Re:Thinking with Adam GrantWhy you should study yourself like a scientist! with Jim Collins | ReThinking
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
35 min read · 6,673 words- 0:00 – 1:37
The “bug book” origin: studying yourself like a scientist
- JCJim Collins
One of the things that, um, happens with me with all of my work is just like you, even if you discover things that are timeless, your thinking about them evolves, right? Your, your understanding of even things that you still hold to as a true principle, your understanding of that principle deepens, evolves, becomes, uh, more kaleidoscopic, uh, as the years go by. [upbeat music]
- AGAdam Grant
The place I have to start, and I think maybe my favorite moment in the whole book-
- JCJim Collins
Hmm
- AGAdam Grant
... is when I learned about your bug book.
- JCJim Collins
Oh, yes, the bug book. [laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
Tell, tell me the story of the bug book.
- JCJim Collins
[laughs] Okay. So we'll start with the bug book. You know, I was in the fog of youth in my 20s. In fact, I would say really up until about age 30, I was really, uh, wandering. Even though it might have looked I was kind of linear, I really wasn't. And, um, what happened was that I had a wonderful, uh, teacher by the name of Rochelle Meyers, uh, who co-taught a course on, uh, creativity at, uh, at Stanford Business School when I was a student. And, and one of the things she said to me, she said, "You know, you should study yourself like a scientist and observe yourself." And so, uh, I, uh, I bought one of those l-lab notebooks thing, you know, the ones we used to have in like chemistry lab and stuff, right? And I put on the front of the book, "Jim." But what I meant by that was the book wasn't owned by Jim, the subject under study was Jim, and I decided to study myself dispassionately like a bug. So if you were a scientist observing a bug, you don't judge the bug. You don't say,
- 1:37 – 3:38
What the bug book revealed: frustration, fit, and a clue to life’s work
- JCJim Collins
"Oh, it's a good bug," or, "Blue bugs are better than red bugs," or anything like that. You just, you just make detached clinical observations about the bug. And so I was really-- I was casting about trying to find my way, but the entire time, I had this book. I would make notes in it constantly. People thought I was a really good note taker on meetings, but I wasn't actually making notes on the meetings. I was making notes in the bug book. And so I'd be sitting there, I-- uh, one of the times that I was very much not in frame, I was working for a large company. It was not a really good thing for me to be in a, in a large company. But it was a wonderful laboratory to make notes, and I'd be sitting there in meetings, and I would note my just incredible frustration that I'd see a meeting go on for twice as long as it needed to. Then I would write in there, "The bug Jim finds such meetings incredibly frustrating and ira- uh, enraging," right? Just a simple note. But there was a, a moment of kinda how it ended up shifting me towards the way I ended up choosing to spend my entire life. I got this assignment in the-- it was, uh, kind of the mid-'80s, and I was working in the personal computer area, and I was asked to go off and figure out how network personal computing would work. And I went off and did this dive and, and kinda-- I loved making sense of a really messy world that had a lot of pieces and getting my head around it. And then there was this point where I had to help the rest of the team understand. And so I was really puzzling like, "Okay, so how do I package what I've learned in a way that they can grasp and really internalize?" I just completely lost myself in it, and the, there are notes about, you know, that bug Jim just really loves making sense of a, of, of a messy world, and then figuring out how to, how to framework it so that it affects the way people think. And that kind of bug book moment is when I got a glimpse of what ultimately ended up leading me back to teach at, at Stanford and then writing my books and all of that, but it was this observation. It was like this giant start observation about
- 3:38 – 5:21
The modern bug book: daily spreadsheet, creative-hour accounting, and day scoring
- JCJim Collins
the bug named Jim. And to this day, I still use a version of the bug book. It's this spreadsheet that I use every day. And in that spreadsheet, I have to do it before you go to bed. I write three things in the spreadsheet. One is just kind of a, a catalog of what was in the day, what time I got up. Did I, you know... And, and just ways I spent my time. What filled the day? Then the second thing I put in the spreadsheet is the number of creative hours I got that day because I, I hold myself to an enormously, uh, disciplined standard that I have to keep that above 1,000 creative hours every 350, 65-day cycle, no matter what, for 50 consecutive years.
- AGAdam Grant
Wow.
- JCJim Collins
So I track it systematically. But the third thing I put in is a subjective read of the day, plus two, plus one, zero, minus one, minus two, and I've learned something interesting, Adam, which is that you can't put the score in the next day. Your emotional feeling of what the day is, and it's purely subjective. And I, you know, make notes. If it's a plus two, like why was it a plus two? If it's a minus two, why was it a minus two?
- AGAdam Grant
Jim, this is, this is fascinating on, on many levels, so I've got, I've got a whole battery of questions for you about this.
- JCJim Collins
Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
The, the first one is just to make sure my math is right, that, that 1,000 creative hours a year is ab-about three creative hours a day, right?
- JCJim Collins
Yep.
- AGAdam Grant
Wow.
- JCJim Collins
The key is that you can have zero days because other days are larger than the three, right? You have some days that it's like a 14-hour creative day, and there are other-- and then you might have two or three days or, of zeros or ones. But so long as the total is always above the three s- the, the 1,000 for the 365, that keeps me on track.
- AGAdam Grant
That, that's a much healthier version of a streak than-
- JCJim Collins
Yeah
- AGAdam Grant
... the Snapchat version.
- JCJim Collins
[laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
I see my students, "I need to take a picture of my ear and send it-"
- JCJim Collins
[laughs]
- 5:21 – 6:13
Self-comparison beats social comparison for growth
- AGAdam Grant
"... to my friend every day or we'll lose our streak." Okay, so next, next thing that I think is really striking about your bug book and even the, the Excel version of this that you do today is I think most people try to learn whatever they wanna get better at, whether they're trying to become more creative or more productive. They compare themselves to other people, and they try to then borrow routines. And-
- JCJim Collins
Yeah
- AGAdam Grant
... what I've always thought, which you just crystallized in, in a really good practice, is we actually learn more from comparing ourself to ourselves.
- JCJim Collins
Mm-hmm.
- AGAdam Grant
Your productivity or creativity routine may not work for me.
- JCJim Collins
Exactly.
- AGAdam Grant
But if I gather enough data on my own variations-
- JCJim Collins
Yes
- AGAdam Grant
... I can start to figure out, okay, what did those best days have in common? What differentiated them from the worst days?
- JCJim Collins
Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
And how do I build more of the good ones and, and erase the bad ones?
- JCJim Collins
Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
And I, I'd just love to hear you riff a little bit on that Like that idea that I should learn from my own fluctuations-
- JCJim Collins
Yeah
- AGAdam Grant
... maybe even more than other people's, um, habits that might be different from mine.
- 6:13 – 8:52
Why Collins distrusts “recipes”: discover your own modes
- JCJim Collins
I really have become enormously skeptical of following recipes or advice from other people at all. And part of that flows from the, the work that led to the "What to Make of a Life" book, 'cause in studying all those lives, what I really realized is that that's what they did. They, they, they discovered the modes that worked incredibly well for them, and then they trusted and gave themselves over to those modes. But there's also another piece of it. The question isn't trying to find what you can do better than others. It's about finding the ways in which you c- uh, are better to expend yourself relative to other ways you could expend yourself. And that f- is a s- a, a very, very different frame. It's, it's a, it's a way of looking at things that is, is, uh, reflecting the idea of your own understanding of yourself versus a comparative sense to others. And then the other piece is you're a writer, you, you, you relate to this, but two of the people in the study was Toni Morrison and Barbara Tuchman. And, and of course, the beauty of studying people who are prolific writers but also spoke a lot about their processes of writing is that you can really delve deeply. You can see their work, and then you can look at the actual processes. Did they type? Did they use a pencil? Where did they work? How did they slice up their hours in the day? How did... Right? But what was stood out is they came to understand what worked peculiarly well for them. And so instead of going to other writers and saying, "How do you write a novel?" It's a discovery of how I write a novel.
- AGAdam Grant
You know, Jim, as, as you talk about this, I'm struck that it's often said that comparison is a thief of joy.
- JCJim Collins
Mm.
- AGAdam Grant
And I think what you've written here forces us to rethink that. I think that it's true that social comparison is often a thief of joy.
- JCJim Collins
Mm-hmm.
- AGAdam Grant
But self-comparison is a source of growth.
- JCJim Collins
Mm-hmm. When I looked at how these lives unfolded and it, it was even if they weren't processing it on a highly intellectual level, right? I think sometimes it was just a real instinctive sense. But their actions, their choices, even in the face sometimes of really epic cliffs that, that changed their lives, but their choices flowed from kind of an inside-out understanding of themselves as opposed to an outside-in sort of trying to form fit themselves. It's this, this notion of we're getting clues all the time, but do you trust them enough to be different? Because by definition you are different, and the ability to trust that differentness is, I think, what so stood out to me was that level of self-trust.
- 8:52 – 12:52
Dispassionate self-observation and learning from criticism
- AGAdam Grant
This takes me back to what I think is maybe the most striking part of the bug book, which is to be this nonjudgmental of yourself is highly unusual.
- JCJim Collins
Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
And you used the term dis- dispassionate-
- JCJim Collins
Yes
- AGAdam Grant
... when describing it a few moments ago.
- JCJim Collins
Mm-hmm.
- AGAdam Grant
I just wanna give you a couple examples-
- JCJim Collins
Yeah
- AGAdam Grant
... to maybe to answer this with. So you said you started to discover things about yourself that most people would be very bothered by-
- JCJim Collins
Mm
- AGAdam Grant
... um, is I guess how I would paraphrase it.
- JCJim Collins
[laughs] Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs] There was one that, that stuck out for me, um, which is, "I made dispassionate clinical notes like a scientist making precise observations about a bug moving about in a lab container. I would note things like my utter incapacity to endure with enthusiasm-
- JCJim Collins
[laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
... meetings that could, could've been half as long and twice as productive." You spoke to that. However, I... You also say, "I noted that I lacked the political instinct to be more discreet in pointing out people's logical inconsistencies."
- JCJim Collins
Yes.
- AGAdam Grant
"It simply didn't occur to me that being right doesn't matter if you offend people by asking a series of questions that trap them in a corner." Those are not pleasant self-observations, Jim.
- JCJim Collins
No.
- AGAdam Grant
You could, you could read those and say, "Wow, I have real problems with focus in meetings."
- JCJim Collins
Mm-hmm.
- AGAdam Grant
"I'm not a good team player."
- JCJim Collins
Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
"I'm disloyal." You could, you know, you could read your lack of maybe political instinct or savvy as-
- JCJim Collins
Yeah
- AGAdam Grant
... you know, "I'm, I'm kind of an arrogant prick. I'm, I'm more interested in, you know, being the smartest person in the room than actually, you know, trying to learn from other people and teach other people." How did you not judge yourself? [laughs] How did you stay dispassionate?
- JCJim Collins
Yeah. Somebody was once doing a, a profile on me, and so I invited the, the reporter out, and the reporter wanted to meet with Joanne, and I was like, "Okay, this is gonna be interesting." And but one of the things that the, that this person asked was, "If Jim has a, a really unusual, uh, capability or strength, what would you say it is? Like, what's the number one?" And Joanne said, "Jim takes critical feedback better than any human I've met." And I've thought about that because actually that's really true. So first of all, there's kind of the perspective of when I get critical feedback, it might sting. Okay, it definitely can sting, but I don't... My response to it is, again, to process it as almost clinical information. I think it comes from my desire to be better relative to myself. Oddly, doesn't let my emotional response to critical feedback impede my development to being better.
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah, I, I think one of the things that, that stands out as, as you talk about this is feedback research has long distinguished between the informational content of feedback and the motivational impact of feedback.
- JCJim Collins
Mm.
- AGAdam Grant
And one of the reasons people have such a hard time learning from criticism is they overlook the informational value, and they overreact to, you know, the motivational part of it. A lot of people focus on how feedback makes them feel, and you were focused on what it could teach you.
- JCJim Collins
That's right.
- 12:52 – 15:36
Encodings and ‘getting in frame’: finding environments that activate you
- JCJim Collins
Yeah. So, so if you don't mind, I actually wanna pop back to the people in the study 'cause I think it illuminates this. But when I look over the whole span of the lives that, that, that I studied in, in, in this book, what you can see is there's these times when this notion of this sort of durable set of capacities that you have inside that await discovery by the experiences of life. And I describe these as these encodings, right? They don't... They're just kind of there to be discovered, and they're vast, right? You'll, you have many you will not discover. I have many I will not discover, so long as we discover some of them. But what's interesting is you sort of watch over the course of their lives that the same exact pers- You think about John Glenn, who became a tremendous American hero as an astronaut and first to orbit Earth from the United States, and so on and so forth. But you can see these different points of his life where I sort of think of it as being... It's like a window frame looking out at this constellation of encodings, and in any given moment, that frame captures either very few encodings or a lot of encodings. They're there, but the frame of your life is shifting around. And, and early in his life, when he first went off to the local college, you know, he wasn't flourishing in chemistry class, and, and he didn't do well in sports and, and, and so forth. And so it's not that he didn't work hard, but there just weren't a lot of encodings in frame there. Then through a series of fortunate events, he'd had a, an experience once with a flight when he was a kid, and it ignited something in him. He goes off and he starts towards his, uh, pilot's training, and something just like all of a sudden the frame of his life shifts, and these things that he is enormously instinctive at, piloting an aircraft, and then he becomes of course a com- a combat fighter pilot in World War II in the Pacific and then, uh, then stays in the military, fighter pilot, jet fighter pilot, test pilot, astronaut. And that entire time of his life, he's g- uh, in frame in a way where big set of these amazing encodings. I mean, one of my favorites is just how his heart rate goes down in the face of speed and danger. I, I'm fairly confident that if I were in a jet and there's another jet behind me trying to knock me out of the sky, my heart rate doesn't go down. It was finding frames in life where more of the things that he was encoded for were shining through the window, and they were better ways of expending himself relative to other ways. And so it's a matter of kind of this, whether it's a search or a creation or a happy accident, there could be a lot of different ways that it happens, but there's a point at which you kind of click in frame and things work better.
- 15:36 – 17:22
Life as mini-experiments: hypotheses, provisional selves, and articulation
- AGAdam Grant
Well, that search process also, I think, speaks to something that a lot of people overlook, which is, you know, we've, we've been talking in part about thinking like a scientist. I read your writing about this and I said, "Oh," it, it hit me. This is a missing chapter in "Think Again." It's something that's been implicit in my habits.
- JCJim Collins
Yep.
- AGAdam Grant
And I didn't-- I failed to articulate it.
- JCJim Collins
One of the things that, um, happens with me with all of my work, uh, i- is just like you, even if you discover things that are timeless, your thinking about them evolves, right? Your, your understanding of, uh, of even things that you still hold to as a true principle, your understanding of that principle deepens, evolves, uh, becomes, uh, more kaleidoscopic, uh, as the years go by.
- AGAdam Grant
It's not just making observations. It's saying, "Okay, I've got a hunch. Let me now go and test that hypothesis by-"
- JCJim Collins
Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
"... treating my life as a mini experiment."
- JCJim Collins
Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
And it reminds me a little bit of the way that, um, Herminia Ibarra, um, has studied people adapting to new workplaces and new jobs by trying on provisional selves.
- JCJim Collins
Hmm.
- AGAdam Grant
Uh, and saying, "Okay, who I wanna be and how I wanna operate, uh, like let me not hold that so tightly. Let me think about that more as I'm trying on a, you know, a new outfit."
- JCJim Collins
Hmm.
- AGAdam Grant
"And I'm gonna see if it fits, and I might have to, I might have to walk around in the shoes."
- JCJim Collins
Just love to ask you, Adam, is do you think it's just that that gives you language for something you've been doing all the way along anyway, or is it actually something that you hadn't been doing all the way along?
- AGAdam Grant
The former. I... Part of the reason I got so fired up when I read about your bug book was I, I, I didn't have the notebook and I wasn't-
- JCJim Collins
Yeah
- AGAdam Grant
... taking the observations nearly-
- JCJim Collins
Yeah
- AGAdam Grant
... as systematically as you were. But I read that and I said, "Oh, this is what I've been doing my whole life-
- JCJim Collins
Yeah
- AGAdam Grant
... and my whole career." I have been doing this with other people-
- JCJim Collins
Mm-hmm
- AGAdam Grant
... for a long time.
- JCJim Collins
Yep.
- 17:22 – 19:33
A bug book for other people: noticing differences without judgment
- AGAdam Grant
So I keep a bug book on anybody I interact with.
- JCJim Collins
Mm-hmm.
- AGAdam Grant
And it's, it's also not written down. It's more of mental notes. But I, I had the [chuckles] funny interaction yesterday where somebody emailed me and it was a, "Congratulations on your new book. How do I get a free copy? Unless, of course, you want me to order it, then I'm happy to do that."
- JCJim Collins
Huh.
- AGAdam Grant
Someone I'm very close to, uh, was looking over my shoulder and saw that message and was really bothered by it.
- JCJim Collins
Huh.
- AGAdam Grant
And said like, "How could this person not know support an author, buy their book? Don't-
- JCJim Collins
Yeah
- AGAdam Grant
... don't get in line for a free copy." I didn't care. I didn't... I ha- I had no emotion about it. I just filed this away as-
- JCJim Collins
Hmm
- AGAdam Grant
... another observation about this person and-
- JCJim Collins
Mm-hmm
- AGAdam Grant
... a domain in which, you know, their, their judgment isn't the same as mine. Their idea of what it means to support someone is different from mine, but it doesn't mean it's better or worse.
- JCJim Collins
Mm-hmm.
- AGAdam Grant
So let me turn this into a question, which is I think that this idea of observing other people's behavior, and when you see something that is different from the way that you operate, not ignoring it because you're trying not to judge them, but rather just kind of noting it and saying-
- JCJim Collins
Yeah
- AGAdam Grant
... "Oh, I've just discovered something that's different or idiosyncratic about them that will help me understand where they are well-suited to thrive and where they might struggle. It'll help me figure out how to interact with them more effectively because I realize that's a difference between us." I think you do this. I think this is why you're so good at learning from other people, is you are keeping this notebook about everyone you interact with.
- JCJim Collins
Mm.
- AGAdam Grant
Am I right or wrong?
- JCJim Collins
So, no, you're very, very right, but it, it's evolved, uh, uh, substantially. And I used to spend an enormous amount of emotional energy feeling frustrated with what people are not.
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- JCJim Collins
And I can assure you that, uh, that would cause a lot of pain. It would cause me pain, it would cause them pain, and I would be especially frustrated if they weren't more like me, right? My shift went from feeling frustrated with what people are not into feeling grateful for what they are, and that shift emotionally has been-- It's like the entire color of the lens of which I look through the world and look at other people has changed. And,
- 19:33 – 21:29
Seats vs the bus: humane leadership by aligning roles to encodings
- JCJim Collins
uh, their lives are better, my lives are better, the pain is less, the results are better. I began to sort of look at all the people around me and think, "Are they in seats that really fit their encodings and what really feeds their fire?" And back in "Good to Great," everybody grabbed the principle, write people on the bus. Okay, f-first who? But my evolution in thinking is it's much less about the bus and much more about the seats. What I began to do was that same idea of observing dispassionately, where somebody would do something and I would just notice, wow, that's a, a really instinctive capability in that person. And then I would kick the frame of what they do to the side so that more of that encoding would shine through the window, and it gradually kind of shifting and widening so that their responsibilities aligned much more with the encodings that they have. And once what they're responsible for lined up with those things, I truly-- My main experience is I'm incredibly grateful for what they are. That is when a whole bunch of lightning bolts go off. And I think it's inhumane to try to turn people into what they're not, and it is supremely humane to help them get in frame with responsibilities that just activate them. And that, for me, has been a huge journey.
- AGAdam Grant
I mean, first of all, I think it's, it's a, it's a major aha to make the shift from-
- JCJim Collins
Yeah
- AGAdam Grant
... being constantly frustrated and probably exasperated by what people aren't-
- JCJim Collins
Yeah
- AGAdam Grant
... toward-
- JCJim Collins
And feeling it's a form of pain, actually.
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah, and also conflict.
- JCJim Collins
Yes.
- AGAdam Grant
Relationship conflict in particular.
- JCJim Collins
Yep.
- AGAdam Grant
Uh, because there's this t- this tug of war going on where you're trying to pull them to be more like you or more like you want them to be.
- JCJim Collins
Yep.
- AGAdam Grant
And the harder you pull, the more the, the more force they pull with in the other direction.
- JCJim Collins
Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
And either the rope snaps or somebody just lets go and, and falls down.
- JCJim Collins
Everybody's in pain.
- 21:29 – 22:16
Encodings vs strengths: discipline can build skill, but not deep fit
- AGAdam Grant
I'm curious about how this is different from playing to their strengths, 'cause I think there's, there's, there's a nuanced distinction there.
- JCJim Collins
Yeah. There's a huge distinction there, and there is a direct relationship, of course, between, um, what you're encoded for, these instinctive, durable capacities that get exposed by the experience of life and strengths. But I also think you can turn things into strengths that aren't necessarily deep encodings just by sheer force of will, right? By just sheer discipline and hard work. I had a strength at math. I majored in math as an undergraduate mathematical scientist. But I met the people who were encoded for math, and they're different than me. And so while I could really will myself to be strong at math, I'm not deeply encoded for math. And so all the difference in the world of those two.
- 22:16 – 25:33
Responding to ‘Good to Great’ critics: comparison logic and what happens next
- AGAdam Grant
So you mentioned "Good to Great" and some of what you've rethought from there.
- JCJim Collins
Yes.
- AGAdam Grant
I want to give you a chance to dispassionately answer your critics while, while we're on that subject.
- JCJim Collins
Yeah, sure.
- AGAdam Grant
As you know, one of the, the consequences of, you know, just the, the sheer impact that you had with that book is it stimulated a lot of academic research.
- JCJim Collins
Yep.
- AGAdam Grant
And, uh, I know, I know of a couple articles, um, that have, you know, sort of questioned whether, um, the companies that you studied actually made the good to great leap. And, and one of those articles concludes that, you know, greatness did not appear to be sustainable. Uh, that if, you know, if you study their long-term stock performance, only one of your 11 was, was able to stick it out. And then a-another c- another article says, you know, these firms basically are good, but they're not great. That never really bothered me that much-
- JCJim Collins
Mm-hmm
- AGAdam Grant
... because y-you could've said this was a study of, you know, how do leaders find a North Star, and, you know, actually arrived at the same valuable insights about the importance of humility, for example. Um, but I'm, I'm curious about how you think about that, because obviously science evolves.
- JCJim Collins
Yep.
- AGAdam Grant
Um, the firms you studied at one point in time are not gonna look the same over time.
- JCJim Collins
Mm-hmm.
- AGAdam Grant
Does it get under your skin a little bit to think maybe the firms I studied didn't make a sustainable leap from good to great?
- JCJim Collins
It doesn't, and here's why. So there's a couple key things about this. The first is Jerry Porras, my research math, uh, mentor at Stanford, is the one who really gets the credit for this. Jerry, way back on "Built to Last," said, "What we need to do is for every one of those companies, we should be able to find another company that was in the same spot, in the same time, and same resources, and same potential, with the same potential customers, and the same technology changes that was beginning with them, and then we track them over time, and one did this and the other didn't." And the real part of the research is not what did the visionary companies in "Built to Last" or what did the good to great companies share in common. That was not the question that we asked. The question we asked was, what did they share in common that was different from their very carefully, very clinically Selected comparison companies were-- that were in the same environment. It is unassailably true that if you have two companies that are both kind of not doing particularly great, and then one goes through an inflection, and for a minimum of 15 years dramatically outperforms, and the other that was at the same exact situation or very, very close to it at that moment of inflection keeps going sideways, you have two points of comparative change. One is you have the not great era to the great era for the good to great company, so you've got that contrast. But you also have the good to great company in contrast to the comparison company. And so what you're always asking is, what was different that separated them? Lastly, there's kind of an ultimate answer to it, which is my wife Joanne said to me, "You need to write the book about how they lose it."
- AGAdam Grant
That-- I was gonna say, that was your sequel then.
- JCJim Collins
That's why I wrote "How the Mighty Fall." And so my response is, in the end, is none of the fundamental principles in "Good to Great" I would overturn at this point. My understanding has deepened, and, um, I think this notion of that the companies, after 15 years in some cases fell, is simply fascinating, not condemning.
- 25:33 – 27:26
Lightning round: bad leadership advice and five leadership dinner guests
- AGAdam Grant
Okay. Last thing before I let you go.
- JCJim Collins
Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
Lightning round.
- JCJim Collins
I'm bad at these, by the way, but I'll try my best. We'll do something I'm not encoded for. Let's go.
- AGAdam Grant
Perfect. First question is, what is the worst leadership advice you see given today?
- JCJim Collins
To follow other people's recipes for leading.
- AGAdam Grant
You get to host a dinner party of anybody in human history, alive or dead, to learn about leadership. Who are the five people you invite?
- JCJim Collins
Oh, five, uh, that-- to learn about leadership? Well, I would love to have Winston Churchill. Um, I-- my first leadership text was reading all of Churchill's books. Um, I would have, uh, Katharine Graham, who I think is-
- AGAdam Grant
Washington Post.
- JCJim Collins
Yes, Washington Post. Greatest corporate level five leader that I've ever studied. Third on, on leadership, probably George Catlett Marshall and, uh, his amazing capacity to hold together the coalition, uh, as needed with such grace and such stability. Number four, Lincoln, because what I would wanna know from Lincoln is how he maintained his resolve when he was getting those battle reports from Antietam. Grace Hopper is, uh-- oh, gosh. Oh, man, I would just so delight in a, in a dinner with Grace Hopper. She's the-- She's in the book. She's the one who was the pioneer in computer science. But what's so amazing about Grace Hopper is that she wasn't just a great computer scientist. She had these amazing abilities to lead, uh, as a woman in science, in industry, in the Navy, in, uh, the original Mark I project, and her capacity to move not just inside an organization, but an entire world around software and languages outside of it, uh, I just think is one of the most sparkling, wonderful examples of leadership. And you wanna talk about someone who it would be fun to have an evening with, it would be Grace Hopper.
- 27:26 – 29:15
Biggest rethinks: encodings over purpose, legacy skepticism, and ‘giving’ as contribution
- AGAdam Grant
Great. Okay. Last, uh, last two questions for you. One is, what's the biggest thing you re-thought as-- I know you have a whole list of them here, but-
- JCJim Collins
A whole book. Yeah, re-thought. Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
[chuckles] What was the biggest, the biggest rethinking in what to make of a life?
- JCJim Collins
There's that whole table in there, I used to believe, I now believe. The top line of that is I used to believe in the primacy of discover and follow your purpose. I now believe in discover and trust your encodings, even if you don't know what purpose they're leading towards. That's a big rethink for me. I used to think you had need to have the purpose clear. Yes, there it is. Uh, there's another one on that list, and this is huge, the importance of thinking about legacy. I just don't think it's important. And then when I studied all these people, they didn't really think about legacy. They focused on what was right in front of them until they were done with their lives. And this whole notion of what my legacy is gonna be is ultimately egocentric. You're not gonna be here to enjoy it anyway. I think far more important is to ask the question, what is the responsibility for making the most use of myself while I am here right now? You have too much to do to make use of whatever encodings, uh, you have. I'm gonna give you a third one, though, just for fun. I think I've really re-thought what giving is all about. And, you know, kind of my primitive view was giving means giving away money or give-- volunteering, giving your time, and those are giving. But take I. M. Pei. Suppose he'd stopped his architecting, and he'd, uh, started giving away his money as his main use of his time and volunteering for causes, which wouldn't have been bad to do, but would that have been a better use of I. M. Pei than giving us the Louvre Pyramid? And what I see giving really is, is giving of your encodings responsibly, and that takes many, many possible different forms. I'd like the Louvre Pyramid, please.
- 29:15 – 33:57
Freedom and the closing question: choosing responsibilities and spending life’s “punches” well
- AGAdam Grant
Me too. I have to tell you, there's one other in here that I found especially powerful. You wrote that, "I used to believe freedom means lack of constraint."
- JCJim Collins
Oh, yes.
- AGAdam Grant
"And I now believe freedom means choosing responsibilities."
- JCJim Collins
Yes. Why does that one speak to you?
- AGAdam Grant
You know, it's, it's funny. I was, I was talking with Esther Perel about this recently, and I realized that some of my most, most frustrating experiences in life are when I feel like there's a tension between my desire to help others and my desire to maintain my own freedom and autonomy. And Esther said, "Well, you realize helping others is an expression of autonomy." She said, "That means you don't need other people. They need you." Touché, Esther.
- JCJim Collins
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- AGAdam Grant
But also, I think that if I choose who I wanna help and how I wanna help them, that's a commitment I'm making.
- JCJim Collins
Mm-hmm.
- AGAdam Grant
And it does impose constraints on my life. It means that I don't have complete freedom to choose how I spend my time.
- JCJim Collins
Mm-hmm.
- AGAdam Grant
But I chose that constraint-
- JCJim Collins
Yeah
- AGAdam Grant
... because I care about the person and the impact matters to me. And the way that you articulated that really took something that was implicit for me and made it explicit to say, "Yeah, I want the freedom to choose my responsibilities." Those responsibilities, if I choose them, don't feel like constraints.
- JCJim Collins
Yeah. And to be very clear, the, the who that comes from is Toni Morrison in "The Study." And I read all of her books in sequence and then but also studied her life alongside those books. And there's this obscure interview like way back in the mid-'80s sometime and there was just this line in there where she says something like, "People don't understand freedom. It's, it's not the absence of constraint. It, it, it's not the absence of responsibility. Freedom means you get to choose your responsibilities." And it, and it's very interesting, Adam, because when I, when I read that line and it was like a whole bunch of dominoes just fell because I've cast back through all the other lives and I realized Franklin chose the responsibility to lead in the revolution and McClintock chose the responsibility to continue to do her genetics 'cause she could, right? They're all different permutations, but that notion of choosing responsibilities was such an animating force in their life, particularly in the later years when they could have chosen not to choose any more responsibilities. The, um, incredible power of choosing those responsibilities, which are very different than externally imposed obligations. It's freely chosen responsibilities and that I hope for people.
- AGAdam Grant
Quick anecdote. I was on a stage in Europe last year and I, as I always do, I asked what's the one change that will make the biggest difference-
- JCJim Collins
Mm
- AGAdam Grant
... as I try to improve moving forward? And the, the, the response back from the host was, "You know, the, the speaker who outrated you made everyone cry and just had an extraordinary story and that's, that's not you. You're, you're a cerebral teacher, not a, you know, an emotional preacher." And he said, "But Jim Collins reached people that way."
- JCJim Collins
Hmm.
- AGAdam Grant
I was like, "Damn you, Jim Collins."
- JCJim Collins
[chuckles]
- AGAdam Grant
And no, I, I, I was like, "Okay. Yes, I'm sure I know, I know Jim does that. How did he do it?"
- JCJim Collins
Hmm.
- AGAdam Grant
And the host said, "Jim left people with a question that shook them to their core. And instead of, you know, putting his emotions on the stage, he helped people unlock their own emotions."
- JCJim Collins
Hmm.
- AGAdam Grant
So what I wanna know is what is the question that we should all be asking to make the most of a life?
- JCJim Collins
Hmm. It would be the idea that first of all you start with the i- the, that life is the ultimate punch card and you then now take the Warren Buffett idea of there's only so many punches for investments, so you have to be disciplined. Well, think of every five-year chunk of life's like a punch and you get one. You get one punch card, one life, and the punches are going and you don't get them back. And it doesn't mean you have to go out and do the biggest things. It's just an awareness of the punches. And with that, a question that I really-- what many questions I like to ask people to think about, but one of them is this question of what responsibilities will you choose that reflect your encodings but would not happen but for you and for which you may never receive any credit? And that only the people who are really close to you, your spouse, the pe- your very, very best friends, they might know. But you have in the end this question of did I spend the punches well and do those around me have a respect and affection for that, right?
- AGAdam Grant
I, I can't think of a more profound question to reflect on than that and-
- JCJim Collins
Yeah
- AGAdam Grant
... Jim, this is just, it's such a good example of why it's always a joy but also a mental workout-
- JCJim Collins
[chuckles]
Episode duration: 34:08
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