[Music] hi Shannon Waller here and welcome to inside strategic coach with Dan Sullivan Dan I am particularly excited about our latest book geometry for staying cool and calm because such interesting things came out of that conversation and I really want to get to the second idea in the book but what came out of it because it was a big aha for me and it has to do with rules but before we get to that why don't you just say what the three guidelines are in Geometry for staying cool and calm so geometry refers back to a particular Greek mathematician by the name of uclid and in about the year 300 BC he was Greek but he lived in Alexandria Egypt which was a real center of learning they had a huge Library there so it was kind of like a library I think probably University of its day I don't think he invented any of this stuff but I think what he did is he aggregated he pulled all the documented mathematical knowledge in that part of the world which was really you know the center of development in the western world not the Asian world but the Western World and he put it into a series of books but the primary one which I really fell in love with were the fundamental rules of geometry and geometry is how you build things so that they stay up you know the first book intoxicated me because there's 47 rules and you can't get to the second rule until you understand the first rule and you can't get to number 47 unless you've gone through the first 46 and I just thought it was a massively good way to put together a knowledge system so my sense is that everything in the world today that's built you know I don't care what kind of building it is it doesn't stay up or it doesn't stay up in a sound way if it doesn't follow the rules that were laid down by this uclid the Greek mathematician more than 2,000 years ago so I put geometry the book is called geometry and quotation marks because I'm not relating to mathematics here I'm relating to mindset for operating in a world in the 21st century that I think is going to be in real flux so how do you stand tall and stand solid in a world where a lot of things are shaking and falling down I came up with three fundamental rules and the first rule is everything is made up got to realize that everything is made up but at one time somebody had an idea and they either told somebody about the idea or they wrote it down and other people read about the idea but all the knowledge that we have comes from somebody okay like I just mentioned uid all that math had not been aggregated until he made up a system for understanding it okay so everything is made up so you can make up things too okay you don't have to get permission to make things up okay now once you make them up then you have to make them up and communicate them in such a way that other people find them useful so that's another story now in the world of making up new things nobody's in charge okay so there isn't any make it up Authority okay as a matter of fact most of the people who think they're in charge of making up things are the worst at it yeah we call them bureaucrats but entrepreneurs are the masters of making up new things okay so recognize who you are that you got here by making up something new and nobody's in charge nobody gave you permission to be an entrepreneur and you don't have to apologize to anybody after you've made it up you just have to sell it okay and the third rule is life's not fair that one struck more of a nerve than the first two and I saidwell what do you mean by I saidwell when you make up something new the consequence of you're making up the new thing if other people find it useful that some people are advantaged by that and some people are disadvantaged so some people are better off for your new idea and somebody is probably worse off but you don't have to think about that because nothing's Fair okay and they said well what about Fair INE equality and I said yeah look that up the concept of fairness was made up about a thousand years ago according to the Oxford English Dictionary and as we understand fairness today that's about a thousand years old and humans been around anthropologists tell us now it's about 200,000 years they can tell that there's a different human species might be longer might be less but that's the best they can do right now so that's only a thousand years old that means before the year 1000 in our calender probably the idea of fairness really wasn't an idea because nobody had any proof that anything was fair and it's only until recently that you know you can have sort of fair conditions and then what about equality ah now that's later that's about 1,600 so that's about 400 years old because most people couldn't even eat properly there was such scarcity in the world that you couldn't think about things like fairness and equality okay so now we live in a world actually it's only been about a hundred years that pretty well everybody can eat you know so if you put the three of them together I put them together in a triangle triangles are interesting because it's the strongest structure in the universe because there's two angles that support the third angle and there's two sides that support the third side so if you put the three rules together that's the geometry of stay cool and come remember if you want something make up something new if you want somebody to be in charge you have to be the one in charge and number three don't worry about fairness or equality just make up new things that are useful to other people and that's all you have to do but the one that also triggers people after the unfairness one is nobody's in charge they said well political leaders are in charge and I said nope nope they're not in charge okay they're fulfilling a role according to a set of rules so if you look at anything where things work it isn't somebody's in charge the rules are in charge that's why we love sports because the rules are clearcut but the Umpire didn't make up baseball the Umpire isn't in charge of baseball the Umpire is just there to make sure that the rules are followed okay the players made up the rules and then you had to get uniformity if everybody was going to play the same game and you look around your life my life everybody's life who are looking at from morning till night without realizing you're probably following hundreds of rules about how you operate with other people and how you live safely and everything else it's all rules you know well and that's one of the things I just love that emerged from the book is that I had just hadn't thought of things that way and it goes from everything from you know umpires and baseball games to traffic lights and how we don't crash into each other the one that I particularly like are company ground rules or core values those are rules for how people show up and work together which I also love so there's something about making up your own really good rules is kind of what I want to dive into because I think that's kind of fascinating and it ties into Dan a concept that you've talked about for decades now which is the meaning of the word autonomous so do you want to describe that because you've said this for as I said decades and I've always found it kind of fascinating yeah it's a Greek word autonomous and auto means self and noos means law so you have self laws okay there are people who have to be controlled by other people's laws because they don't make laws for themselves but Freedom comes out of following rules freedom is actually maximizing being inside of a restriction you're restricted Peter diamanos who's a a marvelous technological thinker he's in strategic coach and we're in his program which is called a360 which our company and Peters company created about 10 11 years ago and he says everybody thinks creativity is thinking outside of the box he says actually creativity is thinking in a smaller box than the one you're in okay but there's rules for this and one of the rules is that nothing you come up with has any value until somebody's willing to write you a check for it you know so there's a rule called the the mechanism of the market place the marketplace is actually controlled by millions of rules of what has value and what doesn't have value and that's determined by check writers every day deciding that something's worth it or something's not worth it okay where things get bad is where an outside force like government tries to interfere in the marketplace and control prices or control how things are traded how things are owned and everything like that all economic breakdown usually comes from government mismanagement the marketplace itself and I had a great example of that we had a blackout here in Toronto and if I remember correctly it was around 2003 and I was coaching the workshop we're in one part of the town and city of Toronto and we live in another about what would you say 10 miles yep 10 miles between yes 17 kilometers yep and at about 3:00 in the afternoon all the lights went it was because of an electric switching Station in New York state I think it was in New York state but the energy grid between Canada and the Eastern United States as a continuous energy grid and a lot of our power actually comes from Niagara Falls which also hours a lot of New York State I remember the expressway was just passed you know and people were waiting for half hour to get on the expressway so we just took one of the main local streets we took King Street which becomes Queen Street and you know so you could stay on the street and we could get home and as long as there was no attempt by the authorities to direct traffic it really were because there's a rule when you come to a Four Corners there's a procedure who goes first who goes first and then we hit the middle of the city and everything blocked up because they had cops at three intersections and the cops weren't coordinated with each other and so you had the only problem was where the cops were trying to be in charge but as long as the drivers were in charge following just very simple rules you come the person on your right if they get there first they go first and then it just goes around right right right right right and traffic moves and just shows you that if drivers know the rules they don't need the cops right I like that so that's really interesting Dan how can people use this in their own companies in their own lives to make things better to prevent interference from other from other places I'm finding it super useful with teamwork with managements like when something just devolves down to opinion I'm like let's set some ground rules and actually the impact filter is my favorite tool for that but let's set up a success criteria so people know what the rules are because then they can be more self-managing so that's one application that I've been actively applying since our conversation about the book where else are you seeing it well it's everywhere I mean everything that exists exists and survives by a set of rules on how to use this thing and where to use it where I really notice is is in language okay I did my first grade in 1950 Bo I mean had to learn spelling had to learn grammar you know first two or three years and the teachers could still hit you in those days and I remember you know on the knuckles you know not with a ruler well with a wooden one that had a metal Edge you know walk like that you know you know and people say well that's awful and I said no no the lesson stuck yeah but the one thing that gets me I know people who have from my perspective I'm a writer you know and I have a good grasp of the language you do but one thing that just jars me is the people who use me as the subject of a sentence well me and Shannon are everything else is perfect everything else is perfect about how they talk about but and all of a sudden I hear that me and I said oh they don't know this what else don't they know you know and it's like somebody in a tuxedo but they're wearing white socks and Tennis Shoes you know and I know there's fashion graes and everything else but I myself could never do that I love that Dan I was raised by someone who was expert in language no you I had it easy my dad would stick up his finger cuz you know teenage girls were like like like like and every time we did it he'd hold up his finger during dinner he pretty much never put his hand down you were Valley girls yeah apparently but the one that drives me crazy is less and fewer oh like I just want to correct people or infer and implied you know when you know the rules you're like oh but and to your point Dan you're not sure what else they don't know and you've said something before which I think is relevant to all rules it's like those people don't know what opportunities will be closed to them because they didn't learn the rules which I think is really interesting well the interesting thing about it is that people probably wouldn't correct you but there's doors that just closed yeah because of the use of language there's opportunities that you're never going to have the worst thing about it is you're never going to know right because someone said if they don't know basic English and they don't know basic grammar what else don't they know I had the opportunity to have as my tailor one of the greatest men's Clothier clo ear in the world Harry Rose and here in Toronto and he is considered one of the greatest clo he had 17 stores here in Canada but about 40% of the upper inome men's markets uh Harry Rosen suit was a big thing and he said men have it easier than women because men it's all about style women is very very subject to Fashion okay and he says if you establish a style when you're as a man in your 20s and it's a good style you can stay with that style for the rest of your life and he had a thing called style confidence and I said what style of confidence and he said you're dressed in such a way that you're at a social function and you're the only person in the room not thinking about how you're dressed so what rules do is they allow you to have your attention on the main thing rather than on the small things but if you're in a situation like what's happening in a large of the big cities in the world now they're Lawless you know you could be robbed you know some cities in the United States the big retailers are moving their stores out of the city because they're losing so much money on shoplifting shoplift people just walk in and they just walk things out and there's s of rules you can't stop them you can't pursue them and everything else because the retailers are no longer protected by the rules so they take their business someplace else where their business can be protected by the rules and I think that's key and that's where the enforcement of rules I think is critical like I know so in anio we have something called The Liquor Control Board of Ontario and literally the security people and the staff have been told if someone goes and steals don't stop them which for personal safety I totally understand but I'm like why isn't someone calling the cops and I've met some of the cops policing the store and they're incredible I love them they're so to use the term badass they're just great but it bothers me it's like no if we're not enforcing the rules the rules don't matter and I think that's true individually I think that's true in stores I think that's true in companies it's like really being conscious and conscientious about your rules I'm only like rules where I've been part of creating them I tend to be the rule breaker otherwise but if they're really good then they need to be upheld what's your take on that yeah there was a great column in the New York Times 25 years ago writer by the name of Tom wicker very famous New York Times columnist and he was talking about a weekend that he spent in Toronto and Toronto was just starting to emerge as a major city you know turn of the century he said that he had heard about Toronto so he flew there stayed downtown and he was just catching the bus the hotel bus to the airport and he was trying to think what's the difference here and he went into the store in the hotel and he bought himself a candy bar and he ate the candy bar and he had the wrapper and he put the wrapper in pocket and then went to the airport flew back to New York and the next morning when he was out on the street in New York he took the thing out of his pocket and threw it on the street he said that is the difference between Toronto and New York that is so true no littering no littering and on the escalator make sure you're on the right get those two rules down you can pretty well do well in walk left stand right I find Canada is a bit more rule abiding compliant than lots of places in the United States I'm not saying everywhere in the United States but there's kind of a lawful mindset here in Toronto I agree so Dan to me this idea of it's all made up remember in any situation you're in it's not people who are in charge they can be in control but they're not in charge what's in charge are the rules I love that yeah yeah and so to make sure that at least if you're the one creating or co-creating the rules that they're really good ones I think that's one piece and then it's also often just the way to get along and to make things happen the most easily is to know what the rules are know the rules of the game yeah and the scheme of things this is probably for another whole book maybe but it's very interesting because I'm a both American and Canadian okay so I've lived in in Toronto for 52 years and I'm almost 80 and I've actually lived 2third of my entire life outside of the United States and from a certain perspective the United States is the most law-abiding country in the history of the world in the sense that the country was created out of a set of rules it's called the Constitution and what's interesting is that the 13 colonies who came together and were the first 13 States each had a Constitution and the great Genius of this was James Madison who was about 2627 when he took all the Constitutions plus he was one of the world's greatest Constitution experts I think he had access to about 2,000 different constitutions going back thousands of years and if you took the Constitution which was 1787 it was a agreed on and you typed it out single space it would be 23 pages in 1787 and today if you typed it out it would be 27 Pages they've added four pages and the entire country and it's gone from 3 million people to 340 million people it goes from the Atlantic to the Pacific and then you have Alaska and Hawaii and everything that happens dayto day is controlled by the rules so they have the debt crisis right now it's called the debt crisis because our government as the debt stealing crisis the debt stealing crisis because this current Administration is just spending and spending and spending but there's a limit there's a debt cealing so the President says well we can use the 14th Amendment that's one of the rules in the Constitution that said says that it's legal for us to have a debt it is under that but in the United States the national debt is 80% owned by Americans it's not owned by foreign countries I mean everybody says well China owns our China is maybe 1% of the total outside debt and it's Americans who own the debt and what the 14th Amendment says the government has to pay the citizens who own the debt before they can do any more spending so he doesn't even understand the rules or he's acting as if he doesn't understand the rules and there's only one body of the government that can change the debt ceiling and it's the only one who allows there to be any spending and that's the Congress it's not the president okay and everywhere like the president of the United States it looks like he has enormous amount of power but he's stopped at almost every oh nope that's the Supreme Court can block him the state governments in certain cases can stop him and all this has been known for 250 years and it takes about seven years to change the Constitution even if everybody wants to that's amazing there's not only the rules but there's rules on how you can change the rules and you can't just change the rules I love that so Dan I just really appreciate this perspective because certainly this conversation and what emerged out of the book gave me a whole new insight into rules more Liberty to make it up which I really love and to be very conscious and as I said conscientious about the rules that I am living by so I just thought this was an absolutely fascinating take on things and I as always really appreciate your Insight I've never put this in book form we haven't put it in book form because there's no books unless we're doing it together but the book I'd like to revisit the we called them the refer ability rules in the all day but I think they're The credibility rules and there's four of them which I want to add a fifth one and the four rules are show up on time whatever you're doing show up on time show up a little earlier and you feel a little bit more confident do what you say or go back and say I can't do what I say I've got to do something different and number three is finish what you start and number four is say please and thank you but number five is be appropriate so wherever you are be appropriate to the situation I love these those are self rules and I strive mightily to follow the rules and it avoids about 90% of the problems that an individual can get in because they don't show up on time and they get into trouble they don't do what they say and they get into trouble they don't finish what they start so they get into trouble but not only that doors are closed to them you know the word goes around not a Dependable person they don't say please and thank you and they're not appropriate for the situation they're they're not talking appropriately they're not dressed their hygiene isn't up to standards you know they're just not paying attention to their surroundings I love that Dan thank you for ending with that because I think that we've called them refer ability habits credibility habits rules another great context but they're so pra iCal because you can start them immediately after listening to this conversation and it's true it's dislike language if you're not following these people won't correct you but you will not know what doors are closed to you and that's huge I mean these are great rules habits to raise your children with right it's like these are so key so thank you for ending with this and I think it'd be a spectacular book let's do it thank you Shannon please can we do this again gee let me think yes thanks Dan