Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:07 I think you've written a lot about getting on the same page without necessarily talking about getting on the same page, but just what are your, what are your thoughts on gen intelligence and getting on the same page?
Speaker 2 00:00:18 I think it's what happens when we get sort of moved from this idea of tension or, or competition to one of collaboration. So to me, it's really what we're trying to do in those second two practices. Mm-hmm, <affirmative> where it's all about shared mission, right? To the same page. To me means we're both, we're all pointed in the same direction. Hmm. And when we can understand that, then it allows us to kind of lower our defenses and say, oh, well, if you're heading the same place I'm heading, then I would love to hear your idea of how to get there. Maybe my idea's not working right. Or I, I would love to know more about your thoughts, your tools. It's less threatening to me because I'm still gonna end up where I wanna go. And so to me, getting on the same page is, is looking at each other in the, you know, looking in the same direction as each other.
Speaker 2 00:01:16 Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And I think that is, is so critical, um, to getting on the, the same page. And I, I also think it's, it's sort of the, the mantra of gen intelligence is that every generation has something to teach and something to learn. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. So if we just remembered that, then I don't have to know everything. And I also am more than, you know, capable or, or valuable in terms of having something to teach. And I, I feel like that's the same page. I would want everybody to get on and to have organizations sort of normalize that in their culture.
Speaker 1 00:01:50 Yeah. I like that. I like how you closed that thought there. I think what you were saying was if we, if we say to ourselves and can keep foremost in our minds that we have something to offer and something to learn, right. That changes that could change interactions right there.
Speaker 2 00:02:07 Yeah. I mean, I think it, it does, it affects everything. Yeah. Right. Because I think one of the biggest misperceptions we have in leadership, particularly as older people, and this has been more true for older generations I've worked with is that we somehow got the memo that we're supposed to know everything. Right, right, right. That the older you are, the more you're supposed to know expertise is positively correlated with age. And in historically the longer you had been alive, the more you knew, right. The better you were at everything. And then when the digital age came, it upset that dynamic because suddenly for one of the first times in history on a very large scale, of course this has happened in the past, but on a very large scale, our younger generations were inherently learning as they grew up something that we, as older generations had to acquire.
Speaker 2 00:02:59 Right. We were the digital immigrants, right. Not the digital natives. And so suddenly someone who's 20 is better at something than someone who's 60. Sure. Not permanently. Right. That's a stereotype that older people aren't good at technology, but their engagement and interest level. And it was higher that they, they had a very sort of fluid knowledge of, um, digital that was not available to us who grew up when, before it was, was invented. And so we had to learn it. Yes. Right. And anytime you have to learn something versus just naturally acquiring it as you grow up, it's obviously a different learning curve. And so we didn't quite know what to do with that. That was a lot of the angst around millennials was like, well, wait a second. Like, they're supposed to have to wait to know more than we do <laugh> or they're supposed to have to wait to be the experts. And somehow they got that before they were allowed to get it. And that's very uncomfortable and we don't like it. And, and so then we, we had this very negative, horrible, you know, diatribe around shaming and blaming them because, you know, who are you to think? You know, things that we don't know, even though they did. And it was just this storm of, of, of angst and negative,
Speaker 1 00:04:08 It was tension and
Speaker 2 00:04:10 It was tension and, you know, gen Z I think sort of saw it. And, and I honestly think, okay, boomer is, was sort of their proactive. Like you're not doing that
Speaker 1 00:04:19 To us, to me. Yeah. Right. That's
Speaker 2 00:04:21 Good. But also not, you know, I wrote a piece for NBC on this, uh, last year or the year before. Maybe it's been longer than that. The last few years have been a blur <laugh>. Yeah, I know. But, um, it's it, you know, was about the fact that like, I completely understand, okay. Boomer, but that's not gen intelligent either. Right. Because you're, you're sort of saying I have nothing to learn from you. I'm gonna put my hands over my ears and I'm not interested
Speaker 1 00:04:43 In that. It could be dismissive. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:04:45 Yeah. Right. And, and that's not right either. But I think if you, if we all could get on the same page per your question about the fact that I'm comfortable, knowing that I have something I can learn and something I can teach and that learning can happen with people older or younger, that's a very reachable place to be. It really is. I think like you said, it's, it's not hard. It's not,
Speaker 1 00:05:10 No, you know, no, it's not very technical about it.
Speaker 2 00:05:12 No, it, it really isn't. But it's one of those things where, you know, one of our reviewers said, this, this is the missing link. Like, why haven't we talked about this or brought this out into the open and tried to figure out how to be better at this. And I, I just think it's a matter of, you know, if you're very confident, it's easier to internalize the idea that you always have something to learn. And of course you're able to teach people, I think, good point. You have to feel, you have to feel secure and you have to feel content and confident in your organization or in yourself. And when, when people aren't feeling that way, I think often it's because their organization maybe has given them reason to feel insecure. So like, I think about our, our baby
Speaker 1 00:06:01 Boomers that's
Speaker 2 00:06:02 Right now, you know, I'm hearing from a lot of people who say I was displaced or I quit, or I got a early retirement or, you know, a severance package during the pandemic. I wanna work. I'm healthy. I have a lot more to give. I can't get an interview because of my age. Oh yeah. Or whether it's blatant or, you know, yeah. More implicit bias, getting messages that, you know, a company doesn't want them to come work because you know, they're older and how many more years could they possibly have. Right. And so, you know, when you're getting messages like that, or you're working at a place that you feel like has sort of puts you on that off ramp, you know, you don't feel valued. You don't feel important, not at all. And it's hard for you to be like, I, I have something to learn from a younger generation cuz you're, you're feeling threat. And when we feel threat, we're not gonna
Speaker 1 00:06:52 Open, you know, open up
Speaker 2 00:06:53 Psychological safety is sort of like the ability to wanna share your toys with other people. And I'm not sharing my toys with you if I think you're gonna steal or jump up and down on 'em. Right. And so you have to make people feel like, Hey, we see you. We find you valuable. We respect what you're bringing and then they can get to that place of feeling like they have something to, to learn absolutely.
Speaker 1 00:07:15 To teach. I think. Absolutely. And let's talk about that in terms of culture, but I really like that notion of off, have something to offer and learn and a same page about that. I gotta think about that some more. I like the three what'd you call 'em legs of a stool layers. Layers of yeah.
Speaker 2 00:07:32 Layers of culture,
Speaker 1 00:07:33 What we believe. Yeah. What we see and then what we do, I'm sorry, what we believe, what we say. And then the third one was what we do and see.
Speaker 2 00:07:43 So we pulled that from, um, Shine's work in organizational culture, which is very classic foundational work and organizational culture and shine talks about the layers of culture being artifacts. So what, what we see values. So our, our espouse values, right. What we say, right. What we say we care about and then our underlying assumption. So what we actually care about, you know, sort of our fundamental beliefs. And so our adaptation of that really was gotcha. In a culture, what messages are people internalizing? And, and it's sort of like, if you think about Lou traveling to again, another culture, right? The first thing you're gonna take in is what you see. Right? What, you know, what does the workplace look like? You know, our, our senior leadership behind big, big, heavy Oak doors versus open floor plan versus whatever, you know, foosball table and bean bags or whatever people are seeing that we think speak to a certain demographic or generation.
Speaker 2 00:08:46 You know, we saw this a lot maybe in the decade ago when we were seeing everyone try to capture the millennials with their cool hip workplaces. Right. Right. And, and we thought that was what was going to be appealing. And so we went with those sort of seeing those artifacts and then what we hear, right. This idea of, of what we say we care about. Yeah. So really interestingly, right now, I'm, I'm, I'm working with, um, former student of mine to gather data on fortune 100 diversity practices. Because when we were writing our book, we found a study that basically said that only 8% of organizations have age in their de and I strategy. And we thought, oh, that's so low. Like, how is that even possible? And so it was from a while ago though, it was from 2014, but it was the most recent one we could find.
Speaker 2 00:09:39 And so I've, I've seen sort of updates on it, but nothing that I felt like was really that reliable. And so we're kind of combing slowly through, you know, whatever's available, not everything is available, but it's so fascinating because most places don't mention age on their D E and I websites. But if they do, it's like as a, a one word in between all other kinds of difference. And in very few of these companies actually seem to have any plan around it. Sure. So you might say we value people of all ages, you know, races, genders, all of those
Speaker 1 00:10:17 Things. Exactly.
Speaker 2 00:10:18 But then that's what you say mm-hmm <affirmative> right. Then what do we see? Do we see that the mean age at our workplace is 32? Well, then I don't really believe you, right. That doesn't feel very authentic if you say you value age, but you know, clearly people aren't sticking around much after you know, their mid thirties. Yeah. And then that, that fundamental assumption, what do we believe? Well, that gives root to everything else. If we believe there's a power in age diversity, then when we say that on our website, is it a reflected in what you see around you? Right. Right. It's all, it's all connected.
Speaker 1 00:10:54 Gotcha. Okay. I'll offer this to you. It's a, another working definition of organizational culture that I use, which is a shared rationale for why, how we spend our time and our talent, the way we do. And not some other way, the idea is a shared rationale for why we do what we do, but not something else. And that cuts in many ways across organizations, right? It could be, it could be by levels of organization, but doesn't have to be, it could be by roles. It could be spread across an organization. There there's a mindset sort of, of lawyers have in an organization to protect against risk. And there's a mindset that an entrepreneur or, you know, if there's an innovation unit in the organization to try to take some chances, there's a, there's a shared rationale among some people about why they do what they do and not something else.
Speaker 1 00:11:39 And it's probably clearer to them maybe than to others. I think they probably talk about it amongst themselves. Think things could be implicit. Maybe it's just more explicit amongst a, a, a group of people who are sharing a rationale. But I thought about that when I read Pucher bar with shine, what we, those three layers. I think that if I did a lot of government consulting and it was always widely thought that truthfully, that the organizational culture is hard to change, but I'm not sure I saw a lot of people try to go about it the way I think it would produce change. I didn't see the kind of conversations about it that we're having, not that someone replicate our conversation, but that they talked about these kinds of things that they talked about, the difference between ESP and enacted values, that they talked about aspirations and then looked at constraints on people that came from the HR system, formal and informal reward systems, right?
Speaker 1 00:12:39 Where, where there's differences between what we hope to be and do and what we actually be and do are and do. And for legitimate reasons, there's no real criticism about that. The, but talk about it. If you don't talk about it openly, you never change it. Um, if you talk about it more openly, you might find some things you can change. And some things that are hard to change. I saw leaders mostly try to change culture by articulating what they want, the aspiration, what they wanted the culture to be and believing they were providing cover for people to take chances and risks in moving in that direction. But that didn't really account for the realities of people's jobs and the constraints on people and the reasons why people did what they did. <laugh> and not what and not something else. And the other chapter that kind of, kind of goes with the culture chapter was the people strategy.
Speaker 1 00:13:35 You covered a lot of ground, you and your, and your colleagues, Megan, your co-authors covered a lot of ground from concepts to things like structure and framework of things to do from things to say, to notions like culture and, and people's strategy, which are grand in an organization, but you broke 'em down. Like who will your talent be? What will they need to, to stay committed when and where will they work? Why will they work? Right. Those are just great questions to ask, to have a conversation about, to hear how people from different generations in the organization, answer them, or to hear how people from different parts of the organization, answer them different roles, right? You don't know where your different points of view and perspectives are gonna come from, but they're there. So it could be hidden from you or you could surface them. And I think that, I think that these kinds of, uh, questions, uh, and, and that sort of the structure or process you put in some of these chapters for things to do really ought to be effective at surfacing, those conversations does what's on people's minds and hearts.
Speaker 2 00:14:40 Yeah. I think that the people strategies, you know, there, like you said, if at the very least it's a, it's a conversation point to have around, as we talked about return to work, where do people wanna work? There aren't necessarily the generational divides on that, that we would think research isn't supporting that. But it it's an interesting conversation to have even if, to dispel the fact that there are, you know, I saw all kinds of articles and got all kinds of questions about, is it true gen Z doesn't wanna go into an office? Is it true, baby boomers? Can't wait to go back. And it's like, well, no, none of that's really true, but, but what, where, you know, where are there interesting differences? And then even things like, you know, another practical tool when it comes to, to people strategy, taking a look at your job postings, right?
Speaker 2 00:15:26 So if we're in the middle of the great resignation or the talent shortage or whatever, whatever wave we're in at this very minute, it's hard to keep track looking at your job posting and seeing whether a critical eye would reveal that you're somehow signaling that really you do have a preference for a particular age of employees. So whether it's the fact that for as long as anyone can remember, your job posting for a particular role has said five to seven years experience preferred. Right? That is a very odd, I see that a lot. Mm-hmm <affirmative> particularly with HR job. Mm-hmm <affirmative> because my students, a lot of them go into HR and even for entry level roles, they'll be this odd five to seven years experience. And so they normally don't apply for those because they think, oh, not qualified. They don't want us. And then five to seven years also sort of signals to older people that that's not a role for that
Speaker 1 00:16:22 You're over qualifying
Speaker 2 00:16:23 Might think, well, I have 27 years. Like maybe this is way below what I'm looking for. But if you ask someone in the organization, what, how did you come up with five to seven years? I would guess 95% of the time, they have no idea. They didn't write that job. They just cut and paste from the last one. Or sometimes it'll say like, um, a major or a GPA, which I can't remember what my GPA was <laugh>. So if I was back on the job market and I saw an ad that was looking for, you know, accounting and finance majors preferred, I would think, oh, this is, uh, this is for a college student who's graduating or anything like that, right? Like what are you signaling that maybe you don't intend to, or don't necessarily need to, because it's an artifact that we just always included
Speaker 1 00:17:15 That maybe you don't even know you're signaling something. If you look at job postings, there's so many mismatches between them one common requirement as a, as a, some kind of number of years experience. If you look closely, you might think that some of the law, sometimes I see such a long list of, um, responsibilities. It's like, well, that's not a recipe for success right there. No one can do 23 things in one job and be good at the job. That could be a mismatch with years of experience, because I'm not looking at something that says 25 plus years and can do all these things and looking at something that's like 10 or 12 years and do all these things. And then sometimes it's interesting. What's happened to titles mega because I see some government consulting, I still do. Resumes are very important. Part of certain bidding on certain contracts.
Speaker 1 00:18:11 And sometimes the titles that are given out in organizations, VP is given out a lot anymore. There's a lot of VPs in organizations, not even very large organizations where large organizations could have a whole structure of VPs and, and you could look at it and go, they're looking for someone with who's 30, 32. Who's gonna be a VP. And of all this responsibility. And you're thinking that doesn't quite add up right. In my mind, you're raising a great question. Who knows what's intended, but I'm looking at some of these things thinking, I don't know that that's what the HR department, I don't know if they think if what is being, has being read is what they think they're saying. <laugh> or what they meant to say.
Speaker 2 00:18:55 Well, and that would be a good, whether it's a focus group conversation, right. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and even think about, you know, it's an interesting point you bring up, so what assumptions do we have about a VP? Right? So obviously those of us who grew up a while ago, thinking VP, like you can't be a VP,
Speaker 1 00:19:13 Takes some time to get there. Right,
Speaker 2 00:19:15 Right, right. Like I I'm calling you out. Lou. I can hear you be like, that. Doesn't make sense to me, like a VP when you're 30, like, what is that? Right. And so it could go a couple different ways. We don't know one, it could be, are we manufacturing titles? I, I advise for an organization a while ago where everybody was the, the head or chair of something and nobody wasn't. And I'm like, well, what, what does that mean when everyone is the chair of something, right? Like, then, then who's doing the work of the, you know, people on the committee or, you know, what does being chair mean? Anything if everyone is a chair, you know, sort of a question. So, so there's, that, is that the, is that the new iteration of the trophy, everyone gets a trophy, right? Hey, we can just make everyone a VP because maybe we can't pay them more. But if I call you a VP that's
Speaker 1 00:20:01 Worth, we've got some, right.
Speaker 2 00:20:03 I mean, there's probably an article in that, like it's is the, is the, the mid middle management version of, of everyone gets a trophy. Everyone is now a vice president. Like, there's, you'll see an article for me on that probably coming up, but there's that, but then there's also this idea of what's the value of having, if I'm 45 and my, I decide, and I'm the president, what if I want a vice president? Who's 25, because I think there's this great, intelligent potential. Like, I co-authored my book with two former students of mine. Mm-hmm <affirmative> who are millennials. I think they're, they'll probably call me and tell me I'm wrong. Uh, 27, I think something like that now. And I got a lot of questions, like, well, that's really nice of you. Why, why did you know, why would you have them? And, and I will tell you when we started, I thought, oh, this will be a great learning opportunity for them.
Speaker 2 00:20:56 Like, I did it from this sort of kindly place of mentoring and development, but like the, the joke was on me. Like they, they taught me a ton. Like the book was so much better. Mm-hmm <affirmative> like originally they were gonna just contribute. Right. It was, they were gonna necessarily be authors. And they, they gave so much and made so much better through their perspective and sort of challenging some of the assumptions I had going. That's great. Great. Yeah. That, of course I had to, to give them, you know, authorship. And so is there a value in a 30 year old vice president, because we want someone to collaborate with, with, with a different perspective or, and or are we just giving out those titles? Willynilly and they don't mean what they used to mean? I don't know. Good point. We have to look into that. Right.
Speaker 1 00:21:46 Well, that's a good point. It depends on the aim, right? It depends on the objective. Right. And aligning means and ends and you're right. It could go a couple different ways and one way it could be unproductive and well, it could be very productive. We've covered a lot, Megan. Um, we
Speaker 2 00:22:00 Have, yes.
Speaker 1 00:22:01 I like, I liked the book a lot and I've, I've, I've seen other things you did on, you know, other, other podcasts that's I first came across, you was a podcast and some of your U uh, things on YouTube. So I love the frankly put thing the, in your book, remember the, the letter, the email, you, yeah. <laugh> I really did. And, and you know, that
Speaker 2 00:22:19 Was a real letter, Lou. That was a real letter I got,
Speaker 1 00:22:22 But, you know, Megan, I read it like, cuz you, you opened it up by saying the most negative comment you got. And I read it a couple times and I thought that's not that negative. And then, you know, then you followed it on with your reaction to it. I just thought that it was very telling, it was almost like whoever that, whoever that was thought they were being, it was like, they thought they were being critical, but couldn't like, they, they couldn't get it out in a, in a critical, I didn't take it a critical way. I thought that it was more revealing about them than it was about what you had written.
Speaker 2 00:22:51 Well, I did too, you know, it was really somebody who was sort of saying, what could I possibly have to learn from someone younger? Like you silly girl was sort of like the, you know, the tone and
Speaker 1 00:23:01 That was the implication.
Speaker 2 00:23:03 Perfect. Right? Like, perfect. You just proved my point because, and I get that, not infrequently, you know, and it's always sort of the person standing at the back of the room with their hands in their pockets. Like I just don't see why you think they can teach me anything. And it's like, exactly. Right, exactly. Then, then that's where we start because you really don't understand how this could even be possible. And that's very differently than you saying this totally makes sense. It's not hard. It's not that difficult. We're not that far away from it. Everyone can do this if right. If you actually do fundamentally believe that we all have something to teach and something to learn. Yeah. Then right. It's not hard at all. It's just a matter of, of, of doing
Speaker 1 00:23:45 It. You know, the, the organization most traditionally associated with command and controls, the military, you have rank it's your privilege to give an order. There's so many people I've worked with in government consulting who came outta the military. And so many of them would say, that's just not how we do it. You can. And in certain situations you should in so much else, it didn't have to do with combat. I asked a Colonel one, retired Colonel about it one time having the right and the responsibility to give an order. I said, is that a good or bad way to get something done? Megan are more of a team project kind of activity. He said, that's the worst way to get something done. So the military had come up with for a long time. Now commander's intent, which you probably know about or have heard of, and the idea of the commander articulating what the mission will be, the objectives and, and how success would be measured, the what and the why and letting the team, whatever that unit is, figure out the how.
Speaker 1 00:24:49 And you alluded to that. And something we were talking about almost, you know, very early in yes. In our conversation. And then there's a particular one that you, if you, if you're interested in this, you should look a guy named David Marquette who has retired from the Navy and has, uh, his own consulting practice doing basically commander's intent, but what he calls intent based leadership. And he tells a hysterical story, how he came up with this notion where he was, he studied for a year to take command of a ship. And shortly before he took command of it, they switched ships on him. And he literally knew nothing about the ship that he was getting on to take command of at that time. And he tells the story, first of giving a command about steering or speed that couldn't be followed because there wasn't a setting for it.
Speaker 1 00:25:32 And he repeats the command a couple times. And then he asks the young man sitting at the controls. Why aren't you doing what I said? And he said, because sir, there's, there's no three quarter power. He didn't know the ship. And he tells the story of talking to his, his leadership team of an inspection coming up and what were they gonna do? And they got back to him and said, we thought about it. And we, we think we have the answer. We think that you should just shut up. And he says, but commanders don't shut up. It's not what we do. We talk, we direct, we give orders, we give instructions. He said, I thought about it. And I realized they were right. I didn't know enough to pass the inspection. And they did. And it led him to think rethinking how he gave orders all except for the order to fire a weapon, he stopped giving orders.
Speaker 1 00:26:17 Megan, he stopped saying, what do you think we should do? Why that, what might go, right? What might go wrong? He completely changed the conversation with his immediate leadership team and engage them in a completely different way. Then they cascaded that down. According to the story, you tell us that like got to the engine room where guys were now having different conversations about everything they did and understanding how it increased their understanding of how things were connected of how in action they took was gonna impact something or be impacted by something. And they were exchanging information about that when there were never, those were never conversations they had. If you follow an order, you don't have to have that conversation. You just turn around and do what you were told. But if you're being asked, we need to be somewhere by a certain time or we need to accomplish a certain objective.
Speaker 1 00:27:03 How do you think we gotta do it? And the people who are involved in that, even in layers start having different conversations about their piece of it. So much more information surfaces. So much more information is processed by people. And he said in, in, in inside of a year, the entire ship was working that way. And the following year, they went from being one of the worst in the Navy to the, uh, uh, inspection, to being the first in the Navy. Wow. And it's these kinds of things that, like you said it a second ago, do you, let me think of David Marquette? You said, if you fundamentally believe that people have things to contribute and learn, then there are ways to get at that. If you don't,
Speaker 2 00:27:44 You won't.
Speaker 1 00:27:45 Yeah. What are you working on next?
Speaker 2 00:27:48 So my next book is gonna be on how to integrate age into your D E and I strategy. So I just sort of, um, not entirely different obviously, but just
Speaker 1 00:28:00 Focus on that.
Speaker 2 00:28:02 Yeah. With the Harvard piece, they very much wanted it to be titled around age versus generations, which obviously connected but different. And in, in sort of getting the word out on that, one of my assistants said, no, one's really got their, their teeth into the age diversity space. You know, that generations, there's lots of stuff fuzzing around there, but you get a different audience in the conversation when you're talking about age diversity,
Speaker 2 00:28:29 Interesting. Maybe peop maybe people who feel disconnected or stereotyped by the generational conversation are interested in the age conversation. So I I'm trying to figure out, yeah, I've been, I've been reaching out to hopefully talk with some organizations who are doing this really well. Cause I get a lot of questions. Like who's got this figured out. And so I've been trying to really connect to do some interviews there. Looking at how age is looked at in, in the workplace around the world is really interesting. Mm-hmm <affirmative> I wanna incorporate that into the book. So that's my next book projects probably long term, but I'm gonna take my time on it cuz I love, I love writing. So that's what's next?
Speaker 1 00:29:11 I think, well you said this one was phenomenally challenging. What, what did you mean by that?
Speaker 2 00:29:16 It was the hardest thing. I mean that, I said that before I wrote the Harvard business review article, which might have been harder.
Speaker 1 00:29:23 Okay.
Speaker 2 00:29:23 Only because it was, it was a lot of pressure, as you would imagine. There's a lot of eyes on that. It was hard. And I think it was hard because hard in an amazing way, because I learned a lot. Sure. Like there was, we are constantly hitting things where I thought is that right? Do we understand it? What else do we need to find to understand this? There's so much that goes into writing a book that I didn't realize. Right? Like, and, and, and if I wanna just write an academic book, that would be easy because I mean, anybody will let me write an academic book, but nobody will read it. That's the problem <laugh> so I wanted something, you know, I kept
Speaker 1 00:29:57 Saying, what broad appeal airport?
Speaker 2 00:29:59 Yeah. An airport bookstore book, what you would grab is you're going to catch a plane. Like that was my goal. And so how do you do that in a way that does justice to the research and is well supported. So the smart people who are in the know about the research, read it and go, yeah, that's good. But then the smart business people who are out there doing it every day, don't say, well, what the hell does she know? She's an academic, right? Like how do you keep your foot on both sides of that was just great challenge.
Speaker 1 00:30:29 Not bet it was,
Speaker 2 00:30:30 I loved it. It was, it was, it was phenomenally rewarding, but it was very difficult. I'm sure it was like, just to get it right. Like how much is too much like what's missing? Is it clever? Is it interesting? Is it, you know? It, it, it was just, it was great. It was
Speaker 1 00:30:47 Very well. I think you nailed it a good way. I think you nailed it. Oh,
Speaker 2 00:30:50 Thank you. Thank
Speaker 1 00:30:51 You. I appreciate it. I do a lot of reading. Seriously. I do a lot of reading of books like yours. I do some reading of journals. I think you nailed the sweet spot of applicable research. A lot of what I read explains what and why? Very well, some of it explains somehow, but there's levels and layers of how. And I think for business leaders, including government or organizational leaders, they read something and have to figure out I like this. I think I could use this. Where do I? I go in on Monday, where do I start? What do I do? Mm-hmm <affirmative> and you, you don't leave them asking you didn't leave me asking that, that question. So you took it from things that were conceptual to things that were very actionable, which is actually the first thing I said about your post two months ago, I said, this is very actionable stuff. I was just sharing it. And that was the word I used. And now on, on the book, you also covered a lot of, sort of laterally, a lot of territory from things about generations to the framework. And then you, when you went on into the people, strategy and culture, you covered a lot of ground. You gave yourself a big challenge to write to a lot of things.
Speaker 2 00:32:00 Uh, yeah, it was quite the, you know, so funny my agent when we started and I, you know, I gave her the proposal and she said, can you really write like nine or 10 chapters
Speaker 1 00:32:10 On this?
Speaker 2 00:32:11 I was like, I bet I could. That was the big lessons I learned though. Like, if you're gonna write a book, you better love it and have a lot to say, because you know, there's a lot to dig into. And then it's a question of, you know, like you said, how much is too much ground to cover versus yeah. People would wanna hear more on this and where do you stop? And I love all of that. I find it really
Speaker 1 00:32:32 Fascinating. Yeah. I think you did a great job. I'm a big fan and you know, I've talked about it on LinkedIn. It's where we met. I think you've you, you and your, your, and your colleagues have done some great stuff and I hope you do very well with it.
Speaker 2 00:32:43 Thank you. Appreciate, appreciate you helping me, uh, spread the word for
Speaker 1 00:32:46 Sure. Absolutely. Thank you for your time and all your thoughts on this. It's great stuff.
Speaker 2 00:32:50 Thank you so much. This has been a great conversation.
Speaker 1 00:32:53 Thank you. You bet. Of course. Thank thanks, Megan. Byebye. Bye. And that's how we see it. My friends, I want to thank Megan for recording today's episode. You can find it at, I see what you mean.casto.com. Plus all the usual places, send questions and suggestions through your app. Subscribe and give me a five star rating unless you can't. In which case, let me know why and join me next week. When we take another look at how to get on the same page and stay there, unless we shouldn't.
