Podcasts

Episode 16 - Decoding AQ with Ross Thornley Feat. Gregg Carey - Former MD of Exponential Leadership & Education at Singularity University

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Intro

Hi, and welcome to Decoding AQ, helping you to learn the tools, mindsets, and actions to thrive in an ever-changing world.

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Ross  

Hi, we have a good friend of mine today, Gregg Carey, we met through SU. And we have somebody that's quite a rare beast today in terms of being employed, being an entrepreneur, co-founded businesses, been employed and now finding a new adventure. So a real tapestry of history. So welcome, Greg.

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Gregg  

Yeah Ross, thanks for having me. It's always fun to chat with you. And so thanks for inviting me into the conversations around adaptability that you guys are driving, we’re have some fun.

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Ross  

Cool, I have some really great memories of our time together even just before COVID, our trip to Phoenix, where we spent some time with Chris Voss in workshops of how to deal with negotiation and things like that with some good times. And you've surprised me today with those that are watching the video will see but those that are listening, we if you know Greg, this is a new look for Greg, tell people about your new look and what brought this on?

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Gregg  

Yeah, I mean, I've had a beard, a beard for a long time. And so, with the requirement of wearing a mask now, the bigger your beard though, the more challenging that is, and my wife has been sewing masks, she's an artist and maker. She's been letting me know that that masks actually are almost receptacles for like, there's more places for germs to sit right and so the mask doesn't fit and so I did something almost pretty traumatic for my four year old daughter, I wiped it off, she saw a new face. She loves me again. She was about a 12-hour period where it was touch and go and didn't want anything to do with me but I got my quarantine moustache now. So it’s a bit of an interesting look and sitting with it for now.

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Ross

Cool. So give us a little bit of maybe your journey. Some of the highlights, as I mentioned, you've led teams, your latest role that you had was the MD of exponential leadership and education at Singularity University. Prior to that you've had lots of involvement in mergers and acquisitions and people operations. Just give us a flavor of of your journey for the people to get a picture of you.

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Gregg  

Yeah. And I think as it unfolds, and there's more years behind it, a theme starts to emerge. And that theme happens to just be very relevant in today's world, right? Especially with the pandemic like that the narrative around uncertainty is larger than ever and if I kind of go back and map to like post college, I was working with a company called Sapient, who we were doing kind of internet consulting, actually back in the day. So we're helping Fortune 500 Companies with their first foray into the internet. What does this mean right online banking, retail experiences, we were getting breakout rooms, trying to figure out how you do simple things like a password reset, like banging our head, how do we do this? How do we solve this right? There were so many unknowns. 

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After that, where I really kind of developed my professional shop chops around, getting things done project management, ethnographic research, understanding the user, how do you design for the screen by understanding what's happening around the screen, kind of leverage that momentum into scratching that itch of starting a company. And I started a company called Voxy with a good friend of mine, which has its own challenges. I say, most friendships are based around celebrating the good times and being a shoulder, support when needed. But this started in business together, or marriage, right, really test who you are, in ways. And we started a company that built technology to teach people English, and we used this mobile device. What does this unlock as an education tool, what does machine learning allows us to do in terms of building a personalized curriculum, which is incredibly important for learning it's about the individual. So a lot of unknowns, right.

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And then I worked with a company that was trying to make migration from an ad based marketplace, to a transaction based marketplace in the wedding space.And that was a new thing that was being unlocked, because of the network of the internet and the things that people can kind of provide when coming together. And then I made a move to Singularity and was there for the last four years, which was really a convergence of all the uncertainty, right? You saw it happening on the couple of different fronts in terms of the internet and mobile, those were like the first forefront of startups and everything. Now it's getting bigger. It's a convergence of all these technologies and breaking down industries and rebuilding them back up. 

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And Singularity helped me be in the center of all that, in terms of what is that the thought leadership out there that the network of faculty just being around them was fascinating. 

And helping some of these companies solve these incredibly big challenges of navigating this disruptive change. So again, with each of those, it's really like, “I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know what I'm doing”. Until I dive in, and then you realize, ”Oh, a lot of people don't know what they're doing”. And if you can be confident in knowing that not everyone knows what they're doing, that can actually give you the confidence to then have breakthroughs and learn new things, and then get ahead and be ahead of that curve. Because it's a wave, right? And you're on top of it surfing, and you're learning kind of how to ride that wave. 

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Ross  

I think it's a really important point you raised there about this, being comfortable in the unknown, and being able to have vulnerability to say, I don't know, that's what learning is, right? Learning is discovering the answers. And so in order to learn, you have to first say, I don't know. That's really interesting. Before we dig a bit more into perhaps some of your roles and experiences and lessons in Singularity University, is coming back to the half dozen years of in the startup. So in Voxy, what was it like? At the early stages, what were some of the things you learned along that way as the business scaled, and some of the observations of how both you as a person and the team and the organization kind of had key moments of change, maybe just give us a historical look back at that journey? And any lessons that we could perhaps pick up from the journey that you had there?

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Gregg  

Yeah, well, I think, out of the gates, we had the benefit of being naive. And that caused us to kind of think about problems in new ways, which maybe, an expert may have never really jumped to those conclusions right. And so that gave the room for innovation. And so we were doing some really cool things. I won't get into like the technology, but just the theme of being naive. And not really knowing you were naive, gave me the confidence to kind of say, “Oh yeah, can we do that? I don't know. Can we do that? Let's try it. Let's try it right.” We eventually brought in expertise to help with like the fundamentals of learning and making sure that there were principles behind it. But the merge of the being naive and balanced with like that expertise was an important part of what was going on.

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The other thing was that we were embarking on a business, that was disruptive. And there was this kind of an I have a few stories and anecdotes around this. But when you're just starting, there's this tendency to kind of look outside and look behind your back and see what is the competition doing. And I've found that always, to be an incredible, unproductive distraction. Because one the execution the idea serves no purpose, it is all in your ability to execute. And if you're not aligned yourself with being on that own learning journey, and paying attention to the customer, and you drawing those conclusions, you start to break down like the trust of your ability to solve the right problems by hearing other ideas and stuff.

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And so the very kind of ingredients that are required to be successful as a startup, which is listening to the customer trusting your gut and your intuition, they get distracted by noise. And I think that that's something that's a trap that we all often fall into, in large corporate environments, and startup mode, where this whole game is about your own learning journey, and have your own intuition and you want to be customer focused. So we being inexperienced entrepreneurs. We're trying to look for influence all around us, by our mentors and by competition by venture capitalists. And the real magic happens when you have a strong vision, strong principles and strong values and your unwavering in that and let that be the driving force to unlock great discoveries.

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Ross  

I think one of the things that fascinates me in this innovation coming from naivety, but principle-led and having a commitment to go and discover. You created an organization there I mean, was it it was over 100 people that you grew that organization to finding that talent, onboarding, that talent, working remotely for many of them in multiple locations. And then also, correct me if I'm wrong, you were recognized as one, top place to work, by a couple of different things as best place to work in New York or top 10 tech startups best to work in. How did you do that? What were the some of the key methods or principles or things? Was it by accident? Was it by design? Did you have the ambition to say how we want to be the best place to work? And therefore we did it intentionally,tell us a little bit more about that scaling of people, managing the people and getting it to be a great place to work? 

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Gregg  

Well first of all we were fortunate enough to be in a position where we had the opportunity to like, think about that stuff. Because in the very early days, like we did not know, it took us, three tries, before we hired the right CTO, neither me nor my business partner were tech focus. So on day one, we get our venture capital, we started to look around the room, and we're like can you build anything, no. Can you build anything? We have to hire that person. And we didn't even have the competency to hire that right person, because we didn't know what that profile looked like. And this was in 2009, and very, very different world back then where the technologies and the options of which paths you could do, you didn't have things like these crowds, open source, toolkits to work from, but eventually through perseverance and just being like, we are doing this, there's now no option to stop.

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We've clicked, we've gotten outside money, we are moving, we have accountability, we have skin in the game, we were able to get a little momentum. And it took a lot of time to find the right person and find the right person, once we started to get to like, eight to 12 people crammed in a small room, three people per table, knocking knees, people not even paying for people's computers, and some have been horrible internet. We just started to kind of think about what our values were. And we actually set out to be like, how can we be, a great place to work right, with a goal of being recognized for that.

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So setting that as a goal, certainly helped us then define that. And we then we thought about, okay well, how do we do that? It starts with that talent acquisition process, what's the experience in touch point when people are coming into the organization to meet us. So being very thoughtful with our applicant tracking system, with training and onboarding, the people that we'll be interviewing, the onboarding process was so incredibly important. And we also found in the early days, when we're like, “Hey, you're hired”, you start no formal onboarding, you spent 346 months, like just trying to like calibrate. Whereas if you take that time, it talks about highly leveraged time, like, I sit down, and what is that job expectation from day one? What is that job expectation for what day one and really empower them? Then all of a sudden use Shift the dynamic where, here's the goals, here's the guidance, you help us fill in the blanks. There's incredible management levers that you get from that point. And what else was there?

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Ross  

What were some of the mistakes you made? You mentioned that it took you three times to find the right CTO, you got to a point where you felt, 8 to 12 people, we want to set a goal to be a great place to work. Even when you set that and you put this leverage time into getting a slick onboarding, getting people able to do their best work and provide the environment to that. What else went wrong in that journey that potentially you could then think about differently for the leadership that's required now?

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Gregg  

Yeah. Oh man, I mean so much goes wrong. I mean, and that's kind of part of it. It's like an assumption that, “Oh when you're on this journey, things going wrong is actually how things go”. It's the ability to course-correct, and figure out what that learning was so that you're adapting that new approach. So the expectation that things aren't going to go wrong, we're going to produce perfect actually creates angst, frustration, and blinds you to what the real lessons are in this learning iterative process. 

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You know, but we did, we had some trouble. I think early on we were probably we weren't as diverse in our thinking, diversity wasn't as big of a like concept then, and I think we are hiring profile by just our own maybe insecurities, or comfort, insecurity and comfort, we hire people that we thought kind of fit rather than, and we talked about this a cultural ad, right. 

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And so then it started to just kind of create, like a tone that wasn't as welcoming as we would want it, we then kind of shift and by the time I left we had, the management team was 50% women, the company was 50% women, and a lot of minorities.

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I think we had a lot of hiccups of letting go of trying to micromanage at times, feeling the burden of raising capital, and the stress that comes with that, and maybe, projecting stress on to the employees, when they don't have the full context, it's not their company, they're not going to really put in as much time as you are. And coming to terms with that allows you to just get more, just appreciate where there, you're gonna meet them at, rather than setting this unrealistic expectation.

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And I think another big thing is that it is a marathon, there's not like one good rollout, that's gonna make or break your company. It is a series of good behaviors. It's a series, of commitment and discipline of learning. And we got caught up at times, putting so much pressure on these releases, thinking that this was the moment, this was the turning point. And then being let down. Because it wasn't big fireworks. Whereas that tone, the cadence, the constant learning is what needed to kind of fuel the reward rather than a milestone launch. Let the curiosity, let the learning fuel that fire, let that empower and provide satisfaction for your team, and not the big launches that come with a reward. But the way that we work, the way that we learn.

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I think we tried to like, put so much pressure and kind of create a diamond out of the situation. And that's just not how it works. There's no button and the system, ecosystem is set up so that success does not rely on getting lucky or one big break. It's on a pattern of behaviors that you can demonstrate over time. Because there will be, there's one test after another.

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Ross  

That's interesting, this concept of pattern of behaviors that then result in success. And so in terms of all of these experiences that you've been gathering to shape the kind of human you are career you have and the multiple careers you've had in your portfolio. Being then inside SU as an educational organization that's helping people understand what exponential is are, what the concept is, how to navigate that pace of change, and how do leaders show up. 

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What have you learned in the last four years in that kind of role? Of what organizations are doing well to deal with that? What are those behaviors? What are those things that they have put in place that show the new world of leaders in an exponential world because we all feeling it now, right? The pace of change is accelerating? How did leaders now do well in that environment? What can you share from your experiences of advice in that?

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Gregg  

Well, I think yeah, I would answer a different question kind of like, not what are people doing well, but a recognition that like no one's really doing it well. Like take that in, no one's really doing it well. It's so hard and the constant theme is all the uncertainty, the disruption, the change, what do we do, what do we do? And it when it happens, it drives a conversation to look outward, to look at expertise to try to give some type of comfort around what path they go for which they take which assumes Someone knows better. 

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But in a time of rapid disruption, the ability to respond or about validity of expertise condenses. And so someone that's been doing something for 15 years, in a world that's rapidly changing, is almost dangerous, irrelevant sometimes. So what I like to encourage people, and I think is important during this stage is to say, we're on this, global pandemic, talk about like a hard reset on a new normal, right? Where we're forced into being adaptive. Everyone's asking questions. 

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Everyone, no one knows how to figure it out. Everyone's making mistakes. But what that leader is doing, and the leader that's been successful in that is the one that has an awareness about that. And isn't scared to have the right answer. But he's curious and curious to find out the right answer on their own.

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Ross  

So maybe this concept of the expertise and the knowledge being the leaders, to the ones that are able to ask questions, able to provide the environment that allows questions to be asked even in the first place, and to experiment with discovering an answer, rather than looking to someone who already has it.

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So maybe that's the shift that we're facing right now is that because the context is changing so rapidly, a good friend of ours, another SU faculty, "Barry O'Reilly" in his book and work about “Unlearning”, exactly that right, you can be too dangerous with too much knowledge. So maybe the new leaders are the ones that can let go the quickest. And that brings us on to, this shift from maybe upskilling to reskilling and the concept of now, it's not just layering in what you had before and making it a bit better, it's doing something entirely different in a whole new way, and embracing that.

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And if you could look at, taking this balance between data and analysis from the behind to try and predict how to turn up in uncertain times, what are some of the essential things that you have seen in organizations alongside asking questions being experimental, whereas it worked well? Perhaps you could share a story of organizations you've worked with, where you've helped with their executive leadership programs and things that has landed value to ensure they remain relevant and that they can thrive through periods of change. Be great to hear some examples of where that's worked, or maybe it hasn't worked, some stories of where it's failed, either or.

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Gregg  

Yeah, just going back to our last conversation to just kind of summarize the point there, instead of thinking that you have to have the answer, you have to actually find the answer. Because only through finding it, can you get the answer. And you got to break the barrier of “I got to look elsewhere for an expert”. No, you have to be on a quest to find the answer. In terms of, some of the things that we've been doing, I wasn't working too closely on the data side of things I was working more on, the leadership, helping leaders to reestablish a new mindset and mental model to kind of move forward and kind of adapt these things like unlearning, and thinking about value in an exponential way. Whereas you so often especially in the SU world, we think about exponentiality in the terms of technology the rapid advances. What we were working on the leadership programs that I was building with some great colleagues was, how do you think about value, business value in terms of exponential reality? 

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So I was working a lot with Mark Bonchek of Shift Thinking, who does some tremendous work on the appropriate mindset, the appropriate mindset required to kind of shift things. So if you actually like tiered it, first step is getting that exponential value mindset in place.

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Ross  

What does that look like? What is an exponential mindset?

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Gregg  

Yeah so with Mark, we defined six kinds of criteria of what drives exponential thinking. What drives exponential thinking, and some of those were like a network-based business model versus a pipeline-based business model. How do you kind of build a marketplace and think about value. Another example was from a management perspective, we used starlings, these birds that fly as though their school of fish as an example of management, where if you look at those starlings and you say, “Who's the leader?”. There's no leader but leadership is an attribute of the system, where each bird is empowered to kind of make their own decisions based on a set of inputs. And together, they have great leadership as a community. And they have three simple rules, stick together, follow neighbor, and don't hate each other something, I forget what they are now. 

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But those three behaviors create a synchronicity in kind of helping them to evade prey, to feed for themselves. And you can look at that and say, well talk about exponential leadership, like you're getting the coordination and support through a set of principles. Now, if you say, okay, birds, nature, what about humans? Okay, well, now let's look at military. Military a very hierarchical organization. But in the fog of war, where you don't have the time to actually call up the ranks and say, “Hey, what should I do?”, they get trained on doctrine, and very clear principles of when in this situation, I respond like this. And that those collective behaviors over time help to orchestrate a great, go to war strategy, that kind of builds up to their guiding principles.

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So you can build those kinds of that doctrine within an organization, even if it has hierarchy, like the military to respond to this fog of business that we're about to be in. Because one thing that will certainly cripple a company is trying to maintain the hierarchical decision making in times of rapid change. So there are other principles, Mark Bonchek Shift Thinking is like the thought leader on the space. But that was like, first, let's get the right mindset about how to think about value in an exponential world, right? 

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And then you can tear that okay, then say, when you have the right mindset, then you can apply, like the design thinking, to be customer-focused, to design a solution And then you can apply agile in terms of that, the agility required when building stuff, right? So you got the mindset, you got the design, and then you got the execution. So those are the kind of like that three layers are we're starting to emerge with some of the work that we're doing with Mark.

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Ross  

So once you've got this framework of mindset, as a principle for the new way, leaders need to start, they need to reorientate a mindset of exponential thinking, whether that's in, the fog of war, or uncertainty and rapid change, whether that's in hierarchy versus in these situations, we need to execute at a much quicker pace, therefore these are the principles.

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How much of that was either in somebody an innate, they are someone who can cope with having an exponential mindset? And how much of it was, no matter what raw material you had of a leader? Could you help them gain an exponential mindset? Is this something that people can acquire, with focus with effort with learning? What was your experience with that?

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Gregg  

Yeah, I think it is something that you can acquire, I think adapting is being human. And we've just had been living within a structure and a system which has relied on consistency of behavior, of normalcy of behavior, companies tried to reduce risk, by normalizing behavior. And now that same strategy creates risk into the system, because now they can't move. So I believe we have it in us and that is the first belief that needs to be kind of accepted. 

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It is in us, it is absolutely in us and one of the ways that we kind of unlocked that was through, just creating such a compelling, optimistic, entertaining story filled with epiphanies where there was a light bulb that went off,  and so these were carefully choreographed experiences that dealt with a lot of emotions, where you would kind of build-up that fear and almost get to the point where I can't do it, but then unlock something that it actually was their own thought. 

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And the magic and all of doing all this is distilling it down into like the simplicity so that it can become theirs. The program, if it becomes some overly complicated, management, structural leadership, model that people have to bang their head against. That creates friction within an individual, and then magnified that across an organization.

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So the ability to simplify that story, so they can adopt it as their own that gives them the empowerment to be that, “Oh, I can do that” with the fact that it also needs to be backed by incredible empowerment, optimism, so that then they build the enthusiasm to drive the commitment. So I would say at the highest level, our core objective of these programs, was to build incredible enthusiasm for one to transform themselves. 

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Because if you could borrow that enthusiasm, that becomes the fuel to move forward, you could have all the tools and the guidance and the theory, but if you don't have the enthusiasm, you can't get out of the gates. So how do you build the enthusiasm so that this becomes something that like, “Oh I want to be part of this future and I want to redefine myself within that future”

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Ross  

So I guess it's connecting with the triggers on an individual basis of what will excite them to transform. So for some, I've talked about this, a burning platform versus a burning ambition. And we might need a bit of both, depending on the time and context. So as a leader, recognizing when someone needs a burning platform, and when someone needs burning ambition, and to allow them to connect with the dance between those two things, to transform ourselves with optimism and hope, that's something that as humans, I feel a leader, whether that's, I'm a leader in these days and these hours to myself or someone in my organization, is to have a connection to a better future, you know that's what we want to be able to create manifesting first in our mind, and then in our thoughts and our behaviors and actions that then respond.

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In terms of this, one thing I've observed, having run multiple businesses over the last two decades is this change in this concept of exponential, “Oh we’re in this exponential world, everything speeding up”. The pressure that that brings to do things quickly and the adapt or die, don't change quick enough, you're going to become irrelevant, my job's gonna go, my company's gonna go, and hey we've had this big shock, hit wave of reset with COVID, where many people will be going back into their organizations, and everything's gonna look different. 

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What they do, how they do it, they're going to be looking to each other for that support. What advice would you give leaders in those environments that are coming back into a world that is entirely different and changed? How do they face that? Is it the same stuff you've been talking about? Is it going knowing you don't have the answers? Is it creating hope and optimism? Is it the same things that you've just been talking about? Or are there other bits where they need to have the broad shoulders? And so we've got it, a bit like you said just talking this through my own mind. When you had the company and the pressure between having to raise new funds, and then employees, that's not part of what they need to have to deal with on a daily basis, you have to take that responsibility on because that's your role. And so that you meet them where they are, is there an element of leadership coming back? Where we need to take some of this on, on behalf of them? Or do we need to shed bear? What's your view on that?

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Gregg  

I mean, the anchor that I used to always come back to this stuff is like, what's the most human thing to do? Right? What's the most human thing to do? Recognizing the context of the situation, and I think if you get too much, when people come back to work, or there's like some phase kind of situation where half the employees are going back and half are staying at home to maintain social distance. Think about what that means, from a human standpoint. Right? And that usually helps to be just a good like anchor centerpiece to guide and leave from.

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I was speaking with, with a friend of mine, who's an executive in a Fortune 50 financial services company, C suite. And one of the things that I thought was so interesting, which he kind of used to prioritize the majority of our conversation was the importance of mental health. And if you start skipping these basics that are core to being human, the reality is we're in the middle of a global pandemic, there's incredible uncertainty, people are working from home while parenting, which is a disruption of personal and professional lives. And you don't know what people go through, there used to be a very clear divide. I go to work at eight o'clock and I get to leave everything at home for eight hours and come back. That's not happening now. We're starting to drive a higher kind of acceptance and breaking the stigma around mental health.

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But if anything is going to accelerate some of the anxiety of what it's like to, go through this adaptive world and uncertainty, it's leaders that recognize just the mental health situations, because if your employees aren't feeling safe, if they're not taking care of themselves, if they're not sleeping, if the stresses from at home are there and real, and side by side next to their zoom call, like, that is the reality that is happening for so many people right now. 

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And so I think for these next three, six months, a year, whatever it is, that needs to be one of the top priorities, because if you don't solve that, if you don't address it, anything else that you try to do, is a waste of time, because we're humans, we're humans. And we need to dress the real reality of that situation.

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Ross  

That concept of,psychological safety, and being able to perform, we need support to do that. And I think it's a really astute point that you've made there of, there's going to be a lot of panic at every level in the organization. And addressing that is going to be critically important. How might, when you spoke to this chap, were there some things that he was doing and initiatives or certain programs? Because it's one thing saying, we need to do something about mental health? But what is that? Where do we start? We've been doing this, do we do the same thing, but just ramp it up more? Or are there some specific things that you've come across? That might be opportunities for your organizations to think about or even just individuals to think about how they might maintain it? 

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And in order to answer that, I want you to think of two things. One is that conversation you had. The second part is you've just gone through a massive transformation, right? And Singularity University, and the challenges of their own adapting to the marketplace, a lot of their business model was about in person. And now they're having to shift that and a lot of the roles have changed. 

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And so what does your future look like? How are you maintaining your own mental health through your own transitions of those things? So I wonder if you could think about it in those two ways. Maybe if there was anything during that conversation example? If not, what about you, you're going through lots of transformation and change? How are you dealing with that around the mental health aspects? And what's the future look like?

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Gregg  

Yeah so I think in terms of what leaders can be doing it, I think the most important thing is to just make it part of a conversation, talk about it. Talk about it, remove stigma, share, and be open about your own personal challenges that you may be going with, to normalize because what becomes scary is when when we feel alone, right, but if we recognize that the challenge is shared by so many, that that's one, it's not the end all, but it's an important part of that, because when people can be open and share, they feel safety, that's psychological safety. 

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So I think that the thing to do is to talk about it. Now there's services that companies can provide that kind of layer in behind that, where professionals can kind of step in, but you got to talk about it openly and regularly, and be vulnerable as a leader yourself, of sharing what those might mean, right? Because oftentimes people see that leader is so polished this and that, and that's not the expectation, that's not really often not true. And just kind of being part of that dialogue, to not be a part of it as important. Singularity has gone through some transformation as well. And I'm not as close to those solutions right now. But I know that, the majority of the business was in person experiences.

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And that is putting a challenge on the company itself, on the network of our faculty who relied on that ecosystem. And for me personally, who is kind of was transitioned out there's an initial reaction of, okay like that was there was a paycheck there, right? There was security, all things that are especially when you have a family are meaningful. I've been trying to be centered around the entrepreneur in me, who is thinking, wow when, when the world is kind of burning down to ashes, and rising in whatever form, it may take shape, to have a hard reset on that journey is really exciting.

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It's really exciting to then watch and observe and say, Wow, things are gonna be very different, what role can I play. And to use this as like, a level, it's a kind of leveling of the plain field. That now like, as I was saying, in the beginning, there's no experts around how to like navigate a global pandemic in new the age of connectivity, and all this. And so that is an opportunity to kind of establish yourself, redefine yourself. But the things that help me do that are getting a good night's sleep when I can, it's the basics right? Getting on my peloton bike. When I'm with my daughter being present with my daughter, she's is the arbiter of, are you connecting with me or not. And there's no wiggle room. And I know, that doesn't serve either of us if I'm distracted by other things. So they're all those things that are, as the world is crumbling, there's also this like incredible spiritual movement around taking care of our bodies and breathing and meditating. That is just coinciding with the change that's happening. 

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And I think that that is, that's not by accident, it's those tools that are going to be critical for us to come out of this with the right kind of level-headed tools that we need to kind of thrive in this situation.So those that 10 years ago, those were fringe, now they're becoming more core, which is exciting to see for humanity,

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Ross  

I think there's going to be a lot of people in a similar situation of where they're redefining their future. And there's going to be fear and acknowledge that, there's going to be grief of the identity that they were and built up within their own self-identity of their role. And I heard a statistic that it takes twice as long to recover from a job loss as it does a relationship loss. And that's frightening for the reality of just how much we're facing potential unemployment, not just a short blip of it but an extended period. 

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So acknowledging it, and then deciding how do I want to reset, how might I want to show up is going to be exciting for some that have got the right mindset, but also the support network. Whether the support network is your young child, your daughter to be able to, the barometer of how you present that is part of that breathing, really critical for another, another day, another topic, the impact of how we can improve our resilience, through breathing on a chemical level is really fascinating and interesting around our heart rate variability. And the connection between heart and mind to be able to make good decisions and be resilient, just breathing at five seconds in, five seconds out. And at the same time, visualizing positive things, it might be a relationship. So if you've gone through a challenge, using that technique can reset your chemical makeup to become more resilient. And so I think these kinds of techniques, there's going to be more of them. They're going to become discovered. But what I'd love to do is find out what you're doing next. What are some of your plans, as it's forming some of it, I know, you're still figuring out and getting to there. 

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But there will be a lot of people that are listening to you that are resonating with what you're talking but also perhaps excited by your experiences and what you could maybe help them with, having been the MD of exponential leadership and education at SU for a long time, working with loads of organizations, how's that forming for your future? How might people get in touch with you and what would be great for you? What are you looking for in terms of your Phoenix, and you're offering that that's coming out? Just share some of those early stage insights for us would be lovely to hear.

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Gregg 

Yeah no, no, and thanks for the opportunity for this conversation to share that. So there's kind of two big buckets that have been playing. And I think they both kind of serve each other. One is the continuity of this professional journey that I've been on with Singularity, right, I've met incredible people. A lot of what I think and believe is the result of, or is the output of relationships that I've been fortunate to have. And, that ecosystem has just been wonderful for my mindset, for my optimism.

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And there's an opportunity to kind of continue on that path. And, to kind of pair that thought leadership with clients, individuals that are kind of struggling in navigating, and where I think I serve well, is almost this kind of general contractor of the future, in a way, right, because the concept of expertise, kind of as a fast, kind of expiration date. You know, the evolving needs of support systems to unlock that talent within an organization becomes kind of critical, right? And how do you stay on, do your job while staying on top of the support system required? And I see that that's kind of where I can play a role in terms of helping companies kind of bridge and connect those dots in into the future as they make those decisions.

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And a lot of it, I'm kind of, this is everyone's still locked in their home, right. So I try to not being overly, purposely not being overly definitive, and what that vision and that strategy is, I'm purposely being kind of organic, and like conversations kind of flow naturally. And let value kind of, go where, where it may.

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The other thing that I've been doing, which has been an opportunity to really get closer being onto an entrepreneur is I've been running my a friend of mine, e-commerce business. And that allows me to get close to the grit. And the reality to unlearning, to do it yourself, to these things that are just becoming more and more important in this narrative of how do we drive this change? And I think so my like unique superpower, or the ability to kind of help organizations is that I've been and watched corporations and them struggle and repeat certain behaviors that just kind of try to take best practices of the old. 

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And I've also seen incredible execution with very low resources and sweat and inspiration. And by playing in those two roles, how can you merge together a narrative to help people and organizations get the organizational confidence that you can do a lot with a little, you can do a ton with a little. And the E-commerce experience allows me because, it's been a while since I've started my company and what one person can do today with the tools compared to 5 years ago, 10 years ago, sometimes organizations miss those or those tools that are available and think that it's so much bigger and harder, right? So I want to help them, help them jump to that, that easy start.

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Ross  

We don't know what we don't know, we can't see what we can't see. And so for you with this eclectic mix of hope and optimism that it's about humans first. And then leveraging technology in order for organizations to stay relevant and leapfrog to do more with less. And I think that's a really potent mix. And it's, I had a vision when you were talking about what I'm doing in defining

it is the story of sculptors, when they have a rock. And for some that the sculptures inside it, they're just going into discover it. And that's how they talk about it. Rather than “No, I'm making David”, or whatever it may be is “No, they were already in there. I'm just going and discovering it and just getting rid of all the other noise”. So maybe for you, you're at this period of being comfortable with discovering what that is, how you show up. It's already there you're just going to go and discover it rather than go, “Ah, I've got to figure it out. I've got to figure it out. What is my purpose? What is my vision?” and it will come.

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And being comfortable with that is a real testament to your own, comfortable in your own skin, you know you'll provide value having conversations with people and listening, asking the right questions is wonderful. I feel blessed to be in your orbit. Greg, our journey has been one that's been filled with joyful moments already. And I know it's going to continue. I know our paths will cross in lots of ways because of the mission that we're doing to make sure no one's left behind. To help them adapt, you're going to be providing lots of value in that story and narrative as a person involved. So it's been a real pleasure. And if someone wants to get in touch with you, what's the best way? Is it LinkedIn? Is it email? How might they get in touch with you if they want to reach out? 

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Gregg   

Yeah, LinkedIn is a fine way, Gregg Carey, G R E G G, there's two G's on there. And but feel free to send me an email to my personal Gmail, greg.e.carey@gmail.com. Twitter.

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Ross  

I'll put all this links, and for those can access it online for these.

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Gregg  

Great yeah, I love how we're all in this learning process together, right? So part of it is like, just asking questions of each other, and revealing what we can learn. and I just want to also, thank you, I mean, in a world where hugs aren't acceptable right now, I knew that every time we chat, I always take a lot away and appreciate always your summation of what you're hearing, I mean, that's one of your skills to kind of help it in, in an individual that's kind of going through and just kind of distill it and playback like a narrative or an analogy. 

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And that's a huge benefit that I take away. So I knew having this conversation, one, it would just be, I'm grateful for the opportunity. But, while I've chatted, probably most of the airtime on this thing. The snippets of summary, especially in the closing is something that I always take away from our conversations to these.

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Ross  

Thank you.

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Gregg  

Nuggets to hold on to.

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Ross  

I enjoy of and you’ve met Dan Sullivan from Strategic Coach and he calls one of my unique abilities, the contextualizer. And he'll look to me after there's been an hour of conversation by all these great minds and people and looked to me, put me on the spot to give a five-minute kind of summation. And I've kind of fell into it. And he says, it usually comes easy for you, you just do it naturally and I guess I'm embracing that part of my identity of my adaption and unique ability to take that on. So it's it. I'm grateful for your for your recognition of it. It's been a real joy and I look forward to time when we can have a hug again, because I love my hugs, and I'm missing them. And so I'm sending one to you, and I look forward to seeing you and speaking to you soon.

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Gregg  

Thank you so much.

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Voiceover  

Do you have the level of adaptability to survive and thrive in the rapid changes ahead? Has your resilience got more comeback than a yo-yo? Do you have the ability to unlearn in order to reskill, upskill, and break through? Find out today and uncover your adaptability profile and score your AQ visit "AQai.io" To gain your personalized report across 15 scientifically validated dimensions of adaptability for limited time and to code "Podcast65" for a complimentary AQ me assessment. AQ AI transforming the way people, teams, and organizatio1ns navigate change.

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Outro

Thank you for listening to this episode of Decoding AQ. Please make sure you subscribe to your favorite podcast directory, and we'd love to hear your feedback. Please leave a review and be sure to tune in next time for more insights from our amazing guests.

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