Make Things That Matter

Flow dramatically increases every measure of performance you can imagine, as well as your subjective quality of life experience. It’s defined as an optimal state of consciousness. This will help you understand and increase your time in flow so you can get the most out of every aspect of your life.

Show notes here: https://blog.makethingsthatmatter.com/p/flow-research-rian-doris-conor-murphy-pt2

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit blog.makethingsthatmatter.com

Flow dramatically increases every measure of performance you can imagine, as well as your subjective quality of life experience. It’s defined as an optimal state of consciousness. This will help you understand and increase your time in flow so you can get the most out of every aspect of your life.

Show notes here: https://blog.makethingsthatmatter.com/p/flow-research-rian-doris-conor-murphy-pt1

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit blog.makethingsthatmatter.com

Show notes

• How Susan went bungee jumping... and met her husband [0:03:42]
• What is Enspiral? [0:08:39]
• What are the different types of roles and engagement within the Enspiral network? [0:10:45]
• "What we really are at Enspiral is healthy power relationships and practice" [0:17:41]
• How do things get done in Enspiral? [0:18:02]
• The greatest gift Enspiral gave itself: culture first, THEN tools [0:19:37]
• How their decentralized governance tools (Loomio & CoBudget) emerged [0:20:03]
• How should we think about consensus? [0:24:18]
• "The most important thing about decision making is deciding how you want to decide, making that transparent, and then also deciding what actually does a real block mean?" [0:25:11]
• Scaffolding vs frameworks [0:27:21]
• How does a new venture get set up in Enspiral? [0:29:41]
• Do ventures have to contribute X% of their profits to the foundation? [0:34:52]
• How is Enspiral building a deliberately developmental culture? [0:36:20]
• "If we want to change the possibility for the future, we need to be prepared to come together in configurations and groups of people we've maybe never met before, to do things we've never done before. Organizations provide all of the fodder for us to do our ongoing development, we just don't frame it that way." [0:38:46]
• How learning & development (L&D) thinking needs to evolve [0:43:28]
• "We need to create the conditions for us to experiment, to play, to fail, to notice, to reflect." [0:48:46]
• Why is this an idea whose time has come? [0:50:02]
• The power of using a check-in to start meetings [0:53:59]
• Are these ideas that can be added to an existing organization? Or do you need a clean slate? [0:57:09]
• "Nobody leads all of the time, everybody leads some of the time. Followership is as important a gift as leadership." [0:59:54]
• Why is it worth it to transition to this way of working? [1:01:53]
• "You might never change the system, but if you can change the experience for yourself and your comrades, that's a great outcome too." [1:03:58]
• How can product leaders start implementing this? [1:05:23]
• How do we make it safe to try practices like this, if it doesn't feel that way? [1:13:51]
• Why is most feedback unhelpful? [1:20:52]

People, books, companies, resources etc mentioned in episode

• Susan Basterfield (@OpenToGrow)
  • GreaterThan
  • Enspiral Foundation
  • Better Work Together (Susan's book)
  • Better Work Together Academy
• Loomio - tool for collective decision making
• CoBudget - tool for participatory budgeting
• CompuServe
• Michael Schenker - UFO - Strangers in the Night (album)
• Susan's interview on Team Human podcast with Douglas Rushkoff
• Deliberately Developmental Organizations (DDO)
• Reinventing Organizations - Frederic Laloux
• Teal Organizations
  • Self-management
  • Wholeness
  • Evolutionary purpose
• Bryan Ungard - Operationalizing Love
• Seth Godin's altMBA
• Liberating structures & app
• Pyxis agile consultancy (Montreal/Paris)
• Decurion
• Climate-KIC
• Consensys
• DAOstack
• Brené Brown
• Yash Papers (Chuk brand) in India - styrofoam & compostable tableware
• Cut the b******t: organizations with no hierarchy don’t exist - Francesca Pick
• Books
  • Better Work Together
  • Reinventing Organizations
  • An Everyone Culture
  • Going Horizontal - Samantha Slade
  • Brave New Work

Click here to directly email Andrew your questions, comments, and feedback! He reads everything that is sent in: https://tinyurl.com/ydda8zc6

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit blog.makethingsthatmatter.com

Show notes

• "You don't belong to you, you belong to the universe.", Buckminster Fuller [0:03:00]
• "You might not be in the best position to know why you're special. It's not up to you to decide if you're good enough to be here. You are." [0:05:16]
• Amy's first day working for Buckminster Fuller [0:06:38]
• "Work is a place where you learn and grow"... [0:11:07]
• Guidance for dealing with anxiety [0:14:06]
• "I think sometimes a feeling of connectedness is THE most important thing you can have in the workplace." [0:15:30]
• "It's so much more fun to be curious about someone else and what they bring than to be tense about being found out." [0:16:36]
• Why did "The Fearless Organization" strike such a chord in the world right now? [0:16:58]
• Why psychological safety is peaking right now [0:17:40]
• What is psychological safety, and what is it not? [0:19:19]
• Psychological safety is a sense of felt permission for candor [0:19:42]
• Psychological safety is NOT about being nice [0:20:18]
• "Being nice is code for, 'I'm not going to tell you what I really think.'" [0:20:33]
• Psychological safety is NOT the goal [0:21:31]
• What's the relationship between psychological safety & courage? [0:24:37]
• Psychological safety vs culture fit / belonging [0:27:02]
• "The job is to deliberately reframe reality so we can be more learning oriented." [0:30:11]
• What are cognitive frames? [0:30:22]
• How does Amy create psychological safety in the classroom? [0:31:45]
• What is a "good" question? [0:32:33]
• The leaders toolkit for psych safety [0:36:43]
• How psych safety helped turn around Ford between 2006-2009 [0:37:55]
• Concern: won't psych safety take too long? [0:43:46]
• Why is psych safety worth it? What's the ROI? [0:45:07]
• Parallels to self-compassion [0:47:11]
• Psych safety & Flow [0:49:26]
• How do we implement a psychological safety initiative? [0:50:30]
• Using the work itself as the laboratory for culture change [0:53:02]
• Common failure patterns? [0:54:03]
• "A culture of nice can often mask a culture of fear"... [0:55:08]
• How do you measure psych safety & tell if you have a problem? [0:57:34]
• How to pulse check if your team has psych safety [0:59:12]
• Does psych safety differ across intra/extraversion, or personality types? [1:01:59]
• How does psych safety affect hiring processes? [1:04:52]
• Everyone is different: how adapt building psych safety to this variety? [1:07:58]
• What is work for, to you? [1:09:54]
• What ONE thing would Amy have a leader do to build more psych safety? [1:12:37]
• What happens when leaders apologize for safety violations? [1:13:37]
• CONTEXT MATTERS [1:16:05]
• I'm not the boss, what can I do? [1:25:30]

People, books, companies, resources etc mentioned in episode

• Amy Edmondson (@AmyCEdmondson)
  • The Fearless Organization - @WorkFearlessly
  • Amy's HBS faculty page
  • Amy's books: The Fearless Organization & Teaming (Amy's prior book)
• Buckminster Fuller - his moment of great despair in his early thirties and his moment of insight: "you belong to the universe"
  • Geodesic domes
• VUCA
• Ford, Alan Mulally & Mark Fields
• Kristin Neff & Self-Compassion
• Growth mindset
• Flow & Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• Steven Kotler
• Kim Scott
• Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex - associated with self-focused metacognitive evaluation
• Simon Wardley - value chain mapping overview talk & writing
• Stanford - Designing Your Life
• Nilofer Merchant - Onlyness
• Process Knowledge Spectrum
• Jerry Colonna - Reboot
• Books
  • The Fearless Organization
  • Teaming (Amy's prior book)
  • Leadership and Self-Deception
  • Radical Candor
  • Flow
  • Stealing Fire (group flow)
  • Mindset
  • Self-Compassion
  • Designing Your Life
  • Reboot

Click here to directly email Andrew your questions, comments, and feedback! He reads everything that is sent in: https://tinyurl.com/ydda8zc6

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit blog.makethingsthatmatter.com

Show notes

• Paula's favorite movie that informs her work [0:02:41]
• Paula's mentor: Dorothy Green [0:05:20]
• How Paula originally got involved in environmental work [0:06:56]
• What did Paula learn from Dorothy? [0:10:45]
• Being against something vs being FOR something [0:13:35]
• LAFPC's origin story & what was it like for Paula when the policy passed? [0:14:56]
• Keeping the light alive & finding the others [0:20:35]
• The moment that almost killed it all [0:24:49]
• What did Paula feel when it suddenly became real? [0:26:38]
• Where is the Center for Good Food Purchasing today? How'd it get here? [0:30:30]
• How should someone think about working with many types of stakeholders? [0:33:35]
• "I saw people yelling at a junior staffer, as if he didn't have feelings. So I stood up there and told the story of this human being...sometimes people in government are seen for their role and not for their person." [0:36:40]
• How does Paula coach somebody to be effective working with people who are different than they are? [0:37:20]
• Case study: How Paula got the city of LA to change their thinking on stormwater [0:39:00]
• "Usually it's fear-based thinking. They don't want to mess up. So they're worried about something. If you can figure out what that something is, give them examples of how it's handled differently, then you can start making a difference." [0:40:25]
• How do you redirect a culture or group of people? [0:41:39]
• Why government & entrepreneurs is like baseball & surfing [0:42:13]
• The circular economy: what's catching Paula's attention? [0:44:33]
• Why is this the time to engage with the idea of the circular economy? [0:49:48]
• How does Paula teach people to be a systems thinker? [0:53:08]
• Paula's monthly whiteboard review exercise [0:54:04]
• Polarity management [0:56:13]
• How does Paula design an intervention? [1:02:52]
• What lights Paula up? [1:10:28]
• Quotes & mantras that inspire Paula [1:11:59]
• "You're always on the edge of your own invention. And every moment has that opportunity." [1:13:56]

People, books, companies, resources etc mentioned in episode

• Paula: @PaulaADaniels
• Center for Good Food Purchasing - @center4goodfood
• LA Food Policy Council
• Dorothy Green
• Heal the Bay
• LA Unified School District
• US Conference of Mayors
• Dana Gunders - NRDC
• Books
  • Cradle to Cradle
  • The Upcycle
  • Polarity Management
  • Thinking in Systems - Donella Meadows
  • Simon Wardley — strategy mapping drafts & value-chain mapping intro talk
  • Blink
• Ashoka Fellows
• Advice from a Caterpillar, by Amy Gerstler
• Wall-E
• Blade Runner
• "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." (Anna Karenina)
• CA Bay-Delta Authority
• The circular economy
• Mayor Antonio Villaroigosa
• "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit."
• "Luck comes to the prepared mind."
• "The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."
• Jonathan Gold
• Aquaculture

Click here to directly email Andrew your questions, comments, and feedback! He reads everything that is sent in: https://tinyurl.com/ydda8zc6

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit blog.makethingsthatmatter.com

Books, companies, etc mentioned

The Beak of the Finch

Crucial Conversations - Becky especially recommends chapter 5, "On Safety" to broach challenging topics

Vital Smarts communication training

Radical Candor

Principles,Bridgewater Associates, Radical Transparency (TED Talk), and Ray Dalio

Psychological safety

The Empowered Manager

Mind the Product conference

Matt LeMay

Who

Click here to directly email Andrew your questions, comments, and feedback! He reads everything that is sent in: https://tinyurl.com/ydda8zc6

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit blog.makethingsthatmatter.com

Show notes

Barry's focus [0:02:50]
Putting the body into submission to the mind [0:05:17]
A leader's first transformational relationship [0:06:15]
"So they're reading all these books on leadership, but they're not gonna miss lunch today.""" [0:07:15]
Internal & external measures of leadership [0:07:52]
"You just adorn yourself iwth these external symbols, and if you get enough of them, then people believe you, and that's called 'leadership.' " [0:08:42]
Where "leadership" misses traction [0:09:32]
The relationship between what we do and who we are being [0:10:06]
"You don't need to leave your current job to find yourself. Meaning isn't tied to a different position in another company.""" [0:12:14]
"It starts where you are with what you're doing." [0:13:26]
"There is no escape door out of their own life. They have to enter their own life where they are with a different mindset and embrace.""" [0:16:20]
Discomfort & limitations as aids to our leadership and growth [0:18:17]
What is the reward of being limited? [0:19:56]
"When people see you able to accept your own limit...those around you will empower you.""" [0:21:08]
How do you reconcile our abilty to grow vs accepting our limits? [0:23:19]
How do you learn humility? [0:26:04]
Vulnerability as an opening for connection [0:27:24]
What is the strategic value of a leader showing weakness? [0:29:49]
How can individual limits can make a team stronger? [0:34:01]
Removing the manhole cover [0:37:07]
How do you start this with your team? [0:41:35]
How we use work itself as the vehicle to take us deeper into ourselves [0:42:25]
What if the team doesn't want this? [0:46:13]
How to change culture, bit by bit [0:47:58]
"You raise a flag, and see who gathers at the pole.""" [0:51:13]
How to keep the room safe by setting boundaries as a leader [0:52:47]
"When we make something, we're becoming someone. And then you're not just making the product, you're becoming that kind of person.""" [0:57:36]
The craftsman mindset [1:00:23]
The new kind of leader [1:04:16]
"Shaping the shapers""" [1:05:01]
"The products that we're making are shaping the world. Who's making those products? That's the shapers. And who's shaping the shapers, that are shaping the world?""" [1:05:21]
"The possibilities of production are endless now. The new question is not what can you produce, but what kind of person can be trusted to handle this?'' [1:06:07]
The scarcest resource in the new economy [1:07:38]
"That question alone is not answered by means or capital. That kind of question is answered by the kind of person who can say 'this is what I want. I want to bend the capital and means to this desired end.' And that has to be something authentically human, that makes the world celebrate." [1:08:50]
"Any leader that sustains their impact over time has developed a robust interior spiritual life." [1:12:33]

People, books, companies, resources etc mentioned in episode

• Barry Brown
  • LinkedIn
  • Barry's company: Human Ethos
• Singularity University
• Woodstock, Vermont
• Larry Brilliant
• Peter Diamandis
• David Roberts
• Transformative Technology Conference
• Books:
  • Andrew's must-read book list
  • The Wisdom of No Escape - Pema Chodron
  • Why We Make Things and Why It Matters
  • The Craftsman - Richard Sennett
  • So Good They Can't Ignore You

Click here to directly email Andrew your questions, comments, and feedback! He reads everything that is sent in: https://tinyurl.com/ydda8zc6

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit blog.makethingsthatmatter.com

My guest in this conversation is Rich Mironov (@RichMironov).

Rich is known as the "product mensch" in Silicon Valley, and for good reason. Educated at Yale and Stanford, Rich is a 30-year veteran of product management at multiple enterprises and startups that have gone public who now consults as an interim VP of Product helping companies to get their product organizations working at top notch.

Show notes

How did Rich end up as a product leader? [0:02:30]
Rich's first week in "product" [0:05:01]
How to learn a new space or company when you don't have background in it [0:06:46]
How does Rich figure out what's really going on, and what to do? [0:08:34]
Common failure modes Rich sees [0:09:32]
What does Rich do in his first 4 weeks as head of product? [0:13:33]
How do you build the trust to make the needed changes? [0:18:37]
Roadmaps: common initial challenge [0:20:29]
How to build initial momentum when "engineering can't ship anything" [0:22:17]
"Teams that don't finish anything quit" [0:25:11]
"Caring is probably the #1 most important feature I see in engineering teams that get a lot of really good stuff done" [0:25:21]
What are the conditions that enable a product team to be at their best? [0:25:43]
Lesson: Assume good intent & don't blame people for the system [0:30:13]
"If we design an organization badly, almost everybody we put into that organization fails" [0:30:27]
"As product people we gotta be curious, we gotta look outside ourselves and figure out what's broken. We're analytical, relentless, and we failed them if our product doesn't work." [0:32:08]
Digging into psychological safety [0:34:55]
How to provide top cover for your team [0:36:13]
How do you make it OK to hear truth and speak truth? [0:37:58]
How to keep the exec team aware of what's being built [0:39:19]
The "exclusive or" question to deal with competing roadmap requests [0:40:15]
"Trust starts with delivering the things we said we'd deliver." [0:42:00]
How do you spread outcomes thinking across an organization? [0:44:06]
Roadmaps & outcomes thinking [0:47:13]
How is PM different in a machine learning context? [0:49:16]
"Just because you have a stack of data doesn't mean it's going to tell you anything" [0:52:40]
"Schroedinger's insight" [0:56:05]
How does a product leader think differently about a product portfolio with ML products? [0:56:59]
Impostor syndrome & internalizing impersonal issues [0:59:22]
How do you help the product team level up their skills? [1:06:55]
"The goal of those discussion isn't to focus on some artifact. The goal is to skill up mentally." [1:09:23]
What one change would Rich have product leaders make? [1:11:27]

People, books, companies, resources etc mentioned in episode

• Connect with Rich:
  • Website
  • Twitter
• Tandem Computers
• Tolstoy - Anna Karenina
• Shuttle diplomacy
• Rich's talk at INDUSTRY on product org/team structures
• The Glengarry Leads
• The Agile Manifesto
• Psychological safety
• The Fearless Organization, by Amy Edmondson (re: psychological safety)
• Outcomes Over Output, by Josh Seiden
• Christina Wodtke - ENLIVEN episode & website
• Marty Cagan on outcome based roadmaps
• Rich's article on product management in data science
• "Hot Dog, not Hot Dog"
• Sally Foote - AI at Photobox
• Impostor syndrome
• RailsCon 2014 talk on Imposter Syndrome - Nickolas Means
• Inception (movie)
• Calendly scheduling tool
• Teresa Torres
• Jared Spool
• Tristan Kromer
• Daniel Elezalde

Click here to directly email Andrew your questions, comments, and feedback! He reads everything that is sent in: https://tinyurl.com/ydda8zc6

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit blog.makethingsthatmatter.com

People, books, companies, resources, links mentioned in the episode

Marshall's company: VestigoConnect with Marshall: LinkedIn & InstagramInside the Adventure podcast interview with paraglider Gavin McClurgRed Bull X-Alps raceMarshall's Burning Man surfboardFlow - Mihaly CsikszentmihalyiSteven Kotler: The Rise of Superman & Stealing FireSimon Sinek: Start With Why, Leaders Eat Last, and The Infinite GameBrené Brown - TED Talk, booksColin Brady crossing Antarctica solo, unsupportedAirBnb experiencesSingularity University and the GSPRoadieFree SoloColin O'Brady crossing Antarctica solo + unaidedAlex HonnoldTransformative Technology ConferenceVR immersive plank experienceOculus QuestPluto VR - live virtual VR office experiences on Distributed podcastAirBnb's "Obama O's" storyElectric UnicyclesMarshall unicycling in VR on the Beltline in ATLHow I Built This podcastPrimed to PerformUltralearningMasterySelf-determination theoryBlinkistPocket appiOS 13 accessibility updates

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit blog.makethingsthatmatter.com

Contact Christina:

• Her website
• Twitter
• LinkedIn

Christina's books:

• The Team That Managed Itself (consider leaving a review here if you enjoy it)
• Radical Focus
• Pencil Me In

People, articles, resources mentioned:

• Reboot your team
• Designing the team you need
• The dreaded weekly status email
• Rich Mironov lessons on people and systems
  • ENLIVEN ep with Rich Mironov on creating a thriving product org
• Nicky Case - parable of the polygons on diverse neighborhoods
• "I drink your milkshake"
• Stanford GSB's most popular class: Interpersonal Dynamics
• Google's findings on psychological safety
• "The Executioner's Tale" — Radical Focus book MVP
• BOOKS
  • The Wisdom of Teams
  • The Culture Map - Erin Meyer
  • Thanks for the Feedback
  • The Fearless Organization
  • A Theory of Everything (Integral Theory) - Ken Wilber
  • Flourish - Martin Seligman
  • The Inner Game of Tennis & The Inner Game of Stress
  • Turn the Ship Around
  • The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
• QUOTES
  • "I am sneakily trying to bring more humanity to it"
  • "There's no such thing as 'those people,' there's just people."
  • " 'I'm not in charge' is just an excuse, an excuse for being afraid...somebody's got to go first"

SHOW NOTES

Coming to California [0:03:23]
Christina's start in tech [0:06:39]
How did Christina get here? [0:07:36]
How do older & younger students affect each other in Christina's classes? [0:11:11]
What is Christina learning from her students lately? [0:12:41]
Christina's "unfortunate" personal quality [0:16:48]
Managing and teaching — do you need answers? [0:18:58]
What had Christina write THIS book? [0:20:16]
Treating your life like a startup & finding Product-Market Fit in your life [0:20:37]
How to validate a book idea, lean startup style [0:21:15]
Christina's big realization - what made OKRs work? [0:24:03]
The 3 things teams actually need [0:24:41]
What types of teams are there? [0:26:37]
Moving from a workgroup to a team [0:28:05]
What makes a team into a learning team? [0:28:49]
What makes a mindful, autonomous team? [0:30:16]
Radical Focus vs OKRs [0:32:56]
Trust & psychological safety [0:33:25]
The kinds of trust [0:34:25]
How trust is built differently across cultures [0:36:17]
In America, do we act like everyone is a robot? [0:37:11]
How can I chip away at cultural constructs? [0:38:50]
When is each type of team/group the right choice? [0:40:50]
What does it take to be a mindful team? [0:45:02]
How should people approach implementing these ideas? Giving feedback? [0:49:29]
Christina's "GASP" feedback framework [0:50:31]
Integral theory: I-We-It [0:57:51]
How long is this going to take? [0:59:50]
Where to start turning around a culture: compensation [1:02:20]
How does this team-level model integrate with the surruonding company environment? [1:05:48]
Can you make a healthy team in a dysfunctional company? [1:06:38]
Which team to start with [1:09:39]
Team health red flags to look out for [1:13:09]
GASP vs GROW? [1:16:15]
Your job as a leader [1:19:58]
The 9X process [1:22:30]
Goals, roles, and norms — and what people miss [1:23:41]
Isn't this too many meetings? [1:27:07]
How to create a lightweight meeting structure [1:29:28]
The thing that really makes the difference in goals [1:31:51]
Isn't this stuff all too "touchy feely"? [1:38:12]
Engineers are humans too [1:40:32]
The reality of work: nobody is in charge [1:41:59]
How to make a mindful team happen [1:42:47]
What impact does Christina want this book to have? [1:44:00]

Click here to directly email Andrew your questions, comments, and feedback! He reads everything that is sent in: https://tinyurl.com/ydda8zc6

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit blog.makethingsthatmatter.com