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and this is why tiger woods keeps working this is why warren buffett keeps working it's why richard branson keeps
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working the only way in which businesses or people will become successful and truly perform to their optimum this
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amazing question is probably the best question i've ever been asked [Music] camille thank you for joining me today
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it's a pleasure to have you here so early in the morning i i typically on this podcast will won't
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introduce people because um i i'll do a little bit of a pre-introduction but your
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your background and the work you've done specifically with high performance people and successful people
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is so compelling and fascinating that i feel like i want you to introduce yourself and
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i've read through your bio multiple times it was deeply inspiring and i think
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without an introduction everything we talk about from here without the perfect introduction which i
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feel like only you'll give everything we talk about from here on um might not have the
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the context it needs to have so who is jamil creation i'm a performance coach and psychologist
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so i've spent my time working with some very good sports teams some very good
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business teams some successful people and i guess what i do is i help people cultivate a
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mindset for success so i always say that for us to act differently we need to think differently
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i'm going to create different behaviors different actions this is about creating
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different thoughts first so i guess what i do more than anything else is help people change
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their mind so i said there's new new opportunities new possibilities that will come from
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new perspectives so a lot of my time is spent working with people not to give them new skills
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but more to allow them to understand the skills that they've already got and then create a perspective for them
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to use it differently so um as a performance coach i think everyone can be better
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everyone can perform better at terms as a matter of i guess trying to create the
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mindset the attitude um i guess some of the precursors to those to the performance which are which are
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beneficiary which have benefit to them and so you said that everybody has the skills and i i you know
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i i see that in a lot of my friends i see that they have a lot more sort of um natural capabilities than they've
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managed to sort of give the world through their actions if someone has an ambition
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to be something if they have the ambition to be you know a sports uh star and you've worked with a lot of
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athletes and you've worked with business people or they want to start a business
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what you tend to see it and what i tend to see in my inbox is a lot of people with intention but there
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seems to be something preventing that intention from turning into action or like behavior into an
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achievement yeah yeah and i think you know turning ambition into achievement is the key because most people will have
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good intentions most people will be wishing and hoping to be better there's a big difference between wishing
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and hoping and believing and executing upon it so i think that the people who genuinely
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execute on it probably want it more for a start at a monastic key no one's ever wandered
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around the bottom of a mountain and then simply found themselves at the top and it does take that determination
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the resilience it does take the ability to execute upon ideas to drive success so i think the key is the desire which
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is fueled by having a purpose a mission a vision towards what that end goal should look like
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a lot of people um can't quite they say one thing they say that their their purpose is to
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go to the gym yeah for example we all say one thing and do the other yeah and why is that like because it's
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sometimes hard to distinguish with someone whether that's their real sort of desire
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or whether they're kind of like virtue signaling to themselves if they want to be something
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or you know they want to start that business or become an entrepreneur be you know get a six-pack but then their
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actions show that quite a different story so i always wondered that with my some of my friends
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always think are they do they actually want that or they just it's very easy
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to say that this is what i'm after and much harder to do it and i think one of the reasons why is
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because um we have to invest we self-invest so we probably all know these um kids at
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school who are great footballers at 14 15. you think you know what they're gonna make it they're just brilliant
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they're gonna make it um or great track athletes at 12 and you know and you just think
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they're special but they don't make it and the reason why they don't make it is
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they don't self-invest so the people who make it are the ones who um will get up on a rainy friday morning
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and rainy saturday morning to go and practice whilst their mates are in bed the ones who will
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practice on a friday night when their mates are out drinking and so talent is not enough you need
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talent plus teachability so talent plus the ability to be open-minded agile in our thinking
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to commit to practice and turn that practice into something which develops our talent even further
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so there's lots of people with talent and business lots of people with talent
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and sport um but i guess that we need to be open-minded enough to invest in how we practice our talent to become
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successful so you know there's no there's no substitute for practice i get lots of
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golfers who say to me that yeah can you make me better yeah and yeah the number one golfer in
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the world will practice more than any any amateur you know and you know their lies the truth
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but you know we need to we need to apply ourselves in a particular manner and so
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we need to be practical about how we exercise our talent you create good feedback loops to
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understand what we're doing gain better personal introspection and self-awareness
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to allow us to use our talents differently how do you give someone that purpose though like i'm trying to think
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like so we know we know practice is like so incredibly important to master something
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but my i guess my question is um how would you give someone that motivation because i i i guess
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you can't give someone purpose a lot of us spend so much of our lives trying to
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to motivate people right to motivate friends families you know siblings whatever it might be
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i'm wondering if there's a thing we can do as like loving friends or whatever to to give someone
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that kick yeah so i mean a couple of points i guess on that in regard to discovering purpose
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um it can't be done for someone so i always said purpose is never achieved it's attained on a daily basis
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so the mistake that people make with purpose is they confuse it with an end goal
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so here's my purpose and have this vision statement of what they're seeking
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to you know achieve or create whatever it might be and get practical and tangible
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about it but purpose isn't that purpose is achieved on a daily basis that um sorry purpose is never achieved it's
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attained on a daily basis and this is why tiger woods keeps working this is why warren buffett keeps
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working it's why richard branson keeps working it's because it's never achieved it's attained on a daily
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basis so i think that you know we need to find something which is purposeful to us
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um and then we need to lose ourselves to it on a regular basis so once we start to become more purpose
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driven and express ourselves in a particular way obviously being a good colleague being a
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good business leader been a good sports person is not seeking to impress it's about seeking to express and be
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ourselves in the context of our work so once people can find that um within themselves um then i think they
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can direct their energy and their focus in a particular way and become much more purpose driven in
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how they go about their daily activities but you can't give someone that purpose
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it has to be theirs and i think life is about timing i think some people find that very late some
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people find that very early and um and it makes no difference we're all individuals in regard to
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helping other people make change we're almost too quick to go towards behaviors so we tell
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people to be different all the time tell our team members you should be more collaborative guys
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i don't guys need to be more innovative and tell our children to keep their rooms tidy so we're
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constantly talking to people about behaviors say to our friends that you should give
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up smoking or eat healthier whatever it might be the only way in which you change actions
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is by changing thoughts so we think and then we feel and then we act that's how we work
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so if you're constantly working on actions we're telling people to be different and this is why new year's
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resolutions fail from tomorrow i'll be different start doing this i'm going to stop doing that
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and we start talking about actions and behaviors um we need to go back to the um granted
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a precursor of all our actions which is our thoughts so the only way in which you genuinely drive
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commitment rather than compliance when it comes to change in your team in your friends you know and yourself
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is by changing the words and pictures in your head or their head to drive different feelings and then different
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actions there's um a little tip which i sometimes give leaders and so i said leaders never say
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to your team you're gonna make a change you say to your team you're gonna make a
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change they won't like it um say to your team i'd like to try and experiment they'll
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they'll be on board with it and um we'll give that a go that's okay so even just a difference in language to
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allow someone to think differently or make them feel differently and hopefully therefore
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choose to act in a different manner and how how would i get someone to change their thoughts
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you know i think um i think the best way is gamification um what holds people in place is what
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they believe to be true and then so um so people will sit around a boardroom table
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and i'll discuss strategy and i'll say you know look you know we can do this
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but we can't do that and they'll have a viewpoint on budgets on consumer buying behaviors
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on on compliance and governance and that's what holds this in place so what we need to do is break free of
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some of the parameters that we think are in the way so if we got people around the boardroom table
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and said look guys let's just this strategy piece that we're going to talk
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about let's imagine we got an unlimited marketing budget for it if we had an unlimited marketing budget
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for it i know we haven't but if we had what would we be doing how would we be
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doing it um you know if we had no marketing budget what would we be doing now what we're
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doing here is that we are helping people to move outside of the mental tram lines
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that we all operate under and under habitual thinking so let's ask some what if questions
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can you imagine that you know a life if you weren't smoking i told what it looked like i don't know
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what you'd be doing today if you weren't smoking what'd you spend your money on
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that you saved on cigarettes just played the game of what if so let's break free of some of the things which
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are holding people in place by um not by conflict not by arguing and and debate in a
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confrontational manner but finding some common ground and working from there and the common ground
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is let's play a game and you you said that you know about people finding that purpose um in their
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lives you we hear this uh phrase um a lot which is find your passion yeah and i almost feel
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that it's it's in many respects quite harmful because it that question is kind of loaded it it
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assumes a singular passion for a star it sounds that you can discover it like an easter egg and then
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and also um the the context in which that question usually sits in it implies that
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once you find it then it's you know then it's the the the it's a can of unlimited like happiness
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and orientation forever and then that's yours and it i just feel like sometimes language can
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be harmful because it it simplifies very complex things and sometimes multifaceted
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plural things you know so i wondered if that you know that phrase uh find your per find your passion was
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something you um you felt similar about or yeah i do i mean yeah it's true that passion can be
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a significant multiplier of human potential so you know if people are passionate and
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engaged in a business they can direct their energy in a in a worthwhile meaningful manner
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so so so it's it's worthwhile but you're right and um that you know there's a big
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difference between passion big difference between happiness and joy um some are in the moment at home i
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think joy is in the moment and i think happiness is something um that we continually continually
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adjust towards um your passion can be a significant multiplier of human potential
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particularly in the workplace so it does have a place it is something which is useful to
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understand and then ultimately it always comes down to personal introspection and self-awareness for me
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and i think that um we need to work harder at understanding ourselves and when we are constructing a mindset
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which is conducive to performance so we optimize our potential when we're in a particular state of mind
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and that state of mind might be passion it might be relaxation it might be enthusiasm might be
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enjoyment but we need to almost get to know ourselves and know that um there are certain
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things which enable us to do others and once we work backwards and understand what that looks like maybe we
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can gain some more consistency i say to a lot of sports people and to a lot of business people that
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consistency of mind gives you consistency of play and i'm convinced of it and the more
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consistent we can be in our thinking we understand um the building blocks the component parts to success
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yeah the more success we can have and how does one establish consistency of thought
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because i completely agree with that i completely agree i've seen that in my
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own life when i've been consistent with my thinking i've managed to you know
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perform the same habits every day um but then sometimes i'll lose consistency in my thoughts
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because i lose um [Music] i lose i guess i lose attachment or sort of my anchor with my my why
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yeah and i talk a lot i've talked a lot in this podcast over the last couple of
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weeks about this realization i've had this year with the gym which was every year
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february march i was incredibly motivated to go fired up trying to look good for summer
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yeah and then obviously once you look good and summer has ended it's almost like you've lost your anchor
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right so you get into september and the why which made you go and to think consistently every day
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has been is evaporated and i'm tr i can't get myself to go to the gym in
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october right you look in great shape for it this was the other video i realized so this was the year i
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realized that this is the year i booked the trend for the first time in my life because i realized that i thought to
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myself every single year i i do it for this period and then i stop and they're two different people august
00:14:27
steve and october steve don't know each other they're like you know what i mean
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they're like twins that were separated at birth and so this was the year where
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i realized what i was doing and why i was losing my motivation so i thought [ __ ] it you know i'm gonna anchor my why
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to something a bit more uh long term and without a timeline so i said to myself listen i persuaded myself of all
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the reasons why i want to be healthy and view my life as one season and that's what's allowed me to
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persevere and also i got a bit pissed off with myself i thought you're really like that like like
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you're that vain and you're like you know but so yeah do you know i mean i
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always think that consistency of mind comes from understanding the intrinsic quality of
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our decision-making processes and i say that a lot to people in sport and in business so
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yeah you can make a good decision and have a really bad outcome you can make a bad decision have a good
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outcome and this is why i've worked with leadership teams who have confused luck
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for genius and really bad decisions with a great outcome you know markets have changed
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competition's done something something's just worked in their favor um so um so it's really important for us
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to not judge our decision making by our outcomes and we often do so we'll say this is a
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good decision because it resulted in this or this is a bad decision it resulted in
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that and we can only understand the outcome retrospectively so it's wrong to measure our decisions
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by the outcomes and we need to go back to how we made a decision in the first place and once we
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start to understand the intrinsic quality of our decision making process we can become more consistent in how we
00:16:01
make decisions and therefore have more control over those outcomes so i think that you know
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two things i don't i think that and then we'll use you as the example here steve
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um that consistency of mind will come from knowing how we make decisions okay i understand that we put
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our weight into evidence how much we use prejudice and bias and opinion whatever
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it might be but let's understand how we make decisions and in that way we can be
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consistent in um how we apply our logic and thinking and feeling try and determine some best outcomes and
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then the other thing and um as you've just positioned is reframing let's stand back and create some time
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and space to understand and um you know why we do things and why we don't do things
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now i always say that um the people are most successful and i've had a pleasure
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working with six sports people who got to number one in the world i can guarantee you one thing i had in
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common was that um um they um they never made big changes and um it was small changes so i'm a big
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big believer in the one degree of change if you take two parallel lines and you move one by one degree it may not seem
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much at first but it's a really big difference between where you start and where you end up
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so um everyone's trying to you know make a dramatic change and see change from
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tomorrow i'm going to be different i think it's about doing something a little bit more than what we've been
00:17:20
doing it matan a bit more consistently and then the other thing with these people who obtained you know what i call
00:17:26
um super achievements at home so they did really really well um is that they actually worked on their
00:17:31
strengths they started to understand what was good about them and do that some more so we think to be
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better as human beings i'm gonna be better as a business or a team of people we need to
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fix our weaknesses um i'm not sure that's true i actually think it's more about understanding our
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strengths and playing to them so um i've actually worked with teams before in business and in sport
00:17:53
who have actually weakened the strength by trying to strengthen a weakness if you think about it it's ridiculous
00:17:58
and actually weaken the strength by trying to strengthen the weakness we need to be careful
00:18:02
so i think understanding what's good about us understanding you know where our behaviors come from in regard
00:18:08
to the thinking before it and then reframing some of those words and pictures and i guess that's what
00:18:13
you've done with your gym example because i guess change some of the words and pictures in your head
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to therefore feel differently which has resulted you and acting differently yeah and i really you know i was i was
00:18:23
valuing intensity over consistency and intensity wasn't sustainable right so i
00:18:28
was going through the summer like to the gym two times a day i was starving myself like eating things that
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i i didn't want to necessarily eat yeah and the the consistency came from being
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a bit more um realistic with myself being yeah you know if you missed the day of gym it
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doesn't matter you don't have to perspective yes perspective isn't it yeah and i
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think do you know it's funny because again something so many sports people have
00:18:47
worked with and business people who will lose perspective they'll lose the tournament and it's dreadful you know
00:18:53
win a tournament i've made it you know this is it this is turning point for me now they win a big
00:18:58
contract you know in business and you know this is us now we're set up you know or they lose a contract
00:19:04
and um and life has never been so dreadful um but i think that we need a better perspective on things so their
00:19:10
ability to think more long term term to be more forgiving you know to understand with more
00:19:15
um reality at uh what's good and what's not so good is probably the way forwards and in
00:19:22
terms of responsibility it's a it's a topic that's fast consistency is a topic i've been so
00:19:27
fascinated about over the last year as i've reflected and done has been sort
00:19:30
of introspective about the things i've been able to achieve whether it's getting millions of
00:19:34
followers on social media whether it's growing my business or going to the gym it seems that the the
00:19:39
very ironically consistent theme across all of them was consistency it was being
00:19:44
able to do perform x habit for a long period of time and then you have that the eighth wonder of the world shows up
00:19:50
and things start compounding in your favor very quickly usually um but the other
00:19:54
term that i've been fascinated with is responsibility and as i've i started out as an 18 year old kid
00:20:01
dropped out of university disowned by my parents no money at all and the one of the things that i noticed as
00:20:09
i look back on 18 year old steve versus a lot of other people that i see that that are living in the same
00:20:14
[ __ ] area i was living in and stealing pizzas like i was stealing them um was they don't take responsibility
00:20:20
for their situation they kind of see themselves as a a victim of the situation they're in
00:20:26
whereas when i was in that situation not only did i not view it as my destination
00:20:30
i was literally taking photos of the the nothingness in my fridge and the how dire my life was because in
00:20:37
my mind and i started keeping this diary on facebook which i really randomly wrote in my diary that a tv company had
00:20:43
asked me to keep this because i didn't actually know how to tell my own diary right that i thought i
00:20:47
was gonna show the world this someday um i i didn't see it as my destination and i
00:20:53
took full responsibility of my circumstance it wasn't anyone's fault but my own and i was gonna change it
00:20:57
but then one of the things that makes me concerned um about our generation and about
00:21:03
certain political narratives and certain themes i see on the internet is like a an avoidance of responsibility
00:21:10
for your life and the the default to blame someone else and i'll be honest it's something i see
00:21:15
more in the western world than i do in the african village i was born in yeah you know so
00:21:21
i wanted to know if really from you like what role responsibility plays in people's outcomes
00:21:26
okay that's a big one yeah um you promised me some easy questions um no so um responsibility is huge it's just
00:21:34
massive it's um it's it's one of the pre it's one of the predetermined
00:21:39
of successful outcomes is our ability to take ownership and accountability so circumstance and situation push and pull
00:21:46
us in different directions on a daily basis the world is complex it's uncertain it's unpredictable
00:21:52
all of those things the people who perform best have huge levels of responsibility
00:21:57
and ability to respond to those circumstances and situation no matter what they are
00:22:02
to drive the best outcomes or opportunities so i always said there's a circle of concern
00:22:08
water cooler conversations the stuff that's going on you know around us circumstance situation incidents and
00:22:14
accidents then there's a circle of influence and the circle of influence is where we make
00:22:18
choice that's what it's about so responsibility is all about choice for me i
00:22:23
absolutely guarantee you now that the circumstance the situation is not a predictor of success
00:22:30
and um because we know of people who were born into privilege their great role models had good access
00:22:35
to opportunity to wealth they had good guidance and good support and they ended up dying
00:22:41
heroin addicts in prison we know some people born with a physical disadvantage now a lack of good role models now the
00:22:47
lack of guidance lack of support lack of opportunity they grew up to be some of the most
00:22:51
successful people who have ever walked this earth so it proves beyond doubt that attitude
00:22:56
is more important than intelligence or facts and i genuinely believe that to be true
00:23:00
in all areas of high performance that attitude is more important than intelligence or facts
00:23:05
i always say give me i will over iq any one of my teams i'd rather if i will
00:23:09
over iq because high technical expertise and talk about the western world at the
00:23:13
moment high technical expertise is no longer as valuable as it used to be and the reason why high technical
00:23:20
expertise is no longer as valuable as it used to be it's because we can google things that's
00:23:24
why so knowing a lot isn't where your success is going to come from yeah it's not what you know
00:23:30
which is important it's how you think about what you know and how you bring it to life with your
00:23:35
character and personality to determine the best outcomes or opportunities so you know i genuinely believe that the
00:23:42
only way in which businesses or people will become successful and truly perform to their
00:23:47
optimum is taking full accountability and ownership we need to almost move away from circumstance and situation which is
00:23:54
a distraction so um the more that we realize that our success is dependent upon us
00:24:00
and not on situation the better and because the world is so unpredictable i need to simply learn to dance on a
00:24:06
shifting carpet not see the rug being pulled from under our feet you know life is a game of
00:24:12
continual adjustment and it doesn't matter what happens it's how we react and respond to it to
00:24:17
determine those best opportunities or outcomes and i think that you know it's funny
00:24:21
because initially i'm working a lot of businesses and um on culture on team um people strategies and the focus on
00:24:29
responsibility has never been higher mainly because we've been asked to stay
00:24:33
apart people are having to determine their own work schedules people have to determine their own working week and um
00:24:40
they're going to have to take responsibility for driving the best outcomes and
00:24:44
whilst they're not surrounded by team or working with directly with a leader
00:24:48
so it's been a greater call for responsibility i wonder whether in answer to your question i don't know
00:24:53
the answer to this um i wonder whether we'll see a better shift or greater shift towards more
00:25:00
responsibility in the western world because i agree with you i think that many of us will see ourselves as a
00:25:05
victim of circumstance and situation and not necessarily see the beauty in the chaos because of it
00:25:12
you talk there about the the internet as well in the power of the internet and how that's been a bit of a leveler
00:25:17
which is yeah which is a really wonderful thing i think um what how important is it do you do you
00:25:23
think when you think about the successful people you've worked with to be a sort of self-driven
00:25:29
learner beyond school um did you see in the specifically in the sort of upper echelons of like business
00:25:35
the ones that are the people that are most successful are proactive sort of self-driven yeah i
00:25:41
think i think it's true i think that um i've said that our only sustainable competitive advantage is to
00:25:47
learn faster and better than your competitors so you know and you think about that for
00:25:52
a business you think about that for a leader you know you think about as a sportsman it's probably true isn't it
00:25:57
you know our only sort of sustainable competitive advantage is just learn faster and better than anyone
00:26:01
else two powerline lines yeah yeah and i think that you know and i think that i think that how can we learn faster and
00:26:08
better yeah if we're not proactive lifelong learners and so you know and i think that you
00:26:14
know learning isn't necessarily about being taught um we don't necessarily need
00:26:19
teachers um it's a strive for greater curiosity you know i think curiosity is worth
00:26:24
more than creativity at the moment but it's a strive for greater curiosity it's
00:26:27
a matter of being massive being open-minded it's a matter of being um agile in our thinking so we can deploy
00:26:33
resourced of opportunity as it becomes visible um it's about um it's about
00:26:38
self-discovery so it's about a variety of things which are based not necessarily upon
00:26:43
traditional learning but more in a way in which we can open our mind up to experimentation and feedback you know
00:26:51
and understanding ourselves differently and i think the best leaders um you know have this ability to
00:26:58
you know reimagine repurpose reinvent i don't think they're beholden to a
00:27:03
particular or wedded to a particular mindset but that's for a lot of people that's
00:27:07
terrifying the thought of experimentation and being agile and reinvention i've seen that in my own business i've
00:27:14
seen over the years i was um i was known as being the guy that would walk in i think a lot of
00:27:19
business leaders are walking in the morning and be like we're going in a different direction everyone come in
00:27:22
this room we're going to launch this part of our business and we're going to
00:27:24
take it we're going to experiment and i i would often say to our team that experimentation is like at the heart of
00:27:30
all of our strategy it's like why especially as a social media company where our platforms
00:27:35
social media changes every day there's new updates pushed by facebook and instagram every day
00:27:40
um so our company slogan was keeping keeping brands at the forefront of what's possible
00:27:44
which meant that we had to be agile but i'd often see people in my organization
00:27:47
that were really against change fearful of it they would take you know they would
00:27:54
resist it yeah you know uh and i i i am i wonder how you if it's i always wondered why it was i think some of them
00:28:02
had levels of imposter syndrome so they were you know they were just uh just trying to get a
00:28:08
hang of the role they were in and not do more that you know they were already you know but
00:28:13
i wonder what your thoughts were on that i think i think people don't like change
00:28:16
because they don't know what it results in and that's one of the things so let's
00:28:19
take um let's take uh moving your desk yeah someone sat at our desk for ten years in
00:28:25
a particular office he said you know what you need to you need to move down the corridor
00:28:29
i'm going to make a move but uh people weren't like the slightest um if you said to them that you know you
00:28:34
need to move down the corridor you know we really appreciate the move we're going to give you a million pounds at
00:28:39
the end of the year because of it they'll be trotting off with their potted plant in hand i guarantee it
00:28:44
so i think that because people don't necessarily know what it results in why should we invest in doing something
00:28:51
different which is uncomfortable because it goes against our mental tram lines our habitual thinking
00:28:56
so now you're asking me to compromise my patterns and i don't know what for and i know
00:29:02
what's going to result in um it could be good it could be bad so therefore i'm not sure i want to go to
00:29:07
the trouble without investing in this change when i haven't determined you know the result
00:29:12
of it as human beings we like patterns um that's good and it's bad and um it works in our favor sometimes
00:29:19
sometimes it doesn't so we like patterns and so we like consistency and we compartmentalize and how am i
00:29:25
getting a viewpoint on the world and in fact if you look at um the office is a good example the office
00:29:30
is a great example of keeping people in patterns you've got your phone on your
00:29:33
desk here your computer there come in at a certain time working a certain way take your
00:29:38
lunch at a certain time so we're conditioned to work in a way which is reflective of the consistency
00:29:44
which takes out variance in business so you think that management has been around for about 100
00:29:49
years and the reason why management's been around for about 100 years is to reduce variance at time because
00:29:55
then you can guess then you can scale so businesses got bigger a lot bigger 100 years ago
00:30:01
and um because of the ability to keep people habitual so um so because we've become
00:30:07
conditioned to do this and everything around us keeps us in in in a pattern that we quite like being in
00:30:14
as soon as we start to move outside of that there's a level of discomfort so i guess leaders can allow people to
00:30:19
make change atta and embrace change um i guess there's a few points one it's always best if it's co-authored and
00:30:26
co-created right um so let's involve people in what that change looks like um it's always best if um
00:30:34
we look at our organizations or teams as a community instead of as a team or an organization
00:30:39
at the moment communities are outperforming bureaucracies and hierarchies when it comes to maximizing
00:30:44
human talent so let's try and form a community and um let's co-author and co-create
00:30:48
and and then um let's have a look at um peer recognition peer coaching peer challenge
00:30:54
it doesn't need to be a top down thing done to people it can be something which
00:30:58
can happen from the inside out you know it's meaningful when when something is endorsed by others
00:31:05
that that you know you are that you feel an affinity with sure what when you read about the steve jobs of
00:31:11
the world and the elon musk's of the world they seem to buck all of the a lot of the trends that you
00:31:15
hear in like management coaching they seem to be very authoritarian you know i was
00:31:20
reading about from i was reading steve elon musk's biography and there's
00:31:24
stories of him just like calling someone into the office and saying how much does it cost to do this
00:31:28
they'll say 10 million he'll say do it for 5 and do it within 30 days and they'll
00:31:33
go away feeling puzzled but they'll get it done yeah he has this culture of like
00:31:37
intensity and when you start he says to the teams that this will be the hardest you've ever worked in your life
00:31:43
but it'll be the most worthwhile but it'd be the hardest you've ever worked
00:31:46
and and i you know and then steve jobs as well i've heard the stories of how he
00:31:49
was you know how he built the company at medlo park and um he seemed like the antithesis of what
00:31:55
you would read about in a business book but obviously these are two of the most successful entrepreneurs
00:31:59
the world has ever you know seen so i wondered if there's a i'm trying to appreciate the like
00:32:07
how they've achieved their success by being so different from what all the business books say
00:32:11
from all accounts they're you know what i mean yeah i mean i think a couple of things i
00:32:17
guess that you know you find what works for you um i think what they have on their side
00:32:22
is they have a really big purpose statement it's a really big mission so there are lots of companies
00:32:29
with mission statements but very few on a mission and i guess that when it comes
00:32:34
back to um the point i made earlier that passion been a significant multiplier of human potential i guess that these
00:32:41
people have the ability to engage people so to tell a story attempt to inspire and motivate
00:32:48
so i guess that you know there is a there's no doubt lots of logic and time there is no doubt lots of
00:32:54
rationality which is used in their management leadership style you know but what you're describing to
00:32:59
me in the people that you're describing i think you can really get behind something that someone passionately
00:33:05
believes in and is something which is worthwhile and purposeful yeah on such a grand scale so i think
00:33:12
when they're talking about um and things which will change humanity um i think it's possible for
00:33:18
you know us to be swept along at him on that particular vision and so maybe it does mobilize people in a
00:33:23
different manner because of who they are what they believe in and what they're
00:33:26
trying to achieve yeah no that's probably true i mean yeah you think about i
00:33:30
mean the example i'll give you is jfk well yeah i mean i mean jfk do you think
00:33:37
that jfk's speech about putting man on the moon you should read it actually rather than
00:33:41
look at it um it's a rubbish speech when you read it the term and the reason
00:33:46
and the reason why is that there's no logic to it until there's no rationality
00:33:50
so he says we put a man on the moon and the reason why he gives that we should put a man on the moon is
00:33:55
because it's it's hard and not easy which is a rubbish reason to do anything
00:34:00
it's hard that's why we're gonna do it yeah so um but not only did they end up doing this it mobilized the
00:34:07
whole nation behind the space race and the whole nation behind science in fact um the reason why was that because logic
00:34:14
was low inspiration was high it was such a um it was such a literally a moonshot it
00:34:21
was literally such a big goal and so ambitious so expansive you know that people bought into the dream
00:34:28
and i wonder whether and i don't know you know the examples you gave at steve jobs and
00:34:33
elon musk whether whether people just buy into that dream and they buy into what they not necessarily what they're
00:34:39
seeking to do but what they're seeking to create and maybe there's a lesson for all of us
00:34:43
who manage and manage teams that maybe it's not about trying to you know get people to do stuff it's about people
00:34:48
to you know to create stuff is that you know my time to be part of something which is worthwhile
00:34:54
and meaningful and sell a big vision and tell the right story and you know engage people emotionally
00:35:01
you know all of this stuff about psychology i know a lot of stuff i read a few books yeah you've read a
00:35:06
few books about a few books a week last tuesday yeah you know don't tell my clients
00:35:14
um you know when people come across people like you they think that you've got all the answers and
00:35:21
because you've got all the answers or at least an answer to most things um they think that you must live
00:35:27
a life of sort of perfect decision-making couples children have the worst worn shoes yeah exactly
00:35:35
um so yeah what what do you like at living these things that you're aware of
00:35:41
speaking of performance one of the things that's integral to performing at the highest level is nutrition it's
00:35:45
something that i i guess i took a a long time to finally believe but that is why having hewlett's
00:35:52
response for this podcast is such a privilege because there was a time in my life especially
00:35:56
when i was early in my business career where i wasn't getting the vitamins the
00:35:59
minerals and i wasn't having a sort of nutritionally complete diet i was if you look at some of my old photos i
00:36:04
was definitely lacking protein as well and a lot of that maybe it was an excuse was because
00:36:09
i was um i was busy and when i discovered huel when a guy called mike walked past me in the office
00:36:15
wearing a heel t-shirt and shaking a little bottle and you know upon my curiosity of asking
00:36:20
what was in that and why he was drinking it it really really did change my life and
00:36:24
so here's what i want to do you know this particular podcast today has been about high performance and
00:36:28
mindset and how we how we become our best selves and how we teach our teams to become our best
00:36:33
selves i'm going to give away this week five boxes of your big boxes right all you've got to do if you want one of
00:36:42
those boxes is hit the subscribe button on this podcast wherever you're listening whether you're on youtube
00:36:46
or whether you're on the the podcast or wherever you might be and leave a review if you leave a review on the
00:36:51
podcast or just keep your instagram handle or your twitter handle in there so i can find you
00:36:56
but if you're listening on youtube then please um just leave a comment down below
00:37:00
and any comment you leave enters you into the competition and i want to know what you think of
00:37:04
huel so um it's as i say i say it with full honesty it's changed my life and i
00:37:09
really believe that those of you who aren't getting your sort of um all your minerals and proteins and
00:37:13
all the good stuff i think it can change yours too what do you like at living these things
00:37:18
that you're aware of yeah i'm rubbish next question and the reason why is that two things
00:37:28
that one um we're all human because we're all human you know we're all
00:37:34
prone to make mistakes in our doing and our thinking um and i think that being you know
00:37:39
better never stops so therefore we've got to continually adjust you know we don't
00:37:43
find hints tips gimmicks that make us better and then we just apply them regularly
00:37:49
and it works so i guess there's a level of inconsistency which is reflective of the fact that you
00:37:56
know that i'm a human being who tries to do better you know give me an exam on a regular
00:38:01
basis on an example well you're aware of the truth but you're just not oh you might you know on the amount
00:38:06
of time so as you know i've been a guest speaker for 10 years now so when the world is normal and sane
00:38:13
you know i would um go off four days a week anywhere in the world so twice a week i
00:38:18
was abroad and i'd speak to a few hundred people i'd stand on stage i'd do an hour's talk
00:38:23
about performance psychology and i'd come off um so i did that for ten years four times a
00:38:28
week and um but um but i'd often come off and think cause any good i say to the stake at
00:38:36
stake i would come up to me and say that you know that was really brilliant this is
00:38:39
exactly what we're after it's perfect are you happy oh yeah it's exactly what we're after
00:38:43
but you sort of covered the brief yeah yes yeah absolutely it's exactly what it
00:38:46
was send me an email let me know the feedback and then you get you know maybe even get some
00:38:53
feedback which is like you know you get sort of scored out of five it's almost like 97 percent five and um
00:38:59
i'd be scouring for the threes and twos and think that you know there's like you
00:39:02
know 500 people there's that sort of five people who put two and so it was all right i just think
00:39:07
[ __ ] but um but uh but i'd be wondering why what did i do wrong what was real and
00:39:13
it's unbelievable it's unbelievable the amount of times i've sat in front of an
00:39:16
audience and um and you know maybe 300 people there there's someone with their arms
00:39:21
folded like that and they're just like i think he doesn't look engaged you know and so out of friend of people
00:39:27
there's something there's most people writing down things or nodding or smiling or whatever it is
00:39:31
it's amazing how many times i can pick out the one person who doesn't seem to
00:39:34
be enjoying it so i think i think look i think it's a couple of things that i'm i'm always prone to you know we
00:39:41
actually we wait quite highly stuff which we think we're not doing well you know we're trying to fix what's not
00:39:47
right about us what's not good you know you know what we should have done and um
00:39:51
what we could be doing um i think i'm still prone to that rather than sort of enjoying the you
00:39:56
know the success that i've had really what about things in your personal life
00:39:59
in terms of like like you know health and like being a parent and like yeah pursuing goals and
00:40:07
ambitions you have in your personal life what about those things yeah i think that you know um
00:40:12
health-wise i need to take some advice from you we should i'll lie down and tell you all
00:40:15
about it i keep i keep meaning to i keep meaning to run more and get to the gym more there's always an excuse
00:40:22
um so you know i'm the most demotivated motivational spooky life's pretty [ __ ] and um so um
00:40:31
so yeah so i think i need to work out more um i'll tell you the one thing that
00:40:35
gets me and um i've got three children i got sort of um four four-year-old twin girls
00:40:39
and a nine-year-old boy um is that you know as a psychologist and um yeah i'm pretty good at i've sat
00:40:46
in front of some sort of pretty difficult clients some really difficult clients you know
00:40:50
some people at the absolute top of their profession and um and they're they're [ __ ]
00:40:54
screwed in their thinking and um and you know and you know i've dealt with it
00:40:59
four-year-olds and nine-year-olds just do me i can't you know i just you try and apply psychology to it it
00:41:04
doesn't work so the level of frustration that comes about in regard to being a
00:41:08
parent again this is my point that you know all human beings and um so um so you know you try
00:41:14
you try all the influence persuasion and negotiation and all the psychology and all the
00:41:19
techniques that you know that um it doesn't work on four-year-olds it doesn't work it's so funny the guest
00:41:24
that was here yesterday joe wicks are the exact same thing he said i'm like a
00:41:27
you know calm guy but he just said you know when i my daughter i'll tell her that i
00:41:30
want to just put her down so i can clean the counter and she just won't be the irrationality of it is what it does
00:41:35
yeah and um so you know you know it's funny because um i've had some really good sports people
00:41:42
sit in front of me and say you know give me you know you've got something that makes me better then
00:41:47
and then you give them something and they go away they come back a week later and they say i tried that it doesn't
00:41:52
work have you got anything else it's a bit like going to the gym working out for half an hour going home
00:41:57
looking in the mirror and says yo let's crap that i don't like the gym film refrigerator
00:42:02
um and so and this is my point that that you know it's not about tools gimmicks and hints
00:42:07
it's about striving every day to be better than what you were yesterday um i worked with a golfer it was very
00:42:14
very good really good um and you know literally top 10 in the world it's about a whole year and uh with just
00:42:23
a piece of paper in his pocket and he used to play with his piece of paper in his pocket um and it used to
00:42:27
just say um what did i enjoy today and what did i learn today 2 questions on it and then in the
00:42:33
evening he just answered those questions so that whole year forget the numbers i'm not going to look at numbers i'm
00:42:38
just going to answer this question so i've had a good day i've had a bad
00:42:41
day doesn't make any difference i'll just answer that question these questions what did i enjoy today
00:42:45
and what did i learn today had the best year we ever had and i'm just answering
00:42:48
those questions yeah and in a way there almost needs to be more simplicity to not using tools
00:42:54
and techniques not to try and apply psychology to a four-year-old you know but to just try and consistently enjoy
00:43:00
and learn on a daily basis so i guess in regard to like you know yeah i'm still prone to say
00:43:06
god i need to get running okay i've been drinking all week i need to do some
00:43:10
exercise at the weekend um and you know again it's falling into the trap of the
00:43:16
i've been at the mercy of the shoulds and musks rather than thinking about at um you know what am i
00:43:22
enjoying what am i learning what surprised me this week um you know where am i experimenting and
00:43:29
what have i discovered you know this week about myself and then once we start to talk like that
00:43:33
maybe we can so i guess apply more consistent thinking and therefore change our doing so you
00:43:39
want to run let's use that as an example yeah i need to run more definitely i
00:43:42
need to run more why do you need to run more and um do you know because i want to
00:43:46
improve my heart and lung health i think i think i've got tonight it's all right
00:43:49
for you because you're young and fit and um but um but i think i've got to an age
00:43:54
now where i realized there's more of an importance on exercise so you know before i could just
00:43:59
i'll just do it anyway you know pick up running every now and then i'll be able to run i go to the gym every now
00:44:03
and then i'll have a great time at the gym for a couple of weeks and then i'll skip it
00:44:07
um yeah but now you know but now it's it's different a term you know now i
00:44:11
sort of feel at them as though you know i could be fitter it should be i think this year
00:44:15
has also sort of illuminated that for everybody at the importance of health i think
00:44:19
it's made us all well it has for me made me think about my health a lot more
00:44:22
no not for the vain reasons that you know young guy would think about their health because they're trying to
00:44:27
trying to get laid or something but because you know i i want to live longer and i want to have more memories than
00:44:32
those kind of things did you know near ielts he wrote a book called indistractible i know yeah i'm
00:44:36
not familiar with i've read it you're probably familiar with the book yeah i know the name but i am yeah he
00:44:41
said this quote to me which really changed my life and i think about it all the time okay when i find myself
00:44:45
procrastinating from doing something or whatever he said that typically we think
00:44:49
we're humans that are seeking pleasure but we're actually living in the avoidance of discomfort
00:44:55
and when i think about the things that i procrastinate against or whether you know we're at six
00:44:58
seven o'clock in the evening you think i can't be bothered to go whatever it does
00:45:02
ring true to me that i'm actually avoiding some kind of psychological discomfort
00:45:06
yes and so i now whenever i feel myself like this weekend i had had this big project to do i also had
00:45:11
this talk that i had to do um for my manager dom and i found myself like and then i've got the book my book which
00:45:18
i had to do go through the whole book from start to finish in a day and i'm like low-key finding myself oh
00:45:25
just clean the countertop because that's important and i said i stopped myself i thought
00:45:30
you're avoiding the discomfort associated with sitting down for nine hours until six am
00:45:35
in the morning and doing the book and it wasn't until i realized why you know what i started that term has
00:45:42
been like this flashlight that i shine in like the corner of the room we're after hiding the you know the thing that
00:45:47
i don't want to do now so i wondered if it was you know for some in in regards to your running
00:45:52
if it's in some respects similar like you're avoiding some kind of discomfort
00:45:55
where you think i'd rather play i'm convinced of it because running such an unpleasant
00:45:59
experience for me it's a really good example i can't stand it so but you're absolutely right that uh
00:46:07
that you know i totally agree with you that you know we we do sort of go about our
00:46:11
lives trying to seek moving out of that space of you know of of being uncomfortable
00:46:16
this is why we don't have conflict conversations in the workplace this is why we don't challenge our own thinking
00:46:21
this is why we don't like change and uh you know we like we like to operate from
00:46:25
a comfort zone that's what we do um so yeah no i agree with you i think i think because running is such an
00:46:30
unpleasant experience for me that's absolutely awful um i'm probably avoiding it
00:46:35
because i just don't want the experience whereas riding a bike isn't so bad for me um so so yeah so
00:46:42
maybe therefore but um instead of sat there at four five o'clock thinking god i need to go
00:46:47
running in an hour and i really don't want to i'll go tomorrow maybe maybe what i should be saying is i
00:46:53
need to go running no you don't um why don't you ride the bike why didn't
00:46:58
you yeah why don't you just have stairs um okay well i'll have a go on it after
00:47:03
this but um we should have done a whole interview on that i'm gonna kill two
00:47:08
birds with one stone i hate running as well it's like i hate the impact on my knees yeah just
00:47:12
i don't want to be outside yeah that'll be swerving past people so i got the peloton um it's low resistance
00:47:18
it's fun super engaging and gamified because you see the data you see everyone in the
00:47:23
world and where they're placing you see jenny 55 in north carolina's beating you yeah
00:47:27
make me feel bad i hate jenny forever that just makes me realize how unfit i am and how much i
00:47:35
hate other people who are fitter than me but i mean interestingly it proves how fit you are because you said you don't
00:47:39
like running because of your knees and swerving past people i don't like running because i can't
00:47:43
breathe so you're already winning chicken egg that'll be cured if you start running
00:47:50
um but but on that point of um of psychological discomfort um how does somebody in your opinion
00:48:01
face a challenge that they know is uncomfortable like you know to be honest i don't i don't
00:48:07
want to go to the gym or do all these zoom calls all the time it's not like you know i'm not getting comfort or in
00:48:15
pleasure out of doing two hours zoom calls at the moment about like you know biotech or whatever it is
00:48:21
the thing that i'm involved in but i'm doing it and i wanted to know in your case what what does it take someone
00:48:27
who like doesn't want to do something because they know it's uncomfortable to
00:48:31
say do you know what [ __ ] it i'm gonna do it today yeah and is it does that go back to that
00:48:37
point of of having that like long anchor purpose yeah i think it does i mean mohammed ali said i've i've hated every
00:48:45
moment in the gym but i did it so i could live the rest of my life like a champion yeah and it's in in a
00:48:50
way it's true isn't it that that you know there are there are component parts
00:48:54
to success um and i think the two of the interesting one is and the one that most people probably relate to
00:49:02
is failure so people don't like to experience failure but you know for example
00:49:07
failure is part payment towards success so the price of success is always paid in full and in advance
00:49:14
the price of success is always paid in full and in advance you can't be successful and you start making mistakes
00:49:19
you can't be successful and start having your two hours zoom calls but uh you
00:49:23
know in a way you need to fail we need to have these awful conversations we need to kiss lots of
00:49:28
frogs we need to you know do deals which don't work but i mean you do all these things to enable
00:49:32
you to be super successful so um there's lots of things that um again it comes back to reframing if we
00:49:38
see it as part and parcel a stepping stone towards a greater advancement they're probably more likely to do it
00:49:44
you know if you see failure as something which is we're trying to avoid and it's just
00:49:48
awful and you know and it screams to me that i'm useless um then we're probably going to stay
00:49:54
within a comfort zone you know if we embrace failure then we see it as part payment towards success
00:49:59
until we see it as something which is um an active contribution a stepping stone
00:50:04
towards you know being better maybe we're more likely to indulge in it and not have the
00:50:08
discomfort that we associate with it so now i feel that um it is always good to think about you
00:50:15
know what you think about that end goal have that purpose that vision the mission you know what you're
00:50:20
seeking to achieve and create um and then think about what those building blocks look like
00:50:25
because you know all great achievements are the result of many small achievements
00:50:29
um you know you had joe wicks here yesterday he wasn't super successful overnight
00:50:34
and he probably kissed a lot of frogs i'm sure you talked about it you know um know his business and korean personal
00:50:41
life went in all sorts of different directions like ours at um and you know it's not necessarily
00:50:47
as we said earlier it's not necessarily what what happens it's it's our interpretation of what's
00:50:52
happening which will then enable us to use that as feedback towards something better
00:50:57
and do you find with a lot of the high performance people you've worked with
00:51:00
that their childhood is a definitive reason as to why they are the way they are today i'm going to try and
00:51:09
articulate this if i can but i've i from speaking to guests on this podcast and also from a bit of
00:51:14
introspection to be honest i tend to think a lot of people that have extraordinary outcomes have often had
00:51:23
some kind of extraordinary early experience and i'll give you a couple of examples
00:51:29
the a lot of the billionaires that i know are really really successful people that i know
00:51:33
um cite their father's disapproval as the reason why they've always had a
00:51:38
chip on their shoulder and they've always strived obsessively to be enough right because
00:51:44
their father told them they weren't enough yeah um have you seen that in successful
00:51:48
people that there's the the thing that makes them just a bit [ __ ] weird is often a you know i think one
00:51:56
particular instance with a friend of mine a comment their mother made when they were four
00:52:00
that they just can't shake yeah yeah yeah yeah i mean i i'm not a psychiatrist so i don't delve into
00:52:07
backgrounds in the way that maybe someone involved in psychiatry would yes as a performance coach i tend to
00:52:12
work with how people are now basically and um tell me about what you're thinking and doing what you're
00:52:16
trying to achieve and more so than to try and deconstruct you know or analyze some of the you know the earlier
00:52:23
experiences um so that's not my thing having said that though you're absolutely right there seems to be some
00:52:29
sort of correlation between extreme experiences and then how people interpret or translate them
00:52:35
and in fact you know as you're talking i was trying to think of the book i can't
00:52:37
think of a book i wish i could now and they talk about in this book the fact that so many super
00:52:43
successful people politicians actors um business people lost parents when they were young and
00:52:50
there's a direct correlation believe it or not it's a direct correlation between
00:52:55
people losing parents when they were young and then becoming super performers be incredibly successful
00:53:00
um and the psychology behind it was that you learn independence and um it's almost easy if you've got
00:53:06
these loving fabulous parents who you know hopefully you know many people have got um
00:53:11
you're not as independent you know whereas you know if you lose a parent young you
00:53:15
end up sort of doing things for yourself a little bit earlier and so maybe that going back to that
00:53:20
responsibility the ownership piece and i'm having to sort yourself out and um you know means that people learn
00:53:26
some of the skills which enable their talent to then be used differently in the future but there is a direct correlation
00:53:32
believe it or not i wish i could tell it's like the real psychology in the actual
00:53:35
article in the actual piece in the book um but you just reminded me when you're
00:53:39
talking about it so i do think that some people do have these extreme experiences
00:53:44
and i think that um it's almost easier to get to know ourselves and get to think
00:53:50
about life and contextualize things um you know if we're experiencing things which are
00:53:56
outside of our i guess our normal field of vision i i resonate a lot with that i um
00:54:02
you said you know lose a parent but the reason i resonated with that is because i've said multiple times on this podcast
00:54:07
again um that when people have asked me why why i was successful i i cite that when
00:54:13
i was younger my parents weren't ever in the house and that made meant that i had to find a
00:54:18
way to make money to feed myself or you know my mum was never in the house when i went to bed and she was never
00:54:22
there when i woke up because she was just she slept at her shop sometimes my dad
00:54:25
worked in london for six days a week which was four hours away and i and it was only
00:54:30
of the four of us in our my family the four siblings that wasn't the case for my older
00:54:35
siblings when they were younger or when they were my age my mom and dad were in the house every day
00:54:40
doing date nights together and then when i grew up by the age of 10 i could leave the house for
00:54:44
three days or two days and they wouldn't actually know that i'd gone and so that meant that i became
00:54:50
like this sort of self-autonomous kid at like 12 13 14 50. and then started businesses
00:54:54
at 14 and then you know went off but you could have gone the other way as well couldn't you oh
00:54:59
you know with 100 you know with that level of freedom and autonomy but not the maturity and you know to
00:55:05
deal with that freedom um my friend my best friend said to you and i'll never forget where i stood when
00:55:10
he said it in this takeaway shop he said stephen you're either going to be a criminal or
00:55:14
a millionaire and it was because i had that my independence created this connection
00:55:19
where i knew that my outcomes were going to be a direct result of my behavior i always think of like
00:55:25
school dinners as the perfect example for a lot of my childhood maybe up until the age of about nine my there was
00:55:31
always like two quid on the counter which is like okay you take that to school and then by ten the two quid
00:55:36
wasn't there anymore yeah so it was like waking up in the morning and being like how am i gonna
00:55:39
eat today i'd have to find a way so i'd go and sell cigarettes or you know i'd like i knew that there
00:55:44
were cigarettes in this this room upstairs which my mum had got from nigeria one one year
00:55:48
so i just went to school and i was just shopping cigarettes or chewing gum and it was that that connection i made super
00:55:53
early that my outcomes are a direct and only correlation of sort of connected to my behavior um
00:56:00
so i resonate with that a lot and it kind of explains the difference between four kids that grew up in the same
00:56:04
household and one the three of them went to university llc cambridge whatever and
00:56:08
one of them dropped out of everything got kicked out of school and became an entrepreneur
00:56:12
it's true isn't it so it's not necessarily the um yeah the experience is how we translate
00:56:18
that experience and exactly how we channel our feeling into something which could be productive or destructive
00:56:24
you could have become a criminal and a millionaire and got a job at this tory government
00:56:28
you could be yeah but the last thing i really wanted to ask you about was um you know this idea of distractions
00:56:42
social media is uh made it incredibly easy to distract ourselves and you see you know teams
00:56:47
becoming much more distracted at work because of all these screens and you know the
00:56:51
digitalization of the world and individuals and what are what's your thoughts on on why
00:56:56
we're so distracted and how to overcome it yeah um it's true that we are distracted
00:57:01
i think focus and concentration have to be practiced so many things can be improved
00:57:07
so um whether it's resilience whether it's concentration whether it's courage all these things
00:57:12
can be practiced so many think courage for example i say courage is like a muscle the more you exercise it the
00:57:18
stronger it gets so it's possible to exercise all these things and be better at them
00:57:22
and i think that um it's fine to be distracted because it's actually quite
00:57:26
nice to have different stimuli and different um provocation and so we just need to choose when it's
00:57:33
good to have that provocation and change and when we need to concentrate we need to practice both
00:57:40
now um uh here's the thing for you adam is that as human beings we don't multitask so
00:57:46
multitasking is a lie so for all the um all the girls and all the women watching this
00:57:52
and um oh listening to this um i'm sorry to tell you it's not true you don't multitask better than men
00:57:59
it's true amen it doesn't happen we're both equally as bad now we're both
00:58:04
useless at it so what we do is we do rapid switching so we don't multitask we just want to
00:58:08
talk about exactly um this is why actually um i can't remember it was a couple of
00:58:12
years ago that the um the blackberry network went down in abu dhabi for a weekend from friday to
00:58:18
monday had a 48 decrease in car accidents that we get really because as human beings we don't
00:58:24
multitask you don't like check your text and drive well it doesn't work so um so i think that we are living in
00:58:31
an age where it's easy to be distracted and some of these distractions are incredibly useful um
00:58:37
we need to come back to greater responsibility and choice and um let's choose at home you know
00:58:42
when it's fine to do that and it's fine not to be and um and practice you know these levels of concentration
00:58:48
of focus that we may need for certain tasks but we may not for another so i quite
00:58:53
like times when i can sit down and read a book or absorb something or think about
00:58:58
something and narrow my focus sometimes i quite like sort of tv being on music being on at um
00:59:05
phone next to me on the computer because actually um i'm sometimes picking up on
00:59:09
certain things which um for a level of creativity can be quite useful and a bit of provocation a bit of a bit of
00:59:17
changeability in my thinking because i get distracted by something and come back to it
00:59:22
i find that as well i find them for some bizarre reason if i if i go for a walk or if i go to the gym
00:59:29
uh inspiration floods into me but when i'm stood sat in my office trying to think of stuff it's yeah
00:59:34
almost impossible the shower is another weird place where my ideas seem to show up all at once and it's like i'm
00:59:40
not like this isn't hyperbole i'm not exaggerating at all like if i if i'm sat here and i'm trying to think
00:59:45
of something to write or whatever yeah i go for a walk and sometimes i put my my music in
00:59:51
it's like non-stop and i find that quite you know interesting yeah teams are often trying
00:59:57
to think of ideas and creativity and if you say to people where do you have your best ideas and have
01:00:03
asked people that question whatever your best ideas do you know what they'll say
01:00:05
well i'm walking the dog and when i'm in the shower just about to fall off the sleep
01:00:10
um on the commute over breakfast uh you know um they'll they'll they'll come up with
01:00:16
all some recreational drugs they'll come up with all sorts of stuff but no one will ever say in a boardroom
01:00:22
with some mints on the table and a jug of water no one will ever say that but but where
01:00:26
do we where do we um you know try and create ideas in the business at all we get them around this
01:00:31
boardroom table no one ever said don't get me wrong you can't get your team in the shower with
01:00:36
you maybe you've tried i don't know what it's like around here maybe you've tried
01:00:38
i don't know yourself better but um but yeah maybe yeah maybe we can't do that but we've
01:00:45
got to find a way of trying to you know uh create a more natural environment for people to flourish
01:00:51
and i do say to you many organizations i say to them that you know you're too quick to train the people rather
01:00:56
than fix the environment you know people say oh i need more innovative people they don't um you know
01:01:01
we need to train them on innovation no you don't let's try and create a culture an environment where people
01:01:06
are free to express themselves the problem we've got is that you know we're
01:01:10
so we're so convergent in our thinking and uh you know we start off as divergent thinkers we
01:01:16
start off making really weird connections um i had a six-year-old once um asked me
01:01:21
what does the number nine smell like amazing question i think that's probably
01:01:25
the best question i've ever been asked well do you respect the interviewer today i was going to say that but um but
01:01:30
you know what's the number nine smell like it's a great question um yeah was the last time you heard a
01:01:34
ceo ask that question they don't um you know children ask these divergent questions because they make the
01:01:40
connection between two things usually unconnected um and then you go to school and the school says
01:01:46
why are you asking that we're doing numbers today just concentrate on the numbers
01:01:49
um and then we go from divergent thinkers to convergent thinkers and our careers get better because of it
01:01:55
our businesses get better because of it and making simple connections you know margins down okay we need to do this you
01:02:01
know revenue's down okay we need to do that um but what do we need in today's
01:02:06
society in today's world and um i think we need convergent thinking i think we need to move back
01:02:12
and and get into that divergent space again and yeah who are the most successful
01:02:16
people you know at the moment and people are making really weird connections people who this is where uber and airbnb
01:02:21
and all these things come from it's from people who are making a connection between two things previously
01:02:26
unconnected because they're still divergent so let's try and create some
01:02:31
environments where people are free to explore experiment free to break some of the rules and to talk
01:02:38
about things which are um which are not easily put together and i think that that's the best way in
01:02:43
which we can see the opportunity and possibilities in in this changing world in which we live
01:02:48
in how do people find you what's the best uh yeah i think i mean uh twitter or linkedin really i don't
01:02:54
use anything i don't use facebook or anything like that so um for your website
01:02:58
so you're on my website into me people contact me through my website but i used
01:03:02
uh i started using twitter again and but linkedin is great for me i can imagine there are about 30 000
01:03:07
people on linkedin and that's really where where i sort of communicate have you um
01:03:12
how do you find social media just out of interest in terms of life i'm a bit like an alcoholic who can't
01:03:17
get the top of the bottle yeah i mean i mean i love the idea of it but um you know i am you know i i think
01:03:24
oh god i should be doing more um but um but i but i just don't people say that you should if it's not
01:03:31
you should you should do yeah well but you know what it's funny one of the advices that i give people at the moment
01:03:36
if it ain't broke you should break it because um you know we almost need to give up what's allowing us to be
01:03:41
successful to allow us to be successful and um you know i know it's a counterintuitive
01:03:46
argument it makes perfect sense to be honest i mean that's the definition what innovation is right yeah
01:03:50
it's breaking the blueprint so so i think that you know and again look it's probably my running isn't it it's
01:03:55
one of those things which are uncomfortable so i probably don't do it so um so what i should do is is
01:04:01
try and find out more about you know social media and then i'll have a look at your social channels
01:04:05
after and obviously we've got a lot of content from this so we can send it to you in a way that will
01:04:09
do perform well if you post it so listen thank you for your time today thank you very very generous and
01:04:13
it's a really inspiring conversation that's uh i actually want to read it's one of the
01:04:16
few conversations where i'm like i really need to re-listen to this again and maybe with my notepad out and really
01:04:21
take notes because there's so many ideas that are really really profound at times that i'm like i'm trying to hold
01:04:28
on to and then because you're because you're full of them i'm i'm going back i'm thinking
01:04:32
you know what i mean because there's so much intelligence condensed in such a
01:04:35
short period of time very kind no i really mean that as well yeah sometimes i have experts on that have
01:04:44
really well studied in their field and the things you say as someone who's ran a multinational business with 700
01:04:50
employees for the last 10 years of my life i'm like perfect sense and i i really
01:04:55
want to i could unpack all of those individual topics more but yeah thank you such a pleasure to have you
01:04:59
thank you thank you for inviting me [Music]