The Long-Term Impact of Workplace Habits

Mitch: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Make Others Successful, a podcast where we share insights, stories, and strategies to help you build a better workplace. We're back. It's the new year. We want to dive into a little bit of a meta topic this this episode, but it's something that we want to zoom out a little bit and say, while we talk about all of these things, what are the larger impacts beyond this person in this role doing this job, and what what do we expect from a a long term perspective?

And so we we wanted to kind of talk about this in the context of the new year and say, what if 2026 was a year that you could kind of rethink how you're thinking about your work and what role you play in that? So, Mike, do you want to kind of set the stage for what brought up what's our topic today? What brought this up? Why do we wanna talk about it? Yeah.

I think I mean, I'll

Mike: just go right into it. We're gonna talk about the meta human and a lot of the reasons why behind all of the things that we do, the things that we try to teach. Of course, it's like, yeah, we're gonna make a better workplace and your daily work is gonna be better and your life is gonna be less stressful and those types of things. But there's a I think there's a bigger thing behind it all that we don't often think of and that is how our behavior and patterns that we're implementing today or the way that we behave at work or the way that we do things have an even bigger impact for the future. And so it's not just about me today, me tomorrow, or even my coworkers today or tomorrow.

It's about, you know, maybe even fifty, a hundred and fifty, a thousand years from now. Right? The things that you're doing could have an impact. Mhmm. And that human experience that we all as humans have on this planet, you know, realizing that the things that we do at work, way that we work, the patterns that we implement actually impact that human experience much further down the road than we typically consider.

Mitch: Sure. Okay. Yeah. It's a very selfless perspective. Right?

It's Yeah. It's it's very difficult to connect the dots with what we're talking about with what's in it for me. Right? Yeah. We just believe we're called to more, and so I feel like a lot of the things that we talk about over the last few years all relate to this topic, like this this why behind what what we're doing.

Mike: You're right. It is very selfless, but I think the the younger generation, part of the thing that they're looking for is to be part of something bigger than themselves.

Mitch: Mhmm.

Mike: And this is it's right at your fingertips. People don't realize it. Like, don't have to be like, have some crazy impactful job, be a millionaire, be a philanthropist. There are ways that you can impact things well into the future just by what you do in your daily work.

Mitch: Yeah. I I just had to look up the quote because it reminds me of this, but it's an old Greek proverb that says, a society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they will never sit in. And I think that's

Mike: Yeah.

Mitch: Yeah. We we want to build a great society and yeah. So we're gonna be talking about meta things today. So if you're, like, looking for tech tips and tricks, this is not the episode for you. Find one of our other ones.

If you wanna talk about some of the why or hear about some of the why behind what we do, this is a great one. So the problem statement, the format here is like, I'm I'm basically interviewing Mike on this topic because he's he's interested. He's been thinking about it quite a bit, and so I wanted to I'll see what I can pull out of this conversation, but the problem statement is leaders and organizations focus on things like cost, licensing, end users, driving sales, and then one step further down from that, the individuals, they care about checking off their tasks and meeting goals and playing their role, but they're missing a bigger point, which is the way we work matters, and every day we have an opportunity to make ourselves better, stronger, faster, but we also recognize what we're doing adds value, capability and enhances the metahuman. Absolutely. Gonna unpack that a

Mike: little bit. Oh man, there's there's so much there. The we all go to work every day and we've got the list of things in front of us and we gotta prioritize it and it stresses us out and we just wanna get be done, right? But in every one of those things that we're doing, there's probably a better way that we can do it that's gonna make it better for the next person that comes along. And ultimately, when you do that, like if you do that let's say in three different areas and you establish that pattern and you consistently do that, and the others in your organization who come alongside you see that pattern and then they start to do that.

And that organization lives, let's say, beyond twenty years. Right, the new people who started that organization are gonna inherit those built in patterns. Right? It's it's almost like you a genetic modification to the human. Right?

This is a modification it's a modern work modification to the metahuman. Right? When those new employees come along twenty years from now, they inherit all that stuff, all of those patterns that we implemented. And when they show up to do their work, they're already five steps ahead, right, because that has been established.

Mitch: Yeah. It reminds me a lot of the concept. I don't like Simon Sinek will talk about the infinite game. Like, there's no winning business. Like, sure, your business can be successful, but there, like, there is a a losing business which is losing the business, but what what does winning really look like?

It's it's not a finite game that has a start and an end all the time. It's something that goes beyond what we know. So I feel like the example that you gave when we were talking about this, we often well, we'll sometimes relate it to like Bible stories. Right? Oh, yeah.

When when you were thinking about this analogy of what like Abraham and stuff like that.

Mike: This is this is the Abraham story, right? Like, I and that's one of the oldest stories ever told. But God tells Abraham, hey, come out of your luxurious slumber and live a life of adventure and and meaning Mhmm. And I will make you father of nations. Right?

So essentially what he's saying there is there's a pattern of living, there's a way of living that is more successful than what you're doing. Do this and your genes, your genetics will be, you know, father of nations. Mhmm. You'll last forever. A lineage that lasts forever.

Like, what's more important than that? Yeah. Right? Like, you we only have what maybe eighty years on this planet. But to think that there are decisions that you do make, staying married to your spouse for one, for example, that are cosmic in nature.

They are eternal in nature. Right? You make that choice every day and you're affecting forever. Right? And there's not much more bigger than that.

Mitch: Yeah. It's the the easiest way that I think about that is I'm learning more and more how people are affected by their parents and how they're brought up. And that's sort of the you either wanna be like your parents or do the exact opposite of what your parents did Right. Make a difference and that cascades Yep. Through generations.

Mike: Yeah. Like, I don't know any anybody who's a dad, you want your if you have kids, the thing you want is you want them to have it better than you did and you strive to make that happen. Even if you're a bad dad, you want your kids to have it better than you did. And part of that is, sure, making their life better, making their life easier, but you also want them to learn the patterns that work. And if if at all possible, learn those the easy way, not the hard way, so that they're starting ahead and so that their kids learn those things even sooner and Mhmm.

And so on and so forth. Right? It's all about making others successful.

Mitch: It's very it's right behind. Oh, they can't read it See in the what

Mike: I did there though.

Mitch: Yeah. Right. Tying into our value. The thing that reinforces this to me is I just got off a group coaching call with a couple folks and they are all they're actually they were all women, all trying to move this needle at their company of how do we work better. And it is encouraging because they are wearing this persona without maybe recognizing it, but they are saying, what is this beyond me?

And what one of the ladies there kept saying like, I want to replace myself. I want to automate myself out of a job. I want to make myself promotable. And all those things feed into this concept. Everyone with that mindset should be viewed as a valuable asset to any company.

And I think society tempts us to think the opposite a lot of this is mine and I want to stay away, stay off my turf. And there's no doubt that you can find success in that. You can make money off of that.

Mike: Elon Musk has told us all that twenty years from now, nobody's going to actually have to work. Work will be a choice because the robots are gonna do it all. And I think some people buy into that because they see, oh, I can just sit on my couch and watch TV or, you know, the robots will make the food for me or whatever that means to them. I don't think that's what Elon means. Right?

I really don't. I think what he's really driving at is there is opportunity there to improve the human experience overall. And if that means we're doing something else with our time instead of menial tasks, that's great. Mhmm. Because we're establishing a new pattern.

And there are so many inventions and things like the smartphone for example that make the human experience worse in some ways but better in so many other ways, right? We're also connected. It's our relationships can be more connected Mhmm. In positive ways today than they they could have been in the past where we had to write letters and send them in the mail. Right?

So there are so many improvements in the human experience and it changes what it means to be human today versus what it meant to be a human a thousand years ago.

Mitch: Mhmm.

Mike: And what we're doing and what we're teaching people at work is you can change what work's gonna look like a thousand years from now Mhmm. By taking these steps.

Mitch: Yeah. It's it's a fun thought experiment. The let let's bring us back into let's ground us a little bit and say what what does it actually look like to behave this way at work? Or maybe someone's leading a workplace and they want to embody this this mindset and and think about things this way. One of the first things that we we promote is the concept of, like, communicating and collaborating in a topic based way.

Yeah. Yeah. Stuff like that.

Mike: Yeah. Organizational knowledge. Right? Yep. Like fostering that that fostering knowledge and communication that facilitates others in the organization.

Right? Mhmm. That helps other people know what's going on. You're feeding the organization's knowledge, not any one individual's knowledge, right? So taking things getting things out of inboxes, stop emailing internally, using topic based communication in tools like Teams or Slack, And then making sure that documents are put in, you know, the appropriate places in Teams and channels accessible to who who needs to have access to them, searchable, right?

All of those things make the experience of finding them, working with them, using Copilot on them, all of those things become much easier for everyone involved. And that's just an overall, that's the rising tide lifts all boats, right, mentality that we talk about in our foundations course. But that's just one example. Right?

Mitch: Yeah. I am recognizing I the well, my goal of this episode would be if I could put it in a time capsule and say someone watches it or listens to it a hundred years from now, that the things that we talk about all seem so silly. Like, you guys were using team like, a hundred years ago, email wasn't a thing. Right?

Mike: Right.

Mitch: The tools we're using today probably are not gonna be a thing in the same format. Right? Like, what what will it look like? I don't know. But I hope that what we're talking about can be seen as virtuous.

Right? Like, something that if you show up to work this way, regardless of what tools you use, you will see success. So, yeah, we talked about communicating that way. Automation is your next one.

Mike: Yeah. Automation. So being able to like, we Mitch, how many tasks do you do every day that you wish you just didn't have to do because they're I did this yesterday or I did this last week. We all have those things and when we get time, we we look for ways to automate them. And then there is personal automation which is gonna impact you, but teaching others how to personally automate their own tasks because everybody's gonna have that.

So that's an area that we care about. But then also recognizing that the thing that you're automating, if it matters to the organization, it ought to be done in a way that the organization has control over it, has visibility into it Mhmm. So that it can outlive you. Right? Mhmm.

Otherwise, it's just personal automation and it goes away when you disappear and that does nothing for the next guy, right, the metahuman.

Mitch: Yeah. I just heard of same in that group coaching. They talked about how they lost somebody, like they passed away and they did a very core function of their business. And it was like months before anyone could make any semblance of that business process. And it was a huge like they wanted to grieve his loss, but they were so busy trying to make sense of this stuff that it it just that experience can can be so much better.

Mike: Yep.

Mitch: So yes. And then your next bullet point here is for us at Bald, I'm talking like meta meta now. Yeah. Our YouTube content is the it's it's an example of this. Right?

Mike: Absolutely. Yeah. We're putting stuff out there now in the I'll say in the on YouTube, but in the cosmos that in theory is gonna live forever. It's gonna live well beyond us. And so a lot of the stuff that we put out there is tool specific and those tools are probably gonna be gone.

Right? Power Automate, a hundred years from now, probably not a thing. Will somebody watch that video? Maybe. Right?

Maybe my great grandchildren might watch that video be like, oh, this was my great grandpa. That's kind of cool to think Right. About, But to the extent that we can talk about the meta and mindset and approach and culture and behavior and how we treat each other

Mitch: Mhmm.

Mike: And how that is mirrored in the tools that we use and how we use those tools and the patterns that are involved, that stuff will live forever, right? And we're throwing it all out there.

Mitch: Mhmm. Yeah. It's it's fun.

Mike: It's Some it's something that my dad did not have the ability to do, right? Like, there's a certain segment of society that has traditionally will live forever. Right?

Mitch: Mhmm.

Mike: John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart, all those guys. They're gonna live forever. Watch those movies forever anytime you want. That's really cool. And the rest of us never had access to that until now.

Mitch: Mhmm.

Mike: And so this is it's kinda cool in that way.

Mitch: Yeah. There's gonna be so much one day. It's it's a strange concept and I hope that the things that we do we used to have an intro to our podcast that was and we'll make others successful and them makes others successful. Yeah. And it became like a little bit of a mouthful and like not super marketable, but that is

Mike: That is

Mitch: we're talking about.

Mike: That's exactly what we're

Mitch: talking about. How do we enable people so they can enable people? I think that's part of our if we talk to people, like new new people or work with new people, they're like, I feel like you guys are a little bit different. I'm not trying to like toot our own horn in that sense, but I can almost solely label it as this. Like, wear that persona in in what we do every day and it's great.

Mike: It yeah. Absolutely. It's a huge motivator for me. When Matt Dressel and I started this business, was like, well, what do we want this to be? We want it to be bigger than us.

We want it to outlive us if at all possible. What does that look like? What does that mean? Right? What do we have to do?

So we're always thinking about ways that we can impact the future for the good. Yeah. I think we kind of talked about it a little bit, but I think it's important to stress that sure there's this like live forever, oh maybe that's what eternal life really means question. But I think it's a little bit more near term and that is this thinking gives you the ability to actually find ways to to upgrade the human. Upgrade the metahuman in the now.

Mhmm. Right? And if at your organization you can get organization wide adoption of, let's say, topic based communication or something like that. All of a sudden the meta human at your organization has leveled up. Right?

It's like, oh, new genetic modification. This is now gonna happen this way. Like my biceps are stronger. Right? Yeah.

And that's really kind of a cool thing to think

Mitch: about. Super serum.

Mike: Yeah. Exactly, right? This is a little bit of superhero that you're adding on. And so, you know, they may not sound like, oh, wow, that's so amazing. But we know that topic based communication changes things for organizations and it's a little bit like that.

Mitch: It's it's interesting. We're we're painting this in a very positive light and I think overall it's positive. I think there's a small downside to it too of when we think about adding someone new to the team. Yes, we have systems like this that make it easy for someone to onboard, but there is a mindset and approach that you either get or you don't, and it props up pretty quick. Mhmm.

You kind of figure that out. But some people it takes a little bit to really get, oh, we're not yeah. They're like, I don't I don't know a good example That's

Mike: very interesting because I'm I'm thinking that in light of like current circumstances that we're about to step into. And part of me wonders if maybe that's the thing we need to teach when we have a new hire, for example Mhmm. Is we need to teach them, hey, we're working on the metahuman here. So there's a bunch of stuff when you show up that are gonna be it's all new to you. Mhmm.

You haven't gained those skills yet. You haven't had that genetic modification. Right? Mhmm. But prepare yourself because that's about to happen.

Mitch: We yeah. We have a particular way of working that, yeah, takes some some effort and some some upscaling and time. Hopefully, is helpful. This is interesting to someone. We're interested to know what you think of it.

We have a a link set up, bulb.digital/feedback, if this is intriguing to you. Obviously, you know, we're rolling into a new year, so we're dreaming a little bit. We're thinking about these things, but I'm interested to know if this is relevant to you or if you guys are like, guys, stop preaching, stop stop talking at that level and get back to the tools. We could do that too, but it's always fun to kind of zoom out a little bit and and talk about these sorts of topics.

Mike: I for one love this stuff. So if you guys like it

Mitch: Mike's gonna make a spin off series. Sure. Let's do it. Yeah. Cool.

Well, thanks for listening. We're gonna, you know, make this one a little bit short, but it's been fun talking about and we'll I'm sure we'll be talking in light of these things someday soon.

Mike: Absolutely. Thanks Mitch. Thanks.

Mitch: Hey. Thanks for tuning in to make others successful. If you enjoyed this episode, we'd love to hear from you. There's a couple ways you can do that. One, we'd love for you to rate our show on your favorite podcasting app and then if you have feedback or topic ideas or suggestions for future episodes, head over to bulb.digital/feedback and let us know.

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