Fail Safe: Insights from Black Box Thinking By Matthew Syed
In this episode, we talk about the implications of Blackbox Thinking (by Matthew Syed) for organisations.
We talk about how differing companies such as Kodak, Google, and Amazon either learned or ignored the lessons from failure.
The conversation explored concepts such as antifragility, psychological safety, and growth mindset.
By integrating ideas from various domains, this episode offers insights into fostering a resilient and thriving organizational culture.
Links:
00:00 Introduction to Black Box and Rebel Ideas
00:48 Critique of Matthew Syed's Approach
01:31 Ben Hardy and Making Ideas Accessible
03:09 Personal Reflections on Failure
04:32 Learning from Success vs. Failure
11:04 Marginal Gains vs. Kaizen
16:35 Corporate Culture and Innovation
26:36 Processes and Anti-Fragility
30:10 Productivity and Training Methods
30:36 David McClelland's Research on Professional Performance
32:34 The 10,000 Hour Rule and Perfect Practice
34:10 The Role of Psychological Safety in Organizations
35:45 Religion, Closed Loop Systems, and Cognitive Distortions
44:38 Blame, Emotions, and Learning from Mistakes
50:06 System One vs. System Two Thinking
58:46 Final Thoughts and Key Takeaways
Transcript
Black Box is actually one I read.
Rob:Oh, it must have been, Probably close to 10 years ago.
Rob:I don't know how old it is, but it must have been soon after it was out.
Rob:I remembered it was a good, great book.
Rob:But when you compare it so closely with Rebel Ideas,
Rob:they're basically the same book.
Rob:A lot of the times he uses the same examples and evidence.
Rob:Yes.
Rob:But I love that argument.
Rob:Believe very much in that learning from failure, but , I just don't
Rob:see his point of why would you write two books on the same subject?
Michael:A lot of people do.
Michael:A lot of people do.
Michael:A guy called Colin Wilson wrote over a hundred books and many of those were
Michael:not the same book, but he was circling the same problems again and again and
Michael:again and again throughout his life.
Michael:I'm not uncritical, but I don't think he's cynically getting books out.
Michael:I think he's circling the same ground.
Michael:That's what I think.
Michael:But what do you guys think?
Saurabh:My feeling from the book was from an organizational and a
Saurabh:systemic point of view, he does cover it really well, but he doesn't really
Saurabh:cover an individual that deeply.
Saurabh:Most of the problems originate from an individual and these fears, these
Saurabh:things, if you could have just applied to an individual and just covered
Saurabh:that bit about an individual, that could have been a completely separate
Saurabh:book from rebel ideas because rebel ideas does again, the same thing.
Saurabh:It covers the system.
Saurabh:But in this book, I felt that he could have covered the individual much more
Saurabh:deeply that what are those peers?
Saurabh:He covers it from a systemic point of view.
Saurabh:He could have covered it from a personal point of view.
Saurabh:Why not?
Saurabh:That could have been a great addition, in that sense, I felt could have been done.
Rob:There's a guy Ben Hardy.
Rob:I don't know if you've come across him.
Rob:I think that's his name.
Rob:Yes.
Rob:Yes.
Rob:Yes.
Rob:Dan sullivan's Like probably the original coach.
Rob:I think he's called strategic coach.
Rob:He's got a lot of brilliant ideas, but he's never really, came
Rob:into the mainstream book wise.
Rob:And a student of his, Ben Hardy, is like one of the most prolific writers
Rob:on Medium, and he's just basically taken each individual concept Progress
Rob:Not Perfection, and made a book of that, and then I can't remember the
Rob:books, Who Not How and he's someone who's done that really well just by
Rob:taking an idea and making it so much.
Rob:I read one of them because I read who not how and something about
Rob:progress or over perfection.
Rob:And I read another and it was just, it was too baby ish, like he'd overdone
Rob:the point, but he does dumb it down.
Rob:So it's much more widely read.
Michael:Yeah, is it dumbing it
Rob:down or
Michael:are making it more accessible.
Rob:I think in the first two that I read of his they were
Rob:was making it more accessible.
Rob:And then the third it felt like there isn't a point.
Rob:But yeah I think that's the reason Dan Sullivan partnered with him was because
Rob:he knew he had the knack of making it much more accessible to a much wider audience.
Michael:I felt the same as you.
Michael:When I finished the book, I really did like the book and I curated it.
Michael:Yeah.
Michael:But when I finished it, I almost felt I almost felt like writing another book and
Michael:saying, look, if you want to know about failure, this is all you need to know.
Michael:Just this duh, just this, nothing else, no footnotes, no references, nothing.
Michael:I'll just give it to you straight from the horse's mind.
Michael:This is what you need to know.
Michael:And it was all personal stuff about what it feels, whether your feelings
Michael:are justified to, whether your feelings make sense or whether they
Michael:don't, whether just it's in your head.
Michael:One of the things that Syed doesn't do is talk about what I call
Michael:safe failure and unsafe failure.
Michael:It just treats failures all the same.
Michael:I had a day when I was 14, and if I'd fail, I would have died.
Michael:I'm not being melodramatic.
Michael:It's just the case.
Michael:I would have died.
Michael:I had to succeed just to stay alive.
Michael:I had to.
Michael:I had to.
Michael:I had to.
Michael:But years later, when I was doing Forex trades, every one I lost, I was gutted.
Michael:I was absolutely gutted.
Michael:Honestly, even if there's no money on them, you just think, Oh God, I'm wrong.
Michael:Instant feedback, you're either right or you're wrong.
Michael:There's no ifs and buts.
Michael:There's no getting away from it.
Michael:And every one I didn't get, it was like, I'm a bad person.
Michael:I'm a bad person.
Michael:And I felt this way for years.
Michael:It sounds ridiculous, but I'm not the only person to feel like this.
Michael:And in the end, after many years I came up with this thing.
Michael:You are not your trades.
Michael:Because I'd let the results of the trading define me.
Michael:Yes.
Michael:I know this sounds ridiculous because you're standing outside it.
Michael:But if you were in it with the same emotions, you'd
Michael:probably feel the same way.
Michael:Oh God, I'm a failure, I'm a failure.
Michael:When I won, it was, okay, that was all right.
Michael:But when I lost, oh God, oh my God.
Michael:And I was winning more than losing, but I was just, it's just.
Michael:He really doesn't talk about safe failure and unsafe failure because
Michael:they're two completely different things.
Michael:Absolutely you can learn from safe failure, but God don't try
Michael:and learn from unsafe failure.
Michael:' Saurabh: Absolutely.
Michael:I think the seminal idea of the book, that you can learn more
Michael:from failures than from success.
Michael:Like he gives the example of Kodak versus Fuji Film Man, all those examples I was
Michael:mentioning on LinkedIn, I think in a recent post I came with a breakthrough in
Michael:my research, the book that I'm writing.
Michael:That you learn much more from success than from failures, because when
Michael:you are succeeding and still you are analyzing both on both occasions.
Michael:When you are successful and you are analyzing, you are much
Michael:more likely to succeed in future because you have the confidence,
Michael:you have the psychological safety.
Michael:If it would have been the case that you learn more from failures than from
Michael:success, then why do football teams who start losing, they keep on losing?
Michael:Why are they not learning from the mistakes and why are they still losing?
Michael:And when you get on a winning streak, why do you keep on winning?
Michael:Because in both occasions, you are learning as long as you're analyzing,
Michael:you learn much more from your successes than from the failures.
Michael:That was a breakthrough for me.
Michael:I always considered, we always try to put failures on a pedestal,
Michael:our society and everything they try to put failures on a pedestal
Michael:yes, you learn more from failures.
Michael:Okay.
Michael:That is the truth.
Michael:That is how make the society comply.
Rob:I remember that post because when you said that, Michael I was trying to
Rob:think where I'd heard it, but there was someone, and it may have been in your
Rob:post if you referenced something about but I remember reading something about it
Rob:like parachutes or something like that?
Rob:Someone was talking and they said we can't fail.
Rob:I'm not sure where I got this rebel ideas or somewhere, but
Rob:basically it's three failures.
Rob:Like a big failure is three minor failures.
Rob:There's three points that break down.
Rob:It's not just one thing happens.
Rob:I can't remember where I read it.
Rob:I think it was from a book.
Saurabh:This could be maybe Rob, what you are referencing is Barbara
Saurabh:Fredrickson's theory on broaden and build positive psychology.
Saurabh:She mentions that, you need three positive emotions.
Saurabh:If you have to encounter one failure.
Saurabh:So that's how we are wired that way.
Rob:The name rings a bell, but it wasn't in connection with that.
Rob:Where did this idea come from?
Rob:It wasn't rebel ideas then clearly, but there was three points.
Rob:There was this time when it could have been picked up, then there was
Rob:another time when it could have been picked up and then there was a third
Rob:time and it was when all three.
Rob:Like the communication broke down.
Rob:It may have come from somewhere else, but it was referenced on the mountain
Rob:in, there was this point, there was this point, and there was this point.
Rob:And I remember, I, I think it's somewhere else I've picked it
Rob:up from, but when they analyze
Michael:it chunks of air into thin air, like the oxygen?
Rob:I've not read that, but it may have been someone referencing that.
Rob:But it's referenced in rebel ideas.
Michael:It's in fact, he mentioned about Lockheed, there were several times
Michael:where they could have said, they could have communicated, but they didn't.
Rob:Yeah.
Rob:And it boils down to somewhere where there's somewhere where there's some
Rob:research or something that there's generally three points that are failures.
Rob:So it's not one failure, which we typically think, oh,
Rob:it went wrong, but it's not.
Rob:Like in, in the medical case, it was Not reacting not picking up
Rob:on this clue, not, yeah, so it's generally more than one point.
Michael:But the reality for people in companies is that they make
Michael:mistakes all over the place every day.
Michael:And that many failures, you think of, if you think of a visible failure as the
Michael:top of a pyramid of a load of mistakes, there's tons of mistakes, there are
Michael:far more than three, it could be 33, it could be 333, it could be 3033.
Michael:But they don't quite make it up.
Michael:And it all blows up.
Michael:It really is the case.
Michael:I've worked in those places.
Michael:I've seen it.
Michael:All those mistakes creeping away.
Michael:And when companies are successful, I agree you should analyze, but I
Michael:knew loads of people that didn't.
Michael:They just thought, Hey, we're on a roll here, guys.
Michael:And then when they started to go under, all the mistakes came out, but they should
Michael:have been fixing them when they were doing well, not when they were not doing well.
Rob:When you talk about Saurabh in football, I think of the
Rob:Liverpool team of the eighties.
Rob:What they had was a culture and it created an identity of we're winners.
Rob:I've read into this of Shankly and Paisley was a terrible manager in
Rob:the sense he wouldn't talk to people.
Rob:He would hide from them when he wasn't going to put them in the
Rob:team and all of these things.
Rob:They were having punch ups on the team bus.
Rob:But it was holding each other accountable.
Rob:If he made a bad pass or whatever.
Rob:Then you would get this is not what we do because Success can breed that
Rob:culture and you see that with man city where they've developed this And you
Rob:also see it with arsenal liverpool where it's taken them like arsenal
Rob:Maybe are challenging this year But it's taken them they've challenged.
Rob:They've fallen short.
Rob:They've challenged.
Rob:They've fallen short, but it's that sense of rising up And their
Rob:identity of being capable of winning.
Rob:So I think there's something in that.
Rob:Yes.
Saurabh:Yes.
Saurabh:I feel a lot comes from competition, like having a worthy rival, like that
Saurabh:is extremely important to push a person, a team or organization towards success.
Saurabh:I feel again this is not covered in the book directly, but when we are talking
Saurabh:about marginal gains, for example, in this book, these marginal gains Come from not
Saurabh:only analyzing what the organization is doing, but also analyzing competition and
Saurabh:benchmarking against your worthy rivals.
Saurabh:That could have been a point that could have been captured in
Saurabh:this book much more brilliantly.
Saurabh:I feel like why not take cross sectional examples from other
Saurabh:industries and try to improve on.
Saurabh:Don't rely just on the data that you have.
Saurabh:That will limit your chances.
Saurabh:Why not try it, try to get the data that is already available and, study the
Saurabh:rivals, the worthy rivals that you have and try to get the best from them as well.
Saurabh:That's also something that I feel the book could have explored in that sense,
Saurabh:since rebel ideas and this could have been a much more interesting book if you
Saurabh:could have, made it wider by applying these kinds of thinking models, probably.
Michael:I think Matthew Syed, he's not been in the corporate world,
Michael:so I don't think he really knows, he's a journalist looking in, and
Michael:so I don't think he feels this way.
Michael:I think if he'd been in the corporate world, he would
Michael:feel this way, but he hasn't.
Michael:Can't be everywhere.
Michael:So he was a table tennis champion, so good on the guy.
Michael:Yes.
Michael:I also feel that he has a very unitary perception of organizations that they're
Michael:all here to do this, that, and the other.
Michael:That's not the reality of organizations and companies.
Michael:There are all sorts of vested interests, power groups, people
Michael:competing with other people.
Michael:There's all sorts of stuff going on really.
Michael:And a lot of that is not helpful, but you need to be very aware of it, if you
Michael:want to succeed, really, but I agree.
Michael:You should obviously find out legally and ethically as much as
Michael:you can about what your competitors are doing and learn from them.
Michael:Very often they'll talk to you anyway.
Saurabh:Yes.
Michael:A lot of these marginal gains, I'd call them cumulative
Michael:gains because it's doing the basics and making sure they follow through.
Michael:The marginal gain should only come in when you're really pushing the envelope.
Saurabh:I just wanted to ask, like, how do you guys perceive what is the
Saurabh:difference between a marginal gain and what is the difference between Kaizen
Saurabh:that, the concept that has always been.
Saurabh:In organizations wherein there is continuous improvement.
Saurabh:So how do you see marginal gains different from Kaizen?
Saurabh:Is it a concept that is new in your eyes?
Saurabh:Or is it something that has always been existing in the culture of organizations?
Saurabh:I
Michael:think it's always been there.
Michael:I think what's happened now, we used to think of strategy and tactics.
Michael:And now everything's called tactics.
Michael:People do a list of 10 things on LinkedIn.
Michael:Sorry, everything's called strategies.
Michael:People do.
Michael:It's not 10 strategies, it's a list of 10 things for God's sake, so I think the same
Michael:thing's happening with marginal gains.
Michael:Everything's a marginal gain.
Michael:It's not a marginal gain.
Michael:It just isn't.
Michael:And one thing, this doesn't answer your question directly, but I will answer it.
Michael:Marginal gains can be very useful in athletics, where the top of the
Michael:athletic curve has been pushed, and there's very little to get left.
Michael:There's nothing down below.
Michael:That's all being done, really.
Michael:There's very little there.
Michael:I know a lot about it.
Michael:From high standard rock climbing, because you're constantly analyzing
Michael:people climbing absolute limit, the slightest thing can make a difference
Michael:and marginal gains really kick in then.
Michael:But in a Kaizen sense, if those Kaizen things aren't there further down,
Michael:you're wasting your time with Margin.
Michael:You're just absolutely wasting your time.
Michael:And people will do that.
Michael:They'll get this pair of amazing rock shoes, but they've got shoddy footwork.
Michael:There's no point doing it.
Michael:Address your skill first.
Michael:So I think it's just, I think, if you're going to ask Marginal Gains and Kaizen,
Michael:I'd say go for Kaizen every time.
Michael:Get the basics nailed.
Michael:Make sure you're nailing the basics.
Michael:That's what I'd say, but you may feel differently.
Rob:I'm like Matthew Syed I'm not really versed in corporates.
Rob:Mine has been more through people.
Rob:So I look in and I hear other people's experience, but I don't
Rob:have a lot of referential experience of working with in an organization.
Rob:It basically just seems that they were basically doing the same idea.
Rob:By them, but they just called it something else.
Rob:And again, I can see within a sport, you're constrained.
Rob:There is the rules that someone else has set.
Rob:So you are at the best that it is fractions of a second of who's better
Rob:or fractions further or whatever.
Rob:Within an organization though, for most organizations, You're not
Rob:bound by that those limitations And so I like the bit about.
Rob:You get marginal gains, but that only takes you to a certain plateau.
Rob:Marginal gains is only really for mastery So I think most things like you
Rob:well know you've written a book on it.
Rob:So the 80 20 principle but for most things you just Do the 20 percent
Rob:they'll get you the 80 percent result results, but I think there is
Rob:something that you need to master.
Rob:And for those things, the marginal gains are worth pursuing, but it's
Rob:so much better when you can look at a different industry like the Dyson
Rob:example, where you come up with a different way of making hoovers.
Rob:That's something that you're pretty constrained at.
Rob:Once in a lifetime, someone will break a different way of I think
Rob:Usain Bolt changed the way of sprint running and Jamaican runners
Rob:made some breakthrough in that.
Rob:The Fosbury, was it the Fosbury yeah.
Rob:And psychologically Sir Roger Bannister with the four minute mile.
Rob:But other than that, most.
Rob:Sports is just is marginal.
Rob:Most companies coming up with a new iPhone, an iPhone or iPod
Rob:is a revolutionary which is going to have much more impact.
Rob:But then how often does that happen?
Rob:It takes the right.
Rob:Exactly.
Rob:Exactly.
Rob:The right environment and the right.
Saurabh:There's a very clear distinction.
Saurabh:I feel if you are going that marginal gains route, you can only go so far.
Saurabh:You will always reach that.
Saurabh:Whereas when you are doing these marginal gains, you also have to
Saurabh:especially in organizations, you also have to be very aware of the radical
Saurabh:innovation that can also take place.
Saurabh:New technology coming in, which is disrupting the market.
Saurabh:So if you are hell bent on those marginal gains and Kaizen,
Saurabh:I've seen a lot of traditional organizations fail in this way.
Saurabh:Even the example of say Kodak it shows just that you are so focused
Saurabh:on those continuous improvement because Kodak was one of the
Saurabh:pioneers of continuous improvements.
Saurabh:So they, they did all those continuous improvements and, made the organization
Saurabh:and, another thing that Syed mentions.
Saurabh:The sunk cost fallacy.
Saurabh:You have so much sunk cost attributed to, the things that you're that are
Saurabh:functioning so well that you forget or undermine the radical innovation
Saurabh:bit, wherein you also need the new ideas or you have to cannibalize your
Saurabh:products in order to grow in a market.
Saurabh:That's something that I think the book captures very beautifully that part,
Saurabh:especially the Fujifilm and the Kodak example, that captures it very beautifully
Saurabh:that how just looking at marginal gains.
Saurabh:Can be can undermine radical innovation and stop you from changing the course
Saurabh:altogether because of all the biases that we have as organizations, as
Saurabh:people due to the cultural roots of the organizations, all these do take place.
Michael:I completely agree with you.
Michael:In my experience, if an organization is winning, it's very difficult for them to
Michael:do anything else but what they're doing.
Michael:Because they're winning and their whole careers are vested on their
Michael:self-esteem, everything's vested in it.
Michael:And the whole thing you could argue is a massive sunk cost.
Michael:cause one day that's not gonna work.
Michael:And the time to start thinking about the day it doesn't work
Michael:is while it's still working.
Michael:But they don't do that.
Michael:They just go on and on and then it doesn't work anymore.
Michael:Yeah.
Michael:And usually in my experience, it's too late then.
Michael:You should get in the corporate world, Rob.
Michael:It's really interesting.
Rob:Actually, I do know Kodak.
Rob:My dad worked Kodak for 43, 44.
Rob:Oh, okay.
Michael:Yeah.
Michael:Yeah.
Michael:Okay.
Rob:Kodak was a massive local employer in Harrow.
Rob:In their factory and actually, while I was setting up my gym, I worked there
Rob:for about 10 months while I was waiting for leases and things to go through.
Rob:That wasn't the first time that Kodak missed a ball.
Rob:They were the ones that came up with the instant technology of yeah.
Rob:Digitally camera.
Saurabh:Yeah.
Rob:Or even before the, like the Polaroid camera they'd missed and then the digital.
Rob:And so the factory that, that we had at Harrow was, and where I
Rob:worked was all professional film.
Rob:And so they were so invested in selling to, like professional photographers
Rob:and they'd sunk so much cost into the manufacturing and to the paper and they
Rob:were the biggest source of radiation in the UK because it's all dark rooms.
Rob:Obviously, I was very low down, working on the factory floor
Rob:There becomes a complacency isn't there when you're at the top?
Rob:You're a rich organization which I think is what with blockbusters that
Rob:you're so because Your way is working.
Rob:You are blinded to everything else and in the sense that If, but if they were
Rob:chasing every opportunity and everyone had come to them I'm sure Kodak and
Rob:blockbusters both had millions of pitch people, pitching them with crazy ideas.
Rob:So it's easy.
Rob:When you look at talent agents and book published, book publishers who.
Rob:Who would reject the Beatles?
Rob:Who would reject JK Rowling?
Rob:All of these people.
Rob:But they were over and over again.
Rob:And it's because when there's so many opportunities, you can't take them all.
Rob:It's hard to really look from their perspective, I don't know how you would
Rob:deal with that as an organization, because your bread and butter, Is
Rob:going to be keeping the organization going but then maybe you need you need
Rob:someone like steve jobs or someone who's Completely free thinking.
Rob:Perhaps separate from the organization who like dyson managed manages to
Rob:continually find Because he has that mindset and maybe that's what
Rob:organizations need someone outside of the organization The normal organizational
Rob:structure, but who has time?
Rob:Google perhaps are one of the best examples they're talked about in,
Rob:in that they do a lots of like kind of trials, like they've had crazy
Rob:trials of getting rid of all managers.
Rob:And they do a lot of research into teams and they do a lot of research
Rob:seemingly into everything that they do.
Rob:So maybe that's the way organizations could work.
Michael:I don't think people want to work that way though, Rob, because there's
Michael:too much sunk cost in people's careers.
Michael:The whole ethos of management is control.
Michael:Every company in the world will say they value creativity, but creativity by its
Michael:very nature implies lack of control.
Michael:So I'm not saying you can't have both.
Michael:You can, just not at the same time and in the same way, really.
Michael:Yes, they need people from outside, but do they want them?
Michael:And in my experience, the answer is a huge resounding, no.
Michael:Things may have changed now, but I very much doubt it.
Rob:There is so many entrenched problems, like the problem with short term pay,
Rob:where the CEO's pay is linked to next, next quarter's results, or share price.
Rob:A lot of the systems, for me looking in, you look at a whole human resources.
Rob:Why would you call people a resource?
Rob:People aren't going to Most dreadful
Michael:term ever.
Michael:Absolute deplorable term.
Michael:Personnel wasn't great.
Michael:It was far better than that.
Michael:Why would you call people resources?
Michael:Yes.
Michael:Agreed.
Rob:I know what people want, because I'm used to talking to people and I'm
Rob:used to people moaning about their boss, their work, their partner, all of that
Rob:stuff, so I know what triggers them.
Rob:And that's not making people feel valued.
Rob:From the industrial age, it makes perfect sense.
Rob:But largely the basic core mindset, the framework and the structure is
Rob:still that kind of factory of control.
Rob:You still need a sense of control and you still need a structure.
Rob:But it needs to be adapted to the work that we do.
Saurabh:Yeah.
Saurabh:Yeah.
Saurabh:I think a framework, which is called the Ansoff matrix actually covers this part.
Saurabh:There would be certain star products which need continuous innovation.
Saurabh:Then there are cash cows, which are your bread and butter from
Saurabh:which you get the maximum profit.
Saurabh:And then there are dogs, which need to go away after a point of time, they
Saurabh:are at the end of their life cycle.
Saurabh:So understanding that growth of various things like various products within the
Saurabh:organization and classifying them rightly and putting that effort accordingly is
Saurabh:something that organizations that are really agile like organizations like
Saurabh:Amazon, Google have perfected this.
Saurabh:Products that are at various stages of their life cycle within the organization
Saurabh:need to be treated differently.
Saurabh:So generally organizations like say Amazon, Google, and the big organizations,
Saurabh:they are able to do it much more better.
Saurabh:Like in the book Syed quotes, the example of Google and Pixar, right?
Saurabh:So he says that in Google you have 20 percent of your work, any employees
Saurabh:work would be on some personal project.
Saurabh:So this understands the human personality really well, because we don't want
Saurabh:to be controlled all the time.
Saurabh:We want a little room for maneuver, a little of our own time where we can pursue
Saurabh:our own interest, our passion projects.
Saurabh:So these passion projects, I feel by Google incorporating them into
Saurabh:the system has made itself that term that Nassim Taleb uses anti fragile.
Saurabh:This is what I feel makes Google anti fragile because it is giving scope
Saurabh:for people to have that me time that pursuing their own interests so that I
Saurabh:feel a lot of organizations can learn from that people should be treated
Saurabh:as people for at least some bit rest.
Saurabh:80 percent of the time you control them, you analyze them, you do whatever you
Saurabh:can do to improve their efficiency, but that 20 percent time, at least you
Saurabh:should give to a person that's that's a very beautiful thing that Google does.
Saurabh:Yeah.
Michael:But the acid test of this will be.
Michael:When Google starts to go through harsher times, whether they keep
Michael:it or whether they get rid of it.
Michael:I've seen so many initiatives like this in organizations that were embarked on when
Michael:times were good, and then times were lean.
Michael:That's it.
Michael:And if you do that, it's worse than not having it in the first place, because you
Michael:send such a message and people's hopes go up, and then bang, they go down again.
Michael:The next time, three or five or seven years, somebody comes on
Michael:again and says, let's do this, you remember what happened last time.
Michael:So let's see what happens in Google.
Michael:I hope it works, but for it to work, they'll need to stay committed to it.
Rob:Yes.
Rob:I think one of the key things, it was barely mentioned, but
Rob:was about being anti fragile.
Rob:And that's basically what learning from failure is becoming stronger from failure.
Rob:I think that was underplayed, but I think this is really the core of the
Rob:whole idea of black box is that Where he talks about medicine and court, where
Rob:basically they're invested in their professionalism and the legal structure.
Rob:When you see the legal cases where they talk about DNA.
Rob:They are happy to use DNA to convict, but like that guy who clearly innocent
Rob:and six years of fighting to be cleared when the DNA showed he wasn't there.
Rob:I think the key of it is rather than being fairly averse, like the professions being
Rob:more like the airline industry and sports where we're a learning organization.
Rob:To me, that's really about being anti fragile.
Rob:If you can build the system that's anti fragile and the Pixar example
Rob:is interesting because i've read the book of the guy the ceo or Founder
Rob:or whatever it was of Pixar and he downplays Steve jobs's influence in
Rob:that And he says that steve jobs was always very happy to take the credit.
Rob:But What he really did was he bankrolled them at a time when they were probably
Rob:gonna go bust and his job as ceo was to keep steve jobs out because
Rob:the people Didn't want steve jobs.
Rob:but not many Organizations are going to have someone like Steve Jobs or
Rob:even the Google founders because most organizations are more mature.
Rob:They have a career CEO, someone who's grown up, someone who's less
Rob:inspirational, less revolutionary in their mindset and, safer, but it's
Rob:so it's really about how do from that mentality, how do organizations plan to
Rob:make their organizations by anti fragile?
Michael:Sounds like our next book coming up here.
Rob:Does it fit with the mentality?
Rob:of the mindset of someone who is, like a corporate leader.
Michael:I used to work in consultancy with project managers and they were
Michael:the ultimate safe pair of hands.
Michael:You could give them your organization and they would run it.
Michael:Perfectly.
Michael:They hadn't got to create another idea in their heads, which
Michael:they totally accepted, really.
Michael:So the day would come when, it wouldn't work any longer.
Michael:But in terms of safe pair of hands, these guys , they were the business, really.
Michael:They were as professional as you could ever get, and as honest as well.
Michael:But, their very modus operandi carried the seeds of its own doom, really.
Michael:They had no creative ideas, they weren't great with people, they weren't inspired.
Michael:If it came to shit or bust, they couldn't deal with that, but
Michael:anything else, they were brilliant.
Michael:They were brilliant.
Michael:They were wonderful at distilling huge amounts of complexity into
Michael:what truly matters, really.
Michael:It's a balance, trying to get these balances right in your organization.
Michael:Very hard to do.
Rob:It's knowing what type of leadership, because when it's a
Rob:start up you want someone that's more risk taking, when you think of Uber.
Rob:Whoever the guy was who, Travis something wasn't it, who set it up.
Rob:He was obviously brilliant and combative at the time when they needed
Rob:to break the taxis strangleholds.
Rob:But completely unsuited once he became bigger and there was all
Rob:the allegations of sexual abuse and harassment and whatever.
Rob:For most organizations, probably eight out of nine out of 10 times,
Rob:you want those safe pair of hands.
Rob:And so they are making the right choices, just being able to recognize when.
Rob:As Steve Jobs says, you can only connect the dots looking backwards.
Rob:So it's a very hard position to know when you want Someone revolutionary and
Rob:when to stick with a safe pair of hands,
Saurabh:right?
Saurabh:I feel like just coming back to the book about anti fragility Nassim Taleb's book.
Saurabh:So he mentions is your processes are the real hero.
Saurabh:It's not the leader.
Saurabh:Who's the real hero?
Saurabh:Processes.
Saurabh:Which are very robust, so if one of the processes fails, you have those checks and
Saurabh:balances already in place in the system.
Saurabh:So there is redundancies within the system that if something goes wrong,
Saurabh:then those redundancies come into play and still make the system stable.
Saurabh:So that is the central idea of antifragility that the leader
Saurabh:should not really matter.
Saurabh:If you have created a system and a set of processes, like for example like just to
Saurabh:go in my career, like I work with Siemens.
Saurabh:In Siemens, there are so many processes that half of my
Saurabh:day was spent on processes.
Saurabh:It was horrible working at Siemens because I am someone who's creative, who doesn't
Saurabh:like to, work within processes, but such were the systems that if an employee left
Saurabh:that same day, he like each component of the organization is completely
Saurabh:replaceable, even the CEO, because such is the strength of the processes.
Saurabh:The central idea that your processes and system need to be so strong,
Saurabh:so robust that whatever may come.
Saurabh:Like from his previous book black swan.
Saurabh:So even if a black swan events come comes, if a big disruption comes, so
Saurabh:strong as your system, so strong are the processes and so much redundancy
Saurabh:is inbuilt in the system that you are able to, push through that.
Saurabh:But for that you need to have a lot of resources to have those redundancies
Saurabh:in place, you need a lot of resources.
Saurabh:So most of the organizations, they like to be what you, what
Saurabh:we call in today's terms, lean.
Saurabh:In lean systems you cannot have anti fragility.
Saurabh:Lean systems will always be agile.
Saurabh:So it's a complete antithesis to what antifragility is.
Saurabh:So it's there has to be a balance.
Saurabh:I feel if you are striving for antifragility, then it needs to be
Saurabh:a stable, big organization, which can overcome whatever may come.
Saurabh:Like maybe a Google or Apple.
Saurabh:These kinds of organizations are comparatively much more antifragile
Saurabh:because they have a lot of funds.
Saurabh:They have a lot of, money lying in the bank.
Saurabh:Or, their stocks are such so high that whatever, for example, in this
Saurabh:book the example of Pixar was quoted, wherein they reshot a complete movie,
Saurabh:despite whatever the cost implications.
Saurabh:Or say, the example of Google lens.
Saurabh:Even though it failed, Google was happy to have these failures.
Saurabh:This is inbuilt in the system only because they are so resourceful,
Saurabh:like Michael was mentioning that if you are, you have the resources in
Saurabh:good times, you will always be able to bankroll through all these problems.
Saurabh:But in those challenging times, you have to have the other mindset,
Saurabh:which is like the lean mindset.
Saurabh:Which is like the complete opposite of that, of anti fragility.
Saurabh:And within an organization, it's always a fight, a tussle between these two systems.
Saurabh:One is the lean system and the other is the anti fragile kind of a system.
Michael:One of the things that I felt interesting when Syed mentioned the
Michael:medical profession right at the beginning.
Michael:It brought to mind two things.
Michael:One there used to be a discipline called work study, which is
Michael:vilified all over the place.
Michael:Everybody thinks of stopwatch, but there were actually two aspects,
Michael:one time study and one method study.
Michael:And method study was founded, created by a guy called Frank Bunker Gilbreath.
Michael:And when he was a young man, his father died, he was sent
Michael:to work to be a bricklayer.
Michael:He discovered At least three different ways that he could see of
Michael:at the age of 15 of laying bricks.
Michael:One is when you're being taught.
Michael:One was when you were doing it afterwards.
Michael:And another one was if you're working on piecework rates, i.
Michael:e.
Michael:related, your wage was related to productivity.
Michael:But the other two methods didn't relate to your training method.
Michael:Really what Gilbreth realizes that we train people learn, and then they go
Michael:off and do something different, really.
Michael:That happens in every sphere of human activity.
Michael:It happens in every work sphere I've ever been in my life.
Michael:Now, if we just leave that idea to one side and look at another little
Michael:piece of research very obscure.
Michael:I don't think I've ever come across anybody else who knows about it, but in
Michael:the early 1960s, there was an American psychologist called David McClelland.
Michael:He looked at various professional groups and the first one was doctors, and he
Michael:asked the question when doctors go through medical school in the US, he was looking
Michael:at the US at the time, he could access all the medical records then he could
Michael:see how how well they were rated at the time, but once they went out and became
Michael:doctors, there were no more ratings.
Michael:What did they do?
Michael:What, how could you tell a good doctor from a nurse?
Michael:How could you do it?
Michael:And he tried various ways of doing this, but what he basically found is
Michael:that the medical school scores bore no relationship to what happened afterwards.
Michael:In other words, the doctors just went off and did their thing, in my view.
Michael:He really found the Gilbreath example in professional spheres.
Michael:And he looked at other ones, and he got to about his fourth or fifth
Michael:one, which I think was social work.
Michael:And then he got closed down.
Michael:What a surprise.
Michael:He looked at doctors, nurses, social workers, and somebody else BANG!
Michael:End of research kid.
Michael:Because we don't want you looking in.
Michael:That happens with doctors, it happens with lawyers, it happens
Michael:with all sorts of people.
Michael:So what they actually do, God only knows, really.
Michael:God only knows.
Michael:If Syed had got into that about the variation in what people actually
Michael:do, certainly in professional areas where they've got Spheres
Michael:of discretion, shall we say.
Michael:It might have been, it might make another book actually, might make another book.
Michael:Because doctors, they certainly used to be, especially male ones, used
Michael:to be famous for their arrogance.
Michael:Like you weren't a good doctor unless you were arrogant, I had a brother in
Michael:law who was Indian and he came from a family and he had 18 relatives,
Michael:18 relatives who were doctors.
Michael:He was the accountant.
Michael:He might as well have been a drug dealer, a pimp or something.
Michael:And he's not.
Michael:And he was like the nicest, most honest, successful guy, but he wouldn't adopt,
Michael:so once you get these professional spheres, nobody's going to admit
Michael:they were wrong, not going to happen.
Saurabh:The research we were talking about, Michael, this reminded me,
Saurabh:I came across this research when we were doing this, we were going
Saurabh:through the book on outliers.
Saurabh:This study, which you mentioned was the starting point of outliers
Saurabh:of the 10, 000 hour study.
Saurabh:Oh, which was done in 1965.
Saurabh:The David MacLellan one.
Saurabh:Yeah.
Saurabh:Yeah.
Saurabh:So this was used for the 10, 000 hour study.
Michael:Okay.
Michael:I apologize.
Michael:But when you get into the 10, 000 hours, you have to say what
Michael:are people actually learning?
Michael:Are they learning to get better?
Michael:Are they learning to be arrogant?
Michael:Or what?
Michael:Really?
Michael:It'd be better to spend 3, 000 hours learning to get better than 10, 000
Michael:hours, learning other stuff, really.
Rob:There's another book.
Rob:I don't know if you've come across it.
Rob:The talent code by Owen.
Saurabh:Oh, I've got it here.
Saurabh:Yeah.
Rob:He goes a bit more detail into basically how is
Rob:it's about perfect practice.
Rob:It's not about practice because if you practice being bad, you Developing
Rob:bad, but it's about perfect practice.
Rob:And he talks about sports people, tennis players will play tennis or
Rob:musicians, it's the point where they fall down, so it's continually pushing
Rob:the point of failure out and out.
Rob:And but he talks about how practice works is the time that you spend.
Rob:It's like the energy and the attention what it does is it creates the myelin
Rob:sheath that hardwires the skill.
Rob:So the, over the 10, 000 hours, it's basically because you're
Rob:hardwiring your system, your nervous system reacts to that response.
Rob:McClellan's study brings to mind that you're going to get good and
Rob:bad in whatever occupation people do.
Rob:Politicians are continually using education as a political football and all
Rob:of them come in and they blame teachers.
Rob:You're going to get the odd bad teacher, just like you're going to
Rob:get the odd good one, in the same way you're going to get bad doctors.
Rob:And I think that goes back to what you're talking about, Saurabh, is
Rob:that we have to have the processes so that we have redundancy in the system.
Rob:Another organization who do create that again, heavily resourced is the
Rob:military, where they have the idea that obviously because in war someone could
Rob:be wiped out, everyone should be able to do two levels above their actual
Rob:grade so that they can take that role.
Michael:I didn't know that.
Michael:That's interesting.
Michael:The guy in Taylor Woodrow, no longer Taylor Woodrow, it was
Michael:a British construction company.
Michael:And the guy who started that, he had the same idea that you should be able to
Michael:do two up and two below as it happened
Michael:I didn't know that was the case in the military.
Michael:Is that in case like the next two layers up get?
Rob:I guess so.
Rob:Yeah.
Rob:I can't remember where I read it.
Rob:I read it somewhere.
Rob:That it was the military's I think it's talking to people.
Rob:Someone In the military told me that the idea is because obviously you're
Rob:in war, the commander gets taken out and when you think as a military strategy,
Rob:going back Alexander the Great and people like that time, that would be your
Rob:strategy, take out the leader and the organization collapses without guidance.
Michael:Things you learn.
Michael:I would think that's quite difficult practice if your typical squaddy
Michael:going to sergeant to captain now.
Michael:That's quite a hike.
Rob:Yeah, because there is.
Rob:I'm pretty sure I'm not that familiar with the military but there are certain
Rob:levels you can't go above if you don't go in as an officer, there's a certain limit.
Rob:Yeah, oh
Michael:yeah, and then CO, yeah.
Rob:But I think they have to be aware of is that they could take up the role in
Rob:emergency, so yeah, another thing I felt interesting was about the psychotherapists
Rob:and about how they have no measurement.
Rob:What got me was the idea of religion and it makes me think of why religions
Rob:have been sidelined in today's society.
Rob:Joseph Campbell used to say that the religion of the day has to
Rob:fit with the science of the day.
Rob:And we have a religion that's 2000 years behind the science of the day.
Rob:And Galileo is used quite often by side.
Rob:And wasn't it Copernicus, who was killed for the basic same idea because he
Rob:wouldn't recount it and the idea that when they found that the world was older, they
Rob:said no, that's just God made fossils.
Rob:The narrative has to change to fit, we have to be aware
Rob:of the cognitive distortions.
Rob:When you look at the, I can't remember what it was, but the slowness of the
Rob:adoption rate where it was like 60 years when Semmelweis, the doctor
Rob:that realized why so many babies and mothers were dying in childbirth
Rob:because of germs on the hands.
Rob:He basically, I think he did some research which proved the point,
Rob:but it took 40 years because of the arrogance of doctors and they were
Rob:like, I'm not washing my hands.
Rob:And all it took was them washing their hands.
Rob:I really like that story where Provost, the guy who was in with
Rob:the surgeon and he said she's dying because of a latex allergy.
Rob:Look, it will be five minutes for you to change your gloves
Rob:you'll lose if I'm wrong.
Rob:if I'm right, she'll die.
Rob:And he's no, I'm not changing them.
Rob:How many times would we have someone in that position?
Rob:It's that willingness to accept that we're wrong, when we come from a point
Rob:of view, which is like the old tribes and the religions where we believe a
Rob:book has the answer, the definitive answer, we remove the right to advance.
Rob:And I think that's a danger all of us individually, socially and in corporates.
Saurabh:Absolutely.
Saurabh:I feel like, for example, if we take the example of constitution
Saurabh:compared to a religion.
Saurabh:A constitution is continuously being amended by the people
Saurabh:based on the problems that we are facing right now in the society.
Saurabh:On the other hand in religion, the problem, especially with
Saurabh:certain religions, We just said that this is the word of God.
Saurabh:And if you just say that it is word of God, you're closing the
Saurabh:conversation then and there.
Saurabh:So there is no scope for any improvement or disagreement
Saurabh:with whatever that is written.
Saurabh:That I feel is a major problem with, religion, wherever you say
Saurabh:that it is word of God, and this has to be followed, no matter what.
Saurabh:That's what Syed calls closed loop thinking, right?
Saurabh:We then are unable to improve and, make any changes in the system.
Saurabh:That's one of the major reasons why I feel most of the religions
Saurabh:are failing in contemporary times, because they have those single books.
Saurabh:Religions which have multiple books are not failing.
Saurabh:So this is a change like that has taken place in certain religions where
Saurabh:there are thousands of books and no one claims that it is written by any God.
Saurabh:These are all stories, myths, legends.
Saurabh:And these are guidelines.
Saurabh:So if they are just guidelines and no one is forcing you to do anything,
Saurabh:so then why not take the best out of whatever books that you're reading
Saurabh:and apply it to the society of now.
Saurabh:That's what I feel like there are certain religions which
Saurabh:are very closed, very dogmatic.
Saurabh:Based on, the traditionalists group, they would believe whatever you tell them.
Saurabh:These traditionalists or conservatives, as we call the extremist end of the
Saurabh:conservatives which would be somewhere around eight to 10 percent in any society.
Saurabh:And the overall conservatives would be somewhere around 40 percent in a society.
Saurabh:These are again, psychological studies done on the complete
Saurabh:diaspora of the world.
Saurabh:So this is quite common that the number of people in a society
Saurabh:that would be conservatives would be roughly around 40 to 50%.
Saurabh:And within that, the extremists of the conservatives would
Saurabh:be around eight to 10%.
Saurabh:Similarly, on the other end of the spectrum, the left center,
Saurabh:like the left people would be the extremist and would be eight to 10%.
Saurabh:And similarly, the society is constructed like these sort of a bell curve of
Saurabh:overall how the society functions.
Saurabh:So it's a very, intricate play.
Saurabh:No single person is The same, right?
Saurabh:We all have our way of looking at the world.
Saurabh:And even, the books that people are reading, we all three, we read the same
Saurabh:book, but we have a complete different perspective of the book and probably 8.
Saurabh:4 billion or whatever number of people there are in the
Saurabh:world, they will read this book.
Saurabh:They will all have certain differences in how they perceive the book.
Saurabh:That's the beauty like even in case of religion, there would always be
Saurabh:people who would believe each and every word to it without changing it.
Saurabh:And they would be okay with it.
Saurabh:And then there would be people who are open, who want, change.
Saurabh:So the perception of religion for each one of us is also very different.
Michael:I remember years ago, somebody giving three examples of what Syed calls
Michael:closed loop systems psychoanalysis, interestingly enough communism and
Michael:catholicism, because the argument was that if you were in them, you were
Michael:in them, there was just no way out of them, it doesn't matter what you said.
Michael:There was no way out.
Michael:I was brought up as a Catholic and one of the things that we were told was that
Michael:we had what was called the doctrine of papal infallibility, that when the Pope
Michael:spoke as the Pope, he could not be wrong.
Michael:So if he gave you a hot bet for the 330, some race course that might be wrong.
Michael:But when he spoke as the Pope, He was right.
Michael:And that kind of sounded good, sounded reasonable.
Michael:But it was only when I was ghostwriting a book about popes that I found that a
Michael:particular pope invented this in 1860.
Michael:Up until that date, no pope had ever claimed papal infallibility.
Michael:Not a single pope ever.
Michael:And this guy just dreamed it out of thin air, and when he announced it in the
Michael:Basilica of St peter to the Cardinals, they were absolutely shocked, because
Michael:it's like, where'd this come from?
Michael:Apparently there was a huge storm going on at the time, and as he announced
Michael:it, there was a thunderbolt, a flash of lightning, and this piece of glass
Michael:came flying out, crashed down, and just shattered in a million pieces.
Michael:It was like, God is not amused.
Michael:Ironically, within five years, they lost all their estates in Italy, and then in
Michael:the middle of Italy, the papal estates.
Michael:So the guy made the thing up and it's stuck there ever since.
Michael:Nobody's turned around and said, look, we should bend this.
Michael:So interesting.
Rob:It seems so much like the emperor's new clothes basically when you look
Rob:at, so when you look at Christianity and when you look at Buddhism.
Rob:Now Jesus, basically the Sermon on the Mount says don't be like
Rob:the Philistines, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this.
Rob:And then he died and other people set up a religion in his name, basically
Rob:doing everything he said, don't do.
Rob:I think what's really important is that we have to have some sense of spirituality.
Rob:By spirituality, I mean there's some sense of connection of How do we originate?
Rob:What are we here for?
Rob:What's the bigger picture?
Rob:And everyone has to have that.
Rob:Religion is an off the shelf, easy way of doing that.
Rob:Buddha basically said the same is don't believe me, don't believe anyone
Rob:else because it's written somewhere.
Rob:Judaism, Islam and Christianity all take a book.
Rob:That is becomes a closed loop system and then people like popes get power
Rob:by saying, Oh you can't talk to God.
Rob:You've got to talk to me and I'll talk to God for you.
Rob:So you have a system that here in the middle ages, the clergy were
Rob:milking people and saying if you pay me this money I'll have a word
Rob:and absolve you from this sin.
Rob:We have these scams going on today and we, today we clearly see it's a scam, but
Rob:when people are in that mindset of the religion, oh it's written in this book.
Rob:You're trapped, and it is, and then the danger is that we, in many
Rob:other ways, we do this, and we trap ourselves within authority figures.
Rob:Even like here in the UK, like Henry the eighth, because he
Rob:was fighting with the Pope.
Rob:He said hang on, I'm the Pope now.
Rob:And basically we're gonna have our own religion, and I'm
Rob:going to be the boss of it.
Rob:And so the king or the queen is if you're UK protestants are basically
Rob:the head of the church is the sovereign and yet they surround themselves
Rob:with the pageantry and things that, so that it can't be challenged.
Rob:But.
Rob:And I think people CEOs probably did a similar thing and people in
Rob:organizations create ways that people can't oppose and challenge them.
Michael:Sayed makes that point very well in part of the book when
Michael:he says that the further up you go up an organization, the more denial
Michael:there is if things aren't right.
Michael:Yes.
Michael:You get close to CEOs, there are very few people actually going to turn around and
Michael:say, look, sorry guys, I got it all wrong.
Michael:Some people will, but very few.
Rob:Yeah what I thought was interesting was the to see how widespread it is.
Rob:He used the example of Tony Blair and George Bush, but equally Neil
Rob:deGrasse Tyson, when he wrote about a quote that George Bush had said,
Rob:which made his point that he was anti islam and all of this thing.
Rob:And the quote was a complete misrepresentation.
Rob:It was never said and it was a misrepresentation of a
Rob:speech taken out of context.
Rob:So I suppose that at the end what we're really looking at is our
Rob:ability to learn is limited by.
Rob:our lack of awareness of our cognitive distortions.
Rob:This is something that we all have and it talks about blame.
Rob:And I always find the fundamental attribution error
Rob:where we we excuse ourselves.
Rob:I think that comes down to being human.
Rob:This is we feel, we experience ourselves internally and we experience others
Rob:externally, so we can, we look at the end result and the behaviors of what
Rob:other people do, and we can see all their faults, but we feel the excuses and the
Rob:justifications for why we do what we do.
Rob:And that's something that's very hard to overcome, isn't it?
Michael:It's interesting, one of the things that I would take issue
Michael:with Syed for is blame, because he seems to accept it and I don't.
Michael:I think blame is a very useless emotion precisely because it is an emotion.
Michael:Blame is not just saying you did something wrong, it's putting an
Michael:emotional attachment on that mistake.
Michael:I think it's a huge difference.
Michael:There are two components of blame, one the mistake, two the emotional response to it.
Michael:The emotional response, because it's negative, completely wrecks
Michael:any opportunity of learning from it.
Michael:I think you just have to say, we're human, we make mistakes.
Michael:If the person made a mistake, he or she made a mistake.
Michael:But the minute you stick blame on, ouch, you're going nowhere really.
Michael:You're pushing them into a corner.
Michael:It's showing everybody else the example.
Michael:This is what happens, people who get things wrong.
Michael:I really think blame is a worthless emotion, really.
Michael:That we just all need to just get rid of.
Michael:Just accept we do things wrong, other people do things wrong.
Michael:Are we going to learn from it?
Michael:Are we going to get a bit better?
Michael:To me, that's the question.
Rob:But my experience in relationships has led me to believe that there
Rob:are three enemies of relationships, and that is blaming, shaming and
Rob:gaming is where we try and manipulate people, but through gaming.
Rob:We shame people by going, Oh, you're a bad person in order to control or we blame.
Rob:And it is that discharge of emotion.
Rob:I think that's Brene Brown Describes blame as a discharge of negative emotion It
Saurabh:is.
Saurabh:Yeah.
Saurabh:I have all,
Rob:Steve Jones worked at Unilever apparently before
Rob:becoming a leading geneticist.
Rob:When I was studying psychology, my tutor was clearly came from the
Rob:evolutionary psychology department.
Rob:He was a big fan of Steve Jones.
Rob:His son was doing his PhD under Steve Jones at that time.
Rob:I found it interesting, the the idea of unilevers finding their nozzle
Rob:through thousands of iterations.
Rob:And it makes me think that there's a biological equivalent.
Rob:When you look at one of our great dangers is antibiotics because the
Rob:bacteria multiply so much faster than we do and faster than we can
Rob:react to them, that there there is this kind of bacterial warfare.
Rob:And it makes me think that biology is a great analogy that we need to
Rob:find the psychological equivalent of which really seems to be about being
Rob:able to drop our preconceived ideas.
Rob:It talks about narrative fallacy, but what we're really talking about is we need
Rob:to be constantly updating the narrative.
Saurabh:Make up.
Saurabh:What I feel is, for example, like what this book also talks
Saurabh:about is neuroplasticity, right?
Saurabh:That our brain can be rewired if the proper effort is put
Saurabh:into a certain thing, rewiring.
Saurabh:But what I feel is most of the times we are not even aware of the biases that we
Saurabh:are having and the origin of those biases.
Saurabh:We talked about in some part that there is a limbic reaction to a lot of things,
Saurabh:which are from our past evolution.
Saurabh:So we are not even sure where those emotions are coming from.
Saurabh:Why are we negatively wired towards certain emotions?
Saurabh:Like for example, blame, just what we were talking about, whenever
Saurabh:there is someone blames us, we get into that fight or flight response.
Saurabh:We don't want to be blamed.
Saurabh:We take it personally.
Saurabh:You cannot take out the personal.
Saurabh:It's not so easy to, separate yourself.
Saurabh:So those emotions, whatever we feel, they are our reality that cannot be changed.
Saurabh:In that sense, the depth of those emotions that until and unless you are
Saurabh:self realized probably is what the term that we use until and unless you are
Saurabh:that blame and these negative emotions will always negatively affect us.
Michael:The more we are aware of them, the greater chance there is
Michael:that we will not let them negatively affect us if we so choose, really.
Michael:But if we're not aware of them, then we're enthralled to them.
Michael:If you can stand outside yourself and realize what you're doing, then you can
Michael:start to rewire your brain about it.
Michael:If you don't do that, you just can't do the same thing forever, really.
Michael:Absolutely.
Michael:I've got a friend who's 93 year old mum's got like a PhD in blame.
Michael:She can do the drop of a hat.
Michael:She ain't gonna change.
Michael:Yeah.
Rob:Syed talks about, we studied 240, 000 studies or something in
Rob:physics and like less than 10, 000 or something in education.
Rob:This has always been my view in, in, we don't know relationships.
Rob:We don't know emotions because it's something that we don't study.
Rob:It's so new to us.
Rob:And what comes to mind is that statistic that It was 85 to 90 percent of people
Rob:think they're self aware, but when you cross reference it, it's only 10 to 15%.
Rob:And the perennial one is people were like, Oh yeah, I watch adverts,
Rob:but they don't influence me.
Rob:And yet billions are spent and many more billions are made because
Rob:of the influence of adverts.
Rob:Yes.
Saurabh:Yes.
Saurabh:Another thing that comes straight away to mind is 95 percent
Saurabh:of it is system one, right?
Saurabh:Like Daniel Kahneman's book and thinking fast and slow, which
Saurabh:is referenced here as well.
Saurabh:So 95 percent of the things, we do automatically.
Saurabh:And it's only 5 percent of the time that we are using system two.
Saurabh:So just think of it on a course in the course of the day, 95 percent of the
Saurabh:time we are anyways using system one.
Saurabh:That means that most of the things we are doing are coming out of the autonomous
Saurabh:response system that is already wired.
Saurabh:Whatever we talk about neuroplasticity is only when we are using system two.
Saurabh:That 5 percent of the time.
Saurabh:So most of the things that we are doing, that we are experiencing,
Saurabh:we might think that we know the reason of why it is happening.
Saurabh:What is the emotional response to it?
Saurabh:We are aware of it only 5 percent of the time, only when we are making really
Saurabh:tough choices or really important things.
Saurabh:We only use that brain because it's not in our capacity to always be self
Saurabh:aware a hundred percent of the time.
Saurabh:In that sense you cannot expect when you are applying these kinds of things to
Saurabh:organizations, you just cannot expect the whole system to work in that way
Saurabh:because 95 percent of the decisions would be driven by the processes.
Saurabh:It's only in those 5 percent of the time or decision making that system two can
Saurabh:take place or changes can take place.
Saurabh:But such has been the pace of change in today's world
Saurabh:that we are unable to adjust.
Saurabh:And that's the reason why the lives of organizations have reduced to say from 20
Saurabh:to 30 years to now a span of seven years.
Saurabh:Because organizations are unable to cope with that pace of change.
Michael:Which do you think we've been in?
Michael:System one or system two for the past sort of hour and a bit,
Michael:which do you think we've been in?
Saurabh:Oh, I think it would be like most of the time it would be system
Saurabh:two, because we are in a sort of continuous interaction mode, right?
Saurabh:We are talking to each other, we are looking at each other's eyes,
Saurabh:we are trying to decipher things, we are trying to understand.
Saurabh:So whenever you are, we are using our processing powers.
Saurabh:Like to the fullest extent and being in the now, like Eckhart
Saurabh:Tolle's book, Power of Now.
Saurabh:So when we are in the now, we are at the present and
Saurabh:completely involved in the task.
Saurabh:At those moments, I feel the system two works much better
Saurabh:because we are discerning.
Saurabh:We are listening.
Saurabh:We are open and we are able to discern between what is right and wrong, or, not
Saurabh:right, which is sitting in our systems or way of thinking we are open to change it.
Saurabh:That's where I feel system two works.
Saurabh:And that's why I feel the conversation at least has taken place in system two.
Saurabh:And it's more than 5 percent of the time today.
Rob:I think this is something that most people don't.
Rob:understand is the nature of organizations makes people stressed.
Rob:For so many reasons.
Rob:You're putting people under stress and it's like that quote from Archilochus
Rob:people don't rise to our aspirations.
Rob:They fall to the level of their training.
Rob:Often people are stressed and so that, like I think of the triune
Rob:brain, I know it's been disproved.
Rob:As a rule of thumb, it's a nice way of thinking that, we can only
Rob:think from our highest thinking abilities when we're relaxed and calm.
Rob:For us here, there's really nothing at stake.
Rob:We're in a nice environment where we're not stressed with each other.
Rob:We don't have any ongoing issues.
Rob:Each of our decisions doesn't affect our future where, when you're in
Rob:an organization, someone else is making decisions that is directly
Rob:impacting your future, which I think is the same as in a relationship.
Rob:We've got this time booked out that we can explore calmly.
Rob:But often in organizations, we are running from one thing to another.
Rob:We've got ongoing concerns, which make us stressed.
Rob:And it's the lack of awareness of how people are feeling and which
Rob:system that they're operating in.
Michael:Completely agree.
Michael:I always feel that if people are stressed, that stress is telling
Michael:them something that's very valuable if they choose to listen to it.
Rob:Yeah.
Rob:And I think it's the norm.
Rob:When you look at organizations, what the burnout rate and the quiet quitting
Rob:and all of this stuff, it shows you how stressed people are every day.
Rob:And that means that, you go back to that quote of we expect people,
Rob:their aspirations, when I think of interviews, Traditionally people have
Rob:interviewed and they're all prepared.
Rob:They've got their best suit on.
Rob:They're all prepared, they're best self.
Rob:They're most charming.
Rob:They're giving you full attention.
Rob:Three months into the job.
Rob:And they're, pissed off with their coworker and they're fed up with
Rob:how they've been treated and they're unhappy with the organization.
Rob:You're not getting the best out of them.
Rob:And yet we're expecting why aren't they showing up?
Rob:You have to plan that.
Rob:That you have to either create the circumstance in the environment so
Rob:that people rise up or and the culture and the whole connection and the sense
Rob:of belonging and giving them status and things that so that they do.
Rob:Or you accept far less and you plan for it.
Rob:I don't think there's that awareness.
Michael:No, there absolutely isn't.
Michael:There absolutely isn't.
Rob:Michael and I, we have a background in psychology and psychology has
Rob:very little impact on the world.
Rob:It's far less influence and there's far less study on it.
Rob:We're not take bringing that influence in and people aren't generally aware of it.
Rob:When people talk of psychology, they think that people can read their minds
Rob:or they know what you're thinking and this kind of thing, they're still
Rob:talking about Freud or Pavlov and not developing from that knowledge.
Saurabh:Yes.
Saurabh:Yes.
Saurabh:I feel for example, what we're just talking about, major factor missing in
Saurabh:organizations is the psychological safety.
Saurabh:Awareness about it is there.
Saurabh:I would not say that the top leaders don't understand that
Saurabh:psychological safety is important.
Saurabh:I feel they understand now with so much being talked about it, they're
Saurabh:aware of it, but to implement it.
Saurabh:That would mean to, invest a lot of amount on something that is not
Saurabh:tangible in the sense you cannot see the, the cost benefit analysis of it.
Saurabh:So until and unless, there is a quote something that cannot be
Saurabh:measured or something that can't be managed if it's not measured.
Saurabh:If you cannot measure it's very difficult to, implement certain
Saurabh:things or certain processes on organizations in organizations.
Saurabh:Even though I feel this is all talk and no nothing, this is all even the overall
Saurabh:HR department, I feel is of no use.
Saurabh:They are not really taking care of people as such what that, the role entails.
Saurabh:They don't really take care of people.
Saurabh:All they are, involved in is how can you increase productivity?
Saurabh:How can you improve effectiveness?
Saurabh:These are the terms that are being used.
Saurabh:if we really want psychological safety, terms like kindness, terms
Saurabh:like courage, terms like being vulnerable, he should be discussed.
Saurabh:Since they are not measurable.
Saurabh:That I feel is the core of the problem that until and unless we can
Saurabh:make all these factors measurable in some way, organizations will
Saurabh:probably not accept it or make use of it because all they care about is
Saurabh:profitability at the end of the day.
Saurabh:So yeah, that's what I feel where the dissonances?
Rob:Yeah I think that organizations are basically most are driven by money.
Rob:Everything is related to money, but the problem is that was fine in
Rob:industrial times, but when you're working with knowledge to access the
Rob:resources that people have and their full engagement, their full creativity,
Rob:they need to have a sense of purpose.
Rob:Our organizations are set up to maximize money.
Rob:There's a breaking point where they can't maximize money because they
Rob:can't get the most out of the people.
Rob:Ultimately If all you're doing is maximizing money you're reaching
Rob:a point where society breaks?
Rob:Because all that you do is enable greed and that was great for a point
Rob:Where it created most progress, but there's a point where it has to change
Rob:and society has to qualitatively change and organizations within that.
Rob:I think what Syed did in both books is he brought in lots of concepts.
Rob:There's a, there's an underlying theme of psychological safety the
Rob:self awareness anti fragility,
Rob:But what it comes down to in the end, I think for me is the ability to let
Rob:go of ego and I think a great source of growth over the next few decades
Rob:is going to be the sense of identity.
Rob:Cause I think for me, what we have to change is identity.
Rob:Have to learn how we can join with others.
Rob:So that we're an individual, but we're also part of a team.
Rob:We're part of a family.
Rob:We're part of a society.
Rob:And when we have that sense of that we give fully of ourselves without losing
Rob:then I think we'll be better as a society individually and in every way.
Saurabh:I feel black box thinking is very closely related to Carol
Saurabh:Dweck's work on growth mindset and both have a lot of parallels in
Saurabh:terms of how our mindset should be so that we are able to, continuously
Saurabh:reinvent ourselves in a way that we learn from whatever mistakes we make.
Saurabh:We see challenges as opportunities to learn.
Saurabh:At the end of the day, black box thinking is all about being open
Saurabh:and curious about the world.
Saurabh:That's my sort of key takeaway.
Saurabh:There are a lot of other concepts especially the biases part really
Saurabh:interested me because I feel all of it is related to self
Saurabh:awareness at the end of the day.
Saurabh:Whatever growth we go through depends on the level of our self awareness.
Saurabh:So that is the foundation on which everything else about
Saurabh:our mindset is built around.
Saurabh:Taking these two concepts together, how we can increase our self
Saurabh:awareness and be aware of our biases.
Saurabh:And how we can grow and be open and curious, be accountable as well
Saurabh:as, follow certain processes so that we can continuously improve.
Saurabh:So having those balances and, having that is so necessary for growth, I feel,
Saurabh:and that's very beautifully captured.
Saurabh:So that's my key takeaway from the
Rob:book.
Rob:Thank you.
Michael:Oh gosh, what do I feel about the book?
Michael:Lots of things.
Michael:I was brought up at a time and in a culture where failure
Michael:was simply unacceptable.
Michael:So I had a terrible attitude to failure.
Michael:Because it was unacceptable, I just had to shut it out.
Michael:I couldn't learn from it at all.
Michael:I've probably spent most of my life redefining my relationship with
Michael:failure and trying to get it in its right place as a learning vehicle.
Michael:And yes, I think open and curious is the way to go forward because we can
Michael:let failure define us negatively, or we can use failure to move forward.
Michael:It depends how we view it really.
Rob:It's so much about that attitude, isn't it?
Michael:Yes.
Michael:I think open and curious.
Michael:I think that pretty much nails it.
Michael:There's a guy called Bill Bonner spoke about Forex trades and
Michael:he used almost the same words.
Michael:He said, it's very important to, with something in curious,
Michael:but he meant open and curious.
Michael:He said, remain open.
Michael:He said to, to remain an interested observer, even when you're in the
Michael:trade and even when it's not working.
Michael:To still be just interested in what's going on and just, look at it.
Michael:He meant open and curious.
Michael:He meant open and curious.
Rob:Yeah.
Rob:Not invested in any one way, which is the problem is we tend to invest and we tend
Rob:to invest our identity in, into, yes.
Rob:A way of thinking or succeeding or even failing.
Michael:In trading the roller coaster is one of greed and fear.
Michael:And of course, people's egos are going up and crashing up and crashing.
Michael:And he's just saying no just watch it.
Michael:Just sit there watching it and learning.
Michael:That's what he's saying.
Michael:Be open and curious.
Rob:Good advice to us all.
Rob:Okay.
Rob:Thank you for this.
Rob:And next up is Saurabh's favorite of mastery.
Rob:It's an amazing
Saurabh:book.
Rob:I haven't read it yet.
Rob:Kindle, but I'm looking forward to it.
Rob:Oh, wow.
Rob:I've gotten
Michael:Kindle.
Michael:I'm really looking forward to reading it.
Michael:So thank you for suggesting it.
Michael:Thank
