Unlearn

Tanya Cordrey started her career as a journalist for a road haulage magazine. Today she serves on several boards and consults with many leading organizations. She has led teams and international expansions in companies such as BBC and eBay, and oversaw the transformation from print to digital media at The Guardian Media Group in her role as Chief Digital Officer. She joins host Barry O’Reilly to discuss her role in leading difficult change in often very traditional organizations. Doing Something Different Doing something different can lead to new and wonderful opportunities. Tanya’s unconventional decision to do an MBA to pair and contrast with her literary arts degree resulted in creating the opportunity for her to lead a strategy team at the BBC and later to be recruited as part of the European executive team for BabyCenter. Barry comments that many people don’t realize the challenges involved when you’re trying to do something different. Tanya says that she seeks out high-paced environments. She takes calculated risks that she believes will yield good results, like the MBA and working with technology. Both decisions gave her in-demand skills and an advantage in the market. Identifying Scalable Opportunities Convincing stakeholders to grasp new opportunities is often a difficult task. However, being clear on your vision and giving them a taste of the expected results makes the task easier. A little survival anxiety can help as well!  Tanya and her colleagues wanted to convince eBay to introduce fixed price selling—her data supported it. They were turned down initially but were later told that if other countries wanted it, they could give it a try. The international partners were all interested. At the time, Amazon was talking about launching its marketplace, which spurred the decision-makers to see fixed price selling as a defensive maneuver. The project was eventually rolled out, to phenomenal success. Within a few days of seeing the results around the world, eBay US also rolled out fixed price selling. This experience taught Tanya to think big, and use data to support her beliefs. She says that it was the first time one of her ideas led to such a huge impact on revenue. By leveraging external competitors to accelerate action, and collaborating with many different stakeholders, she was able to cause a huge transformation. Shaking Off Existing Paradigms Leading change, especially in traditional companies, involves unlearning your tried and true methods and learning what works in the current context. Having spent several years in purely digital companies that were largely data-driven, Tanya found that using charts and logical arguments derived from the data didn’t really work at The Guardian.  Tanya learned that she had to appeal to hearts as well as heads in order to persuade the media giant. Barry agrees that you need a well-constructed value hypothesis grounded in evidence and data, as well as an aspirational vision and mission to show people where you want to go. Three Phases of Change Tanya’s says The Guardian’s transformation fell into three phases: Phase 1: Changing as much as possible, as quickly as possible. Phase 2: Communication. Phase 3: Cross-functionality. Resources Tanya Cordrey on LinkedIn | Twitter

Stephen Orban found an old TI-99 in his uncle’s attic when he was eight years old. The first thing he did, he says, was take it apart to learn how it worked. Soon he was writing programs to make things move around on the screen. He knew since then that he wanted to work with computers. Throughout his career he has brought exponential technology to many traditional organizations, such as Bloomberg and Dow Jones. He is now leading a new initiative in Data Analytics at AWS.  Killed by Traditional Technology It was during his tenure at Bloomberg that Stephen became infatuated with cloud computing. He relates to Barry O’Reilly that they were experimenting to create new businesses. However, the traditional method of trying to build best-in-class technology was making the process slow and expensive. We were building too much into disaster recovery and business continuity for things that might not even be there tomorrow, he says. He recognized that cloud computing would allow them to test and scale on demand, only using the resources they needed. When he moved to Dow Jones he pushed towards using cloud technology and dev-ops methodology, which allowed them to create a more agile organization. Unlearning Leadership Massive technology changes come with people changes. Stephen soon realized that the way he led at Bloomberg would not work at Dow Jones. Barry comments that it’s almost a reflex to use the behaviors that brought us success in the past. However, those same behaviors may not yield success in a new context. Stephen says that he failed as a leader for the first six months. His advisor told him that there’s no glory in being the only one at the finish line. From that day, he says, he learned to be more empathetic and open instead of the top-down leader he previously was. He wanted his team to buy in to his vision. In order to share their wins, he increased communication with employees from quarterly to monthly town hall meetings. Team members were invited to share what they were doing and how it was aligned to the broader vision. Barry says that when you recognize that you’re not driving the outcomes you want, the first step is to acknowledge it. He commends Stephen for the subtle but impactful changes he made. Building Cross-Functional Teams When Stephen decided to change the siloed IT functions into two cross-functional teams, he expected everyone to be as excited as he was. Each team was responsible for a measurable customer outcome. This required unlearning silos and learning cross-functional team behaviors. Stephen relates that the engineers were not pleased. It was hard for them to understand this new paradigm, and Stephen comments that it was hard for him to lead through the change. Barry comments that a first step is to help people feel successful as fast as possible. If they have some quick wins, they would be more willing to embrace the new behaviors. To reinforce the paradigm shift, the IT department was renamed Dow Jones Technology. Respected persons in the company started to share positive stories about the impact of the new changes, and the metrics showed that the new methods were working. Barry agrees that metrics paired with local success stories leads to breakthroughs. Looking Forward Stephen now works at Amazon, an organization that has a very high performing, well-prescribed culture and operating model. He is excited about the pace of innovation that’s going to happen. Those who can’t move fast enough will feel the impact on their profitability, he says. Don’t be stuck in analysis paralysis, he advises; there are lots of opportunities to start and learn what works and what doesn’t for your organization. You can’t think your way to a new culture, Barry adds, you have to act your way there.

As a trained occupational psychologist, Kim Atherton has worked with leaders and organizations to understand how they create high-performance teams. She joined Ovo Energy - a green energy tech company in the UK - when it was just 50 people in a barn, and helped to scale the company to 2,500 employees. During her time at Ovo, she recognized that misalignment was a problem for companies, which inspired her to found Just3Things, a startup that helps organizations improve alignment at scale.  Alignment With The Vision In 2012 Kim was in the final interview stage at a large bank. It was a great career move on paper, but the thought of getting out of bed every day to do succession planning for a big bank just didn’t excite her. About that time she met the founder of Ovo Energy, who told her that he needed someone to help him build the world’s best company, someone who would be willing to unlearn traditional HR practices. Kim jumped at the opportunity to help scale Ovo as she believed in its vision. [Listen from 1:45] The mission and values of a company are more important than the compensation and prestige, Barry comments. A transformative purpose pulls people together: you’re willing to put up with more when you know it’s for the greater good. It keeps you going through the tough times. [Listen from 3:45] Aligning Values With Behavior Human beings pick up on behavioral cues almost unconsciously. Creating a company culture that aligns with your vision often means unlearning traditional practices, and being intentional about using processes that result in desired behaviors. Ovo knew their success depended on being nimble and agile, so they eschewed traditional competency-based interview practices in favor of interviewing based on learning agility. Kim says that you can always upskill an employee if they don’t have a certain programming ability, but you can’t train learning agility - you either have it or you don’t. [Listen from 6:50] In the fast-paced world of a startup company, full transparency and good communication are vital. You want to create an environment of psychological safety to empower your team to experiment and learn. Reiterate the vision often and embed activities around values to remind your team that we’re all part of a bigger purpose, Kim advises. [Listen from 12:15] Learning and Unlearning Employee Incentives Barry finds that the highest performing companies are those who experiment and figure out the right practices for their context. Kim agrees that experimentation and an efficient feedback loop enabled Ovo to learn what works best for them. For example, their experiment with removing the holiday policy taught them that, trendy though it was, it wasn’t ideal for them. We need guardrails, they learned, otherwise it’s really hard to do our jobs. At Just3Things, Kim finds that they’re unlearning all the time. Feedback from customers often challenges their assumptions and they have to rethink some aspect of the product. [Listen from 19:55]   A Golden Thread Just3Things was inspired by the need for a goal-setting tool for cross-functional teams. Kim describes it as a simple and transparent tool where teams could see how the outcomes they are working on align with company strategy, then link their day to day tasks to the outcomes, forming a golden thread through the entire process. It started as a manual process at Ovo, but was developed into a digital tool when the concept proved useful in recouping lost productivity time. Kim describes how she discovered the need in the market for her product, and how she founded Just3Things to answer that market need. Barry comments that when you understand how your effort is aligning to positive customer outcomes, its an unending tap of motivation and experimentation. [Listen from 30:00] Resources Just3Things.com

Barry O’Reilly is pleased to welcome Martin Eriksson to the Unlearn Podcast. Martin is the co-founder of ProductTank and the Mind the Product conferences that have scaled and sustained themselves around the world.  Learning From One Another When he started ProductTank in the back of a London pub, Martin never imagined that his small meetup of 25 product managers would be the genesis of a community over 150,000 strong from 180 cities, or that they would be hosting 5 conferences around the world. Their goal was simply to learn from one another so they could be better at their jobs. That initial meetup took on a life of its own because many others had the same need. All of their growth has been inbound, Martin relates: people come to them for help in setting up local ProductTank chapters. Martin embraced those opportunities, seeing that the more the community expanded, the more people they could meet and learn from. Recognizing Opportunities and Gaining Momentum When you recognize that you’ve built something of value that your customers love and want more of, naturally, you want to grow. Martin’s approach was to think about the next step and move in that direction. ProductTank was continuing to expand to more cities and countries, so they decided to launch a conference to get big names from the US to share their expertise. Barry remarks that the power of momentum is often underrated. As you continue to do reps, you build momentum and eventually a movement. In the case of ProductTank, they were learning valuable lessons as they continued to meet and grow, such as how to work together and get the best out of one another. Soon Martin recognized the global potential of their fledgling company. Making A Great Experience for Everyone A successful conference prioritizes great experiences for everyone. The needs of attendees, speakers and vendors have to be catered for, and ample time must be given for people to learn and network. Barry asks how Martin ensures that these great experiences are part of every conference, especially as the company scales. It’s really all about people, Martin responds. They closely screen people who want to organize local ProductTank chapters or conferences to make sure that they share the same purpose. This is what has driven the strength of this community, he says. If you have the right people you can trust them to build on that experience. Mission and Shared Values One of the hallmarks of great business is that your mission statement centers around your customer as opposed to your business. Mind the Product encapsulates this in its mission statement: “Our mission is to make other people more successful by coming together to further our craft.”  Barry notes that these principles should be codified as you grow to not only attract the right people, but so that they behave in a way that protects the community and the essence of what you're trying to create. Some of the team values that guide Martin’s company are: We are an empowered and autonomous team; We should be excellent to each other; If we’re not winning, we’re learning; Hard work should be rewarding. Unlearning and Next Steps Two important lessons Martin would unlearn if he had the chance to start over would be to think bigger and embrace the opportunity sooner and to understand his brand and the market better. Building connections among regional and international communities is a powerful part of their mission going forward. There is a wealth of talent all over the world and we can learn so much from each other, Martin says. He sees it as his personal mission to reach out into his network and lift up stories and different ideas and ways of working. That sense of curiosity and willingness to learn empowers and motivates him. Resources MartinEriksson.com  mindtheproduct.com

This week’s guest is Thaniya Keereepart, Head of Product, International at Patreon. Thaniya joined Patreon after working with Major League Baseball (MLB) and TED, moving into the digital space. Raising Your Hand Some people gravitate towards structure, but people like Thaniya thrive on unstructured paths. She says, “The through-line of all of my turning points has been that I have a habit of raising my hand to volunteer to do things I don't really know how to do.” She credits her bravery to learning through doing: she understands how to iterate so she puts guardrails in place to learn what works and be flexible and adaptive when unintended consequences occur. She relates how her Game Day program crashed in the opening MLB game, with four million users online. That scary moment taught her how to handle live events. Something admirable about that environment, however, is that when anything broke, everyone came together to fix it. Barry notes that high-performance cultures focus on solving the problem and improving the system, rather than blaming an individual. This allows everyone to feel comfortable and give their best. Building an Inclusive Team When you’re building products for the masses, you want your team to reflect the diversity of your consumers. The best performing teams are usually the most diverse. Both Barry and Thaniya had to unlearn a great deal when they started working in diverse environments. Thaniya was used to working largely with males in college and at MLB, so there was a culture shock when she started at TED, but it opened her eyes to what it’s like to work in an environment with people of various backgrounds, cultures and genders. Barry says that he never saw the problem of a lack of diversity and inclusion until he started to work in San Francisco. He was in a bubble of sorts at Thought Works, his previous workplace since it was the norm to have a diverse workforce. He felt a call to action to share the values he learned at Thought Works in his new, male-dominated workplace. Sharing a Beautiful Vision of the Future It’s important to share a vision of the future. Thaniya believes in creating big change in small chunks, creating value that can be seen and felt immediately. She involves the teams that will benefit from the change in the product development phase. These teams then become champions of the new product. When you start small, Barry adds, you create evidence of the future you’re trying to build; you build trust and confidence that your big vision can come to life. It’s also important to anchor the big change with a beautiful narrative, says Thaniya. Engaging Customers Part of re-platforming includes building a change management system to set customer expectations. It’s unwise to have big changes foisted on your customers suddenly. Thaniya’s strategy at TED was to create excitement around the coming changes by inviting customers to be part of a beta program. They felt that they were helping to build TED’s new platform, which engaged them and made them champions of the coming change. Resources Thaniya Keereepart on LinkedIn Why Diverse Teams are Smarter - Harvard Business Review Diversity + Inclusion = Better Decision Making at Work

Barry O’Reilly is excited to welcome Eric Ries to the Unlearn Podcast. Eric is an entrepreneur who currently heads the Long Term Stock Exchange. He is best known, however, as the author of the international bestseller: The Lean Startup. The principles of Lean Startup were birthed from seeing many startups and Silicon Valley companies fail for lack of customer engagement, slow iteration, and long feedback cycles—experiences that inspired Eric to think about different ways to work. He shares how he discovered, and subsequently helped people unlearn many of the methods that were holding them back, and relearn counterintuitive methods to help them succeed in situations of high uncertainty. Pioneering ChangeIn his early days at IMVU, Eric found himself constantly explaining why his new methods had merit. At one point he had to decide whether to continue to advocate for his ideas or agree to work the conventional way. He chose to advocate for what he believed in. He reflects that had he not had the courage of his convictions he would never have found out who his ideas resonated with. Counterintuitive ideas cause frustration and difficulty for people. If counterintuitive thinking is key to the success of your business culture, then you need to help people rewire their brains. To have reform, and move people to the next steps, you must find the sweet spot between familiarity and novelty: you can't be too radical, or too conservative. Principles and Long-Term VisionBusiness strategy must be guided by principles in the context of a long-term vision. Barry commends Eric for the iterations he made to his business over time, which were guided by a continuous loop of customer feedback and testing new features in small batches. Eric shares the many pivots he had to make noting that you can always change strategy, but keep the vision. Opening Minds Through EmpathyEric says that he has spent years trying to understand what would it take to change public companies from being short-term focused on multi-stakeholder long-term focused organizations. He would often face vehement opposition from officials when he promoted his ideas. He notes that when people vehemently oppose an idea, method or technique but their reasons are poor, it’s usually a signal that they’re reacting emotionally, trying to protect the status quo. Barry adds this is a behavior he also sees a lot when people don’t deeply understand why they’re doing what they are doing, missing underlying principles instead of sticking to the only practice they know. Eric is sympathetic because he understands: they’re trying to do a difficult, often thankless job, using the tools and techniques they’ve refined over years. He represents a threat to their comfort zone. He tries to understand what they care about so that his plans and ideas are compatible with their values. They appreciate his respectful approach and work with him to find a comfortable compromise. Empathy, he finds, is the path to greater effectiveness. Barry agrees that empathy is key. It leads to mutual understanding. If you are willing to listen to people and they feel that they're being heard, the quality of information that you get just skyrockets. When you have high-quality information and a good decision-making process, you have a better chance of getting the results you want. Changing the WorldOur grandparents built the institutions that were needed in their world, with the institutional infrastructure that their time demanded. Our world today is very different, and those institutions - hotels, hospitals, unions, schools and universities - are all collapsing at the same time. Eric says that we need to establish the institutional infrastructure that our time demands. If we fail in our responsibility to confront these problems on our society’s behalf, we will soon be replaced. ResourcesEric Ries

Snehal Kundalkar, Senior Director of Engineering at Reddit, grew up in a world of dualities. On the one hand she was taught that her place as a woman was between the kitchen and the kids, but on the other hand she was encouraged to embrace uncertainty to solve complex problems. She was naturally attracted to engineering and she channeled her anger at the injustice of her situation into creativity. She didn’t see herself in the expected role of home provider, so after completing her Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering, she left her home country to pursue her Masters in the US. She longed to find the adventure she needed in her adopted country. Celebrating Failure After a little bit of success, failure feels unwelcome”. Don’t let that be you. Embrace it as a natural yin yang of the journey. It takes a lot of patience and grit, but you have to learn to expect and even embrace that some of your efforts will fail. Innovating, building things that have never been built before, is a highly unpredictable situation with loads of unknowns. What Snehal learned from her time at Apple was to break down your big vision into smaller sets: make small things that are almost as good as the big thing, then combine them together to build momentum. Failure is good information: it tells you what didn’t work. It's regrettable that our culture stigmatizes failure as bad instead of focusing on what you learned and how that’s going to help you move forward. Barry points out that in reality, you’ll never be able to predict the future, so you need to test the future: you need to fail as much and as quickly as possible to learn what works and what doesn't. Make Decisions Quickly. It’s natural to be scared when making decisions in a high-stakes, uncertain environment, but the trick is to make decisions fast and stick to them. If your strategy doesn't work, then make another decision fast. Soon enough you'll have a successful process. Encourage all members of the team to come up with their best solution within a limited timeframe. Bring them all to the table and choose the best idea/solution. Unlearning Is Not Forgetting Barry reminds us that unlearning does not mean forgetting everything you know. Your experience stays with you but you recognize that the behaviors that work in one context may not work in another. This is what Snehal experienced when she transitioned from the Apple ecosystem which she knew, into Reddit whose culture was totally different. At the same time, however, she was able to successfully introduce some of the behaviors she learned at Apple. A leader needs to be flexible when introducing a new culture. You may have big aspirations, but you can’t force culture, you have to be patient. Consider your previous knowledge and experience as tools in your toolbox: you don't necessarily have to use all of them at the same time, just the ones that work in your present context. This is what learning and unlearning means to Barry: helping people adapt to their particular context and find the right methods to achieve their desired outcomes. What’s Next for Snehal? Role models like her 71-year-old father, who recently completed his degree in music, inspire Snehal’s unlearning journey. She says that no one is born great, you continuously develop your skills into greatness. She's excited about being part of Reddit’s foray into conversation AI, as well as the company’s expansion into new international markets. Snehal Kundalkar on: LinkedIn, Medium

Creativity can come in a variety of forms, and for Jake Knapp, author of Sprint and Make Time, it was a mixture of painting, artistry and old school programming. Jake finds creative satisfaction in trying to figure out how to design, optimize and improve everything from the default settings in his own life, to how people run meetings and design products. Sometimes, having an outsider’s view can be quite useful. What’s holding us back? We’ve all had times when we feel like we haven’t gotten enough done, or we haven’t gotten done the one thing that would have helped us make real progress. Jake talks about how experiencing moments of intensity helped him understand and prioritize the outcomes from his life he really wanted. Looking at and thinking about the outcomes he wants, and then gathering data that allows him to review his behavior in light of these outcomes is one of the keys to Jake’s success – and perhaps one that can be replicated, even by people who don’t see the world as he does—as code. Listen from 6:15 Failure actually… sucks. You’d think that tech startup founders are handed a script before being interviewed, outlining how they should mention that they absolutely love failure. It doesn’t bother them in the slightest. Most of us don’t feel quite that way about it. Unlike the popular ideology would have you believe – screwing something up sucks. It hurts, it’s embarrassing, it impacts other people and it can feel terrible. The thing to do with failure isn't to pretend you like it, but to actively and intentionally learn from it as part of the coping process. Listen from 12:00 Principles have to be learned to be unlearned. There are certain assumptions we make when we start to gain experience and expertise in our fields, especially when we’re leaders. One of the most critical things Jake had to learn was that other people’s ideas and contributions were as likely to be the best ones as his own. The idea of not selling or pitching your idea to your team goes against most of what we’ve been taught about working in companies. It's a skill set that can be totally unrelated to the problem you’re trying to solve, and it’s better for the best idea to win, not the loudest or most popular person. Jake shares a story about the development of what would eventually become Google Hangouts – and what it taught him about collaboration. Listen from 21:00  The value of the supporting the Decider role. There are people whose job it is to come into a situation and make the call—the deciders. It’s important to have some empathy for that role – even though it may not result in the decisions you personally would make. You can support leaders and decision-makers by giving them the tools and resources they need to make the best possible decision. It’s not always a democracy, but if you do the groundwork to minimize the possibilities of bad options, then great things can happen. Listen from 28:45 What’s next for Jake? Something helping Jake learn and unlearn right now is writing a science fiction novel. He’s not sure when it will be finished, but creating it and using the process he’s refined in other areas of his life, gathering and analyzing data to help optimize for outcomes, is playing a role in how he writes. Listen from 33:00

You always want to look back on your life and say that your path from point A to point B was linear. It almost never really is. Today’s guest on the Unlearn Podcast is Mark Graban, author of Lean Hospitals and Measures of Success, who started out as an engineer for General Motors. It’s been quite a journey. Today, he and Barry O’Reilly will be talking about how that kind of a shift can happen, and what he learned and unlearned along the way. Clashes of Culture You might not think that the worlds of manufacturing and healthcare have much in common, but having worked in both, Mark thinks they have plenty in common - especially when it comes to culture. People aren’t machines, but the culture of many hospitals and clinics echoes what you’ll find on the factory floor - especially in institutions that haven’t done much to modernize the way they manage and lead people. Barry points out that there are similarities in tech as well: every industry thinks it’s unique, but it’s all human systems and people working together to drive outcomes.  Unlearning Your Whole Career When you’ve invested years or decades into a career, you often feel like you need to stay in it. Having made a major career transition, Mark knows that doing so allows you to bring fresh insight into an organization that may not be expecting it, and when you’re in a wholly new environment, you’re in a better position to avoid the curse of expertise. Looking back, Mark wishes he’d unlearned top-down style management earlier - the benefits of engaging people in change are so many and so valuable.   Seeking and Finding Clarity Before you start optimizing for, or worse, applying a solution, you have to be exceptionally clear on what the problem really is, and what outcome you want to achieve. Mark and Barry discuss the ways this can manifest in different kinds of organizations, and the framework for problem-solving that Mark uses to help healthcare providers make changes to their operations with input from people working at all levels. The process is one that listeners will be familiar with: unlearn, re-learn and breakthrough!   The Courage to Change It’s easy to tell when something isn’t right, but it's harder to create a moment where people are open to truly unlearning and making changes. Mark notes that looking outside of your area of expertise takes a fair amount of courage - but many people are highly skilled in their specific profession and not in the other areas of running a business or managing a team. This is often problematic because when we’re faced with things we don’t know, or feel scared and threatened - our higher-order brains shut down. There is never going to be a ‘perfect’ time for a major change, so you might as well just get started.  What are the Top 3 Reasons to Do This? Management from the top-down usually doesn’t usually provide the results companies are looking for. It’s much more effective to lead as if you had no authority - by seeking input and finding out what makes people tick, and why they think the way they do. Something that Mark had to unlearn over the course of his career was that you can’t just tell people what to do, even if you’re wildly excited about helping them. Change has to be based on feedback and engagement with the people it affects. Mark has some insights on what makes people more open and receptive to change and leaves us with the thought that it’s okay to struggle with change. It doesn’t make you a bad person or a bad manager - it’s just something to figure out.  Resources Lean Hospitals  Measures of Success

Entrepreneurs tend to talk about the success, the fun and excitement of running a company. Fewer talk about struggles. Today, on the Unlearn Podcast, Barry O’Reilly talks to Teresa Torres, Product Discovery Coach at Product Talk. They get into what’s hard about the path to success, and at the end of the day, what really matters. No One Has All The Answers Like many young CEOs and founders, Teresa found herself working with people who were older, more experienced, and with access to more resources than she did as a leader. She shares a key unlearn moment about discovering that no one really has all the answers - and how that gave her the confidence to start trying things to see what worked. Barry points out that trying is a learned behavior, and Teresa discusses how education and experience in design-thinking instilled in her the idea that your first attempt won’t always work: iteration is the key to achieving your goals. A Process for Decision-Making Very little about being a CEO is black and white - and coming from an environment where situations were more granular was a challenge for Teresa. She says sales is a lot like product development and gives us some insight on the similarities, and how she brought an outcome-based focus into her work as a product leader and later as a CEO. Every process has parts, and those parts can be modeled, measured and optimized. Our Defaults Can Be Unhelpful When people are working under stress, they tend to revert to the skills, strategies, and habits that they are the best at - it feels good, and more importantly, it feels productive. Barry and Teresa talk about how this tendency can actually work against people whose roles are less about producing, and more about helping other people produce, or taking a bigger picture view of the growth and direction of a company. This is especially challenging when every situation feels extremely high stakes. Letting Other People Help You Teresa recalls the scenario her company was navigating through during the economic downturn, and how critical it was to let her team play to their own strengths and be responsible for their outcomes - and importantly, create a space for them to be transparent with her about her work and responsibilities. During a particularly fraught time, Teresa wasn’t going to make payroll and ended up offering team members the option to become owners in the company. This had several beneficial outcomes and ended up giving her employees a unique learning experience, as well as company stock.   Defining Success on Multiple Levels After being a CEO, Teresa had to decide what came next. She experimented with different projects and determined that what she wanted to tackle was the waste of time and talent endemic in many startups, founding a new company to do so—Product Talk. Barry brings up how, as a solopreneur, it can be difficult to handle loss-aversion, and constantly feeling like you have to take every opportunity that comes along. Teresa’s answer to this is to try and make sure you have only awesome options to choose from and shares some examples of how she’s made that a part of her working life. What Feels Fun That Helps? Teresa used what she calls a divergent-convergent process to try many different options to help weed out what she didn’t want to do. Barry and she discuss how this applies to both business and to life, and why embracing an abundance mindset can help you identify and create many amazing options for yourself—therefore improving the options you end up selecting to succeed. Resources: Product Talk| LinkedIn