How Aidan McCullen Learned To Become Undisruptable

[00:00:02] This podcast is a Reifield Brown production. Find others on I2.

[00:00:08] Alright, yeah!

[00:00:10] Instead of helping companies shrink, I wanted to help them grow and twinly say never leave

[00:00:13] scientific to chance.

[00:00:15] Mobilizing people is only useful if you can challenge twin-fluentensitutions.

[00:00:19] If I want to change that person's mind, it's much more useful for me to find a way to have

[00:00:23] a one-on-one conversation with them.

[00:00:25] And then that becomes this positive loop.

[00:00:28] I wasn't even as far as kid in my neighborhood.

[00:00:30] One day, there's a tragedy 10,000 is a statistic.

[00:00:33] But I was hungry.

[00:00:34] I was really hungry.

[00:00:36] I'm Greg Satell, author of Napping, patience and task aids.

[00:00:40] And I'm with Roifield Brown, BGSA.

[00:00:46] Hey Roifield!

[00:00:48] Hello, Greg.

[00:00:49] Hey, you got to stop all in me Gregory.

[00:00:52] It's driving my mom crazy.

[00:00:55] Seriously, she asked for me up about yesterday.

[00:00:59] Yeah, half the watch out how you treat Mrs. Satell's favorite son.

[00:01:05] Because she listens.

[00:01:07] And my brother Scott's probably listening and he's just going to have to deal with

[00:01:11] the favorite son thing.

[00:01:13] But I'll call you Greg.

[00:01:14] There we go!

[00:01:15] I'm looking after you.

[00:01:17] How's the bar going?

[00:01:19] I just want to make sure you're okay.

[00:01:21] From now on, Gregory, I will forever call you Greg to a piece mother Satell.

[00:01:27] He's at all good.

[00:01:28] Anyway, this is the Changemaker mindset podcast where we're building a community to help

[00:01:35] you bring about the change you want in your organization, your industry, your community,

[00:01:42] or throughout society as a whole.

[00:01:45] Make sure you rate and review the podcast five stars that will help people find this podcast.

[00:01:52] And send us your questions if you have a question about how you can better

[00:01:58] create change or impact the world.

[00:02:02] Send it to questions at changemaker mindset.net.

[00:02:07] Glad to see your transition to the bar is going well.

[00:02:11] Yes, things are definitely on the up.

[00:02:14] But we go into the autumn season now so we can't utilize our garden so much.

[00:02:20] But you know what we're in it to win it.

[00:02:22] But I feel Greg, that is a wonderful segue for you to talk about transitions and our guests.

[00:02:29] Our next guest, Aiden McCollum, was a professional rugby player.

[00:02:35] When his career ended, he had to make the transition and figure out what he was going

[00:02:41] to do.

[00:02:42] He's become a huge podcaster.

[00:02:45] Don't want to infringe on your turf there.

[00:02:48] But also an innovation guru who advises corporations and what's amazing about his story

[00:02:58] is that his sort of quest for excellence in rugby transferred over to other areas.

[00:03:04] And that's a lot about the value he gives to the corporations he advises, helping them

[00:03:12] to transition from what they were doing to the next thing.

[00:03:20] Good to see you Aiden.

[00:03:22] I wouldn't have you on because my friend Reefield here, he's always bragging about what

[00:03:26] a big time podcaster he is.

[00:03:29] He does his own podcast, he does podcast for corporate clients.

[00:03:34] And I told him, Aiden, he's a big time podcaster and he's a best-selling author.

[00:03:40] And he advises some of the biggest corporations on innovation and he's a former rugby player.

[00:03:49] Reefield, you got to up your game.

[00:03:52] You know, when you also missed that, his Aiden's also had better looking than me.

[00:03:55] So 100% on failing at life.

[00:03:59] But Aiden, you have it failed at life, though have you.

[00:04:02] You and Greg are friends and yours beggars believe me.

[00:04:06] People off friends with Greg.

[00:04:08] So how did you guys formed this unlikely friendship?

[00:04:12] Greg didn't mention that Greg used to be a wrestler.

[00:04:14] I don't know if you know that, Greg wrestled at a fairly high level.

[00:04:17] I mean, he has the ears to prove it.

[00:04:19] And I have the mindled ears to prove that I played rugby as well.

[00:04:22] So we actually bonded over this mangled ear approach.

[00:04:26] And we started to riff on that over a period of time.

[00:04:29] So that's how we first connected my instance of meeting Greg was first having him as a guest on the innovation show.

[00:04:37] And I discovered his book, Mapping Innovation, Many of our guests on the show.

[00:04:43] And people are interviewed mentioned this book.

[00:04:46] And then eventually found Greg and then he released cascades, had him back onto the cascades.

[00:04:51] We've worked together.

[00:04:52] We've keynoteed together a festival across the world and got to know of you.

[00:04:57] And get on pretty well, I hope.

[00:04:59] Yes, so I remember when I first went on your podcast, The Innovation Show in 2019, I think it was.

[00:05:08] And it was just a little podcast.

[00:05:10] And now it's really one of the leading podcasts in the world.

[00:05:15] It's tough to think of any major business thinker who hasn't been on.

[00:05:22] DeHock Clayton, Christian sin before he died all of, I think Clayton, Christian, sins co-authors, Howard Gardner and on it goes.

[00:05:32] What have you been up too lately?

[00:05:34] And I know indesruptible was just a breakout bestseller.

[00:05:39] It's one of those books that everybody talks about.

[00:05:42] Maybe you could tell us a little bit about what you've been up too lately.

[00:05:47] Firstly, I think the show does well as yours will from just showing up and doing the work.

[00:05:54] And I think that's one of the most transferable skills you get from sport is that the work is done off to track.

[00:06:01] The work's done on the nights where you don't want to train.

[00:06:05] There's rain pouring outside.

[00:06:06] And for me, the innovation show was just shown up all the time.

[00:06:10] Making sure I read the book, like you would have noticed I read your book.

[00:06:14] I remember actually some of the you said to me Greg afterwards, you said,

[00:06:18] Wow, you asked me questions other people that asked me and you were surprised by that.

[00:06:23] And that encouraged me as well because I understood actually it's rare that the host does this amount of preparation for the show.

[00:06:31] And it was in me from the sporting days to actually do that type of work.

[00:06:35] That's one thing and I truly do believe that helped the show grow.

[00:06:39] And then people like you recommended other people because you're like, this guy did a good job with interviewing me.

[00:06:45] And you asked me about what I'm up to now.

[00:06:48] One of the things I've realized from that deeper work of reading the book is that one episode isn't enough.

[00:06:55] So I'm trying to do deeper episodes, multi-part episodes with the guest when the guest is willing to give their time as well.

[00:07:02] Because it's a big, it's a big sacrifice for people's time.

[00:07:05] So I've been doing that on next year for example, I'm going to do more episodes, cover in one book over two three parts.

[00:07:14] More of those series you mentioned, I have Gary Hamil coming on to do all his books.

[00:07:19] I have Joe Bauer who was playing Christian since thesis advisor and he's going to come on and cover all his books.

[00:07:26] And these are some of these books are all like some of these books go back to the 80s and 90s.

[00:07:30] And I want to cover them because I want to get to the source of the knowledge instead of the synthesis of the source.

[00:07:38] That's where I'm at the moment, I think I've graduated a lot since we first met Gary.

[00:07:44] I've learned a lot more on the deeper you go, the earlier you go into the work as well.

[00:07:51] Yeah, that's...

[00:07:52] I think we've both traveled a long way and it's just been wonderful to see how your podcast has grown and how your career has grown.

[00:08:03] But one of the things that you mentioned about reading the book, and it's something...

[00:08:09] It's a lesson I learned my freshman year in college.

[00:08:11] We had our coach, how to freshman camp.

[00:08:14] And we were all hot-shot wrestlers, which is how you get recruited from a division one program in the first place.

[00:08:24] So we thought, wow, this is going to be great.

[00:08:26] We're going to learn all of that really cool division one wrestler stuff.

[00:08:33] And we were all surprised in somewhat disappointed when we didn't learn anything new.

[00:08:37] What we did is we learned...

[00:08:41] We re-learned all this stuff we learned in the first day of P.W. wrestling, the basic fundamentals of stance and movement and technique.

[00:08:52] And then when I wrestle that up with the Olympic wrestlers at Bob Sketcher,

[00:08:56] the higher the level you go, the more fundamentals you work on, the more it becomes just about drilling and owning.

[00:09:05] And your philosophy of first read the book.

[00:09:08] And if you're going to interview a thought leader, first read the book.

[00:09:12] It's almost like a philosophy for life.

[00:09:15] It's so true. I was saying this to my kids yesterday.

[00:09:17] So my son was doing his multiplication tables. He was on the seventh time to seventh.

[00:09:22] He was saying, I have boring at his. And I said, I know. I said, you have to earn your right to get on to division.

[00:09:29] Then you have to get your right to get on to algebra.

[00:09:32] And I think when we met first when I had a young show, I know it's 2019's five years though.

[00:09:38] Five years of reading every week writing about that synthesizing the knowledge if you will.

[00:09:45] Compounds. And then you're all in understanding.

[00:09:48] You're able to draw on little threads of stuff that you read before.

[00:09:52] And I would say if I interviewed you now fresh on mapping innovation,

[00:09:56] I'd have a totally different perspective.

[00:09:58] And I think that's really interesting to see where you've come from.

[00:10:02] I can't remember which of the French poet set up, but it the line goes something like this.

[00:10:07] If you're not embarrassed by the person you were a year ago, you're not doing very much.

[00:10:12] And that's actually a good thing to be a little bit, oh my god.

[00:10:15] My early episodes, they were terrible. They should be because you should be getting better.

[00:10:20] And then two years ago, they shouldn't be too bad a year ago.

[00:10:24] They should be okay that you're proud of them.

[00:10:26] But you should be pushing the boundary and getting better all the time.

[00:10:29] Why mastering the basics?

[00:10:32] Aiden, you talked about doing the work reading the book.

[00:10:36] Is that because you grew up in Sleepy Drug Eater, which is in the middle of nowhere.

[00:10:40] You know, it's halfway to all the halfway to Dublin.

[00:10:44] Was it a case of you that to do the work to get out of it? That's Sleepy Town.

[00:10:48] You did the work, man. I can see that which is research.

[00:10:52] So yeah, I was born and I was born and brought out of this tiny town in Ireland,

[00:10:59] but a more narrow way from Dublin.

[00:11:01] What I lived in an even smaller place that you would drive through if you blinked you missed it.

[00:11:06] Like most Irish small villages, there was two pubs in it.

[00:11:10] That's all one of the pubs had a shop in it that you could buy your milk.

[00:11:15] But it was a tiny little place.

[00:11:16] So I was from there, but I moved up to Dublin when I was around 10.

[00:11:20] And that wasn't much of a sports person at all.

[00:11:23] I had this ambitions to play our national sport, which is Gaelic Football.

[00:11:27] My dad played for the county, which was me.

[00:11:29] And he was pretty successful as a football player.

[00:11:32] And I wanted to emulate that.

[00:11:34] But then we moved to Dublin.

[00:11:35] Then I went to a school that played rugby.

[00:11:38] I had to play rugby.

[00:11:39] And eventually my body became useful for something.

[00:11:44] And I started to mangle my ears like I talked about with Greg.

[00:11:49] And I stumbled into that sport.

[00:11:51] I was really late.

[00:11:51] I was 16 when I started to take it seriously and train.

[00:11:56] And what I actually think happened was,

[00:11:59] he pulled started to notice and go, hey, you're pretty good at this.

[00:12:03] And my ego started to listen to that and go, oh okay, I'm getting noticed for something here.

[00:12:07] And then that becomes this positive loop where the more you've ever put in,

[00:12:13] the more people noticed you, the more your performance was noticed.

[00:12:17] The better you were perceived.

[00:12:19] Then I got on to the Lester team, which is Lester's probably the second most successful

[00:12:24] Globe in Europe.

[00:12:27] Behind Toulouse, who I went on to play for later.

[00:12:29] But to your point, I learned that positive loop is that you have to do the work.

[00:12:34] And you have to do a consistent way to get anywhere.

[00:12:38] That element of discipline, I think is the most important thing I ever took from sport

[00:12:42] because it's transferable.

[00:12:45] And people, for example, Roy Field would ask me, literally, how did you write the book?

[00:12:49] And in my mind, I'm like, what do you mean, like, what techniques did I use, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera?

[00:12:54] And they're like, no, how do you get your head around that?

[00:12:56] And for me, I just set my answer was like, it's like going to the gym.

[00:13:00] I just kept doing it every day, until I had something I was pretty proud of that.

[00:13:05] I could put out there.

[00:13:07] And I think, and I try to articulate that to my children all the time.

[00:13:10] My son taken the leaf at a Greg's world.

[00:13:14] He's training in jujitsu and MMA, unbelievably for 14 year old, unbelievably disciplined with us.

[00:13:21] It's the food, sleeps, you know, he's never been tempted.

[00:13:24] I mean, Ireland by friends drinking alcohol and other substances, et cetera.

[00:13:29] And he says no because he's focused on this thing, which is just fantastic.

[00:13:34] Because I keep saying to him, that is a template that you can now apply to anything.

[00:13:39] You can then apply to writing, you can apply to learning a discipline like being a consultant, a keynote speaker, whatever it might be.

[00:13:49] But I'm still on rugby.

[00:13:50] Like, you've got to weigh your head.

[00:13:54] So you're 16, right? You're in Dublin and you're the best part of six football.

[00:14:00] Let's say you're six foot two then, right? You're still growing.

[00:14:05] Did you choose rugby because you were good because your big, or did rugby pick you because you are that physically impressive at such a young age?

[00:14:13] So I was kind of a amorphous blob for a long period of time.

[00:14:20] And to your point, I like how you phrase it, I really really picked me in that.

[00:14:25] I tried at these other sports and I never really succeeded.

[00:14:29] There's a bit of survivorship bias with all this.

[00:14:32] I think that there's so much look within a successful author, your podcast takes off because you're a favorable mention by somebody

[00:14:41] or an entrepreneur, launches a product at the right time.

[00:14:45] All these things. For me, rugby, there was a lot of different serendipities in place.

[00:14:51] And one of them was that our team, which hadn't been successful as a team for a very long time,

[00:14:56] we got to the semi-finals of the big cop.

[00:14:59] And we did it two years in a row. I was on that team.

[00:15:01] And as a result then, Lester, which was the Prague provincial team, had to pick some players from our team because they couldn't not.

[00:15:10] So I got sent on this tour to Australia.

[00:15:13] And this is where my discipline paid off.

[00:15:16] So I didn't treat that tour like anyway, a holiday.

[00:15:20] And some of my colleagues did.

[00:15:22] And because they didn't get picked and I got picked.

[00:15:24] So I played every single game of an eight-match tour to Australia.

[00:15:28] And I got player of the tournament.

[00:15:31] And because there was player of the tournament, then I got selected in the Irish Academy for fourth-coming players.

[00:15:38] And they were little serendipities that helped me.

[00:15:41] But the underlying thing always there was I kept showing up.

[00:15:45] I kept being professional, kept doing the work.

[00:15:47] And I don't know any other way.

[00:15:50] There's a culture of yours that's going to call you supremely disciplined.

[00:15:54] What's the story around that?

[00:15:56] I love this story.

[00:15:58] So this is more a moment of saying goodbye to the sport.

[00:16:03] So I had retired.

[00:16:05] Even though I had felt I'd done everything I'd left every ounce on the field.

[00:16:10] I wanted closure from that old world.

[00:16:13] And I could move done Gregon.

[00:16:15] I talked about this before, but I really enjoyed my career in rugby.

[00:16:21] But I don't hang my hat on it in any way.

[00:16:23] I don't actually, that's why probably I move on even in a conversation quite quickly from

[00:16:27] because it's like there's loads of things to do in life.

[00:16:30] I need to move on.

[00:16:31] But it served me massively as well.

[00:16:34] I had a fantastic time.

[00:16:35] But at the end of my career, I just wanted to close that chapter of my life.

[00:16:40] And I met the coach who picked me for Ireland.

[00:16:43] I played professionally for Ireland.

[00:16:45] And I wanted to ask him was there anything else I could have done?

[00:16:49] Or was there anything I did that I shouldn't have done?

[00:16:51] Why don't mean anything on toward there?

[00:16:54] She means I went and I played in France at a time two times when it wasn't the

[00:16:59] don't thing to do.

[00:17:00] People didn't do that because they were saying goodbye to their international

[00:17:03] careers.

[00:17:04] And I did that twice, but I did it because life experience was more important to me than

[00:17:09] rugby.

[00:17:11] And rugby also gave me this passport to do it.

[00:17:13] And I did it in brilliant style living in the side of France twice once when I was

[00:17:18] alone.

[00:17:19] And the second time when I was later on in my career when I was 28.

[00:17:24] But this coach, anyway, I asked him to come for lunch with me.

[00:17:28] And I was meeting him genuinely to ask him about being part of the leadership

[00:17:32] program that I was putting together for a client.

[00:17:34] And the second thing I was asking him to join me for was this closure.

[00:17:39] So I've been inviting for breakfast for breakfast and he's looking to be going,

[00:17:42] when is he going to ask whatever question he really has me here for?

[00:17:46] So I asked him, I said Eddie is named Eddie of Sullivan.

[00:17:50] And he's written a great book actually called Never Dive Wondering.

[00:17:54] And it's about this idea of leaving nowhere, grats.

[00:17:58] So I asked him, Eddie, is there anything I could have done or might maybe anything I shouldn't

[00:18:03] have done that I did?

[00:18:05] And he said he looked into his coffee deeply and I was like,

[00:18:09] I did he hear me.

[00:18:11] And then he raises his head slowly and he goes,

[00:18:13] I didn't.

[00:18:14] There's three types of player in the world.

[00:18:17] There's a player who is disciplined.

[00:18:20] Then there's a player who's talented.

[00:18:23] And then the job of the coach like me is to make a talented player disciplined.

[00:18:29] And he goes, you my friend.

[00:18:32] And I lean in and there's quiet.

[00:18:34] Like the whole cafe stops.

[00:18:36] And we both lean in and he goes,

[00:18:38] where extremely disciplined.

[00:18:41] And we both stop for a moment and look into my coffee.

[00:18:44] And then we both burst out laughing.

[00:18:47] I'm like, I'm, he was sure how I take that because some people might take that as an insult.

[00:18:53] And I was like, oh, thank God.

[00:18:57] Because it was closure.

[00:18:58] It was like there's nothing else I could have done.

[00:19:00] And probably I over achieved for my level of talent,

[00:19:03] which is what he was trying to tell me.

[00:19:05] And it was a great moment for me.

[00:19:07] It was a great moment of closure.

[00:19:09] And I wrote about it not too long ago.

[00:19:11] And many people got in touch and said,

[00:19:13] I need to meet my version of that coach in life.

[00:19:17] One last question about your playing career.

[00:19:21] It is the end because no professional sports person

[00:19:25] is going to do the whole of their professional life.

[00:19:27] It's just physically impossible.

[00:19:29] Unless maybe you're a dart player,

[00:19:31] maybe they can throw darts for 40 years.

[00:19:35] So it's inbuilt, isn't it?

[00:19:37] Obsolescence.

[00:19:38] Yeah, I love it.

[00:19:39] Yeah, it's totally inbuilt.

[00:19:41] So did you always have an eye on what was going to come next?

[00:19:47] Yeah, and actually this is a way somewhat many of the metaphors that you've find in an innovation or so relevant I find.

[00:19:54] So I love one of the metaphors that I first learned from

[00:19:57] Tushman and Oryli, Greg Yoonau, these guys.

[00:20:00] I did a series on Michael Tushman and Charles Oryli.

[00:20:03] They wrote great books on innovation, going right back to the 90s.

[00:20:06] Still doing amazing two great guys.

[00:20:09] But they talked about this idea of the Roman god, Janus.

[00:20:13] And Janus is this god of new beginnings.

[00:20:17] And it's often seen in Rome on the head of like gateways and doorways.

[00:20:23] And Janus has two pairs of eyes to the future and a set of eyes to the past.

[00:20:28] And I love that as a metaphor for

[00:20:30] Orperian innovation that you have to always have an eye on the future.

[00:20:33] And I think that's a very important part of the idea of why managing the present which is really decisions you made in the past.

[00:20:38] So I think about I was always like that.

[00:20:41] And probably a little bit to my detriment, I treated Ruby because contracts are two years at our time.

[00:20:49] So I treated it like always like a two year project.

[00:20:53] And I was never worried about moving on what would happen if I don't get a contract.

[00:20:58] Because I had this Janus scene approach to kind of gone,

[00:21:02] Oh, and I could be missing something out there that I'd like to be doing.

[00:21:08] Like a one stage earlier on my life,

[00:21:10] I was toying with the idea of being a professional DJ because I was big into music.

[00:21:14] Have a huge record collection open the attic.

[00:21:17] My wife doesn't let me keep it down.

[00:21:19] There's anymore.

[00:21:21] So I had all these things I still want to do,

[00:21:25] including writing and all these things.

[00:21:27] And I always felt itchy about doing those things.

[00:21:31] So I was never afraid of the end of the career, but it's inevitable.

[00:21:36] And one of the things I talk about, and I talk about in this in the book on this rope to build that Greg mentioned,

[00:21:41] is that it's a gift knowing that the end is coming because you have no choice but to reinvent yourself.

[00:21:48] You're not going to earn enough as a professional Ruby player to live off those earnings for the rest of your life.

[00:21:53] If you're lucky, you might buy a house out right.

[00:21:57] But unfortunately when I retired, it was in the days and in a recession,

[00:22:01] and most of us lost all the housing investments that we'd made.

[00:22:05] So we had to reinvent yourselves in the middle of an absolute inferno,

[00:22:10] which was the crisis.

[00:22:12] But there's no better way to be born into the world than that way because you had to really work hard.

[00:22:18] You had no favors done for you.

[00:22:20] And it creates character that's useful on combined with discipline leads to good things, I think.

[00:22:29] Yeah, so I understand what you're saying logically, but just knowing as an amateur athlete myself,

[00:22:39] emotionally and viscerally, it's quite a different thing.

[00:22:42] Much like you said at some point, you get noticed.

[00:22:46] When especially as a young man to get recognition, and by I think it's something that most managers don't realize enough about what a powerful motivator recognition is.

[00:23:01] But as a young man when you're in athlete, you get recognition that very few people your age and your cohort have.

[00:23:10] And your treated is something special, especially if you're on the larger size as a young man.

[00:23:19] And in a physical sport like rugby or wrestling.

[00:23:23] And then as much as you may intellectually know that you need to make that transition.

[00:23:30] To go from somebody special to just another person is difficult.

[00:23:36] And I do think a lot of people are going through that now, whether they're a copyrightor or a graphic artist or any one of any number of skills.

[00:23:52] Where now they have to say that's not a special skill.

[00:23:56] Somebody's doing it on chat GPT and I need to transition somehow.

[00:24:03] And it's one thing to know that intellectually.

[00:24:07] But from an emotional and self-worth point of view, because when you pour yourself into a sport or to a profession or to a skill, you tend to rate yourself.

[00:24:23] It becomes a source of self-worth. And I don't care whether it's wrestling or rugby or graphic arts or copyrighting or coding or whatever it is.

[00:24:34] What you do to a certain extent becomes who you are when what you do had to change, how did you make that leap in terms of self-worth?

[00:24:44] How did Aiden McAllen, the rugby player become the same Aiden McAllen as a business thinker?

[00:24:53] You're nailed at Greg, which is I see this as the same challenge with an organization when it faces the reality that it needs to change or needs to.

[00:25:02] You said the term make the jump so to jump to a new escurver to become something new.

[00:25:08] It's very difficult because it means letting go of the old person. I think it was Herman Hassas said,

[00:25:13] Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but it's actually letting go.

[00:25:18] And I use this if you'll indulge me on this story. I use this story called the Coconut Trap.

[00:25:24] It's about this ancient method where in an age where soldiers were allowed to capture monkeys and sell them to zoos or sell them as pets to people.

[00:25:34] They use this ingenious technique used by natives, and they take your coconut.

[00:25:39] And they'd hollow out just a little tiny hole in the top of the coconut.

[00:25:42] Just widen off for the monkey to squeeze their hand in and they'd fill it with fruit.

[00:25:46] And then they'd tie it to a tree that monkeys would frequent.

[00:25:50] And in time the monkeys came along, smelling the fruit, squeeze their hand in to grab the fruit and then they create a fist.

[00:25:58] And once they create the fist, their hand is too big to take out of that hole once again.

[00:26:04] So they're stuck.

[00:26:05] And even when they see the captors coming out of hiding and going to take them away, they cling to the fruit.

[00:26:13] And I always think of that as this metaphor for what happens to organizations that cling to their identity too long, or to what you've seen in an I've seen.

[00:26:23] And sporting people become the Jersey they over-identify with that persona.

[00:26:28] And a persona's only fleeting in my mind it can change quite quickly.

[00:26:33] And that is brilliant thing that they did in Toulouse which is the flow by theiden France there at the top European club.

[00:26:39] And they don't give you a squad number related to the pitch.

[00:26:45] So in Ruby of 1 to 15, the numbers, these corresponded positions you play on the pitch.

[00:26:51] But they give you a squad number like mine was 71 and there was a guy who was 00 and there was another guy who was 120.

[00:26:59] And the whole idea was that you're not the number on the pitch.

[00:27:03] You're holding this Jersey or a transient period and you should be very feel very privileged to do that, but it doesn't belong to you.

[00:27:12] And I always thought about that as you're not your Jersey.

[00:27:16] So you don't become that Jersey because you could be injured tomorrow in your career could be over.

[00:27:22] So don't over-identify with that persona that you create.

[00:27:26] And that's really hard when you're in it.

[00:27:27] You're in this bubble and you get this self validation from people.

[00:27:32] You get the VIP treatment, they, you don't have to queue at night,

[00:27:37] lobes and all that kind of things and people know you.

[00:27:39] So you have this kind of false notoriety but it's transient.

[00:27:44] And I think that in today's society like you have identified,

[00:27:49] you can't do that. You can't do that for a long time.

[00:27:51] You can't cling to an identity because it can change so, so quickly.

[00:27:54] And I love the idea of stem cells. I call it this stem cell mindset.

[00:27:59] Stem cells are these cells in the body that are embryonic, that they can become unethic.

[00:28:03] They can help your bones, they can change your muscles, they can become I, whatever they want to be.

[00:28:10] And that we almost have to have that mindset in the working world today because you're a job or you're industry in a world of

[00:28:24] things. And all the efforts that you've put into your life to create the career that you have,

[00:28:30] can be gone and an instant. So therefore we have to have more on-ramps and off-ramps for education.

[00:28:36] That's why I see the work Greg Yudu for example as a consultant and a keynote speaker.

[00:28:41] Roy Fields editing podcasts and editing content for people so that they can inform themselves and actually learn

[00:28:48] because that piece is so important, but we don't give ourselves enough time to learn new things etc.

[00:28:54] And all of that I say absolutely depends on letting go of the persona you've created or being willing to let go

[00:29:02] over very quickly.

[00:29:03] When the first things we do when we sit down with an organization to work on a transformational initiative is this idea of a resistance inventory.

[00:29:13] So we've identified five categories of resistance and four are completely rational things like lack of trust,

[00:29:23] change fatigue, competing in incentives or commitments switching costs.

[00:29:28] And these are very real, but the last one is completely irrational.

[00:29:32] And that's resistance due to identity, dignity and sense of self.

[00:29:38] And it seems very well related and I think people do that in their own careers and with their own businesses.

[00:29:46] Once you take on an identity, it's very difficult to abandon that identity and maintain yourself worth.

[00:29:56] So when you work with organizations, I know you do quite a bit of facilitation.

[00:30:02] And when you bring on guests with that, this challenge that because of AI and other things everybody is taking on.

[00:30:12] I think to a similar extent, other technologies such as synthetic biology or what's going on in manufacturing 4.0.

[00:30:22] I think everybody is struggling with that. How do you make that shift in terms of activity, which on paper seems like it should be simple, but how do you overcome that obstacle of identity and sense of self?

[00:30:42] Like you, showing people examples and showing where those examples lead.

[00:30:48] And unfortunately we have so many examples of failed transformations when it comes to innovation.

[00:30:54] And one of the stories I tell people of over-identification with the past is the serious story.

[00:31:00] A lot of people don't know, serious through their work as a catalog company and going on to become a really successful retailer created a way for people to have credit to buy their products, etc.

[00:31:14] So they created this financial services part of the business.

[00:31:17] And then when they stumbled upon troubled times, they instead of selling off the retail business and leading into the Golden Goose.

[00:31:27] They sold off their financial services business and that became then this very successful business once it was sold.

[00:31:34] Instead of letting go of the pot, they were so over-identified with that heritage of who they were and they're like, we're a retail business.

[00:31:40] Steve Balmer from Microsoft talks about this, for example, when he's asked by Charlie Rose in this famous interview,

[00:31:47] What's your biggest regret? And he's like, should it go into the hardware business earlier? If you look at the top businesses in the world, their hardware businesses, Apple selling phones, for example.

[00:31:57] And he goes, the reason was because we were called Microsoft and software was our DNA.

[00:32:05] That's how huge challenge for people because you take that and you go, that's the same for people.

[00:32:09] You're the person that's known for coming to talk about innovation and you feel good about that.

[00:32:13] This goes right back to you mentioned by the sport. It's like, hey, people recognize me for this. I'm known which is all ego.

[00:32:20] So this way I do a lot of shows on the human condition and understanding how mindset works and how we create personas.

[00:32:34] And equally, how important it is to grip them very softly so you can lack of them quite quickly.

[00:32:40] And I try and bring awareness to this because Greg, as you know, you tell people they're broken. Like, you're going to lose the audience straight away.

[00:32:49] So by showing kind of, look at what happened these people and then look at these people who were willing to invent themselves like, oh, they're past, et cetera.

[00:32:57] Look how they're thriving example being food you film that I use quite a lot in organization that people think is dead because it was a film business.

[00:33:04] Now it's thriving as a makeup business because it looked at what transferable skills that are developed within the company, excuse the pun, including, for example, anti aging.

[00:33:17] Because film was so dependent on things like collagen and anti aging. So the pictures wouldn't fade.

[00:33:24] And they're like, oh, those are the same skills that are valuable for a makeup business. And then they can apply them to choose the pun again in that respect.

[00:33:32] And they make more money now from makeup than they ever made from film in the past.

[00:33:37] Now you've revealed your secret. Oh, yes. I have my own line that I'll tell you about as well.

[00:33:45] So what I do take collagen, I drink collagen as a sublure. I think just showing people and doing so in a creative way, in a way that's not boring.

[00:33:57] We talked before, like similar books I read are really boring academic books. And I tried to synthesize them in a way that somebody can grab onto them the story within those because we remember stories so much when it comes to keynotes and workshops.

[00:34:14] I use beautiful graphics that people remember because people always go, I remember your pictures. I remember the image you show and they're specifically chosen.

[00:34:24] So I try to use those tried and tested skills of storytelling, conveying case studies in a interesting way, multiple different ways of showing a video audio story imagery and engagement then.

[00:34:39] So break through exercises etc. They're the ways I activate us within certain organization and it seems to work.

[00:34:47] Thanks so much for coming on this show. I trust. I hope that Refield has found it educational and will use these insights to better himself in some way.

[00:35:00] Roy Phil, Roy Phil's going to end up hating me man.

[00:35:03] I know that. Nothing can be further from the truth. You're a fine specimen of a man's sir and what I've learned is not only discipline but also collagen.

[00:35:14] So if I take away anything from this podcast, there's bring some collagen but also what I'm doing at least be disciplined. Lovely to meet you sir.

[00:35:23] I was an absolute pleasure guys.

[00:35:31] We feel. What did you think of our friend, Amy?

[00:35:35] I really liked him and what I really liked was the fact that he was all about hard work being disciplined.

[00:35:43] Some of them which I could learn a little bit more about Greg as I'm sure he would have tested but about turning up.

[00:35:50] But also what I'm really fascinating was he's mixed between serendipity and just that turning up. The reason element of chance, he did talk about that and look.

[00:36:02] But if you turn up do the work read the book as he said, it more likely to actually have serendipity. So really liked him and I didn't just learn about collagen from the entity.

[00:36:16] I learned about that as well. That's something I've really found as well when I was finishing up my wrestling career.

[00:36:23] You would see guys come back and they would go completely to pot and I was thinking about how I was going to avoid that and I came up with this idea of a five minute rule.

[00:36:34] This idea that if you do five minutes of activity every day, you can only go so bad because people don't get out of shape because they're going to gym and not working out.

[00:36:46] It's that they don't go to the gym for a couple of days which turns into a couple of weeks which turns into five years.

[00:36:54] They try and come back but that showing up every day, writing every day, a friend of mine, but it has you have to let them use know your serious.

[00:37:05] You have to let the forces of fortune and chance know your serious and show up consistently every day because when opportunity knocks, you gotta answer the door.

[00:37:23] Absolutely. Another thing I'd say which was his idea of letting go of right entity being able to change and he talked about the end of his career.

[00:37:34] He only ever looked his career in these two year spurts.

[00:37:37] So he was always ready for the transition ready for the change. Don't hold onto your squad number.

[00:37:45] It's just a transit you're saying and to have that mental flexibility and emotional flexibility means that you're always ready for the next step in your life.

[00:37:54] It's such a good point and it's something I call the identity trap.

[00:38:00] When a lot of people think it's common for people to say you change the incentives, you change the behavior.

[00:38:07] That's rarely if ever true. People will do things to protect their identity that are completely irrational and we all do it.

[00:38:18] But this knowledge that your identity can be a trap is an incredible asset if you want to change yourself, your organization, your community, this understanding that identity can be a trap because people will cling to it.

[00:38:39] Even when everything else is in their interest to change.

[00:38:45] Now Greg, I know normally we have questions and we have three questions lined up which will do it in future so's but I actually have a question because I'm not exactly new to management but I'm new to managing people working hospitality and they're very different from when I ran.

[00:39:09] And in terms of dealing with colleagues who have very different temperaments, what's the one bit of advice you can give me because I'm finding this a little bit trickier at the moment in terms of people who are actually bringing their problems to work.

[00:39:27] I think that's something every manager struggles with.

[00:39:32] There's a couple of things that I found helpful. First is this Emmanuel Kant had this notion of dignity where you treat somebody with dignity when you see them as an end in themselves rather than just a means to an end.

[00:39:51] And I think as a manager you need to understand that everybody who comes to work for you is bringing something and need something.

[00:40:03] And finding out those two things, understanding uncovering those two things, what each person needs and what each person brings and how you can help actualize them.

[00:40:18] I think is key to making that relationship work.

[00:40:51] I think that's a bit meant to fostering a culture of courage, compassion and joy.

[00:40:55] Listen to your student understand who she is, ask her what she needs from you and then build yourself to what she needs.

[00:41:03] That's what we did in Emerala where we built a culture of caring and at a clear theory of change that guided that transformation and a community that needed it desperately.

[00:41:13] His work is truly inspiring, shaping an institution where every student can thrive.

[00:41:19] Until then keep making change happen.