S1 E3 | Q&A with Bob and Greg - What Debating Can Teach Us About Ourselves

There was a study done by Kim Clark. He talks about engineers and how engineers basically are most productive when they have five different projects, anything more than five, and the fact is that they need that contrast between the things like we do, but when we have like 20 that it becomes overwhelming and we don't make enough projects and you're better off not working on the other 15 and get those five done so then you can get to it because otherwise it just all stretches out for a long period of time. And so for us, it's prioritizing what are those essential five or six things we have to do either every day or every week. And then from there it's then being able to understand kind of the impact we're going to have when what's the progress we're really trying to help somebody else make.

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 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 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.

Today I want to pose a couple questions to you two, Bob and Greg. This is the beginning of a series on this podcast of Q and A with Will Solicit from our audience. So stay tuned for instructions on how to submit your burning question to Rewired for a podcast answer. Today I took the liberty of formulating my own questions. I'm pretending I'm a presidential debate moderator and coming up with my own things I want to ask you to. Based on my experience working with you guys for a couple years, observing and working the Rewired way, I have some thoughts I want to hear you share that I think will be helpful to the audience.

So where do we begin?

I know. Where do we begin? The first thing I want to talk about is something I think everyone struggles with from time to time. And that's the feeling of being stuck in the mud in your work, not being able to make progress, move forward. And I've seen both of you tackle being stuck in different and unique ways I think that are quite different from what I've seen in my prior life in the corporate and education world. So tell us. Let's start with you, Greg. Tell us how do you approach getting unstuck?

So when I get stuck in something I'm doing like a process or a piece of a project or something, I always go back to the force of progress. Why am I doing it? What is the thing that I'm trying to get done? What are those forces acting on me and what are the things that are causing me the angst of not being able to move forward? Right. It's really getting below that water line is the important part in that. Because you have to understand why you're stuck, what's going on. Is it lack of motivation, which is different than not knowing where to go? Or is it that people are putting roadblocks in your way? What are those things happening? And you have to understand your force of progress. You have to understand why you need that thing done and what's going on. And then understand the under the water of the things holding you back. Is it something you don't want to do? Because it's habit of if I do this, then it's going to destroy other things I'm used to doing, like doing videos. When I do videos, I actually, the habit is not to do videos and just talk to people over and over again. And the video has to be so perfect. So I have to go back and really understand why am I doing the video?

Why am I stuck doing these videos when I talk about this stuff all the time? Well, it usually comes back to things like it has to be perfect when I'm in front of somebody or doing it live. It's okay to stutter, but on a video, is it. And once you get past those things and you say what's okay and you put those metrics of how you're going to measure it being good enough, then you can move on.

Yeah. So when you say below the waterline, what you're really referring to is those habits and anxieties.

Yeah, I talk about habits and anxieties being below the waterline because most I picture a duck on the water and you can see where they're going. They look really calm on the top, but under the water, their legs are churning like crazy. Right. They're moving their legs, they're going directions. And that's what I visualize when I visualize the force of progress is people talk about the things above that line all the time, but they don't talk about the things below the line. They don't let you know what's actually below the surface level of. Well, yeah, this is going out of my life and I want this to happen, but they don't tell you all the other stuff. That's the more emotional things or, or the things that might be holding them back because they're afraid that you're going to judge them, or the anxieties about the new, because maybe they haven't thought about them, but maybe they don't want to admit to some of them. So I think of that as the waterline of being. When you look at the forces of progress, we usually draw pushes and pulls on the top, and then we usually draw a line and then put habits and anxieties. And I view that as a waterline.

BOB so I get stuck for three main reasons. One is something becomes too big, meaning those anxieties either come in or the scope has changed, or all of a sudden I find something that I didn't know before, and it just, it gets big and then you get overwhelmed. A second one is really that I don't have enough energy. Like, my brain power is I'm stuck because I just don't have the mental energy to kind of go do the work that I have to go do. And so there's strategies for that. And then the last one is when kind of the context has changed and something else now has either higher priority or basically is kind of taking my mental energy away to go do something else. And so part of it is to take the time to really kind of understand which one of one to acknowledge I'm stuck. Two is, then what kind of stuck am I? And then strategies for each one of them, right? Like, so, for example, when it gets too big and there's too much, one of the things I'll do is I'll break it into smaller pieces and be able to kind of take the, you know, say, like, all right, all I gotta do is get this part done today or this part done now, and then we'll worry about the rest of it later kind of thing. So it's almost building a time wall. And say in the next hour, what can I get done when I don't have enough energy? What I. Part of the, I'll say the luxury of being in consulting and the work we do is there's just so many different places. And so when I don't have enough energy, typically what I have the ability to do is kind of move to a different subject or a different topic and do other things and then come back to. And so part of this is to, again, assess my energy, but to really know, kind of like, can I, you know, when would I be most motivated to do this kind of work, especially the. I'll say the harder work. And then the other thing is, a lot of times things around us will change and we'll have kind of a new priority or we'll have something else we're supposed to be doing. And so it kind of pulls my attention away from the work I'm doing. And so part of it will be, well, you know what? I just have to pause and we'll put this later. And so none of the work we do is, I'll say, technically urgent. And so part of this is to realize it's about sequencing and reading your energy and kind of the progress you're trying to make, and then adjust accordingly with different strategies along the way. And so for the most part, people always ask, like, how do you get so much done? I think part of it is we don't try to make everything linear, and we mix it up all the time.

You're also quite intentional about how you structure your day. Coming in early, doing your thinking, and doing other tasks later in the day. You know, you have an idea of how. How you want to work and how you work best.

Well, I think it's not how I want to work, but how my. My brain and my body work the best. And so it's one of those things where I've. I've kind of found that sweet spot. And, you know, though it feels like we're impromptu, a lot of the things I'll do is when I'm thinking about something or I'm doing a presentation. It's like I'm iterating a lot on it. And so there's certain times when I can. And certain times when I can't do that. And so I've almost got, like, the day planned out of, like, when. When do I need to. What do I need to be thinking about this morning? What do we need to be doing, you know, you know, when we're together, near the end of the day, as my energy gets lower, like, what are those other things do I have. I held off that I can do almost like, with one arm time behind my back. And so I've learned how to kind of match my energy to the task.

Have you been stuck recently? Do you have an example you can.

You can share? Yeah, so I have a. I have a. So I have four conferences I'm going to, and I have a conference that's out in California in two weeks. And my. Let's see, the presentation was due yesterday, and I still don't have it done, but I worked on it yesterday and today. It's one of those things where I get stuck because they want to put too much into the hour that I have. And so I'm in this mode of prototyping back and forth. I can send them something to kind of ease it off and then basically modify it between now and when I present. But I'm still trying to wrestle with all the different things we've done in the last six months and kind of mash something together to kind of make it fit the audience that we're talking about. And so a lot of times I've come in the last three days more or less in the morning and kind of built something and kind of just didn't feel like it was tight enough or it was there. And so I've been able to back off. And so it's one of those things where it's that aspect of stepping closer, stepping farther, getting some perspective, and then eventually getting your guys input to it as well. But I don't feel it's ready to go to the show.

You get, you're making trade offs, you're prototyping, you're moving forward.

Yep, yep. And I think the other thing around getting stuck is we don't try to make anything perfect. We all believe in this notion of iteration and that we get as it's almost like we time box or build a time wall for everything to say. Like we're going to do as much as we can within this time window. And then from there it's like, okay, we'll come back to it. And it's that iterative. It's the right amount of iteration that really kind of helps us be ridiculously productive.

Yeah. So something going to my next question in my mailbag, something that often goes part and parcel with this notion of being stuck in your work is motivation. How do you two keep motivated through such busy work we do here? Teaching, coaching, consulting, writing, podcasting, now software. Software, all kinds of things.

Do you want to go first?

Back to Greg.

Back to Greg.

So the first thing is we have to define what stuck and motivated are. Right. Because I think Bobby used a lot of words that were interchangeable there. And I think what he was actually describing to me was more of how does he stay unstuck, not how does he get unstuck. Right. He plans his day to make sure he doesn't get stuck.

That's right.

So it's not about getting unstuck for him. Yeah. It's more. More of preventative there. But so stuck to me When I say I'm stuck, when I'm talking to you all or to people that know me well is I don't know what to do or I don't know how to do it. That's when I'm stuck. Motivated is when I don't want to or I don't know how, or I don't know when to is motivated, right? So they're different and they take different things to get them done. So we are blessed with what we do and how we work. That there's one way that I can help myself stay motivated or just pick things that motivate me. Because of the way we are able to pick and choose projects, because of the way we're able to pick and choose things, that's one way I'm able to do it. That's preventative, right? That's we've set up our lives to do that. That you can't do that all the time. That's not something that anybody can strive for. But when you get it, you realize how great that is. And a lot of people have it in their personal lives, maybe not in their business lives. They have some of those things in their personal lives. But what I try to do to stay motivated or when I'm demotivated is again, I go back to the forces, but this time when I look at them, I don't look at them through my eyes. I look at them through others, right? I have to look at it like, who am I doing this for and what are they expecting from me? Or how am I going to help them be satisfied? Because motivation is about me getting myself to go do something. I have to do that through others. Unstuck is about me just doing it. So I get to look internally. So it's based on what I am. And you have to make sure you're defining those things correctly for yourself. Stuck and motivated to understand what you're doing. So stuck. I look inner motivated, I look out and I'm saying, who am I doing this for and how is it going to help them? Because me wanting to help them will keep me motivated or keep me moving forward, right?

And to me, the other part is when you start to look who you're doing it for, you. And I always end up in this realm of like, well, this is what we think they want. And then we go like, all right, we got to go talk to them or have a conversation or something like that. Because a lot of times our standards are higher than what we would say most people are. And so part of this is adjusting our expectations to basically make sure we're helping them make progress and not necessarily make it perfect kind of thing. And so motivation is a really like, I think, Greg, you always tell me that, like, I have very little anxiety forces, so progress for me is very easy.

Right?

And I think that's right. I think the bigger issue for me is trade offs of where do I spend my time and how do I make sure I'm making enough progress in any one thing at a time that it's meaningful enough. Right? And so part of this is like you can balance 20 things, but the reality is that none of those 19 of the 20 things are sitting in inventory waiting to get done, right? Until basically you're done with that last test. And so to me, having the right portfolio of things and having like. So there's a, there's a study done by Kim Clark. He talks about engineers and how engineers basically are most productive when they have five different projects, anything more than five, and the fact is that they need that contrast between the things like we do, but when we have like 20 that it becomes overwhelming and we don't make enough projects. You're better off, you're better off not working on the other 15 and get those five done. So then you can get to it because otherwise it just all stretches out for a long period of time. And so for us, it's prioritizing. What are those essential five or six things we have to do either every day or every week. And then from there it's then being able to understand kind of the impact we're going to have when what's the progress we're really trying to help somebody else make.

So let's talk about that portfolio. How do you prioritize whether you have five things or you're a little overwhelmed with 20 or more? How do you go about, we rattled off some of the things rewired works on. How do we go about prioritizing, Bob.

In my world, I think Greg will call BS on this if it's not true. But I believe that part of the portfolio is one is what is the thing? One, where is the biggest payoff in terms of making progress today? What kind of energy do I have? And then basically what are the list of things that I have to get done? And so part of it is being able to focus and then intentionally delay things. So for example, I know I have sales calls I have to make today and you know, I should have made that or I could have made them yesterday, but I looked at the week and said, Wednesday's gonna be better, everybody's gonna be coming back. Here's where this. And I carve the window for that. And so to me, it's about fit of what I need to do and where I need to do it and what things need my attention. And I think the other thing is the way that we.

We don't manage by kind of checking in to say, hey, where do you sit on something? It's almost like whenever we're given tasks, it's almost that thing of, like, we're assuming it's done unless you come back to us and ask for help. And so there's that aspect of we're not kind of micromanaging, like, hey, did you do this? Did you do that? In either way? And so that enables me to actually kind of prioritize those right things for the moment. And sometimes it's 30 minutes, sometimes it's 10 minutes, sometimes it's 20 minutes. So it's picking the right windows of time to help us prioritize and get stuff done. But it's. The prioritization is all around kind of matching my energy, my brain power, if you will, or my brain, how well my brain's working at that point in time, what I've done before, what I'm going to do next. And to be honest, we'll look like. I look at the day, I look at the week, I look at next week, and then after two weeks, it's kind of, you know, bigger, bigger rocks that are out there. But for the most part, I'm trying to make sure that every day and every two days is kind of like set up pretty well.

So I think the, the, the first thing I use, and I think Bob uses it as well, I think he went more on time here. But the big prioritization tool we use is we look at what we're working on and we chunk it in the work. And let's just say we have. I want to do videos to explain jobs to be done, I want to work on proposals, I need to work on a output for a client, and I have podcast ideas. Are the five things I'm going to work on, or whatever, how many there were I just rattled off. We look for which ones have interdependence on them, what can I work on that actually helps me solve one or two problems. So if I work on the videos to explain jobs to be done, I can use that in proposals, I can use that to explain to people, I can use that in whatever I'm doing it for. So I have three different places I can use that and move that ball forward even further on all of them. So I find out where there's interdependence or where if this happens, then it automatically feeds this project. And I do that one first. And why do I do that one first? Because it moves all of them. So I actually get to move the ball forward on all of them. Whichever one has the least amount of impact, I wait on. And that goes back to motivation a bit. Right. If it doesn't have much impact, my motivation's not going to be as strong.

Right. Or the fact that it might have a lot of impact, but there's a lot of other work you have to do to get to unlock that impact. And so it's kind of like, you know what, though it might be the, quote, the highest priority thing we need to work on, it might be actually the last thing we have to do. And so this is where people kind of confuse priority with sequence. And so this is where we would use things like the interrelationship tool or other tools to help us understand what we would call the nature reached the natural priority of the work, which is the sequence of things that need to get done because they build on each other.

And then the next thing I do, once I understand that that pattern is I look back kind of to what I answered with stock and motivated. Right. Which ones do I know? Do I know how to do? Which ones can I. Can I say this is. And Bob would use the word energy. I use the word do I know how to do it? Or. Or can I do it relatively quickly? Or am I going to get stuck? Because if I'm going to get stuck, then I shouldn't prioritize that one. If I know it's going to make me stuck, why would I waste that time?

Yep.

Right. So I have to also then match, once I figure out that that interrelationship diagram that Bob explained of which ones work on which I then have to look at and say, do I have the energy to do it? Do I have enough knowledge that says if I do this, I can actually do it?

I get it done. Yep.

Or will I get stuck? And if I get stuck, how many hours is that going to cost me? Is it going to cost me days, hours, minutes, seconds? We have to figure that out.

You have the notion too, of maybe we're not smart enough yet to tackle something, right?

That's very true. I think the aspect of being able to just understand yourself and understand what you can do and what you can't do. And so the one thing I would say that we're actually really good at is asking for help right when we need it. And it's like, okay, you know, or if I see you delaying something or you see me delaying something, you're like, okay, what's going on?

Well, and I'm going to do that to you right now.

Yeah.

Because you use the example of your presentation.

Yeah. I knew this was gonna. I knew this was gonna be you.

I need to know if you're stuck or if the motivation isn't right. Which one is it really?

I think in most cases, the fact is, I'm. I'm trying to have the biggest impact for a very broad set of audiences. And so I'm trying to kind of pare it down to what are the three things I really have to do to have that impact in terms of changing their paradigm. And so part of it is, there's things, there's stories I want to be able to tell. There's an interview I want to be able to do. I have an hour block. And part of it is being able to understand, like, how do I. How do I make sure that in that hour I can actually have the greatest impact? And again, so I'm trying to size up kind of that. And so what I'm learning is I don't know enough about the audience. And so that's where I've got a call set up to talk to the coordinators, just to make sure I get clear on the audience.

And that's what I was going to ask is, who have you talked to in order to figure out what is the right criteria to do this? And the other thing is, have you looked at it and said, I want to do these things for me, or I want to do these things for the people? So you mentioned interview. Generally, whenever we say we want to do an interview, that's usually easy for us.

It's easy for us. But it also has an impact where people realize they don't have. What I would say is the, like, the questions, like, the whole line of, well, the next question should be this. And it's like, no, we're going to ask a different question. And so it helps them kind of see the line of questioning that's very different. Though the case studies help. The fact is, it's that subtlety of realizing, like, boy, I'm not asking the right questions. And I think that leaving them with that will help. And so just talking this through is kind of, again, helping me realize it. But part of it is to realize I'm stuck and that I'm not wasting time at it, but I'm going to move to something else so I can come back.

So is it motivation to where? It's not like you don't want to do it.

It's just clarity. It's clarity because of clarity of the outcome.

So it's actually a combination. So it's actually a combination of the two. So you need to take different strategies to get this one done, because that's.

Right.

A little bit of stock and a little bit of. If I don't understand the audience, I don't know what to do. So then I lack motivation.

Well, and I think the. I think the other part is to realize, like we, we when we're speaking or we're teaching, it's. It's the feedback we get from the students or from the audience that actually helps us kind of guide the way. And so part of this is being able to make it flexible enough that as I read the audience, I can go left or go right. And so that's the other kind of aspect of it.

But how is reading the audience more difficult now that it's virtual?

It's not going to be virtual. It's face to face. It's my first face to face in a long time, by the way.

You're going there, I'm going there. And they're going to be there.

Yeah. So that's. The other part is I get nervous, obviously, speaking in front of people. And so it's one of those things where it's like, I haven't done it in a while. I'm like, oh, do I still have it or not? Little bit of doubt.

So you've been doing virtual now for a year or more?

Yes.

And now you're doing a live audience.

Yes.

Is that causing part of the angst?

Yes, that's part of the angst as well. And I don't have. It's just me where for the last year it's been you or me or Catherine and me. So I've never really been alone. And so it's one of those things going on.

So I want to ask one last question from the bottom of the mailbag. My mailbag.

Something I think that's very unique about how we work here at 88Kercheval, as we say. And that's the role of debate, discussion, arguing. We argue all the time about everything from words, language a customer used in an interview, to best pastrami sandwiches. What is art? All kinds of things. And that's quite. That doesn't happen in every workplace, let me put it that way. So what does that help us do here? What role does that play, that time spent debating and arguing?

So I think it's twofold. I look at our arguments as a break, and I look at our arguments as practice. So what I mean by break is we're doing a lot of things, and by being able to distract ourselves and talk about something like pastrami or a word or a concept that is not attached to our work, it gets us away from the work and it allows us to think about something different than the work, which helps with motivation and stuck. Right. So we need those micro times. We do that and we'll do it over. We'll do it anytime. Quite frankly, I think we're all up to an argument now and then.

We've already done it several times this morning.

Yes, we have.

It's not even 10.

Then. The other is practice. Practice what we do. Because arguing is a twofold thing. It's trying to get your point across, but then also learning about the other person. And that's what jobs and innovation is about, or building a company. Any of those things that we help people with. That's what it's really about. It's about, can you describe what your position is in a way other people can hear you, but can you also hear what they're saying to either help them see where your idea is different or better, or maybe you come up with a thing of saying, hey, look, maybe what they're saying makes sense, but let me reconcile it with what I'm saying and come up with a better thing. And we do that a lot around words, right? We'll debate words like crazy. And I can't even think of one. The last one, we debated pastrami.

We even debated what is pastrami.

Yes.

And when is it not pastrami?

So we use those things to just understand. And I think it's also a rapport builder for us as well. Yes, you get to know the person's thinking, you get to know those things. So I think it's we. But the rule is you can't get pissed off.

Well, if anything, you get pissed off. For me, I get pissed off at myself. Like, I can't either articulate it clearly enough or I don't understand enough. And so a lot of times I will raise my voice, but it's not. It's not. Not because I'm mad or angry at that person. It's like I don't Understand or I don't have the right perspective. And I think when we debate, it's also in my mind and in your mind. I know we actually have systems in mind. We're thinking about when they use that word, are they thinking about that word as an output or an input? Oh, we need to have trust. So is trust an input to this process or is trust an output of the process? Because it's very, very different activities I would do depending on where trust is as part of the process of whatever we're doing. And so a lot of times we're just trying to make sure we have clear meaning from a cause and effect perspective.

But how does the arguing help that?

The arguing helps us understand where and when people talk about healthy versus healthier.

But if it's just us, how is that helping you?

It helps all of us actually understand each other and at the same time allows us to realize, like, there's certain words that we should not be talking about because they actually have so many meanings that they don't actually help us. Right. So like, like the word of boy, this is healthy. We've. We've banned the word healthy from this office. It's healthier than what? Right? Because there is no absolute healthy. It's all relative. Because your definition of health and my definition of health are very different. And so whatever we would build would never actually satisfy both.

So I go. I go back to. That's practice. So we're practicing the tools that we're using. And that's, and that's what we're describing here is, is practice is thinking about those things and using your knowledge always, even when you don't think you are. And that's what actually builds the muscle.

Right. And I think the other thing, though is we also realize that.

Nobody is really actually using the dictionary definition of words. They're using approximations. And it's the other words wrapped around the word that actually help give it context that then ultimately help us understand intent. Intent is where we're really. What we're really trying to get to so we can get to what I would say is reasonable scope and understanding what has to be done or what we could do next, as opposed to kind of just. It's an observation. And so part of it is to always that we have a debate, but the debate has some forward motion of progress embedded in it. So, like when we're talking about pastrami sandwiches, well, we had a bet and our. Our friend lost and he's going to buy us a lunch from Carnegie Deli and it's one of those things, do we want pastrami or not?

That's not what happened. What happened was he bet us $100 million and you settled on a pastrami sandwich.

A good pastrami sandwich from Carnegie Deli.

But is that good from your definition or my definition? Because I don't eat pastrami.

So, yes, we're getting lean corner booster.

$100 would have been better.

Yeah, but he's never going to pay it. So the whole thing is, it's really kind of a joke. And so if I can, if we, we can get something out of it, that's progress.

Okay, Bob, next time you're negotiating something, don't go down to a pastrami sandwich. Okay, let's get $100,000.

Don't do it alone.

Okay, let's get $100000.

I'm gonna blow the air horn on this debate. Thanks, Bob and Greg, for giving everyone an inside look into how Rewired works. Stay tuned for opportunities to submit your own questions to hear from Rewired about jobs, innovation, working, Working. All your questions that might be of interest to the whole audience.

Thanks.

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@the RewireGroup.com to find out how we work, how we can help, some resources, some books, some software. Join us next time as we trust Trip the Circuit Breaker to help you recharge, re energize, and refocus your new product development.