Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
Speaker 1: This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 1: episode is going to be a slightly longer one part
Speaker 1: of the series where I interview fascinating people about how
Speaker 1: they take their days from great to awesome and any
Speaker 1: advice they have for the rest of us. So today
Speaker 1: I am delighted to welcome Marcus Buckingham to Before Breakfast.
Speaker 1: Marcus is a longtime thought leader on leadership. He's a speaker.
Speaker 1: He is also the author of the new book Design
Speaker 1: Love In Marcus. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me, Laura, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Very excited to have you. Why don't you tell our
Speaker 1: listeners a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 2: Well, I'm a psychometrician actually by training, which means that
Speaker 2: I measure things about human beings that are really important
Speaker 2: but you can't count. So how do you measure strengths?
Speaker 2: How do you measure talents? How do you measure how
Speaker 2: satisfied or half you are with your life? All those
Speaker 2: kinds of things that kind of make life worth living.
Speaker 2: So I spent seventeen years with the Gallop organization and
Speaker 2: building something called strength Finder, which is all about how
Speaker 2: do you find out what your strengths are? And then,
Speaker 2: in the seventeen years since then, just built my own
Speaker 2: business focused on how do you help leaders to get
Speaker 2: the most out themselves and the most other people that
Speaker 2: they lead and the people that they serve.
Speaker 1: Absolutely well, I know a lot of listeners have done
Speaker 1: the various strength finders' assessments over the years. So in
Speaker 1: the intro to your new book, to Design Love in
Speaker 1: you talk about coming to love as a topic, which
Speaker 1: we'll get to at a sec but at some kind
Speaker 1: of dark moments for yourself. I wonder if you could
Speaker 1: talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I've built my company over ten years focused
Speaker 2: on folks, on helping leaders to get the best out
Speaker 2: of the people that they lead. And we've built this lovely, entrepreneurial,
Speaker 2: passionate group of people who'd come together to serve our
Speaker 2: clients in a way that was very loving. I mean
Speaker 2: it was. It was the kind of environment where you
Speaker 2: have family member joining the company and everyone else who
Speaker 2: is friends feels like family. Everyone's sort of wearing company merch.
Speaker 2: It's all very passionate actually. And then because I believed
Speaker 2: in the mission so much, I sold the company in
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen to a much much larger fortune of average
Speaker 2: company that had three thousand salespeople. Because in my brain,
Speaker 2: I'm thinking, if you want to spread the mission quickly,
Speaker 2: you need a lot of smart friends. So a three
Speaker 2: thousand person sales person organization is enticing because of that.
Speaker 2: And yet over time, quite quickly, the passion drained away,
Speaker 2: the love drained away, And it wasn't It wasn't the
Speaker 2: bigger company's fault, per se. It was just when you
Speaker 2: get inside a big organization, other considerations start to dominate
Speaker 2: the conversation. It's the monthly returns, it's the quarterly earnings,
Speaker 2: it's the performance reviews, it's the run this by legals.
Speaker 2: And what happens with love passion isn't that. It's not
Speaker 2: like it gets killed. It just dies from neglect. You
Speaker 2: just start talking about other things. So for me, I
Speaker 2: saw up close and personal what happens when you don't
Speaker 2: make love. I know how to say that sounds I'm
Speaker 2: saying of it. If you don't make love the central
Speaker 2: organizing principle of how you do work, whether it's the
Speaker 2: employee side of things or the customer side of things,
Speaker 2: then it slips away and you wake up one day
Speaker 2: and you realize that nobody talks about it anymore, and
Speaker 2: everyone's just going through the motions of that day. And
Speaker 2: so that was the impetus of the book really is
Speaker 2: to go, wait a minute, there is life is too
Speaker 2: short for us to be going through the motions of
Speaker 2: the day to get through the day. So that was
Speaker 2: the impetus of the book. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, love is kind of a funny word for a
Speaker 1: business book, as I know, you know, and you kind
Speaker 1: of shied away from that word at the beginning, right,
Speaker 1: You kept looking for like synonyms that sound more business appropriate.
Speaker 2: Yes. Well, the first thing to see is that when
Speaker 2: you look at the relationship between an experience, let's say
Speaker 2: it's an employee experience, the relationship experience, and an outcome
Speaker 2: like profitability or productivity or loyalty, the relationship isn't and
Speaker 2: this is going to get a little datory, but the
Speaker 2: relationship isn't linear. It's curve linear, which means that if
Speaker 2: you've got a scale of one to five and the
Speaker 2: quality of the experience five being strongly agree and one
Speaker 2: being strongly disagree, moving someone from a two to a
Speaker 2: three experience or a three to a four experience doesn't
Speaker 2: drive their performance at all or their loyalty. It's really
Speaker 2: only when you get to a five strongly agree that
Speaker 2: you can see any kind of relationship to their next behavior.
Speaker 2: So when you look at extreme positive behaviors, the thing
Speaker 2: that drives them is extreme positive experiences, not fours, not threes, fives.
Speaker 2: And then when you dive into the fives and you go,
Speaker 2: what the heck of people saying when they say that
Speaker 2: they're having an extreme positive experience at work, in their day,
Speaker 2: in their life, what are they saying? Well, the word
Speaker 2: they actually say, the word we humans always say, which
Speaker 2: you want to extrive an extreme positive experience is love.
Speaker 2: We say I love that. Now, we say it about
Speaker 2: all sorts of things, Laura, we say it about I
Speaker 2: love those shoes, I love that movie, I love that song,
Speaker 2: I love my mom, I love that mentor so we
Speaker 2: use it in all sorts of interesting contexts. But when
Speaker 2: we're trying to explain something extreme positive, we pick the
Speaker 2: word love. And I kept hearing it as a researcher,
Speaker 2: and I kept trying to change it into things that
Speaker 2: were more palatable to the business world. Those so things
Speaker 2: like passion or joy or engagement or stray and those
Speaker 2: are good words, but they're not actually what the words
Speaker 2: that we humans use when we're trying to explain something
Speaker 2: that's extremely positive for us, the word we pick is love.
Speaker 2: And so as a researcher in the end, I just
Speaker 2: had to go crying out loud, Marcus. Just go with
Speaker 2: the word people are using. Let's explore it, let's be
Speaker 2: curious about it, because it's the only thing that drives behavior.
Speaker 2: So love is predictive of positive human behavior in a
Speaker 2: way that no other word is respect, learning, enjoyment, satisfaction,
Speaker 2: None of those predict what someone's going to do next.
Speaker 2: So if we want to be serious about actual, super
Speaker 2: productive human behavior, well we've got to go to the
Speaker 2: thing that causes it. And the thing that causes it
Speaker 2: is love.
Speaker 1: And how do you define love then, because people like again,
Speaker 1: you use it with all sorts of things. I love
Speaker 1: my mom, I love my job. We mean different things
Speaker 1: when we're saying that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so well, first of all, there's eight billion
Speaker 2: definitions of the word love, right, there's many as many
Speaker 2: definitions there are humans alive. And yet when you look
Speaker 2: at the data around the world, when people use the
Speaker 2: word love in China, we can predict their behavior. People
Speaker 2: use the word love in Argentina. We can predict their behavior.
Speaker 2: Wherever you go around the world, love is predictive. So
Speaker 2: there must be something common about that definition of love,
Speaker 2: even though every humans got their own definition. So in
Speaker 2: the end, if you push and push and push on that,
Speaker 2: what you bump into is this definition. Love is the
Speaker 2: deep and unwavering commitment of the flourishing of a human
Speaker 2: So if you think about their word flourishing, every single
Speaker 2: one of us as human beings feel that we've got
Speaker 2: something unique inside of us, and we want to get
Speaker 2: to the end of our life and feel that we've
Speaker 2: had some chances to express what's inside of us. If
Speaker 2: you've got kids, you want them to be able to
Speaker 2: express what's inside of them. And yet most of us
Speaker 2: go through life balled up like an armadillo with armor
Speaker 2: plating because the world's scary and frankly, it doesn't care
Speaker 2: that much about us. So we go through life balled up.
Speaker 2: Any time we bump into any sort of experience that
Speaker 2: allows us to take one plate of armor off, even
Speaker 2: if it's a small thing, like I love that outfit,
Speaker 2: I know it sounds silly, but if you feel more yourself,
Speaker 2: if you feel more fully yourself wearing that outfit, the
Speaker 2: word you pick is love. If you work for a
Speaker 2: leader who cuts through your performance review and allows you
Speaker 2: to stretch yourself in some way that expresses the best
Speaker 2: of you, use the word love. If you've seen a
Speaker 2: movie where a scene, or a character or some aspect
Speaker 2: of the movie helps you sort of explain your own
Speaker 2: experience to yourself a little bit better. You walk out
Speaker 2: of the movie and go, I love that. So in
Speaker 2: a way, love just means bigger any experience, no matter
Speaker 2: how small or how large, which lets us take the
Speaker 2: armor plating off a moment even and let's just take
Speaker 2: what's inside and put it out. The word we humans
Speaker 2: reach for to describe the specificity that experience is love,
Speaker 2: whether it's about a shoe or whether it's about a
Speaker 2: mom So there is something common about what we mean
Speaker 2: when we say love. And it's not like it's not
Speaker 2: lots and lots and lots of like. Love is just
Speaker 2: categorically different as an experience.
Speaker 1: Love isn't just more likes. Well, we're going to take
Speaker 1: a quick ad break and I'll be back with more
Speaker 1: from Marcus Buckingham. Well, I am back talking with Marcus
Speaker 1: Buckingham about how to design love in so we've been
Speaker 1: talking that, you know, people having love as a driving force.
Speaker 1: You know, we want to be a company that people
Speaker 1: love to work for, or you know, companies that are
Speaker 1: selling things want customers to love their products. But part
Speaker 1: of that is flourishing as humans. And you know, you
Speaker 1: talk about this a lot. So much of the world
Speaker 1: seems designed not for humans these days. I mean so
Speaker 1: much of what we experience in terms of you know,
Speaker 1: robocalls or you know, horrible customer experiences at a doctor's
Speaker 1: office or in an airline. I mean, it's like people
Speaker 1: forgot there were humans or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny we coming out with the word love.
Speaker 2: I thought the problem would be that people would go,
Speaker 2: oh love, that's not real, or oh love, come on.
Speaker 2: I thought they'd pushed back against the word love. But
Speaker 2: funnily enough, the word that people push back more on
Speaker 2: is experiences we humans we go through. Let's say you
Speaker 2: go to the doctor's office. That's an experience for us,
Speaker 2: and we as the human are going through that experience.
Speaker 2: You would have thought the doctors, let's say, would have
Speaker 2: designed an experience as though the whole human was going
Speaker 2: through it. But we don't. We design it for process.
Speaker 2: So in the doctor's office, there's a series of handoffs
Speaker 2: that you have from the person who's there as the
Speaker 2: receptionist or the person who that hands you off to
Speaker 2: one nurse, to another nurse, to the doctor, to a
Speaker 2: different nurse on the way out to and insurer, one
Speaker 2: handoff after another. If you call your bank, it's one
Speaker 2: handoff after another. If you call your airline, it's one
Speaker 2: handoff off another, call the insurance company it and we
Speaker 2: have to we as the human, have to contain the
Speaker 2: coherence of our own story, repeating our story, whether it's
Speaker 2: at the hospital, whether it's at the restaurant, whether it's
Speaker 2: at the bank. We're the ones who have to try
Speaker 2: to keep the coherence of our story together because the
Speaker 2: whole darn world we live in has not been designed
Speaker 2: for a coherent experience. It's one vertical process after another,
Speaker 2: and we're just handed off. The whole world's been designed transactionally,
Speaker 2: which is why, for the first time, by the way,
Speaker 2: in thirty years, we asked this question. I started doing
Speaker 2: this back in the early two thousands when I was
Speaker 2: still at Gallup. We were just measuring trust, trust in
Speaker 2: big business, trust in school RULs, trust in the government,
Speaker 2: trust in big media. Last year was the first year
Speaker 2: where not a single one of those institutions I've just
Speaker 2: mentioned had more than fifteen percent of people saying I
Speaker 2: strongly trust them. We are living in a world where
Speaker 2: we just do not trust the institutions that are a
Speaker 2: big part of our world, from schools to hospitals to banks.
Speaker 2: But we just don't think it's not built for us,
Speaker 2: because it's not. It's built for process and efficiency and transactionalism,
Speaker 2: and it feels terrible for us. It feels terrible when
Speaker 2: you call your bank. It feels terrible when you try
Speaker 2: to buy tickets for a Taylor Swift concert and she's
Speaker 2: outsourced the selling of tickets to Ticketmaster, who then gouge you.
Speaker 2: But by the way, which is why she took that
Speaker 2: back interestingly enough, because she did take the experience seriously
Speaker 2: and started, I think it's taylorswifticks dot Com to take
Speaker 2: it back in so that she could own the totality
Speaker 2: of the experience. But most experiences for us in our
Speaker 2: world are designed as though we aren't the human going
Speaker 2: through them and it feels rotten.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you say that it's not so much that
Speaker 1: people are evil about it. I mean they're not. It's
Speaker 1: not immoral. It's just a moral right that it hasn't
Speaker 1: been considered to make a human being flourish, right.
Speaker 2: I mean. The simplest and the most banal example would
Speaker 2: be you go to a restaurant and the person who
Speaker 2: you made the reservation through, who is probably interactive voice response,
Speaker 2: by the way, which is not a relationship strategy. It's
Speaker 2: a containment strategy. That's what IVR is. You've made your
Speaker 2: reservation online. The person you bump into at the hostess
Speaker 2: down is not the same person whose voice you have
Speaker 2: been when you made the reservation. The person who seeks
Speaker 2: you is not the same person. The person you can
Speaker 2: order your drink from is not the same person. The
Speaker 2: person who then takes your order is not the person
Speaker 2: who brings you. The whole thing is designed to efficiently
Speaker 2: contain table four as efficiently as possible. It's not designed
Speaker 2: to go you're a human, you probably want to feel
Speaker 2: as that there's another human going through the experience with
Speaker 2: you who's probably thinking about you as having a holistic experience.
Speaker 2: Even something as banal as a restaurant isn't designed that
Speaker 2: way for you. And so we live in a world
Speaker 2: where trust is low, love is low. There's an experience
Speaker 2: which back in the late eighth nineteenth century, actually a
Speaker 2: very famous sociologist called Amil Durkheim coined to term an
Speaker 2: m which means alien nation. We live in a world
Speaker 2: which feels like it's blind to us humans as employees
Speaker 2: of work. We're not called employees. We're called full time
Speaker 2: equivalents FTEs or headcount. All of the human capital management
Speaker 2: systems that do our pay, that do our recognition, programs,
Speaker 2: that do our goal setting, those are all extensions of
Speaker 2: financial systems. All of our human systems are actually financial systems.
Speaker 2: And so we live in a world where of humanity.
Speaker 2: Even at school, if you think about it, the uniqueness
Speaker 2: of the student from the ages about zero to ten,
Speaker 2: the uniqueness of your child is kind of interesting to
Speaker 2: schools from ten onwards, it's how closely do you match
Speaker 2: up to the standardized testing that we're going to do
Speaker 2: all the way up through college actually, and the great
Speaker 2: point average of the seniors who graduate from the college.
Speaker 2: That's the preoccupation of schools, education at large, and then
Speaker 2: it continues at work. So and there are exceptions, that's
Speaker 2: beautiful leaders and beautiful managers and beautiful teachers who really
Speaker 2: get to know us as unique humans. But most of
Speaker 2: the world is set up to turn us from a
Speaker 2: human into a financial element of a transaction and more.
Speaker 2: With AI barreling down the track, we're going to get
Speaker 2: more of that, not less of that. And the point
Speaker 2: of this book is that's stupid. It makes very bad
Speaker 2: business sense. Why because love's the most powerful driver of
Speaker 2: productive human behavior for employees or for customers. So when
Speaker 2: you put systems in place that drive love out, you
Speaker 2: are undermining the behaviors that you want, whether it's productivity
Speaker 2: or loyal or advocacy or word of mouth or whatever
Speaker 2: it is.
Speaker 1: So let's say somebody is yeah, listening to this, and
Speaker 1: they are a manager of a team, and they're like, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I may not be the CEO of a huge corporation,
Speaker 1: but I would still like people to love to work
Speaker 1: with me, yeah, right, and to help my team members flourish.
Speaker 1: What are some of the things that a manager can
Speaker 1: do to cultivate that within their team.
Speaker 2: Well, the simplest thing that you can do if you
Speaker 2: think about what's the handmaiden of love? Well, attention is
Speaker 2: the handmaiden of love. Humans don't do very well when
Speaker 2: we're ignored. Like, what's the opposite of love? Hate? No,
Speaker 2: the opposite of love is ignoring someone. So the simplest
Speaker 2: thing that a manager can do, which so many managers don't.
Speaker 2: But you know that put upon and the company's yanking
Speaker 2: them one way and another. But really, what you should
Speaker 2: do is check in with each of your people for
Speaker 2: fifteen minutes, one on one every week. It's the simplest thing.
Speaker 2: Are some two questions, and do it fifty two times
Speaker 2: a year. And the two questions are how do you
Speaker 2: feel about last week? And what are you working on
Speaker 2: this week? And how can I help? Do it fifty
Speaker 2: two times a year. It's fifteen minutes and you're not
Speaker 2: coming in with some amazing coaching tip every week, that's fine.
Speaker 2: What you're doing is giving someone the benefit of attention
Speaker 2: about the short term past. How was last week for you?
Speaker 2: Did you love it or loath it? What'd you love like? Seriously,
Speaker 2: go what'd you love about last week? And what's your loath? Okay, interesting,
Speaker 2: I'm right with you now. What's your focus for this week?
Speaker 2: How can I help? And you just keep doing that
Speaker 2: fifty two times a year. Then for all of you,
Speaker 2: but you and the rest of your team, what you'll
Speaker 2: be doing is establishing emotional harmony with your team, because,
Speaker 2: if you think about it, a year oscillates. Everybody goes
Speaker 2: through ups and downs and challenges, and what you want
Speaker 2: as a person on a team is just having a
Speaker 2: leader who pays attention to it. They don't have to
Speaker 2: fix it, they just have to pay attention to it
Speaker 2: every week. Now, maybe on some weeks you can tweak
Speaker 2: or adjust or course correct, but for most of us
Speaker 2: when we go to work, we feel unseen. So if
Speaker 2: you want to fix that, have a frequent light touch
Speaker 2: check in or conversation call or whatever you want, check
Speaker 2: in touch base. It turns out when you look at
Speaker 2: the modality, it doesn't matter. You can do it online,
Speaker 2: you can do it with an email, you can do
Speaker 2: it face to face, you can do it on the phone.
Speaker 2: What matters isn't the modality of it, Laura, it's the
Speaker 2: frequency of it. Do you repeatedly touch based on each
Speaker 2: of your people about the near term future every week.
Speaker 2: If you don't do that, by the way, that sounds
Speaker 2: boring to you to do, then you shouldn't lead people,
Speaker 2: because leading is actually individualized attention to the human and
Speaker 2: the work and the human and the work and the
Speaker 2: human and the work. Gosh, you do that fifty two
Speaker 2: times a year, you'll be in the top five percent
Speaker 2: of leaders in terms of the loyalty and the productivity
Speaker 2: you get from your people.
Speaker 1: And then one other thing you mentioned is is sort
Speaker 1: of paying attention to customs, which I know a lot
Speaker 1: of people listening to this show are very much into
Speaker 1: routines and rituals. Are there certain sort of rituals that
Speaker 1: good managers do in our to build love into their teams.
Speaker 2: Well, the two but by the way, every single leader,
Speaker 2: of course, I call it the ABCS of leadership Authenticity, beliefs, customs.
Speaker 2: So whatever your customs are, they better be authentic and
Speaker 2: they better be a manifestation of your beliefs. If you're
Speaker 2: trying to fake it. If your customs are just a manipulation,
Speaker 2: we humans can sort of sniff that out. So the
Speaker 2: C comes after the A and the B. Authenticity means
Speaker 2: we don't need you to be perfect, we need you
Speaker 2: to be you beliefs means don't assume that we can
Speaker 2: read your mind. What do you believe is deeply important
Speaker 2: to you? Tell us, help us know that because we
Speaker 2: can't actually dive into your heart. Customs would be like,
Speaker 2: what are the things that you repeatedly do that bring
Speaker 2: those first two to life? If you were to think
Speaker 2: about some super predictable ones that probably work for most leaders,
Speaker 2: although the way in which you do that might vary
Speaker 2: according to your style. First of all, catch people doing
Speaker 2: things right. There's a million different ways in which things
Speaker 2: can go wrong. Your goal as a leader should be
Speaker 2: to keep looking for excellence. And when you say good job,
Speaker 2: that is not the end of a sentence. It's the
Speaker 2: beginning of an inquiry. So when you say good job
Speaker 2: to someone, that should be the beginning of why did
Speaker 2: that work for you? Let's unpack that a little bit,
Speaker 2: why so that you can do it again, so that
Speaker 2: we can refine it or improve it. Let's look at
Speaker 2: the bits that worked. Because excellence in any job isn't
Speaker 2: just the opposite of failure. It's like you don't write
Speaker 2: a great poem by fixing all the dangling partibles or
Speaker 2: the split infinitives. So you as the leader. You've got
Speaker 2: to be really interested in what works. When it works,
Speaker 2: what works, catch people doing things right, not just to
Speaker 2: make them happier, but because that's the raw material for
Speaker 2: future greatness. Is current goodness, not current badness. So many
Speaker 2: leaders get kind of get drawn into remediation and fixedness. No,
Speaker 2: keep looking for what's right. And then another custom, which
Speaker 2: is do it once a quarter for yourself. I would
Speaker 2: suggest you actually don't want to quote it with each
Speaker 2: of your people, but start with yourself. Just take a
Speaker 2: black pad around with you for a week, draw a
Speaker 2: line down the middle of it right, loved it at
Speaker 2: the top of one column, and loathed it a top
Speaker 2: of the other. Take it around with you for a week.
Speaker 2: Any time you find some activity or interaction that you love,
Speaker 2: that you lean into, that you find yourself looking forward to.
Speaker 2: Time speeds up when you're doing it. Scribble it down
Speaker 2: and loved it column and in the loaded it when
Speaker 2: you see the opposite when you're procrastinating, when time drags
Speaker 2: on when you're doing it, Okay, scribble that down. Take
Speaker 2: an inventory of a regular week of your life and
Speaker 2: put it through the lens of love. I know again,
Speaker 2: I know that sounds a bit combin our. But really,
Speaker 2: what you're trying to do is use love as your
Speaker 2: decoder for what are the particular activities or situations that
Speaker 2: super energize you. No one else is going to do
Speaker 2: it for you. I actually call those lower red threads.
Speaker 2: Every job has thousands of different activities in it, and
Speaker 2: some of the threads are pretty neutral. You just got
Speaker 2: to do them. They're black, they're green, they're gray, whatever,
Speaker 2: you just got to do them. But some of the
Speaker 2: threads are red. These are activities that you love, and
Speaker 2: everyone's colorblind to your red threads. Even your mum, who
Speaker 2: may love you to the anth degree, doesn't know what
Speaker 2: your red threads are. She doesn't know what activities, moments,
Speaker 2: or situations super energize you. You do, You do know them.
Speaker 2: You're the wisest person about what you love in your life.
Speaker 2: Do love it, loath it once a quarter, and use
Speaker 2: the raw material of your own day or week to
Speaker 2: pinpoint where are my red threads. Because if you want
Speaker 2: a really really happy life at work or frankly life,
Speaker 2: you don't need a red quilt. There's research out of
Speaker 2: the Mayor Clinic which suggests you need twenty percent red
Speaker 2: threads twenty percent red threads.
Speaker 1: That's the equivalent of one day a week, right.
Speaker 2: Exactly, or twenty percent every day. But you don't need
Speaker 2: one hundred percent every day. You're never going to find
Speaker 2: a job you love like, that's just not real. But
Speaker 2: you can find the love and what you do that's different.
Speaker 2: That's doable.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, Well, we're going to take one more quick
Speaker 1: ad break and then I will be back with Marcus Buckingham. Well,
Speaker 1: I am back talking with Marcus Buckingham, the author of
Speaker 1: the new book Design Love in So we've been talking
Speaker 1: about things that energize us, you know, as we go
Speaker 1: about our schedules. I'm curious about you your schedule. This
Speaker 1: is a time management podcast. So do you have any
Speaker 1: you know, rituals or things you do during your day
Speaker 1: that you think make you more productive.
Speaker 2: Well, not to be too subperfrentual, but I start The
Speaker 2: first thing is attitudinal. You've got to think to yourself,
Speaker 2: my day is my smartest, wisest, most loving friend, which
Speaker 2: I know sounds a bit silly, but so many of
Speaker 2: us look through the look at our days as something
Speaker 2: to get through the days. The enemy. It's a to
Speaker 2: do list that rolled over from yesterday, and I've got
Speaker 2: to get through the day, get through the list. And
Speaker 2: of course there is some part about this real, but
Speaker 2: I always start off every day. It's right now, it's
Speaker 2: early in my day. I start off and go, what
Speaker 2: red threads am I going to weave today? Because my
Speaker 2: trying to show me my day is trying to show
Speaker 2: me a whole bunch of threads, And it's basically saying
Speaker 2: to me, every day, is this one read? Is that
Speaker 2: one read? Is this one read? My Day's trying to
Speaker 2: help me find the energy that I need to be
Speaker 2: invigurated in my life. It's trying to if I would
Speaker 2: but listen. So for me, initially, it's always start off
Speaker 2: and go, what red threats will I leave today? Because
Speaker 2: if I don't set that intention around, what are the
Speaker 2: activities that I can seek out, linger on pay attention to.
Speaker 2: If I don't do it, no one's doing it. So
Speaker 2: every day for me starts that way. Over time, I
Speaker 2: end up writing, I mean, I've written down, you know,
Speaker 2: ten or so red threads that I know will invigorate me.
Speaker 2: They always do so for me, and it's going to
Speaker 2: sound boring, but one of my red threads is finding
Speaker 2: patterns in data. I love finding patterns in data. And
Speaker 2: if I let days go by and I don't do that,
Speaker 2: I don't sit with some data to go what does
Speaker 2: it mean? Which I know for some of your listeners,
Speaker 2: I'm sure sounds like pulling teeth.
Speaker 1: We love data over here. This is exactly how people
Speaker 1: spend their time, for instance, is fascinating. I love looking
Speaker 1: at data sets of thousands of people and how they
Speaker 1: spend their time.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely so for me, Like if you the moment
Speaker 2: you say the word data set and patterns, I just
Speaker 2: lean in. I just always have leaned in, and I'm
Speaker 2: just so I love doing that. I love, I mean
Speaker 2: turning it into narrative. I love turning data into narrative.
Speaker 2: So for me, that could be a podcast like this,
Speaker 2: by the way, which is I mean I'm loving like
Speaker 2: times fine by For me, I don't know how much
Speaker 2: time has gone by, but it could be three hours.
Speaker 2: I don't know. It's just whipping by. For me, I
Speaker 2: will deliberately seek out opportunities to Now. I can write,
Speaker 2: I can record, I can do it put. But any
Speaker 2: time where I can seek out an opportunity to tell
Speaker 2: a story from data, I'm going to lean in and
Speaker 2: see that out. So those sort of rituals for me
Speaker 2: give me some intention and control, not control over you
Speaker 2: or control over someone else, but gives me control over
Speaker 2: way in which I'm spending the time in my own days.
Speaker 2: That's hugely important. It gives me agency absolutely.
Speaker 1: Well, Marcus, I always ask my guest, So we've sort
Speaker 1: of been getting at this, but what is something you
Speaker 1: have done recently to take a day from great to awesome?
Speaker 2: Well that's a jolly good question. I mean, for me,
Speaker 2: the challenge in a day is always that it doesn't
Speaker 2: like no one who's calling you knows you the way
Speaker 2: that you know you. So for me, every day has
Speaker 2: to start off and it's not really like something I
Speaker 2: did that is special about a particular day. For me,
Speaker 2: every day's got to be do you want to take
Speaker 2: love seriously in your own life? Marcus? Do you want
Speaker 2: to make sure that that day today you're feeling a
Speaker 2: little bit more full of yourself today as compared to yesterday. So,
Speaker 2: for I mean, I'm not saying I have every single
Speaker 2: day is an awesome day. But once you understand that
Speaker 2: love is your decoder and that love is available, activities
Speaker 2: that you love interactions that you love, situations that you
Speaker 2: love that are so specific and unique to you. Once
Speaker 2: you understand that that's there every day, then I don't know.
Speaker 2: For me, it feels like every day is being designed
Speaker 2: by me to have a lot of love in it,
Speaker 2: and that is awesome. I mean, I'm sorry to sound
Speaker 2: too woo woo.
Speaker 1: That works for me. We're going to design love into
Speaker 1: our days as well in order to take them.
Speaker 2: Just some great one quick thing about that, Laura. The
Speaker 2: opposite of design. I've been thinking about a lot about
Speaker 2: this because of the book. But what's the opposite of design?
Speaker 2: What happened with my company, what happens to so many
Speaker 2: people in their lives is drift. When you don't design,
Speaker 2: you drift. And sometimes you're lucky, you have a great day,
Speaker 2: but in a world which is pulling you and pushing
Speaker 2: you this way and that, which doesn't really think about
Speaker 2: your flourishing very much at all. In fact, as we
Speaker 2: talked about, it sort of ignores your flourishing. You can
Speaker 2: drift a long way from the authority and the energy
Speaker 2: that you need to have a full life. It's not bad,
Speaker 2: it's just you've drifted. And so design feels like the
Speaker 2: right word to say, no, no, no, let's bring it back.
Speaker 2: We're all designers. You can design experiences in your own
Speaker 2: life that invigorate you, and it's up to you to
Speaker 2: do it because no one else.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, absolutely, it's all about being intentional with our time,
Speaker 1: our lives, everything we are doing. So, Marcus, where can
Speaker 1: people find you?
Speaker 2: Well, rather unsurprisingly, probably got a design loove in dot com,
Speaker 2: which is the book site. We've just launched the pre
Speaker 2: orders of the book and we're doing this masterclass series
Speaker 2: for folks with the book with the Harvard Business Review
Speaker 2: who's the publisher, So Design Love in dot Com would
Speaker 2: be great. And then my various socials I'm always pottering about,
Speaker 2: trying to be helpful and thought provoking for folks.
Speaker 1: Excellent, Well, Michaus, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: Thank you to everyone for listening. If you have feedback
Speaker 1: about this or any other episode, you can always reach
Speaker 1: me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making
Speaker 1: the most of our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast.
Speaker 1: If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach
Speaker 1: me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast
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