Playing the Decade Game: Setting Priorities for Your Future
By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
Carolyn Buck Luce has a mile long resume of achievements and along the way devised The Decade Game, an excellent way to set priorities for your future, and write “EPIC!: The Women’s Power Play Book” a book with ideas for everyone. https://amzn.to/3kKTdgJ
Shifting Your Mindset During Your Job Search
Jeff Altman
So, my guest today is Carolyn Buck Luce, a gifted strategist, leader and executive coach who spent her career building highly effective cultures, businesses, teams, and leaders in private and public non-profit sectors. A diplomat, a Wall Street banker, a management consultant, there’s a whole list of things she’s done in her career. Now, executive coach, it’s given her unusual and unique perspective on building a hardware operating system for organizations and she served in a variety of capacities, advancing women’s leadership, including a past board chair of the New York Women’s Foundation, a Former Woman of the Year winner by the healthcare Women’s Business Association. She even was appointed by Mayor Bloomberg in New York as a commissioner of New York City’s commission on women’s issues and if you saw the full bio just goes on forever with accomplishments and successes and somehow rather, she managed to work in writing a book, Epic, the women’s power play. I just want to make sure I had this right. The women’s power playbook. Carolyn, welcome. Thanks for your time today.
Carolyn Buck Luce
Well, also, I just have to say, a wife, a mother, and a grandmother, because I think those have been my hardest jobs.
Jeff Altman
I know as a dad, that’s the hardest job of all. I so admire my wife who’s taken point that her son’s so often and it’s a tough job to say the least.
Carolyn Buck Luce
And never-ending. There is no retirement on that one.
Jeff Altman
Oh, God. I was hoping.
Carolyn Buck Luce
My mother is 94 and I occasionally ask her when she stopped worrying about me and she looks at me and said, what do you mean stopped?
Jeff Altman
Amazing. So, folks, we’re going to play a game today and I’m gonna be the player and I’m going to be coached today. So, Carolyn is going to be my coach as we play the decade game and what the heck is the decade game? And how did you come up with this idea?
Carolyn Buck Luce
Well, this is something that came to me when I was eight years old and I want to remember that age because that we’re going to come back to that, Jeff. But it was 1960. It was the middle of the Cold War, the first cold war, for those of you who follow the news, and we were hiding under our desks in elementary school, because of atomic bomb drills or hiding in our lockers as if that would save us and John F. Kennedy was running for president and he said, don’t ask what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country, and I was like, reporting for duty, sir because that’s when I realized it was a purpose larger than myself and then I was no longer a self-contained thing, that I was actually a baby citizen of something bigger and that I needed to answer the call. So, I had to figure out well, so what does that mean? Like, how do I live in my purpose, and the farthest that I could think was 10 years, when I would go to college and be independent leave the home and I began to start imagining what I would study and how I would answer the call and 10 years later, I ended up going to university studying Russian and my first job 21, out of school, was a diplomat in the former Soviet Union, telling American story and trying to spread the Thomson piece. So, I didn’t call it the decade game at the time. But what I learned is number one, it was up to me. Number two, I was part of something bigger. Three, I was called to do whatever my job was and four, it was up to me to figure out what that job was and that was the beginning of the decade game.
Jeff Altman
And thus, the title of the book Epic. Well, I think of Epic is being incredible, huge, monumental, enormous, and fantastical at once.
Carolyn Buck Luce
It’s all of that and however, we think about Epic, that way as an adjective, bigger than better than greater than all about needing to do something we haven’t done yet. However, the original meaning of Epic, was a long form story, of daring do, daring to do, and daring to be that we think about the epic of Homer or the Odysseus epic. So, a long form story of daring to do and daring to be, which actually means not what you’re going to do in the future. But how you feel about your ability, and what your commitment is, because it turns out, we all were born with the power of the universe inside us and the more we own, that we’re the author of our own epic, and feel that agency. That’s what I mean by Epic.
Jeff Altman
Fabulous. I’m ready to play if you’re ready to coach.
Carolyn Buck Luce
I am. Okay. So, now, let me just say that I want everyone to know that the decade game is a framework for reimagining what your job is because your job isn’t, what someone’s paying you to do. Your job is what is your becoming. How do you manifest epic and how do you make choices around the right experiences, the right relationships, the right skills, and the right knowledge that you are committed to acquire in order to be able to manifest your epic? So, let’s start by what’s the purpose larger than you? So, I talked about the fact that at 8. I became aware that there was a purpose larger than me around leading in a way that would create a world that works. I think we all had a moment when we first got introduced to our own purpose and interestingly, here’s the hardest question in the world, and probably the most important question of your life, which is why are you here, but we have a hard time answering it. So, our first exercise, Jeff, it missions if you’re willing to accept it is when was that moment for you where you, you realize it was a purpose larger than yourself? And how did you understand it at that time?
Jeff Altman
I would say I was in college, I was a political kid and started to work on political campaigns in New York, because I believe people needed help and it’s interesting how fundamentally over time, that’s become an operating system for me, is helping people. So, my initial moments were, I don’t remember which a year of college it was, but kind of kicked in for me when I was there, and starting to work on politics, to try and make a change in the world through campaigns.
Carolyn Buck Luce
So, I’m going to push you a little bit on that because the way I like to define purpose, which is sort of what holds the whole decade game together is what is a particular theory that you have about how the world gets better that you feel, and have always felt called to make your own unique contribution? So, how does the world get better? And there’s lots of different ways the world gets better, kinder, healthier, more just, more equal, more peaceful, really something almost universal like that, where you said, that’s the shift that I’m going to, that’s going to be my life’s work. So, when you talk about political campaigns and wanting to help people, what was it in particular? What was the stuckness, where the world needed to do some shifting that you said, in particular, this is my swim lane.
Jeff Altman
And what I saw at that time in college, was that most people were trapped in mediocrity and thus, they live quiet lives of desperation to use the famous crowd and they did things good enough, but they really wanted to be left alone. They were conditioned to be ordinary and mediocre, and not to aspire and where they still aspired was about being better employees, which I kind of learned. I think I knew it for the longest time. But most people were trained in school to shut up and do what they were told to do. Regurgitate a bunch of facts when you were told to do it, or else and that or else, of course, translates into when you’re in school, you’re not going to get to a good college. When in college it progresses to you’re not going to get the good job and when you get the good job or a job, you wind up in a situation where you still have to do it or else you’re gonna get fired and it was living with these constant and perpetual fears imposed, that caused people to be small, and I want to help people break out of that and now I have language to it, but I didn’t at that time.
Carolyn Buck Luce
So, that’s the thing about purpose. You don’t have language. Your language gets more sophisticated as you actually get wiser about how the world works. But the instinct was there. So, what I’m hearing from you, and sort of shorthand is for you, the world got better when people trusted their epic.
Jeff Altman
I’ve to use your term. Yes.
Carolyn Buck Luce
Why not?
Jeff Altman
No reason I can think of.
Carolyn Buck Luce
And you’ll have your own language. But that purpose actually becomes your life’s work. So, no matter and you might be temporarily out of a product, but you’re never out of a job. Once you know that, that your life’s work is to help people find interest their epic. That makes sense?
Jeff Altman
Yes, it does and I want to translate this for the audience and say, what Carolyn has helped me do is to go back in time, and start in an earlier age, and with my first awareness of what I now call be the desire to help people be great. She calls epic and in doing that, how it’s surfaced, and you’ll notice, she prodded me a little bit more texture, in order to explore and I’m doing this because you can engage in your own process, with support with a book with the mydecadegame.com Am I right about that?
Carolyn Buck Luce
That’s it.
Jeff Altman
And be able to, to engage in your own version of self-discovery and start this process off for yourself and it’s better working with someone. Let’s continue.
Carolyn Buck Luce
So, what we’ve just established is your life’s work, which should feel liberating to know that if you look back in history, all of your, quote jobs have been in service of your life’s work. So, to actually know what your life’s work is, is very helpful as you think about which mission you’re going to take on at any time which is the how are you going to manifest that particular life work at that particular time. So, let’s go to the next exercise because I said your job is not what people are paying you to do. Your job is who you are becoming and that’s the objective of the decade game. The objective is to say 10 years from now wouldn’t it be cool if I knew myself, and was known by the people who love me? And the people who count on me, as and then you fill in the blank. Now, do you remember the game Mad Libs? Do you ever play Mad Libs? Okay, so mad libs is you get a story. But it would have some blanks in it and it would just tell you put a noun in here, or put an adjective in here or put a verb in here. You’d come out with outrageous ideas, and it would totally change the story because I said earlier, we are the actual author of our own story, except a lot of us have stories in our head, that compress us, contain us stories of I’m not good enough imposter syndrome or I’m too much, I better dim it down. I better not really share what’s really inside. I better pretend all those types of things. So, the objective of the game is to actually come up with your future job title by answering the question, wouldn’t it be cool if I knew myself, meaning a leader at home. This home, your heart home. If I knew myself known by the people I love, which is your family, the one-on-one relationships that you love, and known by the people who count on me, which is the world because I believe all of our jobs are to be the leader we longed to be at home at work and then the world in service of that big purpose. Okay, so now here’s the mad lib, you have to answer that question. Wouldn’t it be cool if I knew myself and was known by the people who love me and count on me as. Now, you have to pick a great adjective and iconic sub subject, a compelling verb, a targeted object, and an epic outcome. Now, I’m gonna say that again, and I’m going to give you an example. You have to come up with a great juicy adjectives in a super heroes subject, a compelling verb, a targeted object, and an epic outcome. So, for example, at 60, I had mandatory retirement from my partnership at EY. I was the Global Healthcare Leader. I built a billion-dollar business for EY, which is a professional services firm. But we had mandatory retirement at 60. So, I needed to set my game for 70 because by the way, I believe that every decade is the best decade yet, but you’re responsible for building it and so I set my mad lib, my new job title this way, at 70 and by the way, I turned 70 four months ago, at 70, it’s going to be so cool, because everyone’s going to know me, myself, the people who love me and the people who count on me as an organizational shaman, inspiring humans to live epic lives. So, that became my job title at 60 and then all of a sudden, I have a new job. Not what they were paying me to do but what I was going to say yes to in terms of experiences, knowledge, networks, skills, etc. So, now it’s how old will you be in a decade?
Jeff Altman
Well, I’m currently, folks, you may not know this, I’m 72. So, in a decade, let’s work with the whole numbers.
Carolyn Buck Luce
All right.
Jeff Altman
So, by the time I’m 80.
Carolyn Buck Luce
Yes, you will answer the question, how will I know myself, and be known by the people who love me, and the people who count on me as adjective, noun, verb, object, epic outcome, and make it as epic as possible. It would have to take you 10 years to be known this way.
Jeff Altman
So, by the time I’m 80 the people I know and love, and everyone around me and beyond, well know me as being a bold and blessing leader, who inspires people to be great. How’s that?
Carolyn Buck Luce
Great. Now, I will bold and blessing leader.
Jeff Altman
Who inspires people to be great.
Carolyn Buck Luce
Now, I’m going to push you a little bit
Jeff Altman
Good. That’s the idea folks.
Carolyn Buck Luce
My bet is you’re already known that way and it wouldn’t take so I’m looking for an exponential shift. Meaning what’s the work you haven’t yet done? This is a job, you’re gonna get promoted. What’s the work you haven’t yet done? If you were going to goose that up? And one of the things I say to my participants in the decade game masterclass is, this new job title should make you giggle. It should like Oh, my God. Yeah, that would be unbelievably cool.
Jeff Altman
So, the terms I would add in are a globally recognized as a bold and blessing leader who inspires people to be great. So, the extra piece involves the visibility and it’s exponentially larger.
Carolyn Buck Luce
So, you’re getting warmer and warmer, Marco Polo, because one of the things and I’ll explain this in a second. I actually ask people to look at every word they choose that adjective, the noun, the subject, the verb, etc and goose each one up, and let me tell you why. The way you play the game is it turns out that there’s 87,600 hours in the decade and if you sleep eight hours a night which I would definitely recommend, if you want to look like either you will be at our ages. That leaves over 50,000 hours and theoretically, it only takes 10,000 hours to become a world expert. So, you can become a world expert in five different areas of your life and those five areas in the decade game are outlined. 10,000 hours around your spiritual journey, your sense of self, the real stories that you tell yourself, the stories, you’re going to let go of. 10,000 hours in your relationship with the people you love because somehow, for some reason, it’s the hardest to be our best self with the people we love most and there’s 30,000 hours divided into three different areas of right relationship with the world and only 10,000 of that is whatever they’re paying you for. Another 10,000 is learning for the love of learning and the last 10,000 is your gifts of yourself into the community and your actual job is to be the CEO, the Chief Experience Officer, and the CIO, the Chief Investment Officer of your talents, your trust your time, and your treasures and so that’s the job is you’ve got 50,000 hours to invest, plus talents, trust and treasures and that would allow you to get to a whole new level of epic for each one of those words. So, that’s what I want you to work on is each one should be epic.
Jeff Altman
So, globally recognized, sorry, I have to work with two there.
Carolyn Buck Luce
That’s okay. That’s okay. You know, iteration. This is all about design thinking and if you iterate seven times in design thinking you’ll get to 1000 times better answer.
Jeff Altman
Okay. Globally recognized. Seen. That’s the simplest, simplest way I can distill it. The word global is redundant. So, it although on first blush, it seems more accurate to say globally recognized, but to be seen and accepted as a bold and blessing leader, I don’t have a better word than bold. I’ve spent years coming to that word because bold in US culture, and homogenized, this is the convention US culture and I don’t want to be homogenized, pasteurized, or anything else. I want to be bold.
Carolyn Buck Luce
someone who loves the word epic. So, I’m just gonna, you know, in the book, I actually give people a bunch of words to inspire them. But so for example, you say leader. I like playing with words like changemaker, shapeshifter, things that are iconic. So, I’ll give you an example. I also like coming up with new words, because when you think about it, probably half the job titles that exists today didn’t exist 10 years ago. It’s gonna be the same thing in the future. So, for example, let me give you my decade game for AD, because I just created that game. Wouldn’t it be cool if I knew myself and was known by the people who love me and the people who count on me as intergenerational restorer naming the dances that are longing to happen. Intergenerational restorer naming the dances that are longing to happen. Now, do I really know what that means? No. Do I really know what organizational shaman meant? No. However, once you’re able to, and here’s the thing about the decade game, you’re not playing it in the future. This is a job search. You’re playing it right now. So, for example, as soon as at 60, when I said I’m the organizational shaman, inspiring humans live epic lives. A week later, I got remarried. So, I retired from EY, I got remarried and instead of choosing to go to a beach for our honeymoon, my husband I chose to climb Kilimanjaro. Now, I’ve never met a shaman, but I’m thinking, I don’t think a shaman would go to a beach in Fiji. Like so what would a shaman who wants to inspire Epic do? So, all of a sudden, you begin to look at your choices differently. You begin to look at what are the experiences I need to have, what are the things I want to learn? Who do I want to learn with? And from and those become the choices that guide your decisions. So, that’s why it’s, do I know what a restore your is yet? No. But I know that I have a gift, which is to see the dances that are longing to happen in people.
Jeff Altman
That is beautiful. That is beautiful and there’s so much more I can go into here and I want to go a little bit further with me as a model because you spoke about intergenerational, which has been part of my work the last couple of years, recognizing that part of my job is legacy and what I leave behind and connecting with those younger as a resource, not to tell them what to do, but being the trusting advisor for them, or trusted advisor for them, of who they feel they can come to. So, I get that piece in my way. Your way can be very different because that word intergenerational really hit with me.
Carolyn Buck Luce
And let me just say, in order to sort of take the pressure off. Everything doesn’t have to be in that decade destination. I mentioned that you’ve got 50,000 hours and so the real part of the game is once you name your purpose, your life’s work and once you give yourself an evocative epic, giggly, juicy job title, then you’ve got, you’ll see in, as you read the book, there are five pillars that hold up this temple and those pillars each are game within the game and you get a chance to name each of the pillars as well. So, for example, well, let’s talk about my 70 to 80 game. I’ve named my learning pillar, which is one of the five pillars that I’m going to put 10,000 hours into, the wisdom of the ages. Now, I don’t know what that means, either. But what I know is that I’m going to spend 10,000 hours being curious about what does Why mean, when you’re five? What’s likely to happen when you’re 10? What about when I’m my mother who’s 95? So, to be curious about the wisdom of the ages, including ancestral wisdom, and future generational wisdom, in order to be an evolutionary leader for the epic, EPOCH that relief that we’re entering into. So, you don’t have to get everything right, in terms of the decade because you have five other games within the game to play, to come up with something juicy and evocative.
So, for example, I think you have to read the book to actually construct the entire game. But I just wanted to take some pressure off. So, there you go. You have an opportunity to be able to really think about the different areas of your life in order to name each of those games around what’s the real work now, because again, your job isn’t what someone’s paying you to do and by the way, I’ve used the decade game as have many in actually doing job searching because the being able to know that your story is really important because every company has a story of what they’re leaning into. Think about it. Every company has a vision statement of how the world gets better, in a way they want to contribute in a unique way. So, for example, I work with healthcare companies. Well, every healthcare company has the same vision to make the world healthier, but their decade mission about how they’re going to contribute to that is unique to them. So, to be able to know how to actually interview the interviewer, to be able to have a conversation about the company purpose, the team purpose, that leaders purpose and then what’s their mission? Like, what do they need to get accomplished in the next 10 years, it will be transformative, and then share why you’re there. It’s a whole different way. There’s so much of job searching and job interviewing, as you know, is people talk about what they did in the past. But people hire based on the future. Can they see you in their story? Will you be a hero and make them a hero or heroine in their story? So, I use this framework in lots of different ways.
Jeff Altman
This is fabulous. I have to say that, is there anything we haven’t covered yet that we really should, given this time that we have available?
Carolyn Buck Luce
Yes, I’m going to do one more exercise that everyone can do, and it takes just a second. Forget the whole framework, forgot all of that. When you feel anxious, compressed, angry, resigned, or exhausted, it means you’re playing someone else’s game, and you’re not out of your energy. As soon as you’re aware of that you might not know what to do, but I’m going to help you figure out how to get back into your energy. So, here’s the exercise. Come up with an acronym for an adjective that starts with E, an adjective that starts with P, an adjective that starts with I, and an adjective that starts with C, an epic acronym, that destruct that describes you, when you are feeling fully in your power, connected to your purpose when you are in flow. So, for example, my epic acronym is empathetic, passionate, innovative, and courageous. So, anytime, when I’m aware that I’m playing someone else’s game, I shut my eyes. Breathe deeply and think empathetic, passionate, innovators, and courageous and I can find that energy and when I do, I always make better decisions for myself, and anyone else who’s in the room. So, that’s how you play the game second by second. So, what is your epic acronym when you really are in flow in your power, in integrity, in your center, on purpose?
Jeff Altman
Energetic, I’m going to play here, folks. [Inaudible [38:03]. Well, I’m actually doing this Ph because it’s the rebellious side of me. I, Independent and Courageous.
Carolyn Buck Luce
Well, I love that we both have courageous because it’s my favorite word. It comes from the root, core heart and it means to go forward with your heart in your mouth, at times a doubt, fear and uncertainty and boy, the world needs courageous humans.
Jeff Altman
And we don’t need people who are transformational, because that translates in most businesses, homogenized, commoditized, and all sorts of all the rough edges have been shaved off as though someone took a plane out and file them off. We need greatness. We need epic people in order to make the world as it should be.
Carolyn Buck Luce
And that is sort of the essence of the game, which is how do you know that you actually that there’s no one on earth that’s ever walk that has the same fingerprint is you that has the same voice timbre as you or the same eye pigmentation, which is why face technology and voice technology work. So, what does that mean? It means no one can do what you can do. No one can see what you can see the way you see it and no one can speak the truth the way you can and that’s a call for epic because we each are we are unique and we all have been called for some purpose larger than ourselves and you are the author of that story of your epic.
What Are Your Goals? What is Your Strategy?
Jeff Altman
And if you’re job searching, you want to join an organization that can see you and accept these qualities in you. Otherwise, we’re back to homogenized and pasteurized and commoditized.
Carolyn Buck Luce
Absolutely.
Jeff Altman
This has been a lot of fun and there’s so much more in the book. How can people find out more about the book the decade game, everything.
Carolyn Buck Luce
So, you can go to mydecadegame.com and I do two-decade game master classes every year. You can find out more about that. You can go to epicwomensplaybook.com. You can buy the book and give it to all the people you love on either Amazon or Barnes and Noble or Walmart or anything like that and you can always write to me at Carolyn. Carolyn@mydecadegame.com and I promise I’ll answer you.
Jeff Altman
Beautiful. Thanks so much for making time today and folks, we’ll be back soon with more. I’ve got my coach hat back on. I’m Jeff Altman, the big game hunter. Hope you enjoyed today’s show. If you did and you’re watching a YouTube share, leave a comment click the light button, do something that lets people know it was worthwhile. I also want to encourage you to visit my website thebiggamehunter.US. You can find a ton of great information the blog, schedule time for a paid coaching session with me. Find out about my courses, books, and guides a lot there to help and lastly, connect with me on LinkedIn at linkedin.com\In\thebiggamehunter and I’ll tell you point blank will get a lot of no BS career advice from me. Hope you have a terrific day folks and most importantly, be great. Take care.
ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a coach who worked as a recruiter for what seems like one hundred years. He is hired to provide No BS Career Advice globally. That can involve job search, hiring staff, management, leadership, career transition and advice about resolving workplace issues. Schedule a discovery call at my website, www.TheBigGameHunter.us
He is the host of “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes for job search with over 2500 episodes.
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