Lessons from 100 coffees with Matt Ballantine

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I've honed those skills about being able to draw people out. I think it's interesting actually, that you can probably categorize people, and that this is sort of top of their head. But there are people where the conversation is fairly equal. There's the conversations where the person who meeting has got something that they want to get from me, they're interested in exploring a particular thing, and therefore are asking for my views. There's ones where I probably talk more, there's definitely ones where the my coffee companion has taught more. There's ones that have gone on for two hours, because we had so much to talk about, there's not been any that have ground to hold less than an hour.

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So hello, and welcome back to unset. At work, I am your host, Katherine Stagg Macy and executive and a team coach interested in the conversations that we aren't having at work. And today I'm interviewing Matt Valentine about his project that I've been following for probably two years now equals 100 coffees. And so his intention was to have 100 coffees over the course of 2022.

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Just to come in as we came out of lockdown as a hypothesis that something interesting would happen. It's really inspiring to get in detail about the work from home hybrid conversation that was happening at the time, born out of lockdown. And he was going to really curious as to how could you now connect with people given that we were working on such different patterns? How would it be possible to do that, so it's a fascinating conversation, but limited a bit more about Matt, he's got three decades of experience and transformation initiatives. And as he puts it, getting people in tech to work better together. He's worked for a wide range of organizations like Reuters and BBC, and today, he's an engagement manager at a consultancy in London called equal experts. He's also podcast host of WB 40, which I've he's invited me on to talk about leadership. And he talks to guests there about tech and how it's changing the way we work.

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In my conversation today with Matt, it felt a lot like I was having one of his coffee chats, because we were talking about product itself, but its origin story, but we managed to get all over the place that we talk about liminal spaces of work, and it gives us a great phrase apophenia he explains what that means to us, and how it comes into his his lessons from the 100 coffees, and how the Protestant work ethic gets in the way of a project like 100 coffees and our need for outcomes and KPIs the things that we do. I've known Matt for over a decade now. And we first connected when we were judges for the CIO magazine for the top 100 cio award process. And I've always been struck by his sort of superpower to make sense of what we're talking about, even if there are lots of threads of going on. And one of the reasons why I invited Matt to talk about this project of his was to chip away at these perceptions that I hear repeatedly about networking, you know, what, what is it? What isn't it What could it be? And I think it's that last question of what I think the 100 coffees really opens up what networking could be, and like why, why do I care is because I see signs of mine, finding themselves at a critical point without a network and that critical time is finding a new job. If you're in a mid to senior position, you're going to find a job through your network, you're not going to find it on a LinkedIn job advert. So when it comes to the point of looking for a job, you have to have this network and most people have ignored their network for for much of their career because it's we have assumptions about it awkward and icky and manipulative and salesy and all that kind of stuff. My proposal is ever since I've known about Matt's 100 Coffee project is that under coffee project, or something similar, could be a way to build yourself a network to future proof yourself. So I'm gonna let you make up your mind about that by listening to conversation. So let's go listen in Matt's Welcome to unset at work, it's been a long time coming. I've been on your podcast now you're on my podcast. How cool is that?

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absolutely delightful to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

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And we're going to talk about one of your many projects, just one of them.

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The 100 Coffee project, which I believe now is at 149. As

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you know that as of the day before I wrote is up yesterday, but you have Monday this week was 214 100.

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Well,

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yeah. So let's kind of go back to the origins of the 100 coffee. Is it a do you call it a project? Or is no you talk about just as the 100 coffees?

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Yeah, project is as good a term as any, even our work in an organization that's obsessed about saying that we have products and our projects, but that's a completely different story. Back in 2022, I joined the company I'm working for now equal experts, and my role is an engagement manager. So I manage the relationships between us as an organization and clients who we generally are building software for and our teams, which is a mixture of staff and Associates and making sure that everybody's happy basically is the core of my role. And there was discussion going on within the organization when I joined about how essentially the underlying challenge was that the organization had been very in person, before the pandemic and in person almost exclusively on the client's site. So we'd go in, and we'd be sitting with their clients in the client's offices, and that's broken down, because we just don't get that opportunity like we used to. And even if we are visiting client sites, it will be much more limited time than we used to have. With despite some of the return to the office noise that's going on at the moment, actually, there's been a lot of downsizing of office space. And so the availability of desks for contractors to come in and sit is incredibly limited now. And people work from home more, and you've got global teams, which means you've got more distribution geographically, which means that you'll never get people together physically and and and and so there were these ongoing discussions about what did we need to do about it to sort of go beyond the well, let's get everybody together once in a while, which seemed to be the kind of the main thrust of the argument because practically, that actually is incredibly difficult to do. And I don't know if you find this in your work, but organizing people to be in the same physical location now is way harder than it was pre pandemic, because I've been working and flexible patterns and seek to present their space and and help them to reasons. Absolutely, yeah. So I was interested in being able to explore this a bit, I was also conscious that personally, I'd become a little bit comfortable within the physical space in which I'm sitting at this moment, in fact, my home office, I'm in the privileged position to be able to have space that is exclusively used as my office at home. And I'm very lucky in that. And that's not the same in many people. But I'm at that age, where I'm able to do that.

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I was also conscious that I wanted to be able to get out, and to be able to see people and to be able to do things. I needed a spare for that. And I find that I am not a deadlines, particularly driven person. I like the Douglas Adams thing about deadlines, which is I love them. I love the sound of them washing past you. But I am somebody who works quite well with the idea of a project to have. And so there's that part of it. Okay, what project is it that I need to do to explore how we might be able to do things. I also knew a couple of people who had for quite a few years at the beginning of the year written out a list of people that they wanted to have coffee with over the course of the year.

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Wonderful entrepreneur, Mary McKenna, who's based in Donegal in Ireland, who I've known for years, and she has 100 list, equally wonder for information internet he person sharing a day, who also does a similar thing?

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And are these people that are outside of their network? Or they don't know at all? These

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are people I saw I know these people,

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are they their 100 list is they are these people they know or they want to know they have any connection with MCs, yeah,

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it's a mixture.

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So they'll have people that they know people that they don't know. What I wanted to do, though, is to sort of invert that a bit and not start with a list, but actually start with a target because that motivates other people. And so I said, Well, what will happen if over the course of 2023, I have coffees with 100 people. And the hypothesis was that something interesting might happen. And that was as detailed as it got.

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But the interesting might help me to also explore some of these ideas about what is it that we need to do in the post COVID hybrid world, to be able to build relationships, extend our networks, identify work opportunities to be able to find ways to better connect people to a whole bunch of things that used to happen serendipitously, because we would be in the same physical space as others and aren't having serendipitously as much now because we're not in the same physical space as others. So that was the premise for it. Mechanically, what that looked like was, I put some notes out and blogged a little bit on the internet, I use LinkedIn. And probably this is the last major thing that was of use on Twitter before I just had to get the hell out of the madness, and pull up a Calendly page to be able to manage people being able to find some time set some rules about that, which are sort of worked out as I started to do it. So I set it so that I would never have more than one coffee in a day. And there was buffer either side of it. The coffee would be an hour because I think you do need an hour to be able to have a good conversation with somebody half an hour isn't long enough. It's a bit like a week's holiday isn't long enough, you need two weeks. And then that's the most privileged thing I think I've ever said is much better if you can get two weeks holiday property turned off over two weeks. As I got into it. What I also kind of resolved to do was to keep some records of of who it was that I was talking to, but not to make the who it was public, also to be able to write some notes after the coffee about what I'd remembered of the coffee. So nothing in detail, but to be able to write some bulleted notes that just were the things maybe 24 hours afterwards that stuck in my mind about that conversation. I initially started also thinking that it would be an in person thing actually quite I quickly realized that if I limited it to in person, I was limiting to people who I could meet in London. And that dramatically shrunk the number of people that I would have available to have coffee to actually, as it turned out, it's about 5050 between the people that I've met in person and those people that I've met online, and because I've met people online, it's meant I've done the length and breadth of the UK. But I've also done from California, all the way through to muster further west, probably Sydney, which wouldn't have happened if I'd insisted it on in person.

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Yeah, it's an interesting experiment of this, we all have to come into the office because otherwise we don't have the watercooler conversations. This is sort of a structured way at the air quotes watercooler conversations that every senior executive seems to miss in this hybrid working. Although no one can really quantify what we really got from that or really understand if there was a value other than just telling bad jokes and winding each other. I

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think there was value at the liminal spaces in the office, the place is between the places. I don't think the watercooler ever really existed.

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I think that the If I think back in my own career, when I worked at the BBC, in the 90s, there was a team of about 11 or 12 people. And we were next door to the coffee bar in one of the buildings that would woodlands in White City, and two people would drop in to see us. And they'd have a chat either before or after getting their tea or coffee from the coffee bar next door. Now all of that is it sounds so ancient, because the idea of tea or coffee bars, offices feels like it's over.

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But that was a really interesting thing, because we had an incredibly close relationship with our stakeholders in the business because they drop in and have a chat. But I think that was a kind of, even in my mind, that's a kind of mythical ideal, that has never happened to him. I think that, you know, the walking to the meeting that preamble before the meeting, the walking out of the meeting was useful. And it's really interesting that I think most when people are waiting for a meeting to start on a zoom call or a team's call, that tends to be awkward, deadly silence. Yes, there isn't. There isn't chatter,

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which is, well, they'll do their emails a little bit, you can see they're on their phone or something like that. It's hard. It's awkward to engage on Zoom. Yeah,

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no, absolutely.

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But I think that that actually is at the core of what I've is one, there's many learning things, things that I've learned out of this whole experiment.

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One of them above all else, though, is the value that we get from the bits between have been lost. And it's worsened, because we have also lost attention. And the trouble with most zoom meetings, where it's more than two people is the opportunity to get distracted by other windows or other devices is massive. And so most people fall foul of it, is that attention that we're losing. And that's not to do with being in person or not, because what I'm also seeing is that those bad habits that we are developing in teams or Zoom meetings are now transferring into the into the workspace.

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I've been in meetings where people have been obviously doing other things in the same physical space. I think the height of that was running a workshop for some people will have 12 months ago in a government department. And there was one of the participants and the client was just tip tapping away a keyboard all the way through it. And about halfway through the morning. She said I'm really sorry, but I've got a ball paper prepared by lunchtime. There was a bit of me that wanted to say can you just leave the room because yeah, it's not helping you being here.

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This isn't like a zoom call.

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You're actually disrupting it because but you can't say that when it's it's a client but but that that would be acceptable now is nuts. Yeah,

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it is.

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Yeah, we we've slipped into that. And we love this idea of luminance liminal spaces as well, it resonates so much more than water cooler, the whole, the water cooler theory is has never stuck with me and all but liminal spaces I can completely get

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it. So, so often happens in the way in which we think about how we improve organizations is that we look for efficiency. And by looking for efficiency, what we do is we transfer or convert interactions between people into transactions, it's perfectly possible to be able to move interactions and turn them into transactions. And the advanced your transactions is you can grow transactions exponentially, it's very hard to be able to do anything with interactions other than just grow them linearly, because it involves people on either side of the equation. But the issue is that as you do that, what happens is that you strip significance and cultural meaning and value and depth from those interactions. And you're left with just the call the transparency. The somewhat silly metaphor I use to describe this is the difference between going to Tiffany to buy an engagement ring and buying an engagement ring from the Tiffany website.

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One is purely a transaction, the most divine Yeah, but there's none of the ceremony near the event and the cultural meaning and then yeah, the symbolism of it all, and the depth and the richness and the emotional thing and that all the rest of it. And the other thing is actually interestingly, and this has been a challenge with the 100 coffees in a way that tension has been there. But when you have everything in the same medium, our ability to recall stuff gets harder. If every meeting happens in the same virtual meeting room, which it does, they all look the same. I went for a coffee a couple of weeks ago with one of my colleagues, quite mysteriously, he said, We I'd like to meet at Piccadilly. And I was very exciting, okay to answer we went in to meet in Piccadilly, and the we're going to the royal Geological Society, there's an exhibition of dinosaur bones. It's only until the end of the week that we can have a walk around that as we're having a chat. And that was wonderful, because that meant there was this incredibly inspiring, we were in the library of the Raju Geological Society, this amazing Victorian building. And so there's stuff about that conversation that I remember, but there's also just that whole conversation I can remember vividly because it was somewhere if

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I bet you'll remember that in a year like aspects or something of some meaning that you took from that session, just because of the different contexts that you're in. One of

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the key discussion points there was about how the amazing way in which paleontologists are able to find a small fragment of a small bone of a very large animal, and then work out what everything else would be, and how, in the work that we do, we're doing something similar, we are able to be able to get a small snapshot of a small part of an organization and we have to from that extrapolate out what the whole beast might look like. And I wouldn't have been able to recall that if it just been sitting on a zoom call. No.

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And that's sort of rich storytelling and metaphors that come out of the context that you're in.

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Yeah, absolutely. Really quite special. When I met, you've talked about the 100 coffees being intentionally unintentional, like that's kind of your your strapline, right.

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And when I talk to people about I've got some clients who are sort of in between roles in voluntarily resting. Resting is that the new is that well,

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that's that's the the actor's way of putting, rest resting.

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What we're up against for them is that they don't have a network.

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They know that their next job comes via the network, but they didn't really have a network because they've ignored the network for five to 10 years being enrolled. It's surprisingly common. Okay, so we have to start at the beginning.

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And then I sort of tell them about maths 100 Coffee project, and like, they're, they're like, Well, why would I? Why would I ask people to talk about? Oh, boy, what what has been? We can get on to networking just now.

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But I mean, what's, what's the response? How do you get over the talking for the sake of talking invitation, or people just naturally drawn to you kind of get them are okay with that?

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Yeah,

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that's interesting. I mean, there are people who say, I don't do small talk, I try to avoid people like that, because God, they're dull.

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The underpinning all of this.

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I'm a curious social scientist, I'm really interested in what people do and how they do stuff and who they are and what they think about. I'm just fascinated. And so this, for me is just a part of an ongoing anthropological study of the entire universe. But you can only do the entire universe of people because it's anthropology. It's not, you know, other stuff.

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I can get how you're excited, but how you get your, your coffee, yes, to relax into this idea of talking for the sake of talking for an hour, I don't

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think it's for the sake of talking, it's for the sake of being able to understand a little bit more about the person and a little bit more about the world. So I'm talking about the anthropological experiment, slightly tongue in cheek, but there is that I've got some skills. And one of the skills that I've got is the ability to be able to draw stuff out of people. It's very rare. And that comes from having done a degree in sociology and doing research methods study, having run a podcast for eight years, having done lots of work that was involved in being able to dig into who people are and what they were spending nearly two years working in management, leadership development in my mid 30s, where I was running workshops, every day, the week are three or four days a week, every week of the year for two years, which was incredible, nearly killed me. But so I've honed those skills about being able to draw people out. I think it's interesting, actually, that you can probably categorize people. And this is sort of top of their head. But there are people where the conversation is fairly equal. There's the conversations where the person who meeting has got something that they want to get from me that they're interested in exploring a particular thing, and therefore are asking for my views. There's ones where I probably talk more, there's definitely ones where the McAfee companion has taught more.

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There's ones that have gone on for two hours, because we had so much to talk about, there's not been any that of ground to a halt in less than an hour. So

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when that kind of suggests if you give people a spacious connection space or repeating myself, that there's a longing for it, there's a yearning.

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Yeah, I mean, it's not from everybody. This is a self selecting group of people. There's a couple of couple of people I got in touch with to say, would you have coffee with me? I've got this project. And they graciously said yes, so But most people actually I've, I've known before, but there are people who are particularly interested in one of whom is a professor in social psych ecology specializing in the science of conversation, I thought, Liz would be really interested in having a chat, because we could talk about actually the experiment itself a bit as well.

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But I also wanted to catch up with her because I find her were absolutely fascinating. Liz Stocco at the London School of Economics, but I think the thing and another social science reference, but I think that one of the big challenges with this, and with what we need to be able to do to work effectively in a hybrid world and what we need to be able to do to work in a complex world where we need to come up with ideas to complex challenges. And you don't know what the answers are, is that a lot of what you need to be able to do that doesn't conform with the cultural models we have for what work is, people might find it enjoyable, people might find it that they are feeling stretched in a good way, people will often find that they will feel that it isn't work like because it doesn't conform with what we have as the the ideas of work. And I think, I don't think this is the case in it won't be the case in all cultures. But I think in in UK culture, most of northern Europe, in the US, there's a German, one of the founding parents of the discipline of sociology, Max Weber. And in the early 1900s, he published a book in which he described a thing that has become known as the Protestant work ethic. And the Protestant work ethic. It has many facets and Vabre argued that Protestantism was one of the reasons why capitalism was a success in Northern Europe and America, and then that was then spread elsewhere. And it was because of some of the moral strictures within Protestant faith. Essentially, if you work hard, you go to heaven. And if you don't, you don't. And the work should be sufferance. It shouldn't be pleasurable. And it should be austere, and it should make you feel uncomfortable. And it shouldn't be anything that you enjoy. And if you're enjoying yourself, you're obviously not working, you're doing something else. And that that was a good confidence trick to be played at the turn of the last century, because you have people doing very dangerous jobs for for crap pay, taking their lives in their hands and daily basis. And to be told, Well, it's okay. Because if you die, it's fine. You'll you'll be going to heaven because we're working hard as a miner or a steel worker, or whatever else.

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Now, those crap jobs have gone.

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And for the most part, certainly in developed economies, and the Protestant faith to a great extent has gone. But we've got still those cultural values that are deeply entrenched in how we think about work. And so we're left thinking that it's perfectly alright for somebody to say no, you will go into the office three days a week, because I've told you to, because that conformed to this idea that work should be sufferance. But we've lost all of the reference points about why that was the case in the first place. And so taking an hour out without agenda to go for coffee with the stranger is an act of corporate robber espionage. It's not Yeah. And people feel like deeply guilty about it, because of the Protestant work ethic. But we don't understand it, because we've lost all the reference point. Yeah, it's going on, which I find fascinating. The best example I had of it was actually before COVID. and chatting with a journalist Steven Bush, who currently works at the Financial Times at the time was working for the New Statesman. And he was talking at an event I was at with a few of us about how he had such an immense sense of guilt when it came to reading books in the office, that he had to take him and the book home to be able to read the book at home because he couldn't bear to do it in the office because it was all too much. Guilt was overbearing. He felt that people looking going on at work, his job was to review books. Very statesman.

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You're being paid to do it. And yet you still Yeah. Are you still feel guilty about it? And I think that guilt, I think my in my experience, the most people I work with aren't in touch with their emotions, so they wouldn't be able to name the guilt. But what I would come up as is that this is a is it sort of judgment, or this is a waste of time, but like, what's the agenda? What's the outcome?

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What's the deliverables? Yes.

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What's the deliverables? The KPI like and if and if you don't have that, then you're wasting my time. It's a waste of capitalist kind of material. Yeah,

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there's also this really weird thing that's gone on. And again, this is I have like a really visceral gut reaction when people rely on numbers alone. And that gut reaction is I clench I get scared when people this is one of my ongoing battles with the entire universe. But things like net promoter score, which is at a bad social science, there is nothing valid about any of it anymore. It is nonsense. And yet people will hold NPS scores high above actually going to talk to customers. Because we value numbers, we don't value qualitative data. It is mere anecdote. And it's not. You just need to find different ways of analyzing it. And those aren't just trying to turn quality data into quantitative data. Yeah. We not only have very little capability to be able to So we have a very low value associated with qualitative data. But moreover, most people working in organizations do not have any faculty to be able to deal with qualitative data. Because they've never been taught it, they've never been taught what it is to be able to use qualitative data as a valued source, as well as quantitative data. Because so many people come from a finance background in senior positions in organizations is my hunch. Now,

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I've seen a lot of their leadership teams that I coach, finance, math, science backgrounds.

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It's very rare that you say I'm gonna actually, I think, Bezos is probably a massive tyrant, and probably overall not good for the world.

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But he does do his six page write the press release thing, which is interesting for an organization that is obviously very, very numbers driven, I'd be interested in how many of those press releases are just basically spreadsheets with words. But nonetheless, the qualitative is valid there, it seems as much as the quant. Like

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there's like a real big takeaway from for me in this conversation about how the 100 coffees can push up against that Protestant work ethic and even my own I mean, even thinking about the conversation with you is like, I noticed myself wanting to put some shape to it through what what did you want out of it?

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What does each convert? I mean, I know you have a broad hypothesis, but I was following the same lines, as my clients and your clients do have, you know, we are subject to the system of oppression, that is capitalism, too. I'm trained 25 years trained in capitalism plus, so of course, I'm really looking for that. So I'm saying this because I give listeners are listening to this going.

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What's the deliverable? Yeah, if they're struggling to sort of relate to this conversation, I think you're a part of that would be normal.

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So there's another thing that I've been exploring, and I'm actually working on a workshop around this at the moment, I've only just learned the word. I love it when you've you've been working around something and then suddenly, you realize there's a word to describe the thing that you've been working on, there's a thing called apophenia apophenia APO Phen IA, what apophenia is, is it describes the human's brain's ability to better spot patterns in random.

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We have this presumably for some sort of evolutionary advantage, you can imagine, it's like if I, if I spot some data in grass over there, and that data looks in us like a tiger or a lion, I will run away. And the false positives are worth it. Because a false negative involves not having legs anymore, or worse, that ability to be able to spot these patterns we have all around us all the time. And in fact, there's there's one argument that says there's no such thing as reality. And we get too philosophical about it.

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But everything that we look at around us is constructed that I feel division is actually about the size of your thumbnail held at arm's distance, and everything else has been created by the brain. So you're taking a very limited amount of information and then constructing around it, and so on. But apophenia as a power that we have, if we could find ways to hack it, because there's downsides to it as well.

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apophenia this random information and spotting patterns leads to conspiracy theories, it is probably underpinning of what is known as confirmation bias, where we find the data to support our opinion, I think you could argue that probably religions and things are also probably, if you're an atheist stem back to apophenia, as well, but it's okay there for the moment. But if we could hack it, if we could find ways to be able to make this thing useful if we could find ways to be able to allow random input and pattern matching to help us reframe problems, rather than trying to be able to have a problem and the solution and then finding random data to support it, going for coffee with my friend, Dan. And seeing dinosaur bones enabled us to get some random input and enabled us to create some new framings for some of the ways in which we operate with our clients. Random input can be used to be able to help generate ideas very quickly. I've been working on another project recently, which is a thing called Business makeout, which is a set of playing cards which are loosely based on the idea of tarot, which enable people to be able to do exactly this to be able to reframe problems through the use of random input to help them be able to spot solutions that they otherwise wouldn't have done.

00:29:20.640 --> 00:30:30.900
And there's something about going and having conversations with lots of people from lots of different backgrounds, that the conversation itself is the valuable part. Because what it's doing is it's allowing you to create new connections and spot new patterns. Because if you go into open minded and if you go into a CSA just let's see where this leads. It's fascinating because what you find is that you will find new ways of thinking about things because you're getting input from diverse sources, you will find new connections, every person that you meet, you've just extended your net worth by their network, minus one which is you know, exponential power of growth. If you want to add numbers around it. That's awesome. The other thing I found is that I've had conversations that have gone through To the conversations, there have been threads that I have found where a conversation starts with one person and then gets picked up again with another person who knows nothing about the first conversation. But I'm the conduit for that idea to be able to shape and evolve over a number of people's inputs, which is how I've got to the, there's a very Burien Protestant workers who think it's not come from Me just sitting and thinking really hard about it. It's come from having the opportunity to speak with lots of people and then tie ideas together.

00:30:31.440 --> 00:30:48.029
As you as you talk, I'm reminded of two things, one about getting new information. The other one is mindset. Like, if you were to reduce executive coaching, down to some core aspects, one of them is the power of mindset or perspective change. And that's what you're talking about here.

00:30:48.029 --> 00:31:02.130
How do you allow the dinosaur perspective? Yeah, it's a way of looking at something and allows you to look to see it in a different way. And therefore new information about the problem, the challenge to come in. It's classic coaching on a one on one. But

00:31:02.130 --> 00:31:16.079
it's very hard for the coach to be able to do that if it's a sustained relationship between coach and client, because, and I've done both sides of it. Yeah. And it's really easy to be able to just quite quickly get to a point where there's a set conversation is a

00:31:16.079 --> 00:31:40.500
stuckness as a pattern. I agree. Yes, I agree with that. But I think as I as I talk to you here, I'm kind of wanting to release that idea of mindset of perspective into the world and kind of offer listeners like this is a, this is a thing that's available to you in different ways. And 100 coffees is one way at it. The other thing that comes to my mind, which I've always resisted what I had struggles with in the beginning, when we used to do, I still do supervision in groups.

00:31:41.039 --> 00:32:12.539
So coaches sitting in three or four would have three or four other coaches being held by a supervisor, you have a hot seat, you put your I one of you has your issue. The idea is that even though that issue is not mine, that through the conversation, I get insight into whatever I'm dealing with completely unrelated. And I'm I'm saying this because I imagine listeners are in different places, listening to our conversation. When I did my first few, that group was coaching supervision sessions, I finaid it, like someone's done my life coaching or whatever.

00:32:10.440 --> 00:32:18.420
I'm like, that's not my world, like, What the hell is that about? This is complete waste of time. And the supervisor will say what you've been taking away from there, and well, I'm like, well, nothing.

00:32:20.970 --> 00:32:23.099
Can't imagine it, Catherine. There

00:32:23.099 --> 00:32:26.700
was like, 10 years ago, my supervisor still reminds me of those days.

00:32:24.450 --> 00:32:46.650
And I'm like, yeah, it's kind of humiliating. But I, I share that because I think it is, the topic of conversation you're talking about isn't my interest I so I'm, I'm at MIT here, like I've checked out, as opposed to staying and going, well, what can I just knowing that there's something in there patterns or perspective or anything, it doesn't openness to this that I think is important.

00:32:47.670 --> 00:32:59.730
I guess the other thing, as you're saying that is that for somebody in a senior position in an organization, the ability to have a conversation with anybody should be a basic prerequisite of any senior role.

00:33:00.180 --> 00:33:01.170
That's a great point.

00:33:01.289 --> 00:34:14.190
And if it isn't, you Peter Principle has massively kicked in, and you've reached the top of where you're going, stop, now you've cut off the best, because being able to have conversations with just about anybody is super important. And to be able to do that one of the things I've found over the IRS is that, because I'm curious, because I've had quite a very wiggly career path. I've done lots of different things in lots of different sectors and lots of different organizations. What I am able to do quite quickly with just about anybody is to find something that I've got in common with them that I can talk to them about. And because I can do that, and almost always will find something where they go, Oh, he knows a bit about my world. That's an incredibly powerful way to be able to, and I'm not doing it in a kind of subversive or manipulative way I'm doing it because I want to be able to, first of all, check my knowledge and what I'm remembering about what I think I know about the particular subject areas that this person is in, and then to be able to learn more about it and that hook in to be able to say, Oh, that's interesting, because I did some stuff with an insurance company 10 years ago, and what I found there was this weird thing about how they have lots of signs up in their toilets, warning you about every possible risk, because they seem to be really risk averse organization.

00:34:09.780 --> 00:34:27.179
So right now, I know I do know, because I'm speaking to an insurance company. But it's that kind of thing. That skill that that ability to be able to talk to anybody about more than just nice weather. What was on TV last night wasn't a football crap.

00:34:27.208 --> 00:34:38.849
It brings you back this idea of networking and how much resistance so many of the people I speak to have about networking, my clients and they have these assumptions about it. It's a sales thing.

00:34:35.458 --> 00:34:57.748
Yeah, it's a sales thing. It's manipulative, it's transactional, or they go the other way. I don't do small talk. I don't want to talk about the weather. I'm like, Well, who where's the manual and networking with that you ever talk about the weather? Your 100 Coffee project really shows that there are different ways of connecting. One of

00:34:57.750 --> 00:35:12.719
the other things that I've realized I've said I wanted to do again, this wasn't a sort of plan thing, the vocal handshakes that we used to be able to signify the beginning and the end of the conversation that the start of the conversation, how are you? I give an answer to that,

00:35:12.780 --> 00:35:14.369
as opposed to the Yeah, I'm fine.

00:35:14.400 --> 00:35:15.420
As opposed to I'm fine. How

00:35:15.420 --> 00:36:05.489
are you? That's that's not an answer. That's, that's, that's automated handshaking. But to be able to say, well, you know, Bob, I'm pretty good at the moment. Oh, do you know what? There's a ridiculous thing that's just happened. And again, that's just an opening. It's a I guess, it's also a bit of influence that's come from talking with people involved in the world of improvisation. So people like Neil malarkey is also a common name guy who runs a improvisational theatre company called improbable. Fell in McDermott, though, yeah. And actually thinking about conversations as being they are improvised things. They're not role playing. It's just but it is improvisation. And the other key thing about Well, the key thing about improvisation is you need to offer to the other person, you need to give them the opportunity to be able to come back to talk to you.

00:36:05.730 --> 00:36:11.880
That is such a great, great, I've actually got someone coming in the podcast to talk about improv because I'm such a fan of it.

00:36:09.329 --> 00:36:28.710
And what a beautiful way to link it into kind of networking or interactions of the humans that yeah, it's a it's a way of I use it on team building to help teams get out of patterns of conversation, you're talking about this in the day to day networking, they how do you how do you hand the baton back in the conversation and make it easy for the person to pick it up?

00:36:28.860 --> 00:36:30.449
Exactly. Yeah,

00:36:30.449 --> 00:36:44.340
that's nice. Yeah, I segue there. But tell me about it, you must have had some interesting memorable interactions, or bits of information that you've learned that kind of stick out to you.

00:36:44.789 --> 00:37:00.750
There are two things that have happened as a result of this one of them happened only this week. So Mary, actually, who I mentioned, to had her 100 List of 100 people that she wanted to have coffee, which was one of the inspirations for this. She dropped her thing on LinkedIn.

00:37:00.989 --> 00:37:13.920
She runs networks of entrepreneurs, mostly female entrepreneurs. She's in Washington, DC soon, she wants to know if anybody knew anybody who she should talk to, to be able to forge further networks.

00:37:10.920 --> 00:37:31.320
12 months ago, I wouldn't have been able to answer that question. Now I was able to put pointed to mark it was somebody who got in touch with me, who is a communications expert who works in a slightly murky world of political lobbying, and political comms. And he's super well connected. And so I was able to just point those two.

00:37:31.349 --> 00:37:43.590
And I don't know if anything will come of that. But I was able to do something useful out the back of this and kind of fittingly, it was actually hopefully to help. One of the people who inspired the project in the first Yeah, it's quite nice to kind of honor that.

00:37:41.039 --> 00:38:49.050
Yeah. The other thing that happened, which is quite ludicrous, but has given me incredible pleasure. In July, I think I met with a guy who is based in California, and his job is to be a ghostwriter. For tech leaders, he writes pieces, and he write speeches for important people in tech companies. So fascinating conversation, and the fascinating world that he works in. And again, he was somebody who just got in touch with me out of seeing on LinkedIn and said, We have coffee. That's great. And James was talking as part of that conversation about how in its growing up, he was absolutely fascinated by rock music, loved rock music, British rock music in particular, and was fascinated about the environment in which the great rock musicians of the 70s and 80s grew up in the 60s and 70s and 80s grew up in in the UK in the post war, very damaged, beginning regenerate regeneration, very poor economy of Britain in the 50s and 60s.

00:38:43.769 --> 00:39:26.760
So it was interesting, because when my dad was working for the BBC in the 1960s, he was working on the World Cup and he went out to Goodison Park the habit and grounds us station there for World Cup matches. He's got no interest in football, my dad, but he was very interested in photography. So he went out when he wasn't working, rather than going back to London. It stayed up there. And then he went out and took photos around Liverpool in 1966. And of course at a period where we didn't have like a billion photographs being taken every second because you had film and the cost of producing, developing film and all the rest. So it's got these photos of a Liverpool in transition. They're fascinating.

00:39:26.760 --> 00:40:28.889
There's some of them. There's pictures of the ferry across the Mersey and those kinds of things. There's pictures of life of building. There's also pictures of around Goodison Park, the slum clearance that was going on in the building of the new tablets. The great future for social housing in the city at the time, spoiler didn't turn out as well as they were hoping of mind. But these photos are amazing. And they said to James, I'll take them out. So got some scans of them, I'll send them across to you. So went into my photo library digging them out, and I think these need a bit of a broader view. So alongside emailing so Other than to James, what I also did was I put them on to the thing that we used to call Twitter. And half a million views of these photos later, I got a call from the Liverpool Echo saying, Could we do something about your dad's photos? Can we run a piece about? And then I then got a call from the BBC saying, Could we do something about your dad's photo? Can we do a piece on? So from a conversation with a complete stranger, I was able to send my dad viral on the internet. Which guy dead? Why doesn't matter?

00:40:29.190 --> 00:40:33.449
No, but this is something sort of serendipitous about a minute.

00:40:30.989 --> 00:40:33.449
Absolutely. That's the point.

00:40:33.659 --> 00:40:46.980
That yeah, that's what there's something there's something joyful about serendipity for me, like you cannot plan this. It'll be timing and surprising and curious and moving or funny, or who the fuck knows. Like we don't, that's the whole point.

00:40:47.039 --> 00:40:48.539
Absolutely. whole point.

00:40:49.019 --> 00:41:05.309
I've said up front, what I'm going to do is I'm going to do a project involving coffee that's going to send my dad via on the internet, that was ludicrous. But I've also I know that, you know, there's some client relationships that are built out of this, as a new partner relationships are built out of this, my knowledge is extended hugely, I continue to just become part of my working practice. Now. When

00:41:05.309 --> 00:41:13.110
I see I mean, I was gonna ask you what next for the project, because your 149, as you said, it'd be started. It just this is going to kind of roll on

00:41:13.230 --> 00:42:23.610
it, I think. I mean, I've I've got a number of kind of working out loud, open working kind of practices that have built up over the years, probably the most visible until this has been week noting which is just every week, I put together a short bulleted list of the things I've learned in the last seven days, stick it on my blog, is published to the internet. And I've done that religiously now since 2009. I think, and it's a it's a good way for me personally, just to close down the week. And it's also a good way for people to occasionally just check in and see what Matt's doing every so often people so I saw that thing you wrote about, can I talk to you about it or undo something similar or awkward, you're not still looking at that or you whatever else. So that's one of them. The coffee's thing, actually, just intentionally, it doesn't take huge amount of effort. It's in the bottom, my email signature. Now, I still post a blog after each coffee to be able to give the notes of what I learned from the coffee that I've just had. So it's a similar sort of thing to the week, noting so there's a link there for people to be able to book calendly.com/matt Eisen, Ballantine, I'll put it in the show notes. It's just now a thing is something I do. And I don't really have a toll. I mean, coffee was always a metaphor. Yeah, the 100 is now a metaphor as well. That's fine.

00:42:23.610 --> 00:42:25.559
Yeah, I'll stop doing it when they stop. Yeah.

00:42:27.119 --> 00:42:29.489
Yeah.

00:42:27.119 --> 00:42:36.000
Yeah. I love that. That is a again, how freeing is that as opposed to, there's no KPI there, right. It's like to get to 200 Oh,

00:42:36.059 --> 00:42:41.369
no, it's a que si, which is key feeling indicator? Does it feel like it's right on?

00:42:42.659 --> 00:43:02.369
The CSE ologists. And if someone's listening to this, on fact, I'm thinking like, maybe I should do 100 coffees like I'm very inspired by the the joyful, wandering and meandering that you've heard. And in this experience, there's some key I mean, you've talked a little bit about how you've done it. Any other key tips you want to highlight for the person who wants to do this,

00:43:02.789 --> 00:43:27.239
there's a real value in making a project because there's something about being able to say, if you want to invite people to coffee, don't be manipulative about it, don't just give your top list of people that you want to sell to all the top people that you want to employ you because it will they'll see through it. But if you want to use it as a way to be able to invite people having a project makes it much more viable. If I say, Catherine, can we meet up with for a coffee?

00:43:27.480 --> 00:43:38.579
You may or may not go down the path. If I say, Catherine, can we meet up for a coffee cuz I'm doing this thing called 100 coffees? Because this crazy guy, Matt, I heard about doing it. It just opens it up a bit. Because

00:43:38.579 --> 00:43:41.880
the purpose and reason part of something Yeah. Yeah.

00:43:42.389 --> 00:43:52.349
The mechanics of it something like candidly to be able to allow people to sell serve, booking big help. The other thing that I did 100. And I will intend to do it at 200.

00:43:52.349 --> 00:44:15.960
If I get that far as I close the loop a bit by producing a little badge, which just a little coffee cup with 100 coffees written on it. And I sent one with a card saying thank you to all the people who've been the first 100 nights. And just that as a way of being able to turn even for those ones, which were only virtual, although they were very real. There was a physical element to the whole thing as well. So you posted

00:44:15.960 --> 00:44:24.059
that to the virtual people. Again, acknowledgement of you were part of a project that's been significant for me and thank you. I love that. Exactly.

00:44:24.059 --> 00:45:07.739
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was chatting to somebody actually earlier, the coffee on Monday where somebody who has been living in London for 11 months, she's going back to Melbourne in Australia where she lives she's thinking about doing something that isn't 100 coffees, but isn't sort of inspired by it as a way to be able to meet more people and have more conversations. So adapted this she's an artist, so thinking about how she might combine painting or drawing with this idea, which is quite interesting. Ultimately, it's really interesting for me is that 100 coffees over the course of the year is about two hours a week, two hours of a 40 hour working week. a tiny amount. In fact, what you're doing for all the other house is more valuable than having conversations.

00:45:08.010 --> 00:45:26.400
But I haven't put full stop. Let's just end the podcast. You've nailed it. What else are you doing that's valuable for the other 38 hours in a week? And he's doing 30. He's doing 40 hours anyway. Mr. was to do more than that. Yeah. I feel very inspired. I have, we might see a lot of this going on on LinkedIn. Now. I'm hoping actually,

00:45:27.000 --> 00:45:51.329
there's been a few people have spoken up and run with it. I think the other bit for me out of all of that is if I can give a bit of permission, in my own little way to say this is all right. I'm not wacky guy. Well, I mean, I'm, I'm out there in comparison to a lot of people. But there's levels of wackiness, and I'm very, very conscious about the stuff that I do that I get very uncomfortable with stuff that feels like it's forced upon, or

00:45:52.739 --> 00:45:59.550
I also have also picked you and maybe I've got this wrong as sort of a borderline introvert like you're not massively Yeah. So

00:46:00.510 --> 00:46:04.079
that's really interesting, because that helps me to be able to control it. To

00:46:04.079 --> 00:46:16.739
all the introverts listening to this going on. I couldn't possibly do that. I mean, I think Matt is an introvert and in controlling and managing this allows you to step into those containers that you've created under the circumstance that you want to meet. No,

00:46:16.739 --> 00:46:18.269
absolutely.

00:46:16.739 --> 00:46:22.230
It's an interesting quote, would I sign up for 100 coffees with a property? I would now would I have done before this? I

00:46:22.230 --> 00:46:24.989
don't know. Would you have signed up to someone else's 100 coffees?

00:46:25.019 --> 00:46:27.929
Somebody else's? Yeah. I don't know.

00:46:28.710 --> 00:46:36.420
I think I'd be looking for a while. Why, aside from being part of the project where we've explored that Mayan attachment to outcomes and which I think

00:46:39.030 --> 00:46:40.019
we'll talk about that separately.

00:46:40.079 --> 00:46:44.849
Yes. I'll put myself in for a coffee and you can counsel me okay.

00:46:45.750 --> 00:46:47.219
Do a Tarot reading? Oh,

00:46:47.219 --> 00:46:49.500
yeah.

00:46:47.219 --> 00:46:58.530
Meow cat Tarot reading? Well, Matt, it's been a joy. Thank you for sharing the experience. And I hope people feel really inspired to this guy just have a few coffees even if it's not 100. Yeah,

00:46:58.530 --> 00:46:59.760
absolutely.

00:46:58.530 --> 00:47:00.329
Thank you for lovely conversation.

00:47:05.039 --> 00:47:43.170
Well, that was fun. I am really inspired to find to have a miser version of the 100 coffee project. I am someone who, if you've listened to this podcast, you'll know this. I like to control things. I like to have a very ordered diary. I like to know where I'm going and conversations, accepting coaching conversations designing. And so that I think there'll be a real test for me to try this out and see what I could learn. Maybe you're inspired to, which would be amazing. And if you are planning to do something or inspired to do this, email me, tell me tell me what your thoughts are, how you might shape that. Maybe you can, we can inspire each other.

00:47:39.510 --> 00:48:13.349
And if you decided it's not your thing that you hope you can take from this conversation tips about networking, and it doesn't have to be about small talk that you can connect with other people for the sake of it and that there are people out there who who want to do somebody who want to connect just for the sake of connecting and leaning into the sort of the serendipity of what's possible when we connect without a very strict Work Agenda. This is all making me want another cup of coffee send me go make that cup of coffee and until next week, this is your wing woman signing off.