Keep Leading!® Podcast 121 | The Long Game | Dorie Clark

All right everyone. We are now live. Welcome to Keep Leading LIVE™ stream. Keep Leading LIVE™ stream, like the Keep Leading!® Podcast, is dedicated to leadership development and insights. I’m your host Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator®. I work with leaders to accelerate their performance and drive impact through the power of executive coaching, masterful facilitation, and motivational speaking.Today, we are streaming live on LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube. As you join the discussion, please let us know you’re here, tell us where you’re from, drop a note in the comments section, ask any question that you would like to ask and we will answer. And as you join, feel free to hit the share button so that your friends can join our conversation and if they miss the conversation, it’s in their feed for later on to be able to watch.

My guest today needs no introduction. I’m going to bring her in right here. My guest today has established an international brand for her expertise and excellence. My guest today is the amazing Dorie Clark Dorie.

Welcome to Keep Leading LIVE™.

Eddie, I’m so glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

Dorie, I am just so excited. I don’t think that there’s a publication, a business publication of note that you have not appeared in or write for.

Oh, thank you. I try to get around.

You do. You do so much so I have to admit I’m like giddy that you’re here, I am excited but I learned something yesterday. My wife, she’s in the government space. And so, she doesn’t always keep up with some of the corporate things I’m doing. My wife came to me and said “You’ve got Dorie Clark on your show?” I said “Yes. How do you know Dorie Clark?” She said “I love Dorie Clark.” She starts telling me how she follows you. I did not know that before yesterday. So, yes,

Oh, it’s amazing.

You get around, you are everywhere and your work speaks for itself.

Thank you, Eddie. Well, I feel the same about you and I’m really happy to have the chance to talk with you today.

Thank you. Now, I want to share something with you and I want to get your reaction to this.

Oh, that’s amazing. I love that photo.

Now, do you remember when this photo was taken?

I’m trying to. It looks like an MG100 picture.

It is.

Was it in San Diego in January just before the pandemic started?

It was. It was. Before the world changed, Marshall Goldsmith brought us all together for the first annual meeting. And the three power women in that photo, number one was Laura Gassner Otting. She helped me open the Keep Leading!® Podcast by being one of my first guests over two years ago. And then Alyssa was one of my first guests when I started the live stream. So, now we complete that power trio with having you here with me today.

Unbelievable. That is great and I remember that trip fondly because it really was one of the last times to get together with hundreds of awesome people and enjoy ourselves in a normal way before the pandemic actually took root about six weeks later. So, that was a special time.

It was indeed. And I want to talk to you about a lot of things, literally hundreds of things I could talk to you about because of all that you’ve accomplished but we brought you on today to talk specifically about The Long Game: How to Be A Long-Term Thinker In A Short-Term World. And this is being released on September 21st by Harvard Business Review Press. Tell us about that.

Thank you, Eddie. I appreciate the dramatic rendition of the title. That conveys it very well because ultimately, in playing the long game or the long game, one of the things that I realized and the impetus really for the book is that so often in our lives in general but especially in our professional lives we are frustrated because things frankly just take so much longer than we want. We look around and we all know that in so many ways it’s a sort of short-term world where there’s a lot of incentives. That’s true at the corporate level where companies sometimes end up making poor decisions because they’re trying to optimize for short-term share price gains in the stock market but it’s also frankly true for many of us in our own lives because when we look around on social media, it seems like everybody else has it figured out, things are going great for other people and we say “Why isn’t it working for me? What am I doing wrong?” And I really wanted to write The Long Game as a way of answering that question because I believe most of the time the answer is you’re not doing anything wrong. It’s just that we have to exercise strategic patience. It’s a concept I talk about in the book. I think patience gets a bad rap, sometimes deservedly so because it’s a little passive, it’s like “Oh, maybe things will work out” but if we have strategic patience, a kind of muscular willingness to persevere, then often great things can happen. And I really try to walk people through the process of how to do that.

The strategic process. And clearly exemplified by the X’s and O’s on the cover. So, it’s not through happenstance. There’s some intentionality that’s required.

Absolutely, yeah. In a lot of ways, ironically, our life is sort of like a tic-tac-toe game because we need to be a few steps ahead, we need to be at least asking the questions rather than just kind of blindly executing a script that may not even be our script, that may be a script that other people have written.

Yes so much so and as coaches, you and I see that oftentimes, right? We may ask someone what makes this important, this topic that they’ve brought to the session and we just realized that they’re making a decision, it’s not even theirs.

Yeah, exactly. It’s so true and it’s much more common than we might expect. And it’s not necessarily because you know people are just sheep and they’re “Oh, well, if they’re doing that, I’ll do that too. It’s not necessarily that. What often happens for many successful, very smart professionals is that we all get so wrapped up in the day-to-day, so wrapped up in execution mode and dealing with a million little fires in our inbox, we lose sight of the longer-term picture. And I argue that we have to really forcibly raise our heads up to be able to do it because nobody’s going to do it for you, nobody’s going to hand you that space. You have to take it.

You have to take it. So, action is required and certainly you show how to do that in the book. I want to share a couple reactions to our conversation so far. David Gordon says “Hi from sunny Scotland. Great stuff” and he’s looking forward to the discussion. And also, Lauren Sanders from California is saying hello as well. So, we want to thank David and Lauren for participating in our discussion. And we welcome you, if you haven’t told us you’re here yet, I don’t always get some of the comments coming through depending on the platforms but Dorie and I would love to hear from you during the conversation as well.Dorie, is it harder to have this strategic thinking and have the long view in front of us now especially post pandemic than it was in the past?

That’s a really interesting question that you raise, Eddie. And in fact, one of the opening anecdotes in the book is it turns out just in an accident of timing the day that I got the notice from Harvard Business Review Press that they wanted to publish the book was the day that the very first COVID case was diagnosed in the US.

Oh wow! Okay.

So, over the course of the next week, the world just started collapsing around us. Here I was writing a book about long-term thinking. And so, there was a guy that I met right around that time and it was hard to know whether he was trying to be helpful or trying to needle me but he said “Doesn’t this pandemic mean that long-term thinking is completely irrelevant now? It blew up all our long-term thinking. So much for that” which could be one response but actually what I came to believe through the process is that, in many ways, I think long-term thinking is more important than ever because while it is true, I mean, we live in a both-end world, of course, we need to be agile, of course, we need to be able to pivot in the short term if some development happens that’s unexpected but all that being said, you also have to have a long-term vision. If all you’re doing all the time is short-term, short-term, short-term, you end up pivoting a lot but you might just pivot your way into a circle. You’re not necessarily ending up anywhere. So, it’s really important for us to have that long-term vision so that we understand where are we at least attempting to go. We might decide on something different, maybe a better opportunity presents itself, who knows, but having a destination enables us to have enough focus so that even if things don’t work out exactly as we intend, which in fact is usually the case, we at least with our eyes on the horizon can pivot successfully enough that we can find a way to get there if it turns out that that remains where we want to go.

That becomes challenging, to your point, because when we’re only thinking about short-term and afraid to take the long-term view, we almost aren’t really even in control. We find ourselves at the whims of the wind essentially.

Yeah, that’s exactly right. I mean, ultimately, the most flexible pivoting creature in the world is a jellyfish, just like “Oh, here’s a wave. Let’s see where it goes.” And I think that most people don’t necessarily want to live their lives and have their careers be like that. I mean, it’s true. If you literally don’t have any preferences and anywhere you end up is just fine with you, then mazel but I think for most of us, we have ambitions, we have goals. And so, we need to tee them up. During COVID, I got really, really obsessed with the concept of scenario planning because I’m asking myself, I think, like a lot of people did “Why didn’t I get this? Why didn’t I see this coming? Why didn’t I somehow prepare better for this?” And what I came to understand as I was studying scenario planning is of course we can never map out every possibility that could happen. The numbers are too infinite for that but one of the strengths of scenario planning and where it can become actually very useful is if you are mapping out a reasonable number of scenarios, let’s say, the three or five most likely, what you are going to see almost certainly is that the response to what you should do if this is going to be the reality is actually going to overlap in several of those situations, meaning, in let’s say three out of five possible scenarios, the way to defend yourself against it is actually going to be the same thing. So, if you were able to take an action even if it is because of some future that you don’t know is going to happen, there’s a lot of crossover benefit to it. And that’s what long-term planning gets you. Just as one quick example, I was thankfully able to financially keep myself afloat and, in fact, ironically, have my best year ever during COVID, during 2020 on the strength of online course sales. I had started to get into online courses six years prior in 2014. It was certainly not because I thought a pandemic was coming but it was because I realized “You know what, I might get sick or I might get tired of life on the road speaking all the time.” And so, I wanted to increase my passive income. It turns out that that decision was helpful. Certainly it would have been helpful if I had gotten sick of speaking but it also turned out to be helpful in a pandemic.

Wonderful. And along those lines, Dorie, you used that strategy that helped you to help others. In fact, I believe I read an article from … I’ve read a lot of your articles, so I wanted to remember where I read it. It was either the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times some place and you talked about this concept of a portfolio that everyone should have and you’re not talking about financial.

Yeah, that’s right. And thanks for referencing that, Eddie. It’s true. I mean, in a financial sense, I think most professionals are aware of and in agreement with the typical advice. I mean, we all know “Oh right. Of course, it’s a bad idea to put all your money in one stock. You need to diversify your portfolio.” That is financial wisdom 101 that almost anyone knows but on the other hand, we are actually every day doing exactly that with our professional lives because oftentimes, we only get income from one place, meaning our day job or even if you are a consultant, oftentimes a lot of people are very overweight with one client. They might have one client that represents 70% of their business or maybe one type of work that represents a huge percentage. And that actually makes you quite vulnerable. If there’s a disruption in it, it’s a problem. So, thinking about ways to diversify your revenue streams is definitely one of the drums that I like to beat and it in fact is the topic, the whole topic of my most recent previous book called Entrepreneurial You.

Excellent. Yes, I love that. And I’ve talked about this sometimes because people almost are penalized for thinking about having an alternative career or hobby that they monetize because it’s seen as disloyal to your primary client or your primary employer but really I say that even if you have a 1040, you should act like a 1099 because 1040s don’t last for 40 years like the way they used to.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in terms of questions loyalty and disloyalty, I mean, of course, in any relationship with a power differential, one side would love it for you to be more dependent on them because it means they have more leverage. I mean, let’s not paint it for anything other than what it is. If I need you a little bit but you need me a lot, then that means I can extract a lot of concessions from you. And if we want to operate that way, that’s fine but it puts you at a real strategic disadvantage. So, I think that the more that we can do as individuals to empower ourselves to give ourselves options, to give ourselves plan B, I think, that’s beneficial because mostly in the United States, we do not have long-term employment contracts, mostly we can be fired at will and I learned early on, my very first job, I got laid off and they told me at 4 o’clock that I lost my job and by 4:30 I was packing my desk, by 5 o’clock I was out the door and they gave me a paycheck for the rest of the week. So, I had four days’ salary and I suddenly had to support myself. And that was a pretty clear wake-up call for me that “Uh, oh, I guess companies are not going to take care of me. I better take care of myself.”

Absolutely. Indeed. And we have some support for some of the things that you’ve said that I just want to go back. Lauren amplified what you said earlier, strategic patience. We definitely have to have it. Erin Urban, a very popular coach here in the Houston, Texas area, says “Great to see you, Eddie and Dorie. She’s tuning in here in Houston, Texas. She says “Long-term thinking is still incredibly important. We can approach it differently due to VUCA. We can be agile at the moment as long as it’s true to our vision.” And for those who are not familiar with that phrase, Volatile Uncertain Complex and Ambiguous.

I know. It’s a mouthful.

It is a mouthful. And then finally we’re acknowledging Jordan Thomas who says hello as well.So, yes, if you are tuning in listening to this conversation, please hit the share button so that this can go into the network and your friends can tune in and be a part of our conversation. Also hit the like button yourself. Ask any questions. Let us know that you’re here. And if you are not one of the 200,000 people already following Dorie Clark on LinkedIn, please follow Dorie Clark on LinkedIn. Also, head over to Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Follow her there as well because you don’t want to miss the just plethora of articles that she produces and her newsletter and certainly the new book that we’re talking about that she’s going to release. You want to be able to get access to that.

Now, Dorie, part of this relationship with work strategic thinking, some people might confuse being busy as being important. And it’s almost like a badge of honor they wear. What’s your view on that?

Yeah, you certainly raised an important point, Eddie, because research that’s been done out of Columbia University, there’s a researcher named Sylvia Bellezza, who has looked into this question and it turns out that one of the hardest barriers to actually getting less busy, we all will blame external circumstances, we’ll say “Well but I have too many emails. I have too many meetings” and of course that’s all true, no doubt you do but also it turns out that for many of us, there are hidden psychological reasons underpinning it because at least in many Western societies, certainly in the United States, busyness is viewed as a stand-in, as a proxy for your level of importance. And so, if you are not busy at all, the implication is “Oh. Well, I guess you’re not really anybody.” And so, in our culture, there’s a push, a sort of subconscious push where in some ways we’re seeking out or at least not pushing back against the busyness because it gives us a sense of meaning and importance. And so, grappling with that and really understanding “Oh, in some small ways, I might actually be doing this to myself or inviting this upon myself.” It’s a really important first step in being able to successfully get the white space that we need in order to do strategic thinking.

Wonderful. Now, Dorie, you happen to be both busy and important and you’re not just being busy to look important. I’m impressed by everything you’ve accomplished. I know that that is not by accident. There has to be some strategy and intentionality into what you do. So, can you tell us what’s your time management strategy so that you yourself apply the long game and accomplish what you accomplish?

Yeah, thank you, Eddie. And I’d certainly be curious to hear about yours as well because we can always pick up some good tips but I will say, actually, my thinking around time management has been really informed by a couple of activities that I’ve done. I have a friend named Laura Vanderkam who is an author on Productivity and Time Management and she is a big advocate of time tracking which is completely boring, I’m not going to lie, it’s really, really boring and annoying to do, but I have forced myself to do it at two different junctures and I’ve written articles about it. Actually, for people who are interested, in February of 2010, I did the time tracking and then in April of … No, I’m botching the dates here. In 2018. There we go. I did a month-long time tracking experiment, I wrote about it for Harvard Business Review and then this past December during the pandemic, December 2020, I did another month of time tracking and I wrote about it for Fast Company. And it was very illuminating to actually understand where my time was going, how I was spending it. I would say, in general, what I try to do when I’m able to sort of consciously exert force is I realize that one of the worst things for productivity is having just these little snippets of time that are constantly broken up. And so, following the advice of Paul Graham who is the founder of the Silicon Valley incubator Y Combinator, I tried to carve out what he refers to as Manager Days and then Maker Days. And so, Manager Days are the days when I have kind of back to back meetings and it’s all this very staccato activity. And then Maker Days are the days where I don’t really have very much on my schedule and I’m able to do deeper work, write the article, finish the project and actually move things forward in a more substantive fashion rather than just responding to messages all day.How do you handle things, Eddie?

I take notes from people like you but I think that, as you said, having things written really matters but then also setting priorities. And I have, especially with the birth of my daughter, found myself learning to say “no” more. And that was a hard word for me before. I kind of still wrestle with it but setting priorities based and now based on wanting to spend more time with her, learning to say “no”.

That’s great. I think that’s so important really having a clear impetus, a clear reason because when we don’t, when the reason is just “Oh. Well, I guess I should do this. I guess I have time,” we never can really marshal the willpower needed to say no because it is a matter of a lot of willpower but if you have a compelling reason, if you have something compelling that you could be doing instead that is valuable to you, that’s one of the best reasons and best drivers to be able to resist the constant incursions.

Absolutely. And someone who we both know and love is chiming in to our conversation. Cheryl Stokes – “Glad to hear from two amazing people. Thanks, Eddie Turner, for this terrific session with Dorie Clark.” She was there at Duke for many years and now as a partner at Heidrick & Struggles. And then my wife is actually chiming in on this session.

That’s very nice. Yes.

She never does this, Dorie. This is just because of you. She says “Dorie Clark is the BOMB. I’m clinging to every word and taking notes.” And one of the notes that she just took is manager and maker days. Love it.So, can you tell us a little bit, Dorie, you wrote an article in the Harvard Business Review and I wrote it down, I thought this was fascinating, about reshaping your career in the wake of the pandemic. A lot of people have either been displaced because of some of the organizational changes or they’ve had to select new careers or new jobs. Tell us a little bit about the insights you shared in that Harvard Business Review article, please.

Sure, yes. Well, as you say, Eddie, there’s been a lot of shifts. There’s been a lot of displacement. And just about everything, every trend in modern life seems to be toward a greater kind of inequality, I guess, you could say, unfortunately. And one form that that took is there’s huge numbers of people in certain industries, whether it’s Travel, Entertainment, Hospitality, that for almost the entirety of 2020, their work evaporated, they lost their jobs, they were laid off, they had no work. Meanwhile, you had people at the other end of the spectrum in industries like Technology or certain other fields, logistics, where all of a sudden, they had way too much work, way more than they can handle. And so, rather than an even distribution, all of a sudden, there’s this kind of spike where some people are miserable and overworked and some people are miserable and underworked. And so, it’s really created a shift both in terms of industry reconfiguration and also, for almost everyone having this traumatic life event, has caused a lot of personal reflection about who you want to be working with, where do you want to be working, what’s the location you want to be working from, what’s the style you want to be doing. So, there’s been a ton of changes. And I think one interesting thing that we’re seeing is that this is really a liminal moment. That’s a term that is used in Sociology to refer to these periods, these kinds of in-between periods, where things are not quite fixed, they’re not quite settled yet because right now you keep hearing “Oh, the new normal” and no one knows what that is. And so, therefore, it is up for debate. And so, even just today in the New York Times, there was a really interesting article about how for the first time in a long time workers seem to be regaining a lot of power in the equation because ultimately talent is hard to find and people are feeling empowered after a year of working from home, surprisingly high levels of productivity. And if you have a company that’s now saying “Well, you are going to come back to the office” or “Sorry, you have to move to Cleveland” or whatever it is and people are saying “Oh really? Oh really?” And they actually have some of some of that leverage now. So, it’s a very interesting time when you actually have the ability to push back and reshape things more than you probably ever would in the past.

Indeed. And one person from my network actually did a powerful post yesterday. She said she literally walked away from her job with no plan. She just was exhausted. And now, she’s basically using this as a time to press reset. And many people have reevaluated do they really enjoy the job that they’ve been working all this time. And a lot of organizations even, quite frankly, showed their value system during this time. So, people have said “This company no longer really aligns with my values.” And so, for a variety of reasons, they’ve reevaluated their priorities in life and if they want to stay a part of an organization or not.

Absolutely. I mean, if you think about things like relationships with managers or relationships with senior leaders that are setting policies, in the height of the pandemic, as an employee, you may not have had a lot of discretion. Everything’s crazy, you have to buckle down, you have to suck it up, you have to do what they say but if you’re emerging a year later, 15 months later and you say “You know what, when the chips were down, they were jerks. They didn’t treat me. They were expecting ridiculous things. They didn’t provide the sort of understanding or the concessions that they ought to” or whatever it is. You remember that. And now that you’re in a position to actually do something about it, many more people are choosing to.

They are. They absolutely are. And we’ve got Fronda Graves joining us from Dubai, all the way from Dubai. So, that is exciting. And Cheryl Stone says “You’re the best, Dorie.” We appreciate that feedback.And so, if you haven’t had a chance to have your voice heard, we’d love to hear from you as well. Hit the share button so folks in your network can get a copy of this as well. Hit the like button and let us know that you’re here.

Dorie, I want to switch gears very briefly. A lot of people talk about networking. You have published a lot on this. What really is networking and how can people be effective at it as they head back to the office or if they’re trying to make this career change and making switches?

Yeah. So, networking, of course, is the kind of thing that some people, a certain percentage of people love and they think it’s the most fun thing ever and then another group of people, probably a larger group of people say “Oh no. Oh no. Why? Why do I have to do this? This sounds miserable” and maybe intellectually they’re like “Okay, I know I should” but they can’t will themselves to do it because it just sounds so miserable. And so, one of the things that I’ve kind of taken on as a mission is really trying to puncture a little bit some of the discourse around networking because I think half the problem is that what it connotes in people’s mind is the kind of terrible short-term transactional networking which no one likes to begin with. And if you assume that that is the entirety of what networking is, then of course as a rational person you wouldn’t want to do it. What I really try to push and put forward in my new book The Long Game, I have a whole chapter about it, is the idea that … First of all, I have a rule that I like to suggest to people, which I call “No asks for a year” because one of the worst things that can happen in networking is you meet somebody, you think you’re going to be friends, “Oh, Eddie’s so cool. Yeah, we had dinner. He’s great” and then a week later and, Eddie’s like “So, can you introduce me to Jeff Bezos?” Oh my God! I call that a networking hit-and-run.

That’s a good way to phrase it.

Thank you. And of course, you never do this but every once in a while, we get hit by these people where it’s like “Oh, I thought they wanted to be my friend but they don’t want to be my friend. They want something,” which is a terrible feeling. And from that point on, the relationship is kind of poisoned. And so, I like to say “You know what, just literally, no asks for a year.” I mean, obviously, if it’s like “Oh, Eddie, I like your pocket square. Where did you get that?”, that’s fine. You can ask the basic things but not like asks that require political capital in some way. And so, that way, they won’t get the impression that you want something from them and you won’t even want something from them because you know that it’s not going to happen for a year. So, you’re going to invest in the relationship only if you genuinely like them and want to have that relationship. And by then, you’ve developed a relationship, you’re friends and friends actually actively want to do things for each other.

Really good advice. In fact, even my wife says that she likes that or as a good rule she’s going to keep that in mind. And since you’ve spoken into existence, Jeff Bezos, if you are listening, I would welcome the opportunity to interview you here on the Keep Leading!® Podcast.

Amazing. Yes, do it, Jeff. Do it. He wants to interview you when you’re in space.

Yes, he just announced that. Absolutely. That’s the way to do it.One question that my wife has submitted, I think, is on the mind of many working women. She says “Dorie, what’s your best career advice for the large number of women who’ve left the workforce during the pandemic to take care of their children?”

Yes, it’s so important actually because, obviously, it affected a lot of people when all of a sudden during the pandemic we have this unprecedented situation where it’s like “Oh, actually, no, you can’t have any strangers in your house at all so. Sorry,” people had to respond. And many women, many people but certainly perhaps disproportionately many women had to leave the workforce to take care of their children. And so, I actually wrote a piece about this for the Harvard Business Review about uh women re-entering the workforce. So, for anyone that’s interested, I would encourage them to Google it. You can get it for free if you type in my name and “women workforce Harvard Business Review,” something like that, but broadly speaking, I would say, there’s been a lot of interesting work that’s been done by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and the Center for Talent Innovation. She wrote a book a number of years ago called On Ramps and Off Ramps and it was talking about women kind of exiting and then re-entering the workforce. And what she discovered, perhaps not surprisingly, is that when women leave to have kids, to take care of kids, to do some form of caregiving, maybe it’s elder caregiving, oftentimes they are anticipating “Oh, it’s going to be maybe an 18-month break” and it ends up most often becoming much longer than that, becomes the four year, the five-year break because it’s much harder than they anticipated to actually break back in once you have left. So, what we do about that, obviously, is the question. So, a few things that I think are really important. The first actually goes back to what we were talking about a few moments ago, which is networking. It is very easy for people to let their networks go because, especially if they’re assuming “Oh, well, this is just for a year,” they think “Oh, I don’t really have to keep it up because they’ll remember me” but if it turns out that it ends up being much longer, those connections can fray. So, really making a concerted point of keeping up LinkedIn, email, whatever with your professional network is going to be important because the people who are most likely to give you a break and to give you the opportunities, to let you know about positions that have reopened are going to be the folks that you have already worked with and know you and like you and trust you. That’s number one.And the second thing is we need to create a narrative. I mean, obviously, this is completely unfair but if you can picture this sort of archetypal bro that doesn’t have kids and in their mind it’s like “Oh, well, yeah, you’ve just been like eating bon-bons for three years, right,” and so, it’s ridiculous but we need to have a really killer answer about “Okay, what were you doing to keep your professional connections, your professional knowledge, your professional development fresh during that time?” And so, it’s not something that has to be so onerous because obviously you have other professional responsibilities but it could be things as simple as taking LinkedIn learning courses, reading books in your field, attending virtual conferences which is actually easier than ever now from home but if you have a litany of those kinds of things to cite, if you can tell a good story about it, it can help diffuse some of the more ignorant perceptions about “Oh, I guess, she’s been out of it for a while. She doesn’t know what’s going on anymore.”

Thank you for answering that, Dorie, for Ashley but then also Fronda had the same question as Ashley. So, again, on the minds of a lot of working women. So, what’s the most important lesson that you want folks to take away from our conversation today?

Ah-ha. Thank you, Eddie. Well, it’s been such a joy talking with you. I would say, in terms of the most important takeaway, in many ways, I would just hearken back to some of the lessons in my new book The Long Game which, as you mentioned, comes out in September and, actually, if folks are interested, I have something that’s available right now, it is the Long Game Strategic Thinking Self-Assessment and folks can get it for free at DorieClark.com/TheLongGame so you can begin to think through some of these strategic questions about your own life and your own career and get the wheels turning but ultimately, when it comes to playing the long game, it’s about understanding that even though progress, oftentimes, I mean, unfortunately, takes longer than we want, what is really powerful is that so much of the competition ends up dropping off because they are impatient, because they give up too soon, because they don’t actually realize what the journey entails along the way but if we can be strategically patient, if we can be persistent in it, we can actually over time open up an almost insurmountable lead between us and the competition.

Excellent. So, DorieClark.com/TheLongGame. All right, excellent.And a follow-up, Dorie, from Cheryl Stokes. She says do you have suggestions for companies who want to welcome women back into the workforce?

Yeah. Thank you for that, Cheryl. It’s great. Well, I think actually there’s a couple of possibilities. The first one, honestly, is for companies that are willing to think outside the box a little bit, it really can become a tremendous competitive advantage for them uh to be seen as the sort of hub of reentry for smart and talented women because the issue so often is that because companies want to have a cookie cutter process for things, because they don’t really want to create bespoke arrangements, they just don’t want to think about it. They’re like “No, this is how work is. This is how it’s done.” They want people who can fit into that mold. Usually, it is in fact easiest to fit into that mold if you are single and don’t have any responsibilities in a family sense or maybe you’re married and you have kids but somebody else, not you, is the one taking care of the kids and then “Oh, the business trip at the moment’s notice” or whatever. Oh yeah, sure. That’s easier frankly for companies and that is why companies do it but if a company is actually willing to sort of take a slightly roundabout position and say “You know what, we are willing to work just a little bit harder to understand people’s unique situations, their unique needs,” you can actually get even better talent because they will be loyal, they will be grateful and it’s a higher talent pool because they are not able to get what they need in terms of flexibility from many other places. So, by being willing to make trade-offs on your end, the trade-off as a company that you get in return is often extremely loyal talented and high performing professionals.

Excellent. And Ashley says excellent as well and she appreciates your advice.Dorie, what advice do you use or what’s a quote or the best piece of advice you’ve used as a leader to help you keep leading?

Well, one that I often like to come back to is a quote from Theodore Roosevelt. He said “In any moment of uncertainty, the best thing to do is the right thing, the next best thing to do is the wrong thing and the worst thing to do is nothing.” And especially during COVID which was a time of great uncertainty for many people, I really kept coming back to that because there is a tendency to just be paralyzed to say “Oh, I don’t know to do nothing to retreat.” And, ultimately, we’re only able to get data if we do things, if we take action. And it’s that data that if it turns out to be the wrong thing, we can find out sooner so that we can pivot and adjust. So, movement and forward momentum, I think, is really key.

Well, excellent. Again, folks, the book is The Long Game: How to Be A Long-Term Thinker in A Short-Term World by Dorie Clark, being released by Harvard Business Review Press on September 21st. You can pre-order it now. Pick it up. Follow Dorie on her social media. We’re going to release this video episode as an audio episode on that day as well. So, Dorie, thanks again for helping us all to keep leading.

Thank you, Eddie. So, glad to be talking with you.

And my pleasure, Dorie.And I want to say thank you for listening. That concludes this episode, everyone. I’m Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator®, reminding you that leadership is not about our title or our position. Leadership is about action. Leadership is an activity. It’s not the case of once you’re a leader, you’re always a leader. It’s not a garment we put on and take off. We must be a leader at our core and allow it to emanate in all we do. So, whatever you’re doing, always keep leading.