Speaker 1: I try to purposefully get to a sixty or eighty
Speaker 1: percent answer on something and stop and just say, I'm
Speaker 1: going to walk away from this, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: ask my brain the question, what's one hundred percent answer,
Speaker 1: and not expect my brand to give me an answer
Speaker 1: in the moment, but just know that it's somewhere in there,
Speaker 1: so that when I'm in a moment where I'm beginning
Speaker 1: to disappear again, the subconscious is doing the work that
Speaker 1: the subconscious does.
Speaker 2: Welcome to How I Work, a show about the tactics
Speaker 2: used by the world's most successful people to get so
Speaker 2: much out of their day. I'm your host, doctor Amantha.
Speaker 2: I'm an organizational psychologist, the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium,
Speaker 2: and I'm obsessed with finding ways to optimize my workday.
Speaker 2: Before we get into today's interview, I wanted to firstly
Speaker 2: do a shout out to all the kind people that
Speaker 2: have been leaving reviews for How I Work. I read
Speaker 2: every single one of them and they're just ringing such
Speaker 2: a big smile to my face. It's so nice to
Speaker 2: get feedback from listeners, So thank you, thank you, thank
Speaker 2: you to everyone that's done that and if you're enjoying
Speaker 2: how I work and you maybe haven't left a review,
Speaker 2: then maybe today's the day where you might do that.
Speaker 2: You might leave a star rating, which is awesome and
Speaker 2: thank you to the several hundred people that have done that.
Speaker 2: Or maybe you might write a few words, so thank
Speaker 2: you if that is you. And one other thing before
Speaker 2: we get on with today's show is that you might
Speaker 2: have heard that I have recently launched a second podcast,
Speaker 2: which is called How to Date with my best girlfriend Monique.
Speaker 2: The show is all about helping us get better at dating,
Speaker 2: which is exactly what we're both doing, both being about
Speaker 2: a year out of our respective marriages. So if you're
Speaker 2: interested in learning about how to become a better day
Speaker 2: and maybe consuming more on my podcast, then search for
Speaker 2: How to Date wherever you get your podcasts from, and
Speaker 2: I will also link to that in the show notes.
Speaker 2: All right, let's get on to today's guest. Who is
Speaker 2: Scott d Anthony. This is the second time I've had
Speaker 2: Scott on the show. I had him on oh maybe
Speaker 2: a year and a half ago, and I've known Scott
Speaker 2: for a few years. Our firms do a lot of
Speaker 2: work together. And if you haven't come across Scott before.
Speaker 2: Scott is a global authority on innovation and also the
Speaker 2: former managing partner of inosit, which is a global innovation
Speaker 2: and strategy consulting firm co founded by Clayton Christiansen, the
Speaker 2: late Harvard Business School professor and the grandfather and really creative,
Speaker 2: disruptive innovation. I want to say so. Scott has written
Speaker 2: several best selling books, Got a new One out at
Speaker 2: the Moment, Eat, Sleep, Innovate, and he also writes regularly
Speaker 2: for Harvard Business Review. Scott has been awarded the Thinker's
Speaker 2: fifty Innovation Award, which recognizes the world's leading thinkers on
Speaker 2: innovation and really Scott is one of the smartest people
Speaker 2: that I have the honor of knowing. So we talk
Speaker 2: about all sorts of things in this chat, and in
Speaker 2: particular how Scott's routines and habits and ways of running
Speaker 2: meetings and workshops have dramatically changed thanks to COVID. So
Speaker 2: this interview is full of really practical strategies around how
Speaker 2: Scott has restructured the way he works some of his
Speaker 2: new routines, and also how he's now thinking about client
Speaker 2: engagements and meetings and workshops and things like that. So
Speaker 2: on that note, let's head to Scott to hear about
Speaker 2: how he works. Scott, Welcome back to the show, Amantha.
Speaker 3: It's a pleasure to be here as always.
Speaker 2: So I wanted to reach out to you again and
Speaker 2: have you back on the show because now as we're recording,
Speaker 2: we're in September. I almost had a mental blank. Then
Speaker 2: I'm like, what month are we actually in? But no,
Speaker 2: I believe it's September, mid September. So where gosh six
Speaker 2: months or something like that into COVID and everything that
Speaker 2: goes with that. And I know for you that life
Speaker 2: looks very different because you were often on a plane
Speaker 2: most weeks. So I want you to start by taking
Speaker 2: us through where are you based and how has your
Speaker 2: work life changed in the last six months.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm based in Singapore and I have been in
Speaker 1: Singapore since March seventeenth on this leg. I've been lived
Speaker 1: in Singapore of course for more than ten years. But
Speaker 1: the six months now that I've been in one place
Speaker 1: is I believe, the longest stretch I've been in one
Speaker 1: place in my life. So my work life has changed
Speaker 1: a lot, because you know, my work life used to
Speaker 1: involve getting on planes and going to places, and I
Speaker 1: have not been getting on planes and going to places,
Speaker 1: and that has lots of knock on effects about how
Speaker 1: I spend my time in the day, the hours, when
Speaker 1: I do things, how I do things. We're a consulting company,
Speaker 1: and impacts how we work with clients, how we get clients,
Speaker 1: how we serve clients, lots of areas that we could
Speaker 1: dive deeper into.
Speaker 2: Wow, isn't that amazing? This is the longest period of
Speaker 2: time that you've been in the one place. That's quite crazy.
Speaker 2: I think I could probably claim that same thing too,
Speaker 2: probably in the last decade. This is the longest stretch
Speaker 2: of time I've been in Melbourne at home. So I
Speaker 2: want to know what are some of the things that
Speaker 2: you've changed, And maybe if we look at this on
Speaker 2: a daily basis, because I know that when travel is
Speaker 2: a part of work, like not many days really look
Speaker 2: the same. But now that every day looks the same
Speaker 2: in your home office, I imagine, what does a typical
Speaker 2: structure for your day look like at the moment?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the typical structure for me, and there are
Speaker 1: some days that are different because in Singapore at the moment,
Speaker 1: inside the country, things are actually reasonably open and there
Speaker 1: are opportunities to and I'm sorry for listeners who are
Speaker 1: in different parts of the world, but there are opportunities
Speaker 1: to go out and meet people in controlled ways and
Speaker 1: all that. But there is some degree of variety, so
Speaker 1: I just say that as a caveat. But a typical
Speaker 1: day involves getting up a little bit later than I
Speaker 1: did before, and I'll talk more about that in a bit.
Speaker 1: It involves either having a morning of deep work where
Speaker 1: I've got a task that I need to get through
Speaker 1: and I'll avoid email until I do that task, or
Speaker 1: doing a catch up where my brain will be tired
Speaker 1: and i just want shallow work just to feed it
Speaker 1: a little bit in the morning.
Speaker 3: Then usually in the middle part of the day there's.
Speaker 1: A few meetings that tie to things that are being
Speaker 1: done on this time zone, and then there's a break
Speaker 1: between about six and eight to spend time with the
Speaker 1: family and have dinner. And then from eight until it's done,
Speaker 1: there are calls that are on the European and US
Speaker 1: time zone, and those will go anywhere from most nights
Speaker 1: ten or eleven, some nights two or three. And that's
Speaker 1: been one of the things that's been a big shift
Speaker 1: for me in that I didn't used to do calls
Speaker 1: that late. But one of the pandemic opportunities is I
Speaker 1: could be anywhere in the world with a push of
Speaker 1: a button. So I've kind of expanded my view of
Speaker 1: where I can serve clients from Asia to anywhere. And
Speaker 1: you know, of course it's tiring to do something between
Speaker 1: two and four in the morning, but it's easier than
Speaker 1: dealing with twelve hours of time zone changes. So this
Speaker 1: has had a lot to knock on effects about how
Speaker 1: I think about things and all that. But that's what
Speaker 1: a quasi typical.
Speaker 3: Day looks like.
Speaker 2: I feel exhausted hearing that you're doing meetings at one
Speaker 2: or two in the morning. I'm quite lakish in my behavior.
Speaker 2: I'll sort of naturally wake up at about somewhere between
Speaker 2: five thirty and six thirty. And I remember the last
Speaker 2: time we spoke a couple of weeks ago, I think
Speaker 2: you'd had a two am meeting and then a seven
Speaker 2: am meeting or something crazy like that. So to start with,
Speaker 2: how are you even functioning at that time of night
Speaker 2: and has that actually changed? Essentially, like the chronotype that
Speaker 2: you're running on in terms of your normal sleep wake cycle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it definitely has.
Speaker 1: You know, there's traces back to the experience I had
Speaker 1: when I came back to Singapore in the middle of March.
Speaker 1: So you know, we were supposed to have a big
Speaker 1: face to face meeting in North America with one of
Speaker 1: our big clients, and then that meeting went from face
Speaker 1: to face to virtual and you know, everything was happening.
Speaker 1: So I just flew back to Singapore. But I decided
Speaker 1: the first week I was in Singapore, when I was
Speaker 1: isolated for fourteen days, that I was going to roughly
Speaker 1: keep myself on the US time zone so that when
Speaker 1: we did the virtual meeting, I would just be in
Speaker 1: tune with the meeting. So that was kind of weird,
Speaker 1: But then I realized it actually wasn't that hard. You know,
Speaker 1: if you're stuck in a place and you're trying to
Speaker 1: adjust to different time zones, and at least for me,
Speaker 1: I'm able to adjust my sleep cycle a little bit,
Speaker 1: I could do that. And I said, okay, you know,
Speaker 1: as long as we're in the situation, I should essentially
Speaker 1: mentally put myself on the time zone of the Maldives,
Speaker 1: which was, you know, a nice, nice place to imagine,
Speaker 1: which is, you.
Speaker 3: Know, a few hours earlier than Singapore.
Speaker 1: So you know, it just means that I'm starting my
Speaker 1: day mentally a little later and ending it mentally a
Speaker 1: little later. And you know, as long as I found
Speaker 1: that I get enough sleep in between the two, I'm okay.
Speaker 1: And I don't usually have things that go until two
Speaker 1: and then start at seven. Those are anomalous days. I
Speaker 1: tried very hard if I've got a quirky meeting after
Speaker 1: midnight to just have the morning be clear, and sometimes
Speaker 1: that doesn't work and you have to deal with it.
Speaker 1: But I never do that more than one day, so.
Speaker 3: I don't do that back to back days.
Speaker 1: If I've got a week where I've got a couple
Speaker 1: things that are post midnight, the mornings are as clear
Speaker 1: as they possibly can be.
Speaker 3: And as part of that too.
Speaker 1: I blocked off all all Monday mornings and all Friday afternoons.
Speaker 1: And so this is just times when I'm just not
Speaker 1: going to take other meetings.
Speaker 2: And what strategies are you using for I guess that's
Speaker 2: sleep shifting to effectively be in a different time zone
Speaker 2: to the one that you're living in, where the daylight
Speaker 2: is generally the thing that gets us into local times,
Speaker 2: So how are you doing that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I mean, I'm thankful for whatever genetics
Speaker 1: have enabled this to be mostly possible, But you know,
Speaker 1: it's mostly making sure that I manage the calendar. Is
Speaker 1: at least for me, the thing that wakes me up
Speaker 1: as much as anything else is the stress of what's
Speaker 1: coming in front of me. So you know, it's one
Speaker 1: of these weird things. And I'm sure you have similar experiences.
Speaker 1: It's like if you have an early morning meeting and
Speaker 1: you know that you need every minute of sleep, you
Speaker 1: still wake up before an alarm because you're anxious about.
Speaker 3: The early morning meeting.
Speaker 1: And to me, a large part of it is just
Speaker 1: making sure that my brain is cleared when I know
Speaker 1: that I'm going to have a weird no, so I
Speaker 1: don't have that stress leading to me getting up early.
Speaker 1: I also always give space, and I know I need
Speaker 1: space between my last work activity and bed. It's just
Speaker 1: it's an hour an hour between the last thing that
Speaker 1: I do and when I'm able to go to sleep,
Speaker 1: so I just prepare for that. And I have started
Speaker 1: doing meditation and deep breathing, which is something I did
Speaker 1: not do before the middle of the pandemic, so it
Speaker 1: is something that I found helps as well.
Speaker 3: And then you know, just managing.
Speaker 1: Food and stuff like that as well, and of course
Speaker 1: all of this. You know, we've got four kids here
Speaker 1: in Singapore, and we have clear division of responsibilities, and
Speaker 1: there are mornings where I get the kids and my
Speaker 1: wife gets to sleep, and there are mornings where my
Speaker 1: wife gets up and I get to sleep, and you know,
Speaker 1: we're very transparent and open about those discussions. You know,
Speaker 1: the weekends have generally been the times where I've been
Speaker 1: getting up earlier because I tend not to have late
Speaker 1: calls then, and just making sure that we balance and
Speaker 1: manage it that as best we can.
Speaker 2: I want to dig into deep and shallow work. You
Speaker 2: mentioned that as part of your routine, and I remember
Speaker 2: when we spoke last a lot of your deep work
Speaker 2: rituals took place when you're on a plane and therefore
Speaker 2: disconnected from all things digitally distracting and also in cafes
Speaker 2: and sort of other such places. So how does your
Speaker 2: deep work ritual work now? And I guess how are you?
Speaker 2: Trigging is not quite the word, but it is kind
Speaker 2: of tricking your brain into going, okay, this is deep
Speaker 2: work time, because I found for myself I completely had
Speaker 2: to change my habits and triggers around that, because I
Speaker 2: too would do a lot of my deep work in
Speaker 2: cafes and on planes, which is now no longer an
Speaker 2: option at all in Melbourne where I'm based.
Speaker 1: No, absolutely, And you know, so the planes have certainly
Speaker 1: been out for me. The cafes are conceivable but challenging,
Speaker 1: you know, because you're then either very with Singapore regulation,
Speaker 1: you're either very slowly nursing a drink, or you're sitting
Speaker 1: around with a mask on, which just makes you conscious
Speaker 1: and it's just a little bit harder for your brain.
Speaker 1: Done one and focus, I've found, so for me it
Speaker 1: really has been three things. Number one has been being
Speaker 1: even more ruthless about scheduling the time, making sure that
Speaker 1: I use some of the things Amantha that you've taught
Speaker 1: me about making sure that you put formal time on
Speaker 1: the calendar for things, and then making sure that that
Speaker 1: is time that you hold sacracent.
Speaker 3: So that's number one.
Speaker 1: Number two, to trick my brain, I do change space,
Speaker 1: just I do it within the place in which we live.
Speaker 1: And you know, I again am fortunate that there's enough
Speaker 1: different places that I can work. You know, we've got
Speaker 1: a nice porch that if the weather is good, can
Speaker 1: be a good place to get stuff done. And the
Speaker 1: kids are in school. Schools are open here, so there
Speaker 1: are good quiet periods of time where I can actually
Speaker 1: do that.
Speaker 3: Where sometimes you know, it's at weird hours.
Speaker 1: You know, it could be quite late at night where
Speaker 1: you get that moment where you've got ninety minutes just
Speaker 1: to crank through things in between calls.
Speaker 3: So it's making sure.
Speaker 1: It's not all done with the in the home office
Speaker 1: where I sit most of the time, but it's in
Speaker 1: different spaces in the house. And number three, I've used
Speaker 1: music a lot as the way just to get my
Speaker 1: brain into flow.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: There's just certain mixes that I have or playlists on
Speaker 1: Spotify that just tell my brain this is when you're
Speaker 1: going to actually engage in a task. And I found
Speaker 1: for me, at least, I get much more in flow
Speaker 1: when I have background music. And I'm very thankful for
Speaker 1: the AirPod pros from Apple. They're just to me just
Speaker 1: phenomenal noise blockers, so you really can just immerse yourself
Speaker 1: in sound and just disappear in what you're working on.
Speaker 1: So those are the things.
Speaker 3: That I've done.
Speaker 2: That's great. What are your go to playlists then for
Speaker 2: your deep work?
Speaker 1: Oh, it's a mix of different things, you know, and
Speaker 1: sometimes it's just following threads, you know. So I like
Speaker 1: music a lot. They are all things that I've created.
Speaker 1: If I'm trying to do deep work. This is not
Speaker 1: when I listen to my favorite band, which is a
Speaker 1: Pearl Jam is good for other things, but it is
Speaker 1: not good for deep work. But usually I will have
Speaker 1: some album that I've just recently. Recently, I purchased a
Speaker 1: new album from Phoebe Bridgers and Bright Eyes, and there's
Speaker 1: just a tonality in both of those albums that's just
Speaker 1: good for me when I'm working. And then I'll go
Speaker 1: from those albums and sometimes go to Spotify radio off
Speaker 1: the songs.
Speaker 3: Actually do buy albums, by the way, I just you know, I.
Speaker 1: Feel like in the creative space, I write things and
Speaker 1: I hope people buy some of the things that I do.
Speaker 1: So I always feel like for artists, if I am
Speaker 1: listening to the music, I owe it to them to
Speaker 1: buy the albums as well, you know. So I buy
Speaker 1: a couple dozen albums a year, and it just changes
Speaker 1: depending on mood. But it tends to be things that
Speaker 1: are a little bit discordant sonically, but not things that
Speaker 1: are too loud, if that makes sense. So something where
Speaker 1: I can kind of feel the noise but it's not
Speaker 1: disruptive to my brain. I've actually never thought about that before,
Speaker 1: but that's at least the way that I think about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's very interesting. I remember, like a couple of
Speaker 2: years back now, I had Matt Mullenwig on the show,
Speaker 2: the co founder of Automatic, and he had a strategy
Speaker 2: where he would to get into flow. He would listen
Speaker 2: to the same song on repeat. Do you ever do
Speaker 2: that or is it always circling like straight through the album.
Speaker 1: I never listened to the same song and repeat. And generally,
Speaker 1: if I'm trying to lose myself, it is some collection
Speaker 1: on random, because if I listen to something in order,
Speaker 1: like if I listened to the Phoebe Bridges album in order,
Speaker 1: my brain is starting to track into and it knows
Speaker 1: what's coming, and I get kind of pulled too much
Speaker 1: into the music on random for whatever reason, our brain
Speaker 1: kind of loses it.
Speaker 3: You know, you hear it, you hear it, but.
Speaker 1: It's not something that you're tracking and figuring out it
Speaker 1: doesn't really make sense because you would think if you're
Speaker 1: listening to something where you know what's coming next, it's
Speaker 1: a way to not have to process things, and when
Speaker 1: you get surprised by a song, then you have to
Speaker 1: stop and think about it for a second. But at
Speaker 1: least for me, it just helps me disappear.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting listening to you talk about it almost
Speaker 2: makes me want to experiment with music again. I've tried
Speaker 2: different strategies around music and working rituals, and I did
Speaker 2: try the same song on repeat. I remember when I
Speaker 2: was going through a massive Hamilton stage quite a while ago.
Speaker 2: Now I would have a particular song on repeat from Hamilton,
Speaker 2: which I found I found quite good because you just
Speaker 2: sort of get into the zone and it does become
Speaker 2: background music quite quickly when it is the same song.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's almost caterintuitive what you're saying about the
Speaker 2: random music. But I'm feeling all inspired to try music again.
Speaker 2: When I work now, I want to look at shallow
Speaker 2: work because you said something interesting where some mornings you'll
Speaker 2: feel the need to feed your brain with shallow work.
Speaker 2: And for me that just kind of struck something in
Speaker 2: me because in my own possibly quite rigid rule book.
Speaker 2: It's like, hang on shallow work in the morning. The
Speaker 2: only time I would do that is if I've got
Speaker 2: a keynote in the morning, and I know I can't
Speaker 2: get into flow before the keynote because I'll just be disrupted.
Speaker 2: So tell me about how you know when you're going
Speaker 2: to do shallow work in the morning. And I'm just
Speaker 2: curious to understand more about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, some of this is just again
Speaker 1: just given the reality of the way that twenty twenty
Speaker 1: has worked. You know, my chronotype, according to the test
Speaker 1: that I took about reinventing your work day, is a
Speaker 1: middle bird. So I am neither a lark nor a
Speaker 1: night owl. But the thing I find for me is
Speaker 1: where I am at my best really is circumstance contingent.
Speaker 1: So there are some days where I've not worked that late.
Speaker 1: I've woken up after a good sleep and I can
Speaker 1: hop out of bed and I could go and write
Speaker 1: a chapter of the book. And there are other days
Speaker 1: where it's been more fragmented, it's been later. I've had
Speaker 1: a chopping morning where there's just no way I could
Speaker 1: do it. I just I'm not going to be really
Speaker 1: deep functional until later in the afternoon or early in
Speaker 1: the evening, and I have a reasonably good sense of
Speaker 1: myself to just have a feeling as to what type
Speaker 1: of day it is, and if it's a day like that,
Speaker 1: then I'll flip around and say, Okay, this is a
Speaker 1: great day to do stupid stuff and just answer the
Speaker 1: emails that need to get answered. And I know I'm
Speaker 1: beating them whatever skinner light dopamine hit when I do it,
Speaker 1: and I know I'm not really making progress with anything material,
Speaker 1: but it's just.
Speaker 3: A way to kind of warm up.
Speaker 1: And there are other days where that is the exact
Speaker 1: last thing that I will do, where I will say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I really do have it in my brain to do it,
Speaker 1: and I need that focus first thing in the morning,
Speaker 1: and I won't even look at email.
Speaker 3: So to me, it's very circumstanced contingent.
Speaker 1: And I do have something that I adopted as a
Speaker 1: ritual a couple of years ago that is held, which is,
Speaker 1: I do not look at email first thing in the
Speaker 1: morning under any circumstance. So I wake up and I
Speaker 1: do other things, and I might look at what's app
Speaker 1: to see who's texted me, and I'll read some sports news,
Speaker 1: and I'll look at other things, and it is only
Speaker 1: until I've had my first sip of coffee that i
Speaker 1: will allow myself to look at email.
Speaker 3: And some days it's not even that. If I really
Speaker 3: have a deep work task, I won't even peek because
Speaker 3: you know you know this.
Speaker 1: I mean, you tell other people this, You tell yourself, Oh,
Speaker 1: I can just look and not engage. But your brain
Speaker 1: just starts worrying once you see these emails and you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: here all this super stuff that I need to deal.
Speaker 1: Not that my colleagues asked me to do super stuff,
Speaker 1: but you know, you know the point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, given the amount of time that you were
Speaker 2: spending traveling and now that's completely been removed from your life.
Speaker 2: And I say this because obviously plane travel is so
Speaker 2: good for work in many ways, and particularly when that's
Speaker 2: become quite habitual and almost this Pavlovian response I find
Speaker 2: when I'm on a plane, I'm completely focused. There's so
Speaker 2: much ineffective and unusable time when you are traveling a
Speaker 2: little lot, like you know, moving from an uber to
Speaker 2: the airport, going through security, waiting in lines, and all
Speaker 2: those sorts of things like I feel like you must
Speaker 2: have a lot of time now that you didn't have previously,
Speaker 2: And I want to know if Astley ah, like, how
Speaker 2: conscious of you are that, and are you also conscious
Speaker 2: of deliberately using that time in other ways?
Speaker 1: I am definitely conscious of it. But there's a bite
Speaker 1: that relates to new habits during the pandemic. We moved
Speaker 1: right before the pandemic end of February to a place
Speaker 1: that's about a two minute walk to the Botanic Gardens
Speaker 1: in Singapore, and I think this is true. I think
Speaker 1: one hundred percent of the days since the pandemic started
Speaker 1: after I got out of my quarantine, I've spent at
Speaker 1: least thirty minutes in the garden, and many days more
Speaker 1: than that going on long walks or going for runs,
Speaker 1: sometimes doing work concurrently with it. Sometimes I will go
Speaker 1: and do some of the shallow work email while walking
Speaker 1: through the gardens. Sometimes I will purposely not do anything
Speaker 1: but just let my subconscious work on things as I'm
Speaker 1: walking and listening to music. Sometimes I don't want to
Speaker 1: work on anything. I just want to walk or run
Speaker 1: or listen to music or whatever. But that's kind of
Speaker 1: been the equivalent, you know, if it's thirty to ninety
Speaker 1: minutes a day. That's kind of the equivalent of waiting
Speaker 1: in lines for planes that or dealing with it those
Speaker 1: moments where you just have time when you can't really
Speaker 1: do something.
Speaker 3: It's kind of the same thing for me.
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm conscious, but I also have consciously put in
Speaker 1: something else that is a routine and ritual that does
Speaker 1: not involve me sitting in a place staring at a screen.
Speaker 1: And again, I'm very thankful to be in Singapore, which
Speaker 1: has allowed that consistently. You know, even when it went
Speaker 1: for the tightest controls that it did in April and May,
Speaker 1: individual exercise was something that was always allowed. So you know,
Speaker 1: they were restricted in terms of being with other people,
Speaker 1: and they were restricted in terms of parts of the
Speaker 1: garden you could go to to enable safe distancing, but
Speaker 1: the garden was always open. And that's one of the
Speaker 1: things that I've done just to you know, partially keep
Speaker 1: myself from going too crazy during these times and also
Speaker 1: to give myself space because you know, I have found
Speaker 1: for me.
Speaker 3: You know, sometimes it's when you're waiting in a line.
Speaker 1: To go through security that your brain's so engaged and
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, all of a sudden, it's
Speaker 1: like ah, a connection is made. And that is one
Speaker 1: of the big things that I miss about travel. It's
Speaker 1: just the change in stimuli is something that's always very
Speaker 1: helped for me when I'm working on anything and just
Speaker 1: you see something and you make a connection you hadn't.
Speaker 3: Thought to make.
Speaker 1: And I was working on an idea that this idea
Speaker 1: for something related to leadership, and I remember the moment
Speaker 1: where I had something that clicked together and I began
Speaker 1: to see what it could be. You know, I had
Speaker 1: been working, I stopped working. I went out to the garden.
Speaker 1: I was listening to music. It was raining a little bit.
Speaker 1: I was reading the Harvard Business Review. It was way
Speaker 1: too much stimuli. But I was just walking past this
Speaker 1: hill and like, ah ah ah, the answer are these
Speaker 1: four things And it just it hit me in that moment.
Speaker 3: And why then, who knows.
Speaker 1: But it's just finding ways to continue to make sure
Speaker 1: that you get the just diversity and stimulized so that
Speaker 1: you could let your subconscious process, to me, is just
Speaker 1: a really important thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I do want to ask a bit more
Speaker 2: about almost how you can take full advantage of those
Speaker 2: walks or maybe other rituals that you have to think
Speaker 2: more creatively. Like I remember a couple of months ago,
Speaker 2: I had professors got Son and sh on the show
Speaker 2: from Rice University, and he's done a bit of research
Speaker 2: around how you can use rituals to boost creativity, which
Speaker 2: almost sounds counterintuitive, And so he described something that he
Speaker 2: did every day sounds similar to what you're doing, where
Speaker 2: every morning he'll go for a half hour walk and
Speaker 2: he'll deliberately walk the same path so that his mind
Speaker 2: can kind of be focusing on other things, but also
Speaker 2: in the same breath, he said, well, even though you're
Speaker 2: walking the same path, there's going to be different sorts
Speaker 2: of stimuli that you see on your walk. Different people
Speaker 2: will be walking, different dogs will be out, and so forth.
Speaker 2: So I want to know, how do you almost think
Speaker 2: about priming yourself and these experiences, whether that be walking
Speaker 2: around the botanical gardens or something else, to optimize for
Speaker 2: creativity and those sparks of insights.
Speaker 3: Well, to me, there's two things.
Speaker 1: Number One, the gardens here are not tiny, but not
Speaker 1: that big, So there's no no inch that I have
Speaker 1: not gone through, So there's a little bit even if
Speaker 1: it's not the same route it's not new, you know,
Speaker 1: so I'm not discovering new things, etc. Although you know,
Speaker 1: you always do see little things like the flower you
Speaker 1: haven't seen before or whatever, So that there is a
Speaker 1: routineness to it that allows your subconscious to work on
Speaker 1: other things. And I do find that valuable. Is there
Speaker 1: other times where you just you want to discover, you
Speaker 1: want to lose yourself in a new place, and that's
Speaker 1: a different thing, So I certainly would echo that experience.
Speaker 1: The other thing for me is that I try to
Speaker 1: purposefully when I wanted to flex this muscle, I try
Speaker 1: to purposefully get to a sixty or eighty percent answer
Speaker 1: on something and stop and just say, I'm going to
Speaker 1: walk away from this, and I'm going to ask my
Speaker 1: brain the question what's the one hundred percent answer, and
Speaker 1: not expect my brain to give me an answer in
Speaker 1: the moment, but just know that it's somewhere in there,
Speaker 1: so that when I'm in a moment where I'm beginning
Speaker 1: to disappear again, the subconscious is doing the work that
Speaker 1: the subconscious does.
Speaker 3: You know, just a practical example.
Speaker 1: You know, I've got a session I'm running for a
Speaker 1: European bank next week, and I started working on the
Speaker 1: presentation materials about ten days ago, and I wasn't trying
Speaker 1: to finish it.
Speaker 3: Ten days ago.
Speaker 1: I was trying to get a couple pieces done, and
Speaker 1: a couple pieces very purposefully open, because I didn't know
Speaker 1: what I wanted to say in those pieces, and I
Speaker 1: just left them there, and I just left them messy,
Speaker 1: and I asked my brain the question, how do you
Speaker 1: make this last messy? And then you know when exactly
Speaker 1: it comes You never know for sure, but it's in
Speaker 1: there somewhere. So that that's the thing that I have
Speaker 1: tried to do, and I've learned from this current moment
Speaker 1: that at least for me, that's effective to give yourself
Speaker 1: a sixty percent answer in a question and let your
Speaker 1: subconscious do its work.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's the garden, sometimes it's the shower. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: in the middle of trying to adjudicate a fight between
Speaker 1: the kids, whatever, just it comes to.
Speaker 3: But you can't fully fully appreciate or predict.
Speaker 2: I like that that's sixty percent rule. I can definitely relate.
Speaker 2: Makes me more conscious of actually deliberately doing that now.
Speaker 2: I remember when you were last on the show, we
Speaker 2: spoke about how you'd gone about removing the majority of
Speaker 2: recurring meetings from your diary, and you earlier in this
Speaker 2: chat you mentioned that you've got no meetings. Was it
Speaker 2: Monday morning and Friday afternoon?
Speaker 3: Correct?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So what's happening now around meetings? What have you
Speaker 2: found has happened in your own working life now that
Speaker 2: we're not traveling? Like, are you in more meetings now?
Speaker 2: Are they longer, are they shorter? What does that look
Speaker 2: like for you at the moment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So this this year has been a weird year
Speaker 1: for all of us. You know, I think I've been
Speaker 1: busier this year than any year that I can remember.
Speaker 1: I just have had the good fortune of having interesting
Speaker 1: client work taking place across multiple geographies, while also doing
Speaker 1: all the normal stuff and a book coming out in
Speaker 1: a month and all the things related to that.
Speaker 3: So you know, it's been a very busy year, a
Speaker 3: good busy year.
Speaker 1: So I would say if I were to compare the
Speaker 1: number of meetings now to previous years, I would say
Speaker 1: they're up by a pretty material amount. And I would
Speaker 1: say in terms of timing of meetings, I don't really
Speaker 1: see a big difference. You know, I've got some meetings
Speaker 1: that are short. You know, I've had a twenty one
Speaker 1: minute catch up with somebody earlier today. I've got some
Speaker 1: meetings that are longer. I've got a two hour session
Speaker 1: with the cloud at the end of the day to day.
Speaker 1: Very rarely has there been kind of the equivalent of
Speaker 1: the all day meeting. You know, I think, like many people,
Speaker 1: I have found that you get much past three three
Speaker 1: and a half hours on any topic in a virtual world.
Speaker 3: It's just really hard to make that work.
Speaker 1: And the thing that I have tried to do personally
Speaker 1: is I just don't function well if I've got three
Speaker 1: hours blocked straight through of video meetings. So I have
Speaker 1: number one tried to make sure that I do have
Speaker 1: gaps in my schedule, and number two made sure that
Speaker 1: I don't do everything as a video meeting. There's somebody
Speaker 1: that I've got a standing meeting with, my colleague Patrick,
Speaker 1: who who you've met, Amantha.
Speaker 3: We meet every week. We know what we look like.
Speaker 1: We don't need to see each other, you know, we
Speaker 1: always do that as a phone call, and we both
Speaker 1: appreciate that.
Speaker 3: You know, it's a weird thing. We have flipped this
Speaker 3: year the world.
Speaker 1: To having this almost obligation to have a video meeting,
Speaker 1: and not everything needs to be done on a screen.
Speaker 1: I think many times being able to really listen, I
Speaker 1: think it's done better by a voice than by a video.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and look, there's research to back that up. I
Speaker 2: know some research I came across suggests that we're actually
Speaker 2: better at reading people's emotions over the phone as opposed
Speaker 2: to video, which seems completely the wrong way around. But yeah,
Speaker 2: that's what's come out so in terms of making meetings effective,
Speaker 2: because I feel like that's interesting that you're doing a
Speaker 2: lot of meetings that make sense. But I think that
Speaker 2: for people that are having good meetings, they are thinking
Speaker 2: about meetings differently because face to face strategies don't necessarily
Speaker 2: translate into the online world. And I want to know how, like,
Speaker 2: what are some of the different things that you've been
Speaker 2: trying in meetings to make them more engaging, more useful,
Speaker 2: and more productive.
Speaker 1: Ultimately, this is something that obviously we have thought a
Speaker 1: lot about in our consulting work, because the way that
Speaker 1: we did consulting pre pandemic was very hands on, very
Speaker 1: side by side, very collaborative, and of course you have
Speaker 1: to think about how do you achieve the same sort
Speaker 1: of impact and have the same feel of collaboration in
Speaker 1: a world that just has constraints on it. So the
Speaker 1: couple of things that I've seen in a client setting
Speaker 1: that have worked a lot is number one, the use
Speaker 1: smart use of interactive tools, whether it's polling or other technologies.
Speaker 1: You know, we in early March, my Collie g Asher
Speaker 1: Debong with an outside developer, hack together, a pretty simple
Speaker 1: engagement tool that we have found to be amazingly effective
Speaker 1: to guide group discussions. So using tools to encourage discussion
Speaker 1: is one thing. And then the second thing, if you're
Speaker 1: on a platform that enables it, finding ways to break
Speaker 1: groups into the smaller groups using Zoom, breakoutrooms or whatever
Speaker 1: also as a way to make discussions much more engaging.
Speaker 1: And I have found if you use these two things, well,
Speaker 1: if you use pulling and engagement technologies and you use
Speaker 1: breakout rooms, you can actually in some cases have more engaging,
Speaker 1: have better virtual meetings than you'd have physical ones, particularly
Speaker 1: because there is a democratization factor when everybody's box on
Speaker 1: Zoom is the same size. And I remember this experience
Speaker 1: I had with the Singaporean company a few months ago
Speaker 1: that just really struck me. It was a company that
Speaker 1: is one hundred percent owned by Tamasik, which is one
Speaker 1: of the sovereign wealth funds here, and we were helping
Speaker 1: them think through their twenty thirty strategy. And we had
Speaker 1: on this session we had their top leadership team, we
Speaker 1: had their board of directors, we had some of their investors,
Speaker 1: we had some outside government people, and then we had
Speaker 1: about a dozen up and coming leaders in the organization.
Speaker 1: And I can tell you had we done this base
Speaker 1: to face, there would have been a VIP table that
Speaker 1: had all the important people at the front of the room,
Speaker 1: all the younger people would be at the edge of
Speaker 1: the room, and they would have said not a word.
Speaker 1: But in a virtual setting using some of these engagement tools,
Speaker 1: everybody is the same size and basically in the same space,
Speaker 1: so we had wide participation. It was easy for me
Speaker 1: to bring in different voices. We had people go toe
Speaker 1: to toe against the chairman of the company in a
Speaker 1: respectful way, of course, but just a really vivid, really
Speaker 1: democratic discussion that was very unusual for my experience in Singapore.
Speaker 1: So again I think done in the right sort of way,
Speaker 1: there are some dividends that you can get from a
Speaker 1: digital dislocation that can lead to higher engagement, more inclusion,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Of course, it can be a lot worse too.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've got to actively manage it and create
Speaker 1: space for emotions and all that. But I have seen
Speaker 1: that there are some are some pandemic premiums.
Speaker 2: That really stuck with me when we spoke a few
Speaker 2: weeks ago and we were talking about the future of work,
Speaker 2: and one of the benefits is that no one considered
Speaker 2: the head of the table when you're running a Zoom
Speaker 2: meeting or a Zoom workshop. And it's fine. It's not
Speaker 2: something I'd actually consciously thought about, but now I think
Speaker 2: about it a lot when I'm engaged in online experiences.
Speaker 2: I want to know, what else are you thinking about,
Speaker 2: whether that be for meetings or even workshops that you're
Speaker 2: running with clients. How are you thinking about the openings
Speaker 2: and closings differently, or are there any other strategies that
Speaker 2: you've been experimenting with that you've found to be particularly effective.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a few different things.
Speaker 1: So one, the ability to have kind of the side conversations.
Speaker 1: It's a lot easier in a digital world than to
Speaker 1: do it face to face, you know, so that you
Speaker 1: are a discussion we have tonight is with one of
Speaker 1: our clients. We have a Microsoft Team's chat with all
Speaker 1: the NSA people on it, so that we can just
Speaker 1: make real time calibrations, or someone can say, hey, this person,
Speaker 1: I can see they really want to get into the discussion,
Speaker 1: or we haven't heard from this person, or this person's
Speaker 1: got something good to say about it because I've already
Speaker 1: talked with them, blah blah blah blah blah, which is just.
Speaker 3: Really hard to do face to face.
Speaker 1: So you know, having whether it's Slash or Microsoft Teams
Speaker 1: or Zoom or whatever or WhatsApp chat, having the ability
Speaker 1: to essentially parallel path things I think helps a lot.
Speaker 1: The other thing that we certainly have done, and I
Speaker 1: think many people have done this is just have ground
Speaker 1: rules up front. You know, camera's on, not off, and
Speaker 1: if you need to go away and turn the camera
Speaker 1: off for a few minutes, that's totally fine, and put
Speaker 1: yourself on mute and turn the camera off if you
Speaker 1: need to do it. But otherwise we want people to
Speaker 1: be present and this is I use the chat window
Speaker 1: for this.
Speaker 3: And blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: So having ground rules I think is important. And then
Speaker 1: there's a group that I'm part of that was sharing
Speaker 1: tips and tricks, and they mentioned something that I'd not
Speaker 1: thought of before, but just small ways to do digital engagement.
Speaker 3: You know, so opening a meeting.
Speaker 1: By saying, Okay, where's everybody calling in from? Or what
Speaker 1: did everybody have for their last meal or whatever, and
Speaker 1: just have them to type into the chat window, or
Speaker 1: even have something where you ask people to handwrite a
Speaker 1: word and hold the word up to their screen, so
Speaker 1: you know, how are you feeling right now, and people
Speaker 1: write it up and hold it up, just as a
Speaker 1: very small way to get in game aagement and to
Speaker 1: make things a little bit more human. And then the
Speaker 1: final thing that I would say is, you know, particularly
Speaker 1: for internal meetings, I mean, of course we've got the
Speaker 1: business at hand, but you know, in today's world where
Speaker 1: depending on the country you're in, there are at least
Speaker 1: two and sometimes three crises going on. You know, there's
Speaker 1: the global health crisis, there's an economic crisis in many
Speaker 1: countries in the US, there's a social justice crisis, so
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of stuff going on.
Speaker 3: Just giving space for people to be humans and.
Speaker 1: Just say how are you doing and saying no more
Speaker 1: than that and not to try to fix, but just
Speaker 1: to try to listen. Create the equivalent of a holding
Speaker 1: container for emotions. I found that's an incredibly important thing
Speaker 1: to do. I wish I did even more of it,
Speaker 1: because you know, you're just so used to getting into
Speaker 1: the business at hand, but I think we all just
Speaker 1: need to give that space for humanity right now more
Speaker 1: than ever.
Speaker 2: That's so true. And I really like that idea of
Speaker 2: writing a word down on a shade of paper. I
Speaker 2: haven't come across that before, and that's really cool. I'm
Speaker 2: definitely going to be stealing that, you know, with meetings,
Speaker 2: and something I've been thinking about a lot is just
Speaker 2: the role of synchronous versus asynchronous communication, particularly in the
Speaker 2: remote world, and I want to know how you think
Speaker 2: about it, like when or what are the right types
Speaker 2: of purposes or reasons to have a meeting and do
Speaker 2: synchronous communication versus not because I think and what I
Speaker 2: observe in a lot of the organizations we work with
Speaker 2: is that there are a lot of meetings going on
Speaker 2: that would best be served in an asynchronous way. I
Speaker 2: want to know what your thoughts are about this and
Speaker 2: how you think about applying that with the meetings that
Speaker 2: you're setting and attending.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great point, and I wish I had
Speaker 1: a great answer to it, because I certainly have the
Speaker 1: same feeling that you do where sometimes you end a
Speaker 1: meeting and you say, well, that could have been an email,
Speaker 1: and that that should have been an email or should
Speaker 1: have been a one on one conversation versus a ten
Speaker 1: person conversation with eight people listening.
Speaker 3: And I have not seen a great framework for this
Speaker 3: out there.
Speaker 1: You know, you could imagine there's something around are you
Speaker 1: really trying to actively collectively problem solve something versus in
Speaker 1: part information versus gather data from people? And I suspect
Speaker 1: there's something about is it one way or two way?
Speaker 1: Is it single party or is at multi party? That
Speaker 1: you could make some kind of two by two from
Speaker 1: it and solve it. But I know it's true, you know,
Speaker 1: I just I had a reinforcing moment. I was doing
Speaker 1: a webinar for a European company and we were talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, what are some challenges some you know, internal
Speaker 1: innovation problems worth solving and they say, you know, one
Speaker 1: of our challenges is we can't get people to turn
Speaker 1: on the video when they're in meetings. And because of
Speaker 1: that it's hard to have, you know, good video based meetings.
Speaker 1: And we talked about a little bit and the real
Speaker 1: problem was they had people who were showing up to
Speaker 1: meetings that were not present in the meeting at all.
Speaker 1: They didn't want to turn on the video because that
Speaker 1: would show that they were just doing other work.
Speaker 3: They said, well why are they coming to that?
Speaker 1: You know, there's obviously a much bigger issue there, you know,
Speaker 1: and I do think dB Bank, who as you know,
Speaker 1: it's a big vocal case study in the forthcoming book
Speaker 1: Sleep Innovate, which the publisher would be mad if I didn't.
Speaker 3: Mention during this discussion. So there you go, I got
Speaker 3: it in.
Speaker 1: So but dbs Bank, I think has done a really
Speaker 1: good job of thinking about what are the rules and
Speaker 1: rituals that you have to put around meetings and how
Speaker 1: do you think about making sure there are clear purposes
Speaker 1: for every meeting that you have, that you have clear
Speaker 1: reasons why everyone's there every meeting. You have to come
Speaker 1: to the meeting with three S one R, three suggestions,
Speaker 1: one recommendation. The meetings have to have a meeting owner.
Speaker 1: They have to have a joyful observer that's making sure
Speaker 1: the meeting owner does their job. That's the Mojo program.
Speaker 1: The Mojo is rated for five things, the degree to
Speaker 1: which they are data driven, they take action, they keep time,
Speaker 1: and a couple other things. There's an app where everybody
Speaker 1: rates these things. At the end there's a leaderboard that's
Speaker 1: provided so the meeting owner knows how they're doing.
Speaker 3: So just very thoughtful ways to.
Speaker 1: Think about are we using our collective time as effectively
Speaker 1: and as efficiently as we can? And I think there
Speaker 1: is so much more that can be done here, and
Speaker 1: we just know that so much time is wasted on things,
Speaker 1: and I wish I had a better answer for knowing
Speaker 1: exactly what those things are.
Speaker 3: But that's at least a couple of stream of consciousness thoughts.
Speaker 2: Oh that's great, Scott, And you've done your publisher, Harvard
Speaker 2: Business Review Press proud by introducing the book. Although I
Speaker 2: was just about to ask you a question about your
Speaker 2: new book, Eat Sleep, Innovate, which comes out on October twenty.
Speaker 2: Is that I got the date right.
Speaker 1: You have it exactly right. It's the same date. We'll
Speaker 1: see which one sells more. But Matthew McConaughey has a
Speaker 1: book called Green Lights coming out on the same day.
Speaker 3: I have failed in my effort to get us to
Speaker 3: do joint promotion for our two books. But we will
Speaker 3: see whose book does better.
Speaker 2: Oh, yes, I remember you're talking about that. Well, I
Speaker 2: won't be buying Matthew's book, if that's any consolation. But
Speaker 2: I haven't got my hands on an early copy of
Speaker 2: your book yet, Scott, I'll assume it's in the mail.
Speaker 2: In all seriousness, though, how does one launch a book
Speaker 2: in a pandemic? How are you thinking about that?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Again, you look for what is the silver lining? Which
Speaker 1: is another book I wrote that was a decade ago.
Speaker 1: But you look for the silver lining and things. And
Speaker 1: the great thing about right now is again, I could
Speaker 1: be anywhere, you know. So I'm going to be in
Speaker 1: Japan tonight. I'm going to be in India this afternoon.
Speaker 1: I'm going to be in Thailand later this afternoon. I'm
Speaker 1: in Australia now, you know.
Speaker 3: So it's just my.
Speaker 1: Point of view has been say yes to everything. And
Speaker 1: I've got some promotional things that are being done in
Speaker 1: the US, in Europe, in Australia, in Japan, whatever, all
Speaker 1: around the globe. So that is one thing that is
Speaker 1: a bit of a silver lining, and everybody's in the
Speaker 1: same situation, so they recognize and understand it. So that's
Speaker 1: one thing. The second thing is trying to figure out
Speaker 1: the connection points between the ideas in the book and
Speaker 1: the circumstances that we're in right now, which is not
Speaker 1: very hard.
Speaker 3: You know. The book, as.
Speaker 1: You know, it's about essentially how do you create a
Speaker 1: culture of innovation? And in the book we say that
Speaker 1: innovators follow five behaviors and you need to find ways
Speaker 1: to make those everyday habits, which means you've got to
Speaker 1: overcome the inertia that stops them from being everyday habits.
Speaker 1: We have tools and techniques for how to do that,
Speaker 1: and you can make the argument very clearly that this
Speaker 1: is a moment where we need innovation more than ever.
Speaker 1: We need to innovate not to the new normal, not
Speaker 1: to the new abnormal, those are depressing, but to the
Speaker 1: new better. And if we're going to innovate to the
Speaker 1: new better, we have to figure out ways to be
Speaker 1: more curious, and to be more collaborative, and to be
Speaker 1: more adept and ambiguity. And today's time creates challenges for
Speaker 1: following those behaviors, but creates opportunities as well, So seeking
Speaker 1: to find ways to connect the content in the book
Speaker 1: with where people are right now is I think another
Speaker 1: thing that will be important, and you know, we'll see
Speaker 1: how it all goes. And of course, we have the
Speaker 1: book available in every format that might exist, so you know,
Speaker 1: of course, but people might not be going to bookstores,
Speaker 1: but you know that the world is still shipping, so
Speaker 1: you can still get physical books, and there are digital
Speaker 1: ones and audio ones and all that last thing i'd say.
Speaker 1: We are also planning to introduce, along with our publisher,
Speaker 1: kind of do it yourself kit that augments the book.
Speaker 1: You know, so of course there.
Speaker 3: Are people who will buy the book, read the book,
Speaker 3: and use the ideas in the book.
Speaker 1: There might be some people who want some consulting help
Speaker 1: to call us, But there's people in between that want
Speaker 1: a little bit more help but don't want to full
Speaker 1: on consulting engagement.
Speaker 3: So we're working with Harvard.
Speaker 1: To create a kind of do it with help sort
Speaker 1: of kit to enable people inside organizations to use all
Speaker 1: the ideas in the book, which I've not done for
Speaker 1: anything that I've written before. So I'm very excited about
Speaker 1: that as an additional offering that we hope will help people.
Speaker 2: That sounds really cool. I love the idea of that,
Speaker 2: and I want to know in the book because I
Speaker 2: think it's like, it's a very practical book with practical strategies.
Speaker 2: Is there a favorite strategy which is probably asking you
Speaker 2: to pick your favorite child, but is there one in
Speaker 2: particular that you particularly love and would like to share?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, this one's very easy, because this really
Speaker 1: is the heart of the book chapters three and four.
Speaker 1: So let me just give you the brief arc of
Speaker 1: the book. Chapter one is definition, so culture of innovation,
Speaker 1: one in which the behaviors that drive innovation success come
Speaker 1: naturally or.
Speaker 3: Five of them.
Speaker 1: Chapter two then identifies what is the biggest blocker to
Speaker 1: having this happen inside organizations, and we make the case
Speaker 1: that it essentially is what we call the shadow strategy,
Speaker 1: which is the way in which you do the day
Speaker 1: to day work inside organization. We're institutionalized inertia crowds out
Speaker 1: the ability to do something different.
Speaker 3: So we say this is what it is, this is
Speaker 3: what stops.
Speaker 1: And then three and four goes into the tool we
Speaker 1: suggest using, which is essentially something that's adapted from the
Speaker 1: habit change literature. We brand it a bean. A bean
Speaker 1: is a behavior enabler, artifact and nudge BAM. The behavior
Speaker 1: enabler essentially activates what Daniel Konnaman would call system two.
Speaker 1: It's the logical rational steps to do different things. It's
Speaker 1: a checklist, it's a coach, it's a ritual. It's an
Speaker 1: app that helps you do the hard work of behavior change.
Speaker 1: The artifacts and nudges are the indirect things like the
Speaker 1: pictures that push you in a direction, gamification principles and
Speaker 1: so on, so you do different things with not even
Speaker 1: thinking about it. Gets Daniel cottoman system one. And in
Speaker 1: the book we have one hundred and one beans and
Speaker 1: we have companion website where people can download them and
Speaker 1: use them that try to overcome the inertia encourage innovative behaviors.
Speaker 1: Things like the DBS Mojo, meeting owner, joyful observer being,
Speaker 1: things like the Adobe Kickbox, things like the Tata Dare
Speaker 1: to Try a prize, all things that people in the
Speaker 1: innovation field would know the individual examples reasonably well. But
Speaker 1: the idea of bringing it together with a simple three
Speaker 1: step process to create a bean, which is not hard.
Speaker 1: You identify the behavior you want to encourage. You identify
Speaker 1: the behavior you're doing instead of that behavior, and then
Speaker 1: you come up with the behavior enabler artifact and nudge
Speaker 1: to overcome the compensating behavior and encourage the desired behavior.
Speaker 1: I've seen people create beans in five minutes that are
Speaker 1: pretty good and actually work. So that's the tool that
Speaker 1: is my favorite in the book by far. It's simple,
Speaker 1: but it works.
Speaker 2: That's awesome. I love the sound of that. Super practical
Speaker 2: and easy to use. Now, the final thing I wanted
Speaker 2: to ask you about is, and I know you're not
Speaker 2: a clairvoyant, but I know that you think about these
Speaker 2: things a lot, is just what do you think the
Speaker 2: future like? The next twelve months in your life as
Speaker 2: a consultant who has clients all around the world is
Speaker 2: going to look like like where will you be working from?
Speaker 2: When will you be traveling again? Are we going to
Speaker 2: just move most things into the virtual world? What are
Speaker 2: you expecting the next twelve months will be?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: A nice, nice, simple question to end the discussion.
Speaker 1: You know, as you say, I'm not a clairvoyant and
Speaker 1: all that, but I'll give you a few of my perspectives,
Speaker 1: so you know, you just feel that the world desires
Speaker 1: to move on, And yes, we have to deal with
Speaker 1: health related issues, and different spaces and countries are going
Speaker 1: to move at different paces, but you know, the world
Speaker 1: wants to move on. The world is experimenting with different
Speaker 1: tracking and tracing and testing methodologies. We have vaccines that
Speaker 1: people are working on. Exactly how these things will come together.
Speaker 1: I don't know human beings want to be together, but
Speaker 1: we want to have people move and not be stationary.
Speaker 1: We want people to be able to gather, and I
Speaker 1: just cannot imagine that we can't figure out some way,
Speaker 1: even if we can't figure out the vaccine, to.
Speaker 3: Have a lot more of that than we have now.
Speaker 1: Speaking in the middle of September, So I'm expecting that
Speaker 1: you're going to just see more stuff that looks like
Speaker 1: normal stuff in the months ahead. That said, I think
Speaker 1: we have proven through the last six months that you
Speaker 1: can do a lot of things remotely and can do
Speaker 1: a lot of things digitally. So I don't think in
Speaker 1: any circumstance, even if a vaccine that completely eradicates COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen arrives tomorrow and has spread magically throughout the world
Speaker 1: in a minute, I don't think we're going to go
Speaker 1: back to the way things were I think we are
Speaker 1: going to have a different way in which we do
Speaker 1: work now we think about it at in a sight,
Speaker 1: if we were starting from scratch, we would have a
Speaker 1: very different infrastructure. We would invest less in physical offices,
Speaker 1: we would invest more in coworking spaces, best more and
Speaker 1: having people all come together for short bursts of time
Speaker 1: versus having people episodically come into an office and sometimes
Speaker 1: run into people. You just think really differently about the
Speaker 1: geographic construct. I think people will have a much higher
Speaker 1: bar to go to face to face meetings. I think
Speaker 1: there'll be many more virtual things. So that's something that
Speaker 1: I think you'll see in the medium term. And I think,
Speaker 1: and again, I am a half full sort of person.
Speaker 1: I'm an optimist by nature. I think you're going to
Speaker 1: see just this huge wave of innovation energy that gets
Speaker 1: it essentially what I call second order silver lining opportunities.
Speaker 1: So first order silver lining opportunities. March and April the
Speaker 1: world said we need more ppe, we need more ventilators,
Speaker 1: we need to have more specific things, toilet paper has
Speaker 1: to be produced faster, whatever.
Speaker 3: But we have a whole set of very.
Speaker 1: Obvious things where if you're in those spaces, the pandemic
Speaker 1: is actually good for you, But then you get the
Speaker 1: knock on effects where people say, Okay, in the longer term,
Speaker 1: consumers are probably going to care more about immunity and
Speaker 1: they're probably going to care more about wellness. What new
Speaker 1: forms of opportunities open up. You're going to have more
Speaker 1: places that are working in hybrid fashion, some people physical,
Speaker 1: some people virtual. What are the new tools that can
Speaker 1: enable that to work effectively? And how do you create
Speaker 1: community across that? And people haven't figured this out yet,
Speaker 1: but people are working on it, and I think you're
Speaker 1: going to see some really amazing innovations that enable that
Speaker 1: to happen in a better sort of way. And then
Speaker 1: the final thing that I would say is, I would say,
Speaker 1: coming out of all of this, you have had a
Speaker 1: lot of miraculous things that have happened. In March and April.
Speaker 1: The world didn't stop moving, commerce didn't stop. Things didn't
Speaker 1: stop shipping, logistics didn't stop. People in many places were
Speaker 1: still educated, some places not, but many places still were.
Speaker 1: And I think we will pause and reflect about the
Speaker 1: power of innovation, the power of working in dispersed ways,
Speaker 1: the power of global commerce to do some truly amazing things,
Speaker 1: and we'll say what do we need to do to
Speaker 1: make sure that the next time something like this happened
Speaker 1: and we handle it better then we handled it in
Speaker 1: the March through June period. So I think there'll be
Speaker 1: a big moment of reflection in the world as well.
Speaker 1: So again, who knows, But those are some of the
Speaker 1: things that I see. I certainly see myself being on planes.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've got touch would but I've got a
Speaker 1: trip plant next month to go to the United States
Speaker 1: to see some family and do some work that you know,
Speaker 1: these things aren't easy to do, and you have to
Speaker 1: in Singapore be prepared for two weeks of quarantine on
Speaker 1: the other side, but you know, they again the world
Speaker 1: lurches towards normalcy. So that's at least a few of
Speaker 1: my thoughts on the topic.
Speaker 2: Wow, amazing, And I can't believe you are going to
Speaker 2: be on a plane potentially next month. That blows my mind. Now,
Speaker 2: my very final question for you, Scott is if people
Speaker 2: want to connect with you, read more of your work,
Speaker 2: and importantly buy a copy of Eat, Sleep, innovate, what
Speaker 2: are the best ways to do all of that.
Speaker 1: So, of course we've got a companion website eat sleepinnovay
Speaker 1: dot com.
Speaker 3: So go to the website.
Speaker 1: It tells you more about the book and how to
Speaker 1: get copies of the book, et cetera. And then I'm
Speaker 1: on LinkedIn and Twitter, and I use LinkedIn more than Twitter,
Speaker 1: but LinkedIn is the best place to find me. And
Speaker 1: of course the company in asit www dot inters dot
Speaker 1: com has all the great research in writing that my
Speaker 1: colleagues are doing in addition to my work, So those
Speaker 1: would be my suggestions.
Speaker 2: Awesome. I will link to all of that in the
Speaker 2: show notes. Scott, I've loved our chat. I always learned
Speaker 2: something new, if not many new things whenever we talk.
Speaker 2: So thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 3: Oh, no problem, Mantha.
Speaker 1: And the best part will be twelve months from now
Speaker 1: we can see how horrifically wrong I was about some
Speaker 1: of the predictions about the next twelve months.
Speaker 2: We will see that's all right, Thanks Scott. That is
Speaker 2: it for today's show. If you liked it and know
Speaker 2: someone else that you think might benefit from it, why
Speaker 2: not share this episode with them? And as I mentioned
Speaker 2: at the beginning, if you're enjoying how I work, why
Speaker 2: not leave a review in Apple Podcasts or wherever you
Speaker 2: listen to this from So there's it for today and
Speaker 2: I will see you next time.