The Foundation Of A Growth Mindset Is Just Guesses And Bets

Shannon Waller: Hi. Shannon Waller here, and welcome to Inside Strategic Coach with Dan Sullivan.
 
Dan, as part of the subject of our latest book that we're working on, you have talked about something that I find totally interesting and fascinating, and that is guesses and bets. And you made a reference to it in our company meeting recently.
 
One of the bets that you'd made, and guesses that you'd made, was about Unique Ability and how that impacted our company. So we'll pull that apart a little bit, but could you please talk about guesses and bets? Because it is such a cool, I'm going to say, for me, healthy way to look at the future, and it takes some of the angst out of things. So, let's talk about guesses and bets.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Well, this is a topic that is very front and center these days because of a belief in certain circles that the capabilities of technology are such that you can now start predicting the future with technology. In other words, it can make, with great certainty, that things are going to happen this way.
 
And I think it's silly. I think it's very, very silly because the creators of the technology are guessing on something. They're guessing that this particular technology, their particular approach to technology, is better than any other technology. And that somehow technology has an intelligence that can predict the future.
 
And my sense is that the technology will not be able to predict the future in anything that's different from the thermostat in your house, noticing that it's dropped below a certain temperature and it's time to adjust the heat. So I don't think we ever get beyond the fact where technology is just reactive. And the reason is that the programming of technology all comes from human beings who are making guesses and bets on the technology.
Shannon Waller: Mm-hmm.
 
Dan Sullivan: So the technology cannot be superior to the human thinking that goes into it. So I don't want to get into a long discussion about the technology. I just think it's a very silly idea. And there's been other predictions about other factors related to religion, related to politics, related to economics, where they say it's a sure bet and it's a sure prediction, it's not even a bet, that things are going to happen this way and then it doesn't happen.
 
And part of the reason is that the future is always created by every human being on the planet every day making guesses and bets about their individual future.
 
Shannon Waller: Mm-hmm.
 
Dan Sullivan: That alone should discourage you from making claims about technology because there's no way of understanding or even detecting what kind of guesses and bets eight billion people are making.
 
They didn't even think about it yesterday, but this morning they got up and they said, "You know, I think I'll do this with my day." Well that got created in the moment. That's a guess, because they got to fill up their time between getting up and going to bed again at night.
 
And they say, "Well, we could do this, we could do this, we could do this." And then they bet on certain things, which means they commit their time, they commit their activity, and in some cases, they commit their money to doing this particular activity. And that gets made up every single day by every single human being on the planet.
 
So, the future is not predictable at all. There are trends which unless reversed can end up at a particular this place in the future, as opposed to this future. But those are simply trends based on what's happened up until now.
 
And even when you predict that a trend is going forward, you're still guessing and betting because nothing happens in a straight line. Things can go to the right, they can go to the left, they can go up, they can go down. So my feeling, this whole question about prediction ... And there's always this desire that we'd be able to predict the future.
 
Somebody played a game once at a party and they said, "If you could have one power, a superpower, that would just make you superior in relationship to everybody else." And I said, "Yeah, tomorrow's Wall Street Journal today."
 
Shannon Waller: Yes, please.
 
Dan Sullivan: Especially the stock prices.
 
Shannon Waller: Yes, exactly.
 
Dan Sullivan: I would like to know tomorrow's stock prices right now before closing hours. But that's not possible. And it's not going to be possible when technology has advanced a hundred years into the future, a thousand years into the future. There's just no possibility because the future is made up by human beings, and each of them does something different every day that's not predictable. They make a guess and a bet.
 
Shannon Waller: And I think that's really key, Dan. Because unless people actually understand technology, how it comes to be, artificial intelligence, which we've all been talking a fair bit about. You know, artificial intelligence, especially the new ChatGPT and new capabilities coming out, it's based on pattern recognition, which is the past.
 
Dan Sullivan: And probability.
 
Shannon Waller: And probability, but it's not the future.
 
Dan Sullivan: No.
 
Shannon Waller: And an unpredictable human can disrupt that immediately, which is why you can't count on it for creativity. You can't count on it to do unpredictable things. That's literally not built into it.
 
And so, once you actually drill down into how the technology is created, you know what to expect from it. You also know what not to expect. And I think that's a very critical distinction for people to have as we move into our own self-created future.
 
Dan Sullivan: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, what I'm saying is that this desire to predict the future has been around forever. It plays a role in the development of mysticism, in religion, the way that power is handed down from one generation to another generation. But it's still the wildcard factor is just each individual just thinking of something new today, they're making a guess that this would be a good way to spend my time today, and I'm betting on this.
 
And it's gotten more unpredictable over the future because we have way more freedom on an individual basis than we had a century ago.
 
Shannon Waller: Mm-hmm.
 
Dan Sullivan: And there's many more human beings now. So the chances of surprising things happening, just triggered by individual behavior, have grown greatly.
 
Shannon Waller: Oh, exponentially.
 
Dan Sullivan: I was born in 1944. The population of the planet is three and a half times now than it was when I was born in 1944. I think it was 2.2 billion, now it's eight billion. So it's more than three and a half times.
 
Shannon Waller: Yes. It's grown a lot in my lifetime.
 
Dan Sullivan: Another factor is that half of them are connected to each other with cell phones and with the internet. So, just the sheer number of unpredictable things that can happen.
 
So, that's my basic thesis about this. But I just happened to mention, we were having a team meeting this morning, and I was just marveling at the teamwork and the excitement. Because we had each of the teams, we have a dozen or so teams in the company, and each of them was giving a report on new things that they're doing, things that they've achieved. And I was just sitting there marveling because before the report, I knew about 5% of the things that were talked about, and I was just sitting there and enjoying it.
 
Shannon Waller: Yeah.
 
Dan Sullivan: And I just happened to mention, in my part of the sum up—after the meeting, we had a little summing up for the organizers of the meeting and the team leaders. And I said I was feeling enormously rewarded by the team meeting today because so many things are being done that I had no idea of. And I feel very rewarded for Babs and I making a big guess and a big bet before we even started the workshop program in 1989 that we would build the organization from start and, continually just focusing on one thing, that we were going to make it possible for everybody who joined our company to very quickly identify their Unique Ability. And so, in our language, that means that this is something that you're really great at, and it's also something that you love doing.
 
Shannon Waller: Mm-hmm.
 
Dan Sullivan: So, that's our definition of Unique Ability. You have superior skills. But the other thing is that it gives you total enjoyment to do this activity. So, that's Unique Ability at the individual level. And then you also have the ability to link your Unique Ability up with the Unique Abilities of other team members who have different Unique Abilities. Unique means that each of them is a one of a kind.
 
Shannon Waller: Mm-hmm.
 
Dan Sullivan: And that if we did that, we would have a organization continually growing that was, first of all, self-managing.
 
Shannon Waller: Yeah.
 
Dan Sullivan: That you didn't have to manage people who are in their Unique Ability. You don't really have to manage them, you don't have to monitor them, you don't have to motivate them. It's built into how you're allowing them to operate in the company.
 
It's internally driven. Unique Ability internally drives people. They want to get to work because they so much enjoy the work, both within their own skill, but they also enjoy the work in the teamwork.
 
We guessed that if you based everything in the growth of the organization on Unique Ability and Unique Ability Teamwork, that would pretty quickly become a Self-Managing Company. But beyond that, it would become a Self-Multiplying Company.
 
So we, as leaders, wouldn't have to be paying attention to that. We would just be giving greater vision to the company, which is really Babs's Unique Ability. She can see the future of the company. And I would focus on giving the vision for the future of the program.
 
Shannon Waller: Mm-hmm.
 
Dan Sullivan: So we have two visionaries in the company: one's the organizational visionary, and I'm the program visionary. And I was just feeling very rewarded from the meeting because we saw evidence that it was a Self-Managing Company based on Unique Ability Teamwork, and it was now becoming a Self-Multiplying Company based on Unique Ability Teamwork. So, it was a good guess and a good bet.
 
Shannon Waller: Well, there's a couple things that strike me as you were saying that. One is that you don't need to manage, monitor, or motivate, which I think is that takes so much time in most people's companies. Like, are people doing what they're supposed to be doing? And there's this lack of trust because you're not lining things up with people's individual Unique Ability, which means they need to pay attention to it and take it seriously. You need to do the same thing.
 
We use lots of profiles to help get at the heart of it. We have Unique Ability processes. We've got our Unique Ability book, Discovery 2.0, and we have book clubs around it. We have all the things, and everyone's really encouraged to really focus on that. And then, of course, leadership also needs to reinforce it.
 
And the cool distinction here, Dan, is that leadership is really about, as you talked about, sharing the vision, charging people up, but you don't actually have to babysit them because they come in excited.
 
It was interesting, I was talking to someone who said, "You know, I think the opportunity is to really inspire people outside of work." And I was like, "Mm ... to me, it's actually making sure that work is a phenomenal place for them to be, where they can be their best selves, making their biggest contribution, having the most fun. If you give them that, they'll handle the rest of their life." And I even, to that point, had a team member say, "Oh my gosh. Work is where I come- It's one of the best parts, least complex, most focused, most interesting, most fun parts of my life."
 
Dan Sullivan: And I have friends there.
 
Shannon Waller: Exactly.
 
Dan Sullivan: People I work with that are friends.
 
Shannon Waller: Yeah.
 
Dan Sullivan: I think it would be the rare member of Coach who didn't have a close friend who worked in the company.
 
Shannon Waller: Very true. Which happens to be one of the Gallup 12 questions. Do you have a close friend at work?
 
And Kristi, who was the emcee of our meeting today, she asked a really interesting question. She just gave us a few seconds. Then we post it in the chat, which is, what do you most enjoy about being at Coach?
 
And what people wrote in the chat was so exciting, affirming: Get to do my Unique Ability, the difference we make for our clients, get to be ourselves. It was just so validating, exactly the guess and the bet that both you and Babs made, which was really gratifying.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. And the thing is that it's not for everyone. So over the years, I think for every person we've had, we've had three who came and left. We're at about 130 worldwide. And I think that we've had easily three times that, maybe 400 individuals who were there. Sometimes, it was just making a bad guess.
 
Shannon Waller: Mm-hmm.
 
Dan Sullivan: And a bet on hiring someone when you weren't really true to your principles, you know? You weren't-
 
Shannon Waller: Right.
 
Dan Sullivan: ... there. But a lot of times, they had the Unique Ability. I mean, potentially they had a Unique Ability. They hadn't really developed it yet. And then you don't know whether they're going to be any good at teamwork. Because it's not just that you have a great individual, but they don't play well with others. It's got to be both. They got to be great at what they do, but they have to be great in playing with others and working with others.
 
Shannon Waller: Mm-hmm. Yep. That is such a key point. It's funny as I'm all about teamwork, and I'm like, "Yes." I mean, I tend to focus a little bit on individuals, but unless they can make those connections and play well in the darn sandbox, it doesn't play out. It doesn't work.
 
Our teams went around and did their Positive Focus this morning, which was so fun, as you were talking about. And I calculated, based on the numbers that were given, the number of people we hired versus the number of resumes we had gone through.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah.
 
Shannon Waller: It was-
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, it was-
 
Shannon Waller: ... 0.1%. Not 1%. 0.1% is how many we hired.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. I think it was-
 
Shannon Waller: Five?
 
Dan Sullivan: ... 4,500 resumes we received. And we hired five.
 
Shannon Waller: Mm-hmm.
 
Dan Sullivan: We hired five.
 
Shannon Waller: Yep.
 
Dan Sullivan: And that's in the UK, that's in Canada, and that's in the U.S.
 
Shannon Waller: Yeah.
 
Dan Sullivan: So we had 4,500 resumes and only five people. And we have a lot of censors about this. I think there's about five stages that you go through if you want to work at Coach. We have such a Unique Ability culture that I think our screeners, the people who are bringing people in, they can just tell right off the bat, "I don't think this is going to be a fit."
 
Shannon Waller: Right.
 
Dan Sullivan: You can just tell how they respond. And one of the observations I had that, if they were in their Unique Ability, they would be a good team member. But they don't take their Unique Ability seriously. They don't take seriously the notion that they have a Unique Ability.
 
Shannon Waller: Yeah.
 
Dan Sullivan: We take their Unique Ability more seriously than they do.
 
Shannon Waller: Mm-hmm.
 
Dan Sullivan: And that's not good. That's not good.
 
Shannon Waller: No.
 
Dan Sullivan: We want them to be surprising us with their Unique Ability as they develop their Unique Ability. We don't want to be the person who keeps pointing things out to them.
 
Shannon Waller: Right? I love what Andrew said this morning, one of our Membership Advisors in Chicago. He goes, "Yeah, and if someone does slip through, they don't stick around very long. We course correct really quickly."
 
It's interesting, Dan, what you say about people: they need to take themselves seriously, at least as seriously as we do. And the people who don't, and I've seen this in other organizations, occasionally in ours too, is where someone overrides their Unique Ability because of intellect, because of their cognitive training, and the weight that they give to that. Or they're so status-oriented.
 
Dan Sullivan: Mm-hmm.
 
Shannon Waller: Right? They want to climb the ladder, and we don't really have much of a ladder here at Coach. So it really is, your expansion of value creation is based on your expanded contribution of your Unique Ability.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah.
 
Shannon Waller: And status is a byproduct of contribution, not the other way around, which I find really interesting. So, for me, it's always just interesting human behavior when you see people override that.
 
Dan Sullivan: You mean that, by the fact that they don't want the job that they end up with by following their Unique Ability because it doesn't match their goal for status in the organization.
 
Shannon Waller: Exactly.
 
Dan Sullivan: They'll strive for something that they're not uniquely good at because in their mind it has higher status.
 
Shannon Waller: Exactly. And there's nothing that kiboshes the whole thing.
 
Dan Sullivan: I can think of cases.
 
Shannon Waller: I think everybody can. It's actually why I wrote Multiplication By Subtraction. It was a client's company. I was like, "Oh." It's just so hard to watch.
 
So Dan, I really appreciate you sharing the fact that guesses and bets are what the future's about. And this is an early one that you and Babs made, partly so that you could also stay in your Unique Ability. Very astute of you. And I think it's an interesting exercise, which we've actually done in one of the connection calls or workshops, I can't remember. It was a workshop. Which is, what are some of the best guesses and bets you've made in the past? And then what are you excited about?
 
Dan Sullivan: I'll be doing it next Tuesday with the big Free Zone [crosstalk].
 
Shannon Waller: Fantastic. Oh, that'll be so great.
 
Dan Sullivan: Mm-hmm.
 
Shannon Waller: So would that be an interesting thing to take out of this conversation? I mean, I think you could take guesses and bets as a practical application of today's conversation, or the bet on Unique Ability. Because if people are at all frustrated with their team, their teamwork, it might be a very worthwhile bet to move things more towards the Unique Ability end of the dial.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah.
 
Shannon Waller: What would you recommend for people taking the workshop?
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, I think it'd be true since our audience are entrepreneurs. But you can't spot Unique Ability in other people unless you, first of all, take ownership of Unique Ability in yourself. So it's the entrepreneur who's guessed and bet on their own Unique Ability, now wanting to expand the power of that in the team that they create.
 
So my sense is that somebody who hasn't done it for themselves would be no good at creating an organization that consists of Unique Ability Teamwork because you're tone-deaf.
 
Shannon Waller: Mm-hmm. Yep. I think that's really true. That's a really great point.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. And I think in both Babs's case and my case, this was incredibly well-developed before we even met each other.
 
Shannon Waller: Mm-hmm. So you guys were really self-aware about where you had energy and attention and creativity, and where you didn't.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Yeah.
 
Shannon Waller: Mm-hmm. And do you find that some people just never clue in or constantly override it?
 
Dan Sullivan: Oh, yeah. The vast majority of people never-. I think the environment of a Coach workshop, especially if it has ... the entrepreneurs have some years in the Program, is just automatically energetic and powerful. Because everybody's there, participating with their Unique Ability.
 
Shannon Waller: Right.
 
Dan Sullivan: And I think it's rare in the world that you ever have the situation that we have in one of our 500 workshop days a year, where just everybody in the room is there on the power of their own Unique Ability.
 
Shannon Waller: Mm-hmm.
 
Dan Sullivan: And what they're learning is how to maximize that. I mean, they come to the Program, how to maximize my own Unique Ability, how to surround myself with team members who operate according to Unique Ability? And I would say, the longer that they're in the Program, the better they get at guessing and betting.
 
Shannon Waller: Mm-hmm. It's interesting, Dan, as you're talking about the room, it's also our team, because our team is a hundred percent in their Unique Ability in the room too.
 
Dan Sullivan: Mm-hmm.
 
Shannon Waller: There's certain roles that you and I are doing, and certain roles which we will never do and vice versa.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. And it really simplifies life. If you think of all the rage, the age of rage, I call it, in the social media and the news media and everything, about people being insulted because their identity is not respected.
 
And I don't care about anybody's identity. I couldn't care less what your identity is, but I do care one hundred percent about what your Unique Ability is. And I don't care of skin color, I don't care where you come from, I don't care what you're attracted to or not attracted to. None of that really matters. It's just, what are you good at that you have superior skills and you love doing it? And if we can fashion a role for you inside of our company, that you'll stay with it forever. And get better. And get better.
 
Shannon Waller: And make a great contribution with other-
 
Dan Sullivan: With teamwork.
 
Shannon Waller: With teamwork.
 
Dan Sullivan: And everything like that. It solves a lot of problems. Unique Ability Teamwork just solves a lot of problems and people feeling disrespected, people feeling insulted and everything, because you don't recognize their identity. It's made up. It's like a fashion they bought at the store and they're wearing the fashion for this quarter.
 
Shannon Waller: And Unique Ability is so core to who someone is.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, it's unique.
 
Shannon Waller: It's unique.
 
Dan Sullivan: And there's none like you.
 
Shannon Waller: No. It might start off small. But if you grow it, and expand it, and put time and attention, and intellect, and problem solving, and experience behind it, it grows and expands.
 
And it doesn't change. It's timeless. It might get deeper, it might get richer, you might get more refined about your audience, but it's going to go wherever you go.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah.
 
Shannon Waller: And it's not changing based on the season, which is, to go back to your fashion analogy.
 
Dan Sullivan: Mm-hmm.
 
Shannon Waller: Yep. I agree.
 
Dan, thank you. I love talking about guesses and bets. It's such a, as I said at the beginning, a freeing way to look at things. And the fact that you brought that into Coach and Unique Ability, for me, you've been able to explain why Unique Ability is so powerful and the type of environment that it creates. Unique Ability and Unique Ability Teamwork. It explains so much of the success of Coach and the future of Coach, because that's what we're going to keep betting on, which I find really exciting. So, thank you.
 
Dan Sullivan: Thank you, Shannon.