Chris Hare
Appearances
Chief Change Officer
#249 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Three
And I'm curious, so what was your conclusion based on all of that input in terms of what your superpower is?
Chief Change Officer
#249 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Three
Yeah, I think what's coming to mind as you're saying that, too, is there's what's also challenging. So the work that I'm doing is very like it's very unstructured data, right? Like it's based on a conversation. And it's also part of it is reading the energy of the person and the stories that they're telling. And for example, although I think it would be good to introduce this as well.
Chief Change Officer
#249 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Three
here's 10 questions, answer A, B, and C on each one of them. But in terms of the inputs with these conversations, it can be 100 to 150,000 words from these interviews. You also introduced the challenge of
Chief Change Officer
#249 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Three
When you're interviewing these people, you also like we unknowingly put weight on more weight on some people's opinions than others, whether it's because of the friendship or the level of friendship or whether it's because of the position they have or the power that they have or their role that they've had. Right.
Chief Change Officer
#249 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Three
So like Jonathan Adler, he teaches at Department of Psychology at Olin College of Engineering and then also Harvard Medical School. He talks about the fact that if I'm telling you a story, if we had our cameras on right now, I'm never telling the same story twice.
Chief Change Officer
#249 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Three
I'm rewriting the story as I'm telling you based on your face, how your facial expressions, your body language, your tone of voice, the fact that you say something, the fact that you don't say something, right? So there's all those factors that play into it that make it incredibly complex, right?
Chief Change Officer
#249 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Three
Yeah, exactly. Because I've seen, if you looked at the transcripts from some of my interviews, if a machine were to read it, there's nothing there. They were just saying something, talking about some interaction they had in an office that was incredibly minor. Therefore, it's not important.
Chief Change Officer
#249 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Three
But if you were to see the person and see their smile or see the light in their eyes that shifted or hear the rise in their energy, that's a clue that the machine would not have picked up, right?
Chief Change Officer
#249 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Three
I love it. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. This has been amazing. Amazing conversation. The questions you ask are extraordinary.
Chief Change Officer
#249 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Three
Yeah, so there's two very practical tools that I recommend. And if it's helpful, I can share a worksheet with you that walks through these that you could share with your guests. But the first exercise is what I call the movie theater. And so it's a visualization where I have people think about their very first day of retirement. And some people say, OK, I'm never going to retire.
Chief Change Officer
#249 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Three
So maybe the last week of life. Right. When you're elderly. What I have people think about is, okay, yesterday you had a retirement party. They gave you a watch or a plaque. And today you have no more title, no more power, no more paycheck. Also no more emails. Hooray. And all of those things. And so you decide to go to the movie theater.
Chief Change Officer
#249 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Three
you buy a ticket for the blockbuster for this blockbuster and you go and sit in your favorite seat and you have your coke and you have your popcorn and there's no one else in the theater and the movie starts playing and so then i have people visualize that movie that plays is actually not the blockbuster it's actually your life playing
Chief Change Officer
#249 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Three
and your career not just your career but your entire life one scene after the next play and the good but also the bad the people that you brought with you the people you left behind etc if i have people not just think about that but feel that and sit in it and then i start asking questions of what are some of the themes that you're seeing what are you feeling good and bad what might you call that movie and that sort of thing and so what that does is help you see
Chief Change Officer
#249 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Three
the trajectory that you're on, what do you want that future to look like, but also what does your past look like and bringing up those scenes. And so that is one way of, it's interesting because it feels very peaceful in one sense. You're in this
Chief Change Officer
#249 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Three
envisioning this quiet movie theater but the other hand it can be chaotic because you have all these stories that can come flooding in so that's one exercise that can really stir that up and then you can start to analyze okay what's the narrative that's going to get me there if i want a different future what's the narrative that's going to get me to that future
Chief Change Officer
#249 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Three
And then the other piece is the one that I think is the most practical. If you want to find, uncover atomic stories that you didn't know were there is doing the 360s. So what I would recommend is picking three to five people.
Chief Change Officer
#249 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Three
And this is not the 360 that many of us from corporate America are used to where you have people that there's all kinds of politics and they're evaluating you, potentially putting you down, being very critical. The goal here is not that the goal here is to go and talk to three to five people who know you care about you and want you to succeed.
Chief Change Officer
#249 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Three
And they know you in different spheres and ask them, spend 30 minutes, ask if you can record the call and ask them the first question based on how you've seen me live my life. What do you believe my number one value is? Or you could ask what are my top two values, whatever. And then the next question is, please tell a story that you believe best demonstrates that value.
Chief Change Officer
#249 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Three
And there's other questions that you can ask. So if you're wanting to know thought leadership, for example, potential directions for thought leadership, what's the one thing that Vince should write about forever? If Vince could only talk about or write about one thing, what would that be to put constraints on it?
Chief Change Officer
#249 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Three
So you take those interviews, you record them and then start looking at the patterns from them and seeing and looking at, OK, what are those stories that they told and how do they make me feel? How do they challenge my thinking? How might I synthesize those to shift the direction that I'm going? A great example of this was how I ended up bringing 360s into my methodology.
Chief Change Officer
#249 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Three
But I had on Art Delacruz, who's the CEO of Team Rubicon, an amazing nonprofit that deploys veterans, gives veterans community and purpose by creating opportunities for them to go and serve after natural disasters. And so Art had an entire career in the Navy and was a Top Gun instructor. He was a fighter pilot or naval aviator and was a Top Gun instructor.
Chief Change Officer
#249 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Three
He said the only thing that was true in the first Top Gun movie was when their plane went into a 360 spin. And that happened to him. For 57 seconds, their plane was plunging towards the desert, and they did desert floor, and they did all of the things to get out of the spin, and they couldn't. And so they had to eject.
Chief Change Officer
#249 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Three
A $40 million plane blows up in a fireball with, I think, 14,000 pounds of fuel. And then... They're parachuting down and have to maneuver their parachutes so they don't land in the fireball. What was interesting, he talked through that narrative, the internal narrative, and then how he navigated through that, and then how he came back from that to fly again.
Chief Change Officer
#249 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Three
A lot of people wouldn't be able to fly again. He took ownership, even though he was mostly not at fault. What was interesting, though, is I posted about that on LinkedIn. It was the highest true engagement of any post I've ever had on LinkedIn because what was fascinating is person after person from across decades who have known him.
Chief Change Officer
#249 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Three
came and commented on who he was as a leader, how they owed him for what he'd taught them, or people within the nonprofit that he works in telling just remarkable stories about who he was as a leader. And so this wasn't him saying, how do I burnish my executive brand? And how do I tell this story that positions me as a thought leader? It was him telling this very raw and vulnerable story.
Chief Change Officer
#249 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Three
It was also the fact that he lived in those moments. He led in those moments across his career, even when no one was watching or seemingly no one was watching. But because he had the guts to tell this story in that environment, that opened up for people to come and share these perspectives that gave him an opportunity to hear those things that he might never have heard.
Chief Change Officer
#249 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Three
So that's what sparked that. But I would say those are the two tools is one that future visioning and then the other is the 360 piece.
Chief Change Officer
#249 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Three
Yeah. So I think some of it is what will people take on? And so for some of my clients talking to three or four people, that might be a lot for them. But on the flip side, I'm actually working with a founder named Dr. Tammy Wang. So she used to be the VP of machine learning and analytics at Korn Ferry and her co-founder is a leadership development professor at Columbia.
Chief Change Officer
#249 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Three
And so we're actually taking my storytelling frameworks and the first one we're doing is Atomic 360 and we're putting it on their AI leadership development platform. So it'll give you a tool where you could actually do that at scale. And so stay tuned on that. So I'll definitely share that with you so that you could go to 50 or 100.
Chief Change Officer
#249 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Three
But yeah, I think absolutely if somebody wants to do that and can do that, I think that's amazing. There could also be the danger with people can give us feedback based on the version of us. So if we're living by a particular narrative and we're presenting in the world based on that narrative, people could actually end up reinforcing that narrative that needs to change.
Chief Change Officer
#249 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Three
I had a client recently when I met with one of his 360 interviewees, highly successful businessman, phenomenal. And what I actually realized is What my client's internal narrative was had been shaped by an interaction that he had with this friend and business leader years ago.
Chief Change Officer
#249 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Three
And what this business leader had done is he'd actually projected his narrative on my client and kind of infected his narrative. And so my client took that on and it created significant discontent and shifted his trajectory based on that.
Chief Change Officer
#249 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Three
So if I had said, hey, this is truth, or if you'd had 50 people that were also saying, and I actually did have other people say similar things that would have kept my client embracing the wrong narrative. And so I think we just have to be careful and think about them in terms of these are inputs, but we need to synthesize them and frame them up against that future that we want to create.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
And he would spend the entire day cleaning it up, taking the trash out, taking the sticks out, getting the water flowing the right direction. That brought him so much joy. The only thing that brought him more joy is when the next rain would come and wreck it again and he got to do it all over again. And so that's what I showed him.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
It was that's the pattern for his entire life that he's followed over and over again. And he goes into these chaotic situations and he's this calming, peaceful presence. And he knows how to get that creek flowing the right way in a way that brings life and peace and better financial outcomes. So that creek became core to what his narrative was.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
So for him, that's grounding and centering, and that's a story that he can tell. But then also you have to pull it all the way through to the business outcomes that it drives. So it's okay, great. We have this really compelling and emotional narrative, but now how do we pull it down into the pillars of his business and the outcomes that his customers want to drive?
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
But again, that was a story that he told and never saw it from that perspective. And not realizing that is a part of that flows through him. It's a part of who he is now.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
Yes, there's a lot of bad ones out there, but I think I'll pick on myself. And for this part gets a bit from a really challenging part of my journey. So in 2015, when I worked at Amazon, my mental health was in a really bad place and I nearly took my life.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
What was interesting in retrospect is there was something that happened to me and I remember going to work the next day and believing that I was stuck. in the situation that I was this, I won't go into the situation, but I was stuck in this situation.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
And there were some days where I was commuting up to three hours round trip in the dark, in the rain, in the Seattle, the terrible Seattle weather that we have. And I was in this place where I was stuck. It felt stuck in this job. I felt stuck in my car. I had chronic pain and I had a terrible situation at work. And so what happened is I would repeat over and over again.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
I started to repeat, I'm stuck. I'm stuck. I'm stuck. And I would do this for hours every week. And it became a mantra. You talk about the power of a mantra. Usually it's a positive mantra. This was a negative mantra. So I would repeat that. So that story was the thing that happened to me that precipitated this. And there were a bunch of other stories.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
And that tape that played in my head, that narrative was, I'm stuck. And then one day, tragically, I saw I drove past a car of a gentleman who had just died in an accident. And all of a sudden, so that was a story. All of a sudden, my narrative internally became not I'm stuck. It became I'm going to die. And so I would repeat that narrative over and over again.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
And I remember falling asleep in traffic one day, almost falling asleep. And then I remember almost swerving into a truck and I like those kinds of things. And those little tiny stories would keep reinforcing this narrative to the point that actually took me to the edge where I nearly took my life.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
I know it's heavy, but that's part of why I believe in this work so much is because those, the way that we take those stories and synthesize them can be very high stakes. So like in that moment, you might, for somebody else, so you're in that situation, it might not hit you the way that it hit me and you might synthesize it in a different way.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
But that story, absolutely the worst story I've ever heard or told myself.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
As a creative person, when I went to Amazon, One of my clients, who was the director at the time, became the VP there. He would always talk about inputs and outputs. And it used to drive me nuts because as a creative person, I'm like, no, I just want to envision this future and do creative things. But it really is that. It's inputs and outputs.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
But the challenge that I had was the inputs and how I synthesized them. In my case, one, you do have to hit. I shouldn't say hit rock bottom. I think that's part of it in some cases. But you need something that Fletcher at the Ohio State University, narrative scientist, and what he talks about as a plot twist. So there needs to, something needs to happen.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
to create a shift, to shock you out of your way of thinking at times, give you a vision of a new possible future. So for me, a part of my narrative was also very much blaming other people. Now, to be fair, I had a terrible manager.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
I had a lot that had happened across the course of my life, but I had taken all of that and said, I would claim that I took responsibility for my life, but I would blame others for the things that happened to me. I had to get to a place and in 2020, my marriage almost ended. My wife and I are now back together.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
But to get through that, I had to completely rewrite my narrative and go from blaming others to taking responsibility and shifting so that to view a different future. My wife and I, for quite a long season, would actually say, we found it helpful to actually voice, and I would encourage listeners to do this as well, voice what the narrative is.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
So in our case, it was, here's the narrative of what I'm believing about you in this moment, or I'm believing about this situation. I know it's not true based on this new future that we're creating, but this is what I'm feeling and believing at this moment. It really is, how do you create new inputs?
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
And so if you're in a place where you move into, whether we're talking business situation or personally with mental health, if you continue to put in the same inputs, things likely won't change for you. But for me, one of the positive inputs that I changed was I got into fly fishing. And so that put me in the energy of the river.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
It put me in all the movement and all the creativity that goes into that, all the analyzing the river and trying to figure out where the fish is, but mostly just for me being in nature, right? That was a part of changing those inputs so that I could shift the, not only the narrative, but the, the outcomes of that narrative.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
Yeah, so I'll reframe the question slightly to the best story I've ever felt. And to set that up, actually, I want to, before I get there, I want to, you talked about the fact of your very rational approach. And I love the perspectives that someone who's wired like you versus someone who's wired like me, because I can definitely be more on that.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
the other side of the spectrum and how do we integrate those. But Herminia Barra tells this story about a CEO that she coached. And this woman went from being, she was an engineer and she was elevated into CEO. Things were not going well with her team. She was driving the board crazy and was just incredibly rational.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
And so one of the board members said, coached her and said, you need to be more human. Try telling a story. And her response was very angry. And she said, no, that's manipulation. Why would I tell a story? It's all about the facts. It was interesting that Herminia said to her when she coached her was, and this woman said, I'm being authentic to who I am as an engineer. And what Herminia said was,
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
You're being authentic to the version of you that got you here. If you want to succeed in this role, there's a different version of yourself that you need to step into and be authentic to that version of yourself. And so it doesn't mean you change your values or your morals or anything like that, but growth. is very uncomfortable, right?
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
So I like to think about growth as bespoke shoes or the experiment of trying on different pair of shoes. So if you have the best cobbler in the world, make a pair of shoes for you. It's not guaranteed that they're going to be super comfortable when you first put them on. They might be incredibly uncomfortable.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
So when we, Herminia talks about experimenting with different possible selves, when you try on those different types of shoes and wear them, they might be uncomfortable for a week or two. But if it's the right one, eventually it will fit you perfectly. Just wanted to respond on that. In terms of the best story that I've ever felt, it's actually tied to the worst story.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
It gives me goosebumps just thinking about it. So when things were at my worst, I'd been on disability leave and I went back to Microsoft. So I was at Amazon, went to Microsoft, went out on leave. And when I came back, I had a new manager and the best manager I'd ever had. And he had tattoos all over his arm, Pearl Jam tattoos, the band. I'd never been a fan of Pearl Jam.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
In fact, I didn't like them. And I thought, I live in Seattle. Like, I tried to like them. In the 90s, I tried to like them because they were cool and I couldn't. So I asked him, tell me about your tattoos. And he said, it was 1991. So I was driving across Michigan. He called his mom and found out that his dad had just passed away.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
So he turns around and drives three or four hours home and he's listening to Pearl Jam on the radio. And one of the songs was the song Alive. It's this really haunting song, beautiful song. He listens to that the whole way home and Pearl Jam has become a part of his healing and healing journey. And so he told me this.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
And so because he told me that story, it didn't make me like Pearl Jam, but I thought, okay, I'm willing to give it another try. So I tried listening to them again and put on the song alive. Everything changed in terms of my perspective about that song. So all of a sudden I went from disliking them to being open to listening to this song. All of a sudden it became an anthem for me.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
And I remember driving down the road past the place where I, this is at least how I envision it, past the place where I nearly took my life and seeing that song at the top of my lungs. And that became healing for me because of the story that he told. Fast forward to last year, and around September or October, I come across this video of the lead singer of Pearl Jam, Eddie Vedder, from years ago.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
And he's talking about that song live, and he said, didn't mean what fans have come to believe that it means. When I wrote that song, it was an FU to my dad. He said when I was 12 or 13, I found out that my dad wasn't actually my dad and my parents had been lying to me. That was filled with bitterness and anger, and it became a curse to me.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
But what ended up happening is fans believed it was a song about life and freedom. Over the years, as he heard it, he started to be open to the fans' interpretation, and eventually he completely changed his belief about what the song meant. And he said, as soon as I believed what the fans believed the song meant, It literally broke the curse and I was free, right?
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
So it's like, how incredible is that? That narrative was completely shifted for him. Two weeks later, I go and I tell my daughter, okay, let's go to the record store. And her best friend goes with us. And we get there and I said, okay, here's the deal. Everyone only gets $10 and we'll see who gets the best, the best album. So that means you obviously have to buy used.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
So we'll see who gets the best haul. So we go in there, we dig through for vinyl and it was complete failure. None of us gets a record. So he said, oh, let's go to the bakery down the street. And so we're walking across the crosswalk. The sun's going down. And I said, there's an album that I actually forgot that I need that I want to get.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
And so why don't you all go to the bakery and I'll meet you there. So I walk back inside the record store. I walk upstairs and Eddie Vedder, the lead singer of Pearl Jam, is standing right there digging for vinyl. I was like, you've got to be kidding me. So internally, I thought I should go say hi to him. And I had something internally tell me, you need to go tell him your story.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
So at first I was like, he doesn't want to be bothered. He just wants to be a normal person. And then I thought, no, you need to tell him. And then I thought, okay, let's not him. And I heard him talk and I'm like, yeah, it's definitely him. So I go over and I thank him for his music and chickened out and shook my hand. And then again, the voice inside said, no, you need to tell him your story.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
So, uh, classic Chris, that I say things to create some drama. I started out and I said, I never liked your music. And the look was pretty funny, but I have the story to tell you. And I proceeded to tell him the story that I just told you. It was this unbelievable moment. He just gave me this huge hug and it was like electricity went through my body.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
And it was this crazy full circle moment where you go all the way back to 2015 and my manager telling this story, and then you go back to 1991. And Eddie Vedder telling this story through his song. And then here we are in 2023. And this guy who wrote this song that he sang back in 1991 is giving me a hug. And it's like healing running through my body.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
what I tell people on my podcast, what I tell clients, what I tell other people is that's the power of storytelling is that when we tell our stories, yes, it can change our companies. Yes, it can change the world, but it also changes us.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
We have to tell our stories and not always the really clean, really curated story that makes us look good, but that raw story that has the power to shift the future.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
Yeah, so there's two very practical tools that I recommend. And if it's helpful, I can share a worksheet with you that walks through these that you could share with your guests. But the first exercise is what I call the movie theater. And so then I have people visualize that movie that plays is actually not the blockbuster. It's actually your life playing.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
And your career, not just your career, but your entire life. And one scene after the next play. And the good, but also the bad. The people that you brought with you, the people you left behind, etc.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
I found it, and the young people listening might need to go to Wikipedia and look up what a cassette is, but I find it helpful and more visceral to think about narratives and our personal narratives as a cassette tape, a tape that's playing in our head. We're constantly writing and rewriting that and adjusting that.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
This is the future I'm creating, or this is what's happening in the present, or this is what happened in the past, and we fuel that with stories. So I'll give you a few different practical examples. So one, I have this one CEO that I work with. He's a serial CEO and board member. And Chicago MBA, go Chicago, I know you're a fan. Chicago MBA, McKinsey consultant.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
When he came to me, he said, it was, how do I, I have one narrative that I use with private equity, another that I use with venture capital. Another that I use with board roles when I'm interviewing. And then I've got my hippie yoga community and my nonprofit work. And what I want is one narrative.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
So yes, on the business side, how do I attract more board opportunities without me having to pursue them? How do they come to me? So that was the outcome that he wanted. And I've...
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
become wise enough to know that I guarantee a process and I guarantee deliverables, but I won't guarantee an outcome because I've seen over and over that these narrative shifts that neither one of us could predict often almost always happen, right?
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
So with him, when we were done, his narrative, he now has one narrative and an authentic narrative at the core of who he is that came out of his yoga practice, but it can now be used and lensed across each of those different audiences. So now it's an authentic narrative that he can use when he's with his yoga community.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
But when he's talking to Goldman Sachs about a business they just acquired, he has that narrative lens. And then he has stories from his experience to support that narrative lens. There's a CEO that I just recently finished working with. And I thought this was going to be my first ever failure. And so this is somebody who has a remarkable story. It's like it could be a movie easily.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
They were miserable in their role and they were sick of telling the story and said, Chris, I want a new story. I want you to help me create a new story. And I want to exit my company. And it was fascinating. So in terms of my process, we do future visioning, but not just talking and thinking about it, feeling it. So I put them in that space in the future where they feel that.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
And then they're also feeling the choices that they've made across their career, good and bad. Because my goal is not to burnish their reputation or that's not my initial goal is to pull out all of the realities of what happened and how that impacts them, how that makes them feel for better or worse.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
And then we do storytelling across their lifespan, going all the way back to when they were a little kid. And I look for patterns and energy there. So I'd done those two steps with this client and it wasn't succeeding. And I thought, okay, this is going to be my first ever failure. And then we did the third part of my framework, which I call Atomic 360.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
And there interviewed people who knew this CEO for, in some cases, decades. So this executive team, his employees, his friends who had known him and seen him for a long time, other CEOs, board members, etc. And I still can't believe what happened.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
Like when he heard the impact that he had on these people's lives and how he changed the way that they see the world, changed the way that they run their businesses, etc. It literally changed everything for him almost overnight. To the point where he went from completely miserable, I'm gonna sell my company, to I'm gonna stay in this company until I retire.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
I'm teaching myself my new narrative every single day, and I'm learning to be content and happy where I'm at. He's now expanding to other geos, which will at least double his multiple when he exits. But... The thing for him was, and this was a bit scary to say this to someone, but I said, I'm not going to give you a new external narrative. You don't need that.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
You have all these extraordinary stories across your life. So those atomic stories are the fuel. And the way that you synthesize those was amazing. Like I'm not going to be happy in these roles or I'm never going to be happy. I have to go to the next thing to find that happiness.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
What we actually need to do is synthesize that and make different choices and uncover a new narrative, which is actually if you go deep where you're at, that's where you're going to find the contentment and happiness. And so it's actually rewriting the internal narrative versus the external narrative.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
I love that. So the one thing I would add to that to, in my mind, make that analogy. work incredibly well is you. So you're the one that's building with those bricks. So if we look at just the bricks on their own, that shows us a static structure that's made up of those stories. So I 100% agree with that. And then you are the dynamic piece of that.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
You are the one who comes in and assembles those pieces from your past to assemble those new potential futures and that narrative. So I just want to zoom out or pull out slightly so that it definitely incorporates you in the energy that you bring, because that's what we do is really we're shaping those pieces from our past. So, yes, absolutely love that analogy.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
Yeah, so I think part of it is distance, our proximity. So we're so close to our own narrative and to our own stories that we don't see the broader picture. So if you're building with Legos, you might not see that there's a gigantic pile of Legos that's behind you.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
Or that you could order more online. Or here's another way to assemble them that you might not have thought of. Absolutely. I had one leader that I worked with. They just started talking and they'd done a lot of therapy, but they'd also gone through a huge spiritual transformation because of all the work that they'd done.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
Once I put them in the right environment and had the right framing, everything just flowed out. But the next piece is that especially in the business world. And when you talk storytelling, I generally don't believe what people say. This is my most important story or this is my narrative because I've seen so many times that generally the narrative is there, but it's hidden.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
And so my job is to put you in a space to where we can uncover that. And so where the kind of the mass media conversation around storytelling can be can create even more challenges is we think like the hero's journey, for example. Oh, I need to take this framework. And Chris is asking me about to tell my story and I've got to fit it into this framework. And I actually want the opposite.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
I actually create what feels like a fairly chaotic environment when I'm asking for stories. And it may feel all over the map. I've had people that don't believe me or don't trust me about why I ask certain questions. But my goal is for you to collide with stories from your past that you've forgotten about, that you don't value, that you don't think are relevant.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
and synthesize those because they are a critical part of what made you, you. I have this one client who, the first time I met him before we were working together, he told a colleague of mine, I met Chris, I really liked him. I'm like, oh man, this guy's great. I would love to work with him. And then he started asking me all these questions and I'm like, what? Oh man, Chris doesn't get what I do.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
These are crazy questions. This isn't going to work. And then we got to the end and I was like, Holy cow, Chris gets me, right? And so the point being is, it's really about what are those elements for the past that we can uncover and then use those to shape the future. And generally, they're not at the level that you've processed.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
like the level that you've gotten to it can be far beyond that so i have a client that i just recently finished working with and his story will be published at some point he is an m a advisor and for lower mid market lower and or small businesses and His whole thing is coming into businesses that look really good on the surface.
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
There's a lot of wealth locked up in the business but the business has a ton of chaos. And so he comes in and fixes that chaos and then helps them maximize their value and eventually their exit. most prolific storyteller i've ever worked with period to the point that i mean it almost my brain can handle a lot it almost melted my brain but what was interesting is where we got to his narrative is
Chief Change Officer
#248 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part Two
discovered the story of when he was a kid, his favorite thing to do was when after it would rain, he would hike for miles to get to the creek with his friends. The water was high. The water was essentially like chocolate milk and there's sticks in there and there's trash in there.
Chief Change Officer
#155 From Buzzwords to Real Words: Chris Hare on Mastering Atomic Storytelling — Part Three
And I'm curious, so what was your conclusion based on all of that input in terms of what your superpower is?
Chief Change Officer
#155 From Buzzwords to Real Words: Chris Hare on Mastering Atomic Storytelling — Part Three
Yeah, I think what's coming to mind as you're saying that too, is there's what's also challenging. So the work that I'm doing is very, like it's very unstructured data, right? Like it's based on a conversation and it's also part of it is reading the energy of the person and the stories that they're telling. And for example, although I think it would be good to introduce this as well.
Chief Change Officer
#155 From Buzzwords to Real Words: Chris Hare on Mastering Atomic Storytelling — Part Three
Here's 10 questions, answer A, B, and C on each one of them. But in terms of the inputs with these conversations, it can be 100 to 150,000 words from these interviews. You also introduced the challenge of
Chief Change Officer
#155 From Buzzwords to Real Words: Chris Hare on Mastering Atomic Storytelling — Part Three
When you're interviewing these people, you also like we unknowingly put weight on more weight on some people's opinions than others, whether it's because of the friendship or the level of friendship or whether it's because of the position they have or the power that they have or their role that they've had. Right.
Chief Change Officer
#155 From Buzzwords to Real Words: Chris Hare on Mastering Atomic Storytelling — Part Three
So like Jonathan Adler, he teaches at Department of Psychology at Olin College of Engineering and then also Harvard Medical School. He talks about the fact that if I'm telling you a story, if we had our cameras on right now, I'm never telling the same story twice.
Chief Change Officer
#155 From Buzzwords to Real Words: Chris Hare on Mastering Atomic Storytelling — Part Three
I'm rewriting the story as I'm telling you based on your face, how your facial expressions, your body language, your tone of voice, the fact that you say something, the fact that you don't say something, right? So there's all those factors that play into it that make it incredibly complex, right?
Chief Change Officer
#155 From Buzzwords to Real Words: Chris Hare on Mastering Atomic Storytelling — Part Three
Yeah, exactly. Because I've seen if you looked at the transcripts from some of my interviews, if a machine were to read it, there's nothing there. They were just saying something, talking about some interaction they had in an office that was incredibly minor. Therefore, it's not important.
Chief Change Officer
#155 From Buzzwords to Real Words: Chris Hare on Mastering Atomic Storytelling — Part Three
But if you were to see the person and see their smile or see the light in their eyes that shifted or hear the rise in their energy, that's a clue that the machine would not have picked up. Right.
Chief Change Officer
#155 From Buzzwords to Real Words: Chris Hare on Mastering Atomic Storytelling — Part Three
I love it. Thank you so much for having me. This has been an amazing conversation. The questions you ask are extraordinary.
Chief Change Officer
#155 From Buzzwords to Real Words: Chris Hare on Mastering Atomic Storytelling — Part Three
Yeah, so there's two very practical tools that I recommend. And if it's helpful, I can share a worksheet with you that walks through these that you could share with your guests. But the first exercise is what I call the movie theater. And so it's a visualization where I have people think about their very first day of retirement. And some people say, OK, I'm never going to retire.
Chief Change Officer
#155 From Buzzwords to Real Words: Chris Hare on Mastering Atomic Storytelling — Part Three
So maybe the last week of life. Right. When you're elderly. What I have people think about is, OK, yesterday you had a retirement party. They give you a watch or a plaque. And today you have no more title, no more power, no more paycheck. Also, no more emails. Hooray. And all of those things. And so you decide to go to the movie theater.
Chief Change Officer
#155 From Buzzwords to Real Words: Chris Hare on Mastering Atomic Storytelling — Part Three
You buy a ticket for the blockbust for this blockbuster and you go and sit in your favorite seat and you have your Coke and you have your popcorn. and there's no one else in the theater, and the movie starts playing. And so then I have people visualize that movie that plays is actually not the blockbuster, it's actually your life playing.
Chief Change Officer
#155 From Buzzwords to Real Words: Chris Hare on Mastering Atomic Storytelling — Part Three
and your career, not just your career, but your entire life, one scene after the next play, and the good, but also the bad, the people that you brought with you, the people you left behind, et cetera. And so I have people not just think about that, but feel that and sit in it. And then I start asking questions of what are some of the themes that you're seeing? What are you feeling, good and bad?
Chief Change Officer
#155 From Buzzwords to Real Words: Chris Hare on Mastering Atomic Storytelling — Part Three
What might you call that movie? And that sort of thing. And so what that does is help you see... the trajectory that you're on, what you want that future to look like, but also what does your past look like and bringing up those scenes. And so that is one way of, it's interesting because it feels very peaceful in one sense. You're in this
Chief Change Officer
#155 From Buzzwords to Real Words: Chris Hare on Mastering Atomic Storytelling — Part Three
envisioning this quiet movie theater but the other hand it can be chaotic because you have all these stories that can come flooding in so that's one exercise that can really stir that up and then you can start to analyze okay what's the narrative that's going to get me there if i want a different future what's the narrative that's going to get me to that future
Chief Change Officer
#155 From Buzzwords to Real Words: Chris Hare on Mastering Atomic Storytelling — Part Three
And then the other piece is the one that I think is the most practical. If you want to find, uncover atomic stories that you didn't know were there is doing the 360s. So what I would recommend is picking three to five people.
Chief Change Officer
#155 From Buzzwords to Real Words: Chris Hare on Mastering Atomic Storytelling — Part Three
And this is not the 360 that many of us from corporate America are used to where you have people that there's all kinds of politics and they're evaluating you, potentially putting you down, being very critical. The goal here is not that. The goal here is to go and talk to three to five people who know you, care about you, and want you to succeed. And they know you in different spheres.
Chief Change Officer
#155 From Buzzwords to Real Words: Chris Hare on Mastering Atomic Storytelling — Part Three
And ask them, spend 30 minutes, ask if you can record the call, and ask them the first question. Based on how you've seen me live my life, what do you believe my number one value is? Or you could ask what are my top two values, whatever. And then the next question is, please tell a story that you believe best demonstrates that value. And there's other questions that you can ask.
Chief Change Officer
#155 From Buzzwords to Real Words: Chris Hare on Mastering Atomic Storytelling — Part Three
So if you're wanting to know thought leadership, for example, potential directions for thought leadership, what's the one thing that Vince should write about forever? If Vince could only talk about or write about one thing, what would that be to put constraints on it? So you take...
Chief Change Officer
#155 From Buzzwords to Real Words: Chris Hare on Mastering Atomic Storytelling — Part Three
those interviews you record them and then start looking at the patterns from them and seeing and looking at okay what are those stories that they told and how do they make me feel how do they challenge my thinking how might i synthesize those to shift the direction that i'm going The great example of this was how I ended up bringing 360 into my methodology.
Chief Change Officer
#155 From Buzzwords to Real Words: Chris Hare on Mastering Atomic Storytelling — Part Three
But I had on Art Delacruz, who's the CEO of Team Rubicon, an amazing nonprofit that deploys veterans, gives veterans community and purpose by creating opportunities for them to go and serve after natural disasters. And so Art had an entire career in the Navy and was a Top Gun instructor as a fighter pilot or naval aviator and was a Top Gun instructor.
Chief Change Officer
#155 From Buzzwords to Real Words: Chris Hare on Mastering Atomic Storytelling — Part Three
He said the only thing that was true in the first Top Gun movie was when their plane went into a 360 spin. And that happened to him. For 57 seconds, their plane was plunging towards the desert, and they did desert floor, and they did all of the things to get out of the spin, and they couldn't. And so they had to eject.
Chief Change Officer
#155 From Buzzwords to Real Words: Chris Hare on Mastering Atomic Storytelling — Part Three
A $40 million plane blows up in a fireball with, I think, 14,000 pounds of fuel. And then... They're parachuting down and have to maneuver their parachutes so they don't land in the fireball. What was interesting, he talked through the narrative, the internal narrative, and then how he navigated through that, and then how he came back from that to fly again.
Chief Change Officer
#155 From Buzzwords to Real Words: Chris Hare on Mastering Atomic Storytelling — Part Three
A lot of people wouldn't be able to fly again. He took ownership, even though he was mostly not at fault. What was interesting, though, is I posted about that on LinkedIn. It was the highest true engagement of any post I've ever had on LinkedIn because what was fascinating is person after person from across decades who have known him.
Chief Change Officer
#155 From Buzzwords to Real Words: Chris Hare on Mastering Atomic Storytelling — Part Three
came and commented on who he was as a leader, how they owed him for what he'd taught them or people within the nonprofit that he works in telling just remarkable stories about who he was as a leader. And so this wasn't him saying, how do I burnish my executive brand? And how do I tell this story that positions me as a thought leader? It was him telling this very raw and vulnerable story.
Chief Change Officer
#155 From Buzzwords to Real Words: Chris Hare on Mastering Atomic Storytelling — Part Three
It was also the fact that he lived in those moments. He led in those moments across his career, even when no one was watching or seemingly no one was watching. But because he had the guts to tell this story in that environment, that opened up for people to come and share these perspectives that gave him an opportunity to hear those things that he might never have heard.
Chief Change Officer
#155 From Buzzwords to Real Words: Chris Hare on Mastering Atomic Storytelling — Part Three
So that's what sparked that. But I would say those are the two tools is one, that future visioning, and then the other is the 360 piece.
Chief Change Officer
#155 From Buzzwords to Real Words: Chris Hare on Mastering Atomic Storytelling — Part Three
Yeah, so I think some of it is what will people take on? And so for some of my clients talking to three or four people, that might be a lot for them. But on the flip side, I'm actually working with a founder named Dr. Tammy Wang. So she used to be the VP of machine learning and analytics at Korn Ferry and her co-founder is a leadership development professor at Columbia.
Chief Change Officer
#155 From Buzzwords to Real Words: Chris Hare on Mastering Atomic Storytelling — Part Three
And so we're actually taking my storytelling frameworks and the first one we're doing is Atomic 360 and we're putting it on their AI leadership development platform. So it'll give you a tool where you could actually do that at scale. And so stay tuned on that. So I'll definitely share that with you so that you could go to 50 or 100.
Chief Change Officer
#155 From Buzzwords to Real Words: Chris Hare on Mastering Atomic Storytelling — Part Three
But yeah, I think absolutely if somebody wants to do that and can do that, I think that's amazing. There could also be the danger with people can give us feedback based on the version of us. So if we're living by a particular narrative and we're presenting in the world based on that narrative, people could actually end up reinforcing that narrative that needs to change.
Chief Change Officer
#155 From Buzzwords to Real Words: Chris Hare on Mastering Atomic Storytelling — Part Three
I had a client recently when I met with one of his 360 interviewees, highly successful businessman, phenomenal. And what I actually realized is. What my client's internal narrative was had been shaped by an interaction that he had with this friend and business leader years ago.
Chief Change Officer
#155 From Buzzwords to Real Words: Chris Hare on Mastering Atomic Storytelling — Part Three
And what this business leader had done is he had actually projected his narrative on my client and kind of infected his narrative. And so my client took that on and it created significant discontent and shifted his trajectory based on that.
Chief Change Officer
#155 From Buzzwords to Real Words: Chris Hare on Mastering Atomic Storytelling — Part Three
So if I had said, hey, this is truth, or if you'd had 50 people that were also saying, and I actually did have other people say similar things that would have kept my client embracing the wrong narrative. And so I think we just have to be careful and think about them in terms of these are inputs, but we need to synthesize them and frame them up against that future that we want to create.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
I had a conversation with someone from a company, a well-known company, that was struggling a lot. And this person's manager was the CMO, and the manager said, I own the narrative. I want you to work with me on the narrative. And the CEO came to this person and said, I own the narrative. I want you to work with me on the narrative.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
So you can see right there, at a meta level, the challenges they're having with their own narrative about narrative. But... What I found most helpful is, within a business, as a good friend of mine says, there's only one strategy, right? There's not the business strategy and then the marketing strategy and the customer experience strategy. There's one strategy.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
Ultimately, that narrative needs to be owned by the CEO. And the way that I view it is really, or define it, is... The strategic narrative or the narrative of the company is a translation of the business strategy and clearly communicating that in a way that aligns board to the front lines around the same future and then extending it further.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
I mean, you're obviously not going to communicate your business strategy to your customer, but you're going to communicate what's the differentiated future that only our company can create with our customers. In an ideal world, there should be one narrative and it should be the strategic narrative is the brand narrative, et cetera.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
But one of the challenges you run into is the brand narrative is often viewed as what's this creative manifesto that we're going to put out into the world. When you have one narrative that's directly hooked into the business strategy, absolutely it should be part and parcel of the brand, how the brand communicates, but it should be
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
If you want to use the word infect, but it should drive every single part of the company, customer experience, finance, operations, etc. A great example of this is when Bracken Darrell was the CEO of Logitech. Prior to that, he was the president at Braun, and he gave this speech about this future, this audacious future where every single part of a company would be led by human-centered design.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
And then he went looking for a company, failing so badly that the only way out was that narrative. And so that was Logitech. They were bleeding money, laying people off. I believe he 4X'd them in five years. What was fascinating is they won 250 design awards. He won the Edison Award that Gates and Jobs won. But all of that's big and exciting.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
But you go down to the small level, when they would close their books at the end of a quarter, it would take, I believe, 30 days for them to get any insights from that. So you imagine a company of that size with a blindfold on essentially for that 30 days.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
And so they had two fairly low level accountants who took what was manifested within that culture about or what was taught within the culture about human centered design aligned to his narrative. And again, it's tricky, right? Because this wasn't who knows how I haven't seen how this was communicated within the company's narrative.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
What was interesting is they then went and re-architected their entire process of closing and they took it from using human centered design and took it from 30 days to two days.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
So you imagine the impact that has on the business, but that shows the power of when the CEO has a narrative that they're then working with the business, not shoving it down and saying, you must do this thing, but having that narrative catch people's vision and propel them forward.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
I found it, and the young people listening might need to go to Wikipedia and look up what a cassette is, but I find it helpful and more visceral to think about narratives and our personal narratives as a cassette tape, a tape that's playing in our head, right? And that we're constantly writing and rewriting that and adjusting that.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
This is the future I'm creating, or this is what's happening in the present, or this is what happened in the past, and we fuel that with stories. So I'll give you a few different practical examples. So one, I have this one CEO that I work with. He's a serial CEO and board member. And Chicago MBA, you can go Chicago, I know you're a fan. Chicago MBA, McKinsey consultant.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
When he came to me, he said, it was, how do I, I have one narrative that I use with private equity, another that I use with venture capital, another that I use with board roles when I'm interviewing. And then I've got my hippie yoga community and my nonprofit work.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
Good morning, Vince. Thanks for having me.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
I actually love to start with the future that I'm working to create. So for me, I'm working to create a future where business leaders and just humans in general are celebrated and remembered, not just for what they've built, but for how they built it. who they took with them and also who they became in the process of getting there. So very much anchored in the future.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
My background, I started a very meandering career and then went into advertising, then went to Amazon and Microsoft, started my company in 2016, focused on marketing. And ultimately, probably around 2019, 2020, started to shift into strategic narrative practice.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
So essentially translating the business strategy of a company into a narrative that aligns everyone from the board to the buyer who may want very different things around shared and differentiated future. And then now I still do that work, but I'm also significantly focused on the leaders and the narratives that drive them and to help them create that future that I was talking about.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
Correct. I still work with corporations, but yes, I would say the seasons of it where I started with marketing, which is just oftentimes can be talking at people and then started to discover the power of narrative, which is more talking and co-creating with your audience. And then now I still do that some, but most of my focus now is on marketing.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
leaders and the narrative that they need to create to bring their audience with them, but then also the internal narrative that's gotten them here and how that potentially needs to shift to get them to the future.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
Yeah, so it's tricky, right? I had a meeting with the chief marketing officer of a big tech company once and I asked her, how do you define narrative? And within a matter of minutes, she defined it at least three different ways. So there is a bit of a language challenge in that everyone uses these terms interchangeably, and oftentimes they can be the same thing.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
What I've found helpful is to tease them out into, we all have stories that we tell ourselves and others constantly, and I view those as time bound. This happened, it started at this time, this thing happened and then it ended. And I view narrative as ongoing, but it's more of the narrative in my mind is more of an architecture that shapes a direction that an individual or a company is heading.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
So the stories, in my mind, are really, as I conceive of it, are really the fuel for the narrative. And so we take those stories, we synthesize them, and then we create a narrative out of them, and then we follow that narrative, and it propels us, whether we're talking about a business or an individual.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
Yeah, absolutely. So the first thing I would say to your point about the mass media, I absolutely agree. So for years, I wouldn't even... call myself a storyteller just because it was so overplayed. And I think on the one hand it's positive because it's sparked lots of conversations about it.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
But I think what's also happened is it's very reductionistic where people say, okay, here's one framework, like the hero's journey. And it's a paint by numbers. We take these elements and we shove them into this framework and it's going to work for us. And I think it can be a lot more complex than that.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
So one of my favorite examples, one of my clients, so he was a VP of Amazon Marketplace, took them from about eight employees to 4,000 and probably about 150 billion. And what was interesting is his name was Pete. At a certain point in time, their belief, I would say their narrative within the company was that the entire future of their business was resellers.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
So people who had a product and they were from whatever brand and were reselling it on the platform.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
And if you were to look at their data, and if you were to look at the stories that were hidden in those data, the stories that they would tell each other in the hallway about XYZ seller did this thing and had this success, it all pointed to the idea that it was just resellers and that was the future. So the stories were Vince has a product and has been selling this product successfully.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
Therefore, we need to keep doing this. That's the story example. The narrative is that belief of the future of Amazon Marketplace is resellers. Therefore, we must invest in those resellers. And then as a result of that narrative, the business then changes. throws everything at that and pursues that.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
What then happened then where a story actually shifted that narrative was Pete was invited to visit Brooklyn and met a number of multi-generational family-owned businesses. For example, an immigrant family potentially came over in the 30s or 40s. They may have started out repairing vacuum cleaners.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
get to the third generation and now they're inventing new products and consumables for vacuum cleaner bags, for example, and they're the brand owner. So all of a sudden he met brand owners and had conversations with them and just incredibly compelling stories that move you both emotionally, but also you're seeing the business potential of this.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
They didn't have a way to measure that or look for that in their data, or they weren't. If it was there, it was hidden. And so they took those outside stories, what I would call them as atomic stories, these small moments of energy and matter, so that peat collided with these people.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
heard their experiences, and as a result, brought those stories into the ecosystem and rewrote the narrative and said, actually, we believe the future might include these brand owners. And when that happened... had a tectonic shift. Now, I believe those brand owners, I believe they're an extraordinary part, tens of billions of dollars, if not more, of Amazon Marketplace's sales.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
And so in that case, the third generation owner that he met, they told him a story. So that's the story. And then it shifted the narrative, which is, this is the future of Amazon Marketplace. So that's how I view the interplay of them.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
If we had our cameras on right now, you'd see a huge smile on my face. Yes, exactly. That's exactly it. So I find it helpful to think about it as a narrative flywheel. That's probably my Amazon background. But exactly. So the stories are the fuel that flows into the flywheel.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
And then within that, the stories come in and then we synthesize those stories and look at the patterns within them, look at the different directions they could take us. And then we make choices about those Roger Martin's where to play and how to win. Based on these stories that we have now synthesized, we are going to make decisions about where to play and how to win.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
And then lastly, then we have experimentation or learnings from those that then create more stories. And then we continue to bring in stories from the ecosystem and around it goes. But you're exactly right. And I think the other piece that you said that is really powerful is is if you're Amazon or any other large company and you're to come out with
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
Like a narrative, you need to have one narrative. But you also spoke to the flip side, which is you said it needs to be flexible and there needs to be room for experimentation. And so I think there is Dr. Herminio Barra at London Business School talks about this for the individual is running experiments around different possible future selves when you're talking about your own narrative.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
But again, with companies, I think you can do the same thing. You're not going to put a bunch of different narratives out into the world and tell the world everything. Hey, shareholders, we're going to experiment with all these narratives. You've got to come to the market with one narrative, but having the ability to experiment and learn with possible futures and then use that to adapt ongoing.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
Yeah, so I think I was just thinking about this morning before our call is that a business is a collection or an ecosystem of narratives and not an infinite number, but seemingly infinite number of narratives that are just colliding against each other. I have a narrative internally about what you're saying right now.
Chief Change Officer
#247 Chris Hare: When the Story Guy Becomes the Story — Part One
Or if you're my manager, you have a narrative about me and what I'm doing with my time and what my future is. We have all of these narratives that can collide with one another. In an ideal world, there's one narrative within a company. One of the challenges is the way that the word narrative is used. Oftentimes within companies, the chief marketing officer will say that they own the narrative.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
How do you get those two? How do you bridge that gap between the two? And because I experienced a few failures in expeditions very early in my life, I think I was able to see the crisis of building a team and how that can win or lose a goal in a sort of high stakes way.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
boiler environment and translate that to work i think more recently yeah so in summary when i think about the successes i've had all failures in the world of software it basically comes down to the team
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
And the realization that, yes, I'm supposed to be really good at what I do, whatever it is that I do in that particular company, but I'm never supposed to be better than any individual who works with me. And as an expedition leader or as a business leader, I'm effectively the secretary for the team.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
My job is to check in on everyone, make sure that they're aligned and get rid of any obstacles in their way so that they can do the best jobs possible. which I think is a very different attitude to the sort of gung-ho, lead from the front attitude. Don't get me wrong. I think that's important.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
I think leaders demonstrating their commitment to a particular cause, to a business venture, to an expedition, whatever it is, through self-sacrifice, that's key there. It's not necessarily competitive. Although I think competition has a lot of good, a lot of benefits for both business and expeditions, at least in the lead up to them.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
It's about being a servant for a team that where each team member in their respective domains is a much better performer than you are and enabling them by guiding the direction of the whole.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
Look, I have ego and I failed more than I've succeeded. So I think it's a goal. I don't know if I'm a good leader, but I'm trying to be and introspective about it. I don't think the factor of being a leader is being a servant. There are many cases where you as a leader have to build a kind of myth around yourself. You have to be something that people aspire to be toward or to be like.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
You have to demonstrate qualities, the best qualities that maybe they see in themselves. You have to exemplify that. But those qualities don't necessarily mean obviously beating everyone else at their own game. Those qualities could be patience, wisdom, experience, humility, strength, ruthlessness. This is an underrated one, I think.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
Every one of your team members trusts you not to make the best decisions for each of them individually, but to make the best decision for the expedition as a whole, right? This is a typical lesson you learn as an expedition leader. You're not there to make everybody individually happy. You're not an adventure tour guide, let alone just a regular tour guide.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
You're there to achieve a particular goal. That's what expeditions, that's what sets expeditions apart from tourist holidays, right? They have specific goals, typically scientific goals.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
or attainment goals, you try to do something for the first time, and everybody should walk into this experience understanding that they're walking into the unknown, and that ultimately, they're going to have to trust one person who will make decisions, perhaps against your own interests, maybe with you, but incidentally, but overall, contributing to the final goal.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
And I think this analogy is particularly important when it comes to low performers in the business world, by the way. Which is that too often I've seen great leaders in every other sense who go this particular person's maybe dragging their feet a bit or is lagging a bit. But you know what?
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
The team performance overall is so strong that we can just basically mask that and I can avoid an awkward conversation. The expedition world has taught me that you nip that in the bud as soon as you sense that, right? Whether it's with a particular plan or just understanding what's going on, you need to address that almost immediately.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
Too many times in life, I've made so many mistakes, but too many times in life, I have a gut sense, like a gut inclination towards a particular direction, and it becomes vindicated months or even years later, even though I knew what I needed to do a year ago or months ago. Now in an expedition scenario, that's life or death, right?
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
So you don't, the pressure to make that type of decision is much more to a business decision where someone loses their livelihood or their income, which is still a big deal, but obviously not as big a deal as on an expedition. And I've seen a lot of leaders who just fail to understand that. And so they let low performers continue working in their organizations. But guess what?
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
The people you work with, if you've done a semi-decent job, are not stupid. They can see that this person has slack and is being let off. And it really affects the morale in particular of your top performers who say, what's the point? What's the point of me pushing towards this big vision that I've been sold on that I want to work towards?
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
If I don't have to put in the same effort and still be around. And it's the same thing on an expedition. The last thing you really want on expedition is someone who requires a lot of energy and a lot of support, but contributes very little. You have to be agnostic to the reasons for this, right? You can be very sympathetic with someone on an expedition who's having a really difficult time.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
And at least on the expeditions I've organized with people that I haven't done expeditions with, they're always in generally well-supported areas. So if I need to evacuate someone or get them out, I don't need to be an ass about it. And if I'm allowed to say that, yeah, I can basically be sympathetic to them and help them get out the expedition without it affecting them or the team.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
It's the same for a business. In fact, in many ways, a business is an expedition on easy method. If you need to let someone go tomorrow and you do it in a responsible way that gives them the support they deserve and need, you can make that decision without worrying about whether they'll find work again or whatever. You cannot do that in an expedition environment.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
Yeah, okay. With regards to the first part of the question... I think I got very lucky. Anyone who's had any reasonable success in their life and relies on their own sheer will to explain that success, I think there's something they're not telling you. Although I greatly and deeply admire those types of people. That type of notion per se, I think it's actually quite cool.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
That being said, for me, it first started at home, in particular with my parents, my mother and father. They had, going back to my analogy of mountains, they had particular goals and peaks that they wished I would summit. But those peaks were actually, they weren't even peaks. They were more like those North stars. They were values.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
So my parents didn't tell me that they wanted me to have a particular career or to earn a certain amount of money or to go to a particular university. In fact, I can even remember that when I, I did very well in my application. I got into almost every university that I applied to. And I remember telling my mom and dad about it, so I remember calling them.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
And I remember that my father, when he, when he heard about, for example, Harvard, which for your average Hong Kong is like a big deal, right? You're in Harvard. He was, he thought I was going to be studying in New York. They just had no idea about where these universities were. And in fact, had very little input in me applying to the US at all.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
I had a university spot before I applied to the US in the Netherlands. which I was happy with and they were happy with too. But more importantly for my parents were values. In particular, start something, finish something that you start was a big one. Do the right thing ethically.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
That was a big one for my father, who was my first board member at 24 hour race and was always the guiding pillar in terms of its moral and ethical framework, which as a young man in my late teens and early twenties, I could often forget about what a What are we doing here? And are we doing it for the right reasons? So I had a really good network.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
Even I remember one of my first non-familial mentors was a man called Paul Salnico, who started a very successful business here in Asia called The Executive Center. It's very high end service to office arrangement. And I remember talking to him about our goal, our mission, our vision of the 24-hour race, which he was an early board member of, was to be the end of slavery.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
And he said, Chris, if you think that you can set this kind of mission, you don't understand human nature. Humans are always going to be exploiting each other to some degree. And you need to be thoughtful and mindful of this as you pursue your journey. I remember that hit me like a ton of bricks, right, at the age of 18 or 19. But he was absolutely right. I can't change human nature.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
And there's always going to be people willing to exploit other people for a dollar. So at best, I can mitigate it. And I think that's a nice segue into meaning and purpose in life. I go back to that analogy I said earlier, could you spend your whole life fighting for something that you will dedicate every minute you have to and still fail?
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
And can you still have a smile on your face at that passing moment? I don't think that's a really easy question to answer. It really isn't. But judging your own life success based on comparisons, which are really easy to make in the digital age, because 100 years ago, you compared yourself to 50 neighbors. Today, you compare yourself to anyone who's online.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
And I think that creates a lot of anxiety, by the way, for young people. Look, you as an individual will always have to tread a balance between what you want to be and what you need to be. You know, I want to be an astronaut. No, no joke. For a long time, my life goal, my ultimate expedition was to become the first man to circumnavigate the moon. It still is, by the way.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
I don't know how likely it is, but it still is. It's still a big goal of mine. But what I need to be is a really good son to my parents. And what I need to be is a really good partner to my girlfriend. And what I need to be is an excellent chairman for the 24 hours.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
And what I need to do is pay my electricity and gas bill, which would be really high because I've got into the sous vide cuisine recently. So I need to find constantly a balance between these two things.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
And I explored, as any person does, regardless of their age, I explored lots of different philosophies that I thought may provide the answers with this tension, what I want to be, what I need to be. And ultimately, what's given me the most fulfillment has been a sort of vitalist Nietzschean sort of approach. Nietzsche, in my opinion, is the greatest philosopher of the 20th century.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
And I wouldn't be surprised if he accrues almost religious-like deference in the next century or two. And one of Nietzsche's most important tenets is to live life with vitality
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
which means, contrary to a lot of different religions, to live it with energy in the moment, to think about what gives you pleasure and what gives you joy in the present right now, and to use the past and the future only as guiding posts, but mainly to think of what maximizes your human experience today.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
And this is a philosophy, I think, in today's world, which is so full of challenges, I can't even begin to talk about them, a very helpful philosophy. So I think aspire toward values that are important, but accept that you're not perfect and you'll never be able to embody those values. Just aspire towards them and try and do things that will make you happy, even if you fail at them.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
And I want to end with one analogy, which I think summarizes this philosophy in some way. When I was really young, at the start of the 24 Hour Race, the types of people I looked up to were like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, people who had transcended the hierarchy of impact to the point where everybody knew who they were and everybody had experienced some benefit from these people.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
And I thought, okay, if there's a hierarchy of giving back, it starts with family and friends, it elevates to a community. And then finally it's maybe something global. I think today I realized I had it the wrong way round. You know, the easiest thing, even though it's not easy at all. And people like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk have my utmost respect.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
is to create this kind of incredible but kind of minute change to people's lives versus the hardest thing is to look at the people around you today, your family, your friends, and to help them in meaningful ways, like beyond just a phone call, which I think is important, don't get me wrong, but to actually invest in them and invest in their future. And I can think of people who...
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
said small things or did small or big things for me that will be forever more important in my life than any Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg. These are just people I met and encountered briefly or have known for a long time who made huge and lasting impacts. And all of us have that opportunity today.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
All of us have that opportunity today to look at the people that we know and make a difference in their lives in a positive way. And I think that's the paragon of the human experience. The paragon is being someone who's not always a nice guy, right? Sometimes it involves giving tough love, but who can provide that value, provide that feedback to the people closest to you.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
And I think you can live a very satisfied life just by doing that.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
yeah that's a great question look we've honestly had hundreds of thousands of challenges and they can really span from existential through to incidental so existential for example was just identifying our purpose what are we we're not quite a grassroots organization we put these races together we raised quite a bit of Are we in a grassroots NGO? Are we an events provider?
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
Are we an anti-slavery charity? Just figuring that out in the early days was really tough. We've had other stuff since. For example, we had one event that was literally received a threat from ISIS at the peak of the ISIS terror wave in the 2010s. And we had to make a spot decision whether to cancel our event or to continue it.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
So you have these sort of momentary hurdles and you have the existential ones. The way I always think about it is like climbing a mountain. When you climb a mountain, and let's say it's a totally novel new mountain that hasn't really been climbed before, you identify an approach from where the perspective that you have, you'll of course miss things.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
And then you attempt to summit or wherever you attempt an approach. And often there are obstacles and maybe you get about halfway and then there's an ice field and... It's insurpassable, and so you turn around and you reevaluate your approach. But fundamentally, the goal is the same, which is to summit that mountain.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
And sometimes you get really close, and you're so close that it's very tempting to carry on. But again, there's some kind of threat, a big crevasse or whatever, that just isn't worth the risk. And of course, if you're very lucky and if you're very good at it, you do summit the mountain.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
But as any mountaineer will tell you, when you get to the top of a peak, what's the first thing you see another peak that you want to find? There's this sort of aspect to a charity where I would describe, for example, an ISIS threat to a group of students in a particular city trying to fight slavery.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
as a similar situation to a crevasse on that mountain analogy versus what is the actual mountain we're climbing is more existential and more akin to what is the 24-hour race what's its role in the world if that makes sense i really like the analogy used is actually quite philosophical it reminds me of a chinese saying
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
Yeah, let me expand a little bit on that analogy by going into the realm of the absurd. So in 2011, I took a gap year after graduating high school. And while all my friends were heading on trips to Phuket and various destinations in Asia. I got on a train and then a plane and arrived in the capital city of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, where I met a team of 14 in total seasoned explorers.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
And then we went all the way out to the west of Mongolia and we began to attempt to walk across the Gobi desert. And I was young. I think I just hadn't turned 18 yet. I was 17. And as we began this journey, the Gobi desert itself, sometimes for whatever reason back then, the GPS signal wouldn't work. Now navigation was a little bit
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
more simple in the early days because you basically had a series of mountains to your north and you had a series of mountains to your south. The sun rose and you just followed the sun and you kept the mountains between, you'd more or less be on track.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
But as that mountain range, the Altai mountains subsided into the flatness of the Gobi, you know, we struggle with navigation to the point where we'd have to double check where we thought we were with stars. And what I think is interesting about cellular navigation, this millennia-long way of getting around the world, is you follow stars, but you never really expect to set foot on them.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
So you can follow the north star, which is the one everyone talks about, or you can navigate by it, and it can guide you to incredible destinations. It can get you to exactly where you want to be at various points of your journey. But by following this thing, you're not going to ever reach it. And I think in some way, good goals are like that.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
Good goals guide your day-to-day decision-making, whether they're immediate, random threats to whatever it is you're building or doing in your personal life or in your business life, or totally big decisions to make. You can always refer to your so-called North Star or whatever star it is that you navigate by. I think about that analogy a lot. What's a goal worth pursuing?
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
were you to spend your whole life pursuing it and you were to never reach it and you're in your old frail years you could still say to yourself that was a hell of a shot and it was totally worth it You know, what are goals that are so important that failure is expected and not a disappointment because the goal itself is just too important for that.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
And that just, that was a thought process I had back on the Adobe expedition some time ago.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
Okay. So in short, I worked, I studied at Harvard from having graduated in Hong Kong, took a gap year, in that gap year applied to uni, ended up going to Harvard and a year and a half into that degree, I dropped out. I did what's called an indefinite leave of absence. So you don't lose your seat at the university, but you're basically allowed to take as much time as you want at the university.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
And in that time, I transitioned from being a charity founder to a software founder. And I have a lot of thoughts about the evolution of software since I started working in the industry in 2014 till today. As a matter of fact, my background, I started at Harvard studying a very generically named field, East Asian Studies.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
mainly focused on China, and in particular, Ming Dynasty Chinese history onwards. And I transitioned to the field of computational neuroscience, which is eventually where I got my degree. So I was always attracted to the field of technology. And anyone who was alive in 2013 or 2014 could see it was really early days for adopting and deploying technology into various industries.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
So I made that transition. That being said, everything, every success I've had, and for that matter, every failure I've had while working in the full profit technology and software sector, I can basically trace to an analogy from an expedition that I've partaken on. So
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
Talking about, for example, team building, there's an expression that I first heard when I was rowing in high school, at boarding school, which was the first boat is only as fast as the second boat. And I think what was meant, I was on the second boat, by the way, I wasn't on the first.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
I think what was meant by this is that you define, your performance is not defined by your best players, it's defined by your weakest players. And in business, this can be a little bit of a trope because our attitude often in the business world is to give people chances and to make sure they perform. But the expedition world, there are no such, there's no such forgiveness.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
So I can think of one expedition that I was on, for example. where the expedition leader, who wasn't me, was himself an accomplished explorer, but was not very good at understanding that distinction between your top players and your, I wouldn't say bottom players, but your weaker links.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
As an expedition leader, you need to make sure that your top players are humbled and understand that they're only as strongest as their weakest player. And so as an expedition leader, you have really two choices. You can either get rid of your weakest link or you can rein in your top performers. That's really what happens. And by the way,
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
To be quite honest, by the time that an expedition actually takes place, it's really too late to be making these decisions. They should be made well before you do the expedition itself. And this particular person didn't really understand this concept very well.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
And the result was that small discrepancies in the abilities between team members were not managed properly, led to huge discrepancies in morale and expedition success. And on this particular expedition, I think over 70% of the participants ended up dropping out. And they dropped out for health reasons. There were some very close calls. And when I say close call, I mean near death, okay?
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
This doesn't happen in the business world, but in the expedition world, it definitely does. And just due to low morale, we lost some really great team players. So... There's a sort of like a motto in the startup world, fire fast, hire slow kind of thing. With expeditions, it's very much like this.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
If there's an issue, you almost immediately have to try and address it, but you have to address it in a way where you're not just benchmarking everyone against your most capable person. And moreover, what I'll add is I've been on plenty of expeditions where I've You have to be extremely wary of the type of person who is extremely physically confident, mentally competent.
Chief Change Officer
#233 From Rainy-Day Idea to $20M: Chris Schrader’s Race for Change – Part Two
Often these people end up being quite weak in the expedition environments where you operate absolutely as a team. So I guess what I'm saying is that a business is a watered down, in my opinion, a watered down version of an expedition. An expedition is a hyperbolic version of a business. And especially when it comes to thinking about team dynamics. Who's your weakest? Who's your strongest?