Why do you think we give our power up to the external for that validation?

Well, this was something that I was desperately trying to understand as I was doing the research.

I ran across the work of psychologist Gordon Flett, who I feel, along with Isaac Prelintensky, are the two fathers of the science of mattering.

Unfortunately, Isaac passed away earlier this year.

But Gordon has a term for this.

He calls it anti-mattering.

And anti-mattering is...

way I

While we're doing these great things with the six Ps and our passion, our purpose, how do we have mattering on the side, knowing it, and what can we follow?"

Yeah.

Well, well, l- let me first talk to you about what I think of your six Ps as, as I process them and Jon Miles speak.

So to, to me, um, passion and purpose are the foundation.

But purpose, from my way of thinking, leads to passion.

So I always approach this that the first thing I try to get to is even before I have a why, it's the because.

The because is why you're doing things in the first place.

Were there any things that in your data and what you found that may have been different than what you had originally gotten into it to think?

But, um, you, you have this matter, M-A-T-T-E-R framework Can we unpack that a, a little bit and then apply that to, you know, what can be valuable information for our viewers?

Yeah.

David, before I get into that, I think there's one other concept that's important for people to understand.

I have in my, one of my initial chapters something that I call the, the Mattering Pyramid and the Mattering Needs Pyramid, and it's important as we go into the Matter framework for people to understand this.

As, as I started to look at this, I was trying to understand w- where does mattering disappear in, in ourselves? And so the way I look at it is the foundation of the Mattering Needs Pyramid is internal belief.

Um, I matter to myself.

It, it really gets down to do I possess an internal sense of worth myself that doesn't rise and fall with many of the things we've been discussing, like approval, achievement, productivity, or fear of other people's opinions? The next layer is the r-relational reflection.

So does it not extend to the workplace?

Mm-hmm

... listen to the audio from these interviews, and she would ask them, "Is this a student from the 1970s, or is this a student from today?" And every single one of them from the 1970s, they said, "This is a student from today." So w- what this is showing me is, I think with some of the changes that we've had in the school system starting in the '80s and the influx of social media happening in 2010, et cetera, those are accelerants to something that I believe has been going on much longer.

I think over the past 200 years, the great erasure has been happening, and what I mean by this is I believe that we are living in a mattering market.

The mattering market is the system in which human beings increasingly exchange their inner sense of worth for external measures of value, such as status, achievement, productivity, approval, visibility, utility, you name it.

But I think what's happening here is ever since the first whistlebrew blew in the first factory during industrialization, what's been happening is the gradual loss of individuality as people become increasingly interchangeable parts inside the systems that organize their lives, whether that's the work system, where they're seen for what they output, the school systems which now we've taken what's worked in the work environment and we're now taking into the school systems, which is then carrying into our home systems.

These same things are being used by the product engineers that are in these companies, creating these social media tools and now the AI systems that we're interacting with, and it's the same things that companies, the retailers where we shop and everything else, are using to drive consumerism.

So everything that's happening around you is repeatedly creating these experiences.

Mm-hmm.

What does it look like in action, and what does MATTER, M-A-T-T-E-R framework, what is it all about?

Yeah.

Well, I think it's important to, to realize that mattering has two sides to it.

Uh, first you have to give value, but you also have to feel like that value is being returned.

And I think in the world we live in today, so many of us are extremely good at producing, performing, providing to others, but we feel less and less of it being reflect back on who we are.

Mm-hmm.

Um, I disagree with him that it is the cause.

I think, uh, a, a bigger cause started at least here in the United States, um, with core acrili- curriculum and No Child Left Behind, where we took freedom and play out of our school environments and instead brought the boardroom into the classroom.

Tell us, what do CEOs need to know right now? What are you paying attention to?

I hear Simon Sinek talk a lot about our why.

I wanna talk about my because and why that because is so important to so many CEOs.

My be- my because is something I call the slow fade.

I believe that there are a ton of people today, and the statistics show it, who are disengaged, and the reason for that is they don't suddenly lose themselves.

So many people today are slowly fading from their own lives, and the reason this is happening is because we become so identified with our career, our responsibilities, our accomplishments, and what other people need from us that we start slowly losing sight of the person who's underneath all those roles.

Mm.

And why this is my because is because I know this personally.

Can you walk us through some of the changes that you implemented to turn that around?

Yeah, so one of the most important ones is something that I call a line of sight.

So I went around and first I tried to interview, well, I went and interviewed all of the customers of our organization and then I talked to all my peers to get from their perspective, why was this organization performing so low? But then the important other step I took was, is I showed up and I started talking to people in break rooms, in the command centers, in the data centers.

And I would get up at two o'clock in the morning because some of the shifts were 24 by seven and they didn't work a day shift.

So I, one, signaled to all of them that they mattered to me and that I was willing myself to put in the effort to meet them.

The second thing is I started to learn about them.

Like, what were their passions? Did they want to stay in this role? Did they want something more? What was happening outside of them? Did they have a member who might've been sick in their family? Did they wanna go on to further their education? Did they have kids? And what were their kids interested in? So I made them see that I was concerned about them bigger than just the role that they were doing.

What was that change for you to focus so much on Maverick?

And some people would argue that by not just doing it, it means that they potentially save a lot of time and cost that would have gone into an idea that maybe would have failed in the end.

indecisiveness is a decision it's just usually a dumb one and i mean if you go through the decision tree that i said at every point along the way if the answer is no then go back and make a different decision differentiation is how you get noticed and that's will it provide a distinct experience because if you're doing that you've got a much better chance of being noticed A really good example of this is the One New Zealand story.

I, like a lot of people, when it came out, One New Zealand, we had TV One, I confess I did go, well, why the fuck are they doing this? I didn't get it, and I think a lot of people didn't get it.

But they did one of the smartest things I've seen a brand.

And I credit to Jason Paris because he's an ex-marketer and he's a CEO.

And I guarantee you that if the one New Zealand purse CEO had been an accountant or a lawyer or someone of that ilk, it would never have happened.

And before they were Vodafone New Zealand, Vodafone New Zealand was really a faceless corporate entity from overseas.

Is there something that you're seeing within organizations at the moment that they're putting off? Is there a decision or a topic that organizations are really struggling with and they need to just do it?

You know? [laughs]

The interesting thing, one of the loveliest bits of feedback that I've had, um, I don't know if you know Jordan Ekatoomli, who, uh, founded the Autism Kids, and because one of his, um...

Jordan's done an unbelievable job.

And, um, he did a little testimonial for me for, on video, and he said, he said, he said, "Look, for a, for a kid who grew up in South Auckland, I've never been taught how to make decisions." And he said, "Having read this now, I'm using this as a framework to make decisions on a daily basis, because I've got a framework, and no one's ever taught that to me before."

Yeah.

And I mean, I was really proud that, um, TRA did some research on, on the, on marketing association, and they said to us, "You're the most passionate, uh, organization in New Zealand." And, um, they said, "Y- y- 72% of your members said you, labeled you as passionate." And I said, "Oh, that's 'cause I'm very competitive.

I used to play international sport and all that sort of thing." And I said, "Oh, that's really good.

Um, how far away is number two?" You know?

So how does the solo episode kind of help you with your other conversations that you have?

No, I mean, for me, they all play into each other.

So, for instance, that interview I was doing with Adam Galinsky, we started talking about a Southwest Airlines flight where in midair the hull burst and the pilot successfully landed it in Philadelphia.

And it took me back.

I went to the Naval Academy, and when I was there, We got to have this crew from a United flight.

Some of you probably remember it in Sioux Falls where they lost all hydraulics and they were able to bring it down just by using the to land the plane.

About half the people still died, but it was still a major feat that when they took it into simulators, no crew could replicate it.

Haha.