Action, in an uncertain world, is increasingly the best way to learn and to shape the future we desire. Our new book Provoke is about looking forward and working through the natural human instincts that keep people frozen in place, thinking and analyzing. It is about forcefully gathering the will to act in the face of deepening uncertainty and DO SOMETHING!
Sometimes that action is physical. There have been times when we each had to literally force our bodies to go do something while every instinct said, “Don’t do it!” It can be a worthwhile exercise for anyone looking to develop the mindset of a provocateur.
When Geoff first heard about Gym Jones from Steve, he was pretty sure they were talking about a cult leader who precipitated a sequence of terrible events in a South American jungle in the late 1970s. Turns out, in fact, that the modern incarnation is even more terrifying to some: a private collaborative of ultra-fit trainers and training houses around the world who take on only those willing to work hard—and suffer—as their belief is that there are no shortcuts to physical fitness. Famous athletes, secretive military operatives, and sculpted movie stars have made the cut in the past. So has Steve, Geoff discovered.
The story came up because we were wrestling with what a “when” provocation would feel like if brought to life in the physical world. What does it feel like to overcome extreme cognitive dissonance to force your body to do something it doesn’t want to? Steve’s experience was in testing for one of the Gym Jones certifications. Here’s how he described it:
When I did the Gym Jones certification, it was led by Bobby Maximus—a former UFC fighter and one Men’s Health’s Top 100 Fittest People Ever. (Bobby and Gym Jones have since parted ways and Gym Jones has repositioned itself differently from the unique experience Bobby created in his seminars). Bobby emphasized the power of the mind in training, so they put you through some real psychological tests. One of the tests they give you is to do a 60-second, all-out, sprint on the Airdyne bike (one of those old-school “fan” bikes). When I say all-out, I mean, all-out. The goal is to “score” as many calories burned as possible. Here’s the twist though: you’re competing with the 16 other people in the certification session and the top 8 in calories get to be done for the day. The bottom 8 have to do another all-out sprint. And the process repeats. Then 4, then 2, then 1. If anyone’s ever done anything truly all-out, one is sufficient for the day. You definitely don’t want to have to do this more than once, let alone 3–4 times. There’s nothing worse than a 60-second sprint. It’s different than 20 seconds (you can do anything for 20 seconds); it starts to really hurt after about 20 because you get lactic acid building up in your legs. To get a good score, you just have to turn off your mind, which is telling you to stop so the pain will go away. You have to tell yourself it will be fine. If you try to do an 80% effort for 60 seconds, you’ll definitely have to do it again. And the worst result is that you have to do this again . . . and again. Bobby has since become a friend and I know this is one of his favorite mind-you-know-whats. The fact that I was 41 and probably, on average, 10 years older than others in the room—no discount. The fact that all the others were professional trainers and I was businessperson who spent 300k miles in the air every year—no discount. You just had to completely surrender to go all out and deal with it and know the pain would come. I knew I wouldn’t come first, but I also knew that some people that were fitter perhaps wouldn’t commit fully, so I set my goal to come at least eighth. Believe it or not, I came in exactly that place and set a personal calorie record in the process. And then I lay down and curled up for a while and enjoyed watching the bottom eight rinse and repeat.
Likely proving Steve’s maxim wrong, Geoff wouldn’t have lasted 20 seconds. Instead, his story came from a very different place and domain of adrenaline-seeking: bungee jumping.
He would be hard-pressed to say that he loves—or even likes—the activity. He’s done it a sum total of twice: once on a long-ago wander around the world, and once on a family trip to celebrate a certain birthday.
This was several years ago when the extended clan made a trek to southern Africa, to enjoy some family time. But the “kids”—Geoff’s four teenaged sons and their five cousins—were looking for even more adventure. Somehow, they settled on bungee-jumping despite Geoff’s protestations; even after two and a half decades, he still remembered launching himself from the Pipeline bridge in Queenstown, New Zealand . . . the massive cranial pressure and sheer terror completely unabated by the two shots of courage he and Martha had taken beforehand.
But as any reader with them will know, kids have a funny persuasive power. Geoff found himself walking out to the center of a span of bridge in Zimbabwe, knowing with perfect certainty that he did not feel like going through with this. With each step, he was assailed with data and reasons not to carry through: “The safety of this equipment is totally unknown! I already have a bit of a backache and who knows what this might do to that! If I do it, I’m going to get roped into buying the damn pictures afterwards! I’m a grown man and have nothing to prove to any of these people!” And then he strapped in and jumped.
Though he might like to paint it otherwise, this was not a moment of heroic bravery. If anything, it was a willful, nonpharmaceutical firing of his GABA receptors—self-induced and temporary—and to this day he can’t explain the rational reason for having acted the way he did. However, in retrospect he was happy he did, as was Steve when he was able to uncurl himself from the gym floor.
This is the mindset that we’re trying to encourage in any provocateur as they pass through the phase change: to act even in the face of doubt and/or incomplete data, not hesitating too much but not being foolhardy either. As optimists, we’re hopeful that everyone has it in themselves to act this way. Abstracted or out of the moment, it’s easy to say, “Well I would never do that.” In fact, after we swapped stories, we both concluded that no amount of coercion or motivation could have gotten each of us to take the action of the other. But these stories give us hope that the will to go out and DO SOMETHING! lies in all of us.
GEOFF TUFF is a Principal at Deloitte; he holds various leadership roles across the firm’s Sustainability, Innovation and Strategy practices. STEVEN GOLDBACH is a Principal at Deloitte and serves as the firm’s Chief Strategy Officer. Together, they are the authors of PROVOKE: How Leaders Shape the Future by Overcoming Fatal Human Flaws (Wiley; September 15) and the national bestseller DETONATE: Why—And How—Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (And Bring a Beginner’s Mind) to Survive.