Lean By Design
Lean by Design delves into the dynamic world of biotech, pharma, and life sciences, focusing on operational excellence through effective workflow and process optimization. Join hosts Oscar Gonzalez and Lawrence Wong as they engage with industry leaders who share their insights, innovative strategies, and real-world experiences in transforming complex challenges into streamlined, efficient solutions. Through thought-provoking conversations, you’ll gain practical tips and inspiration to drive continuous improvement and success in your organization. Produced by Sigma Lab Consulting, Lean by Design empowers you to enhance productivity and innovation, one process at a time. Listen on Spotify, iTunes, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Lean By Design
0119. Unleashing Innovation Through the Power of Simplicity with Lisa Bodell
In this episode of Lean by Design, we’re joined by Lisa Bodell, CEO of FutureThink, to unpack a counterintuitive truth: complexity is innovation’s worst enemy. From her days in advertising to her role as a simplicity guru in biopharma, Lisa shares a journey fueled by one mission—cutting through the noise to make work... actually work.
Together, we get real about the meeting marathons, inbox floods, and busyness obsession that cloud judgment and strangle creativity. Lisa doesn’t just talk big ideas—she's here with tools and strategies, inspired by a "Marie Kondo" for the workplace approach, focusing on "killing stupid rules" and decluttering processes to create real impact and boost morale. It's about balancing people, process, and technology to make every minute matter and every task count.
And if you’re leading a team or growing a new company, here’s where it gets practical. Lisa shares her "You Me We" method to help leaders ditch ambiguity, clarify roles, and clear the path for true innovation. It’s time to go beyond the ping-pong tables and snack bars, finding purpose in work that drives the team forward.
Find out more about Lisa and Future Think:
- FutureThink https://www.futurethink.com/
- Lisa Bodell (Linkedin) https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-bodell-futurethink/
- Why Simple Wins (Amazon) https://a.co/d/dN6BEw3
- Kill the Company (Amazon) https://a.co/d/hunKBjU
For more insights and to assess your organization's excellence, check out our tailored scorecards:
1. Integrated Research & Business Operations Scorecard
- Evaluate your R&D and business operations and uncover opportunities for improvement. Integrated Research & Business Operations Scorecard
2. Data-Driven Portfolio Strategy & Execution Scorecard
- Evaluate your portfolio, strategy, and execution to uncover opportunities for improvement. Data-Driven Portfolio Strategy & Execution Scorecard
3. Asset Onboarding Scorecard
- Evaluate your asset onboarding and management readiness to uncover opportunities for improvement. Asset Onboarding Scorecard
4. Maintenance Efficiency Scorecard
- Evaluate your maintenance strategy to unlock operational excellence. Maintenance Efficiency Scorecard
Find all our links here! https://linktr.ee/sigmalabconsulting
Want our thoughts on a specific topic? Looking to sponsor this podcast to continue to generate content?Or maybe you have an idea and want to be on our show. Fill out our ...
Welcome back to a new episode of Lean by Design podcast. I'm your host, oscar Gonzalez, with my co-host, lawrence Wong, and we are so excited for the guests we have on today and, quite frankly, I had to pinch myself to say is this really happening? Let me introduce you to Lisa Bodell. She is the CEO of FutureThink, a company focused on helping organizations simplify and innovate by eliminating unnecessary processes and barriers All about what we're doing here. She is a best-selling author of two books, and I love these titles Kill the Company, and in no time those will be on this shelf because I am going to devour that content. And in no time those will be on this shelf because I am going to devour that content. Her approach emphasizes creating cultures of simplicity and efficiency, making her expertise so relevant in a space like biopharma and biotech. Lisa, welcome to our virtual studio and thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 2:Oh, thanks Oscar and thanks Lawrence. I'm glad to be here. Really, I'm really glad to be here and we're going to have a good time talking about some provocative things.
Speaker 1:I can't wait. That's Lawrence. I love really digging deep and getting dirty. I really want to know where did this start? Where did this idea of simplicity and understanding that there was a void to even have these conversations, what? Tell us a little bit about your journey? How did you get into this?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I was new from a young age. I wanted to be an entrepreneur and I wanted to help people merge the creative with the business. I was always a very creative person in a business environment. Right, I was. I went into advertising and I was the business person in advertising. But I also realized I was really creative too and I wanted to teach people how to do that, build more of that innovation into their business.
Speaker 2:And when I started to do it, people were really excited because innovation was trendy. Right, this was like this early Zeds and everyone wanted to brainstorm and have ideas. But it never went anywhere. And I was very frustrated because it was like a performance bringing someone from the outside in teaching people to be creative. Right, we're going to have a brainstorm and then nothing goes anywhere. And the reason wasn't because people weren't creative, and the reason wasn't because people didn't know how. It's that they didn't have the time.
Speaker 2:And I realized that the start of innovation is in ideas. Everyone's got ideas. It's that they don't have time and that's where simplification was born. So it didn't matter how creative you were if you didn't have time to get to it. So I really knew that the front end of innovation was giving people the space and time, and so that's where I really pivoted my business from being about innovation to being about simplicity. Because if you don't start by weeding the garden, business from being about innovation to being about simplicity, because if you don't start by weeding the garden, you know rules and complexity and unnecessary work. It's like a weed it keeps growing back, and so we've got to build systems in to allow people to know that it's okay to get rid of things that are outdated and not keep going with the status quo. So right, you as a scientist and you as an engineer, you have processes in place, there's rules to be followed, but there are so many unnecessary ones, and we've got to give people the methods to get rid of stuff that doesn't work.
Speaker 1:I feel that to such a degree and I think what you're hitting is such an important part about creating the opportunity for your brain to do this work. We're not being paid to be creative when we're at home, when we're sleeping, and then we're just slaving over a computer or whatever throughout the entire day. I mean just the sheer amount of things that are happening throughout a day really chokes any time that you have to stop and say let me take a look at what's actually happening here. Why are these things happening?
Speaker 2:And that's the issue is like I'll ask people on stage you know, what do you spend your day doing? And 100% of the time, the top two things are meetings and emails. People are I don't know anyone that was drowned or that was hired for their email and meeting abilities, but they're, as a scientist and engineer, you know you're not hired for, you know, running an amazing meeting, so we can't get to the work we want to do. And when you ask people here's the bigger thing when you ask people, what do you wish you could spend your time doing? They've got a lot of ideas. You know like it's. It's like meeting with customers or coming up with new, innovative I don't know new compounds. Whatever it is. Most things they want to do are more external and aspirational. Where they spend their time is really the mundane, the unnecessary. They've got to free people up from that slave of the busy.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Busy is not productivity.
Speaker 2:It's not, because what they need is time to think. I mean again, like if I ask people when I'm on stage talking, how many of you wish you had more time to think. Every hand goes up. Thinking is a daring act in companies, because being busy gives people more sense of comfort, a sense of value right, the cult of business. And being unbusy because thinking has just become too daring of an act right, it's like it's intangible. I can't just sit around and think I'm going to get fired.
Speaker 1:You know it's interesting because there's so much of what Lawrence and I are doing here that I still feel guilty, myself running a company, that I'm sitting outside and just sort of combing through Okay, where can we go, where can we take this processing All of the? You know you have all these meetings. You need in some, in some space, to just stop and say what do all the things that we just talked about actually mean? What do we really care about? And I still have trouble with that where, you know, even giving ourselves this luxury of vacationing whenever you guys want and you can ask Lawrence, I probably don't take as much time as I should to really allow your brain to think, and it's just I don't know if it was the industry that is sort of ingrained that in me and now I'm trying to pull out of that.
Speaker 2:It's cultural. I think it's bigger than just industry, because everybody says across industries they wish they had more time to think, because everybody says across industries they wish they had more time to think. But, what's interesting, there's a paradox that happens because people want more time to think, because that's where you process, that's where you really hear what's inside right Kind of head, heart, gut, of what's bothering you, what's the real solution you need to do, what's the hard thing that really needs to be done. But until it's quiet you don't really understand it. So we don't make the time to do it because we think that it's not valuable, we'll be seen, it'll be wrong. The other paradox is that when we actually do have the time to be unbusy, we are incredibly uncomfortable.
Speaker 1:It's like being quiet.
Speaker 2:People don't know how to do it and so you're on the right track. That's what I always say to leaders. If you start to feel uncomfortable because you are unbusy, you're doing it right, because you're reteaching yourself how to think and, yeah, that's a catharsis that you need to go through, and I struggle with it too, and I run a thinking company, you know. But so there's lots of ways to do that, to help people do it. But that's the first step, which is realizing hey, when you do get that time to think, when you finally give yourself permission, it's gonna, it's gonna feel weird.
Speaker 1:When, when was that point that in your company to move from innovation to sort of simplicity at its finest?
Speaker 2:Well, the it happened actually. I talked about this in my book and actually killed the company, and it became the defining moment for me for writing the second book. I went down, I was doing a very large project with a group of GE and it was in Raleigh, durham, north Carolina, and there were 50 leaders and they wanted us to come in and help them think about the future and be innovative. And I was doing all this trend research and fun presentations and et cetera with my team and none of them were engaging. None of the audience was engaging with me and I couldn't figure out why. You know, was it me? I was starting to feel paranoid and on a break I said to the leader what's going on? Like, what the hell you brought me in to teach innovation? Nobody cares. And he said well, you know, this is kind of performative. Like they're not gonna have the permission, they're not gonna have the time to do the motion. And uh, I said I was pissed, you know, I thought my time and theirs and I brought them all back in. I just kind of pulled this out of nowhere and I said all right, everybody, let's sit down. We're going to do something innovative. We're going to take the space to really blow things up. I'm going to teach you how to kill the company. And they were like what I said? I said I want you to spend the next hour and tell me all the ways you're going to put your company, your role, your job, your business unit out of business. Pretend you're your competitor, let's do it.
Speaker 2:And the room just lit on fire. It was amazing, because people had permission to say the thing that will not be said. Now, how does that get to simplicity? What I realized was what they wanted. What needed to be done to kill their company was to get rid of so many things that weren't working. So teaching innovation didn't mean a damn thing, because they had so much that was in their way, and that was the light bulb moment for me. I've got to give people permission to finally get rid of the unplanned and the unnecessary and the rules that hold them back, because they'll better engage right and they'll better have time to think. So simplicity has to start before innovation ideas can happen.
Speaker 1:Lawrence and I, we talk about making sure that sort of your house is stable, that your foundation is there, that you can't begin. A big part of our work involves the technology. It's really people, process, technology. That triangle of things needs to move together and in this spell of you know, there's all of these super interesting and innovative technology companies that you're like man for that stream, for that domain, they're going to blow it out of the water. But then you get organizations that are like, well, let's get this Cadillac, let's fix the house first, let's really know what we're about. Yeah, and a lot of people it's get this Cadillac, let's fix the house first, let's really know what we're about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and a lot of people. It's not that they don't, you know, it's not like they're dumb and they don't have good intentions, it's the they don't have time. So often the phrase I use is we create the beast that we become a slave to right and in order to just move on and get something done, we add another feature on top of a process that already sucks today and move on to the next thing because we don't have time to really think about how to do it. So we often, you know, we get entrenched in these. It's a vicious cycle basically.
Speaker 2:So if we could give people permission to think I mean, one of the things I do at my company is I mandate a half day and people can pick what half day they want each week that they have deep work I need them to know that I'm sending a signal as a leader. I expect you to think, I'm giving you permission to carve out the time and if you don't take it, that's on you. So there's a lot of signaling there that has to happen from leaders, because thinking is a daring act. We get uncomfortable being unbusy. We've got to give people the form and the way to do it, and it starts with leaders modeling the behavior, and I think that would give people the space to really think about things.
Speaker 1:When you initially brought that into your organization, how did it feel for people? Initially? We talked about the comfort level and feeling. I imagine some folks sort of. So how do we do this?
Speaker 2:I think that people get uncomfortable with being unbusy. A lot of this is driven by fear. That's the best thing I can tell you. By fear, people have a lot of fear around getting rid of things versus adding things right. You're bonused at work based on doing more, not less. You get a raise based on how many people you manage, how many things you do, how many products and services you launch. It's more. So, getting people comfortable with less and then thinking is really, first of all, it's a cultural shift. Right? There's a few things I say. We need to start getting away from more and doing valuable. That's a big one. Another thing we need to move away from is being stop being organized and be simplified right. One of the things about you know, marie Kondo the closet organizer.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:So one of the things that was so great about her is that she didn't organize all the things in your closet. She organized the things that mattered. So her key was wasn't an organizing, wasn't getting rid of, it was elimination. And teaching that to your teams can be really, really powerful. Rid of.
Speaker 1:It was elimination, and teaching that to your teams can be really, really powerful. I can see where eliminating tasks was sort of well, how are we going to get to accomplish what's at the end of that road? How do we accomplish what's at the end of that? But then I think therein lies now you innovate on your process. You make things simpler than they need to be, things simpler than they need to be, especially now with technology. This, the ability to simplify from learning a tool or from learning sort of what really drives your value. You know to your point. Organizations are not paying for us to build PowerPoint slides from the manager level all the way through. Vps working on PowerPoint slides that are ad hoc over and over Just have to bang your head against the wall and say like, don't you see that this is choking your organization.
Speaker 2:You know, there's two things that we do that are really powerful, that I would tell people listening that you can do with your team or with yourself. First of all is bake into every project plan or, ideally, strategic plan that you do not just all the things that you're going to do, but have at least one or two slides that are commitments to what you're going to stop doing, and what's really cool about that is that it really it bakes into the process of I'm going to. Here are the things that I've identified that are barriers that are going to get in my way, and so I am committed to immediately not doing these things anymore so I can make space for this. Most people don't think about that. Right, that's number one. The second thing is you've got to build this into your system. Like, if you want people to really be, you know, doing the right things versus all the things, invite them to kill stupid rules, and so we, on a quarterly basis with my team I have my team we meet in New York City. That's where our offices are we end our status meetings or strategy meetings with killing stupid rules, and people look forward to it Because it's their time all the stupid rules and things that we do that aren't working, and I'm always fascinated by it because usually they're my rules.
Speaker 2:That's the thing about leaders you put in place. So that's a catharsis right there. But also it is a immediate therapy session for them, because the amount of time and engagement I get back from those people is stunning Stunning. And they're not rules that they're telling me. What happens is they tell me time sucks and frustrations and processes and all that kind of stuff that doesn't matter. So, even if you're working in a regulated industry right, you talked about pharma or banks or I don't know, national intelligence I, you know, we work with all of those it's just because you're regulated. That's not, that's not an excuse. There's plenty of crap that you do every day that has nothing to do with regulation or rules that you can get rid of. You've got to give people the permission to do it.
Speaker 1:So where and when does all that crap happen?
Speaker 2:in an organization.
Speaker 1:Every day.
Speaker 2:No, it's habits. It's too easy to set up a meeting. It's too easy to send an email without thinking. It's the immediacy and the ironically. There should be more friction in your ability to set up a meeting. It's too easy to send an email without thinking. It's the immediacy and the ironically. There should be more friction in your ability to set up a meeting and send an email.
Speaker 2:Because we don't think there's some ways people are getting around this, like Microsoft, they say when people schedule a meeting, the subject line and the agenda they all have to be in the form of questions and what that does is right forces people to say this is the question we're going to be addressing in the meeting. Because if you're not addressing a question or making a decision, why are you meeting? And it forces the person scheduling the meeting to really think about do I need a meeting? So that's one thing. The other thing I'll tell you. That was really interesting.
Speaker 2:I was talking with the CPO, the chief people, the officer, former CPO from Kickstarter and they launched a four-day work week and they said the thing that really made it successful was that they taught people that stealing time is a crime and so they teach people not to practice time crime. So setting up a meeting is a last resort. So if you set up a meeting, it better be good, because you are stealing my time. That changed everything because people were really like, rather than just setting something up on your calendar, I really had to think about do I have the right to take up their time and what am I going to accomplish? So those little things like shifts help people really change their relationship with not time management but really how they spend their time.
Speaker 1:Purpose.
Speaker 2:It's purpose. It really is it's. You know, time management is a misnomer.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right being organized isn't being simplified. I can't spreadsheet my way out of it anymore because there's no more time.
Speaker 3:I think there's a there's a point to be made about setting boundaries as well. I think we spend and this is corporate America that spends a ridiculous amount of time in meetings and emails, but nobody's ever taught how to have a meeting or how to send an email, but yet we spend the most time on it. And it's like this weird ironic flip that why do we spend so much time on this and nobody really questions it? Once you join an organization, you look around and you go well, that person's sending a meeting for that, that person's sending a meeting for that, and then you end up, you know, just aligning with what that culture is. And you had a point about just making sure that there's some sort of like safety level in terms of leadership, allowing, I think, their teams to be able to do this. And I'm interested in hearing your perspective on, like, what barriers to you or resistance to change do you hear from leaders that say, but Lisa, we need to have these meetings, we need to send these emails.
Speaker 2:We need to spend time on this right. It's interesting Good leaders don't say that. Good leaders don't Like they're. You know authentic leaders that really do want to get to the work that matters, are willing to question work. The ones that don't are the ones that are driven by fear and are risk averse. I'm a fear. If I get rid of this, something will happen, and what you teach them is you actually teach them to pilot getting rid of things versus getting rid of them outright. Tell me about a time that was complex for you, like, do you guys have a an example of somewhere where you really remember a time suck for you?
Speaker 3:Oh, I have my whole career.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean even even starting, even starting a company. I mean there are some things that I'm just like, yeah, this should be super simple to do X a company. I mean there are some things that I'm just like, yeah, this should be super simple to do X. And you go and you're like, why am I spending 50 hours, like I am paying this group, like this is why I offloaded this. I didn't realize that it was going to be so much of me taking care of this, or I mean the, the number of the amount of sort of searching. When you're actually starting a company, there's very simple things that you learn. You know, here you can fill out this form and you get an LLC right away. There are.
Speaker 1:You know, what we learned as MBA students was really about how to think when you're in the company but physically starting it. I didn't realize that we had to have a bank full of money already in order for health insurance to come out. I didn't realize that we had to have a bank full of money already in order for health insurance to come out. I didn't realize that these companies don't give you health insurance when you're a company less than five, less than 10, et cetera, understanding. I didn't even realize that companies had a son's number, your social security number, for your company. We don't really talk about that stuff. That's.
Speaker 1:Eventually, when you look at it, you go, ok, yeah, all this stuff makes sense, but the amount of time suck on these unknown required processes I think for me was big time suck in the beginning.
Speaker 1:So I do want to shift a little bit more specifically, talking about the biopharma, the biotech, the medical industry and life sciences.
Speaker 1:There's, you know, countless tools that are designed to help really process data and things like that, but there's just there's so much more before you even get to the technology of changing just your looks on what is really important, what is really valuable, what is really going to drive the organization, the projects, out to scaling, to reaching clients. There's so much involved in there and it's just every organization you go to. You look at people's email calendar and you can't schedule anything for three weeks. How is it that there are so many important things over the next three weeks, over the course of the whole year? How is that possible? You know, what do we do in an environment like this outside of you know, deleting meetings. I love people deleting meetings and the first thing I ask is what are you doing in place of that? What do you, how do you get that information for that project out, if you want to cancel it or decrease it Cause in some way?
Speaker 2:what do they do? What are they replacing it with?
Speaker 1:Oh, nothing, nothing. That is what I see. No meetings on Fridays, and in concept, fine, that's good, but let's be honest, there's going to be tons of meetings happening across the whole company.
Speaker 2:I think that meetings are a big issue, but I also think the fact that people feel that being busy is more important than doing valuable work. So, of course, getting comfortable with being unbusy, I think, is going to be a really important thing for people, and people don't know how to do that anymore. So I think meetings and emails are always the biggest target, by the way, but there's other things. There's reports, there's decision making, so there's lots of ways that we can help people get time back beyond just meetings.
Speaker 1:You know, as you talk about decision making coupled with meetings, I see meetings with the top of the organization and you come in and you present and you ask a couple of questions. The beginning and the meetings just sort of go in a different direction. Everybody had pre-reads, Everybody had a report, Everybody had access to the same information. I don't understand why, but the meetings will go into a different direction and then you get to the end. Are we waiting for a decision to happen? I thought this was a decisional body. We're supposed to have this process, but no one's making a decision to happen. I thought this was a decisional body. We're supposed to have this process, but no one's making a decision, because it seems like the conversation isn't even supported with what we provided and what we're showing.
Speaker 2:Decision-making is a big problem.
Speaker 2:I mean, there's a lot of things that we do with people.
Speaker 2:I think one of the best things you can do as a leader is, even if it's just a team leader can do as a leader is, even if it's just a team leader is a process called you me, we and you me, we if you've heard about this is take every person on your team. I mean, the reason they don't make decisions is either it's not clear what decisions they can make or they have fear, right, fear of missing out, fear of doing something wrong, fear of being fired. And so you me, we allows you to meet with people and say these are the decisions that you can make, I can make, and that we will make. And it sets, rather than having this kind of fear and being frozen, you're setting guard rails around risks, what risks they can take and can't take, and often outlining what they can't take is more important than what they can. So that's an interesting way to kind of start helping decision-making happen and get people comfortable with making one, versus just never making one at all.
Speaker 3:That, yeah, that's a good point about these these roles and responsibilities around decision-making, which I feel like a lot of times gets glossed over. And, um, there's this idea that, oh, we have to all agree on the one thing so that we can move forward, and it's like if we ever do that, nothing would get done right.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, and they feel that decisions are just so permanent, right, you can never go back. And that's not true. You can just pilot doing something, and if it, doesn't go back and try something else. So again, taking away the fear I think to your point you know, lawrence, the fear I think to your point, lawrence you've got to be able to get people comfortable with making a decision, because otherwise you'll never move forward.
Speaker 3:Yeah, in your experience, do you find that leaders that are, let's say, responsible for a specific initiative or process are they also the same person that is deciding to stop something? Because I've seen it go both ways, where you have somebody start something, but you have another person stop it because they have to be objective about okay, this is the situation we agreed on, like A, b and C, and it looks like this is not going the way that you had intended, and so, for whatever reason, sometimes the person who owns the process is not, let's just say, intellectually honest about what is going on, and so they try to cover up things or whatever it is, and so you need somebody else, coming from you know, not the person who is who's decided to start this thing, to be able to go. Let's stop this, because we agreed that we were going to do these things and clearly this thing that we've planned out hasn't played out the way that we want it to Right.
Speaker 2:Well, there's ego. That's the thing. No-transcript online learning business, and I've recently retrenched it. You know, I have a whole learning hub, but, um, what's better for me, rather than trying to pitch my own things, is partner with those that already do it, like partner up with LinkedIn and all that stuff. So, rather than trying to fight the fight, I joined, you know, my, my competition, and that was a big pivot.
Speaker 2:So, um, and not easy to do, but you know, at some point you have to kind of cut your loss and decide. You know, what am I going to do? Keep chasing good money after bad. I think that's hard for leaders to do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's a lot of ego in um in biotech and biopharma, I'm sure oscar can speak to that and just a lot of people are very proud of of the work that they do, and they should be right, I think. But then there's also this I can see humility and to say that, okay, yeah, what I suggested was was probably not the best way, and I don't know everything right, so let's, what do we want to do next? Right, like you have to be open to that to be able to drive the change that um os I have been discussing about.
Speaker 1:And it can be tricky too, because you have leaders that they're great, they're intelligent. No one really teaches you to be a leader. You know, you're here, you have such a level of intelligence in this domain, we're going to get you up here and keep moving you up so that you can make higher level decisions. That's great, but it doesn't really position you how to be a good leader, how to be a good manager, how to talk and listen, how to pivot without you know, creating chaos.
Speaker 2:I think that we don't teach leadership because we don't teach human things, we don't teach soft things. People are afraid we're really good at teaching subject matter expertise. You know you guys are engineers and scientists by trade. You have deep expertise but you don't have broad expertise and what makes a leader is broad. You know to work across the organization, to build a network. That's why they call them building T-shaped people.
Speaker 2:We always train for I-shaped people, but not T right. This is where you get your power, skills of curiosity, creative problem solving, agility, resilience, et cetera. And we don't teach that, and part of the problem is we don't. It's not that we don't even teach leaders. We don't teach it in school. We are really focused on not building humans but building employees, and we need to build in the human piece because, at the end of the day, people buy people. Meaning in sales, it's not about the product, it's about the person you're buying.
Speaker 1:Right, absolutely.
Speaker 2:There's very human aspects that get in the way of work despite our best laid processes, and if we could learn how to better deal with that, I think that we would be more successful in lots of different ways.
Speaker 1:One of the things that we explored and started to understand as we were starting our small but mighty organization.
Speaker 1:You have two options you can bootstrap it or you can go get funding and in our industry there's a lot of shareholders, there's money that just pumps into this early stuff because you're not making any money for six, seven, eight, nine years, 10 years, unless you're licensing something. So that sort of go go go mentality for a decade. It's exhausting and it is and it's sort of this constant. You know, every day you go into work and you can't even relax because you feel like a beehive. But we're human.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is where I get to. You know, right now we are in an epidemic of burnout, and that leads to disengagement. Eight in 10 workers report a level of mid to severe burnout, lack of engagement even teetering on. 23% say they're depressed, and so what that leads to is either people quitting or complacency. They just don't feel like fighting the fight anymore, you know. So we want to give people more meaning at work and we want them to not be burned out while doing it. This go, go, go, go go can only happen so long, but it's not change fatigue, it's. You know, people will work incredibly hard for things that they think are meaningful, and they're just constantly being busy without understanding if it's really going to be meaningful. They're not going to do it. They're not. So I understand the long runway and I understand needing to chase stuff, but that's where simplicity comes in, so people don't get burned out and they remain engaged, even for the long haul.
Speaker 1:How do you, what are your thoughts on? Sort of I've I've had my share of experience in a couple of different industry and a couple of different organizations and academia. What I've seen early in this industry is you know, we're going to do that walk to raise money, we're going to bring patients here and, in essence, use the patient and you seeing this person for you to work harder because, your work goes into there Sometimes.
Speaker 1:I don't think that that lands the right way. I think in some cases it's like we are already burnt out and tired and now you're putting somebody in our face to say what about them? It's like I haven't seen my kids in a week.
Speaker 2:That's interesting, yeah, whereas I think that's where people are getting to. Is that people are saying well, what about me? You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:I want to keep working hard. I never lost sight of the patient, but what I am losing sight of the patient, but what I am sight of is the work. So the thing I preach is that we continually underestimate the importance of getting work right and the impact of being able to do great work. So we are so focused on the vision and the vet and that's great, but it's empty If the work I do every day is unplanned, unnecessary. It's um, it becomes demeaning for people. We, we have to get the work right, cause culture is the work you do every day.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's not these great. You know having organic food available to everybody and bringing your dog to work, and you know what I mean. Like nice offices, no gifts of shit, no one. I mean they really don't. That's why they don't want to come back to the office, because they don't care. What they want is meaningful work. They want to know that how their time is being spent is going to be towards doing something good, like, and a meeting doesn't do that. So I really think that's where we underestimate as leaders, even as entrepreneurs, right, like getting the word, am I doing the right work? And we have to have time to think to understand that when you're caught up on the hamster wheel, you just do what's in front of you. You execute your calendar.
Speaker 1:And people go on vacation and they still work.
Speaker 2:And I, they do, I do, and the reason I do is because you have to keep. You're trying to just keep up, and the reason I do is because you have to keep. You're trying to just keep up, and the idea isn't to keep up with everything, it's to rethink what are the things that I should be doing instead? And that's where you know, I keep talking about getting rid of, you know, killing rules, et cetera, and making space for deep work. It's critical.
Speaker 1:I love this idea that your culture is the work you do every day.
Speaker 1:It is what you're able to bring, what you're able to see and feel like. This is where I'm, this is where I am in this chain to make that happen and this is how it affects that. Once in this huge initiative, regulations, all this stuff, everybody has to stay here in the company essentially for a week, day in and day out, because we have to finish X, and it was, it was, it was. Oh, we want to get it there before they want us to get it there. We were creating the extreme urgency.
Speaker 2:The urgency around it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it was this. It was interesting because they were bringing in breakfast, lunch and dinner essentially for anybody that was sticking around for about uh, for about two weeks, and the things that I kept hearing from people was like I don't understand this shit, because I know how to feed myself. I don't need a company that is trying to feed. Stop trying to feed me and let's do something in this company, like it's food is not going to make me want to work here more.
Speaker 2:And this is where I get back to burnout, which is people aren't burned out from doing good work, they're burned out from doing bad work, and we seem to mistake culture as perks. I've joked about the organic food in the cafeteria. But it's not a joke, right? What happens right now is we're trying to fix employee wellness. So it used to be like culture, getting people engaged. Well, now it's giving them wellness perks to make them have better mental health, and it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:It's going to suck here, so we're going to give you a discount to go get it fixed.
Speaker 2:This is what I'm talking about. It doesn't matter. I'm burned out, I don't want to discount to yoga classes because I'm never going to be able to go. And the joke at Bloomberg was that, you know, they created these meditation spaces for people and, first of all, they're always like these creepy rooms that no one wants to go into, like the recluse janitor closet. But the joke was no one could ever get in them because they were filled with people taking conference calls because they couldn't get in. You know they were. All the conference rooms were booked.
Speaker 2:So it doesn't work Like we're not fixing the right problem. You know I I don't want a meditation room or a nap room, because you're going to judge me when I go and take a nap there anyway and they're gross. So I mean, let's fix work. You know, don't give me a space that's going to keep me at work longer. Give me better work and don't waste my time. And people are pissed, they're pissed, they're burned out and they're pissed, they're tired of it. So, focusing on getting the work right, we dramatically think it's beneath us and it is the core issue, the core issue so right, that's so right.
Speaker 1:I mean you got to get the work right. You got to really know why we're doing it. We got to know why we're doing it.
Speaker 2:And people are starting to wake up to do that. And the issue is is that you know, we've known forever that workers will say that their you know their time is being wasted and things are too busy. But that doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. What matters is suddenly, now, when you survey the leaders, they're saying their time is being wasted. So suddenly, guess what?
Speaker 2:It's an initiative to get rid of the complexity, to give, to focus on wellness. That's, that's what made the difference. So it is caring for people, but it's it affected the leaders, and that's when things changed.
Speaker 3:So, it is caring for people, but it affected the leaders and that's when things changed yeah, I guess with the leaders. And the point about, obviously, when you do these sorts of I would say simplification exercises, where you're trying to figure out, like, what are those, you know, what are the mission critical activities that you're working on, and now you have this new allocated amount of time, I think there needs to be some time spent on how do you spend that time right? And I think, like me and Oscar, we spend quite a bit of time just consuming content from not only our space but other industries to figure out, like are there better ways to do something right? And I think there's something to be said about, like learning how to learn, or like learning how to simplify your work, or learning how to be curious, and there just needs to be some percentage of your time allocated to just learning something new just learning something new.
Speaker 2:So giving people times and space for deep work, I think is critical because it sends the signal that I expect it and it is important, is critical to getting things done. So I mean, I know I'm throwing out a lot of different tools but everyone thinks differently and everyone feels permission differently.
Speaker 2:So, the idea is just to try one of these things to start to show the momentum to people and the results to people that let's get the work right, let's get rid of the time socks, let's kill the zombie meetings, let's not let stealing time be a crime, and they'll stop, I want to say spending their time and they'll start investing it. They'll get a new relationship with time.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:That's important. The relationship we have with time is wrong, and you get really mad when people waste your money. Why aren't you that pissed off when people waste your time? You should be.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, a thousand percent. Yeah, non-renewable resource. You'll never get it back, so let's spend time.
Speaker 1:This is it on so many levels. I hope that we can have you back again and tackle some more things that are really out there and when we, when we say in our podcast, lean by design, it's being purposeful like really think about what and why you're doing these things and you'll start to find avenues that really enhance the way that you work. Just taking a second and go out of it. No one even said you had to do it.
Speaker 2:No one said you had to. You just made assumptions. So I'd love to talk more about it.
Speaker 1:Have a whole thing about wanting to know how you simplify at home. I have two little kids, but I will have to leave that to another conversation. Yeah, it's. Sometimes I'm looking around, I'm like I'm supposed to be the efficiency expert in this house is not efficient in any way, but I can't. There's no, there's no time. But my time is not wasted. To love my job, my role as a, as a father and as a husband, I want to leave. I want to end with with one one last question work-life balance or work-life fit?
Speaker 2:It's not balance. I think it's, uh yeah, work-life fit, if I'm understanding your definition of it. I don't think there's ever a balance, but I think it's just trying to have. You can't just constantly have the pendulum be on one side, so I know when we're going through a launch man.
Speaker 2:It's going to be heavy on the work, but then I've got to give back that sometimes I think where people aren't comfortable is when it's ironically heavy on the life they're not used to it and it's very easy to be busy. And when people are unbusy they are uncomfortable. So we've got to get used to reestablishing. You know, find your hobby, what's important? If you had all the time in the world, what would you spend your time doing? So spending time figuring out what those things are. So when you do have the time for yourself, you use it wisely, like I'm sure. As somebody who has two young kids I don't even know if you remember what it was like before kids like your time is so dramatically different now that suddenly, when you have it back, you're going to be shocked.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes. When we send our our three-year-old to Nana and Papa's house for a night, my wife and I sit around and go like what do we do now?
Speaker 2:I guess there's dishes.
Speaker 1:I guess there's laundry, but you fall into tasks. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so right. And you say work-life balance. I mean I guess you have you need to define what that is.
Speaker 1:That's the first step.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm so glad we could Thank you.
Speaker 1:Lisa, thank you so much, and I'm going to post in the notes where they can find your book, your bestselling books, why simple wins kill the company. Um, and where else can they connect with you and learn more about future thing?
Speaker 2:Definitely link in with me on LinkedIn, lisa Bodell. Um go to future thinkcom and there are a lot of things on there about. Uh, there's free resources and ways that they can start to think about. Um simplification so they can get time back. Right, the idea is get your time back so you can do the things you want to do, reach your potential, not just the company's.
Speaker 1:Value guys, all about value, lisa. Thank you so much, lawrence, thanks for joining and we'll catch you next time.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much.
