0 | Welcome To The Circuit Breaker (Origin)

Welcome to the Circuit Breaker podcast where we challenge the status quo of innovation.

And new product development.

We'll talk about tools and skills and methodologies used to build better products and make you a better consumer. I'm Bob Mesta and I'm the co founder of the Rewired Group and I'm one of your co hosts and we're joined by Greg Engel, who is my co founder and the chief, Bob interpreter. Join us now as we trip the circuit and give you time to reset, reorganize, and recharge your brain to build better products.

Hey, Bob. Today we're going to talk about our origin episode. And this is a really hard episode for me because it seems very self. Congratulatory. Very self. I don't even know what the word is. Just promotion. And it's not really us.

It's not really us at all. But as we have a producer to help us with this, the reality is like, we need to talk about why we want to do a podcast.

Yes. So this is where I want to start. And I want to start with a cadence of I want to talk about why you want to do a podcast because you've been prodding me, conjoling me, forcing me, badgering me to be doing, to do a podcast for, I don't know, the last five years, maybe longer.

So why do you want to do a podcast? What does it do for you? What's the job to be done? It does for Bob. Messed up.

Yeah. Yeah.

So.

So I think part of is this is one is I've been on a lot of podcasts. I've been on people's podcasts over. Over a hundred. Right. And it's one of those things where it's everything from a sales podcast to, you know, innovation podcast to a legal podcast to, like, I mean, it's just a huge range of it. And it's always about a topic that's either a book or something that I. I've been doing. And, and I have a lot of things in my head that are, if you will, half baked. And I want. And I don't really have because I'm dyslexic. It's very hard to write. And so part of this is for us to use this as a forum for us to kind of banter and almost kind of see how the things we develop and what we're doing connects. And so part of this is about helping me get the things out of my head and you and I being able to like, because we, to be honest, we do A podcast every day, but we don't record it.

We talk, argue and talk, argue and debate things all the time.

All the time. It's like one of the core things. And what I want to do is I want to kind of be able to share some of that with other people, because I know when we've had people here or people come to the office or come to the design center here, we end up. You know, that's half of. Kind of the value of being together is all these conversations. Sorry, I keep.

You said something that I want to unpack, because you say it all the time, and I'm not sure you even know what you mean by it, but you say, I want to get it out of my head.

Yeah.

What does that mean?

So.

That'S a good question. In my head, I have multiple tracks of thought. So I'm thinking about things, multiple things simultaneously. And so part of this is to realize at some point, the stuff that usually only comes out is the stuff that's relevant in the moment. But there's a lot of stuff in the background about. Because I'm asking myself, why all the time. Why is that happening? And at some point, that becomes almost a little hamster wheel that's running in my head going, I'm trying to figure out why that's happening. And it's background processing. But I want to bring some of that stuff to the forefront, and I wanted a forum to kind of do that and bring that forward.

Why does it have to come out, though? What. What's the problem with it being in your head and being background processed? People do that all the time. What's the problem with that?

It's not. But it gets back to the fact is we only have so much time. And I think that as I get older, what I'm realizing is we end up mashing a lot of things together. So, like, take Clay Christensen's work and take Dr. Taguchi's work, which are two really independent things, but they all mash up inside my head, and then all of a sudden, I can see things in a different way. And so part of it is to realize, like, this is, you know, the. One of the books that we've been working on is the, you know, learning to build, and it's empathetic perspective. And it's this notion of, like, how do I articulate, like, Taguchi's work and Christensen's work together mashed up in a new way? Because at some point, it's like, nobody has thought about it from this perspective.

And I think Part of the issue is, is we all. We all background process all the time. Yes. And if we don't actually get it out, we don't have a forum to prototype to getting it out. It just becomes lost to everybody. Right. So if we don't have a way to get it out, if we don't have a way to prototype ways to talk about it with other people, get the ideas out there, it can never make anything better.

Yep. Yep. And I think the other part of this, though, is the fact is, like, we get the same question every day. Right. Or all once a while. And it's like, I think we're both, having been doing this now for almost 12 years, it's kind of like, how do we actually start to answer the questions? So one is, we don't have to answer them anymore. We can answer some new questions. And so part of this is about kind of building a portfolio of answers to the questions that people have so we don't have to spend the, if you will, the time to literally just repeat what we did yesterday.

Yeah. So I kind of say it as we want to prototype our ideas. We want to have the conversations. We want more people to hear it because they can help us make it better. And we want to attract new friends, people that are new to us and can listen to us and help us do that. But we also want to have a place for our old friends to go and hear some of the things and be reminded some of the ways to think differently and do those things. So I think I want to transition now to what does the listener get out of this? And I think one of the things the listeners get out of this, and I'll let you answer as well, is it's a place where I can go back and I can hear a different way to look at things. We are about changing that paradigm, changing the way you look at a problem, because we tend to stare at the problems with the same lens over and.

Over again and expect different results.

And how can you get different results? You can't. So you have to look at things slightly different. And because of our learning differences, because of the way we work, we have to look at things differently.

Yes.

It's the only way to look at things.

I think we don't have to necessarily look at them different. We have to look at things in multiple ways simultaneously so we can see what's really happening. We don't have confidence in our ability to read. And sometimes we know that when we hear people say things, we know that's not what they mean, so we have to like, for us, it's like we have to actually kind of engage and unpack and get, you know, I'm taking my hands and putting them together and kind of rotating. If anybody's worked with me, they understand, like, you got to see it from multiple perspectives.

So in your mind, people are listening right now to this. This. I don't even know if it's the first episode, if it's the pre episode. I don't even know what to call it.

Right, right, right. The origin episode.

Who should listen?

Well, I think it's. It's. First of all, I think it's targeted towards, in some cases, the people we've worked with in the past. And. And that's going to be innovators, entrepreneurs, engineers, marketers, people who naturally have to have either product or services in mind and are about helping people and need a different way in which to think about it or need a moment to push pause. That's why we call the circuit breaker. Right. Is to almost hit the reset button so you can think about something in a different way or from a different perspective. And so this is primarily, I think, for people from the past and then people in the future that we haven't met and don't know that they can get to know us a little bit before we actually meet. And to be honest, at some point, some people, we never meet, but the way we approach things is what I will say is, it happened just yesterday where you just ask a question and they go like, oh, that's a great question. I have no idea what the answer is, but then they're going off to answer the question. And so I think part of this is to. Is to help frame better questions so you can actually figure out what to do next.

If you had to describe this podcast, is this entertainment? Is this informational? Is this a break? Like, there's multiple reasons why people listen to a podcast, Right?

We know the jobs of podcasts. Yes.

And so what. What is this? What. What is this podcast? What does this do for people?

Yeah, I think the main job that we're going after in this case is when.

It'S mostly about filling things in. So it's taking a break, if you will, and it's about being able to take a break, a productive break, where I get a new perspective and I can hear something, and it's like, it's that notion of, I have this problem, I'm going to go for a walk, listen to the podcast, hear some words, and then come back to that problem. And now I have a different perspective on it. So I think part of it is, let's be clear, we're entertaining just because we banter all the time. Right? But I think that, well, for some people, some people, it gets old. I think at the same time, though, I think this is really about helping people kind of get that. Get a different perspective on where they're at or where they want to go.

So you're envisioning this podcast being, if I'm stuck, I need to recharge my batteries, if I have a problem that I don't know how to solve, take a listen, be entertained, but also then take away this different way of approaching things. Time gives you that. And then also some tools, methodologies and thinking tools will help you with that as well.

Exactly.

So sometimes we just need time and space. Sometimes we need tools and methods. We're trying to give people all that chance to do that.

Yep, yep. I mean, we work this way, right? We go in intense bursts where it's like, we'll do something and then it's like we just start spinning our wheels and we just stop and we go like, all right, let's break. And we all go off and do our own things, right? And then we come back. But it's like that break, this is about filling that break so people can actually have a different perspective, coming back to it and re energized at the same time.

So I want to hit one more thing, and that's what it's not. Right. And I often hear people talk about listening to podcasts, about getting an answer or getting a process or getting the magic wand or the silver bullet, as.

We would call it.

And this is not it. If you want to be spoon fed an answer, if you want to be spoon fed a way of thinking, this is probably not for you, right?

This is not a how to kind of podcast. This is not a what to do kind of podcast. This is really about helping people think a little bit deeper and for us to give you kind of the clues of where you might want to go down the rabbit hole. And so this is not, like you said, the answer, but it's more about bringing perspective. And everybody's going to come from a different perspective, but it's more or less, can we actually help them see their problem or their solution or whatever they're trying to do from a different point of view than they have today. And so it's really more about kind of helping you see things and helping you think about things and helping you make decisions.

So If I pinned you down.

Yep. Which you've done once or twice.

And I see.

Which is not pretty, by the way. This is where we. It gets very loud in the office when you pin me down, so be careful here.

And I've. And I ask you, what are the three promises. Yeah. That you would give to our audience.

Yeah.

From this podcast. What are they?

I think one is.

I think. I think every podcast people will laugh at some. At some quirky, stupid thing we do.

Because that's a lot of pressure, because we haven't done that yet.

Yeah. But. But my belief is, is our banter is. Is. Is a little bit of comic relief. And I think it's like, that's so fun. But it's always good to see. See a relationship like we have over 20 years and how comfortable and how much we trust each other to do that thing. So it allows us to understand and demonstrate kind of what does trust look like and how to actually how we work. Right. I think the other promise is that you might not always agree with what we say, or you might not, you know, or you might. But I think the part of it is we're going to make you think differently. We're going to make you think a little harder about something. We're going to. We're not going to give you answers, we're going to give you questions to literally go like, that's a great question. Because I go back to Clay's quote of questions. Great spaces in the brain for solutions to fall into. And so we really want to actually force you to start to think about a question to help you make progress. I think the last thing is that it's as a. So each individual podcast will have that. But I think the other part is to think about the set of podcasts, which has different traits, but I think part of this becomes an underlying theme of where you want to go and what you want to do. And so I think when you start to connect the podcasts, that's where you're going to start to see real progress. So the progress isn't going to really happen in any one podcast. It's going to happen in the set of podcasts. And that's the other thing I can guarantee is that by listening to a series of these, you're really going to get a lot of different perspectives on something, because in some cases, it's going to seem like we're contradictory from one podcast to another. And the reality is what we're doing is, no, we're going to approach this from the Demand side, we're going to approach this from the supply side. And so part of this is to realize like it's the set that's going to actually help you get really, really good at this.

I think one of the other things we'll promise is that we don't always agree.

No, but that's the beauty of it. And.

We don't need to agree. In a lot of cases when we disagree, we come up with something that actually is better that we can both agree on. That's not so. The interesting part is most people, when they disagree, they compromise. We don't compromise. We actually then create something better because of the contradictions we have or the constraints we have and the trade offs we have. And we know how to do that. And so to me, that's the important part.

And then the last thing I kind of want to just end with is kind of, I don't know if this is advice. I don't know if this is learning from my past behavior on podcasts or listening to podcasts. Is one of the things I want the listeners to understand is this was a broad view of kind of what we think the podcast is going to be. The podcast will evolve over time, of course, and not to give up too early. If you listen to this origin episode and you're like, that's interesting, don't just stop at one episode. You have to listen to multiple to actually figure it out. Because I think a lot of times what we do as humans and what I absolutely do with podcasts is I jump around, right? And I lose what I the reason why I really started listening to this podcast. So the commitment I would like from the listeners is can you really understand and do a force of progress on yourself of why did you pick this podcast? And then give it enough time and enough reps to see if it's making that happen or not? Because I think we give up on things too early. And I think that happens in development, I think that happens in life, I think that happens in everything. And I don't want people to give up too early, but I also don't want people to waste their time. So they need to understand why they're listening to this. Hopefully this helps.

And when do they reach for it? Right. I think the other thing to think about here to me is the fact that context creates value. And so part of it is I can listen to one podcast in one context and it helps me do one thing, and then I can actually listen to the same podcast at a different time, in a different context, and it helps me do something different. And so part of this is to realize, like, part of that we're trying to build this as a set of tools that you might come back to one podcast three, four or five times, because it's the thing that actually helps you generate the questions you're trying to answer better. And it doesn't matter whether it's, hey, I'm trying to figure out how to choose college, or I'm trying to choose a new job, or I'm trying to actually buy a new product, or I'm trying to develop this thing. Like, there will be one or two podcasts that literally every time you listen to it, you hear something different. And so that's where I think the aspect here is to think of this as a tool. It's a thinking tool to help you frame the right questions so you can move forward.

So that kind of wraps up our our origin episode and I guess the assignment out of this one, because we kind of try to do assignments on most of them, is to think about your Think about why you're listening to this podcast. Why did you pick up the origin episode? Figure out what progress you want to make, see if this is the right one, give it a couple reps, and if it isn't, let it go. If it is, keep listening.

That's right. That's right. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to influence and thanks for listening.

Thanks for listening to the Circuit Breaker podcast. If you haven't already, please subscribe so you won't miss an episode. If you know somebody who's stuck on the innovation treadmill, please share it. If you'd like to learn more information, Visit us@therewiregroup.com to find out how we work, how we can help. Some resources, some books, some software. Join us next time as we trip the circuit breaker to help you recharge, re energize and refocus your new product development.