Applying 'Extreme Ownership' to your career: are you an elbow patcher or an entrepreneur?
On the reg
No Bad Teams, Only Bad Leaders
The next chapter was on No Bad Teams, Only Bad Leaders. And the central argument here is that if you've got poor leadership, then your team's just doomed to fail. So you can't be blaming your team if you're a bad leader.
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Inger and Jason catch up on Inger's 24th wedding anniversary (with Mr Thesis Whisperer's permission!).
Inger went to Newcastle in the Tesla and had fun doing a workshop in a bathroom. It's been a weird couple of weeks: she also encountered giant animatronic wombats on the lawns of parliament house while taking part in an NTEU event. Jason's had Covid in the house (9:47), but avoided getting it, despite using his Aunt's method of taking temperature of kids via hugging. He's finally going back to just two jobs (thank goodness) and trying to work out how to not overwhelm the big boss when she gets back.
Jason and Inger talk about how they were interview by Andrew for The Omni Show (18:48) and are just a little bit excited that they got retweeted by Ken Case (squee!).
At 24:46 there's some talk about Navy SEALS and our #deathcagematchreadathon with @tseenster on Twitter. Inger's been reading 'Extreme Ownership' by Jocko Willing and Leif Babin while Jason has been reading a romance called 'Everyday, Average Jones' by Susan Brockmann. They also made @tseenster read one, but she hasn't left a speak pipe review yet (no pressure Tseen!).
Then they both unpack the lessons from 'Extreme Ownership: how US Navy SEALs lead and win' (40:38) Using a slide deck to guide the conversation. Inger applies three of the lessons (extreme ownership, Believe and Plan) to the problems of academic life, specifically designing a career for yourself (1:01:58). The pair discuss her theory there are two types of academic 'elbow patch' (who spend their careers in deep study becoming The Expert) and Entrepreneur (the ones who are agile to survive). They debate the pros and cons of both career choices and then how to fit into the broader mission of a university (1:13:39) and then go on to drop the knowledge about how to use the university strategic planning process to basically Get What You Need (1:22:48).
They close out with talk about necrotic robots (yes, reanimating dead spiders - shudder) and the terrifying footage of a robot dog with a crazy accurate machine gun strapped to its back (1:42:59). The two minute tips are there, but trust us when we say that you will STILL be thinking about killer robots by the end of this episode - hasta la vista!
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Stuff we mentioned:
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