Greg Voisen
Well, welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. This is Greg Voisen, host of Inside Personal Growth. And joining us from the Netherlands, you can see is David Allen, many of you already know, David, and he's up there. And in the lower left-hand corner, depending on how this all starts, is Ed Lamont joining us from London, England. Good day to both of you. It's the middle afternoon for you. And good morning to me. How are you guys both doing?

David Allen
Oh, good. Thanks. Great to be here.

Edward Lamont
Great to be here. Yes, good.

Greg Voisen
And we're here to talk about a brand new book that the two of them just wrote, called Team: Getting Things Done with Others. And the subtitle, well, that is the subtitle. But it's the New York Times bestselling author of Getting Things Done of David Allen. And many of you know him. And I'm gonna quote because I was reading all of these quotes from somebody that I really respect a lot. And that's Guy Kawasaki, who was just on the podcast with me. And he said that the two of you tapped into the vast experience to reveal the core principles that make teams not just individuals getting things done. They show you how to cut through the noise, align your group efforts and foster remarkably high performing teams. That he says that with your guidance, you'll transform your team into a focus force poised to achieve its objectives. And I think this is the big one, with less stress, and more success. That was a great quote you guys. And that's the key is drying removes stress from these teams. So a little bit about the two of them. David Allen is an international bestselling author widely recognized as his work leading expert on personal organizational productivity. Time magazine called his flagship book, getting things done the definite business self-help book of the decade. Edie is the co-founder and senior partner of next action associates. It's a GTD partner for the UK and Ireland. He has over 25 years of experience in executive coaching and training, consultant errs leadership, productivity, and motivation. And since 2009, he's founded and grown the most successful G T D franchise worldwide by using the principles in the book, before moving into consulting, he worked. Covering commodities markets as a freelancer for Financial Times a little bit about both of you. Well, my listeners are anxious for us to get into the meat and potatoes as people say, of this book, and how this book can help them. That's the key with inside personal growth. Everybody here is a seeker. I know my audience is well, I've been doing this 17 years, and 11 124 podcasts. And I think I know a little bit about the kind of people that listen to the show. They want to do things more effectively. They want to do things with less stress, and they want to do things. So we're talking about things getting things done, and be happier doing them and having more meaning in their life doing them. So in the book, you guys emphasize the importance of clear standards and processes for teamwork. And I think that that's good it is. But can you elaborate on how these principles can transform a team's productivity and cohesion?

Edward Lamont
Are they I think it's pretty. It's a pretty simple thing, actually. Because all teams have standards. They simply, most of them have not articulated those standards for themselves. How are we going to do this with each other in a reasonably granular way? You know, what communications channels are we using? How are we doing our meetings? What what's okay, what's not okay in the way that we work with each other? Everybody has those. But if they're not articulated, then they're generally going to be just some fudged up mix of what people bought from their last team for what they learned at home or what they learned in college. And so you don't have the clarity and the crispness around communications around accountability around handoffs, that make for a team that is functioning well and enjoying itself. Well,

Greg Voisen
you know, David, I just had Corey Cogan on here from Franklin Covey. Speaking about everybody's a project manager today, right. We've all got a series of tasks to do and projects and timelines and deadlines and whether you're a gig worker, you're working with people across the country, time zones, elaborate a little bit if You would, because that becomes part of the challenge that many of my listeners are faced with today. You know, they may have a team in Slovenia, they may have a team in Ukrainian Ukraine, they may have a team anywhere on the globe and time zones and zoom and getting people together and organizing it. Any comments you have that you might help them feel a little less stressed over that?

David Allen
I'd say, you know, pray meditate, relax? No, it's a great question. And it is, the world has changed in that the channels have increased, the volume has increased and the speed has increased, that everybody needs to deal with. But whether you're dealing with somebody in Colombia, or in Slovenia, or in China, you still need to Ed's point, you still need to make sure make sure you have appropriate standards. It's like trying to play soccer or football, you need boundaries, you need to where's the goal? And where are the boundaries over here, one of the rules of the game. So we're not talking about breeding, you know, super constraining kind of rules, we're talking about what are the freeing kind of kind of parameters, if you will, that we need to build in so that we are more free to focus on the bigger stuff that team needs to get done? See, you know, we make the point, as you may read in the book, that we're not trying to address the big stuff. Here's the big thing, we our team has come together to make sure that happens. We want to make sure that the mechanics of how the team works together, are functioning well. So they don't undermine that energy and undermine that motivation. Because what will undermine the motivation is, if you're allowing people to bring three digital devices to a meeting that aren't have nothing to do with the meeting. That's, that's not exactly high performance. If you have people show up at a meeting, and they don't know exactly why they're in the meeting, what the purpose of the meeting is, and they end the meeting without going so what's the next step, but who's responsible for that? That's, these are not hard things to change. You don't have to transform the people, you don't have to transform the organization, you just need to upgrade the mechanics of the game. And that's a lot of what we tried to address are what are the what are all the optimal mechanics of how you work together with people appropriately? And oftentimes, you don't need to make that that much conscious. You know, you get in the taxi, you know, yeah, the your team with your taxi driver, right? And ideally, here's where we're going and drive safely. Don't go too fast. And whatever it is, so you have a purpose, and you have principles, and you have a you know, all that's going on, do you have any life partner, you and anybody out there, we made that point that team, it's not just, you know, corporate business project team, although it includes that for sure. It's anybody you're trying to get anything done with that you want to get done? Well,

Greg Voisen
I know even in producing this podcast ad, I work with a team and Philippines, and I work with the team in Pakistan. And I know everybody out there listening today has their own digital way. You know, you're using Asana, you're using monday.com, you're using something to remind you of the tasks that have to be completed on an initiative or a project. And there's so many of these tools, even you guys GTD has their own methodology, I wouldn't, I am not certain still about the software, because the whole world has been inundated with so many pieces of software, would you guys like to comment on? So the question is this, Hey, I have to work in different time zones. And I have to use a piece of software. And I'm not asking you to endorse any one piece of software. But if you're going to use one of these, how do you take your methodology and embedded in there to make sure that it runs correctly, and that people are getting things done more effectively and efficiently?

Edward Lamont
So I mean, it's not there's certainly not any endorsement in the book for for particular, right software. We've got clients who are running extremely well on on spreadsheets, frankly, and other ones who are choosing Asana or teams or wherever. A lot of it is that that question is very often settled for the people on the team by what the organization provides, and then you have to work it out. And unfortunately, most people have simply kind of defaulted to a kind of a wild west approach where they just get stuck in it Without enough thought about how they're going to use the piece of software, what what it actually offers to them in terms of what they might need as a team, and then how they're going to use that in a way that reduces the, again, the friction and noise on the team. So what we did was we, we went in a principled approach, if you have a piece of software, and it gives you this, then that equates to what we're talking about here as an inbox. Or this is a place where you can organize things, or this is a communications channel, here's how you might want to think about organizing all that. So it works for you. The, what we don't do is suggest that the entire team use the same system, you could do that. But again, you increase friction, if you move people away from their own system, what you want is them to have their own system. And then you want the team to have some way to track what the team is doing. You don't need to have both of those things in the same piece of software, because very likely, you have a learning curve on which you will lose half of the team. Because they're not comfortable with the team software. So there's there's kind of stuff that you can allow them to do whatever they like. And then there's stuff that is kind of mandated in order for the team to function. And that probably needs to be in either your team software, or just a spreadsheet with a link that everybody can access easily to see what the team is up to.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, there are so many tools today. And I think people do get confused over the plethora of tools that, you know, I know we use a sauna, but not only that, everybody but he's got a G drive right? Or they have OneNote or they've got whatever where they're saving documents. How does the GTD methodology adapt when applied team settings as opposed to individual productivity? I know I go back to the day when David was in Ojai, and there were a lot of us sitting in a room there. And it was individual productivity, like in the 80s. We were doing this through a little workbook that he gave us it's come a long way since then. And so what are the key differences and benefits? Because that's what this book is about? Anybody wants to take field that one?

David Allen
Well, I guess, it wasn't so much a surprise, because I knew that the principles of getting things don't apply to a group as well as to an individual. They don't change. If I walked into you and your team, Philippines, Slovenia, kind of wherever you folks are, I say, Well, what has the team's attention right now? What's not our cruise control? That's a capture process. So just like if I were to sit down with you personally, say what's on your mind? What do you have all I need new tires on my car, I need to hire vice president I need to research this piece of software, I need to see if my daughter should take karate lessons. You know. So it's the same thing in terms of somebody personally trying to get stuff off their mind, the team needs to get stuff off its mind, because on your own on its mind is inversely proportional to the to getting done. So whatever has your team's mind, it's not wrong, it's not a judgment, it's just the truth. If it's on your mind, that means there's decisions about it you haven't made yet, or you haven't organized the results appropriately in some appropriate place. So those of us those are universal principles, essentially, for people personally. And we just had found a way to objectify that and codify that as a way for a team to acknowledge that. So you can use Asana, but believe me, I've worked with several companies that just couldn't get this to work, because they had to decide on the protocols. At what level of detail did people need to input on this? who's accessing it? And if you have somebody who's not accessing what they should be accessing the thing sucks, doesn't work. Right. So you have to have serious rigor about how do we use the tool in that way. And that's, that's not impossible, but tough to come by. I

Greg Voisen
think it's implied. I think frequently, so pardon me for interjecting here. But if a champion takes on something and somebody makes a decision to use a piece of software, I don't think they're asking for the input too much. Often for the other people, it's implied, then that you're going to figure out how to use it and make sure that it works. Would you say that you find this happening frequently because I know even me in my own little operation. I have this implied consent that if I chose Asana, you guys are gonna figure out how to use it. Right. Any comment on that? Because it's, it really is a challenge when the person on the Rand is going, No, I'm a little resistant using this, this isn't the tool that I really, you know what to do, but you're not going to please all the people all the time right?

Edward Lamont
Now, but this is where so to your point earlier, right, you've got all these different pieces of software, many of them now come with a communication, chat function or something like that. And, again, to kind of distinguish how this book is different from what David did earlier. At an individual level, you know, we can teach people how to handle their inboxes, right, and clean them out, make decisions, put the results of their decisions in a place that they trust, all that stuff. That's, that's all individual productivity workflow type stuff. What you can't do at that level is decide that the team is only going to use four or five channels instead of 45 channels. Right? So they've got access to 45 channels. And some of the work that I did in in the research for this book, was to go talk to teams about how many channels do you have available, one team had 23, and various pieces of software, some were being used by some members of the team, others were being used by other members of the team. And they found huge benefit in simply deciding, here's the four we're using, here's what we're using them for. And here's the response times for them. Right, that's a decision that you can only make at a team level, you can't do that as an individual, no matter how good you get as an individual, that doesn't change that you still got 45 places to look to find out what your work is. So it's not it's that kind of thing. That that this book addresses.

Greg Voisen
Yes. And it does a really good job of that. And you know, one of the things that I do want to get to is healthy, high performance. And I don't know if this is for David, or you. But you mentioned it to me when we had our pre interview. And I want you to talk about the concept of healthy high performance. Because I frequently think that the amount of stress the additional digital world has put on people is not helping healthy high performance. It's decreasing healthy, high performance. Can you explain what this means for teams? And how can we achieve without sacrificing well being because like, when I interview people on the show, yesterday, I had a guy by the name of sage radar doing somatic breathing with me, right, and I get from everything from the far end of meditation, I have a doctor coming on next speaking about how to heal your own cancer. So the reality is, you know, I get a full spectrum of this. And I really am interested in healthy, high performance. Because it seems like a conundrum when you take high performance and LV and put it together.

Edward Lamont
Yeah, and that's something that we acknowledge in the book is that, you know, most people I, because of what we've done, over the course of let's say, the last 50 or 70 years, we're holding those things as kind of opposite ends of the spectrum, I can have high performance or I can be healthy. And And when we're saying well, actually, no, that is that is simply a creative tension. You, you can just go for high performance and sacrifice your health. And you know, people are, are trading health, for wealth throughout their careers. This is a choice that people make, I'm going to trade my health for wealth, and then I'm going to use my wealth to try and get my health back. We're simply saying that's, that doesn't make sense to us. And you can have high performance in a sustainable way. If you're willing to think about performance slightly differently, and you're willing to start to look at, at what is meaningful for people, right? Because we're defaulting to measuring and focusing on the performance that we can measure. And we've got lots of important things that are difficult to measure. So they're not being given much of a look at.

Greg Voisen
Right save you. Can you comment on this, either you or David, you bring up something that right now is just like, at the forefront of my mind. Jordan Peterson said to me, you make a contract with the future. Everybody's made a contract with the future, but you're making a sacrifice in the present. So whatever the sacrifices are that we're making today for this contract in the future, whether it's that 401 K plan, or that money that we're chasing, or whatever it might be, we are making these sacrifices, and I would agree with that philosophy. And I think anybody on a team would agree with that philosophy. anybody's still in the everyday workaday world is going to agree with that. And that relates right back to healthy pie performance. As far as I'm concerned, where do you find the balance? And how would you address that? You

David Allen
find the balance based upon the people and the team. What needs to happen? What's my agreement? What do you need? Believe me, I had a long many year friend and client, who ran one of the top foreign policy advisory institutes in the world, frankly. And this guy travelled faster, more around the world than anybody I've ever met, and was engaged with, he was engaged with a lot of people that were behind the 1989 sort of undoing of the Soviet Union. And a lot of those people, if you work for John, you got tied to his hip for two years, you, you, you did not have any other life, than hanging out with him. And going, where he was going, and being his right hand, and doing whatever needed to get done. And he didn't have any problem getting people to do that. Because they knew after those two years, they could write their own ticket in terms of their experience, and credibility, based upon what they could do and what they had done. It was just an agreement. So you could say that was imbalance, or was it was an imbalance or that was exactly the what the balance was. And that's what the agreement was. So I think a lot of it is comes down to and, you know, again, this is one of the sort of new issues these days, the new generation, whatever, Gen X, Gen Z, Gen X, X X, or whatever Gen Xers are, you know, they really care that they have a conscious and then fulfilling lifestyle is full of purpose, right? And they're not willing to, they're not willing to open their veins and give it all to whatever. Unless somebody says, that's what you do here. And because of that, you get x, y, z. So I think there's just a lack of clarity of agreement with people about how they're playing and to what degree they're playing what's necessary for that play. So that's, it's kind of a non answer or non response to what you said. But that's, that's, that's the truth. Really. It's like,

Greg Voisen
you are absolutely correct, David, we have all these different generations working in the workplace today. And I'm sure that your this team book is attempting to address all generations that are in the workforce today. And they do have different viewpoints and perspectives about work and getting things done. And so add that throw that out to you, I guess, you know, wasn't one of my questions on here. But I think that's what's good about a free flow forum like this is how is teams helping multigenerational work in the workforce and achieve getting things done?

Edward Lamont
So it's, it's a great question, and it's one that showed up for us in our, our London book launch. It was one of the I think one of the more powerful questions because we had someone in the audience who was, let's say, you know, more aging Boomer than than Gen Z, trying to manage a multi generational workforce. He was running a theater, and he was finding that, you know, as David says, They younger generations were coming in, they simply were not interested in working in the way that that he thought was right and correct, given what he'd learned and what he'd done all his career. And in fairness to him, he wasn't angry. He wasn't, it wasn't a blame game. He was just like, I'm really confused about this. I think and we believe we're not addressing it directly in the book. But it's implicit in the book that if you're willing to have conversations on the team, about how we're going to do this thing, and make those standards again, which will be different through the generation, but at least make them explicit, so people can choose to be in or be out. And the thing that that I said to him was the kids who are coming through, they're looking at what we've done. They're not impressed. They're not impressed, you know, on a physical level, they're looking what people have done to themselves and they're going we're not we're not impressed. They're looking at what we've done to the environment. And they're really really not

Greg Voisen
impressed. Like in fact course. ng they should be, as they shouldn't be. Yeah.

Edward Lamont
And, and so, you know, my response was like we need to come to this conversation with a certain amount of humility, because it's just highperformance has not produced sustainable results that we can repeat in the future. Right, that now there's there are people who will discuss that. But I think it's pretty clear what's going on. And we need to find a new way to work together.

David Allen
Well, so let me ask you, the flip side of that coin. If you're 2821 through 24, sometimes it's all adrenaline rush, you get bored going home, right? You're just into the game, like, zoo, let's go. And you know, like, so who cares that that's, that's the game you chose. That's the game. That's what's required of the game. But as soon as you then have a kid, or want to play golf instead, or in addition, or want to do something else, oh, well, that then changes the game. So we've seen just in terms of people's personal productivity, kind of hard to convince anybody between the age of 18 and 24, that they actually need any of that, because they just want to zoom. Right?

Greg Voisen
That is true. I, I would concur with that. I remember being 18 to 24. Actually, I had I had one child by the time was 25. I think so things do

David Allen
change that changed your game?

Greg Voisen
Yes, it did. I have a son who's 14, he's having his first baby in December. So I know it's going to change the game. But a way to turn 40. So here's the deal. You know, I've had so many people on here with leadership books lately. And all this kind of starts with a leader, whether it's a leader of a team, or a leader of a business or something. And I've also had many discussions about the dysfunctional illness of leaders. And we're not going to get into the whole concept of international politics here. And issues. I will say, you know, in the United States, here, we're we're dealing with our own issues, as it might be Dallas, how important it is the leader to lead with compassion, understanding and inclusion, to make getting things done work in the workforce, no matter which leader it is a mid level manager, a top leader, what where do you guys kind of fit on that spectrum, because I think today, a leader has to listen, has to be empathetic, has to be compassionate, has to want to collaborate, has to want to understand. And I think all of these key principles add to the effectiveness of GTD.

David Allen
They're not one of the same. What JD is about and what our book is about is the mechanics, that all those things you just mentioned, those are hard to build, those are harder to sustain, those are hard to find people who have all those qualities. And those are great qualities. So we don't want to disparage those qualities, they're fabulous. But if you have meetings that are late starting people with showing up with three digital devices, and not focusing on what the focus of the meeting is, I don't care how compassionate a leader you are, your your system doesn't work. You've got you've got broken mechanics, and the broken mechanics then start to start to drain the energy of motivation and train and train the ability for those great qualities you just mentioned, which are great qualities for sure. But you don't have a way to make sure that those are going to be sustainable. If if the process of the team is dysfunction. We tried to address that.

Greg Voisen
I think it helps the environment, it helps the environment in which the individuals are working to have leaders with those qualities. In other words, I feel more more you are talking about the younger generation. I feel more included, I feel more at ease. I feel like my voice is being heard, especially at the is we were just saying those 18 to 27 year olds or whatever, it doesn't really matter. I'm not even going to try and divide. What I'm going to say is that should happen across all generations to get people inspired and focused.

Edward Lamont
All right. We are not we're not disputing that at all right in our approach to what we decided to do with the leadership because there is so much out there on leadership was to focus on a very, very particular aspect. And that is let's make sure your team works because then you will need a lot less need to resolve conflicts you will need a lot less ability to listen to people who are unhappy if the thing you've paid enough attention to the mechanics that the thing is actually working. And that is a, an almost a full time job to make decisions about how the team works, how its structured, what are our processes, and make sure that people are self policing, because you don't want to be the policemen for all that.

Greg Voisen
You just let's talk about let's talk about delegation. Delegation is a critical aspect to any teamwork. And this is one of the questions that I had come up with that I'm actually on track with right now. What are some common pitfalls in delegation? And how can teams improve their delegation practices to enhance productivity and accountability? Because now we're getting down to the granular part of okay, accountability, delegation and productivity. You're on Ed?

Edward Lamont
Well, I'll be David for a minute. Because David, at this point, will generally say, hey, let's define the rules. So if you have not clearly enough define the rules, then you're going to have a bunch of stuff bouncing around on a team that actually has a home. So if you simply get clear enough about where something belongs, you will start to make better delegations, it'll end up where it's supposed to be faster. Okay. I think the number one thing that's that's going wrong with delegation is, it's probably not happening enough or not fast enough. So people are getting stuff, they're not quite sure what to do with it, they're not sure where it goes, it sits in their inbox for a while. And then, you know, at three minutes to 12, on the day before, the thing is, do they fire it off to somebody in three liner, and hope that they're going to get what they want? So that's the second thing that's going wrong, is that delegations are not handled with enough clarity about what is desired? And what are the resources that are available in order to get that thing done. The other thing, I mean, I can go on, because it's a huge topic, right? The, you know,

Greg Voisen
the thing about you, we talk about scope, creep and business, but what about role creep? And now, I'm going to say what,

David Allen
there is no role creep. There isn't. There's the role. Yeah. And then there's that role. And the role has a purpose, and it has accountabilities. Okay, so So role creep is simply because of the lack of clarity of role. So wow, if you and I are both responsible, nothing's going to happen. Right. Right. So that's what you mean by role creep? Absolutely. What you mean is lack of role clarity?

Greg Voisen
I would say absolutely. Right, David, but it happens a lot, David, of course.

David Allen
If it didn't, we have to find out the job. write another book? I don't know.

Edward Lamont
Yeah, well, there was a lovely, there was a lovely concept that came up during the research for the book. And it was self exploitation. Now live isn't David is an actual hippie he was around and alive and conscious in 1968. I am a kind of, I'm a kind of a wannabe hippie. But I am, I get I get a little bit bent out of shape. When I see that. We've been we've employed people are very often on teams that. So David is not of this opinion. But I'd like I'm really, I think that this does happen. And I don't want to speak for you here, David. That people, they get a job, and they don't know how to defend themselves inside of the system that they're in. And that's where you get role creep, and scope creep. And all of it is that they're simply saying yes to things because they think they have to. And they are allowing themselves to be exploited in service of the team. That's another place where it's only at a team level that those people can get any kind of defense for themselves. If there is some conversation about how are we doing this? Do you have to say yes to everything? Because if you have to say yes to everything, then you're yes means nothing. There's an entire chapter on this in the book, you get to deliver everything. So you have to be able to say no. And some people simply don't have the muscle and they don't feel like they have permission to say no, or to negotiate.

Greg Voisen
So do you either review if I took this book, and I say I'd never known anything about GTD before. I didn't follow David, but it's brand new. I'm just gonna pick this up off the shelf. Does this book stand alone without me ever having done anything with GTD or do I have to have been somebody who's followed the GTD prior to this?

David Allen
Well, maybe let me address that gee. di d is nothing but common sense. Okay? And that people labeled it then created a brand around it, they created a whole cult around it. But it's nothing more than why would you start a meeting without going? What's the purpose of the meeting? Why would you end the meeting without saying, Well, what did we decided? What's the next step? And who's doing it? Why would you? Why would you make an agreement with somebody or have somebody make an agreement with you didn't want to keep track of, so you could follow up on it. So, so doing GTD just means doing good business? Yeah,

Greg Voisen
I agree. I agree with you, David. But I know the brand has been around for a long time, and you help to propel it. So what are what are your top recommendations for making team meetings more effective and impactful, then? Because we know that a structured approach to these team meetings is important? What would the two of you or what have you say, to making team beams more effective and more impactful? Because, look, I I've seen the statistics on meetings alone. And it's, it's heinous, how much time is spent, and wasted in meetings. Okay. So the question is, how do I make these more effective? And how do I get more engagement and productivity? Well,

David Allen
we actually worked with a client, very, very sophisticated financial services company in the northeast of the US. And after we worked with them, they made a policy from the top down, if you get invited to a meeting, that the purpose is not clear, and the role that you were supposed to play in that meeting is not clear. You don't have to go. That just that could change your culture.

Greg Voisen
Like, yeah, so no one shows up for the meeting.

David Allen
Then why the hell did you even set the meeting to begin with?

Greg Voisen
Right? Well, the person who said it thought it was important, because of

David Allen
what because of their role that they needed other people to play. And so there's some lack of communication, something fell through the cracks.

Greg Voisen
I love what that financial services firm did. I think that's, that's beautiful. So how can teams ensure that they're not only performing well in the short term, but also building some sustainable practices that will support long term successes, let's face it, the the focus of the book is if I take the processes that you've outlined in the book, and I was gonna look at the chapter I just had up on control, focus and planning and how you've actually really articulated meaning control and focus the five steps for a team. How do I now correlate what I learned in here and apply it then. And this is for long term success and resilience. That's for you. And

Edward Lamont
I mean, I would say Read, read the book, I mean, that and apply the parts that appeal to you. So they're going to be parts of the book that you read, and you're going to go, Well, we're doing that already. I don't need that. And there'll be parts where you go, Oh, my God, that is like a sinkhole for time and energy. And we need to we need to do something about that. So it's not really an answer to your question, except that everything, everything in the book points at how can you make this more sustainable, and fun, and perform at a high level? Everything is pointed at that.

Greg Voisen
And where do you want people to go? Well get to resources, if you had it would they go to? Because I'm gonna put a link in the blog? Do I want to send them to getting things done? I looked for a book landing site. So tell me where you want our listeners to go. They want to look for well, local bookstore, but if they wanted to get some resources, like maybe a downloadable PDF or anything you guys might have to help them cut through the chase. Just go to get the book. Well, because a lot of them are looking to short circuit Yes,

David Allen
we just say just snack on the book. Okay, Commando snack

Greg Voisen
on it. That's what I want. Yours. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,

David Allen
do you have a manual for Microsoft Word or for Excel? You could do you know how many things you could be doing in Word or Excel you're not even doing don't even know about? That's okay. Yeah, man was there. So what we did was great, the manual, so you could snack on it and use kind of whatever works for you. And back to back to your question about sustainability. And back to the So the whole concept of health, is the team healthy if it can replicate itself. If you just send five people leave your team and you got the five new people globally from some virtual way, they just came onto your team. Can you replicate what you were doing that work? And that's a lot of what we tended to address or wanting to address in the book. What are the models that makes the team sustainable? Is it sustainable? Can you keep doing what you're doing, no matter how much the team changes, or how much the world changes that the team has to engage with. And that's a lot of understanding the mechanics of how a team works optimally, if you understand those mechanics, doesn't matter who comes who doesn't go, you know, comes and goes, the world changes, got surprised you got a pandemic never only has to work from home, whatever, if you understand the mechanics of this, you'll just figure that out and make it work. If you have no idea what the mechanics are, and you're just fumbling around, just, you know, fumbling, and just dealing with latest and loudest Good luck.

Edward Lamont
And to pick up David's point there, you need to make the decisions about about these things. And then they need to be documented in a way that, you know, for someone like your son who's trying to get teams going, right, he can reduce the setup time, because instead of having people join the team, and either having to explain everything to them, or more likely simply allowing them to work out what the standards are, what the accepted practices are on the team. They're simply given a document, which is this is how we do it. And then thereafter, you know, they can they can choose not to join, but they can't declare they didn't know what they were signing up for. Right, that was one of the things that's really moving very quickly on teams, is the flow of people in and out of a team, you're gonna waste unspeakable amounts of time if you don't document your standards and processes so they can get quickly up to speed.

Greg Voisen
Well, Edie, you did a lot of research for this book. And I think one of the things, the reason I like guys quote is because you're cutting through the note noise. And I think that the issue here, frequently in teams, is the amount of noise that gets created. I actually used to teach a course called Nevermind the noise thriving in a world of ever increasing complexity. And God only knows that hasn't changed that goes back 25 years ago, or whatever it was, is matter of fact, that noise is even louder. So reflecting on both of your extensive experiences in the GTD and teamwork area, what are some of the most surprising insights or lessons you've learned about what makes teams truly successful? So if you were to give me a list, each of you and just said, it's this, it's this, it's this, it's this that make team successful? Or if you want to comment, but I would love to kind of end our interview on what the two of you believe, make teams successful.

David Allen
Pretty much everything, everything that's in the book. Okay,

Greg Voisen
so that can be that can be an answer.

David Allen
That's, it comes down to understanding, clarifying keeping current and keeping alive the purpose of the team. Why are we here? What's on course, what will be off course? And what has the team's attention about any of that? And then how do we resolve that? How do we how do we reduce that friction? So we need to capture what has the attention, we need to clarify what it means we need to organize the results in some appropriate place. So people are not bothered by where do I find the right information? We need to make sure that there's a good reflection to review process so we can stay current with the new world that is happening every week, these days, in terms of technology, in terms of changing the world, etc. So these best practices, any one of those, if they fall out, will prevent the team from being at its high performance level.

Greg Voisen
And any last comment from you? Or do you like what he said?

Edward Lamont
I love everything David says. I mean, for me, I if I was pointing people at something I would I would say you know, to reflect on both the health of the individuals on the team and the health of the team as a lever for achieving sustainable performance and to have those conversations, not not to simply do Fall to well, we can measure measure the money. So let's measure money, but to have conversations about the things that are super important for every individual on the team, but very difficult to measure, like the health of their relationships, the health of the, you know, their their social health, you know, are they getting to see anybody by the time they leave the office? Is there any scope for them to do anything other than go to sleep, and try and repeat it in the morning. So I think having those conversations is, is critical, if you're interested in really sustainable performance.

Greg Voisen
Well, I tell my listeners, if they're looking to beat a section about healthy high performance, which is what you were just talking about, do go out and get a copy of the book. Definitely, it said, all your major sellers will put a link to Amazon and everybody who sells the book, we'll also put a link up there to the Getting Things Done website for all the listeners who are out there today. I want to just acknowledge both of you and you in particular for the research and you put into the book, not the David didn't put in years and years and years of his background and expertise to this book, or you wouldn't be sitting here as partners having done it. But you did a really, really excellent job of giving people a framework in which to work in teams and to be more effective, and to be healthy. And I think that's the big key to this is, I think in today's world, a grog cross generations, we're all looking for that balance and you've provided a tool to help give us some balance in there. So I think that's important. And I want to acknowledge both of you for that. David, thanks for being on Inside Personal Growth again, even though it's been way too long. And Ed, thank you for being on Inside Personal Growth. You guys have a wonderful rest of your evening. Blessings to you. Thanks for being on the show. Thanks for taking this time.