0:01

Hi guys, I'm back with Dave.

0:12

If

0:14

you've been online with us, you know

0:16

Dave and I are sort

0:19

of interview buddies these days.

0:22

You know, and we talked about

0:24

our

0:27

topic this time I said was cabbages and Kings

0:30

and Dave actually you know I'm gonna embarrass

0:32

him he didn't know what cabbages the King came from

0:34

and I went well and I had to go look it

0:36

up to see exactly what the phrase was of course

0:39

it's Alice in Wonderland and

0:40

we talk about you know

0:42

that anyway

0:44

more than any of you need to know.

0:46

Anyway, for

0:48

those of you who don't know Dave, Dave

0:50

I'll let you enter, you know, do

0:52

the do the short paragraph to introduce yourself

0:55

in case folks haven't been in

0:57

touch with us as we've been chatting over these

0:59

months. Yeah, because obviously, you,

1:02

you don't need the introduction but I but

1:04

I probably do so. My

1:07

background is journalism and worked

1:09

for public radio here in the States really

1:12

most of my career. I ended

1:14

up doing a lot of work for NPR was

1:16

chair of their board for many years and

1:19

I retired from my day

1:21

job managing public radio

1:24

in Milwaukee to do

1:26

a little consulting and a little teaching and

1:29

that's what I've been doing and I've been a practitioner

1:32

of GTD for many years. I

1:34

say a practitioner I'm I don't say I'm an expert

1:37

because I think it's just always a work in progress

1:39

but but I've been

1:41

really enjoying our opportunities to

1:44

converse and and hopefully people

1:46

have been enjoying what we've been talking about.

1:49

Yeah,

1:49

well as you sure know,

1:51

you know, I was a multi-year

1:54

huge fan of NPR,

1:56

you know, and all of that work used

1:58

to listen to it back in Cali. I was in California

2:01

and actually was in one hour and two

2:03

hour commutes in the car. It's all I listened

2:05

to. Yeah. And so, uh,

2:07

you know, loved all of that. Loved, um,

2:10

uh, just the style and

2:12

the, the, the, the frankness, the

2:15

freshness and, and the

2:17

in depth story telling, you know, which

2:20

was, which is so rare to

2:22

hear and define these days. I mean, everybody's,

2:24

everybody's so into the sensational

2:26

stuff,

2:27

you know, and, uh, you

2:30

know, again, one of my, uh,

2:33

you know, favorite books now is humankind.

2:35

Uh, record fragment has

2:38

a huge rant about, uh, sensational

2:40

media

2:41

and how much that has so distorted

2:44

people's perception of what the world

2:46

is really like and that people are really a lot

2:48

nicer and friendlier and more

2:50

creative than what you'd see if

2:53

all you think, all you're seeing is the headlines.

2:55

And so, you know, there's, it's a huge addiction.

2:57

You know, just the sensational news, you

2:59

know, that, that people have, I have, I have to admit,

3:02

you know,

3:03

every morning I read the, at

3:04

least the front page, the New York times and their world,

3:07

their world section edition and, uh, you

3:10

know, and the Dutch news, you know, here just

3:12

to see if something blew up, if

3:14

I need to be aware of anything going on, really

3:16

more sort of check in with the world. Let

3:20

me poke at you just for a second about your

3:22

experience with NPR and national public

3:24

radio and, and what

3:26

you think was unique about that. It's

3:29

had its challenges obviously lately with the

3:31

political world, trying to strangle

3:34

funding, you know, that it's gotten nationally,

3:36

but. Well, I think, I think

3:38

to the benefit of NPR,

3:40

I think that the, uh, the economic

3:43

model for public broadcasting in the

3:45

United States is a, is a

3:47

pretty strong one in the sense that, uh,

3:50

it's very dependent upon the contributions

3:52

of listeners, and I think that's

3:55

really good because it has that diverse

3:58

funding base, whereas what we're seeing. especially

6:00

when there's no firewall to protect

6:02

the content. I think that's important.

6:04

But I think

6:07

that a lot of the commercial broadcasters

6:09

that we're seeing here in the states and elsewhere,

6:13

have become so commercial and they have

6:15

become so dependent on appealing

6:17

to the masses, that journalism

6:20

falls by the wayside and that's

6:22

a real concern of mine. Yeah,

6:25

I get it. Well, as you know, Jim Fallis

6:28

is an old and good friend of mine. Jim's

6:30

now writing a lot about journalism

6:33

and how the press is handling

6:35

stuff these days and voice

6:39

crying in the wilderness sometimes it seems in

6:43

terms of all that. And everybody's into,

6:45

I don't know, everybody. It's a

6:47

YouTube world. YouTube

6:50

shorter than five minutes. Give

6:54

me the sound bite. Give

6:56

me the quickie on this. And there's certainly

6:59

good news for them. I certainly enjoyed a whole lot

7:01

of stuff. I can take two minutes or three

7:03

minutes to see on YouTube. But that's

7:05

like, it's

7:07

both fun and educational. Sometimes

7:10

at the same time. So what's your take on

7:12

that? Do you play with

7:15

the media at all in that way?

7:17

Oh, sure. Yeah, no, absolutely.

7:19

I mean, I'm very much like you. I'm

7:22

a consumer of a lot of different kinds of

7:25

journalistic sources. And I think the short-burst

7:28

news has its place. You

7:30

know, when I get in the car, I want to know, like you

7:32

said, did anything blow up? And so I quickly

7:35

turn to the news station to find out what's going

7:37

on. But there's so many complex

7:39

issues in our world that

7:42

I really feel it's important to kind of spend

7:44

the time with the longer-form journalism.

7:47

So I think both have its place.

7:49

And the other thing is I'm a big proponent of

7:51

people not consuming just one

7:54

or two sources. But we live in a very

7:56

rich world where we can access so

7:58

much content online. And

8:01

I think, you know, that's

8:03

wonderful because we get to read a lot of

8:05

different versions. I mean, one of the reasons

8:07

why I'm enamored with the BBC is because I

8:09

enjoy listening and watching

8:12

the BBC covering news from

8:14

the United States, because that's a different

8:17

perspective. And

8:19

I think that's a perspective more people should want.

8:23

Yeah, I get it. And I love The Guardian. I love The Guardian.

8:25

Catherine, my wife, you know, subscribes to The Guardian.

8:28

And I think The Guardian has that same essence

8:31

and flavor. Right. It's

8:33

so globally focused. It's one

8:35

of the reasons we left the States. We

8:37

love the States, but we love what

8:40

we didn't love about the States was its micro

8:42

focus on just the States.

8:46

You know, I don't know how many people in the States you go, hey, there's

8:48

another world that they go, oh, you really? You

8:51

know, who? They just are

8:53

not aware of, you know, extensive

8:56

that stuff. This

8:59

is a, you know, I'm supposed to be interviewing you. So,

9:01

but but I

9:04

turned about turn about fair play. But,

9:07

you know, when I was spending that time

9:09

at the BBC that I told you

9:11

about seconds ago, one of the things

9:13

that I really, really enjoyed

9:15

was I got to sit in on a lot of their

9:17

editorial planning meetings. These

9:20

are meetings that they would have in a conference

9:22

room early in the morning, like six, seven

9:24

in the morning, where they would have all of their

9:27

editors gather around table who

9:29

like represented their

9:31

economic desk, their, their,

9:33

their, you know, health desk. And

9:36

all of the editors from all

9:38

around the world would dial in

9:40

via teleconference and they'd be on all of

9:42

the screens. And they would spend

9:45

an hour talking about

9:46

what has happened in the world

9:48

in the last 24 hours. And

9:51

then that's how they would shape their coverage. They would

9:53

say, yeah, we'll take that story from Beirut.

9:55

We'll take that story from Croatia. But

9:58

to me, I'm sitting there.

10:00

listening to this

10:02

and being fascinated by so

10:04

many stories that people were talking

10:06

about that I was never

10:08

exposed to. Or if I was,

10:10

it was just a passing reference. And these

10:12

are people who are living these stories in Croatia

10:15

and elsewhere. And to me,

10:18

that's the kind of journalism that I want. It's not

10:20

just that kind of run of the mill, like what's the coronavirus

10:23

doing today. There's so much that

10:25

is layered beyond that. I think as

10:28

good citizens of wherever

10:30

we reside, I think we need to

10:32

be exposed to that. Here,

10:35

here. Okay. Enough

10:37

of me interviewing you. Let me interview you

10:40

again. I understand you just wrote a book. Oh,

10:43

yes. Yes, I did. It's

10:45

fascinating because I think it's about leadership.

10:48

But I've always been fascinated by the concept

10:50

of leadership, you know, being

10:52

in an organizational

10:55

operating system like I am now, holacracy,

10:58

that doesn't have job

11:01

titles. They're just accountabilities.

11:04

But what does leadership mean

11:06

when you get to flattened organizations

11:09

and so forth? Anyway,

11:12

I don't want to steal your thunder. So I'm

11:15

going to... So Dave,

11:18

promote your book. Hey, thanks,

11:20

Dave. Yes,

11:23

well, since I retired from my day job,

11:25

I've been doing a lot of coaching with folks

11:28

around the topic of leadership. I mean, I've been

11:30

in management and leadership positions

11:32

for 30, 40 years of my life. And

11:34

I've been very fortunate to, I think,

11:36

have learned some things along the way. And

11:39

so as I was coaching people individually,

11:41

I began to think, you know, maybe I need

11:44

to start writing some of this down. And,

11:46

you know, a lot of like what you say with

11:48

GTD, it's not really brain surgery.

11:51

A lot of this is when you think through it,

11:53

it's stuff we should all kind

11:55

of understand at the base level. But

11:58

until you have it written down and somebody... talks

12:00

to you about it, it's easy to forget the concepts.

12:03

And so the book is, and I would hold

12:05

it up, but first of all, I got

12:07

its goofy screen, but actually the cover has

12:10

changed since I got my draft. But

12:13

the title of the book is, Be a Leader,

12:15

Not Just a Manager. And

12:17

the subtitle to it, I think really tells

12:19

the story. And it's, if you are given

12:21

the title of manager, but you earn

12:24

the role of leader, you know, people

12:27

get these jobs, they're now a fancy manager,

12:29

they got a fancy title, they got a big desk, but

12:33

is anybody following that? And

12:36

so that's really what I started writing about.

12:38

And so I wrote the book and it's

12:41

really in three different sections. One

12:43

is developing your own personal leadership

12:46

skills. The other one is building

12:48

and leading a team. And then the

12:50

other one deals, the third part of the

12:52

book is focused on some of the

12:54

contemporary issues of leadership. How

12:56

do you navigate diversity?

12:59

How do you manage dealing

13:01

with crises, you know, that

13:04

may emerge and change the way we work?

13:06

So it's been a fun book to write. It

13:09

comes out at the end of January and

13:12

the shameless plug is it'll be on

13:14

Amazon, but it might be easier for

13:16

folks to just go to my webpage,

13:19

daveedwardsmedia.com and

13:22

all the information is there. So daveedwardsmedia.com,

13:26

it's supposed to be available at the end of January

13:29

and I hope that it will be. And thank

13:32

you for allowing me to mention it. So

13:34

what's the difference between a leader and

13:36

somebody who just has a title? Well,

13:39

a leader is someone who I think really

13:41

takes the time to understand people,

13:43

where they are, what their needs are, and

13:46

are able to convey a vision

13:49

of where an organization or department

13:52

needs to be and do it in such a

13:54

compelling way that people

13:56

get the vision, want to buy in the

13:58

vision. And. will work towards

14:00

that vision. The

14:03

way I look at it is being

14:05

a manager is kind of a lonely world.

14:08

Being a manager, as you get the reports out,

14:10

you do the kind of basic stuff. But

14:13

if you really want to be good at it, you've

14:15

got to be able to work through people to make

14:17

bigger things happen. And it's easy

14:19

to say, well, I can just delegate that. But

14:22

if you don't delegate correctly, if

14:24

you don't let people see why

14:26

the assignment that you're giving them is important

14:29

and where it fits into the bigger picture,

14:32

people will resent that,

14:35

oh, he's just trying to shovel his work off onto

14:38

me. And so this is

14:40

an opportunity of letting people learn,

14:42

I think, how to do that effectively.

14:45

Well, I've always noticed that

14:48

the best leaders that I knew were

14:51

on the train. And you either hopped on or you

14:53

didn't, but they were going. Yes.

14:56

And so they walked their

14:59

talk. In

15:01

other words, whatever that vision

15:03

was, whatever was pulling or pushing on them, they

15:06

were doing it. They were on. They just

15:08

needed assistance or help or could

15:11

use people to be engaged with that in

15:13

that process in terms of making it happen.

15:16

Yeah, I think

15:19

that's absolutely true. If

15:22

you really want to be effective as

15:24

a leader, you've got to really,

15:27

as I say, work through

15:29

other people. And it's one

15:31

thing to say, well, I'm just going to go. I'm going

15:33

in my direction. And follow me

15:36

if you want. But that's

15:38

not an effective way of running a department

15:40

or running a company. And I think

15:43

we're now living in a society as

15:45

generations move forward

15:48

where the people who are working in the offices

15:50

today or working from home but working

15:52

for companies today want

15:55

more than a paycheck.

15:58

They want to feel that way. connected to the

16:01

work that they're doing. And I think

16:03

that's where it's very important for

16:05

leadership to provide that

16:07

connection. And so I spend a good deal of

16:10

the book really talking about how

16:12

we make those connections for people

16:15

in different generations to

16:18

get the best work out of everyone. And when

16:21

we're able to do that for other people,

16:23

I think we become

16:26

better leaders, we run better departments and

16:28

our companies are more successful.

16:31

Yay.

16:31

Yeah. Good stuff. Yeah. I'm gonna

16:33

argue with that. So, okay, I'll

16:36

toss the tennis ball back on your side of the court.

16:39

Thank you. Thank you. DaveEdwardsMedia.com.

16:43

You know, I really enjoy these opportunities

16:47

to meet with you and talk about GPD,

16:49

which I don't know, maybe

16:52

by now you're tired of talking about it because

16:54

you're basically saying a lot of the same things over and

16:56

over again. But for those of us who

16:59

are using it every day,

17:01

we stumble

17:03

onto things that I think

17:06

we need clarification on. And

17:08

here's the thing that I was thinking about. Over

17:11

the holidays, we're recording this in the middle of January,

17:14

and over the holidays, I know a lot

17:16

of people who make New Year's resolutions.

17:19

And I don't do that. But one of the things I

17:21

do in January is I try

17:23

to clear the decks. I try

17:25

to take a look at everything that I've got in front

17:27

of me and say, what

17:29

are my priorities? So it's like the

17:32

weekly review on steroids. And

17:34

I was just wondering,

17:38

do

17:38

you

17:39

do anything like that? Where

17:42

you kind of review all of your systems

17:44

in place? Or do you have everything

17:46

kind of moving along that you don't really have

17:48

to do one of those mega reviews?

17:51

Yes. Which is it? Both.

17:56

And it depends. depends

18:00

on whether i need to really read do all of that

18:03

you know when gathered i just

18:05

moved into a new new place we bought in

18:07

an answer them and it's taken a year

18:09

to renovate isn't a baby and

18:11

structure and set up my new office i

18:13

just sonic the office had

18:15

that in i had tons of backlog

18:19

of smiles of reference material and so forth

18:21

and i need to go foods to check effects and

18:23

and like he did whatever and that forces

18:26

essentially a ton of a read think you

18:28

know of the whole game so i

18:30

think sometimes just moving or just changing

18:33

your fear eco system

18:35

if you will out whether you

18:37

have to or whether you decide to are not that

18:40

that's that's an automatic trigger to do that kind

18:42

of deeper dive deeper

18:44

think about all that also migrating

18:47

into office three sixty five which we

18:49

did in are smaller company we just

18:52

we did that this last year doing

18:54

that would because you

18:57

know all of my reminder systems

18:59

and lists and and

19:01

you know a whole lot of my rough and system digitally

19:04

was in other things besides one

19:06

note besides often

19:08

for sixty five and and outlook so

19:11

migrating and all that forced me to

19:13

rethink a lot of that stuff so

19:15

a lot of it wasn't like i said

19:17

as i need to rethink everything out

19:19

of scratch emphasis like cool yeah

19:22

here's an opportunity or a necessity is actually

19:24

to rethink what i'd do i really want

19:26

to move that from inferences

19:29

i migrated from evernote into one know

19:32

but

19:34

did you know as a lot of stuff that

19:36

i parked in their just ad hoc

19:38

i just thrown in there in whatever

19:41

dagger live in at that have been i'm enough

19:43

stuff that caused to retake the to

19:45

begin with so i i haven't

19:48

done a whole lot of rigorous rethinking

19:50

of them as i you probably heard me

19:52

talk about the scattered and i every year we

19:55

still need to do that for this last year's do

19:57

canada completion list of everything we did in

19:59

the

20:00

And the previous year, we just keep that

20:02

on the list. We've done that for,

20:04

I don't know, 15 years.

20:06

And then what would we like

20:08

to have on that list? You know,

20:10

the end of 2022.

20:13

And, you know, that's kind of, it's

20:15

kind of a informal rethink

20:19

as opposed to some big sit down, rethink

20:21

my life, you know. But again,

20:23

because we tend to, you know,

20:26

think and sort of outcome focus and, you

20:29

know, I guess because, I don't

20:31

know Dave, I guess because I just have this sort

20:34

of G2D stuff in my DNA.

20:37

It's not a big deal. It's something that

20:39

I think we need to do and ought

20:42

to do and won't happen by itself. We actually,

20:44

you have to put a little bit of creative energy into

20:46

it, doing those kinds of reviews and

20:48

renegotiations with yourself.

20:51

I don't know if that was a, is that a big

20:53

non-answer to your question? No, no, no, it was very,

20:56

very helpful. Someone once told me

20:58

that if you really want to stay organized, you should move

21:00

like every two years because that forces

21:03

you to do exactly what you're describing.

21:05

I go live on a sailboat. I'm

21:07

good. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

21:10

But you know, you said something there, which

21:13

really prompted this for me because

21:16

this came up in my now

21:18

annual mega review. I started

21:21

looking at digital

21:23

versus paper. I'm

21:25

an Evernote guy. I have everything. I have

21:27

a lot of stuff in Evernote, but I also

21:29

have these file cabinets next to me. And

21:32

a lot of stuff goes in there and

21:34

a lot of stuff goes in Evernote. And it really

21:37

got me thinking about what should

21:39

go where and also do

21:42

I really need all this junk? Because

21:45

I tend to collect everything. And

21:48

digitally, it's so easy to collect

21:50

everything, but then you just got

21:52

this huge reference

21:55

file system. And that

21:57

was my biggest thing that I had to kind of put some.

22:00

around what I keep

22:02

for reference. Somebody

22:04

described Evernote as right only. Because

22:09

they never looked at anything they put in there. They just don't. Well,

22:14

I mean,

22:16

in fairness, my entire productivity

22:19

system is based in Evernote. I mean, I have everything in there.

22:21

All my lists are in Evernote. So it is very

22:24

much a part of my daily life. But

22:27

my question for you was reference

22:30

materials, whether they're digital or

22:32

analog. I mean, do you set

22:34

parameters around what you keep

22:37

and what you don't keep and how you know

22:39

if this article will ever matter to you again?

22:43

You know, again, I just redone my office. So

22:45

let me move my screen over.

22:48

So. I'm going to go ahead

22:50

and do that. I'm going to go ahead and do that.

22:53

I'm going to go ahead and do that. I'm

22:56

going to go ahead and do that. Alpha filing

22:59

system, two drawers.

23:05

It used to be

23:05

four drawers, but now I can visualize a lot

23:07

of stuff, but there's still a lot

23:09

of stuff that's a lot easier to keep in paper than it is

23:11

in digital form. My contracts with my. With

23:15

my publisher. Penguin, right.

23:18

I'll tell you that it's a lot easier to pull out this file and

23:20

look through it than it is to try to look

23:22

through it digitally. Yeah. What

23:25

else is here? You know, I've

23:28

got a long term health care policy

23:31

with Prudential. And,

23:32

you

23:33

know, what am I going to do? File there.

23:36

There what this is. Digital

23:39

for. I don't think so.

23:41

Well, it changes every year anyway, so I just throw it

23:43

out. So and passport, you know, I

23:47

still keep, you know, my sort of. Expenses

23:50

for my two

23:52

companies here. It's a lot easier

23:55

to keep.

24:00

this in paper form because my

24:02

accountants here often ask David, where

24:05

was that? And do you have a copy

24:07

of that? I guarantee you this is

24:09

a whole lot easier to use than

24:11

to try to surf the

24:14

computer for it. So there are certain things

24:17

that are still, again, much less than

24:19

it ever used to be because again, a lot of stuff

24:21

is in PDF form. But

24:24

my limitation is how much room do I have,

24:28

basically. And it's

24:30

much like moving

24:32

to a sailboat and

24:35

force you to decide how much you think you want to keep

24:38

in that way. So for instance, how long

24:41

do you keep financial files? Well,

24:44

you need to do a record retention

24:46

timetable to see how many things you

24:48

really need to keep in case the IRS

24:51

or whatever your local, you know, tax

24:53

people if they ever come after you for any reason, how

24:55

many of those things do you need to keep. And, you

24:58

know, again, that's a lot easier to have in paper

25:00

based form. I've still got versions

25:02

of it in PDF form. But even

25:04

when I was not doing much of that

25:07

these days with meeting with clients or

25:09

meeting with people or whatever, it's

25:11

a whole lot easier to have a folder with the

25:14

six or seven or 10 or 12 documents

25:17

relative to our conversations going

25:20

up to that meeting, as

25:22

well as their contract and so forth, then to try to sit

25:24

there with a computer and try to find all that stuff at

25:26

once. So it's a lot

25:28

easier, you know, the paper has a great

25:31

advantage to it that it's a lot easier

25:33

to see a larger context of information

25:35

and data than it is on the computer.

25:38

I don't even have to have two huge screens

25:40

on your desk and have all kind of

25:42

windows open. All that's going to be more

25:44

confusing than this helpful for the

25:46

most part. I think I migrated

25:49

more to a digital format

25:51

because I was literally I was

25:53

working in two different cities for a while. And you

25:55

mentioned my association with NPR and I was

25:58

here in Milwaukee and then I was in one. Washington

26:00

DC and I needed a file that was in Milwaukee

26:03

when I was in DC. And that's what kind

26:05

of forced me into, into a digital,

26:08

uh, environment. But I, but I get

26:10

exactly what you mean. There is the simplicity

26:13

of paper, uh, that,

26:15

that is very attractive

26:18

outside of the location

26:20

problem. Um, you

26:22

know, I, I, I think I would much prefer

26:25

paper. I'm actually more surprised that

26:27

that's all the, those are the only files

26:30

you have. I'd be embarrassed to show you my two

26:32

big file cabinets right now. There's nothing wrong

26:34

with that. That's just space issue. Yeah.

26:37

You know, come on, come on. So

26:39

what? Just, just buy

26:41

another apartment or buy another house and keep

26:44

as much as you want. Cause as long

26:46

as there's nothing, as you have no attention

26:48

that there's stuff in there that might be

26:50

something you need or would, or could, should do something

26:53

about, then it's just references. Like a library,

26:55

it's like Google, like so what?

26:58

Nothing wrong with that. It's

27:03

actually a very creative process to go back and curate

27:06

all that stuff.