360 - Seth Godin's Guide to Finding Meaning and Purpose at Work

0:00But it's not just about me. It's about the chance each of us has to make a ruckus, to be able to look back as we get older and say, yeah, but I did something. And we don't get tomorrow over again. So let's figure out how to make tomorrow better.

0:20Hey, it's Marie Forleo, and welcome to another episode of the Marie Forleo Podcast, the place to be to create a business and life you freaking love. And I got a question for you. Imagine if you and everyone you worked with felt like you had the best job ever, like celebratory. It doesn't matter whether you're a boss or you're a member of a team. My guest today not only says that's possible, but he's here to show us the way. Seth Godin is the author of 21 books that have been bestsellers around the world. In addition to his work as an author and teacher, he has given five talks that have been featured by TED, created a worldwide online learning platform that's been used by students in 90 countries, and founded one of the first internet companies.

1:04His latest book, The Song of Significance, a new manifesto for teams, is available now. Seth, I have missed you so much. I think of you all the time. I cannot tell you how thrilled I was when A, heard there was a new book coming out, B, learned that you would be willing to come to our new studio to hang out for a little bit. So thank you. And, uh, you know, so you had just asked me if the Smurfs are a new thing. And I was like, the Smurfs are actually an ancient thing. I was obsessed with the Smurfs as a kid. I still have probably like 80 figurines. I was a member of the official Smurf fan club, which most people don't even know there was one.

1:46So I was like into continuity before continuity was a big thing. But yeah. And the blue, like I was just saying, my stylist, Aaron, who's a genius, I was like, oh my God, this is like elevated adult Marie Smurf outfit. So as long as you don't start like changing completely into, I was into trolls when I was a kid with the hair, you know, and when I was a book packager, I actually owned the rights to make troll books. Couldn't sell them. But on our wedding cake, Colleen and I had two trolls that the troll people gave us. They were this tall and they were dressed in bride and groom clothes. Oh, how sweet.

2:23I don't think I'll ever get over my love for the Smurfs. And I don't know if you'll ever get over your love for the trolls. I'm over my love for the trolls. You are. Okay. So this, so by the way, I just want to say, I got this from you. Like I felt so honored to have like a not bound pages copy. I was getting highlights done in my hair and I'm sitting there and like baking in all the foils and all the stuff. And I'm literally like flipping through, putting my pages on the floor, keeping everything in order. This book is so gorgeous, so beautiful. It's spectacular. So you open the book with, if you've been paying any attention at all, you already know that work isn't working.

3:02We've seen quiet quitting, right? We've seen the great resignation. And you quote the statistic that in 2022, productivity dropped by the largest amount since has been recorded in over 70 years. How do you see what's going on from your point of view and how it relates to wanting to create this beautiful book? Well, first, thank you. Thank you for squeezing me in. Thank you for being the person you are and showing up the way you do. It's not easy to just keep doing it, particularly because all of us, people we know, people we care about passed away. We had a worldwide pandemic. It caused a lot of rethinking.

3:39Yeah. And at the same time, industrialism, which is 100 years old pretty much, is sputtering because you can't make the machines go any faster. And you can't make the productivity any more efficient than it already is. And so what is happening is big companies are turning the dial. First it was how do we make the machines more efficient. Then it was how do we make the people more efficient. Let's put them under surveillance. Let's count their keystrokes. Let's watch them on Zoom calls and put a camera there to make sure. And when the steam shovel came along, we didn't speak up for the ditch diggers, even though the ditch diggers couldn't dig ditches anymore.

4:21We have a steam shovel. But now it's coming for us. Us is every single person who has the freedom and privilege to watch this thing, right? And we're saying, you know what? Our lives are worth more than that. Our days are worth more than that. And so this is a really personal rant from me, a manifesto about the conversation we need to have with each other, with our boss, with our employees. Let's get real about it or let's not play. If you want me to show up and make decisions and lead and invent and create, I'm going to need respect and dignity, possibility, and meaning. I love that. You know, you asked 10 ,000 people, right, to describe the conditions at the best job they ever had.

5:05And I love that. I love that you asked. Do you want to talk through some of the characteristics that you discovered that people said that had in common? This was really surprising to me because I listed 14 choices, including I got paid a lot. I didn't get fired. I didn't have to work that hard. But I also put in things like I accomplished more than I thought I could. People treated me with respect. I did work that I was proud of. And it didn't matter which of the 90 countries the responses came from. It didn't matter how old the respondents were. Everyone said the same thing. What came in last was I didn't get fired and I got paid a lot, which is what bosses think we want.

5:44But in fact, what people want is to matter. And when you have the best job you ever had, it's not work anymore. It's your passion. And we wouldn't trade it for anything. I was at a volunteer community orchestra performance two weeks ago. And these people were even paying to be in the orchestra to pay for the conductor and stuff. Now, there are people who make money playing the flute or the oboe, but these people were volunteers. And I think if we talked to them, they would say, rehearsal is the highlight of my week. And I think we would discover they are happier than people who just go home and stream and binge at night.

6:23because they're doing something in community toward a goal. And that's what we want. And when we realize just how short life is, if you are lucky enough to have a roof over your head and a way to care for your family, what matters is the best job you ever had, not whether or not you can be senior vice president of something. Yes. Yeah, and I loved it. These four characteristics, like I surprised myself with what I could accomplish. For me, as I was just reflecting on my own work and my own career and my own journey, it was like any time that I've been challenged under pressure, set out to do something that I didn't know if I could do, it's like those are some of the most fulfilling and gratifying milestones that I look back on.

7:06I could work independently. I feel like as someone who loves independence and we have this incredible virtual company that we've had for a really long time, it's like I find that I work really well with people who prize value their independence and their ability to just go off and do great work. And then we come back together and we build something good. The team built something important, right? That feeling that it actually mattered. And people treated me with respect, which I think reading this book, gosh, it's so heartbreaking sometimes just to watch the news or to see what goes down online or just to see how we humans treat each other.

7:42So that notion of being treated with respect too. I've been flying again, you know, after not flying for a couple of years. And that also breaks my heart, just seeing what's happening in the skies, you know, that lack of respect. So it's these core basic things that it's so interesting too, as a leader and as a CEO, you know, that no one was like, oh, I got the biggest bonuses in the world, or I had the hugest paycheck, or, you know, some of the things that I think I've been conditioned to think are the most important. Yeah. And it's It's very important that we pay people fairly. Yes, of course.

8:12This isn't saying that people don't need to be paid. And it's also worth noting, I am not arguing that organizations get soft. Like you just treat everybody with like a kumbaya sort of situation. What I'm saying is the opposite. We need to make promises and keep them. That the way to get the agency we need to work independently, the agency we need to do work we're proud of, is to solve a problem, to make a promise, and then to do extraordinary work to keep it, that is not a downside. That's an upside of what it is to have a great job. Yeah, and it takes pausing too. You know, I loved this, that you said, the lesson in this manifesto is simple.

8:55An organization of any size can effectively move forward by asking, what do humans need? What will create significance for those who interact with us? And I loved this question. What does the earth want? And so I pulled those two together, even though those sentences weren't quite next to each other in the book, because I think it points us towards some really important questions to ask as we are designing, choosing what to work on next, how we want to grow forward, how we want to evolve what we do. and this other question too, I want to say these out loud. These are your words because I, first of all, I always love your words.

9:34I adore you, but I want my audience, everyone listening or watching right now, it's like, write these down. I want you to get the book and read it, but write these questions down because they're so important to ask yourself. What is the change we seek to make? Does it matter to the people that we work with? It's like, these are such fundamental questions, but I'll just speak for myself. I can get into such a habit of setting visions and setting goals and being really excited about them and pushing forward and just going. And I think I'm only more recently really practicing slowing down to ask these kinds of questions of myself.

10:11And I feel like our company has such a great opportunity. It's like, oh, I want to ask these of each other more. This is really fun discussion points. Anything you want to say? Oh, so many things there. Let's start with the questions about what does the earth want or what does the market want? For a long time, if you were the CEO of a big company, asking what does the stock market want was a good way to get rich, right? When the internet came along, feeding the internet what it needed and wanted was a really brilliant insight. And you were one of the pioneers in doing this in this medium, right?

10:46Understanding that content plus production values plus connection was something that would fuel this new internet thing. As we are finally paying attention to our climate problem, organizations are starting to understand, oh, we can succeed just by doing what the earth wants, just by showing up to help fuel that going forward. And what we do if we're going to create significance is we make a change happen. If there is no change, then you're a cog in the system doing what you did yesterday. So nothing against bank tellers, but most bank tellers make a different kind of change, right? But they're just doing a transaction over and over again.

11:27What we are looking for in a great job is something wasn't there and now it is. You made a change happen. And being clear about what change we seek to make, who are we seeking to change, how do we create value for others, not simply demand something for ourselves? This shift is critical because any job where I can tell someone exactly what to do, I can find a computer cheaper than you to do it. So if you're just looking for a script and a manual, it's going to be tough. Yeah. Yeah. Real tough. So I want to highlight a section. Again, this is another one where y 'all, when you get this book, which you need to get this book for yourself and your team, this is the area where I'm like, yeah, let's copy this.

12:15Let's put it up on my little billboard. Let's share it around, distribute it in our team. So they're questions worth asking, things that we can begin with every time we set out to do work together. And you said, yes, they are worth asking out loud. They are worth answering in writing, and they're worth committing to the answer. So I'm just going to read them, bear with me, and then we can dive into one or two. What's the specific change this team is going to make? What's my personal role in making that change happen? What do I need to learn to support or lead this change? Who needs to help me and who needs my help?

12:52What's the risk for us, for me, the people we serve? What's the timing of this project, the budget? What am I afraid of? And what's the benefit to each party involved? I was like, ooh, that is a meal. That is a full-on meal. That's like a multi-hour conversation, really, really worthy of it. Is this the kind of thing that you have seen work? Because you've had so many beautiful projects over the years. And that's one of the things I admire and respect about you so much. Is this the kind of thing that you'll sit with, depending on what project it is, with folks that you're working with on a team?

13:24So as you're reading the list, I'm sure people are saying to themselves, but it's too awkward to say this out loud. It's too awkward to create a Google Doc shared and have people fill it in. Well, if it's too awkward to do that, then why are you going to spend the next month or year of your life working on the project? It's too awkward to spend an hour to be really clear about mutual understanding and you'd rather just wing your way through it. And it's not just what you do at work. It's planning a wedding. It's the same thing. What is the purpose of the$80 ,000 we're about to spend on this party?

13:58What change are we seeking to make in the guests? Are we trying to show status by how much money we can spend? Or are we trying to create connection or joy? Because if it's about connection and joy, why is the day so over-programmed that no one can talk to anybody else. Let's figure out what it's about. And so, you know, I spent the last year and a half organizing the Carbon Almanac as a volunteer with 300 other people. Now it's 1900 in 90 countries. And it was life-changing. But one of the things about coordinating that many volunteers is you can't just sort of use winks and nods to get your point across.

14:38We never had one meeting and we never met in person. And yet we made a 97 ,000 word book that was a bestseller in multiple countries and has no errors in it. How did we do that? We did it by being clear and specific. We got real. We said, the purpose of this page is what? And so one of the things that we're arguing for is to build a sense of mutual respect so that you can criticize the work and never criticize the worker. That standards needs to go up in this world, not down. And the way we make standards go up is we can look at the work and say, but what if we did this? Would it come closer to achieving our goal?

15:21And we can say that without saying, Bob made this and Bob's a bad person. Right. That part of what it is to be in this significant relationship is to be clear about what our standards are. And so that particular project, because I know it is very, very important. Let's talk about that for a second. Was there one leader, multiple leaders? How did that go down? Because I think what you said is so extraordinary. I've never heard of anything like that before. And I can only imagine people listening and watching right now going, how cool is that? Do you know what I mean? That this extraordinary project that's so important on so many levels came to life and there was never one meeting.

16:02And at the time, was it 300 volunteers that's now up to - Yeah, the core group was 300 people in discourse, not discord, which is noisy. Discourse, which is organized. There's a difference between a manager and a leader. Yes. Managers use power and authority to tell people what to do and get them to do what they did yesterday, but faster and cheaper. So airlines, fast food restaurants, they need managers. They need to just deliver the stuff on time. Leaders, that's voluntary. That can work in sync. That can work horizontally. So did we have a managing editor? We had a couple. But mostly, we had about 100 leaders.

16:42Someone said, I'm going to lead this work to make sure we got 20 graphs and charts in this section. I'm going to lead what our graphs and charts look like. right and that person didn't get to tell anybody else what to do what they got to do is invite others on to the journey be clear about what success looked like create the conditions for people to have the conversation make a promise about when it was going to get done and organize so that it would but there was no hierarchy and people came and went because we were all volunteers some people stayed for an hour some people thought they were going to stay for an hour and stayed for 30 weeks.

17:23And so it was intentionally flexible like that. Yeah. But that's the way humanity has always been until industrialism said, no, you have to sit in this cube and fill this box on the org chart and you're not allowed to talk to that person because they're not in your department. That's recent. Yeah. It's just, it's still mind blowing to me and it's so cool. That's why I wanted to ask you more about it. I also want to highlight these two documents that you share that we need before we begin. Can you tell us what those two are? Or I can, yeah. You should tell me. So the pre-mortem and then the rave.

17:58And I love that because again, we've done beautiful things and I'm so proud of it. And myself and my team, we're always looking for ways like, okay, how can we do this better? How can we be better? Where did we miss the mark last time? And what can we do both from a process perspective and our teams, but also most importantly, from our customers and our user perspective, like, okay, how can we make it better? So walk us through the premortem and the rave. And I just want to lay you up with another thing that you wrote. Intention gives us the power to describe and name possible futures. I was like, oh, so good.

18:31Okay, so here's this beautiful, magical book, right? We have trepidation when we start out on a project that's going to be in public. Well, here are two ways to deal with it. The first thing is before you begin, write down in detail a tragic, horrible failure that the project led to, right? That it didn't ship. We were late. People hated it. It didn't sell. In specifics, all the things that went wrong. And then right next to it, write the single best review you could ever hope for. Specifics. What does that review say? And hold the two of them next to each other. and say, all right, now, when I'm dealing with this pre-mortem, this disaster in advance, how likely is it?

19:18Can I live with that if it happens? And how can I organize this project to make the chances of that happening very low? So at the Aravind Eye Hospital in India, which I'm a huge fan of, if we add up the number of people in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, in total, Aravind has restored the eyesight of more people than that. and when you go to Aravind you have a choice you can pay 130 or zero up to you and you get the same surgery it's just different recovery room and I can tell you what the premortem is people got infections and went blind right oh okay so let's organize the conditions so that will never happen and in fact the rate of infection at Aravind in India is less than at a fancy hospital in London because they organized to make that not happen.

20:07And it's easy to describe what the raves are when you restore the eyesight to millions of people. And that becomes your guiding light as you're going to figure out, is this even worth the effort to make this change happen? Yes. And that's such a big question, isn't it? Is this even worth the effort? Some of us are getting tired of it, but we are asking, especially as we've been putting together this new space and making all these decisions. It's like, is the juice worth the squeeze? Is that investment of time, money, energy, human life force worth whatever thing? We're like, hmm. And I love asking those questions because it's easy when you're ambitious and creative to just go and just want to kind of move fast and dive in and get messy and say, oh, it's all going to work itself out.

20:51But I think - So I'm going to interrupt you for a second and say that it's entirely possible that beauty is its own reward. And I think that the P &L CFO analysis of that little part of your office is probably not going to pay off in cash. But this place was worth whatever juice, whatever squeeze. It's inspiring. It is a testament to the extraordinary crew you have here and to you. And your work's going to get better because of it. Beauty matters. Thank you. We feel that way too. I'm excited to show you some other things that haven't been publicized because I think you're going to get excited about them.

21:31Ray, look, nothing in life is that complicated. You can do whatever you set your mind to. If you roll up your sleeves, you get in there and you do it. Everything is figureoutable. I was still a little girl when my mom said those three words to me. I had no idea how much they changed my life. Eventually, that simple phrase helped me end a physically abusive relationship, get out of piles of debt, and land every job I've ever had. From bartending, to trading on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, to publishing at Condé Nast, to becoming one of the world's first Nike elite dance athletes, to starting a business at 23 and building it into a multi-million dollar socially conscious education and media company from the ground up.

22:20Now look, I don't know what your dreams are, but I do know this. They are 100 % figureoutable. If you want help on your journey, get yourself a copy of my number one New York Times bestselling book, Everything is Figureoutable. Now one big thing, do not just read the book. I need you to do the book because if you do, it will change your life. Learn more at everythingisfigureoutable.com or head to your favorite place to buy books or audio books now. Okay. Another story that I was like, I love this. And I wanted to share this one with my team and everybody. The story about Kinko's and Sleepy's and about Paul's best technique for growing what would become more than a$2 billion business.

23:12Do you want me to lay it up? Oh, no. Yeah, great. I mean, years ago, shortly after I got the rights to the trolls, I worked with Paul and had the rights to do the Kinko's book, which I also didn't sell. I had a lot of books that didn't sell, but it was great to spend time with Paul. So it was called Kinko's because Paul had really wild, crazy hair. He has a haircut like mine now, but at the time. Yeah. And he has profound dyslexia and isn't shy about it, basically not a reader. When he opened the first Kinko's on a college campus, the office they were in was so small that they had to roll the Xerox machine outside to open for the day.

23:53And if it was raining, they were closed. And it grew to this huge chain that they sold to FedEx for a lot of money. And I'm like, well, Paul, we're writing a book about this. What's the secret? He said, the secret's simple. I walk into stores for a living. That's all I do. I go to stores and I say to the person behind the counter, what's working? And if they can't tell me something new that they've done that is working, they're in trouble. So they're all ready for me when I'm going to walk in. They don't know when I'm going to walk in. Oh, we tried this. We put this over here. We changed this.

24:24And then all I do is tell all the other stores about what I learned from that store. Fast forward 20 years, I'm in a mattress store back when there were mattress stores called Sleepy's. And the salesperson hears the phone ring and turns white as a sheet, runs over and answers the phone. Apparently the only person ever calls is Mr. Sleepy. And there were 80 stores at the time. Mr. Sleepy, I think, was in his 70s or his 80s. And the guy picks up the phone and Mr. Sleepy says, what's wrong? That's all he would say when he would call stores. What's wrong? And if you couldn't tell him something that was wrong, you were in trouble.

25:00And all Mr. Sleepy did all day was call stores, find out what's wrong, and fix it. And so the combination of the two, what's working, what's wrong, is about saying to the frontline folks, your job here is to make things better. Your job is not to ask me for a script. Your job is not to follow instructions. Your job is to make things better. Well, it works. It works for companies. It works for nonprofits. It works for spiritual institutions. This idea that there's only one smart person and everyone else has to follow the instructions, that doesn't really work. No, it doesn't really work. There's so many times too, I'll say very frankly, like, guys, I've got an idea.

25:41I have no idea how to do it. I know it's figureoutable. This brain is not wired to solve that. But you guys are probably way smarter at me and could figure this out. Like, let's see if we can make some magic happen. There's another place. And this was something that I'm super curious to hear your take on. So this notion you talk about in the book that we need stability, that the day-to-day consistency can bring. And then the significance comes in the projects large and small. And I've seen that to be true for myself. And here's what I'm pondering. And I'm curious if you have a take on it. And I know it's not a cut and dry answer necessarily, but I'm super curious.