E23 Revolutionizing Adult Learning and Professional Development with Mark Herschberg

Unlock the secrets to bridging the gap between business and technology with insights from seasoned executive and cybersecurity expert, Mark Herschberg. Mark introduces his groundbreaking app, Brain Bump, which harnesses the power of spaced repetition and just-in-time features to help you retain and apply information from your favorite books, podcasts, and learning materials. Discover how his extensive teaching experience at MIT and HBS translates into a practical approach for making adult learning more effective.

Explore the philosophy behind Brain Bump and its mission to enhance information accessibility in our fast-paced digital world. Learn how the app, offered for free, aims to ensure quick access to valuable tips with minimal clicks and wait time, and understand Mark's vision for contributing positively to society while also identifying potential future monetization strategies for tech startups. Delve into parallels between user patience for website loading times and accessing personal notes, and uncover the broader implications of this innovation for authors and content creators.

Gain valuable career insights from Mark's book, which covers ten essential skills necessary for professional success. From career planning and leadership to interpersonal dynamics and navigating corporate politics, this episode is packed with practical tips and actionable advice to help you thrive in any work environment. We'll also discuss the impact of technology on education, the importance of executive function skills in younger generations, and strategies for upskilling team members within organizations. Don't miss out on this opportunity to elevate your career and enhance your learning journey with Mark Herschberg.

Guest Linkedin: Mark Herschberg
Check-out his book at : https://www.thecareertoolkitbook.com
Check-out the app at: Android phone or Apple

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Let me invite you to sit back, drop your jaw, tongue and shoulders, take a deep breath and, if you wish, close your eyes for a moment and feel the beat within. In a few seconds, you just jumped from your head to your heart and felt the beat within opening up to receive even more value and fulfillment out of your business and life. And today's episode. I'm your host, nico van der Venne, confidant to successful CEO founders, entrepreneurs striving to achieve everlasting fulfillment. Welcome to the Everlasting Podcast with our next guest, mark Hirschberg. Introduction of Mark. We got a gold man here, wow. Seasoned executive and cybersecurity expert who can bridge the divide between business and technology. Mark started, grown and fixed startup companies spanning over a dozen different verticals, helped two Fortune 500 companies with their internal startup initiatives and helped create educational programs at MIT and HBS. Mark typically lead, engineer, product and data science and co-created strategy for the company, an experienced board member as well, and has created his own app out of can I say, frustration, mark.

Speaker 2: 1:28

Sure, it began with frustration and seeing a need.

Speaker 1: 1:32

Okay, then I'll mention frustration to find a way, on a different approach, to keep what you learned and use what you learned. In addition, and I thought this would be the end of the introduction, he also wrote a book on leadership, especially on a career tool for evolving in your career as a leader. That's one hell of an introduction, mark. Welcome to the show and thank you so much for taking the time.

Speaker 2: 2:03

Thank you for having me. It's my pleasure to be here.

Speaker 1: 2:06

So let's dive into that app. We already talked about a little bit in the green room, but it's amazing. That's a good solution, I think.

Speaker 2: 2:16

Sure.

Speaker 2: 2:17

So let me set the context of the problem and then how I went and solved it. I read lots of books. I also listen to a lot of podcasts. The problem is, every time I read a book a business book, a self-help type book say, wow, there's great advice here, and then I forget all two weeks later. When you listen to a podcast, you're probably at the gym, going to work, making dinner, doing something else, and it goes in one ear and quickly out the other, because you going to work, making dinner, doing something else and it goes in one ear and quickly out the other because you're going to forget it before you can apply what you've learned. That's wildly inefficient. Think about all the hours we spent learning. That went nowhere.

Speaker 2: 2:57

And for the content creators, we care. It's not just about money. We care about helping you retain it, although we do like you to remember us and word of mouth, marketing and buying other products or services. I don't have any related to my book, by the way, but many people do, and so I wanted to find a way to help people better retain and use what they had, especially now that I was an author with a book. How do I help people remember it. I was convinced there must be a tool to do this and I found none. There's lots of ways to market. There's social media, there's oh, look at me posting, but it's not helping you. So what I realized from my years of teaching.

Speaker 2: 3:37

I've been teaching for over 20 years at MIT. I helped to start a program at HBS as well. I've done other types of teaching. We know spaced repetition works that's a fancy name for seeing the material again and in school you had tests, so you studied, you made flashcards We'd put in the time. As an adult, there's no test, so you're not taking notes. You're not going to create these flashcards and look over and over. For those who do take notes on books because I actually would take notes on mine you never go back and look at them. That was the problem. It's not the taking of the notes, it's the accessing of the notes. So how can we give you that access easily? And that's where Brain Bump comes in. It's a completely free app on the Android and iPhone stores.

Speaker 2: 4:25

Brain bump comes in. It's a completely free app on the Android and iPhone stores. What we do is we take the key ideas from books, blogs, podcasts, classes and talks. If it's a book. Imagine going through with a highlighter. Oh, I want to remember this. Here's a good quote, here's a good point. We take all those highlights, we put them into the app and then they're all in the app tagged by topic. Here's the advice on leadership. Here's the advice on leadership. Here's the advice on networking. Here's the advice on communicating. So now you can use it one of two ways.

Speaker 2: 4:53

There's a just-in-time feature. My book, for example. There's a chapter on networking. Where do you read it? Sitting at home. Where do you need it Two months later as you're going into a conference?

Speaker 2: 5:06

So imagine, as you're in the lobby of the hotel, you open the app, you tap networking and there's all the networking tips right there within seconds, just when you need them. Or maybe, if you want a subset, you created some favorites because we have a favorites list. That's the just-in-time feature. There's also a daily affirmation feature.

Speaker 2: 5:27

Imagine you're trying to scale up your business. So you've been listening to podcasts like this. Or you're reading books on scaling. Imagine if every day at 9 am, as you go to the office, there's some advice. You don't even open the app, it just pops up on your phone. Here is advice on scaling. You look two seconds later. You swipe. You're done Once a week.

Speaker 2: 5:48

Maybe 3 pm is your strategy meeting, so get a strategy tip at 2.55 pm, right before the meeting, so you're primed for it. And then maybe you're a new parent so you're reading a parenting book. You get that at six o'clock, right as you leave the office, walk home. There's that parenting tip and the key idea is that it's always relevant to when and where you are, because the parenting advice at 11 am your brain says good advice, but not now, I'm busy. That strategy advice, if you get Friday afternoon, your brain says I need this Wednesday, I'm not going to remember it for next Wednesday. So you control when and where you get information. This is the key. We move from push media, which is the email marketing, social media, even blogs, podcasts and emails. They come out on the schedule set by the content creator. But now we give you control to say I need this information at this time.

Speaker 1: 6:51

And that's the key to learning, retaining and using all the information you get. That's a great approach in the organization I'm currently running a long-time project in to maybe even prepare people for trainings that are upcoming. For instance, you give them a snippet of information that can trigger them to really think about the subject that might come up. Or, like you said, right in front of that key meeting, one-on-one with your manager, so you can put in a good one to convince them of your high intelligence and all of that wonderful stuff. Or just, you know, really being practical and thinking a little bit, a little bit further than just um, reading the book and indeed, um, taking out a couple of things, because I was the moment you said, uh, taking notes and never going back to them.

Speaker 1: 7:46

Luckily this, this camera, only has a, a limited view, but, um, there's like I have these, these kind of black book notebooks and the funny thing is I also have something that's a completely modern solution, it's a remarkable. So it's one of those writing tablets and this is full of all notes and stuff like that from from trainings, from meetings and, of course, meeting usually notes from meetings you kind of still pick up because you know you wrote something down on your to do list or you want to send somebody some work or delegate something, but I think the approach that you made on really triggering that one moment in time when somebody needs that information, it's almost as if, let's say, you're thinking I should Google this, but it's already there. Well, in the future it's probably going to be I should chat, gpt it or GPT it, and then it's already there. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 8:49

That's exactly right. And if you think about similar patterns when we think about websites, we know someone going to a webpage. They'll wait two, maybe three seconds for the webpage to load. If a webpage starts taking more than four or five seconds, and certainly by about seven seconds, you've lost the person. They give up. You think, well, it's just a few seconds. But in this world today, even the world I was in 20 years ago when we were starting to use web browsers a little over 20 years we didn't like to wait and we have this timeout function To your point. Like to wait and we have this timeout function To your point.

Speaker 2: 9:28

You've got all your notes in that electronic notebook and I'm sure that's accessible through your phone and other interfaces. So in theory you always have it with you. But if we're in a conversation or you're running off somewhere and you're thinking I need this information, it's going to take you minimum 20 or 30 seconds to access it, to open up the right files, to control F and search through it, and you're going to give up. The same way we give up on the website. So the key and again, there's lots of other apps that let you take notes the key was making the information accessible as quickly as possible. We focus on how many seconds and how many clicks it takes to get the information, and we're always trying to minimize that.

Speaker 1: 10:10

That's indeed that's an approach that I've never heard of, and find it kind of a pity that I only hear about your app right now, but I also did. I also hear you correctly that this is an app that's just available right away.

Speaker 2: 10:24

People can download it right now right now it is 100 free on both app stores or at brainbumpappcom. But if you're going to download, you have to come back and promise to listen to the rest of this episode.

Speaker 1: 10:39

Yeah, yeah, keep your phone, Keep your phone out.

Speaker 2: 10:43

So brainbumpappcom download the free app. And now the best part is we have thousands of tips already from lots of books, blogs, podcasts. We've already put that in there, so you don't even have to create them. You get them Now.

Speaker 2: 10:59

Obviously, we don't have all the books and other content in the world, so if we don't yet have what you want, there's two things you can do is, one, tell us who you want and we'll reach out to the person. Or, even better, tell the person say, you should get your stuff here because I want to access it, but you can also add it yourself just for you. Now we respect copyright and IP, so we're never going to take someone's content without their permission. But if you locally want to take your own notes just for your instance of the app, you can go do that. You can edit yourself. You can also, if you've been doing highlights in your Kindle eBooks, you can import that highlights file and now they all turn into tip cards for you. But we'll reach out to the content creator, the author, the podcaster and say please put your tips here for everyone, and we're we love to get more content. The more we get, the more people love it. The more people love it the more content creators come, and it's just a better experience for everyone.

Speaker 1: 12:00

Yeah, yeah, indeed. Now, this is something enormously valuable. Where do you come up creating an app? Well, first, of course, you think of I want the solution for myself, but then launching it into the world. You're giving something extremely valuable into the world, where most companies start looking at what's the revenue bit that we can get out of so many sold items in this app and blah, blah, blah, blah. Where do you come from that point of view? Because this is, you know, the world is not free. We all know that the only thing that comes up is the sun you don't have to pay for that or anything and storms, but yeah, but what's the story there?

Speaker 2: 12:46

Well, this app I am trying to give away for free. We plan to keep it for free for everyone. This is you could describe it as charity. You can describe it as just my way of giving back to the world. This is how I want to make the world better. And now I'll note, but we'll circle back to your idea in a moment I mentioned earlier.

Speaker 2: 13:07

Most authors, for example, usually have some other service and, by the way, authors don't make money from selling books. They make nothing, but the book helps promote them for their coaching, their consulting, whatever other services or expertise, and that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that business model. Because I build tech startups, I work as a CTO, cpo, and because this book is on careers, this is all. Just how can I give it away and help as many people as possible? Now the book we have to charge something for. Partially, there's printing costs, but also, if you give away a book for free, people go OK, it's cheap, it's not worth it.

Speaker 2: 13:50

Apps, however, they're used to getting for free. Now, that said many of my other companies, we would start off with a product that is free, in fact, one I'm in the process of launching. Now we're looking at how do we give away for free or for some trivial costs like a dollar a year to get people on it? And profits do matter, certainly for those companies which are designed to make money. The mistake is to start out and say how do I get money. Instead, focus on how do I create value, because if you can create value for your customers, then you can claim some of that value down the road.

Speaker 2: 14:30

It's kind of the drug technique of your first taste is free If I just say here's something, go buy it. Oh, I don't know, maybe it works, maybe not. In fact, I can tell you as a CTO, I have companies every day saying oh, we've got this great tool. It's going to make your team so much more productive and you can get a two-week, a one-month free trial. It's not free. You might not be charging me anything, but now I have to invest time and effort for myself and my team to do this and I don't yet know if it's worth it.

Speaker 2: 15:05

So if you can minimize that cost and say here's something that truly is free, not just in terms of money but in ease of use, time and effort, I can quickly get you to the value you receive. That's going to get people hooked. They're going to say, great, I need this. Once they're using it, say, oh, I see the value. You're saving me this much time, you're earning me this much money. Now I say, okay, look, the world isn't free, as you point out. I need to be compensated for it. They'll say, well, I can now figure out how much I'm willing to pay because I can do this and I'm still getting a benefit. So start with the value creation before you get to value claiming.

Speaker 1: 15:47

That sentence is so profound because I've worked in the past where I was. Of course, if you start a business, the first thing you think about is the freedom that you're going to get. That kind of disappears really quickly when you realize that you have to do everything, but you know. And then the second thing um, but that was my cycle um is how am I going to earn my buck? You know, my, my bread on the table and stuff like that.

Speaker 1: 16:14

And I can agree 100 with what you're saying, because marketing used to be something you, you, you had this shop in a village where you put something on the wall advertising. This is, I don't know, a blacksmith. Everybody knew it was okay, he's a blacksmith. I have to go there with my horse to get his shoes on and stuff like that. These days, with this high-tech world and international connection like we are now I don't know what distance we're at right now, but you're in the US, I'm here in Belgium and Europe and speed connections are amazing, stuff like that but this also causes the fact that you need to shout even louder to show yourself to this world, world. So one of the ways to do that, of course, is is go on social media, which is only, I think, 15, 20 years, that that exists in a certain form of way.

Speaker 1: 17:12

Um, and I see a lot of value going into social media and my experience has been that I gave a lot of value and didn't go get a lot of value and didn't get a lot of value back because I was directing my value towards the wrong target audience. That's something you have to be aware of as well. So, if you look at your target audience with this specific app or let's skip over to your book, because I find the book very interesting as well you just mentioned a little bit earlier find the book very, very interesting as well. You just mentioned a little bit earlier. The book is is written to help you. Um, if I remember correctly from I I was, I was listening at one of the episodes, another podcast that you from like 20 years to 40, how you can climb the ladder and have a couple of tips there is. Is that correct? Where I'm going with this?

Speaker 2: 18:03

on your book. That's the marketing copy it turns out it's a little more broad. So when I first wrote it I thought, well, who's the target? Because they tell you if you target everyone, you target no one, true, yeah, I actually disagree with that advice. Now the book is written for white collar office workers. It's maybe less useful if you're a plumber, if you're working as a cashier in a shop, but assuming you're an office worker, we were targeting 20 to 40, although on Amazon most of the comments I get in the reviews are boy, I wish I had this book 20 years ago and we see a lot of people who are in their 40s and 50s writing about how much they like it. So I'd broaden the target, even though I think I initially list 20 to 40. And really it's the skills that everyone needs that we don't teach and that's why the book with the subtitle it's the career toolkit and the subtitle is essential skills for success that no one taught you.

Speaker 2: 19:04

Now this comes from partially my own experience. When I was hiring people. I discovered no one seemed to have the skill or the set of skills. But around the same time MIT got feedback from companies saying we try to hire people and we want these skills, but we can't find them. Not just MIT undergrads, not just engineers, not just recent college grads Universally, these are the skills we want in our hires, but no one seems to have them. And we looked around and said, right, no one's teaching them. That's why no one has them. So we create a program, and this is where I got involved at MIT and I've been teaching here for 20 plus years. What are these universal skills? How do we teach them? And from having done that now for decades at MIT, I said well, I know it's not just our students who need this. And that led to the book how Can I Reach a Wider Audience and Help More People?

Speaker 1: 20:00

That's amazing. I can remember my own career and, um, I just skipped through a part of it. You know, just looked at the chapters and and read the, let's say, the back cover and all that beautiful stuff that you get an idea of what the book is about. And I I listened to the episode where you were explaining this part, also in a different context. But I'm thinking back when I started working. I ended my high school and I didn't go into higher education or anything. It was just not a possibility within my family.

Speaker 1: 20:40

And I've been out there for 25 years and the last five years to eight years I've had my company and I must indeed say that there is no curricula or anything like it that brings up specific skills that are career oriented. It's the same way. Where nobody explains you how to do your taxes, it's exactly the same Nobody explains you when you're 18 or 19-year-olds, you start working and two years later you get this letter or this email saying you can fill in your taxes and you're sitting there. Okay, now I need to read a book on how to fill in the taxes and nobody explains it to me. These days you can find a lot of stuff on the internet, so how did you go from? So? You explained MIT. You're educating there as well, but how did you go from MIT to you know, using the book? For do you use it for companies, wide stories, or is it still specifically?

Speaker 2: 21:45

No, it's across different industries. And actually let me give some context. Let me we'll get a little more concrete about what's in the book and then we'll talk about where it applies and how. The book has 10 chapters, 10 skills. Now you've seen these lists before and you've seen as a list of anywhere from five to 50. It's really just the size of the buckets you're putting them in. So these aren't going to be surprises of oh my God, I never heard these words before but the 10 buckets. I use the 10 skills.

Speaker 2: 22:13

Chapter one career planning. And so chapter one itself is career plan. Now that might mean for some people how do I move up the corporate ladder and get bigger titles, even if you're a founder CEO? It's not about your title changing, it's how do you develop and evolve your set of skills to handle new challenges as your business grows. Chapter two working effectively, understanding corporate culture, understanding how you're delivering value to your customers, the ecosystem in which your business operates. We never tell people this. We say you're a cog, sit over here, turn with the other cogs. Chapter three is on interviewing, not as a candidate. We give people oh, here's how to answer this question, but many of us have to hire people and we've had zero training. The analogy I use it's like saying to a 16-year-old hey, you've been in a car before, you know how it works, so here are the keys, go drive off. Best of luck, that's what we do. It's like oh, you've been interviewed before, go hire some more people.

Speaker 2: 23:16

That's section one. Section two there's a chapter on leadership, and then one on people management and one on process management. And then the third section, interpersonal dynamics, has four chapters communication, networking, negotiation and ethics. So again, these are the 10 skills. These are universal skills and in each chapter there is a mental shift how to look differently at the skill than what people typically do. And then what are concrete, actionable things you can do to get better at this particular skill. And then it concludes with a summary and next steps to go further. And we again, this applies across all different disciplines. We have examples in the book from different disciplines and how you can apply it to your job. And then, of course, all of this is also in the brain bump app. So you have the companion app and you have all these tips with you to help you remember it and apply it when you need them.

Speaker 1: 24:20

Okay, okay, well, yeah, it's a nice combination right there. Yeah, so is there. Is there also a part? You mentioned the second chapter, career planning. Chapter one, career planning, and then the second one was I can't remember.

Speaker 2: 24:38

Working effectively, and this is a bucket of subtle skills, like managing your manager. They never teach us that, yeah. Make your manager, happy, really important, understanding how you deliver value to the customer, understanding corporate culture, corporate politics. These are the unwritten things you have to do to be successful, and most people don't even know they have to do this, let alone what it is they have to do.

Speaker 1: 25:04

Yeah, indeed, and I think one of those parts there is what you're saying corporate culture, one of those parts there is what you're saying corporate culture, managing your manager it goes both ways, because there's a lot of stuff that goes on about leadership and how you need to manage people, etc, etc. You know the delegated items towards you on the expectations that are not mentioned. When you get the delegated item towards you, you know like I have a standard way of asking people. Something is usually either I know that they need deadlines or I don't give them deadlines because I know they're either they work too fast. You know, it's kind of a way that you start learning in your leadership role.

Speaker 1: 25:54

This person you have to tell them next Monday afternoon I need this ready. Another person if you tell them next Monday afternoon I need this ready, they get stressed out and they just lock down and they're not able to do it, and those are skills that are pretty difficult to put down on paper. Are any of those tips also in there that you've? You know out of your own experience, because you've got certainly got a lot of experience on the road. Let's say that that can help.

Speaker 2: 26:28

There's a whole bunch. You give one example of how you set deadlines for people. Another one I talk about is how we communicate. There are some managers where if I want to pitch you an idea, I need to go into your office, we need to sit down, I need to talk through it with you, whereas a different manager might say email it to me, let me look it over, think about, then we'll talk. Both are perfectly acceptable, but the mistake we might make is if you go and email the first one that says just talk to me face-to-face, I don't want more emails in my inbox. Or you walk into the second one and she says listen, don't surprise me like this. Send it to me, I'll look at when I'm ready.

Speaker 2: 27:09

And so just aligning to the how, not the what, the how. And this comes from the fact that in school we were very clear about you're going to write a thousand word essay on this Shakespeare play. Okay, you know exactly what format to deliver that in. You type it out, double space, whatever the professor wants. Or here's a math equation go solve it. Put your answer in the box. Very clear how to deliver the answer. You just had to figure out the what. But in the real world you don't get that clear how.

Speaker 2: 27:46

And so learning that, and, by the way, if you're thinking, well, I'm already a manager, I'm the CEO, so I don't have to manage up yes, you do, because you have clients. Yes, and you have to do subtle things, like some clients say okay, call me as you hit that next milestone that we specified in the contract and otherwise I'll assume no news is good news. I'll assume no news is good news. And then there are other clients where you need to check in with them week after week, maybe even every day, just to hold their hand, just to keep them, just so they feel that transparency that's usually not in a contract. The frequency of communication no, it's not. But any salesperson, account manager or CEO knows you have to figure this out and then manage those expectations. And so these are the things never talked about in school, but they apply to all of us.

Speaker 1: 28:40

It's kind of funny how what you mentioned on if you're in school is it university, high school, middle school, wherever somebody instructs you to do a certain task towards a certain date, and they even write it in your schedule or something like that, or you need to write it down or whatever. That's what I think. We're both kind of the same generation, if I can make the right assessment. But my kids now they're 13 and 11 years old and then they get these, these assignments, just dropped into a mailbox and then they do get a deadline, which is kind of gray area of saying next week, where I'm like these kids are not used to getting this leeway too much, um, and I've, I've, I've gone into extremes where I always say you have to do it, then that's the deadline, that's what needs to be done, blah, blah, blah with my kids and I've noticed that they are, they need a certain structure in their life at that age to understand what steps they need to incrementally take to achieve something.

Speaker 1: 29:58

When you're saying, like in a say of thousand words, it's a pretty big document to write, you won't write that in one hour. You might need to take some research time and this and that, and I've noticed that with younger people these days and I'm really talking about what I call it Generation Z I don't know one of those generation things, but I've noticed that there's a lot of tenacity or grit to do these little things, one after the other, to compile it, to compound it to a complete document. They leave it till the last moment and then they start working on it. What's your view on this effect and towards the future, because you've been in leadership roles as well? I have my own view, but what do you agree on that?

Speaker 2: 30:48

So I agree with you on that. I think back to my fifth grade teacher who made us get day planner books and she would have us open and say okay, we're going to have a test next Thursday. Everyone open your book and next Thursday, write down test. I think she'd even tell us things like write down three times between now and next Thursday, study for test. And she helped us because at that age we couldn't figure it out on our own, which is fine. We were nine and 10 years old, and so she would walk us through it. Of course, that taught us very good skills and we took that into middle school and high school and even today and I know from my calendar today I have activities and sometimes I'll put days or weeks before like reminder this is due or work on this, knowing that's coming up. And one thing that's happened is there's a lot more. There's a lot more that's been taken off the plates of kids. Now you talked about you said you're referring to gen alpha. So at the time we're recording in 2024, gen alpha are the kids who are in middle school, high school, college, even right out of college. Gen z has, I believe I don't know the exact years, but gen z at this point has. They're maybe finishing up college or out of college, and millennials, of course, are now. I think some of them are hitting 40 in 2024.

Speaker 2: 32:22

But what we saw when I was a kid, when you were a kid, because I think we are about the same age our parents would say go outside and play, come home when it gets dark, and they had no idea where we were and we had to manage our time. Where are we going? How do I make sure I am home by six o'clock for dinner? We weren't even wearing watches, so we had to somehow figure out the time. Maybe someone had a watch? Hey, what time is it? Okay, because I need to leave at this time. And we did a lot of self-management. What we saw, at least here in the US, is when we moved to the millennials to get into college.

Speaker 2: 32:59

It wasn't just well, you need to have good grades and maybe play a sport or an instrument. Suddenly, you need good grades and you had to speak another language and you had to be first chair in violin and you had to do some charity work. And so the parents started to over schedule the kids. There was a term helicopter parenting of parents who would come in whenever there's a problem. Another term was snowplow parenting. The parents would just push away anything in the way of their kids.

Speaker 2: 33:26

And so now the kids weren't making their own choices the executive function of do I want to do soccer or violin? Maybe I don't want to do both of them because my afternoons are too busy taken away from the kids. And the parents are saying this is what you're doing, your job is to be that cog and do it. And so we remove that training. And now to your point automation is great. But when automation puts everything into your calendar, as is happening with your kids, they're not making the decisions. They're not saying I need to put this here and I need to think about what else happens. They just say, oh, it magically shows up, I just have to follow what my calendar tells me. And they're giving up that executive function, thinking so we do need to bring that training back in, formally and informally, to the younger generations and their education.

Speaker 1: 34:17

Yeah, I completely agree. Even now, with the newest buzz of AI and so on, you see these stories come up where they tell you you know, get this app and it'll schedule everything for you, and this, and that I was kind of apprehensive. I, I love ai, I use it a lot, um, because I'm a tech guy as well. I worked 15 years in it. So for us it's like second nature to start up something new and say, oh, this, this works, or let's try this and try to break it usually, but, but anyway, I think it also has its merits, of course, to aid us in scheduling and prioritizing and all that beautiful stuff, but I'm a bit apprehensive towards giving it to my kids already for that. A couple of weeks back, my youngest one came in dad, I need to write a poem and I'm like I used to write poems when I was really young, especially when I had girlfriends. Of course, these things come easy, but, um, and I was thinking, how is he going to write a poem? So he explained to me he needed to get a book from the library and then write a poem about it, and I asked him the question okay, how are you going to approach this? Because this is something explained to me. He needed to get a book from the library and then write a poem about it. And I asked him the question okay, how are you going to approach this? Because this is something completely new, and he really was struggling to find a way on how can I work towards that poem. And I said you know, that's the end result. So come back, let's get back to the first step. What happens before the poem? Oh, I need to read the book. I said, well, that was easy, wasn't it? What do you? What do you need to do before that? Oh, I need to go to the library. I'm like today the library is open, hint.

Speaker 1: 36:03

So he went off and then he came back and the funny thing was he came into the library and he talked to the librarian and he said exactly what he needed to do for school. So he had to explain about the poem. And he talked to the librarian and he said exactly what he needed to do for school. So he had to explain about the poem and this and that. And she gave him a book with a beautiful story and at the end of the story there was a poem. So it was a poem about the story and he came up that got the solution, and I was like, okay, so this is an alternative version of chat, gpt. He asked the system to provide him with a solution to his problem and he got the solution.

Speaker 1: 36:42

So that's that's what I think is is going to be more and more applicable as well that young people have all the information is out there and they have just the need to learn how to retrieve it, like your, your brain bomb app.

Speaker 1: 36:57

If you need something at a certain time, you're going to schedule that information at a certain time and you'll get it.

Speaker 1: 37:03

But this was kind of a different approach where he found a way to get the information without actually searching for it.

Speaker 1: 37:06

And that's one of a different approach where he found a way to get the information without actually searching for it. And that's one of the things that I've noticed that a lot more kids are are learning to do is to get around the systems that they ask you to do something, but they get around it and fix it by using technology, and so that kind of is like different than what we used to do. We were able to look up on Google. I got this error message on my computer what's the solution? And you get to go through all these blogs and all these wonderful things, but now these days, their world is changing so much in a different direction on where they collect information and if they even need to bypass that information. So I think what, what you're doing with with the app, also has merit for younger people, where they more easily get the information directly so they don't have to go around the system and find another way of getting that solution, which is also another approach.

Speaker 2: 38:14

I think it's important to distinguish information from thinking and decision-making. That's a subtle but important point. Now, throughout history, we've used technology to make our jobs easier. Instead of picking crops by hand, we started using tools and then we started to automate those tools with the Industrial Revolution, and now one person can more efficiently cover entire fields using these great tools. We go great. Humans can do better things and sit there and pick individual crops, and we're trying to automate as much as possible in all sorts of fields. Now it's true that we have information available at our fingertips.

Speaker 2: 38:59

When we were kids, it was look something up in the book and maybe you had an encyclopedia at home, Maybe you had to go to the library to get it, Maybe you couldn't find something. I had to look through multiple books. But now, of course, we have everything on the internet. I can find a piece of knowledge in seconds. How much does the heart of an elephant weigh? I can find that in 20 seconds, and so that's great, because flipping through books to find it was very inefficient and the equivalent as adults. If you're a lawyer and you're saying I need to find a certain precedent again instead of reading through hundreds of cases, if you can find it more quickly.

Speaker 2: 39:41

Software engineers go to Stack Overflow. Find that error code. Great, Okay, this is what I need to know. So it saved us a lot of time and we will continue to remove road time. I remember as a software developer in the early days I had to deal with all these file handles find the file, open the file, track where you are in the file, close the file. More modern languages say, hey, we'll take care of that for you.

Speaker 2: 40:10

Other things like logging, so writing logs for your software, or user management hey, you need to be able to reset a password. This is not high value. Every system needs it. Why should we waste a developer's time doing it? We get off-the-shelf solutions because that now comes as part of a library or a third-party tool. So great, we avoid that root work. But then what do we do with that free time? It's that okay, now you can think through what is the way to deliver real value to your customers, because it's not password reset. Yes, they need that because you can't reset their password. It doesn't work. But the real value is the password reset. It's taking this data, analyzing in this way and providing some information to them. If you're a lawyer, the value wasn't. Oh, you found this precedent, the lawyer, the value you provide to your clients, it's. Here is a strategy we're going to take for this legal matter, and part of that strategy requires, I find, precedence, and that's the rote work. And so what we always try to do is remove more of the rote tasks to free up people, to focus on the higher order thinking and value creation.

Speaker 2: 41:23

Now, kids often just want the quickest, easiest, fastest way. They're not thinking of the higher order piece and there's something to be said to hey, if you can be clever and find a quick way to solve this, good, that's a useful skill. But we also want to balance that with teaching them what's the higher order lesson here? What's the meta lesson lesson? In fact, one of the mistakes that I think comes out of certainly at the college level and even high school level, is we never talk about the meta lessons in each of the classes. It's not about whether you remember the exact dates of the Roman empire and which particular ruler came after which one. You can look that up, but do you see the patterns? Do you see how society evolved, what the flaws were that grew over time, that led to the downfall? If you can understand that now you have not information, but knowledge and understanding that you can apply to other situations, and that's what we need to be emphasizing in education, particularly for older students in education, particularly for older students.

Speaker 1: 42:35

Yeah, I like the idea of what you're saying about the meta lesson, because I see a lot of trainings you know. Let's take, for instance, a time management training. They throw around with all these terminologies of eat the frog and you know big rocks and small rocks and sand, and steven covey loved that one. I still use it in in my trainings because it's it's very visible. Um, but what's the what's the major idea of, for instance, a time training?

Speaker 1: 43:03

Time management training is what I had as an opinion at some point was like time is not manageable. The the only thing that you can do is is compartnate time for specific things that you do. So the only thing that you can do is prioritize nothing to do with time management. It's like you can manage money, because that's a physical thing, then it's a number thing, but time it's out there and if something goes wrong, you know, I don't know your coffee maker blows up, you have to run for a fire extinguisher. It's something that you cannot plan, it's something that happens. So you set your priority and put out the fire.

Speaker 2: 43:45

That's a great way to look at. By the way, this is where my physics training comes in. That's not that? Oh, let's use my knowledge of quarks. One of the things you learn to do in physics is rotate your coordinate space, and that's what you've done here. You said, instead of looking at as time management, rotate that to priority management. It's a different way of looking at, and in physics we know, by rotating to a different coordinate space, a problem gets easier or possibly harder if you did to the wrong one, and so that's what you're saying here is, if you're looking at time management, struggling, look at as priority management, and that might be a more tractable problem. It might be easier for you to parse out or work with, and so that's a great example.

Speaker 1: 44:30

Yeah, so what are the things that you found in your career up until now, that were the biggest struggles that you found in your leadership role? Because I think that's what a lot of people always like to know people that have gone somewhere and then you know found out, my probably biggest challenge throughout my career was dealing with corporate politics.

Speaker 2: 44:58

Okay, because I rose through the ranks thinking, well, I can do a good job, I'm going to focus on doing a good job, and as long as I do a good job, I am creating value for the company, for the clients, and that's what gets rewarded. I didn't realize there's a whole different system and I was lucky to get a wonderful book, survival of the Savvy. I referenced that in my book. In fact, I reached out to the authors. I said I want to basically almost quote you for about a page and a half and I want to make sure I have the permission. That's more than a fair use quote Got their permission.

Speaker 2: 45:33

I talk about their model, about their spectrum from overpolitical to underpolitical. I think it's a wonderful framework and they really taught me that, while I might be focused on underpolitical, just let the results speak for themselves. That's not how everyone is wired and so, just like we talked about, for some bosses you need to send the email, for others you need to go into her office. Likewise, for some bosses, they just care about what's the end product. For others, it's the delivery as well, and making sure they're aware of what you did and how you did it, and getting that recognition actually matters. It goes into how they process their own reward system who gets promoted, who gets on another project, who gets terminated. The key is either of these, taken to the extreme. We think about the extreme case of oh, they're just promoting the people who kiss up to them. That's an extreme case and we don't like that.

Speaker 2: 46:35

But towards the center, some people can be a little more relationship oriented, others a little less relationship oriented.

Speaker 2: 46:44

I came from that very less relationship-oriented side, so I wasn't seeing how they looked at the challenge and that these relationships did matter. And once I shifted to understand that I could then engage in a way that mattered to the CEO, to my boss, and that helped me gain success in later companies. So that was a big struggle for me, but really for anyone, whether it is corporate politics or these other skills we talked about. This is why I noted in my book it begins with a mental shift, because when you look at the problem a different way whether it's moving from time management to priority management, whether it's looking at networking as a tool to get me a job to, networking is a set of people who can provide me insights and information. All of a sudden you see it in a different way and it can solve different problems, making some of your current problems much easier. So that mental shift towards these skills. That's what's so important, even more important than the concrete actionable things you can do, because once you look at it the right way, problems get much easier.

Speaker 1: 47:57

Yeah, that's a beautiful vision, and I understand what you mean by your experience in corporate politics.

Speaker 1: 48:05

I've been there as well, where I was a technician at the start of my career and I did some amazing things, if I say so myself, where the point came that I was actually training the other technicians on how to do the job and I was amazingly good at leading them out of a natural sense of leadership, without pushing or pulling or whatever.

Speaker 1: 48:35

You know, I always bring up the image of the managers on the cart and the leaders in front of the horses or between the horses pulling the cart, and once the cart is rolling, I crawl on, do the cart and cart, and, you know, manage if it can keep on rolling. And that's what I used to do. But I was hitting a wall because the people that were officially titled manager um were not happy, because they were kind of jealous that I had more influence on their employees than they did. So so corporate politics, or even SMB politics even there it also exists Absolutely. So, yeah, I think there's a couple of really great things that we've discussed during our conversation here and I think, for the listeners listeners, even though most of the people that listen to this podcast are already of a certain age and a certain experience. I think it might be interesting to understand how their team members might benefit of these changes in perspective by reading your book and getting that information from a different point of view.

Speaker 2: 49:54

What started me on this path? When I wanted to develop these skills in myself, I quickly realized these skills are for everyone, not just C-suite leaders. When you think about, well, I'm the owner of the company. I have to network to find clients, to find suppliers, to find people. What if everyone on your team could do that? You think, well, I need to be able to communicate this. I need good communication skills to lead people to talk externally. I have to know how to communicate well. What if everyone on your team could communicate much more effectively with each other, with your clients, with your partners?

Speaker 2: 50:32

So, these skills, if you can get people just one or two percent better, you're going to see this compounding effect across your company. So, absolutely, Even if you feel I've got these skills asked, does everyone in your company have them? And if not, it's time to go and develop them. And now on my website and we'll give you that in a moment, on the resources page, the very first download, completely free, I don't even gate it with an email is how to create a learning program, a no-cost learning program within your organization. Now you can use my book if you want a breakdown. Here's how to use my book to teach different skills. If you don't want to use my book, you can use other sources, other books, podcasts, videos, other training material, but here is the framework for how to upskill your entire organization, all for free.

Speaker 1: 51:26

That's a lot of gifts going out into the world that you're, you're providing, and I want to, I want to thank you for the, the biggest gift that you, you gave me as a person. That's your time, because we don't that's. You know, that's limited, um. Thank you very much, uh, for our conversation today and I've got question um, except for the book and the app, where can people find you and what else can they reach you out?

Speaker 2: 51:56

reach out to you, for I'm going to give you a couple of websites the brain bump app we talked about, which is completely free. You can get in the app stores or go to brain bump appcom, and on that website are links to the stores. There's a 90 second video showing how it works, faq, instructions All of that is at brainbumpappcom. My book's website is thecareertoolkitbookcom. You can learn more about the book, where to buy it, get in touch with me, follow me on social media, and we have a number of free resources, including that download I mentioned for how to use this as a training program, again completely free.

Speaker 2: 52:38

I have a third website we didn't talk about much, called Cognosco Media, c-o-g-n-o-s-c-o Media, and on that website, cognoscomediacom, I write about the future of media. Brain Bump is one example. I write about other things happening in the media world. I also have a whole sub-series on podcasting called Podcast Alchemy. So all that's on the third website. And then for my professional work, where I'm a CTO, cpo, I advise companies on technology, ai, cybersecurity. You can see that on LinkedIn, and so if you just Google my name on LinkedIn or linkedincom slash IN, slash, hershey, h-e-r-s-h-e-y you can find me. Learn about that and you can reach out to me on any of these websites or my LinkedIn, so brainbumpappcom, thecareertoolkitbookcom and cognoscomediacom.

Speaker 1: 53:38

Wow, that's a lot of projects you've got running there, mark.

Speaker 1: 53:42

I know which one I'm going to consult already. So thank you very much for for joining us today and giving us so much value and so much insight on your in your book, and I hope a lot of the listeners will reach out to to get your book or the the resources that are available. So for our listeners, uh, check out my website as well, nicovondevenacom for our newest ebook and remember to jump from head to heart and feel the beat within. Have a good one, everybody. Bye.