How to Tell Stories That Actually Change People | Shane Snow

Shane Snow

Natasha Nuytten: Welcome to Human Side Up. I am pleased to share with you. Shane Snow is the, and by that capital T-H-E, a strategic rule breaker who is really living proof that conventional career advice is not always the way to go and that we Ziggers and Zaggers are sometimes amazing and great dot connectors and have something really unique and valuable to contribute. Shane has collected careers like other people have collected hobbies, but his have come with Tony Awards and best-selling books and companies that have actually changed things and made an impact. At the age of 40, he is a natural born, multi-hyphenate journalist, entrepreneur, Broadway producer and expert pattern spotter in a world that is rarely rewarding those of us who like Zig and Zag. While traditional career paths were paved with rungs and resumes, Shane really reverse engineered pirate democracies and broad training techniques from Norwegian skiers to build dynamic teams and really impactful businesses. He started out writing for Wired, The New Yorker and Fast Company where he really honed his signature blend of storytelling and systems thinking. That same approach really helped him as he co-founded Contently, launched an educational platform called Snow Academy, produced award-winning films and penned or co-penned multiple books that really have decoded how to build exceptional teams. His secret is that he treats business like an investigative journalist, just like he is at his core. And he treats industries like anthropological case studies. And he really is amazing at mining for the unexpected insights that no one else sees coming. So he is now based in Chicago and runs Integrated Cinematics and contributes to Forbes all while continuing to prove that the most powerful ideas often come from the intersections that no one else is exploring. If your career counselor wouldn't approve or says it wouldn't work, there is a good chance that Shane Snow has already done it and proven that it does. ♪♪ Snow, welcome to Human Side Up. I am very excited for this conversation. So thanks for making time for me today. 

Shane Snow: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. 

Natasha Nuytten: All right, so we were just discussing some of the reasons why I'm so attracted to some of the work you do is that I too am a zigzagger. My life does not make sense on paper professionally, but I love that about you because from out here, your superpower looks like connecting dots and finding, I would say, the connective tissue between things and learning and exploring. And so I'm super excited to dive into things with you today. Probably have a thousand questions. I'll see if we can get to a few of them. Let's see how many we can get through, yeah. Yeah, without getting too distracted, for sure. So as we dive in, I would like to start with two questions that are very familiar to the Human Side Up podcast listeners, which is if there are one or two words that you would use to describe yourself, what might they be? And when did you start to own them for yourself as true? 

Shane Snow: One or two words I used to describe myself and when did I start to own them? The one that really comes to mind is explorer, which I think wouldn't necessarily track if you knew, I grew up in Idaho and stayed in one spot for the first 20 years of my life. But what I did is I climbed grain silos and warehouses and explored tunnels and got in rafts and floated down canals to see where they went. And part of that maybe is a little bit of being young and going stir crazy. But part of it is, I think my mother was a teacher and she taught hearing impaired students and she was really big on us reading and learning and like exploring books. And my dad was an engineer and he was always taking apart car engines and it was really keen on showing us how things worked on the inside. So I think it was embedded in me, this explorer thing. But yeah, you look at a resume and you might see me bouncing around a little bit, something that you could relate to, as you say, like zigging and zagging and really having a career coalescing to something. But I blame a lot of that career path and a lot of, I think, what's been interesting to me career-wise and I think just life-wise on not being afraid to turn the doorknob of the door that you don't know where it goes to. And maybe if the sign says do not enter, you don't enter. Maybe you do, but being willing to do that. And I think that, where I do use like a two-word answer, I'd say side quests, like maybe with a hyphen, of I really like having side missions and side projects and making these goals that aren't necessarily, silly goals, you could say. Like specifically with the exploring when I lived in New York City, I had a goal of exploring every abandoned subway station, everything that had been bricked up. There's a dozen of these. Or, side quests of little things to accomplish that have nothing to do with my career. Learn how to breakdance, which now I'm 40, so I don't do anymore. But I think all of these things, we were talking about before the show, at the very least make you interesting or make your life interesting to you. And at, perhaps the most, they allow you to draw from different sources of inspiration or different analogies or different points of view and bring those into the work you do, or the, I guess the relationships you have, the more I think you explore outside of your own frame of reference, the more you can intuitively understand that we're all wired differently and it's okay if someone sees the world differently than you and in fact, maybe you should explore that. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yes, oh my God. See, these questions that I have lined up, they're gonna go just right out the window and we're gonna go in a completely different direction. No, it's fantastic. I love it. Yeah okay, you grew up in Idaho. I grew up in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. And the whole notion of bigger and better and like having to figure out how to do things that I'm very familiar with as a concept. And I too, like when I was a kid, some people are like, what do you wanna be when you grow up? And they know. For instance, I went to high school with this guy. He, when you asked him in kindergarten what he wanted to be, he was like, I wanna be a mad scientist. That was his answer. He answered the same way all through high school and the guy is a mad scientist. He has I don't know, 47 patents and that's what he knew, right? In his bones. Yeah, which I love. Me, on the other hand okay, I wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer because I saw the Cosbys did it and that was cool, right? And then, I don't know. I was like, but I really like animals. Maybe I'll be a marine biologist. I'm growing up in landlocked South Dakota. That seems like an obvious choice. So at one point in my life, I thought I'm gonna be an actor because then I can get paid to learn about all these things. And so I really identify with that. What can you learn from that and take it with you? And I've had that similar path. So I love and appreciate that. And we're gonna, I think, pull on some of those strings. Okay. One of the things you've mentioned being an explorer and kind of having side interests that inform what you've done from out here. And we are not, I think we're becoming friendly, but we're not friends. So I don't know. We just met. That's right. So I don't know you personally, but having read your work in many places and seen talks and things like that, is it fair for me to say that you are brimming with curiosity and maybe a natural contrarian?

Shane Snow: Mmm, yes. 

Natasha Nuytten: Okay!

Shane Snow: Fair to say. Fair to say. I'd say that's a good pattern recognition. 

Natasha Nuytten: Okay. Pattern recognition is your jam for sure. So thank you for giving me some credit for that. I am curious, because of that, is there a time in your life, and maybe it's coming from your parents, talked about them a little bit, when you started to think about thinking outside of the box and not doing things in the standard sort of way, or have you just always been naturally comfortable with that or was that something you grew into? 

Shane Snow: I would say some of it, it's certainly a product of my upbringing to a degree. I'll also say though, I have a two-year-old and he is the most curious. He will climb everything. He wants to know how things work. And I think a lot of kids are like that, but I've just been shocked by it. You see him with other kids and the other kids are content to play with their toys. And he's I want to know what that dead bug is on the window. So maybe some of it's genetic. But I grew up in a household that was very religious and had a lot of rules and a lot of structure. And I think when you grow up that way, you either embrace that, you lean into that, you learn to appreciate that, or you test the boundaries, which is what I did. So some of it might be a reaction to that kind of upbringing. And there's seven kids in my family and different siblings turned out different in how they approach life. And some lean all the way in and the structure is what they thrive on. And I have a brother who is an artist where structure is the opposite of what you would describe any element of his life. And he's amazing and incredible because of it. But I have a brother who loves the structure and he is an incredible father and provider and he does work that saves lives. And so you see, I'm not saying one's good or bad, but I see my contrarianism as a reaction to that. And I think there's key moments that you can point back to when you look at your childhood of oh, this is when I decided that I wanted to do this or be this way. And God bless your friend who's the mad scientist. I don't know that I decided this is what I wanna do with my life so early on and stuck to it. Although I did from an early age, I loved reading so much that I decided I wanted to be a writer and whatever else. And from an early age, and I think that's informed a lot of my career and what I love. Just as a side tangent, my wife for our anniversary last year gave me a week's vacation to go by myself to write because that's what I like to do for fun. Yeah, it's like the best anniversary present. And anyway, so there is this moment and this is I'll say honestly, like a bit of a sore subject with my parents. And I think we obviously are close and everything's fine. But when I was a teenager, I started a company, it was the early days of the internet. And I started a company where I was doing greeting cards online and had figured out as this teenager who knew programming how to make some serious money on the internet with these greeting cards. And there was a month where I got a paycheck that was so big, it was just a check in the mail from the internet that my parents flipped out of. Is this legal? What is this? We need to learn more. And they're like looking back, I'm like, these are concerned parents who are feeling something uncomfortable and they're trying to figure out what to do about it. And what they told me is, eventually after they took a look at it was we want you to shut down your website and go get a job at the gas company with like our neighbor who's gonna give you a job and you're gonna spend the summer spray painting gas meters so you can learn the value of hard work. And I was furious. And I pulled out all the arguments. I was like, you're not gonna pay for my college. This is how I'm gonna pay for my college. And they're like, you'll figure it out. And I was like, this is what I wanna do. I don't wanna spray paint gas meters. Like I wanna do this. And they're like, why would you do this to me? And so it became this sore subject, which now I look back on it. And in a way I'm very grateful because that was the summer where I committed to never letting someone tell me I can't do something. And I wasn't doing anything illegal. It was unknown. It was, and again, I can't emphasize enough my parents really cared about me. I had great experiences working for the gas company and made some dear friends, learned some good lessons and decided that I don't wanna do that with my life. And then that was when I decided I really wanted to be an entrepreneur and kind of prove it to my parents that I could do it which now they're very proud of what I've done. But also I think what started as this chip on my shoulder and this sort of obnoxious sort of rebellious reaction turned into oh no, what I was working through with all those feelings and being mad at my parents was actually me deciding that I was like, once I was on my own and able to do so I was gonna be deliberate about the path I choose rather than let someone else tell me the path that I need to choose. And I shouldn't do it because I'm mad but I should do it because it's what I think is the right thing to do. So that I think is the moment that like really there's a million things that shape us, right? And the answer to your question is there were a lot of those moments but that was the big one I think that I look back on as like that was a turning point for me. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah, thank you for sharing that because one of the zigs earlier in my career I worked with young people and their families and there was so much of that from out here, right? It looks so different than it looks and feels when you're in that relationship with the thing that's happening and there's so much changing in the world right now that I can imagine that experience that your parents had is like happening all over the place to such an incredible degree right now because AI is changing everything, even the way we do or do not go to school in traditional ways or if we live and work within the United States versus living and working someplace else so much is happening. So I can imagine that there are parents all over the world who are gonna hear this and be like, I am having that moment right now and kids too, right?

Shane Snow: Yeah, I think it's gonna happen to me too. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yes, it totally will. 

Shane Snow: My kid is gonna want to do something that I am uncomfortable with and I'm gonna have to wrestle with what's the best thing for my kid and when I'm in charge, what do I do? It happens at the micro level all the time, but yeah. No, it's- 

Natasha Nuytten: It's nature's way of getting us ready to leave the nest, right? That natural friction that happens. So yeah, I love that. But I also think it sounds to me like that is part of, and in retrospect and again from the outside when I think about your book, Smart Pets, right? And how you learn from what other people have done. It feels like that's that could have been part of the impetus for what ultimately became that thinking about how do I use what someone else has done- 

Shane Snow: Yes. 

Natasha Nuytten: To get further ahead, is that fair? 

Shane Snow: Yeah, it's, you're making me think of, cause that book is 10 years old now or 11 years old. And I've been working slowly on a second edition with updated thinking, based on what I've learned since then. But one of the parts of that book that I rarely talk about, people rarely bring up, that you're bringing up now, is I wrote about how surgeons, heart surgeons, there's this sort of crazy moment in the history of heart surgery where there was a new surgery that came out. And so researchers got to observe all of these, medical professionals learn a new heart surgery and see what happened. And in this study that they did, what they observed is that a heart surgeon who tried the surgery and did well, continued to do well. They like got it, great, lucky or whatever are the reasons. Heart surgeon that screwed up the surgery that had a hard time with it, would continue to have a hard time with it depending on what happened next. And, learning a new thing is hard, but it's like life or death is basically like why the study is so interesting. If you as a heart surgeon saw someone else screw up before you tried it, you are much more likely to do well on your first try and to learn from their mistakes. Whereas if you screwed up on your first time, you were a lot less likely to immediately get better at it. And it's, part of it is psychological. It's if you have to live with yourself, you have to sleep at night. So the story you tell yourself after you screw up a new heart surgery, it's gonna be the one that helps you live with yourself. It's gonna be the circumstances, the patient, it's new, it's gonna be external. Whereas if you observe someone screw it up, you're gonna be a little less biased about it. You're gonna say, oh, they did that wrong. They missed this thing. You're gonna have a clearer view of it. And so then you're gonna do better. And I, like I said, I wish people brought this one up more because it's core to the general concept that I was talking about in Smart Cuts, which is there's the slow way to learn things, the slow way to accomplish things. And then there's the clever way or the alternate way or the faster way to do it. And sometimes we have to go the slow way, but do we have to? And so with this, the heart surgery thing, it's true that if someone else learns the mistake for you, you don't, you have a lot better chance of getting to where you need to go than if you have to learn the mistake for yourself. And, All the caveats aside, we need to learn plenty of mistakes in life to become resilient and all that. But if you're trying to stand on the shoulders of giants, you don't have to make all those same mistakes that they made. You need to study the mistakes that they made. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah, exactly. 

Shane Snow: That's how progress happens. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yes. I love this because just yesterday, we brought a couple of new SDRs or sales development representatives into our company in the last few weeks. And yesterday they invited me to view a role play with them for making some phone calls and calling on my acting skills from college. I thought I would throw some things out there. What was so beautiful about the experience though was that immediately each one gave feedback to themselves and from everyone else and then did it again. And what was so cool was that it interrupted that story that I'm telling myself that you were talking about and gave the next person the opportunity to fix the problem that they had just seen. And so each of the practice runs that we did built upon the collective work of the group from the call before. It was really cool to see. And I didn't set it up, but I was like, this is amazing, right? Yeah. 

Shane Snow: Yeah. Yeah, I love that because it turns what could be this like game of who got it right into a team game of how do we build and to get like the best thing out there. And it's so hard to not take things personally or worry about your own personal performance. And if you can, this is one of those things that's amazing teams work this way. It doesn't matter who got the right answer as long as we got there and helping people save face. In part, it sounds like one of the tactics was you evaluate yourself. You tell everyone what you thought you did wrong before someone else tells you so that you can show that you're learning that helps you save face and all that. It sounds like that's a key tactic, but I love that. Make it a team game rather than who did it the best and we give them a lollipop and then we move on yeah. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yes, that's exactly right. And I know, you've done obviously a ton of research and like deep study around high-performing teams for your book, Dream Teams, which is awesome. Everybody, if you are listening and have not read it, you absolutely should. It's about really bringing out the best in organizations and in humans individually so that they can work together. I'm curious if when you think about, so this example that I shared came from our director of sales. That was not me leading the charge, that was her. And I thought there's really excellent leadership. And I'm curious if in the work that you did when you were studying all of those teams, were there any, or maybe I should say, which through lines and patterns did you see that were really important for creating those teams where it was inclusive and really allowed people to bring their own hard-earned wisdom and experience to the table for the group? 

Shane Snow: Yeah. Thank you for the question, by the way, and the shout out to the book. So the book is about groups that exceed the sum of their parts. And the core question that I, trying to chip away at this piece of marble and find the statue in there of what is it about those teams or those groups that feel like magic where you add up to more, you're not just adding up to the smartest person. You're not beholden to whoever has the most power and their ideas. You actually are able to beat the odds and have that super additive kind of collective. And so a lot of it does have to do with how leaders empower that dynamic and leaders recognizing, I think this is the core to the answer to the question, leaders who recognize that if it's on them to have all the answers, then that team is limited by them. And they're not gonna get the potential energy that you could unlock in your team. It's gonna be limited by you if you're the one that has to decide everything and come up with the answers and you're the constraining factor. Like you gotta think a lot of yourself. If you're gonna be that kind of leader and yet it's natural for a leader to think that it's all on them to do that. So the kind of the key pattern I would say for these groups that do exceed the sum of their parts, the core formula is you have people who think differently, who are bringing different tools or different ingredients to the recipe. And then you manage to engage and explore those different tools and ideas and heuristics and all of that. But then ultimately you have to be willing to change, to transcend your previous point of view and to become something bigger than yourself. It's fine to have a debate from two sides of a point of view or an argument. But if no one changes their mind after the debate, what have you done? You've just maybe had fun or maybe eroded the dynamic a little bit. But if as a result of that, you're like, hey, let's now all upgrade or again, turning it into a team game after this debate, we found something new. That's where the magic happens. So there's this concept called intellectual humility which is like the fancy psychology term for you could say open-mindedness or willingness to change. And that is like when a leader establishes that is valued inside of a team, then that really unlocks something special. Because if you're a leader or the people with power, whether they're officially the leader or just sort of soft power, reinforce this idea that you get rewarded when you're right and you get punished when you're wrong or certainly ignored or whatever. You get promoted, you get praised, whatever. You get acknowledged. Then that encourages people to not speak up when they're not sure if they're right and to not put things forward or suggest things or go the extra mile, go out on a limb. But if you are reward people for going out on a limb or for speaking up, even when they're wrong or when something doesn't pan out, it's these micro behaviors of saying, first of all, let's explore that here. Someone suggest something that and the inclination would be, oh no, that's not gonna work or that's wrong or that's not relevant. Instead of saying hey, what can we learn from that? Let's actually pause and let's explore, see if there's something we can take out of that. That's reinforcing that intellectual humility thing. If you, when someone brings up an idea and you don't use it, if you take a second to say, thank you for bringing that to the table, this is what, this is pushing us forward. Even though we're not gonna go with that, like this is pushing us forward. So appreciate that. And if people see you do that, you're reinforcing this environment where yeah, change and adaptation and rethinking the way we think is valued. And then there's other micro behaviors too. I think that especially those with power can do. There's things like admitting you're wrong or admitting you changed your mind or saying I could be wrong, but here's what I think. Or there's this thing called tentative expression. Now I'm really getting into a real discussion. I love 

Natasha Nuytten: I love it. Get in there. 

Shane Snow: This thing called tentative expression, which is when you have an idea or an opinion or something you wanna say, you can say, I think whatever, like Gatorade Zero is the best drink ever. This is what I have on my desk. I think Gatorade Zero is the best drink ever for reasons X, Y, and Z. Here's my strong argument. If you instead say, my current thinking is that Gatorade Zero is the best drink on the market and here's why, that opens the door for someone else to say hey, what about this counter argument? Or hey, what have you thought of this? And now I don't have that on my face. If I say, actually that's a good point. I should include that into my Gatorade theory. But if I say, yes, this is it. And this is, and then someone says hey, what about, the fact that like electrolytes or whatever, then I now have this personal incentive to in front of everyone defend my position. But as a leader, if you set yourself up to not have to do that, you're establishing this environment where, yes, change and learning and growth and adaptation and admitting you're wrong is rewarded or is okay. Other people will then volunteer their hypothesis or their current thinking or their theories rather than trying to play this game of fighting about, who's right and then defending your turf. Or I think crucially what happens in groups is feeling like you need to defend turf on behalf of others. This is a sneaky part of human behavior is if I represent a group, I'm the designer in the meeting, in the boardroom or whatever. And there's a group of designers that I represent. I can't be wrong or everyone's gonna think that the design department has a problem. Or, this happens sadly, in corporate America a lot. You're the one woman in the room. It can easily turn into a situation where you feel like I can't actually be wrong or, I'm the one woman in the room. What are they gonna think this is gonna turn into that? Which is not fair and it's not cool. But if the leaders create an environment where it's not about the who's right and who's wrong, it's about the team game of us, finding to use the analogy I use in the book, finding the taller mountain peak together, then we can forget about this, having to represent groups and defend turf and make it personal and, and all of that, we can, move forward on trying to better the team itself. So very long way of saying that intellectual humility and establishing an environment where you reward and clear the way for people to learn and grow and add things, happens in these micro behaviors, not in some declaration of your values. It's these little moments that you reinforce when you don't have to take the opportunity to speak up or praise people or say thank you or say, let's explore that, but you choose to do that anyway. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah, I really appreciate that because I think sometimes in leadership, even if your personal take is as described and you are open to hearing things, it's easy to forget that your opinion has an outsized weight to it and be that not everyone in the room is coming at you with the same lens. And so even if you think you have been very, you think you're very open and you are, maybe you genuinely are, sometimes you have to restate that. And I find, I'm being called to the carpet on this because sometimes I admittedly am like, man, I have said this 8,000 times, why the hell do I have to say it again, right? And that's my problem. That's not somebody else's problem. But I think the value of just doing this sort of micro behavior over and over is that it just, I don't know, it just underscores it, right? Like it just keeps underlining the thing and demonstrating that behavior. So I really appreciate that because sometimes you do have to be more clear, right? 

Shane Snow: Yeah, and to underscore what you just said, sometimes it's not fair. It's not fair that you have to keep repeating yourself. There could be some systemic reasons why, or it could just be the current circumstance or whatever, but it's not fair. And it's true that if you don't say it, people might have to read your mind. And this is some of the best teamwork and relationship advice I had ever gotten is people can't read minds. Don't pretend you can read other people's minds and don't believe that people can read your mind. This is like the classic thing of, we know dad loves us even though he never shows it. Do you know that dad loves you but he never shows it? That's it. I don't want people to have to guess what my intentions are or how well-meaning I am. Like I wish they could, I really wish they could. I wish I didn't have to say it. But I think there's some of those micro behaviors that can include, especially as you're saying, if your voice carries outsize weight because you're in a position of power or you're representing a group. And so it's gonna be taken this outsize way or just big companies that's it all feels yeah, there's more pressure. Say what you don't mean also. Like when you're saying, when you're having, you're bringing up a point that might cause conflict or might be, people are gonna have to think about or bad news or whatever. Say, I'm not saying you did a bad job. That is not what I'm saying. I'm saying, let's talk about this thing. I'm not saying I don't value this. Sometimes you have to say that because you can't assume that they're like, do they think that I am valuable or do they think that I did a good job? And I think by the same token, I'm not saying I'm set on this opinion. I'm saying, here's the evidence and here's my hypothesis and I wanna explore this. I'm not saying that this is set in stone even though I'm the boss and you're gonna take this as a gospel. I'm actually not saying that. So I think sometimes yeah, it sucks to take the extra time to do that. And sometimes, like I said, it's because of other factors of how people behave around us that are outside of our control. But I think the burdens of doing a good job with teams and working together often does entail doing things that we wish we would n't have to do in order to make things clear and make things safe. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah, clear is kind, right? Yeah. And humans will human every opportunity that we get. So I think those are good practices. Let me ask you something a little bit related and adjacent. So there are times when I think as leaders, we believe very strongly in the folks around us and we believe they can do a thing sometimes more than they believe they can do the thing. And so I'm curious if in your research around building these teams, were there any sort of practices that floated to the surface that would help leaders pull that out of people? 

Shane Snow: Oh, it's really good. There's a couple of things that come to mind. Actually three, I'll try not to be too long winded. One is the sort of basic principle that a leader who can push you to grow is going to keep you in this zone of discomfort, which as you say, like that you're comfortable with, but uncomfortable, but safe. And you can even chart it like, one of those nerdy two by two matrices. If you have something like safe, unsafe, comfortable, uncomfortable, safe and comfortable is often what we think that we need to provide for people, like I want my kid to be safe and comfortable, right? And yet safe and uncomfortable is where growth happens. You think about a private trainer, at the gym or a coach, in a sport, they're pushing you beyond where you are comfortable so you can grow, so you can achieve the potential they believe you have. And a good coach is going to be in it for your journey, not just for this thing that you're going to accomplish when you push yourself and then they drop you. Because that's where you can get uncomfortable and unsafe is if you get pushed so far that like you are now damaged or suffering or hurt or whatever in order for the short-term gain. I think really terrible bosses are good at being persuasive and putting people in that position. And obviously unsafe and uncomfortable, it's like we know to avoid that. So I think that's the first one is good leaders understand that. I think it's tough for people who are kind to push people into uncomfortable places. That is particularly tough for me. I think like tough love is a tough one for me to deliver. But, understanding that's how people grow is when you push them into that uncomfortable but not unsafe place. That's the first one. The second one is I really believe strongly in the power of storytelling to motivate people to go beyond where they think they can go. And I guess to persuade people to go into that uncomfortable or unknown place. And this is some stuff I've, throughout my career as a writer, and as a storyteller myself, I obviously have a bias towards this. But lately I've been doing a lot of speaking and consulting with groups where this has been the thing that I haven't talked about, which is change management. You're trying to get people to change when change is hard, either because the world has changed and now we've got to adapt this new, you brought up AI. AI is changing our circumstances. So now we have to do things differently. Why can't we do things the same? It's going to be uncomfortable. It's going to be hard. That's what you're up against as a leader when you're dealing with change. And it's really powerful to use story as a way to get people to become intrinsically motivated and to feel the emotions that help override the aversion to discomfort. So you think about movies where the leader gets up and gives a speech to rally people before the big battle or the big, whatever, math tournament or whatever it is. And often you see like a version of the Gettysburg Address. The leader stands up and says, this is the history we've all been through. Together we built this thing and we got here and we overcame so many odds to do so, after reminiscing about that history, here's the next chapter of our journey. That kind of storytelling of getting people to remember and bond and feel inspired and feel motivated by that shared history and kind of parlaying that into the next thing. It causes our brains to, to take the logic of this is going to be hard, so I don't want to do it and override it with this is important. And so I do want to do it, even though it's hard. So that's the second thing. And then the third thing I completely forgot by the end of that monologue. I'll come back to it. 

Natasha Nuytten: Please do, but those are two great things. So I'll take it if we land there for sure. Yeah, I love what you were saying. I love both of those things. And I'm reminded of Charlene Lee is a leader in AI and change management. And one of the things that she said when I was speaking with her was, it's like being at recess, right? The kids are always at the fence, right? They're always as far out as they can go. So if you can push the edge of the fence a little bit and say like this, it's okay, this is still safe. This is still within bounds. And you can go all the way out there and they'll help you to do that. Then that's a great way to help people come along with change. So she's much more eloquent than I am. I love that analogy. I thought so too. I was like, hell yeah, that's exactly where I spent my time at recess was as far out there as I could go, okay, I really love that. So in thinking about those things and managing change in your own organization okay, so you've written about smart cuts, right? But there are certainly, like you started a couple of companies. That's a long cut. That like the company is not a shortcut but are a smart cut by any means. How did you, in your experience, how did you navigate that slightly slower, more difficult process of building the thing while also incorporating all of these ideas from these other sort of genius things that you had read about? 

Shane Snow: Wow, this is a great question. You're asking me all these things that people don't ask me. I'm delighted by this. Okay. I think smart cuts are funny because of the title, we were all really excited. My editor and I were really excited when we came up with that title. And yet it does sound like, yes, we're trying and even the subtitle, how hackers, innovators and icons accelerate success. And it got with the second edition and it turned into the power of lateral thinking. But it's really the underlying idea is approaching things from new angles or from, not the path that everyone else is on so that you can do more or do more faster or change the game or change your outcomes and different goals. But it doesn't lend itself to this oh, we're trying to accomplish things faster. I think, the longer time goes on and I look at my own work and what I've done kind of building on that. Time is our enemy to doing a lot of great work and innovation. Time is the enemy of innovation. It's the enemy of taking, doing what we need to do in order to make our teams the best they can be. Like we're, it's, that's always the bad guy. But it's not always about doing things faster, doing things better or doing things, I'd say however you define better, that bigger or better analogy that you described, are we trying to, create something bigger? Are we trying to create something better and it's better means more sustainable? In which case being fast isn't necessarily the path to that. So it's interesting that in my own self-reflection, what does it mean to take the alternate path? Is the goal always getting there faster? Not necessarily. And I think part of that might be just I'm growing up and you realize that some journeys are long journeys by definition. Doesn't mean that the journey can't be shorter or better, but, where I think the biggest applications of this smart cuts concept for me and my business career come in two forms. One is at the micro level of when we're looking at discrete problems to solve, being able to ask, is there a different way to approach this problem? What are the observations underlying the kind of question we're asking? Are we asking the right question? If we're not, what is the right question? Backing up to those fundamentals and then saying that the question is this, what if we approach this a different way? So looking at problems with that general framework, as part of it. And then at the macro, the business that I've most recently started is a film technology company called Integrated Cinematics. Showrunner is the brand name. It's a film technology company that does fancy LED wall film set stuff. And it's like the stuff that you see on the Mandalorian and all that. It's just building technology that allows filmmakers to do more and run their film set like a smart home, basically. So that company really you could say is a product of this sort of smart cut, zigging and zagging mentality of I am primarily, I'm a writer who started businesses. I got into screenwriting because I had this realization that more people watch TV than read business books. And if I wanted to make an impact, that was gonna be my next chapter is writing for the screen. And it turns out that to make a movie or TV show or a documentary, you need lots of people to say yes to you, lots and lots of money. And, there's all of these middlemen and gatekeepers and, and started this company shortly after the Me Too movement had really taken down some key figures in Hollywood. And my business partner, who's also married, had quit Hollywood as an actor and then director because of all of these scumbags that have to say yes to your project and they have the money and, and so when we with a couple of other business partners started this tech company, it was actually our hack, you could say, on figuring out how we can tell the stories we wanna tell. If you need people to say yes to you and you need lots of money to make a movie what if we could use technology that we borrow from another industry, from the smart home industry, to start remote controlling things, to start allowing people with less money to do more, so that we can then, with a quarter of the funds, make the movie that has impact so we don't need to ask those people for their money and to say yes. And from there, we've applied that same smart cuts mentality to like, how do you get something funded? How do you stack R and D tax credits and film tax credits and opportunity zones and tax loss harvesting and all these things, how do you add these things up from real estate and from Silicon Valley and add them to the film world so that these same people don't need to ask other people for permission to make their movies. And so that's the big one, the big application of this smart cuts mentality has coalesced into this company, which we're now making movies and TV shows and all of that and funding other people's movies through this. And yeah, we're on year four of what is gonna at least be a 10, 15 year journey and like AI is changing all of it. But anyway, I'm just rambling about the pitch for my company but it's very much, I would be, if not for kind of that thing that we're talking about of the zigging and zagging and the smart cuts mentality and using that to play the long game, I would be pitching screenplays to people with money rather than making movies about things that I care about and buying people's screenplays so that we can make them. And so it's, that's waiting in line for someone else to say yes to you versus creating something that lets you climb up one ladder and then cut into the place that you wanna be. Oh, anyway, that's the latest. 

Natasha Nuytten: I love it. I have, as I have reread your books of late and with our company as it is trying to get legs under it and coming to market, been thinking a lot about that. And what I'm curious about, the thing I haven't quite landed on the how is building that culture for folks around you who maybe haven't been introduced to that idea before. Now you're in a unique position that people are probably coming to you knowing some of these ways that you work, right? But if I'm a leader in an organization and maybe the company has been here for 50 years before I got here, how do you, what are some practical ways that a leader could start to build those practices into the fabric of their team or culture? 

Shane Snow: Great question. Back to storytelling, I think one of the most powerful tools leaders can use is storytelling. And you hear a lot of people say this and you could say what does that mean, right? I'm just gonna tell stories, okay. But I think a very practical way to use storytelling as a leader is to use stories to illustrate your principles and your values. What do you care about? You can say, oh, I care about people approaching problems from new angles and bringing ideas that help us innovate and change the game rather than play the same game. I care about that. You could say that, but either people are gonna believe it or not and it's not necessarily gonna stick unless they observe you doing that. And how do they observe you valuing that? It's gonna be you day-to-day, build the initiatives and do the hard work of reinforcing that and you talk about it, you take those micro opportunities to reinforce that. Or and you can get there faster, can persuade people that you actually care about something by sharing stories where that's happened and where that illustrate those principles. So you can say, I'm gonna tell you a story about a time when this happened and what I just did with you of we started this company and my wife had quit Hollywood because of the scumbags and we wanted to write our own ticket and all that. I'm pretty sure you're persuaded that I believe in the principles that are underneath our approach and our company without you having to observe it. And so I think that's, as a leader, you spend a lot of time talking to your team or at least you have the opportunity to, you have the floor. So use that floor to tell stories that illustrate your principles so that people can start to believe that you actually believe it. And then they raise their hand when they do have that idea or that thing to say that aligns with what you're trying to encourage. So I always tell the story about how my dad used to always say, people are more important than stuff. And which is, I think it's a nice phrase, I actually say it all the time. But how you know that my dad believed that people are more important than stuff is my mom was a rather bad driver and she was always getting into fender benders. And she backed the van up into the gas pump, I wanna say 15 times, I'm probably exaggerating, but she hit the gas pump, she put the van in the ditch, she ran over the mailbox. And you could see someone who's got seven kids mouths to feed and a van that's 20 years old and a single income at that point, getting upset when mom runs into the gas pump with the van, but instead he always said, what's the first thing we ask, is mom okay? He always made sure that we saw him seeing if people were okay when something went wrong rather than focusing on oh, that's gonna be a lot of money. And so at this point, I knew that my dad believed that people are more important than stuff. I told you that about my dad, but now after I told you the story about my mom getting into car accidents and him always saying that, I'm pretty sure you're convinced that my dad believes that people are more important than stuff. And it's just because I told that story. So I think as leaders, we can leverage that whatever your principles that you care about and you want people to believe you, you can use stories to kickstart that belief. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah, I need three more hours of your time, Shane. 

Shane Snow: I love talking about this stuff. We can do more of this. 

Natasha Nuytten: I am gonna take you up on that because I have all kinds of questions, but I do wanna be respectful of the fact that we are where we are in our time together right now. So I'm gonna ask you two last questions. One, is there anything I should have asked you about today or that you wanted to talk about that I didn't touch on? 

Shane Snow: Ooh, I don't know. This is all tons of fun. And like I said, you're asking me questions that are not the usual questions I get, which is how I know that you've really dug into my work. No, what questions should you have asked me? I would say these days, I'm so obsessed with being a parent of a young child. I have one kid and I think a lot about how my point of view on the world has changed because of that. And so you didn't need to ask me this, but I think a new question for me is, how has that experience changed the way that I approach this thinking and this work? And also yeah, can I show you pictures of Quentin because he's adorable? Yes, that's the question you should have asked. He's the best. He loves monster trucks and we took him to a monster truck rally. And I have this video of him holding a monster truck, watching a monster truck and going, oh no, when the monster truck tips over. 

Natasha Nuytten: So that's the best. I need Quentin to meet my mom. My mom has this crazy obsession with monster trucks. So maybe they can hang out sometime. It's the strangest, but I love it. 

Shane Snow: Yeah, I'll say that when I think about that, this newest chapter in my life, it's made me realize that there are so many life experiences that you know that people have them but you don't really understand the point of view and how it dramatically alters how you see the world until you have them. And I think this experience of being a parent has opened up what logically I understood, but now I think I feel to my bones that someone who lives a very different life than me or who has experienced tragedy or heartbreak or maybe like success or luck or has gotten to an old age and are people who I cannot fundamentally understand the breadth and the wonderfulness of their point of view on the world that these life events change until I experience them. And so I think it's made me value more, I think in particular, the perspective of elders in my family and of people who have been through trauma and sacrifice that, I'm thinking about family members who went through great sacrifice for their kids. I understand the motivation now to do that, but I also don't understand the extent of how that shapes their entire world. So anyway, this is a kick that I've been on is like this aha moment that probably everyone else who's had kids has had is, oh, wow, we all do see the world very differently based on the experiences we've been through. And some of those experiences are about who we are and some of them are about choices we make and some of them are just things that happened to us. And so my appreciation for what my teammates or people in my life can bring to the table I think has grown because of that experience. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah, no, I love that. There's a lot of wisdom having grown up in South Dakota, there's a lot of wisdom that comes out of the tribes who have been there and left an imprint, although much less of an imprint than we have coming after them. Sure. And one of the beautiful things that I really appreciate about it that I think ties into your work is that power of that story, right? Like that I haven't necessarily experienced the thing that you have, but if someone can tell me the story of the people who came before me, then whatever experience I have had that ties to it is enough to at least get me to appreciate the parts of it that I am capable of appreciating, right? And five years from now or 25 years from now, my level of appreciation may change based on my experience, but it's that shared sort of starting point that really matters. So that's cool. Oh, that's wonderfully 

Shane Snow: put. Yeah. Thank you 

Natasha Nuytten: for putting us there. That's awesome. Okay, so my last question to you is how, as a community of listeners and or rando humans walking through the world, can we support the work that you are doing? 

Shane Snow: Oh thank you for asking that. It feels weird to ask this, but if you like any of the writing that I've done, share it. I appreciate you sharing on this podcast. I've been doing work lately, the side project. It was the full-time thing during the pandemic and then now with the film company, it's the side thing. I have this thing called snow.academy, which is it's courses where I distill a lot of the stuff that I do, especially on storytelling and teamwork. If anyone wants to dig in on this, check out those courses and get a course for a friend. And in fact, if you're listening to this, hit the contact button and say, hey, I heard you on this podcast and I hear that there are coupon codes. I'm happy to do that. We're trying to be generous with the knowledge rather than charge full price. But that certainly helps. I have a team of people who are supported by that project and trying to share the word, but certainly you don't need to pay for anything in order to carry on with this. But if you can share articles or books of mine that have this stuff that's useful to other people, that makes me happy. As a writer, people reading my stuff and having it impact them in some way, that's like the best. Thank you for asking. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah, very cool. We will absolutely share that out and send folks your way. So thank you again. I learned so much. And again, I might have to just show up in Chicago one of these days and land on your doorstep and invite you and your wife to coffee, but I'm so grateful.

Shane Snow:  Or we'll come to Omaha and go see a monster truck rally. 

Natasha Nuytten: That sounds great. Thank you so much, Shane. I really appreciate it. 

Shane Snow: Thank you. 

Natasha Nuytten: Okay, I told you it was gonna be amazing. Shane has been researching so many different types of things and has just lived his professional career in such a way that he chased what he was curious about and used that as a means of creating incredible businesses and taking all these learnings from seemingly disparate areas to build amazing insights that we can all learn from. So I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. And if you have any comments, leave them below. Let us know what you think. Please share the episode. Absolutely check out the resources that Shane shared with us. And in the meantime, keep the Human Side Up.