Andrew Skotzko

8 Lessons Learned in 2020 (#33)

For the last episode of 2020, I reflect on eight big lessons I learned from guests this year, and share a few questions to ask yourself as we head into 2021.

We’ve shared so many amazing conversations this year, and I couldn’t possibly cover all of them, but I wanted to pull out some that I think are timely to keep in mind as we’re all closing out this year, and navigating into an unknowable future together.

How do we want to show up differently? How do we want to lead differently? How do we want to create differently? This episode shares ten takeaways from the conversations of 2020 to help us navigate into the next year.

I wish you all a peaceful end to this turbulent year. I hope you are finding an opportunity to rest, to reflect, to just take a deep breath with yourself and with the people you’re close with. Here’s to making things that matter in 2021!

And if you have a moment, I’d love it if you could give me a little feedback via this SurveyMonkey link. (It only takes one minute.)

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Transcript

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

Andrew 00:00:24 Hello, dear friends and happy almost end of 2020. I just realized yesterday that they’re actually 53 weeks in 2020. So this crazy year not only feels insanely long, but it actually is longer. Anyway, moving on in closing out the year, I just wanted to take a pause from our normal long form programming and share some of the lessons and the tools from this year that have really impacted my thinking. You know, there’ve been so many amazing conversations this year. I couldn’t possibly cover all of them, but I just wanted to pull out some little nuggets that I think are timely to keep in mind, as we’re all closing out this year together. And as you know, we’re navigating into an unknowable future, how do we want to show up differently? How do we want to lead differently? How do we want to create differently? You know, like all of these questions are top of mind for us as we go into this.

Andrew 00:01:12 Uh, as we, as we wind up, all of these questions are top of mind, at least for me, as we’re wrapping up this year and, and turning our attention to what is hopefully a much brighter 20, 21. Also, I would love to hear some of the moments from the show this year that resonated with you. Please send me an email [at] connectandmakethingsthatmatter dot com or let me know on Twitter @askotzko. Hearing from listeners is one of my favorite things. The way this is going to go is that we’re going to go through eight different lessons from different episodes. And then I’m going to close this out with two other tools that are not from specific episodes, but that I have found to be incredibly helpful this year in each of these, you’re going to hear from one of my guests this year. And of course I’ll link to all the stuff in the show notes.

Andrew 00:01:52 So leading us off, first of all, is Amy Edmondson. Now, if you don’t know who Amy is, Amy Edmondson is a senior professor at Harvard business school, and she’s recognized as one of the top 10 thinkers on business and management in the world, specializing in the areas of psychological safety and teams and organizational learning. Now, the lesson here, the big lesson is that psychological safety is not what you think it is. It’s not about having everyone share every detail of their private lives in the workplace, or being able to just do whatever they want. And it’s also by the way, not the goal, but have a listen

Andrew 00:02:25 Just to set up set of baseline. You know, I’ve heard you describe it as, um, psychological safety that is as sort of not getting tied up in knots about interpersonal risk. How do you like to describe it for people now? And, and I guess related to that, what is it not? Oh, great. Well, I like to describe it because I think it’s conveys what I really mean as a sense of felt permission for candor, that this is, I just look around and I feel like this is a place where I can be candid. I can ask for help, or I can say, oops, I made a mistake where I can, um, say, I don’t know. Um, or I can suggest a wacky idea, right. That then, um, and I, it just feels possible. Right? It’s easy. So, um, so that’s, that’s the best I can do, I think to define it.

Andrew 00:03:15 And yet when, even when I do my best, I will still inadvertently imply. Um, people will think, Oh, it’s about being nicer to each other. Like, no, and the reason I’m not against being nice, but the reason why psychological safety is not about being nice is that oftentimes at least at work being nice is code for, I’m not going to tell you what, I really think I’m going to go along. I’m going to nod. But then in the hallway, I’m going to tell my other colleague who I trust. And like, when I really think it’s also, I also want to say, it’s not sort of touchy feely. It’s not, um, absence of conflict. In fact, if you really get this right, if it’s the presence of conflict, I mean, we’re, we’re going to disagree. We’re going to have different views. We’re going to, we’re going to sometimes have to really get into it.

Andrew 00:04:11 Um, it’s not, um, permission just to whine, like, okay, now your psychological state psychologically safe. You can just sit there and whine about what you don’t like around here. Um, I mean, that might be fine and, and come along with the territory, but it’s not, that’s not what I’m talking about per se. Um, and it’s not Nirvana. Right. And, and, you know, it’s also not the goal. The goal is learning or excellence or contribution for the mission. Um, and all I’m saying is that if you don’t have this kind of climate where we’re permission to speak up, feels easy, then you won’t be able to do the work as well.

Andrew 00:05:01 Yeah, no. And I think you said that very well, and it went to how we actually originally came and came and got connected was I, I had some misconceptions of my own about what did this term mean and what is the psychological safety thing? And I think I have two really critical misconceptions that, um, I have heard now from other people, as I’ve been talking about this, getting ready for the conversation. And the first one was that it was the same as, um, belonging or a sense of fitting in. Right. And as we, as I explored it, it seems like, and feel free to please correct me where I’m getting this wrong. Um, it seems like this is really about, it’s about voice. It’s about candor. It’s about the, the conditions that provide a easy opportunity to speak up about anything. Work-related. I think there was a reference to you used a lot or a phrase you used a lot about any work-related idea. And I said, Oh, that’s very interesting because you’re not saying, I think you’re not saying it’s about anything on your mind or about, you know, what you had for lunch two weeks ago or your random personal hobby. Right. So say a little bit more about that, because I think that, that, there’s something

Andrew 00:06:04 I think that it’s so important to, to, um, realize we’re not talking about, I’m not talking about just unleashing every thought that flows through your head. Um, whether that sounds fun or horrifying, if I’m talking about work relevant information. So if you, if you suddenly feel all your colleagues should be interested in what you had for lunch today, you need a second thought it’s it’s. Um, so, and this is in fact where the discipline comes in. I mean, I think psychological safety is the sense of freedom that I can bring my full self forward, but I also have an obligation to be thoughtful and disciplined about what I bring forward. Now it’s okay to err, on the side of inclusion, like if I’m not quite sure that something’s relevant, I probably should check. Right. But there are many things that are obviously not, not relevant and not helpful for the here and now.

Andrew 00:07:01 And so learning and engaging and, and sort of contributing to the shared work is a process that requires both a sense of psychological safety or, and, or discipline, or it sort of discipline to, to get it right. And to be thoughtful, there’s been a lot of talk recently about, uh, about courage and people are, and I’m, I’m all for it, right. Starting to write about, uh, courage and courageous cultures and the, the immediate questions that come to mind are okay, well, if you have a, you know, if you have a courageous culture, does that mean we don’t need psychological safety anymore? If psychological safety does that obviate the need for courage. And I think the answer to both questions is no, that, that in fact, I think psychological safety and courage are two sides of the same, very valuable coin, right? That, that, um, it’s no matter, no matter what, there will be things that are going to be challenging for me to say, or I’ll worry that I won’t get this quite right.

Andrew 00:08:13 So I, I need to sort of, you know, screw up. My car is just a little bit too, uh, you know, to jump in there and try. Uh, but meanwhile, there will be co you can easily imagine workplaces where I don’t care how much courage you. I mean, you’re just not gonna do it. You’re holding back. It doesn’t feel appropriate. It feels that it’s not your place, et cetera. So whether you think of this as a need for more courage or as a need for more safety, almost doesn’t matter too much. I think the only real difference is that the emphasis in the term courageous cultures is on the individual. Just speak up. You ought to speak up right? In the emphasis on psychological safety cultures is a little bit more on the combination of leaders team and otherwise, and the collective, like it’s up to us, it’s up to us to draw each other out. It’s up to us to do what we can to make it easier for people to express themselves.

Andrew 00:09:12 Yeah. I think the key word, what you said is easier, right? Not zero effort. Right. You know, so maybe it lowers the threshold or the bar of courage required, but it doesn’t eliminate the need for, for guts.

Andrew 00:09:25 Exactly. And in fact, I sometimes think about the question. It’s a hypothetical question, but where do we put the threshold? Where do I put the threshold? Because clearly there’s you put it somewhere of what I, what I will and what won’t speak up about. And my primary argument is that most people, most of the time in most workplaces are putting the threshold for voice too high. Right. They put it up here when it should be down here, not at the floor, uh, but, but it should be lower than your instincts

Andrew 00:09:59 For more check out Amy’s book, the fearless organization, and listen to episode number nine on building teams where people feel safe. Okay, next up, Marty. Cagan now for all you product people out there. This is one with the grand master himself. If you don’t know him, Marty Cagan is a highly sought after coach to the best product organizations out there. His work has had a major impact on all the teams that make most of the tech products that you love. Now, what’s the big lesson here. The lesson in this next clip is that buyer’s remorse sucks and there’s something we can do to avoid it. Now, what do I mean by that? Joining a company or a team only to later find out it’s not what you thought it was going to be is one of the top regrets that people have in the job search and career process.

Andrew 00:10:40 Now it turns out that as product people, we have a lot of skills that we can use about this. We have a lot of interviewing skills specifically, and the lesson in this next clip is to use the same skills that we already use to interview users and customers, and to apply those skills to interviewing the companies or the teams that we are actually considering joining for our work. Again, buyer’s remorse really sucks. And using your interviewing skills well, we’ll help you avoid it in your career. In this clip, you’re going to learn about some of the key questions that Marty would suggest you ask when you’re interviewing to join a company or a team to see if it is truly a product first company. And if it’s going to be the kind of place that you can actually be an empowered product person, how can we figure out

Andrew 00:11:19 In advance that this is going to be a place I really will be empowered? And I can really work to my highest potential and all the ways that I know I should work, that the community’s figured out or that it’s just window dressing. Yeah, well, of course from the hiring managers point of view, you know, their job of course is to number one, make sure you’re competent. You have this basic skills that the team needs. And number two, you’re not an asshole, so that you’re looking for. But from your point of view, your job is to learn as much about how that company really works and especially how that manager would be like to work for. We have of course, many good ways to do that. You have to be, I always try to coach the, uh, interview candidates to be realize your first obligation is to show them you’re capable and you’re a good person, so they should want to hire you.

Andrew 00:12:06 But assuming you can do that, uh, you definitely want to take advantage of every opportunity to learn about these, uh, to learn about this question. What is it really like? Uh, one of my favorite ways of course, is to ask, to be able to go to lunch with the team. For example, if you can find so much out just by the dynamic that team doesn’t even have to be work-related, you can literally just go to a restaurant over in an hour, hour and a half. You could figure that out. Uh, I also would ask people that you talk to what it’s like to work for that manager in the interview team. What’s it like, uh, how do you get coaching? How often do you get coaching? What kind of coaching is that? You know, how do you make decisions here? How does work get assigned to our teams will tell us things like if it’s a feature team, is that a empowered product team you could ask, how, how is success measured here?

Andrew 00:12:55 What is it like? Uh, how do you handle hard product decisions? Can you tell me about your last hard product decision? And now you guys dealt with it. These are all totally, um, innocent questions, right? They are not accusatory or anything like that. They’re just like, tell them, tell me the things I should know. You know? So tell me what it’s like here. You can get a very good understanding now, of course you could be, it could all be a big demo. Like you said, it could all be a facade, but you know, that’s pretty hard to deal. And it’s also not. Um, you know, it’s not really to the company’s best interests because if they know you’re going to join here a week later, if you’re going to figure it out, when I’m the hiring manager, especially, I always make sure on the interview process to share the things that are difficult about the company, because I know you’re going to look, if you come here, then you’re going to learn this stuff.

Andrew 00:13:48 And I want you to come in eyes wide open and I’ll point out like, okay, well, the CEO is like very opinionated. So what we’ve learned is that you have to really do your homework with the CEO and provide the data works, but you have to do that. So that conversation, uh, I just think it saves cause you know, when you hire somebody and then they leave, that’s like the worst of all you’ve spent all the time and money and then it’s a really expensive mistake. So I would much rather it be as fully informed as possible. If there was

Andrew 00:14:21 One particular, you know, if you, if you could have an interview candidate ask about only one thing that you think would tell them the most about where the company they’re interviewing with is on the spectrum from, you know, feature factory to truly empowered product team, what would the be the thing they should ask?

Andrew 00:14:38 Well, what I usually recommend for that is that ask how work is assigned, ask how the team decides, what they’re going to work on is it’s something that’s, uh, you know, how does that work? There’s only two main ways that’s done, but they’ll typically describe it. And it’s what they’re used to. So you’ll be able to recognize that. Perfect.

Andrew 00:15:00 Yeah, you can, I’m sure. You’ll find out pretty quickly if like, okay, is this truly a sort of an OKR based, uh, you know, both top down and bottom up negotiation or is this like, you know, are people handing out roadmaps and saying, go,

Andrew 00:15:13 That’s a good way to put it, do they technology as a cost center? Do they think as a enabler for the business? Yeah. They’re the things that come out in that question, you know, saying, can you describe your product vision? You know, they should have great answer to that and you should see their eyes light up. Now we’re talking about something cool. It’s not a whole, hopefully even the, you know, whoever recruited you is already kind of started to sell you on the vision, but still you want to understand

Andrew 00:15:43 In addition to those excellent questions, here are a few others from the book escaping the bill trap written by Melissa Perry, who I recently recorded an episode with that. We’ll be releasing in 2021. Question number one, who came up with the last feature or product idea that you built. Question number two. What was the last product you decided to kill? Question three. When’s the last time you talked with your customers live question four. What’s your goal? Question five. What are you currently working on? Question six. What are your product managers like for more? I highly recommend checking out Marty’s new book empowered and then go listen to the full conversation with Marty on empowering product teams to do the best work of our lives. It’s episode 31. Next up is Nilofer Merchant. Now Nilofer is one of the world’s top business and management thinkers. As an operator.

Andrew 00:16:34 She was involved with the launch of over a hundred products that collectively generated more than $18 billion in revenue. She’s written three books and she’s gone to teach at Stanford, Santa Clara university in Yale, as well as to boardrooms and audiences around the world. And on top of that, honestly, she’s just one of my favorite people I’ve met this year and is just a wonderfully generous human being an author. I highly recommend checking out her work. So the lesson in this next clip is that belonging and voice are not the same thing. And that agency is a social construct. I’m going to say that again. Belonging and voice are not the same thing. An agency is a social construct. If we are going to unleash the potential in everyone, we actually need to reevaluate the social constructs within our group through different lenses to see how we’re inadvertently cutting off people’s unique contributions

Andrew 00:17:27 It’s built on. So what we just finished doing was sort of pointing out how a bunch of different ideas ask you to do all this stuff by your self. And they’re basically telling you how to have high voice, how to go from not believing in yourself, to believing in yourself from, um, thinking that maybe because like your parents told you, you didn’t know anything that you do know something right? That, all that. So

Andrew 00:17:50 They’re asking you to go from low voice to high voice. And what I’m doing is adding one more dimension. So in the two, by two, I say it’s both voice and belonging and let’s just kind of take it apart so that we can visualize it, right? So if you have low voice and low belongings, you’d be in the lower left quadrant, you’d basically be, feel small yourself. Like, you’d be like, Oh, I don’t really count. And the world in which you exist would say, yeah, you don’t really count, right? So you wouldn’t have a job as a paint maker at one of those like, uh, companies where you show up, somebody else gives you a little paint, swab, you mix the paint, you put it in the thing, the shaker, you hand it to the person and your job. You’d, you’d smoke for one all day long because your job would suck.

Andrew 00:18:31 Right? I basically told you, you’re relatively inconsequential. You have no decisions and creativity to make. And you’ve taught, you’ve put yourself in that position where that’s the, you know, so you feel small and inadequate and in work language, we would say that person’s highly disengaged. Right? Okay. So lower. We kind of know that box is indoor. No one wants to live yet. By the way, 70% of jobs live there, it’s a sucky place. All right. So let’s start off. Can you please, um, so high voice, but low belonging says that what matters is you and you alone? And so you are going to try to perseverance spite of everything. So you will have a brilliant idea. You will make it all about you. You will flame out on that idea and about two or three years, because you’ve not enrolled anyone else in that idea.

Andrew 00:19:20 You’ve not figured out how to build momentum yet. You think it’s all about you and how smart you are and how hard you work. Every entrepreneur who’s flamed out after two or three years is basically living this thing. Would they think it is about their vision, quote, unquote and not about whether or not that thing is shared by many people. So I call it the lonely only. And because it is about you owning that thing that only you have, but you’re not actually owning it in some context that allows other people to share with it. Right. Okay. So you’re all alone. So it’s high voice, low belonging, then go to a low voice, high blogging. So, um, you belong. Yay. Most of us think that we have to give up ourselves in order to belong, but you belong. Like you’re the member of the Borg, right?

Andrew 00:20:07 So if you remember the far, right, it’s like, everyone’s the same, it’s a, in the star Wars metaphor, it would be all the, you know, people in the white suits or black suits or whatever, all the stormtroopers. Exactly. And so they belong. That’s, what’s so beautiful about the last part of that story, where the one of the stormtroopers is like, I have an identity, I could have a voice outside of Peter Stormtrooper. Right. But until then he belonged as a unit and he felt so good about the fact that he belonged. Right? And so some of us feel like we’re not allowed to both have a voice and belong. We think that tension is one or the other. And so give up ourselves. That’s why we take jobs where we’re like, sure, we’ll do whatever you ask so that I can work. Okay. It’s only when you have the two together, when you have high voice and high belonging, where you get to show up fully alive and bring what only you have to offer and you get to join with other people.

Andrew 00:21:08 So that, that thing that you’re working on together is owned. And you start to run balls down the field because you don’t have to like check in. You don’t go, Hey, Andrew, I need to tell you what to do. Cause Andrew knows what the touchdown looks like. Right. And if I, or, or that the field goal or whatever. And so we start playing really differently with each other because I can bring what game I have and you can bring what game you have and we get to play. Yeah. So high voice high belonging is when things start to really create scale and impact. And that’s why only ness. And so in that box, I’m describing what agency is voice and belonging. Combined agency agency is really falsely described as personal agency, air quotes again, which is so funny to me because, uh, what we’ve just finished describing as we describe agency, is that it is a social construct, right? So I find that very funny that the naming convention says personal agency, but what they’re really trying to get to is what is your inherent capacity to add? And that is what is for more checkout Nilofer for his book, the power of loneliness and listen to them

Andrew 00:22:12 Episode number 20. Now this next guest is someone who I got a lot of private messages about this episode seemed to really strike a chord with a lot of people. And it’s an episode quite understandably about trauma now to give you the background, Dr. Matthew Cook is an anesthesiologist who pivoted his practice towards functional and integrative medicine. And as, since emerged as a leader in STEM cell treatment, regenerative medicine and trauma therapy. Now that is an extremely timely thing given the year that we have all have. And the lesson that I want you to be listening for in this clip is that beating trauma is a team sport, and we all have trauma. It’s totally normal. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t actually have trauma. Sir. Some people have more trauma, some have less, but it’s the normal thing to have trauma. I want to normalize that a little bit.

Andrew 00:22:57 And I can say that I personally have done a lot of work on my own past traumas this year and the traumas of COVID and the, you know, everything that’s going on this year in 2020. And I can tell you it’s hard, but it’s been a big difference. It’s really been worth it. And I can say it is also not only made it easier to make peace with the things that I had struggled with in the past, but it’s made it easier to get through the present. What I hope you take away from this is that it’s okay if you need help and that you can get help it’s out there, which you’ll hear in this clip is Dr. Cook explaining in layman’s terms, what’s going on. When one of us gets triggered, like what’s happening in the brain when something just sets us off, because I find that understanding that starts to open a door, to regaining some control over the situation and understanding that, Hey, it’s just some, some wiring that’s going on here. And there’s things we can do to fix this. So have a listen.

Andrew 00:23:46 But then as those triggers go away, then you’re kind of just like, Oh, Oh, that’s an interesting idea.

Andrew 00:23:53 So this idea of triggers is really fascinating, right? Because it’s something we all have. And everyone who has even an ounce of self-awareness has experienced and notice themselves like wildly lose their shit over something that was blown out of proportion. We’ve all done that. Um, but I’m super curious, like, could you, could you sort of in layman’s terms, explain a little bit about like, what is this link between our neurophysiology and our psychology? Like what is a trigger in our brain and like, what is actually happening in the brain when you have, when you work someone through this Academy and treatment that allows what you’re describing is reframing to actually, yeah,

Andrew 00:24:28 That’s a great question. And I hope that I’m going to do justice to it. Um, we have our consciousness and our framework of how we create our identity and our structure of our preferences and the who we are. Okay. Now then that intimately mapped into the limbic system. And so then the limbic system is emotions. And now interestingly, in the limbic system, I’m, I’ve had this new way that I’ve been thinking about this, which is that there are emotions that are in rest and relax, motion, emotions, and then there are fight or flight emotions. Okay. So the fight or flight emotions are like fear and anger and worry and chain. And so then those are good emotions and super useful because the house was on fire. I might need to use anger to motivate somebody to do something, or I might have to. So, so, and we’ve been running through, through these emotions forever.

Andrew 00:25:39 Now, then the rest and relax emotions are love, acceptance, gratitude, all the, all the touchy-feely good ones that we want to be all the warm fuzzies. Now then the way is that our, our brain works to that our prefrontal cortex and all of our senses are mapping into this part of the brain called the amygdala, which is the fight or flight control center. And, um, when, if everything’s cool, like right now, so I was just like, great. And so then the whole brains on the brain wires into the hippocampus back here, which is like the memory part of the brain, and it’s, it’s contextualizing emotion, but it’s contextualizing cognitively what’s happening. And so we have this kind of robust, cool thing happening, but if something comes up that insinuates that we’re not safe and that we might need to change our program to fight a flight, get up and get out of here, then that can turn the fight or flight card on.

Andrew 00:26:46 And so we’re constantly modulating back and forth. Like heart rate variability is kind of a, a measure of how quickly you can go back and forth. So what should happen is something crazy, scary could happen. And then the, we would realize that was the best gone now. And it was it’s funny or whatever. And then we would just immediately switched back into the state. And that’s what happens with little kids. It’s like our default setting. That’s our default setting or default setting is, is that, you know, you think about a little kit that you, that something crazy happens to them. And then like 10 minutes later, you’d be like, I can go take a nap and then they’ll go light on and take a nap. But if a real stressful thing happened to you, you’re not gonna be able to go take a nap 10 minutes later.

Andrew 00:27:34 Now what happens is there are topics that are, that are related to our consciousness and our construct or identity of who we are. And if that gets triggered, then what it does is it triggers a fight or flight response. And then that turns on the fight or flight emotions, which is like this anger, fear, shame. And so then all of a sudden that can totally derail you because then all of a sudden those emotions take over and become overwhelming and they start to take over the contest. That’s because what they’re doing is they’re teaching, they’re the same incredible, powerful slavering to an idea. And so there’s an idea that might be a good idea, but then if there’s a whole bunch of shame and worry and anger around that, it’s just like, seems out of control. But then if the warm and fuzzy emotions are running around that idea, it might be like the greatest idea of all time.

Andrew 00:28:38 Now, part of our construct of our ego and stuff is what you heard this term called the default mode network. What happens is really learning to rewire the brain so that you’re practicing, being more in control. And so those triggers are often, if that’s true, then that says something about me that I don’t like, and that is worrisome because if that’s true, that means I’m not safe. And what happens is that happens so quickly that it leads to like a little bit of a Ridge response of like, cause you don’t want that to be true. And so then you’ll almost fight against fight, which paradoxically makes it true. So then, so then what you have to do is sort of, as you start to defrag these, and then you start to realize that there’s like an entire universe inside here. And so then all of a sudden then it’s like I say, Oh, okay.

Andrew 00:29:38 Just what my identity is kind of interested in my identity, but it’s like evolving so quickly that like my identity at the end of this COVID thing is going to be different than it was now. And so therefore, what if you said something that was like triggering that, that might be triggering to my identity now, but it may not be triggering to my future identity. Then this becomes the sort of logic games. And so then I go, Oh, okay, well, so that’s triggering to me now, but it’s not triggering to the me in the future. Okay. And so then, so then if I’m able to work my way through a timeline and I realized, Oh, so then I don’t need to be triggered by it now because I’m not super wired into like, whatever my identity is. Like, let’s say you said. And so then what that allows you to do is to navigate through things and not be true to trigger to people because you’re not threatened by that, by the fact that you’re not going to feel safe. That’s the fundamental thing.

Andrew 00:30:45 Yeah. So let me, let me, let me just pause you for a second, make sure I’m with you. Let me try and recap that in, in layman’s terms. So what I think you’re saying, and please correct me where I’m getting this wrong. Is it there’s like kind of a multi-part system going on here, right? So there’s like the mental you call, I think you called it like an idea or a mental formation, right? There’s a concept in your mind. And then that concept has sort of like has wired in associations that trigger emotions to go along with it. Right? So they could be the idea of shame or an event that there’s a, there’s an event. And then that’s wired to the emotions of shame, for example. And that is sort of like kicking in. So event happens, that’s the trigger. It kicks off this entire cascading effect of emotions that takes over the nervous system off you go into fight or flight.

Andrew 00:31:30 And next thing you know, you don’t know what to do. You don’t even know what’s going on. And so it seems like what’s happening in, under, under the treatments that you all are creating is that you’re using assistive, uh, interventions like ketamine, for example, which has a psychological and physiological effect of kind of like making you feel first of all, really safe. And so you feel safe. And then I think you, you also, I think in the research, I found that you’re also doing things like stellate ganglion blocks to like turn off the fight or flight system. And so it seems like you’re almost like using this intervention to go in like snip the wire, that’s linking this mental formation to an automatic response. So you can then kind of talk through and introduce a new linkage. Is that what’s going on?

Andrew 00:32:12 Yeah, yeah. That is, that is exactly what’s going on. But then what I’m my attitude is once you figure out how to do this, then you don’t need to do any of those other things

Andrew 00:32:23 To go deeper on this and go into the full conversation, which I highly recommend check out episode number 17 on beating trauma identity shifts and continually recreating who you are next up, Josh Seiden. So Josh Seiden is a designer, a strategy consultant, a coach speaker, an author of three books who helps clients launch new products and services and creates more agile entrepreneurial organizations. Now, the lesson that I got from this episode and that I want you to be listening for, is that learning to think in terms of outcomes really sets you free. It’s hard, it’s a discipline that a lot of people struggle with, but it is absolutely worth it because learning to think in outcomes helps you to create alignment internally and externally of where you’re going and why and what you’re really trying to achieve. And the best part is that when you get clear on that, you actually create the room and the strategic context for you and your teammates and everybody you work with to have room, to experiment all along the way, and actually be creative and have a much more enjoyable experience as well as be more effective, which is a total win-win.

Andrew 00:33:23 So I think in this clip, I want you to be listening, to hear Josh explain a great way to navigate the risks that are inherent to any creative, new undertaking, and how to think about linking your activities, the output, the things you do with the outcomes that you see.

Andrew 00:33:38 So have a listen. Talk to me about the logic model framework and the three magic questions. The logic model framework is something that I was exposed to because I worked with a number of nonprofit clients. It’s called the logic model is developed by the Kellogg foundation. And it’s used in the nonprofit world to plan and to assess initiatives, logic model framework says at the highest level, you’re trying to create an impact. That’s your kind of highest level target and an impact is a long-term target. That is the result of many factors. You might be trying to increase prosperity in village in Africa or something like that. And so prosperity is a result of many factors, government policy, and health, and access to all kinds of things that support prosperity. The next level down your target is called an outcome. And an outcome is some kind of change that leads to that impact in the, in my work.

Andrew 00:34:40 And in my book, I simplify the definition to an outcome is a change in human behavior, okay. In the logic model framework, it it’s bigger than that. But for product work, I’ve found it very helpful to just say, it’s a change in human behavior that creates value change in human behavior that creates value for you for the organization. And then that outcome is created by some, the next level down an output. So you make a thing. The example I give is you might dig a well, okay. And the outcome of that well is changing behavior. People spend less time carrying water from the river and that contributes to prosperity, right? So you’ve got your three levels and in product development, we often we focus our work. I think too often on the output, we’re going to make a feature and then we ship it and we’re done.

Andrew 00:35:40 Yep. And that feature, it might create an outcome that’s valuable for us and for our customers and for our users might not. And we don’t always go back and have the discipline to check. And you hear people talk about the feature factory or what Melissa Perry calls the build trap. And we just get stuck like building and delivering. And we think that’s our job. When in fact our job is to make as little stuff as we can, and to create the most valuable outcomes that we can with the smallest amount of output that we can make. And so if you have the opportunity to reframe the way teams are setting targets and say, look, our target is to create an outcome and we can do that by the smallest possible feature or policy or copy or content change, then let’s do it. Let’s see if it works and then let’s move on to other stuff. Cause there’s no shortage of stuff in our backlogs. So how do we make sure that the stuff that we’re working on is valuable and the way we do that is by setting our sights on value expressed as outcomes

Andrew 00:36:53 For more check out Josh’s most recent book outcomes over output and listen to the full conversation in episode 18 on how to create clarity without comes thinking I hope you do next up is Laura Garnette. Laura is a career performance strategist, Ted X speaker, and a regular contributor to Inc and Forbes magazines. She’s one of the best thinkers I came across this year when it comes to crafting a joyful, meaningful, engaging career, which I mean, come on, who doesn’t want that? And I think the conversation that I had with Laura is especially timely given the uncertainties that so many of us are facing in the pandemic, the economic uncertainties, the social uncertainties, and the reality that many of us are navigating jobs searches that frankly we didn’t want. So whether you’re navigating a job search right now, or at some point in the near future, you’re going to want to listen to this episode.

Andrew 00:37:41 The lesson I took from this episode is that by connecting with your personal zone of genius, that zone where you’re both intellectually on fire and emotionally filled up and moved, when you’re connected to that zone of genius, you never need to fear a job search again, because you can always find ways to create from your deepest core, from your deepest truth that you will find satisfying. And to me, that is just so exciting because it means suddenly your odds of finding something that really works for you and fulfills you and is exciting to you, goes up through the roof, which means you never actually need to fear a job search again. Cause you’re always coming from a place of value creation, not value seeking. So have a listen

Andrew 00:38:22 Know you said a couple of minutes ago that one of the

Andrew 00:38:24 Payoffs of this is no fear about the job search. And I know a lot of people, particularly right now, we’re recording this, it’s the beginning of July. Um, and you know, we’re in the middle of the COVID-19 and there’s been massive disruption in the economy in whole world. A lot of people are facing a fearful job search. So talk to me a little bit more about that. Like how can this really make a difference for those people in like, cause I think everybody would love the idea of the job search being exciting instead of terrifying.

Andrew 00:38:51 Well, I will caveat that with the actual process of a job search is most likely not in line with your zone of genius. I mean, it is a very specific process you have to do in order to find a job and it’s oftentimes boring, but, um, being fearless is absolutely possible because more often the fear that comes with the job search is just a not knowing if there’s going to be a job out there. And B when you are faced with an interview or a potential opportunity, um, not knowing how to tell if that’s the right job or not. And invariably always taking the first job that comes because of the fear that there’s not one around the corner, when you know your zone of genius and you know, yourself deeply, then you will very easily be able to very easily and effortlessly talk about the value you can possess, be able to look at a job and say yes or no very quickly. And then if it’s a yes, going into an interview and be very clear and confident about why it’s a yes, and that is often the things that are missing with the job search,

Andrew 00:39:56 It’s huge, but it’s a fit to you. It’s a fit between you and the role. And so it was much more of a conversation about like, yeah, you could do that. Or you could do that. Or you could do any of these even they look really different on the surface, but by understanding more of what is he really good at and what does he enjoy? Does that role give him a chance to really use that and express that? And if yes, then cool, we ask them to talk about it. And if not, then, you know, probably, probably not a good thing to do.

Andrew 00:40:19 Yeah. And I would say more often than not, people are trying to make themselves appear like they’re a good fit for the role. And they’re also nervous because, Oh my goodness, what if I’m not actually, I don’t have what they need versus doing the opposite, which is wait a second. Here’s who I am and is this the right opportunity for me? And you’re the one that’s interviewing them rather than feeling like you’re on the, you know, they’re, they’re totally in control. You have just as much control. And I think when you are really practiced at owning your value, it’s a lot easier to come off as super confident because you’re clear and you can educate the interviewer on you. And also how would you approach this potential role? That’s one thing I talk with clients about in the job searches, you should be going in with an idea of here’s who I am, and here’s how I would approach this role. Here’s how I see here are the opportunities here is this, I mean, you, it just, it’s a different frame. It’s a different way of looking at it.

Andrew 00:41:20 Posture of confidence, generosity, and abundance, like, you know, this is what I bring to the table and how I can help you as an organization, total game changer, then showing up like kind of hat in hand saying, Hey, is this, you know, can you help me out? It’s just, the whole thing is different. Trying

Andrew 00:41:34 To be someone you’re not in order to get a job offer, which actually breeds desperation and you can feel the desperation. And I think too, I would say I would add to that, that probably one of the things that makes the job search. So nerve-wracking, and again, of course, in a pandemic even more so is this, this kind of irrational fear that there’s no job out there for you. And once you are clear on who you are, that fear kind of subsides because you know, there will be something for more

Andrew 00:42:04 Highly, highly, highly recommend checking out Laura’s book, the genius habit and going to listen to the full conversation in episode 24, little bonus there, you’ll see Laura put me in the hot seat at the tail end of the episode. So if you want to hear what firsthand some of the work sounds like you can hear me doing it live, which many people have found quite entertaining, so how to listen and enjoy it. Our next clip comes courtesy of Derek mills. Derek is the founder and CEO of glow, a health and wellness company that challenges people to live a fulfilling life and live into their potential. It’s honestly a yoga app that I have used so much in the pandemic and has frankly helped me keep my sanity, uh, by doing even just a little bit of yoga here and there, or like getting up in the morning and doing it glow has become my favorite app for that.

Andrew 00:42:47 I highly recommend giving it a try. And he’s also a really authentic, generous, open person who just is so candid about the realities of leading a company in general linear company during a pandemic. Um, the, the massive cultural changes he’s led that company through. It’s really an astounding story. And the lesson that I hope you listen for in this clip is that we control our intentions and our actions, but we don’t control our outcomes. So we must just, we have to just focus in on our actions and riffing on that a little bit. I think another idea it reminds me of is that each of us is only responsible and can control our emotions and our actions, but we can’t control the actions or emotions of others. And we shouldn’t try. So listen from that place. As you check out this clip,

Andrew 00:43:35 You know, there’s a phrase you said to me, the first time we hung out in person that is coming to mind right now that I’m wondering if it’s what you’re referring to here. I think you were quoting this fantastic book, the back of a detail, which you gave me a copy of it for the first time we hung out. And there was a phrase in there you quoted, I think, which was something to the effect of, we are entitled to our actions, but not the fruit of our actions. And you were the point that you were trying to make to me was it was about, there was something very important about owning the intentionality of what we do and releasing the illusion of control over the outcome. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. The thing without taxes, depending on which translation you read, the words will vary some cases quite dry, quite ethically, and just work on it. This is the Douglas Brooks translation. Yeah. I highly recommend it. It’s he also lectures on our platform if you want to go deeper. It was when I first read that when I was 23, that was one of the things that

Andrew 00:44:32 Kind of like shook me to my core, like to focus on action, not the fruits of action. Like what did that mean?

Andrew 00:44:41 That’s exactly what I wanted to ask you. What does that mean?

Andrew 00:44:45 You know what I mean? So much you probably can observe in yourself or anyone listening, just do little experiments on yourself, like this gap between like where I am now and where I want to be. Like, there’s always some gap, you know, across some dimension and imagining that like, Oh, if I only could get there, I will be blank or I will experience blank or I will feel blank. Uh, and, and that the sense that I want to do the thing only for the fruit of doing that thing, it, depending on what the fruit is. So like, if I want to do, if I set out to do that thing, because I want to look good, or I want people to respect me, or, you know, if the fruit somehow is tapping into some shadow aspect of myself that I’m not fully aware of it, it likely causes some type of unsatisfaction or dissatisfaction or suffering or so that’s what that means to me.

Andrew 00:45:49 Like the focus on action, less on the fruit of action. And I think that also has evolved for me over the years, too, is like, outcomes are great. Outcomes are wonderful. Goals are wonderful if we’re not setting goals and trying to work towards them and achieve them. And that’s potentially a problem too. I mean, there are some people who don’t need to, I think of people living in caves and try and try and not try not to accomplish something or, and, uh, it’s, it’s just all the work in state. That statement signals to me. The work is in how I experience that fruit. My am I clinging to it? Am I attached to it? Am I, uh,

Andrew 00:46:37 I think you said this to me the first time I asked you about it, but it’s about grounding ourselves in the intention, right? It’s, it’s releasing the illusion of control of the outcome because we don’t control outcomes. Like, look, I love results. I love love outcomes. Uh, love them. And I go hard after him, but I know, you know, at some, some level it breaks my ego to know this, but I don’t control them. And so all I really have is to control how I show up to control, what is my intention, how am I moving this forward or, or hurting it. Um, and that’s really what I hear in that is that it’s sort of that. And when you said that sort of, when you’re coming from the shadow side, um, that it tends to create that sort of dissatisfaction or the, I I’ve been studying a lot of Buddhist Buddhist thought in the recent six months. And it reminds me of the word Duca, which is often translated as suffering. Um, but I actually liked the other trends, another translation of that word, which is sort of, um, unsatisfactoriness

Andrew 00:47:30 His idea that something’s just not quite, you know, it’s just not quite satisfying.

Andrew 00:47:36 Derek shares an amazing story of cultural change from the front lines. It’s the kind of authenticity you frankly, just don’t hear very much. And so I highly recommended for anyone, any leaders listening to this who are really putting in the work to lead their team or the company through a cultural shift. And you really want to, you know, just hear what that is like from the front lines. It’ll help you understand it better. It’ll help you avoid some mistakes and it’ll help you, frankly, not feel alone through what is a very hard process. So for more go check out the full conversation with Derek it’s on episode number 14 and Hey, while you’re at it, go check out glow.com. Again, I love the app. I look, I’m not paid or anything for that for saying that I just really, I use the app. I love the app.

Andrew 00:48:13 It’s great. I’ll check it out to glow.com. That’s G L o.com. All right. So our last clip of this episode comes from Rayanne, Doris and Connor Murphy, who, along with best-selling author, Steven Kotler are the co-founders of the flow research collective, which is the leading flow skills research and training company in the world. Okay? Flow what’s that? So you may not know the term, but everyone knows the experience. Flow is defined as an optimal state of consciousness. It’s considered to be the optimal experience of life. If you think about every time you were lost in the zone of something and just completely lost track of time, uh, time slowed down, you merged with whatever you’re doing, that’s flow. It’s one of the most craved optimal best ways you can feel alive. And this episode helps you to understand it better and increase your time in flow so that you can get the most out of every single aspect of your life flow dramatically increases every single measure of performance that we have, as well as your subjective quality of life experience and your sense of meaning and purpose. So the lesson in this segment is that understanding flow, what it is, how you trigger it and how you can create more of it will give you direct access to increasing your performance and your satisfaction in life. It’s, it’s kind of one of the few things where it’s like, uh, you get to have your cake and eat it too, in my opinion, what is flow? And also what is this,

Andrew 00:49:29 Let’s start with just high level, what is flow. And then we can drill down into how to make that really personal and applicable to many people. Because one thing that I commonly hear is when I’m discussing, um, especially with, um, random people that I meet, right? Because, you know, I live in the Bay area, Bay area is an echo chamber. Just like any other place that you might live in. So flow is a bit of a more, you know, a common piece of the . Um, but when I talk to people who are completely outside of like that bubble, um, then like they have like these weird aha moments to be like, Oh, I’ve had that experience, right. I never had the language for it, but now I have a language for it. And so that’s really exciting for me. Um, but at a high level of flow is an optimal state of consciousness where you feel your best and you perform your best and the easiest way to get people, to like click in like no of what flow is, is just imagine a time that time passed radically differently.

Andrew 00:50:23 Um, and so maybe you got lost in a conversation and all of a sudden you look at the clock and it’s two later, um, think of like the like car crash, freeze frame effects, right. That doesn’t exactly flow, but it has that same sense of time distortion. Um, and so those moments, right, the, the original research from CIC semi high, um, indicates that like those moments are among the most meaningful, happiest moments that we have. And so the reason why flow is arguably the centerpiece of positive psychology is because those are the most meaningful, powerful moments of our lives. And so the goal of the company began like became, you know, how is it that you decode these moments and how do you make these more accessible to other people because there’s a science behind it, right? Like we know things about this and because we know things about this, we can manipulate different parts of that process in order to get people to tap into flow. Um, and so, um, uh, yeah. I don’t know if you have anything to add to that.

Andrew 00:51:17 Yeah. There’s a point there that I love, which is I kind of talk about it as unnecessary paradigm shift. You need to make, to understand what we do as a company in the first place and what our goals are, which is the idea that you can take a state of consciousness, which flow is reverse engineers, or look at, you know, how it tends to occur and then put things in place to systematically recreate that state of consciousness within your own life so that you can train and tune your state of consciousness, which I think is quite a radical realization for a lot of people.

Andrew 00:51:51 Well, just a general. Exactly. It isn’t like, yeah, just piggybacking off of that. Like, um, so really, really big picture, right? So like the entirety of your life, um, oftentimes the most meaningful happiest moments are when you’re in flow. Um, but if we also, we were talking about future thinking a moment ago, um, like for like, if you’re thinking insanely future oriented with these things, right? Like what are 21st century skills? And this is something that, you know, we talk about with some frequency, right? So like 21st century skills are like your ability to be creative, your ability to innovate, right? Your ability to do things that are you at this point in time, uniquely human. And so, like, that’s the goal that we’re we’re looking to accomplish is by using something like flow, you’re training a state of consciousness rather than individual skills. And like, we are systematically awful at doing this as a species. We don’t know how to train creativity. Right. We know how to take a bunch of articles. Students, we know how to put them in the same room. We know how to put them in different environments, that they might be a little bit more creative, but by and large, we don’t have a systematic understanding of these things. And so education of the future will likely be more focused on how do I train you into a given state much more so than how do I give you this discreet set of skills?

Andrew 00:53:01 Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. A nice way to conceptualize that I think is primary and secondary competencies. So a primary competency might be writing or coding or project management, but then you’ve got the secondary competency which drives or influences the quality of the primary competency. Another way to think about it as like a meta skill. And that might creativity that might be flow that might be an inability to adapt or learn or synthesize new ideas or think critically. And so in that respect, we’re focusing on a secondary competency that drives and enhances all of the primary competencies or specific skills or things you do in your own life.

Andrew 00:53:43 Yeah. It is. The flow seems like it’s one of those really interesting things because not only does everyone know it, it’s that thing that we’re all addicted to without even realizing addicted to it. Like, you know, I think about it as I was getting ready for this conversation and over the last couple of weeks and thinking about flow and, you know, you start to see it everywhere and when you start looking for it, and one of the things that stood out to me, um, or struck me was I’d be having conversations with people and they would just, you know, I would ask them, how’s your day going? Or, you know, we would get into a conversation about something they loved. And it would be really interesting to think about like, why do they love that? Like, so, you know, I was talking to friend and she just loves yoga.

Andrew 00:54:14 I mean, like loves yoga. And I was just like, Oh, like, well, what is it about like, what is yoga like do for you? Like what do, what is it about that, about it that resonates with you so strongly? And she starts describing all these sorts of things. And I realized the middle of a conversation. Yeah, yo, she likes yoga, but she liked where the reason she likes yoga is it’s, it’s her doorway to flow exactly. Fall in love with the doorway. And we think we love the doorway, but we really love is what’s on the other side of the door.

Andrew 00:54:37 Another. Yeah. Oh, well, I love thinking about that is that like people do things for the state that they get into when they do those things, but the state is activity or task independent. So the reason a surfer will get up at 4:30 AM and drive four and a half hours to go catch. Some waves is because of the state of flow usually, or whatever the state may be that they can drop into when they’re on those waves. But when you can then take that stage, deploy certain practices and habits and protocols that can drop you into that state in any activity, then you get the same effect in the same draw to that other activities. For example, if you can learn how to drop into that same state, that you’re in water surfing from a neurophysiological standpoint, while you’re working, then work can begin to have that same like pull and draw on desire and excitement around us. And that’s where you can do when you can reverse engineer flow and then learn how to recreate

Andrew 00:55:30 For more. I highly recommend listening to the full interview, which was split into two parts across episodes, 11 and 12, and check out their work at the flow research collective. This next one was not covered in any of the podcast episodes, I think, but I can tell you that it has been a huge deal for me personally in 2020, and that is sleep. Somebody asked me the other day, what were the most significant accomplishments I’ve had in 2020? And this was high up on my list. This was actually I think number two on the list and that was fixing my sleep. So I don’t know if you’ve ever had insomnia, if you do have it or you have had it, I am sorry. I can completely empathize with it. Insomnia sucks. Uh, what I will say about that is that everybody has insomnia. Sometimes it’s totally normal.

Andrew 00:56:13 Acute insomnia is something that happens to everybody. You know, we have stressful life events. Um, things can be crazy at work, whatever the case may be. Everybody deals with it at some point or totally normal, most common sleep issue in the world. And frankly, it’s really not well understood by most people. And I struggled with insomnia for the last 18 months. It sucks. And so what I want to tell about really quick is something called CBT. I, and if you have sleep issues and insomnia, please do yourself a favor and go ask a sleep doctor about this while you’re at it, get a book called, say goodnight to insomnia. It was written by the doctor who invented this at Harvard, and basically CVTI stands for cognitive behavioral therapy for him. Somnia, it’s basically a therapeutic technique takes it. It’s about an eight week program that deals with, with your ways of thinking and acting and behaving around sleep.

Andrew 00:57:06 And it basically reconditions your entire relationship to sleep. It is far and away, the most active insomnia interventions it’s not even close. So if you have sleep issues, please do yourself a favor and check this out. Unfortunately, there’s not that many places that offer it through insurance. It’s just not that widely distributed yet. Um, you can always find some private facilitators or clinicians. Uh, if you are looking for someone who will take insurance, I highly recommend looking into research programs or anything that like a major research university with a, like a research hospital, they tend to have a sleep disorder type centers. For example, I ended up doing this through UCLA sleep disorder center here in Los Angeles. Uh, and they took insurance, which was fantastic. And I have to say, unfortunately, I have not been impressed with any of the online options I’ve seen.

Andrew 00:57:53 So I think your best bet is to either go with a live facilitated option through something like UCLA or USC or any of the other ones that are out there that are facilitating this, or get your hands on that book, which is called, say goodnight to insomnia, which is basically the same program, put into a book, super, super effective. I cannot tell you how much better my life is sleeping well. And consistently, even with all the stresses of 2020, it is a complete game changer. I would do this before doing all the sleep gadgets and stuff like I have personally spent tons money and time researching all the sleep stuff. You know, whether it’s the special mattress or activity trackers or sleep tracker, whatever, like those are all fine, but fix the core issue first and everything will get better. And then if you want to add those things on later, go for it.

Andrew 00:58:40 So again, CVTI, I cannot recommend it enough. If you haven’t sleep issues, please do yourself a favor and check it out. Okay. And wrapping this up, bringing this thing home is just with a little bit of reflection. You know, one of the things that I think is a bit of a silver lining in this really fucked up year, we’ve all had is that for the first time, many people have had a chance to reflect a lot of people. I think really never had any space in their life or reflection, or they were just constantly running around like a chicken with their head cut off so busy. They never had a moment to pause, to breathe, to reflect, to look inward. And I think one of the positive things that will come out of 2020 in the longterm is that a lot of people have been forced to take that opportunity this year.

Andrew 00:59:24 A lot of people I know who never did that before have really engaged with some of those reflective contemplated practices this year. So given where we are at this end of the year, it’s a reflective time. I wanted to give you three questions to mull over. Uh, as you are reflecting on closing out one year and opening up the next one, and these are three questions that I’ve been personally thinking about recently that I’ve found to be a little bit unusual and opened my eyes to some things that I maybe I wasn’t seeing, maybe listen to these and then go for a walk and just mull them over. So the first question am I lying to myself about it? Second question, how am I different than I pretend to be? And third is what question am I trying to answer the most in my life right now?

Andrew 01:00:10 And the reason I find this third one to be so helpful is that I often find that if I can finally get to the point of having a question, that’s actually, well-stated usually I’m most of the way to an answer, but until I force myself to stop and actually define a question in enough clarity that I can write it down in an email and not look like a rambling idiot. Usually at that point when I can get it clear enough to write it in an email and have it be concise, suddenly it’s so much easier to answer. So have a think on that, try it on. And that’s it. My friends, I wish you all a peaceful end to this turbulent year. I hope you are finding an opportunity to rest, to reflect, to just take a deep breath with yourself and with the people you’re close with. And so with all that, my best wishes to all of us, to you in the new year. And here’s to making things that matter in 2021 and making it better.

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