LEE DUNCAN

Full Transcript



Douglas:

And we're live. And in case this is the first time you've seen one of these, Karen and I have weekly chats with readers of Start Within where we talk about their experiences with pushing their ideas through big companies, and just any environment they might find themselves in, and what they've found to be effective and how the book has helped them out and what challenges they might have. And it's a little bit of a live coaching session and just chat about the possible. So, great to be here today. And today we have Lee Duncan with us.



Lee:

Hello. Glad to be here.



Douglas:

Yeah. Thanks for being here. And I first met Lee through the Design Sprint community and we had exchanged a few, I think video calls and he happens to reside in an area of the country that I spent a large portion of my life. So it's nice to visit him whenever I could come back to North Carolina. And we also spent quite a bit of time at the Design Sprint conferences together. And it just turned... found him to be a great collaborator and a great colleague. So Lee, thanks so much for participating in this series with us.



Lee:

Yeah, my pleasure. I think I was googling for people that knew what they were talking about in regards to Design Sprint and innovation, and your name kept popping up and I'm like, "Who is this Douglas guy?" And of course I made a huge mistake the first time we met, I called you Doug, massive error. I apologize. I'm hoping someday I can recover, but you came to, I believe, American Underground. You gave a talk and I really enjoyed that and I knew you were a person I needed to track.



Douglas:

Yeah. And I think, the feelings are reciprocal. I've always been amazed at your work and our conversations. So I'm delighted that people are going to be listening in on one of our conversations, because I feel like, there's something magical that happens when you find people that you can have really great conversations with and it's unfortunate that people can always listen in. So that's part of what, the reason that we're doing these, so that people can tune in to some of the crazy things we chat about, including gene expression. So maybe we'll go there. Who knows? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, we've done that. So who knows where we'll go next? I guess when I first mentioned the book to you and you started to dive into test reading for us, what sorts of things surfaced for you as... What jumped out as, what's this book all about? What resonated with you personally?



Lee:

Yeah, I would say one of the main things is that we all need to think about how we can improve ourselves and what is it, as far as our own way of seeking out skills, our own way of seeking out confidence, our own way of overcoming those types of challenges and how you can then take action.



Douglas:

I love that confidence piece. We talk a lot about the book being a great guide for people who are just wanting to get started. And a lot of times it's that lack of confidence that can get in our way and so just having a guidebook with some exercises so you can practice a bit and build up a bit of that muscle so that you can go in confidently knowing where you're doing. And so, anything jump out to you as you were reading through the books? Any chapters or any of the activities where like, "Oh, wow, that's something I haven't seen before" or "That's something I know people really need."



Lee:

Well, honestly, a lot of it I think is the self-talk that people have [inaudible 00:03:54] believing and the step by step approach. And I honestly just appreciate the fact that successful people go through the same things as everyone else. Sometimes you question if you're on the right track, you're questioning if you're making the right moves and you need to pivot. And in your book, one of the things that I discovered is, you really need to be highly adaptable at all times, and you need to be, to steal a phrase, in the business of changing your mind. You have to be open to things. You can hold an opinion, but only so long. Be open to advice, don't get your feelings hurt and run experiments. And another quote which I love and I've said a million, trillion times but I'll say it again, is that smart people have smart reasons for their guesses.



Douglas:

Yeah.



Lee:

Yeah. So you have to experiment a lot to find the right path.



Douglas:

Mehn, that reminds me of Tom Chi and he has this thing, if you're talking to someone who is ego driven or not in the mindset of testing, you don't want to tell them that they're making guesses. You want to tell them they're making conjectures.



Lee:

Right. Yes. So I got to remember that when I have a discussion with my wife later that she's making a conjecture.



Douglas:

Oh, I don't know. I don't condone that.



Lee:

Okay.



Karen:

Well, yeah. Speaking of working with teams and collaborating, not everybody has the same passion in the same time. Some people are just tuned into doing the checklist and my job as I need to do my job. And then other people are leaning in and asking the how-might-we's, how do you pull those people that are maybe in a rut or in a moment of just stagnation?



Lee:

Yeah. So I think any enterprise, one of the risks is that there's a lot of homogenous thinking. People believe... they try to out obey each other. They're never looking outward and always seeing, "How can I get along with everyone else better? And how can I be really... act in that way." But honestly, just in the book, I believe that there's a book out there that talks about the purple cow, where you have to differentiate yourself and you have to look outward. And as far as strategy in a large enterprise, thankfully we get a lot of the strategies, a lot of the guidance from the top. But I think it's important that as that comes down to us, we think about, what is the value add we can provide with the skillset that we have and our place in the organization.



Lee:

How can we make that real? And that's something I think through quite consistently.



Karen:

Yeah. I mean, it's both meeting people where they're at and it's also trying to bring them out of that moment and looking around and, what are some disciplines that you have for yourself to break that habit that we can get into of just doing the day as per usual.



Lee:

Yeah. So try and develop an innovation habit, I think is huge. Another major important thing is courage. I think every day, [inaudible 00:06:59] something that terrifies you, especially in a skillset category, everyday, you should think about doing something that you would prefer not to do. And that's the stuff that is going to push your skillset. It pushes your skillset. Now you may not be great at it but you're going to get a lot of information and just as in design, innovation, want to fail fast. I think also in the skillset area and learning where you can go from good to great, you need to fail fast, experiment, that's where the rapid learning happens. And you can't be afraid of that.



And that also, by the way, in the same way I know we were talking about ice pass and all that a little while ago as far as developing an adaptation genetics, in the same way of pushing your limits, far as when you have self-talk where you say, "Well, I couldn't possibly do that. I don't have the skills for that. I don't have the experience for that. I'm not qualified for that", but when you push yourself beyond those self-imposed limits, suddenly things that you thought weren't possible become possible.



Douglas:

So, Lee, what frightens you that you're going to do tomorrow?



Lee:

What was that?



Douglas:

What frightens you that you're going to do tomorrow? You said every day you should do something that frightens you. So I'm very, very curious.



Lee:

Yeah. So this is interesting. I'm going to try to flip it. I am really hard on myself as far as... I mentioned earlier that I'm in nutrition and so I hold myself so accountable for everything I do every moment. Behind me, I have a hypoxicator. So I also use hypoxication to do exercises at 15,000 feet to help with clarity and a brain-derived neurotropic factor. And what I'm doing tomorrow? Honestly, what's terrifies me is I'm going to not be so hard on myself. I'm going to just pause and be casual, and maybe eat a meal that doesn't have broccoli in it.



Douglas:

Wow. You're going to go donuts tomorrow.



Lee:

That would definitely terrify me. My family would immediately take me to urgent care if they [crosstalk 00:09:11]



Douglas:

Oh my God, he's got a donut. Call someone.



Lee:

They would [crosstalk 00:09:13] out of my hands. Yeah. They knew there was something. They're going to ask me if I hit my head.



Douglas:

Wow. Yeah. So, that's amazing. And I think you're hitting on something that's super important in this, all this work can be so focused on the objectives and "Am I doing the things right? Am I building the confidence? Have I done all these activities?" And it's important to take that self care time because if you're not bringing a hundred percent of yourself because you're running yourself ragged, then it's going to be really hard to push ideas forward.



Lee:

Yeah, absolutely. In the same way that sleep is important. I think it's important to be playful and create these enterprise playgrounds where people come in. I try to develop that psychological safety and model the behaviors, there's usually a mix of playfulness, but also moments of reflection. I try to be pretty dynamic as an individual, but definitely, especially [inaudible 00:10:09] these new remote environments. You [inaudible 00:10:12] have to lead and develop and create a culture at the beginning to open people up and have those real and genuine authentic conversations.



Douglas:

Yeah. Speaking of these remote environments and this need to be playful, I mean, bringing the playful stuff into an enterprise or just a corporate or business setting in general can be... Some people find it frightening because it's deemed as childish, which I think is unfortunate. But, so you had to balance this kind of objective business lens with the playful stuff. But I believe that the virtual nature makes it even more difficult because when you get into loose structures and most of the time playful things are loose, when you get into those loose structures, it can be sometimes hard to reign people back in when it's virtual. Because you can't see how people are moving around and where they're at. And so I'm curious, what sorts of things you started, we've talked about this a little bit. So I'm curious where you've come to in the two or three weeks since we last discussed this. How do we just keep track of all the cats, so to speak when we're introducing some of this play.



Lee:

Yeah. It's really hard. And I like to make stuff up. So I'm going to try to make up some phraseology. So we've all heard of IQ and then we've heard of EQ, which is emotional component, and I'm going to make up something now which I'm going to call VQ or Virtual Quotient and that's where you really need to be sensing in a high sensing mode of what's going on. And there are numerous ways to do that. You can do on the spot heuristics, for example, we use mural. A lot of people use different tools, but I'll watch the cursors moving around, what is the energy of the cursors? How generative are individuals in creating stickies and how active are people in being conversational? Are people willing to take the lead? And you have to create an environment which also backs that being dynamic and adaptable.



You have to sense at every moment who is participating, to what level is the engagement, and how can I pivot and make changes right now, either in methods or me as creating energy for individuals, how can I modify that to optimize? And I would say that's one of the best traits of a facilitator, is they're able to turn up energy, dial it down, adapt, move around, scrap everything, whatever it takes to deliver. I think that's the trait of a facilitator and I think that also comes with exposure hours, doing a lot of facilitation, getting the reps in and that's how you get there.



Douglas:

Yeah. And it's interesting because on the surface, a listener might think, "Well, what does this have to do with Start Within, that's not about facilitation", but the hook I'll tell you, is that what we're talking about right here, the stuff you just drilled into is the micro level whereas Start Within, we were a little bit more macro or the least Altitude's a little higher because these things matter. What you're talking about, reading the room, well, we have a chapter on reading the organization. So, understanding how prepared the organization is, what kind of a process it follows, et cetera.



Douglas:

And so I think that these awareness skills, these real skills and an ability to understand the context of the ecosystem are super important. And so I think it's fascinating how you can take these facilitation skills and apply them at different levels, or just look at the similarities between what you might do when you're thinking about your stakeholders around who is going to influence your problem or your idea versus someone in a room that you're trying to work with for a specific meeting, so.



Lee:

Absolutely. And I liked the way you talked about that as far as micro and macro. And I also think about, as far as analogous thing, powers of 10 zooming in and zooming out, taking a look at a situation from a nano level all the way out to a "what's going on in the wider ecosystem and environment.'



Douglas:

Yeah. I think zooming in and zooming out's such a really awesome tactic. When you think about, for instance, just running workshops or product development in general, I think some people fly at much too high of an altitude and some people fly way too low. And so it's like if you can make a structure or a habit out of moving up and down frequently, and maybe even in the same meeting, why don't we look at it from really far away and look at it really close, and then we'll compare those two extremes because I think there's fascinating stuff at the extremes always and can we create systems where we're repeatedly doing that. So it's interesting to ponder and to think about how it could impact how you structure your process.



Lee:

Yep. Go ahead.



Karen:

Well, I just love that idea and even taking it a step further in assigning it to people saying, "You're typically thinking high strategy today, just flip your brain. I want you to get really deep in the weeds" and then asking the same from someone that might be thinking differently on the other end of the spectrum. So, forcing habits of people to switch different parts of their brain that they're tapping into and seeing what creative juices that brings to the table.



Lee:

Yes. Yeah. Just like, I don't know, using mouse with my left hand, I think that's a great way to create some sparkles in the brain. And just, as you said, a lot of times we get into these ways of working, I'm really good at the details or I'm really good at the strategy and I think it's important to challenge ourselves through these other things. And also bringing it back to your book, I think a lot of us outsource accountability. We think that the answer is out there and if I can only read this book, if I could only do this thing, but really if you start with yourself and reflect inward and work on your own game, you can become unstuck and improve and be more effective.



Douglas:

Awesome. And you know, that's a great sentiment to end on. We're just one minute over our planned 15 minutes. And I think you just summarized it really nicely, Lee, so I want to just say thanks for being here. And Karen always, it's a fun journey to continue to collaborate with you. So, looking forward to next week.



Karen:

Yeah. If anyone wants to check out the book, it's on Amazon. Just go to your Amazon to find it. And then we're also looking for more people to collaborate with us in these conversations so if you're interested in being someone that we have this conversation with and go deep on the ideas that you're launching, then reach out to Douglas or I through LinkedIn.



Douglas:

Cool. Great.



Lee:

Awesome.



Karen:

Thank you.



Douglas:

Have a great day.



Karen:

Bye.



Lee:

Bye bye.