87. How to be a long term thinker in a short term world with Dorie Clark and Prina Shah

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Hello, and welcome to this episode of Ways to Change the WordPress with myself, Bruno Shah. I love what I do. I'm a global leadership co-teacher, a consultant, a trainer, a keynote speaker, a podcaster. I help you to develop your leaders, your teams, and I help you to optimize your organizational cultures. I'm here to help you find ways to change your workplace. Why? Because we spend more time in our waking days at work than we do with our loved ones. It has to be a good place to be. So in this podcast, you can expect a mix of interviews with amazing thought leaders and then some solo episodes from myself as well. Get ready! Hello and welcome to this very special episode of the Ways to Change Your Workplace podcast with myself, Prina Shah. And I'm very excited to introduce to you today my coach, Dory Clark. Dory, welcome. How are you?

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Prina, it's so great to have the opportunity to get to spend a little more time with you.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Thank you so much. Now, Dory is all the way in Miami. And Dory, allow me, if you will, I've got a little bit of an introduction to you. So may I? Dory Clark is a well-known author, a speaker, and a consultant who focuses on career development and entrepreneurship. Her book, her latest book, The Long Game, How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short Term World, offers practical strategies for achieving long-term success in a fast-paced and a constantly changing world. And Dory, I want to talk to you exactly about that today in relation to how to be a long-term thinker in a short-term world. Welcome.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

Thank you so much. I'm excited to talk with you.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

My pleasure. So, Dory, it's very much about the power of persistence, essentially. Can I ask you before we even get into any questions, what inspired you to write the long game? And what do you hope that readers will take away from it?

SPEAKER_01 2:17

Well, I was inspired to write the long game by a few different things. I mean, one was just a generalized desire in myself, I suppose, to always try to answer the question, what can I be doing today that my future self will be grateful for? I feel like it's a decent question. I know there are things that sometimes I have done in my life or not done in my life. And I look back and I say, oh, but come on, 20-year-old Dory, what were you thinking there? And I would like to be the person now that 20 years in the future, I'm saying, oh, well played. So that's one piece. But the other thing that inspired it was really just seeing so often in myself and in people around me, people I coached, friends, colleagues, people would be racing around and they were constantly saying, almost like a mantra, I just wish I had time to think. I just wish I had time to breathe. And it felt like everybody was kind of treading water and they wanted to have more space. They wanted to be able to make smarter choices or to be able to even just step back and think about things or analyze things a little bit. But they were so busy with their email or whatever the equivalent of their email was that they couldn't do it. And I thought, all right, this really doesn't make any sense. This is not how we want to be living our lives. So how can we make changes so that we actually do have a better outcome?

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Beautiful. And this book is really anti-the-byness culture. And you've got loads of practical strategies within the book, Dory. And it's all tried and tested by yourself as well, which is another thing that I love. So you really share a lot of yourself within the book as well and your successes and your failures. You're very honest with all of the things that you've persisted with and how you have been playing the long game. So, in relation to the long game, Dory, how do you define the long game and why is it so important in today's world?

SPEAKER_01 4:16

Sometimes people think about the long game in terms of period of time. And you can do that, of course. I mean, certainly, you know, if we think about 10 years down the road, 20 years down the road, that qualifies, right? It's something that is a substantial enough goal or outcome that you really have to work towards it. It's kind of a question of like, well, where do we want our lives to go? Where do we want our careers to go? But I think also it doesn't necessarily have to be a unit of time. It can be a unit of perspective. And so I think about a long game strategy. And for me, a very reasonable long-game goal is that we want to take action now for our physical health, for instance, so that when we're older, we are able to be as healthy, as mobile as we want. You know, I think almost everybody thinks that's a good idea. And yet something that is so easy to do in the short term and is literally about your action tomorrow, would be doing something. And I actually literally do this, like leaving out your gym clothes at night so that the default option is, oh, I'm gonna wear the gym clothes in the morning, which means I'm gonna go to the gym first. And that is predisposing us to the outcome that is gonna be the most helpful outcome 10 or 20 years from now.

SPEAKER_00 5:40

From a gym perspective, totally understand that. And then there's the bigger life perspective. And in the book, you've got a beautiful case study about the wonderful Ron Carrucci, who is a success and a half, right? However, when Ron started off, he came to you for a reason. And let's say it was baby Ron to huge Ron now, and the mountains that Ron has climbed and the peaks that he reaches haven't happened overnight. So it's not a case of you know leaving his work briefcase out, let's say, to say, okay, tomorrow this is what I'm gonna do. That there's bigger pulls for him. Can you talk to a little bit more to that in relation to the kind of North Star that we have to have, which are, I guess, the analogy of our gym clothes leaving out overnight?

SPEAKER_01 6:26

Yeah, absolutely. So Ron Carucci is a friend and client of mine, and he's somebody that I profile in the long game because I think he exemplifies these principles so effectively. And it's useful to also point out you're saying from like baby Ron to big Ron, but also you often hear people with a kind of narrative in their head, and they especially sort of fixate on age. And so to be clear, when Ron first came to me, Ron was over 50. I think he was 50, he was 51. I think some people are like, oh, but you know, sure, if you're in your 20s, you can play the long game, but I'm older, and so therefore, dot dot dot insert excuse. Yeah, it's the long game. I mean, the long game is not tomorrow, but the long game also is something that regardless of your age, as long as you at least have some horizon left on your aspirations, you can accomplish. So, Ron at 51, 52, whatever he was, he was already successful, but he wasn't as successful as he wanted to be. And he wanted to do something to intervene because he knew, quite logically, if you keep doing the same thing, you will keep getting the same results. And so he said, What is an intervention that I can make so that five years from now, my career looks markedly different? And he did the work. In his case, he did a lot of amazing stuff in terms of writing for high-profile publications. He's become a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review, to Forbes. He wrote a really fantastic book with the publisher Kogan Page in the interim. So he's really dramatically raised his profile. And as a result, he is working with much bigger, much better clients. His work is much more satisfying to him. And that's something that in your 50s or even in your 60s, who knows, even beyond that, assuming you want to keep working, you absolutely can do. This is not something that is limited to Gen Z or what have you.

SPEAKER_00 8:33

It is achievable. And I love in the book you talk about the fact that when you have been working with Ron, he has that big, bigger reason for doing whatever he wants to do. And guaranteed there's going to be knockbacks, there's going to be setbacks throughout whatever he is trying to achieve. And same with the examples that you share about yourself, but having that end goal, that huge, big end goal, is something that actually enables you to get through even the rejections and the constant setbacks, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:01

It's true. I mean, Nietzsche said a strong enough why can endure anyhow, which I always liked. So it's true. If you have a clear sense of purpose and know what you're aiming toward, then I think it is a lot easier to endure when inevitably there's going to be some kind of setbacks or just things aren't going to play out precisely the way that you imagine. I mean, it's kind of hubristic to assume that, like, oh yes, the world is such a predictable place that I can sit here right now and tell you exactly how everything in the world is going to play out over the next three to five years. I mean, like, really? So I think that we have to understand that anything we're coming up with is a bit of a hypothesis and it might work that way in kind of broad brush strokes, but we don't know when the butterfly is going to flap its wings. And so it's probably going to play out a little bit differently in reality. And we've got to be nimble enough to be cool with that. So I'm curious, Prina, I would like to hear from you. Like, how do you think about the long game in your own career or your own business?

SPEAKER_00 10:05

Oh, I can share with you. So, Dory, long ago, I had decided. So, when I was working in corporate, I decided I wanted to quit. And then I thought, oh my gosh, how? Because I live in Perth, which is quite the small city in that everybody knows each other. There's quite the clicky network. If you're born here, if you've been to the right school, except for life, really, I'm not from here. So that was my first hurdle. I thought, shit, okay. So I honed my skills internally from a corporate perspective, knowing that I wanted an exit out. I then learned all of the best things and skills that I needed to from a corporate perspective. And then I thought, no, well, I need to expand my network, my brand, which is how I came across a self-assessment that you offer, which I'm going to actually link to. Dory, that has just been super life-changing for me. That's how I first came across you. Amazing. Yeah. The self-assessment really helped me cover my own insecurities and the kind of excuses I was making for myself. So I really learned truly, Dory, from that self-assessment that I had to increase my profile and my brand. Because in the book, as you say, Ron was the best kept secret, as was I. So once you are the best kept secret, no one's going to know about you. So I did all of the work. I've been doing all of the work. I've been, so I'm in Dory's Recognized Expert Program as well, just to let our audience know. And that's a thorough program. So before I looked at this, I looked at the self-assessment, did a lot of work on myself over that year, and then I joined Dory's Recognized Expert Program, which is a lengthy program. It's for your whole life, Dory. So thank you so much for the open community that you've created. And with that, I have learned from the best. I learned from people who've been there and done that. And I continue to evolve as well. So my mission also is something that I had to get upfront and ready before I even went out to the world. And that is, thank you for all of the work on the self-assessment and then joining Dory's group. So my mission is to help individuals and organizations to find ways to change a workplace because we spend more time off our waking day at work than we do with our loved ones. It has to be a good place to be. So I found my reason, Dory. So even when I have those knockbacks, even when I have those setbacks, I've still got my North Star to keep me going.

SPEAKER_01 12:33

Amen to that, Prina. I love that.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

It didn't happen overnight. I side hustled for seven years, Dory. I side hustled like you would not believe. So it is a long game, and I'm still playing that long game because I still feel there's still so much that I can contribute to the world to make the workplace a better place. That's my little thing for the world.

SPEAKER_01 12:52

So good.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

So that's how I've done it. A question for you: lots of people have these big, wonderful ideas, such as myself as well. We want to do things, we want to give back to the world in various ways. But what are some of the obstacles that get in our way, Dory, from a long-term perspective?

SPEAKER_01 13:08

Well, there's a variety of obstacles that get in our ways, but I think that one of the more pernicious ones, and this is just sort of endemic to the nature of pursuing long-term goals, is the fact that there's a reason that short-term thinking is so desirable. And it's that the results come sooner. The problem, if you took a person and you said to them, look, Prina, you're gonna have to work really hard for five years, but I guarantee that the results are gonna happen. You're a responsible person. You'd probably be like, you know what? All right, I can suck it up, I can do that. But the problem is that in life, there are no guarantees. And so as a result, you've got this process where you're working towards something that obviously is a big important goal for you. I mean, maybe that goal is I want to be self-employed and start my own business, or maybe it's that I really want to get a promotion and I want to reach the C-suite, or maybe you want to launch a new initiative or whatever it is, but you're doing this thing and all during that extensive process that it takes to get there, you are not getting the feedback that you need to know that you are making progress. And so you are basically walking in a dark tunnel and you don't know how long that tunnel is. If you know the tunnel is another 10 meters, okay, great, but it could be a hundred thousand meters. You have no idea. And it's that uncertainty that freaks people out so much that they often decide, screw this, and they quit and they give up. So sometimes maybe it's the rational move, but oftentimes what I've seen is that they quit too soon.

SPEAKER_00 15:02

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 15:03

So I think that the biggest problem that we have to solve for people is how do you make it emotionally okay for people? How can people feel okay with themselves and in their own lives not getting that kind of sexy, frequent, short-term, even if it's kind of trivial, but short-term feedback. Like I post on Instagram, you know what, Prina? In 20 minutes, I've got a hundred likes. Doesn't that make me a good person? Well, that feels emotionally a lot more satisfying than slogging away to create some piece of meaningful thought leadership that actually over time might do so much more for the world, might do so much more for my business, for my brand, but I'm not getting those hundred likes in 20 minutes. That is an emotional problem that we have to solve.

SPEAKER_00 15:53

Yes. Okay, so now here, Dory, we're really going into failure and dealing with rejection. That's one thing I want to ask you about, and the compound effect of when we start now to you talk about the three-year horizon, the five-year horizon, and things truly start to change then, eventually, but you've got to persist. So, could you talk to me a bit more about rejection and failure? And you have had a lot of rejection, a lot of failure yourself, which you clearly share in the book as well. Talk to me about that. How do you deal with it?

SPEAKER_01 16:26

So, failure is the other part that I think needs to be talked about because it kind of haunts the question of long-term goals, right? What if I put in all this effort and then it just doesn't work in the end? And you're working on something that is speculative, you haven't done it before, so you kind of don't know for sure if it's gonna work. So I think there's a few important points to be raised. The first one is I like to actually not always, not 100% of the time, but mostly I like to put the word failure in air quotes because it's true that some things are legitimately failures, but I think that we are so sensitive, we're so trigger happy when it comes to the idea of like, oh my God, a failure. We label things as failures that aren't necessarily failures, they're just like a thing that didn't work. Like that doesn't mean it's a failure. It just means it's like a thing that didn't happen to work. So the analogy that I like to give is if you went to a casino and you lost a dollar, that's not really a failure. I mean, I guess you could call it a failure, but like like literally, who cares? You lost a dollar, like you're just like, hey, LC, right? No one cares. If you go to a casino and you lose a million dollars, then yes, you could say that's a failure. And so the most important thing that we can do is how do we place one dollar bets and not million dollar bets? And that's an upstream question. That's an upstream situation. Let's pretend your goal is like, oh, I want to launch this new initiative. If you bet your company on this new initiative, you cut off all the other things that you're doing, you make it super secret so the competition doesn't know about it, and then all of a sudden you unveil it to your customers to surprise them to see it really needs to work because otherwise you've spent so much money, you've burned all the boats. It has to work. And if it doesn't, that is a complete failure. But what if instead of doing something so high risk, you said, you know what? I want to start a new initiative. Why don't I have dinner with a customer and show them my napkin sketch and see if they seem interested in it? All right, if they seem interested in it, why don't I see if they'd be willing to put down just a little tiny bit of money and then they can get a prototype and maybe we can co-create the prototype? You just you do these de-risked small things so that if any of them don't work, you can walk away and just be like, oh well, we learned something. That was interesting, but it's inappropriate to call it a failure. I think that that's the most important thing. Failure does suck, so let's have less failure, and you can have less failure by doing small bets.

SPEAKER_00 19:14

I love that. And Dory, throughout the book, you've got this whole philosophy of treating these things as an experiment. So when you look at it as an experiment, it may well flourish or it may well fail, and that's okay. But putting that bucket around it as well is really important. And you really talk about in the book as well experiences. So this is another experience. That's all it is. If you look at it in that manner, then that's another thing that we just have to get over if it is a failure. But then when we do have a failure, it's not the end of the world. We can pivot. And let's say that didn't work from that perspective, that client's perspective, we can use the material, angle it to something else. It's not done and dusted altogether. That's exactly right, Prina.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

I think a lot of it just comes from taking ourselves less seriously, right? Like I think we just act like the stakes are so high and it's our whole identity is resting on this thing. And it's very dangerous. If this doesn't work, I'm gonna be a failure. Obviously, it's gonna feel pretty awful if that's the way you're framing it. But for all of us, I would like to hope and assume this is the case for me. I hope it's the case for other people, that our value as human beings is not about the success or quote unquote failure of any given initiative. We have value as human beings, and a thing either works or doesn't. We tried something, we're learning something, whatever. I mean, if you're playing poker, not to sound like a gambling addict, I'm using a lot of metaphors tonight. I don't even gamble, I find it boring. But anyway, it's a good metaphor. The interesting and helpful thing about poker as a metaphor is that because luck is a factor, as it is with life, you could play the hand perfectly and still not win. And it doesn't mean you didn't play the hand perfectly, it's just there's factors outside your control. And so we need to recognize that life is like that too. You just you do the best you can. And if it doesn't work, I mean, maybe this particular strategy worked 95 out of 100 times. You know what? It doesn't work this time because the wind changed direction or whatever. It's not that we have to give up on our goals, and it's not where people often go, which is like, oh, the universe is telling me it's not meant for me. It's like, no, the universe is not telling you that. What it is is just a fucking hassle. That's what it is. It's a hassle, and it's like, eh, I wish that it had worked the first time, but oh well, we'll try it again.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

Absolutely. So, Dory, you talk about the fact that you can't make it alone, and none of us have ever made it on our own. So the importance of networking here is essential as well. There's three types of networking you talk about short-term, long-term, and infinite horizons. So essentially, we know what short-term networking is. We generally know what long-term networking is. Infinite horizon networking? Hello. Could you expand upon that concept, please?

SPEAKER_01 22:16

So this is a concept, Freeno, that I coined basically to refer to networking that has no perceived value in the sense of like long-term networking would be with someone that you could see that there might be a value in the future. Like, oh, you know, we're sort of in the same industry. I don't know if I'd do business with him today, but maybe someday that could be helpful. It makes sense. Like anybody could see, like, oh yeah, that seems useful. Infinite Horizon networking is networking that doesn't seem really useful at all because they are not in your industry, they're not in your region, they might seem random. And so, therefore, that is a place where a lot of people under-index. Because if you are someone who is theoretically a go-getter, you want it to be productive, you want to be optimizing. But it's also true that sometimes we can over-optimize. And there is value in serendipity, there's value in random connections because you don't know right now, like at this moment, you might say, you know what? I absolutely don't need to be friends with any opera singers. That would be weird. That would be random. Why would I need that? But if for some reason you pursued infinite horizon networking, you made friends with an opera singer, and just who knows, five years from now, when I come to you, Prina, and I say the musical that I have written has a climactic finish scene on the roof of the Sydney Opera House. Prina, I need a connection at the Sydney Opera House so that I can film the movie version of my musical. I need someone who can help give me permission. You can say, you know what? I know this star opera singer who can help hook you up. And all of a sudden you were the hero of the day. We never could have predicted it. But sometimes those connections are the ones that can change your life or change other people's lives.

SPEAKER_00 24:15

100%. Dory, can you give us examples of how you've had these serendipitous connections which have changed your life?

SPEAKER_01 24:22

Yeah, absolutely. I really relish having different kinds of connections and things like that. And in a literal sense, I was referencing a musical, but that's actually something that's been a big thing for me. So when I first moved to New York in 2014, I had coffee. This was what I guess you could call long-term networking. I had coffee with this guy, Daniel. He was like a Harvard Business Review author. And Daniel was going to be on this panel, and they needed somebody else for the panel. And he's like, oh, well, I'll suggest you. And it was like a few days from then. So I was on the panel, and in the audience was a guy who came up to me afterwards and he was like, Oh, hey, you seem cool. I'd like to meet. And I was sort of thinking, like, who's this random guy? Didn't totally make sense to me. I mean, he seemed nice, but it was not like top of the priority list because I had no context. But anyway, eventually we ended up connecting. And he was a former Broadway producer. And he was the first person that I knew who had any sort of theatrical background. His name is Michael Roderick. And one of the things that he used to do was he organized for several years a conference called ConnectorCon. And it was like a conference of connectors. So it was like very meta. But at ConnectorCon, he invited me to speak at it. And I ended up meeting this other guy at the conference, who, because Michael had these theatrical connections, this guy was in the theater world. He, his name is Bruce, invited me to go to a show with him. And that experience of going to that show was what ended up kicking off my interest, which for the past seven years I've been pursuing in writing musicals.

SPEAKER_00 26:09

Fantastic. Dory, you talked about the whole go-getter concept, and you know, go-getters really want to achieve, achieve, achieve. Now, from that achievement perspective, I call it destination addiction. So you just you reach here, you go there. So we're addicted to going there, there, there, there, there. But we forget where we've come from, and we completely lose sight of everything that we've achieved. And you you give examples of that throughout the book. When you move to New York, can you explain the building that was opposite your building and how you'd come full circle and your little story there, Dory?

SPEAKER_01 26:46

Ah, yes, yes, absolutely. So I agree with you, Preena. I think it is really important for us to just periodically remind ourselves and sort of take stock, because otherwise you're always almost like pathologically focused on the next thing and you're not appreciating the arc of what you've done. And so for me, I mean, I'm based in Miami now, but for a number of years, I was living in New York and I ended up my first apartment in New York, really like kind of accidentally. I was in the same neighborhood. I was in the financial district, and it was just literally a couple blocks away, just down the street. I discovered it by accident. The financial district in New York, as people who've been there will know, is the oldest part of New York. So it's not on the grid system. So everything in New York is like super logical. It's like First Avenue, Second Avenue, Third Avenue. Well, not the financial district. The financial district is all kind of wack-a-doodle and very confusing. And so, unless you've spent a lot of time there, you it's very easy to get turned around. And so I at first at first it took me like the first week to be like wandering around. And I'm like, wait, what? Because I didn't realize it was right there and so close. But I discovered that this apartment that I had moved into was actually just like a block or two from the office building that I worked in when I was a college between the summer between my college junior and senior years. It was the summer that I had interned in New York. And it was this advertising agency that I worked for. And so for me, you know, essentially like 20, 25 years later, to see that building and to know, like, oh, little teenage dory was like wandering and going there every day. And now I walk past it, and there's just this sort of regular reminder of like very viscerally, like, oh, here's where I've come from and here's where I am now, was an important touchstone for me.

SPEAKER_00 28:38

100%. And I think all of us need those regular reminders of where we have come from and where we are now because it's too easy to forget. How can someone stay motivated and focused when the rewards of playing the long game might not be immediate, Dory? Motivation.

SPEAKER_01 28:55

Motivation is always really crucial. I like to think about a story that I told in one of my previous books, Entrepreneurial You, where I talked about a woman named Stephanie O'Connell who came to New York and she started out, she is an aspiring actress. Speaking of theater in New York, and accidentally, you know, along the way, she started a personal finance blog, mostly as a way of kind of keeping herself honest because she was trying so desperately to keep herself afloat in New York, which is a very expensive city. So she had these like blogs about how she was saving money and things like that. And it turned out that she started to get traction as a finance blogger. And now, years later, that's what she does. She's become a very successful personal finance authority. But the interesting thing was talking to her about those early days and how did she stay motivated. And she said something that was really critical for her was in those early days, things that a lot of people would overlook, she really took the time to relish. You know, and she told me about a moment that was very meaningful to her, which was the first time that somebody paid her for writing a guest post. And they paid her $25. Like it was not a lot of money. So a lot of people would be like, way to go, $25, you know, that's not gonna pay your rent. But for her, it was actually a very meaningful symbol because for her, that was the turning point where she realized, like, my work has gotten to the point where someone else is willing to pay me for it. And that was how it landed emotionally for her. And that gave her a lot of momentum to be able to keep moving forward. And even for small amounts of money at first, she was waitressing. That was how she was earning a living. And she's like, you know what? 25 bucks, that's an hour I don't have to be a waitress. So just framing it and noting it can be so powerful.

SPEAKER_00 30:45

Beautiful. Dory, what is one actionable step that someone can take today to start playing the long game if they've got this big vision in their head?

SPEAKER_01 30:55

Well, aside from setting out your gym clothes, I will say that one of one of the most important things we can think about is there's a concept that I talk about in the long game, which I call optimized for interesting. And basically the idea is if you have a choice, and in some cases we don't, but in many cases we do, try to choose the option that is more legitimately interesting. And we get hung up sometimes so often about is it the right choice? Is it the right decision? We get almost paralyzed trying to figure it out. And that's often the wrong question. You often don't even know if it's the right decision or not until pretty far down the road. But a question that we can answer for ourselves is, you know what, is it interesting to you? Is it something that would make for a good story? Is it something that you feel like, you know what, I'll learn something from it? And if it is, all right, do that. If you reach a point where it stops being interesting, then fine, you can pivot. It's all about holding things lightly. But when you have a choice, choose the more interesting option, I think is a helpful rule of thumb.

SPEAKER_00 32:00

Choose a more interesting option. The other thing I've been really, really finding valuable, Dory, from the book as well is the four questions you ask yourself when you want to say no. I love this, I've truly applied this myself. So, what is the total commitment, the hidden or insinuated obligations? What is the opportunity cost? The cost of not doing other things and that meaningful proactive choice that you decide upon. What's the physical and emotional cost? How to balance your competing priorities? And Dory, this question slapped me around the face positively so. Will I feel bad in a year if I don't do this? Ah, those questions are fantastic. And Dory, I know from all of the work that you do, you do lecturing, you do lots of speaking, you help corporates, you're in the musical industry as well. What's next for you?

SPEAKER_01 32:55

One of the things, Prina, that I'm trying to do to be thoughtful about walking the talk is I made a commitment when the long game came out in fall of 2021 that I really wanted to give it the very best chance of possible of succeeding and becoming a sort of ongoing evergreen success as a book. And so I decided that I was going to play the long game for the long game and that I would work hard to try to continue promoting it and its ideas for a five-year period. So I am continuing to just like bang the drum around the importance of long-term strategic thinking.

SPEAKER_00 33:30

It is so important in such a short-term world. Dory, I have one final question for you. So this podcast is called Ways to Change the Workplace. Dory Clark, if I was to hand you a magic wand, what is one way you would change the way of the workplace?

SPEAKER_01 33:46

Well, I know that there are organizations that have already done this in many cases with great success. But if I could universalize something, this is something that I personally do and have found it enormously helpful, is to have at least one day per week with no meetings. I'd frankly like it to be even more. I think it should be multiple days with no meetings because they break up your concentration. They inhibit your ability to do deep work. And we can probably agree there's too many of them in general. So if it becomes a scarcer resource, the ability to place meetings on your schedule, then maybe we'll be a little bit more thoughtful about actually what things we have meetings about. Boom.

SPEAKER_00 34:27

And with that, I thank you so much, Dory Clark. Until the next time. And it's in the show notes as well. So check it out. It is brilliant. Dory, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 34:52

Thanks, Prina. Take care.

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If you want to meet great thinkers who stand against crappy workplace cultures, lousy leaders, and toxic teams, then you need to join the Ways to Change Your Workplace Facebook group, which is linked in today's show notes. I will see you in the next episode. Bye for now.