Barry O’Reilly: Unlearning and creating culture change (#2)

Barry O’Reilly (@barryoreilly) is a business advisor, entrepreneur, and author who works to help people invent the future instead of fearing it.

Barry has pioneered the intersection of business model innovation, product development, organizational design, and culture transformation to help leaders and organizations innovate at scale. Barry is the founder of ExecCamp where he helps turn executives into entrepreneurs, and he’s worked with leading organizations all over the world including ThoughtWorks, The World Health Organization, and the leadership teams of many of the Fortune 500. 

Barry has published two books: Unlearn, and Lean Enterprise. He serves on the faculty of Singularity University, and is a frequent contributor to The Economist, Harvard Business Review, and MIT Sloan Management review among others. 

We start by dropping right into a powerful moment in Barry’s career as an entrepreneur, and go on to cover everything from deliberate practice, to culture change within an organization, to how thinking we’re right gets in the way of our own growth (and what to actually do about it). I will be your guinea pig for Barry to demonstrate some of his unlearning techniques

It is my pleasure to welcome him to the show, so without further adieu, please enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with Barry O’Reilly. 

Connect with Barry at his website, Twitter, and LinkedIn. 

SCROLL BELOW FOR LINKS AND SHOW NOTES

EPISODE NOTESPEOPLE, BOOKS, ETC MENTIONED

• People
  • Carol Dweck
  • Angela Duckworth
  • Cal Newport
  • Andy Grove & OKRs
  • Tom Bilyeu
  • K. Anders Ericsson
  • Gibson Biddle (listen to Gib’s episode on Barry’s Unlearn podcast)
  • Dr Ed Hoffman at NASA
• Books & Podcasts
  • Barry’s books
    • Unlearn
    • Unlearn podcast
    • Lean Enterprise
  • Mindset
  • Grit
  • So Good They Can’t Ignore You
  • Deep Work
  • Digital Minimalism
  • Impact Theory
  • Peak: The New Science of Expertise
  • Mastery, by George Leonard
  • The E-Myth
• Other
  • McKinsey & the obligation to dissent
  • Deliberate practice
  • Agile

QUOTES

• “If something important comes up, I’ll put it on my calendar. But I’m going to make time for thinking.”
• making two or three bets and exploring them well is better than making one hundred bets and half-assing them”
• “I’ve been right a million times…and it’s bought me jack shit.”
• “Innovation is new insight that leads to better action”
• “we’re building these systems that are so example that we don’t even know how they work”
• “in all our meetings we just talk about output, the things we got done…if we’re going to be agile we have to talk about outcomes”
• “organizational transformation is just the collective impact of individual transformation”

LESSONS AND KEY TAKEAWAYS

• how eager am I to get information that is contrary to my view?
• the essentials to unlearning: curiosity, ownership
• reflection is a habit of top performers
• signs you need to unlearn
  • challenge facing and not living up to expectation
  • place you’re struggling or avoiding a challenge
  • tried everything can think of and not getting results you want
• What’s the real outcome you’re aiming for?
• when frustrated with the obstacles, zoom back out to the outcomes in order to discover new things to try
• we often know what to do…but we can’t execute shared things on our own
• Andy Grove and Steve Jobs “getting it right”
• create and cultivate a personal board of directors to re-energize and gain new perspectives
• always have agency for how we show up in a system—so it starts with us

SHOW NOTES

• Barry moving to America and the “American Dream” [0:06:11]
• Experimentation as a lifestyle — the kitchen table talk [0:13:14]
• Navigating uncertainty [0:15:09]
• Modeling behaviors [0:22:25]
• Barry’s hack to get new perspectives on problems you don’t know how to solve [0:24:12]
• Stumbling blocks in unlearning [0:26:36]
• Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and “time to think” [0:31:07]
• Barry’s personal reflection practices [0:33:11]
• “We’re trained for more” [0:35:19]
• How do I know I need to unlearn? [0:45:27]
• Hotseat: Barry puts Andrew through unlearning exercise on the spot [0:48:11]
• Andrew’s embarrassing insight [0:54:50]
• The #1 obstacle to being a learner [1:00:04]
• “Steve always got it right” [1:02:24]
• How to make being wrong, feel good [1:04:09]
• Debunking the 10,000 hour rule [1:07:49]
• The levels of deliberate practice [1:08:24]
• Applying deliberate practice to day-to-day life [1:15:12]
• Building systems & countermeasures around yourself to be successful [1:18:42]
• The origin of the Enliven podcast [1:22:44]
• How to start a cultural transformation [1:26:37]
• Barry’s #1 hack for meetings [1:33:01]

Transcript

Transcripts may contain typos. With some episodes lasting 2+ hours, it can be difficult to catch minor errors. Enjoy!

Andrew 00:00:52 Barry, we’re already going, but you know, officially welcome to the show. Thanks so much for being here. I really appreciate you taking the time

Barry 00:01:55 Here. Look, it’s a pleasure to chat with you, you know, very interested in work. You’re doing happy to share some of the stuff I’m doing and see where it goes.

Andrew 00:02:03 Absolutely, absolutely. So I, as, as we were chatting kind of, before we, before we started recording, um, I love to start kind of more the, the personal side. And one of the things that I, uh, I, I noticed when I was digging around getting ready for this conversation. Um, there was a blog post from a couple of years ago that I really loved of yours. And you were, I just had this picture and I was hoping you could sort of start there and paint the picture for us and just we’ll see where it goes from there. But it sounds like you, at the end of your first year, as an entrepreneur, we’re sitting in this beautiful rock garden in Chiodo having some pretty profound realizations about sort of the nature of entrepreneurship and what it’s really like. And I just, yeah. Could you tell us that story?

Barry 00:02:44 Yes. Um, I have a pretty fun story actually, or are definitely an experience for me. Yeah. So, uh, after I started them, my sort of, uh, uh, company as I’m working on at the moment, uh, we, we took sort of, uh, well, we, we basically had four weeks to go to Japan. Uh, I was going out there to do workshop in Tokyo based on lean enterprise, uh, which is a fun experience to go to Japan and teach people about lean. It was sort of odd, but eh, very, very humbling sort of experience. And on the back of that, yeah, me and my wife took three weeks to travel all around the country. And Kyoto is obviously a must stop for anybody. Who’s, who’s going to Japan and you have this really famous sort of Zen garden there, where there are 17 stones in the sand garden, but it’s never possible to see them all, no matter what angle that you move around this garden, you’re only able to see at most 16 stones because of the way they’re laid out.

Barry 00:03:51 It’s, it’s one of these like interesting conundrums, you know, and, and a lot of people go there sort of to, you know, reflect, um, you know, where their arrests and, um, you know, the timely part point for me was that I was a sort of year end to starting the business for myself, you know? And it had been tough. Like I I’d moved to America to start a business with two Oh two other people. And, you know, at six weeks in, it became pretty obvious that we all had different assumptions about what the company was going to be about. And, you know, I quit my job, moved to America for the hope and dream I’m going to land here. Great. I’m working with two people I admired are brilliant. It’s like the American dream is the movie right here, right. In six weeks in, we all are just looking at each other go, and this is not what we want to do a lot happens, you know?

Barry 00:04:46 So, um, it was tough, you know, and so I literally like got into the minus points in terms of my hopes and dreams on the back of that, and really, really had to sort of claw my way out of figuring out, like, what did I really want to get out of starting this company as I, as, as we had started it and what did I want it to become afterwards? And, you know, you’re full of, um, feelings of regret and anger, you know, you’re fed up at the other people that they let you down or were used to, but to do what you did or, you know, I had to work through a lot of that stuff. And, um, you know, this was just sort of one of these funny poignant moments, you know, and I’m sitting there going, why can’t I see 17 rock it’s like, there must be a way to do it.

Barry 00:05:33 You’re trying to solve the riddle or, you know, if you know, and it just, there’s such a parody there. I think with any entrepreneurship activity where, you know, it’s, it’s embracing uncertainty as a lifestyle is how I sort of feel about starting any business. And many of the things you believe will be true are always turn out not to be the case. And it’s tough. Sometimes it’s also super rewarding in other times. And, you know, like that, that was sort of the real inspiration for me, just really a chance to sort of capture some of my lessons learned with that blog. And it’s, it’s so funny. You mentioned that like, um, you know, it was one of those blogs. I think I wrote that more people reached out to me on the back of it to say, God, you know, I’ve been 0.4 and 0.7, man, that’s my life right now, you know, are just connecting with people.

Barry 00:06:27 I think, you know, who, who have realized that, uh, entrepreneurship is not necessarily the, Hey I woke up one morning, went for a jog. And when I got back by lunchtime, I built this amazing app and now we’re a massive unicorn and everything’s going perfect. And, you know, I think it, I think it just encapsulated the grind that is associated with, um, you know, continuously trying things to find out what works and what doesn’t. And, um, same with the company starting at, like, I believe we all believed we had the same idea, but until you actually start road testing stuff, it never really find out, you know? And, um, sometimes what you find out is not what you hope, but again, if you can adapt to that, if you can find ways to sort of recognize that, you know, failing sucks, you know, but, but you can sort of work your way through the ashes and learn a little bit about yourself and recalibrate and, and go from there. And I think, um, that was sort of my, you know, that was how I started this company, literally from the ashes of, of like getting and getting to ashes very quickly, which was kind of sad in itself, but, you know,

Andrew 00:07:43 Wow. So what, so what happened then?

Barry 00:07:47 Well, you know, like, um, you know, I sort of was left with this dilemma of, you know, what do I really want to do? And at the time my, my wife works for the world health organization. So she, she actually does like good things in the world, you know, like she was part of the Ebola and Zika virus response team. She works in the world health organization. And, um, you know, she was still based in Geneva, um, on the back end of the pandemic response to the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone. And I come over to America to start this company. So we were already like going back and forth between Europe and I was sorta like, trying to figure out, like, do I, you know, what do I really want to do? And do we really want to make this a, you know, a shot of it here in the U S for awhile?

Barry 00:08:33 So, you know, I, I did, what I often do is when I’m stuck in this seize on certain moments, you know, I started describing to myself, well, what, what is my vision here? What is success for me? If I was going to try and build this sort of like a consulting advisory business, like, what would that look like? And, and, um, you know, I started to map out in two years what I would be doing and then just work backwards from there. So I can two years, a year, three months, what would I have to be doing in three months to sort of find that out? And funnily, I sat down and had this conversation with my wife and she’s like, okay, well, you know, let’s, let’s see the KPIs. So it’s come up. How will you know, that this business is working in three months time?

Barry 00:09:13 And, um, you know, I described the outcomes over those different time horizons of two years, a year, six months, three months. And, um, and that was it. And then I’d say, let’s give it a go, you know, and that set up my own sort of next round of experimentation, really. So I knew roughly where I wanted to take the business, you know, and, um, set some outcomes and started coming up with some experiments to give a go and yeah, was pretty fun. You know, like I, I came, I am an experimenter, I think any that knows me. Like I, you know, I advocate through other lean software development or product development, you know, I sorta like delivered as a lifestyle. You know, it’s not like I’m one of those people who, I don’t think I’m like a Tim Ferriss type weighing out four gram five or 4.5 grams of protein.

Barry 00:10:02 And I don’t think I’m that level, but I, I am deliberate and intentional. And I know when I’m in uncertainty, I’ve got to have a system in place to help me make some good decisions along the way. And, um, you know, using that philosophy on myself and helped me to sort of like figure it out, what I wanted this business to be. And then know if it’s actually moving in the direction I wanted. And, you know, I was new to the U S it was my, my two founders were much more established in the U S they had a network. They had people that fell on where, for me, I had to sort of start from scratch and, you know, so like, you know, success was like going from zero to one from one, one to three, you know, from three to five. And, um, you know, and I think it’s one of those odd things about the businesses.

Barry 00:10:51 You, you have to be patient, but you also need urgency to keep, like, to keep pushing. Um, and yeah, no, I was lucky enough. Like, I, I, you know, I’ve found one or two clients who had read lean enterprise and were, were curious to try and apply it in their company. And, um, that got me started. And, you know, we just sort of started to build from there. And three months in, I hit my KPIs and we sort of had the conversation with my wife about what she wanted. She got offered another great opportunity to keep working on the Ebola project. So she’s like, well, you know, let’s do six more months where, you know, she, she was still working from Switzerland and I was in the U S you know, we’d go back and forth. And, um, yeah, and just over time, we’ve just sort of built it up bit by bit, podcast by podcast, you know? Um, it’s, it’s been a lot of fun. And, um,

Andrew 00:11:47 You know, what, when I, when I so love about that story is it’s kind of exactly what you touched on. Like, you know, you and I are still just getting to know each other, um, and right away I could, you know, it was super clear that you are like, you don’t just talk about experimentation. Like, this is, this is like your life. So it’s like when you come into a company you’re not just like spouting off these ideas that you’ve never done. You’re like, no, no, I put my family through this bleeding. I said, this has been battle tested. Like I’m talking like the kitchen table, come to Jesus. Talk with my wife. Like we, we have tried this stuff. So I just think that’s amazing because not only does it give you, I think a deep level of intimacy with the material that you’re teaching people, but also like there’s some legit credibility there.

Andrew 00:12:34 So one of the things I’m really so curious about, like, you talked about uncertainty as a lifestyle, right. And going to back to your, to, to the joke, right. About like, Oh yeah. I went for a walk, had a ham sandwich and now get a unicorn startup. Right. It’s like, that’s, that’s how it works. Right. That’s at least that’s what, that’s what the Silicon Valley, the TV show shows me. But I think you’re really hitting on something with that idea. Right. Of, of, you know, when I think about all the, all the significant projects I’ve ever worked on, or anyone I know has worked on, or anybody who I, you know, where I actually have gotten to know the person beyond the beyond, like the press release or the Twitter bio or whatever, you know, there’s always this enormous, enormous amount of uncertainty, um, on personal levels within, within the project itself.

Andrew 00:13:21 And, um, you know, one of the, one of the jokes I like to make with some of the engineers I work with is like, yeah, you know, anyone who’s ever built and shipped a product, like you ask, you, ask the customer, who’s happy with the product. They love it. You ask the person who worked on it, and they’re just intimately familiar with like all of the flaws, all of the hidden, ugly stuff. And they’re just like, Oh, don’t even get me started on that thing. Right. And so I’m just so curious about, like, when you think about how, how do you, I mean, obviously experimentation is a major theme in your life, but when you think about it, like zooming out from just the tactics of, of business. Right. But you think about uncertainty as a lifestyle. How do you, how does, how do you think people should approach that? Like, how do you approach, how do you approach navigating that uncertainty?

Barry 00:14:03 Yeah. Um, I, you know, I often have this mantra of like thinking big and starting small, but, you know, I think I say that quite a lot. And, um, you know, and I like, just so there’s template examples from my life. You know, when I finished, I love travel. Right. I was always, I grew up in a small town, tiny little fishing village, 5,000 people in Ireland, you know, like it’s still there. 90% of the people are still there. Right. It’s um, and, you know, I always knew I wanted to sort of travel and see the world and get in it. That was just my thing. Um, and like the way I would always try and like have this aspiration, but I’d always do something like really, really small to stars. And, and so for instance, when I, when I finished, um, a university, I live here, he was like, I’m going to backpack around South America and just go for six months and see what happens.

Barry 00:14:59 Couldn’t speak a word of Spanish travel, travel on my own. Yeah. And, you know, and for so many people, they were like, that’s crazy. Like, you know, and this is like, uh, just to, to start a two thousands, you know? So there wasn’t even an if for me though, it was like, that’s what I want to do. So how, how would I prepare myself to do that? You know? So I used to do like little things. Like I booked a ticket to just get a train from like London to Amsterdam on my own for like three days to find out, like, what would it be like to just travel on my own for a little bit a while. Right. So it’s only three days, what could possibly go wrong? Sure. You know, and, and, and doing this small little, like, little tests almost right. If I’m going to disappear on my own for six months or a year, just travel on my own, like nobody to talk to, what’s it, like people get nervous about that.

Barry 00:15:55 And I was like, well, I just did it for three days. And I survived. Can I do it for a week? I do it for a month, you know? And, and so in LA, a lot of that sort of pattern of, okay, I have these, I, I do think I go travel on my own for a year. Let’s go do it. Um, but then I might start small with like a three day trip and see how I get on. And, and that pattern is sort of ingrained in me. And so many things that I do, right. Start a business I’m. Yeah. Right. Well, what’s the smallest thing I could do tomorrow to start finding out if that’s gonna work for me or not, or how, how that might, how I might experience that. And I think, um, so I think that’s, the uncertainty is a lifestyle type thing, right.

Barry 00:16:35 I’m always the person where people are like, Hey, let’s go to this festival or, Hey, let’s go to this thing. And, you know, I don’t always go, yeah, great. I want to go, but I’m curious enough to like, find out, like, what, how can I find that quickly if that’s something I would be into or not, um, and routers and sort of get hung up with the, no, I don’t like that, or no, I wouldn’t do that. I’m much more of the mindset of how can I try something quickly to see if I like that? What I like that sport would, I like that type of food, but I like that type of product. And I think that’s, that has served me very well in terms of not only figuring out what I liked, but figuring out myself and, um, I guess I’d encouraged more people just to do that is to think rather than yes or no, think more like try and try quickly, fast and small and figure it out.

Barry 00:17:32 That’s much more of my more sort of approach, I guess. I always like that for you. Or did somebody teach you this? You know, I don’t know. It’s, it’s kind of cool. Like, it’s one of these things, like when it’s only, when people ask you these questions and you reflect on it, you’re like, Oh shit, yeah. That’s actually what I’m doing. And I’m, you know, like I was very lucky, right? Like my, my folks were, are, were great at encouraging me to sort of do things right. They, they weren’t, they were sort of, um, give it a go type people, you know? And, um, and it’s funny, even when you think about so much of the research now from people like Carol Dweck, who wrote a fantastic book called mindset about growth and fixed mindset, you know, like I think my parents were practicing that, um, where without research to back them up, if that makes sense.

Barry 00:18:20 Totally. You know, it’s sort of like, um, those, those sorts of things have been, you know, they’ve become very intentional to me now as well when, when I’m working with people, when I’m, you know, spending time with people you’re trying to help is just encouraging them to try, rather than sort of letting the belief that they’re good at something or not good at something. Um, because it holds so many people back from doing stuff that they could be amazing at, but they’ll never find out cause they’re like, Oh, I sucked, I sucked at English in school. Like I got T pluses in, in English literature all through school and thought I couldn’t ever write anything, you know? And here I am down the road with two books because I found a different way to create content that you and I, because talking was a better medium for me to create content and typing. Yeah. So most of the content creation I do now is I talk it and I, and I transcribe it. And certainly I’ve got like 10,000 words in an hour and, you know, most books are 70,000 words for anybody out there. Who’s, who’s harboring ambitions to write one. I, you know, so, you know, all you need is like seven hours of talking to somebody that’s somewhat relevant and recorded all.

Andrew 00:19:34 Yeah. There’s your first draft. You do it on a Saturday. Right.

Barry 00:19:38 So, um, you know, it’s just like, there’s so many different ways to think about how you can accomplish certain things, um, that aren’t necessarily the conventional way to do it. And, um, if you don’t try and figure out what, what’s your jam in, in terms of driving that, then you’re never, you’re just, you’re just gonna close all down these opportunities that, that, uh, life presents. So that’s sort of more how I come at it from,

Andrew 00:20:06 I love that and I love that I am not a parent yet. And, but I think about like, so I, I, the book, you mentioned mindset by Carol Dweck that, and, um, grit by Angela Duckworth are like, basically, you know, if I, if I could combine two books into one Bible, I, those are probably the two, uh, you know, I have them like right behind me on the bookshelf and they are just dogeared and tattered, like nobody’s business. Um, and I remember specifically like, like, uh, begging, literally begging my brother to read these books. I was like, I will buy them for you. I will read them to like, whatever it takes, I don’t care. Right. Cause I have two little nieces that are absolutely adorable. And I was like, okay. I was thinking a lot about how do we, as the, in the family, like, how do we model for these kids?

Andrew 00:20:50 You know? Cause I mean, I’m not a parent yet, like I said, but what I have gathered from talking to lots of parents is that, you know, it’s not like you can say whatever you want, but it’s really what you do that they’re going to pick up on. And so it’s really kind of that idea of modeling. And what I’m really curious about is like, was there anything, any particular behaviors that you think like when you, when you think about like, you know, did your dad model something for you or, or now that you’re a dad, how do you think about modeling these types of behaviors?

Barry 00:21:17 Everything you’re saying resonates massively. Right? Like I, I see this so much. Um, because people do judge you on your actions, not what you say. Right. And whether that’s in the family context or whether you’re in a company. Yeah. We’re an open, transparent, collaborative organization. I sit down in your cubicle and get your work done. Right? Like PE people, people see the contrary and they, they, they call it out and, you know, you lose credibility, whether that’s what your, your kids, your friends and, or your colleagues. Right. And, um, for me, I think, you know, one of the most important roles of any leader ship activity is you got to role model what you’re looking for other people to do. And, um, whether that’s, if you want people to try things in your company, you should be trying things. If you want to create a culture, that’s open and inclusive, you’ve got to be open and inclusive.

Barry 00:22:13 You know, one of my favorite stories from a, you know, a coach executive team, just massive bank and, you know, classic bank, very bureaucratic hierarchical. And what I used to love is like one of the most senior execs in the whole company, what he used to do is when the grads all came in every year, he would go and like sit with them for half a day and give them all the problems that he was currently trying to solve to see how they would solve them differently. Like with new technologies or maybe new methods, because it provided him disability to sort of like find out what was other ways that people would tackle problems that were, he was so ingrained about how he would tackle them. Everyone would sit around the office going, you know, what, why does this corner office exactly talking to like a grad who’s just started like two days ago, but why, why are they doing that?

Barry 00:23:11 Right. You know, again. Yeah. But you know, again, it’s this idea of it role modeled at behavior where doesn’t matter who you are on this company. You’ve got something to bring to the table. And I, by the time the most senior, and you’re the most junior who cares, but I could probably learn some stuff from you and, you know, and I think that’s really powerful, you know, and a lot, a lot of the great, uh, I guess at leaders and inspire us for me, it’s like, that’s the kind of stuff that I sort of picked up is it’s really important to sort of live and honor these things, if you’re serious about it, because people will, will call you out on it. If you’re not. And you like, again, those are some of it. I think the great things, whether you’re trying to role model good behaviors for your kids or what your friends or your colleagues sees, these things are sort of super powerful, I think, and, you know, really make it concrete about what you’re about to people. And I think that’s really important.

Andrew 00:24:13 Totally, totally. Yeah. The, um, one of the things that I was like that came up a lot when I was, um, and we’ll talk, we’ll talk a lot more about, about unlearn and, and your new book. Um, but one of the things that came up for me when I was reading it and listening to your podcast, which is excellent, by the way, uh, we started coming up as this thread was like the barriers that people stumble upon. Right. And how kind of going back to the idea of mindset, how many of those barriers, like, we, we, I think many people and I’ll call myself out on this as well. You know, when I’ve been frustrated at times before I often my first instinct and I think it’s a natural reaction is to like, look externally, right? Like, okay, there’s something in my environment. That’s messing this up.

Andrew 00:24:55 It’s Oh, no, it’s like that person’s fault. Or it’s the way the company is or whatever. And yeah, sometimes there’s an element of truth to that. But every single time, I always, if I keep, if I stick with the inquiry, I very quickly find like, okay, yes, there may be something outside, but there’s also some piece of this that’s mine to own and I need to be responsible for. And I’m curious, like what, how do you, cause you, you have seen more people go through this process than I think anybody I’ve personally spoken to. Um, but what do you see people get tripped up on and, and how do they, how do they get out of those, those, those gaps? Well, look,

Barry 00:25:29 You’re touching on some of the most important ones, right? I always think, um, the F the first one for me is always curiosity, right? Like how interested are you really to like, get information that’s counter to what you believe. And simplest examples of this is say, you’re working with someone and you give them a task to do that. You know, how to solve or you’ve self before, and then they start doing it in a different way. What’s your reaction? What’s your reaction there? Right.

Andrew 00:26:05 So my first reaction is I go, I almost want to like, reach and stop them, or like, and then I’m like, no, no, stop, stop. Let him, let him do it, let him do it. Like it is their reaction is I want to like reach out and almost protect them. Cause I don’t want them to waste their time. But then instantly on the back of that, there’s like this other, I don’t know where, where it’s coming from, but this other thing it’s like, no, no, hang on. Let’s see what happens.

Barry 00:26:27 Right. You know, and, and it’s, it’s such a classic, right. And, and even when it’s coming from positive intent, as you’re describing there, it’s very easy for us to go, Nope, you’re doing it wrong. You do it this way. Right. Um, and this could be creating an innovation and you’re just like,

Andrew 00:26:46 I’m just cutting them off at the knees.

Barry 00:26:48 All right. Are you, are you removing all this sort of expression from them? You know, like, and so, you know, that’s, that’s a classic one. And the ownership piece you mentioned is I think, uh, probably the next, most critical, if not the most critical in some respects, because ultimately when we’re not getting the results we want, who, who do we point that to, you know, to do we blame the, someone didn’t do what they were going to do. This other team is letting us down, it’s my manager’s fault. Or, you know, and, and it’s, it’s a very human reaction, but like ultimately, you know, the only people we can really change is ourselves. And the only way we can really be, have any agency is by doing things differently ourselves. Um, and I think starting with that is so important is if you can really own the results, you know, just like when I started the company with two other people, it’d be easy to blame them and go, ah, it’s their fault that it didn’t work out, you know?

Barry 00:27:48 But, but what I also found is when I sort of owned it and said, right, well, this hasn’t worked out. I’m part of that made the things I believed were not true. So now what am I going to do differently as a result of that, you know? And that just unlocks a whole different sense of countability and ownership about how you can work your way out of these things. And I think if you’re not someone who’s willing to do that, I think you’re going to really struggle to both really learn and unlearn things that are not working for you. You know? And, and then there’s so many other things like our, you know, our natural biases or biases exist to make us help us make decisions quicker. They’re helpful. They also hinder us, you know, being aware of some of those things, uh, our, our desire to always be correct, you know, our dopamine hits of that great fee.

Andrew 00:28:39 That’s my favorite. It doesn’t just feel so good to be right. So good. Hit me again.

Barry 00:28:49 And it’s like, these things are, you know, they’re there within us, you know, and then we have external realities, like maybe the incentive structures in the companies that we operate within, you know, the leadership conditioning of the places we’re in great leaders tell people what to do. So I’m going to tell everybody what to do, you know, so, so it’s sort of hard to just, I sense, it’d be aware of these things and, you know, not, not to go down the rabbit hole on the mall, but just, just sort of be aware of these things. And if you can ask yourself tougher, personal reflection questions, you know, um, I think that’s where you get a lot of benefits and what I’ve noticed with the, you know, the, the true, like outstanding performers I’ve got to work with reflection is part of their, their habits. You know, whether it’s daily reflection or weekly reflection, or like they make time for it.

Barry 00:29:44 They’re not just doing stuff all the time. Like, they’re, they make time for it. Um, and probably the classic example of this is there’s a great story of when bill Gates met Warren buffet for when the first times, you know, and, uh, Gates is like phenomenally known for like managing his time down to like the five seconds in his calendar, you know? And he, he, he ever looked at his calendar. It was like all these very micro meetings and I’ve ever since just like jammed in. And then when he met Warren profit and looked at his calendar, just like two meetings in it for the whole week.

Andrew 00:30:19 And it’s like, what the hell

Barry 00:30:20 It was going on? And it’s like, well, let’s see these two things are really important. And the rest of the time, you know, I need to be thinking about stuff and, you know, if something important comes up, I’ll put it on my calendar, but I’m going to make time for thinking, you know, and yeah, and it’s, it’s such this like different juxtapose of these massively successful people, but, you know, it’s, it’s just always interesting to sort of like compare and contrast those methods a little bit.

Andrew 00:30:49 I wonder if, is that the source of the, I think they later maybe a bit they’ve later became famous, but I always heard the story that bill Gates had his famous think weeks where he would just go off the grid for, like, I think it was a week, a quarter, which is a lot, I mean, for a CEO of Microsoft, that is a lot of time off the grid. I’m wondering if, if that’s where that came from.

Barry 00:31:09 I don’t know, but, you know, I could definitely see why it could. Right. And, but like, but I think both of us do that to a certain extent, right? Like last week I was in glacier national park where there is no phone reception and, and I’m just like hiking around, you know, and, and looking at the world go by. And I know coming back from that already, I’ve liked refreshed, I’m focused and recalibrated, you know, and that, you know, that’s part of why I do those sorts of trips, if that makes sense, you know? And I, and I try to build in prompts. Like I know I reflect better in the mornings. So I try to say every, every second day I have like a little 15 minute reminder for me to go reflect on some stuff, you know, like, look at what you’re working on.

Barry 00:32:03 Look at some of these outcomes you’re aiming for, what’s working. What’s not, what are the tweaks I might need to make over the next day or two, you know, being aware of the, the big thing I’m aiming for my little small step along the way. And it’s just a good habit for me. And I think when I speak to people about it yeah. People reflect, but I don’t think it’s like a deliberate reflection. I think it’s sort of, I’m working in an agile team and I’ve a retrospective every two weeks. Oh yeah. I’ll just, I’ll just rock up and start reflecting in the meeting. They’re not, they don’t do any beforehand

Andrew 00:32:36 Switch on. Yeah. You know?

Barry 00:32:40 And, um, so, you know, I think, I think, you know, we’re, we’re so overloaded with like sensory information and stuff to do and backlogs to finish and tasks to get on. And it’s very easy to feel like the adrenaline hit of like, just go emptying your, your in tray. But I think like the power of reflecting on what’s actually in that out tray and lining it up to what you’re really trying to achieve and what is working and not working, you know, like that, that is a skill that I think few people really deliberately focus on are try to master.

Andrew 00:33:18 Why do you, why do you think that is, is it, is it just a time thing? Because it’s one of the, it seems like one of those things that, you know, like, like bro like good, like all good habits, right? Like we all know what we should be doing. And I think this is a common theme in a lot of your work at the organizational level. Right. Like we know what we should be doing. Most people in an organization have at least some sense of like, yeah, we should do this. Or whatever individually you’re like, yeah, I should be saving more in my 401k or my IRA or whatever. And yet we don’t, which to me is like, one of the most fascinating mysteries of life is like humans and why we do the things or don’t do the things that we do. W what do you see?

Barry 00:33:58 I T I just see that, um, it feels like to prevent a, C’s always to do more, the more you’re doing the busier, you are, the more you’re getting through your high output. You know, we’re trained in that, like, we’re conditioned to do that, to do 60 hours a week, to be the last person to leave the office, to like all these, like, you know, there’s sort of an, there is an ego to it as well. Sure. But again, the more things you have moving, the more context switching, you’re making, the more context switching the quality’s going down to energies are going down, you know? So again, counterintuitively, the way to make more progress is not to do more things. It’s actually to do less things and find out if those things that you’re doing are actually driving the outcomes that you want, you know, like really making two or three bets and exploring them well is better than making a hundred bets and sort of half asking them all right.

Barry 00:35:05 And, and dealing with the switching costs of all of all those hundred things, you know? So it’s, it’s definitely one of these things that I try to work hard on is like limiting the amount of things I have in progress. And you’ve got to find your thresholds for these things. We’re all different. But I know if I, that feeling like when I have so much stuff going on and I’m trying to spin all these plates and keep them going, and, you know, it’s a rush, it feels great. But then sometimes I’m like, why the hell am I splitting all these plates, half of this stuff I don’t even care about? I don’t want to do. And you’ve know, you’ve no mental cycles left to like really consider some of the stuff that you really care about and you really want to go after and do well.

Barry 00:35:49 And I think that’s, that’s always one of the things that I think I definitely observed with great people I work with is they’ve great focused. They, they actually do less to, to achieve more. And, um, it’s definitely one of the things I’m always trying to practice in myself is just not having too many different types of things in progress, because the price of context switching is so high and the quality of what you do goes down. Um, and just being aware of that, I think is, is important for people because it feels anxiety and stress.

Andrew 00:36:26 No. Yeah. Are you familiar with, um, with Cal Newport’s work now? Oh, okay. You, I think you were going to love this stuff. So, uh, I, I won’t say he’s quite on like the personal impact level for me as, as Carol Dweck and Angela Duckworth, but he’s not far below it just in terms of foundational stuff. So this guy’s name is Cal Newport. Uh, he is prolific, I think is really the only appropriate word as both an author and a computer scientist. So he’s managed to be both like, uh, I think he’s like a five time, five times, five X author, uh, as well as being a tenured professor at a very young age at Georgetown in computer science. And that, that are like that right there. And you’re like, okay, how’s this person doing this? And what’s what, where I fell in love with his work was probably, I don’t know, six, seven years ago he wrote a book called so good.

Andrew 00:37:17 They can’t ignore you, which is like, if anyone is feeling lost in their career and is saying, what is my passion? And where is it? I thought I misplaced it. I just had it, but I can’t seem to find it anyway, read that book. Uh, but his, his further work has gone on to explore, um, how to have meaningful careers doing great important work in an age of just crazy distraction. Right. So his next book was called deep work. Uh, you know, how do you do hard, like important work and with so much noise and then his most recent one, which is the one that I, um, uh, would definitely suggest you check out, uh, given what, what you were just saying about like, just the re how refreshed you feel after, after going to glacier national park is all about how do we cultivate, this is my words, not his, how do, how do you, how does one cultivate a sense of, uh, quiet in a noisy, noisy world that is full of like things beeping and pinging us all the time. And I can personally attest to my life getting a lot better, um, from doing some of the digital detox, uh, that music, that’s not the term he uses. He would hate me using that term. Uh, the digital declutter, there we go, the digital declutter, uh, that he discusses in his book. So highly, highly recommend his stuff, uh, for anybody listening. But also I think you, you would dig it to Barry. Yeah. Awesome. Thank

Barry 00:38:36 You. Now, I always, I love recommendations, which is awesome, but it’s, it’s, it’s such a challenge for us. Right. And, um, you know, we are in, on dated with requests for our attention at the moment, right. In, in this world that we’re in, um, both social and work-wise and, you know, like if people responding to like Slack messages at like 11:00 PM, where does it end? You know, and, and, and these boundaries are, you know, they’re becoming, uh, almost they don’t exist anymore for some, some situations. Right. And I think that it’s, it’s a hard training for people to sort of step away from what they’re bombarded with, right. Because that’s what is expected of people. And some people are happy with that, but you also have to recognize others. Aren’t. And, um, that’s sort of a little bit about finding out, like, what’s your, the best of you, you know, what are the systems that you need to have in place?

Barry 00:39:42 So you bring your best every day. And, um, you know, for me, it is this idea of intentional time to work, time to reflect time, to exercise, time to, you know, where, where I know what makes my system run at its at its best and, and understanding there’s always time through, you have to adapt cool, but I think it’s more and more important. Um, especially, you know, if, if we want to do great things for and achieve great things for what we’re capable of for ourselves is getting to know your, your system, uh, to help you be successful, I think is, is key for people. And, and that is a process of experimentation and trying things and figuring out what works for you and, and what doesn’t. And yeah, I’m super curious to read more of his work with him.

Andrew 00:40:32 Sure. Absolutely. Check it out. I think you’ll, I think you’ll you’ll benefit a lot from it. And I think, I mean, I think anybody would, um, and as you said, like, I think kind of zooming, zooming it out, popping back up a level, right? Like w Y if we try to put this in context, like on one hand, I think we’re, we’re articulating something. A lot of people it’s kind of in the ether right now. Like a lot of people are dealing with this kind of these concerns, these experiences, these emotions. And I think if we kind of reorient that and put it in context of, of your work, where it’s especially relevant, is like, you know, if you’re distracted all the time, if you’re fried all the time from, you know, Slack messages at 11:00 PM every night, never taking a vacation, never having any space to think your own thoughts. Um, it’s impossible to learn. Like you, you, I mean, you just, nothing of substance anyway, like you might, you might learn that you hate messages at 11:00 PM, but like how you just don’t have the, literally the physical cycles in your, you know, the capacity in your brain to, to really go risk, uh, and take experiments and things like to really move the needle forward. That’s, that’s where I think it comes back around to what we’re we’re talking about.

Barry 00:41:38 Oh, for sure. Right. And, um, you know, like, and again, it’s one of these things where I think for a long time, people used to think, like learning sort of happens where you would like take time to learn, practice what you learned, reflect on what you learned that, go back again, take time to learn, you know, like, like these sort of blocks, but, you know, and they’re like explicit start and ends, you know? And, um, and that’s not the case, right? Because you’re, you’re thrown so much stuff now where you’re on a project and you’re in a, you’re building a product and someone’s like, Oh God, I got to learn about how web services work. I’ve never built a web service before. I’ve got, I’ve got to be some way educated on that. Oh. And also I got to get this other part of the system working and make sure that we’ve got a good pricing model for how we’re going to talk to the customers and right.

Barry 00:42:28 There’s your there’s loads of little things that are moving, you know, so, and the more of those that are coming at you, you know, you are getting into this firefighting mode, right? So I think having these sort of systems to understand that there are, you need to make your pasty in time and have thresholds for how much new you can take in and how much stuff you’ve got to recognize is obsolete and let go of. Right. And I think that’s what came to me often with this onboarding system was I was working with these phenomenally competent people, right? They’re running these massive organizations to brilliant people. But what I, what I found was like more of the time, not learning new stuff, wasn’t a hard thing for them. It was actually letting go of their existing behavior. It was even harder because those were the systems that had made them successful.

Barry 00:43:24 And when they’re time poor, and when they’ve lots of stuff coming at them, how do you solve the problem? Oh, I’ve got this hammer. I just used a hammer for everything. Here’s hammer, hammer, hammer, hammer, hammer. And you know, it wasn’t the best move in every scenario, but they had no time to even think about using any of their tool, our invest time to learn another tool. Because the one that they had used was working for them. I’m the most senior person in the company. Of course it works. It must be working. Look, I look all my stuff, you know? So I think that was a real aha moment for me. And then starting to help people understand these systems to recognize, well, where are you living up to those expectations of yourself? You know, people ask me all the time. Well, how do I know I need to unlearn?

Barry 00:44:16 And it’s the thing is it’s so obvious until, but until you’re told how to do it, and then there was like, Oh God, I should’ve done this. But then again, people don’t take time or have the time reflect. You know? And the simple thing is when, when I say to people, well, here, here’s a little thought experiment for the listeners. How do you know? You need to unlearn well, think, think about a, a challenge you’re facing where you’re not living up to the expectations you’ve set for yourself, or maybe you’ve set some outcomes you want to achieve, and you’re not. Is there a scenario or a place for you’re struggling, um, somewhere where you’re actually struggling to resolve a challenge that you’ve got, or you’re actually avoiding it completely because you’re just like, Oh, I can’t even think about dealing with that right now. Or maybe you’ve tried everything you can think of, and you’re still not getting the results you want. Right? Like people can answer five different things for each one, those questions, right? They’re all signals that your existing behavior is not driving the outcomes that you want, so you probably need to unlearn. And yet most of those things just feel like, Oh, keep them at the door. And I’m just going to keep doing the same stuff I’ve been doing always and expect a different result. And I think, I think someone called that insanity,

Andrew 00:45:45 It has been called that,

Barry 00:45:46 You know? And so I think it’s just like, once I start to introduce these ideas to people, they can see a system there. And they’re like, ah, you know, so, so I, when I’m working with people, I’m like asking them, like in a way, where do you need to unlearn answer these questions for me? See what you come up with, what challenges surface, you know, and then try and prioritize one of those to say, where do you think you’re going to have is really going to help you the most and limit the amount of things you’re trying to change about yourself. Just think big, but start small and learn and learn fast. What’s going to work for you. And I think, um, that is where this sort of system becomes really powerful for people because, you know, if you’re changing too many things, it’s impossible to know what led to the results you wanted or not. You know? So again, this idea of like doing less to achieve more small, little changes, controlled sort of sample size are controlled experiment to a certain extent of what you’re trying to change and see what works and what doesn’t is super powerful for people. So what challenge did you come up with in your head? When I was, when I was,

Andrew 00:46:56 Yeah, it was, I was just thinking, I was like, okay. I bet I hope he turns this on me. I’m I’m game. I’ll play. Um, so alright. Let’s let’s, let’s do it again. So ask me the question again,

Barry 00:47:07 Right? So where, where are you not living up to the expectations you have of yourself? Maybe not achieving some of the outcomes you’re aiming for a situation you’re struggling to resolve or somewhere you’re voyaging altogether, or maybe, maybe you’ve tried everything you can think of and you’re still not working or maybe like your secret sauce suddenly just it’s not working anywhere.

Andrew 00:47:31 Could it be a historical example or you want a current one?

Barry 00:47:35 I think let’s go current because we can workshop.

Andrew 00:47:39 All right. We’re going to workshop this life. Um, okay. So there is a situation that I’m dealing with in, in business right now where, um, a particular partner that we’re working with. Uh, I am everything I have tried and I’ve tried everything I can think of is not effective in getting them to operate in a way that like, based on what I see and the people that I’m working with and in this particular setting, um, based on everything we see, we think there’s a pretty clear path forward. And, um, we, I have been totally ineffective at getting the people who need to take different actions to take different actions. I think that’s probably the cleanest way I can say it. So that’s, that’s the, that’s the situation is that I see like what, what to me is a very clear path, uh, about what we need to do that I, I believe I can’t promise it’ll work, but I believe it’s our highest odds, like our high, our best chance path. Uh, and then to me it’s extremely clear to several other people that I have obviously been effective in convincing. It’s very clear, but I have not been effective in convincing the people who actually need to take the actions along this path.

Barry 00:48:51 Nice. Okay, cool. Right. So th th there’s a couple of tactics I not often try in, in this sort of space. Right. Okay. Great. First one. It’s like, um, what’s what, what’s the real outcome you’re aiming for? Like, if you totally dissolved this problem, but what would be happening in like a year’s time?

Andrew 00:49:17 That is an excellent question. Uh, what would be happening in a year’s time if we totally dissolved this? I think what would be happening is that the, the group that I’m working with on this would be totally, um, they would be totally self-sufficient in an experimental, innovative kind of way. Like they, they would, they would, um, be thinking on their own. Like they, they would be thinking this way on their own without anyone needing to like, you know, handhold them along the way they would, they would just be running cycles quickly. Um, and not, not, they would have, they would have overcome either the external or what I believe are actually more of the internal blocks to actually being aggressively experimental. That’s what I think would happen.

Barry 00:50:06 Great. Yeah. And then if they’re experimenting my buck, what would be some of the things they’re doing,

Andrew 00:50:10 Uh, they would be running a lot more customer tests. They would be, um, you know, more customer tests. They would be putting products in front of, they would be putting unfinished products that are not like totally packaged and polished and, you know, signed off on by every regulatory authority in front of people to actually customer response. Uh, I mean a lot of the lean startup type things that, that, uh, you know, you and Greg and I both love.

Barry 00:50:33 All right, great. So this is brilliant, right? So, so what you’re describing there already is like behaviors, right? Like what, what people would be doing differently than they’re doing today, running customer tests, shipping stuff more frequently, right. Like just getting, getting stuff that wasn’t perfect.

Andrew 00:50:53 I think the fastest, the simplest way to say it is like letting go, like stop waiting for perfect and iterate your way to quote. Perfect. That’s what I think is this the summary?

Barry 00:51:04 Yeah. So, so w what I see, you’re starting to define outcomes there. Right. Which are, which are super interesting. Like what I normally get people to do is like, write that down. Like write the story you just shared. Okay. Write it on the one page. Okay. And then go back over that story and look for like the key behaviors that are different. So you said things like testing with customers shipping more frequently. Right. Often they’re often verbs cause they’re forbs or new behaviors. And then I normally sort of try and say to people, right. Well, how much more or less would they be doing those things on a sort of ratio or rate level? Right. So I, you know, I’m going to guess at the moment, testing with customers, how frequently are they doing that?

Andrew 00:51:46 Not very, uh, it’s very, it’s very infrequent.

Barry 00:51:49 Okay. So say, say you say you, like, we would increase the rate that they test with customers by 200%.

Andrew 00:51:54 Yeah. I would, I would probably phrase it in like a time interval. Like they’re putting new things in front of customers. Uh, no slower than once a month.

Barry 00:52:03 Okay, cool. Right. So you write that. And what I would get you to do then is put that down as an outcome that you’re aiming for and put that like right at the end and sort of a center of a circle right now, if I said to you, if you were trying to get a team to increase the amount of customer tests they done to like every month from once every three months. Right? So by two, 300% walk would be some of the behaviors you think could make people do that. What would encourage them to try and start testing more? What could you do?

Andrew 00:52:47 I can’t change their incentive structure so that one’s out. Yeah. Um, I could, what can I do this? Oh man. Alright. I’m going to out myself here. So one of the things that, uh, and this is, this is me reinforcing being a learner. Cause I’m learning, I’m learning live right now, like out loud and giving myself like intern. And we’ll go back to that in a second. Um, so this is the moment of a really good learning moment for me. So one of the things I just noticed in thinking about the answer to your question was that I allow, I have allowed my, with these particular people to kind of color the lenses through which I view all their actions. And so I’m typically only in this, I say, Oh, this is nasty. I am catching. I’m only catching them doing things wrong. I’m not catching them doing things. Right. And so one thing I could change is to catch them doing things right. And it actually like encourage them as simple as that sounds. Right. But I’m like, Oh man, like I just got so frustrated that I just was like, Oh, and I stopped paying attention to all I started seeing was what they’re doing wrong from my perspective. And not seeing any of the things that they’re doing. Right.

Barry 00:54:01 Brilliant. Right. Yeah.

Andrew 00:54:03 Was saying that, but you know what? I have a commitment to myself to like own the mistake and learn from it. So there you go.

Barry 00:54:08 That, that’s why I’m not worried about you, Andy, you know, it’s like that, like, these are the things it’s like when you start to like go through this, right. Like yeah. I can encourage them more. Um, I could bring customers into the office every week and just let other teams test and sees them up there. I could, you know, and what happens often is it’s the obstacle that presents, presents ourselves. Right. And we just see the obstacle so much that we’re like fighting this obstacle and we forget about like, what’s the outcome we’re actually really trying to aim for, you know? And that’s why it’s trying to pull people out of the, the, you know, the thing that’s right in front of them to sort of go look back or what are you really trying to do? You know, and listening to you. You’re like, I want my teams to be experimenting.

Barry 00:54:55 I want them to be with customers. I want them to be iterating, you know? And I think, well, how do you get them to do that? Oh yeah, you, you, you sort of get them, you know, and suddenly you’re, you’ve pulled yourself away from this obstacle and you’re back thinking about outcomes that you want and it really frames your whole mind, you know? And I, and I think thank you for your honesty there. Um, sharing that, that as you go through that process, you know, and we’re all guilty of this. Cause when you’re so like in it, all you can see is the obstacles. And I think putting yourself back out to see the outcomes is this, you know, it’s very, the best method I’ve, I’ve discovered of like reframing your, where you’re at and, and getting this, you know, something else to try and who knows if this is gonna work shot. Right. But it’s, it’s a, it’s a whole like different place to be in than two minutes ago where we’re in this, I’m sick of this scenario. I can’t think of any sense of solve this. And now suddenly you’re like three or four new ideas to try to try, you know? And I think that that’s just like, so I think powerful when you, when you get into that spot.

Andrew 00:56:12 Yeah. No, thank you. That’s, that’s a real gift. I really appreciate you taking me through that.

Barry 00:56:17 No, like this is honestly, it’s, it’s been so interesting, right. Because I am as guilty as the next person to fall into these traps. And I’d love to say I live and breathe and dog food to stuff myself every day, but I don’t, you know, and I think that’s why in, in so much of this, you know, it’s hard to do it on your own. It’s like you were asking before, like, why don’t we do this stuff? We know it’s the right thing to do. Why aren’t we doing this? And in many reasons we can’t just do it all on our own now, you know? And I think that’s fine for me, like the power of reflection, the power of coaching, the power of feedback from people you trust, you know, these are all mechanisms to sort of break us out of that sort of execution, a rush in some respects.

Barry 00:57:07 Yeah. And building that into your system is important. You know, like I, I, I have people who coach me. I have people who, when I build things, I value their feedback. Cause I know they’ll tell me what sucks and what doesn’t in a positive kind of way, you know, there’s, you know, so I have my reflection time for me to look back on what I’m doing and is it really what I getting the results I wanted? Um, you know, so do you, these things are all just countermeasures to help us. And, um, I just did, we’d encourage everyone to try and work some, uh, some of those sort of tactics into their system of operation, if that makes sense and, um, see where, see where, where, how it can help you.

Andrew 00:57:52 What’s coming up for me right now is one of the threads that we were talking about earlier about like the obstacles that come up for people when they’re really trying to take on this, this system, you know, a system like this, which to me is really like the behaviors that embody or exemplify really like a learner mindset. Right? Like when I, when I really think about kind of what’s underneath all of this is it’s like a foundation of the growth mindset. Um, it’s grit it and it’s being a learner. Right. But it’s not just like talking about being a learner. It’s, it’s doing it. It’s being a learner, uh, in, in practice. And I think the biggest obstacle I’ve seen to being a learner is something that I am very much still practicing. And I got an opportunity to practice that live with you here.

Andrew 00:58:33 Like two minutes ago is, uh, the, the obstacle is being right. Right. Like we, like, we talked really, it feels so good to be, to be right. Or to think that we’re right. Like, it just feels so fucking good. And the thing that I, that I had this coach, a brilliant woman named Jen, and she would always just hammer me on this. Right. Cause like one of, one of my, uh, negative patterns that I’ll go to when I get pissed off with something or frustrated is, uh, you know, I’ll, I’ll get, I’ll get self righteous about it. Like I think I’m right. And I’m super convinced I’m right. And I have the evidence for it. And I was like built the case. Right. And, and I know other people do this too, but I’m just, I’m just outing myself so that everyone else can, you know, find, find themselves in what I’m saying here. And I’ll have this whole thing. Right. And at the end of the day, I’m like, well, shit, okay. Maybe let’s say, and I’m like, you know what, say I am right. Maybe, maybe I actually am. But then it’s like, well, but what’s it get me in the answer. I have never had any answer to that question other than nothing. Like I’ve been right a million times and it’s bought me Jack. Like it never buys me anything.

Barry 00:59:37 Yeah. Yeah. It’s a funny one. Isn’t it? You know? Um, but I, I, I just think so much of that is like a doctrine that’s being pushed on us. You know? Like that’s the narrative that people have created about what is a great leader. What is a great founder? What is a great innovator? You know, like people always drag out poor old Steve jobs, dig them up from the grave and leave them alone. People. Steve, Steve jobs was, he was always right.

Andrew 01:00:04 You know what, actually, there’s a story. Have you heard, I’m sorry to cut you off. You actually finished it all. All a if it’s still relevant with time. No, no, no, go go. So you said, you know, people always say Steve, Steve was always right. So, but have you heard what, uh, there’s a story that I can’t remember if it was Andy Grove or Larry Ellison who told this story, I want to say it’s Andy Grove, uh, who is, you know, legendary, uh, CEO of Intel and like really popularized the whole OKR system for anyone who’s not familiar with him, go check those out there. They will make your life better. Um, but the reason I brought that, I thought that was, um, I heard the story a little differently is cause so people will often will say like Steve was always right. But the story that I thought was more interesting, um, and more revealing of, I think what probably actually went on, um, is that Steve wasn’t always right.

Andrew 01:00:53 But Steve always got it. Right. And it’s like, well, what’s the difference? And it was this idea of being a learner where, uh, from what I’ve read and listened to people, not, I never knew Steve jobs never worked with him. Uh, but what I, what I learned or what I’ve heard from people is that, you know, he was like strong opinions, loosely held, like he had very strong opinions. Right. And he was famous for those strong opinions. And he demanded of everyone around him that they challenge his opinions. Like if you believe, if you saw it differently than Steve, it was like your obligation to dissent. Right. And I think that’s a big, big value in, um, I think it’s McKinsey the consultancy as well. They have that same idea. Like if you see a different, like you have a duty to speak up. And, but, but the, the weird thing about Steve was apparently you could convince him, right?

Andrew 01:01:38 Like you could argue back. And if he, if you convinced him, he would just completely jettison his entire former beliefs and just completely flipped. Like if he was like, Nope, you’re right. A hundred percent switch. And within five minutes, you’d be, you might think he was the one who had like, thought of that before. And for all the things that I have read about Steve jobs that I don’t want to emulate as a leader, as a manager, et cetera. I think that one is absolute gold, right? Like is to me like the, the, the, the learner mindset gets, um, the thing I try and actively practicing is a cause. And I’m, I’m blatantly stealing this from another reference that I’m going to tell you, it totally tell you to check out, uh, I’m blatantly stealing this from a guy named Tom , who runs a studio called impact theory, which is maybe my favorite podcast.

Andrew 01:02:26 Um, brilliant check his stuff out. Um, and he I’m totally stealing this from him. Um, but it’s this idea of the learner mindset being anti-fragile like, it’s the only thing that when attacked grows stronger, because if you can get yourself into a position where every time someone shows you how you’re wrong, or you discover a mistake, like we just did about like this, you know, I felt gross for a second there about like the way I’d been relating to these people that I work with. Um, but every, if you can, if you can train yourself to actually make that like a, a positive neurochemical reward, like then, then you’re off to the races. Cause like the only reason I got so excited was the split second after I went, Oh, I feel really gross about this. There was a split second later, there was this reward that came in that was like, yeah, but you’re being the learner right now. And that’s awesome. And I felt really, really good. And I was like, Holy shit, this works. Because if I could admit that out loud and feel good about it like that. Okay. Then I’m pretty optimistic about what else, like where that will take me. So that was a long rant, but that’s what I that’s actually what I was thinking about it. Like, I think that might be the solution to the, like how good it feels to be. Right. Is what if we could make it feel equally good to find out we’re wrong.

Barry 01:03:37 Right. And, and discover new information, you know, I think what’s great. If I, what you’re describing is the sad part for many people is they get trapped in the maybe it’s shame of feeling that they thought they were so right. And then they were wrong that they have to fight.

Andrew 01:03:57 Mm.

Barry 01:03:59 So they never get the second insight that you have here of, well, hang on. I just made a discovery. Wow. That’s actually way more useful than me feeling. Was I right or wrong? I’ve discovered something and something that’s going to help me go in a better direction. You know, like that, that is iteration at a target. That’s true. I describe innovation is new information that leads to better, uh, better action, right? And if you are able to like really dial into that, you know, you’re undefeatable, you literally are because you’re just a learning machine and not getting trapped on the result, recognizing it’s a process. And if you have a good process to get new information and see if you’re moving into direction, you want, that’s awesome. If you get trapped in the result, success or failure of the result of the thing you did, did it get a positive result?

Barry 01:04:59 That’s fixed mindset. That’s where you’re, you’re a stutter. And I see a lot of people get stuck in that, you know, because they’re, they, you know, they’re in a team, they build a competency for being the best coder or the best product manager. They’re always right. They always get it. Right. And then suddenly you give them a problem they used before or tried before. And then they’re always there a hundred percent records. I’ll cut. What kind of behaviors are they going to start to implement in a team versus someone who is like, well, look, I, if I can build a good process to find out if I’m right and just trust in a process that will help me figure out like the results just as positive, negative, but it helps me move into the direction I want that there are totally different people, you know? And I think, um, it takes, it takes a while to, I think sometimes evolve into the person who recognizes that you’re going to try lots of things when you’re doing wicked problems and lots of the market and to work and not sometimes they are. And if you can have the humility to recognize that, um, I think you’re in a much better place, so kudos to you. Keep it up.

Andrew 01:06:09 Thank you. I’ll, I’ll do my best. Um, you know, one of the things I was curious about that you, you mentioned was so, you know, there’s the famous, um, I think it was, came from Malcolm Gladwell, the whole 10,000 hours rule. Right. And

Barry 01:06:22 Yeah. Which, which we’ll debunk in a minute. So yeah.

Andrew 01:06:25 Yeah. So I was gonna, I was gonna just do that one up and ask you to, if you, if you would debunk it, but in particular, I’m curious to hear your thoughts on, um, maybe the trade off, I’m gonna use that word between hours and iterations and if one is more valuable than the other.

Barry 01:06:44 Yes. So you know that the whole 10,000 hours idea, so the person we really want to listen to is a guy called Anders Ericsson. He, he writes, so, yeah. So he he’s, um, really the expert here in, in, in performance. And I think Gladwell, you know, he’s, he’s a writer, so he’s like, yeah, 10,000 Aras to be a pilot. That sounds good. Just, just do the hours. And then you’re done, you know, due to training course, and then you’re ready to be a scrum master.

Andrew 01:07:12 Okay. That CSPs certification, you’re off to the races.

Barry 01:07:16 You can change the world now, you know? And, and, um, I think what’s very interesting about Anderson and he has this amazing, like a small little example in his book, you know, we’re, we’re, he would invite in one of his students, um, every week. And he was trying to teach them him a system to like count up to these like really, really high numbers. Right? Like you could try, try and find a way that he could sort of Deauville numbers or double primes or something, you know, and, um, every week he’d come in and they practice this sort of method, the boat and the student would develop his own system where he sort of went from being able to get like five consecutive to 12 to 13. And I think it read 50 and he sort of started maxing max it out, um, because he was deliberately practicing this method every, every week.

Barry 01:08:07 And, um, so that was sort of interesting to Ericsson, you know, and then what he did is he got the student to go and one of his buddies to come in and try and teach him his system for how he was like counting up to these really high numbers. Um, and the student explained his system to, to the other student who was sort of like, okay, that’s kind of interesting. But he sorta started using his own system that built on top of the previous student system. And he was able to like exponentially counter much way, way more higher numbers, because he was sort of taking someone’s idea and building upon it again and again and again, right? So this whole idea of who was smarter, both of them had the exact same IQ, same intelligence, save everything after both, both great students. But the idea is that they were deliberately practicing different techniques to try and drive certain types of outcomes.

Barry 01:09:09 And you see it, like when people are practicing, um, instruments, you know, you, you need to start small with things like very simple routines trying to play the guitar. You learn chords, they went to know chords, you can start to do multiple chords once, you know, court, you can start to go up and then different fret boards, right? Like there’s a, there’s a dis you have, but the problem is you have to keep taking on more and more difficult challenges to stretch your knowledge thresholds, to encourage you, to keep reinventing the systems that you’re using to get better at things. So as the first student just created a simple system to count up to 13 consecutive prime numbers or whatever the next student then took that and built on top of it. So they could go up to like 50 to the next person will take, but their system and build on top of it to go to higher and higher levels of performance.

Barry 01:10:08 And what most of us end up doing is we get a problem. We solve it in one way. And then we stick with that system for the rest of our lives. So we cap our ability and then we don’t take on more challenging problems because we’re sort of afraid in some respects or we feel like we’ve already figured it out. Um, and it’s one of these reasons why I’m a big advocate of growth means always trying to do new things all the time, because it exercises these muscles of learning, of trying things and not working of pushing yourself to find like new edges of what your capabilities are and what you’re trying to achieve. And for me, like that’s, that’s mastery, you know, and, um, that’s the sort of deliberate practice that I have is continually finding my, the edge of my comfort zone, getting a little uncomfortable and seeing what kind of stuff I can create as a result of taking on more and more challenging tasks. And, um, 10,000 hours like doing something for a period of time, doesn’t make you a master it’s like actually practicing more and more difficult tasks to try and find new systems to get to higher levels of performance is actually what gets you there? Yeah.

Andrew 01:11:27 Now I love everything you just said. And I think it’s one of the, one of the areas you and I really resonate on because, you know, just listening to you, I’m sitting here in my head going yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Because I just love anything that helps people develop and express who they are. Right. Because I believe human potential is nearly limitless. And I just love seeing, I love in whatever domain it is, whether it’s at work at home in sport, whatever like that, that to me is such a beautiful part of the human experience is like that discovery and exploration of our own potential. Like, wow, far, can we take this thing? I don’t know, but you know, guys like Anders, Ericsson, I think have really done seminal work in showing us the, what the path of mastery looks like. Um, one of the things I’m really curious if you have any insights on this.

Andrew 01:12:14 So I, I’m also a huge fan of, uh, of Erickson’s work and, and the entire sort of that whole field of, of deliberate practice. One of the things that I’ve beat my head against the wall on a little bit, I’m curious what your thoughts are here. Um, if my memory on this is correct, and I totally might be screwing it up, but I, I think in his book peak Anders, Ericsson sort of broke out a couple, like almost like levels of practice. And the S the first was maybe they call it like naive practice or simple practice. Something like, something like that. Right. And that’s just sort of like, yeah, I’m just repeating the thing and, you know, whatever, I’m just doing the same thing over and over. And then the next level was, I think they called it purposeful practice where you’re, it’s like you’re describing where, you know, you really are pushing your edge, whatever that edge is, you’re pushing it.

Andrew 01:13:00 And then they talked about the idea of deliberate practice being this, this true gold standard where not only are you doing that, but you also have really tight feedback mechanisms like with a coach. Um, and typically it’s in a domain where like, excellent performance is well understood, like, you know, sports or music, right. Like people have been doing that for a very long time. And what I, what I find myself wondering about was like, okay, so then where does, if I, if we try to bring this into, you know, like day to day life of somebody’s career, how does someone actually go about doing this and working this into their life, as let’s say, a product manager, right. Where it isn’t as well defined as like what virtuoso, violin, violin playing looks like? How do you think about translating these ideas and just like the day to day worklife for people, let’s just do what you can take product manager as an example.

Barry 01:13:49 Well, it’s funny if I bring it back to the, you know, the blog posts that you, you mentioned at the start, I wrote like a respect perspective and entrepreneurship, right? Like w w one of the, one of the points that is important for me, it was a couple of them. It was like, find a mentor are even better find a few, you know, because so much of the stuff that we’re doing, especially product management, it’s an emergent field, right. It’s still early days for a lot of this stuff and nobody has it figured out. And what’s also sometimes more inspiring for me is like, what are people in other fields done that are similar to this? And what, what kind of understanding have they got about how to solve it? Yeah. Like, and looking for these people, like simple example, even with product management at the moment, you know, like one of the big issues we have in product management is that we’re building these systems that are so complicated. We’re not even sure how they work or how people would use them.

Barry 01:14:53 And simple examples like Facebook’s hacking is such a simple example of that, right? Like people are generally trying to build a feed. And then next thing, you know, um, being hacked by bots to manipulate people perspective of what there was no product manager built a system to do that. It’s just, people are using their product and unintended ways. Right. And, um, and that’s a safety issue, you know? And, but, and then, you know, for me, I started to dig around and I found out that this is there’s this whole field resilience systems engineering, which is like, based on people trying to sell these like ridiculously wicked problems. Like how do you make a, a nuclear power plant safe when you have so many, you just commute moving parts about it, you know? And, and they had these problems in aviation about how do you make planes safe for people to fly?

Barry 01:15:45 And then that they sort of had me digging around and I found out all these people who are working in like safety fields, like, and, um, you know, that, that opened up a whole new group of people that I didn’t even know existed before people like Sidney Decker and Eric Hall room and David Woods are these characters. Who’ve been like working with NASA when they’re like in the space station. And they’re trying to figure out like why astronauts are doing spacewalks and potentially killing themselves because they’re not sharing all the information that’s happening inside the space station because they want to run their missions. Um, it’s just this wealth of stuff going on there. Wow. And I’m like, there’s, there’s something to learn here, uh, in my world, based on these people trying to create safe systems and high stress, high expectation, high tempo environments. And, um, I just want to go find these people and hang out with them.

Barry 01:16:42 Right. So, so, um, but that’s our mission. Coaching is a mechanism, you know, feedback from customers, from people that you trust, that’s a mechanism, you know, like you’ve, you’ve got to build it, those into your system. Right. And, you know, again, for me, like other things like finding a trusted group of people, I can collaborate and share my insecurities with my fears, my challenges, you know, all these sorts of things. It’s like building this sort of system around me to help me be successful, you know? And I think, um, you need to be intentional about that, you know, and because nobody can do this stuff on their own. I think that’s the biggest fallacy, if all, and recognizing that if you can build these sort of countermeasures in, you know, um, it’s funny, I had a Gibson Biddle on, uh, on the podcast before he’s the VP of product for Netflix.

Barry 01:17:41 He, yeah. He describes this having like his own personal board of directors, you know, where he like brings people onto his board that he’s like, all right, I’m trying to learn how to do public speaking. This person’s great at that. You’re going to be my you’re going to be the director of public speaking. It’s like, sounds like 1984 already. You’re going to be the head of communications. You’re going to be the head of, you know, but like, that’s the, self-awareness in yourself knowing where you got gaps, who can fill them, who can mentor you, who can coach you, who can be a collaborator who can be, you know, and I think when you’re like that deliberate and systematic about these things, you know, that’s, what’s helped me sort of pull through and, um, you know, I, I live and breathe those things and I definitely would encourage other people to be thinking about it.

Andrew 01:18:32 Have you gone through that process yourself of like creating a personal board?

Barry 01:18:35 Oh yeah. Like I, you know, that’s, it’s, it’s huge for me, you know? And like, that’s how, like I said, I have two coaches who the hell is two coaches me because, you know, one, one of them is focusing it very focused on specific aspects of myself. Like, how do I feel? How, how am I spending my intentional time? I’ve got a business coach. Somebody was saying to me, coaching me about how to like, run and operate a business better. Right. Like, I, I, you know, I am the most uninterested person in business operations that you will ever meet, like expense reports. Couldn’t give it, you know,

Andrew 01:19:18 Not interested.

Barry 01:19:20 You got to do it when you’re, when you’re running your own business. Right. And so if people coaching me on how to do that, you know, and then my set, like running myself, well, people coaching me and how to do that, try and learn new technologies. You know, I have great mentors around me, like people, uh, Adrian Cockcroft, who is like I’m VP for AWS open source. And he’s just being like, he just gives me like two nuggets of wisdom anytime I see him. And I just, he encourages me, you know, um, dr. Ed Hoffman, who was at NASA, I was sitting there, sitting there going, Oh God, maybe I’ve maxed out. Maybe this is as good as it’s going to be. And he turns around to me, uh, when I spend time with him a few weeks ago. And he’s like, I can’t wait to see what you do over the next 30 years.

Andrew 01:20:08 I hadn’t, I hadn’t even thought of that.

Barry 01:20:10 And there, like sitting in my head going, this is it. I’ve never, it’s never going to get right.

Andrew 01:20:16 I’ve tapped out

Barry 01:20:20 Just as a quiet, like one sentence. Like that just sort of gives me this whole, like, reenergizing about myself, you know? Cause there, there are people you’re admire and it gives you perspective, you know? And um, so, you know, I think just having these people around you and deliver you, like digging them up and recognizing where you needed is super powerful. And um, and I think it’s a good exercise for us all to do is like nobody is great at everything. Um, UN UN a very simple smart system. I think that might help people. There’s a, there’s a book called the E-Myth it’s entrepreneurial myth and it’s a really, really old book and it’s got this like really like super simple system. Um, and, uh, all it is, is like, it just gets you to like, think about your business. And it’s like a classic sort of wheel type scenario, you know, there’s seven or eight different facets to it or whatever.

Barry 01:21:17 And you just sorta go round to swell and you score yourself on a scale of zero to 10. Like, how good am I at business operations? How good am I at marketing? How good am I at sales? I could have my product delivery, whatever it might be. It’s, it’s a very simple system, but like the insight that you gleaned from it is super powerful because you’re like, you know, you look, no one’s 10 across the board. If they are, they’re lying to themselves. But, but then it makes visible to yourself like, okay, actually for me, I really sucked at, you know, business operations. So I need to get some help with that because I don’t want to do it. It takes energy away from me. So I’m going to get someone to help me with that or coach me with that. And, you know, I like, I like, um, you know, the delivery part of my job, so I’m cool there, but the marketing stuff, maybe I’m not so good at it. Maybe I’ll get some help there. And you know, all these things, it’s just raising yourself awareness and finding where you can get support and trying to build the best possible team of people around you to help you achieve, you know, whatever mission you’re going after. That’s true of whether you’re starting your own business, where you’re leading a team and you know, what do you care about what you’re trying to do with your life? So that’d be definitely a little, a little tip. I’d give people to think about it.

Andrew 01:22:37 Yeah. Thank you for that. I love the theme that like, that all just sort of fell into this really beautiful umbrella you created. Like if nobody can do it alone, right. And I actually want to push it, explore a little bit there, and I know we’re running a bit short on time, but, um, one of the things that I really am curious to hear about is I know you, you have done a lot of work with organizations doing what I’m just gonna refer to as sort of cultural transformation, right. Within, within an organization. And to me, like I, I have dipped my toes in that water and found it to be very cold water. Like I have found that to be from the limited efforts I’ve put in one of the hardest, maybe the hardest problem in business is how do you change culture, right.

Andrew 01:23:21 And how did, how do you shift culture around? And when, when I’m listening to you talk about this, right? I’m so fascinated by it because my, my twin fascinations, professionally speaking are product development and work design. Those are the two, those are the two labels I use, right? Like how do we, and that’s really the Genesis of this entire podcast is how do we use, um, how do we develop amazing products and amazing environments for the people who make those products so that everybody who comes into contact with that environment and that product is better off for the contact. Like that was the Genesis of kind of everything I’m exploring. And that’s the overarching question that this podcast is exploring. And we’ve talked a lot about products. We’ve talked about learning, we’ve talked about that, but I want to, I want to spend a little bit of time on that culture bit because especially, you know, riffing on the idea of like deliberate practice and how you have to really, as you said, that you have to systematize it, you have to weave it into your sort of your daily rhythms.

Andrew 01:24:14 And I think that work is such a beautiful untapped opportunity for that, for personal growth for people, because we spend half our waking hours at work, at least in the United States probably war, right. It’s like, okay, well, shit. If you’re going to be there all the time, you know, like let’s get the full spectrum of what’s available there. And so I guess my question to try and turn it into a question instead of just a ramble, um, is when you think about like cultural transformations, I don’t even know where to start. I’m hoping you do. But like, when you think about that, of how do you weave, how do you, if someone’s listening to this and they really love these ideas, right. And they want to weave these into their daily, let’s say their daily work life. And let’s say that that’s not the way the culture is right now. How should someone start? Like starting small going there? Cause obviously you can’t change everything at once, but like, how would you, how would you advise that to start?

Barry 01:25:10 Yeah. And, uh, and you’re, you’re sort of hitting the nail on the head in different ways, right? Culture transformation is big and more amorphous it’s everything and it’s nothing

Andrew 01:25:24 Perfect. You know, that was like a perfect problem.

Barry 01:25:28 And it is the perfect problem, you know? And so it’s overwhelming to think about how do you do culture transformation, but it sort of goes back to this point that we, we talked a lot, even at the very start is the, the thing that you can control in that big system is yourself. You know, you have agency in that system to start trying to change yourself to role model, the behaviors that you’re looking for other people to create in the company. You know, and, and what you’re hoping for is that by people, seeing you role modeling these behaviors, that it has a network effect essentially on the rest of the system, the rest of the people in that organization, you know, and, and my favorite example of this is a coach that the leadership team of a very well known bank, uh, Samuel L. Jackson might use them. For instance, we were doing this sort of, um, they were doing an agile transformation and, you know, the, the CEO of the company was like,

Andrew 01:26:35 Just really quick for anyone who’s not familiar with agile transformation. What does that mean?

Barry 01:26:39 Oh, it’s a it’s often when people are trying to create a better way of delivering products to their customers, right. Changing the way that they build and release software, working in smaller iterations and so forth that they, they had the concept of agile everywhere. What’s the name of their initiative. They wanted their business to be more agile, more adoptive. Gotcha. And, um, you know, so, so he started going to himself, well, if we’re going to ask everyone else to do this where we should start working in that way. Um, and you know, so we started working in that way. And what he realized is, and that, you know, one of the things in agile is you do this retrospective at the end of the iteration for one or two weeks. So we did it for two weeks. And after two weeks of working together, we did this retrospective for where you reflect on the things that we’ve done for the week.

Barry 01:27:30 And we ever often you get people together, they write on post it notes, they stick it up on the wall. So he goes off and he writes this post it, note down, sticks it up in the wall. And I’m sort of shock in the room. Everyone’s like, and they’re like, yeah, the post note said agile is hard, you know? And everyone was like, why do you, what do you mean? He goes, well, look up. I thought we were being agile. But what I realized is that we just measure output in all our meetings. We just talk about the tasks we got done. None of us talk about the outcomes we’re achieving, you know, and, and if we’re going to be agile, we have to talk about outcomes so we can iterate the things we try rather than just ticking off task lists. And everyone in the office was like, Jesus.

Barry 01:28:18 Wow. Okay. And this is the leadership team, right? Team of 12, very senior person. Yeah. Right. But he didn’t stop there. You went back to his desk and he wrote an email that’s then the subject title was agile. It was hard. And he sent it to 50,000 people in the company and it’s like, Hey everybody, I know we’re going through this transformation as part of that, you know, we’re trying to work in a different way. And what I found out from this too, my first retrospective this week is that we weren’t actually working in that job. And it’s really hard. So good on everybody out there. This is tough. I know it’s tough. I’m encouraging people to try, keep it up and we’ll get there. They don’t need, like, people were like stopping me in the cart or going, how did you get this person to write this email?

Barry 01:29:09 And it was like, the magic was, he created agency for other people, right? Like it created this ripple effect across the whole company from just one person sort of making it safe, making it vulnerable, you know? So, you know, the way I try to say to people is you have more influence than you realize, and you have agency, but it’s gotta start with yourself. And if you could keep role modeling the behaviors, you’re looking to create that it will inspire other people because people are watching. And if you say it and live it, you know, you’ll be surprised to network effect. It can have in a culture transformation because again, co organizational transformation is just the collective impact of individual transformation.

Andrew 01:30:02 Hmm. Yeah. So I love that story. What I would, well, I want to push you a little bit because the, the, I’m trying to imagine the, what someone who’s skeptical about this would say, and what comes to mind is they’d say, well, yeah, but that was like the CEO, right. So they can do whatever they want, people are gonna follow. So what if someone wants to make some sort of transformation like this, right. And model it and, and be, uh, the, the tipping point for some sort of change in their environment. And let’s say they don’t, they’re not the CEO. They’re just some person, you know, a fairly low level employee within whatever hierarchy they work within. How does that change things does, or does it change things?

Barry 01:30:42 Well, again, trying to find little ways to start small. Right. And there’s a very great place to start making change in your company every day. So if you’re in a company, where do you spend most of your time?

Andrew 01:30:57 Uh, probably at your desk or in your little work area.

Barry 01:31:00 Okay. And if you’re not there or were you

Andrew 01:31:03 Let’s go with me and actually, I think that’s the answer you wanted.

Barry 01:31:06 Thank you. Great plan. Thanks for that. Yes. Meetings meetings. Right. So, you know, and the reason I imagine you are, so, uh, let’s say excitable about meetings is because most of them are a massive waste of time for people like they, they, they are total waste of time. Yeah. So, you know, I always say, you know, one of the hacks I always encourage people to do is the best hack ever in a meeting is five minutes before it’s meant to end to stop the meeting and ask people how effective has this meeting be. I go around the room and listen to what people have to say. And you, you, you know, you might, you might be surprised with some of the stuff that you hear and you can simply say to them, well, how could we make it better next time and go around the room again, and maybe just pick one or two of those ideas and implement them in the next meeting.

Barry 01:32:04 And that if anything, can have the most profound effect in a company, because people start asking, why are we doing this? Is it effective? How could we do it better? And you can have a, more of an impact on a team because everyone who will leave that meeting and go, wow, that was a great idea to actually ask if this was a good use of our time or not, don’t go to their next meeting and do it, you know? And so I think, you know, it’s big and smell, uh, get out there and give it a go and, uh, look forward to hearing how people

Andrew 01:32:40 Perfect for a while. I know we’re running short on time, but, um, a couple of, couple of closing questions, uh, first of all, where can people find you online? If anyone wants to reach out, get in touch, share stories

Barry 01:32:51 Yeah. And powering around the.com. So my website, I’m a very early on Twitter, LinkedIn, all the social, all of the socials. Yeah. I always had this knack of just getting Barrio Riley at the right time. I think I just, the right person tells me sign up to this before I leave. I have to be probably arrive at 48.

Andrew 01:33:13 Perfect. Perfect. Um, and, uh, any, any requests of the listeners, any, any asks you would have of anybody listening to this?

Barry 01:33:21 Yeah, so like, I love hearing from people who maybe have been inspired by our conversation, tried something new, you know, reach out and tell me what you’ve tried, send me a, you know, a little, a blog, tweet, whatever you’ve done. I’m always curious about how people have used it in ways I’ve not anticipated, especially so perfectly shiny.

Andrew 01:33:38 Yeah. And we, we will link to Barry’s new book on learn and all the other things we’ve mentioned in the show notes, but, uh, Barry, I just want to say thank you so much for coming on and sharing and for just a really fun conversation, it’s been an absolute pleasure.

Barry 01:33:50 Well, it takes two pal. So thanks very much for having me.