Focus Upstream: Equipping Your Team of Decision Sprinters to Drive Innovation and Performance

0:00 The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests and not those of W Forcy Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicit or implies shall be extended to W forcy Radio or its employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FORCY Radio. What's Working on Purpose? Anyway? Each week we ponder the answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their highest potential. Business can be such a force for good in the world, elevating humanity. In our program, we provide guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we all want Working on Purpose. Now here's your host, Doctor Release Cortez.

1:03 Welcome back to the Working on Purpose program, which has been brought to you with passion and pride since February of twenty fifteen. Thanks again for tuning in this week. Great to have you. I'm your host, Doctor at least Cortez. If we've not met yet, you don't know me. I'm a management consultant, organizational logotherapist, speaker and author. My team and I at least Cortez and associates help companies to enlighten and fortify their operations by articulating their purpose and building inspirational leaders and cultures activated by meeting and purpose to turn those companies from a flatline EKG to a vibrant destination workplace. There people are intrinsically motivated to perform at their best, grown to their full potential, and are committed to stay and dynamically deliver on the company's mission. You can learn more about us and now we can work together at at least cortez dot com.

1:46 Now getting in today's program we have atif Rafiq. He's the author of Decision Sprint, the new way to innovate into the unknown and move from strategy to action. He's the founder and CEO of Ritual, a new software app, and an advisor to startups like SpaceX and Headspace. Throughout his career, Rafik has shown passion for driving companies into the future. He has blazed trails in Silicon Valley in the Fortune five hundred for over twenty five years. After rising through digital night native companies like Amazon, Yahoo, and Aol, he held C suite roles at McDonald's, Volo and MGM Resorts. Rafik Has was the first chief Digital Officer in the history of the Fortune five hundred, a pioneering role he held at McDonald's, and he was most recently president at MGM Resorts, a Fortune five hundred company. Today for the conversation, he joins it from Chicago ATIF. Welcome to Working on Purpose. It's great to have you, Aliz. It's a pleasure to join you. Thank you so much for having me. You're welcome. Let's show off this beautiful thing you created, shall we? You know I say this often because I usually feature authors ATIF, and I want you to know, as a mother and as a woman, what you did here is harder than bringing it a child to the world.

3:00 You do not know that, right, I was very kind of you. I wouldn't know how to relate the two, but don't point out what to say to just leave that alone. Well, it's wonderful to have you. I learned so much from my guests. I was just on with another guest in Australia that I had on a couple of years ago. I get to know my guest well and stay in touch. So I'm looking forward to learning about you. And so to start, I think we need to before we even get into what you were doing at Silicon Valley, I think it makes sense to just start with why did you pursue technology? Why that? Why not art? Why not architecture, why not marketing? Why technology? Well, I had started in the Internet pretty early. It was nineteen ninety six and I did my first job at Coleman Sax and I didn't like it very much. So I I kind of took a calculated that that technology, you know, would be a space where I could be more creative. And I got started by writing a cold or and mailing it to Steve Kase who was the founder of AOL, and he actually read the letter. He gave it to someone else at the company and I got a call. And so I was lucky enough to get my foot in the door and the Internet when I really didn't have much experience, and learned a lot through you know, AOL, which was a very formative company of its time, but since then I haven't looked back. So basically I was able to find, you know, strong connection and meaning with this thing called the Internet, you know, around all the possibilities, whether it be commerce or communication or you know,

4:33 media, and I just saw that as like an unending sort of creative space, and obviously that's what it's turned out to be. And my start really came from this calculated bed of saying, Okay, well I'm early in my career, let me at least try a thing, because then i'll know if I really, you know, I won't have any regrets. And it turns out I didn't. From from that perspective, well, I think that this this is quite an interesting and suitable place to take all of it intellect and creativity of yours from what I could tell from your book, So kudos for figuring that out so early. So you have got in a market reem just remarkable resume. I mean, all the different companies you've worked for amazing.

5:15 So what I want to understand too, is just how did you make the shift from working in Silicon Valley to the Fortune five hundred and just a little bit about you know, what have you brought? I mean, your book says this so beautifully that now the listeners and viewers who haven't heard this yet, this will be new for them. I read it, but let's hear it. Sure well. You know, I had a metaphor morphosized a couple of times in my career. I talked about the first one, which is basically like more of a banking career into like, okay, let me do something that gives me a meaning where I understand the product, like the product that we're providing to customers. And that was sort of you know, internet based companies. So that that was the first metamorphosis. Then I thought I'd be doing that forever because I really enjoyed it, and I was general manager leading a business unit at Amazon. And but of course the world keeps evolving, and so in twenty thirteen, about ten years ago, every company, even company with that are not needed technology companies at the heart began to see that their futures were impacted by technology. It could mean their customer experience, their business models, something was going to be disrupted, and they needed to rethink, you know, the core of the company around technology and physicization.

6:30 So at the time, the CEO McDonald's had a strong vision, didn't know exactly what it meant, but didn't know that technology would be very meaningful for the future of the company, and decided that he wanted to recruit somebody either at a Google or Amazon. And I had the opportunity to not only join McDonald's and become the first CDEO in the history of the fourtune five hundred, but basically take this calculated bet where I could bring Silicon Valley thinking to a well known global company that is very good at other things like execution and operations and see if that formula, that mix of ingredients could help the company grow in the next era and really set it up for the next twenty years and the areas I was responsible for. So I made a metamorphosis. I calculated bet that you know, that would be a skill set where could be valued not only on McDonald's but even other industries. And that turned out to be the case where you know, I went on to automotive and then resorts and all kinds of companies in all industries will obviously look at technology as a disruptive force. They want to rethink their core products and services around technology. So that's sort of my metamorphosis over ten years, and now I'm working on my next ten yere metamorphosis. Yeah, I want to applaud that too. If you know that one. It just it sounds like like you've had really great jobs of fun and in the process really true, really move the needle.

8:01 I know what you did to McDonald's, for example, in the Volvo work, it's just incredible, right, But I just really want to acknowledge an applaud that I just you know, as someone who really believes in the world of work and that shouldn't be a bad four letter word but an actual playground in which to realize your potential. I just really want to applaud what you have done for your for your for your own career, and what you've done for the industry. Just really so inspiring. That's super kind of you. I really appreciate it, and you know what, it means a lot to me because when you're a little bit of a pioneer. I don't want to label myself as a pioneer, but basically, you take a risk, you know it may work out. I mean I'll work out, you know, a couple of things need to go right, you look like an all star. A couple things don't go your way, you look like you know you made a bad move right. So you don't really know what's going to happen, but you try and say, well, just a couple of things that they line up, this could basically really be the next wave of how things are going. And so you know, that's how I look at decisions as well. You know it's making kind of calculated bets because there's no bulletproof you know, guarantee that something will work out. But if you can bet on yourself and you get the right support from some colleagues or some and some other kind of keep players around the table, no great things can happen. And you are living proof of that. So somewhere along the way, I've come to understand by reading your book and listening to some of the other things you've done, you started to figure out that the way that you were working with teams you could be shared as a method. And that's of course what you

9:35 call decisions. Friends, So help me understand when did this occur? For when did the aha hits you that there was something about the way that you'd learned to work with teams that you could actually start teaching other people how to do in other organizations. That's a wonderful question because I didn't realize it until late in the game. I mean I had been doing something that they didn't have a label for, which is really interesting to me because you could be doing something for ten years and as producing results for the company. It's making you know, it's allowing teams to do better work and their best works. It's building your profile and your credentials in the marketplace. Like all these good things are happening, but you don't really have to. You haven't been able to step back and reflect on what is that thing? Until you know, maybe you get a break, And I had a break about two years ago where I got to look at that. So for a majority of my career, I would say I was always focused on the what versus the how.

10:35 And let me explain what I mean by that. You know, if you're at McDonald's and you talk about disruption, you're talking about the customer experience and how technology will make things more convenient. You're talking about introducing new ways of using McDonald's, new service models. That's the language that I was using when I was doing my job there, and that's really the what. You know, what you're doing for the customer, but how you go about these innovations, how teams problem solve and figure out how do you go from a raw idea to making something real and actually having it make impact and even before you get there, having it set daylight because you got the organization to say yes and believe in it. That is the how. So it's there's the what and the how. And for a majority of my career I thought my job is to be, let's say, the main person having a vision for the what. You know, what do we want to be when we grow up?

11:30 What is it going to look like? Revolving? You know, what is a great car, new way to get cars to customers or sell cars for example? What does that look like? So it's all about the what. And in doing this work, about ten years into transformation, I realized, actually it's the how. It's you know, it's independent of the category. It could be resorts, it could be burgers, it could be you know, autonomous vehicles. But in what's common across all this is we have a right idea, but in the in the beginning. We have a lot of unknowns, a lot of things to sort through, and we want to figure out how to get to you know, the recommendations we're going to make, what the forts in the road are that we're going to take, How to get the organization to say yeah, that makes sense, and how to unlock a decision making so we can get onto action and be very confident in the actions that we're taking. That is a whole activity, And when I wrote my book, I started with giving that a label, and I call that upstream work. Upstream is basically the part where you're still trying to figure out what what is it that you know, what is our direction? And it comes before the downstream part of execution. That's definitely one of the concepts in your book that I found really really intriguing outif it's just in this notion of what you've situated there and you actually say in your book, you say, perhaps my counterintuitive message to experience speed and quality and decision making, organizations

13:03 must start further upstream. Too often companies are cavalier or circular about how they handle unknowns. That's when it's time to make a decision and they're paralyzed or they blender into poor decisions. I think this is really a very interesting idea that you're putting forth, this counterintuitive message. Yeah, you know it's it is a little bit counter intuitive, I think because when people talk about decisions, they think about the decision point, which is, you know, when you're you know what your choices are, at the point in which you have to pick one, basically, and unfortunately, that is way too late in the game to actually put yourself in a position of confident decision making, because, as anyone who's been in a meeting where decisions are being made will be familiar with, you know, meetings that don't go as well because people start poking holes, pointing out blind spots, or being confused, like, how did you arrive at this conclusion? Here, show me how you got there right, connecting the dots. And if you spend a one hour meeting, he spent ninety percent of it explaining how he got there, as opposed to the very high stakes decisions that are needed yes or no, then that's probably the wrong mix. And the reason why it happens that's a symptom of a problem is that there's there's work further upstream, which maybe wasn't done as well as it could have been. So the counterintuitive message is to be at a point where you can take confident decisions and have let me just say, drama free decision points. You start further upstream when it's okay to have a lot

14:37 of ambiguity as long as you know how to make that uncertainty actionable. And the weeks and once the teams spend trying to wrestle with ambiguity, they do a really good job of reducing that ambiguity. And that's why I coined the term upstream work and kind of illustrated through a few three three phases and thirteen workflow. Basically, we will dig more into that. Let's go ahead and grab our first break. I'm your host, doctor at least Cortez. We're around the air with antif Rafiq. He's the author of Decision Sprint, the new way to innovate into the unknown and move from strategude to action. We've been talking a bit about his early career and Redish book came from after the record to dig more into these concepts. Stay with us, we'll be right back. Doctor Elise Cortez is a management consultant specializing and meaning and Purpose.

15:41 An inspirational speaker and author, she helps companies visioneer for a greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at Elise Cortez dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortez. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Elise ali Se at Elise Cortez dot com. Now back to working on Purpose. Thanks for saying with us.

16:30 I'm welcome back to working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortez, as I'm also dedicated to creating a world where people actually want to come to work and realize their potential, are led by inspirational leaders that help them find and contribute their greatness, and we do this as a better as the world. I continue to write my own books, and so my latest one is called on the Great Revitalization. How activating meaning and purpose can radically enliven your business. It came out in March twenty twenty three, and it's designed to help leaders understand what's happening in today's workforce and then offers twenty one best practices to help equip them provide that through their ear, LEADERSIP and their culture. You can learn more about my books and how to find them at at least grotest dot com if you're just now joining us. My guest is atifra Fik. He's the founder and CEO of a Ritual, a new software app and the advisor to start upside SpaceX and Headspace, and the author of Decision Sprint, the new way to innovate into the unknown and move from strategy to action. Okay, so the next part I want to get to which I think is really really interesting about your book. And there are so many things and you'll notice we know I sent you some of the topics that I wanted to talk about. There's kind of a sprinkling here. And the reason I do that is because I like the conceptual stuff that you talk about, and I also like it to be able to get into your model. But one of the things that I think is really interesting that you also treat is being able to deal with this idea lens of uncertainty and not getting stuck between the two extremes of either blank check autonomy or corporate micromanagement. So could you speak a little bit about it, because this is where you get into, of course, your actual methodology. So if you could kind of paint the picture, you know, of how organizations find themselves in this this uncertainty and

18:04 how your system of decisions print actually treats that well. In the book, I talk about the two common reactions to unknowns, which are either fear or not having enough fear and being too cavalier about it right trying to identify the sweet spot. But the first two things I talked about I think people will recognize because the on the one hand, you know, a reaction of fear causes companies to shrink their ambition before they actually really get going. So the idea sounds really interesting, But what we that would happen only if we focus on the known commodities, like what do we already know how to do well? And you would shrink your idea and your ambition to really, you know, essentially make it. You remove the risk and the and the problem with that for everybody is that you still do a ton of work. But then once you ship turns out to not be a needle mover, employees aren't happy because, you know, when they tell their families what they're working on, what they worked on the last two years, it's kind of like a you know, a honor, right, it's not meaningful. It didn't move the needle, and you don't feel good about that as an employee, right because you're still working, you know, pretty intensely, you know, over long periods. So we don't want to water down the ideas, but at the same time, we don't want to be cavalier about about things and say, okay, you know, we hope it works out where basically you kind of get teams so much autonomy but without asking the hard questions and poking the holes where they wind up maybe producing a cool looking prototype, but then you know

19:38 it doesn't pass muster because some hard things haven't been thought about. You know, those hard things need to be thought about to make the idea stronger. And so the middle ground here is essentially starting with questions and saying it's okay to have space where we have a lot more unknowns than knowns, because that's what we're spending time on is building. We're exploring these unknowns. We're doing an exploration where we're trying to make sense of these unknowns, get our head around them, gather a good fact base, maybe a good reasoning and critical thinking process to kind of put the puzzle together. And this exploration is going to give us a lot more clarity on what conclusions we should draw. This is harder than we thought, easier than we thought. This is doable.

20:26 This is more expensive and less expensive than we thought. You know, you can actually you should draw the conclusions once you've actually explored the key unknowns or questions. Is sort of where what I start with that why is this news? Because often we don't allocate specific space to source questions, input and make them actionable before we rush to judgment. A lot of times in companies, we rush to judgment before we actually do the exploration. And that's what I'm trying to offer as a rung sequence, and there's a right sequence to improve it for everyone. M Okay, two things. At first, it occurs to me to ask you you have you're really serving up something here that's really near and dear to my heart and when that comes around to potential. So I wonder if you have any sense at all of just how underutilized innovation and creativity occurs in most companies because of this, you know, inability to do what you've you've learned how to do any sense of that. My senses as massive, massively that's what I guess too, but massively underd utilize because you see, and it's really a shame. And the next hour of business I think will be very different kind of because necessity is the mother of invention, and uh, you know, whether people came at it from a principal standpoint or because we just needed to help the companies grow, it's going to it's

21:56 going to have to be quite different. But my perspective it is that basically the way you help people realize their potential is you unlocked. You need to really unlock their intellect because people do not feel value if they know something or believe something and they can't get it on the table, or if they got it on the table and it didn't influence or get integrated into the company's thinking. Now that's not to say that every single person is right about their input, but that input needs to feel we need to be able to have a way to surface it and then discern through it to say, oh, well it was relevant or not relevant, and if it was relevant, then it gets integrated into the thinking. But the thing that makes us all feel sort of like intellectually not engaged is when we can't offer that or it was relevant and we offered it, but it didn't impact the thinking of the company.

22:56 This is a shame, and this is Goodly leaders recognize that they have a way of actually making sure that you know, you bring out the best the people, specifically around engaging their their input. I think their good leaders are obsessed with input and looking for the right inputs. And then the second thing that comes to my mind is you know, of course, or if you heard my introduction to to the program, but I really do believe that in business as a force for good, it's just a force in the world. And of course it's quite obvious to me that what you're doing you have an opportunity to greatly expand the impact the contribution of companies, which you know, those leaders, those founders that started that organization, the leaders in that organization, everybody that's part of it. To be able to recognize we're part of something great. We did something really great. We didn't just sort of move the needle a sub agenship a little couple of externs products. We created something grand and I think that's really exciting. A defense you can that you are providing this way of thinking and innovating today to companies at least we are totally on the same way length. I mean, my motivation is a big part of it is that we need to realize that work is a human experience and that because it's essentially knowledge work, and companies that if you bring out the best and people's ability to contribute to the thought of the company and make that thought better, and then that releads to better results, that we feel better

24:30 fulfilled as employees and we are happier in our lives, able to give more to our families, to our communities, etcetera, etcetera. That's why business is a force group for good because helping someone basically you feel alive through you know, a good thinking work right and thinking work that that had an impact is a great way to make you know, I make people more more satisfied and more willing to kind of kind of give you of themselves. So I think it's a It's a big part what I'm trying to do is make sure that instead of getting a fraction out of people's potential, we actually get it, you know, as much as possible for everyone's benefit. I love it.

25:19 So you got you got a lot of work to do. Latif you've got a lot of work, you hope you've got a lot of energy because you've got a lot of work to do in the world. Uh. One of the things I've also really enjoyed about your book is that I like how you situated your interviews with your with the leaders that you worked with in these various companies. And the one I want to call out here, one of the conversations that you showcase is the one with the CEO of Vovo, and I thought it was absolutely delightful that you suggested to him that his title not be CEO but clarity of Thought. And I thought and that he actually he did, he took to it. So if you speak a little bit to where that idea came from and why you feel so convicted on that, well, it was kind of a random interaction where you know, I needed to talk about certain initiatives that we're working on. They were quite strategic and was top of mine for a hawk On silence, and you know it was bole of CEO was changing the culture, and part of it his idea was maybe removing titles from the executive team and instead too and I guess in your language, give each person a mission or a purpose statement, you know, and that so he wanted to start with himself. I'm like, okay, if I don't call myself president, what is my purpose? And I said, okay, well, you know you should ask farious team members, but I can tell you from my Amazon experience, I wanted once her job. Basios say that his purpose as founder and CEO of the company was to promote clarity

26:51 of thought. And that really struck stuck with me and struck me, and so I suggested to hawk On then maybe he considered that and he liked it because he was That's pretty much what he was doing anyway with teams across this, you know, mega company of fifty thousand employees. Is he wasn't telling people what to do. I'm the CEO, this is what I want. He was always trying to understand how are they thinking about what they're responsible for? And trying to make it a little bit better, fine tuning their thinking basically, and so I just gave a name to something that he was pretty much already doing. He liked it. So he basically kind of if he went through the corporate website of bolthough you'd see it didn't say that he was CEO, he would say, you know something along the lines of this, like this tagline, that he was the person it was promoting clarity of thought or that was his purpose in the organization. And so more kudos to him, I think for you know, for all the different aspects of that where it made it clear what his style of leadership, what he was trying to do with his leadership style. I like to that was just beautiful how you brought that to light. I like to that you also situate in that section, is you know that you connected the idea that a CEO's highest contribution is to calibrate the thoughts of the organization, to straighten out any clumsiness from them, and to make that understanding that make sure that understanding is driven into the teams. I think that is really crisp, and again I don't think that

28:23 I've seen that very often. I've had this show has been on air for eight and a half years. I've had on a lot of people talking about leadership, et cetera. And that is a very nice fresh concept. Well to me, I like, is its visual because I imagine like a clumsy string and so we're in the meeting about a topic and there's four people, and my mindset is basically, what what are we dealing with here? Like? Is this a clumsy string with a lot of kinks? Is straight? You know, very tightly you know, you know, laid out string? That actually, well, that says how much what we have to accomplish in the thirty minutes we have together, For example, in a meeting where it's like what are these kings? You know, how are we how do we fix them? You know, because maybe the thought process is a little bit off. One of the assumptions isn't really a strong assumption, So we need to REDIRECTI to pivot the thinking. But in order to get the thinking of the group on the table, it's not easy, right, Actually, you burn a lot of calories in your brain. You need to have plenty of protein that morning, maybe a couple of hard boiled eggs, because you know, to get an understanding of where what the team is actually thinking is really critical when you only have thirty minutes with them, you're the leader, and you're going to move on to five other things because that is your shot to really get everyone in this mind mild where they're thinking clearly enough about it, and it's so critical. The upside is if you do it well, they

29:55 go off, they do ten other meetings about the thing that you're not involved with, and they're cascading all the right understanding and information, activating the organization in a great way. And then, you know, if you do that repeatedly with this team three months from now, the initiative is like has a lot of momentum and you look great and all you did was, you know, really engage in the right way, you know, in a few interactions. So there's a lot of upside as a leader in thinking about clarity of thoughts as part of what you need to contribute in your work leading teams. Okay, and then we get to this next part that I thought was really really critically important. I see this all the time, and we're going I do own to coming to organizations and you talk a lot about how you know, cold starts happen where you see the team being passive about fact finding and june to dig. They're waiting for someone to tell them to do something.

30:52 And you you talked about this at one of your particular places that you're landing. But what interesting is you know the price. You say, the prior regimes didn't have this the expectation and people were not accustomed to this idea of fact finding and continuing to dig. But then things you said, things began to change once the team began to see that these stand up meetings that you were doing, we're not a call to the principal's office, but instead of way to solve the puzzle together. I think if we could get more organizations to do just that right there at we could really change the output of organizations, the the connection, the experience of what they're doing. If you can get people to be able to feel safe to be able to do that, you've already I think so much elevated your game. I know there's writing your wheelhouse around psychological safety. Yes, it's really hard for leaders, you know, because leaders know that you know, results matter a lot, So then the emotional component of leadership is you know, fee here are we not going to get there? And then how do I make myself clear that you know, I'm being demanding and we need to get there right? But now you're you're you're going to get people to shut down some parts of their brain.

32:09 I mean, I'm not a brain expert, but I know that you know there's parts where the thinking brain versus the kind of just the doing brain, right, and you want to activate it enough of the thinking brain and you're the annual common sort of system too thinking if you will, And so you have to be, you know, pretty careful and you have to keep a neutral It's like, okay. And that's why in the book I talk about, you know, the right part of an initiative or phase of initiative where you want to really get the questions and the ambiguity out on the table. And it's okay to do that because that's the whole purpose of that step in the process. If that makes sense, Like there's no answers expected. Not only are there no answers expected, I don't even expect you to have a recommendation or being able to be able to draw conclusions. I just expect you to be able to tell me all the main things that we need to get our head around. And that's step one of making you unknowns actionable is knowing what they are and feeling good about that list that the team can do detective work on. So if we create psychological we can create psychological safety by looking at workflow where there is a step in the process where the ambiguity is what we're actually trying to trying to, you know, gather. I really appreciate

33:39 that, and so making the exploration process not just safe but fun and dynamic. And you know, the better the questions, the better we are. So I just really want to celebrate that and call that out. And on that note, let's let our listeners and viewers think about that while we take our next break. I'm your host, Doctor Release Cortez. We've been on the air with Atifa Rafik, the author of this vision Sprint, the new way to innovate into the unknown and move from strategy to action. We'll continue to a conversation after the rake. Stay with us. Doctor Elise Cortez is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author, she helps companies visioneer for greater purpose. Among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce.

34:39 To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at Elise Cortez dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortez. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to a lease a l I se at Elise Cortez dot com. Now back to working on Purpose. Thanks for staying with us and welcome back to working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortez. As I mentioned in the last break, my latest book, The Great Vitalization is out and this is really something for organization to be able to value what they're doing around their culture and their leadership. So to augment that, I have on my website for you an organizational assessment for you to learn the extent to which your company's leadership and culture actually meet the standards of today's workforce. You can go to Elise Cortez dot com and then go to how We Help tab and find it there. If you're just now join us. My guest is Atifrafik, the founder and CEO of Ritual, a new software app, and he's an adviser to start ups like SpaceX and Headspace, and the author of Decision Sprint, the new way to innovate into the unknown and move from strategy to action. So for this next bit here I couldn't resist. I have to have you as someone who has such a beautiful, innovative, creative mind.

36:04 I really loved when you wrote in the book you say for a company to endure, it needs to deliver it wow and OMG. Not so what So we need a way to overcome or outsmart this potential pitfall and organizations and I think this is really important to talk about. So I wonder how many organizations are going for wow or oh my God. Well I can tell you is that people are very busy and pretty much every organization, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the output of that is going to be OMG or wow. And OMG and wow are actually really really hard, and sometimes you know there is some OMG potential at the beginning, when the idea is compelling and kind of people as the light bulbs go off right, and I think a lot of people experience that, but as getting some staining power in that where which is part of why offer this method of having a workflow where you don't water things down and at the same time you're pretty purposeful and you're not also blind to you know, real question marks. You know. So the idea of the main idea is that you service the right questions. You're neutral about it.

37:20 A lot of questions does not mean you should be shy or run from the idea making those questions actionable so that you suspend judgment, can come to conclusions when you're staying on a high quality fact based ors, you know, thinking through all the right things, you know enough of the right things, then you're in a position. That's how you preserve the OMG because basically, people are very creative in companies. They are problem solvers, and if you give them the time and space to identify the right things get to the bottom of them, they may very well find out how to make how to make things work in reality. That is real OG potential because then everyone starts being confident it's not just a bright idea, but then we can actually pull it off.

38:06 And that's how you build a machine around MG. Now the good news is, I know it sounds hard, but you run water through the pipes once or twice, people start believing there's a method to the man. This is not just you know, one blip where there was a great creative burst in the company. No, it's actually a repeatable thing. We can make this systematic and making a systematic way of solving meaningful problems, of innovating ideas, you know, that is what we'll make an enduring company. So I'm passionate about helping, you know, companies get there through through a system, which I really really applaud, really appreciate that. I am a systems thinker as well. And I you know, being able to adopt your system and put it into issues to say any category right, it works anywhere is really incredibly exciting. So you know, one thing we didn't talk about at you said you meet something about two the two year ago mark. Here, what happened two years ago that would situate you on this different track. Well, I stepped off the corporate treadmill, so to speak. You know, I was in a pretty high level role at a Fortune three hundred at the time of Amagon Resorts in the president role, and I thought to myself, you know, what is the thing, what is my highest purpose? And my conclusion was, as opposed to help in one company at the time, I wanted to build a system, both a system like in general as a set of methods, but also through technology and software where I could help any company,

39:38 in fact, any team in any company. And therefore I made a break and I'm on my latest metamorphosis as of two years ago, which is essentially an entrepreneurial track of getting my new company, Ritual off the ground. It's a software app and then some of the work that's related around the book, decisions and in other ways on which I can bring and teach, you know, the idea of you know, the system or management operating system for companies that I think is fit for purpose as we look at the next narrow business. So that's the that's the pivot that I made. I really applaud that I've stepped in that track. Not quite like you are, but I've stepped on the track. I know what that feels like. Now we have to talk about what's Ritual. Let's the app. So Ritual is an app that is designed for teams, so that enables teams to go from you know, a raw idea or kind of a high level objective, through the process of coming up with a building, an exploration, running an exploration, using explorations to come up with recommendations, and even preparing the content that they might use for meetings, decisions meetings for examples, by producing content like FAQs or a strategic narrative. But it basically breaks everything down into a workflow software workflows, and it's designed for a team, so a team can go into a

41:08 meeting, let's say, with sponsors, and they can sort of knock their socks off and say, wow, like your work is you know, thoughtful, You've thought of all the right questions. We understand how you got to your recommendations. So really streamlining the process of getting to buy in and yes for you know, for your bright ideas. That's what the software app is designed for. Brilliant. Okay, makes complete sense. Okay, now we would be remissed you started to hind about this before. And I do want to ask you if you would treat it because I know your you know, your book is related to the future of knowledge work and so it would be interesting if you could make the connection between your ideas and knowledge work. Well, I think you know, knowledge work is a spectrum and basically what you've seen with software and a lot of the conversation around AI is more I would say, on the on the execution side of knowledge work, right, it's like repeatable things we can document and so forth, and so we will teach the AI and then a sort of like takes over, so to speak.

42:15 You know, but I'm working on the end of knowledge work where you know, humans and machines need to work together, and I see that happening forever. I don't speed too. Yeah, I don't see I taking over the work of innovation or you know, the most meaningful problem solving in a company. But I do see AI being helping increase the speed of that and making it go a lot better as well. So I see the velocity of problem solving an innovation going much faster and better when humans and AI kind of come together on the upstream part of things, which is things like coming up with the right questions and so for example, if you look at JENII specifically, if we were a team and we had a problem statement, you know that we're trying to get our head around and we came up with, you know, five or seven important questions that we need to look into. AI can suggest similar questions or questions that might be blind spots from our carent list and help us round round that out. That's that's how humans and AI can work together. Or let's say you have a question list you were in to take a crack and answering them, and I can point out things in your answers like, hey, this is a good point, but you need evidence for it, you know, so go get some data for example, or hey, you know, you know your reasoning on this is a little bit weaker.

43:44 You need to elaborate more. You know that jen Ai can be good at those type of things to basically complement the work that we do at a team level, and the result of that is speeding up the quality and the speed of innovation. You know, I'm already finding that is in my own work as well. Antif playing with that to be able to kind of test out and tease that how can I improve what I put forth here and getting some of that feedback from jen Ai said that's just absolutely beautiful. So you've just affirmed what I'm doing, So thank you for that. So We have to talk a little bit more about the management piece here, because that's definitely my jam and we're getting close to time here. But you do say in your book, you say, Peter Drucker, who have of course, is considered a father of modern management theory, but roll over in his grave, you say, You say that, why are the ideas in your book consider consequential to the field of management? And how are the work of so in other words, how are is your work consequential to what he's put forth?

44:43 And why would he roll over in his grave? Well? First, I used to read Peter Drucker in college, so that's like I remember him too, Yeah, yeah, and so were in so many books and it's pretty amazing. But the rain Wiz Peter Drucker was writing this entirely different because that was an environment where things were stable and predictable, Yeah, and predictable. And because of that you could have situations and companies where a few people kind of wrestle with ambiguity, think things through, and then the rest of the company just execute. So you have a few people kind of figuring this out and the rest making sure that they keep their promises and are clear on their objectives and accountable for their results, and that defined basically business for a long time, like fifty years, right, But that's you know, then we have all now it's actually the inverse of that is it's not a few people.

45:43 It's pretty much ninety five percent of people need to contribute towards figuring things out and just a few people are execution only. You know, follow this sp operating procedure well documented thing. That's we all know that AA is nibbling up on that. So the whole paradigm is upside down. And so if you design knowledge work for those conditions, you get something very different, where basically having people understand how to embrace ambiguity, not be frightened by it, kind of make it actionable, and then put that into how to connect it into decision making at some point and then the right way it becomes really essential to have across the company, cascade and scale across the company. So you know, it really is down to the fact that the volatility, the velocity, the amount of ambiguity on pretty much everything the company is working on, those are the conditions that define the context of businesses today. So I think, you know, Peter Drucker would come up with a different system, but he's not around the rest of us have to figure out what that looks like.

47:01 Well, you just took the baton, my friends, so you're you're you're doing great. Keep on running down the track. So we've done it. We've come to the end. The show already happened so fast. So you know, this program is listened to by people around the world. And what we really are up to here is we're trying to create workplaces where people actually want to come to work. They do their best because they want to. They're led by inspirational leaders only do business at betters the world. What would you like to leave them with? I would like to leave people with the fact that, you know, work is a human experience and bringing out the best and people is the same thing as putting the company in the best position to grow and and you're they are literally the same thing. So if you want to look at the health of a company, and we have to look at whether people feel that the workplace is sustainable for them right and if they're able to bring out their best work. You know, to me, if you can put your finger on those two things, you're getting to you know, then you're going to put your finger. It's a great indicator whether that company is going to continue to put up the results on the growth ATIF.

48:15 Thank you so much for being on working a purpose. It's always delightful. I get to meet people like you I wouldn't otherwise meet because of this program. I'm very happy to cross paths. You are delightful and your work is very exciting. Well, I really appreciate your support, you know, and your help helping me spread these ideas as a real pleasure to join you at elite. Thank you. Great to know you. Listeners, viewers. If you'll want to learn more about Antifa Fique, his book Decision Sprint or his work, the best place to start with would just be Decision sprint dot com. Last week, if you missed the live show, you always catch to be a recorded podcast. We were on air with doctor Robert Lynell talking about his new book A Place for Tea Giving Voice to the Tortoise in our hair Brained World, which, among many other things, discusses the promise of developing the capacity for divergent thinking to address today's business challenges and the criticality of embracing slower speed, empathy and ambiguity to do so. Next week we'll be on air with Grant Kaguar and Greguart talking about the work he does, unleashing entrepreneurial spirit for good and anchored in stakeholder capitalism principles. See you there.

49:15 Remember work as an essential part of our lives, ultimately the way we spend our lives, and it can be one of the best adventures and means of realizing our potential in making the impact we crave. So let's work on Purpose. We hope you've enjoyed this week's program. Be sure to tune into Working on Purpose featuring your host, doctor Elise Cortez, each week on W four CY. Together we'll create a world where business operates conscientiously, leadership inspires and passion performance, and employees are fulfilled in work that provides the meaning and purpose they crave. See you there, Let's work on Purpose.