The Exchanges

Q trend? Is it a personality trait? Is it something, um, a crusade? Is it, we've all, I mean, I've worked in organizations where there are some people who are, I would say, relentless, uh, and they come from a good place, not malicious intent, but they're, They're constantly challenging the status quo and making sure that other people can't be, uh, blind to information. Um, what causes that to happen?

A Well, it's really interesting, and it's a very, very hard question to answer because, uh, you know, there's a lot of mythology around such people who are customarily described as whistleblowers, although that's quite a complicated term. Um, so there's a mythology that says they're mostly women, and the research doesn't bear that out. There's mythology that says they're people of faith, the research doesn't bear that out. The only thing I could find, and I've interviewed hundreds of such people, um, they tend to be a little nerdy, and I emphasize a little, because, um, you know, not spectacularly, but they are definitely people who like detail. And as a consequence of liking detail, they may be slightly better than average pattern recognizers. So they'll start to see things that will prompt questions.

AI assessment note: “they tend to be a little nerdy... people who like detail.”

Q Let's talk a little bit more about your work and, um, selective blindness or what you call willful blindness. Can you define what you mean by that concept? What's the difference between blindness kind of in hindsight and blindness that could or should have been seen in real time?

A Yeah. So willful blindness is a legal term. And I first encountered it when I was writing two plays for the BBC about the collapse of Enron. And in the trial of Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay, the judge, Simeon Lake, Uh, referred to it in his summing up to the jury, um, and he described it as, uh, if there are things that you could have known and should have known and somehow managed not to know, the law deems that your ignorance has been a choice, and you're responsible for the choice that you made. And so, when I was writing that book, you know, the critical, uh, Determinant for the, for the cases that I chose was there had to be ample evidence that the information that was ignored was easily and freely available. So, for example, um, at one point I thought of looking at the case, and I'm going to forget his name, there was a horrible case of a, of a man in Austria who had kept his daughter locked up in a basement for years. And raped her repeatedly, and had a child by her, and so on. And I thought, and meanwhile, his wife was, and the rest of his family was living upstairs. And I thought, is this a case of willful blindness? And, um, as unpleasant as the case was, I read through, you know, everything I could find about it. And I determined that actually, it wasn't knowable, that this is what was going on. And there was no evidence that anybody knew what was going on. In which cas…

AI assessment note: “if there are things that you could have known and should have known”

Q That's a good promise. Well, what sort of things do you read? Like what's on your nightstand right now?

A Oh, wow. Um, all sorts of things. I read fiction in the summer or when I'm not writing. I mean, I read fiction mostly in the summer because I think it's just good for me and good for my brain. Um, um, I'm trying to think when I'm looking around my office, what am I reading? I'm reading a book called The Curse of History at the moment. Analogies at War is another book I'm reading. Um, so I'm reading quite a lot of history at the moment, and I always read a lot of history, that's fair to say. There's a book across my desk on Thomas Beckett. Um, So I read a lot of history. I read a lot of fiction. I read quite a lot of poetry. Um, I read quite a lot of history of art. Um, I read very, very few business books.

AI assessment note: “I'm reading a book called The Curse of History at the moment.”

Q Why do you think that we're more in tune with our workplace or more productive or happier when we have a human connection to the people we're spending so much of our time with?

A Well, I think the basic thing is that in any organization, you know, the whole premise of organizational life is Is that together you can do more than you can do in isolation, but that only works if people are connected to each other, and it only really works if they trust each other and help each other, and that isn't automatic, and I would even argue, and have argued at some length, that in fact I think there's a lot that happens to people as they're growing up, That if they did that naturally to begin with, they learn how not to do it. Instead, how to regard each other as rivals and competitors. Um, so you're only really going to get the value out of organizational life to the degree that people begin to feel safe with each other, to trust each other, to want to help each other. And the way I think about that these days is, um, Not surprisingly. I think of it as a network, and I think of all the collective knowledge of the organization flowing through that network, and what impedes the flow is distrust, rivalry, or not knowing what other people need. So to the degree that people are open and generous and information flows quickly, it'll find the problem that it is destined to solve. But all of the distances between people, all of the distrust or just ignorance as to who people are and what they care about slows that flow down.

AI assessment note: “together you can do more than you can do in isolation, but that only works if people are connected”

Q to how you having wrote plays. Um, but first are there, uh, you've run five businesses. Are there recurring patterns to the irrationality that you see happen in organizations you've observed from the outside and run? Um, do you think of it that way in terms of irrationality or the, the things you write about since Simply kind of natural outcomes of bringing groups of people together to accomplish goals.

A I don't really think specifically about rationality versus irrationality. Um, I mean, I'm pretty allergic to anything binary, which is probably strange having run software companies. Um, but you know, I really, I think anytime I hear, well, it's either this or it's that, I know I'm being sold a pep. I think my experience is there's always more intelligence and talent in organizations than manages to get out and to surface and to be deployed, and I've always wondered why, and where does it go, and why does that happen, and where does it get stuck and trapped, and what, and I think also I have always felt That it is in organizations specifically that very good people can go bad. And I've been endlessly fascinated by why or how that happens.

AI assessment note: “I don't really think specifically about rationality versus irrationality.”

Q A lot of the people I seem to talk to who've, um, run businesses or been in senior management often come to this understanding later. At first, they see kind of argumentation or disagreement or thoughtful, um, challenging as slowing them down. And later, only later, they come to see that as actually propelling them forward. Why do you think that is?

A Well, I think, you know, often, especially when you're not wildly grown up, it's really easy to take it personally. So and so argues with me, that means they don't like me, right? So you need a certain maturity to think beyond that. And especially if you have a very competitive mindset, of course, you've kind of got to get over that. So it takes a certain degree of maturity, and it takes a certain amount, I think, of intellectual rigor. Which is, um, do you want to get it right, or do you just want to win? Right. Those are two very different things. Um, and I think it takes a long time. I mean, maybe I'm just talking about myself. I think it takes a long time to look back and think, well, in those situations, I did good work. In those situations, I did less good work. What was the difference? Cause obviously it's me in both places. So what were the conditions in which it was easier for me to do better work? And it's interesting because I think that, you know, we often tend to think, well, if I did good work, that's me. And I think one of the things I'm constantly probing is of course it's you, but it's also the environment and the context in which you're operating. So what is the context that's really conducive, you know, to creativity or productivity or, um, you know, perfectionism or whatever you're pursuing? Because I think this notion that you can do wonderful work, um, reg…

AI assessment note: “it takes a certain degree of maturity, and it takes a certain amount... of intellectual rigor”

Q Do you think we're about to see a lasting change?

A I don't know. I think, um, I guess I have two questions. One is, will it all blow over, and everybody think, oh, thank God, that's so, if we can go back to business as normal, whatever that is. And I have a second question, which is, will it trickle down? Which is, I remember interviewing a young woman who worked in a car showroom, Talking about sexual harassment, you know, so this is, um, not a famous young woman working in not a famous place for not a famous boss, and my question is, will her life, her working life get better? Because if it doesn't, then this isn't good enough, right? Um, And I really don't know. I mean, it certainly feels, and I know everybody's saying it feels like a real, um, sea change, and I would really love to think that it is, but I think for the, for it to have lasting impact requires more than heads rolling. It requires a, you know, as well as the kind of negative, let's get rid of this, It requires a positive, which is, what is the concept of power that replaces it? And whether that will take root, I don't know. And how far this is actually displacement activity, um, because some people in power can't be removed, I don't know. I really hope it marks the beginning of something quite different, but it's way too early to tell.

AI assessment note: “I really hope it marks the beginning of something quite different, but it's way too early to tell.”

Q I agree with that. You've led a varied life. You've been involved with so much over time. Was there any grand design behind it, or were you just putting one foot in front of the other? What would you say to a young person who wants to follow in your footsteps?

A Well, definitely no, absolutely no grand design. Um, absolutely none. Um, I, I mean, I've definitely experimented with lots of things. I think, um, so my advice, you know, to my kids is try stuff. Try stuff, um, and whatever you're going to try to do, try to do it with the, with people who do it at a really high level. So just try to work with people who you think are really serious about what they're doing. So don't mess around. Um, if you're going to do it, do it with the very best people you can find. Because even if you then decide actually this is not my thing, You will have been exposed to high quality thinking, or high quality doing.

AI assessment note: “definitely no, absolutely no grand design. Um, absolutely none.”

Q Why is it, do you think, that organizations develop such rivalries?

A Well, I think there are a couple of things. I mean, so I think there are kind of sins of omission and sins of commission. Um, in other words, this, some of this happens organically, and some of it does happen, sadly, um, deliberately. So the stuff that's deliberate is to do with, definitely there are leaders out there who believe that the more people compete within an organization, um, Um, the smarter and the better the organization will be. They pretty spectacularly misread Darwin. Um, and, you know, Darwin, there's no evidence that Darwin was a social Darwinist. Um, and they've introduced systems like forced ranking, and forced ranking in effect pits everybody against each other. And bear in mind, certainly in the US, that most people, the US and to be honest, the UK, most people are coming out of competitive education systems. Uh, they may have had very competitive, pushy parents, uh, Um, you know, the prompt predominant metaphor for business in the U S is around competitive sports. So there's an awful lot of competitive mindset that comes into a company, whether you ask for it or not. And when you add onto that systems like forced ranking and, um, hierarchies, You foment necessarily status contests. And what all of that does is it implies that if I help you, you might do better, which by inference means I do worse. So I'm now pretty, you know, if I'm thinking about this, an…

AI assessment note: “they've introduced systems like forced ranking, and forced ranking in effect pits everybody against each other”

Q Why did you start writing books in the first place?

A Good question. Um, well, I had run five businesses, and I had got to the point of thinking, I don't want to do this anymore. Um, I had hired and fired so many people. I was fairly burnt out, and I remember going to a fast company retreat of people that, I don't know, writers and people they thought were interesting, and somebody there, and shame on me for not remembering who, Um, said to me, you know, Margaret, just because you're good at something doesn't mean you have to do it forever. And that really stuck with me. And I thought, well, I don't have to run companies forever. That's cool. And I thought, so what I want to do next is I want some sort of business that requires no employees. Now, at that point, your options are pretty limited. And, um, and also at the time, so this would be the early 2000, um, coaching was a pretty kind of wild west, uh, arena, and it wasn't an area I wanted to go into, and a friend of mine who's a literary agent in London said, Margaret, you should write a book about the internet, and I thought about it for a long time, and I thought, actually, it's either too early or too late. I'm not sure which, but it's, I don't have anything very interesting to say, and the world's full of books with nothing very interesting to say, so let's not add to that. But it did get me thinking, well, what would I like to write about? And so I think, you know, those d…

AI assessment note: “the wanting a business with no employees, the encouragement by my friend”

Q I would a hundred percent agree with that. What environment was conducive for you when you were running these companies to doing wonderful work?

A Uh, well, I had an investor who argued with me quite a lot, um, and was a brilliant guy, and I think we both understood it wasn't personal, so that was terrific. I had a Hardcore of, uh, people that I worked with for quite a long time, and with whom I developed, you know, very high levels of trust, and respect, and freedom, and safety, which is we could be very open with each other. I think a certain amount of pressure I think that, um, when I worked at the BBC, at one point I made a documentary where I had a huge budget and a huge amount of time, and it's hands down the most boring thing I've ever done. I mean, not for me, for the audience. It was just, you know, I researched it to death.

AI assessment note: “I had an investor who argued with me quite a lot, um, and was a brilliant guy”

Q What can we do to avoid a similar fate?

A Well, it's a great question. I think we have to be very humble about how fragile our sense of good and bad is. And, you know, Stanley Milgram wrote about this brilliantly. He talked about how when we go into an organization and Our moral focus shifts, essentially from wanting to be a good person to wanting to do a good job, and we implicitly assume that doing a good job is doing what we're told, and there's much in our organizational life that creates, if you like, a sort of special identity for us. The person You are at work is not identical to the person that you are at home, which also is probably not entirely consonant with the person you are on the golf course or, you know, in the, on the baseball pitch. You know, we, identities are not as absolute and fixed as we used once to imagine, and so we have to be very alert to how we change In different environments. And pay attention to what we leave behind and what gets amplified. And it's, um, I mean, I think it's a very hard problem. I, I work on a thing here in England called the Responsible Leadership Program, where, you know, we work very hard with senior executives to try to alert them to the dangers of That exists in organizational life, not because the organizations are bad, but just because there are organizations, right? Um, and obviously some are more dangerous places to work than others, but the assumption that you'…

AI assessment note: “we have to be very alert to how we change In different environments.”

Q So often we see argument as a threat, not only, uh, probably to us. Why do you think that is?

A Well, sometimes, of course, it is, right? I mean, I'm not that naive. I know there are times people have argued with me at work, you know, not because they had my best interests at heart, but because they wanted my budget, right? So these things definitely do happen, but I think that, you know, when you're in a really good collaborative environment, the argument is about, that's not good enough, how do we make it better? Which is the crucial, the crucial kind of dialogue to have. Um, but of course people will argue with you because their ideologies are different, in which case maybe they see something you don't, so it behooves you to listen to them, and it certainly sharpens your own understanding if you are prepared to take it on board and think about, well, if that were true, what would that mean for what I see? Am I missing something? But I think, you know, obviously we're living through a phase where mostly people Aren't prepared to argue with each other. Um, they'll abuse each other in public. They'll abuse each other in social media, but they won't have what I think of as the real argument, which is let us together from different perspectives, explore this territory and figure out what's going on here.

AI assessment note: “Well, sometimes, of course, it is, right? ... because they wanted my budget”

Q I want to go back to something you said about people thinking in black and white. What do you think causes people to think that way?

A Well, it's much easier. It's much easier. It's much easier to think that something is either good or bad or black or white or alive or dead. And of course there are binaries in, in human life, right? You either are alive or you are not. Um, and it's much more dramatic, and we like drama. Um, I just don't think it reflects the complexity or the richness of life very well. And I think that it, um, it oversimplifies to the degree that much that is wonderful, fun, and full of opportunity in life gets kind of Run over when you simplify it that much. And it's kind of interesting because I think, um, I mean, I think about this quite a bit in the sense that I think a lot of my books are probably more complex than the genre likes, but perversely, I don't really mind.

AI assessment note: “Well, it's much easier... and it's much more dramatic, and we like drama.”