--:-- Ryan Hanley: Fear, I see as this potential energy. Limits of that go way beyond our own capabilities. Being brave can be really unleashed and amplified when we're being brave with others. Let's go. Yeah, make it look, make it look, make it look. The Ryan Hanley Show shares the original ideas, habits, and mindsets of world-class original thinkers you can use to produce extraordinary results in your life and business. This is the way.
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--:-- Ryan Hanley: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show. It is tremendous to have you here, and we have a fantastic conversation for you today with Chris Deaver. He is the co-founder of BraveCore, a leadership and culture consulting and coaching company. He is the co-author of the book *Brave Together*, which I'm going to give my highest recommendation to.
--:-- And I'll tell you guys, this is one of the most tactical, in-depth, applicable kind of culture leadership conversations we have ever had on this show. Chris really dives into this idea of co-creation and what it means for developing the successful company cultures of the future. We talk detail. We talk applicable strategies that you can put in your business today.
--:-- I highly recommend you pick up Chris's book. We'll have it in the show notes or the description wherever you're watching or listening to this show. We'll have a link to both BraveCore's page where you can learn more about Chris and his work as well as his book, *Brave Together*, which again, I highly recommend you pick up this book.
--:-- If you are a leader, if you are trying to build a company with a culture that can go beyond where you alone can take it, right? We can only take our companies so far alone or with disjointed cultures. But when our people align together, when our people take ownership of what we're doing, when they feel that they're part of the creation process, you can go 10 times, 100 times. You can go farther than you could have ever imagined. And Chris outlines exactly how to do that and how he's implementing these strategies in Fortune 500 companies across the US through his coaching company, BraveCore.
--:-- I want to thank you for being here. I love you for being here. If it's your first time with this show, make sure you subscribe. If you have comments, guys, leave them in the reviews on Apple or Spotify or on YouTube. Come in, let us know what you think. What parts of these strategies make sense, don't make sense? The guests that come on this show are amazing at coming back in and answering those direct questions. And if I can answer the question, I will as well. It is a fantastic way to keep the conversation going around this topic.
--:-- Guys, you are going to love this episode. I love you for being here. Let's get on to Chris Deaver.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Dude, incredibly excited to have you on the show. Love your work. Love your mindset. I've actually done some diving on my own just as I started reading your stuff, and I started asking, I want to start with the word bravery. It's not a word that's used a lot today. I think it's often misunderstood. I don't think people really dive into what bravery means. So you use this word a lot in your work. What is bravery today, and how does it apply to our businesses as either entrepreneurs, leaders, et cetera? How does it apply to that in the context of our work lives?
--:-- Chris Deaver: Yeah, that's a great question. Thanks again for having me on, Ryan. I'm excited to dive in. You know, I think the thing we usually hear in any kind of self-help or leadership material or just conversation, usually we think about being brave as the counter to fear. And there's truth to that. But usually we think about it just as an either-or, right? We're either having fear or being brave. But really, fear I see as this potential energy that has way more potential than just getting us out of the negative. And there's so much more to what it can do. And the limits of that go way beyond our own capabilities. So usually we think about it in just the individual personal context, but being brave can be really unleashed and amplified when we're being brave with others.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: How does bravery relate to the concept of ego? You put this phenomenal proclamation out. I was reading through your LinkedIn, and when I hit this, I have it up on the screen now, and I'll make sure in the show notes for everybody, I'll include the LinkedIn post. So one, you guys can connect or follow Chris and also see this document that I'm looking at. But I've been a firm believer for a long time that what holds us back in almost every aspect of our lives is the ego. It can be a positive, but it oftentimes is corrupted into something that ends up having negative consequences for us. So how does bravery apply to the negative aspects of ego and overcoming them, if that's even how we relate it?
--:-- Chris Deaver: Yeah, that's a great question. And we all have a tendency to lean to ego at times. We're human beings. We're people. And I think especially in the world of we're trying to do something different, whether it's as an entrepreneur building our own business or inside a company being an entrepreneur. The reality is, you've got to have confidence in what you're doing. But ego really starts to get in the way at times when we don't even know it. And so, yeah, the letter was, it's really a statement to ego. It's a breakup letter. It's like, hey, we're done.
--:-- And I think especially the pandemic, it showed the true colors about how little ego serves us and how much of a disservice it is to us. But to give one example, just highlight how this really plays out. You look at NBA teams, and these are people who show up at that pro level. And they've all been told, they've all worked hard enough to be the best. And you bring together a group of people who have been told or who have earned being the best. And so suddenly what happens, because of the marketing engine of the NBA, they pick out one person, one or two guys, and they'll say, hey, this is a star. If they don't play well, we're not winning. Things aren't going as great as we want. But all the pressure is on this one person. What it does is it actually causes issues.
--:-- And we looked at the data on this. Take for example Ja Morant with his team. The team actually statistically plays better without him. LeBron James, I know it's going to sound surprising because a lot of people love LeBron, but the Lakers statistically speaking, they play better without him. And Michael Jordan, he's probably an argument for the other. And I will say the caveat there is when LeBron's on fire, when he's playing well, when he's playing selfless, it pulls the team together. And likewise, we saw with the Warriors in their peak time, and Jordan as well. But I think the point is that you have a bunch of players who are saying, hey, they assume that they're the best. They're being told they're not because there's this one person. But that's the challenge with ego in our lives. Suddenly somebody's got this competitive notion of who's better or competing against this unseen force in our lives that we feel like we can never attain. And that's also a problem.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It doesn't surprise me a lot, LeBron, because I can't stand LeBron. But I'm more of a Kobe, Michael guy. I'm with you. For anyone who follows me on Instagram, they know that every time I see a Michael Jordan-LeBron James comparison, I always post it into my stories because I just can't. Michael, to me, obviously had his failings as a leader of that team, for sure, in some of the ways that he went about things. And I don't want to even say failings. I'd say friction points is probably a better way to put it. Certainly not the leadership style that everyone would recommend in their company.
--:-- However, he did two things that I find that I just keep coming back to when I'm comparing the two. He was always focused on the goal, and his numbers didn't matter to him. He almost never knew how many points he had. He cared about winning the game. And if he could take the shot and win the game, he would take the shot. But if there was someone better to take the shot, then he would pass the ball or he would set the play up. Or in multiple cases, they won games on last second shots by other players in which he was actually the diversion. And that was set up by him.
--:-- And that to me, when you have a guy who you would think, and he had an ego, obviously. I mean, Jordan knew he was the best and thought he was the best at all times. But when you also see that that person is willing to set that aside in moments where it's necessary, you'll put up with all the other stuff or some of the friction because you know that when the rubber meets the road, they're going to be there for you. So is it humility? Is it loyalty? What is the other side of ego look like for someone who goes, okay, I maybe do oftentimes operate with ego. Where are the places? What are the skill sets that I should start thinking about to overcome some of this?
--:-- Chris Deaver: Yeah, absolutely. And I think Michael's a great example in many ways. Because to your point, whenever that conversation comes up with him, he always defers. He's never claimed being the GOAT, which is fascinating in and of itself. And actually, his response to that question, we include this in the book, is where he says, that's the wrong question. The right question is, what's the greatest team of all time? And then he flashes his rings. And to your point, that was his focus.
--:-- And there's a moment in *The Last Dance*, I think it's in Episode 7, this is my favorite part of the whole thing. And they're cornering him about his leadership approach, which sometimes was tough on them. But he always said, I never expected more of them than I expected of myself, which is leadership. And his will to win, what he says in that moment too, he says, some people didn't like my methods or don't like my methods. But what I really wanted, I always wanted to win. He said, what I really wanted most was I wanted the team to want to win and to feel what that felt like. And then he starts to get emotional, tears up. He goes, turn the camera off. But that's his soul.
--:-- And I think there's so much power in that because he is laying his ego aside. In that moment, what he's doing is saying, hey, I'm willing to make the hero's sacrifice. And we talk about the hero's journey. We love the part at the end where the rewards and we get all the stuff and get the money and the fame. But the part that people don't like as much because it's painful is the hero's sacrifice. And to your point, for him, that's deferring to Pippen or passing to Steve Kerr for that game-winning shot. Or going in, he's got the flu, he's sick. It's crazy stuff.
--:-- But I think those are the kinds of things where we look at ourselves and say, the answer is going to be we're going to have to make some kind of sacrifice. And I think sacrifice is a principle that is unfortunately kind of getting lost, it feels like, but it doesn't have to be. We can find power in making the sacrifices for our future and especially for others, for the team.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I love that. To me, in the companies that I've either founded or run myself, something that I try to reiterate to the team, and this is a learned lesson. I don't want to say this is just something that was intrinsic inside me. Not many, many failed conversations and meetings and leadership moments to get to this mindset. But I used to say to the team every day, I'm here to support you. You tell me what your problems are, and as the CEO, as much as in a vein that I can help, I am here to put you in your best position. It's not about me being on top of the mountain and just preaching down to you all the things.
--:-- We catch ourselves in that, like why salespeople won't pick up the phone or do their job. We get frustrated in moments, but ultimately it's, if you can spin that back on how am I impacting them not picking up the phone or not following up with a prospect? What is my role in that? Am I not giving them the right tools? Are they not properly trained? We often don't sink down to that level.
--:-- And you address this. I don't know if it's in the book or I can't remember if it's in the article or not, but you've addressed this where it's like just because I told you to do, it's your job, do your job. That mentality of like, just do your job. That doesn't motivate anybody. And you have this co-creation process that you outline in your book, the framework. And I want to get into that. To me, what you outlined is the solution. Everybody needs to read this book. I'm going to have the link in the description. This is, in my opinion, the leadership style for max results. It absolutely is. So talk to me a little bit about this concept of co-creation, where it came from, and how it plays into getting the most out of your team.
--:-- Chris Deaver: Yeah, absolutely. And first off, to your point, co-creation is the next big wave. It's already happening. And we ask ourselves, even things with technology, it's like, who's going to win in the AI space? Well, the key to this is co-creation. And we look in the past, we're like, well, efficiency was the focus. We look far enough back. Effectiveness and this big wave of co-creation is key.
--:-- But to your point, it's like if we show up as leaders or entrepreneurs and it's employer-employee, people do not respond well to that anymore. And granted, people are still employees, don't get me wrong. But if you show up as co-creator with your people and they're a co-creator, you unlock magic. And there are examples of this throughout time.
--:-- I think Steve Jobs is a great archetype because he was both at times. And he got fired from his own company. That was a big kick in the teeth. All the great leaders probably had a version of that. But the difference that happened was he was driving people towards objectives, oftentimes in that kind of push-pull way. Even though he was focused on innovation and a lot of things he was doing well, there was a shift that happened where you had a rough Steve that turned to change Steve.
--:-- And Ed Catmull, who worked with him, who founded Pixar with Steve, worked for Steve for 26 years, the longest of anybody. And he's a good friend, Ed is. And his observation was about this, the hero's journey. That when Steve was kicked out of his company and in the wilderness effectively, he learned things at depth because he had to look internally. And there's this mirror test of he was asking himself what do I need to do differently instead of blaming other people. It was, hey, what do I need to do differently as a leader?
--:-- And the things that he learned from that, it gave him a sense of compassion and empathy that he didn't have. And what would happen is then he would show up in meetings. The statements that we usually read, those power quotes, like, "I don't hire people to tell them what to do. I hire them to tell me what to do." This is change Steve. He'd show up in meetings. This would be shock to a lot of people. He'd be sitting there, and he would take a position, maybe a hard stance on something. And then to hear people out, they'd say something and he'd flip 180. And then people in the room would say, what? Because most of the time, the CEO or leader of the company, they've got to have it right the whole time. They got to stick with their guns. But Steve would say, no, actually, that's the best idea. I'm pivoting because he's right. Or she's right. And I think that that's a good example of co-creation. And the best companies do this. The best brands do it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I love that example. Especially because people have this image of Steve Jobs ranting and raving and pounding desks and throwing computers and screaming at people when none of that was his best work. I mean, it may have been some of his early get off the ground work, but Apple's escape velocity wasn't until he turned into what you just described. It's 100% the case.
--:-- You know, I think the idea of a hierarchy is almost like a four-letter word these days. But the way I always approached it was you need to have a hierarchy of responsibility so that people know what their roles are and what they're responsible to get done. But then I'll call it a flat communication and kind of creativity format where people can bring ideas and stuff. That to me feels like the only way.
--:-- But to your point, and this is my next question, in order to do the second part, the flat communication and creativity, you have to be willing to change your mind. You have to be able to listen to people and go, well, we were thinking about doing it this way, but what she just described, maybe we need to pivot or maybe we need to delay this project or maybe we need to bump it up in a row or whatever. I need to reposition based on this new information. Why do leaders struggle, especially younger, newer leaders, not necessarily in age but to the position, why do they struggle so much with changing their mind? Is it ego? Is it a lack of confidence? Why do we feel like we always need to have the answer as a leader?
--:-- Chris Deaver: Yeah, well, we have this problem in our... I would say it's broad. And if you look at trends historically, you always have civilizations go through these phases of building up a sense of knowledge. And then we've had it in multiples. You have the internet, you have access to information, and we've leaned in the science of management, but also the science of functions, of expertise. And so, when we talk about this in the book, it's like there's an expert model that we'd like to lead with expertise, lead with competency.
--:-- But what happens in a world where information and knowledge has been democratized fully, as in you can go to Google, you can go to ChatGPT and find answers to any question. So I'm not coming to a manager or a leader or a functional leader to really find the answers to all of it. Maybe some particulars. And we still need vertical, we still need depth of vertical expertise. That doesn't change. But that's not the future. It's not the full answer.
--:-- The best answer is going to be, hey, if those things are already there, and if we can get depth of perspective, what we really need to do is connect dots. We need to connect dots across our team and build essentially perpetual motion. In science, they talk about it can't be done. Well, in business it can, but it's through people. Perpetual motion. Tesla tried to create a perpetual motion machine. Da Vinci tried. By all accounts, they failed. We don't know. We haven't seen those.
--:-- But what you can do in a team, in a culture, and at Apple or Pixar, they call it brain trust, is you build a team that can wrestle with challenges. It can have debates. It's all healthy approach. Best ideas win. And it's a situation where you're just constantly iterating together and building new products and services and testing those. And what's more important in today's world where everything's changing all the time, this disruption that we've experienced over the past year or two weeks, it's not going away. We're going to see probably over the next decade just as much or more disruption that we've experienced.
--:-- So how do you deal with that? It's less a linear approach of being in the proverbial canoe just gently floating along versus you're in a raft, a river raft. It's shaking and everything's moving. And then to your point, then it's about being like Bruce Lee would say, be like water.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. It's funny you bring up Bruce Lee. I love Bruce Lee. There's another quote that he has that I apply to leadership all the time, which is the value of the cup is its emptiness. And I've shared this proverb on this show before. In his book, he shares this story that he was told back when he was in China about a Zen master has a student approach him and wants to spend time with the Zen master. So they sit down and they each have a cup of tea in front of them. And the student starts talking and talking and talking and talking and talking. And finally, the Zen master stands up and grabs the teapot and starts pouring tea into the student's cup until the cup overflows and the student jumps forward. "What are you doing?" And he said, and this is where Bruce Lee got his quote from that he uses, that the value of the cup is the emptiness.
--:-- You have to approach these situations. You may have an idea in your mind that you think we should go in X direction. But when you show up to the meeting, if you're only thinking about X, there could be 10 opportunities that you don't even hear because you've already determined the answer before listening to everyone there. And it's always been shocking to me, the people that want to just, well, you're only a receptionist or you're only a salesperson. What do you know about service? Or you're in the accounting department. What do you know about sales? And it's like, except maybe they do. Maybe they've bought something before and have a feeling about the way that you're handling it. And to let those ideas fly away to me feels insane.
--:-- Is it, again, I always come back to this idea of ego. Are we being, are leaders feeling territorial because of all the change? The standard best practice of what a leader does is starting to be changed. It's more dynamic. Is it I'm worried about losing my position? Am I worried about not adapting? How do we break this down in a way that allows someone who is, and maybe this is your framework and we can jump into that, but how do we break someone down who's sitting there going, I don't know how to live in this world if I don't make this decision, then the board's going to question me, or if I'm not presented as strong and confident, then people are going to undermine me or come after my position? I think everyone's having these thoughts all the time, but we have to get past it. So how do we start to make those moves?
--:-- Chris Deaver: Yeah, great question. Yeah, I think first we have to be open to it. I like your analogy of the cup, the negative space. We've studied the best leaders that are leading that co-creative future now and may have been doing it for years. The difference is for them is they aren't out to flaunt their expertise. And not for ego reasons either, to your point. In fact, they don't look at it like ego. And I think the Zen master kind of is a good analogy for this. They're sitting back. They're asking powerful questions. They're listening. They're taking the time because they know there's also that potential energy that needs to turn kinetic and that has way more power when they unlock it in people.
--:-- Because that person or those people in the team, they can start to spin the flywheel and things can start to move that would never otherwise happen if they were relying on the expertise of one person. That's the old world. It's not even the currency or the electric current that exists today. So to believe that that's true is actually a problem right out of the gate. People are going to be bumping their head against the wall.
--:-- And to assume that that's still true and things are changing extremely fast, that's not the only reason to do it. It's like, well, because we're talking about macro changes. And I think of it like, if you're going to lead the future, but there are teams that have been doing this for years. And you look at it on simple terms, look at bands. Why do some bands come and go? Having one big hit, that's kind of a big deal. But most bands will have one and they're gone. It's like they're five minutes of fame and it's over. This could be true of a lot of fields.
--:-- But with the bands that have transcended time over years or over decades, like the Beatles, the way they did it was the way we're talking about. They let their ego, they pulled ego off the table, building blocks on the table, and they were building all the time. And the Beatles, when they split up, they were good, but it was never the same. And you look at U2, they've transcended time. And they have constantly changed and upgraded their work.
--:-- And I read Bono's autobiography, and he says, this is so fascinating to me, I think, because it really gets to the heart of what we're talking about. And there are timeless truths to this, principles that it's rooted in. But he said, when we started out as a band, we knew that it was about birth, life, death, and then rebirth. And that that was a cycle we were going to plan for with intention. And I think there's something about that in terms of a product or a service, because we can get very stuck on a way of doing things that we assume that's the way.
--:-- And I'd say that's been true of their albums that have been hits, with the exception of *Pop* which they made a public apology for. But everything else, you're like, wow, how are they doing this? Transcend time. Well, we call it, there's a notion here, and they experience it. I think the great bands do this as well, is it's shared flow. The great teams in basketball, the great teams in any sport, the great teams in any company experience shared flow. But a lot of times we talk about flow. You're creating art, you're playing sports, you're doing whatever you love that makes your heart sing. But what happens when that's shared with others and it's in unison and you're creating this collective force that's co-creative? You can unlock things that you've never done, things you couldn't possibly do as individuals.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: What are the right questions or what is a question or a type of question that when we show up as a leader and we want to start developing this culture, say we don't have it today or we're just not intentional with it? What are some of the right questions or types of questions that we could scribble down on a notepad to show up at our next meeting to start to bring this in, to start to establish this, to start to make it part of what we do?
--:-- Chris Deaver: First is embrace the notion of questions versus answers. Lead with a question. We have a podcast called *Lead with a Question*. We actually inherited that principle from Ed Catmull at Pixar. And he told us about his journey. His was the typical, he had answers for everything. He's a smart guy, PhD. So when he was leading these teams, everybody would come to him with questions. You fire off answers. But he realized, and it took him going on a meditation retreat for seven days, encouraged by his wife. He did this and it changed him. After two or three days, it was like, and all you could do is ask questions and listen. Those were the rules of the meditation retreat. He said it drove him crazy. He wanted to quit. But it changed his life when he stayed into that. And it also changed his leaders, changed him as a leader.
--:-- And so leading with a question is a powerful way to unlock meetings, turn them or reimagine them as brave conversations. Because how do you invite, and having that empty space is important first. But how do you fill that? And how do you give people that space?
--:-- Chris Deaver: You know, you could send a question in advance of a meeting, a week in advance. They do this at Pixar. And *Inside Out 2* is great proof of this. They have a brain trust that are rolling, and you watch these movies, it's like they go so deep.
--:-- We're talking usually about soft skills versus hard skills, and you're like, "Okay, you know that debate." But actually, we're talking about deep skills. You're building your core. When you build your core at a deep level and you're brave, you expand into the universe with other people because you understand human nature better.
--:-- So I'd say lead with questions. And then in the conversations you're in, lead with questions. That's a great way to start out.
--:-- And then you asked, what questions specifically? Well, we have a set, a series of golden questions. We've actually tested these. If you're wondering, "Hey, what could spark something?" If I want to change a conversation, if I want to change a relationship, try these.
--:-- One golden question that I love is this. I connected with a guy on LinkedIn, and he was asking for career advice. I was like, "Okay, I'll chat with him." I posed this question: "In the back of your mind, in the back of your heart, what's something unfulfilled that you'd still like to achieve?" That opens people up. It kind of creates a spell, but it gives people space to fill that cup, that shared cup.
--:-- In this example, he was an engineer at a Silicon Valley company. He went on for 45 minutes or an hour and just spilled everything that was going on in his life. I didn't even know the guy to begin with, but we were diving into his world. We created a connection. We started to build things together. These are things that can be unlocked with the power of a question.
--:-- Another one is, "What are you most excited about right now?" In a meeting, in a conversation, with a team, usually we tend to just play on the surface. "How was your weekend?" That's okay. It's good to give people that initial space. But diving into these kinds of things, mostly one-on-one, we create all kinds of different connections at a different level, a different depth.
--:-- We think of trees. On the surface, we look at them and say, "I've got to figure it out. There's one there, one there, one there." Actually, the roots underneath are all intertwined and connected. There's an ecosystem. So why wouldn't we want to build that? What happens when you do? What does that unlock?
--:-- We've seen the results of this in brands. We studied comparing consumer perspective and culture, and these things are fully aligned. When they invest in their culture, let's say Nike and Adidas versus Asics and Skechers. They've invested in their culture differently, Nike and Adidas. On average, they're about 80 to 90% positive, their cultures. Asics and Skechers, 60 to 70%.
--:-- We partnered with a company called Verve, and they asked consumers the question: "What shoes make you feel like you belong the most?" Their answer was 80 to 90% Nike and Adidas, 60 to 70% Skechers and Asics. This is fascinating because the same things that are happening internally to the companies are happening externally. The difference in the impact of revenues between that 20% to 30% is over 4X. In some cases, 10X in some quarters. So it's massive.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So what I just heard you say is that the internal enjoyment of working for a brand mirrors the consumer connection to that brand. The companies that have great cultures where the people feel empowered and enjoy working and are challenged, they're simultaneously receiving the same kind of feedback from their consumers because it plays through. The way the customer service person answers the phone, the way the marketing person puts the language together, it all flows through in terms of the enjoyment and satisfaction and fulfillment that someone's getting from that brand connection. And that leads to not percentage increases, but multiples of increase in revenue to the companies that are skewing towards the higher side.
--:-- Chris Deaver: That's right.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That's incredible. Guys, if you're listening to this, think about what Chris just described. We spend so much time crafting marketing messages and sales hooks and lead funnels, whatever your business is. Yet if as leaders we just spend all our time creating a company—not a ping pong table good culture, but a culture where people are actually challenged and fulfilled and felt like they were heard—that immediately applies to the product that you're putting out and probably answers most of the questions that you have about those things to begin with. That is absolutely incredible.
--:-- Chris Deaver: Yeah, you might say, "Well, that's Nike, or that's Apple, that's Pixar." That could be true, except that we've also worked with smaller teams, smaller companies—startups, mid-sized, smaller.
--:-- I'll give you an example. I work with a client. He's got a co-founder, a team of about 100 to 150 people. He says they're about a $15 million business. I said, "What's your goal?" He said, "I want to go to $45 million in three years and then exit." That's a decent goal.
--:-- I asked, "Do your people know that?" He said, "Oh, what do you mean?" I said, "You said that they feel uncommitted." He realized, "Oh, wait a minute. Okay, yeah, I guess they do know that."
--:-- There's a connection there. You're on a beach sipping your piña colada in Key West—they're seeing you mentally right now. Of course he's doing work, but the goal, that's his north star. That's not their north star. They're not going to benefit like that from doing their work. Maybe they get some stock, who knows, but not a lot comparatively to him.
--:-- The question became, how can you look at this differently? You can still have an exit strategy, but what if you build that perpetual motion? If you ask any of these people—Steve Jobs, if we had him on the show—"What's your favorite product you've ever worked on? What's your best movie? What's your best this?" Most people would pick Toy Story or iPhone. Of course, these are amazing. But they say the culture. Why? Because the culture is the perpetual motion machine that's producing those things, the better ones every time.
--:-- So this guy, we partnered with him. We said, "Zoom out. Let's think about that relationship with your co-founder." At first he's like, "Hey, do some team building with my team." I said, "Let's zoom out. What are the first principles of your future culture?" I'm talking like this is the interstellar version of your culture. You're coming off the DeLorean 10 years, 20 years, 30 years from the future. What are people saying about this? What do they feel? What do you observe?
--:-- "Oh, people love what they do. We're high growth. It's just unbelievable success that we're seeing in this company."
--:-- Okay, focus on that. Build your brain trust where you shape these first principles. I'm talking about first principles as in you're going to land a self-landing rocket like SpaceX. It's not just "What materials do you need? Aluminum, some other parts." No, the way they approach that, or Elon Musk approaches that with the team, is to say, "What are the first principles of accomplishing this?" Which is we've got to deal with gravity. We have to deal with certain materials that work and that don't. We have to deal with forces, Newton's laws, all these things. Those are the first principles.
--:-- The interesting part, Ryan, is that for everybody, most leaders, most entrepreneurs haven't wrestled with these questions at all. And that's okay. There's upside to that. I think we're all asking the question: Do we all want to work in places that we love? We all want to be in those experiences where you feel something different, where you feel like you're doing the best work of your life, where your heart sings.
--:-- That was the challenge to this leader. We did some coaching over the course of a year. Get this: He calls me about a year later. We launched our website, bravecore.co. My co-author, Ian Claussen, pings me and says, "Hey, have you been on the website?" I said, "No." He said, "Oh, look on there." Tim Cook had just downloaded our e-book and was on our website. I did some work at Apple there, so he was aware apparently. That was cool.
--:-- I get a call from this client. He pings me and says, "Hey, can you talk right now?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "Hey, that culture work we did, it's been transformative. People love their work. We're high growth. It's unlike anything I've seen before." And by the way, we just had a million dollar day yesterday.
--:-- They went from $15 million to $150 million a year in one year. They went public as a company. They sold. Now he spends a lot of time with his family and buys houses in Hawaii. But he has a culture that's a perpetual motion machine. He's proud of what's there. He's still an advisor to it and just loves seeing what they've built. By the way, the people that felt uncommitted, they love being there. They don't have an attrition problem. They have a problem of they get the best talent. They just got to sort through who they want.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Whenever people ask me questions about hiring and culture, one of the first questions I ask them is, "Would you want to work there? Would you think about what your people do? Would you want that job the way it's set up?" Sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes no. I think we get so caught up in whatever our personal goal is that we don't slow down and go, "Well, I have a sales team, but they all hate working. The environment's not good. The tools aren't good. I haven't trained them enough. I haven't answered their questions. There's no risk. Whatever the things are, they're hating their job."
--:-- In my mind, they're just seven salespeople, salesperson one through seven, and I'm looking at their numbers. But would you want to go sit in that seat? If you were a salesperson at that point in your career, would you want to sit there? If the answer's no, right away we know that something's wrong.
--:-- I like to delineate between listening to books and reading them. I hate when people say they read a book but they really listened to the audio. I don't know why. But I was listening to the Walter Isaacson book on Elon Musk and the rockets. There's this question that Elon would ask that has always captured me, especially in the early days of SpaceX with the rockets. They tried to buy a Russian rocket. They didn't have the ability to generate their own rocket at that time, so they were trying to find rockets from other places. They immediately ran into hiccups based on the realities of the situation.
--:-- He would explain to the head of engineering what needed to happen as an outcome, and he would get an answer often like, "Well, it doesn't do that," or "It can't do that." He would respond, "What if it could? Explain to me what you would need if it could do that thing." That question drove so many of the innovations and tweaks. That was actually what spurred when they created their own rocket plant to manufacture their own rockets. That question created that because he kept asking, "What if it could?" They kept telling him what they needed to make what he needed a reality, and they eventually just decided, "We're going to have to create this ourselves."
--:-- His initial plan was to never manufacture his own rockets. That was never part of the original plan. But by asking questions as you describe, by listening to the answers, the inevitable and only solution was they had to manufacture themselves because literally it didn't exist in the world what he needed.
--:-- So how do you get to, as you describe your client with 15 to 150 instead of his five-year goal of 45? All the iterations, changes, improvements that were necessary to make that much of a leap forward could only happen by believing that you don't have all the answers and leading with questions. This is incredibly powerful stuff.
--:-- In the book, you outline these six principles. I'll have links to all this stuff in the show notes and YouTube. Chris will direct you at the end as well. I want to end our conversation around this idea of our mission. This is a place where, specifically talking to culture, talking to alignment, you described it perfectly. The mission as seen by your client when he first came to you—he's working hard, but he's doing it on a beach trying to get the 45. That mission is completely misaligned or maybe doesn't exist to everyone else on the team.
--:-- So we start to ask questions. We go back to first principles. What does the actual implementation look like at a high level? Once we know what we want our culture to be, how do we start to align our people to that mission and that culture?
--:-- Chris Deaver: That's a great question. I will say about the book, and I agree with you about audio versus reading. We've got all options for our book. We've got an audio version. We've got the regular. And we have actually a lit video book that came out recently that has a lot of visuals that captures the essence of the book in about 30 minutes. That's something else that's available.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Wow, that's pretty cool.
--:-- Chris Deaver: To your question, there are two principles that come to mind from the philosophy of co-creation. One is create context. Oftentimes we think about creating content. There's a lot of opinions about this: just produce more content, more, more, more. But what we see in greatness in the best leaders, the most co-creative leaders, the co-creators that are really shaping the future, is that they're creating context.
--:-- Steve Jobs said that the storyteller has the most power over the future. That's true. So what story are you telling? What story are you telling yourself as a leader? Part of it is being clear about that. Once you've set the tone with leading with questions, building on first principles—but they're custom to your future. Those first principles, and you're co-creating them with others. You build this engine of a brain trust. This is all ensuring the key people are in the room or the Zoom room. You keep that vehicle in place, the perpetual motion of that brain trust moving forward.
--:-- But the biggest key in all of this is you live it. You live these principles. What starts to happen is, because culture is what an organization, as an organism, as a person, how it lives, how it breathes, what it does, how it acts—it all starts with the power of the founder. An entrepreneur sets that tone.
--:-- I coached Michael Dell, CEO at Dell. He was transitioning from a rough version of himself, very tactically oriented, to scale. Having a broader view of the business. A lot of things we're talking about. That shift required a different mindset, a different approach. But he was really open to those changes. If you can be open to what those changes are, you are a constant reflection. Steve talks about the mirror. We talk about the mirror test in the book, and that's key on a regular basis.
--:-- As far as driving towards an objective, you have that North Star, and that's a drumbeat that goes constant through the organization. One of the biggest parts is when you look at the future principles of that experience—what it feels like to be in the culture you want to experience—then you have to ask yourself the hard questions. What am I doing right now, today, this past week, the past few months or year that is incongruent with that? What are the things in my own habits or patterns of the team that aren't working towards that objective?
--:-- That's what follow true north is. You set the true north and stick to that. You have to be willing to make the sacrifices to shave off those things. This is one of the hardest things to do because it's painful sometimes. It involves a sense of rebirth where you're saying, "That rough version of me..." I think of it like a rough stone rolling down the mountain. The parts that are chipping off, you don't really need them anyway.
--:-- Look at Michelangelo. He goes in, he gets a piece of marble. You don't just hit one time and it turns into this masterpiece. You chip off everything that's not. To become essentially super leaders of the future, or co-creators that are inspirational and are the kind of quality of leaders we're talking about—both the impact of the results you want to have and the innovation engine that makes it legend—you're willing to ask the inverted question.
--:-- To your point about the inverted question with the space in the cup, maybe it's not about "What do I need to become? What are the characteristics I need to become as a leader?" It's "What things do I need to shave off in comparison to this beautiful future of these first principles that we've imagined, what it can be, this culture that is truly amazing?" That becomes the bridge. People will notice. Even if somebody's been kind of an a-hole in the past—we talk about Steve, that was brutal. The stuff that Hollywood loves to talk about, all these bad boy behaviors. That's not what got him into the future at scale with Apple or with Pixar. It was all about compassion and empathy, things that he learned on a personal level. He got married, settled down, had kids. Not that everybody has to do that, but the point is there are a few key building blocks to this.
--:-- One is shared wisdom. That's leading with questions. That's a building block for the future. Tim Cook does this extremely well. He sits back. He asks questions. He listens. Deep empathy, which is essentially compassion. You're making others the mission. It's a selfless force. Satya Nadella at Microsoft does this extremely well. He learned it on a personal level. His wife, a great example—their son had cerebral palsy. He spent a lot of time with his son. This transformed him. We all have experiences that we can tap into, but usually we create barriers or firewalls to get from private to public. The reality is we've got to break those down. You bring those experiences. Let's call it what it is: love. What's the most brave thing to do? Is it be compassionate?
--:-- The last one is being powered by principles. A great example of this is Jensen Huang at NVIDIA. It's not just the fact that they're killing it and changing the entire industry or defining this industry of AI, standing up billion-dollar businesses overnight. It's the fact that the guy sits in a room with Stanford students and says, "I'd love to see you guys suffer." They've been through a lot of kind of entitled experiences. It's not that he's saying that because he wants to see pain. There's this notion of "no pain, no gain." I don't think that's the future. The future is we all have enough pain. We don't have to go looking for it. But if you turn it into power, his point is there's joy in suffering because suffering will come. You also choose those experiences, like with the SpaceX example—these things that are extremely hard, these impossible challenges. You just figure out, "What are the obstacles?" Rather than saying it's impossible, you just delete them, and you're there. You've just done the impossible, and they're doing it all the time.
--:-- Those building blocks of shared wisdom, deep empathy, being powered by principles like sacrifice and joy in suffering is so powerful. It's a contrarian paradox, but it's powerful.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The book is *Brave Together*. I couldn't recommend it enough. Everyone who's listening, if you're not following along with Chris's work, this is the future. This is the roadmap. I so align with what you're doing. I had never put it into the context that you did. I'm just so happy that we've had a chance to meet and chat. You got a fan for life in me. I appreciate it. Where's the best place for people to connect with you and go deeper down the rabbit hole?
--:-- Chris Deaver: Thanks so much, Ryan. It's been great, this conversation. LinkedIn is a great place to connect. Bravecore.co. We have a lot of resources there. People can download the Proclamation or the Letter to Ego. They can download snippets from the book or articles. The book's been highlighted in Forbes, Fast Company. The Next Big Idea Club has a good kind of take on the book, a shorthand version of it. That's Malcolm Gladwell and Adam Grant, part of that. I love to connect. I love hearing people's stories and how we can be better co-creators and lead the future.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Awesome. Appreciate you, Chris. Let's go. Make it look easy.
--:-- [Outro music begins]
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Thank you for listening to The Ryan Hanley Show. Be sure to subscribe and leave us a comment or review wherever you listen to podcasts.
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