Narrator: You're listening to the humans of DevOps podcast, a

podcast focused on advancing the humans of DevOps through skills,

knowledge, ideas, and learning, or the skil framework.

Eduardo Briceño: This particular framework became really helpful

for them to align with each other about how they wanted to

foster a growth mindset culture, and what it addresses is the

confusion that the way to improve is to work hard, that is

simplistic and it gets us into trouble.

Eveline Oehrlich: Welcome to the humans of DevOps Podcast. I'm

Evelyn knowlage, Chief Research Officer at DevOps Institute. I'm

skipping the introduction today. So we get more time with a very

special guest, who is a thought leader, author and very popular

keynote speaker on developing cultures of learning and high

performance. Up podcast title for today is exploring different

zones. Stay tuned. And today we have with us and I have a

drumroll. Eduardo bird Sanyo, who is a very, very popular

keynote speaker as I mentioned. Hello, Eduardo.

Eduardo Briceño: Hello, Evelyn's Great to see you. Great to be

here.

Eveline Oehrlich: Likewise, very excited to have you on our

podcast today. So let me quickly and I will read this in third

person. So this will feel strange to you, Eduardo. So I'm

going to just share with our audience a little bit on your

bio. So Eduardo is a global keynote speaker, as I already

mentioned, facilitator and program provider who supports

organizations in developing cultures of learning and high

performance. Prior to that, he was the CEO of mindset works,

the pioneer in growth mindset development services, which he

co founded in 2007, with Stanford professor Carol Dweck,

Lisa Blackwell and others, and led for over a decade before

that he was taking on investors with Credit Suisse venture

capital arm, the sprout group and served on several for profit

and nonprofit boards. It borders TED talks on growth mindset, and

Ted Talk on learning zone and the performance zone have been

viewed by over 8 million have been viewed over 8 million

times. And I'm one of them. His book, the performance paradox,

turning the power of mindset into action, will be published

by Penguin Random House in September of this year. He is

Behera Aspen fellow, a member of the Aspen Institute's Global

Leadership Network, and an inductee into happiness Hall of

Fame. Eduardo grew up in Caracas, Venezuela, he holds a

Bachelor degree in economics and engineering from the University

of Pennsylvania, as well as an MBA and MA in education from

Stanford University. Most importantly, he continues to

enjoy lifelong learning every day. And that's exactly while

you why you are here, Eduardo, for our listeners to share your

experience and how to actually do that. So welcome again to our

podcast.

Eduardo Briceño: Thank you, Evelyn. Great to be here. I feel

like we have kindred hearts. I look forward to the

conversation.

Eveline Oehrlich: Yes, the first one. The first thing which I

really want to know, of course, everything else is exciting, but

happiness Hall of Fame. I did some research and check that

out. You have to tell us about that. What? What is that?

Eduardo Briceño: Yeah, I didn't know either. And it is actually

one of the things I'm most proud of, because, to me, it

symbolizes a lot of change that I have done in myself. I grew up

being very unhappy, actually. And I have really transformed

myself over a lot of years. And I lead a very happy life now

with a lot of joy. And that's, that's involved a lot of change

in myself a lot of work in myself. And so I was doing a

keynote once and afterwards, a man came to me and he said he

was the executive director of the happiness Hall of Fame. And

I hadn't heard of it either. But they had looked at my work and

the impact that they felt that was having on people and how I

was spreading joy. And they wanted to induct me into the

happiness Hall thing so that you know that to me, was striking in

in symbolizing how much of a change I had made myself.

Eveline Oehrlich: Wow. Fantastic. For our listeners,

check it out. There are Eduardo is in great company out there.

There are a whole range of folks you you got you listeners will

all recognize. So that's fantastic. Congratulations for

being there. All right. So as I mentioned to you already, when

we did a little bit Have a pre call. I'm a big fan of Professor

Carol Dweck work, particularly the work around the growth

mindset. But I don't want to assume that everybody on

listening here has actually read her book mindset or is familiar

with. So why don't you share with us a little bit about what

a growth mindset is?

Eduardo Briceño: Sure. And I'm glad you're asking that because

it's something that is really easily to get distorted. It is

something that a lot of people haven't heard about, like you

said, but also a lot of people have, and a lot of people have

read the book you just mentioned Mindset by Carol Dweck. It's

been a bestseller. But even for for people who learn about

mindset and do work on mindset, and I'll start there. We, when

we ask people who think they're familiar with growth mindset,

what a growth mindset is, they often describe something

different, like they might say, it's, it means being open

minded, or it means working hard or persevering. And a growth

mindset is none of those things. A growth mindset is not

something we do. It's not a behavior. But it's a belief

about the nature of human beings is the belief that we can change

the belief that our abilities or qualities are malleable, or we

can develop them. And the reason so for example, if we think that

some people are natural leaders and others aren't, and that's

what determines whether somebody's a good leader, that

would be the opposite of a growth mindset is what we call a

fixed mindset about leadership. Or if we think that some people

are introverted, and others extroverted, and that's fixed,

those are things that don't change, that would be a fixed

mindset. Versus we can work to develop any of those dimensions

we can we can work to become more introverted, right, like

more mindful, more reflective, more more present more

comfortable in solitude, and more extroverted, more, more

more in a state of enjoyment when we're with other people,

and great at conversation and great at being funny, or

whatever it is. So those that's different from a fixed mindset.

And a growth mindset is when we see ourselves as fixed, or when

we see ourselves as able to change. And the reason that

that's important, is that what doctor mindset with Dr. Dweck

research has shown and lots of other researchers as well now is

that we will try to change the behaviors is really hard if we

are in a fixed mindset. So if we think that we can't change, then

telling somebody, you know, to work hard, or to be open minded,

or to try to experiment beyond the known that doesn't tend to

work if people are thinking that their abilities are fixed, or

that other people's abilities are fixed. And so we need to

work on both changing our beliefs about the nature of

ourselves and others, and changing our behaviors and

habits. And those two things go hand in hand.

Eveline Oehrlich: Interesting. I love that. I wish this book I

haven't really checked, if that book is also in German. I have a

few colleagues who potentially should read this, because we

just had this conversation on these assumptions. And I felt

that they had a very fixed mindset. So but I would love

them to read it in German. I will check on that.

Eduardo Briceño: Later, too. I think you know, 17 languages, if

I recall correctly, yes. I bet it is available in German and

lots of other languages.

Eveline Oehrlich: I will do that research tonight and check with

our favorite retailer, if that's possible, right. So let me know

I would like yeah, yes, absolutely. So how did you

actually get into the space of developing cultures of learning?

Eduardo Briceño: Well, you know, the first time that I got into

learning, I think was a time that we all got into learning,

which is when we when I was really, really young. When I was

a baby, when I was a young kid, I think all of us are passionate

about learning them, right? If you look at a baby or young kid,

they're trying to get up or like crawl and like failing and

trying again, and trying again and trying a different strategy.

Or they might be really looking mesmerized at what we're doing

with our voice in making all these sounds that seem to you

know, we seem to communicate with each other and they don't

understand what's going on. And they're so interested and trying

to understand that eventually they come to understand language

and they come to to understand what it is that we're doing with

our mouths. That's incredible. And so, we have so many

questions, right? kids ask so many questions, but then what

happens is that we get to school and in school I think what tends

to happen in school is tragic because schools haven't, the

goal of school hasn't been to develop lifelong learners,

right? It hasn't been to ignite a fire for people to pursue

whatever path they want to pursue, to experiment and

discover, rather, is being to try to teach people some things

that they might not be interested in at the time. And

so we start associating learning with something that's boring and

tedious and like something that we do in school. And when we're

home, we do it only when we're doing homework, and when we're

done with homework, then we're done learning, right, and we go

do something else. And so and so we learn in school, that

learning sucks that learning is not relevant, it's not useful.

And and we also learn to perform all the time because so many

things in school are graded with a letter or a number that we we

we get the message that what we're supposed to do on a daily

basis is to do things well to do things we already know how to do

to try to minimize mistakes. And so I like many people, I

believe, I went from loving learning, to just trying to

perform and to show that I'm good and to validate myself. And

I ended up you know, after school, like there's no more

tests and almost grades, but the way that the best way that I

could figure out to do well is to get a high paying job, right?

So I I went and I work in the investment banking in New York

City. And I know you, you you worked at Forrester Research

where you were in that kind of similar world as well. Then I

got into venture capital, and I was investing in technology

companies in Silicon Valley. And after a few years of that, you

know, it was it was interesting, but after a few years of that I

realized I actually got physically sick. I was my I got

a repetitive strain injury called myofascial pain syndrome,

it was painful and difficult to use my hands to do simple things

like brushing my teeth or open doors or driving. And I met

people with my condition who had gotten so bad that they couldn't

use their hands for more than 10 minutes a day. So I, I ended up

stretching for an hour and a half for every day for three

years and getting treatment of all kinds. You know, I went to

Washington DC for six weeks to get a particular treatment every

day. So it was a big journey for me to heal. But one of the

things that I learned was that I needed to, I couldn't take my

hands for granted. I couldn't take my ability to do things for

granted. And so I needed to find something that I was passionate

about, and that I felt was making a difference in the

world. And so I went to grad school to build that different

path for myself. And over there. I met Carol Dweck. And I read

her book and I, she's my mentor. She's been my mentor for since,

you know, over 15 years, and her work just learning about her

work, I realized how my fixed mindsets had gotten in the way

of my goals. I was self sabotaging. I realized how I

needed to change my thinking and my habits in order to really try

things that I hadn't done before and, and learn and develop

myself. And I realized how a lot of people could benefit from

those same insights that I was gaining from Dr. Dweck. So we

partnered and co founded a company called mindset works.

And I led it for over 15 years, my job became more and more

public speaking. And that's what I'm focused on 100% for for the

last several years now. Wow.

Eveline Oehrlich: fits very well with, with my belief in how we

want to lead our work in the DevOps Institute. Because,

again, if you think about what we do, I'm sure you probably

don't know, but I'll, I'll share it with you and again with

others. We're trying to help. We're not trying but we are we

know we are helping our community members to learn. We

call it upskilling or skill building, right. And we do this

by developing content, we do trainings, we do certifications,

we have events, and we encouraged and fostered a fairly

tight community. We have over I think 90,000 or so fellow

followers on LinkedIn. I just learned that today. And we hope

we can make a difference for these individuals who want to

learn and grow but it is challenging. And so when I went

off to help us give get some insights in this learning and

growth, that's how I found you and I find your explanation on

learning and performance zones extremely helpful. And I would

love for you to share a bit more details with our community

members to help them understand these different zones. So please

do share with us. What are the zones Since you call them

learning zones and performing zones, and what what must we

know about them for our daily work?

Eduardo Briceño: Sure. So the learning zone and performance

zone came from when I, at some point, my work, businesses

started reaching out to me because they wanted to build a

growth mindset culture. And in those workshops, in getting into

the conversations and trying to help them build a growth,

mindset culture, I tried different frameworks and

different routes to the conversation. And this

particular framework really resonated and became really

helpful for them to generate insight and to align with each

other about how they wanted to foster a growth mindset culture,

and what the the the one that addresses is the the confusion

that a lot of us have, that the way to improve is to work hard.

That is too simplistic, and it gets us into trouble. So the

reality is that there's getting better at things or innovating

is not just about working hard. Because there's two different

types of hard work, there's hard work to get things done as best

as we know how trying to minimize mistakes. That's what

we call the performance zone. But in order to improve, we have

to actually work to go beyond the known and to ask questions

and to experiment and to do things that may or may not work.

That's what we call the Learning Zone. And it is by engaging in

the learning zone that we get better. So my book is called the

performance paradox to performance paradox is the

counterintuitive fact that if we perform all the time, we hinder

our performance, we actually stop ourselves from performing

even higher if all we're doing is performing. And that's that

is a paradox, but it's true. And so what we need to do in order

to get better is to go beyond the known and to do things like

when you talk about upskilling and skill building. Those are

the things that happen with great performers, right. So if

you look at a great athlete, for example, if they're playing a

championship final, they're going to be focused on the

things that they do best, and they're trying to minimize

mistakes and be if they have a weakness, they're going to try

to avoid that weakness in that match. That's all for

performance. And because the only goal during the match is to

try to win the game. But what they do after the game is the

learning zone right after the game, if they were having

trouble with a particular move, they're gonna go to their coach

and say, Coach, I need to work on that particular move. And

that's a very different activity and area of attention than what

we do during the match. Right, it's actually completely

different. And it is what they do in the learning zone that

allows them to perform so well, in court in the performance only

if they're only playing games, then they get stuck, right, they

don't get better, in fact that the Williams sisters, which

became the best in the world, Valium played any championships,

any games. For years before they turned professional, they were

just in the performance zone, sorry, in the Learning Zone. So

the learning zone can be a pure learning zone, like taking a

course, or you know, doing you know, reading is a pure learning

zone activity. But we can also integrate these two zones so

that we do them together so that as we're getting things done,

we're doing things in a way that's also going to lead to

insight and to new skills and strategies and to getting

better. And so it's a by integrating these two zones. We

we can get better while also doing all the things we need to

do in our long to do list.

Narrator: Do you want to advance your career and organization we

can help you do that DevOps Institute offers a wide range of

educational experiences for you to begin your upskilling

journey. Whether you're looking for a defined path to

certification, exploring the latest in DevOps, or connecting

with the larger community, we can help you develop the

specialized skills needed for the future of it. And it won't

just be good for your career. It will also make you indispensable

at work with our lineup of industry recognized DevOps

certifications, digital learning opportunities, and engaging

events. You can connect with our network of experts and expand

your potential today. Visit DevOps institute.com and join

our community now.

Eveline Oehrlich: So a quick side note for everybody

listening in. There are some two fantastic TED talks from Eduardo

one is called How to get better at things you care about. Check

that out. The other one is the power of belief. So listeners go

to the TED Talk, easy to find, and listen to it. Let's come

back to what you just said. And this is very specific to our, to

our folks in IT, particularly the DevOps folks and others. We

do a lot of, well, a lot If it's a little bit of an exaggeration,

we do something called a post mortem, right? Actually, it's

because it's such a nasty word, we have renamed it to call the

retrospective, because post mortem sounds like we're killing

something. But we don't want to do that, we want to actually

step back and look at what has happened. And so that, I think,

is an excellent example of an integration of a learning zone

and the performance zone. Would you agree with that?

Eduardo Briceño: Absolutely. Yeah. That's a great way to

integrate the Learn the learnings and the performance on

the retrospective is a wonderful strategy. And it's also kind of

what you know, great performance, like athletes do,

right? They perform. And then afterwards, they might watch a

video and see, hey, let's, let's think about how that game went,

and what can I learn? And what do I need to practice. So that's

the retrospective, in addition to a retrospective, think about

doing because retrospective, also, can be called an after

action review. That's a term they use in the military. But

and that's great, that's all wonderful. But also consider

doing kind of mid action reviews, something that happens

also kind of in the middle of projects, and as a habit, rather

than only when things go wrong. When when people make a mistake,

it's just we can always get better, right? And so whether it

is after projects, or after there's an incident, which is

wonderful to do think about also, how can you do this

proactively and as a habit, so that you're doing it all the

time regularly. And so it is normalized is something that we

all want to be doing on a regular basis, because we can

all continue to improve.

Eveline Oehrlich: And, and it becomes part of our day. Now,

that I guess is the challenge. Because, again, if I think of my

times in it, I didn't have a lot of time, it was very dynamic,

very fast paced, I had lots of performing to do, right. And

even so in, we encourage people to make mistakes and learn from

that. At the same time, because I'm delivering outcomes and

values and our lives deliver results. It is very difficult to

actually combine those two and and and kind of integrate them.

Do you have any additional tips for people? What What can our

listeners do is just something would you say? Do this once a

day or once a week or something like this? Because everybody is

probably hungry, saying yeah, this sounds all great. This is

very theoretical, but be in my shoes one day, write anything

you would suggest?

Eduardo Briceño: Sure. So first, yeah, there's there's so

strategies, I'll share a couple. But first, I want to start by

just recognizing the issue, which is that if we only stay

only worried about getting the tasks done, then over time,

we're going to make to be to have a lot less time, right? If

we want to create time and make more time both for learning and

for performance, then we have to find ways to work smarter. And

to get more work more done, like more important things done in

less time. And the way to find that is to engage in the

learning zone. So so we have to figure out a way to engage in

the learning zone, so that we have more time, right so we can

create time. And and so in general, one way to get started

is to do something as like doesn't take a lot of time is

very, very quick. And that you can do frequently. So rather

than try to say block two hours every Friday like which is

becomes really hard. It's better to just spend like five minutes

a day doing something or even just one minute a day. Because

what that that Prime's a growth mindset and an interest. And

then it is it is very frequent. So we start building a habit,

and then it becomes easier to go from one minute to three

minutes, and from five minutes to 10 minutes, or then even

more. So just to change our thinking as we're going about

getting things done throughout the day. So we're just paying

more attention to the things that we can learn isn't isn't

doesn't really involve doing something differently. But it

involves paying attention to the things that we can learn. In

fact, there's research that shows that for people measured

people's mindset, so they ask them things like, Do you believe

that you can become smarter? And for the people who answered yes,

I believe I can become smarter. They looked at people's brains

inside of a brain scan machine. And they while they were solving

problems inside of the machine. And what they realized is that

people who thought they could become smarter, so who had a

growth mindset about intelligence, their brain was

more active when they were getting information about what

mistakes they made during the problems. And so they learn from

those mistakes, and they were more effective in solving

subsequent problems. So they became better problem solvers,

because they paid more attention to our mistakes. And they pay

more attention to mistakes because they thought they could

become smarter. And so they weren't spending any more time

solving problems. They were all just solving problems. but some

of them were paying attention to what they could learn and others

weren't. And that made all the difference. But some something

that is very simple that anybody can do. And I think it's really,

really powerful is to build a habit to every morning remind

ourselves of what it is that I'm working to improve. We're like,

what one thing am I working to get better at right now and, and

review that every morning. And what that does is first, it

makes sure that you're always working at improving something,

a that be that's top of mind so that you're thinking throughout

the day and identifying opportunities to improve so that

when something comes up, you're like, oh, that's relevant to

what I'm interested in and you pay more attention to it right?

And then it Prime's a growth mindset, it Prime's the reminder

that we can always continue to improve and develop ourselves.

And so it gets us to think differently throughout the day,

every day. So that's just one example of something simple that

we can all do.

Eveline Oehrlich: Perfect, fantastic. I am going to make

that for myself important. So let's talk about quickly on the

upcoming book, the performance paradox, turning the power of

mindset into action. It's releasing September 5 2023. Give

us a few things, what to look out for what's in that book, I

already ordered it. So I'll share with everybody else how to

preorder it but give us a little bit of a like two minutes on,

what can we find in it? Sure. And

Eduardo Briceño: thank you for pre ordering. And and yes, it's

available for preorder in any bookseller now. And yeah, I'll

describe a little bit the structure that sounds good,

because it also gives people an idea of what kinds of things we

can all work on in order to become better at learning and

performing. So the book is has has three parts. The first one

is driving individual growth, which is about individual growth

and the foundational ideas. Part two is about overcoming the

performance paradox in teams and organizations. So how do we

create strong teams and organizations? And part three is

from individual transformation to global impact? So how do we

take everything we're learning and apply it in the performance

zone and apply it to change lives. So in part one, about

individual growth, like Chapter One is about the performance

paradox, which describes what the challenge is the problem.

Chapter Two is the solution, which is about the two zones

that we talked about the learning zone and the

performance zone. Chapter Three is about integrating the two

zones so that we do them together, right? So instead,

it's not about learning by doing because we don't learn by doing,

but it's about learning while doing how do we change the way

we do things in order to, to also improve? Chapter Four is

about six essential learning strategies that we can all use.

Chapter Five is about mistakes. And mistakes are interesting,

because mistakes on one hand, we know that we can learn from

mistakes, and on the other hand, mistakes, lower performance. And

so Chapter Five is about getting more and more nuanced

understanding of mistakes and getting clear about how can we

elicit mistakes in a way that's going to increase learning, but

also increased performance as well. And when do we want to

avoid mistakes. Chapter Six is about common misconceptions

about learning and about growth mindset that gets in the way of

growth. Chapter Seven is about a framework called the growth

propeller, which is the five key elements that drive growth that

any of us can work on in order to become stronger learners and

performance. And those are our identity, our purpose, our

beliefs, our habits, and our community. And so that's part

one of the book. Part two is about teams and organizations.

So chapter eight is about visions of a strong learning

organization with examples of very, very strong learning and

performing organizations. Chapters nine and 10 are about

teams, chapters, 11 and 12, are about how to lead for growth to

leadership. And finally, the third, the final part of the

book, chapter 13, is about the performance zone, what can we do

in the performance zone in order to perform at our best, and

chapter 14 is about how overcoming the paradox changes

lives. So not only can we get to better destinations, and to

improve and to increase our results, but in in overcoming

the performance paradox, we also change the process, right what

what the experience of life and work feels like? Because we find

more joy, we find more happiness, we also experience

less anxiety, less depression, and we build deeper

relationships with each other because we become more curious.

We're more supportive of one another we learn about each

other's needs and perspectives. We can learn more from each

other. And so we we change not only this nation, but also the

process and the everyday life that we live.

Eveline Oehrlich: Beautiful. I cannot wait. I kind of wish it's

September. So I can't have it. But then the year will be over.

So we'll we'll look forward to it if anybody on the call or on

this listening into it is easily preorder PL orderable add

performance paradox.com Go there and, and preorder it. So we have

come to the end, I have one more question for you. What do you do

for fun? Well, you

Eduardo Briceño: know, I feel so grateful that from so many

things, I mean, the first thing I do every morning is to express

gratitude for so many things. But I find most of my days like

really fun. And I'm I'm very privileged that way. But some of

the things kind of outside of work because I love my work, and

I have fun in my work. But some of the things I do outside of

work is I've been playing more and more tennis with my wife we

played yesterday and the prior day. And we're really enjoying

kind of being playful and challenging one another in the

tennis court. I also travel a lot for work, and my wife does

too. So we like traveling with each other and kind of when I

when I'm in a place I take some time to either visit a museum or

see somebody there that I haven't seen in a long time as

something that that I enjoy doing as well. But I love my

work. I love how I'm I'm you know, in a way obsessed about

it, and I like being obsessed about it. So I'm privileged to

kind of have fun throughout the day, every day.

Eveline Oehrlich: I can feel that I can sense it through

through the through the lines of communication with you. This has

been absolutely wonderful. We have been talking to Eduardo

percent. Your Thank you, Eduardo. This has been a very,

very, very nice treat for our listeners and for myself. Thanks

again for joining me today on humans of DevOps podcast.

Eduardo Briceño: Thank you, Evelyn. It's great to speak with

you.

Eveline Oehrlich: Humans of DevOps podcast is produced by

DevOps Institute. Our audio production team includes Julia

Papp and Brendan Leigh and Daniel Schultz Newman, shout out

to my teammates who make this really great equate production.

I'm humans of DevOps podcast executive producer Evelyn

earlyish. If you would like to join us on a podcast, please

contact us at humans of DevOps podcast at DevOps institute.com.

And I said that this time without really tripping up so I

remember literally talk to you soon.

Narrator: Thanks for listening to this episode of the humans of

DevOps podcast. Don't forget to join our global community to get

access to even more great resources like this. Until next

time, remember, you are part of something bigger than yourself.

You belong