83: The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek

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1. 00:00:00 All right, Mike. So there's a thing that happens sometimes when you introduce somebody else to a given thing.
2. 00:00:10 And they eventually become so enthralled with it. They love it and they learn a lot about it.
3. 00:00:17 And they eventually eclipse you in how far they are into using said thing.
4. 00:00:24 And I feel like that's where we are right now with you and fountain pens.
5. 00:00:28 Because I have I have four fountain pens, two of which I use almost daily.
6. 00:00:35 I use a single ink, which is a noodlers black ink, but holy buckets, dude, you're sending me pictures and stuff of new pens you're buying and the inks you're using.
7. 00:00:45 It's like, how many pens and inks you got going over there now?
8. 00:00:48 There's a fair amount.
9. 00:00:51 So the challenge last time was, would I buy the fancy bottle that you had mentioned for my Twizbee?
10. 00:00:59 Right. Right. And did you?
11. 00:01:00 I did not.
12. 00:01:01 OK. Instead, I bought a sailor 1911 fresca and a bottle of Yomogi, manio sailor ink, which is amazing.
13. 00:01:13 We're more expensive. So here's the story with this.
14. 00:01:17 I started listening to the Panatic, which was definitely a mistake.
15. 00:01:21 Yeah, from an economic perspective, a mistake.
16. 00:01:24 And yeah, Brad and Mike were talking about some of their favorite pens.
17. 00:01:31 What's on their desk and they're going through all of these different crazy special edition pens.
18. 00:01:36 And I'm like, man, someday I'd love to have a sailor because Mike's got like five sailors on his desk.
19. 00:01:41 And then I went and checked the Anderson pens website, which next time you're in town, we'll have to stop by there because it's about 100 feet from the co-working space that I got.
20. 00:01:51 Go to sure.
21. 00:01:52 And they had an experienced sailor 1911.
22. 00:01:58 So it was cheaper than the standard one.
23. 00:02:02 There's no sign of wear on this at all.
24. 00:02:05 And when I saw it, I'm like, I'm probably not going to find a better deal than than that.
25. 00:02:11 So I bit the bullet and I bought myself a fancy fountain pen, a truly fancy phone pen.
26. 00:02:20 Like crazy.
27. 00:02:21 Yeah, I love it.
28. 00:02:22 I'm using it using it all the time.
29. 00:02:25 I kind of knew that once I had like a really nice pen that I would end up using it more.
30. 00:02:31 But I think I ended up using it more than even I thought I was going to.
31. 00:02:35 It just is so comfortable.
32. 00:02:36 Right.
33. 00:02:37 So well, the ink looks awesome.
34. 00:02:38 Yeah, I'm a big fan.
35. 00:02:40 I also purchased the the Twisbee Eco and filled it with the pink ink from the Twisbee ink sampler that I got in Rachel's using that one presently.
36. 00:02:51 And I have a pilot metropolitan on the way as well.
37. 00:02:55 Oh, so you did go that route.
38. 00:02:56 See, that was one I told you to get, I think, right?
39. 00:02:58 Yep.
40. 00:02:59 Yep.
41. 00:03:00 The plan is that that one will be the everyday carry stays in the backpack, probably got it.
42. 00:03:06 Got it beat on that one a little bit.
43. 00:03:08 Sure.
44. 00:03:08 Yeah.
45. 00:03:09 Well, you've made me proud for sure.
46. 00:03:11 I guess the only other question I have at this point is what notebooks are you using?
47. 00:03:16 I am using solely a Berenfig.
48. 00:03:20 Confident, the clear edition.
49. 00:03:23 So the James Clear one, the it's got the black cover and the golden boss triangle thing, just because I think it looks awesome.
50. 00:03:30 Sure.
51. 00:03:30 The Berenfig paper I really like, but I don't know.
52. 00:03:34 There's lots of different versions of the confidant.
53. 00:03:35 I would use any one of those.
54. 00:03:37 I do like the larger size.
55. 00:03:39 So this is not like the standard moleskin size.
56. 00:03:42 It's a little bit bigger.
57. 00:03:43 It's basically the exact size of my 11 inch iPad Pro.
58. 00:03:49 So I can grab like the notebook, a pen in my iPad and very comfortably carry it to coffee shop, whatever.
59. 00:03:55 So that's that's where all of the the noodling happens is inside that that Berenfig.
60. 00:04:00 Well, I'm proud of you.
61. 00:04:02 Well done, sir.
62. 00:04:03 I only hope that now you don't cost me money in this endeavor.
63. 00:04:08 We'll just never use the sailor and you'll be.
64. 00:04:12 All right.
65. 00:04:13 I'll do my best.
66. 00:04:17 One thing I want to point out before we start running through action items and follow up there is that we're doing something at the end here of 2019 going into 2020.
67. 00:04:30 And Mike saw this happen in a couple other places, one in particular, and it kind of sparked something in us.
68. 00:04:37 So we thought we would try it, see how it goes, but it's top books of 2019.
69. 00:04:42 So what we'd like to ask you to do is go to club.bookworm.fm.
70. 00:04:47 At pinned at the top of that list of topics, there's a poll, top books of 2019.
71. 00:04:53 Go into that and choose your favorite book of all the books we've covered for the year of 2019, which is a pretty difficult task, to be honest.
72. 00:05:03 I submitted my vote.
73. 00:05:05 Did you do this already, Mike?
74. 00:05:06 Did you put one in on this?
75. 00:05:07 I did.
76. 00:05:08 OK, I don't know if I should ask what it is.
77. 00:05:10 We'll do that whenever we do the episode.
78. 00:05:12 But there's already votes on this.
79. 00:05:15 The cream of the crop is starting to come towards the top.
80. 00:05:19 And there's this.
81. 00:05:22 I had a hard time going through this list in order to choose the one that I was going to vote for because I restricted it to one vote.
82. 00:05:27 Not sure if I should have done that or not, but it's what it is.
83. 00:05:32 And holy cow, this is hard to do.
84. 00:05:34 So anyway, go to club.bookworm.fm.
85. 00:05:38 Click on that poll topic, submit your vote.
86. 00:05:40 You have until midnight on December 31st.
87. 00:05:45 So you have until the end of the year to get your vote in.
88. 00:05:48 And you want to add to that, Mike?
89. 00:05:50 It's kind of cool looking through that list and realizing that we read a lot of books in 2019.
90. 00:05:56 Yes.
91. 00:05:57 Yes.
92. 00:05:57 That doesn't even include the gap books.
93. 00:05:59 Right.
94. 00:05:59 So that's actually quite a bit to pick from there.
95. 00:06:02 These are the books that we covered for bookworm, by the way, in 2019, not the books that were published in 2019.
96. 00:06:07 Yeah, that would be a long list.
97. 00:06:08 Holy cow.
98. 00:06:09 That would be.
99. 00:06:10 Yeah.
100. 00:06:10 One time.
101. 00:06:12 So yes, club.bookworm.fm.
102. 00:06:14 How many times can I say it club.bookworm.fm?
103. 00:06:16 Go to the poll, submit your votes, and we'll go from there.
104. 00:06:20 So that said, action items, Mike, I have one that I need to go through because I did it last time.
105. 00:06:27 And that is this two minute morning practice.
106. 00:06:32 And I had one person ask me about this from the last time I said I only got it done halfway.
107. 00:06:40 Like what exactly it is that I'm doing as part of that.
108. 00:06:43 Well, there's three different prompts that I'm attempting to go through on this.
109. 00:06:47 I'm only about 75% of the time getting this done.
110. 00:06:50 But each day there's three things I'm answering.
111. 00:06:52 One is I will let go of blank.
112. 00:06:55 I am grateful for blank.
113. 00:06:57 I will focus on blank.
114. 00:07:00 Those are the three things that I'm doing as part of this two minute morning.
115. 00:07:03 Practice and just trying to make that a part of my morning routine.
116. 00:07:06 It has been going into paper.
117. 00:07:10 You know, no surprise there.
118. 00:07:11 And it ends up being part of like my daily journal for the day.
119. 00:07:16 So it ends up being how I start my day.
120. 00:07:18 And then at the end of the day, I'm using that same notebook and same location to do
121. 00:07:22 like my end of day journaling, which I don't really have any prompts for.
122. 00:07:25 I feel like I should.
123. 00:07:26 I don't know how many times people told me I should use prompts for this.
124. 00:07:29 And I don't.
125. 00:07:31 So anyway, that's the one I got to follow up on from two episodes ago.
126. 00:07:36 You've got a couple here, Mike.
127. 00:07:38 I do.
128. 00:07:39 And in typical Mike fashion, there's no way to tell if they were successful.
129. 00:07:43 So good job.
130. 00:07:44 How can I simplify my life in the form of a question?
131. 00:07:48 I haven't spent a whole lot of time thinking about this, to be honest.
132. 00:07:53 Although I am about to walk into a period, which is a simplification of my life,
133. 00:07:59 which is a two weeks sabbatical.
134. 00:08:01 So kind of I'm doing this, but there's definitely more room to make improvement in this area.
135. 00:08:08 One of the things that I've been thinking around this, this topic is just minimizing
136. 00:08:16 the number of things that I am involved in, the number of commitments that I have made,
137. 00:08:21 new projects pop up all the time.
138. 00:08:25 And I am feeling a lot better about saying no to them.
139. 00:08:29 And a lot of it is because of this question, how can I simplify my life?
140. 00:08:34 I know that my goal is to this to create simplicity.
141. 00:08:38 And so when I am presented with an opportunity for a project now, it's kind of my initial reaction
142. 00:08:45 instead of being like, Oh, that's interesting.
143. 00:08:46 I really want to do that.
144. 00:08:47 It's kind of like you.
145. 00:08:49 Sure.
146. 00:08:50 I want to touch this with a 10 foot pole.
147. 00:08:52 Yeah.
148. 00:08:52 You know, and I have to.
149. 00:08:53 So it's kind of flipped where instead of trying to talk myself out of doing it, now I kind
150. 00:08:58 of have to talk myself into doing it, which for me is kind of a baseline of progress
151. 00:09:02 that's being made.
152. 00:09:02 But like I said, I know that there's more stuff to be done here.
153. 00:09:06 So not completely done, but for terms of following up with action items, I'd say this is done.
154. 00:09:13 A second one I had was am I interruptible?
155. 00:09:16 And this one, I do actually have a specific story that proves that I did actually do this one.
156. 00:09:21 Okay.
157. 00:09:21 Let's step in the right direction.
158. 00:09:24 Yeah, I think it was two or three days after we recorded somebody asked me for help moving a couch.
159. 00:09:34 And it was in the middle of my work day and my initial reaction was, no, I'm not going to drop
160. 00:09:43 everything and help you move a couch.
161. 00:09:44 But then I instantly remembered this action item.
162. 00:09:49 And I'm like, well, let's figure out a way to make this work.
163. 00:09:53 And you know what?
164. 00:09:53 It all worked out.
165. 00:09:54 So I was in fact, interruptible, but again, judging by my initial reactions, there's room
166. 00:09:59 for improvement here still.
167. 00:10:00 I need to seek out more opportunities to be interrupted, I think.
168. 00:10:04 Which is so weird to hear someone say, I need to find ways to be interrupted more.
169. 00:10:10 Like, yeah.
170. 00:10:10 Okay.
171. 00:10:11 Sure.
172. 00:10:12 Well, nobody likes being interrupted.
173. 00:10:14 That's the thing.
174. 00:10:15 You know, I'm also teaching a Bible college class right now in personal management.
175. 00:10:20 And the lesson that we just did was on attitude and discipline.
176. 00:10:23 And the word for discipline that they use in a couple of different places literally
177. 00:10:29 means to hit under the eye.
178. 00:10:32 So you think about all of the Bible verses that talk about the benefits of discipline
179. 00:10:39 and choosing to be disciplined.
180. 00:10:41 It's like subjecting yourself to pain.
181. 00:10:43 Doesn't sound that enjoyable, but ultimately it produces a good result.
182. 00:10:50 Right.
183. 00:10:50 Which for me is better relationships.
184. 00:10:53 So I know that being interrupted is going to drive the productivity nerd in me crazy,
185. 00:10:59 but that's probably a good thing.
186. 00:11:01 And I think just to defend you and clarify, I think what you mean by this is
187. 00:11:07 interruptible by people, not necessarily interruptible by some media related thing.
188. 00:11:16 I'm not looking for notifications to go off so I can be distracted by
189. 00:11:20 something.
190. 00:11:20 Yes.
191. 00:11:21 Yes.
192. 00:11:21 Yeah.
193. 00:11:21 People who have some something that they need my help with and I want to,
194. 00:11:25 instead of just saying, no, I got my own stuff going on, being able to prioritize
195. 00:11:30 people over projects.
196. 00:11:32 Right.
197. 00:11:33 So you're essentially making the distinction between being interrupted versus being
198. 00:11:38 distracted.
199. 00:11:38 Yep.
200. 00:11:39 Definitely.
201. 00:11:39 No, between those two there.
202. 00:11:41 So people versus things, I like it.
203. 00:11:44 I've got three here from our last book, margin.
204. 00:11:49 Uh, one is to get back into my daily yoga practice, which has failed about as bad as it
205. 00:11:57 could in that I did it absolutely zero times.
206. 00:12:02 I'm going to try again though.
207. 00:12:06 You know, that's, that's the way this works.
208. 00:12:08 You just keep going.
209. 00:12:09 So I need to keep trying on that.
210. 00:12:11 That is definitely something I need to, uh, to get back into.
211. 00:12:14 I also had, uh, simplifying my life on here, simple life.
212. 00:12:19 Uh, I don't have anything specific as far as success with this goes, but I've been
213. 00:12:25 having a lot of conversations about my schedule.
214. 00:12:29 I know you and I talked a little bit about, uh, my schedule with working at a church,
215. 00:12:33 uh, after our last recording, what should my schedule look like?
216. 00:12:37 What does it look like when I'm at the church, when I'm at home, etc, etc?
217. 00:12:42 A lot of questions, a lot of details around that, but I am still working through that.
218. 00:12:46 I don't think there's a way to say, yeah, your name on this.
219. 00:12:49 I think you kind of alluded to that.
220. 00:12:50 Um, but it is one that I am going to continue working on, but I don't think it's
221. 00:12:56 worth following up on again for say.
222. 00:12:59 Uh, last one here is to put some buffer time between my task blocks.
223. 00:13:05 So essentially giving me, uh, you know, that buffer zone between what I'm working
224. 00:13:11 on.
225. 00:13:12 And this has gone very poorly.
226. 00:13:14 Um, basically what I'm saying is Joe is really bad at putting margin into his life.
227. 00:13:21 And in my attempt to put more buffer between all of my tasks, I realized that over
228. 00:13:28 the last two weeks, I had one week of catch up from Thanksgiving.
229. 00:13:32 And then this past week I've been hustling because we're going to be gone next week
230. 00:13:37 for Christmas.
231. 00:13:37 So the last two weeks have been the opposite of putting in buffer, if anything.
232. 00:13:42 Uh, so I had a lot of questions for Mike after our last episode.
233. 00:13:49 How, how long do we talk after we recorded last time?
234. 00:13:51 Like maybe 20, 30 minutes, even after we were done.
235. 00:13:54 Yeah, probably about 30 minutes.
236. 00:13:56 Some of that was me quizzing Mike on the, the work, uh, scheduling of the sweet setup
237. 00:14:03 and how they do things with like this two weeks of bad.
238. 00:14:06 I called it's coming up and such and it's like, is that a routine I could start to adopt?
239. 00:14:10 I would love to.
240. 00:14:11 No idea if that'll work.
241. 00:14:13 Um, it doesn't make sense to start that routine on a sabbatical.
242. 00:14:17 That would be kind of odd.
243. 00:14:18 Maybe it would make sense, but that's that way of thinking is something I'm trying to work towards.
244. 00:14:24 So this whole simple life and buffer between task blocks, the whole yoga practice, like it's all intertwined.
245. 00:14:30 So much of this really is, uh, but no conclusive answers, but I'll keep working on them.
246. 00:14:36 So what I got.
247. 00:14:37 All right.
248. 00:14:38 Cool.
249. 00:14:39 So that's it for follow up.
250. 00:14:42 Yep.
251. 00:14:42 Tell us about today's book.
252. 00:14:43 Today's book was not my choice, but it was my choice.
253. 00:14:47 This was selected from a game I played, uh, where club members first one to send me a private
254. 00:14:56 message to on the book they wanted us to cover.
255. 00:14:59 No questions asked.
256. 00:15:00 We would cover the book.
257. 00:15:01 Mike didn't like that concept, but it turned out okay.
258. 00:15:04 I think Mike did and awful.
259. 00:15:07 On the club chose the infinite game by Simon Sinek, uh, so that is today's book.
260. 00:15:13 So we picked it up.
261. 00:15:14 We have read it.
262. 00:15:15 It's time to go through it, but I did enjoy this one.
263. 00:15:18 Uh, and we'll get into what is the infinite game here shortly, but I'm grateful that we had the
264. 00:15:25 chance to go through this one.
265. 00:15:26 But what were your first impressions on this, Mike?
266. 00:15:27 This is an awesome book.
267. 00:15:29 I forgot how much I liked Simon Sinek.
268. 00:15:32 Yeah.
269. 00:15:33 Yeah.
270. 00:15:34 No, uh, three different sections, just 11 different chapters and everything flowed together
271. 00:15:42 super tightly.
272. 00:15:43 There were a lot of stories in here that feel like I've heard before.
273. 00:15:46 One thing that instantly came to mind was, Oh, yes, Simon Sinek really likes Apple from a
274. 00:15:52 business organization perspective.
275. 00:15:53 Yes.
276. 00:15:54 Yes.
277. 00:15:54 But there's a lot of other other stories in here too.
278. 00:15:58 So yeah, there's lots of Apple culture, Steve Jobs, Apple retail stores.
279. 00:16:05 Apple, Apple, Apple, Apple, Microsoft messed up by Apple, Apple, Apple, Apple, like there's,
280. 00:16:10 yeah, there's a lot of that.
281. 00:16:12 Let me just read off all the chapter titles here because there are 11 and we're not going to go
282. 00:16:19 through all of them.
283. 00:16:21 I think we have seven written down here to kind of go through and we may pull some stuff from the
284. 00:16:28 other pieces here, but chapter one through 11, finite and infinite games just cause
285. 00:16:35 cause no cause.
286. 00:16:36 Keeper of the cause, the responsibility of business revised will and resources,
287. 00:16:43 trusting teams, ethical fading, worthy rival existential flexibility and the courage to lead.
288. 00:16:50 And the first of those is finite and infinite games.
289. 00:16:54 And this is where he really lays out what is the point of this book, I think.
290. 00:17:01 And his, his point here is that number one, this shouldn't be a book that needs to be written.
291. 00:17:08 And yet it needed to be written.
292. 00:17:10 But two, a finite game is one that has an end.
293. 00:17:14 It's one that's once you've reached the end of it, you know, if you've won or lost.
294. 00:17:19 And an infinite game is one that never stops as the name implies.
295. 00:17:25 So what has to happen is whenever you're playing that game, you have to think about it very
296. 00:17:30 differently because you're essentially empowering the people after you to continue living out the
297. 00:17:34 values and the methods that you have put in place yourself as part of playing that game.
298. 00:17:39 So your methodologies and the systems and the lifestyles you put in place between those two
299. 00:17:45 different thought processes is drastically different.
300. 00:17:50 Um, and the whole book is just littered with examples of how this has come about.
301. 00:17:57 I think the one thing I want to point out here though is that he keeps it very focused on business,
302. 00:18:02 which is kind of Simon Sennox, M.O. here.
303. 00:18:07 So he's, he's very much focused on companies, businesses and how the world of economics operates.
304. 00:18:15 It's not really one that he gears towards like a personal life.
305. 00:18:20 You could definitely do that and you can pull out those parallels, but it's not
306. 00:18:25 something that he focuses on. I think at all. I don't remember him calling that out in any way whatsoever.
307. 00:18:30 But anyway, finite and infinite games.
308. 00:18:33 Yeah. So what is the difference between a finite and infinite game?
309. 00:18:37 Well, one you can win, the other you can't. That's a simple answer.
310. 00:18:40 Yeah. No, that's that is a simple answer. He's got a bunch of other points where I thought
311. 00:18:47 this was really interesting, an interesting way to start the book because we probably,
312. 00:18:53 if we're honest with ourselves, tend to default towards a finite mindset.
313. 00:18:58 So I'll just quickly go through how he defines a finite, a characteristics of a finite game are
314. 00:19:04 played by known players. There's an agreed upon objective that when reached ends the game, players
315. 00:19:09 where uniforms and are easily identifiable, a set of rules and referees is in place to
316. 00:19:14 enforce those rules and the game ends when the time is up and the players live to play another day.
317. 00:19:18 Now, an infinite game is kind of the exact opposite. It's played by known and unknown players. There's
318. 00:19:24 no agreed upon rules. There's sometimes conventions, but players can break them if they want to.
319. 00:19:29 There is no finish line, infinite time horizons, kind of your point. There's no such thing as winning,
320. 00:19:35 and it's the game that lives on and the players that run out, which I thought that
321. 00:19:41 play on words isn't, it kind of encapsulates this idea perfectly. So you think about your life
322. 00:19:48 and the 70, 80 years that you're here and time goes on before and after, and you're trying to
323. 00:19:54 leave the biggest legacy that you can, at least a lot of people, that's their goal.
324. 00:19:58 And so that's an infinite mindset is what can I create that's going to last, rather than the
325. 00:20:06 finite one is the short term nearsighted. How can I make the most of this tomorrow sort of a thing,
326. 00:20:15 which he impacts that from a business perspective as we get into the other chapters. But this is
327. 00:20:21 definitely something worth defining here at the beginning. Some examples of this, because he talks
328. 00:20:28 about how business is an infinite game. And this is where you start to see the pro apple bias.
329. 00:20:33 I don't think this is 100% true anymore. But when he was writing this, he was talking about
330. 00:20:39 Steve Balmer, correct? And their release of the zoom and they were the zoom HD. And their goal
331. 00:20:47 was they were going to kill the iPod, they were going to beat apple. And he said that he spoke
332. 00:20:52 at a Microsoft event and he got one of these zoon HDs and it was a really impressive product.
333. 00:20:57 So Microsoft strategy was beat apple, but apple strategy was bigger. They had an infinite mindset.
334. 00:21:04 Their goal was to help teachers teach and help students learn. And I don't I don't remember who
335. 00:21:08 said what was championing that specific finite story or infinite story at the time. But he did
336. 00:21:15 mention that he was in a cab with an Apple executive and he told them what Microsoft had said and
337. 00:21:19 was like, Hey, the zoon HD is way better than the iPod and the apple executive is like, I'm sure it
338. 00:21:25 is like didn't wasn't didn't phase them at all. And I thought that was a cool story. And it showed
339. 00:21:30 the difference between a finite mindset and infinite mindset really well. Yeah, because it
340. 00:21:34 really does take two of like the conglomerates in the tech world. Like they're definitely against
341. 00:21:39 each other and yet one's really not paying attention to the other. And the other one's hyper focused on
342. 00:21:45 their competitor in this in this story, which did not work out well for Microsoft in the end,
343. 00:21:54 as we all know. But yeah, they, you know, as he goes through these two different mindsets,
344. 00:22:01 he does call out five essential practices. If you're going to adopt an infinite mindset,
345. 00:22:10 we'll talk about some of these, maybe most of these. Maybe all of them, we'll see. Yeah, probably
346. 00:22:18 all of them time is all said done. There's really only one that's not on our list right now. So I
347. 00:22:24 might just mention it because, but it's so the five essential practices are to advance a just cause,
348. 00:22:32 build trusting teams, study your worthy rivals, prepare for existential flexibility,
349. 00:22:39 and demonstrate the courage to lead. And you can see the parallels with some of his chapter titles
350. 00:22:47 here, just cause trusting teams worthy rivals courage lead. So let's just dive into the
351. 00:22:53 first of those, which is the just cause. And the reason I say that is because this is where a lot
352. 00:23:00 of the core starts to begin, because he does say that your just cause has to be something more than
353. 00:23:09 dollars, and it has to be something that you can't achieve. So it can't be a goal. I don't know how
354. 00:23:16 many times we talk about, you know, setting goals and making sure they're achievable and such.
355. 00:23:22 That's not what we're talking about here. This is bigger than that. Yes, you can have those goals,
356. 00:23:25 and you can have those short term trajectories that you're trying to put together. But this is
357. 00:23:30 bigger than that. And, you know, he of course gives a lot of examples like the one you just shared with
358. 00:23:37 Apple and Microsoft, Apple was focused on delivering excellent technology and trying to share music,
359. 00:23:46 making music available to everyone, thus the iPod. But Microsoft was focused on winning the MP3
360. 00:23:53 player game. Yeah. And those are two different ways of coming at it. And you can kind of see
361. 00:23:58 that still today in that Apple is now running Apple music, and they are still fighting to make
362. 00:24:06 sure that music is available to all people. And, you know, that's that's kind of ingrained in their
363. 00:24:12 culture, that concept, which is probably where some of their service mentality is now coming out,
364. 00:24:17 at least partially not to get into Apple finances at all. There's lots of other podcasts for that.
365. 00:24:25 Yeah, you know, I could rattle off five or six just off the top of my head. And I'm sure there's
366. 00:24:31 way more than that. But, you know, the that is the core principle there in putting together,
367. 00:24:36 you know, what is that long term goal? Is it trying to solve the fight against AIDS? That wouldn't
368. 00:24:46 necessarily be a just cause because you're focused on one, what happens if you find the cure for AIDS
369. 00:24:52 that will now you've succeeded in that. So that wouldn't necessarily be a just cause because you
370. 00:24:57 can achieve that. So if you get the point there, like the goal is to determine what it is your
371. 00:25:03 company is shooting for in the long term that you will continue to work towards, even if,
372. 00:25:08 you know, all of the cultural circumstances change, you will continue fighting and adapting
373. 00:25:14 to achieve that mission. Yeah, so you in that passage right there, I think you said the word
374. 00:25:21 goal like five times and I had it occurs to me that goals are finite minded because they are,
375. 00:25:32 by definition, a game that has a clear ending. And I've kind of a brewing on this lately, but as
376. 00:25:40 you were just talking, kind of, sheaves the moment of clarity here where goals are finite-minded,
377. 00:25:47 but habits maybe are an infinite-minded version of that. So habits are the things that you're going
378. 00:25:55 to do every day going forward and you don't even care that you'll probably be doing them the rest
379. 00:26:00 of your life, whereas goals have a specific ending, like, I'm going to run this half marathon and I
380. 00:26:06 had this experience, I guess, done running the half marathon. I'm like, okay, now what? That was
381. 00:26:10 cool, but that was a year of my life now. What's next? So as I'm going through and reading this
382. 00:26:19 and talking through this with you, I'm recognizing more and more that goals are dumb. I understand
383. 00:26:25 in a lot of context, maybe they're necessary, but I find myself every time people are talking about
384. 00:26:33 goals now, kind of pushing back on the concept a little bit, and especially after reading this book,
385. 00:26:41 that feeling is kind of multiplied. And I don't know if that's completely justified, but
386. 00:26:52 my initial reaction as we're talking about goals and getting into the just cause and stuff is that
387. 00:26:58 not the default way that we should be thinking about how we want to live our lives. The just
388. 00:27:08 cause is the thing that kind of provides the motivation the definition he has is it's a specific
389. 00:27:14 vision of a future state that doesn't exist. It's a future state so appealing that people are
390. 00:27:18 willing to make sacrifices in order to help advance toward that vision. And he's again talking about
391. 00:27:23 this from a business perspective and rallying people behind you're just cause, but I think even
392. 00:27:27 on a personal level, you could identify a just cause. And that's the thing that makes you show up
393. 00:27:34 every day. It's not the fact that you're checking a box and I am now 37% complete towards my goal
394. 00:27:42 of writing a book or whatever. And it kind of challenges me because I've kind of defaulted to
395. 00:27:49 that way in the past and I want to kind of change that. And I've kind of been thinking about this
396. 00:27:55 for a while anyways about habits and habits over goals and that kind of thing. But as I was reading
397. 00:28:01 this section, the action item associated with this for me is to identify what is my just cause.
398. 00:28:08 I've got my life theme, which is a version of this, I think. But I want to condense that down.
399. 00:28:18 Have you given any thought to this just cause and how it applies to you?
400. 00:28:23 Yeah, to some degree. And I know that like the sweet setup just has the planner and the plan
401. 00:28:31 your year thing that they've recently come out. I'm sure you're well aware of that, Mike.
402. 00:28:37 And I've tried to, I haven't jumped into that, but what I've, what it prompted whenever I saw that
403. 00:28:45 a lot of this came out is that's what really kicked off some of my thinking around, okay,
404. 00:28:50 what does 2020 look like? 2020, you know, people, there's a, I think an especially large
405. 00:28:57 number of folks interested in putting together goals and plans for 2020, just because of the
406. 00:29:04 weird coincidence of 2020 vision, like there's just, there seems to be a weird connecting thing
407. 00:29:10 there. Even folks that I've talked to and like, oh yeah, I'm never setting plans and goals. I had
408. 00:29:16 conversations with our small group last night with folks that are very much anti goal orientation.
409. 00:29:22 And then I'm like, yeah, I'm thinking about setting some goals this year. Why are you doing
410. 00:29:26 that? You've been against these things for years, almost a decade. Like, well, it just seems right
411. 00:29:31 with it being 2020. Okay. Yeah. Sure. So I'm not, I'm not sure plans and goals are necessarily the
412. 00:29:39 same. No, they can be. No, but I am all for planning. I'm not all for setting goals. Just to clarify.
413. 00:29:47 I think what I've been, and if you've gone through my working with Tommy Focus Course and listened to
414. 00:29:55 some of the stuff I've talked about recently, you're aware that a lot of what I've done with my
415. 00:30:00 task management systems is they're built around the development of habits. They're not necessarily
416. 00:30:07 goal oriented. There's not necessarily a thing that I'm shooting for that's going to end in three
417. 00:30:13 months. I have some of those thought processes that I kind of worked towards, but they're not locked
418. 00:30:21 in stone. And I'm more towards, more geared towards trying to build the habits on a daily and
419. 00:30:27 weekly basis than anything, and then step back and make sure that those are shooting me towards
420. 00:30:32 the mission that I want to shoot towards. So I've thought about it in that sense, but
421. 00:30:37 part of the reason I brought up the sweet setup piece was just because that is what prompted some
422. 00:30:44 of this thinking. And then whenever we went through, when we're going through this particular section,
423. 00:30:48 my mind immediately started to translate it into how does this apply to me personally. And
424. 00:30:57 this is again, what I was mentioning earlier in how I'm trying to do this simplification process.
425. 00:31:02 And do I try to put myself on a rhythm of work and then having some time to stop,
426. 00:31:09 take a step back and reflect on it. That whole habit mentality is, I think, similar to
427. 00:31:16 this just cause mentality in that you're trying to build an infinite process. You're not trying
428. 00:31:25 to achieve a thing on a short term. And of course, being the end of the year, there's a lot of people
429. 00:31:32 talking about setting up goals and do smart goals and make sure you got your review for the year
430. 00:31:39 completed. It's like, well, review could be a good thing. But in most cases, people are taking
431. 00:31:44 that review and then setting up their annual goals for the next year. I don't really buy into
432. 00:31:49 that because life moves too fast. And at least for me, it does. I know there are some people that
433. 00:31:55 it works out great, but holy buckets, you know, if I set up goals for end of year 2020,
434. 00:32:01 I guarantee you before January is half over, I've got them changed. Like, it's just not going to work.
435. 00:32:06 So I think I'm with you. I haven't done formal goals in a long time. Our church is interested in
436. 00:32:15 having us set up goals for the year. And my first response to that was, can I set up goals for the
437. 00:32:21 next seven weeks? But that was my initial response. And my boss kind of looked at me and was like,
438. 00:32:28 well, yeah, I suppose that might work. So, you know, we're small enough still. We can have everybody
439. 00:32:32 operating on different schedules and it's okay. So kind of weird. But that's, I don't know, all of
440. 00:32:38 this to say, I've had a lot of thoughts about it. I don't like goals. I think I'm with you in that
441. 00:32:42 sense. But I do want to try to put up the routines and put together some kind of a plan for the year,
442. 00:32:50 maybe not quite the year, but at least a routine to work towards.
443. 00:32:54 So just real quickly, he has some characteristics of a just cause, which I think would be helpful.
444. 00:33:01 So a just cause must be for something. It's got to be affirmative and optimistic. It must be
445. 00:33:07 inclusive. So it's open to all those who would like to contribute. It must be service oriented
446. 00:33:12 for the primary benefit of others. That's the one that really jumps out to me, talking about
447. 00:33:17 some of my follow up action items from last time, being interruptible, prioritizing people
448. 00:33:22 over my own stuff. Just cause must be resilient. So able to endure political, technological,
449. 00:33:28 and cultural change. And it must be idealistic, big, bold, and ultimately unachievable.
450. 00:33:32 So I've been thinking about this. And again, I don't have this nailed down, which is why it's
451. 00:33:38 an action item, but just to bring some clarity, maybe for people who are listening. I think that
452. 00:33:44 the just cause lands somewhere between the phrase that I've mentioned, my wife and I landed on,
453. 00:33:51 from going through the Life in Air book, where there was one thing in particular that really
454. 00:33:55 jumped out to me as we were going through those exercises. And that was we want to make people
455. 00:33:59 feel like a million bucks, even if we don't have a million bucks. I don't think that's a just
456. 00:34:04 cause, but I also don't think my life theme is either, which is for sake of transparency here.
457. 00:34:10 You know, it's to help people answer the question, why am I here by inspiring, encouraging, and teaching
458. 00:34:15 them to connect to their calling, discover their destiny, live a life they're created for.
459. 00:34:18 So I think my just cause is probably a simple one sentence thing somewhere between those two.
460. 00:34:25 And I want to, by next time, spend some time thinking about that. I'm hoping that I will have
461. 00:34:33 something that is clear and concise that I can share next time that we record. But I have a
462. 00:34:39 feeling this is going to take a little bit of effort. I don't think a just cause is something
463. 00:34:45 that you just stumble onto. And then you're like, Oh, yeah, that's the thing. I think this
464. 00:34:51 maybe needs to be discovered. And there's different levels of nuance along the way. But I totally
465. 00:34:58 see the value in this. And I think that a just cause personally, ultimately translates into a just
466. 00:35:07 cause for my family. I've mentioned we've got like the family core values, but I'd love to
467. 00:35:12 get that down into a single sentence for our just cause. And ultimately have that applied to
468. 00:35:17 everything that we do. How specific do you feel like that needs to be? And here's here's why I
469. 00:35:23 asked that question. My wife and I have looked at and adopted to some degree the mission of our
470. 00:35:33 church as our own personal. I might call it a just cause. And that is to glorify God by being a
471. 00:35:42 disciple who makes disciples of Jesus Christ. Like that's the mission statement there. And
472. 00:35:48 to me that that is a difficult thing to work towards. But at the same time,
473. 00:35:55 I love working with technology. I love working with books. I like the whole analog space. I've
474. 00:36:00 got this thing for privacy and data ownership and such. I've got a lot of those things that I'm
475. 00:36:08 interested in, but none of those come out in that statement. And I haven't figured out if
476. 00:36:16 that's okay to me, me personally, some people will throw a fit. Some people say, "Oh, it's
477. 00:36:21 perfectly fine." It's hard for me to say I should trust any one or multiple people on that.
478. 00:36:27 It has more to do with, "Is that okay for me or not?" So that's why I'm asking, in your case,
479. 00:36:31 do you feel like that should be more specific or can it be more broad in that form?
480. 00:36:37 Depends. I think it depends on you personally. That helped. None at all.
481. 00:36:41 I think it's fine. I mean, he uses examples of like CVS helping people on their path to better
482. 00:36:48 health. It's hard to get more general than that. But also, he shares stories of how they were able
483. 00:36:54 to filter the decisions that they made based on that cause. And it was obvious that, and this is
484. 00:37:01 from chapter 11, so jumping all over the place, but in 2014, they decided to stop selling cigarettes
485. 00:37:07 in their stores because they recognize that this isn't in line with their cause. So what is the
486. 00:37:12 single sentence cause that allows you to instantly filter things and say, "This is a heck yes or
487. 00:37:20 this is a no." I think that's really the value of the just cause. But how specific you need to be,
488. 00:37:28 I think, probably differs for the person or the organization. I guess for you personally,
489. 00:37:35 how specific do you think you need to be? Because I'm just telling on myself, I guess,
490. 00:37:42 if I left it more general, my tendency is going to be to look for the loopholes and the reasons not
491. 00:37:49 to do stuff. I need to get it very clear where there's no wiggle room in terms of how you're
492. 00:37:57 going to interpret this for me to really be motivated by it. But maybe that's not you.
493. 00:38:02 Well, mine would be the other way around. Because it's so general, I feel like it makes it easy to
494. 00:38:08 say yes to a bunch of stuff. Oh, yes, that kind of fits. I could say yes to that. But I think is
495. 00:38:16 potentially the fear that I have with it. So maybe you help me answer that question.
496. 00:38:22 Oh, dang it. Now I have more work to do.
497. 00:38:24 Sorry. I could point you to a fancy fountain panel to make that work more fun.
498. 00:38:33 Oh, thanks, Mike. You're helping lots today. So now you're giving me more action items and
499. 00:38:40 you're costing me money. Okay. I see how this is going to go.
500. 00:38:43 All the clarity that's going to come from it though.
501. 00:38:45 Uh huh. Yeah. I can't help but sit down and write about it because I got the new fancy
502. 00:38:50 pin. It's like, okay. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Thanks for that. All right. We better move on. So
503. 00:38:55 determining what your just cause is, please do better at it than I have. And once you have done
504. 00:39:03 that, you have to have a keeper of the cause. And I thought this was interesting. It's why I put
505. 00:39:08 it in the outline. But he talks about cases where the original founder for a company
506. 00:39:16 who has that vision and has that just cause and is driving towards it.
507. 00:39:20 The Keystone story here is about Sam Walton and wanting to deliver inexpensive products to the
508. 00:39:31 world. So essentially he wanted to make all the products available at cheap prices. That was his
509. 00:39:36 goal and was trying to make sure that it was done in a way that everybody was happy about it
510. 00:39:41 and did exceptionally well at it. Thus Walmart is like everywhere. And what happened was,
511. 00:39:49 shoot him. Am I going to forget his name? The guy who succeeded him. All right. You're going to
512. 00:39:56 listen to me flip pages. What was his name? Mike Duke. So Mike Duke took over from Sam Walton.
513. 00:40:05 And had a different mindset. He didn't have that long term vision of trying to deliver inexpensive
514. 00:40:12 products. He had the vision of trying to cut costs and to do to drive up shareholder value.
515. 00:40:20 And what happened? All kinds of bad stuff from lawsuits and, you know,
516. 00:40:26 public not wanting Walmart anymore where they used to lobby to have a Walmart brought to their
517. 00:40:33 town. Now they were lobbying to keep them out. It just changed the whole trajectory of the company.
518. 00:40:39 And I think you can still see those ramifications yet today. So the keeper of that cause has to have
519. 00:40:46 the infinite mindset. Otherwise, they start to make the poor decisions that you don't want to see.
520. 00:40:53 He does bring up Apple again in this story. But, you know, it's a process that you have to make
521. 00:41:00 sure that if you are the keeper of that just cause, that it does have to have ripple effects down
522. 00:41:07 through the company. You brought up CVS. That's a great example. Because with that, they had to
523. 00:41:13 make decisions to, I believe it was like a $2 billion decision. Does that sound right? It seems like
524. 00:41:20 it was a very large number to CVS on how much they lost whenever they decided to stop selling
525. 00:41:27 cigarettes in their stores. Yeah, they were basically giving up the sales of roughly 700 packs of
526. 00:41:36 cigarettes per store per day. So it ended up being a ton of money. And when they did it,
527. 00:41:43 all the experts were like, I don't know what they're thinking. Their earnings per share is going to
528. 00:41:47 go way down. But then because they took a stand, it actually had a net positive effect. And they're
529. 00:41:54 way further than they would have been had they not taken that stance.
530. 00:41:58 Yeah, I would say that this particular chapter, keeper of the cause, one of the things that really,
531. 00:42:04 this one really drove home for me is just the terminology and becoming aware of the way that
532. 00:42:15 some of the upper level management thinkers in these big companies, how are they operating?
533. 00:42:22 And just the words that they use, can you tell if they're shortsighted or longsighted in the way
534. 00:42:30 that they're making their decisions? I haven't really noticed that previously. So whenever he was
535. 00:42:35 explaining and telling some of these stories, it really struck home that, yeah, this happens a lot.
536. 00:42:42 And the finite game is one that's played by a lot of people more so than I ever really wanted to
537. 00:42:50 become aware of, but it's still I mean, it's everywhere is ridiculous. Okay, keeper of the cause. Are you
538. 00:42:58 the keeper of the cause? I'm a keeper of a cause. Well, this is the interesting thing about this is
539. 00:43:02 you may not be the CEO of your organization. You can still be the keeper of a cause. I was
540. 00:43:11 talking to the guys in my discipleship group last night about the topic from extreme ownership,
541. 00:43:19 like decentralized command and like the chain of command in our church, but this applies to any
542. 00:43:25 organization as well where you've got people who are communicating up and down and ultimately,
543. 00:43:30 you want everyone to be in alignment, everybody recognizing what is from that book, they called
544. 00:43:35 it the commander's intent. So what is the vision for this organization? What are we working towards?
545. 00:43:43 What is our just cause? And you need everybody to buy into that and to work towards it from the top
546. 00:43:48 to the bottom, but you can't have the person at the top personally communicate to every single person
547. 00:43:56 along the chain of command, especially as you get into hundreds and thousands, millions of people.
548. 00:44:01 There's no way you can you can do that. So you got to communicate, you got to communicate the vision
549. 00:44:08 or the cause to the people below you, they've got to communicate it to the people below them.
550. 00:44:12 They've got to communicate to the people below them. That's how a big organization or a big team is
551. 00:44:18 ultimately successful. I think if you've got a CEO who is infinite minded, that's great.
552. 00:44:26 And that's one of the things that struck me about these stories that they told. You get to know
553. 00:44:31 Wells Fargo later and all of the stuff that they did wrong. That wasn't just a CEO who all of a sudden
554. 00:44:40 changed the culture in all of those different branches. There were a lot of managers along the
555. 00:44:46 way who embraced that culture. And yeah, leadership starts at the top, but I don't think it's as simple
556. 00:44:53 as just get a new person at the top and then instantly everything becomes better. Trust has to be built
557. 00:45:00 over time. He talks about that in this book. So I don't know, it encourages as I'm reading through
558. 00:45:07 this section, it encourages me to for the food chains that I am at the top of or the totem pole,
559. 00:45:13 whatever. I want to make sure I'm infinite, infinitely minded and I'm communicating that down to
560. 00:45:18 everybody below me. But if I find myself not at the top of the food chain, then it's my responsibility
561. 00:45:25 still to connect infinitely to whatever vision is being passed down. I don't want to just go along
562. 00:45:33 with things because this is the way that we do things. Look for ways that I can improve things.
563. 00:45:38 Look for ways that I can build trust and the circle of safety and all that type of stuff.
564. 00:45:43 With the people that are around me, regardless of whether my CEO has said this is the way we're
565. 00:45:50 going to do things, I feel like if you were to take that approach, that's probably a recipe for
566. 00:45:57 promotion. I think that if you can lead people well, which to be a good leader, that's kind of the
567. 00:46:04 unwritten thing he's saying here is like, if you're going to be a good leader, you need to be
568. 00:46:07 infinitely minded. I don't know that he explicitly says that at any point. He uses a lot of stories
569. 00:46:12 though of like finite minded leaders and how they failed. So the narrative is like, if you're really
570. 00:46:18 going to be good at this, you got to be infinitely minded. And I feel like that kind of will develop
571. 00:46:23 your leadership abilities to the point where maybe you are. If you're not in charge of a large team
572. 00:46:28 now, you might be in the future. If that's something that you want or aspire to, then the way to do
573. 00:46:33 that is to start where you are with what you've got and apply that infinite mindset the best you can.
574. 00:46:38 I think the important thing is that we're all the keeper of a cause in some form. And if you're
575. 00:46:47 a dad or a mom, that's an easy one. I was recently introduced to, this will be a good segue into the
576. 00:46:58 next section. I was recently introduced to the concept of thinking about families as a team
577. 00:47:03 and how, think about a baseball team, you got a coach who leads that team and they're running
578. 00:47:10 drills, they're doing practice, they're learning how to play the game. And then they have their
579. 00:47:17 competition. They play the game. They win or they lose, but then they come back and they try again
580. 00:47:22 for the next time. And they maybe get to the end championship, but then they come back again
581. 00:47:28 next year. And it's just a repetitive, it's an infinitely recurring cycle. Translate that to
582. 00:47:36 your family. And I see myself as the coach for my family team. And it's my job to run drills with
583. 00:47:45 our kids and teach them how things work in life, show them simple things like math or how,
584. 00:47:54 when you walk into an ice cream shop, what should you expect? What's the expectation
585. 00:47:58 of the owner of that shop on how you should interact with them? Soft skills in that sense.
586. 00:48:03 Those are the drills that we're running. And then later on, they will have chances to do those on
587. 00:48:07 their own, but then you can review those, go through it with them and then continue to help
588. 00:48:11 them become better humans following the cause that you're working towards. And this gets into the
589. 00:48:17 next section, trusting teams. But that mindset behind thinking of your family as a team,
590. 00:48:24 and if you go into this next section of trusting teams, you have to have that team working together
591. 00:48:31 so that they can reach that long term infinite cause that you're, that just cause that you're
592. 00:48:38 working towards. And that's done by continuing to work through difficult things together,
593. 00:48:45 whether it applies to the just cause or not, but learning how to help each other through a lot of
594. 00:48:51 those, those instances and sharing how you're feeling about it. If you've got things you're
595. 00:48:56 struggling with asking others in that team to help you with it, etc, etc, you get the point.
596. 00:49:01 Yeah. So you really have to have that whole team working really well in order to succeed
597. 00:49:08 in working towards your just cause. And I do like the idea of thinking of my family as that team.
598. 00:49:16 You know, there's obviously other areas that I am the leader of as well, you know, sound teams
599. 00:49:21 and video teams at our church. Like I am the keeper of the cause in those areas as well.
600. 00:49:27 And I can continue to build those teams in those scenarios in the same way. But frankly, it just,
601. 00:49:33 I like the family thing. Yeah. Well, before even trusting teams, he kind of touches on this topic
602. 00:49:40 a little bit in will and resources because he talks about how in any game there are two
603. 00:49:46 resources that two resources that people need to play will, which is intangible, harder to measure
604. 00:49:50 and then resources, which are tangible and easy to measure. He makes the point that every leader
605. 00:49:55 has a bias. And the things that you were talking about, the soft skills and the things like that,
606. 00:50:00 as you are leading your family, that shows your bias towards the will, not the resources, which
607. 00:50:09 like the money is the easy one. You know, how much do we have in the bank account, the things that
608. 00:50:13 you can measure like that. Going back to the Walmart thing, we can see this in the statement that Mike
609. 00:50:23 Duke made when he took over. He says, I'm confident we will continue to deliver value to our shareholders,
610. 00:50:30 increase opportunity for our over 2 million associates and help our 180 million customers
611. 00:50:36 around the world save money and live better. He makes the point from that quote that those are
612. 00:50:42 in the wrong order. It's shareholders, associates, customers, but Sam Walton's just caused the team
613. 00:50:50 that he was leading his just cause that he was trying to communicate was lower the cost of living
614. 00:50:54 for everyone. So the customer is first. And I thought that was really interesting. Now getting
615. 00:51:03 into the trusting team section, there's a story here about Alan Mulally and how he
616. 00:51:10 kind of changed the culture at Ford when he took over as the new CEO. He was the CEO of Boeing
617. 00:51:19 prior to that. And so talking about this from a corporate perspective, I liked this story because
618. 00:51:26 I actually heard Alan Mulally speak when I was at Entre Leadership. When he spoke, it was an
619. 00:51:32 interesting presentation because he made this slide, put it up on the wall. And he basically was
620. 00:51:38 like, these are the 13 things, everything I know about leadership. And then he proceeded to talk
621. 00:51:44 about the 13 things that are on that slide. And it's not complicated. It's simple stuff.
622. 00:51:51 But it is kind of to your point about leading your family well, the things that he did, how
623. 00:51:59 he kind of set the tone and dictated the direction that they were going to go. So when he took over,
624. 00:52:04 and he talks about this in this book, Simon Scenic does, that the executives were asked to
625. 00:52:09 report on their business plans and they were to assign it green, yellow, or red based on how well
626. 00:52:14 it was doing. And time after time, he has these meetings with people who are in charge of these
627. 00:52:19 projects and all of these things are coming back green. And he's getting frustrated because he's
628. 00:52:23 like, guys, these are not all green. We're about to lose many billions of dollars this year.
629. 00:52:29 Something is broken. Let's figure out what it is. And it was hard for him to create the circle
630. 00:52:35 of safety that Simon Scenic talks about in this book, where people would admit that they're
631. 00:52:41 struggling with something. And immediately when somebody shared something for the first time,
632. 00:52:46 like he praised them in front of everybody, everybody that was there kind of thought they were going
633. 00:52:50 to be humiliated, berated, or they were going to get fired. That's what the previous CEO did.
634. 00:52:56 But he wanted to set an example of, I want to know what's not going well. And he uses this phrase,
635. 00:53:04 like, you have a problem, but you are not the problem. And that's, I have an action item
636. 00:53:10 associated with this too. Now, I want to create that circle of safety inside of my family as well.
637. 00:53:16 I want it because he mentions that it's necessary for trust to exist. So how do you do that? How do
638. 00:53:23 I create a circle of safety for my kids? That's kind of my action item here. Because
639. 00:53:28 he talks about this in this chapter, how a leader cannot force anybody into the circle of safety.
640. 00:53:36 This really challenged me. He mentions that trust is built over time. You cannot
641. 00:53:43 tell somebody, Oh, just trust me. That doesn't doesn't work that way. He's even got this cool,
642. 00:53:50 little cool, little chart. Well, I guess it's not a chart, but there's two axes. There's performance
643. 00:53:55 on the Y axes, and then there's trust on the low axes. And he talks about how the Navy seals
644. 00:54:00 try to find, obviously, people who are high performance have high trust. The people that
645. 00:54:06 are toxic for them are the people who are high performers, but they have low trust. Because
646. 00:54:11 if you have high performance, you can tend to rely on your own abilities, but you're not going
647. 00:54:16 to win every battle. And when it starts going south, do you have the character? Do you have the trust
648. 00:54:22 necessary there for people to admit that things are going wrong? So you can fix them? Or do they just
649. 00:54:27 try to just gloss over it? And that kind of gets into like the ethical fading stuff, which we'll
650. 00:54:33 get to in a bit. But you don't want people who are going to compromise the standard
651. 00:54:39 in order to cover their butts. You want people who are ultimately going to prioritize trust first.
652. 00:54:47 And that does start at the top. And again, that's something that spoke to me as I was going through
653. 00:54:53 this too, about my family is I've got to take the first step. I have to set the tone. I have to
654. 00:55:00 become vulnerable myself. I have to admit my mistakes. I have to talk about all the times that
655. 00:55:06 I've messed up. And an insecure, finite-minded leader would say, well, I can't possibly tell my kids
656. 00:55:13 the times that I've messed up because then they're not going to listen to me. They're not going to
657. 00:55:17 respect what I have to say. But actually, the opposite is true. When you do that kind of stuff,
658. 00:55:22 they do respect you because they see the things that you're doing wrong. They see your flaws.
659. 00:55:27 And if you just pretend like they don't exist, then eventually what they start to believe is,
660. 00:55:33 well, I guess dad's just a hypocrite. And I don't want that.
661. 00:55:37 I don't think anybody does want that. This is a challenging thing to think about whenever you
662. 00:55:45 start applying it to your family because so much of it comes back to how you live. It's not necessarily
663. 00:55:53 about what you say or what you decide. What do you actually act on? Yes, I can say that I like to do
664. 00:56:01 my morning routine. And I tell my kids, yeah, I read my books every morning and I read my
665. 00:56:06 Bible every morning and I pray every morning. But if they don't ever see you do any of that,
666. 00:56:10 it gets hard for them to know if it's actually happening or not. They might be able to pick it
667. 00:56:17 up. They might be able to nail down if you actually are or not. But they have to see
668. 00:56:22 the action that corresponds to the words or just the action. So I do think that if you
669. 00:56:30 determine what that just cause is and you create that safety zone and make sure that you're not
670. 00:56:37 going to have any gotchas in there, like, yeah, I'm going to create the zone for you to share. And
671. 00:56:42 then depending on what you say, I'm either going to make it easier for you or I'm just going to use
672. 00:56:48 it against you. And if you do the latter of those two bad things happen and you've just completely
673. 00:56:55 trashed your safety zone in that sense. So it doesn't end up well. Yeah, I would add to that.
674. 00:57:03 I think the most important thing is that you follow through on what you say you're doing.
675. 00:57:08 Right. If you are going to, if you say that I read my Bible and I pray every morning,
676. 00:57:13 then you better make sure that that is what you actually do. It can't be something that you
677. 00:57:18 confess is important, but then your life doesn't line up with it. It doesn't mean I'm going out of my
678. 00:57:24 way to, hey, kids, look, I'm actually doing it, but they can tell, I believe they can tell when you
679. 00:57:33 are saying something and you feel bad because you're not living it out versus this is part of
680. 00:57:41 who I am. This is part of my identity. And there's a confidence behind the statement that is lacking
681. 00:57:47 otherwise. They can tell when you're faking it. I guess it's kind of what I'm saying. And it's
682. 00:57:52 not just kids, I think. I think if you're leading a team or an organization that they can sense it
683. 00:57:58 as well. Absolutely. So in other words, don't be lazy. And I think that that's probably a good
684. 00:58:03 place to jump into our next talking point here in ethical fading and lazy leadership. Oh, nice
685. 00:58:11 segue. I know, right? Because the end, and you mentioned earlier, like the whole Wells Fargo thing
686. 00:58:17 with how they they had theoretically a good mission, but they didn't follow through on it in the long
687. 00:58:28 term. They lost sight of that. What was the number 3.5 million fake accounts that were opened under
688. 00:58:37 Wells Fargo? And people were getting late fees, all kinds of stuff, all sorts of bad things were
689. 00:58:42 happening. There's tons of corruption that came out of that. And it essentially comes back to if
690. 00:58:50 you're not on point, if you are the keeper of the cause, and you are the one setting the example,
691. 00:58:58 take your family again, if you are not the one following through and you're not actually doing
692. 00:59:06 the things you're telling your kids that you're doing, they catch that laziness. And people know
693. 00:59:11 if you're not going through with it, thus, over time, that leads to what he termed ethical fading,
694. 00:59:19 where you slowly but surely start to lose that the course towards that just cause. And you start
695. 00:59:29 looking at the more shortsighted, the finite games that you end up playing. That's not good. All,
696. 00:59:36 all, tons of examples were bad things come out of this. Wells Fargo is just one example.
697. 00:59:43 I'm sure you can think about how this has happened in your own life. I can think of times when I've
698. 00:59:47 slowly gotten worse and worse at procrastination over time, and it's led to bad conversations,
699. 00:59:52 and I've had to cancel a bunch of stuff that I really didn't want to cancel because I screwed
700. 00:59:56 up and got behind on things. It just doesn't pan out. Don't do that. Don't be lazy. That's
701. 01:00:03 the moral of the story there. Yeah, and it can happen to anybody. They have a... I didn't write
702. 01:00:09 down all of the corporate stories that he shares in this book in my Mindowed File, but I did write
703. 01:00:14 down this Princeton University Good Samaritan study, which was really interesting. These are
704. 01:00:20 students who were in the Divinity program, I believe. And so they're studying religion,
705. 01:00:32 and the Good Samaritan is a Bible story about this guy gets beat up left on the side of the road,
706. 01:00:37 and then who is actually going to stop and help that person. So they had somebody who was in a lot
707. 01:00:42 of distress, and they put them strategically on the way to class for these students, and then they
708. 01:00:48 had a researcher that went with them. I don't know how they did this study without it making it seem
709. 01:00:54 like they're trying to manipulate me. That would be my thought if I was participating in this study.
710. 01:00:59 Like, I know they're going to try to get me to do something I shouldn't be doing.
711. 01:01:01 They're totally going to try to do this on me. Yeah, so I don't know exactly how they did it,
712. 01:01:07 but what they found was that with low pressure to get where they were going, 63% of the people
713. 01:01:16 stopped and helped the person. With medium pressure, 45... to just keep going to wherever they were
714. 01:01:23 supposed to be, 45% of people stopped, but with high pressure, only 10% of people stopped. And this
715. 01:01:29 is the group, like I said, that you would think 100% of these people would stop every single time,
716. 01:01:35 no questions asked. But you apply a little bit of pressure, and it's easy to shift your focus on
717. 01:01:41 your own stuff instead of the problems of people around you. This comes all the way back to beginning
718. 01:01:46 of the episode and what I want to change in my life. So this is not something that you read about
719. 01:01:54 it and you say, "Well, yeah, the people who were running Wells Fargo, they're just complete jerks,
720. 01:02:00 and there's no way I would have done that if I was in that situation." It's a slippery slope.
721. 01:02:05 It's practice he points out to choose language that softens or obscures the impacts of our behavior.
722. 01:02:12 The words that we choose can distance us from any sense of responsibility, but they can also
723. 01:02:16 have the opposite effect as well. They can help us act more ethically if we choose them well.
724. 01:02:21 As I was reading this, I was thinking about the probably only TV show I've gotten into in the last
725. 01:02:26 15 years, which is this Canadian comedy called Corner Gas. I'm not sure if I showed you this when
726. 01:02:34 you were here or not. But it's written by us. I think this might be the first time I've ever heard
727. 01:02:39 of it. Okay, so it's written by a stand-up comedian, think like Jerry Seinfeld. Okay, but it takes place
728. 01:02:48 in a small town in Canada. Instead of Seinfeld, which is just loud obnoxious humor, it's
729. 01:02:56 just really sarcastic. There's this one scene in there where these two police officers are
730. 01:03:03 arguing, and one of them's like, "You lost the Clavec Cup." The other one's like, "I didn't lose it.
731. 01:03:08 I'm just unable to ascertain its whereabouts." The other one's like, "Don't try to please mumble
732. 01:03:13 jumbo on me. I taught it to you." That's immediately what I thought when I read this section.
733. 01:03:19 And that's obviously a funny example, but it did challenge me to think about how I do this.
734. 01:03:30 How am I lazy in my leadership and how do I default towards this ethical fading?
735. 01:03:41 And I don't have anything specific that came to mind, but this whole section on lazy leadership
736. 01:03:47 really stood out to me because there's a couple things he points out in this that kind of lead
737. 01:03:52 to this ethical fading. So the first thing he says is that lazy leadership chooses to put
738. 01:03:58 processes in place to fix problems rather than building support for their people. I definitely
739. 01:04:06 am guilty of this where we think about something that went wrong and then, "Okay, well, how can we
740. 01:04:12 make sure this doesn't happen again?" I recognize after reading this book that that's a finite-minded
741. 01:04:18 way to solve that problem. A more infinite-minded approach would be, "Okay, what is the job that
742. 01:04:25 this team or these people are trying to do and asking them, 'How can I support you?'" That's
743. 01:04:32 kind of the story that he tells about the barista who worked at the Four Seasons and
744. 01:04:37 it was kind of interesting because they talked about how he had a couple different jobs, a couple
745. 01:04:40 different hotels and compared and contrasted the infinite-minded versus finite-minded
746. 01:04:44 approach between those different organizations. That really hit me. And again, I don't think I
747. 01:04:50 have anything specific that I'm doing this right now and I need to change it, but I've definitely
748. 01:04:55 done it in the past and I want to make sure it doesn't happen again. Solutions to ethical fading
749. 01:05:01 are usually finite in nature, which then leads to more ethical fading. So the best solution when
750. 01:05:10 it comes to this ethical fading is just don't even start, don't even go there because ethical
751. 01:05:17 decisions are not based on what's best in the short term. Usually when you have a situation like
752. 01:05:23 a Wells Fargo or some big corporate scandal, the focus is on, "Well, how do we fix this?" And
753. 01:05:32 naturally, it's going to be short term. And it's kind of shocking as you read through these chapters
754. 01:05:40 to recognize that if you were to get caught doing something like that and then you ask yourself,
755. 01:05:45 "How can I fix this?" Whatever answer you're going to come up with is going to be wrong because
756. 01:05:50 your perspective is wrong. It's more complicated than that. And really, you just have to go back
757. 01:06:00 and start at the beginning with an infinite mindset and a just cause.
758. 01:06:05 I think this is where the concept of habits comes in pretty strong and how I've been watching a
759. 01:06:12 couple interviews of James Clear lately and it kind of has me wanting to reread atomic habits
760. 01:06:18 over Christmas break. But I've become more and more aware of how his thinking around habit building
761. 01:06:28 is essentially lifestyle building. Just not called that. You're just thinking about the
762. 01:06:35 individual components of what you do on a day-to-day basis and how you live your life on a day-to-day
763. 01:06:40 basis and how those little tiny incremental steps can add up to massive change and massive results.
764. 01:06:51 I think that is ultimately what can help protect against some of this ethical fading in the lazy
765. 01:06:58 leadership. Because me for one, I'm very prone to the whole instant gratification circle of procrastination.
766. 01:07:06 It just can eat me alive if I'm not careful. And I have to continue to build habits to stop that.
767. 01:07:14 Otherwise, like you're saying, ethical fading can creep up on you and you don't even realize it's
768. 01:07:19 happening. It's so hard to get the high-level review or the reflection point you need to even
769. 01:07:26 see it. Sometimes you got to have a spouse or somebody just slap you across the face and say,
770. 01:07:31 hey, you're screwing this up in order to actually get the point across. So the hope is you don't
771. 01:07:37 ever go down that path. The reality is you're probably going to lean towards it at some point.
772. 01:07:42 So trying to put together something to help with that in the long term would be helpful.
773. 01:07:47 Ethical fading is not a single wicked act done by evil people. It's something that anybody is
774. 01:07:55 susceptible to. Absolutely. Now, to kind of transition off of that, he talks about
775. 01:08:02 these other companies or other people that he terms worthy rivals. And worthy rivals,
776. 01:08:11 think of them as not necessarily your competition, but somebody or some company that is working in
777. 01:08:18 the same space that you are. And it's important to identify them because knowing who those rivals
778. 01:08:25 are helps you identify your own weaknesses because you can start to see their strengths
779. 01:08:30 and how they do things. And it can help illuminate some of what you're doing as well. You may not
780. 01:08:35 like them. You may absolutely despise them, but you have to at least recognize and respect them
781. 01:08:43 for what they are doing. He tells the story early on about how there's another. Yeah, he
782. 01:08:48 didn't name the person, did he? I tried to find it. He did eventually.
783. 01:08:53 Okay, I drew a blank and missed that part. You have to tell who it is when we're done here.
784. 01:08:57 But he tells the story of how there's another individual who was working in the same space as he
785. 01:09:05 was as far as writing books and creating things. And he would constantly check in to see,
786. 01:09:12 you know, was his book rated higher than this other guy's book? Or was it the other way around?
787. 01:09:19 And if he was losing, he would just loathe and be upset about all the things that this other guy
788. 01:09:26 was doing and was jealous, etc, etc. And whenever he was winning, he would kind of gloat like,
789. 01:09:33 oh, yeah, you know, look at me, beat his chest and be all excited about it. But then he was asked
790. 01:09:40 to do a joint interview with this guy. So they were on the stage at the same time,
791. 01:09:47 and they were asked to introduce each other. And if you've ever been to conferences or anything
792. 01:09:55 along those lines, these public interviews, the introduction is basically talking about the
793. 01:10:01 accolades of the other person and how great they are and trying to explain to the audience
794. 01:10:11 you know, why they should be listening to that particular person. And Simon had the opportunity
795. 01:10:19 to go first in this in this instance. And I'm going to I'm just going to read what he says because
796. 01:10:25 he starts this particular segment. So whenever he goes to introduce his rival, this is what he says,
797. 01:10:33 "You make me unbelievably insecure because all of your strengths are all my weaknesses.
798. 01:10:40 You can do so well the things that I really struggle to do." The audience laughed. He looked at me and
799. 01:10:45 responded, "The insecurity is mutual." And he went on to identify some of my strengths
800. 01:10:50 as areas in which he wished he could improve. That right there is like one
801. 01:10:56 just true humanity in practice. Like that's just awesome for one. But two, it shows the power of
802. 01:11:05 rivals in that they do show you what it is you're doing well and what it is you need to improve on.
803. 01:11:11 And that and then can encourage you to continually improve yourself. Okay, now I'm dying because I
804. 01:11:18 completely forgot who was the person. It was Adam Grant. Adam Grant. Okay, how did I miss that?
805. 01:11:24 Got it. Okay. Well, the way he wrote it was interesting because he is very generic about the
806. 01:11:32 person the whole time. And then he kind of just slips it in under the radar near the end as like
807. 01:11:38 a big reveal. I kind of feel like if you were to see him read this chapter out loud, there would
808. 01:11:45 be a big buildup to that reveal. But when it's just text on a page, it's kind of like, "Oh, yeah,
809. 01:11:50 by the way, it was Adam Grant." Sure. Sure. Wow. I just completely missed it. So maybe some of the
810. 01:11:54 effect is lost there. But that was definitely a cool story. I love this chapter because at the
811. 01:11:59 beginning, he's talking about it and you're like, "I got to know who that person is." And then he
812. 01:12:05 doesn't tell you. Like he goes through that. I was just flipping back through it, obviously,
813. 01:12:10 because I was there reading it. He doesn't tell, he goes on to explain the worthy rivals thing
814. 01:12:15 and then comes back to it. That's why I missed it because I got angry because he didn't tell me
815. 01:12:21 and then I blocked it out. Yeah, exactly. The worthy rivals, this is a really cool section I
816. 01:12:27 thought because, like you said, the worthy rival could be anybody. It could be somebody that you
817. 01:12:34 really like. It could be somebody that you really hate. But how you view the people who are also players
818. 01:12:41 in the game in whatever space you happen to be in, I feel like this is something that's easily to
819. 01:12:49 slip into a finite mindset. And he makes the point that the finite mindset for book authors is stupid
820. 01:12:58 because can people read more than one book? Of course they can. We read 20-something of them this
821. 01:13:05 year. Right. So just because they bought Adam Grant's book doesn't mean that they're not going
822. 01:13:12 to buy his book. And that's kind of the default approach that we take is like, "Oh, well, they chose
823. 01:13:18 this other person, so they obviously aren't going to choose me also." And I think that's fairly natural.
824. 01:13:25 And in some games, that is true. Some arenas, that is true. But it doesn't have to be true. And he
825. 01:13:36 explains that in an infinite game, both you and your worthy rival can be successful. I really like
826. 01:13:43 this. I've been studying this for quite some time. This abundance versus scarcity mindset.
827. 01:13:50 And I never made the connection between finite and infinite, but it totally makes sense. Where
828. 01:13:55 an infinite mindset is an abundance mindset and a finite mindset is a scarcity mindset.
829. 01:13:59 And what does that mean? It means that a scarcity mindset thinks that there's only so much success
830. 01:14:06 to go around. And it's easy to see with a finite mindset and with that scarcity mindset,
831. 01:14:12 the approach of Steve Walmer led Microsoft where we've got to beat Apple because this
832. 01:14:20 pie is only so big and we got to get our share. But that isn't the case most of the time.
833. 01:14:28 And this is, I think, hard for us as humans to understand that the abundance mindset,
834. 01:14:34 just because somebody else is successful, like that's not taking anything away from us. In fact,
835. 01:14:38 that may actually be a help to us because if somebody likes Adam Grant's book and we talk about the
836. 01:14:44 same stuff, maybe there's a good chance they were at this event. They saw us on the same stage.
837. 01:14:49 They're going to come and buy my book too. When you identify your worthy rivals, it's not
838. 01:14:56 as somebody that you're trying to beat necessarily. How does he put it? He says that if you're playing
839. 01:15:05 an infinite game, other players are not competitors to be beaten, but they are rivals which make you
840. 01:15:10 a better player. And it also doesn't matter if your rival is playing with a finite or infinite
841. 01:15:17 mindset as long as you are playing with an infinite mindset. So that's an interesting
842. 01:15:22 scenario, I think, where if you are competing with somebody and they do have a finite mindset
843. 01:15:27 where you can kind of let them set the tone and slip into that, but it's not the best way to
844. 01:15:35 do things. Competitors compete for customers. He says rivals look for followers and recognizing
845. 01:15:42 that there's no shortage of the followers that you can attract to a just cause just because somebody
846. 01:15:48 else has attracted some followers doesn't mean that there are less of them out there for you.
847. 01:15:52 I want to pull in the last section here, the courage to lead because I've been itching to talk
848. 01:15:56 about this whole CVS story and we brought it up a couple of times, but I feel like this is a good
849. 01:16:00 place to kind of morph the end of this book together because with worthy rivals, sometimes you have
850. 01:16:08 companies that are willing to have courage and take that step towards something that no one
851. 01:16:15 else is being willing to take that step forward in with CVS, it was cigarettes and nicotine, like
852. 01:16:23 they're out to help us be healthy. That's not helpful by selling cigarettes. Is it a big
853. 01:16:30 plus to their bottom line? Absolutely. But they had the courage to step forward and then
854. 01:16:35 remove that from their sales. And by doing so, if their rivals are paying attention,
855. 01:16:42 they can now see that weakness in themselves. So take for example, if Walgreens is watching CVS
856. 01:16:48 and those two arrivals, it's now on Walgreens shoulders to do something similar or to consider
857. 01:16:58 their own just cause. And if they're actually shooting towards it because have they done something
858. 01:17:03 at that level when CVS just did it. So if you have the courage to take those steps and to follow
859. 01:17:10 your just cause and to do something that no one else is doing, if you have rivals and you've
860. 01:17:16 identified your rivals, like that might become your strength. But what are your rivals having
861. 01:17:21 the courage to lead in? And are you falling behind is the bad term there? Because that's a finite
862. 01:17:29 mentality. But are you shortcutting your own just cause because you're not doing the same?
863. 01:17:34 So knowing who your rivals are and seeing what they're doing can help you see where you need to
864. 01:17:42 improve as well. I don't know if I want to take this action item, but it's an interesting action
865. 01:17:48 item if any of our listeners would like to take it to identify who your worthy rivals are.
866. 01:17:53 I feel like I should do this. But I most certainly don't feel comfortable identifying them publicly,
867. 01:18:02 most likely, because a lot of the stuff I tend to do is very, it's a lot of writing and very
868. 01:18:09 personal in that sense. So I would be identifying a person, not a company. I don't feel like I
869. 01:18:14 would have an issue identifying a company, but identifying a person and talking about them on
870. 01:18:18 air. That seems a little odd. So don't expect that one, Mike. But it's an interesting question
871. 01:18:24 of should you identify your worthy rivals when you're operating in a personal space of sorts? I
872. 01:18:30 don't know, probably, but not something I would share publicly. Yeah, that is interesting. I'm not
873. 01:18:38 sure I want to apply that either. Before we hit record, we were talking and you asked me,
874. 01:18:47 "Offair, are we worthy rivals?" And I said that I think in an alternate universe, probably.
875. 01:18:55 I think I still think that you could make that argument, but it's not a direct competition,
876. 01:19:05 necessarily. Like, if I'm writing on task management at the sweet setup and you are creating a task
877. 01:19:13 management, I'm the focus course. Technically, I guess you could view us as rivals. But also,
878. 01:19:19 I think that we've both kind of had this infinite mindset as it pertains to the productivity space
879. 01:19:26 specifically for a long time. And so I don't typically view you that way, or anybody else who
880. 01:19:34 would come out with a course or write a book that way, that there's enough room here for everybody.
881. 01:19:40 I do think it's worth identifying if you want to pick somebody who kind of challenges you to
882. 01:19:49 do better. He makes the point in the previous section, knowing who you're worthy rivals are,
883. 01:19:54 is the best way to adapt and improve before it's too late. So you can learn from what other people
884. 01:19:58 are doing. But to your point about CVS and Walgreens, it was interesting, as he talks about that in the
885. 01:20:05 last chapter here, that that's not what happened. He shares how Walgreens has a similar statement
886. 01:20:11 that they use. But then when asked about the fact that they continued to sell cigarettes,
887. 01:20:18 they justified it with a statement that basically said, "Well, it's our legal right to do this."
888. 01:20:28 And that kind of goes back to the ethical fading thing. If you find yourself trying to justify
889. 01:20:34 something legally, like, "I can do this," then you probably have disconnected from your just cause.
890. 01:20:39 And I think that when you see somebody who has a just cause in a particular area like CVS,
891. 01:20:46 and they make a statement, or they make a decision that's in line with that just cause,
892. 01:20:50 like deciding to stop selling cigarettes in their stores, it almost doesn't matter what somebody
893. 01:20:55 else is doing if you're Walgreens or whoever the other pharmacies are. I don't even know.
894. 01:21:00 They're going to do what they're going to do depending on the mindset that they have as they're
895. 01:21:07 playing the game. And if you've got a finite mindset, then you are always going to be looking at the
896. 01:21:12 short term, and you're never going to make those big, bold leaps like CVS did. And ultimately,
897. 01:21:19 we talked about how that turned out better for them. The previous chapter on the existential
898. 01:21:24 flexibility kind of talks about this too. We covered what was that, the innovators dilemma,
899. 01:21:30 and they talked about Kodak. Well, Kodak appears here again, and they invented the digital camera.
900. 01:21:38 Existential flexibility is being able to see the next big thing for your just cause, and being able
901. 01:21:46 to kill the thing that you were doing and go over to the new thing. The Kodak story was interesting
902. 01:21:51 to me because when they started, their cause was you press the button, we do the rest. They wanted
903. 01:21:56 people to be able to take photographs without having a professional photographer there to take it.
904. 01:22:01 And it's interesting. He makes a point in the book that as they abandoned the digital photography,
905. 01:22:08 even though they had the patents on it, once the patents dried up in 2007, the money dried up,
906. 01:22:15 and ironically, the one market that Kodak had left when he wrote this, I'm not even sure if this
907. 01:22:20 is true anymore, is professional photographers. So they went full circle, and they totally forgot
908. 01:22:28 who they were. We're trying to serve. He also talks in this section about Disney and how they
909. 01:22:33 released Snow White, and it was a successful animation. And then Walt's like, I got to build
910. 01:22:40 the happiest place on Earth. I got to build Disneyland, and everybody's like, you're crazy.
911. 01:22:44 He's like, no, this is going to be awesome. I think that the courage to lead ties in with this
912. 01:22:49 previous chapter very nicely, where there will be points as a leader where you see
913. 01:22:56 what leap you have to make. And the finite minded solution is always going to be to cling to what
914. 01:23:05 you know. The infinite minded solution is going to leap into the unknown and see what's actually
915. 01:23:15 there. And it's easy to talk about that podcast and say, oh, yeah, when you see those opportunities,
916. 01:23:21 just go for it. But it's totally different. When you're there and you've got people who are relying
917. 01:23:26 on you. And I'd like to think that I have, after reading this book specifically, would have the
918. 01:23:34 the courage to say, I don't know what's next, but I know that it's this direction and to step out there.
919. 01:23:43 But time will tell, I guess, when the rubber hits the road, that's when you really find out what
920. 01:23:51 you're made out of. But the more that you can connect to your just cause, and the more firmly
921. 01:23:57 you can attach to it, he talks in this section about integrity, firm adherence to a code of
922. 01:24:01 especially moral or artistic values incorruptible, that can put you in a position where you are more
923. 01:24:08 likely to succeed and navigate that successfully. I really don't know what else to add to that.
924. 01:24:14 Do you have more to add to the book? Or should we do action items? No, I'll just, well, there are a
925. 01:24:19 couple quotes. I'll just add page 217, right near the end, he says, playing the infinite game is
926. 01:24:24 not a checklist. It's a mindset. It's not something that you can just check the boxes and look there.
927. 01:24:30 Now I'm infinite minded. There is no formula for an infinite mindset. And then he also
928. 01:24:38 says on the page 218, which I think is the second to last page, courageous leaders are strong because
929. 01:24:42 they know that they don't have all the answers and they don't have total control. They do, however,
930. 01:24:45 have each other, and they have a just cause to guide them. I'd like to think that that applies
931. 01:24:51 to bookworm. And I think you could apply that if you want to whatever organization you happen to be
932. 01:25:01 in. But inherent in that statement is the requirement that you admit that you don't know everything.
933. 01:25:11 And it's kind of interesting to me that some organizations, if you were to say, yeah, I don't
934. 01:25:20 have all the answers, they'll be like, hey, that's great. You're admitting it and we know that we can
935. 01:25:25 work with this and we can go in the right direction. And other organizations, if you say you don't
936. 01:25:30 know all the answers, it is a negative thing and you're not going to last long. Ultimately,
937. 01:25:36 I think an infinite minded view or perspective of that would be, well, good, I shouldn't have
938. 01:25:43 been there in the first place. But I don't know. It's a great ending to the book, I think,
939. 01:25:49 in a great encouragement to launch yourself into an infinite mindset.
940. 01:25:55 Absolutely. Well, I have one action item that I'm going to write down because I'm not comfortable
941. 01:26:00 writing down the second one in that I just want to define what my just cause is personally.
942. 01:26:06 I like having the mission statement tied to the church, but I don't think that's quite specific
943. 01:26:14 enough for me. So I need to work on that one. That's probably something I could share. So I'll
944. 01:26:20 write that one down. But that's what I got, Mike, because I feel like that's the starting point
945. 01:26:24 for the rest of this. There's so many other aspects that are going to come out of that.
946. 01:26:30 But I feel like that's the starting point. Sure. Well, I've got two that I've mentioned,
947. 01:26:36 and that's basically it. I'm trying to decide if I want to put these down formally. But since I
948. 01:26:42 talked to my bottom already, first one, identify what is my just cause. I want to spend some time
949. 01:26:49 thinking about that and see if I can come up with a single sentence there. And then the other one,
950. 01:26:54 which I'm not sure I want to share this, but I do want to think about how do I curate that circle
951. 01:26:58 of safety for my kids so that trust exists in our family. Our kids are getting a little bit older.
952. 01:27:05 Toby is almost 13. And that is kind of scary to me. Teenagers are typically the point people say
953. 01:27:14 like, Oh, all of a sudden they just don't care what you have to say. They just stop listening to
954. 01:27:19 you. And I don't want that to happen. But I also recognize that I've got to so before we get to
955. 01:27:24 that point. And I've been doing that, I believe with like the one on ones that we do. But I want
956. 01:27:29 to continue to think about this and see if there's anything else that I can do to to create that
957. 01:27:35 that circle of safety where my kids feel like they can they can talk to me about, but anything as
958. 01:27:41 they get older and they're dealing with more serious life issues. I want to not just be the
959. 01:27:46 person with all the answers, you know, finite-minded leader who's like, this is what you got to do.
960. 01:27:50 But I want to be the person who is willing to listen and to help them solve their problems.
961. 01:27:57 I think that's a really noble thing to take on and a very tall task. Like,
962. 01:28:02 good luck. Yep. I know that stating it publicly. But what's the alternative?
963. 01:28:10 It's true. It's just not do it. That's not true. Fair enough. All right. Well,
964. 01:28:17 styling rating, it's Simon Sennick. It's easy to read. And he is very good at telling stories
965. 01:28:25 with words on a page. And it's an easy one to sit down and get lost in. I read it fairly quickly
966. 01:28:35 and really enjoyed going through it. So it's one that I would recommend. You know, it's one that
967. 01:28:42 I think is extremely helpful if you have any qualms with, you know, is do you have a direction
968. 01:28:51 in your life? Do you feel like you've got a good handle on where you should be going,
969. 01:28:56 which is probably, you know, we didn't plan this out at all. You know, we don't typically look
970. 01:29:03 further than the next two books as far as the schedule for bookworm. But this turned out to be
971. 01:29:09 an excellent one to read here towards the end of the year, I feel. Because, you know,
972. 01:29:14 with the new year coming, like it's a very good one to have under your belt because it's one that
973. 01:29:21 can kind of set you up for determining what is that goal, not goal. I keep using that word.
974. 01:29:27 What is your just cause? What is it you're shooting for? So I really appreciated having
975. 01:29:33 gone through it at this time and I'm glad to have gone through it as far as how to rate it.
976. 01:29:40 I don't, I know, I feel like we've done this a lot lately. It's not. I don't know that this is a 5-0.
977. 01:29:51 And to me, I don't know why though. Like it's one of these that I got a lot out of,
978. 01:30:00 but something about it just doesn't strike me as 5-0. I know it's at least 4.5,
979. 01:30:07 but I don't feel like I can go all the way to 5.0. I don't know why that is though. I wish I could
980. 01:30:15 nail that down. It might just be that this is, this will sound a little weird. This is a very
981. 01:30:21 skimmable book. I felt that like it's not one that like take range, for example, like that one you
982. 01:30:29 really had to just sit and read. Like it's not one that you could just jump around and jump ahead,
983. 01:30:37 come back. Like you can't do that. It builds on itself through the entirety of the 280 pages that
984. 01:30:43 are in it. Like that book you can't do that with. This one you definitely can. I don't know if
985. 01:30:48 that's why I struggled going all the way to the 5.0. Because there are definitely other books that
986. 01:30:53 are like that that are 5-0. I don't know. This is kind of a weird one for me. Maybe it's because
987. 01:31:00 it wasn't 100% my pick. I don't know. I'm going to put it at 4.5. I'm not 100% sure why though.
988. 01:31:05 This is so weird. All right. I need to be done. I'm going to put it at 4.5.
989. 01:31:09 Well, I think the reason that you are not putting it at a 5.0 is because you are not Walmart,
990. 01:31:17 you are not Ford, you are not CVS, you are not Apple, you are not Microsoft. It's hard for people
991. 01:31:26 like us to put ourselves in the shoes of a Alan Malali or a Steve Jobs or a Sam Walton.
992. 01:31:35 So in my opinion, this book is a little bit difficult to translate if that makes sense.
993. 01:31:42 Sure. Sure. But the information in it is really, really good. And it is typical Simon Sinek.
994. 01:31:49 It is very well written. Great stories. He was a little bit more snarky in this one than I thought
995. 01:31:57 the previous books that we read by him were, which I actually enjoyed. There were a couple lines
996. 01:32:05 where he's like, so people will typically say this. And then he's kind of sarcastic, like,
997. 01:32:10 well, what's the point? And I actually really enjoyed that. I also am going to meet you though
998. 01:32:16 at 4.5 because I feel like from a bookworm perspective, if you are in the right position,
999. 01:32:23 then Simon Sinek is just what the doctor ordered. But for anybody who's not over a large team or
1000. 01:32:34 organization, that there are probably other books written by other people who speak more directly
1001. 01:32:41 to the things that you are going through. There's tons of great stuff in here, tons of things
1002. 01:32:46 that we didn't even talk about that really impacted me. It's a pretty short book. Well,
1003. 01:32:53 it's 200-something pages, so it's not that short. But it's an easy read. It's not something that
1004. 01:32:59 you have to labor through and it took me weeks to get through. I feel like he does a great job
1005. 01:33:05 of taking these complex topics and subjects and making them approachable. He gets into
1006. 01:33:13 economics and definitions of capitalism. I felt like I actually understood what he was talking
1007. 01:33:19 about as he's introducing us to Adam Smith and I'm blanking on the other guy's name. But
1008. 01:33:26 the guy who kind of changed the definition of capitalism and how he uses that to launch into
1009. 01:33:32 all the examples of corporations and businesses who are kind of applying this in his view the wrong
1010. 01:33:38 way. I feel like Simon Sinek and Adam Grant once he shared that they're worthy rivals. I can
1011. 01:33:46 totally see how these guys are talking about some of the same things, but maybe different sides of
1012. 01:33:51 the same coin. I think it's probably a matter of personal preference, whether this is a five-star
1013. 01:33:56 book or not. But it isn't something that I would just recommend to anybody off the street just because
1014. 01:34:04 of the approach that he takes. There are a lot of corporate stories, a lot of stories about
1015. 01:34:10 Apple specifically. I can think of a couple people in particular where as soon as they start
1016. 01:34:16 this book and they get to the part about Microsoft versus Apple, they're going to disconnect.
1017. 01:34:21 So I do think it's a great book. I'm really glad that we read it. It makes me want to read more
1018. 01:34:29 Simon Sinek. But I think from a bookworm perspective, this is a 4.5 that could easily be justified
1019. 01:34:37 as a five. Thanks for justifying me. I appreciate that.
1020. 01:34:40 So let's put Simon on the shelf. What's next, Mike? The next book is Indestractable by Near
1021. 01:34:50 Eyal, the guy who wrote Hooked. Kind of interesting because that book was how to make habit-forming
1022. 01:34:56 products. And this one is basically how to fight against that from a user perspective. So be
1023. 01:35:02 interesting. Yeah, I'm excited about going to this one. It'll be good. Following that,
1024. 01:35:07 I kind of struggled to pick this one, but I really want to read this one with you.
1025. 01:35:13 Making it all work by David Allen. This is going to take us back all the way to episode number one
1026. 01:35:22 of bookworm, which maybe there's a different time to do this, but I really want to do this.
1027. 01:35:26 It's the follow up to getting things done if I understand it correctly. I've never read this,
1028. 01:35:32 Mike. Have you read this before? I have not. Okay, so this will be interesting. I'm not 100%
1029. 01:35:39 certain what we're getting into, but I've wanted to read this for a long time.
1030. 01:35:42 You know, I have opinions on David Allen. I know you do. This will be a fun episode.
1031. 01:35:47 One way or the other. That didn't weigh into my decision. Oh, so I'm excited. I think it will
1032. 01:35:56 go through. I'm either going to be fired up or eating humble pie. One of those two. So it'll be a
1033. 01:36:02 good one. I do not have a gap book this time around. That whole simple life thing going to get
1034. 01:36:09 there, but you have one and I know you have a story with it. I do. Yeah, we got a puppy, a
1035. 01:36:16 golden doodle puppy named Lucy. And my gap book is The Perfect Puppy by Gwen Bailey. This is a book
1036. 01:36:21 that I had on my bookshelf at one point. We got it when we got our previous dog and then I loaned
1037. 01:36:27 it to somebody and never got it back. So we've got a new puppy. We want to make sure that we are
1038. 01:36:33 creating naughty monster with unintentionally bad habits. You know, so I remember when I read
1039. 01:36:41 through this the first time that it really helped. And I want to go through it again because I feel
1040. 01:36:46 like this is the thing we need as we got this this three month old golden doodle puppy in our
1041. 01:36:53 house. We need to make sure that we we do it right from the beginning and don't try to
1042. 01:36:58 don't try to change things after the fact. So that's what I'm going to be going over as we're
1043. 01:37:02 on Christmas break. Thanks. How to take care of your puppy. Love it. Oh, welcome Lucy.
1044. 01:37:12 Um, just a quick reminder. Go to club.bookworm.fm.
1045. 01:37:16 Top of the list. There should be poll top books of 2019. Go get your vote in. Go do that now.
1046. 01:37:22 We would love to know, you know, what you feel are the best books that we covered
1047. 01:37:27 for 2019. And we'll talk about them in some format. So while you're there club.bookworm.fm,
1048. 01:37:35 go to slash membership. And you can support the show through that. You get access to all of
1049. 01:37:40 Mike's book notes, his mind node files. There's a handful of gap book episodes have recorded
1050. 01:37:47 in the past. I haven't had gap books for a little while. So there are none or new ones,
1051. 01:37:53 but there are some old backlog there. And there's some special stuff like a really cool wallpaper
1052. 01:38:01 for your computer. So I love that thing. It's what I use on everything I can possibly put it on
1053. 01:38:06 including computers that aren't mine. So anyway, go to club.bookworm.fm. All kinds of goodies there.
1054. 01:38:11 Get your vote in. Awesome. And if you're reading along with us, pick up
1055. 01:38:15 indestractable by near I/O. And we will talk to you in a couple of weeks.