Episode 120

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Published on:

9th Sep 2024

Rebel Ideas By Matthew Syed Book Club Discussion

Why do groups of the smartest people make dumb decisions?

The Bay of Pigs invasion. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. Blair and Bush's war on Iraq.

Every day in smaller ways groups make terrible decisions because of groupthink.

Yet the increasing complexity of the world shows that collective intelligence is key. Overwhelmingly, science, business and social breakthroughs happen through teams. Individual brilliance is no longer enough.

Rebel Ideas by Matthew Syed shows how teams get it wrong.

People not speaking up. The people who could see the flaws not being in the room. The unconscious biases that mean we don't know what we're missing.

If you lead or are part of a team, it's a must read.

Here's our Book Club discussion with:

Eduardo Dos Santos Silva

Neil Hamilton

Michael Ward

Transcript
Rob:

One of the things that struck me, about rebel ideas was the.

Rob:

idea from Amazon, where you spend the first couple of minutes of a

Rob:

meeting reading so that we don't get carried away by whoever says the first

Rob:

thing when we go on to that point.

Rob:

So I thought it would be a good idea to do that.

Rob:

So if we In the chat, write two or three key points that stood out for us.

Rob:

We'll all send it together.

Rob:

So none of us are being influenced by the other.

Eduardo:

Rob, what also got my attention in this very same example that you have

Eduardo:

just mentioned about the Amazon meetings, is that it wasn't a couple minutes.

Eduardo:

And I think this is the trick.

Eduardo:

It was 30 minutes.

Eduardo:

So you know, I think a lot of business managers and so called

Eduardo:

leaders would read that book.

Eduardo:

Yeah.

Eduardo:

And take that aside that it's a few minutes at the start of the

Eduardo:

meeting, and I have to say I have seen that, where they say, Okay,

Eduardo:

2-3 minutes and now you read it.

Eduardo:

And then we start the discussion.

Eduardo:

No, you didn't really read.

Eduardo:

And you didn't think about what you read.

Eduardo:

Blocking, 30 minutes of everybody's time to really think through what

Eduardo:

is that you're going to discuss.

Eduardo:

That's cohesion.

Rob:

I don't think you said it was 30 minutes did it?

Rob:

Or did I just miss that bit?

Eduardo:

I'm pretty convinced I remember 30 minutes, but of course

Eduardo:

then we would have to find it.

Eduardo:

Thank you.

Rob:

Okay, it could be.

Rob:

I

Neil:

Overall, I think I enjoyed it.

Neil:

I enjoyed certainly the first half.

Neil:

And, felt actually for me, there was, there were many ideas that were coming

Neil:

together that, weren't necessarily new, but were presented in a way

Neil:

that was compelling, and I thought a nice way of bringing it all together.

Neil:

So that really struck home about the cognitive diversity point.

Neil:

around making sure that you're focused on the right kind of diversity

Neil:

for the task at hand, particularly for innovation and creativity.

Neil:

And then all the other things.

Neil:

So beyond that cognitive diversity, breaking the group think, mentality, the

Neil:

innovation benefiting from the combination of different ideas struck me as important.

Neil:

You often see recruiting in specific sectors only and actually that lacks

Neil:

an ability to bring in new ideas.

Neil:

Collective intelligence felt like an important point and reminded me of a

Neil:

book I read, Creating Intelligent Teams.

Neil:

The collective intelligence of the team is greater than any one individual's.

Neil:

Challenging the status quo and have been a safe space in order to challenge

Neil:

the status quo again, bringing in that sort of psychological safety, but also

Neil:

being prepared to challenge norms.

Neil:

All things that, I care a lot about that were brought together

Neil:

in terms of the book itself.

Neil:

It felt longer than it needed to be.

Neil:

I felt the examples some of them were unnecessary, got the point moved on.

Neil:

I wanted to hear more about actual rebels.

Neil:

Diversity and inclusion is one thing, but what about the edge cases?

Neil:

What about the rebels?

Neil:

I wanted to hear more about that given the title of the book and, at

Neil:

the end, the evolutionary argument around, collaboration was interesting,

Neil:

I thought, but it felt a bit shallow.

Neil:

So that's an area I was particularly interested in,

Neil:

but wanted more evidence for.

Neil:

An interesting concept around how although our brain might not have been

Neil:

the biggest, how we've evolved because of our ability to learn and collaborate

Neil:

with others in our evolution has put us ahead of, Neanderthals, for example.

Neil:

That was an interesting idea, but I thought lacked depth.

Michael:

I felt the same, I think towards the end he was let's get some

Michael:

more evidence, let's get some more evidence, let's get some more evidence.

Michael:

Yeah.

Michael:

And then I think it would have been, he needed, basically, sorry about

Michael:

this guys, he needed a ghostwriter.

Michael:

He wanders all over the place at times.

Michael:

It's lovely, but it could have been a far tighter book and I think it would

Michael:

have been a better book if it had been.

Michael:

It's still a good book.

Eduardo:

Yeah, I felt the same guys.

Eduardo:

And this is what I wrote last week.

Eduardo:

I would rather not recommend the book.

Eduardo:

It's a good experience.

Eduardo:

so it's not terrible.

Eduardo:

It's not that I would say avoid it altogether, but for me, it completely

Eduardo:

skips the point of the title.

Eduardo:

rebel ideas.

Eduardo:

No, it's talking about something else.

Eduardo:

It's talking about diversity and in the certain context, which is great.

Eduardo:

And we need that.

Eduardo:

And we need books like that.

Eduardo:

But that's not the book, right?

Eduardo:

And that annoys me.

Eduardo:

It feels like it's misleading in a certain way, and I felt exactly

Eduardo:

like you, Neil, when you said that he doesn't come to the point.

Eduardo:

I had an impression that he was trying to mimic a little bit the style of somebody

Eduardo:

like Malcolm Gladwell for example, that goes starts with the story, goes

Eduardo:

somewhere else, and then bring it back.

Eduardo:

All back together, but he doesn't actually do that quite often.

Eduardo:

I felt like he went somewhere else and stayed there and left

Eduardo:

something there and then came back.

Eduardo:

So why is that you took me to that trip if there was nothing

Eduardo:

else for me to figure it out?

Eduardo:

So I completely agree with how you felt and also about the conclusion.

Eduardo:

That's not scientific work and he chooses to evaluate or analyze a very specific

Eduardo:

period of 100 years or so to make certain conclusions about human beings.

Eduardo:

That's just not rigorous enough in order for us to be able to make

Eduardo:

conclusions and then derive ideas that are really time proof and

Eduardo:

that we can leverage going further.

Michael:

He's definitely got a bad habit of starting with case A, going on to

Michael:

case B, and then coming back to case A, which especially the second time I

Michael:

read, I find it bloody irritating really.

Michael:

Could you just do case A, build on that, draw your conclusion, move

Michael:

to case B, But whatever, maybe it's just too much of a rebel for me.

Eduardo:

Maybe that's it, Michael, you're right.

Michael:

With regard to the title, I mean his publishers will have been

Michael:

on at him to get a catchy title.

Michael:

Because they want a catchy title, they say the hook of the book.

Michael:

So that probably wasn't his working title.

Michael:

But they would have wanted a sexy title.

Michael:

So that's probably why, that probably wasn't his first choice.

Michael:

It might have been the 50th, It's a great title, I agree, but for another book.

Neil:

It's interesting because, I bought Outliers, of course, the book we reviewed

Neil:

previously, because I thought it was going to be about the people who are rebels on

Neil:

the edge of thinking, which of course, it was a good book, but it wasn't about that.

Neil:

And that was just my excuse.

Neil:

But reading this, I thought, again, oh, this is going It wasn't

Neil:

going to be about those ideas on the edge, and it wasn't really.

Rob:

I agree that I don't think I get this point of rebel ideas as against clone

Rob:

ideas, but it's not really rebelling.

Rob:

It is diverse ideas.

Rob:

Yeah.

Rob:

And maybe diverse ideas is the better title.

Rob:

For me, there were two standout points.

Rob:

What really caught my attention was how important teams are, where he breaks

Rob:

down every achievement of business, scientific, academic, all these kinds

Rob:

of breakthroughs come through teams and we need teams for complexity.

Rob:

It follows through that theme that, where he talks about individual

Rob:

geniuses where being sociable makes you get a hundred times output by your

Rob:

social intelligence or by your social network than by your Intelligence.

Rob:

And the other part was we hear about diversity from the point of view

Rob:

of political correctness, where it's often a box ticking exercise.

Rob:

I've always felt that was wrong.

Rob:

I don't think that we should just recruit someone because they fit a quota.

Rob:

But this brought more clarity.

Rob:

We need to cover the parts that we don't see.

Rob:

I felt that was a great message to go against the political correct

Rob:

idea that doesn't really have depth.

Eduardo:

I love that too.

Eduardo:

Rob, he makes, and I love that he makes this point very early in the book.

Eduardo:

So what is Demographic diversity and what is cognitive diversity and

Eduardo:

how the two sometimes overlap and how the two sometimes won't overlap.

Eduardo:

That is really making a difference for solving complex problems,

Eduardo:

because that's really what he's talking about in most of the books.

Eduardo:

When it comes to the examples, it's something that is well done

Eduardo:

because you find examples of both.

Neil:

It's not language I would typically use, but talked about,

Neil:

germane and synergistic for thinking about how you bring in, diversity.

Neil:

I might use simpler language because I'm simpler sort of guy, but I

Neil:

think that for me summed it up.

Neil:

It was a nice way of thinking about, actually Rob, your point that diversity

Neil:

can sometimes turn into a box ticking exercise where you're looking at someone

Neil:

to see whether they're male or female or what race they register on your corporate

Neil:

database as and things like that.

Neil:

Whilst that's important for cultural and, different perspectives actually

Neil:

in this instance, that ability to think about what is both, appropriate

Neil:

for the task in terms of, what ideas can add value to the to the task.

Neil:

Are those people actually going to be collaborative in that approach and moving

Neil:

away from this idea, which I think the COVID 19 thing struck me if you just

Neil:

bring in all the experts on one particular topic, you don't get that diversity.

Neil:

And I think we saw, that use case of COVID in the SAGE group, just lacking a sense of

Neil:

diversity in their planning and thinking.

Michael:

I'll very quickly tell a tale which may shed some light.

Michael:

Years ago, I used to work for a management consultancy and It's so

Michael:

long ago, it doesn't matter now, but one of our clients was BNFL.

Michael:

Guys who do fill the UK full of radiation.

Michael:

It's a huge complex company.

Michael:

Anyway, after I'd left my company, they asked me back to do a piece of work that

Michael:

they'd forgotten to do on a huge project.

Michael:

And the piece of work they'd forgotten to do was some interviews with

Michael:

the top seven guys in the company.

Michael:

Does this fill anybody else with horror?

Michael:

They'd just forgotten to do it.

Michael:

And it was the top seven guys in the company.

Michael:

Anyway, so I turned up to do it, ever willing, and when I turned up

Michael:

there was something like either 23 or 24 consultants already there.

Michael:

So I was the 25th.

Michael:

They were billing and today's money would have been about three grand a day.

Michael:

So it's about 75 grand a day at BNFL, we're paying them to be there.

Michael:

The consultants were split into two groups and they split themselves into two groups

Michael:

called the right brain and the left brain, the creative types and the systems guys,

Michael:

and they weren't speaking to each other.

Michael:

So that's how good that team was going.

Michael:

There were about three people from the creatives who wandered into the

Michael:

other one of whom I was one, but nobody from the systems guy ever

Michael:

wanted into the creative group.

Michael:

So basically BNFL is incredibly complicated and basically the consultants

Michael:

were duplicating the complexity of their client or doing their best to anyway.

Michael:

Anyway, I'd been there, the three people running the project.

Michael:

The three project managers, that's three rather than one guys, from a

Michael:

company that prided itself on project management, they invited me to have

Michael:

a meal with them the first night.

Michael:

And this lady Martha asked me what I thought of things, and I said, you're

Michael:

all wasting your time basically.

Michael:

And she said, that's a really interesting viewpoint.

Michael:

And I said it's going nowhere.

Michael:

This project's going nowhere.

Michael:

You need to send 20 plus consultants back again, get a few guys and just work

Michael:

with the top people and do it slowly.

Michael:

So one guy, Graham pulled a face.

Michael:

Martha said that, because she didn't care.

Michael:

She just didn't care.

Michael:

And about a week later, this guy Roy accused me of being

Michael:

an intellectual fascist.

Michael:

But the teams were the smartest bunch of people I've ever met in my life.

Michael:

Every single person on that team was ten times smarter than I was.

Michael:

And they were highly motivated, they weren't just taking the money.

Michael:

They really wanted to be there, but they were wasting their It

Michael:

was quite shocking to I'd never seen it before, call me naive.

Michael:

But I could see why the Bay of Pigs failed, I could see why Vietnam

Michael:

failed, I could see why the CIA failed.

Michael:

And Syed brings that over very well, that if you get the smartest

Michael:

guys in the room, but, they're all over the place, you can forget it.

Michael:

So that was the end of that story.

Michael:

Of course, I was the rebel, but there you go.

Neil:

There were some nice quotes, I think, in the book or sections that

Neil:

I marked that I went through before.

Neil:

One of the ones I liked was it talked about if you want cool tech, it's

Neil:

better to be social than smart.

Neil:

I really like that idea because particularly with technology, you

Neil:

need to have technical people.

Neil:

Doing all the development and that idea of actually just being much

Neil:

more social and that was borne out through Some of the cases in the book.

Neil:

I really like that concept.

Neil:

It's a nice way of thinking about it.

Rob:

It's a great counter argument to the great man theory Yeah.

Rob:

In today's world, that great man theory doesn't hold up, yet it persists.

Rob:

So there's something deep in the psyche.

Rob:

I guess it's because it plays into the Hollywood movies.

Rob:

And so kids grow up wanting to be the hero and everyone wants to be the special one.

Rob:

Like you said, Neil, there's a lot of different ideas that are covered

Rob:

in other books cross over here.

Rob:

But that is, it's just a powerful one that, we shouldn't seem to need

Rob:

to keep going over, but we seem to.

Rob:

Yeah,

Michael:

just thinking about things, because I made a big note of this,

Michael:

which I can I read it right towards the back of the book in the notes.

Michael:

Did you go through the notes at the back Rob at all.

Michael:

Anybody going through the notes?

Eduardo:

Not really.

Eduardo:

Sorry about

Michael:

this guy.

Michael:

Team nerd here.

Michael:

But books is my thing.

Michael:

In the notes about chapter 3, he's got a very interesting research into teams.

Michael:

And he says the factors this research indicates, whatever it is, he says

Michael:

indicates the two most important things about teams were people

Michael:

speaking for similar amounts of time rather than dominating things.

Michael:

That's it.

Michael:

The other one, he says, social perceptiveness, people who can read

Michael:

other people's moods and manage.

Michael:

And he says, particularly women are generally better at this than men.

Michael:

And I thought that might have a special relevance for you, Rob.

Michael:

It's in the notes at chapter three at the back.

Rob:

Yeah, that comes from Project Aristotle, doesn't it?

Rob:

I don't

Michael:

know, I'm way out of time.

Michael:

Yeah,

Rob:

it's Google's Project Aristotle.

Rob:

So Google studied why some teams worked.

Rob:

And they found the number one factor was psychological safety and

Rob:

they met a number of principles.

Rob:

A few of which were about the inclusion of at least one woman and the more women that

Rob:

we have on the team they tend to, it's a linked assumption that women tend to have

Rob:

more social awareness, social perception.

Rob:

And so they tend to play out better in teams.

Eduardo:

What bothers a little bit, about that research and how it's used unless

Eduardo:

I understood wrong I read it quite some time ago, that The sampling that they

Eduardo:

are using is too specific, so they made a lot of conclusions, from a statistically

Eduardo:

relevant, group, and then everybody tries to apply that and those learnings across

Eduardo:

multiple industries that are completely different cultures, company cultures,

Eduardo:

country cultures, and so on and so forth.

Eduardo:

so I do have a problem.

Eduardo:

With that, I don't think it's thoughtful, even if it was a good study and for

Eduardo:

Google, they should definitely use it.

Eduardo:

But I don't think it's thoughtful to leverage that and use that without

Eduardo:

going a little bit the extra mile and testing the ideas throughout different

Eduardo:

industries and different cultures.

Rob:

If you're in a manufacturing industry or you're in retail or something like

Rob:

that, it probably wouldn't apply it.

Rob:

So Google studies are done on their own teams.

Rob:

So it's information technology within a certain culture.

Rob:

I don't think it would necessarily be universal across all industries.

Michael:

There's also an issue that if you've got socially highly

Michael:

perceptually cogent people on teams, what use do they put their gifts to?

Michael:

They may use it in being blatantly political.

Michael:

And women hate to say it.

Michael:

The new women here may be very much better at it.

Michael:

If you looked at, I stopped looking at The Apprentice because I couldn't stand

Michael:

it, a British television programme.

Michael:

But I gather in the later stages, people argued, but I gather that

Michael:

most of the females were absolutely vicious in terms of being political

Michael:

gameplay, whereas the guys generally blundered on a bit together.

Michael:

That's what I heard anyway.

Neil:

That's interesting because I think that was one of the points that

Neil:

came out for me is because it, that's a program of competition, of course.

Michael:

Yeah.

Michael:

You also need to collaborate.

Michael:

You need to

Neil:

collaborate.

Neil:

Equally that's true in the workplace, isn't it?

Neil:

We can't do things alone, but at the same time what we have is a lot of performance

Neil:

systems that are individual focus.

Neil:

Peer review performance that, puts you on a normal curve.

Neil:

And if you're at the top, you get a bigger bonus or something like that.

Neil:

And I think that was an interesting point from the book is that rarely do

Neil:

we look at performance of the group versus performance of an individual.

Neil:

And I think that is one of the key things for me.

Neil:

I think there's also just to pick up on that sort of diversity in the group.

Neil:

There's two things for me in that.

Neil:

One is mindful design of your teams depending on the outcome

Neil:

you are seeking to achieve.

Neil:

And the other is then creating an environment where actually

Neil:

you can get the value from that diversity in the first place.

Neil:

That brings you to the psychological safety and

Neil:

emotional intelligence and so on.

Neil:

I worked on a project once that was looking at organizational design, and

Neil:

this was at the forefront of our minds.

Neil:

How do we create greater innovation and creativity across an

Neil:

organization, across the organization?

Neil:

And we felt that actually designing capabilities, areas of the

Neil:

organization that specialized in particular disciplines could allow

Neil:

you to grow within that discipline.

Neil:

So deepen your skills, go deep in skills that you work with other people

Neil:

in a similar discipline that allows you to build and grow and develop.

Neil:

However, when it came to building teams to achieve particular outcomes

Neil:

at a strategic level, you describe the outcome and ask every one of those

Neil:

functional teams, the capability teams to participate in what the team needed

Neil:

to look like to achieve the outcome.

Neil:

The book talks about horizontal integration, that was also used

Neil:

in US intelligence community.

Neil:

So what you had in that design was an ability to grow

Neil:

deep capabilities and share.

Neil:

knowledge and grow in your profession.

Neil:

But actually when it came to achieving outcomes you promoted the need to work

Neil:

across those specialisms in a way that everyone had a view on how much they could

Neil:

contribute towards achieving an outcome.

Neil:

So you got that, diversity across the specialisms in how you approached,

Neil:

achieving an outcome basically.

Neil:

Did

Michael:

you use external facilitators?

Neil:

Yeah, we, yes, we did.

Neil:

There were two consultants.

Neil:

I was actually internal consultant at the time.

Neil:

There was two that brought in a, diverse perspective.

Neil:

It was an interesting concept that was perhaps too big to implement.

Neil:

Because obviously you need to fundamentally change

Neil:

the whole organization.

Michael:

I would have started small, trialed it at a small level.

Michael:

And then, learned the lessons.

Michael:

What do we do right?

Michael:

What do we do wrong?

Michael:

Very tentatively moved it forward.

Neil:

Yeah, that's exactly what we did.

Neil:

We could see that did allow for greater innovation and creativity through

Neil:

those, So we developed an approach to do the experimentation that called

Neil:

on the different groups of people.

Rob:

One I'm interested in is the fate of rebels.

Rob:

Michael, that's from you.

Michael:

They get nailed to the cross.

Michael:

That's the fate of rebels.

Michael:

So you have to think, if you take Syed's view that we want rebels,'

Michael:

we do want different views.

Michael:

Yeah.

Michael:

The person's coming in with different views.

Michael:

What age are they?

Michael:

20s?

Michael:

No, they're probably in their 30s or 40s.

Michael:

So if they're prepared to have different, shall we say, views at that age, have

Michael:

they been expressing those views?

Michael:

all the way along.

Michael:

Because when I went to school, I was four and the first question in

Michael:

religion was who made the world?

Michael:

And the answer was God made the world.

Michael:

So I said, who made God?

Michael:

Whack!

Michael:

Teacher would go to jail for that, but they didn't then.

Michael:

And I, being cheeky, I just thought it was a, it wasn't just a reasonable

Michael:

question, saying God made God.

Michael:

That's okay.

Michael:

But so having been a rebel all my life, by the time you're in your

Michael:

twenties, thirties, forties, you've been nailed to the wall a lot.

Michael:

You've paid a price a lot, really.

Michael:

So if you're going to be a successful rebel, you've got

Michael:

to position yourself very well.

Michael:

Most people won't want to do it because they're putting their

Michael:

career on the line for a comment.

Michael:

We can talk about psychological safe spaces, but we never talk

Michael:

about the politics of organizations.

Michael:

And that's what really matters.

Michael:

So you can say something out of turn, and your career can be like that.

Michael:

Even if you're right.

Michael:

Actually, especially if you're right.

Eduardo:

Especially if you're right.

Michael:

Especially if you're right.

Michael:

If you're right, they hate you forever more.

Michael:

If they're wrong, they think the guy was an idiot.

Michael:

But if you're right, wow, they hate you forever more.

Michael:

Because you were right.

Michael:

That's the reality.

Michael:

He rarely mentions the CIA guy that was demoted to a junior librarian

Michael:

because he raised the flag on Al Qaeda.

Michael:

That's what happens every single time you're sent to Siberia.

Michael:

But I think because he doesn't work in organizations, he

Michael:

doesn't understand the reality.

Eduardo:

And the frequency, right?

Eduardo:

Because what we are talking about is also the consistency in

Eduardo:

which you have this experience.

Neil:

That's probably

Michael:

why

Neil:

I'm so interested in finding books about that, actually.

Neil:

I think that gets to my comment earlier about wanting to understand

Neil:

more about human evolution.

Neil:

Because on one hand, I understand the argument for what he's talking

Neil:

about and how we may have evolved as a consequence of that ability to

Neil:

collaborate and learn from others and get value from a wider diverse group.

Neil:

But we also have evolved with heuristics and biases that lean towards wanting

Neil:

to be alongside people like us.

Neil:

Of course, in that is where you start to see particularly people in

Neil:

senior positions don't like to be challenged it threatens status and

Neil:

so you get groupthink developing.

Neil:

You're actually closing down ideas through groupthink.

Neil:

I felt that argument was left open because it on one hand argued a case

Neil:

that I could recognize, but on the other hand didn't explain why we've

Neil:

Evolve with the heuristic I know why because it saves energy, but It didn't

Neil:

really make the case strongly for the heuristics we will tend to inhibit

Neil:

and and the idea of social value.

Michael:

At one point he mentioned, but he only brings it up and then drops it

Michael:

that when things get stressful, people kind of huddle together and follow a

Michael:

leader, and that's exactly what happens.

Michael:

The classic example is combat situations.

Michael:

People want to be close together.

Michael:

Which is the worst thing they can do, because one grenade is going to take

Michael:

out the whole bloody lot of them.

Michael:

So it's a big training thing for military people, I'm not a military

Michael:

person, to keep them apart.

Michael:

People want to be together.

Michael:

And in organizations, they may go along with diversity, this, that, and the other.

Michael:

But when things are on the line In my experience, they cluster

Michael:

like hell into perceived authority figures and blah, blah, blah.

Michael:

Political example in the UK now is probably Nigel Farage.

Michael:

All these people with their own theories about things and their own

Michael:

lack of understanding just think, oh he sounds like a good guy.

Michael:

Go along with him.

Neil:

I think I'm drawing a distinction between our inherent need to be social

Neil:

So that's that social construct.

Neil:

It's driven to be alongside people like us, isn't it?

Neil:

So we like people like us, and this is a bias heuristic.

Neil:

And and that is counter to the argument he makes throughout the

Neil:

book about diversity, and inclusion.

Eduardo:

He makes the point, right?

Eduardo:

When he gives the examples of these two different colleges and colleges

Eduardo:

sizes in, in United States, and how he expected to find more diverse teams

Eduardo:

and groups in the larger one, only to find that this is not what happens.

Eduardo:

Because since you have more people and more opportunities, what people

Eduardo:

ended up doing, all of them, right?

Eduardo:

Doesn't matter the group, it's to cluster.

Eduardo:

Yeah, and what you observed was that the smaller environment in which

Eduardo:

people wouldn't have the choice was actually the one that fostered diversity

Eduardo:

and inclusion, not by imposing it or creating structures around it.

Eduardo:

But just because it was the way to live the way to go forward with

Eduardo:

the studies to get your homework done and then so on and so forth.

Eduardo:

You didn't have a choice.

Eduardo:

Given the choice, you see what humans are going to do.

Rob:

It's interesting about diversity because our biases mean

Rob:

We don't know what we don't know.

Rob:

So in terms of putting together a team, and despite my intention, and

Rob:

wanting to be diverse, if you look, we're all,white of a similar generation.

Rob:

Three of us are in the UK.

Rob:

All of us are currently in Europe.

Rob:

I did have in mind, diversity, but it's also that we don't recognize,

Rob:

that affect how we put teams together.

Rob:

I like what he does is he points out the mistakes that we make.

Rob:

We can see a mistake logically.

Rob:

We can see the logic of it.

Rob:

But emotionally it's still human nature that we gravitate towards people like us.

Rob:

Something, you touched on there was, which I thought was really interesting.

Rob:

I hadn't heard before was the difference between the dominance

Rob:

hierarchy and the prestige hierarchy and the styles of leadership.

Rob:

I thought that was a really interesting take.

Michael:

I find that a little bit hard to take in reality.

Michael:

I just did.

Michael:

Different people have got different, I suppose if somebody's got a

Michael:

massive amount of credibility anyway, they don't need to be dominant.

Michael:

They just are who they are and they're probably at peace with themselves.

Michael:

So I can understand that.

Michael:

But I thought that notion was a bit shallow as well, to be blunt, really.

Rob:

Maybe it's just leadership styles rather than.

Rob:

Yeah, I think it was.

Rob:

So we're down to schools as factories.

Michael:

It actually, it just goes along what I said.

Michael:

Towards the end of the book he quotes somebody as saying in 1925, there

Michael:

are schools of factories, and they are factories for standardization.

Michael:

If you really are going to be a rebel, be a proper cognitive rebel, then

Michael:

you've probably been fighting with the school system for 10, 15 years.

Michael:

Then you go to uni, you fight there again, then you go to

Michael:

work, you fight there again.

Michael:

You think, should I run my own business?

Michael:

What should I do?

Michael:

Because everything is standardizing you.

Michael:

Everything is pushing you into the known, the safe, the normal,

Michael:

the proven, yet you're this person who says why are we doing that?

Rob:

Which, which kind of goes back to the point of the type of the

Rob:

idea of the title being misleading, because What I think what he's talking

Rob:

about isn't really about rebels.

Rob:

He's talking about open communication, people saying what they see, people

Rob:

saying what they feel, and that would probably get the message across.

Rob:

stronger, but it's very close to Amy Edmondson's ideas of psychological safety.

Rob:

And I suppose he's trying to distinguish that.

Rob:

But if we can create the environment where people feel safe, where communication

Rob:

flows, then everyone, I really liked the Everest story for this because it really

Rob:

shows so much of what we see is like the six blind men with the elephant and

Rob:

one sees the trunk and one sees the leg.

Rob:

We all see different things.

Rob:

and that was the key in the Everest story of if everyone had shared, then they

Rob:

had enough information, same as the CIA.

Rob:

And what is really interesting is the, where, just the social dynamics.

Rob:

You talked about, Michael, the clustering, when people are under

Rob:

stress, they look for a dominant leader.

Rob:

Halls, who was the leader of the Everest.

Rob:

He played the role of feeling that he needed to be dominant,

Rob:

which shut down the discussion.

Rob:

So it's, for me, it underlines the key that leaders need to create the

Rob:

environment where communication flows.

Rob:

But

Eduardo:

that is a counter argument to that which is again, a fallacy in

Eduardo:

a lot of the thinking, a bias, in a lot of the thinking it was a disaster

Eduardo:

and it was horrible, but it was the one time that his style didn't work.

Eduardo:

How many times the guy went up there again.

Eduardo:

How many times, probably he saved everybody's lives

Eduardo:

because of exactly his style.

Michael:

Totally agree.

Michael:

I've got a huge amount of climbing experience.

Michael:

Rob Hall's style is absolutely appropriate.

Michael:

He did miss out on the climb business.

Michael:

He did.

Michael:

But that, like you said, Edwardo that was one time, you don't expect civilian

Michael:

clients to be telling you stuff you need to know, if they're voicing opinions,

Michael:

usually it's about stuff you already know, and they need to do what you say.

Michael:

The oxygen thing.

Michael:

Yeah, that was everybody was knackered, it was all over the place, really.

Michael:

But yes, I would agree with you.

Michael:

19 times out of 20, Rob Hall's style was the right style.

Michael:

It's just sadly, he got number 20.

Eduardo:

Shit happens.

Eduardo:

I think that's the other problem that often enough even if we say it's not

Eduardo:

about perfection, we try so much to achieve perfection and think about

Eduardo:

what these guys are doing, right?

Eduardo:

That is an inherent risk about exactly that kind of activity.

Eduardo:

That one out of a hundred times something like that will happen.

Eduardo:

It's even part of why people go there to feel that thrill to know that

Eduardo:

it's not 100 percent under control.

Michael:

If you have high performing climbing teams where everybody is

Michael:

the same level, then it's absolutely appropriate to share information.

Michael:

It's absolutely appropriate then.

Michael:

But if you've had clients on Everest.

Michael:

Most of them aren't proper climbers at all.

Michael:

They need to be told what to do.

Michael:

They can't be arguing with a leader.

Michael:

They just can't.

Michael:

I think it was unfortunate that got it wrong that time.

Neil:

There's something there about complexity, an

Neil:

environment that is complex.

Neil:

In a way, you need to think differently about how you might plan.

Neil:

In complexity, I think it is important to listen to the perspectives of others.

Neil:

One of the things that struck me, wasn't there an airline pilot in

Neil:

the group who would recognize seeing cloud formation at that height?

Neil:

That's a good example I think.

Neil:

So in, in complex situations we need to recognize we're not going to have

Neil:

all the answers despite our experience.

Neil:

And so I think it requires a different way of engaging with teams.

Neil:

That was just an example that came out.

Michael:

There's a quote from Voltaire, liberty has no

Michael:

relevance in the city under siege.

Michael:

And if you're under fire in a combat situation, you're under fire.

Michael:

That's it.

Michael:

You're in there.

Michael:

You may not be doing it the best way, but you've got to do it a way.

Michael:

So once they'd gone in the death zone, the clock was running.

Michael:

I think the mistake was hanging up there too long.

Michael:

That's where everything went wrong.

Michael:

That bad time management, in my view, everything went wrong because of that.

Michael:

Yes.

Michael:

The airline pilot, would have been better if he had spoken up.

Michael:

I agree.

Michael:

I agree.

Rob:

We want to please people.

Rob:

And he's got a client that's paid him a lot.

Rob:

It's a lifetime ambition.

Rob:

And do you just push and change the rules or do you remain inflexible?

Rob:

So there's always that human element.

Michael:

If you're a rebel, you speak

Rob:

up.

Michael:

No, just to agree.

Michael:

Neil, I agree with you about complex situations.

Michael:

Yes, absolutely.

Michael:

I agree.

Michael:

But all I'm suggesting is that when you're actually under fire, you're under fire.

Michael:

That's all I'm suggesting, really.

Michael:

Yeah.

Michael:

Once you press the button.

Michael:

It's tricky then, really.

Rob:

Me, what the book does is it gives you understanding of

Rob:

dynamics, and It isn't prescriptive.

Rob:

It doesn't give you any answers because how do you know how

Rob:

to put together that team?

Rob:

How do you know what you're still missing out?

Rob:

How do we know who's going to speak up?

Rob:

How do we know all of these human elements?

Rob:

But I think it's awareness of some of the minefields, and that

Rob:

isn't necessarily practical.

Rob:

but it is something that you can add to those heuristics that we use when we're

Rob:

thinking about situations like that.

Rob:

One of the things that comes to mind is there isn't a definition of what's

Rob:

complex because everyone probably feels that the problem is relatively complex.

Rob:

But how do we know where the level of complexity that we need that

Rob:

more diversity and when we need and I suppose that's just the judgment

Rob:

call of experience in leading.

Michael:

I'd view it simplistically as Venn diagrams, one of

Michael:

competence and one of what's needed for the situation, really.

Michael:

The problems are more complicated than your competence.

Michael:

So getting more than,

Rob:

Which I haven't read the book that's on the list mastery, but I've read

Rob:

another book called mastery, by George Leonard and mastery is the ability to

Rob:

perform the same result in any situation, whereas the journeyman can do it in 80

Rob:

percent or 90 percent circumstances.

Rob:

It makes me think that it's, there's different circumstances.

Rob:

for example, in the Everest, where there's thunder clouds coming,

Rob:

which they didn't have, which the pilot knew, but the others didn't.

Rob:

And it's random events, isn't it?

Rob:

It's being challenged by new challenges.

Neil:

I think that's it.

Neil:

I think about it in terms of, technology adoption, which is

Neil:

where I've spent most of my career.

Neil:

Quite often in digital transformation programs you'll hear the conversations

Neil:

around complexity a lot, but to my mind, it's probably not quite

Neil:

accurate to describe that as complex because in most cases, it's 20 years

Neil:

experience of how you do these things.

Neil:

Every organization is different, which makes it complicated, but

Neil:

equally there's best practice that have developed over 20 years.

Neil:

So it's been done before.

Neil:

And you might, you can describe launching to the moon.

Neil:

It's complicated, but we've done it before.

Neil:

So there's something to draw on.

Neil:

Complex in my mind is where you've not done it before.

Neil:

So I think about AI adoption.

Neil:

It's complex because actually there's not enough experience of how you

Neil:

can utilize AI in way in different ways in different organizations.

Neil:

And so in that sense, I think it requires a different approach.

Neil:

It requires much more about what the book is describing in

Neil:

terms of innovation, creativity.

Neil:

And in order to achieve that, you need the diversity, you need

Neil:

the psychological safety to allow people to question our beliefs about

Neil:

how organizations work and so on.

Neil:

Michael, you talked earlier about that leadership position of not being

Neil:

able to speak up or the political navigation that we need to do, and

Neil:

that just really is counter to being able to innovate and be creative.

Neil:

In that sense, AI provides an opportunity, I think, to really question

Neil:

models that have been around probably since Frederick Taylor's day that

Neil:

puts this standardization in place.

Neil:

And so that came across to me as being something that is just going

Neil:

to hamper our ability to embrace new technologies rather than help us.

Rob:

That is really about people feeling uncomfortable about change, about the

Rob:

threats to their position, to their power, to their status, all of the

Rob:

political points of an organization is how is this going to affect me?

Michael:

But when you say power, there are always two ways of looking at power.

Michael:

Either power over or power to can't really be taken away from you.

Michael:

Power over certainly, one way of approaching thing is from a negative

Michael:

to, if you look at freedom and say, it's hard to define it, but

Michael:

we know what tyranny looks like.

Michael:

If you say how do we avoid being totally blindsided.

Michael:

Like the CIA work, the problem about the cloud formation, was that you

Michael:

don't normally look down on it.

Michael:

You have to be above 26, 000 feet.

Michael:

You're only above that for a few hours, even Rob Hall.

Michael:

You don't normally look down on it.

Michael:

So the airline pilot did, because he's always above that height.

Michael:

That was what gave him the advantage.

Michael:

But if we go back to BNFL.

Michael:

When the radiation from Chernobyl hit BNFL, they knew that something had gone

Michael:

wrong because they, they test everything that moves, but what freaked them

Michael:

out is they had more radiation on the outside of the perimeter than inside,

Michael:

and they spent three days agonizing.

Michael:

Now these are seriously bright people, they couldn't understand it for three

Michael:

days because they'd always assumed, they'd always worked from the position that any

Michael:

radiation, any rogue radiation would be theirs, because it always had been theirs.

Michael:

The notion that it came from Russia, and the Russians had kept shtub about it.

Michael:

They couldn't begin to imagine that.

Michael:

Now a rebel would have probably flicked that button pretty quickly really.

Michael:

Hey guys, it's not yours.

Michael:

But nobody either thought that or certainly nobody said it.

Michael:

And it was only three days afterwards that they somehow thought, that

Michael:

must be somebody else's not ours.

Michael:

And these are unbelievably bright people, right?

Michael:

Like you couldn't imagine.

Michael:

I know I interviewed them, you can get super bright people and you

Michael:

can just be blindsided completely.

Michael:

So I can see how the CIA got it wrong again.

Rob:

So I sometimes think intelligence is sensitivity to information.

Rob:

Yes.

Rob:

and what's happening there is their intelligence is being lowered because,

Rob:

there's barriers, protective barriers to, reacting and being sensitive to that

Rob:

information, because what they know,

Michael:

I slightly differ, as in the actual measure intelligence, the

Michael:

speed of processing, that's what IQ test measures, speed of processing

Michael:

along certain dimensions, and they're incredibly blunt, I score almost zero

Michael:

for verbal ability as it happens.

Michael:

But there you go, because I'm not, because it tests like word

Michael:

tests and I'm not into word tests.

Michael:

They're just not interested really.

Michael:

But anyway but IQ is basically speed of processing.

Michael:

That's different from cognition, which I'd argue is about thinking, ability to think.

Michael:

And that's really what you're talking about, Rob.

Michael:

The ability to think, to be agile, to look at it in different ways.

Michael:

that's what's missing.

Michael:

Because once you get standardization, once you get box ticking, that's

Michael:

thrown out, that's just thrown out.

Michael:

The Belbin plant, the, have you used Belbin at all, Neil?

Michael:

Because I know Rob knows about it.

Neil:

I know about it, but I'm not a fan of, personality tests.

Michael:

No, nor am I.

Michael:

It's actually not the personality.

Michael:

Years ago I was in a carpet factory and we just used Belbin just as a rough thing.

Michael:

And the guys, the senior managers all said we're okay in this, but we

Michael:

haven't, we scored zero on the plant.

Michael:

The plant is like the rebel ideas guy.

Michael:

Yeah.

Michael:

So they said, we need to get a plant.

Michael:

We need to get a plant in because we scored zero.

Michael:

I said, no, you don't need to get a plant.

Michael:

They said, why not?

Michael:

I said, because you've already got one.

Michael:

And they said it's you.

Michael:

And I said yeah, I don't mean me.

Michael:

One of you, one of you at this table is a plant.

Michael:

Now I might as well have said he was like a Russian agent because

Michael:

they all looked at each other, which told its own story, of course.

Michael:

And I said it's, Peter.

Michael:

Peter's the perfect plant.

Michael:

And they said, but he scored zero on the plant for the test.

Michael:

And then I said, it's not a psychometric test, because I know that.

Michael:

Didn't know about these things.

Michael:

It's not validated.

Michael:

It's not replicated.

Michael:

It's just a rough thing.

Michael:

It's rough and ready.

Michael:

But I said, Peter, he goes outside this room.

Michael:

He's got 20 million ideas.

Michael:

He comes inside this room and he conforms.

Michael:

Why?

Michael:

Because you've neutered the poor bastard.

Michael:

You've just sat on him for years and years.

Michael:

You've got the perfect plant, but you've neutered him.

Michael:

You don't need another plant.

Michael:

You need to use the one you've got.

Michael:

And that was a huge revelation to the guys.

Michael:

It's obvious when you sit here and say it, but they just couldn't believe it.

Michael:

That just blew their brains away.

Michael:

So it's like living in this mental construct.

Michael:

It's like culture.

Michael:

You're so used to it.

Michael:

It's how you are.

Michael:

You can't imagine something else.

Michael:

And then you just get taken out.

Michael:

He said about Prada and Gucci.

Michael:

Prada didn't have young kids.

Michael:

Gucci did.

Michael:

Prada got left behind.

Michael:

I rest my case.

Michael:

It's tricky.

Michael:

But it's interesting what you said about AI, Neil, because it's just going to

Michael:

change the world and we have no idea how.

Michael:

We have no idea.

Michael:

I hope it works.

Michael:

I hope it doesn't zap me.

Rob:

We're the last one is the echo chambers.

Rob:

I think we've covered all the others.

Rob:

We talked about the evolutionary argument from, about Neanderthals and homo sapiens

Rob:

we talked about that lacking science.

Rob:

And I think, yeah, I think it's the echo chambers.

Rob:

We is the last one.

Rob:

Yeah, I think politics is a great example of how people are becoming polarized,

Rob:

and the great fear or my fear of AI is like, social networks like Facebook and

Rob:

whatever have their algorithm has meant that you give people what they want,

Rob:

which blinds them to, to other voices.

Rob:

I think there's a danger of a people are going to rely more

Rob:

on AI rather than read a book.

Rob:

They're going to ask for the summary, which is gonna, perpetuate the biases

Rob:

of the algorithm, I would think.

Neil:

Yeah the algorithm is, of course, reflecting human content and

Neil:

communication, which is inherently bias.

Neil:

And then for social media and things like that, you're being fed the

Neil:

things that you like, which just exacerbates the issue, doesn't it?

Neil:

Yeah,

Michael:

He made an interesting point about algorithms towards

Michael:

the end of the book about looking for coders and looking for people

Michael:

who've been on particular sites.

Michael:

He was looking at it coders, people doing coding and he looked at particular sites

Michael:

and I think there was a, the browsers that

Rob:

they used.

Michael:

I think there was a feature called Guild that selected these

Michael:

people and it used a form of AI.

Michael:

And they, one of the things they looked at was how active they were on

Michael:

different networks of, in their own time.

Michael:

And one of them was a Japanese site called Manga, I think, So they, if you

Michael:

were on that a lot, that was evidence that you were a, Brighty, spunky,

Michael:

cognitive kind of person, really.

Michael:

But actually discriminated against women.

Michael:

They reckon on two possible kinds.

Michael:

One, that there's an imbalance of caring, that in terms of caring for your

Michael:

relatives, your parents, whatever, it's more a female thing than a male thing.

Michael:

So the women might have less time.

Michael:

to be on these things, messing around.

Michael:

And also because if they were dominated by men, women might

Michael:

feel less at home there as well.

Michael:

I see this on climbing forums a lot, they're dominated by men.

Michael:

And a lot of women say, we feel a bit leery really.

Michael:

So it meant that women weren't going to these sites as much.

Michael:

Therefore, they were being getting marked down.

Michael:

in terms of their potential.

Michael:

So the algorithm was obviously, as you say, Neil, it was reflecting

Michael:

human bias, but people didn't realize that was happening.

Michael:

Once they did, they were horrified because the whole point was to make it fair,

Michael:

but it was just concealing unfairness.

Rob:

Related to that I thought the point about, I'm sure it was rebel

Rob:

ideas but where the people that used the different browsers, they

Rob:

couldn't find any common thread.

Rob:

And it was the people who had the initiative to change.

Rob:

It was job applicants and then it went into the immigrants, yeah.

Rob:

And the people that had the initiative to do that had a different makeup that

Rob:

made them more successful in, solving or staying with organizations because

Rob:

they could navigate the problems.

Michael:

Yeah.

Michael:

They weren't just accepting the status quo that we thought

Michael:

yeah, only use this process.

Rob:

Exactly.

Rob:

Also the point of the Swedish, the Swedish council when they were

Rob:

clearing snow Oh, the snow thing in,

Michael:

yeah.

Rob:

Because they were all men, they'd all cleared all the snow for cars

Rob:

because that's how they traveled.

Rob:

And then when they did the research, they realized that the biggest

Rob:

problem and the biggest costs were to pedestrians, which were causing

Rob:

injuries, which was taking like five times more than the budget to, to treat.

Rob:

So it's another example of not recognizing the biases that we have.

Michael:

He quotes somebody, he quotes the Bay of Pigs, he said, once it started to

Michael:

go wrong, he said within five minutes, we said, Oh God, how could we have done this?

Michael:

How could we have done this?

Michael:

Super bright guys, the classic Robert McNamara in Vietnam, he got it

Michael:

gloriously spectacularly utterly wrong and he accepted it and spent the rest

Michael:

of his life trying to understand why.

Michael:

So this is the brightest person with the brightest people and they got it wrong.

Rob:

Like Tony Blair's legacy is not going to be anything else he did but

Rob:

the fact that they went into Iraq.

Michael:

I think at the time Blair felt he was on a roll, he could do no wrong.

Michael:

When you're in a role, it's exactly the time to be careful

Michael:

because you just feel invincible.

Rob:

Yeah.

Rob:

Also just ignoring anything that contradicted that view.

Michael:

He believed, they say a man believes own propaganda and

Michael:

he was also too close to Bush.

Michael:

He was far too close.

Michael:

They were just two gung ho.

Rob:

Shall we wrap up in a sentence each of what you'd say to

Rob:

someone who hasn't read the book.

Rob:

I think it's a great book for understanding teams and some of the

Rob:

problems, and deficits and some of the pitfalls that we can fall into

Neil:

I definitely think it's worth the read at least the first half,

Neil:

particularly in situations which you need creativity and innovation.

Neil:

And I guess the key takeaway for me is designing teams with diversity in mind.

Neil:

In a way that not only pulls people together, but allows them to, creates the

Neil:

conditions that allows them to speak up.

Neil:

And, you're listening to opinions.

Rob:

Yeah, I

Neil:

think that's key.

Michael:

I think I'd say to anybody, read the book.

Michael:

Because talk to, engage with people who are different to you or as

Michael:

different to you as you can find.

Michael:

Because if you don't, you won't know about your blind spots.

Michael:

And if you don't know about your blind spots, you may

Michael:

just be taken out by history.

Michael:

End of.

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About the Podcast

The Unified Team
One team. One Goal. How do we more successfully join with others to achieve more?
How do we join with others to achieve, belong and connect more with less friction?

Humans aren't the strongest or the fastest. Our superpower is working together. We are a social creature.

We need to belong and be valued within our tribe.

But we hit 3 main friction points in teams:

1. We lack trust because of a lack of integrity, suspicion and past resentments.
2. We don't communicate well because of fear, insecurity and feeling unsafe.
3. We have divided goals because of politics, power struggles and personality conflicts.

A team is two or more people joined to achieve the same goal. It can be a marriage. Or a multinational organisation.

The principles still apply

Every team needs communication, resources and energy to flow to where we need it when we need it.

The barrier is friction.

How do we reduce friction and get teams to flow?

That is the question we address in The Unified Team Podcast.