Announcer: Want to know the big three secrets to success? Gabe Peterson is someone who crushes it in both his career and personal life. I mean, who the heck can run an ultra race in the alps of 227 miles on 7 hours of sleep over 5 days? This same guy, using the same approach, has risen to the top level in his career. How does he do it? Let's get into it!

Gabe Peterson: Running is more individual. Sure. It's part of a, you're part of a community, but it's really about. It's really about, you know, what yourself. 

Joe Miller: you have control of everything. 

Gabe Peterson:Yeah. 

Joe Miller: sort of 

Gabe Peterson: Which is sometimes it is worse because you, we're not honest with ourselves a lot.

Gabe Peterson: Um, and so the classic is you'll get someone who has this running goal and you're like, okay, it's really easy to see if you're going to have a chance of,

I want to do say a sub three-hour marathon. Okay, go, go run a half marathon. And if you can do it this time, you know, like an hour, hour and 20 minutes or something like that.

 You can probably run a sub three and you can go, What's your fastest half marathon? Well, I've done a two-hour half marathon. 

Joe Miller: That's a long way.

Gabe Peterson: Yeah, you got work to do. so, sometimes it's harder doing it by yourself because, and I think this is why coaching is important in athletics, Is you have someone who's giving you that feedback. Like, okay, I hear your goal.

You want to get to a three-hour marathon. You're at more like a four-hour marathon now. Here's what we have to do to get you there. That's probably like a two- or three-year goal of really focusing on running a marathon that fast using the marathon analogy. Cause you know, people kind of understand marathons, a lot of people run them.

 Whereas Teamwork is, it's more, I think there are a lot more variables. And it's a team that you don't necessarily, it's a, you know, hybrid team. Some, some people report are part of my team, they're my direct reports, so I have some ability to directly influence what they do, but most of the products we roll out are not for the technology team.

They're for a business unit, like scientists doing research in the lab. So, when they come to me with those unrealistic goals, and you go, okay, well here's, you know, the work we have to put in.

Gabe Peterson: Oh, I don't want to, I'm too busy to put in that kind of work. Um, but I still want that goal. So, I put in some early tests to see are they really committed. I want to do this project. I'm like, okay, here's what it's going to take from your team. We need a product owner. Someone from your team who can really drive the vision for this product.

Oh, I don't have anyone that can do that who's not busy. Okay, that's fine. I totally understand it, but we can't do that project right now. You're not committed to this project that you won't give me a product owner. Here's what I'll need. We'll need a product owner. We'll need people to be part of this team developing this product.

 If they're too busy, I totally understand it, but we won't be successful. And I want to invest in projects where we're going to be successful for our company. 

Joe Miller: It seems so obvious, but I would say, based on my experience, that's probably one of the easiest places that technology leaders can trip up because they want to say yes to something. They want to be helpful and in the end of the day, they're not going to be helpful because there are realities to what it takes to get certain things accomplished.

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