Mike Hayes is the Chief Digital Transformation Officer at VMware. He joined VMware in October 2020, and leads the company’s worldwide business operations and the acceleration of the company’s SaaS transition. Prior to joining VMware, Mike served as Senior Vice President and Head of Strategic Operations for Cognizant Technologies, where he ran a $2B P&L for Cognizant’s largest financial services clients. Mike previously spent four years at Bridgewater Associates, an investment management firm, where he served in Chief of Staff to CEO and COO roles. Prior to Bridgewater, he spent 20 years in the U.S. Navy SEALs where his career began as one of 19 graduates from a class of 120. Mike served throughout South America, Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia, including the conflicts in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan. His last job in the Navy was the Commanding Officer of SEAL Team TWO, which included ten months as the Commander of a 2,000 person Special Operations Task Force in southeastern Afghanistan. Before that, Mike was selected as a White House Fellow (’08/’09) and served two years as Director, Defense Policy and Strategy at the National Security Council. 

Episode transcription:

[00:00:00] Mike Hayes: [00:00:00] Hi, my name is Mike Hayes. I'm the chief digital transformation officer at BM where I've been at VMware for about six months. I'm responsible for running global business operations and transformation. VMware is a large software company based in Palo Alto, Califia. And I was having a great time. And before VMware I spent 20 years in the Navy seals and also then four years at Bridgewater Associates, the world's largest hedge fund, four years at cognizant technology. It's a large IT services firm where I ran a $2 billion P and L for all IT services sold into the financial services vertical. So eclectic background, a little bit of a lot of things. I know I'm an inch inch deep and a mile away.

[00:00:58] Jahn Karsybaev: [00:00:58] That's awesome. Mike really appreciate your time to join us on the Ivy Podcast today. Very diverse backgrounds. So I want to dive a little bit deeper into that and obviously talk about some of the things that you are building now, your book and all of that great stuff. First things first shared with us. What falls under your purview within VMware right now? What are you responsible for? And then we'll go from there.

[00:01:18] Mike Hayes: [00:01:18] Absolutely. So everything starts with people. So let me talk about the team. And one thing that I think is really important is that I never say anybody works for me. It's only with the preposition should always be with never, never for. And so the people I'm privileged to work with on my team are the chief data officer, the chief information, the chief security officer and an integration, and then a and then a few other elements. And I run what's called our operations leadership team. We have three leadership teams across the firm. The OLT is the operations leadership team. The PLT is the product leadership team. The GLT is the go-to-market market leadership team. I'm a member of all three and run the OLT.

[00:02:03] Jahn Karsybaev: [00:02:03] Wow. That's super exciting. Definitely a huge enterprise and very diverse leadership team. And I like what you said in terms of team members working with me versus for me it seems so simple yet, very powerful and oftentimes overlooked concepts when it comes to servers and leadership and things like that. Which leads me to another point: your book that I want to dive a little bit deeper into never enough. Can you at a high level, tell us what was the motivation behind the book. And then I want to spend some time talking a little bit further about that.

[00:02:36] Mike Hayes: [00:02:36] I'd love to, first of all, we should start with the title. Never enough is intentionally provocative. It can sound a lot like fame and fortune. We never have enough material goods or status or whatnot. Not at all. It's intentionally provocative, but focusing never enough is about me. Meaning and impact in the world. So it's about making ourselves better and, and so on, enabling ourselves to make the world better and to help others. My foundation of my growing up in my twenties, thirties and young forties was really in the seal teams. And it's the culture of one team. So I've lived a life of hundreds, if not thousands of once in a lifetime experiences. I like every seal of my era that has buried way too many friends. And now it's about giving back. I'm donating all of my profits from the book, never enough to a 5 0 1 C3. That pays off mortgages for gold star families. And so those are families who have experienced the loss of a loved one in combat. And so it, for me really John it's about, it's about helping, it's about pulling people and society up.

[00:03:51] Jahn Karsybaev: [00:03:51] Well, that's super exciting. Definitely very powerful. And how long have you been working on this book before it came out?

[00:03:56] Mike Hayes: [00:03:56] Well, I say my whole life, because it's a lifetime of lessons in there. I like to say, wisdom is really just a series of things we get from mistakes, so certainly while I've had some successes, I've also had plenty of things that were less than success, if not full on. Full of things you might call failure. And that's really, to me, it's really only failure if you fail and don't learn. And so on, that's what I poured the heart and soul into. And then the, but the actual answer to your question took me about maybe a year and a half to write it. And for those of you who know the book process, it's you write the proposal, you see if anybody wants it. And I was really fortunate. I had, I don't know, about 15 different places that wanted to publish it. And I was able to be selective. I chose a great group. And now we're really just trying to bring it to the world.

[00:04:47] Jahn Karsybaev: [00:04:47] Oh, that's great. And as far as some of the lessons or the strategies that you've written about in the book, can you share with us some of the practical use cases or our application strategies in the corporate environments or anything that's in the business?

[00:05:05] Mike Hayes: [00:05:05] Absolutely. First of all, what I tried to do was recognize that my life as a seal and also running defense policy and strategy, and two different white houses might not be that relatable to some people. But, and so how do I make those experiences and learnings relatable? And I've done a lot of things wrong, but one thing I've done really, I think right in my life is make those experiences real experiences relatable. It really can apply to anybody who reads it, a new college graduate or a CEO of a fortune 500 company that reads this will get something out of it. And so to answer your question a little more directly, I think there are a bunch of things in there. The most important thing I think is really being oriented more for others themselves. If there's anything that I've learned in my life in giving that we are so cliche, but it's cliche for a reason, but in giving we do receive. And when , nothing comes back to you in the moment, but mail lives when you just live a life of positive energy out in the world that does come back to you. We see these networking events. And I think one of the biggest mistakes people make is that they think of networking as, oh, let me go get the business card from the person who is better placed than I am professionally. And then it's very transactional. Like, oh, I talked to so-and-so and I have the business card and so narrow and wrong. To me, a network is a group of people in whom we invest. And then when we need something, we'd get it back from that. So we can pull the energy back from all those people in our lives that we've helped in our days because we look, we all have hard days. That's number one. And I'm sorry, I'm going on way too long. Had a very easy question, but I'm passionate about sharing the one more thing that I would say is it's really about risk in the seal teams, it's obvious, you're thinking about risk and so a mission, what missions do we go on? And what risks do our people assume and what risk is worth assuming and what risk isn't. And so that's the same thing as in a career, it's the same thing in a relationship, tell the person, or don't tell the person about this bad news or how you do it, whether it's PR professionally, et cetera. So I, and then the last thing I would say, It's really interwoven. Some people love the theory. Some people love the practice. In other words, some people are top down thinkers. Some people are bottom up thinkers, no value judgment. They're both. But what I tried to do was make this relatable in a way that had both stories that were interconnected with, I won't say theories, that's a little bit too educational, but the broad abstract concepts are intertwined with stories.

[00:07:36] Jahn Karsybaev: [00:07:36] That's very interesting. And prior to recording, when you and I spent some time talking about this, something that really was very powerful that you mentioned as far as, from that altruistic standpoint of the proceeds from the book that you use for sharing with us a little bit more about that at once. I want to shine a little bit more light on that, because I think that's very unique. That's very different. You don't see that a lot of these.

[00:08:01] Mike Hayes: [00:08:01] Well, thank you for asking. And it really is the mission of the book besides a one to many model of sharing things that I think that we as citizens in society need to be more United, to be more one while accepting that we are a diverse nation with lots of different opinions on how things should go. That should also be celebrated. Иut the point is a lot of people have sacrificed in lots of different ways. There are few communities that have sacrificed more than our nation's gold star families. So I have been really privileged to be in a situation where I've transitioned from the seals and I'm in the C-suite of a large or important organization. The nation's technology fabric. And so it's really the expression to those whom much has been given much is expected. And so I live a life where for the rest of my life, I've dedicated myself to very quietly helping these families and widows and children of the fallen and to make it, to bring it to. Like we just paid off our fifth house. The day before Thanksgiving, we were able to tell a woman whose husband was a seal teammate of mine and many friends of mine who was just a wonderful, wonderful man. And the woman got back on her feet, started a small business and she and her four kids were doing okay. And then in the pandemic, she lost her business. And so she was struggling and she and her children. We're homeless until we bought them a home. And so it's mind blowing how in America, we can have families whose husbands and fathers have, and in some cases, mothers and wives have given the other, their life to the nation and that they were homeless. And so that's what I'm really dedicated to is helping in whatever way I can, Jahn.

[00:09:50] Jahn Karsybaev: [00:09:50] Wow. Just one word that comes to mind. Powerful. That's very powerful. So definitely thank you for that. Thank you for sharing a little bit further about it. I understand that you spent some time in the Obama administration. Can you share with us, what were some of the lessons learned during that period of time that really stand out to you that perhaps you're still utilizing to this date?

[00:10:13] Mike Hayes: [00:10:13] Great question. First of all, I was fortunate where I caught the tail end of the Bush administration. And then was one of the few people who carried over the new Obama. I was in a role where I reported to the national security advisor who reports to the president. So I was, I knew where the light switches in where the bathrooms were when the Obama administration came in and, and was able to, was able to help on the phone. Foreign policy showdown for president Obama, which was when a guy named Richard Phillips got hijacked on a ship called the Maersk Alabama overseas. And this was Easter of 2009. I basically led the white house response upstairs. I have a nice note from president Obama on white house stationary that says Mike, you made a family very happy at Easter. Great work on the Somalia situation Brock, and then just got pulled into more and more as the administration went on. I learned a ton. It's where the average of the people we hang out with. I was privileged to hang out with people who are really smart, who are really dedicated. And I think they're the main lesson that I draw from both administrations, frankly, is that the process is so important at the beginning of the Trump administration. Or excuse me, after Trump was elected, but before he took office. Half the nation, no matter who wins and who loses, half the nation is happy and half the nation isn't, that's the way the system is designed to work. And so having spent time in both administrations, both a republican and a democratic administration, I was often asked like, what's coming at us. And my answer was look as long as. Process doesn't break down. We are going to be fine. Our nation's fabric, our democracy is built on process and law. And so the takeaway, if I can paint this a little bit better, is that when we're making a decision, I've run hundreds of meetings in the white house situation room, and then things that my meeting couldn't solve that kicked up to the national, the deputy national security advisor, the national security advisor and, or the president. The thing that I learned was that my job is to make my boss's job as easy as possible. My job is to keep things off of their plates, but that's okay when it doesn't come together. And so as long as we have the people with diverse opinions around the table, a diverse set of experiences, we rightly talk about diversity, equity and inclusion right now. And the access to all is equal. Access for all is so important because we get different viewpoints and with different viewpoints around the table, you will make better decisions like, and this is like, let me bring it back over, running a seal team and running. I ran all special operations in Southeastern Afghanistan for the better part of a year in 2012, back at the peak when we had about a hundred thousand Americans in the country and when I had to make a decision, that was really hard. If I saw myself as both the input and the decider, we wouldn't have been as solid as if we had multiple inputs. And so what ma by definition, what I try to do is surround myself with people who don't think like me, because then, then you build that like healthy conflict into the system, and then you get better. You get better surface area on which to grapple and grasp. And ultimately that leads to better outcomes.

[00:13:20] Jahn Karsybaev: [00:13:20] I liked that last point that you just made because I see a lot of that as I work with other executives and other, other managers within organizations, when it comes to hiring and interviewing where their focus is rather more on, can I tolerate that particular individual? Can I tolerate the weaknesses that they have versus looking at it on a completely different spectrum? In terms of, are they thinking completely differently? Can they offer a completely different perspective? So I think that's very unique. That's very powerful in terms of building a very high performing team.

[00:13:53] Mike Hayes: [00:13:53] It is one. It is the most important ingredient to me. If we think about when we're hiring, we all have biases, whether we know it or not. And one very natural bias is to see somebody on the other side of the interviewing table who looks like us. And we will naturally think that person is really smart and awesome. And the thing is that we need to remember is like to hire people that are different from us engineers naturally hire engineers. If you had an engineer interviewing an engineer and an artist. The engineer will probably 95% of the time pick the engineer or the artists will pick the artists, but your organization is better if the artist picks the engineer and the engineer picks the artist. Right?

[00:14:34] Jahn Karsybaev: [00:14:34] Absolutely. And one, I spent some time talking a little bit about innovation and leadership strategies, first things first, what are some of the trends, insights, and ideas that really excite you these days? What are you researching? What are you perhaps looking to implement or invest in?

[00:14:52] Mike Hayes: [00:14:52] Great question. First of all, I wish I had more time to research. I certainly wouldn't give myself any credit there. I'm lucky if I read no,I do read a decent bit, but I think the middle third of my book is about the concept of agility. I think the biggest thing that organizations need, especially as they're larger, is to recognize that they're not planning for the future, that they know. But they're planning for the future that they don't know. And the only way to do that is agility. I've gone around and spoken at lots of different places. Wells Fargo, JP Morgan UBS, a lot of these larger institutions that all have really critical functions to run for the globe. And one of the things that happens in any large enterprise is that things go right. And it isn't that's to be expected. You want to minimize what goes wrong, obviously, but what defines an organization isn't whether or not something goes wrong, it's how the organization handles what goes wrong. So a lot of people, a mistake, a lot of people make is that they think, oh, we have a playbook. We're going to make a playbook. We can see this could go wrong. And if it goes wrong, we're going to take our playbook off the shelf and we're going to go run the play and it's going to solve the problem. That is garbage. It does not work. It never works. You're going to plan for a hundred playbooks and the hundred and first thing is going to hit you. And so what I tell people is that you only need one playbook and it's what I call the Metta playbook. It is what is the, which is the playbook to create the playbook that you need in the middle. Because that's all I ever did in the seals, we got the advantage of time to prepare for many missions, but a lot of missions, it was like, Hey, how fast can you get out the door and go do this thing? So the course of thinking through, like, how did we succeed in those types of situations is the extractable relatable stuff that I tried to bring through in the book, which I think I did. And so that playbook is like, if you want me to talk more about that, what is a Mehta playbook? And that trend, I wouldn't call it a trend. It's something that I'm trying to make a trend. And can I take a second on the metal playbook, Jahn? Is that all right? Absolutely.

[00:16:56] Jahn Karsybaev: [00:16:56] Please expand on it.

[00:16:56] Mike Hayes: [00:16:56] Okay. So, to me it's very simple first and foremost, deciding what outcome you want and need. Everybody gets total alignment on the goal. When I walk into the C-suite of another organization and say it, and just as one of these executive talks or something like that, if I ask. I pull out a three by five card, write down the vision for your organization. You'll get 50% alignment, but maybe if you're lucky 65, but not more than that, right? Because on the fringes, there'll be like different words in language that don't show total alignment. It'll be close. But how do you, it takes a lot of effort to really stay like 90 plus percent aligned on where you're going. My economics professor in grad school said something that stuck with me. He said, Mike, be aware of fast trains to the wrong station. And so it's really making sure you're getting that right station. Once you have that, Jahn, then it's a matter of organizing the work. Now, you have to think about it into two buckets. One is the positive space of what you can see. And then the other is the negative space of what you can't. So first solve for all the positive space of what do you need in order to go achieve that goal? And how do you chunk things out, organizations? And put people in charge of those different pieces and parts to go achieve that goal. And then from there you also need a function. That's going to get into that unknown, unknown quadrant and think about that. Like, what are we missing? That's where all of the opportunity and all of the risk is for any organization. And so if you don't have somebody thinking about what you're not doing, you'll lose. I sometimes ask, we'll ask people or an organization who's in charge of what we're not doing. And nobody raises their hand. It's a natural proclivity to not have that quadrant handled. So then with that design, then it just gets to culture and how people operate together in order to, how do you communicate? How do you inter operate in order to achieve that set outcome? That's what the Metta playbook is that you make that in the moment very quickly builds on knowing the strengths and weaknesses of the people on your.

[00:19:03] Jahn Karsybaev: [00:19:03] You mentioned something around culture, which leads me to a further question when it comes to building and fostering that culture of innovation, that culture of experimentation, what are some of the things, some of the strategies, maybe some of the methodologies, or maybe some things that you do personally, that really help you build and foster such culture within your organization.

[00:19:24] Mike Hayes: [00:19:24] That's a great question as well. I love this topic. I would answer it in two different ways. There's the culture of innovation so that everybody in the organization is an innovator. So take, say we have a hundred people in the organization. How do we get all a hundred people in, while they're doing their day jobs? And while they're busy being mindful of capturing the innovation or the thoughts of what our organization can be doing in order to prepare for. Then there's also a structural piece of like, do we have any sort of people carved out too? So that innovation is their full-time job. I think it takes both and they need to be inextricably linked. Now the other part of it, I think from a structural, like innovation type of mindset is not just saying you're innovative, but you have to, like, if you have to follow through on some of those things that the a hundred people are going to have a hundred different ideas or maybe a thousand ideas or more yeah. How do you have a process going back to the process conversation earlier, where you're going to take some of those ideas and actually go see them all the way through. One of the biggest problems I see is that in a lot of big places and in small places to say that they're innovative, we all say we won't wear that way, but you're actually not. Unless you see a few, some of those things all the way through. So if you can generate a hundred ideas. How do you have a process to figure out what you're going to implement and what you're not, you don't have any organization that has the bandwidth or the capacity to go implement a hundred ideas. So what's the business logic of what you're going to select out of that hundred. And then how do you say you picked three of them or say you picked 30 of them. How are you going to celebrate the 70 or the 97 that you didn't pick and say, Hey, thank you so much for your ideas. Keep them coming. Here's the ones that we're going to implement. We're going to keep your idea on the shelf, but three or the 30 that you pick, you bring them all the way through. And then when they're rolled out, you celebrate that in a way that is very.

[00:21:26] Jahn Karsybaev: [00:21:26] I spent a great deal of time with other executives talking about the concept or even the future of work something that we're all dealing with, especially in the current times where the pandemic and I'm coming out of this and organizations designing their workforce in hybrid models. What's your take on that? How do you, what's your view into the future of work? How do you see the next period for a lot of companies?

[00:21:52] Mike Hayes: [00:21:52] If I had the answer I'd play the lottery. I think everybody's working through this right now, but there are a few things that are undeniable, which is that the hybrid model is here to stay. And that's not any knowledge that's unique or differentiated. It's funny, just yesterday, myself and another colleague from work. Had a call on this very topic with two executives from a large wall street bank, just a very informal conversation of how are you thinking about it? So, Palo Alto based tech software company in a New York city based bank and saying, just sharing ideas and thinking about this. And so the first thing I would say, Jahn, is keeping lines of dialogue and communication open so that we're not solving anything. And then I would say what we're personally doing is figuring out what is it, meeting people in the workforce where, where they want to be and of course we're a business where we have responsibility to shareholders and we'll of course, first and foremost, focus on the mission of the organization. Well, we can simultaneously achieve that mission and be great for our employee base. And that's what we're doing. I'll tell you just to bring it to life. I needed to make a hire for a communications leader and I talked to a woman. Is extremely intelligent and I've known her for quite some time and said, look, I'd love to get you on board. And we talked about all this stuff and she'd look, I just can't do it. I'm in Washington, DC. I have a three-year-old and I just can't move. And I'm like, that doesn't matter anymore. Like let's keep talking? And so that, I think the talent flow that we're going to see is going to flow to the places that are more agile to the earlier conversation. Until everybody is equally agile. And I just think that's the future. One other point on that, because I think we need to do such a much better job with diversity, equity and inclusion. One I'll just be very open to one interview question that I love to ask. As I say on a one to 10, if you had an employment offer in front of you from within, with a 10 being you'd sign right away. And one is you'd run the other direction, where are you at? And I don't care about the number, but I care about what's in the space between your number and a 10, and that forces the candidate to think about what's in the space of why you wouldn't say it. We talked about that. And then I can understand what's the gap that I need to close if I really want to get this person on board. And so that draws out that gets right to the crux of the issue. I interviewed another woman who actually started yesterday. Excuse me Monday. And I lost cattle a day, what day? The week it is. But it was an awesome conversation and she said, look, I'll be honest. I had a one-year old, I just don't know about returning, pivoting jobs with a one-year-old, et cetera. I was like that's to be celebrated, we will work. There's no meeting at any company that if you miss, because you're a parent that you're going to that we're going to crash the car. Like, we will be fine if you call up and all of a sudden you're like, I'm sorry, like I'm supposed to give this big presentation. I just can't because my, I got to go to the doctor, like that's where we have to meet people these days. And I think that is needed. Recognized by executives. I think it needs to be incorporated. Look, there are, of course, some functions that really have to be done, but individuals can fail while organizations can't if you build that system so that we have individuals that don't do what they're supposed to do, but the system does, does work. That's good. That's going to create great long term outcomes.

[00:25:22] Jahn Karsybaev: [00:25:22] It couldn't have set me up any better for the following question that I have for you around talent acquisition interviewing, and really surrounding yourself with the play eight type players. What does a difficult interview with Mike look like? I understand that candidates go through multiple rounds of assessments, technical and whatnot. And when they get to you. Give us a glimpse into an interview with you. What are you, what are you asking? And more importantly, what do you look for in the responses when you hear them?

[00:25:50] Mike Hayes: [00:25:50] Great topic. First of all, it never feels like an interview.I think the other person's interviewing me just as much as I'm interviewing him or her. And so that's where it starts and it feels just like a conversation. Look, we're all human. Like let's just have a human conversation. I'm very open about the organization of what we're doing. And what our challenges are so that we can make sure that if that person does get on board, they're not like, oh my gosh, you didn't tell me about these 10 things that are absolutely terrible. Like, let's talk about that before you come in the door, because those are the things we're trying to solve together. And so it's somebody who draws energy. I will say that I think of it with three circles. I think of a circle. That is what gives a candidate. What is a candidate good at? And then what does the business need? And the only solution is to paint the middle of those three circles and hit that perfect setup where people are energetic. Good and can contribute to the business in a way where we are a profit maximizing organization, but we can maximize profits while doing great things in the world. And it starts with people being really excited to be on the team. So that, and so the quick answer is it doesn't feel like an interview. I have grown up, I can figure more. Very few super powers. One of them is figuring people out really quickly. And so just through a conversation with people, I can really understand what makes them motivated. What makes them tick. I'm looking at what people's motivations are, not through a judgemental lens, but everybody's different. If we really got down to what motivates people, if we whiteboard and 10 different things, John, we basically come out with some combination of what motivates every single person in the world compensation. Public recognition, learning quality of life. The people that you're around the opportunity to move in a company, we named four more things and you basically got, got every promotion, so understanding what makes people excited and then helping them connect their goals with the goals of the company are what the mental calculus that I'm doing is I'm visualizing the future and saying, yes, this is a person with the abilities and the interests. That'll get us to the point.

[00:28:01] [00:28:00] Jahn Karsybaev: [00:28:01] Yeah, that's very exciting. And I love the concept of making that a conversation versus the interview. It's really trying to understand who that person is, what motivates them, what's their personality like? So that's very interesting. And when it comes to. The war for talent out there is real. And so a lot of companies, when the pandemic hit everyone shifting to remote setting, everyone thought that, oh, great, I'm going to get exposed to a much greater pool of candidates and access to all kinds of skill set, but that also increase the competition with a lot of companies that are probably much bigger, much faster targeting that same talent pool from your perspective. What are some of the most in demand yet very hard to find skill sets out there, at least in your field, in your space. What are you seeing now there? The reason I asked this question is because a good portion of our listeners are early stage career professionals, second year MBAs. And a lot of times the questions that I'm getting is what's the career path. What are some of the things that I should be investing in further as I enter the world?

[00:29:07] Mike Hayes: [00:29:07] Well, the first thing I would say is that whenever you get career advice from somebody you recognize that the advice is going to basically be, you should be like me because I'm the smartest person. I know. And so my answer right now, just in full disclosure, is going to be almost exactly the same, the but, but in all seriousness, I think what it is to find a foundational stuff. Get really good at it. I describe a career in three phases. One is getting, picking something and getting really good at number two is then showing the world that you're really good at whatever you've picked. And then the third phase is a phase. A lot of people don't make it, which is being confident that you're good at what you do. You no longer need to prove that to them. So that's how I'm the arc, if you will. But there are I'm intentionally not answering at the skill level because I really deeply believe it's just foundationally. How, what are people's experiences in their ability to to connect things now, like my own past look, I've been in the seals, I've worked in the white and white houses. I've worked at a hedge fund. I've worked in an IT services firm in a product company. Like how, like, if you look at my career path, it just doesn't. To a lot of people, if you look, but then if you look the layer deeper, you say, oh my gosh, all this guy has ever done is moved toward the largest problems where you can create value in greatness in the world and gone after that and not be afraid to take risk and not be able to be afraid to roll the sleeves up and and really do the work to to put yourself out there and to go learn new things. So I would say. You could be at a place for a lifetime in one organization, but every, every year you should be looking back and saying that you learned and got deeper at whatever it is you're doing. And I think with that leaning into the hardest things. It's one of the topics in the book that is never enough, it's leaning into those hard things, trying the hard things and then learning. I will say that the biggest obstacle to that is saying like, why wouldn't you try the hardest. Well, it's really because of fear of failure or fear of looking silly to our friends or colleagues or family. And if you really think about that and you take the view, the mental exercise of going that last tactical mental yard, like there's no reason to worry about trying hard things and failing because the people who care for us, the people who really know who we are, aren't going to think less of us. If we try something hard and fail, that's okay. That has to be okay in our organization. That has to be celebrated because it's that con that thing I said before about individuals can fail, but the system can, if we need every single person in the company to succeed at every single thing, they try, we will fail as a company because those people need to be able to go try hard things and learn that's what's going to make us better for the future. So that would be my best advice to a younger person.

[00:31:52] Jahn Karsybaev: [00:31:52] Very sound advice. And Mike obviously as a book author, I'm sure you read a lot and you consume a lot of information and share with us your content diet. What are some of the things you consume on a daily basis? How selective are you with what you let your mind be exposed to any resources that you can share with us?

[00:32:11] Mike Hayes: [00:32:11] I will. And what I would start with is saying like, I'm one of these, I love the expression. If you want something done, give it to a busy person. I'm that busy person and my biggest challenge is carving out quiet time. There's a great article. It's maybe eight or 10 years old. Now I'm going to it's called solitude and leadership. And the author said it was a West point graduation speech. We can get it out to you to post later or something, but if you look up, it appeared in the Atlantic. So if somebody Googles, solitude and leadership at Atlantic I'm 99% sure it will come up. But that article's premise is about carving out the quiet time you need in order to think. And in fact, I tell one really great story about when I was the commanding officer of the special operations task force of co coming into a very complicated situation. And I designed a system where I didn't have a job, so I could sit down and have that quiet space to think about what we weren't thinking, thinking of back to the earlier point of that where the opportunity and the risk is in that unknown quadrant. That's how you get that out. But anyway, Jahn, the biggest thing for me right now, doing my 20 minutes of Headspace or whatever meditation app, you can just really get a chance to quiet your mind. And I think without that quieting of the mind, you're never going to get in that creative mode. So I try to do that every day. I often fail, but that's so thing, number one is not actually reading it's the quietness. And then what I personally have is a combination of long form short form. I think the things that I scan are the biggest things for me, just to think about my morning: Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and for the news diet, if you will. And then for some of the longer form stuff. In fact, this just came in, I was reading an article foreign affairs. I'm a member of the council on foreign relations. I was just reading an article anyway, it doesn't matter that, and in fact, you see a whole bunch of, and this is the only thing that I don't throw out. They're all sitting right here because I'll remember an article. Flip back and get some factor 50 figures in there. I'm not really a paper person, but that's the one thing that I really do think. And the economist, like I think if you read one thing, the economist, when I was applying for the white house fellowship, which is an incredible program I the best advice that previous white house fellows get where like, if you read one thing to prepare for the interview is just go read the economist. And so I think that's another really great piece. And then I try to always have a book in hand right now. I'm rereading Marcus' meditations. I think the stoic philosophy is such a it's such an awesome thing to be both detached from a situation yet not vacuum.

[00:34:45] Jahn Karsybaev: [00:34:45] Yeah. Mental health is something of a huge interest for me that I've been studying a lot lately. The whole mental fitness concept is we probably can spend the entire episode talking about this typically on each episode. Mike, I asked what is one book that you always recommend to others? I'm going to ask you that in a different capacity, because I definitely want to talk a little bit further about never enough. So can you share with us where the book can be easily bought, find access to just share with us and maybe any of your contact information. If people want to reach out and find out a little bit more.

[00:35:25] Mike Hayes: [00:35:25] Absolutely. Thank you for asking. And so the first thing I would say is the easy answer is you can buy it anywhere. You buy books, Google never enough on Amazon, it's on Barnes and Noble, it's going to be an I it's going to be in target for actually for Father's Day, a part of their Father's Day focal. They're calling it. So it's pretty easily found. What I will say is that I appreciate the question because look, I'm not profiting from this book. My personality is such that if I was making a penny on this, I couldn't sit here and go ask the world to go buy my book. It's just not who I am, but that model of going to help others, I would tie it to something that I had when I grew up in the seal teams during my era, it was either strength or perceived. There was no never showing your weakness or perceived weakness. It was about minimizing that and maximizing the other part. And I think that, I spoke at a seal graduation maybe four years ago now where one of the things I said was that asking for strength is to excuse me, asking for help is a sign of strength, not weakness, and it's okay to ask for help. I took over for him or a bunch of seals that a group of seals after grad school in 2005 had been their mates, half of their platoon had been shot down in a helicopter. It became a movie called Lone survivor. And I worked through some really hard situations with a bunch of the friends that survived through that. And we all lost friends at that particular time. June 28th, 2005. And one of the things that I did was I brought in a chaplain and a psychologist to come overseas and come help us out. And it was that at the time in 2005, that wasn't common, that was very uncommon. And frankly, some of the seals were uncomfortable even talking to them. And I said, Nope, everybody's going to spend at least five minutes. You just go say hello. That way there's no stigma of who talked to the chaplain or the sec and the psychologist and who didn't everybody at least five minutes mandatory. I don't care if you just sit there and stare at the person for five minutes, you gotta do it. And to a person, everybody spoke for hours, the chaplain and psychologists were like, I'd like to stay here an extra week and just keep talking to a few people and things like that. So I'm going on too long, Jahn, the main thing is that I will now ask for help. Hopefully I show strength here because this book is for others. Look, it's a great cause, but I also promise people hit me up on, I will Venmo you 20 bucks if you read it and you really genuinely don't like the book. I know that's a bold statement. I'll probably be out millions of dollars after this, because you have said you have such a large readership and but no, in all seriousness, I really do appreciate the opportunity to bring the mission, meaning and impact to the world. And for on Twitter, I'm at this is Mike Hayes, one word and Instagram is, this is my case. And on LinkedIn, if you Google, my K's and seal, I'm pretty sure I'll be the person that pops up. So that's how you track me down. Awesome.

[00:38:14] Jahn Karsybaev: [00:38:14] I love it. Thanks Mike, for that. And for our listeners and viewers, we'll make these links and titles and all of everything that might have been mentioned throughout the episode available in the episode notes, Mike can't. Thank you enough for this very short and powerful conversation that was actually taking a lot. Throw out in the conversation. So I really appreciate all the insights that we're going to stay in touch with you. And we can do another episode in the near future.

[00:38:35] Mike Hayes: [00:38:35] I'd love to, and I also meant in the very beginning we got started so fast. I just wanted to also thank you for bringing all of this great content to the world. Forget me for a second. And then let's. All of the great content you brought to the world is so uplifting and, and awesome. I'm a huge fan of yours and the podcast, Jahn. And I just thank you.

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