Leaders Eat Last, Simon Sinek [Sales Machine NYC 16]

[Music] wow that was great wasn't it standing ovations he couldn't see it because you can't see out here so we're just gonna clear the stage quickly for our next speaker I think all of you know simon Sinek you know his work I think that this is a great transition from the presentation that we just saw because I mean I was in the back here taking as many notes as I could and when Simon was speaking but what sets the speaking excuse me Simon is going to come out in a minute and he has his easel I think some of you have seen many of his his YouTube videos and you've seen his TED Talks and I think we're gonna have much of that also today he's a best-selling author he is going to be speaking to us about leadership and how leadership can really change the game for people so be without any further ado please help me welcome simon Sinek to the stage [Applause] [Music] thanks very much I'm having a bit of a bit of a moral crisis right now I was very inspired by Seth and the idea of taking a risk and the idea of potentially failing and I'm considering at this moment I still haven't made a decision whether I should abandon what I was planning to talk about what they paid me to talk about haha to tell you something new that I doubt I can even fill the whole time with but then maybe we'll just do questions all right all right all right so in the spirit of Seth Godin here goes no hooks coming out and that's good okay this is an idea that I think is really interesting and I'm learning about it and I'm exploring it on trying to understand how it fits into business and it's based on game theory so in game theory there are two kinds of games there are finite games and there are infinite games a finite game is defined as known players fixed rules and an agreed upon objective baseball we know who the players are we know what the rules are and we all agree that whoever has more runs at the end of nine innings as the winner and the game concludes perfectly fine right then there are infinite games an infinite game is defined as known and unknown players the rules are changeable and the objective is to stay in the game when you pit a finite player with a finite player the system is stable baseball is stable when you pit an infinite player versus an infinite player the system is also stable the Cold War was stable because everybody knew that there was no such thing as a winner or loser and we had to keep the game and play for it to maintain its stability because there are no winners and losers in an infinite contest the only way that things change is when one of the players drops out because they no longer have the resources or the will to continue to play right the problem arises however when you pit a finite player versus an infinite player because a finite player is playing to win and an infinite player is playing to keep the game in play this is bad for the finite player this is what happened to the United States in Vietnam the North Vietnamese were fighting for their lives America was trying to beat the North Vietnamese this was what happened to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan the Soviet Union was trying to win the Mujahideen would fight for as long as is necessary if you listen to most businesses the vast majority of businesses do not understand the game they're playing the game of business inherently is an infinite game the game of the business has existed long before every single company on this planet exists that that exists right now and it will continuing to exist long after every single company on the planet is dead and gone right in other words the game of business is infinite but if you listen to the language of businesses they don't understand the game they're in they keep talking about being number one but in the finite game we agree on what the objectives are and we agree on what the rules are so when a company announces we're number one or we're striving to be number one based on what revenues market share profit square footage number of employees and by the way what other companies have agreed that that is the standard of being number one oh and by the way what other companies have agreed on the time frame that we all agree you're right you won we lost in other words it's arbitrary organizations individual sales people make up their own standards that no one else has agreed to yet again a sign that we're in an infinite contest because in a finite contest we agree on the rules plus it's about the competitors in an infinite in a finite contest we know who all the competitors are it's a fixed set in an infinite contest we know some of the competitors but not all of the competitors you do not know who all of your competition is we study the competitors we know about we do competitive analyses on the competitors we know about but 99 times out of a hundred its the ones we don't know about that show up and steal our lunch do you think that myspace had any sense that Facebook even existed they were doing plenty of competitive analyses doing all kinds of presentations and powerpoints and then this unknown competitor showed up the rules are infinite the rules are infinite let me give you a real-life business example of a competitive of what a finite player and an infinite player look like I spoke at a education summit at Anton's funny at an education summit it was a get it because I used education that's a vowel it's a bad education never mind I spoke at an education summit for Microsoft I also spoke at an education summit for Apple at the education summit for Microsoft I would guess that about 70% of the executives spent 70 percent of their time presenting talking about how to beat Apple at the at the Apple summit 100% of the executives spent 100% of their time talking about how to help teachers teach and how to help students learn one of them was obsessed with their competition the other one was obsessed with where they're going one was playing a finite game the other one was playing an infinite game now at the end of my talk at Microsoft they gave me a gift they gave me the new Zune when it was a thing and I gotta tell you this thing was gorgeous this thing was spectacular it was the most elegant piece of technology I'd ever seen the user interface was incredible it was flawless it worked perfectly it was unbelievable it was way better than my iPod the problem is it didn't work on iTunes so I couldn't use it it's different story so I'm sitting in the back of a taxi at the end of the Apple conference with a very senior Apple executive sort of like employee number 12 kind of guy and I decide to stir the pot and I turned him and I say you know Microsoft gave me their new Zune and it is so much better than your iPod touch and he turns to me and he says I have no doubt conversation over because the infinite player understands that sometimes you're a little bit ahead and sometimes you're behind the infinite player understands that sometimes you have the better product and sometimes you don't because it's not about winning every single battle it's about staying in the game longer than the other guy remember every single company that goes bankrupt didn't lose or fail or anything like that they ran out of the will or the resources continue to stay in the game almost every single merger and acquisition that ever happens is an announcement that it one or both of the companies can no longer stay in the game with the will or the resources they have and so they have no option but to combine their entities so that they can try and stay in the game a little longer if you look at all the great companies the companies that the few the precious few companies that folks like me and Seth and Gary write about and talk about the apples the harley-davidsons the Southwest Airlines the the Costco's what you find is that none of them are obsessed with their competition every one of them is obsessed with the direction and the path that they are on in other words they are all playing the infinite game and every single one of them frustrates the heck out of their competition that's one of the reasons that they are the exception to the group even though they may sell similar products even though they may be at a parity price sometimes sometimes not the difference is is that they stand for something that they know what they stand for and they know where they're going and that their obsession and it's okay to be a little bit behind in the short term because no one has agreed what the timeframes are anyway and the goal is to last longer than the other guy but in in business it is astonishing to me the abstraction with which we show up to work let me tell you what I mean so the way companies talk about their opportunity or what they're doing or what they're trying to advance same with salespeople same thing we talk in the abstract it's like it's like saying to your friend where are you going and they say I'm going on vacation and you go amazing where are you going they said vacation you go got it where are you going they took I told you I'm going on vacation well how you gonna get there I'm taking Route 95 and what happens is they've decided on the route but they have no idea what the destination is it's this abstract thing called vacation companies are exactly the same so why did your company exist growth got it awesome so why do you want to grow cuz we're a company got it where you go in growth okay how are you gonna get there and they will tell you their strategy for growth and the problem is they become stubborn about the strategy and they're completely it's an abstract concept about where they're going a better way of building a business is to know where you're going to have a sense of vision to have a sense of purpose to know what you stand for to play the infinite game where are you going California and you can be open to absolutely any route it takes to go to California so you start driving down route 95 and everything's going fine your competitor who's playing the finite game growth I'm going vacation they're so excited because they've made a goal their goal is to drive 100 miles per day as they go down route 95 on their way to vacation and they're ecstatic when they beep plan and they drove 120 miles today and everybody's high-fiving each other because we're ahead of our plan to only drive 100 miles same thing we put these financial plans in place and everybody's high-fiving each other when we the plan where are you going because there's a problem what if there's a roadblock what if there's a storm what if you have some internal problems what are the car runs out of gas what happens if your competitor overtakes you what happens is you sit at the roadblock or you don't know what to do in the car runs out of gas because you've only made one decision the route we're on route 95 and we don't know what to do when you know that you're going to California you just turn off the road you take a different exit it's no big deal because you understand that going slightly to the right doesn't mean you're off course it means you're going around whatever obstacle when a submarine commander gives a command go due north a submarine does not go due north it goes like this you have to know where you're going and it can't just be growth this is one of the reasons as we get more senior and as we get more successful our lives feel less exciting and we don't feel as successful as we do when we were Junior because when we're junior the goal is just to try and get in the game and every promotion and every raise we got was literally the most exciting thing in the world but the problem was it was just counting the steps there was no sense of vision there was no sense of destination and so now you're making more money than you've ever made in your life you're more senior than you've ever been the more responsibility and more authority than you've ever had in your life and yet for some reason it doesn't feel as good anymore and the reason is because you're running a race and you don't know why you're in the race the difference between a goal and a vision is the finish line remember human beings are useless we are no good with the abstract we need things to be tangible right we're no good with the abstract this is why most vision statements are useless they're completely useless the reason is they're abstract to be the biggest to be the best to be the most respected respected by whom your mom be the biggest based on what standard abstract no one else has agreed to the rules I can prove to you how we need tangibility what if I told you that you will get a bonus if you accomplish or how much more you ask more it's actually unnerving tell me the goal you want me to hit give me the number give me the thing you want me to accomplish I'll make a back plan and I'll figure out how to get there metrics are very important don't get me wrong can you imagine running a marathon with no mile markers unnerving even if we know what the goal is we need to have a metric so we can understand if we're going in the right direction what speed were going at etc etc but what if you were running a race that had all the mile markers but no finish line it's really exciting at the beginning you're making progress mile 1 mile 2 but after mile like 23 24 29 30 you're you've accomplished more than you've ever accomplished you've run further than you've ever run and at some point you start asking when is this like what is the purpose of this our jobs are the same work is the same vision but the problem is most people most organizations articulate their visions in these abstract absolutely useless ethereal terms Martin Luther King he understood a thing or two about vision by the way that's the reason they call it vision because you can see it vision right not dream not apparition vision can you imagine you said to somebody what's the vague cloudy thing that you're pursuing in your job in your career vision Martin Luther King said I have a dream that one day little black children will hold hands on the playground little white children you can see that you can imagine that in your mind's eye and you can set your sights on working towards that vision and for all practical purposes you will never get there but you will die trying and that's the point that's what gives our work and our lives sense of purpose that the game matters that the infinite game matters the finite game is exhausting absolutely exhausting the difference between a goal and a vision is the finish line a goal is 26.2 miles simply count the metrics until you get to that goal but what happens after you achieve the goal you pick another random arbitrary goal and you work towards that you pick another random and arbitrary goal and you work towards that but I don't know what direction you're going in growth vacation I see it over and over and over again right because your ability to understand opportunity and which opportunities to lunge at which opportunities to pass it depends on your clarity of destination are you going on vacation or are you going to California because if you're going on vacation and somebody drives up next to you says hey I got a private jet it's a lot faster than your car you want to come you'd be like oh yes much better than a car what they didn't tell you was the plane is going to Canada and so now you're flying very very fast in the wrong direction all excited all the mileage you're making and then somebody says to you you realize you set out to go on vacation you set out to go to in that direction and you go yeah yeah yeah but this is so much better and so what we do is we just keep changing the destination we just keep changing the goal based on whatever opportunity we have but we never actually get anywhere versus somebody who's going to California and somebody drives by and says you want to ride on my private jet and you ask the question where are you going and they say Canada you go I'm going to keep driving but thank you or or you you are able to articulate where you're going would you come on my private jet and you say I would love to go in your private jet I'm heading to California your ability to articulate your vision means one of two things people know when to stay away because they can't help you advance your vision and people show up out of the blue to help you because they can hear what you believe in and they have something that can help you this is what it means to play the infinite game you can absolutely pay attention to your competitors for tactical reasons but you cannot use your competitors to make decisions about where you're going or how fast you're going to get there that is yours but the problem is the reason most organizations the real reason most people most salespeople play the finite game is because they have no sense of vision and they have no sense of the infinite game they're in as I said before the difference between a vision a goal is knowing exactly how far away the finish line is 26.2 miles even though you may not know what it looks like a vision is having a crystal-clear sense of what the vision looks like but you have no sense of how far away it is or how long it'll take you to get there that's the point that's what gives our lives and our work meaning and value and every marathon we complete every major goal we achieve we know is moving us in the right direction finite and infinite games we have to play we have to understand we don't get to choose by the way if you want to play the finite game and the day you run out of money the day you run out of will or the day that somebody just takes all your business you have to say up those with a game those are the rules I set out to play by I leave this game comfortably and happy it's you can be sad but everybody knows the game's over baseball players don't ask to play another few more innings because if they just have a few more innings they they're positive they can be the competitor you don't get to choose those are the rules it's only the infinite game where you can break every rule that exists you can break them all you can break the rules that exist for you you can break the rules that exist for others you can break every expectation that you may have had for yourself the single most important thing is I think there's two important things you need to play the infinite game one is courage the other one is patience you see the infinite game is like exercise the infinite game is like exercise if I make a compelling argument to you as to why you need to exercise you'll go to the gym you'll come home you'll look in the mirror and you will see nothing and you'll go to the gym the next day and you'll come back and you'll look in the mirror and you will see not thing worse you're in pain and so you say to yourself empirically I see no value from the method from the effort that I'm expending and I'm hurting and so you quit the game or if you understand that there's value in this and you work through it because you understand that the vision you have and the values you hold dear are more important you stick with it the pain goes away you get a little stronger things get a little easier and eventually you get into shape the problem is I don't know how long it takes and this is why most companies don't like the infinite game is because I don't know how long it takes I know a hundred percent sure that exercise takes more than a week to work I know that for a fact you will see no results in a week zero and you may even see your metrics go down you may see stress go up and you may see your metrics go down I also know that if you've been exercising everyday for a year and you see no difference you're probably doing something wrong the problem is I don't know where in that space you'll start to see things happen it's like parenting when exactly do you know that your kids turned out right you're not really a hundred percent sure and so the only thing you have to do is play the infinite game you have to just stick to it and try very hard every day to be a good parent knowing that on some days you get it wrong that some days you're number two sometimes they're ahead and sometimes you're ahead that's what the infinite game is all about it's the patience to continue to stick with it because it's the right thing well how do you know what the right thing is that's where our values come in so if you consider up here is the infinite game right this is where our values exist it is inherently intangible and is inherently hard to measure down here is the finite game this is where our interests lie it is inherently tangible and it is inherently very easy to measure if we do not have a clear sense of the infinite game that we're playing if we do not have a clear sense of our values all we do is focus on our trysts what's the difference between a values-based decision and an interest-based decision let me show you what I mean here's a values-based decision okay in time of war our soldiers Marines Airmen and and sailors will shoot a bad guy and then our medics will rush in to pull the bad guys injured body off the battlefield they will put him in our helicopters send them to our hospitals put them in our hospital beds and then our doctors will use our medicine to nurse him back to health that is not in our interest that is not in our interest it is however a value based decision the reason we do that is because it's kind of who we are it's kind of the thing we do and if we didn't do that we would all feel a little gross and we would all be angry at our servicemen because they weren't upholding the values we hold dear that is a values based decision that doesn't always go in your interests right but when we are completely oblivious of our values then every single thing that happens we make a decision in a vacuum so what we should what should we do with regard to this new product offering let's make a decision based on our interest what should we do with the competitors movement into a new category let's make a values be an interest based decision what do we do with the new sales manager who really doesn't get it how are we going to navigate the politics well let's make a decision based on them on our interests what about the company the company lost a lot of money and now we have to protect ourselves and ignore each other how are we going to and we make all of these decisions based on our interests and the problem is in a vacuum they seem perfectly fine except the value of them is finite and more importantly when you pull out nobody knows what you stand for and nobody knows where you're going and nobody knows the kind of person you are and no one will trust you we can all tell you've all had the experience where we go into like Best Buy or something and you can tell if the employees are Commission based or not we can tell you know why because you can tell that they're not thinking about trying to help us get what we are looking for they're only thinking about their Commission and we can feel it we can feel the pressure and it's actually off-putting and we won't trust them and the reason we won't trust them is because we know that they only have their interests in mind they don't care about us and Trust which is a feeling not a PowerPoint not an ad campaign not a set of values I'm not a set of products benefits Trust is a feeling born out of a common and shared set of values I can prove it to you we as human beings are constantly looking to find people who understand us and understand our values and when we find someone who we assess share similar values to us we show them very quick trust and loyalty let me demonstrate how many of you are from New York okay are you friends with everyone in New York of course not that's ridiculous but when you go to Los Angeles and you meet someone and they're from New York you're like I'm from New York too and your best buds and then you go to France on vacation with your family and you're standing there in the Paris Metro minding your own business and you're a stranger in a strange land an American and France an American in Paris Gershwin for those of you care some of you have no idea what I'm talking about you're standing there with your family in the Paris metro and you hear an American accent and you turn around and you say where you guys from they're like we're from Los Angeles like we're from New York best friends and that family from Los Angeles will say to you hey have you guys gone to this restaurant you've got to go to this restaurant and you will turn to your spouse and say honey we have to go to this restaurant because strangers who don't even live here told us we should but if a Parisian were to turn around and say to you randomly out of the blue I've lived here my whole life you know what restaurant you should go to you be like a weirdo thanks but no thanks in other words listening to the Parisian is actually in your interest but that's not how we make decisions we make the most comfortable decisions when we assess that someone understands us a little bit they share our values they know where we're coming from they kind of get us we kind of get them and there's this weird sense of trust when we assess that they actually care about our well-being we're suspicious of the Parisian but we understand that that family from Los Angeles actually cares about us having a great vacation just like they are and we trust them but if you don't know where you're going and you don't know what game you're playing and you don't even know what your values are and you're not holding yourself or your people accountable to your values before your interests then the best gains you can hope to make are the short-term games of the finite game until somebody else your competitor who's playing the infinite game who's playing a values game is collecting all the loyalty and/or the trust and you will drive yourself crazy because that's what happens to the finite player they get frustrated and you'll sit at your desk you go this is insane my product is better we're cheaper we offer better terms why are they still doing business with that other company I don't understand I do it's because you're busy making decisions based on here thinking that that's how other people make decisions - that's called a transaction you the business you're getting the transactions you're getting are short term because soon as somebody comes along better cheaper faster those people that you're doing transactions with are also making interest based decisions and they don't care about you they're gone it's the same inside a company companies that embrace layoffs mass layoffs to balance the books are making interest based decisions not values based decisions all decisions need to go like this through our values then through our interest first we say does this decision represent what we stand for and who we are is that helping us move closer towards our vision if the answer is yes then you can make any decision you want if the answer's no I don't care how good the opportunity is you don't do it here's a famous example of a values-based vision based decision back in the day Steve Jobs and a few of his senior executives went on a tour of Xerox PARC as seek you know as executives do they tore each other's companies and Xerox showed them this new technology that they had invented called the graphic user interface now Apple had just come up the success of the Apple one and the Apple two there were already a multi-billion dollar company they're famous they're huge they're the darling of Wall Street everybody loves them and all of their time and all of their energy was now being invested in the next big push they call the Lisa now the difference between Steve Jobs and most other CEOs is he was playing the infinite game and he understood the vision that he had the values-based direction he was going he didn't want to be number one it wasn't about growth it was none of those things Jobs wanted to take down the man he was at his heart a young revolutionary who grew up in Northern California during the Vietnam era and he hated the corporation he hated government he hated incumbency he hated status quo and just by virtue of the time he was born that's all it was in other words the technology of the personal computer he saw that this technology was an amazingly powerful tool that would give the individual the power to take down the corporation that one person could compete with a corporation if they had a computer and so the goal was to make the computer as usable by the average person as possible that was the goal because only if it was usable by the average person could it give the power to the average person he hated the fact you had to learn a language that you had to be a geek and so he sees this technology described graphic user interface it's like him driving down route 95 trying to get to California and someone just showed him a private jet that's going in the right direction he sees that what Xerox had invented will take him to his vision advance his vision much quicker than what he's working on so as he and the executives are leaving Xerox PARC he turns to them and he says we have to invest in this we have to abandon the Lisa and invest in this and one of the executives who was there said Steve if we invest in this we're gonna blow up our own company and jobs his response was better we should blow it up than someone else that decision became the Macintosh a graphic user interface based platform that completely changed and revolutionized the computer industry the entire platform of Windows is designed entirely to copy the graphic user interface that Apple pioneered didn't invent advanced that's what it means to play the infinite game Jobs was not setting out to be number one he was setting out to take down the man and would do whatever he needed to do to advance it and all the major things that they were doing we're helping him measure that he was working towards that goal and he was okay if they had missteps it happens it's all good the problem is most companies would never have made that decision no courage no patience because they would have said we've invested so much time and so much money in the Lisa we can't walk away from this in other words we've been on this private jet flying to Canada we've made all this progress towards Canada let's just go to Canada even though it's the wrong direction but you have to know what direction you to know that you're going in the wrong direction it is one of the greatest opportunities you have to convert to change your mindset to understand the game you're in and play the infinite game your goal is not to win to be number one because no one else has agreed on those arbitrary standards in other words it's fiction you can announce today that you're number one I'm sure you can find a statistic that shows everybody that you're number one it's fiction it's like it's like financial services companies you know number one blah blah blah you read the fine print based on five year thing based on three based on one year based on like they make up the standard that makes them number one but we're like well number one you know it's fiction infinite game the goal is not to beat anyone the goal is to advance the game to stay in the game the only person you should be competing against you're against is yourself the goal is not to be better than them the goal is to be better than yourself whatever goal that you achieve this year this quarter see if you can make it better next year figure out a way to be more efficient figure out a way to be take bigger risks figure out a way to build trust with more people because the more you articulate your vision the more you stay true to your values people weirdly show up out of the woodwork to say I'm also going to California how can I help you you know the reason I love Seth Godin love not like like love rational emotional you know the reason I love Seth Godin is because I know what he stands for I know what he believes I believe what he believes and when I listen to him it's as if he's talking directly to me it's as if he wrote his books and he does his presentations especially for me not because the stuff is interesting not because I agree with everything some of the stuff I disagree with it's because deep down I know who he is I know what he stands for and I will follow him anywhere the reason I trust him is not because he's the smartest and not because he's the best-looking and not cuz he has the coolest glasses the reason I trust him is cuz I know where he's coming from and I know he cares about advancing the same thing I care about advancing and it's not just himself and I felt that way about him from the day I met just like that family on the Paris metro talk about your values and you find people who believe what you believe I've run out of things to say [Applause] thank you thank you that's very nice of you thank you I got a few minutes if you want to do some questions I can't see a thing so I'll just trust that that I'm imagining there's a long line of people waiting to ask a question but I don't know the question was did I really make that up on the fly or did I that is that what I plan to say I made it up on the fly oh I'll ask a question yeah so what you said about Seth Godin yeah believing what they believe from the very moment yeah that's how I feel about you so this has been a real pleasure thank you thank you thank you so here's my question a year or so ago after watching the start with why talk I said I want to start shepherding my company to start you know talking communicating acting inside out on outside in sure so I started trying to evangelize some of those ideas within the business I was working at and it fell flat yeah how do you start to get those ideas to take hold as one person a cog in the wheel yeah what what are some of the things that people can do to advance that that way of thinking so the single most important thing to know is that you cannot do it alone right life is difficult business is difficult sales all of these things that we try to do are very very difficult why would you ever set out to do something difficult or dangerous by yourself you would never go scuba diving by yourself you would go with a buddy you know anything difficult or dangerous we take a buddy and so the question is who's your buddy who's your leadership buddy who have you committed to seeing not that they help you it's not a transaction this is what a transaction looks like if you help me I'll help you that's transit in fact I'll help you only if you help me that's transactional they may say yes they may say no right truly building finding a buddy is going to someone who you believe you either admire them for what they stand for you admire their consistency you admire their devotion their their commitment their willpower to say no to things that they know are the wrong thing to do and say yes that are the right things to do that you go to me say I want to help you I want to do anything I can do to help you advance your cause because if you're successful you're actually helping me advance my cause because I have a belief and I'm okay you're the one who advances the cause as long as the cause gets advanced how can I help you and that with no expectation of anything in return and that is the form partnership so the more that I talked about my why because the big change for me was I learned that I don't have to know all the answers and I don't have to pretend that I do that was the biggest change for me and when I started preaching what I believed and stopped telling people what I did what started to happen as weird people came up to me and said how can I help and the first employees that I had literally committed themselves to advancing the cause and I was blown away how lucky I was that these people wanted to help me but I had to start by living the values embodying the values making decisions that were good for the cause good for us we never to this day for the past decade we have never had a conversation in our company about what's good for the business we have never had that conversation the conversation we have is what's good for the movement because it reminds us of California what is this good for the movement or the only conversations we have we don't even on our pl we don't actually have a line on our P&L it says profit it doesn't exist we have a line on our pl that says freedom because I'm not motivated to work for profit I am motivated to work for freedom and you're damn right I want more freedom this year than I wanted then I had last year the freedom to say no to things that I know are wrong the freedom to fund charities and and artists the freedom to pay my people give them big bonuses at the end I want that freedom you're damn right I want that freedom right so make sure make sure you know what you stand for you preach what you stand for and invite others to help you and you commit yourself to helping others great thank you so much you're very welcome one more question yes any time hi first I wanted to say thank you thanks for being authentically excessively you thank us today thank you thanks for listening to your intuition going off script so I'm going to speak for myself and make a nice statement but I do I believe I'm probably speaking for at least a few of us in here going based off of a values based and a vision based Drive in our careers in our lives I think one of the things and I'm in New York I've lived here 17 years I think there are a lot of distractions out there there's a lot of noise there's a lot of interference there's corporate cultures there's overlays all of this all these skins and so sometimes we can become masked our vision can become masks yeah our values can become masks and I think having practical toolkits I think a lot of people in here are practical minded yeah practical toolkits to check in to reevaluate to take re inventory because that kind of resets the compass yeah you can you speak to some of that I say I hate to sound like broken record but it's very similar to the the answer I gave to the previous question right which is have you ever dated someone and you think they're amazing and all of your friends go right maybe maybe they see something you don't see and so when our friends love us which means they know who we are and we know they know what we stand for they can see when we make decisions that are inconsistent with who we are and our values they can see it and our good friends will tell us and our good friends will be honest when we ask right or they'll say things to you like I didn't expect you to do something like that if I'm honest or you know you're not the same person I used to know or what's going on with you that's what they say they say things like that so at work they may say things like that because they've known us to be of high integrity and values-based and now they see us acting solely based on our interests and it may not be because we're bastards it may be because we're trying to face overwhelming pressure you know the sales pressure the deadlines the fear that if we don't make the quota that we will lose the job and so we start working for the short-term finite interest of saving the job rather than the long-term infinite cause of advancing the vision right and improving ourselves improving the organization so the practical thing is is to make sure that you have people around you who tell you have spinach in your teeth you know like we all know that's like this standard of a good friend like somebody who'll tell you have spinach in your teeth you've got spinach in your teeth oh my god thank you that's just the kind of guy I am so so you know because values are intangible this is the reason we we play the finite game because it's easier because I can count it I can measure it and I can really like got there but over the course of time it's draining it's expensive and you will drop out that's how it the game works that's how the game works whether it's exhaustion burnout and no amount of yoga can fix it thank you very very much appreciate it thanks very much you [Music] amazing right how great with Seth amazing great morning all right we're gonna take a short break right now we're going to come back at 11:20 and we'll start here we'll also have our breakout stage sessions we'll start over there Simon will be out in the expo area signing his most recent book leaders eat last he'll be out there in about ten minutes if you want to have him sign a copy of the book and he'll be out there in about ten minutes so thank you very much

Channel: Quotable

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Id: E98Pjd8l1WE

Length: 44min 44sec (2684 seconds)

Published: Wed May 03 2017