Atif Rafiq - Executive Leader, CEO Advisor, Keynote Speaker & Author | How To Make Decisions That Matter

In this book there are 13 different superpowers. What are superpowers? First is the idea of upstream work, first downstream, is broken down into three phases. They, my guest, is Autif Rafik. Over an impressive 25-year career, he has left an indelible mark on Silicon Valley in the Fortune 500. He is the man behind the groundbreaking system for problem solving that has become a game changer in the industry. How have you been so effective in so many different industries? Because that is incredibly impressive. How do you basically excel? It's very much tied to this idea of innovating into the unknown, where I'm comfortable with the unknowns, I'm hungry for inputs. And so I think that just ports itself very well to problem solving. What does an effective, innovative, process-oriented company look like? Welcome to Success Story. I'm your host, Scott Clary. Success Story is part of the Hub Spot Podcast Network. Quick question before we get started. 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Today my guest is Autif Refique. Over an impressive 25-year career, he has left an indelible mark on Silicon Valley in the Fortune 500. He is the man behind the groundbreaking system for problem solving that has become a game changer in the industry, propelling his career to incredible heights and granting him unprecedented success. As a digital pioneer, he has worked with some of the most innovative companies in the world, including Amazon, whereas expertise in strategic thinking and creative solutions made waves. His keen sense of innovation led him to become the first ever chief digital officer in the history of the Fortune 500, making a significant impact at McDonald's, but he didn't stop there. His relentless pursuit of excellence took him to top positions at other notable companies such as Volvo and MGM Resorts, where he continued to revolutionize the way we approach problem solving in the digital age. I would point to a letter I wrote. It's a snail mail letter that I sent to the CEO of America online AOL. Some of your audience may never remember how meaningful a company that was for the internet and getting the consumer internet going, but I was 23 years old. I was working at a bank in New York and I wrote a letter I mailed it. I put a post a stamp on it. I sent it to the CEO of the company and I said, look, this internet thing sounds really meaningful and interesting. Is there anything I can do in your organization? This was in 1996 and he actually not only opened the letter he gave it to another executive and they called me back. So I got a response to a cold outreach. I started working at the company and then I sort of got hooked on the internet and digital businesses and that's been the red thread in my career for about 25 years. So that is really the thing that set it off. You've worked with, you've worked with some of the largest companies in the world. I mean, some people who are listening to this may not know AOL, but if you think about if you think about the internet in 1996 and then all the different companies that you've worked with helped transform, helped navigate, what are some of the things that you've seen change over time in terms of digital disruption and what are the things that you've seen stay the same? Well, I mean, typically in the tech industry you have a charismatic visionary founder who gets the thing off the ground and sometimes they strike oil and their invention is so material and technology lends itself to one very dominant player in a space and that can give a company lights for a long time. That can be 10 years where if they're a well-managed company, let's say Google, it can be around 20, 25 years later and still thriving. But at some point you get quote unquote professional managers into the mix and then the companies that survive are those that actually have put some time and thinking around what is their system if that makes sense. So it's not just about well, we're the bad ass, we own the space, we got a lot of profit, let's just hire the best people and let them do their thing. I think that error has actually just come to an end in Silicon Valley here in the last couple of months where people are saying, well, we need to get more out of the talent. And so the company that I would point to, like Amazon for example, which has been from the beginning very conscious about the culture it's building, the management system. So whatever space you look at whether it's grocery, pharmaceutical books, digital media that you have a common way of tackling this new space, they've been able to scale that culture of invention and culture. And now they can throw thousands of people at it and generally they come out on the winning end of things. So that is one thing I've observed being in tech for a long time is you can be on the roller coaster but if you want sustain, you want to be around for a while, you want to be an enduring company, have to invest in the culture and sort of the system of how things get done. So you feel that there have been examples and we don't have to name names or not name names up to you but you feel that and I am fully in agreement. There are companies that have perhaps not focused on the long term because things were so good and money was so cheap and companies grew that weren't even profitable, let alone scalable. Well in the previous era I spent some time at Yahoo and I almost wrote a book about Yahoo because quite frankly it was so dysfunctional and you know it was a bit frustrating and really the backstory there is again two founders they really came up with a great invention but there wasn't enough time spent on how are things going to get done in this organization you know are we an engineering led culture or a product led culture or a sales led culture you know different technology companies have these different emphasis and as a result it was a lot of sort of chaos if you will but putting aside you know Yahoo and the turmoil that they went through in the previous decade you know it can be something where you're successful and you scale and you continue to have a culture of invention that's very effective and you know I point to to Amazon just because you know the founder that doesn't have to be in the room for for them to kind of solve problems in a similar way and and the book I've just written the decision sprint is trying to offer that if you will do companies of all kinds but certainly you know younger companies maybe they're getting a growth a growth wave and they want to be conscious of well okay we're not going to be in the room for every big decision how do we begin to you know teach our organization the best way to think about problem solving so that whatever we work on you know we can we can we can be effective at it and and decision sprint that that is more or less the playbook for when you are disruptive fast-moving company that's the playbook for building systems and processes that will eventually allow you to to to become the next Amazon to not that that's more or less what this book is meant to accomplish correct well yeah it's very focused on saying that look you know I cannot introduce the big invention made that's up to the entrepreneur but if that person or team or organization wants to build something that's sustained and that is enduring right and continue to to innovate at a rapid clip then they need to think about you know what is was the system that they're going to put in place so decision sprint specifically is about helping teams make the leap from a promising idea to action and the hardest part of that is always wrestling with the unknowns and unknowns and making them actionable is something which can be done but it's really not something that's been elaborated on in sort of other business schools or sort of in your management kind of the books that kind of thing but unknowns are really the heart of everything once you have a good idea because in the beginning you have always have a lot more questions than answers and how do you begin to flip the script where you begin to have more more confidence in your answers and your questions more confidence in the in the in the answers so that you can really drive decision making in the organization if if you don't do that well once the company reaches a certain scale and it's cross functional and you have teams with you know different corners of the organization involved in in the innovation you know you can get a lot of symptoms around you know misalignment and bureaucracy and fits and starts and projects and of course you know we don't want that I want to I want to really lay this out clearly and almost start with the end in mind and then we can reverse engineer some of the steps that you you outline and the book and the process and through your career as well and your experience but I want to start with the end in mind and and you mentioned Amazon which is a great you but everyone's okay great Amazon that's fine but what does that mean for me so what are the what are the KPIs what is an effective not digital transformation it could be digital transformation what is an effective I guess innovative process oriented company look like what are the KPIs that are like we've done this properly we've set ourselves up we are sustainable we can maintain for the future we've sort of checked all the boxes what does that end result it's basically that you know you have non-decision decisions that's what I refer to these at because I've been in I've had these happy cases happen where you know it's really clear to everyone in the room even though they might be sitting in a different quarter of the company or a different function of the company what is the path forward and we're really just thinking to ourselves how quickly can we move on to execution now that is much easier said than done and a lot of people in the audience will say wow I wish my organization worked like that because we spend weeks and months trying to convince each other to go down this fork in the road versus this other option so to speak the way to make it go well is to really spend the time upstream and that's something I put emphasis on in my book and upstream is is a body of work that people recognize they spend weeks and months on it sort of wrestling with the unknowns raising the right questions trying to get the bottom of those questions after they do the fact finding trying to draw the right conclusions from from from their kind of their deep diving and then putting recommendations together to get you know people who make decisions in a position to say okay that makes sense let's move forward um this is something you can have a methodology around it's not something you need to leave to chance or personalities if you leave it the chance or personalities you know your your hip-ray will go down in terms of the quality of being able to drive good ideas into action and that's really why I've put methodology as an emphasis in terms of what will separate you know the next wave of companies from from the rest of the pack it's not just their core dimension or jury commerce or you know something in social it's actually the the way the how how the collaboration works and the company to problem solve and tackle new ideas let's chat about something that's a 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somebody thinks say somebody looks at this and they're like and we're going to talk about some of these superpowers we're going to talk about this framework in a second but when somebody thinks about superpowers what does that mean for them is that these are like the attributes or the skill sets or the soft skills hard skills what are superpowers but then also that framework I want to go deeper into that framework as well great so high level concepts are basically first is the idea of upstream work first downstream downstream everybody understands yeah that's where we have the decision point we have the decisions and it's like let's go let's make a project plan and let's execute but I think we can all relate to the fact that we spend weeks and months trying to get to the decision point and getting our organization to say yes and so this upstream part you know is broken down into three phases exploration alignment and decision making so let's take them one by one okay so exploration is a concerted effort to surface the really important considerations especially the unknowns and get to the bottom of them and you do this by starting with questions questions are very democratic they're very inclusive you can give four people from a company they have different roles different jobs and you put an idea in the center of the table and the first thing that comes up will be all kinds of really interesting questions to me that's gold that's not skepticism and you know that is actually high quality input to say hmm what are the unknowns around this what seems to be a promising idea you want to do a good job of creating space for that and you want to collect those questions before you raise ahead to anything else like having a judgment or an opinion or yeah trying to align on what to actually do so exploration creates space for getting all the right questions on the table and trying to get to the bottom of them that's phase one the second phase is using the exploration to draw conclusions if you're standing on high quality information and you said okay there was a bunch of things so we had questions around you know here's sort of the discovery that we did and now we're in a position and say well what conclusions would we draw from this you know what what makes sense then you look at those conclusions and you do try and bring people together to say do we have alignment and generally you'll find that people say well based on this fact base we've you know this is these are some conclusions that we draw and usually that's pretty layered it's not just oh this is a good idea or a bad idea it's many things it's yeah we should do this idea but we should also keep in mind x and y and so people you know it's really important to spend time say okay what do what do you see in your eyes and do we see the same thing when once you're complete with that that's when you're ready to drive action and you say well based on these conclusions what what actions do we need to commit to and that's where you usually are parting with dollars and resources you know you're walking through one way doors sometimes right you're saying no to two other ideas and yes to this one that is the time for action so in the book I break this down it further into 13 workflows where you could you know sort of set these up in your teamwork and basically create a path from you know idea promising idea to the decision point and hopefully that improves the company's ability to say yes to the right things and no to the things that deserve a note so ultimately at its core not not to oversimplify the complexity baddest core for people that are are just wrapping their mind around this concept it's it's a decision making process with a built-in feedback loop and that can be executed so my actual my question is that is that correct is that like a good summary of it is that oversimplifying significantly if it is I apologize because nobody some people some people have knock on into this level of of depth when it comes to decision making yet and I mean you're talking to a range of individuals and some people are just starting to make these big decisions for their business are trying to figure out okay at what point do I start incorporating this is this something that I I work with a small vendor this is a this is something I should incorporate I should put you know put an exploration phase out to the business to my co-founders should talk to them or is this very specific useful for very certain larger decisions that move the business forward it definitely applies to companies of all kinds although you know you know if you're on the smaller end you know five people are ten people probably some of this can be done you know very informally through conversation but once you start to get if you will functions in a company you know that's or any sense that there are any silos then then you need something otherwise you're leaving it to chance and personality the the good way to summarize this is basically it's a method which promotes exploration promotes starting with questions and suspending judgment on what to do because the human mind as you know there've been some neuroscientists who written about and I talked about this in my early chapter around the way the brain works there's system one and system two and system one is for a very quick decision making you're in the far est and the tigers there do you defend yourself for run kind of thing and there's system two which is much more about thinking twice about something um and which allows you to see a little bit more of the picture and the kinds of work we do in companies especially around innovation is much more system two oriented that part of the brain where you need to think twice about it and question it in order to see more of the inputs now human nature and especially in companies you know depending upon the personalities and the culture of the company you can be using system one but you need to be using you have a system two problem yeah that's a great common occurrence in companies yeah right because people might think oh my job is to know exactly what the right thing to do is at all times but that's actually not the case the the better way to look at leadership is to know how to ask the right questions or get the right questions on the table and and another another thing that I'm thinking people would have a big big concern with not in terms of the process but in terms of their own organization is you mentioned something you mentioned this is great to solve for this type of thinking system one system two thinking but also silos so silos pop up in organizations I know that this is not directly related to to decision sprints but it's probably something you've experienced do you have any tips for stopping silos from forming as much as possible is this a process that actually improves not only the decision making but by constantly deploying this process you almost improve the the structure of the organization because it breaks down silos before they would even start if done properly as one of my passionaries to be honest we just got because I think it's one of the most baffling things in companies is the you know not initiating with another part of the organization that has some relevant input so the way I solve for that and this is actually part of the first workflow in the decision spring is grouping people around a common challenge so to look at you know a problem you're trying to solve in a company or a new idea and saying what competencies do we need to gather around this specific idea this specific problem that we're trying to solve when you start with that from the get go you automatically melt away the silos because the opposite is I think more common which is okay who's point on this and the company and it could be a person or some function and there's no problem with that if they then say well we're going to do a much better job of problem solving if we get the right inputs around you know what this you know what the picture is and what competencies do we have in this organization that we can group around this common challenge so to me that's the mindset that we need to take and then you stop thinking about you know structures and layers and other things like that and you just start thinking about you know what is for example what it has all will call a two pizza team you know not huge but enough to feed the team with two pizza pies right yeah there's five or six or seven or and that's it however you are yeah but that's what you get you know and that's really wise because you know it's not one or two parts of corners of a company especially on a large company that can really solve a problem you know holistically right so thinking about like being hungry for input why don't we get the right inputs to really solve this problem that will melt away silos and another another point on that because inputs are very important but the larger the even smaller organizations but the larger the organization you're going to have endless amounts of questions that can be put through this process so how do you prioritize the the urgent and important it's definitely a matter of relevance so you're right where I mean interestingly if you ask everybody and I have a methodology in the book where I actually suggest people do this independently so let's say you have this six person team and you want to get all the right questions to me that's getting to first base when you're trying to tackle a new idea if you ask them to independently you know sit down right up their questions send them in to one person you will find them a lot of common themes so generally you know there's you can group them together and do the pattern matching and by trying to get independent input you get to see like a little bit of the heat map of where is the headspace of the team where are really the the questions that matter most so I think what I would suggest is a little bit of of that methodology where you kind of try and promote independent thinking so you can get wide enough diversion thinking but then bring them together you'll see you'll see the patterns and I think you'll be on manageable list interesting so so when you when you've run this exercise even though you have so many different business units so many different personalities again you start to see the common threats and I'm assuming that would mean you'd actually start to see the common threads in in the in the output as well so when when a question goes through this process you start to see the common threads in the actual answers that you're getting exactly yeah well well it's the beauty of it right is that because behind everybody's question is sort of some uh consideration like a risk or fear or upside or you know is there a business case you know and so if you and the questions are very neutral because you know you're going to get people to if you will sort of agree that you've canvas the problem right through the questions and what happens is that people begin to set develop a lot of trust in the problem solving effort because they say well I'm good if we do a good job this this set of questions I'm pretty confident that we'll be drawing the right conclusions and therefore executing the right decision so you do what I call upstream is you bring that all the way up there and it gets to be much less contentious where where people because it's neutral right there's no there's no decisions yet so I think that's a really important part of this methodology you bring it to a neutral point which questions to me are very about so in that role okay so if you're like me the last time you cared about learning another language and took it seriously was in some class in high school and there's no way you remember anything about that language for me it was French for a lot of people here with probably Spanish but listen there is a solution if you're going 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examples of companies that are not operating efficiently that do not make decisions with this level of of detail and scrutiny and I think that that's it's it's wild to me that that you can grow to the size that you can grow but like you referenced before maybe the time of growing without a smart decision making is come to an end so when you look at some of these companies I mean you have all these different case studies can you can you tell over a story or case study that makes it very tactical like the input the output a company going through this process what the end result was to really frame it because it sounds amazing in theory but then you you see somebody like McDonald's using your like yeah definitely like I'll I'll I'll adopt the strategy that McDonald's is using it seems to be working for them so well there are many examples and but I'll use one where I was part of the company excuse me but that's not necessarily part of the initiative and I think that's useful because well it works for anything that just you know things that I was personally responsible for so in this example we think about Volvo cars and you know people think of Volvo and really two ways one is of course a 90-year heritage of safety but also sustainability is a very big pillar for the company and they're taking a very serious with everything in the product so one idea the company has evaluated is the idea of vegan leather and for those who are enough familiar you know there's a lot of emissions that come from cows so if you depend on less on cows for leather and use vegan materials you could be you know contributing to reducing emissions you know so that's really that's really interesting for the company now it's one thing to have a meeting and say wow what about vegan leather and everyone get excited it's another thing to look into the reality of that and in order to look at the reality you know you have questions around the feasibility right because you want to know if you can get enough materials to meet your volumes because Volvo's not a small company right there a lot of Volvo sold across the world every year so can you get enough material supply traceability right I mean there's no sense in saying you're doing something good for the world or the environment if you can't verify that it's actually sustainable materials right there's cost factors I mean is there you know enough of these type of they're essentially plant based materials available and what does that mean in terms of cost and can that cost be are people willing to pay a premium for it or do they look at kind of old-fashioned leather as sort of the premium thing right so you need to think through you know the business aspects of these so there are questions of all kinds here at the least of which is the customer right and you know customer preferences and is this something that's a niche thing you know you're a cool millennial and that you get a bite on it or is this for you know the entire demographic that is interested in Volvo so very multifaceted problems with a lot of questions in the beginning and as you begin to you know get the right questions on the table kind of grouped them by subject matter you make these unknowns actionable and that's really what I'm offering here you know with the methodology is you get the right question list you make it actionable you develop for example FAQs which is you know could be a three-page document with the right questions and answers um and then you have you know a meeting where you say well based on this you know the working team develops some recommendations um and they try to create you know that connection between their their exploration and the recommendations that they make well now they're ready to meet with maybe the sponsors of this initiative and and put the high quality information on the table to say okay the right answer is is X for example um let's take our newest uh people will love it it's very interesting uh let's take our newest car line uh the sleekest looking car for the right demographic and let's introduce it and premiere it in this vehicle line and get some experience with it so that's some example of how you can go from a promising idea begin to tackle and search the harder harder questions here serve you know by servicing the unknowns and get you know recommendations on the table for people to decide on I love that um and and another another thing that I wanted to go into so we've we've alluded to these these 13 uh these 13 items that are are very useful to facilitate this process and you know you again you go you'll go check them in the book but we've we've sort of covered some of them already we have to cover them we go through this process but are there some that are some of these attributes I don't know what you want to call them I call them superpowers call them attributes call them whatever you like these 13 identifiers that are not uh not so obvious in facilitating this process are a little bit outside establishing decisions crafting workflows that makes sense socializing knowledge within the organization that also makes a little bit of sense as well but are there some that maybe are not so obvious probably the the most um uh the step people skip most frequently is sourcing input and viewing that as a deliberate step in the process so we all do brainstorms right we say okay well well great news we've been charged with looking at this promising new idea this new product opportunity etc and then we hold a brainstorm um and this brainstorm can waver and vacillate between you know trying to uncover some of the important questions and then trying conclusions based on that going down a rabbit hole on one or two important considerations uh maybe someone having a pretty strong opinion on what the right uh way forward is um etc etc and then you're kind of uh you kind of uh have a middling outcome of this brainstorm where you like okay we kind of push the ball a little bit but we're not really clear on where we actually stand in terms of of tackling this so um making um you know the sourcing process I've really rarely seen companies that say where are where you add with this idea well we are currently sourcing input well what in the world does that mean that means you know we wrote down the problem statement we said these are the four or five main competencies or links um you know parts of the company that need to be involved in you know problem solving here uh so that's on the team formation side and we're sourcing input we're getting people to ideally independently say these are the unknowns uh and we're making a list of those and that's all we're doing is gonna take us four days or five days but after four or five days we're gonna have a really good question list organized by subject matter we're gonna share with our sponsor or someone senior and say hmm any blind spots anything we're missing because we're gonna spend the next couple of weeks trying to get through the bottom of this and that in and of itself is really not just good hygiene in executing or going about an initiative but the fruits of it show up all the way through and they help you avoid surprises is there and and I want to I want to actually um ask about a little bit of digital disruption um because it was interesting you know like when when your agent reached out uh I think there was actually a note about incorporating chat GPT and AI into some of the stuff you speak about and I thought that was fascinating because um this seems like a process like a process improvement and and this can be great for companies but there is a digital disruption there is the mindset of if if you're improving process and SOPs within an organization there's other things that can be added on and other things your company should be looking at as just like a forward looking company it seems like a company that focuses on and process improvement at this degree is also looking at other things they can incorporate and include to literally make their company better so you work with a ton of companies I mean you you've worked with companies that have that have innovated and disrupted um and have sort of stayed ahead even though they're older organizations and I want to I want to talk about that a little bit but I don't want to move off I don't want to move off um like the book and the content in that just yet so I would say is there anything that I didn't ask about any like any questions any main points and I'll get don't worry about like the the you know the links and everything that I'll go in the show notes but is there anything that like you wanted to bring out there would be really useful from the book that I didn't ask you about that would help somebody that's building a business right now well um it's hard for me not to buy it on the AI piece because the last couple of champions of this sprint are on that so if you don't mind that oh that's how okay so explain to me how okay so I don't understand how it incorporates okay so explain to me how it incorporates so how does the last few chapters of a process sprint incorporate AI I didn't realize that was included in this okay well you know a question answer system is really very complimentary to chat GB2 so let's take an example um you know let's let's imagine a scenario where you're a CEO of a company you you ask somebody or a group of people to go look into a new idea let's make it up a loyalty program two weeks later you had a meeting they came back to put a document on the table or PowerPoint you know however they're gonna handle it and then in the middle the CEO also was doing an AI based chat and kind of got uh leveled up on loyalty programs right um now you're in the meeting you're responsible for this idea and you know it wouldn't be ideal it wouldn't build trust if the AI reveals important factors considerations or questions that the team had integrated into their work right and this is the world we live in because the um you know the AI has four billion web pages with all the existing human knowledge that's public around loyalty programs available and it can parse it and synthesize it and put it back in natural language and so you're going to have a situation it will happen if it hasn't happened already where the CEO will say well I asked chat GBT and it thought we should also be thinking about acts how did you think about that in your proposal and as a team you don't want to be in that position so my concept here is we need to avoid weaponizing AI against employees and we need to have AI enable employees so a better outcome here or way for this you know script to unfold is for the team itself to have use chat GBT to if you will you know do that deeper research and identify these important matters and considerations that are part of fingernail you know the pros and cons of doing a loyalty program right now the way that relates to decision sprint is well decision sprint is based on natural language questions and answers right so you can definitely for example take the answer you develop in the decision sprint and see if chat GBT gives you something different maybe in raises a consideration that's a blind spot I call that a suggestion if you want to take a positive constructive view on it so you use chat GBT to make suggestions to improve the quality of your work let's say questions and answers then you're on higher ground I call this bar raising so there's constructive ways to look at knowledge work and how we use AI to you know make a knowledge work even a knowledge worker even better with their work product as opposed to things like weaponizing it against people to say hey you know the chat was better than you are which is I want to talk about the Kelly Roadshow I do not take my podcast recommendations lightly but I have truly admired Kelly's journey from the get-go she was a fresh employee at a Fortune 500 received seven promotions in eight years all this while building a company that blossomed into an eight figure empire today she's a best-selling author top-ranked podcaster the proud owner and co-owner of six thriving companies and let's not forget she's an ink 500 awardee proving that growth isn't just a goal it is a lifestyle now her podcast the Kelly Roadshow dies deep into business growth strategies specifically targeted for those hitting these six and seven figure mark but it's not all business she also explores the habits mindset and disciplines of the world's most successful people it's a podcast it's perfect whether you're just getting started or you're trying to up level your success game but here's a deal kicker for me she is a super mom and a wife she embodies the truth that you don't have to sacrifice your home life for success she believes and shows that life-changing wealth wild success a happy marriage and fulfilling home can coexist that is goal so tune in to the Kelly Roadshow on Apple Spotify wherever get your podcast trust me it's time well invested it makes a ton of sense I love that and I think that so anybody again anybody who is looking to to improve their business and to grow their business I think these are all tool sets that they should be willing to adopt and it would be unfortunate it would be kindly very unfortunate if a CEO is weaponizing chat GPT against their employees I mean that's a toxic situation I mean even pre-chat GPT if a CEO spoke to a board member and the board member had an idea that an entry level knowledge worker didn't have and then the CEO is weaponizing that information that would also be a toxic environment so I think that would all try and stay away from those CEOs that's sort of like a universal lesson but yes I do agree I think that chat GPT AI tools are just going to augment and I think it's really it's really important to learn how to use them to it's going to affect every business unit and it's really about trust right because you know it's it would be very short-sighted to say hey you know I can replace you with the chat it's yeah true trust me but you know it's really about yeah I'm not creating this culture here because and so we need to be able to integrate you know things like you know chat base AI into the problem solving effort and I think decisions for Ann is really perfectly paired with that because you know it's not a prototype right it's not metrics report that comes you know for the data science team it's it's words and it's basically it's problem solving through questions and answers and that that obviously fits very nicely when I wrote this a year ago I couldn't have scripted how the world was unfolded it's working it's listen it's it's working very well but but the process and the and the search for better information and for better questions to have better answers I mean that's that's it's timeless right this is always a good thing for a business to adopt so I guess but the question still stands that I asked before is there something that I didn't I wasn't smart enough to ask about this that we didn't go into that would be valuable so now I understand how the AI component plays into it but are are there any other points that you really wanted to to leave the audience with well I think I mean my passion is basically my passion previously for a long time has always been what are we making in the organization we're in right like what is the killer product or idea or business model for the space that we're in how do we rethink it and reshape our industry and lead the pack and along the way I realized this eureka moment where it's actually the machine inside the company you know the how how things how we collaborate how we problem solve how we innovate that connect that is the thing in and of itself so there's the what and the how you know I've been in resorts and burgers and cars and books and so you can always think about well what's the next iteration of that at the same time you know whatever the the space or industry you know how the machine works internally to really get the collective intelligence out of the organization that is sort of my passionate and I'm sort of advising leaders to spend you know just as much time on the how the machine works versus versus the what and just like more on this is just an off the cuff personal question how have you been so effective in so many different industries because that is incredibly impressive so when you go from industry to industry to industry just as a professional I'm just curious how do you basically excel in all these different industries without the experience well I think it's very much tied to this idea of innovating into the unknown where I'm comfortable with the unknowns and I'm a question or personality and I just always suspend judgment even if I'm very experienced and I made and know the answer but I'm hungry for inputs and so I think that just ports itself very well to problem solving so you know if a company is sort of not very ambitious and they want to grow three four percent a year and do the same old thing and take out some costs you know that's probably not a good fit for me but if they need to ignite some growth you know figure out how you know to create some more more engines get those off the ground have them scale really become kind of a platform for the next decade or two you know that's that's new territory and that's sort of where I excel so I'm a little bit advantage by you know yeah I was gonna say getting good at that to be honest with you through repetition you know well it sounds like the the mindset that you take when you when you enter a new org is very similar to this decision sprint like it it's almost like this plays at a at a company level but it's almost like a can play out at a very personal level when you're trying to upskill and yourself in a new uncomfortable environment that's that's the way I see it yeah well for sure you know like for example I have a newsletter called rewire on LinkedIn and the tagline is method and meditation and maybe people don't understand where I'm coming from there but you know method everybody understands you know some S.O.P some process you want to improve workflow okay this all great business jargon but meditation is what you're talking about Scott which is mindset so if you come in you say um you know I am just sort of here to help us put the puzzle together tell me what the pieces are you know what piece do you see and what piece do you see it doesn't mean I don't see pieces as well but if I create that sort of environment and that space for all the right inputs to just flood in right and then we're comfortable spending time saying how do we solve this puzzle we're just we're just going to do a much better job and that's a different view on leadership than maybe people are used to I have a story in my book around not coming to McDonald's we're you know being in a senior position people may expect me to tell them what to do or have the answer we're share the answer from the beginning but it's not my it's not the way I operate it's not my it's not the mode in which I work even if I have a strong inclination I need to make sure we get enough input because that's why we have the people right yeah and and then we can kind of steer it and by the way when you see where people are coming from then they're also more invested they're more bought in it clicks in their head it's much more powerful you don't have to be in the room then every time it'll kind of cascade in a better way I love that okay if people want to connect with you if they want to go get the book where are they going to go where do you want to send them well I have a newsletter called rewire on LinkedIn and it's one of like this most popular newsletter so you can subscribe to that my book is available on my website decision sprint.com and you can get a free preview or you can buy the book and where you can be in touch so that's those are best ways to be in touch amazing okay and I ask this question of everyone before we close it out you've had an incredible career written a book worked with multiple brand you know household name companies at this point in your career what does success mean to you a success means scaling impacts so I mean I get a lot of gratification if you know your sort of your average sort of project manager in the company says you know wow this made the workplace better I also like to say that as we made work suck less you know you know it's like the workplace to me because the workplace it can be you know very frustrating right and navigating the things that the companies say they want to do and then getting them to the finish line it's just more complex than it needs to be so the part of my motivation providing this method is to reduce frustration you know make it more sort of flow state if you will flow state for more teams and more companies that to me creates a lot of personal satisfaction