Navigating the Way Forward: What We’ve Done and Where We Go From Here with Dr. John Izzo

Sep 14

About This Episode

What does it mean to orient your life around your mission? We talk about mission all the time around these parts, but when was the last time you stopped, took a deep breath, and embarked on the discernment journey around not just what you do in the world but what you want to leave behind when you're gone from it?

This week, kicking off the eighth season of the Mission Forward podcast, Carrie sits down with Dr. John Izzo, author, and advisor who has dedicated his mission to helping companies and individuals find theirs. This conversation is a masterclass in vulnerability; Dr. Izzo shares how experiences from his childhood, growing up without his father, shaped his desire to help people live more purposeful lives. This led him to become a minister, get a Ph.D. in organizational psychology, and eventually advise companies on creating positive cultures for themselves.

He's also a leading trend-spotter and shares with Carrie major trends he sees in business and society: rethinking our relationship to work and seeking more meaning, the growing divide between the wealthy and others, and more. We're at an inflection point, he says, where we could create a more regenerative society or head down a darker path. The choice is made by the cultures we create.

The bottom line, according to Dr. Izzo, is this: "Ultimately, the only thing that's going to matter to you is what you wound up giving the world, not what you wound up taking from it."

We're deeply grateful to Dr. Izzo for sharing his time and attention with our Mission Forward community.

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Welcome to Mission Forward.
Carrie Fox:
Hello and welcome to the Mission Forward podcast. I'm Carrie Fox, your host and CEO of Mission Partners, a social impact communications firm and certified B corporation. Thanks for tuning in to today's episode.
As you're listening, you are catching us early into our eighth season of this show. And this episode is guaranteed to be a great conversation in part because of how well I know this conversation will align with what's on your mind. To zoom out what this episode and this season is all about are the issues that are keeping you up at night. And I know we're going to get into some good topics here with Dr. John Izzo. Now, I'm going to tell you more about him in just a moment, but I will preview with you that this conversation feels very much in line with some others we've had in recent episodes, like Carol Cone, as we talked about the Purpose Collaborative and her focus on Purpose, and Dan Buettner, the National Geographic Explorer, how he talked about our bigger purpose in life and how we show up fully and living into that purpose in life.
Well, Dr. John Izzo brings a powerful and purposeful approach to his work. I've had a chance to see that up close as we are both members of that Purpose Collaborative, and I'm really looking forward to hearing from him today.
Dr. John Izzo has been a pioneer in creating successful businesses. He has spoken to over one million people. He's advised over 500 companies, authored six bestselling books, and helped some of the world's most admired companies. He's probably best known for his ability to spot trends. When Dr. John Izzo pinpoints a trend, people listen. His client lists includes many companies that you know well, IBM, the Mayo Clinic, Verizon, WestJet, Microsoft. Plus he's been featured many times in Fast Company, The New York Times, and CNN. So we are thrilled to have him here.
So as you all know, our conversations here at Mission Forward don't just exist and live for the business leaders or C-suite leaders. We're talking about issues at the intersection of communications and life because we see that intersection happening every day in the work we do. And what I think you'll find listening to Dr. John Izzo is that his message is relevant to wherever you are, whatever position you hold, and wherever this conversation might find you today. Dr. John Izzo, thank you for joining us on the Mission Forward podcast.
Dr. John Izzo:
Carrie, thank you. Great to be here and thanks for your good work.
Carrie Fox:
So I would love you to get us started with a story. I suspect we'll talk about stories a little bit today, but tell us a little bit about your story.
Dr. John Izzo:
Well, one of the things that always interests me about other people is, what is it that caused them, drove them, the confluence of rivers that made them devote their life to whatever they wound up devoting their life to. And I think that for myself, I have to go back to a young boy growing up in New York City. His mother was only 20 years old when she got pregnant and had to get married. And six months later, his mother and father decided it wasn't working, and they split up. The father moved two-hour drive away in Connecticut. And that young boy did not see his father again for those next eight years until one day he was playing in the street and his mother called him into the house, said, "I've got some news for you. Your father died today."
And that father was actually not a living human being to that young boy. He was just a one picture of him in his navy uniform. And at eight years old, I really didn't know how that would impact who I was and what I would wind up doing with my life. But Carrie, I think a lot of who I am can be explained in that story. My empathy and my big heart for others who're hurt as a young child. I didn't even know actually how abandoned I felt by that experience of my father being missing in my life. Really took me years to figure out how important that was.
But also, Carrie, as I got older and realized that my father had died at 36 of a sudden heart attack, I realized that perhaps if my father had gotten to live longer or thought more deeply, he might have made different choices. So rather than getting angry, I channeled that energy into asking how could I help others be more intentional in their lives and maybe make better choices? So I think a lot of who I am is described by that. And then the subtext is growing up in the 1960s in the base of nuclear war and the beginning realization of environmental destruction in a very religious family. I think I had the sense that everything around us was sacred and the story we were writing wasn't really a story we would be proud of.
So I think my whole life has been about helping other people and myself write a better story than the one we might live if we didn't think deeply about what we were doing. So that's, I think, the best explanation of who I am and why I've wound up doing what I do.
Carrie Fox:
Well, that's a beautiful story. Thank you for sharing that with us. John, I can only imagine what it was like as a kid to have that moment and how that changed your trajectory as a kid. You talk about how you use that to fuel your work and your purpose. I imagine that that didn't happen at eight, but over time you started to have these aha moments that you were thinking about carrying forward that experience into your work. Take me forward a little bit more. Can you remember, can you pinpoint that moment when you said, "I am going to make my career this work?"
Dr. John Izzo:
Yeah, it's a really good question. And I always was a do-gooder, for whatever. And this is the part I think that, for all of us, there's two stories of who we are. There's the nurture story, which is the experience of our early upbringing that I just told about my father and my mother, and there's a whole subtext even to that in my mother's side of the family and the struggles of adolescence. But then there's the nature. And I do believe each one of us has a way in the world and we have something we were, in a way, born to do.
And for those who are more religious, they may believe that has divine origin. For others may say, well, we're just this incredible cocktail of the DNA of all our ancestors that somehow came together in one unique way. No other human being will ever be exactly like you in terms of this chromosomal cocktail, if you will, of cells that you had a nature of who you were in the world. So I always was a do-gooder. But I always was type A too. So I had the values of a nonprofit person, but I had the energy of an entrepreneur, because I could never sit still and I got bored easily and all of that.
So there's only three careers I ever considered doing. One is, I wanted to go to law school and go into politics and run for office. Second, I thought about being a journalist. And again, I'd grown up with Bernstein and those guys exposing Watergate. And may I go out and do that. Or, because I'd grown up in this very religious family, perhaps I'd be an ordained minister. So a long story short, I chose the latter and I got ordained as a Presbyterian minister and spent six years in the parish ministry. And there was actually a moment, I think, that wound up launching me to what I wound up doing now for most of my life, which is, I was a young minister in Youngstown, Ohio when all the steel mills were closing down. Remember the Rust Belt in those days?
And some ways, the community never recovered from it. And there was one elder in my church, his name was Hollis. And Hollis was probably 55, and I was maybe 24 or 25 at the time. And you could tell at one time there was a fire of passion inside Hollis. But the lights had gone out. And it took me a while getting to know him that I realized it was the experience he had had at work, how he had been treated at work, the loss of dignity in that way that workplace was run. And I saw the impact on him as an individual, but also impact those companies had on the community I was a part of. And a fire was lit in my belly that perhaps work and business didn't have to do that. Maybe it could actually make communities better and make people more noble and more their most authentic great selves.
And Carrie, it took a while for me then to go back and get a PhD in organizational psychology. And then I like to tell people I wound up marrying my three careers. I treat regularly about things I care deeply about. I've been involved in writing books that are almost all journalistic enterprises to tell the story of what's possible. And while I've never run for office, I've been involved in issues that I care about in nonprofits, on boards, and especially around the environment, which is an issue I care deeply about. So I like to say I wound up marrying all three of my careers in the end, which worked for someone who gets bored really easily.
Carrie Fox:
That is incredible, and talk about channeling your purpose, right? Seeing it and feeling it early on and finding a way to carry that forward. There's so many times I have conversations with folks who are in their forties, fifties, sixties, saying, "I don't know that I have figured out what I'm supposed to do here yet." And I feel very blessed that I did find that. And I think I found that pretty early in my life, similar to you, right? By the time I was in my twenties, I knew deeply what I wanted to do. Didn't exactly know how I was going to do it, but I knew I needed to make an impact in the world, and I was going to use my superpower as communications to do that. But for so many folks, who're still looking for that purpose, that can be difficult.
Dr. John Izzo:
Yeah. And just on that, I think that it always looks easier in retrospect. So people might listen to you or I and go, "Oh look, it was so easy for them." But there were so many moments of doubt and confusion about exactly how to do it. And it's never too late to discover that. I just was talking to... I'm involved in an organization called the Elders Action Network that's dedicated to really activating this generation of elders, the 55 pluses, to be engaged in creating a sustainable regenerative society.
And I was just talking to a woman who was a very successful lawyer for almost 40 years, and then she finally let it go. And only now she's actually doing the things she's incredibly passionate about. And only now in her late sixties, mid to late sixties that she discover it. And yet now she's got this whole new life that has emerged for her. So anyone who's listening, it's never too late to figure it out, even if you get hijacked by your own choosing into something that doesn't feel quite right.
Carrie Fox:
Right. Well, I'm hearing you talk about generations, and the work that you're doing through the Elders Network. I also see that incredible book sitting behind you right now, Purpose Revolution, and how much of your work is actually thinking about the work of generational change. So the work you're doing with Elders, thinking about how we create and leave behind our greatest legacy and impact, but also the impact that younger generations are having on the workforce and what we see as norms in the workplace. Tell me a little bit about that too.
Dr. John Izzo:
Yeah. So first, almost every generation of human beings believe they're living in the moment of change, of inflection. But I think it's fair to say that we are living in one of the critical moments of human evolution. A moment when, as Carl Sagan said, the popular astronomer, before he died, where in the next 50 or 60 years, we could either blow ourselves up or destroy the environment beyond repair, at least in terms of human lifetime meaning. And we see it all over the world, the deterioration of democracy, the rise of totalitarianism, the growing inequity between the rich and the poor. There's a tension building in the world right now.
And the real question for this generation of humans who are alive is, are we going to set humanity on a regenerative or a degenerative path for the next generations? And I think, Carrie, in my mind, one of the things that all of us care about is our legacy. In fact, I do a lot of work with CEOs. And one of the things I've discovered is if you really want to get at the heart of who a CEO is, don't ask them what their goals are, ask them what they want their legacy to be. After they're gone, not in that seat anymore, what do they want to be true that was their legacy.
And I think each one of us... And we experience in our personal lives, grandparents want a legacy of their grandchildren or children doing well in the world. And at large, I think each one of us knows that we're eventually going to be a black and white picture on the wall, people who used to be in the room. And the only question is, how did we leave the room? And so I spent a lot of my time trying to get leaders to think about how are you going to leave the room of your stakeholders and society and your shareholders? How are you going to, in your life, leave the room for your kids and the people you mentor?
And we also are in this moment when I think the younger generation senses the story that we've been telling is not working. And the older generation has a choice to either simply relax and savor the world and say, "Sorry, we did this." Or to join with young people to say, "Let's write a different story." And I'm an optimist. I believe we have a chance now to write a different story. But this is a really important moment in human history where I think a lot will be determined at least for the next several hundred years.
Carrie Fox:
You're a trend spotter. So what are the trends you're seeing now that are worth watching and paying attention to for the folks listening today?
Dr. John Izzo:
Well, a couple of really important trends. One is the pandemic accelerated the desire that people have to have a life of their own choosing. Life is short. You could go at any moment. And a lot of businesses, many that I work with, treated people really well during the pandemic, some not so well. People went to their houses and worked and said, "I like this. I don't like having to get up every morning and waste all that time commuting." So people talk about these last few years as the great resignation, but I think it's actually not the right term. I think we should call it the great reconsideration.
So we're in a time when people, especially younger people, but really of all ages, are reconsidering the relationship they have with work, reconsidering what's important. At the same time, there's a reckoning happening in society. And I use one trend that I think businesses need to pay really deep attention to, which is this growing sense that a few lives are getting better and better, while the lives of the many are slowly deteriorating. And I think that a lot of the political unrest you see around the world are the beginnings of the warning signals that some of the important things we've held for granted, that people are not really wanting that anymore.
And I'm not a socialist. I don't think the answer to that is, "Well, let just the government redistribute wealth on some massive scale." But I think there is a reckoning that maybe the pendulum has gone too far. And so I think that while there's a lot of ESG going on and a lot of businesses trying to do good, the level of skepticism that people have about government and business, I think, is stronger than ever. So I think that the point is there's all these tensions going on, tension between, "Can I live my life instead of the corporate life?" The tension, "Is this a society that's really working for everyone?" The tension that with climate change and forest burning all over the world, that maybe our very relationship with the planet is dysfunctional.
And at the same time, there's this incredible young generation around the world who are saying, "This doesn't have to be this way. Let's write a different story." And so the point I'm making is, I think the old story is in its last moment. And the only question is, what's the story that will replace it? So one way is it could move to a authoritarian, deteriorating society realm. Or we might imagine something new, something more beautiful. And I think that the organizations and people who are trying to imagine that is really important. Because I don't think we know what it is yet. We just know what we're doing isn't really quite work.
Carrie Fox:
Right. Right. We had someone on not too long ago from The Theatre Lab, which is a long time client of ours. And they do incredible work where they help act out people's life stories on stage. And they've got this great line, John, where they say, "When you write the story, you have the power to change the ending." And I'm thinking about that as I'm listening to you, that it is in our powers, in any one of our power to decide what we will and will not do today, what actions we will take and what actions we won't, what we will leave behind and what we will choose not to. But that so much of that is, in fact, in our power. And when we're having these questions around where power exists and at what level power exists, I think we often forget how much we actually have, any one of us.
Dr. John Izzo:
Yeah, we do, each one of us. There's a sign right here in my office, "I trust the next chapter because I know who the author is." And so each one of us is the author of our own life. And it begins by just the choice I'm going to make today. Regardless of whatever choices you've made at another point in your life, today, you have the opportunity to realize I'm the author of my life no matter what has led me to this moment, and how would I choose to spend this day if I were to really focus on the things that truly matter to me?
And I think imagination is so important first in our own lives, to just imagine what we want, to imagine what's possible, and then to hold that image in front of us. And I think even as a society, we have that same challenge that I think we spend too much time talking about what's not working, and not enough time talking about what might we imagine it would look like if it worked. Because once you have a vision, an imagination of what you want, then, well, something becomes possible. But that's hard work.
Carrie Fox:
It is.
Dr. John Izzo:
But it starts. Robert Greenleaf who wrote The Servant as Leader said, "For something great to happen, there must be a great dream." He said, "The dream is never enough, but the dream must be there first." So it's as true in our personal lives as in our corporate lives, as in our societal lives. The dream is never enough. But without a dream, an imagination of what you want, that's what gets you up in the morning. Willing to do the hard work, that comes after you have a nice dream.
Carrie Fox:
Right. Right. You are sparking every one of my senses right now as I listen to you talk about your work and your direction, and having me think back to something else too. Not too long ago, I was having a conversation with my husband and we were talking about words, words that exist in certain cultures and don't exist in others. And we were talking about how in Japan, there is a word that means death by overwork, because it is so common, in fact, for people to die as a result of work burnout.
And when I hear you talk about the pandemic and what that did for us, as terrible, terrible as it was. And we would wish that that never happened. It did give us perspective and insight into almost seeing into the future of what if we keep working this way? What if we keep going along this path? That, would death by overwork become an American word too, an English word too? So the opportunity that you present in your work is so powerful.
And I'm curious as we're coming to the end here, if there's another story or something's on your mind today as you are inviting leaders to think about where they are in their work and where they might be able to go to take this path forward. What you might leave this audience with?
Dr. John Izzo:
Well, I think that you're sparking a lot of my senses now, so I'll resist the temptation to sense our time is running out to go down too many paths, except to say that language is very powerful. And we can't really go to a place we don't have a language for. So we may need new words, to create new words for ourselves, positive and optimistic words. I think that my message for leaders would be the same message that I would have for every individual. Which is, first of all, to... One of the things I tell people, Carrie, is there are two great tasks in life. The first task is to find yourself. And by find yourself, what I mean is to know who you truly are, to know what it is that you came here for, to know what lights you on fire and what extinguishes your fire both on a daily basis and in the big things of life, to discover who you are and to align your life as closely as you can, never perfectly to the contours of who you truly are.
But the second great task of life is to lose yourself. And what I mean by that is that ultimately... I interviewed for my book The Five Secrets You Must Discovery Before You Die. I interviewed 250 people who had only one thing in common. They were nominated as the wisest older person someone knew who had discovered what life was about and had something to teach us. From town barbers, to CEOs and poets and everything in between. Now, one of the things that I discovered is that pretty much all of them said, "Look, ultimately, the only thing that's going to matter to you is what you wound up giving the world, not what you wound up taking from it." What, if you will, I use the word legacy, but you could just use, what was your contribution? How was the room different because you were in there?
So I think for each one of us to navigate, whether you're a CEO or a frontline team member or a young person, first, who are you? And the second is, what's the difference that you want to make? And each one of us, our purpose, our sense of that legacy we want to leave might be different. And that's good because there's so many things that need to be solved and imagined that it's good that we all not love the same thing. So who are you, and what do you want to leave behind? And if you can answer those two questions and then hold that in front of you to remind yourself every day, "That's who I am. The closer I am to that, the more I will be happy and enjoy and in my bliss. This is what I want to leave the world on a daily basis and in my life. Today, did I do this and did I do that?"
I always tell people, the problem with life is it's so daily. You can't leave a legacy 30 years in advance. All you can do is have those two north stars in front of you today in the choices I make. Am I being true to myself and living in my bliss? Am I leaving the legacy today in the small and the large moments decisions I make that's the legacy I want to leave? I think if you keep those two things in front of you every day of week of your life, you're probably going to turn out, won't be perfect, but you'll probably say, "I'm proud of that and I was pretty happy person."
Carrie Fox:
Well, that's a beautiful place to end. Dr. John Izzo, I am certain that I did not give this show and conversation enough credit at the top because, as we are winding down, I am feeling deeply inspired and grateful for your work and your ability and willingness to share your special gifts with the world, for finding that marriage of your gifts as you found early on. Dr. John Izzo, thank you so much for this conversation, for sparking so much inspiration for this audience, and look forward to talking to you again soon.
Dr. John Izzo:
Yeah. Thanks, Carrie. And please people, connect to our podcast The Way Forward Regenerative Conversations on Apple and other things if you want to hear more of my ramblings and some great guests we have and we hope to have carry on soon.
Carrie Fox:
No ramblings here. We will link to that podcast and to your books in the show notes. And thanks again, Dr. John Izzo.
Dr. John Izzo:
Thank you.
Carrie Fox:
And that brings us to the end of this episode of Mission Forward. Thanks for tuning in today. If you are stewing on what we discussed here today, or if you heard something that's going to stick with you, drop me a line at carrie@mission.partners. And let me know what's got you thinking. And if you have thoughts for where we should go in future shows, I would love to hear that too. Mission Forward is produced with the support of Sadie Lockhart in association with the True Story Team. Engineering by Pete Wright.
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