Bookworm Transcripts

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All right, so let's talk about a book.

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But before we do that, Mike, tell me about Macstock.

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Macstock was great.

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Happened as we record this last weekend.

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Shared with you before we hit record

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that the timing was tough for me because I overcommitted

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to stuff, basically.

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And I did two all day workshops.

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Immediately got in the car, went down to Macstock,

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and then did two more workshops.

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But it was a ton of fun.

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One of the things that was added this year, kind of at my request,

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was these workshops.

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I collaborated a little bit with Mike Potter on this idea.

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And I say a little bit because he did the majority

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of the heavy lifting.

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I had a couple of calls with him,

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and we had some emails that went back and forth.

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But he basically put it together.

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But essentially, this conference was Saturday, Sunday.

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And on Friday, the day before, there were four workshops

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that were an hour and a half.

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I did mine on journaling, and I shared some journaling shortcuts,

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helped people craft their journaling workflows,

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not just the crazy one that I do an obsidian,

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but things that you could do inside a day one,

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or even Apple's journal app, stuff like that.

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And it was awesome.

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I think there were like 40 some people

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that signed up for the workshops, which was great.

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And then the conference itself, I spoke on Saturday.

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Unfortunately, I had to leave early.

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So I took off after the conference

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and got up on Saturday.

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I wasn't there for Sunday.

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But yeah, it was at a new, freshly renovated conference

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center at a Holiday Inn, which was kind of the perfect place

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for it.

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There were tables set up so people could set up their computers

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and follow along with stuff.

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And it's always one of my favorite weekends of the year

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because those are my people.

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I got to meet somebody from the Life-Themed cohort

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and the Practical Pecam cohort that I do some Hugo.

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I'm not going to share a last name, but shout out to Hugo

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for your listening.

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That was fun to hang out with you in Woodstock.

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We went to, got dinner together, went to the bookstore.

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He convinced me to buy a fiction book for my trip to London.

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Which one?

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Which one?

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The Three Body Problem.

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Oh yeah, three-body room.

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OK.

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Yeah.

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Winner of the Hugo Award, which we had a good time with,

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like, hey, you picked this one.

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He's like, yes, I personally recommend this book.

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So yeah, it was really fun.

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And I would love to do some sort of, like, bookworm library,

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whatever style meetup.

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So I met a couple people who listened to the show.

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If you are thinking about coming next year,

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you absolutely should, first of all.

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But second of all, let me know.

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And we'll try to arrange something that would be super cool.

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Well, good.

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I'm glad it went well.

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I'm glad you--

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I know you this past week and then rolling into this week

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has been a whirlwind for you.

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So I'm glad all that stuff went well.

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All right, let's hit follow up.

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I'll go first.

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I had two items on follow up.

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And that's in my reflections and personal retreat.

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Was I thinking about whether I've done the right thing

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or whether I've followed my North Star?

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And yes, but not a lot.

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So mainly on the follow the North Star one

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is I frequently get this reoccurring question of,

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are you putting your time in the right places?

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So sometimes I answer that question positively.

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And I'm like, yeah, I did a good job today or this week

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or over the last couple weeks.

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And then sometimes I do not.

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Sometimes I feel like I've focused on the wrong things

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and I've put the wrong things first.

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So that's something I want to keep doing.

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I want to keep thinking about, one, what is that North Star?

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And am I pleased with the North Star?

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And then the second one would be,

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am I doing things in a way that it's done the right way

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towards that North Star and keep it on track with that?

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So that's something I'm going to keep working on.

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In terms of looking up Gandhi's seven blunders of humanity,

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I did not do that.

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I actually completely forgot I was supposed to do that

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until I looked at these show notes and said,

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oh, I said I wanted to look up Gandhi's seven blunders

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of humanity.

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And I really need to put that in my reminders app

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if I, or my task management app if I want to actually remember

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to do that.

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So how about yours?

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So you're trying to constantly be in the lookout

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for new allies.

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Yeah.

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And I was just reviewing that episode.

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We record this right before that one goes live.

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So a couple weeks in advance.

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And I just listened to that again.

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And I basically said at the time that there's no way

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this will actually be completed.

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But the perspective shift, I think, is there, which is essentially

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to engage in discussion with people who have different opinions

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and then not just walk away from that discussion,

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but maintain those relationships.

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And that was something that I had a little bit of an opportunity

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to practice when I was at MaxTock.

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Kind of the cool thing about MaxTock

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is it brings together all these nerds and geeks

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from all over the world.

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But other than Apple stuff, there's not a whole lot

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I have in common with some of them.

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And that's OK.

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That's what we're there for.

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That's what we talk about.

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And in the course of the discussion,

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other things come up.

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And it's kind of interesting.

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It's like, oh, so you believe that thing?

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OK, that's interesting.

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But it's cool because it's so small that you get to--

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you're kind of forced to spend a lot of time

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with the people that are there, not that I

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got a chance to hang out with everybody.

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But it's just such a small group that you really

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don't have the opportunity to just go off and form your clicks.

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And I'm going to hang around with these people

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because there's 1,000 people here.

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And we're just going to go do our thing.

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It's not how it works.

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The hotel-- well, we think the exception of us

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because we stayed at an Airbnb because we

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love the town of Woodstock so much.

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But for the most part, the conference

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is all at the same place.

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The hotel where the rooms are, everybody is right there.

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So it was a cool time not to rehash that whole follow up

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again.

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But yeah, so all that to say, I feel like the perspective shift

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is there making progress.

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But I don't think this is ever really going to be done.

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I just hope that the perspective, I guess, kind of sticks.

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Good.

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Good.

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Let's get into today's book.

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Today's book is called "Uncommon Greatness" by Mark Miller,

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the five fundamentals to transform your leadership.

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So Mark Miller is the-- he was the former vice president

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of high performance leadership at Chick-fil-A.

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He runs a website that's dedicated to leadership

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and leadership consulting.

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In the very intro part of the book,

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he talks about the fact that this book came out

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of two former books.

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And it's kind of the one book to put these couple ideas together.

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So the first idea would be, hey, how

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do we develop leadership skills?

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And that book he has is called "The Secret."

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And then the other one is, how do you develop a heart

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for leadership?

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And that one's called "The Heart of Leadership."

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So he said, well, how do we put these two together?

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And he wrote a book called "Uncommon Greatness."

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I think the structure of the book is pretty straightforward.

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So you have essentially an introduction.

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You have five different sections.

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And each of those five different sections is a fundamental.

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So you have a fundamental one, two, three, four, and five.

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And then you have an epilogue at the very end.

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It's a pretty-- I would say concise, tight book--

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wasn't very difficult to read at all in terms of its structure

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or in terms of the way it was laid out.

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Anything you want to hit on, Mike, about the book?

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Well, I agree with you that it's pretty tight.

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It's a pretty easy read.

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Will-- I'm interested to see where this conversation goes.

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Because like you said, it's a little bit of a greatest

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hits type book, combining things from other places,

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which I am generally not a huge fan of.

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There's a lot of little things that he mentions in here

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that he could obviously speak a lot deeper to the points

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that he's making here.

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And I'm kind of curious what sort of paths

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your brain went down as you were reading this.

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Yeah.

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Let's see how the conversation unfolds

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as we talk about the actual book.

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And then if that question comes back up, ask me that.

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Ask me that again.

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Like if I don't address it during it.

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So let's go and get into the introduction.

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Introduction is fairly high level in terms of--

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you know, I guess the way I can summarize it

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is in his mind, every problem is a leadership problem.

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He makes the statement, every problem is a leadership problem.

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So you ask yourself, do you agree with that?

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Like, I mean, that's where I went in the introduction.

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I was like, well, do I think every problem is a leadership

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problem?

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I don't know if I have the answer to that.

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But it wasn't difficult or it's not

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difficult for me to think about the fact

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that a lot of problems do stem back to either I'm leading

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poorly or someone's leading poorly.

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And therefore, we've lost direction

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or we've lost the North Star or the way we want to go on this.

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So he breaks this uncommon greatness

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and into a couple of different ways.

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So first thing he says, believe leaders, uncommon,

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great-- or uncommonly great leaders,

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I guess is the way I'll describe it.

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Believe they can make a difference in the world.

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They care deeply about personal excellence.

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And then they're energized by producing tangible results.

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So these are what uncommonly great leaders do.

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I thought the intro, the very, very first part

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of the introduction was a little bit cheesy,

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a little bit like motivational speaker-y.

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But maybe I'm getting too quickly into styling rating,

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but I had a little bit of like, ah, this is a little bit cheesy

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for me.

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So that's the introduction from my perspective.

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I should love this book on the surface,

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because this is the type of person

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that I look up to and I want to learn from.

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They've had the experiences.

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They have the connections.

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They can speak to these things from a place of experience

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better than I can and a lot of people

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that I know in my immediate circles.

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And right away, I feel like we've

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gotten off on the wrong foot because of kind of what you said

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every problem is leadership problem.

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He's not wrong when he says that.

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But it also is a polarizing statement

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that he shares right at the beginning,

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which even for someone who is fascinated

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with the topic of leadership felt ostracizing.

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Like, OK, you're pushing me out instead of drawing me in.

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And I guess just for like comparison's sake,

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some of the other books that I've read on the topic

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of leadership, which I have read a ton of them.

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But some of the ones that I've enjoyed the most

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are like John Maxwell and he kind of humblebrags

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about the relationship that he has with John Maxwell.

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And you compare this to like a John Maxwell book,

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like the 21 Laws of Leadership.

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And it just has a different tone right from the beginning.

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And I hesitate to talk about this because I'm sure Mark Miller

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is an incredible person.

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And some of the things that he shares here,

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it's like, I would love to meet you in person and pick your brain.

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Like, if I could see you talk about these things,

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then I feel like they would hit totally different.

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And I would get more value from them.

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It's almost like he has all of this experience.

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And he just had some trouble translating it

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into the written word in a way that

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is engaging to someone who is interested in the topic.

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Maybe some of that is, like I mentioned,

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the greatest hits thing, where it's a mashup

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of some of the different ideas that he shared in other books.

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I never like it when people do that, by the way,

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because you're left with a couple of paths

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whenever you reference something that is in another book.

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You can be like, oh, there's these five things.

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And don't worry about it.

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I talk about somewhere else.

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I assume that you've read it all because you're my greatest fan.

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Why else would you be reading this?

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Or you could be like, OK, you probably not read this stuff

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before, so let me unpack all of this even briefly,

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but it takes 10 pages to get through.

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And he takes the first approach, which is weird,

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because it's a short, quick read.

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And I get it if he did that everywhere that he was

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dropping the stuff in.

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It probably doesn't fit anymore.

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But it just felt a little bit like I'm not--

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because this is my first experience

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with Mark Miller picking up this book.

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It's like, oh, you're not cool enough.

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You're not in the club.

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You don't know about this stuff.

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But here's the upsell for only--

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he doesn't go that far, but that's sort of in the same vein.

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It's like, well, if you want to go deeper with this, then.

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So I didn't get the--

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if you're the cool enough vibe, right?

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I never got that vibe, but I very much got the upsell vibe.

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And then one of the things-- and I can't remember

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if he does it after the introduction,

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but it's not very far into the book.

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And I wonder how much it's the publisher.

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I wonder how much it's him, where they kick you to a website.

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And they say, for our free guide on whatever it is,

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and it's like, ah, dad, go on it.

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And as soon as I read that, my brain

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shifts to this book is it's going to have some decent stuff

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in it, but it's kind of a marketing book.

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The whole point of this book is to push you to the website.

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That way, then, we can do consulting.

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And it's like, OK, but there's been probably 10 books or so

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in my life where that's happened.

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And they all have the exact same feel to them.

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They all have this weird--

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you said it, but like cheesy motivational

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is the only thing I can think of as a way to describe it.

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But it's like, there's something off-putting about it.

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And it sets the stage or it sets the tone for me

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where I'm just like, I don't know.

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And then we go on and it kind of flavors the rest

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of the book for me.

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So that's just kind of how it started for me.

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Yeah, so let's unpack that a little bit,

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because if we don't, maybe I come off as a little bit

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hypocritical, because what that essentially

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is a lead magnet.

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And I do the exact same thing with a lot of the stuff

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for my creator business.

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I include a link to the book notes

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that I take from these books.

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And it's a landing page.

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People can enter their email and they get the notes.

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But the thing that I think that rubs me the wrong way about

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this is it feels tacked on.

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Like there's not a real clear connection as to, OK,

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you are obviously interested in this.

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So this is the next thing that would be of benefit to you.

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It's like the marketers were like,

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hey, we need something to capture emails.

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What can you create?

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He's like, I know, I'll make an assessment,

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which he mentions assessment.

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And again, like you probably heard me rant about this before.

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I hate it when people talk about that,

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because I know what goes into an actual research-based

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assessment.

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And this is not an assessment.

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This is a survey maybe, probably a Facebook quiz.

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So don't call it an assessment.

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But yeah, it's like here's the URL.

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Here's a QR code.

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Like checking all the boxes in terms of the marketing person

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who worked with them and like, do you have this?

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Do you have that?

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But it doesn't feel like, OK, this is actually valuable for me

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to get the deliverable outcome.

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And maybe that's part of it is like it doesn't feel

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there's a deliverable outcome with this.

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Yes, he's got five different fundamentals.

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But again, they're coming from two different books.

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And all of my action items come from the fifth fundamental,

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which is based on the other book.

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So maybe I just missed the forest through the trees

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as I was reading this.

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And other people would read this and be like, oh yeah,

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obviously I want that downloadable stuff.

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But it feels tacked on.

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And it doesn't feel like you're considering the reader

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as you go through it.

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One quick example for the lead magnet that is actually

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working for me and the reason why I think it's working

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is because it is delivering value to people who

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are watching my YouTube videos.

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And I know that if you're watching a YouTube video on how

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I do journaling, you're interested in journaling

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and obsidian.

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So you probably want my journaling template.

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OK, so that's what I'm going to offer you.

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It's not just like, hey, for a bunch more resources,

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go over here.

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It's I guess the obsidian vault is sort of that.

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But the main thing, the thing that you came there for

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is in there.

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I throw a bunch of other stuff in there as well as other things

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that you may be interested in.

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But I'm not asking for anything extra in terms of that.

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It's like, well, you want the template?

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Well, here's the template, by the way, all of the templates

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and all of the tips and all that stuff is also in there.

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But I feel like if you're coming to this because you're

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interested in this, this is the natural next step.

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So yeah, I think my brain has a bias too for expecting

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that in social media, expecting it in YouTube,

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expecting it in those avenues, but not expecting it in books.

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And this is probably a me issue.

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I do not expect you to upsell the wrong word.

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But like, oh, go to this site for more resources.

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Go to this site for more tips.

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And I can very much see it coming out of a, hey,

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I just couldn't fit all the stuff in the book.

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Or I didn't want to go to that length in the book because I

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have all these other resources over here.

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But it just doesn't sit right with me in a book.

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OK, so let's put that aside.

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Sorry, one other one other thing because I think I know why

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it doesn't sit well for you in the book.

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I think it's because you don't get to the end.

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And then it's an invitation to go to the next level.

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It's almost framed as the expectation is you're

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going to do this and follow along.

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Otherwise, why are you pointing me to this after the first

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section?

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And that feels weird.

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Like I bought the book because I want to know what you have

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to say.

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Isn't that enough?

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Now you want my email?

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Just for me to understand your arguments

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and decide if I want to do anything with them.

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Whereas if it's at the end, it's like, OK, yeah,

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we're on the same wavelength.

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I like you.

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Let's do this.

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Yeah, yeah.

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That's a good point.

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It's a real good point.

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Now I have a--

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in my mind map here, I have a different section.

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And I don't know if it was a distinct chapter or not.

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But I have to choose a different path.

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So I have the introduction that kind of lays out this idea

00:19:23

of, hey, leadership is important.

00:19:25

And then I have to choose a different path that essentially

00:19:28

is greatness and common or uncommon leadership, right?

00:19:33

And this idea of greatness.

00:19:34

So he has this table that he puts in there.

00:19:36

And it says, common leadership is focused on the achiever,

00:19:39

widely celebrated, exalt the individual.

00:19:41

Uncommon is focused on others.

00:19:43

Often goes unnoticed.

00:19:45

It elicits excellence for others enduring value.

00:19:47

And then he gets into the overview

00:19:50

of the fundamentals of uncommon leadership, which

00:19:53

this all might be actually in the introduction.

00:19:55

And I just separated it out for some reason

00:19:56

into two sections.

00:19:58

Is it its own chapter, its own thing?

00:20:01

Yeah, so actually, I guess we should talk a little bit

00:20:04

about the structure of the book.

00:20:05

We can definitely go into this section here.

00:20:08

But the table of contents--

00:20:10

because I look at that when I create the mind maps,

00:20:12

there's on the-- and I basically look for the headers in there

00:20:15

for the different sections.

00:20:17

So introduction and choose a different path

00:20:18

are both on the same level.

00:20:20

And then there's a header for fundamental one,

00:20:23

see the future, fundamental two, et cetera.

00:20:26

Under each one of the fundamentals,

00:20:28

there is essentially a chapter which has material,

00:20:31

and then another chapter called ideas for action.

00:20:34

Which I like that approach.

00:20:36

Here's a whole bunch of things you may consider doing

00:20:39

as a result of this material.

00:20:41

What I was not a fan of was most of the ideas for action,

00:20:44

I guess, because I got to the end and I was like, huh,

00:20:47

I only jotted down a couple of those,

00:20:49

and they were all from the last one.

00:20:51

Yeah, yeah.

00:20:53

OK, so we got an idea for--

00:20:54

for we're going, so the five fundamentals of leadership,

00:20:56

let's get there.

00:20:57

Actually, one more thing about choose a different path.

00:21:00

You mentioned the common greatness

00:21:01

of an uncommon greatness table,

00:21:03

which I jotted that stuff down to.

00:21:04

And I understand and I like where he's going

00:21:08

with defining uncommon greatness.

00:21:10

I guess my issue is with the things

00:21:13

that he listed under common greatness.

00:21:14

I'm not sure I would call that even greatness.

00:21:17

OK, OK, yeah.

00:21:19

I mean, I get what he's going for there.

00:21:21

This is how most people think about it.

00:21:22

This is what it actually is.

00:21:24

But I don't know, just didn't really

00:21:26

like the way that he defined that as greatness.

00:21:29

I don't think that's not what it is.

00:21:33

So this irony wouldn't have occurred unless you and I

00:21:36

had this conversation.

00:21:37

But I have the question in this section about ask.

00:21:41

So I put ask in capital letters and then I say,

00:21:44

how can I add the most value in every situation?

00:21:47

And then I think about what we're doing.

00:21:49

And it's like, does this book add the most value in every--

00:21:52

it's like in every situation?

00:21:53

Or do I need to be kicked out to--

00:21:55

what is it?

00:21:56

Every day leadership or something like that?

00:21:57

Everydayleader.com.

00:21:58

I don't even remember what the URL was.

00:22:01

But OK, so let's get to the five fundamentals, which

00:22:03

we're then going to unpack in each one.

00:22:06

So see the future, engage and develop others,

00:22:09

reinvent continuously, value results and relationships,

00:22:13

and then embody a leader's heart.

00:22:15

Now, Mike, I have a question for you

00:22:17

as we talk about these five fundamentals

00:22:19

of uncommon leadership.

00:22:22

Does he say in Choose a Different Path

00:22:25

that they represent the acronym SERVE?

00:22:27

Or does he wait until the very end of the book to do that?

00:22:31

Because if he said it in the beginning of the book,

00:22:33

I missed that.

00:22:34

And I feel like that's not something I would have missed.

00:22:37

And then you got to the end and I was like, oh, that's cute.

00:22:41

Right?

00:22:41

Like that's really cute.

00:22:44

But I never had it until the very end of the book.

00:22:46

So did I miss that?

00:22:48

Or did he just not-- did he hold it till the end?

00:22:50

I mean, if you missed it, I missed it too,

00:22:53

because I had the same reaction.

00:22:54

And maybe that's what he was going for at the end.

00:22:58

But it is a little bit weird.

00:23:00

OK.

00:23:01

All right, because just in case people missed it

00:23:03

as we were talking about it, see the future, engage,

00:23:05

reinvent, value, and embody the first letter of all those

00:23:09

spells out the word SERVE, which at the very end of the book,

00:23:11

he's going to talk about the fact

00:23:13

that leadership is service, which there's

00:23:15

been a bunch of stuff written on the fact

00:23:16

that being a SERVEENT leader and all of that.

00:23:19

OK, so we'll maybe we'll unpack these

00:23:22

as we get to each one of them.

00:23:24

So let's start with see the future.

00:23:25

So now we're in fundamental one.

00:23:27

Now we're in see the future.

00:23:28

We'll do ideas for action separately.

00:23:30

So actually, now let's just do it all.

00:23:33

What did you get, Mike, out of see the future?

00:23:36

Like what was your big takeaway in terms of this?

00:23:39

Or you obviously said already that you don't have many ideas

00:23:43

for action until we get to the last one.

00:23:45

So what's your key takeaway from see the future?

00:23:48

Yeah, well, essentially, it's talking about the leader

00:23:54

needing to have a vision.

00:23:56

And he's got some cool stories as he

00:23:59

goes through these different sections where

00:24:02

this is an example of a leader with vision.

00:24:06

He has some specifics as to reasons

00:24:08

why a leader would withhold the vision.

00:24:11

But the way that it's packaged under any fundamental one

00:24:14

feels like he had a bunch of listical blog posts.

00:24:18

And he tied them together.

00:24:20

And then maybe asked chat GPT to smooth it out.

00:24:23

(laughs)

00:24:24

Wow, wow.

00:24:27

I mean, there's some pretty big leaps.

00:24:29

I don't know that it's necessarily in this section.

00:24:33

But I really believe in the power of vision.

00:24:38

And this is where if you were able to sit down

00:24:40

and pick his brain, he probably has a lot of value

00:24:43

to add to this.

00:24:45

But he's just like, this person talks about this.

00:24:48

This person talks about this.

00:24:49

In this book, this person, I'll summarize

00:24:51

the whole thing for you in three sentences.

00:24:53

And you're just like, so.

00:24:56

Yeah.

00:24:57

Like I have done a lot of research on the topic of vision

00:25:02

myself and not when I say research.

00:25:03

I mean, it's a topic that I've been personally interested in.

00:25:07

It's kind of the basis for all of the life-themed stuff

00:25:10

that I do.

00:25:11

So I'm not coming to this new, but I also probably don't have

00:25:15

as much experience or know as much about it as he does.

00:25:20

And I feel like this is very surface level at this point.

00:25:25

And it's frustrating.

00:25:28

Yeah.

00:25:29

I think that is a key takeaway when we get to silent rating.

00:25:32

That's a key frustration of mine for the whole book.

00:25:36

Is I think the five fundamentals are good.

00:25:39

Like I'm totally on board with the five fundamentals.

00:25:43

But I don't think, I think this is like a leadership 101 book.

00:25:48

Right?

00:25:50

And I did not want it to be a leadership 101 book

00:25:53

and I'm walking away going, okay, that was a good reminder.

00:25:58

I don't know if I needed 200 and however many pages

00:26:01

to be reminded of those.

00:26:03

It's not even a leadership 101 book

00:26:05

because there's all of these different things

00:26:08

that he's grabbing from.

00:26:09

And he's just laying them all out

00:26:12

and it's completely overwhelming.

00:26:13

A good leadership 101 book will say, start here.

00:26:17

Here's three things.

00:26:19

Master these, then we'll come back

00:26:21

and we'll do the next thing.

00:26:23

And he's just kind of laying it all out,

00:26:25

which is why I made the comment about the listicles.

00:26:30

Like I get it.

00:26:31

If you're talking about this type of stuff,

00:26:34

you want to create these lists.

00:26:36

You want to create these acrostics

00:26:39

so that people remember these things.

00:26:43

But it's a whole bunch of surface level lists.

00:26:47

I mean, just the ideas for action.

00:26:49

Every single section under ideas for action

00:26:51

has at least three, maybe four different key things

00:26:56

that he bolds.

00:26:57

And then underneath that, there are lists.

00:27:00

And I felt like all I was doing

00:27:02

as I was taking these notes is making all these lists.

00:27:07

Yes.

00:27:08

And I get done and I'm like, what am I going to do with this?

00:27:11

This book more than any book that I've read

00:27:14

since I joined the podcast was very much a list

00:27:19

that broke out into another list,

00:27:20

that broke out into another list.

00:27:21

But there's not a lot of like meat there.

00:27:23

There's not a lot of like heavy idea,

00:27:25

which this is why I refer to it as a leadership 101 thing,

00:27:28

is if I make just the headers, right?

00:27:31

Like so if I would just take his headers

00:27:33

or his bolded words and make this out,

00:27:36

it would be a fairly decent in my mind.

00:27:38

Oh, okay, well, let's go into see the future ideas for action.

00:27:41

So if I'm going to, what could I do

00:27:44

to actually see the future?

00:27:45

Well, his bolded items are,

00:27:48

remember the past, remain grounded, dare to dream.

00:27:51

Okay, cool.

00:27:52

So remember the past, like if I have those somewhere outlined,

00:27:55

so there's a saying, right?

00:27:59

Tell them what you're going to tell them,

00:28:00

tell them and then tell me what you just told me.

00:28:02

Right, and like that's a decent way

00:28:04

to like teach a class or whatever it is.

00:28:07

Well, he does this in terms of,

00:28:09

you know, he doesn't necessarily tell you

00:28:10

what he's going to tell you as well,

00:28:12

but then he tells you the thing

00:28:14

through the bulleted paragraphs.

00:28:15

And then at the very end of the chapter,

00:28:17

he basically gives you the list.

00:28:19

He gives you exactly what you're describing about

00:28:21

like the highlighted level,

00:28:24

the bulleted list.

00:28:27

I mean, I don't know how else to describe it.

00:28:29

It's exactly what it is.

00:28:30

Where it has, yeah, here are the key takeaways.

00:28:32

Remember the past, remain grounded, dare to dream,

00:28:35

which is where I wanted to go.

00:28:37

Okay, that's fine, but like what do I do?

00:28:40

And I think that's where I get frustrated

00:28:42

'cause it just kicks you out to,

00:28:44

if you want more on this,

00:28:45

or if you want more.

00:28:46

No, I don't want more.

00:28:47

I want something.

00:28:48

Yes. (laughs)

00:28:50

Okay, so what else do you have on,

00:28:51

on See the Future?

00:28:52

One, vision's good.

00:28:54

We need to have vision as a leader.

00:28:56

We've all been in a situation where we've been under a leader

00:29:00

or at least we assume,

00:29:01

sorry, I'll assume that everybody's been in a situation

00:29:03

where you've been under a leader who has poor vision.

00:29:05

They don't know where they're going.

00:29:06

They don't know how to direct you and lead you to some place

00:29:09

because they don't have any idea of where that place is.

00:29:13

I think the, my key takeaways were two here,

00:29:16

is if we don't have a vision or a place that we're trying to go,

00:29:21

even if it's wrong, right?

00:29:22

Like so wrong vision can be okay,

00:29:24

but like having some place that we're striving for,

00:29:27

then we're really hurting the folks that are following us

00:29:30

and we're hurting the organization.

00:29:31

So that's one, right?

00:29:32

Like I was one of my major takeaways.

00:29:34

The other one was to map out this, you know,

00:29:37

strategic listening plan.

00:29:39

I thought this was an interesting idea

00:29:40

that maybe was new and I hadn't really thought about that

00:29:42

before is as I'm setting that vision,

00:29:45

actually go out and listen to people at all levels

00:29:49

of the organization because that's gonna help you set the vision

00:29:52

in an informed way.

00:29:54

And that was probably like my biggest takeaway from like,

00:29:57

I hadn't heard that one before.

00:29:58

That was pretty good in terms of making me think differently.

00:30:03

- Yeah, I mean, that's the,

00:30:07

maybe the where the value lies,

00:30:09

but also the problem with this book in my opinion.

00:30:12

So it's obviously written from an organizational perspective.

00:30:16

I mean, just under the first,

00:30:17

remember the past, he's got listened to the founders.

00:30:21

So that's assuming that a certain type of organization

00:30:27

and I think that when he talks about those things,

00:30:31

there's not enough there to really,

00:30:35

if it's something that is completely new,

00:30:37

there's not enough to be like,

00:30:38

okay, now I know how to do this,

00:30:40

but also it's not real prescriptive,

00:30:45

which in one sense is good.

00:30:46

These are all ideas for actions,

00:30:48

things that you could do.

00:30:50

But also it's also just a bunch of things that you could do.

00:30:53

Like which ones are the most important?

00:30:55

You've just given me a whole bunch of things.

00:30:58

And my tendency is to,

00:31:01

if I'm gonna read this as the type of leader

00:31:04

that it seems like he's targeting,

00:31:07

I'm gonna be like, oh yeah, we don't do that.

00:31:08

Oh yeah, we don't do that.

00:31:09

Oh yeah, we don't do that.

00:31:10

And I'm gonna walk out of this with like 50 things

00:31:12

that I'm gonna try to implement as change

00:31:14

and unless I'm the CEO visionary, which sounds,

00:31:17

I don't think that's likely,

00:31:19

you're gonna get frustrated trying to implement this stuff.

00:31:21

Speaking as a former second in command,

00:31:23

I can tell you like the way to affect change

00:31:25

in an organization is you're gonna pick one thing,

00:31:27

you're gonna collaborate with people

00:31:28

and you're gonna try to cast vision for this

00:31:30

and make that thing a little bit better.

00:31:32

And this is just sort of like praying spray at this point.

00:31:37

And I really didn't like it, which is weird

00:31:42

because the ideas for action,

00:31:43

my whole thing when I read books is I'm not gonna adopt

00:31:46

the system, I'm gonna find one or two things

00:31:48

that really stand out to me and I'm gonna implement those.

00:31:52

And I did find a couple of those towards the end,

00:31:55

but the first several sections here,

00:31:58

it kind of feels like this isn't his main message,

00:32:02

the fundamental five, that's obviously his main message

00:32:04

'cause he wrote a whole nother book on that particular thing

00:32:06

and he can sit down into a section, a chapter or two,

00:32:10

which I mean, I think the quality of writing

00:32:12

definitely elevates at that point,

00:32:14

like not the quality of writing,

00:32:15

but the quality of the ideas that he's sharing there,

00:32:17

just because like this is something

00:32:19

that he's been living for a long time probably.

00:32:22

And this feels like, well, I'll check the box.

00:32:25

There's the story, there's the point,

00:32:28

I guess this all wraps together, boom, done.

00:32:31

(laughs)

00:32:32

Onto the next one.

00:32:34

- All right, let's move on to fundamental two then.

00:32:35

If you're good with that.

00:32:36

So fundamental two is engage and develop others.

00:32:39

So again, again, same structure,

00:32:41

engage and develop others and then engage

00:32:43

and develop others ideas for action.

00:32:46

So let's go less about structure

00:32:50

and more about what caught you,

00:32:53

like what was interesting,

00:32:55

what did you take away from this one?

00:32:58

- Well, I think that the idea of engagement

00:33:03

and culture is really powerful.

00:33:07

I'm not sure he's really trying to speak directly

00:33:11

to organizational culture,

00:33:12

but that's what I think of when I think about engagement

00:33:16

and when you're trying to create engagement

00:33:18

in an organization, a lot of times that needs

00:33:23

certain conditions to be met in order for that to happen.

00:33:28

So some of the ideas they talks about here,

00:33:29

it's easier to lead people if you love them

00:33:33

and then the different levels of engagement

00:33:35

where you decide who to engage or enlist to join your team

00:33:37

and then what do you do to ensure the talent

00:33:39

that you've already invited stays motivated

00:33:41

and contributes at a high level,

00:33:42

like again, kind of good, high level stuff here,

00:33:47

but I'm not sure that there's a whole lot of actionable

00:33:52

takeaways here from the ideas for action,

00:33:57

that reading them as bullet points

00:33:59

like does not do justice to the things

00:34:02

that must be done to create this.

00:34:04

Like he talks about building trust,

00:34:05

you need to create psychological safety, right?

00:34:09

I worked tirelessly to do that.

00:34:11

(laughs)

00:34:12

When I was at the day job and it is so hard

00:34:17

and you can do everything right

00:34:20

and it still just takes time,

00:34:22

especially if you're trying to shift a culture

00:34:25

where this is the way we used to do things

00:34:26

and this is the way we want to do things.

00:34:29

It's really, really hard, but it's one bullet in a list.

00:34:31

So I don't know, like, but there's probably a whole lot

00:34:35

of great conversation to be had about some of the topics

00:34:38

but I'm not sure any of it is based

00:34:40

on what's shared in the book.

00:34:42

- So I hadn't thought about this until right now,

00:34:46

but like this actually would be a good book

00:34:50

to go through with another group of leaders, right?

00:34:53

So you have 10 leaders sitting around in a room

00:34:56

and you're looking at these lists

00:34:58

and these ideas for action

00:35:00

and you're doing almost an assessment of like,

00:35:02

am I doing these things and then how well am I doing

00:35:05

these things, but then where the real value comes

00:35:08

and where the real meat of everything comes

00:35:11

is the discussion we have afterwards.

00:35:13

So think about it, you and I are sitting in a room

00:35:15

with eight other key leaders

00:35:18

and I look at this list and one of them's build trust,

00:35:22

help people grow, build genuine community

00:35:24

and I think and I go, man, I'm not doing anything

00:35:27

to help people grow and I can then ask the question

00:35:29

at the table, is anybody doing anything

00:35:31

to help people grow and somebody's like,

00:35:33

oh yeah, this is what we do, we do this and this and this

00:35:35

and I immediately get ideas for helping people grow

00:35:39

and then I can ask a bunch of other questions,

00:35:41

well, how do you pay for it

00:35:42

and where do you get your resources from?

00:35:44

And if I think about this book as an assessment

00:35:49

of my leadership activities where I can do it

00:35:54

and do an assessment of my own

00:35:56

and then I can actually ask questions and do follow up,

00:35:59

this book becomes a lot more valuable to me

00:36:01

at the high level that it's at, right?

00:36:04

Because it does that overview of all of what he's considering,

00:36:09

what Miller's considering, the key areas

00:36:11

and then I can dig in more for what I actually need

00:36:16

and I can gloss over the areas that we're doing well

00:36:19

or the areas that we feel like we're doing okay with

00:36:21

and that actually becomes, I mean,

00:36:23

the book is a lot more valuable if I think about it like that

00:36:26

than it does just me reading it and going,

00:36:29

I gotta help people grow, I gotta build community.

00:36:31

- Possibly, possibly.

00:36:32

- I think you're right that that is a potential scenario

00:36:35

where you've got like an entrepreneur book club

00:36:38

and you're talking about the themes here

00:36:39

and everyone is well read on all these topics.

00:36:41

So you just use this as like conversational starting points.

00:36:44

The thing that is difficult for me to wrap my head around

00:36:47

is that this is all conceptual,

00:36:48

but it's obviously framed in the context of an organization

00:36:52

and the, I've been in the room for those types

00:36:56

of conversations, that's the thing.

00:36:58

There was an organization that I attended the meetings

00:37:01

and I was at the day job called,

00:37:03

I think it was Entrepreneurs Organization, EO,

00:37:05

and basically every quarter they would have a different theme

00:37:09

that they would discuss.

00:37:10

So one quarter, it's cash, one quarter, it's people,

00:37:14

one quarter, it's systems.

00:37:17

And there they have different guests that come in

00:37:20

and they present on these different sections

00:37:23

and here's some principles that you should consider

00:37:25

and here's some resources and tools that you can use

00:37:27

to help implement this in your organization.

00:37:30

And it's kind of loosely based off of a system

00:37:33

by Vern Harness called Scaling Up,

00:37:37

which I actually really liked that.

00:37:38

So if I were working with a company or organization

00:37:42

to shift culture, I would start with one of those

00:37:45

business operating system books.

00:37:48

Scaling Up is a good one.

00:37:49

We worked with a pinnacle guide for a while.

00:37:51

Pinnacle I think is actually a really good one too.

00:37:53

That actually combines a bunch of different elements

00:37:55

from a bunch of different systems,

00:37:56

but it's framed as like, here's a tool

00:37:58

that can help you do this, here's a tool account,

00:37:59

you do that, pick the tools that you want,

00:38:02

solve the problems that you're facing,

00:38:04

probably another one is like traction or EOS,

00:38:08

but it's hard without that context to go any deeper

00:38:12

as to like, well, how would you actually do that?

00:38:14

(laughs)

00:38:16

So you're right that if you have the right people

00:38:18

with the right context in mind,

00:38:20

this could spur a great conversation,

00:38:23

but I guess the hard part is this is not talking

00:38:26

about the business operating system specifically.

00:38:28

There is no system actually that he's proposing

00:38:32

as a way to do all of this stuff.

00:38:34

And it's just kind of like, oh, hey, remember this.

00:38:37

- Yeah.

00:38:38

- No, I agree.

00:38:39

I think that's exactly what he's doing.

00:38:40

He's saying, remember this and have you thought about this?

00:38:43

And this is what separates what I consider

00:38:46

a common leader versus an uncommon leader

00:38:48

apart from each other.

00:38:49

- Yeah.

00:38:50

And I guess the issue that I have just so people understand

00:38:53

why I'm being so harsh on this one, I guess,

00:38:56

is that I have thought about this.

00:38:58

I have tackled a lot of these issues.

00:38:59

And so when I hear him talk about it,

00:39:01

I'm like, well, that's not good enough.

00:39:03

(laughs)

00:39:04

- Yeah, yeah.

00:39:06

So let's take a, let's find a positive in each one of these.

00:39:11

- Okay.

00:39:12

- So I'll start first on this one.

00:39:15

I think the positive in fundamental two for me

00:39:18

was build genuine community.

00:39:20

That I think that, you know, a lot of bad leadership

00:39:23

can get softened if you have a really strong community

00:39:28

where, you know, and the ideas that he,

00:39:32

you know, the list within the list that he unpacks here

00:39:34

would be set the strategy, value diversity,

00:39:37

no others deeply and celebrate often.

00:39:39

I think that if you're actually in community with people,

00:39:44

then a bad leader, everything they do is softened.

00:39:48

So I think that's my like key takeaway out of this one

00:39:51

is if I'm a leader and I've developed

00:39:54

a really good community underneath me or at my organization

00:39:58

to where they actually like each other,

00:40:00

they're authentic with each other

00:40:02

and they enjoy coming into work every day,

00:40:05

I can screw up and it'll be okay, right?

00:40:07

Like everything will, everything will have softened.

00:40:09

So I don't know if that's the way I should look at it,

00:40:10

but that's the kind of way I think about it.

00:40:12

There's a bunch of positives on the other side of that, right?

00:40:14

They work better in teams and they do projects better.

00:40:17

But like, that was a big, I guess a bigger takeaway

00:40:20

for me for this one.

00:40:21

What did you have?

00:40:23

- Okay, I'm gonna spin your action item a little bit here

00:40:25

if that's okay.

00:40:26

So like I'm gonna take one of these ideas for action

00:40:29

and if he's got something that I think is worth calling out,

00:40:33

I will share that, but if not,

00:40:34

I'm gonna add my own version of what he's talking about here.

00:40:39

All right, so under Bill Trust,

00:40:41

he's talking about creating safety

00:40:43

and I think one of the best things that you can do

00:40:48

to do that is to revamp your meeting structure.

00:40:51

And this is kind of along the lines

00:40:52

of get a good facilitator,

00:40:54

which is one of the things that he calls out here.

00:40:56

But I'm gonna give people something specific.

00:40:58

When you are looking at your meetings,

00:41:02

I think the biggest thing that makes a difference tomorrow

00:41:06

is to start and end the meeting with a positive focus.

00:41:11

So what you are doing at this point is you are calling out

00:41:15

the things, praising the things that people have done,

00:41:18

that exemplify values in your organization

00:41:21

or places where they've gone above and beyond.

00:41:24

That's at the beginning.

00:41:25

You're recognizing the wins

00:41:27

and you're reinforcing the type of behaviors

00:41:29

that you want to see in the organization

00:41:31

that are in accordance with your values.

00:41:33

And then the last thing is every single meeting

00:41:37

to express gratitude to a single person.

00:41:40

Now, if you've got a meeting with five people

00:41:42

and you're the team leader,

00:41:43

it can be tempting to be like,

00:41:43

thank you to this person for this.

00:41:45

Thank you to that person for this.

00:41:46

But everyone express briefly one person

00:41:50

that they are grateful for,

00:41:51

something that they did specifically as it pertains

00:41:54

to the things that they were talking about in the meeting.

00:41:58

And I implemented that when we were at the,

00:42:02

when I was at the day job,

00:42:03

we do it as part of our family meeting, Rachel and I,

00:42:05

we have our date nights,

00:42:06

part of my discipleship group.

00:42:08

This completely changes the atmosphere in the organization.

00:42:11

You can be in the meeting and you can be fighting about,

00:42:13

well, this is what I think should happen.

00:42:14

This is what I think should happen.

00:42:16

But then when you express gratitude to people for something,

00:42:18

like all of the,

00:42:19

all of those negative,

00:42:21

unresolved negative feelings are,

00:42:24

they're stripped of their power essentially.

00:42:28

It's disarming.

00:42:29

It's like, well, I know this person really cares about

00:42:33

me as a person and what I'm doing.

00:42:35

And you know, if you're saying,

00:42:37

well, yeah, people can fake it, yeah, they can.

00:42:39

But if you do it consistently enough,

00:42:42

this will definitely build trust in the organization.

00:42:45

- Yeah.

00:42:47

All right, the next one is fundamental three.

00:42:49

This is reinvent continuously.

00:42:52

So my takeaway on this one,

00:42:54

you know, he does an interesting,

00:42:56

kind of deep dive into Mr. Beast.

00:43:00

He seems like he has a lot of respect

00:43:02

for the way Mr. Beast reinvents.

00:43:05

And he actually, again,

00:43:06

a list within a list, but he has Mr. Beast tips,

00:43:09

you know, learn from others, more ideas,

00:43:11

better ideas, capture ideas,

00:43:12

every video is an opportunity to improve,

00:43:14

involve others and be patient.

00:43:15

This one really, you know,

00:43:20

I get the idea on this one

00:43:22

that you have to think about reinventing

00:43:24

and you have to think about escaping the norm

00:43:29

and, you know, when is the time for change?

00:43:31

Well, it's always a time for change.

00:43:32

So you have to be thinking about it.

00:43:33

And he gives examples of people who kind of did this well

00:43:38

and didn't do this well,

00:43:40

lists the questions to help you reinvent yourself.

00:43:43

I just, I don't think I got a lot out of this section.

00:43:47

I had a fundamental three that was like,

00:43:48

okay, reinvent yourself.

00:43:50

Yeah, but not always.

00:43:52

Like I don't always want to reinvent myself.

00:43:55

Like there are certain things, you know,

00:43:58

I've heard it referred to as the performance engine.

00:44:00

There are certain things we do in our organization

00:44:01

where we don't want to reinvent that.

00:44:03

Why?

00:44:04

Because it brings in X amount of revenue every month

00:44:08

and we need that revenue

00:44:09

or else none of the other stuff happens.

00:44:10

But now I think if you are only banking on that

00:44:14

and then you lose the contract, okay,

00:44:15

you should have been thinking about reinventing

00:44:18

reinventing continuously.

00:44:20

So it's a both and I get where he's coming from here,

00:44:23

but this is probably the one where I was kind of like,

00:44:26

yeah, okay, I understand what you're going for,

00:44:28

but I don't think I agree with this one quite as much

00:44:31

as you're emphasizing it.

00:44:33

Yeah.

00:44:35

So a couple of things here.

00:44:38

The domains that you should constantly be looking

00:44:40

to reinvent self systems and structure.

00:44:43

I like that.

00:44:45

And I think really if I were to condense it,

00:44:47

there's really just two self and systems.

00:44:51

The structure he says should enable

00:44:53

not inhibit the accomplishment of the task at hand.

00:44:55

I feel like that gets into systems.

00:44:59

He probably has a real clear delineation,

00:45:01

but I think systems go beyond just,

00:45:06

here's the standard operating procedures that we use

00:45:08

to execute a task.

00:45:11

And I think it's maybe a little bit of unnecessary complexity

00:45:14

to break those apart.

00:45:17

If I were to take that a step further,

00:45:18

I think the next step is,

00:45:21

like if you just look at that,

00:45:22

structure should enable not inhibit

00:45:23

the accomplishment of the task at hand.

00:45:25

That is true, but if you're a leader,

00:45:27

then you could take that too far

00:45:28

and you can create some very complicated structures

00:45:31

to support the way that you think something should be done.

00:45:33

And if you really want a high performing organization,

00:45:35

what you need is you to get out of the way.

00:45:39

You have a unique ability,

00:45:40

so go function in that,

00:45:41

the people that you're hiring for the jobs

00:45:43

underneath you have unique abilities

00:45:45

that compliment yours.

00:45:47

They're not in that position just because

00:45:49

they are lower than you on the org chart

00:45:52

and they don't make as much as you and the salaries.

00:45:56

They have maybe better ways of doing things

00:45:58

and the more structure that you add,

00:46:01

the more micro-manage-y you get,

00:46:04

the more life you suck out of those,

00:46:07

potentially a high functioning individuals.

00:46:10

The other thing I wanna nitpick in this chapter,

00:46:13

he references atomic habits,

00:46:16

but he references it really weird.

00:46:19

So he talks about systems and value systems.

00:46:26

You need to have these habits

00:46:28

and you need to get 1% better every day,

00:46:31

but the one quote that he pulls out of atomic habits,

00:46:36

paints it in a negative light.

00:46:40

I don't have the book in front of me.

00:46:41

I should have wrote this down.

00:46:43

Do you remember reading that part

00:46:44

where he actually quotes James Clear though?

00:46:47

Yeah, so do you remember what exactly it was?

00:46:49

If something along the lines of like,

00:46:50

this is how you break bad habits or something?

00:46:52

No, I don't remember how it, I don't remember it.

00:46:54

And I don't remember it flagging to me as...

00:46:57

Well, okay, so he's quoting James Clear,

00:47:00

but the part that he's quoting James Clear on

00:47:03

is like a really minor point that he's sharing from the book

00:47:07

and he shares the quote.

00:47:10

Then he goes on to talk about in his own voice

00:47:15

all of the things that I'm sure he read in atomic habits.

00:47:18

He talked about brails for the British cycling coach.

00:47:21

That story is in atomic habits.

00:47:25

And he talks about the 1% better idea.

00:47:28

That's James Clear from like 10 years ago.

00:47:30

I remember those charts on his blog.

00:47:34

But the thing that he credits James Clear with is like,

00:47:37

if you were to look at that and be like,

00:47:39

oh, this came from atomic habits,

00:47:40

I don't wanna read atomic habits.

00:47:41

(laughs)

00:47:43

It was really strange.

00:47:44

I didn't pick up on that, so that's an interesting find.

00:47:49

Yeah, and you know, James Clear's borrowing this stuff

00:47:52

from other people and looking at the same research studies.

00:47:55

So maybe that's not actually what happened.

00:47:57

Maybe he's actually reading the research

00:47:59

on the British cycling team,

00:48:01

but it was just put together really weird and maybe go,

00:48:06

huh.

00:48:07

Well, good, he challenged your mind.

00:48:10

He challenged your mind on maybe an example

00:48:12

that you don't wanna follow.

00:48:13

Yeah, yeah.

00:48:15

All right, so what's your one?

00:48:17

I'll make you start on this one.

00:48:18

What's your one big takeaway from this one?

00:48:22

Well, I like the reference to think different,

00:48:27

but I gotta ask you, having read this now,

00:48:29

like do you know what that means?

00:48:31

For him, I can tell you just based on my notes,

00:48:34

it means invest time, think opposite,

00:48:36

and then ask more questions.

00:48:38

Because that way those are the bullet items in the list.

00:48:41

Okay, so I'll give you a little bit more structure

00:48:43

with that if you want to start considering more options

00:48:47

and to ask more open-ended questions.

00:48:49

I'll give you three specific open-ended questions.

00:48:52

Okay, what should we start doing?

00:48:55

What should we stop doing?

00:48:56

What should we keep doing?

00:48:58

I first came across those, I don't know,

00:49:02

maybe like 10 years ago at this point,

00:49:04

and I have brought them to every organization

00:49:06

that I have been a part of.

00:49:08

We incorporated them into our retrospective process,

00:49:11

and we always are blown away by the quality of ideas

00:49:16

that are generated by the group using those as kind of openers.

00:49:21

So yeah, like he talks about asking questions here,

00:49:26

which I think if I were to pick one thing verbatim,

00:49:28

then he said that's it.

00:49:30

But then what are the questions?

00:49:31

He gives you a list, I didn't really care for the list.

00:49:33

So those are the three that you should ask.

00:49:35

What should I start doing?

00:49:36

What should I stop doing?

00:49:37

What should I keep doing?

00:49:38

And that's part of my personal retreat process too.

00:49:40

So it doesn't just apply to an organization as well.

00:49:43

Yeah, I like, I think my big takeaway from this one

00:49:46

is his distinction between artistic creativity

00:49:50

and creativity from a viable option standpoint.

00:49:54

Like, so make options and make things

00:49:58

that are gonna move the ball forward

00:50:01

or that are different in their nature.

00:50:04

I like that idea because I've heard you talk about this

00:50:07

and I've heard other people talk about this before,

00:50:08

but we think I'm not creative,

00:50:11

but creative doesn't mean art

00:50:14

and it doesn't mean design always.

00:50:16

It doesn't mean those things.

00:50:17

It means thinking in a way that adds value differently.

00:50:22

And that's what I think creativity really is

00:50:26

in the non-artistic context.

00:50:28

So I liked that he called that out

00:50:30

and I liked that he helped people think about that

00:50:32

and see that yes, we're saying reinvent continuously

00:50:36

and then he goes into this whole idea

00:50:37

of cultivate creativity,

00:50:39

but think about creativity differently.

00:50:41

I think that was my,

00:50:43

if I had to put a spotlight on one thing out of this,

00:50:47

the small second one was lowering people's standard

00:50:52

on what we actually need to do to reinvent.

00:50:58

Reinvent doesn't mean uproot my whole life.

00:51:00

Reinvent means make that small change,

00:51:02

make that small change.

00:51:03

So this ties back into your atomic habits conversation,

00:51:05

but it's like just bringing people,

00:51:07

if they've never read that

00:51:08

or if they've never heard of that before,

00:51:09

it's like, okay, the small changes will stack together

00:51:12

and they will add up and they will make

00:51:14

a larger change over time.

00:51:15

So I think those are my two major one

00:51:19

and minor one from fundamental three.

00:51:21

- Gotcha.

00:51:22

I guess one other thing on the atomic habits thing,

00:51:27

I've been brewing on like,

00:51:28

why is it feel so weird to me?

00:51:30

I think maybe it's because at this point

00:51:35

we're in fundamental three.

00:51:37

So he's shared a bunch of stuff from other books

00:51:41

that he's sort of assumed.

00:51:44

You have some shared knowledge about,

00:51:47

but if there is one book that you can absolutely assume

00:51:52

your reader has some knowledge about,

00:51:56

it would be this one.

00:51:57

And I guess that's just not the approach

00:51:59

that he took with it.

00:52:00

- So it's a pretty popular book

00:52:03

in the world that would be reading this.

00:52:05

It's pretty popular.

00:52:06

- Yeah, I forget the statistics,

00:52:07

but it has been at the top of the New York Times

00:52:11

a selling list longer than,

00:52:14

I want to say longer than any other nonfiction book.

00:52:18

And I don't know if that's ever or just in recent history,

00:52:21

but it's like four or five years in a row.

00:52:23

And it's like completely unheard of

00:52:26

for self development book.

00:52:29

So yeah, definitely a big deal.

00:52:32

- All right, fundamental four is value results

00:52:36

and relationships.

00:52:37

So he focuses a lot on the and

00:52:40

this one makes references to the idea

00:52:45

of you're gonna do something and this other thing.

00:52:48

So a lot of leaders he calls out

00:52:51

just focus on the results.

00:52:52

So they neglect the relationships

00:52:54

and you can't do that.

00:52:56

You actually have to focus on both of those,

00:52:59

refers to Coach Wooden at a UCLA

00:53:04

and why people looked up to him

00:53:05

and why he was so successful

00:53:08

because it was his style of both resulted relationships,

00:53:11

breaks it down into this idea of setting the example,

00:53:16

coach for success, demonstrate care

00:53:20

that you want to do these things.

00:53:22

This style is very wash rinse repeat.

00:53:27

So fundamental one, fundamental two,

00:53:29

fundamental three, fundamental four,

00:53:31

you're getting the exact same structure to the book.

00:53:36

So you kind of knew what you're getting into,

00:53:37

he's gonna have a couple examples here.

00:53:40

I think I'll start off quickly

00:53:43

and just give you my key takeaway is,

00:53:47

I think it's really this idea of feedback.

00:53:50

He talks about what kind of feedback should you give?

00:53:53

We should give honest feedback, you should give thorough.

00:53:55

He says completely, but give thorough feedback,

00:53:58

give it timely and give it in an actionable way.

00:54:02

And I think this is just a key skill

00:54:05

for hitting both results and relationships.

00:54:08

That if you're able to give feedback honest fully,

00:54:12

timely and actionable, then you can get better results

00:54:16

and you also keep the relationship strong

00:54:19

between the people that you're given that feedback to.

00:54:22

So I think that was my key takeaway out of fundamental four.

00:54:27

- I actually like this section.

00:54:31

The coach for success section specifically,

00:54:33

I feel like there's some good stuff in there,

00:54:35

but I think he ripped that out of another book

00:54:38

that he referenced, I forgot to jot down which one that was.

00:54:42

But like the provide situational coaching,

00:54:44

I feel like there's some good stuff to dig deeper in there

00:54:48

where essentially if someone has no experience

00:54:50

but they're an enthusiastic beginner,

00:54:52

you offer a directive.

00:54:53

If someone has experience but lacks a critical skill,

00:54:56

then you're offering coaching.

00:54:58

If someone has experience or skills but not confidence,

00:55:00

then you are supportive.

00:55:02

And then if they have both confidence and confidence,

00:55:04

you are delegating that to someone else.

00:55:07

Kinda reminds me of the,

00:55:09

I've heard different formats for this where like,

00:55:14

in delegating, I do it, you watch me do it,

00:55:17

I watch you do it, then you do it.

00:55:18

That's just kinda how it mapped in my brain.

00:55:22

So I kinda like to dig a little bit deeper with that.

00:55:26

I do think that the results and relationships,

00:55:30

the real power there you hit on this

00:55:32

is just substituting the word and.

00:55:36

So maybe the real value of this just comes from considering

00:55:39

the title of the section.

00:55:41

Like the John Wooden stuff is interesting.

00:55:45

I'd heard some of that but not all of it.

00:55:47

He kinda zeroes in on the Bill Walton thing

00:55:51

and how he would call him like every single day

00:55:53

just to see how he was doing.

00:55:56

And he uses that kind of as like a metaphor

00:55:58

for like, wouldn't it be great if people cared that much

00:56:01

about you that they were calling you 30 years after,

00:56:04

you know, you had contact with them.

00:56:07

And that idea kinda challenged me.

00:56:10

What can I do to invest in the teams that I'm a part of

00:56:13

to build those relationships?

00:56:17

But I don't have anything specific from that.

00:56:21

I mean, the different ideas for action,

00:56:24

demonstrate care and set the example

00:56:28

in addition to coach for success, obviously.

00:56:30

I feel like again, you can go a lot deeper

00:56:35

with some of this stuff.

00:56:37

I guess if I were to pick one that kinda just stood out to me,

00:56:40

it is set the example because two of the things

00:56:43

that he mentions under there are know the values

00:56:45

and share the values.

00:56:46

And because I was part of a project where we were shifting

00:56:50

cultural values at an organization about 20 people,

00:56:53

I can tell you that this is difficult

00:56:56

and again, you can't overstate the importance

00:57:00

of this stuff so it could go a lot deeper than this.

00:57:03

But just to kinda like hit on these

00:57:06

and give some practical examples maybe know the values.

00:57:09

One of the ways that we try to do this is we would have

00:57:13

this thing built into Slack, the communication tool

00:57:16

where if you saw somebody exhibiting a value,

00:57:18

you could give them some points associated with a value

00:57:21

and it was tied to a custom hashtag.

00:57:23

And then the person with the most number of points

00:57:26

at the end of the month got a Amazon gift card or something.

00:57:30

So you have to constantly be talking about these values,

00:57:34

constantly driving them home.

00:57:35

And really as a leader, you haven't communicated your values

00:57:37

until you see your team starting to express them

00:57:40

out of their own mouth, I'm prompted in front of you.

00:57:44

So know the values, share the values,

00:57:46

hit on them every single time.

00:57:48

It's why we've got our family core values printed out

00:57:50

and hang on our living room wall

00:57:51

so that they are always visible.

00:57:54

And when it comes to an organization,

00:57:57

like all of this is pointless.

00:58:00

If the leadership team and specifically the visionary

00:58:03

isn't going to abide by the values,

00:58:05

they're not aspirational, they're not something

00:58:07

that you do most of the time.

00:58:09

Like these have to be absolutely never going to break this

00:58:13

because it's so important to us as an organization.

00:58:16

And if you've got leadership that is saying one thing

00:58:18

and doing another thing, then obviously you're not gonna,

00:58:21

you're not gonna be able to gain any traction with this stuff.

00:58:24

But ultimately when you have those values in place,

00:58:27

I feel like that's where you can build the relationships.

00:58:32

Until you've established that, it's kinda like,

00:58:35

what are the rules that we're playing by here?

00:58:38

And unless you get everybody on the same page,

00:58:41

like you're not gonna be able to make much movement there.

00:58:44

- This is the section where I probably have

00:58:47

the biggest disagreement with Miller

00:58:50

and it's because he states in fundamental two,

00:58:53

which is engage and develop others,

00:58:55

that this fundamental requires the most time and energy.

00:58:58

So he thinks fundamental two,

00:58:59

develop and engage others.

00:59:00

I disagree.

00:59:02

I think fundamental four is what requires

00:59:04

the most time and energy and it's the relationship side.

00:59:08

That I think that if you're really gonna do relationships well

00:59:11

and you're gonna set the example coach for success

00:59:14

and then especially demonstrate care,

00:59:16

that it just takes so much time.

00:59:20

And that's not a bad thing,

00:59:22

but it's one of those things that,

00:59:25

he throws out the demonstrate care is practice,

00:59:27

deep listening, pursue real relationship

00:59:28

and engage personally.

00:59:29

And if I'm gonna do those three things,

00:59:31

it's a lot of not only actual on the clock time,

00:59:36

I need to actually engage with you and spend time with you,

00:59:40

but it's also the time for referencing another book,

00:59:44

it'd be that diffuse time.

00:59:45

Well, I'm thinking about what you told me.

00:59:47

I'm actually thinking about how do I enhance this relationship

00:59:51

and how do I keep this relationship moving forward?

00:59:54

And then I'm thinking about ways that I engage,

00:59:56

but it's not just with one other person, right?

00:59:58

And my thought, the best example I have on this is,

01:00:02

is my wife, it's like, if I'm doing that well,

01:00:05

it takes a lot of mental energy for me to do that.

01:00:08

And it takes a lot of time for me to plan different things.

01:00:10

And then you add your kids to it,

01:00:11

or you add just the people at your work.

01:00:13

If you've got five people that you're trying to do this with,

01:00:16

that's just a lot of time and a lot of effort and a lot of energy.

01:00:20

So this is probably my biggest disagreement

01:00:22

with one of his points that he makes throughout the book.

01:00:26

Yeah, I didn't pick up on that, but I think you're right.

01:00:28

I mean, the whole thing about giving great feedback,

01:00:33

for example, be honest, empty the tank,

01:00:35

respond quickly, make it actionable.

01:00:39

That's a nice list,

01:00:42

but that's essentially radical candor.

01:00:46

Which was what, 350 pages?

01:00:48

Yeah, exactly.

01:00:50

So you're right, this is definitely the hardest part.

01:00:56

And I shouldn't say maybe the hardest part,

01:00:58

but it's definitely going to take the most time.

01:01:00

There are structures that you can use to provide

01:01:04

some scaffolding or framework to make it easier

01:01:08

and more effective, more efficient when you are giving feedback

01:01:11

and you are developing these relationships.

01:01:13

But this is the hard part about management,

01:01:16

is it's all relationship stuff.

01:01:19

And again, I guess it kind of comes down to meeting structure

01:01:24

being the thing that is going to either make this work

01:01:27

or you try to implement this and you quickly get overwhelmed.

01:01:32

Because if you've got bad meetings

01:01:34

and you're not able to resolve issues

01:01:36

and you walk out of there and people aren't clear

01:01:38

and like this is what I need to do

01:01:40

and how it contributes to the success of the organization,

01:01:44

then what's going to happen is you're going to spend

01:01:46

a whole bunch of extra time trying to get that clarity

01:01:50

by communicating asynchronously through email or Slack

01:01:54

and it's just not going to get you there.

01:01:56

Exactly.

01:01:58

Alright, fundamental five, embody a leader's heart.

01:02:01

So this is Mike's favorite section,

01:02:03

so he's probably going to, or sorry,

01:02:04

it's the one I shouldn't say favorite.

01:02:07

It's the one that he took the most action items out of

01:02:10

or he had the most notes on.

01:02:12

He talks about the idea of the leadership iceberg

01:02:17

and there are skills which represent the top of the iceberg

01:02:20

which is only about 10% of the iceberg

01:02:22

and then there's heart which represents the bottom part

01:02:26

where 90% exists.

01:02:28

I agree with the premise.

01:02:30

I think that having the heart of the leader drives a lot of it

01:02:34

and then the skills can develop as you go

01:02:37

and you're not always going to hit things perfectly.

01:02:40

But if you have the right heart and you're going through it

01:02:42

and I think what makes me agree with this the most

01:02:45

is the fact that I've had leaders like this

01:02:46

where they don't have to do everything right.

01:02:49

Like everything, they can mess up

01:02:50

and they can make even big mistakes

01:02:52

but you're like, man, they wanted the best

01:02:55

for the organization or they wanted the best for me

01:02:57

or they were really thinking they were making

01:02:59

the best decision and it just panned out in a different way.

01:03:03

So I like that leadership iceberg idea and that model

01:03:08

comes from his book, The Heart of Leadership.

01:03:12

So it's again one of those recycled things

01:03:14

where he hits it at a higher level here.

01:03:17

I also like the idea in this section

01:03:21

about putting others first.

01:03:23

This is something that's been on my mind

01:03:25

and on my heart a lot lately I would say

01:03:27

in the last three to five years where we live

01:03:31

in a culture that's so self-focused.

01:03:35

How can we intentionally turn that

01:03:37

and think about others first and think about

01:03:40

how do we serve these other people first

01:03:42

and how do we help the other people grow first?

01:03:44

And really my role as a leader is to

01:03:48

what is it, the rising tide lifts all boats, right?

01:03:51

So if we can help everybody get better

01:03:54

and help everybody grow and help everybody do good work

01:03:57

then we're all gonna grow

01:03:58

and we're all gonna move this thing forward

01:04:01

in the way we want to.

01:04:02

So I think those are my two big takeaways

01:04:06

from Embodied Leaders Heart which is fundamental five.

01:04:10

- Yeah, so my takeaways specifically

01:04:13

from accept responsibility, find someone to praise weekly

01:04:18

and then under respond with courage,

01:04:20

find something hard to do.

01:04:23

But I wanna back up just a bit though

01:04:24

and the whole leaders heart, there's another acronym here,

01:04:27

the heart of leadership.

01:04:29

So hunger for wisdom, expect the best,

01:04:31

accept responsibility, respond with courage

01:04:33

and think others first, which man,

01:04:36

he really loves his acronyms.

01:04:38

When I see acronyms like this,

01:04:43

I tend to try to shorten them,

01:04:48

to make them more memorable.

01:04:50

So hunger for wisdom becomes hunger,

01:04:53

expect the best, becomes expect, accept, respond, right?

01:04:57

And then that helps me remember,

01:04:59

oh, heart, that's what this stands for.

01:05:01

'Cause I like the visual where he's going

01:05:04

with the heart of leadership.

01:05:06

But think others first, think,

01:05:08

like that one doesn't connect for me.

01:05:12

- Yeah, yeah.

01:05:13

- So it feels a little bit forced as an acronym

01:05:16

to tell you the truth.

01:05:17

But I do like the ideas here a lot.

01:05:20

And I feel like this is actually the section

01:05:22

where he's got these five different things

01:05:24

instead of three or four.

01:05:25

And every single one of them has multiple lists underneath them.

01:05:29

So like think others first, listen to understand,

01:05:32

lead with empathy.

01:05:33

There's actually three points I've jotted down

01:05:34

under each one of those.

01:05:36

So that's why I said at the beginning

01:05:37

that I feel like this is the one

01:05:39

where he's got the most meat on the bone.

01:05:42

And it's been condensed down into this section,

01:05:45

but because he went through the distilling process

01:05:48

of writing the book ahead of time,

01:05:50

he was able to condense that down into these sections.

01:05:53

It feels like he's starting from a different place

01:05:56

of knowledge with this fundamental

01:05:58

than with the other fundamentals.

01:06:00

And I feel like that makes this one read differently.

01:06:05

It creates a lot more trust right from the beginning

01:06:10

in this section, I feel like.

01:06:11

You know, I can relate to him and I'm, I don't know.

01:06:14

Not that I was looking side-eye

01:06:17

through the other four fundamentals, but sorta, I guess.

01:06:20

By the time I got to this point,

01:06:22

I realized the difference in the perspective here.

01:06:26

So I am actually interested in seeing what else

01:06:31

he's got to say on this particular topic.

01:06:33

Maybe I'll pick up that other book.

01:06:36

It's definitely a good way to end the five fundamentals,

01:06:41

but this is also a weird wrap-up as he goes

01:06:45

into the next section too,

01:06:47

because it's not explicitly called out before then.

01:06:51

So, you know, it's kind of like,

01:06:54

you're tying it all together here,

01:06:55

but also maybe this is the foundation.

01:06:58

So I get, you know, it's last because you want it

01:07:02

to be the E and serve, but maybe it should have been first.

01:07:06

- Okay.

01:07:07

I'm really glad you said this because it seemed to me,

01:07:11

and he actually makes a comment here

01:07:12

that the five-heart habits,

01:07:14

which those are what you just outlined with heart,

01:07:16

you know, hunger, expect, accept, respond, and think.

01:07:19

The five-heart habits that enable us to move

01:07:21

from common to uncommon.

01:07:22

So he actually calls out this idea.

01:07:24

So it's almost like this is like the,

01:07:27

this is the why I wrote this book, right?

01:07:29

Like I wrote this book because I wanted to write this chapter.

01:07:33

I wanted to write chapter, you know, in fundamental five,

01:07:36

but I needed all that other stuff to round out the book,

01:07:41

maybe, or to like set the foundation for the book

01:07:44

or whatever it was, but I felt the exact same way.

01:07:46

I was kind of like, well, this seems like your,

01:07:50

what I really wanted to say, section,

01:07:52

and all this other stuff I just collected

01:07:55

and like set a foundation that way this section had more oomph

01:07:59

when I made it.

01:08:01

So that's funny that you called it out

01:08:02

'cause I kind of had a similar feel.

01:08:05

- Interesting.

01:08:06

- Yeah.

01:08:08

- Okay, so let's move on to the epilogue then.

01:08:11

The epilogue basically is all about Truett Cathy.

01:08:16

So the epilogue's point is Truett Cathy was the CEO

01:08:20

of Chick-fil-A, Miller considers him an uncommon leader

01:08:25

and he gives a bunch of different examples

01:08:28

of how Truett Cathy demonstrated serve

01:08:31

and demonstrated these five fundamentals.

01:08:34

And you know, he calls out the idea of like,

01:08:36

what will your legacy be?

01:08:37

Like what are you gonna, what are you gonna leave?

01:08:39

What will people remember you by?

01:08:41

And you know, he wants people to always think about serving

01:08:46

as a leader, always think about those five fundamentals.

01:08:49

And I thought it was a, I thought it was a fine way

01:08:52

to wrap up the book.

01:08:55

It almost read like a tribute to Truett.

01:08:57

And he's just like, I need to write this.

01:09:00

I need to write this.

01:09:02

Do I think it was necessary?

01:09:03

No, I don't.

01:09:04

Do I think it was one more set of decent examples

01:09:07

for the S-E-R-V-E acronym?

01:09:11

Sure, I think it was fine.

01:09:13

So I, this might have been my favorite part of the book.

01:09:18

I feel like the stories that he shared here were great.

01:09:20

What I would have liked to see happen with this book,

01:09:24

honestly, is the choose a different path

01:09:29

be bundled into the introduction.

01:09:34

And then this takes the place of choose a different path

01:09:38

as like an introductory chapter.

01:09:41

Oh yeah.

01:09:42

And then the rest of the book is going deeper

01:09:46

into these five elements that I've explained briefly here

01:09:51

and shared some cool stories about Truett Cathy.

01:09:55

And then instead of the random examples,

01:09:58

sharing personal examples, and then maybe he doesn't have

01:10:02

to be there, but let's just use Truett Cathy

01:10:04

as the person we're going to dissect here.

01:10:07

Because it feels like in terms of the uncommon greatness,

01:10:11

that's the avatar.

01:10:14

Okay, so let's share more stories

01:10:16

about how things are done at Chick-fil-A.

01:10:18

Yeah, there's gonna be some people who are like,

01:10:20

"Nah, Chick-fil-A, I'm outta here."

01:10:22

But there are also gonna be some people who are like,

01:10:25

"Yeah, I'm totally in now."

01:10:27

Which I would probably be in that camp full disclosure.

01:10:31

But I feel like having that as a focusing mechanism

01:10:36

at the beginning would have resulted in better discussion

01:10:41

and material around the fundamentals.

01:10:44

And then you probably don't need all of the ideas

01:10:47

for action in all of these.

01:10:48

You could just use the ones that are really highlighted

01:10:51

by the stories that you've told.

01:10:54

But because you've got this acronym

01:10:56

that you are 100% committed to,

01:11:01

and you're putting the foundational chapter at the end

01:11:03

because it's the last letter in the acronym,

01:11:07

it feels like you kinda have to fill a bunch of other holes.

01:11:12

Whereas if you introduce it this way,

01:11:15

I feel like you maybe don't have that pressure.

01:11:19

Like this is the context of the book.

01:11:21

So I will just speak to the things that align with this.

01:11:26

And I feel like that might have been a better book.

01:11:30

- All right, good. So let's go to action items.

01:11:32

Mike, do you have any action items

01:11:35

that you're walking away from uncommon greatness with?

01:11:39

- I do. I've got two which came from that last fundamental.

01:11:42

Again, there's like a bunch of like very surface level stuff

01:11:47

that he mentions here that you could totally create

01:11:49

in-depth projects about.

01:11:51

But none of them resonated with me to the point

01:11:53

where I want to do something about these.

01:11:56

He does mention several books though that I ordered.

01:11:59

- Okay.

01:12:00

- I think this book bought three additional books

01:12:03

as a result of reading this.

01:12:06

So that it cost me some money.

01:12:09

I guess you could classify those as action items.

01:12:11

But the two that I listed were find someone to praise weekly.

01:12:14

And I want to do this probably via text message.

01:12:18

I've got different text message threads for different teams

01:12:22

that I'm a part of.

01:12:23

And I really just wanna get in the habit

01:12:25

of sending out some of those encouraging text messages.

01:12:29

And the other thing, find something hard to do.

01:12:32

This was something that we did as a family a while back

01:12:36

when I read "Grit" by Angela Duckworth.

01:12:39

We actually had something on our fridge for a while.

01:12:42

That was like, this is what this person is doing.

01:12:45

That's hard.

01:12:46

And I've gotten away from that.

01:12:47

My hard thing at the time was learning Spanish

01:12:50

'cause I'd just gotten back from my mission ship to Costa Rica

01:12:52

and couldn't speak a word of Spanish.

01:12:54

But having done Duolingo now for something like 1,600 days

01:12:58

in a row, it's probably time to find something new

01:13:00

that fits that description.

01:13:02

- Yep.

01:13:04

All right, so I had two as well.

01:13:06

First one was, I wanna map out a strategic listening plan.

01:13:11

In the context of the fall semester,

01:13:15

how do I listen to students, the other faculty admissions?

01:13:19

How do I listen to the folks around me

01:13:22

to help lead the engineering program better?

01:13:24

So it's very contextual, it's very specific.

01:13:27

I won't make any steps on this one for next episode.

01:13:30

But at the same time, I do wanna map out

01:13:32

that strategic listening plan

01:13:34

because I think that's important.

01:13:36

The second one is in my journaling

01:13:39

and in my daily reflection,

01:13:42

I wanna think about how did I serve others?

01:13:44

So how did I put others first?

01:13:46

How did I serve others?

01:13:47

And I wanna be able to actually write something down

01:13:51

of this specific individual was served today

01:13:54

or this specific individual was put first.

01:13:57

And hopefully that's more than one person,

01:13:59

but those are my two action items walking away

01:14:04

from our book.

01:14:05

All right, let's get to style and rating.

01:14:07

I am, this is my book, so I'll do style and rating first.

01:14:11

We've talked a good bit about, you know,

01:14:14

kind of our thoughts and feelings on this book

01:14:17

and the way it was from a style standpoint,

01:14:21

didn't really bother me that bad in terms of the structure.

01:14:24

I like Mike's idea a lot in terms of that epilogue

01:14:29

could have gone to the front

01:14:30

and then we could have built more of the narrative

01:14:33

around the points, the key points based off of that epilogue.

01:14:36

I actually like that a lot.

01:14:39

But overall the style didn't bother me.

01:14:41

I kind of knew what we were getting into

01:14:42

and it was fundamental action, fundamental action,

01:14:45

fundamental action and it flowed really well.

01:14:48

Very easy read, didn't think that there was anything

01:14:51

overly confusing or written in a way that was not,

01:14:56

I don't know, written in a way

01:14:57

that could have been done extraordinarily better.

01:14:59

I did not, I wish we'd have gone deeper on certain things

01:15:03

instead of what I feel like was pulling the,

01:15:05

pulling the rip court at the end of each chapter

01:15:07

that said go to this other resource.

01:15:09

That's gonna hurt the rating on this book fairly significantly.

01:15:12

I do think this book is much more of an assessment

01:15:15

of your current leadership and your current leadership style

01:15:19

that could then be used to focus in on specific areas

01:15:21

but you're gonna need to tie into other more

01:15:24

in depth resource to resources to focus on those areas

01:15:27

to actually make progress or to do those things.

01:15:31

I still consider this book a like a leadership 101

01:15:35

kind of a book without, as Mike said,

01:15:37

without the, what do I do about it?

01:15:40

When I realized that there's this whole,

01:15:43

what do I do about it?

01:15:44

So all of that being said,

01:15:46

my rating on this book is going to be three stars.

01:15:49

- All right.

01:15:52

Well, let me respond to the Leadership 101 comment

01:15:56

that you shared there because when I hear 101,

01:16:01

I think about some of the college classes that I've taken

01:16:04

and you have more experience with this than I do.

01:16:06

So you can correct this if I'm wrong.

01:16:09

But with a 101 class, I feel like that's followed up

01:16:12

with a 201 or a 301, so it's fundamental principles

01:16:16

and then we're gonna build on this.

01:16:18

The impression I get with this book is this is more

01:16:22

like a survey of whatever or overview of whatever,

01:16:27

which I remember some of those survey classes.

01:16:30

Like I took a survey of religion or something,

01:16:35

like intro to world religions.

01:16:38

And it was just, okay, so this is what this one says.

01:16:41

This is what this one says.

01:16:42

And obviously with something like religion,

01:16:44

you can go way deeper than what was shared in that class.

01:16:47

But sort of like a sampler.

01:16:50

- I stay corrected, you win, you're absolutely right.

01:16:52

It's much more like a survey.

01:16:54

It's much more like a seminar or a survey class.

01:16:57

And just for fun, mine was appreciation of jazz.

01:17:01

So we listened to a lot of jazz music

01:17:03

or appreciation of music or something like that.

01:17:05

I remember there being a lot of jazz in there though.

01:17:07

(laughing)

01:17:08

- Cool, yeah.

01:17:09

So I have actually nothing against that approach.

01:17:14

But if someone were to have walked into my class

01:17:19

and be like, okay, so here's the outline.

01:17:21

We're gonna do a survey of these world religions

01:17:24

and we're going to make them fit into this across the cake.

01:17:27

(laughing)

01:17:28

Obviously that changes the way that it is presented.

01:17:32

And in my opinion, makes it not as good.

01:17:35

So I wish that he had not done that.

01:17:38

I think there is definitely some good stuff in here.

01:17:41

There were some aha moments that I had in my mind map.

01:17:46

There is definitely interest in some of these topics.

01:17:49

And I mentioned I bought a couple other books

01:17:52

that I want to go deeper based off of things

01:17:54

that he had mentioned.

01:17:56

I just think that in terms of leadership books

01:18:01

because that's a topic that I love.

01:18:04

I mean, when I saw that this was the one you wanted to read,

01:18:08

I got real excited.

01:18:10

And then when I got into this, I got kind of sad.

01:18:13

(laughing)

01:18:15

And again, I think if I were to work with Mark Miller one-on-one,

01:18:21

he's probably, if he does any sort of coaching,

01:18:25

like he's the fact that I didn't really like this book,

01:18:29

is not a detriment at all.

01:18:30

He would be on the short list of people that,

01:18:32

yeah, you've done this before

01:18:34

and I want to know what you know.

01:18:37

I just think from a bookworm perspective

01:18:40

that there are a lot of other better leadership books

01:18:45

than this one.

01:18:47

If you're interested in the topic of leadership generally,

01:18:49

I kind of already mentioned this one.

01:18:51

I think John Maxwell, the 21 year Refutable Laws of Leadership,

01:18:55

that's probably the place to start.

01:18:57

If you're looking for business application of values

01:19:01

and how do you implement some of this stuff,

01:19:04

a lot of the Patrick Lencioni fables are really good.

01:19:09

Five dysfunctions of a team is one of my favorites.

01:19:13

Yeah, there's a lot of other ones I think I would pick up

01:19:16

before I picked up this one.

01:19:18

But I am interested in his other book.

01:19:22

So I don't know if I'm gonna pick that one up yet or not.

01:19:25

I've got a bunch of other things to read prior,

01:19:28

so we'll see.

01:19:31

I'm gonna meet you at 3.0 because I think there is some

01:19:35

good stuff here, but I don't think you're gonna get it

01:19:37

from reading this book.

01:19:39

This may open up some loops and you are gonna take that

01:19:43

and you're gonna dig deeper.

01:19:45

But I don't think that there's a whole lot here

01:19:50

that's gonna translate into tangible action.

01:19:53

Even like the high level stuff that he shares

01:19:56

where you should really do this, you know, I don't know,

01:20:00

build trust, build genuine community.

01:20:03

Like that's not enough to go off of.

01:20:05

If you're gonna try to just implement the sub-bullets

01:20:08

that he shares underneath that,

01:20:09

set the strategy, value diversity,

01:20:11

no others deeply, celebrate often,

01:20:13

you're gonna end up making a whole ton of mistakes

01:20:17

and your team's gonna disappear.

01:20:19

Like you can't afford to take that approach.

01:20:21

You need something else.

01:20:23

And from an individual perspective, you know,

01:20:26

this is all based off of his experience

01:20:29

and sounds like work at Chick-fil-A.

01:20:33

It's a very business heavy context.

01:20:38

Like if you're interested in the topic of leadership

01:20:40

but you wanna apply it to yourself personally,

01:20:42

which is kind of the boat I find myself in,

01:20:45

being a solo entrepreneur with the independent creator

01:20:49

business, you know, like I like to read

01:20:52

these business type books but working with teams,

01:20:53

but a lot of, I don't have a team that I can implement

01:20:56

this with directly.

01:20:57

But that's okay. Like I figure out ways to translate

01:21:00

stuff like the radical candor into my own personal context.

01:21:05

This one's just hard to do that with.

01:21:08

And I feel like there is a better version of this book

01:21:11

kind of talked about how I would rearrange the outline

01:21:15

and do the introduction than the epilogue

01:21:18

and then the fundamentals.

01:21:21

I would love to see what that looks like.

01:21:23

And you know not, he's written several books.

01:21:27

So he's ahead of me.

01:21:28

I'm just a guy who critiques books on a podcast.

01:21:31

(laughing)

01:21:33

Take what I say with a grain of salt here.

01:21:37

And you know for people who write multiple books,

01:21:39

I also kind of see this trend where if you write a great

01:21:43

first book, you feel the pressure to write a great

01:21:45

second book and not every book is a home run.

01:21:48

So maybe we just picked the one that is the least

01:21:53

in alignment with what I want from a leadership book.

01:21:57

Maybe these other stuff is awesome.

01:21:59

But yeah, this one I thought was okay.

01:22:02

- I'll echo the fact that he's somebody,

01:22:06

just from reading the book, I would be interested

01:22:09

to sit down and talk with or to, you know,

01:22:13

work with the consulting side or be under his leadership.

01:22:17

I get that vibe as well.

01:22:19

I just don't think, you know, I think the book could have

01:22:23

been better and that's why we both rated it a three.

01:22:26

I'm actually really surprised and hopefully this doesn't

01:22:28

come across the wrong way.

01:22:30

I'm really surprised you gave it a three.

01:22:31

I was, if I had to guess you were given this book a two.

01:22:35

So the fact that it came out of a three from you,

01:22:37

I was like, "Well, interesting, okay, okay."

01:22:40

- Well, I tend to be a little bit generous with my ratings.

01:22:46

There's definitely the bell-shaped curve with my ratings.

01:22:51

I think I've only given one or two stars.

01:22:56

Maybe I'd never given a single star.

01:22:59

If I did, it was probably for the art of asking.

01:23:01

I hated that book.

01:23:02

But I also believe that whenever you read a book,

01:23:08

even if it's one that you just absolutely do not like,

01:23:13

it's really hard for you to engage with it,

01:23:15

I feel like I can always get something out of them.

01:23:20

So the fact that I got a couple positive action items

01:23:23

that probably skews me a little bit higher

01:23:25

than the general discussion.

01:23:27

I should also add though that that's bad advice

01:23:31

for most people.

01:23:32

If you don't have a podcast where you have to talk

01:23:36

about these books every two weeks,

01:23:37

you have our permission to stop reading a bad book.

01:23:41

- Just put it down, right?

01:23:43

Do something better with your time.

01:23:45

- Yes, I agree completely.

01:23:46

- Yeah, yeah.

01:23:47

- All right, so let's put uncommon greatness.

01:23:50

Is that the right name?

01:23:51

My gosh, did I just forget the name of the book?

01:23:53

- Yes, that is the name.

01:23:55

- All right, so let's put uncommon greatness on the shelf.

01:23:57

Mike, tell us what the book is for next time.

01:24:00

- The next book is Hidden Genius by Paulina Merinova-Pompliano.

01:24:05

I think I said that name correctly.

01:24:07

I apologize if I did not.

01:24:09

And this was someone that I came across

01:24:11

her podcast episode on Good Work by Barrett Brooks,

01:24:15

who is a former second in command at ConvertKit.

01:24:19

Really enjoyed that podcast episode.

01:24:22

This book has a blurb by James Clear on the cover,

01:24:25

which significantly increases its stock in my eyes

01:24:30

and is a little bit outside of the normal books

01:24:35

that I see popping up all the time in the circles

01:24:39

that I run in.

01:24:40

But still, it speaks to the perspective

01:24:44

and mindset of successful people.

01:24:47

So I think it's very much in line with the themes of Bookworm,

01:24:50

but wasn't one that I had been on my radar

01:24:53

prior to listening to the episode.

01:24:55

So once I listened to that, I was like,

01:24:57

oh, this might be a fresh take maybe on some of the stuff

01:25:01

that we talk about a lot.

01:25:03

That's my hope anyways.

01:25:04

- Then the book after that will be The Ritual Effect

01:25:08

by Michael Norton.

01:25:10

Learned about this book, it's fairly new.

01:25:12

I like the idea of, I don't know,

01:25:14

thinking about things in terms of rituals or habits

01:25:17

or less about doing a single thing,

01:25:20

but making it part of your system,

01:25:22

making it part of your routine.

01:25:24

So I'm excited to open this one up and see

01:25:28

what it's like in terms of how will it impact

01:25:30

my day-to-day activities.

01:25:33

Mike, do you have any gap books for this period of time?

01:25:38

- Well, the fiction book that I mentioned earlier,

01:25:42

I will be leaving for London shortly.

01:25:44

I'm going to the Relay 10th Anniversary Show,

01:25:47

and I am bringing the three-body problem.

01:25:51

Is that the title?

01:25:53

I always mix it up. - Three-body problem.

01:25:54

- Okay.

01:25:55

Yeah, so I'm gonna bring that one with and read it.

01:25:58

Other than that, I do not have a gap book.

01:26:00

How about you? - Okay.

01:26:02

So I am still working on Evergood and Devere.

01:26:05

It's the book that just won't go away, right?

01:26:07

'Cause I read it so slowly,

01:26:09

'cause I'm taking more detailed notes

01:26:11

than I would normally on it.

01:26:14

So Evergood and Devere is definitely there,

01:26:16

but then I am re-upping my project management

01:26:21

professional certification.

01:26:23

So there's some professional development stuff

01:26:24

I'm doing there, so that'll prevent me

01:26:26

from doing any other gap reading.

01:26:28

All my learning education time goes into

01:26:32

thinking about artificial intelligence and LLMs

01:26:35

and how that impacts project management.

01:26:37

- Nice.

01:26:39

All right, well, thank you all for joining us.

01:26:42

If you're interested in us talking about board games,

01:26:46

the pro show this week was learning a lot

01:26:49

about Mike's board games and how many he has

01:26:51

and where he stores them and those things.

01:26:54

He also gave us some good recommendations

01:26:55

on some board games to start,

01:26:57

especially if you have younger kids like I do.

01:26:59

Now, so that was a lot of fun.

01:27:01

If you're interested in becoming a pro member,

01:27:04

you get the bootleg version of the show the next day.

01:27:09

Then the pro show comes out a little bit early,

01:27:12

followed by, and it's an ad-free show

01:27:15

with that extra content added in there.

01:27:18

You also can get a wallpaper, a bookworm wallpaper,

01:27:24

and Mike, am I forgetting anything on the pro show?

01:27:27

- No, so just to condense it, the couple perks,

01:27:32

you get the bootleg, which I upload

01:27:34

when we get done recording.

01:27:35

So that's about two weeks early.

01:27:37

And then the pro show has the extended version,

01:27:41

extended section at the beginning

01:27:42

where we talked about the board games today

01:27:44

and no ads if there are ads in the episode.

01:27:47

So that gets released the day before in the regular show.

01:27:52

And to join, you can go to patreon.com/bookwormfm.

01:27:56

It's $7 a month and it is the primary way

01:28:01

to support the show.

01:28:03

So if you enjoy bookworm, get value out of it,

01:28:06

and want to support the ongoing development,

01:28:11

I don't know, the podcast, that is the way to do it.

01:28:15

And we really do appreciate everyone

01:28:16

who is willing to throw some money our way.

01:28:19

- Thank you all for listening,

01:28:20

and we'll put uncommon greatness on the shelf.

01:28:23

We'll pick up Hidden Genius for next episode,

01:28:25

and we'll talk to you guys next time.