 Happy New Year to you. Now if you're anything like me, I've spent the last couple of weeks going through what I Accomplished during the year and didn't accomplish. I'm a very ambitious person and sometime around December 1st I start hating myself anybody else do that and then by the time about a week for Christmas I start hating everybody around me and then the new year ends and then I have to get my composure And I always say I've made too many goals, and I'm too ambitious, and I've got to focus more and and then I start making my plans for the year and Hopefully you're thinking about what you want to accomplish for the year now. I want to start out with a very simple question What if you got everything you wanted the day you graduated from high school Just think about that for a minute. Oh come on the pretty girl the handsome boy the hot car The job, you know being the disco guy at your favorite, you know the disc jacket your favorite club all that stuff Would your life be meaningful? Oh, you might be happy for a while. I'll give you that Would you would you actually be growing? Now what's interesting is that our lives are works in progress I like that Bernard Malmood famous novel the natural which of course there's the famous Robert Redford film where Roy Hobbs the great hitter is laying in the hospital bed and iris gains his childhood sweet art comes in and she says you know Roy I think we have two lives the life we learn with and the life we live with well I would add to that. I think we have multiple lives We are versions of ourselves we're version one version two version three version four and part of that Has to do with what pulls us forward now I use the term Creativize as a as a nilagism as a nilagism. It's a made-up term and it means Adding creativity to the ordinary things that we do in life, right adding creativity to the ordinary things That's what we do every year. That's what we do with our New Year's resolutions And and and creative ising is is the activity of actually the process of doing this and Creativizers are people who do this on a regular basis So every year we kind of go through this cycle where we're actually sort of intentional about this But there's there's more to Being an innovator than just having a creative mindset And I think one of the things that people get wrong is what it really what's really required to do this So I'm going to start out by saying I think there are eight underlying rules that all of us have to admit to They're almost existential at the beginning of the year when we make our New Year's resolutions Because if we don't engage these rules our resolutions never come true So these are sort of guidelines and I'd like to start out with one of my favorite quotes from Emerson Man is a piece of the universe made alive now when I grew up I grew up in the in the great state of Michigan that surrounded by 90 percent of all the fresh water in the United States We have more shoreline than the entire East Coast put together So if you live in Michigan everybody lives on water granted it's frozen a third of the year But we all live on water so my grandfather was a Hungarian immigrant and we would go fishing with him all the time And one of the amazing things is when he take us out He would show us how nature was alive the fish were alive and the could the clouds were alive and the trees were alive And everything around us was alive and what he was trying to show us is that we are not the center of the Universe that everything around us that's moving is pursuing power progeny or pleasure The world is growing and the object is can we grow with the world? So the first sort of rule or the first guideline is very simple. We are beings in the world Trying to transcend it the great philosopher Martin Heidegger Coined the term beings in the world and he said you know the problem with philosophy is we we think we're gods looking down On the world, but we're actually encased in all kinds of challenges in the world And we're we are having to respond and draw on this world Now in a in a in a wonderful in a wonderful book by day I'd say our day show down the great the great Jesuit philosopher of the last century His big thing was that we are all in an act of becoming But one of the challenges that that we all have about trying to trying to transcend the world is that even though We we have this great capacity as human beings The only way in which we can actually transcend the world is by the process of Creativity it is the reason that we create now don't say that man is the only animal that create that's simply not true chimpanzees create dolphins create Caldean crows create, but man is the only animal that knows and knows he knows Putting another way ladies and gentlemen. No one gets out of here alive that is the existential condition and that is the reason that we create and what makes us unusual is we're able to share this with Other human beings if in fact a great alabaman of Harvard professor if you know EO Wilson's work talks about what? distinguishes human beings from everyone else in the world is our ability and our capacity to translate Imagination into language and to share that this is how we build cities. This is how we build airplanes. This is how we build civilizations rule number two Everything is both part of a greater system and a whole thing unto itself Emanuel Kant's great great work right the the critique of pure reason now What Kant was saying is that all of us have this fundamental belief that somehow We're we're unique or individual now. I had this happen to me a few years back I was at Torrey Pines in San Diego and there's a very famous statue there called the self-made man That it's a person kind of carving himself out of rocks I think Michelangelo, you know pulling himself as an orthogonal twist out of a piece of marble And what was interesting to me is when I first saw it I fell into the same trap. We all fall into I Said to myself. I'm a self-made man I grew up in a hud house. I have a million brothers and sisters. I came to college as a wrestler Nobody thought I was gonna do anything I work I worked all the time and I became someone and I go to you ever have that moment where you're like I did it and then you start thinking through carefully and what do you start thinking about The the teacher who saw something in you the coach who wrote a letter for you The guy who didn't need to give you a teamster job But gave you a teamster job the person who took you into the doctoral program We didn't need to take into the doctoral program and what do you figure out immediately? No one in here is self-made. I don't care where you came from. You were not made Individually now every year around this time I fall into this trap and I'm guessing you do too I read a self-help book over Christmas. I love self-help books. I'm addicted to them Even though most of them are terrible And I start out this is sanny claws I love say he's my hero sanny claws and I start out by saying you know what I'm doing next year I've worked really hard and I just turned 60 years old and I'm gonna I've made a little money I've done okay I'm gonna quit it all and I'm gonna move up north and I'm gonna write a crappy fantasy book. That's what I'm doing I've had enough of the bureaucracy. How many are with me? I've had enough of the bureaucracy had enough I've had enough. I'm mad as hell and I'm not taking it anymore Yeah, you read the book too, right? I'm reading a book. I'm self authorizing all the things I'm supposed to be except there's a problem and that is my nesting doll fits inside Guess what another nesting doll a bigger sanny claws Who's in this sanny claws? Well, my wife sanny is in this sanny claws What does she think about me taking the year off if she likes it? I probably have a big problem at home right My dean at my school my business partners the people at NPR in charge of my Radio program they probably are not thrilled with me moving up north and writing a crappy fantasy novel Now on top of that is what there's another sanny claws and this sanny claws is called reality There's a financial crisis Yeah, you think about it. We had a 10-year run guys I used to be an advisor to Federal Reserve these things don't go on forever. Don't kid yourself, right? There's a pandemic Somebody decides to attack the war is what you guys are all about Yeah, that's sanny claws is bigger than the communal sanny claws. Now. Here's the point Innovation and creativity is not created through freedom It's created through constraints It's the workaround. It's what do we do, right? It's the person's There's a tale of bureaucracy. It's so bad. Nobody can get anything done until you see what somebody get it done Then what do you do cheater cheater pumpkin eater? No It's a person who's figured out how to be creative in a functionally restrictive environment So the second rule you're not self-created. You're not alone We are both creating and created Anything that you've become in life has been a group project and consider yourself lucky Somebody cared about you enough or something happened to you that turned out pretty well Now this is my favorite quote of all time and it's wonderful. We have a Cambridge professor here This was a Cambridge philosopher a famous one in Bertrand Russell won the Nobel Prize The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves But wiser people so full of doubts. Oh my word How you create is What you create One of my one of my favorite stories is I did something radical when I was a very young man I was 25 years old. I had a PhD. I was a presidential scholar So certainly I was going to go to an Ivy League school or do that. You know what I did I went to work for a man with a 20 million dollar pizza company Five years and five billion dollars later was Domino's Pizza. I Could hear the people at PepsiCo and Pizza Hut think they were dull drab and awful And it was a lot of fun building it You know why it was fun because everything that everybody else did was predictable and what we did was different Let me give you the big thing you couldn't buy a Domino's Pizza franchise on if you know this back in the day When it was the fastest growing corporation in America the 1980s You had to go work for somebody who actually had a Domino's franchise and knew what they were doing You had to be a Prentice you had to learn to be a creative person just like the old guilds of Europe You had to learn to be a goldsmith Right and we gave you your first store and no one knew what hit them And what was even more interesting is people didn't know whether that was a real progressive thing or a real conservative thing to do as If that ever even mattered Another example of this when I was at Domino's I was brought into a group called AIS Plight and Graded Systems Those of you who are youngsters there was a day before the Internet and I happened to be an advisor to Apple when Steve Jobs is being pushed out the first time and Apple had problem Apple couldn't create enough software to compete with Microsoft and IBM So what did we do? We created an internal system called Apple net which became something called connect which became something called iTunes and what it was was a way to connect seekers and solvers It was a way to engage a larger federation a group of people in order to create software in order to compete with other corporations The notion was even though these other businesses were in different businesses. They didn't create the same way The notion is are you willing to change the playbook and in order to do that? You have to change the way you think about things Even if you were to be your best self if you were to try to use the bureaucracy to create radical innovation What you would create is quality and efficiency at scale and you would inadvertently destroy your forward position And I'll talk about this later. So how you do something is what you do and here it is New Year's a great example Oh, I'm gonna lose weight. How are you gonna do it? I'm doing the secret diet. Oh, how's that gonna work? I'm eating I'm eating kale for three days three meals a day. First of all one meal is enough, right? It tastes like an ash tray. It's terrible stuff, right? You know in order to in order to lose weight you got to do what you got to build it into your lifestyle You got to go to the gym. You got to eat slightly differently. How you create is what you create Lesson four If you do not change direction, you may end up where you're heading Now it's interesting to me That people think they're going to be creative without ever practicing. You ever notice that now I can tell in this room Everybody if you took out a piece of paper and drew a picture of your spouse I could tell you at what age you stopped learning to draw Speak a foreign language play an instrument. It doesn't matter whether you're eight or 80 you're going to go through the failure cycle you ever wonder why venture capitalists give a lot of a round Money to a lot of different people, right? What I'm doing is I'm giving you all $10,000 for the same disease state. Why am I why am I doing that? It seems wasteful, doesn't it? But what I'm doing is I'm accelerating the failure cycle and all these folks down here They get something promising you look like pathetic losers, but it turns out you were winners So what I'm doing now is I'm doubling down and be around and I'm giving you guys ten times that amount of money It turns out that our folks in the front row here who would have ever guessed it It turns out that there are big winners and they're going to get my IPO The Templeton Foundation study 1% of 1% made 89% of all the capital gains That's where the 1% on Wall Street number came from the rich got richer Why because they understood that you cannot avoid the failure cycle You can only accelerate it. You know what a loser is the loser is somebody goes go bigger go home Oh, I love the recession all those arrogant bastards went home Goodbye Real innovators hedge you want to see the greatest movie ever made on innovation watch the movie money ball Watch it over and over and over again, and don't forget the first six weeks They wanted the fire billy bean right don't forget it and don't forget he didn't win the playoffs Why because he stops shuffling the lineup It's always version one version two version three. Can I move the runners along and where am I getting momentum? So where in your yearly plan? Are you going to fail? Where is that in your plan or is your plan effortless superiority? That's my favorite effortless Effortless superior. It's all going to work The other one that really bothers me and I see this sometimes in the military feigning humility feigning and acting the part being a poser The issue is if you really have humility you don't believe everything works You believe some things go kaboom Hope I didn't hurt anybody right Number five every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world You know one of the things that I find particularly bothersome these days is what's happened with social media There is a term for this called confirmation bias Have you ever noticed that all the people on your social media page? Who who who call other people stupid you ever seen that happen? You ever noticed they're the stupidest people on your page? You know why there's a term for it called the Dunning-Kruger effect means they're not very self-aware And what happened to social media which called micro segmenting so this is a this is a marketing trick You're playing right into it. We're knowing what you're going to do next What happens if somebody on your social media page doesn't believe all the same crap you believe? Doesn't listen to the same alt band doesn't go to the same church doesn't have the same political views. What do you do? You unfriend them The Spanish inquisition couldn't have thought of that on a dark night on a dark road people disappear I've spent my life Studying what are called creativity clusters groups why why groups have creativity? I live in this little town called Ann Arbor, Michigan 116,000 people has 2.8 billion dollars in venture capital where you have the most venture capital per person any city on the planet right now Why is Ann Arbor any different than any other city up north and it's very simple you walk through the town and what do you see? You see all the you see all the different races You see all the different occupations you hear all the different languages and the same is true for the 30 other places on the planet That produce almost all the intellectual property What is it about diversity? That produces innovation It's simple when people don't come from the same place. They don't think the same way. What do you get? conflict Innovation is the result of the creative power of constructive conflict On your social media page if you never meet the loyal opposition You continue down your blind spot road You only see one thing you become dumber and dumber and dumber you become done in Kruger Spread it out reach out if you're straight read the advocate if your white read ebony Expand your mind engage in the other if you're a democrat watch fox your republican watch msnbc You'll live okay Because innovation is not the result of compromise. I'm not talking about compromise I'm talking about a third way. I'm talking about he gave a lot logic. I'm talking about dowers philosophy I'm talking about when two things that don't agree are meeting in a way. That's respectful You create a third way a better way a new way In my opinion the american way. That's what we're about. That's our unique strength Right, this is the great experiment everyone is from someplace. It's not just a moral issue. It's an economic issue Six My favorite philosopher john dewey. I built the innovatrium the original innovation institute across the street from the original dewey school That's right. You guys from chicago the original dewey schools in an arbor. Thank you very much. Look it up Now the self is not something ready made but something in continuous formation Through choice of action It's it's an act of volition. You don't just wake up one day. You have to decide you're going to create yourself That's what new year is about. That's what building this is about. But here's the thing Everything costs something Whoever tells you different is trying to sell you something or sleep with you one or the other Now you're okay with that. I got all right now I'm coming back from miami the other day and this lady sitting next to me says well, you know, she wants to chat Okay, i'm going to chat. I'm a nice guy She says what do you do and I you know, I write a lot of books and do a lot of things. You know, she's I'm writing a book I said, oh, and I'm trying to you know, you're trying to be engaged even though you're really tired Just want to go home. Oh really tell me about your book Well, you know, I'm a lawyer and I wrote this book and it's all it's uh, it's an intrigue book It's a suspense book and you know, there's uh, there's murder and mystery and oh it said oh, wow That sounds that sounds amazing. Tell me a little bit about Have you got an agent? Oh, no, I haven't got an agent yet. Oh, do you need a recommendation or something? No, no, not yet I said, oh, uh, do you have you have you targeted the publisher? No, no So, well, are is your manuscript ready? She said no, I don't really have a manuscript yet I said, oh, um What have you got? She said I've got an outline I said, oh good. How long you've been working on the book? She's about 15 years Okay, now Just a just a fact check for a minute here. Is this woman ever going to write a book? No You know it and I know it and I asked her what's stopping you from writing the book You know, I um, I do Pilates And I volunteer at the Humane Society. She's a really nice woman I'm a lawyer, you know, sometimes I have to work late And what what am I thinking as a writer? You think what if you want to write a book? How do you write a book? You get your sorry ass out of bed every morning And you write a bunch of pages and what happens the end of the day? You say I'm never going to be a writer I totally suck. This is terrible. I'm going to do it again tomorrow It's a socially acceptable pathology But here's the question for you you want innovation What are you willing to give up? If you give up nothing you're still flying the old spacecraft. You're still doing it the old way What's the likelihood you're ever going to write a book? Never When do you have to start doing it? Now do you try and do it all in one fell swoop? That's what people do with the new year. I'm going to go on a diet It's all going to work. I'm gonna do this really stringent thing About 30 days in what do we notice? Y'all fall down doesn't work Why you overplayed your hand? That's the guy you go golfing with who always thinks he's going to make it on the green with one shot Good luck with that Even tiger woods doesn't do it right anymore, right? So the notion is it takes Oh, it's a little it's hard to do. What do you want to give up? The next one the only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free That your very existence becomes an act of rebellion All right, are you willing to free yourself? I had a very instant conversation. I've been married for a quarter of a century But my wife made a comment one time sort of in in passing. She's from Indonesia And she said what what really strikes me about america Is that it's the freest country in the world and you know, this is how people see us It's the freest most opportune company in the country in the world And yet most people do the exact same thing You ever notice that your your slaves to the dominant logic of this culture You all do the same thing you fill your head with the same stuff Interestingly enough, I love the old western movies that I think put this in a nice perspective You remember the old john wane movies where gabby haze or walter who used to would ramble into camp the cavalry ain't coming the cavalry ain't coming What does it mean? It means only a few things run forest run Or i'm going to fight the man. That's my favorite millennials. This is my favorite you guys I'm going to fight the man you haven't even seen the man man's going to put a can of whoop ass all over you He's going to hit you upside the head the man's going to whoop all over you Good luck fighting the man Even when you become the man you're fighting the man. You by don't know who the man is I thought someday I'd get all my chevrons and I'd be the man and even i'm not the man There's another nesting doll on top of me. Yeah, you all want to be generals Do you think you got to take crap these guys up here have to take an incredible amount of crap They can tell you what kind of wine goes with crap, right? That's what goes on Yeah The cavalry ain't coming You want innovation in the air force? You want to recreate yourself? No one's going to save you I'm sorry They're not No, it's just like some if I oh if I here's the 10 secrets to attracting the no no first no No one's ever going to save you no marriage is going to make your life perfect No job is going to make it all work for you. No That's an existential moment. You have to figure this out yourself. You're free and responsible I'm sorry. I didn't make up the world. I just live here like you I'm a being in the world Henry Bergson the guy who kind of created psychology elon vitale this guy To exist is to change to change is to mature To mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly. I got a story. I want to tell you I was in heartsfield in Atlanta the other day And there's a guy screaming at the monitor Right, you're been in heartsfield. It's crazy airport. So I had to go up to the guy. I'm like what I'm thinking something happened You know, we're are we being invaded and he said no my representative He's a flip-flopper I said what what happened my representative where I'm from my my congressperson was on a committee And it was all about controlling this thing and and and he read this report and he changed his mind He's a flip-flopper and I said I'm not understanding. It's what happened He he he was really an advocate for this one position and then he read this report and he changed his mind And I looked at him. I said, isn't that what intelligent people do? I thought he was going to hit me They're going to have a fight in the Atlanta airport. I'm not going to get home tonight The guy's dominant logic Was so strong That he was unwilling To adjust any of his positions Because of what he believed And that's what most of us do most of us start by judging somebody We don't start By by saying we're going to have to grow to the next position. We don't start that way Well, that leaves us kind of with our with our final piece here We aspire to wholeness But we never achieve it. You will never become whole The the great psychologist Carl Gustav Jung calls this individuation He says only at death do we ever become whole Right and if you're if you're a believer in a faith This is the whole point of your soul sort of the the transcendence of soul But you know, I want to give you an example of this. One of my favorite heroes is Benjamin Franklin I did anybody else love Ben Franklin? I love Benjamin Franklin Because he's a problem. Can you imagine living next to this guy? He's a runaway when he's an apprentice He then apprentices himself to Of the printing business, but he does it in a way that he lies about who he is He masquerades as as a woman and he sort of he he does this whole thing with letters And he gets this huge sort of syndicated commas filing then he becomes the printer himself Then he goes on and and he creates the first public library He creates a syndication system all throughout the east and east coast at the time He then moves on to create one of the first great universities. He then goes on to become a scientist You know to get the golf streams Electricity then event stuff the franklin stove, you know the the lightning rod Then he becomes a then he becomes sort of the great man. He becomes a diplomat. He becomes a patriot Benjamin Franklin is constantly pulling himself forward because why? Because he feels his life is incomplete It is incompleteness that pulls him forward not completeness. It's not wholeness Wholeness is not the the game the game is getting to wholeness. In fact, Benjamin Franklin was a terrible husband and a worse father But it was his incompleteness that pulls us forward. So remember as you're making your new year's goals Remember to to leave room for the stuff you don't know now Leave room for the stuff that when you when you look back at today you think of it just like when you graduated from high school All the stuff I want now is probably what i'm not going to want in the future. So putting it all together We're beings in the world trying to transcend it We're created and creating How we create is what we create We can't avoid failure. We can only accelerate it We grow through constructive conflict everything costs something the cavalry ain't coming and we aspire to wholeness But we never achieve it. This is the beginning of your mindset to your new year's resolution Putting your resolution into something that's actually Something that you can create something that we come back in a year. You could say I've actually achieved this Now I want to talk about the creative easing mindset How you need to think about this Now many of you Have are familiar with this model. I'm the third researcher on this model The competing values framework or the innovation code or the innovation genome whatever we're calling it the michigan model And the notion is that there are these four different types Now most of you know if because I've been here before that most of my work is on strategy It's on predicting the outcomes that organizations produce particularly in the stock market So most of it has a very quantitative aspect to it But what's very different about this than almost any other model Is it's not really about you It's about the situation in which you find yourself the big nesting doll It's about the community in which you're surrounded with the middle nesting doll And it's about you and how those three things interact with each other And when we are aligned which I think is one of the big things we think about around here What actually works for us and when we're misaligned what actually works against us But I want to point something out. That's very important Most organizations have two functions just like people one is to maintain and one is to grow To maintain is the reduction of variation to grow is the increasing of variation Innovation and creativity are a form of deviance Deviance is created by what kind of people Deviance, thank you deviance. Do you feel like deviance? Yeah, the only way you're going to change anything this year Is if you're willing to deviate So this model is based on the notion of diversity But it's also based on the notion that we're not trying to align We're trying to use conflict constructively. So i'm going to play my cards on the table I just published an article for the duke dialogue duke university And one of the things I publish is I really don't believe in amadextrous leaders. I don't oh, I can do it Oh, I'm a triple threat I've you know, I knew the steve jobs of the world. I've been over half the fortune 500 companies I know these people personally I can count on one hand how many amadextrous people i've ever met their unicorns They're almost mythological creatures Most people who get ahead in the world do it as a village They do it with other people. They do it with the very people that drive you insane How about that for a new year's start where are you going to go out and find the person who makes you insane And make them your partner. Yeah, it's not abstract now. Is it so let me take you through this These are the four positions the artist which we all have an artist archetype in us Sometimes it's stronger or weaker. It's like being right-handed or left-handed Right, so these are things that we have in different degrees the engineer who does things right the artist Who does things new the athlete who has to win does things now Right in the sage who does things that are going to last kumbaya sages kumbaya And how do these things go together so the care and feeding of the artist So as you think about your your new year's resolution I want you to think about the care and feeding of your inner artist the inner artist likes what they like to be new The inner artist thinks perfection is death The artist wants to be new the artist likes to build things. That's me I love to build things once they're built. Do I like to run them? No I don't like to run them. I get bored. Right. I have to tinker too much So the artist is great because they love ambiguity. They love taking risks. They're the artists are crazy You ever notice that that at cern the large hadron collider anybody remember this story five years ago cern switzerland the large hadron collider There are seven Nobel prize winners two of them believe when you fire it up They're getting this is the god particle the bows right the bows hicks the moment of truth the great that great oxford philosopher 1966 Right the the moment of truth To to no bell laureates no bell. They don't get any higher than that Believe what's going to happen. They think it's going to create a black fissure and destroy the universe as we know it They bet a beer and pulled the switch See you in hell jergen right these are greens Never ever tell the greens. There's a switch because the greens will have to touch the switch Lie, there's no switch because the greens will always drive the harley into the pool They're greens They're always testing boundaries. They're always finding new ways. They're wiggly What greens want is greens want freedom? Now I have a I have a I have a I have a secret for you The air force is filled with greens There are many in this room and you're hiding in plain sight Look at yeah, I see you. I it's like romper room miss and I see every day. I want you You're here. I know you're here, but you're wiggly You're wiggly and wily and weasley and you figured out how to be in this system without being caught You're sort of living at the edge here. Yeah, I see you Now the opposite the engineer You can hear the engineers when they came in. Did you notice the engineers were here right on time singing hi ho Hi, ho, it's off to work. We go and they're using their phone And they know how to do crap on your phone that you guys don't know how to do And they you know, they've they checked off every task. Yeah, right way and they kissed your ring You genuflect your kid, whatever it is. These are these are engineers. They love large-scale projects You ever hear engineer talk about big projects? They love say like yeah, you know what? We've got 144 step method here. We're using at the Air Force And and it has 33 different processes. You'll have to be checked out on they love acronyms That's a cpi 43-9 And everybody's got to be checked out on something because if you're not it's like drunk driving Are you checking out on that soldier? No, I'm like, well, you got to get checked out on that They know the rules about everything and that's a complicated system It's like mcdonald's, you know where the illiterate kid presses a cheeseburger button And simultaneously somebody shoots a cow in argentina bang and everything between happens Smithers come here. These are you guys They know all the rules So they're technical expertise. They love engineering. They loved it. Boy, that was our talk this morning Did you notice the half the talk was really fascinating that it turned into the techno geek talk and the other half you were all tuned in Oh, look at the tail feathers on that one. Yeah, I got it They want more responsibility. They're trying to achieve rank Now I hope you can see that the first tension is what there's a tension between your artist and the tension between your engineer Now most of you are going to try and avoid this tension and compartmentalize your life I'm suggesting the exact opposite I'm suggesting your inner artist needs to meet your inner engineer Because if the inner artist goes unchecked, nothing is buildable If the inner engineer goes unchecked, nothing's interesting Everybody follow this put them together. You might have a shot at something Now I told you I'm a I'm an avowed. It's like being a it's like being an alcoholic. I'm jeff I've been an artist and I've been sober for you know, that sort of thing Grace of god write that thing All my right hand people have always been reds Why because I know that's my blind spot. I know where my dominant logic ends and I'm a terrible hypocrite I hate I hate collaborating with reds because you're insanely detail-oriented But I know I need to collaborate with you. Do you see the difference here? I don't like to I'd love to tell you I do. I'm not that big of a person. I wish I were But I'm not But I know that I need to do that Some of my life I get to be a green I built these innovation labs and some of my life, you know, I'm a professor at a top school I'm on all these journals I have to figure out if you did the right method and is this sound science and we wear funny hats You know in funny ties. You were in the yeoman of the guard is your junior year or whatever the hell that stuff is So we have to have situational efficacy. We have to act appropriate to our situation, but it doesn't mean we have to be aligned There's also our inner athlete. I'm married to an athlete boy. Boy am I married to an athlete? I always tell people I know who wears the bossy pants of my family They challenge everything everything is a scrap If you say the sky is blue boy, it's not blue all the time Is it and they want to argue over everything and arguing is fun What is it shakespeare says is unfortunate quote dogs are made for the gripping Yeah, what shakespeare mean by that? He means dogs are meant to compete. I love dogs So I hope they're not meant for the gripping But here's the point Blues are all about pursuing key goals and overcoming barriers and winning and the air force is filled with blues Think about all you have to do is look at the language. What's your team called go team win team strike force, you know Tiger team Who's the head chainsaw hitman the great white shark? These are not nice people Is it gangsters? Right We're gonna go rip them apart. Yeah, I got it I got it This is this is boomer culture I'm a baby boomer. Sorry junior people We went to the moon. We licked the commies. We built the net What did you do uber Get some ambition We also move a lot marry a lot hurt each other a lot. There's a lot of downside to it But traditional american culture has Has tilted up to this point towards blue and that's part of the challenge. We're having isn't it Part of the challenge is you know hit first ask questions later now This is our these are these are millennials There are also some people who are boomers, but this is the sage. This is about community building This is about doing the long-term thing saving the environment You know treating animals humanely Did this chicken have a name? Was he treated well? Yes His name was sebastian the chicken and he was handheld until he was 10 and then he was killed in a humane way And we're going to eat him today With kale, okay So it's all about developing people and curating your social self and snap chatting each other and giving Giving money to people who are in other places to help them pull themselves out socially And you know, let's get rid of straws in seattle because we're killing the sea turtles I didn't even know there were sea turtles in seattle who knew they probably aren't but we got to get rid of the straws Anyway, this is this group of people now. We make fun of them But don't because some people my age are are yellows and they're incredibly important because they connect dots And that's what the air force needs to do You need to reach out and connect dots and build community and that's what you need to do as a person You need to be inclusive and and connect dots But what's interesting to me is if you think about this for a minute and what the air force is trying to do To expand out to create a more inclusive air force. This is what the future looks like to me The future looks like a few things out if you know this but in the past 15 years We went from 10,000 publicly traded corporations to under four So corporations are no longer the way people are competing. They're competing in federations These are sages Three things about about sages about young people Do you know that over half of all births to women on the age of 30 are outside of marriage? Marriage is no longer normative. I've been married forever. I'm a boomer, right? But young people aren't married and the more educated the woman the less likely she is to be married This is a fact number two when we ask young people what they want to do for a living. Do they want to go to the the air force? They want to work for general motors. What do they want to do? Oh, I want to work for myself and my friends and I want to have meaning and impact And I want to spend six weeks off and hiking in Tanzania and curing river blindness. These are young people These are all good things boomers. You don't kid yourself. You wish you could go hiking in Tanzania too mea culpa mea culpa Finally, what's the fastest growing religion to people on the age of 30? It's no religion plus 19 percent. So for the first time in american history We're seeing a culture that's opted out Of marriage capitalism and religion Now you can be mad about this and you can judge yourself. I'm a capitalist pig I've been married forever, right and i'm a practicing roman kaplik Right an old jesuit So you can be against us all you want, but this is what's coming and what's happening is for the first time We're seeing a generation that's opted out of institutions the very institutions that freed my generation This generation is opted out rather than vilifying young people and young people you rock Right i'm making fun of you, but you rock you represent the future You should look at what they can add to this to this discussion add to this world They're the future now most of time when you look at the political ethos right now or the health care debate It's these two groups against each other. What should we make money at health care? Should we cover everybody? But the real issue is what both of those positions are what they're ridiculous They're ideological. They're dominant logic. The real answer is what? Engaging Right engaging these two cultures are different, but we can engage these two cultures and you can do this yourself at the beginning of your life So how do we do this? First of all, let's go back to our nesting dolls start by looking up In what situations do you typically fail and what situations do you succeed? And don't go. Oh, it's outrageous fortune and fall on your sword Where is it that you're good and stop this baloney? We're all going to be renaissance people Your right-handed or left-handed your life experience is telling you that stop trying to be good at things. You're not good at Try and be great at things. You're good at there's a difference I only do three or four things. My job is to do them really well That's it. Then I have other people do the other things. It's a good philosophy in life So look up. Where do you fail and succeed? So when you make your new year plan plan to be in more places, where where you succeed And plan to avoid what where you fail And you know you read the books. Well, if you just think it, it'll happen. Yeah, that'll work Right Magical thinking that's real helpful Look around Who are the people that are around you when you fail? If you got teenagers, you know how important it is to tell your kids What? Who are your friends become your friends become your successes and failures And the biggest thing with young people is what lose the terrible friends Keep the good ones Surround yourself with the best people you can be with Who are the best people in your life and remember some of the greatest innovators are invisible Somebody who gave you who let you took a charge against earnings who gave you a couple days off Maybe somebody looked really like they were anti innovation, but they actually were a friend Right. Don't judge a book by its cover. That's why we have that saying next Look inside What is it that you really want? That's the problem. Isn't it every year the problem with your yearly resolution? I guarantee if you ask yourself this in the quiet of the night Your big problem every year is what do you really want? And the answer is you don't know And the reason you don't know is you've let everybody else walk in your clean mind with their dirty feet What is it you really really want? Students come to me all the time and say I want to tell you what I want to do And you know what I always tell them? I don't care what you want to do. I care what you're designed to do What are you designed to do? What's the evidence of that? What's the evidence that that's wrong? And then finally Be willing to take a higher point of view and look down at yourself objectively honestly Those are hard moments. They're dark nights of the soul Right, we have this notion that we're better than we really are And at the end of the year in addition to making new goals Let's reflect for a minute on what we really fell short on And what we will continue to fall short on as long as we keep deluding ourselves What is it that we really are? And then own it This is it. This is who I got. What is the number one year for divorce in marriage? Anybody know by far the number one year of people are divorced anybody know overwhelming It's year one What do you figure out in year one? He's not going to change. Yeah, he's not going to change You're not going to change The notion is if you're planning that you're going to have this huge apotheosis and you're going to be sainted for it Good luck How do you build on what you got? So what i'm going to ask you to do is take these four points of view I'm going to ask yourself to think about what doesn't work You don't wake up at two in the morning going oh, i'm so successful. It's incredible You wake up at two in the morning going what i'm a total fraud and a failure. It's all going to end tomorrow You're human being And then when you're done with what doesn't work and you've emptied the chamber Ask yourself what does and instead of trying to solve what doesn't work Try and build momentum on what does You're all skilled. You're all amazing But your dominant logic is so strong. You're not seeing what you're amazing at Once you've done that I want you to think of your life in the new year as a portfolio You have a portfolio life in a portfolio. What do you do? You buy and you sell The biggest problem that people have when they make goals Is they buy without selling How many of you feel over capacity don't raise your hands. I know you're in the air force But I bet you feel overstretched. I bet you thought over the break. You're going to get a little breathing room You're going to be able to recover and most of you didn't get it And what are you beginning to figure out? In order to write that book you're going to have to do what quit pilates You're going to get a little squeegee around the edges, you know, you're going to have to You know, maybe take you take a year off from the humane society What are you willing to give up to create the capacity to be creative in your life? You want to write a novel? You want to build a business? You want to build a new device? You want to do something remarkable? Whatever it is Start cleaning out the closet because you don't have time unless you do that And stop filling up your time with apps. That's the opium of task pursuit Oh, look at I haven't opening at 7 30 it'll always be filled Once you've sold positions or or reduce positions only then add What is it that I'm going to add that I'm going to start doing So instead of saying I'm going to go to the gym for two hours every day Say three times a week. I'm going to get to the gym for 30 minutes I'm going to add that So three times a week. I wanted to learn how to paint. I'm going to paint. I used to be a great guitar player I'm going to start playing the guitar again I'm going to start adding creativity back into my life The more the air force sucks it out the more you're going to have to work hard to put it back in And what's going to happen over time is you're going to find how what you've got in your life that's creative actually fits You're going to find a place for it at work And that's going to be amazing But you're going to have to rebalance your portfolio life and you start by you're going to start this by stopping Now here's a radical thought for the air force. It's radical What if the whole key to innovation at the air force is not starting anything? What if it's stopping things? Let that sink in for a minute What if the key to innovation here is not starting anything? It's simply stopping things Creating capacity to do what you already you already have That's true for you. That's true for your own life and only then start and it doesn't mean you throw the baby out with the Bathwater doesn't mean you get rid of all the things that work. There are things you want to hold on to And i'm a terrible hypocrite I love innovation, but there are some things I do that are really ridiculously conventional I sit in the same seat. I have to pay a ton of money to sit way far away at the university of michigan football stadium Right the largest stadium in north america second large stadium in the world, right? I drive an old old Mercedes It's really old. I won't check right so the innovation guy doesn't like a lot of things somehow in my life I have to create stability Because if all you're doing is innovation stuff all the time you have no moorings So Things you can do as an artist Things you can do as an artist you can pilot things you can you can modify your room start a revolution Things you could do as a as an engineer You know you can you could start setting milestones you can you can put a budget together You could read the fine prints things you could do as an athlete Go the extra mile overcome boundaries tough it out Right show that you've got some reserve Finally things you could do as a sage Mentor somebody coach somebody You know resolve a conflict somehow empower someone But remember none of this matters unless you have an innovator's mindset I want to leave you with a few things. I think everybody really should do In putting their goals together for the next year Instead of doing the traditional bullet point bullet point bullet point task pursuit thing write a story You know the frontal cortex of your brain is designed to make pictures Right, it's the modern part of your brain. It's move your fine digits and make pictures We'll tell a story What's going to happen to you at the end of the year because a story Is is going to be much closer to your creative apparatus than a bunch of bullet points are going to be your stupid power point slides Produce a video you got a phone Talk to yourself You know I make all these videos you some people know I've had a pbs special and all this stuff My favorite videos are ones that basically I make for myself and even though I might post them I go look at them at the end of the month. What did I say? What am I thinking? What's going on in jeff's head here, right? Author a manifesto. I love manifestos, you know the the communist manifesto starts out with workers of the world unite It's not you know what I think I'm going to do now make a declaration Put it on your refrigerator, you know invade. I don't know something something strong Build something, you know Even if it's out of beer cans. I don't care. I know we're in alabama. Whatever whatever works Draw a map How do you get from here to there jr. Tolkien right the beginning of the lord of the rings paint a picture, right? Do something very artistic Create create a soundtrack. It's one of my favorites. Anybody else screwed into the ears like I am I have a new mix I make every year, you know some years. It's ride of the valkyries You know other years, you know other years. It's put on a happy face. Whatever it is That's your soundtrack. That's your mojo But most importantly I want you to leave room for the stuff you don't know now Just like the day you graduated from high school Now on the website here. I've done something for you. I've written a chap book about 120 page book It's a pdf and if you go to this website and you go to book. It's called the in live and self I wrote it for you guys. It's free. You can download it as many times as you want I'll make these slides available as a pdf to you, right if you're interested in this So the notion is i'm going to give you some clues how you can make your new year's resolutions Actually stick and help creative eyes your life Thanks for having me. I'm going to take a few questions. Thank you We got six minutes before they before they pull me questions comments push back who wants to fight come on You're going to have a shot at the old professor here All right Stand up and I think there are microphones. So stand up get a mic Oh, she doesn't she just wanted to stretch her arm. Okay I just wanted to embarrass you. No, I'm kidding Who has a question comment or push back You're all just ready to go to the bar Anyone She has a question and she sat right in front too. She was right in front. That's a gunner incidentally That's a gunner for you right there The rest of you back there free riders all your foot First of all, who are you? Oh, good afternoon, sir. My name is kina echo from boolean green state university, ohio the first name again Um, kina echo amanda. Amanda. Nice to meet you. Amanda. Um, nice to meet you too, sir I think it was a very inspirational speech And it it talks to the to the idea of you know, not thinking alike And I was wondering what you think is important about having a group of people That don't think alike. Why is that a benefit and Why should we encourage that in the military? Yes, we were taught to be so similar the the reason is simple Dominant logic or conventional thinking amanda Happens when you surround yourself with people are like you Right, that's where the dominant logic and the dunning kruger effect kicks in Where where because you don't see the loyal opposition in any meaningful way You don't have to make provision for it The second worst thing you can do is to compromise across groups and I like to talk this morning It was a great example of not doing that what you really want to do is to engage in conflict. That's respectful. This is very key It's respectful conflict. You you don't say derogatory things now. Don't get me wrong. It's human behavior You're going to have a few there's going to be some fur flying every now and then But the notion is what you're trying to do is get to a shared vision That's the key so start by surrounding yourself with a diverse group of people Next engage because there's diverse groups of people where you're at but you're not engaging them You're not saying well, why do you think that? You know, I don't agree with that and then third create that shared vision Because once you've got the shared vision then you can take all these different points of view And you can harness them in a better way and that's what these creativity clusters do and that's why that's key Now this is important. Is there a time in the military not to be creative? Yes There's a lot of times in the military not to be creative. That's called situational awareness A lot of times in the military you should salute and do exactly as your commanding officer tells you to do But there's also times in the military Where somebody needs a creative solution where the conventional solution isn't working So I want you to think Amanda about your life like a bell curve Can we do that for a minute? Are you imagining a bell curve? I want you to think about when you really change or need to change. Is it in the middle when everything's okay? When do you really change when your life's in a crisis? Right when you got an f at bowling green or your boyfriend broke up with you or something horrible happened to a friend And the reason you change then is the risk of trying something radical And the reward of staying where you're at is reversed Is this making sense? The other time you change is when you got an a plus and you got a scholarship from the air force And somebody gave you a promotion and told you you were the best person ever That's what we call risk capital and you change when things are outstanding because the risk of trying something radical And the reward of staying where you're at amanda is reversed So here's the thing to think about in your life innovation and creativity doesn't work from the inside out It works from the outside in so there's a lot of this is making sense to you So the the big thing is situational awareness that I answer your question Yes, sir. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thanks. Thanks, Amanda someone else Questions comments pushback I think that's it. We'll call it a wrap off to the bar with all of you