We tend to romanticize innovation as a lightning-strike moment: someone suddenly has a brilliant idea that changes everything.
But what if innovation isn’t something you wait for? What if it’s something you can deliberately create?
In this episode, I sit down with former Google executive and innovation speaker Steve Lerch, author of INNOVATE: Igniting a Culture of Curiosity and Perpetual Improvement, to explore how leaders can create environments where people continually question assumptions, share ideas, experiment, and improve.
Steve spent nearly a decade at Google, where part of his work involved teaching Google’s innovation philosophy to new employees. What I find particularly interesting about his perspective is that he doesn’t view innovation primarily as a technology issue. It’s a people and culture issue.
We explore the four themes at the heart of Steve’s approach—inspiration, curiosity, openness, and structure—and some surprisingly simple ways to put them into practice.
Steve explains why setting an “impossible” 10X goal can generate ideas you’d never discover by thinking incrementally, why labeling something “Version 1” changes the way people think about it, and why sharing unfinished ideas can lead to better collaboration and innovation.
We also talk about psychological safety, Google’s famous 20% projects, Paul McCartney brainstorming “Get Back” in front of the other Beatles, and why constraints and structure can actually increase creativity rather than restrict it.
If you’re a leader who wants your people to stop defaulting to “this is how we’ve always done it” and start looking for better ways forward, there’s a lot you can take away from this conversation.
Key Takeaways
Innovation is a culture, not an event. Rather than waiting for inspiration to strike, leaders can create systems and environments that make innovation more likely.
Use 10X goals to force different thinking. An impossible goal doesn’t always need to be achieved; it can be a brainstorming tool that forces you beyond incremental solutions.
Label things “Version 1.” Treating processes, reports, meetings, ideas, and systems as Version 1 reminds people that they’re allowed—and expected—to question and improve them.
Share ideas before they’re perfect. “Brainstorming out loud” lets other people contribute while an idea is still flexible enough to evolve.
Psychological safety fuels innovation. People stop contributing ideas when they repeatedly feel judged, dismissed, or shut down.
Seek perspectives outside your expertise. Sometimes the person who knows less about your specific problem can offer precisely the different perspective you need.
Constraints can increase creativity. The right boundaries, rules, deadlines, and systems can give creative thinking direction instead of limiting it.
Innovation needs structure. If creativity is always treated as something to do after the “real work” is finished, it probably won’t happen.
Relevant Links
Steve Lerch’s website: SteveLerch.com
INNOVATE: Igniting a Culture of Curiosity and Perpetual Improvement: available in hardcover, paperback, audiobook, and eBook through Steve’s website: https://www.stevelerch.com/book
Unedited Transcript
Hello, Steve. How are you doing, my friend?
I'm doing very well. Excited to chat with you. It's been too long — excited to spend some time with you today.
Well, I'm excited too. I'm excited it's always great to talk with you, but also to talk about your book, which I read. I really liked it, partly because you reinforced a lot of things I know and touch upon and talk about, but also you gave me some new ideas in there, which is always kind of what you're looking for: something to sort of validate your own beliefs, but also give you some new stuff.
A little bit, yeah.
So before we get all into your book and the great content in there, for people who don't know you, could you just give us a quick, kind of, one-minute who you are and what you do?
Sure. Yeah I, like you, spend a lot of my time giving speeches. But the bulk of my career was spent at Google. I worked at Google for about a decade, did two core things there, one working in the digital marketing strategy world. But then the bigger thing I did there, which informs most of my speaking career, is that I taught what we call innovation philosophy at Google, starting with working with new employees and then expanding to other departments or partners and vendors.
So now, as a speaker, I do a lot of that. I talk a lot on innovation, artificial intelligence, a lot of change-related things and digital-related things, but all from the perspective of someone who knows incredibly little about technology and can't code or build robots or write algorithms.
And I'd like to think that that's what makes me helpful on stage, because I think it's a good reminder to people that even at a company like Google, the guy they teach--the guy they picked to teach innovation to new employees didn't know anything about technology, because they thought innovation was more about people and culture and systems than it was about, you know, code and R&D budgets. So yeah, I've been doing this for seven and a half years, I think, now. And yeah, that's the nutshell version.
Let me-let's start with that before we get into your book, because I knew some of your background and I learned some more reading your book, but I didn't know that you didn't have a technical background. So how does a person with no technical expertise or programming background at a company like Google, probably one of the first companies that come to mind when you think about technology.
Yeah.
How does someone like you get tapped to lead this or teach this innovation philosophy?
Yeah, you know, it's a good question. And it came through sort of various paths and various people. And I think at its core there were a couple elements of that. One, you know, like you, I like teaching. I like giving speeches. I like telling stories. I love being in front of people, and I think I'm good at that, which folks at Google recognize.
But also, I think I just had a real passion for the culture at Google, and I didn't hide that from anyone. To whatever, for good or bad, I drank the company Kool-Aid. I believed in the way Google did things. I believed in the systems and the structure and the frameworks and really the culture, the way I think it affected people when you got into that system and allowed you to ask crazy questions and try new things and pitch outside-the-box ideas, big or small.
And so I think I was just so interested in how Google was designed and so excited by how it was set up. And again, didn't really hide that by any means. My passion and excitement, and I spent time learning as much as I could about the way Google was built over the decades and why they do things the way they do.
And through all that, I think I was able to identify some things and be taught some things that really helped Google be Google. And again, from my vantage point, I wasn't looking at--like I said, I wasn't looking at code, because I wouldn't have understand it if I did.
So this whole thing around innovation philosophy, did you learn that at Google and then become the sort of evangelizer of it? Or is that something you brought from your previous experience or life, and you kind of started introducing that yourself there?
Yeah, I would say I largely learned it at Google. I think I was fortunate to come to Google with a mindset that aligned with some of those principles. Just, I've always been a highly curious person. I've always been the type of person who just does not believe in settling for status quo. I tend to be a person that doesn't accept things as just the way they are. If I think they can be improved or made better, I believe you should do it.
But really, I think my education on innovation largely started at Google and studying, yes, the people I worked with and the teams I was on and the leaders that I got to follow, but also studying, like I said, the history and learning about how certain products came to life or failed to come to life and learning about some of the things that early founders and early Googlers put in place.
And as I've left Google, and even at Google, I had the opportunity to work with a lot of partners, a lot of vendors on various things, whether it's innovation or in my sort of digital marketing capacity. So I worked with a lot of tech companies at first, companies like GoPro and Fitbit and Roku, who were innovators and gadget makers and cutting-edge tech people. And then later in my Google career, I worked a lot with the federal government, which moves at a very different pace to GoPro and OtterBox and Fitbit.
And so I got to see sort of different sides of how ideation happens and how innovation happens. And so I think I started with that baseline of what I learned at Google and then applied all these learnings from all the other companies I got to partner with, both at Google and now as a speaker, and sort of mashed it all together and did some more research and studying. And I think that still sort of informs my speeches as well as my book.
That's fantastic. And I want to get into all that, but I do want to touch I want to stay with the Google thing for one more moment. So there's, you know, as speakers, you know, we try to come up with more unique examples from other speakers, and Google's an exemplar. So everyone's talking.
But there's two things that I can't help but keep bringing back because they're so powerful. I'm curious about how involved you were. Were they just going on while you were there? And I think you mentioned one of these in the book, but the two things, the two principles I always talk about are psychological safety, which I think you talk about in your book as well, right?
So of course, I've got to quote Project Aristotle. And just the idea of innovation and play and the whole Google idea of 20% time, which I believe Gmail came out of and a whole bunch of other things. And I think Gmail might be the one you mentioned in your book, but I'm just let me hear your thoughts on those two things. How much contact did you have with them? What your kind of philosophy around those things are?
Project Aristotle, which for those who don't know, was a massive research study across Google to sort of define, above all else, what makes good teams and good leaders.
And a lot of what it identified was related to psychological safety and that trust and comfort and feeling the ability to be open. And I think I have a gosh, I can't remember what the chapter of my book is called, but I have a chapter that focuses heavily on that subject.
I was not involved in it at all, other than as someone who read it, learned it, studied it, admired it. But I was not involved in any way in Project Aristotle.
20% projects I did have a chance to be involved with in a few capacities, but as a user, like most of us at Google, there's not much of a there's a little bit of a structure to 20% projects. There is some parts and systems.
Could you just explain to people if they don't know what that means?
Oh, sure. Yeah. So 20% projects, or sometimes we just call it 20% time at Google, it's the idea and it doesn't always work perfectly, because we've all got nine-to-five day jobs that keep us busy. But the idea was that every Google employee is supposed to be able to take up to 20% of their time to work on projects of their choosing, even if those projects are unrelated to their job. As long as they think it would add value to Google and to the world, they are supposed to be able to carve out time to do it.
When I worked in ad sales for a while, we used to joke that we had 120% time, that we, you know, you still have quotas and KPIs. So it doesn't always work perfectly, but that's the intention. The goal is to be able to free up time to pursue passions. And some amazing things have come out of those times.
Gmail, I probably did talk about Gmail in the book. There's a little controversy about some of the origins of Gmail, but most people would say that Gmail, Google Maps, our 20% projects, as well as a platform called AdSense, which most people aren't familiar in term, but it was the original platform that allowed Google to put ads on websites that weren't Google, which now, I don't know what that nets Google a year, but it's probably close to $100 billion. So some amazing things came out of those projects.
And for me personally, a lot of the innovation stuff I was doing, both when I was giving presentations to new employees, but then also giving some presentations to different partner teams that came in at our executive briefing center, we called it. For me, that was part of like a 20% experience or a 20% time project. So the only reason I got to do a lot of this stuff is because Google had that 20% project.
When I first started Google, I also did a 20% project with the events team who was planning the sales conference. It just sounded cool. It sounded like a really neat thing, and I wanted to help and to learn about it. And Google gave us those opportunities to try new things, to learn new things, and to chase our passions. And sometimes that led to really amazing stuff.
Yeah, and I guess even if it didn't, like if it didn't directly as one of those like hard-to-measure things, but just the creativity, the expanding your mind, doing something outside of your primary core.
Sure.
Like I was a programmer as a day job years and years ago, but that's all I did. And so I got better as a programmer, but, you know, probably stuff I did outside of work, like improv comedy or martial arts, that all kind of developed in a way, you know, because you're bringing new skills and different.
Totally. And I think part of that too, not only expanding minds and getting people to try new things and be excited about work, I think at Google there was a real big belief that one of the huge benefits of 20% time was in the collaboration that it stoked.
Because, again, we have some systems in place to help people sort of find matches for 20% projects that they're interested in and other people that might be interested.
So you might ultimately have like, let's say somebody at Google wants to make a fantasy football app, because they just love fantasy football.
Yeah.
Well, in all likelihood, there's somebody from the Android team who loves fantasy football and someone from the legal team and someone from search and YouTube and marketing. And ultimately, you put together this team of people who all are super excited and passionate and thrilled. And hopefully, they build the best fantasy football app ever, and it makes money.
But even if they don't, they learn from each other, and they get to go back to their teams. And I mean, you know, a company like Google with 100 and whatever thousand employees, there are plenty of things happening in different teams and departments that other teams and departments don't know about. There's best practices. There's tools. There's strategies. And so I think 20% projects were really valuable for collaboration and breaking down silos as well, even if, as you said, not every project led to revenue.
Yeah, it's hard to put a metric on everything, but there's benefit.
Yeah.
OK, so you took your background there, and then you started your own thing, and you did some consulting. You've done digital marketing.
Yeah.
And you work a lot now with organizations improving their innovation and creating cultures of innovation. Is that fair to say?
Yeah, that is fair to say. And I still, and I know I feel like maybe you've got a little bit of this as well, but sometimes I struggle with the balance between hyper-focus and mastery of a topic like innovation versus I have a lot of interests.
And as much as I love innovation, I'm also passionate about AI, and I also still love, love, love marketing. I love storytelling. I love digital communications. So I still do some work in that space as well.
But innovation is certainly the topic I speak on the most. It's what I do the most. But yeah, I've still got marketing consulting clients. I still give speeches on consumer behavior.
So I still try to touch all my passions at least a little bit, but especially with this book, I've leaned more and more into innovation over the years, I suppose.
Yeah, which makes sense. So let's talk about that. So you took all this knowledge you've accumulated over almost two decades, and you went through the long, arduous task of getting a book out into the world. So first off, I know how difficult and challenging that is. So congratulations to you.
I know you do. Thank you. And congrats to you on your most recent book, which.
Thank you.
Recently, I was reminded it's your third now.
Third book, yeah.
I've got a long way to go to catch up.
So this is your first one?
Yeah, and it was enough to make me unsure there'll be a second. I mean, you know how it is. I loved part of the process, and part of the process was tiring and just so much, not only time commitment, but like headspace committed to this book. It was just.
Oh, yeah. Well, and I don't know if you feel like this, because your book, I think, came out maybe a month or two after mine. So maybe it was a bit on a little less time.
Yeah, a little bit.
But I'm already now through presentations and thinking, I'm always like, already like, oh, I probably should have talked a little bit more about this, or here's something else I left out. Now it's like, oh, the next.
That's interesting. I feel like I'm a little bit having the opposite, where I'm not thinking of things I wish were in the book. I have so many things in the book that I wish I could fit in my speeches. You know what I mean?
Well, yeah, there is.
So I'm struggling with that a lot. I feel like, you know, you research a book, and my book is heavy on stories. I know so many cool stories now that I didn't know six months ago, and I want to tell people them. But I've already got full speeches with lessons and stories and strategies. So it's, you know, I.
Well, I'll share with you my secret technique I've started using.
Please.
I'm putting it out in the public world now. So if you've seen me speak recently, you'll notice I did this.
It's been a bit since I've seen you speak.
What's that?
I said it's been a bit since I've seen you speak.
Yeah, and this is a whole new I created a whole new presentation.
Yeah, tell me about it.
And so my book has a six-step framework. You know, I took YASAN and turned it into an acronym.
In a keynote, especially because I got to start with the first 20 minutes kind of explaining what YASAN means before I even get to the framework, I show the framework and say, look, in the time we have, I'm only going to cover two of these. If you want all six, here's your free download, right? That's my sort of.
Makes sense.
Because it does two things. One, obviously, is the marketing piece. But it helps me, kind of like the thing you're talking about. I feel almost bad, like, well, I'm leaving this out, or they're going to get enough. It makes it easier to cut, because I'm like, well, I cut that out of here, but they're going to get it here. So it's OK.
It's so hard. And I think I've learned this as a speaker, and it sounds like I'm sure you already know this, but I look back when I first started giving innovation speeches outside of Google, like as a keynote speaker, as a professional. And I used to try to hit like eight principles of innovation, and now I do three, and I can barely get through three. And it's like the more I've done it, the more I've realized you have to take your time, and you have to get people to really understand.
It's like you said with YASAN, you spend the time making sure they understand it before you go forward. And I do think sometimes with presentations, people try to teach too many things, or tell too many stories, or too many lessons, or too many graphs, too many charts, too much whatever. I'm going to go slow. I'm going to tell really good, compelling stories that might take some time, but you'll remember them. And so, yeah, it's hard to, to your point, maybe I should start doing that, reminding people that the rest is in the book.
Yeah, like here's what I'm going to focus on to make sure you get this.
Yeah.
And then there's more. Well, let's talk about the book then. Obviously, it's all, it's called Innovate. It's all on innovation.
Yep.
Which makes sense. And just a lot of things I like about the book. I like the stories are great, the examples, the case studies, but it's very practical.
Like you really, I feel like you went the distance to make sure that there's things people can do in every chapter to apply the material. And you've got it set up as kind of a four-step process.
I'd like to talk about each of those, but could you just kind of give us the overview of what sort of your four-step innovation methodology is?
So like are you talking about the inspire, curiosity, structure?
Yeah, yeah.
Sure, yeah.
But if there's something I missed, you know, feel free.
Sure. No, that's great. That's perfect. That makes sense. Yeah, so the way I structured the book, so there's 10 chapters, 10 principles, 10 strategies. But those 10 strategies, in my view, fall into sort of four characteristics or priorities or themes that I feel like as an organization, and when I say organization, it could be a literally baseball team, or it could be Google. If you have some sort of leadership structure, some sort of group, if you have these four sort of themes, especially as a leader, if you have these four sort of themes, you can do all the 10 principles. You can build an innovative culture.
The first one is inspire, and it's essentially this idea that so much of innovation is risk-taking, so much of innovation is trying new things. If you want your people to do that, they need to feel like they've lined up behind the right leader. They need to feel like, and that could be getting psychological safety right. It can be setting big, crazy goals. It can just be more traditionally cliché, inspiring people. Like sometimes it's speeches. Who knows what it is?
The second one, if I'm remembering the order of the book correctly, the second one is curiosity. So much of innovation dies when we take for granted that we already know how to do a thing, or that the best practice has already been figured out, so I don't need to question it anymore. So you need to stoke curiosity in yourself and your people.
The third one is openness, just that general belief. There's a quote in my book, and I can't think of who says it right now, but there's a quote that says, "None of us is as smart as all of us." And it's just that simple idea that there's a limit to how good you can do anything until you get other people involved, whether that's because they're better than you, smarter than you, or just have a different perspective than you and can challenge and push you. So you need a culture that's open.
And then lastly is structure. And it's just the simple recognition that too often, innovation, creativity, brainstorming, we romanticize these ideas as like, you know, the lightning strike moment in the shower where you suddenly have a great idea. And when we romanticize it too much, we forget that innovation is a business function like any other. And just like accounting and legal, it needs a time and a place and a budget and a system and a KPI. And I think people think constraints are, or people think rules are limiting for innovation, but sometimes rules are the necessary launchpad for innovation. So those are the four themes of the book: inspire, curiosity, openness, and structure. And then everything falls within those.
It is just ridiculous how many things you're saying that like, like we talk, I mean, I think part of it is that once you get to like the deeper principles, you realize kind of what works. Like literally in my keynotes, I play an improv comedy game.
Yeah.
And I talk about, look, you know, like now with the new keynote, I've added a game where it's an improv game where you combine A to Z, where like you have to speak, and when you speak, you have to start with the next letter of the alphabet. So my sentence will start with A.
Yeah.
Then I force it to be in a genre like horror, science fiction, you know, fantasy. And then I put a 90-second timer on it, and I do with an audience volunteer. And the debrief at the end is like, there are a lot of constraints in that. And you look at those as obstacles, but the constraint is actually what drives the creativity, gives it direction and shape, and makes it work. And so it's exactly what you're saying. Like there's so many things like that you said that I'm like, all right, so sorry, were you about to add something?
No, no, I'm just, I'm agreeing with you.
Yeah, yeah. It's just, that's what I was saying was like, your book was like validating, but also you gave me some additional things to think about and do. So I want to go through all four of these, kind of as you said about the keynote, like we don't have time to dig deeper into all chapters. So I just want to touch upon maybe one or two things from each of the four points.
Sure.
Probably from a bit of a self-serving nature of things that like really resonated with me or things that I talk about and kind of want to get your perspective on.
Great.
All right, so inspiration. Let's talk about the massive goal thing, right? The 10 times goal.
Yeah, totally.
Because I love this idea. I call it setting an impossible goal. And I use a story, my favorite band of all time is Rush. I don't know if you're familiar with them.
OK, sure, yeah.
So you know, I won't go into the whole thing here, but basically, when they wrote an album afterwards, the drummer talking to an interviewer said, you know, when we wrote that, we were writing music that was beyond us.
And I love that idea, because like they didn't even know how to play the music they were writing.
And then they had to go and learn and figure it out.
And I feel like you had some stuff in there as well.
Like you set a goal that is so big, you don't know how you're going to achieve it.
Yeah.
And then you go figure it out. So could you talk a little about what kind of what your take is on the 10 times goal?
Yeah. I think goal setting is such a tricky thing to get right, because I do think, I think a lot of the themes in the book, and I think traditional innovative thought or innovative teachings would suggest that you need to set big goals.
And setting small goals leads to small thinking, or setting practical goals leads to practical ideas. And sometimes we need beyond that. Or in other words, to say, if we set a goal here, we come up with ideas to meet here, and we stop, right, with our outside the box thinking.
And for those listening to the audio, Steve had his hands.
Oh, sorry.
One hand just a little bit higher than the other.
I raised my hands up. But at the same time, to your point, like setting impossible goals, if you don't do it right, that can be demotivating for people too, because of course, people want to achieve their goals. So what I often say and what I kind of talk through in the book, and I think this is probably, I'm glad you asked this, because I think this is probably one of the trickier concepts sometimes to get right, at least my version of it, is essentially to say that sometimes when we set the impossible goal, it's OK to remind our team that it's not necessarily about hitting it.
And what I always say is that setting impossible goals, or as I call them, 10x goals, so the idea is you take your traditional goal and you multiply it by 10. And then, but it's kind of a brainstorming lever. It's a strategic tool, where what we do is we say, OK, well, what if our goal wasn't $1 million this year? What if it was $10 million? OK, that's impossible. Well, let's describe what would need to happen or change for it to be possible. What would need to be different?
Oh, well, we'd need like 50 more workers. Oh, well, we'd need our biggest competitor to go out of business. Oh, we need to invent a whatever. And in that conversation of what would need to change to make our goal possible, we start to identify levers, and we start to identify where we need to put attention and time.
And through that process, maybe we do find a way to get to 10x, but even if we don't, we likely identify some root issues and root opportunities that help us get to 2x or 3x, as opposed to the 1x goal we started with. So I think there's like, it's not just about saying, hey, there's a big impossible goal, go chase it. It's about the act of actually using it as a brainstorming system and a tool.
I think that I think can be really valuable, whether you end up getting to the crazy goal or not. That's how I kind of like to think of it. And I think it's tricky to get right. Like you said, setting the wrong goal can be tough for people. It can demotivate. So there is some art and science to it.
Yeah, and I heard another, there's another speaker out there. I read his books and stuff. And he has, yeah, he talks a little bit about the 10x kind of goal thing. What I like what he says is, if you set a regular goal, you know, kind of the hands, one hand a little higher, or even a 2 times goal, you can sort of achieve that by doing what you've been doing just more.
Yeah.
But to go to 10 times, you have to do things differently. And that's kind of like your point. Like it forces you to brainstorm, because it's like, you can't just make 10 times as many cold calls or code 10 times longer every day. It's like.
Yeah. It has a limit. It has a, right? Like marginal gains are great, but like they're not, unless you can count on having a new marginal gain idea or work 10% harder the next day and the next day and the next day.
And I think in the world we live in now with AI and just, I think companies are at risk of failing so quickly or getting left behind so quickly. The world just changes so quickly now that maybe growing it 5% year over year, maybe that's not enough anymore.
And we need to ask the bigger, ask for bigger outcomes from our people, because otherwise, some other company will figure it out. And it's just riskier to have slow growth these days.
Yeah, it's, yeah, slow growth is kind of the thing everyone's looking for, is like year over year. But yeah, at some point, you got to kind of break it to build it up better.
Yeah.
So let me ask you sort of a little bit off topic then. Do you have any 10 times goals for yourself currently? Like for your own business?
Yeah, I mean, there are some.
You don't have to share them.
Sure. There are definitely versions of my book, even my book launch plan, where I say, well, what's the crazy optimal best case scenario? And then how do I get there? What does that look like? And some of those things I tried to follow up on, and some of those things I kept notes for, for if there is a second book, how I'll go about it differently.
And for the speeches itself as well, there's definitely, I definitely have some high aspirations. And you know, I'm not perfect. I try to follow my own teachings as much as I can. I try to brainstorm on those big goals and then break out the steps. And some of that stuff you follow up on, even like, you know, I made it the first six years in this business with a lot of video clips that were decently edited, but no speaker reel for it. Not like a really serious, not one of those reels you spend 10, 15, 20 grand on, right?
But then as I get further in this and I start thinking about 10x versions of my goals, one of the scenarios for a 10x version of how many speeches I do a year or whatever my speaking goal is, is to go viral in a more meaningful way or to create some piece of content that is so powerful and catchy that it totally changes the way people see me. So when I start to recognize that factor, I say, oh, you know what? It is time to bite the bullet and spend all that money and make a fancy reel, because that raises the, it raises the ceiling on what's possible for me. So I do think in those terms as much as I can, and I do try to brainstorm in that way when I can for different parts of my business.
Got it. Love it. All right, let's keep rolling here. The second principle is curiosity, which I love. You know, I talk about this idea of digging deeper, which I think is kind of similar. It's like shifting that focus. So why, how did you come up with the word or the idea of curiosity to be like a whole foundational principle of innovation?
Yeah, honestly, I think this chapter is probably my, I don't know if favorite's the right word, probably of the four principles, it's the one I gravitate towards the most. I think it's the one that I most naturally feel without forcing myself. I think I, like I said at the beginning, I'm just a very curious person. I'm a very, I've always been a, how does the puzzle fit together kind of guy. And I've always been, as I said, somebody who doesn't just take what you're given for granted.
And I think as I read more and more about innovation, other books, other stories, other case studies, I think I just found a lot of systems and strategies where at their core, they started with someone just being curious about something. And then, you know, it ends up with somebody building something or inventing something. But so many great innovations start with somebody just looking at something and saying, well, why is that like that? Or why can't that be like this? That simple fundamental thing.
And I've seen it, you've probably seen it too at organizations where people don't have it and where people just very routine, this is my job. I do it the same way every day. I do it the same way the guy before me did it who taught me how to do the job. And that lack of curiosity is just so defeating when it comes to innovation. So I think it's just, I saw it as a really underlying part of so much of this.
And yeah, I don't know. Yeah, it's just, again, it's probably the part of the book. I think it's the part of the book I wrote first, or at least I think the version one chapter, which I think is the first chapter in curiosity. I think that's the first chapter I wrote, if I remember right.
Well, it's so funny you mention that, because in this chapter or in this section, you have a piece where you say to label everything as version one.
Yeah.
So it's funny you just mentioned this was version one when like, so talk a little bit about what you mean by that, like label everything as version one.
This is of all the concepts in my book that I favor on. And this is something I speak about in speeches for sure. And it's basically this idea that, and you can think of it literally or metaphorically.
So like imagine you work at a company and you have standard reports you have to fill out, and you have weekly meeting agendas you get and emails you send, all these documents and forms and systems. It's very easy, as I was just saying, to look at that stuff and think that someone already figured out the best way this report should be. Like somebody already solved this, and now I'm just using it. Somebody already built this CRM tool, and now I'm just using it.
But if all of those reports and strategies and documents had a V1 in the corner to symbolize that this is version one of this document, this is version one of this report, this is version one of the way we do this meeting, suddenly that tells everyone at some point in a week or a decade, there should be a version two of this. And that means it's OK to question it. It means we're supposed to look at this and say, could this be better at some point?
So to me, that's like, it's such a good starting point for innovation is just to simply look at things and say, is anyone asking if that thing should be better? Is anyone asking if it's time for a new or a faster or a more efficient of X, whatever the thing is? And again, it could be physical, could be metaphorical.
But that's just an idea I've always been obsessed with. And I think I learned it at Google or versions of that concept at Google and have just always been very intrigued by how that works in practice and how simple it can be to get started by simply labeling things.
Yeah, and I love that. And it's funny, this ties the idea of constant, I guess you call it perpetual iteration, which is where you.
Yeah.
Which is a similar principle in improv, but I talk about calling step by step, which is an improv. The worst thing you can do is try to have the whole game or scene figured out when you start, because you get this tunnel vision versus.
Yeah.
Let me just say one sentence and see what my partner says.
Building.
And keep building. So how do you work with groups on this idea of perpetual iteration? Like is it the version one, version two, or is it like you just try to try something, kind of like the agile sort of mindset of like get things out quickly? Like how do you see people using the perpetual iteration idea?
Yeah, I think it can take a lot of shapes and sizes and depends on the team and the company, of course. But I think it's good for people to understand that it, I think it helps. And some of the, this relates a little bit to the openness chapter as well, which is heavy on the idea of like sharing your ideas even before they're perfected.
But I think with version one, what it allows us to do is it allows us to move, I think, a lot faster even to start with at the beginning of a process, because it sort of takes some of the pressure off to say, hey, that idea you have, it's OK if it's just version one of your idea. And because of that, you feel safe sharing it, because everybody knows you're not done. Or you come up with some, you build some new product or some new process, some new tool. It feels safe to share it with the team when everybody knows it's version one.
And we're all supposed to help. We're all supposed to contribute. We're all supposed to make it better. So I think helping people to see sort of, or helping organizations to see how we can leverage version one thinking in a lot of ways, to ask more questions, to move more quickly, to get people feeling more comfortable.
I said it relates to the openness chapter of the book, but it also relates back to the psychological safety stuff we were talking about earlier. Feeling comfortable putting your idea out there, because, yeah, this is just a rough draft of my idea. It's OK if you have feedback. That's great. It's supposed to get feedback.
Whether that's version one is just launched to your team, to the company, or out to customers. Sometimes going through versions still happens behind closed doors. It doesn't mean version one has to go out and be sold. Sometimes it can, but it again, depends on what we're talking about. So I think showing people that there's a lot of ways to leverage it to achieve a lot of different outcomes.
Yeah, and I love that psychological safety. I'm going to move on to openness in a moment, but I just want to share.
Yeah.
Just maybe think of this. So I was part of this like LinkedIn sort of class, you know, how do you get better content for LinkedIn. And on one of the sessions, the person leading went like to some of us, not letting us know, to some of our old LinkedIn posts.
OK.
Examples, things we did wrong. And she happened to use mine. And it was one where I posted the graphic that's in my book of my yes and framework, because obviously, I'm proud of it. And she sort of ripped it apart a little bit.
Interesting.
From the perspective of a LinkedIn post and from the perspective of being helpful.
OK.
But like she was referring to it almost as if it was like an infographic and how it doesn't explain this and there's not enough detail, and here's all things that would do differently. And it like, and in my mind, because A, I hadn't said this is a version one, and literally, it wasn't, right?
This is the version I hired a graphic designer for my book. And because she didn't set it up as a version one, it really sort of undercut the psychological safety, right?
So I think that idea that if your people know that the things they're putting out are going to be version one, and if everyone who's giving the feedback kind of has that psychological safety, it makes such a, like without that, I think it can be a bit of a disaster. And having that element, I think, is so key to that rapid iteration.
Absolutely. Of course, that's so true. And it's so, you know, obviously, that was sort of a one-time thing where you're going through a training. But if you're on a team and that happens with the people you work with and your manager and you get that feeling of rejection and judgment, it's, oh, it's totally going to hinder your ability to share your next idea or your next graphic or whatever it is.
Yeah, which is the crux of the whole yes and versus yes but thing, right? It's like if I'm posing ideas and people keep saying, yeah, but to me, like I'm eventually just going to shut up and stop giving ideas.
Totally. Totally.
Which I think leads into the next step, which is openness.
Yeah.
So talk a little bit about that, kind of how you see that working in a culture, an organizational culture, the idea of openness.
I think like openness has a lot to do with humility and stubbornness, or lack of stubbornness, I should say. I think, you know, I worked at Google. There's some very bright people who worked at Google, many people who are far smarter than me at Google. Sometimes the more competent we get at a thing, the more we close off ourselves to other people and other feedback.
And I also think when we get so deep in a profession, like let's say you're a software engineer, and I'm not going to pretend I know a lot about software engineering, but let's say I'm 20 years into my software engineering career and I went to MIT and Stanford and I'm so great and I work at Google or Microsoft or whatever, and I know all this stuff. The deeper we get entrenched into our world, the less likely we are to think that we can be helped by people who don't have our experiences. The software engineers want ideas and feedback from software engineers. Marketers think they can get help from other marketers. Lawyers get help from other lawyers. And of course, there's a logic to this, because those people who look like us and sound like us and studied what we studied understand what we're going through.
But there's also this realization we have to have that we already have the perspective we have. We already know that part. What we don't know is the other part. And if you want the other part, the other perspective, the outside thought, we need to go get it. And it's in other places. It's in other people. It's in other companies. It's in other industries. And that if we go get it, yes, they will lack some of our depth of knowledge of our specific role, but we already have that. So we can apply it. We can take their misinformed, and I'm doing air quotes again for the audio people, their misinformed outside perspective, filter it through our knowledge and experience, and now turn it into something bigger and better and more relevant.
But I also just think like ideas mostly are free. Feedback is mostly free. It's not that hard to go up to people you know and like and respect and say, hey, you know what would work? I feel like I've been wasting a lot of time with X, Y, and Z. You ever encounter that? And even though they don't work with you and don't know your company, it's just a human thing. And they would gladly give you their input and their expertise. And it costs nothing. And it's just we waste these free sources of wisdom and information in so many cases.
And so I think openness is one of those things that it starts really on an individual level of acknowledging you don't know everything, acknowledging you can be helped, and acknowledging that it's worth your time to listen. I think that's sort of the starting point for openness.
And I think that sort of I see that tying into curiosity too, because I could be.
Yeah.
I could go to you, maybe you and I have completely different job functions and be like, here's what I'm struggling with, you know, and be open to your ideas.
But I could also come to you and you could tell me something you did in your field, and instead of me thinking, that doesn't really apply to me, so let me just say, oh, that's too bad.
Like let me dig deeper into what you're saying. And by being curious about you, I might hear ideas that will then help me as well.
Yeah.
If I'm open to.
More oriented.
A tunnel vision of like, hey, you're not a lawyer, so you can't help me with my lawyer issues, but rather like, oh, because it's so funny, because when I was first like running an improv group and teaching that, I found some of my biggest leaps in my teaching of improv came not from reading more books on improv comedy or taking improv courses, but from reading a book like Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
Yeah.
Because I read how Covey structured that book, and it completely mapped to me on how to do improv comedy.
Sure.
But.
Yeah, and he probably doesn't know anything about improv comedy.
Yeah.
He tried to write that book to help somebody learn about improv comedy, but you applied your wisdom, right? Like you're the expert on that, and you could combine it. And yeah, I think it can happen a lot if you're open to it. And yeah, you're right. It definitely bleeds into curiosity. And they go, I'd like to think all four of them go together for sure, but these two are definitely heavily tied.
So there is one story I want to ask about, because I made a note, and I just love anything from like the world of entertainment. And I skipped over the Brian Glazer story with if you're reading, you can go read the book, get that. But there's a whole, you had a case study in this chapter about the Beatles and how the song "Get Back" sort of came to be.
Yeah.
You don't mind sharing that, because I love, I just love the creative process and hearing about stuff like that.
It's from a docuseries that came out not long ago, two years ago maybe, that Peter Jackson made on the Beatles. I think the docuseries actually is called "Get Back," if I remember right. But basically, it's this scene in the movie. And you can watch the, the video is on YouTube. You can watch it if anybody's interested. But it's basically Paul McCartney who is sort of in the process of writing the song "Get Back," which goes on to become a very iconic rock song for the ages. And. But he doesn't really have the song yet. He just kind of has like a rhythm he likes and sort of has some sounds. And it's just him sitting in a room with, I forget which other member, not all four of them were there, but two of the other members of the Beatles are sitting in the room with him. I think maybe it's George Harrison and Ringo, but I could be wrong on that.
And Paul's just kind of strumming his guitar to the like rhythm of the song. And at the beginning, he doesn't even really have words. He's kind of just making like mouth noises. He's like, like just sort of sounding it out. And he's kind of writing it in real time out loud in front of his peers. And as he's writing it, the other members of the group sort of start making their own little sounds and sort of following along and kind of adding a drum beat. And like it's just this idea that, you know, Paul McCartney is one of the greatest musicians, inarguably one of the most prolific musicians to ever have lived, right? He's perfectly capable of writing his own song somewhere and then bringing his song to his bandmates and saying, here's the song I wrote.
And if he does that, two things happen. And it's kind of related to what we talked about already. The first thing that happens is that he didn't get any feedback from these other fantastic musicians. And that's a loss for him, because they're great musicians too. But the other thing that happens is if he does want feedback, let's say he finishes the song, instead of doing it out loud with them, he finishes it and then takes it to them and asks for feedback. In most corporate settings, even the toughest environments, most of us are geared to try to be nice to each other. We are geared to try to be polite to each other.
And if I know Paul McCartney just spent all this time working on this song, and here's the final version, and now he asks for feedback, I mean, how honest am I really going to be? How blunt am I going to be? Does that feel to me like, as we talked about with curiosity, is he bringing me a rough draft, or is he bringing me the final version? Because if it's a rough draft, great, let's dive in. So by doing it out loud, and I use the term brainstorm out loud a lot in the book. That's the name on one of the chapters that maybe, this is probably in that chapter, brainstorm out loud.
The ability to get people to share ideas before they're done with the ideas is so valuable. It is hard, because it absolutely leads to what you mentioned earlier, where people say things and feel judged and get, you know, put down. And so it's not easy, and it's easier for some people than others. But getting comfortable brainstorming out loud is so valuable for innovation.
And I think this sort of starts going into the structure section, because you mentioned this when you went the overview, and I didn't say this there, but, and what I've talked about is how most people kind of like you said about the aha moment or Newton under the tree.
Yeah.
Oh, gravity.
The apple.
Yeah. It's like innovation, it's a messy process. And.
Totally.
I love the entertainment world. I just started listening to a new podcast where they kind of talk about movies. And.
Yeah.
They really go on like the making of, and you learn the iterations of like famous movies and like what the story actually started at.
Yeah, I'm sure that's crazy.
And how it developed because of this limitation or this like, and that's kind of the story of "Get Back," right? He started with this, and then, so, and you kind of started talking about this in the overview with structure and how it's not just one brilliant idea.
Yeah.
But you need a structure in place to sort of nurture and develop and encourage these ideas. So could you go into a little bit about what you mean by structure with innovation?
I think like one of the things just in sort of the marketing of the book, and you know what it's like when you write a book and you have to fill out all these forms and all these websites and.
Yeah.
Give me a synopsis and a one sentence and something that has culminated, I think, from the structure section, but has become like a big statement for the book, for leaders, is really this idea, say that, you know, it's perfectly fine to wait for a lightning strike of inspiration.
But as a leader, you can also build lightning rods, and you can also track weather patterns.
And you can't just be doing the former.
You have to do the latter too.
And again, it comes down to that idea that, have you ever read "Deep Work," the book "Deep Work"?
Yep.
So in that book, they talk a lot about like there's a limited capacity in people to really do deep, deep thinking and work. So you need to plan for it. You need to schedule it. You need to set aside time to do it. And that's how I feel about innovation. It's just, if you just say that it's like some back burner bonus thing, I say that a lot in speeches. We all think of innovation as like a bonus. It's like additive. I have to do these things. Creativity and brainstorming, that would be like nice to do.
We can't excuse ourselves from innovation. We can't think someone else is going to handle it. We have to make it part of our job and part of the roles for the people on our teams, or it just won't happen or it won't happen well. And I talk about, and I didn't know about this, not much. I've heard of it, but didn't know about it until I wrote the book. But reading about Skunk Works, the Lockheed Martin program, and it was, you know, it was the research and development decades ago that like the most successful R&D factory ever just led to like every major breakthrough in aeronautics and jets and just all that kind of rockets.
And what they said is there were, I forget how many, it's like 25 rules or something, the 25 rules of Skunk Works. They had the most rigid set of rules you can imagine, down to like how many people per team and who gets reported to what and how people get salaried and paid. And it's an important reminder that in the most like crazy room of mad scientists that's ever existed, they weren't just, it wasn't the Wild West. They had tons of rules. They had tons of systems, because they felt that enabled the innovation, not took it away. Rules don't hurt innovation. Bad rules hurt innovation. And good rules and good systems are springboards, not barriers.
And I think that's maybe the most important job for a leader is to figure out what your teams need and build systems and structure and timing that allows them to be creative and outside the box and crazy. There's a metaphor in the book too that I, I can't remember where I got this, but I don't think I came up with this. I think I found it somewhere. This metaphor that if you put a kid in an open field, he'll just sit there. But if you put a kid in a really big yard that has a fence in it, he will explore every inch of that yard and every crack in the fence.
Fences can be good. They can be helpful, right? Like it's, I say this when I talk about AI now. The fact that you can use ChatGPT for anything sounds great, but some people it paralyzes. Some people, that's too much choice and too much freedom and too much lack of guardrails. So yeah, I think structure is the big one that a lot of people forget when they talk about innovation.
Yeah. And I think when you first mentioned at the top, I talked about the constraints and the improv. And yeah, going back to entertainment, you know, I think you avoided using the cliched example, which I use still in my keynotes, which is the movie "Jaws." I'm sure you know the story.
It's about the shark, the shark not working right.
Yeah, yeah. And that forced them.
I did not use this in the book, but I do know a little bit of this story.
Yeah. And I talk about this. I think it's in my book. But hell, yeah, like the shark didn't work. And Spielberg originally had planned on showing the shark like three times as much as he did. But because of that, he had to, you know, come up with all these creative ways. And it made the movie so much more intense.
So suspenseful.
Yeah. And the other entertainment example I use is this is why when I go back to like the "Star Wars" movies, you know, I'm a child of the 70s.
I talk about "Star Wars," and I talk about "Star Wars" in my speech.
I forget how you talked about it, but my thing is like Lucas, genius, when he was limited in the 70s by technology and by budget, and when he came out with the prequels and he had all the cachet and all the money, and I'm like, these movies are way worse.
It's because no one can tell you no, because you're George Lucas. It's because the technology has caught up to your full vision instead of you having to be creative, and you've got a lot more money.
And so it is amazing how the constraints can just.
Sure.
Really drive innovation.
Yeah. It can bring the best out of people for sure.
Yeah. It's, all right, well, I can keep talking about all this stuff as you go.
Sure.
And I feel a little bad. I feel like, you know, I feel like I talked almost as much as you on this podcast.
No, it's great.
Because there's so much great stuff I want to talk to you about. But we are going to finish up here just to be respectful of the time. And, but if everyone wants more information, they can get your book. So I'm going to finish up with one more question.
Okay.
Before I do that, why don't you share if people want to get your book or potentially engage you to work with their company or speak at their conference, what's the best ways they can connect with you?
Probably just stevelerch.com. Steve, that's Lerch, L-E-R-C-H. A lot of people spell it with a U, but it's stevelerch.com. And everything's on there from information about speeches to information on the book.
Mostly, I'm just encouraging people to buy the book on Amazon. You can certainly find it on quite a few other websites and platforms, but even through my website, it'll link you to Amazon. It's just the easiest.
And I've got my hardcover, my paperback, my audiobook, and my ebook. It's all on there. So.
Oof. Yeah. I still got to do the hardcover and the audio. I haven't done that yet, so I'm not buying.
Oh, man. The audiobook was, whew. I did it all myself.
Got too busy narrating yourself.
Yeah. Man, learning some, thank God for AI. If I couldn't ask questions to Gemini through that process, I was nearly punching holes in the wall trying to figure out how to use different audio recording software. And, you know, you're removing breath sounds, and it's just like, oh, what a headache.
Part of the reason why I haven't done it yet.
Yeah.
But maybe this will be the kick in the butt. All right, so stevelerch.com. I will link to that in the show notes as well.
Awesome. Thank you.
So Steve, I'm going to end this with a final question I always ask as my last question is, you know, I do what I do because I believe the world would be a better place if everyone started with a default mindset of yes and instead of yes, but. Just their initial thinking.
Yeah.
So what is one small thing that you believe if everyone did, it would make the world a better place?
Oh, man. I think I would probably go back to the openness thing we talked about in this book. And obviously, we talk about it heavily from an innovation perspective of companies and teams and building things. But I think it's just such an important reminder for life in general that the importance of learning from people who don't think like you, people who didn't study where you studied or go to school where you went to school, and, you know, just from different schools of thought. Even if it doesn't change your opinions on things, even if it's just to strengthen your opinions, to learn from outside perspectives and other thoughts.
But if you're not, you know, I think being open to those other people and other ideas will help you question yourself. It'll help you question your beliefs. It'll help you question the way you do things. And again, that may change your views. It may harden your views. It may strengthen your convictions, but without testing your beliefs and your knowledge against others. And I say others, I don't necessarily even just mean other people. It could be books. It could be travel. It could be other companies working on other projects.
It's just seeing more things, hearing more things is, I think it's just beneficial for all of us in everything we do, whether that's trying to innovate for work or just trying to be a more, you know, well-rounded husband or father or friend or neighbor, whatever it is. So yeah, I'm going to go with that one. I'm going to go with stay open to people who don't look and think and act and don't know what you know.
I love it. That is a great answer, and I agree. I think the world would be a better place. Steve, thank you so much. This was fantastic. And, you know, if you want to come back sometime, I feel like this is a whole lot of stuff we didn't get to talk about yet.
I appreciate it, man. That was fun. It's surprising me to realize that we've been talking for almost an hour. So I appreciate it. Great to get to hang out with you and to do this. Thank you so much for letting me talk to your audience.
All right. Thanks. And everyone, be sure to check out Steve's stuff.