Trusting What Brings Us Alive, With Kirk Souder
In this episode, Andrew speaks with Kirk Souder, a branding and marketing leader and executive coach. Kirk's work focuses on generating higher levels of creativity and innovation in organizations and their leaders. He believes that business has great power to change the world and that what is needed is to access the “higher gears“ of spirituality. Kirk references Howard Thurman and says, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what brings you alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is more people brought alive.” It is the responsibility of leaders to support their people to identify and nourish what brings them alive. This is all about shifting mindsets, opening to a recognition of possibilities.
Kirk shares the story of his client at Mattel who chose to trust her calling and to feed that which brings her alive. This client ultimately spearheaded the diversification of the Barbie doll, which laid the foundation for the recent Barbie movie.
This is a very practical and inspiring conversation.
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Listen to the podcast here
Trusting What Brings Us Alive, With Kirk Souder
In this conversation, I had the opportunity to speak with a relatively new colleague of mine, Kirk Souder. He is based in Southern California. He is a branding and marketing leader who has turned executive coach and coaches people in their businesses in different ways. He’s a fascinating, wonderful, and richly experienced individual.
He comes from the world of branding, ideas. and possibility. That comes through in our conversation. He talks a lot about bringing people into powerful zones of aliveness and greater levels of creativity, what he referred to as higher gears of creativity. We also talked about the importance of the connection between spirituality and leadership. He talks about how business needs greater creativity, higher levels of innovation, and spirituality, which, as he talks about it, helps take it to greater levels.
What does spirituality mean to him? He talked about a quotation from Howard Thurman that I've heard before, but it was lovely to hear it again. What the world deems is people who are more alive. Ask about what brings you alive. We don't need to necessarily even use the word spiritual, what brings us alive.
He shares a story of an important client of his who had been working for the Mattel toy and doll company and chose to trust her calling. She spearheaded the diversification of the Barbie doll, which laid the foundation for the recent Barbie movie. As Kirk describes it, his client was willing to move in this way and use the company to manifest her purpose in the world. We talked about the impact of mindsets. As Kirk says, “To open to a greater paradigm of creation, to not to focus on what's available now, but to focus more on what's possible.” It's a lovely, rich, encouraging, practical, inspiring conversation. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.
*Please note that the podcast transcript is AI-generated, and thus there may be inaccuracies in the transcription from time to time.*
I’m pleased to welcome Kirk Souder to the show. Kirk is a new friend and colleague of mine. He’s a fellow graduate of the University of Santa Monica's Spiritual Psychology Programs. He may talk about his experience with that. Kirk's background is a bit different than mine. He grew up and took leadership positions in the branding and marketing world in his first career before moving into leadership development and executive coaching with a focus on positive impact. You can tell us about your work and more. I'm grateful you're with us, and we were able to make this time work. Welcome, Kirk.
It's great to be here, Andrew. Thanks for inviting me here. The topic is one I feel strongly about.
Looking Back
We could start right there. As we've had several conversations about this topic, tell me how it resonates with you and what it means for you, your work, and your life. That sounds like a big question.
The idea of spirituality and business is that we live at a time when it's important that those two things come together. An event and a way of the time we live in is asking for a greater level of creation. We need to access higher gears. I don't mean higher as a pun, with spirituality. I mean higher in terms of the capability to generate more potent, scalable, and innovative ideas into the world. We can use any word. Spirituality is one way of saying it or the defining truth and physics of our reality. It's time that we enabled the platform of business to feel comfortable in accessing those for the sake of the change that can be made.
Joseph Campbell had a great observation when he said, “You can tell at the time that a certain village or city was created in the world.” What were the greatest powers at the time? If it was the church, the highest building would be the cathedral. It went from religion to the church to government, and the government buildings became the highest.
He says, “When you go into cities, the highest buildings are the buildings of business. That business has the greatest potential for creating change in the world more than government or the other sectors.” I believe that simply because of its capabilities and scale. For it to keep grinding at the gear it's at and not have access to these other gears of creation seems like a miss for me, given what it can create with both energy and capability.
New Inner Technologies
Corporations still rule the world. I don't mean that judgmentally. It's a fact in terms of the influence of business and businesses' influence on governments, which may be something I have little judgment on, but that's the subject of a different episode. This is philosophical, but it's instructive. What is missing in business?
I like to frame it less as there's something missing now and say, “There's an opportunity available.” In terms of both the accessing of these new tools and new inner technologies, I'll call them, the access of those that you know can mean the ability for these platforms, businesses, and corporations to generate in a bigger way. Also, to connect first to what those human beings would ideally rather be orienting around in terms of the North Star for business as opposed to the conditioning from the last century.
Spirituality, or anywhere we want to apply it, enables leaders and leadership to access that deeper, authentic part of themselves and give themselves permission to use that North Star in what they create through the platform of business. A gentleman named Howard Thurman, who was the godfather of the Civil Rights Movement, had a quote. Even though he was a Christian mystic, you don't even have to feel spirituality in this. He’s like, “Ask not what the world needs. Ask what brings you alive and do it because what the world needs is more people brought alive.”
You don’t even have to feel spirituality in business. You just have to ask not what the world needs but what makes you alive.
When I work with people, we don't even have to broach the word spirituality. It's for the first time that they are oriented on what brings them alive to be in the world, to create in the world, and to trust that the impact of that and the positive precipitate of that in the world will make itself evident. All they need to do at this moment is to trust that inner compass around what brings them alive.
I could give that a different flavor of the soul's calling or the energy of the authentic self. Howard Thurman puts the thread through the needle in the most perfect way, which is simply what brings you alive. Joseph Campbell said, “Orienting around the bliss in you and choosing that.” What this word spirituality can offer businesses is connection and even greater tools for creation, as well as what can happen through that.
Developing Trust
You've left a lot of threads out there to pick up on in conversation. I want to talk with you about trust. You said, “We need to trust that.” It is a big if for many of us. As a recovering lawyer who needed to lean into this work, that trust doesn't come easy. Before I do, I would love to read my favorite Howard Thurman quotation that I happened to have here because I intend to share it. I'm speaking at a coaches' conference. I'm going to read this. Howard Thurman said, “There's something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It's the only true guide you will ever have. If you cannot hear it, all of your lives, spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.”
It cuts right to the bone.
If I could circle back to this notion, we have this opportunity to pay attention to what's happening for us spiritually. However, we may define that, whatever that may mean to people. For the purposes of this conversation, it doesn't matter whether that spirituality is something in a church, nature, meditation, yoga class, or gardening.
As I've said before, “If there's a God, I don't think she cares what the label is.” God is much more interested in what we're doing if there is a God, which I believe there is. We developed these parts of ourselves. How do we develop that trust to say, “I can bring this into my work, and in fact, my work would be better off if I did?”
The answer to your question is through the running of the willingness to run the experiments. In this next volley in my life, what if I oriented around that instead of some preconceived idea of success? What I should do and what the world says I should do, I'm going to orient around it. How do I move into this particular volley, whether it's a business I'm in as an employee, as a leader, one I own, or what I'm about to create?
I run the experiment and see what happens when I choose to trust that. In that beautiful precipice moment with some of my clients, I frequently say, “It may be easier for the ego to put the fear-based scarcity stuff and fear of failure.” You're not saying goodbye. It's put it on a shelf and say, “It's there.” It’s not having to say, “I'm cutting it away forever, but I'm going to run the experiment of what happens when I choose independent of that based purely on my aliveness, joy, and sense of calling to see how it goes.
Coaching is a 100% confidential process with the leaders that we work with. Because we've published this together, I can speak to one of my longtime clients, Kim Culmone, who's the Head of Product Design at Mattel. Many years ago, he chose to trust where she felt her heart going. To make a long story short, she did it with her team, but she is the one who spearheaded the diversity of Barbie dolls, from being the least diversified. It’s this blonde, the absurdly shaped White woman to the most diversified doll in the world of all colors, all shapes and sizes.
That enabled people like Greta Gerwig, Ryan Gosling, and Margot Robbie to invest in the brand because it had that foundation already and brought it into this whole other experience for people, which has become an amazing phenomenon in that film. I had another client say they left the film with their teenage son. They came home, hugged the mother and the wife, and thanked her for the journey of women and being there.
That started with one leader saying, “I'm willing to move into this.” Her observation was that, at the time, she was on the fence of, do I, because I know where her heart is. Do I start a nonprofit to pursue diversity and equality in the world? This is a Fortune 500 company. She had a revelation. She’s like, “I see now that this global infrastructure company exists for my purpose of coming into the world.” There was a flip that happened. She leaned into it.
Greta Gerwig has a quote in the New York Times story and review about the film where she said, “In my research when I went to Mattel, I hung out with the people and the design group and everything. I saw that what they were doing was spiritual work.” She used the word spiritual work, which, in a sense, it was, although it was not overtly called that. It was one person's deep sense of calling that her sense of aliveness that was trusted and created that.
Greta Gerwig directed the Barbie film, as I understand it. If there's 1 of 6 people on earth who haven't seen the film yet, it’s beautiful. Following that calling, we should use the organization and recognize that the organization, perhaps if we allow ourselves to see it that way, exists for the furtherance of these purposes individually and collectively.
You're calling me saying, “No, I am going to start a new thing.” That would've been directive. All the options are available. The answer to your question is how people do it. They run the experiment. They see what happens when I act in that. What happens when I transcend the polarity, like a major spiritual tool like you and I know, transcend the polarity that my ego is created of nonprofit or a sell-out? That's a baloney polarity. We can both create a positive impact, follow our aliveness, do well ourselves, and do well for the world.
There are people who are looking for that. If it's the work we do, there are clients looking for this. In the work that she does, there are consumers that are looking for this. To your earlier point about the tallest buildings, the government is not going to put a Barbie in the hands of millions of girls and boys, but children around the world. It's a beautiful contribution.
There are people looking for that but not necessarily looking for a spiritual approach to the work. When we move into this zone in ourselves, whether we're looking for the evidence from a spiritual or a scientific physiological point of view, the neuroanatomy of what happens when we move from what I should do to the curiosity of what does this calling, what would come from this to this particular opportunity or challenge that the neuroanatomy becomes much more innovation-based when we move into that zone of aliveness than should do.
Neuroanatomy
Could you talk more about that neuroanatomy piece, both from the science of it but also in terms of how you've seen it play out? What I'm hearing behind what you're saying is, “I've seen this shift, and perhaps I have a story about it preserving confidentiality.”
The neuroanatomy is looking at work by people like Tara Swift and Barbara Oakley and a recent MRI white paper done at Harvard. When the brain leaves fear and job, that orientation to one of curiosity, creativity, and invention, the brain goes from focused mode, which is like, “This is a task I should do.” It’s become a small part of the brain that is all about that.
When we let go of that and move into the feeling of aliveness and curiosity, the brain goes into what's called dispersed mode, which is when a few different parts of the brain become active. What happens is it's like a great design sprint collaboration between the executive function, creative function, and production function.
As a result, more creative and innovative things come through it. It wasn't a variety of different races and ethnicities that came out from the Barbie thing, but there are Barbies who taught kids to meditate to alleviate anxiety in this day and age of social media and so on. They're the first non-binary doll line that came out of that energy of the first where kids could let go of that binary polarity in this world. Kids could create their own version of the doll that aligned with where they saw themselves.
These are things that innovations that became, in two separate years, part of Time Magazine's best inventions of that year in terms of the impact they had. We did a workshop with the entire design group of the Barbie group. The practice was to first identify what brings you alive and, in an event, see where that coincides with the broader mission of your brand. And as a result, when they identified that they could bring that heart and aliveness to what they were doing every day because they saw the connection. It, in turn, brought innovation out.
An amazing woman stood up. She said, “I'm a personal assistant here. I'm not a designer. This was going to mean what brings me joy because what brings me joy and aliveness is bringing surprising joy to my family.” I thought, “I can create that for the people here. What I can do is, as a personal impact, all the meetings I organized for you guys, and people laughed about that.” She goes, “I will now find a way to bring joy for a moment into that meeting. I might not have the impact that the designers have, but it's something.”
Kim and I intervened at that point and said, “If you bring joy to a meeting, whereas before a bunch of people would be coming in looking at their things, can't wait until this is over. All of a sudden, there's a moment that elevates their consciousness and brain anatomy to joy and aliveness. You may be responsible for the greatest innovation this company has ever created.”
If you can bring joy to a meeting, the people involved will experience a moment when their consciousness is elevated.
She's changing the conditions.
She's changing the conditions that are important to innovation. She is at that understanding because it's true. That's what we can offer by bringing people into this other zone and higher gears. You end up having people who are feeling brought alive, which is a much better workforce to have these days, especially in the era of the Great Resignation and the Hidden Resignation. That state generates a greater possibility for your company.
What makes it happen is that willingness to set aside the complete the task brain. I like the way you said it earlier. I don't think you were talking exactly about this, but it seems that the same would apply. To put that task-focused brain on the shelf for a moment, I can still see it, and it's still there. Give ourselves permission to have this other conversation and see what happens.
It can be scary at first to leave that. That's why I won't say it's time to let go of that, cut that tether, and kill the ego phrase. I detest the whole new age movement thing and say, “No, you don't have to do that from the shelf.” I watched a great documentary called The Defiant Ones about Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine's partnership over the years.
One of the pearls of wisdom came out when someone described Jimmy Iovine's superpower. They said, “It's always amazed me, his willingness to let go of whatever got him to this place in order to bring in what was going to take him to the next place.” Many people are challenged there because that got me here. It's scary to cut that away. If we say, “No, you don't have to cut away. It's there. You can always go back to that. Let's run the experiment.”
This is something that interests you, too, Andrew. How do we translate this in a way that makes it universal, accessible, and permissible? The S-word can be polarizing in a way with that. What I find is the beautiful perpetual example ship of this is nature. When I go there, I look at references and examples, and it's both safe and profound. It's nature. That's scientific from one lens. I could say it's spiritual from another lens.
In this case, coming back from these redwoods, I love up North. A redwood tree, as it grows, lets the lower limbs die. Look at a redwood tree. Sometimes, the canopy doesn't even start until two-thirds of the tree. It lets the lower ones die as it grows closer to the light and the moisture of clouds it uses. It's perfectly fine to let go of what got it to this level to adopt something that's going to get it to the next level. In my theorizing, that is something that is true. That undiluted energy of nature will be true.
It's highly successful, tried and true.
It’s 14 billion years of iteration. It's going to be true for us because we are a part of nature. Similarly, we get to let go of what got us to where we are, discerning what might still work but be open to a higher limb for us.
We are part of nature. We get to let go of what got us to where we are discerningly to understand what might still work for us.
Decision Making
Discerningly and with guardrails, or we may do it in order to lean into it. I'm reminded of a few things. One is this metaphor that I've heard and used many times with clients, including decision-making about our own thoughts and what I am going to believe. That's to recognize that if we are the tree, are we thinking in terms of the protection and flourishing of the tree or my individual branch?
If you're an organization working in a department where the market is no longer there, or you're still making film at Kodak, you're that branch. You have to recognize where you are in that branch. You want to build your nest in a different branch, leave, or otherwise recognize that the decisions need to be made for the benefit of the organism, not of that particular branch,
What is the real mission of this organism? Is it to be that branch? Is it to be the oak tree or the redwood? If it's that, the analogy here is if it were Kodak and it's about film, and we think what we're about is film, even though this giant digital age is emerging, we're going to be in trouble. If we let go and say, “Film was one vehicle.” I'm making this up now. We're about human expression. Whatever forms that take, that's our business and brand, not film. That creates new limbs that own that particular positioning and mission for us. That can move from form to form as the world changes. Human expression will always be a constant.
Making those decisions, in terms of the work that I think you and I both do, working with leaders in decision-making is difficult when we've been in the film business for many years and letting go of our own individual point of view that we become identified with. I'm reading a wonderful book now called Quit by Annie Duke, which talks about how a point of view is connected to our identity. The harder it is to quit it, which makes perfect sense.
Adam Grant, in his book Think Again, talks about the need for us to question our own thinking and the long body of research that supports the conclusion that the more expert we are, the harder it is to let our point of view go. How could I possibly let it go? I'm an expert. That may be the most necessary. To throw into this conversation the body of research that we think better when we are in nature. It doesn't mean we should always be in nature, but when we go to nature, we think better because our brains are activated in a certain way via nature. We can learn and benefit from the system of nature and being in that place, in terms of decision-making and listening to that voice within that Howard Thurman was speaking of.
It is always a relentless reflection of systems and processes that can work for us. We're willing to see what's happening in nature. The distinction that you're describing that person or the brand leader is attached to that thing. Somehow, I am moving the conversation to be able to see that there is form, and there is what is motivating form. What is Simon Sinek’s why versus what?
If I can move the conversation with that person, I hear that you love this form that you've been creating so far. It is an awesome idea and form. What excites you about that? What excites you about that particular thing? That is ideally the question of what it is and what's the why for them in terms of uniting them back because I love to see the joy on people's faces when they get their photographs back. What if there are more ways to create that joy in addition to that particular form or other forms? That can open up a conversation where they see their identity isn't at stake. It’s an opportunity for that identity to express itself more fully.
Book Recommendations
There's an opportunity to pick up another tool or experiment with another direction that will serve that bigger purpose more directly. Before I forget, the full title of that book is Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away by Annie Duke, who talks about the amazing biases that keep us persevering and greatly marching along, even if we're marching off a cliff and the need for us to question our own thinking and recognize these biases at work. There are many.
There's another great book called Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Maree Brown. Using emergent theory, which looks at natural systems and how they work from simple, like basic choices at a molecular level, creates these beautiful complex systems, but they're working on a certain code of what is to be done, and different systems get created by human beings or redwood.
Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds
The idea is to bring that wisdom into the worlds of business, activism, and all sectors and look at the core tenets of emergence on the planet as the cues for how we can create amazing things and great change. There's evolution happening on the level of natural systems and what we're going to create. We're natural systems that get to create this and be as evolutionary in that sense.
Paradigm of Creation
I appreciate the zoom-outness of this conversation to look at what's happening in the world that is successful. What are those systems that we can learn from, which is important, particularly if we're locked into some conference room, like a finite period of time, binary decision-making model, the opportunity to zoom out and say, “From where else can we learn of some potential options approaches?” This field of biomimicry is a piece of that, which is the opportunity to see what else can inform our decisions so that we can stay on course even if that course is not necessarily the track I'm on right now.
How do we, at this point in our evolution, create even more expansively in order to address some of our challenges? I’m working with the client. I became aware of this because they're at the cusp of being a known leader in their industry. At this point, they felt like it was about me now creating my own thing out there. There was something holding them back.
I realized that what it was was their consciousness, which was still like an old, outdated idea of the universe of a mechanistic. There's a final set of everything in this universe. It's a bunch of marbles. There's only that bunch of marbles. We have to grab the marbles that are there and find out how we fit into the marbles. Naturally, it becomes a confined, narrow aperture possibility when we're looking at things, and many of us do. There are many jobs and opportunities. I have to make sure I fit into that.
We started to talk about what if he ran an experiment of leaving that concept of how reality works to a different one, which is, it's not a finite set, but there's this field of quantum potential that my intentionality and actions impact that generate limitless possibility for me in that direction. I'm moving from a paradigm of availability to a paradigm of creation, which means I don't orient around what I perceive as available. I'm going to move into every moment as its own new total blank slate, waiting to see what my intentionality and actions are and bring forward new things for me to choose to create whatever it is that I feel I'm here to create.
It's so much fun to watch someone go there and begin to see, even in that short amount of time, how the new possibilities that occurred to them in terms of what I can create versus what I need to fit into. It shows them right away how much on track they are. They get to see how many great leaders out there didn't orient around what is available. What do people want from me right now? I said, “No, this is going to be something amazing that people are going to want to participate in like Steve Jobs and people who said, “This brings me alive. I'm going to create in this direction. There is no personal computer market in the world now. There will be.” Here, we are doing this on a Mac.
In my experience, that type of thinking does not need to be a world-changing physical, tangible product. It could be the way I think about something or the way our team addresses something. It could be as much about the how as is about the what in my experience to think differently about the how, for example.
In fact, that's where I always start in my work. I know you're familiar with a living vision, where they're writing in the present tense a day in their life, and this is what they want to create. I encourage you not to move into form. Not move into this role, company, and much money, but not take that detour and rate what they're here to have on this planet, which is an experience, a qualitative experience of life that has been missing so far of comradery, joy, creativity, and aliveness. Building that into that becomes the trellis-work of co-creation that begins to form around that as they live into creating that experience. That's what's important.
That prompts me to talk about how you say sometimes we don't talk about the S-word, presumably spiritual, and sometimes, we don't talk about the F-word, which is feelings. What you're talking about is how it feels in that vision state. What are you feeling? What's prompting those feelings? What's happening around us that's prompting those feelings and having that desired future state pulled us forward?
Spiritual Dimension
I'm feeling the need to back up a little bit and connect some of what we're talking about what this show is about. Let me hold where we are and say, “What's the connection between this type of thinking?” We're thinking in terms of new possibilities and paradigms. We're willing to not believe everything we think and move in new directions in terms of creativity and how we might approach problems and make decisions. What's the connection, in your view, between these spiritual dimensions of ourselves?
That's such an important understanding, which, a lot of times, we have regarding spirituality and business. That means bringing meditation in for everybody in the morning and a gratitude circle at 4:00, which are all great things. What we're talking about is a way of being as opposed to the doings of spirituality. This core thing of helping people move into their aliveness inside and move into what brings them that energy in this life is the only thing we're here for in the end. All we have is our experience.
The beautiful thing is that energy and feeling are the compass that's been implanted in us to know what we're here to express individually on the planet. That energy fuels all the cohesiveness, serendipity, and everything else that goes into creating anything meaningful as opposed to defaulting to the mechanistic way of being in the universe, which is not what brings me alive. It's what one does at this point as a human being.
It's such a sad thing to me that people, through that sense of perhaps fear and scarcity, move into that default zone when this other thing is available. A lot of my clients are amazing leaders who got to that summit. That was going to be the summit where they said, “That's where I know I made it. It’s that place.” It's like this beautifully wrapped gift box that they've been eyeing for a long time. They get there and open it up. It's like, “Where is the there?”
It is sad to see people go through a sense of fear and scarcity, which pushes them into a default zone. They fail to see other opportunities that are widely available to them out there.
The realization is that they flip the ends and the means at some point along the journey. At the beginning of our lives, we know that it's about being as much as we can in the sense of joy, aliveness, and love. We say, “For me to have those, I'm going to move in the direction of being this and doing this.” They start that. In the midst of it, they lose touch with that. They're going for the experience. They think they're going for the form. They get there and realize they defaulted out of that qualitative experience, the whole journey. Frequently, they come and join me. This time, I don't want to lose sight of why I'm here and why I was doing all that, which was to have the experience of aliveness, purpose, mission, and impact.
That's the long-winded answer to your question, Andrew, but for me, in terms of what spirituality means in this context, when we move the cloaking of that word and look at what the opportunity is for us and embrace those other dimensions and gears that are available to us, but we haven't thought of those as real or pragmatic, as practical as the default mode. From my point of view, if the purpose of our being here is to have this qualitative experience, those other dimensions and gears are infinitely more pragmatic and practical than the ones we were taught are the important tools here.
Connecting With Aliveness
To connect with that, what brings us alive, and as we wrap this conversation a bit, as I look at that and consider what brings me alive, perhaps it gives me the courage to run the experiment that you're talking about to connect with that aliveness. I hear the way you are connecting that aliveness with that spiritual sense, whatever that may mean. We may access it, but it is a recognition and a discovery, not a creation. It's about finding what's already there. Discovering where that aliveness lives and having the courage to bring that into our work and the world needs it. To Dr. Thurman's point, the world needs people who are alive, and businesses need people who are alive.
What happens in the statistics and the research on things like productivity, impact, and innovation is that they all jump through the roof when people are feeling ignited by a sense of purpose. The data is there to support this thesis. It doesn't have to be called spirituality. At the same time, it's okay if it is because the outcomes for the individual and the broader organism are outstanding.
The research supports what we're talking about in terms of nature and thinking in different ways. The research around bias supports the conclusion that we need to do things in ways that may feel counterintuitive because our minds are biased in certain ways.
Bias is another word for I've adopted the conditioning of some preexisting modality. That's outdated now.
There's an opportunity. Let me be clear. There are a lot of Barbies in different parts of the world. The Barbie experiment and experience is such a beautiful illustration of what can happen when one trusts and uses business in a way. It becomes this zeitgeist of important conversation. It’s not necessarily easy, but it's an important conversation. No important conversations are ever easy. It's beautiful. I'm grateful you're able to share that experience directly.
One of the examples I love that I read in the Harvard Business Review is the story of Microsoft. The CEO came on sometime around 2018 and identified that Microsoft's organism had become emblematic of the status quo. The reason was that the organism had oriented around that one suite of tools and programming. How do we keep protecting that? How do we keep holding the ground instead of going back to their original thing of Microsoft, innovation, and opportunities? He called it moving the paradigm of the company from defense to offense, which is moving from the paradigm of availability. That is what we have in the paradigm of creation. What do we want to create?
It's looking forward versus looking backward.
Unlocking the engineers to think that way, go that way, and spend money in new directions. Not innovating, but buying innovative companies and having that become a part of their thing. When the study was done on companies that had what's called perpetual innovation, they didn't think, “Let's innovate and come up with our thing, and we'll keep pushing everything into that.”
Let's innovate 12% or 15% of the time.
Stop there. We never stop the process that gave us that and a living organism in nature. An oak tree doesn't stop at, “I'm an amazing acorn. Cool.” It keeps saying, “What does it mean to be an oak tree now and proceed in that direction?” Microsoft is a living example in that the research done in perpetual innovation companies. They now scored higher than Google.
Innovation And Efficiency
I met Satya Nadella and worked at Microsoft in 2015. I’m working with leadership, talking about the growth-learner mindset. What does that mean? It is an uphill climb. It's difficult because I've heard the saying, and I believe it's true, and I've heard it's true from my clients in a number of different places, that efficiency is the enemy of innovation.
When you get to the point of maturity with this leading suite of products around the world, all you want to be is efficient. If you're leaning on efficiency, you're sacrificing innovation by definition. I don't want to be too binary about it, but as I've seen it, you're either going to lean this way or that way. How can you find the happy medium?
One has to be the servant. One has to be the master. That's the important thing. Innovation can serve efficiency, like innovating more ways efficiently. The lifeblood of companies like that is making sure that those who are tasked with efficiency are doing it under the idea that how that serves the broader mission innovation that we're doing, as opposed to making sure as many marbles as possible or in the cast not outside the cast.
It can take on a life of its own, particularly if an organization is driven by quarterly revenues. It's like, “Let's keep pulling this thing because this is what gets us. This is our money maker.”
We can look at natural systems and say, “There's amazing efficiency out there.” You can't look and see something that's out of place or extra. In nature, it is in a congruent system of creation because it talks about perpetual innovation, whatever is behind what we call spirituality or nature. The one thing that we can say emphatically and empirically that is important to it is innovation. It's never repeated itself once in 14 billion years. It hasn't even done the same snowflake twice. Everything that ever comes into being has never existed before and will never exist again.
You, Andrew Cohen, Kirk Soder, those personas, these forms, it's like you could say, “We're insignificant in terms of 10 to the 22 stars.” Yes, that's one of the parts of the paradox. At the same time, we are infinitely precious because our expression will only be a part of this for this particular amount of time. How important it is to follow natural systems. There's that level of maniacalness with regard to innovation, but it also finds a way to have efficiency to make sure that as much energy as possible is going into that as opposed to what's not needed anymore.
What does not bring us alive?
If you walk into a redwood forest or the Anza-Borrego desert, everything that is thriving out there is spending every moment that brings me alive right now.
Without thinking about it.
It doesn't need to think about it. You need to trust that sense of how to respond at this moment in a way that brings me the most alive, whether I'm a choa cactus, a redwood tree, a fern, a piece of algae, a human, or a brand manager at X brand corporation.
Closing Words
We must continue this conversation in some form. This may be a logical breaking point here. I invite you to come and continue this conversation with me in the beautiful nature of Northern New Mexico. Perhaps having a seat around some of our horses and feeling some of the inspiration of that do come to a little plug. Before we wrap, I would like to ask you to please share if any reader would like to learn more about you or your work, where could they go for information? What's the best way to learn more about you?
My website is KirkSouder.co. You can look around there. The contact information is there. The most true and relevant way to explore my work is to go inside yourself, look at what brings you alive, trust that, and move in that direction. What would that mean now in your life and work and everything else? That would be the best discovery process.
Thank you for that invitation. It's a grand, lovely invitation. Thank you for expressing that succinctly and appealingly. I look forward to spending more time in that place. You're inviting me in. How can I do more of this for what's available? Thank you so much. Thanks for being on the show and taking the time. It's been an absolute pleasure.
Thanks, Andrew. Thanks for inviting me. Thanks for doing this as a theme and an important vector in our world at this point. I appreciate that, and I've had a great time. Thank you.
It brings me alive. Thanks, Kirk.
Thank you. Take care.