I’m delighted I had the chance to sit down with Joe Byerly at From The Green Notebook for a podcast about defense innovation, reflection, personal growth, and my book Eating Glass: The Inner Journey Through Failure and Renewal.
This is one of the best discussions I’ve had about the unique challenges and opportunities of leaving the “well-lit” path in DoD and making unconventional career choices–a common reality for many of us who care about creating change inside our organizations.
Joe and I go back a long way, as we discuss in the podcast. We met at the first annual conference of the Defense Entrepreneurs Forum, which was a pivotal experience for both of us. A group of young grassroots military innovators had been steadily finding each other and forming relationships online, culminating in the decision to hold a conference so we could all meet face to face. Joe and I met at that conference and although we only loosely kept in touch afterwards, that conversation was apparently influential for both of us and we’ve admired each other’s work from afar. That conference gave Joe the confidence and courage to start seriously blogging; years later, From the Green Notebook has become one of the best resources available for teaching military members (and the general public) about leadership, personal growth, self-reflection, and other related topics. So it was a real pleasure to reconnect after all these years, catch up, and compare notes on our respective journeys.