We Will Get Through This Michael Bungay Stanier

For many years, I did five year plans. I'd sit there and do my best to map out what the next five years were going to be like. I would imagine great things: bold ambitions and brilliant outcomes.
The other day as I was sorting through old boxes of paper, I came across some of these plans. What was both hilarious and slightly depressing about them is just how little resemblance those plans bear to what actually happened.
Really understanding how to think and implement strategically is difficult. And while there are thousands of people who pontificate about it, only one of them is the #1 strategic thinker in the world.
Rita McGrath is that person. She is a popular speaker and author and a long time faculty member at Columbia Business School. Her latest book is Seeing Around Corners: How to spot inflection points in business before they happen. She's been on the Thinkers 50 ranking for global management thinkers for more than a decade, and recently was ranked the number one thinker in strategy.
In our conversation we look at the temptations and delusions of certainty; the power of Discovery Driven Planning; how to work back from the future; and why intelligent failure is a critical component of success.
You can meet Rita at www.RitaMcGrath.com, or say hello on LinkedIn. She’s on Twitter at @RGMcGrath
This show is brought to you by The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book. You can access a wide range of tools to help #TameYourAdviceMonster at www.TheAdviceTrap.com
If you’d like to spend more time with Michael and people he admires, sign up for The Year of Living Brilliantly. 52 teachers over 52 weeks, each teaching one brilliant insight. Absolutely free

It’s one of the stories that doesn’t quite seem real. Man has a really rough time in his life, starts a blog to cheer himself up--1,000 awesome things--it blows up, the book versions sell millions, the TEDx talk is seen by more millions, and he goes on to write more intriguing books, begin compelling podcasts and be a sought after keynote speaker.
My friend Neil Pasricha is this self-same man. He’s a friend of mine, and we’ve spent time walking Toronto, visiting second-hand bookstores, drinking cocktails and talking. Neil’s a great talker. Of his Awesome books, his latest is my favourite: You are Awesome. It blends science and motivation, and I use a number of his suggestions to make my life better. He’s also the host of the number one book podcast in the world, 3 Books, which features guests such as Malcolm Gladwell, David Sedaris, the former sex-worker who wrote the world’s first children’s book featuring a sex-working parent … and me.
In our conversation, we look at the magical 40% of life you can control; why the question about half-full or half-empty is the wrong question about the glass; the three books I shared in his podcast; and how and why Neil is starting to think of himself as an activist.
You can meet Neil at Neil.blog and listen to his fantastic podcast 3 Books. Episode 48, featuring me, is a particular classic.
This show is brought to you by The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book. You can access a wide range of tools to help #TameYourAdviceMonster at www.TheAdviceTrap.com
If you’d like to spend more time with Michael and people he admires, sign up for The Year of Living Brilliantly. 52 teachers over 52 weeks, each teaching one brilliant insight. Absolutely free.

I have three broad categories of books in my life. First, there are the books that come and go pretty quickly. They’re just not very good. There are quite a lot of those. The second bucket are ones I read and think, “This is a pretty good book. There’s a smart idea buried in here.” And then the final category is made up of the types of books I strive to write. Powerful, designed, elegant and stirring. These are the books I keep on my top shelf, that travel with me when I move.
Dr. Alexander Osterwalder writes those types of books. He is one of the world's most influential innovation experts, and is an author, entrepreneur and speaker. He was ranked number four in theworld by Thinkers 50, and he shot to fame with his business model canvas, a tool used by millions worldwide.
His new book is The Invincible Company, and it’s fantastic. In our conversation we talk about what it means to me to create an ambidextrous company; the role of the CEO in innovation; some examples from his library of different business models; and the power of a gravity creation model.
You can meet Alex and access his work at Strategyzer.com.
This show is brought to you by The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book. You can access a wide range of tools to help #TameYourAdviceMonster at www.TheAdviceTrap.com.
If you’d like to spend more time with Michael and people he admires, sign up for The Year of Living Brilliantly. 52 teachers over 52 weeks, each teaching one brilliant insight. Absolutely free.

The odds are you’re not an elite athlete. I know, for sure and without a doubt, that I’m not. When I am playing sports or working out, the thing that’s mostly going through my head is how do I keep myself from quitting, because I almost always have that desire to quit halfway through.
The way champions like Bonnie St. John do it, in part, is by building micro-resilience. Bonnie is a former Olympian, and the first African Americanto win medals in a winter Olympic competition, taking home silver and two bronze medals at the 1984 winter Paralympics in Innsbruck, Austria.
Today, Bonnie travels the globe as a keynote speaker, Fortune 500 leadership expert, and the bestselling author of seven books. She was a Rhodes Scholar, and served in the White House as a Director of the National Economic Council during the Clinton administration. NBC Nightly News called Bonnie one of the five most inspiring women in America.
In our conversation we dive into the principles, strategies and tactics of micro-resilience; explore how someone from San Diego ends up winning skiing medals; look into the power of what happens in between the moments of performance; and how to stay focused on “the next turn”,whatever that may be for you.
You can meet Bonnie, watch her TEDx talk and pick up her resilience first aid kit at microresilience.com.
This show is brought to you by The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book. You can access a wide range of tools to help #TameYourAdviceMonster at www.TheAdviceTrap.com.
If you’d like to spend more time with Michael and people headmires, sign up for The Year of Living Brilliantly. 52 teachers over 52 weeks, each teaching one brilliant insight. Absolutely free.

You know the marshmallow test, right?
Some poor kid put in a room with a single marshmallow in front of them, and a choice: eat it now, or resist the temptation for 5 minutes and get a second marshmallow.
Even though the research has been shown to be problematic, it’s illustrative: we so often take short-term, in-the-moment gratification that goes against our long-term interests.
Bina Venkataraman is the editorial page editor of The Boston Globe and a fellow at New America. Before joining the Globe, she served as a senior adviser for climate change innovation in the Obama White House, was the director of Global Policy Initiatives at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and taught in the program on Science, Technology, and Society at MIT. She is the author of a terrific book, The Optimist's Telescope: Thinking Ahead in a Reckless Age.
In our conversation we talk about the power of a vividly imagined future; how to deal with vulnerable decision points; lessons learned from professional poker players; and both the flaws and usefulness of the marshmallow test.
You can meet Bina at writerbina.com or on Twitter @BinaJV to say hello.
This show is brought to you by The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book. You can access a wide range of tools to help #TameYourAdviceMonster at www.TheAdviceTrap.com.
If you’d like to spend more time with Michael and people he admires, sign up for The Year of Living Brilliantly. 52 teachers over 52 weeks, each teaching one brilliant insight. Absolutely free.

You know me well enough to know that I love a good question.
But there are times, particularly in a crisis, when the questions you’re being asked feel impossible to answer. They ask for certainty and reassurance that you’re just not able to give. In that moment, you feel anxiety and uncertainty. What do you say to the unanswerable question?
Ron Carucci has a suggestion. He is co-founder and managing partner at Navalent, and works with CEOs and executives pursuing transformational change for their organizations, leaders, and industries. He is the author of 8 books, a relentless contributor to the Harvard Business Review, and a two-time TEDx speaker.
In our conversation we talk about the power of knowing you don’t know; when the best answer is sometimes another question; the somatic wisdom of your body; and how grace can be a guiding principle when you don’t know what to do.
You can meet Ron at www.navalent.com, read his many articles on HBR, and connect on Twitter at @RonCarucci.
This show is brought to you by The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book. You can access a wide range of tools to help #TameYourAdviceMonster at www.TheAdviceTrap.com.
If you’d like to spend more time with Michael and people he admires, sign up for The Year of Living Brilliantly. 52 teachers over 52 weeks, each teaching one brilliant insight. Absolutely free