John Hagel, Founder of Center For The Edge | Navigating The Journey Beyond Fear

Welcome to success story the most useful podcasts in the world. I'm your host Scott D. Clary the success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network the HubSpot podcast network has incredible podcasts like the martyck podcast hosted by Benjamin Shapiro each week the martyck podcast tells stories of world class marketers who use technology to create lasting success with their business and their careers if you like any of these topics you're gonna like the martyck podcast is changing advertising how to set up a CRM so you actually use it private equities take on digital transformation by big social is focused on newsletters if these are topics that resonate with you go check out the martyck podcast wherever you get your podcasts or you can also go listen at HubSpot.com slash podcast network today my guest is John Hagle John has been over 40 years in Silicon Valley he is an experienced management consultant entrepreneur speaker and author he is recently retired from Deloitte he found a new company beyond our edge that works with companies and people who are seeking to anticipate the future and achieve much greater impact he's also worked with McKinsey and co and Boston consulting group in addition to his new book he's also the author of seven other books he is widely published and quoted in major business outlets including the economists fortune Forbes business week financial times Wall Street Journal New York Times NBC and BBC so what do we speak about well let's let me provide some context so whether or not you're building a career raising a fair family running a business tending school uncertainty has been the name of the game for years especially in the past two years and the feeling is recent all time high with the COVID-19 pandemic obviously for the past year even the smartest savius toughest people have been feeling an enormous amount of pressure and often feel paralyzed by fear he speaks about the journey beyond fear moving past fear even in the worst possible circumstances so some of the strategies that he likes to deploy for people that he works with a high performing entrepreneurs individuals executives that he's going to teach over is creating the right personal narrative that can truly change the course of your life he speaks about something called the passion of the explorer so he says that people that have this passion are excited about the opportunity to achieve more in their chosen domain and he's basically teaches you how to live this passion of the explorer and how to build passion at any stage in your life young or old in any particular domain and it's not always by building your strengths he speaks about how to use communities to move forward to push through fear to push through these hurdles in your life groups of small people that are like minded they can support you he also and also how to find these groups who you should be associating with who should be in your inner circle he and lastly he speaks about what causes fear why do we feel fear and how does it impact us so much when we think we're bad ass we're tough we've got everything figured out why does fear seem to paralyze all of us especially when things are going great and we know that we should be good but something happens and we just get that imposter syndrome we get that doubt he's going to walk you through that so this is John Hagle cereal entrepreneur cereal management consultant cereal author just an incredibly experienced and tenured individual he is the intersection of entrepreneurship start up personal professional growth my origin if we go way back in time I grew up in a different country every year as a child so a global upbringing and at one at one level hugely exciting very stimulating at another level I had a dysfunctional family so I was my mother had big anger issues and I was subjected to rage attacks and my father was a very gentle soul and he retreated he wasn't there to defend me or protect me so I was isolated and grew up in fear that's part of my journey is starting with fear and in the early days one of my ways of dealing with the fear was to retreat to my bedroom and read science fiction stories novels and at the time science fiction was all about the credible opportunities things the wonderful future ahead so it was a way for me to at least balance the fear that was a sense of you know amazing things coming in the future so that was my start I was raised basically to believe that my needs did not matter that it was all about serving other people and that was really the driver for me for many decades was you know asking to help people in addressing whatever problems they had my my needs didn't really matter I also because my parents were very strong in terms of academic interests they I did my best to satisfy them from viewpoint of academic performance I did an undergraduate degree in African and Asian studies I then because I had not spent much time in Africa or Asia most of my childhood was in South America in Europe and then to round it out I did a graduate degree in modern Middle Eastern studies at Oxford University because that was one another part of the world I hadn't been to and then finally did a both a law degree and a business degree at Harvard so I was doing my best to impress my parents and please my parents with academic performance even though I actually hated school all the way through so that's a lot of school to hate school oh yeah for sure but then I ended up at a longer story but I ended up at Boston Consulting Group in Boston I was living in Boston at the time and spent a couple of years there but as in the summer in college I had had an opportunity to spend some time out in the San Francisco Bay area and I fell in love with the Bay Area and part of it was it was in the very early days of Silicon Valley but what attracted me was the sense of optimism out here the view that it was an incredible opportunity exponential opportunity in the world and so two years into BCG I came up with an idea to start a computer company and I figured what better place to start a computer company than in the Bay Area San Francisco Silicon Valley so I used that as my opportunity to move out here and I've been here ever since I've been here over 40 years now and I started a computer company even though I had never used a computer before much less study technology as a liberal arts guy but I managed to find some good tech people to work with me and we created a successful company turnkey computer systems for doctors and sold it to a larger company and then boy I got recruited into a company that I was going to work with. Some of you may remember Atari in the video game business I was a head of strategy for Atari and plot a battle to try to get Atari to shift its focus to the computer business not just video games but ended up helping to sell Atari to a different set of owners and then use that to go to McKinsey and company and spent 16 years with McKinsey as a partner I was a leader in their strategy practice I founded two started two practices while I was at McKinsey I helped open up their Silicon Valley office and I started writing books business books at McKinsey and they were quite successful and the back end this was 1993 I started their e-commerce practice this was what the internet was just beginning to get known but after 16 years at McKinsey I got attracted to another startup in the computer business and it was a head of strategy for that startup for two years and then long stories to what happened there but I ended up getting going off on my own and spent I think it was about five years just doing work on my own by that time I had a pretty big reputation and network of people that I could work as a consultant to I was still basically focused on other people's needs and after about five years doing that I got recruited by Deloitte to set up a new research center for them and it's what we ended up calling the center for the edge and then the charter there was to identify emerging business opportunities that should be on the CEO's agenda but are not and doing the research to persuade them to put it on their agenda so we're trying to stay one step ahead of the clients that the light was serving and then the journey continues I retired from Deloitte as a partner I was a partner there for 13 years and retired in August of last year and used that as an opportunity to finish this new book that you mentioned the journey beyond fear and now I'm wanting to start a whole new chapter of my life which is building a new center that will be what I call an activation center that will help people in their journey beyond fear, helping them to achieve more impact. So you don't stop, you don't stop. I love that as you go through your career you mentioned a few things but it seems like the theme is always helping other people, always helping other people even the practice of consulting by definition is like you're just helping you're helping other people but I don't hear a lot of fear in your career, in fact a lot of the moves you made were fearless almost. So what is the principles or the thought and the reason for you to write a book about fear? What does that mean? Well I actually had a huge amount of fear I mean the whole notion of helping others was my fear was that I had no need that my needs didn't matter and that if I didn't help others I would fail and so it helped me to be very successful as a consultant for sure and even as an entrepreneur I was focused on helping others with new innovations but it was the catalyst for this book was actually about I started the book about three years ago and as part of my work I was traveling around the world and what I was struck by was that everywhere I went the dominant emotion that I was encountering was fear at the highest levels of organizations at the lowest levels out in the communities and while I've come to believe that fear is very understandable I think there are reasons for fear I also think it's very limiting and ultimately very destructive and so that was the catalyst for me to say first of all I want people to recognize the fear that's going around the world that then motivating them to make this journey beyond fear and cultivating emotions that will really help them to achieve much more impact that's meaningful to them and can we properly define what living in a state of fear is for an executive or an entrepreneur or even somebody outside the realm of a professional environment because I feel like as you walk through this you're just saying that we constantly just live in a state of fear or expectation fear of deliverables fear of are we fulfilling what we're supposed to be fulfilling doing what we're supposed to be doing what is the status quo for fear and fear and a professional environment right now yeah I think there again many reasons for fear but as part of my research I've looked at the long term forces that are reshaping the global economy and society and I think the impact of those forces is to create mounting performance pressure on all of us I mean at one level we're facing intensifying competition on a global scale and it's both at the level of corporations but also at the level of individuals I mean more and more workers are now worried that their jobs are going to be taken by a robot or by artificial intelligence and they're competing for just to maintain their job so there's intensifying competition there's accelerating pace of change things that we thought we could count on are no longer there and then as if that weren't enough you've got because of all this connectivity we've created on a global scale we've got small events in a far away place in the world that cascade into extreme disruptive events you know there I mentioned pandemic I think it's just one example of the kinds of extreme events that we'll increasingly see in the world so when you combine all of that increasing competition accelerating change extreme disruptive events there's good reason and thank the sponsor of today's episode HubSpot HubSpot is the leading business CRM now creating a legacy business starts with investing in sustainable scalable tools HubSpot is the number one CRM for starting growing and scaling businesses with the HubSpot CRM you have a purpose-built solution that's tailored to your business and your business alone now I've used HubSpot for many years now but just this year the releasing some new features these are some of the ones that I'm definitely most excited about so first new feature is called business units so business units allow you to confidently manage contacts marketing and sales assets and settings across multiple brands which means clearer insights to empower whatever it is you're trying to do there's also new admin features like permissions templates and OKTA integration which makes it easier than ever to add, remove and edit users give them the proper permissions as needed and lastly a new HubSpot feature that's rolling out is called sandboxes so with sandboxes all admins have access to production like accounts allowing them to test iterate and experiment with new go-to-market strategies campaigns before they actually push them live this is a game changer because now you can actually see what works in this sandbox environment very similar to what a developer would do in a preprod or a testing environment if you want to learn all about HubSpot's latest features some of the new features I just spoke about you can customize your CRM platform as well as learn about all these new features and all the old legacy features as well at HubSpot.com and then by the way I'll just say that is it that weren't enough we have a news media that is largely feeding fear I challenged people and asked them when was the last time you saw a news story that was good news about something wonderful happening in the world no we're all focused on the latest catastrophe or disaster wherever it is in the world and it's like the sense the world's collapsing around us and then just to wrap it up also no no no it's all good this don't don't feel the need to rush through I actually was going to I was going to double down and just understand the process of even the research that you did for the book because I think that everything you're saying resonates all 100% I think everybody agrees with it but many people don't look any deeper than just this is the reality right so even like the finish up what you were just mentioning but also what's the what's the process of research for the book how did you actually start this sort of investigation? yeah so just the final note on the fear is I believe we increasingly live in political environments around the world where all the politicians and I don't hold one side or the other more or less guilty in this all sides are increasingly focused on what I call threat-based narratives it's all about the enemies coming to get us we need to mobilize now and resist what we're going to die and that feeds the fear again oh my god we're going to die we're under attack you know I'm afraid so as if the forces themselves weren't enough we've got the political environment the news environment that are just feeding this fear on a daily basis and I think it's again very understandable why more and more people are consumed by this fear in terms of the research I mean this was largely done when I was at the leading the center for the edge of Deloitte because our our perspective was that to really anticipate opportunities we had to understand the forces that were shaping the global economy and what the consequences of those forces are so that was what led us to expand our horizons I mean one of the things we find in business is increasingly businesses becoming more and more short term focused and in part that's fear that's a natural consequence of fear we don't have the time or willingness to look ahead we just want to focus on getting the job done at the moment because we're under so much pressure and so just stepping back and saying no we need to understand how the world is evolving the long-term consequences was something that most executives and business people in general don't really have time to explore and our feeling was it's it's absolutely essential if we're going to really thrive in this changing world is to look ahead so the the instigator for more fear is higher expectations those higher expectations nobody really thinks through it's just delivering for shareholders delivering on bottom line and then that trickles down into fear and the average individual trying to always achieve more and more and more was it what do you think was the precursor for these added expectations was the technology was it further propagated by COVID I'm sure to some extent so what was the main instigator for this? Now now this again goes back many decades I mean the big shift as we as we began to understand it our belief is it actually started back in the 1960s and I think even though it's been decades we're still in the early stages of this big shift and part of it is an important part is this notion of digital technology in the way it's changing business at a fundamental level all the connectivity that's creating the accelerating change another force that's been playing out unevenly but over time it's been pretty significant is the reduction of trade barriers around the world so again you have less political barriers to trade and competition increases across the world and the intersection too I mean because of all these changes now you can hire somebody in Africa to do work in the United States so competition for jobs is not just within your local community it's around the world one of my favorite billboards there was a billboard in Silicon Valley many years ago which said how does it feel to know there are at least one million people around the world who can do your job oh my god it feels horrible it's a feeling you know in a few decades ago it would have been an absurd question I mean that doesn't matter I'm here there there doesn't matter well guess what now it matters it's real wherever they are they can compete for your job so that's the that's the instigator so let's let's speak about let's speak about the solutions obviously it's sort of just been getting worse and worse and worse over the years again as globalization and technology and barriers are broken down like you said all these things contribute to fear our expectations are higher how do we how do we fix it what's the what's the solution which is obviously not an easy one right right now for sure and again it was the motivation to write the book and I want to start by saying that I don't think the book itself is the solution I think it's the start to build awareness of the potential for a journey and some of the elements on it but you know I ended up in this was again the result of a lot of research as well as my own lessons along my personal journey but I've come to believe there are three pillars I call them pillars that can be very helpful in the journey and one is what I call a narrative the second is passion and third is platform and the challenge for me is I have very different definitions of each of those terms I mean most people have attached very different meanings to narrative passion platform so part of the book is just explaining why I have a different meaning to it and why I think it's so critical in terms of helping us in the in that journey beyond fear but who are these lessons for these for CEOs or these for individuals? They're for everyone I think the book you know most of my books have been business books and certainly I think this has huge business relevance I think again one of the key issues in terms of performing well in a rapidly changing world is making the journey beyond fear both as the CEO and as the employees within your company if they're all driven by fear good luck which is a status quo in some organizations which is not good but that's reality right? Now I think it's a status quo in most if not all organizations today certainly large organizations around the world I think are very much driven by a culture of fear the way to get workers to work is to tell them if they don't work harder they're going to lose their jobs okay that's a good motivator so anyway I think that's that but the book is relevant I think to add everyone you know whether or not they're in a large company a small company or just out part of a family I mean in the family you've got huge issues around fear of your parents fear of your children fear of yourself there's a lot of fear in it so let's can we add a at a high level breakdown those three pillars so people can dive a little bit deeper because then this will this will queue it up they want to like go real deep and get the book but I want to I want to bring out a couple like tactical takeaways for people that are listening so you said narratives passion and then platform so first one narratives are not stories what does that mean so just contest somebody hearing that they're not going to understand what it would mean narratives are not stories how does it have any impact on whether I'm going to lose my job well most people again view narratives and stories to be the same thing they're synonymous you know you can use either word I make a big distinction between them and for me a story is self contained it has a beginning a middle and an end to it the end the story's over and the story is about me the storyteller or it's about some other people real or imagined but it's not about you you can use your imagination figure out what you would have done in that story but it's not about you so that's a story at least the way I talk about it for me a narrative is very different first of all it's open ended there is no resolution yet there's some kind of big threat or opportunity out in the future I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode BetterHelp if you want to take advantage of a special promo BetterHelp is offering all success story podcasts listeners go to BetterHelp.com slash Scott Clary BetterHelp.com slash S-C-O-T-T-C-L-A-R-Y so what is BetterHelp? BetterHelp is therapy for lack of a better term it's the best way to give yourself routine maintenance for your mental and emotional well-being and the best way to think about therapy is usually through analogies we always get our cars tuned to prevent bigger issues down the road we get annual checkups and we go to the gym to maintain physical health so that we don't get out of shape we want to prevent injury we want to prevent disease we do chores regularly so they don't all pile up and have a huge giant mess in your house by the end of the week going to therapy is light all of the above it doesn't mean there's something wrong with you it just means that you're investing in yourself and keeping your mind healthy. BetterHelp is customized online therapy from the comfort of your home it offers video phone and even live chat sessions with your therapist so you don't even have to see anyone on camera if you don't want to you communicate the way you feel comfortable it is so much more affordable than in-person therapy and you can start speaking to somebody in under 48 hours take care of your mind before any more bad stuff happens success story sponsored by BetterHelp you get 10% off if you use this specific URL to sign up for your first session so go to BetterHelp.com slash Scott Clary and you'll get 10% off BetterHelp not clear whether it's going to be achieved or not and the resolution of the narrative hinges on you it's a call to action to say your choices your actions are going to help determine how this narrative resolves so it's that call to action and I think tying it back to fear and I talk about narratives at many levels so I think there's personal narratives I think there are corporate narratives, geographic narratives, movement narratives but starting with the individual I believe most of us first of all we've never really stepped back to articulate what's the narrative that's driving our life what's our view of the future is a primarily driven by threat or primarily driven by opportunity and if so what threat or what opportunity and then what's our call to action to others you know do we have a call to action to others because in my experience many of us who are increasingly consumed by fear because we're focusing on threat in the future we lose trust in other people we can't afford to rely on other people we have to do it all ourselves so there is no call to action to others we become increasingly isolated versus no I want people to come together and help me to address this really big exciting opportunity that's out in the future and so I think the process of just stepping back and articulating that narrative that we have today what is it that's driving our actions and choices today but then reflecting on it to say is this really the narrative that's going to help me to get the most impact that's meaningful to me it can be very powerful I view it as a catalyst in the journey beyond fear because in my experience people who go through this exercise you know they come up with this aha moment that they actually are focusing on fear and threat in the future and that's what's driving their fear and it's driving their current day actions exactly yeah so this is almost taking like you know it's always best practice to even have a personal you know one three five-year plan but many people don't even have that this is taking it to another degree is to have your own personal narrative for your life yes correct what's the big long-term threat or opportunity you know not just next six months or even year, decades ahead what's the big red or opportunity that's motivating you today that's motivating your actions today and so that's yeah amazing that's that's very powerful that's very very good incredible idea for people to take on okay the second piece well actually can I just mention the corporate narrative because I think again I talked about personal narratives but corporate narratives increasingly I think are important and here the challenge I find is when I talk to executives about corporate narratives they say oh we have a narrative we began in a garage we faced incredible obstacles we overcame them accomplished amazing things that's our narrative and my point is no that's about you what's your call to action to your customers to the prospects out there what's the big exciting opportunity for them and what action do they need to take and it's not by your product it's some action that is meaningful to them that will help them get that opportunity and just a quick example and that because I think they're very few corporate narratives but hugely powerful in a world increasingly driven by fear is what Apple computer did in back in the 90s they had this narrative that was framed around a slogan of think different but if you unpack the slogan it was you know for decades we had digital technology it took away our names gave us numbers, put us in cubicles now for the first time there's a generation of technology where we can express our unique potential and individuality but it's not going to happen automatically you need to think different will you think different and it's the reason why for many people I think Apple became the equivalent of a religion they were talking about such a deep aspiration that customers had and we're talking about Apple they were talking about the customer and the opportunity for the customer and the actions they needed to take so anyway I'll just offer that as I think an additional opportunity here that is missed by most companies very good example are there any modern organizations that you see having great narratives that's a great example I'd just curious if anyone else has risen to that you know there there are so few examples I mean somewhat contemporary you know Nike would just do it was kind of an interesting example of that the opportunity we all have to achieve more of our physical potential and then Airbnb today is it's not fully developed and moved but it's a narrative around the slogan of Belong Anywhere it's the notion that we as tourists only see its tiny fragment of the world that we're visiting but the key is how do we find ways to belong in the environments that we're in and that we can belong and focus on that is the opportunity and so yeah very good all right second second pillar is passion sound again sounds great at a high level that everybody wants to be passionate I don't think anybody would argue that but what is passion meaning the context of fear and overcoming fear and the definition of passion based on my research I've ended up focusing on a very specific form of passion I call it the passion of the explorer and it has three components to it one is people who have this passion have a long term commitment to having an increasing impact in a domain that excites them so they're there for the future and having more and more impact there second item is unexpected challenges they get excited this is an opportunity for them to learn how to have even more impact so they're excited by it and then the third element is when they're confronted with these unexpected challenges their first reaction is who else can I connect with who can help me get to a better answer faster so they're extremely well connected and I think that that's the elements now you turn mounting performance pressure into excitement this is an opportunity to have more and more impact in the area that really excites me so I think that you know and I would say one of the challenges we face is that I'm going to generalize but I think particularly in large organizations around the world you don't want passionate people this kind of passion when I talk to work executives about passion oh yeah we want passionate workers who will work nights and weekends for the signed tasks no the passion that I'm talking about those people ask a lot of questions that's distracting why do we ask so many questions they take too much risk they deviate from the script oh we don't want passionate workers we want workers who will do their assigned tasks reliably and efficiently it's the reason why again I did a survey in the US workforce at most 14% of US workers have this kind of passion to explore about their work 86% do not so I think it's a huge opportunity and need for all of us that excites us and find a way to really focus on it and in an environment and culture where we're discouraged from it I mean again even in school we were taught you know listen to the teacher memorize what the teacher has to say if you've got a passion do it out on the playground he's going to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode like a technology powered business 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success story podcast listeners that's h-e-y-l-a-i-k-a .com slash success to request a demo and get 20% off when you sign up for Leica I think the challenge for me is I use platforms and everybody in business today talks about platforms platforms to hold the world they're all over my view is actually there are many platforms today but they're not this kind of platform I think has the greatest ability to help us on that journey beyond fear so generalizing most of the platforms today support short-term transactions you know like a retail platform connecting buyers and sellers so they can buy something or social platforms where you're helping people to connect with friends, family larger networks of people and build relationships with them I don't want to dismiss that there's value in that kind of platform as well but the missing element the platform that I think we still have an opportunity to develop and deploy is where the primary design goal of the platform is to help everyone on the platform to learn faster together and I hasten again because now I talk about learning when I talk to most people about learning, they think about training programs or classes and yes, we have platforms where you can sign up for a video class and learn something no, I'm talking about a different form of learning in a world that's rapidly changing existing knowledge becomes obsolete at an accelerating rate so if you're just sharing existing knowledge that's not going to have as much impact as if you're learning in the form of creating new knowledge new knowledge that never existed before because the world is changing and there are new situations new opportunities new approaches how can we learn about those faster and so for me the goal of this platform is to help people focus on learning in the form of creating new knowledge through action in a classroom it occurs through action and observing the impact that you've achieved and I'll mention another element that I think is critical on the platform and it's again a theme in the book but I believe that no matter how smart or talented you are as an individual you're going to learn a lot faster as part of a small group I've come to call them impact groups but they're typically 15 people at most who are have a shared commitment to having increasing impact in a particular area and they're constantly on the one side they're constantly supporting each other so if you run into an unexpected failure not to worry let's keep going but on the other side they're constantly challenging each other they're constantly asking how could we get more impact and so it's that combination of support and challenging and that shared excitement about getting to more impact in a particular domain that makes these impact groups so critical so these learning platforms I believe the core unit of organization on these platforms will be impact groups creating shared work spaces for these impact groups and then connecting to exponential so that's my concept of the learning platform Do you have examples of companies or independent platforms where people join these they ideate and you've seen this acted on affected like there's been like use cases of these types of platforms that you have seen work well or is this still very theoretical and conceptual? It appears to hold yourself accountable to push yourself harder like this all makes a lot of sense in practice but where do people go if they wanted to just call up your neighbors is this in a professional environment is this something that organizations are helping put together within their own walls but let me know how do you think about learning platforms so it's like most of my work is anticipating opportunities and I can point to some early initiatives that are suggestive in terms of these kind of learning platforms but one of the areas that I've spent time on is big wave surfing extreme sports and big wave surfers have created they find ways to connect with each other in small groups online they have discussion forums where they can connect with big wave surfers around the world they have video collections where they can watch surfers around the world so they're learning together but they form small groups as their core learning quickly in a business context one example that intrigues me very not very well known but in the early days of digital music devices there was a startup called portal player where the founders saw this incredible opportunity to make this a mass market consumer device at the time the technology was just so far behind there was no way you could make it an attractive consumer global platform where they brought together technology leaders from different parts of the total technology architecture and created challenges for them to develop technology that could enhance performance in different areas and again a longer story but they actually became the core element in the platform that was the key technology underpinning I appreciate that and I just thought it would be good to walk through an example of one that somebody could even go participate in but it seems like this is not because I see masterminds that's really what I was alluding to these perfect use cases or even close to being perfect use cases of these impact groups that are truly sharing new knowledge versus potentially just regurgitating existing yeah I'm my general advice to people as they start this journey is focus on finding an impact group typically of people that are in your area geographic area where you can build more frequently and where you can build deep trust-based relationships with each other but the key is finding people who are excited by the same opportunity and wanting to learn through action versus just conversation discussion groups and this could be in a professional environment this could be for in a personal environment this kind of platform again not not a good one because it didn't really focus on impact groups but now we're going to blank on it it was started by Johnson and Johnson for parents with small children with babies a huge life event very challenging for many parents it was an opportunity to connect with other parents to learn how to be a better parent and address the challenges that you're facing baby center i think was the name of that so yeah very good okay all right so we broke it down three pillars i always like to ask some just rapid-fire career questions at the end but before I pivot was there anything else that you wanted to bring out of the book that was that was a major theme or some just some learnings that you wanted to leave people with or do we go into most community and i would say that i didn't really discover fully evolved my narrative personal narrative or discover my real passion until i was in my 50s and so part of my message is this can be done at NEH it's not just for children or you know younger people it can be done at NEH but my hope is by sharing my lessons people could do it at a younger age because your passion and evolve your narrative the more you'll make the journey beyond fear so yeah you'll live a happier life that's the only end goal yeah very good okay um some rapid-fire career questions feel free to go as in-depth or as high-level as you'd like you've had an incredible career so i just want to get people to learn where you've had successes and failures so biggest and how did you overcome it wow you know i'd say my biggest challenge has occurred repeatedly it's not just the one time event but my biggest challenge at least in my career i think is being able to leave something that i'm doing or a place that i am when i'm not learning fast enough you know i often came up with this because i've done many different things in my life the notion of being willing to leave when you're suddenly leveling off in terms of your learning not learning fast enough and going to find another environment where you can learn fast enough is very challenging i mean you don't want to leave the safety of your current employment or activities and go off into a new area and so that's been my challenge throughout finish to do that if you could choose one person that has had a major impact on your life it can be personal or professional who would that be and what did it teach you wow i'll mention two just quickly sir Ken Robinson has had a lot of impact on me in terms of really attacking the educational systems we have and how we need to fundamentally rethink our educational systems from the ground up and then Carol Dwack who's written a great book that i highly recommend called mindset which makes the contrast between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset and encourages all of us to cultivate that growth mindset huge influence and inspiration for me for sure if you could tell your 20 year old self one thing what would it be you know again given my own life experience it would be forget about what others want from you or expect from you and focus on what really excites you the most i mean i think so many of us youngsters are listening to our parents listening to our teachers and our communities on what's really what we should be doing versus no what is it that really excites you and if i've known that when i was 20 i might not have done as much of my schooling and might have actually gone off and done some more powerful things earlier a book or a podcast that you'd recommend people go check out but i think i mentioned the book the Carol Dwack's book mindset but you know in general i have a huge library i've got over 10,000 books so i'm a big bibliophile but over time i've come to find that actually social media done in the right way can be a huge learning vehicle connecting with the right people connecting with other people who are driven by excitement about learning and just seeing what they what they cite in their experience and i've gotten a lot of unexpected ideas and insights from those people good advice and then last question what does success mean to you wow i think for me the success is just achieving more and more impact that matters to me and so it's really being thoughtful about what is the impact that matters more and right now it's this notion of finding ways to design and deploy these learning platforms that can help others to achieve more potential very good okay and then where do people connect with you so website, social where do they get the book yeah well the book hopefully is available in many book stores at this point but if you're sure you can go there and buy it and then to connect with me i've got a website johnhagel.com i collect a lot of my writings and things there i do blog posts there and then i'm active on social media i'm active on twitter facebook linked in there three platforms that are most active on so look up my name or any of those social media platforms yeah perfect