Cody Royle On The High-Performance Secrets The Business World Should Steal From Sports

[01:00] Paul: Welcome to The Boundless Podcast. I'm Paul Millerd, and I created this podcast because I'm passionate about making sense of the future of work and having conversations with the innovators, creators, and thought leaders who are carving their path in today's fast-changing world. You can check out the podcast and more on boundlesspod.com. So today's conversation is the full interview I did with Cody Royle. You may have listened to the minisode I published around the Super Bowl where we talked about the Patriots. Cody wrote a book, Where Others Won't, which I'm holding a contest and giving away 2 copies.

You just have to retweet the podcast with the hashtag #BoundlessPod, and I'll choose the winners a week after this episode. In this episode, Cody and I go through many examples from his book about what the business world can learn from sports. I think Cody's story is pretty awesome where he took a leap himself to go out as a freelancer, but was also learning a lot from the coaching he was doing on the weekends. And he was having the experience of high-performance team environment on the weekends and then going into the corporate world, which he described as baffling.

So I think he has a unique perspective and shares a lot about his own journey going from trying to be an Aussie Rules football player growing up in Australia to realizing he was better as a coach and then finally leaving the corporate world to pursue some of his passions around this topic and doing that through things like AllMBA and the encouragement of other people. So enjoy this episode. Let me know what you think. Like it on iTunes, leave a review. Would love if you'd share it with somebody. And if you're interested in supporting the podcast more, check it out on Patreon.

Thanks for joining me on the podcast today, Cody.

[03:00] Cody Royle: G'day, Paul. Thanks for having me, mate. Awesome.

[03:03] Paul: So I'm looking forward to the conversation today. You've worn many hats in your life, including athlete, coach, businessperson, and now author of the book Where Others Won't that talks about taking ideas from sports and applying them to the corporate world. I love this. I think a lot of people do make those sports analogies in the corporate world, but don't really get to where they, where they come from and what's driving performance in sports. So I have a ton of questions for you, but I'd love to just start easy and ask you about sports. What's the first sport you played?

[03:37] Cody Royle: The first sport that I played is rugby league, which most people in North America have never heard of. I grew up in a place called Canberra, Australia. Most people don't know that Canberra is actually Australia's capital. It's not Sydney. Canberra is the capital. When I was growing up, the only sport that we had there was rugby league.

It's a 13-man variation of rugby. It's a little bit like American football where You only get 6 tackles, and on the 5th tackle you have to kick the ball away and give it to the opposition, and then they come back down the field. So at that time, that's the only real professional sport that we had in town. So that was the first sport that I played. And then when I was 8, we moved to Melbourne, and sport in Australia is very regional, and down in Melbourne they only play Aussie Rules. So Aussie Rules has ruled the rest of my life after that, but Yeah, the first sport was a bizarre one, rugby league.

[04:34] Paul: For me, my first exposure to Aussie rules football was, I think MTV started covering it, or maybe it was ESPN, but it was somewhere in the '90s where it was like, oh, this is a different sport.

[04:46] Cody Royle: Yeah, it'd be ESPN. That's where most people have seen it. Yeah. And it's, you know, as Australians have traveled, it's kind of picked up all over the world and One of the things that I do, I coach our men's national team in Canada. We obviously have a big rivalry with the US, and they have a thriving league down there. So it's only played professionally in Australia, but it's definitely making its way all around the world.

[05:11] Paul: So you've done a number of things in your career now. So looking back, when you were growing up, what were some of your interests?

[05:19] Cody Royle: Sport. My, my journey was fulfilled with just being obsessed with sport. And I really only had one career path that I was interested in, and that was being involved in sport in, in some way, shape, or form. And as I got to draft age, which in the AFL is 18, I was there or thereabouts, but I had a few injuries and probably didn't have an X factor. And at that time, they were really looking for players with X factors. And so really, I got to 18 and didn't get drafted and then had to scramble from there.

And it's probably reflective in what I've ended up doing. Like you said, I've worn a lot of hats, and part of that process for me has been really starting to have to find out what I wanted to do at the age of 18. And ironically, it's led me back into sports, but I, I had to really start thinking about it at a late age.

[06:19] Paul: Yeah, so in your bio, you talk about you had this analysis paralysis. When did that realization come to you? And that's obviously led to a lot of your success, as you say, in the coaching realm. But when did you have that realization that maybe you're looking at it different than others?

[06:38] Cody Royle: Yeah, it really came to the fore as I kept going up and up the levels. So my story was I, I was in the, the state team, um, at under 15, under 16, and under 18 level, and super competitive. Obviously everyone in Victoria, which is the state around Melbourne, plays Aussie Rules. And so I was in that elite group at all those age groups, and then when I got to that level, I was just completely disabled. And it was like my talent just completely fell away as I looked around at people who were going to be my teammates. But I was just, uh, you know, I had imposter syndrome.

I was kind of wondering why I was there. And all the things that had got me to that level ended up crippling me. And so it was probably as I matured— again, you're still young at 16 and 18, you're not quite sure why— but as I look back on that stage of my life, it's definitely— it was paralysis by analysis, and I just, I stewed on every little thing and wasn't able to live in the moment and show my true self out on the field, which is unfortunate, but it's taught me a lot of other things.

[07:50] Paul: Yeah, so, so when you entered the business world, what were some of your reflections based on your previous experience, obviously competing at a very high level in a team environment? Were you kind of taken aback by how things happened in the business world?

[08:07] Cody Royle: Yeah, definitely. That was one of the first things that really struck me about the business world was I'd always had this impression that it was team-based, and it certainly was to a certain extent, but not to what I was used to. I'd surrounded myself in sports my whole life and understood that dynamic. And then to get into the corporate world where someone is willing to just kind of let you die out on your own and it's kind of a sink or swim scenario. Yeah, I was a little bit put off by that and that stewing over 10 or 15 years, the first 10 or 15 years of my career has culminated in why I wrote the book, funnily enough.

[08:53] Paul: Yeah, I often find that people find what they're most excited by, by some of the things that frustrate them. Are there any moments early in your career that really stand out that just kind of drove you a little crazy? Why are things operating like this? Or why can't we do it a different way?

[09:12] Cody Royle: Not so much early in my career. It's actually late in my career, as in within the last 1 to 2 years. I worked for one of the big banks here in Canada. They're called the Big Five here. Going into that sort of environment, I'd worked with big companies before as a consultant, but this was the first time I'd worked inside a major, major corporation. It was just baffling, the whole thing to me.

None of it made sense. I was coaching a national program on Saturday and Sunday with these elite athletes, and we were building a team. Then I'd walk into supposedly a team environment from Monday to Friday, and just shake my head. I knew that that wasn't going to be what I wanted to do for a long time, but I ended up sticking it out a little bit longer almost as fuel for the book, funnily enough.

[10:10] Paul: When did you know you had to write a book?

[10:14] Cody Royle: Probably about a year and a half ago. I'd been blogging about the same topic for about 5 years and it had started to materialize into something where I'm like, "This is a book and I can conceptualize the whole thing." It just made sense. I wasn't ready when I started writing 5 years ago, but the added experiences on top of what I'd already spoken about started to make sense for it to be pushed into a different format.

[10:48] Paul: Yeah, it makes sense. I, I've talked to so many people that start writing and the unintended upsides they experience are pretty incredible. It helps you kind of make sense of what you're thinking and you can look back and be like, oh, this is— I've come a long way.

[11:05] Cody Royle: Yeah, it's funny, I, I was at my best friend's wedding in February and I spent a lot of time with his family growing up because my mother was a single mother. So she was working. So I would spend time with my best mate's family. His mom said at the wedding that reading my writing, having seen me grow up, she could see that that was the outlet that I needed. I wasn't able to verbalize a lot of my annoyances with the world or passions. But she had read some of the things that I'd written and she just knew that that was the outlet that I needed.

It took me 25 years to find it, but I can feel that too.

[11:52] Paul: Yeah, I personally love writing as well. It's really helped me self-reflect a lot. I encourage a lot of people to just start writing even if you're not excited by what you're putting out there. But I'd love to get your reaction to something you participated in. So Seth Godin created this program called Alt MBA. And I've been fascinated with this since it's come out.

It's a 1-month— and you can correct me if I'm wrong— it's a 1-month essentially sprint where you're creating a lot of things, getting rapid feedback, and it's so much cheaper than something that might be a 2-year grad school commitment that could put you in loads of debt and seems to lead to some pretty remarkable results for people. So I'd love if you could just tell us what the altMBA is about and what were some of the outcomes for you.

[12:52] Cody Royle: Yeah, absolutely. It is something that has definitely changed my life and changed my perspective on a lot of things, both in the workplace and outside of the What sold me on it was Seth essentially reverse-engineered an MBA and took away what people came away from that program with and was able to build something else around it for the digital age and for the agile age and for the current workplace. So yeah, you're exactly right. It's 4 weeks. You deliver 12 or 13 projects. Within that month, and every second day you're participating in either developing a project, group discussions, and the projects range from everything to do with you personally and what you want to achieve, and all the way through to things like Start with Why becomes a a project, so really common kind of corporate business-centric ideas.

So the outcome for me was really— it ended up being more of a personal journey for me than a professional journey, but the outcome was I was challenged repeatedly by the people in my groups to finish the book, put timelines around the book. And just leap. And so to kind of answer the first question that you asked last, what's it all about? It's really about forcing you off the edge and making you step into something, whatever that something is for you. And the great thing is that it is very much around, based around you and what you want to achieve, not going in specifically to get an MBA for a piece of paper. You come out of it with a bit better of an understanding of yourself personally and how you're going to achieve your goals.

[14:59] Paul: So did you ever consider getting a formal MBA or anything like that?

[15:03] Cody Royle: No, I'm a non-traditionalist, and I have my own gripes with the education system, which we don't need to get into, but no.

[15:13] Paul: Yeah, we can, uh, we can save that for another, uh, podcast. But I'd love to dive into the book here. So the book was a big outcome of the, uh, All MBA Talk to me about the process there and any of, any learnings along the way of creating it.

[15:29] Cody Royle: Yeah, so the book is— what I discovered through the UltimBA process is the book is really my baby. It's 5 years of thoughts and reflections and frustrations with the corporate world and, and then laid over the top with my sporting experience and some improvements that I can see, or some, some little nuggets that a middle manager or a VP in a company could just grab that little nugget and adapt it. The process that I went through, I really wanted to self-publish and I wanted to go through all of the pain that comes with that for a couple of reasons. One, because it was my baby and I didn't want to change it. I didn't want an editor to come in and tell me that that chapter wasn't going to make it because these were very specific thoughts.

And so I went down that path and that has been the— the end result is obviously my accomplishment, but going through that process of going and having to find my own editor, which I found through the Ult MBA network, going and finding a graphic designer to do my front cover, which I knew from my time at the bank. Having to market my own book and my own ideas and get on my own podcasts, that has been the real learning for me and the greatest achievement and the thing that I'm going to look back with the most kind of astonishment of where I've been able to get to, but also the proudest part of being writing a book for me. But I also, for a follow-up, I want to go down the traditional publishing path to see what that's like too. So it's been a really— the ideas are obviously very unique, but I've tried to go down a unique path of doing it too just for the experience.

[Speaker:JEFF_BULLAS] Right.

[17:34] Paul: So love to dig more into the book and some of the examples you outline. I'll link up to the book in show notes. So at a deeper level, it seems to be about changing the frame on traditional practices. I think you might agree with the statement that you're arguing that the business world leans on conventional practice a lot. You use a quote, "We don't get fired for hiring IBM." Why are people in the corporate world so afraid of taking a different path?

[18:11] Cody Royle: I think, yeah, there's a certain lethargy and then, yeah, I agree with you. I think there's an ingrained idea of what business is and how companies work. And people just don't like change. Like, that's a known thing. But we built a system through the industrial age that basically helped all these ingrained notions stay in place. You just go to the same workplace over and over again from 9 to 5 and then you check out and nothing ever changes and you get your money at the end of it and you retire and at 65, this is it.

We built a whole— well, we built a whole world. The Western world is built that way. So that's why I think people are scared of change and that's why the new age of whether it's Silicon Valley or whether it's fintech or whether it's Bitcoin. That's why people are scared of all these things. But I think what that's now created, and this is what the book is about, is that there's a real opportunity to harness your people now and get the most out of your people in order to get a competitive advantage rather than what we used to do was we would go and we would make a faster conveyor belt which could produce more cars faster and we would get to market faster or we would innovate on a particular product. But the book is about people innovation and setting your people up for success.

You're right that the fundamental thing for that is we need to change the framework that we've been working in for the last 50 years.

[20:02] Paul: Right. One thing that really kept popping up for me as I read your book, and also reflecting on my own career, I think purpose is a big word. I think in sports there's clear purpose, right? It's excellence and winning, and you want to win that championship. I think a lot of times in the corporate world, there are organizations that are just missing this clear purpose. When I reflect on some of my best experiences, it was this huge goal of being a lasting firm or doing great work.

Why do you think organizations really struggle to find these driving goals?

[20:41] Cody Royle: Possibly because they have gotten so big. I think we kind of, you know, I don't believe that the original intent was to be as big as McKinsey or an IBM. And through that process, you end up acquiring a bunch of companies and you bring all these different parts together and people together and you're all over the world. The interesting thing that I found, and this is— Simon Sinek has been talking about this, is you can actually have an overarching why or purpose of the company with compartmentalized wise underneath that that are still driving towards the ultimate goal. The example that I talk about in the book, Nyle Diggs, who was a linebacker with the Green Bay Packers, when you think about it, he was a linebacker. He also played special teams.

He was in 3 or 4 different groups within the team and they all had different goals. The defense had different overarching goals than the linebackers had. And the whole team had different goals than just the linebackers, and they had different ways of rewarding players within those different groups, but they're all headed towards the same destination, which was to win games. And so I think, you know, when you, when you think about that from a corporate perspective, it's okay for the accounting division to have a different goal than the overarching company as long as they're all going in the same direction. and that's why I, that's why I think there's, there's a real body of knowledge that people are overlooking in sports because they just see it as a bunch of doofus testosterone-filled guys, uh, running into each other.

But underneath that is some really, really smart people strategies that you could look at and adapt to your circumstances.

[22:37] Paul: Yeah, I love that idea about different cultures and subcultures. I think There has been an acknowledgment that culture matters in organizations, but often it's, okay, let's design this from the top and tell people what it is. And you talk about one example, which I love, which I think they do a great job, is Netflix. They published a culture deck, and a lot of people have seen this, but haven't really dug into what, what it took to create it. I think Patty McCord, when she talks about this, she's the chief people officer there, talks about this was a result of 10 years of work of trying to figure it out. And you can't just create a culture deck.

What have you seen from Netflix and learned from them?

[23:27] Cody Royle: Yeah, I've been lucky. I sent Patty an email last week. I read the introductory chapter of her book Powerful, which came out last Greek, I think. She got back to me and I'm lucky enough I'm going to exchange some ideas with her next month. They are the bastion of corporate culture and their understanding of it. I think the nugget when it all boils down amongst all the fluff and the grandiose that comes with people speaking about Netflix's culture, the nugget is that that culture deck changes.

And it's not the same as the original one that they uploaded onto the internet. They've changed it 3 or 4 different times, and they're going to continue to do that. And the best story I can say about Netflix's culture is that Patty McCord essentially lost her job because she had developed such a strong culture within that business. So, she was basically put out of work by her own great work and the company stuck to the culture above anything or anyone. There are so many lessons to be learned from that, that no one is bigger than the company and that Reed and Patty at the top were held to the same level that average Joe who's coming in as the help desk guy would be held to. Obviously, after people buy Where Others Won't, they should also buy Powerful by Patty McCord.

[25:15] Paul: Awesome. We'll link that up as well. Yeah. They actually have a pretty radical idea and I don't think people see see it as radical when they read it. They say, "We are a team, not a family." And the underlying behaviors that are lined up with that are saying, "You're constantly being assessed, just like sports. Like, you might be cut from the team or you might be traded." They want people who are doing their best work, and otherwise, they're not just going to give you a job just to hang out there.

[25:46] Cody Royle: Yeah. It was funny, I was listening to your episode with David and they were saying that the coworkers didn't show up to the funeral. It's kind of that thing where it really is where we're teammates, we're not a family. These guys aren't going to be there for you afterwards. I think the way to navigate that is to be transparent about it and say, "We need you to be on board for," If you're going to be here for 5 years, we need you to be on board here for 5 years and you're going to get a hell of a lot out of that and we're going to get a hell of a lot out of that. Then if that ends, we're going to shake hands, thank you for your time and we'll move on.

But you kind of need to know that going in rather than the way companies do it now is they sell you on this dream and then cut you 6 months later so that some guy in India can do your I'll do your job for half the price.

[26:45] Paul: Right? Yeah, there's that underlying lack of trust, which makes a lot of things people are trying to do, which are, are good initiatives, that kind of undermines itself.

[26:56] Cody Royle: Exactly.

[26:57] Paul: So I'd love to talk about coaching. So you've been coaching since you were 24, and pull out a lot of examples in your book, which are, which are just really great. I think you bring a great perspective to this as both a former athlete and a coach. But One thing that stuck out for me is you talk about coaching as a mindset that requires patience and practice. I thought this was a pretty unique insight, especially when you apply it to the business world. I think we think of things in terms of, okay, this leader is a good leader, except to really build those meaningful relationships, it takes a long time.

And we really need to shift our mindset in terms of how we develop people for that. So what are your thoughts on coaching when it comes to the business world?

[27:48] Cody Royle: I really did a lot of work around coaching for the book, and I wanted to be very particular about what I was saying. The funny thing is when you look into where the word even comes from, it comes from the word stagecoach, and that you're carrying a load of people from A to B. I think that really reflects what it should be, and it's kind of lost that edge to it. But I think in terms of it being a mindset, that's where we fall down a lot in the workplace. It's where it's seen as an event, and it's not an event. You can't coach someone— well, you can once a week for an hour, you know, when you sit down in your weekly sit-down with all your employees.

but there needs to be, it needs to be deeper than that. They need to be able to basically come to you with anything and not have to wait until the end of the week or whatever it is. And when you start to look at organizations that have implemented a coaching mindset throughout everything that they do, and that includes having the coaches be coached, right? The, the results are astronomical. And the example that I use is the Iceland soccer team where 15 years ago they realized that they weren't going to be able to develop the talent that they needed to be able to compete with the other European soccer teams, France and Netherlands and Germany. So what they did was invest their money in coaching.

And basically, I think it's 1 in every 800-odd people in Iceland has a FIFA accreditation for coaching. and then they allowed those coaches to work with the youth players. So the youth players, the talented ones, had more fun. They were better coached. They wanted to stay in soccer, so they progressed through soccer. They got bought by bigger clubs in Europe, got better coaching, and then the result has been that the team is in the World Cup as the smallest country to ever go to the World Cup.

And it's not that— it's not the players, it's the fact that they set up a coaching structure around them, and it took 15 years for this to come off. But they, they were patient, like you said, and they stuck with it. And when it didn't work, they went back to the drawing board— coaching, more coaching, more coaching, better coaches. And yeah, there's the parallel in the corporate world is it's seen as an event— go and coach this person, that's a one-off thing— rather than a 15-year thing.

[30:34] Paul: Right. Fix the performance. Make sure that person is better.

[30:37] Cody Royle: Yeah, in an hour.

[30:40] Paul: Exactly. So let's talk about some organizations. So I'm a big Boston sports fan. And you said you are a New York Giants fan. As a Patriots fan, I'll definitely get to digging into them. But first, would love to hear, how did you become a New York Giants fan?

Fan in Australia?

[31:06] Cody Royle: I am an NFL fan from way back. I think we— it was probably the mid-'90s. There was a highlight show that would come on at like 8 o'clock in the morning in Australia on Sunday morning or something like that. So I'd get up really early to watch it. And I ended up— I really enjoyed watching at that time the St. Louis Rams.

And when Kurt Warner got traded to the Giants, I decided I was going to follow him. Again, no allegiances. I'm just some kid in Melbourne, so I wasn't a local. I didn't need to be a homer. And then Warner plays, I think it's like 9 games, and then gets shipped off to Arizona. I'm like, you know what, I'm going to stick it out with the Giants.

They just drafted Eli. And so I kind of stumbled on it. It wasn't deliberate. It was following a player that I liked, and then I've just stuck with them ever since. Elias delivered on that, and so now I'm hooked.

[32:05] Paul: The Giants are a pretty incredible organization, and it pains me to say that as a Patriots fan, but the Patriots are also an incredible organization but have been beaten twice by the Giants in the Super Bowl. I think they've really benefited from great ownership, uh, some great coaches, great managers. What are some things that have stuck out for you looking at organizations like that?

[32:28] Cody Royle: Yeah, we talk about this a lot with our friends here when we go and watch games. There's, um, and the Patriots have joined this realm of just really stable, really deliberate organizations, and you know what you're going to get from them. And as frustrating as, as that can be with what the Giants are going through at the moment with having to basically strip down the whole organization and start again. Um, the consistency of what you expect from them and the fact that they're committed to who they are, I think, is what stands out the most.

And, you know, you see it with only a few, a handful, like the Steelers, the Giants, or the Patriots now under Bob Kraft, and Green Bay really probably the other example, but the consistency and that we are this and this is the way we've always done it and we're going to continue to do this and we're not going to be rocked by a 2-game losing streak and fire everyone. We're going to stick with it. Over time, again, we're talking generational teams here. Over time, you just build a consistency with that. And people know what to expect when they come into the organization. They know what they're going to get out of it.

I think that's why people that leave the New York Giants, players that go and play somewhere else, later on once they've retired, they still identify as being a Giant or a Patriot or a Packer. It's because it has such an effect on those people because they feel like they're at home. And yeah, that there's a lot to be said for that.

[34:18] Paul: Yeah, I think so many people underestimate how different it might be organization from organization. I think we, we see these teams on the field and say, oh, it's— there's 11 players there, there's 11 players there. But in many ways, I've tried to reflect on the Patriots and seeing what they're doing, looking at it from an organizational lens, and They're doing things very differently. Their goal is not just to win one game. They're putting people in earlier in the season, trying different things, going against the grain constantly, and it's all with this long, long-term goal of trying to win as many championships as possible. So what should an organization or even other football teams do when they think about copying models like this?

[35:05] Cody Royle: I think you hit the nail on the head there. The long view is really what you're after. It allows you to set yourself up in ways that other teams won't. So what the Patriots are great at doing, and I talk about this in the book, is they know that other teams are going to freak out and overreact and trade them something that is actually worth more value than it seems at that time. Second round picks is the big one that everyone talks about, but the Patriots just sit there and they have a long-term view. And then someone has a quarterback controversy or an injury or something happens and they completely freak out.

And they go, okay, well, why don't you give us your second round pick? And then they do that to 3 or 4 teams and by the end of it, it's seen as that they've fleeced teams. But it's because they're just consistent. They're playing the longer game and don't really care whether they lose 1 game, lose 5 games. Yeah, and I think there's so much to be learned from that. It happens in the business world too where something happens and everyone freaks out and panics and you fire this person and you do this and do that, and it just unsettles everything, um, and you do some crazy things and, uh, you don't set yourself up for sustained success, which is what the Patriots have had.

And it, right, to me, it's, it's not amazing what they've done because they've shown that they're unwilling to flinch because they lose a game or lose a player.

[36:51] Paul: And I think a lot of those advantages build. I was reflecting with a friend and saying Tom Brady and Belichick and Kraft have played almost 2 or 3 seasons of playoff high-intensity football. So once you're aiming high enough, you're getting more reps at that high-performance level, and suddenly the gains even grow more and more. Do you have examples from other teams or sports where that kind of comes out?

[37:23] Cody Royle: Um, yeah, well, I think there's, um, I think there's some consistencies with that as well. Um, you know, I, the recent example in the, um, in the tennis world would be a Roger Federer where, um, you know, he's just won his 20th Grand Slam having come back, you know, he's in his late 30s and everyone had written him off. But you have to remember that he fully understands what it takes and what his body needs and the pressure that he's going to come up against and how to play against XYZ player. And yeah, I think we see it in all walks of life, not just sport and business. But when you have that understanding of what it's going to take at the highest of high levels, it kind of becomes self-perpetuating to a certain degree. And so that's why people that have one success often have 3, 4, and 5 successes, because they now understand what it's going to take, right?

[38:33] Paul: Yeah, those, uh, those advantages build over time. One example we talked about with the Patriots was I wrote about this in one of my articles of saying, okay, Tom Brady wins his first Super Bowl and succeeds. And what the corporate world would actually do in this situation is say, all right, great, you're really good at your job, we're gonna promote you. But Bob Kraft didn't come on the field and say, Tom, we wanna make you general manager now. Why do we have such this disconnect? Like, we understand that the players should be doing the creating and the work in this in sports, but in the business world, we just promote people past what they're actually thriving at.

[39:14] Cody Royle: Yeah, exactly. That's a great example. Your whole article there, which is actually how we started talking, just hits the nail on the head. I think it's one of those old-world strategies again. You're good at putting nuts on the conveyor belt, and so we're going to promote you to the leader. And you just keep going up and up and up and up.

The whole system is set up that way, but you're starting to see examples of companies like Google who don't do that. They have— I think you mentioned this in the article as well— they have people that are earning more at the lower levels than the higher levels. So you're starting to see it, but it is really a structural thing. We need to completely revamp the way companies do business and how they promote people or don't promote people. But again, it kind of comes back to you have to be asking those questions of your people. Do you even want to be a leader?

We don't even ask that. We just promote people and they take it because it's more money. But we don't know whether people are interested in leadership, whether they can lead.

[40:28] Paul: We just say, "You're good at your job, and so now you're going to teach everyone else how to do it." Yeah, the counterintuitive thing may be they may actually be a better leader by just remaining doing the work and doing it at a really well level, right?

[40:43] Cody Royle: Right. And that was one of my real frustrations, I guess, in the corporate world was I just wanted to be a leader. So I actually would have taken a lower salary to be able to manage people and coach them and help them do their jobs better. But you can't do that unless you tow the company line for long enough and basically outlast everyone else. And then you get your opportunity to lead. That's really not a good way of doing it.

I think we should be almost putting particularly leaders into some sort of leadership pipeline where they can actually utilize those skills.

[41:23] Paul: Right. I love that. One of my ideas I've been thinking about, we have career tracks for supply chain, operations, finance, but there's no career track where you're just saying, I am a leader of people. You kind of discovered this in sports, but why aren't we creating a path just to develop people to inspire, coach, and lead?

[41:46] Cody Royle: Yeah, yeah, it's an interesting one. And there's, there's so many coaching examples now where well, I talk about a bunch in the book, but if you want to talk about the NFL, Sean McVay, 30 years old. In the corporate world, he doesn't get his head coaching position because he's too young and there's a more experienced guy to come in and take that role. There's another example in Germany, a coach by the name of Julian Nagelsmann. He has a small team. He was 29 when he took the job.

He took them into the Champions League qualifiers within 18 months. From when he took over, they were about to be relegated from the German first division. There's proof in sports that when you put people into a leadership career path, it doesn't take them long to be able to be really, really effective. They're not even out of their 20s. Of these guys and they're competing. They're inspiring and managing and leading teams at the highest, highest levels of sport.

There just has to be more examples in business where that could be the most effective thing to do rather than bringing in the 55-year-old guy with super experience at this and that who maybe is checked out and doesn't really want to lead.

[43:10] Paul: [Speaker:JEFF_BULLAS] I'd love to just get your reflection on If I'm a business person listening to this and wanted to know what are one or two things I should just copy and put in place in my business tomorrow?

[43:28] Cody Royle: The big thing for me would be— so throughout the book, there's really four quadrants that I talk about: recruitment, leadership, culture, and high performance. And the big change that I ultimately campaign for is for people to see those four as being interlinked. They're not siloed in any way, shape, or form, but they're treated as such. Again, we're talking about the old world where you go and have an HR division and you have this division and you have that, that, that. Um, I think what needs to happen is we need to reverse engineer a lot of that An easy change to make is your recruiting. You need to align your recruiting with what you're trying to achieve rather than just grabbing a job description off the shelf.

The last accounts payable person that we hired, let's just grab their description and we'll put an ad out on Monster or whatever it is, LinkedIn, and we'll just do that again. But spend some time worrying about the people that you bring into your organization. How are you going to lead them? What cultural elements they're bringing to the table and then how you're going to manage them. So it's not two things, but it's really one big thing is we need to stop looking at our world as being siloed. Those four elements are very much together.

You should be recruiting people worrying about how you're going to lead them and how you're going to manage that performance. And then, like we've been talking about, how is that going to change over time? Because once your top salesperson who was flying when they were 25 and single, once they have their first kid, their priorities change and maybe they lose their edge. And he doesn't care about being a ruthless salesperson anymore. How are you going to manage that person? So that starts at the recruiting process.

So if there is one little thing, I think really think about who you're bringing into your organization and why and how you're going to manage those people once they're in the job rather than sitting down and trying to checklist people. Can you do this? Can you do this? Can you do this?

[45:50] Paul: I love that. So if you were to give advice to somebody early in their career, somebody graduating college or even somebody maybe in your shoes at 18 years old who's pursuing sports, what would you have them think about that they might not be thinking about?

[46:05] Cody Royle: Try a lot of things. I, I was lucky enough to be on the Join Up Dots podcast a couple of weeks ago, which is a great podcast for young people that are coming into the workplace, and you're talking about how careers unfurl and career advice. And I talked about my journey as being one where I've tried a bunch of different things and I wear a lot of different hats and I do a lot of things and I've failed at a lot of things. My advice for people coming into the workplace is that it's— what you're going to find is that it's not as linear as you think it's going to be. The degree that you get may or may not end up being the field that you work in, probably not. The career path that you think you're you're probably not going to be on— by the end of your career, you're probably not going to be on that trajectory either.

Things are going to change and I think if you can acquire lots of different skills, one will really stick out to you that you want to pursue. But you have to try it first. You can't just stay on one trajectory and then pivot drastically when you're kind of in the middle because that becomes scary. Yeah, I love that.

[47:28] Paul: I think you're probably a great example of that too, kind of combining different skills, that sports experience, business experience, and then you added, layered the writing on top of that and kind of led to something you weren't expecting.

[47:40] Cody Royle: Yeah, exactly. And this is what I talked about on the other podcast was only in looking back have I realized that English was my best subject in school. I've actually always enjoyed writing and I've ended up— it's taken almost 15 years for me to connect those dots back up and for life to come full circle. But only by going through all the other things that I went through did I get to this destination. So I think there's a certain element of having to get comfortable with being uncomfortable and maybe not being able to see what the future holds, that actually it becomes a competitive advantage for you that you just end up— going back to what I was saying with the alt-MBA, you just end up leaping and seeing what happens. That becomes a really powerful thing if you harness it properly.

[48:36] Paul: What are one or two books that really influenced you either on people, strategy, or that have influenced you in your life?

[48:43] Cody Royle: Yeah, I'm, I'm a big reader. I love non-fiction books in this kind of category— sports and business and original ideas. So Legacy is one that really influenced me, which is about the All Blacks, the rugby team. And been lucky enough to speak to James Kerr, the author of that, who— he was embedded in the team for a couple of months and, and wrote about, you how they had developed their culture and what it was all about to be an All Black. It came at a really interesting time in their history where they weren't very good and they wanted to be good. It's a journey book that has sport as its background, but it's also about business and life lessons.

The other one would be Originals by Adam Grant, which I was reading as I was writing Where others won't, which really helped me because it's about how original ideas come to— come into the mainstream and basically the effort that you need to go through to get them to be heard, which was funny for me because, you know, my particular area that I write about isn't particularly well received. And so I need to do extra to tell people to look at the body of knowledge that exists in pro sport because they don't really want to hear that. Um, so it was a really powerful book for me at that time anyway, and I think there's a lot of lessons in there for people that maybe are struggling to find a place for their thoughts, and they have a few ideas that are a little bit different or a little bit quirky, but they believe in.

Um, it's a really powerful book to help consolidate those ideas and maybe even come away with some strategies as to how you can get those out into the world and, um, yeah, beat the drum a little bit. Awesome.