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Today's guest has over four decades of experience and Media Events, government nonprofit. He's got a thirst for life a positive attitude. He started media companies, magazines, author books and he's one of the top most influential people in the event space. Today we're going to be talking about collaboration artists. Please welcome David Adler. You're listening to sea sweet blueprint, the show for sea sweet leaders. Here we discussed nobs, approaches to organizational readiness and digital transformation. Let's start the show. David, thanks so much for joining me. It's a pleasure to be here. I also really wanted to thank you for turning me on to the the Jento club from Ben Franklin. Isn't that? You know, I love history and I had not heard about it. And for those that haven't heard about it, David turned me on to it. They was Ben Franklin, had a small group of individuals with a diverse set of backgrounds and experiences that met on a regular basis to to exchange ideas and, you know, David, I thought a great way to start was they asked a set of questions. I would like to start with question number one. Of the Gento Clo okay, which is have you. I wonder if I should change my my affect and reading this, but I won't have you met with anything in author you last read remarkable or suitable to be communicated to the Jento. Yes, absolutely. I am a totally a beast around a book called Social Physics, how ideas flow, and it has changed my life in that I I've learned all about how to run a meeting from this guy who's been studying it, named Sandy Pentlin, who has been exploring the digitization of human humans who work online and he's following the facetoface methods. He is creating he like. He says, how do you create serendipity online and how do you sort of in figure out what the flow would be? He talks about when you run a meeting the leader should not say anything and that the whole idea of a meeting is to be a coach and let other people talk and then once you have your initial meeting, everyone goes out and explorers and brings new stuff back in. If there's no exploration in a meeting, then you don't get to the next level. So it's really interesting how he you know, he has a whole idea of how do ideas flow? Of You ever thought that how ideas flow? I mean you're in the business of figuring that out and it's there's a serendipity effect that you can't necessarily digitize, but you can certainly give people hints on how to do it. But that's the thing that I that I love from the Thomas Jeffers something and I think that what he is saying to you in that in the in that first question, is exactly what Alex Pentlin is saying. Is that it's not about being in a meeting and being starting sitting there. It's taking what you learned in a meeting, going out exploring and bringing back from me. MMM, I think we're a feel that we're going to inflate the egos of physicists, which are already think that everything is physics, no matter what. Yeah, probably that. I've ever heard the term social physics before in this way and and it really is. I looked. I use it for meeting design, I use it for when I ever I do my sales meetings with my team's I basically turn it into a coaching session and everyone, instead of saying hey, you did reach sales. We're down twenty two percent or whatever it's. Here's the client and group. How do we solve the problem to help this guy explore other options to create more business for your company? It could be so hard to sit back. It could be. You know, one of my resolutions this year is, and I've done it with my team, where I'll actually start a time around my phone, almost like a freediver, where I'm trying to build up my tolerance to be able to stay quiet for longer and longer. There's some there's another and Liz Wisseman, she wrote a book called multipliers and she has this concept that like there's the six accidental diminishing qualities that we have, and one of mine is the the idea guy, where you assume that if you just step in there and you throw out a big idea, then... |
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...at that'll get the momentum going. But when you find is it actually shut some people up or they just they get attached to your idea rather than throwing out, you know, their own ideas. Oh Yeah, you know, I was at I was for a few years. I was a consultant to the State Department and I went to the farewell. We did for for Hillary Clinton, who was the secret heave of the say of the time, and she started saying that whenever she walks into a room and gives these big ideas, she got all her staff, or eye rollers, I know. And so she she decided she can't do that because you know it's like, oh no, what is she going to come up with now? And and and the staff goes and you know that they're not receiving it, they're not hearing it. So, yeah, it got to be a different way of doing it, I think. And the end they're not owning it. But but yeah, that concept of social physics and and you know I've read some I forget the name of the book, but is also talked about the spreading of ideas in the same way that virus is spread, right and less. Oh yes, and moods, even the mood spread the same way that viruses to in a digital medium. Well, we're hiring our epidemiologists for the event industry into who is now predicted that the virus is going to sort of fall apart in February and March, even before Amicron, and he said that he put in some some things in there. He is actually doing maps on idea flow and how an idea moves around the country, just like a virus, and it's fascinating to think about it is in the same exact way and the virus health guys are the ones that are helping us create these maps for idea flow and how an idea travels around the country. It's totally interesting. It's interesting. It's almost I wonder if people who organize events and meetings and collaboration if there's a bit to be learned from the intelligence community and propaganda departments that are out there right because who they know about planting ideas? Oh, they certainly well. I think that a lot of you know a lot of this is information disease that we end up practicing because we don't have all the information and the intelligence people know that we're handicapped and know how to use the tools appropriately. I mean, it's all about a propaganda hmm. I was I was at this company called PRI media. No, I was at a company Home Mcmillan, and the head of community, the head one of it, the age to the CEO, comes over and says, you know, that was really good. That's the way like the the Nazis did its with well, not a compliment, but it was like, you know, they were so good at their propaganda. It's like I'll total the lefting it a compliment in a bad way, but it is it. These things could be used for good purposes or you could be used for bad purposes and it's tool and there's great frameworks and so much knowledge out there. I find a lot of times when you're facilitating groups or collaborations, a lot of it you feel like you're just kind of figuring out on the spot. And I got excited when you said that you're writing a practical playbook to collaboration and or the collaboration artists, which is even more interesting. I'm curious what was the genesis of that Weber Genesis was? I've been doing this damn a bit business for twenty years and everyone has these beautiful sceneries and these great sets and the food is unbelievable, but it all falls apart at the facilitation mode that you know, they don't get the girls to dance with the boys at the junior high school dance, and so I realize that it's one of like selling the razor without a good razorblade, and so that the missing link is what I'm calling the collaboration artist. And the collaboration artist could be the conductor of an orchestra, the leader of, you know, creating an event. It could be the guy that works the White Board. It could be the people that are opening a project for a company and they want to get everyone to work together. It could be a campaign manager. But you got to be a collaboration artist and there... |
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...are simple tools like listening to other people and things like that that actually work and they're not that far fetched. And so I think that the idea that that my goal and writing this book on how to be a collaboration artist is to celebritize the collaboration artist. I've also started another organization called it's collaborate America, where we honor six collaboration artists a year, because I think that, you know, I'm using the model that in the in the s and s, the chefs that were behind the scenes were a cooks. The other's superstars. The person that puts on, you know, the new climate conference is it is a superstar and they should be celebrated and not be pushed behind the scenes. So I think that that's the next level of celebrity and I want to sort of show that. I will also want to prove the point that everybody can be a collaboration artist and that they should be teaching collaboration arts in elementary school to let people know how to work together better. It's just seems so obvious to me after watching the event industry for twenty years fail at a lot of their gatherings because there's no real outcome, there's no real agenda and there's no way that they get people to talk to each other. One of the things I do at all of my speeches, when I go give a speech now, I go on stage and I say, okay, it's not about me. I want to create thousands of conversations right here in front of you, and so I just have people talk to each other before I talk and have them say what you know, what can we do? Introduce them to each other and say an event now is no longer about how many people attend an event, but how many conversations you're able to create at an event and those interactions convert down into actions that that people like, activities from getting married to new businesses, to to one night stands to never know what. And so I believe that that's part of being a collaboration artist is to activate the audience as opposed to just letting them listen like they've did for thousands and thousands of years, without any feedback whatsoever. So, you know, that's one of the simple things, I think, from a collaboration artistry perspective and and you know, it's sort of what happens online to you know sometimes the one thing you know when you am not taking any political stance here at all, but when you think about the genius of the trump rallies, which get into a little bit of propaganda, they did things like he always coming, would come in late, so people would talk to each other naturally he would. He talk to people like he was a he was their neighbor, as a pose to, you know, somebody who's high, you know, high flutinous sense. That didn't that didn't activate that crowd. So you can sort of see the reason that he was successful, in the beginning anyway, in terms of some of those techniques, and they were were propaganda techniques, Tou but they're also could be used for good or for bad. Yeah, getting these collaboration artists out of the shadows and up on a pedestal. You know, I hope what will happen, because he talked about chefs. When you started putting the glass walls into the kitchens or putting the kitchens in the middle of the restaurant, all of a sudden people realize, wow, this small restaurant has an incredible amount of people in that kitchen. It was always underestimated what it took me to create that experience and and I think it's the same with these collaboration artists. To you, you underestimate how much is needed. And I think a lot of times, and I've been guilty of this in the past, if you're putting something together small, medium large, there's even this question of do we need a facilitator? Can we just do this ourselves? You know, do we really? Is that an expense? But I think if you get them up on a pedestal and really, you know, put it out in the air how complicated this is and how important it is, then it becomes a little easier to invest the right amount of money into these. It's no different than doing your own systems when you when you you guys, for example, go in in recreate the way a company operates in very equivalent to the chef and the cooks and the soux chefs and the dishwashers and all those things. There's so much involved in it and people underestimate they think. You know, I think that the purpose of technology is to make... |
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...what was complex trivial, and that's what happens when you are a good collaboration artist, when you have a project in mind or a solution, all the sudden the answer is so obvious. After you know you haven't solved it for years and years and years, and then all of a sudden a solution happens and, oh my God, it always should work like this. I mean it's like an how moment. In this sense, that's the Matt Yeah, it's when the magic happens. And and I know that you've had a ton of experience in the Culinary Institute the Air Industry. What I think that the business world has so much to learn from restaurants. It's especially if you look at three Michelin Star restaurants. It's operational excellence all the time, not just some of the time, not just most of the time, all of the time. But then that is held in concert which just top notch creativity and artistry all at the same time. And you know on what? If you've been exploring that topic, you know what? Can we go from that industry into business? Well, I one of the things I do, I have this really sort of fun I guess it's a hobby, but it's an expensive hobby, is like going to a lot of michelins our restaurants and they take pictures of what they're doing at the tasting restaurants and use it in all my speeches because all of a sudden you realize the future of the creativity of the event industry and the hospitality industry is what these Michelin Star restaurants are exploring. And you see it, you know, you see new systems happening, new combinations of things that don't necessarily go together that all a sudden taste fantastic. And it's so different than creating a menu in your office or a system or something thing like that. I mean you guys do the same thing. You take two things that you wouldn't think go together and they really do go together and you make it fresh and you keep it, you keep it at the highest quality of operational excellence. As you said, and and I've learned you know so much and what it does. It does from a social physics point of view. It's that exploration that I can bring to something else. So what happens is half the time when I go to an event and I show people what they're doing at a great tasting restaurant, it inspires them to think of what they can do in their own thing place to make it better. And so, you know, that's whole idea of the exploration is not internal, it's not just extra, it's internal. It's like, Oh my God, what can I do? It's like what the brilliance of competition? The brilliant what I had this magazine for twenty years. I still have it with this new company and I always use the whole premise of my whole company was allowing people to peek over the fence to see what other people are doing, because most people are so locked into their own rule that they don't even realize. I realize that after I work for a corporation for ten years and start at my own company, that Oh my God, you don't have to do everything using like the greatest. You know, it's most expensive way of doing it. The new technology today. What I loved, what he said about inspiration and bringing inspiration for for people to connect that within their own lives, and that's artistry right. It's not necessarily with the artist meant, but it's what does this mean to you and what are you going to take with this art? And I'm curious outside at a maybe in addition to inspiration, what are the the when you think about a really superstar collaboration artist, what are the qualities or what are the most important features that that collaboration artist has? Well, first of all, he understands process and he understands listening and he's able to think on his feet so he can then inspire somebody by his words. If he calls somebody out, you know he's He's thinking on his feet literally all the time, and it's no different than what a great lawyer does, and you know how to like cross examine a witness and you're thinking on your feet to relate to the person that you're dealing with right in front of you, as opposed to a grand plan. So you're taking all this theory and and bringing it down to the person that you're listening to. I I I you always watch Bill Clinton, for example, when you talk to a Bill Clinton and he's with you. You're like the only person in the room. HMM. A great solid hitor has to be able to do that to an entire room and to an individual because they want to feel it. I mean, it all still comes down to my the my Angelo quote that people... |
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...don't remember what you said, they remember how you made them feel. And whether it's customer service on a computer system or it's it's the interface, you know, if you feels good or feels good the same. When you're a collaboration artist, you have to make people feel like they're being heard. I use one of the techniques that I use a lot as something called the Jeffer, Sonny and celled dinner party. I think we may have mentioned it before and one of the things I use as an opening question, because basically the way a Jefferson and dinner party works is a bring twelve to fifteen people in a room and the leader facilitates the entire conversation. So instead of having, you know, lots of like individual conversations, let's have dinner and everybody talks and you never know who's going to talk to anyone else, and sometimes the person that your left never talks the person at the end of the table. So what the facilitator does is allows people to have a group conversation. It's kind of like, you know, going to school a little bit and and the questions that you start with, you start with sort of a question that brings the conversation down to what it was like before you're twenty years old, because it democratizes a room. So I know is the first question. There's two questions I like. I like, and they're not high for looting at all. Is what was your first job and what did you learn from it? And so the guy that was the ice cream scooper at Baskin Robbins, you know, learns customer service because you know, he knows how people complain and how sticky everything gets and all that. Yeah, question is who was your favorite teacher and why? And it always comes down to the third person that speaks. As you know, my favorite teacher was my third grade teacher, because she or he listened to me as a real life human being and heard me, and that seems to be a common thread. And then that goes around the room and everyone's sort of agreeing with that and and it gets, you know, it gets to be almost a therapy session in some ways in a good way, and it it gets inspiring for people. Then you take the question from that that you know before your twenty and you keep elevating it, keep getting it larger to solve your bigger problem, once people get to know each other, because you take that experience that you know, I worked on a farm and I as a kid and I, you know, milk cows, and then somehow the solution about the persistence of milking cows properly gets into the solution for the bigger problem that you're trying to solve. It just amazing how we're kind of the through lines go through human. It looks like very human as opposed to very technical. Yeah, it's and it's kind of a bummer that it's such a low bar for just people listening to you as a human being. You you would hope that it would be more commonplace, but it's not. You know, people is people do not connect with each other and people are not facilitating that. They think that it could just happen, but it doesn't. It's a shame. And technology supposed to help us and it can sometimes get in the way. But you know what I think? I might actually steal some of the Jeffersony and dinner party concepts, for we've been remote for twenty years or so at this point and we'll do these things like virtual happy hours, and sometimes it's not that smooth because of in a happy hour you do have a bunch of one off conversations, but when you're all on zoom you're kind of just all on stage watching two people have a one off conversation and then switch over to another one off conversation. But if it was more orchestrated like that, you can almost make a zoom kind of get together a little bit more meaningful in that way. Oh, I think the the ones that I've been to that really work the best are both the group ones and then the the zooms that go into individual matching people up and forcing them to have a conversation like with three people. HMM, you can't hide and and you give them a little of a of a guide post of how to how to half that conversation and and it's I think it's it's fantastic because I think we're getting we have a lot of zoom fatigue going on to time, and so I found something shocking. I've started playing around... |
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...with VR, the virtual reality meetings, just to play around with it, and what I found shocking, or a surprise at least pleasantly, is the d audio, the spatial audio that you experience in there. Is If someone's kind of speaking directly to your year, you feel it there, or if the if they're at the other end of the room kind of having a side conversation whispering, you hear that in the distance and there's something really grounding about that. You know that you can replicate something in the real world in this virtual space. You know what's interesting also about that? You bring that up. We were experimenting with what. We were using these headphones that you use for the silent discos in our education sessions, and it turns out that you learn more because the you're hearing it more clearly and you also don't need the heavy walls in between two. So even organizers save a ton of money. I'm having to create rooms when they can actually just have people listening through headsets in multiple rooms at the same time without any walls, and that's kind of an interesting but I do believe that that the virtual thing is going to be here to stay and that, you know, one of the things that we've discovered was that a facetoface event is a trust accelerator. So once you meet someone in person, once you can then do a lot of more virtual stuff. What's going to happen, I think, is, as the new tools happened, that virtual becomes really like what you were saying. We're more intimate and more more trusting. Things happen. You're they're going to learn to trust online a little bit more, I think, and you have more of the avatars and things like that, like the metaverse thing with verizon, horizon workspaces. I've been experimenting with a little bit. Still Clunky and it's like a headache where in it, but I think that we're sort of in the brick phone age of that era. You know, yeah, it's an inflection point. It's going to take a while and it's not like we're all going to be anything, you know, having v our meetings anytime soon, but it's it's a nice thing to experiment with and they'll definitely be some meaningful I could even see from a therapy perspective and learning. Oh yeah, yeah, so much. Oh yeah, there's all these techniques. Like there I was, I went to. I used to go to this conference called see to Montreal, and if you heard about it, it's a great creative conference in Montreal that they have once a year. We put it down as one of our number one at Bisbash, whenever number one events that the year always and they experiment a lot with how people have, people behave in situations and how they have meaning, like they did one year they had they took like twelve people and they elevated them into the sky. I. So your feet were dangling. So you have a meeting in your more vulnerable and you the ideas are more interesting than they had a meeting in a room that was all mirrored and dark so that you can discuss difficult topics. I mean they experiment with the way people sit and communicate. They did another experiment where people would take a walk with a neighbor in a rainforest with an umbrella. So you they created this rainforest. You had to walk around a path in the rain talking to people, to one person. So it just interesting how we're all studying the new ways of connecting and it's coming down to the old ways of connecting. It is and it's so much in the event industry and and you know, it's I will admit. You know, for a long time I underestimated what goes on in that industry and what I found is in the last five years or so I've I now have a lot more people in my network and in my orbit that are in that industry and and you had mentioned that, where in the Golden Age of events, and I'm just curious what is this confluence of things that's happening? Well, what's happening is everyone is saying they're going to these big conferences. They're saying, I could do this a lot better. They're saying, yeah, critic, and all of us the critic all and a lot of these people in these big companies are saying, you know, I could create, no, a better version of a cees or I can create a better version of a niche, because things are getting smaller to and people want to connect more and people want experiences. But so big organizers... |
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...are now branching out into creating smaller events. But people are going to face too fate's events are going to be more of a luxury because you can easily do those zoom meeting for things that don't really matter as much. But when you really want to practice no hugging your customers or your employees. A great event or a great trade show will be the way to do it, and I think you're going to see people spending more money on that. Already people go to conferences like like World Economic Forum and Ted and they're spending a lot of money to go because they want that network. You know, it's it's no longer now about the the content as much as the contact. So you get to meet people that you wouldn't normally meet. It is why people like the event industry. That's why the hallway is more important sometimes in the main stage and that the serendipity effect, is kind of where you where people. People would say, Oh, that Nice party planner, a nice party planner. It's not really about parties. It's very much about strategic gathering. MMM, and and this community. Yeah, right, like that's been one of the threads and some of my other conversations is you know, there there was, there used to be a lot of you know, your elks lodges here, your Bowling Leagues, like. There are all these community features that they've kind of dwindled and gone away and I don't know if this is an accurate kind of view, but it feels like we kind of stepped away from that kind of community for a little bit, but now it's this return to it's important for a communic unity and we want where of a hunger. You know, they were missing it. We didn't realize. Maybe we didn't realize we missed it, but now we are and we have a hunger for it. We always funny. I was talking to some of my millennial friends and they were saying the reason they go to events as they can scale relationships because they instead of meeting one person for Lenner, they can beat fifty people. If they do it right, they can get to know entire industry. So it's a very strategic thing to that for to them to be part of their community in some way. And you know, it's not necessarily just to be a number or or a widget in the community. It's to be some sort of to break through. In many cases people notice. I like that. Well, David, I've really enjoyed this conversation. You know, one thing I always love to finish on is what is the best piece of vice that you've ever received yourself in life for work? Okay, this is the best piece of advice I got. I had a boss at a company called Premier View. We own like three hundred and fifty magazines, and he would tell me, you know, how do you sort of prevent conflicts from happening right away? He said, whenever someone comes into my office and present an idea, I always say yes because and then I ask, well, let's see some more information about that. He says that ninety nine percent of the time no one follows up on anything they say they're going to do. So why start a fight right away? And you can always say no later and so and it also makes you more like likable by everybody, because you're not, you know, you're not saying that idea is terrible. You know you're sort of saying, tell me more about it and if they have a lot of passion for the idea, you'll see it, but if they don't, it goes away pretty quickly. So it's like one way that that that made me. It's part of the whole concept of really watch how you behave with other people and always be on with them in a sense. You know, don't just know it's always smile. I mean I'm a big smile or I think that that's good, and I'm a big someone's came to me and Said said, you know, you have PMA, and I said what the Hell's pm a? And they said positive mental attitude, and I took that as a huge compliment because you can tell when someone has pma. You have PMA, I can tell. Yeah, and it radiates, and I think that's one of the most important things that people get when they see you. It comes down to my Angelu in a sense that you make them feel good or no matter what you're saying. That's a great way to exist in perfect timing with her. Are On the coin finally, so I think it's fantastic. David, thanks so much for joining me. I thoroughly enjoyed this. Thanks so much. |
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Technology should serve vision, not set it at and tevity. We design clear blueprints for organization readiness and digital transformation that allow companies to chart new pass then we drive the implementation of those plans with our client partners in service of growth. Find out more at detww dot. Have BECOM. Was That podcast you've been listening to? See sweet blueprint. If you like what you've heard, be sure to hit subscribe wherever you get your podcast to make. I'd never miss a new episode, and while you're there, we'd love it if you could leave a Rabel. Just give us however many stars you think we'll desert until next time. |
