January 2, 2025 • 30 mins
Are you looking for a Third Growth Option ℠ ?
This week's episode emphasizes the critical need for future-focused leadership in evolving business landscapes. Dev Patnaik discusses the pitfalls of present-centric thinking and offers practical strategies for balancing immediate tasks with future opportunities, underscoring that successful leaders look beyond the now to innovate and adapt.
• Importance of future-focused leadership
• Risks of being present-centric during rapid change
• Implementing a time diet to prioritize future tasks
• Neuroplasticity's role in shifting leadership mindsets
• Divergence and convergence in innovation processes
• Learning from failures of companies like Kodak and Blockbuster
• Strategies successful leaders use to anticipate change
Thank you for listening to this episode of TGO Podcast. You can find all episodes on our podcast page at www.reALIGNforResults.com. You can find me, Benno, host of TGO Podcast, there as well. Just email Benno@reALIGNforResults.com. Let's keep growing.
Always growing.
Benno Duenkelsbuehler
CEO & Chief Sherpa of (re)ALIGN
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, welcome to the Third Growth Officer podcast,
where we talk about all thingsgrowth, yes, even and especially
those hard parts where you shedsome skin and pick yourself up
by the bootstraps.
Hey, I'm Benno Dunkelspüler,growth Sherpa and OG hashtag
growth nerd.
We're on a mission to redefinesuccess inside and outside the
(00:23):
business, one TGO episode at atime.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
I'm Dave Pitnayak, I'm the CEO of Jump Associates
and I'm Benno's new best friend.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
And where are you located?
Speaker 2 (00:42):
I'm in San Mateo, california, california.
Dave, I'm in San.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Mateo, california, california.
Dave, I'm so excited to haveyou here.
So, first of all, welcome toThird Growth Option Podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Yeah, I am the host, and our friend and also former
TGO podcast guest, peterFriedman from DEMDECO,
introduced us.
I want to give a shout out toPeter for putting us together
and, dave, you are a businessleader and an academic and a
(01:15):
thought leader.
On the business side, you havefounded Jump Associates, a
leading strategy and innovationfirm, back in 1998.
You are currently its CEO.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
That's right, 1998.
That's a long time.
We're going on 27 years orsomething like that, isn't it,
my goodness?
Speaker 1 (01:36):
It's a year.
I remember well, because my nowwife and I got married, that
year Great wife and I gotmarried great um.
You are also an academic, anadjunct professor at stanford
university since 2003 is thatright?
2003, it seems longer.
But yes, yeah, okay, on yourwebsite or your linkedin.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
So all right that, if it if it's, if it says it on
linkedin, it must be true.
Right, it must be true.
Exactly, it must be true.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
You're an author of several books, board trustee of
Conscious Capitalism since 2018.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
You were a YPO member for eight years, until COVID,
or so I think.
Yeah, technically, I think I'mstill a member of YPO.
I'm not that Y anymore.
They kick you out of the baseorganization when you're not.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
You're an OPO.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
I'm an OPO now, exactly that's right.
But yeah, I think it coincidedwith COVID, because in 2020, I
turned 50.
And so then, they kick you out.
They elevate you to what theynow call YPO gold, which is
really YPO old.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
That's funny, dave.
You've also lived in Berlin,germany, so another connection
between you and me.
I was born in Germany, not inBerlin, but I've been there, and
so you and I share, uh, or I.
I have already learned in ourlast conversation and the email
(03:09):
exchange after that you enjoyand value discussion and arguing
in a good way, uh, so I hopewe're going to get a little bit
into you know, discussing andarguing I'm looking forward to
it.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Right it's, it's how I learn.
Right, because the best thingis is when you say something and
then the person you're talkingto says, no, that's totally
wrong, because then it's anopportunity to learn something
new that's exactly right, yeah,so, uh, the.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
You know what, when we talked a month or a couple
months back about hey, you knowhow should we frame up this
episode, I had put a coupledifferent months back about hey,
you know how should we frame upthis episode.
I had put a couple of differentideas around.
You know, maybe I ask you somequestions around being a
purpose-driven company or aroundempathy.
You'd write a book about a wireto care.
Maybe we would talk aboutvisualization, maybe we'd talk
(03:58):
about being customer-centric andyou're like no, no, no, we're
going to talk aboutfuture-focused because you've
just written a book.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Has it been published yet.
I am in the process of writingit right now.
What's happening is I'm puttingthings out into the world in
small chunks and then we'llgather it all together and we'll
make a book out of it, but thetitle of it is going to be
future-focused, because we'reseeing this for mid-sized
companies, for large companies.
The biggest reason why theseorganizations fail is because
(04:29):
they miss the future, and so wewant to help them not do that,
so they can persist.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Talk a little bit more about that itch that you
felt when you started, when youwanted to write a book called
Future Focused.
Yeah, what did you see in theworld that made you want to
write that book?
Speaker 2 (04:53):
You know there is.
It's such a great question, Ben.
The world is going throughmassive disruption and massive
change.
You know we just had hearingson Capitol Hill on this week
Monday and Tuesday wherebasically we have you know
officials or former officials ofthe US government saying that
(05:14):
you know UFOs are real and itseems like no one's like yeah,
we're all just shrugging ourshoulders Like you would think
we would have panic in thestreets on that.
I don't want to turn this intoa UFO discussion, but I think it
is an indicator of just hownumb, how inured we are getting
to constant, rapid change.
Right, it's like there's aflock of black swans that keep
(05:40):
getting unleashed on us and Ithink that figuring out how to
navigate that is crucial.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Separating the wheat from the chafe.
Is that what you're?
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Yeah, but even seeing the signals about you know
what's going to happen in theworld, right, not next year, but
in five years, in seven years,right, and where the world is
going.
And what should you do as aleader?
You know, know, certainly as abusiness leader running a
company, but even just as aleader of people.
What should you do to preparefor that?
And, and it's a huge challengethat we're facing, even if the
(06:14):
ufos are not real, how?
Speaker 1 (06:19):
so how do you answer the question?
What should what I to do?
As a business leader and aleader of people.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Yeah, well, you know, I think number one it starts
with the realization that.
Number one most companies failbecause they miss the future and
we have good evidence for that.
How do you end up as beingKodak or Blockbuster or
Blackberry, all of thesecompanies that fail, and we're
using large companies justbecause everyone knows them
right?
But even for small, limitedsize companies, that's true.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
You're doing a great job.
The highway is littered with,yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
The highway is littered with companies that
were managed incredibly well andyet, unbeknownst to them, there
are exogenous forces that haverendered them obsolete, right,
but what's the problem?
It's not that people are stupid, right.
It's not that they can't seethis coming.
It's that, and there's great,you know, psychological research
that came out of, you know, myalma mater, out of Stanford,
(07:15):
that shows that, you know, mostpeople are not future focused,
right, there's about 16% ofhuman beings that can think
about the future more than acouple of years out, imagine
where the world's going, realizethe urgency of it and believe
it and get moving on it.
There's another 13, 14% of thepopulation who are completely
(07:38):
past-focused.
Their entire worldview isdetermined in terms of what
they've seen in the past.
What?
Speaker 1 (07:45):
happened last year, last decade last century.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Yeah, Like we, our company's been around for 60
years.
We'll do so.
These are the people who willsay you know, you know, Uber is
just a blip.
Taxi cabs will never go away.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Right, amazon never made money in the year 2000.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Right, that's what everybody was saying.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
It's never going to be a thing.
It doesn't make sense.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
It's never going to be a thing, right?
I mean, they have all sorts ofgood arguments why the past will
continue to be true, right,despite all evidence to the
contrary.
But you know, leave those guysaside, because that's only you
know.
14%.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
So that's on the outside of the bell curve in the
middle right edges of the bellcurve.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
The future folks are getting going.
The past focused folks arearguing for the past, but it's
the people in the middle of thebell curve you just described.
70% of us are present, focused,70% of us think about the here
and now, and when you show themthat the world is changing,
their reaction is Benno, you'reright, the world is changing,
but we need to focus on thisquarter, we need to focus on the
here and now, and that is theworst of all three options.
(08:49):
The future-focused guys aregoing, the past-focused people.
You can disprove thepresent-focused people.
They're talking like thefuture-focused people, right,
and they're acting like thepast-focused people.
It's like they've-.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
And they're not wrong .
They do have to make thequarter right, I mean you know
the old adage in the longtermwe'll all be dead.
So there is there, there is acertain limit to how future
focused you want to be.
You have to have one foot, andI think of it as one foot in the
present and one foot in thefuture.
I don't know, you're exactlyright, you're exactly right.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Future focus does not mean head in the clouds.
It's just really looking aboutwhere the world is going,
assessing like am I on the rightside of history or not?
No-transcript, so you have todeliver this quarter, but if
(09:50):
that's all you do, you're goingto end up like one of those.
You know those people in thebody count on the side of the
road that you described.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Right, right.
How do you help leaders,business leaders, get that
balance right?
Yeah, right, because it'scertainly not 50, you know, and
there is no formula, it's not50-50 or 40-60.
But how do you balance?
Speaker 2 (10:15):
it.
Yeah, you know that is, andthis is part of what I'm
discovering in the book that I'mwriting.
I'm looking at like so what arethe habits of future focused
leaders?
And one of the things thatthey're really good at is these
folks are really good atbalancing the now and the next.
They take an almost portfolioapproach so that they say, okay,
let's call it, 75% of what I'mdoing is going to be about the
(10:39):
now, but 25% of it is going tobe about the next.
I love that 25% is a rough LarryPage, who is the co-founder of
Google.
He talks about that when he wasrunning the company.
Think about it, google most oftheir money comes from
(11:00):
advertising generated search andhe would spend every Friday
afternoon like half of his dayon Friday, which, I mean, think
about it, that's like 10% of histime.
He'd spend it with this newlittle company that they had
acquired called Android, theirmobile operating system, and he
says you know, I felt so guiltythat, like you know, I should be
(11:21):
spending all my time on searchand instead I'm going and
screwing around with this.
You know this little OS and inreality, I'm so glad we did that
because it's central to ourfuture reality.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
I'm so glad we did that because it's central to our
future, right, so it's sointeresting.
I mean these percentages thatyou know different folks have in
their head about how to balancepresent and future, and I I
actually in my weekly to-do listI have I break it down into
three buckets.
I have 30% of my time I want tospend finding future-oriented,
(11:57):
finding clients, finding newideas, 60% of my time just
running the day-to-day and 10%of my time tracking.
And Steve Jobs famously spent20% of his time recruiting
talent.
Right, Because he knew I mean alot of CEOs would say, well,
that's HR's job, that's not myjob he spent not Friday
(12:21):
afternoon but all Friday right20% of his time, so interesting.
So I think part of beingfuture-focused, you're saying,
is being very intentional andmindful of where, when and how
we spend time on the futureversus the present.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
That's exactly right.
One of the pieces of advice Igive to our clients is that if
you are like most of us, if youare like the 70% who is
present-focused, don't dismay.
Neuroplasticity is a beautifulthing.
You can change how your brainis wired.
If you were like the 70% who ispresent focused, don't dismay.
Right, neuroplasticity is abeautiful thing.
You can change how your brainis wired.
So how do you do that?
And it's exactly what you said,benno.
We started with saying let's doa time diet, right.
(13:03):
And so what is a time diet?
A time diet is exactly justlike a food diet, right If you
wanted to lose weight or if youwanted to get in shape.
One of the first things that apersonal trainer or a
nutritionist will tell you iswell, start keeping a log of
what you're eating, right, justto start to notice what's
happening.
You might even start to changeyour behavior if you're noticing
.
The same thing is true for yourtime outlook, which is, you know
(13:27):
, many of us manage ourcalendars through, you know,
microsoft Outlook or GoogleCalendar or something like that.
Just every day, at the end ofthe day, take a look at your
calendar and mark the timeblocks and say you know, choose
like.
Give it an orange color if thisconversation was thinking about
the future, right, give it agreen if it was about the
(13:49):
present.
Give it a blue if it was aboutthe past.
And notice how you are spendingyour time and you might
discover like, wow, I'm spendingmore time than I thought
justifying the past or trackingwhat happened last quarter or
reporting out on a year ago.
(14:09):
And you've got to spend a littlebit of time on the past so you
can learn from it sure right,but but but you know, not not 30
, you know, and don't besurprised if, like your brain,
75, 80 of your time is on on thepresent.
You know, another 10, 15 is onthe past and you have almost
nothing for the future.
That's, that's very normalright, right, right.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
What other concepts maybe are bubbling up as you're
thinking about writing this book?
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Yeah, it's so fascinating that the folks who
are really these leaders, whoare very good at navigating
their companies to the future,they're also really good at
looking out in the world andseeing things at the margins,
seeing things at the edges right, they're very much to the rest
(15:06):
of us.
They look like they're big risktakers, right, and they're
actually not.
They're just really insightful.
They're good at seeing changesthat the rest of us don'ters
right, and they're actually not.
They're just really insightful.
They're good at seeing changesthat the rest of us don't notice
, right.
So I have a client and friend ofmine, Lucian Grange, who's the
CEO of Universal Music Group.
Universal Music is every musicact, from Taylor Swift and Drake
(15:29):
to the Rolling Stones and PaulMcCartney and Elton John, right?
So I mean like something likeeight or nine of the songs that
you hear in a given hour onSpotify are universal.
Lucian, as much as any humanbeing I've ever seen is so good
at looking around corners, right?
And I'll tell him like Lucian,you take big risks.
He says nonsense, Dave.
(15:50):
He's like if you saw what I saw,it would be freaking obvious to
you, Right, Because they're,you know, he, and he trains his
people to do this as well.
You know, especially in music,what's going on, you know, in a
small town that nobody'snoticing, right, what's going on
in a new technology thatnobody's paying attention to,
right, what's going on in inmarkets that you know he's he's
(16:13):
obsessed about things likewhat's happening in in in west
africa, right and like becausenigeria, in in his mind, is
going to be a huge source notjust of a new market but of kind
of new music productioncapabilities.
That's going to change how wethink about music.
We, I mean he can't just reston elton john and and taylor
swift right, right, right.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
You know when, early in my career, when I lived in
your neck of the woods in theBay Area as a buyer for Pottery
Barn, the guy that sort ofspearheaded reinventing Pottery
Barn back in the 90s, who hasnow done the same for RH in an
even bigger way, you know, heused to say, you know, or to all
(16:59):
of us buyers and merchants hewould say a good merchant simply
has open eyes, open ears and isopen to new input all the time.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
That's right and is open to new input all the time.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
That's right and that is different from you know sort
(17:36):
of the historians of thebusiness world.
You know the accountants andthe operations people that have
to analyze what happened lastweek and last year in order to
forecast for the future and getbetter, faster, cheaper.
Right, they have to look atyesterday's facts and then
analyze them.
But in order for visionaries tohelp the rest of the
organization infuse a littlevision of what is happening
tomorrow, we have to look.
We just have to have our eyesand ears open.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
I think that's right.
And you bring up a really goodexample with accounting, right,
which is that if you've evertaken any finance classes or
let's call it basic bookkeepingclasses, right, double entry
bookkeeping and all of that somuch of it is tuned to what has
happened, right.
You know, double entrybookkeeping and all of that so
much of it is tuned to what hashappened.
Right, where did the money comefrom and where did the money go
(18:20):
?
All of those same skills can beused.
And at Jump, where I work, youknow we spend a lot of time
teaching people how to use thosesame financial skills to think
about you know pro forma incomestatements of what might this
look like over the next fiveyears and how do we build that
and what assumptions do we needto make about it.
Right, mechanically they'revery similar skill sets to build
(18:45):
that P&L right, but it takes avery different mindset to say,
okay, what would it take forthis to be true in five years?
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Right, right, and you know earlier we talked about
sort of time blocking thesevarious activities.
And you know, in my business wehelp companies enter new
markets, get into new adjacentproduct categories, somehow
expand their market footprintright.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
And I sort of break it into three different buckets,
right?
The first is let's take acouple, a week or two and just
evaluate an idea, right?
Just sort of fat fingerexercise right.
Is this a good idea or a badidea, and why, and then take a
couple months to roadmap, whereyou know now you're doing a
five-year pnl forecast andyou're doing gantt charts and
(19:36):
active and you know time andaction calendars, and then a
couple years worth of executingagainst the milestones that you
put into the roadmap.
Um, um, what other um Iactually?
I I want to ask you a littlebit about I love this concept,
um, and the picture ofdivergence and convergence right
(20:00):
.
Innovation, uh, uh, best, youknow, or I think, in the
practice of innovation, uh, wehave to be divergent, you know,
sort of take the blinders offand look everywhere.
But then at some point you haveto say okay.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Yeah, this is what we're going to focus on.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
We're going to do this next year and that the year
after.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
How do you think about divergence, convergence?
Speaker 2 (20:28):
You know, it's interesting, again, if you are
one of these future-focusedpeople or, let's say, you're
doing the kind of work that youand I do, thinking about new
business creation or growth orinnovation, right?
I think one of the biggestmistakes that we make and again
this goes back to psychology iswe tend to think in terms of
upside.
We think of like, oh, look athow much revenue this new
(20:48):
business might create, and it'skind of forgetting our audience,
right, who are all thosepresent focused people?
What is a far bettercalculation is how much we're
going to lose if we don't dothis, right, which is, you know,
like it is again, another habitof future focused leaders is
(21:11):
they tend to thinkoptimistically, but then they
tend to speak pessimistically,right.
So they think about the bigpicture oh, we're going to go
create this new business butthen they build a case that says
you know, if we don't createthis new business, right, forget
how much new money we're goingto make.
Here's all the money that isgoing to go away.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
That's going to go to the competition.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
It's going to go to the competition or we're going
to be out of business.
Or look at the decline that ouryou know our core businesses is
facing today.
Right, and this goes back toyou know all the neuroeconomic
stuff, you know Daniel Kahnemanand you know Mr Versky, people
who I'm sure you know some ofyour listeners know well.
Right, that idea that lossaversion, right, is a much more
(21:54):
powerful thing for people ratherthan upside realization.
Right, it's like no, no, no.
We need to be terrified of thefuture, not optimistic about the
future, if we're going to getpeople on board.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
I mean, it comes down to the two basic human emotions
of hope and fear.
Right, right.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Yeah, right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
So, you know, pie in the sky, you know, is all about
hope, and isn't it great?
And fear is like you know, ifyou, if you don't build, you
know if, if, if you, if youdon't replace the VC or
videotape, mr Blockbuster, withyou know, a Netflix model,
(22:38):
you're going to go out ofbusiness.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Right, okay, take that example.
It's a fascinating thing, whichis I think they were two or
three years into their growthand Netflix was having financial
trouble and they went toBlockbuster and they said buy us
please, and Blockbuster said no, and Blockbuster said no,
(23:13):
no-transcript, and they shut itdown, right Like, but why?
Speaker 1 (23:18):
did they shut it down ?
Speaker 2 (23:19):
was going and they shut it down, right, like, but
why did they shut it up?
Because they were like you know, they looked at that team and
they said idiots, do you knowhow much money we make on late
fees, right, I mean.
And so to kind of to walk awayfrom the now right and to build
something new that you're notgoing to do that because of the
potential upside, you're onlygoing to do that because you're
so terrified.
If you don't do that, what'sgoing to happen?
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Right, right.
How many books have you written?
Speaker 2 (23:48):
I've written a few.
I've published two of them.
All right, all right, yeah,exactly right.
The first one is Wired to Careand that was written about 15
years ago.
That was about empathy and howempathy can drive business.
I think that certainly anymid-sized company knows this,
which is that you can't manageby PowerPoint.
You need to be out in the worldwith the people that you're
(24:08):
serving.
The second book is really abook for the class I teach at
Stanford, which is called NeedFinding, and how do you actually
understand what people need, asopposed to just what they're
doing today, what their currentbehavior is?
Speaker 1 (24:22):
What is the main thesis of need finding?
Speaker 2 (24:24):
The basic thesis of need finding is that you gave me
one sentence.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Give me a paragraph or two.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
You know, need finding is really about saying
that we all have needs that wemight not be able to articulate
to someone else, and we all haveneeds that we might not even
know to articulate to someoneelse, and we all have needs that
we might not even know that wehave.
So how do we use methodologiesfrom psychology and anthropology
to actually dig underneath thesurface and say there's things
that are going on in the culturethat are kind of gaps and
(24:55):
opportunities that we can servepeople with, as opposed to just
generating more crap that goesinto a landfill?
So it's really it's basicallythe social science for MBAs and
designers as a way to do it.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
And it sounds very much design thinking focused.
Is that?
Speaker 2 (25:15):
fair Very much.
You know I used to.
My mentor when I was in schoolwas a fellow by the name of Rolf
Fasti.
He's actually the fellow whocoined the term design thinking
decades ago and we co-taughtthat class together for many
years until he passed away.
So yes, it is very much acentral part of design thinking
(25:39):
as is practiced in the worldthese days.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
You know, and when I talk, first of all I love every
book I've ever read arounddesign thinking and whenever I
talk about design thinking to mydesigner friends, most of them
just shrug their shoulders andsay you mean thinking?
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Yeah, exactly, yeah, exactly Right.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
I mean.
To me, design thinking isfuture-oriented and going into
the.
You know what we were talkingabout earlier, that it's more
about asking the customer whatwould they like, what would they
, what needs do they have,rather than asking the ops
people and the accounting people.
What happened last year that wecould, you know, retread.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Yes, that's right.
And look, it is really usefulto do an audit of what happened
last year.
But if you know to your point,if all you do is that audit
about what happened last yearand call it as job done right,
you should not be surprised ifyour beautiful business, you
know, is suddenly out of youknow a future like running out
(26:47):
of rope, and I think especiallyfor it gets worse for midsize
businesses, ironically, and itgets worse for midsize B2B
businesses, right, ironically.
And it gets worse for mid-sizeb2b businesses, right, the kind
of like you know, we make, youknow, widgets that go into other
people's products.
It's even worse.
The situation is even worse forthem why do you say that?
because often, if you thinkabout it, you know let's say,
(27:11):
you, you make things for an endconsumer or something like that
you can notice these changes andyou can, you know, start to
pivot on this.
If you're a B2B manufacturer,you're one step removed.
So often you don't see thesignal or you are kind of like
chained to your downstreamcustomers.
(27:32):
You know past focus thinking.
You know the classic thing isyou don't want to be making
buggy whips, right, but what ifyou don't make buggy whips?
What if all you do is you makethe handles for a buggy whip
manufacturer downstream?
At that point it's like, well,I just make handles.
How is that a bad thing?
Speaker 1 (27:51):
Because you're a couple of places separated
Because you're not makingsteering wheels.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Exactly, that's right .
But to see that, and then Ihave to look at a completely
different customer base, becausethe steering wheels are going
to go to.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
You might have to hire people like you or your
company or my company.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
God forbid exactly, or get started and do it
yourself, and the biggest thingsthat's going to get in your way
is a mindset that you're goingto be too focused on the present
, like a lack of exposure tothose distant early warnings
that things are changing, andjust a belief that this might be
true and you should dosomething about it.
(28:30):
Ironically, it's those samemidsize companies, though, that,
if they can put that in place,they're far more nimble than the
bigger guys are.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Oh, absolutely Right, Because if they can actually
believe in place, they're farmore nimble than the bigger guys
.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Oh, absolutely right, because they can actually
believe it.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
They can get going faster.
We could.
We, we work with mid-sizedbusinesses and, and and that is
one of the things I love uh,that it doesn't take an act of
conquest to make change that'sexactly right yeah, so this,
this was a wonderful uhintermission to my day and
hopefully to your day andhopefully to our listeners and
viewers.
(29:03):
I'll invite you to give anyparting words of wisdom, if any
come to your mind.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Benno, it is a joy to get to know you, because you're
just a voracious and hungrylearner for things, and if your
clients are smart, they willargue with you a lot because
they will get something out ofit.
In the process, they'll learnsomething which is the thing
they should be most grateful for.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Well, thank you so much and I can't wait for the
book to come out.
Can't wait for the book to comeout and next time I am in the
Bay Area or you in eitherCincinnati or Mexico City, let's
meet each other.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Oh, sounds great.
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Thank you so much, Take care Thanks.
Thank you for listening to thisepisode of TGO Podcast.
You can find all episodes onour podcast page at
wwwrealign4resultscom.
You can find me, Benno, host ofTGO Podcast, there as well.
(30:09):
Just email Benno B-E-N-N-O atrealign4resultscom.
Let's keep growing.
Hey, welcome to the Third Growth Officer podcast,
where we talk about all thingsgrowth, yes, even and especially
those hard parts where you shedsome skin and pick yourself up
by the bootstraps.
Hey, I'm Benno Dunkelspüler,growth Sherpa and OG hashtag
growth nerd.
We're on a mission to redefinesuccess inside and outside the
(00:23):
business, one TGO episode at atime.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
I'm Dave Pitnayak, I'm the CEO of Jump Associates
and I'm Benno's new best friend.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
And where are you located?
Speaker 2 (00:42):
I'm in San Mateo, california, california.
Dave, I'm in San.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Mateo, california, california.
Dave, I'm so excited to haveyou here.
So, first of all, welcome toThird Growth Option Podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Yeah, I am the host, and our friend and also former
TGO podcast guest, peterFriedman from DEMDECO,
introduced us.
I want to give a shout out toPeter for putting us together
and, dave, you are a businessleader and an academic and a
(01:15):
thought leader.
On the business side, you havefounded Jump Associates, a
leading strategy and innovationfirm, back in 1998.
You are currently its CEO.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
That's right, 1998.
That's a long time.
We're going on 27 years orsomething like that, isn't it,
my goodness?
Speaker 1 (01:36):
It's a year.
I remember well, because my nowwife and I got married, that
year Great wife and I gotmarried great um.
You are also an academic, anadjunct professor at stanford
university since 2003 is thatright?
2003, it seems longer.
But yes, yeah, okay, on yourwebsite or your linkedin.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
So all right that, if it if it's, if it says it on
linkedin, it must be true.
Right, it must be true.
Exactly, it must be true.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
You're an author of several books, board trustee of
Conscious Capitalism since 2018.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
You were a YPO member for eight years, until COVID,
or so I think.
Yeah, technically, I think I'mstill a member of YPO.
I'm not that Y anymore.
They kick you out of the baseorganization when you're not.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
You're an OPO.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
I'm an OPO now, exactly that's right.
But yeah, I think it coincidedwith COVID, because in 2020, I
turned 50.
And so then, they kick you out.
They elevate you to what theynow call YPO gold, which is
really YPO old.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
That's funny, dave.
You've also lived in Berlin,germany, so another connection
between you and me.
I was born in Germany, not inBerlin, but I've been there, and
so you and I share, uh, or I.
I have already learned in ourlast conversation and the email
(03:09):
exchange after that you enjoyand value discussion and arguing
in a good way, uh, so I hopewe're going to get a little bit
into you know, discussing andarguing I'm looking forward to
it.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Right it's, it's how I learn.
Right, because the best thingis is when you say something and
then the person you're talkingto says, no, that's totally
wrong, because then it's anopportunity to learn something
new that's exactly right, yeah,so, uh, the.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
You know what, when we talked a month or a couple
months back about hey, you knowhow should we frame up this
episode, I had put a coupledifferent months back about hey,
you know how should we frame upthis episode.
I had put a couple of differentideas around.
You know, maybe I ask you somequestions around being a
purpose-driven company or aroundempathy.
You'd write a book about a wireto care.
Maybe we would talk aboutvisualization, maybe we'd talk
(03:58):
about being customer-centric andyou're like no, no, no, we're
going to talk aboutfuture-focused because you've
just written a book.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Has it been published yet.
I am in the process of writingit right now.
What's happening is I'm puttingthings out into the world in
small chunks and then we'llgather it all together and we'll
make a book out of it, but thetitle of it is going to be
future-focused, because we'reseeing this for mid-sized
companies, for large companies.
The biggest reason why theseorganizations fail is because
(04:29):
they miss the future, and so wewant to help them not do that,
so they can persist.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Talk a little bit more about that itch that you
felt when you started, when youwanted to write a book called
Future Focused.
Yeah, what did you see in theworld that made you want to
write that book?
Speaker 2 (04:53):
You know there is.
It's such a great question, Ben.
The world is going throughmassive disruption and massive
change.
You know we just had hearingson Capitol Hill on this week
Monday and Tuesday wherebasically we have you know
officials or former officials ofthe US government saying that
(05:14):
you know UFOs are real and itseems like no one's like yeah,
we're all just shrugging ourshoulders Like you would think
we would have panic in thestreets on that.
I don't want to turn this intoa UFO discussion, but I think it
is an indicator of just hownumb, how inured we are getting
to constant, rapid change.
Right, it's like there's aflock of black swans that keep
(05:40):
getting unleashed on us and Ithink that figuring out how to
navigate that is crucial.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Separating the wheat from the chafe.
Is that what you're?
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Yeah, but even seeing the signals about you know
what's going to happen in theworld, right, not next year, but
in five years, in seven years,right, and where the world is
going.
And what should you do as aleader?
You know, know, certainly as abusiness leader running a
company, but even just as aleader of people.
What should you do to preparefor that?
And, and it's a huge challengethat we're facing, even if the
(06:14):
ufos are not real, how?
Speaker 1 (06:19):
so how do you answer the question?
What should what I to do?
As a business leader and aleader of people.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Yeah, well, you know, I think number one it starts
with the realization that.
Number one most companies failbecause they miss the future and
we have good evidence for that.
How do you end up as beingKodak or Blockbuster or
Blackberry, all of thesecompanies that fail, and we're
using large companies justbecause everyone knows them
right?
But even for small, limitedsize companies, that's true.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
You're doing a great job.
The highway is littered with,yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
The highway is littered with companies that
were managed incredibly well andyet, unbeknownst to them, there
are exogenous forces that haverendered them obsolete, right,
but what's the problem?
It's not that people are stupid, right.
It's not that they can't seethis coming.
It's that, and there's great,you know, psychological research
that came out of, you know, myalma mater, out of Stanford,
(07:15):
that shows that, you know, mostpeople are not future focused,
right, there's about 16% ofhuman beings that can think
about the future more than acouple of years out, imagine
where the world's going, realizethe urgency of it and believe
it and get moving on it.
There's another 13, 14% of thepopulation who are completely
(07:38):
past-focused.
Their entire worldview isdetermined in terms of what
they've seen in the past.
What?
Speaker 1 (07:45):
happened last year, last decade last century.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Yeah, Like we, our company's been around for 60
years.
We'll do so.
These are the people who willsay you know, you know, Uber is
just a blip.
Taxi cabs will never go away.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Right, amazon never made money in the year 2000.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Right, that's what everybody was saying.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
It's never going to be a thing.
It doesn't make sense.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
It's never going to be a thing, right?
I mean, they have all sorts ofgood arguments why the past will
continue to be true, right,despite all evidence to the
contrary.
But you know, leave those guysaside, because that's only you
know.
14%.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
So that's on the outside of the bell curve in the
middle right edges of the bellcurve.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
The future folks are getting going.
The past focused folks arearguing for the past, but it's
the people in the middle of thebell curve you just described.
70% of us are present, focused,70% of us think about the here
and now, and when you show themthat the world is changing,
their reaction is Benno, you'reright, the world is changing,
but we need to focus on thisquarter, we need to focus on the
here and now, and that is theworst of all three options.
(08:49):
The future-focused guys aregoing, the past-focused people.
You can disprove thepresent-focused people.
They're talking like thefuture-focused people, right,
and they're acting like thepast-focused people.
It's like they've-.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
And they're not wrong .
They do have to make thequarter right, I mean you know
the old adage in the longtermwe'll all be dead.
So there is there, there is acertain limit to how future
focused you want to be.
You have to have one foot, andI think of it as one foot in the
present and one foot in thefuture.
I don't know, you're exactlyright, you're exactly right.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Future focus does not mean head in the clouds.
It's just really looking aboutwhere the world is going,
assessing like am I on the rightside of history or not?
No-transcript, so you have todeliver this quarter, but if
(09:50):
that's all you do, you're goingto end up like one of those.
You know those people in thebody count on the side of the
road that you described.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Right, right.
How do you help leaders,business leaders, get that
balance right?
Yeah, right, because it'scertainly not 50, you know, and
there is no formula, it's not50-50 or 40-60.
But how do you balance?
Speaker 2 (10:15):
it.
Yeah, you know that is, andthis is part of what I'm
discovering in the book that I'mwriting.
I'm looking at like so what arethe habits of future focused
leaders?
And one of the things thatthey're really good at is these
folks are really good atbalancing the now and the next.
They take an almost portfolioapproach so that they say, okay,
let's call it, 75% of what I'mdoing is going to be about the
(10:39):
now, but 25% of it is going tobe about the next.
I love that 25% is a rough LarryPage, who is the co-founder of
Google.
He talks about that when he wasrunning the company.
Think about it, google most oftheir money comes from
(11:00):
advertising generated search andhe would spend every Friday
afternoon like half of his dayon Friday, which, I mean, think
about it, that's like 10% of histime.
He'd spend it with this newlittle company that they had
acquired called Android, theirmobile operating system, and he
says you know, I felt so guiltythat, like you know, I should be
(11:21):
spending all my time on searchand instead I'm going and
screwing around with this.
You know this little OS and inreality, I'm so glad we did that
because it's central to ourfuture reality.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
I'm so glad we did that because it's central to our
future, right, so it's sointeresting.
I mean these percentages thatyou know different folks have in
their head about how to balancepresent and future, and I I
actually in my weekly to-do listI have I break it down into
three buckets.
I have 30% of my time I want tospend finding future-oriented,
(11:57):
finding clients, finding newideas, 60% of my time just
running the day-to-day and 10%of my time tracking.
And Steve Jobs famously spent20% of his time recruiting
talent.
Right, Because he knew I mean alot of CEOs would say, well,
that's HR's job, that's not myjob he spent not Friday
(12:21):
afternoon but all Friday right20% of his time, so interesting.
So I think part of beingfuture-focused, you're saying,
is being very intentional andmindful of where, when and how
we spend time on the futureversus the present.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
That's exactly right.
One of the pieces of advice Igive to our clients is that if
you are like most of us, if youare like the 70% who is
present-focused, don't dismay.
Neuroplasticity is a beautifulthing.
You can change how your brainis wired.
If you were like the 70% who ispresent focused, don't dismay.
Right, neuroplasticity is abeautiful thing.
You can change how your brainis wired.
So how do you do that?
And it's exactly what you said,benno.
We started with saying let's doa time diet, right.
(13:03):
And so what is a time diet?
A time diet is exactly justlike a food diet, right If you
wanted to lose weight or if youwanted to get in shape.
One of the first things that apersonal trainer or a
nutritionist will tell you iswell, start keeping a log of
what you're eating, right, justto start to notice what's
happening.
You might even start to changeyour behavior if you're noticing
.
The same thing is true for yourtime outlook, which is, you know
(13:27):
, many of us manage ourcalendars through, you know,
microsoft Outlook or GoogleCalendar or something like that.
Just every day, at the end ofthe day, take a look at your
calendar and mark the timeblocks and say you know, choose
like.
Give it an orange color if thisconversation was thinking about
the future, right, give it agreen if it was about the
(13:49):
present.
Give it a blue if it was aboutthe past.
And notice how you are spendingyour time and you might
discover like, wow, I'm spendingmore time than I thought
justifying the past or trackingwhat happened last quarter or
reporting out on a year ago.
(14:09):
And you've got to spend a littlebit of time on the past so you
can learn from it sure right,but but but you know, not not 30
, you know, and don't besurprised if, like your brain,
75, 80 of your time is on on thepresent.
You know, another 10, 15 is onthe past and you have almost
nothing for the future.
That's, that's very normalright, right, right.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
What other concepts maybe are bubbling up as you're
thinking about writing this book?
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Yeah, it's so fascinating that the folks who
are really these leaders, whoare very good at navigating
their companies to the future,they're also really good at
looking out in the world andseeing things at the margins,
seeing things at the edges right, they're very much to the rest
(15:06):
of us.
They look like they're big risktakers, right, and they're
actually not.
They're just really insightful.
They're good at seeing changesthat the rest of us don'ters
right, and they're actually not.
They're just really insightful.
They're good at seeing changesthat the rest of us don't notice
, right.
So I have a client and friend ofmine, Lucian Grange, who's the
CEO of Universal Music Group.
Universal Music is every musicact, from Taylor Swift and Drake
(15:29):
to the Rolling Stones and PaulMcCartney and Elton John, right?
So I mean like something likeeight or nine of the songs that
you hear in a given hour onSpotify are universal.
Lucian, as much as any humanbeing I've ever seen is so good
at looking around corners, right?
And I'll tell him like Lucian,you take big risks.
He says nonsense, Dave.
(15:50):
He's like if you saw what I saw,it would be freaking obvious to
you, Right, Because they're,you know, he, and he trains his
people to do this as well.
You know, especially in music,what's going on, you know, in a
small town that nobody'snoticing, right, what's going on
in a new technology thatnobody's paying attention to,
right, what's going on in inmarkets that you know he's he's
(16:13):
obsessed about things likewhat's happening in in in west
africa, right and like becausenigeria, in in his mind, is
going to be a huge source notjust of a new market but of kind
of new music productioncapabilities.
That's going to change how wethink about music.
We, I mean he can't just reston elton john and and taylor
swift right, right, right.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
You know when, early in my career, when I lived in
your neck of the woods in theBay Area as a buyer for Pottery
Barn, the guy that sort ofspearheaded reinventing Pottery
Barn back in the 90s, who hasnow done the same for RH in an
even bigger way, you know, heused to say, you know, or to all
(16:59):
of us buyers and merchants hewould say a good merchant simply
has open eyes, open ears and isopen to new input all the time.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
That's right and is open to new input all the time.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
That's right and that is different from you know sort
(17:36):
of the historians of thebusiness world.
You know the accountants andthe operations people that have
to analyze what happened lastweek and last year in order to
forecast for the future and getbetter, faster, cheaper.
Right, they have to look atyesterday's facts and then
analyze them.
But in order for visionaries tohelp the rest of the
organization infuse a littlevision of what is happening
tomorrow, we have to look.
We just have to have our eyesand ears open.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
I think that's right.
And you bring up a really goodexample with accounting, right,
which is that if you've evertaken any finance classes or
let's call it basic bookkeepingclasses, right, double entry
bookkeeping and all of that somuch of it is tuned to what has
happened, right.
You know, double entrybookkeeping and all of that so
much of it is tuned to what hashappened.
Right, where did the money comefrom and where did the money go
(18:20):
?
All of those same skills can beused.
And at Jump, where I work, youknow we spend a lot of time
teaching people how to use thosesame financial skills to think
about you know pro forma incomestatements of what might this
look like over the next fiveyears and how do we build that
and what assumptions do we needto make about it.
Right, mechanically they'revery similar skill sets to build
(18:45):
that P&L right, but it takes avery different mindset to say,
okay, what would it take forthis to be true in five years?
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Right, right, and you know earlier we talked about
sort of time blocking thesevarious activities.
And you know, in my business wehelp companies enter new
markets, get into new adjacentproduct categories, somehow
expand their market footprintright.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
And I sort of break it into three different buckets,
right?
The first is let's take acouple, a week or two and just
evaluate an idea, right?
Just sort of fat fingerexercise right.
Is this a good idea or a badidea, and why, and then take a
couple months to roadmap, whereyou know now you're doing a
five-year pnl forecast andyou're doing gantt charts and
(19:36):
active and you know time andaction calendars, and then a
couple years worth of executingagainst the milestones that you
put into the roadmap.
Um, um, what other um Iactually?
I I want to ask you a littlebit about I love this concept,
um, and the picture ofdivergence and convergence right
(20:00):
.
Innovation, uh, uh, best, youknow, or I think, in the
practice of innovation, uh, wehave to be divergent, you know,
sort of take the blinders offand look everywhere.
But then at some point you haveto say okay.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Yeah, this is what we're going to focus on.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
We're going to do this next year and that the year
after.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
How do you think about divergence, convergence?
Speaker 2 (20:28):
You know, it's interesting, again, if you are
one of these future-focusedpeople or, let's say, you're
doing the kind of work that youand I do, thinking about new
business creation or growth orinnovation, right?
I think one of the biggestmistakes that we make and again
this goes back to psychology iswe tend to think in terms of
upside.
We think of like, oh, look athow much revenue this new
(20:48):
business might create, and it'skind of forgetting our audience,
right, who are all thosepresent focused people?
What is a far bettercalculation is how much we're
going to lose if we don't dothis, right, which is, you know,
like it is again, another habitof future focused leaders is
(21:11):
they tend to thinkoptimistically, but then they
tend to speak pessimistically,right.
So they think about the bigpicture oh, we're going to go
create this new business butthen they build a case that says
you know, if we don't createthis new business, right, forget
how much new money we're goingto make.
Here's all the money that isgoing to go away.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
That's going to go to the competition.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
It's going to go to the competition or we're going
to be out of business.
Or look at the decline that ouryou know our core businesses is
facing today.
Right, and this goes back toyou know all the neuroeconomic
stuff, you know Daniel Kahnemanand you know Mr Versky, people
who I'm sure you know some ofyour listeners know well.
Right, that idea that lossaversion, right, is a much more
(21:54):
powerful thing for people ratherthan upside realization.
Right, it's like no, no, no.
We need to be terrified of thefuture, not optimistic about the
future, if we're going to getpeople on board.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
I mean, it comes down to the two basic human emotions
of hope and fear.
Right, right.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Yeah, right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
So, you know, pie in the sky, you know, is all about
hope, and isn't it great?
And fear is like you know, ifyou, if you don't build, you
know if, if, if you, if youdon't replace the VC or
videotape, mr Blockbuster, withyou know, a Netflix model,
(22:38):
you're going to go out ofbusiness.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Right, okay, take that example.
It's a fascinating thing, whichis I think they were two or
three years into their growthand Netflix was having financial
trouble and they went toBlockbuster and they said buy us
please, and Blockbuster said no, and Blockbuster said no,
(23:13):
no-transcript, and they shut itdown, right Like, but why?
Speaker 1 (23:18):
did they shut it down ?
Speaker 2 (23:19):
was going and they shut it down, right, like, but
why did they shut it up?
Because they were like you know, they looked at that team and
they said idiots, do you knowhow much money we make on late
fees, right, I mean.
And so to kind of to walk awayfrom the now right and to build
something new that you're notgoing to do that because of the
potential upside, you're onlygoing to do that because you're
so terrified.
If you don't do that, what'sgoing to happen?
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Right, right.
How many books have you written?
Speaker 2 (23:48):
I've written a few.
I've published two of them.
All right, all right, yeah,exactly right.
The first one is Wired to Careand that was written about 15
years ago.
That was about empathy and howempathy can drive business.
I think that certainly anymid-sized company knows this,
which is that you can't manageby PowerPoint.
You need to be out in the worldwith the people that you're
(24:08):
serving.
The second book is really abook for the class I teach at
Stanford, which is called NeedFinding, and how do you actually
understand what people need, asopposed to just what they're
doing today, what their currentbehavior is?
Speaker 1 (24:22):
What is the main thesis of need finding?
Speaker 2 (24:24):
The basic thesis of need finding is that you gave me
one sentence.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Give me a paragraph or two.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
You know, need finding is really about saying
that we all have needs that wemight not be able to articulate
to someone else, and we all haveneeds that we might not even
know to articulate to someoneelse, and we all have needs that
we might not even know that wehave.
So how do we use methodologiesfrom psychology and anthropology
to actually dig underneath thesurface and say there's things
that are going on in the culturethat are kind of gaps and
(24:55):
opportunities that we can servepeople with, as opposed to just
generating more crap that goesinto a landfill?
So it's really it's basicallythe social science for MBAs and
designers as a way to do it.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
And it sounds very much design thinking focused.
Is that?
Speaker 2 (25:15):
fair Very much.
You know I used to.
My mentor when I was in schoolwas a fellow by the name of Rolf
Fasti.
He's actually the fellow whocoined the term design thinking
decades ago and we co-taughtthat class together for many
years until he passed away.
So yes, it is very much acentral part of design thinking
(25:39):
as is practiced in the worldthese days.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
You know, and when I talk, first of all I love every
book I've ever read arounddesign thinking and whenever I
talk about design thinking to mydesigner friends, most of them
just shrug their shoulders andsay you mean thinking?
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Yeah, exactly, yeah, exactly Right.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
I mean.
To me, design thinking isfuture-oriented and going into
the.
You know what we were talkingabout earlier, that it's more
about asking the customer whatwould they like, what would they
, what needs do they have,rather than asking the ops
people and the accounting people.
What happened last year that wecould, you know, retread.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Yes, that's right.
And look, it is really usefulto do an audit of what happened
last year.
But if you know to your point,if all you do is that audit
about what happened last yearand call it as job done right,
you should not be surprised ifyour beautiful business, you
know, is suddenly out of youknow a future like running out
(26:47):
of rope, and I think especiallyfor it gets worse for midsize
businesses, ironically, and itgets worse for midsize B2B
businesses, right, ironically.
And it gets worse for mid-sizeb2b businesses, right, the kind
of like you know, we make, youknow, widgets that go into other
people's products.
It's even worse.
The situation is even worse forthem why do you say that?
because often, if you thinkabout it, you know let's say,
(27:11):
you, you make things for an endconsumer or something like that
you can notice these changes andyou can, you know, start to
pivot on this.
If you're a B2B manufacturer,you're one step removed.
So often you don't see thesignal or you are kind of like
chained to your downstreamcustomers.
(27:32):
You know past focus thinking.
You know the classic thing isyou don't want to be making
buggy whips, right, but what ifyou don't make buggy whips?
What if all you do is you makethe handles for a buggy whip
manufacturer downstream?
At that point it's like, well,I just make handles.
How is that a bad thing?
Speaker 1 (27:51):
Because you're a couple of places separated
Because you're not makingsteering wheels.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Exactly, that's right .
But to see that, and then Ihave to look at a completely
different customer base, becausethe steering wheels are going
to go to.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
You might have to hire people like you or your
company or my company.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
God forbid exactly, or get started and do it
yourself, and the biggest thingsthat's going to get in your way
is a mindset that you're goingto be too focused on the present
, like a lack of exposure tothose distant early warnings
that things are changing, andjust a belief that this might be
true and you should dosomething about it.
(28:30):
Ironically, it's those samemidsize companies, though, that,
if they can put that in place,they're far more nimble than the
bigger guys are.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Oh, absolutely Right, Because if they can actually
believe in place, they're farmore nimble than the bigger guys
.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Oh, absolutely right, because they can actually
believe it.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
They can get going faster.
We could.
We, we work with mid-sizedbusinesses and, and and that is
one of the things I love uh,that it doesn't take an act of
conquest to make change that'sexactly right yeah, so this,
this was a wonderful uhintermission to my day and
hopefully to your day andhopefully to our listeners and
viewers.
(29:03):
I'll invite you to give anyparting words of wisdom, if any
come to your mind.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Benno, it is a joy to get to know you, because you're
just a voracious and hungrylearner for things, and if your
clients are smart, they willargue with you a lot because
they will get something out ofit.
In the process, they'll learnsomething which is the thing
they should be most grateful for.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Well, thank you so much and I can't wait for the
book to come out.
Can't wait for the book to comeout and next time I am in the
Bay Area or you in eitherCincinnati or Mexico City, let's
meet each other.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Oh, sounds great.
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Thank you so much, Take care Thanks.
Thank you for listening to thisepisode of TGO Podcast.
You can find all episodes onour podcast page at
wwwrealign4resultscom.
You can find me, Benno, host ofTGO Podcast, there as well.
(30:09):
Just email Benno B-E-N-N-O atrealign4resultscom.
Let's keep growing.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!