Narrator: You're listening to the humans of DevOps podcast, a
podcast focused on advancing the humans of DevOps through skills,
knowledge, ideas, and learning, or the skil framework.
Eduardo Briceño: This particular framework became really helpful
for them to align with each other about how they wanted to
foster a growth mindset culture, and what it addresses is the
confusion that the way to improve is to work hard, that is
simplistic and it gets us into trouble.
Eveline Oehrlich: Welcome to the humans of DevOps Podcast. I'm
Evelyn knowlage, Chief Research Officer at DevOps Institute. I'm
skipping the introduction today. So we get more time with a very
special guest, who is a thought leader, author and very popular
keynote speaker on developing cultures of learning and high
performance. Up podcast title for today is exploring different
zones. Stay tuned. And today we have with us and I have a
drumroll. Eduardo bird Sanyo, who is a very, very popular
keynote speaker as I mentioned. Hello, Eduardo.
Eduardo Briceño: Hello, Evelyn's Great to see you. Great to be
here.
Eveline Oehrlich: Likewise, very excited to have you on our
podcast today. So let me quickly and I will read this in third
person. So this will feel strange to you, Eduardo. So I'm
going to just share with our audience a little bit on your
bio. So Eduardo is a global keynote speaker, as I already
mentioned, facilitator and program provider who supports
organizations in developing cultures of learning and high
performance. Prior to that, he was the CEO of mindset works,
the pioneer in growth mindset development services, which he
co founded in 2007, with Stanford professor Carol Dweck,
Lisa Blackwell and others, and led for over a decade before
that he was taking on investors with Credit Suisse venture
capital arm, the sprout group and served on several for profit
and nonprofit boards. It borders TED talks on growth mindset, and
Ted Talk on learning zone and the performance zone have been
viewed by over 8 million have been viewed over 8 million
times. And I'm one of them. His book, the performance paradox,
turning the power of mindset into action, will be published
by Penguin Random House in September of this year. He is
Behera Aspen fellow, a member of the Aspen Institute's Global
Leadership Network, and an inductee into happiness Hall of
Fame. Eduardo grew up in Caracas, Venezuela, he holds a
Bachelor degree in economics and engineering from the University
of Pennsylvania, as well as an MBA and MA in education from
Stanford University. Most importantly, he continues to
enjoy lifelong learning every day. And that's exactly while
you why you are here, Eduardo, for our listeners to share your
experience and how to actually do that. So welcome again to our
podcast.
Eduardo Briceño: Thank you, Evelyn. Great to be here. I feel
like we have kindred hearts. I look forward to the
conversation.
Eveline Oehrlich: Yes, the first one. The first thing which I
really want to know, of course, everything else is exciting, but
happiness Hall of Fame. I did some research and check that
out. You have to tell us about that. What? What is that?
Eduardo Briceño: Yeah, I didn't know either. And it is actually
one of the things I'm most proud of, because, to me, it
symbolizes a lot of change that I have done in myself. I grew up
being very unhappy, actually. And I have really transformed
myself over a lot of years. And I lead a very happy life now
with a lot of joy. And that's, that's involved a lot of change
in myself a lot of work in myself. And so I was doing a
keynote once and afterwards, a man came to me and he said he
was the executive director of the happiness Hall of Fame. And
I hadn't heard of it either. But they had looked at my work and
the impact that they felt that was having on people and how I
was spreading joy. And they wanted to induct me into the
happiness Hall thing so that you know that to me, was striking in
in symbolizing how much of a change I had made myself.
Eveline Oehrlich: Wow. Fantastic. For our listeners,
check it out. There are Eduardo is in great company out there.
There are a whole range of folks you you got you listeners will
all recognize. So that's fantastic. Congratulations for
being there. All right. So as I mentioned to you already, when
we did a little bit Have a pre call. I'm a big fan of Professor
Carol Dweck work, particularly the work around the growth
mindset. But I don't want to assume that everybody on
listening here has actually read her book mindset or is familiar
with. So why don't you share with us a little bit about what
a growth mindset is?
Eduardo Briceño: Sure. And I'm glad you're asking that because
it's something that is really easily to get distorted. It is
something that a lot of people haven't heard about, like you
said, but also a lot of people have, and a lot of people have
read the book you just mentioned Mindset by Carol Dweck. It's
been a bestseller. But even for for people who learn about
mindset and do work on mindset, and I'll start there. We, when
we ask people who think they're familiar with growth mindset,
what a growth mindset is, they often describe something
different, like they might say, it's, it means being open
minded, or it means working hard or persevering. And a growth
mindset is none of those things. A growth mindset is not
something we do. It's not a behavior. But it's a belief
about the nature of human beings is the belief that we can change
the belief that our abilities or qualities are malleable, or we
can develop them. And the reason so for example, if we think that
some people are natural leaders and others aren't, and that's
what determines whether somebody's a good leader, that
would be the opposite of a growth mindset is what we call a
fixed mindset about leadership. Or if we think that some people
are introverted, and others extroverted, and that's fixed,
those are things that don't change, that would be a fixed
mindset. Versus we can work to develop any of those dimensions
we can we can work to become more introverted, right, like
more mindful, more reflective, more more present more
comfortable in solitude, and more extroverted, more, more
more in a state of enjoyment when we're with other people,
and great at conversation and great at being funny, or
whatever it is. So those that's different from a fixed mindset.
And a growth mindset is when we see ourselves as fixed, or when
we see ourselves as able to change. And the reason that
that's important, is that what doctor mindset with Dr. Dweck
research has shown and lots of other researchers as well now is
that we will try to change the behaviors is really hard if we
are in a fixed mindset. So if we think that we can't change, then
telling somebody, you know, to work hard, or to be open minded,
or to try to experiment beyond the known that doesn't tend to
work if people are thinking that their abilities are fixed, or
that other people's abilities are fixed. And so we need to
work on both changing our beliefs about the nature of
ourselves and others, and changing our behaviors and
habits. And those two things go hand in hand.
Eveline Oehrlich: Interesting. I love that. I wish this book I
haven't really checked, if that book is also in German. I have a
few colleagues who potentially should read this, because we
just had this conversation on these assumptions. And I felt
that they had a very fixed mindset. So but I would love
them to read it in German. I will check on that.
Eduardo Briceño: Later, too. I think you know, 17 languages, if
I recall correctly, yes. I bet it is available in German and
lots of other languages.
Eveline Oehrlich: I will do that research tonight and check with
our favorite retailer, if that's possible, right. So let me know
I would like yeah, yes, absolutely. So how did you
actually get into the space of developing cultures of learning?
Eduardo Briceño: Well, you know, the first time that I got into
learning, I think was a time that we all got into learning,
which is when we when I was really, really young. When I was
a baby, when I was a young kid, I think all of us are passionate
about learning them, right? If you look at a baby or young kid,
they're trying to get up or like crawl and like failing and
trying again, and trying again and trying a different strategy.
Or they might be really looking mesmerized at what we're doing
with our voice in making all these sounds that seem to you
know, we seem to communicate with each other and they don't
understand what's going on. And they're so interested and trying
to understand that eventually they come to understand language
and they come to to understand what it is that we're doing with
our mouths. That's incredible. And so, we have so many
questions, right? kids ask so many questions, but then what
happens is that we get to school and in school I think what tends
to happen in school is tragic because schools haven't, the
goal of school hasn't been to develop lifelong learners,
right? It hasn't been to ignite a fire for people to pursue
whatever path they want to pursue, to experiment and
discover, rather, is being to try to teach people some things
that they might not be interested in at the time. And
so we start associating learning with something that's boring and
tedious and like something that we do in school. And when we're
home, we do it only when we're doing homework, and when we're
done with homework, then we're done learning, right, and we go
do something else. And so and so we learn in school, that
learning sucks that learning is not relevant, it's not useful.
And and we also learn to perform all the time because so many
things in school are graded with a letter or a number that we we
we get the message that what we're supposed to do on a daily
basis is to do things well to do things we already know how to do
to try to minimize mistakes. And so I like many people, I
believe, I went from loving learning, to just trying to
perform and to show that I'm good and to validate myself. And
I ended up you know, after school, like there's no more
tests and almost grades, but the way that the best way that I
could figure out to do well is to get a high paying job, right?
So I I went and I work in the investment banking in New York
City. And I know you, you you worked at Forrester Research
where you were in that kind of similar world as well. Then I
got into venture capital, and I was investing in technology
companies in Silicon Valley. And after a few years of that, you
know, it was it was interesting, but after a few years of that I
realized I actually got physically sick. I was my I got
a repetitive strain injury called myofascial pain syndrome,
it was painful and difficult to use my hands to do simple things
like brushing my teeth or open doors or driving. And I met
people with my condition who had gotten so bad that they couldn't
use their hands for more than 10 minutes a day. So I, I ended up
stretching for an hour and a half for every day for three
years and getting treatment of all kinds. You know, I went to
Washington DC for six weeks to get a particular treatment every
day. So it was a big journey for me to heal. But one of the
things that I learned was that I needed to, I couldn't take my
hands for granted. I couldn't take my ability to do things for
granted. And so I needed to find something that I was passionate
about, and that I felt was making a difference in the
world. And so I went to grad school to build that different
path for myself. And over there. I met Carol Dweck. And I read
her book and I, she's my mentor. She's been my mentor for since,
you know, over 15 years, and her work just learning about her
work, I realized how my fixed mindsets had gotten in the way
of my goals. I was self sabotaging. I realized how I
needed to change my thinking and my habits in order to really try
things that I hadn't done before and, and learn and develop
myself. And I realized how a lot of people could benefit from
those same insights that I was gaining from Dr. Dweck. So we
partnered and co founded a company called mindset works.
And I led it for over 15 years, my job became more and more
public speaking. And that's what I'm focused on 100% for for the
last several years now. Wow.
Eveline Oehrlich: fits very well with, with my belief in how we
want to lead our work in the DevOps Institute. Because,
again, if you think about what we do, I'm sure you probably
don't know, but I'll, I'll share it with you and again with
others. We're trying to help. We're not trying but we are we
know we are helping our community members to learn. We
call it upskilling or skill building, right. And we do this
by developing content, we do trainings, we do certifications,
we have events, and we encouraged and fostered a fairly
tight community. We have over I think 90,000 or so fellow
followers on LinkedIn. I just learned that today. And we hope
we can make a difference for these individuals who want to
learn and grow but it is challenging. And so when I went
off to help us give get some insights in this learning and
growth, that's how I found you and I find your explanation on
learning and performance zones extremely helpful. And I would
love for you to share a bit more details with our community
members to help them understand these different zones. So please
do share with us. What are the zones Since you call them
learning zones and performing zones, and what what must we
know about them for our daily work?
Eduardo Briceño: Sure. So the learning zone and performance
zone came from when I, at some point, my work, businesses
started reaching out to me because they wanted to build a
growth mindset culture. And in those workshops, in getting into
the conversations and trying to help them build a growth,
mindset culture, I tried different frameworks and
different routes to the conversation. And this
particular framework really resonated and became really
helpful for them to generate insight and to align with each
other about how they wanted to foster a growth mindset culture,
and what the the the one that addresses is the the confusion
that a lot of us have, that the way to improve is to work hard.
That is too simplistic, and it gets us into trouble. So the
reality is that there's getting better at things or innovating
is not just about working hard. Because there's two different
types of hard work, there's hard work to get things done as best
as we know how trying to minimize mistakes. That's what
we call the performance zone. But in order to improve, we have
to actually work to go beyond the known and to ask questions
and to experiment and to do things that may or may not work.
That's what we call the Learning Zone. And it is by engaging in
the learning zone that we get better. So my book is called the
performance paradox to performance paradox is the
counterintuitive fact that if we perform all the time, we hinder
our performance, we actually stop ourselves from performing
even higher if all we're doing is performing. And that's that
is a paradox, but it's true. And so what we need to do in order
to get better is to go beyond the known and to do things like
when you talk about upskilling and skill building. Those are
the things that happen with great performers, right. So if
you look at a great athlete, for example, if they're playing a
championship final, they're going to be focused on the
things that they do best, and they're trying to minimize
mistakes and be if they have a weakness, they're going to try
to avoid that weakness in that match. That's all for
performance. And because the only goal during the match is to
try to win the game. But what they do after the game is the
learning zone right after the game, if they were having
trouble with a particular move, they're gonna go to their coach
and say, Coach, I need to work on that particular move. And
that's a very different activity and area of attention than what
we do during the match. Right, it's actually completely
different. And it is what they do in the learning zone that
allows them to perform so well, in court in the performance only
if they're only playing games, then they get stuck, right, they
don't get better, in fact that the Williams sisters, which
became the best in the world, Valium played any championships,
any games. For years before they turned professional, they were
just in the performance zone, sorry, in the Learning Zone. So
the learning zone can be a pure learning zone, like taking a
course, or you know, doing you know, reading is a pure learning
zone activity. But we can also integrate these two zones so
that we do them together so that as we're getting things done,
we're doing things in a way that's also going to lead to
insight and to new skills and strategies and to getting
better. And so it's a by integrating these two zones. We
we can get better while also doing all the things we need to
do in our long to do list.
Narrator: Do you want to advance your career and organization we
can help you do that DevOps Institute offers a wide range of
educational experiences for you to begin your upskilling
journey. Whether you're looking for a defined path to
certification, exploring the latest in DevOps, or connecting
with the larger community, we can help you develop the
specialized skills needed for the future of it. And it won't
just be good for your career. It will also make you indispensable
at work with our lineup of industry recognized DevOps
certifications, digital learning opportunities, and engaging
events. You can connect with our network of experts and expand
your potential today. Visit DevOps institute.com and join
our community now.
Eveline Oehrlich: So a quick side note for everybody
listening in. There are some two fantastic TED talks from Eduardo
one is called How to get better at things you care about. Check
that out. The other one is the power of belief. So listeners go
to the TED Talk, easy to find, and listen to it. Let's come
back to what you just said. And this is very specific to our, to
our folks in IT, particularly the DevOps folks and others. We
do a lot of, well, a lot If it's a little bit of an exaggeration,
we do something called a post mortem, right? Actually, it's
because it's such a nasty word, we have renamed it to call the
retrospective, because post mortem sounds like we're killing
something. But we don't want to do that, we want to actually
step back and look at what has happened. And so that, I think,
is an excellent example of an integration of a learning zone
and the performance zone. Would you agree with that?
Eduardo Briceño: Absolutely. Yeah. That's a great way to
integrate the Learn the learnings and the performance on
the retrospective is a wonderful strategy. And it's also kind of
what you know, great performance, like athletes do,
right? They perform. And then afterwards, they might watch a
video and see, hey, let's, let's think about how that game went,
and what can I learn? And what do I need to practice. So that's
the retrospective, in addition to a retrospective, think about
doing because retrospective, also, can be called an after
action review. That's a term they use in the military. But
and that's great, that's all wonderful. But also consider
doing kind of mid action reviews, something that happens
also kind of in the middle of projects, and as a habit, rather
than only when things go wrong. When when people make a mistake,
it's just we can always get better, right? And so whether it
is after projects, or after there's an incident, which is
wonderful to do think about also, how can you do this
proactively and as a habit, so that you're doing it all the
time regularly. And so it is normalized is something that we
all want to be doing on a regular basis, because we can
all continue to improve.
Eveline Oehrlich: And, and it becomes part of our day. Now,
that I guess is the challenge. Because, again, if I think of my
times in it, I didn't have a lot of time, it was very dynamic,
very fast paced, I had lots of performing to do, right. And
even so in, we encourage people to make mistakes and learn from
that. At the same time, because I'm delivering outcomes and
values and our lives deliver results. It is very difficult to
actually combine those two and and and kind of integrate them.
Do you have any additional tips for people? What What can our
listeners do is just something would you say? Do this once a
day or once a week or something like this? Because everybody is
probably hungry, saying yeah, this sounds all great. This is
very theoretical, but be in my shoes one day, write anything
you would suggest?
Eduardo Briceño: Sure. So first, yeah, there's there's so
strategies, I'll share a couple. But first, I want to start by
just recognizing the issue, which is that if we only stay
only worried about getting the tasks done, then over time,
we're going to make to be to have a lot less time, right? If
we want to create time and make more time both for learning and
for performance, then we have to find ways to work smarter. And
to get more work more done, like more important things done in
less time. And the way to find that is to engage in the
learning zone. So so we have to figure out a way to engage in
the learning zone, so that we have more time, right so we can
create time. And and so in general, one way to get started
is to do something as like doesn't take a lot of time is
very, very quick. And that you can do frequently. So rather
than try to say block two hours every Friday like which is
becomes really hard. It's better to just spend like five minutes
a day doing something or even just one minute a day. Because
what that that Prime's a growth mindset and an interest. And
then it is it is very frequent. So we start building a habit,
and then it becomes easier to go from one minute to three
minutes, and from five minutes to 10 minutes, or then even
more. So just to change our thinking as we're going about
getting things done throughout the day. So we're just paying
more attention to the things that we can learn isn't isn't
doesn't really involve doing something differently. But it
involves paying attention to the things that we can learn. In
fact, there's research that shows that for people measured
people's mindset, so they ask them things like, Do you believe
that you can become smarter? And for the people who answered yes,
I believe I can become smarter. They looked at people's brains
inside of a brain scan machine. And they while they were solving
problems inside of the machine. And what they realized is that
people who thought they could become smarter, so who had a
growth mindset about intelligence, their brain was
more active when they were getting information about what
mistakes they made during the problems. And so they learn from
those mistakes, and they were more effective in solving
subsequent problems. So they became better problem solvers,
because they paid more attention to our mistakes. And they pay
more attention to mistakes because they thought they could
become smarter. And so they weren't spending any more time
solving problems. They were all just solving problems. but some
of them were paying attention to what they could learn and others
weren't. And that made all the difference. But some something
that is very simple that anybody can do. And I think it's really,
really powerful is to build a habit to every morning remind
ourselves of what it is that I'm working to improve. We're like,
what one thing am I working to get better at right now and, and
review that every morning. And what that does is first, it
makes sure that you're always working at improving something,
a that be that's top of mind so that you're thinking throughout
the day and identifying opportunities to improve so that
when something comes up, you're like, oh, that's relevant to
what I'm interested in and you pay more attention to it right?
And then it Prime's a growth mindset, it Prime's the reminder
that we can always continue to improve and develop ourselves.
And so it gets us to think differently throughout the day,
every day. So that's just one example of something simple that
we can all do.
Eveline Oehrlich: Perfect, fantastic. I am going to make
that for myself important. So let's talk about quickly on the
upcoming book, the performance paradox, turning the power of
mindset into action. It's releasing September 5 2023. Give
us a few things, what to look out for what's in that book, I
already ordered it. So I'll share with everybody else how to
preorder it but give us a little bit of a like two minutes on,
what can we find in it? Sure. And
Eduardo Briceño: thank you for pre ordering. And and yes, it's
available for preorder in any bookseller now. And yeah, I'll
describe a little bit the structure that sounds good,
because it also gives people an idea of what kinds of things we
can all work on in order to become better at learning and
performing. So the book is has has three parts. The first one
is driving individual growth, which is about individual growth
and the foundational ideas. Part two is about overcoming the
performance paradox in teams and organizations. So how do we
create strong teams and organizations? And part three is
from individual transformation to global impact? So how do we
take everything we're learning and apply it in the performance
zone and apply it to change lives. So in part one, about
individual growth, like Chapter One is about the performance
paradox, which describes what the challenge is the problem.
Chapter Two is the solution, which is about the two zones
that we talked about the learning zone and the
performance zone. Chapter Three is about integrating the two
zones so that we do them together, right? So instead,
it's not about learning by doing because we don't learn by doing,
but it's about learning while doing how do we change the way
we do things in order to, to also improve? Chapter Four is
about six essential learning strategies that we can all use.
Chapter Five is about mistakes. And mistakes are interesting,
because mistakes on one hand, we know that we can learn from
mistakes, and on the other hand, mistakes, lower performance. And
so Chapter Five is about getting more and more nuanced
understanding of mistakes and getting clear about how can we
elicit mistakes in a way that's going to increase learning, but
also increased performance as well. And when do we want to
avoid mistakes. Chapter Six is about common misconceptions
about learning and about growth mindset that gets in the way of
growth. Chapter Seven is about a framework called the growth
propeller, which is the five key elements that drive growth that
any of us can work on in order to become stronger learners and
performance. And those are our identity, our purpose, our
beliefs, our habits, and our community. And so that's part
one of the book. Part two is about teams and organizations.
So chapter eight is about visions of a strong learning
organization with examples of very, very strong learning and
performing organizations. Chapters nine and 10 are about
teams, chapters, 11 and 12, are about how to lead for growth to
leadership. And finally, the third, the final part of the
book, chapter 13, is about the performance zone, what can we do
in the performance zone in order to perform at our best, and
chapter 14 is about how overcoming the paradox changes
lives. So not only can we get to better destinations, and to
improve and to increase our results, but in in overcoming
the performance paradox, we also change the process, right what
what the experience of life and work feels like? Because we find
more joy, we find more happiness, we also experience
less anxiety, less depression, and we build deeper
relationships with each other because we become more curious.
We're more supportive of one another we learn about each
other's needs and perspectives. We can learn more from each
other. And so we we change not only this nation, but also the
process and the everyday life that we live.
Eveline Oehrlich: Beautiful. I cannot wait. I kind of wish it's
September. So I can't have it. But then the year will be over.
So we'll we'll look forward to it if anybody on the call or on
this listening into it is easily preorder PL orderable add
performance paradox.com Go there and, and preorder it. So we have
come to the end, I have one more question for you. What do you do
for fun? Well, you
Eduardo Briceño: know, I feel so grateful that from so many
things, I mean, the first thing I do every morning is to express
gratitude for so many things. But I find most of my days like
really fun. And I'm I'm very privileged that way. But some of
the things kind of outside of work because I love my work, and
I have fun in my work. But some of the things I do outside of
work is I've been playing more and more tennis with my wife we
played yesterday and the prior day. And we're really enjoying
kind of being playful and challenging one another in the
tennis court. I also travel a lot for work, and my wife does
too. So we like traveling with each other and kind of when I
when I'm in a place I take some time to either visit a museum or
see somebody there that I haven't seen in a long time as
something that that I enjoy doing as well. But I love my
work. I love how I'm I'm you know, in a way obsessed about
it, and I like being obsessed about it. So I'm privileged to
kind of have fun throughout the day, every day.
Eveline Oehrlich: I can feel that I can sense it through
through the through the lines of communication with you. This has
been absolutely wonderful. We have been talking to Eduardo
percent. Your Thank you, Eduardo. This has been a very,
very, very nice treat for our listeners and for myself. Thanks
again for joining me today on humans of DevOps podcast.
Eduardo Briceño: Thank you, Evelyn. It's great to speak with
you.
Eveline Oehrlich: Humans of DevOps podcast is produced by
DevOps Institute. Our audio production team includes Julia
Papp and Brendan Leigh and Daniel Schultz Newman, shout out
to my teammates who make this really great equate production.
I'm humans of DevOps podcast executive producer Evelyn
earlyish. If you would like to join us on a podcast, please
contact us at humans of DevOps podcast at DevOps institute.com.
And I said that this time without really tripping up so I
remember literally talk to you soon.
Narrator: Thanks for listening to this episode of the humans of
DevOps podcast. Don't forget to join our global community to get
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