Beyond Busy #87 with Fred Pelard
Graham Allcott 0:04
You're listening to Beyond Busy, the show where we talk productivity, work life balance, and defining happiness and success. All the big questions for work and life. My name is Graham Allcott. I'm your host for the show. And on this episode, I'm talking to Fred Pelard. Fred is the author of a book called How to be Strategic. He is a former rocket scientist and also strategic consultant to some of the biggest brands in the world: Nike, Barclays, Ernst and Young, The Guardian, Tate sky, IKEA; the list goes on. So before we get into that episode, just a quick reminder that the tickets are on sale for my six weeks to Ninja, evening class. It's UK time, Thursday evenings, six weeks during November and December. And if you want to find out more about that, just go to grahamallcott.com; I'll put a link in the shownotes as well as getbeyondbusy.com. But I'd love you to come along basically, as a small group, the idea is that we will be going through some of the key chapters and therefore habits of my book, How to be a Productivity Ninja, all the stuff that you need to get organised, ready for the new year. All the stuff that you need to kick your productivity into shape. So if you want to be part of that Six Weeks to Ninja, the first time I've done it is basically taking all the stuff from my one day masterclass and putting it in an evening format. I'm really excited about doing it in this new format. And it's called Six Weeks to Ninja. So it's on Eventbrite if you want to just search it on there, and also just at grahamallcott.com. I'd love you to check it out. Right, let's get into the episode recorded as they all are these days, I used to really love doing them face to face. And then now they are all down the line, sadly, but recorded just a couple of weeks ago. Here is my conversation with Fred Pelard.
Fred Pelard, how you doing?
Fred Pelard 1:50
Very well, Graham, how are you?
Graham Allcott 1:51
I'm good. Thank you. I was quite amused by the fact that you just had told me that like your preparation for this conversation was listening to Beyond Busy and I was the soundtrack to your journey through Kent. I don't think I've ever been described as that before. So that's a— that's a— that's an amazing stuff.
Fred Pelard 2:08
My pleasure. It was you know, it also was the first trip after the end of lockdown this year. So you were actually a sign of freedom.
Graham Allcott 2:17
A sign of freedom. Oh, that's that's maybe happy at five, five o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon. So we're going to talk about your book, How to be Strategic and talk strategy. And this has been before you wrote the book, obviously a big part of your life's work, right?
Fred Pelard 2:35
Absolutely. Yeah, it's one of these. It's one of these sort of 15 years of experience shoehorned into 200 pages.
Graham Allcott 2:45
So you were a management consultant. And you work for Cal chasse and the instigate group, and with a lot of people who've worked for McKinsey, and Bain and the kind of consultancies that people would know about, and what would you say, if someone doesn't know that world? How would you describe the life of a management consultant.
Fred Pelard 3:06
So the life of a management consultant or a staff consultant is long hours, huge amount of structure, and extraordinary varied. So one of the differences between sort of these careers, and more corporate T or even tech startup is when you work in consulting every three months, you have to enter an entirely new world, and find a way to fit in. So you're going to tackle a completely new problem. In particular, as it were, that there's two strands of consulting. And that's what I was going to mention. There's management consulting and extract consulting. And strap management consulting is very much about telling companies how to do things. And usually it comes from a place of expertise. And then strap consulting is more working out with companies, what what else they might be doing, and it comes more from a place of sort of analysis and discovery. Yeah, and so management consultants tend to be a bit more senior, and a bit more, sort of prescriptive, whereas strap consultant are a bit more sort of junior and discovery, discover things. And both of these involve long hours and intellectual stimulation.
Graham Allcott 4:13
And when I've worked with consultants as well, I mean, just this sort of geographical spread of it, you know, so I'm just going to live in Reading for three months, and then I'm going to be in Edinburgh, and you know, just that whole sense of kind of often being placed in you know, faraway places in hotels and and that kind of stuff. Is that an experience that you can relate to? Was that a big part of your own career?
Fred Pelard 4:38
Oh, absolutely. You know, I've been I've been in Britain for 20 years. I'm now sort of a British citizen as well as a French citizen, and the first five years in Britain. I am so grateful that I got to spend time and you know, Doncaster and, and Grimsby and really get to experience the reality of a country.
Graham Allcott 4:59
There's probably Like a sort of George Orwell book or something in that, you know that the Frenchman in Grimsby or something?
Fred Pelard 5:05
Absolutely yes.
Graham Allcott 5:07
Just feels like an incongruous thing. So you mentioned there before this idea of walking into a new workplace, a new organisation, a new building a new culture and having to try and work out how they do things and having to try and fit in and be be part of that culture. And were there any particular examples of organisations that the culture was just particularly striking or where it went wrong, or like just what were some of the sort of more extreme experiences of culture that you've had over the years,
Fred Pelard 5:40
Some of the things you might say, as a consultant who works into organisation as a foreign body trying to integrate and integrate? Well, they can get the organisations to go in certain ways, if they're done, they're on the outside. And so you spend a lot of time really looking for the clues the codes, and you might notice things that even some of the employees in these organisations don't notice. So for example, over the years, I've done quite a bit of work more as a trader than the consultant to be fair. So I've been a consultant for 10 years, and I've been a trainer for the language team. And as a trainer, you get a little bit closer to organisation. Very simply put, a consultant is someone whose company's has been hired by your company to help improve things. A trainer is someone who is in the room to help you become smarter. So there's more of a, you know, personal connection. And as a trainer, for example, I work a lot with broadcasters in the UK. So I work with BBC, ITV sky, and Channel Four. And then when you work across all you notice some interesting things. So for example, you know about sort of timekeeping, there is an element where we're talking about productivity, in some organisations, let's say, hypothetically, Sky, there's a really strong elements of you know, we're going to deliver, we're going to be productive, we're going to be organised, we're gonna be structured. So if a meeting is on the hour, then you show up, you know, five minutes before and the, you know, somewhere in the middle sort of ITV in the hour is the our channel four is a bit more Well, you know, if you show up at the meeting within five minutes after it has started, you're still on time. And then at the BBC, there's usually a tendency to to juggle many, many balls actually handle a lot of different stakeholders, as you know, you've got employees, you know, certain constituencies, you got to be careful about the mindful assembly, the press etc. And so lots of people juggling lots of things. If you show up at the meeting, within the first 15 minutes you're still considered on time, for example, right? And that's a and after a while, you kind of go Okay, that's an interesting, that's a sort of cultural norm. And you know, that if one were to take a job with these organisations, then you know, you go with the cultural norm.
Graham Allcott 7:46
Have you watched the sitcom W1A, which is like a spoof of the BBC.
Fred Pelard 7:52
Absolutely. And just as I was telling the ending, I was about to say, one has to be a little bit careful about over sort of deriding so because at the other end, now, talking about other organisations, sometimes extreme productivity, as you know, can lead to, to massive problems. Because as we've seen, for example, with supply chains during the pandemic, when you optimise everything within an inch of its life, then all of a sudden, when a couple of people get sick, then the whole organisation falls down. So there's a little bit where, in particular, quite commonly, the more creative someone is, the less productive they're going to be. And vice versa, according to the classic metrics of productivity. There was a great who I forget his name now, but the writer of the West Wing Aaron Sorkin, and you know, has a great has a great comment, which is he goes, "I have all my best ideas in the shower", and taking a slightly productivist take on that. He goes, Well, if all my best ideas are in the shower, he asked, he actually installed a shower in his office. And every time you were stuck for ideas, you'd have a shower, I wonder things he realised is actually by the time you productiviced, the hell out of the shower moment. It's no longer serendipitous and an early morning, or late evening endeavour, and you get less of each additional shower.
Graham Allcott 9:15
Um, but I think ideas come often in the places that you least expect them because that's where there's space, right? And so, you know, certainly for me, if I've had a really difficult long day, and I know there's another 15 things to do on emails and everything else, often the best thing, and I don't always stick to this, but the best thing is just to get outside and go for a walk for half an hour because often just that process of sort of clearing your head and being being outside of your desk in your work is often the place where your brain figures it all out. Right.
Fred Pelard 9:51
Well, that's absolutely, absolutely and in particular, the the approach that you described is one that companies slightly underplay. Because if I talk about So one really well known model that I put in sort of how to be strategic is the different ways by which people learn and the different ways by which they solve problems. And so if you think about, you know, it can be a bit derided. But NLP identify the fact some people are very visual. So they see stuff some people are auditory they hear it and talk. And some people are more digital and some people are more kinesthetic. So when you describe typically would be described as kinesthetic, so people who need the sort of the physical activity to stimulate the brain, I know quite a few people in particular people who work in strength consulting, where when you force them to go and walk to think their brain freezes, because they're just, they get lots of stimulation and input from the body, which doesn't help with with problem solving. Okay, and so, a bit, the bit that I would say here is, what you described, for example, is one type of idea generation, which is what I would refer to as sort of the serendipitous, which is, you know, let me bring from the nether regions of my recesses brain, a flash of insight. And then typically, the thing that I tend to help people with more is at the other end of the spectrum, which is the idea of like, how can you create what I would call structured brainstorm. Yeah, and so if you think of the three sort of completely, you know, serendipitous, which is the one described, you know, go for a walk and hope for the idea to, to land on you. And a more traditional one is in a, in a, in an office environment, 10 people get together to solve a problem. And typically, they'll, the classic technique they will use is to brainstorm, and whether they use, you know, post it notes, or just verbal language, but they'll kind of each contribute. And what I tend to help people with, is slightly more structured brainstorm technique, which really means sort of take the time to, to create some booster rockets under the first five ideas or so most people's brainstorm stops, after five ideas. You know, you if I asked you sort of, you know, which restaurants what we could go there, we could go there we could go. by five years ago, I've got a long list now. And, and, and usually, the first five solutions can be the ones that are sort of top of mind. And then it's helpful as an as a team, for example, as a large group, to create an environment in which you will get past the first five to discover a few more.
Graham Allcott 12:27
And there's a thing that you wrote in the book, which really resonated with me. So you basically say being strategic is a skill, and you can learn it. And I guess it's often I guess, it's often thought of as being like a character trait. And it's often thought of as being, you know, most people's experience of strategy is that once a year or so, they're taken to a hotel somewhere, and they do some strategy. But actually thinking about it more as a skill and thinking about it more is something that you can inherently apply and use in all of your decisions and kind of day to day. And I think it's just much more compelling. So if someone's listening to this, how, if you bet, I think they'd be a lot of people listen to this, who don't necessarily feel like they are strategic people or feel like they, they could have more strategic thinking. So how can people learn it? Like what what are some of the key ways that you can just get better at being a strategic thinker?
Fred Pelard 13:29
Okay. So yes, the I love the the dichotomy or the comparison you've made between sort of strategy and strategic, and a lot of people's experience of strategic is actually strategy, which is, you know, the big decision done once a year of the organisation, as you say, in the hotel, what if I make analogy with, you know, people travelling to see, to see some friends, the strategy is who you're going to go and see and what we can, there you go, boom. And so it's take is done once for the trip, the strategic is at various point, asking yourself, actually, should we continue on the motorway we'd be better off taking a smaller, you know, a better more touristic journey with more sites, or should we stop at this petrol station or the next one because it has slightly better food? And so what you find is, the strategy tends to be the end destination that you spent a long time thinking but once it's set, it's set. And the strategic is the question you might ask yourself at various points in time to ensure that you achieve your outcome. And one of the reasons people are a bit uncomfortable around strategic is because of the infrequent nature of strategy. If there's a skill that you use once that mean you know it's if you if I go into the the kitchen or the you know, the word cabinet, if you're in the kitchen and you open your cutlery drawer, you look at a spoon, you look at a fork, you look at a knife, you know how to use it without a problem. And then there'll be some slightly bizarre utensil probably in the second drawer. How do we use that again?
Graham Allcott 15:00
Have a couple of days.
Fred Pelard 15:02
Because that might be the one to use once a year for the turkey at Christmas, or, you know, I don't know an egg shaver for Christmas. And every time you look at it, you go "oh how does it work?" And one of the issue with strategic is, it is a skill, the more you practice it, the better you are at it. And it's a slightly, it's quite at odds with the most the most classic way by which people solve problem every day. If you give me sort of another minute here, I'll expand on it. And I'll say, there's four ways, there's four main ways to solve problem, solve problems, the expert way, the analytical way, the creative way, and the strategic way. And most of us spend most of our days in the expert mode. In other words, when we're trying to solve a problem, most of the problems we solve everyday are problems for which we already have the answer. And by the way, that's lucky because it's good for one sanity, and it's also good for one's income, because you get paid for the stuff you're good at do it. And your CV or your LinkedIn page is effectively a manifestation to the outside world of the stuff you're good at solving. And then every, every so often. And by the way, there's quite a few professions or no personal trainers, police officer, estate agents, we spend most of it exactly in that mode, they have a body of information that's not available to their counterpart. And therefore, every hour of the day, they're the expert. They're either the law, literally for police officers, or they are the most knowledgeable about the the market for estate agents, etc. The second way to solve problem, which is the analytical mode is one where it's, you know, what, if the problem has never been tackled before, and we've seen a lot of that around COVID, you know, how do we keep? How do we work? What is my job gonna look like? How do I make the organisation work? How is the country going to keep everyone safe, you know, how's the government going to help keep people safe. And usually, at that point, there's a tendency for people to default to the analytical approach, which is to say, there's lots of information that are missing. Let me go in and gather all the facts, and then I'll see the solution emerge. professionals like you know, lawyers, investigative journalist, engineers, specialist, doctors spend their days doing that being very analytical. And by the way, you or me might do that, when we're looking at buying a new car, you know, we'll spend a lot of research we'll go and visit etc. And that's a great way to solve problem. And slight drawback is, if you can hear all of these a lot of, then it's not a great way to invent the future. And then the third way to solve problem is the creative one that goes, let me not worry too much about things I don't know, let's invent a number of solutions. And you think about, you know, whether it's designers or advertising creatives, or even sometimes military officers, or your GP, many of these people will really quickly come up with a range of options to a particular problem, rather than worry about gathering too much data right away. And if, and if you if I put these in front of you, they literally be you know, if you think about the matrix and the blue pill and the red pill, what I've shown in front of you here is sort of the you know, the left path, the middle path and the right path. The one ahead is the experts. The one on the the analytical is I refer to it as a submarine of analytical research is the one where you spend more time you go underwater, you disappear for a while you gather lots of information. And then maybe at the end is that there's a sort of a missile that appears with a solution. And then the creative one I refer to as the helicopter of creative discovery, where you take her from the ground, you come up, you explore your surroundings, and you you come up with a wide area of of ideas right away. And when you think about these three, you probably usually when I describe them like that, people go Oh, the first one is my dad, the second is my brother, and you know, and my brother's girlfriend is very much so, we can we can quite easily recognise more than just, you know, archetypes. We can recognise friends and family and colleagues in these three descriptions of the experts, the analytical and the creative.
And then the fourth one, very few people recognise because it's a slightly less visible skill. Because if you think about what is a strategic person, a strategic or strategic mindset lets me be a bit careful, because I when I call someone creative is usually someone who spends most of their days solving problem in a creative fashion and analytical person will spend most of their days solving problem in an analytical fashion. Think of these as like actually, you know, the fork, the knife, the spoon. Some people have a strong preference for one but we will borrow from each of these utensils when the work for they're in the right circumstances, and the another strategic one, and sorry here's a slightly long preamble, but it goes, the strategic one, most people are a bit anxious, and then usually it clicks in the next 30 seconds, because the way I explain it is I go, if something is strategic, it's in the future. If it's in the future, no data is really reliable. Again, think about, you know, March 2020, when we're looking at what happens with our societies under COVID. So if it's in the future, if your strategic, you're looking at the future, if it's in the future, the first thing you got to do is be creative. Yeah. And then you come up with a range of possible solutions. And typically, the difference between a creative and a strategic creative is often a subjective choice as to which solution you're going to go with what you know which way you're going to redo your kitchen, what what clothes you're going to wear today, all of these you can have lots of ideas. And then how do you decide on one subjectively, either intuitively right away, or over time by mulling things over? If it's a strategic issue, once you've had all the options, you're going to tell yourself, look, I need to absolutely be objective in the choice of the bet, you know, what is the approach that minimises the number of deaths in society? What is the approach that minimises the impact on, you know, on all our jobs and on GDP, what's the option that combines these two, and to be ruthlessly objective, you now have to sort of take your creativity and combine it with a very, very analytical approach, where you kill a lot of your, you eliminate a lot of your ideas, because they don't stack up.
Graham Allcott 21:35
And so that's where if you approach things creatively, and you end up, you know, let's say you have particular biases that you can't see, or particular kind of pet ideas that were yours and you think are really great, it can be really easy to just follow those through. And then, you know, that's where by sort of stress testing it and analysing it, you you really, you know, come to look at these things more objectively, rather than just kind of hanging on to the bits that were more memorable or made more sense to you.
Fred Pelard 22:04
Absolutely. And one of the better apologies, sometimes I can talk for a few minutes at a time, as you know, I earn a living.
Graham Allcott 22:15
So I was I was just leaving you to get through the floor.
Fred Pelard 22:18
Thank you very much. And also, the drawback is, you know, earning a living as a public speaker, sometimes there's a tendency to go and out, let me tell you the 27 anecdote.
Graham Allcott 22:27
And on my next slide.
Fred Pelard 22:29
Yes. Apologies, Graham.
Graham Allcott 22:31
So the next slide I was gonna ask you about is the slide of the roller coaster of strategic thinking, because I think that leads on quite nicely. So tell us about that roller coaster. And presumably, this is a process that you're going through with clients
Fred Pelard 22:47
Absolutely
Graham Allcott 22:48
Like that's kind of like almost the way that you would structure a strategic process with.
Fred Pelard 22:54
And that's one of the things so you know, we're all familiar what a roller coaster looks like but imagine a very simple roller coaster so it goes up, down and back up again. And in that little simple shape, you've got the shape of that product, strategic problem solving takes all the time. The best way to solve problem is, you know, strategic equals creative plus analytical, and being creative, first, analytical second. So the creative bit, if it was on a roller coaster, is go up with your energy with your enthusiasm with some structured thinking, and come up with lots of possible options. And then the bit that differentiates a pure creative person as you were needed to, sometimes people are very creative, a tendency maybe to fall in love with their ideas. And a strategic person has a slightly bizarre click, which is at the top of the roller coaster, they switch mindset. And now they go, I don't really care, which of my seven ideas turns out to be the best. What I want is I want to, I will kind of wait until the downward part of the roller coaster find out which of the seven is the one that's the winner, and that's the one I want back. and in that contrast, you know, with the sort of the roller coaster of being, it's a roller coaster of both creativity. And also it's it's an intellectual roller coaster, and an emotional roller coaster. And for example, that image is a fantastic way to make sense of people like Steve Jobs or Jeffrey Sachs. Know, every anecdote about Steve Jobs talked about how extraordinary visionary he was and how sort of painful as a human being he was to work with whether his family or colleagues or boss, and when you realise that, I mean, nobody would have called Steve Jobs anything other than strategic and one of the things that he did very naturally is get super enthusiastic around some ideas. And then once they were Okay, let's make that happen then be ruthless, sort of testing, testing them nearly by destruction and that ability to go from I love it to I hate it is sometimes giving yourself a bit of whiplash. Because you have to go through, let's come up with 3 4 5 possible solutions. And then pose, what I do is I don't drink coffee, I only drink tea, which is how I got the passport. And so you know, and you're gonna make a cup of tea. And then when you come back, you know, sometimes you will roleplay, a slightly meaner version of yourself, that rolls its eyes and the collection of ideas that your previous self came up with,
Graham Allcott 25:28
you must have come come across them Edward de Bono's work, right. And the six thinking hats and just the idea of taking, taking an idea and then looking at it almost like with different lenses. And, you know, let's look at the resource part of this as think about the negative aspects of this, and but, you know, potential things that we've not spotted. And I think sometimes we can make big decisions, but but we don't do that kind of thinking often enough when they're making some of those decisions, right?
Fred Pelard 25:56
Yes. And part of the issue is, if you think about, you know, six thinking hats, I think if either of us challenged each other to name the six, we're probably we know the technique, yeah, the colour of the hat, but we couldn't get it, I couldn't kind of the tip of my tongue list the six. That's because six feels like a slight overkill. And, and here is the comment when I talk about the roller coaster, really, I go, there's like three stages, if you see what I mean. Yeah, and I literally call them up down, push. So first be very positive, then go very negative, and then really push the thing that you're left with. And, and actually, interestingly enough, if you want to take it into a more male environment, you can recognise Winnie the Pooh, where you know, you go Tigger first or second and we need third. So, first be super enthusiastic, then be very critical, then be practical.
Graham Allcott 26:49
That's cool. So you get to say, wherever you are listening to this, you can channel you're in a EA or ticker, like depending on the
Fred Pelard 26:55
absolute,
Graham Allcott 26:56
with which by the processor and,
Fred Pelard 26:58
and rebounding on that one of the tips, you know, we're talking about sort of all of the book in the book itself, there's like, there's a rollercoaster, then there's 12 techniques that people apply in practice. And at the end, there's kind of a few, a few tips. And one of the, one of the tips I would make is, but it's not in there, let me call it tip six, is you have to be Tigger before you're Eeyore. And that's really, really important. Because for you know, whether people are looking, for example, in current in current situation. If you if you tell yourself that you need more information, before you decide, the future is so uncertain, that you're going to trap yourself into a vortex. So you're isness. And so the way to be strategic is to go, I don't know enough, that's true. But let me invent three or four possible solutions, you know, I can, I could work from home, I could do that I could change up, I could do XYZ. And then once you've laid them out, then you go, what's wrong, what's the good and bad with each of these, and you'll find that you get a bit you get a bit further. And then typically linked with that, sometimes you might not do it on your own, you might do it at work with your colleagues, one of my tip is small teams go up, and large teams go down. So if you're going to try and be optimistic and positive, and find a way, and you probably better off with a small group of people, three or four, not more. And if you're trying to eliminate an idea, because if in a small group, you can you can create an illusion for as a team that you'll find a way, you know, the army, US Rangers are small, or you know, if you look at two people go ahead and explore the path. They're usually very a very small team, because it's discrete, it's quick, it's nimble. And then when you have this ideas, then what you want is a large body of people you really want, then the person is going to tell you what's wrong, and you needed that very narrow expertise that they have, that kind of help dampen an idea. So small teams go up and large teams go down.
Graham Allcott 29:05
Love that. I wanted to talk about the happiness line. And partly because we're on Beyond Busy and we talk a lot on this podcast about not just productivity, but also how people define happiness and success and the happiness line in the book. I think people listening to this are gonna have to go and get the book to find out some more, because I think a lot of it is it's a very visual sort of graphic representation. But I just love the sort of the idea of the tension and like the sort of happy tension thing that you talk about. So do you want to just explain where that comes from what it is?
Fred Pelard 29:41
With pleasure. Yes, indeed. So the happy line is a construct that there is a strategy professor who teaches at INSEAD called Chan Kim, who came up with a book called Blue Ocean Strategy, which has been been a phenomenal success. Chan Kim is if you're in the rarefied world of strategy and strategy consulting is one of the rock stars. And the format before blue ocean strategy was something called the happy line. And the two are slightly different blue ocean strategies about how you completely invent new worlds. Hence, the blue ocean in a blue, a completely sort of open ended corner, the happy line is a bit more, how do you make the best out of the circumstances you find yourself in. And if I make an analogy, the happy line is a fantastic way to help is a structured thinking technique to help improve a relationship, because it says the key to success, the key to productivity, the key to everything, Chan Kim introduces the notion that there's another party, you're doing it not just for you, there's someone else involved. So to be successful in business, you've got to have a client that's happy, you got to have employees that are happy, you got to have regulators that are happy. And what he suggests, it's if I use a more well known sort of popular say, is there's you know, the golden rule is treat others as you would like to be treated. And Chan Kim introduces this idea that actually, it's a good rule. But there's a better rule is the better rule is treat others as they would like to be treated, right, because everyone has subjective preferences. And so for example, for many people who are looking, you know, some people might have difficulties in a career, or in a relationship, or the example they often find because it, they often use is parents, you go, you know what that might be out of your two parents, there might be one, you get along with really easy. And another one, it's a bit harder. Likewise, you know, your boss, you might have a certain relationship, or some clients. And what Chan Kim posits with the happy line is if you create a two dimensional picture, and it's hard to explain it like this, but it goes on the horizontal axis, plot the criteria that matter to the other person, and preferably in decreasing order. And then on the vertical axis, you plot how well you're doing on these dimensions. So you know, if it's your boss that you want to please you go, what's important to my boss, and some of you would have a boss for whom the most important thing is, you know, on time delivery, then it will be accuracy, then will be foreign languages, then will be making tea. For other people, you might have a boss who values, you know, emotional intelligence above everything. And then creativity, and then on time is a much less important criteria. And so what you've identified here on that horizontal axis is the relative importance of what Jen calls purchasing criteria, the relative importance of aspects of performance to the other person. And effectively, your performance at work is a subjective activity where someone else decides whether you're doing well or not. And what many people do is they don't put themselves in the shoes of the other party, in trying to satisfy someone, and you might be giving them more and more and more of stuff they don't really care about, rather than a little bit of what they really care.
Graham Allcott 33:07
That's so true, isn't it? Because often, you'll just think about it more from the point of view of here's the thing that I care about, and I'm doing a good job with it. So therefore I'm succeeding.
Fred Pelard 33:15
Yes. And you're right. There's there's an also there's a you know, and I can see it myself too, there's a virtuous circle, is if there's something you're good at, usually you find it, it's pretty important to you, so you do more of it, which is where you get good at what you value even more. And you can sometimes get trapped into doing more and more walls getting less it I mean, if I bring it to a very simple scenario that everyone will be, you know, listening will be familiar, is when your romantic relationship, there's a tendency, how much thought do you put into the criteria of the other party when you make a present? Mm, do you offer the other person what you would like to get? Or do you offer them what they would like to get? And it takes and the beauty about the happy line and Chan Kim and I would argue many of the techniques in the book is that they are the the boundary between IQ and EQ. They are the boundary between sort of, you know, intelligence, and emotional intelligence, because they make you think, Okay, what would another stakeholder want or what would be really important?
Graham Allcott 34:20
Shout out to my best mate at uni, Gareth Parker. And on his birthday, one year, I bought him the CD of Commons album like water for chocolate, just because I wanted it and I had MiniDisc players recorded onto mini disc and then it was done right. So shout out to Gareth and he knows I've changed since then.
Fred Pelard 34:44
I was going to say it's bigger view too. Interesting. I could I could reciprocate and sort of demonstrate humble bragging because I can absolutely see that when my when my sort of student My peers at INSEAD Business School in France 20 years ago, when they found out that I was good at explaining emotion intelligence technique, many of them laughed because I was a, you know, I'm a French rocket scientist. And when they met me, I was probably slightly trapped in a narrow, very analytical, very mathematical view of the world. And we all grow by listening to podcasts, like yours.
Graham Allcott 35:25
So a couple of other things on strategy that I'm going to talk to you about your own productivity and your own work life balance, too. And so one of the sections that you talked about on that roller coaster, is this idea of push. And so let's say you've come up with lots of ideas, you've tested them, you've, you've got rid of some of them, and then you've committed to the ones that really matter. And then a really important part of of that strategic process becomes how to sell those ideas to other people. And of course, this is something that even when you're not making a strategic decision, you know, we have to sell ideas to everybody all the time, right. And so in the book, you've got these three, sort of elements of that. So through impactful words, simple numbers, and compelling stories. I wonder if you just got any thoughts about just just some simple techniques that people can take away around just how to sell ideas and how to persuade?
Fred Pelard 36:21
Yes, so the indeed, so the shorthand is sort of words and numbers and story. And if you think about the story, that the best structure universally acknowledged to be, the best way to structure a story is something called a pyramid principle, where you create a series of both states or nodes, where you go, you know, you've got one at the top three, below that nine below that 27, you follow a rhythm of three. And at the top, you go, this is the conclusion, this is what I'm recommending, or this is what I think we should do, either as an organisation, or myself or, and then below that, literally, you go, the three reason why that should be the case, or x y, z. And when you make the effort of writing the story, that way, you'll be amazed at how you take something that's quite complicated. For example, you know, we have overcome the COVID pandemic, and then you go, Okay, well, we need to be true for the, you know, big one, because, you know, the virus is not circulating freely in the in the population at large anymore, and the economy has started again, and there's no risk of a third wave, okay, well, you know, that, that will be a pretty powerful message to deliver to Parliament, possibly around you know, February or March next year. And then you go, now we've created the structure. And it's quite easy to remember, the three bits are not circulating anymore. GDP is is, you know, economies back, and it's not going to happen again. And so when you take a story, usually follow it up or back it up with three components, and replicate that to go from one to three to nine to 27.
Graham Allcott 38:00
So then, so taking that pyramid, so one of those is that the economy is working again. So then you would come up with like, what are the three reasons the economy is working as at the service sector is improved? And people are using shops again, you know, whatever those so you base three things around each of those. Is that is that how that works? Essentially?
Fred Pelard 38:19
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Graham Allcott 38:20
Nice. That's a cool little um that's a cool little structure. I like it. I love the bit because we talked about the pyramid in the book where there's like the, if this is true, and that is true, and that you're kind of using threes in that same kind of way, right?
Fred Pelard 38:33
Yes. And I have the one exercise. So I'm hearing it's in the book as well. But one of the things, you know, a lot of the techniques in the book I mentioned is like sort of, you know, 20 years, or 15 years of training shoehorned into 200 pages. And one of the homework I usually give to people, and I tend to link strategic, so it's about strategic thinking. And I, I find that people learn the technique better if they can apply it to their own life. Because when once you realise the kind of different solutions, that strategic thinking bring, to your day to day personal problem solving, it's very easy to make the leap and go Of course, it's going to work from my work environment. And so one of the things I recommend with a pyramid for example, is, you know, if you want to if you wanted to tell a story to yourself, in a year's time, a lot of people today will ask themselves, you know, how is my life gonna look like next year? Just that question you can probably hear massively rises, you know, it makes anxiety go through the, through the roof because you What's my life going to be like next year? What's my life going to be? And that's one of the limitation of the analytical approach to problem solving in the future, because we don't have the answer for what your life is going to be. And what the pyramid principles for example, suggest is, instead of focusing on the question, flip it into an answer and populate backwards. So what that means here is I get people to write on the wall. My life is great success in 2022, just writing it, and you can see already the anxiety goes down, people start smiling, they Oh, that's cool. That's I like that. And then I got now before we go into PR mode, let's go, let's actually be strategic and go, what would need to be true for that to be true. And literally, you go, Well, if you know, my job is there, I find some some kind of gainful employment, and everyone in my family has overcome the virus quite well. And then you know, my mental health has gone through that unaffected, then my life is pretty good. And by the way, please know that maybe your first draft where you go, you know, financials, family mental health. And you might go Actually, let me reorder that me start with family, then mental health, then financial, and yet, that's a story that meets better maybe my idea of priorities. And then, and so there's some beautiful ways, but way to connect sort of the power of strategic thinking, in your day to day life. And then realising that if, if on an issue that you know, so well, which is, you know, how your life is going, a tiny technique that you borrow from outside can help give you clarity, and loss of anxiety, then it's not too difficult to go, wow. If I apply a few more minutes, and I brought in a few more colleagues to do the same thing with our, you know, either a team or a division or a company at work, then we're quite likely to achieve the same outcome.
Graham Allcott 41:29
I really feel like that's a nice segue into the other thing I wanted to ask you about in terms of the book is, one of your five tips at the end is, the third solution is often the best. And it sort of feels like there's this magic power of three, you know, three is the magic number. So tell us about why the third solution is often the best.
Fred Pelard 41:49
So this one, I can't quite explain it. It's one of these, you know, your ristic, which is a fancy word for a bit I've been, I've been noticing it, it's a bit like the and so there's a little bit where, you know, maybe that's in a meeting when you have healings and Young's and Eeyore's and Tiggers and so you know, there's, there's gonna be someone who's going to plant a stake in the ground and go, boom, that would be a solution. Everyone rolls their eyes. And at the other end, someone goes, boom, no, really, and you know, we should stay what we've been doing and, and then the third one is offered some sort of compromise. And, and then then you might go, there might be a fourth and a fifth. And sometimes the fourth and the fifth are a little bit too crazy, a bit too fancy. And, and they usually play a good role. And then what you find is, you know, if it was sort of the Olympics, whether a swimming pool or you know, 100 metres, you let them run, and then you find that typically is, you know, it's the middle lane that tends to arrive first. Yeah, it's gonna be a bit like that, where the third, the third answer is often the best one
Graham Allcott 42:54
nice. I it really reminds me of when I was in my first ever management job, and I was still a student at this point, I worked for this bank, and they made us do this exercise, it was to gain a management position. And they made us do the this exercise to test team working skills. And my supervisor at the time, who was really rooting for me, just took me to one side before I did it and said, and just gave me this really simple advice, which always stuck with me, which is like, okay, they are, they're not looking for the leader at this point. They're looking for how you relate to others, and how you work in a team. So everyone will just fly off the handle and start answering stuff, just hang back, and then just, you know, wait for the lull in the conversation. And then you present this sort of, you know, the compromise the middle way, and kind of sum up what people have been discussing so far, because it shows that you're listening, it shows that you're not kind of hot headed, sort of running in there trying to impress everybody or whatever. And like, it's the quietly confident, you know, person who hangs back that succeeds in this and that, like, it's that kind of thing. It's like the, you know, everyone's you know, sort of pulled an idea of this direction, that direction. And if you're just like, somewhere in the middle, you're likely to kind of have more of an influence.
Fred Pelard 44:16
Absolutely.
Graham Allcott 44:17
Yeah.
Fred Pelard 44:17
Absolutely. I love I love your approach. Very good.
Graham Allcott 44:20
Love it. And so let's talk about a couple of other things outside of the book. You drop this in a few minutes ago. Oh, yeah, I used to be a rocket scientist. So that's one of those things where, obviously, there's, you know, people have this, saying that it's not rocket science. So tell me what rocket scientists actually like?
Fred Pelard 44:43
Well, so I am a rocket scientist, but I'm also someone who's lived in Britain for 20 years. So I know it has social cachet here. Yeah, I promise. I promise you in dinner parties in friends. When you send rocket scientists, they go, Yeah, whatever. This is, there's two schools of rocket science. There's a rocket science industry. So The flip equivalent is if you tell people in France that you're in a band, they go, Oh, wow, and in Britain, you're in a band you're in the band is like, yeah, everyone is in a band innit. And that's the same, has the same sort of sort of, you know, at the risk of being unfair on my fellow French citizen, you know, French music hasn't really taken on the world since I probably the 16th century. And so, you know, being sort of French music is a bit behind the times. And that's also because very few students are in a band, it's not a, it's not a rite of passage. It's not something you do in Britain, that's kind of like, Oh, you went through university without being in a band. But what's wrong with rocket science as a tiny bit of that particular? Bit? It's a sort of, I sometimes describe it as an extreme form of mathematical nerdiness.
Graham Allcott 45:47
Have you watched the documentary about challenger? It's on Netflix at the moment?
Fred Pelard 45:50
But well, that's on my that's very much on my watch list.
Graham Allcott 45:53
Yeah. And I won't spoil it. But I think you'll find it fascinating. You know, what I found really fascinating, because I was, I was quite young when that happened. But I remember being at a McDonald's birthday party, and then coming home, and my mum telling me about it, because it was going to be on the news that, you know, all these people that watch this, this rocket go up, and these people just basically be killed in midair, you know, and it was just this awful thing. And it's still kind of see it on my brain as being this. You know, maybe maybe it might even be my first memory of there being a tragedy, because I still remember it really vividly. But it's a, it's a really interesting documentary. And I suppose what is interesting about it is that it's not really about rocket science, or the challenge at all. It's kind of about human error. And yes, and how to how certain people under certain sort of moments of pressure, make decisions that aren't great. So it's Yeah, it's a really interesting watch. And then, I won't say any more than that. But yeah, definitely check it out, if you haven't seen it on Netflix. And we, when we were about to schedule this, we were going to do this conversation last week. And it was September here in the UK, and it was really sunny. And you sent me a really lovely email that was like grey, and the sun's out, can we do this next week, and I just really liked it. So it's one of those things that I'm often tempted to do. And then for some reason, I never do it. So I wondered if you had learned how to how to sort of organise your work around work life balance in simple pleasures, like sitting in your garden and enjoying the sunshine,
Fred Pelard 47:28
oh, very, very, very much so. And so it's, it's even a joke among my friend, which is I'm sort of Weather Bureau. I'm a proper, I'm a proper strategic thinker, which is, I have indoor activities and outdoor activities. So typically, for example, you know, inventing new stuff is based on indoors, because it's a bit intense, etc. seeping in new knowledge, I love doing an outdoors until I schedule things. And I know I have a tiny balcony, it's a really tiny balcony outside, but it takes itself. And so in London, you know, whenever there's a when sun's out, sort of, you know, I don't know, there's an expression that goes when sun's out guns out. And I should come up with something a bit similar with me. And now, if talking about productivity, I'm going to share something that some some of you will hate me for. But I want to kind of mention it there. So I've been an entrepreneur. And I had some point, I had 20 employees working really hard. And then through various circumstances, and working solo for the last 15 years. And then when I didn't have any employees anymore, I was a bit more in charge of my own diary. And I realised that in my line of work to help people think better, you know, I usually describe myself as kind of I help smart people get smarter. And for that, I have to stay a step ahead, not necessarily in smartness, but at least in knowledge about smart sources. And so I have to read I have to ingest, I have to be abreast of what's happening. And I found it hard to combine that with, you know, the pressures of day to day job. And so one of the things I decided is about 15 years ago, so 2007, I decided that I would be closed for the whole of January, and I would shoot off to the tropics and read 20 business books. And so every year I read 20 books in the tropics actually read 30. But then I take the that gives me the opportunity to not finish, you know, 10 of them. That's a bit of a sort of Britain's Got Talent approach to it. So there's an elimination round my list. My List of books is on Goodreads. And by having sort of having the I have the discipline because I know that some of my alumni, you know, I've trained about 10,000 people now, wait for the sort of end of January release of my list. So it's nowhere near as popular as the Barack Obama reading list. But it's a kind of like, Hmm, I wonder what you know, I wonder what Fred has been doing on a lounger. Got this this year. And, and it's a great way to effectively give yourself the space to really read stuff around productivity, you know squiggly career, lots of other things, and possibly, hopefully your contribution to the world in a written format very soon again, grab, and then rethink. So at the moment, for example, in January, I was in Buenos Aires for a month, or Argentina and Uruguay, and I read lots of stuff around AI, last year, a couple of stuff around, you know, Bitcoin and, and, and you and you create your own, you stimulate your brain by hiding off moments that are entirely dedicated to growth. And better people than me, I found ways to do that by reading a book every every evening. And I know it doesn't work for me. And so in a bizarre fashion, my productivity hack, is to collapse all of my growth and all of my reading into one discrete pockets. Which, you know, by the time you add up all the hour here and there, you know, an hour a day, that's probably equivalent to what I do in January. But I found a way to reschedule it that way,
Graham Allcott 51:14
I mean, I actually used to do something very similar. So for a good seven, eight years, in the early part of Think Productive's history, my business and actually a little bit before that, too. I would always in the winter, go to Goa. And what a lot of people were sort of surprised about was the fact that every time I went away, I went to the same beach, I sat in the same bars, you know, and it was it was almost like a routine thing. And people would say, Well, why don't you go somewhere else? And it's like, no, because the point is, they don't want to have to think about anything else. And I would, I would literally take a stack of business books, this was in the in a few years before the Kindle came out. And then I was taking Kindle for a few years. And it changed a little bit once I had a child. So I've only been I think I've been twice. He's six. So I'm not getting the other every year at the moment. But that would be the intention of it. I would take a big stack of business books, I'd also you know, sort of take my pad to do business planning and you know, idea generation and maybe write some slides and that kind of thing. But yeah, like very much a time of just no clients no email, you know, pretty much solitude and just doing doing work in the sunshine in the in the sort of British wintertime.
Fred Pelard 52:28
Yeah, I love that sounds fascinating. And I love your, your hack of just going let me not overstimulate my explorative brain by just going to the same beach. Yeah. So that, you know, you get like 24 hours of real excitement of being back. And then it's kind of like it's a bit of a routine. And then all the excitement comes from the page in front of you rather than
Graham Allcott 52:52
And it and if I look back on, on think productive my business, you know, I can think of three or four of our best selling workshop products were all written on basically the same two balconies in Goa because it's just yet and just waking up really early in the morning and just being able to look out to see and write is just it's a really beautiful, sort of, you know, wonderful way of doing it. But it sounds like you travel around a bit. So So Buenos Aires and then Sri Lanka was
Fred Pelard 53:22
the year before? Absolutely. Yeah. And that you know, what rebounding from the comment one of the one of the notions I have, and it's an interesting one, which is, people are, you know, there's four different types of jobs. There's a product, process, performance, well, let's go with three, but you know, product, process, performance. And if you do performance, it's Usain Bolt. Frankly, your life is entirely dependent on 10 seconds, every four years. Yes, there's a few competitions in between, but fundamentally, it's 10 seconds every four years. And the way you optimise to achieve that big is very different from a job where you show up every day. And you've got to say you've got to do the same thing. And it's a very different and typically when people talk about productivity, one of the reasons I'm a little bit reticent about sort of the the mythical at the extreme form of productivity is that applies really, really well. When you're in process types of occupation, you're in a product or service the for productive project, which is a bit the same thing. But when you have a project, there's a, you know, consulting, there's a six month timeframe, you run quite a bit, but if you go straight into another six month thing, where you run the same speed, you're going to choke, because it's not the hundred yards of 100 metres of Usain Bolt, but you have to be at a high level of concentration and performance. And then you allow yourself a break in the middle. And that's where I got this idea of, you know, going and probably like you going on the beach for a bit if you're a process person. So you've got process, performance, project, and product and they have slightly different rhythm and what looks It's like a really smart, productive way to optimise yourself for delivery looks very different from the outside.
Graham Allcott 55:07
Yeah, okay.
Fred Pelard 55:08
When you see when you see Usain Bolt, if you were to examine his daily routine, there's a lot of, you know, being horizontal and sleeping and lying about, yeah, which doesn't look very productive, until you factor in the way in which he explodes energy and etc,
Graham Allcott 55:23
which, again, coming back to your thing of wanting to stay one step ahead, you know, in terms of that, helping smart people to get smarter, you know, you'd like you need to have those breaks, and that, that, that kind of break in the normal rhythm of things,
Fred Pelard 55:37
absolutely.
Graham Allcott 55:38
Love that. And it sounds like you have a scepticism around like productivity. Like, I was gonna say, media, or kind of the stories that people tell each other about productivity and that whole thing, and the good news is I do too, but like, tell me more about your relationship with productivity and things that things that use, perhaps the online that you really disagree with?
Fred Pelard 56:09
Well, so sometimes referred to it, as you know, the productivity industrial complex, and sometimes, you know, Tim Ferriss and the four hour week, a lot of it seems to be around effect, sort of efficiency rather than effectiveness. Yeah. And so it's about the, the sort of the, the over optimization of so that, for example, just very simply put, can you see that, you know, you're talking about a young child, I also sort of, you know, split up when my son was quite young, and we travel a lot together. And, and there's a bit where, when you're trying to optimise a relationship with another human, and you miss the pockets of unproductive time, and you know, and I know that that's where a lot of bonding takes place. And it's where a lot of the beauty happens, and we're wanting to bring all of that to a work environment, a lot of that. And that's an interesting challenge in recovery time. A lot of the, you know, a lot of the literature around successful organisations, talk about motivated teams, who feel quite strong cultural bond to one another. And if you ask where the bond took place, it was not in the shaping of seconds, in the handover between tasks, it was in the slightly and productive discussion, or allegedly in productive discussions around the, you know, around the watercooler or in the kitchen.
Graham Allcott 57:32
Yeah, or sharing the birthday cake, or whatever,
Fred Pelard 57:35
abs. Absolutely. And so there's a little bit around that, where, you know, if you look back, if anybody, any of you, if the listeners will think back in what has been the most productive thing I've ever done in my life, and sometime, you know, in a professional context, and sometimes it might just talk to a random stranger who happened to be x, y, z, and it could have been a wasted minute and in turn, that they changed your life with a job offer, and other circumstances. And so there's a little bit about, and the way I think of it is, I think of it as a productivity budget, which is, I sponsor my serendipitous productivity, by extracting budget from my efficiency, productivity. So there are bits where I go, I'm going to be super efficient, I'm gonna, you know, write these, this chapter of the book, I'm going to give myself six hours is going to be done. And I have to do X thousand words. And I'm going to superbrat and at the end of that, I'm going to give myself a couple of hours of serendipitous time. And, and it's that, and again, you recognise possibly the roller coaster of strategic thinking, which is you do better by combining two extremes of heat and cold, rather than having something tepid ish. So be ruthlessly productive in areas where it matters. But allow yourself to be sort of ruthlessly serendipitous, if it's not a contradiction in terms, in areas where you want to create, you know, and for you by the sound of it, it might be go on a walk, you know, if we come back all the way to the beginning, you were saying, Yeah, that's where sometimes you refresh your brain. For me, one of the ways to refresh my brain is literally to pick a book on a subject that has zero, nothing to do with what currently occupies me.
Graham Allcott 59:14
Nice and, and what's also interesting is that often if you do that, you'll find some interesting connections and like that serendipity will come in all kinds of different forms that may well even inform the work help the work and so on. Right, like, I think there's, you know, one of one of my ninja characteristics of in Productivity Ninja is all about unorthodoxy. And just kind of taking inspiration from really unusual places. I think it's often it's, it's too boring and predictable to only sort of read on your own subject matter or only take the advice of Steve Jobs and Richard Branson and the kind of no names so to speak.
Fred Pelard 59:56
Yes, very much so.
Graham Allcott 59:58
Yeah, that really resonates with me that ruthless serendipity thing. The The other thing that springs to mind for me is I talk a lot about a productivity ninja being a human and not a superhero, because it really, it really bugs me the whole, like, let's try and optimise everything kind of mentality. And I think I think sometimes people feel like that's how I want the world to be too. But yeah, I just think those richer experiences around the fringes of things are often where a lot more the excitement is,
Fred Pelard 1:00:35
indeed, in particular, you know, and when you say, for example, when the world changes, and when the world changes, and you, you know, people talk about sort of the, you know, the power of habits, habits are fantastic, if nothing changes around you, if lots of things are changing around you whether you know, personally or professionally or in the wider environment, then clearly, you don't know what the next solution is going to be, the next best solution is going to be, and the next and the way to discover that is through discovery. And the best way to discover is, you know, there's a school of thought that goes, you know, test and learn. And I would plug on to that a little bit upstream the idea of have as many ideas as you can, and before you test and learn them, then you kind of pare them down to a reasonable amount, but have lots of answer. There is effectively efficiency or habit is is a downside, tween concerned, when the world is still unknown, when the world is well known, it's perfectly fine to find ways to, you know, on your journey to work when it's the same commute to find ways to take this street rather than that street to save a few seconds, skipping that traffic lights, when you find a situation where you have to completely reinvent what the definition of going to work means, then what you're better off is coming up with lots of alternative options. Rather than try to optimise the one that you just happen to have settled upon, which we haven't really touched upon, which is the big, big, big unsaved in that, which is personality types, which is people have different have default preferences, and I'm going to throw my son in it in his absence. Sorry, Louis. But so his mom and I have a possibly default preference for things being on the spontaneous end of the spectrum, rather than the organised end of the spectrum. And when he was younger, he was very much on the I prefer things organised. And then you know, as a parent, as a responsible stakeholder, or as a responsible adult, you can either a lot of people kind of forced their children to adjust to their cultural preferences, whether political, cultural, etc. Or you can go you know, a happy line is perfect example of a happy line. And then one of the solutions we both discovered with Louis, is when he would say, you know, what's the plan this weekend, and every other weekend, we would have created a little plan, because, you know, that makes him happy. And then every other weekend, when we didn't have a plan, instead of telling him you know, we're just going to chill, we would say things like, the plan is to chill, and, and all of a sudden, the plan was to chill, which is a perfectly acceptable plan for him. In his mental diaries, he would like put a line through Saturday and Sunday and right, chill, you know, at which point, there's a plan, we're not just and so personality types come into, come into the equation when it comes to how do you make you know, how do you make a cat very productive, as opposed to how you make a dog very productive, you know, dogs, you can train them and they love a bit of productivity. Cats, it's a nightmare herding cats is or is an expression for a reason. And it's a bit the same thing with if I bring it back, you know, if I combine sort of the productivity ninja with the strategic thing how to be strategic, and the roller coaster, is in the roller coaster, most people are good at one bit of the journey, but not the others. And so some people are very good at being very creative upfront, but then they get a bit too subjective and enamoured of their solution even even when they're not very practical. And on the other hand, you have people who might be very good, you know, that sort of person I described might be a bit Tigger-ish, you have Eeyore's who are really good at finding the flow in everything, but left unattended, their world is not going to change much. And so there's a bit where to become a better strategist, or a better and more productive Ninja, you probably have to embrace your dark side, embrace the bit that doesn't come very naturally to you. And time and time again, there's only two ways to really achieve that is either you grow to become able to do the bit that doesn't come naturally to you. Or you find you know, in life or at work, a partner who compensates your strengths with their strengths
Graham Allcott 1:04:59
and this is often This feels like such a lovely conclusion and way to finish the conversation because I often I often get asked, because I've done about 100 hours of podcasts now and you know, typically with people who've written books, CEOs, high achievers, creative people, and I'm often asked, What's the lesson and the through line in the thread line through all of these people? And you know, what can we learn about high achievement through this, and I always just say, I've really learned one thing, and it's, there's just that humans are weird. Like, we're all we're all weird, we're all different. And actually, a lot of the richness comes from, like you say, embracing that dark side, and kind of recognising that other people will be really different to you in the way that they work. And that's how you grow and and sort of get somewhere better, you know, together with them.
Fred Pelard 1:05:49
Absolutely. And, you know, there's no such thing as folks. And the journey never ends. Discover more quirks every every time about ourselves and about others.
Graham Allcott 1:05:59
And I've loved this conversation. And it's been a lot more philosophical than I was expecting a conversation about how to be strategic to me, so. So just want to say thank you so much for being on Beyond Busy, Fred. And where can people find out more about you? And where can they get the book and just just tell us what you want to want to plug at the end here.
Fred Pelard 1:06:21
Yeah, so the book is a you know, in every bookshop and How to be Strategic coming out, online, sorry, do digital, physical and audio on the eighth of October. And then for more things about me, it's fredpelard.com.
Graham Allcott 1:06:40
Thanks so much for being on beyond busy.
Fred Pelard 1:06:42
My pleasure, reverie. Thank you, Graham.
Graham Allcott 1:06:51
So there you go. Thanks to Fred for being on the show. Thanks. Also, as ever to Think Productive our sponsors for the show. If you're interested in productivity training, and coaching, then go to thinkproductive.com. Thanks, also to Mark Stedman, my producer, and to Emilie for helping to put all this together. And we have been doing a lot of work on the grahamallcott.com website and on lots of other marketing related stuff. So kind of looking forward to the next few weeks of really kicking a lot of my marketing stuff into gear. It's been like my new year's resolution ready for 2020. And it I don't know, got a little bit derailed points in the year with, you know, being basically like full time on the dad stuff. A lot of days. But yeah, really a lot of stuff happening behind the scenes and looking forward to sharing that with you in the next few weeks. So yeah, check out what's been changing grahamallcott.com. And also, you can always find out what I'm doing with the https://www.grahamallcott.com/now. And this is an idea from Derek Severs. And I put this in my email signature, but it's also available just on the grahamallcot.com sites if you're ever curious, like what's going on working on just https://www.grahamallcott.com/now. And I'd really recommend you doing the same thing like having your own now page. It's a really cool thing. So there you go. That's my little closing ramble. So we'll be back in a week's time with another episode. So until then, wherever, wherever you are, stay safe. Take care. Bye for now.