The Elephant in the Org
The "Elephant in the Org" podcast is a daring dive into the unspoken challenges and opportunities in organizational development, particularly in the realm of employee experience. Hosted by the team at The Fearless PX, we tackle the "elephants" in the room—those taboo or ignored topics—that are critical for creating psychologically safe and highly effective workplaces.
The Elephant in the Org
Why Your “Best Employees” Are Killing Innovation — with Mark Murphy
We say we want innovation.
We reward compliance.
And then we wonder why nothing changes.
In this episode of The Elephant in the Org, we dig into a quiet but damaging contradiction inside modern organisations: the employees leaders like most are often the least innovative.
Our guest, Mark Murphy—New York Times bestselling author, Forbes senior contributor, and founder of Leadership IQ—shares research showing how “dependable,” low-friction behaviour gets mistaken for high performance, while challenge, dissent, and original thinking are subtly discouraged.
This conversation isn’t about bad managers or difficult employees. It’s about systems, incentives, and the unintended consequences of prioritising harmony over progress.
We explore:
- Why compliance often gets rewarded as “performance”
- How toxic harmony quietly shuts down innovation
- The structural pressure middle managers face around risk
- Why psychological safety doesn’t happen by accident
- How meeting design determines who gets heard—and who doesn’t
- Practical ways leaders can surface better thinking without chaos
If your organisation talks a big game about innovation but struggles to hear uncomfortable ideas, this episode will hit close to home.
About Our Guest
Mark Murphy is a New York Times bestselling author, Forbes senior contributor, and founder of Leadership IQ. His research on leadership, performance, and team dynamics has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Bloomberg Businessweek, and The Washington Post. Mark has advised organisations ranging from Harvard Business School to the United Nations and is the author of Team Players, Hiring for Attitude, Hundred Percenters, and HARD Goals.
🔗 Leadership IQ: https://www.leadershipiq.com
🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markamurphy/
Link to Show notes
📩 Got a hot take or a workplace horror story? Email us at elephant@thefearlesspx.com
🚀 Your Hosts on LinkedIn
- 🐘 Marion Anderson — https://www.linkedin.com/in/marionandersonpx
- 🐘 Danny Gluch — https://www.linkedin.com/in/dgluch
- 🐘 Cacha Dora — https://www.linkedin.com/in/cachadora
💬 Like what you hear?
Follow/subscribe so you don’t miss an episode — and if this one hit home, leave a ★★★★★ review to help more people find the show.
🎙️ About the Show
The Elephant in the Org drops new episodes every two weeks starting April 2024 — fearless conversations about leadership, psychological safety, and the future of work.
🎵 Music & Production Credits
🎶 Opening and closing theme music by The Toros
🎙️ Produced by The Fearless PX
✂️ Edited by Marion Anderson
⚠️ Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests, and do not necessarily reflect any affiliated organizations' official policy or position.
Topics: employee surveys, listening culture, trust, people analytics, psychological safety, em...
Marion Anderson:
We say we want innovation.
We say we want people who challenge the status quo.
We say we want bold thinking, fresh ideas, and people who don’t just nod along.
And then—quietly—we promote the safest people in the room.
The ones who don’t rock the boat.
The ones who stay in their lane.
The ones who make their manager’s life easier.
Today’s elephant is this:
your “best employees” might be the very people killing innovation.
Not because they’re bad at their jobs.
But because they’ve learned exactly how to survive the system.
And to help us unpack that, we’re joined by Mark Murphy—New York Times bestselling author, Forbes senior contributor, and founder of Leadership IQ.
Mark’s advised leaders everywhere from Harvard Business School to the United Nations. His research has been featured in places like the Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Bloomberg, and the Washington Post. And his work focuses on one uncomfortable truth:
the behaviours leaders reward are often the ones that quietly block progress.
Once you see that pattern, you can’t unsee it.
Let’s talk about why.
This is the Elephant in the Org.
00:00:03.050 --> 00:00:09.360
Danny Gluch: Welcome back to the Elephant in the Org, everyone. I'm Danny Gluch, and I'm joined, as always, by my co-host, Cacha Dora
2
00:00:09.360 --> 00:00:10.930
Cacha Dora: Hello?
3
00:00:10.930 --> 00:00:12.380
Danny Gluch: And Marion Anderson.
4
00:00:12.520 --> 00:00:13.970
Marion: Good morning!
5
00:00:13.970 --> 00:00:22.149
Danny Gluch: And today, we have… A fantastic guest. Mark Murphy, why don't you say hi and introduce yourself real quick?
6
00:00:22.430 --> 00:00:35.219
Mark Murphy: Hey there, Mark Murphy here, and first, thank you all for having me. I'm excited for this conversation, and yeah, I am the founder of Leadership IQ, and we are a leadership and training
7
00:00:35.500 --> 00:00:36.720
Mark Murphy: research company.
8
00:00:37.660 --> 00:00:52.780
Danny Gluch: That's fantastic. I love leadership, I love training, I love all of the things. And you're the author of Team Players, which is… oh god, you stole, like, one of the best titles of the book I can think of.
9
00:00:54.120 --> 00:00:57.169
Danny Gluch: And the elephant in the org is…
10
00:00:57.720 --> 00:01:05.060
Danny Gluch: All about this… this research, this work that you've been doing, and the idea that
11
00:01:05.390 --> 00:01:23.360
Danny Gluch: there is toxic harmony. We, you know, I love the term toxicness, toxic that. I'm like, is it toxic? And then it turns out, yes, very toxic. And the idea that organizations say they love and encourage things, but in practice.
12
00:01:23.360 --> 00:01:37.890
Danny Gluch: actually struggle and discourage the exact same things that they want to encourage. And we're gonna really dive into a lot of your work, a lot of your experience, a lot of what you've written on and researched.
13
00:01:38.010 --> 00:01:39.140
Danny Gluch: And…
14
00:01:39.840 --> 00:01:51.960
Danny Gluch: Mark, I want to talk with, first off, the kind of stock question. What made you interested in this? What's your background? How did you get into starting something called Leadership IQ, which is fantastic?
15
00:01:52.980 --> 00:02:11.709
Mark Murphy: So my… my early career was actually spent in the world of, turnarounds. And so, like, a company's gonna lose 100, 200 million dollars, you know, and they gotta do a major restructuring, scrub the balance, blah blah blah. And a lot of it, you know, involves layoffs, things like that, and…
16
00:02:11.760 --> 00:02:20.339
Mark Murphy: As you might expect, not every company that comes out… that goes into a turnaround ever comes out of a turnaround. Sometimes they're sold off for parts.
17
00:02:20.370 --> 00:02:36.289
Mark Murphy: And, you know, inevitably, they do damage. So I was doing a, working with a lot of healthcare organizations at the time, and I did a study where we took a look at the mortality morbidity rates of hospitals that went through across-the-board layoffs.
18
00:02:36.530 --> 00:02:43.089
Mark Murphy: It's pretty intuitive nowadays, but it was not at the time that if you do an across-the-board layoff in a hospital.
19
00:02:43.420 --> 00:02:54.089
Mark Murphy: your standard reduction in force, your risk of about a, you know, getting a significant, statistically significant jump in mortality and morbidity rates went up by about 300%.
20
00:02:54.430 --> 00:03:04.770
Mark Murphy: And so, you know, basically, it was like, okay, you know the old joke, like, never fly on a bankrupt airline? Well, same thing, like, don't go to a hospital where they're doing a layoff.
21
00:03:05.250 --> 00:03:16.410
Mark Murphy: And so, after about a decade, I was running that firm, and we ended up selling off the company to a big $20 billion conglomerate.
22
00:03:16.410 --> 00:03:28.229
Mark Murphy: And I said, okay, well, I can't work for a big $20 billion conglomerate, so I said, I'll… they made it clear that, you know, my innovative personality that we're gonna talk about
23
00:03:28.440 --> 00:03:33.809
Mark Murphy: I was not so on board with what they wanted, and I said, well, I'm not gonna…
24
00:03:33.970 --> 00:03:47.210
Mark Murphy: be not me. So, I said, I'll give you a year. And when I left and started Leadership IQ, because of all the research we had done, and found that the mitigating thing, the thing that stopped
25
00:03:47.220 --> 00:04:03.600
Mark Murphy: like, you know, damage being done to patients and the organization, when you go through a turnaround, was the leadership side. I said, you know what, instead of dealing with this on the back end, where we're just laying people off, what if we could, like, fix this on the front end, and, like, develop better leaders, so maybe we didn't…
26
00:04:03.970 --> 00:04:05.929
Mark Murphy: Get into this horrible place.
27
00:04:06.090 --> 00:04:13.840
Mark Murphy: At all. And, you know, like, wouldn't that be a shock? And I said, that sounds like a way more enjoyable way to spend my life and career.
28
00:04:14.300 --> 00:04:26.449
Mark Murphy: So, that's what I did. I said, I'm not dealing with the turnaround side of the world anymore, it's only gonna be the, the leadership side, the, you know, the precursors. And the thing that…
29
00:04:26.490 --> 00:04:35.689
Mark Murphy: I kind of founded Leadership IQ1 was the idea that we gotta have some data. Like, I'm not gonna go into the guru business, where it's just…
30
00:04:35.690 --> 00:04:50.559
Mark Murphy: listen to me, because, you know, I'm so charming. And I said, that doesn't seem like, you know, my natural. But, if we always have data, then no matter what we say, if we can back it up, even if it's an uncomfortable truth.
31
00:04:50.890 --> 00:04:54.899
Mark Murphy: if I can prove it, or at least provide evidence for it, then…
32
00:04:54.900 --> 00:04:55.360
Danny Gluch: Hmm.
33
00:04:55.360 --> 00:05:04.659
Mark Murphy: this gives me the freedom to do all sorts of interesting things. So that's kind of the, you know, the long history of how we got here.
34
00:05:04.660 --> 00:05:21.650
Marion: I'm, like, I'm, like, itching to take us down a different tangent, because you're talking about hospitals and mortality rates and stuff, and it takes me right back to Amy Emondson's early work, you know, psychological safety, hospitals, all of that stuff, and I suppose before, like.
35
00:05:21.650 --> 00:05:28.730
Marion: we go right into the topic. I'm just curious, how much of that was based on lack of psychological safety, even if it's a ballpark guess?
36
00:05:28.730 --> 00:05:31.090
Marion: Yes. When you… in your early research.
37
00:05:31.610 --> 00:05:40.570
Mark Murphy: You know, hindsight being 20-20, I'd say that probably a good third of it was.
38
00:05:40.690 --> 00:05:42.720
Danny Gluch: Because it's the…
39
00:05:43.780 --> 00:05:51.080
Mark Murphy: Long before there was a notion of psychological safety, there were lots of emphasis on
40
00:05:51.350 --> 00:06:11.220
Mark Murphy: Speaking up, just in general. The JCHO, the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, this is… oh gosh, I'm really dating myself. This is back in the 90s. They started a campaign called Speak Up, and the Speak Up campaign was designed to empower
41
00:06:11.300 --> 00:06:24.660
Mark Murphy: nurses a lot, to… and even patients, to be advocates for their own care, to, start tackling preventable medical errors. And preventable medical errors could be anything from…
42
00:06:25.330 --> 00:06:40.580
Mark Murphy: Not washing your hands. A clinician not washing their hands, which is, the number one cause of nosocomial infections in a hospital. Wrong-site surgeries, for example, like literally amputating the wrong leg, things like that.
43
00:06:41.790 --> 00:06:52.400
Mark Murphy: And it was designed just to get people more and more comfortable with the idea of, it's okay, if you see a doctor come into the room, and he or she doesn't
44
00:06:52.530 --> 00:06:55.140
Mark Murphy: At least hit the hand sanitizer.
45
00:06:55.350 --> 00:06:58.909
Mark Murphy: Say something. Say something. Yeah.
46
00:06:58.920 --> 00:07:00.900
Danny Gluch: So, it, you know… Damn.
47
00:07:01.750 --> 00:07:19.239
Mark Murphy: it all kind of ties together, right? Like, that was one piece of it. Now, another part of it, of course, is there's… it depends on how broad you want to go with psychological safety, because there is an assertiveness component to it, there is an organizational hierarchy.
48
00:07:19.440 --> 00:07:28.970
Mark Murphy: component to it, there's a power distance component to it, so it… you know, I mean, you can… if you broaden the concept of psychological safety enough.
49
00:07:29.090 --> 00:07:39.069
Mark Murphy: It starts to become fairly all-encompassing, but if we're dealing with simply the sentiment of, do I feel comfortable speaking up.
50
00:07:39.530 --> 00:07:45.690
Mark Murphy: Even tackling it, you probably have to hit 3 or 4 other factors that play into that.
51
00:07:46.070 --> 00:07:47.990
Danny Gluch: Yeah, that's…
52
00:07:47.990 --> 00:07:59.130
Marion: Yeah, it's definitely… that's definitely… that's definitely when we have you back to record another episode, because I'm like, I really want to go down that road. Danny, pull us back!
53
00:07:59.130 --> 00:08:03.950
Danny Gluch: I actually, I mean, this is one of the things that I think Mark…
54
00:08:04.090 --> 00:08:08.880
Danny Gluch: It has such a unique perspective, and your experience
55
00:08:09.080 --> 00:08:25.560
Danny Gluch: But so many of the leadership books deal with hospitals, right? And they deal with this idea of, you know, like… I don't know if the numbers sound better, because it's literally talking about life and death and morbidity rates, sounds, like, very impressive.
56
00:08:25.750 --> 00:08:44.430
Danny Gluch: But I wanted to sort of tie in what you were just talking about with the Speak Up campaigns, and also the 9-11, you brought that up, you know, what an interesting time to start an organization. And the sort of see something, say something campaigns. And…
57
00:08:44.430 --> 00:08:50.660
Danny Gluch: I'm curious if you see, sort of, like, differences or commonalities in
58
00:08:50.660 --> 00:09:00.520
Danny Gluch: the cultures behind speaking up, because I've always thought that the see something, say something had a very, like, neurotic,
59
00:09:01.530 --> 00:09:10.800
Danny Gluch: feel to it, a very, like, oh, there's something wrong, as opposed to, like, the say something when you're talking about it in a hospital of, like, this is a normal thing.
60
00:09:10.800 --> 00:09:35.730
Danny Gluch: And how do you feel, like, is there a tangible difference? Is there a substantive difference between, you know, the feel of these different campaigns of, like, oh, there's something wrong, you need to be on watch, you need to be on guard, versus, like, hey, you're a part of this, say something, you're a part of this team. Do you think that there's a difference between how those things feel and the ability of people speaking up?
61
00:09:37.300 --> 00:09:43.960
Mark Murphy: Hugely. And one of the big differences And so…
62
00:09:44.120 --> 00:09:47.360
Mark Murphy: I am blanking on her name.
63
00:09:47.760 --> 00:10:02.200
Mark Murphy: There's a comedian, and I heard her doing this routine, and she was talking about she's, she went on some, you know, like, blind date, and she meets a guy at a bar, and she's,
64
00:10:02.400 --> 00:10:13.449
Mark Murphy: he's ordering a drink, and he's like, you know, I want a vodka and soda, and the bartender's like, do you want a lemon or a lime? And she's like… and the guy's like,
65
00:10:13.650 --> 00:10:17.499
Mark Murphy: Yeah, the, the green one. And the comedian's like.
66
00:10:17.850 --> 00:10:37.310
Mark Murphy: the green one, it's called a lime. Like, how do you not know what a lime is? And she's like, and then she goes into the, hey, listen, and I see all those signs with the see something, say something, like, I just saw something, this guy doesn't know what a lime is, who am I supposed to call for this? And, I mean, it was hysterical, but that goes to the essential…
67
00:10:37.350 --> 00:10:42.409
Mark Murphy: I think major problem with See Something, Say Something is, see what exactly.
68
00:10:42.750 --> 00:10:44.830
Mark Murphy: If it's a hot… Yeah.
69
00:10:44.940 --> 00:10:47.000
Mark Murphy: campaign to speak up.
70
00:10:47.140 --> 00:10:53.629
Mark Murphy: Well, they're clear about what it is you should be looking for. I mean, we, again.
71
00:10:53.750 --> 00:11:08.729
Mark Murphy: Hand washing. Did you mark the surgery site? Like, if you're gonna be operating on my left shoulder, did you pull out a Sharpie and mark the left shoulder versus the right shoulder? Did you pull out the chart and confirm and look for
72
00:11:08.850 --> 00:11:13.810
Mark Murphy: Did you check the lungs? Were the lungs clear? Did you read the chart and check for medication?
73
00:11:14.240 --> 00:11:27.109
Mark Murphy: It's… speak up, I know exactly. And I'm not a nurse, but, you know, if you tell me what to look for, yeah, I can do casual observer stuff sitting in a hospital, because the list is…
74
00:11:27.610 --> 00:11:33.079
Mark Murphy: pretty darn clear what you're supposed to look for, right? And with see something, say something.
75
00:11:33.840 --> 00:11:38.789
Mark Murphy: what am I supposed to look for? And because it's so fuzzy and vague.
76
00:11:39.250 --> 00:11:44.230
Mark Murphy: All it does is allow each individual who's out looking
77
00:11:44.850 --> 00:11:53.249
Mark Murphy: to assess what they consider dangerous. And… and that is a… you might as well…
78
00:11:53.290 --> 00:11:57.769
Mark Murphy: tattoo be prejudiced on everybody's foreheads, because now.
79
00:11:57.810 --> 00:12:11.399
Mark Murphy: It's, you know, if I happen to be scared of people of color, for example, and now I see a person of color doing something, well, you told me, I saw something, and it's, like, just a recipe, versus…
80
00:12:11.400 --> 00:12:19.019
Mark Murphy: a list, even on an airline. You go into an airline, you know, and it's the… if they had a Speak Up campaign, it'd be like.
81
00:12:19.160 --> 00:12:33.590
Mark Murphy: Did you hear the pilots go… you know when you're sitting on a plane, and the cockpit door is open before they take off, and the pilots are going through there? Pull up, pull up, and they're, like, pressing every alarm button to test and make sure it all works? Again, I'm not a pilot, but I can…
82
00:12:33.940 --> 00:12:40.469
Mark Murphy: I can tell you that the pilots have or have not gone through the safety checklist simply because I have ears.
83
00:12:40.600 --> 00:12:45.230
Mark Murphy: And I know what a safety checklist sounds like on an airline. We all do.
84
00:12:45.330 --> 00:12:54.969
Mark Murphy: And same thing, I can see if a nurse or doctor washing their hands. But to see something say something is so problematic. Well, it's problematic because it's so vague.
85
00:12:55.500 --> 00:12:56.550
Mark Murphy: that you're.
86
00:12:56.550 --> 00:13:00.000
Cacha Dora: And it's so, like, weirdly contextual, in a way, right?
87
00:13:00.000 --> 00:13:00.420
Danny Gluch: Yeah.
88
00:13:00.440 --> 00:13:13.640
Cacha Dora: Where it's like, if you're in manufacturing, or if you're in something, all these really high process, high-procedure things, you might be able to… be able to line into it, but, like, I've seen them see something, say something campaigns on, like, a poster on a bus.
89
00:13:15.510 --> 00:13:17.100
Danny Gluch: Do you see them in national parks?
90
00:13:17.100 --> 00:13:17.810
Cacha Dora: You see them in.
91
00:13:17.810 --> 00:13:20.130
Danny Gluch: I'm like, I don't know, I see a lot of things.
92
00:13:20.130 --> 00:13:20.860
Cacha Dora: Yeah, it's like.
93
00:13:20.860 --> 00:13:22.709
Danny Gluch: That box looks suspicious.
94
00:13:23.180 --> 00:13:26.030
Mark Murphy: Yeah, and it's like, you know, it's… I,
95
00:13:26.290 --> 00:13:35.759
Mark Murphy: one of my oldest friends, used to be an executive at DuPont, and they are an insanely safety-focused organization, and,
96
00:13:35.940 --> 00:13:51.499
Mark Murphy: And, you know, so I… I got the lessons from him early on that I've tried to pass on to my children, especially my son, who works on cars, and it's like, okay, well, I can… I can do a quick safety audit. Do you have eye protection?
97
00:13:51.590 --> 00:14:00.489
Mark Murphy: Do you have ear protection? Is the saw blade, does it have the cover down when it's not in use? It's like, okay, again.
98
00:14:00.630 --> 00:14:07.479
Mark Murphy: I'm a simpleton, but you can train me in a specific context to walk into a workshop or a garage
99
00:14:07.620 --> 00:14:18.510
Mark Murphy: and do a quick see-something, say something kind of thing, like, hey, why isn't that, you know, that grass cutter, that saw blade covered? Okay, I can do that, but…
100
00:14:18.680 --> 00:14:31.999
Mark Murphy: you know, again, you gotta contextualize it, and Kasha, as you said, it's like, it's so context-dependent that, yeah, put me in a hospital, a garage, auto shop, a factory, cool, you can train me up for that.
101
00:14:32.340 --> 00:14:33.030
Mark Murphy: But…
102
00:14:33.030 --> 00:14:38.009
Danny Gluch: But yeah, walking around the street, it does seem to bring up a lot of those sort of, like.
103
00:14:38.240 --> 00:14:42.570
Danny Gluch: Prejudices, and that's… that's… that's problematic.
104
00:14:43.560 --> 00:14:46.379
Marion: But bringing it back to toxic harmony…
105
00:14:48.400 --> 00:14:52.669
Danny Gluch: Sorry, I had to go there, it was, it was, it was too, too interesting to me, I'm sorry.
106
00:14:54.330 --> 00:14:58.669
Marion: problem, we find something interesting, and we go off and attaching.
107
00:14:59.420 --> 00:15:10.380
Marion: But I want to get into this, because this… when I was reading the book, and it really resonated with me, and… and…
108
00:15:11.930 --> 00:15:12.760
Marion: being…
109
00:15:13.180 --> 00:15:20.919
Marion: being a Brit, and having lived all over the place, I was thinking about examples of my own, kind of, like.
110
00:15:21.050 --> 00:15:32.420
Marion: living this experience of being in organisations where this exists, and layering into that different cultures, you know, having lived in the Middle East, growing up, obviously, in the UK,
111
00:15:32.550 --> 00:15:40.670
Marion: even in the UK, Scotland to England are very different. Scottish people are a lot more direct, English people tend to be a little bit more…
112
00:15:41.030 --> 00:15:56.999
Marion: Oh, polite? I don't know, maybe that's a bit of a stereotype, certainly not always the case. But, like, when I started to think about it through those lenses, I was like, oh, this thing's really interesting, because it still exists and manifests in lots of different contexts and ways.
113
00:15:57.170 --> 00:16:06.650
Marion: But it plays out differently. And again, sorry, I'm taking this off on another tangent, but it was really interesting to me, thinking about it through a multicultural lens.
114
00:16:06.980 --> 00:16:14.219
Marion: Tell us more about how this kind of came around, and why this was such a pinnacle area of the book.
115
00:16:15.620 --> 00:16:21.080
Mark Murphy: So, one of the… Before I even actually started on
116
00:16:21.280 --> 00:16:37.459
Mark Murphy: the book proper, one of the studies that we did was we just… and this kind of went to somebody, you know, personally, who has bumped up against this, from time to time, where
117
00:16:37.750 --> 00:16:49.109
Mark Murphy: You know, when I… I told you when I sold my… that earlier company to this big conglomerate, and I'm meeting with their chief marketing officer, this, you know, $20 billion company, and we're…
118
00:16:49.470 --> 00:17:02.699
Mark Murphy: Sitting in the room, and I said, Don, I got all these great ideas, and then here's how we can roll it out. You know, you've got X thousands of hospitals, blah, blah, blah. And he stopped the meeting, and he looks at me, and
119
00:17:03.060 --> 00:17:07.220
Mark Murphy: It's a very Southern way, and he goes, Mark, I have to tell you.
120
00:17:07.560 --> 00:17:13.230
Mark Murphy: That people that get that aggressive don't last very long here.
121
00:17:14.460 --> 00:17:18.349
Mark Murphy: And… I walked out of that meeting, and this is…
122
00:17:18.359 --> 00:17:19.119
Cacha Dora: Massive.
123
00:17:19.440 --> 00:17:26.449
Mark Murphy: This is before even cell phones were popular, so I walked into a side office, and I called my wife, and I said.
124
00:17:26.630 --> 00:17:30.330
Mark Murphy: Well, I'm in hell.
125
00:17:30.650 --> 00:17:40.690
Mark Murphy: I don't know how long I'm gonna last here. Like, I am literally leaving this office and going to a bar. And, I'll be home tomorrow.
126
00:17:42.300 --> 00:17:46.829
Mark Murphy: And so, I had always kind of had, you know, I've had experiences like that, so…
127
00:17:47.650 --> 00:17:55.789
Mark Murphy: I did this study, and what we did was we asked managers, a couple thousand managers, and we asked them,
128
00:17:56.050 --> 00:17:58.519
Mark Murphy: We're gonna give you a list of characteristics.
129
00:17:58.670 --> 00:18:00.800
Mark Murphy: We basically want you to rate
130
00:18:00.900 --> 00:18:15.679
Mark Murphy: what your… you know, just to imagine, like, a 7-point scale, I want you to rate your employees on this. Think of your favorite employee, and think of your least favorite employee. And now, go through and score
131
00:18:15.750 --> 00:18:25.380
Mark Murphy: your favorite employee and your least favorite employee on these characteristics. So, managers' favorite employees were things like
132
00:18:25.590 --> 00:18:40.400
Mark Murphy: They're dependable, they're understanding, they're tolerant, they follow the rules, they stay in their lane. It was all, you know, kind of compliant, conform, don't be a pain in my rear kind of stuff.
133
00:18:41.360 --> 00:18:43.570
Mark Murphy: Their least favorite employees.
134
00:18:43.720 --> 00:18:59.530
Mark Murphy: Where things like, challenges convention, challenges conventional wisdom, likes to be on the cutting edge, swims upstream, is a nonconformist, doesn't know their own limits, it was stuff like that.
135
00:18:59.780 --> 00:19:00.850
Mark Murphy: And…
136
00:19:01.150 --> 00:19:09.080
Mark Murphy: So then, we did a second part, which was, okay, what are the characteristics of the most innovative people you know in your organization?
137
00:19:09.210 --> 00:19:15.309
Mark Murphy: And it's things like swims upstream, is a nonconformist, takes risks, blah blah blah blah. And…
138
00:19:15.450 --> 00:19:18.379
Mark Murphy: Basically, the upshot of it was…
139
00:19:19.160 --> 00:19:27.839
Mark Murphy: Managers' favorite employees were the least innovative types. Managers' least favorite employees had the characteristics of the most innovative people.
140
00:19:28.090 --> 00:19:29.689
Danny Gluch: And it's like…
141
00:19:30.340 --> 00:19:34.649
Cacha Dora: They made their jobs easier versus harder, but had a completely different net profit.
142
00:19:34.900 --> 00:19:35.370
Mark Murphy: Exactly.
143
00:19:35.370 --> 00:19:35.940
Danny Gluch: Yeah.
144
00:19:36.400 --> 00:19:38.280
Mark Murphy: And here's the thing.
145
00:19:39.040 --> 00:19:41.380
Mark Murphy: I did not make up this study design.
146
00:19:41.770 --> 00:19:59.039
Mark Murphy: I took this study design from a study I had come across, doing some other research of a study of schoolchildren in, like, the 1970s. And so these educators did the same thing that I did for managers, they did it for teachers.
147
00:19:59.130 --> 00:20:04.029
Mark Murphy: And they asked the teachers to rate their favorite student and their least favorite student.
148
00:20:04.920 --> 00:20:09.279
Mark Murphy: And… I thought it was when I first read that, I was like, ugh.
149
00:20:09.430 --> 00:20:21.770
Mark Murphy: Well, and this is why, you know, me and my children from time to time would get in trouble in school, because it's like, well, you know, you say you want, like, creative thinking, but you don't want… you don't like the creative thinkers.
150
00:20:21.770 --> 00:20:29.579
Mark Murphy: And because they're disruptive, and they're a pain in your butt, and they're harder to work with, even though, theoretically, they ultimately are…
151
00:20:30.190 --> 00:20:35.230
Mark Murphy: You know, ostensibly gonna deliver more value, but that's not what you like.
152
00:20:35.520 --> 00:20:41.750
Mark Murphy: And it turns… so I had always had that in the back of my mind, and said, at some point, I'm just gonna replicate that study.
153
00:20:41.900 --> 00:20:57.820
Mark Murphy: But just do it in business, rather than, you know, I'm… I don't work in education, so that doesn't matter to me. I mean, it does, but not, like, what I… I don't have access to, you know, a million teachers to go survey them, but I do managers. And so I said, I'm gonna do this for managers, and…
154
00:20:58.170 --> 00:21:00.600
Mark Murphy: What that really hit was that…
155
00:21:00.810 --> 00:21:10.629
Mark Murphy: you know, we say we want innovation, we want people to challenge the status quo, you know, the old Steve Jobs line, you know, we're here to make a little dent in the universe.
156
00:21:11.060 --> 00:21:13.030
Mark Murphy: Yeah… heh.
157
00:21:13.180 --> 00:21:21.630
Mark Murphy: But, while that sounds good, and no company would say we don't want innovation, Yet…
158
00:21:21.970 --> 00:21:32.349
Mark Murphy: If you don't do innovation coloring within their very specific lines, how they want it done, if it challenges them a little too much.
159
00:21:32.550 --> 00:21:44.520
Mark Murphy: Very few companies actively seek out or are willing to put up with the kind of, even in a meeting, the kind of discussion and interactions that need to take place.
160
00:21:44.520 --> 00:21:53.850
Mark Murphy: If we're just doing something… let's say we have a change process we're putting in place, and you look at the timeline for it, and you're like, well, that's… there's no way that's gonna work.
161
00:21:53.960 --> 00:21:58.399
Mark Murphy: And the manager's like, well, this is the timeline, this is what we're gonna stick to. Well…
162
00:21:58.640 --> 00:22:04.819
Mark Murphy: You know, it's how it's always been done. This is the conventional wisdom. And there's somebody who's a bit more innovative, looks at it, and says.
163
00:22:04.820 --> 00:22:05.370
Danny Gluch: Hmm.
164
00:22:05.620 --> 00:22:17.220
Mark Murphy: we could do this differently. You know, what's the natural reaction from a manager? Well, that's… no, this is the way we're doing it, and that's just the way it is.
165
00:22:17.470 --> 00:22:18.710
Mark Murphy: Okay, and…
166
00:22:18.710 --> 00:22:36.760
Cacha Dora: It's that, like, opposition to challenge, right? Like, it's that same thing, like, people don't like change, but also, when you start playing with power dynamics and hierarchies, suddenly, this openness to try something new goes away because it was their idea, or they're the one that's holding it up in the system.
167
00:22:36.890 --> 00:22:48.680
Cacha Dora: And that resistance to challenge, CHCH, challenge and change, I feel like are very, it's like a human behavior problem at the end of the day, where, like, you've got some part of…
168
00:22:49.080 --> 00:22:56.240
Cacha Dora: whether you have a mammalian brain or a reptile brain, whatever you ascribe to in the world, right? Like, either way, it's… it's…
169
00:22:56.550 --> 00:23:01.430
Cacha Dora: Very hard to turn that off for people, even if they might see the value.
170
00:23:01.550 --> 00:23:15.160
Cacha Dora: it needs to be framed up better, because it's just now… well, you're not making things move faster, you're slowing me down, you're slowing the process down, but at the end of the day, like, that's also the antithetical to what psych safety is to begin with.
171
00:23:15.700 --> 00:23:16.650
Marion: Yeah…
172
00:23:16.650 --> 00:23:17.610
Mark Murphy: Very much so.
173
00:23:17.610 --> 00:23:22.379
Marion: Yeah, and I think, like, when you take that concept and sort of, like.
174
00:23:22.590 --> 00:23:31.430
Marion: laid it into our current experience, our current lived experience and external environment, right? Where, you know, if you think about tech.
175
00:23:31.570 --> 00:23:34.360
Marion: I think is a great example, like, tech…
176
00:23:34.360 --> 00:23:58.610
Marion: industry is just in absolute flummox right now, because on one hand, you've got one of the greatest periods of innovation in industrial history with AI, but then on the other hand, you've got Amazon about to lay off 14,000, and God knows who else is going to come after that, right? Like, we're already hearing, as we go into, sort of, wrap up Q3, go into Q4, we're already hearing those
177
00:23:58.610 --> 00:24:04.529
Marion: Warning kind of conversations about, you know, NDP year profits, etc.
178
00:24:04.530 --> 00:24:13.389
Marion: So, like, layoffs are happening, they're coming. I mean, they've been happening all year, they've been happening for the last few years, but I think next year's going to be really different. And so…
179
00:24:13.400 --> 00:24:20.409
Marion: going back to… almost going back to what you were talking about earlier on with the see something piece, like, it's the same thing, right? Like, if I,
180
00:24:20.410 --> 00:24:44.509
Marion: you know, in my job, and I don't feel secure, and I don't feel psychologically safe, because if I see something, or if I see a problem, and I speak up, then that could be a target on my back. And so, when those layoffs come around, then I'm out the door, so I'm gonna be… I'm just gonna hunker down, and just, like, hopefully, you know, not cause too many waves, and… and try and ride it out.
181
00:24:44.510 --> 00:24:52.880
Marion: But guess what, then? I'm not going to innovate, because I'm not going to take risks. And so we're stifling our innovation.
182
00:24:52.920 --> 00:25:06.710
Marion: And, like, I'm just… I'm fascinated by this dynamic, because organizations are like, we want innovation, we want creativity, we want you to just, you know, here's all the AI tools, go and…
183
00:25:06.800 --> 00:25:15.410
Marion: like… rebuild the world, right? But at the same time, but we're gonna lay you off!
184
00:25:15.410 --> 00:25:18.340
Cacha Dora: There's penalization for the thing I'm asking for.
185
00:25:18.340 --> 00:25:23.039
Marion: Absolutely! It's wild! It's wild! I mean, what's your take on all of that, Mark?
186
00:25:23.630 --> 00:25:28.520
Mark Murphy: So, one of the issues that we see a lot is that
187
00:25:30.170 --> 00:25:43.589
Mark Murphy: when we, you know, we all say, yeah, we pay the company, we want innovation, but it's really only the very senior-most executives that actually get rewarded for innovation.
188
00:25:43.740 --> 00:25:47.540
Mark Murphy: Middle managers… and so, an interesting thing we have seen.
189
00:25:47.880 --> 00:25:53.319
Mark Murphy: Senior executives, the very top, are the most
190
00:25:53.700 --> 00:25:59.169
Mark Murphy: risk-taking oriented. The most pro-risk-taking.
191
00:26:00.000 --> 00:26:07.730
Mark Murphy: Frontline employees are actually second to… there's a pretty big gap, but they're second compared to the
192
00:26:07.960 --> 00:26:19.909
Mark Murphy: senior executives. The worst is the least… the most risk-averse, the least risk-taking group is actually the middle managers, the managers in between the execs and the employees.
193
00:26:20.230 --> 00:26:22.189
Mark Murphy: Because there is a chance that…
194
00:26:22.280 --> 00:26:27.120
Mark Murphy: An employee is incented to create something.
195
00:26:27.210 --> 00:26:47.050
Mark Murphy: that might involve innovation. So, imagine you have just an individual coder, and you have a coder who's come up with a better algorithm, a better… it can shorten the code, and it loads faster. So they're, like, even, you know, it's a micro-innovation, but they've just come up with something wicked cool that speeds up the way the code loads.
196
00:26:47.160 --> 00:26:49.370
Mark Murphy: Okay, odds are, they're gonna get…
197
00:26:49.470 --> 00:27:05.560
Mark Murphy: rewarded for, or at least recognized for that in some way, shape, or form, like, that's cool. Nothing wrong there. CEO, if enough employees do that, well, the stock price is gonna get up, and Wall Street's gonna go, okay, they're doing some cool stuff.
198
00:27:05.650 --> 00:27:09.980
Mark Murphy: So, the CEO is getting rewarded. But the manager in the middle…
199
00:27:10.110 --> 00:27:22.089
Mark Murphy: whose job is often more of herding cats than it is encouraging innovation and, like, cascade it up and add value. It's more like just…
200
00:27:22.230 --> 00:27:37.540
Mark Murphy: Just keep things on track, try not to get us sued, you know, make sure people show up on time, make sure they're working in the office, not from home, you know, and stuff like that. And their job is weirdly antithetical.
201
00:27:37.730 --> 00:27:51.639
Mark Murphy: to innovation, and I'm not saying it should be like that, it obviously should not be like that, but that's de facto how a lot of managerial jobs kind of end up, is they are…
202
00:27:52.030 --> 00:27:56.859
Mark Murphy: risk-averse. They are, you know, prevent mistakes rather than
203
00:27:57.160 --> 00:28:04.370
Mark Murphy: achieve something great. And, you know, it's a… It's more of a,
204
00:28:04.750 --> 00:28:11.690
Mark Murphy: A fear-based than it is a achievement-driven Kind of mindset, and…
205
00:28:12.190 --> 00:28:18.220
Mark Murphy: And so that is one of the problems, is that, we're…
206
00:28:18.460 --> 00:28:23.920
Mark Murphy: doing… you know, we're rewarding them in all the wrong ways, or incenting them, I should say, in all.
207
00:28:23.920 --> 00:28:24.300
Danny Gluch: Yeah.
208
00:28:24.300 --> 00:28:34.429
Mark Murphy: Because it's like, listen, we want you to, you know, hit the budget number, you know, don't step out of line too much, and this is one of my earlier books.
209
00:28:34.830 --> 00:28:43.609
Mark Murphy: was called Hard Goals, and it was basically… that was built off of a study that we did called, Are Smart Goals Dumb?
210
00:28:44.170 --> 00:28:53.890
Mark Murphy: And, one of my biases is against, in a SMART goal, you know, specific, measurable, Achievable, realistic, time limited.
211
00:28:53.890 --> 00:29:04.229
Mark Murphy: My beef is not with the S, the M, or the T, it's with the A and the R. It's the achievable and realistic parts. Because no CEO on Earth sets a SMART goal.
212
00:29:06.230 --> 00:29:11.220
Mark Murphy: You know, said hard goals are BHAGs, big, hairy, audacious goals.
213
00:29:11.220 --> 00:29:11.760
Danny Gluch: Yeah.
214
00:29:11.760 --> 00:29:18.900
Mark Murphy: CEOs do not set SMART goals. And yet, we turn around and we say to the managers.
215
00:29:19.150 --> 00:29:22.410
Mark Murphy: create your SMART goal. It is very much.
216
00:29:22.410 --> 00:29:26.040
Danny Gluch: Do as I say, not as I do. And…
217
00:29:26.040 --> 00:29:29.569
Mark Murphy: That is a… again, it's a hypocrisy, and it's a disconnect.
218
00:29:29.570 --> 00:29:30.110
Danny Gluch: Damn.
219
00:29:30.110 --> 00:29:40.309
Mark Murphy: And it is very much the same thing that plays out with innovation, because, you know, achievable, realistic, it goes back to, you know, your favorite versus your least favorite employees.
220
00:29:40.360 --> 00:29:55.020
Mark Murphy: My least favorite employee is the one… they don't do anything realistic. They, you know, they're always trying to scale Mount Everest, whereas my favorite employee, like, stays in their lane and colors within the lines. Well, it's the same thing with hard goals and smart goals.
221
00:29:55.380 --> 00:29:55.960
Marion: Yeah.
222
00:29:55.960 --> 00:30:00.409
Mark Murphy: And again, it's like, I just look at, sometimes, very simple things and go.
223
00:30:00.720 --> 00:30:05.939
Mark Murphy: Okay, what does the CEO do? What does the CEO goal look like? Like, show me your goal.
224
00:30:06.080 --> 00:30:10.279
Marion: And, you know, and you look at what they tell Wall Street, it's not…
225
00:30:10.310 --> 00:30:23.180
Mark Murphy: we're gonna have a half a percentage point improvement. No, when they go to the Goldman Sachs Investor Conference, it's like, we're gonna be number one, or number two, or in every market space we're in, or we're gonna get out of that market space, and this is…
226
00:30:23.180 --> 00:30:25.900
Cacha Dora: 10X, and… Yeah.
227
00:30:25.900 --> 00:30:33.420
Mark Murphy: You know, you can't even get funded if your projection chart doesn't have a hockey stick shape to it.
228
00:30:33.860 --> 00:30:40.219
Mark Murphy: You know, and that's the thing, is that mindset is so different.
229
00:30:40.320 --> 00:30:58.399
Mark Murphy: from managers, and what we expect of them, that it's no wonder they end up being the least risk-averse, because at least if a CEO goes out, hires an innovative programmer, there's a chance that that person has enough autonomy because they control
230
00:30:58.510 --> 00:31:03.059
Mark Murphy: the world in front of them. They control their computer screen, their lines of code, their whatevers.
231
00:31:03.220 --> 00:31:03.740
Marion: Hmm.
232
00:31:03.740 --> 00:31:08.210
Mark Murphy: Okay, you got a chance that that individual's gonna innovate, but odds are they're mad.
233
00:31:08.940 --> 00:31:27.349
Marion: something you just said just actually put shivers down my spine, because if we think about… again, I'm focused on tech here, because this is where it's most relevant. There's a real trend right now about flattening structures, flattening hierarchies, right? Now, when you're, like.
234
00:31:27.450 --> 00:31:40.510
Marion: 9 deep, 10 deep, 11 deep, absolutely, like, clean that shit up. However, when you're starting to get very, very, very, lean and, non-hierarchical.
235
00:31:41.370 --> 00:31:42.120
Marion: That…
236
00:31:42.470 --> 00:31:53.869
Marion: That sort of, like, gap of where those middle managers are kind of either being squeezed out, or let's face it, a lot of people don't even want to be a manager anymore, because it's shit.
237
00:31:55.220 --> 00:32:14.160
Marion: So… so when you think about that delta and those behaviors and those expectations of your, you know, risk takers, your… your… your… I mean, let's… let's call it out what it is, right? Those higher amounts of psychopathy, Machiavellianism, all of that stuff, right, at the top end, and then you don't have…
238
00:32:14.160 --> 00:32:17.469
Marion: You don't have that counterbalance at the bottom end.
239
00:32:17.950 --> 00:32:20.430
Marion: Who are these poor buggers in the middle that is your developer?
240
00:32:20.430 --> 00:32:20.910
Danny Gluch: Recording.
241
00:32:20.910 --> 00:32:23.239
Marion: You're a person trying to do the job, like…
242
00:32:24.240 --> 00:32:28.569
Marion: Oh my god! This is terrifying.
243
00:32:28.780 --> 00:32:35.030
Mark Murphy: Well, and that is one of the reasons why You know, so many…
244
00:32:35.140 --> 00:32:42.090
Mark Murphy: you know, everybody wants the flattening, but this stuff goes in cycles, right? I mean, like, it was…
245
00:32:42.090 --> 00:32:42.550
Danny Gluch: Hmm.
246
00:32:42.550 --> 00:32:59.820
Mark Murphy: what, like 10 years ago, 15 years ago, we had the whole holacracy thing, and that had its moment where we're gonna go into circles, and we're gonna get… pay the middle managers to either leave or take a staff job, and one by one by one, every company that tried that
247
00:33:00.010 --> 00:33:17.249
Mark Murphy: has abandoned it. Or they got, like in Zappo's case, they got bought by Amazon, and Amazon said, no. You know, Medium, tried it, they have even published an article explaining why they've abandoned it, because it… it builds its own
248
00:33:17.730 --> 00:33:22.140
Mark Murphy: Hierarchy, and its own bureaucracy that just kind of…
249
00:33:22.380 --> 00:33:24.550
Mark Murphy: You know, oozes out of it, it just…
250
00:33:24.670 --> 00:33:27.450
Mark Murphy: You know, comes out organically.
251
00:33:27.840 --> 00:33:33.279
Mark Murphy: And it is a… number one, I think that.
252
00:33:33.320 --> 00:33:36.750
Marion: Humans are wired for hierarchy, and there's enough.
253
00:33:36.750 --> 00:33:48.689
Mark Murphy: you know, neurological evidence that, you know, in the book, I give some of the studies, like, you know, if you see a dominant face, you would tend to it more than if you see a face with less dominant features. You put
254
00:33:48.690 --> 00:33:56.979
Mark Murphy: two puppets in front of a group of preschoolers. Give one puppet two pencils, another puppet six pencils, and the toddlers instantly go, oh, the…
255
00:33:56.980 --> 00:34:04.690
Mark Murphy: puppet with six pencils as the boss. Like, we just spot hierarchies all over the place. And it doesn't have to be…
256
00:34:04.960 --> 00:34:12.809
Mark Murphy: You know, like the animal kingdom, where it's a dominance hierarchy necessarily, but we… we do… we are wired for certain kinds of hierarchy.
257
00:34:12.969 --> 00:34:28.490
Mark Murphy: But hierarchy done right, when hierarchy is put in the hands of the people best able to make particular kinds of decisions, people with the right kind of expertise and talents to be in charge of that particular aspect, rather than, you know, we're just installing fiefdoms.
258
00:34:28.690 --> 00:34:30.120
Marion: Yeah. Hierarchy…
259
00:34:30.120 --> 00:34:36.159
Mark Murphy: can work really well, but it also, back to your point, Marion, it becomes…
260
00:34:36.300 --> 00:34:45.039
Mark Murphy: something of an insulation to not… to not allow the CEOs, for example, to run unchecked.
261
00:34:45.080 --> 00:34:48.489
Marion: Because there is some reason to have.
262
00:34:48.650 --> 00:34:51.650
Mark Murphy: You know, as much as we are,
263
00:34:51.870 --> 00:34:55.699
Mark Murphy: Antithetical, in many respects, to innovation.
264
00:34:55.830 --> 00:34:59.700
Mark Murphy: There is an argument that we don't want the old.
265
00:35:00.010 --> 00:35:03.430
Mark Murphy: you know, Mark Zuckerberg move fast and break things.
266
00:35:03.610 --> 00:35:21.300
Mark Murphy: You know, I mean, there needs to be limits on that as well. Like, move fast and break things? You want to pull that off if you're designing new drugs, for example? You think people we're gonna kill if we adopt the move fast and break things approach? Yeah, you know what, if you screw up my web browser for a day.
267
00:35:21.740 --> 00:35:33.980
Mark Murphy: probably not everybody's gonna die, but man, you do that in a drug trial? So, you know, again, there are contexts to it, but also, there is a reason to have…
268
00:35:34.090 --> 00:35:45.659
Mark Murphy: at least some hurdles, and it's not a black or white issue, where it's like either innovation has to be allowed to run unchecked, or we're just suppressing all creative thought
269
00:35:46.170 --> 00:36:02.309
Mark Murphy: It's like, you know, even the best creative writers in the world had editors, because it's good to have, you know, another set of eyes, and so even if you're going to do something extraordinary, even Picasso had an agent, you know, he had to still sell his
270
00:36:02.740 --> 00:36:14.369
Mark Murphy: galleries, it's like, there was at least another person to provide an additional bit of perspective and go, okay, Picasso, Pablo, I love this, man, but, you know.
271
00:36:15.040 --> 00:36:15.990
Mark Murphy: Could you…
272
00:36:16.050 --> 00:36:30.419
Mark Murphy: maybe put an ounce of color in there? Like, something? Like, maybe not everybody is headless? You know, like, just something to, you know, a little interplay back and forth, which is, again, that's a gray area, and it is not
273
00:36:30.420 --> 00:36:42.649
Mark Murphy: well, he must hate innovation. No! It's just, you know, kind of seeking, you know, to ease it in a little bit, but that's one of the roles that a manager can play when they're doing it really well.
274
00:36:42.980 --> 00:36:47.570
Mark Murphy: Is to make sure that we don't go completely off the rails.
275
00:36:47.730 --> 00:37:05.399
Mark Murphy: And that there is some guide rails to this, and so that we could innovate, and move fast, incredibly fast, but just do it smartly, and, you know, we can mitigate the downsides without suppressing all innovation. That is eminently doable.
276
00:37:05.580 --> 00:37:06.350
Marion: Yeah, I'm…
277
00:37:06.690 --> 00:37:11.159
Marion: fright… I'm frightened for the next 5 to 10 years, so I'm not gonna lie, I think it's gonna be a.
278
00:37:11.160 --> 00:37:11.690
Danny Gluch: Goodbye.
279
00:37:11.690 --> 00:37:12.240
Marion: Bye.
280
00:37:14.280 --> 00:37:30.060
Danny Gluch: I laugh, but it's true and very sad. When you were describing the sort of, like, the innovation and, like, the most innovative are at the top and the bottom, and sort of, like, the… but what managers like is the not innovative. I sort of see, like.
281
00:37:30.310 --> 00:37:36.110
Danny Gluch: The two triangles, you know, where the points meet in the middle and they expand.
282
00:37:36.240 --> 00:37:44.459
Danny Gluch: And it just… it looks like there's a stress point. Like, that stress point is that middle manager. And…
283
00:37:44.590 --> 00:38:02.500
Danny Gluch: I think it exists, like you said, very naturally. It's like a human, you know, instinct. In any sort of society, you see these influx points of they're responsible both for making the innovation happen that is being asked from upwards, which is a lot of pressure.
284
00:38:02.560 --> 00:38:10.130
Danny Gluch: But they're also, and I think this is where a lot of the stress comes from, is they're responsible for mitigating risk.
285
00:38:10.490 --> 00:38:30.180
Danny Gluch: Right? Those, you know, those new people, the individual contributors, the coder, right, who's trying to do innovation, they're responsible for, like, but I want your job to still be around in 10 years. I need this to be stable enough to where we don't just, I don't know, lay off 14,000 people.
286
00:38:30.180 --> 00:38:33.660
Danny Gluch: For… for no good reason. And…
287
00:38:33.950 --> 00:38:37.339
Danny Gluch: And I think there's a lot of stress there, and…
288
00:38:37.340 --> 00:39:00.900
Danny Gluch: I think that's one of the reasons why they prefer, just like a teacher prefers the docile student because it makes it easier to manage classroom, I think the manager likes docile employees because it's easier to get those predictable, safe results. And if people aren't speaking up, they're not shaking the boat, those are the ones who are like, well.
289
00:39:00.900 --> 00:39:11.090
Danny Gluch: I know that my role and your roles are still gonna be here in 10 years, because we're not gonna move to a place that's unexpected and invites that risk.
290
00:39:11.420 --> 00:39:15.799
Danny Gluch: But my question is, and this is a long way to get to a question, is…
291
00:39:15.830 --> 00:39:33.670
Danny Gluch: that's obviously not great long-term, because it's too stable, it's stagnant, it's milquetoast. So, what is it that managers should be looking for to include on their teams, to encourage, to incentivize on their teams, that isn't just, like.
292
00:39:33.700 --> 00:39:46.529
Danny Gluch: super… like, you can't have a bunch of innovators underneath a middle manager. It's gonna be chaos. Or is it? I don't know. You're the expert. You've done the research.
293
00:39:47.110 --> 00:39:52.840
Mark Murphy: So, the… Thing that comes out of this, and to your point.
294
00:39:52.960 --> 00:40:09.440
Mark Murphy: is that there really is a… you need a balance, right? And so, the thing we discovered when I started the research for the… for the Team Players book was that if you think about the most effective teams, and you start looking at, like, what is a really effective team.
295
00:40:09.490 --> 00:40:28.380
Mark Murphy: have to do to be effective, to be successful? Well, it's things like they have to be able to make decisions, they have to be able to achieve stuff, like they, you know, do work, deliver results. They have to be able to stay on track with, like, you know, timelines and deadlines and milestones and whatnot.
296
00:40:28.690 --> 00:40:47.559
Mark Murphy: Ideally, they're able to resolve conflict, but also encourage people to speak up. It should have a high enough level of engagement that people are participating and feel psychologically safe and emotionally connected. And then, it obviously needs to have some innovation.
297
00:40:47.620 --> 00:40:54.889
Mark Murphy: And what we found… so I… we ended up… the more we looked at it, we found that most of the time.
298
00:40:55.050 --> 00:41:00.840
Mark Murphy: Those functions fell amongst… were divvied up amongst different people.
299
00:41:00.990 --> 00:41:01.870
Mark Murphy: On a team.
300
00:41:01.870 --> 00:41:02.340
Danny Gluch: Hmm.
301
00:41:02.340 --> 00:41:09.529
Mark Murphy: It was often the case that the most… the innovator on the team was also not the.
302
00:41:09.530 --> 00:41:16.690
Danny Gluch: Deadline Taskmaster one. Like, those two roles did not work in harmony. Like, that usually was not the same person.
303
00:41:16.750 --> 00:41:22.610
Mark Murphy: And so what we found was that there… a team typically, to be successful, would have
304
00:41:22.840 --> 00:41:38.799
Mark Murphy: really 5 distinct roles. And so, we called the director the person who can make that hard decision, the achiever, who was the person who's like, I don't need to be in charge, just give… tell me what to do, and I'll go do the stuff. I'll write the code, I'll make the Excel file, whatever.
305
00:41:38.870 --> 00:41:52.340
Mark Murphy: The stabilizer is the person that keeps us on track and is in the, you know, make sure we're hitting the deadlines and the to-dos and all that stuff. The harmonizer is that one usually responsible more for the
306
00:41:52.490 --> 00:41:57.810
Mark Murphy: Not fully, but partly for the psychological safety and the emotional connectingness. They're the…
307
00:41:57.950 --> 00:42:12.260
Mark Murphy: The person usually with the highest emotional intelligence who can kind of read the room. And then we call the trailblazer the person who's really kind of the innovator. They're the person who will come up with that out-of-the-box kind of crazy thinking. And…
308
00:42:12.800 --> 00:42:17.920
Mark Murphy: If you just had a 5-person team, well, then it, you know, works out pretty well, where it's…
309
00:42:18.330 --> 00:42:26.420
Mark Murphy: one person per role, and, you know, voila, those… when we looked at five-person teams, those were usually how it got distributed. Now.
310
00:42:26.640 --> 00:42:28.420
Mark Murphy: In the real world.
311
00:42:28.610 --> 00:42:47.080
Mark Murphy: Rare is the case where you will truly have a 5-person team. You are much more likely to have an 8- or a 9- or a 10-person team than you are a 5-person team. And when we started to look at those, what we found was a team could have a bunch of achievers, a bunch of doers, workers. Totally fine.
312
00:42:47.080 --> 00:42:47.570
Danny Gluch: Hmm.
313
00:42:47.570 --> 00:43:07.530
Mark Murphy: You could even have one or two stabilizers, fine. Another person keeping you on track? Not gonna kill you, that's good. You could have a couple of harmonizers. Yeah, a little more peace and safety and emotional connectedness. Good stuff. Where teams really get into trouble is where they have
314
00:43:08.380 --> 00:43:15.089
Mark Murphy: Multiple directors, and we've all been in those meetings where you get multiple people who think they're in charge, and so it's…
315
00:43:15.150 --> 00:43:24.970
Mark Murphy: just a 90-minute pissing contest to see, you know, who gets to make the final decision. So those are nightmares, so you really can't have multiple of those.
316
00:43:25.000 --> 00:43:43.250
Mark Murphy: And the truth is, we saw very few cases where teams would have an overabundance of trailblazers. Because of everything we've talked about, and because it starts so early, where we kind of beat it out of people.
317
00:43:43.620 --> 00:43:48.119
Danny Gluch: You know, my… my recommendation, like, on the best teams.
318
00:43:48.120 --> 00:43:55.690
Mark Murphy: they always have at least one. And it's… my recommendation is, listen, don't get hung up on having too many Trailblazers, because
319
00:43:55.860 --> 00:44:12.300
Mark Murphy: Odds are, in a normal organization, if you get one, you're… you're doing great. And so, probably on a team of 8 people, you're not gonna have 7 Trailblazers, because it's… it's just not practic… it's not the practical reality.
320
00:44:12.390 --> 00:44:17.450
Mark Murphy: You know, in most organizations, and with all the assessments we do.
321
00:44:17.690 --> 00:44:32.699
Mark Murphy: it's the least common of the roles that people play. People are… it's the one that they are least likely to self-identify as. So, the… but the issue is that even in…
322
00:44:33.070 --> 00:44:44.790
Mark Murphy: cases, if you did have, you know, a team of 7 trailblazers, yeah, it would be absolute chaos, not just because you'd have 7 crazy innovators in the room, but also because
323
00:44:45.070 --> 00:44:51.969
Mark Murphy: Who's gonna monitor the health of the group dynamics? Who's gonna actually make a decision? Who's gonna keep it on track?
324
00:44:52.200 --> 00:44:57.609
Mark Murphy: By the same token, however, If you have a team of all harmonizers.
325
00:44:57.930 --> 00:45:05.639
Mark Murphy: While that sounds nice, and it would be a lovely meeting to sit through, it would be delightful and warm and collegial.
326
00:45:06.020 --> 00:45:24.389
Mark Murphy: You're not gonna get anything done, and nobody's gonna make a hard decision that might tick off somebody else in the room, and so it's going to be passive and indecisive, even though it will feel delightful. You could have a team filled with stabilizers, and yeah, they will get things
327
00:45:24.500 --> 00:45:26.090
Mark Murphy: Done on time?
328
00:45:26.510 --> 00:45:34.259
Mark Murphy: But is it gonna be good, creative, interesting work? No, it's just gonna be checking boxes and, you know, hitting timelines, but…
329
00:45:34.480 --> 00:45:41.909
Mark Murphy: who cares? Because the stuff we're hitting the timelines with isn't that good. And so, when we looked at and we asked people.
330
00:45:42.010 --> 00:45:45.630
Mark Murphy: You know, one of the earliest studies we did on this was we just asked people.
331
00:45:45.860 --> 00:45:55.589
Mark Murphy: Tell us about your best team that you're on, tell us about the worst team that you're on. And let's just start simple. You identify for us what's the best team, what's the worst team.
332
00:45:55.590 --> 00:46:09.359
Mark Murphy: You know what's impacting your career, you know what's delivering the best results, and so we took the best teams, we're like, oh, well, tell us about the people on those. What do they do? What's their role that they're playing? Tell us about the worst teams. What's their role? What do they do? Tell us about them.
333
00:46:09.360 --> 00:46:16.809
Mark Murphy: And the initial finding was that, yeah, the best teams were pretty evenly distributed. They had all five roles covered.
334
00:46:17.060 --> 00:46:23.060
Mark Murphy: Even if it was, you know, two of this, one of this, they had all 5 roles covered, whereas in the worst teams.
335
00:46:23.270 --> 00:46:29.779
Mark Murphy: only 20% of the time did they have all 5 roles covered. The vast majority of the time, they were missing
336
00:46:30.060 --> 00:46:35.669
Mark Murphy: At least one, usually two or more, of these other roles, so they were just…
337
00:46:35.930 --> 00:46:38.339
Mark Murphy: out of balance, and part of that was…
338
00:46:38.700 --> 00:46:43.110
Mark Murphy: You know, when you look at… What the…
339
00:46:43.340 --> 00:46:52.180
Mark Murphy: who people hire. You know, they often will pick people that they like, that are easy for them, that they get along with.
340
00:46:52.290 --> 00:47:00.050
Mark Murphy: They're much less likely to hire somebody that is possibly going to be a pain in their rear, even if it's exactly
341
00:47:00.050 --> 00:47:18.549
Mark Murphy: what they need. I mean, you know, ask a trailblazer who's the most annoying person you have to sit next to, and it's probably going to be a stabilizer, because it's going to be the person that's like, okay, well, you're going to get it done this month? Like, what, give me a deadline. Well, I don't know, you can't rush the creative process. No, you can, because we're all going to get fired if we don't.
342
00:47:19.590 --> 00:47:35.930
Mark Murphy: And so, but, you know, who does a… or a harmonizer, right? Who does a trailblazer need? Well, a trailblazer needs a stabilizer and a harmonizer. It's like, that's what they need, but that might not be the most fun for them.
343
00:47:36.030 --> 00:47:44.009
Mark Murphy: And that's part of this, too, is that so much of hiring is… Capricious and non-scientific that…
344
00:47:44.010 --> 00:47:44.900
Danny Gluch: Mmm.
345
00:47:44.900 --> 00:48:03.379
Mark Murphy: very least not regimented, that even when people… even when they're just selecting people from amongst their team, or from across the organization to build the team, let's say cross-functional work group or something, you know, they're picking the people that they can connect with, not always the roles that they need to fill to make this an effective group.
346
00:48:04.600 --> 00:48:07.840
Danny Gluch: That's… man, that is such…
347
00:48:07.980 --> 00:48:14.569
Danny Gluch: truth. And I think, you know, when we talk with so many organizational leaders and managers.
348
00:48:14.860 --> 00:48:24.869
Danny Gluch: the conversation almost always goes towards the creating a team is a kind of alchemy, right? It's… it's not a,
349
00:48:25.370 --> 00:48:43.640
Danny Gluch: a black and white sort of thing to do. It's a science, you know, it's a mixology, and finding that mix, right? Because no one fits those roles perfectly either, right? So finding that mix, that's going to make an effective team is really hard. And…
350
00:48:45.140 --> 00:48:46.520
Danny Gluch: How do you
351
00:48:46.570 --> 00:49:04.790
Danny Gluch: managers go about hiring for, like… is there self-assessments? Like, is there a way to identify and diagnose what you're missing, what you have too much of, and what you need to add to the group? Like, oh, I need, you know, that dash of Tabasco because this is too creamy.
352
00:49:04.790 --> 00:49:08.729
Danny Gluch: Sorry, I don't know why I was thinking about, clam chowder, but…
353
00:49:08.730 --> 00:49:10.930
Cacha Dora: I was gonna say, that sounds like clam chowder.
354
00:49:10.930 --> 00:49:12.310
Danny Gluch: It is.
355
00:49:12.530 --> 00:49:19.030
Mark Murphy: I was actually sitting here thinking, what is Tabasco and creamy? I'm like…
356
00:49:19.030 --> 00:49:20.750
Cacha Dora: It's missing the bread bowl, that's why.
357
00:49:21.240 --> 00:49:29.270
Danny Gluch: I lived in San Francisco for a long time. We do a lot of clam chowder and bread bowls. It needs Tabasco, or it's just, you can't eat it.
358
00:49:29.270 --> 00:49:32.879
Marion: I don't know, my brain went immediately to a Bloody Mary, but that's just me.
359
00:49:38.540 --> 00:49:39.940
Danny Gluch: I'm so sorry.
360
00:49:39.940 --> 00:49:48.719
Mark Murphy: So, yeah, now I gotta… I grew up in Buffalo, New York, so I am a, you know, lifelong…
361
00:49:49.240 --> 00:49:59.190
Mark Murphy: Buffalo Wings fan, and… Oh, there you go. You know, it's, I hear, I'm like, Tabasco. I'm like, well, couldn't you just use some Frank's Red Hot? That'd be even better than the Tabasco, and it's like…
362
00:49:59.320 --> 00:50:00.310
Danny Gluch: Yeah, honestly.
363
00:50:00.320 --> 00:50:03.910
Cacha Dora: 10 out of 10 on Frank's, love it.
364
00:50:04.650 --> 00:50:07.660
Mark Murphy: So… What were we talking about?
365
00:50:08.000 --> 00:50:08.500
Marion: He's better than that.
366
00:50:08.500 --> 00:50:16.069
Mark Murphy: Yes, okay, I remember that. I mean, thinking about Buffalo, and it's football season, and, you know, all that.
367
00:50:16.070 --> 00:50:18.920
Marion: 1980s, I'm sorry, I'm stuck.
368
00:50:20.170 --> 00:50:33.830
Mark Murphy: So, one of the things I always tell teams, one of the easiest things you can do is literally start with just a quick around the room, and ask people the question.
369
00:50:34.270 --> 00:50:39.470
Mark Murphy: What role would other people say you most commonly fulfill in our team?
370
00:50:39.640 --> 00:50:44.540
Mark Murphy: After you, you know, teach them the 5 roles, and then ask them, what role would…
371
00:50:44.810 --> 00:50:49.890
Mark Murphy: other people say that you most commonly fill. And the reason I like to word the question like that
372
00:50:50.000 --> 00:50:52.800
Mark Murphy: is… Meta perception?
373
00:50:52.920 --> 00:51:04.429
Mark Murphy: people are weirdly better at gauging what others think of them than they are doing a self-diagnosis. So I can ask people, you know, what's the role you most commonly fill?
374
00:51:04.430 --> 00:51:17.630
Mark Murphy: But if I ask it, what's the role that other people would say you most commonly fill? They get weirdly more accurate. And so, it's just a nice little quirk. That will give you a very quick read on
375
00:51:18.150 --> 00:51:31.050
Mark Murphy: who do you have in the room? And if you see that you're missing, knowing the five roles, if you see that you're missing one, okay, well, that's a pretty big red flag right there. Second thing is then ask everybody on the team
376
00:51:31.290 --> 00:51:32.990
Mark Murphy: Is there another role
377
00:51:33.170 --> 00:51:39.059
Mark Murphy: That you're not currently playing, that you would like to try, or you'd like to develop.
378
00:51:39.150 --> 00:51:57.789
Mark Murphy: And this, I love this for two reasons. One is that it kind of gives you an idea of bench strength and, you know, what other capacities might you have on the team that maybe you're not aware of. But also, it kind of gives you some future growth opportunities. If you know you've got somebody on the team.
379
00:51:57.840 --> 00:52:12.700
Mark Murphy: that would really love to try, you know, being more of that stabilizer role, or being more of the harmonizer, because they might be thinking about their career, and they're like, you know, I'd like to get into management someday, and I know, I've been told I am a little rough around the edges.
380
00:52:12.700 --> 00:52:18.899
Mark Murphy: And I know I'm gonna… if I want to succeed as a leader, I'm gonna have to smooth this out a little bit.
381
00:52:18.900 --> 00:52:19.360
Danny Gluch: Hmm.
382
00:52:19.360 --> 00:52:25.850
Mark Murphy: Could… could we work on me trying to be that harmonizer a little bit? Because it… it might round me out for…
383
00:52:26.020 --> 00:52:38.600
Mark Murphy: you know, a management role someday. Like, okay, cool. And maybe they're not gonna be the world's best harmonizer, but if you know you've got somebody who's willing to work at it, and wants to develop those skills.
384
00:52:39.110 --> 00:52:42.350
Mark Murphy: Now you've got them at least a bit more invested in…
385
00:52:42.610 --> 00:52:49.879
Mark Murphy: trying to contribute to the group and do something meaningful. In all of this, of course.
386
00:52:51.270 --> 00:53:00.330
Mark Murphy: We'll get so much easier if the leader of the team and the person doing the building of the team, whether you're hiring externally or just assembling people internally.
387
00:53:01.000 --> 00:53:03.990
Mark Murphy: If they have a dose of self-awareness.
388
00:53:04.380 --> 00:53:05.020
Danny Gluch: Nope.
389
00:53:05.280 --> 00:53:10.360
Mark Murphy: It… this gets infinitely easier, because it's…
390
00:53:10.360 --> 00:53:29.399
Mark Murphy: I see so many leaders who will come, whether they're a manager or a CEO, they'll say, well, I have to play all five roles. I have to be the decision maker, and I have to, you know, get the people engaged, and I have to hold them to the accountable to-dos, and… and it's like, no, A, you don't. There's no rule that says you have to do them all.
391
00:53:29.400 --> 00:53:30.290
Mark Murphy: B,
392
00:53:30.370 --> 00:53:42.039
Mark Murphy: It makes your life a nightmare, because trying to play all 5 of these roles is exhausting. Number 3 is every time you do one of these things that isn't your core.
393
00:53:42.070 --> 00:53:54.770
Mark Murphy: You're taking work away from other people and denying them an opportunity to actually grow and develop their skill set, and so you're not preparing them
394
00:53:54.910 --> 00:53:58.389
Mark Murphy: To take that next leap in their career.
395
00:53:58.390 --> 00:53:59.220
Danny Gluch: Hmm.
396
00:53:59.220 --> 00:54:08.639
Mark Murphy: The other side of it is that odds are, you're not gonna be the best at doing that thing. So, if, you know, if I look at myself, for example.
397
00:54:09.300 --> 00:54:16.299
Mark Murphy: I am much more of a trailblazer than I am… that's the role I enjoy playing the most.
398
00:54:16.430 --> 00:54:23.200
Mark Murphy: And I would tell you, and anybody who knows me would tell you, that my weakest point is the stabilizer.
399
00:54:23.300 --> 00:54:27.540
Mark Murphy: And so, it takes an ounce of self-awareness to go.
400
00:54:28.020 --> 00:54:47.029
Mark Murphy: Yeah, I mean, okay, if everybody was out sick today, could I step in? Like, I'm not an idiot, I can, you know, hold it together enough for a few days, great. But if you ask me to do this for a year, A, it's gonna be miserable for me, and B, I am by far not the best person to do it.
401
00:54:47.080 --> 00:54:55.239
Mark Murphy: Whereas, I have a person on my team, and she is A amazing at it, and B, she loves it. She loves doing
402
00:54:55.800 --> 00:55:04.380
Mark Murphy: that I absolutely hate doing. She loves… for her, there are tasks. I remember one time we were doing a
403
00:55:04.630 --> 00:55:14.809
Mark Murphy: database alignment with a couple of our research studies, and creating a data warehouse to tie the studies together. And I sat there and I looked at it, because I had started the studies.
404
00:55:14.830 --> 00:55:33.300
Mark Murphy: And I'm like, this… this is horrible. I hate this so much. And I found myself… there was one day, I, like, you know, had to… I was sitting here with a glass of wine, just to, like, try and get through this, because I'm like, I hate this task so much. And so, I called Jill, and I go, listen, I got this horrible thing that I'm working on, and I hate it so much.
405
00:55:33.690 --> 00:55:44.400
Mark Murphy: would you take it off my plate, please? And I made it sound absolutely horrible, and so she's like, yeah, of course. So she takes it. The next day, we talk, and she's like.
406
00:55:44.560 --> 00:55:46.580
Mark Murphy: Oh my gosh, this is so much fun.
407
00:55:47.870 --> 00:55:48.660
Mark Murphy: What?
408
00:55:48.960 --> 00:56:01.120
Mark Murphy: I'm like, this is the worst thing I have done this month. And she's like, oh my gosh, this feels so calming. It's like, I love seeing the order out of the chaos. This is, like, actually pleasurable and enjoyable for me. I'm like…
409
00:56:01.360 --> 00:56:12.969
Mark Murphy: okay, well, A, you're nuts, and B, this is great, because that's… Yeah. But that's the, you know, that's the diversity in these roles that we're trying to get, is there is stuff that…
410
00:56:13.070 --> 00:56:28.569
Mark Murphy: you don't like, nobody likes every single thing that is on their plate. There should be… if you're not doing something you don't like, you're not stretching enough. But then, if you find somebody else that can do it better, faster, and hey, might actually enjoy the thing.
411
00:56:29.210 --> 00:56:31.799
Mark Murphy: Well then, awesome! Now you've got a.
412
00:56:31.800 --> 00:56:32.240
Danny Gluch: fully.
413
00:56:32.240 --> 00:56:40.929
Mark Murphy: fledged team, and we each get to do more of what we're good at doing and like doing, and the team is stronger as a result. It's like win-win-win.
414
00:56:40.930 --> 00:56:42.020
Danny Gluch: Hmm.
415
00:56:42.020 --> 00:56:44.079
Marion: I… I love that… oh.
416
00:56:44.450 --> 00:56:45.940
Cacha Dora: Go ahead, Mary.
417
00:56:45.940 --> 00:56:46.300
Marion: Tasha.
418
00:56:46.390 --> 00:56:50.280
Cacha Dora: I was gonna say, I loved your call-out on…
419
00:56:50.700 --> 00:56:56.309
Cacha Dora: It… the importance of being more self-aware than needing to do every role.
420
00:56:56.800 --> 00:57:02.820
Danny Gluch: And, like, being able to… if I could identify where these roles show up in my team.
421
00:57:02.820 --> 00:57:10.839
Cacha Dora: That is more powerful, that will help everyone way more than me trying to be like, I need to be all five.
422
00:57:11.090 --> 00:57:27.249
Cacha Dora: And… and on top of it, it also is better for the person at the end of the day. Like, I know that, you know, work can't always be a feel-good moment. Sometimes you have to do the hard thing, or you have to be stressed, or you have to… whatever, right? Challenge is challenge.
423
00:57:27.360 --> 00:57:28.290
Cacha Dora: But…
424
00:57:29.160 --> 00:57:36.849
Cacha Dora: Imagine if we had more leaders who did have the ability to see the things instead of trying to do all the things.
425
00:57:37.240 --> 00:57:37.790
Danny Gluch: Hmm.
426
00:57:37.790 --> 00:57:50.310
Mark Murphy: And that right there is the difference between… you know, it's that necessary skill to actually be a leader, is that it's not just about, I'm a worker bee. You know, we…
427
00:57:50.530 --> 00:57:58.479
Mark Murphy: We used to do these studies where we'd take, we'd do it with, like, nurses and engineers and pharmacists, and so we take, like, a nurse manager.
428
00:57:58.600 --> 00:58:01.859
Mark Murphy: And go, are you a nurse first, or are you a manager first?
429
00:58:01.990 --> 00:58:10.900
Mark Murphy: And 99% of the time, they'd say, I'm a nurse first. Do it with an engineer, an engineering manager. Are you an engineer first, or are you a manager first?
430
00:58:10.960 --> 00:58:25.280
Mark Murphy: I'm an engineer first. And one of the things that has happened over time, and this is one of the reasons why we flatten organizations and why it's so easy to fire managers, is we've devalued the concept of management as a profession.
431
00:58:25.380 --> 00:58:26.530
Mark Murphy: And…
432
00:58:27.040 --> 00:58:36.989
Mark Murphy: It is like, well, you know, you're not doing real work if you're not a, you know, a nurse, or a engineer, or a pharmacist, or programmer, or, you know, whatever.
433
00:58:36.990 --> 00:58:48.819
Mark Murphy: And, like, the management is like, that's… that's not the real work. And it's like, well, yeah, go live in an organization that has crappy managers versus one that has really good managers, and then come back and tell me.
434
00:58:48.820 --> 00:59:02.929
Mark Murphy: if management is or is not real work, because the ones that do it well are, you know, Kasha, to your point, are… they're developing people, they're assessing the strengths and weaknesses of their team, they're putting people into positions to succeed.
435
00:59:03.320 --> 00:59:07.660
Mark Murphy: It's… it's just night and day difference, but…
436
00:59:07.860 --> 00:59:20.889
Mark Murphy: so many managers feel like, A, the management part is kind of a throwaway, and B, if they're gonna add any value at all, they have to do absolutely everything. And it's like, you are fundamentally misunderstanding
437
00:59:21.000 --> 00:59:26.730
Mark Murphy: What it is to lead a team of people. Leading a team of people is not…
438
00:59:27.150 --> 00:59:29.100
Mark Murphy: Being the entire team.
439
00:59:29.240 --> 00:59:32.440
Mark Murphy: And the other side of it is, on a practical level.
440
00:59:32.680 --> 00:59:36.230
Mark Murphy: If you started a company.
441
00:59:36.720 --> 00:59:47.829
Mark Murphy: And you went to Silicon Valley to go down the VC route and try and get funding, and you walked into a VC and said, yeah, I do everything.
442
00:59:48.140 --> 00:59:57.559
Mark Murphy: They will not give you money, because to them, that is a giant red flag, that you don't know how to build a team, and that you.
443
00:59:57.560 --> 00:59:58.130
Danny Gluch: Hmm.
444
00:59:58.130 --> 01:00:10.240
Mark Murphy: the weak point in this organization. And so, just on a practical level, like, if you wanted to, you know, go off on your own and scale your own enterprise, man, that is death.
445
01:00:10.370 --> 01:00:28.820
Mark Murphy: To try and get financial backers to believe in you, because they will never believe in somebody who says, I do it all. That's idiocy. They'll look at you and go, you can't build a team. And the one thing we want you for, maybe you invented the new algorithm, true, but also, if you can't build a team.
446
01:00:29.190 --> 01:00:33.839
Mark Murphy: Trust, we will move you aside, we'll stick you in a closet and let you.
447
01:00:33.840 --> 01:00:34.300
Danny Gluch: Yeah.
448
01:00:34.300 --> 01:00:40.799
Mark Murphy: the algorithm, and we'll install it a leader, a CEO, who can build a routine, because that's what we're after.
449
01:00:41.900 --> 01:00:42.460
Marion: Hmm.
450
01:00:42.460 --> 01:00:58.229
Danny Gluch: Oh, man. That's so many just amazing and practical nuggets. But as we try to wrap up, because we're all stressed for time, but other than buying and reading your book,
451
01:00:58.540 --> 01:01:01.710
Mark Murphy: What is it that you would like to.
452
01:01:01.890 --> 01:01:14.780
Danny Gluch: to help these managers, organizational leaders, or people with aspirations and, you know, just workers trying to work their way up and find their place. What would you suggest that they do, sort of, in the moment?
453
01:01:16.380 --> 01:01:29.470
Mark Murphy: Going back to one of the very first things we talked about with innovation and psychological safety and hearing from, you know, not suppressing the innovators, is do this. After you've done that quick little around-the-table exercise.
454
01:01:29.700 --> 01:01:33.670
Mark Murphy: And you have a sense as to, you know, who's who on your team.
455
01:01:34.000 --> 01:01:35.260
Mark Murphy: Is do this.
456
01:01:35.370 --> 01:01:40.160
Mark Murphy: Find the one or two or three people that you don't hear from very often.
457
01:01:40.410 --> 01:01:59.500
Mark Murphy: And the next time you have a meeting, start your conversation by hearing from them first. Stop opening it up to the floor. Stop opening it up to the group at large. And use some psychological science to stack the deck in your favor to…
458
01:02:00.110 --> 01:02:02.159
Mark Murphy: Bolster the voices that
459
01:02:02.310 --> 01:02:11.780
Mark Murphy: you don't often hear from. You know, the herding effect is real. Whoever speaks first has a huge impact on the outcome that the group eventually comes up with.
460
01:02:12.020 --> 01:02:27.200
Mark Murphy: well, okay, that's bad, but it's also good, because if you know that going into it, take the voices on your team you don't hear from enough. So if it is your trailblazer, if it is the innovative person on your team, and you haven't heard from them very much.
461
01:02:28.250 --> 01:02:39.919
Mark Murphy: Then just make them talk first. Prioritize them, because as the leader of the team, you can impose some structure, and this is one thing I will say about psychological safety.
462
01:02:40.650 --> 01:02:44.619
Mark Murphy: Psychological safety, for it to be more than a slogan.
463
01:02:44.840 --> 01:02:48.730
Mark Murphy: You actually have to put some structure around it.
464
01:02:48.960 --> 01:02:52.240
Mark Murphy: And part of that is ordering
465
01:02:52.570 --> 01:03:08.199
Mark Murphy: who talks first? And so, surface some of your quieter voices, or some of the voices you need to hear from. Maybe it's the more diverse voices, maybe it's the divergent voices. It's the voices that are challenging the status quo.
466
01:03:08.730 --> 01:03:14.550
Mark Murphy: Whoever you need to hear from, and it's usually the people you hear the least from, ironically.
467
01:03:15.700 --> 01:03:25.399
Mark Murphy: surface that, control it, because otherwise, you can say, this is a safe space for everybody to speak up and share their concerns. I promise you, that's not true.
468
01:03:25.420 --> 01:03:31.349
Danny Gluch: And if you do one thing that we do in our research that anybody can do now with AI.
469
01:03:31.790 --> 01:03:45.819
Mark Murphy: Take a transcript of your most recent meeting. Take that transcript, delete the secure, you know, price change or piece of code, whatever. Okay, delete that. But then, throw that transcript into ChatGPT.
470
01:03:45.970 --> 01:03:48.320
Mark Murphy: and say, Tell me.
471
01:03:48.440 --> 01:04:00.270
Mark Murphy: Who spoke the most in this meeting? Did anybody raise an objection? Once they raised an objection, what happened to the conversation after? Did that person ever speak again?
472
01:04:00.390 --> 01:04:07.239
Mark Murphy: for the rest of the meeting. What was the reactions of the group? We used to have to code all of this stuff.
473
01:04:07.270 --> 01:04:18.520
Danny Gluch: Like, go through the transcripts and code this line by line, and… I mean, and I'm talking, like, not just 20 years ago, I'm talking, like, even 4 years ago, when we would do linguistic studies.
474
01:04:18.540 --> 01:04:21.450
Mark Murphy: oh my gosh. Nowadays, it's like…
475
01:04:21.670 --> 01:04:29.590
Mark Murphy: this is… it's one of my absolute favorite AI things, is it's like, we've made… everybody can do the kind of studies that we do on this.
476
01:04:29.770 --> 01:04:33.909
Mark Murphy: Literally every person who has access to Zoom
477
01:04:34.020 --> 01:04:50.019
Mark Murphy: can do it nowadays, because you throw the transcript into Claude, or ChatGPT, or Gemini, whatever, and just go, analyze the transcript. Who spoke the most? Who spoke the least? If I wanted to reorder the conversation, who should I have speak first next time?
478
01:04:50.640 --> 01:05:00.729
Mark Murphy: You can put structure to this, and actually surface innovation, surface, create psychological safety through structure, and that would be my…
479
01:05:01.240 --> 01:05:06.569
Mark Murphy: One simple thing, super practical, that people can start doing literally today.
480
01:05:08.030 --> 01:05:11.559
Marion: That is gold, man! That is just gold!
481
01:05:11.560 --> 01:05:12.449
Danny Gluch: I mean, and even without.
482
01:05:12.450 --> 01:05:12.870
Cacha Dora: new.
483
01:05:12.870 --> 01:05:32.090
Danny Gluch: Even without AI, just taking the time to reflect and be like, how did that meeting go? Who didn't speak? When someone brought up an objection, what happened after that? What can we do next time differently? Just taking the 20 minutes to do that exercise, I think every…
484
01:05:32.390 --> 01:05:37.349
Danny Gluch: team, every organization needs to do that. And it would just… find the time.
485
01:05:37.580 --> 01:05:41.420
Danny Gluch: You know, if you're too busy, find the time, that's super important.
486
01:05:41.440 --> 01:05:55.710
Danny Gluch: It's also really interesting that you were… you were talking about, you know, that as the solution. And going back to the studies, how you stole from the study about school teachers, that's also one of the solutions in the classroom.
487
01:05:55.710 --> 01:06:02.110
Danny Gluch: is structure who talks. Don't just let the person who's super eager talk.
488
01:06:02.110 --> 01:06:23.110
Danny Gluch: find the person who's quiet and introspective and reflective and slower to speak, give them space, find a way to make them speak, and add to the classroom is one of the, like, classic sort of pedagogy moves, and it works, and it makes the classroom better, and it'll make your team better. So I really appreciate you calling that out.
489
01:06:24.280 --> 01:06:31.120
Mark Murphy: It is amazing how, like, leaders are, in many respects, teachers, and if we thought of it more like that.
490
01:06:31.390 --> 01:06:34.229
Mark Murphy: We would have so much better leadership.
491
01:06:35.840 --> 01:06:37.340
Danny Gluch: Yeah, absolutely.
492
01:06:37.470 --> 01:06:38.930
Marion: Well…
493
01:06:38.930 --> 01:06:41.950
Danny Gluch: Thank you so much. Oh, Mary, were you gonna say something?
494
01:06:41.950 --> 01:06:50.180
Marion: No, I mean, I was just gonna say, Mark, like, where can people get their hands on your amazing book? They can pre-order, like, all of this stuff.
495
01:06:50.470 --> 01:07:02.849
Mark Murphy: So, the book is, Team Players is available anywhere. You buy books, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books A Million, whatever. But you can also go to LeadershipIQ.com, and if you go to…
496
01:07:03.300 --> 01:07:18.710
Mark Murphy: either go to the Research tab, you'll find a number of our research and studies there. In fact, you'll find the Innovator study that we've been talking about. That's there. There's a study on team effectiveness that is there as well. And so, if you want to
497
01:07:18.990 --> 01:07:26.040
Mark Murphy: nerd out and put yourself to sleep from time to time, you know, that's a good place to go. There's lots of charts and data there. And then if you go…
498
01:07:26.040 --> 01:07:27.150
Danny Gluch: charts.
499
01:07:27.150 --> 01:07:38.049
Mark Murphy: If you go to the quizzes tab, there is a bunch of quizzes, free quizzes and stuff, but there's a team players quiz, which if you want to go, okay, well, what's my natural team role?
500
01:07:38.200 --> 01:07:45.200
Mark Murphy: then you can do that, and it will… it'll guide you through. And they're, you know, a couple of minutes to take, they're fairly short, so…
501
01:07:46.440 --> 01:07:47.660
Danny Gluch: Well, that's my next story.
502
01:07:47.660 --> 01:07:49.189
Cacha Dora: And I was like, I… I was like.
503
01:07:49.190 --> 01:07:50.120
Danny Gluch: That's like a good quiz.
504
01:07:50.120 --> 01:07:53.620
Cacha Dora: any day. Give me a good quiz.
505
01:07:53.620 --> 01:07:54.230
Marion: I'm gonna…
506
01:07:54.230 --> 01:07:59.439
Danny Gluch: ace that test, I'm gonna send you the results.
507
01:07:59.600 --> 01:08:16.509
Danny Gluch: Those, those links will be in the show notes, everybody. Thank you all for listening. Mark, thank you so much for coming on, and for sharing your stories and your insights. It was really fantastic. Everyone, be sure to subscribe, like, leave a 5-star review, and
508
01:08:16.779 --> 01:08:27.030
Danny Gluch: Message us on LinkedIn if you have ideas for other elephants that you guys want to talk about, guests you want us to have on, and we'll see you guys next time. Thank you so much.
