The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

Read my new book, "The Price of Becoming."
www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming
This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver.
My Guest: Scott Harrison is the founder and CEO of charity: water, a non-profit that has raised over a billion dollars and funded tens of thousands of water projects to bring safe drinking water to millions. He previously spent a decade as a New York City nightclub promoter before a dramatic career shift led him into humanitarian work.
Key Learnings
Scott started a charity: water with $20 from a birthday party. Then $15,000... Twenty years later: over a billion dollars raised, 21 million people served. He says it should be 10 to 100 times more.
The cure for water already exists. We're looking for water on Mars while 700 million people drink dirty water on Earth. We solved this hundreds of years ago. We just haven't implemented it.
25% of the money sitting in American donor-advised funds would give every human on Earth clean water. That's parked philanthropic capital. Already tax-benefited. Just waiting.
The goal is always 10X what you're doing. If we raised a million last year, we want ten this year. If we raise $100 million, we should raise a billion. The opportunity is always orders of magnitude larger than the moment.
Show, don't bullet. Scott shows 210 photos in a 45-minute keynote. No PowerPoint. Single images. A story unfolds frame by frame.
Be early to the technology. First charity on Instagram. First to hit a million Twitter followers. First to use VR. The question is always the same: how does this new thing further the mission?
The 100% model: solve for the cynic.  Public donations go to one bank account that funds only water projects. Overhead is raised separately from entrepreneurs and business leaders. Then track every donation to a specific village.
Don't be mid. Scott's 11-year-old daughter says nobody wants to be mid. Excellence is a core value. There's a lot of mid out there.
Design everything. The fact cover sheet. The PowerPoint. The website. The package. "We're always dating." If the message comes in an ugly package, you're at a disadvantage before you start.
Treat the donor like a Michelin three-star guest. If a restaurant can think that carefully about a meal, you can think that carefully about a donor who can save a million lives.
The Goldman Sachs partner who changed Scott's paradigm. Before making an eight-figure ask, Scott asked a partner: "How does it feel when people ask for a lot more than you expected?" The expected answer was irritated, offended, put off. The actual answer: "I feel flattered that they think I would be that generous."
People are generous. The well is there. You just have to drill deep enough. Scott has spent 20 years asking for too little. That might be his next obsession.
People give to people, not causes. A dynamic leader who transfers their enthusiasm gets the donation. The cause doesn't. Most of the donations Scott and his wife give are to people, not topics they were already passionate about.
Talk 10% of the time. When Scott meets a donor for the first time, he wants to know their whole life story. Their marriage. Their kids. What they wanted to be when they grew up. Be genuinely curious or don't bother.
Hire for integrity, humility, curiosity, and energy... 16,000 applicants for 36 roles last year. Energy matters most. Someone who can get you fired up about pickleball, Patagonia, or a new running shoe is exactly who you want on the executive team.
The dinner test for hiring: Can you imagine having this person at your home for two hours at dinner? And wanting to keep them for another hour?
Get the whole life story. Scott wants the arc from the beginning to the present in an interview. If someone can't tell their own story coherently, they probably don't know themselves yet.
The 11-year-old with the piggy bank. He told his parents he was going to fund a whole village. They told him to set a realistic goal. He went knocking on doors. He came back with $10,000.
Scott's experience lab in Nashville. A 60-minute immersive tour. A 100-degree room with a treadmill where you carry a 40-pound water vessel. Microscopes that show you parasites. A VR film that ends in celebration. The "give shop," not the gift shop. 53% of visitors donate. 10,000 visitors. $3.9 million raised in year one.
Scott's champagne moment: a single billionaire who picks water. The water sector doesn't have one. Republicans and Democrats agree on it. Atheists and people of faith agree on it. Everyone has to drink.
Reflection Questions
What is the 10X version of your current goal? Where are you asking for too little because the smaller ask felt safer?
Who in your work or life is the Michelin three-star guest, the customer, donor, or partner who deserves your most thoughtful experience design? 
When was the last time you went 10% talking, 90% genuinely curious about someone else's story? 
More Learning: 
#290: Scott Harrison – Redemption, Compassion, & The Transformative Power Within Us
#680: Scott Galloway - Don't Follow Your Passion, Follow Your Talent
#682: Will Guidara - Adversity is a Terrible Thing to Waste

Audio Chapters
00:00 The Price of Becoming - Pre-Order Now!
01:18 Welcome Back, Scott Harrison
02:56 From a $20 Bill to Over $1 Billion Raised
04:59 Why the Goal Should Always Be 10X (or 100X)
07:54 Storytelling: How to Get People to Care About a Problem They Don't Feel
10:30 Being Early to Instagram, Twitter, and VR
16:10 Radical Transparency: The Bank Account That Built Trust
19:51 The Beauty of a Healthy Obsession
21:22 Drilling Deep for the Artesian Wells of Generosity
25:04 What It Feels Like in the Room When Generosity Breaks Through
27:01 "Nobody Wants to Be Mid."
30:56 Design Everything: We're Always Dating
32:13 Treat Your Donor Like a Michelin Three-Star Guest
35:39 Selling With Integrity: Talk 10%, Listen 90%
39:15 16,000 Applicants for 36 Jobs: What Scott Looks For
43:12 The Power of Vulnerability in Hiring
45:39 Inside the Nashville Experience Lab
50:34 The Champagne Question: A Billion-Dollar Vision
52:10 The 11-Year-Old Who Raised $10,000 Door-to-Door
54:25 EOPC

The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk
www.LearningLeader.com
New Book - The Price of Becoming
www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming
Ron Friedman is a psychologist and researcher who has spent his career studying what separates great teams from average ones. His research, which has surveyed thousands of professionals across dozens of industries, became the second most-read article in Harvard Business Review history. He is the author of three books, including his latest, Superteams: The Science and Secrets of High-Performing Teams.
This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver.
Key Learnings
Ron's dad threw himself into impossible challenges and taught his family the dignity of hard work. A physician in Israel, he didn't want his son in the army, so he picked up the phone and started dialing hospitals in New York City until he landed a job at NYU. He pulled his family out of a country he knew, didn't speak the language fluently, and succeeded anyway. Ron dedicated Super Teams to him. He recently passed away.
Only 8% of teams qualify as super teams. Ron's team polled thousands of workers and asked two questions: How effective is your team at meeting its goals? And how does it compare to others in your industry? Super teams hit the perfect score.
The only office amenity that statistically drives performance: quiet space for focused work. Not the gym. Not the ping-pong table. Most offices are an attentional war zone. That's why people prefer working from home.
How a team works matters more than where a team works. Remote, hybrid, in-office. The data shows none of those predict performance. Intention does.
Don't make meetings the default. Make them the last resort. Super teams are 50% better at avoiding unnecessary meetings and 54% less likely to schedule recurring ones.
Recurring meetings are insidious. Once they're on the calendar, removing one feels like breaking up with someone. So they just live there forever.
Ron's rule: no decision, no meeting. Have a question? Pick up the phone. Have an update? Record a video or send an email. Don't pull people away from their work.
The average worker loses 18 hours a week to meetings. And another 11 hours to messages. That's three-quarters of the week gone before they've achieved a single task.
Meeting-free days cut stress in half and increase productivity by 71%. People go home feeling satisfied because they were able to actually do the work.
Three pillars of super teams:
They get more done by managing time, energy, and attention.
They don't just collaborate. They actively make each other better.
They're never satisfied. They're constantly building skills and improving.
Recovery isn't passive. Scrolling Instagram or binging Netflix helps you wind down, but it doesn't restore your energy. Mastery experiences do. Learn a new song. Try pickleball. Cook a new recipe.
When leaders recover, their teams perform better. A well-rested leader shows up in a positive mood. That mood lifts the team. Investing in your own recovery isn't selfish. It moves your team forward.
The best leaders support their people's side hustles. Not because they assign them, but because their people feel they have permission to grow outside the job. That's a signal you care about the person, not just the output.
Three factors predict trust in a leader: competence, caring, consistency. Any one of them breaks down and trust breaks down.
"How was your weekend?" is lame. Be specific. Ask about the kid's soccer game by name. Specificity proves you actually thought about the person.
People need to be appreciated for who they are, not just what they do. That's how they feel cared for.
The top three characteristics of toxic teammates: unreliable, bad attitude, and arrogant.
The top three characteristics of the best teammates: knowledgeable, dependable, and a good communicator. Notice what's not on the list. Funny. Good listener. Caring. Those are nice-to-haves. They don't move the team forward.
The best teammates make excellence the norm. On super teams, 94% say their teammates motivate them to do their best work.
On super teams, 82% say they feel worse about letting down their teammates than their manager. When people know their teammates are counting on them, they work harder.
Constant togetherness is not collaboration. The Succession writers' room cycled between solo writing and group critique. Real collaboration protects focus time first.
Brainwriting beats brainstorming. Have people generate ideas alone first, then bring them to the room. You get higher quantity and higher quality ideas.
97% of feedback fails to lift performance. Over a third actively makes it worse. What does the 3% do differently? Focus on one thing at a time. Future-oriented, not past-oriented.
Top performers want to know what they did wrong. Confidence allows them to absorb criticism and correct it. Most people aren't there. Gauge the feedback to the person.
Great football coaches give feedback differently to the quarterback than the lineman. Know your people. Adjust your approach.
Comedians get better at the Comedy Cellar because of what happens next door. Seinfeld, Chappelle, and Schumer gather at the Lemon Tree Cafe after sets to critique each other. Ryan calls it the "see it, say it" mentality, an ethos his teammate Geron Stokes brings every day. Great compliment, say it. Falling short of the standard, say it. The best teammates care enough to tell you how you can improve.
Ron's champagne moment a year from now: his 19-year-old daughter landing a finance internship she earned on her own.
Reflection Questions
What's your recurring meeting that should be a breakup conversation?
When was the last time you asked a teammate something specific about their life, by name? Or are you defaulting to "how was your weekend?"
What's your version of the Comedy Cellar's Lemon Tree Cafe? Who do you go to for the candid feedback that makes you better?
More Learning
#422: Ron Friedman - How to Reverse Engineer Excellence
#535: Geron Stokes - Maximizing People
#647: Tim Ferriss - Effectiveness Over Efficiency


Podcast Chapters
00:00 The Price of Becoming - Pre-Order Now!
01:09 Meet Ron Friedman
02:41 Ron's Dad and the Dignity of Hard Work
03:47 Two Workplaces, Two Cultures, One Lesson
06:01 The Super Teams Methodology
07:13 The Only Office Amenity That Drives Performance
08:50 How a Team Works Matters More Than Where
13:06 The Three Pillars of Super Teams
16:11 Meeting Guidelines That Actually Work
18:42 The Power of Meeting-Free Days
22:23 Why Guidelines Beat Rules
23:40 Side Hustles, Recovery, and the Goldman Sachs CEO Who DJs
28:53 The Three Factors of Trust: Competence, Caring, Consistency
30:13 Why "How Was Your Weekend?" Is Lame
31:02 Get Specific or Don't Bother
31:22 The Manager Who Asked About Miranda by Name
32:08 The Spreadsheet for Remembering People
33:09 What Makes a Toxic Teammate
35:05 Chevy Chase and the Cost of Burning Bridges
35:52 The Best vs. Worst Teammate Traits
37:08 How Tom Brady Lifted an Entire Organization
38:06 Why Super Teams Hold Each Other Accountable
39:39 Inside the Succession Writers' Room
40:46 Brainwriting Beats Brainstorming
41:41 The Candid Feedback Culture That Drives Improvement
43:06 Painting in Red: The Power

The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk
www.LearningLeader.com
New Book -- The Price of Becoming
www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming
Austin Kleon is the NYT bestselling author of Steal Like an Artist, Show Your Work, and Keep Going. He's a writer who draws, a former librarian, and one of the most original thinkers on creativity working today. His new book is Don't Call It Art: 10 Ways to Create Like a Kid Again.
This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver.
Key Learnings
 
Stay light. Bill Murray told ballplayers that if you stay light, loose, and relaxed, you can play at the highest level. Same with acting, writing, anything. Austin keeps a photo of Bill in his studio as a reminder.
Play is the work. A lot of Austin's best work requires a sense of play. It's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.
Go to the analog desk first. Austin has a digital desk and an analog desk. Nothing electronic is allowed at the analog desk. He starts there with nothing and sees what comes.
Most people never give themselves the time, space, and materials to make something of what's swirling inside them. 
People want to watch someone who is activated. "People will pay every night to show up and see somebody believe in themselves." (Kim Gordon, Sonic Youth)
The market for something to believe in is infinite. (Hugh MacLeod) The world is full of people just doing their thing. They're hungry to see someone on fire for something.
The writer's job: take what everyone is thinking and put it into words. "You gave me the words" is the highest compliment a reader can give.
Effortless is earned. People say the Friday newsletter looks easy. Austin's reply: Do it every Friday for 13 years, then call me.
A place to put things makes you notice more. Thoreau took morning walks knowing he'd write later, so he paid closer attention. Carry a camera, and you start seeing shots everywhere.
Live for the living, not for the writing. There's a tension between living your life and documenting it. Don't lose yourself to the feed.
Your attention is the most valuable thing you have. Everyone wants to take it. The real challenge of modern life is making sure you're the one who decides where it goes.
The best teachers are perpetual students. You realize what you know and don't know only when you try to teach it.
Toggle between knowing and not knowing. The moment you think you know what you're doing, the work gets stale. You start running on routine instead of need.
To be an amateur is to be a lover. The French root means "lover of." An amateur does it out of love, not material reward.
Every great CEO should be put in a room with a four-year-old. They'd both learn something. Kids knock the pompous certainty right out of you.
"I don't know. How do you think we should figure it out?" Austin's kids taught him it's less important to know everything than to know how to find out.
The leader isn't the one who speaks while everyone listens. The leader listens, asks questions, stays curious, and wonders how everyone is doing.
Look for who's having fun, not who's successful. Fun is underrated. Serious people have a serious time. Do it with lightness and it's contagious.
"A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play." (Lawrence Pearsall Jacks) He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he's doing and leaves others to decide whether he's working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.
Ask "What does the universe want to show me today?" A useful fiction. Tell yourself the world is trying to send you messages and suddenly you see a hundred of them.
Have the toy before you know what you'll do with it. Austin buys typewriters, then asks what to make. Get the bicycle first. In six months you'll know what kind you actually want.
Steal an idea someone only did once and turn it into a whole thing. Austin saw a single typewriter interview, made it a series, and has done more than 20.
Put the human hand in the work. Austin decided 20 years ago to make it obvious a human made his stuff. In the age of AI, it stands out more than ever. People want the imperfection.
Writing is thinking. People think you gather your ideas then write them down. The act of writing is the act of figuring out what you actually think. That's the hard part.
Differentiate yourself by reading a book outside your field. Swim a little further out than everyone else and you find new water.
Focus on what you can control. A writer controls only what's between the covers. Did you do a good job? Were you clear? Were you helpful? The rest isn't up to you.
Austin's champagne moment a year from now: his kids flourishing. The older he gets, the less the books mean and the more his family does.
Reflection Questions
Where is your analog desk? Do you have a space with no screens where you go to make something of what's swirling inside you?
Are you activated? When people watch you work, do they see someone on fire for it, or someone just going through the motions?
What's one idea from outside your field you could steal this week? Where could you swim a little further out and find new water?
More Learning

#676: Jesse Cole - Built for the Fans, Obsession & Excellence

#687: Jim Collins - What to Make of a Life

#241: Austin Kleon - How to Steal Like an Artist
 
Podcast Chapters
 
00:00 The Price of Becoming - Pre-Order Now! 
01:33 Meet Austin Kleon 
02:53 The Bill Murray Photo: Stay Light 
05:42 The Analog Desk: Where the Real Work Starts 
08:51 People Want to Watch Someone Activated 
15:22 Why "It Looks Easy" Is the Whole Point 
16:28 The Newsletter as a Forcing Function to Notice 
20:46 Who Owns Your Attention? 
24:39 How Austin's Kids Became His Teachers 
29:06 Why the Best Creators Stay Amateurs 
31:33 Curiosity Is the Real Leadership Skill 
34:09 What Does the Universe Want to Show Me Today? 
35:02 Look for Who's Having Fun, Not Who's Successful 
38:30 Do You Love to Write, or Love to Have Written? 
41:00 The Typewriter Interviews: Stealing an Idea Done Once 
47:18 The Interplay of Analog and Digital 
49:02 AI and Why the Human Hand Wins 
51:23 The Champagne Question: Family Flourishing 
55:47 Walk-Ins Welcome 
58:06 EOPC

The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk
Read my NEW BOOK -- The Price of Becoming -  www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming
Eric Ries is the author of The Lean Startup, one of the most influential business books of the past 25 years, and the founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange, the first new U.S. exchange to both list and trade multiple stocks since NASDAQ launched 50 years ago. His new book is Incorruptible.
Key Learnings
The more successful a company becomes, the more valuable it is as a target. Companies are worth stealing and taking over. Most founders are naive about this and don't understand what's coming for them. They've been following the so-called best practices about how companies should be built, structured, and governed. Most of those best practices are value-destroying.
Sol Price was a lawyer before he became an entrepreneur. He believed a lawyer had a fiduciary duty to put the client's interests before his own. So when he became a retailer, he asked: "Who's my client?" The customer. He treated the customer as the person he would rather die than betray. When competitors sold a product for less, he'd put up signs in his own store: "Don't buy this from me. You can get it cheaper somewhere else." He capped his margins at 14 percent. He paid above-market wages.
It is so much easier to destroy than to create. One day, Sol came into work and couldn't get into his office because the locks had been changed. Investors had pushed him out and forced Fedmart to practice retail best practices. Within seven years, they bankrupted the company. We've built an economy that rewards people for cost-cutting without holding them accountable for the consequences to trustworthiness, brand, or culture.
The origin story of Costco: Sol took two weeks off, then leased the office upstairs from Fedmart and started Price Club. One of the young guys who left with him, Jim Sinegal, had worked his way up from stock boy. Jim eventually started his own company using the Sol ethos. A few years later, their companies merged to form what we now call Costco.
Wall Street routinely calls Costco the exception to every rule. Wall Street analysts say things like: "At Costco, they take money that rightfully belongs to shareholders and instead invest it in the customer experience." As if that's a criticism. Costco endures because it's protected by a governance fortress. A series of worst practices that resist outside pressure structurally.
The $1.50 hot dog has been the same price since 1986. A McDonald's Big Mac was $1.60 in 1986. Today that same Big Mac in California is over $7. Costco sells more hot dogs than every Major League Baseball stadium in America combined. If they raised the combo to $7, it would be a billion dollars of extra net income. They could do it. They choose not to.
"If you raise the price of the effing hot dog, I will kill you. So figure it out." Jim Sinegal said it to his COO in 2008 when costs were rising. Figure it out. Costco vertically integrated the hot dog supply chain. They own hot dog production plants in multiple cities. They worked deals with soda vendors. They did all that extra work for the privilege of not making more money on the hot dog.
Harder is easier. "When you take the hard road, when you make a principled commitment, you get these almost unbelievable values. Because you're generating the most underrated and most valuable asset in all of business: trustworthiness."
"Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life." Jerzy Gregorek, Olympic weightlifter.
"Everybody wanna be a bodybuilder. Nobody wanna lift these heavy ass weights." Ronnie Coleman, eight-time Mr. Olympia. Everyone wants the outcome. Nobody wants to do the actual thing.
Culture and mission can be cultivated, not commanded. Most leaders get this wrong. They say "I'm in charge of my team." But can you command your team to have integrity? Can you command it to have a particular culture? You have to make consistent, responsible choices, just like cultivating health in your body.
Get reps. Eric gave practice talks at a Hobee's restaurant at 7 AM to six people just to get the reps. Caring and trying to do a good job is so unbelievably rare. That alone is a competitive advantage.
Feedback tells you something about the person giving it, not about yourself. If someone reads Eric's manuscript and says, "This book sucks," he hasn't learned anything about the book. He's learned this person doesn't like this kind of book. When he stopped arguing with negative customer reviews and started studying who they came from, he noticed patterns. People 16 and younger loved the product. People 16 and older hated it. He learned who his product was for.
Separate qualitative from quantitative feedback. Qualitative is for hypothesis generation. Quantitative is for hypothesis validation. When test readers told him a chapter wasn't working, that was qualitative. When the platform data showed nobody was getting past that chapter, that was quantitative. You need both to know what to fix.
It is always too early until it's too late. Eric tells the story of a multibillion-dollar founder he warned before his IPO. The founder talked to his bankers, lawyers, and CFO. They told him Eric was a downer. The founder went public anyway with conventional governance. Five months later, his stock dropped 90 percent, and he was ousted. The best time to plant a tree is 40 years ago. The second-best time is today.
Eric's checklist for building an incorruptible company:
Encode your mission into the corporate charter. Most founders have never read their charter. If your mission statement says one thing but your legal charter says another, you're lying. The easiest fix: file a public benefit corp filing (PBC). Two pages. 44 states. Your lawyer can do it tomorrow.
Identify your fiduciary commitments. Who would you rather die than betray? Is it your customers? Your employees? Product quality? You decide. If your answer is nobody, you're a sociopath. The whole book is for the people who actually want to accomplish something.
Align your employees to that mission. Make sure everybody on the team is committed to the same fiduciary priority.
Create a director's oath. Like the Hippocratic Oath for doctors, but for your board. They must pledge to commit to the company's mission. Board betrayal and investor pressure are leading causes of death of companies in the modern world.
Make the directors accountable to somebody. Power without accountability is corrosive to the human spirit. Novo Nordisk is governed by a nonprofit foundation. Patagonia is governed by a perpetual purpose trust. John Lewis Partnership in the UK is governed by an employee ownership trust. IKEA, Vanguard, and REI all have these structures. The data shows these companies are dramatically more stable and higher performing than conventional structures.
You are not stuck in traffic. You are traffic. People love to blame the system. But you're not just a passenger. You're part of what creates the system. Where you work. What you buy. What you give your attention to. Every one of those choices is fueling somebody's company, somebody's algorithm, somebody's bonus. The richest people in the world spend billions on PR because they know your individual choices matter. Use that power.
Eric's champagne moment a year from now: a grassroots movement around Incorruptible. This book won't get wall-to-wall media coverage. It's antagonistic to people in power. So Eric hopes readers will hand it to their founders, their bosses, their friends. If consumers and employees start demanding, "I want to work in an incorruptible company," that's the toast.
Reflection Questions
What is your equivalent of Costco's hot dog? The one commitment you'd defend even when it's financially painful, even when the easy move would be to abandon it?
Have you ever read your corporate charter, or the foundational document of your team or department? Does what's actually written match what you say you stand for?
Where in your work or life would the harder short-term path build something more durable in the long run? Are you willing to lift the heavy weights?
More Learning
#258: Jesse Itzler: Creating Your Life Resume & Living Outside the Box
#529: James Clear: Setting Up Your Future Self & Becoming an Optimist
#565: Noah Kahan: The Art of Asking For What You Want
Podcast Chapters
00:00 The Price of Becoming - Pre-Order Now! 
01:03 Meet Eric Ries 
02:55 Is It Possible to Build an Incorruptible Company? 
04:04 Why Culture Alone Won't Save You 
05:13 Sol Price, Fedmart, and the Locks That Got Changed 
07:56 Why Wall Street Calls Costco the Exception 
09:11 The $1.50 Hot Dog Story 
13:59 Harder Is Easier: The Principle Behind It All 
16:48 Why Governance Is Just Soul Craft 
19:50 Building the First New Stock Exchange Since Nasdaq 
22:33 Eric's Communication Style: Reps, Not Talent 
30:52 The Opportunity Hiding in Broken Markets 
31:59 How to Know Which Feedback to Listen To 
35:39 Qualitative vs. Quantitative: Why You Need Both 
37:23 The Whole Foods Cautionary Tale 
40:25 The Founder's Checklist for Building Something Durable 
43:44 Encode Your Mission Into the Corporate Charter 
47:35 You Are Not Stuck in Traffic. You Are the Traffic. 
52:37 The Champagne Question: A Grassroots Movement 
55:27 James Clear, Author's Equity, and the Future of Publishing
56:43 EOPC

Go to www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming for my new book, The Price of Becoming
This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver.
Dr. Henry Cloud is a clinical psychologist, leadership consultant, and New York Times bestselling author whose books have sold nearly 20 million copies worldwide. His titles include Boundaries, Integrity, Necessary Endings, and Trust. For three decades, he has worked with leaders, helping them close the gap between where they are and where they want to be. His newest book is Your Desired Future: The Five Essential Steps That Take You Where You Want to Go.
Key Learnings
Henry's five-step model for getting from here to there:
Vision (clear and compelling)
Talent (engaging the right people around you)
Strategy and plan (how you'll win)
Measurement and accountability (how you'll know)
Fix and adapt (course-correcting in real time)
At the age of 16, Henry's daughter asked, "Dad, how do people become singer-songwriters?" Henry went out to the garage and brought in his whiteboard. Lucy rolled her eyes. He gave her the five-step model. A couple years later, she published a song called "Crash and Learn" that got bought by CBS, the CW Network, and featured on Spotify and Apple Music.
We tend to create departments and businesses in our own image. Of the five components, we're going to be good at two, maybe three. But the others still have to happen. That's where most leaders fail.
Only humans can picture a desired future state. Finley is Henry's Doberman. When the FedEx guy comes to the door, she runs to it, and barks every time. Henry has never seen her stop and ask herself: "I wonder if that barking will help me get to where I want to be on Thursday." Most leaders are operating like Finley. Working hard. Doing what they've always done. Never stopping to ask if any of it is getting them where they want to be.
You need an observing ego. The worst thing you can do is hit the accelerator harder when you're going down the wrong road and you don't even know where you're going.
Tony Blair, while Prime Minister, spent half a day a week sitting by himself next to a pond in reflection. Warren Buffett spends an hour and a half a day at his desk staring out the window. 
A revenue number is not a vision. The single worst vision statement Henry ever heard: "We want to be a $50 million company." It provides no clarity of what the company is going to do.  
A vision is a compelling picture of a future state that makes people want to sacrifice for it. If your vision wouldn't inspire anyone to get out of bed early, it's a metric, not a vision.
Will Guidara created a "dream maker" role at Eleven Madison Park. Their job: listen for clues from guests, then create a personalized, unexpected, memorable experience the guest will never forget and tell everyone about.
Trust Fuels Investment. People invest in leaders who feel like they understand them. You're taking your team into a war. They've got to have deep trust with you. The first thing a leader has to do is develop deep, deep trust and let their team know that they understand the pressure they're under.
"A vision can die without a plan or without people."
Alan Mulally's weekly 7:00 AM Thursday meeting at Ford. Every VP had to give every project a red, yellow, or green status. When Mulally first arrived, the company was hemorrhaging money. Everyone was holding up green. He said: "How can you be holding up green when here's the reality over here? I need some reality in here." When one VP finally held up red, Mulally moved him to sit next to him.
The wrong view of accountability is looking back to spank somebody for what they didn't do. The right view of accountability is a tool to make sure we reach our destination.
You get what you create or what you allow. Henry was working with a global CEO whose team had cultural problems. Henry kept asking, "Why is that?" After a few rounds, the CEO finally said, "I guess I am ridiculously in charge, aren't I?" If you are the one actually in charge, you are ridiculously in charge. Either you're creating it, or you're allowing it.
Accountability answers two questions:
Did we do what we said we were going to do? If not, why not? Don't just tell people to "do better." Run a root cause analysis. Maybe they don't have the tools. Maybe you gave them competing goals. Maybe it's a leadership problem.
If we executed perfectly, did we get the result we expected? If yes, pour on the gas. If no, go back up the model and adjust your strategy.
Most leaders measure goals, not activities. Goals are lagging indicators. You can measure them after it's over. It's too late. Measure activities. Did we do this week what we said we were going to do?
Micro drivers matter. Henry worked with a CEO who built multi-billions in valuation from a one-office company who was excellent with micro drivers. It's an atomic compression of the 80/20 rule. He knew the specific activities at each level of the business that actually moved the needle, and he made those objects of extreme awareness, focus, training, and deliberate practice.
Peter Drucker said, "Nothing's worse than perfectly executing the wrong things."
The number one thing the greatest leaders share: character. Not moral or ethical character. Your makeup as a person. How you're glued together. Integrity comes from the word that means wholeness. The great performers are drivers of tasks and relationships.
The highest performers utilize coaching the most. Henry expected the disastrous leaders  to be the ones calling. It was the exact opposite. The ones crushing it are the ones who reach out. The struggling ones rarely do.
The greatest leaders reverse the law of entropy: things get worse over time. But entropy only applies to a closed system. Open the system to a new energy source from the outside plus intelligence to organize it, and you can reverse it. That's what coaches, mentors, and advisors do. A leader is a closed system when the only voices they're ever listening to are the ones in their head.
The greatest leaders embrace negative realities. They move toward problems. Not to nuke them, but to either resolve them or transform them into something better.
Reflection Questions
In how many areas of your life are you just barking at the door, working hard at activities without ever stopping to ask if any of it is getting you where you want to go?
Is your current vision a metric, or a compelling picture of a future state that would make people want to sacrifice for it?
Where in your life are you a closed system? Whose voices outside your head could open you up to new energy and intelligence?
More Learning
#229 - Dr. Henry Cloud: Be So Good They Can't Ignore You
#050 - Dr. Henry Cloud: Integrity is the Wake You Leave Behind
#682 - Will Guidara: Adversity is a Terrible Thing to Waste
Podcast Chapters
00:00 The Price of Becoming – Pre-Order Now!
01:13 Meet Dr. Henry Cloud
02:40 The Leadership GPS: Where Are You Going?
04:54 Step 2: Building the Right Team Around You
06:09 Steps 3-5: Strategy, Measurement, and Adapt
10:45 Why the Best Leaders Carve Out Time to Think
15:50 Why a Revenue Number Is Not a Vision
18:20 Crafting a Vision People Will Sacrifice For
23:12 The HVAC Story, Joe Girard, and the Dream Maker
27:38 Trust: The First Thing Every Leader Must Build
30:04 Alan Mulally's Red-Yellow-Green Meeting at Ford
32:38 How to Run Status Reviews That Actually Work
34:26 Accountability Should Be an Immune System, Not Autoimmune
38:18 Measure Activities, Not Goals
43:10 Micro Drivers: The Atomic 80/20 Rule
45:14 The Voices Outside Your Head: Peers and Accountability
47:47 The #1 Trait of Sustained Excellence: Character
50:39 The Greatest Leaders Reverse Entropy
56:17 EOPC