The Outliers Inn

Topic: In this episode of The Outliers Inn, we try something new – having a “theme” for the show. As we approach the end of another year in time and space, we (ought to) become reflective of things said and done, failures and successes, fulfillments and hopes yet to fulfill themselves. Like the Irish man who thought about the evils of drinking in the New Year – then he gave up thinking. So we decided the theme for this show should be “most impactful event” of the year where our guests will share what happened in their lives that had a significant impact this past year.

Our first guest is Hal Frohreich who shares his transformative experiences in leadership development during his participation in a Kata Dojo workshop that he attended in “Cascadia”, a rather obscure region (except for those who live there) of North America roughly defined as Oregon, Washington State, and British Columbia. Hal is followed by Davis Balestracci who shares the challenges he faced in 2019, having been forced into “semi-retirement” by losing traction and having a lack of engagements. We ponder together what the root-cause might be and explore potential ways of taking corrective action. JP helps Davis to deconstruct the challenges and reconstruct potential ways forward; how to gain and retain the attention of the M.A.N (the person who has Money, Authority, and Need). And our last guest is James Considine, who shares his life-altering event in 2019 – the facilitated departure from corporate life and entering the world of the entrepreneur. He proposes that business owners care the most of these criterion; 1) Can it make me money, 2) Can it save me money, 3) Does it keep me out of prison, and 4) Does it make my life easier – these being in no particular order. James proposes that each of us must know and understand their own personal “superpower” and amplify the this superpower rather than to focus on improving where they are weak. Strengths should be amplified and weaknesses should be augmented.

There is a lot of insight, perspective, and sharing in this episode. Kick back and enjoy.

Topic: Antlerboy and JP talk with Steven Stanton, the author of “Smart Work: Why Organizations Full of Intelligent People Do So Many Dumb Things and What You Can Do About It.” on a surprising theme: how continuous improvement can kill!

Steve's a pioneer of process innovation who has worked for more than thirty years on improving the capability of organisations to transform, including co-authoring, with Dr. Hammer, of the “Reengineering Revolution” (HarperBusiness) and the Harvard Business Review article “How Process Organizations Really Work.”

He talks about how organisations suffer from too much unco-ordinated change, and how we can get back to strategic transformation. Nobody dies.

Guests: Steven Stanton

About Steven: Steven Stanton is the author of “Smart Work: Why Organizations Full of Intelligent People Do So Many Dumb Things and What You Can Do About It.”

He is a pioneer of process innovation. For thirty years his work has been focused on improving the capability of organizations to transform themselves.

Through his consulting, writing, and teaching, Mr. Stanton has participated in the development of many of the most innovative and valuable business ideas of the past ten years such as Business Reengineering, Process Management, and Smart Work, a revolutionary way of creating value.

Mr. Stanton is the co-author, with Dr. Hammer, of the “Reengineering Revolution” (HarperBusiness) and the Harvard Business Review article “How Process Organizations Really Work.” In addition, he has published many articles on business transformation and as a leading management thinker is frequently cited by national publications such as Fortune, BusinessWeek and CFO Magazine.

He teaches many of FCB Partners’ public courses, in many internal training programs, and at Tecnologico Monterrey, in Mexico.

Mr. Stanton holds an MBA from Harvard and a BA from the Berklee School of Music.

Topic: Change that matters - Mike Staresinic has experience in engineering, the arts - and in fomenting revolution - strictly nonviolent. He spent 25 years overseas supporting civil society and nonviolent resistance. He helps nations, organizations, and leaders adapt to an ever-accelerating pace of change. Bringing it all back home, he's started to find himself thinking about the kind of city and community that people want to live in. The boys talk to Mike on a magical mystery tour around danger, excitement, judgement, adaptive leadership, and his book: ACTIVISM - Organizing for large scale transformational change. Oh yes, and dad jokes and bad puns.

Guests: Mike Staresinic

About Mike: Change That Matters. 25 years in change that matters. I help nations, organizations, and leaders adapt to an ever-accelerating pace of change. National change require adaptive leadership, effective collaboration, and widespread quality participation. Develop, coach and mentor national government, civic and media leaders in strategy, vision, and participation in seminal democratic transitions; create new methods to boost civic participation in countries worldwide. Take understanding of change to the next level through writing and publishing about adaptive leadership in transformational change in complex adaptive systems including nations and large organizations. Technical lead on winning USAID’s largest contracts $2.5B SWIFT IV and $1.5B SWIFT III Technical lead on USAID's largest 2015 bid and $600M in USAID bids Devise and lead $62M in large, complex, essential US government field programs in democratic transition.

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Recorded: November 24, 2020

Antlerboy starts off the show with a confession; that he has been seeing other people – in fact quite a selection of other people. Behind JP’s back but in broad daylight, he has been recording two other podcasts; “Joy and Work” for leading (public) service transformation, and “Transduction” for the systems, complexity, and cybernetics. He also shares that his launch strategy is rather atypical in that he is purposefully limiting his audience to a “need to listen” basis with a tight circle of trust and with limited outreach. JP thinks this is a rather odd launch strategy indeed. But then again, JP got a bit lost (but not surprised) when Antlerboy started talking about the subject matter having socialist and liberal leanings and academic wonks being the source for many of his episodes.

JP expresses concern that Antlerboy’s appetite for strange is insatiable and that he should seek help – this before confessing that he too has recently launched a new podcast himself entitled “Supercharged Supply Chain”. But JP’s also shares that his new podcast is a bit of a struggle because he is not used to having a co-host who is so much smarter than he is, and it takes a lot of work on his part to be sure to be on his toes. Of course, both Antlerboy and JP wish each other much success with their new ventures.

Our first guest is Sam Storm from Sweden. JP has known Sam for some time and took notice of the complete personal transformation that Sam has undertaken in the past year; from hoodies and baggie-pants to custom tailored suits. In the spirit of John T. Molloy, Sam is “dressed for success”. Sam then shares that he has competed in the Swedish hip-hop cover competition several times and does a pretty good Dr. Dre cover. It is near peak darkness in Sweden now with a maximum of seven hours of twilight and Sam is finding satisfaction in working with others; coaching and mentoring them on agile tools and techniques with an eye to professional and personal growth.

This leads to a larger discussion on mentoring; and how we often don’t know we are mentoring others (and that others don’t know that we are being mentored by them). Perhaps it is better this way in that each of us can be more genuine and have the real conversations without feeling the pressures associated with knowing we are examining or being examined.

Our next guest to the bar is a regular, Stephane from Belgium and now in France. The conversation starts with the renewed lockdown in France and the challenges that will be faced with holiday shopping. It would appear that many people in France openly rail against Amazon whilst secretly clicking away. Absurdly, the supermarkets are open for food, but aisles within the supermarket are closed because they sell “non-essential” items (whatever that means) even though they are in the same store. This is to protect the small shops that sell these items, but are currently closed – even though you can buy these items online. Government Rules Hurt. Our. Heads.

JP shares with Stephane that he was concerned for Stephane’s well-being. Usually, Stephane is responsive to eMails and LinkedIn messages, but there were a couple of weeks where Stephane did not respond – not even open a message on LinkedIn. Stephane shared that he was on vacation, or rather a “stay-cation”. He stayed in his apartment and unplugged from everything work-related. How can a person do that for two weeks, couped up in an apartment with restrictions for movement, escaped JP (who would have had to escape).

Lastly, we again call to center stage, Mandalyn, with another acapella rendition of one of her original songs. This one is a personal favorite of her’s and is entitled “Breaking Up” about the end of one of her relationships a really long time ago. As usual, we sit around the table discussing what-not and such – mostly adding to the previous conversations of the evening, until the last call is shouted and the lights are turned up brighter letting us all know it’s time to go.

Mule kicks of the conversation at The Outliers Inn with the season wrap of robots season. Kids being kids, they start off wearing their "Sunday best" and end-up dragging the duds through the grass playing frisbee after the official goings-on are done.

JP laments about how packed the flights are. But that there is an upside with his travels as the people along the route (flight attendants, restaurant personnel, and so on) have become familiar with his ways and see to it that all is good; and it is good.

JP also shares that he changed-out his old notebook for a latest and greatest; and how easy it was to make the change as compared to times past. But whereas JP has one notebook, Mule shares he has several and the challenges therein.

JP is the first to share a coincidence, combined with a life-hack. The life hack is that he introduces himself and chats folks up at the hotel bar. Because, drinking alone indicates a problem, but he is always sure to drink with someone else.

But the coincidence is that JP has loved space programs since Apollo and Skylab. He used to write NASA and IBM and get all sorts of cool pics, pamphlets, and patches. And while on a project in Denver, he met some NASA pilots who were on the SOFIA program and who were in Denver to train on the "vintage" 747 simulator.

Well, one thing led to another and the pilots invited JP to join them at the simulator the next day. Of course, JP messaged the client and let them know he was going to be late the next day and he "flew" the 747 out of SFO, towards the Golden Gate Bridge, out to Napa Valley, and then landed back at SFO. He was a happy guy.

Esther joins us and shares that she believes coincidences do not exist, but that things in life happen because they are meant to happen, there is always a reason; definitely in the "Gibbs Rule Nr.37, there is no such thing as coincidence."

Mule gets all scientific and etymological on us and postulates that a coincidence is a collision, and its rather difficult to put into words here; you gotta give a listen. And just when you think it can't get any deeper, Ester injects Carl Jung into the conversation.

Thankfully, Don brings us back to Earth and raises the most perplexing conundrum; there are 24 hours in a day, and 24 beers in a case - coincidence?