Leah:  [00:00:00] Hello, hello, and welcome to part two of this episode with bestselling author, Dan Heath, as we talk about how to change what’s not working. This is obvious, but since this is a part two, if you haven’t already listened to part one, you’re going to want to go back and start there so that this all makes sense.

Leah: Assuming that you’ve already done that, let’s jump in to part two of this amazing conversation.

Leah: I think you get to a point In your life, and I think we can say this about your audience and the readers of your books, we [00:01:00] can say this about mine, is that our lives are filled with a lot of good things.

Leah: There’s not really much in our lives where like, yeah, that’s really bad, like, shouldn’t be doing that, right? It’s a lot of good things. So then it becomes that our focus has to be on how to sort through these good things and prioritize properly. And I love this concept of good, better, best. And how I can look at all the things in, in my life and in my schedule and my ambitions and my goals and, and all these things and I can say, okay, well, when I’m trying to figure out where I’m going to spend my time and my resources and how I’m going to allocate this, I can look and say, okay, well, it’s all good.

Leah: So what is better and what is best? And of course I come back every time, even though I make the mistake over and over and get it wrong. Every time I come back to. The very best things are always going to be within my role as a family, right? So every time that becomes the choice above everything else, I mean, I’ve never regretted that once, but I’ve certainly regretted letting work take up too much [00:02:00] and, and those kind of things.

Dan: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. I want to come back to the notion of waste too, because I, I bet this is something a lot of your listeners haven’t, haven’t thought very much about. So this, this is like a classic concept in operations. Um, there, there’s a famous guy who, um, created the Toyota production system, which is talked about in sort of hallowed tones and, uh, by operations people, uh, Taichi Ono.

Dan: And he defined waste as any activity that doesn’t add value in the eyes of the customer. And you know, if, if you dig into the operations literature, a lot of times you’re talking about waste, like in a factory setting and, you know, trying to make sure you optimize the use of resources and so forth. But I started thinking about it in the context of family stuff, and at one point, I sort of did this anti waste campaign with our morning rituals of just getting up and getting ready for school, and so I started kind of just replaying, like, what were the moments of kind of pointless communication?

Dan: Like, I just felt like I was always [00:03:00] Verbally pushing, you know, it’s like, I need you to get dressed, I need you to finish up your bite, get dressed, don’t get distracted, go have you brush your teeth yet, but it’s like, just pester, pester, pester. And then, you know, at the last minute, inevitably, we’re scrambling to get out the door, and, and, and we had just a strange disproportionate amount of drama around, like, shoes and socks.

Dan: Like, just the location of shoes and socks, and like, can we get them on? My girls are young. And, um, and so my wife has this ingenious idea. To take all of their shoes and socks, and we have this big drawer by the back door, and just load them all up in the drawer. So there’s never a mystery, ever, about where a shoe or a sock are.

Dan: And, and it also had this, these kind of ancillary benefits of, of not tracking dirt through the house, because now the shoes just get pulled off and dumped in the drawer before they come inside. And it felt miraculous to just do something really tangible, you know, like putting shoes in a drawer. But seeing that it, that it genuinely paid off in terms of like one less wasteful irritant in the morning.

Dan: My new [00:04:00] thing, I haven’t cracked this one yet, so I don’t have like a nifty story for this. But in the book, I talk about how, you know, one unappreciated aspect of waste is micromanagement. It’s a, it’s a waste for both the manager and the employee. You know, it’s just literally a waste of oxygen in many ways and time.

Dan: And so I’m starting to think about, like, when am I just wasting my breath as a parent? Like, when would I have been better off just not saying something? And so I’m starting to, like, monitor myself. Through that lens, the parenting micromanagement. 

Leah: That makes me think, you know, if you’ve read Anxious Generation and any of those, right?

Leah: Like, right? That makes me think about how much we’re micromanaging. And now we’re starting to see, and the research is coming in, and we’re realizing this, this micromanaging parenting style is really not working. And it’s always fascinating how these lessons show up in other places, but then we don’t We missed how they should translate to another place, right?

Leah: It’s like, we can [00:05:00] see in our work why micromanaging doesn’t work, but then we micromanage our children and then are surprised that the outcome doesn’t seem to turn out 

Dan: very 

Leah: effective. 

Dan: Exactly right. Exactly right. Yeah, I can’t wait to sort of feel that first taste of victory like we did with the Shoes of Socks, like when I, when I stopped myself from saying something stupid and overbearing that was just pointless and didn’t need to be said, you know, like that, that’s the moment I’m waiting for.

Leah: Oh, it’s, I, I mean, I, yeah, me too. And mine are, I have two out of the house. So I’m still working on, I’m finding those, those moments too, but I have definitely found the more that we let our kids know. Learn for themselves, investigate for themselves, you know, it was like that story. She felt the best, the daughter who had recently been diagnosed with ADHD, she felt the best when she was empowered, when she got to have control and I’m like, that’s universal.

Leah: That’s all of us. We, yes, [00:06:00] there’s some times where we’re scared and we want someone to make all the decisions for us because we’re, we’re feeling unsure, but that’s, that’s a symptom of insecurity. When we overcome those insecurities and we become more confident. It changes everything, but the only way confidence shows up is by us doing the hard things.

Leah: There is no other way, and I’m sure, I mean, everything you’ve accomplished, and I, my mind boggles at how you’re doing it all, because, which I would love to know, like, let’s, let’s side tangent for a minute, because you have your company, you write these books, like, there is so much, On your plate, and you’re obviously dedicated to, you know, being an active dad and husband, like, how are you managing all of it?

Dan: Honestly, I, I feel Really lucky that I don’t feel like I’m definitely not a workaholic. I had a workaholic phase in my twenties and that kind of cured me. I don’t, I probably work 50 hours a week. I’m just really relentless about making sure [00:07:00] those 50 hours are like well spent. I’m home every night for dinner.

Dan: I almost never work on the weekends. Like I, I feel really, I mean, and it’s a lot of that is luck. I mean, let’s be honest. Like I have, I have the ability to. You know, kind of carve out this living where I get to do things I love to do. And I don’t have to work a hundred hours a week. I think probably 82 percent of that was luck rather than any great genius on my part.

Dan: But yeah, it, it kind of, it makes you continue to think about if I don’t want to give my life over to work, then I’ve got to be relentless about making sure I’m doing the high priority, high value stuff. 

Leah: I mean, I love the humility and the luck and all that, but I think it’s also about. Life design. It’s sitting down and choosing what kind of life we really want.

Leah: There are career paths, and I think as entrepreneurs, we often set these up ourselves, where it, it is impossible to have strong relationships and work life balance. You know, going back to that [00:08:00] original, , that original quote from the intro about mm-hmm . The current system right, is set up to give the exact results.

Leah: Mm. And I made them the same mistake. So when I first started my company in 2000 and 2008, 2009, I mean, workaholic completely did it wrong, realized, oh my gosh, I, I have to fix this. This is going to be at the detriment of my marriage, any relationship I wanna have with my kids and my health. And so needing to make that fix, but there is so much around.

Leah: Intention, right? Like what, what are we trying to design and being clear that we’re designing something that we really love? And that goes back to this idea of like waste versus the right things in the right places. Right. And understanding and finding the leverage points and not getting stuck on, on getting focused on the wrong things, which I think is so easy to do.

Dan: Yeah. And I, I love what you said about, you know, can you redesign the system to, [00:09:00] Support the values that you have. Like I remember reading something from Clay Christensen, the, the thought leader and business professor years ago. And he just had some really wise things to say about, almost like black and white treatment of values.

Dan: Like, you know, for him, he was not gonna work on a Sunday. And he tells this story about, Clay Christensen’s like 6’7 I remember seeing him around, uh, uh, campus at Harvard Business School. And, uh, and so he, as a young man, was on a basketball team, and they were like in a championship game that was on a Sunday.

Dan: And he wasn’t going to play because it was like a matter of faith for him. And, and of course, everybody is, is kind of leaning on him. Like, can you make an exception this one time? And his take was it’s actually easier to uphold values when, when you just start, start with a black and white, like this is important to me.

Dan: And I’m not going to make an exception because an exception is where then you have allowed complexity to creep in because what about the next [00:10:00] thing that somebody wants you to do and the next thing and every time you have to kind of agonize about the decision versus just setting a line and saying, you know, I’m not doing that.

Dan: I am doing this and then letting the chips fall where they may. 

Leah: You don’t even know how happy you made me with that story because I absolutely love Clay Christensen and like. And that idea of it is so much easier to make the decisions ahead of time, right? If, if we just make those decisions ahead of time, then, then when we’re Faced at that moment where we’re challenged, we don’t have to have this like, wait, what, what do I believe?

Leah: What do I think? How do I feel? I talk about this a lot with teenagers, right? Because they’re going to be faced with big questions where their values are challenged. And if they’re in the room trying to decide. What they believe, that’s really tricky. Like, you need to figure that out way before you ever get into that room.

Leah: But I think the same thing applies with [00:11:00] us. Like, what do we believe are our highest values? What are those non negotiables as, you know, within, with our integrity and our character? And, and as a parent or as a spouse or as, um, uh, you know, a manager or a boss or, right? Like, just sit down and do that work to say, okay, what are my non negotiables?

Leah: I mean, I think about the amount of problems that show up. Yeah, I’m thinking the stories that make the news, a corporate, you know, huge, um, Just drama. 

Dan: Is Brawn or yeah. Yeah. 

Leah: Right? And they’re showing up. Yeah, exactly. Those frauds. And they’re showing up because in that moment, someone or a lot of people, when they were challenged, they didn’t have that black and white and they decided to make an exception, right?

Leah: And then to their downfall or detriment, you know, that, that later gets exposed. So, I, I really like that. 

Dan: There is some research on, uh, on ethics that, that really appealed to me and, um, what I liked about it was a lot of times when it, [00:12:00] like if you’ve ever been part of an ethics class, like probably you talked about dilemmas and what should this person do and you kind of have a debate and it, it’s about what should you do, but, but this, this curriculum was, was directed more toward the notion that a lot of times it’s not that people, that, that the hard part of acting ethically is knowing what to do.

Dan: A lot of the times the hard part is doing it because you’re in a system or you’re in an environment or you’re in a social group where it’s painful to do the thing that you know in your heart is the right thing to do. And so, this ethics curriculum, Giving Voice to Values, is what it’s called, uh, Mary Gentile is the, um, the author.

Dan: I just think it’s ingenious, because it’s really about that notion of practicing. It’s not, it’s not about what to do, it’s about will you do that thing when the moment is tough. 

Leah: That’s so good. Okay, I feel like that’s a perfect segue to bring us to my last question, which is, What advice would you give to our [00:13:00] listeners?

Leah: Who are feeling stuck, right? So they’re, like, and, and, you know, we were just talking about, about ethics and how, you know, you have to have that moment where you’re willing to do the hard thing. But isn’t that kind of what it all comes down to? All change is based off of being willing to do the hard thing to, to reset and to get a different outcome, a different result, right?

Leah: So, So for everyone listening who, you know, they, as soon as we talked about stuck, there was something that came in their mind and they’re like, I know exactly where I am stuck, right? They’re stuck in their current routine or, or, or, you know, some result that they’re getting and, and they want to reset.

Leah: They want to move forward, but they’ve tried it before. It hasn’t worked. Like, where do they start? What, what is that thing that, that you would share with them? 

Dan: I love that. Okay. Here’s what you do. Here’s, here’s my grand advice. So, um, Let me give you three different lenses to bring to your stuckness, and you just see, you just see which of these kind of resonates for you.

Dan: I think it’ll be [00:14:00] different for different people and situations. One is the bright spots lens we’ve talked about. So, in the context of your stuckness, when are you not stuck? Or when are you the least amount of stuck? And can you do more of that? That’s lens one. Lens 2, which we haven’t talked a lot about, but I think it’s pretty intuitive, is what I call, uh, the constraints.

Dan: What’s the number one thing holding you back? What’s the limiting factor? To the extent you can whittle away at that, it might not be something you can remove, it might be something really big. But if you can just whittle away at it, You’re almost guaranteed progress because it is, by definition, the number one thing holding you back.

Dan: So that’s the constraint lens. And then the third thing is the overcoddled, undercoddled thing we talked about. Like, if you just kind of foreshrink whatever the axis is that you’re thinking about, whether it’s time related or client related or kid related, you know, can you do that sort of analysis of where, where am I spending my time and energy and money in ways that are yielding less [00:15:00] value than they could?

Dan: So, you know, just shake the snow globe, see which of those three, three approaches kind of resonate. And then here’s the final thing. When you start to move, make it, make it committed and, you know, allocate a day or, or a week if you, if you’ve got it. The notion here is what I call in the book a burst. It’s sort of like if you’ve ever tried to move a stuck window and you know, it takes like a tremendous amount of energy to just get it moving a micron.

Dan: Yeah. And then once it gets unstuck, it starts to move a lot easier, less forces required. So in the analogy, like you want to be able to throw some hours at change in a committed way, in a dense way. If, if you’re collaborating with others, if it’s not just a personal change, can you get everybody in the same room for a day or a couple of days?

Dan: It’s not that you necessarily are spending more time, it’s more like the density of the time. It’s like 15 hours with a small team across 2 or 3 [00:16:00] days can be equivalent to 40 hours across 6 months in the form of emails and meetings and calls and things not responded to. So, so what you really want is that density of work up front, that, that initial burst.

Leah: So good, so good. Thank you so much for being on the podcast with me. This has been so 

Dan: fun. Thank you. 

Leah: I’m so grateful. Okay. Tell everybody where to find you. We’ll obviously have all the links, literally wherever you’re listening. Just look down. They’re going to be there. But tell everybody where to find you.

Dan: Yeah. So my name is Dan Heath, Heath spelled like the candy bar. So if you could remember that, that’s my website, danheath. com. And the book we’ve talked about is called Reset, How to Change What’s Not Working. 

Leah: And it’s so good and it literally came out today, so you all should go grab it, grab the audio or grab the physical one if you like to highlight and make notes, but it’s so good.

Leah: So grab that. Okay. Thank you so much. And we will see everybody next week. [00:17:00] Welcome to episode 131. Today we are talking about how to change what’s not working. When you’re stuck, how do you get unstuck? And we’re doing it with an incredible guest who I’m so, so excited to have, which is Dan Heath, the author of multiple books, but most recently, in fact, as of today, his book Reset hit shelves.

Leah: So if you don’t know who he is, as I start to give this bio, you might realize that you actually do. Dan Heath is an American bestselling author, speaker, and senior fellow at Duke University’s Case Center, which supports entrepreneurs who fight for social good. He has an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Leah: He is an entrepreneur himself, having founded ThinkWell, an innovative education company. He’s the number one New York Times bestselling author, or co author with his brother, of six beloved business books, including Switch, Made to Stick, and my personal favorite, The [00:18:00] Power of Moments. He made Fast Company Magazine’s list of most creative people in business, and he hosts the award winning podcast, What It’s Like to Be.

Leah: So, his new book, Reset, launched today, and I was lucky enough to be sent an early copy and I sat down with Dan a few weeks ago to talk about his new book. So, the premise of Reset is how to change what’s not working, and I feel like for us as busy women, we are aware of where we’re feeling stuck. We’re aware of where there’s these sticking points, right?

Leah: What’s not always so obvious is how to get unstuck, how to reset and get in a place that we’re feeling really, really happy about. So the goal of this episode is to help you get unstuck. Like that’s the goal. We’re in the new year. We’ve got goals. We’ve got things that we want to see change. Let’s talk about how you are going to get yourself out of the results you’ve been seeing in the past and into the results that you want moving forward.

Leah: All right. Let’s [00:19:00] jump in. Hello, hello, and welcome to part two of this episode with bestselling author, Dan Heath, as we talk about how to change what’s not working. This is obvious, but since this is a part two, if you haven’t already listened to part one, you’re going to want to go back and start there so that this all makes sense.

Leah: Assuming that you’ve already done that, let’s jump in to part two of this amazing conversation.

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