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Growing up all Cody thought about was sports. He saw his path as becoming a professional Aussie Rules Football player. However, after competing at the highest level of the sport, he quickly saw felt his “talent just fell away” at the age of 18. He struggled to live in the moment and stewed on the fact that everyone around him seemed much more talented. While this period would help him realize that he was better suited as a coach than player, it took him a few years to make that realization.
High-performance team environment on the weekends to the “baffling” corporate world on Mondays
The first time Cody worked in a large organization, he described it as “baffling.” At the time, he was coaching the Canadian national program on the weekends and then coming into a supposed team environment on Monday through Friday. While people claimed to be part of a “team” he experienced it as anything but. He knew he had to leave, but ended up staying a bit as he tried to make sense of what he was experiencing.
Writing as a path to discovery
Cody started writing about five years ago and over time it helped him make sense of what he believed in. He got some feedback that he was on to something when a childhood friend’s Aunt suggested that his writing was the “outlet that he needed” in the world.
The “altMBA” transformed his idea into action
I am fascinated with Seth Godin’s altMBA. For only $3,500, you become part of a global online learning community of driven and passionate people and focus on “shiping” 12 projects over 30 days. Cody said that the feedback and support that he got from others in the program was instrumental to helping him take action on his book and turn it from a half-baked idea into reality. At the end of the program, Cody felt that the biggest value was not a credential, but a real world transformation in his ability to create and take action.
Coaching
In his book, Cody says that coaching, when done right, takes “patience and practice.” As we discussed, he noted that the word coach comes from the word stagecoach, which means you are carrying a load of people from A to B — and that it reflects what coaching should be at its best — supporting others.
He believes coaching as a mindset falls short in the corporate world and too many people see coaching as an event (e.g. “I am going to coach you once a week on Tuesdays”).
In his book, he called out He uses the example of Iceland, who invested a ton of money in coaching almost 15 years ago and is now seeing the rewards of their patience and practice.
His Career Advice
He tells people to “try a lot of things” to help you understand what you like, don’t like and to figure out how many different things fit together. Throughout his career he has “tried a bunch of things and worn a bunch of hats” and has found that a career is not as linear as people think
Book Recs:
Links:
- Cody’s Book: Where Other’s Wont: Taking People Innovation from the Locker Room into the Boardroom
- altMBA
- Simon Sinek — Start With Why
- Netflix’s Culture Deck
- How Netflix’s Former Chief People Officer Patty McCord Got Herself Fired at Netflix
- Boundless Episode 3: David Vaucher
- A dozen lessons I learned from Originals (by me)