Hello boys and girls ladies and
germs Damas y Caballeros. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show. Where is my job to deconstruct world-class performers of all different types from all different Industries areas of expertise my guests today back by popular request is Jim Collins. Jim Collins is a student and teacher of what makes great companies tick and a Socratic advisor will explain what that means two leaders throughout the business and social sectors his first appearance on this podcast was
Easily one of the most popular of all of 2019 people went bananas. So the hope is that we bottle some of that lightning again in this round 2 and we cover a lot of new ground for those who don't know Jim Jim has invested more than 25 years and rigorous research and has authored or co-authored six books that have sold more than 10 million copies worldwide in total. They include good to Great the number one bestseller that examines why some companies make the leap to Superior results and its companion work good to Great and the social sector
The enduring classic built to last many of you will know that which explores how some leaders both companies that remain Visionary for Generations. How the Mighty Fall just in some ways the exact opposite which delves into how once great companies can self-destruct and great by choice, which is about thriving and Chaos why some do and others don't and now he's updated his debut book beyond entrepreneurship for the 21st century Beyond entrepreneurship 2.0 is the title subtitle turning your business into an enduring great company.
Is the subtitle is available. Now everywhere books are sold lesser-known. And as a teaser for those who didn't pick this up in the first episode Jim has been an avid rock climber for more than 40 years and has completed single day a sense of El Capitan and half dome in Yosemite Valley those of you in rock climbing will know just how serious those accomplishments are and he has many other interests many other skills and is an all-around fascinating character. So without further Ado Jim Collins Jim Collins dot-coms where you can find all
Thanks Jim. Please enjoy this Return of the reclusive polymath Jim Collins.
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Jim welcome back to the show. It is such a pleasure to have you again.
It is really a joy to be back with you and for all of those people who may not have heard the first session we did together. You did such a marvelous job of extracting my particular approaches to self-management that I hope some people will go back and find that previous one and then we can build upon it from here and in the spirit of conversation you and I love conversation. We love ideas. I'd love to
Begin with maybe turning the tables a little just asking you some questions and I was rereading the 4-Hour workweek and and just kind of getting myself into your head about what you wrote that about 15 years ago. Was that right? Approximately?
Yes, you have 2007. Yeah. So about to be about 15 years ago about
15 years ago. So the first thing that just struck me as I noted in there that you had really been affected by Edge how
Ow, and I'm curious if you're still in touch. And also what you really learned from him
it shall yes. We're still in touch sir Professor Ed. Xiao spelled Z scha you for people interested. He's also appeared on the podcast not too long ago. I would say a year and a half or two years ago, and we're still in touch and Ed had a tremendous impact on me on multiple levels.
I was first exposed to him when I was a student in his class called high tech entrepreneurship ele 491. So it was a cross-disciplinary class. It spanned a few different departments electrical engineering operations research finance and Ed appealed to me and I think appealed to a lot of people because for those who don't have any context he is a true polymath and a very curious character. So he had been a competitive figure skater. He'd taken a few companies public. He was one of the first computers
science instructors at Stanford and if my memory serves me correctly he became that because the person who had been appointed to teach didn't show up and he just raised his hand and the so became one of the first computer science teachers, he was a congressman and is really the consummate teacher in my mind and encourages all of his students to do it their own way to live life their own way to
Not depend on a predetermined path and we are still in touch. We're still in touch and I'm still in touch with most of the most impactful mentors from my life
story and he's getting up there in years in chronological age. But sure strikes me as quite intensely young and what do you think his Arc teaches about really?
After
60, well, I think that not to invoke the cliche. But some things are cliches for good reasons that youth is in the heart or youth is in the mind. I think that Ed has made a life of exposing himself to new ideas new technologies young blood in the form of vibrant young energized.
Students and entrepreneurs Founders full of piss and vinegar. So I think that has a an osmotic carryover effect into his own life, which I believe he is extremely aware of those would be a few of the things that come to mind. He he is constantly challenging his own understanding of the world and possibilities via proactively exposing himself to new things and new people.
So,
I'd love to bridge from that to a question that's been just really simmering in my head all weekend. And so you have this this wonderful course and he has this kind of look you really don't have to force yourself into a box of what a whole bunch of other people want you to do or how you should live or how you should expend your life and your your talents. There's only one better use it. Well, it goes by really fast and
If I sort of understand the story you kind of went out and hit the soul-crushing day-to-day experience of this thing that you and I are both constitutionally incapable of enjoying called a job. And I sort of feel where there are those of us who For Better or Worse, we are constitutionally unemployable and then sort of from there to if I understand the Arc of the 4-Hour workweek argument. It was essentially look.
If you want to have a life of experiences and meaningful experiences and freedom of choices and how you live that by very creative of disciplined approaches. You could kind of squeeze down the amount of energy that's needed to earn the cash flow needed to be able to have the experiences and a great life and that there was a lot of both tips and overall principles for doing that have I got it kind of essentially
right you did.
Did I think that is essentially right? I would I would say that creative and disciplined could also just as easily be replaced with creative and experimental. I think the experimental component is is a large large piece of the puzzle. But yes you did you did nail the
essence so so now here's here's the question that's been on my mind and I'm really curious to hear how you've evolved on this.
So at that time you if I also heard it, right you didn't come from a wealthy family did not you had a little something about your parents combined learn something like 50,000 a year or something to dip it basically came from a like, you know, look there's not a big safety net. It's not like hey, I can just go do anything people support it. You have the reality of the world and and yet you weren't going to bow to the strictures of the way regular work would happen until you share a lot of your wisdom from your own experimentation with
That now what's interesting is that was really focused on of to me. Anyways, as you were really focused at that point on I can get the work part down so I can really do this life thing your life's different. Now. Hmm, your life is different in that that question of what's my minimum monthly cash flow. I need to be able to fund great experiences is actually no longer relevant question for you.
So my question for you at this stage is what keeps Tim Ferriss going.
What is it that drives you in your work because the option of just experiences?
Is fully available. So what is it that's changed for you. That's now the inner motor the keeps Tim Ferriss going and going
that is an excellent question. I'll try to not give a terrible answer a few things pop to mind for me and the first is
creation for in a search for beauty I think that the Search for Beauty and elegance which are similar in my mind but not identical has become the fuel for the Seeker if that makes any sense and I find that in my own personal experience that when I
for beauty which seems like it is absurdly too high on Maslow's hierarchy of needs to be relevant to anyone perhaps it sounds very abstract that I tend to find more truth than when I purely try to deduce truth intellectually in a very prefrontal way and that the to use a crass term the return on investment of finding those examples of
Beauty far surpass a lot of what I had white-knuckled to achieve through crunching numbers and digesting spreadsheets not to say there isn't a value to that. I think it is necessary. But I have found it insufficient if you want to experience what we might call some semblance of Grace. I know we're getting out into maybe the Deep Waters here a bit. What's
an example for you of so it's interesting. Actually, I really resonate with this.
Idea of the Exquisite right and and and the word that I've often when I even when I'm engaged with profit-making companies or whatever at some point. There's just something that's that making something Exquisite making something excellent because it can be is not a means to an end.
It is an end in itself and I always think about that wonderful parable of the think it was when I learned heard from Drucker actually about sculptor who made these these statues that the city fathers had asked to make these statutes in the statues were were, you know to be up in the town square and he made he put in all this extra effort and took this extra time to make the backs of the statues as
All as the front of the statues and the city fathers are well, why did you do that? Nobody will ever see the backs of the statues and his answer is ah, but the gods can see it and I know it's there.
Right. And so and you know that that notion of or making a sentence just just right or the simple Cadence of where you place a comma are the person we both admire and writing John McPhee, you know his sense of the Exquisite single sentence. Hi really relate to this and I'm curious for you. Like what's an example like how wide of a range does exquisite or beauty go for you? Is it Exquisite experience Exquisite painting the Exquisite goose?
Bumps of Beethoven's Symphony Number Three movement number two, when it goes into the funeral March. I mean, what is it?
It is all encompassing in a sense and I would also rewind to bit earlier when you asked me the question that has been on your mind over the weekend and I can't remember the exact wording, but it was something like what drives you know, what calcium
ferrous going
right what keeps me going. So I think that
That if we look at keeping someone going there are different ways to keep someone going and you can feel driven. We use that word in English lat. I think that for some that if we were to unpack it has some level of being whipped forward in terms of sentiment. There is a sometimes there's something we are running away from as opposed to running towards if that makes any sense. There's some type of pain or just function or
Wound next to our strengths that is driving us forward and then there's a very distinct feeling which is that of being pulled towards something and I have found it more sustainable enjoyable and ultimately more aligned in recent years to seek those things that pull me forward and beauty is one of those indicators its kind of the light at the Lighthouse. Tim O'Reilly is is one of my favorite.
Thinkers fantastic person a technologist well-known publisher and he and I have had a number of conversations and one of his practices at least at the time that we were speaking last was to take a photograph of one flower each day. And that is a practice of recognizing Beauty. It's not that beauty is hard to find. It's that it is easy to overlook. So cultivating the eye.
in the awareness to Spot Beauty whether that's in a flower or quite frankly in something that would normally be found repulsive like decay of some time is endlessly interesting to me and I do find that when I am attuned to that the Simplicity of that in the same way that Mary Oliver might simplify the approach to prayer if
If someone were to want to explore that practice as an example, even in a very secular way, which might sound like an oxymoron, but I'll try not to drown Us in the Deep Waters too much at this point in the conversation. I do think that a lot of it is is driven to or not driven to I would say based in reactivating instincts that have been
Forgotten but just in some fashion laid dormant, right? So there's a quote from DH Lawrence that I like a lot which is very simple be a good animal comma true to your instincts. That's it. And I've operated very much from a metaphorically speaking left brain analytical perspective for decades and I there are tremendous benefits and applications for that.
And I'm trying to in recent years pay equal attention to the millions of years of evolution that preceded language that have as an end product in some fashion a whole spectrum of what we might call instincts that I believed to be deeply intelligent and Powerful is as guiding forces. So sure if that answers the question
it's very
Just staying in it. And I asked the question for for sort of two levels about what keeps you going. I'm genuinely curious because you were two different stage in your life and you wrote that and people who still resonate with it today very much may also be backward you were when you were doing that the other facing different constraints in life and and wanting to create their freedom with that and and and it gives them a tool kit for for that very useful tool kit and one observation and then just something that
That I found for myself as how I think about this is that my sense in reading the 4-Hour workweek was that it was in many ways kind of reacting to the order in which you were placed the sort of I reject this I'm going to do it different and and did right and it's kind of like moving away from I don't want that and the way you describe it now is it's a moving toward.
That's right. Right. It's a moving toward Beauty towards Exquisite towards exploration as opposed to reacting from is and it's very striking in the tone difference. I found as I thought about this for myself because I have like you didn't have much of a safety net. We talked about that in our last episode and taking big entrepreneurial or the big bet that Joanna and I took and it was very scary and so forth still wanting to go forward and do it.
And have these sort of different sort of drives early and I thought of it is kind of what's the point allocation. I always tend to go to point allocations and numbers and so forth. But what's the point allocation between dark force motivations and light Force motivations and dark force motivations for me have always been the things like anger rage channeled channeled rage insecurity need for attention just you know accomplishment to show others. I'm capable right those things that I felt.
Very much when I was young and then there's like force point which are I just love the work?
Okay, just love the work or I love the people. I'm doing it with or the sheer curiosity of the question or I know I can make this better even if no one else notices. So therefore I want to make it better and the sheer joy of seeing something come out on the page. That's like wow. Yeah, that's a that's a neat sentence or whatever and the drive for contribution being useful as we talked about last time versus being successful and so forth. And so what I have found is that
For me, it's trying to be you know, moving decreasing the point out of a hundred that are dark force motivations, which I would say when I was younger were 80/20 and I was afraid to let go of those because I felt that if I let go of the emptiness in my stomach because my dad didn't pay attention to me, you know, I'll lose my drive,
right? Yeah lose your lose your edges lose my Edge
probably I need that. I need that. That's the fuel. That's the kindling. That's the
That's the explosive power within what if I lost that right and and the sense of fear that what if that went away and and and then gradually realizing that actually if I replace that with the others, right the point allocations go from 80/20 dark force and they flip to and I don't think I'll ever get to a hundred zero. I really don't like to way too human for that. But if I can get to 8020 lightforce, it's constantly generating. It doesn't ever have an end.
And and and you can let the others sort of go and it is a moving toward versus a reacting to very interesting to hear that. We just ask you just in terms of beauty. I just saw one other thing and then I'll put myself in your hands. I know somebody said to me are you ever going to do a podcast? I said, well, I'll sometimes you know beyond one, but if I get a marvelous podcaster than I can just be the question or so. So the
So anyways, I'm game. I think you and Joanne and I all share something in common.
Which is we are all Dean Fred hargadon and bit admit. Is
that right? That's right.
Okay, sir, I we are and we were both admitted by Dean Fred at Stanford. You were admitted by Dean fretted at Princeton and I noticed in your book. You said I'm not sure why they let me in because like I was sort of off the sort of normal mode like when you think of all the straight a double 1600 sat whiz brain, you could fill the whole class and still have like 200 percent left over with people like that at why'd they let
And and so I got to share with you this story you did you ever meet Dean Fred?
I did I did.
Okay, so I got to share with you this story but it ties into the idea of creating something beautiful. So for my 25th College reunions, I was asked to go and be on our class panel and after the class panel was the presentation in an interaction with us by Dean Fred it come back. He was at Princeton then as dean of admissions, but it came back to talk to a bunch of us.
Who he did admit it?
We got to chatting afterwards. He came and over and found Joanne and me it turns out that he was a real fan of good to great and he also had a framed picture of Joanne in his house. I think at the bottom of the stairs in her cycling outfit from the years that she was won the Iron Man her back then one of her Sports endorsement hosters, and so it's kind of like it was sort of fun sort of coming full circle that he was still following us in some way but in that
Conversation one I asked him. How long does it take you to make a great admissions decision. He said 30 years and 30 minutes is just a great example of cumulative pattern recognition, right and then he had shared with the skimmer with it was just us personally or the whole group, but he said, you know, what I've really learned is that you have to put the extra little splash and things that isn't just every kid looks like every other kid he's so let me tell you the story.
About this young woman who applied she came from a school in like Eastern, Oregon and they're like eight kids in the school or something and her avocation of choice was Demolition Derby and I decided Princeton needs her right some great Princeton needs hurts. Not a she gets to go to Princeton Princeton needs her fight. So when I heard your story about that, I thought you know, maybe had one of these moments right? No, this is guys definitely Princeton needs Tim.
But anyways, but here's the the the end of the story.
I was thinking afterwards though because it really went into my head about creations of things.
And how you could look at it is that well, if you're dean of admissions at Princeton, you could just take you know, a whole bunch of the kids that look the best and throw a dart and you're going to have a really good class.
You might not get the demolition derby. You might not get the Tim right but you'd have a really good class and I thought there's something artistic about that. And so I had this note to myself send a letter to Dean Fred send a letter to Dean Fred's and illiterate in and and it's kind of sap. They're like these things like I should get around to doing and so I decided to I decided to send in this letter in this letter. I wrote a little paragraph.
That essentially says as follows and this gets to the notion of Exquisite and then I want to put one Coda on it.
Some would say that the dean of admissions at Stanford and Princeton cannot fail given that the ratio of a talented applicants to seats that may be true for creating a good class and seems to me that a great undergraduate class requires the hand of a master sculptor the details at the margins the choices about what not to include the stroke of Genius to include something just awful enough to be perfect.
Like a demolition derby player from a small town in eastern, Oregon if each class is of work of art then you have sculpted a series of masterpieces.
And so I sent him this letter.
And shortly after this is 2008 shortly after few months later. I got a letter back from him and I think this is something that I'm going to try to remember for the rest of my life.
Is it has a very nice letter very very thoughtfully composed. He says this thing he says you're taking the time to send such a thoughtful note happens to be a perfect example of what I had in mind at my Baccalaureate address the class of 2003.
I encourage them not to underestimate the value of small gestures and provided examples from my own experience. When asked to summarize my comments in a few words enough to be inscribed on a carved plaque for a new dorm classroom building dedicated. Last fall is hardened on Hall. I wrote quote the most treasured gifts in the world are kind words spontaneously tendered
And now I mean, I'm sure many people have wonderful words to him. I'm not trying to take extra credit for words to him. Well what if I never got around to sending the letter?
Before he passed away. Hmm.
And I try to remember that because we have these people in our lives.
And in a time like this like, you know that we're living through it that pandemic to I mean, you never know when the people you might want to say something too.
might disappear any number of things can happen accident disease life just expires and I hope that I take in this idea that if you have it to say
don't wait too long.
I second that I have been personally too late in a number of cases and you know truthfully passing the midpoint on average of life spans on my paternal and maternal side. So on the on the on the male Side Of The Ledger if we look at the average age of death across both sides and my family, it's 85 I
43 last time I had a birthday and I was like, okay, I've passed the 50% points assuming that we don't have some Singularity that allows me to become a cyborg with immortality. I've kind of passed to the outer edge and I'm on the return path with the boomerang so
that reminder to me at least that Stark reminder of mortality led me just in the last I would say three to five years especially the last three years to reach out to many of my mentors who are older and that has been what is Galvanized the rediscovery and the reaching out that you mentioned having done yourself.
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I would like to ask you because we're talking about influences and mentors and we're going to spend quite a bit of time. I think discussing this I want to discuss father figures, but I want to do it in a somewhat round about fashion or an oblique fashion and going back to our first conversation and I have to just as a slice of life for people listening tell you tell you meaning the listeners and also you
Jim why I love you so much just as one example, and I'm going to read since you read a paragraph. I'm going to read a paragraph which is from you for Tim greetings from the creative monk mode cave. This is a letter that I'm holding in front of me that I printed out. I'm really looking forward to our conversation. I went back to the transcript of our previous conversation and systematically analyzed it to call out we did not talk about I thought that might help us to create a part to conversation that is distinct from our first here are some topics we did not discuss in our last conversation or that we only briefly mentioned that might be
Possibilities to consider for this conversation most important Tim. Let's have fun and you provided me with the most Immaculate and diverse and tantalizing outline a producer could ever want some thank you first and foremost for that and as as luck would have it a bit of prep myself also and what I do at the end of my interviews and I did this at the end of ours is I circled certain things we didn't get to or notes. I took
look with highlighter and put our two next to them which meant in the case that we ever have around to these are some of the things I would like to explore and from that first interview. There's a quote in transcript which is of course from spoken word. So it's not intended for publication, but here's the line and so I kind of decided I would create my own father by reading biographies of people. I really looked up to and
I'm wondering if there are any particular biographies that have impacted or influenced you along those lines in seeking to create your own father by reading these
biographies when I sat out on that that was there were sort of two parts of creating my own father one was biographies and the other was mentors and the biographies were relatively
wide-ranging and they kind of fall into both the Memoir autobiography category and then the full biography by someone else category and I'm still a voracious learner from biographies. I think the Ark of entire lives as one of the greatest sources of of wisdom to really understand the Arc of a life and one of things you find when you do that is that I don't care how remarkable the person is. They all have their there.
Steaks that are setbacks there wandering periods there whatever and it's kind of encouraging this is going to sound like a strange one, but it had utterly profound impact on how I view the world and that was early on one of the early ones. I read was Winston Churchill's 4990 six-page Memoirs of the second World War.
And I read it, you know all six volumes including I'll still never forget you're reading these tables. You'll shipping Cottage loss North Sea March 1942. I mean, it's really detailed stuff that you get a map and you follow the war but here's the thing you're going through. The second world war in Winston Churchill's head.
There's no kind of better way of sort of thinking about what coming at the world is and crisis and Leadership and everything else than just go through all those years in his head. And that was one that I still I feel that it had massive shaping impact on me. And then of course the later Churchill biographies by William Manchester who I think is one of the great biographers the last line series 1 and Series 2
two and then of course his own Memoir, goodbye darkness, which had a real impact on me. It was where he turned his own lands upon himself as one of the great biographers and he said what I'm going to do is I'm going to unravel a mystery and that mystery is why I is a marine went back to my unit and Okinawa when I was already had a million-dollar wound to go home and nearly get killed.
I have this recurring nightmare of themself arguing with a younger self about this decision and trying to understand any went back and wrote A Memoir of his years as a young Marine a memoir and the self as a middle-aged man going over the same terrain right in all the islands. And then the story of the Pacific War all wrapped into one and it had a huge impact on me because it's really ultimately about love and you do whether one ever does.
Does anything heroic it's an act of love but not all the biographies are ones that sometimes I what I would describe as negative and or just instructive. So for example, I think Robert Caro's work as extraordinary. I love his I mean I relate to his desire to spend months and months just immersed in information and detail and getting everything and you'll make sure you read all the files and so forth. I personally relate to that but his book The Power broker which I
You know I didn't do is one of the great biographies now, what's great about it is that it shows actually the reverse we were talking earlier about light for start Force. I think his dark force motivations increased over time and that old adage power corrupts from Lord Acton right absolute power corrupts. Absolutely. And then I think the last part of that is very few. Great men are good men.
What Carol does so unbelievably well in that is he takes one person and shows that
happening. Could you give a little more context on perhaps Robert Moses? Nothing we have to get too deep into it. But just so people know who the subject
is. It's another one of those things where it's a it's a book that somewhere along the way it's really worth getting too because if I remember it, right it was quite a number of years ago when I read it if I remember it, right the essence of it is you had this person who had
really peculiar genius and his peculiar genius was the ability to find sources of power to be able to get things done that were often unseen by other people and he started out as somebody who in New York who didn't have any obvious formalize sources of power and he went Parks originally and he ended up playing this massive role over the course of his life of the shaping of New York and it's almost impossible to look at the way New York Works without thinking about the imprint of Robert Moses upon that
or for better and worse and how we got that done and how we got the beaches done when there were lots of powerful forces Allied against and his ability to find pockets and pools of power to be able to harness to get these things done without any formal power to do it. And then what Cairo if I recall correctly does so well is he shows how it gradually grows from power to get things done?
To power because you can and he does it in 1200 Pages or something. It's sort of a counter of like it's really fascinating like you talk about a bug book. This was the ultimate bug book on on Power and Robert Moses the examples of what you don't want to be are also important in your biographies his biographies Lyndon Johnson extraordinary the one that just still stuns me to this day and actually great take away from it is Master of the Senate.
You can watch Caro start off almost like I don't like Johnson and he sort of doesn't but he rose to appreciate his skill.
And when he becomes Master of the Senate his ability to get things done to politics is the art of the possible like this was Michelangelo at work, whether you agreed or disagreed his ability to do it, you know, and again, I always distrust my own memory, but if I got it right right at the end of the book is he's leaving the Senate to go become vice president.
Hero writes something along the lines of you did not know it at the time.
But in leaving the Senate he was leaving the only home he ever really had least. That's the way I remember it and the takeaway I got from that was never let your ambition confuse you about what you really are. So he always wanted to be president.
But what he was made for was Master of the Senate and of course his presidency ends doesn't seek a second term and so he achieved his ambition.
But lost his home
Mmm Yeah, I think that's easy to
do.
We could have the Tim and Jim conversation for biography after biography.
Well, maybe that's maybe that's easier for you to do a podcast. Yes, Tim and Jim Tim and Jim our now I know you are a fan of if I'm getting my homework done properly of Ron chernow his biography of George Washington. Yeah and George Washington is fascinating on so many levels, you know in part because he has this Cincinnatus like quality of being The Reluctant.
Didn't ideal leader write the perfect candidate is very seldom the one who wants to run for office. And so I know you've publicly discussed the impact of that biography and and you brought it up of your own volition. I was going to lead from that to the question of what you can learn from not the Jedi not the white Knights of the leadership Cannon so to speak but from the Sith Lords those who have
Not to push the Sith used to far but who are masters of power but with some Shadow elements and I'd be very curious to know. We spoke of of one Robert Moses who also is portrayed. I think very well in the film adaptation of motherless Brooklyn by Edward Norton played by Alec Baldwin. Robert Moses was perfectly cast what are some of the lessons that you have been able to
teen from some of these darker leadership icons or icons of power and have you been able to use or absorb these things without being infected by some of the other components of their personas because it's strikes me as very difficult to emulate only a tiny percentage of someone if you're not careful at least,
you know, it's an interesting question because it
is interesting how I went to Moses and to the Johnson biographies the the Carol books because they they really do they are there things there. That's like I'm not sure I would want I would want to be and as you know, I'm a big consumer of this thing called the Great Courses Series where basically go out and they found the best university professors for the quality of their teaching. I can do a whole course right now on how the brain works, right and the
Service from Vanderbilt. She's wonderful just her sheer Joy like and this is how light comes in and actually your brain then creates an image and isn't that wonderful just leave you with this incredible sense of awe and how everything works there was a course on philosophy and I feel bad that I don't remember the name of the professor. I probably might come to me towards the end of our conversation, but it's called I think it's called question of value or question of values. And in that course the professor makes this wonderful distinction.
It says, you know, you might want to think about whether you want a life to Envy or a life to admire. Well, that's great. Isn't that so you take Lincoln it is not a life to Envy he struggled with depression. He had a tumultuous set of relationships. He had personal tragedy in his life. And then the handy gets dealt as president to I mean imagine sitting there getting the battle reports from Antietam. I mean,
And then he finally gets to it and then he gets his life taken away. I mean it is not a life you would choose but it's absolutely a life to admire
said Professor Patrick
Grim as I'd send. Yeah, it's like yeah, it's called question or questions of values are valid questions of value. Yeah, and I just and I was so struck and I think what I'm really interested in is the people who may be ultimately they
Mission they don't become one or the other they grow over the course of their lives and I'm almost more interested in the growth cases than in kind of the static cases and was fascinated with Moses. Is he sort of grew and the other direction but kind of the Arc of change of people's lives. I find it really really interesting and even even Washington's an example of that early in Washington's sure now by the way if you had sure now on
I have no idea. That'd be wonderful chernow would be able to speak to this far better than I could but early in Washington's life very very, you know, really just incredibly ambitious. Right and he has some setbacks and and then you see over the course of his life. How is ambition gets increasingly channeled out then into the intersection of history and how that intersection of History then brings further a sense of almost historical.
Service out of him, but the Washington of his later years is a much more evolved Washington than the Washington of early years. And I think that's what's interesting because I think this is question of we are not fixed. We're not static right there isn't you know, we chat a little bit later about there wasn't Steve Jobs there Steve Jobs 1.0 and Steve Jobs 2.0. Right and it's the ark it's the growth. That's what's interesting to me.
Well, let me give you just a map.
Of the territory actually just leading to the Horizon. I like to give people an idea of what's coming. So we are going to talk not just about books, but we're going to talk about mentors since that was the second component that you mentioned and we're going to talk about builds ear specifically, but before we get to build lazier because you brought up questions of value. I would like to ask you a question about questions because I think many people consider you a provider of answers.
I would agree with that to some extent but I view you more as a Craftsman of questions and the description of questions. 'value just as a leaping off point is a course for anyone who has ever felt the tug of such questions or who wants to fine-tune their ability to see how deeper questions of ethics and values apply to the choices that make up their lives. Okay. So let's take that and jump to a New York Times piece about you which was published in 2009, and I'm going to read this.
Our graph. Mr. Collins also is quite practiced at saying no request support in every week for him to give speeches to corporations and trade associations. It could be a bustling sideline given that He commands a top-tier fee of $65,000 to dispense his wisdom side note from Tim. I would say at this point in time. I wouldn't be surprised if it were twice that amount back to the New York Times paragraph, but he will give only 18 speeches this year and about a third of them will be pro bono for nonprofit groups companies also asked him to consult but he mostly declines agreeing only if a
Many intrigues him and if its Executives come to Boulder to meet him over to half day sessions for $60,000. He will ask pointed questions and provide very few answers quote. I am completely Socratic. He said and I challenge in push they come up with their own answers. I couldn't come up with people's answers book tours. No splurging with the millions. He's earned from his books. No to the part that I underlined was the over to half-day sessions. He will ask pointed questions and provide very few answers. What types of questions
Shins or could you give any examples of questions that you have found over the years of experimentation and refinement to really more than pull their weight and as a side note, I will say I know some people who have flown out with their leadership teams to meet with you and to three years later. They're still talking about some of these conversations. So could you give any examples of questions that you like to use?
Yeah. So so first of all, I
I'm so pleased that you see me as more about the questions that about the answers and I really I am a genuinely just deeply thrive on questions and and it's that's why I think I again it is so they go back to that course. I didn't really take away like these are the answers on value. Like I took away a question. Let me just describe a little bit how I prepare for
really anything but particularly prepare for Socratic lab
and first of all, it starts with probably something very similar to what you do because your Socratic is you kind of have this big funnel of trying to gain understanding before you even enter a conversation. You read you learn your try to get your thoughts around what are the really critical things? And then the next thing is to start asking the question. What are the questions?
And if you can identify the questions and I think of the questions I think of it this way I think of it is like preparing for if I were an NFL coach.
and
You are going to go into the game with a game plan. You've prepared really? Well, you're going in with a game plan. And when you get the ball, you're going to know your first few plays in all likelihood unless something weird happened early. And so I'll come in with some questions that I know a little bit like Green Bay Packers always had their first set of plays and you always knew what they were then the game of them fold. And so you have to be really clear. What are the two or three really essential things that they don't walk away.
Having wrestled with this I have failed them.
Not these are the things I need to tell them. These are the three things they got to really wrestle with and your task is to get to those now you walk in but then it's like the game starts and what you have to do is okay. We weren't we were planning on you know, throwing long on third down, but their defense isn't allowing for that. They're all leaving the whole middle open. So we're going to run drop plays right? And so you prepare obsessively but then you have your questions or your place.
and so I have opening questions and the first one is always the same for inside organization on at least historically has been I know it's not a core value this could change but it works like this you got to picture everybody's in the room they've done homework ahead of time they've had to answer a bunch of questions ahead of time which I've digested all their answers
I walk into the room I'm in that room right now we set up and covid time to use that room as kind of our little Studio here so table we had custom made just for this room it's a Totally Secure room there's no if you look at the four walls on either side there's no way that information could Escape into the outside world but for some people who we've had people send security sweeps and things like that I mean it's very important that things remain in some cases very confidential and then the session started at 8 a.m.
Now there's a rule with that 8 a.m. Doesn't mean 8 a.m. And 4
seconds.
8:00 a.m. Is 80000 because you have to set the tone bang. We're we are going to engage here now people have often wondered. Why do I require people come to Boulder?
Very simple, it's not because I don't like to travel although I don't.
It's when you're dealing with people who can buy anything.
and you want to have an impact on them with the limited number of chances that may be the only be able to come once or you might only have them come once
What's the one thing they can't get more of their time time?
So by requiring that they all have to come here and there in this space.
In these rules. I've set the conditions for full commitment. Right? So those people still talking about it years later isn't just because I asked a question to some part because the conditions were created of you have to make a commitment to come you have to make a commitment to be really present when it happens.
I wait until exactly eight o'clock.
And on day one, I walk in the room at 8000 and I go to my chair and I say good morning.
Take out a blank sheet of paper. It's not like how was your flight? How ill what do you think of Boulder? Hope you had a good meal last night. Good morning. Take out a blank sheet of paper. We have feel tremendous responsibility. We have a lot to do right down the top-5 brutal facts that you face today.
We are now at eight o'clock and what 12 seconds?
And they're quiet blank sheet of paper brutal facts right out of the front and one on one thing that I have found is that if you start there and then that's the very beginning that go cheetah paper little facts. Then we have six corners in the room six cornered room and there's a random process by which then they're put into small and then they have to come back to the large table.
And all randomly pick someone and I say, okay, what are the top 5 brutal facts that you face and then each of those become something to start pulling on.
Why is that a brutal fact is that really a fact there's a rule no opinions allowed facts only. You can't say I think we're growing too fast. That's an opinion facts facts facts, and if you begin right at the start.
The conversation gets very rich very quickly because everybody knows what those facts are but you put them on the table that quickly you are already setting the conditions for tremendous momentum
if the setting of conditions, yep, how underestimated.
Yeah, and then from there you have a number of them. We do a lot with sometimes it's the flywheel. Sometimes. It's the Hedgehog almost always something on people and what makes for the right people. There's almost always something on
Danger signs. I really like to ask people to take the five stages of decline from How The Mighty Fall and self-diagnose. Where where are we vulnerable here?
And why and what would we need to be worried about and those sorts of things and zooming out 20 years and those types of things. But once you get into it, then there's no script. That is the same for everyone at that point. It's all very conditional upon who they are, but it's always going back to the principles from our
research. Well people go to Boulder to learn to be interrogated challenges I think is the
Challenge yeah challenged challenged. Let's introduce build azir. Who is Bill is here. Why is he worth having a conversation
about so the spark for us doing this again is I'm re-releasing this my very very first book which called Beyond entrepreneurship bringing it out as Vienna to partnership 2.0 with some upgraded material and it new chapters and so forth but a big part of the reason is because I wanted to honor and extend the legacy of my
a co-author on that book Hill is here.
And first sort of how that intersects bill passed away in 2004. And when I was in the memorial service, I think there's about a thousand people there, but I just had this overwhelming.
Need to write something about Bill.
And I thought well, I could write a no-bid. I could write an article. I could write something for the alumni group. And then Joanne as is often the case in my life had this really great idea. She said why don't you
Preet something permanent, which would be to take this book. That was your first book that you and build it together and bring it back to the world but really shining a light on Bill and what he did to change your life and the role he played and what a great mentors all about and then it's by Bill and Jim.
And it brings him out permanently and I can share him with the world. And so that's kind of the impetus of all of this and just of something that was very meaningful to me. I got my first copies the last week. Is he the last week of the week before?
Copy 001 went to Bill's Widow Dorothy and I sort of like no matter whatever happens from here. Like that's it. There's everything else from here is gravy.
So Bill, why
was he? Yeah, why was he such an important or perhaps arguably the greatest Mentor
because greatest Mentor in my life. I think the best way is to just tell a story we talked earlier about this notion of dark force and light Force motivations and so forth and I met bill when I was
I think I was just on the verge of turning 25.
And it was complete lock and the last episode you and I did together. We talked about wholock a lot who love of Peter Drucker the wholock of four days to a marriage with Joanne or to engagement with Joanne and here we are 40 years later and so forth.
But this was like luck in a real sense. I had wanted to be in a different section of a course and it so happened that I didn't get into that one and I got assigned to a different Course and there was an unknown first-time teacher of that course name lazier. And has anybody know anything about this this this guy lives here. Nobody knew and so I just went and I figured I would just find find out what he was like what the course is about.
That sort of chance interaction.
Led to Bill somehow taking an interest in me and the image I have is that I have that I was like this propulsion machine this this driven creative energetic propulsion machine, but I had nowhere to no direction to it if you will.
And and Bill took this interest in me and he started inviting Joanna me over to his house now. He'd been a very successful. It was an accountant then a very successful entrepreneur and in his 50s. He returned to Stanford to really begin teaching kind of a renewal phase in his life and I became like this project for him and he just kept working on me. Just just he would ask questions and he would be and he he was never judgmental. He was just believing in support of what the key was.
believed in me
He just believed in me. And then when I was 30, just I think I just turned 30 hours. They're about
there was this moment when all of a sudden kind of like the edge house where you were describing earlier where there was this unexpected vacancy in the entrepreneurship and Small Business course at the Stanford Business School Bill taught one of the other sections, which was the course I had taken from him years before
And the Deans needed somebody to fill in for this other Professor who was a star professor and bill went to the dean's and suggested me.
And then put himself on the line and he's a puts his sense of his own reputation on the line. He said I'll try to make sure he doesn't mess up too badly and because of the clock I think more than anything else the Deans let this happen and then Bill essentially kind of got me to see that this is like that is like that thing in Hamilton, you know, don't throw away your shot. This is the shot.
And the idea of being the image I've always had in my head is imagine you're a pitcher way down in the minor leagues and you happen to be in Yankee Stadium and for whatever reason all the pictures on the bus don't make it to Yankee Stadium in the games about to start and somebody says, why don't you go out there. Somebody's got to pitch you just grab a glove go out there and pitch and Bill's message was their companies times in life while not all time in life is equal.
And the quality of your performance in that moment will have outsides effect on the rest of your life.
If you throw a perfect game you'll get to throw again ago throw.
And that was the start of everything and had had I not had bills class had I not had Bill believing in me. And then from there till the end of his life shaping me guiding me challenging me modeling for me you and I wouldn't be having this conversation.
Good great wouldn't exist built to last wouldn't exist. How the Mighty Fall wouldn't exist. Beyond entrepreneurship wouldn't exist. Great by choice wouldn't have none of that would have happened. I have some thoughts about what I'm I did it ended up doing but this is a lot better.
And that was Bill and it was his caring and investment. This is what I think made him such a great mentor e so believed in me that it created a sense of responsibility to him to that standard. You don't want to you don't want to fail that you don't want to let that down.
That it acted like a magnet and it just pulled me up.
What are some of the life lessons that you gained from Bill and that have remained highly important to you.
So I put some of these in the book in the notes. Yeah, and I booked yeah exactly because I got this whole chapter on sort of the lessons. I want to share with the world from Bill and I could pick any number of the maybe we'll pick one or two. Is there anything I can
get one? Yeah, just because I'd love some some clarity on it. So I'll give people just a teaser of
You never stifle a generous impulse great life, great relationships trust wager, which is the one I would love to hear you expand on values is the hard stuff and then put the butter on your waffles, which I also love but maybe you could expand on just since I'm following my own curiosity here trust
wager. Yeah, and then and then maybe a little bit of butter on the waffles because I think it's something that you may relate to but the even though I think you're probably more
at about diet than I am. But anyways, the
more fanatic about consuming copious amounts of butter than just about anything. So this is it. This is in my Strike Zone.
Yeah, so so the trust wager after I had left Stanford and in the previous episode we talked about that what Joe and I called our Thelma and Louise moment of launching out over the chasm and betting on my own entrepreneurial path to try to be an entrepreneurial Professor rather than a professor of
Persia and when I left the very protective walls of where I was I started hitting other sorts of experiences including and I won't go into specifically who and what they were but situations where people I trusted had abused my trust and it really stung. I hadn't really experienced that in life before and just realizing, you know, not not everybody is trustworthy and some people are really not trustworthy. And so
Went to Bill and I said Bill have people ever abused your trust and how do you deal with this? And he said yeah they have but this is one of the big decisions you have to make in life. You have to decide as a basic stance. Are you you're opening basic assumption about people that they are trustworthy.
You always start them. Your opening bid is trust and trusting them always.
And they can lose that trust if there's incontrovertible evidence that they have abused your trust, but I always have to be clear never attribute to malice what could simply be explained by incompetence?
And the other path is to start with you have to earn my trust.
I'm not necessarily going to trust you but through evidence and experience you learn your trusty. So this is one of those big choices and live to just a basic stance. What is your stance? And I and I said, well you seem to trust people. He said yes, that's my bit. So what?
But how do you deal with the fact that people are not always trustworthy. He said well so long as you don't leave yourself open to catastrophic loss and it was always very clear and always pay attention to the cash flow and he described a situation when he'd lost enough money from somebody. He trusted that it hurt right didn't crush him but it hurt and he said but I still come back to I would rather live with that. I said, well how many understand though the
The pain you have to deal with that and the fact that people are not always trustworthy. He said look and think of it as upside and downside.
Here's the wager. And what's the upside? If you to taking the bid of mistrust, well, you'll maybe prevent yourself from having one of those hurtful experiences. And what's the downside downside is trustworthy people you will lose them on the upside to trusting people is when you find the trustworthy people they will rise to it. And if you need said this was the critical thing he said to me
If you ever considered the possibility Jim the not everybody is one or the other but because you trust them at that outset.
They are more likely to become trustworthy because you trust them.
And ever since then that I try to live to that the idea that that's the opening bid and just make sure you protect your flank so can't be catastrophic but that was Bill hard-headed realistic but you always start with the opening bid of trust. Were there any footnotes on
that trust and I guess I would love an example of what trust means in this context if that if that makes sense because
You know, the expression that comes to mind is trust but verify, right. So if I get an email that says I am the Widow of a Nigerian prince and can you please wire ten million dollars to this falling bank account and I here's how we'll split the hundred million dollar proceeds. I assume that he does not mean you wire the 10 million in a circumstance like that, right? That would be an extreme example, but you much like and we may get to this bit later also, but you know, I've read of how you think
about luck is a symmetric as a causal Force, right? So bad luck can kill you but good luck cannot make you great. It may be necessary in some circumstances but not sufficient. Similarly. There are certain downsides that are survivable there certain downside risks that are easily manageable and then there are sort of existential or catastrophic downside risks. So how did he trust from an informed or a smart place as opposed?
Reckless Place does that make sense?
Well, when it came to business dealings bill.
Always I guess it sort of describe it and if I understand this one situation that he referred to he always had a good awareness of the cash flow in his environment. Like he used to he was just fanatic about always understand your cash flow. Very practical person on that. I remember one day he was teaching a class on it was for entrepreneurship and small business and he was pushing the students. Um, what are the really key issues in the case and they're all going off of that, you know, our strategic positioning.
And you know, we're sort of market share growth and whatever and finally build just sort of walks over to the Whiteboard and puts in about four foot high letters with the side of the chalk all the way across the board one giant word cash
and
and he's and and and he always try to particularly for people come from earnings world. You don't pay your bills with her earnings. I mean you pay your bills with cash and so
so bills practice always was to be very aware of where the flanks were in to ensure that he would never leave himself exposed to say having something where you would wake up and find that something had been taken that left. You completely crushed if you will completely embezzled or anything like that right is where the cash flow but when you bring somebody in do you not trust that they're doing to do a great job. Do you not trust that they're going to Steward the resources of the company as if they owned it or
Are you going to basically trust that they will he basically would always just start with I trust you. I trust you and the idea of like locking a supply cabinet or anything like that. Just I trust you. You could lose that trust, but it's just nowhere the Flying Star and we'll probably get to that when we get to the lock part because I think that has a lot to do with this sort of notion of managing what's catastrophic versus managing. What's not and in the end. Here's the key thing bill was all about relationships and
Bill believed that the only way to have a great life it's two approaches to life.
To seek transactions and see life is a series of transactions or to take life as building relationships. And the only way to have a great life and bills view was relationships and the Cornerstone of relationships is Trust.
And then you can put butter on your waffles together presumably. Okay. So let's talk about that because I'm thinking about eating waffles ever since you mention it.
Yeah, so but this dish, okay, so butter on the waffle. Is this something that this is still something I really struggle with but I learned from Bill we were working on be on entrepreneurship. I didn't know what I was doing as a writer and I'm sure back when you were writing your first book. There's this incredible sense of inadequacy, right?
Does that ever go away? Please all wait
Actually word is that writing is like running.
If you're going to run your best, let's say you can run a six-minute mile. And then now you're a better Runner and you can run a five-minute mile. If you're going to run your best, whatever your PR is. It is always going to hurt writing never gets easier. You only get better.
Hmm, so I was going through but I was I know I was running maybe nine minute miles. I mean that's throwing all kinds of stuff in the wastebasket. I felt completely overwhelmed there was I truly felt inadequate and I was suffering and so I go to Bill and we're working on this together and I'm doing most of the trying to get the text working and I sit down with Bill and you can tell I'm just sort of really suffering and and I described to him how I spent the entire day the day before and it's all in the wastebasket.
Whine whine whine and I expected Bill to give me this maybe this lecture on you know, this is the time to push through and you know, you have to do something to have to double down. It's like the last six miles of the marathon. You're only at halfway at Mile 20 in the last six or where everything happens and that's when you really have to grit it out. And that's what I expected to hear. And instead what I got was electron fun.
And bill says to me he says, okay.
So if you're not having fun, and we're not having fun doing this we should just stop.
If we can't find a way to make this fun.
We shouldn't be doing this.
so the day after we turned in the manuscript
Bill had a heart attack and you had a quintuple bypass surgery.
And we used to have these waffle Fest at the peninsula Creamery.
And we would we would meet there on Saturday mornings and we would have waffles and few weeks or months. I can't remember the exact time length. We're having one of our waffle face after Bill had at his heart attack. We sit down and just like before he pulls out all this butter and starts putting butter on his waffles and putting syrup all over the butter and creating, you know, that marvelous mixture of like syrup and butter creating that marvelous mixture of of yum stuff on
Waffles I said bill but what are you doing? You had a quintuple bypass surgery you would putting all this butter on your waffles and Bill just continued to pour the butter on his waffles. And then he looked up at me and he had this.
Most marvelous expression like that. It was sort of a smile but it was this it's hard to explain what it is. It reminds me of that line and senecas right on the shortness of life, you know, it is wise is a wise person who knows how to meet death with a firm step and and Bill told me the story of going into the operating room. So I bet they saw a smile on my face.
Yes, I'm going into the operating room and I held the sudden new. I mean I knew.
without question
that if this was the end, I'm okay with that.
Dorothy and I have had a great run
I have lived my life the way I wanted to live it.
I have so many people in my life who I have loved and I love.
I have already had a great life.
And nothing can take that away.
And so I decided coming out of it. Everything from here is gravy and I'm going to lead my life and I'm putting the butter on my waffles.
Bill never confused a long life with a great wife
and he died a number of years after that not that many years after that if you decade must have been maybe 12 years later.
He woke up and was walking across the room and he fell dead of congestive heart failure.
and Dorothy later told me that he had a smile on his face and
When I was in the Stanford Chapel.
I saw all these people in there.
I cried.
and it was such a different crying because when my dad died
I cried for what I never had.
When Bill died I cried for what I had lost.
And then I look out in that Stanford Chapel.
and I see all these people in there and I realize I'm not the only person
Whose life he had altered?
There are hundreds of them.
And I had this image of them is like vectors going out in time and space and that if you can affect the trajectory of a vector even a few degrees when they're relatively young it's a huge sweep.
as their life unfolds
and imagine you did that for not just one vector not just one Jim Collins but a whole bunch of other people.
And you have hundreds of those vectors going out into time and space.
Then you've lived a really great life.
And you have butter on your waffles. And so, you know, it's interesting. You notice I put here most important Tim. Let's have fun.
On my memo to you. I am really trying this is for me the hardest of the lessons I learned from Bill.
Just putting a premium.
On if it's you can't find a way to make it fun. You shouldn't do
it. Let's see. It seems like Bill was not only having fun. He was fulfilled and you know fun at least temporarily can be bought with a bottle of wine, but you know fulfillment not quite as transactionally available and I'm going to jump around here just a little bit but this is the next topic that pop to mind for me, which is
Later to this and that's contrasting your time with West Point Cadets having spent time at the United States Military Academy at West Point with your time with MBA students at Stanford because it seems that the cadets seemed happier and I would like to know.
In your mind why you think that is maybe perhaps what, you know to be true about what separates those two groups because you I think in the minds of many are a you are a researcher and as a student of success, but you and I can both point out examples of people who are extolled or put on a pedestal as these Pinnacles of success and yet they have these pyrrhic victories. They go home they have terrible.
Relationships with their kids with their spouses Etc. So this is deeply interesting to me the contrast Cadets versus MBA students.
So back in 2012 and 2013. I had this real honor to serve a two-year appointment as the class of 1951 chair for the study of leadership at the United States Military Academy at West Point. And first of all, just personally it was a incredible experience to go.
And be invited in and especially in a special roll like that to really get a feel for how does a place like West Point one of the great leadership development institutions in the world probably in history do its thing with young people who come in and what's their approach to things and had a profound impact on me on many ways and I went there theoretically to teach something to the cadets, but really I ended up as is often the case.
He's being the student and I used to have these marvelous dinners where I had this big round table and I would invite about 12 Cadets and you just start off with a simple question beginning to ask them questions about their lives. But how did you end up here? Where did you grow up? Why did you choose this versus something else and just getting to know each Cadet and why they would choose this path marvelous Journey. Well, anyways, the more I got to know the cadets and the more engaged with them the more I
I was struck at by and large how happy they seemed now. You got to try to understand. What life as a West Point Cadet. It's like I didn't go to West Point. I went and studied math on the west coast. They have not just their Hefty academic load. We've got no history and philosophy and engineering and all of these things. You also have your leadership training. You have your physical training you have your military training right and you
Have a whole lot of free time. This is an intense place and I'm finding myself thinking what is it? And there's this sense of them being on the balls of their feet and the sense of energy and and I'll never forget when I had the joy. That's the only word I can use the sheer Joy of being able to close out my session with the West Point Cadets with a 1 hour presentation to 5,000 Cadets all in there camos in Eisenhower Hall for an hour and at the end of it do you rupture in though the wharf?
From them that just sort of conveyed the sense of sharing Joy if you will I was like, wow, this is really an interesting place the energy why have you just bottle that what is that? How does that happen? What's working here?
And so I puzzled a lot because what's really struck me is they did seem happier. If I can't measure that I can't prove that they're happier, but they sure felt happier to me than my Stanford students when I taught in the business school.
And so I came away with a couple of key thoughts on maybe three that go together.
The first begins with just have to get lead into with a little bit of a story.
I always like to do something physically demanding or challenging in some form for my fives. So for my 55th birthday, which was when I was there I decided that I wanted to do this thing called the ioc T the indoor obstacle course test because I kept asking the kids. That's what's hard about being here and they kept talking about this and called the ioc T as I do. Well, what's the ioc T. So you don't want to know what we all we all hate the ioc T. Well, what is it? It's the end or obstacle.
Course test and this is place called. Hey, it's Jim and the idea being that you have to leap over things and mantle up on a shelf and go across these sideways bars and across a balance beam and over walls and you know hand over hand the crossbars and then up a rope and then run around the track with the medicine ball. But here's the key. There's a graduation time. You actually have to hit a time and I said, well, I think I'm going to try to do the ioc T in 22 year old Cadet graduation times a 55-year old.
I was having trouble with this because it was actually quite Hearts not a good idea by the way and as over their training and um and and you know, the cadets were wonderful because they'd be coming along. This is sort of don't do it like that. You look like an old man, sir. I'm like, well, I am an old man. So anyways, I'm working on the ioc T and I'm training and one day and all of a sudden I stand back and I look around.
And I noticed something there are groups of cadets who are clearly you're not having any trouble accomplishing the ioc T. They'll hit their time easy who are in there taking a time out of a wife would they don't have extra time?
to help
their classmates who are struggling with the ioc T to ensure that they get through.
And all of a sudden it just part of her realize What's Happening Here?
Is the entire culture is built on the idea that you are not alone.
And that your response to this sucks is how can I help you?
And the idea being that you the thing you have to learn is we will take care of each other and I began to think about this notion of successes communal. It's never alone. It's never solo and there are people that are going to help you and then your responsibility is to help someone else if you have trouble
With the ioc tea and somebody helps you, but you might be good at math and you're going to help them.
And that was very different than what I saw in other environments. It's all very different from what I see often in Corporate America and if you could grab that idea
That you are never alone. And your first responsibility is to help someone else.
Versus Advance yourself and you make that systemic built-in cultural.
The other part is the ethic of service.
and
we talked a lot about service and kids should do thing for services. There's another thing when every kid that their nose.
That either they or somebody close to them or somebody in their unit May well die.
And the rendering of that service?
and that
creates a context of meaning that is I think very hard to find other places. So you have the service but you are in service to what you are willing to sacrifice for what you might even die.
And those around you and take care of each other and the acts of love.
That is I think a very special and very powerful concoction. And I think it explains a lot of why at least I don't know if it was happier more meaningful more but it was this extra X Factor that is palpable.
So I want to make a military leap to and I am making a bit of a guess but I think I am I think I may be right here. So
After 30 years of work and research of a single map of Concepts in a framework now and if you died tomorrow, that is what you would want people to have and follow one of the bullets in this Consolidated map of Concepts is the Stockdale paradox.
Is this Stockdale the poww? Yeah, there's just a different stock of could you we don't have to necessarily start with stocked up because you mentioned Seneca earlier my stoic reading and leanings fascinated by by Stockdale suit. Let's approach this. Anyway, you like we could dive into Stockdale Paradox, or we could begin just by taking a step back and looking at the macro of of what is meant by having a single map of Concepts.
Thirty years of work and research.
So here's what I'd love to do with that Tim as I actually would love to pick up on just the previous part of our conversation and go into Stockdale. It's one of the key principles in the map and I feel in today's world by the time people here this we're really in a Stockdale moment. And so I would love for people to hear from me the Stockdale Paradox if that's all right with you. It involves the story. Yeah. So for people who don't know Admiral James Stockdale was the
the highest ranking Naval officer military officer in the Hanoi Hilton prisoner of war camp and in North Vietnam, he was shot down in the late 1960s and he spent seven years in the camp.
And I have the great privilege to be able to get to know Admiral Stockdale a bit when he was studying stoic philosophy across the street at the Hoover Institute when I was teaching my Small Business and Entrepreneurship class over at the Stanford Business School.
And in preparation for this walk across campus and lunch that we were going to have I sat down and read his book in Love and War which is written in alternating chapters by himself and his wife about his years in the camp.
And now I want you to picture I'm sitting there in a really nice leap annulled warm Stanford faculty office looking out at the fog kind of coming in over the hills and this is beautiful setting and I'm in you know, I'm comfortable I'm safe. I'm reading a book and I found myself starting to feel the sense of Despair and feeling depression.
Because as I read the book, I really began to realize the bleakness of a situation but what really struck me about it is not only could they pull them out and tortured him at any time and they did that they could keep him in leg irons for extended periods of time and they did right what really struck me was the sense of he had no idea when or how it would him so it's not like you walk into the Hanoi Hilton and they give you a slip of paper and say is your release date is December 31 1972.
You have no idea.
You don't know how long you'll be there. You don't know what it's going to be like all the way through it. You don't know if you will reunite with your family again. There's no sense of when this might come to an end or if it will come to an end.
And it was that never-ending since this just oppressed the struck me as that was hard and then I donned on me.
I'm feeling this reading pages in a book.
And I know the end of the story.
I know he gets out. I know he reunites with his family. I know we're going to go for a really nice walk on this beautiful campus in just a few days. How on Earth did he live it?
Not knowing the end of the story.
How did he not capitulate to despair?
So I asked him and he said ah, I never never capitulated to despair because I never ever wavered in my faith. Not only that I would get out but I would turn it into the defining event of my life.
Didn't retrospect I would not trade.
So we didn't say anything or why we just walked he was very comfortable with silence and we walked and we walk finally I said Admiral Stockdale who didn't make it out as strong as you well, that's easy. It was The Optimist.
I'm kind of confused here and he said by Optimist. I mean those who said we're going to be out by Christmas.
I'm Christmas would come and it would go.
We're going to be out by by Easter and it's going to come and it would go and we're going to be out by Christmas and it would come and it would go.
And they suffered from a broken heart.
And this is what I learned from Admiral Stockdale this idea. You must never ever confuse the need on the one hand for unwavering faith.
That you can and you will prevail in the end.
With at the same time and at the same time the discipline to confront the most brutal facts as they actually are today.
Now is have this image of Admiral Stockdale saying we're not going to be out of here by Christmas deal with it.
Years later, I was working on the research for what became good to great and I kept noticing those level 5 leaders. We talked about in the last episode.
They haven't had a leader companies through often.
Made me years of desperate experiences to get to the other side and they all seem to have that strange Duality this sort of unwavering Faith. They would get there in this incredible stoicism to confront the brutal facts and one day I shared the Stockdale story with the research team and everybody jumped in saying essentially that's it. It's the that's exactly what we're seeing with these people.
And we ended up calling it The Stockdale paradox.
I find whether it's this covid time people. Hopefully maybe listening to this after covid time because I certainly anticipate there will be one but we go through Stockdale moments whether it be like we're doing on a global basis right now. We are in a Stockdale moment companies and leaders and entrepreneurs go through Stockdale moments times in our lives that you go through Stockdale moments over last time we talked about the spreadsheet. I keep why do the plus one plus?
0 minus 1 minus 2 calculation of the days and how you get a minus 2 day. You can feel like you're in a really dark hole like it everything is colored by that. Well part of coming up with that is the idea to basically lent faith that when you look at the data you see a lot of ones and twos that you can't see clearly when you're in the - tube was sort of an actualization of living the Stockdale Paradox. You've got to confront the fact today sucked or this is hard or I am feeling really down for whatever.
And there's a unwavering faith that the plus twos will
return.
May I ask you a question about your scoring book? Yeah your spreadsheet because I don't think I asked this last time and that is well as a lead in there. Are there many different ways to get to the same average and one approach. Let's just say and I'm not saying this is the objective but your goal were to hit a certain average one way to get there would be to have consistently plus 1 negative 1 plus 1 negative 100.
one- on another way to get there would be plus 2 negative 2 plus 2 negative 2 0 and so on which of those
do you prefer if either more or less more or less volatility if you choose less volatility are getting lower amplitude on the positive days.
Yeah. Well, that's that's a great question. Let me think about that for a minute because you know, I find they come in strings. Okay, so there's a couple things I've observed just so for those who didn't hear that episode the essence of it is I score this I track two numbers every day. I tracked the number of creative hours I got for the day and they have to
Over 365 day period always have to be above a thousand creative hours and my self-imposed March is that it has stay above a thousand creative hours every 365 days every day of the year for 50 years, right? So that's the that's the marked on the creative side. Then there's this other part which is tracking. How do they feel was it a plus 2 J plus 1 0 minus 1 minus 2 and the reason that that's very important to put in the end of the day is the next day you might feel different. So you gotta put it down that day and then start looking for
Or correlations about what correlates with twos and ones and minuses and so forth and I do this every single day and but as I begin to go back and look at patterns, I find a find a couple of things. The first is sometimes there are strings you might go through to three weeks that are a lot of plus 1 plus twos in the averages are starting to be above one which is really good. By the way to be above one means there's twos and ones and not a lot of negatives and then you might get a string of you know a week. That's just
For whatever reason and often it's just you wake up in the morning and you have that sense of dread and anxiety and you can't shake it and it sort of colors everything. I've learned how to deal with it by basically preparing for the things in the future, but you begin to see those and you begin to see that they come in strings. And so what do I prefer? I just prefer a lot of ones and twos accepting the brutal fact that there are - ones in - tubes but in terms of the amplitude
So the reality of life is not a lot of plus twos and not a ton of minus 2's, which is why the average is sort of a little more consistent, but I really love the plus twos. And so if you gave me a choice what I'd rather have minus 2 and plus it was well that's really hard to answer that's really hard to answer. You know, one thing I have noticed though that does just myself. I mean, I'm My Own weird idiosyncratic case so in studying myself
One of the things I've noticed is and this is part of what is great about life and self-observation.
I can find that I can have minus 2's + + 2 is right next to each other. It is astounding sometimes their strengths, right? But sometimes it's just astounding how you can go have one day where you just like man if my life was going to be all these - twos it's just not alive I want and then the very next day something changes and it's a +2 and you try to figure out what that is. I can't always explain it but it's incredible and it's that notion also, sometimes I've even noticed that something starts off feeling like it's going to be a minus 2.
And You observe that like man is going to be a minus 2 day know the days not done the days not written the days not over.
I have choices I can make
so can I turn this what's looking like a - to day into at least a plus 1 or plus 2 the day is not written and I found that you can begin to start changing them. I think that I've learned some of the triggers that cause the negatives I think comparison one of my one of my mentors Michael Ray had a wonderful line, which is comparison is the primary sin of Modern Life.
And I find that any time I find myself in comparison as opposed to others as opposed to hey, I'm aching backs of the statues as beautiful as I can that tends to correlate with - tubes much more snow. I find that if I'm also very sensitive to how other people around me are feeling and if other people are having - twos I might be more likely to have them.
-
to if you don't want me digging into the comparison because I think this a lot of people will resonate with comparison. If not as the primary sin of Modern Life
as microwave statement. There's a good
one. Right right as a predictor or a harbinger of negative two days. How did that will let me let me ask you first. I mean the question that I have is would you be willing to give some examples of how that shows up for you. How are you comparing yourself to other people because you strike.
Is such a such a unique snowflake? Yeah, maybe I don't know who you would compare yourself to exactly. I mean, I'm sure we can always find people maybe it's some incredible 514 rock climber. I don't know but how did how does it most often show up for you comparison this seduction is kind of moth to the flame of comparison. And how did it show up for Michael Ray if you have any idea.
Yeah. Well Michael Michael Ray.
Is it was a very evolved specimen and the way he was academic professor professor of marketing then taught the creativity and business class and I think that in you know the world of Academia with peer review and with kind of the tenure ladder and all of that is going to breeds a sense of comparison, and and I think that totally yeah and you know and where your office is in a whole bunch of other things in a way it's kind of a it's a command then Silicon Valley. I mean if there is Sin City
If so, come out
in terms of comparison is the primary scent of Modern Life, right? And and so a Michael dealt with it by very very deep spiritual practice that that was the way he dealt with it,
but was his spiritual practice. He just he did
he was involved very deeply in a very extensive meditation and studying under I believe maybe more than one Guru and he dedicated his life to his own.
Ocean to find what he always described as to get in touch with his real Inner Essence as opposed to as external forms and his life was very guided in that direction. I think that for me sometimes it's changed over the years. I think when I was younger, you know, it was would be, you know, sort of more surface-level comparisons. It's never been like gee, how am I comparing? And he actually or how am I comparing is my I actually would rather compared with people being
Maybe surprised there. Oh, you don't have X and Y and Z kind of like that. You don't have Windows in your office. Like I kind of like those sorts of comparisons of being like different but the yeah, why don't you have the corner office with all the windows exact because there would be windows will be distracting. We're talking earlier in our earlier one about John McPhee. Can you can read a John McPhee paragraph and go
I don't know if I could ever do that paragraph.
That's really optimistic stance. I just say God damn. I can't even imagine ever producing a pair
exactly exactly, you know, but it's it's
Sort of I think sometimes it's it's just these standards that and then I see people who embody them and you feel o and adequate to those and that's where some of the comparison comes in and climbing. It's great. If you get to be 62 or 63, you know, you're going to lose a comparison with anybody who's 25. So
right right not on the table. Yeah. What do you do if
Michael Ray had a spiritual practice to act as a countervailing force a counterbalance to the very human. I should say Instinct reflex evolutionary pre-program tendency to compare what he what do you have? What is your what is your pattern interrupt or sort of method for mitigating the tailspin or possibility of that negative to do to comparison?
Yeah. I've learned some very specific things that again.
I'm idiosyncratic to myself. Everybody probably has to find their own patterns and I certainly am not one to prescribe that other people. Although after our last session. I guess a bunch of people started spreadsheets and good. I hope they're helpful to them but people have to sort of find their own recipe and that's what the bug books about right to begin to observe for yourself as you study yourself like a bug what really works and for me, I've learned a couple of things that that the critical thing is to find something very tangible that
pivots me to the Future and what's coming next and so for example, I've learned that if I wake up at 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning, and I know I'm hitting the 20 minute Rule and I'm not going to get back to sleep and I can feel those. You know, what is the 20-minute rule 20 minute rule basically says if you wake up in the middle of the night and you're not back to sleep by 20 minutes you get up and get going and and so I followed the 20 minute Rule and hits 20 minute while I like there's no way.
Back to sleep. So get up and going but in that 20 minute you can it's there's something weird about laying there in bed in the darkness that you can see almost like feeling the you can feel those like a black mist sort of coming in and you can begin to all of a sudden you're thinking about something that's whether it's comparison or comparison to something you to is standard you could have done better or whatever. Here's what I've learned. Just even this last weekend as I Was preparing for our conversation. I have found that one of the best things to do is to throw
Myself into creative preparation for something that's coming up and to go into the preparation bubble. And the reason for that is simple. There's nothing to compare to at all. There's nothing to be like judgmental of there's nothing but none of those things then never haven't happened yet, but they're all in the future and all your energy goes from you know, Looking Backward or looking to the side or any of that and all that just all of a sudden becomes this energy.
Had a bad go right right to the desk and then immediately pop up and say what if I got coming up I need to prepare for.
So hey, I'm going to be talking with Tim. I better be thinking about what do we talk about last time? Well, it could be different this time like what me have I should probably go back and revisit the 4-Hour workweek at all of a sudden this generation of I'm preparing I'm preparing I'm looking forward. I'm on the balls of my feet. I'm creating I and I'll goes away and so and I have a little thing on my on my iPhone which because I might to do is like everybody else and I also have my shop dues on mine, but there's I have it.
Call prep and prep is always in bold. And so whenever I'm in that point, I immediately go to the bulb line that's called prep and I say what can I prepare for?
And then or or I can be preparing for you know that that also applies if I go into my research, but again that's for ideas that have yet to happen. I can't judge the ideas. They're not there
yet. Hmm. What do you use to to contain your to do is stop dues and prep do use notes do use a different application. What where do those things live?
I am a and the people in our little system here know this I'm a fanatic for
I'm not always so good at it. But I'm a fanatic for Simplicity. I don't like really complicated. I'm sorry to app makers and all that. I apologize to you. So, how do I keep my my to dues? I use the notes app on my iPhone and which also that carries over to my iPad and I have to do two versions of it. There's the beginning of every year is it down and you do your sets of Threes right top three things together.
It done this year write them down top three things to stop doing or reduce significantly this year. It has to balance 343. If you have more than three in your top set you don't have any priorities then truly and then and then you go down to top three what I call supporting objectives. So for example, I might have a top objective redesign the socratic process. I might have us supporting objective, which is create a new table for the space, right? So, I mean it's supportive but
Again, only three and they are supporting the big ones but they have to be in support of and then and then they'll be other threes. Like, you know, I actually have one top three fun. Right? I'm really trying on that right that says it's still in the hard ones for me. So you do that and so I have those over there on one thing and you go back and you're constantly and at the end of the year you grade yourself right and you don't grade yourself. You don't get to change it you have to grade yourself at the end on every one of those at the end of the year.
F you can do is minuses and pluses if you want and you grade yourself relative to exactly what you said you were going to focus on for the year now something may happen, you might get sick or have to deal with that or whatever but you grade yourself and you go to that and it's on a simple note. It's just a simple like little memo pad right and then you have your what sort of going on.
Which is the long list every time you think of something you need to do just add it to it's a memo note. That's all it is. But the critical step and you wrote about this. You're really good at this temp when you sit down you do the very thing that you wrote about a think in the 4-Hour workweek and I found it very very helpful sit down and you just look at that list and you say okay. What are those two? Maybe three things today?
That like and if only and maybe you're the one of them, right this is today and sometimes it can be simply as today is a day that if I didn't have fun. It's a failure right because it's going to be a fun day or whatever, but then here's the little trick I've learned there's all the other to do is and they might go on for hundreds of things. Just so someday. You don't always forget about them. I'd like to hit return enough times.
When you open the memo, which you always have keys so it can open up instantaneously when you open the memo all the ones below those top three are off the screen and they're they're right, but they're purposely hidden and it's simple it's just simple and I use for date things. I used to think on the iPhone, which is just their simple reminder saying but like around here we could have all these help you can have like all these powerful apps for
King contacts and stuff like that, but I'm like, you know or things that we have to prepare for. I'm like why don't we just use an Excel spreadsheet or a Word document? I just think the critical thing is if you don't have the discipline, no app is going to make you disciplined
speaking of discipline. What are some examples of things on your stop do
list? Well, I think one of the biggest ones on my stop do list and I give myself so far used to be a you know, he's doing a great.
Rager are Rising one is don't hit send
what does that
mean? So one of the things I learned from another wonderful Mentor felony murder of Groesbeck.
You can always say something. You haven't said you can never unsay something you've said and so I very simple thing but I never draft an email response in an email app.
I never draft an important text in the text app.
Because you might hit send.
And sometimes it's a matter of when you hit send so, you know, I thought about the shock it's my system. If I'm up at 4:00 in the morning and something occurs to me and I text and email people on my team at 4:00 in the morning. First of all, they don't need know about it at four in the morning at 8:00. I might not even think it's that important because it just was according to me at 4:00 in the morning and and I've shocked their life and it's completely unhelpful.
So I put it in I don't put it in the map. I just type it out and I would say about somewhere between a half and two-thirds of my correspondence. I never said wow.
That's amazing partly because I like a conversation if I can have that and one thing I've really observed with really effective people. I'll never forget every once in a while in a couple of the conversations that well. I've actually had this with multiple people really remarkable people. I've noticed that they often see the purpose of email is to is to trigger a conversation by voice dear Jim. Can we chat?
How do you feel about that
about? Oh about dear Jim?
And we chat. Yeah. Well, I'm reclusive so often that's but if it's if it's the right person, I mean there are things that can happen in a in a in a by voice and conversation that can never happen. Imagine having this conversation by email.
Right. He's just part of it be really it'd be really really hard to do. So another thing is I have travel is at least on a slowly right now. It has stopped doing but ideally would love it to be almost permanently a stop doing travel for other than fun. And those are some that are really, you know, I'm still very much working on but the when in doubt don't hit
send if we return to the Consolidated map of Concepts this
This map of Concepts and framework after 30 years. There are many that we could talk about and if you can feel free to to go off menu with what I'm going to mention, but I would love to hear more about the genius of the end or clock building not time telling. Okay great, but you can you can choose option see if there's another one you think would be more more fun to explore
right? Let me zoom out for a moment about this map and then I'll pop into a couple of
It's about that. So first of all, what is the map starting way back when I first started teaching the entrepreneurship and small business class and interest just as an aside, by the way, a lot of people think that my work has been about big companies because the companies that were in the research were huge companies by the time we pick them up to study them and that's where the data was because they were publicly traded companies. So that's that's but we always studied them back to when they were startups. So I was interested in Disney when Disney was doing
First cartoon I was interested in how Amgen went from a start-up into finally stumbling upon. What would become EPO I was interested in Intel when it had three people in Southwest Airlines wouldn't had three airplanes. And for me, I've always had my main interest and passion has been ultimately for the entrepreneur and the entrepreneur who I would like to challenge with the Beyond part of the be entrepreneurship part, which is to basically take the
Idea of okay. Now that you have a successful business. Can you make the journey from there to build turn it into a truly enduring great company. I mean if you're going to do it, why don't you try to create one of the companies that can last that's worthy of lasting that can change the world that can go on and continue to do that for generations and can serve as a role model for others. Like if you can do that. Why don't you do that, right or at least why don't you think about doing that that was always sort of the frame you get companies.
They're young and when they're small because it's like getting them when they're really really still in the early parenting stage and it's easier to turn a small business or an entrepreneurial company into a great company than it is to try to change a giant mediocrity down the road into a great company. So get it right early. That's kind of where all this work began and I started thinking about how would we do that? And that's what led to the research and lesson we talked about the research.
Search method comparative analysis and historical analysis and all the things that we do that go back to how I learned how to do this research with Jerry porras. And we applied it first in built to last it wasn't about big. It was about how the small became the lasting and Visionary the others did not and each study was I kind of think of it as it wasn't a series of four books. It wasn't like built to last and then good degrade and then how the Mighty Fall and then great by choice. It was actually one giant study that came out.
An installment and each study was looking at the question of what it takes to build a truly great company Superior results distinctive impact lasting endurance, but truly great company and after 30 years. I thought to myself now that I'm moving on to new questions, right? So after we after this conversation Tim, I'm going to be heading off and do you know the next time we talk? Hopefully I'll be emerging from the cave with perspectives on these new questions a midpoint.
In my career at 62 was I think of it moving on to new stuff? I wanted to consolidate all of our work into something that could fit on a single whiteboard 30 years of research on a single whiteboard. And so I thought I'm going to give people a map. If you did 30 years of research rigorously figuring out what makes great companies tick and you wanted to hand it to an entrepreneur and say follow this here's here's the map. What would it look like hence the map and
And then beyond entrepreneurship 2.0. I've written a whole chapter on what the map is consolidates all that work. It unfolds in these stages of stage ones about discipline people. So your level 5 leaders, you're right people on the bus all those and Stage 2 is about discipline thought the genius of the and and the Stockdale Paradox, which we talked about earlier the Hedgehog concept which we talked about in the previous session together stage 3 is all about disciplined action, which begins with the flywheel which we spend a lot of time on the last episode on
and then executing on the flywheel with a fanatic 20-mile March - my mm creative hours but companies can have them to and then renewing and extending that flywheel with firing bullets then cannonballs to get calibration and then placing very calibrated big bets that extend that flywheel leading to stage 4, which is building greatness to last which is productive paranoia. You got to stay alive and stay out of the stages of decline shift from being a Time teller to a clock Builder because if your
The time teller everything falls apart when you go away. So you got to build clock and then finally the real deep secret of preserve the core stimulate progress allowing you to achieve be hag after be a gift or be hag. Those are all the inputs
multiple hag for people who don't know being big hairy audacious goals
big hairy audacious goals. And that's funny. There's a long story about how that came about. We eventually embraced the big in the Harry and the audacious. It's a way to stimulate progress.
And great companies in history many of them have used be hags very artfully to stimulate progress. And then there's finally in the map one principle that multiplies all the others which is the principle of return on luck. And that was the piece of analysis that Martin Jansen and I did that. I'm very very proud of because we're able to Define and quantify the variable of luck and then to ask rigorously systematically. What role does it play?
What role does it not play? And how should you think about it? When you really look at the long horse of things you add all those principles up they can fit on a single whiteboard there the inputs they follow unfold in those sequins and it would want if I Disappeared tomorrow, I would love to be able to say to anybody who's started a company or a business a I wanted to be great company take the map follow the map. I'm gone, but the map is here and that's that's what that's all about in terms of the
the genius at the end one of the things we found is that those who really build enduring great companies and maybe great companies even that just for a period of time but get these extraordinary things going they reject the tyranny of the or and they Embrace The Genius of the end and so that we found this real ability to live with both sides of Anne's all the time when somebody says creativity or discipline they say an innovation or execution they say and
They say values or results they say and and one of the big ones is purpose and profit and we live in this time whenever we it's like we discovered purpose again as if this is a new discovery with Jerry and I found in our research 25 years ago, one of the main findings have built to last. Was that the Visionary companies
Have always been more driven by purpose.
than their mediocre also-rans in our comparative analysis and
They were more successful as businesses. So this notion of purpose over profits isn't quite right.
Could you give an example of a paragon in your mind a company that really exemplifies that
combination? Well, I think one that people would maybe a really identify with is Patagonia and yvon chouinard, so people would know it but great story of
How Yvonne Canard grew up in rock climbing and mountaineering and he had this belief that a company should be a tool for changing people's behavior. That would have a positive impact and I remember back in 1972. Wish I got the Sinead catalog and it was a Manifesto for cream clean climbing.
And back then we used to bash pitons into the Rock and of on comes along and says, you know, if we keep bashing pitons into the Rock as more and more people climb, we're going to just leave these ugly scars and he had a picture in there. If I remember right of a thing called Serenity crack and Yosemite which basically used to be this beautiful thin seen that was just marred and mangled with piton holes. And if on said this is wrong,
But then so his purpose was he was going to change the climbing Community to be that role model and tool for social change, which is really kind of the purpose right change the climbing Community make it more sustainable of what we were doing and he was going to issue a Manifesto to that effect in the catalog was a Manifesto. I still have it. I still have that Manifesto catalog no kidding. Yep, and then he put that out of the world to educate us about what we were doing trying to get us to change your behavior. You got to remember when
Pete on feels really secure and he's saying take this little tiny piece of aluminum that I've attached to this webbing and slide it in and it's dead and you're thinking man. I don't want to hit a ledge. It's like no we have to do this. These will be safe. Let me show you he then provided the solution and basically said I'm going to give you the answers. I'm going to give you the eccentrics and the stoppers and all the products that we could use and trust and then made them say don't buy the old products by these new ones because they will be better and
Actually, let us through with his company as the Catalyst for doing it into a revolution with other climbers who were calling for this to but he provided this great solution to be a role model for in a tool for social change in the climbing Community, which then later has become larger for them in the way that they do all of the things that they do and the power of it is Patagonia is an incredibly successful business.
And it is purpose all the way along and profit and this goes back decades and is alive today and Christine mcdivitt who built the company with him. That was the whole thing. We have to do the and we have to do the and we have to do this.
I am so glad you brought up Patagonia. I have travelled with Yvonne shards book let my people go surfing since it was initially published. I've had a copy of that book that has traveled with me for
The long it's been 20 years 20 plus years and they just do a phenomenal job actually have literally a Spanish paprika mackerel from Patagonia Provisions in front of me and I become fascinated with the work that they're doing from is a biological ecological perspective on sustainability sustainable agriculture and utilizing what we might consider bait utilizing what we might consider, you know, the precursors of food like seeds in a really thoughtful.
Awful and intelligent way which exemplifies the end like you said?
Oh and what I think is really the thing. I really emphasize is there's nothing trendy about this. So Jerry and I found way back and built to last going way back to companies some of them found it back in the eighteen hundreds that this notion of we have a reason for existence.
That is not defined in terms of maximizing wealth for the owners.
and we have incredible discipline to be an incredibly profitable successful growing sustainable business and that we found that in our research and then you see a company like how to go Nia
You there's nothing about it. That is new. There's new ways of doing it, but it's been there since the beginning and this idea that somehow companies should go out and let you don't bolt on a purpose. You don't say, you know, I read we should have a purpose. So I guess let's go get one. It doesn't work like that. It's has to be this inner purpose that you have always had and it is it's far better to never say you have a purpose if you
Out than to in authentically Proclaim one.
So I still have 7,000 pages of notes and prompts and questions that we could spend another seven hours on I think we should probably bring round to to a close and put a bow on it and about say 15 to 20 minutes here. What would you what do you think would be fun or important or fun?
And important to cover I mean I have questions about of course the clock building not time telling I have questions about other mentors of yours. Like I don't know if this is a single named person like Madonna, I'm probably missing out what Rochelle, you know, if you had ten years to live, what would you stop doing? There's so many things that we could talk about. What would you like to talk about or what do you think would make
sense? Yeah. That's funny Tim. I I was really little bit worried and hesitant about doing another conversation.
Because you did such a great job last time we covered so much material that I thought we're going to have nothing to talk about
surprise.
So as I if I think about might be really fun and or may be useful to people but fun, maybe if you and I have fun, that's where we'll have the best use of our time here. Let's do it. Let me ask you what would you what would you go to for fun? I have a couple of thoughts
when I'm being pulled to a
Hurley given some experiences in the last few weeks is a tremendous hole towards simplification. And I think that is why the thought exercise of asking the question if you had 10 years to live, what would you stop doing is pulling my eye my eye keeps getting pulled to that. Maybe that's my version of fun. I'm not sure if you're also be curious
about the clock building and time telling and I am yeah, so I think we could easily do both of those if
If you'd like,
let's do it. Yeah, let's tackle it.
So we talked earlier about you've got the map, you know the stages and then you get to the fourth stage by building greatness to last and in that it's one of a key idea that again it was Jerry porras and myself together working on what became built to last where this idea came out and it was the first of all it's kind of picture that there's a town square and there's this there's this amazing time tellarite the could come in at any time.
Time of day or night and look up at the stars and the moon and the sky and go tell you exactly what time it is. It could tell you it's 12 13 and and 22 seconds in the morning on such and such a date. I'm going to incredible time color and you don't need a clock because you got the time to help her and one day the until it goes away. I'm Tyler dies or the time teller, you know decides to move to another town or whatever now said no one knows what time it is and what we found is when we go back to the early stages.
This is very much about the entrepreneurial side of things. Go back to the very early stages of companies that became the enduring great companies. So Disney as an entrepreneur David Packard is an entrepreneur Tom Watson senior as an entrepreneur George rathman is an entrepreneur herb Kelleher is an entrepreneur you go back to we could just go through the long list of them are W Johnson J Willard Marriott Paul Galvin, they were all entrepreneurs.
Doors right at some point what happens? Well at some point they very early in their Journey a relatively early in the journey. They said I don't want to be a time teller on that. Everything depends upon me to tell the time. I don't want to be that Visionary founder that everything depends upon me. I want to build a clock that could tell the time even if I'm not here and I'm going to start the process of thinking about that relatively early.
That be the there's a whole bunch of different things that want to put in the clock, but I think that it was a temperament that they have that they understood that they had to make a shift away from doing more time telling and most entrepreneurs are good time tellers, they recognize it's time for X but to shift to building a company means I've got to become the clock Builder. I've got a that involves all the things we write about about, you know, picking your people and building your systems and nurturing your culture and
And and building great mechanisms and a whole bunch of other things like that, but you build the clock and sometimes that can be better to start clock building when it's relatively early and Baker who's just one of the great leaders. I've gotten to know what Telecare when she took over her father's company. He had died of a adverse medical event and she all of a sudden have a company on her shoulders. One of the first things she did was to sit down and say what are the basic things we're going to build this on so that
Instead of relying upon my father anymore to be here. We as a company can carry on what he was all about. And that means I have to really build the clock and of course that's when the company really began to take off and for the next 30 years has been an incredible run so I encourage all entrepreneurs as one thing. I want to highlight here.
There's this maybe it's not as much of a myth today. I don't know you would know better than I do.
But there's this myth that there are these things called entrepreneurs that have kind of an entrepreneurial temperament.
And they're really good for starting companies.
They're really good at like, you know, they're kind of these great and it has really been crazy people. I could be very disciplined people, but they are the starters.
and their natural temperament is that they should be starting things and then you have a different temperament almost like a different species which are those who built the company
and at sometimes for some of these entrepreneurs and some of you might be listening to this right now people around you like your board or folks are and you say, you know, it's kind of the company's outgrowing you it's now time for you to sort of think about maybe you should really hand this off to somebody who could take it to a different level and I encourage in the strongest possible terms that any entrepreneur that faces that conversation to look in the mirror and ask yourself the question. What choice do I want to
It because what you find in the research is that almost all of the great entrepreneurs. We studied became the great Builders of their companies Disney built Disney David Packard and Bill Hewlett built HP. Jeff Bezos has building Amazon Bill Gate built Microsoft, right? They the the entrepreneur becomes the Builder the average tenure and
honest of the founding Shapers of the companies that became the great companies is about 36 years. Now, you might choose that. You just want to go start something else. That's fine. But don't ever let anybody tell you you can't choose to be the other so
Rochelle,
yeah, who is Rochelle
I got to share with you this story in this image of her shell. I met Rochelle in 1982 and Michael raise we talked about him earlier Michael raise course on creativity in business.
And she co-taught the course with him.
You got to imagine you could meet somebody that is a cross between Socrates and yoga
handsome good-looking there
in Rochelle Rochelle was just she was just this really wise and she was all of about five foot. And so we all come into the class the first day or sitting there were buzzing after the summer and what do we did whatever and there was this
Five foot tall very Serene looking woman in this kind of flowing muumuu thing standing front of the class you just stood there and just waited for us to quiet down. And then chily we sort of realized we should be quiet and all of a sudden Rachelle says this very quiet voice.
You are about to embark.
on a 10-week journey
to discover your deepest Inner Essence
At which point I began thinking about what corporate finance class I could take instead. So I'm thinking I don't know about this you remember I'm the math guy. I ever loved stats. I love quantifying things all this stuff. So I go home and giant says to me so, you know, how are your classes and talk about this one? Jim Van Horn's finance class and whatever.
I said, well I have this other thing. I think I'm going to drop it. I told her the story and she joined looks at me and she says oh this would be really good for you. So I stayed in the class and Michelle became one of the great guides in my life and she's the one who I think taught me about questions because I used to go and meet with Rochelle and she would she would sit and she would always begin.
With the same question every time.
She has little white board and she would write on the Whiteboard the date and she would say it is November 23rd 2020.
What would you like to get clear about today?
And then she would through a series of questions you realize that she wasn't really come in with you did ask her a question of to try to get clear on but what she was trying to do is to get you clear on you.
Who you are what you are what's inside? You not like what you should do for a job choice, right?
And and she just knew how to ask the right questions, right? That was the power power of her questions
are is her last name Myers
Myers Myers, Michelle Myers and
At one point she gave me a question.
Which was I can't remember those five years or ten. I think 10 is a little more useful of the number, but it could work with five essentially along the lines of if you woke up tomorrow morning and you discovered. Absolutely you have only ten years to live.
What would you stop doing?
Or say I want all I wrote down the quit my job as this is before I was teaching at Stanford. I was like, I don't want to do this. You know this I'm not cut out to be in a regular job.
And what Rochelle?
Taught me with that question is someday that 10 years or five years is going to be true. You just don't know when I might already be in the 10. Hopefully not. I'm hoping I'm Midway in my career, but you never know and she said you should be asking yourself all the time.
If you knew you only had ten years or you knew you only had five years now, what would you do?
First what would you stop doing and I started using that as like a little guidance mechanism. She was also the one that taught me about like bug books and stuff like that and you just start going through every day. Like if I had 10 years what I do this
I'd five years what I do this.
Because the truth is it's all short. That's one of the lessons of bills life, right?
Short goes by in a vanish.
Any sense of historical perspective and it accelerates and I used to walk into my class at Stanford influence by Richelle to my students and one day I would walk in I would just say everybody got a blank sheet of paper.
And I say I want you to write down what would you do? What would you stop doing if you discovered you only have a short time to live.
So nobody's writing their notes down.
And this video before I went to the numbers board love the numbers board was one day before the numbers board.
And then I didn't comment on it other than to say one thing before he went into the number sport. I said, oh.
And now for all of us, that's true. We all have only a short time to live.
Do you personally still revisit that question or do you feel like you are already you've already called the heard of activities to the point where you're doing exactly what you would like to be doing are there things that would still be on your stop doing list if you went through that
exercise I continue to I'm pretty sure that my theme I usually do a theme for every year at the top of that list of the
For ease of three primaries three stop during the cetera. I'm pretty sure I set for the theme for this year because it comes back periodically only ten years to live.
And and I try to go back to it because the truth is you get pulled in lots of different directions. I can say with complete Equanimity to that if I knew I only had ten years to live.
We would be having this conversation. You know, I don't know. I think when you start getting into one to two years things change because you got to tie a lot of life.
But if you can basically get to at the end of every week and say if I had ten years to live it's still pretty good choices in my life. My life is composed of things. There's not a lot on the stop doing list. Well, there are some things that you can't stop doing because it's reality
flossing flossing
but flossing is better if you have a really really good course on how the brain works to
watch. It's true.
That guy was just a child.
They are flossing while watching this course on how the brain works and I couldn't help myself thinking. I wonder what my brain is doing with this.
Yeah, that's it. It's additive really.
Really valuable prompt and I think covid has has really brought that to the for the fragility the fragility and in permanence of of life, and I've had some people close to me. I've had relatives close immediate relatives of my girlfriend pass from code related complications. It's been a good reminder to
Revisit mortality or at least the awareness that time is limited and I too would be having this conversation and you alluded to a question very early on that. I like to ask which was on my list of unasked for round two which was the billboard and so here we go. Metaphorically speaking. You have a billboard to get a message a quota question anything you like?
To billions of people. Let's just assume they all are able to speak the same language understand the same language what might you put on that billboard doesn't have to be one thing. But what might you put on it
how have you changed the lives of others?
And I come back to Bill.
We could talk about all of his accomplishments and his board seats and how he became a chaired professor at the law school. And he was the first-ever holder of the Charles and Nancy Monger chair her study business and law at Stanford law school. I'm incredibly accomplished career. What what is really great about Bill?
T change the lives of others
And I think that's a really good measure don't have to be a lot of people.
It doesn't have to be that you changed millions of lives. I don't think of it that was that scale build a change a lot of lives, but you are some people's lives better and different because you were here.
I think that is an excellent question to let linger to end on I think that is an excellent place to to stop Jim people can find you Jim Collins.com the new book, which I encourage people check.
Is beyond entrepreneurship 2.0 subtitle turning your business into an enduring great company, which certainly expands pain a lot of the things that that we've discussed. I find you always to be a skilled and enjoyable conversational tennis partner or dad dance partner. Yeah, Jazz improv. It's always so much fun. And is there anything else that you would like to say suggest request put out?
Into The Ether for listeners anything at all. Do you like to share before we come to a close
why I'm just looking here at our list and I just am so tickled at how we did have a lot Beyond part one to converse about and I would I mean I truly was worried as like is I what are we going to talk about? That was so rich last
time we have enough left around 3:00 easily,
but don't it's so I know I think
As always we went through in a it seems secure this but actually there's the linear line has been the Curiosity and the in the conversation and I love that. There are some questions where I'm not I still want to think about my answers. I'm not a hundred percent like, which do I prefer that's a great question. Actually. I'm going to be observing my spreadsheet to hear what you do. I prefer I just prefer a lot of plus twos I would really like that and and I you know once I
For me, I guess here's what I would leave for people is 5 a hope for all of you of her a lot of you sure. I hope some of you start and build great companies and that's a great use of a life. I think it's very Noble thing to build a great company. I think it's as Nobles anything else you can do in life if it really contributes and adds not only economic wealth, but now it changes people's lives and provides a great place for people and so forth. I think that is Noble. I hope some of you will take up on doing that.
But whatever you do in your life.
If I could wish something for all of you.
It's that you would find people like Rochelle Myers.
Bill is here Peter Drucker Jim Stockdale Edge how the people who can shape you and when you find those mentors.
Make good on it and and then do it for others but I feel such deep deep gratitude for what they have done for me and I truly wish everybody got the benefit of that abundance and generosity that a great mentor does for you. It would be very impoverished to not have that
in the mentors are out there. They are constitutionally predisposed to look for that.
Jedec exchange or the circulating of the gift if that makes any sense exactly. I mean they are they are hard-wired just just as any any other organism might be for something to serve that incredible function of Mentor so they are out
there. They are out there, but make sure that if you have the privilege of having a great mentor, it's a relationship. It's not a transaction. They're not there to open doors.
Yours or any of that they're there to Mentor. Yeah since
show up at eight o'clock. Not eight o'clock and four seconds Jim one last Cliffhanger request. If you would indulge me and we can keep this short. I know you don't yet have answers to share. But can you share the next big question that you're working
on? Yeah.
Boy, so yeah, let me let me I'm John really puzzling a how I want to share it exactly.
I don't know the answers. I'm about five years into the research and the signature of it will be the research and I because that's all I have to offer ultimately is something that's research-based. If I do it, right John Gardner one of my another one of my mentors I didn't get to spend enough time with him. But he had this he's the one that had this marvelous belief that well not not to try to be interesting should seek to be interested.
and John wrote a marvelous book in 1962 by the title of self-renewal and I went down the hall to John and I said I'd like to do research on this because John believe one of the greatest cost to the world is the failure to self renew the failure of Nations to self renew the failure of societies failure of organizations and institutions and companies and ultimately the failure of individuals to self renew
and I said I wanted to do research on it and he kindly gave me a lot of time I saw have all my notes from that but he suggested I wait because it will take decades to do my great companies work that's probably not old enough to understand it and so I waited and about five years ago I started a project and I finally figured out how to do it and it asked a very simple question which is what's going to ultimately be the map I just going to take a long time to get to
The map is what is the map to self-renewal and not as episodes but over the Arc of an entire life.
And and why do some people remain so spectacularly renewed over the long course of a life maybe in others might not and and what are the real ingredients in that and and I'm taking a very research-based approach to it. I can't show what the method is. It's kind of like the coke recipe, but but it's really so it's the most exciting stuff. I've worked on in a really really long time. I will share with you one question though, and I'll leave you all of your listeners with this question.
Did you know one question as I could so far? I have questions more than answer. I know one of the questions.
One of the key questions about renewal is is ultimately going to be are you going to be the kind of person who renews within a primary form a primary art form in your life?
Whether that be business or writing or music or theater or whatever it is that is your art form politics, right or you're going to be somebody that is going to renew as your primary mechanism all the course of a Life by changing your art forms. So if you take John McPhee is just heard that wonderful interview with him. I think was on NPR called The Old Man project, you know, and he's in this race to get as many of his ideas as he can't he's just renewed as ever right, but
Is renewal within a single art form and it's a spectacular path of renewal that started early and ran forever, but you could take other people who will renew by changing their art forms sometimes because it's imposed upon them, you know, Katherine Graham one of the great heroes in my mind. She was not didn't want to what being a CEO wasn't her heart form because if the way post unfolded and the suicide of her husband, she had it on her shoulders and she chose to renew into a different art form to become a great CEO.
And and I think one of the great questions all of us have to wrestle with because we're different, you know different plugs if you will, but one of the great wisdom questions is to remain renewed over the entire Arc of a life. I mean like until you're like out and done. Is it going to going to be are you going to be variations on a theme?
Are you going to be different themes? And that is one of the Crux questions? I will have answers for how you think about that. I don't know yet and I can't wait. I have to go in the cave once I get be 2.0 out so I can help Bill come to the world. I'm going to be in the cave think of me happily without Windows figuring this
out. So how's that for us? I love that question. I love that question to variations on a theme or
Games all together it makes me think of being Mario Andretti and Lane shifting or being a shapeshifter. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly
and it's one of the wisdom questions because it's not like there's not like they're smart answers to this. They're wise answers and and I am trying down what I really want to understand and this is the beauty of the looking over the entire Arc of people's lives done in a
Rigorously selected set to try to unpack this and it is the most fun and interesting engaging in exhausting piece of research. I've been in for a long long time. I really really hope I if I have only 10 years. I hope I can get it done and I really hope I have enough. Talk to you.
Well, you know if the power broker can get written Lyndon Johnson volumes can be compiled. I have great confidence in you and Jim this is always so much fun. Perhaps we'll have around three at some point. We certainly have no lack
well by then I might have something on renewal to say so but anyways, I'm just looking at the notes here and it says most important Tim. Let's
Have fun have we accomplished set goal?
Yes, yes least I can speak for myself. I absolutely me too and what a joy to be able to spend time together again. I really appreciate you making the time and I really look forward to seeing what be on entrepreneurship 2.0 does in the world and the extension of your mentors Legacy and to to see the
Ripple effects that that will have as its transmitted in written form to probably Millions more by extension and congratulations. Thank you. So it's very exciting. It's about in the end. It's
about Bill. So that's what I am very excited about. I appreciate you helping me bring Bill to the world. So Tim you go and put some butter on something don't sleep.
If you like the to a lot of it, I I will do the same
that is that is on my my top three to dues for 2020 ones put butter on everything the theme the theme is fun. Yeah self-renewal Jim will thank you so much for for spending so much time today and for everyone listening as usual you can find links to everything that has been mentioned from the
the old man project which was dropped as a gem at the end a little Easter egg to the new book to everything in between in the show notes at teamed up log for such podcast just search Jim Collins and it will pop right up and until next time
until next time my friend. Take care
some butter on some waffles. All right. Thanks for listening. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off number one. This is five. Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a
Work email from me and would you enjoy getting a short email for me? Every Friday that provides a little more soul of fun for the weekend and five bullet. Friday's a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week that could include favorite new albums that have discovered it could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I have read and that I've
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It's actually it feels like a lot more of the high end in a device smaller than a flat screen TV. And you can perform at least a hundred and fifty different exercises and these different Technologies are exclusive to Taro even dial weights up and down with the touch of a button in one pound increments using magnets and electricity. So the movement is extremely smooth and even though I have a home gym already in my garage. I'm still getting a total installed I've used tonal for multiple workouts now.
To do things I just cannot do in my home gym such as the chop and lift exercises from where our body all sorts of cable exercises that would usually involve much much bigger piece of equipment eccentric training for instance. You can do to give a simple example bicep curls where you are lifting. Let's just say 20 pounds in each hand up and then total will automatically increase the weight because you can lower more than you can lift to say 25 or 30 pounds on.
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cam for $250 off of your tone of purchase. That's one more time T Ona elle.com. This exclusive deal is only available for a very limited time. So today is the day to grab the total one more time T Ona elle.com total be your strongest. This episode is brought to you by give well.org tis the season of giving isn't it? And you've got a few weeks left to make your charitable donations before we close the books on 20/20.
This is why I encourage you to check out give well not for more than 10 years. Give well.org has helped donors find the Charities and projects that save and improve lives most per dollar. Here's how givewell dedicates more than 20,000 hours a year to researching charitable organizations and handpicks a few of the highest impact evidence backed Charities. I recommend to give well.org and they shared a note with me, which is just incredible. And here it is quote. Here are the data they sent me a spreadsheet.
From organic donations excited Tim over the past few years transactions that specifically cited Tim Ferriss some two hundred thirty three thousand forty dollars and 74 cents. We estimate that those donations will save 15 to 24 lives. How did this happen? I suspect that a lot of these donations came from my interview with will mccaskill really knows what he's talking about when it comes to effective giving he's a philosopher ethicist and one of The Originators of the effective altruism movement. He is an associate professor in philosophy at Oxford that is
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