The Exchanges

Q a huge impact on growth, right? But, you know, sometimes as humans, we get stuck, right? We need help. Um, and in the second part of your book, you, you really dive deep into this idea of teaching in order to learn, and then also enlisting other people for help rather than just trying to master something alone, right? Can you, can you tell me a bit more about that?

A All right, so the, the, one of my favorite findings in psychology is, um, It comes out of birth order research. One finding that's pretty robust is that firstborns slightly outscore their younger siblings on IQ tests. As a firstborn, I was delighted by this evidence. My sister did not like it so much. So we know that's not a genetic advantage. What is it that birth order is doing? It turns out that firstborns spend more time teaching their younger siblings things, and that experience of teaching makes them better students. It's called the tutor effect. And one of the ways we know it is, if you have more younger siblings, you get to do more teaching, and you get a little bit more of an IQ edge. So, I think the lesson here is that one of the best ways to learn something really is to teach it. You remember it better once you've had to retrieve it, and you also understand it better once you've had to explain it.

AI assessment note: “one of the best ways to learn something really is to teach it.”

Q how does that happen? How, how, how can big organizations encourage innovative thinking?

A So I'll throw out two ideas that I think have some good data behind them. The first one is something that I've seen both at Bridgewater and at Warby Parker. It's a rethinking of the suggestion box, and instead of a suggestion box, they run problem boxes, where at Warby, it's just a Google Doc. Anytime you see something broken, it's usually a technical bug, but you could design yours to include management bugs or culture bugs. You submit that, and then they have people across the organization rate how important those problems are. Which means you get feedback on whether you're raising critical issues, and then if you want to work on one of the important ones, you can make it part of your job to do that. You get a team and resources behind you, and that problem identification process is usually the beginning of an innovative solution. Um, when you want to get more innovative solutions and higher quality solutions, I think one of the best things you can do in a big organization is run an innovation tournament, a contest for ideas, and My favorite example was at Dow Chemical. They announced this tournament, and they said, we're looking for ideas that will save energy and reduce waste. They have to cost no more than 200 grand U.S. and be able to pay for themselves within a year if they work. And anybody in the company can submit. They have peers and subject matter experts evaluate, …

AI assessment note: “I'll throw out two ideas that I think have some good data behind them.”

Q and in your books, you are not a natural procrastinator. You are an A student, right? And you kind of poke fun at yourself for that, because in your research, you actually discovered that procrastinators can sometimes be some of the most creative people, that procrastination is Part of the creative process, which I love. But, I mean, I'm hyperbolizing a little bit, but, but there's truth to that, right?

A I think there is, although I'm always worried when I talk about this that people are going to take this as, as license, right? I've now just given you an excuse to procrastinate on everything, which is, which is not my ambition. What I'm trying to accomplish is something more modest, which is to say we all procrastinate sometimes. Um, even those of us who are pre-crastinators and like to do things months ahead of schedule, sometimes we put things off. And if you're putting off a project or a problem because you're bored by it or you don't care about it, Procrastination is not going to pay off. But in this research that Jihei Shin and I did, we, we found consistently that if you were putting off a task because it was hard and you hadn't figured it out yet, that that opened up opportunities to incubate. You were more likely to access remote knowledge. You were more likely to reframe the problem in, you know, in fresh ways. And sometimes that allowed you to stumble onto a great creative insight. And so, yeah, I think it worked for DaVinci, Epic Procrastinator. I've been told that Steve Jobs was a serious procrastinator by many of the people who work closely with him. Uh, Lincoln and MLK both procrastinated on their most famous speeches. You know what? Sometimes people, people come up with brilliant ideas, not in spite of that procrastination, but in part because of it.

AI assessment note: “I think there is, although I'm always worried when I talk about this”

Q of this, of founders who, who, despite the evidence to the contrary, stick with it, and eventually they succeed, but of course we know that, that those are the stories we tell on how I built this. In many cases, it's, it's a folly. So when do you know When do you know to stick with it, and to keep at it, and when do you know to course correct?

A So I don't think you can know. I think there's a fine line between heroic persistence and stubborn stupidity, and it's usually after the fact that you get to tell which was which, and I think for, you know, for every Gary whose persistence paid off, right, there are probably eight or nine entrepreneurs who were too busy worshipping at the altar of hustle and praying to the high priest of grit to, you know, to stop and say, hmm, maybe I should rethink this, and then they regretted it. I think, Irrational persistence, uh, is a very high risk, maybe high return strategy. Uh, but I think the, the way that I would start to, to try to analyze, should I stick with it or should I let go is with the research on what's called escalation of commitment to a losing course of action. So escalation of commitment happens when you make an initial choice, you start to get some negative feedback that signals, maybe this was the wrong call, but you decide, you know what, if I invest more, I can turn the ship around. And a lot of us do that. We think it's about some costs, but the most powerful drivers are not economic. They're emotional. It's ego and image. I don't want to look like a bad decision maker. I don't want to see a bad decision maker in the mirror. So I convinced myself that there's still hope here yet. And what that means is if I'm the person who made the initial decision, I am comprom…

AI assessment note: “So I don't think you can know. I think there's a fine line”

Q Do you, um, do you feel like every single person, I mean, I, maybe it's, it's impossible to say every single person, but that most people have a hidden potential that, that they are unaware of?

A I think everyone has hidden potential. And yes, that is a, that's a big generalization, but I believe it in part because This is one of those shoulda said moments. If I were rewriting Hidden Potential today, I would do a section on this exercise called the Reflected Best Self Portrait. Laura Morgan Roberts and Jane Dutton and colleagues created this tool that started from the premise that we don't always know our own strengths and capacities for growth. And I've done it with founders. I've done it with senior leaders. I've done it with undergrads and MBA students. It is one of the only activities I've ever done that no matter how senior you are or where you come from, uh, is a moving, meaningful, and sometimes life-changing experience for the participants. Uh, and what happens is it, it, it really makes your hidden potential visible to you by allowing the people who know you well to hold up a mirror. So all you do in the exercise is you go to, the original version is 15 to 20 people who know you well in different walks of life. Some family, some friends, some colleagues. And you ask them to tell a story about a time when you were at your best. And that's it. And you collect these, you get them by email, it's, it's the best inbox you will ever experience. You're like, wow, I'm amazing! But then you have some work to do. You have to analyze the stories and identify the common the…

AI assessment note: “I think everyone has hidden potential. And yes, that is a, that's a big generalization”

Q was abandoning the original vision that they decided to join him on, that journey, right? And, and they, they, they left. Um, and he almost, he was almost thrown out. So he was right. He was proved right in the end, but how does a founder handle a situation like that? I mean, he, he knew, he truly believed he was right, but everybody around him didn't, and they left.

A I think where I would start on that is to say it's always easier to manage a situation like that proactively as opposed to reactively. And upfront, what I would love to see a founder do is make a clear distinction between principles and policies, right? So I would argue that Robert's principles, uh, were much more fundamental and more basic than do we give commission or not to real estate agents? Um, I think the underlying principle is he didn't want to treat people like, um, You know, like they were monkeys that needed to be incentivized. He wanted to value them like human beings and pay them a salary and not have to dangle carrots or use sticks to try to motivate them, right? Um, but that is an assumption about human nature. It's a value you place on people. Whether a particular policy is the right way to express that value is a, it's an open question, right? It's waiting to be tested. And so I think if, if I were a founder in that situation, I would try to, to separate those two things out. I would say, look, I want to found this as a different kind of real estate company. I want to put people first. I want to treat my agents as full employees. And, you know, I think one interesting way of doing that might be to experiment with a no commission structure. That's a hypothesis. It's a hypothesis. It might be true. It might be false. Let's go and test it. And if it turns out tha…

AI assessment note: “manage a situation like that proactively as opposed to reactively”

Q to sort of talk high level, but also talk about very actionable and practical things, tools, advice, tips, and, and something that you've written about that I love is, uh, it's something you call the creative checkup, which you actually, you put on your calendar. You recommend people schedule a creative checkup like you would schedule a medical checkup. So first of all, what is, what is a creative checkup?

A It's something that I, I stumbled upon after too many years of students coming back after graduating from Wharton and saying, you know, I really wish you would have pushed me harder to rethink my career plans. You told me not to go in investment banking. You told me I was not intrinsically interested in markets and that I was not going to find this to be, you know, a great learning experience. And I didn't listen. I'm like, I don't know how much harder I can push you. What I think you need instead is to hear this advice at the right time. When you're open to it. And eventually what I started doing was I just, all the students who I thought were making career choices they might later regret. I said, you go to the doctor once or twice a year, even if nothing seems to be wrong. What if you did the same thing for your career? So schedule a career checkup, uh, put it in your calendar. Don't do it every day because then you're going to be stuck in analysis paralysis and you will never engage in that job.

AI assessment note: “What if you did the same thing for your career? So schedule a career checkup”

Q You have to come up with ideas that are interesting, that are innovative. I mean, your books, give and take, and originals, I mean, they are so innovative and so interesting, and that requires a lot of Thinking. I mean, you have to come up with those ideas. How do you begin to do that? I imagine it's not just about time management. Sometimes it's about just thinking, isn't it?

A Yeah, it is. One of the things I've tried to do is, is reverse engineer some of the, the projects that I'm relatively proud of and some of the ones that I regret. And one thing I've noticed is obviously a project has to start with, you know, with passion or curiosity. I have to care about it. It's going to follow me around for a long time and I'm gonna get annoyed by being typecast at some point by it, and so I really have to wake up in the morning excited about it, uh, go to bed at night thinking about it, and, you know, a lot of that incubation happens when I'm not even meaning to focus my attention on it, but it just draws me in. And then the second filter is it's gotta be obviously useful to other people, but I haven't paid enough attention to is this, is this novel? Do I have something unique to say about this topic? I've started a lot of projects that are, I think, exciting to me, Um, they address things that matter to others, but we just don't need another leadership book. I, I'm pretty convinced. I don't think we need another self-help book either on self-esteem for that matter, right? So thinking about, okay, how unique is the contribution that I could make here is something that I would like to spend more time on, and that's not occupying enough of my thinking time right now.

AI assessment note: “One of the things I've tried to do is, is reverse engineer”

Q What, what are, what are some strategies that you use when you run into roadblocks, when you, when you hit a creative block, or you, I hesitate to ask, do you ever have, have that experience where you just feel like nothing interesting is kind of coming out?

A Are there, are there people who don't? Because I'd really like to meet one of those people. Of course I do. Everyone has, has creative blocks. And, um, For me, they usually come when I'm trying to rush an idea ahead before I've, I've really put all the pieces together. And for a long time, I just, I beat myself up about that. And I would say, okay, you know what? I'm not creative. Uh, I am, you know, most of my work is really synthesizing other people's ideas, which I failed to recognize is a form of creativity. It's not the, you know, the, the breakthrough innovation that I normally think about when I think about creativity. But, um, as, as one of my favorite organizational psychologists, Carl Weick often puts it, Creativity is just putting old things in new combinations and new things in old combinations. And so that ability to integrate is actually a skill. And when I'm, when I'm blocked creatively, it usually means I haven't gathered enough pieces of that puzzle to put it together yet. And it's time to go off and read. It's time to do some research. It's time to, to go out into the world and observe what's happening in some organizations that live an extreme version of what I'm trying to make sense of. And then at some point, what I typically find is I can try to get a About my own creative blocks. I'm like, okay, I'm a psychologist. This is a fascinating case for me to stu…

AI assessment note: “It's time to go off and read. It's time to do some research.”

Q Um, but people who are part of this summit are building things and they know that they may have to Try something and fail in order to innovate, but, but failure after failure, or even one significant failure, it can be hard to keep learning and growing from that without knowing whether you're ever going to get a break, right? You could become, you could become totally demoralized and paralyzed.

A I think one of the worst exports of Silicon Valley to the rest of the world is the idea that we should celebrate failure. Guy, I don't know about you. I have never wanted to throw a party when I crashed and burned. Uh, like I, I was not out there celebrating when I found out that this online social network that we started in 1999 could have been Facebook. I was definitely not ready to party when, you know, Warby Parker went from an idea that I had declined to invest in, uh, to a unicorn. I mean, I was, I was thrilled for Neil and Dave and their team, but I wasn't like, yes, I screwed up that investment. And Now it's a badge of honor, right?

AI assessment note: “I think one of the worst exports of Silicon Valley to the rest of the world”

Q innovative ideas, you come up with innovative ideas, is by asking other people, and, and bouncing them off other people, and, and collaborating with people who you trust, and this has been a challenging past 15 months to do that, because we are all in remote environments. How do you think, If collaboration is an engine for innovation, how do you think remote work is going to affect creative collaboration?

A I think it depends a lot on how we do it. So pre-pandemic, I think COVID has been the worst time to test remote work because we are in the middle of a pandemic, and many of us have been trying to be productive and creative while our kids are at home and online school at the same time. And the fact that we've been able to get anything done In those circumstances is a minor miracle. I think the much better tests are pre-COVID. Um, we had evidence, a meta-analysis, a study of studies showing this is, uh, even as early as 2007 with thousands of data points that as long as people were in the office half the week, if they had flexibility the other half, they were more productive, more satisfied, higher retention, and no cost to relationships in any way, shape, or form. And so I think that that's where we need to be moving. We have lots of good experimental data, um, like Nick Bloom at Ctrip in China showing that when you're randomly assigned to work from home, you're about 13 and a half percent more productive and half as likely to quit. We have also some now within-person experiments which show that if you test my productivity compared to my own productivity when I'm at home versus not at home, I'm more productive at home, especially if I'm a working mother, it turns out. The big unanswered question is how do we keep creative collaboration going with that flexibility? And I think th…

AI assessment note: “The big unanswered question is how do we keep creative collaboration going with that flexibility”