How to Build Collaborative Cultures & Fix Toxic Creative Environments | with Chris Deaver

About Episode

Today’s guest is Chris Deaver, the co-founder of BraveCore, a leadership consultancy dedicated to helping leaders embrace creativity and empowering creatives to become better leaders. Chris has worked with Fortune 500 companies like Apple and Disney, inspiring them to develop groundbreaking content through a culture known as co-creation.

In today’s corporate landscape, many companies stifle creativity and operate under toxic cultures, often without realizing it. As Chris and I discussed, this has been the norm for years because it worked. But now we’ve reached a tipping point where things are starting to fall apart, and the way we collaborate and build relationships needs to evolve. Chris and I explore what the culture of co-creation entails and how it has benefited early adopters like Apple. More importantly, he provides practical steps you can take to cultivate a culture of co-creation in your own environment.

Even if you’re not a manager or CEO, my conversation with Chris provides essential advice for anyone who is a creative collaborating with others.. It highlights the importance of changing how we communicate with each other to foster more nurturing relationships, regardless of our roles.

Key Takeaways

There isn’t a single path but a set of building blocks
If you want to affect change, it has to start with you and the next person, not from the top down.

Transcript

Zack Arnold: I'm here today with Chris Deaver, who is the co-founder of Brave Core, which is a leadership consultancy that helps leaders be more creative, but also helps create us be better leaders. You've influenced fortune five hundreds from the inside, including Apple and Disney, there going to be a lot of people listening today that work for those two companies. And you've also inspired teams that have shaped multiple AI products, Star Wars experiences and others. Some of your clients very short list includes, I don't know, little known companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Coca Cola, LinkedIn, Nike, I mean, the list goes on. But I'm pretty sure everybody listening recognizes those names. And the reason main reason we're here to chat today is because you're the co-author of the new book, Brave Together, Lead by Design, Spark Creativity, and Shape the Future with the Power of Co-Creation. So Chris, I'm very, very excited to have you here to ultimately answer the question which is boiled down into one sentence in your book, and it's the reason we're here today. How can we shape a creative work life that we love? So Chris, cannot thank you enough for taking the time to be here today.

Chris Deaver: It's great to be here. Thanks, Zack. I'm excited and looking forward to diving in.

Zack Arnold: So the way that this came together is the universe decided to literally put you in my lap, or at least in my inbox, your publicist reached out. And I took a quick look at the message, I asked my Podcast Producer to take a look thinking this sounds like it might be the right fit. The book was sent to me and I basically open up the book, having asked Debbie, what am I going to be talking about with Chris, you had me at the third sentence in the dust jacket? And the question was, why do companies kill creativity? And I was like, Yes, I want to talk about this so badly. That's going to be the major crux of our conversation. But before we get right into the weeds, I think it's really important to understand a little bit more about you, and your own personal hero's journey, because it really shapes a lot of the work that you do now. And there was one line that you shared about the the journey that you had, that I think really is going to resonate with my listeners that resonated with me. And you said, I didn't want to be stuck animating somebody else's ideas. So let's use that as the teeing off point for your own creative journey that led to you doing all the consulting work, the writing, and while you're here today,

Chris Deaver: yeah, thanks again, Zack. So to sum it up, you kind of In short, you know, this was something that goes back to, I say, my earlier days of just being young, and I wanted to do do things, right. I was on the kind of the Boy Scout path, you know, get the Eagle Scout, get all the merit badges and, and then knock out one dream at a time, you know, academically, everything. And, you know, what could What could possibly go wrong? Well, you know, a lot, actually. So, fast forward, I ended up on a well, I was studying at BYU, which at the time wasn't really known for animation at all. This was their experimental run at it. But they hired somebody from Disney. And I realized, like, I, I'd known for a while that I wanted to work at Disney. And so I wrote a letter Roy Disney. And I said, Hey, I'd love to get a job there. Can you help me out? You know, that was about that was about that summed up the letter, sent it off. And then, you know, three or four months go on, I forgot about that. That letter. And I got a phone call, though. One day, lady says, As Lisa, I'm a recruiter at Disney, Roy said to talk to you. And you know, all the wishes upon a star were coming true. pixie dust everywhere, was flying everywhere. And you imagine anybody gets this moment? It's like, there's it I'm done. Like, I'm good. That's that's the dream. But my heart was saying other telling me otherwise. And it was really strange moment. Right then to feel that way. I didn't exactly know why at the time. But I told her thanks. And I got a phone. And it felt really weird. But what I didn't know that was happening was there were things that were orchestrating and I but I realized I was I was burned out of that idea. Right. I didn't want to be in a sweatshop I talked to some animators at Disney. And some that were very successful. And one of the guys he was he was the hamster in bolt. And he was also an animator done incredible work. But he told me he's like, you know, he didn't have a family. He's just like, as isn't really conducive to my family. Sometimes, you know, it's busy and I sleep on the floor at a friend's house sometimes, like, what this guy seems to be the epitome of animation success, or at least somewhat of it. So a lot of those things factored in, and I just realized, like, okay, right company, but this isn't gonna work this way. And, you know, so then I just said On an exploration I, I wondered, like, what was this? Exactly? Right. Part of it had to do with Yeah, I don't want to just, you know, be in a kind of sweatshop, you know, cranking out in between lines, you know, or in between drawings. But it was more than that. And more than that, more than anything it was, I don't just want to try to go it alone anymore, or just being pursued that dream. You know, there are a lot of people I noticed that were after their dream, and they were not happy. You know, they're struggling and just burned out and, or disillusioned, right, because they go down a path. And I mean, like that guy, like, he didn't hate his job, but he wasn't like, excited about it. It surprised me. So, you know, I also realized, there's something I don't know, that's out there in the universe, that I need to know, before I can really move things forward. Yeah.

Zack Arnold: So what was the thing that you went from not knowing that you didn't know, to knowing that you didn't know to now knowing?

Chris Deaver: Well, it was a strange path to because after that happened to the Disney thing. I didn't really know what to do next. Right. I knew what that was a no, that was a hard, no answer. But sometimes we get hard, no answers. And we don't really have clarity about what the yes is. And that was true for me. So I had a friend at the time, and we, you know, had some ideas about certain things. And suddenly, we just started to connect dots. I was connecting with different mentors or people that I admired. So like Don Bluth, who was an animator, you know, American tale, a lot of the classics, he left Disney years before. And just people like that, that I was curious about, what's their story, right behind the curtain? Like, what did they do? What was it about them? You know, because usually, you just see the product of success, you see what they are, and everybody's just fawns over that. And then you don't really know, all the blood, sweat and tears it took to get there. And so that I was curious about that, with a lot about a lot of people. And he and I had this idea, which was, well, what if we start connecting people with mentors, like their dream people, or they connect with their people that they admire? And they dig in and figure out what's the story behind the curtain, but the real story, and so, you know, that was one way that so we created what we call the international mentoring network was kind of experiment. We had another friend who was a developer, and this was like, early days of like, early social network days. So we're just testing stuff, but we launched it, kind of garage experiment. And next thing we know, we're featured in Fast Company, you know, entrepreneur, and, you know, things were moving, that we didn't even understand how this was moving. It was but it was really like an open source, mentoring experiment. And then it it was also a platform for us to do the same thing that we were suggesting other people could do. And I kind of did that with the Roy Disney thing. But you know, that was different because I didn't pursue it. So my friend, he was curious, like, you want to connect with Jack Welch, right? CEO of GE at the time, he did, and learn his story, got his experiences, but we'd also share these with the community. So the idea was, you could open the floor, have a mentor on a call, and just have, you know, 1020, or however many people on the call in just take it out, ask questions or listen, you could share the story online after. So we had people like Stan Lee, right, who created Spider Man, and, you know, fantastic for all that stuff. Stephen Covey, who was somebody I always admired, you wrote The Seven Habits book. And, you know, we got crazy, and we launched a thing, a campaign called to get in their shoes campaign, we asked these mentors for their shoes, that we auctioned off on eBay, with a mentoring, kind of experience, you know, 30 minutes or an hour. And, you know, that was kind of innovative way, I guess, to just kick off this idea of this different approach to mentoring. But it was already a learning exercise for me about, wow, what happens when you get a few passionate people in a room with an idea that could definitely change them, but could also potentially, you know, change people's lives and maybe even change the world. And that was where I'd say, the inception of what's now become the book in some way, kind of started, because I didn't really know that before. I was trying to do my own stuff and, you know, figured out my own way. And that's one way to do a career. But I think what I learned was, it's an amplifier. It's an accelerator, right? For a creative for a leader for anybody. Build a team, you know, build a brain trust. Ed Catmull talks about this in his book, creativity, Inc. You know, the Pixar founder, but you can do that with your career. Get it out with your life with your family. Yeah.

Zack Arnold: It's so odd how many parallels there are to your earlier journey and my journey where it is now mine's almost kind of flipped in the opposite direction where where I started and very much went down that path of solo success being the creative in the room, that don't bother me, I'm going to figure this out myself, you know, four walls and no windows, going that path for over 20 years getting to very high levels of success, I don't have an Emmy or an Oscar. But outside of those external versions of success, I've done pretty well as a Hollywood film and television editor, only then to realize, one of the reasons that I got to where I am, is because I built a team around me. And I found mentors, and I learned their stories. And I have now built an educational platform where I teach people how to build those relationships and reach out and have those conversations. Which leads me to the question that I have now, which is with just this quote, unquote, experiment, how the hell are you getting Stan Lee, and Jack Welch and all these names on these calls to share their experiences? You must be doing something right.

Chris Deaver: It was? Well, that's a good question. We had a lot of people ask that, you know. And there were other people we connected with, you know, David Copperfield, the magician, a lot of people. But you know, the thing was that, I think we were there was a sense of bold and crazy. Like, those ingredients can be powerful. Like you mix those together. And you mix unconventional approaches together. Like you just show up somewhere where they are, right, it's hard for them to say no. Or you send a really thoughtful email that would frame the question, but it was it was also we're a nonprofit. So I think that maybe factored in was like, Hey, this is all about just making others the mission. It's altruistic. That was a good hook, I think. And yeah, I mean, we found ours. I mean, I just found so like, pinching myself. One of the funniest ones was, my friend sets up this call with this guy. I don't know who it is, but he's like, Oh, this guy's big. He's doing a bunch of stuff. You know, it's like, you gotta hop on. And I'm like, what's his name? Say, oh,

Tim Ferriss. Like, I don't know if this guy is. Who's this guy? This was like, you know, before he got really big.

And then he sent me some stuff about, you know, I think his book had just come out something I just wasn't paying attention. So I mean, his book was big later, but I'm in the four hour workweek. But I just dug in. I was like, I don't really understand what all this is. But okay, so I hopped on the call, and I started asking these random questions. And you know, here we are talking to Tim Ferriss. I don't know who he is. I ended up talking to Jimmy Wales who started Wikipedia, right? The same thing, we're just on a call and, and a Jimmy, you know, what, how did you start this thing? Oh, people, you know, were skeptical. If I was crazy, you know, who's gonna post stuff for free? You know, on on it online? Like, no, he's getting paid. Like, this? Isn't a model a business model? He's like, No, I'm gonna try it. So you learn things like that, or Tim had his ideas about productivity that were kind of crazy at the time. A lot of them have been adopted since you know,

Zack Arnold: yeah, now everybody's doing them. Right. They all think they're the innovators. And they're all just copying what everybody else is doing, which, actually another three theme maybe we'll talk about later about all these personal life hacks and productivity hacks and how I think you and I feel very, very similarly about all those but I don't want to go down that tangent. But yeah, continue.

Chris Deaver: That's the whole thing. Yeah, I think. Yeah, I guess the shorthand of, you know, how do you connect with how did we connect with these folks was just a blend, you know, of crazy, brash naivete. And having a that's a pretty good reason, you know, to connect that they could feel that that matters, right. Because, like, they have pretty Unlimited, but relatively unlimited resources and not unlimited time. So they think like, oh, well, this gotta be important. And so to get grab their attention, and sometimes we would use like, Tim, actually, first is this, you know, throw question at them. Right. Sometimes that's that works to kind of leave leave, leave it leave them with some intrigue. But yeah, we've can i We've continued to connect with folks. I moved on from the, you know, the Metro networks, great experiment. Of course, I got married and wife's like, yeah, you're great. You're out changing the world, we got to pay the bills, you know. So, you know, reality came knocking. And that was a turning point for me to get into the corporate world, because I didn't have an answer as to what that would be there. So I'd studied animation for my undergrad. I'd done some work and some publishing companies and some animation stuff. But I really, I came to the realization that I mean, the hard thing for me was I would sit during, you know, university classes, I'd be in art classes, I'd be thinking about business. I'd be business class, everything about art. So I was this weird kind of misfit, you know, situation, right. And I don't claim to be like, Albert Einstein level, but it was encouraging when I heard him say, I didn't hear him say personally, but I read. He's like, I don't the physicists say, I don't belong with them. The mathematician said, don't belong with them. Right. And this is a theme in our book two is about misfits. And I think what we're seeing in the world today is far more creatives that feel like they don't fit the bill. You know, and they're, and to your point about why do companies kill creativity, while they've been reestablishing and trying to reframe and reset this notion that it's a scientific exercise, and all of us that feel differently, but it's about humanity's or creativity, which when you look at the companies that are the most successful, that's everything they're doing. Right. Nike is about humanity. Apple is about humanity. Its core, right? Microsoft has become about humanity. Satya Nadella is that kind of leader. And so that's really what is winning. But every there's a lot of companies haven't they don't notice that. And it's, it's frustrating, right? Because it we bump up against that stuff. And it's painful. Yeah.

Zack Arnold: Well, this idea of impact change, humanity just brings me back to one of my favorite quotes, this goes back to this idea of the misfits, or this idea has got to be bold or crazy. One of my favorite quotes comes from Steve Jobs, who you talk a lot about in the book, and his quote is, those that think they're crazy enough to change the world are usually the ones that do. Right. And I don't know about anybody else that's listening, I would presume there's a high probability that they can relate. But I know for me exact same experience, every single sector of my life, I always feel like I don't quite fit in here. I don't quite fit to the mold of whether it's the the editing post production community, or like, I spent five, six years training for American Ninja Warrior, love this community, but I don't quite totally fit in, or you know, going to a playdate group for dads with their kids I don't quite fit in. And I realized that for me, it wasn't about the sense of I specialize in this one thing. And this is my group or my tribe. It's the intersection of all of them, where I feel like that's where I really fit in is when all those things converge and come together. And I talk all about this idea of this intersection and how I really believe that with the advent of artificial intelligence, and everything going on with the various creative industries in the economy, that it's the generalists like us the multi hyphenate, it's, we're really going to start rising to the top because specialists don't really fit in anywhere anymore. I think that's a very common theme for creatives, especially, the more specialized you are, the more prone you are asked for a placement by technology. And there's so much about your own personal narrative that I can resonate with, were like, well, I was into this, but I was into that. And this other thing, and I don't really fit in anywhere. So I'm curious whether it's similar to me or not, whether if for a long time, that was really to your own detriment, or you you felt like you were doing something wrong? Yeah, I

Chris Deaver: got I hit a wall, like after the Disney thing. And I realized, like, I don't know how to move forward. And you know, I mentioned the metro network. That was one way. But ultimately, what I realized was, it wasn't a single path. But that it was a set of building blocks. like Legos right there were going to fit together. And for me, it was something related to creative, right art, something related to business leadership, and then something related to, you know, teaching your truth, you know, stuff. And so I was like these things, combining them, you know, and I didn't know how they recombine. But, you know, that's the part of the journey or at the exploration is how this stuff starts to fit. So yeah, I mean, I think going back to what you're saying about, you know, most people well, I saw this video, this reel of Kevin, you know, the shark. And, you know, we have our opinions about sharks. In the book, we

Zack Arnold: got a whole chapter about shark tank, which was fascinating, but continue

Chris Deaver: got to shatter the Shark Tank. I mean, this notion, you know, it's like, an actually, this has to do with shattering something to Okay, so he says in this video, and it wasn't long ago, by the way that we that people would say, hey, you know, kids got to learn coding or was gathering coding, coding, coding. I have friends that are doing web three and everything else, and they're like, I have an entire team of an organization of bots that are coding. Now, do they need to learn coding, okay, yeah, they're an architect. But Kevin, in this video, he says, You know, I used to tell people hire if you're talking about hiring engineers, engineers, engineers, we saw like, Steve Ballmer on stage like shouting that and sweating, you know, classic Microsoft video. But he said, Now, what I say to people is creatives, creatives, creatives, he said the problem now is though it's flipped where you can't afford these guys, right? They're getting paid six figure that you know, to undercut. And he's like, because but they have a niche. But here's the interesting thing about that engineering that's usually at least partly degree oriented, educational, there's experiences that I add to that. And yeah, there's experiences at any career. But creatives, you could just come out of the wilderness with an idea, right? You could just have something that you're just that that is You know, it's uniquely you. I think the originality potential of creatives is very high. And we're in a world to your point AI, that has all kinds of that creates all kinds of positive possibilities and challenges, also in the creative community, but what it does is, I think, as a civilization advances over time, which have, we go beyond efficiency, we go beyond effectiveness. And then what's next? Well, it has to do with creativity. And we believe it's co creation. So it's an advanced level of creativity. That also requires partnership and leadership to do it. But again, the great companies do this in a great, the great people, the cultures we love, right? Where we love to be those moments that we feel something different. We all had, we're like, we look back, and we're like, what was that best experience that I had, it's usually has to do with the team. Right? I mean, to your point with those teams, where you're just creating something awesome. And you can have this in a family, you can have it any organization.

Zack Arnold: So the this idea of co creation is clearly a really big central theme of your book. And one of the charts of the many charts that are in the book that I gravitated to almost immediately was the efficiency, effectiveness. Cocreation. I'm like, That's the epicenter of what I want to talk about. But I want to get there by taking maybe not a circuitous path, but I want to go a little bit backwards. And I want to dig even deeper into this idea of why companies and why businesses kill creativity. Because I think there's two very different ways to approach this. But you've literally written the book on it. So I want to get your take. When I read that question, what I really read was how companies kill creativity. So if somebody came to me and said, What's your opinion of how a company kills creativity, I talked about this all the time, where for me, as a film and television editor, or creative, it doesn't matter if you're a composer, or a writer, or whatever. So let's create the worst possible environment imaginable for you to do your job. Well, we're going to put you in a small dark room, we're going to take away the windows, we're going to make you work 14 1618 hours a day, you're going to be completely and totally sedentary. And we're going to give you ridiculous deadlines that creates such a high amount of stress that you have no room for free thought you don't you want to access the default network of your brain and take a break, do that on your own time. You're on the clock. Right? So that to me is those are examples of how companies kill creativity. But what I want to know is, why would companies kill creativity? What's what's in it for them to kill it? And am I am I just interpreting the question wrong? Or do you feel that there's a difference between the two? Yeah,

Chris Deaver: I think so. Ed Catmull. One is in a creativity book, he references something that's interesting, I think there relates to this, he's relating it to the creative side of, you know, in fact, specifically Disney versus Pixar. So as they're integrating Pixar, and he talks about the the beasts versus the baby, right, and the Beast is the machine, the beast is, we've got a business that's running, and we got to feed the beast. And, you know, there's truth to that, you know, you have to have a margin, you got to have revenues. But if we ignore the baby, or if you know, if, you know, let the baby die, it's like, that's not good, right? We've got to have something that and that's the, I think what we're seeing now is, there's all these babies that need attention. And they're great ideas. They're, they're actually going to power the future. But I think we have a lot of the beasts in organizations that are ignoring that or they're scared, or they're just so used to doing things a certain way. I mean, like Disney when they fired, you know, Lasseter, like, they do these things where it's like, now 3d is not gonna work, you know, it's like, well, why because they just stuck in the machine, right? They didn't see the future at the time. So I think there's a lot of things like that that could be the reason why. And then when you get to individuals and leaders particularly well a lot of these guys have been trained men and women to think business they that is why executives when they get involved in creative stuff, it's tends to be messy, right? And they just got notes that are crap, right? And, and then it's like, why are they are and it's usually just a knee jerk reaction thing, or it's a power play or it's a rank pole thing. Eisner started yet Disney didn't go over well. But I think when they, when they create, they let things loose. You know, one example of this, that I love is the first real the first real big stab at Marvel movie, which was Iron Man. And he had fabro and Jeff Bridges when a podcast talking about this, and he's like, I'm so used to having a script, like always, right always have a script that says he's like, I don't like to go in any thing, you know, without that for a minute for a movie. And yet for Ironman, he said they went in him and Robert Downey Jr. and Fabbro their trailer and it's like, there's no script fabrics like what would you say there? What would you say? Okay, and they're switching parts and do this whole thing. And then the suits are in the room? Spine, if this is Kevin Feige or whoever, these guys, right, and they're like, No, he wouldn't say that that guy wouldn't say that. And yet, they're just what Jeff Bridges said is, he's like Robert Downey Jr, is just riding this wave fabros riding this wave, right, which is the wave of co creation. And he's writing, he starts riding this wave bridges, even though it's uncomfortable, it's like, this is weird. And he's like, here, you have this 100 million dollar movie, like hundreds of millions of dollars going into this. And if it fails, by the way, there is no Marvel Universe. Right? I mean, at least for a long time, it's not gonna work the same. And so, you know, they're kind of pushing back. And that's in a creative environment, they're pushing back on the suits. So it's a good lesson, and how do you do things that are not as unconventional, but they're co creative. And they bump up against those walls? You know, one of the other things about Steve Jobs was like one of my favorite videos. He's got his beard, he's in the wilderness, you know, he's left Pixar or no apple, but left, kicked out, kicked out into the wilderness, his hero's journey, hero's journey, right? And he says in that video, he's like, you know, we just get used to like, just bumping up against these walls, all these things in the universe, and we're used to seeing all this stuff. But, you know, it was all made by some person. It's no smarter than you and me. And, you know, we realized that, and when we ask, Billy, he talks about asking and talks about calling the person at HP are the founders getting parts and getting a job there? So just like we were talking about earlier, connecting with people, but it's also about asking the universe, right? What if questions, and what if we build things differently? What if it doesn't have to be a boring meeting that we sit in and just stare at the clock or, you know, hate the agenda? Or it's some bleeder just playing a role right there? Like it's like a Shakespearean play, and they're just up there, saying what they have to say. I mean, Simon, Shakespeare is boring. So pick it, you know, some movie that's, I don't know. But it's not what we want. It's not the experience that we're looking for, to feel, you know, activated. But it is possible. Yeah, well,

Zack Arnold: this, this idea of building differently is definitely the direction that I want to go. And as long as we're on it, we're gonna stand the threat of Steve Jobs. Because Apple and Steve Jobs are obviously a core theme of this entire book. And I know that this is this was a stumbling point for me in the past. And I know it's been a stumbling point for a lot of people, especially those that consider themselves kind of grammar gurus, where for a long time, it bothered me that this thing was think different. I'm like, No, it's an adverb, it's think differently. And then I read the Steve Jobs biography, and I was like, Oh, I get it now. And not only do I want you to help everybody interpret that might still not understand the difference between think differently and think different. But you helped Apple their entire culture, make the transition from think different to different together. So I want I want to attack this a little bit more deeply, because this is the heart of this co creation process. Yeah.

Chris Deaver: Yeah. I think that's a good point, too, because you're right. And that just shows like, I guess, the brash atria of like, Hey, we're gonna challenge the English language even, right. That's classic apple. And, you know, I being at Apple culture I saw, you know, they do that. It's not just they talk about they live it, right. It's, it's fundamental, it's it, they don't have mission statements on the wall. They live and breathe thinking different. And, you know, I think as an aspiration or as something that, I mean, clearly, the products they build, there's collaboration involved. It feels like, you know, there's like a band, you know, like, like the Beatles, Steve would relate to. But I think the thing that's interesting is what what started to happen when I was there, I was like, Well, okay, I was people that knew Steve, as a leader. And then you have these leaders that were were people teams. I was told 70% that had been there five years or less. So the question was, how do we teach them Apple fast enough? And it was a very one directional question, though. So I thought, okay, so you're assuming things different? You know, that's it, right. And we already got nailed down. Apple University was showing a lot of the artifacts of Steve on stage. And I mean, these are classic. So you're talking about the quintessential business leader, but to Ed Catmull is point in his book. Most people don't cover the whole story arc. And I wouldn't say they ignored it, but that's a big deal. Right, like going from rough Steve to change. Steve, he learned a lot, you know, Ed talks about this in his book, but we referenced this as like, you know, he had worked with him for 26 years more than anybody else. And you know, he got to see firsthand the somebody's behaviors that weren't great, you know, and in Holly With a glorified a lot of these, some of the movies that came out. And you know, there was heartburn about this, for some of you know, Steve's family and other people because they're like that doesn't really capture it. And what it didn't capture was, it didn't capture the fact that this guy got kicked out of his own kingdom, right. Now, while Disney got a kick in the teeth, when his his Oswald, the Lucky Rabbit got stolen, but you know, Steve, it was his company. And, but he had lessons to learn, he was not matured in some ways. And so he had in starting next and starting Pixar. He learned some compassion, he learned some empathy. And I think that helped contribute to the right ingredients, right, the right soil, the right things that you could plant, the future of Apple upon. So of course, he gets back and he clears up the skews, they get focused on what they need to do. And pretty soon it is one of the most valuable companies in the world. But when I got there, what we were struggling with was an existential question of First of all, where's that person over the shoulder? That has a definitive point of view? That's telling us what to do. Right, Steve? Tim was much more distributed power, a sit back and listen, what do you think? Right? And then you drive. But that's, that's a different interaction. Right? And so leaders didn't quite know what to do. And then this notion of, okay, well, yeah, identity, right thing different, that's a good identity. If the problems that were arising about friction in the system and cause problems collaboration, again, 70% of people didn't know how to navigate sometimes at least there are newer, so they're trying to figure out, okay, those guys at the top, know each other, they had pre existing relationships. And you know, Apple is a company that focuses on secrecy. So they're not, not always talking about the product, they are there. But down here, how do we connect us 100 People with those other 100 people, or 200, and they're not sharing this, they're not sharing that. So all these horizontal connections, you know, that require working together? And so we thought, okay, let's keep the strengths of thinking different. And build on that, by doing it together. And, you know, the way we did it was just starting to dive into one of those future culture principles, that, you know, kind of in an interstellar way, if this is the Matthew McConaughey of the future in a cooper that's pulling the old one, you know, to the future, or giving him advice, the old Apple is the you know, now he's the future Apple, what is it? What are those things? What are those things that are going to be the guide points, the beacons, you know, the coordinates. And that was the exercise was to get to what are the heartbeat future principles for Apple? Some of them had to do with sharing. So it had to do sticking with the North Star. You know, and sharing was countercultural, because it was like our secrecy. But yeah, share smartly. But build the circles of sharing right brain trusts. So we borrow the notion of brain trust from Ed Catmull, to infuse the Pixar that a camera brain trust, what would we build for AirPods? They're having challenges over there? Oh, what if we do it for iPhone, there's some struggles like trying to get the iPhone 10, which is a big deal. And if we don't solve for the antenna, you're gonna have a nice, big, a nice glorified iPod. So we got to get this right. Oh, wireless, we got to do that better, too. There's all these things are like, wow, what if we're doing more brain trusts, and it wasn't that those elements weren't there the ingredients were, but really bringing it together and being intentional. That was the work to do. And as we did, yeah, you had air pods that they went from, you know, an idea that people thought was actually frankly, inside the company, I'll say a little ridiculous. They knew it was possible. They hired PhDs and white paper, people who read white papers, they're like, there's a possibly can't do this. Like, that's why we hired you can help us do it. And engineers like, yeah, that's exciting. And so, but like the stem in it, the designers hated, like, always gonna, come on, like, you know, the course turns into a meme. People love it, you know? But then the idea of like, how do we iterate? How do we get better at this, we're working different together. Having brain trusts that partner differently together based on those principles, and those coordinates the quantum data right from the future, we could get there. And that's how we started getting there.

Zack Arnold: I want to dig a little bit deeper into some of these ideas and these core principles, and I want to pair them with kind of the contradiction or the opposite. So essentially, all these things you're talking about, that you brought to Apple or to other companies to create co creation. I also want to see what the inverse is in the world of these more standard toxic work cultures. So I'll give you I'll give you an example. And then you and I can kind of riff we're going to kind of CO created fly, see what I did there. So for me one of the core principles that's really important to me for any team that I work with, and it took me a long time to figure this out. But whenever and it's been a while. Since I've actually interviewed to work for somebody else, because I know largely do my own thing, but the number one question whether I'm actually asking it or I'm trying to figure it out, is this a culture where the best idea wins, or where your idea wins, because you're more important and you get paid more, those are two diametrically opposed ideas. And I've always said that if I'm working on something late at night, and my doors open, and the janitor comes by and says, that should be a close up, instead of a wide shot, in one culture, they shut the door and say, What do you know, in a culture I want to be a part of I'm like, what?

Chris Deaver: Oh, they're right, that is better than right.

Zack Arnold: So that, to me is an example of either co creation, or just this idea of the best idea wins, versus the most important person's idea wins you some other examples of this contradiction between the toxic work cultures we're very familiar with, and the inverse, and we can work towards that. I want to talk about how we work towards it.

Chris Deaver: Yeah, I mean, just how leaders lead, right? They may say, I mean, to your point, it's like, I'm the expert. I've got the, you know, I've seen companies where they have this, there's actually a notion where they would use it. I don't know if it's still happening. But there was a company I worked with, it was like AnswerFirst, they borrowed this from Bain, right consulting companies to have the answer first competence that you leave with the competent they use this example, the bicycle, it's like your first wheel should be the competence that you bring to the table. I think it's flipped, actually, it definitely is now, right? Because I have Google, I have a I have all these things, chat DBT, they can get they can spit out answers all the time. I don't need a guy or person, male or female, leading, that is just an answer machine. What we need is people that are great at listening, that are leading with questions, you know, and How simple is that just to create some brave space, and allow for someone to share thoughts and ideas, and to feel empowered to do it. And that's not a threat, you know, to the boss or leader, it's actually powerful when they can, you know, feel like wow, you know, or like see would say, I don't hire now granted it to live up to it. That's another thing. But he was, so it was a wrestle. But you know, I don't hire, we don't hire people to tell them what to do. We hired people to tell us what to do. And I felt that was true. Like my first meeting at Apple, I get in there. And I know, you know, because at some companies, you have to earn your seat, right? It's few years, even like six months, I mean, so you just kind of wait to kind of graze around the edges. First meeting, I've sit in there. And there's about performance management, their whole philosophy and all this stuff. So I don't think I have like really much to say, because I'm like, I'm not even I haven't learned process here. But the leader comes in who hired me, and he just, like, slams his fist on the table. He's like, this is crap. He's like, we got to change everything we're doing. It's like, Chris, you bet at Disney and Dell, tell us what we need to do differently. And I just love the spirit of that. Right? Like, he didn't have to be like, oh, yeah, I'm going to actually come out with some solution. And I like I would have all the context to even do that. But I felt like the spirit of that was, was really encouraging, right? Because it created that kind of Miss 50. You know, and that's what they have, or they have that anomaly, culture, that it's the the rebels, those kinds of things, a meetings to just by design, are. They're designed typically to be boring, they're designed to disengage people, they're designed to be top down. So reimagining meetings, you know, why can't it just be more flow? We talked about flow with art, right? When you're doing what you love, you're painting? Are you playing sports? You know, you're reading things you love? Why can we have that feeling at work? And why can't we have it? You know, that's the next level, which is the shared flow, you see those teams and sport that are just moving together? Right, the warriors when they're playing a great game, you know, or other teams when they do? Yeah. That kind of thing. Those are some.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and one of the you kind of said this already. I want to dig into this even deeper, because it's a core philosophy and principle of mine as well. If we're looking at the toxic work culture approach, versus more of the co creation approach, it's, I'm gonna give you answers. Versus I'm going to lead with questions. This is actually a transition that I made in building my team, which is a little bit smaller than Apple. It's probably the size of one tiny corner of one building of one department. So it's very, very small company. But we were struggling with figuring out especially because we're 100% remote and we're distributed across I think four different continents and multiple timezones, it's hard for us to just get into a room and just chit chat and be like, Oh, what do you got on the whiteboard over there? Right. Like it's much, much harder. And I think that a lot of people are struggling with this currently, where it's it's harder to to creatively collaborate with remote workflows. And the fundamental change that I've made that I think and maybe Debbie or other team members would disagree, but I really believe that the fundamental change that's helped facilitate the creativity is that we frame meetings around questions, right? And how can we solve this one problem and give people the time beforehand to think about it, then the entire meetings What about this? What about this? Well, what about this versus if I wanted to create kind of the more standard corporate environment, you only to solve the problem. You do it this way you do it this way you do it this way. And I feel like especially in the creative side of the industry where I was, and because you've been with Pixar and all these other companies, you've probably seen the difference between here's how you're going to do it, versus how can you solve this problem?

Chris Deaver: Yeah, I think planting those seeds of questions is really powerful. You can send a question out a week in advance. And then just let people marinate on that, you know, creates a lot of space, you can lead with questions in the meeting. Without appearing. You know, I think, you know, to not knowledgeable or, you know, like, this is something too, that shows up in the world out there. Right. It's like, I think we get I don't know, I get burned out of it. Like there's a lot of books, right? I mean, self help kind of gurus. It's like, there's this spitting out answers all the time. And usually, it's about one thing, right? It's like, this is the expert at that thing. And you know, I don't think it's there's nothing wrong with being an expert, but there's tends to be more power, in power and power for questions. I had a I had a friend, while I worked with her Apple name is Lucky of all names. She's very, you know, asked this incredible thinker, smart, extremely smart, but like, probably the best Socratic method applied I've ever experienced in my life. And she would just ask really probing questions and just really thoughtful questions, and just wait to create space. You know, just let you sit in your, in your thinking. And I just I really appreciate that. I think there's power in that. And it's underestimate. It's underrated, right? For leaders, because we also feel that internal pressure to have all the answers we feel the internal pressure to, to lead. But again, I think so the best i My favorite leaders, he worked in the Air Force, he was a pilot, like 20 some years. And then he led this organization I was in, and I remember sitting with him, and he's like, I had this question I needed to answer to. And I asked him, and he goes, Well, if you were me, like, what would you do? If you were me for a day? Like, what would you do? And I wasn't he just it wasn't a throw. It wasn't a throwaway question. He was actually really curious, like he wanted to know. And so when I shared that he just grabbed it in the air, and we started co creating the answer. And then we went after the solution together. And I think that's something that a lot, you know, a lot of leaders could benefit from. That's the creative side of it, because it is created, right? It's a creative act. I love like Rick Rubin's book, right. The creative act, I think leaders can benefit from that kind of space where they just say, you know, this is a creative act. Leading is a there's an art to it. And yes, there's definitely science to it as well. But the art and creativity has been crowded out. And it's been bullied for too long.

Zack Arnold: So now comes the next obvious question, at least for me, speaking of questions in the Socratic method, because that's the whole point of this podcast. All of this is a creative that's worked in the entertainment industry for well over 20 years. And whether it's Hollywood or Pixar, or the tech industry, just where creative minds are coming together to solve problems. Everything you're saying makes perfect sense. Why are so few people actually doing it this way? Why is it so bass ackwards? I

Chris Deaver: mean, this could be the same question inside of an organization where you're wondering, like, why isn't the culture different? Right. And most of us had been there, right? Well, the house isn't on fire, right? It's like, well, they're making some money, right? They've had, like, they may be applying 1980s methodology, right? As far as business is concerned, and it's getting some results. Right, whatever that is 20% margin, whatever it is. And, you know, most people don't, they're not at the stage where they want to really change. Unless there's a pressure to that, you know, and this is the unfortunate This is the challenge of life. This is I mean, our personal lives, like, sometimes it's like, the greatest growth happens in the valleys. Actually, you know, I'd say it's true, generally speaking, and then in companies too, but if that's true, you know, and granted, like the other part of this is, we're talking about culture, or the flow. Most leaders don't just stop and think about this, like, that hasn't been part of the education of the leadership education. Right. And by the way, to go back to Sir Ken Robinson, it hasn't been part of the educational system to begin with, right. Like, why do Why do schools kill creativity? I mean, why are they just getting into teams and building apps and building businesses in school? Like, why not? Because that's what they're going to do after. I mean, granted, there's always subjects and Fair enough, fair enough, but why not apply? and right, why don't an and answer hybrid to that. So these are the kinds of things but we've, we've asked, I've asked these questions a lot of times in different these different companies and some as you emerge with, okay, like Adele, we started this thing. It was like, let's get all these people together. We it was a think tank platform we call the game changers. We invited people from all over the organization. They'd been there 20 years I've been here 15 years been there five years, been two years. Just got there. And it's like, Hey, here's our business challenges. help us figure these out. And get into teams and boom, boom, boom, and you know, it's kind of a shark tank, exercise. Less shark, more dolphins. And they start building, right. And pretty soon you got a guy, he's in his team, they create a billion dollar app for the company, out of thin air. Right? And, you know, these are the kinds of things where, well, nobody really asked, right? So is it sit in the corner for 20 years? And yeah, he's doing his job. He's like, you know, pigeon holed into the screw fits in the screw? It's like, yes. But what if there's like 10 Other things he can do? I mean, I was in a meeting 20 years ago, 1515. Tom Ferry, Thomas Friedman, right? The World is Flat. They asked him at the very end, they said, what's the future. And he said, it's writing your job description. We're in that future act except the powers that be want to keep clinging to that power. But the ones that see, they realize there's more to it than that. So I think that's something for folks to keep in mind.

Zack Arnold: There's a couple of things that I want to add on top of this. And I apologize that this is veering, so completely away from the table of contents of your book. But to me, all of this is so fascinating. I can easily talk for three hours, just about the one phrase schools are killing creativity. Don't get me started. But I that's going to be veering so far off course. But I want to get back to this idea of why the companies are killing creativity and how they're, they're so myopically not seeing this. And there's two discoveries that I've come apart, well, one of which I knew for a while. And then this other one I came upon relatively recently. And it had nothing to do with studying companies that had to do with studying just the cycles of history, this idea of the four turnings, I don't know if you're familiar with our concept, right? But what this idea of the four turnings and being in the fourth turning there, I heard it on a podcast, I don't remember who was talking about it. But it was this idea of when it comes to governments and infrastructure. It seems like everybody's waiting for the perfect time to update the roads and build the new systems and put in the futuristic subways. Like in the US the infrastructure is just laughably bad when you look at the infrastructure in other countries, right? And the question is, why wouldn't you fix all of this when things are good, and you have all the money, you have a surplus. And the concept that was talked about that instantly, everything made sense to me is that necessity is the mother of invention. It isn't until the entire building is on fire, that you start thinking about fixing all the things that led to that, which then all of a sudden made sense to me why every time I start a new project, I say, you realize we don't have enough time, you realize this is under budget, and under this makes any sense. But they're waiting until the building is on fire, because then they have no other choice. That's when it all clicked. To me. This is what's broken about the industry. And the reason I bring that up is because right now, the buildings on fire and Hollywood, the building is on fire and all of global entertainment, and the tech industry. This is where I see tremendous opportunity, because now it's all falling apart. So now necessity becomes the mother of invention. Yeah.

Chris Deaver: And to your point, I mean, I love that I'm loved the reference, the fourth turning. And for anybody you know, it's that's a great recommendation, because it's just like, it's something that you wouldn't expect. The book dives into both kind of the parallels of an entire history of civilization. And then also the history of, you know, the United States, or globalization you say, but like, the notion of crisis, right, the fourth, the fourth turning is crisis, that fourth phase, and we're definitely in that. I mean, I look back, it's like, well, the 80s there was something like idealistic about it, you know, kind of grew up in that it's like, you know, go on your BMX bike, and you know, it's like, okay, just have fun, right? Be back by dark, you know, not today, right? Break it out over the kids are, and, and life is so complicated, and it's accelerated, and it's complex. And then you add in things like AI. And yeah, entire industry is going down. I mean, we see the jobs reports of like, hey, it's pretty good, right? Blue Collar. I think white collar has been majorly disrupted. Right. I was at Comic Con over there, speaking and talking to different, you know, writers and, you know, actually, actors didn't show up because that was during the strike. But, you know, to your point, it was like, uncertainty. Right, and uncertainty is pain, right? It's painful, but in that pain It is opportunity to turn that potential energy, you could say into kinetic energy. That's powerful. And so what does it start to look like or shape? We don't know the answers to that. I mean, I'll say like, just right there, I was talking like Marvel creators and people that have worked on produce, like, I don't want to say, Well, when I will, so Secret Invasion, they made it, they made a public apology, they made a private apology to me for that, I got to sitting through a half episode of that. And then for whatever that was with last one for for I think they, he's, these producers that worked on it, they said they couldn't watch it, although, hey, it's one of those where it's like, to me, it was like, this is two different movies. You got Christian Bale going method, you know, on villain, which is awesome. And then you've got like, Chris Hemsworth, and team and the Guardians like, fighting, like, basically, Labyrinth puppets, you know, in a battle, it's like, these two don't fit together. I mean, it's, you know, so hey, maybe somebody was, you know, doing some stuff when they were making the movie, I don't know, take it with TD, but like, he usually nails it. Hey, and you know, he gets a free pass. Mandalorian he did a great job. He did other great job. Ragnarok. But like, these are the kinds of things that I'm like, Okay, first of all, I think there's an existential not vacuum, but, and maybe that falling off was related the strike itself. So to be fair, I don't know. And also, just like, there's a bit of a burnout with the Marvel Universe, I'm not gonna go there. But you're getting at is like, Hey, there's this opportunity space for all this stuff. And this technology has been created. And that is, the the frontier is best lead with a sense of co creation, you know, and not just with the robots that are already here. But with teams that, you know, can know what to do with that together. And you build that together, you know, and then yeah, what does it start to look like? Who knows? But like that kind of disruption? Yeah, you're right, like, house is on fire. How many companies though, are in the same boat? And they don't know it? Right. Some of the tech companies, we saw some major layoffs. So I think there's a recognition of like, hey, stuff has to change. You know, and there's also the signs of the future, right? Apple vision Pro, I can talk about that. Now. My kids was a secret lab next to my office for years. But here we are. And those kinds of things were like, Wow, what's that going to turn into, you know, experiences, like the void. They had with, you know, using VR blend with AR or life, you know, and kind of make putting people in the video game. I mean, there's a lot of stuff and all that that's interesting on the entertainment side, but as it gets back to also just general business. You know, I don't think a company has to necessarily be doing be squarely in the creative space, because they do what they do. Right. But it is a question for leaders to answer seriously is to say, how do we go about this? How do we go about this differently? You know, and that's, that's the mirror test, I think of the future is, you know, yeah. What's, what do we want the future to be ask ourselves, right, and then pursue that together? You know?

Zack Arnold: Well, the reason I wanted to bring up this idea of the fourth turning, and the idea things really have to break down the building has to be on fire before anybody listens, is that I think there's a lot of people that are listening or watching today, similar to me, where we've been shouting this from the rooftops for 1015 20 years, right. But the analogy that I always use on day one of the new project and like, my, the only one that sees the tidal wave a couple of miles away like are is nobody going to prepare for the tidal wave, and then it hits like, Oh, my God, there's a tidal wave. And like, I mentioned that six months ago, nobody listened. The reason I think this is so important, is that I think everybody's going to be infinitely more receptive to solutions, because now everything is broken. So anything that we might have said, well, what about this or that or the other thing, it was working just well enough and holding together, there's no reason to listen, like, as long as we're kind of meeting the bare minimums of the status quo, like for them, maybe not the best thing in the world, but it's still making money and we're hitting the bottom line. But now Disney, the entire business totally on fire all these massive flops, one after another, they're going to be more receptive to feedback other companies will be. And I want to make sure as we have this very narrow, limited space as creatives, I want us to have solutions. I don't like bringing people problems, I want to bring them solutions. And if I'm an individual creative, and I'm listening to this today, and I'm thinking yes, I want to bring this to my company, or I want to bring this to the teams that I work with. What are practical solutions to transition from this is the way we've always done it to let's build systems of co creation. What can I as an individual do to start effecting this change? Because I think people are finally ready to listen. Yeah,

Chris Deaver: I think it's actually really simple. It's finished. It's been true for me in my experience, whether it was the mentoring network or Adele we started those things or Disney or Apple Just start small, you find that one person, right? You know, like that video where the guy starts dancing, and he's just crazy dance. Right? And the other guy

Zack Arnold: joins and once I love that video, yes, well, we'll link to it again, when I've used that half a dozen times to exhibit principles. Yeah.

Chris Deaver: So that's how it works, right? Because usually will think, Oh, we got to do some big rollout or we got to do some big thing that's just gonna have all this impact. And then we can also end up just stuck in our cave, trying to design that perfect thing. And then it doesn't happen. So what we have to do really is, okay, you share, but you connect with those people that you feel are like minded, right? Or that, that are asking the same question. And they're kind of maybe angsty about it, right? They're, they're, they're wrestling with it. And they're like, I don't I don't understand why. And maybe the verge of angry is it but like, they're bored or they're just, they're upset, like they're done right there. They want to, they want things to change. And it's not skeptical or, you know, a sense of giving up, but it's it's Wow. Like, hey, you're asking the same questions. I mean, at Disney, we started one of these, and I call them brave conversations. We would meet with his Imagineer, we met with futurists at Disney, we met with head of diversity in the heads of diversity. Myself, we just do lunch meetings, and then we talk we'd start venting about the culture. We're like, Oh, this sucks about that this this terrible. Why is this these toxic bosses, whatever. And pretty soon, though, after, you know, weeks or months of that, we start to shape ideas. And so futurist says, Well, what if I did a session where I bring all these VPS SVPs in, and we think forward like 2025 years about the future Disney start to build that, like, yeah, that's good, you should challenge them. And we sort of started helped shape you that the Imagineers like, I hate my boss. What do I do? And you know, that's a pretty funny story, right? Because, you know, the unhappy Imagineer who would expect that, right? I mean, that's like the best job in the world. If that isn't the

Zack Arnold: best meme I could possibly imagine. Like the grumpy Imagineer. It's

Chris Deaver: the it's the story that it's the unknown story we had in the book, we pulled it out with our editor. It was one of those that like, but it's still, there's a story there. Because it's unexpected. The thing that happened though, was here is he's just upset. And we had a conversation where I were in this brave conversation, he's just sharing, sharing, sharing, and we're just sharing ideas. We have nothing to do with his career. We're just weighing in. Right? And eventually he gets this idea. Like, because I know somebody said it, like, why don't you just go talk to the VP? Why don't you go talk to the front leg? The head of the? I don't know, that's working around them? I don't know, is that a good idea? Well, you're valued, right? Like, you want to be successful. You're, you're getting put on crappy project projects, your boss is micromanaging you, you're gonna leave, right? Otherwise, what do you have to lose? You know, and we're not answering the earlier question about, you know, hey, if you're but I think the question that it is, in the sense because he had the trust in this little circle of people who felt similar to him to share this. And then what he got out of that was the courage to go to his VP and say, Hey, this is what's happening, put it on the table. And what I really want to do, he said, was working on Star Wars, you know, the, the edge, right, like, build this world of Star Wars, I want to do the Toy Story land, I want to do this avatar, I haven't been able to do this project. This guy, you know, and he's like, it could be respectful about it. But obviously, it was like, there's a boss situation. So VP says, Hey, we really value I'll change your boss, you'll work on those projects. And the story, right. And these are the kinds of things for me at the time, it was I wanted, I was bottling up this notion of like, I wanted to break out of Disney. And I didn't know it was Apple Exactly. But that's what it was. So I started writing. And I started writing about Apple and LinkedIn, and connected with Adam Grant some other people to like, get on the platform early. And he was gracious enough to help with that. But it turned into actually sending the signal the bad signal out into the universe. And then Apple saw this in the I just started connecting with people. And the senior director calls me and he's like, Hey, you're one of the 5000 people. Mike, my connections, your fire one of the five that I want to talk to? And I didn't I thought well, how do I connect to this guy? Oh, I was just blasting connections to people when I was talking about Apple. And you know, there's a lot of content on LinkedIn these days. I don't know how effective strategy that is now, but going back to your point about like, what do people actually do practically will start a circle. But start, you know, are brave conversations really could be with one person and start to see where those lead. And then those conversations could be co creative conversations that can turn into co creative builds, or brave builds, where you start to build things that are different. And this could be an industries that are otherwise not creative. Right? It can be like, Hey, you're you guys build toaster ovens. Okay, what if we start just connecting and talk you know, those ideas that are just latent, you know, who's been taught who, you know what Like Brad Bird at Pixar, it's like, Oh, who's working on hair? Well, nobody knows nobody's gonna listen to make hair in 3d. It's impossible never been done. Oh, these guys are crazy. They're in the cave, trying to do that. They're nuts. Right? And Brad's like, I want them on the team. Let's get them, you know. So you find misfits too, on the edges. Scott Belsky at Adobe chief product officer he talks about getting to the edge of reason. And I think that's a good notion right there dealing with Firefly, there's a lot of things you can do. And build off of, you know, at the edge of reason. Without going crazy. Yeah, it's funny

Zack Arnold: that you've named at least five people that I've also either connected with, or they're on my dream list of connections, which tells me that we went from who's this person in my inbox. And this could be an interesting conversation, to finding that epicenter of the intersection of all of these generalized skills and interests and experiences that we have. It's so interesting how that just happens. So that's me putting a pin in, I think you and I are going to need to chat afterwards. Because there's, there's a lot of intersection where I think there's a lot more we could talk about, well beyond this conversation. And like I promised you before we started, we're gonna get to minute 89. And I'm going to be about 10% into my notes, I'm about 5% into my nose, but I'm loving this way better than anything that I prepared, I want to come back to this idea for a second of practical solutions. And I want to share my experience of and again, for anybody that doesn't know what we're talking about, I'll put a link to the video of the guy in the field at the concert, and understanding human nature and how you can affect change. This is literally the way that my entire business started is that I had a standing desk at my job. And there were other people that were talking about standing desks, but nobody in my industry was really using them yet. And I would tell them, if you're not going to provide me with a standing desk, this height adjustable. I'm going to bring my own. And literally on day one of my new project I carried in a giant desk. They're like, didn't we furnish you with a workstation? So yeah, but it's not a standing workstation, I want to be able to go up and down. So I was the only one I was the outlier. I was crazy. Then all of a sudden, a couple days later, hey, what's what's with your desk? I saw you walking down the hallway? What's that all about? So I show them like, oh, I want that too. So then then they will call the facility and then they say, Well, wait, I see you're taking walks in the afternoon, we're all eating lunches at our desk, what's that about? Then all of a sudden, that became a conversation, then it was a conversation I had on somebody else's podcast, then I started my own podcast talking about and all of a sudden, it just exploded. I'm like what is happening here, I was that one crazy guy dancing in the field. And what I've been saying for well over 10 years, is that if you want to affect change, if we're going to talk about the entertainment industry, just to kind of keep it to one sector, you can expect the change is going to happen from the top down, we're not going to fight for one contract that has one provision that's going to change the culture of our industry, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't fight for contractual protections. But at the same time, if we really want to affect change, it's me and the person I'm sharing a wall with and the person down the hall and the person down the hall, they dispersed to the next job. And it's the person on the other side of their wall on the other side of their wall, which becomes more challenging, you know, in a post pandemic zoom society, but it still happens largely the same way.

Chris Deaver: Yeah, it's interesting to like, because, you know, in today's world where, you know, so much happens that is so big and global, like in a tweet in a moment. And now it may be, you know, just a short fizzle, and it's there are two hits, and it's gone. But what reality the reality is, is behind all this, is we talked about humanity's early right, are there people, right? And we as people can affect change, we can make an impact. i This dawned on me deeper than probably any other time. To that point, when I was we were doing that work at Apple. And I felt like, Okay, we nailed it. With these, these particular organizations like the camera team, who does incredible work on the camera technology. We nailed it with this wireless team. And I told this partner of mine Carolina's like, hey, let's roll this out to everybody. Right? We gotta get this everywhere in the organization. Right? Working different together. We got to do that now and just roll it out, right? You know, put on a banner blast it and you know, yeah, there's HR programs or programs and leadership programs that do that. But they don't do very well. They go flat, right, because it's a corporate initiative, even at Apple. And by the way, that is the challenge because people are like, what really matters to them? Well, what matters is what they've created. So we just took the approach of like, now let's make it organic. We're sitting in this reflection pond, there's a reflection pond inside of Apple Park, in Cupertino. And it's one of the coolest places it's like a meditation space. And there's trees and you know, bushes and rocks. And Caroline says to me, Well, no, it's like this, this ecosystem right here. Right? We've we've put the right pieces in place. and it's like a garden. It's just gonna grow. And she was right. Right, or it was organic. And, you know, maybe it also takes the right culture to be conducive to that. You know, there's another story that and as far as impact that's related to this. And these were both big titans of industry. One time. Not long ago, Elon Musk was on of Twitter tirade, a raging about the App Store. And he challenges Tim Cook to, you know, essentially a Twitter cage match. I call it that, you know, it, he calls him out, right, calls that Apple, is there a problem? And, you know, most leaders would have their reaction, right, that are kind of thinking at that level. Now, but not 10 Tim's kind of the Zen monk Buddha, you know, kind of up there. And so he doesn't, that's how he thinks he actually invites, instead invites Elon to that reflection pond, you know, to tackle party tourism, and then they go into the reflection pond, and they're standing there. And Elon takes a video of it. And he posts online himself later. Look, Tim Cook, and I just met, we're all good. Here's the video like, so he answered his own question. cage match Elon versus Elon. Right? Who wins? I guess, Tim Cook. And at the end of the day, like, that was about principles, right? It's about two people coming together. And that's the simplicity, we can have a massive impact on the world, right? It's what allows go 140 million followers we already Tim has reality was we don't have to be fighting. We could be peacemakers. But you can also build stuff and start really small, with just one person at a time. And that's true of every endeavor.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and I agree with that wholeheartedly. And now I want to add a couple of layers of practicality to it. So let's assume somebody's listening, maybe it was me 1012 years ago, that's their, their, the outlier with the standing desk, or whatever it is. And they say, You know what, I think I might be the first person that's going to stand up, it's going to, you know, dance crazily until everybody joins me. And I want to have a brief conversation. I have no idea how to do that, or where to start. Give me some just like some baby steps. If I want to go from this sounds like a great idea. But I don't know how to approach it, or I don't have the confidence to do it. actually starting to lead this change with just one person or two people and not worrying about, I'm going to change Hollywood, but I'm going to change the culture of my floor.

Chris Deaver: Yeah, test the waters, like build relationships. That can be hard for introverted folks. But if you just test the waters, and you're having, putting in the effort to connect, and that can even happen on Zoom, you just set aside 30 minutes with someone, right? And it could just be like, Hey, I just want to connect with them. Just wanna get to know them. And you know, you, as our friend, Randy Nelson, who started, Pixar University says, be more interested than interesting, you know, and dive in to people's lives. And as you do, you'll find, you might find, well, we don't agree on enough. And maybe that's not really where the momentum is gonna happen with this. But I respect them. And I got to know them a little better, that's good. Or somebody else come out of anything. Wow. And sometimes it's people that have been through similar experiences, right? So sometimes, like you started the company around the same time, right? Or, or you're wrestling with the same problem, right, let's say per industry, and it's Hey, yeah, sky is falling on creatives. Like, hey, we have that common, like, let's talk about it. You know, you just test test these conversations and kind of see where, where the bravery in the conversation can lead. Usually it'll, it'll turn into something, you know, and fuel, right could be if it is fuel for the future, then you'll know, it's like that's turned into something else. Now we're talking about, what can we actually do with this? Well, this

Zack Arnold: reminds me of a quote. And I can tell just by the structure of the book that you and II and your co author, you clearly have an affinity for quotes. And they both have this just reminded me of is the African proverb, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far go together. I use that all the time. And this is the perfect example of like you said, you pick the one person down the hall or in the upper left hand corner of your weekly zoom call, or whatever it is, you're like, I think they're feeling what I'm feeling, right. It's not about here's all the solutions, and I've got a five five point bulleted plan and agenda I'm going to send to the VP it's Let's talk. Am I the only one? You too? Oh, maybe there's your tone. The other he he's been talking to you about that? Okay, right. I've felt that at a much more organic level. And it's what's led to me building this platform and teaching all the things that I teach, because one person at a time, it's, oh, I'm not the only one that feels that way. Oh, my God, I feel so much better. So I think that that's so important, but there's one factor that I think is necessary for us to talk about before we leave and I was hoping to have more time for it. This literally could be an entire part two of our conversation. Pretty much everything we've talked about. So so far has been within the realm of what you call tier one, I work for a company, there's a whole other vast universe of Screw this, I'm going out on my own. And I'm going to be an entrepreneur. And you can talk about that as tier two. And that's very much the world that I was in for years. And I kind of instill in. But then there's this third tier that never occurred to me like this is the your version of inception, where Intel going through your book and like this, it never even occurred to me, there was a blend of these. So at least briefly talk to me a little bit more about tier one, tier two, and then this whole new co creation phase, which is an either or, yeah,

Chris Deaver: we see this most prevalently, probably in places like LinkedIn, or this battle, right that ensues between. And it's not really spoken this way. But it's shows up, where like, entrepreneurs are like, Hey, look at me, right, I've got, you know, I'm pursuing my dream. Right. And, you know, and there's extreme versions of this that are a little more caricatures. Right. Well, guys, like live streaming, Lambos are behind them. They're probably rented, right? He's got a house behind him, but it's probably

Zack Arnold: sorry, my throat, sorry,

Chris Deaver: there you go. It's probably all green screen, right? You might have a family who knows, right? But period. And then and then you know, but there's that tension, right? Because then on the other side, employees could say, well, I got to security, I got to safety, the comfort of like what I do, but what we're seeing more and more of is this innate, creative sensibility, this inner voice that wants to be wants to express in all of these people, right? So whether you're inside of a company, yeah, it might be like, Okay, this talent, and it might not be like, I want to build a whole business out of it. But there's something there. Right, there's something there. And then entrepreneurs, I mean, they're not wrong. Right? As far as like, hey, that's more autonomy, more freedom. But you know, ultimately, what are you building? Right? And if you look at, like, how does the Shark Tank play out? Well, ultimately, they start building an empire, right? And then it starts to look like, what was tier one, right? So it's like, Hey, you got a, you know, a system that you built? Nothing wrong with that. But is it the full answer? And so the question that left us to, and you know, you could be inside of a company saying like the examples we shared about, hey, let's build something, you get the you get the motion to do that. Or you're outside, you're doing that as the entrepreneur. But the point is, is there's a synthesis, right, because thesis is kind of Hegel's dialectic thesis is employee, antithesis, entrepreneur, and most people would say, ends there. No, the synthesis is the CO creator. And you can be a co creator in either context. And you can do it very well. And by the way, you could blend both as possible. So I think finding ways to be a co creator. And by the way, you know, Covey would say, how do you change behavior? The best way is to change people's perception of their role. And so how do you change the dynamics of a leader? Or a parent, even to their son, or, you know, or, or a leader to their employee? What if they just rethought the relationship? What if it's not, hey, this person is my employee, or this person's, my, you know, whatever, like, their CO creator, I'm a co creator. So that example, that leader from the Air Force to talk about her, he was being a co creator, or if as a parent, I show up with my son, he's wrestling with some challenge, by show up is just, you know, dad here to tell him what to do. That's one approach. Or it could be like, What do you think you should do? Right? Or partnering? Right, co creating the answer. He's bringing forward things. And teenagers don't always have all the answers. Clearly, but but I think they'll appreciate the appreciate a co creative approach more. And it's not to say you can do this all the time. But I guess getting back to the business side, it really is crip being a co creator, as tier three. We call it you know, shorthand T three. And you can seem to stack this, you can look around and like, and then you start to see like you walk around the world, you're like, I see those people are living in T one, right? They like, like what Steve Jobs described, like, they like the box, they like to be in the box. And they feel very comfortable. There's nothing wrong with that. But there's people like to break out of the box, right? That's the T too. It's like, hey, they don't want to be in a box. They want to build their own box. Good. And then you know, tier three is like, well, it's like a triangle, you're combining these things together. You know, and you're living in either world, or you're living in both worlds. And if you're a co creator, living in the entrepreneurial world, you're gonna be a better leader. You're gonna be creating better, you're gonna be working better together with your team. If you're a co creator in an employee role, you're gonna be looking for opportunities that weren't there, at way outside of your job description that could benefit the company. I want my favorite leaders Disney's VP and he's like You're an anomaly. Chris, you don't belong here, like, really? Thanks. Because I know the problem is is like there's a graph, right? Most people like to reside in that like, what's normative, what's, you know, not deviate your way over here. So you have to decide like, but he said, first of all, that 60% of your role is already defined, but, or maybe, let's say 40 to 60. But there's about 640 to 60. That's not that you can create a bunch of stuff. So what do you do with that? You know, and that, that as the answer to that question has defined my entire career. And what I've done, and I think we can, we can do that. You

Zack Arnold: just without seeing it because the camera would have been on you proverbially. As you were saying this, I had an aha moment. Because when I was reading through the the different tears in the book, and I'm thinking, Oh, I've I've been in both tears, I spent most of my career in tier one. Now I'm in tier two. And I didn't really understand tier three, even as I was reading, I was like, I get it, but I don't get it. And my next question she was going to be, yeah, but what does that actually look like explained it to me. And as you're talking, I'm like, idiot, you're tier three, because I still work for other projects and other companies. Like, for example, I spent the last five seasons working on Cobra Kai for Netflix. But in between working on that show with those teams, I'm creating my own venture. And I'm constantly taking the ideas that I learned from my podcast and learn from my guests and learn from my students. And I bring it to the teams that I work with. And that's when I realize, Oh, I'm already in the epicenter of the triangle. But I didn't have the awareness. Like one of my favorite jokes of all time, which I think explains so much about how we experience the world. It's really simple. And it's actually very Pixar asked, I could see this being a Pixar short to fish are swimming through the water. One says, Hey, how's the water today? And the other one says, What's water? Right? And I feel like you need to correct me if I'm wrong, because if I end you can let me know. But I feel like I just realized, I'm in the triangle. I thought I was outside the box. And everybody else was inside the box, and I escaped the box. Am I right? In that? I'm in the middle of the triangle?

Chris Deaver: Yeah, yeah. Well, the funny that's irony, too, is that we don't, he's you don't realize that we are right. We're right in that, right. And, you know, then there's times to where, like we, there's people earlier in their career, who may want that really bad. But usually, it's a gradual process, right? Well, it's not like you force it, it's the go back to the organic thing, right? It's like you'll start to build, you'll start to have these experiences that are like building blocks, that will just kind of the Legos will start to form. And then you'll, you'll find yourself in a moment like that. And you'll say, Yeah, I guess I am doing this what I've always wanted to do, you know, wow. Yeah. So I think that's, that's, that's, that's true. You know, that's, and you can design for it. But and you can be intentional about it, too. I think that that's the thing, too, is giving ourselves language around these things helps to power it, because then a leader can say, well, yeah, I want to I want to do that, you know, I want to you know, synthesize, I mean, that's, that's something in the music industry, too. Right? It's like, okay, or in entertainment, you know, bringing things together that seemingly didn't fit, you know, but that do, right, because like, that's the thing, entrepreneurs, employees, it doesn't have to be a battle, you know, exists, it can exist in the same person, you can exist in all of us.

Zack Arnold: Well, that's a good opportunity for me to to wrap it up, because I made a promise that I'd have you out of here by 1259, or wanted to latest, and I want to do my best to not break that promise. So there's the short version of this, as you've already answered this question for the last 87 minutes. But to wrap it up, I want to bring it back to my who I am is my creativity, my ability to express myself. And the world is designed to take away as much of that as possible, whether it's the school system, whether it's my job, whether it's my company, whether it's the Hollywood entertainment industry, etc, etc, etc. What's the best advice you can give me to reconnect to my creativity and build a work life blend that I love?

Chris Deaver: They start with going deep. And just understand that we don't want to spoil the book but at the very end, there's a story that just is about grounding. Right and you put your hand on a tree, you experience nature, you connect with the core of who you are principles truth, right? And for some people that's religious or spiritual who Child of God, but you're true to like the center that is brave. And then you just start to expand out from that. And you find a way as we talked about, you know, connect with those people that that feel that and then you can be brave, you know, together in ways that can really make a difference in the world.

Zack Arnold: I love it. So you heard it here, folks. We're going to fix the Hollywood entertainment industry by touching a tree. You got it sounds it sounds like a really Quick life hack to me so well done. We brought it back to a very simple life hack. I believe they now call that forest bathing. So totally having conversation. There's literally a life hack that's called forest bathing, which means walking outside in nature. Don't get me wrong. Okay? It's the thing. Look it up. It's just the most asinine. Absurd.

Chris Deaver: It's not quite like ice bathing and like, like pine needles or something. No, no, there's

Zack Arnold: this new concept in the world of life hacking and biohacking. It's called forest bathing. Wow. And the way you do it is you walk outside in nature. That's it. Alright, but that's a whole other tangent. So having said all of the above, this is tremendously beneficial. For me. I learned a ton. I hope that everybody else listening, learned a ton. We barely barely scratched the surface. Where can I send people to make sure that they can learn more about you learn more about your work and most importantly, find and consume your book? Absolutely.

Chris Deaver: The books on Amazon so brave together. Christie were in Clawson, my co author and you know, bravecore.co is a website is our website. So bravecore core.co. And we'd love to connect with you. Yeah, I'm just I've been fed well fed to in our conversation, Zack. I feel like I'm curious too, about the Cobra Kai connection. I'm a huge karate kid. You know, fans, you

Zack Arnold: and I are gonna have to talk more. This is the beginning of a conversation at the end of one.

Chris Deaver: Absolutely, absolutely. So I appreciate it. It's been awesome. Yeah, this

Zack Arnold: has been a tremendous pleasure. I appreciate you taking the time. Thank you.

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Zack Arnold

How to Build Collaborative Cultures & Fix Toxic Creative Environments | with Chris Deaver

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