Speakers
Greg McKeown, Scott O’Neil
Greg McKeown
Scott O’Neill Welcome to the What’s Essential Podcast
Scott O’Neil
Greg, it’s wonderful to be here. I’m a huge fan of your work. Essentialism in that book is a key piece of how we train and teach and develop at Harris Blitzer sports entertainment where I work. And we talk about it in my family as well. The concept of JOMO is something that I really struggle with. But when I’m when I’m exercising essentialism, I’m happier, I’m more grounded, and I’m living a better life. So thank you for all you’re doing.
Greg McKeown
Well it’s such a pleasure to have you in so nice to hear you say all of that. You yourself in your new book Be Where Your Foot Are, share, perhaps a surprising approach, one that maybe we wouldn’t expect coming from the CEO of the Philadelphia 76’ers. You’re making this case when we’re moving at 150 miles per hour we rarely see the wall coming. But you write that it comes to all of us. And when it does, we grasp the lessons for meaning for purpose. And I wonder if you could just start us off by giving the story behind the story?
Scott O’Neil
Sure, well, the immediate story is as to how we got to here is, I met one of my best friends in the world at Harvard Business School. His name is Wilford Carden. And 20 years later, I got a call in the middle of the night, and he had taken his own life. A wonderful, bright light, bear hug of a man who had an incredible presence, and a light in his eyes, and a wonderful family with five beautiful children and a wife Nicole who is amazing. And he suffered from depression. And while I was speaking at his funeral, I’m looking at the audience and I kept having that notion of he will never be able to share a lesson he’s learned. He will never be able to impact or influence these incredible young kids. And I started to spiral at that point into what I guess is grief but struggling to get up in the morning and struggling to get to bed at night and bursting into tears in the middle of a meeting and walking out. I mean, it was it was a very tough time in my life. And, and what I started to do was write to heal. And what I kept writing was lessons I learned. And as I opened up to friends of mine, I found the same thing, I found that you know that the world is messy. And when you’re young, and you think that life and success and family and everything that you have this vision of what life looks like when you’re quote unquote successful in your faith in your work in your family. It’s just not as linear as you thought it would be.
Greg McKeown
But what do you mean about that? We’ll start with that for a second. What does it mean that life isn’t as linear as you expect it will be?
Scott O’Neil
I just had this vision when I was 22, that everything would be smooth and easy. You know, I was relatively smart, I was very hard working, I had a vision for what I wanted to do and who I wanted to be. And I thought it was going to be a nice little smooth elevator ride to the top. And instead it looked a lot more like a roller coaster. And I had some issues and challenges and like I was president at Madison Square Garden and got fired. I started a company in the.com boom days, and it evaporated to nothing. You know, I’ve been out of work out of luck and out of money a couple times I you know, I’ve had my own struggles as a dad and a husband trying to figure out who I want to be and where I want to be but the one commonality was that’s where all the learning was taking place like the analogy of get to the top of the mountain misses the fun part while the learning is and that’s the journey along the way. And I think that today you know we are in a 15 seconds of fame world and a life that you see on TikTok if you’re my teenage daughter, or on Instagram, if you’re my wife or on Facebook is your if you’re as old as I am or LinkedIn as I see my colleagues, life looks pretty good. You know we got fancy vacations kids getting into great schools a wonderful success on the field or court or ice. And that’s wonderful and I love seeing those with my friends and those I love. But if you if you peel the onion back a little bit one layer or two layers or three layers and you ask and see some vulnerability you get to learn that that life isn’t that porcelain little china doll and that it’s a little messy and I’m okay with messy and I want I want everyone to be okay with messy and then because that’s where all the lessons and learnings take place. And so that’s what this book is really about. And that’s how I found it so surprising for me in life because When you’re standing on top of that mountain, a few things are for sure one is, is pretty lonely, too, as I’m looking for the next mountain to climb, and three is, I had a lot more fun coming up than I do standing on top.
Greg McKeown
One of the things that I really relate to what you just said is the messiness of life. There’s a sense sometimes, especially with essentialism, in fact, where I have noticed that people sometimes will get into it. And they’ll say, they’ll try to be perfectionists in their essentialism. So they’ll try and do everything through an essentialist lend lens perfectly right now, which actually isn’t essentialism at all. But it’s like the old ways die hard. And I mean, this is one of the reasons that even wrote this new book effortless is because I feel like there’s a different way to go about what’s essential. And part of it is the messiness part of is, is it to embrace the imperfection of the journey. And that that’s even necessary that the messiness is part of progress. If you want to be a perfectionist, fine, but you will not be as happy and you will not make as much progress. And I feel a similar theme in what you’re trying to communicate right now and in the new book.
Scott O’Neil
Absolutely. I mean, if you want to see messy, or what we call the NCAA tournament, you come to our house around breakfast time when the girls are getting ready for school. I mean, that is survived advanced time in our house. And, and I look, I would love everybody to be getting ready for school on their own, and neatly tucked into the table. And we could say grace and have a wonderful blessing in the food and serve a some nice pancakes that I’d take flip, it does not look like that in our house. I mean, it is chaos and that’s okay. You know, and I, but I do want to make sure that we are spending the time we can because that’s not the time for meaningful conversation in our house. But we have to carve out time because time flies by, and they have school and sports and boyfriends and homework, and I have work in games and activity and action. And we have to make sure that if we have that 45 minutes at night, that we spend it the right way, and that we put our phones down and keep our heads up. And that we just spend time talking and finding meaning. I mean the world is providing so much opportunity to have meaningful conversations around social equality and politics and purpose. There are so many lessons we can learn about being present and where we are at and I’m far from perfect. And I have an incredible partner, my wife Lisa weapon married for 25 years who, who she gives it to me straight. The other day, we’re out to dinner. And you know, I’ve got a first-place team and you know, the Eastern Conference in the Sixers. And there’s a lot of pressure coming down the homestretch to see where we would shake out the first second or third and I was checking scores. And she said, she looked me dead in the eye and said, I’ll wait. At that moment, a powerful message. And she said, No, I’m serious. I’ll wait. I was like, No, no, I was just checking check, she said I know what you’re doing. If that’s more important, let me know when you’re done and we’ll keep going. What a great lesson, what a great message. I mean, one it shows me stealing still being on my journey. But the need to have someone around you that will give you real feedback. And you being smart enough and open enough and what we call palms up enough to actually listen and adjust your behavior. But we can be better and do better.
Greg McKeown
What do you mean by palms up?
Scott O’Neil
It’s just something language we use at work and at home. And if you literally take if you if we were in video or in person, I would actually show you but I have my hands, my palms up and my arms out. The opposite of that would be me with my arms crossed. And I think your arms crossed, give the message off of I’m not listening. I know what I’m doing and you don’t. And my palms up and open, give the signal and the bilanguage to say like I can listen, I want to learn I’m interested in what you have to say.
Greg McKeown
It sounds like one of the things that you’re really saying is just not missing the moment not letting the important things pass you by. And it reminds me of a quote that you have from Maya Angelou. If you must look back do so forgivingly. If you must look forward, do so prayerfully. However, the wisest thing you can do is to be present in the moment. gratefully. What are your thoughts about that? And just again, particularly, how does somebody who’s going currently at 115 mph go about being in this moment, gratefully?
Scott O’Neil
Sure, first of all, Maya Angelou is genius. And so anything she says I love listen to, and learn from. Secondly, I, you know, I have this notion that we have some work to do. And one of the things that I like to talk about is what I call WMI, or what’s most important. I have this incredible coach executive coach named Brendon Burchard. And he told me that high performers spend 65% of their time on the three things that matter most. And I don’t know if it’s 65, or 80, or 40, but it isn’t 15%. And so I went about for a few months doing an audit of my calendar and this would be really interesting for everyone to do is you write down what’s most important in your life. And you can have different aspects you can say your health, your work, your family, your faith, whatever those aspects are your life that are critically important. And write down three things that you think are most important. And then match up your calendar and do an audit at the end of the week and just drop each block in your calendar drop in one of those little segments and have an other as well. And unfortunately, what you’ll find, I think, or at least what I found was, there’s way too much in other. And so I we need to be honest with ourselves, I either need to change what’s most important, or change the way I’m spending my time and energy. Because the first step is actually understanding what’s critically important. And I find a lot of my colleagues and a lot of my friends and oftentimes myself spending time on what’s quick, what’s easy, what’s expedient, and not what’s critically important. So the first step in being wholly present, in my opinion, is to make sure that you understand what’s critically important to you so you can put your energy there.
Greg McKeown
And so then what’s the next step in the process, what did you do next?
Scott O’Neil
You know, for me, I started to better prioritize how I schedule my meetings. My hardest thing is something that you’ve talked about quite a bit and that’s saying no. And so I got much more disciplined about saying no to things that aren’t critically important.
Greg McKeown
Tell me this. Why did you write the book, what’s your what’s your why behind this?
Scott O’Neil
It’s funny, I was in LA, meeting some music executives, and was meeting with Barbra Streisand’s longtime manager, Marty Ehrlichman. And he wanted to tell me the secret to life. And I immediately pulled my phone out the video it, which he thought was really funny. He’s an older guy’s been her manager for 40 years. And he said, number one, I want to be so passionate about what I do that I put my feet on the ground and morning in a run to work. I kind of nodded my head thinking, I can get comfortable with that, like, that’s something that I can identify with. And I said, what’s number two, and he said, at home, I run home, run home with equal passion. And I said, I got that. But for me, it’s slightly different, although I love running to work, and I love running home. But for me, my why’s about developing the next great generation of leaders. And so I want to do that at work, I want to do that at home. And I want to do that with the youth I work with a church. And so that’s what gets me up and out. This book is an opportunity to hopefully move people. You said it really interesting, you said this is this is not what I expected, or this is, this wasn’t a book that was you would expect from somebody who runs sports teams for a living. And I’ve heard that a few times. I’m much more interested in how I can be and why I can be then what I do for a living. That’s my why is can I move someone? Can I help someone? Is there someone out there that can needs a message at the right time in the right way from the right person?
Greg McKeown
You say that the why is to develop the next generation of leaders, which I think I understand what that means. Tell me why does that matter so much to you?
Scott O’Neil
You know, I work in an environment that is notorious for a poor management and poor leadership. That’s the one. Number two I’m the product of my environment. My parents were leadership and development trainers. So I mean, I was correlating books for them when I was since I was seven years old, and saw my mom up in front of a room of men for the first time when I was 13, so I think someone’s in my blood. And three, because I can. You know, I’ve been really blessed. I’ve worked for some incredible some of the world’s best leaders in the world. I have been able to test and try things at some of the biggest companies and brands in the sports entertainment business. And I think people are yearning for to be better and get better. It makes me smile. It makes me feel like what I do and how I do it and how hard I work. And the hours I put in is worth it. When I can see someone lift up and the birdie flies out of the nest.
Greg McKeown
What is something that essential for you, really important for you that you’re currently under investing in?
Scott O’Neil
Boy, you know, COVID has given me a lease on life. So if you’d asked me that pre COVID I would have said, My health and well-being for sure. physical, mental, emotional, and maybe spiritual. And COVID has helped me lean into those with a regular. I have this notion that we have to do something for our mind something for our body, something for our soul every day. So I’ve fixed that and leaned into that. I’m not I’m living a life and priorities. I want to live right now. So I don’t have anything screaming at me. Like if you were to ask me a year ago, we could talk for 25 minutes on that topic.
Greg McKeown
What concretely did you do that has helped you go from feeling like that was a you know, a chink in the armor to feeling like yeah, I’m not perfect at it, but I feel good about where I’m at.
Scott O’Neil
Well, I hopped off that crazy treadmill we’re on. You know, I work 150 nights a year. I was getting picked up at 7am you know, after getting home at 11 o’clock. I was sprinting everywhere and white knuckling everywhere and COVID kept me at home and I decided that well let’s get a peloton, we can’t play pickup basketball anymore. Let’s get a Peloton bike I got a Peloton bike every morning hey, we have a pool Okay, I’ll swim after that. I started eating better. I started like reading scriptures and praying more intently. I started to get my myself in better stead and better shape. And then in terms of work, I found it I know some people found it really hard to compartmentalize because we’re all working from home. For me, I found it like that I could get a level deeper. Because I was very transactional before COVID. I would get on and get off calls. I was just running, running running sprinting sprinting sprinting now I got to see your cat or your dog or your kid I saw you in your bathrobe. I know what your living room looks like in your bedroom, in your kitchen. And, you know, I thought that that was some incredibly rich connectedness. And, you know, we started doing these exercises with my directs in the mornings for a while we were doing it for six months, we did them every day. And each of the executives had to have an exercise prepared for that that morning. And so you think about a relatively new team that’s together. And every morning, somebody saying everything as simple as, find me a picture from when you were 10 years old to here’s an article, how might impact your life to you need to listen to this TED talk and tell me 10 things you’ve learned and read it, read this article and tell me one thing, you might change in terms of how you do your business, or, hey, here’s a podcast, I want you to listen to it, share it with your team, and come back with three great insights. And we did that for six months, every day. And so I got this Man, it was so powerful, not only did we get to know each other, and see each other and see pictures, and everything from your favorite song to your favorite sports memory to kind of really in depth, deeper thoughts and topics. And we became, I don’t know, I became richer, stronger, faster, more efficient, more sensitive, more connected. And, and that really has an impact on me still to this day.
Greg McKeown
You have really thrived personally in the pandemic months, it’s been you know, that’s what you’re saying. It’s been a time of renewal of growth of going deeper of reflection. Of course, it’s not like that for everybody. But I suppose the question that that brings from me is, do you want to go back to how things were before? And assuming that you don’t, what’s your plan for transitioning as the world opens back up?
Scott O’Neil
Yeah, I’m not going back to living the way I was before the pandemic. So I am, as I’ve talked to a lot of my colleagues and friends running companies, I’ve heard a lot of the same messaging and messages in terms of better prioritizing who they are, why they do what they do, how they’re going to do what they do, and whether they’re going to do what they do. And I love those conversations. And I love the thought of that. And the way I talk about it with my team now is how are we going to create the new normal. And I think we all have that opportunity. We’re coming back online, our offices are beginning to open up in the next few months. And we have this chance to say, here are the new norms, here is how we’re going to be here is how we’re going to interact. What does life look like now and why and I love I love that I love renewal, I love change in transition. I don’t do very well as a status quo manager, I like change in action. And I think this provides an opportunity to get into some change in action. But man am I grateful for the lessons I learned and even more grateful for the opportunity to come out of the pandemic to reshape and reset some of the things we were doing and how we’re doing them. Because I don’t I don’t, I don’t think many of them are sustainable. And, and I’m this is a, this is a challenge. I’m excited about tackling.
Greg McKeown
I was just talking with Kim Scott, the author of radical candor. And as we were, as we were just chatting together, we started talking, she shared with me the idea she says, I love a two by two, which she does. She said that here’s a two by two that’s worth reflecting on right now. I thought they said such relevance. She said on one axis, it says, Love and hate. And on the other axis you have, before the pandemic, during the pandemic
Scott O’Neil
Oh, I love that.
Greg McKeown
And it to me, it captures exactly the exercise we need to go through right now. Because there’s a lot of people I’m speaking with who feel in a state of anxiety right now. Because, of course, they don’t want the pandemic to continue. But nor do they want to go back to how things were before. And yet there’s a rush as things open up, at least within the United States, as things are easing as they’re opening up. There’s this rush to, from some people and from some leaders, let’s just go back, okay, we’ve got to open the offices, everyone comes back let’s and people go well, I don’t want what I’ve had, but I don’t want to go back to what it was before. And so it’s an anxious experience to just suddenly be back. It’s like we need a transition period.
Scott O’Neil
And I think that the next pandemic, in the world is going to be one of mental health. And so as leaders and managers, we need to, to not dismiss the feelings because they’re real. We need to not dismiss anxiety because it is real. And we need to provide tools and a model to make sure that these incredible people that are out and struggling, have an opportunity to find themselves and find peace and be happy and be challenged at work and held accountable at work. But it is it is absolutely real. Like the anxiety about coming back is real and the momentum to just quote unquote, let’s just get back and open them up is I think short sighted but definitely happening.
Greg McKeown
What’s something that you have loved and hated during the pandemic?
Scott O’Neil
I love family dinners. I hadn’t really been to family dinners and 25 years of work. Yeah. And I’d read about them. They seem lovely. But in my daughter’s they’re creative and cute and we had like color parties we come dressed in a different color stuffed animal parties were your favorite jersey party dress. Sup party, Grammy party, Oscar party, and we had so many, like, we just had different themes are really cute. And so that was it was fun. And just, you know, being in the kitchen and cooking dinner with my daughters and my wife was just an awesome time talk about connectedness, and no phones and real conversations. And it was, boy, that’s great. What did I hate, I hated the isolation. I am a classic extrovert. So which means I get energy from people. And so the only people I saw were my, my four ladies. And I, you know, go into a store with a mask on get out as soon as possible. I barely made eye contact for people with people. And for me, I missed games. I was in the, in the NBA, they held games in Orlando, they call it the bubble. And I went to my first game down there was at the bubble, and I was the only fan. So can you imagine going to a professional basketball game and being the only fan? They’ll never happen again in my lifetime?
Greg McKeown
Let’s hope not!
Scott O’Neil
No I hope not, you’re certainly right. But as I looked around, I couldn’t help but kind of smile. You know, here is someone who is just craving people and activity. And even at an NBA game, I couldn’t find that rush.
Greg McKeown
If somebody’s listening to this wants to do better. They want to do better in the midst of all of this noise in the midst of this pandemic, in the midst of this transition, and they want to just, you know, let like they just said teach Tell me a very specific thing that I can do one thing I can do it right now. It’s a tiny change but can make a big impact. What’s that change?
Scott O’Neil
If you’re willing to take 60 seconds a day, which I know sounds like a lot, I’m just kidding. For 60 seconds a day, I would today, as I’m listening to this, I would pause this podcast. And I would text my mother. And I would say, Mom, I just want to tell you how much I love you and appreciate you. I remember when I was 13, and I was having a hard time and you took me to watch a train it to this day changes the way I see women, changes the way I manage and lead. And I just want to say thank you. You’re amazing. And I hope to see you soon. I love you, Scott. So if you send some version of that to your mom, and you get a note back that says something like, hon, are you okay? You need to do a better job. Now, if you take that idea, that 60 seconds and one 60-second period a day, when someone pops in your head in the morning, and somebody will pop in your head in the morning, you send them a text and it’s just like, hey, checking in thinking about you, love you appreciate you. If you need to chat today, give me a call. We’d love to connect, I miss you. Just checking in on you. Are you doing anything I can do for you? I think we need more of that. So you want something simple. Open your eyes be a little more intuitive search and seek out goodness be a vehicle to say good be good and do good. check in on each other. Connect. Be a human being like we need connectedness now.
Greg McKeown
I love that. I love that. What haven’t we covered? What do you want to say? What’s one final thing you would like people to know understand.
Scott O’Neil
I would like, in the words of, of our former general manager to 76’ers Sam Hinkie, I want him to trust the process. I truly, you know, Sam used to say, if you want to go to the moon, don’t grab a ladder, which always used to make me chuckle. And he also used to say, there are no shortcuts to the top only to the middle. And I think that applies to life, just like it does in terms of building a basketball team. My last message would be have your lens be a little longer than the 15 seconds in front of you. And you can accomplish really big things. But you have to have a vision, and then you have to put the work in. It doesn’t work any other way. You don’t you don’t luck into big things. You don’t luck into writing Essentialism. You just don’t look into it. You do it. You sit down, you write and you commit to it. And it takes time. And then you have to promote it. And that takes time. And your success Greg is not an accident. This podcast is not an accident. And you have vision. And you’re smart, obviously brilliantly smart. But you do. And I want more people to do. I want I like big dreams. I like big thoughts. I just want to see the work behind it and a plan to get there. And I think if you have that vision, and you trust the process and do the work, that really good things will happen. And I’d love for you to just ask yourself, why not you?
Greg McKeown
Sixers going all the way?
Scott O’Neil
We’re a good team. Were coached by an extraordinary coach and Doc Rivers. Joel Embiid, if he doesn’t win MVP this league, I can’t understand what games they’re watching. Ben Simmons is one of my all-time favorite players to watch as a six foot 10 point guard is built like a Mack truck. We have shooters we can guard. Tobias Harris is as good a third wheel as there was ever in this league. So I love this team. But man oh man, there are 29 other teams fighting to the death to get there. Fortunately, they’re down to 16 now, so I think we have a we have a really good shot. I’ve been in this business a long time. And I don’t say that willy nilly. I like this team where we’re heading.
Greg McKeown
But it’s a very interesting season. It’s been such a strange season. And obviously you literally had a front side view even when nobody else did some of the games in the bubble. And it’s felt strange even as a as an observer even it’s just you know, somebody’s enjoying the game from the outside. But it’s it feels like it’s it feels like it’s looser and could go almost in any direction with the teams we have left.
Scott O’Neil
I couldn’t agree more. It is the most wide-open race we’ve seen in years in this league. And that’s what makes this so exciting. What I like to be a more clear-cut favorite y es, I would be. But being the number one seed is pretty good. It’s the first time for me, so I can’t wait. I’d love to get you and the family out for a game if at all possible.
Greg McKeown
I know. This is this is a this is a plan we’re gonna figure out a way to make that happen. We should keep going here because now you know, other great things are happening. Scott O’Neill what a pleasure to have you on the What’s Essential podcast. Thank you.
Scott O’Neil
Thank you and thank you for your incredible work. You’re making a huge difference in the world. And I love your pursuit
