(upbeat music) - All right, next question. We have another mom and she has a question about how to implement some of your ideas from a world without email. - Hi Cal, my name's Madeline. Prior to staying at home the last five years to raise my three young kids, I received my MBA and was an internal strategic consultant for a large healthcare company.

Much of the work I did was to create quarterly plans, identify and track key project metrics and develop and implement process improvement projects. Very in line with the recommendations you've laid out in a world without email. I first wanna thank you for creating a language and culture around the deep life and clarifying why this type of structure is important.

Looking back at my prior role, I sometimes wavered in my confidence to hold people accountable to the systems we developed because it felt like additional work for them. My question is, after being out of the workforce, I like to re-enter and coach small businesses on the productivity tools I did in my previous job and also the theories and recommendations you've laid out.

Do you have any thoughts on how someone can help small businesses implement your concepts? I plan to work part-time, but also I would love to collaborate with other consultants doing this type of work. Any recommendations would be much appreciated. Thanks so much in advance. - Well, it's a great space.

It's a great space. This is my read having published "A World Without Email" is that there is an immense hunger out there at all levels within companies to figure out better alternatives to simply, you're on email, you're on Slack, let's just rock and roll and hope things get done.

That hyperactive hive mind approach, the hyperactive hive mind approach I describe and dissect in detail in my book "A World Without Email" is not working and people recognize this, whether we're talking about the small business entrepreneur or the CIOs of major corporations, which in both cases I have had these conversations recently.

So I think this is a great space to get into. I don't actually have a good process for helping companies develop these processes. I kind of wish I did because I get asked to do this a lot, which is why I'm glad Madeline that you're thinking about doing this and that I think this is gonna be a big space in consulting for lots of people.

There's gonna be a lot of room for this. Typically what I tell people is I'm an idea guy. I come in, I study the issue, what's going on here. I get really deep into the issue. What are the actual roots of the issue? And then try to figure out philosophically what you would have to change to improve this problem, but I'm not in the world of business.

So you don't want me to come into your business and start giving specific advice on how your business runs because I don't know how businesses run. So I don't have a good process for this, but I think there are good processes to be constructed. I think it's gonna be a major sector of the sort of knowledge work, management consulting world, that sector.

I think helping companies develop processes to sidestep the hyperactive hive mind is gonna be a big deal. So Madeline, I would say probably you should have some sort of process you follow that you're willing to evolve very quickly as you actually try it out there in the real world.

I would say I've learned you need to probably learn more about a team than you think before you're ready to propose things. There's often very, you have to surface these hidden dynamics that you don't really know about, but that are actually driving a lot of how work actually gets done.

And three, I would say it's important that you eat your own dog food here. So make sure that you run your consulting firm very much aligned with these ideas, that it's not just, yeah, email me whenever. Just hit me up on Slack and we'll figure out the contract. You should have very clear processes that you love, that you can communicate clearly, and that clients will enjoy that clarity because then they will see that you're the change you wanna see in the world.

They will see you do it and get a sense of what it's gonna look like when they do it as well. I might point you towards Ginny Blake's new book, which is a book, I believe it's called "Free Time." And it comes out in March, but I did an interview with her in December on the podcast.

You can go back to that episode and learn about a lot of the ideas. But it's a whole book about how to do this with your small consulting style business, how to figure out your processes, what to focus on, what not to focus on. So read that book, it'll help you with what you're doing, and it might give you ideas on how you can help other companies do the same thing.

All right, but that's good to hear. I do, I mean, Jesse, I think this is gonna be a huge sector. Doing this type of consulting, I mean, it makes my eyes bleed thinking about me doing it. I mean, could you imagine something worse than me, just individually me being in like a corporate board room and having these sort of jargon-filled small talks about how their team, their Q2 quarterly metrics.

And like, I'd be terrible at it because after like half hour, I'd be like, "You guys should all just go write books. "This is crazy, what are you doing here? "This is a terrible job." So I would be terrible at it, but other people would be great at it, and it's gonna make a lot of people's lives better if their companies actually get rid of this hive mind.

Just don't ask me to do it. (upbeat music)