that's the value.

We weigh everything we do against are we achieving that value? for are the people that come to us, the customers, etc. Second is quality. If you see the one-star reviews on Amazon, a lot of times it just says, I got the thing and it was broke. Quality is we provide to people things at work the first time.

The quality should be basically invisible because quality doesn't become invisible until it's broke. And then it's obvious. So a lot of times managers don't talk about quality a lot because they think it should be obvious. They need to talk about quality. They need to make it clear that it should go to the customer's defect-free, that it should come into testing with very few defects because you can't test quality in. And rework is expensive, more expensive than doing it right.

So quality, focus on that. Third, ownership is beat to value. This is a subtle one, but the same. this is about whatever you're given a task to do, you come back to me and you say, here's how fast I can do it with the resources you've given me. But here's other options. We can go faster when we change this requirement. We can go faster if you've given me more money.

We can go faster and give me these more resources. You know, that one's hard because, you know, I was talking to one of the really big equipment manufacturers with software, hardware, all these systems. And I said, what's it cost you of your, for every week you're late to getting this on the manufacturing line. He goes, oh, two, three million dollars every week.

Wow. I said, do the developers know this? Well, they should. Yes, exactly. They did it. And I said, are they bringing you ideas how to go faster? No, they just keep complaining. No.

So this is the speed to value. Ownership is speed to value. Bring me, I said, you've got to go tell them that if they have something that will cost a million dollars, it'll save a week. They should bring it to you. So he had to do that talk multiple times before he got any suggestions about how they could go faster. Then things started to change. Ownership of speed to value. And these are in the order of priority.

Forrest is make commitments you keep, which is basically, this is a subtle one too because you can't just put down a deadline and say people are going to be fired if they don't make it by that point. That's perhaps an illusion to Twitter again. I'm not sure. But you want the people making the commitment to make the commitment. Then you can hold them accountable. to the commitment they made.

So that one's subtle as well, but you want them to make the commitment. So I think we covered most of the book now. People won't have to buy it now. That's the good news. No, no. They still should. I think we've just barely scratched the service of the book.

The book is called Lead with Speed by Alan Willett. And if you thought what we talked about here was interesting, buy the book and you'll be blown away. You're going to come out with a lot of ideas. You're going to come away with getting to understand other people's experiences. And I think that that's one part that I really took away and then I really enjoyed is that there's ideas in there that although they're told in a story format, whether it's through your life or through places you've been to, there are things that you can apply to your life today

or you can apply to your team today. And it's communicated in a very effective, friendly way for anybody to read whether you're an engineer or not an engineer, whether you're a manager or not a manager. But yeah, it's amazing. I'm having an absolute blast, Alan, and I thank you very much for your time. Do you have any gigs coming up or where can people find you? And what are you excited about? Okay, sure.

I can be found, you know, you can just type Exceptional Difference.com, just those two words, or Alan Willett.com. And you will find me. And, of course, my books are on Amazon, Barnes &, Noble, Audible, they're, I do think they're fun books. I have

two major books now lead with speed and leading the unleadable. They're both fun. Do I have any gigs coming up? Oh, I always have gigs coming up. If you mean speaking tours, probably I have another couple speaking things come up.

But the main one is we have our next version of exceptional engineering experience coming up soon, which is we have, by the way, that's really fun because it's both executives that take it as well as team leaders and individual engineers. It's really about these fundamental things.

And it's customized for each person in it. It's really intense. It's really fun. We have technical debt deep dives coming up, quality deep dives, leadership deep dives. We have, oh, just so many things we're having fun with, working around the world with people from all sorts of walks of life. Did I answer your questions? Yeah.

Tell me more about that, what you just spoke. about is that like a six-week course it is a week you know what is it is what is that course like for those different okay okay the exceptional engineering experience is truly across six months and we cover four X factors we call them the exceptional difference factors the ability to make commitments you can keep or beat quality how do you actually make sure that you have the data and you're progressing in the quality journey in that we just teach people that there's nine stages of the quality journey and most people are stuck in stage two or three, which is test quality and or informal reviews.

We find that every time people make a step up and the journey, they're going faster, producing better things for their clients, and having a hell of a lot more fun as well. The next X factor, so this is, you know, six weeks on this, then six weeks on quality, then six weeks on speed to value ownership of speed to value how do you make sure you're doing the right value and how do you make sure

and Jake I'm on the radio you'll have to wait my kids are here okay okay yeah and then the final one is culture about how to amplify culture and so this is what I said is not your traditional training

it's not like you're in a classroom this whole six months we have every couple weeks we have a dialogue session where all that everybody gets together and we share things we give reading assignments and most of all we give homework assignments to go take and apply the principals on their job and have sessions with the gurus that teach it myself included such as you know design we say okay we talk people through a lot of what a good design is because most people don't learn that. We really, people are, even people that have been in the business for 10, 20, 30 years are startled when we show them what a good design

really should be. And then we have them go evaluate the design process in their organization. It's only like a two, three hour exercise with people's minds are blown because they go back and look at these things and they come back with 20 ideas of how they could do something better in their organization. And then we tell them, well, let's pick one. and you go do that before you lose me out of this. So people go through it and they make really dramatic changes through the six months to how they do work and how to the organization around them does work. So that's the exceptional engineering experience.

That sounds amazing. Yeah, I tell you, I'm constantly, I'm constantly blowing away. And when you do these things right, you learn more. You learn as an instructor so much because, what I'm doing is I'm coaching like people from our last cohort just is graduating right now

18 people from 18 different parts of an organization and I get to learn about so many different things about unique challenges, unique things so I'm accumulating even more experience than a lot of individuals

although all the individuals are as well because they get to hear about all these other people and a great depth. Instead of me talking, talking all the time. It's all of us talking all the time, learning from each other. It's really a transformative experience. And we keep making it better based on the feedback from everybody that takes it. Man, I know you got your kids or you got to go, Alan, but I'm having way too much fun. You're going to have to come back because we should talk about your next book. This is a really fun conversation, and I could probably talk to you for another hour. But I'm going to let you go

because you got your family there. So I really appreciate your time. And after the broadcast, I'll I'll get you all this raw info and you can have it and do what you like with it. I'll send it to your email and stuff. And we'll set up some more times, man. If you're willing to come back, I would really enjoy it. Yeah, two things. One, love to come back and two. I know you know this, but hey, I just ask everybody to, hey, let's work on doing good in the world.

We get better at that. We'll have a good place to live. I love it. It's a great way to go. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for your time. Check out Allen's website. It'll be down in the show notes. Get the book.

It's called Lead with Speed. check out as other books, you'll walk away feeling a little bit better about yourself and be able to make some real changes in the world that'll make the world a little bit better. So that's what we got for today.