S1:Ep80 From Hollywood Blockbusters to Boardrooms: Secrets of High-Impact Remote Performance and Flow States

My amazing guest is Steven Puri from Austin, Texas. Stay with us as we reveal the Secrets of High-Impact Remote Performance and Flow States – from Hollywood Blockbusters to Boardrooms.

Steven has an extraordinary background in Hollywood, having worked as an executive and producer on some of the biggest blockbusters of our time – including Die Hard 5, The Wolverine, Transformers, and Star Trek.

Steven has collaborated with major studios such as DreamWorks, 20th Century Fox, and Sony, and raised more than $21M in venture funding across three tech start-ups. After decades of turning big visions into reality on screen and in business, Steven shifted his focus to solving one of today’s most pressing challenges: how we work.

As the Founder & CEO of The Sukha Company, he now helps remote workers overcome procrastination and distraction, bringing more focus, energy, and well-being into the flow of daily work. From Hollywood blockbusters to the future of remote productivity, Steven’s journey blends storytelling, leadership, and innovation in a truly unique way.

Steven is a Diamond Executive Member of the AI Game Changers Club - an elite tribe of visionary leaders redefining the rules and shaping the future of Human–AI synergy.

🔑 Key Topics Discussed:

✔ Secrets from blockbuster filmmaking that translate directly into leading high-performing executive teams and making critical decisions at the executive level in today’s AI-powered world

✔ How to recognize and sustain flow states - the “holy grail” of performance - and how leaders can create those conditions, especially in remote and hybrid environments

✔ How leaders can amplify decision-making when in flow to drive greater clarity, speed, and impact

✔ What leaders must unlearn to build the best possible workplace aligned with current AI disruption trends

✔ One powerful piece of advice - the lasting secret to elevating leadership capabilities in the AI era

🔗 Connect with Steven Puri on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-puri/

🌏 The Sukha Company: https://www.thesukha.co/

Chapters

• 0:00 Opening & Steven’s Origin Story
• 6:00 From Effects to Executive: Climbing Hollywood’s Ladders
• 13:00 Exits, Startups, Failure, and Renewal
• 18:30 Yoga, Mindfulness, and a New Operating System
• 22:30 Humans, AI, and What LLMs Really Are
• 28:30 Leadership in Subjective, High-Stakes Environments
• 36:30 Best Idea Wins: The Spielberg Lesson
• 41:30 Building Culture: Mission, Values, and Hiring
• 47:30 Flow States Explained: Science and Signals
• 54:00 Designing for Deep Work: Time, Ritual, Protection

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hello and welcome to Digital Transformation NAI for Humans with your host Amy. In this podcast, we delve into how technology intersects with leadership, innovation, and most importantly, the human spirit. Each episode features visionary leaders who understand that at the heart of success is the human touch, nurturing a winning mindset, fostering emotional intelligence, and building resilient teams. I feel like it's Christmas today, unwrapping something truly special, because my amazing guest is Stephen Furry from Austin, Texas. Stay with us as we reveal the secrets of high-impact remote performance and flow states from Hollywood blockbusters to boardrooms. Steven has an extraordinary background in Hollywood, having worked as an executive and producer on some of the biggest blockbusters of our time, including the Hard Five, The Wolverine, Transformers, and Star Trek. Steven has collaborated with major studios such as DreamWorks, 20th Century Fox, and Sony, and raised more than 21 million in venture funding across three tech startups. After decades of turning big visions into reality on screen and in business, Steven shifted his focus to solving one of today's most pressing challenges: how we work. As the founder and CEO of the SUKA company, he now helps remote workers overcome procrastinations and distraction, bringing more focus, energy, and well-being into the flow of daily work. From Hollywood blockbusters to the future of remote productivity, Steven's journey blends storytelling, leadership, and innovation in a truly unique way. I'm honored to have Steven as a part of the Dime Executive Group of the AI Game Changers Club, an elite tribe of fusionary leaders redefining the rules and shaping the future of human AI Synergy. Welcome, Steven. I'm so happy to have you here in the studio today.

SPEAKER_02: 2:09

I hope this is an episode for those listening at home or listening to their cars that has some interesting thoughts as well as some really actionable things to take into life.

SPEAKER_00: 2:21

Let's start the conversation and transform not just our technologies, but our ways of thinking and leading. If you are interested in connecting or collaborating, you can find more information in the description. And don't forget to subscribe for more powerful episodes. If you are a leader, business owner, or investor ready to adapt, thrive, and lead with clarity, purpose, and wisdom in the era of AI, I would love to invite you to learn more about the AI Game Changers, a global elite club for visionary trailblazers and change makers shaping the future. You can apply at AIGamechangers.club. Steven, to start with, I would love to hear more about yourself, about your journey, about your passion. I'm so impressed by your achievements and your story.

SPEAKER_02: 3:15

Well, that is very gracious of you to say. And thank you, everyone who's out there listening. I will tell you this: that my life, if you were to describe it in terms of a story, a film spine, is very much like Forrest Gump, in that I've had a lot of great fortunate things happen to me, and then I've worked hard to make something out of them, right? So I can tell you, I started out as an engineer. Both my parents were engineers at IBM. And you know, when you're little and your mom is like a great ice skater, you probably learned to ice skate when you're little. So I learned how to code and I would go with my mother to the computing center and civit jobs. So that led to becoming a Watson scholar at IBM and then working as a junior software engineer to make money while I was going to university. So here comes the first big turn. I went to the University of Southern California, which has one of the best film schools in the world. And, you know, even if you're not in the cinema TV school, a lot of your friends in the dorm are, you know, aspiring Spielbergs and Lucas's, and you go to late night movies on Tuesdays and you go to a diner and you debate the movie. So it was really fun. And I happened to be very fortunate. I was in Los Angeles when computers were powerful enough to start handling film. So that was the rise of nonlinear editing systems like Avid, Pro Tools for audio, silicon graphics made computer equipment to manipulate the entire film frame, right? Which is a huge data set. So I spoke engineer thanks to my parents, right? And I spoke creative thanks to my friends. And there was suddenly this demand for people who could bridge those two worlds. I could talk to a director. What is the effect you want to have in this scene? What are the things you want to achieve? But then I could turn to an engineer and say, okay, here's my ideas technically how we could do this, understand their ideas and be able to negotiate how to achieve this thing that the director wanted in terms of his vision. I did about 14 movies. So I suddenly moved from what was kind of an engineering path into a creative path. And this would be very interesting, this sort of hybrid world of digital and technical with creative and you know, squishy and fuzzy. And I did about 14 movies producing the digital effects or the titles, including seven with David Fincher, True Lies with Jim Cameron, Braveheart with Mel Gibson, a ton of stuff. And I met Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin when they were going to do Independence Day and produced the digital effects for that movie. We're very fortunate we won the Academy Award for the digital effects in that movie, which helped all of us. Like many people contributed to that, right? It's a huge movie. And it was a wonderful thing to have. Roland and Dean and I got along very well, and we decided to start a company together to do digital effects. So we went out, raised about$15 million, which not that hard when your last movie just won an Academy Award. You know, people think you know what you're doing. So I was in my mid-20s, had a great relationship with my partners, and suddenly was running a company. We built to about 82 people and doing, you know, movie visual effects through that. When I was 28, we got an offer from Das Wirk in Germany to purchase us, and it was a nice exit. It was like a 6x multiple. And so we sold the company. And then suddenly I had time on my hands. I was like, what do I want to do next? I have some cash. My girlfriend was a flight attendant for Air France. So we got to travel a lot, right? And I had sort of that, I don't know, maybe a midlife, quarter life crisis, whatever of okay, do I want to wake up and be 30, 40, 50 years old and making more visual effects for other movies? Right. And I thought, you know what? I'd really like to go completely into the creative side and not do the engineering part anymore. So I looked at, you know, how do you become a studio executive? And it was interesting that some friends of mine said, even though you know all these directors, like you're on a first name basis with Cameron and Fincher and Mel Gibson and you know, all these guys, they think of you more as a craftsman who helps make their movies. They don't view you as a creative who's helping to package the scripts. Okay, so what would you do? They said if you want to become a studio chairman, you know, or senior executive studio, it's a different ladder. And you have to acknowledge you're going to get on that ladder. From the outside, it all looks like the film business, but from the inside, there's really like the business of putting a movie together, and then there's the business of making the movie. And you only know making the movie. So I started doing this. I went to a low level on this other ladder, started reading a ton of scripts, meeting a lot of writers, meeting agents, you know how you put a movie together. I did that, worked hard, had a bunch of lucky breaks of people who, you know, were generous and kind to me. And as you know, went to DreamWorks. I was in a rose up from being a junior executive to being an executive vice president for Kurtzman Orsey at DreamWorks, and then went to Fox and was a vice president there. And that was the era of like, I got to run the Die Hard franchise, the Wolverine franchise, a bunch of those action movies. And Fox was a really hard situation for me in that I went there because the the chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment had said to me, Hey, if you leave DreamWorks and come here, I will double your salary and I will give you the Die Hard franchise to run. He's like, You probably grew up watching the diehard movies. I'm like, I did. I watched, you know, I was little, I watched Die Hard, you know? And so that was a really attractive pit to go run the Wolverine franchise. And I'll tell you, you know, DreamWorks is a really wonderful experience for me. Like I have great respect for Steven and Stacy, who were running it at the time. And there was definitely a sense of DreamWorks, values-wise, about go home tonight and try and make your projects 1% better. And that was how the leadership there led. They were like, we believe that if you can make something slightly better, it has a better chance of being successful in the marketplace. Right. I went to Fox, a new scorpion company. There was definitely a different sense from the leadership there, which was rather go home tonight and try and make this 1% cheaper because it lessens our risk. Our risk profile goes down, and we don't really need to know if it's good or bad, as long as we didn't spend a lot of money on it. And that was a really hard position for me because it's not where I'd come from. It's not what I believed. And so after two years of doing that, and I did not get along with my boss, who was the chairman of Fox, and he didn't like me either. That was definitely a moment where I said, okay, you know what? All the movies that I'm working on are franchises or sequels. We don't really make a lot of original movies anymore. Everything was a Marvel movie. Friends were working on spin-offs of Snow White and spin-offs of this and all the Pixar sequels and things like that. And I said, wow, the film business has changed while I've been in it to being completely about sequels, prequels, spin-offs. And I wasn't that inspired anymore. So I thought, okay, this is the next big turn. I don't know. I want to wake up and be like 40, 50 years old, making diehard seven. And what could I do? And the only other thing I knew how to do was engineering. So it sort of goes full circle like engineering, getting into engineering creative, going to creative, getting back into engineering. And I thought, you know what? Let me see if there are problems I can apply engineering to solve, right? And go raise some money and do a startup, right? And not a lot of friends from film were going to do startups at the time. Now it's very popular, but this is, you know, like 10 years ago. And I left to do two small startups that I uh ran, raised about$3 million in venture for both. Both failed. And I was just embarrassed. I felt like such a loser. I was depressed. I moved to New York. I finally was just like, I need to clear my head. Moved to New York. Luckily, I met my wife in New York, which is a good thing, but also was like super depressed for a while where I was like, wow, that did not go the way I wanted it to go. And had to pull back and think about, okay, well, what have I learned and what could I do? And it was out of that reflection that I created my current company, which is I looked at what really high performers that I'd worked with in film had done to do great work. And it was very similar techniques to what the high performers had worked with in tech do. And did a lot of reading on this, you know, because so many smart people have written about this. And that's how I discovered flow states. That's how I discovered more mindful productivity. It's also when yoga entered my life. And that was something that really affected, I think, how I viewed how I interact with the world and how all of us get to interact with each other. It's also how I met my wife. I met my wife. She was on the yoga mat to my left. I married the girl on the yoga mat to my left. And it's a daily part of our life. We go and do yoga together every day. And I love that. So that is how I came in the full circle. So now running a technology company that happily is growing, and we help people get into a flow state, work it just in a more healthy, spiritual, mindful kind of way. So that's the path. And I think everything, everyone who's listening, everything we'll talk about today is basically a lesson learned along that path.

SPEAKER_00: 13:05

Incredible journey, beautiful. It's so romantic in the last part, and it is so inspiring all along. But I also admire your bravery, the courage you had to restart the learning curves and take a step back in order to move forward towards your North Star. Not everybody can do that for sure, but it's also about the mindset and uh about your willingness to accept failures sometimes and move forward towards success.

SPEAKER_02: 13:40

Let me share with you this. So after coming from being a senior executive at a studio, which there are what 35, 40 jobs in the world that are that job, right? So everyone thinks it's very glamorous and it's very, you know, fabulous. And you get to know all these like actors and directors and stuff and go to film festivals and premieres, right? So there's that. But you also have to understand that from the business side, it is the same as working like at a soap factory. Your soap is fun where it's made with you know actors and all this stuff, but ultimately it is a product made by a corporation with quarterly reports where they have to do projections of how much will the Avengers 19 make. You know, it's gonna come out in two years, and we're already kind of guessing how that will work. So that was a very interesting learning for me. And that was a great impetus to say, you know what? This is not really about what I can do here. There was someone in my chair before me. And after I leave, there'll be someone else in this chair. And it's really the chair that's making a lot of these studio movies now. It's not really about what I champion, it's just could you make sure the soap gets made this year and it smells okay? You know? So that made the decision to leave much easier. Where I was like, this is not at all about me. But then when I did those two startups that failed, I was like, oh, that was about me, and it didn't go well. Oh boy, that was bad.

SPEAKER_00: 15:03

So true, but then it becomes more personal. And yes, of course, no matter how high you are on that ladder, it's still just a row, and you are replaceable. Yes. So it is not about you, it's more about the brand and your place there, and it is also insufficating in a way because you have your guidelines, you have quite a description of who you are supposed to be and how you are supposed to run that narrative.

SPEAKER_02: 15:36

And and it evolves. I mean, I'll tell you, so my dad, from the time he was eight, the yoga practice, from he was a little boy in India, right? It was never part of my life. My life when I was coming up in engineering and then the beginning of my film career was very much sort of regimented and not so spiritual. And an ex-girlfriend of mine, Allison, who's still a close friend of mine and my wife, she was the director of marketing for a chain called Yoga Works, a big chain of yoga studies across the United States. So when we were dating, she gave me, you know, a class card with like the you know little punch holes, and she gave me a yoga mat. She said, Oh, you should try this. I'd love this, right? Like a good boyfriend. I went and did the 810 class, whatever it was on the card, right? And I'll tell you, the day after the last little punch on my card, I was not thinking about when I was going to do yoga again. So I thought, you know what? I did the good boyfriend thing, check, I tried it, not for me. Two years later, Allison and I were friends. We were not dating anymore, right? And I was traveling in India with my father and some family friends. There is a national park called Ranthambur in the center of India. It's where the Royal Bengal Tiger Preserve is, right? Which is super cool because you can get a Jeep and a guide and a trekker and try and like head into the forest and find the tigers. So we had arrived there to see the tigers the next day. And we arrived around lunch. All the um the little hotel rooms we were staying in in the forest were all like little tents that were scattered so that you couldn't see them. It was very nice, but it didn't break up the forest, right? So my dad went to our tent to get ready for lunch, and I went walking. And when I was walking, I saw an Indian guy in a clearing about 30 meters off the path. There's just an Indian guy in his white dhoti standing there alone. And I, of course, had nowhere to be, and I'm curious, guy. So I walked up to him, I was like, Hi, what are you doing? He said, Oh, I lead a yoga practice. And I thought this is hilarious because he's standing alone in a clearing. I was like, Oh, um, for whom? He's like, anyone who comes by. And he says this totally seriously, like, there's nothing weird about like he's standing alone in a clearing, right? So he's like, anyone who comes by. And I said, Okay, um, when? He said, This afternoon. Okay, so if I go to lunch with my dad and our friends, I come back here, you're gonna be leading a yoga. Yes. So I go to lunch, right? Now keep in mind, everyone at lunch is full Indian. I'm half. So I'm excited. I'm like, oh my God, there's a guy in the forest who's gonna teach yoga in this clearing. It's so cool. And everyone there, it's like when you live in Los Angeles and friends come from out of town, they want to go to Disneyland, and you've been there 10 times. You're like, oh no, you guys go to Disney. I'm so good. Like, have a great day. I'll see you tomorrow, right? So I pitched this, and everyone at the lunch table is like, Oh, Steven, you you should go do that. No, we're good. We don't need to go like, okay, fine. So I go back to the clearing after lunch. There's the guy, he's standing there, and there's this very tall, like, I'm almost six feet. He's probably another like three or four inches taller than I am, standing in front of him, beautiful DSLR camera off to the side. And I walked up, and the Indian guy said, Let us begin. And he taught a yoga class there in the forest. And at the end of that, I wanted to call Allison and say, I wasn't ready when you gave me this gift, but now I understand what you were trying to give me at that time. And that started a daily yoga practice for me. So, unless I'm sick or on an airplane, I practice every day now, and it definitely is an influence on why I want to give the things that I want to give back into the world. And without yoga, I'm not sure I wouldn't be here.

SPEAKER_00: 19:29

Amazing, such a warm and beautiful story, truly.

SPEAKER_02: 19:35

Very lucky. Told you, I have a lot of lucky stuff in my life.

SPEAKER_00: 19:39

For real. But it's also important to grow up to reach the level where things fall into place. And sometimes it takes longer, sometimes it takes shorter time, but at the same time, we need to be ready to get to the next level. And you can't force it, you can't push it, and and we have a completely different timing. Nobody else can decide it for ourselves, it's just our own individual journey. So I truly appreciate how you shared your story, and it's also very inspiring for our listeners and viewers because this is what really matters on the human level. And especially in this AI-powered world, it's going to be increasingly important to find that mindfulness and the way towards your inner power.

SPEAKER_02: 20:37

I'm glad you brought that up because this I think is so germane to what's happening right now. Because as we record this, and this will air soon, there is this tug of war between everything needs to go AI, the computers are coming, people are being laid off, we don't need as many humans, right? And then there are humans on the other side saying, Well, what is my value in this new world, right? Is AI going to make me obsolete? Is AI going to do what? And I talk to a lot of business leaders who are looking at how to integrate AI into their teams, looking at how to leverage tools like mine and other tools to make use of AI. And this is how I think about it. If you were to go to Usain Bolt, you know, the fastest man in the world, or the fastest runner, and say to him, Listen, Hussein, using AI, we designed this robot. It runs faster than you. So why don't you just sit here and then we'll let it run the race for you? That would be terrible for the spectators. It would be terrible for Hussein, right? Who wants to watch that? But if you were to go to Hussein and say, hey, using AI, we really looked at your foot. We designed the shoots maybe five or 10% better for your bone structure that allow you to get a little more traction. Maybe you could shave like a tenth of a second or a quarter of a second off your world record. That would be thrilling for Hussein, it'd be thrilling for the spectators to leverage AI in that way, right? And a lot of the way in which I counsel people to integrate AI is to say, hey, you know what? What most people are calling AI right now is really a conflation with just LLM. So let's talk about LLMs. LLMs are a glorified version of Google autocomplete. You know, and when you see something autocompleted well, a thought, it seems magical like it is thinking. But in reality, it's a probability engine. The same way when you're typing and Google says, oh, the next character is probably S because it's a plural, it's not magic anymore. The first time, you know, five, 10 years ago, it was like, oh, it's really smart. Google figured out it was writing a plural. But now when you see that, it's just, of course, it's like a spell checker, right? It's just predicting what you're going to write the rest of the word. So most of the models that we're looking at right now, the LM models, are prediction engines trained on a large data set to say, hey, you know what? When Stephen or Emmy says, oh, it really looks like it's going to 30% chance the next word is rain, 20% chance the next word is this. And then it does that. And it can do that with words, it can do that with thoughts. So it's autocomplete. It's not really a robot that's going to run the race better, but it's something that with the right supervision, you can leverage it to multiply your work, be effective your actions. So that's a lot of what I talk about with leaders who are wondering how do I integrate AI into here? Because, for example, with coding, I use an AI assistant. It is fantastic for things where you can say, I want to create this in this way. And I don't want to think about the syntax of is this supposed to be an open brace or an open parentheses? And then is there a semicolon in the middle? Do that for me. But I'm going to give you my input on how to create this. What is the structure of this? And then please do the work that I don't want to do. You know what I mean? Exactly. Because that does become this AI slop. So, anyway, a long speech, but I think AI, especially LLMs, which is subsects of AI, it's amazing and can be leveraged really well. But it's not necessarily a complete replacement. It'll get rid of those drudge work jobs and hopefully enable us to do jobs where it's really more interesting.

SPEAKER_00: 24:22

I couldn't agree more, and you woke up so many different thoughts in me because just a few days ago I saw a video where literally a robot was competing with humans. And of course, it's impossible to get up to speed with that machine. So that was one brilliant example of how we can differentiate between the real application for the better of humanity versus something what is applied, but in a way where it doesn't create a beneficial difference for us as humans.

SPEAKER_02: 25:01

Ryan. If you wanted to read great thoughts from Hemingway or, you know, some writers, very distinctive, you don't necessarily want to write like regurgitated AI slop. You want to read Hemingway. If you want to go to a great soccer football, and you're on a great football team, you want to see humans achieving the best that they can. It's not that interesting to see robots running around a field kicking a ball. You're like, okay, whatever, they programmed it well. But if there is like a nuclear waste site, you absolutely would like to see robots go in and help clean it up rather than humans who are going to die of radiation poisoning. Like, that's a police bring the robots in.

SPEAKER_00: 25:38

You know, spot on, exactly. And that's the difference. And you know, this week I've been in the team of judges at the AI Packathon 2025, the megatrends, and it was really interesting. Several teams from the corporate world were developing their AI solutions, their agents and maps, and they were competing. So I could clearly see, and you know, the teams were really brilliant. There was IKEA, there was Tetrapax, so the global companies and global impact. But I could also see that some of the ideas were less productive in terms that when you apply AI to something what shouldn't probably be done from the beginning in the first place, then it's not going to create more magic. And the use cases they depend on our ability to think. So critical thinking and our vision for what can be created, really, not just have what we already have and try to apply AI on top of it, but also generate something new, something different, something amazing. That's also one of our opportunities in this age of incredible future which we can create, but it's up to us to choose what kind of impact and outcomes we want to see in the future and what we are bringing into this game and putting on the table. But Steven, you've worked on Hollywood blockbusters like Die Hard 5 and the Wolverine, where every second counts. What secrets from that world translate directly into leading high-performance executive teams and making critical decisions on the executive level in today's AI-powered world?

SPEAKER_02: 27:43

Ooh, a very applicable question. This is good. So what I'll say is when you think about film television, right, these creative arts, they're interesting in that no one knows what is right or wrong. They're very subjective, right? You may hate this movie, not want it released, and then the movie is released and it makes$300 million domestically. You know, sometimes you don't know because it's not an outcome that can be clearly judged in an objective way, right? Okay. So let's think about film through that lens, which is when you're making decisions as a leader in that kind of environment, and you know there is no right or wrong, right? Then you're really relying upon the, hopefully, the team, you know, how well you have hired. So have you put together the right, in this case of a film, the right cast, the right director, the right script, you know, the right writers? Is that coupled then with the right people to market it? You know, how will they judge what is in the zeitgeist? How does this movie, you know, hit? And so some of those questions about like, how do you lead in this AI environment? They come back to earlier questions, like upstream questions about hiring. And I think that the same thing is true also with distributed teams. You know, there's a lot of tension right now about, oh, can you exist in a world where people work remotely? Should everyone be RTO, right? And this is a huge debate now. I think a lot of those things come down to this similar concept of how well did you hire? Because as a leader, there are some things you know you have to do. Sometimes you have to raise money and do this. But there are two big things you have to do. You have to declare your mission. We're here to cure cancer, we are here to build zero emissions vehicles, we're here to clean up the ocean, we're here to make the best romantic comedy movies, you know. And you have to establish a culture, which really means values. It is while we do this mission, how do we treat each other? How do we treat our customers? How do we treat our competitors? Now, if you do those two things well. You attract the right people in hiring where you can trust them. You know, if if you say to me, Stephen, I am focused on you know curing this kind of cancer, and I'm like, oh, I mean, I want I want to work on this. Like my father experienced that. I saw him in the hospital, that kind of cancer. And I'm passionately engaged in what is our mission and how do we treat each other, right? You can be sure on Tuesday afternoon at three o'clock, if you can't see me, that I am trying to help cure cancer, right? I'm not at the ball game watching, you know, whatever, the Mets play the socks or something. And that's because you hired well. But if you have me approach you and I've had five jobs in six years, and I look on Indeed and LinkedIn for new jobs all the time on Tuesday at three o'clock, you really don't know what I'm doing. I could be applying for other jobs, I could be taking a nap. So some of the tension around how do you lead in that sort of environment really comes down to how do you hire. So going back to your first question, which is okay, so in these high-stakes environments, how do you make decisions? Especially in something where there is no objective truth, right? It really is about you guys are making the best guess. You can call it whatever you want, but it is not two plus two is always going to equal to four, right? So you need to understand, hey, I'm making this a safe place because people make better decisions when they feel safe than they're making decisions worried they're going to get fired, right? So if you acknowledge that with your team, and I'll give you an example of something that I saw firsthand, which was when I went to DreamWorks, as much as I had done things in my career and sold a company, the first time I was in Steven Spielberg's conference room, his private conference room in the little Amblin complex, where it's his southwestern, you know, the Navajo rugs and the whole thing and the exposed beams. There was something about that where I was like, oh my God, I'm in Steven Spielberg's conference room, like right off his office. Like, I'm having a story meeting with Steven Spielberg. What? Right? But on the outside, you have to be very cool. Oh, it's just Tuesday, I'm having another meeting, right? So we're sitting there with Steven, obviously, Stacy, who was the chairwoman of DreamWorks at the time, the president of DreamWorks, you know, some writers, and there are probably eight of us around the table. And I'm gonna falsify some of the details just to be respectful to Stephen and the creative process. Okay, so this is not exactly it. We were having a conversation about an alien movie that we were developing. And Steven had an idea, and he's done a lot of alien movies, so he's thought a lot about aliens, right? So he had an idea, and I'm gonna say his idea was like, okay, so in this scene, the alien comes through the wall, and the way it reacts to this thing in the scene reveals that that's what makes it vulnerable. Like that's its kryptonite, right? So he says this, and of course, everyone is like, okay, Steven said this is writing down. It's the Ten Commandments. And someone came through the room who is like a coffee boy and said, actually, I feel like we just saw that in this other movie. What if it were this other thing that was like the kryptonite? And I thought inside, oh my god, that's the last time we're gonna see this person alive. Like he contradicted Steven Spielberg. Like, his body will be in the dumpster out back. It'll be like, anyone see Jerry? No, no, I haven't seen him in a while, right? So as I thought this inside, going, Oh my god, like the coffee boy contradicted Steven. Steven said, actually, yeah, that's better. Let's go with that. And he never even acknowledged anything about it. It wasn't remarkable. And I realized Steven was playing from a point of view of best idea wins. And a lot of the mediocre talent that I saw, mediocre leaders, mediocre writers, stuff like that, they're very possessive of my idea needs to win. But the top talent that I worked with just wanted the thing to be great. I want the team to win. I want the project to win. And they didn't care. Like Steven didn't care that the Walter thing was not the kryptonite. He just wanted it to be a great scene in a great movie, you know? And that again goes back to this thing of like there are many decisions you will make in high-stakes environments where there's no objective right and wrong. There's not, well, two plus two is always four. There is, we can assign some probabilities and some weights and do some forecasts, but this is kind of what we think. And at that point, you do need to create an environment where if you've hired well, people around you can speak their mind and really share, as opposed to in an environment of fear. People are just going to say what they think you want them to say, and they're not going to take any risks. And that's often how you see companies disrupted, right? You see something great and innovative turn into a company. And then five, 10 years later, that company is doing the exact same thing because no one actually says, Oh, we should innovate some more. And, you know, Clay Christensen talks about this a bunch in the The Innovator's Dilemma. And that is something that comes from leadership. That is something where you as a leader can say, one of the conditions I'm creating here is that you can be wrong and it's going to be okay. Because then you do get interesting debate. And even if you say something that is stupid, I'm like, oh my God, I'm in the meeting with you, da da da, that's not going to work, da-da-da. But then someone next to you goes, actually, you know what? That makes me think of this. And that second idea, which might be the one we go with, would not have come up if you hadn't taken the risk to say, I'm not sure if this is good or bad, but what if this? So those are some of the ways I've seen, like in a very creative business, great leaders lead because there's not an objective truth, right?

SPEAKER_00: 35:53

And that is so relevant to today's world and today's business development, because it is crucial if we are going to keep being led just by status quo, these powerful technologies were not going to come to a place where we would like to be. So it is about time to redefine leadership, to redefine the way we are connecting to each other, leading, and also become more open to the new ideas, to the new possibilities, and be more humble, probably, which is always beneficial for any growth.

SPEAKER_02: 36:38

It is interesting you say humble because this touches upon something I'm very passionate about, which is if you as the leader, and I know many of the people who listen are leaders, right? If you as the leader firmly believe you know more than the people you've hired. So you're like, ultimately, I should be making these decisions, then you've hired really poorly. Right? Because what you want is you want to have a healthy dialogue of ideas brought by people who have experience and great points of view. Otherwise, you should do everything yourself and you're gonna live or die on what you do. You could be a solopreneur, you don't need to be a leader, right? So if you say, okay, I want to lead a team of great people, what does that fundamentally mean? You know what that means? It means this, and I believe this. It's that you look at other people with the belief that they have something great inside them. And I believe this. I believe we all have something great inside us. And the question of this lifetime is are you going to get it out or not? And if you're really a great leader, your job is to draw out of everyone on your team the greatness inside them. That will benefit your company, your division, you know, your PL. And ultimately, those the people that when you elicit greatness for them, they will remember that you were the leader that did that. There are some organizations, I've been part of some, where you look back five, 10 years later, the people who are your teammates, and they've all gone on to found companies. They've all gone on to be, you know, important figures in that field. Because at some point in time, someone was able to say, I'm creating the environment where you're going to realize how great you are. And you may leave. But this will be the thing that elicited that from you, that drew that out of you. And that comes from, I mean, you have to be very confident as a leader to say someone else might have a better idea than I. And that doesn't make me less of a leader. You know, it's not your leadership, it's not valued, it's not measured by do you always have the best ideas? It is, do you create the best ideas from your team? So that's something, yeah, I think can't be underlined enough about leadership.

SPEAKER_00: 39:02

This is brilliant. It is so important, but it's not going to land in those who are not ready to hear. There are those who are already leading by example, running by this principle, and those who are just going to think that this has nothing to do with their reality, and it's not applicable to their way of operating, unfortunately. But that's how it is, and it is okay. But still, we are sharing the best practices and how leadership should look like in the coming years. And I'm really happy that you highlighted this part. And from here, I'm thinking so much about flow states. They are often called the holy grail of performance. And you mentioned them before.

SPEAKER_01: 39:54

So, what's you know I love talking about flow states? So good. Thank you for bringing it up. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00: 40:00

I know because I love them much as well, extremely much. So they are important for me in my world.

SPEAKER_02: 40:07

When was the first time you experienced a flow state?

SPEAKER_00: 40:12

It was over 20 years back in time for sure. But yeah, it was a long time ago.

SPEAKER_02: 40:18

That is amazing. I will tell you this: you understood flow states before I did, and I also did not know the term flow state when I first experienced it. And it was only afterwards that I was like, what just happened? And I'll tell you, for me, I was flying from here, Austin, uh, in Texas. So I'm sort of in the central part of the United States. I was flying to San Francisco, and the next day I was going to meet with my team, and I wanted to, on the flight, illustrate in Figma, sort of roughly an idea for a feature so we could debate it the next day, right? So I got on the plane and Alaska runs a non-stop on that route. Alaska Airlines. So we took off, and the pilot said the Wi-Fi was not working. And then, like 15, 20 minutes later, we landed. And I thought, oh my God, something bad happened. Like the engine fell off. They don't want to tell us until we're on the ground. But we must be in Dallas, right? Which is the next city over. We were actually descending into San Francisco. Over two hours and 40 minutes had gone by since I had looked at the clock. And I had no concept of time. I couldn't tell you if the drink cart had, you know, come by. I couldn't tell you that the guy who sat next to me what his name was or what business he was in. Nothing. But my designs were done. Like I had illustrated the idea well enough, and I was very happy with it. But I said, oh, tomorrow I can actually show this. We could debate it. And I remember thinking to myself, I had prepared myself emotionally that, okay, when we get off the flight, I'm going to go through the hotel lobby, grab a sandwich, take it to the room, and I'm going to finish working in the hotel room to get ready for tomorrow. Reality, I was done. I called up a friend of mine. I was like, hey, I have a free night in San Francisco. Do you want to have dinner? And it was wonderful, right? So later, I came to understand that was my first flow state. And I think it was helped by the fact that with no Wi-Fi, it was very hard to be distracted by WhatsApp, you know, by Slack messages, emails, things like that. And I guess if it's fair with you, I know there's a portion of your audience that are flowmasters that know all about flow states, but maybe there's some that are not as fluent. Why don't I spend 30 seconds on what is a flow state? Is that fair?

SPEAKER_00: 42:44

Absolutely. It is brilliant because I suspect that most part of our listeners are not deeply into this type of information.

SPEAKER_02: 42:54

So please share more. For those listening at home, at work, you know, driving in their car. Here's the deal. There was a Hungarian-American psychologist, Mihai Chisek Mihai, who had a thesis. He said, high performers in these different fields, athletes and artists and scientists, inventors, they seem to go into these concentrated states where they do the thing that makes them famous, the thing that moves the world, and they describe it in very similar ways. What's up with that? Right? So, like Prometheus, he wanted to go up to Mount Olympus, steal the fire, you know, bring it down to the rest of us. So he did his research. At the end of it, he wrote a book called Flow. And it is the seminal work on this. It is from whence we get the term flow state. And he said, This was the most beautiful metaphor I could find. Because we are all on the river paddling to move ourselves forward. But if you align your boat with the current, it magnifies your efforts. It carries you forward. You go further and you go faster. He said, That's what these people have found, the ways to do. And now we benefit not just from the amazing work that he did to identify this and name it. But you know, you have really smart people in the past 20, 30 years who have done research on specific areas. What kind of music helps you get into flow? How do you block distractions? You know, what kind of work, like Cal Newport writing about deep work, you know, Stephen Potler and you know Near writing about triggers, internal and external triggers and these things. So we're lucky that we stand on the shoulders of giants who are standing on the shoulders of a giant, and we can benefit from that. And as you know, the company I've created is an app to help you get into a flow state or help your team get into flow states because it's a powerful thing when you realize I did my work faster, I did it at a higher quality, and I feel energized as opposed to drained. So to wrap up this thought on flow states for everyone, what Mihai wrote is he said, there are some characteristics of this flow state. He said, Seems like everyone loses track of time. You're not staring at the clock, right? You don't get distracted. You're really immersed in the thing that you're doing. He said, There are some conditions preceded that seem to make this possible. Everyone who's doing it believes what they're doing is meaningful. You know, no one gets into a flow state sweeping the trash or, you know, stapling papers. In this country, it's like Michael Jordan has this famous quote where he says, When I'm in the zone, it's just me and the ball. There are no distractions. The spectators don't matter, the scoreboard doesn't matter. You know, even the defenders don't matter. The whole world comes down to if I can control this ball to go where it needs to go, we win. Picasso had a great quote that I always mangle about. Oh, I was up all night. I forgot to go to the bathroom. I didn't eat, but hey, I made progress on Guernica. Do you like it? You know, it's like kind of amazing. So Mihai said, it seems like people lose track of time. They believe what they're doing is meaningful. He said, It only happens when they have skills that apply. You know, so it's not Michael Jordan trying to paint. It's not, you know, Picasso trying to play basketball. He said, you have to be challenged to use that same example. It's Michael Jordan playing in the professional basketball league, right? It's Picasso standing back from this massive canvas trying to recreate the horrors of war in paint. It's challenging to do something like that. So he said, there are all of these conditions that you can create. And that's what these people do when they go and do the things that make them famous. Where years, decades, centuries later, we're talking about how this one person stood out and what they created. And he said, that is available, whether you are an individual contributor, or, and this may be interesting for your audience, if you're a leader of a team and you want to create the conditions where your team does great things. So that's why I'm super passionate about those states. It's kind of an amazing way to think about things.

SPEAKER_00: 47:04

I absolutely love it. However, I want to highlight that we have to be very mindful about what we want to create in those states because that's a big deal. And we have to work on our mindset and our way of approaching that power conscious in a way which can be really, really positive and beneficial. Otherwise, it might be a dangerous game.

SPEAKER_01: 47:33

This is very true.

SPEAKER_00: 47:35

Steven, when in the flow, how can leaders simplify their decision-making process based on those states to drive clarity, speed, and impact?

SPEAKER_02: 47:45

So one of the qualities of flow states is that you need some time to drop into a flow state. That highly concentrated state, research shows you need 15 to 23 minutes. You don't just sit down and say, I'm in flow, I'm magical, you know. So you need time to let your brain fall into that state. So as a leader, you need to recognize you're not going to get this kind of deep, impressive workout of people. If every hour on the hour, there's a Zoom meeting, there's a Teams meeting, you know, there's something like that. And then in between, there's nine minutes. Those nine minutes will be used for returning email or Slack messages or Teams messages, right? That you're not going to do amazing things. So one of the things you can do as a leader is say, hey, if I have ICs on my team that need to do deep work, I need to allow for that time to be a block. Now, I'll tell you, in my company, we block out 9 to 11 a.m. in the morning. We have a rule. Don't set Zooms with each other. Don't expect client meetings, don't slack each other. Just in that time, do the thing that moves the team forward. And that is one of the simplest things. Just acknowledging flow requires time to get in. And if you get interrupted, it takes another 15 to 23 minutes to get back into flow. So you have to treat that time as sacred.

SPEAKER_00: 49:10

Exactly. That's a good point to pay attention to. In film productions, stamina and precision are critical. In boardrooms and in leadership, overall, it's often about mental energy and emotional presence. What secrets can leaders apply to manage energy and impact theirs and their teams for sustained performance?

SPEAKER_02: 49:32

I'll give you one uh very clear thing, which is there's a concept of chronotype, which is that there are times of day you're more adept at doing certain kinds of things. And I'll tell you the first time I saw this in real life was there's a screenwriter named Ron Bass, who's an attorney who became a screenwriter, right? He's written Rain Man, My Best Friend's Wedding, all these movies in the 80s and 90s. And he would not talk to his family in the morning. He said, I'm not the dad who's going to be like, who wants pancakes? You know, did you do your homework? Do you need to ride to school? He said, I can't do that because when I start talking with you, even his wife, after that time, I can't hear my characters' voices in my head. And that's where I get paid, you know, a million, two million dollars of script for is I write these characters that Tom Cruise and Julian Roberts and Justin Hoffman want to play. So his family, of course, was like, Dad, go make$2 million. Like we can make our own pancakes, or okay, you know. But it was interesting in that he said in the afternoon, I can absolutely do collaborative work. If I need to do studio notes, do rewrites for an actor, have collaborative meetings with other writers. He's like, that's my time for that. So he was very aware of his chronotype, which is here are the periods of time I can do certain things. So you, as a leader, if you decide to take advantage of this to say, how do I leverage this to do great things on my team? The first consideration is chronotype, is you need to understand with the people on your team. At what time of day do you do things? For example, if you schedule a flow time, let's say from 2 to 4 p.m., it might be the lowest brain energy time of your team, and they're practically napping after having too many carbohydrates at line. So that's not going to work. So you need to figure out the chronotype in order to establish a time block.

SPEAKER_00: 51:24

This is amazing. And, you know, it is important as well for us not only to learn new things and move forward, but also to create the space for this new wisdom. So, what is one thing that you believe leaders must unlearn if they want to create the best possible workplace corresponding to the AI disruption trends?

SPEAKER_02: 51:48

Too many opportunistic hires. You know, I think that hiring is the fundamental thing about putting together a team. There are a lot of techniques you can use when you have a team, but assembling the right people, there are too many times that you get attracted to, oh, well, this is such a great engineer. Oh, my goodness, this is a great designer. Oh, I need this writer, this copyrighted. And if you don't understand whether they are engaged in your mission and they're value aligned with how you treat each other and people, you may get the best engineer, but you still have that, you know, Tuesday at three o'clock where you're like, I need a micromanage. If you have that feeling, it means you didn't hire well. And it usually is because there's some opportunistic thing of like, oh my goodness, this amazing person is available. And it may not be the amazing person for you. They may just be amazing at something. You need to find the one that's amazing for you.

SPEAKER_00: 52:39

This is so profound, Stephen. If you could share one powerful piece of advice, one lasting secret to elevate leadership capabilities, what would that be?

SPEAKER_02: 52:51

Well, I actually I would go back to what we talked about a few minutes ago, which is I think if you view your leadership as enabling your team to do the great thing of which they're capable, like looking at each IC and saying, what is it that they're going to do in this world that is great? You're going to get greatness. And if you just enforce your will upon them, it's a roll of the dice whether they're able to perform that way. So uh that's when I would be my number one bit of advice is view leadership as how you get greatness out of your team.

SPEAKER_00: 53:27

This is amazing, and I'm so grateful for having you today in this studio. It's for fun hearing your wisdom and getting so close to all your experiences. Thank you so much for being here with us today, Steven. Truly appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02: 53:47

Thank you for inviting me, and thank you to everyone who is still listening.

SPEAKER_00: 53:51

Thank you for joining us on Digital Transformation and AI for humans. I am Amy, and it was enriching to share this time with you. Remember, the core of any transformation lies in our human nature, how we think, feel, and connect with others. It is about enhancing our emotional intelligence, embracing a winning mindset, and leading with empathy and insight. Subscribe and stay tuned for more episodes where we uncover the latest trends in digital business and explore the human side of technology and leadership. If this conversation resonated with you and you are a visionary leader, business owner, or investor ready to shape what's next, consider joining the AI Game Changers Club. You will find more information in the description. Until next time, keep nurturing your mind, fostering your connections, and leading with heart.