ProductiviTree: Cultivating Efficiency, Harvesting Joy

Productivitree #13: Nuclear-Level Productivity – Lessons from Submarines, Leadership & Fatherhood with Matt Di Geronimo

• Santiago Tacoronte • Season 1 • Episode 13

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In this conversation, Matt DiGeronimo discusses the misconceptions surrounding productivity, emphasizing that true effectiveness is often about doing fewer things well rather than maximizing output. He highlights the importance of embracing conflict within teams as a means to foster innovation and psychological safety. DiGeronimo also addresses the concept of preventative courage, advocating for recognition of those who prevent disasters rather than just celebrating heroes. He critiques the notion of fake productivity and the Dunning-Kruger effect in leadership, urging leaders to focus on continuous improvement and the importance of empathy in leadership roles. 


Takeaways 

  • The word productivity can be misleading and rooted in outdated concepts. 
  • Focusing on fewer tasks can lead to greater effectiveness. 
  • Conflict in teams can lead to better outcomes if managed well. 
  • Preventative actions should be recognized and rewarded in organizations. 
  • Fake productivity can hinder true effectiveness in the workplace. 
  • Leaders should prioritize continuous improvement in their skills. 
  • Empathy in leadership should not be equated with weakness. 
  • The Dunning-Kruger effect can lead to overconfidence in leadership. 
  • Effective communication is crucial for addressing conflict. 

Matt’s Content: 

https://curiousleaders.substack.com/ (Stubstack) 

https://medium.com/@mjdigeronimo (Medium) 

https://youtube.com/@mjdigeronimo (YouTube) 

https://linkedin.com/in/mjdigeronimo 

Books: 

Dear Hunter:  Letters from Father to Son (https://www.amazon.com/Dear-Hunter-Letters-Father-Son/dp/B08YQCQRDZ ) 

Extreme Operational Excellence (https://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Operational-Excellence-Submarine-Organization/dp/1478778121) 


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Have questions or suggestions? Email us at info@santiagotacoronte.com

Matt Geronimo is a writer, thinking and leadership strategist dedicated to simplifying the complex and challenging conventional wisdom. With a unique blend of experiences from his distinguished service aboard nuclear submarines and extensive corporate leadership, has developed a profound understanding of human dynamics, leadership principles, and organizational culture. quo, embracing both humor and deep introspection. Matt believes authentic leadership isn't about popularity or charisma alone. It's about fostering a questioning attitude, maintaining uncompromising standards, and procedural excellence. Matt's essays and articles often reflect on personal and professional development, the importance of embracing vulnerability, and the necessity of enforcing meaningful standards without compromise. His perspectives resonate deeply whether he's discussing the nuances of decision-making, the overlooked importance of management skills, or the strategies needed to effectively lead diverse and multi-generational has published two Amazon best-selling books, Extreme Operational Excellence and Dear Hunter, Letters from Father to Son. Hi Matt, welcome to ProductiviTree Hi Santiago, thanks for having me. Matt, you are not stranger to high stakes environments. You have worked in nuclear submarines at the highest corporate levels. What is the biggest lie we've been sold about productivity? I think the existence of the word productivity in some ways, in and of itself, I believe is a lie. Because there's a connotation associated with productivity that I really think reaches back to the emphasis during the Industrial Revolution about how fast can we make widgets. And it never really went away. And most of us who are knowledge workers are obsessed with this idea of efficiency and You know, if I wake up at 5 a.m. and I do this, this and this, then I'll be more productive today. you know, I think it's a, I'd much rather do two things really, really well than a hundred things okay. And even if that means having a lot of white space on my calendar, meaning like if the average person were to look at my corporate calendar, they might think I'm not very busy because I don't allow back-to-back meetings. I demand that I have at least an hour and a half for myself to just work and think, and during which time I don't answer the phone, I think a lot of people would say I'm not very productive. But I think I'm effective, and I think there's a big difference between those two words. Why do you think we get so obsessed with doing more instead of doing things well? I think it's two reasons. I think one is I don't think we have figured out a way to measure the value or effectiveness of knowledge workers in our world. It's very easy to measure a manufacturing plant effectiveness, right? How many widgets do you make today? But if you think of the typical, whether it's an accountant, an engineer, an executive, whomever, you how do we measure their effectiveness? And so we come up with these kind of almost unspoken assumptions about more is better. I see the same thing with respect to how we still romanticize folks who are first in the office and first to leave every day, or last to leave every day. And so think that that's one of the reasons. I think the other reason is this incessant tendency for us to compare ourselves to others, even if they're not in the room, right? Like we think about like, what did I do today? And what did my counterpart at competition a do today? Or, you you're on a, you run a podcast, Santiago, and you may be tempted to say, well, what, can I do to climb the ratings ladder? And you, and your brain will automatically, I think, go to more, more, versus saying like, no, maybe actually less. You know, maybe, you know, maybe, I'm not saying this is true, obviously, but I'm saying is, you know, as a thought experiment, you know, how often do we really say, Hey, I want to be doing better at this. So I think I should be doing less things. Like that's just, that's so counterintuitive, right? But like my experience is actually that's, that's closer to the truth. and if I could, you know, just give an example of that, when in the, in the United States Navy, there was a submarine called the Greenville. who, yeah, the Greenville, who ran into an underwater seamount at top speed. And there was a casualty associated with that and the submarine was almost lost at sea. Horrible, horrible situation. And so of course there's an investigation and out of that investigation came all these corrective actions, which all sounds very reasonable, right? In terms of things that they did wrong that other scripts should not do wrong in the future and therefore these are how we're going to prevent these other submarines from having the same mistake. All sounds reasonable. But when you implement those types of things, there's an assumption that you have excess demand sitting around that you don't know what to do with. Right? So, or excuse me, excess supply. And in this particular case, I'm talking about time. So, okay, so when are we supposed to do those things? Because we're already at capacity, everyone's working as hard as they can, many, many hours a week. And so rarely do we say, huh, you these requirements were already in place. The ship didn't do that. Why didn't they do that? And is it possible we have them doing other things that aren't as important and let's get rid of some things. And again, it's so counterintuitive. And I think you have to have a lot of courage to go down that path. Because if either of us were in charge of corrective actions, it would take quite a backbone to say, hey, everything we're doing is fine. We just got to get rid of these other things so our guys can focus more on these things. But honestly, my instinct and over the years, I've come to believe that there's usually more truth in changing the environment to allow people to focus on less things rather than throw more stuff on their plate. You say that conflict is a gift in teams and you write a lot about this. However, most workplaces fear it like a plague. Why should we be encouraging more productive fights and work and not saying we need to, you know, all be together as a family dancing kumbaya? Yeah, I mean, think it's a couple things. I mean, the first thing is an acknowledgement of the uniqueness of human beings, right? So if I have 10 people in a room and I were to interview each of them separately on any particular topic, and then I compare those 10 results, what are the chances that all 10 are going to say the same thing? Near zero, right? But when I put them in a room together, it's amazing how often we can, how quickly we gain consensus. on some answer without much even discussion and i think what's happening is a couple things one is you know we most not all the most organizations allow extroverts to rule the world right so the loudest most confident speaker tends to be the most influential and then secondly you know a lot of people just assume you know i just keep my mouth shut i mean i i'm not gonna say anything here and and And it's not to me, that's more symptomatic of a team that's operating less effectively than it matters to that particular instance. And there's a term that you're probably familiar with called psychological safety. Like if there's not a lot of conflict in the workforce and that when let's in a moment, we'll, circle back and kind of define what we mean by conflict. But if there's not a lot of conflict in the workforce, I don't think it's a very psychologically safe environment. Because human beings just don't see eye to eye on most things. And if you don't allow ideas to battle out, you know, in a public forum, the best idea is not gonna be the one that you go with. You're gonna go with the loudest one. Now, I will say that most teams don't know how to embrace conflict, and most teams... haven't given their people training on how to have effective communication and discourse when they disagree. We just assume that people come prepared to do that and they don't. Like it's a, mean, if you get into, they take negotiators, for example, or debaters. I mean, it's a craft unto itself. People spend decades becoming negotiators to really extract and kind of influence and and have productive conversations, but yet we just kind of dismiss it as like, well, you know, it's just people talking. I was like, no, no, it's not. I mean, if it was a piece of equipment, we'd send people to school for two years to certify on it. But since it's not, we don't do anything. So, you know, I think that, although I firmly believe that conflict is a gift and the best teams have a lot of conflict, that assumes that those teams have also been trained on how to work through conflict and communicate conflicts in a way that we're not threatening people's identities, quite frankly. mean, oftentimes, you can observe a conversation about a topic, and if you listen to the words that are being said, you think that's the thing that's being argued. But Quite frankly, usually there's a soft underbelly of that conversation that has to do with power dynamics and status, egos, identities that get in the way. And so if we're not taking the time to train our people on how to identify and deal with that, in those circumstances, maybe conflict isn't such a good thing. Hmm. Matt, we reward heroes. Something happens, we have an issue, someone's safe today, and we consider them a hero. But you have written about something called preventative courage, who if I get it right, is the people who stops disasters before they happen. And these people rarely get medals. So how do we, you know, completely switch to This guy saved a lot for the company because they prevented something bad from happening. great question. It's a great question and I've spent a lot of time thinking about this. You know, when you do the right things the right way and that bad event doesn't happen, there's no parade for that because the thing didn't happen. So it often just the way our minds work we just assume like it just it's not a special day it's just a Tuesday. But the reality is you know a lot of hard work went into nothing happening that day. And how do we embrace and encourage that? That's really challenging. I can recall a time when, on a submarine, where we had an untoured event, which is perhaps a story for another day. And what we kind of evaluated was that you we didn't have people speaking up and saying, hey, don't do that or something bad is going to happen. You sometimes in corporate America, that's called stop work obligation or stop work authority. And one of the things that we did to address that, you know, in the military and in corporations, we'll often do exercises or drills, right? But usually that's like a fire drill or something that's a physical event of some sort. But what we started to do, were like drills in courage. Not dissimilar to if you've ever seen them, there's a sitcom, not sitcom, there's a show out there called What Would You Do? Where they put a bunch of actors in say like a deli and they have somebody acting inappropriately towards maybe the cashier and they just film other people's reactions to see does anyone stand up and defend that person. So it's similar to that, like so in this particular case I'm thinking of We would have a brief, just a couple of us, and we would say, we're about, let's say when a submarine goes to periscope depth, it's a pretty dangerous evolution because the likelihood of you running into a surface ship is high if you don't follow a particular protocol properly. And we'd say, okay, we're gonna come up to periscope depth. on a dangerous course. going to say we're going to do it, right? So we're going to say, right, know, tension and control, I intend to come to Periscope Depth on this course 071. And let's say it's a very dangerous course to do that. And we're not obviously going to do that. But then we just wait to see who's going to say something. And when somebody does say something, we give them credit as if they had just actually saved something or done something. meritoriously. And then we would also talk about it. So let's say nobody says something like we would call a timeout and we'd say, Hey guys, we were just about to go up on a very dangerous course. What happened? Right? So we need to incentivize the behavior that we want to see. And unless we're willing to allow rock bottom potential events to just come up on their own. you know, come up naturally, which nobody wants that, right? You don't want to wait till the day of the, the Challenger launch and hope that people get it right. You need to talk about it and you need to test it and you need to incentivize it. And it's not easy, but I will tell you, if we don't do anything, then, you know, you're just hoping that you have at least one person whose parents trained them on that topic. You've written about fake productivity, people who look busy but don't get much done. How do you spot and potentially eliminate corporate masqueraders? Great question. All these are really good questions, by the way, Santiago. I guess it depends, for me, it depends on where we're talking about, right? So for example, if it's up the chain, if it's down the chain, or if it's a peer, or it's a support function, those would all be sort of different responses. The ones that we have most control over, obviously, are the people that work for us. And for me, You know, one of the things that I often talk about with my team is the difference between rocks and sand. And you may have seen this demonstration, but for your listeners who may not have, it obviously works better with a physical, as a physical demonstration. But in short, the way this works is the demonstrator takes an empty fish tank and he says, okay, my goal is to fit all these rocks and all this sand into this fish tank. Right? So it's like an aquarium sized tank. He says, okay, I'm going to do this. And he puts all the sand in the tank. And maybe the sand comes up to about three fifths the height of the tank. And then he says, and now I'm going to put my rocks in the tank. And then the rocks don't fit. They spill out all over the place and he just, there's no room for them. And he says, okay, so is my conclusion that these won't fit? You know, and the audience gives them some feedback and things to think about. He says, all right, let's try it a different way. And then he puts all the rocks in first. and then he pours the sand in and it all fits. And the moral of the story is the rocks are the important things. Those are the things that really make a difference in our organization and in our teams. And it's important for us to make room for them first and then identify, okay, this is sand, it still has to get done, it still has to get in the tank, but it's secondary, right? And so one of the things I like to do with my team is start that vernacular, like we talk about, is this a rock or is this sand? And I'll even go so far as to have people identify, okay, you this quarter or this year, what are your rocks? And then we hold each other accountable for are we working on our rocks? Because usually rocks are not very loud, right? Rocks are typically the things that we know are important. We know it would improve the organization. But There's usually no deadline associated with them. No one's banging on their door to get it done. Their phone's not ringing about it, right? And it could be something as simple as, I need to improve my engagement with the workforce. I need to step up my training and development program. I need to provide my team better standard operating procedures. Things that we know are important. But they're just not urgent, right? So compare that to a phone ringing or an email coming through or a teams meeting scheduled. I that's typically our sand, right? So I kind of forced the conversation to say, what are your rocks? And then evaluate almost exclusively how, you know, let's say a month goes by, a quarter goes by. Okay, you know, last month you told me these two things were your rocks. Let's talk about them. And it's It's pretty common that especially in the beginning, there's a lot of, I've just been so busy with this, that, and the other thing. say, okay, so you put the sand in the tank first. Now, keep in mind, I think it's obvious that one of the things that, one of the objections to this type of thought process is, well, you're just gonna make me work more hours then. If I put my rocks in the tank first, and then I'm forced to put sand in afterwards, then I'm just gonna have to work longer. And I've always challenged that. forget, is it called the Pareto's principle, I think, or, you know, work will expand to fill the allowable void, right? So if you give yourself all day on Saturday to clean up your closet, it'll take all day Saturday. If you have an hour before your parents are visiting and you want to clean it up, it'll take you an hour. So I actually, you know, I don't prescribe to the fact that it'll just take more time. It's okay to get a C minus with our sand. Like we don't need A pluses in our sand. We need A pluses with our rock. That's a powerful analogy, Speaking productivity-wise, I'll let you choose if you get into politics or not. What do you think about the Dodge program run by Elon Musk these days? Yeah, so I think it's a good question. I think when I think of the American economy, I think of a family whose father has created a certain lifestyle for his family based exclusively on credit cards. And we all know how that ends. It's going to be ugly. So and it's and it's not going to be it's either going to be a rock bottom event or you know, someone's feathers are going to get ruffled because you're taking away things that people have grown accustomed to. So now I think that the manner in which this has been executed has been less than desirable. I think at times it's been disrespectful. It's lacked empathy. But I do think that our government has expanded to a size that is just not reasonable anymore. I've done some YouTube videos on the topic of if we had businesses that were run the way a lot of our government programs are run, they'd be out of business. Simply because the best teams and best organizations survive when they get good results. I don't even know, I get put into, when we have these discussions, I get It's tough for me sometimes because let's take the Department of Education, for example, which is in the spotlight right now. I don't know how to measure the Department of Education's performance because there's no dashboard. When I look at test scores, they're going in the wrong direction. When I look at high school graduation rates, they're going in the wrong direction. Truancy is going in the wrong direction. So at first-plus, you'd say, OK, whatever you're doing might not be working. and we have to fix it. Does fixing it mean slashing the whole organization? Now you get into the whole deficit versus effectiveness. But there's certainly something drastic that needs to be done. I don't know how much longer any group can withstand a $1.8 trillion a year deficit before they devalue the currency. just don't. Clearly, there's some tipping point. If there isn't, well then just send a check to everyone for a billion dollars. Right? I we could just do whatever we want, then just do it then. So there's some point at which it becomes you devalue the currency and we won't be able to afford bread. So I guess what I'm saying is in theory, I appreciate the effort to identify and reduce, and I wouldn't even call it waste. I would call it luxuries that we can no longer afford. Whether it's for other countries or our own. We just don't have that luxury and we've fooled ourselves that we do, but obviously we don't because the money doesn't exist. What is the most overrated productivity tip that people worship but is actually killing their effectiveness? Yeah, I think kind of related to what we talked about earlier, the more is less or the more is more philosophy. Like the more things I do today, the more productive I am. Somebody had once told me and it stuck with me is that especially as you become more senior in an organization, we shouldn't be doing the things that only I can do, or excuse me, we shouldn't be doing the things just because I can do them, right? It's like, hey, I know how to do this, so I'll do it. We should be doing the things that only I can do, right? So there's nobody else in the organization who can do this thing or do it as well as me, and that's the thing that I want to do. And if it means I have to delegate the other things, now everybody talks about delegation, but it doesn't happen to the extent that I believe it needs to because we are a culture obsessed with the A. Meaning, you know, when we have something that we know we do very well, and we realize, well, geez, to get, you know, Tom to do this as well, I'm gonna have to do a lot of training, and maybe I even assess that he'll never be able to do it as well as me. Well, take the C-minus and move on with life. And then focus your efforts on less things where you crush them. Because, you know, most of the time, this goes back to the sand and the rock discussion. Every company, like if you take a particular industry and there's 10 companies, they're all doing the sand. Like you're not, you're not, there's no competitive advantage associated with getting your sand done. But yet that's kind of where our focus is on. Like it's the, it's, dare I say busy work, which might not be fair because the stuff has to get done. But what really differentiates a team to just leave everybody in their dust. You know, it's usually like a singular thing or two that someone or some group of people crush that their competitors not even thinking about. And, you know, and those are the things that get missed when there's a lot of organizational noise. And I talk about noise in an organization in a very similar way that I would talk about acoustic noise, right? It would be very challenging to do our work with. rock music blasted at 110 decibels into our office, right? Nobody would like that. But for some reason, when it comes to, in the somewhat paradoxical expression of noiseless noise, the noise of our organizations, we're okay with, you every day there's a fire drill, and now there's an impromptu meeting, and there's this report that needs to be filled out. That's all noise. And in the noise, we lose the ability to hear messaging that's coming from our customers, coming from our organization, coming from our team members, because usually that knocks very softly. I'll use the analogy of a group of cave people sitting around a fire at night. And when there's noise from the brush, everyone's head turns there, right? Because that's a threat. Well, guess what? Whatever comes out of that brush, we're probably going to be OK, because everyone's looking at it. Where we're currently vulnerable, is where the noise is very soft or maybe not at all behind us. And if we don't assign a couple people to say, don't worry about the noise. I need you to be thinking about what are the other threats, what are the other opportunities. Something's coming out of that brush that's going to surprise us. I mean, it happens all the time, right? You and I could list a dozen or so mammoth companies that went under because their inability to hear the noise or hear the small, the noiseless noise or the, I guess that's the wrong way to say it, the signal that you really had to listen to, right? Whether it's Blockbuster or TiVo or even Barnes and Nobles. So that would be the thing that I would... try to, if I had the ear of every CEO and every team leader in the nation, I mean, that would be one of my strongest messages to them. You've written about the Dunning-Kruger effect, where the least competent people are often the most confident. How does this show up in corporate leadership? Yeah, so the Dunning-Kruger effect is interesting, right? So as you said, it's a phenomena identified actually not that long ago, I think it was the late 90s, by two psychologists who said, hey, the folks who know the most are usually the least confident. And folks that know the least tend to be the most confident, right? So they oversimplify things. Whereas the more you learn about a subject, the more you realize how complex and nuanced it is. then the more likely you're to answer a question with, well, it depends. And then you go off on this tangent of trying to educate everyone about the pros and cons. And then the guy across the table says, no, stop, stop. This is simple. We do A because X, Y, Z. Let's just execute it and be done with it. And then the rest of the room kind of nods their head and says, yeah, let's go. And I think that happens for a couple of reasons. One is, as humans, we are all filled with our own amount of doubt and insecurities. And therefore, we tend to be drawn to people who seem to be able to eliminate that doubt and that uncertainty in our team. So when someone says, yep, I got the answer, just follow me, I got it. We're drawn to that. We just are. And because we like to think that they're feeling that because we put ourselves in their position said, geez, the only time I would ever act like that is when I really knew what I was talking about. And therefore, in a lot of this, I think is subconscious. But whereas we've all been there when like the subject matter expert starts to answer a question and he's droning on and on and he sounds like an encyclopedia, our eyelids get heavy and we just say, I don't know what to do with this information. Like, I don't think this guy knows what the heck he's talking about. when in reality he might know more than anyone else in the room. How do we deal with that? Well, that's a much, much tougher question. think, and what's interesting though too, is that there's a logical fallacy called the complexity bias, which is actually flies in the face of the Dunning-Kruger effect that says often, if given an opportunity to pick between two solutions, one which is very complex and one which is very simple, human beings are likely to pick the complex one. which it's hard to resolve those two phenomena of the human brain, but it exists, right? We're complicated animals and that's a complexity that we have to deal with. So I think there's a couple things that I kind of recommend for folks. And one is, I think the senior people in the room should always speak last, right? you know when the boss comes in and says okay we got a problem and I've seen this before my career and we're going to do A to fix it what do you guys think? I appreciate your feedback you you guys know I love to hear what you have to say tell me why I'm wrong what you've already poisoned the well right so if you're going to suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect you're already going to suffer from it just because you've said you'll give me some feedback Whereas you say, whereas alternatively, if we say, hey, we got a problem and I need your guys advice. And you point to the most junior person in the room and say, Tim, how would you solve this? If none of us were here, how would you solve it? You know, and give him the opportunity to share what's on his mind. I think that's a step that we can take, towards addressing that. another step that we could take during addressing it is just talking about that phenomenon, meaning like we can't address a weakness if we're not aware that it exists. If we sent out a survey of every adult between the ages of 18 and 70 and asked them to describe the Dunning-Kruger effect, how many would even know what we're talking about? And I'm not suggesting that they should necessarily, we don't, excuse me, but if I were to talk about how many electricians could describe a delta wired transformer, they don't know how to do that, right? But when we talk about people who lead people or whose workplace or role in their team involve having to interface with people, we give them very little training on anything that's deeper than a surface level, the type of PowerPoint training that we've all been through dozens of times in our career. I think the... I think the second one is probably more important than the first one, right? The first one is kind of a functional tactic that we can use, the second point that I mentioned of like, have to increase people's awareness of these phenomenons because they occur subconsciously, and if we're not aware of them, we can't possibly tackle them. What is the most dangerous leadership trait that people mistake for a strength? you know, I think it's, it's related here, right? So I think I would say. You be careful here because I was going to say like confidence and assertiveness are very well, they're very valued in our culture, right? If you can be assertive and make decisions quickly and communicate that very succinctly, that's admired and as well it should be by the way. However, people... People will behave in a way that is in their best interest. So if I'm naturally inquisitive and I'm naturally want to involve my team and I'm naturally vulnerable saying, hey, I'm not sure about this, but I see the leaders in my team, people who have been selected to be leaders, to be able to shake that off and somehow seem to be know-it-alls, if you will, well, then I'm going to behave that way. because that's what I want to do. again, it may not be a conscious decision. Like I've actually observed that the people who are most likely to ask questions or say, don't know, are very, very junior folks and very, very senior folks, right? So the very best CEOs that I've seen when they hear something they don't understand, they'll just say, like, look, I have no idea what you're talking about. Like explain it to me like I'm a grader. And the people who are very new in their career have a, you they have a blank check to ask those questions. It's the mid-grade members of the team that often feel like they're supposed to know these things. And therefore, if they display any evidence that they don't, it will be perceived as a weakness or a deficiency. And to me, that is the singular most dangerous type of leader, right? Because, Not only is it ineffective because oftentimes I think people can sniff that out a mile away But vulnerability and authenticity I think our leaders biggest superpower and so if I'm not sure of something I'd much rather just say hey look we have this problem, and I don't know how to deal with it, and I need your help or You anything in that zip code, and I don't think we see enough leaders doing that simply because for one reason or another they've come to believe that that would be displaying a sign of weakness. You have said that most leaders aren't as good as they think they are. What did you mean with that? Yeah, I I think, hey, I said it a little bit tongue in cheek. It's an article that I wrote that said, hey, you're not as good as you think you are. And by the way, that's a good thing. Meaning, you know, leadership is not something that we accomplish, right? It's not like getting a black belt in karate where you say, hey, I achieved black belt status. You know, being a good leader is a journey, not a destination. So anyone who's convinced themselves that because of their title, they are now a good leader, like I am now a black belt in leadership, is making a huge mistake. Because there is no end of, you know, there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, right? You try to chase it, you'll just be chasing it forever, which is great for leadership, because we should be this continuous improvement. know, I will tell you that, you know, life and leadership are both very humbling, and I'm very grateful for that. know, every time I think I have something under wraps, I get, I get shown that I don't. And, know, if I'm open to that, I will continue to get better and better. If I'm not, then I won't. And, you know, I think we owe it to our people, just like we demand, you know, it's pretty common to talk about continuous improvement and we put people on training programs to identify their strengths and their weaknesses. Well, If we do that with our people, we better be doing it to ourselves too. And, you know, for anyone who's convinced themselves that like, hey, this is just something that, you know, I've been doing this for 30, I hate when I hear that, when someone says, I've been doing this for 30 years. Like, okay, as soon as I hear that, I'm like, this person is hiding something because, you know, whether they mean to or not, just, know, working with people is so... Complex and it changes from generation to generation and person to person in context to context There's no such thing in my opinion as a good leader saying something someone is a good leader to me is like saying something is a good light Like what does that mean? Like sometimes that we want a light to be dim and romantic like candles sometimes we need a floodlight Sometimes we need a flashlight sometimes. I mean there's all type it was sometimes we need LED lights like it depends what you're trying to achieve So to think that any one person could just be everyone to everything in all contexts because they've been doing it for 30 years is ridiculous. So that article was written, again, somewhat tongue in cheek to get people's attention, but the idea of like, you're never done. You're never done. And there's not that much time to get better at it. When I think back, like I'm probably in the fourth quarter of my career, and I realize like, my. gosh, that went fast. Like, you did I really take advantage of every opportunity that I had to get better? And if I could, if I could talk to someone who's playing in the first quarter of their career, I would say, hey, time is not on your side. It feels like it is, but you you got to squeeze every ounce of, of goodness out of the fruit that's handed to you because that ultimately will be a huge differentiator between you and your peers. So don't. Don't let a day go by where you're not looking for some way to learn something new. Rapid fire questions answer in less than 30 seconds. Number one, what's the most military discipline productivity trick that you still use today? Bottom line up front, don't keep your listener in suspense. If you have something to say, start with the ending. So if I have to say, we're going to blow the budget this month, just say it. Like, I'm going to be over budget by 15%. Period. Stop talking. Now, if the listener wants to hear more questions, answer the questions. But don't tell me some long story that ends with, we're going to blow budget by 15%. What is the biggest leadership red flag in a new manager? overconfidence for reasons that we've discussed. If you could erase one corporate buzzword forever, what would it be? I think it would be when we talk about people have to understand the why. I understand why we say that, but I think in most cases, we need to understand people's why. Don't assume that the people are interested in your why, understand their why and then integrate whatever it is that you're talking about into their motivations, not the other way around. What's the most misunderstood leadership trait? Empathy. Oftentimes when we talk about empathy, think it's, you know, we talk about servant leadership and, you know, acknowledging where people are and what they need and all that's true, but that doesn't take away accountability. And it's okay to be demanding and challenging and push people to limits that they didn't think that they could meet. Empathy has become synonymous with soft and I don't agree with that. One of your taglines is allow yourself to suck. What is one time you totally sucked at something but still were happy because you learned at it? When I wrote my second book was called Dear Hunter, I wrote it to my son. It's a series of letters of my life lessons. And it was miserable at first. And I had this voice in my head that was reminding me how bad it was and just this voice that wouldn't stop and say, what are you doing? Like nobody cares and your son's not going to care and this thing is going to collect dust. And I just had the only way I could get through it was to just do it anyway and just tell that voice in my head like, yep, you're right. You're right, this sucks, but guess what, I'm gonna do it anyway. And in time, a different voice comes and replaces that voice, and it's much more encouraging and positive, sometimes action creates motivation and not the other way around. If listeners could take just one productivity principle from today's conversation, what should it be? I would say less is more and crush the things that you know matter. Let's not do a hundred things, let's do one or two things. And keep it simple. If you know that your physical conditioning is important to you, don't come up with some long complicated strategy that's going to involve weighing out your chicken on Sundays and going to the gym for two and a half hours every day. Keep it simple. you know, do something like a push-up every day and see how many consecutive days you could do a push-up because I think what we often see is on a scale of 0 to 100, we're at 35 and then we look up at 100 and we get intimidated by how far we have to go. My recommendation to any leader or any team is just get to 36 and then take a breath and then regroup and say, do I get to 37? Matt, I've developed a big fan of yours. I read you every week. Where can people follow you? How can people know more about you and your thinking? Yeah, so right now I write mostly on Substack and you can find me either under my name, Matt DeGioranimo, or my publication is called The Curious Leader. And I believe curiosity is a superpower of all of ours and it's the one that I try to emulate the most. So that's where I would encourage people to come find me on Substack under my name, Matt DeGioranimo or the tagline, The Curious Leader. Matt, thank you for 35 minutes of really thought leadership. I've enjoyed this conversation and learned so much from you. And I'm gonna still following you because your wisdom is incredible. Thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you for having me, Santiago. I appreciate it. I'm honored to have been here. Thank you. Thank you.