You need to make a decision but don't want to make a mistake. For decades, Dr. Constance Dierickx has helped leaders make wise decisions. Now, she's sharing how to see what others don't and make great decisions when it matters most. So come on in and have a seat. It's time for your appointment with the Decision Doctor.

Hi, I'm Constance Dierickx. Welcome to my podcast. I'm very excited to share with you my conversation with Dorie Clark. Dorie is a speaker, author, consultant, and coach, and she still manages to teach at Columbia Business School. Her latest book, The Long Game, reached the Wall Street Journal bestseller list. Dorie manages a rare feat. She is brilliant and pragmatic. Thinkers50 named her to their list of the World's Best Management Thinkers. Her willingness to share her disappointments on the road to dramatic success, makes her both credible and darn likable. Hi, Dorie. Great to have you with me.

Constance, thank you. It's always such a treat to get to spend time with you, so, thank you for having me.

Oh, you're so welcome. So for the listeners who don't know this, which I hope there are just a few, your most recent book is called The Long Game. I'm really in love with the book and the subtitle, which I believe, you tell me if I get this wrong, How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World.

Nailed it.

I nailed it! All right, I should. I've spent a lot of time with your book. I guess my first question is, how did you come up with the idea for the book? And then tell me a little bit about your process of deciding on that fabulous subtitle because it really is an attention grabber.

Thank you. Yeah. One of the things that I really learned, this is my fourth book, and sometimes, it takes me a while for things to sink in.

Takes all of us a while, yeah.

But I realized that one of the most powerful things that you could do is to have a title of a book, and by title, I mean, it includes the subtitle as well, where when you tell people what it is, you want them to say, "Oh, I want that," or, "Oh, I need that." A lot of my other titles, I mean, they're fine, but they're a little bit abstruse. It's "Reinventing You: Define your Brand, Imagine Your Future." I mean, it sounds good. It's not a bad thing.

It's not bad at all. It did very well, by the way.

It did fine. It did fine. Yeah, thank you. But it's not quite the same value proposition, that kind of clear value proposition. So I realized that would be an important differentiator in talking about the book. So to answer your question about how I came up with the idea and sort of the genesis of it, really, for me, it was the phenomenon, pre-pandemic, of just racing around so much -- me and also, just about everybody I knew, and hearing the phrase over and over again, or some variation thereof, "I wish I had time to think. I just don't even have time to think." I realized, of course, we all sort of pay lip service to the idea that thinking, especially, deep thinking, long-term thinking is the most important thing we can possibly do. Everybody agrees, "Oh, yes, that's a good thing. We should do more of that." And yet, nobody felt like they could or nobody felt like they had time for it. And so I wanted to explore that disjunct and to see how we could possibly interrupt it a little bit.

Yeah. That makes so much sense to me. My latest book, which you are familiar with, Meta-Leadership talks about metacognition, and I'm advising people, what is metacognition? Why is it important? But your book is really the solution to what keeps people from being able to think about their thinking. Now, we're in this crush, all the time. Actually, I've solved that for myself. So maybe that should be my next book, how to get out of it. But what I love about your book so much is that it doesn't argue with the fact that we live in a short-term world. It doesn't argue with that. It just says here's what you can do that's different. One of the things I know about you is that you are so good at reverse engineering. That's the phrase I use to describe the Dorie Clark way of seeing something really cool, and then figuring out what are those elements. I would love for you to describe that process for the listener because I think it can be used really by almost anyone.

Yeah, thank you, Constance. For anyone who, in particular, is interested in the concept of reverse engineering, my friend Ron Friedman wrote a book, which I think is underappreciated, because it's a really, really excellent book called Decoding Greatness. It essentially is this extended peer into reverse engineering and discussions of techniques of how to do it. And in fact, he interviewed me for the book and we sort of talked at length about one of my online courses in particular, which was called the Rapid Content Creation Masterclass, where I sort of reverse engineer and deconstruct the process of how to quickly write high-quality articles or blog posts, which is something that a lot of people in the community that I run wants to be able to do as a way of expressing their ideas and their thought leadership. Ultimately, we have to recognize that with the exception of a precious few things in life, maybe on the order of curing cancer and going into various parts of outer space, pretty much anything you want to do has been done before by other people, and probably by a lot of other people. And yet, we often systematically fail to remember that or fail to avail ourselves of that wisdom. And so I think, just at a really basic level, I mean, Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's famous investing partner, always talked about the fact that you could be ahead of the vast majority of people, not by making great decisions, but simply by avoiding stupidity. I think the key thing here is like, well, if a bunch of other people have done it before you, why would you not learn from that? Why would you not take that information into account in terms of what works or what doesn't? I mean, that's not to say that your path will exactly replicate other people's. But it's also true that doing X, whatever it is, took, on average, five years, it's probably not going to take you five weeks. Maybe it takes you four years.

Probably not. Just guessing.

Yeah, yeah, we're just guessing. And so it's really useful to understand like, alright, well, how long did it take? What did they do? What seemed to work, what didn't? Then, enabling you to put your own spin on it. But most especially, I think this is the part where I really drill down on this in The Long Game, I think that expectations are actually the key variable here because so many people quit prematurely on whatever it is that they're doing because they have erroneous expectations. And they get really frustrated. They're like, "Well, I've been trying for so long. I've done everything you could possibly do. Like, obviously, it's just not working." And that may or may not be true. But if you haven't properly scoped it, you might have been trying really, really hard for six months on a project that is a five to 10-year project. And so it's not the actions, it's not the, "Oh, you can't do it," it's that you really had the wrong idea at the outset. And so you're probably going to quit, and it will be a mistake because you are throwing away the work that you did.

Yeah, that is certainly an emotionally driven decision, for sure. You start out with the wrong idea, so your thinking isn't exactly right. It's not accurate. But then the frustration takes over, and you give up. I think it's accentuated when you see exemplars. People look at Dorie Clark, and they think wow, she teaches at Columbia and Duke and Skolkovo in Moscow, and is a sought-after speaker and has written books and has this fabulous recognized expert community. But it took you years to build that. And that leads me to something you write about in The Long Game, which I think the way you describe it is delightful, partly because it's fun, also, it's memorable. But you advise people to look for raindrops. That if you expect what took Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett 20 years to build that you're gonna build it in 20 weeks, it's a little nuts, really. But there are signals. So talk a little bit about your idea about the raindrops and why it matters to keep people from giving up too soon.

Yeah, absolutely. You raise a good point by citing Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett because there have been some really interesting analyses, and I'm not going to even try for the exact numbers because I'll butcher them. But the two most crucial facts that we need to know about Warren Buffett and why he is the world's greatest investor, I mean, he's smart, obviously, but the two most salient facts are, number one, dude is about 90 now, so he has been investing for a very long time. He started investing when he was 11 or 12. This is not somebody who got their first job out of college, and they're like, "Well, maybe I'll put some money in the stock market." He was obsessed with the stock market as a child and started investing. And so for almost anyone, again, if you avoid sort of catastrophically stupid mistakes, as Charlie Munger talks about, for almost anyone, if you make reasonable decisions with your money over an 80-year period, you will have a lot of money at the end of that period. So that is an important thing to keep in mind, and I think it's important for all of us because one of the biggest parallels that I discovered in the course of writing The Long Game was I just had this creeping sense as I was writing the book, I'm like, "Wow, I am not writing a personal finance book, and yet, it is a personal finance book because I just kept discovering the advice that I was giving people about their careers and their professional development, it was the exact same advice that you would give in terms of money management or things like that." It's like number one, okay, don't be an idiot, and have it blow up. But beyond that, small amounts of whatever the currency is, whether it's money, whether it's time, whether it's effort, deposited regularly, has just this extraordinary power of compound interest. And our brains literally don't even understand. It's too much for our brains to understand compound interest. And yet, you can get so far and grow so fast, in terms of your ability to outpace the competition, just by dint of being there and being around for a while. I think about somebody that I profiled in a previous book of mine Entrepreneurial You, the podcaster, Jordan Harbinger. He's a very successful top podcaster today, has millions of downloads every month, and it's wonderful. He's a good interviewer, he deserves it. But I think a key factor about Jordan is that he didn't just start doing it. I mean, podcasting became widely popular, let's say in the past, call it seven years or so. He had been doing a podcast since around 2005. And literally, for years, he didn't even check the numbers on Libsyn for downloads because it wasn't worth checking the numbers. He knew it was so few people, it was irrelevant how many people they saw.

All related to him.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. But the power of compounding is nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. Oh, now, all of a sudden, you have millions. So that's, I think, the key. I might have forgotten your question. But I hope that was useful.

It was about raindrops and your analogy. The parallels are exact and you know this, but I was a stockbroker in a previous life. I can confirm that what will really ruin your financial future is stupid mistakes in the present. Buying a house that you can't afford, you're gonna have to carry around like an overloaded backpack for years, unless you sell the house. It's hard for people to undo a big decision like that because they don't want to lose what they've -- we get into the sunk loss fallacy. But I know that you work with executives and you work with solo entrepreneurs, and could you give us maybe a story about a time when somebody was looking at raindrops, and they were all excited about the raindrops, but they weren't the right raindrops. You know what I mean? Their criteria was a little bit off. How can people get better at that?

Yeah, thank you, Constance. So just to break the metaphor down for folks, the way that I think about this is -- the way that we typically measure success is, this sort of typical, self-evident way where the big thing happens, whatever the end goal is, I got the contract, revenue, I made a million dollars, I got the promotion, whatever it is. It's great, but the problem with any sort of long-term endeavor is that it usually really takes a while to get there. The distance between here and there can feel very long. It can feel very discouraging. And so, looking for the raindrops is essentially my way of trying to help people think through, how do you sustain yourself in the interim between setting the goal and actually achieving the goal? The way I think about it is like the formation of a rainstorm because we all know when a big thunderstorm hits, nobody can deny it,you're being soaked, you hear all the noise, you see the flashes of lights, like, okay, we get it. But it's also true that a thunderstorm never starts instantly. The clouds have to roll in, the temperature and the barometric pressure have to change. Those are the things that we can start to sense, we can see them on the way. It's true for our professional success as well. Nobody, literally overnight, goes from nothing to, oh, you earn a million dollars, or oh, you're on the cover of such and such magazine. There are interim steps. So we need to name them and be aware of them. Some of them may be very subtle. But as long as we are mindful of that, we can actually realize like, oh, this is actually good, I'm getting somewhere. It helps keep you on track and it helps keep you encouraged. It can be anything from the number of inbound sales inquiries that you're getting, it could be all of a sudden, I'm getting a lot more LinkedIn requests or something like that. But it's showing more interest in a way that you can track. So you were asking about people who might be following the wrong metrics. The biggest problem here in terms of our choice of metrics, and this is kind of the human condition, is it is not uncommon for people to default to the highly visible metrics. And when I say visible, I mean, oftentimes, social media, things that are like the tip of the iceberg. So it's very easily trackable by everybody. Well, how many followers do you have? People get very obsessed with that sometimes. It's not really healthy, and depending on your goals, it might not even be relevant. I mean, if someone has a practice, like you, Constance, where they're working with boards and with CEOs, I'm not saying it wouldn't be nice to have 100,000 Instagram followers, but I'm not actually sure that would even move the needle on your particular business. That would really be a distraction.

Not a bit. I'm pretty sure board chairs and CEOs aren't scrolling on Instagram. And if they are, they're following some hobby that they want. So yeah. I see that. The other thing that I think that people do is they act, not deliberately, nobody does this on purpose, but they mistake activity for progress. So the activity or the input, that's like, I made this many calls or something like that is a proxy for making progress. And I do think it's hard when you're trying to get somewhere that's pretty far and you're starting out. It's really hard, which brings me to the idea of relationships and networking. I think when you were talking about money and investing and how you put some dollars in and some dollars in, and it doesn't look like much, and then it feels like all of a sudden, you have $500,000. Where did it come from? It was that step-by-step, and relationships are very much like that. So when you make an investment, and you give good advice too, and I've repeated this a number of times, that when you reach out to someone who's pretty well-known, and maybe you're not as well-known, it's fine to reach out to them, but don't reach out and ask them for something. People like yourself, people, like our friend Francis Frei at Harvard, who we both think so fondly of, they get requests all the time, will you do this for me? Will you do this for me? But talk a little bit about how you've built such a robust network. I mean, it's amazing. Somebody commented online yesterday, they said something about Dorie. And I said, "Well, of course she knows. I'm sure Dorie knows everybody." So you've actually got this image now, as well as the reality, of course, that you have this network, but what are some of the things you have done that have made that work?

Well, thank you. That's very kind, Constance. I would say that one of the most important things is a principle that I actually lay out in The Long Game, which is what I call, "No asks for a year." I mean, we don't necessarily mean this is gospel. It's not like day 366 is magic or better. But the rough rule of thumb is that if you are building a relationship with someone, you need to refrain for quite a while from asking for something that has political capital now, I mean, of course, you ask them questions, or you can invite them to things, if I'm starting to make friends with you, great. I'll ask you to come to coffee or dinner with me. I'll ask you, "Oh, Constance, I really liked that top, where did you get it?" Or, like, whatever. "Oh, Constance, you just had such a great book come out, who did you use for your PR firm?" Whatever, those are fine. But what we're talking about is sensitive asks that involve political capital. And to your point, especially as people get sort of more visible, they get a lot of those things. I actually did an analysis just because I was curious about it at a certain point, and so a while back, I did an analysis, where for a two-week period, I tracked every email that came into me, and I coded it based on, what was it like? Well, I always feel like everybody does that. I'm oppressed by email, I get so many emails, so much stuff. And I'm like, what actually is all this stuff? And so I coded it by like, okay, well, this is like a promotional message, this is like a client correspondence, this is an inquiry from a prospect, whatever sort of groups. And what I discovered is that over this two-week period, on average, I got 10 emails per day asking me for something. Now, not all of them were sort of outrageous asks, or whatever, but 10 things per day of somebody who wanted something from me. So, obviously, it's even worse for people who are genuinely famous. So, it's an important thing to be mindful of that. And so I like to really defer like, okay, for as long as possible just if you're building a relationship with someone, don't go there. Don't ask for the politically sensitive thing that, oh, hey, could you introduce me to your well-known friend, or whatever it is, because the minute you do that, you kind of click into a different zone, and the person's like, oh, is that the game she was playing? Now I see it.

So that's how you want to use me? Oh, good to know. Yeah, absolutely. It's so interesting because it's very avoidable. In the days where LinkedIn is so widely used, it's easy to join a conversation with someone you want to get to know and say, "Hey, I read your article in Harvard Business Review about blah, blah. I really appreciated this." Something short. "I'm curious what you think about this." I think one of the things that people do, one of these habitual behaviors, I'm sure people don't mean to do it, but they see something on LinkedIn and they have something to say that's really their content, and they take up like this much space to give their speech. And one of my friends who's a well-known sales consultant says, "I don't like people camping out on my real estate." Well, of course, that's LinkedIn's real estate, obviously, but you've seen a lot of people make some great decisions, and a lot of people make some bad ones. What do you think are the one or two things that really get in people's way and lead them down the wrong path?

Yeah, that's such an important question. And I mean, obviously, you've studied this extensively, Constance. So you're really the expert here. But I would say that most bad decisions, actually, are often the product of people not understanding that they have a decision, or not understanding that a given move is a decision. Like, I think that oftentimes we do better when we're like, oh, I have this weighty choice, like, I'm a juror and is he guilty or innocent? And we're like, oh, that's high stakes, okay. And so you're really on it, you're like, okay, pros and cons, and I'll make my list and all that. Where we screw up, where we really fall short is in the moments where we don't consider our actions because it doesn't even seem like a decision, it doesn't even rise to that category. It's things like keeping doing the same thing, whatever that is, sort of like the Kodak problem, right, not understanding that not making a move is making a choice. It's not the right one. So I think that that's a piece of it. I think also, something that was very influential to me, was a wonderful book, which you probably read, called The Gift of Fear. I think that it was written by a guy who is a security consultant for high-profile Hollywood celebrities, for Jeff Bezos, and things like that. Basically, what it's talking about is that we often with this sort of gut intuition and all the chemical receptors we have in our stomach, our microbiome, we often know the answer. But we allow our brain and social convention to override it to our detriment and often physical harm because we say, "Oh, no, well, this can't be dangerous." Or, "Oh, gosh, I'll look like a wimp, or I'll look like a scaredy cat if I cross the street here. I'm sure he's fine." And of course, your body's like, "Get the F out of there." So we need to train ourselves to be better at picking up on the messages that we know already.

Yeah, that's true. You're absolutely right about the first part of your answer, by the way. It turns out, and this is a topic that I'm doing research on right now, so how convenient that you brought it up, that the biggest mistake people make in decision-making is ignoring a decision that needs to be made that is very consequential. Now, either they're not aware of it at all, or they're postponing it and postponing it and postponing it. I like to say to my clients, bad news is not like wine, it does not improve over time. It just gets bigger and more and more robust as we go. So, very insightful of you to pick up on that and surprising to me when I really realized it and started reading this. So you've seen a lot of people make decisions, corporate executives, people in academia, solo entrepreneurs like myself. What are some of the best decisions that you've seen people make or a great decision that you've made?

Well, this is great. I would say, in general, and this is a theme that I turn to a lot in The Long Game, there's a sentence or phrase that I like to turn to as kind of a mantra to help me with my thinking for this. What is it that I can do today that will make tomorrow better and easier? And I think my favorite decisions, I mean, again, it's true, that sometimes, we have the archetypal decision, as people think about it, like, Kennedy War Gaming, like the Cuban Missile Crisis or something like that. Like, we'll get the geopolitics here. But most decisions for regular people don't look like that. They don't feel like that. That's why we don't even recognize them. It's like, well, I mean, where's Nikita Khrushchev here? Like, I don't know. So, I think that decisions often come with a still small voice, and because we don't see them, we don't recognize them, we fail to take action. So I think some of the best decisions don't even look like decisions, they look like habits, or they look like small consistent practices that set you up and put you into the catbird seat when you keep doing it for a year, five years, 10 years, 20 years. And all of a sudden, it's like, oh, my God, she looks 20 years younger than her age and she's a multimillionaire. How did that happen? And it's like it's happened because of all the things you did over the past 20 years.

Right. Right. Exactly. And in fact, habits are artifacts, right? It's something we decided to do at some other point, maybe not even willingly, maybe it really speaks to the culture or our family or something like that. And so we don't recognize those as choices like, well, this is how I do it. One of the things that I am curious about is that a lot of people come to you to join your recognized expert community, they come to you for advice. I know, for myself, that sometimes people ask for advice from somebody who maybe has developed a skill or an ability or had success in an area that they want, and then they argue with you. My longtime friend and mentor, who you know, Alan Weiss, said to somebody once in a workshop, I wouldn't say this, but I've certainly thought it, "Well, I'm standing here and you're sitting there." I find that sort of frustrating that someone would make a decision to make an investment, show up for something, and then basically, explain to Dorie Clark, at length, why your advice won't work for them. What do you think's going on there?

Yeah, it's an interesting question. I think, in those cases, I realized that it doesn't do much good to argue with that person, for sure, because their mind is so set. So I almost immediately back off. And I'm like, "You know what, you're right. It probably wouldn't work for you. So Godspeed."

Good decision, Dorie.

Yeah, that's my decision. It is interesting. I mean, I think that in the coaching work that I've done, and I imagine this is probably true for you, but I've been really surprised because, over the years, you see plenty of people. Many of them become successful. Some just figure out how to be successful on their own, some get coaching, and then they become successful, and it's great. And then there's this other small, but it's there, group of people who are so talented, and you look at them, and you're like, they should be successful, like this person has so much to offer, they should be successful, and you're like, mystified, like, why are they not? And you realize that there is some psychological thing holding them back. I don't know what it is, I don't know where it comes from. It's obviously quite deep-seeded. But I think that there is a subset of people that -- I think it's facile to say that people are afraid of success, like I don't think that's quite the right formulation. I think everyone actually does want to be pretty successful. But I think that they're afraid of something. It feels psychologically comfortable for them even to pay the money because what they're buying is the right to say, "Well, I tried everything, and it didn't work. I tried that program, I tried that course, I tried that coach, but it didn't work." And being able to say that is apparently worth somewhere between thousands and tens of thousands of dollars to that person. And I don't know why. I wish for their sake that it didn't happen that way. But I do think that there is a subset of people that, for whatever reason, that is their block, and that's what they need to do. I don't know, what have you seen?

I think fear is a big emotional driver for people. It's very tough to admit. I mean, you can admit that you're afraid of getting a bad diagnosis medically, or something like that. Those are acceptable fears. But being afraid to do public speaking or being afraid, well, maybe that one's acceptable too, I don't know. But there are ways to get over that. I think that it definitely drives fear. But I also know, and we know this from the literature, which has been repeatedly demonstrated, that humans are rationalizing creatures, way more than we are rational creatures. There are some wonderful aspects to that. I mean, I sometimes say, of course, we need to be irrational, sometimes because who would ever fall in love if we were rational? I mean, because you feel mildly insane in that state, but it's a delicious feeling, you know? Or why should you spend a lot of time making a decision about what flavor of ice cream to choose? Like, go with your gut. So I think that there's a lot of rationalizing that people do, but it does, I have to say, it makes me sad because there are great people in the world to learn from, and you do a good job of making what you know and your wisdom accessible in a lot of different ways, which I think is a great model for other people. So, I'm gonna wind up with a couple questions, but one is, what decisions do you make? Let's use ice cream as an analogy. What is the thing akin to ordering ice cream that you allow yourself to do just absolutely mindlessly and joyfully? It doesn't cause you any problems.

Right. Well, yeah, I mean, in terms of, essentially low-stakes decisions or what have you, in the recreational realm, I will often just start walking sometimes, like, especially if I'm in New York. One of the great things is just sort of letting things be very unplanned and just sort of stumbling into, well, let's see where I end up. That's really wonderful. Also, I think when you're choosing within a bounded band of options, you can kind of play around. I mean, anytime I hear about a book that I think is interesting, I'll usually download a Kindle sample of it just to try 20 pages or whatever. I will go through and then just really see, like, where my mood strikes or where my mood takes me of this collection of possibilities to be like, alright, let's, let's roll the dice and see what I end up diving into next.

Yeah, yeah. I think that's wonderful because it's a form of exploration. And yeah, it's low stakes. So, you order a book you don't like? I mean, who cares? Ask me if I've read all the books that are behind me. No, I haven't. So what is the best decision that you've ever made that you want to share with the listeners?

Well, it's a great question. I mean, I think there are a lot of ways you can slice it. It's sort of, which decision are you proudest of? Or which decision has kind of given you the best net gain? I mean, there are a lot of ways you can answer that. I will say, from a business decision, my starting to do LinkedIn Learning courses, kind of early on in 2016, they had kind of only recently acquired it from lynda.com. So it was just becoming LinkedIn Learning, and I started doing it. And I thought, even if I don't make a lot of money from this, this is good exposure. It's good for me to do this. And so I really just kind of pressed my advantage and leaned into it and did a bunch of them. Now, I've done over 25 LinkedIn Learning courses. And over time, especially during the pandemic, it actually did become a kind of lucrative thing because people did a lot of online learning during that period. So that sort of diving in and doing a lot of that once it seemed like it was a good thing, I would say, that was a really good decision. I think probably the decision that I'm proudest of is a personal one because back, now, over a decade ago, I had a relationship, a romantic relationship with somebody that I really was in love with, I really cared about a lot. But it was not a super healthy relationship. It was not a great dynamic. And I realized that it was extremely hard because I really cared about her, but because it was kind of this toxic relationship, I knew I needed to end it. She wouldn't have. She kind of wanted to stay in it. But I knew it would just kind of drag me down, and so I had to do it. It was like, the most brutal thing in the world. I mean, she made a point of making it a brutal experience to end the relationship. So it took a lot of fortitude to kind of keep my resolution. But doing it was actually really important because I think that my diagnosis at the time was right, and that if I had not ended it, it would have continued to have been a drag on my mental health, on my productivity, and like just about anything else in my life over the past 10 years.

Yeah, that's a big deal. Yeah, that's a really big deal. I think there are just a number of things that the listener to this podcast can glean from your experience. One of them is that you're willing to step out and do what you believe is in your best interest. Sort of all your stories revolve around that. And I'm not saying you've never made mistakes, but I think that willingness to be mindful is so super important. So I want to make sure that the listener knows how to find you. It's so easy to find Dorie Clark because you just Google Dorie Clark, then you get your website and you find out about all of your courses and things like that. You're very active on LinkedIn, which is super great. Anything coming up for you that you want to share before we wrap up?

Well, thank you, Constance. I appreciate it. I'll just say if people want to dive in even further to the questions, specifically around being a better strategic thinker, the new book is The Long Game, and you can get a free Long Game Strategic Thinking Self-Assessment at DorieClark.com/LongGame. So that's another way to kind of dive into the material.

Yeah, it's good. I did that. I downloaded it, and actually, that's where I got the idea for the Meta-Leadership self-assessment. A good example of, you see your role model and you say, I think I want to do that. Thank you so much. You are always a joy to talk to and you always share such marvelous insights. Thanks so much.

The Decision Doctor will be back with more advice soon. Hit the follow button on your favorite podcast app and check out TheDecisionDoctor.com to receive the Meta-Leadership self-assessment and other no-cost resources. We'll see you next time.