The Failure Gap

Speaker 2 (00:00)
Hello and welcome to the Failure Gap, where we talk with leaders about crossing the space between agreement and alignment. We love talking with interesting people and today we're joined by Cyril Peupion. In 2006, Cyril launched Work Smarter Live Better (WSLB) with one simple vision, providing efficiency solutions to millions around the world. With his team, Cyril has built WSLB into a highly respected efficiency coaching and consulting firm.

He authored Work Smarter, Live Better, a bestselling business book. And today, as well as managing and leading WSLB, Cyril is coaching CEOs and senior executives. He's passionate as a business leader and a coach who focuses on helping people to change their work habits, take control, and dramatically improve their performance. Today, Cyril lives in Sydney with his wife and three children and works with clients in Australia and around the world. Cyril, welcome to the Failure Gap.

Speaker 1 (00:55)
Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (00:57)
Yeah, I'm delighted. I'm looking forward to this conversation. And I would love for you to just share with our listeners a little bit about your journey to becoming the CEO and the founder of WSLV and what brought you to where you are today.

Speaker 1 (01:12)
I was going to answer a failure. That's what brought me to... There you go. That's as we go straight into it.

About when I was in my mid 30s, I was the leader of a one of the leader of a global business. And I absolutely loved my job. I love what I was doing. But after three years, I resigned.

So in my mid-30s, I became one of the leader for British Airways in France. And I actually loved the job. I had been trained first as a, a RNT call engineer. So I did an engineer degree and you know, RNT call is something that I loved. And on the other side, after that, I did an MBA. And so becoming a leader of British Airways was almost the, the meeting of the both. It was the,

a ironical industry that I really enjoyed and the business side. And so I was so proud, loved it. The team were great. The environment was great. And then it hit me. I had 14 direct reports and I was like completely swamped with requests, with things to do. I was part of a leadership team in France and ⁓ we were spending our life in meetings.

And I discovered the joy of working for a global organization where you received email 24 seven.

And my way, Julie, of coping with that was to work harder. So I started working longer and longer hours. I started coming back home late. I started checking emails while I was in the evening on weekends, trying to cope by working smarter, working harder. And it was a time where ⁓ TK, who was my fiance at the time, who now is my wife, she had came to live with me from England. So you can see that.

even, you know, French and English can get along together. We still married after 25 years. So she had moved. Yeah, I know. She had come all the way from England to live with me in Paris. And that was not the life that we wanted. It was just, I was stressed. I was working late and it led me to resign. You know, when you remember a moment and I really remember being in this canteen.

with Gilles, my leader, having a lunch with him because I had to, I asked him if we could have a catch up and I said, I'm leaving, I'm resigning.

And Julie planted a seed in me. I had done what is considered one of the best education in France. It's called the Grandes Ecoles and then probably the best MBA that you can do in France. And no one had ever taught me how to work. I had learned a qualification. I had learned a great thing about business, about the architectural space and so on,

but I had never been taught how to work. And my way of coping with that was to work harder and harder. And that planted a seed in me that led quite a few years after to create Work Smart Early Better because I had never been taught how to work and I have seen so many leaders who had the same gap that I had. This gap between we have great education, but no one had ever taught me how to work. That's what started Work Smart Early Better.

Speaker 2 (04:51)
I think that's so fascinating. And it reminds me actually many, many years ago, I had a sports coach who told us we were kind of going through practice as a team and maybe weren't really like putting in the effort of that day at practice. I don't know. But she sat us down and she said, you know, it's one thing to know how to play the game and it's another thing to know how to practice. And those are two different disciplines, right? Like the skills of playing in the game and knowing the rules of the game and knowing that this and that, that's all good.

but you also need to know how to practice effectively. And it's almost, when you were talking, it reminded me of that moment with her, because what I'm hearing you say is, it's not enough just to know the technical details of business, that you get in an MBA program or in your aeronautics background, you're kind of knowing about that industry. You also have to know how to work, like how to do the work as a human being. And that seems like a really interesting realization.

Speaker 1 (05:50)
Well, it's so true what you're ⁓ And it's simple things. not, have to be complex. When we work with a team, one of the first thing we do is we look at how they manage this flow of information that we're receiving. And so I work with leaders literally around the world. had for the last 18 years since starting Work Smarterly Better, it took me to about 19 to 20 countries around the world.

And so I see leaders from so many big companies and I ask them and say, how do you manage this flow of things that comes to you? They call email, they call Slack, they call team, they call WhatsApp. You we bombarded every day. Yeah. And people say, ⁓ don't, it's a nightmare. I log in in the morning and I try to catch up with all the things that come in. I go to a meeting and I come back and I try to catch up.

I even have a wonderful tool called my mobile phone. I can walk to meeting. I see more and more people that would even try to catch up with their email while they're in meeting because it's zoom meeting, it's team meeting. And I asked them, I said, why, why are you doing this way? What led you to this habits? Yeah. And most people say, I don't know. I received so many things. I tried to do what I think was right. Is that the best way of doing it?

Maybe yes, maybe no, have they been shown how to do this?

Speaker 2 (07:22)
Yeah, it's the boiling frog, right?

Speaker 1 (07:24)
You can take this for how do you manage your calendar? How do you manage your meeting? How do you manage your priority? How do you manage your task? mean, even simple things. How do you manage your to-dos? And most people who say, still have the good old, you know, literally what I see, Julie, is I still have a notepad with a good old pen and paper and I write every day what I have to do. 100%. And people say, it's a love and hate relationship. You say, I know I'm supposed to do a to-do list.

And I like the fact that I write things down, but I hate it at the same time because as soon as I do something, there's two or three new thing on this damn list, sorry for my French, and it's a never ending list. And I was like, why are you doing this way? And most people say, I don't know, I've got so many things, I have to have a list. Is that the best way of doing it? Maybe yes, maybe no, have they been shown how to do this?

Speaker 2 (08:06)
Yeah.

Hmm, yeah, I think that's so true for so many people. And it's a perfect example of the failure gap actually that many of us find ourselves in. say, we wanna do a better job of managing everything and we wanna work smarter, not harder. We wanna do all these things. It's easy to agree to that. It sounds like a great idea, but it's very hard to align to change your behaviors, to change how you show up for work in a way that shifts that in a big enough way to make it so that you don't feel like you have to quit your job.

Speaker 1 (08:50)
It is, and what I find fascinating is, and when I work with a team, so when we work with leaders, we take them through a three month journey to completely deconstruct and reconstruct their work habits. And by the way, there's a lot of things that do really well, but there's a lot of things you can improve. And what I found Julie is improvement is never a one big thing that you do. It is a lot of little fine tuning. It is a lot of...

hey, rather than doing this way, can you change a little bit this? And so it's a little 3 % improvement here, 4 % improvement here, 10 % improvement here. Now on their own, they look like nothing, but added together, compounded, they make a huge difference. And it's a bit like what you've mentioned, which is really important. One of the things we found is help them to practice the right way. Most people don't do this. And so,

The way I have found that over the last 18 years works really well is we never dump knowledge on people. We don't say, hey, you have a gap. This is what you should do. Good luck. Because it never work. Because people will say, yeah, I like the idea. And then they go back to their desk and they've got another 50 email meeting and so on. And they don't. And so the only way is to make them practice the right way with you. So for example,

A stupid thing about email management, just as simple as this. Give them the best way in 10, 15 minutes how to do it, and then spend 45 or half an hour with them, say, now let's do it. Calendar management, prioritization management, show them in very quickly what to do, and then make them practice exactly what you said, sit down with them and say, now let's do it together. Because that's how people learn, not when they listen, when they do.

I'm a real big believer in that.

Speaker 2 (10:49)
Yeah. Yeah. And I think there's something so powerful. At Kerikin's group, we talk a lot about nudges, not shoves. How do you nudge yourself and nudge others into new ways of working? Don't try and shove somebody into something new ⁓ when they haven't had the opportunity to kind of nudge their way there. And I think there's real power in that. So often we just want this big answer, but it's a lot of little things that change the world.

Speaker 1 (11:14)
I would agree. I'm a big fan of the little 1 % improvement. think change and improvement is not, as I mentioned, one big thing. I'm a real big fan, even for me in my life. There are so many things I do wrong. I make so many things. Ask my wife and she'll tell you how many things I can do wrong. I wrote this book called Work Smarterly Better. And to my surprise, the book became a bestseller and so suddenly I'm on TV, on radio and so on.

My wife of my 50th birthday with my friend offered me another book called Work Smarter Live Better, the alternative version. ⁓ All the things, my little flaw and failure. ⁓ It's a book. This is so many. The book is not for sale, Julie. ⁓

Speaker 2 (11:53)
about

⁓ Where do I get that book? ⁓ my goodness, what a great gift. Well, it kind of brings me to a question that we often ask our guests, which is for you personally, where have you thought, gosh, I agree, it would be great if I did that or if I learned how to do that or if I grew in that way and you've either struggled or been able to move into alignment and get it done. Is there something that you could share with the audience that really strikes you?

Speaker 1 (12:08)
Not published.

Where I struggle, Julie, is that what you say? Yeah.

There are many things. I don't know if it's a personal business thing because for me it's actually very linked to them. One thing that I struggled and in the end managed to do it but it was a real big learning curve was writing my book.

Speaker 2 (12:57)
Hmm, yeah, a lot of people say I want to write a book. I agree that would be great, but they don't get it done.

Speaker 1 (13:03)
And it took me so long. I had all the right reason not to do it. So I had had many of my clients saying, Cyril, you need to write a book about it. And I had all the right reason. I'm not a writer. Now, when I went to university and when I was in school in university, I have a math and physics degree. I'm an engineer. I was terrible at writing. Writing was not

my thing. Okay. And my sisters, if you look at my both sisters, they're much more literacy than me. They were much better at writing. I was the, you know, as I say, the math guy. And so I had all those reasons, you need to say, I can't do it. I don't have the time. I'm, you know, is not going to be successful. How can I do that? And so on. And it's really interesting how the mind play all those tricks on you about the I can't. And if you think you can't,

Speaker 2 (13:44)
Yeah.

you can't.

Speaker 1 (14:03)
And

then I don't know why there's one day where...

this no no change your mindset you don't have to write it's a big thing that changed for me not only for this book but in my life where I'm a perfectionist and there's a real fine line between a perfectionist and a procrastinator yep because the perfectionist is a I can't do it perfectly now so I'll do it later and so you've become a procrastinator really fine

Speaker 2 (14:23)
⁓

Yeah, 100%.

Speaker 1 (14:41)
100%. I'm one of them. And so it was like, I can't do a perfect book now, so I'll do it later, which we never.

And then there's two things that change. One, said, look Cyril, your goals when you created Work Smart, Study Better was to touch millions of people. It's going to be almost impossible to do that with one-on-one training or even group training. A book is a great way to do this. So if you're really true to your vision, you need to write a book, not as a brochure about your business, but something that you really want to give. And so there was suddenly,

something which is a very important philosophy for me about giving back. And so that was one thing. The second thing which was very important for me was just write the first draft.

Speaker 2 (15:35)
Just get it down.

Speaker 1 (15:37)
Just get it done. And if his first draft is terrible, at least he'll be better than nothing.

Speaker 2 (15:43)
Yeah, easier to edit than create, right?

Speaker 1 (15:46)
100 % and I wrote Julie's 16 draft of Work Smarterly Better before I was happy to publish it. But I would have never, without those two key things, one about, forget about yourself, it's about giving and if you really want to touch people. And the other one is about just do something, which is even if it's bad, at least just start somewhere. And as you say, it's better to improve something existing than starting from scratch and editing.

And that changed completely the game.

Speaker 2 (16:21)
Those are two really interesting takeaways for anyone who's feeling stuck in agreement that they would love to do something or it would be a good idea regardless of what it is. This idea of find, we talk about that, know, Simon Sinek talks about find your why. I like to switch that a little bit and think about what's it in service to. And if you know what that is, then it makes it easier sometimes to be willing to take the risk and push yourself into action on it.

And then, you know, what my father always used to say, once started, half done. And just get started a little step. You can steal that, Cyril.

Speaker 1 (16:57)
Definitely going to one started half done. I absolutely love it.

Speaker 2 (17:00)
Yeah, but that's what it is, right? Like just get started and that's half the battle and then everything else flows from there.

Speaker 1 (17:07)
I love what you're saying about serving. again, that was a failure for me for ⁓ quite a long time where I think I compare myself to my wife TK and TK is a natural giver and carer. She's a super carer. I was much more, you know, me self-centered, big egoist, you know, let's be honest. I was like, I want to things for myself and so on.

And it took me

It took me a while, took me maturity, growth to understand. I love the quote from Churchill, the secret of living is giving.

Speaker 2 (17:54)
I love that.

Speaker 1 (17:55)
And

it took me a while to understand that. once I, and again, I'm not, I fail on this often, I'm by far not perfect, but I think it was this change of mentality about, well, the secret that I took me a while is really giving back. And whenever you give back to others, you get back so much down the

Speaker 2 (18:18)
Yeah, I think you create a cycle that continues to perpetuate itself. And that's a really beautiful thing. I actually think that that is one of the things about moving into alignment as a team. We talk about individuals struggling to change their own habits and get ⁓ into doing something in a different way or accomplishing something like writing a book or learning to play an instrument or whatever it might be. But when you get a whole group of people trying to do something together,

It just multiplies in complexity. But if one or two people are just really continually feeding it with that positive intention and that idea of let's make a contribution back to our clients or our customers or whatever the end state is, it really does feed on itself.

Speaker 1 (19:07)
I 100 % agree.

Speaker 2 (19:09)
⁓ Yeah, I would love it, Sarah, if maybe you could share an example with a team that you've worked with or even in your own team with your own company of something where you've seen people be able to come together in that way and really move from agreeing, like everybody looking around the table and everybody's like, yeah, that's a good idea. And then they look away, they don't want to make eye contact because they're just like, I'm not, who's going to do it? Where's that going to happen?

where they've moved from that energy to really getting aligned and getting energized to do something together as a team.

Speaker 1 (19:44)
Yeah, I remember one of my first groups. So when I started 18 years ago, I started working, doing one-on-one and working with leaders to help them to work smarterly better, completely changing their work habits. And pretty quickly I realized that it would be much more powerful to work with teams. Because when you work with just one person, let's say a leader,

He or she might say, yes, it has an impact on me, but I still have a team around me. And if I don't change their ways of working and their mentality, then I haven't done even a half of the job. And so we completely changed the model very, very soon on at Work Smarter, the Better to say, now, when we work with a leader, we work with a leader and he's our team. And I remember working with this leader, in Australia, part of a large bank.

And we took Neil and his team through a journey where we completely changed their ways of work.

And two things really struck me.

One is the personal impact and one is the team impact. On the personal impact, at the end of the journey after three, four months, I asked this team and say, what was the impact for you?

And I'll never forget what Marnie said. Marnie stood up and she said, Cyril, the impact for me is my desk is clean. Remembering that 18 years ago, we had what I call messy desk. Now the messes move soft, but they say, I'm not super organized. I see the white space at the end of my inbox every day, which I haven't seen the white space for years.

And I know I will achieve my KPIs. I know I will succeed.

but that's not the big wind. That's what I thought. And then she said, Julie, but that's not the big wind for me. And I was like, what? That sounds really amazing. What's the big wind for me? And she said, the big wind for me, sir, all these, I sleep at night. I used to have to have a pen and paper on my bedside table because...

I was waking in middle of the night saying, I forgot to do this and I need to do this. And she said, I was constantly in overdrive with work. She said, for the first time in a long time, I sleep at night. You've changed my life. And that became this moment, Julie, where you think this is why I'm doing what I'm doing. This is really became quite an important moment for me. So that was that you're in service of that person. And then I spoke with Deal and I said, what's the impact for you as a leader?

Speaker 2 (22:30)
Yeah, that's how you

Speaker 1 (22:40)
And he said, Cyril, it's really simple. I want you to imagine my team as a carriage. And each person is pulling to, the carriage is our strategy, our vision where we wanna go. And everyone is pulling. The problem is before, everyone was pulling in a different direction. Now imagine when you have a carriage where everyone is pulling in different direction. What happened? Nothing happened. It might move if they're suddenly lucky, but really slowly.

And he got a lot of opposite force. He said, changing the way they work, now working as a team, did this. We're all going in same direction. And it was this strength of saying, we've not clarified what's really important, the few things that we need to focus on. We have created not only alignment, but we're spending so much more time as a team on the thing that matter, that we've accelerated everything by six months and I know we will.

perform this. And so for me, it's the power not only of changing your personal work habits, but when the team start aligning that, it's so powerful.

Speaker 2 (23:48)
Yeah, it is amazing. know, you one of the things we like to say at Kerkens Group is to go fast, go alone, to go far, go together. That's an old proverb. we add onto that to go far fast, get aligned.

Speaker 1 (24:01)
I love it.

Speaker 2 (24:03)
Yeah, I think there's such power in this idea of coming together. And I really appreciate that you took what was impactful for one person, and you brought it out into a whole team to say, we all need to be working together on working differently, so that you're really, again, creating that wave that we talked about earlier, that momentum, because everybody's fueling the effort.

Speaker 1 (24:27)
Yeah, was in, about three weeks ago, I was in the Philippines to work with the leadership team of a big mining company. And we had about 10, 12 leaders. And it's a team that been working for a while. So I know them, they know me, we know each other really well. And we had this whole discussion where...

I made them think about, so they had a whole off-site thinking about where they wanted to go as a team. And then we sat down and I asked each of them on their own to clarify their own priorities. I call them the big rocks. And so I guided an exercise to be really clear on the few things, on the few things that really have an impact for each of them. so defining

It's a process that I Think Quarterly, where every quarter, everyone for every business, I highly suggest that you don't think yearly. mean, great to have a yearly plan. That's really good. But it's too far. If I say that, hey, Julie, you've got some goals to achieve in a year time, relax, you've got plenty of time. I much prefer really putting a three months period. having a strategy which is a yearly, three yearly, five yearly strategy, great.

But I think every quarter, everyone asking, what does that mean for me? And choosing two to three priorities. That's the exercise we did. Great. So they walk out with really clarifying their priorities. And then I did the next exercise, which is say, now I want you to like group by three or four. And I want you to challenge that. Hey, Julie, explain to me your big rocks, your priorities.

And then the group challenging and say, Julie, I understand your number one, I understand your number two, but in the service of the strategy we're not, why are you doing number three? And why are you trying to achieve? And my point was three or four brains is 10 times better than one. And it created such an alignment where they all challenge each other and they walk out with refined priorities now aligned to where the business was going. So powerful.

Speaker 2 (26:45)
Yeah, that's incredibly powerful. And I love how you're using the team to help build and help people also articulate and get more clear about what are their priorities and are their priorities fitting together as a team, not just as individuals, because often that enterprise view is missing from people's individual priorities.

Speaker 1 (27:05)
agree and I think first of all what's missing is people don't take the time to think about it and I say look spend 20 minutes per quarter and I'm not asking much I'm saying 20 minutes per quarter to stop when it really calm down for 20 minutes half an hour and look at where you're going and say over the next quarter I'm gonna choose two or three priorities that's at least number one number two sit down with your manager because

If you're my boss Julie and I think I should be focusing on ABC and you think I should be focusing on 123 and they don't match, Houston, we have a problem. Okay. But even better sit down as a team and challenge each others. And you would then create an environment where people understanding each other priorities. People feel involved. People want to synergize and help.

Speaker 2 (27:45)
Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (28:05)
it bring it to a complete different level. And then I'm gonna bring one last level. So on your own, with your manager, with your team, and then my last level, which I call amplify, is to say, why do we spend so much time and energy thinking about our business priorities? And why do so few people do the same thing with their personal priorities? Every quarter, Julie, I...

really clarify my business priorities. I don't report to anyone, that's my business. But if I'm not clear myself where I want to go, then how do I know what's important? So I do this. But every quarter I do the same thing with my personal life. Every quarter I ask myself, what are the two or three things that if I really focus on over the next three months would have a significant impact long term on my life? And it's such a profound question in my view.

Speaker 2 (29:04)
Yeah, and then do you and TK go through that together?

Speaker 1 (29:06)
Yes, we do. we have, ⁓ we, TK and I sit down. do. So I was in, I started doing that with some of my clients quite a few years ago because my client was saying, Cyril, how do you apply that to your personal life? And so when I train a team, we go through a journey where we talk business and the last session is exactly that. The last session is to say on your desk bed, are you going to think about the number of email you responded to, the number of meetings you attended and how successful you were in your job?

or are you going to think about something else and everyone talk about my family, my legacy, the thing that were important for me, all that. And I said, obvious. Why do we spend so much energy and time therefore thinking on the business side and not on the personal side? So we have a whole session. I had a meeting this week with a client to say, your session last week, which was the last session called Amplify Your Life, I have two people that come back to me and completely changed their perspective of life.

One has decided to resign and move to another job. And one is completely redesigning the personal life, the relationship we keep. mean, it was just challenging them. ⁓ And so TK and I, every year, sit down to plan our year. Okay, so at the end of the year, start on the year. And we do what we call the dinner with a pen and paper.

And Julie, the dinner with the pen and paper started because a few years ago, TK and I went to a really nice restaurant in Sydney. And literally in the middle of the dinner, I took out my notebook and my pen and said, love, can we plan the next year? And she was like, what the hell, Cyril? We're going to a nice romantic dinner and you want to do some down planning? I said, please keep with me. It had been so good that now every year,

we have either a lunch or dinner that we call the dinner with a pen and paper where, so this year we went to a beautiful walk for three hours south of Sydney in a park called the Royal National Park. And after that we sat for three and a half hours in a restaurant and we planned everything for our year. And it's so powerful that now I do that with my client at the end of the year, I invite my clients and their partner

to sit down and we discuss that and I have them to plan. I have received so many feedback and photos of people saying, Cyril, we've have done your dinner with a pen and paper. Here's a photo of me and my wife doing it or me and my husband doing it. It just warmed my heart. So yes, TK and I do this and we have a meeting every week to discuss that.

Speaker 2 (31:53)
There you have it, the secret to a 25 year plus marriage, right?

Speaker 1 (31:57)
communication,

sharing. There's a...

There's a French writer called St. Augustine Perri, Antoine de Saint Augustine Perri.

Speaker 2 (32:10)
For those who never heard about it.

Speaker 1 (32:12)
Yes, Le Petit Prince, The Little Prince. I mean, if you haven't read Le Petit Prince, read it for you, read it with your kids. Such a beautiful book. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry had this expression that I really like. He said, love is not gazing at each other. It's looking together forward in the same direction. And I really like that, where Tiké and I, yes,

We love each other, but we also love is for us thinking about where we're going, where we're taking our family, where we're our relationship, where we take even our finance, everything, we look together in the same direction and we talk about it. That's so important.

Speaker 2 (32:57)
And it really, know, part of the essence of that is that idea is also what you're bringing to teams and telling them, you know, it's not that we all have to, not that we all have to just like each other and kind of get along, but we also have to be looking out in the same direction at this adventure that we're on together as a team. And I really appreciate that sentiment that you continue to pull through with. How do you help inspire that in a team? Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:24)
100 %

Speaker 2 (33:26)
So this has been such a great conversation about some of your thinking on what are ways that people can get aligned to deliver together. And I would love it if you would just think about, there two, three, four hot tips that you would give people? I think your book is full of great ideas. One of them might be have a pen and paper dinner, right? But are there some things that you would recommend to people if you want to move from agreement that something sounds like a really good idea and you wish you would do it or that you and your team could come together and do it.

to getting aligned and actually doing it together and crossing the failure gap, what would you suggest that they start?

Speaker 1 (34:03)
The first thing is more an understanding of the danger we all face. And the danger we all face, I call that the bias for more.

Most of us have a bias for more.

fascinating experience that was done a few years ago in Washington DC.

They designed...

a day to visit Washington DC. A day where you would go and visit the museum, the monuments and you you go around. But on purpose, Julie, they design it crazy. They design it, they packed that day. You had to go to one thing, see it, jump in a taxi, go to another place, jump in a bus, go. I mean, it was like a 10 hour mad marathon.

to visit Washington DC. So imagine that. And then they gave that day to people and the experience, the German school lady Klotz who did this and his team. And they gave that day to people and they say, can you improve the itinerary? That was the task, can you improve it?

75 to 80 percent of people

added things to the day.

Speaker 2 (35:36)
More, more, more, we need more.

Speaker 1 (35:38)
More

and more. Only 20 % to 25 % of people decided to eliminate things, subtract things. We all have a bias for more. We all think that more is better. And Julie, it is engraved in us. It is biological. I mean, if you think about when we were living in the savanna,

When we're food, we don't know the next time we're gonna find food. And so we have to accumulate just in case. I mean, look at now, the impact it has on us, keeping as many files, as many documents as we can, keeping as many clothes as we can, keeping as many shoes as we can. I mean, we've got this accumulation thing. It's become cultural. Who are the most successful civilization? The civilizations that are big, the Egyptians, the Romans.

And now even today, the simulation that be more and more and more. And even it's become business who are, know, we all have this growing is the word. We need to grow to be better. It's just like permanent growth.

Now, interesting, when you research that, so we have this bias for more.

so many interesting study about the fact that in business, more bring less. PricewaterhouseCoopers many years ago did an interesting study published in a hard business review. They wanted to see if there was ⁓ a relationship between the number of priority a business has and their performance and their revenue growth.

the more priority your business has, the less revenue they have.

Speaker 2 (37:30)
Interesting.

Speaker 1 (37:34)
There is this, and again, one, so you ask me how you help people. I'm writing my next book at the moment, and my next book is gonna be called Less Achieves More.

less achieve more. So I'm going to give you three simple advice on this one and they're linked to Think Quarterly Plan Weekly at Gdeli. So Think Quarterly. Every quarter clarify a few priorities.

but choose less. I suggest you only choose two to three priorities every quarter based on the impact it will have. Number one. So every quarter have the courage. And I talk about courage because you have to have the courage of saying no to a lot of good ideas. You have to have the courage to say no to a lot of good ideas. So less priorities.

choose two to three priorities and accept not to do the rest. That's number one. Plan weekly, less task. Every week I do what I call a weekly plan. And to do my weekly plan, I look at everything. I look at my priority, what I need to do so for my priorities and anything, everything I have to do. And I have a huge long list. And I compare this long list with the amount of time I have available.

And it never matched because my list of things to do is always much bigger than my list of time available. And so I have to really have the courage every week to decide not to do many things.

Prioritization is not about deciding what to do. It's even more about deciding what not to do. So less priority every quarter, less task every week, and then the act daily. I think about my priority, I just block tasks in my calendar to do them, and then every day it's under attack. There's so many things to do, requests and so on. Less distraction.

We live in the world, there's a great book called Stolen Focus by Johan Harry about we live in a world of distraction. And all this distraction are taking us away from the thing that really matter. And so every day I'm focusing on the few thing and cutting a lot of distraction out of that to make sure I progress them. Think quarterly, choose less priority. Plan weekly, choose less task. Act daily, choose less distraction. That's my short answer.

Speaker 2 (40:22)
That is a great rule to live by and I'm gonna take that to heart and try and think about how I do that for myself. So thank you. I appreciate that and I'm sure a lot of our listeners will be able to take note of that and look forward to your new book. Do you have a timeline for that that you wanna share?

Speaker 1 (40:37)
August 2026 is the year, of the date.

Speaker 2 (40:41)
Okay, well, people will be keeping an eye out for it, I'm sure, because even just in this short amount of time, I've taken so many notes about ways that I can do more and at the same time do less. And I think this idea that you do more when you do less is a really, really great thing to keep in mind, both from a business perspective and from a personal perspective. So I appreciate that very much. I have one last question for you, and we ask everybody this.

If you could get some group in your life, whether it's family or community or work or the business or your clients or the world at large to get aligned and kind of come together around something, what might that be? And I have a feeling it might be in the space of having the courage to say no, but I'll leave that up to you. What would you ask? What would you love to see people get aligned to make the world a little bit of a better place?

Speaker 1 (41:36)
So the courage to say no is more the, I really like that, the courage of saying no. Say no is a very powerful word because whenever, actually, when you say yes too many, too often, you actually say no to the thing that matter. But I think if I have to have one thing that I would kind of leave and discuss and hope that people take away, I actually...

There three things that come to mind. so sorry to just come to one from three, but there three things that come to mind. And they're the three things that I think about every day at the start of every day. And at the start of every day, I think about to live, to give, to grow. To live, to give, to grow. To live.

For me, it's about living every minute with juice, with enjoyment, 100%. There's a great movie that I love called About Time. And to cut a long story short, it's a movie where the male of this family have this ability to travel time. They just go in a dark place, clench their finger, think about a time that they have been, and they go back to time. And there's this beautiful scene between the dad

who then explained to his son about this family secret. And the son like, I said joke. And he was like, no, no, I said it's a joke. Said, try it. He tries it, experimented, come back to this dad and I'm like, oh my God. And then they had a really discussion about what's the learning from that. And the first logic where the person say, I can become very rich and so on. And the dad said, no, no, the real secret of that is you live every day as a normal day.

And at the end of the day, you clench your fist and you go back to the same day, but then you relieve the same day just with the perspective of enjoying every moment. And he say, this is the secret of life. And I really like that. To say, your perspective of life, you can live exactly the same event.

Speaker 2 (43:44)
you

Speaker 1 (43:55)
as a normal, as a boring, or as a opening your eyes and look, I'm looking at today and I'm seeing Sydney being a beautiful day. see the sea. This morning I went for a swim with two of my close friends. do every Friday we go for a swim and we just jumped in the sea and took a few waves and had a good laugh. And it's just this juice. So that's for me to live.

The to give, you and I talk about it, but it's like in a world with so much selfishness, so much, it's about me as a person, it's about me as a country, it's about me, us, you know, think we need to think about the secret of living is giving. I think the world would be such a much better place if we move from selfishness to actually giving and sharing.

And the last one is to grow. I'm a permanent learner. I don't think learning is only when you go to school or university, but I think learning is something unique. So I have a rule that every morning, so this morning before my swim, I spend about half an hour, try to read something to learn. There's so many fascinating books, so many fascinating Ted Talks, so many fascinating, you know, things to learn. And again, I love this phrase from Gandhi and say, leave...

leave it every day as if you're going to die tomorrow

but learn as if you're gonna live forever. And this is logic of be constantly curious and learning things and so on. That's what I have to live, to give and to grow as kind of a very important mentor for me.

Speaker 2 (45:43)
Yeah, and I think people, if people could embrace that mindset, then we would see a lot of change in the world in a positive way. So thank you for sharing that as your personal commitments and also what you'd love to see people maybe lean into as an opportunity for all of them, for all of us. So I appreciate that. Cyril, this has been such a great conversation. Thank you so much. I'm gonna walk out of this and I'm gonna think about how I can live and give and grow.

every day, I think I'm inspired around that and the idea of saying no and having the courage to have a short list rather than a long list and remembering that, you what is the quote? People underestimate what they can do in a year, but overestimate what they can do in a day. Like don't cram your days so full that you can't be successful within them towards your long-term goals. I think that's a great way to think about it. So I've really appreciated all of the, all that you've shared. I would encourage everybody to go check out your book that you do have out and we'll look forward to.

another ⁓ edition from you in August of 2026, I think you said. Maybe you and I can catch up again then and pull some things out great pleasure. Yeah, I love that. Well, thank you so much for being on. Any final words, thoughts?

Speaker 1 (46:45)
It'll be pleasure.

No, I think the final word is really the living and it's really that I don't know how long I will be there, you know, on earth and alive. Something could happen to me or to you tonight or tomorrow or in a week time, in your time. Most people don't know. And so you don't control that. The only thing you control is to make every moment, cherish every moment, give the juice of every moment and enjoy every moment. That's the...

That's for me the main philosophy here.

Speaker 2 (47:24)
Yeah. All right. Well, to everyone in the audience who's listening, go out and cherish those moments because this is our one chance to do it. And I love, Cyrille, that we're ending on that note. Thanks to everybody who's tuned in. Just a reminder to like and subscribe and pass it on and feel free to comment. We love your feedback and we'll see you next time on the Failure Gap.

Speaker 1 (47:44)
Thank you for welcoming me today.