WonderTour

Welcome to Lead Wisely by Wondretor.

This week, we're talking about Kung Fu Panda.

We are in a series on Trust the Process.

In our first episode, we talked a little bit about Po, the Kung Fu Panda himself, and his
journey and how he learns what it means to be great and how he can be great every day.

Now we're gonna shift the focus to be on Shifu, on the master, the mentor, because
honestly, this first movie, Kung Fu Panda, in the series,

It's really all about Shifu's growth just as much as it is about Poe's.

So Brian, in Kung Fu, it's all about the master, it's all about mastery.

But when is it not?

Talk to me about when mastery...

It's actually maybe not that good of a thing.

This is great.

This is very, very wonder tour.

We've got a, we're kicking off trust the process with a movie about how the initial
process doesn't work very well.

but yeah, like you said, the, tend to glorify mastery in many, many domains.

And we, especially in the martial arts is like, as an example that we always use, you've
got a black belt in something, right?

Like, you've, you know, you've studied it for your entire life.

You've got wisdom.

You've got a title.

You've got a role and you.

students and you've got a school and you've got a building and you've got all these cool
pieces of equipment.

Shifu's got this like entire training labyrinth, right?

He's highly skilled and he is not succeeding, right?

As we see the framing at the beginning of this movie, right?

His first student went kind of completely off the rails and tried to murder everybody in
the valley or something and got imprisoned and so now he's kind of second-guessing

himself.

His second batch of students was highly successful, you know, at

was very skilled, but then didn't get picked to be the Dragon Warrior.

And now he's like completely unable to figure out how to train Po.

And I think you could argue that that's because of all of these things are because of his
blind spots, right?

And I think you could argue that that's because of all of these things are because of his
blind spots, right?

He is truly impressive, right?

He is highly skilled.

He has a very strong process.

He's very dedicated.

He's very compassionate.

Like he's got all these great things going for him.

The only piece of wisdom he's lacking is sort of in questioning whether something is
working well or not.

And I think we see this

This is not a rare thing.

This isn't like an unusual story element.

I think we see this all the time in real life that a high level of competence at something
will inherently create blind spots because you rely on that competence.

You frame the world in terms of that competence.

And so people who are extremely technically skilled, you know, we work with a lot of
technical people, right?

People who are extremely technically skilled tend to frame all the problems in the world
in terms of how will I approach it with this technology, right?

You know, and not necessarily think about side effects or, you know, not necessarily think
about other things that have to be solved before you're even appropriate to talk about

technology.

People who are, have been successful in the past will tend to assume that their ideas will
be successful in the future.

People that have a process that has worked very well in the past will tend to assume that
that process will be robust against things that might happen in the future.

Right.

And so we, we see all these flavors of failure modes of like, and of course it will work
because I am the kind of person who's successful or because I'm part of the successful

system or because I've got access to this really powerful stuff.

and it causes you to not question like, well, what if it causes you to not question like,
well, how would I handle something that isn't what I expect?

It causes you to, to assume that things that went bad were, that wasn't my fault.

Something else, you know, that what that thing went wrong.

I thought it was just, he was just bad.

But my process was fine, right?

But mastery tends to blind you to that, right?

The beginner's mind, the idea that I stink at something at least opens me up to the idea
that I should be looking for insights, that I should be like, how am I going to get

better?

What should I, you what am I missing?

Why am I not any good?

Right?

When you're at the beginning of something or when you're frustrated with something, like
we talked about in last episode with Poe, he's like, how are you going to turn me into the

Dragon Warrior?

Like he's frustrated, but he's open.

He's just like, literally tell me how, I'd love to know.

Right?

Shifu doesn't get to that point in this movie until quite deep into the movie where he's
not questioning his own assumptions.

He's not questioning his own knowledge.

And so he's just like, well, from everything I know, this isn't going to work.

You're terrible and you're going to stay terrible.

And that's not what I want.

Right.

And so he's a terrible leader for most of this movie, right?

He's kind of a terrible leader.

Like he doesn't get his favorite students where they want to be.

And he doesn't get his disfavorite student anything at all.

And he's frustrated and anxious the whole time.

So that's not, that's not very successful for him.

So what is, you know, what does, does that look like something familiar to you?

Have you been in that situation?

absolutely.

mean, there's plenty of times where there's the purveyor of the current system, right?

There's a VP, there's a senior manager in positions over a certain something, right?

Government official, you name it.

And they've been appointed there because they are the master of the current system.

They're really good at navigating it.

They understand what the system does and doesn't do, how it's supposed to work, who's
supposed to do what.

And the problem with that is that the more you know, the more biased you are.

So you continue to build up constraints in your mind.

Well, it only works this way and I have to run the process this way.

And so then you get this new blood in your organization.

You get these new ideas that are like, well, what if we break the constraints?

What if we reverse the polarity?

What if we flip the script?

And it's very hard for that person to see things that way.

I've seen it before, even where their boss, you know, maybe the president is telling the
VP, have to change because we're going this direction now.

you previously everything you've built is designed to do one thing.

Now we're going to do another thing.

And that person, it is hard to internalize that change.

It is really difficult to, because basically now you have to go through a process of
remastering.

And I think that's what we see with Shifu, because if mastery is really all about doing
the thing by the books and then learning to be flexible to do the thing, and then learning

to do the thing by muscle memory.

And that is kind of a common model for mastery.

You have to go back to the second step and say, okay, well, what is the flexibility based
on this new outcome that we're trying to achieve or based on our lack of ability to hit

the current outcomes?

So yeah, riffing on some things that we have talked about in the past in Wonder Tour,
right?

I like to joke, know, middle management or the white blood cells of the organization,
right?

The people that were successful in the current way of doing things and were therefore
promoted, their job is to reject change.

Like they're trying to protect the process.

They trust the process for sure, but they trust it to a fault, right?

They are not necessarily...

intrinsically or extrinsically motivated to make something new happen.

And even when there is an extrinsic push to do something new, like you're, like you said,
your muscle memory is like, that's not how we do things around here.

that's not the thing that it was successful last time we did it five years ago or for
continuously for the last 40 years or whatever your, you know, whatever your framework is.

so.

one of the skills is just recognized on like, this is a new challenge or, this is an old
challenge that we keep failing at.

Like we've never been good at this and we're not going to magically be good at it by
tightening the controls from six sigma to seven sigma degrees of precision, right?

Like that's not the thing that keeps messing up.

Right.

And so, so Shifu is in that situation at the, for the probably the first half of this
movie, right?

Where he is not open to the idea that his approach might be wrong.

And so the things that are wrong in the world, the things that are not going well are
either incomprehensible to him.

Like why is master Uguay doing the things that he's doing or disappointing to him?

Like why is Tidal in the way he is, or just frustrating?

Like, why do I even have to deal with this stupid panda?

Yeah, that's it's so good.

And I'm excited to talk a little bit more about how Shifu overcomes this, because it is a
really tough spot to be in.

And we will all be in that position at some point.

You know, my role up until now has been primarily transformation leader for initiatives,
right?

So I'm the person coming in and saying the system needs to change.

Here's the things we need to do.

And often the person advising on how to accept that change and how to understand that
change and adopt it.

But even myself, in certain areas, I've even seen that I will get locked up in the
previous way of doing things where I've spent so many hours doing it one way that it's

really difficult for me to understand a different way to do it.

Right.

No, that's totally true.

All right.

Well, let's hit the intro and then we'll talk a little bit more about Shifu's arc, right?

Hi, I'm Brian Nutwell.

And we are on a journey to lead wisely, to become better leaders by touring fantastic
worlds and inspiring lore by going on a wonder tour.

We connect leadership concepts to story context because it sticks to our brains better.

You can find out more at wondertourpodcast.com or on YouTube by looking up Lead Wisely,
all one word.

Right.

So we are developing mastery and also challenging the status quo.

And I think we've seen like over and over again, those things can sort of bleed into each
other, right?

You can be a revolutionary and have great ideas about the new way of doing things.

And then the new way of doing things can calcify into the standard way of doing things.

And then it becomes the establishment against which we are struggling.

But Shifu's in this situation where he is, it's clearly not working.

He's clearly really frustrated, right?

And his mentor, his mentor leaves him after challenging him, you've to open your mind and
then like walks away.

like, literally he doesn't have any safety net anymore.

evaporates into cherry blossoms into the spirit realm or something, know, so it's a very.

Does he come back in future Kung Fu Panda movies as a Qui-Gon?

I mean, yeah, it is.

As a force ghost?

Yeah, there you go.

That seems appropriate.

So Shifu's in this situation where he's really frustrated because he's got this big
problem he's trying to deal with and he doesn't, he's not succeeding despite incredible

efforts and incredible skill and incredible, you know, life experience.

And so, what is it finally, what is it finally shocks him out of this?

And so, what is it finally, what is it finally shocks him out of this?

What is the inflection point here?

Do we have a?

Again, our mountaintop moment for this movie is the movie that sort of encapsulates the
lesson that we're trying to talk about in this episode.

So take me into this, Drew.

Okay, so our mountaintop here, for the first time potentially ever on Wander Tour, think
we're doing the same mountaintop as the first episode on Kung Fu Panda, but we're gonna do

it from a different perspective.

So the first episode we talked about Po's experience.

And from Po's perspective, he said, how are you gonna turn me into the Dragon Warrior?

But from Shifu's perspective, things are very different.

Po has expectation of Shifu.

Shifu has expectation of himself.

So we're leading up to this moment where they're on this mountain top, it's near their
monastery, their dojo.

And Shifu has, like you said, Uguay is gone, his turtle master.

And so now he has to think about things for himself.

But the last thing Uguay left him with was a reframing.

And he reframed the mastery.

He reframed the process and the path for Shifu.

He basically suggested to him that you if you cannot think differently about this, you
will not be able to overcome.

Shifu kept challenging Uge like, no, are you sure that this panda is actually the dragon
warrior?

And like it like the greatest master, right?

Uge is like, like this is for you to figure out.

Now I'm leaving this in your hands.

This is the perfect time for me to leave.

And now it's on you.

And this is the first time when Shifu gains any level of confidence that Po actually is
the dragon warrior.

And so when he comes back to have this conversation with Poe now, he is forced to
reconsider his process.

Instead of just continuing to force Poe through the same rungs that he puts all these
other, the furious five through, he's like, when Poe asks him, how are you going to turn

me into a Dragon Master?

What does Shifu's response?

This is, I don't know.

How powerful is that, right?

How powerful is that as the greatest master left, right?

When somebody asks you a question, you're like, how are you going to solve the biggest
problem we have?

You know, it takes him an hour worth of movie to get to the point where he's like, I don't
actually know how we're going to solve this problem, right?

I'm the best we've got, right?

And I don't know.

I do not have a clue how I'm going to turn you into what we need.

don't know how we're going to survive the next six months.

That's it.

first step in the process, Brian?

That has to be the first step in the process to remaster or whatever we want to call this
is recognizing the current process is not achieving the desired results.

I don't have to immediately have an answer.

I just have to admit what I currently know is not enough.

Right.

And everything that everything in your experience, everything in your environment of like,
you're the master, you're the boss, you're in charge, you've been successful in the past

And everything that everything in your experience, everything in your environment of like,
you're the master, you're the boss, you're in charge, you've been successful in the past

is telling you, you're not supposed to say, I don't know.

You're not supposed to say like, I'm not sure how we're going to solve this problem.

Like it, looks like weakness.

looks like incompetence.

looks like why are you in charge then?

Right.

You know, but having both the gravitas of like having demonstrated mastery and the
openness to like.

But the exact things that I've been doing haven't worked in the past.

I don't know exactly what we're going to do.

Well, the unlock for that is he opens his eyes.

He starts seeing the world around him, not in terms of things that don't match his
previous expectation.

He sees the world around him in terms of opportunities of like, what, what's available to
me that I can use my mastery on?

What's, what can I leverage with the skills I've already got?

How do I, how do I get where I want to go?

How do I look at this world in a slightly different way?

And that's, know,

Hardly an original's message for this movie, but it's a really fun way to deliver it.

And I love that both of these things are in the same conversation.

We have the learner revealing that he is both frustrated and still committed, but
wavering, like on the edge of quitting.

And we have the master revealing that he's like, I don't know how we're going to succeed,
but I'm also still committed.

Like I'm interested in making this work.

And if those two things can come together in the same conversation, then you have a basis
for trying something new.

both with a good heart, both with intention, both with willingness to adapt.

I love it, Brian, because you're bringing back our limit break framework.

If you haven't seen that episode, I'll put that episode in right now.

You can look somewhere over here and you'll see it.

But the limit break talks about how we need to have this dissatisfaction, but that
dissatisfaction with the way that things are needs to come into alignment.

And if we don't bring that, if we don't have a mission and we don't come into alignment
with other people around us, we're not going to be able to overcome.

not going to be able to beat Tai Lung.

And that's the moment that we see here.

It's not that this isn't alignment for these people.

This is the beginning of alignment, the agreement that they're not on the same page and
that neither of them just has the answer.

So something else is going to have to happen.

And what's going to happen is they're going to go on a journey and a training montage, and
they're going to find out some new information.

So in this context then, how does Shifu succeed?

What's the unlock here where he actually figures out what he's gonna do?

So Shifu, he has to take in an unorthodox approach, right?

Instead of being convergent and continuing to follow the same process, which by the way,
he's correct that they need a process, right?

Mastery requires a process.

It requires templates and frameworks and consistently, repetitively doing things and
learning.

That is not off point.

We're not changing that aspect.

And that's where we, when we talk about adapting the process, the key is not necessarily
changing the way that we do things.

I guess, sorry, the key is keeping a process oriented mindset, but just considering that
the old process is more malleable and some of it may need to be thrown away completely.

And that's what he does, right?

Instead of assuming that Po from his perspective is this highly motivated Kung Fu master
who has all these capabilities, he walks into the room where Po's in the kitchen or the

cupboard or whatever, and he's foraging for food and he sees Po

able to perform some of the poses and do some of the moves that he's going to need to be
able to do, but he's only able to do it when he's intrinsically motivated to be able to

get the next dumpling or cookies or whatever.

Yes, this is, which is, which is a great fun scene, right?

And with this idea of like, he finally figured out what the learner was motivated by,
right?

It not, and it wasn't the standard things that they did.

wasn't the standard framework that he was looking for.

But it's like, he's highly food motivated.

And so we get an, we get a comical training montage involved chasing a dumpling up and
down a mountain.

Right.

So, okay.

We're not going to use this exact technique probably with most of our own learners, but I
think we can recognize that.

When we don't have aligned motivations and we don't, you know, we don't understand what
the student is intrinsically motivated to do.

We don't understand like exactly how we're going to get people to try things.

we're going to be much less successful.

We're going to be kind of battering at them with our assumptions and our motivations.

And in this case, she finally figures out like, and once he figures this out, then it
actually becomes kind of fun.

Right.

Then it becomes then like exactly like you said, you see all of the standard things that
you see in a growth process.

We see repetition over and over again, building the muscle memory.

We see reflection, what things aren't working well, let's adapt around that.

Let's change the process until it does a good job.

We see progression.

We see you simple things and then do slightly harder things and then do more harder things
above and that.

Those elements are key to any of the processes.

And those are things that Shifu knows how to do with this, know, is blindfolded.

But then exactly how to fit them in, like how to build those things in the context of this
student's current.

capabilities and the students motivations.

That's the fun part we get to see on the screen, but like that's probably not an unusual
thing.

No, it's not.

And it's, just a simple move from a push to a pole instead of pushing, pushing, pushing,
Hey, here's your regiment.

Here's your things that you have to do.

You know, you get in line with this schedule.

He creates a pole and he just says, okay, I'm going to put this over there, this thing
that you want and you'll come to it.

And then on your way to it, I will concoct.

will curate activities for you that will teach you.

And then you will be motivated because you're moving toward the thing that you want in the
first place.

And this is.

That is a whole nother series, Brian.

That would be one series that I might have to get off of Top Dead Center on.

That would be one series that I might have to get off of Top Dead Center on.

That would be one series that I might have to get off of Top Dead Center on.

I might have to relearn the mastery of lean systems, right?

Trying to look at what the customer or the user actually wants and then helping them to
achieve that versus as the mentor, as the boss saying, no, this is what you need to

achieve.

And I'm seeing everything through that lens.

And then I'm putting you through the ringer trying to get you there.

Again, like you said, you can use a lot of the same processes to be able to do it.

It's just a reframing of it from a push from me to you, to a pull where I'm gonna put this
thing and you're going to come towards it.

It's just a reframing of it from a push from me to you, to a pull where I'm gonna put this
thing and you're going to come towards it.

Right.

And so the way I think about that in a, you know, in a business context, right.

And so the way I think about that in a, you know, in a business context, right.

In a, a workplace context, right.

Is the push is like, do this thing and I'll give you more money.

Do this thing and I'll give you a higher title.

Do this thing and I will, you know, and you will be right.

Or, or fear do this thing or this bad thing will happen.

Do this thing or we'll all be out of a job or you'll get a bad review or other people will
get promoted instead of you or this other group will be more successful than we are.

Right.

There's these, there's all of these external motivations that you can, that are the easier
ones to provide as a, as a leader, as a, as part of an organization.

Right.

The challenge is figuring out what's the intrinsic motivation.

Right.

If people are, if people are motivated by money, great.

That's the thing that's a lever you can pull, but why are they motivated by money?

Like having money piled up in a bank isn't really that valuable to most people that aren't
Warren Buffett.

Right.

Most people want money so that they can do something for their family, for their lives,
for their future.

Right?

Most people fear motivation is because they already believe the fear because they've had a
bad experience or because they are really, you know, they're risk averse or something like

that.

But that's, that's still a push.

That's still going to move them away from something.

They're not going to run really hard towards something.

Unless it's something that they intrinsically want to accomplish, unless they feel
intrinsically enjoy being good at it, or they intrinsically enjoy getting the output, or

they can see themselves progressing in their lives towards something that they want.

And if you can tease those things out, then you've got a lot more power than you've got
people that will work infinitely hard and will go do the splits up on the third level

cupboard to get the secret cookie stash out, right?

Without even asking.

Just let them know that it's there and they'll just go do amazing things to get there.

And that's the fun part, right?

That's the fun part as a leader.

If you get to the point where you sort of get the unlock of like, I can just lay this
challenge out and somebody would be like, thank you for the challenge and go run really

hard at it because it's the right challenge for them.

time, then you know, you're succeeding, they're succeeding and everything seems less
frustrating.

Yeah, so I want to bring in a good example here.

Those some of you may know our third every once in a while co-host who also founded wonder
tour Derek Cobb.

Yes, our good friend Derek and Derek has a good example of this right.

So Derek at one point working with some of his team members.

Derek has a team member who is extremely competent and super skilled and all about
achieving results like loves to.

be able to deliver and show value and push the organization forward.

And Derek, you know, as the mentor was trying to figure out, okay, well, how do I leverage
this to get that person to be motivated to do the same thing around their relationships?

How do I get them to be motivated towards to build these great relationships instead?

And it's understanding that person's motivation.

It's understanding that that person gets a lot out of

setting a goal and achieving it, right?

They're a driver.

And so they want to achieve goals.

They want goals that other people, you know, that are challenging.

They really want challenging goals, goals that other people think they can't achieve.

And so when you start to set that up and instead you reframe it as a pull mechanism, not
necessarily as a chip, like, you can't do this.

Not at all, because that's, that's rarely the motivator that we're looking for, but more
so as a, if we could do this, it would be so cool.

It would unlock this level of, of,

vision or ideal state in the future if we could do this.

And this is actually just as important as all that technical stuff that we're doing, as
all that engineering work that we're doing.

And you can be the one that can do it for us, right?

You can be the dragon warrior in this context, right?

No, absolutely.

Right.

I have worked with, I've worked with team members who their intrinsic motivation was they
hated being bored and they love solving problems.

Right.

And so you could be, you could be coming off the end of a six week long arduous project
and you'd have an hour of downtime and you're like, Hey, I've got this new problem.

like, thank you.

Cool.

I've got a new thing to work on.

Right.

Like, know, like the thing that they feared was being bored was, was not having a cool
thing to do.

And so like, as soon as you present them.

Well, the thing to go run at it.

I've worked with other team members who were very process oriented, who hated having to
improvise, who hated when everything was an exception.

And if you present them with like, okay, let's sit down together and like actually codify
this.

And then we'll start to work with everybody else to make this the way we do things.

Like they'll just run with it.

Like, okay, great, fabulous.

I will be the person that figures out the details of the process and writes it down.

Like that's what greatness looks like to them.

But those are.

Those are intrinsic, right?

I don't have to teach somebody, you know, it's difficult to teach somebody to be highly
process oriented.

Often that's an intrinsic attribute.

But if you can find those people and like, okay, this is the flavor of greatness that's
right for you.

All right, let's see how we can align that with the stuff that we want.

you can come back later to talk about that one, Brian, how to teach somebody to be more
process oriented because I've had some experience with that.

I've had to teach myself to be very process oriented because it is not my nature.

am much more of a go with the flow and don't have super clear structures for things.

there are absolutely ways to ingrain that mindset into people.

I just want to finish with one thing in this practical application.

I think this has been super helpful even to me to kind of unpack some of this, but

You mentioned at the beginning, the traditional means that in corporations or even in just
like the basic way that we think about what people are motivated by, sometimes those are

too thin.

Sometimes those are not the root of their motivation.

The typical, they're motivated by the chip on their shoulder.

they're motivated by money.

They're motivated by title.

Those are kind of surface deep.

Those are kind of surface deep.

And a lot of times in my experience, that's as deep as we go when we talk about improving
somebody's development.

How do we go deeper?

Because that's what Shifu does.

He goes a little bit deeper than that.

He says, OK, well, I have to actually study Po.

If I don't study Po, I'm not going to be able to learn more about what makes him tick,
because Po's not going to just tell you necessarily that food is his motivator.

You got to spend time with him.

got to build trust with him so that he is transparent and vulnerable with you so that you
can understand what truly motivates them.

Because in my experience, that person who's motivated by money is not motivated by money.

They're motivated by some past experience of insecurity.

They're motivated by their family, right?

They're motivated by some dream that they have that they want to achieve, that they
believe money is the key to.

And if you can get past that and instead understand what is at the root of it, suddenly
the money thing

becomes a little bit less significant and that person can actually get more fulfillment
and they can be more motivated each day to walk in to learn to become the master

themselves.

100%.

No, that's awesome.

And, and how do you get there?

Right?

How do you get that level of understanding is exactly what we saw in these episodes.

Right?

You have at least one really honest conversation, right?

How are you going to turn me into what I want?

I don't actually know, but I think we're both committed to doing it.

So let's do it.

Let's do it together.

Right.

Getting to the point where you can have that conversation and being willing on both sides.

to be a little bit vulnerable about like, I don't have the answers and I'm not satisfied
with the current state of the world.

But maybe we have a shared mission.

Maybe we have some shared goals and we're certainly all in this together.

So let's go, let's go be as awesome as we can together.

All right, let's go learn it together.

That's a silly lesson to learn from a panda.

But nonetheless valid.

Yeah, this is Wander Tour, right?

We want to learn lessons from unlikely places.

And Kung Fu Panda, just another opportunity.

And Kung Fu Panda, just another opportunity.

Yes.

Love it.

All right.

Thanks so much, Drew.

This was a lot of fun.

was got some stuff out of Kung Fu Panda that I was not necessarily expecting, but, this is
a great conversation as always.

We thank all of you for joining us and hope you'll come back next time.

What are we, what's our next episode here?

We are going to have another, another, another movie about a process that goes wrong and
then having to develop a process around it.

We are going to have another, another, another movie about a process that goes wrong and
then having to develop a process around it.

we're going to get, Matt Damon stranded on Mars in the science fiction movie, The Martian.

Hope you'll join us for that one.

In the meantime, just remember as always, character is destiny.