Game Changer: How to Be 10x in the Talent Economy

I built my talents on the shoulders of someone else’s talent.

—MICHAEL JORDAN

So far, we’ve shown you how the new work terrain has reinvented itself, with 10x talent yielding previously unheard-of power and influence everywhere it counts. We’ve demonstrated that 10x talent both expects and demands to be treated as whole people, with unique needs, desires, and drives. Moreover, these 10xers know their input is critical to your survival. The sooner you realize you can’t live without them, the better.

We’ve also tried to illustrate how a boss, a hiring agent, or a manager, having discovered what they think may be a 10x talent, must first suss out that person’s place on the Manageability Continuum, sniffing for a powerful hidden impulse toward success or sabotage. This drive is most often revealed by that talent’s ability to seek out, take in, and utilize credible feedback. In fact, this skill, manageability, is the ne plus ultra of what it means to be potential 10x material—no one can be a 10xer without it.

It’s a complex set of changes to acclimate to—but all of the above is only the beginning.

Because once a manager-talent relationship is finally in place, that manager must act as no less than a Visionary.

In fact, the manager will need to be what we call a Super Visionary, ready and able to deliver two discrete kinds of Vision that secretly work in tandem:

Future Vision: the ability, when guiding a 10x talent’s career, to prognosticate and see around corners, to anticipate dead-ends and express lanes, and to make success happen through strategic and imaginative planning, always conveying that to the talent in a way they can accept, understand, and use it.

And . . .

Inner Vision: the ability to zero in on a 10x talent’s blind spots, unknown weaknesses, and misguided drives, giving them a path to improvement that they can understand. Often this involves redirecting focus back to core strengths, always letting a super-talent know when he or she is drifting, getting “cul de sac’d” in rigid behaviors, or “chasing shiny objects.”

If Super Vision sounds like a tall order, that’s because it is.

Just as the old boss didn’t have to care about the real you, the old manager didn’t have to care about where you’re heading, let alone where you’d like to be heading. Today, whether your talent is an international rock star or a coding maven, a hands-on doer or a superb idea person, it’s no longer enough to help them get their next big break or survive their next project.

10xers expect career sustainability, input escalation, and the tools for continuous improvement, and they will gravitate toward those guiding forces that can bring these things gig after gig, season after season, year after year.

THE START-UP’S CRYSTAL BALL

In Chapter 3, we introduced you to Jonathan Lowenhar, one of the founders of Enjoy The Work, the San Francisco-based company whose very job is to prognosticate outcomes for fledgling start-ups to help them grow without imploding. It’s no mean feat, since the rate of self-destruct for new start-ups hovers somewhere close to 100 percent.

Lowenhar knows from Future Vision. His clients are desperate for it.

“The reason these new start-ups turn to us is simple,” he explains. “We have seen a ton of use cases. And survived them. And that experience allows us to see forward, where they can’t. Here you are, you’re a CEO of a brand-new tiny start-up, and you’re trying to close your first really big deal. Let’s say you’re trying to win Amazon as a customer. You’ve never negotiated with a Fortune 10 company in your life. Well, I have. A lot. A couple of my partners have done it a lot, too. The likelihood that something’s going to come up during that nine-month dance that we haven’t already seen or can’t predict is really low. And I don’t care how many books you’ve read on enterprise selling, we will probably outmaneuver your negotiation tactics all day.”

Lowenhar also knows from Inner Vision. His company takes any potential new start-up client through a rigorous “dating period,” where they ask tough, sometimes provocative questions, to gauge how well a fledgling CEO can stomach guidance. Enjoy The Work even employs a social-emotional coach to help sift out personality challenges—and blind spots do turn up.

“One of the newer CEOs that we work with, we met when the company was super young, and now they’re doing quite well. But we quickly spotted a pattern where this CEO would wake up in the morning, and he’d be angry and he didn’t know it, right? He’d come into the office and beat the crap out of the first person he dealt with—you know, emotionally, intellectually, just pounce on the first person that came in front of him. By the end of the day, when his anger would start to wane, he’d take in the breadth of damage he’d done, and he would feel terrible. So he went around apologizing to his people at the end of every day, and they gave him the benefit of the doubt, because they believed he was a good human. They were forgiving, but it wasn’t good for morale.”

Having recognized a classic Inner Vision sabotage pattern, Lowenhar stepped in to advise. “I had a one-on-one meeting where I said to him, ‘Here’s the way you’re acting. Do you agree? Because this is what I’m seeing from the outside looking in.’”

In fact, the CEO did agree, but for Lowenhar’s cutting-edge bespoke management to work, the conversation could not end there.

“I said, ‘My guess is you don’t just do it at work. I’m assuming this behavior shows up in your personal relationships and your romantic ones.’ And this CEO was like, ‘Yes, wow.’ I said, ‘You’re about to have a child. Do you want this pattern to show up with your child, too?’”

It wasn’t an easy discussion to have, but Lowenhar knows that to help navigate business growth, he cannot afford to turn a blind eye to the pre-cognitive psychological conditioning a person has received. What would have been way too uncomfortable for an old school manager—confronting the reality of a client’s deepest wounds—is mandatory for a bespoke manager in the new terrain. And there are instances where, even the best managers need to call in specialists from the therapy and coaching worlds to help with certain problems that are outside the scope of management.

“The start-up journey is a lonely journey,” Lowenhar says. “Everything feels existential. You’re just swallowed up by the enormity of the tasks of today, so that it’s impossible to think about what’s around the corner. But the premise of what Enjoy The Work teaches is that 80 percent of the time, the stages are the same for all start-ups—six stages of maturation.”

Those six stages are as follows: 1) defining the customer; 2) product validation; 3) business model development; 4) channel definition; 5) growth; and 6) maturity. It’s a complex process, but for our purposes, what’s important to note is that Jonathan and Enjoy The Work have developed this pattern recognition to better divine future outcomes.

“If you’re honest about what stage you’re in,” Lowenhar says, “then you can start being honest about where you’re headed.”

Hustlers of the world, there is one mark you cannot beat: the mark inside.

—WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS, 1959

THROUGH THE SECOND WINDOW

Future Vision scans the future. Inner Vision scans for the Sabotage Impulse’s close cousin, chronic blind spots. It’s uncanny how these two modes of inspection work together. By bringing to the surface that which the individual talent can’t see for themself—their baggage, their obstacles, their misdirected desires and unacknowledged weaknesses—you fortify them for the future when it comes.

For us, one of the blind spots came to light only through the use of our trusted advisor, Jonathan Lowenhar. After years in the music industry where relying on your gut was every bit as important as trying to use data, we were attempting to apply that same methodology to marketing our fledgling technology talent agency. Through a series of carefully constructed conversations where Jonathan was able to point out the weakness and, maybe more important, paint a clear picture of what a data-driven marketing program would look like, we saw the light. It was not easy at first. After all, who wants to abandon their gut feelings particularly since they have been the chief navigation system for almost 20 years. It was a hard realization and even harder to adapt in practice. While we are still getting better at this now, we have come so far and are able to use both lagging and leading indicators to help us navigate these waters and make decisions from a much better vantage.

Here’s the most important thing to know about blind spots: Everybody’s got them. As Steven Stosny, PhD, puts it in Psychology Today, “Our brains are simply not wired for accurate self-evaluation during emotional arousal, which keeps us hyper-focused on possible threats in the environment.”¹

With this in mind, a very savvy manager is attuned to all four quadrants of Johari Window:

1. The Open/Free Area: That which you know about yourself and everyone else knows about you.

2. The Blind Area: That which others know about you and you do not, also known as blind spots.

3. The Hidden Area: That which you know about yourself and no one else knows about you.

4. The Unknown Area: That which no one knows about you including yourself.

Developed by American psychologists Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham in 1955 while researching group dynamics at UCLA, this model was first published in the Proceedings of the Western Training Laboratory in Group Development. As website Businessballs.com puts it, “Today the Johari Window model is especially relevant due to modern emphasis on, and influence of, ‘soft’ skills, behaviour, empathy, cooperation, inter-group development, and interpersonal development.”²

For our purposes, it’s Region 2 of Johari Window that’s the kicker, the zone representing ignorance and self-delusion. Region 2 not only represents that which we withhold from ourselves, it also can include that which is being kept from us deliberately by others, sometimes because we unconsciously drive them to keep us in the dark. As Jessica Stillman recently put it in a discussion of Johari Window on Curiosity.com, “Those with an outsized ‘blind spots’ box may be naive about their own character. They may not see their own aggression or neediness, for example, as clearly as others see it.”³

When aggression and neediness are present, strong management needs to step in. Like Lowenhar, we have worked with team leaders that don’t always treat their people right. One client we love working with is an amazing entrepreneur named Ahmed who oversaw the creation of a multimillion-dollar gaming software. Ahmed is brilliant, charismatic, courageous, and popular—but for all his strengths, he was always getting in his own way, especially at his own company. He took so much pride in the small empire he’d built that his ego was fragile for it, and every time he felt threatened, he’d lash out at those who wanted to help him most, his own team members and co-managers. During more than one disruptive board room argument, Ahmed sounded off like a wounded child. “I invented this @#$%, it’s my creation to screw up!”

Slowly but surely, his best people just couldn’t be around him. His attitude was his very own kryptonite.

We knew bringing Ahmed’s behavior patterns to his attention was going to be painful. As Businessballs.com puts it, “People who are ‘thick-skinned’ tend to have a large ‘blind area.’” That means confronting the blind spots can be more revelatory, more painful, and more destructive. But Ahmed paid for our career advice, it was simply our job, and it had to be done. The question was, did he have the fortitude and desire to hear it? One thing we have observed is while the subject often is unaware of the blind spot, when it is presented to them, it is not a complete surprise. For many, they are aware of the impact of that blind spot on their lives but just don’t see the behavior itself, and so can’t connect it to the results. Given outside perspective, all of a sudden they can say, “So that’s why these things are always happening to me!”

We had faith in Ahmed. We sat him down and, in the gentlest possible terms, we set up a four-part plan to outgrow destructive behaviors. He knew we weren’t crazy. But it’s one thing to know you’ve got to change, another thing to be able to do it.

Like a true 10xer, Ahmed was motivated to grow and, meeting by meeting, day by day, he began not only to treat his people with greater respect, but to understand his place in the scheme of things. He wasn’t just a brilliant inventor, he was also the recipient of some very fine team support. He wasn’t the entire “brains of the operation” so much as an integral part.

Most important, he realized in those moments of challenge that people were not questioning him as a person. Rather, they were challenging ideas he was presenting. He came to understand (with a little nudging from us) that feedback would always make him and his ideas even stronger.

He also began to understand that if he made it “all about him,” he couldn’t expect anyone else on the team to be motivated to help build the product. His team would feel belittled and undervalued.

As Ahmed grew, the changes he implemented quickly made way for more and better opportunities for his company. A move toward higher EQ pushed him out of his comfort zone and, as sometimes happens, Ahmed was suddenly, almost mystically rewarded with a major new client—a popular children’s property that was a major boon to his business.

The great news is that he knew how to handle it all with grace.

Region 2 of Johari Window isn’t always about simple bad behavior. Alexandra Sleator, career coach for Ivy Exec, brilliantly lists “the downside of your strengths” as a prime blind spot for many. “It is about overusing our strengths,” she writes. “When we use a strength, things will typically work out. Not only do we do well but it often feels easy because strengths are so natural. All good and well but the risk is to fall into the trap of using a particular strength for all sorts of situations, including those for which it is irrelevant. There is also the risk that the behaviour which uses the strength starts to feel clunky, less fluid; that usually manifest via an energy drain. Using a strength goes from energizing us to draining us. And that’s your clue: the change in energy flow.”⁴ Sleator advises to “dial it down. Moderate its use. Just like good wine!”

One of the key roles a bespoke manager plays is protecting their charge from the burnout that comes from overusing a strength. A wise coach once told us: “If you see someone who is really muscular because they put time in the gym, you’d be impressed by their commitment. However, if they walked around flexing their muscles all the time, you’d be less impressed.” A strength is something to deploy when it’s really needed.

A great manager uses Future Vision and Inner Vision as twin beams to light the way. They both require a willingness to face negatives head-on. And sometimes, Future Vision is not only about finding out which rainbows lead to pots of gold. Sometimes it means having to protect a 10xer from entering a dangerous neighborhood, or from getting stuck there.

Case in point: We had a tech client placed in a semi-established e-commerce company, and things were humming along. He was building an app, and the company liked the work he was doing well enough.

Still, after twenty years in the business, you get hunches, and our hunch told us things might go sideways.

Signs were subtle, but every time we checked in with the CEO of this firm, he answered our questions in a way that just didn’t feel right. In fact, today, we can’t even recall exactly what set off our Spidey senses. It may have had to do with the way he kept asking for extended payment terms after we had already signed the contract and work was well under way. Or else it may have been his brusque, hurried manner when he spoke to us. Maybe it was neither, but something was amiss.

With this in mind, we called in our client. He told us the app was about half-built. We talked it over, and ultimately we advised him to deliver no more code until they paid him what they owed. We also advised him to demo the work he’d already done, so they could see his progress and get a deeper sense of his value. Show, don’t tell.

Our greater thinking was simple: If things go off the rails, we’ll at least have a bargaining chip to get him paid.

Sure enough, within two weeks of this meeting, we were informed that the CEO had been arrested—for fraud, no less!

End of assignment.

Yes, our client got what he was owed—but only because we had prepared for disaster by peering into the future and creating extra leverage. “Holding the code hostage” is no way to make friends, but it’s a last resort when Future Vision tells you the future looks grim.

FUTURE VISION IN ACTION
0x Management	Doesn’t create or look at long-term goals for the team or the individuals on it. Acts and reacts to short-term issues and demands.
5x Management	Has some sense of the goals of employees and has goals for the team. Nudges employees in the right direction when there is an easy and obvious way to do so, but rarely anticipates what is coming to course correct with time and ease.
10x Management	Sits down with individual members of the team and truly understands individual goals—personal and professional, short-term and long-term. Lays out a plan to help team members achieve those goals while ensuring that this plan aligns with organizational goals. Knows where individual and organizational goals deviate and is sure to explain what is and is not achievable for the individual. Always has one eye on the road ahead to alert team members, with as much notice as possible, about possible impending obstacles to their personal or team goals, with an eye on navigation and course correction. Points out to the team member how things align, in order to create intrinsic motivation.

SO YOU WANT TO BE A ROCK STAR?

What used to be truest for show biz, and then for start-ups, is quickly becoming true for all contemporary businesses: The future of any venture is wildly uncertain and the chance for failure is extremely high. Wise guidance is mandatory, and the smart know how to use it.

Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood dramatizes client uncertainty in a memorable scene. When silver-tongued talent agent Marvin Schwarz (played by Al Pacino) tells his client, aging TV and movie cowboy Rick Dalton (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) that the future is in Italian Westerns, Dalton is crushed. He doesn’t really believe a word of it. All he hears is his own demise. He openly weeps after the meeting and calls himself a has-been. But what the modern audience knows is that Spaghetti Westerns will one day be considered the greatest genre films of their time.

A great manager dares to study the future in ways you aren’t ready to explore.

For pop music supermanager Ken Levitan, this ability to predict has to be fortified by real-time flexibility and constant reevaluation.

“Sure, we lay out a plan for the future, and we reason with our artists. Sometimes they agree with that plan, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they’re right and you’re wrong, they may have a feel for something you don’t understand yet. You need a short-term plan and a long-term plan, but most of all you’ve got to be nimble, because all of a sudden something you don’t expect pops up. The music business used to be like a children’s puzzle, six or seven pieces. Now there’s like nine hundred pieces. If, all of a sudden, your act is doing unbelievably well in some random place, you’ve got to be able to go there and deal with it.”

Levitan recounts the meteoric rise of Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Nanci Griffith overseas. “We were trying to build her up in the United States and things were okay. Then she did one TV show in Ireland and exploded over there. She became, like, the biggest female artist in Ireland overnight. And that translated into other parts of Europe, where she did really, really well. But we were smart enough to take advantage of it because we were nimble.”

In a similar international tale, Levitan tells of Kings of Leon who had signed to RCA Records, only to find weeks later that nearly everybody at the label was about to be fired, including all their major champions. “I said to myself, ‘No way (chairman and CEO) Clive Davis is going to understand this band. It’s garage. And Kings of Leon have this incredible story—their dad was a Pentecostal preacher who got kicked out of the church. But we lost our support at the label, and I didn’t know what to do.”

On a hunch, Levitan hopped on a plane to the United Kingdom, armed with nothing but a demo and an electronic press kit. He interviewed a phalanx of publicists and hired the best one, and soon Kings of Leon were featured in England’s most important music mag, New Musical Express, in every issue for the next twelve months, which built them into huge stars outside the United States and set the stage for their eventual US stardom. “Yes, you’ve got to have strategy,” Levitan adds, “but you’ve also got to be open and alert to all your options.”

The act of Future Vision is never easy, especially at Levitan’s level, where he makes it a point to choose artists who already have a built-in sense of self and a strong sense of artistic mission. “There’s definitely conflict. And, you know, at the end of the day, it’s not my career, it’s their career. They only have one career—what happens with it is their choice. Most of all, you’ve got to make them understand there is an arc to that career. We teach people to be careful money managers early on, to put money away and budget. Because you can’t know where things are headed. “ Looking ahead is the manager’s blackbelt skill.

Sometimes, as with Marvin Schwarz and Rick Dalton, it’s all about getting a client to do what he or she does best, but in a new, uncomfortable sphere. “I talked to Kenny Rogers about festivals,” Levitan says. “I wanted him to play Bonnaroo. He thought I was crazy. But it ended up being one of the most successful things—fifty thousand people, a young crowd, all singing ‘The Gambler.’ It was a real moment.” It was the beginning of an entirely new chapter of his career that he had long been seeking. Rejuvenated relevance.

To a large degree, Future Vision involves having enough experience and faith to know how certain scenarios are likely to play out.

Then there are those clients, young and old, who “chase shiny objects.” In the record biz, that can mean trying too hard to get a radio hit, or chase the newest musical trends at the expense of their musical identity. Sometimes, these artists are being pressed by a record company, which itself is aiming for that elusive overnight killing. Levitan pulls the reins.

“You have to sit your artist down and say, ‘Don’t do this. Go with your gut instead. Look ahead. Because you can lose your credibility overnight.’”

A NONPROFIT GAME OF CHESS

No matter your industry, looking forward takes crazy discipline. Like chess, it means meditating on the next half-dozen moves and beyond. By definition, it requires deep education and deeper experience, acknowledging all the while that the game can change at every turn. Newbie small-businesses entrepreneurs and hotshot artists so often don’t spend a lot of time growing this difficult aptitude, and that’s why they receive the big painful lessons too late. In fact, at its core, seeking managerial guidance is the act of enlisting experience to help expose you to your own blind spots and come up with a future plan.

Michael’s efforts co-founding and building Musicians On Call—which brings live and recorded music to the bedsides of patients in healthcare facilities across America—has taught us a surprising lesson: Nonprofits are often more adept at strategic planning than their for-profit counterparts. Why? Because nonprofits have no choice but to be disciplined. They have to have a plan, often in order to receive accreditation and funding, and board members and donors want to know what that plan is, in detail, up front. This enforced Future structure keeps all eyes on the future, with a keen sense of survival. For-profit companies are more often judged by present revenue. If that’s good, stakeholders can lose sight of the future.

Dr. Jeffrey R. Solomon, former CEO of Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies (who just happens to be dad to one of the authors of this book) understands the prismatic nature of delivering Future Vision to the board. He has served as exec to many nonprofits and has sat on dozens of nonprofit boards, including the Leichtag Foundation, the Jim Joseph Foundation, the Peaceworks Foundation, and the Diabetes Media Foundation, as well as the city, state, and federal governments of the United States. An adjunct associate professor in the master’s and doctorate programs of New York University School of Social Work, Dr. Solomon understands that Future Vision means not just finding but illustrating outcomes that clients are not predisposed to have already thought of themselves.

“They may not reward you for telling them what they need to hear,” Dr. Solomon says. “I just got off a video call with a program director—I chair his advisory board. During our talk, I helped him see that earned income from fee-for-service sales has greater potential than continuing to rely on donations for virtually 100 percent of his budget. While this man is very talented, a significant pivot like that would not necessarily be on his radar screen.”

Insecure 1xers want to be able to say they saw the future themselves. The true 10xer knows that it takes a seasoned outsider who is trained to shoot their gaze forward with sagacious distance to scan for upcoming opportunities.

“Often,” Dr. Solomon explains, “management does not really appreciate the value of consultants, board members, coaches, and others who can play this future-seeking role. They think they will be seen as weaker, not stronger, for taking good advice. But they’re wrong. Wise managers will seek out wise prediction and use it wisely.”

Dr. Solomon notes that the need for prediction accelerates alongside everything else in the digital economy. “Five-year plans are less relevant today than they once were,” he says. “The world is changing so rapidly, I prefer to think in time segments.” He divides the picture into three substantial categories: a) Organizational vision, which is often a twenty-year idealized projection; b) three-to-five-year strategies to help guide the organization, and c) annual operating plans and budgets that reflect the reality of a) and b). “The Future Vision is adjusted in incremental iterations, hopefully always getting better. By the time I or my leadership is addressing the board, I want to have confidence that there is already a shared vision about the future in place.”

Just as with the for-profit world, Future Vision must be in natural balance with Inner Vision, and Dr. Solomon has found himself in the uncomfortable position of uncovering the blind spots of board members, managers, and colleagues on more than one occasion.

“One of the finest social entrepreneurs I work with had to be reined in, because, despite the value of his entrepreneurial style, his lack of understanding or accepting the legal and ethical framework of philanthropy got in the way of acceptable behavior. A core principle in my line of work is ‘no self-dealing.’ There are specific guidelines that prevent an officer or director of a 501(c)(3) (the IRS designation for nonprofit organizations) from using the resources of the charitable enterprise he works for to fund a nonmission-related personal pursuit.”

Dr. Solomon goes on to describe an officer who was writing a book and using a colleague as his research assistant. The book was neither in the sweet spot of the organizational mission, nor was it to be owned by the charity. Any advance and related revenues were personal. Solomon had to sit him down.

“The conversation . . . was blunt.”

INNER VISION IN ACTION
0x Management	Doesn’t learn much about employees and can’t customize processes around the individual.
5x Management	Gets to know employees enough to feel familiar, but not enough to understand what makes them tick. Spots weaknesses and can, on occasion, present them to an individual, but often does so in a clumsy way.
10x Management	Is constantly learning about employees, getting a clear understanding of their motivations, and the full array of their uniqueness (good and bad). Works closely to solicit feedback from employees, with an eye on learning about potential blind spots of team members. Is able to provide insights to the individual employees that are most relevant to their professional and personal growth, with an emphasis on what the employee can’t see for themselves. Is able to present these insights to a team member in a way that is always palatable, constructive, and never threatening or punitive, with a singular goal of giving a path to improvement.

When a manager can braid the powers of Future Vision and Inner Vision, honing in on the future while shedding light on the blind spots at home, the 10x talent is empowered as never before. And, of course, 10x managers know that both kinds of vision are always to be framed and presented in a manner that connects with their talent’s true personality. Played in tandem, these twin modes are the strongest tools of practice in the art of bespoke management—they have the ability to raise the act of advice-giving to a visionary realm. Suddenly, 10x managers have the powerful tools necessary to course correct themselves and the trajectory of their team or organization.

But none of the great advice that management can provide is worth a nickel if it isn’t delivered as part of a genuine interpersonal bond between parties with aligned incentives and a very high degree of trust.

Next chapter, we’ll tackle trust head-on.

TAKEAWAYS FROM CHAPTER 4

• Strong management, having acquired a 10x talent, knows it’s their duty to deliver Super Vision:

a. Inner Vision helps talent find and confront their own blind spots.

b. Future Vision includes predicting short- and long-term outcomes by looking around corners and creating a plan to achieve long-term goals via short-term tactics.

• Super Vision includes keeping clients focused on their core strengths, preventing them from drifting or “chasing shiny objects.”

• 10x management makes sure that all this advice and insight is framed and presented in a manner that connects with their talent’s true personality.

• 10x management is also attuned to all four quadrants of Johari Window, especially Region 2, the blind spots. The wrong behavior can rapidly devolve into a sabotage pattern that blocks goals.

• Together, Future Vision and Inner Vision constitute the foundation of great advice.