0:01

From luminary and built-it productions,

0:04

it's wisdom from the top. Stories

0:08

of crisis, failure, turnaround, and

0:10

triumph from some of the greatest

0:12

leaders in the world. I'm

0:17

Guy Raz, and on the show

0:19

today, the author of Great

0:21

at Work and Collaboration, management

0:23

professor and researcher Morten Hansen.

0:26

Consensus is the enemy

0:28

of good collaboration. That

0:30

surprises people. I thought we were supposed to

0:33

sit around and debate until we got total

0:35

agreement. Consensus is that we all agree.

0:38

No, it's you disagree on

0:41

something, and at that point, the

0:43

leader has to step in and make the call. How

0:46

Morten Hansen found that doing more

0:48

quality work actually starts with

0:50

working less. You

0:57

know, some people enjoy composing their

0:59

own music, chord by chord, and

1:02

others are happiest when they come across that

1:04

one perfect song. Work is

1:06

not a lot different than that. Whether

1:08

you prefer building your own workflow or

1:10

using a pre-made template, with monday.com, you

1:13

and the team can work in a way that's comfortable

1:15

for everyone. Tap the

1:17

banner to go to monday.com and build your

1:20

own amazing workflow, or find an awesome template.

1:23

No judgment. Ryan

1:29

Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. With the price

1:31

of just about everything going up during inflation,

1:33

we thought we'd bring our prices down. So

1:36

to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which

1:38

is apparently a thing. Mint Mobile Unlimited Premium Wireless. You

1:40

better get 30, 30, better get 30, better get 20,

1:42

20, better get 20, 20, better get 15,

1:45

15, just 15 bucks a month. Sold! 15, 15,

1:48

15, 15, just 15 bucks a month. Sold! Give

1:50

it a try at mintmobile.com/switch. $45 up

1:52

front for 3 months plus taxes and fees. Promote

1:55

for new customers for a limited time. Unlimited more than 40GB

1:57

per month. Slows. mintmobile.com. So,

2:01

here's a question. What does

2:03

a hard-working employee look like? Do

2:06

you see that person staying late at

2:08

the office, or maybe they're

2:10

the first one in and the last one

2:12

to leave, or maybe they're good at snap

2:15

decisions? Or maybe those

2:17

ideas are all wrong. I guess

2:20

today, Morton Hansen has solid

2:22

but counterintuitive research that shows

2:24

working hard doesn't mean insane

2:26

hours with no days off,

2:28

nor is it an indicator

2:30

of excellence. Doing great

2:33

at work really means working effectively,

2:35

slowing down and knowing your limits.

2:38

Now, you may have heard my conversation

2:40

with best-selling business author Jim Collins in

2:42

an earlier episode when we spoke about

2:44

his books like Built to Last and

2:47

Great. Well, my guest, Morton

2:49

Hansen, met Jim at Stanford Business

2:51

School, and it was their research

2:53

collaboration over nine years that led

2:55

to those two books. Morton

2:58

eventually went on to co-author the

3:00

best-seller Great by Choice with Jim

3:02

Collins, and his latest book, Great

3:05

at Work, How Top Performers Do

3:07

Less, Work Better, and Achieve More,

3:10

explores what all of us can do

3:12

to lead and work more

3:14

productively. Today, Morton is

3:16

a management professor at UC Berkeley, but

3:19

before his fairly storied career in

3:21

academia at Stanford, Harvard, and in

3:23

Europe, Morton started out as

3:26

a management consultant at BCG in

3:28

London, the Boston Consulting Group. So

3:31

there he was, a young Norwegian,

3:33

in the British high finance and

3:35

business world, trying to make

3:37

his mark by putting in long hours

3:40

each week, though he now

3:42

knows he really didn't need

3:44

to. It's a big

3:46

myth that you had to work

3:48

extremely hard, many hours, to do

3:50

really well. Everybody has to

3:52

work hard, but it does mean that you have to

3:54

work harder to do better. And

3:57

in fact, in my last book, Great at Work, that's one

3:59

part of the research. We looked at

4:01

hours in correlation with performance.

4:04

And it's a really interesting finding that we

4:06

found that, yes, if you work 30 hours

4:08

in a full-time job, you're not gonna perform

4:10

as well. But if you go to 50

4:12

hours, you will perform better. But

4:15

then from 50 to 65 hours on average

4:17

per week, it sort of

4:20

starts flattening out your performance. And

4:23

at 65 hours beyond, people worked really, really

4:25

hard as we did in BCD back then.

4:28

You're actually declining your performance because you call

4:30

it your work goes down. Yeah. We'll

4:32

talk about this in a bit, but you had a

4:35

colleague there who was

4:37

performing better. You call her Natalie,

4:39

but she was working far less than you were.

4:42

And this was confounding to you. It

4:45

was because, and it was my first year

4:47

at BCD. So, you know, I was just

4:49

college graduate. And what you wanna

4:51

do in your first year, you wanna just show what

4:53

you can do. So you go into the office as

4:55

much as possible. I told

4:57

my fiance at the time, you know, sorry, I

5:00

might come home at 4 a.m., 5 a.m. and

5:02

then back in the year, at 9 a.m., but you know,

5:04

this is gonna be the year where I'm gonna make my

5:06

mark. And I worked like

5:08

crazy. I'm in 90 hours and those

5:11

kinds of hours. And then

5:13

I was in a project with Natalie. And

5:16

one day, I remember it so well today, I went

5:18

to the evening to look for her, to ask her

5:21

a question. She wasn't there. It

5:23

was like 7 p.m. And

5:25

I asked her, where's Natalie? And

5:28

somebody said, no, no, Natalie goes home at 6 p.m. every

5:30

day. And she's really here in the weekend.

5:33

And I thought that was odd. Here I am at 90 hours. And

5:36

she's maybe 50 or 60, working hard, but

5:39

not 90. And

5:41

here's the thing, she was the star

5:43

of that project team. She did better than

5:45

me. She was incredibly good.

5:48

And that always puzzled me. Here

5:51

I am putting in 90 hours. And I

5:53

was capable back then. She was

5:55

capable. But at 60, she had

5:57

performed. And that sort of conundrum, I love this as

5:59

a. management professor because that's kind of a

6:01

data point. It's one anecdote

6:04

but it should spark some question in you

6:07

and it certainly did be for decades later. What did

6:11

I do wrong and what does she do right? So

6:14

I should mention I

6:16

mean you decide to pursue

6:18

a PhD after that experience.

6:20

Was your intention to become

6:23

an academic at that time? Yes

6:26

because I did some research

6:28

and I say either you can become a

6:30

management consultant, you can become a teacher but

6:33

if you want to study this and I had

6:35

a professor back in London School of Economics who

6:37

told me look you got to take this seriously

6:39

you need to go a PhD and become an

6:41

academic and it's a whole different ballgame. So

6:44

I said okay fine tell me who are the five

6:46

best PhD programs in the

6:49

world and one of them

6:51

was staying for the business school and

6:53

I was lucky to get in. What

6:55

I did was I said okay I need

6:57

to investigate this idea of a PhD

7:00

so I'm going to take a little bit of

7:02

a leave from from BCD and go to Stanford

7:04

and see what this is all about and

7:07

it was wonderful because I landed

7:09

at Stanford when Stanford

7:11

was at its peak in this

7:13

area called organization theory. You

7:15

had some of the best prominent professors in the

7:17

world all of them were teaching there at the

7:20

same time and

7:22

you could just do it's like a smorgasbord you

7:24

know and then you could just go and take these

7:26

courses from this the very best

7:28

in the world it was incredible. And

7:30

I think one of the people that you met while you were a

7:32

student was Jim Collins. I

7:35

did so my first year I met

7:37

Jim and Jim

7:39

Collins and Jerry Porres were working on

7:42

the project at the time of

7:44

a book called Built to Last and

7:48

I thought well that sounds interesting maybe they need

7:50

some help. Yeah. So I just called up up

7:52

and say hey can I come and work for

7:54

you for six months for three and I said

7:56

hey why not and

7:58

that introduced me to the whole idea of management

8:00

and with Jim and

8:02

we've been really great friends ever since and

8:04

we wrote a book together, another study called

8:06

Great by Choice. But

8:09

that was another wonderful and so

8:11

many wonderful people at Stanford at the time.

8:14

I know that you spent a few years after

8:17

receiving your PhD teaching but

8:19

you also went back into consulting

8:22

for a period of time back

8:24

to BCG in the San Francisco

8:26

office and from what I understand

8:28

that was around the time where

8:31

you really began to research

8:35

how great businesses work

8:37

and why they work. Yes, because I've done

8:39

two kinds of research. One is when you've

8:41

been an academic, you have to write academic

8:44

articles for an academic audience. That's how you

8:46

get tenure, that's how you get promoted and

8:49

that's what you learn in the PhD studies. So

8:51

that was always going on since I started at

8:53

Stanford. The other thing though is

8:55

that I had a passion for more say applied

8:57

management research to understand why do

8:59

some leaders do better? Why do

9:01

some leadership teams succeed? Others do not. So

9:05

I took a little bit of time off from

9:07

Harvard Business School. So when I finished at Stanford,

9:09

I went became an assistant professor at Harvard Business

9:11

School and then I took a

9:13

little bit of leave from Harvard to go back into

9:15

BCG. Now we're not talking about the

9:18

aftermath of the dot-com boom

9:20

in those years and

9:22

a lot of things were happening in the Silicon Valley. So it

9:24

was a great place to be and

9:26

Jim and I started this product great by choice.

9:29

And Jim had just written the book Good to

9:31

Great. Why do some companies and leaders go

9:34

from good to great? But

9:36

one question that he got from that

9:39

book was, all right, you're studying companies

9:41

in kind of stable industries. What

9:44

about all this turbulence and uncertainty

9:46

and disruption we're seeing in Silicon

9:48

Valley and other places? How

9:51

does that factor into this picture

9:53

of building a great company? And

9:56

Jim and I said, okay, let's study that. Let's

9:58

pick some really industry. that

10:00

have historically been very disruptive. And

10:03

see why did some do great there? And for

10:05

example, the airline industry. If

10:08

you look at the history of the airline industry, it's

10:10

always something happening there. I've been talking

10:12

about the pandemic. Talk about 9-11. Think

10:16

about an industry where you're a marketer that

10:18

goes away and you had to survive somehow.

10:22

And the only airline that has done

10:24

really well during the last four decades

10:26

in that industry is Southwest Airlines. But

10:28

why? Why did they

10:30

do better? It's an interesting thing. You

10:33

always think that the leader, those

10:35

who do best, they sort of had an insight

10:38

where the market was going, where the business was

10:41

going 10 years down the road. And they saw

10:43

that and they said, troops, we're

10:45

going in that direction. And

10:47

that's visionary leadership. And it's

10:49

often not the case. So if you

10:51

read about Southwest Airlines, which has a very

10:54

unique business model, we call it the Boston

10:56

Wings. But you fly back and forth between

10:58

two cities and many have copied that since.

11:01

So you think about, well, Herb

11:03

Kelleher and the other leaders back then, they

11:05

were visionaries. They came up with that model.

11:08

That was the myth about Southwest Airlines.

11:11

It turns out, Southwest Airlines

11:14

did not invent a thing. They

11:16

had no vision. What

11:18

they did was that they

11:21

were traveling on another airline called

11:24

Pacific Southwest Airline,

11:26

PSA, that

11:29

here in California had

11:31

been flying up and down the coast.

11:34

And they were so strapped for money. They

11:37

could only afford a couple of aircraft

11:39

to fly up and down. So

11:42

they had to use them so much

11:45

that they didn't have time to have them sit on

11:47

the tarmac. So they said, well,

11:49

we're just going to have them sit for

11:52

10 minutes to get people off, passenger off,

11:54

and passenger back on. Ten

11:57

minute turns, as they're called. You get into

11:59

the. airport, think about

12:01

that, 10 minutes. But

12:03

what it meant was that they

12:06

were incredibly efficient because back then

12:08

most airlines like American Airlines and United

12:10

were spending 50 minutes on

12:12

the tarmac and they were 10 and

12:16

then Suffolk Airline, Herb Keller and those, they

12:18

flew on this airline and

12:20

they said, wow, what a

12:22

great way to run an airline. And

12:25

they went back to Texas and they created

12:28

their business plan and it basically was copy

12:31

PSA in Texas. That's

12:34

not visionary. So what does that

12:36

mean for leadership? It means you

12:39

have to be

12:42

open to learn from

12:45

others because maybe

12:47

somebody has come up with a great idea that you

12:49

can apply in your world. Yeah,

12:52

I mean it's so

12:54

interesting where I read that book and I

12:56

– because of course I think our minds

12:59

instantly and I'm sure people have asked you

13:01

this, go to Steve Jobs, right?

13:04

This person who is this kind of seemingly

13:06

singular figure who is held

13:09

up as the kind of the archetype

13:11

of a great leader, a

13:13

visionary who saw the world before the

13:15

rest of us did and

13:18

who prevailed. So is

13:20

our interpretation of who he was

13:22

wrong? So there might be

13:24

some leaders who are more visionary

13:27

than others and they might see things that

13:29

we don't see. But if you look at

13:31

the process of how things get developed, it's

13:33

a much more of an

13:35

iterative process. It isn't sort of

13:37

like I can see where the

13:40

world is going and therefore I will take

13:42

you there. If you go

13:44

back and there are nearly always other people around. So

13:46

it's not just one person. So give an example of

13:49

the development of Apple's iPod. So

13:51

that was the iconic product

13:54

back then that really made – set the

13:56

stage for the phone and the iPad and

13:58

the rest. It's not

14:00

just Steve Jobs sitting there saying, okay, I'm going

14:02

to give the world an iPod. Right. It's

14:05

actually another person called Tony Fadal

14:07

and others that are sort

14:09

of thinking, hey, there are MP3

14:11

players out there. They're not very good. Nobody has

14:14

figured this out. People are stealing music. Can we

14:16

do it better? And they started

14:18

doing this. And they sort of

14:20

had to convince Steve Jobs to go along and impress

14:22

him with his product. So history

14:24

is written. And I think about Steve Jobs one day

14:26

walking around Palo Alto and saying, I can

14:29

see an iPod in the future. That's

14:31

a visionary view. But if you

14:34

look at the story around it, it's

14:36

more like a development. Somebody has an idea,

14:38

then other builds on that idea, and then

14:40

yet another person, then they test it out.

14:42

Steve Jobs gets involved. And

14:45

then over a period of time, they sort of come up

14:47

with this great product. It takes

14:49

a group, a team to do that.

14:52

Not just one person. One

14:55

of the ideas that came out of that

14:57

book also was that fast

14:59

decision making, even in

15:02

a fast moving world, is

15:05

a good way to get killed. And

15:07

I thought a lot about that over the past

15:09

18 months because of course, the

15:11

COVID months, I should say, because

15:14

so many companies found

15:17

themselves in a situation where they had to

15:20

make fast decisions. Not

15:22

sure whether they were the right decisions, but in many

15:24

cases, they turned out to be the right decisions that

15:27

they survived and thrived during the pandemic.

15:29

But historically, from

15:32

your research, making

15:34

decisions too quickly is

15:37

actually bad for a

15:39

leader, for an organization. Yeah,

15:41

this is a topic that I've also

15:43

studied some more of, the great by

15:45

choice, including in this other book, Great

15:47

at Work, because I find it fascinating.

15:50

We have two different models of thinking.

15:53

One is the more deliberate,

15:55

rational, spending time, getting data,

15:58

and then it's the reactive one. intuition,

16:00

it's good feeling, I'm just

16:02

shooting for my hip kind

16:05

of thinking. And

16:07

what we found in Great by Choice is

16:10

that sometimes leaders

16:12

move too fast. They see

16:14

a market, they see a trend and they jump on it

16:17

and it may be the wrong trend because they

16:19

haven't done the thorough analysis. You're

16:22

reacting to noise around

16:24

you and so we

16:26

found that people are a little more deliberate. If you

16:28

take the long, if you play the long game, which

16:31

is okay, where do we want this business to be

16:33

in five to ten years? That's

16:35

how you build deliberately a great

16:37

business is the long game, is the ten

16:39

year view or even longer. Now

16:42

during the pandemic there of course have been

16:44

times when people had to make a decision.

16:47

You have to shut down your office, right?

16:49

And you could, you have to sort of say let's

16:51

go, we had to go virtual. You don't have a

16:53

year to think about how we're going to do virtual.

16:55

You had to do it in days. Instantly, yeah. Yeah

16:57

and we all did that and

17:00

for some companies that was not easy. First of

17:03

all, people had, you know, they was asking what

17:05

is Zoom? What

17:07

is that? I never used it, right? Suddenly you had to

17:09

go virtual and of

17:12

course you scrambled. Of course you had to

17:14

do that and so there are of course

17:16

these kind of very reactive decision moments. But

17:19

for leaders it's dangerous

17:21

to think that all decisions are like that

17:24

because many are not. I mean

17:26

give you an example from Great by Choice, progressive

17:30

insurance, they want to

17:32

go in into insurance for trucks, you know,

17:34

big big car. Yeah. They said

17:36

it's just like automobiles, they're just drivers

17:39

but for big vehicles. They

17:41

did an analysis because they really wanted to go in

17:43

that market and build it fast and

17:46

then they went aggressively into the market and they

17:49

failed. It turned out that

17:51

they couldn't get the prices, the margins they

17:53

wanted in their business because of some nuances

17:55

in the market that the analysis had not

17:57

revealed. It was a disaster. to

18:00

pull out right off the investment. So

18:02

that was just too quick, too

18:04

reactive, and it was a big loss. And

18:08

then in contrast to that, a few years

18:10

later they said, okay, let's develop insurance

18:12

for safe drivers, which is the

18:15

big part of the market. How

18:18

are we going to do that? And

18:20

they said, well, let's

18:22

start slow, do

18:25

experiments, try, say, thousand

18:27

subscribers in Texas to see if we

18:29

can get some good pricing. And

18:32

then another thousand in Florida. And

18:34

they spent like three years kind of tinkering with

18:36

their model. Then

18:38

they got the model right for the business.

18:41

They found a way to make money in

18:43

that market segment. And once

18:45

they did that, they said, okay, now we can go across the

18:47

United States, all 50 states.

18:50

So the concept there that came from grape

18:52

by choice was maybe you want

18:54

to go slow at first. You

18:56

want to find your model, and then once you find

18:58

it, you can then go aggressively. But

19:01

it pays to experiment upfront, to find

19:03

out what works in your business. And

19:06

if the thousand subscribers in Florida didn't work

19:09

out, well, you lost thousand subscribers and the

19:11

money, but it's not a lot. Yeah. Right?

19:15

It's an experiment. The idea of an experiment in business

19:17

is try something out at a small scale. So if

19:19

it fails, fine, doesn't matter. I

19:21

didn't spend a lot of money. And

19:24

sometimes leaders don't do that because they're so

19:26

impatient. Let's skip the

19:28

experimentation phase and just go straight to the

19:32

big bet. And that's

19:34

a good recipe for failing. When

19:38

we come back in just a moment,

19:40

Borden Hansen talks about companies that experimented

19:43

during the pandemic and how

19:45

there's actually more than one kind of

19:47

luck. Stay with us. I'm

19:49

Guy Roz, and you're listening to Wisdom from the Top.

19:54

Mom deserves the best and there's

19:57

no better place to shop for

19:59

Mother's Day than Whole Foods Market.

20:01

They're your destination for unbeatable savings,

20:03

from premium gifts to show-stopping flowers

20:05

and irresistible desserts. Start by saving

20:07

33% with Prime on

20:09

all body care and candles. Then get a

20:11

15-stem bunch of tulips for just $9.99 each

20:14

with Prime. Round

20:16

out Mom's menu with festive

20:18

rosé, irresistible berry shantilly cake

20:20

and more special treats. Come celebrate

20:22

Mother's Day at Whole Foods Market.

20:25

Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. At Mint Mobile, we

20:27

like to do the opposite of what big

20:29

wireless does. They charge you a lot, we

20:32

charge you a little. So naturally, when they

20:34

announced they'd be raising their prices due to

20:36

inflation, we decided to deflate our prices due

20:38

to not hating you. That's right! We're cutting

20:40

the price of Mint Unlimited from $30 a

20:42

month to just $15 a month. Give

20:46

it a try at mintmobile.com. $45

20:50

up front for 3 months plus taxes and fees. Promote it for new customers for

20:52

a limited time. Unlimited more than 40GB per month. Full

20:54

terms at mintmobile.com If you're struggling to lose

20:56

weight, you've probably heard about weight loss medications

20:58

like Wigovi. Or Zepbond. And you might

21:00

be wondering if they're right for you.

21:03

Meet Plushcare. A leading telehealth provider with

21:05

doctors who are there for you day

21:07

and night to partner with you in

21:09

your weight loss journey. If

21:11

you qualify, they can safely

21:14

prescribe you medication from the

21:16

comfort of your own home.

21:19

To get started visit plushcare.com/weight

21:21

loss. That's plushcare.com/weight loss. plushcare.com/weight

21:23

loss. Hey,

21:30

welcome back to Wisdom from the Top. I'm Guy

21:32

Roz. So in 2011,

21:34

Morton Hanson and Jim Collins released

21:36

a book called Great by Choice,

21:39

where they discussed the harm of

21:41

fast decision making. And

21:43

before the break, Morton was telling me

21:45

about slow decision making in the face

21:48

of a pandemic and whether companies can

21:50

actually do that if they're

21:52

scrambling just to survive. Instead

21:55

of scrambling, they were scrambling. I would

21:57

also say they were experimenting. Hmm. in

22:00

a sense of saying, okay, we need to

22:02

find alternative ways to make money and survive.

22:05

I have to try out new things. And

22:08

some of them are not going to work out, and that's fine,

22:10

but all this might work out. And

22:12

so I'm thinking, for example, of Wolfgang

22:14

Puck, who's a well-known

22:16

restaurateur throughout the country.

22:19

He started experimenting. So yeah, everybody did,

22:21

so okay, delivery at home, but

22:24

what about we'll do the great meal and bring

22:26

it home to you, and you can have a

22:28

great meal at home. It's just not food

22:30

in a small container. We'll make the

22:32

cocktail. It's like as

22:34

if you were in a restaurant. And

22:36

some of these things, he said, didn't work out, and

22:39

they shut them down. Others did. And

22:42

you come up with these new ways of doing business. But

22:45

we found this concept that I think is

22:47

really fascinating. When you look at companies

22:49

that are really successful, leaders that are really successful, somebody said,

22:51

you got lucky. But

22:54

what we found is it's not exactly the truth. It's

22:57

return on luck, and it's different. So

23:00

there are two kinds of return on luck. One is good

23:02

luck return. You got an opportunity that

23:05

was handed to you. You saw

23:07

the opportunity, and you executed an

23:09

opportunity. So give an example.

23:11

I'm sitting here up in Napa in

23:13

St. Helena, and there is a bike

23:15

shop up here on

23:17

Main Street. Like a small business, they're running

23:19

a bike shop. I think they have two shops. And

23:22

you think, oh, in the pandemic, I thought,

23:25

I'm so sorry for those Main Street businesses

23:27

because nobody's going to go to Main Street

23:29

anymore. But then I talked to the owner,

23:32

and they said, well, people are

23:34

going to be home. They're going to be using

23:36

bikes. They want more bikes. He

23:38

went out and bought hundreds of bikes in

23:41

the supply chain and had the best year

23:43

ever. But

23:46

what does that say? Well, he could have said,

23:48

oh, nobody's coming to Main Street anymore. I better

23:50

shut down my business or make

23:52

it very small, and I'm sure now I'm going to buy

23:54

any bikes. So he

23:57

saw something that in the moment was a

23:59

good luck return. And then

24:01

there's bad luck return. And bad

24:03

luck means when the bad luck happens to you,

24:05

does it wipe you out or

24:08

do you survive? Was

24:10

your business resilient before the

24:12

bad luck? So did you have

24:14

a lot of debt in your business? Right? And

24:16

if you had a lot of debt, it's

24:19

hard to survive when you get hit by

24:22

a pandemic. So in

24:24

Europe, there's been a great

24:26

success called Norwegian Airlines. So an

24:28

airline. Yeah, a low cost airline, right?

24:30

It goes from... Yeah, exactly. Yeah,

24:33

it's a little bit of a cop yourself first. They

24:36

went bankrupt during the pandemic. And

24:38

the reason they went back over is that they have too much debt. They've

24:41

expanded too fast, right? They

24:43

were flying to America and

24:45

you overexpanded in the good times and

24:49

you got hit and they didn't

24:51

survive. You can't really escape from

24:53

that so easily. And

24:56

back to Southwest Airlines, I remember

24:58

the legendary CEO of for decades

25:00

was Herb Callahour who passed

25:02

away a few years ago. But he,

25:04

they said about him, he forecasted the

25:06

last 10 out of 3

25:08

recessions. We always said, there is a recession

25:11

coming. We need to keep costs low in

25:13

good times, right? That's

25:15

easy to say in bad times. It

25:17

is so easy to lose your discipline

25:19

in good times. I

25:22

want to jump back and forth between your

25:24

newest book, Great at Work, and your previous book

25:26

on collaboration because I think there's some

25:29

overlap on these

25:32

ideas. I want to jump into

25:34

this idea of effective meetings,

25:36

right? Because so many people

25:40

either convene or are subjected to

25:43

meetings that are a waste of time, right? And

25:45

one of the things you talk about in Great

25:47

at Work is that in

25:49

order for people to perform

25:51

at their best, they

25:53

have to encourage and

25:55

pursue the kinds of meetings that are

25:57

tough, that are difficult, where people are...

26:00

really not insulting

26:03

each other but respectfully disagreeing

26:05

ultimately to lead to maybe not

26:09

total consensus but at least

26:11

the idea that everybody feels

26:13

and has felt heard in

26:15

order to create some kind

26:17

of buy-in. Dr. Wojcicki

26:26

and so many meetings are ineffective. I

26:29

have a coffee mug here. That's a great

26:31

inscription. It says, I survived another meeting that

26:33

should have been an email. The

26:39

purpose of a – I mean there are different

26:41

kinds of meetings but one purpose of one meeting

26:43

is to get people in the room or virtual

26:46

room and have a great debate. And

26:50

I teach this. I have a case and out of

26:52

cases you learn things. And one of

26:54

my favorite cases that I teach, it's the Bay

26:56

of Pigs. So President John F.

26:58

Kennedy, early on in his

27:00

tenure as president, made a

27:02

decision with his team to

27:05

launch this Bay of Pigs invasion of

27:07

Cuba where there were 14 highly Cuban

27:09

exiles that they have recruited and trained

27:11

and equipped and send them into Cuba

27:13

to stage an uprising to topple the

27:16

Fidel Castro regime. But here's

27:18

the interesting part. What I teach is

27:20

the decision-making process in Canada's team. There

27:23

was no debate. But the debate

27:25

that was there was so superficial. Give

27:27

an example. So one important

27:30

part was that, well, if you're sending

27:32

in 1,400 soldiers into Cuba against an

27:34

army of 50,000, a

27:36

paramilitary force of 200,000, there

27:39

has to be an uprising. That

27:41

means that Castro had to be very unpopular

27:44

among many people for that to be true.

27:47

So that was an assumption in the plan. It

27:50

was never really debated. Is

27:52

he unpopular? How unpopular? Will

27:54

there be an uprising? They sat

27:56

around in the room and Arvus Lessinger, a junior

27:58

advisor, said about the meeting. There

28:01

was a curious atmosphere of

28:03

assumed consensus. And another

28:06

character said, well, you know,

28:08

everybody was voting in favor, so I

28:11

did the same. That's the

28:13

definition of groupthink. They were just sitting around, going

28:15

with the flow. It's the opposite of

28:18

what we're talking about. What

28:20

you need is a rigorous debate. What

28:23

is great about Kennedy, though, is

28:25

that he learned from his failure. Eighteen

28:28

months later, we had a Cuban Missile Crisis. Yeah.

28:31

And there you see real debate. So

28:33

it means also leaders can change. And

28:36

this goes down to techniques. What I

28:38

tell leaders, okay, it's about your behavior. So if you

28:40

show up in a room meeting as a leader, and

28:43

you start the meeting by saying, I think we should

28:45

do X, what do the rest of

28:47

you think? You're biased the meeting

28:49

now. Who's going to say in a meeting,

28:51

well, I don't think we should do X, I think we should do something

28:53

else. You got

28:56

to start by saying, what are the options here, and what do

28:58

you think we should be doing? Open-ended questions.

29:00

So that's technique that changes the

29:02

nature of a meeting room. I'm

29:05

curious about an idea that

29:07

you present around collaborative

29:09

meetings and about this idea of,

29:12

you know, creating an environment where

29:14

there is vigorous debate. And one

29:16

of the things you write is

29:18

that sometimes a

29:21

leader has to commit to

29:23

an idea that unites the team, even

29:26

if the leader disagrees with it. That's

29:29

scary to do, right? And

29:31

just to clarify, you're not saying

29:33

go with the lowest common denominator.

29:36

What you're essentially saying is you may

29:38

not like the outcome, but if everyone

29:40

in that room or most people in that room do

29:43

like it, you're better off going with

29:46

that decision. Yeah, it comes to the

29:48

question. When you're trying to have a

29:50

great debate, the purpose of that is to come

29:52

up with the right decision,

29:54

that you deem it the best

29:56

one given the circumstance. as

30:00

a leader that may not be your plan.

30:03

That means a leader has

30:05

to be open to changing

30:09

their minds. I would say

30:11

one thing though, what we

30:13

learn that consensus can

30:15

be very dangerous. Right. Because

30:18

when you have a

30:20

team striving for consensus, there

30:22

is a pressure to conform. They

30:25

said, wait a minute, we've been sitting

30:27

here hours debating. Don't say no again.

30:29

Don't be the dissenting voice. I

30:32

sometimes says that consensus is

30:34

the enemy of good collaboration.

30:38

And that surprises people.

30:40

I thought we were supposed to sit around and

30:42

debate until we got total agreement. Consensus

30:45

is that we all agree. No,

30:48

it's you disagree on

30:50

something. And at that point, the

30:53

leader has to step in and make

30:55

the call. Yeah. I mean, I thought

30:57

a lot about when I was reading the book, I thought a lot

30:59

about it. And it's still

31:01

early, too early, too, and will be

31:03

for several years to understand the decisions

31:05

behind how the withdrawal from Afghanistan happened.

31:07

And much of that was set in

31:09

motion by the previous

31:11

administration. But the impression

31:14

that one gets from reading contemporaneous

31:16

accounts of the Biden administration's withdrawal

31:19

in the timeline, the timeframe was

31:21

that there was consensus

31:23

among his team of national

31:26

security advisors and military advisors that the

31:29

Afghan army would not collapse rapidly,

31:31

that there was a... It

31:34

seems as if everybody agreed that it would

31:37

be fine, at least for a few years. And

31:39

they were wrong. Now, we don't know all the

31:41

details yet about the internal conversations, but

31:43

the impression one gets is that there

31:45

was consensus that this was going to

31:47

be relatively smooth. Yeah, I

31:50

am looking forward to the day when we

31:52

have the details like we

31:54

did for bigger pigs eventually to see

31:56

that. And if that is true,

31:58

then that's true. as a decision-making

32:00

trap, we fell into this trap

32:03

of consensus. It reminds

32:05

me of Alfred Sloan, the legendary leader

32:07

of General Motors. There

32:09

is a great saying that he was sitting with

32:12

his team in the boardroom and he

32:14

says, it appears that we're

32:16

all in agreement now. Let's

32:18

come back in a few days so we have developed

32:21

some disagreements. I

32:24

like that parable because everybody's in

32:26

agreement in the room? Yeah. Let's

32:29

take a pause here and get

32:31

some time to develop disagreement,

32:33

different viewpoints. I want

32:35

to dive into this idea of

32:37

collaboration for a bit. It's still

32:39

very, very difficult to create collaborative

32:41

environments. Most large organizations and

32:44

even some smaller ones are siloed.

32:47

Creating collaborative environments is

32:49

difficult. It is not easy to

32:51

do, especially when that environment is

32:54

not collaborative to start

32:56

with. Yes, I think

32:58

it has become one of

33:00

the most challenging leadership issues

33:03

of today. Environments,

33:05

business environments or government

33:07

environments or nonprofit environments are not

33:09

set up to collaborate. One

33:12

industry that picked that up to a great

33:14

extent was hospitals. If

33:16

you look at hospitals, they struggle

33:18

with collaboration because they have specialized

33:20

doctors and nurses and departments. But

33:23

as a patient, you want to be treated as a whole

33:25

person. You don't want to have

33:27

one specialist looking at your legs and another

33:29

specialist looking at your lungs and nobody has

33:32

the full picture. Yet

33:34

that's how they're organized. They have to collaborate

33:36

but they find it incredibly difficult. It's

33:39

true in any business as well. It's

33:44

oftentimes because the way we manage is

33:46

that we say, okay, you are

33:49

in charge of the sales office in,

33:51

say, Texas and I'm going

33:53

to evaluate you on your own performance. How

33:55

much do you sell? How well is your

33:57

department doing? How many new clients? And so

33:59

on. But what if the

34:01

Texas then need to work with the

34:04

Florida office? And what

34:06

if they want to share best practice? What

34:08

developed in Texas was also great for Florida.

34:11

How about transferring that practice? So suddenly you're

34:13

getting, oh wait a minute, that's not

34:15

my job. My job is to sell

34:17

in Texas. That's how you reward me. That's how

34:19

you measure my performance. That's the

34:21

kind of system we have built. And it's

34:24

a beauty to that system. But

34:26

it breaks down. The

34:28

moment you need those different people

34:30

or departments or sales offices to

34:33

collaborate. There are very

34:35

few examples I can think of

34:37

where organizations actually place collaboration at

34:40

the top of the incentive structure.

34:42

In other words, I think

34:45

because in ways it's hard to measure it.

34:48

But if you think about great

34:50

organizations that function

34:52

well because of collaboration, everybody

34:55

wants to be like that. But how

34:57

do you build an incentive to

35:00

get people to do that,

35:02

to work together? Yeah, I

35:04

think you hit on the problem

35:06

there which is harder to measure. First

35:09

of all, you have to say as a leader,

35:11

I want people to collaborate. It's

35:13

just not nice to have. It's a must have.

35:16

So I'm going to change the incentive system. Let's

35:18

go back to this example of two sales offices,

35:20

one in Texas, one in Florida. And

35:22

let's say the people in Texas have developed a

35:25

much better way of handling say

35:27

customer calls. And in Florida

35:29

they can use that. But there needs to be

35:31

a transfer of best practice between the two. So

35:34

what you have to do is to say,

35:36

okay, you have to value Texas and Florida.

35:39

Did the people in Texas help out? I

35:42

expect them to do so. And I'm going to measure that. Now

35:45

that is more subjective. It

35:47

requires a different way of measuring.

35:49

You have to ask people who

35:51

helped who in the company. And

35:55

then you need to collect that data. Some

35:57

organizations do. Then

36:00

you have to say, well, that needs

36:02

to count. It needs to count a lot. So

36:05

you need to make that really a top

36:07

requirement. You know, I

36:09

think about – there's a famous – and I know you're

36:11

familiar with this, but for a long

36:13

time, Sears, they were

36:15

surveying their employees to find out

36:17

how satisfied are you at work. And

36:21

I think you know where I'm going with this,

36:23

but there was a clear correlation between the

36:26

satisfaction that employees felt at work

36:29

and profits. When one was up, the

36:31

other one was up. When one was down,

36:33

the other one was down. When employees felt

36:35

great about how they

36:37

were treated, their work environment,

36:40

their work was better and

36:43

more profit came to the company. It's

36:46

an interesting idea and I think it's been

36:48

widely studied, right, that when

36:50

people feel like they're part of a

36:53

team or part of an organization

36:55

that's moving in the

36:57

same direction, they tend to

37:01

function more efficiently, better,

37:03

they're happier. Yeah,

37:05

and again, it's so interesting to

37:07

see that you do a survey like that back

37:10

in the day when that was not done and

37:12

you come up with this correlation and you say,

37:14

wow, this is interesting, maybe this is

37:16

true. I think today's

37:19

equivalent of that is that your

37:21

employees feel a sense of

37:24

purpose and passionate

37:27

about their job. And this is

37:29

something I studied in Great at Work, we

37:31

sort of ask all these employees, do

37:34

they feel a sense of purpose that what they do

37:36

is meaningful, meaningful contributions

37:38

to the world and

37:40

you feel a sense of passion about what they do. And

37:43

passion and purpose are not the same things. This

37:46

is what you can give the world and

37:48

passion is sort of what the world can give you. Do

37:51

you feel passionate about your work? It's exciting.

37:53

You get up in the morning and you

37:55

feel you want to go to work, virtual

37:57

or otherwise. interesting.

38:00

In that book, Read at Work, we found

38:02

out there were seven factors that produced great

38:04

performance. And the second

38:06

most important factor was that

38:09

people felt passion and purpose at work.

38:11

Both passion and purpose. Both passion and purpose, right?

38:14

They were excited and they felt

38:16

that their work was meaningful, both of those. You

38:19

can have one without the other, it's

38:21

possible. But having both provided,

38:24

and this is it, it's provided more focused

38:27

energy. So they

38:30

said, I'm going to commit myself,

38:32

I'm dedicated, I'm going to spend

38:34

these hours at work the best way I can spend them.

38:37

Work is no longer drudgery.

38:39

I'm not looking at it for it to

38:41

end. You know, at five o'clock I can finish.

38:44

And that focused energy produces performance.

38:47

So as a leader, if you want

38:50

satisfied or happy employees, and you want

38:52

to perform well, you need to work

38:54

on making sure people have a sense

38:56

of purpose and they feel passionate. When

39:00

we come back in just a moment,

39:03

more from Morton on balancing passion and

39:05

purpose, but also why we

39:07

should be asking what little we can do

39:09

in the time that we have. Stay with

39:12

us. I'm Guy Roz, and you're listening to

39:14

Wisdom from the Top. Mom

39:22

deserves the best and there's no

39:24

better place to shop for Mother's

39:27

Day than Whole Foods Market. They're

39:29

your destination for unbeatable savings, from

39:31

premium gifts to show-stopping flowers and

39:33

irresistible desserts. Start by saving 33%

39:36

with Prime on all body care and candles.

39:38

Then get a 15-stem bunch of tulips for

39:40

just $9.99 each with Prime. Round

39:43

out Mom's menu with festive

39:45

rosé, irresistible berry shantilly cake

39:47

and more special treats. Come celebrate

39:50

Mother's Day at Whole Foods Market.

39:54

ACAS powers the world's best pot.

40:04

Welcome back to 2 Judgey Girls. I'm Mary from

40:06

the Bay. And I'm Courtney

40:08

from LA. TJG is the podcast where

40:10

we spill all the tea on your favorite

40:12

reality TV shows, celebrity gossip and everything

40:14

in between. We're here to bring

40:17

you our unfiltered opinions, hilarious commentary and plenty

40:19

of laughs along the way. We're

40:21

two SDSU Delta Gamma sisters with a

40:23

microphone and a whole lot of opinions.

40:26

Each week we dive head first

40:28

into the wild world of reality

40:30

television from Bravo to all the

40:32

trash TV you could want. We

40:34

break down the drama, dissect the

40:36

latest scandals and share our thoughts

40:38

on everything from the jaw-dropping moments

40:40

to the embarrassing antics. But

40:43

that's not all. We're not here to just

40:45

gossip. We're here to connect with you the

40:47

jurors and share our love of all things

40:49

pop culture. Whether we're dishing on the latest

40:51

celebrity breakups, discussing our favorite guilty pleasure movies

40:53

or sharing embarrassing stories from our own lives,

40:56

we promise to keep it real, keep it

40:58

fun and keep you coming back for more.

41:01

Come judge with us. ACAST

41:05

helps creators launch, grow

41:07

and monetize their podcasts

41:09

everywhere. acast.com.

41:15

Hey, welcome back to Wisdom from the Top.

41:18

I'm Guy Roz. So before

41:20

the break, Morton Hansen was telling

41:22

me about his research from the

41:24

book, Great at Work, and explaining

41:27

how he discovered that both passion

41:29

and purpose fuel great work outcomes

41:31

and great leaders. If

41:34

you are in management and

41:37

you want to feel passionate and

41:39

purposeful, but you're not quite feeling

41:42

those things, can you engineer it

41:44

so you can find

41:46

those two things? Yeah,

41:49

I think you can. And I think

41:51

we have evidence to that. But

41:54

we need to define purpose properly here. And

41:56

I sort of call it a purpose pyramid.

41:59

There are different kinds of purpose. One

42:01

is to make a meaningful contribution beyond

42:03

yourself. And that's sort of

42:05

at the bottom of the pyramid, right? It's called value

42:07

creation. What I do actually has value. And

42:10

it has value for me. That's kind of second level. It may not

42:12

have for you, but it has value for me.

42:15

And then comes the social mission on top.

42:17

I actually feel what I do, you know, is

42:19

helping society be all making profit from my

42:21

company. Great thing about

42:23

greater work studies, we came across people

42:26

in seemingly mundane jobs. But

42:28

when you start talking to people in those jobs,

42:30

they actually feel it, which is the important part.

42:32

To give an example, Genevieve

42:35

at Consierge at a hotel in

42:37

Canada. That's a professor.

42:40

I thought, okay, there's a job with no purpose.

42:42

Okay, let's talk to Genevieve. Genevieve

42:45

had a very strong sense of purpose. And

42:48

she defined her job as, you know, what

42:50

I'm doing, people come to Quebec oftentimes on vacation.

42:52

So they're spending a week here or a

42:54

few days in my hotel. It

42:57

is my job with my purpose to

42:59

make sure they have a really good

43:01

experience here. Because that's important to them,

43:03

to other visitors. And she

43:05

said, I love doing that. I'm an extrovert.

43:07

I love talking to people. It's a perfect job for

43:09

me. And I can make that

43:12

contribution to people. She felt it. That's

43:14

purpose. There may not be

43:17

a social mission there that you're making the world a better place

43:19

in that sense. You're not curing cancer. You're

43:21

not curing COVID patients in

43:23

the hospital. But

43:25

in that respect, in that business, you

43:27

are making a meaningful contribution. And that's

43:29

purpose. And if you can

43:32

make your employees feel that, then

43:34

not only are they performing

43:36

better, they're happier. And you as

43:39

a leader have done a better job. I

43:43

want to shift one more time to this idea

43:45

of collaboration. Because I think

43:47

the conventional wisdom, right, is

43:49

that in order to collaborate, you've got

43:51

to see people. In

43:54

this future world we are entering

43:56

into of hybrid work, how can

43:59

we do that? When we recreate

44:01

those collaborative interactions or those interactions, I

44:04

should say, that foment

44:06

and inspire collaboration when you're just

44:08

kind of walking around or

44:10

people think, oh, meet this person or that

44:12

person. It's a great story that

44:14

I remember from Procter & Gamble, which

44:16

was the way that Crest white strips were

44:18

developed, which was a person

44:21

working in the toothpaste department met somebody working in

44:23

the plastic wrap department and

44:25

they had lunch and the guy at the

44:28

plastic wrap department says, oh, give me the

44:30

material you're using and I'll develop

44:32

it all on plastic wrap and that

44:34

turned into Crest white strips, the

44:37

teeth whitening straps. Can

44:42

we recreate that in

44:44

what is clearly going to be more

44:47

of a virtual work world in the future? Yeah,

44:50

I think this is the very

44:52

big leadership and management challenge going

44:55

forward. Here is the

44:57

problem. There's a certain type

44:59

of human

45:01

interaction collaboration that is

45:04

best done in person. You're sitting

45:06

around your brainstorming, you're building on each

45:08

other's ideas, it's quick back and forth.

45:10

I can see your body language, I

45:12

can see your smile frown or

45:15

we walk around in the hallways and we

45:17

happen to bump into each other and have

45:19

some ideas and something comes out of that.

45:22

That kind of informal and

45:25

meeting interactions. It's

45:27

so hard to do

45:29

that properly on Zoom or Webex

45:31

or Microsoft Teams. If

45:34

you look at some survey data from Boston

45:36

Consulting Group the last year during the pandemic,

45:38

that's what people complain about, that they are

45:40

not able to do that really well in

45:42

most cases. If

45:44

that's true and if

45:46

that is important in your business, you've got to get

45:49

people back into the office or

45:51

into the physical work environment. And

45:54

if that's true, then it means people cannot work

45:56

from anywhere. That the

45:58

work from anywhere revolution is not going to

46:00

happen. happen if there's some kind of

46:03

work interactions that we need to do

46:05

being physically together. And

46:07

now there might be other types of work that

46:10

we used to do in the office like sitting in a

46:12

boring meeting that could have been an email or

46:14

a solar work. If

46:16

I need to write a marketing report, maybe I'm better

46:18

off sitting at home for four hours, nobody's going to

46:20

interrupt me. So solar work

46:23

is maybe best done at home and

46:26

it's in-person collaboration is best done in

46:28

the office together. Now if

46:30

that's true, those two things are true, you

46:33

land at the hybrid model where

46:35

you have some days in the office together and

46:37

some days where you can be at home or

46:39

somewhere else. So I

46:42

think that we are – the

46:45

management model going forward is

46:47

a hybrid model. We have some days in the

46:50

office and some days we can be flexible. But

46:53

I think there's a caveat to what I just said which I

46:55

think is fascinating. Maybe,

46:58

just maybe, we will

47:00

develop technology that

47:03

is actually going to make those in-person interactions possible

47:05

virtually. We're not there yet. I mean Zoom is

47:07

not there. We

47:09

are far away from it but maybe one day we will.

47:12

I think this is going to be a

47:14

fascinating management challenge going forward. Can you actually

47:16

run your teams virtually?

47:20

And if so, it would

47:22

have enormous consequences

47:25

because think about it. If we think about

47:27

it, okay, we have defined

47:29

work as a workplace, a physical

47:31

place you have to go to

47:34

and a demand you have to come into that place. Imagine

47:38

that was not true because we can do things virtually. It

47:41

means I can recruit from anywhere in the world. It

47:44

means I can have talent sitting across America.

47:47

They don't all have to be in one city where I

47:49

happen to be as a leader. It

47:52

means people can live in other areas

47:54

where there's maybe better living

47:56

standards for them, not expensive places sitting

47:58

in a small apartment. Manhattan in New

48:00

York. If this happens,

48:03

it also means at the society level,

48:05

maybe the downtown office landscape will disappear.

48:07

Because why would you go downtown and

48:10

commute for an hour if

48:12

you don't have to? It will

48:14

have enormous implications. But

48:16

right now we are not there. We're far

48:18

away. The in-person collaboration is

48:21

still the management approach

48:24

of today. Will it change? For

48:28

one, we need lots better technology than we have

48:30

today. One of

48:32

the things that really stuck out to me was,

48:35

and this is really advice for leaders,

48:38

which is to win people over, play

48:41

to their emotions, and

48:43

see their perspective to anticipate their concerns.

48:45

I mean,

48:47

I think I understand what you mean by that.

48:50

But what do you mean by that, to win

48:52

people over, play to their emotions? This

48:55

is actually part of collaboration. If you're going

48:57

to work with people across units, they

49:01

might be sitting in a different department from you

49:03

or a different business, a different partner. You

49:05

have to be able

49:08

to understand where they're coming

49:10

from, perspective taking.

49:14

Understand cognitively what is their agenda,

49:16

what are their concerns, and also

49:18

emotionally where they're coming from. The

49:21

emotional side goes to inspiration. Can

49:24

you evoke emotions

49:26

in someone else in the right

49:29

way? So they

49:32

feel inspired by you because they feel

49:34

emotionally invested in what you're trying to

49:36

do. If you can

49:38

do that as a leader, you will win

49:40

people over. If you stir

49:42

the wrong emotions, like I

49:44

get angry with what you have done, you

49:47

get the opposite. And when

49:50

leaders try to change their company

49:52

or change something, they often

49:54

get this wrong. So let me give a

49:56

very trivial example, but it's very telling. A

49:59

leader of oil company wanted to

50:01

institute a cost-cutting measure in

50:03

the oil company. So

50:06

they launched a change effort, cost-cutting, and

50:08

they thought, well, let's start

50:10

with sort of the symbolic thing, which

50:13

was to cut out all the free coffee

50:15

in the offices. The problem

50:17

was that it stirred the wrong

50:19

emotion. People

50:21

got angry, frustrated. The

50:23

leaders of the oil company, this is so trivial.

50:26

Nobody's got a key, really. They could just bring

50:28

their own Starbucks into the office. People

50:31

were so upset, so upset. So

50:35

now the emotions you have stirred

50:37

now as a leader is anger

50:40

and frustration against your change effort.

50:43

So when it comes to the real

50:45

changes, the real hard cost-cuttings, people

50:48

were opposed. So we

50:50

have to learn as leaders to understand where

50:52

people are coming from and what you want

50:55

are positive emotion about the new future.

50:59

How would an oil company look like if we have

51:01

lower cost and we can do more things maybe in

51:03

renewable energy in the coming decades? Hope,

51:06

excitement about the future, and

51:08

maybe anger about the status quo. And

51:11

that's the job of a leader, to stir those

51:13

emotions. HOFFMAN HARRIS More, for your

51:15

book, Great at Work, you interviewed hundreds

51:18

of people and analyzed thousands of case

51:20

studies to come to the

51:22

conclusion, which is the title of the book,

51:24

that top performers do less. They

51:27

actually work better and achieve

51:30

more, which is counterintuitive in

51:32

our... And I

51:34

think it's changing. Certainly, there's a huge cultural

51:36

shift around work and the meaning of work.

51:39

I think it's driven by younger

51:41

generations of people who understand that

51:44

life isn't just about work. But a point here

51:46

that you make is that the top performers

51:48

in your analysis don't spend

51:52

100 hours a week on work. They're

51:54

not tied to their

51:56

computers or desks all the time, that

51:58

actually the top performers farmers have

52:01

a very kind of varied life

52:03

where work is one part of

52:05

it. It's a

52:08

finding that I didn't believe in myself because

52:10

I had done the opposite, you know, work

52:12

as I told you in BCG, work hard.

52:15

I never learned what Natalie and BCG did but

52:17

I learned something more important to that during that

52:19

study. Natalie was your colleague at BCG who didn't

52:21

work as much as you did but was a

52:23

better farmer. Exactly. But

52:27

I learned something more important which was

52:29

systematically across 5000 case studies what did

52:31

the best people do, the

52:34

really top 10% performers and

52:37

counterintuitively or strikingly they

52:39

did less. They

52:41

had fewer priorities but the right ones.

52:44

They had fewer metrics but the right metrics.

52:47

They had fewer meetings but the right meetings. Everything

52:50

fewer but better. And

52:53

that is so counterintuitive because we have

52:56

to do more. More

52:58

is better paradigm in business, in management.

53:01

I suppose to ask the question how

53:04

few projects, how

53:06

few metrics, how few hours given

53:08

that I must perform extraordinarily well

53:10

is a different question. I

53:13

was giving a talk in Denver about the book and

53:15

somebody in the audience heard me, a president

53:17

of a company, a small sort of medium

53:20

sized company called Master Electronic. They do

53:22

distribution of computers and did quite well

53:25

during the pandemic. But

53:27

he sort of said, okay, I'm going to take this concept back

53:29

to my sales force and

53:31

say we should do fewer customers but

53:34

do them better. And

53:36

some people say, no, of course not. I

53:38

need to sell also to the small customers

53:40

because after all that's helped me meet

53:42

my quota and I spent a little bit of time on them.

53:45

And so I don't want to do this, do less thing. Doesn't

53:48

sound like a good thing to me. I need to

53:50

do more. I lost the customers. I need to call

53:53

to sell them equipment. But he

53:55

sort of persisted this later and said, no, no, no, no, we

53:57

got to try this, do less. And what I wanted to do.

54:00

Concentrate on fewer customers and

54:02

do them better. Better interactions,

54:04

better service, better everything. And

54:07

after a year, that approach

54:10

suddenly started yielding

54:12

results beyond what they had

54:14

done before. Growing faster,

54:16

better sales, better quota, everything

54:19

better. Now it makes

54:21

sense that, you know, it's sort of the

54:23

80-20 rule maybe, that spend

54:25

time where it matters, concentrate your effort on

54:28

what really matters and not on a lot

54:30

of other stuff that is marginal. And

54:33

so many of us do. We have long priority lists.

54:36

We have 10 items. Can I do all 10? Well,

54:39

ask yourself, what is the top three that really move the

54:41

needle? One

54:44

of the things that I am

54:46

still, I mean, I think it's so important

54:49

but still so hard for people to wrap

54:51

their heads around is this idea

54:53

that, you know, we should not really

54:56

work more than 50 hours a

54:58

week. Really, that is sort of

55:00

the, more or less

55:02

the maximum limit, maybe a few more,

55:04

but that's, you've

55:06

got to basically be disciplined about putting a

55:09

limit on it. And

55:11

in fact, that, based

55:13

on all your research, the highest performers are people

55:15

who don't work that much more than 50 hours

55:17

a week. I think it is very

55:19

hard for people to wrap their head around that idea.

55:22

But here's the question. The question

55:24

is not how many hours should or cannot work.

55:26

It is, if I have 50 hours, you put

55:28

that constraint on yourself. The

55:30

question is, how do I spend the 50 hours? Do

55:34

I spend it in the best way possible? Putting

55:37

that constraint is actually liberating because

55:39

it forces you to do less.

55:41

It forces you to focus on purpose and passion. It

55:44

forces you to have the right kind of meetings. It

55:47

forces you to spend the time that you have

55:49

in the best possible way, as

55:51

opposed to be doing how many

55:53

hours can I be awake and work. And

55:56

I think you will have a better life. And that's the last

55:58

chapter of greater work. People who are

56:00

actually able to do this. They

56:03

have better work-life balance. They're more satisfied

56:05

in their job and their lower burnout.

56:09

And that's a great way to work and live. That's

56:14

Morton Hansen, author of the book

56:16

Great at Work, how top performers

56:18

do less, work better, and achieve

56:20

more. And his first

56:22

book on team building and cooperative innovation

56:24

is called Collaboration, how leaders

56:27

avoid the traps, build common

56:29

ground, and reap big results.

56:33

Hey, thanks for listening to the show this week. The

56:36

music for this episode was composed and

56:38

performed by Drop Electric. I'm

56:40

Guy Roz, and you've been listening to

56:42

Wisdom from the Top, from Luminary and

56:44

BILT Fit Productions.