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006 Creativity on Purpose - Finding Meaning in Work

About this Episode

I discovered Todd Henry during an online summit on Productivity, and I've followed his work ever since.

We had a great chat recording Where Ideas Launch - The Podcast for the Unexpected Innovator, where we talked about the privilege of finding meaning when many are simply are trying to survive.

Efficiency is overrated he said, and effectiveness contributes to real value in an organisation.

Positioning himself as an “arms dealer for the creative revolution”, Todd Henry teaches leaders and organizations how to establish practices that lead to everyday brilliance. He is the author of four books (The Accidental Creative, Die Empty, Louder Than Words, and Herding Tigers) which have been translated into more than a dozen languages, and he speaks and consults across dozens of industries on creativity, leadership, and passion for work.

He's got a new book on the way. The Motivation Code. Tune in to our podcast on your favourite player today.

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Episode Transcript

Katherine Ann Byam  0:02  

Todd, welcome to Where Ideas Launch. 

Todd Henry  0.05 

Thanks, Katherine. It's great to be here.

wonderful to have you. Todd, I invited you to the show first, because I love your work. My personal mission is to inspire one million people to transcend the very notion of work, replacing it with purpose and meaningful activity. I believe your book Die Empty expresses this very well. So I wanted to start with one question. You talk a lot about purpose, and that each of us has our own voice and needs to find it. Yet, as the world becomes more digital and inter-connected, it's difficult to slow the noise and find out white space and even earn a living once you found that white space. How would you go about guiding people who may be struggling right now to approach their search for decent and meaningful work?

Todd Henry  2:04  

There is a really great question. I think so many of us right now are just struggling to survive, right? I think even the fact that anybody is able to ask the question, How do I find meaning and my work is an incredible gift. It's a blessing right now, because so many people are just trying to find work or just trying to hold things together. So I want to start with that really strong caveat. That, you know, it is a privileged position that we're even able to ask that question right now. So if you're not in that place, I don't want you to feel anything that I'm saying as a burden or feel as if it's in any way that you're doing something wrong. I mean, we're all trying to get through to the other side of this right now.

That said, I think that there are little clues that are planted in our lives throughout the course of our life that indicate what we're wired for the places where we're wired to add disproportionate value - I call that your sweet spot. And I'm not the only one that calls it that. But that's really what it is, I think it is. The sweet spot on the baseball bat is the area where if you hit it with the same force, you're gonna get more return. The ball is going to travel a far greater distance. And if you hit it marginally off the sweet spot.

 And I think we each have a sweet spot. We have an area of maximum effectiveness. But many of us never find it because we don't look for clues. We don't pay attention. Instead, we morph and mould into whatever others expect of us, which I think in the long term creates a situation where we live our lives bounded by the expectations of other people. And I want to be really clear, I'm not talking about the advice of other people we trust. We should listen to the advice of other people, we need other people in order to understand who we are. But at the same time, we can't live our lives bounded by the expectations of other people who don't really understand how we're wired, don't understand who we are, what it is we're trying to do in the world.

I am of the very strong opinion that very few people in the world are being called to change the world, right. But I do believe everybody is called to change the world around them. So I believe that the way that we discover what we're wired to do in the world is by trying a lot of things, by seeking to be resourceful and add value to any place that we are. So whatever you're doing whatever's in front of you wherever you happen to be working or living or existing or relating to others.

Just try to add as much value any place you can wherever you are and just see what clicks. See what the patterns reveal about yourself. I navigated my way into doing what I'm doing now. But I didn't set out to be an author. I didn't set out to teach. I didn't set out to you know podcast into creating content and work with clients and advise leaders. I didn't set out to do any of those things.

They kind of evolved over time as I discovered the places where I was contributing the most value and I was using my gifts to serve others. So if you take that mindset of I'm going to bring as much value as I can, wherever I am, and add value and be resourceful, and then pay attention to the patterns, then you're going to navigate to where you need to be.

Katherine Ann Byam  5:08  

That's really interesting and loved it especially the part about saying that it's a privilege to be able to look for meaningful work. And, and probably I want to take a little bit of a detour on that point. And ask about, you know, how can we, as businesses even create that meaningful work for our people?

Todd Henry  5:28  

Yeah, I think it just even having the conversation is a pretty rare thing. You know most organisations aren't willing to have that conversation. They're not willing to ask people, whether they feel engaged, whether they feel motivated. Most research would indicate that full three-quarters, two-thirds to three-quarters of people are actively disengaged at work each day.

 And a big chunk of that is because managers aren't seeing engagement as an objective necessity, or they see it as an objective, but they don't know what to do about it. So I believe that the first thing that we have to do is we have to have meaningful conversations with our people about moments when they feel engaged, moments when they feel disengaged, how are you feeling about the work right now?

Are you feeling like your core motivations are being activated in your work? Do you feel like the work that you're doing is challenging to you, but not too challenging? Do you clearly understand expectations? If not, how can I clarify expectations? Those kinds of conversations- we just let things go and we don't have we're not intentional about those conversations. But we have to be intentional if we want to engage the people in our organisation. And so I think that that's the first step is just having a conversation about how people are feeling and living and being inside of our organisations.

Katherine Ann Byam  6:54  

Yeah. Now, that's really good advice. And I want to pivot a little bit to the sort of creative industry - the traditional creative industries. So the musicians, the artists that theatrical performers, so there is an idea that they might be facing an existential crisis. I mean, some politicians have even made some interesting comments about what these people should be doing right now in terms of looking for jobs and work. But yet, I'm somehow excited about the idea of bringing this type of talent or this type of specialist into a traditional organisation to help spread creativity. So what are your thoughts on how companies can go about increasing this cognitive diversity on their teams? Without, I guess, losing what they're good at in terms of efficiency?

Todd Henry  7:45  

Well, I think efficiency is overrated. I believe efficiency is a mark, not a goal. Right? I think, you know, if we can be efficient and effective at the same time, that's great. But I will take effectiveness over efficiency any day of the week because effectiveness equates the value it equates to creating to accomplishing what it is we're trying to accomplish.

And so I think one of the reasons that we typically don't like to have a diversity of thought in our teams is because the way that we measure success as organisations is often how well are we managing our finite resources versus how much value are we turning those finite resources into for the people that we serve? And we have to do both. But I think we err on this side of maximising efficiency when we need to have people with diverse patterns of thought, in our conversations, asking, why are we doing this? And this is the right thing. And what if we tried this? And what if we tried that that's very inefficient at the moment.

But it can be very effective in the long term. We measure in snapshots, not intervals. We should be measuring in intervals of effectiveness, not snapshots of efficiency if we really want to produce the best value we can for the people that were tasked with serving.

Katherine Ann Byam  9:07  

Great response. The last question I want to ask today is How can parents raise their children to be more creative at a time when interacting with others is limited and where they have to go through this digital noise? I see a lot of parents struggling with the balance between screen time and sort of playtime. But even these days, when you can't interact, what do we do with our kids?

Todd Henry  9:33  

I think a couple of things. First of all, you have to understand what you're trying to do with your kids. Right? So I see our job as parents, my wife and I have three teenagers. And so we have one that'll be 18 here very shortly in less than a month. You're basically an adult right at least in age. You're our job is to create wise kids.

We want to instill wisdom in our kids, meaning we want them to be able to spot patterns and make good decisions based on their experiences. So in order to do that, you have to, first of all, you have to be able to spot those patterns, which means you have to be able to think deeply enough, not be distracted, constantly by whatever comes across your field of view.

So pretty early on in their life, like we did not let them watch TV for the first handful of months of their life. We didn't give them phones and just let them have devices at the table when we went to a restaurant to keep them quiet like we made them be present at the moment, we made them have adult conversations, and we're starting to see the fruit of that. Now listen, I never give parenting advice. Because the moment you give parenting advice, you're guaranteeing that your kids are going to you know, take a left turn and it's gonna turn out poorly. Yeah, because that seems to be the pattern.

But I think, you know, understanding your objective, what are you trying to do? You're trying to create kids who are wise. So we have family dinner every night, and we have conversations about what's going on in the world. We'll talk about politics, we'll talk about what happened that day, we'll talk about things we’re frustrated about, we're talking about things we're excited about, we'll talk about what's really going on with a pandemic. And we expect our kids to have a point of view, we expect them to come to those conversations with some perspective.

And I think again, what we're trying to do is model for them how we think about things and hopefully instill a bit of wisdom in them. Your kids get anxious when you shelter them from harm when you shelter them from bad news when you shelter them from all the effects of the world. Because the reality is, they know what's going on. They suspect what's going on. And when they don't when you're not telling them, it creates anxiety because they fear that things might be actually much worse than you're letting on.

So I feel like having respectful conversations with your kids and expecting them to have a point of view. Even if it's an immature point of view, that's fine, just but have a point of view. And then talking with them in a meaningful way about what's going on, I think creates a tremendous amount of runway for them. And I think it begins to instill a bit of wisdom in them. And I think that's our objective as parents.

Katherine Ann Byam  12:19  

That's really fantastic advice. I'm so glad you joined us for this talk. Probably one last question, how can people find out more about you?

Todd Henry  12:29  

The best way to find me Is it my website toddhenry.com. Or if you want to learn more about my new book called The motivation Code, you can visit toddhenry.com/themotivationcode/ and that'll take you to the assessment and all the work that we're doing on understanding what truly drives people.

Katherine Ann Byam  12:45  

Wonderful. Thanks for joining us, and thanks for listening to where it is lunch. Thanks for listening. This podcast is brought to you today by the depot virtual service hub. The virtual service hub is our digital transformation strategy service that supports startups needing to optimise their processes and their performance to scale up the growth. We also help medium-sized firms and modernising their operations and Our services include sustainable strategy, analytics, and tech enablement. To find out more contact Katherine Ann Byam on LinkedIn