Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Kevin Kruse: Leadership Has No Rules | Leadership | E15

Episode Date: January 21, 2019

Everything you know about leadership is wrong! Well, not everything, but there are many popular leadership practices that science has proven is not the best approach. Tune into this episode to become a better leader with Kevin Kruse, the Founder & CEO of LEADx.org, a AI-powered leadership development platform with a mission to spark 100 million leaders over the next 10 years. Kevin is serial entrepreneur, an accomplished author, and also hosts a popular podcast called the LeadX Leadership Show. Kevin has seen time and again that the leadership practices that actually work are the opposite of what is commonly taught and implemented. Hear him debunk popular leadership principles, get a better understanding of self-leadership and learn why having a no-rule culture in your organization can boost productivity. January is National Slavery and Human Trafficking Awareness Month! Fight trafficking wherever you go with these recommended apps.  Want to connect with other YAP listeners? Join the YAP Society on Slack: bit.ly/yapsociety Follow YAP on IG @youngandprofiting Follow Hala on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Follow Hala on Instagram: www.instagram.com/yapwithhala Check out our website to meet the team, view show notes and transcripts: www.youngandprofiting.com

Hey guys, Young and Profiting Podcast has just launched Yap Society on Slack. It's a cool community where listeners can network and give us valuable feedback on the show. To join YAP Society on Slack, go to Bitley slash Yap Society. That's BIT.L.L.Y slash Yap Society. And if you're already active, share the wealth and invite your friends. Yap Society on Slack is sponsored by CompassHQ, a Slack app that helps you make smarter decisions to boost your workspace engagement. Use CompassHQ to get detailed analytics, visualize communication, patterns and run surveys to collect input from your team. Visit compasshq.com to learn more.

This is a public service announcement. January is National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. To help support the cause, we're kicking off every show this month alongside Mick McEwen, a former U.S. Department of Homeland Security senior official, Mick. Tell us, what is human trafficking and how big of a problem is this? Human trafficking is modern day slavery. It involves the use of force, fraud, or coercion to obtain some type of labor or commercial sex act. It's a crisis, Hala. There are an estimated 46 million victims of human trafficking in the world today. While majority of those people are not enslaved in the United States, purchases that we make every day do support businesses that use labor trafficking to get their products to market.

Yikes, those numbers are shocking. I don't want to support any brand that has an unethical supply chain. How can we nip things in the bud by being a more informed consumer? The fact of the matter is, more people are enslaved today than in any other time in human history. The brands that we know and love may not know where all the materials come from in their products. For example, the cotton in your t-shirt, the precious metals in your smartphone, or the beans in your favorite coffee. That's where you find the slaves in the fields, in the mines, in the raw materials processing. Shopping responsibly is a way for us to influence companies to address modern slavery. And there are a number of apps and extensions that can help you make sure the products you buy align to your job.

different ethical beliefs. Got it. That is so eye-opening. I'm young and profiting. I spend a lot of money, but I don't want any slaves working for me. I'm going to put together a list of some recommended apps so that all my listeners have easy access. And together we can make a difference by making smarter choices and taking a stand against

the brands that inadvertently support human trafficking. You're listening to Yap, Young and Profiting Podcast, a place where you can listen, learn, and profit. I'm your host, Halitaha, and today's episode. episode is centered on being a more productive leader. We're yapping with Kevin Cruz, the founder and CEO of leadex.org, an AI-powered leadership development platform with a mission to ignite 100 million leaders around the world over the next 10 years. Kevin is a serial entrepreneur, an accomplished author, and hosts a popular podcast called The LeadX Leadership Show. Stay tuned to learn why everything

you know about leadership is wrong, the principles of self-leadership, and how having a no-rule culture in your organization can boost productivity. Hey, Kevin. Welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast. Hey, Hala. Thanks for having me on. So you've written nine New York Times bestselling books on topics like leadership, productivity, and time management.

You are the CEO of LeadX. You have led and sold many different million-dollar companies. You're the host of a popular podcast, a sought-after keynote speaker. And I could really go on and on with a list of your accomplishments. But it really wasn't always. this way. And one of the things that I like to do is showcase to my listeners that success is not an instant thing. So can you share your career journey with us and specifically touch on some career failures and how you really started on your track to success? Yeah, I'm an old guy,

51 years old, so I'm not going to go through all of the career stuff. But you're right. I mean, I've like pretty much every five years, I've either started a new company or sort of started a new career pivot into author speaker, whatever it might be. But early on, I mean, I started my very first company the day I graduated from college. I was the first person in my extended family to go to college, worked my way through Rutgers College in New Jersey, which I know you know a little bit about being in Jersey, and started my first company. And it was just the beginning of the personal computer boom. And it seemed like, wow, of course there's going to be so many riches and success in this field.

Failure didn't even cross my mind. And I thought it was all about the hustle. I thought, unfortunately, that I was always the smartest guy in the room and that I had it all figured out. And because I had no money, I had to make a choice back then between renting a little office and renting an apartment to live in. And back then, it was not cool to, like, work from home. You know, today everybody does it. It's not a big deal. Back then, that would have been a sign that you're not legit.

So I rented this tiny one-room office from a bigger accounting firm. And I lived there. I worked 365 straight days. I would get up at five in the morning and get out of there before the regular workers came in. I'd drive to the YMCA, take a shower, stop and drink coffee. And then I'd arrive, quote unquote, early in the morning as everyone else was coming in, or at least the early people came in. And I'd work until about midnight. And I just did that for an entire year. Not a single day off. And yet I failed miserably. I mean, I thought I had the answers. I thought I was in a hot field. I certainly was hustling. and my butt off and had to shut it down, had all my credit cards maxed out and everything. I took about a year off to pay down some of the credit cards, and then I tried it again. And I did better than the first time I could afford both an apartment and an office, but I shut that one down after year because it wasn't working out. It took me three times to figure it out. So, I mean, I certainly have failed as many times in business as I've succeeded.

and you mentioned the author side of things. I've written nine books. They weren't all New York Times bestsellers. So one's the New York Times bestseller. Some sell really well. But I've had failures launching books as well. So it's never one thing. I mean, it's sort of more about sticking with it

and doing lots of things and getting smarter every time until you figure out what works. That's awesome. That's great advice. So tell us about your current venture, Lidex. What is that about? And how did you get to starting that? Yeah, LeadX is an AI technology company focused on providing leadership solutions, leadership development for the next generation.

Our mission is to spark the next 100 million leaders around the world. We think that's about a 10-year journey. And so basically what it is, it's an app that is powered by IBM Watson. And we've created the world's first executive management coach built on IBM Watson. We call her Coach Amanda. So Coach Amanda will diagnose your personality, make recommendations, coach you, train you. And then we've got this giant content library of over a thousand webinars, podcasts, tutorials, book summaries, and more so that people can be learning every day. You know, the modern learner, the younger millennial learner,

they don't want to sit in a classroom and watch PowerPoints and all of that. Here we're saying get some advice, some really personalized advice and then supplement it with all these ways that you like to learn anyway, watching videos, five minutes at a time, listening to podcasts on your way at work, et cetera. So we were in stealth mode for two years. We just came out of stealth mode. We're in our third year right now. Very cool. And I know online learning is so hot right now. So, you know, hopefully that brings you a lot of success. Okay. So for this episode, I really want to spend a good chunk of time focused on your expertise in leadership. That's one of the most things that you're

known for. You have an upcoming book called Great Leaders Have No Rules, and it helps folks become both the boss everybody wants to work for and the high achiever every CEO wants to hire without all the drama stress or endless hours at the office. You actually sent me a preview of this book, so thank you. You're welcome. And I was just hoping we could cover some of the interesting parts that I found in the book and cover that with my listeners. Yeah, that'd be great. Okay. So you open up the book saying that everything we've been taught about leadership, is wrong. What do you mean by that? Well, on one level, back in the old days, they would say leadership is what they called the great man theory of leadership. And they did call it great man. It was about power. It was about authority. It was about top down. And then thankfully, a couple decades ago, people started to say, leadership is a choice. You can lead without authority. You don't need a title to lead. Leadership is a choice. And that's a step in the right direction. But I take it even

further. And I say, that's even wrong. I say, we have no choice. We are all leaders. Because if you boil it down, leadership is influence. Leadership is about influencing others. And if you understand that, then you realize you're leading all of the time. You're influencing people around you all of the time. It just means you're either influencing them in a positive direction or you're influencing them in a negative direction. And so the other way, most people think of leadership wrong. Like, I think of leadership as a superpower that we can apply in all areas of our life. If you hear someone talk about leadership, they usually think about leadership at work, being a boss at work, something like that. And I say, listen, if leadership is influence, you are a leader of your kids, if you're a parent,

you're a leader in your relationship with your significant other, your leadership in your community, your neighborhood, your place of worship, because you're influencing all of those people around you. And so the book, certainly the primary focus is for young professionals looking to become better leaders at work. But I always give examples in how we can use this in other areas of our life as well. Yeah. Another concept that relates to this that you talk about in your book is self-leadership. And when people typically think of leadership, it involves managers and building better connections with their frontline employees. And it's not often that we really think about how we can become leaders and look at ourselves and be self-leaders.

And a lot of my listeners are on the younger side. They might be individual contributors or in early management roles. So can you talk about self-leadership, what that is and maybe some tips on how to be a better self-leader? Yeah, it really does always start with self-leadership. And again, if you go back to thinking about how can I influence myself to fulfill my potential? And so you can become better at leading yourself to those health goals, whether you're trying to lose weight, or run a marathon or eat healthier food or whatever that is, you can influence yourself in that health direction,

whether you have a financial goal, they're trying to get out of debt or save money, whether you want to start up a new business this year. All of these things, you know, we end up fighting to succeed. We have to fight through procrastination. We have to fight through setbacks. We have to fight through distractions of social media and technology and fun and everything else. Well, that takes you influencing yourself to stay on track and stay on goals.

And there's a lot of different specific ways to do it, depending on what you're trying to achieve. Let me take a real simple example. The number one variable for success in anything is environment. So, for example, if this year I've decided I'm going to eat healthier and I'm going to drop 10 pounds, well, before I think about getting on the treadmill every day, before I think about all these different things I'm going to do to get healthy, take vitamins, whatever, I need to be. I need to start by thinking about my environment. So it's sort of like, look, if my kitchen's filled with a bunch of junk food, my willpower, my motivation's only going to go so far.

But if I have that afternoon craving for that salty snack, which I always do, but there's just nothing in my kitchen to eat, well, the environment's going to keep me on track. So I can self-direct by saying, I want to achieve in this area of health, let me proactively work on my environment, whether that's keeping the junk food out, putting my vitamins next to my coffee pot because I never miss my coffee in the morning and then I see my vitamins and I'll take those or whatever it might be, I'm working on myself and I'm proactively, you know, I call it leading with intent, living with intent, being mindful of our environment, of our actions and where we want to go in life. Yeah, I totally agree. I actually put out an entire episode about controlling your environment.

it was with Benjamin Hardy. Oh, great. Yeah, and he wrote a book called Willpower Doesn't Work, and it's all about making sure you control your environment and how willpower is just not enough. Yeah, boy, that's fantastic. Great minds think alike, right? Mm-hmm.

So something else that piqued my interest in your new book is that you called the open-door policy of productivity nightmare. You say it discourages employees from appropriate bias to action, limits the opportunities that employees need to grow. So can you tell our listeners, what the open door policy is for anybody who's not familiar and your perspective on it and maybe some proposed alternatives. Yeah, and you summarized it well. I mean, this is another area where classic leadership wisdom is everybody's taught when you're a young manager, hey, you got to practice

an open door policy, which technically went back to early days, meant you literally kept your office door open so that your team members could come in at any time and it would help for good communication, it helped to make sure you could help them when they needed it. If you're higher up in the organization, an open door policy meant anybody could walk into your office at the time. So if you were the CEO had an open door policy, frontline workers could walk in and that removed barriers and red tape. And these all sound like good ideas, right? Those are worthy and noble goals. Now, I'll say that whole phrase, open door policy, is becoming a little bit outdated because so many of us don't actually work in an office that has a door that close.

So many of us are working in an open office environment. But the metaphor still fits. It's an open door policy would mean, hey, anybody can message me at any time on Slack or whatever it is and I'll respond right away. Anybody can drop me an email and I'm going to respond to them right away. Anybody could call me, whatever that is. The problem, as you said, is, first of all, it's a productivity nightmare for the person with the open door. We are interrupted so many times. And these, knock, knock, knock, got a minute meetings, drive people crazy. Just constant interruptions gets in the way of deep thinking, strategic thinking, and deep work. And beyond that, it's not so great for the individual team members either.

Because first of all, it's too easy for me as the boss to say, hey, guys, I got an open door policy. Just let me know if you need anything. Well, not everybody's comfortable with going and interrupting their boss and asking a question. So a lot of people just won't take that step. It's kind of like that first person to ask a question in a big room of other people. They don't want to look stupid. Not everyone's willing to go through that open door. And then for those who are overly willing, they're always going through that door,

it sets up an unhealthy dependency where if someone's got to come through my door all the time, either I didn't train them well or I haven't given them enough authority to make decisions or they're too scared to make a mistake. And that's called a lack of psychological safety. all those things are bad for the growth and development of those individuals. So I say, you know, you don't want to close your door completely. We're not saying don't talk to your people, but there's a better way and a variety of better ways. So one would be, instead of an always open door policy, just shift it to like office hours. And every person, every team is different. But I could say,

listen, before lunch, if my door's closed, don't come in. After lunch, my door will be open, and that's my open door policy time. Or I might say, listen, Monday to Thursday, I'm busy on focus, deep work. My door is going to be closed. But on Friday, I'm going to leave my door open, and that's when the open door policy kicks in. Or it could be between four and five at the end of every day or whatever it might be. But the idea is to tell your team members, hey, listen, it's nothing personal. I want to get strategic and focus on deep work without interruption.

And I'd like you to do the same. So instead of us interrupting each other all day long, at any time, let's agree that we're going to kind of have a time for focused work and then time for open door. Yeah, I think that's a happy medium because, you know, they say it takes an average of 25 minutes to get back to the point of where you were before a distraction occurred. And I also think that your rate of failure increases drastically after you've been interrupted. That's right. I think those are great points, great points. All right. So speaking of distractions, One of the other productivity suckers that you mention is smartphones.

And I read in a study from office team last year that the typical worker spends an average of five hours per week on their phone occupied with things that have nothing to do with their job. And if the office is comprised of millennials or younger workers, that number drastically increases. So can you elaborate on how smartphones are a leadership problem? At Yap, we have a super unique company culture. We're all about obsessive excellence. We even call ourselves Scrappy Home. hustlers. And I'm really picky when it comes to my employees. My team is growing every day.

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Start working in your genius. Yeah, and this was something that I debated with my editor for The Great Leaders Have No Rules book, is is this really a leadership issue? And I say it is because if you care about the productivity of your team, smartphones are an issue. If you care about the physical safety of your team members, smartphones are an issue. And if you care about creating a culture where people feel free to express their opinions, to brainstorm, which always includes wacky eye, ideas to express some emotional honesty, then smartphones are an issue. Because as we know, as you've introduced, the phones are buzzing like crazy. And whether it's the mobile games or Facebook messages or snaps or whatever it is, they're just buzzing away. And every time they buzz, even if we don't pick them up, the research is clear that they're distracting us. In fact, they're saying even if the phone isn't buzzing, but it's near us, like on the desk, turned down, turned over. We don't even to see the scream. Some of our brain cycles are going towards not focusing on that phone,

not picking it up and checking it. And so it's become a very important issue in terms of, again, productivity at work. Now, of course, anybody who's just driven in a car recently, you see all the distracted drivers around you and you don't want your team members to be one of those, whether it's distracted driving or if you're in a workplace that's working with heavy machinery or in a warehouse, etc. Those can be really bad distractions and become safety issues. And then lastly, the smartphones are more powerful than any listening device that spies had 20 years ago. And every few months, there's another story about someone secretly recording a meeting that they had with their boss. I mean, it's happened recently with our president. It's happened, you know,

with celebrities, and not only just by the normal tapping the record, but for like two bucks, you can download from the app store, these recording apps that don't show any recording at all on the screen. They're totally secret. So you launch it, you just go into any meeting, your phone's sitting there, it could be flipped over and it just looks like your home screen, and yet it's recording a conversation. And what a lot of companies are now doing is saying, hey, for our conference room, for our team meetings, let's put a basket outside the door and just say it's a no phone zone. One, because of the distractions, you know, the interruptions and the lack of focus. But two, just so that everybody can feel comfortable, again, giving an honest opinion, getting into a debate, just having some honesty in the room, not wondering, like, is somebody recording this tough conversation or this debate or this brainstorm?

and I'm going to sound really dumb if it's taken out of context down the road. And don't get me wrong, like, I think when people have used their smartphone to record an abusive boss, well, good, get rid of that abusive boss. I'm glad you're using the phone for that reason. But I'm talking about, like, all the times that people are now recording in a way that was not authorized ahead of time, separate from, you know, harassment and other problems. People need to know that they can communicate freely with some psychological safety. So, you know, millennials are addicted to our phones. And many of us, we don't have private offices and things like that. We're at our desk. How do we resist the temptation to look at our phone? Well, I think it's tough. I mean, I think that this is sort of the backlash we're all going to, whether it's people saying they're going to delete their Facebook accounts or get rid of all their social media. I mean, the easiest thing to do is just turn off all notifications. If you're in a job that requires you to check your email,

every hour, every 30 minutes. Okay, fine. Set a little calendar notice to do it. The point is that you're going to pick up that phone when you want to, not when it buzzes and someone else wants you to. You don't want to be Pavlov's dog, constantly distracted and grabbing that phone. But more and more, I'm meeting people, including millennials, who are saying, you know what, I'm going to take a break. In fact, my one daughter just did this 30-day Instagram fast. Like, hey, let me get away from Everybody's showing the edited best version of their life. Everyone's got an amazing life. Let me get out of that for 30 days and then I'll get back on.

And so people, whether it's a fast or whether it's just deciding to drop off from that cycle, I think more and more people are going that way. Yeah. I think it's about setting limitations. Like I personally, when I get into work, I keep my phone zipped up in my purse and I try to only look at it during lunch. Love it. Yeah.

Okay. So let's talk about the crux of your book, which is all about that leadership has no rules. So what are your qualms with rules exactly? Sure. So let me say there are sometimes when a company should have rules. So for example, if it's a law, then you need to have that law or that rule apply in your company. If someone's physical safety, I've done work with this railroad company, and it's a rule not to use your cell phone when you're on the job. In fact, you can't even walk on the rail lines with your hands in your pocket because if you fall, it's more likely you're going to hit your head and get knocked out on the tracks.

This makes sense. Those are safety rules. And another time you'll need rules is if you hire really horrible, stupid people. Like if you hire poorly, then it may be the only way you can try to control these bad hires, this lack of talent would be with rules. But in general, every rule that you give me takes away a chance for me to make a decision, for me to make a choice. And every time you take away the opportunity for me to make a choice. It becomes more your company and not my company. And I tell the story about how this was going back like 20 years. But I sold one of my companies and then was reporting to the CEO. And he gave me this big speech when he bought my company about, you know, he's not really my boss. We're just going to be equals and we're partners and we'll do

mutual reviews and all this great stuff. And the very first expense report I submitted came back short by like $3 or something like that. And it turns out they had a rule that you're not allowed to buy Post-it notes. So I had bought Post-it Notes as part of my new office supplies and they wouldn't submit it. Now, how much did I feel like that was my company when I couldn't buy Post-A-Notes? How much did I feel like I was a vice president in this big company when I couldn't even buy my own post-it notes? How much did I feel equal to CEO when the CEO just banned me from buying Post-it-Notes? So it disengages you when there's rules that you arbitrarily have to follow. Now, later, that CEO, when we fought it out over this stuff, he explained that, look,

it's not about the Post-it notes. It's not that rule. It's he wanted it to be a symbol of being frugal. One of our company values was about profitability and cash, because without it, you die. And he wanted to use it as a symbol. he said, instead of Post-it notes, you just take all that scrap paper that you get from the printer, tear it up and put it in a little pile on your desk, and now you don't need Post-it notes. So the funny thing is, I wanted Post-N notes when there was a rule that banned them.

After he explained to me the company value and why it was important to him and what it meant, I didn't buy Post-Notes anymore. I tore up little pieces of paper and put them on my desk. And so a rule gets in the way of relationships. A rule gets in the way of conversations around values. And again, this goes back to our own personal lives as well. You know, when I grew up, my father had a lot of hard, strict rules, very clear about curfews and all these things. You could do this. You can't do that. And, you know, my sisters, they were older than me. And I mean, they got into all kinds of trouble. And once you're five minutes late past a curfew, well, now that's a fight and it's a power struggle. And it becomes about the rule and

about respect, not about coming home and being safe and courteous. With my kids, look, I'm not a perfect parent. I've never had a rule with my kids. I've never had a curfew. I've never done any of that stuff. But I have had conversations about like, what time do you plan on getting home? What are you doing tonight? What do you plan on doing? How important is it? Because I'm going to worry about you until you get home. So I'm not actually able to sleep until you get home. So one, I care about your safety out there, bad things happening late at night. And I want to get a good night's sleep. I got an important day tomorrow.

So when do you want to come home? When will you come home? And then they'll tell me, 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock, whatever it is. And almost always, my kids will make a choice about what they're going to do or not do, what time they're going to come home. That's like earlier than what I would have told them. I would be like, hey, as long as you're home by midnight, it's fine. They're like, is 10.30 too late?

No, that's cool. And so, but that happens over time of building relationship using values as your, guardrails. And then when someone, instead of it breaking a rule, you use it as a coaching opportunity in a workplace would be a coaching opportunity. You know, if instead, when I did that expense report, if the CEO had come to me and said, hey, Kevin, you know, you gave your expense report, we're going to pay it 100%. But I do want to let you know that you bought Post-it notes. And I generally frown on that because I think you could save money by tearing up these little pieces of paper and leaving them on your desk. And to me, we want to be. We want to

want to send a signal to our teams that were frugal, that every dollar counts. And Post-it notes kind gets in the way of that message. Well, if he had just said that, we'd have been like, okay, it's a little weird, but I get it. Like, no problem, boss. Like, thanks for covering it. And from now on, I'm going to rip up pieces of paper. But because I forced the issue in the entire company, we had to have that conversation. But in general, that doesn't happen. People enforce rules arbitrarily on everybody to protect against the few that might mess up. And then a lot of people get really, really, upset about it. So that's my rant on rules. Yeah. So could you help us like bring this to real life? So I actually came across an article where you wrote about Semcoe and you gave a real example of how an organization

was successful with no rules. Could you maybe like give us a quick preview of what Semco did? Well, yes, Semcoe, Ricardo Semlar is this just crazy no rules, no management type company. And they sort of self-form and let the team members, they're not even really called rules, but it's like each team will set expectations for performance and hold each other accountable. And an even more relatable case is Netflix. I mean, Netflix does such an amazing job of hiring the right people. So you have to hire the right people. You know, they got to be smart. They got to be down with your mission. They got to care. Then you got an opportunity to work with them with the values. And Netflix does that to a T. They're like, hey, you know, let's pretend we're all adults here. Let's pretend we're all

on the same team. We're all going after the same goal, the same mission. Why would you need rules in this kind of a situation? Let's have clear values that are actionable. Let's talk about what's a standard during orientation, during performance reviews, through everyday coaching or weekly coaching, but we don't need rules. So there's plenty of examples of companies that are doing very well without the giant rulebook in place. Yeah, it sounds like such a great culture to be in so empowering, you know. Okay, so something else in your book that was very interesting is that you said that when you're a leader, you really can't care about being liked. And this desire of being liked is human nature. So how can we overcome this and how can we walk that fine line between being a

manager and being a friend? Sure. So this is a very common young leader problem. And I've struggled with this actually even as an old leader. So we all like to be liked. But it gets in the way when you need to be liked because if your self-validation, if your validation, if your self-worth is tied to what other people think of you, then you're going to have a hard time as a boss because there's going to be plenty of times. Like again, back in my 20s, when I was young and dumb as an entrepreneurial manager and didn't have any trained, didn't have any experience, didn't have any coaches in this area, I sort of had a need to be liked. And so I was the friendly boss.

I was the likable boss. I was the boss that, hey, we're all in this together. We're all equal kind of thing. But the problem happens when you've got to give someone some tough feedback. Can you give that feedback? Or in my case, my need not to rock the boat, not to make people think I'm a jerk or whatever, I would withhold those tough conversations. And that's not doing them any favors.

They need to get better in their career. They want to advance. and yet I couldn't kind of muster the professional courage to do that. A big part of leadership, especially as you get higher up in an organization, it's about decision-making. And leadership, it's rarely clear what the right answer is. I mean, if it was clear, then you don't need to really make the decision. Everybody will just know and do it. And so you're always looking at trade-offs.

You know, do we reorganize and give these five people to Jane, or do we move these five people over to Rob? Or it's like, hey, we've got an R&D budget of a million dollars. Do we give all of it to the robot project or do we split it between the robot project and the software project? So you're always making these tradeoffs. There's always winners and losers. One time I wanted to reorganize and I had this kind of need to be liked. The process was ridiculous. It was like announcing, all right, you know, we got to reorganize to get to the next level.

We'll be looking at that in the days ahead. And then all my direct reports needed to come and lobby why they needed. a bigger team and more money and all that. And then their people, with my open door policy, all marched in. So I ended up talking to 50 different people about the right way to organize it. And you can imagine there were probably 50 different ways that people wanted me to organize things. And it took like six months. And looking back, people don't need a friend. People need a leader. And so look, take some input from my direct reports. That makes sense. If I'm going to get input from all 50 people, send a survey. I don't need 51 hours.

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That's fantastic advice. Okay, so last question on the book. You mentioned that the getting things done system, which is something that I loosely follow and actually interviewed David Allen, who's the creator of that system. You say that getting things done or GTD and other traditional time management systems have it all wrong. So why do you feel this way and what do you suggest we do alternatively? Yeah, this is where I get more hate mail than any other thing. Before the great leader's book, my last book was 15. secret successful people know about time management. And I went out and interviewed about 300 high achievers like Mark Cuban, self-made billionaires, lots of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, you know, founders of Facebook, Airbnb, etc. And as I interviewed all these people, I just asked them one question, like give me your number one tip to time management and productivity. And as I was about halfway through the interviews, I realized nobody's talking about a to-do list. Nobody's talking about a GTD system. And so I thought that was weird because I was keeping a to-do list. I did the whole

rewrite it at the end of the day, A, B, C priorities, all that stuff. And then I started doing follow-up questions. And usually people would laugh at me when it came to my questions about to-do list. They said, listen, if you want to get it done, you schedule it, you don't list it. And then over and over, I just had this conversation with John Maxwell last week. He says, Kevin, I could look back five years ago from today and tell you exactly what I was doing at 10 o'clock in the morning because every minute of my day is scheduled and then you live from your schedule. And so when I did some more research on it, 40% 4.0, 40% of everything we put on our to-do list never gets done. It's like the graveyard of important but not urgent. We do the urgent things. We do the easy things. Or we just don't

put things like doctor's appointments on the list. And to-do lists kind of trigger that zygarnic effect where we stress out our unconscious kind of churns on those things. that we know we have to do that we don't have a plan for, which is why we can be so tired during the day, but we have insomnia at night because we're thinking, oh my God, I got 20 things I got to do tomorrow. And so I'm not saying all lists are bad. I've got a grocery list. I have a project management list. And if you only have 10, 12 things to do, a list will work for you. I'm talking about the one percenters that I talk to when they have 15 to 100 things that they want to do, they put it on the calendar. and then they know that what they care about, their values, are pre-scheduled for the year.

If my health is important, I've scheduled it. If sales calls are important, I schedule it. If team meetings are important, I've pre-scheduled it for the year. And when you schedule it, it's far more likely, not guaranteed, but far more likely you're going to actually do it. Yeah. That's awesome advice. And you brought up John Maxwell and, like, my whole mind went a blur because I'm, like, obsessed with him. I've read, like, every single one of his book.

So if you could help me make a connection there, I've been trying to reach out. Yeah, he's got a new book coming out. Now, he's hard. This is the first time I got a chance to talk to him and interview him. His new book coming out is called Leadership, and it's a great book, and you're already a fan. I mean, he's a great guy. He's even more old school than I am, but he's just so genuine and loving, and he's got a great way with words. I mean, he's just, you know, so charming.

I love that guy. I know, me too. Okay, so keeping on, you know, time management productivity, something that you frequently write about is the Pareto Principle or 8020 rule. It gets its name from Italian economist Vild Fredo Pareto, who stumbled upon the concept when observing that about 20% of the pea pods and his garden contained 80% of the peas. So I personally love this role, and I think it's fundamental for every person in business. Can you talk about that a little bit and give some context to our listeners. Yeah, that's right. So the Pareto principle 80-20 rule, it's like 20% of the effort of

anything yields 80% of your results. So if you're looking to save time, save energy, be more productive, you realize like you could whack out 80% of the whatever and still be getting, you know, most of your results. And so it's not always 2080 exactly, but the idea is like, I'll just use examples in my own life. If I look at all the crazy stuff I'm doing for marketing from social, media, to paid ads, to speeches, to whatever, I could go back and track leads to just sort of one or two things, probably LinkedIn marketing and articles in Forbes. Now, if I have the time and the money and the interest to really go all out, fine, do everything. But if I really wanted to just dramatically save time and energy, I could just do LinkedIn marketing and Forbes articles,

and 80% of my leads would still be there. If I've got 100 sales reps and I used to, all the big deals I would look would come to 20 reps that were giving me most of my sales. Now again, if I can afford the other 80 reps, if I was really optimizing for growth, great, keep 100 reps. But if you can't afford them or want to simplify your model and your life, you could literally shift out 80 of those sales reps and still have most of your revenue. And this is the same with health. You know, go back to self-leadership. 80% of the results of your body come from your diet. It's like what you eat. So, yeah, you should get on that treadmill.

You should lift some weights and all the rest. But you know what's going to really move the needle? It's the food you put in your mouth. Like, it's that. And so, you know, for productivity, everyone's feeling overworked and overwhelmed. And think about like, all right, what are some of the things that I'm working on that just aren't going to matter? Like, it'd be nice to work on them. But if they're not tied to your annual performance review, your top goal, then do you really need to work past 6 p.m.

to be working on it? Do you really need to be stressing over it or is good enough, good enough? So that's just kind of an important way to think about priorities as you're trying to live a more balanced life. Yeah, definitely. So just to summarize, the 80, 20% rule means that there's certain activities that you do, you're 20% that account for the majority, your 80% of your outputs or your happiness. That's right. That's awesome. Okay, so I want to be conscious of time. I know that you've got a hard stuff. So tell us, when does your new book come out? What is it called? Is it going to be on Audible and where can everybody learn more about you? Oh, I appreciate that. The new book, Great Leaders Have No Rules, comes out April 2nd, 2019. Definitely is going to have an audio book,

audible version. I know like half the people now do book on audio, which is great. And I would say for podcast listeners, I've got the LeadX Leadership Show, if you're into leadership topics, and visit leadx.org. You'll be able to watch a free course, use all kinds of free resources, and sign up for free trial to see if you're interested in using Coach Amanda to get better at what you do. Perfect. And I'll stick all your key links in my show notes too. Thank you so much, Kevin. This was so inspiring. I'm so thankful for your time. Oh, I appreciate the opportunity. Thanks for reading the word. Thanks for listening to Young and Profiting Podcast. Follow you app on Instagram at Young & Profiting.com and check us out at youngandprofting.com. And now you can chat live

with us every single day on our new Slack channel. Check out our show notes or Youngandprofiting.com for the registration link. And if you're already active on Yap Society, share the wealth and invite your friends. You can find me on Instagram at Yap with Hala or LinkedIn. Just search my name, Hala Taha. Big thanks to the Yap team, Tim, Danny, Steeves, Christian, Stephanie, Nicholas, Ryan, and Kayla.

Stay blessed and I'll catch you next time.