but if you look at the key thought leaders out there and I'm thinking of Adam Grant or Malcolm Gladwell or brene brown or others they're not really representing an organization it boils down to you your your credibility whether or not it feels like you're pushing an agenda and whether or not you can open up people to new ways of thinking in a way that's beneficial to them [Music] welcome back Connected conversations today's conversation is with somebody who I consider a celebrity in the corporate real estate industry I've been consuming his content for the last five years I am beyond grateful that he took the time to talk to us today he's the host of The Looking forward podcast I'm speaking about none other than Ryan Anderson VP Global Research and insights at Miller Knoll Ryan thank you so much for having us and I mean everything I just said about you my gosh what an introduction thank you man that that is flattering I wish I could start every meeting with like a hype uh Moment Like That congrats on the promotion by the way well deserved but uh I am sincere when I say that those kind words from you mean a lot I appreciate it and I mean it you know your content for years has been what I Look to number one for my talk tracks when I'm speaking to prospects customers and peers as well as the younger generation whenever I get on a phone call and they ask me whether it's about LinkedIn or how they learn about the industry I point them every time to your LinkedIn page awesome thank you I appreciate that that's good because I spend a lot of time on that platform and that's maybe too much that's what we're here to talk about today so before we get into all that and I know a lot of folks who are going to watch this video already know who you are can you give us what I call your statement of qualification take us as far back as you want to talk to us about Ryan's journey and how he got to where you are today yeah thank you for asking me that um I will go back a little bit then because to me the most defining kind of uh development experience I had to prepare me for what I do was high school debate I was a debate geek I spent my summers in in libraries researching topics and what's interesting about high school debate is that you have to switch hour by hour what you're arguing the pro and the con and it gives you this unique ability to step outside of your own biases and say I have to argue for something and then it gives you a sense of what you really believe uh so that was like my early days of learning how to research and then learning how to share ideas and also how to pursue a degree of objectivity now where it isn't great is that your your goal is to win my goal these days is not to win my goal our goal is to be able to provide useful helpful relevant Insight but I you know I went from there and um went through University and got involved in the office furniture industry I live in Grand Rapids Michigan and there's a lot of a lot of organizations here focused on it a lot of people don't realize what a tremendous body of research the office furniture companies in general have produced in the last 50 years and I got hooked I was fascinated on just fascinated with how work was changing um but it really became accelerated for me probably around 2004 2005 when I started seeing the effects of Mobility uh and how the work began spreading out and taking on New Dimensions and how drastically it was impacting the spaces we were in and so I made the move from research and development with a heavy focus on product development and marketing into research and so I came to Herman Miller 2012 to lead tech research specifically later went to a prop Tech startup that we sold to wework I was there for a while came back to Irma Miller just before the creation of Miller Knoll in order to be able to yeah lead This Global Research group and that guess what we do we do research we do good primary research it's objective and we have an Insight sharing function and um I think one of the things that has been such a blessing is that I have leadership that is cool with us simply sharing the insights as we get them like there's no one saying um I think we need to take this story and build it into this narrative so we can go sell this thing um instead it's just more of an authentic sharing of insight so I'll get specific for a minute I just had a conversation this morning with a group of people um about this belief that collaboration can only effectively happen in the office I I don't think the research supports it I think people can collaborate very effectively distributed now that doesn't mean that workspaces don't have an incredible role to play in improving that experience in creating better cultures and communities of collaborators but it's nice to have the permission from an organization like this one to say things that may or may not usually fit into a sales narrative simply because we know it's the best evidence out there so I love my job and I got a great group of people doing research and a whole another subgroup of people sharing research and it's uh the most interesting job I've ever had so where does let me start with this before I get into the main meat of the podcast um you know you talked about the debate team and I find that fascinating because right now with the way things have gone with social media sometimes you live in an echo chamber and a lot of people seek out those Echo Chambers meaning I'm going to follow respond to and communicate with only people who share the same thoughts as I do um and so where does that desire from what I'm hearing from you where does that desire to have a dialogue and here are other points of views and not live inside where does that come from well part of it is the debate including the internal debate in my head or the internal debate amongst colleagues on our team is half the excitement um we I think we enjoy it we enjoy pushing on ideas I like beating up ideas even the the ideas that I have uh believed in in the past and I also think that for me being able to test over time the evolution of an idea is a way of mitigating risk I I find cognitive biases really fascinating it's a field that if I wasn't doing this I'd probably go spend some more time researching cognitive biases but organizations make enormous mistakes people screw up their lives and their relationships based on their biases and holding on to beliefs that are often not well supported so I'll give you an example uh of how my thinking about this evolved even further and it was in 2012 we have used a process called scenario planning at times in the past to test the future it's a fascinating process by the way most people have not gotten a chance to be involved in something like this scenario planning often means like testing out various Financial scenarios or risk snares in this case I'm talking about looking at a variety of factors happening in the world and Building stories not predictions but just provocations that articulate how the future might unfold and then trying to figure out what feels right or wrong so if I said to the average person hey I'd really like you to Envision the future in 2042 yeah it's too broad but you know what they're probably going to think of some sort of movie so if I said you're going to think of the Jetsons like let's take the Jetsons let's take Blade Runner let's take Gattaca now which of these is more likely a depiction of the future then somebody can go hmm I think this is more likely than another and when we do these scenarios we involve a lot of experts and there was a guy named Stephen Weber who at the time was at USC and this was in 2012 and we were we were painting these pictures and he said you've missed something critical which is people are finding themselves curating their information streams now that they're digital and by the way in addition to only getting news sources or information sources that feel consistent with what they already believe people are much more likely to click on those things that scare them or upset them and so we created one of these scenarios called New Normal which was basically about uh people living in uh that was way before that term was used a lot by the way in these Bubbles and we used these scenarios actually to help craft our own corporate strategy we we worked through them with customers but after talking to Stephen about that I became hypersensitive to the idea that the algorithms of Our Lives will continue to provide me content that affirms what I already believe and so if we're not intentional about saying I know that I may vote this way or I know that I may consider myself this or I know that I work for a company that says this if we can't step outside of it and be like I'm just for the heck of it gonna put on the opposite hat then um we're at risk like that that's a that's a that's a risky property and we just live through it we spent or suffer the consequences I'll give you one other example in 2013 um a guy named Paul Miller who leads digital workplace group out of London challenged me to a public debate on whether or not offices in the workplace are relevant in an era of digital um collaboration his group that literally is called digital workplace it was so fun so we went and did this we got it wasn't a huge crowd but it was fun but I remember afterwards I spent some focused time trying to argue his position just to myself like when I walked the dog it it forced me to really reconsider some things and we began looking at remote first companies in new ways around 2014 and 15 as a result which played an enormous role in helping us to be prepared for what we faced last couple years by the way we have a lot of Miller Knoll customers in particular Herman Miller brand customers that are remote first companies yeah I'm thankful that Paul challenged me we still we're still in a dialogue by the way so it's just a good thing we should all really make sure we don't hold on to those beliefs a little too hard and I'm not virtue signaling one of the reasons why I'm bad at arguments like I don't like arguments in my personal life in my professional life it happens you know there's disagreements some you catch somebody on a bad day or whatever but a lot of times when I'm having an argument in my head I'm like oh I see why they see it that way yeah so I give up on it like I I see my side I see their side and there's always a gray area that lives in the middle not virtue signaling for for that reason I'm not a good arguer and I'm just like yeah I get your side hopefully you see my side and let's just I'll take the high road I'll try to take the high road in most cases not so all that well let me just say that's where we should all land and debate doesn't have to be argumentative you can literally just begin to like push on theories from either side but if only everybody landed where you did which is chances are if I'm empathetic to what they think and they're empathetic to drive think we're going to find some Middle Ground here I think that's the word empathy right and it's like if you approach things from an empathetic standpoint you won't end up in these heated you know debates that end up very contentious and end up me versus you which is something I wish as a society as a whole we could get away from but that's a different podcast for a different time okay in a different day so you just set us up perfectly so what I like to do with my podcast it's season two of this podcast we're focusing on going back to the future we've been mired in the present and all these things we've been through over the last couple years so when I thought of Ryan to come on the podcast you're a Swiss army knife right there's probably six topics you could talk on six directions we could take it on because you have such broad experience and you you have so many great takes on so many different different areas but again I have to come back to how I know you in my head again I think of you as somebody whose content I reconsume I re-share and I recommend so when we look at it that way when we look at you in that light I say to myself Ryan what is the future of thought leadership look like and how to best use social media to convey your thoughts and in your case potentially your research because one of the things you mentioned to me sometimes you have so much research you and your team have to figure out how to get it out there it's maybe people so what does the future look like for somebody who's been on this journey for so long what is the future of thought leadership look like and how can we best apply um our thoughts and our our takes on things on social media and other platforms yeah what a great question um there's a few things that come to mind first of all we mentioned LinkedIn LinkedIn is the the platform For Thought leadership in most respects I guess we could look to Twitter maybe Tick-Tock but um I don't know that most social platforms really lend themselves to sharing of ideas and having a healthy exchange of ideas I'm so thankful that LinkedIn exists I agree The Good the good news for most people is that there's been a great demand recordization of this in fact generally people don't trust institutional perspectives at all there was a day in our lives when we waited for Siskel and Ebert to give a movie a thumbs up or a thumbs down and we would go to the movie based on it and who wants to hear what a movie critic or a restaurant critic has to say anymore we want to know what our peers are saying and specifically we want to try to hone in on and this is our way of mitigating risk in a society where we're massively overloaded with information by going to voices We Trust so it begins with authenticity and integrity you know I have this group of of insight sharers led by any mark ketchlov uh I mean Mark's perfect for the job because he's gonna be honest he's not gonna twist anything um and so I know that regardless of all the other qualifications for being a thought leader if he's someone that people and the team he leads are people that can be trusted in terms of their interpersonal interactions and their integrity then we've got the makings of something really good because we've got platforms that are democratized we've got people that want personal opinion and we've got people who are open to doing it the key is you have to have like this balance you can't spend a lot of time sharing thoughts without spending twice as much time thinking about this stuff and so you know whether it's doing secondary research whether it's being in dialogue whether somebody has the The Good Fortune of having a team like I do for every post I'm not exaggerating when there may be hours and hours of thought and for me like the the best posts or the best articles are often something where like we've been talking about a topic for a while and one of us just says you know what let's just Express this but if you look at the key thought leaders out there and I'm thinking of Adam Grant or Malcolm Gladwell or brene brown or others they're not really representing an organization um I do and I'm proud to represent Miller Knoll but it's just further indication that it boils down to you your your credibility whether or not it feels like you're pushing an agenda and whether or not you can open up people to new ways of thinking in a way that's beneficial to them Ryan can I be honest with you I don't think of you as Ryan from Miller Knoll think of you as Ryan from LinkedIn meaning the platform is a content creator like that's that's my honest opinion I think of Ryan Anderson your title could change your role could change I'm still going to come back to your content I appreciate that well for me trying to provide a useful perspective on the future of work and workplace has transcended roles but also um I kind of knew this would be my dream job when when I realized that I had that kind of latitude and I also have the incredible uh benefit of being able to go pursue new and interesting ideas that other people might be like huh I don't know really and sometimes they pan out and sometimes they don't so yeah um I'm I'm in a really good spot in that sense and it seems like from you know the conversations we had um your firm has allowed you to do that and it's given you the ability to do these things without handcuffing you per se and when I think firms and organizations and we do that here too that's the whole point of connected conversations let's have conversations let's let's get to the thought leaders let's get their takes and let's get it out there to a broader audience but when firms and organizations do that I don't I don't know if they realize this and hopefully they do leadership realizes that they're building credibility by allowing Ryan to have his platform and speak about what he feels is important to the industry because then you're building a thought leadership platform that then just reflects positively on the Miller Knoll brand yeah thought leadership always involves a Divergent phase and a convergent phase and you have to be good at both and organizations before you go sure break it down diversion phase and conversion phase yeah Divergent heads up broad thinking uh in an expansive way about ideas that are interconnected sometimes very Loosely convergent is like hone in on a key thing got it and um I I knowing that you're a hockey fan I'm a hockey fan too like I I am not exaggerating when there will be days when I'll be hearing about something that a company is doing and it'll trigger in my mind like oh this reminds me of how you know the coach of the Wings back in the day used to do this and that'll remind me of some sort of random thing I learned from uh you know an astronomy article I read like connecting kind of unconnected ideas yeah is a key path towards Innovation there's this I'm really getting diversion on you here there's this 18th century um philosopher named schopenhauer who once said and I'm going to paraphrase because the original language was complicated that the task isn't so much to see what nobody's seen the task is to think what nobody's thought about that which everyone sees and you do it by making these connections companies don't let their people sometimes go a little bit wildly Divergent like you got to tell somebody hey if you're if you're going to be a thought leader around this topic it's okay to get a little weird on this like just just let yourself go a little bit and not rain yourself in too much like I'm sitting in an air on chair uh the the Herm Miller research team back in the day started doing a bunch of research on a project called Sarah into how to prevent bed sores for the elderly um and it was uh yeah it was like an aging in place Healthcare kind of thing they landed on this material that they called pellicle that they continue to work with and eventually created what at the time was viewed as a very unusually exoskeletal uh design that in its first years in the market was ridiculed and then the chair took off and I don't know if there's ever been a chair that's sold more than Aaron globally but that team would not have would not have landed on this design if they were told to go make the next good task chair it just it's not where it went I'm smiling because I can support everything you said about the Aeron chair in my facility days what do you think I had to do I had to walk around and go Wrangle the air on chairs that people stole from the conference rooms and moved to their desks because everybody loved those chairs yeah and it was the bane of my existence Bob go find the chairs oh goodness you know we well I could talk about that at length but for for anybody that that might be listening that would like to have more of a voice around thought leadership you got to give yourself like and this is fun give yourself permission to really think unusually about these things to connect different ideas to ponder them to beat it but to not hang on to ideas to go back to what you said we covered this in another podcast in season one creativity you can't marry yourself to an idea if you do you're going to be disappointed let down or you're not gonna get what you want out of what you just put out there that's right you got to Pivot you know I'll just give you one other example when um when we were in the fairly early days of the pandemic so this was probably July or September we started to get uh more and more people really challenging the ideas of whether or not offices even needed to exist at all and because of some of the work we had done looking at remote first companies ironically most of them had space and it gave us some Assurance I don't know even if everybody decides they want to work remotely forever office space can still have value but we started seeking proxies like are there any other examples that kind of feel like this and one day we landed on restaurants and um and so we started asking people like well you've been cooking at home for like the last six months right you pick up some new recipes you got a sourdough starter in there somewhere you get have you gotten on the Food Network and everyone's like yeah and you don't want to go to a restaurant again oh no no I can't I can't wait for restaurants and bars to open it was like why can't you wait for your office to open well I'm not sure the office is as enjoyable as going to a restaurant okay we've just honed in on the root of the problem isn't it there's something about that office design that you just fundamentally don't like that much I I agree with you I didn't mean to step on you very good I agree with you because when you think about GrubHub and you think about ubereats outside of cooking well you could just order what you want from your favorite restaurant I love Buffalo Wild Wings anybody knows me knows I love Buffalo Wild Wings there is nothing better than when the New York Rangers were on TV playing the capitals or the Islanders to go sit in that Buffalo Wild Wings and watch it on the big screen and eat my chicken wings that that feeling that it gives me that ordering at home isn't the same it's not the same Vibe so if companies can lock in on that and then say all right what gives a good vibe because to me I work home from home I've worked home long before the pandemic started I've worked remotely for years and years and years I just feel like I'm accomplishing something I'm not I'm not saying I'm not an advocate either I'll listen to everybody's take on this I think there's a place for everything but I I feel in the office if I sit down across from a couple people Fred spitballing ideas or maybe we go shoot a piece of content real quick as we're walking we did this once it was one of our um one of our best pieces of content I shot a photo in front of an old office building and Fred took the picture it was it was my one of my best posts and I talked about what I felt at the time because it was 911 and it was a toxic work environment and that was me and Fred just going to dinner after day at the office and really I guess what I'm saying there is what you just said if if firms and companies can figure out way to bottle that feeling what's the equivalent of Bob's feelings when he goes to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch the Rangers yep yep those are great parallels and that's a great way of testing out various ideas is to come up with those similar experiences similar proxies try to figure it out by the way um I was just reading a piece on um for lack better term return to places of worship data like yeah two research was putting out information on not just various types of spaces but it was like how are concerts doing in terms of people showing up how are restaurants and bars doing how are places of worshiped places of worship is interesting because many of them went to video um so there's some parallels there's a lot to learn just by like giving yourself a little bit of space the organization has to give you space but then ultimately converging on I think this is something that we should develop more and then giving you know giving it some time I love it Ryan like I look for nuggets in every podcast and that's one of the biggest one we're going to take from this regardless of where we go from this parallel ideas like what's the restaurant how can we apply a fun restaurant experience to the workplace or how can we apply that collaborative uh Community feeling of a place of worship to the workplace I I think that's absolutely genius now you said it so I'm gonna get right into it um Malcolm Gladwell he just he just created quite the storm it's showing up in my Google feed it's all over LinkedIn um can you take us through that a little bit and give us your kind of take on what Malcolm just said and and kind of the the the Aftershock of that well yes I can but I'm going to broaden it up a little bit because it's just Gladwell it's Adam Grant and it's Scott Galloway it's a lot of the people that I enjoy thinking uh listening to and thinking about what they have to say I I think each of them excuse me each of them have expressed in one form or fashion other that There's real limits to working from home and that being together has incredible benefits but they're speaking this into um a group of workers that are extremely concerned about being forced back into the office right so like as you might know we're a founding member of a group called future Forum we survey 10 000 people every quarter to understand how employees are perceiving flexible work and people want flexibility 80 want more flexibility with where they can work 94 percent want more flexibility with when schedule flexibility is really important um but what's interesting is a vast majority want to spend time in the office but if you look at the group The 34 that have been forced into the office full-time they're not doing well like their uh experienced scores are in the toilet they have higher level work anxiety they have worse work-life balance and so the reality is I I don't know that anything that was said was that egregious I think what Gladwell and others said is very different than what Elon Musk said you're not working if you're not in the office get there 40 hours a week like that's so wildly unrealistic and it has so little to do with pre-pandemic work patterns that I I actually didn't interpret it badly um I put an article on LinkedIn and I confess to you this is one of the few things I ever went back and deleted the next day um that I still feel very good about it was an article from um uh a career coach with a psychology background okay I said young people it's smart to go spend more time in the office it talked about mentoring it talked about establishing a network where you don't have much but she said in it you'll be a lot more difficult to fire if you're a face across the coffee bar than somebody on zoom and my network of people got all over me about this there was only one positive comment out of many that were like Ryan why did you post this it's you know it's Draconian I'm like there's nothing in this article saying that people need to spend all their time in the office it's just really hinting at the nature of our interpersonal networks and the reality that in-person time does create types of bonds that are difficult to achieve virtually but if my little experience with that kind of negative backlash is any probably the tiniest representation of what Malcolm gladwell's facing right now I kind kind of get it so I'll also say that if you look at Gladwell and the type of experiences that I'm probably sure he would have with other people given his body of work in the office I can only imagine they're incredibly enriching and creative and in that sense it might be a lot of touch because we have to just you know realize that many people's experience in the office has not always been creative engaging interpersonal and so it might be that he's limited by his experiences which are far better than what other people have had but I personally wasn't offended by anything he had to say but I I should also note that I quickly skimmed the article I read the headlines I didn't scrutinize every sentence but that's not something I would be inclined to do anyway so my take my take is this and I agree with the article that you posted and deleted I say this all the time and I even have to because Fred the producer of the podcast I have to run things by him sometimes because I work with there's multiple Generations in the workforce right I think there's five of them and I I was asking him and I said well should we call a meeting on this in the office when I'm in town and he's like well you're dealing with some folks who have never met you have never been to the office because they started during the pandemic it might be a little intimidated to meet you in person at first because they don't they haven't built that kind of confidence in that interpersonal uh those interpersonal skills and I couldn't agree with them more and I was like okay we'll do it virtually or we'll do a phone call or um you know we we won't press that button but I couldn't agree with you more that it's very important to be around other people in in the real world to get a sense for that interpersonal um kind of communication style reading people's facial expressions reading body makes you good sales rep I I can read somebody's body language I've been a sales rep for a long time I can read people's body language and it's like oh I I could see where they're angling just by the way they're kind of they shifted their weight or their standing or the way they kind of diverted from a topic and I gained that by being I always used to say to people get me in a conference room just get me in a conference room I'll do the presentation and it'll go so much better yeah well there is another uh Factor here and because I know you've you've engaged with some of what we've shared on LinkedIn I won't go too far into this because you've probably heard it but there is a very real um Dynamic that organizations and individuals should understand about working exclusively digitally or exclusively remotely I guess in this case um which is we tend to gather in small tight groups yeah and there's many people who fall off our radar what sociologists refer to as weak ties and as a result what can happen in a bigger organization is that individual teams can function very well amongst themselves but it's very difficult to scale any sort of innovation or any sort of implementation through teams and Beyond teams because the links between the teams start to erode and that's particularly difficult when you have people leave and have new people come and so I will say that there's solid justification in the world of social sciences for how the health of broader communities and broader networks weak ties grow when we get together I think the context of how we get together is something that needs to be evaluated a little bit I don't know that everybody's sitting at a desk and staring at a video screen in the offices is the the key but quality time like really enriching quality time is great I went out to design yard we've got this beautiful facility it's not close to me by the way it was an hour and five minute commute I spent a couple hours yesterday socializing I met some people that I'd never met before but I'd been on video with I met a bunch of new people um I had a couple people come up to me and you know ask me questions about some of our research that I didn't I didn't even know who they were and then I had the chance in that facility to peel off and sit outside and do some heads down work for like two hours maybe two and a half hours it was gorgeous and I saw that post like that's a pretty damn good return to office day for me if I if I was just being forced to go sit at a desk I'd be ticked off too so it depends on the sort of experiences that people are encouraging us to go have I agree 100 so you know we we talked about a couple subjects there but I want I want to bring up something that as we talk about now how how best to use a platform social or otherwise to get your thought leadership out there you mentioned something very interesting to us to where somebody put out a tweet or I believe it was a tweet and they said what's the best gaming chair out there and it came back as a Herman Miller chair if I'm not mistaken and it was LeBron James right it was LeBron James King James man yeah what did you learn from that whole experience and then how did you apply it to the way you view social media engagement so I was a bit of an of a bystander in this to to begin with but I um an earlier phase in my career worked in social media my wife has worked professionally in social media and she was a really successful blogger back in the day so we have some some contacts um and what happened was the Herman Miller team launched its first gaming chair in it was like July of 2020 it couldn't have been better timing if I'm being honest and it was that early oh it was okay it was like right when the pandemic started and um it was done in combination with Logitech G and it was carving out a new market because if you if you're familiar with gaming chairs most of them have been like 250 dollar race car looking bucket seats that have no ergonomics but sometimes have speakers in them and um and this was like this was a really premium chair and since then the team has Diversified the offer even further but in February of 2021 I got a DM on Twitter from a friend of mine who leads social media for one of the big universities here in Michigan saying hey Herman Miller is trending on Twitter under NBA and I looked at my phone a couple times I'm like under NBA so I flipped over and sure enough LeBron had not that I'm on a first name basis with him but King James had uh tweeted if you were a be Brawn okay good and and I I could you know this I'm a big college basketball fan but I don't follow the NBA that much but I do know who LeBron James is and um he had tweeted I need a good gaming chair um who's got recommendations and the volume of responses so I just pinged some of our folks to say are you following this and they were all over it and I was looking for some of the um the analysis on the the sentiment first of all of how her Miller was referred to but also the percentage of responses that were her Miller I was tracking it at the time I never saw the final but it was it felt like right around 90 percent were responding her Miller with very positive sentiment and I just reached out to John Campbell who leads the team and others saying look what you've done like if you seriously created this degree of brand equity in a premium gaming chair Market that essentially didn't exist in seven months it blew me away and it's been so fun to work with them um our team the research team does user-centered research ethographic research but we also do market research and so we get a chance to partner up with the gaming team a little bit in terms of just the evolution of that category and how it's perceived and it is it is really cool yeah and by the way I should just tell you I'm one of the ignorant fools that knew nothing about esport athletes even to the point of being like tell me what that means again or the fact that people are getting Collegiate scholarships to go be part of Esports teams I really like the team had to tell all of us you need to put your biases away you need to think of these these people as athletes you need to understand that their degree of of um motor skill dependency and movement is similar to what you'd find like in a surgeon using detailed robotics just like people wrapping their their foot around the base of a chair to get really precise movements I mean this is the sort of um ergonomic challenge that our companies have always loved but many of us me included didn't see the market but thank goodness there was a group that did and said this is part of our new customer base I think everything you just said there to me is the perfect example of the power of these platforms and the power of at the end of the day having brand brand Equity I like the way you said that but also it goes into everything you just talked about before that building trust right Herman Miller is a trusted brand in the industry building working off parallel ideas right so we did really well with these Aeron chairs for people sitting in conference rooms right how can we apply that to the gaming world and you all did that and then and then the power of social media just created created an opportunity for Herman Miller and to Trend yeah and and I'll say that I don't think anybody in that um that Twitter stream would have cared what we had to say about it but when Tim the tatman said Herman Miller people paid attention because he's got by the way I had literally had to Google who he was when I first heard his name but he's got credibility um and since um since then it's been very interesting to see like like my kids friends text me pictures of we're watching like a gaming Championship round on TV and we're seeing the her Miller brand it's just it isn't you can't be credible doing this yourself you I have to be in a network of people that are trusted and those people can't go sell themselves out to just say whatever somebody wants to say like those sort of moments of of endorsement even done informally are so critical so you saying that I'm a thought leader is a hell of a lot more impactful than me going out there and saying it I'll put it that way right I mean you're just at that at that point you're just being you know self-centered and arrogant that feedback's got to come from outside well you know and there's so many people who are so self-promotional that refer to themselves as Visionaries or Mr future of work or Mrs uh you know new whatever it it's really risky to go do that that may be aspirational and you may even have the the body of work to defend it but when we start calling ourselves stuff like that it just invites skepticism and feels self-aggrandizing like we have to let our contributions speak for themselves yeah earn Our Brands like I don't know if you've ever come across Marty newmeyer's work but his book zag actually this would be another good thing to touch upon in terms of thought leadership uh or his book The Brand Gap totally redefine how we should think about brand it's really your reputation it's people's gut reaction to you in zag he basically says don't try to be an expert on everything don't try to solve everybody's need hone in on something that you know you're just going to do better at than most people then let your work you know let it speak for itself I always say stay in your lane once you start drifting out of your lane that's that's where you're going to get in a little bit of trouble and I I quite frankly that's why I want to do the podcast and that's why I wanted to do the season this way that I did where I want people in lanes and tell me tell me what you see the future we had somebody from commercial real estate we had somebody from marketing um we had somebody for leadership so I want their take on the future of that one and stay in that lane and really um that's that's the best way to get your point across and then eventually be viewed as a thought leader so now I'm going to do something a little different with you as we wrap this up as we come to the end of our time here um and this is this is again a respect thing um what advice if you could sit down the younger generation and give them either one bit of advice to whatever you want to do what's your advice to those coming behind us and are going to take our roles moving in the future oh boy that's a really good question and there was a time actually on LinkedIn where I was sharing some quotes and bits of advice that people had given me over the years that made the biggest difference so I'm gonna just briefly touch on a couple things as opposed to going deep into one sure one is um I had a a a mentor or a senior person early in my career that said don't do not try to find some sort of career path just establish really good career filters and what he meant by that is like being being able to filter new opportunities that come to you am I any good at this is this the sort of job I'd like what sort of things make something more likely to be successful for me or not like my filters early on were simple things I wanted to engage with the market I wanted to be involved in Innovation over time I learned I'm an absolutely terrible project manager so anything that requires a bunch of detailed work that's dependent upon me I'm not going to be successful the qualities of my boss is for me one of the most important filters um like all these things happened over time and he was right I couldn't predict the sort of things that came my way but I got better better at saying I think I'll be good at this I don't think I'll be very good at that and I took a couple jobs where I was really awful like I had one role uh director of product and portfolio strategy I remember I was terrible at it and I literally went back to my boss and said I'm not very good at this um I'm good at other things can we can we think about a change in great graciously said yes so those filters I think are really important um I think being able to see the world differently and be curious which is kind of a cliche thing to say no it's not but just like authentically have an interest in who you're serving and what you're doing is part of the key um I don't think we all get to go take jobs that are like exactly everything we want to do like um I wanted to be a marine biologist in in this home office I have aquariums around me I've always been fascinated by Aquatics I'm an absolute crap mathematician or scientist um in that sense like biology so it's not like you can just do anything but what you can do is hone in on those things that you really enjoy thinking about talking about and it'll help fuel you through the times when work is just you know not fun there's a lot of times and even in my job there's times when the work is just not always great it requires a lot of perseverance it requires a lot of patience there is no Panacea but if you just sincerely enjoy or find an interest in what you're doing boy does it help to overcome all those other things I believe very strongly in um not just mentorship but apprenticeship which has largely been lost apprenticeship is really where you're you're really enabling somebody to help you with the work you're doing um to the point where you're partnering up in a way that's more than just than just giving them some coaching um and so I have always sought out mentors that are really good at things that are very unfamiliar to me I chose the director of operation funds for manufacturing to Mentor me for a while I just wanted to learn how he thought I've chosen Finance leaders um it just gets back to like that desire to broaden your scope and learn a little bit but you're right ultimately you got to figure out your sweet spot and just dedicate yourself to doing good work and being a good employee and a good teammate the one other thing I'll just mention is um I'm a little concerned with what's happening if we really start talking about younger people with uh requirements for college degrees the amount of debt kids are taking on in order to get a college degree I have dropped degree requirements from my postings in recent years and when someone has a degree I'll say to them tell me why your degree or your field of study will uniquely qualify you for this sort of work I'm always a little surprised that many people can't answer that they feel like I got my degree I jumped through the hoop and that's realistic that's what a lot of people expect these days but as a father of somebody who's you know my oldest daughter is just into college my second one is beginning we've taken a very different approach to thinking about the role of Education going and getting a degree from a school with a really notable name is okay but if you're going to invest that much you should be asking the school how will what you teach me uniquely qualify uniquely qualify me to go get those sort of jobs if the school can't answer it you're not going to be able to answer it and we just got to really push much harder either maybe not direct everyone to college but at the very least make sure that you're going to learn something and I don't care if nobody's ever heard of this school or if it's not even like like go I would personally be open to somebody going and taking a dozen Coursera courses maybe a googler certificate doing an internship and saying this is what I learned versus I got a Bachelor's from wherever but I am I think there's something unsustainable happening with young people getting out of college with six figures worth of debt and not a really clear sense of whether or not they're prepared to go contribute well Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs I watched him present at a conference once and he's like the skilled trades um are really really in a place where they could use more people we need more people going towards the skilled trade route and it could be quite it could be quite lucrative I mean go ask a union electrician in New York um but at the end of the day there's nothing wrong with the skilled trades you could build a great career and when you finish your apprenticeship you do know something and you know where to apply to and you now have a skill that's the key what am I really learning what am I going to go be able to do versus what is some sort of brand name that's going to be living on my resume hey man I have a criminal justice degree I have a criminal justice degree do you really yeah I have a criminal justice correct that's cool so with that said Ryan I think this is a good place to wrap things up I'm going to go back through this and some of the Nuggets that I took away from this is you got to build trust if you're going to be a thought leader um you can't you can't label yourself something you have to stay in your lane and put content out there where people then in turn recognize you as that and that's how I feel I came across your uh your LinkedIn page and your content parallel ideas to me is the biggest nugget I took out of this it's it's the idea that how can we apply um you know again Bob's Buffalo Wild Wings experience to the workplace and then you're advice to the younger generation have those career filters understand you know what what's going to make you happy what's what's going to make you successful on the role so that you're making good choices and figure out ways to maybe stay out of that six-figure college debt and those are those are some of the things I took away from what we talked about here love it and I'll just re-emphasize for for anybody involved in thought leadership dude three times as much thinking as sharing and if that includes like going and commenting on other people's posts reading a bunch thinking about it there's this old Oliver Wendell Holmes quote where he said I wouldn't give a fig for the Simplicity on this side of complexity but I'd give it all for the Simplicity on the other side of complexity the best authentic way to help people is to wade into very ambiguous topics and think about them long enough and sometimes it takes years to the point where it begins to crystallize in something that can be expressed simply but that's not something that you can just do you have to really put the thought into it and that's that's another thing I took away because it was just one word of out of everything you just said there authenticity uh a lot of times in my personal life I tell people to live an authentic life that's the most that's the best way I can best advice I can give to somebody and you you said that multiple times throughout this podcast so I want to take this moment I always wrap these up with a little bit of gratitude uh Ryan I want to thank you for number one spending your time with us today and number two giving me the opportunity to learn from you for the last five years and I I really really mean that in giving me content that I could share and kind of help me on my path to building a platform and building and providing some thought leadership where I can in my Lane but I want to thank you for educating me for the last five years you're very welcome thank you for the kind words it makes it even more enriching yeah I love what I do but on the rare occasions when I get to hear something like that makes it even better I'm a very authentic guy have no filter on this sometimes I only say I mean what I say and I say what I mean so with that this is connected conversations that's Ryan Anderson we appreciate your time and we look forward to seeing you again on the interwebs take care everyone thank you [Music]