The Art of Excellence

Guy Snodgrass recently served as director of communications and chief speechwriter to Secretary of Defense James Mattis. A former naval aviator, he served as commanding officer of a fighter squadron based in Japan, A TOPGUN instructor, and a combat pilot over the skies of Iraq.  Today he is the founder and CEO of Defense Analytics, a strategic consulting and advisory firm. He is the author of Holding the Line: Inside Trump's Pentagon with Secretary Mattis and his latest book is titled: TOPGUN’s Top 10: Leadership Lessons from the Cockpit. 

Some interesting insights from this episode:

·         To succeed a TOPGUN, you have to possess three traits: talent, passion, and personality.

·         Competence is when you have an excellent capability but you operate below that level. Arrogance is when your competence is lower than you anticipate but you act like you’re better.

·         You can achieve anything you put your mind to so long as you’re willing to break down the problem and put the resources against it to solve it.

·         After every simulated dogfight there would be a debrief comparing your recollection of the events with the actual video footage.  This created a continual feedback loop to accelerate learning.

·         President Eisenhower once said: “Plans are worthless but planning is indispensable.”

·         TOPGUN has a flat organizational structure whereby junior officers are calling a lot of the shots.  Decisions are made based on capability and knowledge base, not based on rank. This allows them to get to the best tactical end result. 

Show Notes:

TOPGUN'S TOP 10: Leadership Lessons from the Cockpit

Holding the Line: Inside Trump's Pentagon with Secretary Mattis  

Craig Foster is one of the world’s leading natural history filmmakers and cofounder of the Sea Change Project, a nonprofit to protect marine life and raise awareness of the importance of the kelp forest. He won an Academy Award for Best Documentary for My Octopus Teacher and has created more than one hundred films and documentaries.  His latest book is titled: Amphibious Soul: Finding the Wild in a Tame World.

Some interesting insights from this episode:

·       When he goes on cold water ocean dives, his entire brain chemistry shifts with elevated dopamine and adrenaline levels while remaining very calm. 

·       Managing fear is about getting to know what it is that you’re fearful of.

·       His curiosity and fearlessness has often taken him into precarious situations coming face to face with dangerous predators like great white sharks and crocodiles. 

·       There are expert native trackers who go beyond tracking visuals and sounds of animals to getting into their minds. They can actually feel the animal inside their own bodies and know intuitively what they’re doing and where they’re going. 

·       Having a sense of purpose in life is key to accomplishing anything you want. 

·       “Excellence is tapping into the wild part of us that’s inherent in all of us.”

Show Notes

Book: Amphibious Soul: Finding the Wild in a Tame World

Documentary: My Octopus Teacher

Nonprofit: Sea Change Project  

Adrian Newey is Chief Technical Officer for Red Bull Racing.  He has won 13 drivers' championships and 12 constructors' championships across three teams in his career. He is widely regarded as the greatest Formula 1 race car designer in the history of the sport.

Some interesting insights from this episode:

·       Racing teams have three departments: aerodynamics, vehicle design, and vehicle dynamics/simulation.  Because Adrian had worked in each of those disciplines, it provided a more holistic perspective when designing racing cars. 

·       A good design engineer must be both left brained and right brained - that is, combining the artistic imaginative left side with the analytical and practical right side.

·       He is still old school in that he prefers a drawing board and pencil over CAD (computer aided design) systems.

·       No matter how successful you are, you’ve got to keep pushing and you’ve got to stay sharp or you’ll lose your edge.

·       If you can learn to manage the pressure, your subconscious brain will spend more time focused on the problem and can come up with a solution when you least expect it.

·       Curiosity can be advantageous to the creative design process.  You can often get inspiration looking at how things are done outside of your own domain. 

·       “Excellence is doing something to the ultimate.  To the best of one’s ability at that time.”

Maurice Ashley is a Chess Grandmaster, a chess commentator, a national championship coach, and an author. In 1999 he earned the title of Chess Grandmaster, making him the first African American Grandmaster in the game’s history, and was later inducted into the US Chess Hall of Fame.  His latest book is titled Move by Move: Life Lessons On and Off the Chessboard.

Some interesting insights from this episode:

·       Going into any big moment, the best way to calm your nerves is to get into the right mindset which is that you can’t be better than yourself.  Don’t focus on the results.  Just focus on being yourself and the rest will take care of itself.    

·       He is able to play up to ten people simultaneously while blindfolded and win each game. 

·       It’s important to cultivate a beginner’s mind and approach the game as if you’re viewing it for the very first time.  That way you’re open to seeing something new and having a fresh perspective.

·       Upper echelon thinking is to keep growing every day.  Today you need to be a little bit better than yesterday.  Your only race is against yesterday’s self.

·       Focus often dips when you’re ahead and your lowest concentration is often when you have the biggest advantage.

·       To stay mentally sharp and focused over the course of a prolonged game, you have to learn to continually check yourself. You have to be your own barometer. Counting breaths also helps to calm down and stay in the moment. 

·       Retrograde analysis is envisioning a future state and then working backwards.

·       When conducting post mortems it’s important to categorize your mistakes so you can become more self aware of the patterns behind the mistake and preempt their happening in the future. 

Notes:

Book: Move by Move: Life Lessons On and Off the Chessboard

Personal website: Maurice Ashley  

Gary Hunt is a professional cliff diver.  He is a 10 time Red Bull World Series Champion with 43 overall victories and counting.  He is widely considered the greatest cliff diver in the history of the sport.

Some interesting insights from this episode:

·       Juggling was a practice he used to increase his focus and concentration and take his mind off the stress and pressure of the competition. 

·       It took several years diving off increasing heights to build up the confidence and courage to jump off the 27 meter platform

·       He’s afraid of heights when there’s no water underneath 

·       To prepare for a cliff dive, you have to practice routines off the 10 meter platform and then assemble the pieces together when doing the actual 27 meter dive.

·       His curiosity to learn new dives and explore what’s possible is what drove him to be the best in the world.

·       His greatest fear is losing his motivation to learn new things

George Mumford is a psychologist, elite performance expert, and author of The Mindful Athlete.  He has worked with worldclass athletes including Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and Shaquille O’Neal. He has also consulted with college and Olympic athletes, corporate executives, and inmates, and is a sought-after public speaker at both business and athletic conferences nationally and internationally.  His latest booked is title: Unlocked: Embrace your Greatness, Find the Flow, Discover Success. 

Some interesting insights from this episode:

·       Unlocked is releasing the masterpiece within.  It’s embracing your inner greatness.

·       Being authentic is a core part of being unlocked. “We remove the extraneous, the layering of our conditioning and defenses, and the ways that we have been untrue to who we really are until we find what is authentic within us - an authenticity that is always there, waiting to be revealed.”

·       Kobe Bryant once said of George Mumford: “George helped me to be neither distracted or focused, rigid or flexible, passive or aggressive. I learned to just be.”

·       George’s big break was coming on the heels of the Lakers’ third NBA championship in a row when coach Phil Jackson asked George to help the team deal with the stress and pressure brought on by their success.

·       90% of long term happiness is dependent upon how the brain interprets our experience.

·       One of the distinguishing characteristics of the best athletes in the world is they’re very coachable.  They are lifelong learners, always looking to get an edge. 

·       If you want to be in flow, you have to have a fully integrated self. Your body, your mind, your heart, and your soul have to be in unison and harmony.

Notes:

George Mumford website

Book: Unlocked: Embrace Your Greatness, Find the Flow, Discover Success

Book: The Mindful Athlete: Secrets to Pure Performance   

Dr. BJ Miller is a longtime hospice and palliative medicine physician and educator. He currently sees patients and families via telehealth through Mettle Health, a company he co-founded with the aim to provide personalized, holistic consultations for any patient or caregiver who needs help navigating the practical, emotional and existential issues that come with serious illness and disability. Led by his own experiences as a patient, BJ advocates for the roles of our senses, community and presence in designing a better ending. His interests are in working across disciplines to affect broad-based culture change, cultivating a civic model for aging and dying and furthering the message that suffering, illness, and dying are fundamental and intrinsic aspects of life. His career has been dedicated to moving healthcare towards a human centered approach, on a policy as well as a personal level.

Some interesting insights from this episode:

·         “I had a basic hunger and curiosity to understand the world in which I was living and to understand myself”. 

·         Early on, as he was recovering from the accident with three less limbs, he forced himself to reframe his situation. That life wasn’t going to be extra difficult going forward but just uniquely difficult.  And that suffering is something we all deal with in our own way.  Eventually his emotions would catch up with his mind whereby he truly felt that way.

·         Studying art history in college taught him perspective.  It taught him how he was in control as to how he perceived his life and how he framed his life experience. 

·         In palliative care, you don’t just treat the pain, you treat the suffering. 

·         “If you don’t know the depths of sorrow, you aren’t going to know the peaks of joy.”

·         As dying patients reflect back upon their lives, it’s not so much regret over what decisions they made but how they imbued whatever decisions they made.  Did they do it with love, did they infuse their spirit into whatever they were doing. That’s what matters most.

Notes:

The Center for Dying and Living

Book: A Beginner's Guide to the End: Practical Advice for Living Life and Facing Death

TED Talk: What Really Matters at the End of Life   

Kara Swisher is the host of the podcast On with Kara Swisher and the co-host of the Pivot podcast with Scott Galloway, both distributed by New York magazine. She was also the cofounder and editor-at-large of Recode, host of the Recode Decode podcast, and co-executive producer of the Code conference. She was a former contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and host of its Sway podcast and has also worked for The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. Her latest book it titled: Burn Book: A Tech Love Story.

Some interesting insights from this episode:

·       Her father’s passing when she was just five made her appreciate the ephemeral nature of life and focus on what truly matters.

·       A lot of big tech titans have a big deficit in their upbringing and replace it with enablers and fence themselves off from the population, hence their isolation and loneliness. 

·       With her direct no nonsense approach, she has an uncanny ability to get big people to open up and share unique insights. 

·       She has been as entrepreneurial and innovative with her career as the tech entrepreneurs she covers for a living. 

·       She feels Steve Jobs is the most consequential figure of the modern tech era.

·       She has called Mark Zuckerberg one of the most carelessly dangerous men in the history of technology.

·       “Excellence is doing your very best to get to the heart of something, doing your very best to create something fresh and new, and doing your very best to get it right.”

Notes:

Book: Burn Book: A Tech Love Story

Podcasts: Pivot   On with Kara Swisher   

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant is a wildlife ecologist with an expertise in uncovering how human activity influences carnivore behavior and ecology. She is a National Geographic Explorer, host the PBS podcast Going Wild with Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant, and is the cohost on NBC’s Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom Protecting the Wild.  She is the first black woman to ever host a television nature show. Her new book is titled: Wild Life: Finding My Purpose in an Untamed World.

Some interesting insights from this episode:

·         She attended a high school for the performing arts because of her voice yet refused to apply for a conservatory to continue her musical studies knowing that her life vision was to become a nature show host. 

·         Having black leaders in wildlife conservation during her first field study project in Kenya was transformative in helping her understand that she could actually do this for a living.

·         Learning firsthand of lions killing local villagers in Tanzania was an experience that taught her that the wellbeing of people has to come first in wildlife conservation. 

·         Capturing and tagging a rare lemur during a mission critical expedition to protect a rainforest in Madagascar allowed her to overcome her self-doubt, increase her self-confidence, and realize her full potential. 

·         As cohost on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom Protecting the Wild, Rae has fulfilled her lifelong dream and become the first black woman to ever host a television nature show.

·         “Excellence is being your best and your truest.  It’s being aligned with your values, aligned with your energy, and aligned with the balance you’re seeking.”

Notes:

Book: Wild Life: Finding My Purpose in an Untamed World

Podcast: Going Wild with Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant

TV show: Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom Protecting the Wild

Personal website: Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant  

Daniel Goleman is a psychologist, former science journalist for the New York Times, and the author of 13 books including the #1 bestseller Emotional Intelligence.  He has worked with organizations around the globe, examining the way social and emotional competencies impact the bottom-line. Ranked one of the 10 most influential business thinkers by the Wall Street Journal, Daniel has won several awards including the HBR McKinsey Award for the best article of the year and the Centennial Medallion awarded to him by Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.  His latest book which is titled: Optimal: How to Sustain Personal and Organizational Excellence Every Day shows how emotional intelligence can help us have rewarding and productive days every day. 

Some interesting insights from this episode:

·         There are four parts to emotional intelligence: Self-awareness, self-management, empathy, and relationship management. The latter builds on the first three parts. 

·         There are three kinds of empathy – cognitive empathy, emotional empathy, and empathic concern.

·         When you’re in an optimal state, you’re highly productive, highly engaged, you care about others, you feel connected to your work, and connected to others.

·         The ability to focus is one of the pathways into the optimal state. 

·         People who have a sense of purpose and feel inspired in their work, do it better. 

·         It’s never too late to increase your level of emotional intelligence. 

·         In emotionally intelligent organizations, it’s not just about hitting your targets but how you went about it.  Did you get them by inspiring people to give their best or was it by fear and pressure?

·         Team EI is how people on a team relate to one another.  And teams with highest team EI are often the most productive. 

Notes:

Optimal: How to Sustain Personal and Organizational Excellence Every Day

Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ

Daniel Goleman website

Emotional Intelligence Courses