CEO Darryl Kelly Returns

Gillian

I'm going to get the podcast onto the, careers page because somebody said that the reason they took the job with Asac was because of our podcast.

Michelle

Today's guest is Darryl Kelly, the CEO of aspect. And usually like show behind the show, I like sit and I write like a bunch of accolades for this intro. And they're obviously like a lot that I could list for DK as well. But I chose this route to go a hyper personal route. So, these are my two earliest memories of meeting DK.

Gillian

First.

Michelle

He was coaching up a group of high school students who were disrespectful to some volunteers who were trying to help them. And second, he handled this leader's fragile ego in a very silly and disarming way. And in both of those instances, what I took away from them and, you know, all the time between then and now, I have watched K walk alongside folks who just need to see a different way of doing things.

Michelle

I won't say a better way. He corrects behavior. He sat with those folks through the reason that that needed to happen, and also the work that needed to get done. Today, we are going to talk a little bit about focus, and I have full expectation that we are going to ride whatever wave that comes by us. That is interesting.

Michelle

And the irony of talking about focus while being unfocused is not lost on me. So wherever we land today, I feel very confident that we are all going to leave better, together. So I want to start with DK. Where are you drawing inspiration from right now?

Darryl

I mean, you asked for that intro. Are you kidding me? Dang I don't. First of all, I want to meet this guy. And then, second of all, this is it. All right, I told myself as I was driving it, I'm going to rip a riff. Which means, just like I'm going to follow whatever tangent I have in my head because I've been needing a good riff.

Darryl

And so I think that you're going to hear from me is just hot. Take as it comes. No censoring. But Michelle, that is really inspiring. And I also love hearing your voice on so many of the things that aspect creates. Whenever a new video comes out in like that is Michelle. And then I tell the family, hey, you guys want to hear Michelle?

Darryl

And they're like, why does Michelle sound so professional? That's that's me doing my best.

Michelle

Olivia. Like, who is that?

Darryl

Who is who is that person? But, Michelle, you transform. But you're a chameleon in the best way, where you don't try to come into an environment to fit into that environment. You come into that environment to infiltrate that environment for what's best for that environment is that that work to let you rip in a riff and not even think about it.

Darryl

And then the quantum or the dynamic on top of that is you're one example of the hundreds of people that are around me right now that I'm really drawing inspiration from. And we've got a really good team here at aspect, to the point where it's like, how did all these people decide that they want to join this wild mission?

Darryl

And when does this dream end? And when do I wake up from this dream? It it is insane. And I was talking to Lou Peach about this when we were, when we were doing our like pre conversation of the journey that even Luke has had and it's the people around me are so, so, so dang inspiring because they're doing what they love and they're doing it from a sense of being unapologetic about it.

Darryl

That's all around me right now. I have these incredible conversations with our CTO, Royce at. He's figured out when to fight me at my my Ros, and that's like 4 a.m. for like six. And so he'll call me. He's it's either him or MC that are usually my first calls in the morning and he'll call me like tank, what's up.

Darryl

Almost what's you called me. He's like what's up? And then he goes into what he's working on and telling me about his team and what they're doing, and I love that. And then at the end of the day, I get Kelly, an Australian. It's her morning and she's usually tired and she's telling me about the day before, and it's about all the cool things that her team is doing.

Darryl

So I'm literally from the time that I wake up until I go to sleep, being being fed information about the incredible things that are happening around me. It's uncontainable at times where it's like when I am so privileged, it's so privilege, and I'm trying really hard to not do the thing that I typically do, which is catastrophize and go, well, when does this all it?

Darryl

I know I said that already and I was trying to make light of it. That is what I think about often is because I am so inspired by the people around me that it feels artificial.

Gillian

That's amazing. Yeah, I mean, it's contagious and it attracts like that energy and perspective attracts talent because you can't fake it. People want to stay and be around that, and learn from it. And I'm definitely speaking from personal experience and from, you know, my team's experience. That is a draw and a differentiator. And it is coming out of our leadership.

Gillian

It's coming from our CEO. And again, it can't be taught that perspective. Speaking of perspective.

Darryl

Hold on real quick. Just because I'm on the table and I'm ripping a riff here, having such a good.

Gillian

Transition.

Darryl

Is such a good transition. But, you know, I'm on the podcast, which, you know, that you can get from fear for anything. I wanted to continue, like, I think our, our society loves sports and celebrities so much, because there's that sense of being inspired by them. And that's what I get to feel here at this team and to what you were saying of what the team also feels in it.

Darryl

It's a really, really I don't want to walk away from that without really lid, without landing the gravity of it. I don't have to watch sports because I literally get to watch the best athletes in the world, and they're using their their cognitive abilities instead of their physical abilities. And to see cognitive abilities leveraged in the real world is it's the best thing ever.

Darryl

Right now. I'm done. You can cut me off now.

Gillian

Okay, one other thing is that you and I think I did just say this in a way, but you cannot fake that. You know, there's in our working culture, there's a lot of Kool-Aid being passed around and, you know, sea level, sea level leadership. They're trying to check boxes to retain talent. And there is a lot of scripts, out there that they're reading from the script that we are following.

Gillian

Right now from this leadership team is not it is comes from the heart. It's authentic. And it's not. It can't be repeatable at another organization because it's real and raw and the truth. So perspective. Yeah that was we we're we're vibing. How has your perspective as a CEO evolved over the years? You just came out with an incredible letter.

Gillian

On LinkedIn, I'm calling it a letter. I'm sure technically we would call it a post, but it felt so much from the it felt from the heart, you know, and provided such a peek behind the curtain for so many audiences, folks that are leaders, folks that work at our company, competitors, you name it, there's something for you in there, and I wish I could send it to everyone I know to be like, this is where I work, but you had to get somewhere to be able to articulate, how deep your digging as a leader, and, and what challenges you are facing.

Gillian

And honestly, to build the level of confidence to share that perspective. So in such a raw manner, how did you get there.

Darryl

Of that question? And because a good riff builds, I'm going to start back on where I am inspired, the, the, the anchor of where I was inspired as people. And so how my perspective has changed is also the actions in my behavior that has also followed, because I have some of the most extraordinary people around me, my job changed significantly.

Darryl

I used to have to have a lot more hand on the levers. Right? You think about a pilot, you walk, you look into that room, and you're like, how many hands do you have? I would say that that's very similar to running a company where some pieces are just pure input, some you're actually giving feedback to, some require actions.

Darryl

And what has been unique over the past year, I'd say, is it feels as if there's 300 other people in that cockpit with me right now. And so my cognitive ability isn't overloaded. I'm not at the place where I'm like, oh, I can go here and here and here. And it's like, I've got like toes on buttons at some point.

Darryl

And that's been the story. Typically of my career. I've had the opportunity to work alongside some incredible, incredible people. The cockpit just wasn't big enough. And so that created a lot of limitations, where maybe there's five of us, 20 of us in this cockpit together, but we're trying to navigate a really, really big vessel. What's extraordinary here is because you have so many people that have better competency, they're able to focus on their section of the control board, and they're able to do that really, really well.

Darryl

And they're not missing things that I would miss if I had to pay attention to everything, or if 20 people had to pay attention to the entire control board that's navigating this vessel. And so what is allowed? What has happened is it's like a bridge got created. I know this airplane is no longer aerodynamic anymore. And so just keep this keep this analogy in your head, okay?

Darryl

This is the most energy or excuse aerodynamic and aero efficient vessel in the air possible that somehow also has a bridge on top of it. So you know.

Gillian

Anything is.

Darryl

Possible is possible. Anything is possible. But hold on to that, that that flawed analogy. I'm able to sit above the control panel and identify better where we're going. And there is a unique gift to have that space, that cognitive space, to not have to worry about all the inputs and all the variables, but actually see how those inputs and variables are showing up in terms of the direction and the velocity and the inertia of this very powerful vessel that we're all responsible for controlling.

Darryl

And so my perspective has changed by the ability to, one and this is the uncomfortable thing. I somehow can still see all of the control panels and everything, and I have to restrain myself from pushing a button that I know, like, ooh, that's an alarm. But I have to trust that other person to do it, because if I take my eye and I start focusing on all these things, well, what happens?

Darryl

I'm no longer doing this thing that I gained as a advantage to pay attention to where we're going and make those little micro adjustments. It's really amazing to have that. And so my perspective has literally changed. It comes with a lot of emotional growth that I've also had to lean into. Because I'm needing to challenge myself differently because my role has changed.

Darryl

I'm no longer on that control panel. My role is to be up and on the bridge, if you will. And the second that I stepped down into the control panel, I'm now neglecting my role on the bridge. And that's really uncomfortable for me to do, really uncomfortable for me to do, because I if you don't know, I'm a very controlling person to the way that I was like, hey, I've got to finish this thought right?

Darryl

Like they're there, right? Like, that's the story of my life. I'm going to white knuckle this thing. Because I have a really good relationship with being able to white knuckle things to just like, all right, grab the bull by its horns and let's go. But I don't bring people along when I do that. And it's really important that where we're going, everyone arrives there together.

Gillian

So it takes daily practice and to to keep your hands off.

Darryl

Oh, it's not doing anything like every second.

Gillian

Every time you go to type something.

Darryl

It's why I say you have a 48 hour response time on slack, because I'm like, all information is not good information for me. And if I'm looking at general all day or if I'm looking at the product channel all day one I'm taking up air from someone else, right? Like if I respond, then Royce does not have the opportunity to say that thing.

Darryl

So it's really good for me to not participate with a high level of frequency, because it becomes less about my identity in the company and instead of the collective identity in the company. And so that is also really hard because as you can see, I am a person that likes to talk contingents and be a part of the personality, but because that's so big, it can also be consuming and I need to create space for others to have influence over the organization.

Darryl

And that's where you see a healthy organization. In contrast, for one that doesn't have as much health is and I think you've been saying that, like a lot of companies follow these scripts, a part of the script as well, that the leader that's responsible for leading the company isn't allowing the individuals to become a collective and lead the company.

Darryl

And that's a that's a leadership issue, because I don't have the micro restrain to not open slack and then go in and leave my opinions on something. Right? Or respond immediately to an email. Right. Like that's a me issue, not a company issue.

Michelle

There's a show that I love that has nothing to do with this. But, one of the guys says the reasons restaurant closed, restaurants closed is because the head chef is chopping lettuce. And that is just like, I feel like sums up what you're talking about. I want to referenced a letter that you wrote where you said, I've lived the compromises that come when a company tries to do too many things at once.

Michelle

Focus isn't a theory for me. It's a lived, intimate, and deeply personal lesson which I feel like is a lot of what we just talked about. So share a little bit about when you have seen companies doing too many things, how, how how does that end up falling out on the people who are part of that company?

Darryl

Well, I think aspect is the perfect example of it. I think it's the most fair one as well. Because I don't know every dynamic inside of every organization, but I do I do know this one very well. And so while I can speculate on others, I will hyper personalize. We did that. We we we lost sight of who we are because of the voices that we may have let in our whatever, the whatever the condition may have been from an influencer point of view, we ultimately took action on that.

Darryl

And what happens there is you lose a sense of yourself. And as you can see, I'm personalizing it to myself now, you lose a sense of yourself. And if we really think about it, organizations are really just society. Societies are reflections of it. Right? So an individual of a collective collective, a reflection of individual like you can make the argument that an organization is just as much as an individual entity as as you as an individual are in terms of the construct, it's really easy to lose yourself with the wrong, with the wrong influence.

Darryl

You know, you see this in artists all the time, piece by piece, one of my favorite movies right now, like a movie of Pharrell Williams. He highlights this as well, where music producers said, well, here's a formula for Pharrell Williams. And as soon as Pharrell started following that formula, he lost relevance because he was trying to be everyone.

Darryl

Everything to everyone. I'm going to be a little pop and be a little hip hop, do a little bit of rock. And here's a perfect the perfect box that everyone is going to want. And then what happens is he actually lost his uniqueness. And I think that we, we often forget, no one will outdo you at you at being you.

Darryl

And so if you're really good at being, you know, they'll make the bridge back to a company. If there is a thing that made you keep doing that thing extraordinarily well. Another great example of this is Mythic Motorsports guy, big car guy. And, I can say Porsche 911 and almost everyone in the world know about the Porsche 911 and the iterations that it has that that it, that it has had, or they'll change one or 2 or 3, one, two, three or 4 or 5 things in a release and everyone's like, oh my gosh, the there's something to be said about being incremental.

Darryl

The same is true. The other side of the coin is true as well. There are times where you have to iterate. We have to disrupt, we have to take a pivot. But you have to do that with a sense of intention of how that first fit into what your original integration with the original competency was. Not a sense of a, of a, of inertia, not a sense of, well, we're just going to go this way because the market's going this way, or we're going to go this way because there's there needs to be friction before you make significant movements.

Darryl

Right. And oftentimes there's not because we follow these fads. We'll follow these the these these yeah these these fads and fads can be and in fashion they can be in consumer technology. They can be in consumer brands. And they also can be an enterprise and software brands, brands as well. We can see fads come up. People go, oh well that that's the thing.

Darryl

Well our job is good technologists and good leaders is to be able to discern what's a fad and what's a new innovation right where markets are going respectively. And then we have to decipher that and then build an appropriate, appropriate strategy for that. But that should be a difficult process. It should be a process that requires a lot of introspection.

Darryl

Let's focus on the extrinsic conditions. But more focus on the intrinsic conditions. That's where I think that really stems from. And where we were as a company is we let a market lead us instead of getting closer to closer to what we know to be best. And I think that we would be at a different position now.

Darryl

And so when you think about really what we're doing as a company is what I know to be true in terms of what I've seen successful in my life is, when you focus on the thing, you achieve the thing.

Gillian

I want to talk a little bit about the direction that you like, where we're at today, and the direction you see for us as an organization in hopes not just to, you know, give a deeper glimpse behind the curtain, but genuinely to inspire people, from other companies also, as you know, or just a reminder, future works is not it is meant for a larger audience.

Gillian

It is meant for the leaders, and it is meant for the doers. So when we are talking about unpacking any kind of greatness as an individual or as a company, we are. We really want our listeners to walk away with things to channel, no matter where they are on, on the, on the grid. So, you've said speed with simplicity and speed is cultural when it comes to our organization.

Gillian

What do you mean by that? Oh, and why? Simplicity.

Darryl

What's the best way of saying this? Because I am very passionate about this. Because it's now you're into the 4 a.m. conversations with me and Royce because years ago we Royce ago slow down to speed up. And then, as you could see over the over the year, we've kind of got to the place where it's like speed up to speed up.

Darryl

And yeah. Do you remember that change was like, hey, we're going to, you know, really take things in, slow down to speed up, speed up to speed up. Well, what was normalized in that was speed, right. Like we movement was what was consistent. And rather it was slow down to speed up or speed up to speed up. There was the the the ideology that we're moving and that we're not moving at a clip that is, is, incremental or, you know, incremental.

Darryl

It's like, you know, we're moving, right? There's inertia here, right? Speed. When you think of speed, you don't necessarily think of the turtle. You think of the you think of the tortoise. Well, here's the simplicity of it. Speed can be very destructive, destructive. You know, you you have to harness speed. What allows us to be most efficient with containerizing speed or containerizing energy or inertia is simplicity.

Darryl

Because if you don't have good containerization around the simplicity thing of of where you're directing that inertia, you have chaos, you have entropy, right? And, entropy is how things explode. And to avoid things that, oh, race is calling me right now. See, this is literally my day.

Gillian

You can say hi. Yeah, just called me. So tell him, put him on speaker real quick.

Darryl

Yo, can you. Can you hear me? Yeah, yeah.

Gillian

So, hey, can you hear me.

Darryl

Now that he can't hear you, I it's in my ears. So I'm on the Future Work podcast right now.

Michelle

Answer.

Darryl

And that's why Michelle didn't answer. But they told me to answer because I was I was talking about, you know, before you literally as you rang and I was saying how you were talking early on, it was slow down to speed up. And then it was speed up to speed up. And we're talking about inertia and the difference between, you know, something being able to move forward with velocity and something blowing up.

Darryl

And to me, I said that that's simplicity because simplicity is is coherence. And it's just funny that you call it. So do you have anything to say on this side? Oh my gosh. Really? Other than like, yeah, I think, I think it's, identify, places in the business where you need to slow down, to speed up, and, and so forth.

Darryl

But, you know, sometimes, sometimes, slowing things down can be more right too fast. Right. And so, I think that's just, important to identify. Not everything requires a slow down to speed up strat strategy. Our approach towards it. But, but once you feel high conviction on something, it's up to you, you know, execute, execute fast.

Darryl

So you, mess around. It's like,

Gillian

I almost said that earlier. The mess around and find out.

Darryl

Jillian is saying, Royce, that is brilliant. What you just said I am. And, And how do we quote this as a Royce's? I'm gaslighting right now. I think it's the literal definition of gaslighting because she's saying something different and I'm telling you something different, but she's going to be mad at me. So let me cut you off and, call you back in a little bit.

Darryl

Is that okay? All right. Say bye to everyone. I see you guys.

Gillian

Bye.

Darryl

Where were we?

Gillian

Jay, let's just unpack this a little bit further. Speed with simplicity.

Michelle

Okay? You got to talk about your personal experience with that.

Darryl

No no no no no no. It's embarrassing. Okay. All right.

Gillian

Does this have to do with training for the.

Darryl

Yes, it's training for this run and I'm going to do it really quickly. So a few years ago I was like, I'm going to I want to run a long distance at a fast, fast rate. And so I did some of, like what I thought was good based training. And then this year, I put on some serious volume, like an unusually serious volume.

Darryl

Speed, right. Speed to speed up. And, ended up with an injury and it was like pre very catastrophic potentially could not run again injury. And it's purely because I was speeding up to speed up. I wasn't simply focusing on what it would require to harness speed over time and speed with endurance. And it's one of those things where the simplicity seems so counterintuitive.

Darryl

But simplicity is how you arrive, complete and whole, and how you avoid burnout. And that's the simplicity of it all, is if you're just speeding down the road to speed down the road without any sense of restraint, without the right foundation, right, without the right, without the right base, it's destructive. And we typically in our society have a really good relationship with speed.

Darryl

Right? It's what I call the hustle culture. I was like, I just work, I get it, all right? Or just, you know, whatever it may be, right? Speed, speeds with speed. The simplicity is a really important component to that speed because it simplicity is basically harnessing it. So yeah, there you go. There's probably the story in a minute or two, I guess Royce.

Michelle

Talked about, you know, like saying slow down to speed up is not something that typically board members like to hear. But we also know that just listening to this other podcast, Hidden Brain, it's amazing. I was just talking about it that like our attention, what we can give our attention to. Like that's the that's our currency, right? Like we there is we have a set, a finite amount of attention that we can give to things and we won't get any more.

Michelle

Right. So it's this finite resource. How do you manage the pressure that comes from outside sources. So if you're a CEO that's the board. If you're a doer, maybe that's coming from your manager. How do you manage that pressure? That is like, hey, I also need you to do these other things. And you're like, no, no, no, I know I'm doing the right thing.

Michelle

How do you how do you manage that? That tension.

Darryl

Number one, is knowing your audience, knowing how to communicate, knowing how to translate, knowing how to distill. Yeah, that's really important. The other component is removing emotion from what you're communicating and doing. Effective quarantining. And so this is the tie back to that perspective. And a lot of times when you hear people like me that are afforded the privilege of perspective because it is a privilege to have perspective, don't be disheartened because you can create that as well.

Darryl

And it it requires a different approach than I have to. But as you can see, I put constraints around me to have this to have this perspective. If I don't have a steady flow of information coming in, I have a phone that does voice add text. And so people call me and you can do this as well.

Darryl

It's just a little different, right? You don't have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people worrying about the inputs for inputs for you. But then that just means we have different problems. There's different things that we're needing to different things that we're needing to communicate and a different value, different, importance. And that's not from a negative perspective.

Darryl

They're just different importance on what we are communicating. And so when Royce says speed up to speed up and or slow down to speed up, and he says things like, well, I know board members don't like that, etc., that's for me to manage, right? That's for me to then go, this is input. My my CTO is right. The data set of the organization is saying we have to slow down.

Darryl

We have to slow down to speed up. My job is to try to figure out how to then communicate to the audience that has a counter opinion on what we need to do, and that's all it is. That's the translating back and forth and effective engagement, because I have an understanding of the audience of what Royce needs and then also what the board needs.

Darryl

And there may be times where I have to go back to your voice and go, hey, actually, it's speed up to speed up. We got to go do this thing, and then Royce can go, well, here's how we can simply do that, right? Here's how we can do that with the right constraints. And then my job is to then translate that back.

Darryl

You know, I'm basically just a broker of information. And, and that's ultimately what it, that's ultimately what it comes down to is my ability to, use transfer knowledge and then efficiently communicate that and deliver it to the audiences appropriately, even if that is from one audience or interested parties such as the board, that is. Here's why we have to move this thing forward.

Darryl

And then I will give that context in the other direction.

Gillian

What skills come in handy to be, and attributes come in handy to be able to do that successfully as a leader.

Darryl

Writing I will. I will die on that hill writing and not typing like writing things out. I have ADHD and so I have a faster than normal brain, and so writing is my way of slowing it down. And anyone can do that because when you write, you then can read it. And then when you're reading it, you're pulling out, you're you're reading it.

Darryl

And so you're pulling out the key points. It is very efficient. You're also then reacting to facts. You're not erecting to your emotions. So like you'll see if you're ever in my office, there's note cards and sticky notes and, and sheets of paper because I'm just literally writing things out because then once I write it, I'm going to either remember what I need to remember, discard, ready to discard.

Darryl

But it's written down, so that what that's the number one way. And then that's anyone. Write it out, write it out, write it out.

Gillian

I love where this is headed because you're you're talking about company culture. You're talking about getting things done. You're talking about managing very critical parties that are involved in the success of the company and the individuals that are holding it up. All of this takes energy. You've said that energy is a finite resource. Let's talk about that. Let's also I'd love to hear more about, staying focused as a CEO and balancing, you know, protecting energy of yourself, energy of the company, energy of a team, while also very much acknowledging we are doing something very hard.

Gillian

We are balancing the speed with simplicity element of things. We are also building a tool that is meant to empower employees and allow for them to, you know, counter burnout. Right? And, so how do we protect our energy as a company as, as a tool for other companies? Talk to us about that.

Darryl

Energy is best protected by awareness. Think of it as fuel. And as you're driving along the road, you're on a road trip. What's the thing that you look at every 50 miles or so? Right. You look at energy. We even have we have an even greater relationship with this. Now that, electric vehicles are prevalent in our society, we literally call it, we look at the total energy, right?

Darryl

The total energy output. You have to develop a relationship for between and, strong understanding of how and what capacity energy you have and then the capacity and energy of route around you. We just don't pay attention enough to it. We don't realize what tired looks like. We don't realize it in ourselves. And I think a lot of times we have a hard time realizing it in others.

Darryl

We have a really good job. We do a really good job of right realizing extremes when we're out of gas. We realize exhausted, but we don't realize tired. And in my life, I've done a really good job of identifying when I'm tired and I'm running low on fumes. And, I have a really good job and do a really good job and have really good understanding of efficiency.

Darryl

Because energy, there's an efficiency to energy. If you're like me, running at zone for, for a very significant amount, you're you're burning at a very inefficient rate that cannot be sustained. And so energy is not fixed. The way that I think we typically think about it is being fixed. It's also scarce. Yes. Because it's it's binary and sensors there is 1 or 0, but there's a sense of discrete between that one and zero.

Darryl

I used to go all the way to tired and then try to go beyond tired, and I would hook up, a generator to the right. I'd try to go find some more. Right. But I have found in order to do what I do most efficiently and most effectively, I have to stop at 50. Because stopping at 50 creates an effective reserve around me.

Darryl

So, if something else does come up, I have capacity. And that's what I have found to work for me. Someone's going to have something that works for them. What? I have found for organizations to be true is running at 70% efficiency is best. And I've told this to a lot of people around me. I've told my leaders, I don't want you running at 100%.

Darryl

They don't believe me. And so there's there's a lot of work that has to be done there because it's running at 70%. Feels very, selfish tonight. Typically here is like, I can't run at 70%. Someone's going to judge me for doing this thing. It's like, okay, well, I also want my pilot to sleep.

Gillian

Yeah, yeah. It's not good for anyone if they're not right.

Darryl

Like, there's all these rules and regulations for operating of machines, but yet not as many for operating of the, the, these, these companies that have the same potential destructive impact on an individual's life. So I think that that's a really important. Yeah. I don't know if I have anything else to say.

Gillian

Yeah, I, I will say culturally as a company, something that we've done. Right. That's not even really in writing. It's not in a handbook. Nobody tells you in your first week except for hopefully your manager is just creating space for that 30%. Whatever it looks like, it's usually up to the the manager of how they're doing that for their team.

Gillian

But I see it. It is such a value add where we work, which is being able to show up for yourself in your personal life. Right? Is not a lot of meetings, you know, but nothing's in writing. But there's just this like baseline expectation that we're all sort of protecting that 30% from each other.

Darryl

You're ten can be expanded, too. I thought about something else as you were talking. You can expand your you can expand the collective tank. You can expand the individual tank. I actually like.

Gillian

Because you can get like you can build off of other people. Last week we were the tanks were all the way. We were capped out because we were all building on each other and inspired by each other. But we're not in a room with each other all the time.

Darryl

So my running coach now has told me, hey, you know, it's really funny. You thought that you were going to do this race without pay with alone. And hey, you could have ran at that pace if if you had some pacers with you and those Pacers were swapping out and they were breaking, there's just different strategies. The same is true about an organization.

Darryl

And so that's what I meaning about increasing the capacity. Sometimes if you're if you continue to really inefficiently go from 0 or 1 to 0 or 0 to one, and you're not making the progress that you need to be making, you may need to bring someone else in that race with you. And so that that is exactly what I am meaning when I when I say a lot of a lot, a lot of times we want to get somewhere with a lot of speed, but it's just physically not possible because you don't have the efficiency to get there.

Darryl

And that's why I say 70%. It's a it's a, it's a psychological, it's a cognitive break. It's a thought terminating, thought terminating exercise is if you're at 70%, that means you can't do it alone, right? That's the whole point, right? We need to make sure if we're doing something big, we need lots of people to do this with us.

Darryl

We want to use that collective tank. And then my job is paying attention to how efficiently that collective tank is, is running, and translating that up. And so if I have a CTO that's saying, hey, we we can't we have to slow down to speed up. But I see a lot there's a lot more capacity, a lot more energy around the rest of the organization.

Darryl

I may need to reallocate that energy, to help balance things out. And then that ultimately becomes the translation of what I have to do up as a board. We're not running efficiently right now. And here's our plan to run more efficiently, but during this period. And so that's why it comes back to the communication and ability to translate and decipher.

Gillian

Thank you for.

Michelle

That. Let's take away something practical from this kind of heady conversation. So what can we do as either, you know, a doer or a leader in the next five minutes, right? Like I am, I we're ending the podcast and I've got five minutes to go do X to take action. What can we do?

Darryl

Not have to think about all the things that we just talked about. You are properly labeled. What this conversation was very heady is very ethereal. It was very abstract. It was very ideal. Idealistic. Welcome to working with me, by the way. Is very tangential. There was loops. There was layers. Something's going to fit for you and I.

Darryl

I would highly recommend to metabolize what we just had a conversation. And if that's writing something down, if that's just sitting in silence and some stillness around. Oh, yeah, that was cool. But don't rush past this moment is the point of practicality. Here is allow it to impact you. If you just listened to, I don't know, 30 to 2 hours of conversation, depending on how much of this is in the conversation and not maybe a six hours conversation, but you just consumed a lot.

Darryl

Enjoy that meal. We rush past things because we don't know how to be present, be present for a moment after this. And guess what? Something that I said may not even be the thing that comes up, but something else. Well, and if that's the practical tip, that's the thing that's wrapped around all of this is create margin and find a way to be comfortable in that margin to allow processing.

Darryl

That is my superpower that I have identified throughout my life, is the ability to pay attention to what I'm consuming and allow, this thing called Praxis, which is putting it into process, putting it into motion. Right. I don't just consume, I typically will change the behavior from what I am consuming, and that's why I'm very careful on what I'm consuming.

Darryl

Our little noggin here. That's so powerful, is going to take that information and try to decipher what to do with that. And so it's really important that if something was useful here for you, put it into motion. That is literally the difference between me having productivity in my life and success in my life, and me ending up in destruction is just not paying attention and creating that margin, that space to make sense of what I'm consuming.

Gillian

That's really good.

Darryl

That's a riff. We're ripping riffs.

Gillian

That was your MC job because that's like so it's so simple, yet so powerful.

Darryl

It is very simple at all. That's that's why speed with simplicity. You literally saw me do it in real time. Is, is is that's the simplicity component of it.

Gillian

I love it. This has been so helpful. So eye opening. We've got some analogies in our back pocket as well. You these aspect leaders and their analogies. You guys must have a slack channel. I'm going.

Darryl

To.

Michelle

Go with the French.

Darryl

One. Yeah. Right. Okay.

Gillian

Somebody needs to be like recording these. You know how you started a new company and there's a, dictionary of all the acronyms. We just need one with the analogies.

Darryl

I know someone in branding that could make the brand name, like, brand and, like, okay, Jillian. So here's the deal. That clearly is the thing that speaking out to you go rip that riff and, make that book. Yeah the ism it'll happen aspect isms edition one.

Gillian

Yeah. Early 2026 I think we can make that happen. Amazing. Anything else? Any other knowledge to drop before before we wrap this up?

Darryl

I feel I feel as if I'm giving a speech at the Grammys and the music has come on because you guys have said,

Gillian

This is fun. I wish it was just us all the time. This is really good.

Darryl

I miss this. That's so I said, Michelle, I want it. Can I can I come back on?

Gillian

You can come back anytime you want. This is awesome.

Darryl

You don't want me back.

Gillian

Somebody told me today that I'm going to get the podcast on to the, careers page because somebody said that the reason they took the job with aspect was because of our podcast.

Darryl

That's how we should end it up. That's the final. That's where it's a you kidding me?

Gillian

She said she was applying, talking to a lot of people, and this is how she realized this is a company she wanted to work for it. Thanks for listening to Future works. If you're looking for margin growing and your leadership, or just trying to bring a bit more humanity to your work life, we hope this episode with DK gave you something to hold on to.

Gillian

You can follow Darryl on LinkedIn or find him walking. See you Boulders Campus or in downtown Denver. He's always getting his steps in while dreaming up the next chapter of what work could look like. Subscribe so you don't miss out on what's next with Future Works. Thanks for joining us.

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