Make Things That Matter #2 Barry O'Reilly: Unlearning and creating culture change
Nov 5, 2019
01:34:24
Zen Garden Turning Point
- Barry describes sitting in a Zen rock garden in Kyoto after a brutal first year of entrepreneurship and reflecting on why he couldn't see all 17 stones.
- That moment catalyzed reframing failure as experimentation and embracing uncertainty as a lifestyle.
Work Backwards From A Two-Year Vision
- Define success by working backwards from a clear two-year vision into one-year, six-month, and three-month outcomes.
- Use those outcomes to design small, testable experiments and measure progress quickly.
Start Small, Scale Tests Quickly
- Treat uncertainty as a lifestyle by thinking big and starting with tiny experiments to validate your appetite.
- Run quick, progressively larger tests (3 days → 1 week → 1 month → 6 months) to build confidence without overcommitting.
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Introduction
00:00 • 2min
The Deafening Experience of Starting an Entrepreneurship Company
01:41 • 3min
The Uncertainty of Entrepreneurship
04:36 • 4min
How to Make a Successful Business in Three Months
08:21 • 3min
Uncertainty as a Lifestyle
11:46 • 2min
How to Navigate Uncertainty
13:22 • 3min
The Uncertainty of Life
16:22 • 4min
How to Model Behaviors for Your Kids
20:03 • 4min
Unlearn: How to Get Out of Barriers
24:14 • 2min
The Importance of Ownership in Agencies
26:05 • 3min
The Importance of Personal Reflection
28:40 • 2min
How to Reflect Better in the Morning
30:49 • 2min
The Propensity to Do More
33:18 • 3min
How to Have Meaningful Careers Doing Important Work in an Age of Just Crazy Distraction
36:26 • 2min
The Digital Declutter
38:24 • 2min
The Importance of Taking Time to Learn
40:34 • 2min
How to Unlearn When You're Time Poor
42:41 • 4min
How to Get Your Partner to Take Different Actions
46:56 • 2min
How to Be a Lean Startup
49:24 • 3min
How to Encourage Customers to Test More
51:55 • 2min
The Importance of Owning the Mistake and Learning From It
54:03 • 2min
The Power of Reflection and Coaching
56:13 • 2min
The Obstacles to Being a Learner
57:52 • 2min
The Importance of Being a Learner
01:00:05 • 3min
The Importance of Iteration
01:03:13 • 3min
The Trade-Off Between Hours and Iterations
01:06:09 • 5min
Deliberate Practice: The Path to Mastery
01:11:28 • 4min
How to Be Successful in High Stress Environments
01:15:35 • 3min
How to Create a Personal Board
01:18:32 • 4min
How to Change Culture in Your Organization
01:22:33 • 2min
How to Start a Culture Transformation
01:24:25 • 2min
The Importance of Retrospective Work
01:26:40 • 2min
The Power of Role Modeling
01:28:19 • 2min
How to Make Change in Your Company Every Day
01:30:04 • 2min
Barry O'Reilly 48: How to Reach More People
01:32:28 • 2min
Click here to directly email Andrew your questions, comments, and feedback! He reads everything that is sent in: https://tinyurl.com/ydda8zc6
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
- Books & Podcasts
- Other
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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