Is Management Permanently Broken? Interview with David Burkus

David Burkus is a busy man. He’s an author, a professor, a professional speaker, a podcaster and a tireless crusader for tearing down the wall between the ivory tower and the corner office. He’s also put a new book out called Under New Management: How Leading Organizations Are Upending Business as Usual. I’m thrilled that David joined me in this Great Work Podcast.

In this interview we discuss:

• The broken nature of today’s organizations and why management needs new management
• Why performance appraisals should be ditched
• The importance of constantly checking in on progress and constantly re-evaluating
• Why a question is really a transference of power,  status and certainty in disguise
• What organizations could learn from Broadway shows

Click the play button below, or bookmark the David Burkus podcast for a later listen.

 

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Full Transcript

Michael: Hey, it’s Michael Bungay Stanier here from Box of Crayons and I’m excited to be introducing this new podcast to you. Now, one of the benefits of being a business author is you get to hang out with other authors, other thought leaders in this whole world, and you know, I love this podcast in part because I’ve got to meet some of my heroes and some of the people who’ve really helped shape and influence my own thinking.

And one of the things that I discovered from hanging out with my network is that a writer and a thinker that I know and admire, David Burkus, is putting a new book out. And in fact, it’s coming out at almost the same time as my new book. His book is called Under New Management: How Leading Organizations Are Upending Business as Usual. My book, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More, and Change the Way You Lead Forever.

So David and I were trading emails, going, “How are we going to do this? Do you want to do something?” And we both decided we’d like to do a podcast to support each other. He’s got a podcast; I have a podcast. And when we got online, what we decided to do is not do two interviews, but kind of mush those two interviews together in one and make it more like him and me just hanging out and having a conversation. So we started with the question around is management broken permanently? Can the way businesses manage be changed or are we doomed? And really, the conversation kind of spirals in from that.

You know, David, he’s a business professor. When he’s not writing and delivering speeches, his first book was called The Myths of Creativity, another terrific book, but in this book he really gets into 13 things that drive him crazy and kind of embody bad, broken management, everything from email, everything from performance appraisals, which we talk about a fair bit. One of my favourite chapters, and we talk about it in the interview, is about why we should write the org chart in pencil. It’s a pretty free-flowing conversation.

It’s longer than normal. It’s about 45 minutes. And I think you’ll really enjoy the final part, the final ten minutes or so. David has a standard five questions he finishes his podcasts on and what I did is I turn the table on him and made him answer the five questions as well as answering them myself.

So David Burkus, author of Under New Management. I think you’re going to enjoy this conversation.

David: I start everything with, “Who are you and what are you doing here?” But in your case, since we’re doing this kind of joint thing, who are we and what are we doing here, Michael?

Michael: Awesome. So this is cool, isn’t it, David? We’ve never done something like this, a sort of hybrid, I’m interviewing you, you’re interviewing me. It’s turning into feeling like we’re down the pub together. It’s just having a beer or a soda or something and talking about the world of work. But okay, who am I? I am Michael Bungay Stanier from Box of Crayons. So, Box of Crayons is a small but glorious company that helps people and organizations do less good work and more great work, and we specialize in helping busy managers coach in ten minutes or less. And as for me, I am an Australian. Had the good luck to fall in love with a Canadian some 25 years ago when we were studying in England together, so I didn’t go back to Australia. But I’ve ended up now persevering through long, cold winters up here in Canada due to true love.

David: Okay, so I was going to ask you this question, but you’re outside of Toronto, right?

Michael: I’m in the heart of Toronto.

David: See, because if you were a Canadian on the other coast, in Vancouver or in Alberta, then you might even still be jointly Canadian and Australian. Because the last time I was in Banff, I was overwhelmed with Australians and New Zealanders because apparently this whole tribe of people who just migrate back and forth with the seasons, chasing snow.

Michael: Yeah, Australians are great travellers, in part just because Australia’s just so far away from anywhere that if you’re travelling, you got to travel. You can’t do this, “I’ll just go for a long weekend,” because it takes you a long weekend to fly anywhere. And Whistler, you know, Whistler is the big ski resort outside Vancouver and it’s, like, 112% Australian. I mean, it’s ridiculous. It’s more Australian than Sydney.

David: Yeah. No, I was there. Even still in March, which there was no snow whatsoever, you know? So I was up in Whistler for TEDActive and that was when, I mean, it was literally; I see the 112% because almost every staff member, anybody. You go into the Starbucks and the entire Starbucks is Australians and New Zealanders. It was really …

Michael: Exactly. And the people listening can’t see this, but you and I, we’re on video here. We can see each other as we’re talking and you can also confirm that all Australian men are just gorgeous. We’re just such good looking men.

David: Yeah. No, absolutely. Just rugged and yet dapper at the same time. And I guess you could confirm that all Americans are probably kind of pasty and overweight so there’s that, right?

Michael: I wasn’t going to say that out loud, but that’s what I was thinking.

David: The stereotypes fit.

Michael: So let me ask you this, David, because my audience are listening in as well. So who are you and why are we having this conversation?

David: Yeah. No, that’s a valid follow-up question. So my name is David Burkus. I am the author of The Myths of Creativity and the forthcoming book, Under New Management. And really, I guess I am a crusader for tearing down the wall between the ivory tower and the corner office. And so, what I get really excited about, by training I’m an organizational psychologist but as an undergraduate student I was a writer.

And so, really what I get actually excited about is using writing to kind of bridge that gap. Like, the very first time, I was probably a college sophomore when I read my very first Daniel Pink book, and then Malcolm Gladwell a little bit later, and then suddenly I was, like, “I know what I want to do with the rest of my life. I want to bridge the gap between these two things.”

That’s what I’ve been doing ever since, and that kind of leads you to here. I host a podcast called Radio Free Leader that does exactly that. We tear down the wall between the ivory tower and the corner office. And your work does that in a way that you don’t cite studies, but as I’m reading it I can see the benefits behind all of these different ideas, and so it really excited me.

Michael: Yeah, you know I’m, like you, influenced by people like Dan Pink and Gladwell and those people who go, “Look, there’s some really interesting stuff going on out there in academia and in kind of the social sciences, behavioural economics, but how do you make this practical for your typical manager or leader or employee who’s out there doing the work who just wants to live a better life and do work that has more meaning and more impact? How do you help them with that?”

David: No, I agree, and I think everybody—I’ve never met a manager who wouldn’t do something that was evidence-based based on research of human behaviour and behavioural economics, all of those things. They just don’t know how because there’s no one translating it.

Michael: Right. So, look, I’ve read your new book and I loved it. You know, it’s got 13 chapters. Each chapter is a kind of flag-waving, drum-beating, it’s not exactly a rant, but it’s a little bit of a rant about things.

David: It’s a mini rant. It’s a mini rant, yeah.

Michael: Yeah, that drive you a little crazy about work. And I know that as part of what you do, you speak and consult widely with different organizations. And so, when you look at the world of work and your exposure to it, where do you see it’s broken? Where is it not really working?

David: So I think that, I mean, actually the phrase I use to open the book is this idea that management needs new management, meaning the people who are in charge need to give managers better tools. The tools that we’re using now are basically a slightly modified version of Frederick Taylor and scientific management, right?

Michael: Exactly.

David: And we’ve had 100 years of research, actually 102, since The Principles of Scientific Management was published, and yet most of how we operate is still based on this idea that, A, we can easily quantify everything that matters, and B, if we just incentivize it and then monitor people producing it, we can get it more efficiently. And that was definitely true when the goal of management was to figure out how to efficiently make a product, right?

Michael: Right.

David: And when product was the fundamental aspect of the factory. But now, we’ve moved from a real, a physical product factory, to an idea factory, right?

Michael: That’s right.

David: And we’re asking how the value is created inside the heads of people. And so, we haven’t shifted our tools from product-centric to people-centric yet. We’re starting to and there are companies that are starting to, and it’s weird because the companies that do look very different from business as usual. And really, that’s because business isn’t usual anymore.

Michael: So I mean, I completely agree with you. You know, like the scientific management and Taylor’s work, it’s basically, “Look, human beings, they’re just cogs in a machine and we want them to be as cog-like as possible, which means we’re going to assume that they’re rational and that they can do the same thing over and over again, and you manage them like you would manage a machine, which you keep them in place and you oil them occasionally. And you know, I remember reading Dan Pink’s book, Drive, and he’s going, you know, “The summary of this as a Tweet is everything you know about motivation is wrong. Do it differently.” And you’re speaking to that when you talk about this, which is work is evolving. You know, the future’s here; it’s just not here evenly yet. It’s unevenly spread around.

What, in your mind, keeps us stuck in discredited, 102-year old approach to, “This is how you structure and manage a company”? Why are we still just churning out the wrong models?

David: Right, I mean, especially after it’s been, what, three-plus years since Dan’s book, Drive, came out, right? So you think we would have gotten—and I mean, the dirty, little secret is that it doesn’t just apply to motivation. Everything changes when the nature of work changes. I think the number one thing as I was writing the book that came to me as to why are we still stuck is that you’d find people that would go, “Well, yeah, but best practices are still working.” And my mind is a little riddled with ADHD.

Right when they said that, my mind actually went from business to the internal combustion engine, which if you ever took an engineering class, the internal combustion engine is only about 30% efficient, meaning that of all of the fuel that we put in, gasoline, only about 30% of the energy that’s stored in that gasoline goes into forward motion. So, yes, you could say that the engine is working, right?

And for most of the time, that’s exactly what we did. And so, the same way, you could say that an organization is working. In fact, you look at, like, the Gallup engagement numbers and it’s even less than 30%. It’s usually somewhere around 20, right?

Michael: Yeah, exactly.

David: So, yeah, you could say it’s working: we’re getting 18% engagement. But I think the people—like you said, the future is here, it’s just not evenly dispersed yet. The people who are already there in the future work, they’re the ones who weren’t satisfied. To abuse the engine analogy, they’re the Elon Musks of the world that said, “Forget this, there has to be a better way.”

And those are the people that I’m interested in, the people that say, “Yeah, the way we used to define working needs to be thrown out. 18% engagement should not count as working. What should, and how do we get that?”

Michael: Yeah. I love that. You know, you talk about this in the afterword of your book, right after the 13 chapters, and you make this metaphor and it’s a really strong analogy, which is, you know, the engine, it works but it doesn’t work nearly as well as what it really could be. So, and I know this is a conversation, but this is so interesting for me because I’m banging the same drum. Do you think that organizations have to be—they can’t transform from the old to the new? I mean, do you have to be an Elon Musk and start a new company, literally and metaphorically, or can you actually—because a lot of the examples you give in your book are kind of tech companies or kind of relatively recent knowledge-based companies.

David: Yeah. Well, and even the ones that are not technology-oriented, usually the idea that they’re getting profiled for they started with. But there are organizations that made the subtle changes over time and it usually—I mean, what’s interesting about it is you see this; it’s sort of a retail company and sort of a tech company, but you see it in Zappos, which is making the giant move to holacracy, which I’ll be 100% transparent. The jury is still out for me on holacracy as a model.

Michael: Yeah, I agree.

David: As an empowerment method, I’m all for anything we can do to kind of flatten and reduce and allow for self-managed teams. I’m not sure that that’s the right operating system. But still, so they move and they transition and they lose people, and it’s tempting to say—I mean, they gave their offer. You know, their paying to quit offer, to everybody, and I think it was something like 20% or 15% of the management class decided to leave. And so, if you’re willing to do that, which Tony Hsieh was, then I think you can still do it. But I think you’re absolutely right. For the most part, there are people who, when you ask them to envision the future, don’t want to do it because it endangers the current, right?

Michael: Right.

David: And those people either need to be invited to be successful elsewhere or need to be sort of shown the better way. And I think the amount of effort involved in that is, especially when you’re thinking on a quarter by quarter basis for profitability, etc., I think the amount of effort involved scares most people and they just decide, “You know what? We’ll survive till the turn of the quarter and then maybe we’ll reevaluate,” and then they never do.

Michael: You know, for me, it also makes me think about just how we as human beings react to change at a kind of neurological level. You know, so we’re talking about your new book. I’ve also got a new book out called The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More, and Change the Way You Lead Forever, and one of the things that I talk about in the book is this sense of the neuroscience of engagement. You know, the four elements of the neuroscience of engagement spell the word TERA, T-E-R-A, and they stand for tribe, expectation, rank, and autonomy. So you can see that when you talk about some of the future-focused, future-forward forms of organization that you’ve referenced, and some of the changes you talk about in your book, David, that potentially has a huge impact on things like our autonomy. Fantastic. But you know what? It has a decreasing impact on things like expectations because now we’re moving into a place of uncertainty, and it has a potentially decreasing impact on things like rank. So for managers or people who got to a certain level in an organization, they’re like, “This is the thing that got me to my level of control and seniority at the moment and I don’t want to give any of that stuff up.”

So there’s just you’ve got this challenge to go through, which is there’s a bunch of people who actually, when you talk about some of the proposals that you’ve put out in the book, and some of the stuff that I talk about in The Coaching Habit as well, it actually triggers kind of, “This is a place of risk. This is a place of fight or flight,” rather than, “Oh, it’s a promised world. Let me go. Let me see what that’s like.”

David: Right. Yeah, no, and one of the strongest parallels between both of our books was in—so in my book, there’s a chapter on ditching performance appraisals, which honestly we could do if everyone had a copy of The Coaching Habit, right? Because if they knew, like, “Okay, here’s a simple template and you can do quarterly or even weekly check-ins and only spend about ten minutes and then you’ll never need the performance evaluation.”

Michael: Yeah, exactly.

David: But you’re right, we have a system where the people who have, sort of in most bigger organizations, the people who have gotten to the top got there through this performance evaluation and high potential programs and all these elaborate schemes that are, I mean, actually not that effective, if you think about it. I mean, one of my favourites is in the performance evaluation sort of process, what we usually do is map out a career plan. Like, “Here’s what you’re going to do in three years and five years, etc.” And you can’t do that anymore. I mean, you don’t even know if the company will exist in three to five years, let alone if your job—I mean, literally you might be going down the road and then suddenly the bridge disappears because the plan you thought doesn’t exist anymore. So teaching people to sort of—like, I love that you call it a habit. Teaching people, managers, equipping them with the habit of constantly doing this, is really the only effective way forward because while we want to embrace the stability that we used to have for that comfort’s sake, exactly what you were talking about, it’s not there anymore. And so, the only thing we need to do is to be cyclical, to be habitual about constantly checking in on progress and constantly reevaluating all of those things.

Michael: You know, it’s interesting. I mean, I know in a pretty recent podcast you put out with your latest interview with Dan Pink who, you know, we’re having a love-in with Dan here. And he’s talking about that. It’s like, “This idea of a five-year plan? Ridiculous!”

David: Yeah. Yeah!

Michael: And I don’t know if you’ve read his most obscure book, is The Adventures of Johnny Bunko.

David: Johnny Bunko, which I think rule number …

Michael: Oh, I love that book!

David: Actually, hang on.

Michael: David’s gone off to get the book.

David: Oh, I’ll cut that part out.

Michael: But for those of you who are listening who may not know this, it’s a manga-style career guide for people who are just starting off. And I can’t remember the five rules, all of them, but I know one of them is “There is no plan.”

David: Yeah, rule number one.

Michael: There is no plan!

David: Rule number one, there is no plan, right?

Michael: Yeah, exactly.

David: And there’s even … Yeah, rule number one. So this is actually, you know, my day job, or my night job depending on where I’m focused, is as a university professor, and this is the book that gets handed out to students. Like, “I don’t know what I want to do with my life.” “Read this and come back to me on Monday.” And because it’s great and you’re exactly right: it’s that there is no plan thing. And you know what’s funny, is so all of that thing came up because I was—you know, I got Dan to be on the podcast. Well, I guess when we’re recording this, it was the most recent episode. But on a recent episode of the podcast, and he didn’t have a new book out so we weren’t going to do the standard interview. And secretly, I just wanted to know kind of, like, what—I wanted to get him, like, “Well, what are you working on now?” Right? I wanted to be the first person to break the story of, “What’s Dan working on?”

Michael: Nice.

David: He wouldn’t let me do that. But then, I also tried to get him on, like, “How do you plan out what you’re going to write?” And he’s, like, “I don’t have a plan. I’m just curious, and then when I write something I get curious in this next domain and I go after that.” And it was just like, I mean, Dan’s had a tremendous amount of success as an author, but that’s the same thing that can—that’s the only strategy that can work in this new, ever-shifting territory.

I mean, people say, “Follow your bliss.” I don’t even know that that’s true. Just follow your curiosity.

Michael: Right, because I think there’s something about you find your bliss by following your curiosity. Because honestly what I do now, what I’m really excited about right now, is how do I change the way management and leadership works by making managers and leaders more coach-like? But honestly, if you had asked me that ten years ago, and went, “Here, this is going to be your bliss, Michael,” I’m like, “Hmm, I don’t think so. I’m sure there’s something else I could be doing that’s more bliss-like than that.” But it’s actually by working through it you actually start finding the stuff that lights you up.

And you know, if you had to summarize my book in a Tweet, it would be “a little less advice, a little more curiosity.”

David: Yeah. No, your book is actually riddled with all of these quotes I was taking pictures on my phone of because, you know, I wanted to Instagram them, which is, you know, Instagramming quotes is so popular right now. Michael: Cool. David: And they were all on asking the right questions. And I’m a huge fan of Warren Berger’s book about this issue, about just learning how to ask the right questions.

Michael: Oh, I love that, yeah.

David: And I think it’s something that you and I, it’s intrinsic in us because we’re also writers, and that’s basically what you do, is you’re writing a book and you go, “Huh, that’s interesting. I wonder how that works more.” And then suddenly you’ve got the idea for sort of the next book. But I don’t think people do that in their career. They think there’s this broad—that they’re going to have the best success doing a SWOT analysis and environmental scan and trying to figure out what the most profitable, in demand career with the best chance of options, and I don’t think it works. I think you just have to say, you know, “Hey, I followed my curiosity because those are the things I would be intrinsically motivated to put effort into and I had no idea where it would go over 40 years, but I knew where it would go for three and that was good enough.”

Michael: You know, I can’t remember who said this quote, but I love it. It’s “The most interesting phrase in science is not ‘Eureka!’ but ‘Huh, that’s interesting.’”

David: Yeah! Yeah, exactly. I think it’s actually, “That’s funny,” right?

Michael: Right, exactly.

David: And then you have—there’s one in the book that was the first one that I went to compliment and it’s actually Jonas Salk, which basically more eloquently says the same thing. “What people think of at the moment of discovery is really the discovery of the question,” which I think is great, right?

Michael: Yeah, I love that, too. Yeah.

David: And I mean, that’s in line with—I remember there’s an Einstein quote about, “If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes structuring the question.”

Michael: That’s right.

David: And I mean, I think that’s the strategy not only for individual careers, but as you write throughout the whole Coaching Habit, of how to manage. It used to be measure and incentivize, and now I think it is just sort of question and bring out. And in that comes an inherent risk. I mean, want you to speak to this if you can. There’s an inherent risk that as you start asking people questions, you find they’re not actually cut out for the work that you’re doing, right? And then it becomes a goal of really it’s in everyone’s best interests to sort of help them through that. But hopefully you’ve got an organization that’s flexible enough to let people chase their curiosity inside of one organization.

Michael: Right. So I’d say there’s two things to speak to that. And you know, we’ve taught probably 10,000 managers, more actually, around some of these skills, and I find that the greatest resistance people have to asking questions is not that risk of, “They might not have the answer,” but that in asking a question you inherently give up some power and you give it to the other person.

So asking a question, it’s not a simple transference of behaviour from, “I’m going to give you advice,” to, “I’m going to ask you a question.” It’s actually a transference of power, a transference of status, and a transference of certainty.

When you ask a question, who knows what actually the answer’s going to be. You don’t know where that conversation’s going to go, and I think that’s scarier for people than the thought of, “Well, they may not have the answer,” or, “This may reveal them to be a less successful person.” You know, most of the time it’s amazing just how much resource and how much smart and how much insight people actually have if you just give them some of the time to actually ask their question around that, but you have to give that control up.

And let me use that as a springboard to transfer a question back to you, because you know, I loved your book. There’s all sorts of interesting kind of beliefs you have, everything from outlaw email to ditching the appraisal system, which I love that chapter for the reasons you talked about. Here’s one of the things which really struck me, which is write the org chart in pencil. And you know, so much of what I’m interested about is how do you disrupt power and hierarchy? And I think asking questions is actually one of the most powerful ways to do that. That’s why The Coaching Habit bangs on about it. But tell me about writing an org chart in pencil and why that’s such a disruptive, interesting approach to new management.

David: Yeah, so this was actually one of my favourite chapters to write, and in fact I wrote this before we had a contract for the book. And then we decided that while it was fascinating to you, the editor might not want to see this one, so I had to write a second chapter as a sample chapter in the proposal. But this one has always fascinated me and this one is actually the chapter—the reason it fascinated me is this is the chapter that came out of the previous book.

Michael: Right.

David: And in The Myths of Creativity, I talk about the study of Broadway shows.

Michael: I love that.

David: And the idea that on Broadway, which is an inherently creative network of organizations, you have different teams that come together for the production of a show and then separate and go their separate ways and work on different shows. And what you get is this ever-refreshing blend of old and new connections. And really, the best years on Broadway were the years where we were at this optimal mix of old and new connections. Now, that’s not what …

Michael: This is the Q score, right?

David: Yes, this is the small world Q score, Brian Uzzi and Jarrett Spiro. I mean, I’m probably going to end up writing about this study in every book because it’s one of my favourite social studies ever.

Michael: Right. Well,  I remember reading it in the first book and going, “That’s really cool,” and it’s nice to see it again in this book as well.

David: Yeah, well, I’m sure it’ll make an appearance in whatever else I write, too, so there you go. It’ll be like Stan Lee in all those Marvel movies, right? It’s not a Burkus book unless it has this.

Michael: You know what? You should write a book about kind of some of the science-based stuff around really smart networking. You should think about that.

David: Oh, yeah, I should. I should. You’re right. You’re right. Shh!

We’re going to have to cut that part out. So, okay, so I’m reading this and I’m realizing that most organizations don’t do this, but really creative ones do. And the reason is, I mean, the organizational chart as we know it, the lines and boxes, etc., was actually an invention of railroad executives. And the railroad is the ultimate definition of ‘doesn’t change,’ right? You lay the track and you either—I mean, it could change but for the most part it does not. So it’s really easy: the environments that you’re in, your operations, all of it will never change, right?

Michael: Right.

David: But most organizations, especially knowledge work organizations, are having to change with the environment, right? I mean, this is Biology 101; if an organism doesn’t adapt to the new changes in the environment, the organism dies. So the organization is the same thing. And what that means for most organizations is it means they lay off whole lines of hierarchy. I mean, I used to weigh—my first job out of college was in the pharmaceutical industry and they’re pinnacle of, like, a drug doesn’t go to market or it gets pulled and suddenly 500 people who were on that wing of the org chart are just without a job.

Michael: Yeah. They’re gone, yeah.

David: And then, of course, fast forward a year and a half and there’s a new drug coming out, and so suddenly we’ve got to hire 500 people, but these 500 already found new jobs, right?

Michael: Right.

David: So it’s just madness and Roger Martin has this great article called “Rethinking the decision factory.”

Michael: I love that.

David: Which is all about this idea that it’s madness to have this binge and purge cycle. There are better ways to adapt. And the reason we need this adaptation is that if we move from thinking about the product as the thing we design an org chart around to the project, then we allow for an ever-changing org chart, and this is what a lot of really wild organizations do.

One of my favourite and probably the most applicable is in the early days of Ideo, the famous industrial design firm. Their org chart was they had five studio heads, so there were five kind of vice-presidents of Ideo. And every once in a while, they would say, like, “Here’s who I am and here’s what I’m going to be working on,” and then they would present that to the whole company and people would basically vote for who they wanted to work with for the next couple of years and then they would just reshuffle.

And most of the time, everybody got their first vote but it allowed that Broadway-style refreshing of teams, which I think most organizations don’t do because we’re still thinking lines and boxes and we draw them based on products and geography, and really we should be drawing them based on project. In a knowledge work economy and a knowledge work environment, we should be drawing them based on project. Which to me, the easiest way to phrase that is instead of drawing them in pen, we need to write them in pencil so we can erase them and rewrite them whenever we need to.

Michael: I love that. That’s so smart. It’s such a great metaphor. And you know, in one of my earlier books, Do More Great Work, I talk about how you define your great work project and use project-based work as a better way of organizing your life rather than …

David: I remember that. I might have stolen that from you actually.

Michael: Well, I probably stole it from somebody else, so good ideas get passed around. You know, job descriptions carry on even after you’ve died. If you die in the job, your job description lives on.

Projects, actually if you’re gone, things change and evolve around that. So I think there’s something very smart about how do we get more project-based to be able to do more great work? And part of that is how do we make our organizations more flexible so they can accommodate that?

David: Yeah. No, I totally agree. And you know, even products don’t last forever the way that they used to. You know, the life cycle of a product is maybe 18 months or so, so even thinking about it as an organization, what is our product, what is our value proposition, that’s going to change really frequently.

Michael: Sure.

David: And so, we should probably start thinking about those the same way that Broadway thinks about shows, that Hollywood thinks about theatres, that design firms think about projects, consulting assignments think about, you know, that sort of temporal idea around how do we organize this. It’s probably the only way forward, really.

Michael: Yeah, that’s right. So, look, I’m looking at the time and we’ve been going 25 minutes, and we could literally go for hours on this because, you know, you and I are violently agreeing on everything, which is fantastic.

David: Well, it’s only fantastic because it’s violent. If it wasn’t violently agreeing, it would be really boring.

Michael: Yes!!

David: So if it’s okay with you, you know, your book is all about questions, and beautiful questions.

Michael: Yes.

David: And I always cede power to the guests at the end of my interviews and ask five questions. Can I ask you our five questions?

Michael: Yeah, bring them on. I’m looking forward to it. David: Okay. And I should say that most of the time I give people forewarning on these so you can plan your answers: you’re doing it improv style, right?

Michael: Excellent.

David: So those of you who are listening, it may not be the best answers but these are the questions anyway.

Michael: Good, I like the way you lower expectations. That’s important.

David: Under-promise and over-deliver. So, first question. What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

Michael: The most powerful advice I got was one of my very first bosses saying to me, “Michael, you are a good guy. You are a good person.” And it was very simple but it was really powerful. It said to me, “You know what? Trust yourself and take a stand for what matters in this world.” You know, take a stand. We’ve just been watching Star Wars, so take a stand for the light side, not the dark side.
You know, honestly, most advice; when people ask me, “What’s my best advice?” I often go, “Number one, ignore almost all of the advice you’re ever given.” But the comment that had the most impact on me and still resonates now is, “Michael, you’re a good person.”

David: Yeah. No, I think that’s great.

Michael: And it was … Unlike a lot of feedback, I felt deeply seen and acknowledged in that very simple statement.

David: Oh, no, I agree. And interestingly, and the nature of most people’s advice, it’s more a statement about them than it is about you, so I love that that was a definitive statement about you.

Michael: And David, because this is a joint interview, what’s the best advice you’ve ever gotten?

David: What’s the best advice I’ve ever received?

Michael: And just so you know, everybody, we’re doing this improve style so his answer may be a bit crappy, but you know, give the guy a break.

David: Yeah! Yeah. What’s the best advice I’ve ever received? Okay, so this has applied to my career. I don’t have … To some extent, I think every once in a while I get impostor syndrome, but what I actually get is, ‘Grr! I am frustrated. I’m not where I want to be’ syndrome, right? Whatever that’s called, right?

Michael: Yeah.

David: And one of the things that I tend to over … I tend to forget when I get frustrated and that is my age, right? So as of this recording, I’m 32 years old. I’m young. I’m young in this thing.

Michael: Very young.

David: And I tend to forget that and I tend to get frustrated when I see people who are in their forties and fifties doing really big stuff that I want to be doing now. And so, one of the thing I remind myself often is—not to bring him back into our lovefest, but Dan Pink, I did an interview with one time, and we talked for about 30 minutes offline after the interview. And I told him about a couple different things and I mentioned I was frustrated with something and that he had had it figured out and whatever, and he leans back and he goes, “Well, you got to remember, I’ve been doing this for 20 years. You’ve been doing this for two.”

And really, I mean, it wasn’t advice per se, like “You should do this,” but it was great advice because it was just, like, remember where you are in the journey and that’ll allow you to have a way better perspective on where you should be, right? And I tend to forget that. I tend to look forward, which is good, and I think that’s how you achieve, but the easy thing to do is to forget that you haven’t actually travelled as far as you think you’ve travelled, so having a more realistic expectation of where you should be for what you’re doing, I really don’t have. And I remember that often.

I get frustrated often and I sort of repeat that in my mind. Actually, I had stopped the recording and I wish I would have continued the recording and just had that, and then I would have put it on my iPod and just loaded it up every time I get frustrated. But oh well. So yeah, that’s probably the best advice I’ve received.

Michael: That’s nice.

David: I don’t know how that applies to other people’s careers, but I apply it to mine almost every time I’m frustrated.

Michael: That’s fantastic, yeah.

David: Okay, so question two. What’s an average day look like for you? Now, I know today was not an average day for you. We were talking about this offline.

Michael: That’s right.

David: Eating pizza and drinking wine at 9:30 in the morning. But what’s an average day look like for you?

Michael: You know, I have probably three different average days. You know, one of them is I’m in creating mode. So I have two tables in my office. The one I’m talking to you on now, this is my good work computer and my good work desk. It’s a standing desk. And then over there, looking out my window, I’ve got my great work table, which is another small, Ikea desk, but that’s where I sit and I create. So I write, writing articles. You know, creating the content and the thought pieces that try and drive Box of Crayons and our brand and me and all that sort of stuff. So sometimes I’ll be doing a creative day where I’ve got that and that’s the key thing that I’m doing.

Sometimes I’m on delivery mode, although I do that less and less because part of what we’re trying to do at Box of Crayons is have other people deliver our programs for us. But honestly, there are times where I love doing that. You know, one of my favourite things from 2015 was being on a stage in front of 8,000 nurses down in San Diego and giving a keynote speech there and going, “This is rock star amazing!” It was fantastic.

And then there’s a good deal of meeting people who are kind of, you know, senior folks, HR and R&D often organizations, and kind of having conversations about bringing Box of Crayons stuff into their organization. So you know, I’m either performing, creating, or in my sales mode as part of that, and that’s kind of the mix.

David: Yeah. Huh. So I have to ask you about the two desks. So that’s been working well for you? Because my wife and I are building a house right now, which a couple years ago, my younger son stole my office and decided he wanted his own bedroom, right? Crazy thing for a one-year old to ask for.

Michael: Kids.

David: Right. And so, we’re building the new one with the office and whatever, and I’m literally thinking about that question of, like, you know, I really need two desks. I need a standing one to be, A, to be standing at, to do the podcasts at, etc., and I look at those adjustable ones, and I think that’s not for me. I think I just want two. I’ve never seen proof of concept, so I thought I invented the idea, so you’re my proof of concept.

Michael: I can give you anecdotal advice that it works. My theory is the body leads the brain, and if you read anything like Amy Cuddy’s new book, Presence, or whatever, it’s like if you want to work in a certain way, how you physically are really determines that. So what I do, when I sit at my great work desk, and you know, it’s a cheap, cheapish desk from Ikea. There’s nothing particularly fancy about it. I go, “This is where I show up to be creative,” so I’m priming myself to actually deliver at that level. When I’m here, I’m like, “This is where I show up to be business-like and focused and get things done,” and I prime my body to do that. And I do think there’s something about managing yourself somatically, you know, body-based, actually allows you to be more productive and efficient in terms of how you want to show up.

David: Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. Makes a lot of sense. And again, proof of concept.

Michael: Alright, turning the tables here, for you what’s an average day?

David: Okay, so actually most of my days are 48 hours long, and I don’t mean that as hyperbole; I just mean it’s easiest for me to think in 48-hour chunks. So the average 48-hour chunk for me is I still teach at the university, actually every Monday, Wednesday, Friday during the semester. And so, if it’s during the semester, the average day for me is—well, the average day for me is get up at 4:30 in the morning to one kid screaming or the other, take care of that, maybe fall back asleep; maybe not. And then wake up for real and have breakfast, get the kids ready, etc. Go into work. I teach classes in the morning and in the early afternoon, and then mid-afternoon if I have—I’m either doing something like this, recording a podcast or meeting with students or whatever, or what’s more common now and growing to be more common is from there I drive to the airport and I get on an airplane and I go somewhere, and then I sleep in a hotel somewhere, and then I wake up and I speak and I do the … I haven’t done the 8,000 person rock star thing, so I got to take my Dan Pink advice from earlier, by the way.

Michael: Yeah, exactly.

David: So then I speak and then I fly home hopefully in time to put the kids to bed the second night.

Michael: Nice.

David: Sometimes later at night, and so it’s really that kind of combination of, like, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I’m teaching, Tuesdays, Thursdays, I’m usually speaking. If I don’t have any speaking gig that week, then usually I’ve loaded Tuesday/Thursday up with, like, podcast time and writing time and that sort of thing.

Michael: Nice.

David: So really, it’s that 48 hours because I alternate between teaching days and creative days.

Michael: Nice. Yeah, that’s very cool. Alright, what’s your third question?

David: Third question. And I know that some of this is my book and the answer for me would be your book, but besides that, what are you reading right now?

Michael: So it’s interesting. You know, my wife was actually trained as a librarian, and in particular a YA librarian, young adult librarian, so I read pretty eclectically. My background is actually in English literature as well, so there’s always a kind of mix of different books on my bedside table. So at the moment, I’ve got Neal Stephenson, who’s this brilliant brain and his book is called Seveneves. Here’s the opening sentence: “The moon blows up into seven pieces.” That’s how it starts. And then it’s, like, how does humanity survive when the moon’s blown up? So it’s a huge tome. It’s fantastic. I think his best book is one called Cryptonomicon. I’m reading SPQR by Mary Beard, so that’s a history of the Roman Empire. Pretty interesting, although not quite as fascinating as it might be. And then in terms of a business book at the moment, I’m going to just go and grab it because I can’t remember the exact title.

David: Yeah. No, not a problem.

Michael: Here we go. It’s called The New Ecology of Leadership: Business Mastery in a Chaotic World, by David Hurst, H-u-r-s-t. It’s pretty dense, it’s slightly academic, but it kind of brings into the conversation about what does chaos theory and ecology tell us about what a sustainable leadership is. So a little obscure perhaps, but an interesting read as well.

David: Yeah. No, that’s quite interesting. We actually were talking about Biology 101 earlier with environments, etc.

Michael: Yeah, we were.

David: So now I need to check that out.

Michael: Tell me what’s on your bedside table. What are you reading at the moment?

David: Okay, so, well, what’s on my bedside table is a really esoteric book called Thrown, and T-h-r-o-w-n, like throw someone.

Michael: Oh, yes. Yeah.

David: Or actually, like throw down, and actually it’s this really weird book. It’s an Iowa MFA writing student and philosophy student, like, joint Master’s degree student, who somehow fell in love with mixed martial arts. Now, listeners to my show will know that for a long time, I’ve done judo and Brazilian jujitsu as a hobby, right? And so, it’s this really fascinating kind of quasi intellectual or philosophical look at the sport as she follows around two different fighters, one who has already reached the pinnacle of his career and one who is on the upward trajectory.

Michael: Oh, interesting.

David: I mean, it’s like if you’ve ever wanted to psychoanalyze Rocky, this is this book, right?

Michael: Yes.

David: But it doesn’t just psychoanalyze Rocky, it does the entire sort of industry of prizefighting, etc. So that’s kind of a really fascinating one. Not business-related in the slightest but still fascinating to me. And then I think, interestingly you already mentioned her, but I think the most recent, what would count as a business book that I’ve just read is I finished reading Presence a little while ago.

Michael: Yeah, nice.

David: Just before I picked up Thrown I finished reading Presence. And you know, I mean, overall I think I knew what I was getting into when I read it because, you know, I’ve seen the TED Talk, etc., but actually I was really pleased with Amy’s desire to write about other people’s research.

Michael: Yeah.

David: You know, typically when you have that superstar researcher who also is a TED star, etc., their book just becomes each chapter is one of their studies that they wrote about and blah blah blah. And really, I mean, you remember this because you read it.

Michael: Yeah.

David: The majority of the book is actually other people’s research on the mind-body connection, the presence connection, being in the moment.

Michael: Exactly.

David: And I really enjoyed that, that it was really more like her take on a lot of other people’s research than just—I mean, it was there. There were chapters that were just her research, but I was not expecting that and I really enjoyed that. And you know, I think it’s really meaningful when somebody does that.

Michael: Nice, yeah. So, I thought it was a really generous book as well.

David: Yeah. And even, actually, I don’t know if I liked this or not, but she incorporates a lot of emails from listeners since the TED Talk went live and all that sort of stuff, so really it was a diversity of viewpoints I wasn’t expecting, so I really liked it for that reason.

Michael: Me, too.

David: Okay, so here’s my favourite question to ask and also our toughest. What do you believe that most people don’t?

Michael: Okay, because you know how we were talking about how I spend the morning, which was doing a local restaurant of ours was being filmed for a restaurant show, and so I’m influenced by the fact that I had pizza at nine o’clock and wine at nine o’clock this morning. And I was going to go to something like “Pizza is the best food in the world,” but I’m trying to think of something more profound than that right now. What do I believe that most people don’t? You know what? That is a tricky question. I need to think about that for two seconds. Can I turn the tables on you and then that will give me time to chew on it a little bit?

David: I mean, yeah.

Michael: What do you believe that most people don’t?

David: Yeah, I have to give an answer that hasn’t already been taken by one of the past episodes of the podcast, so that involves me to think more. I mean, overall, so I’ll tell you not what I believe that most people don’t, but what I believe as a trained psychologist, scientist, that element that most scientists don’t, and that is that I believe that not everything is capable of measurement, and therefore every model we come up with is what I like to call a useful lie. Meaning that, like, it’s not 100% true, but it is very useful.

Michael: I love that.

David: And what that comes with then is a willingness to loosely hold onto the models that we have. And really, I mean, that’s sort of a theme of what we’ve been talking about throughout, that as business changes we need to change the management models we’re using. But I think that applies to everything, that we need to have sort of strong beliefs, weakly held, as Bob Sutton would put it, but we need to think about what model are we using to make our decisions on and be open to the idea that that model doesn’t work 100% of the time. Because I don’t think we’ll figure out how to measure every little thing about what matters, and therefore our models will always be useful lies.

Michael: You know, there’s a great quote that says exactly that. It’s from a guy, a statistician called George Box, who says, “All models are wrong but some models are useful.”

David: Oh, some models are useful. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Michael: Yeah, and I love that. That’s a great thing to remember, particularly for you and I who, you know, can get caught up in our own theories a little bit sometimes.

David: Right.

Michael: It’s like none of this is the truth; it’s just somebody’s best guess, a different lens to look through the world.

David: Right, and I think the frustrating thing is that most people, a lot of people who get skeptical with evidence-based management. I mean, the whole ivory tower syndrome is in reality people’s unwillingness to accept the insights from research.

Michael: Yeah.

David: So I think, you know, there’s a danger on both sides. We can either just throw the whole thing away and just go with our gut and past experience and, you know, we’re a sample size of one, but there’s also this over reliance on evidence management or—my wife’s a physician—evidence-based medicine, and we have to realize that we’ll never actually discover the answers to everything. It’s just sort of not possible. Or if we do, it’s 1,000 years from now. So you and I, right now in 2016, just have to know that like the quote says, all models are wrong but some are useful, and then be open to the idea that we might be at the end of the life cycle of the model that we were trained to use and be open to the idea of a new model.

Michael: So here’s my answer to the question, and it’s a little incoherent, but I’ll tell you this. My favourite picture is one called “The pale blue dot,” and I don’t know if you’ve seen this but it’s I think a shot from Voyager just as it kind of vanishes out of the Universe and it’s looking back on the Earth. And you see through a beam of sunlight a single pixel, just a single blue dot, which is the last kind of time it can see Earth before it just vanishes. You know, is no longer seen. And for me, it is an amazing reminder of just how small and how insignificant we actually are here on Earth. I mean, and on balance from that is, like, it is amazing that we are here on Earth. It is extraordinary. You know, one of my favourite books is a guy called Bill Bryson and his book, A Short History of Nearly Everything. It just reminds me of what a series of lucky things have happened that allow us to be sentient human beings enjoying a conversation like this. But for me, there’s something around the belief … And I don’t mean to sound holistic about this, but you know, none of this stuff really matters in the end because we’re just a tiny, tiny dot in this vast universe of amazingness.

David: Yeah, but it is amazing. We’ll go with that.

Michael: It is amazing. Exactly.

David: So the last question we ask actually comes from—the title of my podcast is Radio Free Leader. What makes someone a leader?

Michael: I think it is courage to make a decision and compassion to embrace the people the decision affects.

David: Hmm. No, that’s good. That’s really good.

Michael: Thank you.

David: I don’t know if I should say because then everybody who listens to any interview after this one will say, “Oh, that’s the wrong answer.” But no, I mean, I think there’s—actually, I think it’s fine to have multiple definitions.

Michael: Yeah.

David: I think in my mind, this is actually a question I like asking but don’t like answering because I think there’s a great Warren Bennis line about people don’t set out to become leaders.

Michael: Right.

David: Instead, they set out to do what inspires them, to do what they’re motivated to, and to really express themselves fully. And when you do that, people can’t help but follow you.

Michael: Right.

David: And I mean, at that moment, then you’re a leader and then we talk about what you need to do. You need to have that courage. You need to take care. You’re responsible for people, etc. But I think it starts with that internal thing.

Michael: Right.

David: And yeah, so I’m not sure if that makes someone a leader, but I think it’s an important thing to remember, is that the best leaders never started out even wanting to be leaders. They wanted to express themselves fully and people couldn’t help but follow that.

Michael: Right. Yeah, I like that. I like that.

David: Well, cool. Well, this has been really actually exciting.

Michael: It has. It’s been a fun format.

David: Yeah, totally.

Michael: Yeah, we’ve kind of broken our own rules here.

David: I know, it’s been great. So this is the part where I would say thank you, Michael. Thank you so much for joining us on Radio Free Leader, but I guess I should also say thank you for having me on the Great Work Podcast, so yeah.

Michael: Yeah, thanks for the yin and the yang. Okay, so this what I want my people who are listening in to know. Tell me a little bit—tell me about the name of your new book, tell me where they can find it, tell me where they can find out more about you and your work.

David: Yeah. No, absolutely. So the new book is called Under New Management. The easiest thing to do actually is probably just go to davidburkus.com. There’s info right there on it. Or right now, I should pause here. We’ll have to edit this out. When do you think this one is going live? Like, before the 15th or after?

Michael: Yeah. I’m not sure. Probably around about then.

David: Okay, okay.

Michael: So for sure around about the 15th, you’re going to have stuff on your website about this.

David: Right. No, yeah. So the best thing to do is probably find me at davidburkus.com. Or if you can’t remember the website address, I’m fortunate: I have a really unique name. So just type David Burkus into Mr. Google and Mr. Google will bring you there, so that’s probably the best.

Michael: B-u-r-k-u-s, right?

David: B-u-r-k-u-s, yeah. Exactly. And then from there is the podcast. Radio Free Leader runs off of that website. Information about Under New Management is there, so it’s all just there.

Michael: Lovely. That’s amazing.

David: So, and yourself, boxofcrayons.biz is the address, right?

Michael: Yeah, b-i-zed or b-i-zee, depending on which side of the border you’re listening to. And the new book is called The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More, and Change the Way You Lead Forever. And that’ll be on Amazon and all of the bookstores near you for sure.

David: Yeah. Now, and I should say it’s a great book. I want everybody to check it out because it’s really—and we didn’t even get any time to get into my favourite question, which is the lazy question. So there, if you’re interested, if you’re intrigued by the lazy question, go check it out. I think it’s really useful. And I said earlier, one of the primary ideas in Under New Management is ditch performance appraisals. And if we could get everybody asking these questions that are in this book, we could actually do it.

Michael: Exactly.

David: And that’s the idea that would probably—that’s the future that would be evenly dispersed the fastest. So check out that book for how to do it.

Michael: Thanks, David.

David: Alright. Thank you so much.

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ABOUT MICHAEL BUNGAY STANIER & BOX OF CRAYONS

Michael Bungay Stanier is the Senior Partner and Founder of Box of Crayons, a company that helps people and organizations do less Good Work and more Great Work. They're best know from their coaching programs that give busy managers the tools to coach in 10 minutes or less.

Download free chapters of Michael's latest book The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever here.

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