Hello, my name is Jesan Sorrells and this
is the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast
episode number 178.
And picking up from our book today as we
head into what is going
to be a mashup episode. And normally on mashup
episodes you wouldn't have a book. But we need a book to anchor ourselves today.
So from our book today from the Introduction
the Argument from First Principles
the Argument it is hard to write this book about leadership,
or quite frankly, any book about leadership considering the current pandemic in the world.
COVID 19 simultaneously changed everything about how leaders operate in
world and further exposed much of the remaining tenacious mental
infrastructure of the Industrial Revolution that is still around in small, medium
and even large organizations, and most of that infrastructure is
still on display in organizations. Employees are
at the bottom of the organizational chart believing that they are the foundations on which
the organization rests, yet feeling as though they are treated as basement
dwellers. Managers and supervisors are squeezed in the middle
believing they are the glue that keeps the top of the organization from flying away
and keeps the bottom of the organization in line. Yet the reality is they
are asked to care about something they did not initially build and are asked to
give positive lip service to ideas, innovations and approaches to change
they know will have a low chance of success.
Upper management and executives are at the top of the organizational chart believing they deserve
the status they have and that preserving that status is the only thing that
matters, yet feeling as though they are in a constant battle with forces
I.e. governmental regulations, organizational enue, etc.
The people in the organizational chart below them could never possibly
understand and that is just the
infrastructure in our organizations. Then there is the mental
infrastructure we tend to ignore that affects leaders even more.
How we teach leadership in academic settings, how we write about
leadership in books like this, and how we position leaders in our organizations through
promotion, compensation, merit, competency and other factors
has not been challenged significantly in the way the COVID 19 pandemic
challenged leadership assumptions and expectations. In many, many
years. When our organization had
physical office space before the pandemic and the knock on effects of social
distancing, government mask mandates and work from home regulations kicked
in, I would drive to that office still every
day. This office was down the street from the abandoned
industrial residue representing the company that stood, at least in the
20th century at the pinnacle of industrial revolution assumptions
about the intersections between work, life, leadership and the corporate social
structure that company, the internationally known
IBM, once located in Endicott, New York at its height employed
14,000 quote unquote IBM men and they were
majority men who were notorious for wearing the IBM corporate
outfit of a white shirt, a black tie and and appropriate slacks
with even their hair trimmed neatly in a corporate approved fashion
and endlessly conforming but relatively well paid flood of
men would course and spill through and down the street where my office
used to be located during lunch hours.
Their mere presence stood as the primary example of what successful, thriving and
scalable leadership and management practices could accomplish in the 20th century.
As did the presence of men working at Endicott, Johnson's shoe factory, John General
Electric, Carrier air Conditioning and other upstate New York 20th century
corporations. When IBM relocated its vast infrastructure
to Montauk from Endicott and dispersed its people more globally,
New York State, for reasons both the New York State government and IBM dispute
fired or early retired many of the people who worked in those buildings, the
majority of which were abandoned by the time our office was located there
20 some odd years later this
is what I am talking about when I refer to mental infrastructure.
The pandemic wrecked the mental infrastructure of assumptions, expectations and attitudes
of leadership at all levels in our global society and culture
and laid bare the frank negotiations between public health, public policy,
private medical choices, the responsibility to make a living, and the
responsibility to lead people to do so. Therefore, publishing
a leadership book is dangerous in today's world.
No matter what assertions I may make in this book, they could be frozen in
time by the reader or dismissed as being just a quote unquote sign of the
times, or equally as problematic. They
could be too easily embraced as the holy Grail
solution to all post pandemic
leadership problems.
All leadership, regardless of what
leadership we pick, begins with a vision.
By articulating a vision, a leader, intentionally or not, falls into a specific
model of leadership that encompasses their actions. But
visions, to paraphrase from the great economic writer Thomas Sowell,
can either be constrained or unconstrained. A
constrained vision of leadership acknowledges the fact of the limitations of human nature
that are beyond the ability of institutions, models, and even leadership visions to address
and even beyond the ability of themselves as leaders to fix or
ameliorate. An unconstrained vision of leadership assumes at
its core that leadership and leadership models can be leveraged to accomplish
any type of change. It also assumes that all circumstances,
situations, and environments are mere chains that can be broken off
if the leader is charismatic enough, knowledgeable enough, or even
just cares enough about their followers.
This is a continuing struggle that began when the first man tried to
organize the first hunting party to kill an animal for food and has
continued down to this day
and thus our mashup episode. Today
for books, particularly great literature, present leaders with
options around visions and provide a laboratory for leaders to
experience the strategic and tactical outcomes from either
a constrained or an unconstrained vision.
Leaders on the show today we're going to talk about these visions.
But just remember, without a vision of some kind,
your followers will fail. And without a model
to contain that vision or a model
to surround that vision, your people will behave in a chaotic
and a confusing manner.
And back for this season. And to explore the idea of
vision models and how literature intersects with all of
this. And of course, to help me read from my book, which
I read from the opening here, 12 rules for leaders. The foundation of
intentional leadership is our co host today,
John Hill, AKA Small Mountain. Happy New
Year, John. Welcome back to the show. Happy New Year, my friend. I'm glad to
be back. This is gonna be a cool topic to dig into. Absolutely.
So let's jump right in.
We've read many, many, many, many books on this show. We are now going
into our fifth season of this show. As a matter of fact, you were,
you were on in January of last year when we read Confessions of an Advertising
man with, with David Ogilvy and then continued
through with our romp through science fiction. And
then we talked about the book War by Sebastian
Younger. And of course, you'll be joining us this year
on some other books. I'm very excited to have you on around those.
But most of the books that we've covered, both fiction and nonfiction,
are written from certain assumptions that are either constrained
or unconstrained, or the author begins with
either position. They begin with an unconstrained vision, or they begin with a constrained
vision and then they move the narrative across a continuum.
For example, George Orwell in 1984
begins with an unconstrained vision and moves into a constrained one.
Or the play King Lear by Shakespeare begins with a constrained vision
and maintains that all the way through the performance
or Candide, which we covered as one of
our first episodes of the new season here by Voltaire
begins with a constrained vision, right? A constrained vision of optimism and
moves to an unconstrained vision, or an unconstrained set of assumptions about human
behavior.
When leaders see a vision presented to them in a particular
piece of literature that we've covered on the show or even hear it
discussed here, they can obviously make the determination, if there is any
value for them in leveraging the insights from that particular
piece of literature. To develop a model of leadership. But we've never actually
talked about that whole vision piece here, right. We've sort of
skirted around the edges of it. And I want to do that because I want
to talk about that today specifically to start, because one of the things we're
going to be doing on this show coming up this year is we're really going
to be focusing in on and developing projects around
models, right? What does a model of leadership look like?
And so I guess our first question
for you today is which books have you read
that presented a constrained or an unconstrained vision of human behavior
and of human nature? And what do you think of this idea? Am I just,
like, aiming at something that's silly and stupid or do I have something here?
Well, when what came to mind is, as,
you know, we were talking about, the idea was less about is
one right and the other incorrect and much more about the
idea of, like, what happens whenever there's not alignment between
the leadership and the people. Right? And coming from sales,
there's a lot of ideas about sales. And you know, you got
to, you can't pay them too much because they're going to get lazy. You can't
really trust them, you know, and, you know, now, you know, with
all the digital marketing stuff like this and these big, huge systems and everything,
it's like, well, we don't even need to train them, right? Like, we don't even,
we don't need to find great salespeople. We just need to find people who will
talk to people, you know, and so there's, there's a whole lot of room to
miss the mark, you know, and I've seen situations to, where
everyone follows the same script. And, you know, the people who can follow
that script, they, they eventually, after lots of repetitions and
lots of failure, find a thing that works more often than it doesn't. You
know, coming from the military, it's, you know, you go through a process to
become what the government needs you to be. So that way, if you're, you
know, called to action, you, you can show up in the right frame
of mind and do what needs to be done. And so it's
just this very interesting situation of when, when it's not
misaligned is when it goes completely off the
wall, right? And it's super easy. And I spent about 10
years of, well, if you don't feel my way, you must just be dumb,
you know, like, and really just kind of short sighting everyone who didn't have the
same kind of like thoughts around this kind of stuff that I did,
right? Like the, the very emotional bombastic leaders
that just like to like, you know, push and push and push on people. You
know, the guys who want 80 hour work weeks and, you know, hustle culture at
large and all of these things. And you know, for some people,
it, it's, it's what helps get them through
the process, right? Helps them get to success, whatever version of that they're looking for.
But if you don't know what to go looking for, right,
you're probably going to end up in a lot of situations, environments,
right, that don't align with you. And it's super easy to think
that, you know, you're the problem, right. For a long time. Because I would
have these questions about, you know, should I pitch this person or, or was
it, was it, you know, not ethical to pitch this person? And
I would get pressure of like, you always make the pitch, you always make the
pitch. You know, it was kind of very confusing, right? And it kind of led
to me spending a lot of time thinking that I shouldn't be in sales at
all because I want to do the right thing, right? And now
most of my stuff is, you know, talking about putting the right thing first,
you know, which makes me not popular for some of these people who were
wanting salespeople that are going to be, you know, close at all costs, you know,
take no prisoners, kind of like sales cultures and stuff like that. And
so I don't really know that, you
know, categorically one is absolutely right and one is fundamentally flawed.
But if it's not aligned all the way through, you know, know from the top
to the bottom, it's, you know, going to be a lot
of friction. Yeah, yeah. And it's interesting that you brought up the
term alignment. So I was writing some things down as you were
talking. So alignment process and then ethics, right? So
the, the holy grail of training and development is
alignment. That's the holy grail. Because
once you can get alignment right on any topic, whether that's sales
training or leadership training or
even safety training, right? Once you can get the people
aligned who are going through the training. And usually that's what training
is used for as a tool. Now, sometimes that's the best tool,
other times it's not. We can have a whole discussion about that. But
invariably the people who are choosing the training, whether
that's sales training, safety training or leadership training, are the
people who are searching for or, or wanting to get
more alignment. And they do not know how to
get from misalignment to alignment. They don't know
how to cross that, as the technologists say. They don't know how to cross that
uncanny valley that exists. Right.
And I would assert the reason they don't know how to cross that uncanny valley
is because the vision has changed, but they don't know how to say that.
Right? And so they'll tinker with the model, or they'll hire guys like you
and me, or they'll talk about ethics. Right?
Or they'll create a new discipline
framework for people who get out of line, whatever line that is.
Right. They'll do all of these other things,
except the one thing that they need to do, which is go
back and say, we started here. Maybe we started
with a constrained vision or unconstrained vision, I don't know. But we started
here, we wound up here, and our vision
changed, and we haven't addressed that successfully.
Now, I don't necessarily know that that's just something for people in the C
suite to do. Matter of fact, I think because of COVID 19,
that has now become the purview of everybody in the organization,
not just the C suite. But on a radical, right,
I go in a radical direction, right. With that.
So in thinking about alignment or
misalignment, right.
Misalignment can happen in so many different places, right? So in sales, right.
So many different places. What are some of the places that, as leaders,
we should be looking for? Not necessarily misalignment,
but if we sense there's misalignment there, right. What are some things we should
be? What are some signs of that?
Ooh.
I mean, I think the big stuff is
the thing. The thing that I hear from. From people over and over and over
again is like, why don't my people get it? And it's like, okay, who
should they be getting it from? Right? And so there.
There's this old line from my sales coach, and he always said, as a
default, we sell the way we want to be sold to. Right? And adding on
to that, the. The way that I talk about it now is we. We sell
the way we want to be sold. We lead the way we want to be
led. Right? So it's super easy to just, like, walk around
because you don't have enough experience, you've not met enough different types of people
to just go around and be like, well, if you're here, you must be like
me. And if you're like me, you're going to want to do it this way,
you know? And I Think. I think most people just kind of get
stuck there, right? And then whenever they do get frustrated because
there's a boiling point, right? People don't, you know, and this happens all the time
with founders, right, who are, who are bringing on their first salesperson, right?
And they forgot that the salesperson didn't start this thing. And it's not their baby.
So we're not going to have the same amount of buy in, right? They're going
to have care, they're going to have some buy in, but it's not their baby,
right? And so the idea, where's the urgency? Well,
it's a job for them, right? This is your passion and your purpose.
But expecting everyone to come to the same work with the same amount of weight
is just absurd, right? And this is where hiring
processes and personality assessments and culture and like
defining for yourself what's important to you and the people that you work with and
the people you surround yourself with on the team become really important. But if you're
still running around with this idea of, well, you know, if you want to work
here, you must just automatically have the same values as I do.
And then it's just super easy to like punt it down and be like, well,
you must be the problem as opposed to like understanding of like, hey,
did I even line this out clearly? Right, right. Is our, is our
value word cloud a bunch of table stake stuff like customer service and
like innovation or is it meaningful and
intentional and impactful and stuff like that? You know, and
I moved on this pretty, pretty significantly, right? Because as
a sales consultant and trainer, like I, I think that everybody
can do this job, right? It's hard and not a lot of people want to
and that's totally okay. But I think that everybody can find a path to
sales success if they're in the right environment, right? And they've got good
coaching and training and development. But there's a whole lot of people that are still
just running around talking about hunters versus farmers, right? And well,
if you're a sales guy, you should be happy to work on commission. Well, in
certain situations, like there's realm where that makes sense, right? If you're
on a car lot, I get it, right. If you're managing an 18 month
selling cycle to the enterprise, commission only is an absurd
thing that you're trying to sell on everybody because you don't want to pay them,
right? But if you're not steeped in this idea, you
know, you're just pulling from whoever you're pulling from, right? So
I think most people are not running around with their lights on
until they run into the wall a few times, right? And then
I think people start to get, oh, you know, maybe that
whole EOS stuff about like having values that matter. Maybe there's something to
this, you know. And you know, I, you know, there while
I had the idea that if you had good KPIs and you had good reporting,
everything should just kind of like manage itself, right? And I didn't
really think I was going around with the idea of I'm going to work with
adults who know what they're doing. But there was a vibe of that, you know,
and now it's like performance takes effort, right? Like
as, as both, you know, like martial arts guys, right? If you're going to perform
at a high level, you can't do the minimum. You got to be doing them,
you got to be doing more. And you know, there's a lot of roles
inside of an organization that are merit driven and performance driven
roles, which means there's a gap, right? And if you can't manage that gap,
I think, I think everything we're talking about falls into that gap between
you're given a goal, you're given a big task, and then you have to go
off and execute that task. And there's a lot of nuance in how that stuff
gets done well. And I will. I'm going to go again, I'm a
radical on this, so I'm going to go even more hardcore on this than even
John did. John sort of soft shootle this a little bit and made it,
made it kind of nice. And I'm going to. This is my 1, 2. So
he's the 1. Now here's the 2. Here's the overhand right from Riddick. Here it
comes. It's your fault as the leader if,
if the organization is misaligned. I'm just going to say it. It's your fault.
If you're looking for someone to blame, go grab a mirror and hold it up
to your face because it's your fault. And here's how I know,
okay? I know it's your fault because
when I was building my first business, I had
the massive realization that no one cared about it as much as I did.
Not one employee, not one vendor,
not one customer cared about it as much as I did.
And for me to ask them to care about it as much as I did
was, quite frankly, not the
correct question. That's not the correct query,
right? So if I'm searching for alignment, I'm going to use
an old school sort of Greek idea here. Physician, heal thyself.
Right? Like, you got to fix alignment within
you. And by the way, if you're misaligned with your project,
maybe, and I'm in the process of doing this right now, maybe
you kill the project and go on to something else where you are aligned. Right.
And yes, I understand you've got bills to pay and you've got people
to feed and you've got plates to fill and mortgages don't pay
themselves and electric bills don't pay themselves. Themselves. And.
And kids, braces don't pay for themselves. I get it. Money doesn't fall out
of the sky, nor does it grow on trees. If it did,
we probably wouldn't have a, you know, $39 trillion national
debt. We would just go out and shake the trees. I get it. I
understand. And because two things can be true at once.
You have to care. But you can't ask the people who are following
you to care, okay, more than you do. They
can't get there. They can't overcome that. But
what you can do, and this is the. But what you can
do is you can ask them to buy into
a vision. You can ask them. And by the way, just like John,
I'm agnostic. I think that
constrained versus unconstrained is a binary that just gives us a place to land.
I don't care which vision you pick, but I do
not want you to pick no vision. I don't want you to just be a
person out there doing stuff. Right.
And literature gives you a good container
for how this particular vision that you have picked, whichever one it
is, may indeed play out.
So there's a couple of books that you and I have talked about and I
mentioned them in the script. I look at Martian Chronicles as
maybe more of an unconstrained vision, even though it comes off as
pessimistic and cynical, which we talked about that on our episode
because Ray Bradbury was pessimistic about human beings. But he was.
He was pessimistic in an unconstrained manner. Unconstrained
pessimism. That
might be pretty close to where I'm at, like, these days. Right. Yeah,
it's fine. Yeah, it's tough. You know, people are
chaos machines is like one of my. One of my favorite lines. And I tell
everybody, right? Like, you cannot manage the chaos of someone else, you know? Right.
And you just have to know that going into it, otherwise you're just going to
be upset all the time. But Then you have a constrained version of human
nature, which is more like Miyamoto Musashi is a book of five
rings. That's a constrained vision of. And by the way,
constrained vision is really focused on trade offs, right? So it does
the acknowledgment of the pessimism. The Bradbury and I just made up a word
there, level of pessimism and it
says that's baked into the human condition. And
so because it's baked in, the only thing we can do is engage in
trade offs because we can't, we don't have, we don't have access to the
ingredients. We can't go in and substitute out
stone ground, you know, wheat that I raised in my
backyard for enriched flour in the
Pillsbury, you know, cinnamon roll,
roll that I just got. Like, I can't go in and change the ingredients. I
don't have that kind of power. I'm not the Pillsbury
Corporation. And unconstrained vision says we're going to
march on, we're going to march on the Pillsbury Corporation and we're going to make
them take the stone ground flour.
If a leader picks well. So literature, right? This is where I'm going. So literature,
right? So literature helps us sort of
figure out some of this stuff versus
a business book, right? Because business books don't even talk about
visions. You know, I got this idea of visions from, you know, an
economic book, quite frankly, that I don't think most
business leaders would even read unless they were really deeply ensconced in
economics. And by the way, we're going to be covering that book.
Just as a side note, we're going to be covering that book on the show
next month. So stay tuned for that. It's called A Conflict of
Visions by Thomas Sowell. So we'll be
covering that with a guest, not John, but with a guest who
is going to give us a very, very unique perspective on
that. A person who has actually lived, interestingly enough, an
unconstrained life. So this should be very interesting talking to this fellow about
this book. What,
what, how would leaders apply this sort of thinking
to. Well, no, actually a better question is
this. Let's say I go up and pick out, I don't know,
do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Okay.
And I'm looking for what the leadership vision is in here or
what, what is the vision of the characters in here? How do I spot that,
John? How do I, how do I see that as a leader?
Oof.
Because I'm trying to use this book to get me to some sort of understanding
of alignment, right? But not ethics and process. That'll come later.
Or, or maybe it'll all come in the package together. Because I'm going to see
the ethical conundrums inside of the book. I'm going to those, those things are
presented very baldly in front. But the vision part,
that requires a little bit more, to use a larger term, discernment, a little
bit more intuition into what Philip K. Dick is trying to do
with, with his, with his story there. I think
it, you know, kind of going back to what I was saying a second ago.
Like, I think you, I think you, you can't. I
think when you're, when you're in the spot that I was, that, well, I'm just
going to give everyone good instructions. And then it's on you to not mess up
these instructions. And then when you do mess up, you're the problem.
Like, that's where, like, you got to be
above that tier. You know, that, that level of thinking, right?
World is wider. People think differently, right? People communicate
different, they work different. They've got different appreciations for things like conflict and
relationships and, you know, culture and stuff like that. And so
when, when it's just, you know, to put it on the lines of a drill
sergeant, you either like me or you're wrong, right? If you're still
in that mode, none. Like, you're not even
listening to this show, you're not reading any books, you're not doing any of these
things that we're talking about because you're just going around and I call it,
you're a little mini tyrant, right? You're just going around with your world view
and this is the right one and everything. And so when you're at that level
and you're just expecting, right, you're an expectant leader, right? Everyone
should just come up ready to work. Things from home and other situations
shouldn't be impacting your performance. And, you know, why don't people care enough? And all
these other things. I don't really think that you're going to get
much done, right? You're just going to be mad at the world, mad at everybody
you hire. No one's going to be able to say anything to you because they're
going to be the problem every time it comes up, and it's going to be
a recipe for disaster, right? Now, when you're stuck in
that situation, I met a lot of people that
are stuck in that situation. I still meet people who are stuck in that Situation.
I don't know really how to get those people to, like, pick their head up
and look around and turn their lights on and be more, More open to it,
right? Like, I, you know, I think reading helps,
but if, if only nerds read, right, you're probably not gonna, like,
turn. Turn to that and everything. So, you know, I think,
I think great mentorship, I think coaching and development can be great things,
but ultimately, I think people have to run into that wall, right? Like,
when, you know, I just think that most people are just
not fully aware of how wide the
lane can be, right? And so, yeah,
when you're, when you're there, it's just everyone else is the problem, right?
It's never my fault, you know, and it's,
it's, you know, you hit the nail on the head. It's, It's. It's our fault,
right? If. If everyone else is crazy, right? If. And
I don't really like the whole sales and dating kind of metaphor that everyone
uses, but, like, if you date a whole bunch of people and they're all
crazy, at some point we need to, like, look at the common
denominator of, like, maybe they're not all that bad, right?
I've also been in the room where everyone is
feeling such pressure to, like, keep their status and keep
their job, right? That I've honestly heard things like, well, you know
what? We just need to let all these people go, bring in new people, and
that's going to fix everything. Like. And
I was literally. It was a zoom call, right? We're on the zoom call. I
had to. I had to mute myself and turn my camera off because I, you
know, the. The filter was about to run out, right? Because I was
like, I was. I was so gobsmacked, right,
that this was, like a thing that was actually said, right? Because I'd heard
about it, I'd seen people post on LinkedIn about it and everything else like this,
and I was like, yeah, but, like, you know, I was thinking that if I
kept, like, working with bigger companies and bigger companies and bigger companies, eventually
I was gonna. I was gonna work with people who got it right. And so
this is a big fundraised VC back situation. And,
like, these lines were just being handed out, and I was like, well, there's. It
was if I had a bingo card for absurd leadership
statements, right? Three weeks into this project, I hit all of
them, right? You were drunk half the time, taking a shot every single
time. Like, one of the things that I noticed was
that, you know, a Lot of people didn't feel comfortable being open and honest with
the CEO. And so I was like, hey, CEO probably wants to hear
about this, right? And so I was like, hey, not for nothing,
I just want to let you know some of your people don't really feel like
they can be open and honest with you. And he goes, john, I'm a CEO
of this company. Your pulse should race when you're talking to
me. And I was like, I have a book you need to read, and you
have 30 days to do it, or else we're going to wrap this thing up.
Because that's not how I operate, you know? And
I mean, it's just until you are aware that
I think. I think everybody takes up space, right? And I think about
this all the time. And, you know, in Jiu Jitsu, one of the things you
talk about is you got to create space so that way you can move, right?
And you have room to work and everything. And most people,
especially these people who were not super aware of themselves yet, and they're just kind
of going around on borrowed, you know,
motivation and mantras and stuff like this that they got off of Twitter.
They. There's. There's no room for them
to think about it any other way, right? And so it's just, well, I'm
smart. You have a problem with me, you must be the problem. And it's like,
if that is where you are and you can't appreciate that, you are
at least 50% of this, maybe
87% of this, maybe only
15%, and just understand that different people need different things.
You're not ready to lead anybody. You're not even leading
yourself. Couple of things before we go back to
the book. So you. We are
30 minutes in, and you mentioned Jiu Jitsu before I did, so that is. That's.
You're welcome. Thank you. I appreciate. The dam. The dam is now open, sir.
Thank you. Normally, I have to open it myself, but, you know, hey, you did
me a favor this time. Excellent. I love that. And then this is how. This
is how you become a repeat guest on the show, everybody, right? You get to.
You open the can before he does, right? That's right. That's right.
And then the other thing is, I think you're the first guest.
I mean, Tom Libby might have used. No, I don't think Tom has even.
You're the first guest to use the term gobsmacked on the show. So
congratulations, you've crossed over that divide as well. So there we go. I'm going to
make T shirts later on today, you'll get one in the mail. There you go.
That's right. There'll be. You can get those in the Leadership Toolbox
Shop at Leadership Toolbox Us. No, there is no shop. Don't go
there. You won't see a shop. I've never been. Actually, I
should probably make T shirts for this show. That would be a really good idea.
But the. The other thing is that
when I think about what this show
does as one of the resources that we provide, what the content of this
show does. Right. You know, I started
out with a vision, and it changed, right? Because
at first, my vision was just, I have a vision for reading
books that I don't see covered
anywhere else in any kind of way. Right. And I
was like, I'm going to read literature, going to pull lessons from it, and it's
going to be for leaders, and it's going to be called the Leadership Lessons from
the Great Books. Cool. That's a vision. It's a simple vision.
And by the way, it was a constrained vision. And gradually, over the
course of time, what has happened is the process has become
more constrained, but the vision has
expanded. Right. And I even say it in our opening. Right.
You know, welcome to the. And it even sounds. Again, I get
embarrassed when I say it because it's so unconstrained. But. But welcome to the
rescuing of Western civilization at the intersection of
literature and leadership. That is an unconstrained
vision. So I want to be very clear. You can
start in one spot and move to someplace else.
Yeah, but you have to start somewhere.
This is the key thing that both John and I are getting to begin
somewhere. And yes, to John's point, okay, if you don't want to
read, fine, don't read. There's thousands of good podcasts to listen
to. There are hundreds of opportunities to take advantage
for training. There are great resources
floating around on the Internet in terms of workshops and seminars, like
what John does and like what I do. There's all these opportunities. The.
The problem is not that you don't have. The problem
is not a lack of resources. That is not the problem that we currently exist
in, which might have been the problem 50 years ago. I'll give you. That might
have been a problem. Resources were hard to. You couldn't get them. You know, you
couldn't. You couldn't. You couldn't just call somebody at IBM and be like, tell me
all your secrets. I get it. This is not the
problem in 2026. If anything,
we're on the far other side of the pendulum, right? Correct.
We have too many. I mean, way too many. And
not enough discernment, not enough distinction, right? Because, like, you
know, I, you know, I, I follow
a lot of people who make video content, right? And I'll see people, and
you'll see people clinging to these ideas that are for a vertical or
for, you know, like, consulting versus agencies, right?
Is one of these things that I, that I talk about with people all the
time, right? If you're. I was working with a woman,
and she didn't want to be an agency because all she kept seeing
were these, like, stories about how, like, agencies suck and client work sucks
and just be a consultant and just. And just show them the way, right? But
she hated all of our clients. And then when she could get them to
go off and do the thing, it was never at the level or standard that
she wanted them to be, right? And, and, you know,
I'm a little further down the path. And so, you know, I'm like, why don't.
Like, why, why be a consultant? Like, why not just
be an agency? Do them, do the work for them at the,
at the standard that, you know, is important, Charge them a little bit more and
do the thing. And she's like, well, like, agencies suck. And I'm like, where'd you
hear that? And, you know, she. She spouted four or five
really big, you know, influencer names, right?
And. And I was like, okay, that works for some, some people,
but, like, look at the frustration you're living under. You hate all of your clients,
and you're frankly not at the level of being good
enough of a conversation, being able enough to get them
into action, into lead to an awareness
of the work and wanting to push that better and everything. So you, for your,
for your own piece, should just run an agency and do it for them.
And she was like, well, I don't know. I don't know. And. And she's like,
well, then why. Why are all these horror stories about how bad it is?
I'm like, because they're trying to sell you something. They want to sell you
their course. They want to sell you their stuff, right? But, like,
if there's room for both to be true, you know, like, I've
gotten to a place to where I'm. I'm now pretty good about being able to
get people unlocked, and so that way they can go and do their jobs well,
which means I don't have to do it for them. But that's a skill set
that you have to, like, learn, and it's independent of being good at the work
that you're hanging a shingle for, you know? Correct. A lot of people forget about
these things, you know, and. Yeah,
it's just if you like, like, my business has shifted pretty significantly because of
this idea. Because when I, When I first went out on my own, I didn't
want to be a trainer, right? I didn't want to be a guy who
coached people around this thing. I just wanted to build a CRM for people. But
lo and behold, right, I would start working with the team. I'm like, why is
there no loss column, John? Deals, don't. Deals, deals.
Don't get lost. We just give up because we're not pushing hard enough. And I'm
like, that's insane, right? That's insane. And so then, like, you know, coming
around of like, oh, how I use a CRM as a feedback loop and
mechanism so I can't hide from my results anymore is kind of tied to how
I think about the job, and maybe I'll have less frustration, right? And then
also pair that with, like, people starting to ask me for some of these things,
you know, and so there's. I love that idea that
you don't have to start perfect, but you need to be open to, like, the
right feedback from the right sources, right? As opposed to just, well, you're wrong,
you're wrong. You're an idiot. Right? You're wrong, you're wrong. Oh, one
person likes me. Oh, well, you. You get it, bro. No one else gets me,
you know, and everything else like that. It's, it's. It's insane. But
most people want to hang out in that limbo,
the unaccountable limbo. Back
to the book. There's a way out of unaccountability, by the way. We do
cover that in the book. Back to the book for just a minute
here. 12 rules for leaders by. Well, you know,
so we're going to pick up with. We're going to pick up with. With rule
number one. And we're developed a methodology in this book. And
I, I don't think I've ever talked about this with, with. With John on the
show, but it's a methodology that links vision
to model, and it answers the basic question which floats
underneath a lot of this, which I can already hear leaders asking the
ones who have been with us, you know, 30 minutes in now,
how do I get there?
How does that happen? Because, you know, they're saying, you got to get there. You
got to get there, you got to get there. I've got all these options. Well,
how do I get there? Well, here's a simple, although not easy
model for how you get there and I
quote the methodology of communicating with clarity,
candor and courage or the three Cs was developed and teased out
through research and development from the work we have done with teams and leaders over
the last 10 years and was meant to clear up the tendency among organizational
leaders to communicate with themselves, their teams and and their
organizational structures with obfuscation, deception and
insincerity. This is a trend that has continued
to grow in the realm of thought leadership and has achieved heights of scale never
seen before or experienced because of the prevalence of social media
platforms. However, leaders need to understand,
wrestle with, adopt and practice intentionally and ruthlessly the
3C's methodology. This is to
have greater success in defining their roles and responsibilities to the team, the
organization, and the culture. Leaders can extract higher levels of productivity and performance
from teams and organizations to the application of the 3Cs. This will
ensure lower levels of false and real conflict, less political wrangling
over decisions, more accountability, and higher levels of
genuine trust. In the first step, the
leader defines what the problem is they are facing with themselves, the team and or
the organization by first clarifying the issue.
Clarity in conversation, thinking, speaking, and writing to make thoughts, feelings, and
motives known to the other party is critical. Clarity applies both to
thinking and communicating. Establishing clarity as the shared
organizational goal of all individuals requires ensuring team members feel
comfortable with communicating until a shared understanding is established.
A leader's commitment to transparency contributes to clarity.
Candor in a conversation, being candid with empathy and a focus on
intentionality are also critical for success. Candor contributes to
an individual's credibility and trustworthiness. Your employees and
colleagues must believe you are honest, forthright, and sincere. This means they must
believe you are speaking your truth and the truth, or
at least not lying, about circumstances and conditions, no matter how difficult they
may be, and that you are doing so with their best interests
in balance with your interests and the organization's interests in mind.
Courage in a Conversation Having the courage to neither delay nor avoid the
conversation is critical to achieving success. Bernay Brown
describes courage as a quote, unquote heart word. Although the
contemporary definitions focus on bravery and heroism, Brown encourages
us to remember, quote, the inner strength and level of commitment required for
us to speak honestly and openly about who we are
and about our experiences, good and bad. To be
courageous about confronting the problem with themselves, a team and or the organization,
a leader must ask the following questions. Am I ready to confront the other
party without escalating? Am I offering a solution to the problem or just providing
feedback? With no solution? Am I able to emotionally address
the reactions and consequences of this confrontation in a healthy
way? Now let me skip down a couple of paragraphs.
Many leaders struggle with the basics of establishing clarity, engaging with
candor, and responding and planning intentionally with courage for many reasons. However, the
number one reason is. Is. Wait for it. Ego
leaders. Egos cloud their inner monologues, causing a lack of clarity
in their thinking, which leads to a lack of clear writing and clear speaking.
A sure sign of a leader who has abandoned their roles and responsibilities
is the presence of jargon heavy language that serves only to confuse,
misdirect and there's this word again. Obfuscate an issue.
Ego rears its ugly head when leaders are pressed to be candid and usually about
small issues or matters at hand. Being candid requires having a healthy dose of
self awareness. Furthermore, leaders struggle when they lack
clarity in themselves, necessary to accomplish the goals they seek and
the honesty to talk about them. Candor is also a problem because
it is often mixed in with the desire to be liked and to not
offend. This desire then results in hard conversations being
avoided, hard decisions being made at the last possible moment, and
allows people to elevate themselves in status rather than being directed to
do the hard work of emotionally maturing and growing or leaving the
organization. Being candid also requires a measure of vulnerability and
exposure, which means trust must be reciprocated. If the
leader is covering up, so will every other subordinate leader
and to close. Finally, the courage or heart to think, write, say
and act in an ethical, moral and social fashion means more than just bending to
the whims of the crowd. Sometimes the crowd is
wrong. The team often needs to be
led to where it does not want to go. Sometimes the
courage to lead in this way results in burnout, personal acrimony, hazing,
appeals to the dominance hierarchy and all other manners of commonly accepted social
and political negative outcomes. Keep in mind, the courage to lead
in this way sometimes results in excellence, achievement, and moving the team past the mere
accomplishment of a result and toward the accomplishment of
of something greater.
This is the linchpin. This is the.
Yeah, linchpin. I think that's a good word. That's a Seth Godin word. This is
the linchpin. Clarity, candor and courage that exists
as a. And maybe even a lynching is a good word or the best word.
Maybe it's a bridge exists as a Bridge to go from vision to a
model. What do we do in order? How do
we get to where we can have a model of
leadership? A model is a framework fundamentally, and it is
developed after a vision and it exists to provide boundaries for
visions, whether they are constrained or unconstrained.
In the 20th century, most leadership models are
based on research from examining group dynamics in a post World War II,
mostly male dominated, mostly corporate America.
This is reflected by the way in some of the literature that came out of
the late 20th century as well. Noir literature, spy,
espionage, thrillers, even in cinema and in
the movies, which you know, I love. If you're listening to this show, the man
in the Gray Flannel Suit, if you're a person
who watches science fiction or thriller stuff, Twilight Zone, Albert
Hitchcock Presents the Outer Limits all presented
this conformist vision of America
where as I said in the opening, the edge cases
were merely that, edge cases. Now, all
this began to unravel in the 1960s and the 1970s
and well, so did those
models, right? And models based in 20th century Psychological
and organizational research do hang on
though, and they still influence how leaders leverage communication,
emotional intelligence, persuasion, influence, motivation,
accountability, discipline, trust, and even responding or reacting to change.
And by the way, even if those models have collapsed, which I would assert
they have, and this is why we're in a chaotic period. Like John previously mentioned,
the people who are reacting to the chaos are reacting in
a way that indicates that they want to return to
the stability, psychically return to the stability of some of those
models. However, models based
in literature allow leaders to navigate outlier situations, those
edge cases and hard circumstances that didn't exist in the mid 20th
century. This is because the 21st century edge cases, the
outlier situations and the unusually hard circumstances have moved from the
bottom to the top of the leader's to do list in a world driven
by a roiling red ocean rather than a
blue ocean, a calm blue ocean of
dynamic change.
So we've got a model, we've got a bridge between vision
and modeling. We've got some
literature, we've got some books. I know
you said only nerds read, but we have audiobooks now,
so it's not only nerds that listen. So
if we were to compile. I'll ask you a question that's not on this list.
If we were to compile a list of books,
like if we were to walk into a leader's
corner office, whatever, right? Whether it's on
the third floor of a 12 floor building or the 12th floor of a 12th
floor building. If we were to walk into that leader's office,
what books should we. What literature? Not books. What literature should we expect
to see on their bookshelf? John, what would be some recommendations?
Expect to see. Yeah, Expect to see.
And not leadership books. Right? So like extreme ownership is not allowed to be on
the list. Extreme ownership cannot, cannot make the list.
Extreme ownership could be on. Could be on your list at. Could be on your
shelf at home. I would maybe expect that at a leader's home, but in their
office. Right. If they're really paying attention to what we're trying to do
here. Like if I were
walking. And I'll just give you an example, if I were walking into that leader's
office, I would expect to see Sense and Sensibility on
the bookshelf because that's
how you learn about emotional intelligence is through Sense and sensibility. My daughter is actually
reading Sense and Sensibility right now. Like, that's, that's what I would
expect to see. I would expect to see. I would expect
to see.
Oh, I would expect to see Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein.
That's going to tell me something, right, about that leader and about how they're leading.
I would also expect to see maybe 41 stories by O. Henry.
Right. Because that's a nice little dip into a pool
of how people engage with each other who are of different classes.
I would expect to see east of Eden by John Steinbeck because there's an
interesting idea in there about Tim Scholes and about
how vision moves through time across generations.
Right. So those are just some examples of things that maybe of books that I
would, I would expect to see that would not be business books.
But what would you. Maybe I shouldn't say expect. What would you like to see?
Maybe that's. That's a better question. Well, I mean,
I don't know if we talked about this when we talked about Stranger in a
Strange Land, but that was the book I saw on my wife's shelf
that indicated we, you know, we're gonna have some
cool conversations, right? Yeah.
I would say, I'd say anything historical
that's not like a McGraw textbook would be
super helpful. Right. Like, you know, just the, just the idea that we're,
you know, ramroded with the idea, you know, through, you know,
elementary school, middle school and high school in most situations of we're perfect
as a nation state. We don't ever make any pro. We don't ever make any
really big mistakes. Right. So, you know, we're always going to be
okay. And we always learn from these mistakes that we have made and
everything, which, you know, just if you can zoom out a little bit, we can
see how just untrue of a statement that is. Right? So,
and then, man, I'm going to be kind of one note on this, but
like, I would love to see any version of
philosophy. Like, I don't even really care which one it
is. Like, I'm a big fan of stoicism. You and I have talked a lot
about like martial arts philosophy and Musashi and the art of the samurai or the
way of the Samurai. Excuse me, but
like, you know, anything in that, in that space, right?
Something that is going to, you
know, hopefully get you to kind of think about why do you think the way
that you think. Right. You know, I'm, I'm very.
One of the things that I see on a lot of people's shelves which when,
when I look at their actions and I look at how they actually move, you
know, I'm, I'm kind of confused that the Bible is on some of the shelves
of some of these people that I see because it's like, well, I don't really
see you acting like anything that is in this book
from my reading of it, you know. And
so anything in the military
section, right. Like, I really like military sci fi,
right. For some reason I think Game of
Thrones, right? Just like the, the, the
fanaticism, right? And, and those things.
I think, I think military is a really interesting
lens to look at this, right? Because you know, everyone,
I, I was working for someone and this is a long
time ago, and they were like, john, you're in the military, right? And I was
like, yeah. They said, wow, that's hard to believe.
And I was like, why do you say that? And they're like, well, seem to
speak your mind a lot. And I'm like, you know, we're not still in, in
there, right? Because yeah, this is, this is
back home. I'm allowed to have thoughts and opinions here, right. I'm allowed to be
an individual, you know. Yeah. And you
know, so I think, I think people
should read widely, right? And, and try different things,
you know. But I, I know that, you know, reading is a, is a skill
as much of it, as much of it is like a hobby, right? And the
more you do, the better you get at it, the easier it becomes to kind
of pull your ideas out and be like, oh, how did I get here?
Right? Why do I, why do I feel this way, you know?
But I think it's. There's so much other stuff going on, it
becomes very easy, right? In a. In a line that we talked about in the.
In the kung fu school that I came up in. Always a good reason not
to go to class. It's always a good reason to not pick up the book,
you know, but largely
it. It's one of my favorite topics to talk about with people. Like, what do
you read? Right? Oh, I don't read business books. Cool.
That's not what I asked. What. What do you read? You know, and
diving into it, one of my. One of my favorite series of books. This is
like fantasy. It's by Robin Hobby. And there's
this guy, and he's a. He's a royal bastard, right? And so in this
universe, all the royal bastards were trained as assassins, right? Because you have access and
everything else like this. And this guy becomes kind of,
for lack of a better term, you know, brainwashed into just,
like, letting the crown, right, Just control
him and control his life and control his actions, right? And everyone is like, why
do you keep going through this for a family and
a group that's never done anything for you, right? And you can see that.
That stalwart resoluteness, right, that is
often lauded, right? But when you're on the other end of that
stubborn, you know, rigidness,
it doesn't make any sense, you know? And so I think. I think we only
get there by exposing ourselves to, like, lots of things, right? Reading as widely
as possible. That's why I love this show that you do, right? And I love
that it's not focused on just like, well, here's the. Here's the flavor of the
month in the business book, you know, because, you know,
there's a lot that you can figure out. The Patrick Rothfuss has got these great
books that my wife hates. She hates these books, right?
Because in her. Her opinion, it focuses way too much on the. On
the economy and this. In this world and universe, right? And I'm like,
but we spend so much time talking about how much more expensive things are, right?
So, like, there is. There is a parallel here, you know? Yeah. And
I think. I think you can read for lots of reasons, right? She likes
to read just for, like, entertainment and escape and, you know, that's okay.
But I think if you're trying to lead other
people, right, you have a. You have an obligation to kind of
zoom out, right? We're really good at selling ourselves
on literally anything we want to be sold on, you know,
And Going back a minute, you talked about IBM a second ago.
One of the favorite things that I've ever learned about IBM, right, is they were
known for keeping their goals super low. Yeah. Their sales people.
Right. And then putting massive accelerators on
top of those goals. So that way people would be excited to go out and
overproduce to go make more money. Now let's juxtapose that with all the
people that are like, well, we didn't hit goal last year, so let's just add
20% to this year's goal. And then we're just going to write everybody off who
doesn't hit this goal. Right. And they'll just keep moving it and moving it and
moving it up and everything else like this. Right. And so I just think about,
like, that was a strategic decision. And I can imagine the person
who came up with that idea stood in front of that, that board,
hey, here's what I want to do, guys. I want to take like
30% off of our goals because here's what I think is gonna. Like, do you
think that guy was on anyone's Christmas card list? Right. And I'm assuming it was
a guy because it was a long time ago. But, like, look at,
look, we still talk about them, right? The, the old line in sales that
we, that we talk about all the time is like, no one ever got fired
for buying IBM. Right. Still a mainstay, you know. And
it started from one strategic decision
that most people have never even heard about, never even thought, never
even tried. And instead they go the other way. Well,
in a strategic decision based on.
Because I'm going to keep banging this drum based on a specific vision
of how people should show up. So the vision comes first,
then the strategy, then the tactic. Right?
And that vision, I would assert, comes out of, as I said
in the opening, a combination of, of,
of seeing people as widgets, which was what Henry Ford brought
us. One person's as good as another person. We'll just pay him enough.
Health care will be a thing that we'll give them for free because it doesn't
cost us anything for free, doesn't cost us anything more, you
know, and one person is good, as good as another.
A combination of that and the Frederick Winslow Taylor scientific
management, you know, approach, which you combine
those two things together. And the scientific management
approaches that Henry Ford really liked lead,
now they can lead to prosperity. Don't get me wrong, we had 20 years of
prosperity in this country, but it only lasts about 20 years
because quite frankly,
and we talked about this both in, we talked about this in Candide and I've
talked about this on shorts episodes. We talked about this with Francis Bacon and the
great installation. I do fundamentally
believe that the American people and all
their flavors and eccentricities and differences,
we have taken philosophically
the final step on the mountain of the Enlightenment
as a nation state. We're just the last argument on that because we took
all of the ideas of Enlightenment rationality and human reason and
skepticism, and we turned that into freedom of speech and freedom of
assembly and freedom to do this and freedom to do that. And then we pushed
it as far as we possibly could, and we've been ruthlessly pushing
it as far as we possibly can for the last 250 years.
This is where we get into kind of some of the thoughts, this ties into
kind of some of the thoughts that I had and you pushed back on me
a little bit about those, about robots in our robotic future. You
know, last year, you know, I, I, and I
still hold that we do have in America because of where we
are and the kind of people we are philosophically,
forget spiritually and psychologically, just philosophically, the kind of
expectations we have about how we should be in the world,
whether we agree with those expectations or not, they come from somewhere and they came
from the Enlightenment push to push to its logical end.
And leaders aren't, aren't able to escape that, particularly American leaders.
Now, if you're listening to me internationally, we do have a lot of international
listeners. If you're listening to me from India or from China or
from Australia or from Brazil or from Spain.
And I just named a bunch of places where we do actually have active listeners.
Germany. You're going to have to look at your origin, your country of origin,
and sort of where, where things come from and how that
influences the, the unquestioned assumptions that
you have as a leader that you just approach literature with
those kinds of things, those kinds of assumptions are going
to massively influence the kind of
vision you create and then the kind of strategy you create and the kind of
tactics you create and ultimately the kinds of organizations and teams you
create. Wanted to go back to this idea you had about the Bible,
which is interesting to me,
and I'm going to work backwards. I'm going to add some other books that should
go on that list. So a History of the Peloponnesian War,
Herodotus's. You don't have to read all of it, but I mean,
Herodotus did make the point in that book that war is the father of us
all. I think it's probably useful to know that
then we have Seneca. I know you're a big fan of the Stoics,
Seneca's letters. You may not agree with Stoicism, you may think that
it's nonsense, but it's a good idea to be able
to sort of have that idea. A good idea to have that idea in
your head. I'm currently going back through the
Iliad and the Odyssey, looking for different things in the Iliad and
the Odyssey now than I was maybe three years ago when I. When I went
through it. I'm looking for different things now. But I do think that
we. One of the things that as leaders, we have maybe failed to do
at a. At a cultural level is we fail to rebuild myths
or restore myths. Matter of fact, we're spending a lot of time in
the last 25 years or so arguing about which myths we can have and which
myths we can't. And we don't spend a whole lot of time
leading on which myths we will have.
Which I think is. Is very, very crucial. And I think it's part of
the whole identity. The identity collapse and the
collapse around meaning that we've had in our culture. And
then to tie back into the Bible. The Bible is such a versatile book. It
can be read as literature, it could be read as
philosophy, it could be read as psychology, it could be read as myth,
it can be read as ancient folklore, it could be read as a tall tale,
it can be read as a sow
for skepticism. Or.
A weapon against faith. It is such a. Weirdly, not
weirdly. This is such a uniquely. That's the term looking for
uniquely versatile book. I would just push back a little
bit. I wouldn't assume anything about someone's behavior because they've got that book on the
shelf. I would want to know if they've actually read it. It should be the
first question. That'd be the first question.
That's a big thing. I would want to test them on that because the level
of illiteracy we have, and I'm not the first person to say this, the level
of illiteracy that. That even quote, unquote, Bible believing
Christians have just around what actually is in the Bible itself
is absolutely shocking. So the first question would
be, have you actually read that thing? And then after that, we can sort of
go off to the races, you know, Great point. Just great
point. Just like I would presume that if I'm walking into somebody
who. Walking into the office of somebody who says
they are A Muslim, I can't presume that
they've actually read and understood the Quran. I can't presume that
I have to ask them, have they read it, do they understand it? And then
we can sort of have a conversation after that. Now, there may be some. Because
Islam's different. There may be some ticks that indicate that they've read it,
but it's the same thing if I'm walking into somebody's office who is
proclaiming their Jewish identity and has the Torah on their shelf. Have
you actually read that? So I have a question for you around this, around this
topic, right? Do you think, oh,
this is an interesting question. Yeah. Do you think that,
you know, compare the Bible to the Torah to, you know,
all these other religions and everything? Do you think it's the percentage of
people who say that they are
followers of these thinkings? Right. You know,
and, and I'm putting everybody on one side in the
Bible on the other. Right. And in that thing,
I would, I would wager, I'd be willing to bet,
right, Jewish people, Muslims, right. Some of these
other situations, the, the ratio of people
who have not read the text is less.
You would think so. But what
you find or what I would. What I would say is this. It devolves
out differently. So you can be Jewish
and interestingly. Oh, yeah, because there is a big cultural.
Yes. Yeah. Never touch the Torah or the Talmud ever
and not even know about the Mish, the Mishnah. Like you can, you could have
heard about it on maybe, you know, if you attended a Sabbath
meal or something like that. But you can go your whole life as a Jewish
person and not touch that and still claim
Judaism. Now, Islam's a little different, but where
you get, where you get that disjunction
is where you are culturally Islamic, but the culture is
the book. And so you're getting the book in the culture anyway.
Even if you've never actually touched the. Book.
How it shows up in Christianity, and this is the parallel is.
And you all can send me emails about this. This is fine.
People who read devotionals that are snippets of the book
out of context with commentary from other folks around it that
may or may not be accurate without having
to and presuming that that is the thing,
and then moving on with the rest of their day. So Christianity has it.
Islam, that's. That's fair.
Judaism has it. I mean, I think this, this happens with everybody,
right? Like, like, like I run into people and they're like, oh, yeah, like, I
love Stoicism. Joe Rogan is, is awesome. What,
you know. What'S
that meme? Tell me you know stoicism without telling me you don't know stoicism without
telling me you don't know stoicism. Yes, exactly. You know, and,
you know, the, the cultural aspect is, is a really great balancing point,
right? Because, you know, they're, you know, it is, it is
incredibly likely that it's the only thing you have around you. So then you just
kind of fall into the fold and you've never actually gone on, on your
own, you know, kind of like mental pilgrimage, if you will. Right. Of
like, you know, do I really believe these things? Right? Do I,
do I hold myself to these standards, or is it as
convenient? And I think we as
Westerners presume that. We presume our
sins and our virtues
are only unique to us. That's the thing.
And our sins and our virtues are not unique to
us. They are the same as with
everybody else. The thing is, they show up
differently in other places with other
peoples. And so you have to go there and you have to live among those
people. One of the things that, and I'll use a book, an example from a
book that we, that we read. So we read War, right? And
I watched the documentary that went along with that, Restrepo,
right? And the most
striking thing, one of them, several striking things in Restrepo was
when you saw the commander of the 5th
Battalion going and talking to the,
the local leaders
who we all thought were devout Muslims, but
in reality, remember when they killed the cow in Ali,
they only cared about getting paid for the cow. And that is
a disjunction, because if they had been truly followers of
Allah and followers of the Quran in the way that we would
interpret that from reading their book, the
cow should have not even been an issue. Should
have been, okay, this is whatever. And we're, because we're going to go talk to
people about Allah. Same thing. For
on the other side, they look at us and they go, well,
if you read the Bible, you would act this way, but you
don't. Yeah. And so we have all. So, again,
it's, it's, it's examining these unexamined assumptions.
And we can, again, we can use literature to do this in a safe kind
of way, point this out and go, well, I'm never going to go to the
Korengal Valley. The likelihood that I'm going to run into
a, a follower if I'm living in a certain part of
America, the likelihood that I'm going to Run into a person who is
a devout follower of Islam is
XYZ percentage. But I can still get these disjunctions from
literature. I can still see and explore these and
recognize them. And that's the value of. That's the value of those books
on the shelf. And that's what it. That's what it does. Like, again, I think
it's actually easier. Yeah, right. Because
one of the things that I try to do is like, whenever I'm working with
someone who's like, new to sales or has got some weird ideas about him,
the first thing I do is like, I. In my head, I call
it, like the mother tongue. Like, what is that mother tongue? What is that thing
you have done that you took deep
and you couldn't hide? You had to realize luck played a much smaller
portion than. Than everyone else talks about and everything else. Like, that's right, because like,
in martial arts, one of the things we always talked about is, like, your first
art is kind of like.
Like, as my friend Matt would say, you know, like, I'll study shingi, I'll do
tai chi, but, like, I. Wing chun is how I do work,
right? And so there's always this kind of thing. It's going to go back through
these filters and these lenses and everything, you know, and,
you know, so, like, I'm always looking for, like, okay, where is that thing where
you had to go do hard stuff and you couldn't hide in?
The feedback loop was so clean and clear that it wasn't. Everybody was against
you. There was no victim mentality. There was nothing other than
like, they're, they're. I saw this on a cooking show once, and I just think
about it all the time. Don't get. Don't get bitter, get
better. There you go. Right? Because, like, everybody has
that, right? And I. And I truly believe that, like, that if
you can kind of put yourself into that mode, right? Kind of going back to
the Musashi thing when, you know, the way broadly, you see it in all things,
right? Like, if I can find the kung fu version of whatever hard
thing I'm going through, I'm gonna. I'm gonna be able to find my way through
it. Right? And so I think. I think literature makes it easier to see
it as opposed to, like, having, you know, it's too on the nose
sometimes. Right? You know? Right, yeah, yeah. No, I agree
with that. And you know, you mentioned martial arts, so I. I came out
of striking disciplines, right? And we've talked about this before. I came out of striking
Disciplines, Right. And so, you know, got my black second degree, actually black belt
in, you know, taekwondo back before it got into the Olympics and did all the
nonsense with became watered down sport thing with ridiculousness
and, you know, learned all this great stuff.
And to a certain degree, if I'm doing
mma, there are some of those things that I can still do
inside of that space. But for me, that was 20
freaking years ago. That's number one. So my body doesn't do those
things anymore. But even more importantly in going into grappling
and going into jiu jitsu. And this was the
biggest bump for me, the biggest hill for me, which is why it took me
20 years to do something that I probably should have done 20 years ago.
I had to get over my identity, such as it were,
of being a striker. Right. And
look, the modern word is identity. And the word I
use in this book, and it's in a lot of business books, is also ego.
And I've used that word in training and in coaching and all of that. But
I'm really distilling down and actually talked about this in a different context.
Gosh, last week, talking with somebody,
I'm really distilling down the idea, or still distilling down
ego, the idea of ego into something that I think is a
lot more concentrated and a lot more powerful and a lot more accurate.
It's just pride. And I always think of
that scene in Pulp Fiction when Ving Rhames is hitting,
hitting. What is it, Bruce Willis in the head?
Any. I'm not gonna. If you know the movie Pulp Fiction, you'll know which scene
I'm talking about, you know, because Bruce Willis is the boxer and
Bing Rhames is the mobster and they get into an altercation and he starts
hitting him in the head and he tells him, you know, blah. Blah, blah, blah,
blah. Or. No, it was. No, it's not. It's not there. It's earlier in the
movie when he's talking about the bet. That's right. And about how he's going to
be in the ring and he's going to, you know, not want to go down.
And he's going to be like, that's. That's pride. You know, uses another term. I'm
not going to use that term. But he uses this pride messing with you. And
I always think about this, and not always, but I'm starting to think about this
more and more. How much pride messes with us.
Yeah. And how much we have to say, forget that pride.
And that's not the word he used in the movie, by the way, because it's
a Tarantino film. So forget that pride. You've got to let
that go. And the thing is,
pride is. It's insidious.
It crawls up into everywhere. And I don't know a person,
religious or not, who likes pride. Not
one. I also don't know any person, religious
or not. And we can take the religious connotations out of pride if we want
to. I don't know any person, secular or
sacred, with either kind of those worldviews
who looks upon that as being a. A positive
thing overall down the road because of
how it stops your development.
It prevents you from going and doing the new thing. Right?
It blocks you from success. It also
blocks you from failure. But it becomes the shield,
right, that we wrap around ourselves and we call it ego
or we self sabotage. We do all these other kinds of things. I'm kind of
working on this theory and we'll explore this throughout the remainder of the year. This
is one of my things that I've hooked on into a book, and now I'm
going to start seeing it everywhere because this is also one of the threads that
I'm going through books this year. So this will come up later on down the
year when we talk again in this season. But
I think that what the books do fundamentally,
if we read them to my point about the Bible, if we
actually read them, is they challenge us on our pride,
they challenge us on our ego, and they challenge us on our identity, too.
And I think that's the hardest thing for people to.
Particularly leaders to come to, because
if I'm already. If I've already got the status
and I've got the office, what more. I mean,
what more could I possibly need? John.
I'll let John sit with that. There's a.
As you're talking about this, one of my favorite shows is Brooklyn Nine. Nine, right?
Oh, we've never talked about. I love
Andre Brower on that show. I do, too. Yeah. Oh, my gosh.
Phenomenal. Like, he's like my spirit animal because I saw him. I
watched on Homicide, Life on the Street. That's how I first sort
of interacted with him. Just again, like
the guy in the Wire, just a phenomenal character actor.
And I don't want to step on your point about Brooklyn 99, because I have
an impression about that show, but I want to hear what you have to say
first. There's this one character who's
like the very hard detective, right. Is played by a
woman and, and she's like, well, I don't understand why. Why people are making this
stuff so hard. And it cuts to her reading Sophie's Choice, right? And she
puts the book down and she's like, easy. Pick the daughter, right? And then just
like, you know, so I think. I think there's a lot of room to
go through. Oh, you
know, we do these personality assessments, right? Because this was like the beginning of the
change for me, right? Realized I wasn't the only person with my own
issues and concerns and the. In questions. And also realizing that
because I'm not a completely unique individual with these things, I can go
find other people with similar situations and learn from them.
And people will be like, can you just send me the results? No, not just
going to send you the results. And they're. And they're like, why? And I'm like,
because you're going to look at it and be like, yep, that's exactly what I
thought. See? Yep. Right? And there's no, there's no. You
don't write if you're just going through it to confirm your own biases, to confirm
your own thinking, to confirm you're like, yep, I'm perfect. Like, there's.
There's a whole lot of room to read and not learn anything, you
know? And so when one of the lines that I've changed
on a lot was this idea, right? If.
If I'm not feeling a book, I can put it down, right?
And then. And sometimes it's hard for me to do because, man, I love. I
love completing things. Like, I love chalking things off the to do
list, right? My wife is the same way and I've changed a lot, right? Because
one of the people who I, who I really respect, he talks about the. The
rule is a hundred page 100 pages minus your age,
okay? So at 45, right? So if I'm not into it BY
like page 55, okay, I have a little. I have a little. Okay, Is this,
is this really all that important, right? And then also, maybe I should come back
to this thing later, right? There's a, there's a stoic line
of, you know, when, when. Whenever a man, you know, steps foot on
the same river twice, it's not the same river because he's not the same man
kind of situation, right? Because we're. We are all capable of change, you know?
And so I think about that all the time because I've got some books on
my shelf, right? And I'm a big nerdy reader. Everybody, like, I. I Read
a lot, right? And most of it is for development these days, right? I don't
really read all that much for entertainment until, you know, Hyon calls me and, you
know, he wants to go read something weird. But a lot of
his business books, right? Philosophy books and marketing and sales stuff and leadership stuff
and everything. And Thinking
Fast and Slow by Kahneman, right? Everyone's talking about that book. I picked
it up and was like, oh, this is tough. I wasn't ready to read that
book. And so there is a. We have to
be at the right place at the right plane, right? To be able
to kind of get any knowledge out of it. Or we're just like, yep, knew
Shakespeare was garbage, right? And toss it over the shoulder and put all the blame
on him, right? Whenever there's thousands of. Of other people that have. That have seen
those plays, right? And we also need to remember, like, this is a thing that
I talk about with my wife all the time because she loves Shakespeare, and she's
like, it's not meant to be read. It's meant to be watched. It's meant to
be a play, right? So all of these. All these books and stuff like
this are really great, but, like, really what you should be doing is, like, you
know, watching, you know, three or four versions of Hamlet and how are they different?
And what are those interpretations of it? Don't just try to, like, bludgeon yourself. And
just. And especially not for, like, status. Like, look how great I am. Like, look
at these books on our. On our shelves. Like, I love that our. Our
big library downstairs has got everything from Highline to
Stephen King to Atwood to
Scalzi to, like. But they're things that we really read
and find value in. And, you know, they're. They're there for a reason. They're not
there for the display, you know,
and so I think it's very easy to go into it with. And this goes
back to intentions. Like, intention is my. Is my favorite word. It's my daughter's least
favorite word because she hears it from me way too often. But, like, what
is your intention when you're going through this book? Is it to, like, be like,
ah, I knew they were idiots, right? Or is it to go through and potentially
learn something, right? And maybe find a gap within yourself, right? Remove one of your
blind spots, you know, so that way you can be a better. Whatever it
is you're going after. Well, and as we. We're gonna.
We're gonna. We're gonna turn the corner here a little bit. Because we're, we're gonna
have to wrap up here. I got a hard stop here at the top of
the hour and John has been, has been very gracious with me,
with me today. So we're gonna skip over a section of the script and we're
gonna go right to this idea of what do we do with all of this.
Right? And we've kind of talked a little bit about this today,
by the way. Brooklyn 9. 9. Just as a side note,
so I have watched, I've watched like the first like two or three seasons on
Netflix. I can't remember where I, where I stopped at, where I put it out
and then went off to go do other stuff. I'll go back and pick it
up. But Andre Brower is the perfect example of
the phrase that I always tell my kids, which is, if you open up the
door of a clown car, don't be surprised when clowns fall out.
And he's, he's, he's constantly opening the door of that clown
car and then looking around like, I can't believe I'm surrounded by clowns. And
that's, that's the thing that like,
that like catches me all the time. That for me that's the giggle worthy thing
in the, in the show because it is, it's
all, it's all clowns. And you're just like, I don't know what you expected, dude.
I mean you're, you're very Shakespearean in your approach. You're like
Othello there. These people are like 499
pizza from Domino's.
I don't know what you expected. Well, I
mean, not to cut you off real quick, but like this happens in sales all
the time, right? Yeah, let's, let's have sky high goals, let's
not pay them what they're worth, right? Because salespeople don't come into
their full value, right. They come in for a haircut, they have to earn the
rest through, through performance and merit in getting things across the line.
And some people take massive advantage of this, right. $40,000 base, but
you're going to make 250 if you really go after it. And then, and then
you're frustrated that they're sending bad deals over the wall. Like
what you get, what you incentivize for is the old business lesson, right?
So you know, once again, like you did it to yourself sometimes
because you didn't think all the way through the problem. Correct? Exactly. Well,
what you, what you subsidize, you, what you tax
you get less of and what you subsidize you get more of
to sort of tie back to economic thinking. So
sort of a, sort of a law of life. So, okay,
a model can't work without a vision. Right? And a vision can't work without a
model. I would, I would assert that, I think we've kind of maybe come to
that conclusion. And
I, I, I want to talk touch on this area because I think this is
the place where we get most confused over the last 25 years. And I also
think this is the place where we're going to have to do some really yeoman's
work to rebuild visions and models.
Because so far what we've talked about are very,
for lack of a better idea, they're very 18th and 19th century ideas.
Right? I mean, yeah, we mentioned TV shows and we've thrown in cinema and we've
mentioned movies, but in reality we're talking about. And that has been the
focus of this show and will continue to be the focus of this show. Going
backwards to a discipline that
many people have abandoned. We do live in a post
literate, highly visual culture driven
by algorithms and social media.
Now I'm going to bring this idea over from another conversation that we
were having, John and I were having before I press record. There are people
who are perpetually online and then there's a whole bunch of other people who are
not. And I made a conscious decision starting last year
to begin to build a wall between myself and the,
and the, or between the online people and myself. I began
to consciously do that and intentionally do that and then
to go out and not necessarily explore, but to go out and meet the people
who are not perpetually online and talk with them and find
out what they're actually seeing and then to start building projects with them and
doing things with them as I sometimes frame it in the real world.
And that's been, that's been an interesting, it's been an interesting adventure because we talk
with people who are not perpetually online. They see a totally different reality
than the people who are perpetually online.
And you do begin to see the, the gaps, as we
mentioned before, between those two, those two
lack of a better term worldviews or visions. Right
now I'm not saying one's good or one's bad. I'm really saying that there's gaps.
Okay, yeah.
We've talked about what literature maybe speaks best to creating
that vision. We've talked about the Peloponnesian wars and we talked about
Seneca. We've cut up The Bible a little bit, which is okay. That book can
handle it. Yeah, it's fine.
I mean, any. Any solid book can handle it. Any solid book. If you
can't stand up to a little bit of pushback, like. Yeah.
You know, you're probably not writing anything in the first place.
Correct, Right, exactly. So when we look at
these models, how does technology.
How do we take this, this vision, Right. Whether it's constrained or unconstrained.
Okay, we're gonna have a model, right? We're gonna get a
model from a model of leadership from. From. Let's say
we're going to get a model of leadership from the Iliad. And our model of
leadership is going to be based around a mythic story that we tell ourselves as
a team. Cool. That's fine. I have no problem with any of that.
How does technology factor into this? How do we pull
technology in? Because what I often see is
the technologists and their story
becoming the dominant story and driving a whole bunch of other
reactions. Whereas I think if you have a vision
first from the leadership that is consistent and coherent,
which is two other things, but that you get there with clarity, hinder, and courage,
right? You cross that bridge, the three Cs, bridge to the model.
Now, the technology serves the model rather than
driving the model, and it serves the vision rather than driving the
vision. Am I looking at this incorrectly, or is there a better
way to sort of frame this for leaders? Well, I
think that's a. That's an interesting topic,
right? The. The thing that I really appreciate
about the Internet is there's no real need. There's
there in, you know, coming up as a kid in the 80s, right. I'm
45. You know, I was kind of nerdy, right. You know, and I wasn't
so nerdy that I. I couldn't, you know, you know, have
conversations with other people. But, like, I wasn't really a big football guy,
right. Nerd. You know, and so, right, there, there's. But then, you know,
the Internet is really great at, like, you can find your people, right? You can
find your tribe, right. You can find your community. And
I think if you just go, like, looking for the people who are
like me, right? The people who, who already agree with everything that you
agree with. You. You build yourself this, like, echo chamber, right?
And algorithms are really good at giving you more
of what you've already kind of voted for, if that makes
sense. Right? And so I think that the. I think. I think
that the, the danger is, well,
you know, these five people, I see them all over LinkedIn, right? And so
they were like, man, that's five people. Like, holy
smokes. You know, and so I think, I think it's, I think it's as
helpful as it is hurtful, right? Because then people don't do their own
fact finding. You know, we were talking about this, this conversation on
Friday before Snowpocalypse, and I was kind of like, man,
like, I've got a lot of gray area on this, right? Because I've kind of
moved and I've shifted and I think that most people are just running around on,
on autopilot. I don't really think that most people have done enough reading and reflection
to really kind of understand their own how and their why. And
so then it's like, you know,
you know, people are just looking for people who believe something
similar, right? And that's where, you know, the, the, the whole
guru thing comes into play, right? And you know, the influencer gurus are just
like, well, you know, and, and the algorithms feed into this, right?
You're going to get one polarizing opinion, you're going to get the other one. If
you like the other one. Okay, great, right. It's just going to bottle feed you
more of that. And so our capacity, I think, for being able to kind of
think through the problem. Why do I feel these things? What are the trade offs
of thinking this way, of believing this way? Like,
does this actually get all the way through the gauntlet,
Right? You know, going back to the, the,
you know, the, the Christian, you know, the Christianity conversation, right?
I know a bunch of people who are very, you know, they talk
about being, being very Christian and everything. And they're so competitive that they
would chop their, like, mother's legs out to like, get ahead of them and stuff
like this. And it's like, it's like, I'm not saying
that that's necessarily a bad thing, but like, when you're putting yourself out
there, that you're this kind of person, but your, your, your actions do not align
with that stuff. At a certain point, you've not ran the gauntlet completely,
right? You know, and there's a version of this, like in
stoicism, right? Because like in, you know, I talk with a lot of people who,
you know, stoicism is very popular in business circles. It's very popular in like,
sales and entrepreneurship circles and stuff like this. And then I'll start asking about, like,
okay, what are your thoughts on like, you know,
temperance? Oh,
not, not super worried about that, you know, and Ryan Holiday talks about this
all the time, right? That like certain, you know, there's four main virtues,
right? And there, there' popular ones. And then the other
pop. The, the other two are just skipped over by most people,
right? And, and there's a version of that in Christianity. There's a version of
that in Islam. There's a version of that, I'm sure in, in every like,
philosophy, you know, that the people can go through. And it's like
if you don't go deep enough, you're probably cherry
picking.
Well, and if you can't, if you can't see the world through your enemy's
eyes, whatever that may mean, you
probably are not seeing the world fully.
Oh, like I saw this on
LinkedIn today and this woman was talking about that she had to go block
someone because he was being very, very antagonistic and
just very aggressive and everything. And so he followed her over to another
social media platform. Oh my. And he was like, you
blocked me? Like. And then he goes, what, you don't like
logic? And it's like the idea that
like your version of whatever you were pushing and touting is the
only logical conversation. Everyone else must therefore be an
idiot and not lined up with logic because they don't agree with you
is the whole problem that everyone has with like crossfitters and vegans.
Exactly.
Oh my gosh. I think
that's a good place for us to begin to, for us to begin to
wrap up one of the things that we have
to do and one of the things we're going to be doing actually as a
show, as listeners, as our guests, and even myself as a host
over the course of this year, is we really going to be focusing on
doing and talking about what are the
various intersections of literature and leadership? What can we
pull from literature? What can we pull from leadership in more
of these intentional kinds of conversations, these
intentional kinds of what I call mashup conversations.
A mashup is mixing everything together and pushing on it and
poking it and pressing it and stress testing in and
seeing what works and what doesn't. We do
mashups because A, I don't know everything, I can't
possibly know everything, B, there's more than one
perspective in the world, and C, just because I could see the world
through my enemy's eyes doesn't mean I have to agree with what I'm seeing. It
just means I have to see the perspective from where that person
is standing. Now, I want to be very clear. None of my co
hosts are my enemies. They're all my friends. We're all in this
boat together. We're all rowing in the same direction. And by the way,
we've invited new folks into the boat who want to join us. It's interesting
that John mentioned that his, his wife is into Shakespeare. We actually got a
referral from one of our guests to a. To a person who has
done their thesis work in Shakespeare, had a conversation with her. We're going to
be bringing her on. She's going to be talking with us about Macabeth because we're
doing Macbeth this year finally, and
Troilus and Cressida. So we have to figure out which one of those two we're
going to. We're going to land her on, and it's going to be great.
The, the. The whole point of this show, the whole point of
this is to drive the intersection of literature and
leadership. It's to drive that intersection into a sharp point and to
be the tip of the spear on this.
This is a valuable and I think, worthwhile
quest. It is a quest myth. It's a story.
Of course, I'm telling myself, just like the Iliad, just like the
Odyssey. And yes, I do have a vision for it.
And now I've got a model, and now I've got a quest.
And so I would never, and none of my guests would, but especially
myself, I would never ask you to do something as a listener that I wouldn't
do myself. I eat my own dog food, or at least I try
as much as I possibly can to eat my own dog food. And that is
a statement that I'm making with as much humility as I can possibly muster, because
it's true. We do have to worry about
engagement. We do have to worry about connections.
The fact of the matter is we do have to worry about which way the
pendulum is swinging. Is our vision constrained or unconstrained,
not just as leaders in our families, in our communities,
in our civic organizations, but also as
leaders on our teams and in our businesses, small,
medium or large, in the places where people look to us
and they are looking to see us as leaders.
I will. I've said this before, perhaps not a short episode,
but I want to say it again here.
These days, most people know who the President of the United States is.
Good, bad, ugly, or indifferent because we've nationalized a lot of this.
But there are still a good chunk of people and leaders.
It would be worthwhile for you to pay attention to this. Whose
example of leadership is not the President of the United States. It's
not even the mayor of the town that your organization, your
business or your family happens to be in. There's a whole bunch
of people that are surrounding you and their example of
leadership. The only example of leadership they are seeing
is you. What is your
vision, what is your model
and what are you going to do if it's broken
to restore that model or even to make that model
better. Literature can give you the why
but you're going to have to come up with the what and we're going
to explore all of that this year on the show.
So with that I'd like to close our episode, our first mashup
episode of the year today of the season. I guess I should say not year
but season. I guess I should say that my producer would probably like it if
I said that with John
Hill AKA Small Mountain and I would like to
thank him for coming on the show today. And with that well
we're out.