Evolve with Anne Grady

In this episode, we welcome author and professional speaker Anne Grady. She recaps highlights of her keynote speech at the 2026 TASBO Engage Conference and introduces the topic of her new book, "Evolvability".

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The thing is, we're going to evolve one way or another. The only choice that we get to make is whether we do it by design or default.

Resilience & the TASBO Engage Conference

SPEAKER_01 0:10

That's professional speaker and author Ann Grady, who we heard at the Tasbow Engage conference in February. Anne is recognized as a leading expert in communication, adaptability, and resilience. We discussed the topic of her new book, Evolvability, on today's episode of TASBOCast. I'm your host, Tom Greer, Associate Executive Director for the Texas Association of School Business Officials. Okay, Ann, we're a month or so out from the TASBO Engage conference in Gradefine. You were our first general session speaker. I'm happy to say that uh you were our highest-rated speaker that we've ever seen. And you and Kevin Brown, who did our engage luncheon, were the pair, the two highest-rated speakers. So we're so honored to have you here, and our members are grateful uh to learn from you.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Well, I was absolutely blown away by the enthusiasm and the welcoming and just everything your members do. I mean, they're running the business of education. And as anyone can tell you, it is not an easy business. And as I mentioned, being the mom of a special needs kiddo, um, it just takes it to a whole nother level. So my appreciation for everything your members do to keep our schools going and and to keep our kids learning is just amazing.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

Well, we appreciate it. I I know your your talk was both entertaining and informative. And it was a it was interactive. You showed us actual practical things that we could take back immediately to the office.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

That's a big thing for me because I, you know, I love seeing motivational speakers and I've wanted to be a speaker since I was a little girl. Um, but I feel like if you're going to invest the time, you should be able to walk away with tangible things that you can apply. And we're in such a time of stress and turmoil and change and uncertainty that anything we can do to build that resilience muscle and our ability to adapt and navigate the craziness of life right now, I think is the more you can practice it, the better.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

Well, that's great. And and I was looking through the photos and I did see it for myself. You had a huge line for your book, Evolvability, which you're introducing out. What was your impression of the people when you met them after the first general session?

SPEAKER_00 2:32

Oh my gosh, that's my favorite part, my favorite time of the whole conference, because it's when people come up and share their stories with me. And so, you know, I was pretty vulnerable. I shared the story of my son and what journey that has been for us. And so when I'm sitting there signing books, people are in tears telling me about their kids, their spouses, their challenges, their traumas. There's this connection because I've let my guard down and let them in. And so it's both beautiful and sad and all of the emotions wrapped into one because you're very quickly, you're, you know, in a in a brief moment, you're you're simply signing someone's book and they're telling you about some of the hardest moments of their life. And so I appreciated so much the ability to sit there and just chat with them for a moment. And everybody was so patient and kind and weighted. And so there were lots of hugs, lots of tears. It was, it was just a beautiful, beautiful experience.

About Evolvability

SPEAKER_01 3:31

And then we appreciated afterwards you did a breakout session on the subject of your book, evolvability. And kudos to TASBO Executive Director. She purchased a book for all staff and in our board. Tell us about evolvability real quick and um let us know why it's relevant in this day and age.

SPEAKER_00 3:53

Well, it's funny. Vulnerability moment again, here from Ann Grady, because that was the first time uh ever delivering it live. Um, I have recently, you know, the book just came out in February. The keynote I've delivered virtually a couple of times, a few times, but it it was my first time doing it in person, and I was so nervous. It was like I was back, you know, my first speaking engagement ever. Oh, nice. Um, and it and so I was blown away by the feedback and appreciated it very much, and it was really helpful. Um, you know, evolvability became the next evolution of resilience. Resilience helps you bounce back, right? But it just gets you to baseline. That's surviving. And I feel like we can do more than just survive. We can live well, we can feel good, but we have to learn to adapt rather than fight the reality we're in. We have to learn to navigate it and adapt with it. And so this book was really started out with my journey of adaptability. And I, you know, I am typically very resistant to change. And so I had to go through this journey both with my son, my personal health challenges, camping, as I know we'll talk about. But it was just kind of my what I find is that I have to learn these hard lessons in my life. And if I can break them down into practical steps that people can follow and back it up with the science, then I want to keep people from having to recreate the same wheel I had to, you know, create. So my evolution followed this book to the point where I was supposed to have printed copies to sell at the conference and they weren't there on time. And so, you know, that was me having a crisis two days before going, okay, practice what I teach. Let's process the stress, and um, so it's just it's a learning process, right? It's it's a practice. Nobody ever finishes this journey. It's just something we're all constantly building the skills to to practice throughout our lives.

Camping Stories

SPEAKER_01 5:51

One thing I I do like about the book is you you do weave in your reluctance to to do camping and how you actually learn to enjoy it and evolve and and do it your own way. I'll just tell you from personal experience, I'm you know, I literally have childhood traumas from camping with tents, which Okay, Tom, you have to tell me about these stories.

SPEAKER_00 6:14

I'm dying to know.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

Okay, so I was in Cub Scouts, we all get our tent set, I we figure out how to do the tent, and the tent leaks when it's raining outside. So I I had to my me and my brother actually, I think my dad was around and we just kind of spent the morning in the car because our our tent was leaking. And then again with the storm, I did camping at Mustang Islands.

SPEAKER_00 6:41

I was raised very close to there.

SPEAKER_01 6:43

Yeah, of course, windstorm, yeah, so sands. I was probably I was a little guy, I was like eight or nine, and I I left my tent because it was, I guess it was scary or something, and I slept in the van uh down by the river, but down by the ocean, and then the worst one was we went to in college, I think, we drove to Big Bend, and it's an amazing place. Have you been to Big Bend?

SPEAKER_00 7:13

No, it's on my list.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

It's amazing, and we had a great time, and then guess what? Uh I I maybe we we didn't set we should have set up camp, I think, earlier, but right before we were set to you know set up our camp, we realized we didn't bring tent steaks. So again, we had to sleep in the van. And our in our weekend trip turn turned to an overnight trip. And then beyond that, I was driving back at midnight the next night. So we we spend a whole day. It's really uh treacherous driving on those roads, there's a lot of deer, but on I-10, I hit a herd of javelina, at least two, and totally freaked out.

SPEAKER_00 8:05

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

We I get out, I'm thinking the whole front of my parents' van is destroyed because of those little those solid bumpers. There wasn't a dent, unfortunately, for the javelina. They but I definitely hit them. I didn't crash. Now I've grown up and now you you have more control, and I like the outdoors, but we do Airbnbs and hotels and cabins and then drive to wherever we want to.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

Well, I think the universe is telling you to get a camping ban. Like I think that's what all of these stories have in common. You end up in a van and they make sprinter camping bands. I think it was perfect for you.

SPEAKER_01 8:49

And we did have a speaker who was a photographer, and he needed to get to hard-to-reach places. So the normal campers wouldn't get there. And he did retrofit a four by four Ford or something, basically put on, made it a RV.

SPEAKER_00 9:09

Nice.

SPEAKER_01 9:10

But it had to be four by four because he was going into places where RVs can't get to.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

Yeah, I just got my first four by four vehicle myself because uh of this camping evolution, and now I can drive over anything. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

What's your favorite place?

SPEAKER_00 9:26

Oh my gosh, there's been so many, but I we really love Colorado. We love the mountains. We actually last summer we camped in at Lake Washita State Park in Arkansas. Oh, yeah. And I would have never thought to go there, but it was absolutely stunning. We we loved it so much, we went back again for another week. It was just beautiful. It's right outside of hot springs.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

Okay, is that by that's not Ozarks or is it?

SPEAKER_00 9:52

Yeah, I mean, I think it's like part of it. Um well it's huge, huge, tall, tall pine trees. Um, so I would definitely think it was if it's not technically, then it is the outskirts, but it's it it was just stunning.

SPEAKER_01 10:07

I think I think Arkansas's underrated. My niece goes to the the university there, and she doesn't she never wants to leave.

SPEAKER_00 10:15

Is that the Razorbacks?

SPEAKER_01 10:16

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:17

Okay. Yeah. Lots of school spirit in the town.

Six Pillars of EVOLVE

SPEAKER_01 10:21

All right. Well, hey, let's get let's go deeper into evolvability. Uh, what is it and what are the six pillars of I think it's six pillars of evolve. And they're not gonna be.

SPEAKER_00 10:31

Yeah, evolve is an yeah, evolve is an acronym. So the the whole point in biology, the term evolvability is an organism's ability to adapt over time in response to pressure. Ours is the exact same thing. It's how we build the skills to navigate change, uncertainty, and disruption. And the Evolve framework is broken into six pillars that I believe are the necessary skills you need to be successful and be happy in the kind of world that we live in right now. So the first is emotional aptitude, understanding how to read, recognize, and respond to your emotions. And I, you know, I joke that emotions are like kids. You don't want them driving the car, but you can't shove them in the trunk either. You have to learn how to manage them so they don't manage you. The V is for values, really being clear on what's most important to you and using that to guide your decisions. But also if you're working with a team or even your family, using values as your guidepost for shared expectations and team behavior and accountability. O optimization, how do you make the most out of your limited time, energy, and attention? We have such limited resources and we hand them out like free samples at Costco. So, what are we doing to take back control? Then we move into leadership. And this isn't necessarily from a people leadership perspective, it's more of an impact. How are you bringing people along for the ride and involving them in the process and influencing their behavior positively? Uh, the next V is versatility. We have to shift the way we think, the way we behave based on the situation and based on our audience because our most of us communicate the way we're comfortable communicating and we think the way we've always thought. So we have to stretch that muscle, and it's not comfortable, but it's a skill. And then the final E is empowerment. How can we let go of the stuff we can't control? Take agency over the things that we can control. Um, and really practice the art of acceptance in some areas, but then take back that internal locus of control where we can, because agency determines not just your, you know, mental state, but your physical health. So together they equal this skill set that I think if people can practice and learn, they can make it through just about anything. And I know because I feel like the the insurance commercial, I I know because I've seen a thing or two.

SPEAKER_01 13:04

Oh, right.

SPEAKER_00 13:04

I've done a thing or two, I've seen a thing or two. And uh, and I know these skills are necessary.

SPEAKER_01 13:11

And it does sound like a lot of what our members are talking about in public education, you know, especially on um versatility, uh, empowerment. It's you know, it's relevant in a lot of different industries, especially at this day and age where it it doesn't seem like the institutions are there or the norms are shared. And so focusing on on things that you have control over, uh, and it's that mind shift that which would allow you to be more versatile, be optimize what's important and focus on that priority. Uh, the one I also like for our members is values. You know, when you look at what our members do, they don't only see the children or the students, but we do encourage them whenever possible to interact with the faculty and with the the students so you see what's important, what why you're doing all this, why you're you know, doing the hard things.

SPEAKER_00 14:11

Yes. And, you know, I get I have the privilege of speaking to educators all over the country, and it it's not um unique to Texas, right? Federal funding cuts, uh stress testing, academic standards, not to mention the anxiety, depression, mental health crises that kids are going through, the lack of, you know, available counselors per child. It's just a whole bunch. But I see the exact same thing when I'm whether I'm working with a school district or Lockheed Martin or Microsoft, right? Everybody is experiencing a collective feeling. I think it stems from the fact that our world is evolving faster than our nervous systems were designed to keep up. And so I think people start to feel like, what's wrong with me? Why am I always stressed? Why am I always tired? Why do I always feel like this? Why is it never enough? It's because your nervous system hasn't been able to adapt. The good news is we can train it, right? We can build those skills. But right now, everything is so rapidly changing and there is so much uncertainty. Other than death, uncertainty is the greatest threat of all to the human brain. And so we're walking around in kind of this mental fog because everybody's just mentally, emotionally worn down.

Optimization

SPEAKER_01 15:32

That makes sense. Uh, the one that spoke to me probably because of the the terminology that you put in there was the the pillar on optimization. Uh, I like the section you did on procrastination and and you had a practical tip. If you're kind of overwhelmed with a whole bunch of stuff and you're not feeling it, uh, guess what? You can self-impose a timeout where you do nothing. And then when you go back to work, it's a welcome break from just not looking at your phone, not not listening to music, not watching TV. Then you're like, okay, I'm ready. I'm ready. Is it can you elaborate on that?

SPEAKER_00 16:11

Sure. We've lost the art of stillness. We're great at being busy. Like I'm surprised when you were in Cub Scouts, they didn't start having a busy badge, right? We've gotten, we've gotten really good at it, but busy doesn't equal productivity, it equals exhaustion. And I feel like we're in such a constant state of achievement and movement and go, go, go, go, go, that sometimes what your brain really needs is just to stop. And we procrastinate because the idea of what we have to do seems greater than the resources we have available, or just don't want to do it. And so we reach for things to distract us, whether that's social media or you know, checking email or doing a load of laundry or whatever it is. But when you feel that urge to do anything but the task at hand, sit there and do nothing for a few minutes because it feels like it's forever. And that's kind of the point. When you sit in stillness, you it shifts your perspective of time. But to your point, it also is so uncomfortable for most of us that when you go back to the task, it almost feels like a relief because you're giving your brain back something to do. And so if I have a task that I am just dreading, I call it my frog. And I talked about that in the book too. But if I'm having a task that I just do not want to do, rather than check email or look at social or or do something else, I will literally sit for two or three minutes in silence. And while I'm there, I can't wait to get back to the task, just so I don't have to sit there in silence anymore. Yeah. Um, kind of counterintuitive, but it works.

SPEAKER_01 17:53

Now you you referenced the eat your frog, and I like that section too. You start with the Mark Twain quote. And I'm guessing you're not wanting people to literally do this, but Mark Twain's quote was eat a live frog in the morning, then nothing worse will happen uh that day. And it that's true.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

It is true. Yeah, Brian Tracy wrote a book uh called Eat That Frog. And he was playing off this idea and said that your frog is the task that you are dreading. It's, you know, the report you don't want to do, it's the email you don't want to send, the conversation you don't want to have. It's the thing that would make everything else in your life easier if it were done. And we all have a bunch of them. And so what we do is we dread that task throughout the day. We think about it, we ruminate on it. And what we don't realize is that simply ruminating on it and thinking about it and dreading it wastes so much cognitive fuel that could be spent doing lots of other things. And the research shows if you do the most the least desirable thing, first thing before you check email, jump into your day, deal with other people's emergencies, you get a huge surge of dopamine, which is kind of motivation in molecular form. It's it's a it really does dopamine is a sense of accomplishment, it's excitement, it's feel good, but it also frees up that mental bandwidth for the rest of the day so that you can have more, you know, fuel to power, more critical decisions later in the day. And if you have lots of different frogs, I use something called a focus filter. And so it's it's kind of just a simple three by three matrix. And I think, all right, here are the three most important things I have to do this week. Here are the three most important things I have to do today, and here are the three most important things I can do in this moment. And sometimes in this moment, one of the most important things is to be still, right? These don't have to be actions, but it's to get out of everybody else's crises and emergencies because if everything is urgent, nothing is. So we have to get really clear on our priorities. And one of the activities I talked about in this pillar is gaining alignment with whoever you're reporting to about what your high payoff activities are, those activities that generate the greatest return for the time invested. It's the 80-20 rule. So 20% of the things you do on any given day are generating 80% of your results. But if you're not in alignment with the person you're reporting to, then you could spend a whole lot of time being busy and not producing results. So it's just a great way to gain alignment. Am I investing time in the things that are actually most important? And if not, how do we reprioritize my schedule so I can make space for them? Because it's like Thanksgiving dinner. You can only pile so much on your plate before it spills over, right? You you can't just have more to do than time to do it in perpetuity. So we have to be able to prioritize things. And if we're not in alignment with what those things are, we end up spin spinning our wheels and being very busy, but just tired as a result.

SPEAKER_01 20:56

My my next section that I liked was when you talk about energy vampire. I guess identifying those time suckers is important.

unknown 21:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:04

And it could be tasks, but it could also be people. So we've all been in a meeting with somebody who is just angry and frustrated and short and snappy. And it might have nothing to do with anybody at work. It might be a personal thing, but we've all been in that conversation with that person. And when you leave that conversation, you might notice you feel drained. It's because when we are in that conversation, our body is flooding us with cortisol and adrenaline. It feels like there's danger. And those chemicals can last up to 48 hours after the interaction. So you might have a negative interaction with someone over breakfast, but it still lingers. And so it's it doesn't mean you can avoid these people. Like, I mean, I'm embarrassed to say it kind of, but my son, Evan, is an energy vampire. I love him more than anything in the world. But when I'm with him, it's exhausting because I constantly. Have to be very, you know, he has autism and mental illness. So I have to be very careful about how I say things and how I approach him so that we're staying productive and not challenging. Obviously, I can't avoid and don't want to avoid interactions with my child. But what it does is it lets me prepare ahead of time and create some breathing room afterwards so that I can recharge. So you can't always avoid the interactions or tasks that suck the joy out of your life or make your life difficult, but you can prepare yourself before and after to recover from it.

SPEAKER_01 22:37

Anything else?

Recover Time

SPEAKER_00 22:39

I mean, it's really, okay, you got this. You can do this. You're gonna let, you know, if you're gonna let them say or do what they say or do, it's not about you, it's not personal, right? You can't change them, you can only change your response. But then you need on the back end recovery time. See, that's the part I think most people miss. We finish that interaction and then we move right into the next one. And if you're not taking time to recover, your brain and body are still operating like you're in danger. And over time, that wears down both your physical and mental health. So the recovery is just as, if not more important than the preparation.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

There's a show. Have you watched the show The Pit on HVA?

SPEAKER_00 23:20

Oh, I'm addicted. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 23:22

So it's about the ER in Pittsburgh. There is no recovery time. And and the one thing that you can learn from that is just what you were talking about, is if you are uh in like a lot of our our members, their managers or director level is how can you shape the culture so there is recovery time? So it's not bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. You identify some of the things that don't have to be emergencies, and then you you know manage your what is important.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

Um but it's also setting your meetings for 25 minutes instead of 30 or 50 instead of an hour. I mean, these are tiny simple things that you can integrate into your day. If you are a leader, you should be asking what does work-life balance look for you look like for you right now? Um, if you are a leader, you should be asking, what are you doing to fuel yourself and recharge and reset? Not just like binge watching Netflix, but like what are you doing to intentionally unplug? And the leader has to model it because you can't promote what you don't practice. So if you've got a leader, you know, you talked about values being an important pillar. And so let's use that as an example. If you're sending an email at midnight and you're not working with a global team, right? You're just sending an email at midnight, but you tell your team you value well-being, what you're demonstrating is that you value availability, not well-being. You value convenience and availability. So as a leader, you have to be really clear on modeling the behavior you want to see, because if you're not taking vacation, your team feels guilty for taking it or feels like they need to stay connected. Take every ounce of vacation time that you have, even if you do absolutely nothing. Our brain wasn't designed to run constantly. And you talked about the pit. When you're in critical situations like an ER or space shuttle or these careers where like life and death is literally on the line, what you'll notice is that a lot of these folks are taught one, how to navigate that high level of acute stress over and over and over again so that you learn how to recover more quickly. But you have to be willing to be put in those incredibly high stress environments over and over and over again. But they're also starting to incorporate well-being, mindfulness, breathing, recovery time in healthcare because they're some of the highest suicide rates around. If you don't let your brain recover, it's your body will find a way. For me, it ended up with a tumor in my face that left my face paralyzed. Your body has to stop. And so if you don't take the time to recover, and when I say recover, I don't mean you finish a tough meeting with a colleague and you go on a week-long retreat. What I'm suggesting is that you go in a tough meeting with a colleague and then you take a quick walk for five minutes and you let it go, right? And you go, okay, this is not about me. And what we do, and I read this this morning and it was so fascinating because it said, you know, the stress is not what's bad for us, it's the rumination about the stress. And it's what I talked about in my keynote, right? It's not the stress, it's the story we tell ourselves about it. So if you're having a highly acute, stressful situation, that is very good for you. It's good for your brain, it's good for your body, and our bodies were designed to bounce back from that. But if you're chronically in those situations and you're not letting your brain rest because you're thinking about it all the time, you end up more exhausted than if it were physical exertion. So it's the overthinking, it's the rumination. And I talk about that in evolvability in optimization, right? It's there our brain, just because you have a thought doesn't mean you need to give it a microphone. You cannot control worry. It's an intrusive thought. Don't try. But worrying or replaying the conversation on repeat, that you get to take back some control. And that's where I give some mental hygiene techniques in the book about how to do that.

SPEAKER_01 27:32

And in fact, today we have a chiropractor uh downstairs, and they're doing ways to get better sleep. Like nice, you know, different tips. And you know, one is stay off your screen before sleep. But I know from my own perspective, I will ruminate before sleep, and it just makes your whole night worse.

SPEAKER_00 27:53

You want a technique? You want a tip to stop it?

SPEAKER_01 27:56

What's that?

SPEAKER_00 27:57

All right. So this is what I use every night because I do the same thing. I'm a warrior. It's called cognitive shuffling. And it's gonna sound so silly, but what you're gonna do is give your brain a task that's engaging enough to keep you from ruminating, but not so engaging that it keeps you awake. So, for example, I like to list things that start with every letter of the alphabet. It could be like fruits and vegetables or animals. And so I'll lay there and I'll think Ardvark, alpaca, anteater. And then my brain will go to crap, I forgot to send the email to Tom about what time we're gonna get together. Okay, bear, bobcat, bunny. Oh, why did I eat that bagel? I said I was gonna give up carbs and I ate the bagel. What is wrong with me? Okay, dog, deer, right? And so you do that all the way. I get to zebra and sometimes have to start over again. What you're doing is you're training your brain to direct its attention where you want it to go. You're giving it a job. And you will get distracted because that's what the brain does, but you go back to it over and over and over again. And you're simply training your brain. Yeah, I get to think about what I want to think about, not where you always take me. We think our brain wants us happy. It just wants you alive. Your brain could care less if you're happy.

SPEAKER_01 29:06

What's your favorite pillar of evolve?

SPEAKER_00 29:09

I think it's the one that I struggle with the most. Um, and that is the emotional aptitude pillar, which I feel like is the foundation for everything else. I'm everybody assumes that you can't control, well, I shouldn't say you can't control your emotions. I I kind of liken it to being an emotional thermostat, right? The the ability to be self-aware and recognize your own temperature, the ability to read the room and have empathy and compassion without internalizing and carrying everybody's weight. But most importantly, how do you regulate those really tough emotions? And conversely, how do you put your brain in a positive emotional state? Like if I were to ask you right now, do you want to feel good or bad today? Well, I think I'd know your answer. You want to feel good, right? You don't have to wait for a better mood to take action. You have to take action that's going to build a better mood. So, what creates a good mood? Well, thinking about things you're excited about, proud of, grateful for, people that you care about, people you want to spend time with. So get together with your team and spend two minutes before your meeting talking about something in your life that's right right now. What's a good thing happening in your life right now has doesn't have to be about work. And you try that at the beginning of your meeting, and all of a sudden defensiveness lowers. Being critical takes down a notch. People are out of the threat mode and into a safety mode. Nobody gets tired of hearing about how you appreciate them. Nobody gets tired of hearing that they're doing a good job. So these little things that we can do to cultivate positive emotions. And then conversely, the things we can do to regulate the tough ones, the stress, the anxiety, the worry, all of those, for me, that has been most powerful because I feel like it's the foundation for everything else.

SPEAKER_01 30:57

That makes sense. So what do you want to leave our listeners with?

SPEAKER_00 31:01

The thing is, we're going to evolve one way or another. The only choice that we get to make is whether we do it by design or default. And so the question I would ask your members is do you want to be, do you want to have a life that you enjoy living, not just surviving the one you're in? And if so, these are the skills you need to make that happen. So if you're interested in figuring out your current level of adaptability, if you go to evolvability.com, there's a free evolvability index. It's, you know, basically a snapshot into your current level of adaptability. And it'll give you some ideas of where you're doing great, where you can improve, and how you can help other people come along for the ride.