July 31, 2025 • 34 mins
Our guest this week is Josh Linkner, author of the book Big Little Breakthroughs. We talk about how to apply his principals of creative thinking for business to all areas of your life.
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Episode Transcript
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Unknown (00:08):
Josh, hello and welcome to another episode of
intelligence for your life. Thepodcast. Our guest this week is
Josh Linkner. He is the authorof the new book, big, little
bake breakthroughs, easy for meto say. We talk all about his
principles for creativethinking, how to, how to, how to
boost the creative thinking thatyou're doing in your own life.
Just a fantastic, fantasticallysmart person has talked to all
(00:31):
of the best people in indifferent areas for how to boost
your creative thinking, how tomake the little changes in your
life that add up to the bigchanges to get you to the place
you want to be. So very excitedto bring that to you. Thank you
guys so much for being part ofit today, and here we go. Two
quick pieces of intelligence.
One, when someone with so manyof us working and studying from
home, Google data shows thatsearches for productivity and
(00:51):
time management hit a five yearhigh last year. It spawned a new
type of social media influencer,productivity gurus, a simple
search for the word productivityon YouTube or Instagram pops up
content from influencers liketime saving tips, life lessons
and productivity hacks. Think weall need a little bit of that
while working from home,rethinking our work schedule.
(01:12):
How we make it work? I thinkthat's great. Okay, here we go.
One more to feel more energizedin the morning and sleep better
at night. Try this advice fromStanford University Medical
Center. Medical Center, get adose of natural light within
five minutes of waking up andspend half an hour in it. You
could walk your dog, do somestretches on your balcony, or
just drink your coffee and checkyour email by a window outside.
(01:33):
Is best, but just getting a doseof natural light tamps down the
production of your sleep hormonemelatonin, so you feel less
groggy and more awake. And thenonce night comes, your melatonin
will kick in into overdrive,helping you fall asleep faster.
Just one more hack that says,basically, act like a caveman.
You know, if you want to wakeup, be outside, if you want to
go to bed, turn off all yourlights and go to bed like that's
(01:56):
it's just more of that. Youknow, live, how we how we are
designed to live. How are youevolved to live? All right,
folks, that's enough of that, ifyou like that intelligence.
Thank you guys so much. Here ismy interview that I'm very
excited to bring you with JoshLinkner. Josh Linkner, I mean,
you are, you have, you have alot of bona fides, bona fide
days. I could go through themall. But most importantly, you
(02:18):
were author of the new book, BigLittle breakthroughs. It's not
your first book, it was likeyour fifth one. This
is number four, actually, four.
It'sincredible. All right, so first
of all, thank you so much formaking time for us today. I
reallyappreciate it. Yeah, truly a
pleasure to be with you.
So your book, you've done a lotof coaching, a lot of speaking
around the world. You've startedbusinesses yourself, your book,
(02:42):
Big Little breakthroughs. Howsmall everyday innovations drive
oversized results, the at itscore? Well, why don't you tell
me the thesis of it? So I'm notputting it what is, what is the
core of Big Littlebreakthroughs?
You know? So most of us think ofinnovation as these giant change
the world, billions of dollars,kind of things, and in that that
context, it's inaccessible. Sobig, little breakthroughs flips
(03:04):
that upside down and has peoplefocus on small, everyday
innovations to drive meaningfulresults. And the notion is that
these little, tiny, small, microinnovations, or small acts of
creativity are way less risky.
They're within the grasp of allof us. We can apply them to
every area of life, and whilewe're enjoying them, by the way,
we're cultivating the skill. Soit's sort of a win all around
it, and it's flippingtraditional innovation upside
(03:25):
down. This is more likeinnovation for the rest of us.
You know, one things I reallylike about that is, I think so
many of us look at innovationlike, look, we look at the most
innovative companies that aregoing right now, and you see
them and you go, Well, yeah. Imean, I definitely think
electric cars are going to bethe future, but I don't have
access to the capital or theengineering talent or the
(03:47):
business talent required tobegin to make a revolutionary,
you know, electric car company.
I don't have access to the kindof money and government
contracts necessary to start aspace company, or, or even,
even, you know, even a logisticscompany, like, like, what
Amazon's back end is. So what Ilike about this is it cuts out
some of the excuses we have formaking change in our lives,
(04:11):
because we it gets rid of the,well, I don't have the
resources, so I can't and itgets you into the world of,
well, what can I do? What arethe small things that I can do?
It really does a good job ofcultivating, or beginning to
cultivate, a growth mindset,which I think is really
important.
Yeah, you're so right. And thething is, you really don't need
(04:32):
to be wearing a hoodie or a labcoat to be innovative. And the
research, by the way, is crystalclear here that all of us as
human beings have enormousreservoirs of creative capacity,
and then think of it as dormantcreativity, and we may apply in
different ways, like I haveactually background playing jazz
guitar. So I play jazz guitarpretty well. I can't draw a
stick figure if I tried. Solet's get past the notion that
you have to be painting with oilon canvas to be creative. We can
(04:55):
be creative selling used cars.
You could be creative work in acustomer service desk. You could
be creative. In a family, or inyour church or in your community
or with your kids. So creativityis a universal thing. We all
have this capacity. And the bookreally helps people bring those
skills to the surface and putthem to use. You know, instead
of Creativity only looking like,like you said, like inventing
some new electric car, I'll tellyou what's everyday creativity.
You know, you warm up a glass ofwine, if you put ice in it, it
(05:17):
dilutes the wine. You know, whatcreative approaches a big little
breakthrough, use a frozenbreakthrough use a frozen
grape. Yeah, yeah, I've seenthat. I've seen that. It's
genius. So myonly point is that when we think
of creativity as something thatis within the grasp of all of us
and we can apply it to thethings that matter most to us in
our daily lives, it reallybecomes liberating, and it gives
us a whole new toolkit andframework to go for the things
(05:38):
that we care about the most.
So, okay, so, so baked into thisnotion is that we all have some
sort of inherent creativity thatwe can apply, right? So we have
this, these abilities. But, youknow, are we changing the world
by, are we changing even ourlives by putting the frozen
grape in the wine in order tokeep our white wine cool, or,
(06:01):
or, how does, how does the biglittle breakthrough drive, you
know, how do we get to the backend of that? How does it drive
the oversized results? BecauseI, I'll buy your idea that that
we all have this inherentcreativity. We don't need to
swing as big as you're talkingabout. We can just do little
changes. But do those littlechanges eventually become the
big, the big things that willchange our lives?
(06:22):
Yeah, awesome question, and theanswer is an emphatic yes. In
fact, it's funny. Harvard did astudy recently, and while we
celebrate the Elon Musk's in themedia, turns out, 72% of the
United States gross domesticproduct comes from big, little
breakthroughs, from from thosesmall ideas, the ideas that are
within, within the grasp of eachof us. And a good way to think
of it, perhaps, is the art formof pointillism. So if you ever
(06:43):
seen pointillism, yeah, youbasically use a single.of a
primary color. Anyone could doit. A four year old could put it
on the canvas. So the dot itselfisn't that hard, but you put a
couple more dots and a couplemore dots, and before long, it
cascades into something ofmeaning and substance. And so my
introduction to point myintroduction to pointillism, I
think, like a lot of people, wasfrom Ferris Bueller's Day Off,
(07:03):
because there's Sunday in thePark with Sunday afternoon in
the park is in the ChicagoMuseum, and it's in the it's in
Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Sojust thanks, thanks to John
Hughes for making that possible.
Amazing. Well, you're so right.
But that, you know, the idea isthat these little things really
do add up to big stuff and and,you know, it's true that that a
Picasso will be remembered forgenerations, but if you come up
(07:24):
with an idea that boosts yoursales revenue by 4% like that
means something or all of asudden you reduce safety hazard
than a factory by 4% awesome.
And so, you know, get there aredifferent flavors of innovation.
I'm not saying that we should,should ignore the big stuff, but
there's so much more opportunityfor us cultivating the little
stuff and having those stuff andhaving those little
ones add up to big things. Yeah,yeah. Okay, so, I mean, I
(07:49):
understand that those 4% changesin the law of large numbers
applies, like, if you have, ifyou have a factory, and you're
making and your work, you'reoperating a factory, 4080, hours
a week with multiple shifts thatmaybe your boss there and
switching that to four down, 4%that's lives that are going to
be saved, that's arms that aregoing to remain attached. I
mean, not to get overly dramaticabout it, but that's that I get
(08:12):
that. But if we're talking aboutit for the individual, how do we
begin to see those 4% changesmanifest into into larger
changes in our lives. Because Ithink a lot of people, a lot of
people go, Ah, what's the pointof making, you know, having a 4%
better marriage or having a 4%being a 4% better parent?
Well, let's go, you and me on atrip over to London for a
(08:34):
second. So one of the peoplethat I interviewed in the book
is a guy named trovan restorickand Troy, and someone you
probably never heard of he's notfancy. He doesn't make covers of
magazines. Soundslike a fictional character from
from Sherlock Holmes novel. Itabsolutely does. And by the way,
he looks like that. It's kind oflike the sophisticated looking
guy, but in ratty clothes.
Anyway, British accent the wholedeal. But trolling like he's a
(08:55):
normal guy. He went to college,barely scraped by. He took a
normal job after graduating,just trying to pay the bills,
but, but trellin really wasdrawn to the environment. He
just was like an outdoorsman,and so he learned that in
central London, the singlebiggest litter problem is
cigarette butts. So, you know,besides being unsightly, they're
terrible for the environment.
Little kids or animals caningest them. It's bad all
(09:16):
around. Cost millions of dollarsa year to clean up. It's not
effective. So they tried allthese things. They tried these
campaigns that would shamepeople into compliance. Nothing
works until trial in one day.
Has an idea, a big, littlebreakthrough. And what troen
came up with is something calledthe ballot bin, which is like
about two and a half feet tall.
It's this bright yellow metalbox with a glass front. It's
mounted at eye level, andthere's, there's a divider down
(09:38):
the middle of it. And basically,there's a question at the top.
It's a two part question. Forexample, which do you prefer
pizza or hamburgers? And there'sa little receptacle there that
allows people to vote with theirbutts. So you take your
cigarette butt, you stick itunder the thing that says pizza,
and you see it fall on top ofthe other cigarette butts. It's
like two bar charts next to eachother, and you can instantly see
which one is in the lead. So.
(10:00):
Look at this. This is non tech.
It didn't require 14 PhDs. Hedidn't have a billion dollar
budget. He didn't have, like,NASA Space materials. He came up
with this a big little idea. Youknow what happened? Cigarette
litter was reduced by 80% Yeah.
So Trello went on to start thiscompany now, and he's actually
now, he's live in 27 countries.
He's making a real dent in theenvironmental challenges, all
because he's a normal dude thatdecided to come up with a big
(10:20):
little breakthrough.
Do you see us all being able tohave that kind of stellar
breakthrough? Because eventhough that's a small thing, it
has a big impact. I don't knowthat I have that much innovation
in me every day.
Well, well, again, once again,the research is very clear that
creativity is very much likeyour weight, not your height. So
(10:42):
for me, I'm five, five on a goodday, and there ain't no way I'm
going to be six three tomorrow,but my weight, I can fluctuate
based on my behavior. I can Ican train and, you know,
nutrition and such, andcreativity is the same thing.
It's like a language or amuscle. It's something you can
learn and you can build. And sowhen we build that skill set,
doesn't mean that we're allgoing to become the next Jimi
Hendrix, but it does mean thatwe have a new tool to use for
whatever the things that areimportant, whether it's getting
(11:03):
a raise or or boosting yourrelationship with your spouse or
or being a better parent orgetting a you know, land in the
Jones account at work. Sowhatever the things are that
matter to you, this becomes animportant and often the most
important, differentiated assetto help you win in those in
those tough scenarios. So Iwould argue that you actually do
have that capability, and youcan apply it again. You might
have one big idea once a year,but you have, might have lots of
(11:25):
little small ones too, and theyall are good. We shouldn't we
shouldn't be dismissive of anidea just because it's small. We
should recognize that the smallthings add up to big stuff.
So what, how do we begin tobuild in the feedback for
ourselves into these smallchanges? Because like, like,
exercise is a great example. Somany people, they go to the gym,
and the first week that you'rethe gym, it hurts, and you just
(11:45):
have to motivate yourself to getover that. And eventually all of
the secondary elements ofexercise begin to take over and
give you that, that push. Howdid we begin to get to that
place with changes that are thatare not necessarily So somatic?
Well, one thing that's kindof cool is that creativity is a
high leverage activity, and thata small tweak to creativity can
yield a disproportionatelylarger gain. So there is sort of
(12:06):
that feedback loop that willcome certainly over time. But
the thing I always recommendpeople to do is think about, you
know, we upgrade all stuff, alot of things in our lives. We
upgrade our wardrobes or ourcars or our tech or whatever.
Why couldn't we think aboutgiving ourselves a Creativity
Upgrade. And so in that context,I'm not suggesting 100% or
1,000% Creativity Upgrade. I'msuggesting a 5% Creativity
(12:26):
Upgrade. So 5% totally withinthe grasp of all of us. That
seems reasonable, and with alittle bit of deliberate effort,
a little bit of cultivating thatskill, a little bit of practice,
we can start to really unlockgreat outcomes. Because often
outcomes in our lives arebinary. You know, you win the
job or you lose it. You win theaccount, you lose it. And if
this can be that little extrasomething that pushes you over
(12:47):
the top again, it's a highleverage activity that I think
people will very quickly startto see the gains. You know, once
we can get past the myths, getpast the Oh, I'm just not
creative. I wasn't born thatway, or I don't have enough
money or time, by the way, oneof the funniest things that I
always hear is, hey, I just Iwant to be creative, but I don't
have fill in the blank, right? Idon't have enough money, I don't
have enough time, I don't haveenough bandwidth, I don't have
enough raw materials, I don'thave office space, whatever the
(13:10):
what is, the thing is, but Iwould respectfully say this, if
the amount of external resourcessomebody has equals the amount
of creativity they have, thefederal government would be the
most creative organization onthe planet, and startups,
startups would be the least. Andwe know exactly the opposite is
true. So I think we really candouble down on this internal
sense of of creative wonder.
(13:31):
Look, we all had it as kids.
You've never met a non creativefour year old. So let's kind of
reconnect to those roots and putthem to use again, productively.
I'm not suggesting people drawon the walls with crayons. I'm
suggesting people use theircreativity to drive the outcomes
that they seek.
How do you begin? I mean, I knowyou do you do some speaking and
talk. How do you begin to unpackpeople who have ingrained self
(13:55):
talk, negative self talk. Youknow, the longer we go, the
longer we're separated from thatfour year old you were just
talking about, the harder it isfor us to engage in this kind of
creativity. I think our sort ofentrenched ideas of ourselves
get in the way. So how do youbegin to break that open and
begin to make that first change?
Well, the first thing isdispelling some myths around,
(14:17):
you know, who's creative andwho's not and such, but the best
thing I would recommend is usingtechniques. So if think about
this, let's say, in the backyardof your house you had, you had
an oil well, and you want to getto that oil so ineffective way
would be using a plastic shovel,a more effective way we'd be
using, you know, commercialgrade equipment. So most of us
try to dig, essentially for ourcreativity, using a plastic
(14:37):
shovel, we use outdatedtechniques like brainstorming,
which are wildly get out of dateand effective. Here's a simple
example. There's a technique,and I have, like, I share a
whole toolkit in the book andalso online of better
techniques. But one of them,it's pretty fun, is called Roll
storming. So roll storming isbrainstorming, but in character,
here's the rub. Let's say, let'ssay you're trying to take on a
(14:58):
real problem, like, hey, how dowe. You know, grow revenue by
15% next quarter. So instead ofeveryone in the room sitting
around sharing their safeanswers, their puny answers
because they don't want to saysomething foolish or look wrong
or offend the boss, everybodypicks a character. So maybe
someone picks Steve Jobs. Well,there's no but no way that
people in the room are going tolaugh at Steve for coming up
(15:19):
with a big idea. They mightlaugh at Steve for coming up
with a small one. So now, inthis example, you aka Steve.
You're totally liberated. You'renot responsible for the ideas
you share. You're just roleplaying that you're Steve Jobs.
So the way it works, you pickanybody you want. You could be
an author, you could be amusician. You could be a villain
or a hero, fictitious whatever asports legend. And everyone in
the room picks their owncharacter and actually takes on
(15:40):
the real world problem, as ifthey are somebody else. And I've
seen this happen in real time,and the results are staggering.
People who are all frozen up anduncomfortable being creative,
they get into a different role,and the barriers come down, and
the whiteboards are filledwith ideas interesting. It gives
you permission. Basically givesyou permission to look stupid,
because you don't look stupid.
(16:02):
Steve Jobs looks stupid.
Exactly. You don't look stupid.
Bill Gates looks stupid. I mean,so you just really get to put
that on its head. I like that.
That's That's exactlyright. And by the funny enough,
I did this with a group ofexecutives one time at Sony,
Japan. I met this guy was astiffest human being I've ever
met in my life. You know, darksuit, white shirt, tie, stiff as
a board. Anyway, we got him rollstorming as Yoda, I have never
seen personal transformationlike this. This dude's jacket
(16:27):
off, his ties undone. He's like,leaping around the room. And I
didn't teach him to be creative.
Those freshman year theaterclasses are really paying off
for him,exactly, right? You know? And he
had that inside all along. Butthe thing is that before it was
restricted, and we gave a newframework, a new technology, new
technique, and he was able toliberate that creative capacity.
(16:48):
Hmm, why doesn't? Why doesn'tbrainstorming work? Or what is,
what is the research there?
Because I haven't heard thatthis idea that brainstorming is
a bad move, I understand whythis is better, but you
mentioned that it doesn't workin general. So why? What is the
downside, if you can unlock thisto doing just standard
brainstorming? Yeah, sobrainstorming was invented in
(17:08):
1958 and one might say that alot of things have changed since
1958 so it's just an outdatedmodel, and it doesn't work for a
couple reasons. The first reasonis, by the way, the biggest
blocker of creative output isnot natural talent. The biggest
reason brainstorming doesn'twork is fear, and so fear, if
you think about it, thepoisonous force that holds us
back. And so let's say you havethis killer idea, but you're
(17:29):
unsure of it. Again, do you wantto risk your career? Do you want
to look foolish? Do you want tobe judged by your colleagues? So
we tend to share again, oursafe, puny ideas, our
incremental ones, rather thanour more profound ones. The
second thing that happens isthat we tend to co mingle two
distinct parts of the creativeprocess. One part of the
creative process is ideation,which is jamming and coming up
(17:50):
with new ideas. The second partof the creative process is
execution related, like, Willthis work? Well, who's going to
fund it? How you know, wheredoes it fit? The PowerPoint
deck? And so the problem is, ourbrains are so well developed in
Western thinking aroundexecution, we have like, these
big, giant execution brains andkind of puny creative brain
sometimes. So the minute someonecomes up with a creative idea,
(18:10):
which, by the way, most often,they're not perfect, because
it's just the start, there's oneperson in the room that has the
idea, and everybody else becomesthe instantly self appointed
idea police, right? And theysay, Oh, well, that's never
going to work. We tried thatback in 1987 that didn't work.
And so everyone pounces on thatidea, and they prematurely
extinguish it. So when youreally need to separate
ideation, I call it idea jam,and I prefer that to
(18:33):
brainstorming and let thoseideas come out in full force,
unregulated, withoutrestriction, and then later,
separately, part two, figure outhow to best execute them.
Okay, so we're gonna take aquick break. We come back. I
want to come up with some moreways to unlock our creativity,
as well as how to begin tofilter out what how to actually
(18:56):
be those, those executivethinkers that that you were just
criticizing. But we eventuallyhave to get to the practical. So
when we come back, I want, Iwant to talk about both of those
things. Take a quick break. Joshlink there, before we took a
break, we were talking aboutabout, you know, role play, role
storming, versus, versusbrainstorming, and how that
(19:18):
unlocks the creativity. Do youhave other other ways of
allowing us to tap into ournatural creativity that the we
normally that normally stop us?
Yeah, I do. So in the new book,Big Little breakthroughs, I
cover the eight obsessions ofeveryday innovators. And these
are mindset shifts that areagain within the grasp of all of
us, that we can really put intopractice. And then we go, you
(19:40):
know, they're filled with lotsof stories and examples, and
they're fun, like one of them iscalled, using every drop of
toothpaste, which is basicallyabout getting kind of scrappy
and when you're resourceconstrained. Another one is
called, don't forget the dinnermint, where you're sort of
plussing up an idea with alittle creative something extra,
but, but to answer yourquestion, back
on technique real fast, but you.
Because, because I feel like thethe every drop of toothpaste
(20:01):
thing is the kind of stuff thatthat Google asks as part of
their hiring because, you know,they get these people from all
over, but they really, theyreally emphasize creative
problem solving in their hiringprocess. I mean, they're famous
for it, and because they believeit drives their innovation. So,
like they would ask questionsof, how do you get all of the,
you know, they give youtoothpaste and ask you to get
(20:21):
all of the stuff out of it,things, things like that. Is
that, is that kind of what youmean by that?
Well, those are actually twodifferent so creative problem
solving. Totally agree andsupport the notion that the
principle of using every drop oftoothpaste is actually more
about around being resourcefuland scrap so it's around
figuring out, like, like theythink about MacGyver, you know,
MacGyver didn't, didn't havesuperpowers. You couldn't use X
(20:43):
ray vision, but, but, but he, hefigured it out with the role of
duct tape, yeah. And so that'sreally what it's more about, is
being inventive in usingingenuity, but, but anyway, back
to your question abouttechnique. So I identified 13
techniques, like the like rollstorming, that are very powerful
for IDEA extraction. You mightthink of another one that's kind
of fun is called the judo flip.
So the way the judo flip worksis it lets you're trying to
(21:05):
accomplish something, you make alist of, how have you always
done it before? What's theprevailing wisdom, what is the
conventional approach? And thenyou start draw a line down the
page, and next to each entry,you just ask yourself, What's
the polar opposite? What wouldit look like if I did the total
opposite? So just a quickexample I just read about. Just
read about this couple days ago.
There's a 65,000 Chineserestaurants in North America,
(21:28):
and they're all kind of like,very similar. And they also
often have puffery, like theworld's greatest egg roll or the
best egg foo young in New YorkCity, right? So there's all this
puffery, and they all kind oflook the same. So enter a non
traditional Chinese restaurantin in Montreal, and the owner
decided to judo flip that. Sonext every entry on the item on
(21:49):
the menu, there's a little thingthat says, owners comments,
oh, I've seen this. I've seenthis. Oh my gosh. I've seen Yes,
go, go, go, yeah. It'shysterically funny. They're
like, Oh, you want this dish.
Honestly, that's not that goodorder the other dish instead, or
this dish, it's just not thatauthentic or right? This one's a
little soggy if you, if you waittoo long. And so he's like, sort
of criticizing his own thinginstead of puffery. It's the
(22:10):
opposite. He Judo flipped it,and as a result, here you and I
are talking about thisrestaurant
today. Yeah, oh yeah, that's,that's okay. That's genius. But
now, okay, we know that thatworked. We know that that idea
of of judo flipping, so So, Imean, so far, the two techniques
that we've the practicaltechniques we've given is, is
(22:32):
the idea of of role, rollstorming, where you where you
put on someone else's persona,and brainstorm from their
perspective. Solve the problemfrom their perspective. The uh,
perspective. The this is, thisis taking the the traditional
model and and pushing back anddoing the opposite, right, which
is the judo flip. How do youbegin to because I know that
(22:54):
this, that the Montreal, theMontreal thing worked because I
heard about it. You've heardabout it, but also, how do you
get over the fear that this is abad idea I'm criticizing, I'm
criticizing my meals that I wantpeople to buy. You know what I
mean? Like, how does, how do youget over that hump of the of the
(23:15):
sort of, you know, either theexecutive function of the
executives in the room, or theexecutive function of your own
brain telling you this is a badidea.
Excellent question. So mostoften, when we think of
deploying an idea, we think ofit's all or nothing, like either
do it or you don't do it. Youbet your whole future, and it's
scary and risky and all that. Sothe stakes are that high. You
gravitate to doing nothing,right? The best suggestion I
have in one of the principles,actually, it's called open a
(23:37):
test kitchen. Funny enough,although it's not really food
related, but the notion isgetting getting getting around
an experimentation mindset. Solet's say you had that idea in
your Chinese restaurant inMinneapolis, instead of just
changing every menu and puttingon a press release, you might
say, what if I did it with onemenu and I tried it in one lunch
shift on a Tuesday afternoon,and then I asked customers
afterwards what they thought ofit. And so the notion is around
(23:58):
taking lots of lots of bets,lots of swings, but keeping them
in controlled experiments, smallprototypes. You know, it's fixed
time, fixed money, and soideally, any one of us might be
running five or 10 little miniexperiments at any one time,
recognizing full well that 80%are going to fail. So let's get
those ones that aren't going towork out. If everyone hated it,
great. Move on to the next idea.
But let's say people thought,they chuckled, they thought it
was great. They wanted to take aselfie with it, I still wouldn't
(24:20):
roll it out permanently. Then Ido a second test. I might test
it for a week. I might test itfor a month. And so by the time
you roll something out, you derisk the creative process. So
being being creative doesn'tmean taking irresponsible risk.
And I might argue that doingnothing is far riskier than
trying new ideas in adisciplined way.
I mean, look, I have been sayingthis a lot, especially since the
(24:42):
pandemic that you know our ourattachment to the secure is very
clearly misplaced, right? Weare. We are clearly walking
around in a world where wherethe status quo is no longer the
safe the safe bet. So we do haveto be constantly changing. We do
have to be constantly tappinginto this career. Creative
mindset. There's, there is nomore being able to sit on the
(25:03):
sidelines and let life happen.
We have to be doing thesethings. I mean, I agree so, so
firmly about that.
You know, it's funny. I've beenin business now 30 years, and
I'll tell you, the one thingthat I've learned is that too
often people overestimate therisk of trying something new,
but they underestimate the riskof standing still.
Oof. Oof, oof. I mean, I thinkthat's gonna, that's gonna, if
(25:24):
it doesn't, that doesn't punchyou in the gut right now, then,
then maybe you don't reallyfully understand what he's
saying. Because, yes, you'reabsolutely right. We, I think
we, we think of that we, I thinkfor a lot of us, we tend to be
those people in the room thatyou were describing before where
we just spend a lot of timebatting down our own ideas,
batting down our own finding outthat coming up with the ways
(25:46):
that it won't work, instead ofengaging and making the sort of
small changes like your likeyour book, suggests that will,
that will we can check and makesure that they work. You know,
like the Pixar did at thebeginning, where they just were
animating a little lamp as aproof of concept that computer
animation could work. You know,these kinds of things are, how
(26:10):
are, how big ideas eventuallycome. So I do love that. Wow. I
do. I want to get into, I wantto get into how we can begin
applying this to some otherareas of our life. Because I
don't know that a lot of us aregoing to sit in a room and go,
How would Steve Jobs approachrepairing my marriage or my
relationship with my teenagedaughter? So you know, how do
(26:33):
you how do you begin to applythis on in things other than
business where, where thetesting can be sort of done with
multiple people, as opposed toyou can't really test on your
kids in the same way? Can you?
Thatdoesn't sound very good, does
it? So, no, I wouldn't test onmy kids, right? But
here's but because this don'thave another you don't have
another group to try it on. Solike the, you know, to go to the
(26:54):
just to flesh settle, the moreto go to the Chinese food
example, you know, the peoplethat come in the lunch on
Tuesday are not going to be thesame people that come in for the
dinner rush on Friday. It'sdifferent people. So if you try
something and failed, you're notkilling the Friday night crowd.
But when you have a kid, youknow, the stakes are a lot
higher for you to try somethingand fail.
Well, that's true. I certainlynot advising people you know,
(27:17):
test life threatening ideas,threatening ideas, but even just
relationship changing ideas,yeah, but you can still test
stuff. I mean, you know, youcould say, Hey, we're gonna we
have an idea for a once a weekfamily check in, you know, try
it for a month and see how itworks. If you don't like it,
then discard it. So I think youcan, you can apply testing in
personal relationships. But acouple other principles I just
want to share quickly. One ofthem, one of the principles in
(27:37):
the book, we call it, startbefore you're ready. And so the
notion of starting before you'reready is instead of waiting for
a directive or for permission oruntil all conditions are
perfect, it's getting aftersomething knowing full well you
don't have all the answers, andit's a willingness to be agile
and course correct and sort ofadapt and pivot as you go. What
we find is you're better offjust starting on something than
waiting around until your planis perfectly set in stone. So,
(27:59):
you know, that's one thing.
Another principle, though, thatwe talk about is called break it
to fix it. So a good way yousay, how do you do this in your
personal lives? Mechanically?
What you want to do is examine asystem or process or whatever
you happen to be doing and thatmight be working fine. You know,
instead of waiting tillsomething fails, let's say,
let's say your something'sworking great. Well, let's
(28:20):
examine it. So you sort of takeit, put under the microscope and
deconstruct it. Say, Okay, whatare the individual components of
this thing? And then you examinethem and say, Okay, is there a
way I could put them backtogether in a better way? Could
I substitute something out?
Could I add something to it? Andso when you have this sort of
break it to fix it approach,you're challenging the way
things are, instead of justaccepting them blindly. So a
really funny example of this inaction your personal life. So
(28:43):
Halloween, time you ever carve apumpkin? Yes. How do you do it?
First thing I do is, I carve, Iopen up the top and I take out
the guts, right? Sothat's what everybody does. And
you just probably do that,because that's the way pumpkins
are carved. Yes. The problemwith that is that, first of all,
you carve out this. You got tostick your hand in there. They
get all full of goop, and then,and then, you know, you got to
carry it around. It becomes allslippery, and it makes a mess,
(29:05):
by the way, try lighting oncandle. You got to stick your
hand down that hole and getsecondary burns. So here's,
here's, here's a break it, tofix it, approach, carve it from
the bottom. So this is going toblow your mind, but think, think
about it. You carve a hole inthe bottom. All the gunk falls
out. You get to use gravity. Youwant to carry it around, use the
handle on the top that natureintended. And you want to light
the candle. You put the basedown, put the stop on it,
(29:26):
overlay the pump.
Stop, this makes too much sense.
Stop, game changer, right? GameChanger.
Incidentally, no one listeningtoday will ever carve a pumpkin
the same way. No, yeah. And soagain, the point isn't about
pumpkins, per se, but it'saround what let's challenge
those things in our lives thatwe don't necessarily think are
wrong. Necessarily think arewrong, but just say, Okay, is
there a way we could be morecreative with it, and that could
(29:46):
be the way that we, you know,mow the lawn, or the way that we
interact with our friends, oranywhere in between,
yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah. So,so, yeah. You can. You can do
those small things. You can thenyou can try them out. You can
apply them and. And and seewhat's working, and then slowly
roll them out into more areas ofyour life. And you've what, 13
(30:07):
different methods like this laidout in your in the book.
Yeah. So the book covers, youknow, big picture. There's eight
core mindsets, which are, again,within the grasp of all of us
think that we can focus on as aprinciple. And then there are
these, these tactics, and sothroughout the book. And of
course, there's some onlinesupplement that that are
tactics, very practical toolslike Judo flipping or or like
roll storming. Another one'sfunny was called the bad idea
(30:29):
brainstorm, where you start bybrainstorming bad ideas and then
examine them to see if there'sany good ones in there. So yeah,
they're fun, they're nontraditional, and they're very
effective in bringing creativityto the surface.
Amazing. You talk about mindset.
I want to wrap this up, but I dowant to talk about the
importance of mindset as we, aswe begin to close, you know, you
say eight core mindsets. Areyou? Are you implying that we
that there's sort of eightcategories that we fall into in
(30:51):
our perception of ourselves? Or,how does that? What does that?
What does that? How does thatreflect in this idea of big,
little breakthroughs?
Yeah, so I've had the chance,you know, in the research, I
spent over 1000 hours inresearch and interviews with
incredible people, you know,CEOs, billionaires, celebrity
entrepreneurs, but also peoplelike we mentioned, like trouble
(31:11):
and restarek, who is an everydayperson doing really incredible
things. And what I found throughthis, and really through my body
of work over the last manydecades studying creativity, is
that there are some commonpatterns, common mindsets of the
most innovative people, andthat's what we cover in the
book. And so they're notnecessarily taking people's
existing mindsets. It's moresharing the commonalities among
everyday innovators. And some ofthese, you know, which you
(31:32):
covered. Another one realquickly, is called fall seven
times stand eight, which is, youknow, the phrase itself is part
of a Zen proverb, but the notionis, basically, it's around
understanding, how do you bounceback from adversity, which is
inevitable when you have asetback or a challenge, you
know, what do you do to get backafter it? And it's sort of, it's
the fusion of kind of creativityand resilience. So the mindsets
themselves are pretty easy tounderstand, but then they're
(31:54):
supported with a lot of, youknow, sort of research driven
data, but also stories of howpeople have put these ideas into
action to drive great resultsfor themselves and those around
them. Yeah, yeah. The book BigLittle breakthroughs linked to
where you can buy it in the shownotes. Josh Linkner, thank you
so much for your time. Today,I'm gonna ask you two last
things, first and foremost,aside from buying the book,
(32:16):
which everybody needs to do,where, where can people follow
up with you?
Thank you for that. So I'm onsocial media, on all channels.
Just my name at Josh Linker. Youcan also check me out at Josh
linker.com or Big Littlebreakthroughs.com
link to the website in the shownotes, as well as Josh's social
media accounts. One lastquestion, and I ask it to
(32:38):
everybody, what is one thing wecan all start doing today that
will make our lives a whole lotbetter.
One thing today people can do isgive yourself a time frame on
this, like for the next 21 days.
See if you can uncover onecreative idea, a teeny, tiny,
little one. You don't have to doit. Just think of it once a day.
So I'm talking about littlestuff. For example, next time
you go to order a pizza, ask forthe pepperoni under the cheese
(33:00):
instead of on top. So just allyou're doing is challenging
yourself, sort of like creativejumping jacks, one little
creative flip that you could doonce a day. And what will
happen, by the way, is youcreate momentum, and it starts
to seep into you, and it becomespart of who you are, and then it
starts to build. And that's,that's the exciting thing to me,
one big little breakthrough at atime.
Put the milk in before thecereal, like a weirdo, there you
(33:22):
go. Love that. Oh man, Josh,thank you so much for your time.
We really appreciate it and and,yeah, just, just a lot, a lot to
ruminate over there. So thankyou
truly. My pleasure. Thanks againfor having the opportunity to
chat with you today. That's itfor our show today. Thank you
guys so much for being a part ofit. If you like the show, please
rate, comment and subscribe onApple podcast, Spotify,
(33:42):
Stitcher, wherever you get yourpodcast, helps us out a lot.
Follow up with us,facebook.com/john, TASH, where
we spend a lot of time. We golive there several times a week.
We're always trying to interactwith you guys. John is also on
Instagram at John TASH,underscore, Ify L I am Gib
Gerard. You can find me onInstagram and Twitter at Gib
Gerard, or facebook.com/give,Gerard. I try to respond to
every message, every comment,every DM about the show. I've
(34:04):
even had guests on that you guyshave recommended, because
ultimately, I do the show foryou guys. So thank you so much
for listening. You.
Josh, hello and welcome to another episode of
intelligence for your life. Thepodcast. Our guest this week is
Josh Linkner. He is the authorof the new book, big, little
bake breakthroughs, easy for meto say. We talk all about his
principles for creativethinking, how to, how to, how to
boost the creative thinking thatyou're doing in your own life.
Just a fantastic, fantasticallysmart person has talked to all
(00:31):
of the best people in indifferent areas for how to boost
your creative thinking, how tomake the little changes in your
life that add up to the bigchanges to get you to the place
you want to be. So very excitedto bring that to you. Thank you
guys so much for being part ofit today, and here we go. Two
quick pieces of intelligence.
One, when someone with so manyof us working and studying from
home, Google data shows thatsearches for productivity and
(00:51):
time management hit a five yearhigh last year. It spawned a new
type of social media influencer,productivity gurus, a simple
search for the word productivityon YouTube or Instagram pops up
content from influencers liketime saving tips, life lessons
and productivity hacks. Think weall need a little bit of that
while working from home,rethinking our work schedule.
(01:12):
How we make it work? I thinkthat's great. Okay, here we go.
One more to feel more energizedin the morning and sleep better
at night. Try this advice fromStanford University Medical
Center. Medical Center, get adose of natural light within
five minutes of waking up andspend half an hour in it. You
could walk your dog, do somestretches on your balcony, or
just drink your coffee and checkyour email by a window outside.
(01:33):
Is best, but just getting a doseof natural light tamps down the
production of your sleep hormonemelatonin, so you feel less
groggy and more awake. And thenonce night comes, your melatonin
will kick in into overdrive,helping you fall asleep faster.
Just one more hack that says,basically, act like a caveman.
You know, if you want to wakeup, be outside, if you want to
go to bed, turn off all yourlights and go to bed like that's
(01:56):
it's just more of that. Youknow, live, how we how we are
designed to live. How are youevolved to live? All right,
folks, that's enough of that, ifyou like that intelligence.
Thank you guys so much. Here ismy interview that I'm very
excited to bring you with JoshLinkner. Josh Linkner, I mean,
you are, you have, you have alot of bona fides, bona fide
days. I could go through themall. But most importantly, you
(02:18):
were author of the new book, BigLittle breakthroughs. It's not
your first book, it was likeyour fifth one. This
is number four, actually, four.
It'sincredible. All right, so first
of all, thank you so much formaking time for us today. I
reallyappreciate it. Yeah, truly a
pleasure to be with you.
So your book, you've done a lotof coaching, a lot of speaking
around the world. You've startedbusinesses yourself, your book,
(02:42):
Big Little breakthroughs. Howsmall everyday innovations drive
oversized results, the at itscore? Well, why don't you tell
me the thesis of it? So I'm notputting it what is, what is the
core of Big Littlebreakthroughs?
You know? So most of us think ofinnovation as these giant change
the world, billions of dollars,kind of things, and in that that
context, it's inaccessible. Sobig, little breakthroughs flips
(03:04):
that upside down and has peoplefocus on small, everyday
innovations to drive meaningfulresults. And the notion is that
these little, tiny, small, microinnovations, or small acts of
creativity are way less risky.
They're within the grasp of allof us. We can apply them to
every area of life, and whilewe're enjoying them, by the way,
we're cultivating the skill. Soit's sort of a win all around
it, and it's flippingtraditional innovation upside
(03:25):
down. This is more likeinnovation for the rest of us.
You know, one things I reallylike about that is, I think so
many of us look at innovationlike, look, we look at the most
innovative companies that aregoing right now, and you see
them and you go, Well, yeah. Imean, I definitely think
electric cars are going to bethe future, but I don't have
access to the capital or theengineering talent or the
(03:47):
business talent required tobegin to make a revolutionary,
you know, electric car company.
I don't have access to the kindof money and government
contracts necessary to start aspace company, or, or even,
even, you know, even a logisticscompany, like, like, what
Amazon's back end is. So what Ilike about this is it cuts out
some of the excuses we have formaking change in our lives,
(04:11):
because we it gets rid of the,well, I don't have the
resources, so I can't and itgets you into the world of,
well, what can I do? What arethe small things that I can do?
It really does a good job ofcultivating, or beginning to
cultivate, a growth mindset,which I think is really
important.
Yeah, you're so right. And thething is, you really don't need
(04:32):
to be wearing a hoodie or a labcoat to be innovative. And the
research, by the way, is crystalclear here that all of us as
human beings have enormousreservoirs of creative capacity,
and then think of it as dormantcreativity, and we may apply in
different ways, like I haveactually background playing jazz
guitar. So I play jazz guitarpretty well. I can't draw a
stick figure if I tried. Solet's get past the notion that
you have to be painting with oilon canvas to be creative. We can
(04:55):
be creative selling used cars.
You could be creative work in acustomer service desk. You could
be creative. In a family, or inyour church or in your community
or with your kids. So creativityis a universal thing. We all
have this capacity. And the bookreally helps people bring those
skills to the surface and putthem to use. You know, instead
of Creativity only looking like,like you said, like inventing
some new electric car, I'll tellyou what's everyday creativity.
You know, you warm up a glass ofwine, if you put ice in it, it
(05:17):
dilutes the wine. You know, whatcreative approaches a big little
breakthrough, use a frozenbreakthrough use a frozen
grape. Yeah, yeah, I've seenthat. I've seen that. It's
genius. So myonly point is that when we think
of creativity as something thatis within the grasp of all of us
and we can apply it to thethings that matter most to us in
our daily lives, it reallybecomes liberating, and it gives
us a whole new toolkit andframework to go for the things
(05:38):
that we care about the most.
So, okay, so, so baked into thisnotion is that we all have some
sort of inherent creativity thatwe can apply, right? So we have
this, these abilities. But, youknow, are we changing the world
by, are we changing even ourlives by putting the frozen
grape in the wine in order tokeep our white wine cool, or,
(06:01):
or, how does, how does the biglittle breakthrough drive, you
know, how do we get to the backend of that? How does it drive
the oversized results? BecauseI, I'll buy your idea that that
we all have this inherentcreativity. We don't need to
swing as big as you're talkingabout. We can just do little
changes. But do those littlechanges eventually become the
big, the big things that willchange our lives?
(06:22):
Yeah, awesome question, and theanswer is an emphatic yes. In
fact, it's funny. Harvard did astudy recently, and while we
celebrate the Elon Musk's in themedia, turns out, 72% of the
United States gross domesticproduct comes from big, little
breakthroughs, from from thosesmall ideas, the ideas that are
within, within the grasp of eachof us. And a good way to think
of it, perhaps, is the art formof pointillism. So if you ever
(06:43):
seen pointillism, yeah, youbasically use a single.of a
primary color. Anyone could doit. A four year old could put it
on the canvas. So the dot itselfisn't that hard, but you put a
couple more dots and a couplemore dots, and before long, it
cascades into something ofmeaning and substance. And so my
introduction to point myintroduction to pointillism, I
think, like a lot of people, wasfrom Ferris Bueller's Day Off,
(07:03):
because there's Sunday in thePark with Sunday afternoon in
the park is in the ChicagoMuseum, and it's in the it's in
Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Sojust thanks, thanks to John
Hughes for making that possible.
Amazing. Well, you're so right.
But that, you know, the idea isthat these little things really
do add up to big stuff and and,you know, it's true that that a
Picasso will be remembered forgenerations, but if you come up
(07:24):
with an idea that boosts yoursales revenue by 4% like that
means something or all of asudden you reduce safety hazard
than a factory by 4% awesome.
And so, you know, get there aredifferent flavors of innovation.
I'm not saying that we should,should ignore the big stuff, but
there's so much more opportunityfor us cultivating the little
stuff and having those stuff andhaving those little
ones add up to big things. Yeah,yeah. Okay, so, I mean, I
(07:49):
understand that those 4% changesin the law of large numbers
applies, like, if you have, ifyou have a factory, and you're
making and your work, you'reoperating a factory, 4080, hours
a week with multiple shifts thatmaybe your boss there and
switching that to four down, 4%that's lives that are going to
be saved, that's arms that aregoing to remain attached. I
mean, not to get overly dramaticabout it, but that's that I get
(08:12):
that. But if we're talking aboutit for the individual, how do we
begin to see those 4% changesmanifest into into larger
changes in our lives. Because Ithink a lot of people, a lot of
people go, Ah, what's the pointof making, you know, having a 4%
better marriage or having a 4%being a 4% better parent?
Well, let's go, you and me on atrip over to London for a
(08:34):
second. So one of the peoplethat I interviewed in the book
is a guy named trovan restorickand Troy, and someone you
probably never heard of he's notfancy. He doesn't make covers of
magazines. Soundslike a fictional character from
from Sherlock Holmes novel. Itabsolutely does. And by the way,
he looks like that. It's kind oflike the sophisticated looking
guy, but in ratty clothes.
Anyway, British accent the wholedeal. But trolling like he's a
(08:55):
normal guy. He went to college,barely scraped by. He took a
normal job after graduating,just trying to pay the bills,
but, but trellin really wasdrawn to the environment. He
just was like an outdoorsman,and so he learned that in
central London, the singlebiggest litter problem is
cigarette butts. So, you know,besides being unsightly, they're
terrible for the environment.
Little kids or animals caningest them. It's bad all
(09:16):
around. Cost millions of dollarsa year to clean up. It's not
effective. So they tried allthese things. They tried these
campaigns that would shamepeople into compliance. Nothing
works until trial in one day.
Has an idea, a big, littlebreakthrough. And what troen
came up with is something calledthe ballot bin, which is like
about two and a half feet tall.
It's this bright yellow metalbox with a glass front. It's
mounted at eye level, andthere's, there's a divider down
(09:38):
the middle of it. And basically,there's a question at the top.
It's a two part question. Forexample, which do you prefer
pizza or hamburgers? And there'sa little receptacle there that
allows people to vote with theirbutts. So you take your
cigarette butt, you stick itunder the thing that says pizza,
and you see it fall on top ofthe other cigarette butts. It's
like two bar charts next to eachother, and you can instantly see
which one is in the lead. So.
(10:00):
Look at this. This is non tech.
It didn't require 14 PhDs. Hedidn't have a billion dollar
budget. He didn't have, like,NASA Space materials. He came up
with this a big little idea. Youknow what happened? Cigarette
litter was reduced by 80% Yeah.
So Trello went on to start thiscompany now, and he's actually
now, he's live in 27 countries.
He's making a real dent in theenvironmental challenges, all
because he's a normal dude thatdecided to come up with a big
(10:20):
little breakthrough.
Do you see us all being able tohave that kind of stellar
breakthrough? Because eventhough that's a small thing, it
has a big impact. I don't knowthat I have that much innovation
in me every day.
Well, well, again, once again,the research is very clear that
creativity is very much likeyour weight, not your height. So
(10:42):
for me, I'm five, five on a goodday, and there ain't no way I'm
going to be six three tomorrow,but my weight, I can fluctuate
based on my behavior. I can Ican train and, you know,
nutrition and such, andcreativity is the same thing.
It's like a language or amuscle. It's something you can
learn and you can build. And sowhen we build that skill set,
doesn't mean that we're allgoing to become the next Jimi
Hendrix, but it does mean thatwe have a new tool to use for
whatever the things that areimportant, whether it's getting
(11:03):
a raise or or boosting yourrelationship with your spouse or
or being a better parent orgetting a you know, land in the
Jones account at work. Sowhatever the things are that
matter to you, this becomes animportant and often the most
important, differentiated assetto help you win in those in
those tough scenarios. So Iwould argue that you actually do
have that capability, and youcan apply it again. You might
have one big idea once a year,but you have, might have lots of
(11:25):
little small ones too, and theyall are good. We shouldn't we
shouldn't be dismissive of anidea just because it's small. We
should recognize that the smallthings add up to big stuff.
So what, how do we begin tobuild in the feedback for
ourselves into these smallchanges? Because like, like,
exercise is a great example. Somany people, they go to the gym,
and the first week that you'rethe gym, it hurts, and you just
(11:45):
have to motivate yourself to getover that. And eventually all of
the secondary elements ofexercise begin to take over and
give you that, that push. Howdid we begin to get to that
place with changes that are thatare not necessarily So somatic?
Well, one thing that's kindof cool is that creativity is a
high leverage activity, and thata small tweak to creativity can
yield a disproportionatelylarger gain. So there is sort of
(12:06):
that feedback loop that willcome certainly over time. But
the thing I always recommendpeople to do is think about, you
know, we upgrade all stuff, alot of things in our lives. We
upgrade our wardrobes or ourcars or our tech or whatever.
Why couldn't we think aboutgiving ourselves a Creativity
Upgrade. And so in that context,I'm not suggesting 100% or
1,000% Creativity Upgrade. I'msuggesting a 5% Creativity
(12:26):
Upgrade. So 5% totally withinthe grasp of all of us. That
seems reasonable, and with alittle bit of deliberate effort,
a little bit of cultivating thatskill, a little bit of practice,
we can start to really unlockgreat outcomes. Because often
outcomes in our lives arebinary. You know, you win the
job or you lose it. You win theaccount, you lose it. And if
this can be that little extrasomething that pushes you over
(12:47):
the top again, it's a highleverage activity that I think
people will very quickly startto see the gains. You know, once
we can get past the myths, getpast the Oh, I'm just not
creative. I wasn't born thatway, or I don't have enough
money or time, by the way, oneof the funniest things that I
always hear is, hey, I just Iwant to be creative, but I don't
have fill in the blank, right? Idon't have enough money, I don't
have enough time, I don't haveenough bandwidth, I don't have
enough raw materials, I don'thave office space, whatever the
(13:10):
what is, the thing is, but Iwould respectfully say this, if
the amount of external resourcessomebody has equals the amount
of creativity they have, thefederal government would be the
most creative organization onthe planet, and startups,
startups would be the least. Andwe know exactly the opposite is
true. So I think we really candouble down on this internal
sense of of creative wonder.
(13:31):
Look, we all had it as kids.
You've never met a non creativefour year old. So let's kind of
reconnect to those roots and putthem to use again, productively.
I'm not suggesting people drawon the walls with crayons. I'm
suggesting people use theircreativity to drive the outcomes
that they seek.
How do you begin? I mean, I knowyou do you do some speaking and
talk. How do you begin to unpackpeople who have ingrained self
(13:55):
talk, negative self talk. Youknow, the longer we go, the
longer we're separated from thatfour year old you were just
talking about, the harder it isfor us to engage in this kind of
creativity. I think our sort ofentrenched ideas of ourselves
get in the way. So how do youbegin to break that open and
begin to make that first change?
Well, the first thing isdispelling some myths around,
(14:17):
you know, who's creative andwho's not and such, but the best
thing I would recommend is usingtechniques. So if think about
this, let's say, in the backyardof your house you had, you had
an oil well, and you want to getto that oil so ineffective way
would be using a plastic shovel,a more effective way we'd be
using, you know, commercialgrade equipment. So most of us
try to dig, essentially for ourcreativity, using a plastic
(14:37):
shovel, we use outdatedtechniques like brainstorming,
which are wildly get out of dateand effective. Here's a simple
example. There's a technique,and I have, like, I share a
whole toolkit in the book andalso online of better
techniques. But one of them,it's pretty fun, is called Roll
storming. So roll storming isbrainstorming, but in character,
here's the rub. Let's say, let'ssay you're trying to take on a
(14:58):
real problem, like, hey, how dowe. You know, grow revenue by
15% next quarter. So instead ofeveryone in the room sitting
around sharing their safeanswers, their puny answers
because they don't want to saysomething foolish or look wrong
or offend the boss, everybodypicks a character. So maybe
someone picks Steve Jobs. Well,there's no but no way that
people in the room are going tolaugh at Steve for coming up
(15:19):
with a big idea. They mightlaugh at Steve for coming up
with a small one. So now, inthis example, you aka Steve.
You're totally liberated. You'renot responsible for the ideas
you share. You're just roleplaying that you're Steve Jobs.
So the way it works, you pickanybody you want. You could be
an author, you could be amusician. You could be a villain
or a hero, fictitious whatever asports legend. And everyone in
the room picks their owncharacter and actually takes on
(15:40):
the real world problem, as ifthey are somebody else. And I've
seen this happen in real time,and the results are staggering.
People who are all frozen up anduncomfortable being creative,
they get into a different role,and the barriers come down, and
the whiteboards are filledwith ideas interesting. It gives
you permission. Basically givesyou permission to look stupid,
because you don't look stupid.
(16:02):
Steve Jobs looks stupid.
Exactly. You don't look stupid.
Bill Gates looks stupid. I mean,so you just really get to put
that on its head. I like that.
That's That's exactlyright. And by the funny enough,
I did this with a group ofexecutives one time at Sony,
Japan. I met this guy was astiffest human being I've ever
met in my life. You know, darksuit, white shirt, tie, stiff as
a board. Anyway, we got him rollstorming as Yoda, I have never
seen personal transformationlike this. This dude's jacket
(16:27):
off, his ties undone. He's like,leaping around the room. And I
didn't teach him to be creative.
Those freshman year theaterclasses are really paying off
for him,exactly, right? You know? And he
had that inside all along. Butthe thing is that before it was
restricted, and we gave a newframework, a new technology, new
technique, and he was able toliberate that creative capacity.
(16:48):
Hmm, why doesn't? Why doesn'tbrainstorming work? Or what is,
what is the research there?
Because I haven't heard thatthis idea that brainstorming is
a bad move, I understand whythis is better, but you
mentioned that it doesn't workin general. So why? What is the
downside, if you can unlock thisto doing just standard
brainstorming? Yeah, sobrainstorming was invented in
(17:08):
1958 and one might say that alot of things have changed since
1958 so it's just an outdatedmodel, and it doesn't work for a
couple reasons. The first reasonis, by the way, the biggest
blocker of creative output isnot natural talent. The biggest
reason brainstorming doesn'twork is fear, and so fear, if
you think about it, thepoisonous force that holds us
back. And so let's say you havethis killer idea, but you're
(17:29):
unsure of it. Again, do you wantto risk your career? Do you want
to look foolish? Do you want tobe judged by your colleagues? So
we tend to share again, oursafe, puny ideas, our
incremental ones, rather thanour more profound ones. The
second thing that happens isthat we tend to co mingle two
distinct parts of the creativeprocess. One part of the
creative process is ideation,which is jamming and coming up
(17:50):
with new ideas. The second partof the creative process is
execution related, like, Willthis work? Well, who's going to
fund it? How you know, wheredoes it fit? The PowerPoint
deck? And so the problem is, ourbrains are so well developed in
Western thinking aroundexecution, we have like, these
big, giant execution brains andkind of puny creative brain
sometimes. So the minute someonecomes up with a creative idea,
(18:10):
which, by the way, most often,they're not perfect, because
it's just the start, there's oneperson in the room that has the
idea, and everybody else becomesthe instantly self appointed
idea police, right? And theysay, Oh, well, that's never
going to work. We tried thatback in 1987 that didn't work.
And so everyone pounces on thatidea, and they prematurely
extinguish it. So when youreally need to separate
ideation, I call it idea jam,and I prefer that to
(18:33):
brainstorming and let thoseideas come out in full force,
unregulated, withoutrestriction, and then later,
separately, part two, figure outhow to best execute them.
Okay, so we're gonna take aquick break. We come back. I
want to come up with some moreways to unlock our creativity,
as well as how to begin tofilter out what how to actually
(18:56):
be those, those executivethinkers that that you were just
criticizing. But we eventuallyhave to get to the practical. So
when we come back, I want, Iwant to talk about both of those
things. Take a quick break. Joshlink there, before we took a
break, we were talking aboutabout, you know, role play, role
storming, versus, versusbrainstorming, and how that
(19:18):
unlocks the creativity. Do youhave other other ways of
allowing us to tap into ournatural creativity that the we
normally that normally stop us?
Yeah, I do. So in the new book,Big Little breakthroughs, I
cover the eight obsessions ofeveryday innovators. And these
are mindset shifts that areagain within the grasp of all of
us, that we can really put intopractice. And then we go, you
(19:40):
know, they're filled with lotsof stories and examples, and
they're fun, like one of them iscalled, using every drop of
toothpaste, which is basicallyabout getting kind of scrappy
and when you're resourceconstrained. Another one is
called, don't forget the dinnermint, where you're sort of
plussing up an idea with alittle creative something extra,
but, but to answer yourquestion, back
on technique real fast, but you.
Because, because I feel like thethe every drop of toothpaste
(20:01):
thing is the kind of stuff thatthat Google asks as part of
their hiring because, you know,they get these people from all
over, but they really, theyreally emphasize creative
problem solving in their hiringprocess. I mean, they're famous
for it, and because they believeit drives their innovation. So,
like they would ask questionsof, how do you get all of the,
you know, they give youtoothpaste and ask you to get
(20:21):
all of the stuff out of it,things, things like that. Is
that, is that kind of what youmean by that?
Well, those are actually twodifferent so creative problem
solving. Totally agree andsupport the notion that the
principle of using every drop oftoothpaste is actually more
about around being resourcefuland scrap so it's around
figuring out, like, like theythink about MacGyver, you know,
MacGyver didn't, didn't havesuperpowers. You couldn't use X
(20:43):
ray vision, but, but, but he, hefigured it out with the role of
duct tape, yeah. And so that'sreally what it's more about, is
being inventive in usingingenuity, but, but anyway, back
to your question abouttechnique. So I identified 13
techniques, like the like rollstorming, that are very powerful
for IDEA extraction. You mightthink of another one that's kind
of fun is called the judo flip.
So the way the judo flip worksis it lets you're trying to
(21:05):
accomplish something, you make alist of, how have you always
done it before? What's theprevailing wisdom, what is the
conventional approach? And thenyou start draw a line down the
page, and next to each entry,you just ask yourself, What's
the polar opposite? What wouldit look like if I did the total
opposite? So just a quickexample I just read about. Just
read about this couple days ago.
There's a 65,000 Chineserestaurants in North America,
(21:28):
and they're all kind of like,very similar. And they also
often have puffery, like theworld's greatest egg roll or the
best egg foo young in New YorkCity, right? So there's all this
puffery, and they all kind oflook the same. So enter a non
traditional Chinese restaurantin in Montreal, and the owner
decided to judo flip that. Sonext every entry on the item on
(21:49):
the menu, there's a little thingthat says, owners comments,
oh, I've seen this. I've seenthis. Oh my gosh. I've seen Yes,
go, go, go, yeah. It'shysterically funny. They're
like, Oh, you want this dish.
Honestly, that's not that goodorder the other dish instead, or
this dish, it's just not thatauthentic or right? This one's a
little soggy if you, if you waittoo long. And so he's like, sort
of criticizing his own thinginstead of puffery. It's the
(22:10):
opposite. He Judo flipped it,and as a result, here you and I
are talking about thisrestaurant
today. Yeah, oh yeah, that's,that's okay. That's genius. But
now, okay, we know that thatworked. We know that that idea
of of judo flipping, so So, Imean, so far, the two techniques
that we've the practicaltechniques we've given is, is
(22:32):
the idea of of role, rollstorming, where you where you
put on someone else's persona,and brainstorm from their
perspective. Solve the problemfrom their perspective. The uh,
perspective. The this is, thisis taking the the traditional
model and and pushing back anddoing the opposite, right, which
is the judo flip. How do youbegin to because I know that
(22:54):
this, that the Montreal, theMontreal thing worked because I
heard about it. You've heardabout it, but also, how do you
get over the fear that this is abad idea I'm criticizing, I'm
criticizing my meals that I wantpeople to buy. You know what I
mean? Like, how does, how do youget over that hump of the of the
(23:15):
sort of, you know, either theexecutive function of the
executives in the room, or theexecutive function of your own
brain telling you this is a badidea.
Excellent question. So mostoften, when we think of
deploying an idea, we think ofit's all or nothing, like either
do it or you don't do it. Youbet your whole future, and it's
scary and risky and all that. Sothe stakes are that high. You
gravitate to doing nothing,right? The best suggestion I
have in one of the principles,actually, it's called open a
(23:37):
test kitchen. Funny enough,although it's not really food
related, but the notion isgetting getting getting around
an experimentation mindset. Solet's say you had that idea in
your Chinese restaurant inMinneapolis, instead of just
changing every menu and puttingon a press release, you might
say, what if I did it with onemenu and I tried it in one lunch
shift on a Tuesday afternoon,and then I asked customers
afterwards what they thought ofit. And so the notion is around
(23:58):
taking lots of lots of bets,lots of swings, but keeping them
in controlled experiments, smallprototypes. You know, it's fixed
time, fixed money, and soideally, any one of us might be
running five or 10 little miniexperiments at any one time,
recognizing full well that 80%are going to fail. So let's get
those ones that aren't going towork out. If everyone hated it,
great. Move on to the next idea.
But let's say people thought,they chuckled, they thought it
was great. They wanted to take aselfie with it, I still wouldn't
(24:20):
roll it out permanently. Then Ido a second test. I might test
it for a week. I might test itfor a month. And so by the time
you roll something out, you derisk the creative process. So
being being creative doesn'tmean taking irresponsible risk.
And I might argue that doingnothing is far riskier than
trying new ideas in adisciplined way.
I mean, look, I have been sayingthis a lot, especially since the
(24:42):
pandemic that you know our ourattachment to the secure is very
clearly misplaced, right? Weare. We are clearly walking
around in a world where wherethe status quo is no longer the
safe the safe bet. So we do haveto be constantly changing. We do
have to be constantly tappinginto this career. Creative
mindset. There's, there is nomore being able to sit on the
(25:03):
sidelines and let life happen.
We have to be doing thesethings. I mean, I agree so, so
firmly about that.
You know, it's funny. I've beenin business now 30 years, and
I'll tell you, the one thingthat I've learned is that too
often people overestimate therisk of trying something new,
but they underestimate the riskof standing still.
Oof. Oof, oof. I mean, I thinkthat's gonna, that's gonna, if
(25:24):
it doesn't, that doesn't punchyou in the gut right now, then,
then maybe you don't reallyfully understand what he's
saying. Because, yes, you'reabsolutely right. We, I think
we, we think of that we, I thinkfor a lot of us, we tend to be
those people in the room thatyou were describing before where
we just spend a lot of timebatting down our own ideas,
batting down our own finding outthat coming up with the ways
(25:46):
that it won't work, instead ofengaging and making the sort of
small changes like your likeyour book, suggests that will,
that will we can check and makesure that they work. You know,
like the Pixar did at thebeginning, where they just were
animating a little lamp as aproof of concept that computer
animation could work. You know,these kinds of things are, how
(26:10):
are, how big ideas eventuallycome. So I do love that. Wow. I
do. I want to get into, I wantto get into how we can begin
applying this to some otherareas of our life. Because I
don't know that a lot of us aregoing to sit in a room and go,
How would Steve Jobs approachrepairing my marriage or my
relationship with my teenagedaughter? So you know, how do
(26:33):
you how do you begin to applythis on in things other than
business where, where thetesting can be sort of done with
multiple people, as opposed toyou can't really test on your
kids in the same way? Can you?
Thatdoesn't sound very good, does
it? So, no, I wouldn't test onmy kids, right? But
here's but because this don'thave another you don't have
another group to try it on. Solike the, you know, to go to the
(26:54):
just to flesh settle, the moreto go to the Chinese food
example, you know, the peoplethat come in the lunch on
Tuesday are not going to be thesame people that come in for the
dinner rush on Friday. It'sdifferent people. So if you try
something and failed, you're notkilling the Friday night crowd.
But when you have a kid, youknow, the stakes are a lot
higher for you to try somethingand fail.
Well, that's true. I certainlynot advising people you know,
(27:17):
test life threatening ideas,threatening ideas, but even just
relationship changing ideas,yeah, but you can still test
stuff. I mean, you know, youcould say, Hey, we're gonna we
have an idea for a once a weekfamily check in, you know, try
it for a month and see how itworks. If you don't like it,
then discard it. So I think youcan, you can apply testing in
personal relationships. But acouple other principles I just
want to share quickly. One ofthem, one of the principles in
(27:37):
the book, we call it, startbefore you're ready. And so the
notion of starting before you'reready is instead of waiting for
a directive or for permission oruntil all conditions are
perfect, it's getting aftersomething knowing full well you
don't have all the answers, andit's a willingness to be agile
and course correct and sort ofadapt and pivot as you go. What
we find is you're better offjust starting on something than
waiting around until your planis perfectly set in stone. So,
(27:59):
you know, that's one thing.
Another principle, though, thatwe talk about is called break it
to fix it. So a good way yousay, how do you do this in your
personal lives? Mechanically?
What you want to do is examine asystem or process or whatever
you happen to be doing and thatmight be working fine. You know,
instead of waiting tillsomething fails, let's say,
let's say your something'sworking great. Well, let's
(28:20):
examine it. So you sort of takeit, put under the microscope and
deconstruct it. Say, Okay, whatare the individual components of
this thing? And then you examinethem and say, Okay, is there a
way I could put them backtogether in a better way? Could
I substitute something out?
Could I add something to it? Andso when you have this sort of
break it to fix it approach,you're challenging the way
things are, instead of justaccepting them blindly. So a
really funny example of this inaction your personal life. So
(28:43):
Halloween, time you ever carve apumpkin? Yes. How do you do it?
First thing I do is, I carve, Iopen up the top and I take out
the guts, right? Sothat's what everybody does. And
you just probably do that,because that's the way pumpkins
are carved. Yes. The problemwith that is that, first of all,
you carve out this. You got tostick your hand in there. They
get all full of goop, and then,and then, you know, you got to
carry it around. It becomes allslippery, and it makes a mess,
(29:05):
by the way, try lighting oncandle. You got to stick your
hand down that hole and getsecondary burns. So here's,
here's, here's a break it, tofix it, approach, carve it from
the bottom. So this is going toblow your mind, but think, think
about it. You carve a hole inthe bottom. All the gunk falls
out. You get to use gravity. Youwant to carry it around, use the
handle on the top that natureintended. And you want to light
the candle. You put the basedown, put the stop on it,
(29:26):
overlay the pump.
Stop, this makes too much sense.
Stop, game changer, right? GameChanger.
Incidentally, no one listeningtoday will ever carve a pumpkin
the same way. No, yeah. And soagain, the point isn't about
pumpkins, per se, but it'saround what let's challenge
those things in our lives thatwe don't necessarily think are
wrong. Necessarily think arewrong, but just say, Okay, is
there a way we could be morecreative with it, and that could
(29:46):
be the way that we, you know,mow the lawn, or the way that we
interact with our friends, oranywhere in between,
yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah. So,so, yeah. You can. You can do
those small things. You can thenyou can try them out. You can
apply them and. And and seewhat's working, and then slowly
roll them out into more areas ofyour life. And you've what, 13
(30:07):
different methods like this laidout in your in the book.
Yeah. So the book covers, youknow, big picture. There's eight
core mindsets, which are, again,within the grasp of all of us
think that we can focus on as aprinciple. And then there are
these, these tactics, and sothroughout the book. And of
course, there's some onlinesupplement that that are
tactics, very practical toolslike Judo flipping or or like
roll storming. Another one'sfunny was called the bad idea
(30:29):
brainstorm, where you start bybrainstorming bad ideas and then
examine them to see if there'sany good ones in there. So yeah,
they're fun, they're nontraditional, and they're very
effective in bringing creativityto the surface.
Amazing. You talk about mindset.
I want to wrap this up, but I dowant to talk about the
importance of mindset as we, aswe begin to close, you know, you
say eight core mindsets. Areyou? Are you implying that we
that there's sort of eightcategories that we fall into in
(30:51):
our perception of ourselves? Or,how does that? What does that?
What does that? How does thatreflect in this idea of big,
little breakthroughs?
Yeah, so I've had the chance,you know, in the research, I
spent over 1000 hours inresearch and interviews with
incredible people, you know,CEOs, billionaires, celebrity
entrepreneurs, but also peoplelike we mentioned, like trouble
(31:11):
and restarek, who is an everydayperson doing really incredible
things. And what I found throughthis, and really through my body
of work over the last manydecades studying creativity, is
that there are some commonpatterns, common mindsets of the
most innovative people, andthat's what we cover in the
book. And so they're notnecessarily taking people's
existing mindsets. It's moresharing the commonalities among
everyday innovators. And some ofthese, you know, which you
(31:32):
covered. Another one realquickly, is called fall seven
times stand eight, which is, youknow, the phrase itself is part
of a Zen proverb, but the notionis, basically, it's around
understanding, how do you bounceback from adversity, which is
inevitable when you have asetback or a challenge, you
know, what do you do to get backafter it? And it's sort of, it's
the fusion of kind of creativityand resilience. So the mindsets
themselves are pretty easy tounderstand, but then they're
(31:54):
supported with a lot of, youknow, sort of research driven
data, but also stories of howpeople have put these ideas into
action to drive great resultsfor themselves and those around
them. Yeah, yeah. The book BigLittle breakthroughs linked to
where you can buy it in the shownotes. Josh Linkner, thank you
so much for your time. Today,I'm gonna ask you two last
things, first and foremost,aside from buying the book,
(32:16):
which everybody needs to do,where, where can people follow
up with you?
Thank you for that. So I'm onsocial media, on all channels.
Just my name at Josh Linker. Youcan also check me out at Josh
linker.com or Big Littlebreakthroughs.com
link to the website in the shownotes, as well as Josh's social
media accounts. One lastquestion, and I ask it to
(32:38):
everybody, what is one thing wecan all start doing today that
will make our lives a whole lotbetter.
One thing today people can do isgive yourself a time frame on
this, like for the next 21 days.
See if you can uncover onecreative idea, a teeny, tiny,
little one. You don't have to doit. Just think of it once a day.
So I'm talking about littlestuff. For example, next time
you go to order a pizza, ask forthe pepperoni under the cheese
(33:00):
instead of on top. So just allyou're doing is challenging
yourself, sort of like creativejumping jacks, one little
creative flip that you could doonce a day. And what will
happen, by the way, is youcreate momentum, and it starts
to seep into you, and it becomespart of who you are, and then it
starts to build. And that's,that's the exciting thing to me,
one big little breakthrough at atime.
Put the milk in before thecereal, like a weirdo, there you
(33:22):
go. Love that. Oh man, Josh,thank you so much for your time.
We really appreciate it and and,yeah, just, just a lot, a lot to
ruminate over there. So thankyou
truly. My pleasure. Thanks againfor having the opportunity to
chat with you today. That's itfor our show today. Thank you
guys so much for being a part ofit. If you like the show, please
rate, comment and subscribe onApple podcast, Spotify,
(33:42):
Stitcher, wherever you get yourpodcast, helps us out a lot.
Follow up with us,facebook.com/john, TASH, where
we spend a lot of time. We golive there several times a week.
We're always trying to interactwith you guys. John is also on
Instagram at John TASH,underscore, Ify L I am Gib
Gerard. You can find me onInstagram and Twitter at Gib
Gerard, or facebook.com/give,Gerard. I try to respond to
every message, every comment,every DM about the show. I've
(34:04):
even had guests on that you guyshave recommended, because
ultimately, I do the show foryou guys. So thank you so much
for listening. You.
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