Jim Harris On Disruptive Innovation: Staying Resilient Amidst Change

Life happens, and not always the way we expect it to. Every single day we face change, stress and uncertainty. What if you could learn to thrive no matter what life throws your way? Resilience expert Adam Markell and his inspiring guests explore breakthrough strategies to fully embrace change and build the resilience required to become change.

Proof. On today's episode, we've got Jim Harris, one of North America's leading keynote speakers and foremost thinkers on disruptive innovation. Presenting internationally at more than 70 virtual and in person conferences a year, the association magazine ranked him as one of North America's top 10 speakers. Jim's recent book, Blindsided, is published in 80 countries worldwide and is a number one international bestseller. You're going to love this conversation today with Jim Harris. All right, Jim, so you are, among other things, a keynote speaker, which means that you are very used to having people introduce you and listen to your short or your long bio. What's something that's not a part of that bio that I just shared with our audience that you would like for people to know about you?

Well, after university, I traveled around the world for four years and, and part of that was sailing from England to Australia on a tall ship. And I saw the incredible beauty of our planet. And it is something that all of us are going to be called upon to protect. We're being called right now to change the way we live. And I saw the changes already back in 1987, 88, when I sailed from England to Australia. We saw plastic pollution in the oceans. We saw, you know, fishing nets that were discarded. And we just saw the beauty of the world. And we need to perhaps step back for a minute and see that we are living on the garden planet of the universe. And we don't need to save the planet. We need to stop destroying it.

Wow. You know what? I didn't expect to hear that answer, and I'm glad that I did, Jim. Thank you for that. And I love that I've been writing it down. The garden planet of the universe. I think that's just a magnificent way to size it up. Lately I've been, I've been fascinated by the fact that we're on this, this water and, and dirt ball, the sphere that is spinning on an axis orbiting the sun and also at the same time, a tiny speck in an, in an infinite universe. It is truly, if you believe in miracles, and I certainly do, it's a miracle. It's remarkable, you know, even if, even if the word miracle doesn't strike you and amazing. So I appreciate that. We're starting things out in that way. You know, I want to talk to you today about something I don't get to talk to a lot of people about, frankly, because I don't often have very many people that are in the keynote speaking industry on the show and not because I don't want them. They're my colleagues, after all. I've had a few, but just not many and certainly not any in recent vintage. So I'm really excited to do that with you, have that conversation. Nick Morgan is, Dr. Nick Morgan is a good, good buddy of mine and I get to be on his show to talk about those things. But I haven't had anybody recently on the show to talk about it with me. I think we have a lot in common. When I was looking through your website, I noticed that you speak on a number of different topics that are related. I'm going to ask you a question about that in a second. For me, I am most notably a resilience keynote speaker, but I'm also a mental health keynote speaker, a work life balance keynote speaker, a stress management key. And they're, you know, stress management's keynote speaker. But they're all, they have this kind of a thread that runs through them. It seems like the thread that runs through a lot of the topics that you speak on has to do with innovation and disruption in business. So part one is, is that in fact the case? And, and part two is, you know, where, where have you seen innovation and disruption both in the, in the speaking industry over the last couple of years? And where do you, where do you see it even headed in the future?

So, oh, there are a lot of questions there to unpack.

There are, there's kind of three there. Why don't we just unpack it a little bit? So first of all, is there a through line that, that runs through the topics that you speak on?

So my main focus is disruption and disruptive innovation. So for instance, today Tesla is worth more than the top 10 traditional legacy automakers. I mean, that is a head spinning fact. Uber is worth more than every taxicab company in North America added together. And so while Uber doesn't own a single vehicle, the taxi industry owns billions of dollars of assets in the form of cabs and limousines. So how does Uber with zero assets by comparison end up being worth more than every taxicab company in North America added together? And if you're not focused on innovation in your company, in your industry, you can be blindsided. That's the title of my last book or in other words, disrupted. And these are two examples of disruption. And so I predict that we're going to see a number of the top 10 legacy automakers cease to exist. They'll either go A, bankrupt, B, they'll merge like Fiat Chrysler, or, you know, they'll just cease to exist. So we're going to, we're in a profound transition. And when you're in the transition, things are confusing because they're mixed signals. You know, the old isn't dead yet and the new isn't fully emerged yet. And so how do companies, how do executives move through that transition? There are some profound questions around this. So I look at questions like, why is disruption happening? How do you identify early warning signs of when it could hit your company or your industry? What can you do to put in place triggers to instigate action in your organization? How can you prevent it from happening? How can you get ahead of it? You have really two choices. It's disrupt or be disrupted. So would you rather be the disruptor of your industry or would you rather have it done to you? And I mean, this very much ties into your focus of, for instance, resilience. We are hugely resilient, but resilience is a muscle, just like working out is a muscle. And if we don't use our resistance, it atrophies. And the companies that are best at both growing and disrupting continually are resilient, always coming back and questioning. No, we can't do something just because we've always done it this way, even though always done. It might only be three years old because we've had a pandemic in the middle here. And the pandemic changed everything. I have witnessed 10 years of change in the two years, two and a half years of the pandemic. So for instance, we saw 10 years of growth in e commerce in the first 90 days of the pandemic. 10 years of growth in one quarter. I mean, that's head spinning. Another one, Zoom. You know, we're on Zoom here right now. And In December of 2019, Zoom had 10 million daily users. And in the first 90 days of the pandemic, Zoom was downloaded 300 million times. I feel like Dr. Evil 3. 300 million times. You know, the most number of downloads ever in the history of, you know, Android and Apple for a non gaming app. Really the rules have changed and that's affected our industry, Adam. I mean, we went to 100% virtual right away. You know, I used to travel about 200,000 miles a year on planes pre pandemic. Well, you know, from an environmental perspective, that's a horrible carbon footprint, even if you offset it. But to move to zoom and everything, be virtual. Wow. And you know, we might think, oh, our industry is so glamorous, but a hotel room is a hotel room is a hotel room, you know, and a plane ride is a plane ride. To spend five work weeks a year on a plane, there's not a lot of glamour to that. But, you know, if, if I was doing a gig in Dubai, it's a full day of travel over there. You don't want to arrive and then go on. So you go two days early, you speak for an hour and you think, I'm all the way over here, I'm going to go to the markets, they call them souks, I'm going to go to the souk and get something for Leanne and you know, I'm going to see this place. And then you come home and you've been away for a week for a one hour keynote. And when you actually divide your speaking fee by all those hours, it's not quite such an impressive fee any, anymore.

That, that's certainly true. And, and you left out the, the wonderful hotel food, of course. Jim.

Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

We can't, we can never say enough.

About one can only eat so much chicken, you know.

Yeah, there's just, just, just so much chicken in anybody's diet, for sure. Although I'm gonna just make say that that the, the hotels that I've been have, have gotten hip to a few things. I'm seeing green drinks and, and, you know, cold pressed things that I never would have imagined would be on the menu. I mean, there's better options, you know, there's still the usual fare, of course, but. So that's a good sign. But you know what, I want to go back to when the pandemic actually did start. So what I heard you say in part was that the through line for your keynote speaking is primarily around innovation. Is that, that's accurate?

Yes, it's, yes, but it's, the innovation today is essential because of the disruption.

Right.

And the, it's a disruption that, yeah, it drives the innovation.

It drives the innovation. Right. It's the, it's the, it's the catalyst, if you will, which, you know what in, in, in change language, it's, it's the cosmic law. Use the word universe at the beginning, so I'll just, I'll use that word now. It's the cosmic law for manifestation in the universe. Change, meaning the status Quo is the enemy. You know, people don't, don't often want to sort of see what the downside to disruption is or I should say the, you know, what the downside to non disruption is to the status quo. But that's really the bigger fear I think that we ought to have. Because when things stagnate in any area, whether it's in water, when water stagnates, it becomes toxic, becomes unusable, undrinkable. It's the same in every, in every area, including in business. Things get, get a little too comfortable with things the way we do things around here. Well then the universe has this wonderful way with this great sense of humor of just shaking things up. And so go back to March of 2020 when this all happened. What was that like for you? How quickly the innovation guy, the disruption guy, and I'm asking him, very, not necessarily going to have to be vulnerable, but I'd love for you to be transparent about it. What was it like for you over the first 30 days, 60 days, 90 days? How quickly did you pivot? I wrote a book some years ago, some self serving here and saying that word. But only wish I had a nickel for every time people said pivot since the pandemic began. Actually. How quickly were you able to pivot?

Well, we pivoted immediately because you see the response from the market like people aren't traveling. It started with flights from China being banned, but all you have to do is extrapolate. I began tracking then we called it the coronavirus. When I was at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January of 2020. This is before it was on anybody's radar there. There were only 1300 cases in Wuhan at the the time. And I began posting about it on Twitter and on social and you know, some of my followers were like, hey, what are you, why, why the hell are you talking about this thing? Like this has, you know, like this is irrelevant. Like you're fear mongering, what the hell are you doing? You know, and then, then we saw, you know, flights from China banned. And where is the supply chain for most of North America? Where is most, where are many things manufactured? It's Indonesia, it's in China. So if you're, you know, you have to kind of think implicatively, you have to kind of connect the dots when the picture isn't there. You know how when you were a kid you had to connect the doc picture and you connect all the dots and it looks like a cat or something? Well, you have to kind of connect these dots in advance and the picture is emerging.

We. Hold on. I interrupt you for one second, Jim, because you're, you know, by, by your accent, people might not know this, but you're. You're from Kansas, right?

No, I'm from Canada.

Oh, sorry.

Oh, my God.

From Canada. Canada. Canada. The good nation, the good people of Canada.

You know, we have. We have like, maple syrup and health care and no guns.

No, I love Canada. I mean, and I have good reason to. I've spent a lot of time there. But no, I'm only interrupting you not to poke fun that way, but rather to point out that the analogy, I feel, is. Is more like your. Your national hero. Now, you've had a number of them, and Neil Young's one of them for me. But in sports, who is the one national hero above all else?

Well, I'd say it's probably Wayne Gretzky.

There you go. It's Wayne Gretzky. Even though, you know, he moved to the States and played for the, you know, the Kings, we forget that. Right? But this guy had this great statement. I think that it's his. Where he say, listen, you don't skate to where the puck has been. And I think this is the analogy. If, if you don't mind my plusing you here, I feel like that's what you're talking about, right? Is that you're skating to where the puck is going to be, not where it currently is. Is that. Am I on? On you?

You. You are so right, Adam. So the real question is, where the puck.

I knew I was going to enjoy this conversation. I knew it. And awesome. Yes. Where the puck is it going, Jim?

You know, so I can't tell you exactly what the future will look like. I can give you a general picture in certain industries, but I know it won't look like the present or the past. Like, let me give you just one example. The price of transportation by car has remained constant for 100 years, when adjusted for inflation, at about 70 cents per mile. Okay? But once we have autonomous vehicles, and think about autonomous pools of vehicles like Uber and Lyft, but with no driver, okay? The cost of travel moves from $0.70 to. To $0.25amile. That two thirds drop. Who's going to buy a car if you can get around? If we have this fleet of EV electric vehicles that are autonomous as well, and you can get around, who's going to be buying cars if it's, you know, three times more expensive? Now, people think see things as black or white, it's either all on or all off. No, no, no. They're going to be some people buying cars, and they're even going. Some people still buying gas cars. It's like Jay Leno, he loves gas cars. Jerry Seinfeld, he loves gas cars. Those two, you know, comedians and cars. They're going to be keeping the gas car industry in business in a very small, minor way. You know, Jay has 200 cars. Okay, great. He's going to still be buying them, but for the mass market, for the majority of us, we're going to shift. Now, you might be saying, I don't believe it. I don't believe it. This gym guy. Well, think about this one. 70 million US households have a second or third car. And what happens if they say, I'm going to keep my primary car, but for the secondary one, I'm going to use these autonomous Uber and Lyfts. And if you think it's impossible to have autonomous Uber and Lyfts, they've been. Waymo has been operating in Phoenix as a test market for years. Okay, Years. Like, look it up. There's this new thing, Adam, I love it. It's called the Google and the Google. The Google, man. Your listeners just use the Google and Google Phoenix.

I might have heard of that.

You might have heard of it. It's a cool thing, man.

You know, we're living in inflationary times, and this is. And that's no great surprise to anybody hearing this. But what I think is interesting is that. And that's seen as bad, and there's reasons why that's the case. And I'm certainly not in favor of paying more for, you know, milk and eggs or gasoline or any number of things. But I'm curious whether you think, because this has been a percolating in my head for a couple of weeks now, that one of the positive ends, the pluses, if you will, of inflation, is that it will lead to greater innovation. Now, you're the innovation in this conversation between us. You are certainly the expert. So I'm curious if you found that to be true. Is there anecdotal proof of that? Is there actual research that says, yes, during times of higher inflation? And the reason I was thinking of this was that I'm thinking, well, Will Price, here's how my demented mind works. I'm going to let everybody into the, into the inside of this, this bald head of mine. I'm going, you know, will prices really go back like when, when a hotel can charge $2,000 a night or when, you know, any number of, you know, like first class flight costs this much now, or whatever the things are that have gone up. Will those organizations, once they've, they've, they've, they've seen that there's price elasticity, you know, where, what would ever force them to go back to pre pandemic pricing or what might be just, I don't know, a more, a more reasonable price structure. And I thought, well, the only thing that will do that is when somebody comes along and says, I'll disrupt this marketplace the way Airbnb did or some other group did, you know, Uber, as you mentioned, or others, and you go, well, I figured out how to do this and I'll save people a bunch of money. And then those people that want to gouge or charge higher, regardless of whether it's gouging or not, will simply have to either adjust their pricing or go out of business or deal with that disruption some other way. So back to you, is inflation an actual catalyst for innovation?

Absolutely. The saying necessity is the mother of invention. Well, if I'm running a business and my costs are increasing, it is going to force me to question business as usual. And I'm going to look to innovate. And I want to point out how technology can play a role in being hugely deflationary. So for instance, the example I just used that, the cost per mile of car ownership at 70 cents a mile, moving to 25 cents a mile to get around with transportation as a service, meaning Uber and Lyft, but with no drivers, right? That is hugely deflationary because the cost of transportation has dropped by 2/3. Or think about this. I was in Nepal in 1998 with my wife, beautiful country. And at the time to make a phone call back to North America was 300 Nepalese rupees a minute. But I went into an Internet cafe and I put on a headset like this with a little microphone, and I made what we now call a VOIP call voiceover Internet protocol for 10 rupees a minute. Okay, so 300 rupees a minute. 10 rupees a minute. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to say a 30x difference in price is going to eventually drive change. So I predicted that it would be free long distance for everyone in the world by 2005. Now, at the time, I had some telco clients, okay, really big name clients, and 70% of their profitability was in long distance. Now imagine you hire this speaker, okay, who comes in and who says this.

Talking head and he says, my people just inspire the heck out of them. I don't care if they actually learn anything, but just make sure they're happy when they leave.

Well, I, you know, and I tell them about this like all long distance is going to free within seven years. And they were not very happy.

They were not very, they were not very happy.

Who hired this speaker? But the point of this is that this is, you know, we had Skype launch in 03. So this was a mass market, fully duplex service that allowed for free Skype to Skype calling. Okay, now what happens is people who are in the developing world who don't have a lot of money, like in Nepal, right. They use this new technology. When I used it, it wasn't fully duplexed. Meaning, you know, it was like a walkie talkie. I had to. Only one person could speak and then I'd say over the other person could speak then, you know. And so you had to say.

You meant it was like a walk up, like a duplex.

Oh, no, no.

Two story.

No, no. But we have lots of those in Montreal. So the, this is highly disruptive to an industry. But look at it today we're using Zoom, which you can get a free Zoom account for up to 40 minutes for free. And it includes video. Where's the long distance charges in that?

Right.

So we are living in an era where technology can be hugely deflationary and offset the inflation we're experiencing with supply chain interruptions and so on. You can begin to question the way you work. When the pandemic hit, there was this kid in Alberta, Canada who'd been given a 3D printer for Christmas. And the, the company that made the printer open sourced certain designs. This kid was able to download a design and 3D print PPE for his local hospital. Okay. We had a PPE shortage right at the start of the. So he printed these face masks. Now what is the implication of this for manufacturing? Right. Why do I have to have a supply chain dependent on China? If for small batches I can print locally? There's. So these are the technologies that are profoundly changing business models. And executives, leaders of companies need to be continually thinking about the future. And I, I want to ask you a question here, Adam. Who's closest to the future? The 65 year old CEO who has his assistant print off all his emails? Or the 18 year old who's on Tinder, who does all the strategic planning? Who is most disenfranchised from strategic planning?

Interesting.

Is it any wonder we only get incremental change.

Look, it's back to what we were talking about earlier. A lot of the reason why I get invited to speak as you do and also consult in regard to change management is the fact that there's a mindset that we're dealing with in that, in those circles that you're talking about, whether it's the CEO or it's middle mid level managers or, you know, senior leaders. Right. That there's a mindset that is resistant to change. The opening of the book Change Proof, which is. I so appreciate you putting the graphic up there behind you. For those of you guys who are watching this on YouTube, Jim has the, has the Change Proof podcast logo, but it's based on. This podcast, is based on the book Change Proof that came out in February. In the beginning of the book, there's a story about the being at the beach and getting caught in a rip current riptide under an undertow and how it is that people react, really not respond, but react to that, to that threat as it's occurring when they're being pulled out to deeper and deeper water and what they do. And I was a lifeguard, so that story comes from personal experience when I was working at Jones beach when I was 19, between 19 and age 26. And the fact is people, they struggle with it, they resist it and ultimately they become exhausted in the fight. And in the rip current scenario, when they're exhausted, they become very dangerous to themselves and to anybody around them because now they're in full panic mode. I use that as a bit of a metaphor for how organizations and leaders deal with change and the fact that they do similar things. And the problem is what you just stated when, when that CEO, that 60 year old or that manager or whoever it might be sees change as something that, that is inherently a threat, that they see it that way, they feel it that way. They're, they're very different than that 18 year old, that person that is seeing the world through, through beginner's eyes, through apprentice eyes or whatever you might call young person's eyes. Because for them change is interesting, it's exciting, it's less boring than maybe just the run of the mill stuff that they're dealing with. And that's a very big difference. I was reading something that Jim Collins wrote actually that he was being interviewed and obviously Jim Collins, a pretty bright guy and I thought it was pretty cool that he was saying that chaos and uncertainty are actually what is normal. I don't know if you've ever considered this, Jim, but You and Jim Collins having, sharing a name, perhaps you have that. That's the actual norm. You look back in history and I'm sure, as I know my own name is Adam, I know you're a history guy. You look back, it's like the periods when we weren't in chaos are so infrequent as compared to the times when we've been in a state where things were just upside down. And so you go, that's our natural state of being. So resilience is the fact that it's sort of a DNA, it's sort of genetically we are predisposed to be, to be able to handle change or chaos or uncertainty of almost any kind. So when the mindset is such that you're not seeing the disruption that you talk of, that the chaos or the uncertainty that I speak of, that you don't see those things as the norm, and that your organization doesn't actually plan and strategically speak of it as the norm, I think then that's an immediate sign that there's something that, as you say, is, is wrong, that you might want to have that 18 year old take the wheel for a little bit, you know, while things get retooled.

So back to this notion of either or, you know, it's either all on or all off. We need an. And so we need. In our company, we believe we have to change all the time, but we're not changing everything all the time. We change certain things. You know, we change phone lines over to VoIP lines and this next thing we change from a different web hosting to one web hosting as a service. We change our email over to Gmail workspaces from individual ones. You know, we, we make these little changes, we change our distribution model, we change our business focus in terms of revenue. But we're not changing everything all the time. We're changing something all the time. So it's just what do we need to do? So we get used to change. Yes, and we work through it. Change is actually quite difficult because you don't get it right on the first time usually, you know, so. And there are problems and it takes longer than you think. So yeah, we need to build up.

Somebody once said you could tell the pioneers because they're the ones with the arrows in their back. So I mean we know that early adoption has its risk for sure. And most people, I think, tend to want to see the herd point the way. And when there's safety in the herd, then they'll, then they'll go along. You know, my Wife found. My wife found Zoom in 2016. She had her entire company, which was spread across at that point. Our company was in four, on four continents, and we were doing meetings on Zoom in 2016. You know, so it wasn't. It wasn't when the pandemic hit and every single gig we had planned and every flight, you know, everything was canceled. Right, Jim? In a minute. Our entire business. Now, I'm a lot of businesses. That was the case, right? Restaurants and so many things were just shut down. But for a lot of public speakers or people that, you know, do this kind of work consulting and traveling to their clients, I mean, it was shut down instantly. And it took a bunch of folks a while, months. That's why I was asking you earlier to just sort of find their footing again. We did what you did. We immediately got on Zoom. Now, we both know that organizations that hire folks like us weren't hip to that as quickly as we were, because it took them about three months before they started to say, hey, Jim. Hey, Adam. How about joining us on Zoom? Let's. Let's have that discussion. Do you guys know how to do that? Can you work that out? You know, like. Yeah, I think we can. We can handle that, and it'll be great. You might even like it better.

We. We had to help our clients through this. And here's a staggering statistic. Do you know that 70% of traditional training and education is the cost of flights, hotel rooms, and meals? So, hey, we're going to have a conference, and we're going to fly everyone together to, you know, New York City or to, you know, la, and we're going to put them all up in a hotel. We'll do some wine tours in the afternoons, or we're going to be in the Valley, maybe, you know, wine tours. And this is great, but when you add it all.

Track experience.

Yeah, exactly. You know, Adam, you and I are the business write off. You are and I are what justify all this stuff being written off as a business expense. We're the cheapest thing going here.

You really made my day. Thank you.

But 70% of the cost is getting everyone there and getting them all together. And when you are forced to do something differently and you learn, hey, we can have a Zoom conference, and Instead of having 300 people, we can have 3,000 people hearing our message. And we can allow students to come in with this special, you know, either hugely discounted price or whatever, and we can broaden our audience like we've never been able to before. You begin to See new opportunity in this change. So, you know, the Chinese icons for crisis is both danger and opportunity. Right. It's two icons. Apparently they also look very much like mother in law. Just saying. But you know, whenever there's this huge crisis, there is both a downside. And so many people are focused on the downside. Right. The threat to the existing business model. They're not looking for the upside. What could we, how could we do things differently? You know, and earlier I talked about doing a one hour keynote in Dubai and it taking a week out of my life. Now I can do a one hour keynote in Dubai and it literally takes one hour.

Yep.

Right. So it really changes the market. And we're not going to go back to, you know, the way it was. It's going to be a new equilibrium. There's going to be a new balance where we do a lot more virtual because we can do it at 70% less in cost. And we're still, we are social animals. We're still going to want to get together in person. But I want to come back to a principle. I work with a lot of CEOs, and one CEO once came up to me and said, Jim, what you're really saying is we should pretend that we're our own competitors and knowing our internal weaknesses, how would we slaughter ourselves? In other words, if I'm always relentlessly thinking, what are the weaknesses in my current business model and how do I innovate to strengthen those up? And I'll give you one example. I was doing a conference with 300 CEOs. Now, it happened to be in the Rocky Mountains and I found, you know, strategic planning and CEO retreats. A couple things are essential. One is a five star resort. Another, fine wines must be served. And it's a beautiful setting. Okay, so there we are. These 300 CEOs were having so much fun that they invite me back the next year. And at the sponsors dinner the night before, One of the CEOs, his name's Jeff, his company does Helixical pilings. They're like think about screws that go into the ground for construction projects. They're, you know, massive screws that are, you know, 100ft long screws or whatever that go into the ground to stabilize the building. Anyways, Jeff comes up to me and he says, Jim, I just got to tell you what happened in the last year. Okay, I'm all ears. He says, you told us about assetless expansion like Airbnb. You told us to create a shadow board of millennials and Gen Zs. To run our big decisions by, you know, that's the 65, 18 year old structural solution to getting future insight. So I wanted to expand. Now the way I would have done it is a 15 million dollar custom design, build manufacturing facility. But I ran that by my shadow board and the millennials and Gen Cs said that's brain debt. You know, why don't we find a facility that we can rent, you know, and expand and it totally de risks the expansion. So he said I did. I found a brand new manufacturing facility that had just been built and the owners had overbuilt by 100% to allow for future expansion. And I got to rent what they weren't using for three years. Pennies to the dollar. So look at that cash flow, zero cash flow implications, de risk expansion completely. And when the pandemic hit, he wasn't shut down and left servicing $15 million of debt. He had, you know, an inconsequential rent compared to the design built.

And so yeah, and see where the puck is or exactly predicting because a bunch of this, as you said earlier, when you predict you're going to be wrong at times, I mean that's a success story. And just as easily, I'm sure people can conceive of, you know, someone else that makes a prediction or listens to their shadow board, which I think is a brilliant suggestion by the way. I think everybody's going to take that one back to, back to their leadership teams to talk about and they'll predict something and it won't turn out great. I mean, so I, you know, we don't often talk about that. But I do want to ask you about that Jim, if you don't mind my, you know, interrupting you there to just say when it doesn't go well, when, when the prediction doesn't turn out well, how do you, how do you, what do you say to teams that, that keep them interested, not just interested in innovation, but in the process of innovation, which means failing probably more often than you succeed. Is that not true?

So yes, yeah, you do fail, but you don't. So let me back up. First off, the shadow board wasn't predicting a pandemic. The shadow board was predicting a lower capex way of expanding. So I'll just go back to, you know, the largest hotel chain in the world. I'm blanking for a second. Help me as a free.

I think it's Marriott. That's it, right?

Marriott. Marriott tweets out we are going to add 30,000 rooms this year and you know Think about the capital implications going out to capital markets and you know, issuing bonds and you know, construction and all this, you know, huge projects, capital intensive projects. Well, Brian Chesky, who's the CEO of Airbnb, this is, you know, many years ago he tweets out, Marriott's going to add 30,000 rooms this year. Kind of like good for them. We're going to do that in the next two weeks with zero capex. Like it's a totally different business model. So this shadow board of millennials and Gen Zs, they weren't predicting the future. They were looking at a business model that de risks expansion, that increases cash flow, that achieves a faster to profitability stance. And because we can't predict the future, if you have a process that allows for assetless expansion, de risk expansion, no capex expansion, you can scale faster, you're going to do better. And over time against incumbents who must take four years to build something, billions of dollars raised in capital markets. If you keep on betting between these two organizations, I can tell you over time which is going to win because the fundamental structures, it's like going to a casino. The kiss the house always wins because the game is structured over time. If you bet enough, the house will always win. And if you have significantly greater advantages in your business model over time, if you're innovative, creative, always coming back, you know, innovating incrementally, not just disruptively over time you will win. So it's not so much about predicting the future, it's about looking at business models and which will guarantee the best long term success.

Yeah, I mean, I agree with you. And then I think this is where partly our content dovetails because the way I would speak to an audience of those same folks is that you must innovate. And in, in that process you are going to come up against making good calls and bad calls. You're going to predict correctly and sometimes you're going to predict not so correctly, but ultimately the unsung hero that, that I've seen in looking at in our research groups that came out of the 2008 downturn, which was a massive disruption. I would imagine that the since the United States got a very bad cold, that Canada got one too. So for us it was called the Great Recession and it was brutal. But companies, organizations of all kinds, large and small, that came out of that disruption stronger, Believe it or not, as of 2012, 2013, 14 and on up to today, were the ones that that were identified as resilient, that they had, they were resilience with the ts. And the less resilient organizations either failed entirely or, or just have never fully recovered back or have the gap that was created between those two. They've never been able to kind of close that gap. And I think that in some respects it really is a. From my standpoint, it becomes cultural. Like, is the organization itself designed to be resilient or not? And I'm seeing you pointing, pointing. So please, any thoughts?

That is exactly it. Two things come to mind. The first is that if you look at ants, tiny little ants, you will find that 97% of the workers are harvesting food and water from existing known sources. But 3% of the workers are exploring new areas to find new sources of water and food. And back to this notion about polar opposites or seeing things in binary. It's not the way to see it. So an organization should always have. And it's dependent on the organization and the industry. But let's say the ants use only 3% of their resources to find new sources. So it's not like, hey, let's put the millennials in charge of the entire organization and the total P and L and the, you know, capital expenditure decision. No, let's give them certain things. Let's give them, let's take a VC approach to innovation in our company. And we have teams working on things. So I work with an organization called Exponential Organizations, which works with companies around growing 10x, either their bottom line, their profitability, their customer satisfaction. But it's not about getting incremental change. It's about 10x change. And if you're going to get 10x change, you're going to have to do things fundamentally differently. And one of the ways to do that is to create a shark tank type of innovation where, you know, young, excited, motivated people in an organization work together in teams with coaching and support, and they create pitches. And the executive team has gone through a shock and awe session where they just see how fast things are changing and these ideas are brought forward. And so what you're taking is the deep wisdom of the executives and business models married to the excitement and tech focus, focus of, you know, the millennial and Gen Z groups that are working on stuff with coaching. And so it's not just about the tech, it's not just about the business model. It's how do we marry business model and tech to create something that's exciting and new and stickier with the customer, Increase customer satisfaction, lower costs, increased profitability. Like many people think, hey, if we raise quality, we have to raise Cost. Well, how about we raise quality and customer satisfaction and lower cost? Now, many people will think that's impossible, but there is a small municipality not too far away from me that if they had a public transit service, would have to spend 8 million a year. Well, they're using Uber as their public transit system. They subsidize each Uber ride, and rather than wait for a bus that comes by infrequently in a cold Canadian winter, I get a car come right up to my door, I'm treated like the president of any small republic, and I'm taken directly to where I want to go. Like, isn't that so much better?

So it's you Canadians. You Canadians just have the answers, you know. Well, not all of us health, all these good things. Listen, I just couldn't be more, more happy with how, how this very unplanned conversation unfolded, Jim. And I'm thrilled that we got to explore what we did. I want to just sort of, as a final, final question here, ask you about your own personal resilience. So being somebody that does travel a lot or, you know, is serving a number of different organizations, individuals, etc. I'm curious, do you have a particular ritual that has really worked for you better than others or some other habits that you would share with us regarding your own personal resilience?

Well, you mentioned the word habits. And behind me under your podcast is Stephen Covey's book the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I used to represent Stephen teaching the Seven Habits. It's very powerful material. So I would recommend that. That is a great book. It still influences my business consulting practice and my personal life to this day, so I recommend that. But I want to tell a story. So change, as you were saying, is in fact the norm. But we don't see that. And we work to create stability in our personal lives and organizations. And so it's a bit of a paradox. How do we embrace change and yet have the comfort of stability? And I talked earlier about not changing everything all the time, but always be changing something. Your business model, tweaking it, your suppliers, your, you know, how are we always going to get better? But we have an emotional and personal reaction to change. So I want to tell this story. So it's from China. It's about a religion called Daoism. It's an ancient Chinese religion. And I only understand everything, Adam, through story. So there was a very poor village, and in the village was a farmer who owned his own horse. So he was considered rich because he owned this horse, which he used for farming and transportation. So one day his horse ran away, and all the villagers said, what terrible luck. You've just lost all your wealth. And he said, maybe. And two days later his horse came back, bringing with it two wild horses. And the villagers said, what incredible luck. You've just tripled your wealth. You're the wealthiest man, not just in the town, but in the region. Oh, my God. And he said, maybe. And then that day, his only son was out riding one of the wild horses, trying to tame it, and it bucked him off and he broke his leg. And 3,000 years ago, a broken femur was life threatening in China. And the villagers said, what terrible luck. Your only son with a broken leg. And the farmer said, maybe. And the next day the emperor's men came through the village, conscripting every young man to fight in a war, taking every young man to their certain death, except for the farmer's son. And the villagers said, what incredible luck. And the farmer said, maybe. And really, this is what life is like, you know, ups and downs. But how do I live with the joy, calm and serenity of the farmer despite the vicissitudes of life? And so the paradox of life is that we live it forward, but we only understand it in hindsight. So is something really, really good, or is it really, really bad? Or is the story just not over yet? So when something happens that I perceive as really, really bad, I have to reframe it to say, maybe this isn't a bad thing after all. Maybe this is going to be the best thing ever. I just don't understand it now. But at least I don't have the negative emotional baggage. Because if you are angry or fearful or resentful, it shuts down the creative part of our brains. We can't be resilient if we're in fear. So the reframing is essential to enable the resilience in the face of crisis. So I use this Taoist farmer story, and it can be something as trivial as, you know, you're at the grocery market, you're in the 1 to 12 checkout line, you're in a rush, and the little old lady in front of you clearly hasn't read the 1 to 12 sign. You know, she's got 19 items and she's paying with pennies, you know, and like, I'm going crazy. How do I reframe that? Well, first off, it's only going to be an extra minute and a half, two minutes. Secondly, if I rushed out right now and got in my car, Maybe I'd get T boned by some drunk driver in a intersection who runs red, but this little old lady is thankfully preventing me from being there then. So this, whether that is what actually would happen or not is irrelevant. What is important is that I just calm down, right? That I just accept the situation as it is, right? I can choose to abandon my 11 items in the shopping basket, or I can just be patient and enjoy the world. But, you know, how do I continually reframe to be happy, joyous and free, regardless of, of what is happening, you know, because I really don't want my emotional life to follow the price of Bitcoin.

I love that. I, I just so appreciate what you just shared. And to me, I, I truly, I hope that everybody that's listening, of course you've heard that. So you can, you can feel good about the fact that you made it to this part in the episode, which we are, we are ending our, our show in just a second here. But to hear, to hear Jim Harris share that, what is truly wisdom, I mean, that's, it's fundamentally important to being resilient that you can accomplish what Jim has just shared with us. And whether it's reframing or it's other things, ultimately the goal is to be able to live in that state of equanimity, that, that serenity, that peace, because you will think, you will think more rightly, more clearly, more effectively in that state, and therefore you will make much better decisions in that state as well. So, Jim, thank you so much again. Everything that you shared and especially how you just summed things up in such a beautiful way, I appreciate you.

Well, it's been so much fun being on the podcast, Adam. We went an hour, not 30 minutes, not 40 minutes. We went an hour. We're actually, we must have been having fun or something.

It. So just the behind the scenes look here, right before we hit the record button, Jim said to me, so, you know, how long do you, you know, you think this thing will go? I said, I give it 30, 40 minutes, maybe, you know, 50 if we're really enjoying each other's company. But if not, you know, then not. And yes, we went, we went more than an hour. So that's testament to the whole thing. All right, buddy, thank you so much for being on the show. Everybody out there, if you know someone that would love to hear this parts of this or this entire episode, please feel free to share it. We love those five star reviews. Please leave those wherever you are listening. Subscribe if you haven't done so all that good stuff. And of course you can leave a comment. We will answer those comments. I will do so personally. I will tap Jim if the question is for him. You can go to AdamMarkel.com forward/podcast to do so. And again, wishing you all just a fabulous, fabulous rest of your day and thank you again. Well, I love that conversation so much with Jim man talking about disruption. He has clearly got so much insight and really tangible examples to offer in terms of how it is that we deal with constant and never ending change in the fact that disruption is such a catalyst for innovation. I know we've all heard the expression that necessity is the mother of all invention, etc. Before, but I think he really brought that topic to life and I was so happy to be able to sort of probe and even push back on a number of the things that he said. And we had a great conversation even about inflation. I didn't know that that would come up. But, but lately I've just been percolating ideas about how it is that inflation is actually going to be one of the great drivers of of innovation and cost reduction going forward. Because nobody's happy, none of us about spending more for the same products or services, or in some cases spending more for inferior products or services, or at least products and services that aren't meeting the moment the way they possibly can. Because we've, we've, you know, in every instance, whether it's in our personal lives or in, in our leadership roles or business, et cetera, we are always either evolving or we are going in the other direction, which we don't want to talk about. So the fact is we have got a profound moment of opportunity here and Jim was able to help me to see some things differently. I hope that you will find that he has also enlightened you, given you new insights. And certainly our conversation was lively, was ton of fun and one that I thoroughly enjoyed. So have at it, enjoy it, share it with a friend and of course let us know your thoughts. As always, thanks for listening everyone.

We hope you now have even more tools and greater insights to build resilience and become change proof. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over@adammarkel.com podcast for more resilience tips and strategies, including support for building change proof teams, visit AdamMarkel.com forward/become change proof.