Greg Voisen
Welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. Now, Lisa, I don't know what episode this is going to be, because the last one was 1150 so the reality is, we might be 1000 who knows 200 but I have funny Lisa Bodell on the line with me, and you're joining me from, if I remember correct only get don't let me get it wrong. Tell me where you are joining me from.

Lisa Bodell
I Westchester, just outside of New York.

Greg Voisen
Okay, Westchester and this book is "Why Simple Wins", that's it and the subtitle is "Escape the Complexity Trap and Get to Work That Matters". More importantly, get to thinking about what matters as well. I think sometimes we gloss over it and just think, all right, let's just go to work. But I'm going to tell the listeners a little bit about you, Lisa, if you don't mind, because I think it sets a context for the book. And by the way, folks, the website is futurethink.com and that's f-u-t-u-r-e-t-h-i-n-k.com, great name. Don't know how you got that. She also has a toolkit for simplification that is on Amazon as well, as well as this book. But Lisa believes in the power of simplification. Obviously, she is the founder and CEO of FutureThink, a company that uses simple techniques to help organizations embrace change and increase their capabilities for innovation. She brings her compelling message to more 100,000 people a year, showing them how to eliminate mundane and unnecessary tasks from their everyday routines. She's transformed teams within organizations like Google, narvis, adventure, Accenture and more, drawing on practical Midwestern upbringing and entrepreneur background. She's used the power of simplification to launch three successful businesses write two books. One of them is called Kill the Company. And why? Simple wins. She travels a lot. She just told me she got back from traveling all over the place, and she's on several advisory councils. And you can learn more about her@futurethink.com Well, let's get to the heart of the manor, which is really, oh, as we say, the the key to this, right? So I think sometimes people don't understand how things get so complex. Yeah, on the other hand, your book why simple wins heightens the danger of complexity in the workplace. Yet we know the workplaces are filled with complexity. What are the most common signs that you see as somebody who travels the world, speaks these companies, consults with these companies, provides them tools to get untrapped from the complexity. And how can leaders recognize these signs before it's really too late? I'm

Lisa Bodell
really glad you brought it up. You know, it's funny, because I always say we create the beast that we become a slave to. We don't realize our role in creating complexity with the best of intentions, and the signs are things like this. First of all, you have a lack of speed, an inability to get to move fast enough and meet deadlines, and usually that has to do with the volume of work. You're starting to see burnout among your team and that, and they're becoming more disengaged because they don't feel the work that they're spending their time on. Matters. The other thing you're seeing is people are organized, but they're not simplified, and so yeah, there's a lot of things that we organize. There's a lot of reliance on apps and processes and spreadsheets, but at some point you cannot spreadsheet your way out of complexity. It's a volume game. And the last thing I'll say is I see an addiction to more versus less. And what I mean by that is I know a company or a leader that's really good at focusing on what matters. When he asks people, not just what's wrong with how they work, but what can they stop doing? That's when we know that there's somebody that's not just about getting more done or urgency, but getting the right things done. So those are the kind of. Signs that we look for? Yeah, those

Greg Voisen
are the signs. You know. I relate to conversation I had with an author who just met me, who came down from Bend Oregon, and his name's Glenn van pesky, and he built an ultra-light backpacking company, which is quite successful, and many other companies. And the book is called, take less, do more. What's interesting is the lessons you find about emptying your backpack when you think about ultra light backpacking is literally the minimalism that you wanted to get as light as possible, as little as possible, right? And his whole thing is about in yours as well. How do I lighten my load? How do I get rid of some of these, this weight that I'm carrying up the mountain, because all of us seems to be carrying so much up the mountain, you know, that's packed. It weighs three times more than it really

Lisa Bodell
well, and what you're getting at, and I think he's getting at too, which is, it's separating the necessary from the unnecessary, right? And that's what we talk about. Because then people will start to say, you know, they they have a fear of letting go. It's a very human thing. They have a fear that less isn't as valuable. And they have a fear they have, like, an emotional attachment of getting rid of things. It's like a loss, and so we really have to have them separate, necessary and unnecessary. And there is necessary complexity, just like there's necessary things in your backpack, right? But what that forces you to do when you go ultralight is really pare down the things that don't add value, don't have meaning, that really are the most important things to reach your goals. And you do the same thing at work. It's the same thing with meetings. It's the same thing with how you spend your time. It's the same thing with reports. It's the same thing with clients. It really focuses on that kind of 8020, rule of what is most important, because really the currency, he's talking about backpack. So I'm talking about time. That's the difference my currency and my my backpack is time, and I want to unpack the things that aren't worth your time

Greg Voisen
well. And I think all of us has to have a checklist before we go somewhere, right? So the reality is

Lisa Bodell
no checklist. Yeah, it's not how it's and it's not about just being organized. It's being simplified, like you can organize an incredible backpack and stuff it with all kinds of stuff, but it's too much. So it's, you know,

Greg Voisen
well, people in the workplace today are dealing with the weight of the complexity, and that's why I use that analogy, because it is breaking their bets. All right, so you describe simplicity as a strategic advantage, which obviously it is. But how can companies shift their mindsets, meaning the people's mindsets inside the company, to see simplicity as not just a cost saving measure, but as a driver of innovation and growth for the company, because I think when people give something up, they actually think they're giving something away, but that's not true.

Lisa Bodell
Not true. Yeah, I like what you're saying, because I think the companies that are successful around innovation are the ones that also are successful at simplicity, because they realize this is not just about being organized, being productive, being efficient. Those are byproducts when you simplify, but if all you're doing this for is just to be more organized or more productive, right to get more done, that's not a very motivating message to people. When you talk about it's about getting meaningful done. That's different. So my positioning around simplification is this is a cultural and ethical issue. It's ethical because it is about how we spend our time and how we we're almost boundaryless with it. We give it away. And it's also it is a cultural thing, because I think we underestimate the importance of getting how we work right. Because if you get the work right, you get the culture right. And it's it drives, it's the compass for how you spend your time. So if, if I say to you, what do you spend your day doing? When you come home at night and you tell me that you spent your day in meetings and emails, that is the culture of your company. That is what they are. You are spending your time on. But if I ask you what you did, and you say, meeting with clients, recording my podcast, doing important things, that is the culture. And so how we work, the work we do every day, matters, and simplification is the key driver of that,

Greg Voisen
yeah. And so let's talk about meaningful work, because every Gen Z, or almost everybody across all age groups, is looking for meaningful work today, everyone is they. Doesn't matter. It isn't it isn't age related. That's right. Would you share a success story where a company embraced simplicity, because stories are always the best, and saw significant improvements in. The employee engagement and productivity. So let's say, okay, it was both. We got the productivity, we got engagement, but also a happier, healthier, you know, David Ally was just on the show, and they were talking about a healthy work environment, right? What? How do we create productive harmony, right? And so my question would be, is, it's not just like we get more done, but how do we have more fun doing what we're doing, and know that there's more meaning in it for us? So we come home at night, we go, hey, guess what? We just invented the rocket ship. They'll go to the moon or whatever, whatever it is, something that I can really say was significant and meaningful.

Lisa Bodell
So, yeah, I love that you bring up David Allen. I'm a huge fan of his work around productivity. And, you know, the thing that I talk about that's a little bit of a shift from that is, you know, again, the culture piece is not just about productivity, but this is about, it's actually a a well being message. It is related to mental health. And that's like, if you get the work right, you get the culture right. And the example I can give you is with, it's interesting. It was with Vancouver city credit union, and I was talking there with their chief simplification officer when she first came on board, and she said we were so stuck in like getting technology to help us serve our customers better, like come up with a process. She said that we missed out on the human element of asking people what the time sucks were like, what bothers or what wastes their time. And so by going through this process of killing rules and asking people what their time sucks were, and putting them through simplicity sprints. What was so interesting was it forced people to define what meaningful work was. It forced them to define and call out what was annoying, not just for the customers, but for themselves. And they reinvented work. And the results were, they got together 18 different groups in a year, and they killed over, let's see, it was over 300 forms, 175 steps out of major customer interactions and processes, and got rid of, I think it was over 300 policies. So just by asking, they were able to eliminate a heap of work. But the result, I said, How did you know it was a success? One was they achieved their highest customer satisfaction ratings ever, because you valued the customer's time, but internally, they brought down turnover. Engagement went up, trust levels went up on the employee service and ability to get things done. So you had all these benefits that were, yeah, they were productive. But people's engagement, and they're willing to not just stay but be engaged, overall in focus, went up dramatically, over 24%

Greg Voisen
that's a very, very good story. Now I'm going to make a comment, hopefully, our governmental bodies will hire you to get rid of the complexity.

Lisa Bodell
Well,

Greg Voisen
we do. I'm sure you do work within certain branches of the government. The question is, is, how do we get it so that it becomes a main focus of theirs, right? Everybody in government. So look, there's some steps organizations have to take to simplify, and you've got, obviously, your toolkit, simplification toolkit, in trying to simplify operations. Because normally it's about operations. It's the paperwork we create to get something done, to make sure something is recorded, to make sure the books, yeah. So what are the common pitfalls that that organizations listening to this? Or the simplifications officer, that's the first time I've actually heard that there's a simplifications officer, yeah, that's good. Are common fit pitfalls that they should avoid during this process of assessing how they become more simplified? Well, I

Lisa Bodell
mean a couple things, which is, you know, being organized isn't being simplified. So don't fall into the trap that just because you create a process that you simplified something you didn't right? This is about just getting if you think about the Marie Kondo analogy, it's not about her organizing all the crap in your closet. It's about getting rid of the crap and then organizing it. Yeah, there's an element to that, right? The other thing is, don't fall into the trap of trying to do things that are too big. And what I mean by that is focus on your sphere of control. And because when you ask people what they spend their day doing, it's not like regulatory. I mean, unless you work in legal or regulatory, it's it's not necessarily organizational. It's meetings and emails. It's daily complexity, it's reports, it's things we put in place and things that we have more more control over than we. Realize the other thing is, it's it's time sucks, it's redundancies, it's decision making, it's cultural norms, it's rules that have outlived their time that nobody told them. So the reason I'm bringing this up is it's not just processes. It can be it's behaviors, right? It's including too many people in a meeting. It's not clarifying what the meeting is for. It's ceasing too many people. It's not asking, not having a clear communication in what you want people to read or give you feedback on. So it's it's lack of decision making, or lack of clarity on who gets to decide what. So there are many different things that you can do beyond processes when you simplify and the key is sticking in your sphere of control to get started.

Greg Voisen
Your spirit of control is that what you said, or spear your sphere? So your sphere. Thank you. I'm glad you clarified the word. You used yours work

Lisa Bodell
you This is now the because you want to have control over your daily work, like your team sets your culture. Yeah, CEO sets the culture. But really, it's your team. It's the team you work with every day. It's their behaviors, it's their norms, it's their rules, it's their approach to work that sucks up most your time. Yes, there are people outside of it, more matrix and all that. But if you start in your sphere of control and you look at what's get rid of, what's wasteful, but then agree on how you're going to change your behaviors, it is amazing how much time you can get back like so for example, at NBC, and we work with them, being uninvited to a meeting is now a badge of honor, right? So they read, let's include the least number of people possible in meetings, because everyone's time is too important, so they cut out the whole FOMO element. And it was almost better to be uninvited to a meeting because your time was too important, rather than sitting in the meeting agreed.

Greg Voisen
I mean, actually, when I did the interview with David recently, they brought up the same thing, that if you didn't get an agenda, they did it a big financial services firm. And if I'm repeating myself, I am, because it's important, and you weren't included, you weren't on the agenda, then you don't show up. So the reality is just lots of people stopped showing up to meetings, which then saved a lot of time and simplified things and reduced the amount of time that people were sitting in meetings. So here's the conundrum. I've been around long enough, I don't know about you, but actually, for the Internet, yeah, we're all these web based tools that exist cloud based software. And the conundrum is that technology plays a role in contributing to help solve the problem, but also creates complexity in organizations as well. Yeah, how can company? I know you're laughing, because this is a big conundrum. It's like, okay, yeah, let's get asana and then, oh, are we using it, or let's get whatever the program is. How can companies leverage technologies to simplify rather than complicate?

Lisa Bodell
Joke, I always say is, when people say, is technology helped simplification or heard it? And I say the answer is yes, because there's so many things in my life that I'm like, Oh, I can't imagine, like, not having the app to do this. It's just so much faster, it's automatic. You know, all those kinds of things, the one click, however, technology without clarity, and just because you can doesn't mean you should. Are things we need to think about. And what I mean by that is, well, just because you can add one more thing, do you need it? And the other thing is, one of the reasons that the how of work, you know, the way we work every day is so complex, is we have too many ways to communicate. So I've got email, I've got slack, right? I've got teams channel, I've got the phone, I've got so it's so easy to set things up that we become lazy about it, and we haven't clarified, for example, like they do at Netflix, meetings are for decisions, emails are for information, phone calls and slack are for urgency. Don't use all three for the same thing. And just as we can get me first use each channel for its you know, fit for purpose, and I think that would cut down a lot of redundancy. We're creating too much noise because we can. It's easy.

Greg Voisen
I agree, and I'm sure everyone listening out there agrees with that statement. I'm sure, yeah, the thing that they need help with is, how do I get people to shift their mindset about how they use the tools? Well, that's going to be my next question here for you. You know, as these organizations grow, obviously, all these tools get inserted in more and more and more slack you were mentioning to some of. Well, what strategies can companies use to help employees shift the mindset about how they utilize these tools to become more simplified and make their life easier? I

Lisa Bodell
think the first thing is, one is communication, like communicating that your expectation is that people simplify, because I don't think we realize the amount of fear people have around it. I mean, they they'll give you tons of ideas, but actually doing it, they're afraid that they aren't going to get rid of the wrong thing, that they want to be valued, that they'll miss out, that they'll get fired. And so communicating that it's an expectation I expect you to challenge work, to kill rules, to get rid of things that aren't working. It's part of your job is important. The second thing is, is that the leaders don't do it. No one else does it. So, for example, we worked with, you know, the head of Pfizer, when Albert was he was not yet CEO. We were working with them on their simplification. And one of the things he said he had tried at first that didn't work, was telling people to say no to meetings. And, I mean, what a great thing. Everyone was complaining about it. So he said, Great, say no to meetings. And a month later, when they looked at, you know, people's logs, so their calendars, and he could see in the hallways how people were still stressed. He was upset because everyone was still going to meetings. And he asked his chief of staff, what's going on? And his chief of staff said to him, Well, they still go to all the meetings, because you still say yes to all the meetings. So until he stopped, no one stopped. So we have to model the behavior. Then on top of that, I think the thing that you need to do is do an exercise with people of what do they spend their day doing? And ask them to circle how much of that is meaningful work. Because you've got to get a comment. You've got to have them see how much of their time is wasted. And then you've got to have them see, well, if you if you weren't doing that work, what would we be doing? And define what meaningful work is,

Greg Voisen
do you do? You have an indicator of what this is actually costing us, businesses, or just any businesses to be have this level of complexity? Because when I say cost, I'm going to say cost in money, time, which can then be equated into money. But in the end, most people relate to dollars. How much is this costing us? But I think it's costing them in so many areas that are being measured. For instance, creativity, right? Innovation, I'm gonna say happiness, meaningful, meaningful things, right? So you look at two sides of this, I can say, well, you know, we used to refer to it as the human value equation. It's like, Really, okay, so you're worth so much to us. And so I know there's dashboards that are actually tracking all this shit, and inside companies, they see the numbers of emails that go out and the slacks that go out, and there's somebody that looks at all of that, and the reality is, that's freaking mind boggling to me, because they're trying to measure a KPI like that, and come up and say, oh, yeah, we were more productive because we sent out, you know, 8 million emails today, or whatever. Come on. Let's Well,

Lisa Bodell
there's a few things, yeah, there's a few things to that. I mean, depending on the study that you look at, right, we're talking about billions and but, you know, and but, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars and millions of dollars. But there are a few things about that, and there are even, you know, there's jokes about how Microsoft and teams wanting to actually, when you schedule a meeting, if you input the amount of time each hourly each person is worth, they can count, calculate the value of the meeting and see how much is being spent, right? So that's an interesting metric. If you could actually do that, when you set the meeting up, I think we would schedule meetings differently. We'd think about the time, we think about the frequency, we think about the invite, so it would force us to have an agenda. So I think that's really important. But you know, you're talking about measurement. They can measure the cost of a meeting and they can measure the cost of an email, but what we have found is until you change the reward system, it's going to be really hard to get people to stop that. So for example, what Pfizer was trying to do was tell people to have less meetings. And so people had got rid of the meetings on their calendars, but they shipped them all to phone calls, so they're not technically meetings, right? So this is what I mean. So people are smart, right? They there's a workaround for everything so they could look good. It the metric that you measure matters, and I think it's going to be really important. We're seeing this like at Sanofi right now, that making part of people's performance review about eliminating things and stopping things is very important. In fact, at Sanofi, they are building into their strategic plans. You're not just going to ask people all the things they're going to do next year, but you're asking them what they are going to commit to stop doing, and they hold them to it. So those are the kinds of things that has to be at a personal level and a team level. It has to be rewarded. And it has to be something where more than just like meetings and emails, it's got to be more tangible things like steps taken out of the system. It's also measuring things, like in your employee engagement survey, ability to get things done, amount of innovations in the pipeline, amount of time dedicated to thinking. There's a lot of other things that are kind of softer, that drive innovation, that people are starting to measure, rather than just productivity,

Greg Voisen
right? Well, take it now, flip side of the coin, and I'm sure you've got an answer, but as you know, basically what happens? Are there any dangers like we've got into with Lean, right? So this whole concept around lean, so we're going to innovate something, but we're going to do a lot quicker, because it's going to save more money, but we're not really having as many meetings around it. And then what happens is we end up having to redo it all over again. So, and this is an honest question, as I just was talking with Stefan about it. When we're talking about innovation, it's like, oh, but we tried to do it too quickly. We tried to simplify it too much. Where would you land in that? I know that sounds like a weird question, but I think a valuable one, because many companies now are trying to go the Lean route. So

Lisa Bodell
one of the things I talk about, and even my earlier book called Kill the Company, is that, you know, I'm I am I see a purpose for six sigma and lean and agile project management, 100% for processes. I think that is project management, product development, etc. But you know, where I'm talking about is the work of work. And what I mean of that is you're not going to spend your time Six Sigma email, Six Sigma meetings. These are more behavioral driven and more micro driven. And I think what people do is they get really into again, they fall in that trap of let's do processes, and I think then they fall into one size fits all, and they optimize things, but they haven't necessarily hacked them properly. And so I guess the thing I'm getting at is, I think Lean and Six Sigma and agile, those are all great, but we're not focusing on the work of work, and that's where most people spend their time. That's where they have we undervalue and underestimate the importance of doing, of getting those things right.

Greg Voisen
I think the work of work is a great statement for people to take away from this podcast, because it's almost like, you know, when you prep to do a speech. They say, Well, I'm just coming to do a speech, but you spent six, 810, hours prepping to go there for the speech, right? To go do the speech. That's the work of work, because then you only gave a 40 minute talk,

Lisa Bodell
right? There's much involved, yes,

Greg Voisen
but it's very relatable to people when they realize, hey, I'm being charged for, not only the work of work, but then the work, the work was, you contracted me to go do a speech. I had to spend six hours to get prepared for that. And I think that's the kind of thing we're talking about, is, is that prep prior to the actual work, that's really at a very expensive part, because you're only speaking for 45 but you're bending six hours preparing for the 45 minute. Doc, is that right?

Lisa Bodell
Well, it is. But I think the thing that you're talking about to me is another key differentiator, which is, you know, when I was talking about asking people what they spend their day doing versus what they want to spend their day doing, what we're talking about here is something very similar. Are you spending your time or are you investing it? And most people will say, Oh, we needed that meeting. And I'm saying, if it's not getting to the the end goal, I spent the time, but I didn't invest the time. And that's the problem with so many people, is they are not intentional about how they spent their time, and they give it away. It's boundaryless within so many organizations. And if we were more intentional by defining meaningful work and being able to know what can I say yes to, what can I say no to, I think we would get out of the the over engineered, leaned, Six Sigma kinds of processes, because being organized isn't being simplified. You're following a task. It feels good, right? We all love it, engineer, scientists, etc, but it's not necessarily getting us to the goal that we want, and then we can better decide where should we spend more time and less time. So the I think you have to have subtraction before you have addition. That's really what I get at yeah,

Greg Voisen
I've I always relate to this, and I may have related this to you before. I do listen to Jordan Peterson somewhat, and while he some people think he's wacky. He said, You know, we all have a contract with the future. And the question is, is, what is the sacrifice in the present for the contract with the future? Now, some people will tell you, I'm not making any sacrifice in the present for my contract with. Future. But when you look at simplification, the reality is, hey, I would like to remove what you may think of as and I'm going to use this term my sacrifice. I don't look at it as a sacrifice. I look at as the work of work, but let's make it so that the work of work is less in the front end than on the back end, right? Because I want to enjoy my contract with the future. Okay? I'm not saying give things to me. I'm saying I will work for them, but I think I'm doing way too much nonsensical work to actually enjoy my contract with the future. Does any of that make sense to you? Makes

Lisa Bodell
a big it makes a lot of sense to me, which is, yeah, because that's the other thing, which is about we're so stuck, kind of on this executing our calendar, that we're not really driving ourselves forward. And what I mean by that is most people think, just because it is same thing over and over again and it's familiar, that's very human, right? And it's organized, that it must be good. They think they're in a group, but I like to say they're not. They're in a rut. And the problem is they look and feel the same. And the difference to no groove versus rut is, are you spending time? Are you investing it? You're investing it if it's getting towards the future, if it will help you. You know, investing your time is getting rid of things too. You're spending time if you're not driving forward towards the future, right? So I would argue that people that are not making any sacrifices, or they're not being mindful or intentional about their time, they're just spending time. They are not driving towards the future. But if you're intentional, you know what you'll say yes to, what you say no to. You are driving towards the future, and that's hard, by the way. It's not it. It sounds like, Oh, it's so easy. Just say yes, just say no. A lot of people aren't empowered to say no. Well, I

Greg Voisen
think where people get people get a lot of freedom from all of this. And I remember doing this interview like over a year ago. I'm trying to remember the author's name, but she wrote a book called Flux, and she became very flaming famous about how you look at life. She she actually was 19 and lost her mother and father in an automobile accident in Europe when she was 19. So they both died. The point was that perspective shift. For her said, How am I going to flux in life? How am I going to be able to pivot? How am I going to be able and I think today, pivoting is one of the most important things that we can have as a value to a company to be able to pivot, be able to pivot this?

Lisa Bodell
Yeah, I would, I would add, though, one of the things I say about simplification is, I think one of the things that happened during covid is everyone's was told to pivot, and everyone was told to be agile, because they were waiting for the next unnecessary or unplanned crisis to come up. Right? They had to be ready for the next thing. And the goal of being a flux, I think, or simplification, is you don't want to be on defense. That's not what it's about. You want to be offense. So the reason you simplify is so you can be, not just be ready for the next thing, but when you see the thing that you really want, you can pivot towards it. You're driving it, versus reacting to it. And I think that's, that's the difference between a company that's simplified, in a company that's complex. They are reacting when they are complex. They can pivot to the next emergency, but they're not driving forward to anything and vacation companies. They create that future. They can

Greg Voisen
drive they can actually focus on something in the future and create it and manifest it. And I get that. So look, we are in a world of information overload. You've even said it data everywhere. Ability to analyze beyond analyze, how can organizations manage the influx of all of this data that's telling them on their dashboards about certain things that are going on inside their company, without falling into the complexity trap. Because I think what happens Lisa is, we, they rely on this data to make decisions and but I don't, but then they should, they should, to a degree. But the question is, is, where is their intuition in the process? Where is their gut feeling around this? Because I think when they use intuition in the workplace, and I'm bringing this up, as a result of intuition at work, yeah, Pat, where can we actually use this data, along with our intuition, to simplify?

Lisa Bodell
So what you're getting at, which I think is important, is thinking. The reason that you want simplification is the you have the space and time to think, because that will allow you to grow come up. Ideas, create a problem, solve, innovate, etc. And I think one of the problems right now is with data, just because you can doesn't mean you should. We rely on it too much versus our gut, but the reason for that is in the absence of time to think, just do what the numbers tell us. So there's a reason why we have so many reports, but we can't take action on them. We don't have time. There's a reason we have so many reports, but even though our gut tells us something different, we don't do it. We don't have time to think. So by getting rid of and having the space, I think it's you should have data, you should have reports, but you need to have time for the deep work of thinking. And so my hope for people in terms of how they use their time, with intention is to start mandating more deep work, more thinking time. Ah, I love it, yep. So you can actually, you can innovate, because it all the data doesn't matter if all you're if all you're doing is staying internal, it doesn't matter. But it's what you do with the data. Right Thinking to take you external, and that's what simplification does. It's free.

Greg Voisen
Well, I can remember stories being told, and Stephen Covey Jr has been on here several times. And at the covey organization, they used to give people signs for their doors that says, I'm thinking, and they used to put it out front. And actually Covey used to encourage that. Used to say, hey, you need to have thinking time, not doing time. So I think this whole being doing conundrum is a big issue. And Barnett bean, the guy who worked with Robin Williams in producing a bunch of movies, wrote a book about the conundrum of being and doing, which I thought was fascinating, yes, because it is like, how do I actually think and then apply what I've thought? And I think many people run from thinking because they've found an easier way out, which is relating to the data that comes through the pipelines, or,

Lisa Bodell
I would say, or one of the things I talk about, I'll never forget, because I sit on a board at Novartis, and I was talking with boss as the CEO, and he asked me a question, because I said, people really value being busy. And one of the things they talk about it. Novartis is being unbossed, right? Meaning you you have control. You're the, you know, you're the you're the lead in your own own play. And being unbossed, he said, is great, because it makes you unbusy. And I said, Yeah, but that's interesting, because when people are unbusy, they are uncomfortable. And what leaders have found is they know they're doing something right when they get time back and they start to feel uncomfortable because they're so used to doing they have to remember how to dedicate unstructured time to thinking. So it's like one of the first signs, I think, when you're doing it right, is you're uncomfortable because

Greg Voisen
you're not busy. That is it is, you know, looking that comes from us, and if it is any one thing I could say is it's your ego saying you're not enough. So no matter where that came from, whether it was childhood or adolescence, and your parents said you should be a doctor, and you didn't become the doctor and you're not enough. You're carrying all this not enoughness around. Now, I'm not saying on that, on the flip side of the coin, that we should be a sloth, but we definitely need time to think and reflect. You know, like on walden's pond. So the point is, is to reflect about our story ourselves and our point for existence, right? Which leads me to our final question here, if there is one big E takeaway that you hope readers will take from why simple win? What would it be, from Lisa's standpoint, and then, how can they immediately start working with it? Whether they're a solopreneur a company working on a big team inside of a company like novitis or something, or they're the CEO of the company, which all three people listen to this show. So I like to give a takeaway for that could be universally across all platforms,

Lisa Bodell
that successful people subtract just as much as they add. And I think that the reason that's important is because they know the importance and the value of time. So the only way that you are going to be successful is if you know what you want, and that's not by doing everything that's doing the most important things. And so being a leader, or even in your personal life. A person that is not afraid to say no or to get rid of things is the person that's going to be happier. They're going to get to their goals. They're going to focus. They're going to have more clarity, because they know what matters if they're doing it for themselves, they're not doing all the things for everybody else. So if you could build in subtraction, I think that you'll realize you have more control to do that than you realize so well said.

Greg Voisen
Lisa, thank you for being on Inside Personal Growth spending this time for all my listeners, let's go to futurethink.com Also, we're gonna have a link to the book. Here it is, “Why Simple Wins” and namaste to you. Thank you so much. I appreciate you being on the show and sharing your wisdom.