WEBVTT - How to Make Bureaucracy Work for You 0:00:00.120 --> 0:00:02.320 When you first start working, you think that if you 0:00:02.400 --> 0:00:06.119 have good ideas and you work really hard, then you'll succeed. 0:00:06.720 --> 0:00:09.240 But it's a lot harder than that. You have to 0:00:09.320 --> 0:00:24.160 learn how to play the game. This is game Plan. Hi. 0:00:24.320 --> 0:00:27.840 I'm Rebecca Greenfield and I'm Francesco Levie. This week we're 0:00:27.840 --> 0:00:30.120 talking about how to really get things done at work. 0:00:30.600 --> 0:00:34.120 Oh I know. Um, you have a great idea, tell 0:00:34.159 --> 0:00:36.680 everyone your great idea, and then everyone does it, and 0:00:36.720 --> 0:00:40.560 then it's no, that's that's not gonna work. That's wrong, No, no, 0:00:40.800 --> 0:00:44.839 because of this fun little thing called bureaucracy. Yeah, so 0:00:44.880 --> 0:00:47.879 we work in this world where we have to work 0:00:47.920 --> 0:00:50.400 with other people and they have competing interests in agendas, 0:00:50.560 --> 0:00:53.840 and there's a hierarchy and it's something you need to 0:00:53.880 --> 0:00:55.560 learn to navigate if you want to get your ideas 0:00:55.560 --> 0:00:58.520 through everyone. Everybody has had this root awakening where you 0:00:58.560 --> 0:01:01.000 have some great idea or you have a solution to 0:01:01.040 --> 0:01:04.399 a problem everyone's having, and you think that all you 0:01:04.520 --> 0:01:06.400 have to do is get a few people to understand 0:01:06.400 --> 0:01:09.240 your idea and then it's off to the races. But 0:01:09.560 --> 0:01:13.360 actually what tends to happen is you have half a 0:01:13.360 --> 0:01:16.840 dozen meetings and fourteen different email chains, and six months 0:01:16.840 --> 0:01:19.280 go by and you're still exactly where you started, and 0:01:19.319 --> 0:01:21.080 you have no idea how it happened that way. And 0:01:21.280 --> 0:01:23.360 it's frustrating because it seems like a no brainer, but 0:01:23.440 --> 0:01:26.120 you just didn't get the right person to buy into 0:01:26.160 --> 0:01:29.720 your idea, or it just got lost in this jumble 0:01:29.760 --> 0:01:31.640 of human beings. Right, and so how did we end 0:01:31.720 --> 0:01:35.280 up in this place where we have no idea who's 0:01:35.400 --> 0:01:38.560 owning what aspect of which job? And too many middle 0:01:38.560 --> 0:01:41.959 managers and all of these culprits that we love to 0:01:42.000 --> 0:01:45.279 target when we rail against bureaucracy. I'm so glad you asked. 0:01:45.560 --> 0:01:49.320 The hierarchy is an outdated organizational instructor that goes back 0:01:49.360 --> 0:01:52.440 to the Industrial Revolution. It was a way of organizing 0:01:52.440 --> 0:01:55.080 and dividing labor so it would be the most efficient 0:01:55.080 --> 0:01:58.320 way of doing things when people had very defined tasks. 0:01:58.360 --> 0:02:00.920 But now most of us don't work in those kind 0:02:00.920 --> 0:02:04.080 of economies. Like so, like an assembly, right, an assembly line, 0:02:04.080 --> 0:02:06.280 you put your little part on the widget, and then 0:02:06.280 --> 0:02:08.000 the widget goes to the other guy who glues it 0:02:08.000 --> 0:02:10.799 to a different widget, right, and then there's someone overseeing 0:02:10.840 --> 0:02:13.280 those group of people in etcetera. Etcetera, until you have 0:02:13.320 --> 0:02:15.400 the big boss at top. But now we work in 0:02:15.480 --> 0:02:17.480 these A lot of people work in the knowledge economy 0:02:17.520 --> 0:02:21.239 and the creative economy, and research has found that hierarchies 0:02:21.240 --> 0:02:23.360 when it comes to those kind of types of work, 0:02:23.639 --> 0:02:27.120 can lead to more conflict. And I mean we've experienced this. 0:02:27.280 --> 0:02:30.400 You can see why there's people jockeying for their ideas 0:02:30.680 --> 0:02:34.000 and and it's not exactly clear who's in charge of 0:02:34.040 --> 0:02:36.400 signing off on what ideas or whether they really have 0:02:36.480 --> 0:02:39.680 the leverage to get it through whatever systems they need 0:02:39.720 --> 0:02:41.360 to get it through. Yeah, and there's been such a 0:02:41.400 --> 0:02:46.079 backlash recently towards hierarchies that they're all these experiments and 0:02:46.160 --> 0:02:49.320 altar organizational structures that try to get rid of hierarchy. 0:02:49.440 --> 0:02:52.480 So the most popular one is called holocracy, which is 0:02:52.520 --> 0:02:56.480 a really silly name where your hologram goes to work 0:02:56.520 --> 0:02:58.519 for you instead of you. Yeah, I would love that. 0:02:58.760 --> 0:03:02.080 It's funny because that's even more complicated than hierarchy. But 0:03:02.280 --> 0:03:06.880 it's allegedly a flat structure, so there's no managers. People 0:03:06.880 --> 0:03:10.480 work in these things called circles. I went to medium, 0:03:10.480 --> 0:03:12.600 which used to use lists to see them do it, 0:03:12.880 --> 0:03:15.960 and they have the media medium, the media company medium, 0:03:15.960 --> 0:03:19.000 and they have these special meetings so that the good 0:03:19.000 --> 0:03:23.600 ideas do rise above, so it's not just like personality speaking, etcetera. 0:03:24.120 --> 0:03:27.400 It's an interesting idea, But the funny thing is that 0:03:27.919 --> 0:03:30.360 there's still a system you have to navigate, right, And 0:03:30.400 --> 0:03:33.639 you say, they used to use halocracy, So what happened? Yeah, 0:03:33.680 --> 0:03:37.720 about a year ago they gave up on it because 0:03:38.000 --> 0:03:42.280 it's complicated and confusing. And there's this term called the 0:03:42.320 --> 0:03:45.600 tyranny of structurelessness, which is that when you try to 0:03:45.640 --> 0:03:48.840 remove structures, like new ones pop up, you know, and 0:03:49.320 --> 0:03:51.800 then it's even worse because they're kind of invisible, so 0:03:51.880 --> 0:03:55.720 it's even more opaque. Who really has the authority to 0:03:56.000 --> 0:03:58.720 boss other people around? And people kind of know, but 0:03:58.960 --> 0:04:01.760 they aren't allowed to say it all out. Yeah, And 0:04:01.800 --> 0:04:03.800 again that that sounds like something you have to learn 0:04:03.840 --> 0:04:06.839 to navigate if you want your good idea to rise 0:04:06.880 --> 0:04:09.200 above the rest when it comes right down to it, 0:04:09.960 --> 0:04:12.080 No matter what kind of structure you work, and if 0:04:12.080 --> 0:04:14.480 you work with more than two or three people, there's 0:04:14.520 --> 0:04:17.200 probably a system that you have to learn, and you 0:04:17.240 --> 0:04:21.119 have to kind of have tricks and ways of doing 0:04:21.160 --> 0:04:23.720 things that help you navigate that system. And our guest 0:04:23.800 --> 0:04:26.520 day is going to teach us some of the ways 0:04:26.600 --> 0:04:29.840 that we can get our ideas through and become more 0:04:29.920 --> 0:04:33.040 popular and well liked at work. We have here with us. 0:04:33.080 --> 0:04:36.280 Derek Thompson. He is a writer at The Atlantic and 0:04:36.320 --> 0:04:38.360 full disclosure, a friend of mine who I used to 0:04:38.400 --> 0:04:40.800 work with. He wrote a book called hit Makers, The 0:04:40.880 --> 0:04:51.880 Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction. Your book 0:04:51.960 --> 0:04:54.400 is about what makes things popular, and the book is 0:04:54.400 --> 0:04:58.640 about pop culture, so like music and art and politicians. 0:04:59.000 --> 0:05:02.320 But in the book you talk about this thing called maya, 0:05:02.440 --> 0:05:06.000 which is the underlying principle of what makes anything and 0:05:06.040 --> 0:05:09.039 maybe even our work idea is popular. Can you explain 0:05:09.080 --> 0:05:13.239 what that is? Yes, Maya m a y a. Uh. 0:05:13.279 --> 0:05:16.359 This principle comes from the father of industrial design. His 0:05:16.440 --> 0:05:19.159 name is Raymond Loewy. He was a French orphan. He 0:05:19.200 --> 0:05:22.359 comes over to the US in the late nineteen teens. Uh. 0:05:22.440 --> 0:05:25.280 He starts off as an artist and he gradually gets 0:05:25.320 --> 0:05:30.200 into engineering and design, and he eventually designs the modern 0:05:30.400 --> 0:05:35.080 greyhound bus, the modern car. His student Baker, was named 0:05:35.120 --> 0:05:38.400 the finest automotive design of the twentieth century. He designed 0:05:38.400 --> 0:05:41.800 the modern tractor. He designed the modern kitchen. He even 0:05:41.800 --> 0:05:46.679 designed the habitability of the first NASA spaceship, the interior 0:05:46.720 --> 0:05:49.719 of the first NASA spaceship, the concept of the portal 0:05:49.839 --> 0:05:52.159 where you can look through the glass and see Earth. 0:05:52.480 --> 0:05:55.680 That was his idea. So literally everything from tooth to 0:05:55.880 --> 0:05:59.000 station windows. But they weren't know that they brought on 0:05:59.160 --> 0:06:01.320 Raymond Lowe because is this was the first time they 0:06:01.320 --> 0:06:03.359 were going to send people up into space, and Raymond 0:06:03.400 --> 0:06:06.080 Loey was the expert at designing things that people liked. 0:06:06.080 --> 0:06:09.080 So they said, how do people want to live in space? 0:06:09.120 --> 0:06:12.919 Help us understand how to design a habitat on a 0:06:13.000 --> 0:06:15.600 spaceship that people would want to live and feel comfortable 0:06:15.600 --> 0:06:17.719 living in. And his theory for why people like what 0:06:17.760 --> 0:06:21.760 they like was called Maya m a y a most 0:06:21.920 --> 0:06:25.480 advanced yet acceptable, And his insight was that people are 0:06:25.560 --> 0:06:30.719 essentially intention between two opposing ideas. They are neo philic 0:06:31.120 --> 0:06:35.039 they like new things, and they are neophobic. They don't 0:06:35.160 --> 0:06:39.440 like things that are too new, They are afraid of 0:06:39.640 --> 0:06:42.720 new things. And so he had this amazing ability of 0:06:42.800 --> 0:06:47.680 marrying familiarity and surprise and understanding and anxiety into all 0:06:47.760 --> 0:06:50.080 of his designs. And one of my theses in the 0:06:50.120 --> 0:06:53.520 book is that this principle helps us understand basically the 0:06:53.560 --> 0:06:56.480 popularity of everything in pop culture. We like new songs 0:06:56.680 --> 0:06:59.279 with old chord structures, we like new movies with old 0:06:59.360 --> 0:07:02.280 characters he Tho's adaptations and reboots, and we even like 0:07:02.480 --> 0:07:06.039 ideas and articles and podcasts that express in new and 0:07:06.080 --> 0:07:10.640 fascinating ways, uh, concepts that we've already somewhat intuited and 0:07:10.680 --> 0:07:13.040 so therefore are a little old. And so it's this 0:07:13.120 --> 0:07:15.960 marriage of newness and oldness that is sort of the 0:07:15.960 --> 0:07:19.120 the god particle of popularity. So I want to imagine 0:07:19.120 --> 0:07:22.680 how this might play out in the workplace. So, like, 0:07:22.720 --> 0:07:25.880 say you're in a meeting and you have this idea 0:07:25.920 --> 0:07:28.480 of yours and it's an idea that you want people 0:07:28.720 --> 0:07:31.480 to buy into. How does this principle work with that? Right, 0:07:31.520 --> 0:07:34.320 So you're starting now with a really new, crazy idea, 0:07:34.440 --> 0:07:36.920 right that people don't like because, as you said, it's 0:07:36.960 --> 0:07:39.480 just it's too new. Um, I want to get rid 0:07:39.480 --> 0:07:40.840 of all the chairs in the office, and I want 0:07:40.920 --> 0:07:44.000 to the office great. Yes, exactly, very new ideas that 0:07:44.080 --> 0:07:47.520 people stand the better circulation, they live longer. So Raymond 0:07:47.520 --> 0:07:50.640 Lowly faced this problem all the time. He thought that 0:07:50.800 --> 0:07:54.440 the mid twentieth century was absolutely disgusting, that the designs 0:07:54.440 --> 0:07:57.240 of this era were totally gross. He hated the way 0:07:57.240 --> 0:08:00.160 that trains looked in the early twentieth century. They look 0:08:00.200 --> 0:08:02.120 sort of like Thomas the Tank Engine. They had these 0:08:02.280 --> 0:08:05.280 really garish protrusions, and that they're even with their chimneys 0:08:05.320 --> 0:08:08.080 and um uh, and they're they're sort of spindley designed. 0:08:08.200 --> 0:08:10.240 I think a lot of children what would disagree with 0:08:10.280 --> 0:08:14.320 you on Thomas the Tank familiar with the tank engine? 0:08:14.600 --> 0:08:17.160 Um And he wanted trains to look like we now 0:08:17.240 --> 0:08:19.640 sort of envisioned them, particularly sort of you know, the 0:08:19.720 --> 0:08:21.640 fastest trains that sort of looked like the shape of 0:08:21.640 --> 0:08:24.080 a bullet fired through water, right, that sort of sleek, 0:08:24.440 --> 0:08:27.360 smooth shell. So he pitches this in the nineteen thirties 0:08:27.360 --> 0:08:30.280 to Pennsylvania Railroad and they say, no, that's a terrible idea, 0:08:30.520 --> 0:08:32.240 that that looks way too weird. We don't want that. 0:08:32.520 --> 0:08:35.160 He pitches it again a year later, and again a 0:08:35.240 --> 0:08:38.240 year later, and again a year later, and he starts 0:08:38.240 --> 0:08:40.880 off making the difference between his ideal design and the 0:08:40.880 --> 0:08:43.440 current design of trains really subtle, and then he just 0:08:43.520 --> 0:08:46.280 pushes them along the curve. He shows ideas, gives them 0:08:46.280 --> 0:08:49.080 designs that look more and more and more like the 0:08:49.120 --> 0:08:51.520 current look of trains. This sort of this bullet fired 0:08:51.559 --> 0:08:56.040 through water, and eventually the executives that Pennsylvania Railroad become 0:08:56.120 --> 0:08:59.120 extremely familiar and they fall in love with his designs 0:08:59.120 --> 0:09:01.719 because they've seen them more and more and more, and 0:09:01.760 --> 0:09:04.240 they sort of walk towards his ideas. So what does 0:09:04.280 --> 0:09:06.480 this have to do with work. Well, if you're trying 0:09:06.559 --> 0:09:09.040 to get all the chairs out of a conference room, 0:09:09.320 --> 0:09:11.640 you don't start by saying we're going to have an 0:09:11.840 --> 0:09:14.040 edict that says no more chairs in the conference room. 0:09:14.240 --> 0:09:16.839 Maybe you start by taking away one or two chairs 0:09:16.840 --> 0:09:18.679 so a few people have to stand up. And then 0:09:18.720 --> 0:09:20.400 you take away a few more chairs, so a few 0:09:20.400 --> 0:09:22.679 more people have to stand up. And then when people 0:09:22.720 --> 0:09:25.480 are used to being in conference rooms where a quarter 0:09:25.559 --> 0:09:28.160 and a half the room is standing up, they begin 0:09:28.200 --> 0:09:31.360 to associate people standing in conference rooms with what is normal, 0:09:31.520 --> 0:09:33.480 with what is familiar, and then you can take away 0:09:33.480 --> 0:09:35.560 a few more chairs, a few more chairs, and then 0:09:35.559 --> 0:09:38.360 eventually you have a conference room table and no chairs, 0:09:38.480 --> 0:09:42.480 and you have conference rooms that are just purely standing affairs. 0:09:42.679 --> 0:09:45.080 And so what he would say is don't introduce this 0:09:45.160 --> 0:09:48.560 new idea in its purely new form. Give people a 0:09:48.559 --> 0:09:50.319 little bit of the familiar at first, and then a 0:09:50.360 --> 0:09:53.440 little bit less less less less, and gradually expose them 0:09:53.440 --> 0:09:56.080 to your idea. That's kind of happened with standing dusks, 0:09:56.080 --> 0:09:58.000 now that I hear you talking about it, right, there 0:09:58.000 --> 0:10:01.200 were some weirdos who piled boxes their desks. Actually, Derek, 0:10:01.280 --> 0:10:04.440 I believe you did that. Had an Amazon box in 0:10:04.440 --> 0:10:06.800 my desk. Yeah, And then there were some pioneers who 0:10:06.920 --> 0:10:11.160 had requested standing desks. And now workplaces are starting to 0:10:11.160 --> 0:10:13.559 give you the option of sit stand, and it's becoming 0:10:13.800 --> 0:10:15.920 much more normal to have the sit stand desk. It's 0:10:15.960 --> 0:10:19.440 not just some peculiarity of some weirdo person who wants 0:10:19.440 --> 0:10:21.640 to stand up. Now, Yeah, I think standing desk is 0:10:21.640 --> 0:10:24.800 actually a perfect like entry way into the conversation. But 0:10:24.880 --> 0:10:27.720 the principle has much more serious applications. Right. Let's think 0:10:27.760 --> 0:10:31.080 about something like parental leave policies. There's certainly a time 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:33.280 in the US where the concept of you know, private 0:10:33.320 --> 0:10:36.280 companies having print to leave was extremely rare and crazy. 0:10:36.600 --> 0:10:39.080 And what had to happen is that a few companies 0:10:39.120 --> 0:10:42.000 that could afford the policy had to introduce it, and 0:10:42.040 --> 0:10:45.480 then media reporters had to report on these print to 0:10:45.559 --> 0:10:49.120 leave policies and expose more people to the concept that, hey, 0:10:49.160 --> 0:10:51.920 maybe we should be a little bit nicer to not 0:10:51.960 --> 0:10:54.520 only mothers but also fathers who want to take leave 0:10:54.520 --> 0:10:57.280 when they have children. And then as people become more 0:10:57.360 --> 0:11:01.920 familiar with the concept, they began to quait familiarity with 0:11:02.200 --> 0:11:06.160 normality and fact, and what is familiar becomes normal, and 0:11:06.160 --> 0:11:08.840 what is normal becomes conflated with the good. And so 0:11:08.920 --> 0:11:10.800 once again I think that you know, as the idea 0:11:10.840 --> 0:11:14.320 becomes familiarized, it becomes more powerful in culture. Yeah, and 0:11:14.320 --> 0:11:16.920 then we have candidates on both sides of the aisle 0:11:17.080 --> 0:11:21.199 talking about parental leave, which was unthinkable one political cycleogo 0:11:21.440 --> 0:11:23.840 just study insane. So what about the opposite example, what 0:11:23.840 --> 0:11:26.440 about when you have an idea that everybody else feels 0:11:27.160 --> 0:11:29.520 is too old school? Like what if I want Becca 0:11:29.559 --> 0:11:33.000 to write a story about parental leave and Becca says, 0:11:33.080 --> 0:11:36.560 been done, been done by me and many other people. 0:11:37.240 --> 0:11:41.040 How do we make the familiar idea saying as a story, Yes, 0:11:41.400 --> 0:11:43.600 this is such a this is such an awesome question. 0:11:43.600 --> 0:11:45.960 So this is, first of all a question they faced 0:11:46.000 --> 0:11:49.160 all the time in the book because I'm writing in 0:11:49.240 --> 0:11:52.480 hit Makers about pieces of sort of pop culture icons. 0:11:52.520 --> 0:11:56.679 I'm writing about uh, impressionism and star Wars and Snapchat 0:11:56.720 --> 0:11:59.240 and Facebook and things that people have read a lot about. 0:11:59.480 --> 0:12:02.120 So the he was, how do I bring each story 0:12:02.160 --> 0:12:04.880 to a bit of a surprising place? Right? And in 0:12:04.920 --> 0:12:07.480 many ways, I think that one of the challenges of 0:12:07.920 --> 0:12:11.480 writing things or making things that are interesting is that 0:12:11.640 --> 0:12:16.199 interesting isn't just purely new, and it's not just purely familiar. 0:12:16.320 --> 0:12:19.280 Interesting always takes something that you're a little bit that 0:12:19.360 --> 0:12:21.760 you're a little bit familiar in, and then pushes it 0:12:22.280 --> 0:12:24.200 a little bit further into the future, makes it a 0:12:24.200 --> 0:12:26.680 little bit advanced, and then that's when your brain sort 0:12:26.679 --> 0:12:28.360 of hooks onto it and says, huh, this is a 0:12:28.400 --> 0:12:31.319 really cool idea. So if you're writing a story about 0:12:31.320 --> 0:12:34.040 print to leave policies, that comes after thousands of stories 0:12:34.040 --> 0:12:36.440 about print to leave policies, right, the trick becomes, all right, 0:12:36.440 --> 0:12:37.880 how do I find an angle that no one's written 0:12:37.920 --> 0:12:40.880 about this before? Um, maybe you know we're talking about 0:12:40.920 --> 0:12:43.840 we Becca just brought up the fact that uh Ivanka 0:12:43.920 --> 0:12:47.720 Trump Um, rather surprisingly for the Republican Party, Um made 0:12:47.720 --> 0:12:51.320 print to leave one of her items in the Republican 0:12:51.400 --> 0:12:55.960 National Convention speech. Um, maybe the interesting take isn't all 0:12:56.000 --> 0:12:59.520 of the liberal companies and you know, tech companies that 0:12:59.559 --> 0:13:02.440 have printed leave policies, but is prin to leave policy 0:13:02.720 --> 0:13:07.280 now becoming a Republican issue as well? Is a surprising 0:13:07.400 --> 0:13:10.840 group taking on a familiar cause. And then you begin 0:13:10.920 --> 0:13:13.000 to say, oh, yeah, that is something that someone who's 0:13:13.000 --> 0:13:15.959 interested in these ideas, uh might might like to read about. 0:13:16.200 --> 0:13:19.360 So you've touched on another one of your principles that 0:13:19.400 --> 0:13:21.559 you talked about in the book. That so we have maya, 0:13:21.840 --> 0:13:24.640 which is one thing, but then also repetition and how 0:13:25.120 --> 0:13:27.640 that can be really important in getting people to buy 0:13:27.760 --> 0:13:31.280 into your ideas. Yeah, there's a chapter about the psychology 0:13:31.320 --> 0:13:34.760 of music, and one of the most basic principles of 0:13:34.840 --> 0:13:38.160 music is this idea of repetition. It's true even of 0:13:38.240 --> 0:13:41.720 just speaking. If I have a sentence and I start 0:13:41.720 --> 0:13:45.600 repeating it again, start repeating it again, start repeating it again, 0:13:45.920 --> 0:13:48.520 start repeating it again, the brain starts to hear that 0:13:49.240 --> 0:13:53.160 done done, that dada done, and you can't help it. 0:13:53.320 --> 0:13:58.880 Repetition distinguishes the cacophony from music. It transforms sound into music. 0:13:59.160 --> 0:14:02.480 And this is true not only for rhythms and guitar playing, 0:14:02.720 --> 0:14:06.640 but it's also true for speech. Every ancient Greek rhetorical 0:14:06.679 --> 0:14:10.120 device is essentially a form of repetition. You have a napro, 0:14:10.240 --> 0:14:13.520 which is repetition at the beginning of a sentence win St. Churchill, 0:14:13.559 --> 0:14:15.000 we shall fight them in the air, we shall fight 0:14:15.040 --> 0:14:17.240 them on the landing fields. Repetition at the end of 0:14:17.240 --> 0:14:20.840 a sentence Abraham Lincoln. Government of the people, by the people, 0:14:21.000 --> 0:14:24.080 for the people. But the most powerful example, and the 0:14:24.120 --> 0:14:26.760 one that I think shows up a lot in UH, 0:14:26.800 --> 0:14:30.160 in memos, UH, and in really persuasive speech even around 0:14:30.200 --> 0:14:33.240 the office, is called anti metaboli, which is an A 0:14:33.520 --> 0:14:37.600 B B A structure. JFK. Ask not what your country 0:14:37.680 --> 0:14:39.880 can do for you, ask what you can do for 0:14:39.880 --> 0:14:42.840 your country, or in an office setting, the problem with 0:14:42.840 --> 0:14:45.560 your editing isn't too much criticism. The problem with your 0:14:45.640 --> 0:14:48.880 editing is not enough constructive criticism. And I do think that. 0:14:48.960 --> 0:14:51.120 So wait, can you back up and explain, like, break 0:14:51.120 --> 0:14:54.520 down the A, B, B A in one of those examples. Yeah? Sure, 0:14:54.600 --> 0:14:58.480 So h let's take Hillary Clinton. Um, women's rights are 0:14:58.560 --> 0:15:02.560 human rights and human rights are women's rights. A is 0:15:02.640 --> 0:15:06.520 B B is go ask not what your country can 0:15:06.560 --> 0:15:09.920 do for you, A b ask what you be can 0:15:09.960 --> 0:15:12.360 do for your country A. And so this a B 0:15:12.600 --> 0:15:16.320 B A structure is called chiasmus or anti metaboli, and 0:15:16.440 --> 0:15:20.640 it is absolutely rampant in political rhetoric. But the magic 0:15:20.720 --> 0:15:23.680 of this as a matter of persuasion is precisely that 0:15:23.760 --> 0:15:31.000 it turns and otherwise uncatchy idea into musical language, and 0:15:31.080 --> 0:15:34.360 people sometimes fall in love with the music before they 0:15:34.360 --> 0:15:37.000 even process the substance. This can be a dangerous thing 0:15:37.080 --> 0:15:39.800 when it's sort of on a grand political scale. But 0:15:39.880 --> 0:15:42.600 right now we're simply talking about, you know, the office setting. 0:15:42.920 --> 0:15:44.800 And so I do think that there are lots of 0:15:44.800 --> 0:15:48.200 examples where when people have, you know, an issue with 0:15:48.280 --> 0:15:51.880 a boss or an issue with a colleague, um, sometimes 0:15:51.920 --> 0:15:56.120 the most persuasive way to make that case is precisely 0:15:56.160 --> 0:15:58.240 to make it with a little bit of musical language. 0:15:58.400 --> 0:16:01.040 You know, the problem with you editing isn't too much criticism. 0:16:01.240 --> 0:16:04.240 The problem with you editing is not enough constructive criticism. 0:16:04.280 --> 0:16:06.880 The problem, like, the issue isn't that you talk too 0:16:06.960 --> 0:16:08.760 much in the office. The issue is that you talk 0:16:08.800 --> 0:16:11.120 too much when I'm on the phone. Disability to sort 0:16:11.160 --> 0:16:15.080 of establish an idea by initially establishing its counterpoint is 0:16:15.080 --> 0:16:18.520 like a very very uh used and tried in true 0:16:18.520 --> 0:16:21.040 way of making the idea click. Yeah, we often talk 0:16:21.080 --> 0:16:25.880 about compliment sandwiches, but we mean A B, B A 0:16:26.320 --> 0:16:30.840 what would we call that? I'm not sure, but compliment abbas? 0:16:32.240 --> 0:16:35.920 Yeah that Yeah, it's a good management tool. So if 0:16:35.920 --> 0:16:39.440 Becca wants to sell her great parental leave story idea, 0:16:39.480 --> 0:16:42.360 now she has to figure out a way to talk 0:16:42.400 --> 0:16:44.480 about it with an A, B B A pitch. Right, 0:16:44.840 --> 0:16:48.920 parent to leave is in a women's issue, women's issues, 0:16:51.560 --> 0:16:53.880 we might have to work on it, right, but yeah, 0:16:53.920 --> 0:16:56.680 but sure, but something like um, right, uh, what you 0:16:56.680 --> 0:16:58.880 would say, parent to leave isn't a women's issue, print 0:16:58.920 --> 0:17:01.040 to leave as a family issue, or printal leave isn't 0:17:01.200 --> 0:17:03.560 isn't a mother's issue, printal leave is a father's issue. 0:17:03.920 --> 0:17:06.520 Um that. There there are ways of of establishing the idea, 0:17:06.600 --> 0:17:09.920 even in surprising ways, to use precisely this kind of antithetical, 0:17:10.040 --> 0:17:12.399 slightly musical language. That's actually a great tip that that 0:17:12.520 --> 0:17:14.800 goes well beyond just journalists the news room trying to 0:17:14.840 --> 0:17:16.680 pitch stories, because I feel like there's lots of meetings 0:17:16.720 --> 0:17:18.439 where you want to get something out of it, and 0:17:18.480 --> 0:17:20.760 you'd have to prepare ahead of time with what you say. 0:17:21.119 --> 0:17:22.720 Like so, if you want to go ask your boss 0:17:22.720 --> 0:17:25.200 for a raise, you tend to think, Okay, I'm gonna 0:17:25.240 --> 0:17:26.760 go in and I'm going to talk about all the 0:17:26.800 --> 0:17:28.360 work I did, and I'm gonna say this, I'm gonna 0:17:28.359 --> 0:17:29.800 say this, when maybe all you really need to do 0:17:29.880 --> 0:17:34.080 is come up with a really catchy forward phrase about 0:17:34.119 --> 0:17:35.919 how hard you've been working and why you deserve I mean, 0:17:35.960 --> 0:17:37.920 one thing that I actually find from meetings and these 0:17:37.920 --> 0:17:40.000 sort of conversations with people about you know, whether it's 0:17:40.000 --> 0:17:44.320 salary or responsibilities, Like the meetings only come away with you. 0:17:44.320 --> 0:17:46.600 You only come away with a one sentence summary anyway, 0:17:46.920 --> 0:17:49.840 right like you're getting the raise or you're not. Either 0:17:49.960 --> 0:17:52.199 you are getting this new responsibility or you're not, or 0:17:52.640 --> 0:17:55.200 the you're it's seventy percent chance you're gonna get it 0:17:55.280 --> 0:17:57.360 or thirty percent. You know that all these meetings are 0:17:57.400 --> 0:18:02.120 always incredibly easily summarizeable, and so I'm constantly thinking, like, well, 0:18:02.240 --> 0:18:04.920 the outcome of the meeting was one sentence. Maybe I 0:18:04.920 --> 0:18:07.320 should have gone into the meeting with one sentence like that. 0:18:07.400 --> 0:18:09.760 It's it's I should have focused it by saying it's 0:18:09.840 --> 0:18:12.840 just about this, right, Um, the problem with my job 0:18:12.920 --> 0:18:15.040 aren't the responsibilities that I have, the problem with my 0:18:15.119 --> 0:18:17.440 job are the responsibilities that I don't have? In want 0:18:17.640 --> 0:18:19.479 and so, right and so do you just very clearly 0:18:19.520 --> 0:18:21.480 say I want to keep what I'm doing and add 0:18:21.520 --> 0:18:23.119 a little bit more? Did you just did an A 0:18:23.160 --> 0:18:30.440 B B A B YEA your responsibility? You write the book? Yeah, 0:18:30.560 --> 0:18:32.200 all you can do is talk this way. My friends 0:18:32.200 --> 0:18:35.080 are absolutely horrified by my language because now I only 0:18:35.320 --> 0:18:39.920 exclusively talk through a completely bend to your will into 0:18:39.960 --> 0:18:45.760 everything as I'm constantly giving from all my friends and 0:18:45.760 --> 0:18:49.280 like Pa gave me an enormous amount of money. So 0:18:49.320 --> 0:18:52.720 we've been talking about how to make your ideas more popular. 0:18:52.920 --> 0:18:55.520 But are there things in the book to make you 0:18:55.640 --> 0:18:59.560 a more popular or well liked or respected person at work? Yeah? 0:18:59.680 --> 0:19:01.680 I think there are. I think there are two ways 0:19:01.720 --> 0:19:04.840 at this question. Um. The first is that the very 0:19:04.880 --> 0:19:07.679 first chapter of my book is called the Power of Exposure. 0:19:07.720 --> 0:19:11.080 And it's this idea that, as we discussed, UH, we 0:19:11.119 --> 0:19:13.560 tend to like things more the more we see them. 0:19:13.760 --> 0:19:17.440 A very old classic example is when Impressionist art came 0:19:17.440 --> 0:19:20.600 out in the eighteen sixties, seventies and eighties, people were 0:19:20.640 --> 0:19:23.040 absolutely horrified by it and they thought it was disgusting. 0:19:23.359 --> 0:19:26.000 But now you show any six year old a picture 0:19:26.040 --> 0:19:28.760 of Monai's water lilies, and they run to it and say, 0:19:28.760 --> 0:19:31.760 oh wow, how great. Uh. They're they're used to seeing 0:19:31.800 --> 0:19:34.240 this kind of art. They're they're used to associating it 0:19:34.280 --> 0:19:37.200 with fame and beauty down Stravinsky's Right of Spring like 0:19:37.280 --> 0:19:40.359 cause riots, right, exactly, yeah, Or you could say the 0:19:40.359 --> 0:19:43.320 same about rock and roll. It was this was horrifying 0:19:43.440 --> 0:19:45.719 race music in the late nineteen forties or the nine 0:19:45.800 --> 0:19:48.400 and fifties, and that we think, and then it became mainstream, 0:19:48.400 --> 0:19:49.919 and now we think of it as old fashioned. So 0:19:49.960 --> 0:19:52.760 you have these these hype cycles. Things are too radical, 0:19:52.920 --> 0:19:55.840 then perfectly radical, and then overly familiar. All right, So 0:19:55.880 --> 0:19:57.520 what does this have to do with popular in the office? 0:19:57.680 --> 0:20:00.720 Abraham Lincoln has this great quote, I don't like that man. 0:20:01.200 --> 0:20:03.760 I should get to know him better. And it's this 0:20:03.840 --> 0:20:06.480 lovely idea that I think we've all had. We've all 0:20:06.480 --> 0:20:09.600 had this experience where there's someone in the office that 0:20:09.760 --> 0:20:11.320 we think it's a little bit weird, we think might 0:20:11.359 --> 0:20:14.080 even be mean, we think might dislike us, and then 0:20:14.119 --> 0:20:16.600 we have like one beer with them, you know, like 0:20:17.000 --> 0:20:19.880 one long meeting with them. We tell our story, they 0:20:19.920 --> 0:20:23.520 tell theirs, and we stop thinking of them as this 0:20:23.680 --> 0:20:26.520 radical beast. We're like, oh, they're just a human being 0:20:26.600 --> 0:20:28.720 like us. They're going through their own war, they have 0:20:28.800 --> 0:20:31.080 their own problems, and of course we can get along. 0:20:31.440 --> 0:20:33.480 And becoming just a little bit more familiar with some 0:20:33.560 --> 0:20:36.520 of these people at work makes us like them more. So. 0:20:36.560 --> 0:20:38.480 The first idea would be, if you are a little 0:20:38.480 --> 0:20:39.840 bit of a weirdo, and I'm sure there are some 0:20:39.880 --> 0:20:44.040