Stay ConnectedIn difficult times, it’s easy to despair.
But all around us are experts who have proven tactics and strategies to stay strong: for ourselves, for our teams and for our organizations. This is a podcast asking the very best in the world how to stay resilient.
This is a podcast that shows us We Will Get Through This.
Copyright: © MBS.works @2020
Think one year ahead. You can likely do that.
Think 15 years ahead, let’s say to 2035. You might just about be able to do that.
Think 100 years ahead. Almost impossible. And 1000 years?
And yet, if we don’t build our capacity to think beyond our timespan, we’re likely doomed.
So, how to do that?
I’ve been a member of an organization called The Long Now Foundation for ten years. They’re committed to long-term thinking. We’re 10,000 years into civilization. How do we act as stewards for the next 10,000 years?
The perfect person to answer this question is Alexander Rose, the Executive Director of The Long Now Foundation. Alexander is an industrial designer who’s been involved in The Long Now Foundation since 01997 (the way they write the year reflects a 10,000 year calendar, btw). Projects include a stunning mechanical 10,000 year clock and a fantastic seminar series and podcast on long-term thinking.
In our conversation we discuss: how the combination of mechanisms and myths help generate the conversations we need to survive the next 10,000 years; what it means to think about “a hundred year fix”; how the Foundation decides where to invest its time and money; and why their policy is to not take sides.
You can meet Alexander at LongNow.org, and I’d encourage you to consider a membership to support the Foundation’s work.
This show is brought to you by The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book. You can access a wide range of tools to help #TameYourAdviceMonster at www.TheAdviceTrap.com.
If you’d like to spend more time with Michael and people he admires, sign up for The Year of Living Brilliantly. 52 teachers over 52 weeks, each teaching one brilliant insight. Absolutely free.
Cynefin! Say it with me ...
Well, you probably can’t. Because it’s a Welsh word and you have to know how it’s said: Ku-NEV-in.
My guest today is Dave Snowden, the creator of the Cynefin model. And the reason we’re learning a little bit of Welsh is because this is the model that helps us understand what it means to be operating within a complex system, and how that differs from ordered systems and chaos.
It’s a framework that fundamentally changes how you understand the world. In my conversation with Dave we discuss exactly what the Cynefin model is; the importance of boundaries and transition; why Dave’s a skeptic about Emotional Intelligence; and the power of being a generalist.
You can meet Dave and the Cynefin community at cognitive-edge.com.
This show is brought to you by The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book. You can access a wide range of tools to help #TameYourAdviceMonster at www.TheAdviceTrap.com.
If you’d like to spend more time with Michael and people he admires, sign up for The Year of Living Brilliantly. 52 teachers over 52 weeks, each teaching one brilliant insight. Absolutely free.
How to have a good day. I for one want to know the answer to that. Now! Immediately!
Now let me be clear. I don't want bland, predictable “there is no ‘i’ in innovation” type aphorisms.I want insights from science, so the changes I make are based in reality.
So let me introduce you to Caroline Webb. She is an executive coach, author and speaker who specializes in showing people how to use insights from behavioural science to improve their professional lives.
Her book is called –you got it—How to Have a Good Day, and it's been published in 14 languages and more than 60 countries. She is also a senior advisor to McKinsey where she was previously a partner.
In our conversation we discuss: the brain science of engagement; how to calm your brain when it’s feeling anxious; the power of labeling; and the power of connecting to what you’re uniquely good at.
You can meet Caroline at HowToHaveAGoodDay.com where there are various resources you can get hold of.
This show is brought to you by The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book. You can access a wide range of tools to help #TameYourAdviceMonster at www.TheAdviceTrap.com.
If you’d like to spend more time with Michael and people he admires, sign up for The Year of Living Brilliantly. 52 teachers over 52 weeks, each teaching one brilliant insight. Absolutely free.
The power of ritual is profound. It’s woven deep into the rhythms of societies, and its power lies in the marking of a transition, from one state to another.
It often means a death of some sort: something needs to pass, before something new can arrive. But few of us are comfortable with death, literal or metaphoric.
My guest today is Sarah Kerr,a ritual healing practitioner and death doula whose work supports the living, the dying, and the dead. She facilitates private and public healing rituals, and regularly presents on topics of death midwifery and holistic death care. Sarah has a PhD in Transformative Learning, and a Master’s degree in Environmental Studies. Her doctoral research explored the ways that modern western people can restore and re-create meaningful rituals for the significant transitions of life, and she has been a student of spiritual and shamanic healing modalities since 2000.
In our conversation we unpack what a ritual is; explore how we loosen our fixation on the physical and the outer and the visible and the tangible; how grief and grieving differ; and how to understand our life as a spiral rather than a relentless trajectory.
You can meet Sarah at www.soulpassages.ca, on Instagram at @soul.passages and on her YouTube channel.
This show is brought to you by The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book. You can access a wide range of tools to help #TameYourAdviceMonster at www.TheAdviceTrap.com.
If you’d like to spend more time with Michael and people he admires, sign up for The Year of Living Brilliantly. 52 teachers over 52 weeks, each teaching one brilliant insight. Absolutely free.
I love the power of thinking about your thinking.
This is where sustainable learning truly happens. Not in the telling. Not in the doing. But in the reflection on what’s happening. When you see patterns, you learn to manage them.
My guest today is Trevor Ragan, the founder of The Learner Lab, an educational website that helps unpack and share the science of learning and development. Trevor spends his time with thought leaders and researchers from the worlds of psychology and developmental science, consumes their research, connects the dots, and shares it with anyone who will listen.
In our conversation we talk about an essential process for successful training; why random can be better than predictable; a counterintuitive approach to managing difficult emotions; and of course, just what it means to train ugly.
You can meet Trevor at thelearnerlab.com.
This show is brought to you by The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book. You can access a wide range of tools to help #TameYourAdviceMonster at www.TheAdviceTrap.com.
If you’d like to spend more time with Michael and people he admires, sign up for The Year of Living Brilliantly. 52 teachers over 52 weeks, each teaching one brilliant insight. Absolutely free
You know me well enough to know that I love a good question.
But there are times, particularly in a crisis, when the questions you’re being asked feel impossible to answer. They ask for certainty and reassurance that you’re just not able to give. In that moment, you feel anxiety and uncertainty. What do you say to the unanswerable question?
Ron Carucci has a suggestion. He is co-founder and managing partner at Navalent, and works with CEOs and executives pursuing transformational change for their organizations, leaders, and industries. He is the author of 8 books, a relentless contributor to the Harvard Business Review, and a two-time TEDx speaker.
In our conversation we talk about the power of knowing you don’t know; when the best answer is sometimes another question; the somatic wisdom of your body; and how grace can be a guiding principle when you don’t know what to do.
You can meet Ron at www.navalent.com, read his many articles on HBR, and connect on Twitter at @RonCarucci.
This show is brought to you by The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book. You can access a wide range of tools to help #TameYourAdviceMonster at www.TheAdviceTrap.com.
If you’d like to spend more time with Michael and people he admires, sign up for The Year of Living Brilliantly. 52 teachers over 52 weeks, each teaching one brilliant insight. Absolutely free
You know the marshmallow test, right?
Some poor kid put in a room with a single marshmallow in front of them, and a choice: eat it now, or resist the temptation for 5 minutes and get a second marshmallow.
Even though the research has been shown to be problematic, it’s illustrative: we so often take short-term, in-the-moment gratification that goes against our long-term interests.
Bina Venkataraman is the editorial page editor of The Boston Globe and a fellow at New America. Before joining the Globe, she served as a senior adviser for climate change innovation in the Obama White House, was the director of Global Policy Initiatives at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and taught in the program on Science, Technology, and Society at MIT. She is the author of a terrific book, The Optimist's Telescope: Thinking Ahead in a Reckless Age.
In our conversation we talk about the power of a vividly imagined future; how to deal with vulnerable decision points; lessons learned from professional poker players; and both the flaws and usefulness of the marshmallow test.
You can meet Bina at writerbina.com or on Twitter @BinaJV to say hello.
This show is brought to you by The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book. You can access a wide range of tools to help #TameYourAdviceMonster at www.TheAdviceTrap.com.
If you’d like to spend more time with Michael and people he admires, sign up for The Year of Living Brilliantly. 52 teachers over 52 weeks, each teaching one brilliant insight. Absolutely free.
The odds are you’re not an elite athlete. I know, for sure and without a doubt, that I’m not. When I am playing sports or working out, the thing that’s mostly going through my head is how do I keep myself from quitting, because I almost always have that desire to quit halfway through.
The way champions like Bonnie St. John do it, in part, is by building micro-resilience. Bonnie is a former Olympian, and the first African Americanto win medals in a winter Olympic competition, taking home silver and two bronze medals at the 1984 winter Paralympics in Innsbruck, Austria.
Today, Bonnie travels the globe as a keynote speaker, Fortune 500 leadership expert, and the bestselling author of seven books. She was a Rhodes Scholar, and served in the White House as a Director of the National Economic Council during the Clinton administration. NBC Nightly News called Bonnie one of the five most inspiring women in America.
In our conversation we dive into the principles, strategies and tactics of micro-resilience; explore how someone from San Diego ends up winning skiing medals; look into the power of what happens in between the moments of performance; and how to stay focused on “the next turn”,whatever that may be for you.
You can meet Bonnie, watch her TEDx talk and pick up her resilience first aid kit at microresilience.com.
This show is brought to you by The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book. You can access a wide range of tools to help #TameYourAdviceMonster at www.TheAdviceTrap.com.
If you’d like to spend more time with Michael and people headmires, sign up for The Year of Living Brilliantly. 52 teachers over 52 weeks, each teaching one brilliant insight. Absolutely free.
I have three broad categories of books in my life. First, there are the books that come and go pretty quickly. They’re just not very good. There are quite a lot of those. The second bucket are ones I read and think, “This is a pretty good book. There’s a smart idea buried in here.” And then the final category is made up of the types of books I strive to write. Powerful, designed, elegant and stirring. These are the books I keep on my top shelf, that travel with me when I move.
Dr. Alexander Osterwalder writes those types of books. He is one of the world's most influential innovation experts, and is an author, entrepreneur and speaker. He was ranked number four in theworld by Thinkers 50, and he shot to fame with his business model canvas, a tool used by millions worldwide.
His new book is The Invincible Company, and it’s fantastic. In our conversation we talk about what it means to me to create an ambidextrous company; the role of the CEO in innovation; some examples from his library of different business models; and the power of a gravity creation model.
You can meet Alex and access his work at Strategyzer.com.
This show is brought to you by The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book. You can access a wide range of tools to help #TameYourAdviceMonster at www.TheAdviceTrap.com.
If you’d like to spend more time with Michael and people he admires, sign up for The Year of Living Brilliantly. 52 teachers over 52 weeks, each teaching one brilliant insight. Absolutely free.
It’s one of the stories that doesn’t quite seem real. Man has a really rough time in his life, starts a blog to cheer himself up--1,000 awesome things--it blows up, the book versions sell millions, the TEDx talk is seen by more millions, and he goes on to write more intriguing books, begin compelling podcasts and be a sought after keynote speaker.
My friend Neil Pasricha is this self-same man. He’s a friend of mine, and we’ve spent time walking Toronto, visiting second-hand bookstores, drinking cocktails and talking. Neil’s a great talker. Of his Awesome books, his latest is my favourite: You are Awesome. It blends science and motivation, and I use a number of his suggestions to make my life better. He’s also the host of the number one book podcast in the world, 3 Books, which features guests such as Malcolm Gladwell, David Sedaris, the former sex-worker who wrote the world’s first children’s book featuring a sex-working parent … and me.
In our conversation, we look at the magical 40% of life you can control; why the question about half-full or half-empty is the wrong question about the glass; the three books I shared in his podcast; and how and why Neil is starting to think of himself as an activist.
You can meet Neil at Neil.blog and listen to his fantastic podcast 3 Books. Episode 48, featuring me, is a particular classic.
This show is brought to you by The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book. You can access a wide range of tools to help #TameYourAdviceMonster at www.TheAdviceTrap.com
If you’d like to spend more time with Michael and people he admires, sign up for The Year of Living Brilliantly. 52 teachers over 52 weeks, each teaching one brilliant insight. Absolutely free.
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