Best Seller Live | Author Interviews with Cynthia Johnson and Rhett Power

No Point B: Rules for Leading Change in a Hyperconnected World | Caleb Gardner Interview

July 14, 2024 Cynthia Johnson and Rhett Power Season 1 Episode 13
No Point B: Rules for Leading Change in a Hyperconnected World | Caleb Gardner Interview
Best Seller Live | Author Interviews with Cynthia Johnson and Rhett Power
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Best Seller Live | Author Interviews with Cynthia Johnson and Rhett Power
No Point B: Rules for Leading Change in a Hyperconnected World | Caleb Gardner Interview
Jul 14, 2024 Season 1 Episode 13
Cynthia Johnson and Rhett Power

Join hosts Cynthia Johnson and Rhett Power as they interview Caleb Gardner, the co-founder and managing partner at 18 Coffees and the former lead digital strategist for Barack Obama's political advocacy group, OFA. In this enlightening episode of Best Seller Live, Caleb discusses his new book, "No Point B: Rules for Leading Change in the New Hyperconnected, Radically Conscious Economy." Learn about the challenges and opportunities of leading in a rapidly evolving digital world and gain practical insights into managing change effectively.

Key Discussion Points:
- Introduction to Caleb Gardner: Learn about Caleb's extensive background, including his pivotal role managing President Obama's social media and his current work at 18 Coffees.
- Inspiration for the Book: Discover what inspired Caleb to write "No Point B" and the journey that led him to focus on transformation and leadership in a digital age.
- Hyperconnected Economy: Understand the implications of living and leading in a hyperconnected world and how businesses can navigate this landscape.
- Radically Conscious Leadership: Explore the importance of radically conscious leadership and how it influences business practices and social impact.
- Navigating Change: Gain practical advice on managing change in today's fast-paced, digital environment, including the role of foundational values and adaptability.
- Decision Paralysis and Agency: Learn how to overcome decision paralysis and leverage your agency to drive positive change within your organization and beyond.

Watch This Episode?
- Get insights from a leading expert in digital strategy and transformation.
- Learn practical tools to manage change and lead effectively in a hyperconnected economy.
- Discover how to align your business practices with core values and social responsibility.

📕 Get your copy of "No Point B: Rules for Leading Change in the New Hyperconnected, Radically Conscious Economy"  wherever books are sold!

👍 Don't forget to like, subscribe, and hit the notification bell for more inspiring interviews with best-selling authors.

---
Stay connected with us: BestSeller.live
Rhett Power: rhettpower.com
Cynthia Johnson: cynthialive.com

Rhett Power and Cynthia Johnson, both accomplished authors, entrepreneurs, and speakers, co-host Best Seller TV, interviewing fellow authors about their nonfiction books. With their expertise and engaging style, they create insightful and captivating conversations. Rhett's dynamic charisma and Cynthia's thoughtful approach make for a winning combination beyond mere promotion, offering viewers a deep dive into authors' minds.

BestSeller.live
Cynthialive.com
RhettPower.com

Show Notes Transcript

Join hosts Cynthia Johnson and Rhett Power as they interview Caleb Gardner, the co-founder and managing partner at 18 Coffees and the former lead digital strategist for Barack Obama's political advocacy group, OFA. In this enlightening episode of Best Seller Live, Caleb discusses his new book, "No Point B: Rules for Leading Change in the New Hyperconnected, Radically Conscious Economy." Learn about the challenges and opportunities of leading in a rapidly evolving digital world and gain practical insights into managing change effectively.

Key Discussion Points:
- Introduction to Caleb Gardner: Learn about Caleb's extensive background, including his pivotal role managing President Obama's social media and his current work at 18 Coffees.
- Inspiration for the Book: Discover what inspired Caleb to write "No Point B" and the journey that led him to focus on transformation and leadership in a digital age.
- Hyperconnected Economy: Understand the implications of living and leading in a hyperconnected world and how businesses can navigate this landscape.
- Radically Conscious Leadership: Explore the importance of radically conscious leadership and how it influences business practices and social impact.
- Navigating Change: Gain practical advice on managing change in today's fast-paced, digital environment, including the role of foundational values and adaptability.
- Decision Paralysis and Agency: Learn how to overcome decision paralysis and leverage your agency to drive positive change within your organization and beyond.

Watch This Episode?
- Get insights from a leading expert in digital strategy and transformation.
- Learn practical tools to manage change and lead effectively in a hyperconnected economy.
- Discover how to align your business practices with core values and social responsibility.

📕 Get your copy of "No Point B: Rules for Leading Change in the New Hyperconnected, Radically Conscious Economy"  wherever books are sold!

👍 Don't forget to like, subscribe, and hit the notification bell for more inspiring interviews with best-selling authors.

---
Stay connected with us: BestSeller.live
Rhett Power: rhettpower.com
Cynthia Johnson: cynthialive.com

Rhett Power and Cynthia Johnson, both accomplished authors, entrepreneurs, and speakers, co-host Best Seller TV, interviewing fellow authors about their nonfiction books. With their expertise and engaging style, they create insightful and captivating conversations. Rhett's dynamic charisma and Cynthia's thoughtful approach make for a winning combination beyond mere promotion, offering viewers a deep dive into authors' minds.

BestSeller.live
Cynthialive.com
RhettPower.com

Unknown:

Music.

Cynthia Johnson:

Hello and welcome back to bestseller TV. I am Cynthia Johnson, and I'm here with my co host

Unknown:

Rhett power, good to see you, Cynthia, great to see

Cynthia Johnson:

you, and we have a very, very special guest author today, one of my favorites, Caleb Gardner, who is the co founder and managing partner at 18 coffees. Formerly, he was the lead digital strategist for the for ofa and Barack Obama's political advocacy group and managed all of his social media accounts, one of them being his Twitter account, which was the most followed account on Twitter for several years, and now being at 18 coffees. Formerly with companies like Bain and Edelman, he's working with clients like United Way Worldwide, Bose Corporation, Pandora Dell Foundation, Obama Foundation, and vote.org he's written all over the internet and various publications, and now has a book, which I have Right here. No point B rules for leading change in the new, hyper connected, radically conscious economy. Welcome, Caleb.

Unknown:

Thank you so much. I feel kind of like when you're stuck between two really good friends who know each other and like, talk over you and you're like, well, I could, I can. You can talk to each other. You know, a fun format.

Cynthia Johnson:

Yes, we like to make you dead center, right,

Unknown:

the focus of attention in the hot seat, right? That's right, I love it. So I, you know, I've got to ask. I mean, this is, I wish you to, I wish I'd have this book, you know, a few years ago, honestly, so. But I love the radically conscious economy. I love that tagline a lot. So what inspired you to write what? What was the point where you said, you know, I've gotta put this on paper. I've gotta get this out to the world. What was the point where you said you had to write this? I think it was right around when I was leaving Obama world. And, you know, when you're making a career transition from working for the President, you really don't know what to do next, you know, like, there's no, there's no, like, natural career path after something like that. And so I, I had a ton of conversations with people about, especially, like, what was going on beyond politics. You know, it's pretty burned out. I'd had a career in the private sector for a long time that I enjoyed, and wanted to go back to doing something that felt a little less crisis oriented. Maybe, you know, if I mess something up, it's not like 100,000 people aren't going to get health care. You know, that was the state, that was the stakes I was working at before, and it was very, very stressful. It was not as great when I started working for Obama as when I stopped. So I just, I wanted to talk to people about the kind of work I was interested in doing, and seeing who was doing it, and the things that I was most interested in that that really kind of lit my intellectual fire, like made me feel like we were doing really important work and was really challenging, was around transformation, like helping people wrap their heads around we just, we're still a little bit in the infancy of the internet. Business is constantly changing in response to Technology and Opportunity. But like, when we look at the way business was structured, especially pre pandemic, it hadn't really changed that much. Like we kind of innovated around the edges, and you definitely saw some like up and coming companies doing some really interesting things, not only with technology, but rethinking their business model and how they approach their employees. And again, to your point about being radically conscious their impact on the world, which is something that for a long time, corporations didn't think about at all, or if they did, they kind of paid other people in corporate social responsibility to think about it. Right? I thought that was really like we were at it this inflection point, and no one was talking about how big of a moment it really was. And then, of course, I left Obama world. Trump was elected, and the world became even more hyper politicized than it was before that. And so I felt this real urgency to be at that crux of digital disruption, social change and the future of work. And that's one of the reasons why we founded 18 coffees, to really be at that crux in terms of helping people navigate the new reality of all those things. And so we just we built a service model that was pretty forward thinking, I think, and really dealt with change in the way it looks now, not in the way that consultants and academics have been talking about change management for decades, but in the way that it looks when you're in a constantly moving, internet driven culture where people are kind of sitting at their screens taking in their Twitter message. Is while they are taking in their slack and teams and like, you know, like their internal work culture, like, how that stuff starts to bleed together when you think about how often we have to respond to new data and we have to decide whether a new opportunity, whether it's a new social account or a new business model, is viable for us. Like, there's just we're we're at a at a place where doing change well requires almost a completely different skill set than it did 30 years ago. And so as we were building those service models, and like creating IP for ourselves, I just started talking to people about that, and especially like reflecting on my work with Obama, like a lot of people started saying, oh, you should write a book about that. And always wanted to write a book, and the rest is history. I guess

Cynthia Johnson:

I was wanting you to write a book. And you know, we met because I followed your Twitter account, I think not even Obama's great content. So both the book and the company, great names, great titles. So in maybe start with the company because it existed first, and then go into the book. How did you come up with the titles?

Unknown:

Oh, man. So when you're building something and you're not quite sure what it's going to be at you've got a whole wide world of things that you can call it. And, you know, like we thought of things that were use our last names in creative ways, or that, like, had a history and me and my business partners, like, you know, work together, or do we do something completely off the wall and crazy and quirky and fun? And we went back and forth on this for a long time. And if you've ever named anything important, like a child or a company, you know, like you realize that what an asinine exercise it is, and like how much your ego is tied up in it, and how many opinions other people have. And finally, over, I think this is over chat, one day, I was just like, look, it doesn't matter what we call it, we're gonna have to build equity in the name. We're gonna have to teach people what we do, you know, like, Apple was a fruit company before Apple computers like it just, you have to, you have to teach people, you know, you have to teach the market. And so I was like, you just give me, you just give me a number, and I'm gonna give you a flavor of ice cream. And if the URL is available, which is the most important part, we're just going to do it, and we're not going to look back and she's Chinese by Origin. 18 is a lucky number in Chinese culture. I was on a coffee ice cream binge at the time, and we just said, Fine, that's the name of our company. We'll figure out the rest later. And then we did. We iterated and created equity in the name and the brand. And, you know, the rest is history. But I don't want to, I don't want to disparage anyone who does naming for a living, because it's a super labor intensive, emotional thing that, you know, lots of people have to do, but, oh, I don't want to be, I don't want to be in that industry that was the company. Well, sometimes it takes about 18 cups of coffee to get your mind around something, right? Yeah. I mean, it made sense to me. I don't know, but Well, that's what I'm saying. Now we get to be like, Oh, coffee is where you build trust. It's how, it's how you get energy, you know? Like we can, we can back into a really compelling corporate story instead of the road. We made it up. Yeah. And it

Cynthia Johnson:

changes. Yeah. Yeah. And, okay, I love that. I actually thought maybe you had 18 copies to get to the name, but now, I

Unknown:

mean, we do, we do both drink quite a bit of coffee every day, so it fits.

Cynthia Johnson:

And what about the book? Yeah, the

Unknown:

book was a little bit so I was working with an agent. I was very, you know, beneficial. I know lots of people write books and don't have agents, but having one for me was really, really helpful, because my brain is like, all over the place about all kinds of different things. And she would really come back to me and be like, I don't know what you're talking about. So can you dumb this down for me? And we went, we went, iterated on the concept a lot, until we got to a really simple idea, which is just like, the idea that we can change and then stop changing is ridiculous, and that's the way that we have talked about change for ever. And we have all these models about change management that are like, unfreeze the organization, do all these things and then refreeze it. What are you talking about? Man, like, this is we are. We are in a state of constant evolution, both as people and as organizations. And so just really nailing on that concept, which is no point B, like, there's no end point. This is just, this is just how life is. This is just how we have to lead. And now I, you know, make a living saying, like, change leadership is leadership. Like, that's just what leadership is. I thought we thought that was a really succinct way to, you know, put a bow on the whole concept

Cynthia Johnson:

of the boat. Yeah, go ahead. Rhett, no,

Unknown:

I'm gonna have to steal that, because I. You know, I do change management, and I absolutely love that, so I I will try to credit you, and I want to, don't, you know, I want to sound brilliant. So well now it goes to the Google Alert up to see when you do that, and see when it goes to steal that concept. Well, you borrow from the best, right? We all borrow from the bathroom, honestly, is part of the intellectually taxing part of writing a book is trying to be like, what is original and what am I accidentally going to steal from someone else? Right? That's right. That's right, because you're like, bringing in, you know, you're doing all this curation work of other people's ideas, and I had so much anxiety that I'm going to steal something accidentally and not realize that I did it. I know, actually Google. I actually, I actually did that in into a plagiarism checker last night, as I was thinking of something, I thought of a line. I thought of a clever line for something I'm writing, and I put it in there, just in case, because I I thought it sounded really familiar. But anyway, it came out, came up clean, but I don't know. Yeah, sounds really, sounds really familiar. So I don't know. So you talk a lot about being hyper connected in the book, and how do you define hyper connectivity? And I think I know, but I'd love to hear more about what you think, and what is the, what are some of the implications for living in a hyper connected world? Yeah, that's a really good question, because I don't my there's been, there's been books that have come out, especially in the last five ish years, as we've looked at the at the negative implications of internet technology on our lives. And basically, some of the most radical ones are basically, we shouldn't do it like we should. We should unplug. We shouldn't have social accounts. We should, you know, there's it goes beyond digital detoxes to delete your social accounts or delete your you know, like, basically go back to living in a cave, or, you know, at least back to the 80s, when we all had cassette tapes, you know, like it's just, you get into this mindset of technology contrarianism. And I totally get the instinct of that, because I've been there. I've seen the kind of worst dread dregs of the internet. You know, I ran, I ran, I ran social media account for the first black president. I saw some terrible stuff. Okay, how? Exactly, exactly you don't have, you sure you don't have PTSD from that. I'm saying at least, at least a lot more. But my, my argument that I make is that, like the hyper connectivity part, is not going to go away, and we can't escape it, and we shouldn't try to escape it. We should manage it. I'm big believer in digital detoxes, don't get me wrong, but it's actually an abdication of the power and responsibility we've been given in such a hyper connected world to constantly unplug and not lean in and use our voice and use the power that we've been given to do good. And so the argument that I make is like, not only is it unfathomable for us to be completely disconnected, and for some people, it's actually professionally risky and like can come with a lot of negative consequences to not lean in and be curious about how technology is changing our world. I mean, look at the impact of AI as we're having this conversation, like, if there's not a fire being lit under several different industries about what does this mean for us? Of course, you're going to get left behind, right? So, like, we don't really have a choice but to understand how technology is affecting our our lives and our companies, and how we should be leading them. But beyond that, I think it's actually we have some responsibility built in as the most powerful, most connected, most technologically savvy society that ever has existed to say, what are we doing with that power? How are we using that to speak up about things that we need to speak up on to change not only make our business models better and more effective and more profitable. But to my point earlier about being radically conscious, to use the data that we now have about our social impact to operate differently. And so I just think it goes beyond the hyper connected in the in the mental health, you know, sense, yes, but also, like we can manage those effects while having a positive impact.

Cynthia Johnson:

So interesting, because I think back on when I had my turning point in digital was actually one of your colleagues, I'm assuming, Obama campaign, and they said that the people were dropping off when they went to donate at the like, career question. And it was because students and people who were retired didn't have a career, and they didn't know what to put Yeah, and they just put in parentheses, student or retired. Okay? And like. Like, and it just changed everything. And what it sounds like to me, and please correct me wrong, is that the hyper connectivity reduces our ability to sort of see the forest and the trees. And you're saying, like, look at data points carefully. How do you slow down? How do you get your clients to slow down and then figure out what's the most important thing to look at? Yeah,

Unknown:

I mean, the example that you just gave is a great microcosm of the intersection between reporting requirements for campaigns and how we want things to be fast and easy on the internet, like so, much of our digital lives is built upon infrastructure that hasn't changed in decades, if not millennia. You think about, think about democracy itself, and like American democracy, how much has that been iterated upon in the last 200 years, right and and the pace of change happening right now that that democracy is supposed to help regulate is dizzying. So we don't have, like, campaign electoral reporting requirements that acknowledge that some people don't have one career, some people don't have any careers. Like, to your point about retirees anymore, but, like, I'm a multi faceted person who runs multiple companies, does multiple things. Like I stress out about that when my doctor asks what my career is going to be, much less when the SEC is doing it because they want, like, reporting requirements, right? So no wonder people are dropping off. But I think that for myself and for my own clients, I think it's this is one of the reasons why I focus so much on changing well, is because it's not just about reacting to the environment that we have. Like that's a great example of like we need to we need to figure out what to do today. Like we've got, we've got these reporting requirements, we've got an end date for this campaign. We're just gonna have to build something that acknowledges that we only have a six month ish runway, and make do with it, right? But actually changing well means looking across multiple horizons and saying, Where can we make structural change for the long term, while dealing with what we have right in front of us? Because we're always doing both right, like we're making decisions that have long term consequences at the same time as we're putting out the fires of today, and changing well means just acknowledging that reality and constantly be looking at looking across those horizons and being okay with the tension of we don't actually know, like the longer we look across, the less we know about what's actually going to happen. And we're doing some forecasting, and sometimes we're not great at forecasting, but we kind of have to do it, and we what we're going to do today is do things that are most valuable for today. Well, I got so many questions here, and a couple of them don't have or aren't part of the book, but I mean this idea of not allowed, it has to be. But like you said, like this information we talked about you were hinting on this a little bit ago about a responsibility to try to do good and not to disconnect, but to engage maybe. I mean, how do you deal with overload here, because I think I do see a lot of that, whether it's, you know, I'm here at a tech conference this week, and people just sort of overloaded with AI and all these things that you have to try to keep up with now, as a business owner, as an individual like and we are at a stage where A lot of people just feel that overlay there is that, yeah, how could you know? And the other side of the question for me is, you know, that's led to, I think it's one of the contributing factors to this tension that we have in society, politically and everything else, right? I think social media and is partly responsible for that? I don't know if that. I don't know really what the question is, if it's not more than a statement, but how do we how do we deal with that? How do we process that as people? How do we navigate that overload? I guess, is the question and and remain positive, and engage positively, because I think it is up to each of us individually to try to take it down a notch. Yeah, the way that I framed it in the book is to find the context again for yourself, because there's a real good chance that you either get lost. This is a to your point about attribution. I stole this from Kierkegaard. You either get lost in the infinite, which means that in the infinite amount of possibilities, we do nothing, or you get lost in the finite, which means we know we can control this, and that's all we're going to worry about. We're not going to worry about any of the rest. And actually, the truth lies somewhere in. Middle of we have to deal with what we know and it's provable, and we can, you know, and we know, we can have an impact on while considering the things that we don't know, and be constantly reevaluating how the world is changing, taking in new data points, and again, about changing well, like adjusting strategy, when that data says that we should adjust. And again, looking across multiple horizons, so we're even looking for data points from the right horizon to make those kinds of decisions. But it can be like decision paralysis is probably the thing that we deal with the most from an organization, because that is a very paralyzing thing, and we feel it in our everyday lives, in terms of dealing with the negative information that is coming out about how broken the world is every single day, the negativity in the media is like amplified by social media, which only talks about all the ways the world broken, right? You have to go find the good news. This is, this is one of the things that lots of people that I mentored is like to manage your own mental health, you have to actually build in in like, information streams about the good news too, right? Like find, go out and find the outlets that are talking about the things that you care about. So you hear about where we're making progress. And you're not just looking at the national media standpoint, which is almost always about how the world is broken. So that's my clients. I mean, the clients, though, I mean, they are scared to death to put anything out there. Now, right, right. You mean, like, from a standpoint, because, like, they're worried they're going to get called out. Is that what you mean? Yeah, right. I mean, they've got that decision paralysis about whatever campaign they're they're rolling out whatever they're, you know, who's it going to offend? Who's, you know, how are we going to get canceled on the you know, it is for good reason. I mean, well, we've had Bud Light. We've had target like, just in the last few weeks, in terms of people who tried to make a move got called out, calling back, and we could argue about whether or not pulling back on those campaigns was a good move or not. I definitely have opinions on that, but it's it can be very paralyzing to feel like we can't make mistakes, and in reality, most of the time, you can make mistakes. Let's just talk purely about the calm standpoint. Again, I ran, I ran, uh, social media for a president. I'm very aware of the risks of saying the wrong thing. I've spent many a night worrying about Josh Earnest being asked about something that we tweeted at a press briefing, like that. That was the that was the world that I lived in. But in reality, even the president throws 1000 punches of social media content throws 1000 punches of all kinds of talking about all kinds of different issues, and doesn't always get it right. Doesn't always get it exactly nuanced in terms of the policy issue, doesn't always get it exactly right in terms of who like, when thinking about the constituencies, like you want to talk about a complex constituency base. We had Capitol Hill, we had our voters. We had people didn't vote for us. We had people who were going to be upset at us, and no matter what we said, we had, you know, like there was always risk in terms of that environment. And so we didn't always get it right. And for the most part, as long as you are trying and when you have a crisis, you are over correcting and saying, Okay, this is what we're going to do differently, people will actually give you some leeway to try things and make mistakes. Now, there are exceptions to this rule. It kind of depends on what you're stepping in and how bad you have a mistake that you made, of course, and whose ultimate responsibility it was, but that paralyzing feeling of I can't do anything because I'm going to get something wrong is actually just not true. And the more that we can fight against that anxiety and just try and learn, like, some of that is just we're we're like, there's a mental block that we have to learning new things about ourselves and like, how to do things. And some of that is you learn by trying, like, there's just no other way to do it, and you just keep moving. Just keep moving. Yeah, you do your best, but once you know better, you do better. That's what I brought that quote up a lot in my book from Maya Angelou says, like, when I, you know, when I, God, now I'm going to butcher the quote. It was like, when I when I knew, when I knew better, I did better. That was the essential, totally like, just Angelo quote. Now, speaking of, get it wrong on the internet,

Cynthia Johnson:

but then, but then it goes back. So, you know, I, I've run social media accounts my entire career, never for a president, but maybe I'm more risk adverse. And I found that when you know why you're there, the. The the idea of communicating goes away completely. It's almost like invisible. It's like, you know? It's like, you're so connected to the thing that the process of communicating, it, it's, it's this effortlessness, right? And when it's not effortless, it's usually because you don't have an opinion. And you know, you can, you can, you can just quote, uh, Maya Angelou, if you want to, as long as everyone knows why you're saying it in the first place. But if you go out there and you do it, and they're like, why? Why'd you say that? Because

Unknown:

it's Black History Month. No, yeah,

Cynthia Johnson:

exactly, exactly how, I guess, like, how do you get people to just stop for a second and figure out why they're there in the first place?

Unknown:

I mean, you were talking about the foundational work that so few companies have done to actually figure out what they value. Because if we're going to operate in a highly politicized environment, then we need to operate from principles, not from politics. If we react to the political environment, we've seen so many examples of this just in the last year, when we react to the political environment, we show ourselves as wishy washy, like we don't believe in anything we don't stand for anything. We get seen as this, like corporate boardroom driven nonsense, where we'll just say anything to make a profit, and people just won't put up with that. I mean, that's part of operating in that radically conscious environment, is that people call bullshit on that all the time. And so if we can stop and do the foundational work of saying, what do we value, then we can operate from principle, instead of operating based on the fires that we have to put out that day. And it's going to be hard. Don't get me wrong, operating from principle is still very hard when we feel like we are being more risky by saying what we believe, but people will respect you for it. And over the long run, this is the important part. Over the long run, you might have social media fires in the short term, short term, usually those bird out without much effect on the bottom line. And over the long run, you're going to gain fans. You're going to gain respect for your brand. It's, it's tough to say it's like, there's like an opportunity cost there, right? Like you don't feel like we need to do this kind of foundational work until you don't know what you believe or what you should say in a specific situation, or you've done that foundational work, and it's at such a high level you have no idea how it applies to any given situation. So like, I've seen tons of companies are like inclusion is one of our values. Okay, great. How does inclusion operate in this environment, when you are trying to make a market based decision about which customers you're going to target and which aren't, which you are not, how does inclusion operate when that exclusionary decision actually negatively affects people who aren't your customers. Are you? Are you just talking about inclusion when it comes to your customers? Are you talking about the rest of that community too? You know, like, there's, if you start, like, actually scenario planning it around there, you can get to the teeth of where those values are going to, like, the rubber is going to hit the road on what you believe pretty fast. But nobody, but we don't, we don't do that kind of foundational work that helps us react to things better from a more like, you know, values driven place. No, I always, in a lot of my work that I do with companies, it's, it's really about those values are, and I say the same kind of stuff that you're talking about, which is, you know, in tough times, your values actually, if you're a values driven organization, your values actually make those decisions pretty easy. Yes, right, right? I mean, you know, in tough times when you have hard moments, because you did all that work already, right? And the answer is clear, typically, when you have a tough decision to make, if you're a values driven organization, I 100% agree with that, and and so I hate to we, you know, we have to sort of get to the end here, and I hate that. But what do you hope? What are the key points? Let's, let's summarize this nicely. What are the key points and key takeaways for no point B, like I, let's, let's get to that. So the summarize this, what a very complicated topic, let's be honest, in a in a very short book, which is probably was one of the reasons why my very happy my agent, Aiden, was so patient with trying to come up with the concept. But if I was to summarize in a couple points, it's that we can't change the way that we have changed like we have to actually think about what's different about how we do change right now than how we have done it over the last 50 years of business cycle. Like we are. We are entering a new era, more anxiety, more information, more decision fatigue, like, what are we going to do differently about how we transform our organization now and specifically, what is the role of leaders to do that? I you know the whole book is targeted at leaders of the future that are connected, that are radically conscious, and how does leadership for those people in that environment look different? And specifically, there's a call to action at the end that is about having agency over making that change no matter what level of leadership you find yourself in, and this is an important point that I always make, which is that we all have more agency than we realize, whether that's making change in society using our voice politically, or it's being in an environment, in a bureaucracy, in a larger organization, seeing something wrong and speaking up about it, and not just speaking up about it, but like taking leadership that as a leadership opportunity, and trying to change your company, trying to change those economic levers to be like slightly more just is, I think, worthwhile work. And you know, we we, if we confine that context for us again and find work that is meaningful like that. It makes a world of difference to our experience of work. It makes a world of difference and collectively, if we all can do that, it's going to make a world of difference to building a more inclusive, more, you know, circular economy that we are going to have to build over the next 2030, years.

Cynthia Johnson:

Thank thank you for I mean, just, thank you for being here. Just, I've seen you speak, and I've seen your work, and I've seen you build a company, and now having the book and being in the show and sharing this with everyone, it's really powerful. So and where can, where can we get the book?

Unknown:

Yes, you can get it at wherever books are sold. All the links I have on Caleb gardner.com will take you to, you know, Barnes, Noble, Amazon, I particularly like bookshop or indiebound, of course, for the like, little guys. But you can really get it anywhere. Yeah, so that it's pretty easily accessible. Thank you. That's fantastic. Thank you so much for having me. It's been fun,

Cynthia Johnson:

yeah, of course. And for everyone watching, this is best seller TV, we'll be back next week with another episode. And thank you, of course. Rhett, always, as always you.