#2 Barry O'Reilly: Unlearning and creating culture change

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Show notes

• Barry moving to America and the "American Dream" [0:06:11]
• Experimentation as a lifestyle -- the kitchen table talk [0:13:14]
• Navigating uncertainty [0:15:09]
• Modeling behaviors [0:22:25]
• Barry's hack to get new perspectives on problems you don't know how to solve [0:24:12]
• Stumbling blocks in unlearning [0:26:36]
• Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and "time to think" [0:31:07]
• Barry's personal reflection practices [0:33:11]
• "We're trained for more" [0:35:19]
• How do I know I need to unlearn? [0:45:27]
• Hotseat: Barry puts Andrew through unlearning exercise on the spot [0:48:11]
• Andrew's embarrassing insight [0:54:50]
• The #1 obstacle to being a learner [1:00:04]
• "Steve always got it right" [1:02:24]
• How to make being wrong, feel good [1:04:09]
• Debunking the 10,000 hour rule [1:07:49]
• The levels of deliberate practice [1:08:24]
• Applying deliberate practice to day-to-day life [1:15:12]
• Building systems & countermeasures around yourself to be successful [1:18:42]
• The origin of the Enliven podcast [1:22:44]
• How to start a cultural transformation [1:26:37]
• Barry's #1 hack for meetings [1:33:01]

People, companies, books, etc mentioned

• People
  • Carol Dweck
  • Angela Duckworth
  • Cal Newport
  • Andy Grove & OKRs
  • Tom Bilyeu
  • K. Anders Ericsson
  • Gibson Biddle (listen to Gib's episode on Barry's Unlearn podcast)
  • Dr Ed Hoffman at NASA
• Books & Podcasts
  • Barry's books
    • Unlearn
    • Unlearn podcast
    • Lean Enterprise
  • Mindset
  • Grit
  • So Good They Can't Ignore You
  • Deep Work
  • Digital Minimalism
  • Impact Theory
  • Peak: The New Science of Expertise
  • Mastery, by George Leonard
  • The E-Myth
• Other
  • McKinsey & the obligation to dissent
  • Deliberate practice
  • Agile

Quotes

• "If something important comes up, I'll put it on my calendar. But I'm going to make time for thinking."
• making two or three bets and exploring them well is better than making one hundred bets and half-assing them"
• "I've been right a million times...and it's bought me jack s**t."
• "Innovation is new insight that leads to better action"
• "we're building these systems that are so example that we don't even know how they work"
• "in all our meetings we just talk about output, the things we got done...if we're going to be agile we have to talk about outcomes"
• "organizational transformation is just the collective impact of individual transformation"

Lessons and key takeaways

• how eager am I to get information that is contrary to my view?
• the essentials to unlearning: curiosity, ownership
• reflection is a habit of top performers
• signs you need to unlearn
  • challenge facing and not living up to expectation
  • place you're struggling or avoiding a challenge
  • tried everything can think of and not getting results you want
• What's the real outcome you're aiming for?
• when frustrated with the obstacles, zoom back out to the outcomes in order to discover new things to try
• we often know what to do...but we can't execute shared things on our own
• Andy Grove and Steve Jobs "getting it right"
• create and cultivate a personal board of directors to re-energize and gain new perspectives
• always have agency for how we show up in a system—so it starts with us—and each of us has a

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