Matthew Barzun, THE POWER OF GIVING AWAY POWER: How the Best Leaders Learn to Let Go
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[1:03]Matthew Barzan is the author of the Power of Giving Away Power.
[1:07]How the best leaders learn to let go.
[1:10]Matthew has always been fascinated about how we can stand out and fit in at the same time.
[1:14]He helped countries do both when he served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom and to Sweden.
[1:19]He helps citizens do both as National Finance Chair for Barack Obama by pioneering new ways
[1:24]for people to have a stronger voice in politics.
[1:27]And he helped tech consumers do both as an entrepreneur when he helped start seeing at networks in the early 90s.
[1:33]Barzan was raised on the East Coast, started his career on the West Coast, and settled in the middle
[1:37]in Louisville, Kentucky with his wife Brooke and their three children.
[1:40]Welcome, Matthew.
[1:41]Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Bux to discuss the power of giving away power.
[1:47]Thanks for having me.
[1:48]It's my pleasure.
[1:49]How the best leaders learn to let go.
[1:51]I should have said that originally.
[1:52]Well, if I were to redo it, that's what I would say.
[1:54]I would say it at the same time.
[1:55]Oh, well, I do this.
[1:56]You'll hear it.
[1:57]And that's what I form.
[1:59]So you've had the most interesting experiences professionally.
[2:04]And personally, I mean, it's amazing how many leaders you've worked with, how you've been all over the globe,
[2:11]founding new businesses, like building businesses, finding new ways to do everything.
[2:16]So tell me about your decision to write this book.
[2:19]Why now?
[2:20]Why write the book?
[2:21]Well, I mean, why now it's interesting.
[2:23]And you know this from your wonderful experience by the time the book actually comes out.
[2:27]And you're able to talk about it like we are today.
[2:30]You know, you've stopped writing it a long time ago.
[2:33]So, but what motivated me to write it was I along in my internet chapter.
[2:40]And then my presidential politics chapter.
[2:42]And then my diplomacy chapter.
[2:44]I kept seeing two things, a pattern of behavior, a sort of pattern and tone of behavior that I thought was so unbelievably destructive.
[2:53]Just like disempowering awful, the kept reasserting itself.
[2:58]Good people behaving badly that I would say myself included.
[3:01]And then I saw not as often, but I saw a glimpse of this other way of seeing, thinking, feeling and behaving.
[3:10]And I didn't have a word for it or an image for it.
[3:12]At the time, even that I started writing the book.
[3:15]But I pretty much had an image for what the, the pattern of behavior I would like to see less of, which I call the pyramid perspective.
[3:23]And I think we're all kind of aware of that.
[3:25]I mean, it's obvious form is kind of top down Lord and power over other people or hoarding it to yourself.
[3:30]But there are subtler forms of it too.
[3:32]We can get into, you know, it's the world of top down.
[3:34]It's also the world of bottom up.
[3:36]Same shape, just different direction.
[3:39]But I didn't yet have an image or an awareness of this alternative.
[3:42]And then I finally discovered one on the back of the US dollar bill, which is the constellation, which is this wonderful old image from our nation's founding that I kind of went down the Wikipedia rabbit hole learned all about.
[3:55]And so then I had something to use.
[3:57]I was told by a reader.
[3:59]And now we know all about it.
[4:00]So that's really good.
[4:02]But I wish this wonderful reader emailed me and said, well, you must know this famous Aristotle quote, which I was like, wow, I wish I did, but I didn't.
[4:11]And the Aristotle quote is something like the soul never thinks without an image.
[4:18]The soul never thinks without an image.
[4:20]And so I thought, wow, okay, that rings true.
[4:23]We all know the pyramid image.
[4:24]What is another image we could have to replace it to show a different kind of order and a different kind of stability.
[4:30]The order and stability provided by the pyramid.
[4:32]Very interesting.
[4:33]I love that.
[4:34]You had this paragraph in the beginning.
[4:35]I just wanted to read it out loud if that's okay.
[4:37]You said, well, I should ask you, is that okay?
[4:39]Yes.
[4:40]We think we must.
[4:42]We think we must hoard power before someone else takes it and that we must lord it over others.
[4:47]We've not only come to value the consolidation and preservation of power as the best kind of leadership.
[4:52]We've come to believe it's the only kind that is leadership.
[4:55]How crazy all we have to do is look around to see that there are other kinds of leaders who have adopted a very different mindset about uncertainty.
[5:02]They don't try to ignore it, avoid it or factor it out.
[5:04]They factor it in radically.
[5:06]I love that.
[5:07]And so this is all about and then you go into all of this about your period versus constellation mindset and how important it is to sort of see things differently, which I love.
[5:18]And you also talk so much about, you know, the power of connection.
[5:22]I think my favorite part was with Queen Elizabeth when she felt sort of disintermediated.
[5:28]Maybe that's the wrong word.
[5:29]Like when something came in between her and the crowd that she used to get the adoring eyes of the crowd when they would take her picture, they'd put the camera away.
[5:37]And because of the phones, she was only seeing them.
[5:40]She wasn't even really locking eyes of them at all.
[5:42]And so she was feeling sad about it.
[5:44]So talk to me about this level of connection.
[5:46]I think disintermediate.
[5:47]That is exactly the right word. I should have used that.
[5:50]So yeah, I'm sitting there in my ludicrous, you know, fancy outfit that we Americans.
[5:55]You know, maybe you wear it on your wedding or something.
[5:57]But never again, in a top hat.
[5:59]But mercifully, you're allowed to take off the top hat when you actually meet with the Queen.
[6:03]And so we're talking about and I had come in on with my wife Brooke on a horse-drawn carriage into Buckingham Palace.
[6:08]And he was a weird and wonderful once in a lifetime kind of thing.
[6:11]And all these tourists are like snapping photos of us hoping that we were like a boreal and important and we were neither.
[6:17]But anyway, they didn't know that.
[6:19]So we get in and I said, well, what's it like?
[6:21]You know, you do that every day.
[6:23]And she said, yeah, she said, well, they've always had cameras.
[6:25]And then she said, but they used to just bring them up, click them and put them down.
[6:29]And she said, and now, and then she had this white gloved hand and she puts it over her eyes.
[6:33]And she just holds it up as she finishes the thought, which is.
[6:36]And now they put them up and they never take them down and I miss seeing their eyes.
[6:41]I miss seeing their eyes and I thought that was so wonderful.
[6:44]And so it's sort of an important lament for the times we're all in, not just the Queen, where never have we been so connectable, never have we felt so disconnected.
[6:53]This kind of connection paradox that I think we're all dealing with one more way or another.
[6:58]So how do we be established those connections and make them meaningful?
[7:01]And that you need them to be a really good leader.
[7:04]But you can't.
[7:05]It's very hard to lead into a vacuum of, you know, nameless, faceless people.
[7:09]It's like one person at a time, really.
[7:11]If you don't connect with any of them, who are you leading?
[7:13]Well, that's right.
[7:14]And that's like, you know, a few weeks after the Queen, I meet with someone who is sort of like the opposite of the Queen.
[7:20]It's a compliment, which doesn't sound like it.
[7:22]But Jimmy Carr, who has become a really good friend and he has a couple Netflix special.
[7:26]See, it's a hilarious, cringy stand-up comic.
[7:29]You know what I mean? Like half the stuff. You're like, I can't believe you said that, Jimmy.
[7:32]But anyway, I hadn't met him at the time and we were seated next to each other.
[7:35]And I asked him this question. I've always wanted to ask stand-up comedians,
[7:38]which is how many jokes get a laugh if you're trying out new stuff.
[7:41]And they never tried out in New York or London.
[7:43]They tried out in places like Louisville or Liverpool or whatever.
[7:46]And so you said like three out of seven or something, right?
[7:49]Yeah, that's seven. And I was like, okay, that's really good to know.
[7:52]Or three out of ten rather, three out of ten.
[7:54]Sorry, three out of ten get a laugh.
[7:56]I thought that was interesting.
[7:57]But then he said something much more interesting. And he said, well, you know,
[8:00]stroke, jokes are strange, things map you.
[8:03]And that's like, tell me more.
[8:04]And he said, if you play a song and no one likes it, it's still a song.
[8:07]And if you put on a play and everybody walks out, it's still a play.
[8:09]And if you tell a joke and nobody laughs, it's just a sentence.
[8:12]I loved that.
[8:13]Yes.
[8:14]Isn't that cool?
[8:15]And I was like, oh, Jimmy, did you know, grab show marks or someone famous say that?
[8:18]I was like, no, it was me.
[8:19]And I was like, I'm going to tell everyone and everyone, anyone and everyone I meet.
[8:23]Because to me, it's just what you're talking about.
[8:25]It's like, the comedian does his or her part.
[8:27]The audience member does his or her part.
[8:29]Together they make a joke.
[8:31]It is this.
[8:32]And we know that.
[8:33]And if you do your point on leadership, it's like,
[8:35]so much of leadership is just sentences.
[8:38]And we have these tech platforms that allow us to just throw sentences at each other.
[8:42]And it's easy to pick on the tech platforms, right?
[8:45]Which is trendy now.
[8:46]It's like, this is us.
[8:48]We are the ones deciding to hurl non connective sentences at one another all day long.
[8:54]That's us doing it.
[8:55]You know, you know, aided and abetted by the technology.
[8:58]But don't blame the machines.
[9:00]Blame us.
[9:01]Sometimes I'm like, this is such a bizarre conversation I'm having.
[9:04]I'm saying like a sentence.
[9:06]And then like 20 minutes later, someone's saying one more sentence.
[9:09]And then like an hour later, I say the third sentence.
[9:13]Like texting is so it makes no sense.
[9:15]So finally, I'm just like, I'm picking up the phone and calling her.
[9:18]Crazy.
[9:19]Yeah.
[9:20]Frustrating.
[9:21]It's also a waste of time.
[9:22]Like it's all those times.
[9:24]Unlike the, I don't know.
[9:25]Anyway, don't even get me started on this whole thing.
[9:27]But yes, I agree with that.
[9:29]I also found it so interesting.
[9:31]All your research in the context of the Obama election of volunteers and how actually
[9:37]more volunteers showed up when you didn't pay them and how volunteers are a more,
[9:42]you know, more motivated groups than the paid people in fact.
[9:46]So I actually was talking to my, my zippy book sort of launch team because we have these new books and
[9:51]ambassadors.
[9:52]And I'm like, you know, the guy I'm interviewing later today says you shouldn't pay
[9:56]while you should make them all volunteers.
[9:58]Maybe we should just make them all volunteers.
[10:00]So tell me about that.
[10:01]Well, yeah, I mean, it actually ties into all of the great work
[10:04]that you're doing.
[10:05]So the old way in volunteer land,
[10:08]this is Democrat or Republican.
[10:09]I think it's basically the same, was the old way you would say,
[10:13]just to pick 100 people, you know, hey,
[10:15]how many people would like to take five hours out of their Tuesday
[10:19]night, come sit next to total strangers
[10:22]and make phone calls, unsolicited phone calls to total strangers
[10:25]all night.
[10:26]Now, that is a weird subset of humanity
[10:29]that chooses to raise their hand, usually both hands,
[10:32]you know, to get five people out of 100,
[10:34]and they are what were known over the decades
[10:36]as sort of political volunteers, which,
[10:38]and I love those, they're weird, but they, you know,
[10:41]and with the Obama campaign did, which was really clever,
[10:44]was it radically lowered the barriers
[10:47]of what it meant to be a volunteer.
[10:49]And you picture parents who were really busy at home.
[10:51]They're not going to spend five hours on a Tuesday night
[10:54]calling strangers.
[10:55]So the ask was much simpler.
[10:56]I was like, hey, would you be willing to call five people
[11:00]you already know who happened to live in swing states
[11:02]over the course of the next week?
[11:04]So like, oh, maybe sure, I'll try.
[11:06]You can squeeze that in whenever you can, and they did,
[11:09]and actually they found it rewarding,
[11:11]and the reward for that work was more meaningful work.
[11:14]And so the magic combination was lower the barriers
[11:17]to participation, but then raise the expectations
[11:21]of what it means to participate.
[11:22]And if you repeat that pattern in tone over and over again,
[11:25]you can have really big and dramatic results.
[11:28]Interesting.
[11:28]So the answer is pay or don't pay a volunteer,
[11:31]like make people.
[11:33]And this is like intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation.
[11:38]Right?
[11:39]You remember that there's that famous,
[11:42]I forget which of those behavioral science books.
[11:44]I love them all, but it's like,
[11:45]we on vestigers, that's what you may be doing.
[11:47]When I blend together sometime in my adult brain,
[11:50]but the one where they do that famous test,
[11:52]it's like two people trying to lift a couch
[11:54]into their dorm room.
[11:55]And they're like, hey, can you give me a help
[11:57]and lift this one flight upstairs?
[11:58]And 80% of the people say yes.
[12:00]You say the exact same thing,
[12:01]and they're like, and I'll pay you five bucks,
[12:02]and the response drops to 20%.
[12:05]Because all of a sudden you're asking people
[12:07]to put a monetary value on what was gonna be a favor.
[12:10]And so it's a sports, so you know, that's a thing.
[12:13]In the case of the Obama campaign,
[12:14]the whole world just volunteering was the whole thing.
[12:17]Everyone knew that.
[12:19]And so paid or not paid,
[12:20]but it was trusting me unpaid ones,
[12:22]and to treat them and give them access to the voter file
[12:27]as if they were paid members of staff,
[12:30]was the big insight that they adopted early.
[12:32]That made such a big difference.
[12:34]So open up, let go of control.
[12:35]And the fear always is, yeah, but yeah,
[12:37]but you know, it's like yeah, yeah, yeah.
[12:41]But it's amazing what can be built
[12:43]if you give away that power.
[12:46]So obviously you have so much,
[12:47]so many unique perspectives on leadership,
[12:50]and you've talked to so many leaders,
[12:51]and they've blurved your book and all this stuff.
[12:53]One thing you said was that a lot of leaders
[12:57]are afraid to signal that they don't know what they're doing
[13:00]when oftentimes nobody knows what they're doing.
[13:03]And that immediately like puts up a barrier
[13:05]between them and everybody else, right?
[13:07]Because the future is often uncertain,
[13:09]especially in startup mentality and different organizations,
[13:13]and to have a leader who suggests otherwise
[13:15]is almost immediately inauthentic, right?
[13:18]Because it's not true.
[13:20]So you like can't trust them from the start somehow.
[13:23]Not can't trust, but anyway,
[13:26]talk to me about the power of sort of being open
[13:29]about the realities of running a business.
[13:32]Yeah, I mean, the first three words of the book,
[13:34]and they came, they were like the last three words I wrote.
[13:36]Weirdly, when you know how that works,
[13:38]you sort of do the introduction or I did last,
[13:40]having seen where it ended up.
[13:41]The first three words are pretending is exhausting.
[13:44]It just struck me in so many different realms,
[13:46]parenting, marriage, career, you name it,
[13:50]to the extent that we're pretending,
[13:51]it just crowds out all this energy
[13:53]that we need to be investing in other much more productive ways.
[13:56]And especially in the realm of leadership,
[13:57]we are just encouraged to sort of fake it
[13:59]to we make it or all those other,
[14:01]we're measure what you treasure or treasure,
[14:03]what you measure, all these other sort of memorable
[14:05]and I think deeply misleading bits of advice
[14:08]that we had passed out to us and that we either explicitly
[14:12]or more subtly pass on to the next generation.
[14:15]And yeah, and all these amazing leaders,
[14:18]the biggest company in the world
[14:20]in terms of transactions visa founded as a constellation
[14:23]of giving up power, got Bank of America
[14:25]to not have any more power in the system of what became visa.
[14:29]It was called Bank America our first, you know,
[14:31]and that these little pull down banks
[14:33]would have just as much right to participate
[14:36]on an equal footing as they would.
[14:37]And that was huge and weird and they did it.
[14:40]They took that leap, Wikipedia we talk about, right?
[14:43]Up against the British company in the world, Microsoft
[14:46]and in Carta, I'm old, I remember in Carta,
[14:49]many of your listeners won't because they're younger,
[14:51]but and then encyclopedia Britannica,
[14:53]one of the oldest companies in the world.
[14:56]And they had tried to sort of factor out uncertainty
[14:59]in their business model and plan for it,
[15:01]along comes Jimmy Wales and his team,
[15:03]radically open, they were gonna pay you nothing
[15:05]to write something, charge us nothing to read it.
[15:08]And so time and time again, if you are willing to take this leap,
[15:13]but I think the tricky part and what gets misunderstood
[15:16]is that somehow this is like an invitation to chaos
[15:20]or a thousand flowers bloom or see whatever happens.
[15:23]But in all those cases, Visa, Wikipedia,
[15:25]the internet, alcohol, it's anonymous,
[15:26]others that I highlight in the book.
[15:29]Some of the greatest innovations in organizations
[15:31]the world have ever seen.
[15:33]We use them every day, we benefit from them.
[15:35]They brought an incredible rigor.
[15:37]And I love that word, like a rigor to what they're doing.
[15:41]I mean, it is a miracle that Wikipedia isn't some
[15:43]corkboard of the internet.
[15:44]It's just my end of it.
[15:46]I mean, look, they have their issues, you know,
[15:47]I'm blind spots and they're honest about that,
[15:50]but they want encyclopedia articles.
[15:53]And if you put up some self promotional stuff
[15:55]over the course of three weeks, it will be gone.
[15:58]It will over time self correct and produce
[16:01]encyclopedia like articles.
[16:02]And so whether it's the volunteer network
[16:05]you're talking about or the Obama came being really rigors
[16:08]about let's move the metrics that matter.
[16:10]That's really important.
[16:11]Because you have to be open and rigorous.
[16:13]If you're just sort of open, it'll be like some bad
[16:16]middle school science projects.
[16:18]You have it all yours around here.
[16:20]I know how it's like we have enough of this.
[16:25]Amazing.
[16:26]So what else are you doing?
[16:28]Like your whole scene that experience was so interesting.
[16:32]I love that there was like, you wouldn't present it
[16:33]to HBS about the case.
[16:35]And then like, you know, the internet collapsed
[16:36]the next day, that was awesome.
[16:37]I mean, not awesome, but just like,
[16:38]so, you know, typical of the time.
[16:41]Yeah, place in time.
[16:43]You've done so many things.
[16:44]You have this book.
[16:45]Like what are you doing?
[16:46]What is your goal now?
[16:47]Like next couple of years?
[16:49]Like what do you want to do?
[16:51]What types of places do you want to lead?
[16:52]Do you want to lead?
[16:53]Like what's on your mind?
[16:55]Oh, that's a fun one.
[16:57]Well, now on sort of out, it's so fun to be invited here
[17:00]and to talk with you.
[17:01]I'm at there trying to talk about the ideas
[17:03]so that people can agree with them, disagree with them,
[17:06]hold around to their lives.
[17:07]Probably the most common question and suggestion
[17:11]I've gotten, which has already led in my mind anyway
[17:13]to write a follow up, but that'll take a while.
[17:17]It's sort of like, OK, the kind of three groups
[17:19]of readers I've incurred.
[17:20]Group one is like, I pretty much live my life this way
[17:22]anyway in this sort of constellation-y,
[17:25]and it's worth saying at this point,
[17:26]the constellation mindset is the choice
[17:29]to not think that you're a brick and a pyramid,
[17:31]but to think that you're a star and I'm a star
[17:33]and the people around us are stars and we're distinct.
[17:36]And we can make connections between us
[17:37]to create something more useful, more powerful
[17:39]than we could on our own, and that that symbol
[17:42]back at the founding of our country,
[17:44]that is the symbol that right underneath
[17:46]on the back of the dollar bill is written,
[17:48]E. Pluribus Unum, from many one.
[17:50]We're from many stars, one constellation,
[17:52]not from many bricks, one pyramid, right?
[17:55]And in the pyramid world, you either fit in
[17:57]to the pyramid plan or you are left out.
[17:59]And the magic thing about a constellation
[18:01]is you can stand out as yourself and fit into something
[18:04]and so you've got folks who are like,
[18:07]I didn't have a name or an image for it,
[18:09]but I've lived that way.
[18:11]The second group of folks are saying,
[18:14]gosh, I've done pretty well by the pyramid.
[18:16]I've played the game, that style game up,
[18:18]out, in, out ranking, rating, sorting, sifting,
[18:21]pretty well, but it's exhausting.
[18:23]And I'm open to trying something new.
[18:26]And then the third group, which is satisfying,
[18:28]is like, nope, I don't, you know, arms folded.
[18:31]Like, ah, this is, I don't wanna make a leap.
[18:34]You know, the pyramid serving me pretty well
[18:36]and I'm making my way up it.
[18:37]And no, thank you.
[18:39]And so all three, I learned from all three types of readers,
[18:41]but especially those first two are particularly fruitful.
[18:44]And so many of the questions are,
[18:46]hey, I work in a big pyramid style institution,
[18:48]but my team wants to create more of a constellation,
[18:51]how might we start to do that in a practical tactical way?
[18:54]And you know, from the books you've done,
[18:57]I mean, most of my favorite bits got cut out of this,
[18:59]but I'm sitting on the cutting room floor.
[19:02]And so, and most of the stuff I cut out
[19:04]was this really practical tactical stuff.
[19:07]So I wanna start getting that out there.
[19:08]But the other thing, I listened to a wonderful interview
[19:11]with Senator Elizabeth Warren.
[19:12]Oh, thanks.
[19:13]About the cranky promise.
[19:14]And I just, I've always been a big fan of her work.
[19:18]I knew her writing the two income trap long before she ran
[19:21]for public office.
[19:22]And I thought you did a great job with that
[19:25]and just bringing out why she wrote that.
[19:27]And, and she kept using one word.
[19:29]And I understand why.
[19:30]And I believe in everything she's saying,
[19:32]but she's like, join the fight, join the fight, join the fight.
[19:35]And I get that.
[19:36]And there are lots of things we need to fight for.
[19:38]And there's another kind of things we can do as a group
[19:41]that isn't fighting a fight or running a race.
[19:44]Mm-hmm.
[19:45]And that's the kind of thing I wanna be involved with.
[19:47]And the sort of fight I picked with Teddy Roosevelt
[19:49]in the book, which a sacred cow, right?
[19:52]It's not the man, it's not the critical counts.
[19:54]It's the man who's actually in the arena,
[19:56]or a man or a woman who's actually in the arena,
[19:58]who's face is marred with dust and sweat.
[20:00]Everybody loves that, Berné Brown, Barack Obama, John McCain, Nelson Mandela, LeBron James.
[20:04]And I understand why that is such a romantic notion and something really important is missing.
[20:10]I think Zippy, which is, in that view of the world, you were forced into one of two choices.
[20:16]Fight it out, or sit it out via bias. And I get that. And if those are the only two choices,
[20:21]then like, okay, fine. I guess I'll go fight it out. But that is a gladiatorial framework.
[20:27]And that's what that thing is about. And I think the other kind of work that we can be engaged,
[20:33]I think you're engaged in this work, which is making things together, right? Like, who's going to
[20:38]make arenas? And if like people too arenas and all that kind of work is really important,
[20:42]and it doesn't involve fighting. And so when people say to the next generation, life isn't a sprint,
[20:49]it's a, you know, and then we all say marathon. And I'm almost like, I get why sprints and marathons
[20:55]are different. But they're mostly, in my view, the same. They're a race in one set direction
[21:02]that you do all by yourself. But I don't think like parenting is a race. You're certainly not going
[21:07]to win it. And so long when to answer to your question. But the fun little trick that I used to
[21:13]play before COVID and you can do it on Zoom too, but you get 10 people together and you say,
[21:18]what's the opposite of winning? And everyone says losing. And then you say, what's the opposite
[21:22]of winning and losing, which is really the interesting part? Nine out of 10 of us say, I don't know,
[21:27]not playing. What kind of us says playing or laughing or learning or being. And to me, the
[21:35]optimistic part is that once the nine out of 10 of us hear that other person say playing or whatever
[21:43]they say, we're like, Oh, right. How silly. The the opposite, that if you're not winning,
[21:48]and losing, you're doing nothing. But you don't win parenting. You don't win your career.
[21:53]You certainly don't win a marriage. But if you tried to, you could lose one.
[21:58]And so all these things we actually value in life, you can't win or lose. So why do we keep
[22:03]perpetuating that that's you're either winning and losing or you're sitting at an app.
[22:07]And so if we can bring more awareness and energy and daylight to the act of making things
[22:13]together, that's what I want to devote my time and energy to.
[22:17]I love it. Yeah, I'd never really thought about my like specific leadership strategy,
[22:23]because I don't really consider myself a leader, because I've had this.
[22:26]Did you look scabbity? It's like a month old. But, but I like everything you said in the book
[22:30]is like what I believe in and what I think what works for me. I'm not saying it would work for
[22:35]everybody or in every kind of business. But I know for me, it's like the anti business, right?
[22:39]It's like the anti corporation, right? We are all just people. And that's I know we were joking
[22:45]about this being your first Zoom, which of course it's like not true. And I fell forward. But,
[22:49]but like having everybody here, right? You see our like we have our lives. We're not like one
[22:55]person at work and one person at home. Like it's just, I don't know. So that's like,
[23:01]I don't know. You have to bring your whole self into what you do. And when you do that,
[23:05]then everything works much better. I think. Yeah. I agree. Which we didn't get a chance to talk
[23:11]about. But the matron saint, and I just want your listeners, this amazing woman,
[23:15]there's always going to connect back to Harvard Business School and Harvard Business Review
[23:19]who published in 2003. So this woman is sort of forgotten about. She lived 100 years ago,
[23:26]and she is the matron saint of this book. And, and I really want to write a whole book just about
[23:31]her. So Harvard Business School asked 200 leading gurus from academia, government, and business.
[23:37]There's 2003 who is, so who is the gurus guru? Number one, Peter Drucker. Many listeners
[23:44]would have heard of him. Most courted, you know, leadership guy of the last century. And turns out,
[23:50]as you know, as a reader of the book, that he had a guru all along. And he admits this at the end of
[23:54]his life. So this is the guru's guru's guru. By the way, she shows up not at all on
[24:00]Harvard Business Review's list of the gurus. So not exactly known. She was writing 100 years
[24:06]America is coming out of the global pandemic, racial, economic, and social division everywhere she
[24:12]looks, raging debates about overreach of big business, raging debates about government overreach
[24:17]on how to deal with big business. Sounds kind of familiar. And she was amazing. And she was the most
[24:22]sought after speaker on the kind of CEO circuit of her day. And she has, I think, very practical
[24:28]tactical advice for all of us today, which was getting at your point on sort of what to do in a
[24:34]meeting, basically, whether it's on Zoom or in person. And she says four possible outcomes of a
[24:40]meeting and only one of them is worthwhile. Bad outcome number one, Zivi, you try to win the meeting.
[24:45]It's like, well, why did you invite anyone else? Bad outcome number two, you just acquiesced
[24:50]because Jane or John is super fired up. Just let them have their way. No, that's not good,
[24:54]because you're denying them your unique perspective. Bad outcome number three, compromise,
[25:01]which I know we're all taught to seek out. She's like, not really compromised. Best case,
[25:07]you leave that meeting with a fraction of what you came in with. No, she's Mary Parker follows
[25:11]as the only reason we should ever gather around a virtual or real table is to co-create to make
[25:17]something together. And then that magic happens. And I know you're seeing this and as you're growing
[25:22]your business, it's like, if you make something with another group of people, and it doesn't have
[25:26]to be a book or a podcast or anything as tangible as that, but it could be. It could be make
[25:32]a determination. It could be make a product roadmap. I mean, you name it. If you make something
[25:36]together, you are forever part of it. It is forever part of you. And as I reflect on her wisdom,
[25:44]and the little cheat sheet I have written down here next to my Zoom meetings is I try to bring
[25:48]three expectations into every meeting. Number one, expect to be needed. So in our lingo, to,
[25:54]you know, bring your whole self, no one else can. Number two, expect to need others. That's why
[25:59]you're in a meeting. And crucially, number three expect to be changed. And to me, that's the reciprocal
[26:06]one from that bring your own truth. If you have made something in a meeting, you will leave that
[26:11]meeting just a little bit different than you entered it. And so the next time you bring your whole
[26:16]self, it's an enhanced self and not the same old stagnant self. It's like an old fashioned pinball
[26:21]machine. You know, you just see all the things. You're just like hitting. You go off in a slightly
[26:25]different direction, but you're still in the same machine. Oh, that's a cool image. First off,
[26:30]would be proud. I was always, but I didn't understand pinball. It's what I just was talking about
[26:36]with about this. I was always short. Like when they were around, I couldn't even see up. Yeah,
[26:40]yeah. Time I got to the height. They had sort of done their thing. I'm barely over the height now.
[26:45]I mean, anyway, okay, last question. I have to go to school pickup. Last question, advice to
[26:50]aspiring authors. Oh my goodness. I will pass on. I can't stay in the way of you and school pickup
[26:55]given the topic of this wonderful podcast. So I will pass on the advice that I was given by
[27:00]a mentor of mine. James Harding, a wonderful British guy used to be the top journalist at the BBC.
[27:05]And he said, Hey, Matthew, if you're writing an op-ed for some newspaper, you could write about
[27:09]three or five things and 1200 words. If you're writing a book, it has to be about only one thing.
[27:15]And that's hard as you know. That's really hard. Yeah. And so I don't know if I succeeded in doing it,
[27:20]but I really tried to. And all the things on the cutting room floor are things that
[27:24]all my darling's I thought were really great. Maybe for another book, but they didn't serve that
[27:29]one core idea. You should put them together as like a PDF and give it when people like join
[27:33]a newsletter or something. Thank you. Are you forever changed? I am forever changed. See? Yes.
[27:39]Thank you. Good luck with the school pickup. Thank you. It was great to be here.
[27:44]Thank you for the podcast. Okay. Bye bye.
[27:48]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to
[27:52]follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Also sign up for
[27:57]my newsletter at zebiowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on
[28:02]Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound for the Sound Editing.
[28:07]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and
[28:11]now trim music.