You guys, this is week 21.
We're happy, it's always fun to get together on Wednesdays
and have the teams come together.
And last week, we talked about
how to create powerful playbooks.
And that was really fun, I enjoyed that.
And because they're how-to, they're a how-to source,
so it never has to be explained again.
And it's like hitting the copy button
and capturing the know-how.
So you can see how valuable those would be
to the companies and the businesses.
Today, we're talking about the 70-20-10 rule.
This rule explains how we can create amazing work
and the best ideas.
But just before we dive in,
I'm gonna share with you my pro tip for today.
My pro tip is to keep moving forward,
to keep moving forward and to develop the tools
that you've been given.
So stick with it, keep practicing
and practicing intentionally.
And don't give up if one week,
you kind of revert back to the behaviors before.
And if you find that you have gotten stuck,
a great question to ask is,
if someone new was hired to do my job,
what is the first thing that they would change?
All right, are we all ready to dive in?
As a reminder, as we're going through the material,
be sure to add questions in the chat.
I'll keep an eye out for them.
Now, Dan, I'm gonna hand it over to you.
Thanks, Jenny.
I really appreciate that.
My big win is that Jenny has tipped into a role
called our Operations Director at Brilliant.
So she's taken on a bigger role,
which has freed me up to do more things.
So I'm thrilled.
That's been really enabled me to focus more on content
and on some of the sales and marketing that we do.
Yeah, we're really excited.
Great to see Ben.
You've got three playbooks this week.
That's amazing, actually.
That's a tremendous, that's really impressive.
So here's the thing about playbooks.
If you can get the playbook culture working
in your organization, what it's gonna do
is it's gonna allow people to move around
in the organization.
If you're the only one who knows how to do that function,
and you have no playbook,
no way to hit the copy button on the know-how,
you can't move people around.
So what happens is the ideas,
what people will learn to lean into their A seat
and what playbooks allow is for people to do that,
to move from one area to another area in the business.
And sometimes, you're starting one area of the business,
that's where you just happen to get your job,
but you actually have really helpful skills
for other areas.
And the company discovers this,
and this is an ability to move it around.
The second thing it allows is it captures the capital
that was initially invested in you.
We spend a lot of time talking about the idea
that we invest in everybody
who comes into our organization
because we wanna invest in people first
as the core basis of quality.
And also because when you invest in people first,
even if they leave you,
they're going to be the smartest person in the room
wherever they go.
But there is a two-way street to that.
And the two-way street to that is,
if the company is investing in you to that degree,
your way of paying the company back is to create playbooks.
Your way is to capture that unique knowledge,
that contribution, the unique way you figured out
all the innovation, ideas, breakthroughs you've had,
and to keep those playbooks updated.
And that's why we moved away
from sort of the formal standard operating procedures.
And the reason is, a little of the architecture is,
the standard operating procedure big fat workbook
that almost nobody ever reads
is because they move too slowly.
They don't keep up with you
and they don't keep up with your business,
which means you can't innovate fast enough,
which means you can't move people around.
And at the end of the day,
the company that innovates the fastest wins.
So what we want is when people
are in a highly innovative environment
and they're capturing that know-how through playbooks,
it does something else for the team.
What it does for the team is it says,
not only did I make a contribution,
but I passed that along to someone else in the company
that freed me up to make a bigger contribution.
That is deeply meaningful.
That is deeply fulfilling for every team member
to feel that, wow, not only did I make a contribution,
but my contribution has now been sort of encapsulated
in somebody else in the team.
That's a very meaningful thing.
So think when you've moved now your third move.
So if I can pick on Jenny, you again.
So when I came Jenny, I think you were.
the office manager, right, the office manager, and then, and
Graham's EA, which you still are. But, but as we moved you up
through that things, you're able to capture things and other
people hand off, and we're able to hire people behind. But now
look, over the period of three or four years, how you know,
you've moved up several things, you've taken on content, now
director of operations, operations director. And so for
you, I mean, that, how does that feel for you that you were able
to, you know, move through that process and seeing it being
encapsulated and kept even if you were to leave?
Yeah, it's, I mean, it's, it's been huge. I was actually
reflecting over my journey this last week. And what that has
been for me is that's just it's built such a confidence and a
sense of accomplishment within myself that I do know that if I
were, we have at Brilliant, we say that if someone moves on, we
want them to leave better than they came in, we want them to
leave and be the smartest person in the room. And I truly do feel
like that, feel like that if I were ever to leave Brilliant, I
could go somewhere and I would know the value that I bring to
that company. And it's certainly given me a lot of confidence in
that area.
Except the fact that we've made a rule that Jenny may never
leave. Other than that, it's great. So, and here's the point
though. And so I tell that story, because I thought just
taking a second and talking a little bit about the
architecture of what sits behind some of these, why do we teach
what we teach? Why do we bring this to each week? And so I'd
love to pick up on playbooks a little later, again, in the
course. Today, I want to just tell you a story. And it's one
of those stories, we're going to talk about the 70-20-10 rule, as
Jenny said. And this is a strange rule, because you may
have heard it said in different ways. Some people call it the
20-70-10 rule, they turn the first two numbers around. I just
remember it easy, 70-20-10 rule. And it comes originally, as far
as I can tell, I've done a lot of research trying to find the
original story, but it seems like the original story started
at the University of Florida, where Jerry Elsman, a professor
of film and photography, did an experiment. And the experiment
was, firstly, has anybody ever heard that story about this
professor of photography from University of Florida? No. All
right. So what he did is he divided his students into two
groups. So what he did is he said, everybody on the left side
of the classroom would be the quantity group. Quantity group
meant they were graded for the entire semester, they would be
graded on the amount of photographs that they handed in.
So on the final day of class, he would tally up all the photos
and submit it by each student. And so if you did 100
photographs, you'd get an A, 90 photographs would be a B, 80
photographs would be a C, and so on. So everyone on the right
side of the room, though, he called them the quality group.
And so they would be graded on a single photo, just they were
allowed to only submit or only had to submit one photograph.
And, you know, based on the quality of that, the lighting,
the mood, you know, any photographers here? Yeah, any
photographers? Okay, I should have you guys explain this. So
the all the attributes that would make up an astounding
photograph, they would get an A if it was near perfect, and so
on. So at the end of the term, the professor was completely
surprised. So who do you think produced the most number of
photographs, obviously, the quantity group, who do you think
best the provided the best quality photographs, anybody
want to take a guess? Not the quality people, the quantity
people produce the best quality photographs. Now, this
experiment has been replicated, there's a very famous story of a
ceramics professor that did the same thing, divided the class
net provide pottery, and the quantity group, they were
literally going to bring in a scale and, and weigh the total,
you know, in pounds, how many pounds of pottery did you
produce, didn't matter about the quality. And on the quality
people, they were only going to be rated on one single amazing
piece that they had to perfect. And so this led to a whole lot of
speculation in leadership management theory about why on
earth does this happen. And so the formula, or the, the thesis
that was postulated was called the 70 2010 rule. And so and
you'll see in a second, so I'm going to turn it around the way
it was a
originally presented and that is 20%
of everything you do is pretty bad.
It's just horrible.
You should just throw it away.
Please stop, you know.
But here's the thing, you have to get through the 20%.
You have to do the 20% junk, you know.
And then 70% of what you do is okay.
You know, average, maybe even, you know, pretty good,
maybe sort of ranges then.
And 10% of what you do is amazing.
So 20, 70, 10, 20% is just pure junk
and 70% is pretty good.
10% is amazing.
Here's a shocking thing for me.
I discovered this in a different way.
I discovered this when we were running a private equity firm
which as you know, is just people putting their funds
together to invest in businesses.
And as I was running that firm, I discovered this rule,
the 20, 70, 10 rule also applied to businesses.
So people came, we'd get like 20 people pitch us,
you know, every month and we would say no
to probably 19 of them.
And usually most of them I would say no
within five or 10 minutes.
So how did I know, what was I looking for?
So a group of 12 CEOs in Atlanta asked me to come
and spend the day with them.
They were all trying to raise capital.
And they said, as a private equity investor,
what is it you look at?
So I asked them all to put their deck together
as it's called, you know, their book of what it is they do
and their financials and you know, the whole pitch.
And so they put their deck together and I would pick it up
and in front of them, I would show them
what I was looking at.
And I was using this rule by the way.
And so that's what made it fairly easy
because I knew this thing.
20% of all businesses are so bad,
they should be shut down immediately.
If you've ever watched Shark Tank,
Mr. Wonderful every now and again says,
I prohibit you, I ban you from continuing this business.
This is what he's referring to.
It's just so bad, you should just stop.
It's not good for the investors.
It's not a good product.
It's not good for the employees.
Please just stop.
You know, you're losing money.
It's horrible, stop.
And it's as much as 20%.
And then 70%, which is most businesses are just average.
You know, some of them are okay and good,
but 10% of businesses are amazing.
Actually, there is a 1% that sits right on the top,
which are just absolute game changers.
And that 1% by all accounts
was almost always discovered by accident.
So some lazy guy in the Bay Area
decides his girlfriend wants to run a garage sale
and he's too lazy to put the helper with it.
So he says, what I'm gonna do
is I'm gonna take photos of all your stuff
and I'll put it online.
Your buddies can bid on it.
And a $200 billion company called eBay was formed.
Because what happened is all her friends came back to her
and said, can he do that for me?
And he was too lazy to do it for them.
So he said, look what,
I'll give you the ability to upload your own photographs
and you guys figure it all out.
And so these 1% businesses, Coca-Cola,
you know, in Atlanta, 150, 160 years ago,
which was a cough mixture, no one knew.
So, you know, I think Elon Musk once joked
that he was gonna buy Coke
so he could get the cocaine back in the Coke.
But nonetheless, I hope he was joking.
So nonetheless, this idea of 20%.
So I remember when my son, who's now in his 20s,
when he was starting, he was 12 years old
and he wanted to become a YouTuber.
It was a good time.
And so by the time he got to 14 or 15,
he had 32,000 followers.
And he was able to, he was the first of my four kids
to be able to buy a brand new car when he turned 15.
So, which I didn't let him drive on his own
until he had his proper license.
Nonetheless, it was a brand new car, stood in the driveway
and he was able to pay it from the money
he got from YouTube ads, from YouTube.
And he came across a video that changed his life.
And what he didn't realize is the video was the story.
It was the 27 to 10 rule.
And an older YouTuber, who was older to him,
was 18 years old, who's now got 12 million followers,
that YouTuber.
But this guy basically said,
he said, if you wanna be a designer,
you have to go through a lot of really bad design
so that you can get to a bunch of mediocre design,
so you can get to average design,
so you can get to okay design,
so you can get to brilliant design.
If you're willing to go through that process,
you can become a great designer.
Today, he works for a large company
and he's one of 70 designers
and he's been introducing a lot of new elements.
So this idea is this idea of being willing
to go through the pain and the embarrassment
of being a poor designer
so you can become an average designer.
so you can become an amazing designer. And so I want to say this because there is, it takes a
certain intellectual honesty, a certain intellectual humility to be willing to go through that process.
And it's this concept, when they looked at why, if people understood this, if they understood this
rule, why don't they just push through then? Why don't they just keep going? And the reason is,
evidently, come down to, again, a lot of research around this, comes down to this idea of intellectual
humility. So, you know, it's really interesting that, you know, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos once
stopped at the Basecamp offices. Now, Basecamp is the group that we got, thin slicing, shaping at
that matter. It used to be called 37 signals back then. But anyway, Bezos stopped at the
Basecamp offices a few years ago, and he asked someone, or rather someone asked him a question
that I think every entrepreneur would like to know the answer to. And it's this,
what's the most important quality you look for when you're trying to hire superstars?
So, you might think, right, that Bezos would say something along the lines of, you know,
I want to see amazing accomplishments, you know, stellar credentials, undeniable leadership,
you know, something like of that kind, but that's not what he said. And so, what he actually said,
he likes to hire people who are wrong a lot. What was he saying?
He was talking to this thing, he realized that not you can't just wait until people get to that 10%,
and then try to hire, I want to hire the best people. Well, the best people sometimes are the
ones that are formed under your leadership, the best people, the ones that thrive in this high
trust culture, in which innovation is encouraged, and which being wrong a lot is actually valued to
the point that a billionaire would be willing to hire you. So, what is this intellectual humility,
then? You know, here's the thing, intellectual humility makes you smarter and more successful.
And so, when they pressed Bezos of this question, it's a wonderful interview,
he said that he's observed that the smartest people are continuously revising their understanding,
they're reconsidering, I know, the problem they were thinking about, they thought they'd already
solved it, but it sort of comes back and they keep on it in their mind, what are they doing?
They're going through the 20, the bad, getting through the average, looking to get to that 10%.
Now, you can't do that in every area of your life, but there should be some areas of your life
in which you're doing that. And so, to do that, he found that they were open to new points of view.
When they found new information, they went back and updated their thinking or the update
their solution, even if it contradicted what they previously thought. And so, when something
challenged their way of thinking, that's what he looked at that response when they were willing to
be intellectually humble enough to say, you know what, I was more dumb before, and I'm a little
smarter now. And that is the quality he was looking for. Being open to new ideas means that,
you know, you're willing to discard the old ones, you question all the assumptions you established,
team brilliant know how many times we hit the pause button and say, let's challenge the
assumptions we made when we did this. And it's amazing how many times, because what you're
really admitting is that you were dumber before. That's what you're admitting. And that's where
it takes the humility. And the truth is, you were dumber before. So, this intellectual humility
is not just the bedrock of a high performer, but it really is what will excel you, because if you
don't mind being wrong or looking foolish, that's the humility part. And the intellectual honesty to
say, well, you know, I'm willing to learn. And some more research has shown that people who use this
intellectual humility thing, learn faster, they are much better at weighing evidence more fairly,
they're much more curious, you know, they converse with others who have opposing viewpoints to them,
you know, they have a better worldview, they're easier to get along with. They're very open to
ideas that they before thought were totally wrong, maybe even had a very strong, you know,
opposition. And I think even if you look at our political discourse, you know, things that are
going on in my
in society, it's amazing, there's just not that level of humility. And if, and if some leader
comes along who is intellectually humble, it's very attractive, you know, especially maybe in
our present context. So I wanted to say that this idea of being willing to learn more information
being, you know, it's, it's developing curiosity, to the point that you're willing to be a little
embarrassed. And, you know, and the best thing to say is, yep, I was dumb before, and now I'm
trying to be less dumb. And it's a very freeing thing. You know, why would you not do that? You
know, it's a wonderful place to live. So a couple of thoughts for you. Before I hand it back to
Jenny here, and we've got a little worksheet for you to work through. How intellectually humble
are you? You know, do you have an open attitude to new ideas, fresh viewpoints, contradictory
evidence to what you previously thought you were so sure about your, you know, or how you own
your own intellectual errors. As we've said before, one of the fastest way to grow your reputation as
a, as a person in your team, is not just to do what you say, but when you make a mistake,
own your errors quickly, let good news travel fast, bad news travel faster. And because if you're
the first one up with the bad news, it shows you owned it, there's an intellectual humility
there that's that is very, very attractive. You know, even if people are annoyed with your mistake,
they're impressed with you. So you know, you don't feel your need to protect your turf, if you feel
need to protect your little domain, and you have a little fiefdom, and it's my little space, and
nobody can, you know, this is my space. And I've been doing this for 20 years, or whatever it is,
you know, that's not a great and here's the thing, as we get older, it might be actually harder
to keep intellectual humility, because, you know, it's hard to keep up with everything at that pace.
And so we can become a little protective of our turf. So, you know, this means we're not overly
congratulating ourselves, we're also not beating ourselves up on our mistake. So I love what Elon
Musk tells his team, it is best to assume that you are wrong, and the goal is to be less wrong.
And I think this is not to say where we think our work is terrible, which just a healthy,
open mindedness that we can do better. Why? Because we're trying to get through the really bad 20%,
get through the average 70% and find ourselves in that amazing 10%.
Back to you, Jenny questions, thoughts, I wasn't checking all the comments.
There were some really good comments. Ben is not sure he believes anything he says. So
and then Matt and Tyler. Tyler said that Ben tells him about one 10th of the things he says
is brilliant. So the 10 2070 rule is quite affirming. And Matt said the same.
But then Tyler did have a question about finding humility in an interview being quite the
challenge because the candidate, you know, is trying to impress the company. Are there good
questions to figure out where they're truly at? Or is humility something that is taught in the new
culture they're entering? Well, I know, Jenny, you know, the answer to that question. So that
the point is, though, we will actually get into how to do that in an interview, and why you can't
do it in a single interview. And so we'll, we'll talk about that whole process. And but the short
answer just to give you the bottom line, is that you've you pick on the one tell me about the
biggest thing you've ever done, what's the biggest contribution you've ever made in anything? And you
ask that you keep asking them questions until you run into a dead end. As we say, brilliant,
you keep going down that road until you hit a T junction. And you know, you hit the T junction,
because they start repeating themselves, they run out of detail. Here's what intellectual humility
is and how to determine that in an interview, is that if I was part of a team that did something
wonderful, and I'm kind of claiming, well, I, you know, we were, we were part of a team, or I was,
I worked for the sales team, and we increased sales by 500%. And we did this, and we did that,
we did the next thing. That sounds impressive. When I start pressing in, how many people on the
team? Well, there was five of us. Were you the top salesperson? Well, I was number two. Well,
what did one number one do that you didn't do? Well, I well, was that just an excuse? Or were
they just really better than you? Did you just accept that they were better than you? Why did
you accept that they were better than you? You can see very quickly, I will blow through that,
that fluffy bird, and an intellectually honest person will lean back and go,
no, sometimes I was just too lazy to drive.
harder. You know, they said that I'm like, I like this person
immediately. So I think the point is people need you have to
press and press and press because if they really did the
job, they will know the detail until you run out of questions.
And so if they were only part of the team that did the job, and
they weren't absolutely involved in every detail, they will run
out of information, you will see they'll hit the T junction
along the way. That's the short answer. There's a lot of detail
and we provide an entire host of questions in a four interview
stage process to get that through. So Matt recently went
through that. So he knows what that's like. So there you go. It
was a process, right, Matt. So as we've gone through that, we
will go through that again.
If I can just add to that, that and I think we have said that we
asked those really hard questions, but we've also had
the most responses in our interviews of people saying that
they feel really seen and considered, and oftentimes get
emotional because they just feel like they're being they're
known, they're getting to be known. So it's actually a
really, it's a great process. Okay, so are we ready to break
out in the breakout rooms then Dion?
Sounds like Robin, you had a question earlier.
There's a question earlier from Robin, I think.
Yes, about the playbooks.
He asked, is there a challenge in getting the staff to do
playbooks of their position? If no one can do their job? Is it
better protected?
Yeah. Yeah, you know, that's a good question to ask, actually,
it's good to get that in there. If that's really it, you know,
some people just need some assurance that that's why you
giving them this because you want to improve them. This isn't
so we can replace you because, you know, in a in a culture of
mistrust, then it then that is the question, right? Are you
just getting me to do this, because you're getting ready to
fire me, you know, and and so it has to be listen, if you are at
risk, you will know, and you will have had a 30 day notice
from us, and we will have told you exactly what you have to do.
And in 30 days time, we're going to revaluate against that
criteria. If we haven't had that conversation, silence is golden,
you're good to go. And so you have to reassure people, I
think if they're having that response. Yeah, but I have seen
that that viewpoint. All right.
That's, well, you see how important that culture of trust
is. All right, excuse me, we're gonna break, go into our
breakout rooms now. And I did drop the PDF file for today's
worksheet for those who might need it. We'll go ahead and
separate into our breakout rooms. And we'll see you back
here at 155. If you have trouble moving into your room,
just post in the comments, and we can manually move you over
solo leaders, we've created a group for you called the
general, you can go in there and interact together. And as
always, we'll have that countdown reminder when it's
time for you to come back into the main meeting. So have fun.
Welcome back having a good time. We didn't want to leave.
I think that is the most the most frequent comment we were
received is that you guys are having a good time and don't
want to come back. Well, we're glad to have you guys back. This
is the time in the last few minutes. If you guys have any
questions, or comments or would like insight on something,
please post it in the chat or raise your hand and ask your
question out loud. Are there any questions? Okay, Eli, you
like to see the countdown and everyone is like, Oh, no, we're
gonna get kicked out. That's funny. All meetings should have
countdown clocks. I think, you know, that last minute. All
right. And Leanne is asking Dionne, if you would expand on
exercise two a little bit in the worksheet.
Just remind me what it is.
Sure. Exercise two is pick one area, you could increase the
quantity of what you do to learn faster and to get quality
quicker. So fast.
Yeah, that's a great question. Because what we didn't get go
through is why, why it works so well. And you know, why the
why the quantity people produce the best quality. And the
number one thing that was the research found was that you
don't get trapped in perfectionism. So you know, when
you're trying to get that perfect photograph, what they
found is, it's a it's the thin slicing the rapid
trying and constantly thin slicing it.
And so you make mistakes and you learn.
So with the pottery or with the photographs example,
so they went over and over and over again.
So is there an area or is there a project
where you wanna get the quality up
and you're spending too much time
trying to dial in the quality that if you did quantity,
you could get there quicker.
Not every project allows for it,
but if you can, it is the faster way.
It's another variant on thin slice thinking.
So did I answer your question?
Does that help, Leanne?
I'm sorry, you can unmute if you.
Yes, I was trying to type fast.
Yes, it did.
Thank you so much.
Yeah, so what it does is really is freeing you
from those sort of crippling high expectations.
You know, we always put that the fear of failure.
We don't wanna mess up.
We wanna go to our boss or everyone say, look at the job.
Or if you wanna say to the team, look what I did.
But if you're saying, hey, here's my first version,
second version, I'm gonna do a lot of versions
because I'm gonna figure this out.
And so like in the pottery case,
they talked about the number of the ceramics was so bad,
you know, they were embarrassed to bring them out.
But the last few were so brilliant
that they were better than anything
that the quality group produced.
So it's this tremendous confidence
that I know the 20% is gonna be bad
and then I know the 70 is gonna be average,
but the last 10% and I'm gonna push through.
Giving yourself that permission
or giving your team that permission,
we're allowed to do projects that way.
We're allowed to tackle certain projects that way.
There are boundaries
and we can talk about that at some point.
But I think the whole point is to give yourself permission
to tackle some of your projects.
So the question in exercise two is,
is there a project like that in your world
that you could put immediately to work?
Excellent.
Thank you so much, Dion.
Sure.
Appreciate it.
All right.
Well, I hope everyone enjoyed today's teaching,
the rule, the 70-20-10 rule
and looks for ways that you can implement.
I can't talk.
Implement that this week.
All right.
Well, I hope everyone has a great week
and we look forward to seeing you next week.