Dorie Clark

Dorie Clark

[00:00:00] Don Davis PhD, MBA: Welcome to the life science success podcast. My name is Don and today we're going to be joined by Dorie Clark and Dory is a marketing. Strategist and keynote speaker who teaches at Duke University's Fuqua cost school of business and has been named one of the top 50 business thinkers in the world by thinkers, 50.

Her latest book is the long game, how to be a longterm thinker in a short term world. And we're going to spend a bit of time talking about that. Welcome Dorie.

[00:00:35] Dorie Clark: Hey Don. So good to be here.

[00:00:38] Don Davis PhD, MBA: Yeah. Anything that I missed that that you think folks should know before we get started?

[00:00:45] Dorie Clark: You hit the highlights.

This is good.

[00:00:49] Don Davis PhD, MBA: All right. And you've got to you, you've got a partner there with your cat sitting next to you all set to go. So your your book was released in September of [00:01:00] last year. With this interview, I feel like I played a little bit of the long game and decided that Hey, look, I'll try and be on the end of all of the interviews about your book.

I definitely, appreciate you being on and being here to talk about it. Because as I think about a lot of the entrepreneurs in the life science space, I think that there's a direct tie to thinking through things in terms of long game, what specifically are you trying to do and how are you trying to position things becomes an important, overall role.

But I wanted to know from you, what was the premise of this book? What got you started in thinking about the premise for this particular.

[00:01:44] Dorie Clark: It's interesting Don, because the context of the world around me changed a lot as I was ideating about the book and then ultimately writing the book.

When I started thinking about it, it was 20 18, 20 19, and I was [00:02:00] concerned about the frenzy that we all found ourselves in. Every, everybody thinks that long-term thinking is a good idea. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who didn't. So few people actually do it, actually engage in it.

There's a million things that get in the way, but mostly people are just racing around. They're too busy. They don't have enough white space. And so they focus on everything else. And of course that means that we run the risk as a result of making poor decisions, because we haven't really thought things through in terms of their long-term implications.

And that's not an outcome. Anyone actually desires really. But, so that was the context that I began thinking about the book. But fast forward, I got the book accepted by my publisher. Ready to go. I got the acceptance letter, February 28th, 2020, and within less than a week, the entire world kind of changes and all of a sudden.

All any of us can do is short-term thinking [00:03:00] that's, that becomes our lifeline in some ways is our ability to pivot, to be agile, to adjust. And that's great, there's absolutely a place for short-term thinking, but what I believe strongly is that it can't be the only modus operandi. It can't be the only way that we do business.

And so I think this is a very good time for us to start recalibrating and to think about long-term thinking again and how we can reintroduce it into.

[00:03:26] Don Davis PhD, MBA: Yeah. It's such a good point because there are two, two sort of things that I know I've talked to clients about as COVID came on. And I said, look, you could shrink your way into this pandemic, but you can also think of this as a point where you can build a portion of your business that you couldn't build before, because people are having to take somewhat of a post.

And we would have these conversations where it's, you can leave things as status quo and operate as normally keep all your staff the same, keep your business and your expenses. Exactly the same. You [00:04:00] can shrink into it. So you can lay people off and, Maybe closing office or, do something to shrink into it.

Or you can lean into this and say, you know what, I'm going to try and find a way to grow so that whenever we come back out of the other side, I have an even better business on the backend.

[00:04:19] Dorie Clark: Yeah, that's exactly right. I love that philosophy.

[00:04:23] Don Davis PhD, MBA: Yeah. Yeah. With regards to the book itself early on in the book, you highlighted one particular quote, not the read it here.

So it's a great quote by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. That goes something like we measure ourselves by what we feel capable of doing while others may measure us based on what we've done, it's on page 16 of the book. And when I saw that. And I thought about you specifically your personal history has this [00:05:00] moment set up in time where people are, have a, a way that they might think about you whenever you're going to the Mary Baldwin school or even the Harvard divinity school and, working through that.

And I guess how personal is that particular quote?

[00:05:19] Dorie Clark: I think it's certainly something that I can relate to. I feel like in many ways, a lot of people can because we understand ourselves, we have a high degree of confidence in our ability to to change careers or change focus.

We know that we are not solely bound up in what our resume says about us or what we've done in the past, other people there's a combination of. Perhaps a very sensible, show me the money, a viewpoint of let's see if you can do it. And also the truth is, you know what?

I keep coming back to time and time again in my work [00:06:00] is just understanding that other people. I really don't care that much about us. They're way too busy. They're way too preoccupied. Like it's like not, it's not that they don't care about us in an active sense, but we are literally not even on their radar.

And so they just haven't taken the time or the mental energy to update their perceptions. And so if they met you, eight years ago and. And whatever, running a lemonade stand, you might've gotten your MBA. You might've gotten your PhD. You might've started this life sciences podcast and you're in, in their mind, it's oh, it's well, it's Don the lemonade guy.

That's really where they're

[00:06:35] Don Davis PhD, MBA: at this what they think anyway. I get the lemonade emails all the time but yeah, I think, I just think that there's this. I, so I've coached quite a few people in my history, I guess is the way I would think through. And, they can see so much more in themselves that they want other people to see.

And so how [00:07:00] do you express that? How do you get that out there for people to at least know, Hey, look, my capacity is a lot larger than where I currently am.

[00:07:11] Dorie Clark: And sometimes people resist this. Cause they feel like they shouldn't have to do it or whatever, but I really like in my work and the consulting that I do to just be very reality-based and it's like, all right, I understand it might not be fun or it might not be desirable to have to come up with.

Literally a PR strategy to try to help other people see you in the way that you want and to be seen. But that's the reality. If we actually want to be successful, we have to recognize that other people are going to be completely out to. Not paying attention, not that interested. And so somehow we have to be thoughtful about creating a concerted consistent message so that it actually finally breaks through that it finally [00:08:00] gets into someone's consciousness.

And so that really means number one. And this is something that I talked about quite a bit in my first book, which is reinventing you. We have to get clear about what that message is that we want to be sending in the first place. And then secondly, we need to. Make sure that on a regular basis, we're essentially telegraphing proof points to remind people of that.

Now it doesn't have to be huge. It doesn't have to be a major lift, but it could be something as simple as, okay. If you want to change careers or change areas of emphasis. Don on LinkedIn or on social media start posting more about this new area to remind people. Oh, he said he wanted to do more in nanotechnology.

That's right. Oh I guess that's why he keeps posting about nanotechnology. Like it takes a while to sink in, so we need to keep iterating and reminding.

[00:08:55] Don Davis PhD, MBA: Yeah. And giving people those proof, the proof points is [00:09:00] absolutely important as well. And I guess the one thing that I've seen personally is that a lot of people just don't think through that, that messaging, they don't think through.

Kind of the front end of, how do I make sure that what I am communicating is that in instead you see, all sorts of posts on LinkedIn about random things. And then, I wonder if those same people, oftentimes they're sitting there going, I wonder why people don't see this other side of me.

[00:09:30] Dorie Clark: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:09:33] Don Davis PhD, MBA: The one thing that I have for you as well out of the book is that you start to talk about time horizons and as a guy, that was, so I was with GE healthcare for 17 years. We would plan three to five years. We would consider three as a long-term strategy overall and I feel like you describe, the Jeff Bezos.

With the person that [00:10:00] works for him being described in one of his quarterly letters as wanting to do handstands in a few months. And somebody explained that, Hey, look, this could take, six months or more depending on you and how often you practice or whatever. And I just think that this idea of, us wanting short-term wins is a very important point as well, that you make.

[00:10:26] Dorie Clark: Yeah, absolutely. Certainly to, to a certain extent we are battling human nature. Everybody likes some instant gratification and there's nothing wrong with that. It's actually quite logical that if you have a choice between something good now and something good later why not now?

And this sounds reasonable. The problem comes in because not everything can be obtained now. There are some things that just fundamentally. No matter what you do, no matter how much money you pay, no matter how badly you want it, you [00:11:00] cannot have it. Now. It is the product of time of effort of work. And. If your horizon is always super short, you literally will never get those things.

And so I think that we just need to be really mindful of understanding. All right, what is our goal and what is a rational time horizon? To be able to get it. Lots of people would like a PhD, but as Don, this is not something that one gets in a semester, no matter how smart you are, it ain't going to happen in a semester.

And it's true. Some people can do it a little bit faster than others, but, nobody does in that fast. And so we need to be really thoughtful about what do we really want, what are we willing to give up to get it? And how can we actually do. Plan and pace ourselves so that we don't get discouraged along the way, because the good stuff often does take a while.

[00:12:00] Yeah.

[00:12:00] Don Davis PhD, MBA: Yeah. So the funny story about my PhD, as well as that, I took the longest possible route to get there. After high school, I wanted nothing more to do with formal education. More or less, my father was standing there saying, Hey, look, you probably should, go to college and finish college.

The steel mills were pretty active in Northwest Indiana at the time. But shortly after, everything appended and, the economy completely went in the tank. So I'm glad that I was on the, on that route, but I got an associates degree first, a bachelor's degree, second and MBA third and a PhD fourth.

So I tell everybody I'm like, look, one thing most people shouldn't do is follow my path in terms of education. There is a shorter way to get there and that's, go straight for. Bachelors or go straight for, some other type of degree that at least gets you to a platform. And then from there you can work to anything else, a, an [00:13:00] MBA or PhD is up to you, but yeah, it's I took the long, the truly long-term thinking in terms of my education.

So yeah,

[00:13:10] Dorie Clark: I hear you, man. I hear you. That's

[00:13:12] Don Davis PhD, MBA: great. Yeah. I guess whenever you think about how you set an appropriate time horizon I think I heard it a little bit in your answer just a second ago, what ways can people use to properly frame up the, what is the right way to think about a time horizon and how do you make sure that you're not short-term.

Thinking something, because, I think again, if you use the Amazon example, Jeff Bezos clearly came out and said, Hey, look, you can not expect profits from this company for a good long time because of money to keep investing them back in the company until we get to a point where I can actually give something up.

And, I it helped them build a world-class organization around their supply chain.

[00:13:59] Dorie Clark: [00:14:00] Yeah. That's exactly right. In terms of how we think about these things. I think there's a couple of points. The first is we need to have accurate information about what we can theoretically expect.

And this goes back to the example, Don, that you. Citing from the long game where Jeff phasers taught, tells the story about the handstand coach and how some people the average person thinks it'll take about two weeks of consistent practice to be able to do a yoga handstand, actually it's six months.

And what's interesting to me there, I feel this is not really about handstands. This is a kind of a parable for life that most people are willing to admit. Oh sure. I might be a little wrong, but they think they're 10% wrong or they're 20% wrong. They have no concept that they are wrong by a factor of 20, 24 X.

Could not even [00:15:00] conceive of this, that there's the difference between or sorry, 12 X that, it's a difference between two weeks and 24 weeks of practice. And so similarly, for any goal that we have, the vast majority let's call it 99.9% of things that we might be aspiring to.

These are things that at least one other human has done previously in the history of the universe, other people have made vice-president. Other people have gotten married. Other people have managed to launch a new business or whatever it is. And so most of us though, don't actually take the time to systematically understand, with multiple examples, more than just one example.

How long did that take, what did that look like? What was the ramp up? What was the investment? What was the cost? But by being able to understand that. We really have a much better sense about whether it's something we even want to bother doing. That's an important piece of it.

The second piece that you were alluding to is we often [00:16:00] do run into trouble. And this is why I think Jeff Bezos in particular has been able to be so successful. In his case, and this is pretty rare. There is perfect alignment between his interests and Amazon's interests. You know what I mean? He's the owner, obviously it's a publicly traded company, dude owns most of it. And as a result, he is eight and he run, he owns it and he runs it. Or at least until last year he ran it. And so therefore. He was perfectly well aligned to say, Nope, sorry. We're not going to be profitable because he knew that he was not going to punish himself for that.

He was able to optimize for the long-term. Whereas in a lot of other situations, the incentives are just not properly aligned. If you're an executive, you're probably not going to be at a company, let's be honest your whole life. And so therefore. It might be smart for you, even if you have very good intentions, you might make decisions that can pay off in two years [00:17:00] or three years or five years.

You probably not. Again, even if you are a good person, you're probably not going to make the choice that is extremely painful now, but will pay off in 30 years when someone else is running the company. And so we have to be aware of that conflict and really.

[00:17:18] Don Davis PhD, MBA: Yeah. And I think it's, I think the other key point that I extracted out of that as well as knowing the basis that other people had, that they were, let's say playing long game.

One example could be you're an author of multiple books. I'm currently working on a book. I don't have the multiple example, to build from. And also, didn't have all your years of publishing, other things to build from. So that's a it's a brand new journey for me.

And so if I were to sit here and say how long did it take Dory to do. Publisher [00:18:00] first book. It may not be a fair comparison overall for me to compare, let's say you to me, or for anybody else to do any other sort of comparison, unless you really understand the basis of that person is playing the long game from.

[00:18:15] Dorie Clark: Yeah, I think that's right. And that's why, of course, it's always important to make sure that you have a reasonable cross section because, if w if we have an N of one that we're looking at, it's, oh it's not that hard to become a professional ballplayer, Michael Jordan did it.

Why can't I do it? As it happens, there's millions of other people that try to become professional ballplayers that are not Michael Jordan. So we, we need to be. Of oh, okay. I think the great the great element of professional communities is it actually, I oftentimes see people and they sometimes, I think bizarrely don't [00:19:00] want to make friends with other people with their same job because they somehow view it as competition.

I really believe, first of all, we got to get that scarcity thinking gone, but secondly, How, how else are you going to learn things? You know what I mean? It's still important to understand like I'm in a queue and I'm in a community and a bunch of people are writing books.

So let's see, it took this person a year. It took this person six months. It took this person three years. Okay. And you begin to it's like throwing darts at the dartboard. Eventually you can figure out where the dark board is by seeing where the darts land, you're probably not.

Going to find too many people who say, oh, I wrote a book in a day. You're probably not gonna find too many people who say, oh, I wrote a book in 25 years. You're going to see where the cluster is and maybe it takes you six months and maybe it takes you two years, but it's probably going to be in that range.

[00:19:55] Don Davis PhD, MBA: Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it is a it is such an important [00:20:00] thing to do to try and look around it. If you're going to compare yourself to other people then look around at a bigger population than, one or two people. And also, consider what was the basis that they started from is the overall key takeaway that I extrapolated from the book as well.

[00:20:22] Dorie Clark: Yeah. I love that. Thank you, Don.

[00:20:25] Don Davis PhD, MBA: And then, so from, in terms of one of the things that you just touched on, briefly as well as is your F your thinking in terms of networking. I know that you talk a little bit in the book as well, in terms of, this, the short term networking approach, long-term networking approach and infinite networking approach.

I'm just curious, overall, what have you seen that people do wrong? And then what do you see that people do, right? With regards to.

[00:20:57] Dorie Clark: I think probably all of us have [00:21:00] lots of examples of people who do things wrong. They're pretty memorable sometimes, but generally speaking it breaks down to okay.

What I often see is, okay, there's people who are uncomfortable about networks. They feel like, oh God, everybody tells me that I need to network. I guess I need to network. Oh, and now I need a thing. So I guess I'll do it. And then, because they're uncomfortable to begin with because they're not, they've not seen examples of how it's done.

They come in like a bull in a China shop and they're like, oh, I know how networking is done. You just ask for a thing, you get a thing, you need a thing, you take it, Unfortunately, that feels, it feels yucky for the people doing it, which is why they often don't like to do it.

It also feels pretty bad on the other end because it's oh God, he's not even interested in me. He just, he's only interested in what I can do for him. So in my case, what that often looks like is that, you meet, you, meet [00:22:00] somebody. Whatever a three-minute conversation and then the next day they follow up and they want a thing.

They want a thing that actually is a high value thing that. In all honesty is inappropriate for them to ask for, because it usually involves a lot of political capital. Oh, can you introduce me to this person? Or, oh, do you want to invest in my thing? And those are not great things to to ask someone right away, you need to build up some trust.

And so I actually in the long game have a policy that I talked about, which I call the no asks for a year policy because I want. Banish that I don't want people coming to me with the wrong intentions. I don't want even subconsciously to go to other people with the wrong intentions. What I want is just to build a genuine relationship where you get to know the person now after a year, give or take, this is. This is more art than science, but broadly speaking after a year, if you're still [00:23:00] hanging out with somebody, if you're still connecting with somebody, it's because you genuinely like them. And by the time you're friends with someone you're not keeping score, you're not keeping track. It's appropriate to ask for help then because someone's legitimately your friend and vice versa, but no asks for a year, really, I think helps.

And it helps facilitate the long-term mindset.

[00:23:21] Don Davis PhD, MBA: Yeah, I agree. And It's interesting to me because I had a pretty big LinkedIn network before I left GE. I've continued to build that network, especially in this space being a consultant. And the one of the first things that a lot of people, whenever I first, reach out to them, their first question is, what do you mean.

And I honestly don't want anything. I'm trying to, continue to expand my network, the work that you're doing, or the work that your company's doing is interesting. And I really genuinely do not [00:24:00] want a thing. And then I've had people come back, six months into the future, all of a sudden they haven't seen.

And they can't seem to find the right place and they go, Hey, I know a guy that has a big LinkedIn network. I'm going to go ask him. So then they'll come back to me and ask, Hey, do you know somebody that does this? Of course, my very next step is to reach out to the person that I would connect them with and ask them if it's okay, that they would accept that, sort of introduction.

And if it's okay with them then it goes forward. But it's one of those moments where you just. You can see how it can go wrong, but you also could see the absolute value in having it just a broader network and being able to manage the connections appropriate.

[00:24:48] Dorie Clark: Yeah. Yeah, that's right on. I love that Don.

Yeah. And it's true, it's sad, right? That some people are so skeptical when you first reach out to them because it's obviously been burned so many times by [00:25:00] what I call a sneak attack in networking, where it's oh, Hey, let's just get to know each other. And then it's oh, Nope, that was not the goal.

There is a different goal than. Suddenly becoming aware of. And and if you get burned like that once or twice you do unfortunately become rather wary of other people.

[00:25:20] Don Davis PhD, MBA: Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it honestly is so much for somebody like me as well. I don't feel like I'm a very good sales person.

I've never felt like I'm a very good salesperson. So for somebody like me building a true relationship honestly, is the best way. And then to let people see my skills. Decide from there what they want to reach out with and if they want more information so much easier.

Yes. So I also find the premise with regards to rushing results. An interesting one. One of the exercises I [00:26:00] know I've done with clients as well as one where you imagine yourself a distant point in the future. And oftentimes we seem to gloss over the idea that things could go wrong.

But this idea of, just rushing the results is something that, that you also Talk about, overall, what I wanted to know from you is, if I were really, stuck in this short term, thinking I'd want to know from you, how do I become the overnight success and how do, how is it that we have all of these people that have overnight success results that just seem to happen.

What are your beliefs in terms of, just those quick results and quick wins that some people seem.

[00:26:52] Dorie Clark: Yeah. Yeah. It's of course true. This is the thing that plagues the plagues. A lot of people it's true that [00:27:00] some people actually do have overnight success.

Not many clearly, but we see a handful of examples. These are ones that, of course, because it's an interesting story are lauded in the media. And it's oh we get this picture in our head of oh that's how. Looks like that's how it's supposed to happen.

And of course, we just have to realize that is, that's just like this one in a million kind of scenario. Bernay brown, for instance, or assignment Sinek. They are great public speakers. They're fantastic public speakers. It is also true that there are a lot of other people in the world that are great public speakers, but they had, They spent years honing their skills.

So they deserve all the success they've had, but also we have to admit, and certainly they admit there's a huge amount of luck in the fact that they were selected very early on [00:28:00] for their TEDx talks to be up on the Ted. You know what I mean? Now there's huge numbers of TEDx talks. The competition is tighter.

They got out there early and because it was an exciting new platform, it just hit big in a really powerful way. And it is one of, one of these things where, do they deserve it? Yes. They worked hard. They're great speakers. And also there's an element of totally unpredictable luck.

And so one of the things that I talk about in the. As I'm really a believer in, at bats that we have to take a lot of at-bats because we just don't know what is going to be successful. I think about there are multiple, it's not just one person. There are multiple people. About a decade ago that were big sort of digital.

Digital influencers, big people in the tech space and they, [00:29:00] they didn't want to miss the new trend. And so they wrote whole books that came out about Google plus is going to be the next big thing. Here's how to use Google plus here's how to become a Myntra of Google. And of course, Google bless, now is defunct, Google, plus they never took off.

So for, for every sort of hit there's plenty of misses too. And so if your only book you ever wrote was about how amazing Google blesses, you're a little bit out of luck, but those, those guys are smart. And so they keep writing books because okay. The Google plus one did. But other ones can, other ones might.

So we need to be mindful of not putting too many eggs in our baskets and or no, I think that's wrong. We need to be careful of not putting all our eggs in one basket. And that's the metaphor that we [00:30:00] just need to recognize. We make space for luck to happen. The more we put ourselves out there and it can become, discouraging, a lot of people give up after one or two times, cause they're like, oh, it didn't happen.

I didn't become famous. The talk didn't get through, 30 million views, most talks don't get 30 million views. But if you ever want something to hit, you need to give the universe a lot of opportunities for it to happen.

[00:30:28] Don Davis PhD, MBA: Yeah I, there was one quote in preparing for this interview that I ran across of Winston Churchill's, which is "success is not final, failure is not fatal. It's courage to continue that counts."

I really I've reflected on, again, that point in the book where you're talking, through this idea that you have to have, the courage. Go to bat a number of times and be selective the right way.

[00:30:56] Dorie Clark: I agree entirely with premise that we [00:31:00] do need to be selective about about opportunities and we do need to make sure simultaneously that we are putting in the reps so that success can find us

[00:31:13] Don Davis PhD, MBA: With regards to being able to, to focus appropriately, I guess my next question is really, how do you decide and be selective in the right way? What sort of guidance do you have for people?

[00:31:28] Dorie Clark: One of my favorite sources for this is, and throughout the course of the long game, one of the things that I did a lot was take.

What I will call enterprise level strategy the kind of strategy that, that a lot of people do in their businesses. But most of us don't actually think to apply them in our own lives. And I feel like that's a mistake. I feel like there's a lot of wisdom in that. And so I wanted to turn the lens to our own professional lives, our own careers, but something that [00:32:00] has really gained a lot of popularity in the last, 10, 10, 15 years.

Is the concept of the minimum viable product and sort of the lean startup methodology where, the basic idea, this largely comes out of Silicon valley and the work of Steve Blank popularized by Eric Reese. But. We saw so often in the tech world and frankly, everywhere that companies would spend a ton of money creating something, it would be this perfect, amazing thing.

Except there's one thing that's not perfect, even though it's heavily optimized and that is that they would launch it in. Wanted it, and of course that's tragic so much better to create the minimum viable product so that people can actually see if they want it. Are they willing to pay for it even in a scrappy, a stripped down version, and if they are great lean into it, keep doing it, refine it, make it nicer, but [00:33:00] don't bother to do that until you have validated whether there's demand.

And I think the same thing holds true. Don in our own careers that, try a bunch of things and, try the smallest possible test, take one tennis lesson, or write one blog post. See if you like it. See if it seems worth continuing. And if it does, if you enjoy it, or if you get some positive response, okay, I'll keep trying.

I'll keep going for it. And you can periodically reevaluate. But I think the key is to stay loose and to lean into the things that are working or that are.

[00:33:36] Don Davis PhD, MBA: Absolutely. Thank you so much for all of that. There are three questions that I like to ask every guest. And I've asked you these before, since you've been a guest previously.

I just really like to know Dory, what inspired.

[00:33:53] Dorie Clark: So I, I get inspired. There's plenty of things, but I really [00:34:00] get inspired by people who are willing to step up and make sacrifices for other people. I think it's a very noble thing I re I remember recently, just something that touched me was I was reading about sadly a recent terrorist attack in Israel.

And there was a story about a guy who became, basically a hero and he was an Arab policemen that put himself in the line of fire to save, like in Israeli, mom and child, and in, in a world where, it's this. Poles of oh, the Arabs and the Israelis are after each other.

The idea that somebody would, we would be willing to, to step up, to do his job, to make, the ultimate sacrifice, I think is really powerful and an important message for everybody.

[00:34:55] Don Davis PhD, MBA: Yeah, absolutely. And what concerns you. [00:35:00]

[00:35:00] Dorie Clark: I am concerned about besides inflation, which I think we're all concerned about, I would say I'm concerned about.

Artificial intelligence. And I don't mean in terms of it will eat the world and destroy us. Although I guess that's a possibility I'm not going to rule it out. But I'm concerned specifically GPT three, which is created by open AI. It's apparently very good. It's apparently really quite good.

And they open AI is not totally open yet. So the public has not been able to play around with this only special researcher. So I've not laid my hands on it, but I have read a lot about it and I am. Interested and a little concerned about the ramifications because we're really now squarely getting into the realm of [00:36:00] knowledge, work and knowledge workers.

And so I think it's interesting. I think it could empower and enable a lot of things. But I think we are really going to have to think carefully about the future of work. This is a piece about the future of work that I think has been under appreciated.

[00:36:21] Don Davis PhD, MBA: Yeah. Yeah. And there are a lot of people, it seems like that are afraid of it.

And even my space as well. I know I've been asked to to speak with regards to could AI come take all the physicians jobs could people just be. Randomly out of work because now a computer can fully do their job. There is that possibility in some cases.

I also would say though, too, is that, that a machine as of today, isn't really that good at expressing empathy. And one of the. Key things whenever I want [00:37:00] health care myself, is that the person on the other end, can express some level of empathy with how I feel or that, what I'm needing care for.

And I don't see that quickly being replaced, but again there could be, new things on the horizon that all of a sudden there is a way to better express it from a machine as well. So who knows and what.

[00:37:27] Dorie Clark: Yeah. So I am I'm excited these days about, I recently moved to Miami and so it's actually been an exciting process making new friends and, working to build up a social network.

That can be a little exhausting as well, but but it's important. It's invigorating, Discipline. Just like professional networking is a discipline. I think you really have to work at it to to build up a social network. So I am [00:38:00] I'm in the midst of that. And I, I feel virtual.

[00:38:05] Don Davis PhD, MBA: Very good. And so Dory with regards to to some of the things that I know about you, right? You for sure have your own website that we can talk about@dorieclark.com. You have a podcast where you are here on LinkedIn at Newsweek every week. And then you have your recognized expert group.

There's just a whole series of different ways that I know people can get connected in with you. What are some of the ways that some of the other ways that maybe I didn't mention.

[00:38:42] Dorie Clark: Those are fantastic, Don, I appreciate you mentioning them. And I will just say for folks that are particularly interested in long-term thinking of course there's my book, the long game, but in addition to that, there's also a free, long game, strategic thinking self-assessment and a, it folks would like to get that for free and turn the [00:39:00] lens on themselves about how to apply the principles of strategic thinking to your life and your career.

You can get self-assessment for free@dorieclark.com slash the law.

[00:39:09] Don Davis PhD, MBA: And honestly, that's one of my favorite things about your books. I'll just mention this as well as as a, avid reader of all of your material is that you oftentimes have these assessments and other things that you can continue to build from the thing that you've got from the book.

And so I, I definitely have appreciated that. And then at the end of Dory's chapters, oftentimes she'll say, think about this or. I feel almost like that voice of you is, in the back of my head saying, now you should take, don't just read this now, take this and go put some of it in action as well.

So I do appreciate that with your books as well.

[00:39:54] Dorie Clark: Thank you so much, Don. I appreciate.

[00:39:56] Don Davis PhD, MBA: Oh, you're welcome. And Dorie Clark, thank you so much for being a guest [00:40:00] on the life science success podcast. It's been great to talk to you

[00:40:03] Dorie Clark: it is. My pleasure. Thanks Don.