Turning Chores into Chances with JD Meier | Mentor Momentum

What's going on, Next Gen fam? Welcome back to Mentor Momentum with Next Gen HQ. You are in for an absolute treat this week. We got to sit down with JD Meier. It's Director of Innovation at Microsoft. We dive into everything in this episode, from the 3 things JD wished he knew when he started his first job, all the way to his playbook for actually creating innovation. So you're not gonna wanna miss this episode. You're gonna want that pen and paper so you can take those notes and those action items JD gives you. And you better watch it once, if not twice, 'cause there's a lot of nuggets in this one. So enjoy, fam, and I can't wait to see you again soon. For our audience, I'd love for you to break down that mentality and, and kind of what you're doing and why your year starts in February.

I would get disappointed each year because January would start, I would start whatever my big change was going to be, and then I'd find out midway through the month that I wasn't actually ready. I didn't do the preparation, I didn't do the work, holidays got in the way, and then I felt like I missed my opportunity and I felt like I blew my year. And can you imagine blowing your year in January? It just, it makes no sense. Luckily, one of my mentors had mentioned, hey, you got to think about it like catching your next train. It's trains keep leaving the station. Every month is a new train leaving the station. So imagine that February is your next train. It's your chance to start. So make January your prep month. Do the work, do some practice trials, do some dry runs, whatever it is you're going to go do, but get ready for it. But then feel good about that mindset, because if you don't, you're going to keep beating yourself up about how you messed up January, how you messed up your year, how you didn't get started. But it's that Jan is prep, Feb is start, just go. And if you screw up Feb, you know, catch the next train. March is another great time because it's spring. But it's the idea of you don't want to be beating yourself up, you want to be pulling yourself forward, and you want to keep getting those fresh starts.

Thinking back to your 20-year-old self, what is one piece of advice that you would give to that version of you?

I think the most important thing actually It's, it's actually, it's 3 skills to invest in or 3 domains to learn. And one of them is strategy. You know, I underestimated the value of strategy long ago. I didn't realize when you think about strategy, strategy is difference. Strategy is things you do or things you don't do. Strategy is why are you doing that? And there's incredible body of knowledge around strategy itself. You can go incredibly deep into the strategy game. And, you know, my recommendation would be just even browse the visuals of the tools because it organizes your thinking. When you know why you're going after the competition in a particular way, or if you're really clear about what you're really good at, what your strengths are, what your weaknesses to either make up for or to actually avoid and stay out of, that gives you this incredible clarity. And it means that you actually can create your North Star. you know the direction to go and you may not know exactly how to get there, but at least you know where you should go. And that to me is like a huge thing. So strategy skills, incredible. The second skill I would say to invest in is actually project management. Project management is like the essence behind productivity. Even if you don't lead projects and lead project teams, if you think about it, everything you do, unless it's ongoing, like a process and it's a system or a habit, It's actually a chunk of change. Your value is driving change. Your value is the change that you create. So if you think about value as the change, what is like the ultimate skill for change? It's actually project management. You're going from current state to the future state, but it also helps you break down big scary challenges into doable things like a work breakdown structure. If there's one skill to learn within project management, it's a work breakdown structure. Once you can see the map of the jobs to be done, you've got this new level of clarity. You know the resources you need, you know where you're going to run into challenges. But, you know, project management is like the second thing. The third one, I went back and forth between marketing and executive communication skills. I would say invest in executive communication skills. Nothing is worse than having a great idea or the right answer or a beautiful vision.

Yeah.

And you can't communicate it well. And the trick is, you know, really mastering— it also includes stakeholder management. But when you can be clear about the message that your audience actually needs and actually deliver it, that's how you'll get people inspired to follow you on your vision. That's how you get the support that you need. That's how you get the funding that you need. And if we were to think in terms of like a gig economy, your ability to inspire a vision Create clarity, generate energy, and actually deliver and drive results. If you think about it, those 3 areas between the strategy, the project management, and executive communication, you will have the triad of power, the triad of empowerment.

I think it's so wise. The first thing you say is strategy, which is something that I think most young people don't think about, like that long-game strategy, that North Star finding, if you will, that They say, I'm just going to go, I'm going to start the path, I'll figure all that stuff out on the way. But this is such profound advice.

Yeah, it'll, it'll change how you approach things. Because, you know, one of the things that happened to me was I was really good at the short term, I was really good at maybe a day, maybe a week. And I started doing these longer-term projects that would be, you know, 3 months, 6 months, a year. And in these different timeframes, the choices that I made early on, I had to live with them. But I didn't feel the pain because I— with me, I would, at the time, I would throw more hours at things. I would try to just do really quick do-overs. But when you're including other people, and today's results are really about, you know, collaboration and connection with others, it's the network effect. When you have other people living your pain of your bad choices, you want to make smarter choices. And it's not about big upfront design. It's not about big upfront planning. You don't need that. What you do need is something of a balcony view, but it's hard to create the balcony view if you don't have the tools. So the beautiful thing in this, in the land of strategy, is there's a lot of visual tools. But even better, the fact that they're visual tools, the fact that you could go to a whiteboard, the fact that you can talk through it, now you get other people in your strategy game. It's not like, oh, I can play strategy, but you can't because you didn't learn this in school or you didn't do this. It's like, no, we're going to just pull up the tool. We're going to look at it and think of it like a canvas. Like you've probably heard of the business model canvas. You can pull up a canvas of a strategy tool and you can hack its strategy together. Now you got everybody in the game. That's the cool part. I'm a big fan of being able to get everybody in the game. It's not how smart or what you know, it's how can you broker in others and empower them. You don't want to be just the smartest person in the room because that's like a fatal flaw and that's where things break down. You want everybody to bring their smart on. None of us is as smart as all of us.

Is there one moment perhaps early on in your career, even You know, closer to current times that you remember a failure, a mistake that you made, and a lesson you learned from it that our people could potentially learn from and avoid that same mistake?

I just watched the movie Peaceful Warrior. At that time, I didn't read the book. I just, I watched the movie and it's a good movie, by the way. But the whole idea was about putting your bags down and about being able to see things fresh and being able to have anticipation. And This was kind of a couple things happening at once, but I felt like when I was going to work, I had fallen into habits, you know, and remember that thoughts are habits too. And so I had all of these thought habits. I had a way of showing up. I was showing up as if I had been there a while, as if I was a seasoned person, because it's true, I was. But what that meant was I was missing, not seeing the things right in front of me.

Mm-hmm.

I wasn't observing the changes. I wasn't bringing that fresh perspective. Because I was kind of living off the past. And this kind of led to the next thing. So I'm showing up on the job as if it's my day one, as if I'm a new hire. And I'm taking this fresh look around and I'm realizing, wow, the people that I thought were still here aren't even here. I'm still like having habits of people that aren't even around me anymore. And it's like, you know, it's a new coalition and it's not necessarily a coalition of the willing. Like, I have to take a fresh look at who's here, who's in the house. My next practice, though, was I wanted to invest in relationships better. Now that I realize, like, wait, like, the world of who I work with has completely changed under my feet. I didn't even notice. I adopted a habit of each week have lunch with somebody new, have lunch with somebody old. So keep the kindling, keep, you know, keep the connections with who you have to build your network, but reach out and find somebody that you just don't even know. And this kind of leads to the third thing. I wanted to show up like a kid in a candy store. Microsoft is a gigantic company. I tell people it's the ultimate dojo of personal growth. You really can't outgrow it. But when I look at it, I show up and there's doctors writing code. There was a former astronaut on my team. There's military leaders. There's educational leaders. There's people around the world. There's bestselling authors. There's musicians. You name it, it's there. And I realized, wow, I'm not capitalizing on any day that I show up and I'm not meeting somebody new and learning from the wealth of knowledge and experience that's around me. I'm missing out. So my job totally became about how do I find these amazing people, harness that talent? And it's not always at the time when I need it. And that's the key is you don't just go build your network as soon as you need it. That's, that's rough. What you do is you invest in your network, you invest in people, you share freely because you sharing empowers other people. And you're going to, you're going to grow up because you're going to, you're going to take on bigger and better challenges. But now what you have when you're good to people, it comes back around. And now when it's time to go change the world, you've got a team of people that you can inspire and that will be happy to join your band of merry folks. A lot of people can get easily lost in their career or lost in just even how they think of their own identity. What I see work is, like I said earlier, like it's the ultimate dojo of personal growth.

Mm-hmm.

So I see work as a chance to take on challenges. You got to turn your chores into chances. You got to turn your chores into challenges because the value of what you do, the value of your skills, is the value of the problems that you solve. Once you have that lens and you realize like your value is based on the problems that you can solve, A lot of people get stuck. They're chasing like role titles, they're chasing career paths. What they don't realize is that it's about growing capability. It's about putting those stories under your belt, those experiences. And the way that you choose those experiences is you choose the people that give you energy. You also choose the challenges that grow you. You follow your growth. When you can take on those bigger problems and challenges, you get better at work, you get better at life. And that's part of the game. Like, the game is your growth.

On your personal side, what, what's maybe one habit or life hack that you found that allows you to perform your best, not just in that work environment but in everything?

If I look at my highs and my lows, like, what's the habit that's actually helped me deal with thick and thin, ups and downs? Life throws curveballs. It's a morning startup routine. It's like you have to win your morning. And what I mean by that is that when you start your day I'm a big fan of driving from vision. I don't want to have to slog my way through. I don't want to have to drive my way forward. I want that quick view of what's going to pull me through my day. And I found that, you know, there's a couple of components. The first thing is, is long ago a friend told me, he's like, hey, did you know you're dumber in the morning? I was like, I was like, I probably am. But what?

But why?

Like, tell me more. And he said, well, Google did a study, blah, blah, blah. But your blood sugar is lower in the morning, so you don't think as clearly. He's like, but what you can do is you can work out. So if you work out, you'll be smarter later. And I thought, you know, great point. Why not kind of own my morning, get my workout done first thing? So it's, you know, wake up, workout, it's out of the way. I'm done. I did it. It's there. I don't have to worry about, will I get time later? Will I get this stuff? I own it like I'm done. And I'm even smarter because now I've got the blood flowing. I can think, you know, we're better as people when we move. It's that movement that inspires our mind. It keeps our body going. It's hard to separate the mind and the body. If the mind's not good, the body's no good. If the body's no good, the mind's not good. But now you got the momentum. Then the next piece of it is— it's actually, I think, 2 more key components. It's creating a vision for your day in a very simple way. I have a bigger pattern that I call Monday Vision, Daily Wins, Friday Reflection. And it's all about vision, actually, to think about it. So the Monday Vision is the vision for the week.

Yeah.

But each day it's having a vision for your day and you can actually split it into— I tell people, just think about 3 scenes in your day. You've probably got 3 challenging moments. Maybe it's doing your workout. Maybe it's a meeting that you have with somebody and maybe you're worried about that. Maybe it's a project that's been kind of kicking your butt and you really need to make progress. Picture those 3 scenes in the day. Here's where people fall down, though. They think vision and they imagine everything is positive and perfect. No, we know that doesn't work. You actually have to lean in on the challenges. You need to see what the victory could be, but you need to understand what are you going to do when things just don't go as planned? What's your, what's your plan B or C? How can you respond? And that's, I think, another part of this whole approach is you're imagining how you're going to respond instead of react. So you've got your workout, you've got your vision for the day broken down by 3 scenes. And then I'm a big fan that you basically— you— so this is all about priming your mind. I'm a big fan that you prime your mind by both the questions that you ask and the sources of insight that you draw from. I draw from a lot of books, a whole lot of books, a lot of books. But I like that little quick morning time to read something different, whether that's read on medium.com, read a book, read a Kindle, a recommendation from a friend. And I found a little hack for reading faster and reading better. So the problem used to be you don't start a book because you can't finish it, or you start a book and you don't finish it and you get frustrated because you don't remember where the hell you left off. I'm a big fan of sticky notes, yellow stickies. So what I do is I basically put scaffolding in books. Same idea. You can actually do the same idea in a Kindle. You can highlight things. But in books, what I do is Is I'll read a quick section and I'll go, how can I use this? I'll ask myself, what's the takeaway? But more importantly, how can I actually use this? And I'll put it in my words, like what my outcome is of like, here's what I think I can do with this. And I'll stick the sticky in the book. So whether I finish the book, whether I'm a quarter through the book, no matter where I am, I flip back through my stickies and I got reminders of here's how I can use that knowledge. So I can always pick up where— that's the idea. I can always pick up. where I left off from.

You know, I want to ask you a question that was submitted from one of our incredible community members, Hayden Humphrey, an incredible career coach who left LinkedIn to start his own thing and is just doing some awesome stuff. And, and he's so keen to know, man, what, uh, what are your guiding principles for creating an innovative environment? And what type of leader do you need to be? How do you need to set up your team? And how can that even translate to him as an entrepreneur, any of us entrepreneurs that want to even replicate a little bit of that, you know, that you're creating over at Microsoft?

First of all, there's a lot of research on how to build better teams, kind of going back to the idea that none of us is as smart as all of us. It's that diversity, and specifically it's the diversity of perspective that comes to the table. Your ability to integrate diversity of perspective is gonna lead to more effective teams and more effective results. It may not feel like that way at first because diversity can create conflict, especially when there are— when there can be competing perspectives, but you have to embrace the idea that coming at a problem from different angles, bringing different skills and strengths to the table, is gonna lead to different conclusions and different outcomes. That's just a great thing. The other part that makes a team super effective is this idea of focusing on, well, building trust, There's 2 different definitions of trust. One is, I know what you're going to do, I trust what you're going to do, I trust you with that. That's cool, that's great, got to have that too. But the, the deeper one is vulnerability-based trust. Who's got your back? If the team has your back, you'll go out on a limb. If your team doesn't have your back, you're spending part of your energy worrying, hey, while I'm out on this limb, who's sawing off that branch? If I'm leaning over the boat, who's going to push me over first if they need to? But when you have vulnerability-based trust, you push each other, you challenge each other, you can get through the rough stuff. But as far as actually thinking about and driving innovation, a couple of things help a ton. I have the advantage of— I was head coach on Satya's innovation team. So my job was to accelerate how to do innovation. And I tried a lot of things. Like, I'm a big fan of— first of all, I'm a big fan of double— using a double diamond. If you've never heard of the Double Diamond before, think of it as there's 2 diamonds. One is on the problem side, one is on the solution side. But it's a diamond because you're first, you're expanding it, you're diverging, then you're contracting it. A lot of people just jump to the contraction so they don't solve the right problem. You know, they just start hacking at something.

Yeah.

The other part of it on the solution side is don't just jump on the first solution that you see again. Expand the ideas, expand and explore possibilities, then contract down. Just by doing that means you're putting more options on the table. You're being more inclusive. You're gonna have a better vetted design because you've actually done the work of solving the right problem and solving the right problem the right way. What I wanna jump to is how do you just even practice innovation?

Hmm.

And a great way to do it is probably 3 key things. One is using a mock press release. Step into the future, you know, write down what the world looks like. First of all, focus on your headline. It's that headline that wins hearts and minds. In order to win the mind, you got to win the heart. So get that, that punchy headline of how's the future going to be different if you were to pull this thing off, and then write the story of it. Here's why this is so huge.

Yeah.

Um, a funny thing happens when people try to step into the future. Future isn't them. They can't relate to it. They don't feel it. That's why, like, party tonight you may feel disconnected from hangover you tomorrow. Oh, that's not me yet. That's not you. What they found is that even when they do MRIs, they'll actually see that the empathy part of the brain shuts down when we shift to the future. So imagine you're trying to inspire people about the future and And they don't have empathy for it. They can't feel that pain. They can't feel the win. So storytelling becomes huge. Little vignettes, little narratives of the future. That's how you win people over. Kind of building on that. And this is something that I wish I'd figured out long ago. I— is the idea of a 6-page narrative or just the idea of a memo, you know, basically a memo.

Hmm.

Here's why that's such a big deal is because a lot of people can't see what's in your head. You can put things in a PowerPoint and try to share your ideas, and for a lot of people that works well. However, it only works well when they come with their PowerPoint and they do their little show and they respond to everything. The power of a memo is a very special thing. It forces you to really walk through how you're looking at the world, how you're seeing it, how you're internalizing. It's really what you're doing is you're sharing your internal representation of that challenge and why your response is a good thing. Like, how does Jeff Bezos influence the market? He's able to convince people, you know, the shareholders, hey, you know, the next couple of years, this bet isn't about that. This is about the 7-year play because here's how I look at the market. Here's how I look at the world. Here's how I think the disruptions are going to go. These are the trends that matter. He frames it out beautifully. So that's like, you know, tool number 2 is the— So let's recap. It's the It's the mock press release. It's this narrative memo. Tool number 3, it kind of goes into the agility game, but it's about using scenarios. And I want to be really clear about what I mean by a scenario is it's a— think of it as a problem and solution pair for the customer in the customer's voice, their current state and their desired future state. Scenarios are like the most powerful way to capture a customer's pains, needs, and desired outcomes. If you think about it, innovation is solving itches. Some people that solve the best itches solve their own itches. Some people, you know, that do great innovations, it's because they either hated that problem or they love the customer.

Mm-hmm.

But it's those pains, needs, and desired outcomes. Here's an example of a scenario. Let's say you're in charge of product development and Let me— I'll just be in the voice of that, of that persona. But I have an empty pipeline of ideas. My employees have ideas. I don't know what the hell they are. My customers have ideas. I don't know what they are. My partners have ideas. I don't know what they are. And my brand is getting beat up in the market. I'm in pain. It's really hard to have a successful company if I'm failing right there. That's my current state, my current state of pain. Let's step into the future state. Future state. If I woke up tomorrow. you know, no technology up my sleeve. But if I woke up tomorrow and had a pipeline of ideas from my customers, my partners, and my employees, wow. And if I knew who my brand influencers were so I could change perception in the market, I am rocking. Now, I just framed out this desired future state, this future state story. That is the stage of innovation. Now solve that. Go solve that problem. Solve for X. You just defined what good X looks like. Solve for it now. You figure out how we're going to get there.

Yeah.

And that's how you get everybody in the game too. But it's actually more powerful than that. You'll notice that a lot of what I do revolves around the idea of agility. And agility, you gain speed, but agility itself isn't about speed. Agility is about embracing change. That's like an important idea. It's like, it's about how can you change or how can you pivot. Part of being able to do that means you can chunk things down. So like in that scaffolding for the book, I'm chunking the book down into useful little nuggets. What you're doing with these scenarios is you're creating a catalog of future value. By having a catalog of these customer scenarios, you just defined future value in the voice of the customer. They will pay to solve those pains and needs and those problems. They will pay to achieve those desired outcomes.

Absolutely.

You've just figured out masterfully how to innovate in the future and get everybody in the game wrapped and rallied around customer This is the ultimate way of driving. You hear people talk about customer obsession. Well, this is how you actually do it.

That was Mentor Momentum, sharing life and business lessons from incredible leaders. Looking for more momentum? Subscribe to our weekly Momentum newsletter at nextgenhq.com and check out our other podcast, Momentum Audio, on any of your favorite podcast channels. Now that's momentum.