The Art of Manliness - #293： How to Do More With Less

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast have you ever

00:00:18.780 told yourself man if i only had more time more money or more connections i could start putting

00:00:23.800 into action those big plans i have for my life well my guest today on the podcast is here to

00:00:29.020 tell you that those extra resources might actually hurt you more in the long run than if you just

00:00:33.340 embraced and used what you already have at hand his name is scott sunenshine he's professor of

00:00:37.780 business management at rice university and in his latest book stretch unlock the power of less and

00:00:42.420 achieve more than you ever imagined he highlights case studies from the world of business that show

00:00:46.700 that companies that try to get more resources like money or employees actually have a higher fail rate

00:00:52.000 than companies that try to make do with the resources they already have at their disposal

00:00:55.820 today on the show scott and i discuss why chasing more resources often leads to failure and why

00:01:00.200 learning to stretch and use what you've already got scott then shares insights he's gleamed from

00:01:04.460 the world of business and how this stretching principle help you achieve your personal goals

00:01:07.900 we then dig into the science of why constraints makes us more creative and scrappy why planning

00:01:12.680 is overrated and why you should put a premium on action and why it's so hard to stretch even though

00:01:17.380 we intuitively know that it comes with lots of benefits great show filled with actionable insights

00:01:22.440 after the show's over check out the show notes at aom.is slash stretch

00:01:27.020 scott sunenshine welcome to the show thanks so much for having me you're the author of a book

00:01:39.480 called stretch unlock the power of less and achieve more than you ever imagined and really it's one of

00:01:44.820 the best books i've read this year just just packed with all this this useful information is just

00:01:50.060 these interesting tidbits and case studies so it's all about how companies individuals go about

00:01:56.380 being successful in their career or with their in their industry and you start off the book there

00:02:03.160 there are two ways there's there's stretching which we'll talk about here in a bit and there's

00:02:07.320 chasing and you argue that the way a lot of companies or individuals go about being productive in life

00:02:13.500 getting the success they want is through chasing can you describe what are the traits of a chaser

00:02:18.880 and yeah just kind of give us a walkthrough through that chasing is the idea that we need more

00:02:24.500 resources in order to be successful so we orient our entire lives or entire business models about

00:02:30.640 trying to suck up as many resources as fast as possible and i learned this firsthand during the

00:02:36.780 dot-com boom and subsequent bust in silicon valley i went out there to join a startup and i was i was

00:02:42.060 definitely chasing i was promised a lot of wealth everyone was going through these ipos and i got

00:02:49.020 out there and organizations were doing the same thing because the entire model was let's just raise

00:02:54.360 as much money as we can let's bring in as many employees as we can and instead of building something

00:02:59.720 sustainable whether it be a sustainable business a sustainable career or even a sustainable life

00:03:05.760 this whole model just worked as long as someone wrote the check and as people stopped writing

00:03:10.700 checks and the market collapsed you were left with not much and so that's where i came up with

00:03:15.760 the idea of chasing and chasing is driven largely through what we call social comparisons and that's

00:03:22.480 the sense that you look around at your neighbors your friends your colleagues at work and you think that

00:03:28.880 you need the same things in order to succeed so you focus so much of your efforts on trying to get

00:03:35.040 these things meanwhile you overlook the most important goals right in front of you right and

00:03:40.300 you still see the chasing model today in silicon valley with the the venture capital right like

00:03:45.380 it's just companies who are just trying to get as much cash as they can like the whole mantra is there

00:03:50.700 is like you know cash flow solves all problems spending it on high salaries perks for their employees but

00:03:56.600 a lot of these companies they like what's the success rate for venture capital funded you know tech

00:04:01.900 companies it's not that great is it well we'll see what well yeah we'll see we'll see what it is in

00:04:05.880 in this most current cycle to kind of call the song it it does feel like 1999 all over again but back in

00:04:12.720 the boom and bust that i was in roughly 50 percent of organizations that were founded went out of

00:04:19.320 business like in around five years or so those that survived took this very different approach around

00:04:25.560 stretching which is really about being resourceful and focusing on how do you get the most out of what you

00:04:30.940 already have as opposed to trying to accumulate resources you have to remember that resources are

00:04:36.420 instrumental they help us reach goals they're not the goal itself but people forget that and i mean

00:04:41.920 how does chasing play itself out in our personal lives is it just like oh if only this thing was

00:04:47.340 different or i had this thing i would be successful is that like a chasing mentality in our personal lives

00:04:51.580 yeah absolutely if i only had more money or more connections i can do all of these things and then

00:04:59.500 of course you see chasing a lot when it comes to how we set up our our households so a lot of people

00:05:06.140 move into larger homes than they necessarily would because they think that it's a symbol of status and their

00:05:12.860 neighbors have it and the problem is i like to think of this as you're on the treadmill and you're trying

00:05:18.440 to get somewhere forward and that's what your goal is but with a treadmill of course you're not moving

00:05:23.740 any forward you're working hard and your legs are moving but you're not making any progress and then

00:05:28.680 as you chase you escalate those comparisons i talk about people in the book who are multi-millionaires

00:05:35.260 who feel inadequate as they make comparisons to billionaires so you turn up that dial on the treadmill

00:05:40.500 and you're running faster and faster and faster but you're still not making any more progress

00:05:44.420 towards your goals and that's the challenge with chasing it's a rat race that people don't want to

00:05:49.060 play but they end up playing it because they don't have the courage to recognize and have a conversation

00:05:54.860 with themselves about what it is they're trying to accomplish in their lives and i think also chasing

00:06:00.260 can be a roadblock to actually getting started with something because you use that as an excuse like well

00:06:05.640 i mean i would get in shape but i just don't have time or the money for the gym so they just keep putting

00:06:11.560 it off right yeah exactly it delays it delays reaching your goals and you have a whole chapter

00:06:17.240 in the in the book about that and you take this it's an excuse it's a really convenient excuse to

00:06:21.740 say oh you know i don't i don't have the gym membership or i have an inadequate set of weights

00:06:28.320 in my in my house well just go for a walk or go for a jog or do something and the idea with stretching is

00:06:33.680 you you reach your goals when you start doing something because our success comes not from what we

00:06:39.400 think about or what we plan to do but from what we actually do and chasing is the ultimate

00:06:44.340 distraction and excuse to do nothing all right let's talk about stretching you've mentioned some

00:06:48.880 of the attributes of stretchers they're they use they see their resources and and that what they

00:06:53.480 have and they they start there instead of thinking about what they don't have any other

00:06:56.880 attributes of of a good stretcher a good stretcher is also going to embrace constraints i think when a

00:07:02.880 lot of people think about constraints they want to run away from them because from the chasing

00:07:07.880 mentality constraints are bad because we think of ourselves as worthy people if we have a lot that's

00:07:15.120 what comes from chasing but with constraints stretchers embrace constraints and they recognize

00:07:19.760 that when their backs are against the wall that's when we can unleash that inner macgyver that i think

00:07:24.260 all of us have so i like to think of stretchers as macgyvering their entire life not just you know

00:07:30.620 the physical things and not just in the way that he does it but to think about all of the problems

00:07:35.620 that we face and ask not what i don't have but what do i have and how can i think about those

00:07:40.520 more creatively and there's a whole whole host of research in psychology that shows that when we face

00:07:45.800 constraints when we think about scarcity we can get really creative with what we have and it allows us

00:07:50.600 to solve problems that we otherwise might need more resources for and with this constraints you know

00:07:56.520 yeah you you talk a lot about a lot of research you highlight a lot of research how actually

00:08:00.040 constraints can make us more creative i mean any specific um uh studies or experiments that uh that

00:08:06.940 stood out to you that showed that constraints actually make us more creative yeah so i like this

00:08:11.940 study that looks at simply thinking about constraints because the reality is is all of us probably face

00:08:18.560 constraints in our lives at some time and that's often where we can get into the stretching mindset

00:08:24.400 but i think the bigger challenge is most people in this country are relatively fortunate and how do we

00:08:31.660 unleash this power of stretching when we're in these types of situations so in this research study they

00:08:37.420 divided participants into two groups randomly one group was told simply think about a time when you

00:08:43.120 were a child and you had a lot of things that's the abundance group then another group was told think

00:08:48.680 about a time when you were a child and you didn't have a lot that's called the scarcity or constraint group

00:08:53.060 then they were given a problem computer lab had some extra bubble wrap and they needed to solve a

00:08:59.020 problem related to the bubble wrap and it turns out that simply just thinking about constraints allow

00:09:04.360 people to come up with more creative and innovative ideas and that's one of the beauties of the stretching

00:09:09.120 mindset is it's not that hard to get into first of all we have familiarity with stretching whenever we

00:09:16.400 faced a real constraint that's where we can get into this and you know people who i profile billionaires who

00:09:22.360 grew up during hard times and they were able to build really successful businesses by using the

00:09:27.940 lessons of stretching that they gained when they were under hard times but even when we're relatively

00:09:32.800 fortunate simply thinking about constraints can get us into a similar type of headspace so we too can find

00:09:38.820 success at all times so yeah if you are in a fortune position you have to be more thoughtful about

00:09:44.060 establishing those constraints for yourself i mean that takes a little bit of uh willpower i imagine

00:09:49.240 it takes willpower and it also i think really takes a lot of courage because again if we think that

00:09:54.040 most people are operating out of this chasing mindset by having constraints you're trying to say well maybe

00:10:00.980 i'm inferior because i judge how valuable i am as a person or how important my business is based off of

00:10:08.660 our resources why would i ever want to put myself under constraints you look at the way a lot of startup

00:10:14.580 organizations evolve they start as the scrappy garage startup that's the classic hp in silicon

00:10:20.960 valley and then they move into these really elaborate beautiful headquarters because i think they want

00:10:25.620 to show themselves and the rest of the world that they've made it really big meanwhile they send all

00:10:30.960 of these signals to their employees that says hey it's okay to squander resources look at all of the

00:10:35.920 things that we have we live in the land of abundance and you know the the challenges and i'm talking

00:10:40.900 about a lot of the unicorn startups you see right now they don't actually make any money they spend

00:10:45.680 a lot of money but they don't make they don't make a lot of money and they send all of these

00:10:49.000 signals and they create a culture of waste and when someone stops writing the check they're going to

00:10:53.580 have a really hard time adapting i think there was there's a quote something i forgot who said it

00:10:57.420 something along the lines that like great nations begin stoic and they die epicurean yeah they kind of

00:11:04.340 begin very you know hearty and scrappy but then the reason they die is because the success they got

00:11:09.300 from that scrappiness eventually kills them yeah they consider it inferior right so besides constraints

00:11:15.180 any other attributes of a stretcher yeah so another another important part is this idea of ownership

00:11:21.280 and how stretchers embrace what they have from a from a psychological sense of ownership so i've done

00:11:28.920 some research that looks at retail employees and you wouldn't think of retail employees as those who have

00:11:34.120 a lot of ownership they're barely paid above minimum wage and they don't have equity stakes

00:11:40.400 or any of that stuff but what i found in this research of this large chain of stores is if

00:11:46.060 employees can get into that headspace where they literally feel like they own the resources in their

00:11:51.440 stores they're able to solve problems more creatively and effectively the challenge of course is

00:11:57.360 we tend to strip away ownership from employees we like to put on a dunce cap on them we expect that

00:12:03.240 people are not going to perform their best so we develop a lot of control mechanisms to monitor

00:12:08.320 employees and take away discretion and as a result we end up getting employees who are controlled and

00:12:15.420 don't take discretionary action that would help the organization so ownership when you feel like you own

00:12:20.720 stuff around you and that's hard that's hard to grasp at work because most of us don't work for

00:12:25.280 ourselves we work for other people and we don't own the desk we're working at we don't own the tools

00:12:29.420 we're working at we don't own the computer we're working at but if you can get into that space where

00:12:33.280 you feel like you own these types of things you're able to come up with more creative solutions and

00:12:40.020 then another important aspect of the mindset is frugality and that's all about how do you use

00:12:45.720 resources in effective ways being good stewards we tend to conflate frugality with cheapness and they're

00:12:53.780 two very different things from a psychologist perspective when people are cheap they are

00:12:59.580 pained from spending money they have this bad reaction in their gut so they can't part with money

00:13:04.940 that is not the ticket to a successful life or a successful business because you're not going to

00:13:10.440 make indulgences and we like to indulge sometimes there's nothing wrong with that you're also not

00:13:15.200 going to invest in your business because you're afraid to spend money when we're frugal however it's a

00:13:20.380 very different psychology we take pleasure in using money and other resources wisely so it's about

00:13:27.220 getting a good deal it's about using resources efficiently and that's what tends to be the path

00:13:32.440 to not only a good life but a successful business okay so let's backtrack to this idea of ownership so

00:13:38.320 it's an important aspect of a stretcher and so if you're an employer or you're an employee and you're

00:13:43.520 listening to this you're like i i want i want that because i i know it can make me more effective

00:13:47.260 how do you go about creating that culture in a in a company that culture of ownership so it starts

00:13:52.860 with trust and trusting the front line that they can make decisions because if you think about it

00:13:58.140 the people who are closest to your products closest to your customers are your front line employees

00:14:04.280 yet we take away so much of their ability to use that information because we don't trust them so

00:14:10.360 starting a culture of ownership is really a leadership challenge it's a challenge that sets up an

00:14:15.180 environment that says hey we're going to empower you we're going to trust you to make good decisions

00:14:19.820 and we're going to give you the benefit of the doubt now some people of course will take advantage of

00:14:24.280 that and that's always going to be a negative outcome and there's there's ways you can do that

00:14:28.540 but most people want to make contributions to work they want to help their organizations but we don't

00:14:33.640 trust them so in one one part of my my research i went to the most successful store manager in this

00:14:38.760 in this chain of stores and it was a woman's fashion boutique and i i was asking him

00:14:43.200 what is it that allows you to be so successful and he told me a story about the time when he got a 0.59

00:14:48.720 piece of crap dress no one wanted to buy it the store had lots of it it was falling off the hangers

00:14:53.700 and most people would resign themselves and say i can't be successful in this type of 1.00

00:14:58.440 environment i have garbage to sell so i'm just going to wait until something better comes along

00:15:04.300 well what this guy did is he took a pair of scissors he cut the straps off he rolled it up put a bow

00:15:11.020 around and it made a sign that said beachwear and it went from a last seller to a best seller now a lot

00:15:16.340 of companies that probably would get you fired that would be called damaging the products right

00:15:20.960 but what this company did is it empowered people like him to make these types of decisions that were

00:15:26.400 good for his store as well as the larger company so that ownership it sounds like gives the gives the

00:15:32.020 person an internal locus of control right that they are in control of their exactly so going back to

00:15:37.760 frugality i thought this was a really great section frugality is you enjoy spending money

00:15:43.620 but you enjoy when it's spent wisely right and saving money so how do you avoid because i know

00:15:50.800 when i've been in my frugal streaks it often slips into miserliness where i just get you know i'm just

00:15:56.700 pinching every penny and it's not enjoyable but somehow i turn to this scrooge my duck where i enjoy

00:16:02.300 counting my coins right how do you avoid frugality slipping into miserliness well i think you have

00:16:08.960 to remind yourself of what your goals are and it's kind of ironic but if you think about it the cheap

00:16:15.480 person is really not that much different than the than the chaser because the chaser is so worried

00:16:22.440 about accumulation is going out and trying to acquire resources counting those resources well in many

00:16:28.420 respects that's what the cheap person is doing they're hoarding their resources they're hoarding

00:16:32.740 their money they're counting i mean you're literally counting counting those coins and meanwhile the

00:16:39.160 numbers might be increasing you might have more money you might have more coins or more of whatever

00:16:43.100 you're trying to maximize but you're not using those towards your goals and again at the end of the day

00:16:48.560 what we care about is using our resources to achieve goals not just to get more resources that would be a

00:16:55.540 pretty bizarre goal resources are instrumental so if we remind ourselves what their actual goals are

00:17:01.640 we can get closer to the frugality part of this spectrum than the cheap part and you highlight i

00:17:09.160 guess he's a hedge fund manager of some sort but he was super i mean he's a big penny pincher yeah

00:17:13.680 you're talking about webbush this is a guy who's got millions and millions of dollars and he's a he has

00:17:20.580 his own investment bank and he lives in this dilapidated house with a leaky roof he doesn't

00:17:28.120 seem to want to get a professional to repair the roof he's been seen on his roof trying to repair it

00:17:32.780 himself the house is in such disrepair that mold has started to infest in it so his wife doesn't

00:17:39.540 want to spend the night in that home meanwhile this guy would easily be able to fix it his same business

00:17:44.920 is run the same way where he didn't want to fix the carpet people were tripping all over the place 0.85

00:17:49.020 one of his regulators fined his company for compliance issues not because there was any

00:17:54.400 ill will done but because he was so cheap and didn't invest in compliance and so this is this is

00:17:59.380 this is the classic example of someone being cheap he's counting his money he's not using it to focus on

00:18:06.020 goals that i i would argue would be his more meaningful goals and it's completely displaced him

00:18:11.000 from living i think the type of life that most of us would consider uh wanting to live i guess a

00:18:17.080 contrast him would be someone like warren buffett i mean the guy's a billionaire but he seems pretty

00:18:21.720 frugal like he doesn't mind spending money as so long as it's wisely spent yeah that's right and he

00:18:27.420 of course is donating most of his money to charity and i think there's a lot we can learn from

00:18:33.060 successful business people who take this approach there's a couple of others i profile in the book

00:18:38.660 one is dick yingling who founded a very successful beer company it's actually the largest domestic beer

00:18:43.980 producer in america right now with domestic production and he's he's really frugal he reuses

00:18:50.340 styrofoam coffee cups and drives a very modest car he's one of the 500 richest men according to uh

00:18:57.280 forbes magazine and he's instilled his culture in his whole company and the same thing for this guy by

00:19:04.180 the name of bob kierlin who you know does some pretty pretty extreme things on the frugality side

00:19:11.520 such as not reimbursing expenses when employees travel because or not reimbursing meals when they

00:19:16.560 travel because of course they need to eat but the flip side of that is he takes that money and he

00:19:21.260 invests it in his people he gives them better salaries bonuses lots of opportunities and he

00:19:27.000 reasons look if if i'm paying the bill when they eat they're going to end up eating in ways that they

00:19:31.420 wouldn't if it were their money so let them spend their money and i'll give it back to them in other

00:19:34.780 ways and by the way this guy donates a lot of money to charity too although often anonymously

00:19:39.140 and you can kind of compare that to people who want that you know glamour and they want all of

00:19:44.760 the recognition they want to put up the fancy buildings and get their names on things you know

00:19:49.240 it's a very different type of mindset about how you think about resources one is really about

00:19:53.620 thinking about those goals and what you want to live the best life and the other i think is largely

00:19:58.480 driven by this chasing mentality of of status so even gift giving becomes who can build the nicest

00:20:03.360 building i want to one-up my friend who just donated a lot of money and i want to build an even nicer

00:20:07.960 building so yeah there's some great case studies there about about frugality so folks need to check

00:20:12.020 out the book get at that another attribute of stretchers you mentioned the book is they put a

00:20:16.140 premium on input from outsiders so what makes an outsider an outsider first let's let's go there

00:20:23.720 an outsider is someone who doesn't know a lot about a specific area that they're asked to solve

00:20:28.760 a problem well then how can outsiders solve problems if they don't know very much about that

00:20:34.740 area that they're working in well this again is one of the beauties of the power of the stretching

00:20:40.920 framework because again you're right our intuitions would be you would want people who know the most

00:20:46.680 to to be solving problems to be on your teams but it actually turns out that's not what the research

00:20:52.980 shows so there's there's studies that look at 10 different countries 166 scientific labs and it was a

00:21:02.020 very simple question the researchers were asking with a pretty straightforward prediction you would

00:21:05.920 think how much scientific knowledge in a given domain does someone know how much does that

00:21:13.960 knowledge predict how well they can solve a problem in that domain it turns out that there's a

00:21:18.980 relationship it's a strong relationship but it's negative the more that someone knew about the

00:21:24.060 domain the less likely they were to solve a problem so the biologists were more likely to solve

00:21:29.020 the chemistry problems and vice versa and there's a reason for that the reason is when we have deep

00:21:35.300 knowledge in an area we tend to focus and try and solve problems in traditional ways when we have

00:21:42.180 less information we're able to import different perspectives and not be blinded by our expertise

00:21:49.280 that's hard for people to grasp though you think about there's been a lot of popularity of

00:21:54.560 malcolm gladwell's work in outliers and he talks about how you need 10 000 hours to gain proficiency

00:22:00.920 in in doing something and what i'm finding in my work it's called the multi-c or multi-context rule

00:22:07.320 and that the breadth of experience is what's most important when you have complex problems so if you look at

00:22:15.820 research that shows the relationship between the number of hours you spend practicing something

00:22:20.980 and performance so for games like chess that relationship is about 26 percent that's not bad

00:22:28.280 but it's probably a lot less than you would have predicted when you get down to sports it's like 18

00:22:34.800 percent work and education it's under five percent and the pattern is as we go from more structured

00:22:42.420 activities where the rules of the game are always known to less structured activities but activities

00:22:48.760 that we spend most of our lives doing learning and working the role of expertise and practice has

00:22:54.840 less and less of an impact and it's that same reason why experts approach problems in such specific ways

00:23:00.320 that when the rules are always changing they're applying frameworks that might no longer make sense

00:23:05.600 and that's why we need outsiders on teams and this is like a really powerful idea because you know

00:23:10.380 going back to the the chasing mentality oftentimes an excuse for we use to start a business or to do

00:23:17.240 something is like well i just don't know enough i need to know more about this topic so i'm going

00:23:21.700 to research it more a lot of people do that when they start a business i gotta i gotta look into this

00:23:25.100 business more and more and more and what you're saying is that that actually might not be helpful

00:23:29.540 and in fact it might be counterproductive that's right and i spent a few years doing a study of gourmet

00:23:35.760 food trucks which was one of the funnest research projects i ever had to do i mean i did gain 15 pounds

00:23:41.100 doing this uh research which i had to work really hard to lose but these are incredibly constrained

00:23:47.820 organizations and you'd be surprised but most of them have very little experience cooking they have

00:23:53.260 very little experience in the restaurant business a lot of them were trying to reinvent their careers

00:23:57.520 they came from it i interviewed teachers people who were just serial entrepreneurs a whole diversity

00:24:04.720 of people but a lot of them had zero restaurant experience but what they realized is that that

00:24:11.600 lack of experience but the knowledge that they had from other areas allowed them to come up with new

00:24:18.100 ways of thinking about their food new ways of operating their business so it's not that they don't

00:24:23.240 know a lot it's that they know a little things a little about lots of different things and that gives them

00:24:29.220 a very important perspective on not just starting a business but trying to solve any type of problem

00:24:35.220 and you also talk about in the book that bringing an outside perspective into your life or your

00:24:38.760 business doesn't require you necessarily to actually find physical beings who are outsiders right like 0.94

00:24:44.100 you can do that in your own life by just reading you know broadly from different domains different

00:24:49.600 perspectives traveling gaining new experiences yourself so you can bring that back to your own life yeah or

00:24:55.760 even at work i mean how many people would ever think about going to a conference in a different industry

00:25:00.340 but i mean a lot of the problems that we're solving at work there's similar and parallel problems in

00:25:05.840 neighboring industries but we never talk to people in those industries or go have lunch with someone

00:25:10.600 who has your same job in a different company imagine all the things you can learn but we we tend to

00:25:15.860 just like to talk to people who are just like us there's that big book about bell labs and all the

00:25:20.080 the productivity they had during the 50s and 60s and one of the the things they attributed that

00:25:25.440 productivity and all these developments like lasers i mean it was crazy with what they developed was

00:25:29.340 that there was this intermingling going on between different departments and they were able to combine

00:25:34.180 these ideas just within their own workforce yeah that's a great example so one of my favorite chapters

00:25:39.120 in your book is about taking action and not putting a premium on plans that's one of the attributes

00:25:45.540 of stretchers they don't actually plan all that much they just they start acting and then they

00:25:49.900 kind of figure things out after they've taken action but here's the thing i mean it's

00:25:53.920 counterintuitive because a lot of the the business advice out there is you need to sit down you need

00:25:58.840 to create this detailed business plan before you do a project you need to map out the the steps you're

00:26:04.400 going to take to complete the project so how how do plans actually prevent us from getting the success

00:26:12.060 that we want how can it stop us from making progress if you think where the stakes of planning are the

00:26:18.640 highest imagine you're a big business and you're going through your five-year plan strategic plan

00:26:24.240 the reality is is what the research shows is those plans have very little impact on performance and

00:26:30.300 depending on the study you look at sometimes they even harm performance the challenge is five years

00:26:35.760 is a long time it's really hard to imagine two years from now or the world that we live in right now

00:26:41.620 sometimes goes almost on an hourly basis in terms of what's what's unfolding so when you can't when

00:26:48.740 you when you live in a lot of uncertainty plans are really misleading because what happens is you make

00:26:54.540 assumptions about what the world is going to look like what your life is going to look like what your

00:26:59.000 market is going to look like what your competition is going to look like many many years down the road

00:27:03.800 and the odds of that world or that of those markets or so on looking like how you think they're going

00:27:09.980 to look are pretty slim but you trick yourself into thinking that's how the world will work because

00:27:15.760 that's what you put in your plan so you stick to your plan and you keep marching forward as if you're

00:27:21.120 living in a reality because you thought that reality is what's going to happen so when we're stretching

00:27:26.120 we're realizing that one planning in many respects is a large waste of time and two what we want to

00:27:33.780 focus on is more spontaneous action that allows us to learn about the present as opposed to going

00:27:40.180 through the frivolous activity of trying to predict the future i do a lot of planning i try to plan my

00:27:45.980 day out and it never goes according to plan ever one thing i found with planning is that the traffic

00:27:51.840 can lead you into is that it makes you feel like you're doing something even though you're not doing

00:27:56.880 something so you can pat yourself on the back because you made this awesome plan but then

00:28:00.260 you end up not doing anything about it because you already felt like you accomplished something

00:28:04.940 with your plan yeah and we tend to think that we're successful based off of our plans when the

00:28:09.320 reality is is we're successful because of what we do not what we plan to do but we forget that you do

00:28:14.020 need to do a little planning right you talk about in the book that you know one of the downsides of

00:28:17.720 this action over plans is like not having direction basically wandering around so how do you strike a

00:28:23.220 balance between taking action and doing a bit of planning so you're not wandering around in the

00:28:29.360 weeds yeah it's a really important balance to strike and obviously there are some things in life you

00:28:34.380 still need to plan for you need to plan for retirement you need to plan for your kids education

00:28:38.880 so these are these are things where planning is important the point of the stretching framework is

00:28:44.320 that we over plan in many different aspects so the way to really balance that is to make sure that

00:28:50.860 we're learning and what separates those people who can act spontaneously successfully from those who

00:28:56.480 don't is that they learn and that they make adjustments and what i mean by that is if you

00:29:02.100 think about whether it be your business or your life it's all about trying different things and then

00:29:07.900 reflecting on what just happened and then making adjustments so i talk about one company jc penny in

00:29:15.400 the book and ron johnson was their ceo he had come from apple and he was very successful

00:29:20.640 in the apple retail store he was the one who invented the genius bar and he was he was a very

00:29:27.180 improvisational actor he had this gut feeling about genius bar and he he went with it and it turned out

00:29:32.000 to be great well our instincts also could be wrong and in his case at jc penny he literally bet the farm

00:29:39.120 on a new strategy around getting rid of the traditional discounts that you would have in department stores

00:29:43.920 and going to everyday low pricing he then tested he turned it all on at the same time and as the day

00:29:49.940 they were coming in it clearly was not working and he doubled down and we do that a lot when we're

00:29:55.260 chasing is we just start throwing good money after bad ideas because we think if we spend enough money

00:30:01.300 on something we could eventually turn it around because he had this instinct that said everyday low

00:30:06.040 pricing is the way that we're going to go and as more and more and more data kept coming in he kept

00:30:10.900 sticking to that until finally he was fired and so that's you know what he was doing is leaping which i you

00:30:16.700 know leaping are kind of acting but not learning and if we're not going to learn when we're doing

00:30:21.560 the spontaneous action we're going to be in a lot of trouble so we've got to get into a learning

00:30:25.540 mindset if we're going to abandon the plant right i think one exercise you mentioned in the book that

00:30:30.220 you can do and you sort of alluded to it here in your answer was that you know keep a journal of what

00:30:34.840 you did and then write like what you learned from that right like i took these actions and then here's

00:30:41.220 what i learned from by taking those actions and then you can go you have basically have a record

00:30:45.000 it allows you to plan backwards in a way yeah it gives you that backwards looking plan and what i

00:30:50.580 like people to do is compare that backwards looking plan to what their forward looking plan would have

00:30:56.280 been and my sense is what usually happens is they don't look the same but you know what you see is

00:31:02.540 there still tends to be structure towards your day and that's an important point to make is that when

00:31:07.940 i'm saying you should act spontaneously i'm not saying you should fly by the seat of your pants

00:31:11.440 and you shouldn't have any structure and this backward looking plan is that structure if you

00:31:15.380 even look at jazz music music which is often held up as the classic example of improvisation there's

00:31:21.840 still a lot of structure that's going on in that music whether it be the rhythm the way that they

00:31:27.860 communicate and coordinate by looking at each other and all of those things so i'm not saying just kind

00:31:32.100 of get out there and and uh let things fly what i'm saying is you're going to learn that when you

00:31:38.560 go through your day and you're more spontaneous it's going to open you up to new experiences but

00:31:43.520 it's so critical that you learn from those experiences and make adjustments so you can

00:31:47.140 constantly be getting better and when you create this backward looking plan it disciplines us to reflect

00:31:52.500 on how our day just went what we learn by acting more improvisationally another attribute of stretch as you

00:31:58.500 talk about is having high expectations for yourself so what does the research say about having high

00:32:04.300 expectations for you your company or your employees expectations end up shaping a lot of our behavior

00:32:10.280 the challenge is we often set negative expectations so let's say we're late for work one day or actually

00:32:16.780 let's say one of our employees is late for work one day what do we immediately think well they're not

00:32:22.360 responsible they should have left early or if we're in the store and we see a stranger slip what do we

00:32:29.360 think we think well they're they're kind of clumsy now if we were in those same situations we were late

00:32:34.440 to work we would have known we got caught in the freeway in a bad accident or we would have known that

00:32:39.100 there was a puddle on the ground that we didn't look at the challenge is when we're looking at other

00:32:43.100 people's behaviors we don't have access to their situational uh their situations so we don't know

00:32:49.260 that they were stuck in traffic because of an accident we don't know that there was a puddle

00:32:54.800 on the floor and that's why they slipped so because we don't have access to this we explain

00:32:59.540 their behavior based off of individual attributes so when we're observing bad behavior they're

00:33:05.700 irresponsible and they're clumsy and that's what we do with expectations a lot at work is we assume 0.99

00:33:11.740 the worst in people we might hear oh this guy's a jerk haven't met him well what happens when we 0.98

00:33:17.620 meet him we're going to interact with him in ways that self-fulfill that prophecy that actually turn 0.99

00:33:23.620 him into a jerk whether it's our body language or the way we're looking at him or how curt we might be 0.90

00:33:28.800 when we talk to him so with stretching we want to replace these types of negative expectations with 0.98

00:33:35.520 what i call positive prophecies and positive prophecies are when we give people the benefit of the doubt

00:33:40.760 and we expect them to be able to perform at the highest levels and the important caveat here is

00:33:47.280 we want to make sure that those expectations are believable because there's a fine line that we can draw

00:33:52.920 between setting positive expectations that create this nice positive prophecy and creating performance

00:33:59.660 pressure so there's been a lot of interesting research in sports that have looked at the so-called

00:34:05.880 home field advantage and you often think wow the home team is gonna is gonna is gonna do better because

00:34:11.360 of this advantage but you know what tends to happen is those expectations create this performance

00:34:18.400 pressure so if you look at game seven of a world series it turns out that the home team usually doesn't

00:34:25.740 win those games or you can look at free throw percentage during the playoffs in the nba and the home the home team

00:34:33.680 tends to do better that well those those tend to be equal until game seven where the home team

00:34:37.520 actually does worse and it creates that performance pressure so we want to set credible and positive

00:34:42.320 expectations that are in that sweet spot where people feel capable that they can live up to those

00:34:46.900 expectations but they don't feel overburdened that it turns into pressure so how do you create

00:34:52.220 believable expectations positive prophecies well it starts with really knowing your employees and

00:34:58.060 getting to understand where they can grow and starting small you know if you go if you go and

00:35:03.600 start with someone and it's their first day at work and you tell them you're gonna be the absolute

00:35:10.120 superstar here that's you know people might say oh that's great i i love that they have such high

00:35:16.780 expectations of me and that's a really nice compliment but that creates an enormous pressure

00:35:20.600 so you want to start with what i call small wins so instead of that type of message you can come back with

00:35:26.380 something like i know you're going to do terrific on your first project and start with something

00:35:32.540 that's a less ambitious goal and then gradually over time you can amp up expectations as people

00:35:38.000 build up their confidence and then those expectations won't be seen as performance pressure

00:35:42.860 so start small is is the is the quick answer right this seems like this would be good parenting advice

00:35:48.000 too yeah it'd be absolutely good parenting advice i mean the way we i have two i have two daughters

00:35:52.360 four and nine years old and we put enormous burdens on our children right now i mean we're plotting

00:35:58.280 out you talk about planning we're not plotting out where they're going to college anymore we're

00:36:01.960 plotting out where they're going to pre-k i mean it's just it's absolutely crazy what's out there and

00:36:06.880 kids are smart they're like sponges they soak up this information and they see all of these enormous

00:36:11.880 expectations that their parents are putting on them and these kids i think tend to burn out as they

00:36:17.200 get older and eventually they they revolt because they just crack under the pressure and who wants to set up

00:36:23.480 set up a life of someone like that so again start small you want good positive expectations and a lot

00:36:30.380 of this research is in education and it shows that you can make children smarter by giving them

00:36:34.720 positive expectations but just don't overdo it we've been talking about the benefits of stretching right

00:36:39.560 putting premium actions over planning being frugal thinking about the resources you have at hand

00:36:45.440 right now instead of the resources you don't have there's all these benefits to stretching why

00:36:49.680 do so many people chase i think people intuitively understand that yeah like that's a great idea but

00:36:54.780 they don't do it why is that they don't do it because they have so many signals in our culture and in our

00:37:03.320 businesses that chasing is the and the only way to success and satisfaction you even think about

00:37:10.800 concepts like the american dream and what that means in terms of how you've got to move up to the house

00:37:17.960 with a white picket fence well you know maybe there's people that don't want to live in a house

00:37:21.800 and they rather live in in you know an apartment or something there's nothing wrong when you're

00:37:26.720 achieving your goals you just have to think what those goals are or social media plays a big role in

00:37:31.820 chasing too when we share information on social media about 75 of what we share tends to be good news

00:37:38.140 so we keep escalating our social comparisons as we're seeing all of these people it could be on networks

00:37:44.200 like linkedin you're always getting notices when people are getting promoted or when they're moving

00:37:48.640 to new jobs you never see the other side of it no one's posting on linkedin hey i just got canned

00:37:53.280 so it creates this this arms race where you feel like to have any meaningful impact and to have meaning

00:38:02.260 yourself in the world you need more resources because of all of these signals and people tend to

00:38:10.080 associate stretching as something that you do only when your backs are against the wall stretching is

00:38:17.360 something that is a necessity and we can get that you're a poor college student without any income

00:38:23.640 you understand ramen noodles and stretching you're an executive of the fortune 500 company you understand

00:38:30.000 mahogany furniture and corporate jets and that's the that's the kind of cultural signals we give to

00:38:35.840 people but the point of this book and why i think it's so valuable is when you dive down into the

00:38:42.660 research and you look at many of the most successful people and they're successful not just at work but

00:38:47.340 successful in life they're going at it in the complete opposite direction they're recognizing that

00:38:53.020 yeah we can achieve really high goals and yeah we can be really satisfied but we're getting there

00:38:58.740 not by chasing after resources but by embracing what's right in front of us and just thinking about them

00:39:04.440 much more creatively in better ways this has been a great conversation last question what do you think

00:39:10.220 is one thing that a person who's listening to this podcast right now that they can do today that will

00:39:14.620 provide the most roi and becoming a better stretcher is there like one thing you think they can do quick

00:39:19.660 and i'll give them a quick win the quick win is to start small with a project and impose some

00:39:26.800 artificial limitations on it and this i think is going to be a little counterintuitive also for people

00:39:31.220 if i said go to your boss and say you know what give me a little less money or a little less time

00:39:37.340 or one less person to deliver a project most people say that's the exact opposite thing but again we have

00:39:42.460 to link that dependence on chasing and what happens when they try this out they realize not only can they

00:39:48.040 get the job done but that those constraints help them do the job better and that's how you build up

00:39:53.680 your confidence and experience to start stretching fantastic well scott where can people learn more

00:39:57.640 about the book can go to my website which is www.scottsunenshine.com s-c-o-t-t-s-o-n-e-n-s-h-e-i-n

00:40:07.200 they've got great resources videos and articles that they can download and the book is available

00:40:11.720 wherever books are sold fantastic scott sunenshine thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure

00:40:15.720 thanks so much for having me my guest is scott sunenshine his book is called stretch unlock the

00:40:20.260 power of less and achieve more than you ever imagined it's available on amazon.com and bookstores

00:40:24.760 everywhere you can also find more information about scott's work at scottsunenshine.com

00:40:29.560 also check out our show notes at aom.is slash stretch where you find links to resources where

00:40:35.040 you can delve deeper into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness

00:40:44.820 podcast for more manly tips and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website at

00:40:48.620 artofmanliness.com if you enjoy the show and you've gotten something out of the podcast please

00:40:52.440 consider giving us a review on itunes or stitcher it helps us out a lot as always thank you for

00:40:56.460 your continued support and until next time this is brad mckay telling you to stay manly

00:41:00.440 um

00:41:05.240 you

00:41:06.680 that way

00:41:07.440 you

00:41:07.980 you

00:41:09.620 you

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00:41:15.000 you

The Art of Manliness - April 06, 2017

#293： How to Do More With Less

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