Chris Deaver, author and co-founder of BraveCore, recalls stalking Stephen Covey in his own house, and talks about the key lesson he learned from Steve Jobs, bucking the "expert model", writing a letter to Roy Disney then turning down the reply, the simplicity and power of co-creation, turning Dell around, making others the mission, and working next to a secret lab.

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Hello, Action Aatalyst listeners. This is Adam

Outland. Today's guest is Chris Deaver, co founder of BraveCore,

helping leaders be more creative and creatives be better leaders,

with time spent at Apple, Disney Dell and working alongside

Stephen Covey. Deaver brings his experiences together in the book

brave together, which we'll dive into today. Chris, great to meet

you.

Likewise. Thanks, Adam.

Are you in West Coast?

I'm in the Bay Area. So San Jose, south part of

it a little town called Gilroy that's the garlic capital of the

world. Garlic capital of worlds. Yeah, that's our claim at least

and I can vouch for the garlic fries. But the garlic ice cream

don't don't ask me about anything good to say so.

Oh, man. Well, I'd actually love to start maybe a

little bit earlier in life was a your one of your first

professional experiences to work with Stephen Covey back in the

day.

Yeah, yeah, that was my kind of dream. I listened

to the audio, his audio tape of the seven habits. I had I had a

Walkman. So this this'll date me, you know, Sony. It was a

classic. And I'd go for a jog or run and, and I had his the set

of habits tape. And I just listened to it constantly. To

the point that it literally broke, I think was like 1000

times. And I just couldn't get enough. I thought this is the

coolest thing. You know, it's about principles. It's

inspiring. And it translates into business and personal

development. And I thought that's, that's, that's where I

want to be. I want to be in that space. So fast forward, I had

the chance to connect with, with Steven himself. He's, he's I was

at BYU. And He has connections there and lived in Provo. So,

you know, it all kind of happened just, I guess I say

randomly. I was very intentional. But it was it was

kind of a backdoor in his son had a, like a network marketing

business meeting at his house. And my friend said, Hey, this is

your chance. I said, I don't know, interested in signing up

for some random thing. And he goes, No, but it's at Steven

Kelly's house. It's like, okay, so cool. So I ended up walking

up the stairs, nice big house. And, and I looked down the

hallway I see is bald guy. I'm like, that's well, you know,

older guy thought there's only one of those around here. But

I'm not going to chase him in his own house. That's a lock

word, right? So I kind of stepped towards the door or the

front door and I and I look at a garage, he pops out of the

garage, I think his wife, he and his wife go to a Christmas party

or something. So he's putting gifts in the car. And I walk

over and I just thought, okay, now's my chance. And I said,

Hey, you know, Steven, I really appreciated your books. But you

know, I've made a difference in my life. And he looks me in the

eyes really deeply. He goes, we've met before. And I said, I

feel like I have I you know, I read your books that much. I

feel like I know you. And he goes, No, we've met before. And

you know, oddly enough, I had a, I had a dream years before about

estimating. And I don't know, you know, sometimes these things

just happen for a reason. He just connect. But from there, we

had him come speak at an event. And we started as we were doing

this mentoring nonprofit, he said, I'll be your PR agent

started spreading the word. And he adores our work. And it was

great. I learned a lot from him. You know, one of the things he

said, that's always stuck with me, and I'm striving to work on

to this day. He said, You know, we have two ears and one mouth,

and it's the right proportion. For listening. So, so my

introductory work with Covey.

Yeah. I mean, how much of that influence? Do you

feel like carried over to what you do today with BraveCore? And

you know, the book that you wrote, Brave Together?

I think there's a lot of inherent wisdom in

questions. And I think especially needed in the world

today. Right? We're inundated with answers. You know, Google

is like every tool has answers right? Spitting out an answer

for us. And we have to kind of cut through this noise. And then

when our in our interactions with others. This is something

that both Covey I worked, I had the chance to be at Apple and

Steve Jobs would would do this in meetings, he listened a lot.

He would pivot and start to disagree with himself at times.

And, you know, people would get confused by this. Your CEO, like

you had a position and he say, well, now this this, this answer

is better. Right? So a 180. And that's the power of listening.

Ed Catmull. He started Pixar. Also. His dilemma was he's

really smart guy had PhD and he said when it early days of the

company, he would just answer fire off answers to questions

everybody had, you know, we had the chance to meet with him, and

we thought this is he's the Yoda right of creativity and

principles, you know, creativity, Inc, that has, you

know, has a cabbie flavor to it. But it's, um, it's specific to

Pixar is principles of their culture, right? And so we

thought, well, this guy's Yoda, we're gonna click the wisdom

button, and he's just gonna dispense, you know, the wisdom.

And he didn't. So we ended up sitting there, my friend, co

author and I, and we're just sharing, and he's listening and

asking really great questions. This goes on for 1520, maybe 30

minutes. And at one point, I'm thinking, wow, this, okay. This

it was it was an interesting dynamic. So I paused, I said,

Ed, what's your leadership philosophy? And he said that, he

said, I lead with the question. And I think as we come upon this

time, especially, you know, all these technologies, AI, you

know, all these tools and things that are coming at us? Well,

there's a unique opportunity to unlock the power of questions.

And you know, at Pixar, Ed and team, they would send out a

question a week in advance, so rather than an agenda, they

would send out a question, to just let that marinate creates

that space, you know, there's much more anchoring power in

questions.

Yeah, it's actually harder to come up with

the right questions first, than to work on the answers. Right?

Definitely. But yeah, the feeling and definitely

the business world, you know, to this day, it's a struggle or to

wrestle is, you know, we call it in the book, the expert model,

right? There's an expert model of, you know, it's a temptation

to kind of show up and say, dump expertise, put answers, you

know, kind of pour answers into people or into the conversation.

And, you know, and in a world where there are so many answers,

it does beg that question of, well, how do we create? How do

we unlock the space for people to be brave? I saw this at Apple

where you had, you know, people that had written white papers

that like nobody else had done it, right, their whole PhD was

about this technical aspect of something. And yet, they would

come to the table with kind of egos off the table, a humility

to the universe, an unanswered question, right, that they had

to kind of come together to pull something out of the ether with

a belief that that could happen. And it's something that didn't

exist prior to that meeting, that they were bringing their

perspective and others were bringing theirs, but that the

magic would happen. And it essentially something that it

would be a revelation.

And you had such a career, you know, being senior

HR leadership at Walt Disney and Apple. And as a teenager in high

school, like, how much of this did you predict who's going to

be your life path?

I was just trying to make it through in a survive.

Yeah, I mean, I think I don't know that I imagined Exactly.

This course. I know. I knew something about, I enjoyed

creativity. I also would find myself in those places thinking

kind of commercially or about the business world. And you

know, behind all this in the background, my foundation had

started I'd say, really, my dad was a Scoutmaster. So the Boy

Scout program for ever. And I just started, you know, I begged

to go on these big trips, but you know, 50 mile hikes and

these things were, I didn't realize at the time, but I'm

observing a version of leadership among these kids who

are like trying to figure this out, and they have these

responsibilities a patrol leader, go build it, you know,

put a tent together, go find, you know, make a fire and, and

all the messiness of that. And, you know, my dad, he was pretty

good at like, just okay, go figure it out. The other dynamic

that happened for me was, I was on an achievement orientation

path. You know, I did everything to get Eagle Scout at 12. I, you

know, it was in the grades. And even in college, I studied

animation at BYU, who is a precursor to them becoming, you

know, they're, they're recognized now is really the,

you know, one of the best in the world is that, but this is like

the first class, but I got there and I wrote a letter to Roy

Disney, I wanted to work at Disney. And I get a call from a

recruiter, I didn't know this is gonna happen three or four

months later, I forgot about the letter. But, uh, this recruiter

calls and says, Hey, this is Lisa, your ROI said to talk to

you. And, you know, there's like pixie dust flying everywhere.

This is I've wished upon a star. It's actually happening, right?

And all those things, all those achievements in my life, it all

led to this moment, right? It was the weirdest thing to

actually have my heart override this, where I said, thank you.

And I didn't hang up the phone. It was an existential moment

that I realized, hey, right company. It's part of a dream,

but that's not right now, it's not what you need. And it was a

shock to my system. Yeah. Well, I didn't understand it at the

time. I didn't understand it. But what I'll say is, hey,

achievement is great. You know, we all have a baseline of fear,

right? Conscious subconscious, in work or life. And it may be

the territories that are new for us that were are unexplored,

some unknown, right, we're at and this happens on a daily

basis. It's like, I don't know what's gonna happen with this.

Sometimes it's financial. You know, Maslow's kind of

hierarchy. And it's like, well, I don't know how I'm going to

make that work. Yeah, we break Gotta that by being brave, and

in the achievement world that can turn into hacks and hustles.

And just optimization of what, how good can we get. But what I

learned and what the focus of this book is, is that there's a

higher order approach, which is being brave together. And that

when we unlock that shared dream, or shared future, just

magic happens.

Yeah. So obviously, you had some self

belief and self confidence and your value and your worth to

existentially say that that wasn't the right time. But where

do you feel like you've developed your self worth and

value to teach this? Like, where did that come from?

That's a great question. It's really a great

question. I think it's an eighth. I mean, I think we had

great parents, I love a lot of grandparents, people have been

encouraging my life. And my dad was an engineer. And it's his

credit. The other thing that he would do, it was very co

creative. I didn't know at the time, but you know, I'd have an

idea for something. And these are crazy ideas. Like, I build a

Spider Man suit I want I want to create a, you know, a

hovercraft. And you know, it's easy for a dad to blow that off,

you're like, Okay, or just, Oh, that's nice, you know, but you

actually sit with me, and start to design, whatever it was. And

actually, we'd start to build those things. So it became real,

and it became experience where it's like, wow, you can actually

come up with a thought start to shape it together and bring it

to life.

So there's, there's some good parenting

wisdom in that too, for all the parents listening, do do stuff

with your kids, because it makes a tremendous impact.

I think so, I think for leaders too, and

managers is we have this dilemma, where we look at it as

such a box of employer employee. And then that's so easy when we

think in those terms, right. Like Covey would say, you got to

change people's behavior, change their perception of their role,

right. But so often, this employer employee relationship,

in our minds dictates that, well, we got to behave, then

it's very kind of disciplinary or performance oriented, and

results based, which just honing in on orientation only or

achievement only, it doesn't really motivate or inspire. But

it begs the question of what if, right, the what if is, what if

leaders? What if managers saw themselves as CO creators? What

if they saw their employees as CO creators? And so when they

have those ideas, and one of the best leaders that I ever had, he

would say, what if you're in my shoes for a day? Like, what

would you do? He really honestly wanted to know, you know, and

usually, it's something I was trying to, I was wrestling with,

I'd say, Well, this, what I'm trying to figure out, I solve it

this way. And then he starts to take that idea in the air and

just start to shape it with me. And then he would go that

direction and say, let's do that. And that well, really,

that's the simplicity. And the power of co creation.

Reminds me of the principle of buy in, right? Like

you take that approach to organizational leadership. And a

powerful vision is a shared vision. And so you're equipping

people to have their fingerprints on whatever it is

that's being done. And so the buy in is going to be infinitely

higher. Definitely, one of your co creation principles is

turning pain into power.

I think that one more than any other was most

applicable. You know, the world teaches a lot that, you know, no

pain, no gain. And I think that fits into kind of the brave,

alone category. And I say, there's nothing wrong with it.

Well, that could lead to burnout. And I think we've seen

that right in the pandemic, and some of the fallout from that

and where people have readjusted their lives. But yeah, more

specifically for me, if I were to pick a company that really

had the pain, I mean, I showed up at Dell, and I was fresh off

my you know, my get my MBA out of that mentoring network. And

this was before Disney or Apple I, as far as business

professional context. I wanted to go to those companies. But

you know, they didn't give me the time of day or my dream

list. So I I kind of shelf that I thought you know, what's

available. You know, and Dell is a big company, they'd had some

success. Of course, I didn't know, I got an organization

that's about 2008, give or take, and the three or four VPS SVPs

that hired me they were gone in three or four months, there was

constant rounds of layoffs happening every three to four to

six months, massive, and the stock price tanked down to like

a quarter of what it was been. Dell had had grown in numbers as

over the prior year, years before that, as far as business

and growth with the PC, direct model. But what what has started

to happen was that it got deteriorated as other companies

like Apple took that approach. You know, I show up there and

I'm asking all these existential questions, I realized, like,

wow, this company's got some problems. But what I also

realized was, to Dells credit, what they're good at and what

Michael is particularly good at, is being extremely resilient,

and extremely open to even criticism, right. And so I

formed a team. And we started to look at these questions and

wrestle with what does this mean as it relates to a hopeful

future, and if there is a hopeful future for Dell How do

you start to build that? And what are the elements required

for us to get there? And so when we looked at holistically at

what direct model, as a business model had met, it turned into a

leadership model at Dell. So we had to empower innovation, they

had to approach going back to the lead with the question. And

so we realized that there has to be a shift here and the pain so

that was the pain, right? Talk about pain, it's like, oh, my

gosh, like, this is existential, the sky is falling, we may not

have a Dell right and a few years. And so this team, we

started to shape what that future could be, you know, they

wanted they had a target, it wanted to be $200 billion

company. So this isn't going to happen. If we have this the

state of flow that we have, we have to shift how the culture

operates. And to ground that in an anchoring question. We

positioned this as what we call the Connect model, which was

empowering innovation. Listen first. And, you know, keep those

things at work, right? Keep execution. That's good, right?

But do it in a contextual way that's with others. And think of

it as a platform, right? How do you connect dots with each other

as a leader, right in your teams, and then also with

partnerships, I said, this word of Michael. And long story

short, I show up in my manager's office, and she's like, what was

this email to Michael? And I said, Well, he was in all hands.

He said, He wants ideas, right? We're struggling, we're, you

know, we have some challenges as a company. And he asked for

ideas. And she goes, Well, you know, they say that sometimes.

But yeah, they don't really, I took them out in his word. You

know, the next day, Michael at 5am, sends a response. And he

says, huge respect for this initiative. What are the next

steps? We started a think tank called game changers, where they

would submit ideas kind of Shark Tank type experience. And

billion dollar ideas came out of this people that had just been

in the company, not nobody asked, right? Nobody ever asked

like, Hey, do you think you could build something else? So

mobile app emerged out of this billion dollar idea, other

things, and the what happened was the culture started to

shift, they were able to turn that pain into the power and it

took a collective approach to do it. It was shared.

True North is one of your other principles. I feel

that what you meant by that, I think is the alignment once

you've uncovered and hopefully discovered the principles,

right, you know, how do you help put the guardrails on on

meetings and conversations? How do you put the kind of the

bumper lanes in place so that people stay ahead of the general

right direction?

Yeah, I think as is just a practical question,

you share principles. First Principles are key, right? We

talk about landing a rocket right from the moon, back to

Earth. And, you know, it's not just a matter of like, hey,

let's just, you know, throw some materials, aluminum or this or

that. Right. And it's, you know, we have to figure what are the,

what are the first principles, what gravity is always key

elements. And I think building intention into things like

meetings into one on one conversations, and it doesn't

have to be all mapped out, right, where we have it all

buttoned up, and, you know, make it a show, it's, you know, the

first principles could be shared wisdom, right, which is leading

with the question deep empathy, right, which has to do with

another principle, ours make others the mission. But these

kinds of things that help set the course. And I think more

specifically for meetings is allowing space for brave

conversations to happen. Or you could call it brave space where

people feel inclined to share and that they're not punished

overtly, you know, or, in a subtle way, right? That they

feel genuinely like, why I can shoot, you know, because that's

where the, that's where the goodness is where it's a bit

messy. Scott Belsky, he's the head of Adobe chief product

officer, you know, he talks about being on the edge of

reason, as a collective group, right. And, you know, and I

think what he's expressing is, so we have to kind of be in a,

in a bit of a fuzzy call it an art zone, that we haven't been

as much in if we speak traditionally, about how

business or leadership has operated the past or culture,

right, a lot of has been very oriented toward a scientific,

you know, have the answers approach, efficiency,

effectiveness. But this is where that wave of co creation, it's

not only possible it actually if you look at a company like Nike,

right, we've spent a little time we spent time with with them.

And you could actually chart this based on the data as to the

difference between their investment in culture, and it's

in the investment and the things that we're talking about, which

is, okay, so practically speaking about meetings, give

people five to 10 minutes to check in. Right. And it could be

the one on one meeting or in that group meeting. And it's a

small thing, right? Maybe it's a 10 or 15 to 20% investment of

time, but what we see is, if you look at the comparative

performance between Nike, and and we've charted this based on

both internal culture and external perception of culture,

so we partnered with a company called Varuvai. And they

actually He shared this with customers and asked him the

question is how much belonging do you feel with your shoes

right or with your, your, the products you use, and then they

can gauge essentially our external culture, right impact

of and so with Nike, the difference between them and

ASICs and Skechers and other brands is not just like 3x or

4x. It's 10x difference as far as performance, but based on

just like a 15 to 20% consistent investment in culture. And then

also with the first principles we talked about before, they're

very clear. There's actually a guy named Rob, I forget his last

name. But when they were early making CEO Phil Knight, they're

doing their thing business wise. And Rob, just one day starts to

intuit these principles about Nikes future you may you

probably seen these online, but he starts posting on people's

doors. And this historian of Nike asked you whenever asked,

he was like, was this real? Like, dude, like it? Well? Was

it just robbing Rob? Or was it like, something that was

meaningful? And people started confirming? They said, Yeah, he

actually intuited what the first principle and you could say the

first principles of their future culture. That's it's a little

interstellar of us right to go there. But that idea that like,

the your future, self, but the future self of the culture, but

those are powerful for grounding people. And it's obvious, I

mean, Nike success explains a lot, right? We did that kind of

work at Apple as well. And it was not a fixer upper, there was

not as much pain, as with the Dell experience. But there's It

was simple, it was like, Hey, we have pain points, when we go New

Territories, AirPods, Apple, watch the VR headset with Apple,

literally, the secret lab was right next door to my office.

And so I see people go in and come out really excited. And

these are things that that occasionally get friction, right

or struggles. But the challenge for Apple was how do we go from

thinking different, and that could be any extreme, that could

be an individual approach to really working different

together, and connecting dots horizontally as well as

vertically? And to their credit, they, you know, took it to the

next level.

Absolutely. A lot of things that are occurring to

me while you're talking about the side camera, what book I

read, but it was, you know, more philosophical in nature and

discussed, you know, that one of the unique traits of human

beings that separated us from animals in the beginning was our

ability to create things that didn't already exist in nature,

like the earliest forms of art that we find are things that,

you know, depicted things that didn't really exist yet. And

that that's, you know, one of our our abilities is to create

things that don't already exist. And so having almost like a

disincentive, sometimes incentives get us really

channeled towards one way of thinking and limit our

creativity to solve problems. And so being careful of the

incentives you put in an organization that might stifle

the creativity for the future, right.

That too, you know, and it could be, are there

ways to tie this to a team success, right to the impact

that the team is having? And we've seen that I've seen this

work really well, when they can, you know, IT companies could

solve for a reward system that it does both? Right? It's an

answer. If you look at Apple, it's teamwork, innovation, and

results. Those things are all important. The tension that lies

between them is it's a good ecosystem.

You know, I always love asking guests, you've had a

life of experience and you've isolated in some cases, some of

these principles that you personally and and put into

motion over your career. You know, some of them you've

learned along the way what what advice would you give to the 21

year old Chris Deaver, knowing everything that you've known

now?

Well, I'll caveat that with, I share some advice

with my son occasionally. And I went to I went on a coaching

spree with him one time, it's like 45 minutes of like, just

heavy coaching related to stuff, you know, and it was emotional.

There were some things going on with his life. But he's a great

kid. So we end off and I, we hug each other. I tell him, I love

him. I go to my room. He comes back later, he knocks on the

door. And he's like, Hey, can you coach my friends? And I

said, I don't know. I said, why? And he goes, Well, they were

listening to the whole thing. Like, what? He's like, Yeah,

yeah, there it is air pods in. And they were listening,

apparently. Really, because there was a lot of like, Oh,

he's a personnel but it was, you know, it was some serious stuff.

And I said, Oh, it did keep it posted next time. I'm on you

know, on a live mic?

You're being live-streamed to TikTok.

Exactly. But yeah, finding I mean, I would say

like, largely, it'd be like, keep going, right? Sometimes the

struggles that we see feel so overwhelming. I mean, there's so

much going on, right where they could feel like, where's my

place in the world? I keep thinking gotta go back in my

mind to like Walt Disney when he was younger. He would go to the

train station in Kansas City and or Missouri, and the one to La

he'd stand there and he thought all my dreams, somebody else's

dealing, like it's already been done. And that was his that was

his like, call it a pre regret or a feeling of just, you know,

kind of that pain, right? And now he turned that pain into

power. But I think that's I think part of it is is like

don't get discouraged. We have a mental health crisis. But to

simplify it down and boil it down, I'd say, find a way to,

yes, be successful, but also to create shared dreams, right?

It's not just a dream board. It's a shared dream board. How

do you be brave, you know, with those you love. And like Charlie

Munger talks about this, Warren Buffett, and they're a classic

example. Like they've been brave together for a long time. And

it's just, it's unbelievable, right? The results they get from

that, just imagine what you can do. Right with in building with

others. I think that's something to you know, we haven't explored

it enough on the educational front, we have not explored

enough on the business front personal level that will unlock

so many things in your world. It will unlock your dreams and

accelerate and amplify things like you wouldn't believe. It's

just amazing.

Yeah, I really appreciate the conversation for

people to dive deeper into this they can read your book brave

together, lead by design, spark creativity and shape the future

with the power of co creation. Love it. Any other direction you

want to point our listeners to for resources.

Yeah, thanks. I just add a website BraveCore.co

We've got a lot of resources on there and, you know, content

that can help power what you're doing.

Yeah, thank you for this great conversation. A

lot of a lot of wisdom.

Thank you, Adam. I've enjoyed it been fun.