How To Teach Corporate Leaders To Work Deeply

00:00:00.000 | - Next question's from Marie from New York City.

00:00:03.440 | I work in leadership development

00:00:04.880 | for a large healthcare institution.

00:00:06.920 | I think your ideas on work processes

00:00:08.860 | are potentially game-changing

00:00:10.160 | for many of the leaders I work with,

00:00:11.700 | but I'm struggling with how to share it with them.

00:00:16.460 | - This is difficult.

00:00:18.620 | It is difficult.

00:00:19.460 | I have done some of these events before.

00:00:22.440 | I have worked with C-suite types.

00:00:24.600 | I've worked with boards of directors.

00:00:27.140 | I've worked with the executive cores of Fortune 50 companies.

00:00:32.140 | It's not always my favorite thing

00:00:33.560 | because the corporate world is complicated.

00:00:36.200 | It's more complicated than I understand,

00:00:40.060 | is often more complicated than my ideas fully appreciate

00:00:43.480 | because in addition to just producing work,

00:00:46.640 | there's all of these other constraints,

00:00:48.360 | these social and political constraints of, you know,

00:00:51.360 | this division traditionally has had this power

00:00:54.320 | and they gave it up and this executive VP,

00:00:56.000 | and it is a really complicated,

00:00:58.000 | it is a complicated world,

00:01:00.240 | but I will say what seems to help,

00:01:02.040 | Marie, more so than particular examples,

00:01:06.880 | more so than particular tactics,

00:01:09.000 | which might seem at first what you need.

00:01:11.680 | Can I be more specific?

00:01:12.640 | Can you give me more specifics?

00:01:14.120 | You don't really wanna be specific when talking with leaders

00:01:16.640 | because leaders will hear specifics.

00:01:18.720 | Oh, I use office hours plus shared documents

00:01:22.880 | plus whatever, docket clearing meetings.

00:01:25.960 | You give specifics and what they hear is

00:01:28.560 | where is there a problem with this?

00:01:30.040 | Where is there a potential danger with this?

00:01:31.820 | Where might this ruffle someone's feathers

00:01:33.560 | or get me in trouble?

00:01:34.400 | It is always easier not to do something new.

00:01:36.440 | Something new introduces the possibility of problems.

00:01:40.160 | So I always say with leaders, we're very aware

00:01:44.200 | if I don't wanna do something

00:01:45.080 | that's gonna create new problems,

00:01:46.460 | you wanna get the core principles.

00:01:48.640 | And I think the core principles you wanna get to

00:01:50.440 | when you're talking to a leader is to push them away

00:01:53.000 | from a cybernetic definition of productivity,

00:01:55.520 | get them away from what IT system can we buy

00:01:58.780 | that's gonna generate more analytic insights from our data

00:02:01.860 | and ensure that we get data sharing at a higher velocity

00:02:05.320 | of information accessibility, get them away from that.

00:02:09.680 | They love that world because there's vendors

00:02:11.700 | and you spend money and they have slick slideshows

00:02:13.960 | and you feel like you're doing something.

00:02:14.980 | You gotta say that doesn't really matter.

00:02:16.440 | Yeah, you can speed stuff up, have more information, great,

00:02:18.660 | but this is who cares.

00:02:20.600 | What matters is the brain.

00:02:21.960 | The human brain can only focus on one thing at a time

00:02:26.320 | and needs relatively long refactoring periods

00:02:29.040 | to switch from one target to another.

00:02:33.280 | This is what we should care about.

00:02:35.720 | We have a bunch of human brains,

00:02:36.880 | we wanna think about things and produce value.

00:02:38.760 | They need time to do it.

00:02:40.340 | They need the ability to do things one at a time.

00:02:44.120 | And once we realize that, I would say,

00:02:47.880 | we then realize that context shifts

00:02:51.120 | are like productivity poison.

00:02:52.920 | That's the thing we're trying to minimize.

00:02:55.400 | We don't need IT systems that makes the velocity

00:02:57.880 | of information transfer higher

00:03:00.080 | or the depth of analytical insights sharper.

00:03:02.840 | We need less context shifts.

00:03:04.200 | You want these leaders to be going through their day

00:03:08.200 | after talking to you mentally in their mind,

00:03:10.920 | keeping a counter of, well, how many times

00:03:13.720 | do I have to switch my attention to something else

00:03:15.380 | and back to something else?

00:03:16.480 | You want them to slowly become sort of disgusted

00:03:18.680 | with the reality that they discover.

00:03:20.100 | My God, every time I'm doing this, I can feel it now.

00:03:22.720 | I can almost feel the cerebral sludge that's building up

00:03:27.720 | as I keep switching back and forth.

00:03:30.080 | I can see my concentration fading.

00:03:33.360 | I can see my energy dissipating.

00:03:36.320 | And then they start to think, okay,

00:03:37.600 | so when we think about productivity,

00:03:39.920 | what we think about is minimizing doses of this poison.

00:03:44.280 | Even if this slows us down,

00:03:45.900 | even if it introduces friction,

00:03:47.480 | even if that executive VP over there

00:03:49.080 | that has bad blood with me is gonna get mad about it,

00:03:51.100 | even if it is a pain in the moment,

00:03:53.680 | now I realize this is what we have to do

00:03:55.640 | is stop the context shift.

00:03:56.700 | So we have to rethink everything.

00:03:58.200 | How do we allocate work?

00:03:59.280 | How do we talk about work?

00:04:01.200 | How do we collaborate?

00:04:02.160 | What are our processes for moving information around?

00:04:04.720 | We are ready to go through the pain

00:04:07.000 | of building an attention-centric productivity environment,

00:04:12.000 | a workplace that actually respects

00:04:14.080 | how the human brain functions.

00:04:16.440 | And then they can come up with the very specific things

00:04:18.480 | that make sense for their work,

00:04:19.820 | for their tools, for the people they work with.

00:04:21.400 | Then they can figure that out.

00:04:23.320 | So anyways, Murray, that's what I've increasingly

00:04:25.080 | come to realize.

00:04:26.720 | Forget examples and get the principles.

00:04:30.380 | Because if they're a leader at a big company

00:04:32.320 | or a large healthcare institution, they're smart.

00:04:34.860 | They're very smart.

00:04:36.200 | They notice the issues.

00:04:37.300 | They know what's not working.

00:04:38.760 | They can understand deep principles.

00:04:40.080 | They can generate tactics out of it.

00:04:41.480 | So anyways, I've been big about that recently.

00:04:43.460 | The weeds are too messy in corporate America.

00:04:46.080 | It's why I don't go around and try to consult for companies

00:04:49.080 | and say, "Let me help you rebuild

00:04:51.600 | "your communication protocols," or something like this,

00:04:54.960 | because the weeds are so thick and bespoke,

00:04:57.020 | and every company has their own very specific issues,

00:04:59.760 | and it's very difficult for an outsider to move through.

00:05:02.840 | And an outsider can only do so much anyways.

00:05:05.180 | You need the people right there

00:05:06.320 | that are stuck in these weeds to recognize

00:05:07.840 | that a better plant needs to grow there.

00:05:09.400 | You need them to realize what the problem is,

00:05:11.560 | and then they can generate the solutions.

00:05:13.420 | They know more about their company than I do.

00:05:15.500 | They know more about their group

00:05:17.340 | than a leadership development executive does.

00:05:20.060 | So the best thing we can do is teach them what the issue is,

00:05:22.620 | and then let them actually come up with problems.

00:05:25.880 | - That was a good analogy with a plant.

00:05:29.920 | - Plants and weeds, yeah.

00:05:32.140 | You know, I could do that, Jesse.

00:05:33.300 | I could be.

00:05:35.220 | This is my problem, is I'll write about

00:05:38.100 | all the stuff I write about since 2015, basically.

00:05:43.100 | Everything I write about, in some ways,

00:05:46.000 | about technology intersecting

00:05:47.460 | with different parts of our life.

00:05:48.840 | So technology intersecting with work, of course,

00:05:50.840 | is a big thing.

00:05:51.680 | All this productivity talk is about work

00:05:53.720 | in an age of digital distraction

00:05:56.660 | and high-velocity cybernetic productivity notions.

00:05:58.920 | It's all about technology intersecting work.

00:06:01.200 | Digital minimalism is about technology

00:06:02.900 | intersecting our personal lives.

00:06:04.960 | This is what I care about, right?

00:06:06.740 | But the issue is I'll deal with a particular topic,

00:06:09.480 | and I'll think about it deeply and produce some big ideas,

00:06:11.580 | and then I move on.

00:06:12.480 | But the problem is the ideas are still out there.

00:06:14.200 | So, you know, Deep Work had a bunch of ideas

00:06:17.860 | that I thought were very important.

00:06:19.320 | But then I went on and wrote a bunch of other books,

00:06:22.500 | and yet there's a lot of people who are saying,

00:06:23.480 | "Well, can't you just come and help us do Deep Work?"

00:06:26.640 | That's the issue.

00:06:27.480 | It's not my instinct of, let me just stick with a topic

00:06:31.400 | and really keep pushing it and promoting it.

00:06:33.840 | I like the idea.

00:06:34.880 | I want to understand.

00:06:36.140 | I get the pleasure out of understanding something new.

00:06:38.480 | And by the time people are catching on with something,

00:06:40.860 | a lot of times I've moved on to sort of the next topic

00:06:43.200 | I'm trying to understand.

00:06:44.040 | So this is why I don't travel the world,

00:06:47.180 | you know, running workshops.

00:06:49.620 | This would probably be pretty lucrative, actually,

00:06:50.960 | but running workshops about, you know,

00:06:53.560 | how to make your team deeper, building processes.

00:06:56.760 | I don't know, just actually,

00:06:57.600 | we could probably make a lot of money.

00:06:58.420 | Maybe you and I should just fly around the world

00:06:59.800 | and have people cancel their Slack accounts

00:07:03.000 | and do office hours and market clearing meetings.

00:07:06.420 | We could wear suits.

00:07:07.500 | - Well, then you wouldn't be able to read books

00:07:08.660 | in the woods like you're doing right now.

00:07:09.900 | So that wouldn't be as fun. - That's the problem.

00:07:11.620 | Yeah, that's the problem.

00:07:12.460 | Yeah, well, here's what we'll do,

00:07:14.060 | like in "Good Will Hunting,"

00:07:16.580 | when Ben Affleck went to the meeting

00:07:18.100 | with the NSA instead of Matt Damon,

00:07:19.780 | I'm gonna send you,

00:07:21.140 | and you're gonna give like very bombastic speeches

00:07:25.300 | on my behalf that like involve, for whatever reason,

00:07:28.980 | like a lot of sort of onstage flexing and weightlifting.

00:07:32.460 | I don't know why.

00:07:33.300 | I just think this would be great.

00:07:34.660 | Just to mystify people,

00:07:37.140 | just to have you run out and be like,

00:07:40.140 | focus is like- - The correct form

00:07:40.980 | to deadlift is this.

00:07:42.860 | - Exactly.

00:07:43.700 | Now, I don't know why I would want you

00:07:44.700 | having doing deadlifts.

00:07:45.560 | I just have this vision of you in like gym pants

00:07:49.140 | and like a muscle shirt.

00:07:50.620 | Like, okay, deep work is like lifting heavy weights.

00:07:53.700 | Every rep. - I can't even lift

00:07:55.700 | that heavy weights.

00:07:56.980 | - No, I know.

00:07:57.820 | And it's not like this is something you do.

00:07:59.260 | I just thought it'd be funny.

00:08:00.420 | I'm just thinking like what the opposite would be.

00:08:03.140 | And then to flip it around,

00:08:05.300 | then you should have me take over some of your coaching,

00:08:08.620 | sports coaching responsibilities.

00:08:10.380 | And then I would just be terrible at that.

00:08:11.860 | I'd be like, well, the lacrosse ball,

00:08:14.400 | we have to think about it like an idea

00:08:17.260 | that is evolving through a network of competing ideas.

00:08:22.260 | And then so is it really, are you catching the ball

00:08:25.980 | or is it an idea that we're formulating?

00:08:30.220 | And so that's what we'll do.

00:08:32.740 | - Ah, I'm actually going to an event right after this.

00:08:35.020 | This is why I'm wearing a nicer shirt

00:08:37.380 | is right after we get off the air here,

00:08:38.940 | I'm going over to the Rockefeller Center,

00:08:41.380 | which is the School of Public Policy and Social Sciences

00:08:44.820 | here at Dartmouth.

00:08:45.960 | And I'm doing a fireside chat.

00:08:48.900 | We're gonna go, I'm gonna sit in a chair

00:08:50.880 | and be interviewed by another professor

00:08:52.940 | in theory for an audience.

00:08:54.300 | We'll see, but--

00:08:57.420 | - That's cool.

00:08:58.260 | You had the fireside chats in your courses back in the day.

00:09:01.540 | I took those before I even knew you.

00:09:03.340 | - Didn't, I know exactly what you're talking about.

00:09:05.980 | Scott and I, Scott Young and I had fireside chats.

00:09:09.140 | Was this in--

00:09:11.300 | - You can hear the fire crackling in the background.

00:09:12.460 | - Yeah, so the VAT put in the fire crackling sound?

00:09:15.260 | - Yeah.

00:09:16.100 | - That's great, I love it, I love it.

00:09:17.340 | Yeah, yeah, we did these fireside chats.

00:09:19.380 | So this would have been for, was it Life of Focus?

00:09:22.100 | - I think it was Focus, yeah.

00:09:23.380 | - Yeah, yeah, so we did these fireside chats

00:09:26.960 | where we would talk about what had happened

00:09:29.660 | in that week of the course.

00:09:30.680 | And then, yeah, shout out to VAT,

00:09:33.580 | Scott's longtime producer, I think added fire sounds.

00:09:35.900 | I'm actually talking to Scott, I think tomorrow, so.

00:09:38.020 | (upbeat music)

00:09:40.600 | (upbeat music)

How To Teach Corporate Leaders To Work Deeply

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