YouSaid · the spoken record

Alisa Cohn

lines on the record: 140
first: 2021-10-19
most recent: 2021-10-19
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Or building a manageable business. Having the conversation in advance may not even resolve anything, but at least it brings up topics. Also, getting used to having sort of difficult conversations or real talk conversations with your co-founder, I think, is the key to the whole thing. Whether or not you resolve anything, it's about getting in the habit of bringing up uncomfortable topics.”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Definitely, what kind of company do you want to build? What's the culture of the company? What kinds of people do we want to hire? What are the important values we want to have inside of this company? Because when you don't come to terms with that, one co-founder is busy kind of hiring for his group, a certain kind of person. And then the other co-founder is hiring for her group, a different kind of person. So ultimately, you're almost like hiring two companies. So come into terms with the culture we're trying to build is super important. And I also think that I want to go back to what you said about when do we want to, as we say, exit? What do we want to do with this company? It's amazing to me how people just don't talk about that at the beginning of their relationship. The co-founder relationship. What they do is, and I understand this, they're so excited about building the company, but they assume they have the same music in their heads together, right? They assume they're on the same page with, let's say, building a massive business.”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then once you figure out you, then let's talk about them, the employee. So it's about hiring, it's about onboarding, it's about sadly firing, which does happen. It's about setting up the right systems inside of your company to help you scale. You can no longer do everything at some point once you grow. So you've got to find the ways and the tools and the allies, the other employees who come on board to help you figure out what are the structures that are right that are going to help you scale. One thing is delegation. Many founders have a lot of trouble delegating because it's like their baby. So it's about teaching you how to give away the core elements of your baby and trust that they can be done. And then ultimately using all of that to manage the business. And then I want to take a special, I realize that this may not be in the right section. Nonetheless, that's my book. And the two pieces that are also in the managing the company section, managing the business section, are about managing your board, which people always have questions about and also managing the special relationship.”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so it's like coming to terms with that, but it's also about recognizing back to what we talked about in terms of self-talk. It's about realizing that you as a founder are going to go through a lot of ups and downs in this journey, which you might think is going to take three years or five years, but it is not going to take three years or five years. That is like a mythical story. It's going to take a long time. You're devoting a lot of time to this. And how are you going to take care of yourself? How are you going to have the right regimens of nutrition and sleeping? How are you going to transform your self-talk when you have inevitable imposter syndrome and like what's going on? So that's the first section. It's about you, you, you, you.”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Around here, yeah, post-government. So I want to kind of get some perspective and context. And it always comes down, you know. Founders always start with me with something wrong in the business, or we're not achieving our numbers, or I'm having these problems with my people, whatever they are. But it always comes down to you. It starts with you. And that really means you beginning to think about your self-awareness or 360 feedback that we talked about, but other self-awareness, getting to know your natural swing, are you a natural communicator? Do you tend to clam up? Do you shut down in the face of stress or do you get, let's say, overly passionate and explosive with your team? So it's about you kind of doing an inventory of your overly passionate way. That's a great way to put it.”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If I think about it, if I come in and approach a startup and I approach a founder, my first question is always like, what's going on around here?”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They sort of get reduced. They loom so large inside of you. And by the way, there's also some shame there. Like, I can't tell anybody. Shame also kind of looms large. And we're able to get it on the table. It kind of neutralizes it and it whittles it down to size. It reduces it down to size.”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Contributing this, which I think is going to be helpful to founders, and also putting together my stories in a way that makes me feel proud and completing this project and this work. And again, hoping it contributes to people, that was going to make me proud. And so I saw the resistance for what it was. And I was able to move forward anyway.”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I also knew writing it was one thing and then sort of the year after, you know, and helping people learn about it and promoting it was another thing. And as we talked, it was like I laid them all out on the table. And I saw really pretty physically, pretty physically all the things that were in my way. What's interesting is that sometimes just surfacing the things that are in your way help you. I'm not saying they don't go away like magically, but every time now resistance comes up, you're like, oh yeah, I think it's going to be hard work. Or, oh yeah, I don't want to be that person. Oh, yeah. Hi, high resistance. I get it. And I was able to overcome it in service of my bigger goal, which is basically feeling proud, feeling proud of.”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Read the book. I'm like, I know that already. I read the book. I know. What actually am doing it was very helpful. So I think his name is Robert Keegan, but. Process is there's a reason you say you want to do this thing, you say you want to change, but you're not changing. So it's like one foot is on the accelerator and one foot is on the brake, what's on the brake? And Michael was kind enough to sit with me as I talked about all my concerns and issues. Turned out there were a lot of them. You say you want to write a book. Yeah, I want to write a book. What's in the way? I don't know. What if you did know? I was able to reveal to myself with Michael's supportive help what was in my way and all my associations with how hard it was going to be, all my associations with what if I, there's really a lot of ego stuff like what if it's not a good book? What if nobody likes it? I don't want to be that kind of person who's always talking about my book.”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, the turning point, I think. Was my good friend and fellow coach, and one of the Marshall Goldsmith 100 coaches also, Michael Bungie Stanior, he was kind enough, we were going to do it in person when we were in London together, but we ended up doing it on Zoom. He was kind enough to do this process called immunity to change. Do you know what that is”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A publisher, and so the wonderful Kathy Sweeney and I talked together about this book and we sort of finalized what I was going to do. And then I don't know what happened, but everything just kind of changed. Like I began to kind of tell my stories. And I was able to just talk about in writing the experiences I'd had in startups. And amazingly, the words, I don't want to say they flowed out of me. There was plenty of difficulty and butt in chair and discipline around it. But I no longer back to self-talk. I no longer had this I can't do it in my head. I had instead, I'm going to do this. I'm going to get this done.”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly, or they'll say, This person isn't doing this job, and they'll say, Well, did you hire for that job? Oh, well, we sort of just like that person or whatever So I see these things over and over, and I really wanted to write a book. And I'll just tell you, I was just kind of in my own way. All my reasons, I'm not sure if I can do it. Every time I sit down to write, I go blank. I'm not sure how to structure it. All these things. And then I wouldn't necessarily devote the time to it because it was very uncomfortable. So I'd rather do the things that were comfortable for me. So it took me quite a long time to get over that. And it was actually during the pandemic that I just thought If you don't take this time to write your book, you're going to be so disappointed in yourself. Coming out of this pandemic, what's going to make you feel like I did not use my time appropriately, did not use my time well? And the answer was that you didn't write this book. So I talk to a number of friends. I got a lot of moral support. I shed many tears. And I had anyway already had a contact at.”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, first of all, in my case, the book took 10 years to write, 10 years plus six months, the first 10 years were like, oh, I can't do it. I'm not good at this. I can't do it. So that was extremely frustrating. I knew I had something to say and I wanted to say it. And also, as I got more and more involved with startups, I really saw, oh, there are these common things that happen in startups. I'll say like, well, where's your leadership team? They'll say, wait, what's a leadership team? Or I'll say, well, did you give them like?”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And notice how it's actually divorced from circumstances. I'll speak for myself. My life's changed quite a bit in the past 20 years. I know that your life has changed too. The anxiety is kind of ever-present. It just changes what it attaches to. So you've got to find ways to counteract the anxiety because the anxiety isn't going away just because some circumstance, you think, oh, that thing that I finally get will somehow cure my anxiety. Not really. I'm speaking for myself. Not if you have some anxiety embedded inside of you.”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Agency and some empowerment in this matter, whatever it is. And so I always want to encourage them to remember, who are you really? You have a lot of resources. You have a lot of creativity. You will figure your way out of this problem just like you always have because you will be okay no matter what. And I want people to take that on, take on the mantle of I will be okay no matter what.”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that a lot of, I'll say a lot of people, a lot of people, but certainly a lot of people in the workplace and my clients, they have this underlying fear and concern. What if this happens? What if that happens? You know, in large companies, it might be, oh, what if I get fired or what if these layoffs affect me or whatever? And with a startup, it might be, oh, what if we fail? What if we don't make it? What if we can't raise this funding? And there's just a lot of fear and worry that shows up every day in the workplace. It's really very difficult to think about. So what I try to get them to remember is this one thing is not definitive of your entire life. Not only that, back to problems, problems everywhere. You're always going to have problems. So if you can approach this particular problem about maybe getting funding and having trouble doing it or maybe concerns about your job, realizing I will be okay no matter what. That helps you have some”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They can be very hard on themselves, they can be very critical. The problem is, in addition to taking up your time and energy, it leaks into your team. And it leaks into the people that you actually want to encourage and you want them to do a good job and you want to encourage them. And regularly, if I say to somebody, what are you saying to yourself? And they say all these horrible things, I feel like, would you ever say that to your best friend? Could you actually ever say, oh, you jerk, oh, I can't believe you totally screwed up. And they always would give their best friend much more of a break. And they even would give their employees much more of a break. And the problem is when they don't give themselves a break with self-compassion, it kind of leaks out and it pollutes the environment.”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just want to add the bridge of self compassion, which I think is so important. Again, it's like people are, oh no, I don't want to waste that time. I just want to fix the problem. I actually think internally, gosh, the images coming to mind is like internally hugging yourself, actually knowing, hey, I'm doing that as part of self-talk really. I'm doing the best I can. I don't mean to be screwing up whatever I think I'm screwing up. I'm going to keep trying until I get it right. The compassionate parent looking into that self and giving some comfort. That lets you move to the next stage, which is self-talk. It's becoming aware of it. It's then giving yourself the healing power of compassion just knowing, hey, we're all here doing the best we can and so are you. That allows you and gives you the space to open up and transform your self-talk. And by the way, if you're hard on yourself as CEOs, I work with.”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. I think it leads to a downward spiral at times. You think it gives you an edge, but I am not sure if that edge is helpful in performance, because what do you care about? Success, whatever that your domain is, you want to be successful. So the problem is when you talk down to yourself, when you criticize yourself, especially harshly, you're actually burning up a lot of calories, which you could have used to actually solve the problem. You're not your most resourceful. You're not your most creative and best self when you're”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Telling yourself positive things even in the face of that negative self talk, it's actually very helpful because it gives you a ton more energy. And I found that for myself.”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think just coming to terms with the fact that self talk is real, and I began to study a little bit about it, and I saw research articles that said that athletes talk to themselves and they see that when they say motivating things to themselves, they perform better. And when they say demotivating things to themselves, they perform worse. And I thought, well, I don't need much more information than that. I'm convinced. And then I see it in myself and in my clients. And so I just want to say to everybody, many people I work with are critical and are very hard on themselves. And I think that they think it gives them an edge. I know you've talked about that a lot before on your podcast. You think it gives you an edge. But actually, self-compassion and transforming that negative self-talk into something more positive, into reframes, finding ways to reframe into more positive.”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know, I am somebody to your point before I'm on the forced march of my life many times. And so my self-talk can be, oh, you didn't do that right. You screwed that up. My woe is me self-talk is what will become of me? I began to realize that that, you know, you think it's nothing. You think that doesn't matter, it's not in the physical world or who cares what you say to yourself or no, I don't really talk to myself or whatever. But once you become aware of it, actually I have my clients do this and I've done this myself. In the middle of the day, you could journal what has motivated me and energized me so far. And what has demoralized me and made me feel bad so far today de-energized me. And very often it's self-taught.”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I love that. You know, as you know, I'm very into fitness and I'm into kettlebells. And so my coach who works with me on my strength training and my kettlebells, one time I failed to lift. And he looked at me so kindly and he said so almost like joyfully, oh good, now we know where the gaps are. And I thought that was so beautiful that he looked at my failure, right? My weakness that way. It changed actually my way to think about as much as possible, I try to give people a lot of tools to handle it to your point kind of clinically or even is oh good, now we have something to do.”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Methodical, but strategic did not show, we asked probably eight or ten people and strategic did not show up. So I said, well, I'm just letting you know I know that you're strategic in your own head, but I just want you to know that brand is not getting out there. People are not viewing you as strategic. And I think that's common, Tim, because people think these thoughts in their head. But really what people observe is action.”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What you're about to do is a little weird. And if you're not doing it inside of your organization, it's going to be like, wait, why are you doing this? I heard a coach. Okay, great. You can email this to folks. You might want to set it up. Like, I'm gathering information about me. I'm trying to advance my career. One thing that would really help me would be if you could articulate the three words that you think about when you think about me. And now people will regularly say, you mean your strengths and weaknesses? No, no, no. Just looking for the three words. And so if you can email that to folks or if you can ask them, then they'll give you back three words. So I did this one on my clients and she had said to me, I'm very strategic. I'm like, great, that's fantastic. And she told me that quite a bit. And I said, well, let's do a three word activity. So I actually did it for her. I went out and I said, when you think about my client, what are the three words that come to mind when you think about her? And a lot of words came back, detailed, critical, thoughtful, analytical.”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Love that. I think that's such a quick and easy 360 feedback a little bit. It's like, how am I showing up? So for everybody, Tim, you're the expert on your intention and everybody around you is the expert on your impact. For all of us, it's so helpful to figure out how am I showing up? Because we never really know how we're showing up. So these three words activity, first of all, I want to tell everybody, you can always say, oh, I heard a coach and she told me to do this. Blame me. That's what I always want to say because it's a little weird.”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you solve that, congratulations It's true. I tell my clients if you're lucky, you pick your problems, problems, problems everywhere. But if you're lucky, you get to pick your problems. If you don't like these problems, why don't you go join IBM? Right? Because you'll get a whole other set of problems, right? With being in a large company besides being in your startup. So if you like these problems, let's solve these problems. These are the problems you've chosen for yourself.”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Comfortable, and I'm going to make her uncomfortable. And I just said, you know, you're robbing her of the benefits. So we role play, he gree, we roleplayed it. He went and talked to her. They had a very difficult conversation. It was difficult not because she was against the feedback, but because she did cry and because she did talk about her concerns. It's really hard for me to do this and it's hard for me to do that. It's hard for me to speak publicly. It's hard for me to remember to keep track of all these things. I don't always feel empowered to kind of go do this thing on my own. They had a long conversation. She was upset. And the next day she came back to him and said, I so appreciate your telling me that. I know that was hard. I so appreciate your telling me that. I wish somebody had told me all this 15 years ago.”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like to share a story where this became really real for me. It was From a client a few years ago, he was the CFO of the company that I was working with. And we would talk, and by the way, what a fantastic guy and also was so empathetic that it was hard for him to give feedback to people. So he had his direct report, who was never a number of things that she wasn't doing right. She wasn't owning a process. She wasn't proactively giving updates. She would never speak publicly. So there was, you know, all these reasons why she was kind of getting in her own way. And we talked about, I said, well, maybe you need to give her that feedback. And he said, oh, no, I know what's going to happen. She's going to cry. No, I don't want to do that. No. And I said, you know, you're observing this important area for her to grow in her career. And it's so stingy of you to hold back because you're not comfortable. That's what I hear you saying. I'm going to be uncomfortable.”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Kim Scott She's a grid, and I don't remember all the parts of her grid, but one of her grid, the place you do not want to be, is ruinous empathy. You feel so bad for them, so you don't want to say and then 20 years go by and their career doesn't get better because you were not comfortable telling them what had to be said.”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Uncomfortable exactly. I think a fantastic resource is crucial conversations. Which is then followed up by crucial confrontations. His companion book. People think that confrontations are like, oh, I don't want to confront him. Well, I think you're just saying, here's what's going on. It's not about confronting people. I think sometimes people confuse direct talk and straight talk with confrontations. Nonetheless, crucial conversations and crucial confrontations give you a lot of tools into how to address those conversations. And I would add radical candor by Kim Scott is also a great book on that from that point of view because it also makes the case about why it's so important to give feedback for people. Radical candor is really clear in you need to build a solid relationship with people, which is absolutely true. Conversations go better when you have a solid relationship with someone and they know that you're on their side and that you're doing this because you want to help them, give them the feedback because you want to help them and then it helps you really have the tools to actually say what there is to say in a comfortable way. Well, not in a comfortable way, but in a way.”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let's assume that this person has not addressed any of your feedback or has not adequately addressed it. Maybe they're trying, maybe they're not trying. It needs to be a different conversation, which is, listen, I've asked you to do these things. It hasn't been working. I need to let you know that we're going to part ways with you. We can talk all about why and how. And I want to make sure there's going to be a good transition. I think you're a great person. It's just that you're not able to meet the job requirements right now. And it's really necessary to have the people in place to meet the job requirements. So I want to talk to you about the transition plan. The thing is that I assume that you've had a lot of conversations in advance of that because it should not be a surprise for somebody when they ultimately get fired if that's what happens. It's because you've had the conversations with them time and time again, content, pattern, and you're able to then say, we've had this conversation multiple times.”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Problems everywhere, as you also said. Exactly. Exactly. Problems, problems everywhere. Well, the problems, problems everywhere is like, yep, soon as you solve this problem, you're going to solve another problem. So let's solve this problem first. We don't ever graduate from problems. You then look at this person and you say, listen, and maybe you've had a few more conversations. And I'll talk about sort of you're not building and leading your team. I've asked you a couple of times to really focus on building and leading your team to make sure that everybody's coordinating together and that we're launching two or three products, not just this one product. I've asked you to learn to delegate more to get people more involved. And I've asked you to communicate around to people.”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“After a period of time, if this person is not performing, they're just not performing, they're either not communicating in this way, they're not managing their area. So for example, a lot of people inside of startups, they start out as a product manager, as example. And then they turn into the head of product, which means they're no longer a product manager. That's not their job anymore. Their job is to lead higher and lead a team of people. Very different skill set. And it's very common for someone who's a great product manager to get promoted into this head of product and then bad things happen.”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Actually, the first reaction is usually. I know, I know, I'm sorry. I know, I know, I know, but that's the problem. We're focusing again on content. Then I ask my clients to actually the roleplay with me. Let's talk about the pattern. What's going on? And do you think it's important? Yeah, I know it's important. I get busy. I forget. And then let's talk about strategies that I actually need you to use. And I'm here to help you, but I actually need you to use these strategies to remind yourself to coordinate better with them. Do you need to have sort of a small peer team meeting periodically every day or once a week? Do you need to put on your calendar that you need to kind of let people know on Mondays and Thursdays what's going on? Do you need to have more one-on-one with these folks? Whatever it takes, but I can't have you keep forgetting.”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that's the conversation to have with people, not this constant sort of do this. Okay, do this. Okay, do this. It's like doesn't help. At some point, they're not doing it. What's going on?”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is not communicating with the people around him. He's kind of like living in a silo, and we need your information to feed into sales, to feed into marketing, even to feed into engineering. And you're not proactively telling people what you're thinking and what's going on. So that's the feedback. And I need you to proactively tell your people, tell your peers what's going on. And then life goes on and he doesn't do it. And the CEO goes back and says, hey, I really need you to proactively tell your peers what's going on. It's really need this information. It's really important. So it doesn't happen again. And rather than keep going back, it's really helpful to say, hey, I've been seeing a pattern. So I've been asking you to proactively reach out to your peers and tell them what's going on. It's actually really important because they need the input. And you've told me, yes, yes, yes. A couple of times. But I'm seeing this pattern, which is that I ask you to do it and maybe you get better for a day or two, but it doesn't stick. What's going on?”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So what I think oftentimes the clients I work with and really any, let's think of a CEO of a startup that I work with, his point of view to me is I keep telling him I've told him. I've told him multiple times. I've told him he's not doing it. So then I'm like, let's step back because your job is not to nag people. That's terrible, this feeling of like, oh, I'm the nag now. Now to me, it gets interesting. And I like to give people a framework, which is content pattern and relationship. So content pattern and relationship. So content is...”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's that we have so you're holding these people hostage, right? You're holding the staff hostage in these meetings. And of course, your hoarding time that should be unlocked to have them go do other things, but also it's like you're crushing their soul because they know that they shouldn't be in this meeting because there's like, oh, I have so much work to do and I'm in this meeting. And it's just draining. People don't feel burned out because they're working long hours or they're working hard. People feel burned out when they're wasting their time, when things are hard to do or when they're spending their time in these endless meetings that don't feel relevant to them. So I think that's part of the unlock is also it's to be efficient and effective in your meetings and it's also to recognize that people should be freed and unlocked to go do their work and they're going to be happier when they're putting their time and effort into things that matter”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I remember you were surprised. I even remember this feeling of, oh, you're having fun, that's good. That's good. I think your team was way into it and no one knew what to expect really. But I appreciate that you have come to see the value of the feeling of enjoying being together as being actually tangibly helpful for the team to work together.”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This offset. So it's a one day offset, a two day offsite. What's the specific goal that we want to get out of this? And by the way, team cohesion, having some laughs together, enjoying being together, that's part of it. That's a fantastic goal, especially by the way, coming out of COVID. That's a fantastic goal right now, just to kind of reconnect. But then it may also be to plan the year or it may also be to think through how we're working as a team and to improve the way we're working together as a team. And it may also be specific projects that the team is working on that'll just, again, benefit from a quiet, reflective space together.”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think that actually you are not alone. So many of the CEOs I work with or any of the leaders I work with, if they haven't experienced off sites or people may have experienced as a negative either waste of time or weird trust falls or uncomfortable or not productive, I typically have a little ways to go to help persuade them influence them that it's a good idea to your point to try. So for me, what I like to do is I use data as in this is my experience of the team. So the team doesn't know, as I said before, the things going on. It'll be really helpful to get everybody on the same page. It'll be helpful to do this one particular working session in a where we step outside the day-to-day and do it together in a concentrated period of time. But at the end of the day, Tim, just like you, they're like, all right, let's try it. So then we try it. And it's to me, it's the same thing. What's the goal?”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I like to think of myself as somebody who doesn't over prescribe as a coach. I don't walk into a situation and say, let's do an offsite. We need to have an offsite. No, no, no. First of all, I'm involved. So what I'm finding are a few symptoms. And the symptoms might be people are not on the same page, people don't understand the goals. There's not maybe a strong relationship between key people. To your point about actually about team cohesion, there's just not an esprit decor. So what that means is all of those things get in the way of work and get in the way of kind of rowing in the same direction. So that's what I would say to the CEO I'm working with a leader I'm working with let's do an off-site now as I recall Tim you were a little skeptical”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Everybody go off and do some more work to come back to the table to think about the decision. That's okay. But then we have to be clear the purpose of this meeting is to communicate and prime people. And that's a different meeting is going to happen. There's a different meeting that's going to happen to make a decision. I'm obsessed with meetings, as you can see. I love meetings. Good meetings are great.”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like, what are we making here? Right, right, right, exactly. That's right. Are we making pound cake or spaghetti? It's like two different things. So, what they'll say is what we're trying to make decisions on this, that, and the other. And I'll say, okay, so you've got 20 people in this meeting. Are you really going to make a decision in this meeting? Is that really what you're going to do? Are you set up to make a decision? Has everyone thought about it? Oh, no, not really. Okay. Who do you actually need to make a decision? Well, these five people. Oh, okay, great. And what do they need to make a decision? Well, they need this kind of material, this kind of insight. Fantastic. So the decision making meeting, the sort of we're going to decide this thing is a different meaning. By the way, Tim, if that meeting's happening now, then what we can do is shift the goal this meeting. It doesn't have to be irrelevant. The goal of this meeting may be is to lay the table for that decision. How's that? So maybe it's to get everyone on the same page. Maybe it's to prime everybody. The decision's about to be made. Maybe it's to have...”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I am always astounded at meetings and how inefficiently they're run and how much we waste our time in meetings. I'm always like, guys, it's an expensive room, right? Like actually it matters that we're all here and kind of meandering off course. So when I'm there or what I always try to do is get people to do this. Hopefully, you know, when I'm not there, to get into the habit of saying, what's the goal of this meeting? What is the purpose of this meeting specifically? And what does success look like? We're going to come out of this meeting with, and then some definition of success. And then how are we going to get there? So when I often will say to people, what's the goal of the meeting? They kind of list out an agenda. First, we're going to talk about this, then we're going to talk about this. And actually, what's interesting to me is that it takes a minute for me to have them step back and say, no, really, what's the goal of this meeting?”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of us project meetings are contained all of us on a regular basis. Now, what normally happens in any kind of company, oh, we're too busy, we're good, we don't need those meetings, no, we're all set. But she really insisted because she sort of saw it's going to be easy for us to get off track on this project. And it really helped them all stay on the same page and also help them build relationships so that when things got bad and things sort of got rough and they did, the relationship amongst all the team members who were working together was much better. So that's an example of the way you can use a pre-mortem.”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People know what a postmortem is. Let's debrief how this went. But I work with my clients and also thinking about in pre-mortem. So thinking about, let's assume that this doesn't go well. This fails in some way or doesn't fulfill the promise. What are the things that we did that made it fail? And if you can anticipate those in advance, you have a much better way, a much better hope of planning to not have those things. One of my clients did this. They were doing a partnership with a larger company and the pre-mortem was all the things that are going to prevent us from winning, from doing it right. And one was lack of communication. So my client that I was coaching from the startup, she realized, ah, okay, I need to proactively make sure that I'm going to put meetings on the calendar that are going to contain all.”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, in many ways, that process, it's a starting point of getting the feedback itself and then sending them back to the stakeholders to have open-ended conversations about what they found out, what they're going to do about it bridges the gap between the feedback and the response. But I guess I'm wondering about you, Tim. Could you talk about what was valuable about it? And what did you change as a result of it?”
2021-10-19 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #539: Alisa Cohn on Prenups for Startup Founders, How to Reinvent Your Career, the Importance of "Pre-Mortems," and the Three Selves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT