Speaker 1: When you first start working, you think that if you
Speaker 1: have good ideas and you work really hard, then you'll succeed.
Speaker 1: But it's a lot harder than that. You have to
Speaker 1: learn how to play the game. This is game Plan. Hi.
Speaker 1: I'm Rebecca Greenfield and I'm Francesco Levie. This week we're
Speaker 1: talking about how to really get things done at work.
Speaker 1: Oh I know. Um, you have a great idea, tell
Speaker 1: everyone your great idea, and then everyone does it, and
Speaker 1: then it's no, that's that's not gonna work. That's wrong, No, no,
Speaker 1: because of this fun little thing called bureaucracy. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: we work in this world where we have to work
Speaker 1: with other people and they have competing interests in agendas,
Speaker 1: and there's a hierarchy and it's something you need to
Speaker 1: learn to navigate if you want to get your ideas
Speaker 1: through everyone. Everybody has had this root awakening where you
Speaker 1: have some great idea or you have a solution to
Speaker 1: a problem everyone's having, and you think that all you
Speaker 1: have to do is get a few people to understand
Speaker 1: your idea and then it's off to the races. But
Speaker 1: actually what tends to happen is you have half a
Speaker 1: dozen meetings and fourteen different email chains, and six months
Speaker 1: go by and you're still exactly where you started, and
Speaker 1: you have no idea how it happened that way. And
Speaker 1: it's frustrating because it seems like a no brainer, but
Speaker 1: you just didn't get the right person to buy into
Speaker 1: your idea, or it just got lost in this jumble
Speaker 1: of human beings. Right, and so how did we end
Speaker 1: up in this place where we have no idea who's
Speaker 1: owning what aspect of which job? And too many middle
Speaker 1: managers and all of these culprits that we love to
Speaker 1: target when we rail against bureaucracy. I'm so glad you asked.
Speaker 1: The hierarchy is an outdated organizational instructor that goes back
Speaker 1: to the Industrial Revolution. It was a way of organizing
Speaker 1: and dividing labor so it would be the most efficient
Speaker 1: way of doing things when people had very defined tasks.
Speaker 1: But now most of us don't work in those kind
Speaker 1: of economies. Like so, like an assembly, right, an assembly line,
Speaker 1: you put your little part on the widget, and then
Speaker 1: the widget goes to the other guy who glues it
Speaker 1: to a different widget, right, and then there's someone overseeing
Speaker 1: those group of people in etcetera. Etcetera, until you have
Speaker 1: the big boss at top. But now we work in
Speaker 1: these A lot of people work in the knowledge economy
Speaker 1: and the creative economy, and research has found that hierarchies
Speaker 1: when it comes to those kind of types of work,
Speaker 1: can lead to more conflict. And I mean we've experienced this.
Speaker 1: You can see why there's people jockeying for their ideas
Speaker 1: and and it's not exactly clear who's in charge of
Speaker 1: signing off on what ideas or whether they really have
Speaker 1: the leverage to get it through whatever systems they need
Speaker 1: to get it through. Yeah, and there's been such a
Speaker 1: backlash recently towards hierarchies that they're all these experiments and
Speaker 1: altar organizational structures that try to get rid of hierarchy.
Speaker 1: So the most popular one is called holocracy, which is
Speaker 1: a really silly name where your hologram goes to work
Speaker 1: for you instead of you. Yeah, I would love that.
Speaker 1: It's funny because that's even more complicated than hierarchy. But
Speaker 1: it's allegedly a flat structure, so there's no managers. People
Speaker 1: work in these things called circles. I went to medium,
Speaker 1: which used to use lists to see them do it,
Speaker 1: and they have the media medium, the media company medium,
Speaker 1: and they have these special meetings so that the good
Speaker 1: ideas do rise above, so it's not just like personality speaking, etcetera.
Speaker 1: It's an interesting idea, But the funny thing is that
Speaker 1: there's still a system you have to navigate, right, And
Speaker 1: you say, they used to use halocracy, So what happened? Yeah,
Speaker 1: about a year ago they gave up on it because
Speaker 1: it's complicated and confusing. And there's this term called the
Speaker 1: tyranny of structurelessness, which is that when you try to
Speaker 1: remove structures, like new ones pop up, you know, and
Speaker 1: then it's even worse because they're kind of invisible, so
Speaker 1: it's even more opaque. Who really has the authority to
Speaker 1: boss other people around? And people kind of know, but
Speaker 1: they aren't allowed to say it all out. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: again that that sounds like something you have to learn
Speaker 1: to navigate if you want your good idea to rise
Speaker 1: above the rest when it comes right down to it,
Speaker 1: No matter what kind of structure you work, and if
Speaker 1: you work with more than two or three people, there's
Speaker 1: probably a system that you have to learn, and you
Speaker 1: have to kind of have tricks and ways of doing
Speaker 1: things that help you navigate that system. And our guest
Speaker 1: day is going to teach us some of the ways
Speaker 1: that we can get our ideas through and become more
Speaker 1: popular and well liked at work. We have here with us.
Speaker 1: Derek Thompson. He is a writer at The Atlantic and
Speaker 1: full disclosure, a friend of mine who I used to
Speaker 1: work with. He wrote a book called hit Makers, The
Speaker 1: Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction. Your book
Speaker 1: is about what makes things popular, and the book is
Speaker 1: about pop culture, so like music and art and politicians.
Speaker 1: But in the book you talk about this thing called maya,
Speaker 1: which is the underlying principle of what makes anything and
Speaker 1: maybe even our work idea is popular. Can you explain
Speaker 1: what that is? Yes, Maya m a y a. Uh.
Speaker 1: This principle comes from the father of industrial design. His
Speaker 1: name is Raymond Loewy. He was a French orphan. He
Speaker 1: comes over to the US in the late nineteen teens. Uh.
Speaker 1: He starts off as an artist and he gradually gets
Speaker 1: into engineering and design, and he eventually designs the modern
Speaker 1: greyhound bus, the modern car. His student Baker, was named
Speaker 1: the finest automotive design of the twentieth century. He designed
Speaker 1: the modern tractor. He designed the modern kitchen. He even
Speaker 1: designed the habitability of the first NASA spaceship, the interior
Speaker 1: of the first NASA spaceship, the concept of the portal
Speaker 1: where you can look through the glass and see Earth.
Speaker 1: That was his idea. So literally everything from tooth to
Speaker 1: station windows. But they weren't know that they brought on
Speaker 1: Raymond Lowe because is this was the first time they
Speaker 1: were going to send people up into space, and Raymond
Speaker 1: Loey was the expert at designing things that people liked.
Speaker 1: So they said, how do people want to live in space?
Speaker 1: Help us understand how to design a habitat on a
Speaker 1: spaceship that people would want to live and feel comfortable
Speaker 1: living in. And his theory for why people like what
Speaker 1: they like was called Maya m a y a most
Speaker 1: advanced yet acceptable, And his insight was that people are
Speaker 1: essentially intention between two opposing ideas. They are neo philic
Speaker 1: they like new things, and they are neophobic. They don't
Speaker 1: like things that are too new, They are afraid of
Speaker 1: new things. And so he had this amazing ability of
Speaker 1: marrying familiarity and surprise and understanding and anxiety into all
Speaker 1: of his designs. And one of my theses in the
Speaker 1: book is that this principle helps us understand basically the
Speaker 1: popularity of everything in pop culture. We like new songs
Speaker 1: with old chord structures, we like new movies with old
Speaker 1: characters he Tho's adaptations and reboots, and we even like
Speaker 1: ideas and articles and podcasts that express in new and
Speaker 1: fascinating ways, uh, concepts that we've already somewhat intuited and
Speaker 1: so therefore are a little old. And so it's this
Speaker 1: marriage of newness and oldness that is sort of the
Speaker 1: the god particle of popularity. So I want to imagine
Speaker 1: how this might play out in the workplace. So, like,
Speaker 1: say you're in a meeting and you have this idea
Speaker 1: of yours and it's an idea that you want people
Speaker 1: to buy into. How does this principle work with that? Right,
Speaker 1: So you're starting now with a really new, crazy idea,
Speaker 1: right that people don't like because, as you said, it's
Speaker 1: just it's too new. Um, I want to get rid
Speaker 1: of all the chairs in the office, and I want
Speaker 1: to the office great. Yes, exactly, very new ideas that
Speaker 1: people stand the better circulation, they live longer. So Raymond
Speaker 1: Lowly faced this problem all the time. He thought that
Speaker 1: the mid twentieth century was absolutely disgusting, that the designs
Speaker 1: of this era were totally gross. He hated the way
Speaker 1: that trains looked in the early twentieth century. They look
Speaker 1: sort of like Thomas the Tank Engine. They had these
Speaker 1: really garish protrusions, and that they're even with their chimneys
Speaker 1: and um uh, and they're they're sort of spindley designed.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of children what would disagree with
Speaker 1: you on Thomas the Tank familiar with the tank engine?
Speaker 1: Um And he wanted trains to look like we now
Speaker 1: sort of envisioned them, particularly sort of you know, the
Speaker 1: fastest trains that sort of looked like the shape of
Speaker 1: a bullet fired through water, right, that sort of sleek,
Speaker 1: smooth shell. So he pitches this in the nineteen thirties
Speaker 1: to Pennsylvania Railroad and they say, no, that's a terrible idea,
Speaker 1: that that looks way too weird. We don't want that.
Speaker 1: He pitches it again a year later, and again a
Speaker 1: year later, and again a year later, and he starts
Speaker 1: off making the difference between his ideal design and the
Speaker 1: current design of trains really subtle, and then he just
Speaker 1: pushes them along the curve. He shows ideas, gives them
Speaker 1: designs that look more and more and more like the
Speaker 1: current look of trains. This sort of this bullet fired
Speaker 1: through water, and eventually the executives that Pennsylvania Railroad become
Speaker 1: extremely familiar and they fall in love with his designs
Speaker 1: because they've seen them more and more and more, and
Speaker 1: they sort of walk towards his ideas. So what does
Speaker 1: this have to do with work. Well, if you're trying
Speaker 1: to get all the chairs out of a conference room,
Speaker 1: you don't start by saying we're going to have an
Speaker 1: edict that says no more chairs in the conference room.
Speaker 1: Maybe you start by taking away one or two chairs
Speaker 1: so a few people have to stand up. And then
Speaker 1: you take away a few more chairs, so a few
Speaker 1: more people have to stand up. And then when people
Speaker 1: are used to being in conference rooms where a quarter
Speaker 1: and a half the room is standing up, they begin
Speaker 1: to associate people standing in conference rooms with what is normal,
Speaker 1: with what is familiar, and then you can take away
Speaker 1: a few more chairs, a few more chairs, and then
Speaker 1: eventually you have a conference room table and no chairs,
Speaker 1: and you have conference rooms that are just purely standing affairs.
Speaker 1: And so what he would say is don't introduce this
Speaker 1: new idea in its purely new form. Give people a
Speaker 1: little bit of the familiar at first, and then a
Speaker 1: little bit less less less less, and gradually expose them
Speaker 1: to your idea. That's kind of happened with standing dusks,
Speaker 1: now that I hear you talking about it, right, there
Speaker 1: were some weirdos who piled boxes their desks. Actually, Derek,
Speaker 1: I believe you did that. Had an Amazon box in
Speaker 1: my desk. Yeah, And then there were some pioneers who
Speaker 1: had requested standing desks. And now workplaces are starting to
Speaker 1: give you the option of sit stand, and it's becoming
Speaker 1: much more normal to have the sit stand desk. It's
Speaker 1: not just some peculiarity of some weirdo person who wants
Speaker 1: to stand up. Now, Yeah, I think standing desk is
Speaker 1: actually a perfect like entry way into the conversation. But
Speaker 1: the principle has much more serious applications. Right. Let's think
Speaker 1: about something like parental leave policies. There's certainly a time
Speaker 1: in the US where the concept of you know, private
Speaker 1: companies having print to leave was extremely rare and crazy.
Speaker 1: And what had to happen is that a few companies
Speaker 1: that could afford the policy had to introduce it, and
Speaker 1: then media reporters had to report on these print to
Speaker 1: leave policies and expose more people to the concept that, hey,
Speaker 1: maybe we should be a little bit nicer to not
Speaker 1: only mothers but also fathers who want to take leave
Speaker 1: when they have children. And then as people become more
Speaker 1: familiar with the concept, they began to quait familiarity with
Speaker 1: normality and fact, and what is familiar becomes normal, and
Speaker 1: what is normal becomes conflated with the good. And so
Speaker 1: once again I think that you know, as the idea
Speaker 1: becomes familiarized, it becomes more powerful in culture. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then we have candidates on both sides of the aisle
Speaker 1: talking about parental leave, which was unthinkable one political cycleogo
Speaker 1: just study insane. So what about the opposite example, what
Speaker 1: about when you have an idea that everybody else feels
Speaker 1: is too old school? Like what if I want Becca
Speaker 1: to write a story about parental leave and Becca says,
Speaker 1: been done, been done by me and many other people.
Speaker 1: How do we make the familiar idea saying as a story, Yes,
Speaker 1: this is such a this is such an awesome question.
Speaker 1: So this is, first of all a question they faced
Speaker 1: all the time in the book because I'm writing in
Speaker 1: hit Makers about pieces of sort of pop culture icons.
Speaker 1: I'm writing about uh, impressionism and star Wars and Snapchat
Speaker 1: and Facebook and things that people have read a lot about.
Speaker 1: So the he was, how do I bring each story
Speaker 1: to a bit of a surprising place? Right? And in
Speaker 1: many ways, I think that one of the challenges of
Speaker 1: writing things or making things that are interesting is that
Speaker 1: interesting isn't just purely new, and it's not just purely familiar.
Speaker 1: Interesting always takes something that you're a little bit that
Speaker 1: you're a little bit familiar in, and then pushes it
Speaker 1: a little bit further into the future, makes it a
Speaker 1: little bit advanced, and then that's when your brain sort
Speaker 1: of hooks onto it and says, huh, this is a
Speaker 1: really cool idea. So if you're writing a story about
Speaker 1: print to leave policies, that comes after thousands of stories
Speaker 1: about print to leave policies, right, the trick becomes, all right,
Speaker 1: how do I find an angle that no one's written
Speaker 1: about this before? Um, maybe you know we're talking about
Speaker 1: we Becca just brought up the fact that uh Ivanka
Speaker 1: Trump Um, rather surprisingly for the Republican Party, Um made
Speaker 1: print to leave one of her items in the Republican
Speaker 1: National Convention speech. Um, maybe the interesting take isn't all
Speaker 1: of the liberal companies and you know, tech companies that
Speaker 1: have printed leave policies, but is prin to leave policy
Speaker 1: now becoming a Republican issue as well? Is a surprising
Speaker 1: group taking on a familiar cause. And then you begin
Speaker 1: to say, oh, yeah, that is something that someone who's
Speaker 1: interested in these ideas, uh might might like to read about.
Speaker 1: So you've touched on another one of your principles that
Speaker 1: you talked about in the book. That so we have maya,
Speaker 1: which is one thing, but then also repetition and how
Speaker 1: that can be really important in getting people to buy
Speaker 1: into your ideas. Yeah, there's a chapter about the psychology
Speaker 1: of music, and one of the most basic principles of
Speaker 1: music is this idea of repetition. It's true even of
Speaker 1: just speaking. If I have a sentence and I start
Speaker 1: repeating it again, start repeating it again, start repeating it again,
Speaker 1: start repeating it again, the brain starts to hear that
Speaker 1: done done, that dada done, and you can't help it.
Speaker 1: Repetition distinguishes the cacophony from music. It transforms sound into music.
Speaker 1: And this is true not only for rhythms and guitar playing,
Speaker 1: but it's also true for speech. Every ancient Greek rhetorical
Speaker 1: device is essentially a form of repetition. You have a napro,
Speaker 1: which is repetition at the beginning of a sentence win St. Churchill,
Speaker 1: we shall fight them in the air, we shall fight
Speaker 1: them on the landing fields. Repetition at the end of
Speaker 1: a sentence Abraham Lincoln. Government of the people, by the people,
Speaker 1: for the people. But the most powerful example, and the
Speaker 1: one that I think shows up a lot in UH,
Speaker 1: in memos, UH, and in really persuasive speech even around
Speaker 1: the office, is called anti metaboli, which is an A
Speaker 1: B B A structure. JFK. Ask not what your country
Speaker 1: can do for you, ask what you can do for
Speaker 1: your country, or in an office setting, the problem with
Speaker 1: your editing isn't too much criticism. The problem with your
Speaker 1: editing is not enough constructive criticism. And I do think that.
Speaker 1: So wait, can you back up and explain, like, break
Speaker 1: down the A, B, B A in one of those examples. Yeah? Sure,
Speaker 1: So h let's take Hillary Clinton. Um, women's rights are
Speaker 1: human rights and human rights are women's rights. A is
Speaker 1: B B is go ask not what your country can
Speaker 1: do for you, A b ask what you be can
Speaker 1: do for your country A. And so this a B
Speaker 1: B A structure is called chiasmus or anti metaboli, and
Speaker 1: it is absolutely rampant in political rhetoric. But the magic
Speaker 1: of this as a matter of persuasion is precisely that
Speaker 1: it turns and otherwise uncatchy idea into musical language, and
Speaker 1: people sometimes fall in love with the music before they
Speaker 1: even process the substance. This can be a dangerous thing
Speaker 1: when it's sort of on a grand political scale. But
Speaker 1: right now we're simply talking about, you know, the office setting.
Speaker 1: And so I do think that there are lots of
Speaker 1: examples where when people have, you know, an issue with
Speaker 1: a boss or an issue with a colleague, um, sometimes
Speaker 1: the most persuasive way to make that case is precisely
Speaker 1: to make it with a little bit of musical language.
Speaker 1: You know, the problem with you editing isn't too much criticism.
Speaker 1: The problem with you editing is not enough constructive criticism.
Speaker 1: The problem, like, the issue isn't that you talk too
Speaker 1: much in the office. The issue is that you talk
Speaker 1: too much when I'm on the phone. Disability to sort
Speaker 1: of establish an idea by initially establishing its counterpoint is
Speaker 1: like a very very uh used and tried in true
Speaker 1: way of making the idea click. Yeah, we often talk
Speaker 1: about compliment sandwiches, but we mean A B, B A
Speaker 1: what would we call that? I'm not sure, but compliment abbas?
Speaker 1: Yeah that Yeah, it's a good management tool. So if
Speaker 1: Becca wants to sell her great parental leave story idea,
Speaker 1: now she has to figure out a way to talk
Speaker 1: about it with an A, B B A pitch. Right,
Speaker 1: parent to leave is in a women's issue, women's issues,
Speaker 1: we might have to work on it, right, but yeah,
Speaker 1: but sure, but something like um, right, uh, what you
Speaker 1: would say, parent to leave isn't a women's issue, print
Speaker 1: to leave as a family issue, or printal leave isn't
Speaker 1: isn't a mother's issue, printal leave is a father's issue.
Speaker 1: Um that. There there are ways of of establishing the idea,
Speaker 1: even in surprising ways, to use precisely this kind of antithetical,
Speaker 1: slightly musical language. That's actually a great tip that that
Speaker 1: goes well beyond just journalists the news room trying to
Speaker 1: pitch stories, because I feel like there's lots of meetings
Speaker 1: where you want to get something out of it, and
Speaker 1: you'd have to prepare ahead of time with what you say.
Speaker 1: Like so, if you want to go ask your boss
Speaker 1: for a raise, you tend to think, Okay, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go in and I'm going to talk about all the
Speaker 1: work I did, and I'm gonna say this, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: say this, when maybe all you really need to do
Speaker 1: is come up with a really catchy forward phrase about
Speaker 1: how hard you've been working and why you deserve I mean,
Speaker 1: one thing that I actually find from meetings and these
Speaker 1: sort of conversations with people about you know, whether it's
Speaker 1: salary or responsibilities, Like the meetings only come away with you.
Speaker 1: You only come away with a one sentence summary anyway,
Speaker 1: right like you're getting the raise or you're not. Either
Speaker 1: you are getting this new responsibility or you're not, or
Speaker 1: the you're it's seventy percent chance you're gonna get it
Speaker 1: or thirty percent. You know that all these meetings are
Speaker 1: always incredibly easily summarizeable, and so I'm constantly thinking, like, well,
Speaker 1: the outcome of the meeting was one sentence. Maybe I
Speaker 1: should have gone into the meeting with one sentence like that.
Speaker 1: It's it's I should have focused it by saying it's
Speaker 1: just about this, right, Um, the problem with my job
Speaker 1: aren't the responsibilities that I have, the problem with my
Speaker 1: job are the responsibilities that I don't have? In want
Speaker 1: and so, right and so do you just very clearly
Speaker 1: say I want to keep what I'm doing and add
Speaker 1: a little bit more? Did you just did an A
Speaker 1: B B A B YEA your responsibility? You write the book? Yeah,
Speaker 1: all you can do is talk this way. My friends
Speaker 1: are absolutely horrified by my language because now I only
Speaker 1: exclusively talk through a completely bend to your will into
Speaker 1: everything as I'm constantly giving from all my friends and
Speaker 1: like Pa gave me an enormous amount of money. So
Speaker 1: we've been talking about how to make your ideas more popular.
Speaker 1: But are there things in the book to make you
Speaker 1: a more popular or well liked or respected person at work? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think there are. I think there are two ways
Speaker 1: at this question. Um. The first is that the very
Speaker 1: first chapter of my book is called the Power of Exposure.
Speaker 1: And it's this idea that, as we discussed, UH, we
Speaker 1: tend to like things more the more we see them.
Speaker 1: A very old classic example is when Impressionist art came
Speaker 1: out in the eighteen sixties, seventies and eighties, people were
Speaker 1: absolutely horrified by it and they thought it was disgusting.
Speaker 1: But now you show any six year old a picture
Speaker 1: of Monai's water lilies, and they run to it and say,
Speaker 1: oh wow, how great. Uh. They're they're used to seeing
Speaker 1: this kind of art. They're they're used to associating it
Speaker 1: with fame and beauty down Stravinsky's Right of Spring like
Speaker 1: cause riots, right, exactly, yeah, Or you could say the
Speaker 1: same about rock and roll. It was this was horrifying
Speaker 1: race music in the late nineteen forties or the nine
Speaker 1: and fifties, and that we think, and then it became mainstream,
Speaker 1: and now we think of it as old fashioned. So
Speaker 1: you have these these hype cycles. Things are too radical,
Speaker 1: then perfectly radical, and then overly familiar. All right, So
Speaker 1: what does this have to do with popular in the office?
Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln has this great quote, I don't like that man.
Speaker 1: I should get to know him better. And it's this
Speaker 1: lovely idea that I think we've all had. We've all
Speaker 1: had this experience where there's someone in the office that
Speaker 1: we think it's a little bit weird, we think might
Speaker 1: even be mean, we think might dislike us, and then
Speaker 1: we have like one beer with them, you know, like
Speaker 1: one long meeting with them. We tell our story, they
Speaker 1: tell theirs, and we stop thinking of them as this
Speaker 1: radical beast. We're like, oh, they're just a human being
Speaker 1: like us. They're going through their own war, they have
Speaker 1: their own problems, and of course we can get along.
Speaker 1: And becoming just a little bit more familiar with some
Speaker 1: of these people at work makes us like them more. So.
Speaker 1: The first idea would be, if you are a little
Speaker 1: bit of a weirdo, and I'm sure there are some
Speaker 1: weirdos listening in the podcast, UM, understand that a little
Speaker 1: bit of availability simply makes people like you more. The
Speaker 1: second thing that I that I thought about particularly relation
Speaker 1: in the book is that you know, popularity in the
Speaker 1: office or in any setting really can have sort of
Speaker 1: two definitions. There's likability and their status. Like Ability is
Speaker 1: sort of is just a sheer volume play, and then
Speaker 1: you know, status is is a little bit more intensity.
Speaker 1: So in the book I talked about how like if
Speaker 1: you have a culture with millions of people reading US weekly,
Speaker 1: but none of them talk about US weekly at parties, UM,
Speaker 1: But then in some elite parties who have a lot
Speaker 1: of people talking about things like Thomas Picketti's Capital but
Speaker 1: never reading past page five. Then what is the bigger
Speaker 1: effect on culture US weekly? Which is the likability play?
Speaker 1: Or capital which is the status play? And I think
Speaker 1: in the office, you know, people want different things. Some
Speaker 1: people want to be likable, that's their goal. Other people
Speaker 1: are like the reality TV star who says I'm not
Speaker 1: here to make friends, I'm here to win, and they
Speaker 1: care more about status. So when thinking about office place popularity,
Speaker 1: I think it's important to distinguish between between status and likability.
Speaker 1: And also I think that's worth pointing out that we
Speaker 1: haven't brought this up, but being popular and while liked
Speaker 1: and having status can be extremely gendered, and a woman
Speaker 1: doing these things might come off different than a man.
Speaker 1: My god, yeah, my guests would be without having the
Speaker 1: research right in front of me that for purely cultural reasons,
Speaker 1: women in the office might feel like they have to
Speaker 1: be likable more than they have to nakedly pursue status,
Speaker 1: whereas for men it's sort of culturally acceptable to baldly
Speaker 1: pursue status at issue popularity in movies, for example, Hollywood
Speaker 1: screenwriters face this challenge a lot very strong Uh, female
Speaker 1: characters are sometimes seen very negatively by audiences, whereas this,
Speaker 1: you take the same line and you put it in
Speaker 1: the in a male executive's mouth, and he seems like
Speaker 1: a badass. He seems really cool, and you put posters
Speaker 1: of him on your on your dorm room wall, like uh,
Speaker 1: you know Gordon gekkowin Wall Street. But you think about
Speaker 1: something like you know, Devilwares product an incredibly strong female character,
Speaker 1: Miranda Priestley. She says a lot of things, she does
Speaker 1: a lot of things that if a man did it,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't consider it weird at all. But she's portrayed
Speaker 1: as a little bit of a B word. And I
Speaker 1: think there's a reason why there's a scene in that
Speaker 1: movie where Ann Hathaway opens the door and sees Meryl
Speaker 1: Streep crying over the dissolution of her marriage. The screenwriters
Speaker 1: needed that because audiences want to think, oh, the strong
Speaker 1: woman isn't the real woman. There's a crack in the
Speaker 1: exoskeleton and you can see the vulnerability belief, and that's
Speaker 1: the real Miranda Priestly. She's actually vulnerable. Audiences need to
Speaker 1: see vulnerability in women in a way they don't need to,
Speaker 1: and men, and of course that has all sorts of
Speaker 1: implications in the office place when men and women are
Speaker 1: competing for the exact same jobs. So it sounds like
Speaker 1: before you try to go out and get what you
Speaker 1: on in the office, you really have to think about
Speaker 1: exactly what it is you want, whether you're trying to
Speaker 1: get a project done, or whether you need status or
Speaker 1: how much status you actually need to get that thing.
Speaker 1: And your book has given us so much to think
Speaker 1: about in that respect. So thank you so much for
Speaker 1: coming on and talking to us. Thank you, it's my pleasure. Well,
Speaker 1: that was really interesting, and one thing that surprised me
Speaker 1: was how much we ended up talking about popularity and
Speaker 1: likability and being liked. But as Derek's research shows, there's
Speaker 1: an intimate relationship between being liked and actually getting things
Speaker 1: done around the office. Yeah, and that reminds me of
Speaker 1: a kind of unfortunate thing that happened to me in
Speaker 1: my first job. And I've mentioned this before, but I
Speaker 1: had this idea of, you know, if I'm just good,
Speaker 1: I'll succeed. And I'm at my first job and a
Speaker 1: few weeks in this man pulled me aside who I
Speaker 1: had been working with, and he said, you know, if
Speaker 1: you are less salty, you'll do much better at work,
Speaker 1: Like you need to change your attitude, which was unfortunate
Speaker 1: that he said that to me and obviously stung my ego.
Speaker 1: But I did change my attitude and he was right.
Speaker 1: I started having more pitches get through, and my stories
Speaker 1: did better, and editors liked working with me better. And
Speaker 1: I did have to learn that you play a politics
Speaker 1: game with the people you work if you want to
Speaker 1: get ahead. Right. So at that job, the way for
Speaker 1: you to play the game was to be nicer, right,
Speaker 1: which obviously we've talked about this is very gendered, and
Speaker 1: the way that women play the game is different than
Speaker 1: the way men play the game, and often when women
Speaker 1: play the game, they can't get as far as they
Speaker 1: want to write. The game changes depending on who you are, right,
Speaker 1: But you have to at least acknowledge that there is
Speaker 1: a game, Like, if you don't acknowledge the game, you're
Speaker 1: not going to succeed, at least within the structure of
Speaker 1: most workplaces, right. And that's the real value of some
Speaker 1: of these tools is keep having the good ideas but
Speaker 1: also know there's extra stuff that you need to do
Speaker 1: for people to really hear and implement your good ideas
Speaker 1: fun and now it's time for half big takes, happy
Speaker 1: fake takes. All right, Francesca, what is you are not
Speaker 1: fully formed idea that you want to share with the
Speaker 1: world this week? Yeah, everybody needs to know this one. Um,
Speaker 1: when you are at a restaurant, So you're at a
Speaker 1: business lunch and the waiter asks you whether you would
Speaker 1: like sparkling or still water. In some regions they call
Speaker 1: tap water. It's also known as just those the free
Speaker 1: water that comes out of the faucet. Um, get the
Speaker 1: sparkling water. You're an adult, Come on, like, it's not
Speaker 1: it's it's better. It's a more special experience than drinking water.
Speaker 1: And just getting the still water just makes you seem cheap.
Speaker 1: It's probably not that much more expensive to just get
Speaker 1: the fuzzy stuff. This is how I know I'm not
Speaker 1: an adult. I always get the tap water, right, But
Speaker 1: that wouldn't it feel like just special and kind of
Speaker 1: naughty and just like just really cool if one day
Speaker 1: you were like, go ahead, bring me the fizzy stuff.
Speaker 1: Your life is so exciting. No, I'm pretty wild, but
Speaker 1: all right, yeah, get the sparkling water. Becca, what's your
Speaker 1: happ big take. I want to stand up for airplane food.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, if you are traveling and you're flying on
Speaker 1: an airplane, First of all, I always pay for a drink,
Speaker 1: an alcoholic beverage, depending on the time of day you
Speaker 1: have to. It's the only way to get through the flight.
Speaker 1: And it's just not that expensive. It's okay, that have
Speaker 1: to back up. It's seven dollars for a drink in
Speaker 1: New York City. That's about par for New York City prices.
Speaker 1: I understand that everybody lives in New York City. It's
Speaker 1: more expensive than a drink safe from my hometown. But okay,
Speaker 1: but you're defending the food prices too. I'm also defending
Speaker 1: the food prices and the food quality. If you buy
Speaker 1: something in the airport, it's probably going to be similar quality,
Speaker 1: similar prices then on the plane. So why don't you
Speaker 1: just buy something on the plane and it makes it special,
Speaker 1: just like yourselfs are half big take. Okay, okay, I
Speaker 1: can buy that. And this has been half big takes,
Speaker 1: half bake takes. So before we go, we have some
Speaker 1: exciting news out of game Plan HQ. We now have
Speaker 1: a voicemail line. Yeah, and we want you to call
Speaker 1: us with your half baked takes, so leave us a
Speaker 1: message and we might use it on the air. And
Speaker 1: the number for that is two and two six one
Speaker 1: seven zero one six six And thanks for listening to
Speaker 1: another episode of game Plan. You can find me on Twitter.
Speaker 1: I'm at rs Greenfield and I'm at Francesco Today. You
Speaker 1: can tweet your happy takes too at game Plan. And
Speaker 1: if you like the show, please head on over to
Speaker 1: iTunes wherever you listen to podcasts and rate us and
Speaker 1: review and subscribe. It really means a lot to us.
Speaker 1: The show was produced by Liz Smith and Magnus Hendrickson
Speaker 1: head a podcast. It's Alfa Keith and we'll see you
Speaker 1: next week. Hi. Also, once I was in the Puerto
Speaker 1: Rico airport and it was thirty five dollars for a
Speaker 1: chicken sandwich. So was it a good chicken snow? It
Speaker 1: was horrible.