Overtime with Outland is Action Catalyst host Adam Outland's reflections and commentary on discussions with each of his esteemed and accomplished guests. In this segment, Adam dissects Episode 471 with author, and former CEO of both Blockbuster Inc. and 7-Eleven, James Keyes.
Hello, Action Catalyst listeners. Welcome to Overtime with Outland. This is for episode 471 with author and former CEO of Blockbuster Inc. and 7-Eleven, James Keyes. We had some great takeaways from this episode. And here are just a few of the nuggets that we extracted from him in the interview. Number one, creativity is intelligence having fun.
This is supposedly a quote by Einstein, which James loves. And he explains how innovation arises from curiosity and from applying actual fun to some kind of hard discipline. For example, playing music is a really heavy use of mathematics. He says it's important to try everything, even if you just dabble in it. Why just look at art? Why not practice it?
And then the next time you go to a museum, after you've played around with mixing colors or painting or sculpting, you'll look at a great masterpiece and you'll have such a deeper appreciation for it. This can be applied to anything. Number two, CEO stands for change equals opportunity. I love this point that he made that the role of a CEO is to deal with change, good or bad,
and to confidently make decisions around that change and have the clarity to break complex things into really simple terms and communicate it. Those are the three gifts, change, confidence, and clarity that James says anyone can use to find their own personal or professional success. Point number three, speaking of change, James says leadership is all about change.
Constant, inevitable, lifelong change. Constantly changing as a leader, being able to adapt to different circumstances, different times, different styles, different people. He says that change is at the very root of all commerce, all business. How does any business begin? Someone needed something and someone satisfied that need and got paid for it.
And then that person got complacent and somebody else said, I'm going to change things and give another way to satisfy that need. Commerce begins and competition follows. Change itself isn't necessarily good or bad. It's only the response to change that separates winners from losers. Finally, James shared a very simple system for how he decides where to funnel his time. It's two basic questions.
where am I going to either learn the most or contribute the most? Is it something I will learn from or something where my specific experience and talents can really make a big impact, maybe more than any other individual could in the same position? That's the criteria. Bonus points if it's also something fun. So for this and more, please listen to episode 471 It's really an amazing episode.
Whenever you get a chance to hear someone that's been in a leadership role or two Titanic companies during periods of incredible change, there's a tremendous amount that we get to learn. So for more, episode 471 with James Keys.