Welcome back to Inside personal growth. This is Greg voisen, the host of inside personal growth. And Asheesh Advani us from actually Boston, and he is the head of Junior Achievement worldwide. And I literally met him through Marshall Goldsmith, because I saw Marshall had made a post on LinkedIn about a new book called Modern achievement. And Ashish, do you have a copy there you can hold up for the listeners.

Asheesh Advani
I do. It's right here.

Greg Voisen
There you go. This book. Everybody, hold it up again. I want to make sure that we're going to put a link to Amazon. We're also going to put a link to modern achievement.com seriously, go there. Check that website out. It's a not just a pretty website, but very informative website. He and Marshall wrote this book together, and it's illustrated by a woman by the name of

Asheesh Advani
Aisha burcel. Okay,

Greg Voisen
if you want to see some fantastic illustrations, folks, definitely. Now, I only have the PDF version right now, but the reality is, when you get this book in your hands, you're going to covet this book just because it's wonderfully done. It really, it really is Ashish. So let me let our listeners know a little about you. They do know plenty about Marshall, but he is the CEO of Junior Achievement worldwide, one of the largest NGOs in the world, dedicated to preparing youth for employment and entrepreneurship. During his leadership tenge tenure at ja a worldwide, he's been selected annually as one of the top 10 social good organizations in the world. Has been nominated for the Nobel Nobel Peace Prize. She's is also an accomplished entrepreneur, having led two venture backed businesses from startup to acquisition, he is an in demand speaker and regular contributor at major conferences, having served as a panelist or moderator at the World Economic Forum and the United Nations and The YPO young president's organization and fortune 500 corporate gatherings. For all of you, you probably don't need Marshalls. For the people that listen to my show, they they don't need Marshalls bio, because they know Marshall so well. So Ashish, you know, I think my intention for this is to really let the listeners know, not only just about the book, but really what you and Marshall are teaching people now that's different from a leadership standpoint and and a way to be because, look, this is influencing all the young entrepreneurs and young people that are coming through. Ja as well. You can't write a book and not have this be part of the curriculum, right? So modern achievement, kind of interviews introduces this fixed, flexible, freestyle framework for personal and career success. And I think that's so important in our evolving world with speed of technology the way things are going. You know, you had two startups. Can you explain how this framework is different from traditional approaches to achievement?

Asheesh Advani
Sure, and it's just really great to be here. And you know, Marshall has been such an amazing collaborator. I've learned so much from him. And so I'll try to channel my best Marshall. I'm not wearing a green shirt. So no,

Greg Voisen
you need to channel your best Ashish because we want a sheesh viewpoint here, because you know you're as important. I've co authored many books. The co authoring can be a challenging experience, so I love you for that. Well,

Asheesh Advani
we did it well, we both wrote it as separate eyes, as opposed to a we. Because, you know, Marshall grew up in Kentucky. I was born in India, grew up in Canada, moved to the US. We have totally different life stories. So rather than try to force everything to a we, we decided to write it with two eyes. And that, I think, really made it easier to collaborate. And then we found lots of areas of commonality, including this framework. So to answer your question, fixed, flexible, freestyle is a very simple way, really simple way, to understand how to actually adapt rules and lessons and advice in a world that's changing so quickly. So fixed lessons don't change despite the passage of time, flexible lessons change based on time, place and other variables and freestyle are lessons and rules that are really about you, unique to you based on your personal strengths. And that's a really simple framing. We use it, ja for all sorts of things that has been very empowering and helped us be a dynamic organization, and particularly for young people. If you're about to graduate from, let's say, high school or university, you're on average, going to have many jobs and many careers. People say that on average, at least 20 jobs and as many as seven different careers over the course of your life. So the idea of achievement being something which is about long term goal setting, you know the classic achievement book. So you pick a goal, you write it down, you visualize it, and the universe helps it happen. But if there's this much change in the world, we have to have a different framework to think about how to be adaptable. So that's really the purpose of this framing of the book, and why, I think the framework allows us to include many life lessons which have been helpful for Marshall and for me.

Greg Voisen
I love your Indian approach, because I'm a devotee of self realization fellowship, and I think when you attach yourself to a goal, meaning you think it's going to turn out a certain way, right? So I'm getting a little philosophical here and a little spiritual at the same time. And I don't know if you have any of that philosophy from India, which obviously came forward, but the reality is, it's like as you evolve in life, and you see things happen, you have may set a goal, maybe you reach it, but it doesn't exactly happen the way you think it was going to happen, right? You have to be flexible. I remember interviewing a woman not that long ago, and the book was called Flux, and how to actually stay in flux, and she has actually become a phenom, and eight different languages the book is it's really done really well. And I think it's important for people to be able to pivot right? You gotta be able you being a entrepreneur. You know this. Steve Jobs used to teach the world that's how you get things done. Bill Gates, everybody who's been there, and your intuition, it's important to listen to the connection between the heart and the gut. Now you and Marshall draw from a wealth of experiences in leadership and mentorship. Look at you. You're leading an organization where that's what you're doing all the time, setting an example for younger people, and these are probably Gen Z ers, right? So I was going to ask a question around the what you might see as the generational differences in our society today, but what inspired you both to collaborate this book and how did your different perspectives from somebody who's 70 something to you who's 50, and then if you take somebody down in their 30s and 40s, right? I believe we all work together to make things happen. That's just a personal belief. But how did you these perspectives help you shape the content in the book?

Asheesh Advani
Well, we decided to include the perspectives of a lot of young people. In fact, most of the freestyle section of the book fixed, flexible freestyle. The third section of the book includes the voices of young leaders, Young Achievers, as we call them, who share their own lessons. In fact, some of those lessons are really, you know, they were educational to both Marshall and me. The first part of the book, the fixed part of the book, has the classic lessons, the stuff that really doesn't change, leadership thinkers and the middle part flexible. We included the lessons from people in the coaching profession and leadership profession, some of the world's top leadership coaches, they were kind enough to share their stories. So we tried to do is bring together perspectives of different ages, while the whole book is written for a younger audience, what I found, and this is probably one of the biggest ahas for me, is people who are established leaders, people who are bit later stage in their career, have found much more value from the book because it's not written didactically to them. It's not like, hey, you need to do this. It's more like, Here's what a young aspiring leader should do, which allows somebody who's an established leader to sort of pick and choose the things that resonate with them without feeling like they're being told to do something. So that was an aha moment. At least, I've gotten lots of feedback from people of different ages saying I got so much value out of this part of the book.

Greg Voisen
Well, and rightfully so. I mean, look, we are in an era where things, depending on our perspective, are moving at a much more rapid pace, advent of AI, people using this, people writing books with it, people doing a lot of things, right? It's a wonderful world. I do have nothing negative to say, even somebody who sits here at 70 years old, having said, Oh, well, you know about this or that, and looking at my perspective, but I think this book takes that from an adaptability standpoint in today's rapidly changing world. So how can young leaders who are going to pick up this book balance the need for these fixed principles with the flexibility required to thrive in this incredibly dynamic environment. As a matter of fact, I'd go to say more than dynamic. I would say it's it's actually quite explosive, right? Maybe a wrong term, but I think my listeners will get it, because they understand me, it is pretty explosive. And the opportunities that exist, I know if you can get through uncertainty, you can always find the opportunity, always find the opportunity. Because most people are sitting here going, well, it's such uncertain times. We don't know what's going on. We're really challenged by this. And mentally, this is a struggle. And I say, get through the struggle, because the opportunity on the other side is greater. How do you help the young people who pick this book up see the world that way? Well, let me give you an

Asheesh Advani
example of fixed lesson and an example of a flexible lesson that should answer your question more concrete. So an example of a fixed lesson is to go meta. What go meta means is, and this is, by the way, become part of the way education theory moves into practice. When we went to school, we weren't asked to reflect on what we learned and take five or 10 minutes of every lecture to write down what we learned. That was just not part of school. We just were supposed to, maybe, like, at the end of the year, reflect on what we'd learned. But now what they do in a lot of schools is they actually, as part of the lesson, take a moment to do what's called meta learning, where you actually have to reflect on the learning objectives and what has happened over the last hour of the lesson. That is such an important fixed lesson. It's a way that actually, you can reflect on what you want with this much change in the world. If you don't, if you don't take the moment to just reflect, you move from opportunity to opportunity, and you haven't really improved. So part of this investment in personal development is to take that moment to go meta. That's a fixed us, a flexible lesson. And a lot of young people, I think, forget this, which is why we put it in the book, is to make other people's goals your own. I think we're taught at a young age to be looking for your life purpose and to really be passionate about something and make your career choices based on that passion. But in reality, for most of your early career, your goals are going to be given to you by your university, by your parents, by your first employer, by your boss, and if you don't align your goals to other people's goals, you're going to hit a lot of frustration. So one thing we advise in the book is to and this is a flexible lesson, because it depends on where you are in your career. If you're older, maybe that's not the right or if you have a lot of direction, a lot of purpose already, maybe this is not good advice for you, but making other people's goals your own allows you to align and really advance much quicker in your career trajectory

Greg Voisen
so important that you're taking on an inclusionary part where you're taking on other people's goals, especially as a leader, to see it that way, right? Because we work in teams, in most of these companies, we have team goals. We have individual goals that we are supposed to be reaching for the team. And you know, this brings me to this question, and I, and I love this whole element about the way you've approached this book, but the key concept is finding happiness in the journey, rather than this focusing on the end goal. And you know, most Gen Z ers are going to tell you, Hey, I'm not going to live it the way my parents lived it, because I was a boomer, right? And there's no way I'm living my life that way. I'm just not going from gold to gold to gold to gold. And I'm not going to just go try and find material things, although there is some material out in can you share the practical steps for cultivating? You know, Carol Dweck talks about the growth mindset, or the fixed mindset, right? Well, mindset is a big issue here for cultivating this mindset, which I'm going to just call it, the happiness mindset, the meaningful mindset. What do you guys say about that? Well,

Asheesh Advani
let me give you a couple of examples. I mean, if you're going to have 20 jobs within seven careers, it means that you're going to get some involuntary transitions, which basically means you're going to get fired a few times in your career. Times in your career to have the resilience to get through those very challenging times when you're going to have people who organizations who actually, quote, don't want you, is actually very, very difficult in our generation. It just it was much harder to deal with that change. In fact, the evolution of people having a job for life to having a few jobs to now having many jobs and many careers, has required this mindset shift, this resilient mind shift, asset shift, the concept which which you need to have to get through this is called self efficacy.

Asheesh Advani
so one of the core elements of self efficacy is being able to reframe. So we have a whole chapter in the book that's all about reframing and knowing the power of the word yet. So you can move from being sort of confronted with challenges and saying, I'm not good at math, to I'm not good at math. Yet that reframing changes things in your mind, to be able to be much more focused on being able to get through the challenges that are in front of you. For example, I talk about a personal challenge that I had with stuttering as a kid. So I had a pretty significant speech impediment. You don't hear it now, but when, when I was younger, I really couldn't get a sentence out of my mouth for most of my school age years, and I went through speech therapy. And as I look back upon that, I could think of all the things that I wasn't able to do, right, all the clubs I couldn't join, all the leadership roles I couldn't have, all the girls I didn't date, or whatever it might be, or I could say, Geez, speech therapy taught me to be a really good public speaker, because I had to practice every week doing extemporaneous speaking fluently. So I choose looking back in my own reframing as looking at the positive of the resilience that I built, the obstacle I overcame, as opposed to all the negatives, which will make me actually be less confident for what I can do in the future. And that's a mindset skill that I think will be more important, particularly when young people are going to have this many jobs and this many career transitions, you

Greg Voisen
make a really important point. And I think that somebody who potentially, you know, in your case, who had a stutter, who overcame stuttering, there had to be a huge fear there. And one of the things is you've gotta love yourself and and it's so important today, we can't serve anybody else unless we love ourselves. We've gotta take care of ourselves too. So in your case, you know, look, you went to a speech therapist. You overcame this obstacle. You became a fantastic speaker, speaker. And I think that hard work intelligence obviously has paid off for you in spades. So this goes to your own unique career journey. You know, you've gone from entrepreneur to leading the world's largest NGO, right? Or one of the largest NGOs. How is your personal definition? We call it Junior Achievement. Of achievement evolved over time, and how does that reflect in this book? Because, you know, I read your bio, I get it, but I didn't take your journey. But what I understand is that you've now dedicated yourself to a non profit, right, where you're actually helping young people because you made it in the world already, right? So you could devote time to this and be there for them. How has it kind of changed your definition over time of how you look at being what I want to call an entrepreneur, if somebody is going to help people help and serve, because you're obviously helping and serving in a big way. Let

Asheesh Advani
me start by saying that we have a lot of volunteers who help at ja. So we're one of the world's largest volunteer based organizations as well. So while we have paid staff work on the ground in over 118 countries. Now, believe it or not, paid you know, staff on the ground, we have 10 times as many volunteers who get involved with our organization. So I appreciate your question about my own journey and how I got from being an entrepreneur to here. But I want to just start by saying that many of your listeners are probably already involved in junior achievement on boards and involved as volunteers, and, you know, telling their business stories to young people. What motivated me to make this change is because I'd gone through two very sort of deep entrepreneurship experiences, right? I started a company, built it, raised money and sold it, and the second time around, I was hired by the venture capitalist to run a company, built it and sold it. And they both were, I wouldn't say they were incredible successes, but they both had elements of success and elements of failure in them, in terms of those journeys, and as I look back on what I wanted to do next with my life, I actually did this go meta thing, I stepped back and said, Okay, what am I actually good at? I'm not great at building companies. I really am not. I'm better at being persuasive and and convincing people to be supporters, either financial supporters or joining teams. So how can I use the fundraising skills and the team building skills to, frankly, do more for the world? And ja, at the time, was looking for tech forward CEO with a global perspective, and I went through ja when I was a kid. So for me, the chance to be able to give back in this way was just such a perfect alignment of what I want to do next with my life. This book, in fact, all the proceeds are being donated by Marshall and I to ja, because, you know, obviously we're doing this not to make money. We're doing this to just get the message out there, and to be able to do that at some phase of your life, no matter where you are, whether you're young or old or rich or not rich, or whatever you define, it is so fulfilling to be able to be very, very focused on the next generation. And I think many people get involved with ja just because they see themselves and the lessons they've learned they really want to share with others. And we've created mechanisms to help volunteers do that. So that's, I think, why we attract so many sort of board members, corporate volunteers and entrepreneur volunteers all over the world?

Greg Voisen
Yeah, I know here in San Diego, we have a big kind of ja movement, and many of my friends are in it. I've never been in it, but now that you've spoken with me, I'm going to actually go to one of my best friends, Mark, who's been in it for years, and talk to him about jumping in all right, there you go. Did another you've recruited another person. I've always had many of my own startups, successes, failures, whatever, so I think I would be a good addition to it. So look, you drew you and Marshall drew from this diverse range of leaders and achievers to build this book. What was the most surprising or insightful lesson that you learned from some of these individuals while writing the book? Because you had so many contributors at the end of the book, there's this big, long list that I'm actually looking at right now, and I'm saying, Okay, you guys had to have a couple that stood out. Is there one in there in particular that you would tell our listeners that would kind of exemplify what it was you were looking for in the book?

Asheesh Advani
Well, first, let me say it's like asking a parent who their favorite child is. So this is not about favorite, I know, and we, I will say we were going to do like a proper index in the back, and we decided, rather than do an index, why don't we just list the people who've really contributed substantially, not everyone we've mentioned. So they're people we didn't mention as well. But I will say that, if I had to pick one right now that would resonate with this audience, I would say there's this young man I met. He lives, actually now in Dubai. He moved from the US to Dubai. His name's Amman, and he told me something early in his career, which he used early in his career, which has been so successful for him, even though he's still a young guy, he said he consciously chose to make friends who are five to 10 years older than him as a networking tool. He didn't do it with intentionality, where he's like, Oh, I'm doing it just because I'm gonna get a job one day from he did it because, you know, he was making friends. He got introduced and he he liked hanging out with them. And it ended up being the way that he was able to manage all these transitions in his life. He built a professional network five to 10 years older, and I think so many young people, particularly having young people in college, they are so focused on spending time with their peer group, they don't think of the importance of having these not like, you know, next generation mentors, but people who are just a bit older to guide them in their choices. And I think if you're going to have this much change in your life, 20 jobs, 70 careers, you're going to have to be very, very good at building a network of people who are going to refer opportunities to you so and then, so I wrote this lesson, and then I, of course, shared drafts of the book with many people, and what came back was you need to adapt this lesson issues, because it's such an important lesson. You should also make friends five to 10 years younger than you this. This gets the point where the people who read the book were also people who are kind of at our stage of their careers, and they were so passionate about this. And I said, I have to rewrite this and write it with that angle as well, because it's such an important part of, I think, how we navigate the future.

Greg Voisen
It is it and you that was a great story, because I reflect, as you were talking on chip Connolly, and Chip Connolly speaks about midlife now, but the reality is, he speaks about elders. You know, in the in the in the American Indians, we had elders that people respected now, five or 10 years older, fine, 1520, years older. I don't care if they're older or they're younger. The point is, you are learning from the stories they have, from the context they have, and it expedites your career. In other words, this is going to basically move you forward quicker. And I love it, because that young man actually must have read read him a grass book on putting the dots together, because you have to look for the future. Right? Kind of look forward. And if you can look forward and put the dots together, you're there. So look you. Today's world is global. It's decentralized world. How do you think leaders can maintain a strong sense of purpose and direction. Well, main managing their teams. I just had Dave and Allen on here the book is team right? That are increasingly remote and diverse, and your business especially, I presume it was in the it was in the software industry. I'm making an assumption, but probably so, you know, we're working with teams all over the world. My son is an executive at Adobe. He works with teams all over the world. What do you what would you tell people today working in these remotes, remote and diverse environments?

Asheesh Advani
So I think the world has really changed, and people are so comfortable now with being in teams where they don't even meet in person so many of my colleagues, especially in our organization, it's so global, we couldn't afford, as a nonprofit, to fly people around. So we have to become good at building a team culture, remotely, completely remote. And certainly I had to do that in my previous jobs. But the world was different then. I think the expectations were also different then. Now, I think there's such a feeling of we're going to invest the time in getting to know people on Zoom calls, because we know we're never going to meet in person. So I'll just tell you how we do it, because I think it's essential to building culture. One is to be pretty clear about your team norms, right? We used to do this all the time. In every organization I've ever been part of, we've had a get together where we sit and talk about our norms, how we are actually going to behave with each other, specifically around teamwork. That's one very easy thing to start with. I think another is to really use social media differently. I think some people use social media to either build their personal brand or to communicate with the external world. But in an organization like ours, you know, I need to use social media to communicate with my colleagues, with people who actually are on my team, because I know they're checking the same social that the external audience is checking. So I use social media to actually communicate key messages I'd like the JA network to know, or even the team just to J were wide headquarters, because I want to be able to not have to just send another email. I'd rather tell a story on social media that would be so much more memorable than sending another email. So that's another lesson I would share, I think, another really powerful lesson I'm sure many of your other guests have shared. This is to really focus on appreciation. There's something so powerful about appreciating other people and being highly specific, and then particularly those who like the public recognition focusing on the public side of it too, because then that value, or that element of your culture gets really amplified when you appreciate one person's work very publicly. Some people don't like public appreciation, so you kind of have to ask first. We actually have this thing. We did this a few years ago. We asked everyone the team, do you like to be publicly appreciated, or do you really want private only? And some people just are really uncomfortable with public appreciation. But at least for my career, I found that just really focusing on gratitude and appreciation can be a essential part of your culture, even if you're not naturally suited to be that person who's always thanking people publicly. I think you have to learn that skill. It's just so important

Greg Voisen
and and I think appreciation and gratitude too. I'd add that in there for the fact that you know you have this opportunity like just you and I today, we've never met until this morning. We're on a zoom call. We're educating the world about a brand new book through a thing called Zoom that will now go on social media. And when you really look at all of this, you go, what just it's a wonderment. It's just, it's, it's wonderful that me 17 years doing this, 11 158 podcasts so far, whatever the number is, and I get this opportunity just sit here in my own little office and meet people like you. And I say every day, I'm just so blessed, and I'm grateful. I'm grateful to have met you through Marshall. So here's the thing, given your experience with Junior Achievement worldwide, the book modern achievement addresses the specific challenges faced by us younger generation. So how do you help them rejigger their goals, or look at their goals in a different way, such that through this book, the knowledge and wisdom which was imparted by all of these contributors, right, allows them kind of coalesced all this and go, Wow, I found a new way to look at my goal, or to achieve my goal, because this book is about achievement, right? You wouldn't have titled it modern achievement.

Asheesh Advani
So sure, that's a great question. So I presented, now this book and the concepts in it quite often, and sometimes after I present, a parent comes up to me and says, I really want my my daughter, my son, to embrace their passion, and I want them to develop a sense of purpose. And I fear, I think that's the right word. I fear that we're projecting on young people this need for an organizing principle for our goals. My personal view is we better let young people be young and discover it in their own way, on their own time when we project our need to have this unifying purpose too soon. I think it's actually potentially very problematic for young people. Puts too much pressure on you know, we used to live in a world where the college you got into, or the first job you got was defining in terms of your life trajectory. That is so much less true. Now, might not be completely untrue, but it's much less true. So now it's about the skills you have, the aptitude you have, the mindset you have, because you're going to have this many transitions. So I really think that we, particularly in our generation, we look back on the next generation, we shouldn't be trying to force purpose too soon. There's a wonderful chart you talked about. Aisha bear sells illustrations. She's got this beautiful illustration in the book. I think it's if I recall in the last third of the book, and it shows how you move from ready made purpose to self made purpose. Just a nice little chart showing how that happens. And I think it's so powerful because it happens for different people at different people at different times. If you're like a tunberg, you know, the young woman in Sweden who's so focused on climate change, developed it really early in her life, and that's wonderful, but that is rare. So for me, it happened much later, for the early part of my life. I had so much ready made purpose from other organizations, institutions, parents, educational, sort of communities and other places. So I would say that's probably the most important guidance I would give people listening to this. Particularly, I think most of your listeners are probably not in high school or college, or probably parents or people who are at a different stage of their career. That's what I would want them to take away.

Greg Voisen
You know, you, as you're speaking about this, I was listening to a Tim Ferriss podcast, and he was interviewing Chris, I think it's Chris Sagar, the guy that's made a billion dollars building businesses and selling them and so on. And, you know, he said, I have a list of criteria people, did they work hard when they were young? Did they get their hands dirty? Did they wash dishes? Did they, you know, did they learn another language? Did they and all this whole list had nothing to do with how much education you had from a great university. It had to do with your experiences. And as I was listening to that, I was thinking I was counting off as he was checking the list. How many of those did I personally actually have as as part of my life experience, I say life experience. And I checked almost every box as he was speaking through his list. And I think for a young person today, it's so much more important to have the experience, to show up and be there and just do basically what you need to do, and learn from that, then put that in your arsenal and have an opportunity. Now I hope that's not going against what you believe, but the reality is, I thought it was just a wonderful approach. And it's like, Hey, if you go to UCLA, USC, if you end up going to Harvard, whatever, fantastic. But if you don't, that isn't the hiring criteria. Now, for most organizations, they're looking for, what is your experience, you know? How do you address people? Can you meet people? Can you speak to people you know, whatever? And I relate this because there's a very exclusive hotel chain. And I interviewed the gentleman who was like the head of HR at one point for that, and he said, we're having trouble finding young people who can relate to individuals in the hotel like as Busboys and Bellman and and all of these kind of things, right? He said it's just a real challenge because they they don't, they can't even interact, right? So the book's approach integrates lessons for most established and emerged leaders. How do you think this this? How do you think that this blend of perspectives helps the readers, whether young or older, navigate their personal and or professional lives? Because you've got a lot in this book. I don't know how many pages it was, but when I was going through the PDF. It's how many? 400

Asheesh Advani
Yeah, it's about 400 Yeah. So personal and professional lives, we organize a book into self and career, just to organize it and make it easy. It's, you know, the book is 30 lessons. Each lesson is very digestible. One of the readers said, sheesh, one of the best things about your book is when I'm in the car, because he bought the audible version, it's, you know, each lesson takes, like, just about 10 to 15 minutes, and my kids can listen in the backseat while I drive them to school. Perfect, so but personal and professional. You know, I think this idea of being able to set multiple goals. We have this chapter in the book called start, stop, continue, where the lesson is about start, stop, continue. People make like annual New Year's resolutions, and inevitably, they fail for all sorts of reasons. But start, stop and continue is a framing that's much quicker and easier, that allows you to pick one thing you want to start doing, one thing you want to stop doing, and one thing you want to continue doing. And that is the kind of a way to be able to set iterative goals, because that's going to change like, frankly, it might change every month, every six months, every 12 months, whatever it might be. And so we have a bunch of, I guess, pieces of advice in the book like that, which move you away from long term goal setting and the traditional definitions of achievement to be to allow you, like I think you probably know Marshall's book, triggers right where he's found a way, just by asking the right questions, you can change the framing in your mind for Your role, the behavior change needed to accomplish goals. So I think one of the things we all know is how to set goals, but we sometimes don't know why we don't achieve them. And we put in this book this way of asking active questions. Actually, Marshall's daughter Kelly, who came up with this in her research, it's so powerful. I went through this program with Marshall, where every week I had to ask myself the questions which were getting in the way, which helped me understand was getting in the way of me of my accomplishing goals. So, for example, the goal was to become better at tennis, because it was the summer and rather day. Did

Greg Voisen
you know he used to send those to me on an Excel spreadsheet?

Asheesh Advani
Oh, he did. So you did those questions, all those questions.

Greg Voisen
He's been using those for years.

Asheesh Advani
He has great questions. They're really great. So I had to change the way I thought about playing tennis. I asked myself, have I done my best today to improve a tennis so the phrasing of the question was very much about my personal agency, not like it's raining outside, or the courts. You know, I can't use a court or whatever it might be. It had to be an active questioning, which made personal responsibility core to it, and it was so powerful for me. So the book includes little things like that, which I think will help young people, both personally and professionally,

Greg Voisen
it will, and I would presume, or I don't know if you and Marshall have decided to turn this into a course, but if you haven't, you should, because advice, Lawrence, I'm sure you are right here on track. We got all sorts of stuff going, so

Asheesh Advani
we'll see where's got the AI tool now that he's built. So you can ask Marshall anything. So it's, it's amazing what he's he's been able to do actually, really, really it

Greg Voisen
is. It's an inspiration. And so, you know, you and Marshall have both worked with leaders at really, the highest levels. Let's face it, most people in their career don't even get that opportunity. But you know Alan Mulally and all these kind of people that have that have graced his life with great learnings and him teaching them, what common traits do you see in successful leaders today, and how does modern achievement help cultivate these traits for the readers who pick the book up?

Asheesh Advani
Well, I think the leaders of yesterday, leaders of today, frankly, are somewhat different. So I really do believe like Alan was, like Alan is just an amazing leader. What he accomplished is like legendary right? But leading forward today, or leading forward in 20 years, will require, I think, a very different set of leadership skills. So particularly, I would say, because we're living in a world now that is not just more global, but the unpredictability of the global side of what we're doing has made it much harder to lead global enterprises. And I mean, I live this daily. Even in my 10 years or so in this organization, I've seen the rate of change of what's happening around the world. And my advice for a young leader, particularly one who wants to, you know, lead something globally, is to travel a lot and to learn the nuance of different communication styles, because even learning a new language, for example, 10 years ago, it made a lot of sense to learn a new language. Now there's real time AI translation. You can have a wearable and little you will speak, and it will translate to the other person in their language. But yeah,

Greg Voisen
the new Samsung phone does that. It's on both sides right. You can literally just say something, and then it appears both written and spoken on the other side of the phone.

Asheesh Advani
So I think that the important thing now is actually understanding the cultural differences, to actually really appreciate how the indirect communication style of somebody in China versus the direct communication style of somebody in the Netherlands, for example, are totally different. It's not about knowing that you need to communicate with them and be able to translate and know their language. It's about having the subtlety and the cues of how to convince somebody and persuade somebody to actually understand their goals, listen to them and adapt to what you want to say and what they want to say. That's so much harder, and that takes, I think, real effort. That's just an example of, I think, what needs to happen in the future. Well,

Greg Voisen
understanding the cultures and the cultural differences and the diversity requires you to interact with inside that culture, and that's why you say travel. And I think travel is one way for people to get such a broad education. And you know, you ja is worldwide, so obviously you you said you're traveling, you must go to all these various chapters and get

Asheesh Advani
to meet with us. I mean, we had a massive event just a few weeks ago where we had students from 70 countries come together and meet each other. You know, when you do business together, it changes the way you actually interact. So it's so energizing, obviously, for me to be there and see all these young people from around the world doing deals and getting to know each other and partnering, that's what makes me very happy and energized, frankly.

Greg Voisen
Well, I just want to acknowledge you that ja, whoever is in the board, shows a wonderful CEO. And so thank you, Ashish, for being in because you're a great example. So let's wrap our interview up with this last final question, what do you hope that readers are going to take away from modern achievement, like, look, this is a big book. This is 400 pages. Illustrations are fantastic. I'm going to say that again, by the way. So if you just buy it to see the pictures, actually look for the pictures. And how do you see the book kind of influencing the future of leadership and kind of your role at ja and also people's personal development, right? They're inside personal growth. That's the title of this, this podcast. I because I actually believe this book can can be a seminal work between you and Marshall. Well, first

Asheesh Advani
of all, thank you for saying all those nice things. I'll just say, I would leave your listeners with one, a reflection. This book has 30 lessons. It is not at all to be read cover to cover. It's really written to pop in and pop out, which, by the way, is how all young people read, like all books now, just so you know, pop in, pop out. So my my hope to answer your question for this book is that every single person finds at least five lessons from the book that they actually remember and internalize and actually start to act on. Because I do think those five lessons will change over the course of whenever you pop in and out of the book. For me, this idea of even making friends five to 10 years younger than me, it started to make me think about the importance of reverse mentoring and the importance of my being really thoughtful and intentional. And I learned that from a young person. It wasn't for me, it wasn't for Marshall. So everyone's going to find a different five I know that, and I also know that what we did were We were so careful to curate these lessons, to have pictures and stories, to make them memorable, which is why I think you talked about aisha's beautiful illustrations. So my hope and dream, and I hope you get this too Greg, is to find your five lessons, to remember those five and actually act on them, because I do think it'll make you happier and sort of more adaptable to the new world of achievement that we're all living through.

Greg Voisen
Well, you know, my university is this podcast, and every time I get on and I get to interview someone as bright and as intelligent and as articulate as you, I always take away new lessons. So thank you for the lessons that you've given me this morning, especially a lot about the young man that you told the story where he actually was meeting with a little bit older people, four or five years older than himself. That was a great story. And I think for all my listeners, please go out. Hold the book up again, if you would. I know you've got a great copy there. That's the book you're going to want to go get. It's called Modern achievement with Ashish Vianney and Mark Marshall Goldsmith, we'll put a link to that as well. The website is modern achievement.com. Please go there as well to learn more about both them. And we're going to put a link to Junior Achievement worldwide. So for all of you interested who are listening and would like to be a mentor for young people. Please go to there and sign up to do that. Find your local chapter. There's plenty of them around. They're all over the world, probably pretty easy to do. Thank you so much for being on. Namaste to you. Thanks for you actually gracing our presence here with your wisdom and this book. Thanks so much,

Asheesh Advani
and nice to meet you. Thank you, Greg,