Episode-86; Falling Up

Video Version

About the Podcast

Welcome to The Outliers Inn: Where Failure Is a Launchpad and Redundancy Is a "Plot Twist!"

Greetings, fellow misfits and spreadsheet-scarred consultants! Welcome to another delightfully dysfunctional episode of The Outliers Inn, the podcast where career detours are not only expected—they're celebrated.

This episode's theme? "Falling Up"—because sometimes, getting fired, downsized, or reorganized out of existence is just what the career doctor ordered. Around here, we call that "promotion by ejection."

Host JP kicks things off by revealing that nearly everyone who's ever left his business has ended up in a better job—with one unfortunate exception who found a career in "advanced bottle studies." The rest? Gainfully employed, often far away from JP's watchful eye. Coincidence? Hmm.

Co-host Mule joins in with tales of career exits both glorious and absurd, usually triggered by someone with fewer qualifications and more PowerPoint slides. Together, they reflect on their podcast's redundant recording setup—because once you lose a great episode to the digital void, you get paranoid. (Yes, they hit "record" this time. Probably.)

Naturally, things veer wildly into failure analysis, and Boeing takes center stage. JP points to the company's shift from engineers to "spreadsheet heads" as the beginning of the end. If you wear a tie and carry Excel but not a wrench, you might be the problem. Mule highlights Boeing's outsourcing of 80% of the 777 project to Japan, likening it to an IKEA plane kit: "Some assembly required."

Then the conversation shifts from corporate crashes to personal pivots.

Andy from the UK has turned redundancy into a career strategy, popping out of companies and back into employment with enviable ease. His superpower? Optimism and a short memory. Pete, whose resume reads like a consultant-themed game of Mad Libs, has "fallen up" so often it's practically his brand.

Stephane, meanwhile, pivoted 180 degrees from managing people to influencing them—less stress, fewer spreadsheets, more sanity. When asked if he's ever helped someone else fall up (say, by firing them so hard they landed in a better job), he pleads the fifth, po