The Army Ranger Who Teaches CEOs How to Disrupt Everything (Without Burning Out)

21:19I'm not doing that to my people. I'm saying no. We call that a firefighter. You put out that fire. Sometimes people say, you know what? We could go do that and change our business or change our family to be more oriented that direction. But in doing that, we lose the essence of who we are and what we're all about. So I'm going to lead a movement toward saying no. So one part of it is you have, and by the way, and we all know this, but it was reinforced in the research, sometimes saying no when everybody else is saying yes is the most disruptive thing you can do. Yeah. All the other companies are going this way and we're saying we're not doing that.

21:54An example would be when you look at the COVID period, especially when COVID hit, retail stores were scrambling. How are we going to survive this, right? And we know that apps became more, you know, there were more and more apps in the store that you could use to order goods. And they could be delivered to your home or you go to the store and they come out and drop it in your car. So they created a pickup service. And of course, they were concerned about their own employees at the same time. Are they safe? Then they created these racks inside the stores where you could just come in and sign or something and pick up your item and leave.

22:21And some companies kept doubling down on that, moving more and more toward that change to the point where half their store is becoming a warehouse. Right. And there were other stores that would say, yeah, that's interesting, but that's not who we are. COVID is going to pass and we want to be able to get people off the couch to come into our store. So we'll go so far, but we're not going to go all the way. In those cases, they said no to a disruptive move that the market was doing or their competitors were doing. And that was a very disruptive move to make. So I think that's one thing we learned as we went through it.

22:49To your question was that sometimes the most disruptive things you can do is say no and really lean into that. I also think one thing we've uncovered in the project, and sometimes good research says stuff that everybody's like, yeah, I knew that, but thank you for giving me some data to support it. We talk about these four fundamental facts, and I think they're really helpful to keep in mind. The first one is that the status quo is a deceptive little devil. I know. I love when you talk about that. If you like things the way they are, enjoy the moment, but they're going to change. But conversely, if you're in a bad situation, if you're dealing with, right, like you mentioned, Patty's recovering from a procedure.

23:25It's not the best place to begin, but that too shall pass. Right. It's going to pass. So that's the nice part about that. The other side of status quo is the deceptive little devil is maybe you should stop trying to cling to it. Look at what Netflix was able to do. What, three, four different business models? If you cling to one of mail order, for example, you would have missed out. So the ability to ebb and flow. That's the first one is the status quo is the deceptive little devil. The second one is that's okay because you're wired for it. And the idea that, you know, Jim Patterson and I are not neuroscientists, although I have access to a lot of them at the university, but we all know to some degree that our brains are pretty cool and that we have the ability to do things as animals on this planet that no other animals can do.

24:08We can envision a different future. We can begin to manifest that. We can regulate our time and our effort and where we put our attention. We have the ability to say no to things. Sometimes difficult, but we can do that. So our brain's really cool. We also are wired because of our experiences. Our experiences inform us. In fact, we're going to go in through my highlights of my career right now. But sometimes when you're in a low moment or I'm in a low moment, it's kind of good to remind yourself of the highlights in your life, the things you've overcome. And there's people listening right now that have overcome all sorts of obstacles.

24:38And they think they can't do the next one, but they probably can. And maybe reflecting on that will help them. And then the third one is that relationships in life provide headwinds and tailwinds. So you have some relationships in life, we all do, that are very supportive to us, very encouraging to us, very challenging to us. Sometimes they tell us the hard truths, but they're helping us move toward that goal in life or that purpose in life or whatever it is you're working on. And then there's other relationships that are kind of slowing you down. They're headwinds. And one question to figure out is, are there people in my life that are headwinds, that it's going sideways?

25:13I know it's not good. In my heart of hearts, I know it's not good. But I haven't been willing to disrupt it. What might I do? So we talked to that. And we also helped think, where are you at in people's lives? Are you helping them out? Are you holding them back? That's a good question. And maybe there's a text you need to send to someone today to kind of change that. So we talk a bit about that in the book as well. And then the fourth one is your time here is finite. Make it count in ways that matter. Listening to this podcast, hopefully you're listening at a 1x speed. But if you're going at 2x speed, that too, you know, it's going to pass.

25:47It's going to pass. And you're going to turn this off and go to your meeting. Or you're going to turn this off and go be with your family or whatever you're going to do. You know, this will pass. This book launch will pass. These things will pass. So make sure you take a moment and ensure, you know, that what you're doing really matters. Patterson was good with me on that because I am an achiever by heart. I mean, I just, I am. I like to chase goals and things like that. I can also get a little down on myself sometimes. And I feel like it's not moving fast enough. I was actually writing something down this weekend.

26:16I was thinking about is I have this, I can actually look at my notes. I'll tell you what I wrote. I said, yeah, it's not going to, I led up to it. It might not be as profound as I thought it was. Oh, I just wrote that. Sometimes when you go back and read your notes, you're like, no, I just wrote that I can at times be restless and exhausted from being like, and the funny thing is you can be restless in life if you feel like you have no purpose. Like, I feel like I'm not, I don't, I got, I don't know what to do. I don't know where to go. that's a very restless feeling. It can be exhausting. You can also be restless if you have a purpose you're trying to pursue and you don't feel like it's moving fast enough or whatever it might be.

26:51And that's exhausting. I felt like sometimes I get restless and exhausted, but Patterson would say to me, hey, Patrick, you're going to drink from one or two cups today, the cup of joy or the cup of grief. Choose joy. And I think that was such a great thing to help me through this last few years because writing a book or doing research takes time and you don't even know if there's going to be an end state to it. Right. Yeah. Well, I love that. I'm a pretty optimistic person and I probably drink from the cup of joy more than the cup of grief and just kind of naturally how I'm wired. But for all the research that you all did, and you're looking at these sort of four themes, patterns, how often do people actually, I think you would have to teach yourself to do these things, right?

27:37Or were you finding that people were organically doing this on their own? Or do you kind of have to stop, think? Yeah, no, no, no. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I would say that we all to varying degrees would embrace these things, right? Reminders are good. I mean, so I want to keep reminding people and teaching them about these things. What we found was that the people that we studied in the research, what came out from them was not only a recognition of these facts, like they recognize these things, but also they followed a certain pattern every time they got hit with disruption, or at least most times they got hit with disruption.

28:11What they would do is, we called it the disruptive loop because you start to realize there's this pattern. You know, when you interview a lot of people and code it and you start to realize, okay, there's a pattern here, it's worth writing down. So the first step they would do every time that something happens. So some disruptive thing happened, they wouldn't just react to it. They just hit pause for a moment and they discern. They sit back and say, okay, what does that mean? How is it impacting me? How do I feel about this? And what role of the five roles we lay out in the book, what role do I feel like I need to take on right now?

28:41Do I need to lead the charge? Do I need to support other people? Do I need to say no to this thing and kill it? Do I need to lead a movement toward change or do I need to gather more information? And they all have these fire themes because we're fire inside, right? So do I need to be a trailblazer, a torchbearer, a tinder gatherer, a firefighter, or a fire chief? You don't have to reckon, just get the idea of that. So they discern first. And the interesting thing about discernment is we're not saying that these are like personality types, like you're always a firefighter. What they are are things that they're roles that you take on.

29:09You may have a tendency to take on one of these roles, but part of discernment is, should I take that thing on? Right. And you have to also, you have to take the time to think about, what role do I feel like I want to take on right now? And what role do I think the situation's calling for me to take on based upon the role I have in the organization or my family or whatever it might be? Recognizing that those two things might be different. You might want to take on one role, but the situation, so how do I reconcile that? So the first step they do is discern. The second step they do is they get really clear on what they're strong at.

29:39And we call it behave. So it's discern, behave, achieve, refine. And behave is really about recognizing the behaviors that you're good at, the disruptive behaviors. And there's 16 disruptive behaviors that we uncovered. And 16 is a massively big number, right? If I gave you all 16 behaviors, first, you check out at about eight of them. And second is if you printed them all out and hung them up in your mirror and be like, today I'm going to do behaviors three through four, you'd massively probably fail. Because it's hard to, yes, that's behavior modification. I'm going to do this today and there's no heart behind it or whatever.

30:11So what we say is there's these 16 behaviors. The cool thing is that when we analyze all these people, there is no pattern that says if you have behavior one, three, and seven, you're a slam dunk success. What we found is that some people had one and three and some people had seven and nine. And really quickly, their behavior is like casting a vision. Okay, that makes sense. But I need to cast a vision. But the other one is to kind of the pair with that one is being willing to look at the brutal reality of what's in your hands right now. Because sometimes you say, I know I want to go to the top of that mountain, but you haven't looked at where you stand.

30:41I'm not going to be an NBA player, folks. That might be my vision. But brutal reality is that's not going to happen. So there's these 16 behaviors. So then it gets really cool to think about, okay, what are my behaviors? How can I bring them to this particular disruption? and who other people might come with me on this one because they have different behaviors. So understanding your team, your organization, what their behavioral strengths are. The third one's achieve. And it's really this idea that when I disrupt something, I start by disrupting myself. So I get the doctor's news and I might choose to change my diet or something like that.

31:13By just doing that, by taking that step and starting to change my diet, I start to disrupt the relationships around me because other people around me might be like, oh, wow, you're really committed to this thing. You're looking good. I'd like to change my day. I can learn a little bit too. Or you got this diagnosis. I didn't even know that existed. Let me dig into it. You start to disrupt because we live in a sea of relationships. And we can disrupt them in good or negative ways. And then from there, you might disrupt your team. You might disrupt your family. You might disrupt your organization.

31:38You might disrupt your industry. And it isn't like a wave that has to happen where you disrupt yourself and then your relationships, then your team, then your organization, then your industry. I think that might be in the classic sense how we looked at things. but one massive disruption called technology doesn't require us to do that anymore. You could be Mark Zuckerberg. And if you ever watch like the social network, is that what it's called? Social network? Yeah. Yeah. Where he goes, he goes to a party and kind of gets treated poorly in his mind, goes back to a dorm room and writes this code to Facebook and, and, you know, whatever.

32:08But that's kind of going from disrupting yourself to disrupting an industry pretty quickly. Right. So that's the idea is like, you can, you can go to different levels and it's oftentimes it's really a choice. And then the last step is refine. And it's really about the step that we don't do very well, typically, which is pause and go, what did I learn? What am I going to do differently? But to capture that, we actually interviewed two retired four-star Army generals, General Stan McChrystal and General David Petraeus. And we asked them, you know, why is it the military? And, you know, it could be the military, it could be acting, you know, after a play, you get together and talk about how it went.

32:45Why does certain industries or organizations, why are they really good at stepping back and going, okay, let's review what happened. Let's reflect on it. Let's kind of discern what we're going to do next. And let's lean into the next right thing to do. And they answered because the stakes are so high in the military. And what we try to help people remember is the stakes are high on your team and your life too, because that fourth fundamental fact, your time is finite. Make it count in ways that matters. So I would say that that's the four steps that people really did consistently. It just kept coming up.

33:13And sometimes people would be like, wow, there's a story of a lady who lives in Denmark. York and Piela Kivist. And she went to India on a vacation with some friends and she was struck by the street children in India, very different than what she'd experienced in Copenhagen. A lot of kids living in India on the streets with no family, no looking for next meal. So to her, that was very disruptive. And she started going back to them. And the first loop through the disruptive loop, she just befriended them. But then she leaned in more. What can I do more and more. And now she went through the loop several times.

33:45And now she has 1 ,200 kids in her care in India. And at the same time, she was a server in a cafe. So she didn't have a lot of means. But at the same time, she was able to eventually buy her own cafe. So a really powerful story about the idea of like, you can go from having very little to doing a lot. Yeah, I love that. I want to talk because we talk a lot about leadership on this podcast. So I want to talk a little, because, you know, you have some views from your five-week leadership challenge to now this disruption book. How crucial is getting good at this reflectiveness on disruption or getting good at disruption itself?

34:30How important is that to leadership, do you think? I think it's really important. I think sometimes in leadership, we'll just react and then we'll have to backtrack and apologize or dig in further into the entrenchment, even if we know we're wrong sometimes, right? I know raising kids, when our kids were little, the times where I would be at my wits end and get upset about something, nine out of 10 times, I was kind of wrong. Yeah. I misunderstood something. Then you have to come back and apologize, which is a great example for your kids or a great example for your team. Coming back and apologizing is really critical.

35:01But I think that part's really important. But I think discernment is really, to me, it's a really critical thing. It kind of gets really close sometimes to stoicism. But that idea of like kind of putting things in perspective and spending some time thinking about it, but not just on your own with other people, right? Running an idea by, I come up with some stupid ideas on my own all the time that aren't worth pursuing at all. And my wife or my colleagues or a co-writer or somebody will be like, yeah, that's interesting, but that doesn't fly. And here's five reasons. And that's really, you know, being open to that feedback is really critical, critical too.

35:32I just think that leadership in, so I go to school of leadership that we all are leaders. I think leaders to choice is not a role. It's a choice to be a leader. We lead ourselves first, then we begin to influence others. We might get a formal role to lead or not. I think that the further you go up the leadership hierarchy, if you will, from leading self to leading a team, to leading teams of teams, to leading an organization, it gets more and more isolating and lonely. having good voices in your life that you specifically seek out of someone who can speak the truth to you someone who could challenge you someone who can encourage you maybe all the same person but likely not you may have to find different voices that's really critical as well yeah yeah life is a life is a team sport and a leadership game there's no doubt about it well i love that you said leadership is a choice i believe that too like you know it's not a role, it's your choosing, right?

36:24And I think the best leaders that I've ever worked with or experienced, you know, just in general, whether it's from advising or, you know, I'm in venture now, but the leaders that are great and that stand out are the ones that discern, are the ones that are self-reflective, are the ones that take a step back and say, what did we learn? What do we want to do differently, kind of to your example of the generals you were speaking with. Is there one, like if you're a leader and you're struggling a little bit, is there like one thing you can maybe try or do that can really resonate with your team or just get you off on a different trajectory?

37:08Do you think? I don't know if there's one thing, but I have a few thoughts on that. One thing I would say is sometimes you get off on the wrong trajectory by some things that you've done, whether you didn't listen to something. I remember when we had our company, I had offices in a few different states. And there were a lot of times where I would fly early in the morning to one of our locations. And I would be there when they're coming in for work. I've already flown there, landed, had something to eat. I'm in the office. And along that way, like on that plane, I'm thinking about stuff. I'm like, oh, we're going to do this and this, this, this.

37:36I dream up all these wonderful things. And I get to the office and I just start like pronouncing these things as if everybody already bought into them and know what they meant. It was a little bit, I envision it a little bit like we're all on the dock and I've jumped into the lake and I'm just swimming and they're all looking at each other like, why did he jump in the water? What's going on? So, I mean, sometimes we do that to ourselves. And if you find you've gotten sideways with your people for whatever reason, the chances kind of come in and say, hey, this didn't go too well. Let's talk about it a little bit.

38:03I want to learn from it. I want to get better and genuinely want to do that. And I find that it's interesting when a leader comes to their team and says, I kind of messed this up or we're off target or I don't know how to get from here to there. It's amazing how often your team's rooting for you. They want to see you get there because you're winning as they're winning. And they're also just human beings. We're all human beings. So being a little bit vulnerable in that moment, which is a word used a lot, I know, but I think it's really appropriate in that situation to be like, I don't know how to tackle this or I really messed this thing up.

38:35I think that's a really critical thing as a leader to do, to own it. I also think it's really critical to think about why are you doing this in the first place? You know, we talk about leader, you're going to get promoted and that's a natural thing in your career and you get to take the next step and you get a little bump in your paycheck and maybe a better parking spot if you even go to work these days physically. You know, these type of things are a better spot in the Zoom room. But leadership's hard. And as much as it is an honor, it's hard. I remember as a young guy, like checking soldiers' feet to make sure there's not a lot of blisters on them.

39:07You have to go down the line and check. You have to willing to do that. You have to want to do that. You have to, when I was in the airborne units, leaders jump first. And Simon Sinek says leaders eat last, which is a true statement, but they also jump first, which means when we jump out of airplanes, we're the first one to go. It's a very role modeling type of situation. And I was talking to, some people may know Patrick Lencioni. I was talking to Pat Lencioni about this and he wrote Motivation, among many other things. We were just talking about like, what's your motivation? Why do you want to do this?

39:37And in the hard times to connect. I think there's people that take a role of a leader, get into the role, not realize what it's all going to necessarily entail. It's not just the IQ, it's the EQ side of it. And they're probably struggling to say, okay, what the heck do I do next? And there was a study that was released years ago and Harvard Business Review talked about it where they said that the average age of someone getting their first formal leadership role is 32 years old. The average age of getting their first, or excuse me, 30 years old. The average age is 30 years old and the average age of getting their first formal leadership training is 42 years old.

40:12So that's a 12-year gap where you're learning how to do something. Yeah, you're learning how to do something where maybe your role model before you was great or maybe not so much great. And now you're trying to figure your way out and you're doing it on the backs of your people. So I think it's really critical as well for leaders to be learners. I mean, you have to be constantly in this, whether it's learning the work better, because how can you tell people what good looks like if you don't know? Learning about your people more because they're not just, You know, names on a list or numbers in a system.

40:40There are people with hearts and brains and they want to do cool things too. And then learning yourself and learning what's going out there is really critical. Going out there is really critical. I mean, I couldn't agree more with everything that you said. And I think when, I think I became a much better leader when I realized it had nothing to do with me. You know, again, like this isn't about me. This is about them. And that sort of realization changed me and changed how I communicated with them, how I led, the choices that I made. But I don't know, all the things that you were saying just gave me goosebumps.

41:21Well, I like to look at it, Jessica, as like I know my story and I'm writing my story. I get this cool opportunity to help them write their story. And I think every day we do that a little bit. Like some days you sit down and write a full paragraph in your story. Other days, you might just dot an I or cross a T, for those of you who actually write anymore. Tap a key. How's that? I know. My handwriting is so bad now. I know. Mine is like, well, I'm usually all caps, so I look like an 80-year-old man screaming at someone on my sheet of paper. But if I start to write in cursive, which is kind of not the thing anymore, it gets pretty tragic.

41:53And only I can decipher it. And it's like, okay. I heard that doctors have bad handwriting, but I think they meant medical doctors. You don't want me coming to you for an emergency on a plane. And I'll be like, if they say, is there a doctor on a plane? I'm like, yes, fill out this survey. Not the right guy for that. Not the right guy. No, no. Well, listen, we are running out of time. So I'm going to do two things. One, we always ask for a nugget of advice, the best advice that you have to give to our listeners today. And then we'll go into career confession. So what is the advice you want to leave us with today?

42:28Yeah, I think that advice, and I'm cold on this one, so I'm thinking about it for a second. I think that the advice that I want to leave folks is that regardless of whatever it is you're facing, whatever opportunities in front of you or whatever challenge you see in front of you, the ability to kind of own the moment you're in right now and not let the whole thing overwhelm you. Look for a way to take just one bite at a time. And one way we talk about in the book we wrote, we ended up having these disruptive moves. And these are like little things that you can do. We were on Squawk Box the other day.

43:01Jim and I were with CNBC. We started talking about the guys in the, it was on Varney and company. The interviewer was like, oh, that's way up in the clouds. We're like, no, that's way down on the ground. Owning the day, like the idea, one thing I advice, and I've tried to really practice this recently, it's one of the 27 moves is own the day. So before I get out of bed every morning now, instead of like immediately looking at my device for a while and then absentmindedly kind of wandering off to the restroom or something, what I do is I actually sit and say, okay, what role do I need to fill today?

43:29or how does today connect to my purpose? And I think about those things before my feet even hit the ground. And it just starts you on a different trajectory from the moment ago. For some people, that includes like opening up their Bible or studying some scripture. For other people, it might be a quick conversation with their partner. For me, it's a little bit of those things for sure, but it's also saying like, here's what I'm gonna do today and here's how I'm gonna help somebody else along the way. And just, yeah, I think that's really key. You know what? When I wake up tomorrow, that's what I'm gonna do.

43:57Yeah, own the day. I'm going to own the day. I love that. Oh my gosh. I got goosebumps again. Okay. We're going to do career confessions. So here's a little context for the question. And these are cold as well, folks. So my answer is, we'll see what we say. Oh, I have a feeling you'll be fine. It keeps changing faster than I can adapt. My team's exhausted and I'm trying to hold it together. So here's the question. How do you keep leading when disruption stops feeling like an opportunity and starts feeling like survival? Yeah. So, you know, there's a school of thought out there that says every challenge is an opportunity to learn, grow, and develop, or every problem is an opportunity to learn, grow, and develop.

44:36And I don't fully subscribe to that school of thought. Sometimes problems are problems. I don't want to grow. I don't want to learn. I don't want to develop. I just want to deal with this issue, hopefully never see it again, and move on. And I think part of it is sorting through that. Sometimes it's just a problem. We need to take care of it and just be done with that thing. But there's a lot of things that come up that are opportunities mixed into that. I would say the majority, really. So in those moments, it can feel overwhelming. It sounds like the person who wrote that has a lot of things going on.

45:03And I would say maybe one thing you need to do is just step back and take a moment to unpack a little bit. Sometimes, you know, if you're going on a hike and you keep putting stuff in your bag, eventually it really does start to weigh you down and not serve you well. So I think this might be a chance with this person or this person on their own or maybe with their team is to unpack all the stuff we're doing right now and figure out if some of the stuff just need to not continue to go on the journey with us. Because sometimes in organizations, like you worked in human resources, right? Anything that involved a person somehow was an HR issue to solve, right?

45:36So everything comes to you. And at some point, you have to sort it out and go, well, this really isn't our stuff. This is operations stuff, or this is marketing stuff, or whatever. This is our house. So maybe sometimes as a team, when you start to feel that way, it's unpacking, what are we doing? What's ours to take care of and what's not? And And then also just get really clear on a team, like, who do we want to be? Where do we want to go? What's our contribution to the organization? Who do we serve? And as these other disruptions come along, we pour it through that filter. And if this thing doesn't advance what we do or what we're trying to do or who we're trying to help, maybe it's just a nice one to say no to, which is disruptive, yes, because it's hard to say no, and it might upset some people.

46:16But you got to keep the main thing the main thing. No, I love that. And at Netflix, we'd always say the hardest thing in strategy was what not to do. Oh, yes. Strategy is a choice. I taught strategy for 11 years and tried to do it a lot on my own with clients and in my own business. Strategy at its simplest form, it's a choice. A or B, which path are we going to take? And one of the most deadly routes you can take as a business or as a team is to try to straddle. Where you say, we're going to be A and B. Because you end up being neither. well, you burn out, you burn up resources, you burn out people.

46:52And nobody really knows where the heck they're going. And what they'll do is the days that it's easier to choose a, they'll choose a and it's easier to choose B, they'll choose B and they'll do neither with excellence. Yeah, no, I think your advice is great to kind of take a step back and unpack. I remember this team, this time with my team, and all of the folks that work for me at this time, they always tell this story. And I think it was like one of the moments where they loved and hated me at the same time. But they were all we were stressed out. We had a lot of work that the company was in sort of a pivotal moment.

47:21We were making the transition from DVD to streaming and my team was overworked. They were exhausted. And I played I brought them all in a room and I played at the loudest I could play on the speakers that I had. The Kelly Clarkson song, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And I do think that there's a little bit of that too. It's like, you know, this is hard. Like, you know, sometimes the work that you're doing, even though it's exhausting and it seems like it's overwhelming, unpack it, figure out, you know, if it has a purpose, to your point, and if it's part of the mission. And if it is, sometimes it's just hard, right?

48:01And if it is, if it is, if you decide, I mean, because it doesn't just end at that point, right? Oh, we'll make the choice and it'll be easy. No, it's going to be really hard. But what you'd want to do is if that's the thing you've committed to and you're going to do as a team, then just keep doubling down on that thing. Don't start looking over your shoulder. There's this great quote that I'll completely destroy. But it basically said, like Cyrus the Great said this, but essentially what it's saying is that I want diversity in counsel and unity in command, which is the idea of like, hey, let's get in the room as a team.

48:33Diversity. I want lots of different voices. I want to hear from everybody. I want everybody's input. And then we're going to decide. And once we decide, we're going to unify about that thing. One of the worst things that can undermine trying to do something is when the team walks out of the room and the conversation happens after the meeting, you know, the meeting after the meeting, where they go, this isn't going to work, or that's not going to work, or I've seen this before, it's going to fail. And you feel as a leader, gosh, we're going to ready to tackle this big project or this big initiative.

48:58And you don't realize that the ground beneath you is already starting to crumble. So really encourage people to share in meetings like that or in open forums. And it's hard sometimes because you're the leader and they want to sometimes say what you think they want to say. Make it easy for them. Invite it. Praise it. Jack Welch, whether you like Jack Welch or not. I mean, people are like, there's no, if you know anything about Jack Welch's leadership, results wise is pretty impressive. Very impressive. The way he went about it, people are, there's no gray area. You either like him or you don't like him, right?

49:29But one thing Jack Welch said, which has stuck with me, is that when you find, when you see people doing what you want them to do, make them 10 feet tall and let everybody see it like make a big deal out of it i agree um you organizations oftentimes talk about values we value x y and z we've all seen the signs right this the ceo spin in their chair and show you it on the wall it'll say integrity loyalty trust collaboration communication and have fun doing all these things or something like that's what's written at all and that's great and i'm glad they did that work but what's that look like in practice and i think that's what you as a team in a team leader role need to think about like what does integrity look like an action here?

50:05And how can I model that for my team members? I think it's really critical as well. So I think that when you feel overwhelmed by all these things coming at you, one of the best things you can do is, as Stephen Covey would say, you're getting caught up in the thick of thin things. And you've got to step back and remember what the important stuff is. And then once you decide, you've got to just come up with a plan and follow it and be candid with each other and catch people doing things right. And, you know, be willing to be willing to do your part, which might include rolling up your sleeves at time, but at the other time, recognizing that everybody has a role and your job is to kind of direct.

50:43I like the idea that as a leader, you have a couple different hats you wear. Sometimes you're the dreamer, sometimes you're the director, and sometimes you're the doer. And you have to figure out how to use those different roles. I love that. And I think too, like, you know, when I look back at these times at work that were incredibly tough and incredibly challenging, they're the best times I had. Yeah. You know, I didn't know it at the time, but I mean, that was the, and then I look at the people that I was doing it with. And some of those relationships are the best relationships I have in my life today, because the bond and the journey we went through together was unlike nobody's ever had, you know, So you can't recreate that kind of thing.

51:25No, you can't. I remember my mom passed away back in 2011. And that was right around the time. Actually, I'd just been out of the country for a while. And we were getting ready to sell the business. There was a lot kind of going on at that point. And she passed away up in Chicago. And I went up to Chicago for the funeral and everything. And when I came out of the funeral, I was standing on this few steps outside the church. There were people gathered around outside. and I look over and there's one of my employees who on his own dime, on his own time, flew out from DC to be at that funeral. And that's cooler than any project we ever did, any number we ever hit.

52:02The fact that somebody would do that for me is pretty cool. And my hope was that he did it for me because he saw me doing it for others, I hope. Right, well, I'm sure it is. I'm sure it is. I just got goosebumps again. Yeah, those are moments that stick in your mind, right? I mean, where it's like, this is why, I didn't do it so that somebody would come to my mom's funeral. But him doing that was such an expression of something. That's the gift of leadership. It's so true. Oh, my gosh. I could talk to you for two more hours. But I know you have. I don't know if anybody would be listening. I know.

52:35Well, you know, we're not Joe Rogan, I guess. We're getting close. But anyway, thank you so much for coming on. I had a great time. And I hope you'll come back. and I hope everyone gets your book and where can they find you if they want to learn more about you? I'm guessing they can buy the book everywhere books are sold. Yeah, it is literally. Where can they find you? Yeah, it is literally everywhere books are sold. It's kind of fun, you know, to walk in and see it. Although I tell you this, I went to a Barnes and Noble the other day and I said, oh, I wrote a book, it's over here. And they're like really helpful.

53:08Bring all the books up, you sign them, they put stickers on them, take photos. Hey, here's our tag on Instagram, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, it's a writer. It's exciting to go through that. Yeah, of course. Because usually you're digging away at something for three years. Then I was in an airport and I went into a store. If you guess whatever store it is, you're wrong. It was a one-of-a-kind type of store. And I walk in and I see the book on the shelves and I pick one up and I walk up to the lady who's working there. I said, I wrote this book. And she said, do you bring that in here or what?

53:36I kind of had her arms crossed, looked me up and down. And I'm like, I guess she thought I was trying to bring my book in and get them to sell it. And I said, no, no, it's over there on the shelf. I said, would you like me to sign them? I'm happy to do that. And she looked at me and she goes, no, we're good. And I'm like, all right. I said, all right. Well, thanks. I gave it a shot. Have a good day. And I hope you sell lots of them. And I feel like a dope. And I'll go get my Starbucks. But yeah, that was it. So, you know, it's good to have the ups and downs in life. But as far as where they can find me, it's pretty easy.

54:03My name is Patrick Ledden. I'm sure it's in the notes for this. And this website's patrickledden.com. My co-author, James Patterson, is the world's bestseller. or find him anywhere, but he's at jamespatterson.com. And then we actually have a partnership with the company FranklinCovey because Patterson and I were talking about how do we really scale this thing? Not to sell more books, really, to say like, how do we get this ideas in more hands? And we picked the company FranklinCovey. Stephen Covey wrote Seven Habits of Highly Effective People years ago. And they're a consulting and development firm that deals with millions of leaders around the world.

54:32And they had a course called Disrupt Everything, Innovate for Impact that launches on November 17th of 2025. So it's out there. And people can bring it into their organization, into their teams and their organizations to help people realize, here's what we found. People listening to this who are in senior roles in organizations know there's lots of disruptions going on. And many of them know where they want to take the business. In fact, many of them are thinking, if we don't do this, we'll be gone in 10 years. So they're thinking like this idea of like, I got to go this way. But then they look over and they say, do I have the leaders in the culture to get me there?

55:04What we're trying to do is help them get the leaders and culture by teaching every leader in the team how to deal with disruption, how to create their own little visions, not little, I don't mean that in a diminutive perspective, but organizationally smaller visions. How can they deal with obstacles and how can they rapidly try things and get better? So that kind of rapid Silicon Valley type of approach in that regard to help them do things really cool and reframe disruption in their minds. It's not necessarily negative or positive. It is, and they have to choose. It just is. Yes, it just is. Go to franklincovey.com and you can find out all about that.

55:38Okay, buy the book. Go to franklincovey.com. And thank you, Patrick. That poor writer who wrote that question and started like, I had 50 things to do. You just gave me three more. Thanks a lot for nothing. Give some good advice. To your point, they don't have to take it all. That's right. That's right. It's your choice. Thank you. Yeah, it's your choice. Thank you. Thanks so much. Thanks for listening to TruthWorks.