Disrespecting Disrespect

While the general themes in your leadership playbooks, they're consistent as you move from one venture to another, the kinds of products and services that you have built have varied greatly, right. A tech startup is very different from a federal government agency like the State Department. You've done all of that. How do you inspire your teams to be creative, to keep coming up with new ideas across so many different companies and organizations?

You know, I guess, safe environment is key, it really is. I mean, all you have to do is like do a mind exercise and think of a time where it just wasn't a safe environment and how it just crippled your creativity, and then one where it's just like, hey, anything goes, right?

Yeah.

I think that's really important. And here again, having a diversity, but also what's really important is respect. So to really respect and treat people with respect, and there's no room for disrespect. I mean, the only thing I disrespect is disrespect, I guess.

That's a good line.

That's a winner.

That's a bumper sticker.

I know. The only thing I disrespect is disrespect. But anyway, yeah, so I think that's key, but also have a methodology for drawing that out, too. And you know, there's methodology we use, we always do off sites, the yellow sticky notes, all the different color sticky notes, everybody go by themselves, draw a picture. So there's all these different ways to bring out that creativity. And what I have found, because it's been so many different environments, is I've been able to find the ones that work every time. And it's funny, you know, one of those, for example, is round table. Everybody go around the room, nobody can interrupt them. I always do it after every offsite, after staff meetings, everything. I remember going over in Japan, and this is with Hiro, my chief of staff. And I go, alright, at dinner, we're going to do a round table with all of our Japanese employees.

What do you guys ask them during that round table, what do you guys talk about?

Anything you want, anything goes, anything goes at all. You could say, "I'm scared. Here's my problem. I'm excited. I'm mad at you." It doesn't matter. Once that thing gets home, they begin with you usually start with three questions. Like at an offsite, you'll say, "Tell us how the offsite go. How are you feeling about the company? How you feeling about you personally? Everybody go around." And the point is that everybody has to do it, nobody can interrupt it. So when we go to the Japanese, "Oh, no, that doesn't work in the Japanese culture." So I turned to Hiro, I go, "Tell him he's crazy, we're doing it anyway." And they loved it, the Germans, the Japanese, what do you think? Everybody loves it. And so you get to see some of these universal principles at work.