Sara Lobkovich
Appearances
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
Or figuring out a more efficient way to load the washer. That strategy. It's There's strategy in how you're going to decide to reclaim if your house has gotten a little away from you and it's a little messy. There's strategic play in how to reorganize your home. There's just strategic play in so many, in anything, in anything we do.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
And that the message I hope to bring with this book is strategy isn't just about being smart. Strategy isn't about being the person who can write the perfect line. It's not about being the person.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
who can stand at the front of the room and sell the most effectively it's about asking and answering questions that make people say wow that's a really good question i haven't thought of that way before or i haven't had a chance to think about this before because That's how we change systems that aren't working.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
And I think the more people who feel empowered to or the more people who feel like they can ask those questions instead of wondering what's wrong with me. that this doesn't work for me, the more people who can ask questions about their environment or about our world or about our cultures instead of quietly thinking, I don't know what's wrong with me that this doesn't make sense to me.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
I don't know what's wrong with me that I don't understand how to succeed. What's wrong with me that I can't just do the work like everybody else? I don't want people to have to think those things. I want fewer people to have those kinds of statements running through their head and more people to know that there might be nothing, there's nothing wrong with you.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
You just might be seeing things through a strategic lens in an environment where, based on your experience and my experience, that's not what everybody always wants.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
You nailed it. That is me. This book is a love letter to me earlier in my career. But I know I'm not alone. I know there are so many other people who are having experiences like I did. And it...
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
If I had written this earlier in my life, if I had somehow had the capacity to write this earlier in my life, I would have written a book to people who are strategically wired and feel like they don't fit in a world that's really focused on tactics. To people who feel like square pegs in their careers, like we're always a square peg trying to fit into a round pole and just don't fit in.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
I'm in my late 40s now, but it was in my 30s and then my early 40s when I started to learn about the impact of trauma on the brain and on cognition and the role that trauma can play in changing behavior for people. And I am a trauma survivor. I had early childhood experiences, adverse early childhood experiences. So my brain is really affected by trauma and trauma history.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
Starting to learn about that and then discovering in my mid to late 40s that I have off the charts ADHD. And I haven't been evaluated for autism, but many of my friends are autistic. So I have a lot of affinity for autism. and have really worked to make sure that my work and my teaching is accessible to people with autism or who have autistic traits.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
These are people who are not specifically served by a lot of our mainstream business focus on career. Mainstream businesses focus on career and a lot of what gets written in mainstream business books
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
either shows or speaks to the benefits of neurodivergence because lots of entrepreneurs are neurodivergent so that independent and creative and innovator streak part of neurodivergence gets played up or gets positive treatment in business press without necessarily being mentioned as neurodivergence.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
But it is really important to me that people who look at business books and feel like they're not written for them, I think I have two business books on my entire bookshelf that are geared towards introverted business people. And there are more books than that out there.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
But so much of business books made me and other readers who have some of the characteristics that I just described feel like we don't fit in or there's something wrong with us. They encourage those voices that are in a lot of our heads.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
And it's important to me to just be very transparent and say, my work is for neurotypical people because neurotypical people can benefit from learning simple practices for communicating clear expectations.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
And my work is for neurodivergent people and people who are from other cognitive styles or neurotypes and other cultural backgrounds beyond just standard American business or mainstream business culture. to learn practices for developing and communicating strategy and expectations and goals in a way that can be understood by anyone.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
There was no way I could write that book without just being really honest that It is for neurotypical leaders to develop skills to work better with their neurodivergent employees, which also benefits everyone else while we're at it. And it's a tool that people who've struggled in their careers can use to improve.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
take a step to put themselves back in the driver's seat of their careers and tap into their intrinsic motivation and reconnect with what they want and need and take the risk of paying a little less attention to what people expect of you or the ways that you've been coached to mask your behaviors or to
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
conform with some sort of professional expectation that doesn't fit you or doesn't fit your cognitive wiring and operate from your center and from your truth with tools that help you be well received by others that you work with. Yeah, again, it's For me, we started this conversation with my activism when I was nine years old and in the third grade. And it comes back around to that.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
That has not changed. I'm still an absolute Chinette activist. And my hope is that this book is a way that people who haven't necessarily been served by the mainstream business press... can find that they belong in any room they want to put themselves in, including in the CEO chair, in the organization that they want to work in, because we need people who are wired differently.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
in every role there is. We need people who think differently in every role there is. So I just, my hope is that this is one little step toward eliminating some of the barriers that people experience in their careers and especially in the transition into leadership.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
Yeah, it's one way that I think about my work is The people, the groups of people that we've talked about who are less served in mainstream business press, folks like me, I wasn't born with the same heuristics for, and I certainly didn't see growing up. How to be an adult in a corporate setting. There weren't corporate settings in the town I grew up in and my parents were public employees.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
So when I became a grown up and started working in corporate environments, it was like plunking me down on another planet. And I had to build my own heuristics and mental shortcuts and figure out how to make my own step-by-steps for things that other people took for granted. And that's what
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
The work I do now is, and that's what these books are, is they're just ways to fill in those heuristics gaps that everyone has. It's not just neurotypical people or people who are cognitively wired differently or from different cultural backgrounds. We all have gaps in our heuristics, and so this is an effort to give people an option for a coherent set of agreed heuristics around
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
Simple strategic planning and goal setting, because then not only does it fill in the gaps for some of us who weren't born with these skills. Naturally, it also gives us a shared language that we can use when we work with other people.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
and that we can align on shared words and meanings which really i think is one of the most under valued simple things that organizations can do to improve performance is just give words meaning and consistently use those meanings agree on what our important words mean
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
because organizations lose tremendous amounts of cognitive horsepower and wasted human effort just because they're using different... People are using the same word and they mean different things. It's remarkable. Yeah, so it is. It's just the books are, as passionate as I am, they are technical business books.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
They're about how to set goals, how to organize to improve achievement of goal, and ultimately how to improve your organizational and career performance. I'm a numbers girl. I want to see those numbers go up at the end of the day. And if the numbers aren't going up, I want to have data to know why they're not. They are passionate books that have a real mission and purpose behind them.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
And they're also, to your point, analytical tools that can be applied to help people work together better, communicate better. with each other get aligned with each other with less drama and less incoherence and work together to achieve bigger and better and bolder empirically measurable outcomes and It's remarkable. I've got two books now and three trainings and I train coaches in this stuff.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
Yeah, I can share from my experience. I can't speak for the larger field because I think my experience was a little unusual. I tried to go the big agency strategy route. I had a few years where I applied over and over to the names that you just mentioned and more. And I really wanted to get in that big agency strategy consulting space.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
And it's really not that complicated. We have a couple words that we just agree on definitions of. We have a couple formulas that we can apply. So an objective has a basic formula or makeup and a key result has a basic formula or makeup. And we can say what is and isn't a key result.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
And then there are a few key questions that people learn to ask each other so that instead of coming into strategic planning with all the answers, we come into the strategic planning process with questions that we can ask each other and genuine curiosity about. About our data and our performance and each other's facts and observations and insights.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
And those are the tools that these books are bringing to people. And I'm just really, I'm really hopeful and optimistic and hopeful. excited to see people who might not have felt seen in other strategic planning circles or who might not know that they're strategists right now or that their struggles are because they're strategically wired.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
I'm just so excited to see people discover these tools and then hear what they do with them. That's the part I can't wait for.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
And I never even got a call because I didn't have the right names on my resume. I didn't have the right experience. I wasn't at the right stage of my career. I didn't come from the right school. So I have worked with lots of those consultants. I've worked alongside those consultants.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
I have been brought in after this jump with those consultants and, um, done additional work where it wasn't as successful, um, And so I've seen that big strategy machine operate. I've also worked with folks who come from that world who are some of my dearest colleagues, incredibly talented people.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
They learned brilliant ways of working in that environment and really strong frameworks for working in those environments. learned how to work well and how to serve clients well. So I've observed and learned a lot being adjacent to those types. But that the big agency thing just wasn't something that I was a candidate for. So I worked in smaller agencies.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
I worked in creative agencies to begin with, and then I started working in smaller consultancies. And I think some of the misconceptions or misunderstandings in the workplace, I think too often The words strategy and smart are conflated. So being strategic or being a strategist is not just being the smartest person in the room.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
Being a strategist is being someone who is curious and has a toolkit of questions. that help uncover facts and observations that then spark insight and let us develop ideas. And so I think that's the thing that that I didn't realize until really late is being a strategist.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
I'm looking at a book on my bookshelf right now that I always keep within arm's length by Mark Pollard, and it's called Strategy is Your Words. But he is very much from the school. He's a rebel in strategy. He's a delightful rebel in the field of strategy. And Strategy is your words. Strategy is your questions.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
Strategy is the curiosity to ask questions that yield facts and observations and possibility that wasn't there before the questions were asked. So I think we just think of, I don't, for one, I don't think a lot of people know what strategy is as a field. But for two, when we do, I think we think of strategists as the madman reference, the Don Draper. He's an account guy, but he's also strategic.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
The polished person in the suit at the front of the room that's got the line and the story and the room is captivated by the strategy that's being unfolded. And the world of strategy that I've always worked in is not that.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
It's me and other collaborators from a diverse range of backgrounds standing at a whiteboard on a Saturday trying to solve a problem that we're so excited to solve together or to create possibility around that we're They're by choice on a Saturday, standing at a whiteboard together, throwing ideas or throwing facts and observations and insights around.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
So I think especially what we see when we think of strategic consulting, it is the McKinsey's, it's the Bain's, it's the big ones, it's the folks in suits and the frameworks and they do brilliant research. And that's what we see in the field.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
And then there's also this side of it that is just people asking insightful questions of each other, doing research, actually reading research, doing research, finding links and developing insights. and then seeing what that sparks in terms of ideas. And that's more the part of strategy that I worked in.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
And then luckily, I always thought that I was something other than a strategist because I had seen the McKinsey's and the Bain's and the large strategy. I knew what that looked like. And I just feel very lucky that I was able graduating out of the field and into consulting at a time when Mark Pollard and some of the other really rebels in the field of strategy were emerging and
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
That was when I started to see those people in their work and read what they were doing. I was like, oh my gosh, I have a place. Like that is my person. I'm not going to get his last name. I need to put the pronunciation right on screen, but Rob Estraneo is another. I'll make sure that you have the link for the show notes. These are folks who are just democratizing strategy.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
And this all started with you mentioning my book, but I hope to contribute to the democratization of strategy so that we don't think of it as the smartest person or as the person in the most expensive suit or with the most beautiful slide deck.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
But we can think of strategy as the way that we tap into our very deeply human insight to develop scaffolding for solutions to our biggest problems, including the big problems that affect human life, not just dollars and cents.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
Yeah, when it started, the book was just about no BS objectives and key results. And actually, when the book started, it was about evolutionary objectives and key results. That was the original branding that I used around my approach to objectives and key results, which is a aligned goal setting model that I'm sure we're going to talk about a little more.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
But I originally branded my approach as evolutionary OKRs. It became, I taught a course that I called the working title was No BS OKRs. And it was just the working title. But the response to it was so strong, I never went back. So the approach has been branded the no BS objectives and key results or no BS OKRs ever since.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
We do occasionally work in conservative environments or environments where that no BS is considered too vulgar or not appropriate. And so we use the evolutionary OKR branding in those spaces. But for the most part, the clients that I work with, are drawn in by the fact that this is just a no BS approach to objectives and key results.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
It's a straightforward, learnable, focused way to work with a methodology that's often really overcomplicated by people. And so that's where the book started was being a book about no BS OKRs. And at a certain point, I realized I really think I have two books. I think I have a workbook, which is really about objectives and key results, No BS Objectives and Key Results.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
And so we carved that out and that's available now. I have a PDF version of the No BS Objectives and Key Results or No BS OKRs workbook. which is really, it gives you the words and meanings and the mindset of working with this type of goal setting, but it's really focused on doing. It's really focused on exercises and worksheets that help you create your goals.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
And then the big book, which was what we called it for a long time, was more philosophical. It was more about the why of adopting an approach to strategic planning, not just objectives and key results, but I work in the broader context of strategic planning.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
And so it was this other book that was about modernized, simplified, human-centered methods for strategic planning for meaning for humans so that they could actually use the strategy that was being created. and the no BS objectives and key results. And there was, I wish I could actually remember. I should look back at my notes and see if I have notes on the day that title happened.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
I actually don't remember now. I have some working memory issues and executive functioning issues. So my memory can be a bit spotty. I don't remember. what it was that prompted the title. I think I was doing an ideation session with one of my strategic partners, because I work with a bunch of collaborators.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
And I think I said something like, if I could name the book anything, I would name it, You Are a Strategist. But I can't do that. And here's why. And But that title, the minute it came out of my mouth, I knew that was the title. I knew that was the book. I had to rewrite the book to make it that book.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
It's been a lot of effort to take the book from a book about bouquets to a book that really delivers on its title. But I just got the manuscript back for proofreading. I just got the manuscript back from its first proofread. And I started reading it this weekend and I think I got to page 10 or 12 and then started to cry because it's the book that I wish I had earlier in my career.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
To help me know that I wasn't alone in my career. And so that for me, I've been in, I did get the feedback that I should name it. Are you a strategist or some other variation? And I've just absolutely from the moment that title was a possibility held firm to it because it's for every person who's ever been told.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
You need to, I don't know how to say this without using a word that I don't usually use, but so let me find an alternative of you need to simplify your work. It's too complicated. This is too smart. Your work is too smart. You need to make it simpler. or anyone who's ever heard, you're too strategic. I need you to focus on the tactics. I need you to get executional.
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
But it's also for everyone who's ever heard, you need to be more strategic. And there's never been. I got that feedback early in my career. You need to be more strategic. I can tell you there was nowhere to go to get help on what to do about that. So it is, to me, this is
Chief Change Officer
#227 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part Two
Definitely a passion project with that particular book because I just want everyone to have the chance to get acquainted with their inner strategist because their inner strategist is in there no matter what they do for a living. You might be a dishwasher washing dishes and noticing things in the restaurant and putting linky things together in your brain and that strategy.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
And that was, I'd say, in addition to what I'm doing now, that was really the sweet spot of my career. Working in creative agencies in a senior role so I could actually make change. I could lead people the way that I wanted to lead people and in a way that felt good to me. I could nurture other strategic talent, like spot and nurture other folks who are wired strategically. My
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
Some of my proudest experiences in that agency chapter of my life was spotting potentially strategic talent from the admin pool or the intern list and being able to nurture folks who had not been considered for strategy roles into the field of strategy. So my work graduated from content strategy into actual brand strategy and planning. And then that was when I loved my work. I love my colleagues.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
I loved my team. My team was incredible. And I was the guy on the plane. So I I'd be at the office and they'd say, we need you in Cleveland and I'd stop at home and grab a suitcase and I'd be on a plane and then I'd ask when I was on the plane, okay, what's the client and what are we doing? And then I'd prep on the plane and then deliver the pitch or the collaboration or whatever it was and
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
So I found myself always on the go, a lot of travel, trying to maintain my team at home, my leadership of my team, having at that point very little life. And my dog lived with my mom and dad for way too long during that chapter. And that was what led me ultimately to that burnout that then had me thinking, I can't sustain this.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
I need to find ways to do this differently or to do something differently. And I can't just be constantly in activity without some sort of why for myself or some sort of reason or some self-set goals. And so that kind of brings it full circle to that 2016 year when I started creating my own self-set goals.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
It's such a good question, Vince, because Now I am professionally trained as a coach. I, part of my work is helping people in organizations remain unstuck. But partly because of all my wiring and the way that I've navigated my career, early career when I would move from opportunity to opportunity based on my interest and the opportunities that were presented to me.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
And then later in my career when I started to become just an insatiably curious student of career and leadership and change. I have had times in my career where, in retrospect, I think I was stuck. Like when I think back, it's like I overstayed somewhere or I had to pay the rent and I didn't have something lined up so I didn't make a move.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
But I have always been so intensely curious that I don't feel like I have struggled with stuckness as much because when I get stuck, I just get intensely curious. Curiosity is an antidote for me to so many ills. Curiosity is an antidote to anxiety. It's an antidote to stuckness. And so I've always, I think, been able to shift my brain. I shouldn't say always.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
Later in my career, earlier in my career, I did really struggle. It was just more kind of survival and trying to figure out desperately what was expected of me and what it would mean to succeed. So I think Earlier in my career, I managed stuckness by just trying to be more pleasing and trying to be a better mind reader and trying to figure out what everyone else wanted or needed from me.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
But then later in my career... my curiosity developed and it just meant I could never be that stuck because I always had a playground in my brain and something to learn. I started one of the tactics I haven't thought about in a long time. But one of the tactics when I did have a couple of jobs that weren't a great sit, there was one in particular that was a dream job.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
I was so excited to land that role. And then I had the experience that resonated with you of I was hired in to an innovation capacity. They hired me because of my passion. rebelliousness in content and social media. I had a public profile and a writing reputation in that space. And they hired me because of all that.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
And then once I was in, it was the transition from the, what they thought they wanted to what they actually got. And so that is one role that I do remember feeling stuck in and also heartbroken that it wasn't the dream job that I hoped it to be. That said, I still have some of my most dear relationships are from that job. So it's never all bad. But in that job, I just remember Two things.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
I remember telling myself, okay, I thought I was coming into a dream job. What I've actually got is this is like a mini MBA in how to work in an enterprise environment. It was my first big company job. And I'm like, all right, I guess I'm going to get some experience with how to exist in a large political organization where Your length of tenure matters, and there's a lot of resistance to change.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
So I'm just going to make this a mini MBA for myself in that. And that was what helped me start to get curious. So whenever I did experience stuckness, I think I told myself, all right, this is an MBA in something. I'm going to learn something being here. So what can I make that? What can I learn here?
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
And then I just thought of it as being able to then tap into my dedicated student and curious brain instead of only feeling the suffering and frustration.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
Yeah, I can share from my experience. I can't speak for the larger field because I think my experience was a little unusual. I tried to go the big agency strategy route. had a few years where I applied over and over to the names that you just mentioned and more. And I really wanted to get in that big agency strategy consulting space.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
And I never even got a call because I didn't have the right names on my resume. I didn't have the right experience. I wasn't at the right stage of my career. I didn't come from the right school. So I have worked with lots of those consultants. I've worked alongside those consultants.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
I have been brought in after this jump with those consultants and, um, done additional work where it wasn't as successful, um, And so I've seen that big strategy machine operate. I've also worked with folks who come from that world who are some of my dearest colleagues, incredibly talented people. They learned brilliant things.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
ways of working in that environment and really strong frameworks for working in those environments. Learned how to work well and how to serve clients well. So I've observed and learned a lot being adjacent to those types. But the big agency thing just wasn't something that I was a candidate for. So I worked in smaller agencies.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
I worked in creative agencies to begin with, and then I started working in smaller consultancies. And I think some of the misconceptions or misunderstandings in the workplace, I think, too often... The words strategy and smart are conflated. So being strategic or being a strategist is not just being the smartest person in the room.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
Being a strategist is being someone who is curious and has a toolkit of questions. that help uncover facts and observations that then spark insight and let us develop ideas. And so I think that's the thing that that I didn't realize until really late is being a strategist. I'm looking at a book on my bookshelf right now that I always keep within arm's length by Mark Pollard.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
And it's called Strategy is Your Words. But he is very much from the school. He's a rebel in strategy. He's a delightful rebel in the field of strategy. And strategy is your words. Strategy is your questions. Strategy is... the curiosity to ask questions that yield facts and observations and possibility that wasn't there before the questions were asked.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
So I think we just think of, I don't, for one, I don't think a lot of people know what strategy is as a field, but for two, when we do, I think we think of strategists as the Madman reference. The Don Draper, he's an account guy, but he's also strategic.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
The polished person in the suit at the front of the room that's got the line and the story and the room is captivated by the strategy that's being unfolded. And the world of strategy that I've always worked in is not that.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
It's me and other collaborators from a diverse range of backgrounds standing at a whiteboard on a Saturday trying to solve a problem that we're so excited to solve together or to create possibility around that we're They're by choice on a Saturday, standing at a whiteboard together, throwing ideas or throwing facts and observations and insights around.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
So I think especially what we see when we think of strategic consulting, it is the McKinsey's, it's the Bain's, it's the big ones, it's the folks in suits and the frameworks and they do brilliant research. And that's what we see in the field.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
And then there's also this side of it that is just people asking insightful questions of each other, doing research, actually reading research, doing research, finding links and developing insights. and then seeing what that sparks in terms of ideas. And that's more the part of strategy that I worked in.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
For sure. So now I am a, I call myself a strategy coach and goal nerd. I'm really fascinated by goal setting and the role that goal setting and then organizing behavior change to support goal achievement can have for people's lives.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
And then luckily, I always thought that I was something other than a strategist because I had seen the McKinsey's and the Bain's and the large strategy. I knew what that looked like. And I just feel very lucky that I was able graduating out of the field and into consulting at a time when Mark Pollard and some of the other really rebels in the field of strategy were emerging and
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
That was when I started to see those people and their work and read what they were doing. I was like, oh my gosh, I have a place. Like, that is my person. I'm not going to get his last name. I need to put the pronunciation right on screen. But Rob Estraneo is another. I'll make sure that you have the link for the show notes. These are folks who are just democratizing strategy.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
And this all started with you mentioning my book, but I hope to contribute to the democratization of strategy so that we don't think of it as the smartest person or as the person in the most expensive suit or with the most beautiful slide deck.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
But we can think of strategy as the way that we tap into our very deeply human insight to develop scaffolding for solutions to our biggest problems, including the big problems that affect human life, not just dollars and cents.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
So it sounds super intellectual, but to me, it's really a passion and a movement around helping people tap into their intrinsic motivation and their purpose and their why, and then be able to operate their careers and run their businesses with more of that connection to their why and their purpose and the larger meaning instead of just chasing extrinsic rewards or external expectations.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
You either get a long answer or a short answer when I talk about my work life. The longer story, I am from a little tiny town out on the Olympic Peninsula that's called Port Townsend. So it's still here on the west coast of the U.S. in western Washington. But Port Townsend is a relatively small town.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
It's a ferry ride and an hour and a half drive from Seattle, so it's not really close to an urban center. And it is the kind of place where there's a massive arts and creative community, incredible writing programs. I grew up in a very art-filled and creative community. environment where like being an artist is a way to make a living or being a writer is a way to make a living.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
And so that was how I started. I had two parents who were public employees. and lived in this place where my creativity was nurtured and encouraged from very early on. So my upbringing helped me find, and my early childhood, I think I've been an activist since birth. I successfully petitioned our cafeteria ladies to, for milk equality, which sounds so silly now, but I was in the third grade.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
I think I was nine years old and the brown bag kids had regular milk on Fridays and the hot lunch kids got chocolate milk on Fridays. So I petitioned the schoolyard kids, successfully petitioned the cafeteria ladies to achieve milk equality so that the bag lunch kids could also have chocolate milk on Friday.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
And once I had a taste of that, it's like the combination of growing up somewhere where creativity was really nurtured and that early taste of successful activism You can just draw a straight line from that to what I'm doing today in terms of enabling people to
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
really change systems change workplaces and change how we operate in ways that are more human-centered so it's for high performance but also with these practices that really help us operate from our why and our shared purpose and what really matters beyond just the generating of revenue So that's the early childhood. And then from there, I got really into technology. So I was an early adopter.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
I co-founded an internet content company in the mid-90s when I was still in high school with a couple of my amazing teachers. And Worked in online community and online content from the jump. Just got a really early start in that space. And that led me into my first career in technology. And then my second career was practicing law.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
I wanted to do something where I felt like I could really help people. And for me, that was becoming a lawyer. So I became a lawyer. I practiced law for almost five years and then Because of some life circumstances, I had to make a transition again from self-employed. I was self-employed as a lawyer to having a job. And then that was when I started working in outreach.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
I went back to marketing roles. I got into strategy. My first real strategic work was in that chapter after my years as a lawyer.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
And it was that work in strategy and then beginning to lead people in strategy, having my career develop into an executive career in strategy, where I got to see the challenges that people experience, trying to understand what's expected of them, which I had struggled with my whole career.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
But I also experienced the pressure of being a leader and trying to deliver clear expectations and trying to manage up and trying to support CEOs who are accountable to boards and just saw the complexity of all of the expectations and the overwhelm and the too much information and the not enough information that people navigated. leadership and their careers with.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
And that was really what drew me to this form of goal setting. I started experimenting with self-set quantifiable goals that I cared about my career when I was in a phase of pretty bad burnout. And it was just like a light switch flipped for me.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
The minute I was getting up every day and thinking about goals that mattered to me that I could measure, it gave me a way to feel like I was driving in my career instead of just trying to mind read and understand what everyone else was expecting of me. And that was really the, that was in 2016. That was the birth of my obsession with goal setting. And I haven't looked back.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
I've been in that space ever since.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
Yeah, Vince, that question gave me goosebumps. For one thing, this is a funny place to start my answer to the questions, but I have had issues with authority for my entire life. So I have never had the same deference to authority. institutional power or authority that comes from an org chart as opposed to from the experiences that you have with humans.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
I believe that authority and respect are earned not awarded or not due to something other than being earned person to person. So I have had a career where for one thing, I just got, I'm just going to own it. I got really lucky that I started in technology as early as I did because for my early career career,
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
Because I had that technology and community and content and internet content experience so early. That created opportunities for me whenever I decided I was ready to move on in a role. So I did have, I would have been called a job hopper if we had that language back then. But I worked with a career coach who reframed that for me to use the language of being a scanner at the time.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
So it's not as much about job hopping. It's that I'm nonlinear and I have lots of interests. In my early career, those issues with authority manifested themselves in frustration. I would get into a role. I'd be super excited. I would bring my 150% to the role and then I would realize they don't even want 25% of what I'm bringing.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
It's just not, they just want someone to sit down and do the widget building or sit down and do whatever the tactical thing was. And so that was my struggle early in my career.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
Part of the job hopping was I would get hired in with a change remit or hired in with a more strategic title and then find out that it was actually just a tactical execution role, which there's nothing wrong with tactical execution. I'm just a person who I can't help but see how things can be better or how things can be different or how we can innovate or improve.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
And that wiring for this can be better. Our customer experiences can be better. Our employee experiences can be better. We can be more efficient. We can waste less human labor. All of those noticings have been part of me since my early and mid-career. And all those things made my early career, I would describe it as seeking.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
I was just trying to find somewhere that I could love my work and have my employer love me back again. And it was in mid-career, my tenure started to get longer. I was hired and I started working It was when I started working in actual strategy as a field that my tenures got longer. So I can't remember exactly the year that I started.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
I think it was 2012-ish was the first time I took a job in an agency as a content strategist. And when I found that discipline, it was the perfect mix of strategic and conceptual and creative and executional. And there were numbers. I could see the performance of our content. I could optimize and improve and analyze. And so that was my first ding ding. I think I found it.
Chief Change Officer
#226 Sara Lobkovich: Why Playing Life on Hard Mode Might Be Your Best Advantage – Part One
And working in that space. then led me again into other opportunity in that field. I graduated into a larger agency that was part of a larger holding company. And that was when I got my big agency advertising experience was that chapter from 2013-ish to 20, I can't remember when I actually left. I think it was 2018-ish.