Creative on Purpose Live - Dorie Clark

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Here we are, ladies and gentlemen. Once again, welcome to Creative on Purpose Live. These conversations are about flying higher and the difference only you can make. I'm your host, Scott Perry, average, above average selling author of Onward and Endeavor and a compass helping difference makers live their legacy at creativeonpurpose.com. So please welcome to the season and where we're drawing insight and inspiration from guests successfully embracing uncertainty, navigating adversity, and making things Doing work that matters. I could not be more thrilled and pleased to have with me today Dori Clark. Dori, tell our viewers who you are, what you're up to these days, and where can they go to learn more about you and the difference you're making?

Hey, Scott, thank you so much. So my name is Dori Clark. I teach at Duke University and for the Fuqua School of Business and write a bunch of books. The newest one is actually coming out in September. It's called The Long Game: How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World. And the work that I do is helping talented professionals and organizations help their message get heard in an increasingly noisy and crowded environment.

Fantastic. Well, I saw that The Long Game is coming out soon and I've got it already. I think I've already bought it on presale from Amazon. And one of the things I'm most excited about, Dorie, is you and I have a friend in common that I'm happy to talk about, although we talk about him plenty here. I'm more interested in just your origin story in general. You are, you know, a rock star in this in this space. How did you get to where you are? What's, what's the, and what's the thing that really motivated and drove you to lean into this kind of difference-making?

Yeah, well, thank you, Scott. I appreciate it. I'm so glad to be here talking with you. Briefly, the way that I got to the career that I have now is that ultimately, I tried a lot of things that ended up not working. I, like, like a lot of folks, you know, when I was in college, I was trying to figure out, you know, what are the things I like doing? What what would be fun for me as a career. And so at first I thought I would be an academic because I, I liked school, I liked ideas, I liked writing, I liked thinking. And unfortunately, I finished my master's degree and I got turned down by every single doctoral program that I applied to. So I had to come up with a quick plan B. Uh, so I did. I became a journalist, and I did that for about a year, at which point I got laid off because journalism was collapsing. And I had been a political journalist, and so because I couldn't really get another job in journalism, I decided I would go to work on campaigns. And I ended up working on two very exciting, albeit losing, campaigns— one for governor and one for president. So those are some cool experiences, but none of it was sticking. Eventually I ended up running a nonprofit, and as part of that I came to realize, oh wait, This is very much like running a business. And I thought, ding, I can run my own business. And that's what I've been doing for the past 15 years, is a combination of, uh, writing and thinking and speaking and, uh, consulting and coaching.

Well, what I love about your story is, um, something that I'm sharing with my adult sons these days, which is actually you're not going to find what you are meant to do in this world until you do a lot of things that you're not only not meant to do, but you will never want to do again. And I think that for a lot of us, we live in this, uh, in this society that has this myth that, you know, you have to find your passion, you have to find your purpose. And sometimes people say, oh, it's out there, go find it. Um, and some people say, no, it's inside, you have to excavate it and then you can execute on it. And what I'm hearing in your story is there was no clear purpose or passion. You just executed on the things that were interesting to you and seemed like they were viable at the moment, explored them. Sometimes they were taken from you, sometimes they turned into other things. But it sounds like your path probably makes more sense in retrospect than it did at the starting line.

Yeah, absolutely. At the time, it just really felt like there was a lot of things and none of them were working, which is a little frustrating. But in fact, in the new book The Long Game, I have a whole chapter talking about a concept that I write about called optimizing for interesting, because I think that in our culture there's so much pressure for people to find their passion and live out their passion. And that's, that's great if you happen to know what it is, but I think for a lot of people, you either don't know or it just seems a little murky in some ways. And people can beat themselves up forever because because they don't know and they feel inadequate about it, or they feel like, oh well, I can't, I can't take any action until I know what my passion is. That has to be the starting point. But how long is that going to take? We, you know, we have no idea, right? And so I'm much more of a fan of coming to an understanding by doing rather than just like waiting somehow until you're enlightened and then taking action, which could, which could be forever. So By optimize for interesting, what I mean is that it's not that we necessarily have to be aiming toward the perfect thing, the optimal thing. It's really just a question of like, well, what do you find interesting? If it's interesting, do a little more of it. See if it keeps being interesting and you can continue moving in that direction. So you're getting the data you need to make informed choices about your professional life.

Yeah, well, I definitely feel like I share that instinct for, you know, when in doubt, do something, I think, um, is always a better course of action than when in doubt, sit and wait for inspiration to visit. Because inspiration usually likes to hit a moving target as opposed to one that's sitting and waiting, um, for, for the next, uh, you know, for the next revelation to unveil itself. I'm wondering about— and I, and I, and I believe you've written about this a little bit in, in some of your books, but Well, two things. One is, in writing one of my own books, I did some research and discovered, to your point, that 80% of people, when polled about what's your passion or purpose, can't identify it, which seems like that question is just an invitation to shame, you know, and self-loathing, which is unfortunate that we live in a culture where that's what we start with. The other is kind of the building identity and forging meaning through whatever it is that you're doing in the moment. And it seems like you have some, some ideas and some strategies for how people can begin this process that you were just talking about of, you know, searching for what's interesting and then taking small steps into possibility within that, but also building in moments of reflection and assessment and thinking about how to lean a little bit further in with more intention.

Yeah, absolutely. And in fact, Ultimately, the goal of my book, The Long Game, is to take the principles of strategic thinking and to help people learn to apply them, not just in a corporate context of, oh, we need to do strategic thinking so we know where to bring the company over the next 5 years. Also, we need to apply those same principles of strategic thinking to our own lives and our own careers. And so often we fail to do it because we're just caught in this endless execution mode. One of the things that I discovered in the course of researching the book that I thought was just most interesting and also most baffling is there was a 10,000-person study of senior leaders by something called the Management Research Group. 10,000 were surveyed. 97% said that strategic thinking was largely the most critical thing that they could be doing as leaders for the future success of their company. And yet a separate study showed that 96% of leaders said they didn't have time for strategic thinking. Which is just bonkers. And so we all really have to be vigilant about carving out that time for ourselves so that we don't get caught in an endless cycle where we're just doing things, doing things, doing things, and they might not even be the right things.

Yeah, that— well, that's really brilliant because I, I, I am guilty of conflating productivity with progress frequently. I can get a lot of things done, um, And it feels good to get a lot of things done. But if you're not getting the right things done, and moving, you know, towards a specific aim or aspiration, it can really just be a seductive way to hide or delude yourself that you're actually making progress towards something meaningful when there's no clarity about where you're, you're heading. What I'm hearing in Strategic Thinking, too, is another subject near and dear to our hearts here at Creative on Purpose, which is, you you know, creative thinking, collaboration, you know, being connected with our inherent impulse to find and solve interesting problems and test new ideas. So in that strategic thinking piece, what might be some either tips for getting started with thinking more strategically about solving interesting problems in your work, or what, or if you have any specific processes that people can lean into to get started.

Yeah, absolutely. So when it comes to really creating a framework for strategic thinking in your own life, I like to suggest, and this is actually how The Long Game is structured, that fundamentally it's a 3-part process that we need to do. The first one, to the point that we were just talking about, about the, the kind of frenzy and overload that we're all in to begin with, that's the first step, which is what I call creating white space. Because the truth is, we're not even going to get to strategic thinking if we are just so run ragged with all the meetings and emails and things like that. That level of reactivity and reaction mode prevents us from having the mental space that we need for having longer-term thinking. I mean, in— actually, for one of my previous books, Stand Out, I interviewed David Allen, who is well known as the kind of productivity guru. He created the Get It Done methodology. And he said something I thought was quite powerful, which is it's not that it really takes a ton of time for strategic thinking or for coming up with big ideas. Like, it's certainly not like, oh, you know, you need a 6-month retreat or you need 10 hours a week in your schedule. You don't. You need some time, but not a huge amount of time. But he said that what you really need more than anything is space. Because if you don't have the mental space, it is not— going to happen. And so step 1 really is just getting relentless with our schedule to make at least a little bit of space so that we can begin thinking in, in those broader ways. Number 2 is identifying what those goals are, and it's also challenging teasing out what our goals are from what society thinks that our goals should be. And the final piece is what I call keeping the faith, because inevitably for a goal that is meaningful enough, it's probably going to take longer than you want, and it's probably going to be harder than you want to get there, and there's probably going to be some setbacks along the way. And so we have to be prepared to meet that and to overcome that. And if we can do those things, that's really how we get to the destination that we want.

Really, really brilliant. I really appreciate that. One of the things that I was hearing you touch on is something that I see reflected in the communities where I'm participating or leading, which is people, especially throughout the course of the pandemic, and who knows what's, what's coming, you know, around the corner now, is there's lots of expression of overwhelm and burnout. And one of the things that, that I think about when people express, "I'm feeling overwhelmed or burned out," is that you're actually continuing to invest something that you no longer possess. If you don't have any time or attention to in the tank, and you continue to try to extend time and attention into other people, other things, that's when burnout really comes to bear. So I'm a little disappointed that I don't need a 6-month retreat, because I think I could actually, I could use a rest. 6 months to sit and contemplate my navel and think about what's next sounds nice. But what I love about what you're saying is, at any moment, we have the capacity to just, we can, We have control over— much more control over our schedule than we usually give ourselves credit for. What I'm hearing you say is, in a day, in a moment, in a week, you have to create these moments of white space so that you can allow for a little reflection, a little assessment, and a little planning about what's going to happen next.

Yeah, that's exactly right. In The Long Game, I interview a guy named Dave Crenshaw, who is a colleague of mine. He's a fellow LinkedIn Learning instructor, and he's written a number of books about productivity. Productivity. And he likes to advocate for what he calls building in oases in your schedule because things are so frenetic. If you know that there are times that you can look forward to where you just are taking a break, whether it's a strategy break, or sometimes you might just literally need a time to, you know, watch comedy videos for 15 minutes or whatever. But if you have that thing to be able to look forward to, you can often endure some of the pressure more effectively.

Yeah, I love that. The other thing that you were touching on earlier was what I was hearing is the importance of idiosyncrasy, like doing things the way that you can do them, leveraging your skills, your experience, your perspective so that you can have an offer that stands actually almost in the category of one, so that the right people can find you and the change that only you can help them facilitate. Is that a fair read on what you were saying?

Yeah, I think, I think that's exactly right. And, you know, frankly, one of the things that I talk about in The Long Game about, you know, what, what does it take to really play the long game effectively? One of them, one of the foundational principles is strength of character. Because you— there's a number of places where you run up against it. One is if you are offering something different than other people, or if your goal somehow is a little different than other people, you're probably going to get looked at askance, at least in the beginning, before there's proof that your idea is panning out. And so you need to have strength to overcome those skeptics. There are going to be times when it is really unclear if the path that you've chosen is something that is just not working or if it is something that is not working yet. And so we have to be willing to say, all right, you know what, I placed my bets, I'm gonna, I'm gonna see regardless of this. And sometimes it might be very challenging or countercultural. I mean, I tell a story in the book about a guy named Tom Waterhouse, and, you know, back 10, 15 years ago, Tom had gotten a great promotion. He was going to be the chief operating officer of the Singapore office of his company. And this was like a very coveted position. Everybody wanted to be in the Singapore office. This was very sexy. He had a great relationship with a person who was the head of the office. You know, it's going to be amazing. And so he gets this job offer, he says yes, he goes home over Christmas, and his mother says to him, so Tom, everyone's really excited about your Singapore job except you. And he realized, oh man, Mom called it, and he realized that it was not the right move for him. And part of the reason— I thought this was so interesting— it was, it was not, you know, it was not anything about the job, but he realized that if he took the job, he was going to be working all the time, and he really wanted to get married and have a family. And he knew that it just would almost be impossible because he'd be working so much, and he was getting to an age where he felt like, you know, I really need to prioritize this. And so for this thing, which, you know, it's not even like, oh, it's my wife and kids, I have to prioritize them. This is his hypothetical wife and kids. And he had— and he realized finally, he's like, no, I can't do it. So he had to call up the head of the office. The, you know, the head of the office was just irate, like, you know, Tom, I mean, what, you know, what did I— what did I— what did I do? You know, like, like the guy he was working for was so sad and tried to convince him. The guy above him was like, Tom, you betrayed us. And he was getting heat, all kinds, but he stuck to his guns. And it turns out it took 2 years, but he did eventually meet a woman that he got married. They now have 2 kids. But during those 2 years, can you imagine the strength of character it takes to feel like, oh wow, you know, maybe I did throw away an incredible professional opportunity for no reason at all? But he, he plowed through it to get to the result that he wanted. But it's, it's a very challenging thing for us to be willing to do it in whatever variation we have in our own lives.

I love that you wove in character. One of the, one of the secrets about Creative on Purpose is that began as the Stoic creative. And so, as a lifelong student of Stoic philosophy, in the ancient sense more than the modern sense, we talk a lot about character, will, volition, which I think of as the combination of character and will to do the things that you know need to be done in alignment with your values and your skills and your ability to serve those who share your values and need your talents to enhance their lives. And I love that story. It's, it's really, really telling. I want to switch gears in just a minute, but I can't help but, when I was looking at your new book and the fact that game is in the title, one of the things that I kind of stood up and cheered about was yes, like, could we talk about the fact that it's actually like everything that we're doing is actually a game and that we could be a little bit more playful, joyful, and just bring more joy into the experience of leaning into whatever the work that, you know, we feel called to or meant to do now in the moment. So I just wondered if you would mind touching on um, just whether or not that played at all into the writing of the book, this idea of, you know, games. And games are things that are meant to be played and enjoyed.

Yeah, well, I mean, obviously you're exactly right, Scott Perry. I mean, nobody, nobody wants to think of life as just this slog, like, oh, let's play the long game by slogging and being miserable for forever, and then maybe you'll get something good. Like, that really doesn't sound fun at all. I mean, the, the, the promise of the book, the hope of the book, of course, is that playing the long game— I mean, the truth is, yeah, it does involve sacrifice sometimes. I mean, if you want something good, you got to do some boring things. You have to, uh, you know, fill out the paperwork. You have to, you know, do the, you know, practicing your scales. Like, all these things that are just completely not sexy And you'll get a lot of people saying like, why are you doing that? But, you know, so there is a certain amount of discipline and, you know, dare we say, self-abnegation in those stages, especially because, you know, as humans, we crave constant feedback. Like, it wouldn't be that hard if all along the way people were like, oh, good job. Yeah, way to go. This is— you're really on the right path. But we hardly ever get that, especially if we're doing something that is a little unusual, a little distinct, or has not been done before. So there's challenging pieces, and I want to be straight up with people that, that that's the case. But the whole reason that we're doing it is not so that we can, you know, sort of suffer and endure. The reason we're doing it is that we believe that the payoff at the end makes everything worth it. And that if, you know, if we can hold it lightly, if we can realize, you know what, it might not— you know, Seth Godin, um, the author, famously likes to say, this might not work. And to recognize that and to, to be okay with it, to understand, look, hey, we're all making it up, we're all trying things out, and we are willing to place our bets and say it might not work. But if it does, boy, would that be great. You know, that we can create something exciting here. We can create something meaningful here, whether it's, you know, launching a new product or innovation, or just building an incredible career, or finally writing that book, or, you know, whatever the goal is that we're doing there, that we're aiming towards something, and that there can be real joy in that quest. I mean, you may be familiar with the work of Teresa Amabile at Harvard Business School, who wrote The Progress Principle. And what she discovered is that the single biggest indicator of whether somebody felt like they had a good day at work was whether they had made some degree of progress, even tiny progress, on a goal they considered meaningful. And if we can take that approach with our life, then, you know, we're rocking it.

I love that. Goals and aims and aspirations are obviously so important. But ultimately, those things are beyond our absolute control. The results and outcomes will come. And what I'm hearing is, it's the, you know, with the strategic thinking piece, and also just what you were just sharing, if we pay attention to the process, if we, if we enter the journey with intention and integrity, the results will come or they won't, we'll still learn something, we'll, we'll be able to enjoy you spoke to enjoying the quest. And I love that framing. We have— I just wanted to give a quick shout-out to my friend Dom. Dom is a coach that I've met recently. We have a lot of folks that are members of this community and tuning into this broadcast that are coaches, that are consultants, that are freelancers. Our mutual friend Seth Godin has just launched the 6th session of the Freelancers Workshop, where I am I'm once again, um, very privileged to be the head coach. I would like to shift just a little bit into that element of your work. I know that, um, I was following, uh, a coaching program that you were getting started earlier this year, that you've done a fair amount of coaching. I wonder if you would just share a little bit about that aspect of what you do and any tips or advice for those that are trying to either aspire to get into that kind of work, given the way the economy is going and the way the world of work is changing, or if they're advancing in a freelancing, coaching, or consulting enterprise, how they can step out a little bit more boldly and with a little bit more curiosity into that kind of endeavor.

Yeah, I'm so, I'm so glad you're bringing this up, Scott, because actually the book, it's, it's it's dedicated in part to the members of a community that I run called the Recognized Expert Community. And working, working with them, you know, it's this online course and community in many ways helped to inform and inspire the book because what I kept seeing over and over again, you know, I've been running this for 5 years, 600+ people have gone through the program. So I've gotten a really good, you know, sort of broad longitudinal sense of what it actually takes to reach the goal that the community is sort of optimized around, which is, you know, smart, talented people trying to get their, their message heard, trying to build their platform and get their ideas out there more widely. And what I kept seeing oftentimes in the Recognized Expert community and in the coaching work that I did, which, you know, is often among people who are self-employed professionals, they're coaches, they're consultants, their authors, is so often people would come in and, you know, we'd be meeting every 2 weeks or whatever, and they'd be like, okay, so what now? What should I be doing now? What am I not thinking about? Uh, okay, well, what about this? And I realized they wanted to change strategy like every 5 minutes. And what I, what I so often had to do, I felt like I was constantly like depressing them and throwing cold water. I'm like, how about you keep doing the thing you were doing. Because, you know, you, you know, it's the easier way of thinking about it is like, oh, well, there must be this thing that I'm not doing, and if I do that thing, then things will work out. But oftentimes it's just, no, do the thing you're doing but longer. And so writing The Long Game in many ways is kind of a love letter to, to those folks and to people like them. To say, you know, it's okay. We don't, we don't have to constantly be looking around and saying, well, like, what's she doing? What's, what's he doing? We can keep playing our own game and just, you know, working at it and oftentimes just applying more time and more patience to it. That's the right solution rather than constantly feeling like we need to keep up or we need to change our strategy. What I discovered in both in my own career and in working with folks in the Recognized Expert community is that in general, I mean, I wish it were faster, but it generally takes about 2 years, 2 to 3 years of concerted effort in building your platform and trying to get your ideas out there before, before people, you know, before you start to see pretty much any signs of progress. Right. And then it usually takes about 5 years before you start to see demonstrable measurable, visible progress where, like, you know, people are kind of taking note, like, oh, where did he come from? And so now the good news is if you start now, like, you know, those 2 years, those 5 years, they're going to pass anyway. And it's amazing what happens when you have made that investment and you can reap it 2 years or 3 years or 5 years from now. But there's a lot of people out there that want it in 2 or 3 months. And so I try to be really clear about what what the parameters are to make sure, like, are you, are you willing to do the work? Are you willing to make the sacrifices? But for the people that are, I really think it's a beautiful thing and I want to cheer them on and I want to encourage them, which is part of why I wrote The Long Game.

I love that. So powerful. We're coming to the end of our time together, Dori. I always end with one— this last question, and you've already delivered a lot of really exceptional nuggets of wisdom and insight and actionable tips. If you just had, for those that are tuning in that seek to either advance or aspire to do work that matters, work that makes a difference, work that aligns with who they are, what they're good at, and where they belong, what is the very next step that you would encourage them to take in that journey?

Well, I actually have what I will call a bespoke recommendation for them, Scott, because I— one of the things that I have really spent a lot of time thinking about is, you know, for people who do want to make an impact, there's a million things you could be doing. Where do you get the biggest ROI? What does that look like? And so I created something. It's a free tool. It's a free self-assessment called the Recognized Expert Self-Evaluation Toolkit.. And it is a scored self-assessment that you take. And based on your score, it actually gives you a personalized recommendation of where you should be applying your efforts. Broadly speaking, what I've discovered is that in order to become a recognized expert, 3 key components: content creation, sharing your ideas, social proof, it's building your credibility. And third is building your network. Generally, for a lot of people, We naturally are maybe good at one of these, maybe two, who knows? But usually it's very rare that you're good at all three. And so it means you have to sort of apply your efforts strategically and think about how to round out your portfolio. So for folks that might be interested in getting it for free, go to doryclark.com/toolkit and you can download it. You can get your scores and figure out your prescription for where you should be investing your time and energy so that your ideas can be heard. More.

Fantastic! What a great way to end. I want to thank everyone for tuning in. Dori and I really appreciate you lending us some of your valuable time and attention. We hope today's broadcast motivates you to lean into a difference that matters with a little bit more curiosity and courage. You can learn more about Dori Clark and the difference that she's making at doriclark.com. And of course, it's always great to see you at creativeonpurpose.com as well. Now, take the insight and inspiration from this conversation and fly higher in the difference only you can make. Dori Clark, thank you so much for your time and the wisdom that you shared with us today.

Scott Perry, thank you so much for having me, and thanks you all for being here.